Techmeme
February 17, 2016, 9:10 PM

Top News

Tim Cook / Apple:
Apple opposes court order over shooter's iPhone, says US government is asking it to build a backdoor to the iPhone, calls it a “dangerous precedent”  —  A Message to Our Customers  —  The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers.
More: Politico, The Daily Beast, Fight for the Future, Internet Society, The Verge, Quartz, Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail, Reuters, International Business Times, VentureBeat, New York Times, ACLU, MacRumors, USA Today, BuzzFeed, NPR, Gizmodo, Popular Mechanics, Techdirt, Ars Technica, ReadWrite, CNN, PRI, AVC, The Verge, Macworld, Guardian, CircleID, CNNMoney, Yahoo! Finance, The Intercept, The Next Web, Forbes, Vox, CSO, Mashable, CBS Los Angeles, US News, The Network Garden, iMore, Marco.org, Redmond Pie, BGR, Cult of Mac, SiliconValley.com, Tech Insider, Christian Science Monitor, blog.trendmicro.com, Washington Post, DISPLAYBLOG, Boing Boing, Michael Geist, Guardian, Federal Computer Week, Fortune, The Register, The Register, Yahoo Tech, NPR, Associated Press, Phandroid, BBC, Benzinga, Freedom to Tinker, Daring Fireball, Bloomberg Business, MacNN, Wired, CNET, Shadowproof, CBS New York, Hit & Run, MacRumors, Forrester Blogs, FierceCIO News, 9to5Mac, POPSUGAR, Patently Apple, The Tech Report, Re/code, AppleInsider, Nextgov, iPhone Hacks, The San Diego Union …, InvestorPlace, The Daily Dot, Investor's Business Daily, Adweek, FierceWireless, Neowin, Digital Trends, Refinery29, TIME, Independent Journal Review, PhoneArena, eWeek, American Enterprise Institute, NBC Bay Area, BetaNews, Tech Trader Daily, Techvibes Global News, The Loop, The Tech Portal, Guardian, Fusion, Salon, Schneier on Security, Very Biased Reviews, DSLreports, Slate, Business Insider, and PCWorld
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
Google CEO Sundar Pichai tweets in support of Apple, says forcing companies to enable hacking could compromise user privacy  —  Google CEO Sundar Pichai backs Tim Cook over Apple-FBI controversy  —  Google chief executive Sundar Pichai just weighed in on the ongoing issue …
Dan Guido / Trail of Bits Blog:
iPhone 5C lacks Secure Enclave, makes it technically feasible for Apple to comply with court order over San Bernadino shooter  —  Apple can comply with the FBI court order  —  Earlier today, a federal judge ordered Apple to comply with the FBI's request for technical assistance in the recovery of the San Bernadino gunmen's iPhone 5C.
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
White House Plays With Words, Says Department Of Justice Isn't Asking Apple To Create A Backdoor  —  Following Tim Cook's letter, the White House has reacted to Apple's strong stance against backdoors.  According to Reuters, the White House has said that the Department of Justice isn't asking …
Elise Viebeck / Washington Post:
A look at early reactions from lawmakers and candidates Trump and Kasich to Apple's encryption standoff with the FBI  —  Should Apple unlock a phone tied to the San Bernardino attack?  Lawmakers say yes and no  —  Add this to the list of controversies facing Capitol Hill.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Twitter rolling out a new GIF button for iOS, Android, and Twitter.com over coming weeks, in partnership with Giphy and Riffsy  —  Twitter rolls out native GIF support in partnership with Giphy and Riffsy  —  Twitter has added native support for GIFs, thanks to its partnership with Giphy and Riffsy.
Kara Swisher / Re/code:
Yahoo Tech Editor in Chief Dan Tynan is out; Yahoo's tech site will be integrated into its larger news site; David Pogue will stay with the company  —  If It's Wednesday, It's Layoffs Day at Yahoo: Today, Digital Magazines Get Hit  —  According to sources close to the situation …
Lukas I. Alpert / Wall Street Journal:
Facebook announces that all publishers and bloggers worldwide can adopt Instant Articles beginning April 12  —  Facebook Will Make Instant Articles Available to All Publishers  —  As of April 12, almost a year after launch, any publisher can host content directly on the social media site
Office Blogs:
Outlook.com exits preview, gets major update including @mentions in emails, side-by-side doc and email editing, Giphy integrations  —  Outlook.com—out of preview and better than ever  —  The Outlook team is on a mission to bring you the best email and calendar experience—at work, at home—across all your favorite devices.
Anthony D'Alessandro / Deadline:
NBCUniversal's Fandango buys Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster; Warner Bros. will take minority stake in Fandango  —  Fandango Acquires Rotten Tomatoes & Flixster From Warner Bros Entertainment  —  BREAKING: Fandango is set to acquire Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes, which includes …
Astro Teller / Backchannel:
Plenty of Google X moonshot ideas are ditched, with 100 investigations killed last year, including vertical farming and variable buoyancy cargo ship projects  —  The Secret to Moonshots?  Killing Our Projects  —  At X, I see up close every day how messy innovation is
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
GitHub launches templates for new issues and pull requests  —  GitHub today announced the availability of templates that repository maintainers can add to forms for new issues and pull requests.  The move might sound like a small thing, but it could result in more civil discussion among GitHub users.
More: GitHub and The Next Web
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google's Custom Machine Types Come Out Of Beta, Now Support Red Hat And Windows  —  Custom Machine Types on Google's Cloud Platform allow you to choose exactly how many CPU cores and how much memory you want in a virtual machine to run your applications.  Google first introduced this feature …
Amir Efrati / The Information:
Confidential internal data: Yahoo.com's daily active users declined 16.5% in 2015, Yahoo Mail down 11.5%, and Yahoo Search down 8.8%  —  The Death March of Yahoo's Core Products  —  The number of people visiting Yahoo's three most important products—Yahoo Mail, the Yahoo.com home page and Yahoo Search …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Leap Motion demos Orion, a motion tracking system and sensor for VR headsets  —  Leap Motion's revamped hand tracking is getting built straight into VR headsets  —  When Leap Motion was announced in 2012, it seemed like a solution looking for a problem.  A little black box that plugged …

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Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

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