Techmeme: No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A. (Scott Shane/New York Times)

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November 3, 2013, 12:45 AM

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Scott Shane / New York Times:

No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A. — The N.S.A.'s Evolution: The National Security Agency was founded in 1952, and its surveillance capabilities were limited by legislation in 1978. But with the attacks of September 2001 came a new sense of urgency.

More: Guardian, CNET, Business Insider, Guardian, emptywheel and Guardian

Tweets: @zeynep, @joshuafoust, @jameeljaffer, @colvinius, @apblake, @dangillmor, @charlie_savage, @bcappelbaum, @csoghoian and @ggreenwald

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Netflix starts testing 4K videos, wants to launch Ultra HD next year — Netflix quietly added a handful of 4K HD videos to its catalog this week to prepare itself for a wider launch of ultra high-definition video content in the coming months. So far, the titles added to the catalog …

More: The Verge, Digital Trends, Engadget, TechSpot, Mashable, Softpedia News, iClarified, DisplayBlog, SlashGear and T3 News. Tweets: @qthrul

Aileen Lee / TechCrunch:

Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning From Billion-Dollar Startups — Editor's note: Aileen Lee is founder of Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage fund that backs entrepreneurs reinventing work and personal life through software. Previously, she joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1999 …

Tweets: @rabois, @shervin, @om, @semil, @carnage4life, @chamath and @trengriffin

Anand Lal Shimpi / AnandTech:

iPad Air Delivers 24 Hours of Battery Life as LTE Hotspot — A year ago during my review of the LTE iPad 3 I decided to find out how long the iPad would last as a personal hotspot. With the display off and a single notebook tethered wirelessly to the iPad downloading at a constant 50KB/s …

More: CNET, iPhone in Canada Blog, iPhone Hacks and Fierce CIO Tech Watch

David Grossman / The Verge:

YouTube Live: a disastrous spectacle Google would like you to forget — On the eve of its next attempt, has the company learned from its mistakes? — This Sunday, November 3rd, the world will experience the first annual YouTube Music Awards, hosted by Jason Schwartzman and streamed live from New York City.

Dave Itzkoff / New York Times:

YouTube Music Awards Are Readied for Webcast — “Does there really need to be another awards show?” Spike Jonze recently wondered aloud. “If there's going to be one, why?” — This was a reasonable sentiment that Mr. Jonze, the veteran director of music videos and feature films …

More: YouTube Blog

Richard Waters / Financial Times:

Bill Gates stands separate from peers with focus on disease over internet connectivity — An exclusive interview with Bill Gates — The internet is not going to save the world, says the Microsoft co-founder, whatever Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley's tech billionaires believe.

More: The Verge, Business Insider, Forbes, AllThingsD, The Atlantic Wire, T3 News, CNET and WebProNews

Anand Lal Shimpi / AnandTech:

Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Firmware Update Improves Battery Life — Shortly after general availability of the Surface Pro 2, Microsoft pushed out a firmware update that allowed the Marvell WiFi solution to drive down to even lower power states. I spoke with Microsoft after the update went live …

More: TechSpot, SlashGear, Windows Phone Central and WinBeta. Tweets: @codinghorror

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

Android 4.4 KitKat and Google's quest to take over the world — Can a low-end Android phone be any good? For Mountain View, a billion users are at stake — “As we get on our journey to reach the next billion people, we want to do it on the latest version of Android.” — Sundar Pichai

More: Forbes. Tweets: @carlfranzen

Cameron Graham / Technology Advice:

Why Amazon Fights State Sales Tax, But Supports It Nationally — Amazon will begin charging sales tax on goods purchased by customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin today, after fighting such regulation for years. That brings the total number of states which require sales tax …

More: Digits

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

RIP iGoogle: Google's personalized Web portal service has now closed down — RIP another Google service: iGoogle, the company's personalized Web portal product, finally bit the dust today, some eight months after its shutdown was announced. — iGoogle has slipped into the darkness quietly …

More: The Switch, SlashGear, iGoogle Developer Blog, Engadget, TechnoBuffalo, VentureBeat, AllThingsD and Google Operating System. Tweets: @qthrul

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Machinima, the YouTube Giant Looking for New Money, Is Also Looking for a New CEO — Machinima, the giant YouTube network that caters to gamers, is looking for a new chief executive — at the same time it is trying to close a big funding round. — Allen DeBevoise, the company's co-founder …

More: Los Angeles Times, Variety, The Wrap, VideoInk, Gigaom Research and Tubefilter. Tweets: @pkafka

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