Techmeme: The Battle for Power on the Internet (Bruce Schneier/The Atlantic Online)

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October 27, 2013, 10:50 PM

Top News

Eugene Wei / Remains of the Day:

Amazon and the “profitless business model” fallacy — [DISCLOSURE: As always when I write about Amazon, I'll note I worked there from 1997-2004 and that I still own some shares in the company. I still have many friends who work there, though I have no more idea what Amazon is working on now than any of you in the public.]

More: A VC, TechSpot and Beyond Search

Tweets: @semil, @semil, @jonfortt, @bupbin, @gregbettinelli, @monkbent and @jeffweiner

James Somers / The Atlantic Online:

Disappointed with application-driven AI, Douglas Hofstadter seeks to recreate mind in software — The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think — Douglas Hofstadter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, thinks we've lost sight of what artificial intelligence really means.

More: The Verge. Tweets: @trengriffin, @alexismadrigal and @deatkin

Wall Street Journal:

Obama Unaware as U.S. Spied on World Leaders: Officials — NSA Stopped Surveillance of Merkel, Others After White House Review — WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency ended a program used to spy on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a number of other world leaders …

Tweets: @janinegibson, @davidfrum, @buzzfeedandrew, @buzzfeedben, @morningmoneyben, @eorden and @dbongino

Allen Martin / CBS San Francisco:

Barge in SF Bay may be a marketing center for Glass if Google gets a waterfront permit — Massive Barge On San Francisco Bay Likely Secret Google Facility — SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) — The U.S. Navy had its share of secrets on Treasure Island, but few were better kept than what's taking place …

More: Electronista, Ubergizmo, The Verge, Pocket-lint and CNET. Thanks:@_trendspotter

Bruce Schneier / The Atlantic Online:

The Battle for Power on the Internet — Distributed citizen groups and nimble hackers once had the edge. Now governments and corporations are catching up. Who will dominate in the decades ahead? — We're in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace.

More: Quartz. Tweets: @glichfield, @mchrisriley and @jayrosen_nyu

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

Thoughts and Observations Regarding This Week's Apple Event Introducing the iPad Air and Retina iPad Mini — The Show Itself — There is a certain sameness to almost every Apple event. A pattern, a formula, a structure, a rhythm and pacing. Does this make them boring?

More: Gigaom Search, iPhone Hacks, Virtual Pants, Forbes, Business Insider, iMore and the rajam report

Tweets: @natebarham, @monkbent, @stevecheney, @panzer, @pbyrne and @mattlynley

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:

Spreadsheet of the day: Final estimates for Apple's Q4 2013 — The forecasts of 48 Apple analysts — 27 Wall Street professionals and 21 independents — FORTUNE - The results of Fortune's quarterly survey of Apple (AAPL) analysts are in, and the results are mixed — in more ways than one.

More: ZDNet, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, CNET, Fortune and Business Insider

Mark Gurman / 9to5Google:

Upcoming Nexus 5 leaks in white, Nov. 1 launch date reported — After leaking a clear image of the black model yesterday, prolific leaker @evleaks has posted a render of the upcoming Nexus 5 in a white color option. As can be seen in the image above, the white model is actually a two-tone device …

More: TechCrunch, Engadget, PC Magazine, Gotta Be Mobile, BestTechie, The Verge, TechnoBuffalo, The Next Web, TechnoBuffalo, Android Beat, 9to5Google, MobileSyrup.com and Phandroid

Tweets: @evleaks and @evleaks

USC:

USC Study: Google Search Serves Users From 600% More Locations than A Year Ago — In a shift in strategy, Google reuses existing content delivery infrastructure to speed up searches — Contact: Robert Perkins at (213) 740-9226 or perkinsr@usc.edu — Over the past 10 months …

More: VentureBeat, TechCrunch, The Econonomic Times and Digits

Joel Gascoigne / Buffer Open:

Buffer restores all sharing services after hacking incident — Buffer has been hacked - here is what's going on — Update: All posting should be working normally again, read more below! — I wanted to post a quick update and apologize for the awful experience we've caused many of you on your weekend.

More: PC Magazine, SlashGear, The Next Web, WindowsObserver.com and Geek News Central. Tweets: @buffer

Tom Simonite / MIT Technology Review:

Anonymity Network Tor Needs a Tune-up to Protect Users from Surveillance — Fixes are planned for Internet anonymity tool Tor after researchers showed that national intelligence agencies could plausibly unmask users. — When reports published earlier this month revealed …

More: Gizmodo and Electronic Frontier Foundation

John Lilly / Medium:

Free software strengthens Apple's business - systems, while disturbing Microsoft's - software — Cups of Water … My partner Reid has a fun metaphor he uses when he's describing how companies think about their core strategies (which don't change very much).

More: Benedict Evans. Tweets: @chrisyeh and @monkbent

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