Techmeme: How a small team inside Google built Stories, a tool that organizes photos into narratives (Alexis C. Madrigal/The Atlantic Online)

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July 20, 2014, 4:15 PM

Top News

Kim Zetter / Wired:

How Ladar Levison and a convicted hacker aim to encrypt emails, including to and from fields, with Dark Mail — A Convicted Hacker and an Internet Icon Join Forces to Thwart NSA Spying — The internet is littered with burgeoning email encryption schemes aimed at thwarting NSA spying.

Tweets: @gmillard and @kgosztola

Rohin Dhar / Priceonomics Blog:

Sequoia Capital will likely earn more from investing in YC companies than YC — The Big Winner from Y Combinator's Success? Sequoia Capital — Yesterday, Y Combinator's president, Sam Altman, that the seed investment firm had funded 716 companies that were currently valued collectively at around $30 billion.

More: CB Insights. Tweets: @bryce

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

New search engine indexes records from data breaches, mostly from sites young hackers frequent — Even Script Kids Have a Right to Be Forgotten — Indexeus, a new search engine that indexes user account information acquired from more than 100 recent data breaches, has caught many in the hacker underground off-guard.

More: Engadget and TechCrunch. Tweets: @_n1k_nak, @cert_polska_en and @teamcymru

Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:

Edward Snowden Plans to Work on Privacy Tech — NSA leaker Edward Snowden says he plans to work on technology to preserve personal data privacy and called on programmers to join his efforts. — Speaking via a Google Hangout at the Hackers on Planet Earth Conference in New York …

More: BetaNews, Reuters, Motherboard, TechCrunch and Guardian

John Napier Tye / Washington Post:

Meet Executive Order 12333: The Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on Americans

More: ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation. Tweets: @csoghoian, @kenroth, @astepanovich, @trevortimm and @csoghoian

Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

How a small team inside Google built Stories, a tool that organizes photos into narratives — How to Teach Google What a Story Is — Google wanted to solve a problem we can all understand. People take so, so many photographs and yet they actually do very little with them.

Tweets: @garynielson, @jeluebering and @thebareview. Thanks:@steverubel

WhyCry / VideoCardz.com:

Report: Nvidia Shield Tablet ships July 29 in the US; $299 for 16GB Wi-Fi-only, $399 for 32GB with LTE, $59 for separate controller — NVIDIA extends SHIELD family with SHIELD tablet and wireless controller — Let's talk about SHIELD. — I'm a huge fan of SHIELD, it's such an amazing tv show.

More: Android Police, The Digital Reader, Neowin, ZDNet, Softpedia News, IntoMobile, Phones Review, Forbes, Ubergizmo, Phandroid, Polygon, 9to5Google, TechnoBuffalo, Android Beat, ExtremeTech, Droid Life, Liliputing and Digital Trends

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Even after denial, Bloomberg says Jay Carney in the running for Apple PR head — Last week, Re/code reported that former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has been “bandied about” in connection to filling Katie Cotton's role as Apple's Corporate Communications and PR chief:

More: The Loop, Bloomberg, AppleInsider, iPhone in Canada Blog, Cult of Mac and App Advice. Tweets: @karaswisher

Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:

Sites like Travelocity pass full plaintext credit card numbers and IP addresses to DHS, which retains them for years — Ars editor learns feds have his old IP addresses, full credit card numbers — FOIA request turns up 9 years of records, including plaintext credit card numbers.

More: TechSpot. Tweets: @mikedoherty_ca, @mikedoherty_ca, @jwilkins and @ashk4n

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

The Pirate Bay says unique visitors doubled since 2011 despite blockades in several countries — Pirate Bay Traffic Doubles Despite ISP Blockades — The Pirate Bay is without doubt one of the most censored websites on the Internet. — Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers …

More: Ars Technica and Digital Trends

Hayley Tsukayama / Washington Post:

Kindle Unlimited: worth it if you buy 12+ books/year and find the limited catalogue appealing — Is Kindle Unlimited worth it? — Some things to think about before you sign up for Amazon's latest service. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) — Amazon.com introduced a new subscription service, Kindle Unlimited, on Friday.

More: The Verge, TechCrunch, Tech Times and ReadWrite. See also Mediagazer

Chance Miller / 9to5Google:

Google and Samsung's relationship continues to worsen, this time over wearables — According to a new report out of The Information, the already tense relationship between Samsung and Google has begun to worsen thanks to both of their own lines of wearables.

Ashlee Vance / Businessweek:

Amazon's Cloud Is One of the Fastest-Growing Software Businesses in History — Five billion dollars. — That's how much Amazon.com (AMZN) will rake in from its cloud computing business this year, according to a new estimate from Pacific Crest Securities. If true, it's an incredible figure.

More: Re/code. Tweets: @efeng, @ahess247 and @bfrist

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