Microsoft
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Thursday.
- Microsoft unveiled a folding smartphone, a dual-screen tablet, and a superslim laptop-tablet hybrid. In total Microsoft announced four brand new devices plus two updates on existing devices.
- Microsoft is releasing a pair of $249 wireless earbuds that can advance PowerPoint slides when you tap on them. At $249, Microsoft has priced the Surface Earbuds at a more premium price than Apple's vaunted $160 Airpods, or Amazon's new $130 Echo Buds.
- Elizabeth Warren ripped into Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg on Twitter, saying the company's apps should be split up so they "outdo each other to protect your privacy." Warren's comments came after audio leaked of Mark Zuckerberg saying he would "go to the mat and fight" over any push to break up Facebook.
- Google rolled out three new security features that let you limit what personal activity it tracks in apps like YouTube and Maps. The features include incognito mode in Google Maps, auto-delete features in YouTube and Google Assistant, and Password Checkup.
- Kamala Harris asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to suspend Trump's account for making "blatant threats" and inciting violence. Twitter told Business Insider that it had received the letter and planned to respond to Harris.
- A Florida man was arrested after he was caught on video cutting the brake lines of Lime scooters. 59-year-old Randall Thomas Williams is suspected of being behind up to 20 incidents in his neighborhood in recent days.
- Jessica Blevins, the 27-year-old manager and wife of the most popular video-game player in the world, told Business Insider the inside story of Ninja's move to Microsoft's Mixer. On August 1, Jessica, her husband Tyler, and the handful of people on "Team Ninja" signed an exclusive deal to leave Twitch, where Ninja rose to fame, and stream exclusively on Microsoft's rival platform, Mixer.
- Apple CEO Tim Cook filed a legal brief to the Supreme Court to protect "Dreamers" from the Trump administration. Top executives at Apple attached their names to an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold DACA.
- A backdoor for installing Google apps on Huawei's new Mate 30 suddenly stopped working. That's after Android researcher John Wu probed into "LZPlay", a workaround to installing Google apps on the phone.
- WhatsApp may be about to clone Snapchat's distinctive disappearing chats feature. Self-deleting messages are an increasingly common feature in chat apps, but the concept was initially made popular by Snapchat, which Facebook has repeatedly cloned.
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