This week on VentureBeat: Profanities, HoloLens, 4chan, & more

Every week, the news team at VentureBeat brings you a blitz of news day after day, but even for our most dedicated readers it can be a challenge to catch every single story.

So, we’ve decided to pull together a handful of the best stories from VentureBeat this week, just in case you missed them, or want to read them again.

Andreessen Horowitz shares the 16 tech trends it’s most excited about

Most of us will never be in an Andreessen Horowitz meeting, and even fewer of us will get a chance to work with the famed VC firm. But today, we’re all equals when it comes to getting a peek at the 16 tech trends that a16z, as it’s known, is most excited about right now. In a post this morning, Andreessen Horowitz, perhaps Silicon Valley’s most revered group of investors, shared its “16 Things” list, a breakdown of the hottest tech trends in the world right now. And while few of those things would individually surprise anyone with any tech savvy, it’s fascinating to see a16z codify the trends that it clearly believes are most changing the world today. Read more

The creator of 4chan tells us why he’s leaving the site for good (interview)

This morning Christopher Poole, better known to some as “Moot,”announced plans to step back from the site he created 11 years ago. That site is 4chan, a mega-popular message board known as the birthplace of everything from Lolcats to the Anonymous hacktivist group. Poole created 4chan when he was 15. Since then, it’s amassed over 42 billion total pageviews, nearly 2 billion posts, and over a billion visitors. Read more

Everything Microsoft announced at its Windows 10 event, including that crazy HoloLens

Today Microsoft unveiled the future of Windows, from the cross-platform Windows 10 to a brand new virtual reality headset. We’ve summed up the biggest stories from the event below. Many of Microsoft’s announcements simply expanded on what we already knew, but the presentation packed a few surprises, including Microsoft’s HoloLens. Even if you’re an Apple fan, you’re going to want to see that. Read more

I tried Minecraft with Microsoft HoloLens, and now I don’t want to work anymore

REDMOND, Wash. — I’m not a gaming guy. But now I kind of want to be one. After trying out the latest augmented reality system, the Windows Holographic, at an event on the Microsoft campus today, I realized that it’d be pretty freakin’ cool to make my ordinary environment into a video game. Read more

FCC and Congress jockey for position in net neutrality fight

The House and Senate held hearings yesterday on a legislative proposal that would prevent Internet service providers from setting up for-pay Internet “fast lanes” without reclassifying the Internet as a public utility. The bill, which is sponsored by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) would do essentially everything net neutrality proponents have been asking for. Read more

’70 percent of CRM installs fail’ and other crappy stats you should ignore

Now and then, you’ll hear a statistic or fact that is so striking, it’s hard to ignore. “As many as 70 percent of CRM implementations fail,” one Butler Group analyst said, according to analyst Michael Krigsman, who quizzed The Butler Group about this very stat back in 2009. Read more

Why is messaging app Slack exploding? Founder: ‘I have no f–king idea’

We already knew that corporate messaging app Slack was one of the hottest startups around. What we didn’t necessarily know was why. As it turns out, Slack founder Stewart Butterfield isn’t so sure himself. Speaking on stage at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich, Germany, Butterfield said he didn’t know why Slack had taken off while his last two startups had fizzled. Read more