The blurring of lines between media and tech firms, Silicon Valley's culture of secrecy, and a lack of skepticism and resources make tech reporting difficult  —  With the lines between media firms and tech firms blurring, coverage of the tech sector presents one of the most profound accountability challenges in modern journalism

Sources: seed-stage firm Rothenberg Ventures near collapse as executives depart; employees blame out-of-control spending by the firm's fame-seeking founder  —  Rothenberg Ventures, the four-year-old, San Francisco-based seed-stage venture firm, may be on the brink of implosion, say several sources close to the firm.

How a Lending Club user mined the company's data to uncover shady loans made to Lending Club insiders and repeat borrowers  —  Photographer: Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images  —  “You ready to see some crazy s**t?”  —  Bryan Sims and I were sitting in the dining room of his modest home in Portland …

Expect more non-tech public companies to buy tech unicorns as a hedge against disruption  —  Yeah, There's a Bubble... But it Ain't in Tech … Everybody in the press loves to write stories about the next “Tech Bubble”.  —  Of course, they all think they've seen this movie before—twice in fact, in 2000 and in 2008.

Samsung to Close Milk Music on September 22  —  Samsung is finally pulling the plug on its Milk Music streaming service: The company started to notify users of Milk Music Friday that it will shut down the service on September 22.  Samsung told existing users to instead switch to Slacker, which has been powering Milk since its launch.

Google to end support for Chrome apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux in early 2018, stop surfacing them in the Chrome Web Store in the second half of 2017  —  We have always believed in making the open, interoperable web as strong as possible.  For a while there were certain experiences the web …

Microsoft's Panos Panay on the evolution of Surface, from the failure of the first model with Windows RT to the trendsetting Surface Pro 4 tablet-laptop hybrid  —  On May 20, 2014, Satya Nadella — the recently appointed CEO of Microsoft — sat down next to Microsoft Surface boss Panos Panay in a packed New York City auditorium.

Belgian officials asked NSA for help in snooping on bulk cellphone metadata from a terrorist's funeral, which helped in catching Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam  —  A breakthrough in the four-month-long manhunt for key suspect in the Paris attacks only came when Belgian officials asked the NSA for assistance …

Facebook launches Lifestage, an app for high school students to create a profile with videos  —  “What if I figured out a way to take Facebook from 2004 and bring it to 2016?  What if every field in your profile was a full video" asks Facebook's 19-year old product prodigy Michael Sayman.

Sources: Lyft recently sought $9B for buyout after GM expressed interest in acquiring the company but received no bids even after lowering its asking price  —  It failed to find another buyer after GM expressed interest in acquiring the company.  —  Lyft may have run out of options.

Ransomware attacks have quadrupled from a year ago, averaging 4K per day, and increasingly target entire networks, not just personal computers  —  Digital currency, better software help hackers hold data hostage  —  Dave Winston, crew chief with Circle Sport-Leavine Family Racing, fell victim to a ransomware attack.