10 things in tech you need to know today, September 7

“Call
of Duty” revealed the map for its new battle royale
game.

Flickr

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

1.
Twitter dropped the hammer on Alex Jones and permanently kicked
him off its service. The move comes after Jones
berated a CNN reporter to his face and streamed the confrontation
using Twitter’s Periscope service.

2.
Okta, the company that helps employees log into their corporate
apps, soared 16% on a major earnings and revenue
beat. The company’s quarterly losses lessened,
and it projected continued growth in the upcoming third
quarter.

3.
Bernie Sanders doubled down on his war with Amazon by introducing
a bill named after Jeff Bezos. The bill is
called Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies, or “Stop
BEZOS,” and aims to tax companies for every dollar their
employees receive in government benefits.

4.
Apple is building a special portal for law enforcement officials
to get user data. According to a letter obtained by
Business Insider, Apple responded to more than 14,000 police
requests including 231 “domestic emergency” requests in
2017. 

5.
Twitter is testing a major redesign of its desktop
website. The redesign closely echoes what Twitter
looks like on mobile phones.

6. British
Airways revealed on Thursday that it got hacked, and roughly
380,000 customer payments were exposed. The hackers
infiltrated its system for two weeks. All customers affected by
the breach have been contacted.

7.
Google will unveil its next Pixel smartphone on October
9. Invitations to a Made By Google launch were
sent out late on Thursday afternoon, and the event will be held
in New York City for the first time 

8.
Tesla stock sinks after a notorious short-seller sued Elon Musk
over his alleged attempt to burn investors like
him. Andrew Left of Citron Research filed a
lawsuit against Tesla and Elon Musk, saying Musk’s “funding
secured” tweet was merely a way to burn investors like him who
were betting against Tesla’s stock price.

9.

“Call of Duty” reveals the full map for its battle royale game
mode inspired by “Fortnite,” and PlayStation 4 owners will get a
chance to play the beta early. The new game
mode will allow 80 players to compete against each other in the
same map.

10.
Japan is about to start testing the feasibility of a space
elevator, starting with a small model in
orbit. The Obayashi Corporation plans to have
an operational space elevator by 2050.