Techmeme: The Truth About Marissa Mayer: An Unauthorized Biography (Nicholas Carlson/Business Insider)

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August 25, 2013, 4:55 AM

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Paul Krugman / New York Times:

On The Symmetry Between Microsoft And Apple — I am not a tech industry maven, so I am busy coming up to speed on the implications of the Ballmer resignation. And what I'm about to say may be obvious to many. Still, I think it's worth saying: there is, once you look past the surface …

More: New York Times, Paul Krugman, NYT Bits, CNET, Daring Fireball, Business Insider, New York Times, ActiveWin.com, The Verge, NYT Bits and CITEworld

Tweets: @qhardy, @timbray, @claytonmorris and @qhardy

Guy English / kickingbear:

Ballmer's Straight Jacket — Steve Ballmer announced today that he will be stepping down as CEO of Microsoft within the next twelve months. This comes a little over a month since Microsoft announced a massive reorganization which was aimed at breaking down old fiefdoms and setting a new course.

More: Marco.org, AllThingsD, Benedict Evans, PandoDaily, iMore, Microsoft News Tracker, Computerworld, on the build and Daring Fireball

Lauren Goode / AllThingsD:

The Ballmer Product Pipeline Shows a Very Mixed Record for Microsoft — Larger-than-life CEO Steve Ballmer will be remembered for a lot of things during his 13-year tenure at Microsoft, but what about the actual products he oversaw? — Overall, it is a very mixed bag …

More: MIT Technology Review, Digits and CNN

David Pogue / Pogue's Posts:

How Ballmer Missed the Tidal Shifts in Tech — By now, you've probably heard: Steven A. Ballmer will soon be stepping down as chief executive of Microsoft. — It's supposedly a voluntary retirement, but that holds about as much credibility as a public official's leaving a job “to spend more time with family.”

More: Bloomberg and New York Times

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:

The Truth About Marissa Mayer: An Unauthorized Biography — On the morning of Thursday, July 12, 2012, Yahoo's interim CEO, Ross Levinsohn, still believed he was going to be named permanent CEO of the company. — He had just one meeting to go. — That meeting was a board meeting …

Om Malik / GigaOM:

No Henry, you need to get real about Yahoo. Here are the facts — For past year or so, there has been a bit of a lovefest around Yahoo, the rapidly aging former web star that has lost the attention and preeminence it enjoyed in the 1990s and early 2000s. The showers of praise …

More: Quartz. Tweets: @mattbuchanan, @gigaom, @ianbetteridge, @hblodget, @shaig, @jank0, @bonanos and @emilychangtv

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Windows 8.1 is ready for its October 17th release — Microsoft has finalized its Windows 8.1 update. Sources familiar with the company's Windows plans have revealed to The Verge that the software maker completed the development of Windows 8.1 earlier this week — stamped as build 9600 for Release to manufacturing (RTM).

More: PC Magazine, ZDNet, Electronista and WinBeta

Jennifer Granick / Forbes:

My Dinner With NSA Director Keith Alexander — On July 30, 2013, I had the pleasure of having dinner with General Keith Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency. Just a few weeks earlier, NYU Law Professor Christopher Sprigman and I had called the NSA's activities “criminal” …

More: Techdirt, The Switch and emptywheel

Tweets: @qthrul, @kevinmarks, @pirateorg, @davemcclure, @vikram_nz, @attackerman and @binarybits

Chris Strohm / Bloomberg:

NSA Analysts Intentionally Abused Spying Powers Multiple Times

More: Washington Wire, Guardian, The Verge, emptywheel, The Verge, Softpedia News, Techdirt and Guardian

Tweets: @jim_harper, @7im, @johnrlottjr and @ciaspygirl

Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic:

What Is Medium? — The site from Twitter's co-founders is one year old, and still mysterious — Just about a year ago, a new website from two of the founders of Twitter launched. It was called Medium. The new site was invite-only, but outsiders could read from various collections.

More: Anil Dash, GigaOM, Businessweek and The Atlantic Wire

Tweets: @mathewi, @mathewi and @osulop

Richard Lawler / Engadget:

Alleged Motorola Droid 5 pics suggest the QWERTY slider still lives — Fans of hardware keyboards have at least one reason to keep rooting for Motorola's Droid line, and these leaked pics suggest it will continue on. Posted on Weibo, these supposed Droid 5 pics show a QWERTY slider …

More: The Verge, New Cell Phones, Softpedia News, Electronista, SlashGear, Ars Technica, VentureBeat, AndroidGuys, TechnoBuffalo, Gotta Be Mobile, Phones Review, Droid Life, TechCrunch and I4U News

iFixit:

Motorola Moto X Teardown — What does $12.5 billion dollars buy you nowadays? In Google's case, it buys Motorola, Inc. and all of its designs and patents. Is it what we would have spent the money on? Probably not, but the result of the acquisition is Motorola's first smartphone …

More: Ars Technica, TechnoBuffalo, TechSpot, Geek.com, CNET, VentureBeat, Android Community, Gizmodo, SlashGear, Android Phone Fans, Engadget, Ars Technica and GigaOM

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Facebook isn't making you depressed, but the internet is — Status update: the link between Facebook and depression isn't so simple — Another day, another “Facebook makes you miserable” headline. For the last few years, the social network, which now claims nearly 700 million daily users worldwide …

Tweets: @adrjeffries

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