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August 20, 2013
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'Islamist' hacker hits TWITTER -- Feds attempt deeper BITCOIN control -- GROKLAW shuts self down -- OUTLOOK.COM (nee Hotmail) & Skype integration -- 20% of U.S. off Internet grid

Edited by T. Trent Gegax & Woody Leonhard | August 20, 2013 06:00 PDT | 09:00 EDT | 13:00 UTC

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>> BREAKING: 'Islamist' hacker publishes access details for thousands of Twitter accounts, by David Meyer: "The details, which appear to be genuine, do not include passwords. They do include OAuth tokens, though, so Twitter users should probably revoke and re-establish access to connected third-party apps... this information in itself can help miscreants gain limited access to people's accounts if they run the right script... he apparently claimed to have access to the 'entire database of users on Twitter.' It is not clear right now whether Mauritania Attacker did actually get these details from Twitter's systems or whether he hacked into a third-party service that connects to people's Twitter accounts." GigaOM

>> LIBERTY & JUSTICE: David Miranda, schedule 7 [of the U.K. terrorism laws] and the danger that all reporters now face, by Alan Rusbridger: "As the events in a Heathrow transit lounge -- and the Guardian offices -- have shown, the threat to journalism is real and growing... We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won't do it in London. The seizure of Miranda's laptop, phones, hard drives, and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald's work." The Guardian
>>>> Groklaw closes:
"There is no way to do Groklaw without email ... I don't know how to function in such an atmosphere... for me, the Internet is over. So this is the last Groklaw article. " Groklaw
>>>> Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
WaPo

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>> NEOMONEY: Feds seized $2.9M in Bitcoin funds from Mt. Gox, court docs show, by Jeff John Roberts: "The federal government sent a strong signal to Bitcoin traders earlier this year when Homeland Security seized an account belonging to Mt. Gox, the most popular exchange for people to buy and sell the crypto-currency. It was unclear at the time just how much currency the government confiscated... a new filing in Baltimore federal court shows the feds seized $2,915,507.40 held in an account controlled by Dwolla, a third-party payment platform similar to PayPal. The funds belonged to Mutum Sigillum LLC, a U.S. subsidiary of Tokyo-based Mt. Gox." GigaOM

>> TIE-UP: Outlook.com (nee Hotmail) and Skype integration starts to roll out, by Juan Carlos Perez: "The link between the two products lets Outlook.com users do Skype video chats, audio calling and instant messaging... It's now live in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Brazil and Canada." Catching up with Gmail, Google+, Yahoo, Facebook, etc... InfoWorld

>> DOWNTIME: Amazon website, mobile apps down in hourlong outage, by Sharon Gaudin: "The downed site was first noted at 2:48 p.m. ET Monday on Twitter. It was back online around 3:35 p.m. " Google down for five minutes; Amazon down for an hour; Outlook.com down for who knows how long -- quite a week for cloud computing. InfoWorld

>> THE GREAT RACE: Apple, Samsung nearly neck-and-neck in smartphone customer retention, by Gregg Keizer: "According to [Chicago-based Consumer Intelligence Research Partners], 42 percent of iPhone buyers over the last year had upgraded from an older iPhone... But Samsung's ties were nearly as strong: 38 percent of Samsung smartphone buyers had come from an older Samsung smartphone... 'It really surprised us, that Samsung's brand loyalty was nearly equal Apple's,' [CIRP co-founder] Levin said. For those figures and others Levin cited, CIRP had tallied four quarterly surveys conducted between July 2012 and June 2013." Computerworld
>>>> AND THE FANBOYS SING: Among buyers who switched brands, Apple took three times as many from Samsung (33 percent) as Samsung took from Apple (11 percent). Fortune

>> SHOT: In Silicon Valley, age can be a curse, by Andrew S. Ross: "In 2012, three high-tech companies in Silicon Valley announced they were laying off a combined 48,000 employees. Layoffs continue this year, including last week's announcement that profitable Cisco Systems was letting 4,000 people go. At the same time, the total number of jobs in the valley and in San Francisco's tech hub is on the rise. In fact, tech executives claim to have tens of thousands of jobs going begging, so much so that they need to bring in educated workers from overseas to fill them. But if demand is outstripping supply, how come so many skilled IT professionals in the Bay Area are out of work? In a nutshell, job experience in the tech industry matters far less than it once did. In fact, it can work against you." San Francisco Chronicle
>> CHASER: Is Silicon Valley's youth movement really just age discrimination?, by Tom Kaneshige: InfoWorld

>> COOL KIDS: Microsoft unveils ID@Xbox program to lure indie developers to Xbox One, by Tom Warren: "After unveiling its plans to support self-published games on Xbox One, Microsoft is detailing some of its additional efforts to support indie developers today. As Sony continues to woo indie developers ahead of the console wars later this year, Microsoft is launching a new Independent Developers @ Xbox (ID@Xbox) program for developers to create and publish digital games on Xbox One. Unlike the variety of programs on Xbox 360 over the years, Microsoft is promising to collate all games -- whether they're created by a team of hundreds or a single developer -- into the same Xbox One Store." The Verge

>> MONEY SHOT: Birst raises $38M led by Sequoia to expand its cloud-based business intelligence solutions, by Ingrid Lunden: "Rack up one more win for companies looking to overturn legacy enterprise IT with cloud-based services. Birst, a San Francisco-based startup using the software-as-a-service model to sell business intelligence solutions, has raised another $38 million. The funding is going all toward building out the company: CEO and co-founder Brad Peters tells TechCrunch the plan is to get more aggressive in Europe and Asia, widen its product offerings and staff up in sales and marketing. This Series E round was led by existing investor Sequoia Capital, included participation from other previous investors, and introduced a new backer to the company, Northgate Capital." TechCrunch

>> MADNESS OF CROWDS: Ubuntu Edge may have just set the crowdfunding record, by Kurt Wagner: "Crowdfunding platform Indiegogo announced on Friday that the site's Ubuntu Edge campaign has set the record as the largest crowdfunding project ever -- more than 24,000 donors have offered up nearly $11.5 million in funding as of Monday morning. The Ubuntu Edge project surpassed the industry's previous record holder, the Pebble Watch campaign facilitated by Kickstarter, which ended last May with close to $10.3 million in funding.... The Ubuntu Edge is a smartphone created by U.K.-based software company Canonical, advertised as having the 'mobility of a smartphone and the power of a desktop on a single device.'" Mashable

>> DEADPOOL DATAVIZ: The evolution of the nonsmartphone market. Who will be around in 3 years to still make them? Asymco

>> CERTIFIED ANALYST: Seven IT security skills certifications on the rise, by Ellen Messmer: "For the second quarter, seven IT security certifications gained 10 percent or more in market value in terms of demand from the previous quarter" Network World

>> MONEY SHOT: Zillow raises $205 million in IPO, by John Cook: "Certain shareholders -- including founders Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink and CEO Spencer Rascoff and CTO David Beitel -- also sold 2.5 million shares [worth an additional $205 million]." GeekWire
>>>> Zillow to buy New York-based StreetEasy for $50 million cash. GeekWire

>> OVERLOOKED: 20 percent of U.S. residents don't use the Internet, by Edward Wyatt: New York Times (paywall)

>> SAMSUNG GALAXY MEGA 6.3-inch telephone comes to the U.S., by Evan Dashevsky: "For when no amount of phone is too much phone" TechHive

>> COUCH DROOL: TiVo LAUNCHES NEW "Roamio" family of DVRs with up to 6 tuners, 3TB of storage, and out-of-home streaming, by Ryan Lawler: TechCrunch Review by Harry McCracken, Time

>> HIGH INSECURITY: Money raised for researcher snubbed by Facebook bounty program, by Kim Zetter: Wired

>> PRO TIP: Practical typography in 10 minutes, by Matthew Butterick: via Hacker News

>> PRO TIP (ADVANCED): Web server in one line of Bash Every Day Technology

>> EASTER EGG: Dropbox gives users 1GB of extra space just for linking their account with Mailbox TheNextWeb

>> TWEET O THE DAY: "Gartner 2010 smartphone forecast for 2014: 130M iPhones (passed in 2012), 250M Android (now does that in a quarter), Symbian in 1st place" @BenedictEvans

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