10 things in tech you need to know today

Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones

HBO

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

1. Facebook shut down an online, internal discussion group after employees starting using it to harass each other about politics. The anonymous group was originally intended for people to talk about their work concerns, but quickly turned ugly.

2. Neo-Nazi news site The Daily Stormer was taken offline by hackers as soon as it lost its last line of defence — protection from web services company Cloudflare. Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince said he was "deeply uncomfortable" for dropping a customer over political pressure.

3. Amazon's share price dropped 0.5% after President Trump tweeted the company was "doing great damage to tax paying retailers." The company has been a frequent target of Trump on Twitter.

4. Conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter Jack Posobiec called off a multi-city "March on Google" protest, over possible threats of violence from counter-protestors. The march had been planned to protest the treatment of fired Google engineer James Damore.

5. Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook have spoken out against "hate" after the violent Charlottesville march. In a letter to employees, Cook said "hate is a cancer", while Zuckerberg asked "where this hate comes from."

6. British music startup Electric Jukebox has raised $14 million (£10.8 million) and plans to go public in 2018. The service offers a physical device for people to stream music through their TV for a one-off £199 fee.

7. Female engineers discussing James Damore's firing from Google said he didn't lose his job for, as he claims, "speaking truth to power", but for mishandling a sensitive debate. "Social skills are part of the professional skillset," one wrote.

8. Uber has hired a former Goldman Sachs executive to run its business in Southeast Asia, where it's conventionally faced challenges from regulators. Brooks Entwistle headed up the bank's regional business, and becomes Uber's chief business officer for Southeast Asia.

9. Apple wants to spend $1 billion (£775 million) on original content over the next year, aiming to make up to 10 shows on a similar scale to "Game of Thrones." The company hired two Sony executives in the last few months.

10. Google has bought AlMatter, the Belarusian maker of selfie editing app Fabby, for an undisclosed amount. Fabby will continue to run for now, and the deal illustrates just how popular computer vision startups are right now.

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