Rumors & Acquisitions: Turntable.fm, Still; TechStars, Again; and Competition for Our Heroes

LOOKBACK. Turntable.fm continues to suck up all the air in the New York start-up scene–our top post this week was

LOOKBACK. Turntable.fm continues to suck up all the air in the New York start-up scene–our top post this week was the news about the music site’s 140k users, but we liked this more rumorish postie better. We did hear some hand-wringing over the departure of young Josh Weinstein, Peter Thiel acolyte, rumored last week to be headed west–if General Assembly can’t keep ’em, what can?

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GAWKER CONSORTS WITH HACKERS. Gawker’s Adrian Chen has been tirelessly tracking the story of Lulz Security hack attacks. Mr. Chen spoke to a member of the collective via Skype, he claims, and although we’re not sure how Mr. Chen would know one way or another if he was Skyping with a Lulz hacker, the quotes are amazing.

“As an arrogant and violent sociopath driven to a frenzy by the sense of my own power, I can’t divulge the upcoming releases,” he said. (Earlier in our chat, Topiary had brought up a March Gawker article that he said portrayed him and his crew as “arrogant sociopaths.”)

After all this bluster, we asked if Topiary was worried at all about being caught. His response: “Worrying is for fools!”


MOAR TECHSTARS! The line-up of TechStars start-ups and hackers should be coming down the pike soon, but we’ll just tease a few more: Add a content platform/marketplace, a closed social network, and an SMS-based queuing system in addition to the ad tech start-up, food delivery start-up and fashion start-up we teased last week.

RUMBLINGS FROM THE HACKER NEWS MACHINE. Nodejitsu could be in big trouble as Y Combinator rival Heroku rolls out its competing node.js support this week, several sources told Betabeat. The New York start-up had a headstart and benefits from its singular focus on once type of hosting, while Heroku “must balance the goals of being a curated, erosion-resistant platform against keeping pace with extremely active developer communities” in different languages. Hard not to picture the rivalry as a Japanese martial arts fight scene in the snow, arewerite?

COMPETITION. Fortune is seeking a tech writer–a certain graying newsosaur is ramping up its tech coverage–and now TechCrunchers are coming to New York? Let’s get out before this thing jumps the shark.

Rumors & Acquisitions: Turntable.fm, Still; TechStars, Again; and Competition for Our Heroes