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Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday. Apple has reportedly acquired self-driving car startup Drive.ai. Drive.ai had raised some $77 million from investors including New Enterprise Associates and Nvidia GPU Ventures. Partners for Facebook's upcoming cryptocurrency Libra signed non-binding agreements because they had doubts about the venture, the New York Times reports. Facebook announced last week that it had signed 27 business partners to help govern Libra, but executives at seven of those companies told the Times they had signed deals they could back out of. Elon Musk said in a leaked email that Tesla is very close to setting a record for deliveries in one quarter. Tesla's second-quarter delivery numbers will face particularly intense scrutiny because the company's first-quarter deliveries fell well below those of the prior quarter. San Francisco just banned e-cigarette sales, the first major US city to outlaw tobacco vapes. Juul, the leading maker of e-cigarettes, which is headquartered in San Francisco, is pushing a ballot measure to make the ban unenforceable. Almost 40% of LGBTQ tech employees that participated in a survey said they've witnessed homophobic discrimination and harassment at work. Blind, an anonymous workplace chat app, recently polled its users who work in the tech industry about LGBTQ sentiment at their companies. A US Senator asked the FTC to "take all necessary steps" to ensure YouTube is held accountable for violating children privacy laws. YouTube is reportedly under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for its handling of children's videos and could face fines for breaking children's privacy laws. The Fed's Chairman said Facebook's cryptocurrency has the potential to be so big that it will be regulated with a "very, very high" standard. The Fed will be "carefully" watching over consumer protections and regulations, he said. A massive, ongoing hack has been compromising cell service providers around the world without them even knowing, a new report says. More than 10 cell service providers around the world have been hacked in an attack that compromises key information about customers of the affected providers, according to a report by security research firm Cybereason. Bill Gates said today's big tech companies have learned from Microsoft's mistakes in its big antitrust battle. Gates also called for increased regulation of today's tech firms, given the critical role they play in society. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri denied the widely-held belief that Instagram and Facebook listen in to people through smartphones. CBS This Morning anchor Gayle King asked Mosseri whether Facebook targets advertising by eavesdropping on people's conversations. Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings. You can also subscribe to this newsletter here — just tick "10 Things in Tech You Need to Know." |