Techmeme: Hungary internet tax cancelled after mass protests (BBC)

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October 31, 2014, 12:25 PM

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JP Mangalindan / Fortune:

Amazon exec: We priced the Fire phone wrong — When it introduced the Fire smartphone in July, Amazon bet sales would be something worth bragging about. But three months in, it's obvious the Fire phone is more dud than runaway success. — Last week, Amazon CTO Tom Szkutak disclosed …

More: BGR, PC World, The Verge, Engadget, TechCrunch, CNET, GeekWire, Gigaom, Phandroid, Mashable, GadgeTell, TechnoBuffalo, SlashGear, Pocketnow, DailyTech, AndroidHeadlines.com, AppleInsider and Business Insider

Tweets: @jonfortt and @draccah

Douglas MacMillan / Wall Street Journal:

Slack raised $120M at $1.12B valuation in a round led by Kleiner and Google Ventures, all previous backers participated too — Slack's One-Year-Old Software Business Valued at $1.12 Billion — Workplace collaboration tool Slack didn't exist two years ago.

More: New York Times, Fortune, TechCrunch, Re/code, BetaKit, The Verge, VentureBeat, The Next Web, Medium, Business Insider, Forbes, bizjournals, Mashable, PE Hub Blog and Techvibes Global News

Tweets: @dmac1, @alirayl, @stevesi, @christianhern and @wsjd

Elisabeth Hulette / Virginian-Pilot:

Circuit court rules criminal defendant may be forced to unlock phone with his fingerprint, but not his passcode — Police can require cellphone fingerprint, not pass code — A Circuit Court judge has ruled that a criminal defendant can be compelled to give up his fingerprint …

More: Mashable, PandoDaily, ZDNet, TUAW, 9to5Mac, Washington Post, iMore, iDownloadBlog.com and App Advice

Alistair Barr / Wall Street Journal:

Google's robotics lead and Android founder Andy Rubin leaving the company to start an incubator for hardware startups, will be replaced by James Kuffner — Former Android Leader Andy Rubin Leaving Google — Rubin Is Starting an Incubator for Startups Interested in Building Technology-Hardware Products

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

FCC nears reclassifying ISPs as common carriers on back-end, while still allowing fast lanes — FCC reportedly close to reclassifying ISPs as common carriers — FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler speaking to the cable industry in April 2014. — NCTA — The head of the Federal Communications Commission …

More: Wall Street Journal, PC World, The Hill, Re/code, DSLreports, InfoWorld, Consumerist and Wall Street Journal. Tweets: @nash076. See also Mediagazer

BBC:

Hungary internet tax cancelled after mass protests — Hungary has decided to shelve a proposed tax on internet data traffic after mass protests against the plan. — “This tax in its current form cannot be introduced,” Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday.

More: Reuters, Gigaom, Tech.eu, Engadget, DSLreports, Geek.com, The Verge and ZDNet. Tweets: @asher_wolf

ProPublica:

Twitter's MoPub is using the UIDH “perma-cookies” inserted by Verizon into web pages — Somebody's Already Using Verizon's ID to Track Users — Twitter's mobile advertising arm enables its clients to use a hidden, undeletable tracking number created by Verizon to track user behavior on smartphones and tablets.

More: PC World, Gizmodo, O'Grady's PowerPage and SiliconANGLE

Tweets: @thomasfuchs, @aral and @essdotx

Jessica Dolcourt / CNET:

Samsung Galaxy A5 and A3: Sleek, slim, fully metal (hands-on) — Side by side on a table, the two nearly identical rectangular handsets look innocuous enough and extremely familiar. Yet two things quietly make the Samsung Galaxy A3 and A5 stand out: their all-aluminum material and their unibody construction.

Kip Kniskern / LiveSide.net:

Microsoft's Outlook.com will get third-party app support in spring 2015 — 3rd party apps coming to Outlook.com — Microsoft continues to re-examine and bolster its platform company roots, this time by announcing app support for Outlook.com, coming in Spring 2015.

More: Office Blogs, The Verge, BetaNews, WinBeta, FierceCIO News, The Register and SiliconANGLE

Micah L. Sifry / Mother Jones:

Facebook has experimented with Newsfeed content before voting to analyze effect on turnout — Facebook Wants You to Vote on Tuesday. Here's How It Messed With Your Feed in 2012. — The social network tries to promote voting, but it also has conducted tests that affect users' voting behavior—without telling them.

More: The Hill and Gizmodo. See also Mediagazer

Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:

Microsoft launches redesigned Outlook for Mac, announces new Office for Mac coming next year — Microsoft today launched a new version of Outlook for Mac, available to Office 365 customers. At the same time, the company announced its plans to release a new Office for Mac version next year.

More: Office Blogs, Gizmodo, ZDNet, MacRumors, SlashGear and WinBeta

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Joyent Raises $15M To Bring Enterprise-Grade Docker Support To Its Cloud Platform — Until today, cloud infrastructure company Joyent had raised a total of $120 million in a number of funding rounds, with its 2012 $85 million Series D round being the latest and largest.

More: Gigaom, Data Center Knowledge, VentureBeat and Forbes

Abhimanyu Ghoshal / The Next Web:

Facebook is now available on Tor for more secure browsing — After enabling secure HTTPS browsing by default for all users in August last year, Facebook has taken another step to allow for secure browsing, and has made their social network available via the Tor network for users who want to maintain …

More: Facebook, Gizmodo, The Hill, Engadget, Gigaom and VentureBeat. See also Mediagazer

Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:

IBM teams up with Tencent to offer business software cloud services to companies in China — IBM teams with Chinese ISP Tencent to advance cloud portfolio — Summary: The companies will work together to build Software-as-a-Service offerings that tap into mobile, cloud and big data for use in internal processes and operations.

More: Gigaom, TechRadar.com, Computerworld, PR Newswire, Telecompaper, Wall Street Journal and Reuters

Sophie Knight / Reuters:

Sony reports strong Q3 PS4 sales of 3.3M units, cuts annual smartphone sales forecast to 41M, after lowering them to 43M from 50M in Q2 — Leaner Sony gains smartphone lift despite its own mobile malaise — (Reuters) - Sony Corp (6758.T) posted a smaller than expected second-quarter operating loss …

More: The Verge, PC Magazine, Engadget, ZDNet, Eurogamer.net, IGN, Hollywood Reporter, Gamasutra, Bloomberg, Variety, Deadline, GSMArena.com, GameSpot, Japan Times latest, Benzinga, DW.DE, Fortune and The Register

Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:

BlackBerry updates BBM with timed messages and message retraction, unveils plans for a paid subscription — Above: BBM for iOS/Android, now beefed up with Voice and Channels — BlackBerry today released a new version of BBM, adding timed messages, message retraction, HD picture transfer, among other features.

More: Inside BlackBerry and Gigaom

Dave McNary / Variety:

Seth Rogen Set as Steve Wozniak in Steve Jobs Biopic — Seth Rogen has been set to star as Steve Wozniak opposite Christian Bale in Sony's Steve Jobs biopic. — Variety reported on Oct. 15 that Bale was in talks to star in “Jobs,” Sony's biopic about the late Apple co-founder.

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