Techmeme
June 19, 2014, 8:40 AM

Top News

Amazon.com:
Introducing Fire, the First Smartphone Designed by Amazon  —  New breakthrough innovations—Dynamic Perspective, Firefly button, and more  —  Seamless integration with Amazon's vast ecosystem—over 33 million songs, apps, games, movies,  —  Only smartphone with Mayday, ASAP, X-Ray, and Second Screen
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Fire Phone compared with iPhone 5S, Galaxy 5S, One, Moto X, and Lumia Icon: unique software running on average hardware  —  Fire Phone against the world: can Amazon take on iOS and Android?  —  Amazon's unique software is running on pretty average hardware
Robert Sorokanich / Gizmodo:
Nick Summers / The Next Web:
Chris Ziegler / The Verge:
T-Mobile is setting a dangerous precedent for wireless net neutrality with its Music Freedom initiative  —  T-Mobile's ‘Music Freedom’ is a great feature — and a huge problem  —  It sounds great, but it's really, really, really bad  —  Net neutrality has seen headier days, and to be honest …
Ina Fried / Re/code:
T-Mobile Offering Weeklong iPhone “Test Drive” To Lure Customers  —  Pulling a page from the car dealer's manual, T-Mobile is offering would-be customers a free seven-day trial of its network using an iPhone 5s.  —  “You (can) have a 7-night stand,” CEO John Legere said in an interview …
Brad Molen / Engadget:
On T-Mobile, you can now stream music without hurting your data plan  —  Streaming music on your phone would be fantastic — if it weren't for all those pesky data caps.  T-Mobile's latest UnCarrier move addresses this particular pain point: Starting today, you'll be able to listen …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Facebook Goes Down In Global Outage.  Update: It's Back!  —  Facebook appears to be a suffering a major outage this morning, with the site unavailable in multiple regions around the world, and Facebook social plug-ins on other websites also acting up.  —  The Facebook.com site is unavailable …
Other World Computing:
Teardown of Apple's new $1,099 iMac shows 8GB memory soldered to motherboard; will not be upgradable  —  Teardown of Lower-Cost 2014 iMac Reveals Soldered Memory  —  As we reported earlier today, Apple has released a new $1,099 iMac model with new specs including a 1.4GHz Dual-Core i5 processor …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Code Spaces closes shop after attackers destroy Amazon-hosted customer data  —  Code Spaces closes shop after attackers destroy Amazon-hosted customer data.  —  A code-hosting service that boasted having a full recovery plan has abruptly closed after someone gained unauthorized access …
Chad Bray / New York Times:
British Property Website Zoopla Valued at $1.5 Billion in I.P.O.  —  LONDON - The Zoopla Property Group, a British real estate listings website, was valued at more than $1.5 billion in its initial public offering in London on Wednesday.  —  The company priced its offering at 2.20 pounds a share …
Evelyn M. Rusli / Wall Street Journal:
Nest investor Shasta Ventures raises $300M for its fourth, and largest, fund  —  Shasta Ventures Sticks to Basics With New $300 Million Fund  —  Tod Francis, a managing director of Shasta Ventures, recalls a time when few in venture capital were interested in “consumer” start-ups.
More: PE Hub Blog and VentureBeatTweets: @jacob
Seth Rosenblatt / CNET:
Google cheers growing support for ECPA reform  —  Years after Google first began raising concerns about the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the tech titan's efforts to get Congress to care might be bearing fruit.  —  Google is cheering for a small uptick of support for ECPA reform in Congress …
Judd Legum / ThinkProgress:
People Invested $1 Million In An App That Just Says ‘Yo’  —  It only took 8 hours to build the app, and the only thing it does is allow you to send the word ‘Yo’ to your friends.  To many, it seems like a joke.  But its inventor, Or Arbel, is totally serious.

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Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Cloudflare CEO: We're Ready To Block Millions of Websites From AI — With Matthew Prince
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel
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Access:
Sam Altman on OpenAI's next model and the AI backlash
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Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
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Training Data:
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Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
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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.
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