Techmeme: Airbnb to collect hotel taxes for San Francisco rentals (Carolyn Said/San Francisco Chronicle)

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April 1, 2014, 10:40 AM

Top News

Reiji Murai / Reuters:

Sources: Production of 4.7" iPhone 6 screen to begin in May, 5.5" starting months later — New iPhone 6 screens to enter production as early as May: sources — (Reuters) - Apple Inc suppliers will begin mass producing displays as early as May for the next iPhone, expected to be launched this autumn …

Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg's Base Salary Falls to $1 — Mark Zuckerberg has decided he's a $1-a-year man. — Zuckerberg, who is Facebook Inc. (FB)'s chief executive officer and also the 22nd richest person in the world as ranked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, was paid $1 in salary for 2013 …

More: TechnoBuffalo, Wall Street Journal, SocialTimes, bizjournals, Billboard, Yahoo! Finance, Sky News Australia and AllFacebook

Carolyn Said / San Francisco Chronicle:

Airbnb to collect hotel taxes for San Francisco rentals — Airbnb, the fast-growing website that lets people rent out their homes or rooms to travelers, took a giant step toward legalizing itself in San Francisco with an announcement Monday evening that it will begin paying the city's 14 percent hotel tax by this summer.

More: The Airbnb Public Policy Blog and TechCrunch

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft's Bing expands Snapshot feature to surface doctors, dentists, lawyers, and real estate listings — Microsoft today updated its Bing search engine to show more information via the Snapshot feature, which pulls together connections between people, places, and the “things you care about” …

More: Search Blog, Search Engine Land, WinBeta, Computerworld, TechCrunch and Pulse 2.0

Douglas MacMillan / Wall Street Journal:

Yahoo in talks to acquire online video service News Distribution Network for close to $300M — Yahoo in Talks to Buy Online-Video Service NDN — Sources — Deal Would Help Yahoo Compete With Google's YouTube — Yahoo Inc. is in preliminary talks to acquire online-video service News …

More: The Register, ReadWrite, Digital Trends, TechEye, ZDNet, TechnoBuffalo, Business Insider, Beet.TV, Reuters and Deadline.com

Tweets: @xpangler, @dmac1 and @karaswisher

See also Mediagazer

Colin Campbell / Polygon:

How ‘Game Jam,’ an indie game dev reality show, collapsed on its first day of filming — Game_Jam, a TV-style reality show focused on the efforts of indie game developers, has collapsed in the most publicly acrimoniously way imaginable, participants say. — Touted by its makers as a contest …

More: Indie Statik, Softpedia News, The Verge, Boing Boing and Kotaku. Tweets: @colincampbellx

Lisa Fleisher / Wall Street Journal:

Balderton Raises $305m for European Series A Tech Investments — Venture-capital firm Balderton Capital has opened a $305 million start-up fund, hoping to spread out lots of small investments and have a bigger chance of hitting it big. The company, one of the top venture funds in Europe …

More: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, PE Hub Blog, London News and The Next Web. Tweets: @fredlardieg

Julie / iPhone Hacks:

Pebble asks users not to install v2.1 update, citing critical issue that breaks app — Pebble is asking its users not to install the version 2.1 update for the iPhone that was released March 31st, citing a critical issue that prevents the app from working. — The company does …

More: forums.getpebble.com, Smartwatch Fans, iMore and TUAW

Tweets: @pebble and @pebble

Nitesh Dhanjani:

Tesla's website allows weak passwords and brute-force attacks, easing remote unlocking and location tracking for attackers — Cursory Evaluation of the Tesla Model S: We Can't Protect Our Cars Like We Protect Our Workstations — The innovation behind Tesla's electric vehicles has set us …

More: Reuters, ExtremeTech, Engadget, Computerworld, PC & Tech Authority, TechWeekEurope UK, Softpedia News, The Register, SecurityWeek, SC Magazine, Autoblog, I4U News, The Daily Caller, Ubergizmo, Graham Cluley and NBC News

Tweets: @symantec and @dannysullivan

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Yahoo Mulling Plans to Ax Its Shine Women's Site, Opting for More Online Lifestyle “Magazines” — Yahoo's Marissa Mayer is poised to take an ax to its longtime and massive women-focused content site Shine, closing it down by the second quarter, according to numerous sources close to the situation.

More: Skift. Tweets: @joepompeo, @jayrosen_nyu and @jeffjarvis. See also Mediagazer

Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:

Surprise, surprise: my online metadata actually reveals where I've been — Here are some of the places that Ars tracked Cyrus Farivar to in February 2014. — In January 2014, documents provided by Edward Snowden showed that a Canadian spy agency used a unique identifier to follow thousands …

More: TechPresident

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Jawbone acquires personalized music service Playground.fm, deal said to be “over 8 figures” — Jawbone Snaps Up Playground.fm — Looks like instead of being acquired, wrist and speaker hardware company Jawbone is doing some acquiring, scooping up social and personalized music …

More: hypebot

Reuters:

HP agrees to pay $57 million to settle shareholder lawsuit — (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co agreed to pay $57 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the personal computer maker's former management of defrauding shareholders by abandoning a business model it had long touted.

More: The Verge and SlashGear

Ken Dilanian / Los Angeles Times:

NSA chief's legacy is shaped by big data, for better and worse — Gen. Keith Alexander, who just retired as NSA director, achieved ‘absolutely invaluable’ results with digital spying but failed to anticipate how the public would feel about privacy. — “We need to recognize that those who are working …

More: The Intercept, Techdirt and Mashable

Tweets: @normative, @thegrugq, @ggreenwald, @nsa_pao, @kendilanianlat and @ggreenwald

Russell Brandom / The Verge:

OKCupid shows Firefox users a full-page interstitial suggesting alternate browsers in protest of Mozilla's CEO — OKCupid asks users to boycott Firefox because of CEO's gay rights stance — Anyone accessing the popular dating site OKCupid with Firefox today is in for a surprise.

Michael Calia / Wall Street Journal:

OpenText Seeks $268 Million in Patent Claims From Box — Firm Seeks to Block Online Storage Company From Selling Infringing Products — OpenText Corp. on Monday said it is seeking $268 million in damages from online storage company Box Inc. over 200 claims of alleged patent infringement.

Tweets: @benkiker

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