Techmeme
January 5, 2015, 9:25 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Apple to start selling SIM-free iPhone 6 & 6 Plus in the U.S. tomorrow  —  Apple will start selling fully unlocked, SIM-free iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models in the United States beginning tomorrow, January 6th, according to several sources.  The unlocked iPhones will be available …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Verizon approached AOL about possible acquisition or joint venture to strengthen mobile-video offerings  —  Verizon Said to Approach AOL About Possible Takeover or Venture  —  Verizon Communications Inc. has approached AOL Inc. (AOL) about a potential acquisition or joint venture …
Peter Kafka / Re/code:
Dish announces Sling TV: stream channels like ESPN, CNN, and TNT over the internet for $20 per month without a cable subscription  —  You Can Finally Get ESPN on the Web, for $20 a Month  —  Lots of people say they want to ditch cable TV for the Web, but can't because they want to watch sports …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Gogo issues fake HTTPS certificates to block in-flight YouTube streaming, says no user info collected  —  Gogo issues fake HTTPS certificate to users visiting YouTube  —  Gogo has been caught issuing a fake digital certificate for YouTube, a practice that in theory could allow …
Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:
Bitstamp confirms exchange hacked, has lost less than 19K bitcoins worth about $5M  —  Bitstamp exchange hacked, $5M worth of bitcoin stolen  —  The European bitcoin exchange suspends its service after it was hacked, ZDNet can confirm.  Less than 19,000 bitcoins were stolen from an operational wallet.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook Acquires Wit.ai To Help Its Developers With Speech Recognition And Voice Interfaces  —  Facebook today acquired Wit.ai, a Y Combinator startup founded 18 months ago to create an API for building voice-activated interfaces.  Wit.ai already has 6,000 developers on its platform who have built hundreds of apps.
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
Broadwell U arrives: Faster laptop CPUs and GPUs from Core i7 to Celeron  —  Intel's staggered Broadwell rollout continues with 17 new laptop chips.  —  Intel promised us more chips based on the new Broadwell architecture in early 2015, and today it's delivering on that promise.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Google Asked to Remove 345 Million “Pirate” Links in 2014  —  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 over the years.
Caleb Pershan / SFist:
Mark Zuckerberg's New Year's Resolution Book Club Sells Out First Title On Amazon  —  Mark Zuckerberg is not like us.  For example, when it comes to New Year's resolutions, the Facebook CEO actually achieves things.  And in the five short days of 2015 so far, he's already become Oprah Winfrey.
Marco Arment / Marco.org:
Apple's marketing priorities are driving the pace of software releases at the expense of quality  —  Apple has lost the functional high ground  —  Apple's hardware today is amazing — it has never been better.  But the software quality has fallen so much in the last few years that I'm deeply concerned for its future.
Gordon Mah Ung / PC World:
HP takes on Chromeboxes with $180, Windows-based Stream Mini PC  —  HP takes on Chromeboxes with $180, Windows-based Stream Mini PC  —  Late last year, HP kicked off the Windows war against Google's Chromebooks with its $200 Streambook 11, and now the company is back again to tackle Chromeboxes with its Stream Mini PC.
Lynn La / CNET:
LG G Flex 2: curved smartphone with 5.5-inch screen and Snapdragon 810 coming to Korea this month, AT&T and Sprint later this year  —  LG G Flex 2: Second-gen curved smartphone features 5.5-inch screen, Snapdragon 810 and ‘self-healing’ capabilities (hands-on)
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Google Cast for audio lets you stream music from apps like Pandora and Rdio to compatible speakers, coming this spring  —  Google Cast will offer direct streaming from apps to Sony, LG, and Denon audio products this spring  —  What will be hot in consumer electronics and computing in 2015?
Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:
Samsung is adding Slingbox-like features to its new smart TVs  —  Janko Roettgers  —  Credit: Kobby Dagan / Shutterstock.com  —  Credit: Kobby Dagan / Shutterstock.com  —  This is interesting: Samsung is adding what amounts to a kind of Slingbox to all of its new smart TVs …
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Netflix's Recommended TV program will help you find the best TV for streaming  —  A lot of what we watch on TV nowadays comes streaming in from the internet, but not every TV is cut out to do that well out of the box.  In an attempt to make sure that viewers have a good experience …
Owen Williams / The Next Web:
Twitter timelines lagging with slow updates; company says its working on the issue  —  It's not just you: Twitter's stream is having trouble  —  Uh oh, Twitter's having some problems right now.  For the last few minutes new tweets are appearing incredibly slowly or not at all on the mobile apps …
Micah Singleton / The Verge:
AT&T is the first US carrier to support WebRTC  —  WebRTC will allow AT&T customers to make calls and video chat using their AT&T numbers in the browser  —  During its annual Developer Summit held the day before CES officially begins, AT&T announced it will be the first carrier in the US …

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