Techmeme: Facebook's Open Compute guru Frank Frankovsky leaves to build optical storage startup (Stacey Higginbotham/Gigaom)

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March 25, 2014, 6:05 PM

Top News

Facebook:

Facebook to Acquire Oculus VR for approximately $2 billion — Facebook to Acquire Oculus — Acquisition positions Facebook to accelerate Oculus' growth in gaming, communications and new social experiences — Facebook today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Oculus VR …

More: PandoDaily, Business Insider, TechCrunch, GeekWire, Tech Trader Daily, ZDNet, Wall Street Journal, Re/code, Oculus VR, The Verge, The Next Web, Mercury News, Variety, SlashGear, Polygon and This and That

Tweets: @mathewi, @jaredkim, @owenthomas and @joannastern

Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook:

Oculus will operate independently within Facebook, focusing first on gaming, and later becoming a new communication platform — I'm excited to announce that we've agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology. — Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.

More: TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Inside Facebook, Engadget, Wall Street Journal, VG247, iDownloadBlog.com, All Games Beta, chris dixon's blog, Kotaku Australia, Joystiq, IGN and VentureBreak

Tweets: @pmarca and @tccoxon

Thanks:@orbuch

David Pierce / The Verge:

HTC One (M8) review: a gorgeous, fast, long-lasting phone with a weak, inconsistent camera — The new HTC One review — The best or nothing — My first car was a 1997 Saturn SL1, a tiny black box with headlights that were too close together and a 0-60 time in the neighborhood of three and a half hours.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget:

HTC announces the new One with depth-sensing camera and larger screen

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget:

The new HTC One is available in Google Play and Developer editions

More: WebProNews, The Next Web, Guardian, Droid Life and Gigaom

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Fitbit Partnership With HTC Gives It A Leg Up In The Fitness Tracking Space

Kevin C. Tofel / Gigaom:

Verizon stores offer HTC One M8 immediately, others start online orders

More: Verizon Wireless, The Switch, Los Angeles Times, Engadget, Guardian, LAPTOP Magazine, Gotta Be Mobile and Softpedia News

Chance Miller / 9to5Google:

HTC adds key Sense apps to Play Store to make updating easier

More: BGR, TechCrunch and 9to5Mac

Jeffrey Meisner / The Official Microsoft Blog:

Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public — The following post is from Roy Levin, distinguished engineer and managing director, Microsoft Research. — On Tuesday, we dusted off the source code for early versions of MS-DOS and Word for Windows.

More: Ars Technica, PC World, Computer History Museum, BetaNews, GeekWire, VentureBeat, The Verge, Engadget, WinBeta, The Next Web and Redmond Pie

Rob Wile / Business Insider:

IRS: Bitcoin Is Property [FULL RELEASE] — The IRS has ruled Bitcoin should be treated as property, not as currency, for tax purposes. — The agency says anyone who holds the currency will have to calculate its value from the date it was received to determine whether a gain or loss was realized, and report the result.

More: irs.gov, TechCrunch, Gigaom, Wall Street Journal, The Verge, Gizmodo, Salon, SlashGear, Associated Press, USA Today, Reuters and CryptoCoinsNews

Tweets: @hblodget, @ryanjtracy, @felixsalmon and @kevinroose

Bloomberg:

Bitcoin Is Property Not Currency in Tax System, IRS Says — The U.S. government will treat Bitcoin as property for tax purposes, applying rules it uses to govern stocks and barter transactions, the Internal Revenue Service said in its first substantive ruling on the issue.

More: PC World, BuzzFeed, Forbes, Consumerist and NPR. Tweets: @adrianchen

Charlie Savage / New York Times:

Obama to Call for End to N.S.A.'s Bulk Data Collection — WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is preparing to unveil a legislative proposal for a far-reaching overhaul of the National Security Agency's once-secret bulk phone records program in a way that — if approved by Congress …

More: The Intercept, Guardian, Digital Trends, Federal Computer Week, Ars Technica, PandoDaily and The Switch. See also Mediagazer

Federico Viticci / MacStories:

Apple Testing Related Search Suggestions On The App Store — As first noted by developer Olga Osadcha, Apple is testing a related search suggestion feature on the App Store, which started rolling out earlier today for iPhone users on iOS 7. — The new menu, a scrollable bar with suggestions …

More: CNET, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, PandoDaily, Computerworld, iMore, MacRumors, Business Insider, Engadget, Softpedia News, iPhone in Canada Blog, SlashGear, everythingiCafe, iDownloadBlog.com and iPhone

Tweets: @oosadcha and @tapbot_paul

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google Announces Massive Price Drops For Its Cloud Computing Services And Storage, Introduces Sustained-Use Discounts — At its Cloud Platform event in San Francisco today, Google announced a number of massive price drops for virtually all of its cloud-computing services.

More: Google Cloud Platform Blog, Ars Technica, CITEworld, New York Times, Tech Trader Daily, TechCrunch, ReadWrite, PC World, GeekWire, 9to5Google, VentureBeat, The Register, Forbes, ZDNet, VentureBeat, GeekWire, Wired, Gigaom and Forrester Blogs. Tweets: @sampullara

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Cathy Edwards, Co-Founder Of Chomp, Is Leaving Apple On April 11 — A notable personnel departure is coming up in Cupertino: Cathy Edwards, the co-founder and CTO of app search and discovery platform Chomp, is leaving Apple on April 11, TechCrunch has learned.

More: AdAge, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, iPhone Hacks, iPhone in Canada Blog and MacNN

Andy Greenberg / Forbes:

Dorian Nakamoto's neighbor and second Bitcoin user Hal Finney denies helping to invent Bitcoin — Satoshi Nakamoto's Neighbor: The Bitcoin Ghostwriter Who Wasn't — Hal Finney's light brown eyes are pointed down. — I've just asked him if he was involved in the creation of Bitcoin.

Tweets: @binarybits, @trevortimm and @kashhill. Thanks:@thealexknapp

Roger Cheng / CNET:

Sony won't use Android Wear, will stick with Smartwatch — The head of Sony Mobile's US arm also tells CNET that sales of its Xperia Z1s has exceeded expectations at T-Mobile. — Sony's SmartWatch 2. — Sarah Tew/CNET — ATLANTA—Sony will continue to strike its own path when it comes to its wearable products.

More: TechCrunch, Digital Trends, Computerworld, Geeky Gadgets, Android Central, TechnoBuffalo, Engadget, Electronista, DailyTech, 9to5Google, Ubergizmo, Softpedia News and The Verge

Casey Johnston / Ars Technica:

E-book price fixing settlements land in Amazon customers' inboxes — There may be still more money to come from other e-book retailers. — As of Tuesday morning, Amazon has begun issuing account credits to Kindle book buyers as a result of legal settlements with book publishers including Harper Collins …

More: Gigaom, New York Times, Gizmodo, Ebooks AG Settlements, The Switch, Associated Press, MacRumors, AppleInsider, GeekWire, Engadget, ReadWrite, CIO Blogs, Good E-Reader and Mashable. Tweets: @dannysullivan. See also Mediagazer

Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:

The absurd ebook case: Apple fights on as consumers spend settlement money at Amazon

More: SiliconBeat

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Nvidia unveils next-generation graphics processor with 3D memory — Above: Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang with a Pascal chip — Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang unveiled his company's latest graphics-processor architecture, code-named Pascal, that will put a “supercomputer in the space of two credit cards.”

More: NVIDIA, NVIDIA, Engadget, The Next Web, Inquirer, ZDNet, Ars Technica, Engadget, ExtremeTech, Forbes, CNET and SlashGear

Phil Savage / PC Gamer:

Nvidia announce GeForce GTX Titan Z, brings 12GB VRAM for $3,000

More: NVIDIA, PC Magazine, Computerworld, Gizmodo, WebProNews, VentureBeat, Engadget and VG247

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:

Facebook's Open Compute guru Frank Frankovsky leaves to build optical storage startup — Frank Frankovsky, Facebook's vice president of hardware design and supply chain optimization, who helped oversee the development and growth of the company's custom server effort, has left …

More: Frank Frankovsky, Wall Street Journal, SiliconANGLE, VentureBeat, AllFacebook, Re/code, bizjournals, Cisco Blog and Open Compute Project

Evelyn M. Rusli / Wall Street Journal:

Big-Data Startup RelateIQ Raises Another $40 Million — Big data continues wooing big money. — RelateIQ Inc., a relationship management software startup, has raised $40 million in fresh capital at a valuation of $245 million. The round, led by Redpoint Ventures also includes several new investors …

More: TechCrunch

Matt Burns / TechCrunch:

Intel Completes Purchase Of Basis Science, Which Will Join Intel's Device's Group — Intel has just announced its acquisition of Basis Science, the hot wearable technology company based in San Francisco. As TechCrunch first reported, the startup went to the chipmaker for around $100 million.

More: Intel Newsroom, Basis, Engadget, The Verge, VentureBeat and Business Insider

Austin Carr / Fast Company:

Instagram Testing Facebook Places Integration To Replace Foursquare — Popular photo-sharing app Instagram is testing integration with Facebook Places, Facebook's venue database. Facebook, of course, owns Instagram. The experiment signals that Instagram may eventually wean itself off …

More: TechHive, iDownloadBlog.com and iPhone in Canada Blog

Tweets: @joshconstine and @nikf

Thanks:@shlivy

Maya Yarowsky / NoCamels:

Waze Attacked: Technion Students Create Traffic Jam Cyber Attack On GPS App — Students from the Technion created a program able to disrupt Waze's advanced navigation systems, causing it to report fictitious traffic jams that redirected routes on the popular GPS platform.

More: Haaretz and Jerusalem Post

Serena Saitto / Bloomberg:

Waze co-founder Uri Levine, declining to join Google, launches finance-planning startup FeeX — Waze Co-Founder Skips Google to Try Startup World Again — Uri Levine still has the entrepreneurial bug. After selling map-software provider Waze to Google for $1.1 billion last June …

More: Business Insider, VentureBeat, Digital Journal and American Banker

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