Techmeme
December 10, 2012, 5:20 PM

Top News

Matt Buchanan / BuzzFeed:
Facebook Democracy Is Dead  —  Democracy dies on Facebook in an hour.  The night before Thanksgiving, Facebook quietly announced that it wanted to end a process that's been in place since 2009, which allows users to vote on changes to the way the site's governed.
More: CNET, The Next Web and Slate
Charles Arthur / Guardian:
Apple redraws maps after Australian drivers led astray in the bush  —  Mildura police issue warning after motorists lose way in scorching temperatures because town misplaced on Apple Maps  —  Apple has updated its new maps system after police in Mildura, Australia, said a number of people trying …
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Microsoft Leaks References to ‘Office Mobile for iPhone’, ‘Excel for iPad’ and ‘PowerPoint for iPad’  —  Building upon a series of reports about Microsoft's apparent efforts to bring its Office productivity suite to iOS, The Verge last month shared a few screenshots and noted that the suite …
Matt Smith / Reuters:
Russia backs down on proposals to regulate the Internet  —  (Reuters) - A Russia-led coalition on Monday withdrew a proposal to give governments new powers over the Internet, a plan opposed by Western countries in talks on a new global telecom treaty.  —  Negotiations on the treaty mark …
Sachin Agarwal / Twitter Blog:
New profiles for everyone  —  A few months ago, we introduced new Twitter profiles so that you could make your profile beautiful and display your style on your profile page.  By uploading a header photo on twitter.com or our mobile apps on iPhone, iPad or Android, you can make your profile more uniquely yours.
Jennifer Van Grove / VentureBeat:
Instagram's next move: a novel new camera for iOS and a fresh filter for all  —  Embroiled in a photo turf war with Twitter, Instagram's deadly weapon of choice is a revamped iOS application that allows users to snap better, more stylized shots.  —  The Facebook-owned entity today released …
Zach Epstein / BGR:
RIM teases BlackBerry 10 launch with image of first BB10 smartphone  —  Hoping to keep interest levels up before its big January 30th launch, Research In Motion (RIMM) has started to tease its own “laptop-killing” BlackBerry 10-powered smartphone on its official website.
Katherine Rushton / Telegraph:
Dell founder ‘turned down Autonomy’  —  Billionaire entrepreneur Michael Dell has revealed that Autonomy was offered to him before it was bought by Hewlett-Packard, but that he rejected the British software firm because it was “overwhelmingly obvious” that it was overpriced.
Jon Russell / The Next Web:
Motorola to exit South Korea in 2013, as Google restructuring claims another 500+ jobs  —  Motorola Mobility is to close down almost all of its operations in South Korea next year as its reorganization under the ownership of Google continues.  The phone maker will keep 10 percent of its local R&D staff …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
25-GPU cluster cracks every standard Windows password in < 6 hours  —  Welcome to Radeon City, population: 8.  It's one of five servers that make up a high-performance password-cracking cluster.  —  Jeremi Gosney  —  A password-cracking expert has unveiled a computer cluster …
More: CNET, nbcnews.com and TechSpot.  Tweets: @siracusa
Jessica Guynn / Los Angeles Times:
FTC: Most mobile apps for kids secretly collect and share information  —  A study from the Federal Trade Commission has found that most mobile apps for kids are secretly collecting information from children including device IDs, phone numbers, locations, and other private information without their parents' knowledge or consent.
Robin Wauters / The Next Web:
Nike to kick off a Nike+ startup accelerator in March 2013, powered by TechStars  —  Well, this is interesting: apparently TechStars delivers its acceleration programs out-of-the-shoebox these days.  —  TechStars has teamed up with sports footwear and apparel giant Nike to power …
Etan Vlessing / Hollywood Reporter:
Detained John McAfee Sells Life Rights for Movie, TV  —  Montreal-based Impact Future Media says it has secured the exclusive IP rights to the embattled anti-virus pioneer, now wanted in Belize over the death of his neighbor.  —  TORONTO - U.S. anti-virus pioneer John McAfee …
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
In “Seismic Shift,” New COO De Castro Planning to Move Yahoo Ad Sales to Category Model (Backed Up by “Marissa Halo")  —  In what will be a major shift in how the Silicon Valley Internet giant sells online advertising, Yahoo's new COO Henrique De Castro has briefed employees on a plan to move …
Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
Microsoft combats Google Knowledge Graph by adding people and places to its Snapshot sidebar  —  Back in August, Google launched its Knowledge Graph product on Search.  It's essentially a sidebar that provides direct contextual information about searches for people, places or things.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Beyond productivity: Why live captions belong in every meeting  —  You join a meeting, someone starts talking, and within a minute, there are names, numbers, ideas, and unfamiliar terms flying around.  You could ask them to repeat it.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Sources:
Factory CEO on why AGI is already here
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Meta's Muse Revival, Frontier AI Under Threat, The Rise Of Dopamine Sites
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Great Chat:
Doomers at Dreamforce
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:20 PM ET, December 10, 2012.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Earlier Picks