Techmeme: TechCrunch's Picks: The Top 8 Startups From Y Combinator's Summer '13 Demo Day (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)

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August 21, 2013, 12:35 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:

New Details Show Broader NSA Surveillance Reach — Programs Cover 75% of Nation's Traffic, Can Snare Emails WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency—which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens—has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans' Internet communications …

Julian Borger / Guardian:

NSA files: why the Guardian in London destroyed hard drives of leaked files — A threat of legal action by the government that could have stopped reporting on the files leaked by Edward Snowden led to a symbolic act at the Guardian's offices in London — Guardian editors on Tuesday revealed …

More: The Verge, TechnoLlama, Pressthink, TechCrunch, Digital Trends and Wired

Tweets: @youranonnews and @markseibel

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NBCNews:

US doesn't know what Snowden took, sources say — HONG KONG - 2013: In this handout photo provided by The Guardian, Edward Snowden speaks during an interview in Hong Kong. Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA, revealed details of top-secret surveillance conducted …

More: Hillicon Valley. Tweets: @r343l, @petersuderman, @jeffjarvis, @mattmdiaz, @techopirate and @realchadtaylor. See also Mediagazer

Facebook Newsroom:

Technology Leaders Launch Partnership to Make Internet Access Available to All — Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, Samsung to be founding partners — MENLO PARK, CA, — Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, today announced the launch of internet.org …

More: The Next Web and GigaOM. Tweets: @ericsson, @anoyes and @jguynn

Vindu Goel / New York Times:

Facebook Leads an Effort to Lower Barriers to Internet Access — MENLO PARK, Calif. — About one of every seven people in the world uses Facebook. Now, Mark Zuckerberg, its co-founder and chief executive, wants to make a play for the rest — including the four billion or so who lack Internet access.

More: The Verge, Gizmodo, AllThingsD, Engadget and CNN

Tweets: @facebook, @nateog, @jguynn, @brianstelter and @markgurman

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook And 6 Phone Makers Launch Internet.org To Bring Affordable Access To Everyone — Facebook has just announced a partnership with Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, and Qualcomm to launch Internet.org, a project aimed at bringing affordable Internet access to the five billion people without it.

More: Engadget. Tweets: @shiraovide and @vindugoel

John McDermott / AdAge:

iTunes Radio to Debut in September With McDonald's, Nissan, P&G, Pepsi — Launch Partners Sign 12-Month Deals Worth Tens of Millions of Dollars — iTunes Radio, Apple's answer to Pandora, is set to debut next month with a handful of high-profile brand partners including McDonald's, Nissan …

More: ParisLemon, Macworld, The Register, 9to5Mac, TechSpot, TUAW, MacRumors, iPhone Hacks, Ubergizmo, TechnoBuffalo, VentureBeat, Cult of Mac, AppleInsider, The Mac Observer, The Next Web, Apple Bitch, SlashGear, iDownloadBlog.com, GigaOM, App Advice, Engadget, MacNN and iLounge

Tweets: @pkafka, @jherskowitz and @learmonth

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Terrence O'Brien / Engadget:

PlayStation 4 hitting shelves on November 15th in the US for $399, November 29th in Europe and Latin America — There isn't much we don't know about the PlayStation 4 at this point. Sony has let the details slip out in drips and drabs, dragging out the mystery as long as possible.

More: PlayStation.Blog, VentureBeat, TechHive, The Register, Kotaku, The Next Web, AllThingsD, I4U News, BGR, ABC News, Penny Arcade, WebProNews, Giant Bomb, Gotta Be Mobile, Gizmodo, Digits, Electronista, Polygon, The Verge, GeekWire and Ars Technica. Tweets: @tomwarren

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Twitch Integrates With PlayStation 4 For Streaming And Viewing Video Game Content

More: Engadget, The Official Twitch Blog, The Next Web and Mashable

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

TechCrunch's Picks: The Top 8 Startups From Y Combinator's Summer '13 Demo Day — Convenience tech, developer assistance, and services for senior citizens were the big trends amongst the 45 startups that pitched on the record today at Y Combinator's Summer 2013 Demo Day.

More: TechCrunch, TechCrunch, AllThingsD, GigaOM, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Mattermark, VentureBeat, SiliconBeat and Valleywag

Tweets: @amir, @brianp, @arrington and @startupljackson

David Pogue / New York Times:

Siri vs. the Android: The Sequel — “Your review was the dumbest thing I've ever read. It strains me to avoid profanity in describing how stupid you sound.” — That's the kind of e-mail that brightened my day after I reviewed Google's Moto X phone two weeks ago.

Tweets: @pogue and @nchan

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Google and Waze Start Mixing Their Maps for the First Time — Google today is introducing the first integrations between its homegrown Google Maps for mobile and its newly owned Waze. — Google adds Waze — The traffic tab on Google Maps for iOS and Android will now include accidents …

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Netflix inks exclusive deal for first-run Weinstein films — The Internet's biggest on-demand video service will stream movies from the indie film studio before any other pay-TV providers starting in 2016, the same year it kicks off a similar Disney deal. — Follow @@joan_e

More: Tech Trader Daily, Engadget, DSLreports, The Wrap, USA Today, GigaOM and Associated Press. See also Mediagazer

Robinson Meyer / The Atlantic Online:

This Software Won't Let You Look Away — The creepiest educational technology yet — Updated, 3:45pm. — It's hard to imagine a creepier educational technology than “FocusAssist,” a new feature announced by online training company Mindflash last week.

More: CNET, Nextgov and ROUGH TYPE

Danielle Kucera / Bloomberg:

Amazon Ramps Up $13.9 Billion Warehouse Building Spree — Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is stepping up a warehouse building spree, signaling the urgency of getting products to customers more quickly amid rising competition from EBay Inc. (EBAY) and Wal-Mart (WMT) Stores Inc.

Tweets: @jordanr1000

Alexis Santos / Engadget:

LG Display claims a world's first with 2,560 x 1,440 LCD for smartphones — Full HD displays? Eat your heart out, handset manufacturers. LG Display has just laid claim to the world's first Quad HD (2,560 x 1,440) smartphone display, which also boasts the highest pixel density of a mobile device, clocking in at 538ppi.

More: CNET, Gizmodo and Electronista

Laura Hazard Owen / GigaOM:

Barnes & Noble totally reverses strategy in train wreck of an investor call — Want to know what Barnes & Noble's plan is for the future? In that case, it would be wise to ignore pretty much everything the company has said it was going to do in recent months. — Getting out of the tablet business?

More: Android Community and SlashGear. Tweets: @pogue. See also Mediagazer

Laura Hazard Owen / GigaOM:

Bad earnings for Barnes & Noble: Nook revenues plunge 20%; Riggio won't take stores private

More: Barnes & Noble, Inc., AllThingsD, MarketWatch, DealBook, internetretailer.com, Associated Press, Electronista, ZDNet, LAPTOP Magazine, Engadget, TechCrunch and Reuters

Tweets: @sarahw and @peterlauria3

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Lindsey Turrentine / CNET:

Welcome to CNET, Tim Stevens — Starting this September, one of tech's best-known comes to CNET. He'll bring his storytelling skills with him. — Tim Stevens — Two years ago, Tim Stevens and I met for a few minutes after work one day not long after he had taken the helm at Engadget.

More: Digital Displacement. Tweets: @lturrentine, @tim_stevens, @theromit, @darrenmurph and @tim_stevens

Hannah Karp / Wall Street Journal:

Vevo in Deals With Apple, Samsung for TV Programming — Online Music-Video Company to Deliver On-Demand Programming Via Set-Top Boxes, Television Sets — Music-video company Vevo LLC is migrating from YouTube to the boob tube in a back-to-the-future attempt to recreate something akin to the original MTV.

More: MacRumors, AppleInsider, Electronista, App Advice and Digits. Tweets: @ethanwsj

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Coursera Adds Kleiner Perkins Partner Lila Ibrahim as President — Lila Ibrahim, an operating partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, will become president at the online education startup Coursera. — That's a lot of leadership at the top of the growing startup, which was founded less than two years ago.

More: VentureBeat, Coursera Blog and bizjournals

Tweets: @kpcb and @rschon

Pamela Jones / Groklaw:

Forced Exposure — The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too. — There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum. — What to do? — What to do? I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure it out.

More: TechCrunch, werd.io, GigaOM, Inquirer, ITworld.com, PandoDaily, Daily Dot, TechSpot, OStatic blogs, Popular Science, eWeek, ZDNet, BBC, Naked Security, The Verge, SecurityWeek, Electronista, NPR, VentureBeat, ReadWrite and I4U News

Tweets: @privacyint, @puellavulnerata, @piecritic and @rsingel

See also Mediagazer

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google's Stealthy Helpouts Live Video Commerce Service Makes Its First Public Appearance, Landing Page Now Live — Last month, our own Rip Empson broke the news that Google was working on Helpouts, a Hangouts-based marketplace “ that enables individuals and small and large businesses to buy and sell services via live video.”

More: Ars Technica and TechHive

Adrianne Jeffries / The Verge:

Not OK, Cupid: dating site email security gaffe leaves your account wide open — Users may be exposing themselves without realizing it — A friend who recently started using OKCupid just forwarded me an email she got from the site, containing a funny message from a prospective suitor: “You seem nice.

More: Betabeat, Valleywag, VentureBeat and Business Insider

Tweets: @adrjeffries, @kevinmarshall, @adrjeffries and @xor

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