Techmeme
August 21, 2015, 6:15 PM

Top News

Daniel Ek / Spotify Blog:
Spotify apologizes for confusion over privacy policy, clarifies that no information will be collected without explicit permission  —  Sorry!  —  We are in the middle of rolling out new terms and conditions and privacy policy and they've caused a lot of confusion about what kind of information we access and what we do with it.
Jerry Hildenbrand / Android Central:
Google no longer requires new Android devices to ship with Google+, Google Newsstand, Google Play Games and Books apps pre-installed  —  Your new phone will have less Google bloatware, and that's awesome  —  You might have heard that the new Samsung Galaxy Note 5 comes without Google+ preinstalled.
Reuters:
Tesla engineer joins Apple's growing team of automated car experts  —  Consumer electronics company Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has hired a senior engineer from electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA.O), according to a LinkedIn posting, as part of Apple's effort to build a team of experts in automated driving.
Joseph Cox / Motherboard:
Ashley Madison hackers: we still have 300GB of employee emails, internal docs, some user chats and pictures, more, but will not dump all of it  —  Ashley Madison Hackers Speak Out: ‘Nobody Was Watching’  —  For the past week, international media has reported on the hack of extramarital site Ashley Madison …
Napier Lopez / The Next Web:
Google integrates Twitter into its desktop search results  —  Google and Twitter are getting a little friendlier; you can now view tweet feeds from various accounts and hashtags right from Google.com on the desktop.  —  You can search something like “The Next Web Twitter” and Google will pull up a feed of our latest tweets.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
New data uncovers the surprising predictability of Android lock patterns  —  Like “p@$$w0rd” and “1234567” many Android patterns are easy to guess.  —  Marte Løge  —  The abundance of password leaks over the past decade has revealed some of the most commonly used …
Kev Needham / Mozilla Add-ons Blog:
Mozilla to introduce new API for Firefox to make it easier to port extensions from other browsers, to deprecate certain classes of add-ons 12-18 months from now  —  The Future of Developing Firefox Add-ons  —  Today we are announcing some major upcoming changes to Firefox add-ons.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple TV outsold by Amazon's Fire TV in 2014, now the fourth most popular streaming device  —  According to recent data released by Parks Associates, Apple TV currently is the fourth most popular streaming media device based on 2014 sales, down from third place in 2013.
Evelyn Cheng / CNBC:
Apple stock falls more than 5% as markets correct over slowing global growth concerns  —  Dow falls 350 points as global growth concerns weigh  —  Market rout continues: How to play the dip  —  Portfolio managers Chad Morganlander of Stifel, and Jim Lacamp of UBS, discuss Thursday's market selloff …

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Earlier Picks

Nigel Manuel / CNET: