Techmeme: Mozilla reluctantly bows to industry pressure, adopts DRM tech required to watch Netflix video (Stephen Shankland/CNET)

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May 14, 2014, 7:05 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

iPhone 6 with larger, sharper 1704 x 960 resolution screen in testing — Apple is preparing to release a new iPhone with a larger screen later this year, and while multiple reports have indicated that the screen will be larger, the exact dimensions of the screen and its resolution have so far been guesswork.

Kim Zetter / Wired:

Greenwald expands on NSA reporting with new book ‘No Place to Hide’ and 50+ new documents — Glenn Greenwald's Pulse-Pounding Tale of Breaking the Snowden Leaks — In June 2013, Edward Snowden was sitting in his room at the Mira hotel in Hong Kong, watching the world react …

More: FRONTLINE, Ars Technica, dissenter.firedoglake.com, Los Angeles Times, ABC, The Verge and Daily Dot. Tweets: @ggreenwald

Michael Cieply / New York Times:

Sony Pictures buys film rights to Glenn Greenwald's book on Snowden and the NSA revelations

More: VatorNews, Ars Technica, SlashGear, WebProNews and CNET News. See also Mediagazer

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

NSA Docs Detail Efforts To Collect Data From Microsoft's Skype, SkyDrive, And Outlook.com

Stephen Shankland / CNET:

Mozilla reluctantly bows to industry pressure, adopts DRM tech required to watch Netflix video — Mozilla holds its nose and supports DRM video in Firefox — The open-source browser gets a proprietary Adobe software so people can watch video from sites like Netflix over the Web.

More: Mozilla Hacks, The Mozilla Blog, The Register, Engadget and TechCrunch. Tweets: @dangillmor. See also Mediagazer

Cory Doctorow / Guardian:

Firefox's adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart — I understand the pressure to support commercial video - but the browser makers can do more to defend free and open software — Future versions of the open-source Firefox browser will include closed-source digital rights management …

More: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Techdirt, PandoDaily, VentureBeat and gHacks Technology News

Tweets: @lmorchard and @brendaneich

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook For iOS Tries Popping Up Cards Of Related Content To Browse After You Post — Facebook is taking a swing at suggesting contextual content to keep you surfing after you share. A new test on iOS surfaces related content cards including photos of restaurants you say you're at …

More: Marketing Land, The Verge, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, Gigaom, Inside Facebook, iPhone in Canada Blog, Redmond Pie, Cult of Mac, iMore, Mashable, everythingiCafe and App Advice

Adam Pash:

Switching from iPhone to Android loses incoming iMessages, senders still get delivery receipt — iMessage purgatory — I recently switched from an iPhone to Android, and discovered shortly thereafter that my phone number was still associated with iMessage, meaning that any time someone …

More: 9to5Mac, The Droid Guy, ReadWrite, VentureBeat, Business Insider, iPhone Hacks, TUAW, SlashGear, Redmond Pie, MacRumors, Ubergizmo, Gigaom, PandoDaily, iLounge, App Advice, iPhone in Canada Blog and MacNN

Tweets: @brendan_gill, @dhh, @benbajarin, @adampash and @jasonh

Juli Clover / MacRumors:

Flappy Bird to Return to the App Store in August, Will Be Multiplayer and ‘Less Addictive’ — Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen today announced plans to return Flappy Bird to the App Store in August in a new interview with CNBC's Kelly Evans. According to Nguyen, the new version of Flappy Bird …

More: The Verge, TechCrunch, The Next Web, iMore, CNET News, Engadget, BuzzFeed, The Droid Guy, Business Insider, Touch Arcade and Android and Me. Tweets: @kelly_evans

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Surface Pro 3 might join Microsoft's Surface mini unveiling next week — Microsoft is holding a Surface press event in New York City next week, but the company may have accidentally revealed one of the announcements. In a support article published yesterday, Microsoft says a fresh update for Windows 8.1 …

Miguel Helft / Fortune:

Square expects to start turning a profit in about a year, has secured $225M line of credit — Square's status? It's complicated — Exclusive: Internal documents show that the innovative payments company expects losses through mid-2015. But then it predicts a turnaround.

More: Business Insider, PSFK, Mashable and NFC World+

Tweets: @danprimack, @kylezink, @evelynrusli, @sequoia_capital, @mattlynley, @djtgallagher, @evelynrusli and @evelynrusli

Ben Popper / The Verge:

Depending on its needs, Verizon flip-flops on how its infrastructure should be regulated — Game of phones: how Verizon is playing the FCC and its customers — Tomorrow, the FCC starts deciding the future of the internet. It's an emotional, controversial, drawn-out battle that has been building …

Tweets: @byersalex, @acedtect and @jank0

Don Clark / Wall Street Journal:

Autodesk Moves to Make Its Own 3-D Printer — Autodesk is known for programs that help people make things. Now the San Francisco company plans to make something itself-a 3-D printer and software to go with it, hoping to spur a hot market to move even faster.

More: The Next Web, In The Fold, Gigaom, New York Times, Engadget, CNET News, ZDNet, SlashGear and Electronista

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Comcast plans data caps for all customers in 5 years, could be 500GB — A Comcast executive said he expects the company will roll out “usage-based billing”—what most people call “data caps”—to all of its customers within five years. — Speaking with investors today (transcript) …

More: DSLreports, The Register, DSLreports, FierceCable, GamePolitics blogs and multichannel.com. Tweets: @laurenweinstein

FaryaabS / SamMobile:

Hands-on with a test build of the Tizen operating system for the original Galaxy Gear — Exclusive: Samsung Galaxy Gear Tizen Preview — Earlier this year, there was speculation about Samsung launching new version of its Galaxy Gear along with the Samsung Galaxy S5 at the UNPACKED 2014 Episode 1 event in Barcelona, Spain.

More: Gigaom, Geek.com, Ubergizmo, The Droid Guy, xda-developers, Android Police and Connectedly

Alistair Barr / Wall Street Journal:

Google's not sure how to bring its self-driving-car to market, talks regularly to auto makers — Google Talking to Auto Makers About Self-Driving Car — Google is talking to auto makers about how to bring its self-driving-car technology to market, executives said Tuesday.

More: CNN, VentureBeat, New York Times and SiliconBeat

Barb Darrow / Gigaom:

Acxiom snaps up LiveRamp and its data onboarding smarts for $310M — Acxiom is not some shiny Silicon Valley startup. In fact, it's over 40 years old. The company, based in Little Rock, Arkansas, also happens to be a pioneer in collecting data — and converting that data into big bucks …

More: Wall Street Journal, AdAge, ZDNet, AdExchanger and ECPM BLOG

Rich McCormick / The Verge:

Samsung offers ‘deep apology’ and compensation to workers who've contracted incurable diseases — Recent documentary uncovered 56 cases of leukemia — South Korean electronics giant Samsung has officially apologized over the illnesses and deaths of some of its factory workers.

More: english.yonhapnews.co.kr, VatorNews, Engadget, 9to5Google, BGR, Associated Press, Bloomberg, AppleInsider, The Register, CNET News, Electronista and ITProPortal

Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:

U.S. revealed secret legal basis for NSA program to Sprint, documents show — Under threat of a court challenge, the Obama administration in 2010 revealed to Sprint the secret legal basis of a then-classified program that collected billions of Americans' phone records for counterterrorism purposes …

More: IC ON THE RECORD, emptywheel and Techdirt

Tweets: @matt_cagle, @patrickctoomey and @kgosztola

Andreessen Horowitz:

SaaS company valuations should be based on customer acquisition cost and lifetime value, not revenue and EPS — Understanding SaaS: Why the Pundits Have It Wrong — Tune into any cable network stock market channel and the airwaves resonate with one consistent theme: SaaS companies are simply too expensive.

Tweets: @shiraovide, @stevesi, @monkbent, @cdixon and @rsarver

Nick Summers / The Next Web:

Microsoft to offer Xbox Live Gold refunds once requirement is dropped for entertainment apps — If you have an Xbox Live Gold subscription only to access media apps such as Netflix and Hulu, Microsoft's recent decision to remove the digital requirement may have left you feeling short-changed.

More: eWeek, Ars Technica, GamesIndustry International, Cramgaming.com, Computerworld, Electronista, Windows Phone Central, Neowin, WebProNews, SlashGear, Softpedia News, Eurogamer.net, WinBeta and GamePolitics blogs

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Image Is Everything: Snapchat Tops WhatsApp As Biggest U.S. Messaging App By Volume — Snapchat may be getting a rap on the knuckles right now from regulators over how it handles user privacy, but the ephemeral messaging app is still a hot commodity. According to a report out today …

More: Sandvine, Re/code, DSLreports, BGR, TorrentFreak, Gigaom and Glass. See also Mediagazer

John Koetsier / VentureBeat:

Adobe's marketing cloud goes real-time, adds app store, boosts search ads 25% — How can big data and smart analytics ignite growth for your company? Find out at DataBeat, May 19-20 in San Francisco, from top data scientists, analysts, investors, and entrepreneurs. There are less than 50 tickets left!

More: Marketing Land, ValueWalk, MediaPost, Forbes, internetretailer.com, ZDNet and Inside Facebook

Takashi Amano / Bloomberg:

iPhone market share in Japan is 36.6% in year ending March, up from 25.5% a year earlier — Apple Boosts Japanese Market Share After NTT Docomo Sells IPhone — Apple Inc. (AAPL) boosted its share of the Japan mobile-phone market to more than a third after the country's largest wireless carrier started selling the iPhone.

More: ParisLemon, Android Authority, iPhone in Canada Blog, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, Cult of Mac, Geeky Gadgets, Geeky Gadgets, App Advice, Electronista, AfterDawn.com and MacRumors

Spencer E. Ante / Wall Street Journal:

Red Hat refuses to support commercial Linux customers if they use rival versions of OpenStack — Red Hat Plays Hardball on OpenStack Software — Rivals Fear That Software Maker Is Using Linux Dominance to Block Use of Alternative Cloud Software — Software maker Red Hat Inc …

More: PC World, Gigaom and internetnews.com

Stig Øyvann / ZDNet:

Apple's ‘convoluted and unclear’ iCloud agreements break Norwegian law, says watchdog — Summary: Norway's Consumer Council has filed a complaint about iCloud 8,600 word EULA. — The Norwegian Consumer Council has filed a complaint over the terms and conditions of Apple's iCloud service …

More: forbrukerradet.no, Electronista, EurActiv, iPhone in Canada Blog, Gigaom, iMore, InvestorPlace and MacRumors

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