10 things in tech you need to know today

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1. TikTok is suing the Trump administration over its order to ban the app in the US, arguing there was no due process. The company had said it would challenge President Trump's executive order on August 6 that banned "any transactions" between Americans and TikTok's parent company, ByteDance.
2. Microsoft signed a "nonbinding letter of intent" to acquire TikTok's US operations even before Trump intervened, according to court documents filed in TikTok's lawsuit. A letter of intent is an agreement companies typically sign before they begin the due diligence phase of an acquisition.
3. A judge denied Epic Games' motion to have Apple restore "Fortnite" to the App Store, but ruled Apple can't block Epic's Unreal Engine software. Lots of other game developers use Unreal Engine, and the judge said blocking it "looks like overreach to me."
4. Facebook is reportedly planning to sue Thailand's government over its demand that the company block users within the country from accessing a group critical of its king. Facebook has complied with the request in the meantime, blocking users in Thailand from seeing posts from the group, "Royalist Marketplace," which has around 1 million users, Reuters reported Monday.
5. Snowflake, the $12.4 billion cloud data warehousing startup, filed to go public in one of the year's most anticipated tech IPOs. The company reported that its revenue jumped from $97 million in 2019 to $264.7 million in 2020, But its losses ballooned from $178 million to $348.5 million in the same period.
6. Productivity software startup Asana filed to go public via a direct listing. It was last valued at $1.5 billion in November 2018, and has raised $213.5 million to date according to Pitchbook.
7. Google has started displaying "short videos" which closely resemble TikTok videos, Google 9 to 5 reports. The videos appear in the "Discover" section of Android phones.
8. Apple has acquired VR startup Spaces, Protocol reports. Spaces originally span out from Dreamworks in 2016.
9. Zoom experienced massive outages Monday morning. Thousands of users worldwide reported that they were unable to log in or start video calls, and a Zoom spokesperson said the issue was resolved as of 1:30 p.m. EDT.
10. Apple apologized to WordPress after trying to force it to add in-app payments to its free-to-use app. Apple is in a fierce fight with developers including Spotify and Epic Games, the maker of "Fortnite," over its rules about in-app purchases.

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Contributer : Tech Insider https://ift.tt/3b0UozF

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