Techmeme
August 9, 2013, 1:20 AM

Top News

Kashmir Hill / Forbes:
Email Company Reportedly Used By Edward Snowden Shuts Down Rather Than Hand Data Over To Feds  —  When Edward Snowden emailed journalists and activists in July to invite them to a briefing at the Moscow airport during his long stay there, he used the email account “edsnowden@lavabit.com” according to one of the invitees.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Silent Circle Preemptively Shuts Down Encrypted Email Service To Prevent NSA Spying  —  “We knew USG would come after us”.  That's why Silent Circle CEO Michael Janke tells TechCrunch his company shut down its Silent Mail encrypted email service.  It hadn't been told to provide data to the government …
Jennifer Granick / The Center for Internet and Society:
Give Me Complicity or Give Me Death: Lavabit Chooses Death  —  Today, Lavabit, an email service provider that promised its customers better privacy and security than other publicly available services, shut its doors.  Reading between the lines of a cryptic message posted on the site's homepage …
More: SlashGear.  Tweets: @martian_bob and @shawnyeager
Charlie Savage / New York Times:
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Tumblr Had $16.6 Million Left When Yahoo Bought It  —  In the wake of Yahoo's acquisition of Tumblr, there was some chatter about how much runway David Karp would have had if he hadn't sold the company.  —  Now we know, sort of: Tumblr, which had raised $125 million since 2007, had $16.6 million in cash left when Yahoo bought it.
Roger Cheng / CNET:
T-Mobile's John Legere: The most dangerous man in wireless  —  The CEO has vowed to shake up the status quo — and he's managing to do just that, all while posting T-Mobile's highest customer growth in four years.  —  T-Mobile CEO John Legere makes several big announcements in New York City during its big press event in July.
More: GeekWire.  Tweets: @dbfarber.  Thanks:@joan_e
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Reuters:
Exclusive: BlackBerry open to going private, sources say  —  (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd is warming up to the possibility of going private, as the smartphone maker battles to revive its fortunes, several sources familiar with the situation said.  —  Chief Executive Thorsten Heins …
More: Engadget
Klint Finley / Wired:
Apple's Operating System Guru Goes Back to His Roots  —  That iPad in your hand?  It feels like the most modern of computers.  But like the iPhone and the Macintosh, the Apple tablet revolves around a core piece of software that can trace its roots all the way back to the early 1970s.
Nancy Gohring / CITEworld:
Acer the latest to turn to Google after poor Windows sales  —  Acer, the electronics maker that once seemed to be a big Windows 8 booster, is turning its back on Microsoft.  —  After posting a second quarter loss this week, it said it's going to aggressively work on selling more Chromebooks and Android devices.
JHR Group Blog:
App Review: MixBit (From the folks who brought us Youtube...)  —  YouTube creators Chad Hurley and Steve Chen launched a new app today called MixBit.  Some reviewers are saying that MixBit is going to win the video app wars and beat Vine and Instagram in their own game.  I say “not so fast.”
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

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Earlier Picks

Colleen Taylor / TechCrunch:
Tom Warren / The Verge: