Techmeme: Snowden complained about mass surveillance tactics to his NSA masters (Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica)

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May 29, 2014, 11:10 PM

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Juli Clover / MacRumors:

Beats Breakdown: Apple Paying $2.5B for Beats Electronics, $500M for Beats Music — Apple yesterday announced plans to acquire both Beats Electronics and Beats Music for a combined total of $3 billion, but a new report from The Wall Street Journal breaks those numbers down further.

More: Wall Street Journal, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, iMore and iPhone Hacks

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:

The Apple-Beats deal: What the analysts are saying now — Wall Street weighs in on Apple's $3 billion acquisition of Dr. Dre's and Jimmy Iovine's Beats. — FORTUNE — What a difference three weeks can make. Analysts who “struggled to see the rational” behind Apple's (AAPL) …

More: TechCrunch, Macworld, Los Angeles Times, Mashable, MobileSyrup.com, TIME and 9to5Mac. See also Mediagazer

Ben Popper / The Verge:

Apple didn't want Beats, it needed Beats

More: Re/code, Associated Press, Variety, Associated Press, Tech Trader Daily and Wired. Tweets: @joshconstine. See also Mediagazer

Marguerite Reardon / CNET News:

HP can develop products with Beats tech through 2014, sell devices with Beats tech and logo through 2015

More: SlashGear, USA Today, TechSpot and PC World

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

Jimmy Iovine's four decades of experience and celebrity connections lend credibility to Apple's music plans

More: Forbes, TIME, SocialTimes, Wall Street Journal and Geek.com. See also Mediagazer

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:

Apple's upcoming smart home program is about ‘Made for iPhone’ certification, not deep product integration — Here's how Apple's smart home program will work — Apple's move into the smart home isn't actually the grand experience I had hoped for.

More: iMore, AppleInsider, TechnoBuffalo, GSMArena Blog, 9to5Mac, The Verge, iDownloadBlog.com, Gizmodo, Cult of Mac, iPhone Hacks, MacRumors, SlashGear, Engadget and App Advice. Tweets: @gigaom. Thanks:@jank0

Reggie Ugwu / BuzzFeed:

Amazon Prime to offer music streaming service with songs six months old or older, coming June/July; Sony, Warner on board — Exclusive: Amazon Prime To Offer Music Streaming Service — With 6-Month-Old Songs — The internet giant has reached deals with major labels for a service to launch this June or July.

More: 9to5Google, Digital Music News, Mashable, MacRumors, iMore, Gizmodo, The Verge, Business Insider, Cult of Mac, SlashGear, TechCrunch, Los Angeles Times and Gigaom. Thanks:@mattlynley. See also Mediagazer

Parmy Olson / Forbes:

Microsoft to offer a sensor-rich smartwatch that measures heart rate, syncs with iPhones, Android and Windows Phones — Exclusive: A Microsoft Smartwatch Is Coming — Microsoft is the latest technology giant preparing to jump into the wearables market, with plans to offer a sensor-rich smartwatch …

Mike Isaac / Re/code:

Foursquare's COO, Biz Dev Head Are Leaving — Foursquare has undergone major changes to its entire product lineup. Now it faces an executive shuffle. — Current Chief Operating Officer Evan Cohen will leave the company in the coming weeks, after spending the past four and a half years at the company.

More: ReadWrite, Gigaom, TechCrunch, Business Insider and Mashable

Tweets: @dens and @sarahfrier

Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:

Snowden complained about mass surveillance tactics to his NSA masters — “NSA has now explained that they have found one email inquiry by Edward Snowden.” — During his recent interview with NBC's Brian Williams, whistleblower Edward Snowden said that he did go through official channels …

More: IC ON THE RECORD, Press Association, The Hill, The Next Web, Business Insider and PandoDaily

Tweets: @alex and @muckrock

NBC News:

Snowden on lax NSA security, the “dirty” business of spying, wanting to go home, his training as a spy, and more

More: Guardian, New York Times and Gizmodo. Tweets: @ggreenwald

Mike Isaac / Re/code:

Twitter Engineering SVP Chris Fry to Depart the Company — Chris Fry, Twitter's senior vice president of engineering, plans to step down from his executive role at the company, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday afternoon.

More: New York Times, Business Insider and Wall Street Journal

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

YouTube starts rating U.S. ISPs, puts its weight behind settlement-free peering — Google released an U.S.-focused version of its video quality report Tuesday, which offers users a way to check which of their local ISPs deliver the best-looking YouTube streams.

More: YouTube Blog, TechCrunch, Multichannel News, The Verge, Computerworld, Fortune, DSLreports, Ars Technica, The Hill, BetaNews, VatorNews, Wired, CNET News, Engadget and 9to5Google. See also Mediagazer

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Salesforce CRM apps coming to Windows and Windows Phone — Summary: Salesforce and Microsoft have agreed to tighten ties between Salesforce's CRM apps and platform and Microsoft's Windows and Office. — Salesforce.com is building new Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.1 CRM apps …

ESPN:

Steve Ballmer to buy LA Clippers for $2B; agreement signed by Sterling, pending NBA approval — Former Microsoft CEO bids $2B — Former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has submitted a bid of $2 billion to buy the Los Angeles Clippers, sources have confirmed to ESPN.

Dawn Chmielewski / Re/code:

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Talks Net Neutrality — Liveblog Highlights: — Hastings continues to call out Comcast for “taxing” the Internet. “They want the whole Internet to pay them for when their subscribers use the Internet.” — Hastings wants to avoid government intervention …

More: Gigaom, PandoDaily, Home Media Magazine, Consumerist, bizjournals, USA Today, TechCrunch, Deadline.com and The Tell. See also Mediagazer

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Re/code's Mike Isaac joins NYT as a tech reporter — Re/code editor Mike Isaac is moving to New York to report on tech for The New York Times, Business Editor Dean Murphy and Technology Editor Suzanne Spector tell staff. — Jenna Wortham is joining Sunday Business full time. — Here's the note:

More: BuzzFeed. Tweets: @jennydeluxe, @nickbilton, @cpen, @mikeisaac and @mikeisaac. See also Mediagazer

Juli Clover / MacRumors:

Rumored Split-Screen Multitasking Feature for iOS 8 Not Ready for WWDC Preview — The rumored split-screen multitasking feature said to be coming with iOS 8 is still a work in progress and won't be previewed at Apple's upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, according to Brian Chen of the New York Times.

More: Ubergizmo, App Advice, SlashGear, Gotta Be Mobile and BGR. Tweets: @bxchen

Harish Jonnalagadda / Android Central:

Google demoes Android Wear notifications — In a Google+ post, Senior Developer Advocate at Google Timothy Jordan highlighted how notifications will be handled on Google's upcoming Android Wear platform. — Basically, any app that serves notifications on your Android smartphone or tablet …

More: Android Developers, Engadget, BGR, Gotta Be Mobile, Ausdroid, Electronista, GSMArena Blog, GadgeTell, Phandroid, Liliputing, MobileBurn.com, TechHive and Android and Me

Nathan Olivarez-Giles / Wall Street Journal:

Beats unveils newly designed Solo2 headphones; pre-order for $199.95, will arrive June 1 — Beats Reboots Its Best-Selling Solo Line—and They Sound Better Than Ever — Not one day after Apple made its $3 billion purchase of Beats official, the music technology company led by Dr. Dre …

More: Engadget, Wired, Gizmodo, Ubergizmo, Digital Trends, Cult of Mac, iPhone Hacks, iPhone in Canada Blog, TechnoBuffalo, Pocket-lint, 9to5Mac, iMore and The Mac Observer

Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:

Snapchat CEO ‘Mortified’ by Leaked Stanford Frat E-Mails — Snapchat Inc. Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel apologized for e-mails he sent during his fraternity days that celebrated getting drunk and convincing sorority women to perform sexual acts. — The profanity-laced e-mails …

More: Valleywag, Business Insider, TechCrunch, PandoDaily, Techvibes Global News, Telegraph and SiliconBeat

Tweets: @kashhill, @kashhill and @mccarthyryanj

Grant Gross / PC World:

Bill would prohibit FCC from reclassifying broadband as utility — A U.S. lawmaker has introduced legislation that would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from reclassifying broadband as a common-carrier utility, a move many net neutrality advocates have called for.

More: TechCrunch, Electronista, CED, Channel Partners News …, MediaPost, The Hill and Broadcasting & Cable. Tweets: @kevinbrueck

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Intel Inside your car? Chip giant unveils its technology for autonomous cars — Intel threw its research might behind the idea of autonomous cars, or automobiles that are safer and more efficient because they can take over the task of driving from humans.

More: Engadget, Intel Newsroom, The Register, dailywireless.org, Wall Street Journal, Gigaom and TheStreet.com

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Root backdoor found in surveillance gear used by law enforcement — Software used by law enforcement organizations to intercept the communications of suspected criminals contains a litany of critical weaknesses, including an undocumented backdoor secured with a hardcoded password, security researchers said today.

More: sec-consult.com, Krebs on Security, Techdirt, Threatpost and The Register

Richard Lai / Engadget:

HTC One's plastic cousin officially shown off with M7 design, M8 guts — It's no secret that HTC's prepping a plastic variant of its flagship One (M8) phone, but we've never taken a proper look at it until now, courtesy of the company's China website. And no, this isn't a leak.

More: Ubergizmo, Android and Me, Phandroid, SlashGear, 9to5Google, Pocketnow, Android Central, Gigaom, TechnoBuffalo and Android Authority

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