Techmeme
August 21, 2014, 2:50 PM

Top News

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.
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.
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 …
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
Matthew Miller / ZDNet:
T-Mobile will give you a year of unlimited LTE data if your friends convert from Sprint, AT&T, or 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 …
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.
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.
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.
Carolyn Giardina / Hollywood Reporter:
Jaunt Aims to Kick-Start Hollywood Virtual Reality With $27.8 Million in New Funding  —  “We think over next few years, as the technology becomes available, virtual reality will see mass adoption,” says co-founder Jens Christensen  —  Jaunt — a Palo Alto-based startup that is developing hardware …

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More News

Nellie Bowles / Re/code:

Earlier Picks

Amrita Jayakumar / Washington Post:
Mary Schlangenstein / Bloomberg:
Ina Fried / Re/code: