10 things in tech you need to know today, October 29

Francois Mori / Associated
Press

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

1. 
   IBM is acquiring software company Red Hat for $34
   billion. IBM will pay $190 per share for the
   software company, which it described as the world’s leading
   provider of open source cloud software.
2. 
   Elon Musk criticized federal regulators on Twitter and said the
   $20 million fine he paid over his “funding secured” tweet was
   “worth it.” The Tesla CEO took veiled shots at the
   Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors in a
   tweetstorm on Friday.
3. 
   Facebook has discovered an Iranian influence campaign that was
   followed by more than 1 million people. Facebook
   said on Friday that it had suspended dozens of “inauthentic”
   pages and accounts that originated in Iran.
4. 
   Twitter apologised for not responding when a threat was made
   from an account tied to pipe bomb suspect
   Cesar Sayoc. Twitter said it “made a
   mistake” and that the tweet “clearly violated our rules.”
5. 
   The suspected Pittsburgh synagogue shooter allegedly had a
   following on a social network that many call the far-right’s
   alternative to Twitter, Gab. The man who allegedly
   opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday morning was
   reportedly a frequent poster on a relatively new social network
   that has attracted many from the far-right fringe.
6. Gab had to take its website offline
   after GoDaddy
   gave it 24 hours to find another domain
   provider. Other companies including payment
   provider PayPal blocked Gab over the weekend after it emerged
   that the suspected Pittsburgh shooter was an avid poster.
7. 
   JD.com’s CEO plunged from 16th to 30th richest man in China
   after being arrested in the US over a rape
   accusation. Liu Qiangdong fell from 16th to
   30th place on Forbes’s list of China’s richest people.
8. 
   MIT is giving people control of a real person on Halloween in a
   dystopian game that sounds like an episode of “Black
   Mirror.” MIT Media Lab is hosting a mass online
   social experiment called “BeeMe” where Internet users will
   program the actor by crowdsourcing commands and then voting on
   them.
9. 
   The creators of ‘Fortnite’ just landed $1.25 billion in new
   investment, the largest ever financing round for a video game
   company. “Fortnite” is the most popular video game
   in the world, with nearly 80 million players per month.
10. 
    A mysterious Chinese fund that promised £600 million to UK
    startups fired its CEO and there’s no sign of the
    cash. Cocoon Networks launched in the UK promising
    a £500 million fund of its own, a partnership with UCL, and a
    further £100 million joint fund for medical tech.

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