10 things in tech you need to know today
1. Twitter is killing off "favourites" and instead it wants you to "like" tweets with hearts. Previously, Twitter let users show they enjoyed a tweet by selecting a star icon.?
2. The UK government is due to propose a new surveillance law that will force internet firms to store details of people's online activity for 12 months. At the same time, the government will reveal whether it wants to ban full encryption on hardware devices and social media platforms.
3. A fourth person has been arrested for data theft following the TalkTalk hack. The latest arrest is a 16-year-old boy from Norwich.?
4. A Harvard economist says Uber's most significant innovation has been in how it works with governments on regulation. Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington DC, believes other companies in the so-called "sharing-economy" will use Uber as a role model on how to engage with policymakers.
5. Amazon is opening its first physical bookstore in Seattle. The company said it will use information it has gathered from its online store, such as customer ratings, to help select titles in its physical store.
6. Microsoft is ending unlimited OneDrive storage because people were abusing it. In some instances, this exceeded 75 terabytes per user or 14,000 times the average, the company said.
7. Salesforce billionaire and angel investor Marc Benioff says startups with valuations over a billion dollars are taking too long to go public. He believes public markets are great for CEOs because it forces them to listen and pay attention.
8. The founder of Oculus says schools need his virtual reality invention because "classrooms are broken" and not everyone can go on field trips. The revelations come after Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer recently said that the company envisions Oculus eventually building an experience that mimics a teleporter.
9. San Francisco voters have rejected measures to restrict short-term Airbnb rentals. Proposition F, as it's known, sought to cut the number of days a host could rent a room or their property to a total of 75.
10. "Game of Thrones" actor Liam Cunningham gave a weird press conference at Web Summit about the technology industry. Taking to the stage with no real introduction or opening remarks, Cunningham answered a number of broad technology-related questions on startups, Apple, the NSA, and the Irish government.