Techmeme: Disruptions: How Driverless Cars Could Reshape Cities (Nick Bilton/NYT Bits)

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July 8, 2013, 10:15 AM

Top News

Sam Byford / The Verge:

Top iOS apps and games go free ahead of App Store's fifth anniversary — ‘Infinity Blade II,’ Traktor DJ, ‘Sword and Sworcery,’ Day One, and more — A host of highly regarded apps for iPhone and iPad have gone free today in what could be a major celebration to mark five years since Apple launched the App Store.

Eric Lichtblau / New York Times:

In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A. — WASHINGTON — In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation's surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects …

More: Wall Street Journal, GigaOM, Digital Trends, Network World, Concurring Opinions, Boing Boing, Softpedia News, The Huffington Post and Techdirt

Tweets: @ggreenwald, @thijsniks, @mattblaze, @dhh, @dhh, @richardson_mich and @csoghoian

Ezra Klein / Wonkblog:

Did you know John Roberts is also chief justice of the NSA's surveillance state? — Chief justice of the United States is a pretty big job. You lead the Supreme Court conferences where cases are discussed and voted on. You preside over oral arguments. When in the majority, you decide who writes the opinion.

Tweets: @benparr and @csoghoian

David Harris-Gershon / Tikkun Daily Blog:

NSA Rejecting Every FOIA Request Made by U.S. Citizens — Clayton Seymour, a 36-year-old IT specialist from Hilliard, Ohio, recently sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the NSA, curious as to whether any data about him was being collected. What he received in response made his blood boil.

Washington Post:

Agreements with private companies protect U.S. access to cables' data for surveillance — The U.S. government had a problem: Spying in the digital age required access to the fiber-optic cables traversing the world's oceans, carrying torrents of data at the speed of light.

More: Wonkblog, Ars Technica, TechEye and Hillicon Valley

Tweets: @zerocinemacom and @peternotail

Bloomberg:

Zynga's Mattrick Looked to Buy Company While at Microsoft — Don Mattrick, the former head of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)'s entertainment division who takes the reins as chief executive officer of Zynga Inc. (ZNGA) today, has been hankering to run all or part of the social-gaming company for at least three years.

More: The Register, Business Insider, GamesIndustry International, Macgasm, Ubergizmo, The Verge, Motley Fool, Polygon, Engadget, VG247, SlashGear, www.idigitaltimes.co.uk, GeekWire, MCV: Home Stream, Edge Online and Softpedia News

Joanna Stern / ABC News:

With New Improvements, Facebook Brings Graph Search Function to All U.S. Users — Get ready for your Facebook search bar to start looking a little different. — Starting Monday Facebook will begin rolling out the advanced search feature it announced earlier this year to all users in the United States.

More: New York Times, SiliconANGLE, The Register, ReadWrite, Facebook Newsroom, The Verge, TechCrunch, WebProNews, www.idigitaltimes.co.uk, VatorNews, memeburn, The Next Web, Engadget, SlashGear, CNET and Softpedia News

Nick Bilton / NYT Bits:

Disruptions: How Driverless Cars Could Reshape Cities — SAN FRANCISCO — By now, seeing one of Google's experimental, driverless cars zipping down Silicon Valley's Highway 101, or parking itself on a San Francisco street, is not all that unusual. Indeed, as automakers like Audi …

More: Forbes, Business Insider and Stowe Boyd

Tweets: @mikerugnetta and @aarieff

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Microsoft Quietly Shuts Down MSN TV, Once Known as WebTV — Microsoft said that its MSN TV service will be closing down at the end of September, in a post on its Web site and in an email to users. — MSN TV, of course, was born of WebTV, which was thought up by well-known entrepreneur Steve Perlman.

More: CNET, GigaOM, Inquirer, The Verge, iPhone, bit-tech.net, Softpedia News, PC World, The Register, WPDang, Geek News Central, Gizmodo, www.idigitaltimes.co.uk, SlashGear, Ubergizmo, TechSpot, Engadget, GeekWire, VentureBeat and T3 News

Tweets: @adamclarkestes, @film_girl and @zseward

Rolfe Winkler / Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft's Products Need More Horsepower — By - ROLFE WINKLER - — Microsoft keeps hitching its fortunes to lame horses. It shows how rickety parts of the software giant's business are. — Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Nokia, Yahoo and Dell all face very difficult circumstances of their own.

More: ZDNet

Quentin Hardy / NYT Bits:

Technology Workers Are Young (Really Young) — It's well known that technology is a young man's game. Still, it is surprising to see just how young (and how male). — PayScale, a company based in Seattle, has determined that the median age of workers at many of the most successful companies …

More: Silicon Valley Watcher, ZDNet and memeburn. Tweets: @ejacqui

Chris Welch / The Verge:

MIT tool connects the dots of your life through Gmail metadata — How much does the metadata gathered in your inbox reveal about you? Quite a lot, judging by what researchers at the MIT Media Lab have managed to accomplish with Immersion. They've built a web app that …

More: Boston Globe, Guardian, SiliconANGLE, My heart's in Accra, Los Angeles Times, diginomica, TechHive, T3 News and NPR

Sarah Young / Reuters:

App developer Shazam gets $40 mln backing from tycoon Carlos Slim — (Reuters) - Smartphone app developer Shazam has found an unlikely ally in the form of Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men, who is investing $40 million to back the development of the start-up best known for helping music fans identify catchy songs.

More: Guardian, AllThingsD, NEWS.com.au, TechCrunch, CNET, Beet.TV, GigaOM, Financial Times, The Next Web, VentureBeat, Sky News and ZDNet. See also Mediagazer

Reuters:

Governments to target tech giants' tax avoidance: draft — (Reuters) - Western governments are set to target a range of tax loopholes used by technology giants including Apple, Amazon as part of an international drive to tackle corporate tax avoidance, a draft action plan seen by Reuters said.

More: ZDNet and memeburn

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