Anything For You All: 10 things in tech you need to know today

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June 30, 2017

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

1. Russian hackers reportedly discussed hacking Hillary Clinton's 33,000 deleted emails and transferring them to Michael Flynn, then a member of the Trump campaign, according to the Wall Street Journal. There's no evidence yet that anyone actually did get hold of the emails.

2. A US teenager was charged with manslaughter after allegedly shooting her husband in a YouTube stunt that went wrong. Pedro Ruiz III died from a single gunshot wound after holding an encyclopaedia against his chest which was intended to stop the bullet.

3. Twitter has denied it's joining the fight against fake news. The company was reportedly considering ways for users to flag tweets with false or misleading information, according to the Washington Post, but denied it to Business Insider.

4. A female former employee of US VC firm Binary Capital is suing the company for harassing and defaming her after she left the firm, according to Bloomberg. Disgraced former partner Justin Caldbeck allegedly texted Anna Lai after she left, threatening to ruin her career.

5. Airbnb is reportedly testing another luxury tier for its service called "Airbnb Lux", according to Bloomberg. The company is already working on a hotel-like service called Airbnb Select, but Lux is even fancier, offering mansions and luxurious apartments to wealthier travellers.

6. Germany will start slapping fines of up to €50 million ($43 million) on social networks like Facebook and Twitter if they don't act quickly to remove hate speech. Freedom of speech activists said social networks shouldn't police expression.

7. Nike is going to start selling sports kit through Amazon. The pair are conducting a pilot scheme, the CEO confirmed.

8. Facebook's internet-beaming drone has completed a second test flight without crashing. The flight lasted one hour and 46 minutes.

9. Instagram has released an AI-powered tool to combat spam and malicious comments. Staff trained the tool to recognise spam comments, teaching it to account for context and who's making the comment.

10. Google has hired a new head of diversity as it makes slow progress in hiring more ethnic minorities and women. The company hired Intel's former head of diversity, Danielle Brown, and revealed 7 out of 10 employees are men and 56% of its US workforce is white.