Techmeme
May 18, 2014, 10:55 PM

Top News

AT&T:
AT&T agrees to acquire DirecTV in stock-and-cash deal for $95 per share  —  AT&T to Acquire DIRECTV  — Creates Content Distribution Leader Across Mobile, Video & Broadband Platforms  — The premier pay TV brand with the best content relationships now poised to deliver video to multiple screens …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion: Sources  —  Deal would be biggest ever for YouTube  —  Google's YouTube has reached a deal to buy Twitch, a popular videogame-streaming company, for more than $1 billion, according to sources familiar with the pact.
Wall Street Journal:
Google's acquisition talks with Twitch still at an early stage  —  Google in Talks About Possible Acquisition of Twitch  —  Google's Talks With Live Video-Streaming Service at Early Stage  —  Google Inc. is in talks about a possible acquisition of Twitch, a fast-growing live video-streaming service …
More: Reuters and SlashGearTweets: @marshallk and @ow
The Verge:
Twitch chooses Google over Microsoft amid multiple buyout offers  —  Video game streaming startup believes YouTube is its best bet for mainstream success  —  YouTube is indeed close to securing a $1 billion buyout of live streaming service Twitch, and will have fended off multiple suitors including Microsoft …
Dante D'Orazio / The Verge:
Facebook is reportedly building a new Snapchat competitor  —  Facebook is taking Snapchat very seriously after its failed attempt to purchase the video and picture messaging app for $3 billion last year.  Mark Zuckerberg is personally supervising an internal effort to build a competing …
Fred Wilson / AVC:
Unified login and deep linking within top “app constellations” mean the rich get richer in mobile  —  App Constellations  —  I touched on the concept of App Constellations in my post on Friday about Swarm.  I've been thinking about this concept for the past week …
Tweets: @tek_fin
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Encrypted Internet Traffic Surges in a Year, Research Shows  —  Over the years we have been following various reports on Internet traffic changes, mostly focusing on file-sharing traffic.  —  A new report published by Sandvine this morning sheds light on the most recent developments.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
How 3-D Printed Guns Evolved Into Serious Weapons in Just One Year  —  A burgeoning subculture of 3-D printed gun enthusiasts dreams of the day when a lethal firearm can be downloaded or copied by anyone, anywhere, as easily as a pirated episode of Game of Thrones.
Daniel Roberts / Fortune:
Will.i.am owns an equity stake in Beats, played a key role in its success  —  Behind the scenes, a frontman awaits a payday  —  Lost in the coverage of Apple's reported $3.2 billion bid for Beats is the fact that Dr. Dre isn't the only rapper who will make money in a sale.
Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:
In Letter to Obama, Cisco CEO Complains About NSA Allegations  —  Warning of an erosion of confidence in the products of the U.S. technology industry, John Chambers, the CEO of networking giant Cisco Systems, has asked President Obama to intervene to curtail the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency.
More: Reuters, TechCrunch and Tech News PlusTweets: @jtemple
Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:
Patent reform hangs by a thread as Senate Democrats bottle up key bill  —  For a second there, it looked as if Congress was about to fix the country's dysfunctional patent system.  The House passed a bipartisan bill in December, supported by the White House and a coalition of retail and tech giants …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Do you need a Zoho Partner?  Here's why working with one can benefit you.  —  Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case.  From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …
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.

Featured Podcasts

The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'What's in Louie's Wallet', With Louie Mantia
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Big Technology Podcast:
Leopold Blows Up, OpenAI Drastically Cuts Prices, Microsoft's Best Day
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.
Hard Fork:
Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Great Chat:
Tech's short-term era
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.
Access:
Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:55 PM ET, May 18, 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