Techmeme
February 22, 2014, 3:25 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
To counter competition, Microsoft will charge manufacturers $15 instead of $50 to install Windows on devices under $250  —  Microsoft Said to Cut Windows Price 70% to Counter Rivals  —  Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is cutting the price of Windows 8.1 by 70 percent for makers of low-cost computers …
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp Was Valued At ~$1.5B In Final Round Before Sale  —  WhatsApp did a great job of being surreptitious about its funding while growing into a messaging monster.  But as they say, the truth always comes out.  —  In this case, the truth is that the company had three rounds of financing, with Sequoia as the sole investor.
More: Digital Trends and Salon.  Tweets: @eghosao
Kevin Poulsen / Wired:
Behind iPhone's Critical Security Bug, a Single Bad ‘Goto’  —  Like everything else on the iPhone, the critical crypto flaw announced in iOS 7 yesterday turns out to be a study in simplicity and elegant design: a single spurious “goto” in one part of Apple's authentication code that accidentally bypasses the rest of it.
Chris Williams / The Register:
Seth Weintraub / 9to5Google:
New Samsung Gear 2 / Neo Smartwatches (Gold is Best!) shown in leaks  —  We're expecting to see Samsung unveil an update to their Galaxy Gear Smartwatches in Barcelona next week and of course that means electronics leaker @evleaks has them for us this week.  It seems that these won't be branded Galaxy and will be called Gear 2 and Neo.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook Tests Mobile “Highlights”, A Cheat Sheet To Your Friends' Lives  —  Facebook said there were just big fixes in its 7.0 iOS update it released yesterday, but actually there's a big new feature it's testing called Highlights.  Inside the People tab you'll see Highlights including friends' Life Events …
TechCrunch:
Goldman Sachs gives early assessment of Bitcoin, noting opportunities and potential issues  —  Goldman Sachs Takes On Bitcoin  —  The eye of big finance is finally turning towards cryptocurrency.  Responding to requests from clients, Goldman Sachs has put out an early assessment of Bitcoin …
More: CoinDesk.  Tweets: @tuurdemeester
Loretta Chao / Wall Street Journal:
Twitter, Other Apps Disrupted in Venezuela Amid Protests  —  The Venezuelan government, besieged by nationwide protests, appears to have stepped up its censorship of Internet services used by demonstrators and sites that have criticized the government response to the unrest, technology firms and researchers said.
Lucian Constantin / Computerworld:
Source code for Android iBanking bot surfaces on underground forum  —  Leaked source code could lead to a larger number of attacks using the mobile malware, security researchers from RSA said  —  The source code for an Android mobile banking Trojan app was released on an underground forum …

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