Techmeme
February 11, 2014, 2:10 PM

Top News

Lan Anh Nguyen / Forbes:
Exclusive: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App ‘Gone Forever’ Because It Was ‘An Addictive Product’  —  The mysterious developer of the world's most popular free app, who drew global attention this past weekend with his sudden decision to remove it, tells Forbes that Flappy Bird is dead.
Liz Gannes / Re/code:
Social customer service company Lithium Technologies to acquire Klout for at least $100M  —  Exclusive: Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout  —  Klout, the online popularity contest startup, is poised to be sold to social customer service company Lithium Technologies.
Lorraine Luk / Digits:
Foxconn Working With Google on Robotics  —  But few people know the Taiwanese contract manufacturer, also known as Hon Hai Precision industry, has been quietly working with Google.  —  People familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal that Foxconn has been working …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
New Windows Phone 8.1 features revealed in developer preview leaks  —  Microsoft has started sharing its Windows Phone 8.1 Software Development Kit (SDK) with developers, and the inevitable leaks have begun.  Over on Reddit, one developer is documenting all of the updates discovered in the Windows Phone 8.1 SDK.
Jason Del Rey / Re/code:
Square Lands Its Next Starbucks by Inking Deal With Whole Foods  —  Digital payments company Square has signed a deal to manage the payments process in portions of select Whole Foods Market stores in the U.S., the companies announced this morning.  With the deal, Square has signed on its flashiest …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Groupon Product Chief Jeff Holden To Depart, Is Heading To A Bay Area Tech Company  —  Groupon's SVP, Product Jeff Holden is leaving the company, effective March 18, 2014, according to a new SEC filing.  Though the exec been fairly tight-lipped about where he's headed to next …
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Acquires Social Diary Company Wander For A Price Over $10M  —  Yahoo has acquired New York-based startup Wander.  —  The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but based on rumors I heard last night at the Crunchies, it appears that the price was north of $10 million.
Dan Seifert / The Verge:
Sprint's the only major US carrier yet to lose money this quarter, despite record subscribers  —  Sprint posted its fourth quarter earnings report for 2013 this morning, with highlights including the highest number of subscribers ever for the company.  The third-place carrier reports a loss of $1 billion …
Robert McMillan / Wired:
Google Takes Over NASA's Hangar One, a Silicon Valley Icon  —  Google has taken over the lease at the airfield that houses Hangar One — the giant eight-acre aircraft hangar that was built in 1933 to house massive dirigibles and now is one of the most recognizable landmarks in Silicon Valley.
asymco.com:
With estimated gross revenues of $7 billion per quarter, iTunes would be ranked 130 in the Fortune 500  —  Fortune 130 … Apple Inc. Form 10-Q.  —  During the last quarter Apple changed the pricing for iWork and OS X to zero[1].  —  I estimate the net effect to have been a reduction …
Harrison Weber / VentureBeat:
Thousands of tech companies, groups, sites join “The Day We Fight Back” anti-NSA protest on Tuesday  —  Reddit, Mozilla, Tumblr and more gear up for massive NSA protest tomorrow  —  Caption: SOPA protests in San Francisco.  —  Source: Wikipedia  —  Remember the Internet's reaction to SOPA and PIPA?
Daniel Cooper / Engadget:
Samsung Galaxy S5 teaser hints at new privacy and fitness features  —  We're not mathematicians, but we're fairly sure that you can't multiply Life to the power of five.  That hasn't stopped Samsung, however, from claiming as much on its latest MWC invite.  The company's “back-to-basics” …
Emily Spaven / CoinDesk:
Bitcoin Exchanges Under ‘Massive and Concerted Attack’  —  A “massive and concerted attack” has been launched by a bot system on numerous bitcoin exchanges, Andreas Antonopoulos has revealed.  —  This has lead to popular exchange Bitstamp putting a temporary halt on all bitcoin withdrawals.
More: Business Insider and ForbesTweets: @aantonop and @aantonopThanks:@jsundmanus
Kim Zetter / Wired:
Sophisticated Spy Tool ‘The Mask’ Rages Undetected for 7 Years  —  PUNTA CANA, Dominican Republic - Researchers have uncovered a sophisticated cyber spying operation that has been alive since at least 2007 and uses techniques and code that surpass any nation-state spyware previously spotted in the wild.
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
Netflix moves into deep learning research to improve personalization  —  Google isn't the only company looking to make lots and lots of computers function more like human brains.  —  In a blog post published earlier today, Netflix research engineers Alex Chen, Justin Basilico …
Kara Swisher / Re/code:
Shazam Poised to Raise $20 Million in New Funding at a $500 Million Valuation  —  According to several sources close to the situation, music discovery app Shazam is close to raising $20 million from investors, some new, at a $500 million valuation.  —  The number is significantly larger …
Casey Johnston / Ars Technica:
Virgin Atlantic passengers get Google Glass customer service  —  Professionals are getting further into Google Glass.  A new video shows a firefighter's display while performing a rescue.  —  Google  —  Virgin Atlantic staff are getting Google Glass to help them assist customers, according to report from The Next Web.
Brad Molen / Engadget:
MediaTek's new octa-core processor to compete with Qualcomm over the premium LTE smartphone market  —  MediaTek, a chipset manufacturer based out of Taiwan, has been making some huge moves lately.  Just over two months ago, it came out with the “world's first true octa-core” processor …

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Brian Fung / Washington Post: