Techmeme: Sling TV opens the floodgates, accepts sign-ups without invites (Janko Roettgers/Gigaom)

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February 9, 2015, 10:55 AM

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Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Sling TV opens the floodgates, accepts sign-ups without invites — Credit: Janko Roettgers / Gigaom — Credit: Janko Roettgers / Gigaom — Sling TV, the online TV streaming service from Dish Networks, is now available to everyone: The service ended its invitation-only soft launch late Sunday night …

More: VentureBeat, Ars Technica, PC World, USA Today, Re/code, iMore, The Next Web, Business Wire, The Verge, DSLreports, Yahoo Tech, TechnoBuffalo, Lifehacker, Electronista, Geeky Gadgets, SlashGear, Engadget and Geek.com. See also Mediagazer

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, 9to5Google, Android Authority, ZDNet, Engadget, TechSpot, VentureBeat, Digital Trends, Android Central, BetaNews, Geeky Gadgets, Android Police, Ubergizmo, Ausdroid, SiliconANGLE, The Next Web and ResearchBuzz. Tweets: @korzing

Erik Franco / Motherboard:

Inside Chinese sites that mine 4050 bitcoins/month, equivalent to about $1.5M, with computing power that amounts to roughly 3% of the bitcoin network — Inside the Chinese Bitcoin Mine That's Making $1.5M a Month — In October of last year Motherboard gained access to a massive …

More: jackgavigan.com. Tweets: @kelvindchen and @digiphile

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

KickassTorrents loses .so home to domain name seizure, reverts to .to domain — KickassTorrents Taken Down By Domain Name Seizure — With millions of unique visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) is one the most used torrent sites on the Internet. — The site's popularity …

More: Wired.co.uk, VentureBeat, BetaNews and TheDomains.com. See also Mediagazer

Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:

LinkedIn, American Airlines, and other major developers begin to adopt Apple's Swift, report improved productivity and fewer errors — Apple's new Swift programming language takes flight with Getty Images, American Airlines, LinkedIn, and Duolingo — Apple's new Swift programming language …

More: Apple Spotlight and MacDailyNews

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, CNET, Business Wire, Ubergizmo, TechCrunch, The Verge, Geeky Gadgets, Android Authority, Wall Street Journal, Engadget and SiliconANGLE. Tweets: @inafried

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: @digiphile and @jonrussell

Shane Harris / The Daily Beast:

Samsung's SmartTV privacy policy warns that spoken personal or sensitive information captured by voice recognition may be transmitted to a third party — Your Samsung SmartTV Is Spying on You, Basically — You may be loving your new Internet-connected television and its convenient voice-command feature …

Reuters:

Exclusive: Qualcomm nears $1 billion deal resolving China antitrust dispute - source — (Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) is likely to pay China a record fine of around $1 billion, ending a 14-month government investigation into anti-competitive practices, after the U.S. chipmaker and the regulator …

More: Tech Trader Daily, ZDNet, CNET, Bloomberg Business, TheStreet.com, Channel EYE, PhoneArena and Seeking Alpha

Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:

Dell Venue 8 7000 review: a $400 Intel-based Android tablet with solid build, thin bezels, nearly 10 hours of battery life — Dell's Venue 8 7000: A striking tablet that falls short of greatness — Review: A premium tablet with a cool design that doesn't always work in real life.

More: The Verge and Gotta Be Mobile

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.

More: Bloomberg View. Tweets: @communitech, @kevinroose, @cdixon and @pmarca

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

The FCC isn't afraid of AT&T's legal threats over net neutrality — Lawyers dissect AT&T's claim that broadband can't be a common carrier service. — AT&T will probably be one of the first companies to file a lawsuit if the Federal Communications Commission follows through on a plan to impose stricter rules on broadband.

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