10 things in tech you need to know today
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday.
- Mark Zuckerberg gave an interview to CNN about the bombshell New York Times exposé. The Facebooks CEO said stepping down as chairman is "not the plan," and voiced support for his COO Sheryl Sandberg.
- In a memo obtained by TechCrunch, Facebook's outgoing head of public policy Elliot Schrage said he was to blame for hiring the PR firm Definers. Schrage confirmed that Facebook asked Definers to smear critics, including George Soros.
- Facebook's ad platform crashed, causing chaos just days before Black Friday. Facebook's Ad Manager crashed leaving would-be advertisers unable to create new campaigns.
- Apple's App Store and Apple Music went down for 32 minutes. It's not clear what caused the problems, or how they were fixed.
- Snapchat's parent company is trying again with a new version of its Spectacles glasses, this time with two cameras, at a price of $350. According to Cheddar, Snap is planning to produce around 24,000 pairs of the newest model, a huge difference from the 800,000 units the company ordered of its first generation glasses in a big overestimate of customer demand.
- Facebook staff have voiced a "huge upswell" of support for Sheryl Sandberg after she reportedly feared for her job, a company exec told Business Insider. Patrick Walker, one of Facebook's most senior executives outside the US, also said that the internal debate around Facebook's crisis management has been "robust."
- Jeff Bezos named his newest "shadow," a technical adviser who will follow the billionaire CEO to all of his meetings. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has named Wei Gao as his new technical adviser, according to a CNBC report.
- Israel is pleading for help from the US government after Airbnb removed listings in Israeli settlements in West Bank. While Palestine's chief negotiator welcomed Airbnb's decision, Israel called it a "wretched capitulation."
- Pixel 3 users are reporting that the best smartphone camera in the world has a crippling bug. Google Support and Pixel Community Managers have confirmed that Google is aware of the issue and that a fix is in development.
- Amazon employees are reportedly already buying up apartments in New York City, and they started before the company even announced HQ2. In the week since Amazon announced plans to open headquarters in Long Island City, a neighbourhood in Queens, New York, brokers say they've seen a spike in interest from employees, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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