Techmeme: The NSA's New Codebreakers — America's using front companies … (Matthew M. Aid/Foreign Policy)

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October 16, 2013, 3:25 PM

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Patrick May / Mercury News:

Cupertino council clears huge Apple ‘spaceship’ campus for liftoff — CUPERTINO — Apple's (AAPL) proposed new spaceship-shaped headquarters got a super-charged blast-off Tuesday night when the Cupertino City Council voted unanimously to approve the 2.8-million-square-foot behemoth beside Interstate 280 …

Lorraine Luk / Wall Street Journal:

Apple Cuts iPhone 5C Orders — Move Raises Concerns About Demand, Pricing Strategy for Low-Cost Device — A customer looks at an Apple iPhone 5c at a store in Palo Alto, Calif., on Sept. 20. Bloomberg News — HONG KONG— Apple Inc. has notified its two assemblers for the low-cost iPhone 5C …

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

What comes next after Windows 8.1? — Summary: Microsoft's Windows 8.1 will be commercially available starting this week. What will Microsoft do for an encore on the Windows front? — Microsoft is making Windows 8.1 commercially available over the next day-plus (depending on your time zone).

More: BGR, GeekWire, PC World, BetaNews, WMPoweruser and WinBeta

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Square Cash lets anyone with a debit card send money instantly over email — What if sending money was as simple as sending an email? — That's the premise of Square Cash, launching today for all debit card users in the US, using any email service. To use Square Cash …

Walter S. Mossberg / AllThingsD:

Square Cash is the quickest, simplest way to send money from your debit card to anyone else's — The Money Is in the Email — While you can buy a $500 iPad at Amazon.com with a single click, sending even small amounts of cash to a friend or relative is still often a tedious and slow task.

More: Sqaure, SiliconANGLE, Quartz, MobilePaymentsToday.com News, Softpedia News, Cult of Mac and Payments News. Tweets: @jack

Sarah Kessler / Fast Company:

Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes — Nico Sell, the cofounder of a secure communication app called Wickr, has appeared on television twice. Both times, she wore sunglasses to prevent viewers from getting a full picture of what she looks like.

More: GigaOM. Thanks:@_trendspotter

Blair Hanley Frank / GeekWire:

Watch out, Nike: Adidas announces smartwatch for runners, starting at $399 — SAN FRANCISCO - Another big shoe brand just joined Nike in the wearable technology race: Adidas. — At today's GigaOM Mobilize conference in San Francisco, Paul Gaudio, the Vice President in charge …

More: The Verge, SlashGear, GigaOM, Gizmodo, Engadget, iPhone in Canada Blog and Mashable

Dana Wollman / Engadget:

Lenovo intros the Miix2, its first 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablet; coming soon for $299 — Remember when we reviewed Acer's (sorta crappy) W3 tablet, and assured you it wouldn't be long before we saw more 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablets? Well, with that latest Windows update due out tomorrow …

More: Lenovo Newsroom, GigaOM, ZDNet, PC Magazine, The Verge, PC World, BetaNews, LAPTOP Magazine and Gotta Be Mobile

Ken Yeung / The Next Web:

LinkedIn brings its Work With Us job tool to mobile, launches iOS app to help recruiters manage candidates — LinkedIn today unveiled two new mobile products designed to help recruiters and job candidates better connect with one another and “increase productivity”.

More: Talent Blog, Official LinkedIn Blog, ZDNet and AllThingsD

Matthew M. Aid / Foreign Policy:

The NSA's New Codebreakers — America's using front companies, break-in artists, and hacktivists to spy on everyone — and only North Korea seems able to resist. — There was a time when the codebreakers of the National Security Agency actually took the lead in solving enemy encryption systems.

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @csoghoian

Timothy B. Lee / The Switch:

Many of the most-pirated movies aren't available for legitimate online purchase — Why does movie piracy persist after years of efforts to stamp it out? A new website called PiracyData.org suggests a simple explanation: people pirate movies because they don't have the option of paying for a legitimate copy online.

More: Techdirt, Technology Liberation Front, TorrentFreak, TechHive, DSLreports, Ars Technica, Plagiarism Today, Technology Liberation Front, SiliconANGLE, Wired.co.uk, SlashGear, Softpedia News, Gizmodo, Hillicon Valley, TorrentFreak, WebProNews, The Register and TechCrunch. Tweets: @binarybits

Brad Chacos / PC World:

Microsoft reveals Windows 8.1's mysterious Movie Maker app, other app improvements — Movie Moments, the proverbial white whale of Windows 8 apps, has finally been hauled into the light on the eve of Windows 8.1's release, courtesy of a Microsoft blog post that introduces the new app …

More: The Windows Blog, LiveSide.net, Windows Phone Central, The Verge, TechNet Blogs, WinBeta, BetaNews and Softpedia News. Tweets: @gaborfari

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Akamai: Half Of All Internet Connections Now At 4Mbps+, Safari Remains Most Used Mobile Browser Globally — The ITU has recently published figures noting 2.7 billion internet connections globally, and today Akamai has released some numbers pointing to how fast those connections actually are.

More: Inquirer, Akamai, Softpedia News, CNET, GigaOM, WebProNews and Bloomberg

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Telefonica Takes A Strategic Stake In Rhapsody, Will Bring Napster Into Latin America, Deeper Into Europe — In the allegro-paced race between music streaming providers to see who will be the first to achieve profitable scale, today Rhapsody got a significant leg up, courtesy of Telefonica.

More: VatorNews, VentureBeat, Guardian, Billboard and CNET. Thanks:@matthewsimms_. See also Mediagazer

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Intel says hardware bargains to multiply this fall: $99 tablets, $299 Haswell laptops, $349 2-in-1 hybrids — Nov. 12 - 13, 2013 — Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich said he expects bargains galore this holiday season as computermakers take advantage of the latest Intel Haswell and Bay Trail microprocessors.

More: CNET, Softpedia News, Geek.com, AllThingsD, bizjournals, Gotta Be Mobile, ZDNet, Inquirer, PC World, SlashGear, eWeek, ITworld.com and Engadget. Tweets: @lessien

Rachel King / ZDNet:

Twitter headed to New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ‘TWTR’ — Summary: The move to the NYSE is quite the contrast to Facebook's tumultuous public launch on the Nasdaq. — Twitter has filled in another blank as it goes through the legal process to become a publicly traded company.

Brenna Hillier / VG247:

Xbox Live Compute gives free cloud tech to all devs, including dedicated servers — Microsoft is making its Xbox One cloud servers free for all developers to use, including dedicated server support for all multiplayer games. — In an Xbox Newswire post, Xbox Live's lead program manager …

More: Xbox Wire, GamesIndustry International, Softpedia News, Shacknews Recent Articles, VentureBeat, Xbox Live's Major Nelson, Gotta Be Mobile, TechNet Blogs and destructoid

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Google to retire Chrome support for Windows XP users in April 2015, a year after Microsoft stops updating the OS — Google today announced it will stop supporting Chrome on Windows XP in April 2015. This means the company will stop providing regular updates and security patches a year …

More: Google Chrome Blog, ZDNet, PC World, BetaNews, Engadget, CITEworld, The Verge, 9to5Google and Softpedia News

Brad Stone / Businessweek:

Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder — Inside the Internet juggernaut Amazon.com (AMZN), there's near constant pressure to perform. In dozens of interviews ranging over two years for my book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon …

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @pkedrosky

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Aviate: an always-changing, intelligent home screen for Android — What if Google Now was made of the icons on your home screen? — “We want to connect people to personalized information at the moment it's useful,” reads the mission statement of Aviate, a replacement launcher for Android available today in private beta.

More: Engadget, IntoMobile, GigaOM, PandoDaily, PC World, MobileSyrup.com, The Next Web, TechCrunch, TIME and Gizmodo. Tweets: @starfire2258. Thanks:@dmfreeman

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