10 things in tech you need to know today

Sam Shead

Feb 5, 2016, 13:06 IST

Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for Tinder

Tinder CEO Sean Rad.

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

1. Apple's big expansion plan for its European headquarters could be affected by a shortage of housing in the city of Cork. Employees at Apple and other Cork-based technology companies told Business Insider that they and many of their colleagues are struggling to find places to live.

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2. A UN panel will today conclude Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is being "arbitrarily detained" in the UK, the Swedish foreign ministry has said. Assange claimed asylum in London's Ecuadorian embassy in 2012. He wants to avoid extradition to Sweden over a rape claim, which he denies.

3. Match Group, the company that owns popular dating service Tinder, was down nearly 16% in midday trading on Thursday, adding to the stock's 13% slide the day before. Match's stock is now trading at $9 (£6), well below its $12 (£8) IPO price from November.

4. Fantasy football fans in the UK will soon be able to play for money every weekend. Boston-based DraftKings wants to "mitigate the risk" of being regulated out of its home market by expanding to new countries, including the UK.

5. A former Google employee claims 90% of a book he wrote is based on what actually happens at Google. The book features a lot of 20-somethings who make a lot of money, have a lot of parties, drink a lot of booze, sleep with one another indiscriminately, and take a lot of cocaine.

6. A Texas jury has ruled that Apple must pay $625.6 million (£429.7 million) to VirnetX. VirnetX has no products in the market and has won against the iPhone maker in court before.

7. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has told employees that the social network aims to have five billion users by 2030. Facebook has 1.5 billion users, meaning an increase to five billion users would more than double its size.

8. Facebook is challenging the commonly accepted idea that everyone in the world is connected by six degrees of separation. According to a study published by the company, the members of its user base - made up of roughly 1.4 billion people - are separated by around 3.57 connections.

9. Index Ventures - the venture capital fund that has backed the likes of Facebook, Dropbox and Deliveroo - has raised $550 million (£376 million) to invest in US, European, and Israeli tech startups. It now has a total of $1.25 billion (£855 million) at its disposal.

10. Intel could be about to lose Google's business as the company looks to endorse Qualcomm's chips going forward, according to a report from Bloomberg. Intel currently supplies around 99% of the total server market with computer chips but Google is expected to announce that it will choose Qualcomm's chips if the company can prove they work.