Techmeme
December 14, 2013, 5:15 PM

Top News

John Markoff / New York Times:
Google acquires Boston Dynamics, maker of BigDog, Petman, and other research robots  —  Google Adds to Its Menagerie of Robots  —  SAN FRANCISCO — BigDog, Cheetah, WildCat and Atlas have joined Google's growing robot menagerie.  —  Google confirmed on Friday that it had completed …
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Lawsuit accuses IBM of hiding China risks amid NSA spy scandal  —  (Reuters) - IBM Corp has been sued by a shareholder who accused it of concealing how its ties to what became a major U.S. spying scandal reduced business in China and ultimately caused its market value to plunge more than $12 billion.
Washington Post:
Spencer Ackerman / Guardian:
Yoree Koh / Digits:
Twitter Test Shows ‘Nearby’ Tweets  —  Twitter has an eye on your location — and is testing ways to share it with other nearby users.  —  The short-messaging service appears to be testing a new timeline for its mobile app, called “Nearby.”  It shows recent nearby tweets, whether you follow the tweeter or not.
Casey Johnston / Ars Technica:
Instagram senders can delete their messages from recipients' phones  —  The Instagram Direct interface, which allows you to share photos directly to a subset of those you follow, rather than to all your followers.  —  The surface read of Instagram's announcement of a messaging-like feature today was a bit underwhelming.
Jennifer Golbeck / Slate:
Facebook collects metadata on “self-censorship”, updates you begin typing but don't publish  —  Facebook wants to know why you didn't publish that status update you started writing  —  Facebook wants to know why you didn't publish that status update you started writing.
Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:
Apple's iOS nabbed 76% of small & medium business device activations in 2013, study says  —  According to SMB email management company Intermedia, some 190,000 iPhones and iPads were activated on its network in the first ten months of 2013, grossly outpacing No. 2 Samsung's 29,000 activations.
Rich McCormick / The Verge:
New Google Tips is surprisingly helpful  —  Google has launched Google Tips, a site which uses clickable cards to explain the features and capabilities of Google's biggest products.  The cards explain concepts such as sharing photos with specific people in Google+ circles …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
Labels that build themselves: Simplified Label Automation in Zoho Writer  —  Anyone who ships every day knows this feeling.  Forty orders, each with a different number of items, and every item needs its own label.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
How Ramp Built A $60B AI Product Factory Off A Corporate Card | Co-CEO Eric Glyman
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
Would you let a robot do it?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Training Data:
Bringing Continual Learning to Every Company: Trajectory's Ronak Malde
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Keep Going After The Democrats' Big Win? — With Teddy Schleifer
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Machine Gods:
Crypto's Biggest Heist Ever + The Spy Who Loved Nvidia + Hacktober's Unsolved Mysteries
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Barry Diller on Big Bets, AI, and Knowing When to Walk Away
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:15 PM ET, December 14, 2013.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal: