10 things in tech you need to know today

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10 things in tech you need to know today

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Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Friday.

  1. China is demanding the release of Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who was detained in Canada at the request of US authorities. China says that Meng had been arrested without explanation and that could be a "violation of her human rights."
  2. Lyft on Thursday said it had filed a confidential draft registration statement with regulators to go public, with the expectation that it will float in 2019. It's a big step in what's largely considered to be a race to go public between Lyft and its much larger rival Uber, which is also considering an IPO next year.
  3. Elon Musk's tunnelling firm, Boring Company, will hold a product launch on December 18 that will involve more than just a hole in the ground. Musk revealed that beyond just the tunnel, the company will showcase its autonomous transport cars and "ground to car" elevators.
  4. Millions of British mobile users were left without service on Thursday thanks to an outage at mobile network O2. The outage was caused by an expired Ericsson software certificate used by European telcos.
  5. The Trump administration is meeting Thursday with top tech executives to discuss innovation and the future of jobs. Chief executive officers expected to participate include Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, Qualcomm's Steven Mollenkopf and Oracle's Safra Catz.
  6. Asian ride-hailing firm Grab has invested around $100 million in SoftBank-backed hotel startup Oyo, according to The Economic Times. The cash was part of Oyo's ongoing $1 billion funding round.
  7. Google has denied a claim that it didn't tell its contract workers about the active shooter that attacked YouTube's headquarters in April. But one current TVC who worked at a different Google office told Business Insider that she first found out about the shooting on social media about two hours after the incident occurred.
  8. FCC chairman Ajit Pai has admitted to Russian interference in the US net neutrality debate. About half a million comments sent to the agency about the debate came from Russian addresses.
  9. "Fortnite" maker Epic Games is taking on the world's biggest players in digital gaming with a new storefront called the Epic Games Store. Epic is offering an attractive incentive to game makers and publishers: an 88% share of profits, which undercuts the industry standard 70-30 split by 18%.
  10. Starting on Thursday, the latest Apple Watch models will be able to take an electrocardiogram (ECG) reading, a kind of heart-rate reading that doctors can use to diagnose heart conditions. The Watch can also now notify you if your heart rate may be irregular, a condition known as atrial fibrillation (AFib).

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