Techmeme: Secret Users Have Started Hosting Secret Dinner Parties, and They Are Brutal (Nellie Bowles/Re/code)

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August 21, 2014, 10:15 AM

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Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

The state of Android updates: Who's fast, who's slow, and why — Android 4.4, KitKat was released on October 31, 2013, or at least, that's what you can say about one device: the Nexus 5. For the rest of the ecosystem, the date you got KitKat—if you got KitKat—varied wildly depending on your device, OEM, and carrier.

More: 9to5Google, Guardian and BGR

Kia Kokalitcheva / VentureBeat:

Product Hunt raises $1M seed funding, launches iOS app — Silicon Valley darling Product Hunt gets $1M, launches app for its tech-fanatic community — Two days ago, Product Hunt, one of the buzziest communities in recent times, graduated from the most highly-regarded accelerated program around, Y Combinator.

More: Fortune, Re/code, TechCrunch and The Next Web

Robert McMillan / Wired:

Security researcher claims over 30% of all mobile spam messages are sent through iMessage — Apple's iMessage Is Being Taken Over by Spammers — Apple's iMessage system is a great way to send texts from phone-to-phone without the paying fees to your mobile carrier.

More: 9to5Mac, blog.chron.com, iPhone, MacRumors, Gizmodo, iDownloadBlog.com, iPhone in Canada Blog, Electronista and MacDailyNews

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Google Asked to Remove 1 Million Pirate Links Per Day — In the hope of steering prospective customers away from pirate sites, copyright holders are overloading Google with DMCA takedown notices. — These requests have increased dramatically since Google began making the data public.

More: Neowin, 9to5Google and Engadget

Ina Fried / Re/code:

Verizon Says It Has No Plans for Another App Store — Verizon threw cold water Wednesday on a report that it was in talks to set up another app store. — The Information reported that Verizon was talking with would-be partners about a marketplace designed to rival the Google Play storefront.

More: Ubergizmo, Reuters, Light Reading, Pocketnow, ReadWrite, Droid Life, SlashGear, Phandroid, BGR, CITEworld, Android Central, Electronista, Engadget, The Information and The Verge

Tweets: @amir, @amir, @sub8u, @amir, @amir, @amir, @amir, @amir, @amir and @amir

Nellie Bowles / Re/code:

Secret Users Have Started Hosting Secret Dinner Parties, and They Are Brutal — Secret dinner party, said the intriguing post on Secret, an anonymous sharing app. — Invitations were application only, the host wrote in the comments. As instructed, I used an anonymous account to submit my best secret to a Google doc.

More: Business Insider and Engadget. Tweets: @caseynewton, @nytimesbits, @dorseyshaw, @laurengoode, @nelliebowles, @evelynrusli, @mike_hogan, @pkafka, @sg and @riptari

Ginny Marvin / Marketing Land:

Google Rolls Out App Promotion Ads On Search And YouTube — App install and app re-engagement ads are now available globally. — Last spring, Google took the first step in upping its offerings for app developers in introducing app install and app re-engagement ads.

More: Inside AdWords, USA Today, The Next Web, Search Engine Roundtable, All Content, WebProNews, MediaPost and 9to5Google

Mary Schlangenstein / Bloomberg:

UPS Store Computer Breach Put Customer Data at Risk — United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) said a breach of computer systems at UPS Store retail outlets may have exposed customers' personal and payment data at some locations this year. — Malware was found at 51 locations in 24 states …

More: UPS Pressroom, New York Times, ZDNet, Ars Technica, WebProNews, Business Insider, Softpedia News, Fortune, TIME, Computerworld, Los Angeles Times, CBS New York, Reuters, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, SC Magazine and Wall Street Journal. Tweets: @dangillmor

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Court orders Facebook to respond to EU privacy class action suit, as it attracts 60K users — European Facebook Class Action Suit Attracts 60K Users As It Passes First Court Hurdle — Some developments around the class action suit filed against Facebook in Europe earlier this month …

More: Gigaom

Nick Bilton / New York Times:

At Burning Man, the Tech Elite One-Up One Another — There are two disciplines in which Silicon Valley entrepreneurs excel above almost everyone else. The first is making exorbitant amounts of money. The second is pretending they don't care about that money.

More: Business Insider, sfbg.com, The Huffington Post, Reno Gazette-Journal, KTVN-TV, SFWeekly, Fortune and everwas

Tweets: @noupside, @ssstrom, @mattrosoff, @galenmoore, @noupside, @nitashatiku, @nerdgirl, @vaurorapub, @evelynrusli, @pinboard, @jadmouawad, @jyarow, @ceciliakang and @noupside

Thanks:@nethistorypod

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

GoDaddy Acquires MailChimp Competitor Mad Mimi To Beef Up Its Email Marketing Service — GoDaddy has closed on the acquisition of MailChimp competitor Mad Mimi, the companies are announcing this morning. The move is meant to further expand the web hosting provider's product suite aimed at small businesses …

More: Mad Mimi Email Marketing Blog, StreetInsider.com, bizjournals, ZDNet, theWHIR.com, VatorNews and WebProNews

Nick Statt / CNET:

Minecraft players build working hard drives — Players of the pixelated building block game have taken its virtual simulation tools to an unprecedented level: building functioning hard drives that can read and write data. — A fully functioning 1KB hard drive built within the sandbox game Minecraft.

More: imgur, Gearburn, TechSpot, Gamezone, SlashGear, VG247, Ubergizmo and Geek.com

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