Techmeme: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance of residents' Facebook and Google use (Mike Rispoli/Privacy International)

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June 17, 2014, 11:15 AM

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Joel Rosenblatt / Bloomberg:

Apple Settles E-Books Pricing Case With States, Consumers — Apple Inc. (AAPL) reached a settlement with U.S. states and consumers seeking damages over the company's fixing of electronic book prices, avoiding a trial in which it faced as much as $840 million in claims.

More: Wall Street Journal, Guardian, ZDNet, Re/code, The Verge, Inquirer, VatorNews, GeekWire, CNET, Fortune, MacRumors, NPR, 9to5Mac, TechCrunch, Los Angeles Times, AppleInsider, BGR, Fortune, TechEye, iPhone, Softpedia News, Cult of Mac, VentureBeat, Gigaom, iPhone in Canada Blog, Electronista, iLounge, App Advice and The Next Web

Tweets: @tcarmody and @sarahw

See also Mediagazer

Thomas Gryta / Wall Street Journal:

AT&T to Exclusively Carry Amazon Smartphone — Amazon Expected to Unveil its Phone on Wednesday in Seattle — AT&T Inc. will be the exclusive carrier for Amazon.com Inc. 's new smartphone, which is expected to be unveiled on Wednesday, according to people familiar with the plans.

More: Gigaom, BGR, StrictlyVC, 9to5Google, BGR, PC Magazine, LAPTOP Magazine, Digital Trends, VentureBeat, The Verge, The Next Web, Reuters, Business Insider and AndroidOS.in

New York Times:

Jonathan Ive on Apple's Design Process and Product Philosophy — When Steven P. Jobs led Apple, he created a core principle for the company's designers and engineers: stay fully focused on making great products. — That philosophy continues to guide Apple, even under its new chief executive …

More: Macworld, Guardian, I4U News, Ubergizmo, App Advice, TechnoBuffalo, eWeek, MacRumors, iPhone Hacks, AppleInsider, Cult of Mac, TUAW and iPhone in Canada Blog

Matt Burns / TechCrunch:

Nest Brings Back The Protect At $99, But Waving Is Still Disabled — The Nest Protect is now available following its two-month hiatus after it was pulled for safety concerns. The smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector is now only $99, down from its $129 launch price.

Mike Rispoli / Privacy International:

UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance of residents' Facebook and Google use — Britain's top counter-terrorism official has been forced to reveal a secret Government policy justifying the mass surveillance of every Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Google user in the UK.

More: New York Times, The Verge, Gigaom, PC World, PandoDaily, TechCrunch, The Next Web, Guardian, Softpedia News, Mashable, The Register, Daily Dot, PC Pro, Neowin, The Global Legal Post and GloucestershireEcho.co.uk

Tweets: @privacyint and @davidtpegg

Marcus Wohlsen / Wired:

A Rare Peek Inside Amazon's Massive Wish-Fulfilling Machine — The first thing I saw when I walked into Amazon's Phoenix warehouse was a man riding on a giant tricycle. Behind him, yellow plastic tubs the size of office recycling bins whizzed by on a conveyor belt.

Tasneem Raja / Mother Jones:

On the importance of schools fostering “computational thinking” at a young age — Is Coding the New Literacy? … Detail from “On the Mode of Communication of Cholera,” 1854 … Upending our notions of what it means to interface with computers could help democratize …

More: NPR

Sara M. Watson / The Atlantic Online:

Why customized ads are so creepy, even when they miss their target — Why customized ads are so creepy, even when they miss their target — “What is it about my data that suggests I might be a good fit for an anorexia study?” That's the question my friend Jean asked me after she saw …

More: Stowe Boyd. Tweets: @marymwisniewski and @marginalutility

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

The history of Android — Android's home screen over the years. — Android has been with us in one form or another for more than six years. During that time, we've seen an absolutely breathtaking rate of change unlike any other development cycle that has ever existed.

Leslie Horn / Gizmodo:

SoundCloud, with 300M users, focuses on monetization, considers licensing deals, pre-roll ads — How SoundCloud Changed Music Forever — Some of the best ideas are also the simplest. And there are few things more simple than SoundCloud, which in its seven year existence has sneakily become one of the best things online.

Tweets: @waxpancake

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Parallels' new remote desktop apps let you control your PC like a phone — Remote desktop apps have an easier time working on tablets, where you have a lot of display area to work with, but they're frequently awkward on smartphones. Wouldn't it be nice if you could control a PC at home like it was just another phone app?

More: CITEworld Nancy Gohring, iMore, BGR, CNET, iPhone, Electronista, GeekWire, Android Central, 9to5Google, Technology Personalized, AppleInsider, MacRumors, 9to5Mac and Macworld

Geoff Gasior / The Tech Report:

In SSD endurance test, no failures until 700TB of writes; Corsair Neutron GTX, Samsung 840 Pro, Kingston HyperX 3K go past 1PB — The SSD Endurance Experiment: Casualties on the way to a petabyte — And then there were three — I feel for the subjects — of our SSD Endurance Experiment.

More: Guardian and SlashGear. Tweets: @drpizza and @codinghorror

BBC:

US lifts restrictions on more detailed satellite images — The Worldview-3 satellite is set to launch in August — Sites like Google and Bing Maps will be able to use higher-quality satellite images, thanks to US government restrictions being lifted. — Companies had not been allowed …

More: BetaNews, Softpedia News, Guardian, ZDNet, SlashGear, Engadget, Inside Google, Wired.co.uk, Nextgov, TechSpot and SiliconBeat

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority:

Moto G 4G LTE now available directly from Motorola for $219 — The Moto G continues to be one of the most popular devices world-wide. In fact, it is Motorola's most sold smartphone ever made! It came as no surprise that Motorola would release a worthy successor.

More: Gigaom, Android Central, GSMArena.com, TechnoBuffalo, Softpedia News, AndroidHeadlines.com, TechCrunch, 9to5Google, Pocketnow, Phandroid and Phones Review

Jill Lepore / New Yorker:

What the Theory of “Disruptive Innovation” Gets Wrong — In the last years of the nineteen-eighties, I worked not at startups but at what might be called finish-downs. Tech companies that were dying would hire temps—college students and new graduates—to do what little was left of the work of the employees they'd laid off.

More: Salon and Conversation Agent. Tweets: @nxthompson, @marcabrahams, @eugenewei, @ericnewcomer, @jayrosen_nyu, @ctbarna, @jasonkincaid and @tonyromm

The Unicode Blog:

Unicode version 7.0 released: 2,834 new characters including 250 emoji — Announcing The Unicode Standard, Version 7.0 — Version 7.0 of the Unicode Standard is now available, adding 2,834 new characters. This latest version adds the new currency symbols for the Russian ruble and Azerbaijani manat …

Tracey Xiang / TechNode:

Chinese Cloud Service Provider UCloud Raised US$50M in Series B to Expand to North America — Chinese Cloud service provider UCloud announces US$50 million in Series B funding led by Bertelsmann Asia Investments and Legend Capital, joined by existing investor DCM who participated …

More: China Money Network and TechCrunch

Nick Summers / The Next Web:

Oyster brings its ‘Netflix for ebooks’ subscription service to Android, Kindle Fire and Nook HD — Oyster, often referred to as “the Netflix of ebooks,” is now available for Android devices, Kindle Fire tablets and the Nook HD. It joins the company's existing iOS app …

More: Oyster HQ Blog, CNET, TechCrunch, The Verge, Gigaom, Liliputing and Mashable

GeekWire:

Seattle mayor reaches deal to legalize Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, without driver limits — It looks like UberX, Lyft and Sidecar are here to stay in Seattle. — After more than one year of City Council meetings, protests and debate, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray today announced an agreement between …

More: Engadget, SlashGear and Seattle Times blogs

Tweets: @alexavaughn, @erikb and @knitpurl

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple considered buying Parse before building new CloudKit feature itself — In an extensive profile of Parse co-founder and Facebook executive Ilya Sukhar, The Information reveals that Apple considered purchasing the cloud services startup before Facebook:

More: App Advice and iMore

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