Techmeme
January 28, 2012, 5:50 PM

Top News

Mary Riddell / Telegraph:
Bill Gates: ‘I wrote Steve Jobs a letter as he was dying.  He kept it by his bed’  —  People's plutocrat Bill Gates talks about friendly rivalry, and how to get bankers to part with their money.  —  Change the world: 'If you have a dream and it comes true, it's a very cool thing,' says Bill Gates
Jolie O'Dell / VentureBeat:
Pass the popcorn: Y Combinator startup caught stealing from 37signals  —  Here's some developer drama for your Saturday morning: Curebit, a Y Combinator startup that just closed a round of funding from Dave McClure's 500 Startups fund, has been caught red-handed stealing HTML code, images, and the like from 37signals.
Michael Geist Blog:
The ACTA Fight Returns: What Is at Stake and What You Can Do  —  The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. (excellent analysis from Benkler and Downes) and elsewhere (mounting Canadian concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules) …
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
We Have Every Right to Be Furious About ACTA  —  If there's one thing that encapsulates what's wrong with the way government functions today, ACTA is it.  You wouldn't know it from the name, but the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a plurilateral agreement designed to broaden …
Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:
That Was Fast: Betaworks Returns All Capital... And Then Some  —  The New York tech scene has certainly received a lot of hype, but a lot of people are waiting for results that prove it's more than just that.  Proof that New York is really a tech ecosystem that is here to stay, no matter what may happen to Foursquare and Gilt.
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Mega Aftermath: Upheaval In Pirate Warez Land  —  Despite its “rogue site” status and various other warnings, when MegaUpload went down last week it still came as a shock.  —  But what came next was unprecedented, a dramatic reaction in cyberlocker land that took out vast libraries of digital content and capacity.
More: The Shout
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Two Weeks In, Google Says “Search Plus Your World” Going Well, Critics Should Give It Time  —  Two weeks ago, Google launched Search Plus Your World.  Since then, Google has faced strong criticisms that SPYW is making its search relevancy worse and favoring its Google+ social network too much.
More: Business Insider.  Tweets: @mattcutts
Reporters Without Borders:
Letter to Twitter Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey urging him not to cooperate with censors  —  Reporters Without Borders has written to Twitter Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey voicing deep concern about yesterday's announcement that Twitter will introduce geolocated censorship …
Heather Kelly / VentureBeat:
Macworld finds its footing as a “hardcore consumer lifestyle event”  —  Macworld Expo, a once powerful Mac tradeshow, is getting new life as smaller event for Apple consumers and fans.  The revamped three-day event, now called Macworld |  iWorld, is taking place this week in San Francisco.
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Someone Finally Makes “S**t Silicon Valley Says”  —  After an onslaught of “S**t [blank] Says” videos in my Facebook Newsfeed, I appealed to Twitter yesterday, surprised that the industry that invented YouTube hadn't weighed in on the phenomenon.  —  Little did I know that husband …
Matthew Creamer / AdAge:
Study: Only 1% of Facebook ‘Fans’ Engage With Brands  —  Not Many Fans Are Creating Content, But That Might Not Be a Bad Thing  —  For a few years now, brands have been touting frothy Facebook “like” numbers as evidence of their social-media acumen.  But how many of those fans …

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John P. Holdren / The White House: