Techmeme: Silicon Valley's view of Alibaba: a competitor only for investments, and a potential acquirer (Adam Lashinsky/Fortune)

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September 16, 2014, 4:31 AM

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Markus Persson / notch.net:

Markus “Notch” Persson on selling and leaving Mojang: “It's not about the money. It's about my sanity.” — I'm leaving Mojang — September 15th, 2014 I don't see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it's fun, and because I love games and I love to program …

More: Medium, Bloomberg, USA Today, Tubefilter, BuzzFeed, The Register, Cult of Mac, TechnoBuffalo, Re/code, PC World, ReadWrite, Neowin, ParisLemon, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post

Tweets: @pmarca, @garrynewman, @geoffkeighley, @bfod, @notch, @therealcliffyb, @bgurley, @joshmedia, @dalmaer, @paullicino and @mcpe_news

Ben Popper / The Verge:

Why parents are raising their kids on Minecraft — Microsoft's latest purchase has remarkable intergenerational appeal — Back in June of 2011, David Pakman's daughter and son, at the time age 10 and eight, asked him for a copy of Minecraft. “At the time I didn't know what that was …

Tweets: @a91g and @cwarzel

Owen Hill / Mojang:

Mojang's founders Markus “Notch” Persson, Carl Manneh, and Jakob Porsér to leave the company after Microsoft acquisition — Yes, we're being bought by Microsoft — Yes, the deal is real. Mojang is being bought by Microsoft. — It was reassuring to see how many of …

More: Wall Street Journal, CNET, VentureBeat, Tech Times, Ubergizmo, Computerworld, SlashGear, PC Gamer, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, DisplayBlog, The Verge and Gizmodo

Tweets: @chrisremo, @siracusa, @carlmanneh, @tomwarren, @realbengilbert, @pkafka, @svengrundberg and @theromit

Microsoft Corporation:

Microsoft buys Minecraft maker Mojang for $2.5B

More: GeekWire, Seeking Alpha, Reuters, Forbes, ZDNet, CNET, Polygon, VentureBreak, New World Notes, WinBeta, Guardian, Business Insider, iPhone in Canada Blog, eWeek, TIME and GeekWire

Tweets: @pkafka, @edbott and @dinabass

Phil Spencer / Xbox Wire:

Head of Xbox Phil Spencer: we will “grow the Minecraft community and nurture the franchise”, continue to make the game available on all existing platforms

More: Wired, Gizmodo, GeekWire, NPR, DailyTech and Blue's News. Tweets: @thurrott

Ben Thompson / stratechery:

Minecraft fits into Nadella's new vision for Microsoft, but the Xbox business creates conflict

More: Gamasutra, THE CORNERPLAY and Polygon

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft announces Windows 9 event in San Francisco on September 30th — Microsoft is preparing to detail its next major version of Windows. We had been expecting the company to hold a press event later this month, and now it's official. Microsoft will hold a “Windows event” in San Francisco on September 30th.

More: Re/code, PC World, Mashable, MobileSyrup.com, Laptop Mag, Liliputing, CIO.com, Pocketnow, Wall Street Journal, CNET, Electronista, Windows Phone Central, GeekWire, BGR, TechCrunch, WinBeta, Pocket-lint and TechSpot. Tweets: @zpower

Michael Carney / PandoDaily:

Paypal attacks Apple Pay security with full-page ad in NYT referencing recent iCloud celebrity photo hack — “We the people want our money safer than our selfies.” PayPal goes after Apple in a full page NYT ad — As the rumors of an Apple payments platform swirled leading up to last week's keynote …

More: CNET, ReadWrite, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, AppleInsider, TechRadar.com, Patently Apple, TUAW and App Advice

Tweets: @rabois, @halthomas, @rabois, @ow, @arj, @cjc, @lessien and @delrey

Adam Lashinsky / Fortune:

Silicon Valley's view of Alibaba: a competitor only for investments, and a potential acquirer — How Silicon Valley sees Alibaba — Wall Street is seeing green this week regarding the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. It hopes to raise more than $20 billion.

Tweets: @jonrussell

Wall Street Journal:

Alibaba increases IPO price range to $66-68 a share, from $60-66, could raise as much as $25B

More: Associated Press, Bloomberg, New York Times, Tech Trader Daily, SiliconBeat, Forbes, Gigaom, Bloomberg, CNET and Reuters. Tweets: @wsjbreakingnews

Derrick Harris / Gigaom:

Facebook launches an open source organization and releases new routing tech — Facebook is upping the ante in the open source world, announcing on Monday a new open source technology for routing data across server caches, and also a new open organization (along with other big-name companies) to help foster open source efforts.

More: Facebook Code, Facebook Code, New York Times, AllFacebook, EnterpriseTech, Bloomberg, AllFacebook, Re/code, Computerworld, VentureBeat, Inside Facebook, InfoWorld, Data Center Knowledge and ZDNet

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Roku has sold over 10 million of its streaming players — Roku just hit a milestone: over 10 million of its streaming players have been sold to this point, stretching from the company's original set-top box — which debuted in 2008 — through today. It's a big number, and it establishes Roku …

More: CNET, Gigaom, Re/code, The Next Web, Fast Company and Multichannel News

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

500px Co-Founder And Former CEO Ousted From The Startup — Toronto's 500px photo portfolio site and marketplace is undergoing some major changes, as co-founder Oleg Gutsol is out from the company he started. The executive shared the information on Facebook on Monday, saying that he was …

More: BetaKit. Tweets: @rcnaturephotos

Wall Street Journal:

Bill Gurley says Silicon Valley is taking on the most risk since 1999, will see high-profile failures in the next year or two — Venture Capitalist Sounds Alarm on Startup Investing — Silicon Valley Has Taken on Too Much Risk, Gurley Says — Silicon Valley is a risk-driven place.

More: Business Insider, AVC and Valleywag

Tweets: @rabois, @ross, @hunterwalk, @evelynrusli, @daniellemorrill and @pmarca

Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:

Macy's rolls out retail's largest beacon installation — Summary: Macy's expects to complete the installation by early fall, just in time for the upcoming holiday shopping season. — Following a test run during last year's holiday shopping season at its flagship stores in New York City and San Francisco …

More: MacRumors and SlashGear

Christina Farr / Reuters:

Stanford, Duke University hospitals to launch HealthKit trials with diabetics, other patients — Exclusive: Two Apple medical trials shed light on how HealthKit will work — (Reuters) - Two prominent U.S. hospitals are preparing to launch trials with diabetics and chronic disease patients …

More: TechnoBuffalo, Cult of Mac, TUAW, SlashGear, Tech Times, Macworld, Patently Apple and Engadget

WikiLeaks:

WikiLeaks releases copies of FinFisher malware governments reportedly use to spy on journalists, political dissidents, and others — SpyFiles 4 — Today, 15 September 2014, WikiLeaks releases previously unseen copies of weaponised German surveillance malware used by intelligence agencies around …

More: The Next Web, CNET, Mashable, TechSpot, Sydney Morning Herald, SecurityWeek, The Online Citizen, Guardian, ZDNet, The Register and SC Magazine. See also Mediagazer

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

Panasonic puts a 1-inch sensor and a Leica lens on new CM1 smartphone — Seeking to set a new benchmark for the cameraphone category — Panasonic has made the biggest news of Photokina so far with the announcement of its new Lumix CM1 Android smartphone.

Bloomberg:

Apple Watch Privacy Questioned by Connecticut AG Jepsen — Apple Inc. (AAPL) faces questions by Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen over privacy protections for users of the company's watch, which includes features such as health tracking, unveiled last week as part of its lineup of new products.

More: State of Connecticut, CNET, BGR, iDownloadBlog.com, Hartford Courant, New Haven Register and MacRumors

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Spotify launches on Amazon Fire TV in US, available to premium subscribers only — Spotify fires up on Amazon Fire TV — Amazon's streaming-media box adds support for the music service with more than 20 million songs. To use Spotify Connect, you'll need a premium subscription.

More: Spotify Blog, Trusted Reviews, TechRadar.com, Digital Trends, Gizmodo, 9to5Google, Gigaom, Ubergizmo, The Next Web, AndroidHeadlines.com and Android Central

Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:

Gartner: 75% of mobile apps will fail basic security tests in 2015 — Majority of mobile apps will fail basic security tests in the future: Gartner — Summary: The research firm claims that 75 percent of all mobile applications will fail basic security tests next year — leaving the enterprise vulnerable.

More: Gartner and SecurityWeek

Natasha Singer / New York Times:

California bill to prohibit online services from selling or disclosing students' personal data — With Tech Taking Over in Schools, Worries Rise — At a New York state elementary school, teachers can use a behavior-monitoring app to compile information on which children have positive attitudes and which act out.

Tweets: @mindshiftkqed, @zeynep and @russaltenburg

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