Techmeme: Sheryl Sandberg Becomes One of Youngest U.S. Billionaires (David de Jong/Bloomberg)

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January 23, 2014, 5:05 AM

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Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:

Independent review board says NSA phone data program is illegal and should end — An independent executive branch board has concluded that the National Security Agency's long-running program to collect billions of Americans' phone records is illegal and should end.

More: Engadget, Ars Technica, Gizmodo and Boing Boing

Tweets: @amadooooo, @jasonleopold, @astepanovich, @trevortimm and @jasonleopold

Charlie Savage / New York Times:

Watchdog Report Says N.S.A. Program Is Illegal and Should End — WASHINGTON — An independent federal privacy watchdog has concluded that the National Security Agency's program to collect bulk phone call records has provided only “minimal” benefits in counterterrorism efforts, is illegal and should be shut down.

More: SlashGear. Tweets: @declanm and @ncardozo

Adario Strange / Mashable:

Apple Promises to Fix iOS 7 ‘White Screen of Death’ — Since Apple released iOS 7, its completely revamped operating system for the iPhone, reviews have been mixed but mostly positive. However, a glitch that has quietly plagued iPhone users — the “white/black screen of death,” …

More: 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, MobileSyrup.com, Business Insider, BGR, Gotta Be Mobile, MacNN, TechnoBuffalo, iMore, iPhone in Canada Blog, PhoneArena, iPhone Hacks, Cult of Mac, Ars Technica, SlashGear, The Verge, TUAW, MacRumors, Gigaom, iClarified, CNET, App Advice, Re/code and Macworld. Tweets: @chartier. Thanks:@film_girl

Steven Hickson / Steves Computer Vision Blog:

Hacking Snapchat's people verification in less than 100 lines — I woke up this morning and saw this article detailing Snapchat's new people verification system. You may have seen it but if not I will summarize it for you. They basically have you choose each image with the Snapchat ghost to prove you are a person.

More: Engadget, TechCrunch, CNET, Digital Trends, Daily Dot and Business Insider

Tweets: @film_girl, @lukew, @carnage4life, @chriseng, @privacychoice and @bobpoekert

Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:

Protesters show up at the doorstep of Google self-driving car engineer — Protests against tech giants and their impact on the San Francisco Bay Area economy just got personal. — According to an anonymous submission on local news site Indybay, an unknown group of protesters targeted …

More: Business Insider, SFist, Examiner, Veronica Belmont, PandoDaily, Los Angeles Times, Salon and Indybay newswire

Tweets: @blakehounshell, @ryan, @jowens510, @dangillmor and @paulcarr

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

eBay CEO Donahoe gives Icahn e-commerce tutorial over PayPal plan — Summary: eBay CEO John Donahoe: Why in an era of big data and e-commerce innovation would you separate eBay, PayPal and their network effects? — eBay CEO John Donahoe elaborated on why PayPal should remain part …

Tweets: @levie

Reuters:

EBay dismisses Icahn proposal to spin off Paypal

More: ebay inc, eBay Inc., The Official PayPal, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, Gigaom, BBC and CNBC

Tweets: @pierre and @pkafka

Roberto Baldwin / Wired:

Tivo Lays Off Most of Its Design Team as It Transitions to the Cloud — Update: Tivo says it will continue to use third-party designers for hardware going forward. The article has been updated to reflect this fact. — Tivo has been bullish lately about releasing new software products beyond its core DVR boxes.

More: TIME, Ars Technica, The Verge, Engadget, Gigaom, Pocket-lint, SlashGear, Business Insider and ParisLemon. Thanks:@strngwys. See also Mediagazer

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Netflix wants to introduce three pricing tiers for new members — Netflix is getting ready for a new pricing structure, according to the company's Q4 letter to shareholders (PDF) released Wednesday. In it, CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells write:

More: Gizmodo, Bloomberg and TechnoBuffalo. Tweets: @chartier

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Netflix's momentum continues with 2.33 million new US customers in Q4

More: The Next Web, ZDNet, TechCrunch, GeekWire, Wall Street Journal, internetretailer.com, Business Insider, VatorNews, WebProNews and Tech Trader Daily. See also Mediagazer

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Netflix posts Q4 profit of $48.4M, with 44M subscribers

More: Business Insider, WebProNews and Forbes

David de Jong / Bloomberg:

Sheryl Sandberg Becomes One of Youngest U.S. Billionaires — Sheryl Sandberg's fortune surpassed $1 billion today after Facebook Inc. (FB) closed at a record high. — The chief operating officer of the world's most popular social-networking service owns about 12.3 million shares of the Menlo Park …

More: WebProNews, Business Insider, SiliconBeat, Mashable, Valleywag, New York Magazine and AllFacebook. Tweets: @daringfireball. Thanks:@sarahfrier

Marco Arment / Marco.org:

Apparently It's OK For iOS Apps To Ask For Your Apple ID And Password — Apple's currently featuring the Sunrise app in the App Store. — Upon first launch, Sunrise invites you to create an account, then asks you to add a calendar. The first option, “iCloud Calendar” …

More: Neven Mrgan, AppleInsider, iPhone Hacks, Sunrise, Cult of Mac and Michael Tsai

Marco Arment / Marco.org:

Sunrise on why they ask for your Apple ID and password

Tweets: @monkbent

Shira Ovide / Digits:

The Holes in Microsoft's Data Protection Pledge — Microsoft says it can keep its customers' data from the prying eyes of U.S. spies and cops. But the company may not be able to honor its pledge. — Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said the company would allow its foreign customers …

More: Financial Times, Gigaom, ReadWrite and Engadget

Russell Brandom / The Verge:

Microsoft offers overseas data storage in response to NSA concerns

More: Financial Times and Reuters

Reuters:

Massive Internet mishap sparks Great Firewall scrutiny in China — (Reuters) - Human error likely caused a glitch in China's Great Firewall that saw millions of Internet users ironically rerouted to the homepage of a U.S.-based company which helps people evade Beijing's web censorship, sources told Reuters.

More: GreatFire.org, Xinhua News Agency, Bloomberg, NBCNews, Nextgov and CNET

Tweets: @jonrussell and @adampasick

See also Mediagazer

Megan Garber / The Atlantic Online:

This Little House in Wyoming Didn't Just Get Flooded With Web Traffic From China

More: China Real Time Report, The Switch, Mashable, Ars Technica, Sinosphere, cso.com.au, TechPresident, Adam Steinbaugh's, NYT Bits, Business Insider, Gigaom, The Verge, BBC, The Next Web, Gizmodo, DSLreports, Xconomy, Daily Dot and The Technology Chronicles

JP Mangalindan / Fortune:

Prim: Anatomy of a folded startup — The YCombinator-backed laundry pick-up and delivery business barely lasted 7 months. One of its founders walks Fortune through the post-mortem. — FORTUNE - Can technology disrupt even the most mundane chores? — That's the question Yin Yin Wu …

Tweets: @mikeisaac, @steipete and @caseynewton. Thanks:@jpmanga

John Cook / GeekWire:

Early stakeholders in Scout Analytics claim venture capitalists engaged in ‘self dealing, corporate waste’ prior to $32M acquisition — Not everyone is happy about today's $32 million acquisition of Scout Analytics by ServiceSource. A group of series A preferred stockholders filed suit …

Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:

Renew OnDemand Provider ServiceSource Acquires Scout Analytics For $32M

More: bizjournals, Wall Street Journal and GeekWire

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Judge: IP-Address Does Not Prove Copyright Infringement — Mass-BitTorrent lawsuits have been dragging on for years in the US, involving hundreds of thousands of alleged downloaders. — The copyright holders who start these cases generally provide nothing more than an IP address as evidence.

More: Techdirt, Motherboard, SlashGear, Business Insider, Boing Boing and Softpedia News

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Beats Music responds to launch issues, says free trial length to be doubled — Since Beats launched its Beats Music streaming music service earlier this week, the launch has been plagued by reliability issues and new customers not being able to sign up. — Responding to these complaints …

More: Beats Music, CNET, ReadWrite, The Verge, Android Central, iDownloadBlog.com, BetaNews and App Advice

Sriram Krishnan / Facebook Developers:

Facebook announces it's testing its own ad network for 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 and advertising dollars lag behind time spent on mobile.

More: Facebook for Business, Wired, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Betabeat, App Advice, VatorNews, Android Central, PhoneArena, Engadget, AppleInsider, Re/code, Forbes, AllFacebook, ReadWrite, Marketing Land and WebProNews

Tweets: @jamiedavidson, @mikeisaac, @bbalfour, @niallharbison and @mikeisaac

Douglas MacMillan / Wall Street Journal:

Stripe raises $80 million from Khosla, Sequoia and Founders Fund, now valued at $1.75 billion — Payments Startup Stripe Joins the Billion Dollar Club — New $80 Million Funding Round Will Help Company Battle PayPal — In the crowded field of online payments, venture capitalists …

More: TechCrunch, Y Combinator Posthaven and Reuters

Tweets: @sacca, @erickschonfeld, @cdixon, @vijayshekhar, @sarahfrier, @patrickc, @rabois, @bryfitz and @jess

Bloomberg:

Lenovo to Buy IBM Server Unit For $2.3 Billion Amid PC Slump — Lenovo Group Ltd., the world's largest maker of personal computers, will buy International Business Machines Corp.'s server business for $2.3 billion. — The deal price includes about $2 billion of cash and the rest in Lenovo stock …

More: The Verge, The Next Web, Lenovo Newsroom, Wall Street Journal, CNBC and Reuters

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