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Techmeme
December 19, 2013, 4:12 AM
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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 …
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.
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 …
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.
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.
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, @hunterwalk and @buzz
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.
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
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.
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.
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.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:12 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.

From Mediagazer

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Memo: NYT columnist Ross Douthat, Sebastian Junger, Trevor Phillips, and Gianna Toboni will join 60 Minutes; Norah O'Donnell will also take up 60 Minutes duties

Tony Maglio / The Hollywood Reporter:
HBO Max is testing HBO Max Shorts, a vertical feed that features trailers, clips, and bonus content from the streamer's library, on iOS in the US

Jeremy Barr / The Guardian:
Former FCC commissioners, lawyers, and advisers issue a filing saying the FCC's ABC early license renewal proceeding is “unprecedented” and a “grave violation”

More News

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
The Second Screen Becomes The First Screen: Hulu Says 50% Of Its 5M Subscribers Use Devices Exclusively
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Microsoft releases standalone Xbox Music and Xbox Video apps for Windows Phone 8

Earlier Picks

Clare Jim / Reuters:
China Mobile chairman says still in talks with Apple on iPhone deal
Ben Mutzabaugh / USA Today:
Delta CEO makes it clear: No voice calls on our flights
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