Techmeme
April 28, 2014, 9:30 PM

Top News

Chris Urmson / The Official Google Blog:
Google's self-driving cars get smarter at handling city driving conditions, log 700K miles  —  The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving  —  Jaywalking pedestrians.  Cars lurching out of hidden driveways.  Double-parked delivery trucks blocking your lane and your view.
Eric Jaffe / The Atlantic Cities:
The First Look at How Google's Self-Driving Car Handles City Streets  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—The first rule of riding in Google's self-driving car, says Dmitri Dolgov, is not to compliment Google's self-driving car.  We've been cruising the streets of Mountain View for about ten minutes.
More: Brad Ideas
Chris Wanstrath / GitHub:
GitHub CEO apologizes for lack of transparency, details findings of independent investigator  —  Follow up to the investigation results  —  Last Monday I published the least open and least transparent blog post GitHub has ever written.  —  We failed to admit and own up to our mistakes, and for that I'm sorry.
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Refreshed MacBook Airs with latest Haswell chips likely launching tomorrow  —  New MacBook Airs likely launching tomorrow  —  Update: Here are the specs...  Apple is preparing to launch a refreshed line of MacBook Air laptops as soon as tomorrow, according to multiple sources.
Xbox Wire:
Xbox Originals launching in June on Xbox 360, Xbox One, and other Microsoft devices  —  Xbox Originals: Coming Soon to a Screen Near You  —  Starting this June, you'll have more reasons to love your Xbox: Xbox Originals - premium dramas, comedies, documentaries, animation, unscripted shows, and live events.
Richard Lai / Engadget:
Plastic HTC ‘M8 Ace’ aims at Galaxy S5 with same specs, lower price  —  HTC may have poked fun at its competitors' plastic flagship devices in the past, but it looks like the Taiwanese company will soon be offering one as well.  And no, we're not talking about the Butterfly line here.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nokia ‘Superman’ expected later this year is a 4.7" phone with a 5 megapixel front camera  —  Nokia ‘Superman’ will be the best Windows Phone for selfies  —  One of the first Windows Phone 8.1 devices due for release after Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's phone business …
Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
Skype makes group video calling free on Windows, Mac, and Xbox One; coming to all platforms ‘in the future’  —  Skype today announced it is making group video calling (GVC) available free of charge on Windows desktop, OS X, and the Xbox One.  At the same time, the company is also promising …
Deborah Gage / Wall Street Journal:
InsideSales.com Raises $100M to Predict Sales; Valuation Close to $1 Billion  —  InsideSales.com Inc. has raised $100 million at a valuation of nearly $1 billion, Venture Capital Dispatch has learned, in what one investor called one of the most competitive deals he'd ever been involved in.
Peter Kafka / Re/code:
NBCUniversal research chief Alan Wurtzell says Twitter chatter does not increase TV viewership  —  NBC Pokes a Hole in Twitter's TV Story  —  You know how Twitter is supposed to be TV's friend?  —  Things look a little less congenial today.  —  That's after a pointed article in the Financial Times …
Greg Stohr / Bloomberg:
Microsoft Wins Antitrust Case as Top Court Rejects Novell  —  The U.S. Supreme Court ended a lawsuit that accused Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) of illegally protecting its Windows computer operating system from competition 20 years ago by undercutting a rival word-processing program.
More: ABC News, WinBeta, Reuters and VentureBeat.  Tweets: @monkbent
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
New Relic brings in $100M more ahead of IPO  —  Software analytics company New Relic has raised $100 million in new funding, the company said today.  That helps put off a debut on public markets.  —  The money will go toward more product enhancements and more expansion internationally, the company said.
Alexander Howard / E Pluribus Unum:
U.S. House passes historic open government bill, sending it on to the White House  —  This afternoon, the United States House of Representatives passed the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2013 (The DATA Act), voting to send S.994, the bill that enjoyed unanimous support …
Derrick Harris / Gigaom:
Consolidation looms in business intelligence, as TIBCO buys Jaspersoft for $185M  —  Enterprise software vendor TIBCO has acquired Jaspersoft, an open source business intelligence company, for approximately $185 million.  It's not an earth-shaking deal, but it could be a sign of things to come …

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Jonathan Kizer / 9to5Google: