10 things in tech you need to know today

Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP

Huawei's chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, also known as Cathy Meng.

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

1. The US government has filed racketeering charges against Huawei and its CFO, accusing the Chinese telecom giant of conspiring to steal trade secrets from 6 tech companies. The latest indictment includes information alleging Huawei tried to steal trade secrets from six different US technology companies.
2. Alibaba has pledged $140 million to fight the coronavirus outbreak with a platform to coordinate deliveries of crucial medical supplies. China's 70,000 theaters are closed in response to the Wuhan coronavirus, which could have negative implications for "Mulan."
3. The SEC is looking into Tesla's finances. Tesla did not specify the kinds of data and financial arrangements the SEC has asked for information about.
4. WhatsApp seized on US allegations against Huawei to defend encryption against the government's demands for backdoors. WhatsApp and its parent company Facebook have been fighting off US demands to build methods for law enforcement to infiltrate encrypted messaging.
5. A leaked copy of Tesla's employee handbook reveals exactly how it expects workers to push boundaries and help the company succeed. "Your good ideas mean nothing if you keep them to yourself," says Tesla's employee handbook, called "The Anti-Handbook Handbook."
6. Amazon's annual filing reveals it loaded up on private-company stock while scaling back acquisitions last year - a change that may help as regulators crack down on the tech giant. Amazon has resorted to buying partial stakes of other companies, instead of fully acquiring them, amid growing regulatory pressure, filings show.
7. Oracle says a Google victory in their Supreme Court battle over Java would hurt small US tech companies. Oracle said Google committed "an egregious act of plagiarism" and warned that a Google victory at the Supreme Court would hurt US tech companies.
8. A former Waymo driver has been accused of intentionally causing a collision with one of the company's self-driving vans. Waymo called the former driver "disgruntled." Tempe police said he "targeted" two Waymo autonomous vehicles.
9. Microsoft saw $17 billion of its market value erased in just 5 minutes after a judge granted Amazon's request to block a key cloud contract. Microsoft won the contract over Amazon last year in a surprise upset, but Jeff Bezos and Co. are making life difficult.
10. Warren Buffett's right-hand has trashed the metric Uber is using for its ambitious plan to be profitable by the end of 2020. "I don't like when investment bankers talk about EBITDA, which I call bulls--- earnings," Charlie Munger said.

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