10 things in tech you need to know today
REUTERS/Steve Marcus
1. The French financial prosecutor went dark for a year to investigate Google France. TechCrunch reported that French investigators worked offline for a year to avoid detection while looking into Google's tax affairs in the country.
2. Microsoft is launching a new venture capital team. Microsoft Venture will focus on mid-stage investments in startups, a company exec wrote in a blog post.
3. Apple and Microsoft are still fighting an old war - while Google and Amazon fight a new one. The former two companies have been working to bring computers to living rooms, while the latter two are more interested in ambient virtual assistant devices.
4. Iran is ordering foreign social media companies to move all the data they hold on Iranian users into the country. Companies will have a year to comply, according to Reuters.
5. The lawyers of a man accused of money laundering say he's innocent because bitcoin isn't really money. Michael Espinoza is accused of selling bitcoin to undercover FBI agents who claimed they planned to buy stolen credit cards with the digital currency, International Business Times reports.
6. Reddit plans to rewrite links to online shops to make money. It will take a cut if you buy something from a link that someone posts on the social news site.
7. The Apple Watch is being shunned by Apple's most important community. Developers just aren't that interested in building apps for the smartwatch device.
8. Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt has listed all his problems with the European tech scene. Schmidt, who is now the chairman of Google parent company Alphabet, made the remarks at a tech conference in the Netherlands.
9. Two climbers recorded their journey up Mount Everest on Snapchat. They had to carry 7KG of electrical equipment to send the photos and videos.
10. Twitter has paid out more than $300,000 (£205,000) to hackers. The social network has a big bounty programme that pays out cash to people who find software vulnerabilities in an ethical manner.
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