Techmeme: Tech's biggest players hire first NSA lobbyist (Tony Romm/Politico)

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February 7, 2014, 9:50 AM

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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.

More: VentureBeat, ZDNet, Associated Press, Fortune, New York Times, Quartz, Bloomberg, App Advice, Cult of Mac, TUAW, App Advice, SlashGear and USA Today

Tweets: @sandycannold, @michyuan, @sammywalrusiv and @drewdowell

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.

More: iMore, CNET, TheStreet.com, 9to5Mac, ZDNet, Mashable, Geeky Gadgets, iPhone in Canada Blog, Business Insider, MacNN, iDownloadBlog.com, MacDailyNews, AppleInsider, Business Insider, MacRumors, The Next Web and AppleInsider

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple buys sapphire crystal furnaces for AZ plant, capable of producing 100-200M ~5" iPhone displays per year — Exclusive: Apple just procured enough Sapphire Crystal furnaces to make 100-200M ~5-inch iPhone displays in Arizona — Last year, Apple and GT Advanced struck a deal to open …

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.

More: Business Insider, DSLreports, F-Secure Antivirus …, Android Central, CNET, Graham Cluley, iMore, Engadget and Daring Fireball

Tweets: @a_greenberg, @jandrade, @peard33, @iliablinderman, @stilgherrian, @tapbot_paul and @inthisdimension

See also Mediagazer

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

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 …

More: Engadget and CNET

Randeep Ramesh / Guardian:

Police will have ‘backdoor’ access to health records despite opt-out, says MP — David Davis says police would be able to approach central NHS database without a warrant as critics warn of catastrophic breach of trust — The database that will store the entire nation's health records has a series of …

More: Wired.co.uk. Tweets: @policemonitor, @shrink_at_large, @ianbrownoii and @smaurizi

Kashyap Deorah / OpenTable Blog:

Pay Your Check with OpenTable Mobile: Pilot Payment Program Launches in San Francisco — First, OpenTable made it simple to book a restaurant reservation at any time of day or night with just a few clicks. Now, we're pleased to announce that it will soon be just as easy to pay for your meal.

More: TechCrunch, The Verge, Eater National, MacRumors and The Next Web

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

OpenTable Buys Ness For $17.3M To Beef Up Mobile And Restaurant Recommendations

More: Press Room, Press Room, VatorNews, Internet2Go, silicontap.com, Skift, bizjournals, App Advice, Re/code and Eater National

Tweets: @jess and @chloepark

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).

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

LinkedIn Beats In Q4 With Revenue Of $447.2M, But Growth Concerns Dampen After Hours Trading

More: SiliconANGLE, blog.linkedin.com, VatorNews, TheDomains.com, Gigaom, Forbes, VatorNews, GeekWire, Re/code, Reuters, MarketWatch, ZDNet and Tech Trader Daily

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.

More: Digits, TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, Gizmodo, Telegraph, WebProNews, Reuters, The Verge, BetaNews, Sarah Perez, Gigaom and Lowyat.NET. Tweets: @dannysullivan. See also Mediagazer

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: BGR India. Tweets: @marypcbuk and @alexdc

Liam Tung / ZDNet:

IBM lands deal to make DARPA's self-destructing ‘VAPR’ ware — Summary: DARPA's VAPR project could allow it to blanket vast areas with monitoring sensors without risking the equipment falling into enemy hands. — Liam Tung — IBM has won a US government contract to create a model for transient devices that destruct on command.

More: BBC, Ars Technica, Motherboard, TechEye, Pocket-lint, SiliconANGLE, The Hacker News, Geek.com, Business Insider, Washington Post, ExecutiveBiz, DeviceMAG, SlashGear, ExtremeTech, Ubergizmo, Engadget and The Register

Richard Lawler / Engadget:

Redbox gets a new president plucked from the studios, former Warner exec Mark Horak — Redbox has gone from fighting the studios to build its video rental (and now streaming) business to having deals with them, and that cozy new relationship is reflected by its choice of a new leader.

More: CNET, Variety, Hollywood Reporter and GeekWire. See also Mediagazer

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Android search update lets you pick video-on-demand providers in Google Now — Little software updates sometimes make a big difference. Google has rolled out an update to Android's search app that's currently listed as a simple bug fix, yet introduces a deluge of new features for Google Now.

More: Android Police, Search Engine Land, Geeky Gadgets, Softpedia News and BGR

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

That Secret App Is Becoming Silicon Valley's New Blind Item — “I work at Evernote and we're about to get acquired... Watch this space” — That could be the first big acquisition rumor to have found its way onto Secret, the new “anonymish” sharing app launched late last week. But it won't be the last.

More: Valleywag, bub.blicio.us, Venture Capital Dispatch and Yahoo Tech

Tweets: @plibin, @dcurtis, @danprimack, @frankba, @sarahlane, @tedr, @profjeffjarvis, @benparr, @jyarow, @ajs, @jessicalessin, @karaswisher, @danprimack, @panzer, @hunterwalk, @sg, @howardlindzon, @carnage4life and @ryanlawler

Tony Romm / Politico:

Tech's biggest players hire first NSA lobbyist — Apple, Google, Facebook and five other technology giants that have banded together in their calls for surveillance reform officially registered a Washington lobbyist on Thursday. — The new hire — tasked to represent a coalition that also includes AOL …

More: The Switch and TheHill. Tweets: @govjventura

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

Twitter rejects compromise on secret government orders

More: Inquirer, The Twitter Blog, Digits, Techdirt, Marketing Land, memeburn, NYT Bits, ReadWrite, Electronista, Marketing Pilgrim, SiliconBeat, Engadget, Guardian, CNET, Re/code, The Next Web, TechCrunch and Softpedia News. See also Mediagazer

Rip Empson / TechCrunch:

Descomplica Lands $5M From Social+Capital, AngelList's First International Syndicate To Become Brazil's Go-To Online Classroom — Internet penetration and social media usage are on the rise in every corner of the globe, but few can hold a candle to the level of adoption one finds in Brazil.

Tweets: @leejacobs

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Firefox beta brings touch-friendly web browsing to Windows 8 — After roughly a year of development, Mozilla has at last released a beta of Firefox for Windows 8. The not-quite-finished browser gives early adopters a full touchscreen interface with finger-friendly elements and gesture support.

More: Future Releases, ZDNet, Windows Phone Central, The Next Web, Electronista, CNET, Softpedia News, Geeky Gadgets, SlashGear, Softpedia News and The Register

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