Techmeme
September 17, 2013, 10:30 AM

Top News

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Apple quiet on iPhone 5c pre-orders as stock price slides  —  Apple is clearly positioning the upcoming iPhone 5c as its next smartphone for the masses.  The colored, plastic device is the first thing you see when visiting Apple.com or the company's iPhone page.
Digits:
Preorders Show Weaker Demand for New iPhones in China  —  Just days before the new iPhones are set to go on sale in China, there are indications that demand for Apple Inc.'s iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C may not match up to its previous model.  —  The country's second largest wireless carrier China Unicom …
Nathan Olivarez-Giles / The Verge:
Google is done selling the Nexus 4 in the US  —  The Nexus 4's run in Google Play is now over.  On Monday, Google's online storefront sold out of the 16GB version of the flagship phone in the US, and a trusted source with knowledge of the company's plans tells The Verge that this marks the end for the LG-built device.
Matt Brian / Engadget:
Apple offering ‘last compatible version’ of iOS apps for older hardware  —  With iOS 7 arriving tomorrow, Apple is extending some love to the owners of older iOS devices that have been left behind.  New compatibility features, first spotted on Reddit, will now kick into action if you attempt …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Bing gets a new logo and modern design to take on Google  —  Microsoft's Bing search engine is getting a new look.  A year in the making, Bing is dropping its curly blue logo for a modern design that closely matches the rest of Microsoft's recently redesigned product branding.
Joe Mullin / Ars Technica:
Angry entrepreneur replies to patent troll with racketeering lawsuit  —  FindTheBest CEO Kevin O'Connor and Director of Operations Danny Seigle.  —  FindTheBest.com  —  Most business owners sued by patent trolls don't talk about it to anyone other than their lawyer; a typical response …
Thomas Erdbrink / New York Times:
Facebook and Twitter Blocked Again in Iran After Respite  —  TEHRAN — Internet users in Iran lost access Tuesday to Facebook and Twitter, a day after they were surprised to find that they could get on the sites without having to evade a government's firewall that had blocked direct access to the Web sites for years.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
“That's The Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard Of.”  —  When Twitter broke the news last week about its forthcoming IPO, I got a bit sentimental.  In 2006, when Twitter was entering the world as a side project of the podcasting startup Odeo, I had just left my first “career” in the film industry to try to make it in the tech industry.
Tweets: @dtrinh
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
YouTube starts testing Chromecast support for third-party websites  —  YouTube quietly started to add support for Chromecast to its embedded web player, allowing users of Google's TV dongle to beam videos displayed on third-party websites straight from their browser to their TV.
Joe Miller / BBC:
UK to test emergency mobile alerts  —  Californian police alerted people to a wanted vehicle using a targeted message  —  A system which sends emergency alerts to mobile phones within a specific area is to be tested in the UK.  —  The messages could be used to raise the alarm about flooding …
Associated Press:
Experts see potential perils in Brazil push to break with US-centric Internet over NSA spying  —  RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil plans to divorce itself from the U.S.-centric Internet over Washington's widespread online spying, a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous …
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Gabe Newell: Linux is the future of gaming, new hardware coming soon  —  Gabe Newell speaking at LinuxCon today.  —  Linux Foundation  —  Gabe Newell, the co-founder and managing director of Valve, said today that Linux is the future of gaming despite its current minuscule share of the market.
Bruce Schneier / Schneier on Security:
Surreptitiously Tampering with Computer Chips  —  This is really interesting research: “Stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans.”  Basically, you can tamper with a logic gate to be either stuck-on or stuck-off by changing the doping of one transistor.  This sort of sabotage is undetectable by functional testing or optical inspection.
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
Google Acquires Bump for at Least $30M  —  Google has acquired the mobile startup Bump.  A source close to the transaction said it was worth at least $30 million, and perhaps as much as $60 million.  —  Bump had raised about $20 million from backers including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz …
Alex Williams / TechCrunch:
CipherCloud adds AES 256-bit encryption to Box  —  Box Gets A Little More Palatable With Some Added Encryption From CipherCloud  —  Box appears on the verge of becoming a publicly traded company.  It may not happen until next year but the file storage and collaboration company …

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More News

Jamie Rigg / Engadget:

Earlier Picks

Jordan Kahn / 9to5Google:
Mike Isaac / AllThingsD: