10 things in tech you need to know today
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1. Researchers warned for years about the possibility of phone numbers being scraped en masse from Facebook. Insider spoke to security researchers and reviewed academic literature that showed a Facebook that was repeatedly cautioned as early as 2012 about the risks of data-scraping via its various phone number look-up tools.
2. Amazon employees have voted against forming a union. Workers at the warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama voted against forming what would have been the company's first-ever union in the US. 70.9% of valid votes counted were against unionization.
3. Coinbase's CEO just released an NFT song called "Never Give Up." Brian Armstrong, founder of the $68 billion company, said the electronic song is an ode to how the "naysayers were proved wrong." More on his crypto track here.
4. Elon Musk's brain-chip company released a video of a monkey playing video games with its mind. Neuralink, a company that's developing artificial-intelligence-powered microchips to go in people's brains, released a video that shows a macaque using the tech to play video games, including "Pong." Watch the video here.
5. Scraped data of 1.3 million users of audio app Clubhouse has reportedly appeared in a hacker forum. Clubhouse said it had not been breached or hacked and that the data was publicly available profile information, but it did not clarify how so much data could be scraped.
6. Tesla's CFO is the latest tech executive to buy a home in Texas. Zachary Kirkhorn bought a $3.29 million home in west Austin, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expressed his intention to move. See his lake-front home.
7. The White House is meeting with top execs today to discuss the chip shortage. Representatives from companies like Ford and General Motors will meet to discuss "the urgent need" to strengthen supply chains. The shortage has roiled the automotive industry and delayed Apple's iPad and Mac production. Here's why that could be a bad sign for the rest of the tech world.
8. Oracle's cofounder just bought an $80 million Palm Beach home, four months after he said he'd moved to Hawaii. Billionaire Larry Ellison appears to have bought an ocean-front property after saying he'd moved to Lanai, the Hawaiian island he owns. See the latest addition to his real estate portfolio.
9. Amazon employees blast the forced return to offices - and competitors are trying to poach frustrated workers. After Amazon frustrated workers by announcing a return to an "office-centric culture," Facebook and Oracle are trying to scoop up employees hoping for a more flexible remote-work policy. Read our exclusive report here.
10. These are the 13 execs and earliest employees behind Clubhouse, the year-old startup in talks for a $4 billion valuation. With only 35 employees total, the audio-only app has risen in popularity since its debut in 2020. Meet the execs who made it happen.
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Compiled by Jordan Erb. Tips/comments? Email jerb@insider.com or tweet @JordanParkerErb.
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