Techmeme
February 16, 2015, 8:40 PM

Top News

Ian Parker / New Yorker:
An in-depth look inside the top-secret lab where Jonathan Ive's design team created the Apple Watch  —  The Shape of Things to Come  —  How an industrial designer became Apple's greatest product.  —  I. Launch Day … “We can do this the easy way or we can do this the cute way.”  —  »
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Extensive Kasperky Lab report details advanced spy capabilities of Stuxnet-linked threat actor dubbed “Equation Group”  —  How “omnipotent” hackers tied to NSA hid for 14 years—and were found at last  —  “Equation Group” ran the most advanced hacking operation ever uncovered.
Joseph Menn / Reuters:
NSA-linked “Equation Group” can infect computers repeatedly via spyware inserted in hard disk firmware  —  Russian researchers expose breakthrough U.S. spying program  —  (Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives …
Jean-Louis Gassée / Monday Note:
Apple, while capable of building a car, would face low margins and challenges developing autonomous driving tech  —  The Fantastic Apple Car  —  Forget the iWatch, Apple Pay, and the iPhone 7...the next big thing from Cupertino will be the Apple Car.  —  At first, I didn't pay much attention to the Apple Car rumors.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Elemental Path Debuts The First Toys Powered By IBM Watson  —  A company called Elemental Path is developing a new line of smart toys for children which will be powered by the super computing system IBM Watson, enabling the toys to engage in real and personalized conversations with kids, and evolve with the child as he or she grows.
Michael Zhang / PetaPixel:
Toshiba developing rear 5MP and 13MP camera modules and a front-facing 2MP module for Project Ara  —  Toshiba Shows Off its Camera Module Prototypes for Google's Project Ara Phone  —  Google is hard at work on Project Ara, a modular smartphone that will allow users to swap critical components in and out, including the onboard camera.
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
Samsung's first 14nm SoC is a 64-bit, 8-core Exynos aimed at high-end phones  —  New manufacturing process extends to other Exynos and third-party chips soon.  —  Samsung has just announced a new high-end Exynos 7 Octa SoC.  It uses eight CPU cores—a combination of four high-end Cortex A57 cores …
James Temperton / Wired.co.uk:
After UK court ruling, Privacy International website allows you to ask if GCHQ spied on you  —  You can now find out if GCHQ spied on you  —  People from around the world can join a campaign to find out if British intelligence agency GCHQ illegally spied on them — and force it to delete the data.
Federal Aviation Administration:

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Scott Stein / CNET: