Techmeme: US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper complains that Edward Snowden sped up spread of encryption by seven years (The Intercept)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

April 30, 2016, 8:10 PM

Top News

The Intercept:

US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper complains that Edward Snowden sped up spread of encryption by seven years — Spy Chief Complains That Edward Snowden Sped Up Spread of Encryption By 7 Years — THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE on Monday blamed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden …

More: NBC News, Techdirt, TIME, Hit & Run, Slate and Digital Trends

Tweets: @dnvolz, @snowden, @guan, @ggreenwald, @ggreenwald, @theintercept and @dangillmor

Janko Roettgers / Variety:

Samsung Is Working On a Standalone Virtual Reality Headset … Samsung's plans for virtual reality go beyond the company's current Gear VR headset: The company is working on a standalone virtual reality (VR) headset that will incorporate positional tracking similar to the technologies …

More: ZDNet, Engadget, The Verge, UploadVR, Fone Arena, Digital Trends, Android Authority, SlashGear, VG247, Gizmodo, Ubergizmo, Pocketnow, Pocket-lint, Quartz, PhoneDog.com, Gizmodo UK, Phandroid and GamesIndustry.biz. Tweets: @benbajarin. Thanks:@jank0

Sundar Pichai / Official Google Blog:

Sundar Pichai lays out priorities for Google in his first Founders' Letter, with machine learning and AI playing a key role — This year's Founders' Letter — Every year, Larry and Sergey write a Founders' Letter to our stockholders updating them with some of our recent highlights and sharing our vision for the future.

More: VentureBeat, SiliconBeat, SiliconANGLE, Petri, PCWorld and Bloomberg

Tweets: @sundarpichai, @guy_levin, @qhardy and @whatthebit

Anna Wiener / n+1:

A first-person narrative on the allure and anxiety of working at a Silicon Valley startup — Uncanny Valley — I would say more, but I signed an NDA. — MORALE IS DOWN. We are making plenty of money, but the office is teeming with salespeople: well-groomed social animals with good posture …

Tweets: @leighalexander, @ftrain, @xor, @qhardy, @tomkrazit, @calebgarling, @ibogost, @willoremus and @ashleymayer

Bloomberg:

Internet retailers like Adore Me, JustFab, and Birchbox are placing customers into unwanted, hard-to-cancel subscriptions, leading to complaints and lawsuits — Trapping You in a Club You Didn't Know You Joined — A $19.95 set of lacy lingerie had already cost Hailee Taylor more than $300 …

More: Boing Boing. Tweets: @shiraovide

AnandTech:

Intel's Changing Future: Smartphone SoCs Broxton & SoFIA Officially Cancelled — The past two weeks have been a busy - if not tumultuous - period for Intel. Driven by continued challenges in various semiconductor markets, culminating in weaker-than-desired earnings in the most recent quarter …

More: Neowin, Android Police, PCWorld, Fone Arena, Android Central, Liliputing, EE Times, Forbes and eWeek

Tweets: @stevesi, @withfries2 and @ryansmithat

Thanks:@ryansmithat

Scott Gilbertson / Ars Technica:

Vivaldi browser review: ultra customization and clever tab management great for power users, but no mobile version and some glitches in version 1.0 — Even at 1.0, Vivaldi closes in on the cure for the common browser — Review: Ultra customization, clever tab management breaks from Chrome, Firefox.

Neil Mawston / Strategy Analytics:

Smartwatch shipments grew 223% year-over-year in Q1 2016; Apple had 52% marketshare, down from 63% in prior quarter — STRATEGY ANALYTICS: Apple Watch Slips to 52% Global Smartwatch Marketshare in Q1 2016 — According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global smartwatch …

More: Business Insider, SlashGear, FierceWireless and MacNN

Michele Chandler / Investor's Business Daily:

Report: Yahoo reaches deal to sell 48.6-acre undeveloped site in Santa Clara to Chinese tech firm LeEco — Yahoo Reportedly Selling Huge Silicon Valley Site To Chinese Firm — Yahoo (YHOO) has reached a deal to sell a 48.6-acre undeveloped site in Santa Clara, Calif. …

More: SiliconBeat, Silicon Valley Business … and Business Insider. Tweets: @howardlindzon

Olivia Zaleski / Bloomberg:

Sources: Postmates in talks to raise $100M-$150M, aims to avoid setting too high a valuation target — Postmates Seeks Up to $150 Million as Food Delivery Competition Heats Up — Food delivery startup aims to avoid overpromising on valuation — Financial docs show revenue forecast of $225 million for '16

Joseph Cox / Motherboard:

GCHQ Has Disclosed Over 20 Vulnerabilities This Year, Including Ones in iOS — Earlier this week, it emerged that a section of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK's signal intelligence agency, had disclosed a serious vulnerability in Firefox to Mozilla.

Tweets: @infosecplaya

Stuart Dredge / Music Ally:

YouTube responds to music industry's complaints about low artist payments, says it is more like radio than Spotify — YouTube hits back at ‘noise’ around its music payouts — It's been a bruising month for YouTube as labels, music industry bodies and artists have attacked Google's video service …

More: YouTube Creator Blog, RAIN News, Digital Music News, International Business Times, Tubefilter and hypebot. Tweets: @musically. See also Mediagazer

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.

Zoho:

Introducing Campus: The digital home for educational institutions — Every educational institution needs a place where students, teachers, and administrators can find one another, communicate …

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.

Soxton:

Fast, affordable law for startups — Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better. We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts. Join the waitlist for early access!

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:

Anthropic's IPO Leak, OpenAI's Dots vs. Meta's Muse, Visual Turing Test

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:

OpenAI's Dots lead on the future of ChatGPT

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.

Great Chat:

What does the tech industry owe San Francisco?

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.

Uncapped with Jack Altman:

David George from a16z

Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.

Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.

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.

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.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:10 PM ET, April 30, 2016.

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.