10 things in tech you need to know today

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

1. Twitter dropped the hammer on Alex Jones and permanently kicked him off its service. The move comes after Jones berated a CNN reporter to his face and streamed the confrontation using Twitter's Periscope service.

2. Okta, the company that helps employees log into their corporate apps, soared 16% on a major earnings and revenue beat. The company's quarterly losses lessened, and it projected continued growth in the upcoming third quarter.

3. Bernie Sanders doubled down on his war with Amazon by introducing a bill named after Jeff Bezos. The bill is called Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies, or "Stop BEZOS," and aims to tax companies for every dollar their employees receive in government benefits.

4. Apple is building a special portal for law enforcement officials to get user data. According to a letter obtained by Business Insider, Apple responded to more than 14,000 police requests including 231 "domestic emergency" requests in 2017.

5. Twitter is testing a major redesign of its desktop website. The redesign closely echoes what Twitter looks like on mobile phones.

6. British Airways revealed on Thursday that it got hacked, and roughly 380,000 customer payments were exposed. The hackers infiltrated its system for two weeks. All customers affected by the breach have been contacted.

7. Google will unveil its next Pixel smartphone on October 9. Invitations to a Made By Google launch were sent out late on Thursday afternoon, and the event will be held in New York City for the first time

8. Tesla stock sinks after a notorious short-seller sued Elon Musk over his alleged attempt to burn investors like him. Andrew Left of Citron Research filed a lawsuit against Tesla and Elon Musk, saying Musk's "funding secured" tweet was merely a way to burn investors like him who were betting against Tesla's stock price.

9. "Call of Duty" reveals the full map for its battle royale game mode inspired by "Fortnite," and PlayStation 4 owners will get a chance to play the beta early. The new game mode will allow 80 players to compete against each other in the same map.

10. Japan is about to start testing the feasibility of a space elevator, starting with a small model in orbit. The Obayashi Corporation plans to have an operational space elevator by 2050.

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