Techmeme: VPNs increasingly used to circumvent geo restrictions, access content on sites like Netflix (Quentin Hardy/New York Times)

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February 9, 2015, 7:35 AM

Top News

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Google Acquires Odysee, An App For Private Photo/Video Backup And Sharing, Team Joins Google+ — Google may be adding more offline and private sharing features to its Google+ Photos service soon. It has acquired Odysee, an iOS and Android app that let users automatically back up photos …

More: Odysee, Digital Trends, Engadget, Android Central, Ubergizmo, BetaNews, Geeky Gadgets, Android Police, VentureBeat, Ausdroid, SiliconANGLE, The Next Web and ResearchBuzz. Tweets: @korzing

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Sling TV opens the floodgates, accepts sign-ups without invites — Credit: Janko Roettgers / Gigaom — Credit: Janko Roettgers / Gigaom — Sling TV, the online TV streaming service from Dish Networks, is now available to everyone: The service ended its invitation-only soft launch late Sunday night …

More: VentureBeat, Engadget, The Next Web, Geeky Gadgets, SlashGear, Geek.com and Slate

Shane Harris / The Daily Beast:

Samsung's SmartTV privacy policy warns that spoken personal or sensitive information captured by voice recognition may be transmitted to a third party — Your Samsung SmartTV Is Spying on You, Basically — You may be loving your new Internet-connected television and its convenient voice-command feature …

More: BBC, TechCrunch, Business Insider, TechSpot, We Live Security, SamMobile, The Verge, CNET, Gizmodo, SlashGear, Electronista, Ubergizmo, UPROXX, International Business Times, Tom's Guide, BGR and The Daily Dot

Quentin Hardy / New York Times:

VPNs increasingly used to circumvent geo restrictions, access content on sites like Netflix — VPNs Dissolve National Boundaries Online, for Work and Movie-Watching — Rod Drury, an entrepreneur in Auckland, New Zealand, regularly visits the United States. Sometimes there are multiple visits a day.

Tweets: @digiphile and @jonrussell

Paul Carsten / Reuters:

China's Alibaba to invest $590 million in smartphone maker Meizu — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said in a statement on Monday it will buy a minority stake in domestic smartphone maker Meizu Technology Co for $590 million. Alibaba didn't disclose how much of the privately owned handset maker it will acquire.

More: GSMArena.com, Re/code, CNET, The Verge, Business Wire, Ubergizmo, Android Authority, Geeky Gadgets, Wall Street Journal, Engadget, TechCrunch and SiliconANGLE. Tweets: @inafried

Steve LeVine / Quartz:

Profile of John B. Goodenough, who invented the lithium-ion battery and is now trying to build a powerful new super-battery — The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery at the age of 57 has an idea for a new one at 92 — AUSTIN, TEXAS—The chances are you have never heard of—nor …

More: Wired.co.uk. Tweets: @fmanjoo and @dtunkelang

Kashmir Hill / Fusion:

How Slack makes sure the work conversations of 365K people stay private — How a start-up got 365,000 people to trust it with their office secrets — It was Anne Toth's first week at Slack, and she already had a crisis on her hands. “TeamNameGate,” she now calls the episode.

Tweets: @msquinn, @juliaangwin and @kashhill

Kevin Roose / Fusion:

How Waterloo recovered after BlackBerry's decline and avoided a talent exodus — The life, death, and rebirth of BlackBerry's hometown — It's a little after 5:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and I'm sitting in a freezing rental car outside the BlackBerry headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, looking for signs of life.

Tweets: @kevinroose, @cdixon and @pmarca

Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:

Dell Venue 8 7000 review: a $400 Intel-based Android tablet with solid build, thin bezels, nearly 10 hours of battery life — Dell's Venue 8 7000: A striking tablet that falls short of greatness — Review: A premium tablet with a cool design that doesn't always work in real life.

More: Gotta Be Mobile

Julie Bort / Business Insider:

Interview with Amit Singh about Google for Work's progress and plans for the future — We talked to the head of Google's next multibillion-dollar business. Here's what he told us — Five years ago next month, Google got serious about creating a new revenue stream for itself beyond search ads …

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @benedictevans and @charlesarthur

Christopher Solomon / Popular Mechanics:

Profile of Alex Holden, who tracked down the Russian hackers who stole over 1.2B credentials — Meet The Man Who Finds Your Stolen Passwords — Last summer a gang of Russian hackers was caught amassing the largest cache of stolen user names and passwords ever discovered—1.2 billion in all.

Tweets: @cwarzel

Erik Franco / Motherboard:

Inside Chinese sites that mine 4050 bitcoins/month, equivalent to about $1.5M, with computing power that amounts to roughly 3% of the bitcoin network — Inside the Chinese Bitcoin Mine That's Making $1.5M a Month — In October of last year Motherboard gained access to a massive …

More: jackgavigan.com, TechCrunch and Gizmodo

Tweets: @kelvindchen and @digiphile

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