10 things in tech you need to know today

Good morning! Here is the tech news you need to know this Thursday.

1. Facebook is working on a way to read brain waves that could let you send your thoughts to people. Several recent job postings listed by Facebook's Building 8 group describe a project involving "neuroimaging" and "electrophysiological data" to create a "communications platform of the future."

2. Silicon Valley investor and Donald Trump transition team member Peter Thiel says Apple is past its peak. Thiel is most famous in Silicon Valley for his early investment in Facebook.

3. Alphabet, Google's parent company, killed its solar-powered internet-drone program. It is the latest example of the company's efforts to cut back its ambitious "moonshots."

4. Chancellor Philip Hammond has praised Funding Circle as "a real success story" after the British peer-to-peer lender raised a further $100 million (£82 million). Funding Circle connects small businesses looking to borrow money with investors willing to lend to them at attractive rates.

5. Tesla has hired another key Apple employee. This one, Matt Casebolt, worked on some of Apple's most daring Mac computers.

6. Messaging app Telegram says a report claiming it has been compromised by Russia's federal security service (FSB) is "fake", or that it refers to old information. The claim appears in a dossier containing a number of colourful, unverified allegations about Trump.

7. Samsung was granted more US patents than any other company in 2016. The South Korean tech giant was granted 8,551 patents last year.

8. SoftBank hired a London investor to help manage its $100 billion (£82 billion) tech fund. Akshay Naheta, founder and chief investment officer of Knight Assets, has been appointed to guide public equity investments and potential acquisitions for SoftBank's new "Vision Fund."

9. President-elect Donald Trump finally appeared to publicly say that Russia was behind the hacking and release of emails from within the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton's campaign chair. "I think it was Russia, but I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people," Trump said.

10. Ex-employees are suing Microsoft because their jobs of monitoring for child porn and horrific violence may have given them PTSD. Two former employees of Microsoft's Online Safety Team are suing the tech titan.