Techmeme
February 6, 2015, 9:00 PM

Top News

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
OS X 10.10.3 Puts More Focus on Emoji, Lays Groundwork for Skin Tone Modifiers  —  While the featured addition in yesterday's OS X 10.10.3 developer seed was the new Photos app, Apple is addressing other issues with the forthcoming update, and one of these focus areas is emoji, which is seeing several changes and improvements.
Kelly Phillips Erb / Forbes:
TurboTax temporarily suspends e-filing for state tax returns amid fraud concerns  —  TurboTax Temporarily Halts All State E-Filings Amid Fraud Concerns  —  Up to 18 states are reporting significant upticks in fraudulent activity and there may be a common thread: tax preparation software.
Yoree Koh / Wall Street Journal:
Why Twitter's Stock Popped 16% Despite Paltry User Growth  —  Twitter finally got its wish.  —  Investors didn't react to its quarterly earnings report based on just one number: the growth rate of monthly active users.  —  At last, investors seem to be recognizing Twitter's achievements on the business side.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Twitter Confirms Google Firehose Deal To Target Logged Out Users  —  During Twitter's Q4 earnings call, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo today confirmed that Twitter has signed a firehose deal with Google, which will bring tweets back into Google searches, more eyeballs to those tweets …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Google Uses Hangouts As A Virtual Genius Bar To Sell Google Devices  —  In 2013, Google expanded its Hangouts video conferencing service into a commerce platform called Helpouts, where people buy and sell services like cooking or technical advice via live video.
More: SlashGear and The Next Web.  Tweets: @amir
Owen Bowcott / Guardian:
UK court rules GCHQ mass internet surveillance was unlawful, breached human rights law  —  GCHQ mass internet surveillance was unlawful, rules court  —  Access to intercepted information obtained by the NSA breached human rights laws, according to the Investigative Powers Tribunal
Nellie Bowles / Re/code:
Startups and Self-Loathing at the 8th Annual Crunchies Awards  —  There was a moment last night — when comedian T.J. Miller (who had called an Uber co-founder's girlfriend “bitch” multiple times) was smashing a TechCrunch piñata as a hundred people walked out of his performance …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google Maps for Android update includes Local Guides program, similar to Yelp Elites  —  Google Takes On Yelp Elites With Its New “Local Guides” Program  —  Google is rolling out a “Local Guides” program in an update to Google Maps - a move that seemingly sees the company taking on …
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Galvanize to open massive, 71,000-square-foot ‘tech startup campus’ and coding school in Seattle  —  Good news for Seattle entrepreneurs: Galvanize is opening up a huge new space in Pioneer Square.  The Denver-based company's hybrid model combines tech office space with a programming school, access to investors and mentorship.
Andrew Chung / Reuters:
US court orders Symantec to pay $17M for violating two patents owned by Intellectual Ventures related to its email and Internet protection products  —  U.S. court orders Symantec to pay $17 mln for patent infringement  —  (Reuters) - Symantec Corp, maker of the popular Norton antivirus software …
Ben Fritz / Wall Street Journal:
Nintendo and Netflix are reportedly in early stage of developing “Legend of Zelda” live-action series  —  Netflix Is Developing a Live-Action ‘Legend of Zelda’ Series  —  “The Legend of Zelda,” one of the most popular videogame series of all time, is in the works as a television show at Netflix.
Nick Summers / Engadget:
First Ubuntu phone, a repurposed mid-range BQ Android phone, goes on flash sale in EU next week for $195  —  The first Ubuntu phone arrives next week, but there's a catch  —  It's been a long time coming, but finally Canonical is ready to release its first Ubuntu phone.

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:
Pro Tips: 4 tips to overcome data problems in your CRM  —  Most CRM data problems don't look like problems.  At a glance, your CRM looks fine: records exist, fields are filled, and reports run.
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

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.
Sources:
Satya Nadella on Microsoft's agent bet and AI's trust problem
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI
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.
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Gabe Stengel - Building Investing Superintelligence
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:00 PM ET, February 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.

More News

Earlier Picks

Mark Scott / New York Times:
Kyle Wiens / Wired: