Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday.
- Google told dozens of employees in its laptop and tablet division to find new jobs at the company, raising questions about its hardware plans. The restructuring involves Google's "Create" division, which is responsible for developing and manufacturing the Pixelbook laptop and Pixel Slate tablet amongst the company's wider swath of "Made by Google" products.
- A leaked email revealed that Elon Musk must approve all new Tesla hires. The email also suggests that Tesla has introduced higher standards for hiring.
- Tesla laid off 150 recruitment workers as part of its broader cost cutting. The layoffs amounted to about one-third of the team, according a report from Electrek.
- Huawei got caught passing off a professional image as a photo taken with its new flagship phone. Images uploaded to Huawei's Weibo account seemed to show the P30's camera in action, but they were actually stock photos taken with a DSLR.
- Uber is paying $20 million to end a six-year legal battle with drivers. The drivers argue they should be considered employees rather than contractors, and are there fore eligible for benefits of full-time staff.
- President Trump responded to Sen. Elizabeth Warren's proposal to break up big tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Trump said there was "collusion between the Democrats and these tech companies" during the 2016 election.
- Bernie Sanders renewed his war with Amazon over working conditions for its lowest paid employees. Sanders previously demanded that Amazon raise its minimum wage, which it did in November last year.
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said society has a "Facebook problem" following reports that ads from Sen. Warren were blocked by Facebook. Facebook acknowledged that it had removed the ads and reinstated them, saying it had taken them down due to improper use of its logo.
- Netflix will "double down" on interactive content like 'Black Mirror: Bandersnatch' in other genres, like comedy or romance. "Bandersnatch" allowed viewers to make decisions throughout the movie, and had over a trillion unique story permutations.
- "Apex Legends" has banned more than 350,000 players for cheating during its first month online. Other popular battle royale games have had issues with third-party hacks and cheaters too; "Fortnite" sued a pair of YouTubers for selling cheat software last year.
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