Techmeme
September 20, 2016, 6:00 PM

Top News

ProPublica:
For 250 popular items tracked over several weeks, Amazon ranked its own and affiliated products higher about 75% of the time, even when cheaper options existed  —  Amazon bills itself as “Earth's most customer-centric company.”  Yet its algorithm is hiding the best deal from many customers.
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
macOS Sierra review: Siri and Optimized Storage features add convenience but can frustrate, as Siri lacks third-party tie-ins, and iCloud storage is too limited  —  For the last few years, nearly all of OS X's biggest updates have come in response to iOS.  First, the Mac got iOS's apps.
Andrew J . Hawkins / The Verge:
New federal rules for autonomous vehicles aim to avoid patchwork of state laws, include 15-point safety assessment to cover ethical, conflict situations on road  —  The White House vs. robot cars  —  So far, manufacturers of self-driving cars have operated in uncharted waters …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Comcast CEO says the company plans to debut a wireless service by mid-2017, using leased Verizon airwaves and Comcast's 14M+ Wi-Fi hot spots  —  It will run on Verizon airwaves and also lean on Wi-Fi  —  Comcast just solidified long-rumored plans to launch its own MVNO cellular service.
Josh Smith / Official Google for Work Blog:
Google adds natural language search, improved spell checking to Drive and enhances multi-column support in Docs  —  (Cross-posted on the Google Drive Blog)  —  Innovation is critical for business success, so we're constantly trying to build tools that enable our customers to do more.
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
RIAA report: US music streaming revenue grew 57% to $1.6B in the first half of 2016 and accounted for almost half of industry sales  —  Popularity of online listening offsets plunging album revenue  —  U.S. industry poised for second straight year of sales growth
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
Google sends out invites for October 4 “made by Google” hardware event in San Francisco, will livestream it on YouTube  —  Google today tweeted out an indication that it will unveil new devices on October 4.  People have been expected Google to show new mobile devices …
Harrison Weber / VentureBeat:
Adobe reports Q3 record revenue of $1.46B, up 20% YoY, record Marketing Cloud revenue of $404M, and Digital Media annualized recurring revenue rises to $3.70B  —  Adobe shared its third-quarter earnings report today, revealing (for the third quarter in a row) “record” $1.46 billion in revenue and $0.75 (non-GAAP) earnings per share.
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Tinder integrates with Spotify and lets potential matches view users' favorite songs and artists  —  Tinder has revealed the next step in its mission to help users meet their perfect match, as Spotify opens up its catalog of songs to the perennially popular dating app.

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Earlier Picks

Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
Steve Kovach / Business Insider:
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
BBC: