Techmeme
February 7, 2014, 1:45 PM

Top News

Daisuke Wakabayashi / Wall Street Journal:
Apple Repurchases $14B of Own Shares in 2 Weeks  —  CEO Cook Says Company Wanted to Be ‘Aggressive’ and ‘Opportunistic’  —  CUPERTINO, Calif. - Apple Inc. has bought $14 billion of its own shares in the two weeks since reporting financial results that disappointed Wall Street, Chief Executive Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal.
Jordan Golson / MacRumors:
Tim Cook Says Apple Working on ‘Some Really Great Stuff’ in New Product Categories  —  Apple will launch products in new categories and the company is working on “really great stuff”, according to an interview with CEO Tim Cook in The Wall Street Journal this evening.
Ed Bott / ZDNet:
Apple, Google, Microsoft: Where does the money come from?  —  Summary: If you want to know why big tech companies act the way they do, follow the money.  Based on the latest SEC filings, Apple's still a successful hardware company, and Google's still in the advertising business.
More: Apple Gazette and BGR India.  Tweets: @alexdc and @marypcbuk
Brian X. Chen / NYT Bits:
California Bill Would Require Antitheft Technology for Cellphones  —  A smartphone is sleek, compact and valuable, which makes it a perfect target for a thief.  Californian lawmakers want to require cellphone companies to fix that problem.  —  In the last year, officials in San Francisco …
Siobhan Gorman / Wall Street Journal:
NSA struggles with cellphone coverage, collects only 20% or less of total US call data  —  NSA Collects 20% or Less of U.S. Call Data  —  Program Doesn't Cover Records for Most Cellphones  —  WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency's phone-data program, which has been at the center …
Cade Metz / Wired:
Facebook Deploys Robots to Save Blu-ray From Extinction  —  One day, your Facebook photos will sit in the hands of robots.  —  Behind the scenes at Mark Zuckerberg's social networking giant, Facebook engineers have already built these robots, and one of them was on display last week in downtown San Jose …
More: SlashGear
Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:
Google Asks French Court to Suspend Privacy Notification Order  —  Order Forces Google to Notify Users of a Privacy Fine on its French Home Page  —  PARIS—Google Inc. asked a French court Thursday to suspend an order forcing it to notify users of a privacy fine on its French home page …
Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:
Rdio teams up with Tesla for its first automotive integration  —  Music subscription service Rdio is getting into the automotive game, and it's got an interesting partner for its first integration: Tesla is going to use Rdio as its default dashboard audio service in Europe …
Robert Graham / Errata Security:
NBC story on visitors to Sochi Olympics getting hacked is misleading  —  That NBC story 100% fraudulent  —  Yesterday (Feb 5 2014) NBC News ran a story claiming that if you bring your mobile phone or laptop to the Sochi Olympics, it'll immediately be hacked the moment you turn it on.
Ina Fried / Re/code:
Google Changes Homepage to Protest Russia's Anti-Gay Law  —  As the Winter Olympics kick off in Sochi, groups ranging from Google to human rights organizations are turning to digital media to protest a law that vastly curtails the free speech rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people throughout Russia.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Mike Isaac / Re/code:
LinkedIn to Acquire Job-Seeking Site Bright for $120 Million  —  LinkedIn announced on Thursday it plans to acquire Bright, a data-driven job search startup, for $120 million.  —  The buy is LinkedIn's largest acquisition to date, topping the company's earlier major acquisitions of SlideShare ($119 million) and Pulse ($90 million).

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Earlier Picks

Liam Tung / ZDNet:
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch: