Techmeme: App.net Launches Backer, A Bitcoin-Friendly Crowdfunding Engine For Individual Software Features (Greg Kumparak/TechCrunch)

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January 26, 2014, 4:44 AM

Top News

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

Michaels investigating possible “data security attack” after fraudulent credit card purchases lead back to its stores — Sources: Card Breach at Michaels Stores — Multiple sources in the banking industry say they are tracking a pattern of fraud on cards that were all recently used …

More: Reuters, USA Today, CNET, Computerworld, Ars Technica, The Verge, VentureBeat, New York Times, CNNMoney.com, SlashGear, usnews.nbcnews.com, eWeek, Wired, PC Magazine and WebProNews

Tweets: @abrams, @ldignan, @briankrebs and @briankrebs

ABC News:

Exclusive: Apple's Tim Cook on NSA, What's Next as Mac Turns 30 — While secrecy is part of the excitement at Apple headquarters in Silicon Valley — today marked 30 years since Steve Jobs told America via TV that something big was coming — CEO Tim Cook said secrecy in the form …

Kevin Poulsen / Wired:

How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love — Chris McKinlay was folded — into a cramped fifth-floor cubicle in UCLA's math sciences building, lit by a single bulb and the glow from his monitor. It was 3 in the morning, the optimal time to squeeze cycles out of the supercomputer …

More: Business Insider, BuzzFeed, Gizmodo, The Verge and Lifehacker. Tweets: @moorehn

Matt Mullenweg:

How WordPress has embodied and benefited from the principles of open source — The Four Freedoms — Eleven months before the U.S. declared war on Japan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said “As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone.”

More: Harold Jarche. Tweets: @sacca, @scottros, @jfrizk and @codinghorror

Rolfe Winkler / Wall Street Journal:

Chromebooks accounted for 19% of U.S. K-12 mobile computer purchases in 2013 — Chromebooks Take Other Mobile PCs to School — The Inexpensive Laptops Grab Fifth of U.S. Educational Purchases — Chromebooks have come from nowhere to grab nearly a fifth of U.S. school purchases of mobile computers …

More: BGR, Digits and OStatic blogs

Sam Biddle / Valleywag:

KPCB founder Tom Perkins compares “rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent” to Nazi war on Jews — Silicon Valley Legend Compares Techie Backlash to Nazi Rampage — Silicon Valley has never been known for its appreciation of subtleties.

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Bay area tech companies should give back and promote good public policy in their community

More: Anil Dash, Los Angeles Times, Mercury News, ReadWrite, Webomatica and Vanity Fair

Tweets: @jasonkincaid, @kevinmarks, @stephenfleming, @stephenfleming, @martinsfp, @anildash and @sg

Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:

App.net Launches Backer, A Bitcoin-Friendly Crowdfunding Engine For Individual Software Features — As the popularity of crowdfunding grows ever larger, an interesting new trend has started popping up: developers, curious if a new feature is worth adding to their products …

More: App.net and The Next Web

Graham Smith / Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

King removes flash game from web in response to cloning allegations, denies infringing IP — Flash Developer Alleges King “Cloned” Their Game — Update 2: And there's now a statement from King.com on the subject, also at the end of the post. — Update: There's now a response from Matthew Cox …

More: Junkyard Sam, VentureBeat, PC Magazine, GamesIndustry International, Kotaku, The Pocket Gamer Podcast, Polygon, VentureBeat, Joystiq, SlashGear, Business Insider, Re/code, GamePolitics blogs, TechnologyTell, VG247, destructoid, Geek.com, Forbes and Daily Dot

Jenna Wortham / NYT Bits:

For some, Twitter is becoming less about relevancy and more about one-liners — Valley of the Blahs: How Justin Bieber's Troubles Exposed Twitter's Achilles' Heel — At some point, Twitter and the rest of social media became less about wanting to share the news and more about wanting to be the news.

More: Haywire. Tweets: @stevenlevy, @raju, @juddlegum, @laurengoode, @mikeisaac, @jsnell, @caseynewton, @pkafka, @gaberivera and @abrams

Tim Wu / Culture Desk:

Review: “The Internet's Own Boy”, a documentary on Aaron Swartz's life and death — The New Aaron Swartz Documentary at Sundance — “The Internet's Own Boy,” a documentary about the life and death of Aaron Swartz, premièred on Monday at the Sundance Film Festival, where it received a standing ovation.

More: Rolling Stone, Variety, The Verge and Mashable. Tweets: @knappb

Benedict Evans:

As tech, media, and telecom collide, ignorance of any one sector leads to failures like Joost and WiMax — Ignorance — “However vast any person's basic reading may be, there still remain an enormous number of fundamental works that he has not read.” - Italo Calvino

Tweets: @nathanchubbard, @h4ryb, @stevesi, @minethatdata, @mccarthyryanj, @rubenharris, @jchengwsj and @soundboy. See also Mediagazer

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Facebook's referral traffic share grew over 48% in Q4 2013, Pinterest was up 30%, but Twitter dipped 4% — Social discovery and sharing platform Shareaholic today released a report covering referral traffic data from the eight largest social media sites in Q4 2013.

More: Shareaholic, Marketing Land, WebProNews, Inside Facebook and SocialTimes. Thanks:@dannywong1190

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