10 things in tech you need to know today (AAPL, GOOG, NFLX, TWTR, SNAP)

Good morning! Here is the tech news you need to start your Friday.

1. Apple is rumoured to be planning to release a smaller, more affordable HomePod this year. The new HomePod would reportedly cost between $150 (£110) and $200 (£145).

2. Google wants to extend its mobile-accelerated pages (AMP) project to the whole web. This would require building a web standard that uses the principles of AMPs to make web pages across the entire web much faster to load and browse.

3. New data from Netflix shows that 70% of users end up watching content on TV after six months. Smartphones and tablets are used to sign up, but 25% of people switch over to the bigger screen in about a month.

4. Uber's vice president of product, Daniel Graf, is leaving the company. He will be replaced by Assaf Ronen, Amazon's vice president of voice shopping.

5. Coinbase has hired Eric Scro as its new vice president of finance. Scro previously worked at the New York Stock Exchange, and will try to help Coinbase in its mission to become "the Google of crypto."

6. A study of over 4.5 million tweets from 2006 to 2017 has confirmed that inaccurate news spreads faster and further than true stories. The research also showed that humans, and not bots, are the primary cause of diffusion.

7. Snapchat has confirmed that it's testing a feature to @-tag other users in Stories. Swiping up in a Story with tags will show tagged usernames, handles, Bitmoji, and the Add buttons.

8. Apple said that it audited 756 suppliers for its annual Supplier Responsibility Report. The company found out that there have been 44 "core violations" of labor rules in 2017, which is twice as many as the previous year.

9. A new CIRP report has discovered that Android brand loyalty rate in the US has remained at a steady high since 2016, and is at 91% today. iOS' loyalty rate, on the other hand, is lower, at 86%.

10. Autonomous trucking startup Starsky Robotics has raised $16.5 million (£12 million) in its Series A round, led by Shasta Ventures. The firm said it completed a 7-mile drive in Florida without a human in the cab.

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Contributer : Tech Insider http://ift.tt/2FASPLA

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