Techmeme: Surveillance court rejected Verizon challenge to NSA calls program (Ellen Nakashima/Washington Post)

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April 26, 2014, 1:00 PM

Top News

Barbara van Schewick / Center for Internet and Society:

The FCC changed course on network neutrality. Here is why you should care. — Wednesday's press reports of the new network neutrality rules proposed by FCC Chairman Wheeler have been met with anger and confusion. According to the Wall Street Journal, “[r]egulators are proposing new rules …

More: New Yorker, Marvin Ammori, BuzzFeed, Vox, VICE, The Atlantic Online and petitions.whitehouse.gov

Tweets: @rsingel and @camholm

Ryan Singel / Medium:

How The FCC Plans to Save the Internet by Destroying It: An Explainer — The FCC wants to make good on President Obama's pledge to make net neutrality into law. It's just having a very hard time actually doing it. — Net Neutrality is the simple concept that the company that provides …

More: Hit & Run, Re/code, Computerworld, New York Times, InfoWorld, Gigaom Research, FierceEnterpriseCommunications …, Free Press Blog and Techdirt. Tweets: @ddayen

Liam Spradlin / Android Police:

Rumor: ‘Ok Google Everywhere,’ Modular Actions, New Navigation Buttons Coming To Android — We've recently seen plenty of rumors related to Google's future plans for its Search app, from automatically remembering where you parked to reminding you of things when you're with another person …

More: Gigaom, AndroidOS.in, Softpedia News, Ubergizmo, 9to5Google, PhoneArena, Engadget, BGR, Pocketnow and Android Beat

Kim Zetter / Wired:

Security researcher finds most hospital equipment hackable in study of about 100 facilities — Why It's Insanely Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment — When Scott Erven was given free reign to roam through all of the medical equipment used at a large chain of Midwest health care facilities …

More: I4U News. Tweets: @japi999, @jamesrbuk, @kpoulsen, @dangillmor and @virusbtn

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:

The Untold Story Of Larry Page's Incredible Comeback — One day in July 2001, Larry Page decided to fire Google's project managers. All of them. — It was just five years since Page, then a 22-year-old graduate student at Stanford, was struck in the middle of the night with a vision.

More: Quartz, BGR, Washington Post and Vox

Tweets: @daddy_san, @mattrosoff and @nichcarlson

Chris Velazco / Engadget:

Xperia Z2 coming to US through Sony online store this summer, no carrier support yet — Sony's online store will be the only place to buy its best phone in the US — Sony's Xperia Z2 may be a big, powerful slab of a phone, but fans in the United States hoping to snag one in-person …

More: TechCrunch, Electronista, I4U News, Unwired View, Phones Review, SlashGear and Android Central

Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:

Apple launches iPhone 5 Sleep/Wake Button Replacement Program — Apple launches iPhone 5 Sleep/Wake Button Replacement Program — Apple on Friday launched a new program to help iPhone 5 users that may have been affected by a problem with the Sleep/Wake button not functioning properly.

More: Apple, Wall Street Journal, Cult of Mac, CNET News, MacRumors, TechnoBuffalo, SlashGear, iPhone Hacks, Pocketnow, AppleInsider, Engadget, 9to5Mac, Gizmodo, Redmond Pie, The Mac Observer, iPhone in Canada Blog and iMore

Washington Post:

Low-level federal judges balking at law enforcement requests for electronic evidence — Judges at the lowest levels of the federal judiciary are balking at sweeping requests by law enforcement officials for cellphone and other sensitive personal data, declaring the demands overly broad and at odds with basic constitutional rights.

More: Boing Boing, TechPresident, Techdirt and Of Interest

Tweets: @trevortimm, @trevortimm, @csoghoian, @abrams and @counternotions

Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:

Surveillance court rejected Verizon challenge to NSA calls program — Verizon in January filed a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's program that collects billions of Americans' call-detail records, but a surveillance court rejected it …

More: Re/code, Engadget and The Hill

Tweets: @patrickctoomey and @rj_gallagher

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Unnamed Phone Company Challenges NSA's Bulk Records Collection; FISC Says It's Perfectly Legal

More: TechCrunch. Tweets: @kurtopsahl and @bartongellman

Brian X. Chen / New York Times:

Former Apple engineer recalls early iPhone development, which resembled a startup — An iPhone Engineer-Turned-Game Maker Shares His Apple Story — When Francisco Tolmasky was just 20 years old and started working for Apple, he took on a challenging task: to create a rich mobile web browser …

More: TechCrunch, Daring Fireball, BGR, MobileSyrup.com, Softpedia News, Ars Technica and The Verge

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Why Do So Many People Describe Aereo ‘Complying’ With Copyright Law As The Company ‘Circumventing’ Copyright Law? — We mentioned this briefly in our writeup of the oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the Aereo case, but I wanted to focus in on one particularly annoying issue that has come …

Tweets: @rsingel and @videograndpa

Re/code:

Will Google+ be scaled back? Googlers are unsure, but Besbris' appointment is seen as evidence — Minus Its Leader, What's Left at Google+? — Without its biggest champion and original leader, Vic Gundotra, insiders say the fate of Google+, the search giant's big attempt to dominate …

More: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Computerworld, Pocketnow, Wired and Forbes. Tweets: @alexia

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