TC Roundup: US giant buys Israeli company for Internet of Things tech

US giant buys Israeli company for Internet of Things tech: Red Bend, an Israeli company responsible for nearly three-quarters of the wireless software updates for cell phones around the world, is being acquired by entertainment technology giant Harman, both companies said Thursday. (Times of Israel)

Uber's on collision course with South Korean wall: Opening line: There's a scene in "The Aviator" where Howard Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, narrows his eyes and says to Senator Ralph Owen Brewster: "You want to go to war with me?"

It came to mind when we were musing on the deepening troubles of Uber in South Korea, whose media regulator said yesterday it will report the car-booking company's local unit to prosecutors for violating communications rules.

Uber's been fighting the tide in South Korea for a while, with the Seoul city government declaring its smartphone app illegal in July. (Bloomberg)

In China, VPN internet access tools suffer further disruptions: Internet services that allow people to freely access blocked websites and apps from within China have seen more severe disruptions this week, said three providers, moves that Chinese state media said were justified.

The services affected include popular Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers Astrill, StrongVPN and Golden Frog, which are engaged in a technological arms race to one-up China's highly sophisticated Great Firewall internet censorship system. (Reuters)

Twitter pleads with power users to stop using Instagram so much: Twitter appears to be sending out a message to a group of very high-profile users suggesting that these users post photos directly to Twitter instead of sharing through Instagram.

Mashable secured a screenshot of the prompt, which shows the aesthetic differences between sharing an Instagram link and posting a photo directly through Twitter. In 2012, Instagram shut off Twitter Cards integration, meaning that the images would no longer appear in-line on the Twitter feed. Instead, Instagram photos shared out to Twitter would simply show as an Instagram.com link and push the user to the website for viewing. (Tech Crunch)