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January 6, 2015, 10:50 AM
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Bloomberg:
Sources: Verizon approached AOL about possible acquisition or joint venture to strengthen mobile-video offerings  —  Verizon Said to Approach AOL About Possible Takeover or Venture  —  Verizon Communications Inc. has approached AOL Inc. (AOL) about a potential acquisition or joint venture …
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple now selling SIM-free unlocked iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the US, from $649  —  As we reported yesterday, Apple is now selling contract-free iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in retail stores and online.  Following historic pattern, the 16 GB base model iPhone 6 costs $649 with higher tiers costing $100 extra.
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
Razer OSVR: an Android-based open source VR platform with a $199 dev kit headset  —  Razer introduces OSVR, the ‘Android of virtual reality’  —  OSVR takes a shot at unifying the world of virtual reality  —  For a year or more after the Oculus Rift got people talking about virtual reality, the two were nearly synonymous.
Ev Williams / Medium:
Metrics based on a single number, like MAU, are a poor proxy for value for Internet companies  —  A mile wide, an inch deep  —  I was recently quoted as saying, “I don't give a s**t” if Instagram has more users than Twitter.  If you read the article you'll note there's a big “if” before my not giving of said s**t.
David Kravets / Ars Technica:
FBI says search warrants not needed to use “stingrays” in public places  —  The Federal Bureau of Investigation is taking the position that court warrants are not required when deploying cell-site simulators in public places.  Nicknamed “stingrays,” the devices are decoy cell towers …
More: Techdirt and Gizmodo.  Tweets: @propublica
James Kendrick / ZDNet:
CES 2015: Lenovo unveils Yoga tablets, laptops, and new pen technology  —  Summary:Lenovo intends to continue riding its Yoga line of tablets and laptops, and launched a Yoga Tablet 2 with a strange feature, along with the Yoga 3 and ThinkPad Yoga laptops.  —  The Yoga line of tablets …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Glassdoor Closes $70M Funding Round Led By Google Capital And Tiger Global  —  Glassdoor, the site that lets employees rate their companies' work environment and anonymously disclose their salary information, today announced that it has raised a $70 million funding round led by Google Capital …
Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:
Radiohead's Thom Yorke, most legally-downloaded BitTorrent artist in 2014, may have made up to $20M with BitTorrent Bundles  —  Thom Yorke made as much as $20M from his BitTorrent experiment  —  Credit: Nikola Spasenoski / Shutterstock.com  —  Credit: Nikola Spasenoski / Shutterstock.com
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
HP delivers workstations on the go with thin-and-light Zbook laptops  —  What will be hot in consumer electronics and computing in 2015?  Read VB's full coverage of International CES 2015 to find out.  —  The 2015 International CES is all about consumers.
Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:
Bitstamp confirms exchange hacked, has lost less than 19K bitcoins worth about $5M  —  Bitstamp exchange hacked, $5M worth of bitcoin stolen  —  The European bitcoin exchange suspends its service after it was hacked, ZDNet can confirm.  Less than 19,000 bitcoins were stolen from an operational wallet.
Austin Carr / Fast Company:
Amazon executes sweeping reorganization of hardware group Lab126 following Fire Phone flop  —  Following Fire Phone Flop, Big Changes At Amazon's Lab126  —  In recent months, a string of departures and managerial changes has hit Amazon's Lab126, the company's Silicon Valley-based R&D group …
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Samsung updates SmartThings Hub, unveils subscription home monitoring service, coming April 2015  —  Samsung unveils next-gen smart home hub and monitoring service  —  Looks like you didn't have to wait long to see what Samsung would do in the smart home world after acquiring SmartThings …
Austin Carr / Fast Company:
Interviews with dozens of Amazon employees reveal the story behind Jeff Bezos's Fire phone debacle  —  The Real Story Behind Jeff Bezos's Fire Phone Debacle And What It Means For Amazon's Future  —  “What the hell happened?”  —  It is a cold day in early December in Midtown Manhattan …
More: The Verge
Chris Ziegler / The Verge:
CarPlay and Android Auto will be in Volkswagen cars this year  —  At CES this week, Volkswagen finally announced its plans for Apple's CarPlay and Google's Android Auto: both will be available later this year.  The technologies will work on VW's MIB II dash electronics …
Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:
Samsung is adding Slingbox-like features to its new smart TVs  —  Janko Roettgers  —  Credit: Kobby Dagan / Shutterstock.com  —  Credit: Kobby Dagan / Shutterstock.com  —  This is interesting: Samsung is adding what amounts to a kind of Slingbox to all of its new smart TVs …
Ruth Reader / VentureBeat:
Yahoo Mail mobile app now tracks packages on iOS  —  Yahoo Mail just issued an update to its iOS app that will help you keep an eye on your goods while they're still in transit.  —  In the Yahoo Today section of the mobile app users can track packages from Amazon, eBay, Zappos, Target, Best Buy, Macy's and others.
More: 9to5Mac
Nick Summers / Engadget:
Moonpig API vulnerability exposed data of 3M customers for 17 months  —  Moonpig flaw leaves customer accounts wide open for 17 months (update)  —  Over the years we've seen our fair share of security breaches and loopholes, but rarely do they take the companies involved almost 17 months to patch them up.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook Acquires Wit.ai To Help Its Developers With Speech Recognition And Voice Interfaces  —  Facebook today acquired Wit.ai, a Y Combinator startup founded 18 months ago to create an API for building voice-activated interfaces.  Wit.ai already has 6,000 developers on its platform who have built hundreds of apps.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:50 AM ET, January 6, 2015.

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.

From Mediagazer

Lucia Moses / Business Insider:
WaPo opinion editor Adam O'Neal says he's stepping down after a year in the role; his hiring was part of a push to promote “personal liberties and free markets”

Matt Stout / The Boston Globe:
The Massachusetts Senate passes an amendment that would in many instances bar judges, grand juries, and others from forcing reporters to identify their sources

Wall Street Journal:
UMG shares fall 25%, the record company's worst day since its 2021 IPO, following disappointing Q2 results; UMG is down 40%+ over the past 12 months

More News

Caleb Pershan / SFist:
Mark Zuckerberg's New Book Club Sold Out Its First Title On Amazon
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Gogo issues fake HTTPS certificates to block in-flight YouTube streaming, says no user info collected

Earlier Picks

Peter Kafka / Re/code:
Dish announces Sling TV: stream channels like ESPN, CNN, and TNT over the internet for $20 per month without a cable subscription
Lynn La / CNET:
LG G Flex 2: curved smartphone with 5.5-inch screen and Snapdragon 810 coming to Korea this month, AT&T and Sprint later this year
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