Techmeme: Uber upholds capitalism, (possibly) learns downside of price gouging (Michael Hiltzik/Los Angeles Times)

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December 17, 2013, 6:00 PM

Top News

Guardian:

Tech firms push back against White House efforts to divert NSA meeting — Dominic Rushe in New York and Paul Lewis in Washington — The top leaders from the world's biggest technology companies pressed their case for reform of the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance operations …

More: Politico, TheHill, PC Magazine, USA Today, The Verge, 9to5Mac, Bloomberg, Cult of Mac and Inc.com. Tweets: @dellcam

Matthew M. Aid / Politico:

Review panel will reportedly recommend sweeping changes to NSA's electronic surveillance operations but allow some controversial programs to continue — Slobberknockered: The Tough Hit the NSA Didn't See Coming — How a toothless bureaucratic commission went all Snowden on the NSA.

More: New York Times, emptywheel and Examiner

Tweets: @lawyerpants and @petercoffee

Facebook:

Testing a New Way to Watch Promoted Videos in News Feed — Since September, we've been testing a way to make videos more engaging on Facebook, and as a result we've seen views, likes, shares and comments increase more than 10 percent. — We're beginning to test a similar video viewing format for advertisers.

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Facebook Shows Video Ad, Launches Test This Week

More: Business Insider, Inside Facebook, ABC News, NEWS.com.au, Digits, Bloomberg, MobileSyrup.com, Forbes, WebProNews, Inquirer and internetretailer.com

Amit Singhal / The Official Google Blog:

2013 in Search: Heroes, tragedies and the Harlem Shake — Every day, around the world, we search. We want to find out more about our heroes, explore far-away destinations, or settle a dinner table dispute between friends. And sometimes we just search to find out how many calories are in an avocado.

Seung Min Kim / Politico:

White House chooses former Microsoft Office VP Kurt DelBene to lead HealthCare.gov overhaul — White House to tap Microsoft exec to fix Obamacare site — The White House is tapping the private sector for its next point man to fix the troubled Obamacare website.

More: HHS.gov, The Official Microsoft Blog, Microsoft Corporation, Computerworld, eWeek, The Verge, VentureBeat, CNET, Daily Dot, AllThingsD, GeekWire, Wonkblog, ZDNet, Business Insider and Hot Air. Tweets: @stevesi

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Acquires PeerCDN As It Builds Out Its Content Strategy — Content delivery network provider PeerCDN has been acquired by Yahoo, the company has informed TechCrunch, in a deal the terms of which were not disclosed. The startup revealed its project earlier this year …

More: AllThingsD, VentureBeat, CNET, ZDNet and silicontap.com. Tweets: @peercdn. Thanks:@mjburnsy

Derrick Harris / Gigaom:

Amazon's streaming data service, Kinesis, is now available — Kinesis, the streaming data service that Amazon Web Services announced in November, is now publicly available. The service is comparable in theory to popular open source technologies such as Apache Storm, only Kinesis brings …

More: ZDNet, TechCrunch, InfoWorld, Cloud Pro and Lastest ITProPortal news

Michael Hiltzik / Los Angeles Times:

Uber upholds capitalism, (possibly) learns downside of price gouging — Travis Kalanick, chief executive of Uber Technologies: Let the people walk! (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg / December 16, 2013) — The ride-sharing firm Uber takes great pride in hewing rigorously to libertarian, let-the-market-decide business principles.

More: Valleywag, PandoDaily, Wired, NYT Bits, Business Insider, Valleywag, New York Magazine, Inc.com and NBC Bay Area

Tweets: @calebgarling and @nacin

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Microsoft Director Says CEO Choice Will Not Be Made Until Early 2014 — Microsoft director John Thompson, who leads CEO search — John Thompson, the Microsoft director who is leading the search for a CEO to replace outgoing leader Steve Ballmer, said today in a blog post that the board will not make its choice until early next year.

More: The Official Microsoft Blog, TechCrunch, The Register, CITEworld, ReadWrite, TechnoBuffalo, The Verge, Business Insider and Electronista

Wall Street Journal:

Google, Facebook Push to Control Web's Pipes … Technology giants like Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are expanding efforts to control more of the world's Internet backbone, raising tensions with telecom companies over who runs the Web. — In the past year, these companies that supply …

More: ReadWrite and Gizmodo. Tweets: @samschech, @krmarko, @lisafleisher and @nytimesbits

Richard Lawler / Engadget:

Roku 3 finally snags an official YouTube app, support for additional models is on the way — The lack of a YouTube app has been a massive hole in the content lineup of Roku's otherwise well-rounded media streamers, but no more. YouTube just announced that Roku 3 players in the US, Canada …

More: YouTube Blog, The Official Roku Blog, PC Magazine, 9to5Google, VentureBeat, TechHive, CNET, BetaNews, TechCrunch, IntoMobile, The Verge, Gizmodo, Gigaom and The Next Web

Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:

Samsung wants a retrial of the November retrial in its first U.S. patent litigation with Apple — Last month a federal jury in the Northern District of California awarded Apple $290 million in damages for Samsung's infringement of 13 of the 28 products accused in this first litigation between these parties …

More: BGR, Android Community, TUAW, PhoneArena, Cult of Mac, iDownloadBlog.com and App Advice

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Samsung launches a gamepad for Android that's optimized for its Galaxy phones — Apple began allowing third-party gamepads on the iPhone with iOS 7, and Samsung is also upping its presence in the space after announcing its own gamepad (the not-so-creatively named 'Smartphone GamePad') for Android 4.1 phones.

Ken Yeung / The Next Web:

PayPal acquires mobile platform provider StackMob so developers can build more payment-friendly apps — PayPal is showing that it's serious about supporting developers. Today, the company announced that it has acquired mobile platform StackMob in a move that will bolster its efforts …

More: PayPal, TechCrunch, Gigaom, ZDNet, VentureBeat and Forbes

Kevin C. Tofel / Gigaom:

Samsung taps ex-Apple retail designer for possible Galaxy stores — Samsung may have something new in store for its battle with Apple: A new take on the retail store itself. Former Apple Store designer Tim Gudgel is a new Samsung employee according to The Information (subscription required) …

More: The Information, AppleInsider, ZDNet, TechnoBuffalo, AndroidHeadlines.com, pocketnow.com, SlashGear, Electronista and Android Community. Tweets: @lessien

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

CloudFlare Reveals $50 Million “Secret” Funding — From One Year Ago — CloudFlare co-founders, left to right, Michelle Zatlyn, Lee Holloway and Matthew Prince — CloudFlare, the Web security and performance company, said yesterday that it had raised $50 million in a Series C round …

More: PandoDaily, TechCrunch, The Verge, Gigaom, PE Hub Blog, silicontap.com, VentureBeat and Softpedia News

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Meta Unveils Meta Pro, Its $3,000 AR Glasses Now Available For Pre-Order — Augmented reality startup Meta has spent the past few years making prototypes of wearable devices featuring see-through optics and a wide variety of sensor arrays. Now it's starting production on its first generation …

More: CNET, Engadget, Forbes, Gigaom, LAPTOP Magazine, Al Jazeera America and SlashGear

Phil Goldstein / FierceWireless:

Sprint, Dish to launch trial of fixed TD-LTE service on 2.5 GHz in mid-2014 — Sprint (NYSE:S) is partnering with its erstwhile suitor Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) on a trial of fixed wireless broadband service. This is the second such trial Dish has engaged in; the first was with Sprint wholesale partner nTelos Wireless.

More: The Verge, Gigaom, Bloomberg, Featured News, Wall Street Journal, Computerworld and CNET

Matt Brian / Engadget:

Opera's iPad browser loses navigation buttons, gains lockscreen music controls — Since it's launch in September, Opera's iPad-centric browser Coast has struggled to remain as visible as some of its more popular mobile apps. In an attempt to breathe some life into the app …

More: Opera Software, The Next Web, Gigaom, Opera Software, ZDNet, TUAW, The Next Web and Softpedia News

Michael Steeber / 9to5Mac:

Apple airs touching holiday commercial featuring the iPhone 5s and AirPlay — As is tradition, Apple is airing a new holiday commercial this evening, this time highlighting the iPhone 5s, its movie making capabilities, and AirPlay with the Apple TV. The ad is set to the tune of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”.

More: stratechery, Gizmodo, Business Insider, Forbes, Gigaom, The Verge, MacRumors, BGR, TechCrunch, Electronista, iPhone and Fortune

Tweets: @pschiller and @fmanjoo

Danny Bradbury / CoinDesk:

Additional Sources Confirm China's Payment Processor Ban, Bitcoin Price Falls $200 — Bitcoin dipped to its lowest price in a week, following yesterday's reports that the People's Bank of China had banned third-party payment firms from dealing with bitcoin exchanges.

More: Bloomberg, The Genesis Block, Quartz, Gigaom, MarketWatch, Forbes and SiliconANGLE

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:

Chromebook 11 charger recalled after nine overheat and melt — Google and HP are recalling power chargers for the Chromebook 11 after receiving nine reports of them overheating and melting. One minor burn and one minor incident of property damage resulted from the heating issues …

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

Cisco acquires Collaborate.com, eyes mobile — Summary: The networking giant said the acquisition will help it better navigate mobile collaboration and cloud computing. — Cisco on Tuesday said it has acquired Collaborate.com, a company that develops mobile tools for document sharing, task management and team communication.

More: Cisco Blog, eWeek, Network World, Work together simply, VentureBeat and Xconomy

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