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Elon Musk refuted a story that he was advised by Jeffrey Epstein.
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Tuesday
- Elon Musk denied that Jeffrey Epstein advised him or Tesla during the company's bungled attempt to go private. Jeffrey Epstein told a New York Times reporter that he had advised Tesla CEO Elon Musk during the frenetic few weeks in summer 2018 when Musk had sought to take the electric-car company private.
- Verizon is selling Tumblr to the owner of WordPress, and it sounds like the sale price is about 2% of the $1 billion Tumblr was once worth. The financial terms of the deal were not announced, but according to Axios, the price was less than $20 million - a remarkable discount to the $1.1 billion that Tumblr sold for in 2013.
- The 16-year-old "Fortnite" player who won $3 million at the Fortnite World Cup was "swatted" during a stream. "Swatting" is the act of reporting a made-up crime to police with the intent of disrupting and/or harming someone.
- Whole Foods workers are demanding that "dystopian" Amazon severs ties to ICE. Some Whole Foods employees are demanding that Amazon cut ties with Palantir, a tech company that reportedly provides software to government agencies to help gather data on undocumented immigrants' employment information, phone records, and immigration history.
- On-demand food delivery app Postmates is set to unveil its IPO filing in September. One Postmates investor confirmed to Business Insider that the company is in a pre-IPO quiet period.
- Facebook warned its marketing partners against scraping after a startup was caught saving millions of users' data. The warning comes after Business Insider revealed startup Hyp3r harvested millions of Instagram users' data, saved their Stories, and tracked their locations.
- Two US senators wrote a letter to Jeff Bezos demanding answers about how Amazon recommends products. In the letter, senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) express concerns over whether Amazon is promoting inferior products through its use of this "Amazon's Choice" badge.
- Apple released a cryptic new teaser for its coming TV show starring Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell, and people are bewildered. "The Morning Show," set to arrive this fall with the launch of Apple's TV Plus service, is about the cast of a morning television show.
- Samsung unveiled the first smartphone camera that goes beyond 100 megapixels. Samsung and Xiaomi have developed a 108-megapixel smartphone camera sensor called the Isocell Bright HMX designed to take ultra-detailed photos and super-high-resolution video (up to 6K).
- Uber on Monday confirmed a hiring freeze in the US and Canada as the ride-hailing giant ramps up cost-cutting efforts. The move follows a 400-person layoff at the end of July.
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