Techmeme
December 16, 2013, 7:50 PM

Top News

Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
An NSA Coworker Remembers The Real Edward Snowden: ‘A Genius Among Geniuses’  —  Perhaps Edward Snowden's hoodie should have raised suspicions.  —  The black sweatshirt sold by the civil libertarian Electronic Frontier Foundation featured a parody of the National Security Agency's logo …
Sara Morrison / The Wire:
Josh Gerstein / Politico:
Judge: NSA phone program likely unconstitutional  —  A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency program which collects information on nearly all telephone calls made to, from or within the United States is likely unconstitutional.  —  U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Windows Phone 8.1 includes notification center and Siri-like personal assistant  —  Microsoft is preparing to ship its Windows Phone 8.1 update with two significant changes: a notification center and a Siri-like personal assistant.  Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans have revealed …
Nick Wingfield / NYT Bits:
Photosynth creator and architect of Bing mobile and mapping leaves Microsoft to join Google  —  A Microsoft Star Goes to Google  —  SEATTLE — Blaise Agüera y Arcas, a respected engineer and software designer at Microsoft, has left the company to join its rival Google.
Garett Sloane / Adweek:
Apple pushes iTunes Radio ad sales, builds real-time bidding exchange for in-app ads  —  Apple Is Building an RTB Platform to Sell In-App Ads  —  Apple leadership has given the iAds team a new mission: always be selling iTunes Radio.  And while the sales team is busy pushing Apple radio inventory …
Zeke J Miller / TIME:
Obama To Meet Tech Execs Over NSA Spying, Obamacare Website  —  President Barack Obama will meet with many of Silicon Valley's best-known executives Tuesday at the White House to discuss the troubled Healthcare.gov website and controversial surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency, the administration announced.
Brian R. Fitzgerald / Digits:
As Walt Mossberg exits, WSJ's new personal tech team includes Geoffrey Fowler and new hires Joanna Stern, Wilson Rothman, and Nathan Olivarez-Giles  —  WSJ Announces Personal Tech Reviewing Team  —  Today we are announcing expanded Wall Street Journal coverage of personal technology …
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Ho Ho No!  Amazon Apologizes After Customers Lose Access to Christmas Content.  —  If you buy a digital song, book or movie, do you really own that song, book or movie?  —  Or are you just renting a collection of bits, which are never really going to be yours?
Will Connors / Wall Street Journal:
Two More Executives Leaving BlackBerry  —  EVP of Global Sales, Official in Charge of M&A Strategy to Depart in Weeks  —  TORONTO—The leadership upheaval at BlackBerry Ltd. continues under interim Chief Executive John Chen, according to people familiar with the matter.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook Launches “Donate” Button For Non-Profits That Also Collects Billing Info For Itself  —  Facebook unveiled a “Donate Now” button today to make it much easier for non-profits to take contributions.  A nice side effect for its business?  The button will collect credit card numbers …
John Coté / San Francisco Chronicle:
S.F. rolls out 3 miles of free Wi-Fi along Market Street  —  It's a bit like free citywide Wi-Fi on the installment plan.  —  After announcing a deal in July to bring free Wi-Fi to San Francisco's public parks, the city will officially roll out free wireless connectivity Monday along a main transit spine - Market Street.
David Carr / New York Times:
AOL's Tim Armstrong reluctantly lets go of Patch as shareholder pressures mount  —  AOL Chief's White Whale Finally Slips His Grasp  —  Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of AOL, is finally winding down Patch, a network of local news sites that he helped invent and that AOL bought after he took over.
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
TV Check-In Company Viggle Buys Facebook Publisher Wetpaint  —  Viggle, the company that rewards people for watching TV shows, has bought Wetpaint, a Facebook-centric publisher that specializes in writing about TV shows.  —  The deal, which is costing Viggle $30 million in cash and stock …
Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:
Violin Memory Fires CEO Basile as IPO and Quarterly Results Disappoint  —  Violin Memory, the flash-storage player, just fired CEO Don Basile (pictured) in the wake of the lousy performance of its initial public offering and quarterly results that were worse than anyone expected.

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI that works  —  Tribe builds tech for top AI companies.  Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.
Kulkan Security:
Hire Kulkan as your penetration testing partner  —  Kulkan prioritizes deep-dive manual security reviews, dissecting your software and infrastructure to find issues that once remediated can truly reduce security risk.
Zoho:
Environmental impact of remote support: Reducing carbon footprints in IT  —  Information technology is essential for powering core business processes and facilitating communication.
Mastodon:
Donate to Mastodon  —  Mastodon gGmbH, the non-profit behind the open-source software powering the social web, relies entirely on support from users like you.  Donate directly with a credit card or through Patreon.
The Kevin Rose Show:
Magatte Wade, Unlocking Prosperity in Africa (#53)
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 04/19 - All The News About Llama 3
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:50 PM ET, December 16, 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

Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat: