Techmeme: Twitter's Magic Recs Experiment Personalizes What You Follow (Jenna Wortham/NYT Bits)

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September 15, 2013, 12:45 PM

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Spiegel Online:

NSA Spies on International Payments — The United States' NSA intelligence agency is interested in international payments processed by companies including Visa, SPIEGEL has learned. It has even set up its own financial database to track money flows through a “tailored access operations” division.

More: CannyVision, emptywheel, GigaOM and TechCrunch

Tweets: @kgosztola, @jlllow, @davewiner, @csoghoian, @csoghoian and @rszbt

Gregory Ferenstein / TechCrunch:

Twitter Co-Founder Evan Williams Lays Out His Plan For The Future Of Media — Twitter Co-Founder Evan Williams has an ambitious new plan: to shift our daily reading habits away from consuming incremental news bites and towards engaging with enlightened ideas curated by an intelligent algorithm.

More: GigaOM. Tweets: @ahmed, @ev, @brianstorm, @kellyfaircloth, @alexia, @cate_long, @jsnell, @panzer, @jeffjarvis, @felixsalmon, @mathewi, @eric_andersen, @ryan and @hunterwalk. See also Mediagazer

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Nearly two years after launch, Siri seems to exit ‘beta’ with iOS 7 — With the iPhone 4S launch nearly two years ago, Apple introduced the Siri voice control system to its customers. At launch, Siri was a gimmicky feature at best, being released with bugs, a highly-computerized voice …

More: iMore, iPhone Hacks, T3 News, iPhone in Canada Blog and App Advice

Kashmir Hill / Forbes:

E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths) — A New Jersey hacker altered his E-ZPass to set off alerts whenever it was being read — After spotting a police car with two huge boxes on its trunk — that turned out to be license-plate-reading cameras …

More: Stowe Boyd, Gizmodo, Salon, Techdirt, Slashdot and Boing Boing. Tweets: @amyoleary

James Surowiecki / Currency:

The Virtues of Twitter's Confidential I.P.O. Filing — When Twitter announced yesterday afternoon (via tweet, naturally) that it was planning to file an I.P.O., the company said it had started the process by “confidentially” submitting an S-1 prospectus to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

More: Bloomberg, TIME, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNNMoney.com and Digits. Tweets: @elizakern

New York Times:

At Twitter IPO, Williams, Sacca, USV, and Spark will each hold stakes likely exceeding $1B

Tweets: @mathewi, @scottkirsner, @dom and @davewiner

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

Layoffs hit HTC America as the company struggles to turn itself around — About twenty percent of HTC America employees were let go — The bad news for HTC keeps rolling in. The Verge learned today that the company has laid off about thirty employees and contractors out of its HTC America division.

More: SlashGear, TechSpot, GeekWire, TechnoBuffalo, Softpedia News, 5by5 Master Audio Feed, HotHardware.com News, 9to5Google, I4U News, Engadget and PhoneArena

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

AT&T Threatens Persistent Pirates With Account Termination — After years of negotiating and planning the long-awaited U.S. “six-strikes” system finally went live in February. — The Copyright Alert System's main goal is to educate the public. That is, informing people that their connection …

More: Boing Boing, Ars Technica and BGR

Reuters:

Exclusive: BlackBerry bidders may want to carve up business - sources — (Reuters) - A handful of potential bidders, including private equity firms, are lining up to look at BlackBerry Ltd, but initial indications suggest that interest is tepid and buyers are eyeing parts …

More: IntoMobile, Electronista, VatorNews, TechnoBuffalo, Gotta Be Mobile, The Verge, The Next Web and MobileSyrup.com. Tweets: @loosewire

Jenna Wortham / NYT Bits:

Twitter's Magic Recs Experiment Personalizes What You Follow — A few months ago, a mysterious account called “Magic Recs” appeared on Twitter. — Magic Recs promises to deliver “instant, personalized recommendations for users and content via direct message.”

Tweets: @rsarver and @nicolastorzec

Alyson Shontell / Business Insider:

When A Startup Worth Hundreds Of Millions Goes Dark: Klout's Quiet Year Of Growth And Struggle — “What do you want to be when you grow up?” — It's a question all startups have to answer between giant fundraises and figuring out business models. — Some growing companies, like Twitter and Facebook, handle adolescence well.

Tweets: @sanguit, @carriemantha, @owenthomas, @delrey and @ajs. Thanks:@ajs

Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:

How Zynga went from social gaming powerhouse to has-been — In Zynga's July 2011 prospectus to future shareholders, company founder and CEO Mark Pincus outlined his firm's ambitious plan to take over the gaming world. — “My kids decided a few months ago that peek-a-boo was their favorite game,” he wrote.

More: Dalton Caldwell, Global Nerdy, I4U News and SocialTimes

Tweets: @alexisohanian and @nytimesbits

Gregory Ferenstein / TechCrunch:

San Francisco To Test Online Participatory Budgeting — Taxpayers are sometimes the best people to decide how their money gets spent — sounds obvious, but usually we don't have a direct say beyond who we elect. That's changing for San Francisco residents.

More: The Verge. Tweets: @jeffweiner, @nicco and @janesusskind

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