Techmeme: Facebook status updates, wall posting and payments currently down for some (Ben Gilbert/Engadget)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

October 21, 2013, 11:00 AM

Top News

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

GarageBand for iOS 7 to Become Free with In-App Purchases as Apple Reveals Full Set of New iLife and iWork Icons — Ahead of Tuesday's media event, Apple has revised its Built-in Apps page for the iPhone 5s to reveal the full set of new iOS 7-themed icons for the six iLife and iWork apps offered for iOS.

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

Google's iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary — Android is open—except for all the good parts. — Six years ago, in November 2007, the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) was announced. The original iPhone came out just a few months earlier …

More: 9to5Google, GigaOM, memeburn and rc3.org

Tweets: @caseyjohnston, @xor, @_andycowley, @cdixon, @bgurley, @anildash and @mattrosoff

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service — An identity theft service that sold Social Security and drivers license numbers — as well as bank account and credit card data on millions of Americans — purchased much of its data from Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus …

More: The Verge, ZDNet and Softpedia News

Tweets: @dangillmor and @dodgy_coder

Ben Gilbert / Engadget:

Facebook status updates, wall posting and payments currently down for some — Facebook appears to still be working should you visit its highly-trafficked URL, but attempts to do much of anything on the site this morning are fruitless. Repeated attempts by Engadget staffers confirms what we've …

More: Digits, Mashable, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Data Center Knowledge, CNET, NEWS.com.au, LAPTOP Magazine, Inquirer, The Next Web, The Register, NBCNews, hypebot, NBC Bay Area and WebProNews

Le Monde:

France in the NSA's crosshair : phone networks under surveillance — The future will perhaps tell us one day why France has remained so discreet in comparison with Germany or Brazil, for example, after the first revelations about the extent of the American electronic espionage programmes …

More: Computerworld, CNET, GigaOM, BBC, CNN, Guardian, Gawker, Daring Fireball, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, RT, Softpedia News, The Verge and Daily Dot. Tweets: @csoghoian

Ben Thompson / stratechery:

So the 5S is (allegedly) killing the 5C. Why is this bad news? — John Koetsier, writing at VetureBeat: … First, the necessary caveat: Apple supply chain rumors are notoriously unreliable. But let's assume this one is true, and see if we can figure out the bad news Koetsier is referring to.

More: I4U News and Forbes. Thanks:@monkbent

steve cheney:

Why Android First is a Myth — In mobile, particularly in consumer markets, there has been an ongoing debate about when or if Android will become the first platform that sophisticated startups develop for. Often times, this argument is wrongly centered around vanity metrics for Android …

Tweets: @ericries, @monkbent, @markpinc, @carnage4life, @christianhern, @timoreilly, @benedictevans, @dghoang, @mdudas and @jerrymarino

Sean Buckley / Engadget:

Nokia leaks Lumia 1520 details on Chinese online store: 20MP PureView camera, Snapdragon 800 processor — Looking for more evidence that Nokia's about to unleash an oversized Windows Phone? You've got it: the company's official Tmall store (an online marketplace in China) recently published a product page for the fabled Lumia 1520.

More: The Verge, CNET, Gizmodo, techshout.com, Cult of Mac, Gearburn, pocketnow.com, memeburn, The Next Web, SlashGear, Mashable and Electronista

Anand Lal Shimpi / AnandTech:

Surface Pro 2 is an improvement over its predecessor: quicker, quieter, longer battery life — Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Review — When Microsoft introduced its first Surface devices last year, it did so in a staggered fashion. Surface RT showed up first, then four months later Surface Pro went on sale.

More: Engadget, The Next Web, Gizmodo, ZDNet and The Verge. Tweets: @codinghorror

Anand Lal Shimpi / AnandTech:

Surface 2: Big step forward compared to RT but still faces same struggles

More: ZDNet, Mashable, Guardian, SuperSite for Windows, The Verge, The Next Web, TechCrunch, GeekWire and CNET

Gordon G. Chang / Forbes:

Is China's Lenovo Bidding For BlackBerry To Destroy It? — As we learned Thursday, , the Chinese consumer technology firm, has signed a non-disclosure agreement with BlackBerry in preparation for a bid to buy the struggling Canadian business. Lenovo surely knows it will not be permitted to take over BlackBerry.

More: PhoneArena

Sam Biddle / Valleywag:

Like Everyone Else, Twitter Hides from U.S. Taxes in Ireland — If Twitter's transformation from “that micro-blogging service” to publicly traded advertising titan works out, it's going to have a painful tax bill. But there's good news! Twitter is already pulling an Apple and setting itself up with Irish money loopholes.

More: Business Insider, memeburn, SlashGear and Forbes

Tweets: @arimelber and @frankpasquale

John Paul Titlow / Co.Labs:

WordPress looks to enable fast cross-platform content synchronization with Simperium — Why WordPress Gobbled Up This Scrappy iCloud Alternative — Matt Mullenweg thinks mobile blogging is too damn slow. It's not so much the clunky touchscreen input of devices like the iPhone and Nexus 4 …

Tweets: @simplenoteapp and @mikejohnstn

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Selling gold: Apple debuts its first iPhone 5S TV spot — Just a few days after Apple rolled out its first print ads for the iPhone 5S on the back of several magazines, the company has debuted the first TV commercial for its flagship device during a football broadcast on FOX.

More: GigaOM, Fortune, BetaNews, ZDNet, AllThingsD, Engadget, Gotta Be Mobile, WebProNews, Cult of Mac, MacRumors, memeburn, AppleTell, TUAW, Softpedia News, 9to5Mac, PC Magazine, CNET, AppleInsider, iMore, PhoneArena, Network World, iPhone in Canada Blog, Mashable, MobileSyrup.com and Redmond Pie

Tweets: @markgurman and @hamburger

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple silently updates OS X Mavericks Golden Master to new version — This weekend, Apple seems to have updated the OS X Mavericks Golden Master (GM) version to a new build. The new build is 13A603 while the original GM seed was 13A598. It's not common for Apple to change the GM build for a Mac OS, but it is not without precedent.

More: TUAW, TechCrunch, Cult of Mac, MacRumors, iMore, iClarified and Loop News. Tweets: @theromit

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

OS X Mavericks may arrive this week, plus rounding up expectations for Tuesday's Apple event

More: The Atlantic Wire, Engadget, AppleInsider, The Verge, Bloomberg, iDownloadBlog.com, MacRumors, AllThingsD, iLounge, iPhone in Canada Blog, Cult of Mac, Ubergizmo, Loop News, iMore, AppleInsider, Ubergizmo, MobileSyrup.com, Mashable, App Advice, MacNN, Ars Technica, Softpedia News and GeekWire

Tweets: @markgurman and @markgurman

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.

Cloudflare:

Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.

Zoho:

Pro Tips: 4 tips to overcome data problems in your CRM — Most CRM data problems don't look like problems. At a glance, your CRM looks fine: records exist, fields are filled, and reports run.

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.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:

Meta's Muse Revival, Frontier AI Under Threat, The Rise Of Dopamine Sites

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.

Sources:

Satya Nadella on Microsoft's agent bet and AI's trust problem

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI

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.

Great Chat:

Doomers at Dreamforce

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.

Invest Like the Best:

Gabe Stengel - Building Investing Superintelligence

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Grit:

Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper

Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.

Subscribe to Grit.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:00 AM ET, October 21, 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.