Techmeme: Edward Snowden revelations prompt UN investigation into surveillance (Guardian)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

December 3, 2013, 8:10 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:

Apple acquires Topsy, a company specializing in Twitter search and analytics, for more than $200M — Apple Taps Into Twitter, Buying Social Analytics Firm Topsy — Apple Inc. has acquired social-media analytics firm Topsy Labs Inc. for more than $200 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Apple Buys Topsy For Price Reportedly North Of $200M, Could Use Social Signals To Bolster Siri, App Store Relevance

Foreign Policy:

Accused of Cyberspying, Huawei Is ‘Exiting the U.S. Market’ — The CEO of the world's biggest telecommunications equipment maker, which for years has been labeled by U.S. officials as a proxy for Chinese military and intelligence agencies, says he's giving up on America.

More: TechCrunch, ZDNet, Softpedia News, Ubergizmo, Electronista, Android Community, Lastest ITProPortal news, SlashGear, ecns, Telecompaper and Gigaom

Tweets: @niubi and @csoghoian

TechCrunch:

Google's Compute Engine Hits General Availability, Drops Instance Prices 10%, Adds 16-Core Instances & Docker Support — Google today announced the general availability of the Google Compute Engine, the cloud computing platform it launched in the summer of 2012.

More: Google Developers Blog, New York Times, The Verge, CNET, ZDNet, Forbes, Gigaom, Computerworld, Google Cloud Platform Blog, The Next Web, Digits and The Register

Tweets: @robynbergeron and @bdelacretaz

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Scientist-developed malware covertly jumps air gaps using inaudible sound — Topology of a covert mesh network that connects air-gapped computers to the Internet. — Hanspach and Goetz — Computer scientists have developed a malware prototype that uses inaudible audio signals to communicate …

More: Engadget, Gizmodo, Softpedia News and Graham Cluley

Tweets: @gammacounter, @suffert, @chrisnahr and @qthrul

Derrick Harris / Gigaom:

Netflix is balancing its streaming traffic across Amazon's cloud — Netflix is fighting back outages in the Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform with a new architecture that has its streaming-video service running live across multiple regions of the AWS cloud and balancing user traffic between them.

More: The Netflix Tech Blog, SlashGear and GeekWire

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

Spotify opens up analytics in effort to prove its worth to doubting musicians — Streaming music firm opens Spotify Artists website and claims when it reaches 40m subscribers, even ‘niche indie albums’ will earn $17k a month — Streaming music service Spotify is hoping to win …

More: The Verge, Telegraph, Engadget, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Spotify for Artists, SlashGear, Music Week, Digital Music News, Music Ally and Socialnomics. Tweets: @tobias_nielsen. Thanks:@stuartdredge. See also Mediagazer

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft codename ‘Threshold’: The next major Windows wave takes shape — Summary: Microsoft's wave of spring 2015 updates to its various Windows-based platforms has a codename: Threshold. — When I blogged recently about Microsoft's plans on the operating-systems front following Windows 8.1 …

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Salesforce Says Hackathon Winner Didn't Cheat But Declares Tie, Gives Two Finalists $1M Each — Microsoft Rolls Out Student Advantage, Giving Students Free Access To Its Office Suite — Salesforce has responded to cries of foul play in its $1 million hackathon by announcing …

More: Developer Relations, PR Newswire, CNET, The Next Web, VentureBeat, The Register, ReadWrite, Business Insider, Forbes, Valleywag, ZDNet and NYT Bits

Tweets: @om and @rjonesy

Thanks:@joshconstine

San Francisco Chronicle:

Hangar 3: Google building three floating retail stores for $35 million, to be docked in SF, LA and NY — Google plans ‘floating retail store,’ builder says — It turns out that the mysterious high-tech barge that Google is building at Treasure Island is just the first of three floating wonders …

More: TheStreet.com, Electronista, Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, BGR, SlashGear, The Verge and AppleInsider

Agam Shah / PC World:

HP Slate tablets running Android Jellybean hit the market — Hewlett-Packard's latest Android tablets with multiple screen sizes are available through the company's website. — HP Slate 7 Extreme — The tablets run Android 4.2, code-named Jellybean, and are listed at the company's tablet page.

More: Digital Trends, Engadget, Android Community, Android Authority, Android Police, Phandroid, Unwired View and Android and Me

Guardian:

Edward Snowden revelations prompt UN investigation into surveillance — UN's senior counter-terrorism official says revelations ‘are at the very apex of public interest concerns’ — The UN's senior counter-terrorism official is to launch an investigation into the surveillance powers …

More: Gigaom. Tweets: @mariongroves. See also Mediagazer

Rob Wile / Business Insider:

Stockholm-based KnCMiner sells $8 million worth of bitcoin mining hardware in 24 hours — Bitcoin Developer Sells $8 Million Worth Of Hardware In 24 Hours, As Mining Technology Arms Race Goes Insane — Stockholm-based KnCMiner sold $8 million worth of their new $10,000-a-pop bitcoin miners …

Seth Rosenblatt / CNET:

Google Glass gets official Play Music app — Google continues to add apps to its MyGlass app page with an official Glass-ification of its Play Music app. Google released an official version of its Play Music app for Google Glass on Monday. The app, announced in a Google+ post …

More: Stephen Lau, 9to5Google, Gizmodo, The Next Web, AndroidGuys, SlashGear, Android Beat, Glass Almanac, Android Central, Android Police and Engadget

Amy Gesenhues / Search Engine Land:

Yahoo's Year In Review Includes Top Searches For 2013 & First Ever Posting Of Top Tumblr Trends — Yahoo has assembled an impressive list of search trends for 2013, covering 38 different “Top Searched” lists on everything from top searches overall to top searched cookies (yes, the ones you eat).

More: The Next Web, Yahoo and Mashable

Danielle Kucera / Bloomberg:

Cyber Monday Sales Increase 19%, Aided by Mobile, IBM Says — Cyber Monday online sales increased 19 percent compared with last year, setting the foundation for what's projected to be the biggest online shopping day of 2013. — Retailers catering to smartphone and tablet users are especially benefiting …

More: internetretailer.com

Sean Buckley / Engadget:

Engadget's Cyber Monday 2013 roundup

Ryan Nakashima / Associated Press:

Comcast testing full ad loads for on-demand shows — LOS ANGELES (AP) — Pay TV customers who are used to watching fewer ads on on-demand shows may have to put up with longer commercial breaks. — Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable TV provider, says it is testing out a system …

More: Reuters, Digital Trends, Variety, Fast Company, Benzinga, Consumerist, bizjournals, Broadcasting & Cable, FierceCable and Deadline.com. See also Mediagazer

Aman Sharma / The Econonomic Times:

India seeks US help to intercept chats from online platforms — NEW DELHI: India will ask the US to share its technology on how to decrypt conversations over various services like Viber, Whatsapp, Skype, Wechat and Blackberry messenger while complaining about service providers in US …

More: ZDNet and MediaNama. Tweets: @economictimes

Joe Mullin / Ars Technica:

Judge: MPAA can't call Hotfile founders “pirates” or “thieves” at trial — Action figures that absolutely can't be used in the upcoming MPAA v. Hotfile trial. — lamont_cranston / flickr — In years past, the Motion Picture Association of America has had success in shutting down peer …

More: TorrentFreak

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft launches Student Advantage worldwide, lets teachers who bought Office 365 give it to students for free — Microsoft today announced the worldwide launch of a program called Student Advantage. In short, the move lets teachers offer Office 365 to their students for free.

More: ZDNet, The Microsoft Office Blog, TechCrunch, GeekWire, BetaNews, Ubergizmo, Electronista, SlashGear, WebProNews, Engadget, WinBeta and TechNet Blogs

Parmy Olson / Forbes:

Landmark Princeton Study Sends Bots Across The Web To Track Discrimination — Privacy advocates have long argued that the commercialization of our online data is a worrying trend, but it's been hard to argue why since the advertising and marketing firms who track much of what we do, operate in obscurity.

Thanks:@parmy

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.

Cape:

Most carriers track everything. Cape doesn't. — Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more. Switch today and get 29% off for life.

Zoho:

Celebrating 10 years of Zoho Marketplace — 30 Zoho products,2,900+ extensions and integrations,1 million+ users, and2 million installations.Zoho Marketplace celebrates a decade-long journey of adding timeless value …

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

Lenny's Podcast:

OpenAI's Head of Design: This is the best time in history to be a designer | Ian Silber

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.

Big Technology Podcast:

Best of Big Technology: How Ozempic Changes Our Bodies, Minds, and Economy — With Johann Hari

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.

Hard Fork:

Zuckerberg's Anti-Doom Fantasy + Finally an A.I. Detector That Works + A.I. Math

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Joanna Stern on the New Siri, OpenAI's Weird Gadget, and Life After the Wall Street Journal

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.

Invest Like the Best:

Eric Vishria - A Decade of Lessons Investing in Software & Hardware

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

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:10 AM ET, December 3, 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.