10 things in tech you need to know today (GOOG, FB, AAPL, MSFT)

sundar pichai google ceo

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

1. Google has shared information on how Russia-linked accounts attempted to use its platforms to influence American politics. More than 1,000 videos linked to state-sponsored actors were identified, with more than 300,000 cumulative views in the US between June 2015 and November 2016 — the US presidential election period.

2. Facebook lawyer Colin Stretch told lawmakers that the company should have done more to prevent Russia-backed propaganda from spreading on its platform around the 2016 US presidential election. "I think in hindsight, we should have had a broader lens," he said with regard to Facebook's efforts to weed out politically-charged ads from fake accounts. "There were signals we missed."

3. The first iPhone X reviews have been published and they're overwhelmingly positive. The screen, the phone size, the augmented reality features, and the camera have all been praised.

4. With the iPhone X, Apple made some big changes to who gets review units first, and not everyone is taking it very well. In a series of venom-filled posts on Monday, for example, Apple blogger John Gruber lashed out at some of the media outlets he apparently deemed unworthy of getting early access to the new iPhone.

5. Apple released brand new emojis as part of iOS 11.1 on Tuesday. There are 70 new characters, and 239 new emojis in total if you include skin tone and gender variations.

6. Sonos is opening its first store outside the US in London's Covent Garden. It will open on November 16 and contain two "listening rooms" designed by Sonos sound leader Charles Martin.

7. CCP Games — the company behind sci-fi blockbuster "EVE Online" and virtual reality spin off "EVE Valkyrie" — has announced that it is shutting down two VR studios and laying off around 100 staff. The VR market has not proved to be as big as anticipated and VR gaming companies are being forced to rethink their strategies.

8. Starting in December, businesses will be able to buy a Microsoft Surface Pro laptop/tablet hybrid with a built-in LTE cellular modem, starting at $1,149 (£865). When Microsoft first revealed the current-model Surface Pro earlier this year, it announced the LTE option. However, it's taken this long to come to market.

9. Artificial intelligence has learned to spot suicidal tendencies from brain scans. This is just the latest effort aimed at bringing AI into psychiatry. Researchers are working on machine-learning projects that span from analysing MRIs to predict major depressive disorder to picking out PTSD from people’s speech patterns.

10. Samsung has 3 new CEOs after the last ones got ousted following a huge political scandal. Kim Ki-nam, 59, was appointed to lead the Device Solutions division which makes components including memory chips; Koh Dong-jin, 56, would head up IT and Mobile Communications; and Kim Hyun-suk, 56, would lead Consumer Electronics, Samsung said in a statement. The changes were effective immediately.

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