Why Bitcoin Matters  —  Editor's note: Marc Andreessen's venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has invested just under $50 million in Bitcoin-related start-ups.  The firm is actively searching for more Bitcoin-based investment opportunities.  He does not personally own more than a de minimis amount of Bitcoin.

U.S. court finds Samsung to infringe one Apple patent, declares one Samsung patent invalid  —  In a summary judgment order entered late on Tuesday (January 21, 2014), Judge Lucy Koh, the federal judge presiding over two Apple v. Samsung patent cases in the Northern District of California …

Pinterest CEO Lays Out Growth Plan, Sees Revenue in 2014 … In less than four years, Pinterest Inc. Chief Executive Ben Silbermann has expanded his quirky site for online scrapbooking into a social-media tool used by one-fifth of online adults in the U.S.  —  For his next act …

VMware buys AirWatch for $1.54 billion, acquires mobility strategy  —  Summary: VMware's acquisition of AirWatch will give it a foothold in mobility as well as its end-user computing strategy.  —  VMware will acquire AirWatch, a mobile device management company, in a $1.17 billion cash deal …

Here Are 24 Countries Where Windows Phone Outsells The iPhone (And Why It Does)  —  Statistics may say Windows 8 is a flop but, contrary to popular opinion, Windows Phone is far from down and out in the battle for our mobile affections.  In fact in many parts of the world sales are rocketing past the iPhone.

Amazon considering online live TV service, has approached at least three media conglomerates seeking rights to distribute their channels  —  Amazon Considering Online Pay-TV Service  —  Live TV Channels Would Compete With Cable, Satellite  —  Amazon.com Inc. has approached big entertainment companies …

Snapchat Makes You “Find The Ghosts” To Keep Hackers From Stealing Your Phone Number  —  Snapchat now verifies new users aren't robots by making them choose its ghost mascot within images.  It's an attempt to keep out hackers who could steal phone numbers by exploiting a leaked database of details on 4.6 million accounts.

Icahn says Apple “doing great disservice to shareholders,” increases AAPL investment to $3B … Following a precatory proposal from billionaire investor and Apple shareholder Carl Icahn urging Apple to vote on a larger buyback, Icahn today announced on Twitter that he thinks Apple …

Verizon publishes first transparency report, reveals 320,000 total law enforcement requests  —  As promised, Verizon has released a tally of the requests it receives from law enforcement at all levels, counting a total of 321,545 requests for customer subscription information, phone numbers, or content like text messages and emails.

Google and Apple shuttles will pay to use San Francisco's public bus stops  —  The shuttle buses that transport workers for huge tech firms like Google, Facebook, and Apple between San Francisco and Silicon Valley every day have come under heavy fire lately, but today a vote was passed unanimously …

With Trove, Ex-WaPo Labs Team Takes Another Try at Social Reading  —  How do you get your daily news?  —  It's a question that any 21st century news organization is asking itself — a question all too familiar for a guy like Vijay Ravindran.  As the chief digital officer of Graham Holdings …

HootSuite Buys uberVU To Add Analytics To Its Enterprise Social Media Management Platform  —  HootSuite — a platform for enterprises to manage their presence on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and many more — is ramping up its product offering with more big data.

Cable industry sues Apple-backed patent troll over “illegal conspiracy”  —  The patent wars engulfing the tech industry have taken a new twist as five cable companies filed a lawsuit to stop Rockstar, a consortium owned by Google competitors that bought up 4,000 old patents in 2012 and began suing a wide variety of device makers.

Chrome Bugs Allow Sites to Listen to Your Private Conversations  —  By exploiting bugs in Google Chrome, malicious sites can activate your microphone, and listen in on anything said around your computer, even after you've left those sites.  Even while not using your computer - conversations …

Docker Raises $15M For Its Open-Source Platform That Helps Developers Build Apps In The Cloud  —  The shift to scale out architectures and an app-centric culture has turned out well for Docker and its lightweight open-source “container” technology designed for developers to quickly move code to the cloud.

Russian Spy Nodes Caught Targeting Anonymous Facebook Users  —  Somewhere in Russia an eavesdropper is operating a network of wiretapped nodes at the edge of the Tor anonymity network.  And he's particularly interested in what you're doing on Facebook.  —  That's the conclusion of two researchers …

Showtime, HBO, Starz blast NPD study that says they lost subscribers  —  Thanks to “Homeland” and other shows, Showtime has added 1 million subscribers a year in six of the last seven years, a spokesperson says.  —  Pay-TV channels HBO, Showtime and Starz are blasting a much-ballyhooed study …

CrunchBase data suggests likelihood of follow on startup financing rounds peaks at 9 months  —  When to raise using Crunchbase data  —  tl;dr the likelihood of a follow on financing peaks at around 9 months.  —  When I worked at Google and later at Hotel Tonight, data …

Facebook steps towards mobile ad network with test of Facebook ads in third-party mobile apps  —  Testing a new way for developers to monetize mobile apps  —  Monetization is a difficult problem for mobile app developers, particularly as people move toward downloading more free apps …

Hitachi hard drives used by Backblaze have remarkably low failure rates versus Seagate, WD  —  What Hard Drive Should I Buy?  —  My last two blog posts were about expected drive lifetimes and drive reliability.  These posts were an outgrowth of the careful work that we've done at Backblaze …

Chinese Internet Traffic Redirected to Small Wyoming House  —  In one of the more bizarre twists in recent Internet memory, a large portion of Internet traffic in China was redirected to a small, 1,700-square-foot house in Cheyenne, Wyo. on Tuesday.  —  A large portion of China's 500 million …