Techmeme
September 29, 2016, 2:50 PM

Top News

Financial Times:
Sources: Spotify is in advanced talks to acquire SoundCloud after its two earlier attempts proved unsuccessful  —  Spotify, the music streaming service, is in advanced talks to acquire SoundCloud, as competition heats up with Apple for the future of digital music, said people briefed on the discussions.
Recode:
Sources: Qi Lu, Microsoft's EVP of applications and services, is leaving the company due to health issues; Corporate VP Rajesh Jha to assume many of Lu's duties  —  Rajesh Jha will assume many of Lu's responsibilities  —  Longtime Microsoft executive Qi Lu is leaving the company following medical issues …
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
KGI: ‘Increasing likelihood’ iPhone 8 will feature glass front and back, stainless steel metal for premium models  —  Reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities has released a new report further forecasting that the 2017 iPhone will likely adopt and glass front and back design like the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Skype iOS app updated with Siri and CallKit support, allowing incoming calls to be displayed and answered on lock screen  —  Skype today updated its iOS app to version 6.25, adding support for new features that were introduced with iOS 10.  Skype now integrates with Siri …
Wall Street Journal:
Apple to open $45M R&D center in Beijing with 500 employees to focus on developing hardware  —  New center will employ 500 workers, Zhongguancun Science Park Administrative Committee says  —  BEIJING— Apple Inc. 's first research center in China will be a $45 million facility located …
Harry Shum / The Official Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft consolidates multiple groups to create new combined AI and Research group, which will include Bing and Cortana teams  —  This week at Microsoft Ignite, we showed how we are infusing artificial intelligence (AI) broadly across Microsoft to help our customers.
Michael Kan / PCWorld:
Security firm InfoArmor says hackers-for-hire, not state-sponsored actors, breached Yahoo, and have sold the entire database three times, once for $300K+  —  Elite hackers-for-hire were actually behind the breach, according to InfoArmor  —  Common criminals, not state-sponsored hackers …
Roger Parloff / Fortune:
Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft launch Partnership on AI, a nonprofit to advance best practices in AI; the group isn't intended to lobby government  —  Five tech giants announced on Wednesday that they are launching a nonprofit to “advance public understanding” …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Facebook at Work will launch on October 10 in London  —  Some more details are coming through on Facebook at Work, the social network's big effort to move into enterprise communication services with a business version of its popular platform.  Facebook has now sent out invites for a Facebook …

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More News

Yuji Nakamura / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

John Voorhees / MacStories:
James Rufus Koren / Los Angeles Times:
Lauren Goode / The Verge:
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Julia Love / Reuters: