Techmeme
July 1, 2016, 6:45 PM

Top News

John Paczkowski / BuzzFeed:
Apple accuses Spotify of asking for “preferential treatment” after app rejection complaint, says Spotify is “publicly resorting to rumors and half-truths”  —  “We find it troubling that you ... are publicly resorting to rumors and half-truths about our service."
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Apple in exploratory talks to acquire Tidal, Jay Z's streaming music service; Tidal held similar talks with Rhapsody last year  —  Sources say talks are ongoing and may not result in a deal  —  Apple Inc. is in exploratory talks to acquire Tidal, a streaming-music service run by rap mogul Jay Z …
Mikhail Larionov / Messenger Platform News:
Facebook announces 11K bots on Messenger, updates Messenger Platform with star ratings, quick reply buttons, more content types, and other features for bots  —  Since the launch of the Messenger Platform in April of this year, over 11,000 bots have launched.
David Ruddock / Android Police:
Sources: larger HTC Nexus will have 5.5-inch QHD AMOLED display, 4GB of RAM, 3450mAh battery, 12MP rear and 8MP front camera, quad-core Qualcomm CPU  —  You know about Google's smaller new Nexus phone, Sailfish, but what about Marlin?  Everyone's keen to know what the bigger …
Ben Lang / Road to VR:
Google adds WebVR and VR Shell to beta and dev versions of Chrome on Android, potentially allowing all websites to be viewed in VR  —  Google is working to add fully immersive browsing capability to Chrome, allowing users to browse any part of the web in VR, not just those sites that are specially built for VR.
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Amazon now lets you purchase millions of Prime qualified products via Alexa  —  Now you can talk into your friendly little home AI tower to order toilet paper.  And deodorant and batteries.  And tens of millions of other Amazon Prime qualified products, because no one does synergy quite like the good people at Amazon.
Jordan Golson / The Verge:
US NHTSA opens investigation into fatal accident involving Tesla's Autopilot mode; Tesla says it's the first fatality in 130M+ miles driven with Autopilot  —  A Tesla Model S with the Autopilot system activated was involved in a fatal crash, the first known fatality in a Tesla where Autopilot was active.
Dan Primack / Fortune:
Zenefits cuts its valuation from $4.5B to $2B, will let Series C investors increase stake from 11% to 25%  —  Zenefits, the HR software startup that has accused its founder and former CEO of regulatory impropriety, is slashing its valuation to $2 billion from $4.5 billion.
Don Clark / Wall Street Journal:
Jury awards HP Enterprise $3B in damages from Oracle over 2011 Itanium case; Oracle to appeal  —  Legal case focused on fate of ‘Itanium’ systems  —  A jury in Silicon Valley on Thursday delivered a resounding victory to Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. , finding that Oracle Corp. should pay …

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Earlier Picks

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Agam Shah / PCWorld: