Techmeme
April 15, 2014, 2:40 PM

Top News

Zach Epstein / BGR:
Amazon's 4.7-inch 720p smartphone to have glasses-free 3D UI, four head-tracking infrared cameras  —  This is Amazon's smartphone  —  BGR gives the world an exclusive first look at the unannounced smartphone Amazon is set to debut in the coming months  —  After years of development …
Jana Messerschmidt / The Twitter Blog:
Twitter acquires social data provider Gnip, plans to offer more sophisticated data sets  —  Twitter welcomes Gnip to the flock  —  Every day Twitter users share and discuss their interests and what's happening in the world.  These public Tweets can reveal a wide variety of insights …
Ben Grubb / Sydney Morning Herald:
Heartbleed disclosure timeline: who knew what and when  —  Ever since the “Heartbleed” flaw in encryption protocol OpenSSL was made public on April 7 in the US there have been various questions about who knew what and when.  Fairfax Media has spoken to various people and groups involved and has compiled the below timeline.
Thijs van As / Gmail Blog:
Gmail makes it easier to email photos automatically backed up from your smartphone  —  The photos from your phone, now one click away  —  Unless you're a budding Ansel Adams, odds are you take most of your photos using your phone.  And whether it's photos of your hiking trip or a night out …
Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists (Or SF's Housing Crisis Explained)  —  A hearse rolls up to a Yahoo bus at the BART MacArthur Station in Oakland.  A protester who had climbed on top of the bus later vomited on the vehicle.  (From Indybay)  —  The Santa Clara Valley …
Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:
Teardown Shows Samsung's Galaxy S5 Costs About $256 to Build  —  The Galaxy S5, Samsung's new flagship smartphone, costs about $256 to build according to a teardown analysis by market research firm IHS that will be published later today.  —  Released over the weekend, and winning praise …
Evelyn M. Rusli / Wall Street Journal:
AngelList's Newest Experiment: a $25 Million Fund to Invest in Angel Investors  —  A new experiment in startup funding could have widespread ramifications for the way venture capitalists place bets on young companies.  —  On Tuesday, crowdsourced fundraising site AngelList unveiled a new fund …
Jon Gertner / Fast Company:
Inside Google X: lab reveals it experimented with space elevators and hoverboards  —  The Truth About Google X: An Exclusive Look Behind The Secretive Lab's Closed Doors  —  Astro Teller is sharing a story about something bad.  Or maybe it's something good.  At Google X, it's sometimes hard to know the difference.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Building blocks: how Project Ara is reinventing the smartphone  —  A handful of Google engineers and designers are building a phone the DARPA way  —  In a spare, drab office park in Sunnyvale, California, a bunch of two-by-fours and foamboard have been nailed together into a makeshift model of a shipping container.
Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
Microsoft launches Office 365 Personal subscription: One PC/Mac and one tablet for $69.99/year or $6.99/month  —  Microsoft today launched its Office 365 Personal subscription, a cheaper alternative that is limited to just two devices: one PC or Mac and one tablet.
Tom Lavell / Bloomberg:
Zebra Technologies to buy Motorola's enterprise business for $3.45B  —  Zebra to Buy Motorola Solutions Unit for $3.45 Billion  —  Zebra Technologies Corp. (ZBRA) will acquire the enterprise business of Motorola Solutions Inc. (MSI) for $3.45 billion, adding mobile computing …
Jack Purcher / Patent Bolt:
Google Invents Micro Camera System for Future Contact Lenses  —  Last month Google surprised the market with a new wearable Glass off-shoot project relating to future smart contact lenses.  Our report that was titled “Google Takes their Glass Vision to Smart Contact Lenses,” …
Alexei Oreskovic / Reuters:
Google's updated terms of service clarifies how emails are analyzed for targeting ads  —  Google unveils email scanning practices in new terms of service  —  (Reuters) - Google Inc updated its terms of service on Monday, informing users that their incoming and outgoing emails …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Xbox One update rolling out with Kinect improvements and friend notifications  —  Microsoft seems to be improving its Xbox One software on a monthly basis, and April is no different.  Starting today, the software maker is rolling out its latest update to Xbox One consoles, bringing some new features and improvements along the way.
Liz Gannes / Re/code:
Samsung exec at trial: marketing drove our sales; designer denies influence of slide-to-unlock  —  Samsung Designer Denies Apple Influence: “Absolutely Not”  —  Did Samsung steal its slide-to-unlock feature from Apple's smartphone software?  —  “Absolutely not,” said Samsung senior UI designer Youngmi Kim …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
3 smarter updates for your staffing pipeline  —  Staffing recruiters manage multiple client requirements, large candidate databases, and tight submission deadlines.  Finding suitable candidates is only the first step.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
How a 19-year-old intern built the growth engine behind this $2B AI company | Hector Serrano
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Great Chat:
The case for AI optimism
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:40 PM ET, April 15, 2014.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks