Techmeme
August 17, 2014, 12:45 PM

Top News

Ethan Zuckerman / The Atlantic Online:
Ad-supported web led to targeting and surveillance as a default; let's try again, with fees for service  —  The Internet's Original Sin  —  Ron Carlson's short story “What We Wanted To Do” takes the form of an apology from a villager who failed to protect his comrades from marauding Visigoths.
Dan Primack / Fortune:
We lack the data needed to show whether venture capital is performing as an asset class  —  VCs suck (but there's a way you could prove me wrong)  —  There has been a bunch of Twitter conversation this week about venture capital economics and performance, stemming from an HBR post titled Venture Capitalists …
Paul Thurrott / SuperSite for Windows:
With free licensing and new device makers on board, it's too early to write off Windows Phone  —  It's Too Early to Write Off the Third Smartphone Ecosystem  —  Thanks to a single smart phone quarterly market share report from IDC, many are suddenly writing off Windows Phone and declaring …
More: Gigaom and BGRTweets: @ihnatko
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Internet Explorer team AMA: no plans for iOS & Android release, rebranding has been considered  —  Internet Explorer on Android or iOS?  Not in Microsoft's current plans  —  Summary: The cross-platform push may be on at ‘cloud first/mobile first’ Microsoft, but for now …
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
Chrome drops Microsoft's “Pointer Events” touch input spec in favor of Apple's “Touch Events”  —  Google to drop Microsoft-designed touch Web spec, stick with Apple tech  —  Developers on the Blink browser engine, the core component that powers both Google's Chrome browser …
Paul Carr / PandoDaily:
Bezos-owned Washington Post now inserting gross Amazon affiliate links into news articles  —  There's something creepy in this Washington Post piece about Penguin's new “adult” cover for the 50th anniversary edition of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”  Well, something else creepy, beyond the weirdly over-sexualized cover itself.
Jon Russell / The Next Web:
Twitter's latest experiment turns favorites into retweets (and it's annoying lots of people)  —  Twitter is back in experimental mode, but its latest test is annoying people.  A sizable number of users are seeing tweets favorited by others in their timeline, just like retweets.
Heise:
GCHQ's “HACIENDA” program completed full port scans targeting 27 countries  —  NSA/GCHQ: The HACIENDA Program for Internet Colonization  —  Translations of this article are available in German, French, Italian and Spanish.  —  Since the early days of TCP …
Cat Zakrzewski / TechCrunch:
Uber To Test Moving Services In Atlanta, Nashville  —  Earlier this summer, we saw Uber experiment with UberRUSH, a courier service in New York City.  The car service seems to be testing the waters for another service, announcing it will move Atlanta college students and Nashville residents this weekend.

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Earlier Picks

Mike Williams / BBC:
Barton Gellman / Washington Post: