Amazon is planning a big biodome at the foot of its new HQ, because Jeff Bezos. [Gizmodo]
More people are using their tablets on planes. Someone actually paid to conduct this study. [USA Today]
Square has expanded to Japan. [The Next Web]
Kim Dotcom says he invented two-factor authentication and Google, Twitter and others are engaging in “massive IP infringement.” [The Verge]
Foursquare now offers more specific search and filter capabilities. [TechCrunch]
Could our culture be any more saturated with hackathons? Now even the publishing business has latched onto them. [The Atlantic]
The creator of the GIF insists it’s pronounced “jif,” and no one will listen to him, not even the Oxford English Dictionary. Also, the dancing baby is still one of his favorites. [New York Times]
The immigration reform bill is headed to the Senate floor, which means FWD.us finally racked up a victory, of sorts, instead of just accumulating bad press for throwing the Alaskan caribou under the bus. [AllThingsD]
Microsoft just debuted a new Xbox, in case you were wondering what your spoiled nephew would be demanding for Christmas this year. [Wired]
Marco’s confident Tumblr made the right call: “This is clearly what David believes is best for his product. On such big decisions, he hasn’t been wrong yet. This time, though, I don’t have any doubts.” [Marco.org]
Dave Winer, on the other hand: “When you sell your company, no matter what promises were made, you sold it. It’s theirs now. They will do what they want to with it. Promises don’t matter.” [Scripting News]
Sounds like former Tumblr president John Maloney is just irked he’s being left out of the story. [Twitter]
Fab is reportedly raising a round somewhere in the ballpark of $250 million to $300 million, pushing the company’s valuation north of a billion dollars. [Wall Street Journal]
The Senate, meanwhile, says Apple dodged, oh, about $44 billion in taxes. [Politico]
“The inevitable next step is for Kim Kardashian to sit on the board of a tech start-up, host a global-poverty-awareness event and write a book on behavioral neuroscience.” [New York Times]
The tax man’s hanging round Apple’s door, and now Tim Cook is due to appear before Congress on the matter. [Telegraph]
For her science fair project, this teenaged girl invented a supercapacitor that could maybe, with further development, charge your electronics lightening fast. Everyone’s now feeling pretty bad about their baking soda volcano, huh? [Jezebel]
Matt Mullenweg says that talk of Yahoo buying Tumblr sent WordPress imports from Tumblr skyrocketing, from 400-600 posts per hour to 72,000 on Sunday. Of course, that could’ve just been one really dedicated porn reblogger. [AllThingsD]
Tumblr users are having a collective meltdown to rival The China Syndrome (only onetime Yahoo users are old enough to get that joke). [Buzzfeed]
Apple CEO Tim Cook is preparing for his upcoming Congress appearance about corporate tax code by promising a “dramatic simplification” of the ancient laws. [Washington Post]
It’s been a year since Facebook’s IPO. So let’s celebrate it with a ~one year later~ reflection piece. [WSJ]
Remember when you’re complaining about your long work week, it’s way worse for Foxconn employees. [NYT]
It sounds like the Facebook designers behind News Feed’s redesign were having the chillest of times on the project. They brought in lamps to create a “nice living room” and stared at posters on the wall to keep them motivated. [Taxi]
Ugh, we have some disturbing news: A website that bills itself as “Kickstarter for gigs” has launched in London. [BBC]
Microsoft recently updated its YouTube app for Windows Phones, but Google isn’t too pleased with the results–going so far as to send a cease and desist. That’s because Microsoft built in features allowing users to block ads. [The Verge]
A spokesman said they’d be “more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs.” [The Verge]
“Reading is an activity more likely to be on screen than on the printed page.” So there’s that. [BBC]
Car-sharing service Relay Rides has gotten the ax (locally at least) from the New York State’s Department of Financial Services, who said their insurance is “illegal and inadequate.” [PandoDaily]
Looks like, after technical problems, NASA’s other-Earth-seeking Kepler Telescope is powering down. [Popular Science]
“Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.” That’s the kind of email that, even if you are Steve Jobs, lands you in hot water with antitrust enforcers. [AllThingsD]
PayPal is dropping processing charges for users of its mobile payment platform in an attempt to better take on Square and Groupon. [Verge]
Google is expected to debut a competitor to Spotify later today. Which one of you asked for this? [New York Times]
This is happening: “Boost VC is launching a fund of at least $300,000, called the Boost Bitcoin Fund to invest in Bitcoin startups.” [Forbes]
Airware, a company that creates the insides of unmanned drones, is now freshly funded. Andreessen Horowitz just pumped a $10.7 million Series A funding into it. [TechCrunch]
A Blackberry BBM app is coming to iPhone and Android phones this summer if you still remember your pins. [BGR]
The crooner Bing Crosby might’ve been a total dick, but it turns out he was a pretty smart angel investor. Guess the Biebs isn’t so special, after all! [New Yorker]
“They became a virtual criminal flash mob, going from machine to machine, drawing as much money as they could, before these accounts were shut down.” Don’t look now but someone lived out your wildest ATM-related dreams. [The Verge]
If you’re going to I/O, keep your eyes peeled for all the sensors tracking air quality, noise levels and lord knows what else. [TechCrunch]
Square’s TOS was recently updated to add that you can’t sell “firearms, firearm parts or hardware, and ammunition; or… weapons and other devices designed to cause physical injury” using the service. Guess you’re gonna have to start bringing duffle bags full of cash to the gun show again. [CNN Money]
Aereo launches in Atlanta June 17. [Aereo]
Last week, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo reportedly quit as director of the company’s U.K. arm. The news comes just days after government regulators forced TweetDeck to dissolve following accounting issues. [Sky News]
Bloomberg is apologizing to its clients after allegations that reporters snooped on client terminals to see their Seamless orders or whatever. [CNN Money]
JackThreads’ recent push into international waters, like Australia and the U.K., is doing well for the company’s bottom line as sales overseas now make up 10 percent of its business. [AllThingsD]
Facebook Home is missing features that Android users love (widgets, docks, oh my!) because all of the developers use iPhones. The lack of “droidfooding” is causing them to scramble to add those features to turn around Home’s slow downloads. [TechCrunch]
Here’s a groovy map that shows you where in the world Wikipedia is being edited right now. [Ars Technica]
Elon Musk and David Sacks have left Mark Zuckerberg’s political action group over growing concerns over the support of certain politicians. [AllThingsD]
President Obama issued a mandate yesterday ordering government agencies to make their data “open and machine-readable.” Perhaps soon you’ll have a machine to read Betabeat for you. [Ars Technica]
The U.S. government has been buying up cyberweapons that rely on software holes in widely used programs to attack computers overseas, but that means it doesn’t want everyday consumers to know about their own computers’ vulnerabilities. [Reuters]
The International Space Station was using Windows up until now, apparently, which seems ill-advised? They’ve finally switched to Linux. [Extreme Tech]
Oh, you got verified on Twitter? Whatever, I don’t even want to be. [The Awl]
Cybercriminals stole $45 million from ATMs across the world in a matter of hours, and their ringleader was a 20-something kid from Brooklyn. [New York Times]
Amazon is reportedly building its own smartphone and it’s going to have a 3D screen. [Wall Street Journal]
