Techmeme: Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 to hit 25 more countries as losses mount (Jon Fingas/Engadget)

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August 6, 2014, 10:40 AM

Top News

New York Times:

Russian gang holds 1.2B username/password combos, stolen from 420K vulnerable websites scanned via botnet, say security researchers — Russian Gang Said to Amass More Than a Billion Stolen Internet Credentials — A Russian crime ring has amassed the largest known collection …

Kashmir Hill / Forbes:

Firm That Exposed Breach Of ‘Billion Passwords’ Quickly Offered $120 Service To Find Out If You're Affected — The New York Times dropped the freakiest security story since Heartbleed Tuesday, warning people that a “Russian gang has amassed over a billion passwords.”

More: Tech Times. Tweets: @caseynewton and @lorenzofb. Thanks:@aatilley

Bloomberg:

China bans iPads and MacBooks from government use over security fears — China Said to Exclude Apple From Procurement List — China's government excluded Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPads and MacBook laptops from the list of products that can be bought with public money because of security concerns …

More: Reuters, Engadget, The Verge, AppleInsider, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, iMore, Re/code, Gizmodo, Inquirer, Neowin, Cult of Mac, App Advice, Patently Apple, Gigaom, Electronista, PhoneArena, Technology Personalized, ZDNet and iLounge

Adam Satariano / Bloomberg:

Apple, Samsung Agree to End Patent Suits Outside U.S. — Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) are starting to wind down their global patent battle. — The companies said in a joint statement today that they have agreed to drop all suits against each other in countries outside …

Roger Cheng / CNET:

Sprint taps Brightstar CEO Claure as new CEO — Claure replaces Dan Hesse, who has served as CEO since December 2007. — Sprint on Wednesday named Marcelo Claure its new president and CEO, starting a new chapter for the embattled carrier. — Claure, who is the 43-year-old founder and CEO …

More: Sprint, Re/code, ZDNet, DSLreports, Engadget, PC World, Gigaom, Fortune, The Verge and Tech Times

Wall Street Journal:

Sprint Abandoning Pursuit of T-Mobile

More: New York Times, USA Today, The Next Web, Re/code, Reuters, BGR, TheStreet.com, Digital Trends, TWICE, Rude Baguette, Gizmodo, Wall Street Journal, CNNMoney.com, Reuters, VentureBeat, Droid Life, TmoNews, Mashable, The Verge, Gigaom, Business Insider, MacRumors, Telegraph and TechHive

Tweets: @emilychangtv, @dsilverman, @brkend and @shaliniwsj

Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:

Microsoft's Q2 loss on Surface estimated at $363M, total since launch two years back $1.7B — Surface damage mounts at Microsoft as red ink reaches $1.7B — The tablet business has lost money each quarter, and each fiscal year — Microsoft continued to lose money on its Surface tablets throughout …

More: The Verge, Windows Phone Central, Gigaom, Business Insider, MacDailyNews, Pocketnow and CIO.com

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 to hit 25 more countries as losses mount

More: Surface Blog, CNET, SlashGear, Tech2, The Official Microsoft Blog, MobileBurn.com, Electronista, BetaNews, WinBeta, The Verge, The Next Web and Neowin

John Paczkowski / Re/code:

Apple to hold iPhone event on Sept. 9 — Code/red: Apple to Hold iPhone Event on Sept. 9 — New iPhones to Suck All the Air Out of the Tech News Cycle on Sept. 9 Onstage at our inaugural Code conference earlier this summer, Apple SVP Eddy Cue described the company's fall product pipeline …

Evgeny Morozov / New York Times:

Internet.org's project to connect the developing world is a gateway drug to Facebook — Facebook's Gateway Drug — SILICON VALLEY was once content to dominate the tech world. But recently, its leading companies have ventured deep into areas well outside its traditional bailiwick …

More: Business Insider, BGR, SiliconBeat, Business Insider and AllFacebook

Tweets: @markhurst, @evgenymorozov and @fredericjacobs

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Foursquare 8.0 review: the ultimate food-finder — The check-in is dead, but Foursquare is alive — It's almost 11. If I don't make a move soon, I'm going to hit the brunch rush and have to wait two hours for a decent breakfast. The problem is, I don't know what I want. I'm not in the mood for anything.

More: New York Times, Gizmodo, ReadWrite, VentureBeat, Engadget, The Next Web, Business Insider, TechCrunch and Re/code

Kevin Poulsen / Wired:

With Operation Torpedo, FBI installs “drive-by” spyware on Tor web servers to identify visitors — Visit the Wrong Website, and the FBI Could End Up in Your Computer — Security experts call it a “drive-by download”: a hacker infiltrates a high-traffic website and then subverts …

More: Forbes, Softpedia News, Naked Security and TechSpot

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

Wikipedia reveals 56 requests for user data in first transparency report; 50 links removed under Right to be Forgotten — Wikimedia Attacks Europe's Right To Be Forgotten Ruling As Threat To Its Mission — The Wikimedia Foundation, the not-for-profit organization behind Wikipedia …

More: Tech.eu, Guardian, Wikimedia blog, Search Engine Land, PandoDaily, International Business Times, BBC, The Register, The Next Web, Wikimedia blog, New York Times, Washington Post, Network World and TIME. See also Mediagazer

Edward C. Baig / USA Today:

Timex Ironman One GPS+ smartwatch to debut this fall for $399 with AT&T cellular connectivity and a Qualcomm mobile OS — Timex enters smartwatch category. No phone needed. — NEW YORK — All the early smartwatches generating buzz (if not a lot of sales) come not from traditional watch brands …

More: Gizmodo, Gigaom, TechHive, Re/code, VentureBeat, Digital Trends, socalTECH.com, The Verge, TechCrunch and Reuters. Tweets: @benbajarin

Alex Konrad / Forbes:

Dev Ittycheria To Be New CEO Of Database Unicorn MongoDB As Schireson Steps Down — Billion-dollar database company MongoDB has announced a new CEO, outsider Dev Ittycheria, after just one year with Max Schireson at the helm. A former software CEO turned investor, Ittycheria will become president …

More: Max Schireson's blog, ABC News, VentureBeat, MongoDB, Wall Street Journal, The Register, Business Insider and bizjournals

Adam Clark Estes / Gizmodo:

Inside DARPA's Transformative Apps program, the military's own app ecosystem making smartphones battle-ready — Inside the Military's Secretive Smartphone Program — When I recently set out for the Pentagon's R&D department, I instead found myself in front of a downtrodden shopping mall in Arlington, Virginia.

Tweets: @darpa

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google's HTML5 Web Designer Gets Animation Tools, Deeper AdWords And DoubleClick Integrations — Last September, Google launched Web Designer, a free tool for Mac, Windows and Linux that makes it easy for anybody to build interactive HTML5 sites and ads. Since its launch …

More: DoubleClick Advertiser Blog, DoubleClick Advertiser Blog, WebProNews and eWeek

Kyle Russell / TechCrunch:

Uber announces UberPool, a ride-sharing, cost-splitting experiment to begin Aug. 15 in SF — UberPool Lets You Split Uber Fares With Other Passengers Along The Same Route — In the ongoing war between Uber, Lyft, and all of the other me-too ride-sharing services, competitors are looking …

More: Uber Blog, Business Insider, Gigaom, WebProNews, SlashGear, Engadget, Digital Trends, Mashable, The Verge, Electronista, CNET, iMore, The Next Web and GeekWire. Tweets: @swaaanson. Thanks:@ryanlawler

BBC:

Sony gives up on selling e-readers — Sony has given up selling its line of Reader devices for e-books after failing to find a big enough market. — “We do not have plans to develop a successor Reader model at this time,” the Japanese firm told the BBC. — The PRS-T3 was the last version …

More: The Verge, TechSpot, Gizmodo, Engadget and The Digital Reader

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Facebook's Parse releases PHP SDK, its first for a server-side language and its first to be open source — Parse today released the Parse PHP SDK, which you can download yourself from GitHub. The Facebook-owned company says the release is its first SDK for a server-side language as well as the first to be “truly open-source.”

More: Parse Blog and AllFacebook

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Felicis Raises New $96M Fund, Pledges To Always Vote Shares With Founders — Five to ten years ago, the notion of a super-angel, or an angel backed with a notable but still small-sized fund, was relatively new concept. — There were players like Aydin Senkut, Jeff Clavier and Dave McClure.

More: Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, New York Times, Webrazzi, go.bloomberg.com, Reuters and PE Hub Blog

Gilad Lotan / Global Voices:

Analysis: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter serve as siloed propaganda engines for Gaza news — Israel, Gaza, War & Data - The Art of Personalizing Propaganda — If you're rooting for Israel, you might have seen videos of rocket launches by Hamas adjacent to Shifa Hospital.

Tweets: @en_moutarde, @kia_mak, @ajc110, @imillenari, @abrahamjoseph and @corinnew

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