Techmeme
April 14, 2012, 2:50 PM

Top News

Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Twitter Wanted to Buy Instagram, But Facebook Beat it to it  —  Facebook may have secured the $1 billion acquisition of Instagram last week but it appears it wasn't the only social network that was interested in the service, with a recent New York Times report suggesting that Twitter was also in the running.
Matt Rosoff / Business Insider:
EXPLAINER: Everything You Need To Know About Google's Weird Stock Split  —  Yesterday, in the second paragraph of the press release announcing its Q1 2012 earnings, Google said its board had unanimously approved “a stock dividend proposal.”  —  But as the company explained in a letter from its founders, it's not a dividend.
Felix Salmon / Reuters:
Google's evil stock split  —  Count me in with Robert Cyran: there's something a little evil about the way that Google is splitting its stock, and in so doing creating a whole new class of non-voting shares.  —  There's a long history of such things: they were outlawed in the 1920s …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Valve reveals mystery hardware project: wearable computing  —  This morning, Valve Software set the world of gaming news abuzz by attempting to hire hardware engineers.  Now, Valve developer (and well-known programmer) Michael Abrash has revealed what kind of hardware the company is prototyping: computer technology you can wear.
AppleInsider:
Apple releases Flashback removal tool  —  Coming on the heels of its Thursday Java update, Apple has released a separate program to remove the so-called Flashback trojan that has affected over 600,000 Macs worldwide.  —  Apple on Friday released version 1.0 of its “Flashback malware removal tool” …
Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:
Apple CEO Tim Cook spotted at video game designer Valve's headquarters  —  Apple's chief executive Tim Cook reportedly visited the Bellevue, Washington headquarters of Valve Corporation earlier today, inciting questions about new potential for collaboration between the two companies.
Ryan Tate / Gawker:
Silicon Valley's Secret, Vicious Lust for Hollywood Fame  —  Motivations are supposed to be pure in Silicon Valley.  Facebook, for example, was developed to make the world a better place; its billions of dollars in revenue are just a happy accident.  And when a Facebook scion eagerly promoted …
More: Betabeat.  Tweets: @owenthomas
Damon Poeter / PC Magazine:
Scientists Build First Working Quantum Network  —  Scientists at the Quantum Dynamics division of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany announced Wednesday that they have built the very first, elementary quantum network comprised of a pair of entangled atoms …
Leigh Beadon / Techdirt:
New Draft Of CISPA Announced: Some Progress, Still Big Problems  —  The House Intelligence Committee has published a new draft of CISPA (pdf and embedded below), which includes the two amendments that were already approved, plus several other additions and changes.
Joel Kaplan / Facebook:
Robert McMillan / Wired:
Netflix To Open Source Army of Cloud Monkeys  —  Netflix is getting ready to unleash its Simian Army.  —  The online movie rental company uses a troupe of cloud software — it calls the programs “monkeys” — that poke and prod its online applications and keeps the web site and its services humming along.

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