Techmeme
December 13, 2013, 6:40 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sprint Preparing a Bid for T-Mobile US  —  An Offer Would Test U.S. Regulators's Willingness to Have Just 3 Major Carriers  —  Sprint Corp. is working toward a possible bid for rival T-Mobile US Inc., people familiar with the matter said, setting the stage for a giant telecom merger …
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claiming Its Release Was Accidental  —  Yesterday, we published a blog post lauding an extremely important app privacy feature that was added in Android 4.3.  That feature allows users to install apps while preventing the app …
Spencer Ackerman / Guardian:
NSA review to leave spying programs largely unchanged, reports say  —  A participant in a White House-sponsored review of surveillance activities described as “shameful” an apparent decision to leave most of the National Security Agency's controversial bulk spying intact.
Siobhan Gorman / Wall Street Journal:
Michael Sippey / Twitter Blog:
Reverting the changes to block functionality  —  Earlier today, we made a change to the way the “block” function of Twitter works.  We have decided to revert the change after receiving feedback from many users - we never want to introduce features at the cost of users feeling less safe.
Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Horace Dediu / asymco.com:
How many Americans will be using an iPhone when the US smartphone market saturates?  —  As previously noted, the US smartphone market has followed an almost perfectly logistic growth.  The measured data (via comScore, in green below) follows a predictive logistic function (thin blue whose formula is discussed here).
More: App Advice and Gigaom
Bloomberg:
Verizon close to buying Intel's Internet-based pay-TV startup OnCue, may announce the deal next week  —  Verizon Said Near Agreement to Buy Intel's Start-Up TV Service  —  Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) is near an agreement to purchase Intel Corp. (INTC)'s Internet-based pay-TV start-up, according to people familiar with the deal.
Bloomberg:
Google considering moving away from Intel with its own, ARM-based server chips  —  Google Said to Mull Designing Chips in Threat to Intel  —  Google Inc. (GOOG) is considering designing its own server processors using technology from ARM Holdings Plc (ARM), a move that could threaten Intel Corp. …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Leaked Facebook Video Ad Pitch Deck Reveals Plans To Steal TV And YouTube Dollars  —  “Avoid saying anything negative about YouTube - leave the impression of the user experience up to them” Facebook tells its adtech partners in a leaked, confidential deck that teaches them to sell Facebook's video ads.
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Flush with cash, Oculus plans ambitious new VR headset  —  Is virtual reality finally ready for primetime?  —  According to Oculus Rift inventor Palmer Luckey, virtual reality is near and dear to Marc Andreessen's heart.  Twenty years ago — before he created the Mosaic web browser …
More: TechSpot and Gamasutra
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

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Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

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