Reuters
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday.
- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaned into his vision of privacy at the company's annual developer conference, which kicked off on Tuesday. This revolves around six core principles: private interactions, encryption, reduced permanence, interoperability, and secure data storage.
- An explosive report from Bloomberg claimed that Vodafone Italy found flaws in Huawei's fixed-access network equipment and its home routers that looked like backdoors. Vodafone disputed Bloomberg's characterisation of events and said the vulnerabilities had been resolved.
- Investors cheered Tuesday after Apple's latest quarterly results surpassed the low bar Wall Street had set. The tech giant's fiscal second-quarter revenue - including that from its all-important iPhone line - fell from the same period a year earlier, as did its earnings but the results topped analysts' muted expectations.
- Apple says products like the Apple Watch and Airpods are doing so well, its wearables business is as big as a Fortune 200 company. Apple reported revenues of $5.1 billion for its Wearables, Home, and Accessories business in the first three months of 2019 , which is up from $3.9 billion in the same period of 2018.
- Google spent $1.2 million last year to protect CEO Sundar Pichai in an 'overall security program' that started months after the YouTube shooting. It represents a doubling in cost.
- Facebook is getting one of the biggest face-lifts in its 15-year history. On Tuesday, the California-based tech giant announced a sweeping redesign of the social network - ditching its iconic blue menu bar and replacing it with a cleaner white design, and placing greater-than-ever emphasis on groups.
- Facebook is adding a "secret crush" feature to its Facebook Dating tool. It will allow users to discover if they and their friends have mutual crushes on each other.
- UiPath has raised $568 million in a Series D round of funding led by Coatue, with participation from Dragoneer, Wellington, Sands Capital, and T. Rowe price, the company announced Tuesday. The round values UiPath at $7 billion, confirming Business Insider's earlier reporting, and likely making it the most valuable artificial intelligence startup in the world.
- Just three days into its IPO roadshow, Uber has reportedly already garnered enough demand to sell its full 180 million shares. The ride-hailing giant is expected to net a valuation of up to $90 billion when it prices next week on May 9, the company said in updated regulatory filings.
- One of the world's leading thinkers on artificial intelligence says the technology is a bigger menace to human civilization than climate change. Nick Bostrom, an Oxford philosophy professor, told Business Insider: "AI is a bigger threat to human existence than climate change. Climate change is not going to be the biggest change we see this century."
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