10 things in tech you need to know today
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Friday.
- Uber, MasterCard, Visa, and other big companies have reportedly signed on to Facebook's blockchain efforts. The Silicon Valley tech giant is expected to formally announce what it has been building next week.
- Apple CEO Tim Cook met with Donald Trump to discuss trade, immigration, and privacy. The meeting comes as Trump weighs whether to go ahead with proposed increases to tariffs in his trade war with China, some of which could affect the products that Apple sells.
- Bill and Melinda Gates are launching a lobbying group. The Gates Policy Initiative will be independent of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, their philanthropic organization, and it plans to focus on lobbying efforts, rather than political giving.
- Uber says people are bullying its self-driving cars with rude gestures and road rage. Google's autonomous-vehicle unit, Waymo, has experienced similar issues, with people slashing tires and even pulling guns on safety drivers.
- Uber's self-driving CEO Eric Meyhofer said the company needs robo-taxis because it can't grow its fleet of human drivers fast enough. Uber hopes these cars will help augment its 3 million-strong human driver workforce because, Meyhofer said, the company has trouble attracting and keeping enough drivers to meet the growth of its rideshare service.
- Telegram suffered a huge cyberattack during the Hong Kong protests, and it's blaming China. Telegram's founder, Pavel Durov, tweeted that most of the attacking IP addresses were based in China, and that past "state actor-sized" attacks had coincided with protests in Hong Kong.
- Elon Musk revealed a new game is coming to Tesla cars. Musk took to a stage in Los Angeles on Thursday to announce "Fallout: Shelter" is coming to Tesla, bringing the total number of playable games for the cars up to nine.
- Online tech publisher CNET is shutting down its print magazine after less than five years. The company informed employees of the move at a meeting last month.
- Selena Gomez, one of the most followed people on Instagram, says she doesn't have the app on her phone. Gomez has been outspoken about social media's effect on her own mental health and her phone-addicted generation of fans.
- Huawei is furiously working to get its new operating system off the ground, trademarking it across the world and shipping a million test devices. Huawei wants to release Hongmeng early next year after facing a blacklisting by the US government.
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