10 Things In Tech You Need To Know This Morning

Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

Good morning! There's one big story that's dominating the news. We'll give you the best stuff we've seen on it so far.

1. Facebook paid $2 billion, most of it stock, for Oculus VR, a startup that makes a virtual reality headset. It's for video games now, but in the future it could deliver all sorts of experiences.
2. Mark Zuckerberg said he bought Oculus because he believes virtual reality is the next major platform for computing. First it was desktop computers, then mobile computers, and now virtual reality.
3. The Oculus headset is apparently mind blowing. It's an immersive experience and words don't do it justice. Anyone that tries it is floored by the experience.
4. Mark Zuckerberg had been pursuing Oculus for months. Initially he offered $1.5 billion, but investors thought was too little. He upped the bid to $2 billion and negotiations were finished last weekend.
5. Potential Oculus gamers are not happy about this. The comments on the Oculus blog post announcing the deal are not kind.
6. Oculus's technology was mind-blowing, but it wasn't the only company doing a virtual reality headset. Sony and Microsoft are both working on a competitor. This may have influenced the decision to sell.
7. In non-Oculus news, Instagram announced that it's at 200 million monthly users.
8. Apple let one of the engineers that helped develop the original iPhone software talk to the WSJ. Apple never lets non-executive employees talk. It seems the reason it allowed this to happen was because Apple is about to have a patent suit with Samsung and it wanted to tell the story of creating Apple's software.
9. DigiTimes reports Apple will release a Retina MacBook Air in the second half of the year, and it will release a 12-inch iPad.
10. The IRS made a big ruling on bitcoin. It is property, not currency, and so you have to tax any money made mining bitcoin.

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