Techmeme: When Twitter's IPO lockup expires Saturday, employees can sell 1.8% of company's shares (Yoree Koh/Digits)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

February 14, 2014, 4:55 PM

Top News

Mayumi Negishi / Wall Street Journal:

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten to buy voice-call app maker Viber for $900 million — Rakuten to Buy Voice-Call App Maker Viber — Japanese e-commerce Giant to Spend $900 million — TOKYO—Japan's Rakuten Inc. said it will acquire call-application maker Cyprus-based Viber Media Inc …

More: Business Wire, Rakuten, Inc.Press Releases, TechCrunch, BBC, DealBook, The Next Web, SiliconBeat, The Verge, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, Reuters, SiliconANGLE, Re/code, Fortune, CNET, Digital Trends, FierceWireless, Guardian, IntoMobile, BGR, AndroidOS.in, Ubergizmo, PC World, Cult of Mac, Tech in Asia, Gigaom, iDownloadBlog.com, App Advice, Engadget and ZDNet

Tweets: @semil, @benbajarin, @fcourt and @caseynewton

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Exclusive Interview: Rakuten's Mikitani Calls $900 Million He Paid for Viber a “No-Brainer” — “This is a no-brainer,” was the first thing that Hiroshi Mikitani, co-founder and CEO of Japan's online commerce giant Rakuten, said to me in his first interview after he spent $900 million in cash to buy messaging app Viber.

More: BetaNews, The Next Web, Business Insider, The Register, internetretailer.com, Tech in Asia, Electronista, InfoWorld, Digits, iPhone in Canada Blog and Softpedia News

Tweets: @papadimitriou, @hmikitani_e and @juroosawa

Jason Del Rey / Re/code:

Major League Baseball Completes iBeacon Installation at First Two Ballparks — Major League Baseball is set to announce on Friday morning that it has finished outfitting its first two ballparks with iBeacon sensors that will shoot messages to baseball game attendees' phones this upcoming season.

More: Gigaom, iMore, 9to5Mac, iDownloadBlog.com, Engadget, iPhone Hacks, MacRumors, iPhone in Canada Blog and MacNN

Tweets: @waltmossberg and @bgurley

Yoree Koh / Digits:

When Twitter's IPO lockup expires Saturday, employees can sell 1.8% of company's shares — Twitter Employees' First Opportunity to Cash Out — A small pile of Twitter shares could be freed to the market this week as agreements that barred employees from selling a portion of their shares after the IPO expire.

More: Bloomberg, Tech Trader Daily, TechCrunch, Business Insider and Re/code

Tweets: @qthrul and @hunterwalk

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

Apple and Samsung headed back to court after mediation talks fail, say reports — Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung's mobile chief and co-CEO JK Shin reportedly met last week to try and thrash out a settlement to their long-running intellectual property dispute.

Blair Hanley Frank / GeekWire:

Nokia says Indian tax dispute won't stop Microsoft deal — Nokia Chairman and Interim CEO Risto Sillasmaa — While a tax dispute in India over Nokia's manufacturing plant in Chennai continues to rage, the company says it won't cause any problems for closing the sale of its Devices and Services business to Microsoft.

More: Nokia, WMPoweruser, ZDNet, Re/code, The Verge, SlashGear, Wall Street Journal and PhoneArena

Wall Street Journal:

Target cyber security staff raised concerns at least two months before data breach — Target Warned of Vulnerabilities Before Data Breach — Target Corp.'s computer security staff raised concerns about vulnerabilities in the retailer's payment card system at least two months …

Tweets: @wsjd. Thanks:@evelynrusli

Stephen Shankland / CNET:

Chrome speeds up web apps by compiling JavaScript in the background — Google: Under-the-hood change helps Web apps on Chrome — Google has taught Chrome how to walk and chew gum at the same time. — The newest Chrome beta version, 33, includes a feature called concurrent compilation …

More: Chromium Blog, Electronista, HEXUS.net Latest Content, SlashGear, Softpedia News, The Next Web and The Register

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft extends date for OEM preloads of Windows 7 for business users — Summary: Business users will be able to buy PCs with Windows 7 Professional preloaded beyond October 2014, according to a new change in Microsoft's lifecycle policy. — Microsoft is going to allow OEMs to continue …

More: ZDNet, PC World, BGR, SuperSite for Windows, Microsoft News, WindowsITPro and Microsoft Windows

Wall Street Journal:

Japan Display, world's biggest tablet and smartphone display maker, plans $4 billion IPO — Japan Display to List for $4 Billion — World's Biggest Maker of Tablet, Smartphone Displays to Trade on Tokyo Exchange — TOKYO—Japan Display Inc., the world's biggest maker of smartphone …

More: VentureBeat, Reuters, MarketWatch and Bloomberg

Craig Malisow / Dallas Observer:

How an 18yo Texan who posted a facetious threat to Facebook now faces 10 years in prison — The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life — A young man's violent threat on Facebook lands him in jail, and limbo. — Approximately one hour after Justin Carter posted a sarcastic comment on a Facebook thread …

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @avinash, @pronailprincesa, @nicolaskb and @jbrodkin

Shane Cole / AppleInsider:

Court grants Apple's motion to dismiss Siri misrepresentation lawsuit — After two years of legal maneuvering, U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken on Friday dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit alleging that Apple's iPhone 4S advertisements had misrepresented the capabilities of the company's Siri personal digital assistant.

More: Bloomberg

Ina Fried / Re/code:

Now There's a Federal Bill to Require a Smartphone “Kill Switch” — Following on the heels of a California bill, four Democratic senators on Thursday proposed a federal law that would require those that make cellular devices to equip them with the ability to be permanently deactivated if stolen.

More: U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, The Register, PC Magazine, The Technology Chronicles, CNET, Cult of Mac, T3 News, PhoneNews.com, Breaking Apple News …, App Advice, Electronista, HotHardware.com News, MacRumors, iPhone Hacks and AppleInsider

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Former Groupon Product SVP Jeff Holden Joins Uber As Chief Product Officer — Well that was fast. Just a few days after it was revealed that Groupon product chief Jeff Holden was leaving the daily deals giant to join a “Bay Area tech company,” we now know where he has landed.

More: Uber Blog, Gigaom, Re/code, GeekWire, Digits and Street Fight

Adam Entous / Wall Street Journal:

U.S.-South Korea Communications Won't Use Huawei Gear — U.S. Had Been Concerned Huawei Equipment Could Be Used for Spying — SEOUL—South Korea has addressed U.S. concerns about letting a Chinese telecommunications company develop the country's advanced wireless network by agreeing …

More: Ars Technica, The Verge, Reuters and Engadget. Tweets: @amadooooo

Evelyn M. Rusli / Wall Street Journal:

New Apps Whisper and Secret Cater to a Craving to Dish Freely — Messaging Services Offer Anonymity and a Web With Fewer Consequences — Michael Edgeworth, a 20-year-old college student in Illinois, rarely texts and never tweets. — However, he sends more than 50 messages a day on Snapchat that disappear soon after they are read.

More: TechCrunch. Tweets: @zeynep, @scottmaustin, @wsjd, @scottmaustin and @evelynrusli

Gregory T. Huang / Xconomy:

Bit9 buys Carbon Black, raises $38.25M to boost its enterprise security offering — Bit9 Buys Carbon Black, Gets $38M to Try to Win Security Arms Race — 2014 is shaping up to be the year of cybersecurity. Or lack thereof. — It seems every week we hear about a new data breach or major hacking operation.

More: VentureBeat, Computerworld, theWHIR.com, PE Hub Blog, SecurityWeek, Pulse 2.0 and Bit9

Samuel Gibbs / Guardian:

Thousands of Tesco.com customer accounts suspended after hacker attack — More than 2,000 leaked usernames and passwords forced the retailer to suspend online shopping accounts — Tesco has been forced to deactivate online customer accounts after thousands of login details, including passwords, were posted online.

More: Computerworld, BBC, The Register, Telegraph and CNET

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Cape:

Most carriers track everything. Cape doesn't. — Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more. Switch today and get 29% off for life.

Zoho:

Do you need a Zoho Partner? Here's why working with one can benefit you. — Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case. From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:

Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

Great Chat:

Tech's short-term era

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Access:

Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth

A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.

Subscribe to Access.

The Upstarts Podcast:

Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer

Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.

Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety, and Hollywood's Sort-of Comeback

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:55 PM ET, February 14, 2014.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.