Techmeme
December 29, 2013, 5:55 PM

Top News

Spiegel Online:
NSA Tailored Access Operations unit specializes in “getting the ungettable”, intercepts hardware shipments to plant malware  —  The NSA Uses Powerful Toolbox in Effort to Spy on Global Networks  —  The NSA's TAO hacking unit is considered to be the intelligence agency's top secret weapon.
Spiegel Online:
NSA has 50-page catalog of exploits and backdoors in devices from Cisco, Huawei, Dell, Juniper, Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, and more  —  Catalog Reveals NSA Has Back Doors for Numerous Devices  —  After years of speculation that electronics can be accessed by intelligence agencies through …
Nitasha Tiku / Valleywag:
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Chromebooks' success punches Microsoft in the gut  —  Amazon, NPD Group trumpet sales of the bare-bones laptops in 2013 to consumers and businesses  —  Chromebooks had a very good year, according to retailer Amazon.com and industry analysts.  —  And that's bad news for Microsoft.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Chromebook Sales vs. Web Traffic Share  —  Gregg Keizer, reporting for Computerworld: … If these reports are right, we should soon see a corresponding surge in web traffic share for ChromeOS.  But I'm having trouble finding a web traffic source that even counts Chrome OS as an entity.
Tweets: @manxstef and @naofumi
John Markoff / New York Times:
Qualcomm says its first commercial neuromorphic (brainlike) processor is coming in 2014  —  Brainlike Computers, Learning From Experience  —  PALO ALTO, Calif. — Computers have entered the age when they are able to learn from their own mistakes, a development that is about to turn the digital world on its head.
More: VentureBeat and Forbes
Jim Finkle / Reuters:
Exclusive: Hacker took over BBC server, tried to ‘sell’ access on Christmas Day  —  (Reuters) - A hacker secretly took over a computer server at the BBC, Britain's public broadcaster, and then launched a Christmas Day campaign to convince other cyber criminals to pay him for access to the system.
More: Mashable and SlashGear
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
2013: The Year in Apple and Technology at Large  —  Christopher Mims, writing for Quartz, “2013 Was a Lost Year for Tech”: … What a sad pile of piss-on-everything cynicism.  —  Was 2013 a seminal or particularly extraordinary year for technology?  No, I'd say not.
Mary Ellen Gordon, PhD / Flurry Blog:
Kindles saw 24x bump in activations on Christmas vs. other Dec. days, Apple saw 2.3x bump  —  Amazon Delivers A Great Christmas For Its Kindle  —  In less than a decade, connected devices have become an integral part of Christmas.  They are commonly wished for and given as gifts …

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 5:55 PM ET, December 29, 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

Earlier Picks