10 things in tech you need to know today, August 13

Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Andrew
Burton/Getty Images

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

1.
Saudi Arabia is reportedly looking to invest big in Tesla after
the company teased going private. Saudi
Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the country’s sovereign wealth
fund, is in talks with Tesla about becoming a significant
investor in the buyout, sources told Bloomberg.

2.
President Trump said he would have dinner with Apple CEO Tim
Cook, and praised him for “investing big dollars in
U.S.A.”. Cook has been
vocal in his disapproval of certain Trump Administration
policies, particularly around immigration and trade.

3.
Facebook’s blockchain boss David Marcus is leaving cryptocurrency
startup Coinbase’s board. His departure is a
signal that the social networking giant’s secretive blockchain
efforts are progressing.

4.
Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk were sued twice on Friday by
investors who say his tweet about taking the company private was
a fraudulent scheme to squeeze short sellers. One
plaintiff described them as a “nuclear attack” to “decimate”
short sellers.

5.
Russian hackers attacked Swedish news sites in 2016 as part of an
effort to spread misinformation about NATO, according to a newly
released US State Department cable. The attack
knocked several of the country’s biggest news organisations
offline.

6.
Chinese bike-sharing company Mobike is investigating claims of
sexual harassment. A female employee alleged that a
manger had harassed her and two other employees, according to
Bloomberg.

7.
Chinese startup Bytedance is reportedly raising $3 billion in a
round that would make it the most valuable startup in the world,
according to the Wall Street Journal. The round
would value Bytedance, which owns China’s biggest news
aggregator, at $75 billion.

8.
A former Google China exec says the company’s plan to build a
censored search engine in the country is likely a violation of
human rights. Lokman Tsui, ex-head of free
expression for Asia, said he couldn’t think of a scenario by
which such a search engine didn’t violate human-rights standards.

9.
Magic Leap, the mixed reality headset startup, is open to raising
more capital despite having banked more than $2 billion to date,
according to the Financial Times. Its founder Rony
Abowitz said it was “opportunistic” about capital.

10.
Spotify is considering allowing free users to skip
ads. The feature is normally only available to paid
users, but the company is running a test in Australia that allows
them to skip ads they don’t like.

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