Techmeme: Bill Gates: ‘I wrote Steve Jobs a letter as he was dying. He kept it by his bed’ (Mary Riddell/Telegraph)

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January 28, 2012, 5:50 PM

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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

More: CNET, Neowin.net, Pulse2, Softpedia News, Business Insider, The Next Web, MacDailyNews, Redmond Pie, iDownloadBlog.com, Computerworld, Electronista, 9to5Mac, Network World and GeekWire

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.

More: PandoDaily and TechCrunch. Tweets: @allangrant, @paulcarr, @allangrant, @davemcclure, @dhh, @dhh, @dhh and @davemcclure

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) …

More: Pulse2, ReadWriteWeb, Policy Blog, ZDNet, Guardian, Boing Boing and Techdirt

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 …

More: PandoDaily, VentureBeat, BBC, Washington Post, ReadWriteWeb, Forbes, Mashable! and PC Magazine

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.

More: PC World, App Advice, Gizmodo, The TechBlock and eWeek

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 …

More: Business Insider and VatorNews

Dan Levine / Reuters:

Jobs told Google to stop poaching workers: filing — (Reuters) - Apple's Steve Jobs directly asked former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in 2007 to stop trying to recruit an Apple engineer, according to a court filing. — The email from Jobs to Schmidt was disclosed on Friday …

More: PandoDaily, CNET, Electronista, Business Insider, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, iClarified and 9to5Google

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