Techmeme
April 4, 2014, 1:40 PM

Top News

iFixit:
Amazon Fire TV Teardown  —  Rainy weather got you down?  Stuck inside sitting on the couch eating popcorn?  What better to do whilst eating popcorn than...watch TV.  While on Fire.  Amazon Fire TV.™ Yesterday, Amazon announced a tiny black box that supposedly does everything better than all of the other tiny black boxes.
Brendan Eich:
Brendan Eich on leaving Mozilla, taking a break and what's next  —  The Next Mission  —  Slides for the brief talk that I gave at a Harvard seminar on privacy and user data organized by John Taysom last week.  —  My talk was really more about the “network problem” than the “protocol problem”.
Kara Swisher / Re/code:
Jonathan Cheng / Wall Street Journal:
Samsung claims breakthrough in commercializing graphene, of potential use in flexible displays  —  Samsung Claims Progress on the Next Wonder Material  —  A group of researchers supported by Samsung Electronics said Friday that they've developed a technique for synthesizing graphene …
Associated Press:
“Cuban Twitter” heads to hearings in Congress  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the U.S. government agency that secretly created a “Cuban Twitter” communications network designed to undermine the communist government in Cuba is expected to testify next week before a senator who thinks the whole idea was “dumb, dumb, dumb.”
Derrick Harris / Gigaom:
Facebook open sources code for managing A/B tests  —  A/B tests to determine which features or designs work best is a standard tool of the trade for any data scientist working on a web or mobile application.  On Thursday, Facebook released a portion of its A/B testing code, called PlanOut …
Aaron Souppouris / The Verge:
Samsung's Ativ SE Windows Phone now available for pre-order from Verizon  —  Ships April 12th without Windows Phone 8.1 update  —  After multiple leaks, the Samsung Ativ SE is now official.  As expected, the device arrives with Windows Phone 8, a 5-inch 1080p display, a 13-megapixel camera …
Ben Fox Rubin / Wall Street Journal:
GrubHub raises $193M from IPO, shares up 54% in early trading valuing company at more than $3B  —  GrubHub Shares Surge in Early Trading  —  Offering Is Latest Sign of Healthy Appetite for Fast-Growing Internet Stocks  —  Shares of restaurant take-out website GrubHub Inc. rose sharply …
Walter Frick / HBR.org:
Founders under 35 are likely the majority among those who built billion-dollar businesses  —  How Old Are Silicon Valley's Top Founders?  Here's the Data  —  Last week, The New Republic published a lengthy exploration of ageism in Silicon Valley, the idea that venture capitalists discriminate …
More: FortuneTweets: @harvardbizThanks:@wfrick
Neha Dimri / Reuters:
Car-pricing comparison site TrueCar files for up to $125M IPO  —  Car-comparison website TrueCar files for IPO  —  (Reuters) - TrueCar Inc, which runs a car-pricing comparison website, filed with U.S. regulators on Friday to raise up to $125 million in an initial public offering of common stock.
Andy / TorrentFreak:
Slysoft DVD Ripper owner fined $30K in criminal action by Antigua & Barbuda court  —  Slysoft DVD Ripper Owner Found Guilty in Criminal Action  —  If one existed, Antigua would hardly head up a list of countries sympathetic to copyright claims originating from the United States.
More: Plagiarism Today and RT
Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
Khosla VC Rabois Looks To Make Homes Easy To Sell In A Few Clicks  —  Keith Rabois, the former Square and PayPal executive who is now handling much of Khosla Ventures' consumer investments, has a new side gig.  —  He's co-founding a company under the codename Homerun that will make it easy to sell entire homes in a few clicks.
More: GeekWireTweets: @hunterwalk, @panzer and @mdudas
Leslie Picker / Bloomberg:
TPG-Backed IMS Health Gains After Raising $1.3 Billion in IPO  —  IMS Health Holdings Inc., a 60-year-old company that sells data on prescription use to drugmakers and analysts, rose in its trading debut.  —  The shares rose 11 percent $22.16 as of 9:44 a.m. in New York today.
Matt Burns / TechCrunch:
T-Mobile CEO Fires Back After Losing BlackBerry Sales Arrangement  —  BlackBerry and T-Mobile executives should read Jordan's #love column.  Breaking up over the Internet is rough on everyone.  —  In a letter released this evening, T-Mobile's outspoken CEO John Legere talked …
Angus Loten / Wall Street Journal:
Business owners frustrated with Yelp are suing to try to unmask anonymous reviewers  —  Yelp Reviews Brew a Fight Over Free Speech vs. Fairness  —  Many Businesses Say Anonymity of Comments Is Unfair, Sue to Unmask Users  —  A closely watched Internet free-speech case is headed …
Jacob Gershman / Wall Street Journal:
In bid to trademark “Glass”, Google faces objections from USPTO  —  Google Is Having Trouble Trying to Trademark the Word ‘Glass’  —  Google is trying to register the word “Glass” as a trademark for its computer-powered glasses.  But so far, the company and the U.S. trademark office aren't seeing eye to eye.

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Earlier Picks

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