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10 things in tech you need to know today (GOOG, FB, AAPL, MSFT)

Demis Hassabis DeepMind
Demis Hassabis DeepMind

Google DeepMind

Good morning! Here is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday.

1. The former CEO of Ve Interactive, an ad tech unicorn which fell apart spectacularly earlier this year, is being investigated over claims he spent £11.5 million of company money propping up his other ventures. His name is David Brown.

2. The first employee hired to work on the Oculus Rift at Oculus VR — the virtual reality headset company Facebook paid $2 billion (£1.5 billion) for — is quitting. "Chris Dycus, employee number 1, out," he wrote in a Facebook post on May 15.

3. Google DeepMind beat world Go champion Ke Jie in China. Go is an ancient two-player board game that was invented in China some 3,000 years ago.

4. Facebook responded to the leak of its moderator rules. "We get things wrong," admitted Monika Bickert, the company's head of global policy management.

5. Apple is working on a technology that will increase the iPhone's internet speeds. An application for an experimental license to use new 5G wireless technology, called millimeter wave, was signed on Tuesday by Apple and made public by the FCC.

6. Google's parent company Alphabet is sitting on a potentially huge self-driving car business, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a research note. They peg Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car division, as a potential spin-out company worth at least $70 billion (£54 billion).

7. Instagram is copying yet another feature that Snapchat pioneered. It's the ability to see crowdsourced photos and videos from a specific location or event, like a concert or daily highlights from New York City.

8. Microsoft has taken the wraps off the new Surface Pro, a long-awaited upgrade to 2015's well-received Surface Pro 4 tablet/laptop hybrid. It's the company's Windows 10-powered rival to the Apple MacBook Air.

9. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has frustrated its sales people with issues over their pay. The company's internal software, which tracks how much each person has sold and their sales commissions that form the bulk of their pay, did not work properly, a top HPE exec confessed matter-of-factly.

10. The VC firm that made early bets on Uber and Snap is investing in a marijuana company. Hound Labs, a California-based startup that makes a breathalyzer for marijuana, announced a new $8.1 million (£6.2 million) round of funding led by Benchmark Capital.

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