Techmeme: Activist groups like OpAntiBully try to help bullying victims, doxx perpetrators (Emily Bazelon/New York Times)

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January 19, 2014, 4:45 PM

Top News

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

Jeff Jordan / Andreessen Horowitz:

The Tipping Point (E-Commerce Version) — The news around shopping during the holiday season was dominated by two separate stories. One talked about how traffic to brick-and-mortar stores was well below expectations, and that these retailers were forced to discount tremendously to drive sales.

Tweets: @erickschonfeld, @howardlindzon, @pmarca and @davemcclure

Wall Street Journal:

Stores Confront New World of Reduced Shopper Traffic

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

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: Re/code, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsy, Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Switch

Tweets: @jayrosen_nyu and @stevenlevy

See also Mediagazer

Barton Gellman / Washington Post:

Obama's restrictions on NSA surveillance rely on narrow definition of ‘spying’

More: emptywheel and Gizmodo. Tweets: @bartongellman and @trevortimm

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

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, iClarified, iPhone in Canada Blog, PhoneArena, SlashGear, iMore, MacRumors, iPhone Hacks and iDownloadBlog.com

Tweets: @jyarow and @markgurman

Thanks:@mikebeas

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: The Verge and CoinDesk

Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac:

Inside Apple's MFi game controller program: Why the current crop of controllers aren't up to snuff — Apple's new MFi game controller program offers a lot of promise for gaming on iOS— the top mobile gaming platform around could also soon be a serious platform for hardcore gamers.

More: iPhone Hacks. Tweets: @nchan and @markgurman. Thanks:@justinkahnmusic

Emily Bazelon / New York Times:

Activist groups like OpAntiBully try to help bullying victims, doxx perpetrators — The Online Avengers … One day last April, a 25-year-old named Ash smoked a cigarette in the garden of his London workplace and scrolled through the Twitter feed on his phone.

More: TechSpot, Page-Turner and Business Insider

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

The Rise Of The Hedge Fund Startup Investor (Again) — The first question I thought of when I read that San Francisco hedge fund Coatue Management was the backer behind Snapchat's $50 million round of funding was which VC firm lost the deal. My second question was why take money from a hedge fund?

More: Forbes. Tweets: @semil

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: @carney, @zseward, @peterlauria3 and @pkafka. See also Mediagazer

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: @dangillmor, @andreasbovens, @jamiew and @asadotzler

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 and PC Magazine. Tweets: @pmarca, @pmarca, @pmarca, @karaswisher and @qhardy

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