Techmeme
June 21, 2015, 10:40 PM

Top News

Taylor Swift:
Taylor Swift will withhold her latest album “1989” from Apple Music, says lack of royalties during three month free trial hurts smaller artists  —  To Apple, Love Taylor  —  I write this to explain why I'll be holding back my album, 1989, from the new streaming service, Apple Music.
Ben Fox Rubin / CNET:
Amazon starts weighting product ratings to favor reviews that are newer, helpful, and verified  —  Amazon updates customer reviews with new machine-learning platform  —  The e-commerce giant created a new in-house model to show off more up-to-date and helpful reviews for buyers.
Charlie Warzel / BuzzFeed:
Subreddit moderators far removed from recent bannings say they're concerned with Reddit's leadership and strategy  —  Reddit Is A Shrine To The Internet We Wanted And That's A Problem  —  Reddit has a problem.  It's a well-documented problem, which, oddly, is a big part of the problem.
Tweets: @mat
Caroline O'Donovan / BuzzFeed:
Idea for a new “dependent contractor” class of workers gains momentum as on-demand companies face lawsuits from contract workers  —  What A New Class Of Worker Could Mean For The Future Of Labor  —  Faced with lawsuits that could threaten their business models …
More: Forbes
Joel Hruska / ExtremeTech:
AMD denies rumor that it's mulling breakup or spinoff  —  Rumors about AMD's breakup or acquisition by various companies are common, but they don't often come from the likes of Reuters.  According to the news agency, AMD is once-again mulling a breakup or spinoff.
Justin Pritchard / Associated Press:
CA DMV releases incident reports for self driving car prototypes: 6 accidents, most in self-driving mode, caused by other drivers, no serious injuries  —  California reveals details of self-driving car accidents  —  LOS ANGELES (AP) — California state officials released reports Thursday …
Peter Wayner / The Atlantic:
Amazon to pay authors of self-published Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners' Lending Library e-books based on pages read, not downloads, from July 1st  —  What If Authors Were Paid Every Time Someone Turned a Page?  —  When I recently learned of Amazon's new plan to pay some authors …
Sebastian Anthony / Ars Technica:
How lithium-ion batteries, industrial design and Moore's law created modern laptops  —  The creation of the modern laptop  —  An in-depth look at lithium-ion batteries, industrial design, Moore's law, and more.  —  The world's first commercial laptop—though that is certainly stretching the term—was the Osborne 1.
Tweets: @core77
Jennifer Parker / Bloomberg Business:
Travel industry tests using virtual reality experiences to advertise travel destinations  —  How Oculus and Cardboard Are Going to Rock the Travel Industry  —  As advertisers jump on VR, it may just be a matter of time before you can rack up air miles, virtually  —  Holy cow.
Zac Bowden / WinBeta:
Windows Insiders get Windows 10 for free, Windows 7/8.1 not required  —  Microsoft published a blog post last night which spoke about a number of things which are changing for Windows Insiders on the heels of the Windows 10 RTM, which is set to launch on July 29th.

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