Bloomberg | Atlassian Corp. is selling its corporate chat software to rival Slack Technologies Inc. and taking a small stake in the startup, as they face greater competition from Microsoft Corp. The deal gives Slack more customers, most of whom pay a monthly service fee, and allows Atlassian to exit a business that failed to generate as much demand as expected. Combining the two businesses bolsters Slack at a time when Microsoft is pushing a rival product called Teams to some 135 million Office cloud customers. Microsoft introduced a free version of Teams this month in a bid to lure people who don’t subscribe to Office 365.

The Keyword | Here's a roundup of all the highlights and announcements from Google Cloud Next '18.

Ars Technica | Researchers have uncovered a host of apps and browser extensions downloaded more than 11 million times that keep a list of every website ever visited and send it to servers operated by the developers. The snooping wares affect both Android and iOS users, as well as those who installed Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox extensions, according to a blog post published by AdGuard, a developer of ad blockers and privacy tools.

Ars Technica | "When the Spectre and Meltdown attacks were disclosed earlier this year, the initial exploits required an attacker to be able to run code of their choosing on a victim system. This made browsers vulnerable, as suitably crafted JavaScript could be used to perform Spectre attacks. Cloud hosts were susceptible, too. But outside these situations, the impact seemed relatively limited. That impact is now a little larger. Researchers from Graz University of Technology, including one of the original Meltdown discoverers, Daniel Gruss, have described NetSpectre: a fully remote attack based on Spectre. With NetSpectre, an attacker can remotely read the memory of a victim system without running any code on that system," writes Peter Bright.

Lifehacker | Google and Dropbox are now collaborating on a brand-new “Dropbox add-on for Gmail,” which will make it easy to share the contents of your Dropbox directly within Gmail. If you’re going the other way, it’s also a lot easier to dump files directly into your Dropbox, saving you the step of having to pull up your Downloads folder and manually drag the file over yourself.

TechRepublic | If you're an IT admin, web developer, or other professional, you likely have to juggle different browsers. You may use Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer on a Windows PC. You might use Safari, Chrome, and Firefox on a Mac. Like most professionals, you also probably store and use a host of bookmarks and favorites. If so, how do you keep your bookmarks in sync across all your devices and browsers? Here's a tool that can help.

ZDNet | Automating the distribution of necessary hardware such as keyboards, mice, headsets, cables, and other peripherals keeps employees productive and gives them the business products they want. So how will smart vending machines impact the future of IT?

Hacker Noon | The good and the “humorous” from a female perspective.

Several People Are Typing | Atlassian and Slack are announcing a new partnership. "As part of this partnership, Atlassian will discontinue Hipchat and Stride, and provide a migration path to Slack for all their customers. We are purchasing the IP for Hipchat Cloud and Stride to better support that path to Slack, while Atlassian is making a small, but symbolically important investment in our business," writes April Underwood, Slack's chief product officer.