Techmeme: Inside story of the final days of Mojang: feelings of betrayal, plummeting employee morale, an absent Notch, and money as salve (Wired)

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June 8, 2015, 1:10 AM

Top News

Chris O'Brien / VentureBeat:

Sony Music CEO confirms launch of Apple's music streaming service tomorrow — Sony Music CEO Doug Morris said in an interview on stage today that Apple will announce its new music streaming service tomorrow at its World Wide Developers Conference. — While observers have long-expected …

More: Quartz, Billboard, iMore, Computerworld, The Verge, BetaNews, Music Ally, Forbes, Fone Arena, Re/code, MacRumors, Wall Street Journal, SlashGear, TechnoBuffalo, all, Ubergizmo, The Mac Observer, The Next Web, Cult of Mac, TechCrunch, Macworld, 9to5Mac, Engadget, MobileSyrup.com, Neowin, iPhone in Canada Blog, GSMArena Blog, hypebot and Slashdot

Tweets: @jyarow and @seth

See also Mediagazer

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

What to expect at WWDC 2015: native Apple Watch SDK, iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 focusing on core user experience, and Apple Music — Coming at WWDC 2015: New Apple Watch SDK, Quality-focused/refreshed iOS 9 & OS X 10.11, Apple Music — Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference is about to kick off.

Wired:

Inside story of the final days of Mojang: feelings of betrayal, plummeting employee morale, an absent Notch, and money as salve — The Unlikely Story of Microsoft's Surprise Minecraft Buyout — Microsoft's $2.5 billion purchase of Mojang and Minecraft last September …

Tweets: @hunterwalk

Clive Thompson / New York Times:

Swiss watchmakers Montblanc, Ateliers deMonaco, and H. Moser adopt very different strategies to compete with the Apple Watch — Can the Swiss Watchmaker Survive the Digital Age? — Masters of one of the world's most revered forms of analog craftsmanship take on the smartwatch.

Jenna Wortham / New York Times:

Advanced mobile infrastructure, population density and consumer habits give Seoul some advantages over Silicon Valley as an environment for mobile innovation — What Silicon Valley Can Learn From Seoul — South Korean companies are building software for smartphones that's chaotic …

More: Forbes

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Takeout Giant Delivery Hero Raises Another $110M At Over $3.1B Valuation Ahead Of IPO — Delivery Hero, the takeout food ordering service based out of Berlin, has raised yet more money — possibly some of its last before an IPO sometime after 2015. It's picked up another $110 million from two unnamed …

More: Financial Times

Tom Maxwell / 9to5Google:

Slack for Android updated with much faster navigation, emoji support, more — Slack, the workplace communication service that has taken the corporate communications space by storm, has released what is says is a “better, faster, and all around Android-ier” Slack app for Android, rewritten from the ground up.

More: Slack

Chris Davies / SlashGear:

Amazon Echo updated to read audiobooks purchased through Audible — Amazon Echo now reads your Audible audiobooks — Amazon has added audiobook reading to its Echo personal assistant, allowing the pillar-like speaker to regale owners with Audible ebooks.

More: ZDNet, Engadget and TechnoBuffalo

Kat Hall / The Register:

HMRC, the UK's tax agency with staff of 70K, is first large UK gov't department to switch from Microsoft to Google Apps, store official data on servers offshore — HMRC ditches Microsoft for Google, sends data offshore — Tax doesn't have to be taxing for US firm with inside track

More: BetaNews

Liz Alderman / New York Times:

Inside Uber's battle with regulators in Paris, where its UberPOP service operates in the face of an effective ban — Uber's French Resistance — In cities from New York to New Delhi, the car service Uber has faced threats and bans from regulators but usually comes out on top. Has it met its match in Paris?

Tweets: @sub8u

Glyn Moody / Ars Technica UK:

Microsoft opens “Transparency Center” in Brussels, allowing EU governments to inspect the company's software for backdoors — Microsoft opens EU “Transparency Centre” to allay fears over NSA backdoors — Microsoft has opened what it calls a “Transparency Centre” in Brussels …

More: ITworld.com and Business Insider

Everett Rosenfeld / CNBC:

Why more than a dozen big banks and tech firms are investigating blockchain technology — Why financial firms are investigating bitcoin tech — The technology behind bitcoin could be even more important than the cryptocurrency itself. — The technological innovation behind bitcoin …

More: Forbes

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