Techmeme: Apple and Samsung renew patent infringement fight in San Jose court on Monday (Martha Mendoza/Associated Press)

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March 31, 2014, 2:00 AM

Top News

Adam Levitin / Credit Slips:

Last week's IRS ruling means bitcoins are not fungible, therefore unworkable as a currency — Bitcoin Tax Ruling — The IRS has spoken: Bitcoins are property, not currency. This was hardly a surprise, but it has some important implication that tells us a lot about what it takes to make a currency work.

More: The Atlantic Online and Forbes

Danny Bradbury / CoinDesk:

What the IRS Bitcoin Tax Guidelines Mean For You

More: TechCrunch and Ars Technica

Kashmir Hill / Forbes:

Entrepreneurs step up to help taxpayers track Bitcoin transactions, comply with IRS guidance

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

More: Mashable. Tweets: @bostonglobe, @jesselynradack, @declanm, @mattblaze, @matthewkeyslive and @caleb_crain

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: VentureBeat, The Verge, WinBeta, GeekWire and TechCrunch. Tweets: @stevesi

Laszlo Bock / Harvard Business Review:

Google is two years into gDNA, a long-term study to understand employees' work-life balance — Google's Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance (and Much More) — More than 65 years ago in Massachusetts, doctors began a longitudinal study that would transform our understanding of heart disease.

More: Business Insider, The Verge, BGR and GovExec.com

Tim Harford / Financial Times:

Big data's challenge: gain new insight without making the same old statistical mistakes — Big data: are we making a big mistake? — Big data is a vague term for a massive phenomenon that has rapidly become an obsession with entrepreneurs, scientists, governments and the media

Tweets: @infoarbitrage, @dkthomp, @timharford and @dangillmor

Dan Seifert / The Verge:

HTC wants to deliver great design regardless of price point, market the product not the brand — One more time: can HTC thrive in a Samsung world? — The new One is the best device HTC has ever made, but it doesn't erase the company's challenges — “If it wasn't for the One …

More: BBC and BGR. Tweets: @drewbam, @caseynewton and @zpower

Eric Mack / CNET:

HTC admits boosting One M8 benchmarks; makes it a feature

More: PC Magazine, I4U News, AmongTech, Engadget and GSMArena Blog. Tweets: @geekyranjit. Thanks:@ericcmack

AnandTech:

HTC One (M8) review: great build quality, as much as 70% more battery life vs. predecessor

More: The Droid Guy and BGR

Reuters:

Exclusive: Mt. Gox faced questions on handling client cash long before crisis — (Reuters) - Two years before Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy, a half dozen employees at the Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange challenged CEO Mark Karpeles over whether client money was being used to cover costs …

More: The Register, CoinDesk, VentureBeat and newsBTC. Tweets: @mbusigin

Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:

The Tech Bubble's Silver Lining: Cheap Services for Everyone — Box is losing money. A lot of money. In documents it filed for its initial public offering, the cloud-storage firm disclosed this week that it took in $124 million in 2013, but it spent $257 million.

More: VentureBeat. Tweets: @gapingvoid, @noahelkin, @carriemantha, @pkedrosky and @howardlindzon

Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:

Dropbox clarifies takedown policy, compares file hashes to identify infringing shared links — How Dropbox Knows When You're Sharing Copyrighted Stuff (Without Actually Looking At Your Stuff) — Late last night, a tweet was spread far and wide showing that a DMCA notice had blocked a file …

More: ZDNet, Ars Technica, Electronista and Android Central

Tweets: @darrellwhitelaw, @darrellwhitelaw and @sarahjeong

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, PC Magazine, Business Insider, Geekosystem, Tech2, Los Angeles Times, Polygon, The Verge, iPhone in Canada Blog, Android Community, Business Insider and Los Angeles Times

Tweets: @gruber, @aeiowu and @ashervo

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.

More: New York Times, Reuters and Wall Street Journal

Tweets: @mattcutts, @seldo, @checker and @samaaron

Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:

Review: Asus crafts a tiny $179 Chromebox out of cheap, low-power parts — The Asus Chromebox (bottom) is a mini desktop molded in the image of Intel's NUC. — Specs at a glance: Asus Chromebox CN60 OS — Chrome OS — CPU — 1.4GHz Celeron 2955U — RAM — 2GB 1600MHz DDR3 (should support upgrades up to 16GB)

More: PC Magazine, AnandTech, Liliputing and PC World. Tweets: @andrewwrites

Eat24:

A marketer's amusing “Breakup Letter” to Facebook over News Feed algorithm changes — A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24 — Hey. It's Eat24. Look, we need to talk. This isn't easy to say since we've been together so long, but we need to break up.

More: New York Times, Re/code, Digiday and PandoDaily

Tweets: @eat24, @mcandrew and @dangillmor

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