Techmeme
October 17, 2013, 5:00 AM

Top News

Reuters:
NSA security chief Keith Alexander and his deputy John Inglis expected to depart within the next few months  —  U.S. eavesdropping agency chief, top deputy expected to depart soon  —  (Reuters) - The director of the U.S. National Security Agency and his deputy are expected to depart in the coming months …
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Windows 8.1: Best Experience of Your Web with Sites and Apps together  —  This blog post is part of a series of guest posts we're publishing this week from different people in groups across Microsoft who helped us build Windows 8.1. - Brandon  —  With the general availability of Windows 8.1 …
More: TechNet BlogsTweets: @theromit
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).
Mario Aguilar / Gizmodo:
iPhone 5s accelerometer issues may be linked to change in supplier  —  Here's Why the iPhone 5S Accelerometer Is So Screwed Up  —  A few weeks ago we confirmed reports that the iPhone 5S motion sensors were embarrassingly off.  Some enterprising devs have investigated the problem …
John Koetsier / VentureBeat:
Facebook ad profit a staggering 1,790% more on iPhone than Android  —  Nov. 12 - 13, 2013  —  A study of more than 200 billion ads on Facebook says that mobile ads on iPhone generate 1,790 percent more return on investment than ads on Android.  Even worse, advertising on Android actually costs more than it returns.
Pierre Omidyar / Omidyar Group:
My Next Adventure in Journalism  —  As many of you know, I've had an interest in journalism for some time now.  I've been working on Civil Beat for three years and through my philanthropic work at Omidyar Network and Democracy Fund, we've supported many efforts around the world related to media …
Laura Hazard Owen / GigaOM:
Ebook subscription startup Oyster expands to iPad and opens to all; some stats from Scribd  —  Oyster, the Peter Thiel-backed startup that aims to be a Netflix for ebooks, was iPhone-only and invite-only for its first six weeks.  On Wednesday, though, Oyster launched its iPad app and opened up to everyone.
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
IBM's Q3 mixed, hardware business thumped  —  Summary: IBM's earnings were better than expected for the third quarter, but sales fell short.  The systems and technology division saw sales fall 19 percent from a year ago.  —  IBM delivered mixed third quarter results with earnings …
Josh Lowensohn / CNET:
Judge appoints monitor to keep an eye on Apple's e-books biz  —  A US judge on Wednesday appointed an external monitor to keep Apple in compliance with antitrust laws, following the tech giant's loss in court earlier this year.  —  Judge Denise Cote named former Assistant US Attorney …
Bruce Schneier / Wired:
How to Design — And Defend Against — The Perfect Security Backdoor  —  We already know the NSA wants to eavesdrop on the internet.  It has secret agreements with telcos to get direct access to bulk internet traffic.  It has massive systems like TUMULT, TURMOIL, and TURBULENCE to sift through it all.
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Usermind raises $7.6M from Andreessen Horowitz to build software for enterprise business operations  —  Andreessen Horowitz Partner Scott Weiss was recently quoted in a Wall Street Journal article talking about his firm's interest in enterprise software-related companies.
Alex Williams / TechCrunch:
Search Engine Giant Yandex Launches Cocaine, A Cloud Service To Compete With Google App Engine  —  Russian search giant Yandex has launched an  —  open-source platform as a service (PaaS) called Cocaine that  —  the company says allows developers to build out their own  —  app engines.
Tweets: @jonrussell
Austin Carr / Fast Company:
Anki Drive Is Racing Google, Not Other Toy Makers  —  TODAY, ANKI, THE PROMISING ROBOTICS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COMPANY, RELEASES ITS FIRST PRODUCT, ANKI DRIVE.  BUT CEO BORIS SOFMAN SAYS THE TOY CAR IS JUST A STEPPING STONE FOR LARGER INNOVATIONS.  —  Anki made its debut in June …
Mozilla Hacks:
Introducing TogetherJS, a service to add real-time collaboration features to existing websites  —  Introducing TogetherJS  —  What is TogetherJS?  —  We'd like to introduce TogetherJS, a real-time collaboration tool out of Mozilla Labs.  —  TogetherJS is a service you add to an existing website …

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Patrick May / Mercury News: