Techmeme
May 9, 2014, 6:00 PM

Top News

Nick Summers / The Next Web:
Beats founder Dr. Dre seemingly confirms Apple acquisition in a now-removed Facebook video, still visible on YouTube  —  Did Dr. Dre just confirm that Apple is buying Beats for $3.2 billion?  [Updated] … Apple is rumored to be acquiring Beats Electronics in a landmark deal worth $3.2 billion.
Jon Maples:
Apple buying Beats is an affordable bet on streaming to hedge against the decline of downloads  —  The Magic Numbers: How Apple Beats The Demise of Music Downloads  —  There are two numbers that you need to pay attention to in order to make sense of Apple's breathtaking acquisition of Beats Electronics.
Wall Street Journal:
Beats' CEO Jimmy Iovine industry clout could help strengthen iTunes Radio, generate more ad revenue  —  Apple in Talks to Buy Beats Electronics for $3.2 Billion  —  Apple Inc. is preparing to bolster its streaming-music business with a proposed $3.2 billion deal to acquire Beats Electronics LLC …
Peter Kafka / Re/code:
Steve Dent / Engadget:
Apple hires Ari Partinen, senior engineer who worked on Nokia's PureView camera technology  —  Apple just hired one of Nokia's PureView camera experts  —  Now that Nokia is out of the smartphone game, many of its key engineers are undoubtedly considering their options.
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Oracle wins Android-Java copyright appeal: API code copyrightable, new trial on fair use  —  The most spectacular decision in the ongoing smartphone IP disputes has been handed down today by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit: District Judge William Alsup has been overruled …
Michael Gold / Reuters:
Apple launching 4.7" iPhone 6 in August and larger model in September, claims Taiwanese report  —  Apple to unveil iPhone 6 in August, earlier than expected -report  —  Apple Inc will unveil the next incarnation of its popular iPhone series in August, one month earlier than industry watchers …
Luke Westaway / CNET News:
Netflix price hike is $1 extra per month, £1 in UK and €1 in Europe  —  The new, higher price only affects new subscribers, the streaming service says, with existing Netflix customers exempt from paying extra for two years.  —  Netflix  —  Netflix has issued the first details …
Abhijeet M. / SamMobile:
EXCLUSIVE: First photos of Galaxy Tab S 10.5, Samsung's AMOLED tablet  —  We recently published exclusive info on Samsung's upcoming tablet with an AMOLED display, the Galaxy Tab S. The Galaxy Tab S will come in 8.4-inch and 10.5-inch variants and will be Samsung's return to OLED tablets …
Sam Altman / Y Combinator Posthaven:
Quora, now valued at $900M, to join YC's summer batch, “a new experiment for us”  —  Quora in the next YC batch  —  This month, YC will be participating in Quora's most recent investment round and Quora will be joining this summer's YC batch.  This is a new experiment for us …
Kevin C. Tofel / Gigaom:
Boom!  Google integrates Chrome apps into the Mac OS X Finder  —  Google's strategy to use the Chrome browser as a desktop replacement took another step forward on Friday.  Users of Chrome Canary, an experimental version of Google's browser, can now associate Mac files with supporting Chrome apps in the Finder.
Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:
Facebook has pulled Poke and Facebook Camera from the App Store  —  Facebook Poke is dead  —  To Facebook, Poke was always “more of a joke” than anything else — so why did the company leave it in the App Store for more than a year after its troubled debut?  We may never know, but today, Facebook finally put an end to Poke.
More: 9to5Mac and Gizmodo
Vindu Goel / New York Times:
Several Twitter insiders sold shares after lockup expired, including COO Ali Rowghani  —  Twitter Insiders Sell After Lockup Expires  —  Twitter's stock took a beating on Tuesday, the first day that employees and early investors in the company could freely sell their shares after Twitter's initial public offering in November.
More: Mashable
Dave Lee / BBC:
UK ISPs agree to begin sending out warnings to customers who pirate content from next year  —  Deal to combat piracy in UK with ‘alerts’ is imminent  —  Lawyer Steve Kuncewicz: “There's no punitive backstop to any of this”  —  After years of wrangling, a deal between entertainment industry bodies …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
As Square Struggles, European Payments Rival iZettle Takes Another $55.5M In Funding  —  As mobile payment startup Square faces down reports that it's delaying an IPO amid growth problems and other pressures, iZettle, the Swedish mobile payments company that has been referred to as the Square of Europe …
Hugh Langley / TechRadar:
Project Morpheus was built into PS4 from the start - we just didn't know it  —  EXCLUSIVE It's all part of the plan … Sony caused a lot of fuss when it confirmed that there would be no way of turning off the DualShock 4's light bar (the tyranny!), but do you want to know why it was really on there?

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Mark Josephson / bitly blog: