Techmeme: Players construct functioning “hard drives” within Minecraft that can read and write data (Nick Statt/CNET)

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August 21, 2014, 1:45 PM

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Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft set to unveil Windows 9 on September 30th — Microsoft is planning to unveil its Windows 8 successor next month at a special press event. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans tell The Verge that the software maker is tentatively planning its press event for September 30th …

Reuters:

Report: eBay telling candidates for PayPal CEO role it may spin off the unit as early as next year — EBay considering spinning off Paypal - report — (Reuters) - EBay Inc is considering spinning out its fast-growing payments unit PayPal as soon as next year, news website The Information reported, citing sources.

More: The Information, Re/code, Tech Trader Daily, Reuters, Fortune, TheStreet.com, CNBC, Bloomberg, BetaBoston and StreetInsider.com. Tweets: @amir

Kia Kokalitcheva / VentureBeat:

Product Hunt raises $1M seed funding, launches iOS app — Silicon Valley darling Product Hunt gets $1M, launches app for its tech-fanatic community — Two days ago, Product Hunt, one of the buzziest communities in recent times, graduated from the most highly-regarded accelerated program around, Y Combinator.

More: TechCrunch, Gigaom, Fortune, The Next Web, Re/code, iPhone Hacks and Mashable

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

SoundCloud to incorporate ads, allow artists to collect royalties, prepares to introduce paid subscriptions — Popular and Free, SoundCloud Is Now Ready for Ads — SoundCloud is the ubiquitous wild child of the digital music world. Without paying artists or record companies …

More: SoundCloud, Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, Android Central, VentureBeat, TechHive, AVC, GadgeTell, Guardian, Engadget, Pitchfork, RAIN News, TIME, The Verge, Business Insider, Financial Times, Gigaom, TechCrunch, Gizmodo and Webrazzi. Thanks:@kristinaweise. See also Mediagazer

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

The state of Android updates: Who's fast, who's slow, and why — Android 4.4, KitKat was released on October 31, 2013, or at least, that's what you can say about one device: the Nexus 5. For the rest of the ecosystem, the date you got KitKat—if you got KitKat—varied wildly depending on your device, OEM, and carrier.

More: 9to5Google, Guardian and BGR

Nick Bilton / New York Times:

At Burning Man, the Tech Elite One-Up One Another — There are two disciplines in which Silicon Valley entrepreneurs excel above almost everyone else. The first is making exorbitant amounts of money. The second is pretending they don't care about that money.

More: Re/code, Wall Street Journal, SiliconBeat, SFist, sfbg.com, Business Insider, The Huffington Post, Reno Gazette-Journal, KTVN-TV, SFWeekly, Valleywag, Fortune and everwas

Tweets: @noupside, @noupside, @noupside, @pinboard, @galenmoore, @jadmouawad, @ssstrom, @vaurorapub, @mattrosoff, @nitashatiku, @jyarow, @ceciliakang, @nerdgirl and @evelynrusli

Thanks:@nethistorypod

Nick Statt / CNET:

Players construct functioning “hard drives” within Minecraft that can read and write data — Minecraft players build working hard drives — Players of the pixelated building block game have taken its virtual simulation tools to an unprecedented level: building functioning hard drives that can read and write data.

More: imgur, Inquirer, The Verge, Gearburn, PCGamesN.com, TechSpot, Gamezone, SlashGear, VG247, Ubergizmo and Geek.com

Tweets: @davidcowan and @bgurley

Matthew Miller / ZDNet:

T-Mobile gives you a year of unlimited data if your friends convert from Sprint, AT&T, Verizon — T-Mobile offers a year of unlimited LTE to those who throw Sprint friends a lifeline — Summary: T-Mobile is serious about taking the third place spot away from Sprint and is coming …

More: Newsroom, The Verge, Gizmodo, CNET, BGR, DSLreports, Gotta Be Mobile, Droid Life, Windows Phone Central and TmoNews

Blair Hanley Frank / GeekWire:

Xamarin raises $54M in funding to bring Microsoft's programming language to other platforms — Xamarin, the San Francisco-based company that allows developers to code applications for a variety of different platforms using Microsoft's C# programming language, announced today that it has raised a $54 million Series C round of financing.

More: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, StrictlyVC, The Register, PE Hub Blog, CITEworld, Forbes and Tim Anderson's ITWriting

Robert McMillan / Wired:

Security researcher claims over 30% of all mobile spam messages are sent through iMessage — Apple's iMessage Is Being Taken Over by Spammers — Apple's iMessage system is a great way to send texts from phone-to-phone without the paying fees to your mobile carrier.

More: TechSpot, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac, iPhone, blog.chron.com, MacRumors, iDownloadBlog.com, iPhone in Canada Blog, Electronista and MacDailyNews

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Google Asked to Remove 1 Million Pirate Links Per Day — In the hope of steering prospective customers away from pirate sites, copyright holders are overloading Google with DMCA takedown notices. — These requests have increased dramatically since Google began making the data public.

More: Search Engine Land, Neowin, 9to5Google and Engadget

Zeljka Zorz / Help Net Security:

Report: Most popular Android apps in Google Play store open users to man-in-the-middle attacks — Most popular Android apps open users to MITM attacks — An analysis of the 1,000 most popular free Android apps from the Google Play store has revealed a depressing fact …

More: FireEye Blog and The Register. Tweets: @virusbtn and @csoghoian

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Court orders Facebook to respond to EU data usage and privacy class action suit, now joined by 60K users — European Facebook Class Action Suit Attracts 60K Users As It Passes First Court Hurdle — Some developments around the class action suit filed against Facebook in Europe earlier …

More: AllFacebook, Reuters, ZDNet, Gigaom and Business Insider

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