Techmeme
July 2, 2014, 11:40 AM

Top News

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Google acquires music streaming service Songza for undisclosed amount, will keep product intact for now  —  Google Buys Songza  —  Google has acquired music streaming service Songza after weeks of speculation around a potential buyout.  —  Songza uses information about the user and context …
Ben Sisario / New York Times:
Source: Google paid more than $39M for Songza  —  Google Buys Songza, a Playlist Service for Any Occasion  —  In a sign of growing consolidation in the digital music business, Google announced on Tuesday that it had bought Songza, a three-year-old app that competes with Pandora and others …
Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:
Investor Tim Draper wins auction for 29,655 bitcoins seized from Silk Road, partners with Vaurum to leverage the pool as a liquidity source in emerging markets  —  Famed investor Tim Draper wins auction of Silk Road's 29,655 bitcoins  —  Draper to partner with Vaurum, which offers “secure storage solutions” to banks.
Jillian Ward / Bloomberg:
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
BlaBlaCar Raises A Massive $100 Million Round To Create A Global Long Distance Ride-Sharing Network  —  In what is the largest VC round in a French startup of all time, BlaBlaCar just raised a $100 million round led by Index Ventures, with existing investors Accel Partners, ISAI and Lead Edge Capital also participating in the round.
Cindy Cohn / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Flawed Oversight Board Report Endorses General Warrants  —  The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) issued a legally flawed and factually incomplete report late Tuesday that endorses Section 702 surveillance.  Hiding behind the “complexity” of the technology …
Ian Austen / New York Times:
Canadian antispam law goes into effect, resulting in a flurry of ‘please opt in’ emails  —  Canadian Antispam Law Whips Up a Storm of Last-Minute Messages  —  OTTAWA — The email has all the markings of malicious spam: an overwrought subject line screaming “Urgent Action Required …
Nicholas Stango / Gizmodo:
Inside the Secret Building That's Bringing Cell Service To NYC's Subway  —  As Hurricane Sandy revealed almost two years ago, New York's 100-year-old subway is not a modern and robust system.  In fact, compared to other cities, it's downright dirty, unpredictable and technologically behind.
More: ANIMAL
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
Chumby's smart alarm clock relaunches with 1,000 apps  —  Remember Chumby?  You probably haven't heard much about the snuggly tiny computer/smart alarm clock since its makers' company disbanded, but now it's back from its semi-retired state.  Its current owner, Blue Octy LLC …
More: Geeky Gadgets and LiliputingTweets: @chumby
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
Former Time editor-at-large Harry McCracken joins Fast Company as technology editor  —  Hey, I'm Joining Fast Company!  —  Just over a month ago, I resigned from my job at TIME and rebooted this website.  I wrote at the time that I didn't expect to do Technologizer full-time indefinitely …
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
Samsung Gear Live and LG G Watch review: expensive accessories with promise, but not yet must-haves  —  Android Wear hardware review: Sometimes promising, often frustrating  —  Why wear one smartwatch when there's room for two?  —  We've reviewed most of the major entrants into the smartwatch arena …
Amy Schatz / Re/code:
FTC says T-Mobile made hundreds of millions on crammed text message charges; T-Mobile says accusations are “unfounded and without merit”  —  FTC Alleges T-Mobile Made Millions From Allegedly Bogus Text Message Charges  —  T-Mobile made hundreds of millions of dollars …

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:
Introducing Zoho Expense Integrated Travel solution : The Smarter Way to Manage Business Travel  —  Business travel has become increasingly complex.  Employees expect consumer-grade booking experiences …
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

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.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety, and Hollywood's Sort-of Comeback
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Big Technology Podcast:
How China Caught U.S. AI — With Grace Shao
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.
Training Data:
Building the Automated AGI Lab: Core Automation's Jerry Tworek and Rohan Anil
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
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 11:40 AM ET, July 2, 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

Kevin C. Tofel / Gigaom:

Earlier Picks