Techmeme: Obama's restrictions on NSA surveillance rely on narrow definition of ‘spying’ (Barton Gellman/Washington Post)

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January 19, 2014, 4:15 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: Forbes, iClarified, Re/code, iPhone in Canada Blog, PhoneArena, SlashGear, iMore, MacRumors, iPhone Hacks and iDownloadBlog.com

Tweets: @jyarow and @markgurman

Thanks:@mikebeas

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 and Wall Street Journal. 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

Electronic Frontier Foundation:

EFF's scorecard rates Obama's proposed NSA reforms at 3.5 out of 12

More: Newsy, Boing Boing, Access Blog, TechFreedom, Reuters, The Verge and The Switch. Tweets: @jmarkockerbloom

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, @qhardy, @pmarca, @pmarca and @pmarca

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

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

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, WinBeta, Gotta Be Mobile, Pureinfotech Newsletter and Digital Trends

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.

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, @mathewi and @karaswisher. Thanks:@photomatt

Hayley Tsukayama / Washington Post:

Security firm IntelCrawler says it has identified Target malware author — Security firm IntelCrawler said Friday that it has identified a Russian teenager as the author of the malware probably used in the cyberattacks against Target and Neiman Marcus, and that it expects more retailers to acknowledge that their systems were breached.

More: IntelCrawler, Gothamist, Gawker, The Verge, Newsy, Forbes, SC Magazine, ZDNet, Security Affairs, The Hacker News and Business Insider. Tweets: @pmarca

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Lightroom for iPad briefly appears on Adobe's website, coming soon with $99/year cloud subscription — Adobe will soon make the iPad an even more viable solution for mobile content creation: the company will soon unleash a version of its popular Lightroom photo editing suite that is optimized for tablets.

More: CNET, MacRumors, TUAW, Photography Bay, The Verge, iClarified, Softpedia News, Canon Rumors, Computerworld, PadGadget, iPhone Hacks, App Advice and MacNN

Chris Davies / SlashGear:

Lax Android in-app purchase rules could get Google Play FTC attention [Updated] — Google has been been criticized for having just the sort of lax in-app purchase policies in the Google Play store that Apple will pay out a hefty $32.5m to settle over, after parents complained their children …

More: Consumer Reports Online, Fortune and Daring Fireball. Tweets: @slashgear

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