10 things in tech you need to know today
1. Snapchat has poached staff from BuzzFeed and Twitter to run its first European office. Buzzfeed's former director of partnerships, Jonathan Davies, and Twitter's head of telco and tech, Tariq Slim will join Snapchat.
2. The European Parliament just voted to grant Edward Snowden asylum, but it doesn't actually do anything. If Snowden flew to the UK, for example, he could still legally be arrested, despite the vote.
3. UK police used terror powers to seize a BBC Newsnight journalist's laptop. The seizure of his material has alarmed press freedom organisations.
4. The personal information of over 600,000 people from the UK is on sale on the dark web for £20 ($30.69) per person. The details were revealed to the Financial Times by security firm Symantec, and the figure was confirmed by the UK government.
5. Facebook is testing a new feature that makes it more like Craigslist. The company is testing a feature called "Local Market," that illustrate a new way for people to buy and sell things on the site.
6. Apple expects to spend $15 billion (£9.7 billion) in capital expenditures this fiscal year. The money predominantly goes on manufacturing process equipment, product tooling, and other infrastructure required to make products.
7. British cybersecurity startup Darktrace has gone from from hiring former spies to students as it looks to grow to the size of Autonomy. Mike Lynch's Darktrace was born in Cambridge and is today worth over $100 million.
8. Apple's secrecy on AI could hurt its ability to hire the best researchers. At Apple, new hires on the AI teams are told not to announce their positions on LinkedIn or Twitter.
9. Google believes it is on course to have enough internet-beaming balloons to form a ring over part of the world next year. The balloons will allow it to provide a continuous data service to people below.
10. Charging an Apple Pencil may be even weirder than we thought. Sources familiar with the iPad Pro's Apple Pencil accessory say a new adaptor will allow users to charge the accessory with a standard USB Lightning cable.