Techmeme
January 30, 2015, 1:00 PM

Top News

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
AOL To Lay Off About 150 People, Mostly In Sales; Folding Joystiq, TUAW Into Engadget  —  Some more details are emerging around AOL's reorganization plans.  Sources tell us that the company will lay off around 150 people, with the majority in sales.  As part of it, AOL is also consolidating some websites.
New York Times:
Verizon Wireless to Allow Complete Opt Out of Mobile ‘Supercookies’  —  Verizon Wireless, which has been under fire by privacy advocates since late last year, has decided to make a major revision to its mobile ad-targeting program.  Users who do not want to be tracked with an identifier …
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Jay-Z takes on Beats and Spotify with acquisition of music-streaming services Tidal and WiMP for $56M  —  Here's an interesting piece of acquisition news for a Friday morning: International rapping superstar Jay-Z is on the verge of buying Swedish company Aspiro AB — the firm that owns …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Google Agrees To Change Privacy Policy In Settlement With UK's Information Commissioner  —  While Google continues to work through the best implementation of Right To Be Forgotten legislation in Europe, some more developments in the area of consumer data and privacy.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Secret Co-Founder Chrys Bader-Wechseler Steps Down Because It's Not About Design Anymore  —  One year after founding anonymish app Secret with fellow Googler David Byttow, Chrys Bader-Wechseler is leaving the company on amicable terms.  He cites that Secret isn't about design and curation …
Strategy Analytics Blog:
Android Shipped 1 Billion Smartphones Worldwide in 2014  —  According to the latest research from our WSS (Smartphones) service, global smartphone shipments grew 30 percent annually to reach a record 1.3 billion units in 2014.  Android accounted for 81 percent of all smartphones last year …
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Vine Kids, a separate app tailored for kids with child-friendly Vines, is available now on iOS  —  Vine Introduces Vine Kids  —  Vine is today introducing a new layer of the app called Vine Kids.  It's meant to be a safe, kid-friendly space for a younger audience to play around with the app and watch vines.
Kevin Fitchard / Gigaom:
The big 4 carriers will bring LTE to Chicago's subways  —  4G services are finally coming to Chicago's subways.  Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile are collectively installing a $32.5 million LTE upgrade in the Chicago Transit Authority's 22 miles of subway tunnels, allowing commuters to continue chatting …
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Prosecutors Trace $13.4M in Bitcoins From the Silk Road to Ulbricht's Laptop  —  If anyone still believes that bitcoin is magically anonymous internet money, the US government just offered what may be the clearest demonstration yet that it's not.  A courtroom PowerPoint presentation traced hundreds …
More: TIME, SiliconANGLE and TechSpot.  Tweets: @a_greenberg
Andrew Jacobs / New York Times:
China acknowledges targeting VPN services to foster the “healthy development” of the nation's internet, says VPNs are illegal  —  China Clamps Down Still Harder on Internet Access  —  BEIJING — Jing Yuechen, the founder of an Internet start-up here in the Chinese capital …

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.

Featured Podcasts

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.
Big Technology Podcast:
Meta's Muse Revival, Frontier AI Under Threat, The Rise Of Dopamine Sites
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.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:00 PM ET, January 30, 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.

More News

Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
Abhijeet M. / SamMobile:

Earlier Picks

Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:
Barb Darrow / Gigaom: