Techmeme
October 3, 2013, 12:30 PM

Top News

Kevin Poulsen / Wired:
Edward Snowden's E-Mail Provider Defied FBI Demands to Turn Over Crypto Keys, Documents Show  —  The U.S. government obtained a secret court order demanding that Edward Snowden's e-mail provider, Lavabit, turn over its private SSL key, which would have allowed the FBI to wiretap the service's users.
New York Times:
Lavabit Founder Waged Privacy Fight as F.B.I. Pursued Snowden  —  DALLAS — One day last May, Ladar Levison returned home to find an F.B.I. agent's business card on his Dallas doorstep.  So began a four-month tangle with law enforcement officials that would end with Mr. Levison's shutting …
Ars Technica:
How the feds took down the Dread Pirate Roberts  —  What he wouldn't give for a holocaust cloak.  —  The Dread Pirate Roberts, head of the most brazen drug trafficking site in the world, was a walking contradiction.  Though the government says he raked in $80 million in commissions from running Silk Road …
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Roger Cheng / CNET:
LG preps curved display smartphone, the G Flex  —  Samsung isn't the only company planning a smartphone with a curved display.  LG will likely unveil the device in November, CNET has learned, although plans are not yet final.  —  Get ready for the LG G Flex.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Jukeboxing: Rdio brings free radio to mobile apps to stay in the ring against Spotify  —  Rdio is releasing a free version of its service today on iOS and Android, bringing personalized radio to non-paying users of its mobile apps for the first time.  Free of advertising for now …
Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Amazon's Smartphones Detailed: ‘Project Smith’ 3D Flagship Model And A Value Handset With FireOS  —  Amazon is in the process of developing two smartphones, one inexpensive model and one with a 3D eye-tracking interface, TechCrunch has learned.  The details are somewhat sparse …
Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:
Snapchat introduces “Stories”, a rolling compilation of snaps from the last 24 hours  —  Snapchat's next big thing: ‘Stories’ that don't just disappear  —  The app that introduced ephemeral messages sets its sights on Facebook  —  Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel's hands are shaking as he points to his iPhone.
Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:
Samsung execs shown confidential Apple-Nokia patent license terms, allegedly misused information  —  It came to light on Wednesday that at least fifty Samsung employees retained access to highly confidential Apple-Nokia licensing terms originating from the Apple v. Samsung court trial …
Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
Cue, The Startup Formerly Known As Greplin, Shuts Down Its App  —  Cue, the personal assistant app that grew out of a promising search product, has shut down.  —  The company left a brief note on their main page today, shown below. … The company was backed with at least $4.7 million …
David Kravets / Wired:
How a Purse Snatching Led to the Legal Justification for NSA Domestic Spying  —  Photo: Courtesy of Philip Weiss Auctions  —  It began as an ordinary purse snatching.  On an early Baltimore morning in 1976, a local street thug crouched alongside his green Monte Carlo, pretending to change a flat, biding his time.
Tweets: @sarahjeong
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Aiming to Get Into Smaller Devices, Intel Announces Big Push Into Arduino  —  Intel's latest effort to expand beyond its PC roots involves reaching out to hobbyists.  —  At Maker Fair in Rome, the chipmaker is announcing plans to partner with open-source hardware specialist Arduino.
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Netflix app for iPad and iPhone updated with HD video and AirPlay streaming  —  Netflix brought 1080p streaming to Android 4.3 this summer, and now iPhone / iPad users can experience HD streams as well, provided they've updated to iOS 7.  Another new feature in the latest update is support …
Matt Brian / Engadget:
France approves law stopping Amazon from shipping discounted books for free  —  French lawmakers have it up to “here” with Amazon's book-selling tactics and they're not going to take it any more.  In a rare alliance, France's ruling Socialist Party and the opposition UMP Party approved …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Netskope Comes Out Of Stealth With $21M From Social+Capital And Lightspeed And A Cloud Platform To Manage Enterpise Apps  —  The double rise of cloud-based services and consumerization have been two of the biggest developments in enterprise IT, but they have also led to one of the biggest conundrums …
Klint Finley / Wired:
Runnable launches, lets developers find, edit, and even run code snippets on its site  —  Ex-Amazon Engineer Builds Library for World's Software Code  —  In 2004, Amazon.com boss Jeff Bezos decreed that any software built by an Amazon engineer must be shared with every other engineer at the company.
More: TechCrunch, Resolute.VC and ForbesTweets: @markginnebaughThanks:@bobpatters
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Google Acquires YC-Backed Flutter, A Gesture Recognition Technology Startup  —  Google's Glass, Android and other products may soon be picking up more Kinect-style gesture features: the company has bought Flutter, a Y Combinator-backed startup that focuses on gesture recognition technology.
Gerry Shih / Reuters:
Fab.com cuts one-fifth of workforce  —  E-commerce startup Fab.com Inc will lay off nearly a fifth of its workforce beginning Thursday as it tries to attain profitability by automating more of its business.  —  The company, valued at $1 billion by private investors, said it will cut 101 jobs worldwide …
More: Valleywag

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho Expense Integrated Travel solution : The Smarter Way to Manage Business Travel  —  Business travel has become increasingly complex.  Employees expect consumer-grade booking experiences …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Great Chat:
Tech's short-term era
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Access:
Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety, and Hollywood's Sort-of Comeback
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Big Technology Podcast:
How China Caught U.S. AI — With Grace Shao
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:30 PM ET, October 3, 2013.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks