Techmeme
December 14, 2013, 6:15 AM

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 …
Michael Steeber / 9to5Mac:
iOS 7.1 likely to unlock Apple's upcoming iOS in the Car feature  —  In July, we reported that Apple was already at work at iOS 7.1 and that it would build in support for the upcoming iOS in the Car feature: … iOS in the Car is a feature that allows customers to attach an iOS device …
Washington Post:
By cracking cellphone code, NSA has capacity for decoding private conversations  —  The cellphone encryption technology used most widely across the world can be easily defeated by the National Security Agency, an internal document shows, giving the agency the means to decode most of the billions …
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 …
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
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 …
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.

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Spencer Ackerman / Guardian:

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