Techmeme
July 24, 2014, 2:00 PM

Top News

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:
Joshua Topolsky, editor in chief of The Verge, joins Bloomberg as editor of a series of new online ventures, will be replaced by Nilay Patel  —  Josh Topolsky of The Verge Is Joining Bloomberg  —  Josh Topolsky, the co-founder of the technology website The Verge, will join Bloomberg …
Tracey Lien / Polygon:
Sony agrees to $15M settlement in 2011 data breach class action  —  Sony today agreed to a $15 million preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit over its 2011 data breach, which led to the theft of names, addresses and possibly credit card data belonging to 77 million user accounts.
Timothy J. Seppala / Engadget:
Google Voice offers web-based calls through Hangouts, no G+ profile needed  —  The rumor is that eventually we're going to see Google Voice merged completely into Hangouts, and that's getting even closer to becoming reality.  You can now make phone calls via Hangouts directly from the Google Voice website, no Google+ necessary.
Deborah Gage / Wall Street Journal:
Digital Whiteboard Trello Spins Out of Fog Creek With $10.3M  —  For the second time, Fog Creek Software Inc. has spun out a company—Trello Inc., an internal project management tool that became so popular, according to the founders, it needed to exist on its own.
Exodus Intelligence:
Security firm finds de-anonymizing zero-day vulnerability in Tails OS popularized by Snowden  —  Silver Bullets and Fairy Tails  —  Introduction  —  This week we made mention on Twitter of a zero-day vulnerability we've unearthed that affects the popular Tails operating system.
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
The new $350 Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is now shipping  —  We were expecting to see the new iteration of the Oculus Rift arrive on developer's doorsteps earlier this month, but unfortunately it hit a couple of delays.  Road to VR points out a Reddit thread where pre-orderers confirmed …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Up to 50,000 sites commandeered via exploit of vulnerability in MailPoet WordPress plugin  —  Mass exploit of WordPress plugin backdoors sites running Joomla, Magento, too  —  As many as 50,000 websites have been remotely commandeered by attackers exploiting a recently patched vulnerability …
Ina Fried / Re/code:
LG Shipped 14.5 Million Smartphones in Q2, up 20 Percent, As Phone Business Turned a Profit  —  Korea's LG Electronics said on Wednesday that its mobile unit turned profitable in the second quarter as the company shipped a record 14.5 million smartphones, up 20 percent year-over-year.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
How Hackers Hid a Money-Mining Botnet in Amazon's Cloud  —  Hackers have long used malware to enslave armies of unwitting PCs, but security researchers Rob Ragan and Oscar Salazar had a different thought: Why steal computing power from innocent victims when there's so much free processing power out there for the taking?
Mark Hearn / 9to5Google:
Google switching Chrome to its homemade BoringSSL to make its browser safer  —  Google has exhausted a lot of resources patching up OpenSSL, so much in fact, the company has elected to create its own fork aptly named BoringSSL.  Preparing to move the platform to Chrome …
Josh Ong / The Next Web:
Google Maps challenges Foursquare with new Explore feature on Android and iOS  —  Google announced today the addition of an Explore Nearby button for Google Maps on iOS and Android.  The featuring is rolling out “starting this week.”  —  The new feature expands the Google Maps as more than just your go-to app for directions.
Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:
European Central Bank suffers security breach, personal data stolen  —  Summary: The European Central Bank's website has been hacked and personal information has been stolen by a cybercriminal.  —  The European Central Bank (ECB) admitted Thursday that a security breach has led to the theft of personal data.

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Earlier Picks

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