From the Windows 10 launch to genetically modified babies and Elon Musk tweeting about his “D,” we give you our top articles from this week (9/27-10/3). You don’t want to miss these.
1. Windows 10 was revealed at an event in San Francisco, and you bet we were there. Yes, you heard that right: Microsoft is calling their new OS Windows 10. The operating system will differentiate itself with a tailored user experience between different screen sizes; to put it bluntly, the company is going for the enterprise crown.
2. Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla was going to “unveil the D,” leaving many chuckling and scratching their heads. And it’s not what you’d think. We wonder if Tesla will finally unveil an insane Model S supercar with a wicked amount of power.
3. Reddit raised $50 million in Series B on a $500 million valuation, and wants to give back 10 percent of the round’s equity to the site’s users. Reddit CEO Yishan Wong alludes to a “crazy plan” in which the company will redistribute shares back to Redditors via a unique cryptocurrency.
4. We reported that eBay and PayPal will split into two different companies. PayPal will branch off to become a publicly traded company of its own. Both companies will get new CEOs as part of the deal, with eBay Marketplaces President Devin Wenig taking over at eBay, and PayPal President Dan Schulman presiding at PayPal.
5. The EU approved Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp — deciding that the two are “not close competitors.” We gave you the coverage and the 3 reasons the companies claim why together they will not create an anticompetitive environment for other players in the space.
6. There was a lot of news concerning Facebook this week. Firstly, the social network giant relaunched its Atlas ad platform, which could prove to be a real game changer. It also launched a mobile Like button to ensure that it will colonize everyone’s apps, admitted to emotional manipulation on the News Feed, setting up a formal review process for pre-approving research on its users. The platform also apologized to the LGBT community, promising to change the real names policy.
7. Gilles Raymond, Founder and CEO of News Republic, wrote a piece about being an immigrant in the U.S. He mentions a few foreigners who founded highly successful U.S. companies, and offers some insight into the resilient qualities that many immigrants possess that make them successful entrepreneurs.
8. Leslie Hitchcock charmed us with “A Petite Woman’s Experience With The iPhone 6,” a story that recounts what its like for a small-handed person to use the new larger iPhone model as a small-handed person. The solution? How about an iPhone 6 Minus.
9. We introduced you to the Kano Computing learn-to-code kit, a step-by-step hand-holding layer atop the Raspberry Pi single-board microcomputer to make hacking around with code and learning about computational thinking child’s play. The product was fueled largely by Kickstarter, and the first 18,000 have shipped.
10. Tadhg Kelly, creator of the leading design blog What Games Are, wrote a story called “Why And How To Hire A Game Designer,” in which he describes the disconnect between clients and game designers, and clarifies exactly what it is game designers can do for studios.
11. Sarah Buhr sparked an ethics debate about genetically modified humans in her story, “The World’s First Genetically Modified Babies Will Graduate High School This Year.”
In other news, Korean owners of the new Samsung Galaxy Note 4 noticed a gap between the bezel and the screen of their devices prompting #GapGate to hit headlines and the GoPro launched the Hero4 Black and the Hero4 Silver. Kim-Mai Cutler gave us an analysis of how tech is used for both good and evil regarding the conflict in the Middle East. Oh, and PotatoStock actually happened.