Techmeme
December 14, 2013, 12:15 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sprint Preparing a Bid for T-Mobile US  —  An Offer Would Test U.S. Regulators's Willingness to Have Just 3 Major Carriers  —  Sprint Corp. is working toward a possible bid for rival T-Mobile US Inc., people familiar with the matter said, setting the stage for a giant telecom merger …
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claiming Its Release Was Accidental  —  Yesterday, we published a blog post lauding an extremely important app privacy feature that was added in Android 4.3.  That feature allows users to install apps while preventing the app …
Washington Post:
By cracking cellphone code, NSA has capacity for decoding private conversations  —  The cellphone encryption technology used most widely across the world can be easily defeated by the National Security Agency, an internal document shows, giving the agency the means to decode most of the billions …
Horace Dediu / asymco.com:
How many Americans will be using an iPhone when the US smartphone market saturates?  —  As previously noted, the US smartphone market has followed an almost perfectly logistic growth.  The measured data (via comScore, in green below) follows a predictive logistic function (thin blue whose formula is discussed here).
More: App Advice and Gigaom
Spencer Ackerman / Guardian:
NSA review to leave spying programs largely unchanged, reports say  —  A participant in a White House-sponsored review of surveillance activities described as “shameful” an apparent decision to leave most of the National Security Agency's controversial bulk spying intact.
Bloomberg:
Verizon close to buying Intel's Internet-based pay-TV startup OnCue, may announce the deal next week  —  Verizon Said Near Agreement to Buy Intel's Start-Up TV Service  —  Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) is near an agreement to purchase Intel Corp. (INTC)'s Internet-based pay-TV start-up, according to people familiar with the deal.
Jason Del Rey / AllThingsD:
Report: Readers who own a Kindle spend $1,233/year on Amazon; those who don't spend $790  —  The Amazon Kindle Numbers That Jeff Bezos Must Really Care About  —  We all know that Amazon's annual touting of its new Kindles as the best-selling Kindles ever has become laughable since the company …
Matt Hartley / Financial Post:
Canada's Competition Bureau to open formal antitrust investigation against Google  —  Google Inc facing heat from Competition Bureau over alleged anti-competitive behaviour  —  Canada's Competition Bureau is proceeding with a formal inquiry into Google Inc.'s search engine and advertising practices …

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Earlier Picks

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Richard Lawler / Engadget: