Techmeme
December 16, 2013, 2:40 PM

Top News

Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
An NSA Coworker Remembers The Real Edward Snowden: ‘A Genius Among Geniuses’  —  Perhaps Edward Snowden's hoodie should have raised suspicions.  —  The black sweatshirt sold by the civil libertarian Electronic Frontier Foundation featured a parody of the National Security Agency's logo …
Sara Morrison / The Wire:
‘60 Minutes’: NSA Good, Snowden Bad  —  As if that whole retracted Benghazi report and the Amazon commercial/drone reveal didn't undermine 60 Minutes' credibility enough in the last few weeks, here's another gem: a report on how the NSA has simply been misunderstood by all those Snowden leaks and is a good guy, really.
Simon Sharwood / The Register:
NSA alleges ‘BIOS plot to destroy PCs’  —  Un-named PC maker sought help to defeat un-named nation's PC-bricking plan  —  Senior National Security Agency (NSA) officials have told US news magazine program “60 Minutes” that a foreign nation tried to infect computers with a BIOS-based virus …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Windows Phone 8.1 includes notification center and Siri-like personal assistant  —  Microsoft is preparing to ship its Windows Phone 8.1 update with two significant changes: a notification center and a Siri-like personal assistant.  Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans have revealed …
Nick Wingfield / NYT Bits:
Photosynth creator and architect of Bing mobile and mapping leaves Microsoft to join Google  —  A Microsoft Star Goes to Google  —  SEATTLE — Blaise Agüera y Arcas, a respected engineer and software designer at Microsoft, has left the company to join its rival Google.
David Carr / New York Times:
AOL's Tim Armstrong reluctantly lets go of Patch as shareholder pressures mount  —  AOL Chief's White Whale Finally Slips His Grasp  —  Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of AOL, is finally winding down Patch, a network of local news sites that he helped invent and that AOL bought after he took over.
Will Connors / Wall Street Journal:
Two More Executives Leaving BlackBerry  —  EVP of Global Sales, Official in Charge of M&A Strategy to Depart in Weeks  —  TORONTO—The leadership upheaval at BlackBerry Ltd. continues under interim Chief Executive John Chen, according to people familiar with the matter.
Josh Halliday / Guardian:
Google will not answer to British court over UK privacy claim  —  Search giant insists lawsuit concerning UK internet users' privacy should be brought in California where it is based  —  Google has been called “arrogant and immoral” for arguing that a privacy claim brought by internet users …
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
TV Check-In Company Viggle Buys Facebook Publisher Wetpaint  —  Viggle, the company that rewards people for watching TV shows, has bought Wetpaint, a Facebook-centric publisher that specializes in writing about TV shows.  —  The deal, which is costing Viggle $30 million in cash and stock …

Sponsor Posts

Soxton:
Fast, affordable law for startups  —  Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better.  We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts.  Join the waitlist for early access!
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Zoho Mail MCP: Make your inbox work for you  —  Maya is the head of operations at a 500-person B2B software company.  She's sharp, she's busy, and she starts every morning the same way-with her coffee, laptop, inbox.Not to work.
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

Hard Fork:
'The Daily' and 'The Opinions': How A.I. Is Changing Loneliness and Taste
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.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Writer's May Habib: Building AI Tools For Corporate 'Normal People' The Labs Leave Behind
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
A Nick, Dick, and Paul Buffet!
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Big Technology Podcast:
Anthropic's Labs Lead On Fable's Capabilities + Building AI-Native Products — With Mike Krieger
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.
Great Chat:
How much data do we actually want about our bodies?
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
AI's Mythos Moment: Rishi Sunak on preparing governments for AI
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:40 PM ET, December 16, 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

Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:

Earlier Picks

Jean-Louis Gassée / Monday Note:
Marco Arment / Marco.org: