Techmeme: Justice Department lands first ever convictions against mobile-app pirates (Chris Welch/The Verge)

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March 25, 2014, 10:00 AM

Top News

Charlie Savage / New York Times:

Obama to Call for End to N.S.A.'s Bulk Data Collection — WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is preparing to unveil a legislative proposal for a far-reaching overhaul of the National Security Agency's once-secret bulk phone records program in a way that — if approved by Congress …

More: Guardian, The Switch, Ars Technica, SiliconANGLE, Computerworld, ZDNet, Techdirt, DSLreports, The Next Web, Business Insider, Gizmodo, TheHill, Associated Press, The Verge, VentureBeat, Inquirer, Gawker and Mashable

Tweets: @abrams, @trevortimm, @mikko and @digiphile

See also Mediagazer

Siobhan Gorman / Wall Street Journal:

Bill Would Remove Phone Database From NSA

More: PandoDaily, Bloomberg, Business Insider and Engadget

Tweets: @astepanovich, @gorman_siobhan, @emptywheel and @occupymolokai

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Hotshot CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5% — Box CEO Aaron Levie is credited with bringing sexy back to enterprise startups, but the big surprise in Box's S-1 IPO document filed today is that Levie only owns 4.1 percent of the company.

More: ZDNet, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, StrictlyVC and VatorNews

Tweets: @sacca, @joshconstine and @dgildeh

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Box Files For $250M IPO On Full-Year Revenue Of $124M, Net Loss Of $168M — The Box S-1 is out at last. The cloud storage company is looking to raise up $250 million in the flotation. That sum is less than its competitor Dropbox recently raised from the private markets.

Matt Rosoff / CITEworld:

Box files IPO: Big losses mask bigger ambitions — Cloud storage and collaboration platform provider Box published its long-awaited IPO filing [1] this afternoon, and the main revelation is how much cash it's burning. — Box's cash burn has long been part of Silicon Valley gossip …

Thanks:@mattrosoff

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

YC-Backed Gbatteries Launches BatteryBox, A 50Whr Backup Battery For MacBooks & Other Gadgets — Over the years, users of portable consumer electronics have just come to accept that battery life gets worse over time. But it doesn't have to: Gbatteries, which is in the current batch …

More: BetaNews, Geek.com, Engadget, Electronista, SlashGear, Digital Trends and Y Combinator Posthaven

Ronald Grover / Reuters:

Exclusive: Disney to buy YouTube network Maker Studios for $500 million — (Reuters) - The Walt Disney Co has agreed to buy Maker Studios for $500 million, becoming a major online video distributor through the purchase of one of YouTube's largest networks, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Aloysius Low / CNET:

Hugo Barra on Xiaomi culture, commitment to Android, and plans to enter the Indian market — Xiaomi's Hugo Barra: True world phones in 2 years, Android all the way — The Xiaomi global vice president, and former Google VP, sits down for a chat with CNET in Beijing to talk …

More: MediaNama, SocialTimes and AndroidHeadlines.com. Tweets: @louisgray

Quentin Hardy / New York Times:

New research may show quantum models fit the data from D-Wave computer, not classical — Quantum Computing Research May Back Controversial Company — In the fight to prove it really has developed a quantum computer, D-Wave Systems may have won a big round.

More: Gizmodo and arXiv.org e-Print archive. Tweets: @qhardy

Adam Greenberg / SC Magazine:

Attackers get cash out of ATMs by sending SMS messages — Criminals are using SMS messages to get cash out of ATMs, according to Symantec. — The crooks begin by loading ATM malware into the cash machine. In the Monday post, Symantec used Ploutus, a piece of malware observed circulating Mexico …

More: Symantec, ZDNet, InfoWorld and Softpedia News

Bruce Houghton / hypebot:

Nokia MixRadio becomes first global music streaming service to launch in China — Nokia MixRadio Becomes 1st Global Music Streamer Launches In China — Nokia MixRadio will become the first Global music streaming service to launch in China when it launches in the world's market this week.

More: Gigaom, SlashGear, Music Week, Ubergizmo, WinBeta, Digital Media Wire, My Nokia Blog and neunetznotizen

Dawn C. Chmielewski / Re/code:

Mobile apps eclipse file-sharing services, digital lockers as most widely used source for pirated music — Music Piracy Goes Mobile — The music industry faces a new front in its long-running battle against piracy: The smartphone. — Mobile applications have eclipsed file-sharing services …

More: SocialTimes. Tweets: @natbro

Derrick Harris / Gigaom:

Hortonworks raises $100M to scale its Hadoop business — Hadoop vendor Hortonworks has raised $100 million in a new round of venture capital led by BlackRock and Passport Capital. The company's existing investors — Dragoneer, Tenaya Capital, Benchmark, Index Ventures and Yahoo — also participated in the latest round.

More: Re/code

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Adobe Expands Its Marketing Cloud With Predictive Tools, iBeacon Support, And More — As Adobe kicks off its Digital Marketing Summit in Salt Lake City, the company is announcing a number of new features and products in the Adobe Marketing Cloud, its suite of products for digital marketers.

More: eWeek, eWeek, PC World, VentureBeat, ZDNet, Forbes and The Next Web

Sean Michael Kerner / eWeek:

Secure Domain Foundation Debuts to Fight Internet Domain-Based Threats — With more than 265 million domain names registered globally, and that number growing every quarter, domain registrars must ensure that new registrations are not used for fraudulent and malicious intent.

More: The Register, TheDomains.com, SC Magazine, Help Net Security and SecurityWeek

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Tumblr Gets More Secure With Addition Of Two-Factor Authentication — Tumblr today added a very important security feature to its service, with the addition of two-factor authentication - an option available within the blogging service's “Settings” section as of now.

More: Tumblr Staff, TechHive, Digital Trends, BetaNews, Business Insider, The Next Web, Help Net Security, ZDNet, gHacks Technology News, iMore and Engadget. Thanks:@alex

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Coursera Brings In Longtime Yale President Rick Levin as CEO — Coursera, the massive-open-online-course provider with the most funding and the most students in the space, is shaking up its leadership. — The company has named Rick Levin, formerly president of Yale University for two decades, as CEO.

More: Coursera Blog, Inc.com, Yale Alumni Magazine, Wall Street Journal, New Haven Independent, bizjournals and EdSurge. Tweets: @robreich

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Justice Department lands first ever convictions against mobile-app pirates — Two men accused of operating a popular Android piracy website have pleaded guilty to charges filed by the Department of Justice. This marks the first time the DOJ has secured convictions for the distribution of counterfeit mobile apps.

More: The United States Department …, The Register, ZDNet, TorrentFreak, Mashable, Ars Technica, TheHill and Reuters

Alex Dobie / Android Central:

HTC app listing outs Google Play edition HTC One (M8) — Official app description reveals stock Android version of unannounced flagship — With many HTC Sense 6 apps now appearing on Google Play, further details of the HTC One (M8) features are starting to leak out through HTC's own app listings.

More: Android Police, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, The Next Web, Engadget, 9to5Google, MobileBurn.com, Phones Review, MobileSyrup.com and GSMArena Blog. Thanks:@alexdobie

Ellen Huet / San Francisco Chronicle:

How tech, an object of protest in 1999 San Francisco, reemerged as a convenient target in 2014 — How tech became the enemy - then and now — The flyer tucked on the windshield of a tech worker's car on South Van Ness didn't mince words: “The Mission has been colonized by pigs with money. ...

Tweets: @cmarinucci, @elcush, @stvnflngn, @ellenhuet, @stvnflngn and @dvaldosf

Eric Mack / Forbes:

National Bitcoin Alternative Auroracoin Launches To Save Iceland's Economy — As many of you read this, all the good people of Iceland will have just become about 30 Auroracoin richer, which translates to nearly $350 if current prices hold. — Auroracoin is among the first serious attempts …

More: Guardian, ZDNet, Bitcoin Magazine, International Business Times, Motherboard, NBC News, CoinDesk and Daily Dot. Thanks:@ericcmack

Zeljka Zorz / Help Net Security:

10,000 GitHub users inadvertently reveal their AWS secret access keys — GitHub developers who are also Amazon Web Services users are advised to check the code they made public on their project pages and to delete secret access keys for their AWS account they may have posted inadvertently.

More: iTnews.com.au and Inquirer

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