10 things in tech you need to know today

Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Friday.

1. The US Securities and Exchange Commission is suing Tesla chief executive Elon Musk for making “false and misleading statements.” Specifically, the SEC said Musk didn’t truly have a deal to take Tesla private, as he claimed in an August tweet.
2. Current and former Facebookers piled into the debate about how the company treats acquisitions, after WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton dunked on the firm in a tell-all interview. Several entrepreneurs whose firms were acquired by Facebook were unsympathetic to Acton, suggesting he had sold out.
3. Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank, has said the company plans to raise another $100 billion fund to invest in startups every few years. He told Bloomberg he plans to spend around $50 billion a year betting on startups.
4. WikiLeaks has appointed a new editor-in-chief because the incumbent, Julian Assange, is incommunicado in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. WikiLeaks announced that Kristinn Hrafnsson will be the new editor-in-chief of the organization.
5. Social media analysis shows that Russian Twitter accounts pushed an online boycott against Nike products, after the sportswear firm revealed its Colin Kaepernick advert. According to Wired, some of the tweets, which received widespread media coverage, showed people burning or destroying Nike products.
6. Chinese startup Bytedance is reportedly raising new funding at a mega valuation of $75 billion. The deal, thought to be led by backers including SoftBank, would make the firm one of the most valuable startups in the world.
7. LG’s Korean YouTube channel and press site released a video and a press release on Thursday teasing the LG V40 ThinQ: a smartphone that comes with a total of five cameras, compared to the usual two or three. The video doesn’t reveal the function of each lens.
8. Tesla’s share price cratered after news that the SEC plans to sue CEO Elon Musk. Telsa shares sank by as much as 11% in after-hours trading on the news. 
9. There’s a new season of the hit game “Fortnite” out, titled “Darkness Rises.” The season 6 update adds new locations to the map, including a floating island, a haunted castle, corrupted areas, and corn fields.
10. Some people are saying Apple’s new iPhone selfie camera automatically smooths their skin in photos, and they’re calling it ‘beautygate.’ According to iPhone XS owners, the phone’s front camera smooths out their skin much like cameras on Asian phones.
    

Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for “Business Insider” in your Alexa’s flash briefing settings.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 3 surprising ways humans are still evolving