10 things in tech you need to know today

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February 28, 2017

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

1. SpaceX has pledged to send a manned mission to the Moon in 2018. CEO Elon Musk said two private, unnamed passengers have paid to take part in the flight, which he said could be a significant revenue driver for the company.

2. Uber's senior vice president of engineering, Amit Singhal, was reportedly asked to leave the company after it emerged he had been accused of harassment at his prior job at Google. CEO Travis Kalanick asked Singhal to resign, as the company conducts a separate investigation into allegations of harassment by former employee Susan Fowler.

3. Samsung's heir apparent, Jay Y. Lee, is to be charged in South Korea with bribery, embezzlement, and hiding assets overseas. Lee was arrested earlier this month over claims Samsung had paid to secure government support for a company merger.

4. Uber repeatedly ignored warnings that its autonomous test cars would be banned from San Francisco. The Verge obtained memos between the company and the DMV, which wanted to help Uber, but Uber ignored the agency's legal advice.

5. Apple's next iPhone might have a curved OLED screen, like that Samsung Galaxy Edge. The flexible display would come as a design shift on the iPhone's 10th birthday.

6. Cloudera Inc. will file for an IPO. The Intel-backed company has hired underwriters and is looking for a valuation of $4.1 billion, Bloomberg says.

7. Donald Trump's staff and civil servants have adopted encryption tech at a rapid pace, using apps like WhatsApp and Signal after a crackdown by the administration on leaks. Using such apps could violate US laws, since government records need to be preserved and transparent.

8. Firefox maker Mozilla has acquired bookmarking tool Pocket — its first ever acquisition. Pocket lets you save items to read or watch later and, Mozilla said, will help the company establish itself in mobile.

9. Sony has sold less than 1 million PlayStation VR headsets since they launched last October. The company has shifted 915,000 and said the figure was in line with its own expectations.

10. An internet-connected teddy bear has exposed more than 2 million voice recordings of parents and children. The data was exposed by SpiralToys, which makes CloudPets toys, and has already been accessed by criminals.