Techmeme
November 25, 2013, 5:25 PM

Top News

Anna Edney / Bloomberg:
FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service  —  23andMe Inc., the Google Inc.-backed DNA analysis company co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, was told by U.S. regulators to halt sales of its main product because it's being sold without “marketing clearance or approval.”
BBC:
Amazon workers face ‘increased risk of mental illness’  —  A BBC investigation into a UK-based Amazon warehouse has found conditions that a stress expert said could cause “mental and physical illness”.  —  Professor Michael Marmot was shown secret filming of night shifts involving up to 11 miles …
Dan Primack / Fortune:
Exclusive: Flipboard raising another $50 million  —  Flipboard said in September that it had raised $50 million.  That was only half the story.  —  By Dan Primack and Jessi Hempel  —  FORTUNE — Social news app Flipboard is in final negotiations to raise $50 million in new venture capital funding, Fortune has learned.
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
Mayer Confirms Hire of News Star Couric as “Global Anchor,” Calling Her the “Face of Yahoo News”  —  As AllThingsD had reported it would today, Yahoo said it has hired well-known TV news star Katie Couric for a high-profile job to do interviews and more on its homepage, with the decidedly lofty title of “global anchor.”
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft is fixing Skype messaging, ‘fun things’ planned for Windows Phone 8.1  —  Ever since Microsoft started forcing Windows Live Messenger users over to Skype earlier this year, instant messaging on Windows has been somewhat painful.  If you're a frequent Skype user then you'll be intimately familiar with the problems.
Juro Osawa / Digits:
ZTE Jumps On Smartwatch Bandwagon  —  When Samsung Electronics Co.'s Galaxy Gear launch in early September created a hype around the potential market for smartwatches, it was certain that we would soon see cheaper versions from Chinese competitors.  —  Now, ZTE Corp., mainly known …
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
BlackBerry ousts COO and CMO, replaces CFO  —  The high-level shakeups aren't over at BlackBerry just because the company has a new CEO.  The company has just let go of Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear (pictured at left) and Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben (right), both of whom had assumed their roles roughly one year ago.
Reuters:
Denmark targets iPhone generation to keep edge in hearing aids  —  (Reuters) - Tiny Denmark, with fewer than 6 million people, supplies half the world's hearing aids, and local makers aim to advance that commanding position as baby boomers and the iPhone generation age.
Siobhan Gorman / Wall Street Journal:
Shaken NSA Grapples With an Overhaul  —  Agency's Director Offered to Resign Last Summer in Wake of Snowden Leaks  —  WASHINGTON—Shortly after former government contractor Edward Snowden revealed himself in June as the source of leaked National Security Agency documents, the agency's director …
Dominic Rushe / Guardian:
Paul Carr's news site NSFW Corp joins with Silicon Valley-backed PandoDaily  —  After NSFW's financial failure, the tech journalist joins the tech site PandoDaily - ‘the site of record for Silicon Valley’  —  Tech journalist and entrepreneur Paul Carr's last venture was surprisingly old-school.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft's device chief sees a future without three versions of Windows  —  Microsoft currently ships Windows RT, Windows 8, and Windows Phone software on a variety of devices, but it's heading towards a future where just a single version of Windows will exist.
Richard Padilla / MacRumors:
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt Posts Guide on Converting to Android from iPhone  —  Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has posted a multi-step guide on switching from Apple's iPhone to an Android device on his Google+ page today, refreshing the rivalry between the two companies as of late.
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:
Uber Strikes Deal To Lower The Cost Of Car Ownership For Drivers  —  On-demand transportation service Uber is trying to get new drivers on the road, while also improving the experience for those who are already on its platform.  To do that, it's partnered with a couple of auto manufacturers …
Jeremy Reimer / Ars Technica:
Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2  —  It was a cloudy Seattle day in late 1980, and Bill Gates, the young chairman of a tiny company called Microsoft, had an appointment with IBM that would shape the destiny of the industry for decades to come.

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:
Introducing Zoho AgentInbox: Email infrastructure built for AI agents  —  Most AI agents doing real work eventually need to send or receive email.  The default move is to hand them access to someone's existing inbox …
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.

Featured Podcasts

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.
Big Technology Podcast:
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan: Why We're Betting On AI And Not Afraid Of It
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:
Marc Benioff on the AI boom, SaaSpocalypse, and future of Slack
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.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:25 PM ET, November 25, 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.

More News

Earlier Picks

Kaylene Hong / The Next Web:
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD: