Techmeme: Neustar Buys Aggregate Knowledge, One of Facebook's Ad Tech Favorites, for $119 Million Cash (Peter Kafka/AllThingsD)

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October 30, 2013, 6:00 PM

Top News

Washington Post:

NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say — The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden …

Andrea Peterson / The Switch:

PRISM already gave the NSA access to tech giants. Here's why it wanted more. — reveals that the NSA has been tapping into the primary communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world. That allowed the agency to collect metadata and content from hundreds …

More: PandoDaily, Business Insider, 9to5Google, CNET, InfoWorld, ZDNet, Guardian and Talking Points Memo. Tweets: @d_seaman

Facebook:

Facebook Reports Third Quarter 2013 Results — Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) today reported financial results for the third quarter, which ended September 30, 2013. — “For nearly ten years, Facebook has been on a mission to connect the world,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO.

More: Business Insider, Gigaom, Tech Trader Daily, AllFacebook, AllThingsD, New York Times, CNNMoney.com, BGR, Marketing Land, Engadget, ZDNet, Digits, VentureBeat, AllThingsD, GeekWire, PC World, Forbes, Reuters, WebProNews and MobileSyrup.com

Tweets: @panzer, @hamburger, @nickbilton, @benedictevans, @thestalwart, @tim, @jonerlichman and @hunterwalk

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Facebook's Q3 '13 Beats With $2.02B Revenue, $0.25 EPS, With 49% Of Ad Revenue Now Via Mobile — No, Madam Secretary, Prices On Healthcare.gov Are Not A “Hypothetical Situation” — Facebook announced its Q3 2013 results today, posting $2.02B in revenue with earnings of $0.25 a share.

More: ReadWrite, VatorNews, bizjournals, internetretailer.com and Electronista

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Facebook passes 1.19 billion monthly active users, 874 million mobile users, and 728 million daily users

More: The Verge and TechCrunch

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook Admits Some Decrease Of Usage Amongst Young Teens For The First Time

More: CNET, The Huffington Post and Mashable. Tweets: @pkedrosky. Thanks:@chrisvelazco

John Poole / Primate Labs Blog:

iPad Air Geekbench: Over 80% faster than iPad 4, A7 processor 100MHz faster than iPhone 5s — iPad Air Benchmarks — Geekbench 3 results for the new iPad Air are starting to appear on the Geekbench Browser. I've charted the results for all iOS 7 capable iPads below.

More: AppleInsider, MacDailyNews, 9to5Mac, iDownloadBlog.com, MacRumors, Touch Arcade, PadGadget, TechnoBuffalo, ZDNet, Redmond Pie, AppleTell and BGR

Tweets: @drbarnard and @fmanjoo

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

iPad Air light enough to supplement a laptop, fast enough to replace one for most people — The iPad Air — There are so many millions of iPad users that no simple explanation can cover all use cases. But my take, since last year, has been that the full-size iPad is best seen …

More: Guardian. Tweets: @stoweboyd

Walter S. Mossberg / AllThingsD:

Speed and Power Packed Into a Thin iPad Air

More: Computerworld, New York Times, TechCrunch, Los Angeles Times, Business Insider, CITEworld, Telegraph, SlashGear, CNET, ITworld.com, Yahoo! News, ZDNet, Macworld, TechHive and MedCity News. Thanks:@sidharthdassani

Anand Lal Shimpi / AnandTech:

iPad Air review: lighter, more portable, more usable and faster than any previous iPad

More: The Loop, CNET, USA Today, MacRumors, Daring Fireball, TIME, Mashable, iDownloadBlog.com, PadGadget, Telegraph, Touch Arcade and Geek.com

Matt McGee / Glass Almanac:

California Woman Gets the First Ticket for Driving with Google Glass — This is history: the first known case of a Glass Explorer getting a ticket for driving while wearing Google Glass. — Cecilia Abadie told her story on Google+ late Tuesday night, and shared this image of the citation …

AllThingsD:

Intel May Turn Over Its Web TV Project to Verizon — Intel's efforts to break into the TV business may be coming to a close. — Sources say the chipmaker is close to a deal to hand over control of Intel Media, the unit that has been trying to build a Web-based subscription TV service …

More: PC World, Ars Technica, Digits, Gigaom, BGR, CNET, The Verge, Reuters, Forbes, VentureBeat, eWeek, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Ubergizmo, TechSpot, Engadget and Electronista. Tweets: @jyarow. See also Mediagazer

Steve Rosenbush / The CIO Report:

Facebook Tests Software to Track Your Cursor on Screen — Risk-based authentication solutions can help thwart cyber intruders' attempts to access enterprise systems. By learning users' expected log-in patterns, and by setting appropriate risk thresholds for various systems …

More: AllFacebook, CNET, VentureBeat, Engadget, Digits, Ubergizmo, Consumerist, Mashable, Soshable, The Verge, Gizmodo, Pocket-lint and Valleywag. Tweets: @evelynrusli

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Neustar Buys Aggregate Knowledge, One of Facebook's Ad Tech Favorites, for $119 Million Cash — Neustar, which makes most of its money managing databases for phone companies, is buying Aggregate Knowledge, an analytics company best known recently for its work with Facebook.

More: VentureBeat, AdExchanger and Mashable

Roger Cheng / CNET:

Sprint swings to profit of $383M, but loses a net 313,000 customers — Sprint swung to a third-quarter profit its first period under new ownership. — The company, which reports for the first time after the completion of the SoftBank takeover and Clearwire acquisition …

More: Sprint Newsroom, MacRumors, The Verge, LAPTOP Magazine, Engadget, Electronista, eWeek, Reuters, AppleInsider, Gigaom, Bloomberg, DSLreports and BGR

Reuters:

Twitter hit with $124 million lawsuit over private stock sale — (Reuters) - Twitter Inc was sued for $124 million on Wednesday by two companies that said the social media darling defrauded it into pushing forward with a doomed private sale of its shares to stoke investor interest for its initial public offering.

More: AllThingsD, CNET, VentureBeat and bizjournals

Joanna Stern / ABC News:

Ashton Kutcher Ditches His iPhone, iPad in New Role as Lenovo Product Engineer … Alicia Keys has been the creative director of BlackBerry. Shakira was named T-Mobile collaborator last month. And now the latest celebrity tech hire? Ashton Kutcher is now a product engineer at Lenovo.

More: The Verge, PC Magazine, Gizmodo and WebProNews

Tweets: @joannastern, @edbott, @aplusk and @aplusk

Daniel P. Howley / LAPTOP Magazine:

Lenovo Yoga Tablets Hands-on: 3 Modes, 18-Hour Battery, From $249

More: Lenovo Newsroom, eWeek, Inquirer, Engadget, The Register, Gigaom, IntoMobile and Computerworld. Thanks:@mspoonauer

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Mozilla will add H.264 to Firefox as Cisco makes eleventh-hour push for WebRTC's future — Cisco staged a major coup Wednesday by announcing a new initiative that is meant to turn H.264 into the default codec for real-time communication on the web: the company open-sourced its H.246 codec implementation …

More: Cisco Blog, The Mozilla Blog, Brendan Eich, Engadget and The Next Web. Thanks:@jank0

Jean-Baptiste / Forbes:

Exclusive: Intel Opens Fabs To ARM Chips — As the old adage goes, if you can't beat them, join them! Well, that's exactly what Intel finally decided to do relative to its lagging mobile business. — At the ARM developers' conference today, Intel partner Altera announced …

More: stratechery, Engadget, CNET, PhoneArena, ExtremeTech, Android Beat, Inquirer, PadGadget, AppleInsider, ZDNet, InfoWorld, Cult of Mac, iDownloadBlog.com, iPhone in Canada Blog, The Droid Guy and MacRumors. Tweets: @mlchild

BBC:

Dell users: Latitude 6430u laptops ‘smell of cat urine’ — A number of Dell users have complained that their Latitude 6430u Ultrabooks “smell of cat urine”. — Dell engineers have ruled out biological contamination, and said the smell was not a health hazard.

More: Guardian, Engadget, CNET, Examiner, PC Magazine, PC World, PC Pro, Digital Trends, Inquirer, Geek.com, Smart News, ZDNet and Boing Boing

Kashmir Hill / Forbes:

Lavabit And Silent Circle Join Forces To Make All Email Surveillance-Proof — In recent months, Lavabit, based in Texas, and Silent Circle, based in Washington, D.C., both shuttered their encrypted email services. The companies said they couldn't keep them running knowing they were vulnerable …

More: Techdirt, Slate, Silent Circle Blog and The Next Web. Tweets: @glynmoody

Mat Smith / Engadget:

Nintendo sells 300,000 more Wii U consoles, but over two million more 3DS handhelds — Nintendo's just released its financial results for the last three months, and while hardware sales have increased substantially, it still made a loss. Wii U sales have rebounded significantly.

More: GeekWire, The Verge, Bloomberg, BBC, VentureBeat, Electronista, Digits and Reuters

Andy / TorrentFreak:

IsoHunt Resurrected Less Than Two Weeks After $110 Million MPAA Deal — Earlier this month some pretty surprising news hit the file-sharing scene. After many years battling aggressively with the MPAA, Canadian BitTorrent site isoHunt suddenly agreed to a settlement with the MPAA.

More: The Verge, Digital Trends, Geek.com and Guardian. See also Mediagazer

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Microsoft Bing tests ‘Hero’ ads in Windows 8.1 search results, jousting with Google — Microsoft Bing is piloting a new form of search advertising in Windows 8.1 — allowing advertisers to promote themselves with bold photography, custom links and other visual elements when users search for the names of their brands.

More: Bing Ads Blog, Internet Marketing Blog, Search Engine Watch, The Verge, Search Engine Land, VentureBeat, WebProNews and TechNet Blogs. Thanks:@taylor_soper

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