Techmeme
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 …
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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 …
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.
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.
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 …
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.”
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
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.

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Peter Kafka / Re/code: