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February 9, 2015, 1:55 AM

Top News

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Google Acquires Odysee, An App For Private Photo/Video Backup And Sharing, Team Joins Google+ — Google may be adding more offline and private sharing features to its Google+ Photos service soon. It has acquired Odysee, an iOS and Android app that let users automatically back up photos …

More: Odysee, The Next Web, Ausdroid, Engadget, BetaNews, SiliconANGLE, VentureBeat and ResearchBuzz. Tweets: @korzing

Shane Harris / The Daily Beast:

Samsung's SmartTV privacy policy warns that voice recognition can collect and transmit sensitive personal information to improve the product — Your Samsung SmartTV Is Spying on You, Basically — You may be loving your new Internet-connected television and its convenient voice-command feature …

More: TechCrunch, SamMobile, CNET, SlashGear, International Business Times, The Verge, Gizmodo, Electronista, UPROXX, Ubergizmo, Tom's Guide, BGR and The Daily Dot

Quentin Hardy / New York Times:

VPNs increasingly used to circumvent geo restrictions, access content on sites like Netflix — VPNs Dissolve National Boundaries Online, for Work and Movie-Watching — Rod Drury, an entrepreneur in Auckland, New Zealand, regularly visits the United States. Sometimes there are multiple visits a day.

Tweets: @jonrussell and @digiphile

Kashmir Hill / Fusion:

How Slack makes sure the work conversations of 365K people stay private — How a start-up got 365,000 people to trust it with their office secrets — It was Anne Toth's first week at Slack, and she already had a crisis on her hands. “TeamNameGate,” she now calls the episode.

Tweets: @msquinn, @juliaangwin and @kashhill

Steve LeVine / Quartz:

Profile of John B. Goodenough, who invented the lithium-ion battery and is now trying to build a powerful new super-battery — The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery at the age of 57 has an idea for a new one at 92 — AUSTIN, TEXAS—The chances are you have never heard of—nor …

More: Wired.co.uk. Tweets: @fmanjoo and @dtunkelang

Christopher Solomon / Popular Mechanics:

Profile of Alex Holden, who tracked down the Russian hackers who stole over 1.2B credentials — Meet The Man Who Finds Your Stolen Passwords — Last summer a gang of Russian hackers was caught amassing the largest cache of stolen user names and passwords ever discovered—1.2 billion in all.

Tweets: @cwarzel

Kevin Roose / Fusion:

How Waterloo recovered after BlackBerry's decline and avoided a talent exodus — The life, death, and rebirth of BlackBerry's hometown — It's a little after 5:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and I'm sitting in a freezing rental car outside the BlackBerry headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, looking for signs of life.

Tweets: @pmarca, @kevinroose and @cdixon

Daniela Velázquez / Fast Company:

In Kansas City, Google Fiber penetrates wealthier neighborhoods, but digital divide remains — Lessons From Google's First Rollout Of Google Fiber — Three summers ago, it was everywhere: An old-fashioned ice cream truck with peppy, electronic music blaring from its speakers.

Julie Bort / Business Insider:

Interview with Amit Singh about Google for Work's progress and plans for the future — We talked to the head of Google's next multibillion-dollar business. Here's what he told us — Five years ago next month, Google got serious about creating a new revenue stream for itself beyond search ads …

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @benedictevans and @charlesarthur

Jason Tanz / Wired:

Some techies with DIY mentalities choose to homeschool their children — The Techies Who Are Hacking Education by Homeschooling Their Kids — Chris and Samantha Matalone Cook are homeschooling their sons Simon and Parker. (Their daughter Lucy asked to attend private school for the time being.)

More: Wired. Tweets: @mims, @toughloveforx and @mat

Paul Carsten / Reuters:

China's Alibaba to invest $590 million in smartphone maker Meizu — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said in a statement on Monday it will buy a minority stake in domestic smartphone maker Meizu Technology Co for $590 million. Alibaba didn't disclose how much of the privately owned handset maker it will acquire.

More: GSMArena.com, Re/code, TechCrunch, Engadget, Business Wire, Wall Street Journal and SiliconANGLE. Tweets: @inafried

John Herrman / The Awl:

For distribution, media companies turn to apps and services, whose ad-driven, mediated businesses mirror broadcast TV — The Next Internet Is TV — I was talking to someone who works on one of those half-dozen or so apps that we tend to associate with teenagers: the ones that were built around …

More: Gigaom and everwas. Tweets: @tim, @stevebryant, @grahamfarmelo, @mattyglesias, @frankpasquale, @dkthomp, @mathewi, @mattbuchanan, @digiphile and @dangillmor

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