Techmeme: The Second Screen Becomes The First Screen: Hulu Says 50% Of Its 5M Subscribers Use Devices Exclusively (Matthew Panzarino/TechCrunch)

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December 19, 2013, 8:10 AM

Top News

New York Times:

Obama Panel Recommends New Limits on N.S.A. Spying — WASHINGTON — A panel of presidential advisers who reviewed the National Security Agency's surveillance practices urged President Obama on Wednesday to end the government's systematic collection of logs of all Americans' phone calls …

San Francisco Chronicle:

Obama won't give tech firms assurances on snooping — Technology company executives left a meeting with President Obama this week with no commitment to limit government snooping on Internet traffic, according to an industry official briefed on the session. Warning of backlashMayer …

More: Mercury News

Brendan Sasso / @brendansasso:

Here's the report from the NSA review group: http://www.whitehouse.gov/...

Tweets: @ggreenwald

The Switch:

Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning — The woman was shocked when she received two nude photos of herself by e-mail. The photos had been taken over a period of several months — without her knowledge — by the built-in camera on her laptop.

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

Sources: Target Investigating Data Breach — Nationwide retail giant Target is investigating a data breach potentially involving millions of customer credit and debit card records, multiple reliable sources tell KrebsOnSecurity. The sources said the breach appears to have begun …

More: Wall Street Journal, NYT Bits, Computerworld, BGR, Target Pressroom, Graham Cluley, Mashable, The Verge, Digital Trends, Reuters, Ars Technica, Gotta Be Mobile, CNET, Forbes, NBCNews, AllThingsD and MacNN. Tweets: @innismir

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

Target confirms breach: 40 million accounts affected — Summary: Customer name, credit or debit card number, and the card's expiration date and CVV (the three-digit security code) were breached, the retailer said. — Target on Thursday confirmed that its payment card data was compromised …

More: Target Corporate, NBCNews, Softpedia News and Computerworld

Alex Payne:

Bitcoin, Magical Thinking, and Political Ideology — Last week, investor Chris Dixon posed a provocative dichotomy when introducing his employer's USD $25M investment in Bitcoin service Coinbase: … Now working at vogue venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Dixon is in a fine position to speak for Silicon Valley.

More: Charlie's Diary. Tweets: @konklone, @fdestin, @hunterwalk and @buzz

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

No One Buys Music on the Web Anymore. Except When They Buy a Million Beyonce Albums in Five Days. — Sales of music downloads, which were supposed to rescue the music business from the decline of the CD, have been flattening for a few years. Then things got worse: This year, digital sales were down 4 percent through Thanksgiving.

More: 9to5Mac and iDownloadBlog.com

Mat Smith / Engadget:

British Airways is first European airline to allow electronics use during takeoff and landing — Following the wave of US airlines that changed policy after the FAA reassessed the rules, British Airways is letting passengers keep their electronic devices switched on for the entirety of their flight.

More: Inquirer, Guardian, Gizmodo, PhoneArena and Softpedia News

Paul Thurrott / SuperSite for Windows:

Windows Phone Turned the Corner in 2013 — We're number three. And no, that doesn't suck — 2013 was nothing less than a blockbuster success for Windows Phone, which went from industry also-ran to the undisputed third mobile ecosystem, and is poised to challenge iPhone for the number two spot.

More: TechCrunch, BGR and PhoneArena. Tweets: @greenskull

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

Apple's Redesigned Mac Pro Now Available for Online Orders — In line with yesterday's announcement, Apple's redesigned Mac Pro is now available for order through the company's online stores. The Mac Pro currently ships by December 30, though upgraded versions list a non-specific “January” shipping estimate.

More: Apple, Inquirer, iMore, MacRumors, Engadget, 9to5Mac, The Next Web and Digital Trends. Tweets: @tim_cook

Ron / WinBeta:

Microsoft pulls Dec 2013 firmware update for Surface Pro 2 as troubles become widespread — On December 10th, Microsoft rolled out a firmware update for the Surface Pro 2. Immediately upon downloading that firmware update, numerous users began experiencing an error code (80070490) when attempting to install the update.

More: Computerworld, GeekWire, The Verge, ZDNet, Engadget, TechRadar.com, answers.microsoft.com, BGR and PC Pro. Thanks:@winbetadotorg

Mike Deri Smith / BBC:

Porn filters block sex education websites — The new filters are designed to block sites unsuitable for children — Pornography filters used by major internet service providers are blocking websites offering sex education and advice on sexual health and porn addiction, the BBC has learned.

More: BGR, Gigaom and Pocket-lint. Tweets: @jackschofield

Aaron Souppouris / The Verge:

Spotify brings a clean new look to the desktop — Spotify has started pushing out an update for its desktop client with a new aesthetic. We've tested out the refreshed app, and the starkest difference from the current version is a new darker theme; it's very dark, almost black in places …

More: BestTechie, Cult of Mac, The Next Web, iClarified, VentureBeat, PC Pro, Electronista, Gizmodo and Engadget

Ken Yeung / The Next Web:

Twitter's Vine gets vanity URLs: sign-up starts Dec. 20 for verified accounts and Dec. 23 for all others — As a holiday treat, Twitter has announced that it will begin allowing Vine users to register for vanity URLs for their profiles. The race begins on Friday, December 20 at 9am PST …

More: Inquirer, Digital Trends and CNET

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Lyft tells TechCrunch its revenues are growing 6% per week — Hey Uber, Lyft Is Growing Faster Than You — Uber's revenue numbers, which were leaked to Gawker just a few weeks ago, look bold at roughly $20 million per week. — But there isn't necessarily a definitive market winner yet …

More: Quartz, PandoDaily and Forbes

Tweets: @mdudas, @zgoldstein, @joshconstine, @rachelbotsman and @curious_heather

Thanks:@alexia

Jon Bruner / O'Reilly Radar:

Active Twitter accounts follow a median 117 users, 76% follow more people than follow them — Tweets loud and quiet — Writers who cover Twitter find the grandiose irresistible: nearly every article about the service's IPO this fall mentioned the heroes of the Arab Spring who toppled dictators …

More: Yahoo! News. Tweets: @jstogdill, @marcsettle and @kevinbuist

Andy Greenberg / Forbes:

Google Glass Face Recognition App Coming This Month, Whether Google Likes It Or Not — Since Google Glass first appeared, its potential for facial recognition has been seen either as a privacy nightmare or as one of the headset's first truly intriguing uses. Google has declared itself in the first camp.

More: SiliconANGLE, TechCrunch, Computerworld, 9to5Google and dailywireless.org

Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:

Datameer picks up $19M to help companies do analytics along with Hadoop — In simplifying Hadoop — which takes an elephant as it mascot — Datameer is helping more people process and analyze data. — Hadoop, the leading framework used by companies to process huge amounts of data, has become all the rage right now.

More: TechCrunch, PE Hub Blog, SiliconANGLE and Gigaom

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

oDesk and Elance Merge to Create One Big Freelancer Company (But Still With Two Brands) — Elance and oDesk said today that they would merge. The companies have a lot in common — they both connect freelancers and gigs online — and they say they have a combined 10 million workers in 180 countries, with $750 million in 2013 billings.

More: oBlog, PandoDaily, Elance Blog, Bloomberg, Inc.com, ZDNet, SiliconBeat, NYT Bits, Forbes, VatorNews, VentureBeat, Business Wire and The Next Web. Tweets: @om

Erin Griffith / PandoDaily:

Boundless, the free textbook startup, settles lawsuit with publishers — Since before it even launched, textbook startup Boundless has been dealing with controversy. The company, backed by just under $10 million in venture funding, offers free versions of expensive textbooks to college students …

More: Boundless Blog, Digital Journal, EdSurge, bizjournals, VentureBeat, Wired CampusWired Campus and Xconomy

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Introduces New Style Of Flickr Embeds To Seed Content Outside Of The Site — Yahoo has introduced a new cleaner style of photo embeds today. Just about everyone has used content from Flickr in various ways at some point, especially from its great store of Creative Commons licensed images.

More: Flickr Blog, The Verge, Ubergizmo, Engadget, Thomas Hawk Digital Connection, The Next Web and Off On A Tangent. Tweets: @benwerd

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