10 things in tech you need to know today
1. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has given birth to identical twin girls. Earlier this month Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that he recently became a dad after the birth of his daughter.
2. Taavet Hinrikus, the cofounder of TransferWise, has invested in a mysterious fintech startup called Curve. The entrepreneur - who quietly took over as CEO at TransferWise in October - took part in a $2 million (£1.3 million) funding round.
3. Internet company Easily has been hacked by an unknown third party. The company announced the hack in an email to customers on Thursday morning.
4. British spy agency GCHQ has revealed a cryptic Christmas card that includes a festive brainteaser. The card, which was sent out by GCHQ director Robert Hannigan, is designed to "exercise the grey matter" of participants over the holiday season.
5. Apple is letting retailers, such as BestBuy and Target, cut the price of the Apple Watch by up to $100 (£66) which could signal a new version is on its way, according to 9to5Mac. The discounts are equivalent to around 30% of the cost of the bottom-end Watch.
6. An app developer says Microsoft didn't pay his company for 5 months. He took to Twitter to complain, saying "public channels are unfortunately sometimes the only way for large companies like [Microsoft] to be able to see an internal process that is failing."
7. Palantir Technologies, the data analytics company that helped track down Osama Bin Laden, has raised $129 million (£85 million). The firm is now valued the at over $20 billion (£13 billion), according to TechCrunch.
8. Japanese police want to fight illegal drones with bigger drones. The Japan Times reported that Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department is intending to set up a special anti-drone unit for identifying and taking down suspicious-looking UAVs. Drones have also been an issue in London, where they have come close to colliding with commercial airliners.
9. Alibaba could spend up to $38 billion (£26 billion) on investments and acquisitions in 2016, according to analysts cited by Bloomberg. China is home to seven of the world's 21 largest technology companies.
10. London startup Swiftkey has launched "Symbols" to help people with non-verbal autism to communicate. The company has combined its predictive language keyboard tech and machine-learning capabilities with a selection of hand-drawn symbols.