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Re/wind: The Las Vegas Techtopia, Introducing Microsoft Windows 10 and More
Our multi-part series on Las Vegas’ “innovation city,” and Microsoft’s new operating system.
Vjeran Pavic for Re/code
We hope your week went great. If you missed the big news, don’t worry! Here are the headlines that powered Re/code:
- Nellie Bowles traveled to Las Vegas to learn about the Las Vegas Downtown Project, a 60-acre “innovation city” founded and funded by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh. And then shit hit the fan. Check out her multi-part series exploring the country’s strangest and most ambitious experiment in entrepreneurship. You should also read about Hsieh handing the reins to someone else, and our interview with him about the project’s future.
- On Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled Windows 10 (what happened to 9?) — its all-new operating system that will be available next year. Before the announcement, we laid out some of the questions the company needs to address with its new OS, though it will be some time before Microsoft gets to all of them (timing, price, etc.). That said, the company touted its 50 new partnerships since it announced it would provide device makers with free versions of their new mobile software back in April.
- We interviewed the CEO of Ello, the ad-free social network that went viral last week. The site’s been averaging 40,000-50,000 new user requests an hour, and top dog Paul Budnitz is explicit that Ello is “not here to compete with Facebook.” Because according to Budnitz, Facebook isn’t even a social network anymore — it’s an “advertising platform.”
- This week, the big Facebook news is that Facebook is sorry. Like, really sorry. Facebook is sorry for experimenting with your emotions this summer (but it’ll continue to do it, sort of), and it’s sorry about the drag queens it targeted with the company’s “real name” policy. But not so sorry that they won’t use your data to sell ads on sites that aren’t Facebook.
- Apple wants its music streaming service, soon to become the Streaming Service Formerly Known as Beats, to cost less than $10 a month for its users (which is roughly what Spotify’s premium service costs). Apple is asking music labels to help share the burden. One more thing — Expect the new line of iPads to be announced on Oct 16.
- There was a lot of bad news on the climate change front this week. If you’re brave enough to see just how bad things are getting, click here.
- The social news site Reddit raised $50 million from a diverse group of investors, including Jared Leto, Snoop Dogg, Andreessen Horowitz and Peter Thiel. The company also told us it plans to distribute 10 percent of the equity to the Reddit community, though the mechanics haven’t quite been figured out yet.
- Re/code co-executive editor Walt Mossberg reviewed Wi-Fi calling on the iPhone 6, and boy is this feature good. Though, unfortunately, you can only get it through T-Mobile right now (though Verizon and AT&T have both said they plan to introduce Wi-Fi voice calling in the future).
- In journalism news, the New York Times announced it was laying off a large number of employees and that it was discontinuing its struggling NYTOpinion app. Also, we talked with Financial Times editor Lionel Barber about navigating the digital straits with print newspaper, and whether the New York Times’ “Innovation Report” is enough to take the paper into the post-print age.
- Yielding to the anti-feminist backlash in the gaming community, Intel pulled its advertising from the gaming news site Gamasutra. But, despite showing how it bowed to pressure, Intel wants you to know that they feel really really bad about offending anyone.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
