Techmeme: Why Obama's NSA Reforms Won't Solve Silicon Valley's Trust Problem (Steven Levy/Wired)

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January 19, 2014, 11:20 AM

Top News

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple continues hiring raid on medical sensor field as it develops eye scanning technology — Apple is moving to expand its personnel working on wearable computers and medical-sensor-laden devices by hiring more scientists and specialists in the medical sensor field.

More: Re/code, Forbes, iClarified, iPhone in Canada Blog, PhoneArena, SlashGear, iMore, MacRumors, iPhone Hacks and iDownloadBlog.com

Tweets: @jyarow and @markgurman

Thanks:@mikebeas

Richard Verrier / Los Angeles Times:

Paramount first major studio to release movies in digital format only, abandons film — Paramount stops releasing major movies on film — It becomes the first big Hollywood studio to embrace digital-only U.S. releases. Others are expected to quickly follow suit. — Roll credits.

More: VentureBeat, Gizmodo, Digital Trends, Engadget, The Verge and Ars Technica. Tweets: @zseward

Steven Levy / Wired:

Why Obama's NSA Reforms Won't Solve Silicon Valley's Trust Problem — When Barack Obama announced his reforms of National Security Agency surveillance programs today, few people were as interested as Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Marissa Mayer, and Steve Ballmer. — And the president knew it.

More: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsy, Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Switch

Tweets: @stevenlevy and @jayrosen_nyu

Barton Gellman / Washington Post:

Obama's restrictions on NSA surveillance rely on narrow definition of ‘spying’ — President Obama said Friday, in his first major speech on electronic surveillance, that “the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don't threaten our national security.”

More: emptywheel. Tweets: @trevortimm and @bartongellman

Vindu Goel / NYT Bits:

Former Yahoo COO De Castro was paid more than CEO, made at least $88M for 15 months of work — Yahoo's No. 2 Executive Made More Than His Boss (and Virtually Everyone Else) — It's hard to shed too many tears for Henrique de Castro, who was fired this week as Yahoo's No. 2 executive.

More: CNET, PC Magazine and Forbes

Tweets: @karaswisher, @pmarca, @pmarca, @pmarca and @qhardy

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry / Forbes:

Marc Andreessen Is Using Twitter Like A Real Human, And It's Amazing — Nowadays, if you're a prominent or powerful person, a Twitter presence has become de rigueur. But for the vast majority of those who tweet, their Twitter account is just a feed for press releases.

Tweets: @karaswisher and @birsic

Matt Mullenweg:

43% of websites on Techmeme's leaderboard are powered by WordPress, 42% use a custom CMS — WordPress & Techmeme 100 — Whenever I visit a site I can usually tell whether it's WordPress or not within an instant — there's just something about a WordPress site that is distinctive.

Tweets: @pmaiorana, @splatf and @mathewi. Thanks:@photomatt

David George-Cosh / Canada Real Time:

Canada Says Bitcoin Isn't Legal Tender … Canada doesn't consider bitcoin to be legal tender, a government official said, putting a question mark over the use of the increasingly popular virtual currency here. — The Canadian government, along with regulators including the central bank …

More: CoinDesk and CNBC

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

Adware vendors buy Chrome Extensions to send ad- and malware-filled updates — One of the coolest things about Chrome is the silent, automatic updates that always ensure that users are always running the latest version. While Chrome itself is updated automatically by Google …

More: Business Insider and Digital Inspiration …. Tweets: @jamiew, @andreasbovens and @asadotzler

Wall Street Journal:

Stores Confront New World of Reduced Shopper Traffic — E-Commerce Not Only Siphons Off Sales, but Changes Shopping Habits — Best Buy Co. on Thursday became the latest retailer to chime in with weak holiday results. Like other chains, the electronics retailer blamed the race to offer …

More: Jeff Jordan and Gawker. Tweets: @netbanker, @timjhanrahan and @jeff_jordan

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

After Mulling Sale, Business Insider Raising a New Round of Funding — Business Insider — which rejected an informal acquisition offer of around $100 million floated by AOL last year and has discussed other sale efforts — is likely to be raising a new round from its existing investors, including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

More: Bloomberg. Tweets: @zseward, @peterlauria3 and @pkafka

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft re-releases latest Surface Pro 2 update following initial issues — Microsoft is re-releasing its latest Surface Pro 2 firmware update today. Following issues with the update last month, the software maker pulled it to investigate and correct the problems.

More: ZDNet, Gotta Be Mobile, Digital Trends, Pureinfotech Newsletter and WinBeta

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