10 things in tech you need to know today

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mark zuckerberg facebook ceo speaking

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Good morning! Here's the tech news you need to know this Friday.

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1. Facebook laid off about 40 people. The employees were part of the account-management and sales teams within the company's "publisher ad-tech group."

2. Amazon reported its first-quarter earnings. It was a huge win across the board, and the stock increased 12% in after-hours trading.

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3. Stemcentrx has been acquired by AbbVie for $5.8 billion (£3.96 billion). The company claims it is "curing" cancer.

4. LinkedIn reported its first-quarter earnings, beating Wall Street expectations on the top and bottom lines. The stock soared more than 15% after-hours, but settled at about 8%.

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5. Topshop has launched a startup accelerator called Top Pitch that is focused on wearables. It is being run in partnership with corporate innovation and early stage investor, L Marks.

6. OpenAI, a $1 billion (£687 million) artificial intelligence company backed by Elon Musk, has built a "gym" where developers can train their AI systems to get smarter. Using OpenAI's open source toolkit, developers can access "environments" where they can test their AI bots.

7. Spotify acquired a San Francisco startup that creates concert photo albums for artists. The startup, CrowdAlbum, has a platform that aggregates photos and videos from music events that have been shared on social media.

8. Mozilla has fixed a security flaw in its Firefox web browser that was discovered by a team of people working for British spy agency GCHQ. The flaw could have allowed web pages to run their own code, potentially causing serious problems.

9. The Apple employee found dead at the company's California headquarters was Edward Mackowiak, 25, according to the Santa Clara Coroner's office. Local media reported that the victim suffered a head wound and a gun was discovered near his body.

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10. Google has a new exec heading up all of its hardware efforts. Rick Osterloh, the former president of Motorola, will lead a new division that combines all of the company's disparate hardware products, including Chromecast, Nexus, and Google Glass.

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