Edited by T. Trent Gegax & Woody Leonhard | September 25, 2013 06:00 PDT | 09:00 EDT | 13:00 UTC
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>> SURPRISE IN SEATTLE: Hands-on with Kindle Fire HDX, by Andy Ihnatko: "The 7-inch edition has a 1920-by-1200 display boasting 323 pixels per inch, and will sell for $229 for the base 16GB model. The 8.9-inch version will run you $379, and sports a 2560-by-1600, 339 ppi display. The new screens are easier to read in harsh sunlight thanks to brighter displays, as well as a new dynamic contrast control that kicks in to increase the brightness of shadow areas in onscreen images (it works in both photos and HD video)... three times faster than that of the previous-generation hardware... 11 hours of mixed-use operation... 8-megapixel, f2.2 rear-facing camera that shoots stills and video, enhanced with an LED illuminator... HDR shooting and panoramas... VPN services, Kerberos authentication, and remote device management.. new 'Mayday' button... Push it. A little floating window appears above your content. And less than 14 seconds later, the window contains live video chat with an Amazon tech support person, who's now asking you what he or she can help you with today." TechHive
>>>> Amazon stays ambitious, goes upscale Time
>>>> Amazon tries breaking from the streaming-video pack with offline viewing for new Kindles AllThingsD
>>>> Amazon continues to quietly build the enterprise-optimized tablet with new Kindle HD and HDX TechCrunch
>>>> AMZN is out with two new 'Fire' tablet models -- remember when we used to care? Businessweek
>> DEAD VC WALKING: Day traders, angels, and venture capital: The Internet changes everything, including money, by Om Malik: "The Internet, if anything, has been able to do two things admirably: reduce friction and cut out middle men in many processes. After deflating the stock-buying process a decade ago, the Internet is going to change venture capital and the notion of money itself." JOBS and Angels GigaOM
>>>> AngelList sees $1 million invested on first day under new JOBS Act general solicitation rules TNW
>>>> What to do if a bubble is starting Sam Altman blog
>> LET 'EM EAT CAKE: Oracle OpenWorld attendees fume over Ellison keynote, by Chris Kanaracus: "Oracle customers pay handsome fees to attend its OpenWorld conference each year, and many of them felt short-changed Tuesday when Larry Ellison skipped his final keynote to watch an America's Cup sailing race." PCWorld
>>>> Oracle OpenWorld 2013: Oracle's mission-critical software and Microsoft's enterprise-grade cloud Microsoft TechNet
>>>> Oracle takes the fight to Amazon, Salesforce.com with new cloud services InfoWorld
>>>> Amazing America's Cup comeback is complete for Oracle -- now it's down to Race 19 Wednesday SFGate
>> GRAND THEFT IDENTITY: Data broker giants hacked by ID theft service, by Brian Krebs: "An identity theft service that sells Social Security numbers, birth records, credit and background reports on millions of Americans has infiltrated computers at some of America's largest consumer and business data aggregators... Two of the hacked servers were inside the networks of Atlanta, Ga.-based LexisNexis Inc... Two other compromised systems were located inside the networks of Dun & Bradstreet." Krebs on Security
>> RICKROLL: Nokia pleads with Elop to accept smaller bonus -- Elop claims he needs full $25M for his divorce, by Tero Kuittinen: "It was revealed that Risto Siilasmaa, Nokia's chairman of the board, had misrepresented facts last week when he claimed that Elop's bonus arrangements were similar to those of previous chief executives. Nokia was forced to admit on Tuesday morning that Elop had in fact received a contract that seemed to have been designed to guarantee a quick $25 million pay-off if Elop was able to sell the handset unit." BGR
>>>> Elop's contract reportedly gave him a big incentive to tank Nokia's stock, sell company BGR
>> WE JUST LIVE HERE: Struggling, San Jose tests a way to cut benefits, by Rick Lyman and Mary Williams Walsh: "This metropolis of nearly a million residents is the third-largest city in California, home to tens of thousands of technology industry workers, as well as many thousands more struggling to get by. Yet even here, in the city that bills itself as the capital of Silicon Valley, the economic tidal wave that has swamped Detroit and other cities is lapping at the sea walls." NY Times (paywalled)
>> CLOUD STACK: Citrix aims for VMware, Amazon with new cloud strategy, by Brandon Butler: "Citrix Tuesday updated its cloud computing strategy, saying that its platform - which is based off the Apache CloudStack project - can span both private on-premises deployments and public clouds and is the only one in the market that takes an application-centric approach to architecting clouds." Network World
>> COMEBACK TRAIL: With its new cloud player, RealNetworks is trying the next big turnaround, by Janko Roettgers: "RealNetworks wants to help consumers to share videos they've shot on their phones –- and it won't even nag them to install RealPlayer." GigaOM
>> COMING ATTRACTIONS: Twitter tries 'magic' to keep users in the know, by Zach Miners: "Users of Twitter for the iPhone and Android devices will start getting push notifications when multiple people in their network follow the same user, or when they favorite or retweet the same tweet." TechHive
>>>> Twitter leaning toward NYSE for IPO: source Reuters
>> LAST RT STANDING: Microsoft is sole Windows RT tablet vendor as Dell's XPS 10 is 'unavailable', by Agam Shah: "Dell was the only device maker other than Microsoft selling a Windows RT tablet after Lenovo, Asus, and Samsung bailed out on the device... Right now, no device maker is interested in Windows RT other than Microsoft with its Surface 2." InfoWorld
>>>> Microsoft's most loyal users ask for Surface trade-in program Computerworld
>> #FAIL: Microsoft's SkyDrive stumbles, becomes latest glitchy cloud app, by Juan Carlos Perez: "SkyDrive cloud storage service began malfunctioning on Tuesday afternoon, a day after Google's Gmail got tripped by a network breakdown." SkyDrive's service status site (since updated, so you can't see the old news) showed that the service glitches started 4:01 pm EDT, fixed 10:49 pm. Computerworld
>> THE NEW NETWORK: Infoblox shows off the promise of OpenFlow, by Paul Venezia: "A clever new data collection application, Infoblox's Tapestry provides early example of the power of SDN and OpenFlow." InfoWorld
>> BEHIND THE CURTAIN: A slowdown in Moore's Law leads to $9.4 billion Silicon Valley merger, by Tom Foremski: "The Applied Materials and Tokyo Electric merger is a reaction to the slowing of Moore's Law. With delayed orders on equipment and the high R&D costs, the cost savings from a merger are compelling." ZDNet
>> KERNEL MUSTARD IN THE LIBRARY: Who rooted kernel.org servers two years ago, how did it happen, and why?, by Dan Goodin: "More than two years after unknown hackers gained unfettered access over multiple computers used to maintain and distribute the Linux operating system kernel, officials still haven't released a promised autopsy about what happened." Ars Technica
>> How a crypto 'Backdoor' pitted the tech world against the NSA Wired
>> Google yanks sketchy iMessage clone for Android Computerworld
>> Apple's 64-bit A7 is no gimmick InfoWorld
>> Why I hacked Apple's TouchID, and still think it is awesome Lookout
>> Teardown shows iPhone 5S costs at least $199 to build, $173 for the 5C AllThingsD
>> YouTube gets the yuck out in comments cleanup CNet
>> Solved by Flexbox: Cleaner, hack-free CSS Philip Walton, Github
>> Posturing over patent reform shows how young companies innovate while old companies litigate TechDirt
>> Ceylon 1.0 beta Ceylon Language blog
>> TWEET O' THE DAY: "Still waiting for breakfast. She's too busy telling her Facebook friends how much she loves me." @HonestToddler
FEED ME, SEYMOUR: Comments? Questions? Tips? Shoot mail to Trent or Woody. Follow @gegax or @woodyleonhard.
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