10 things in tech you need to know today

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Sundar Pichai Google

REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach

Sundar Pichai, Google CEO.

Good morning! Here's the tech news you need to know to end your week.

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1. Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have criticised the UK's proposed spying laws. Evidence the tech companies submitted to the Joint Committee discussing the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill has just been published.

2. Google and Lenovo are teaming up to build a smartphone. It's based on Project Tango, a Google experiment to give smartphones depth perception.

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3. Wall Street thinks a Yahoo sale is almost inevitable - but no one can agree on the buyer. Verizon, AT&T, and Alliance Data Systems are all possibilities.

4. Apple's stock is slumping. It's currently sitting around $97 a share, down from July 2015 highs of $132.

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5. The Motorola brand is being wiped out. Its smartphones will carry the "Moto by Lenovo" brand instead, CNET reports.

6. Apple bought a startup that can read your emotions. It acquired Emotient, which has also worked with Google Glass, for an unknown amount.

7. The dark web now has its first major news site. ProPublica has launched a version on its site on the dark web, an area of the internet only accessible using privacy-centric browser Tor.

8. Facebook thinks the mobile phone number is dying. David Marcus, the boss of Messenger, published a blog post on what the messaging tool is aiming for in 2016.

9. Lily, the drone that automatically follows you around taking video, has raked in $34 million (£23 million) in pre-orders. 60,000 people have paid up.

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10. US marshalls raided a booth at CES to seize allegedly counterfeit hoverboards. Fake boards have been frequently in the news recently over safety concerns.

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