Techmeme
December 19, 2013, 12:45 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 …
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 …
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.
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.
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.
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: CNET
Barb Darrow / Gigaom:
It's official: China is the wild, wild west of cloud computing  —  Within hours of Amazon's announcement of a new Beijing region for Amazon Web Services, IBM jumped into the mix, announcing a new relationship with 21Vianet to offer high-end SmartCloud Enterprise + cloud services from a new 21Vianet-hosted facility in Beijing.
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.
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Facebook, Zuckerberg, banks must face IPO lawsuit: judge  —  (Reuters) - A federal judge said Facebook Inc, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and dozens of banks must face a lawsuit accusing the social media company of misleading investors about its financial health before its $16 billion initial public offering last year.
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Microsoft releases standalone Xbox Music and Xbox Video apps for Windows Phone 8  —  Microsoft appears to be taking a page from Google's approach to core software updates; it just launched standalone Xbox Music and Xbox Video apps for Windows Phone 8 users.  The music app is largely …
Clare Jim / Reuters:
China Mobile chairman says still in talks with Apple on iPhone deal  —  (Reuters) - China Mobile Ltd said it's still in talks with Apple Inc to sell iPhones amid mounting industry speculation that the pair are about to announce a deal to net the technology giant hundreds of millions of potential new customers.
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Oracle's Q2 better than expected; Hardware sales stabilize  —  Summary: The bleeding in Oracle's hardware business appears to have stopped and execs tout cloud bookings momentum.  —  Oracle's second quarter results were better than expected and the company said software as a service bookings growth was 35 percent.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Use of Tor helped FBI ID suspect in bomb hoax case  —  It's true that the Tor anonymity service helps people cover their tracks on the Internet.  But when it's not used carefully, it can be the very thing that tips off the people the user wants to evade, as was demonstrated in a federal investigation earlier this week.
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.

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
App Spotlight: Google Sheets Magic Lookup for Zoho CRM  —  Our App Spotlight brings you hand-picked apps to enhance the power of your Zoho apps and tools.  Visit Zoho Marketplace to explore all apps, integrations …
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

Acquired:
Home Depot
Learn the playbooks that built the world's greatest companies - and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
Subscribe to Acquired.
Big Technology Podcast:
Special Report: Will AI Wipe Out Humanity? (And Who Profits)
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Atlantic's CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator
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.
Sources:
Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta's biggest AI bet yet
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Lenny's Podcast:
How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:45 AM ET, December 19, 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

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Ben Mutzabaugh / USA Today:
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch: