Techmeme
December 15, 2013, 3:20 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Officials Say U.S. May Never Know Extent of Snowden's Leaks  —  WASHINGTON — American intelligence and law enforcement investigators have concluded that they may never know the entirety of what the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden extracted from classified government computers …
Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic Online:
How Americans Were Deceived About Cell Phone Location Data  —  Remember when multiple Obama Administration figures said the NSA doesn't collect it?  That wasn't true.  —  Shortly after the earliest articles sourced to Edward Snowden appeared, Americans newly aware of the cell phones …
More: Washington PostTweets: @dafnalinzer
Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:
2013: The Year ‘the Stream’ Crested  —  The Stream is fun and fast, but don't you miss the sense of an ending?  —  The Stream has been the organizing metaphor for the web for the past several years.  In May 2009, a high-ranking editor of TechCrunch identified and summarized this grand shift …
More: Pretzel LogicTweets: @stilgherrian and @homebrew
Allison Arieff / New York Times:
As tech companies embrace urban life, many in San Francisco remain closed off from their city  —  What Tech Hasn't Learned From Urban Planning  —  SAN FRANCISCO — The tech sector is, increasingly, embracing the language of urban planning — town hall, public square, civic hackathons, community engagement.
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.
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 …
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Amazon Pushes Installment Plan Payments for Kindle Fire HDX Tablets  —  Amazon seems to be selling a lot of its newest Kindle Fire tablets*.  But it would like to sell many more.  —  So here's Jeff Bezos' newest pitch: Buy a Kindle Fire HDX tablet today, and we'll give you nine months to finish paying for it.

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Featured Podcasts

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Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
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More News

Brendan O'Connor / The Awl:

Earlier Picks

Jennifer Golbeck / Slate: