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 …

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