10 things in tech you need to know today, August 9

Sean Hannity
Mike
Segar/Reuters

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

1.
The SEC is reviewing whether Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s comments on
Twitter about securing financial backing to take the company
private were truthful, according to the Wall Street
Journal. Under US law, company executives cannot
give misleading statements to shareholders.

2.
Elon Musk and Tesla talked to Japanese conglomerate SoftBank
about an investment in Tesla and taking the company private,
according to Bloomberg. The talks fell apart due to
reported disagreements about company control.

3. Twitter
CEO Jack Dorsey made a brief appearance on right-wing commentator
Sean Hannity’s radio show on Wednesday. Dorsey rang
in to deny accusations that Twitter “shadowbanned” conservatives.

4.
An internal email shows how Facebook learned of a ‘psychological
trick’ to get teens to try a new product. The memo
was sent by staffers at teen polling app tbh, which was acquired
by Facebook, and described how they persuaded teens to use their
app.

5.
People finally got to try Magic Leap, the futuristic mixed
reality device that Google and others invested over $2 billion
into. The results weren’t very positive, however,
with reviewers saying they were underwhelmed by the device.

6.
Electric scooter company Bird is borrowing Uber’s language around
killing car ownership, as it tries to gain approval from
international regulators. Emails obtained by
Business Insider showed that Bird has copied several of Uber’s
talking points.

7.
New York City voted to cap the number of Uber and Lyft drivers
and will enforce a minimum wage for drivers. Uber
claimed the new measures were a step backwards.

8.
The CEO of MoviePass said  ‘very big media companies’
offered to acquire the service, claiming that ‘you would
recognize them.’ He also said the company would
be profitable in 6-9 months, and that its cash burn had been
reduced by 60%.

9.
Tesla’s Gigafactory 2 in New York is struggling to ramp up solar
roof production. Tesla ‘s
production of solar roof tiles has been delayed by assembly-line
problems and difficulties producing a product that satisfies the
aesthetic demands of CEO Elon Musk.

10.
Facebook Messenger is adding multiplayer augmented reality games
that users play with their camera. The games
use the California company’s AR tech to track players faces and
pit them against each other in head-to-head multiplayer
challenges. 

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