Techmeme: TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise (TechCrunch)

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July 9, 2013, 11:25 AM

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Jeff John Roberts / GigaOM:

Justice Dept. defends secret rulings in new spy court filing — The Obama administration, in a new court filing, urged the nation's surveillance court to throw out a request by civil liberties groups to disclose its secret rulings about the scope and legality of the Patriot Act.

More: RT, Softpedia News, TechPresident, SiliconBeat, Concurring Opinions and Techdirt

Rebecca Jeschke / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Federal Judge Allows EFF's NSA Mass Spying Case to Proceed — Rejects Government's State Secret Privilege Claims in Jewel v. NSA and Shubert v. Obama — San Francisco - A federal judge today rejected the U.S. government's latest attempt to dismiss the Electronic Frontier Foundation's …

More: WebProNews, Boing Boing, Techdirt and Tikkun Daily Blog

Guardian:

Edward Snowden: ‘The US government will say I aided our enemies’ - video interview

More: Spiegel Online, CNET, Softpedia News, iMore, Guardian, Business Insider, Poynter, Quartz, Hillicon Valley, WebProNews, Wall Street Journal and www.idigitaltimes.co.uk

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet:

Google releases fix to OEMs for Blue Security Android security hole — Summary: Google has found a fix for a vulnerability in Android's security model that could allow attackers to convert 99 percent of all applications into Trojan malware. — It doesn't get much scarier than this.

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Microsoft Restructuring Set for Thursday — According to numerous sources close to the situation, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is poised to unveil his plan to drastically restructure the tech giant this week. And, while timing might change, sources said that the current plan is to make it public on Thursday.

More: BGR, Digits, ZDNet, WebProNews, Internet Evolution, Stowe Boyd, CITEworld, Mashable, CNET and Business Insider

Zach Epstein / BGR:

Exclusive details on Amazon's next-gen Kindle Fire tablets — With Nook out of the way and Samsung slowing, can Amazon rekindle people's love of Kindles? — Amazon is planning a complete overhaul of its Kindle Fire tablet lineup for 2013 and BGR has learned exclusive details about the forthcoming devices.

More: Gizmodo, PhoneArena and Softpedia News

Todd Hoff / High Scalability:

The Architecture Twitter Uses to Deal with 150M Active Users, 300K QPS, a 22 MB/S Firehose, and Send Tweets in Under 5 Seconds — Toy solutions solving Twitter's “problems” are a favorite scalability trope. Everybody has this idea that Twitter is easy. With a little architectural hand waving …

More: Co.Labs. Tweets: @nikcub and @matthewsinclair

Kim Zetter / Wired:

This Is Not a Test: Emergency Broadcast Systems Proved Hackable — Several models of Emergency Alert System decoders, used to break into TV and radio broadcasts to announce public safety warnings, have vulnerabilities that would allow hackers to hijack them and deliver fake messages to the public …

More: ZDNet, The Register, The Verge and SecurityWeek

Andy / TorrentFreak:

Three Strikes and You're Still In - France Kills Piracy Disconnections — The so-called “graduated response” to the file-sharing issue has for years been championed by the mainstream music and movie industries. — According to the theory, Internet subscribers who are continually warned …

More: GigaOM, The Next Web and Boing Boing

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:

US Commerce Department destroyed $170,000 worth of TVs, mice, and more to root out malware — Though the US military has been preparing itself for digital warfare, other government agencies still seem to be struggling with how to handle basic cybersecurity: last year, the Department …

More: Techdirt, Examiner, FederalNewsRadio.com, Gizmodo, Softpedia News and Nextgov

Bloomberg:

Moguls Flying to Sun Valley With $53 Billion Deal Revival — Media dealmakers digesting $53 billion of mergers, spinoffs and acquisitions announced so far this year head to Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley conference this week to lay the groundwork for more. — So far, more than 240 media deals …

More: Reuters, 9to5Mac, TUAW, Electronista, iClarified, AppleInsider, App Advice and MacDailyNews

Cade Metz / Wired:

This Is the Woman at the Heart of Everything Google Builds — There was a time when Melody Meckfessel juggled two wardrobes: one for one Google, and one for the rest of her life. Her Google wardrobe included hoodies and t-shirts and blue jeans — standard engineering garb — never blouses, skirts, or dresses.

More: Business Insider

Matt Rosoff / CITEworld:

Former Windows chief explains why it's so hard to go cross-platform — Former Windows leader Steven Sinofsky wrote a thoughtful post today about why it's so difficult to build apps for multiple platforms at once. — When a new platform emerges, it's usually fairly “trivial” …

More: Learning by Shipping, CNET and Business Insider

Tweets: @cisco_mobile and @carnage4life

Nathan Ingraham / The Verge:

Sprint now finally owns 100 percent of Clearwire — Sprint just announced that it has successfully completed its purchase of Clearwire — its final, best offer of $5 per share was accepted, and the transaction has been closed as of today. This comes just one day after SoftBank and Sprint announced …

More: The Next Web, Engadget and Sprint Newsroom

TechCrunch:

TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise — TaskRabbit, the San Francisco startup that runs a marketplace for outsourcing errands and temporary work projects, has laid off a number of staffers as part of a larger restructuring, TechCrunch has learned.

More: Street Fight and Business Insider

Timothy J. Seppala / Engadget:

New Chrome developer tools bring Bluetooth, iTunes integration to packaged apps — Google's latest Chrome developer tools could give us even fewer reasons to close our browser — devs can now build packaged apps with access to Google Wallet, Google Analytics, Bluetooth devices and an API that dives into the user's music library.

More: Chromium Blog, GigaOM, I4U News, Softpedia News, Softpedia News and CNET

Paul Sloan / CNET:

Beats trying to launch streaming music service with AT&T — Exclusive: Music industry legend Jimmy Iovine wants to launch his Spotify competitor with a big splash, which is why he's trying to partner with a wireless carrier. — When Jimmy Iovine, the co-founder and CEO of Beats Electronics …

More: TechSpot, Hillicon Valley, IntoMobile, Music Ally, Billboard, Android Headlines, AllAccess.com, hypebot, The Verge, SlashGear, Pocket-lint and socalTECH.com

Brad Molen / Engadget:

HTC 8XT will be available on Sprint July 19th for $100 after rebate — The term “this summer” has finally become much more specific for anyone hoping to score a Sprint-branded Windows Phone: July 19th. This is the date the Now Network will launch the HTC 8XT, the carrier's first WP8 device …

More: Sprint, AllThingsD, The Verge and WMPoweruser

Deadline.com:

Will New .LA Internet Addresses Boost Los Angeles Entertainment Companies? — David Bloom is a Deadline contributor. — Maybe. The country of Laos and the companies working for it sure hope so. Today, on Laos' behalf, URL registry GoDaddy began auctioning dozens of prime entertainment …

More: Los Angeles Times, Variety, brandchannel.com and Domain Name Wire

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Hard drive-wiping malware that hit South Korea tied to military espionage — The hackers responsible for a malware attack in March that simultaneously wiped data from tens of thousands of South Korean computers belong to the same espionage group that has targeted South Korean and US military secrets for four years, researchers said.

More: InfoWorld, ZDNet, CNET, Computerworld, Sky News, ITWire.com, akgulian.com, Associated Press, Motherboard, The Register and Help Net Security

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Hasbro Takes A 70% Stake In Mobile Game Maker Backflip Studios For $112M — Toy maker Hasbro just paid $112 million in cash to take a 70 percent stake in Boulder, Colorado's Backflip Studios, the mobile game maker behind Dragonvale, NinJump and Paper Toss. — The company was started back in 2009 and never took any outside funding.

More: Guardian, Business Wire, Backflip Studios, Inside Social Games, VentureBeat, IntoMobile and Touch Arcade

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