Techmeme: Facebook designer defends scaled-back News Feed redesign, noting low-res monitors are too common for big photos (Julie Zhuo/Medium)

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March 30, 2014, 11:55 AM

Top News

Marcella Bombardieri / The Boston Globe:

Court documents reveal ambivalence in how MIT assisted Aaron Swartz's prosecution — The inside story of MIT and Aaron Swartz — More than a year after Swartz killed himself rather than face prosecution, questions about MIT's handling of the hacking case persist

Tweets: @matthewkeyslive, @bostonglobe, @declanm, @caleb_crain and @mattblaze

Spiegel Online:

GCHQ and NSA Targeted Private German Companies — Documents show that Britain's GCHQ intelligence service infiltrated German Internet firms and America's NSA obtained a court order to spy on Germany and collected information about the chancellor in a special database.

More: The Intercept, The Verge, VentureBeat, Digital Trends, Softpedia News, GSMArena Blog, Engadget, Guardian, TheHill and Mashable

Tweets: @jimmy_wales, @glynmoody, @csoghoian, @csoghoian and @dymaxion

Threes:

Frustrated by popular fast following rip-offs like 2048, creators of Threes tout advantages of their 14-month development process — The Rip-offs & Making Our Original Game — It's been a weird and awesome couple of months. Our expectations for our tiny game were well, fairly tiny.

More: VentureBeat, Business Insider, Geekosystem, Tech2, Polygon, Los Angeles Times, The Verge, iPhone in Canada Blog, Android Community, Business Insider and Los Angeles Times

Tweets: @gruber, @aeiowu and @ashervo

AnandTech:

HTC One (M8) review: great build quality, as much as 70% more battery life vs. predecessor — The HTC One (M8) Review — HTC remains one of few Android OEMs insanely focused on design. Even dating back to the origins of the One brand in 2012 with the One X and One S …

More: The Verge, The Droid Guy, BGR and Android Beat

Eric Mack / CNET:

HTC admits boosting One M8 benchmarks; makes it a feature — Some suspected the HTC One M8 of pumping up its processor for better benchmarks. HTC's response: Of course it does. In fact, it's now a feature. — If this phone wore pants, some think they would be on fire. — Brian Bennett/CNET

More: AmongTech, Engadget and GSMArena Blog. Tweets: @geekyranjit. Thanks:@ericcmack

Felix Salmon:

Grand, immersive designs, increasingly common in journalism, vastly oversell smaller stories — Against beautiful journalism — Have you seen that site's gorgeous new redesign? Every article has a nice big headline, huge photos, loads of white space, intuitive and immersive scrolling …

More: Teaching Online Journalism. Tweets: @clarkstream, @feliciasonmez, @nycsouthpaw, @kgittleson and @dylanlathrop

Timothy B. Lee / Washington Post:

In new case, Supreme Court revisits the question of software patents — If you write a book or a song, you can get copyright protection for it. If you invent a pill or a better mousetrap, you can patent it. But for decades, software has had the distinction of being eligible for both copyright and patent protection.

Tweets: @samaaron and @checker

Ina Fried / Re/code:

Longtime Windows and Office Executive Antoine Leblond Leaving Microsoft — Antoine Leblond, one of several Windows unit executives sidelined in a reorganization last year, is leaving Microsoft. — Leblond, who spent nearly 25 years at Microsoft, will leave the company after Monday — his 9,000th day at the company.

More: WinBeta

Julie Zhuo / Medium:

Facebook designer defends scaled-back News Feed redesign, noting low-res monitors are too common for big photos — Whatever's Best For The People, That's What We Do — Earlier today, Dustin Curtis wrote a post about the recent Facebook desktop redesign.

More: Dustin Curtis, The Verge, Gizmodo and Business Insider

Tweets: @digitalmash, @joulee, @mikeisaac, @marcusf, @mat and @dcurtis

Paul Graham / Y Combinator Posthaven:

Paul Graham steps away from Hacker News, handing control to five Y Combinator staffers — Meet the People Taking over Hacker News — I did several different things while I was working on Hacker News, and these will now be taken over by different people. — Kevin Hale (HN id kevin) will be in charge of design.

More: TechCrunch and Re/code. Tweets: @rrhoover

Larry Seltzer / ZDNet:

Google claims Turkey intercepts their DNS — Summary: Apparently in order to enforce a government ban on certain services, Turkish ISPs are intercepting access of Google's public DNS service. — Google is claiming that ISPs in Turkey are intercepting their DNS service.

More: Google Online Security Blog, Blog de Sté, pcsupport.about.com, SecurityWeek, BetaNews, Re/code, Naked Security, Inquirer and SocialTimes. See also Mediagazer

George Anders / Forbes:

Sequoia Capital profiled as a feisty, decisive, luxury-eschewing band of outsiders — Inside Sequoia Capital: Silicon Valley's Innovation Factory — When Doug Leone arrived in Mount Vernon, N.Y. in 1968, the 11-year-old Italian immigrant didn't have a clue.

More: Both Sides of the Table and StrictlyVC. Tweets: @jmsmacham, @johnehenderson, @katiefehren, @alexia, @joyce, @jeremysliew, @alexrkonrad, @sequoia_capital, @furrier, @pmarca and @abrams

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