Techmeme
February 11, 2014, 10:45 AM

Top News

Lan Anh Nguyen / Forbes:
Exclusive: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App ‘Gone Forever’ Because It Was ‘An Addictive Product’  —  The mysterious developer of the world's most popular free app, who drew global attention this past weekend with his sudden decision to remove it, tells Forbes that Flappy Bird is dead.
Wall Street Journal:
Nokia Prepares to Release Android Phone Ahead of Sale to Microsoft  —  Finnish Smartphone Maker Readies Device for Barcelona Exhibit  —  Nokia Corp. plans to release this month a smartphone that runs a version of Google Inc. 's Android mobile software, according to people familiar with the matter …
Dan Seifert / The Verge:
Sprint's the only major US carrier yet to lose money this quarter, despite record subscribers  —  Sprint posted its fourth quarter earnings report for 2013 this morning, with highlights including the highest number of subscribers ever for the company.  The third-place carrier reports a loss of $1 billion …
Robert McMillan / Wired:
Google Takes Over NASA's Hangar One, a Silicon Valley Icon  —  Google has taken over the lease at the airfield that houses Hangar One — the giant eight-acre aircraft hangar that was built in 1933 to house massive dirigibles and now is one of the most recognizable landmarks in Silicon Valley.
Harrison Weber / VentureBeat:
Thousands of tech companies, groups, sites join “The Day We Fight Back” anti-NSA protest on Tuesday  —  Reddit, Mozilla, Tumblr and more gear up for massive NSA protest tomorrow  —  Caption: SOPA protests in San Francisco.  —  Source: Wikipedia  —  Remember the Internet's reaction to SOPA and PIPA?
Casey Johnston / Ars Technica:
Virgin Atlantic passengers get Google Glass customer service  —  Professionals are getting further into Google Glass.  A new video shows a firefighter's display while performing a rescue.  —  Google  —  Virgin Atlantic staff are getting Google Glass to help them assist customers, according to report from The Next Web.
Kim Zetter / Wired:
Sophisticated Spy Tool ‘The Mask’ Rages Undetected for 7 Years  —  PUNTA CANA, Dominican Republic - Researchers have uncovered a sophisticated cyber spying operation that has been alive since at least 2007 and uses techniques and code that surpass any nation-state spyware previously spotted in the wild.
Brian Fung / Washington Post:
This blogger paid Facebook to promote his page.  He got 80,000 bogus Likes instead.  —  If you manage a Facebook page for a company, interest or organization, then you know there are two main reasons Facebook Likes are important.  One is pretty obvious: The number of Likes you receive …
Rebecca Grant / VentureBeat:
And the winners are... Check out the victors from the Crunchies 2013!  —  It just wouldn't be an award show without drama.  The Crunchies Awards attracted the attention of anti-tech protestors this year, who staged a demonstration outside Davies Symphony Hall as the movers-and-shakers …
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
New Apple TV hardware references already appearing in iOS 7 builds  —  We reported last fall that a revamped Apple TV set-top-box is in the works, and then we learned earlier this year that the new box would likely be introduced in the first half of 2014.  Sources said at the time that the new model …
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
Netflix moves into deep learning research to improve personalization  —  Google isn't the only company looking to make lots and lots of computers function more like human brains.  —  In a blog post published earlier today, Netflix research engineers Alex Chen, Justin Basilico …
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Future Samsung phones could share what you type with other apps  —  ‘Context’ would reportedly share typing, sensor data, and app use  —  Samsung is said to be considering letting app developers know a whole lot more detail about what individual users do with their phones.

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