10 things in tech you need to know today
Good morning! Here's the tech news you need to know today.
1. Facebook is working on a stand-alone mobile news application. Like Twitter, it will let publishers send breaking news alerts to the masses.
2. Apple's stock was down 5% on Tuesday. While there was no clear reason for the drop, although investors have expressed concerns about iPhone and Apple Watch sales.
3. Virtual assistant startup Virtual has been acquired and will resume service. The offer came from Startups.co, a company led by Zirtual investor Wil Schroter.
4. IBM's Watson could learn how to identify cancer and heart disease from X-rays and MRI scans. IBM plans to train Watson using 30 billion images - including X-rays, CT scans, and MRI scans - from Merge, a healthcare company it recently acquired.
5. Legal experts say Google did not split its search engine from the rest of its businesses because the EU wanted it to. The company's search business is still part of a smaller version of Google under a new holding company called Alphabet.
6. Analysts are predicting that the next iPhone won't be good enough to grow Apple's smartphone business. KGI Securities is now forecasting zero or negative growth of iPhone sales in the fourth quarter of 2015.
7. Tinder's PR went on a 30+ tweet tweetstorm lambasting Vanity Fair magazine for a recent feature story in the September issue of the magazine. The article uses Tinder to talk about the effects of technology and smartphone dating apps on youth "hook-up" culture and dating.
8. In a now-deleted blog post, Oracle security chief Mary Ann Davidson said that the company does not welcome security researchers who point out flaws in its software. She warned customers that anybody who tries to reverse-engineer Oracle code to find security vulnerabilities is "almost certainly violating [their] license agreement."
9. Police raided Uber's offices in Hong Kong and arrested five drivers. The police said the drivers lacked the required hire car permits or third party insurance.
10. Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google's Eric Schmidt invested in a Silicon Valley startup that makes shower heads. Nebia designed a new kind of shower head that it says can reduce the amount of water used by up to 70%.