Techmeme: A Year After Death of Silk Road, Darknet Markets Are Booming (Jake Swearingen/The Atlantic Online)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

October 5, 2014, 8:10 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:

HP plans to split into two businesses, one for PCs and printers and the other for corporate hardware and services — Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two — H-P will separate its PC and printer operation from its corporate hardware and other units, sources say.

More: The Verge, CNNMoney.com, Forbes, New York Times, BetaNews, ZDNet, Computerworld, PC Magazine, Bloomberg, TechSpot, The Register, DailyTech, Fortune, Ars Technica, CNET, VentureBeat, Windows Phone Central, Gigaom, Business Insider, Electronista, Reuters and Seeking Alpha

Tweets: @tomkrazit, @startupljackson, @ahess247, @obrien, @obrien, @obrien and @parislemon

Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:

HP revives its three-year-old breakup plan after failing to sell off several business units — HP Returns to Breakup Plan It Shelved Three Years Ago — Computing giant Hewlett-Packard is close to breaking itself into two companies after CEO Meg Whitman ran out of options to turn around …

More: ABC News, Business Insider, ParisLemon and Engadget

Tweets: @gassee and @ahess247

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Hacked Screenshots Show Friend-To-Friend Payments Feature Hidden In Facebook Messenger — Facebook Messenger is all set up to allow friends to send each other money. All Facebook has to do is turn on the feature, according to screenshots and video taken using iOS app exploration developer tool Cycript …

More: PC Magazine, VentureBeat, Engadget, The Verge, iMore, Mashable, Gizmodo, Business Insider, CryptoCoinsNews and iPhone Hacks

Tweets: @dangillmor, @joshconstine and @andyplace2

Thanks:@joshconstine

Jenna Wortham / New York Times:

Founding “queen” of pirate streaming site NinjaVideo is unrepentant after 16 months in prison — The Unrepentant Bootlegger — The Deposed Queen of NinjaVideo The Deposed Queen of NinjaVideo — Hana Beshara, a founder of NinjaVideo, once a popular illegal video downloading site, was known as Queen Phara to its users.

Tweets: @margotkaminski, @thejoebrown, @wyattnyt, @choitotheworld, @percival and @anildash

Matthew Wisnioski / Washington Post:

Walter Isaacon's “The Innovators” is the most accessible, comprehensive history of the digital age — Book review: ‘The Innovators,’ on the digital revolution, by Walter Isaacson — In the Industrial Revolution's wake, aspiring entrepreneurs combed through a landmark biography of inventors for the secrets to success.

More: New York Times, New York Times, Harvard University Gazette, San Francisco Chronicle, Businessweek and Wall Street Journal. Tweets: @walterisaacson

Jeff Elder / Wall Street Journal:

Google to Make Security Guards Employees, Rather Than Contractors — In a move that could reverberate around Silicon Valley, Google plans to hire more than 200 security guards as its own employees, rather than through an outside contractor. — The guards will be eligible for the same benefits …

More: TechCrunch, USA Today, SiliconBeat, bizjournals, The Huffington Post, The Technology Chronicles and NBC Bay Area

Tweets: @qthrul and @mdudas

Matthew Lynley / BuzzFeed:

Behind the Dropbox team working to deeply integrate the company's services in phones like the Galaxy Note 4 and Xperia Z3 — Meet The Team Putting Dropbox On Your Phone — Dropbox's strategic partnerships team, filled with a batch of former Googlers and other policy experts, is tasked with embedding Dropbox into new mobile devices.

Tweets: @mattlynley and @tomgara. Thanks:@mattlynley

Jake Swearingen / The Atlantic Online:

A Year After Death of Silk Road, Darknet Markets Are Booming — It's been one year since the FBI shut down Silk Road, the granddaddy of darknet marketplaces, and arrested main Silk Road admin Ross William Ulbricht (or, as he was known online, Dread Pirate Roberts).

More: ZDNet and Gigaom. Tweets: @jeffreyatucker

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Redbox Instant streaming video service operated by Redbox and Verizon is shutting down on October 7 — Redbox Instant is shutting down October 7 — A year and a half after its official launch, Redbox Instant is calling it quits. The shut-down shows how hard it is to compete with Netflix for streaming video subscriptions.

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Netflix's Exclusive Content Push Continues With A Foray Into Film — Over the last few days, Netflix has announced a couple of deals that will bring a series of films to its streaming video platform over the coming years. The partnerships represent a new form of “exclusive” content for Netflix …

More: The Wrap, USA Today, Hollywood Reporter and Forbes

Colin Lecher / The Verge:

As 911 systems suffer outages and glitches, carriers resist location tracking improvements — This is what happens when 911 fails — Our most important lifeline isn't always there when you need it — On a June morning in Washington, William Leneweaver, the state's E911 IT projects and operations manager, was alerted to a call.

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.

Cloudflare:

Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.

Zoho:

The 90-day recognition cliff: Why praise programs fade, and what keeps them alive — Recognition programs often start with enthusiasm. Employees participate, managers share shoutouts, and teams have a new way to celebrate achievements.

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.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:

SAP CEO: AI Won't Kill Software, But It Will Change Your Job — With Christian Klein

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.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next

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.

Sources:

Factory CEO on why AGI is already here

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

Invest Like the Best:

Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Lenny's Podcast:

The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.

Great Chat:

Doomers at Dreamforce

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:10 PM ET, October 5, 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.