Techmeme
January 23, 2014, 5:05 AM

Top News

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.
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,” …
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.
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 …
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
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
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 …
Megan Garber / The Atlantic Online:
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 …
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.
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 …

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More News

Sean Hollister / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Caitlin Dewey / Washington Post:
Loek Essers / PC World:
Tal Ater: