Techmeme
March 31, 2014, 6:35 AM

Top News

Adam Levitin / Credit Slips:
Last week's IRS ruling means bitcoins are not fungible, therefore unworkable as a currency  —  Bitcoin Tax Ruling  —  The IRS has spoken: Bitcoins are property, not currency.  This was hardly a surprise, but it has some important implication that tells us a lot about what it takes to make a currency work.
Danny Bradbury / CoinDesk:
What the IRS Bitcoin Tax Guidelines Mean For You  —  The US Internal Revenue Service finally announced its guidance for virtual currencies yesterday, explicitly referring to bitcoin (see the announcement here and notice here).  The increased clarity - provided three weeks before the end of the US tax year …
Marcella Bombardieri / The Boston Globe:
Court documents reveal ambivalence in how MIT assisted Aaron Swartz's prosecution  —  The inside story of MIT and Aaron Swartz  —  More than a year after Swartz killed himself rather than face prosecution, questions about MIT's handling of the hacking case persist
Eat24:
A marketer's amusing “Breakup Letter” to Facebook over News Feed algorithm changes  —  A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24  —  Hey.  It's Eat24.  Look, we need to talk.  This isn't easy to say since we've been together so long, but we need to break up.
Laszlo Bock / Harvard Business Review:
Google is two years into gDNA, a long-term study to understand employees' work-life balance  —  Google's Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance (and Much More)  —  More than 65 years ago in Massachusetts, doctors began a longitudinal study that would transform our understanding of heart disease.
Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:
Dropbox clarifies takedown policy, compares file hashes to identify infringing shared links  —  How Dropbox Knows When You're Sharing Copyrighted Stuff (Without Actually Looking At Your Stuff)  —  Late last night, a tweet was spread far and wide showing that a DMCA notice had blocked a file …
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
Review: Asus crafts a tiny $179 Chromebox out of cheap, low-power parts  —  The Asus Chromebox (bottom) is a mini desktop molded in the image of Intel's NUC.  —  Specs at a glance: Asus Chromebox CN60 OS  —  Chrome OS  —  CPU  —  1.4GHz Celeron 2955U  —  RAM  —  2GB 1600MHz DDR3 (should support upgrades up to 16GB)
Julian Sanchez / The Daily Beast:
Of the three main NSA reform proposals, the USA Freedom Act limits the NSA powers the most  —  The Best NSA Fix Comes From the Patriot Act's Author  —  The White House would stop NSA's phone dragnet, but leave the power behind it intact.  An unlikely Republican's bill does better.
Jon Russell / The Next Web:
Online learning company Coursera launches an Android app  —  Online learning company Coursera has finally come to Android after launching an app for the Google-owned mobile platform.  The launch comes just over three months after Coursera debuted its iOS app, its first native mobile app …

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More News

Martha Mendoza / Associated Press:

Earlier Picks

Threes:
Larry Seltzer / ZDNet:
Julie Zhuo / Medium: