Techmeme: Exclusive: PayPal Co-Founder Levchin Launches New Payments Startup, Affirm (Kara Swisher/AllThingsD)

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February 26, 2013, 10:20 PM

Top News

Seth Sternberg / Google+ Developers Blog:

Introducing Google+ Sign-In: simple and secure, minus the social spam — Today we're adding a new feature to the Google+ platform: application sign-in. Whether you're building an app for Android, iOS or the web, users can now sign in to your app with Google, and bring along their Google+ info for an upgraded experience.

Danny Sullivan / Marketing Land:

Is The Google+ “Spam-Free” Sign-In Really That Different From Facebook?

More: Examiner and digitaltrends.com

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

Google's Rubin: No Need for Retail Stores — Despite reports that Google has been eyeing real estate for physical stores, Android chief Andy Rubin says the company really doesn't need its own retail effort. — A few years ago, consumers needed to touch and feel devices …

More: The Verge, VentureBeat, BGR, TechCrunch, bizjournals, Ubergizmo, Geekosystem, PC Magazine, Android and Me, PhoneArena, Macgasm, Gotta Be Mobile, CNET, IntoMobile, memeburn, The Verge, Mobile Marketing Watch, 9to5Google, TechSpot, Pocketnow, Engadget and WebProNews. Tweets: @gsterling

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Exclusive: PayPal Co-Founder Levchin Launches New Payments Startup, Affirm — High-profile Silicon Valley entrepreneur Max Levchin is launching a new mobile payments startup today called Affirm. — It's the first project emerging from Levchin's San Francisco tech incubator Hard, Valuable …

More: CNET, Mobile Marketing Watch, Engadget, GigaOM and bizjournals

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

“Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Scheme Starts, With Mystery Punishments — The MPAA and RIAA, helped by five major Internet providers in the United States, will start to warn BitTorrent pirates this week. The parties launched the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) and agreed on a system through …

More: Geekosystem and BBC

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Should you be worried about the new “six strikes” anti-piracy rules? Yes and no

More: Center for Copyright …, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Forbes, Lifehacker, Gawker, Hollywood Reporter, The Atlantic Wire, LAW.com, Cable Tech Talk, Wall Street Journal and BestTechie

Dennis K. Berman / Wall Street Journal:

Is Twitter Really Worth $10 Billion? — I spent the last week trying to write a column that proved Twitter wasn't worth $10 billion. Then the facts intervened. — Stubbornly, they arranged themselves into a most unexpected conclusion, one that seems almost blasphemy to type …

Tweets: @dannysullivan, @eldon, @sg, @alexia, @rsarver, @zseward, @alex, @conwaytwitee, @justinwolfers and @reformedbroker

Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:

Is Twitter actually worth $10 billion? We have our doubts

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

For the First Time Since Napster, Music Sales Are Growing — The last time music was a growth business was 1999 — back when people bought millions of Britney Spears CDs, and GeoCities was the third-most popular Web property in the world. You know what's happened since then.

More: IFPI, New York Times, AppleInsider, Techdirt, The Next Web, VatorNews, internetretailer.com, MacRumors, Electronista and Gizmodo. See also Mediagazer

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

NPD: Illegal P2P music sharing declined 17% in 2012 as Internet users turn to free, legal streaming services

More: NPD Group, CNET, Forbes, VentureBeat, Wired, WebProNews, CNET, GeekWire and SlashGear. See also Mediagazer

Brendan McGarry / Bloomberg:

Pentagon Will Open Networks to Apple, Google Devices in 2014 — The U.S. Defense Department said today it plans to open its networks by next February to about 100,000 mobile phones and tablet computers from companies such as Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOG)

More: U.S. Department of Defense, 9to5Mac, AllThingsD, Wired, BGR, ZDNet, iDownloadBlog.com, Forbes and iPhone in Canada Blog

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet:

Torvalds strongly objects to Windows 8 secure boot keys in the Linux kernel — Summary: Linux founder Linus Torvalds makes no bones about it. He thinks inserting signed binaries into the Linux kernel is “moronic”. — It started innocently enough. Red Hat software engineer David Howells …

More: OStatic blogs and Neowin. Tweets: @binarybits and @maryjofoley

Christopher Soghoian / ACLU:

New Document Sheds Light on Government's Ability to Search iPhones — Cell phone searches are a common law enforcement tool, but up until now, the public has largely been in the dark regarding how much sensitive information the government can get with this invasive surveillance technique.

More: Forbes, Ars Technica, The Full Signal, Gizmodo, iPhone in Canada Blog and Gotta Be Mobile. Tweets: @csoghoian

Aaron Ricadela / Bloomberg:

Hewlett-Packard CEO Whitman to Evaluate Sale of Small Businesses — Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman said the world's largest personal-computer maker will evaluate selling small businesses or projects that don't fit its plans while keeping its main operating divisions.

More: AllThingsD and The Verge

Tim Maly / Wired:

Freescale's Insanely Tiny ARM Chip Will Put the Internet of Things Inside Your Body — Freescale's Kinetis KL02 MCU is very small. Photo courtesy: Freescale. — Chipmaker Freescale Semiconductor has created the world's smallest ARM-powered chip, designed to push the world of connected devices into surprising places.

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Silicon Valley dwarfs list of top regions for tech acquisitions — Silicon Valley headed the list of the top 10 U.S. cities in terms of tech acquisitions in 2012. — PrivCo, a New York company that tracks private investments, said that Silicon Valley (combining San Francisco and the region around it) …

More: AllThingsD. Tweets: @mims, @scottmaustin and @mercbizbreak

Owen Thomas / Business Insider:

Glam Media Just Secretly Filed For An IPO — Two sources familiar with the matter say that Glam Media, the digital lifestyle-content publisher, has filed confidential documents as part of a new secret IPO process. — Glam got its start offering fashion and gossip content on Glam.com …

More: VentureBeat and The Next Web

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

U.S. ‘Pirate’ Streaming Site Operator Gets Amnesty — February 2011 U.S. authorities seized several domains belonging to major sports streaming sites. — One of the affected domains was Channelsurfing.net, a website where links to external sports streams were listed.

More: Ars Technica

Tomio Geron / Forbes:

Peter Thiel Backs Thinkful For Personalized Online Education — Online education startup Thinkful has raised $1 million in seed financing from Peter Thiel's FF Angel, RRE Ventures and Quotidian Ventures. — Founded in 2012, Thinkful is designed to provide personalized online learning for people.

More: VentureBeat, TechCrunch, VatorNews, Venture Capital Dispatch, VentureBeat and Fort Mill Times

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Cloudflare Partners With World's Leading Web Hosts To Implement Its Railgun Protocol, Speeds Up Load Times By Up To 143% — Cloudflare, the content delivery network and website security company that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in 2010, just announced that the majority …

More: CloudFlare blog, Ars Technica, Softpedia News and The Next Web

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Maybe You'll Get the Pay TV You Want, After All: Cablevision Sues Viacom to Break Up the Bundle — Pay TV has a simple model: If you want to watch one channel, you have to pay for dozens — or hundreds — of others, whether you watch them or not. That model drives lots of consumers nuts, but it has looked very, very hard to dislodge.

More: PR Newswire, VentureBeat, Hollywood Reporter, Ars Technica, Engadget, Wired, AdAge, multichannel.com/rss, The Next Web and Gizmodo. See also Mediagazer

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

EA enables gamers to use a single identity across game platforms (exclusive) — Hitting a milestone in its efforts to go digital, Electronic Arts has completed a major software engineering project to enable gamers to use a single identity across game platforms, even if those platforms are operated by different companies.

More: Engadget and VG247

Rachel King / ZDNet:

Intel baking Apache Hadoop into silicon for big data, security uses — Summary: Silicon Valley is turning to Hadoop to tackle big data, and Intel is attempting to get involved at ground level through integration on its chips. — SAN FRANCISCO — Not to be left out of the party this week …

More: Digits, The Register, Intel Newsroom, SiliconANGLE, Computerworld, Reuters, PC Magazine, V3.co.uk, VentureBeat, TechCrunch and Datacenter Dynamics

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Pinterest For Products Wanelo Raises At North Of $100M — You wouldn't think that a Pinterest where you can buy stuff would be one of the hottest Series A deals of the quarter, but it was. — Wanelo, a site that allows you to bookmark items that you like, and, this is crucial …

Seth Colaner / HotHardware.com News:

i-mate Smartphone Has Intel Inside, Runs Windows 8 Pro—Assuming It's Not Vaporware — According to the Seattle Times, erstwhile mobile device maker i-mate has something amazing brewing: a 4.7-inch phone that runs a full version of Windows 8 Pro—not Windows Phone 8, mind you …

More: Brier Dudley's blog, Ubergizmo, GSMArena.com, Engadget, WMPoweruser, wpcentral.com, Mobile Magazine and ZDNet

Aloysius Low / CNET:

HTC exec says there will be more Windows Phones in 2013 — HTC bets big on its HTC One handset, but it isn't giving up on Microsoft just yet. — BARCELONA, Spain—According to a Gartner report, HTC didn't do very well last year. Its Q3 shipments were down by a third year-on-year, and the continual decline has been worrying.

More: Unwired View, BGR, PhoneArena, Neowin, The Next Web and Pocket-lint

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Revealed: Stuxnet “beta's” devious alternate attack on Iran nuke program — Version 0.5 shows cyberweapon development began two years earlier than thought. — Researchers have uncovered a never-before-seen version of Stuxnet. The discovery sheds new light on the evolution …

More: Wired, Reuters, VentureBeat, SecurityWeek and SlashGear

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