Techmeme
November 8, 2012, 7:10 AM

Top News

Daniel Terdiman / CNET:
Obama's win a big vindication for Nate Silver, king of the quants  —  Despite some incredulous political pundits, the FiveThirtyEight statistician appears to have correctly predicted the winner in all 50 states in the presidential election.  —  In the end, big data won.
Michael Scherer / TIME:
Inside the Secret World of Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win  —  “The cave” at President Obama's Election headquarters in Chicago  —  In late spring, the backroom number crunchers who had powered Barack Obama's campaign to victory noticed that George Clooney had an almost gravitational tug on West Coast females ages 40 to 49.
Michael Kan / Computerworld:
Apple out of China's top five smartphone list in Q3  —  Coolpad smartphones took third place in market share for China, according to Canalys  —  Apple dropped out of the top five list in China's smartphone market for the third quarter, as local handset vendors saw their shipments surge …
Jacqueline Seng / CNET:
MasterCard rolls out credit card with display and keypad  —  The next-generation 2-in-1 card features an embedded LCD display and touch-sensitive buttons for generating one-time passwords.  —  Next time you get a new card from your bank, don't be surprised if it has a keypad and an LCD on it.
Tricia Duryee / AllThingsD:
7,000 Starbucks Locations Added to the Square Wallet  —  Starbucks is now accepting Square's mobile payment application at roughly 7,000 of its stores as part of a wide-ranging agreement between the two companies.  —  The roll out is right on schedule, coming just three months after the partnership was announced in August.
Jordan Golson / MacRumors:
Apple Store App Updated With Siri and Gift Card Passbook Support (Theoretically)  —  Apple has updated its Apple Store app [App Store] with support for Siri, and the ability to email Passbook enabled gift cards to friends via the app.  However, despite being in the release notes …
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
The Narcissism Of Minor Silicon Valley Differences  —  There's a prevalent myth in Silicon Valley, the myth that people aren't snobs here.  This isn't true.  A sort of reverse/meta-snobbery exists here, mostly intellectual in its nature, and the line between the alphas and the betas is extremely clear cut for those who can see it.
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:
Airbnb Partners With NYC.gov To Provide Free Housing For Hurricane Sandy Victims  —  Last week, Airbnb waived fees for users affected by Hurricane Sandy.  It also encouraged hosts with listings in affected areas to lower their prices and take in those without food, power, or housing.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Patent suits target Google, Intel, hundreds more for encrypting web traffic  —  Enlarge / A figure from the patent that has been asserted against Intel, Google, and hundreds of other companies providing SSL and TLS on their websites.  —  Google  —  An unknown company's four-year campaign …
Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:
Hurricane Sandy Proved How Hard It Is to Break the Internet  —  All the damage to the communications infrastructure brought on by Hurricane Sandy is sure giving the people who keep track of the technical underpinnings of the Internet a lot of fodder to see how well things do and don't work in real-world situations.
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
Voters boot three SOPA-sponsoring Hollywood allies from Congress  —  Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), a key supporter of the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act dedicated to her late husband, lost her seat in Tuesday's election.  —  US Congress  —  When the new Congress takes office in January …
More: CNET
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Microsoft's chief patent counsel Bart Eppenauer: ‘We believe our patent laws have served the country very well.’  —  But will he accept our challenge to write his next legal document with a stylus?  —  Bart Eppenauer is Microsof't Chief Patent Counsel — the man who oversees the company's enormous portfolio of 20,000 patents.
Christina Bonnington / Wired:
Apple Granted Patent for Original iPad Design  —  Apple was granted a design patent for the original iPad Tuesday.  Image: USPTO  —  Can you patent a rectangle with rounded corners?  Absolutely.  And Apple has done it again.  On Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted …
AppleInsider:
Apple's Eddy Cue joins Ferrari board of directors  —  Eddy Cue, Apple's head of Internet software and services, has joined the Ferrari board of directors, in a move that could hint that Apple is interested in moving into users' vehicles.  —  Ferrari announced in a statement on Wednesday that Cue has joined its board.
Rip Empson / TechCrunch:
LearnStreet Launches With $1M From Vinod Khosla To Help You Learn How To Build, Test And Push Code  —  For more than a few years now, engineering talent has been in high demand but it also seems that, of late, coding has become cool.  Okay, maybe not cool, but thanks to a fleet of startups …
More: GigaOM and AllThingsD
Claire Cain Miller / NYT Bits:
Walk in a Mall, Receive a Mobile Coupon  —  Smart online shoppers always search the Web for a coupon before they make a purchase.  RetailMeNot, one of the leading coupon Web sites, is also trying to offer coupons for mall shoppers via their cellphones.  —  The idea is the same as the paper coupons …
Josh Ong / The Next Web:
With 400 million registered users, China's YY chat client looks to raise up to $97 million in US IPO [update]  —  Chinese social entertainment company YY has updated its documents with the Securities Exchange Commission for its upcoming IPO, revealing that it hopes to bring in as much as $97 million …
Paul Sawers / The Next Web:
The rumour was true: UK Prime Minister and senior government figures have their own app  —  Remember those reports from last year, suggesting British Prime Minister David Cameron was to receive a personal iPad app, providing real-time access to key public data?

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Reuters: