Tech: 10 things in tech you need to know today

Floyd Mayweather was fined by the SEC for promoting an ICO.

Uber's CEO said the company takes some blame for its self-driving car killing a pedestrian, and Google hid its China search plans from employees.

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

  1. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in an all-hands meeting that the company deserves some fault after its self-driving car killed a pedestrian. During an all-hands meeting at Uber on Tuesday, Khosrowshahi and the head of the self-driving car unit, Eric Meyhofer, were questioned by employees about the culture at the autonomous-car unit.
  2. Google's Dragonfly execs didn't take written notes and isolated internal teams to hide China search plans from other employees. The Intercept published a report on Thursday describing the efforts at Google to push aside internal security and privacy concerns over its controversial project, Dragonfly.
  3. Sheryl Sandberg reportedly wanted to know if George Soros, who publicly criticized Facebook, was shorting the company's stock. This comes after it was revealed that Facebook had a relationship with the opposition-research firm, Definers Public Affairs.
  4. Floyd Mayweather Jr. and DJ Khaled will each pay more than $100,000 in fines to settle charges that they illegally touted ICOs. Mayweather received $100,000 from cryptocurrency comany Centra Tech to promote its ICO, while Khaled was paid $50,000.
  5. Nintendo had a record-setting Black Friday weekend, but Switch sales are still lower than expected after a slow year. Nintendo also revealed that 8 million Switch consoles have been purchased in the US since its launch in March 2017. The company expects to sell 38 million Switch units worldwide by March 2019.
  6. The software for Sennheiser's high-end headphones has a bizarre and potentially dangerous bug that makes users vulnerable to hackers. Sennheiser has issued an update which every HeadSetup user, past or present, should download and install now.
  7. The CEOs of Microsoft and Google are heading to the White House next week. Tech executives including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai are expected to attend a meeting with the Trump administration next week.
  8. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is putting up $6.1 million to turn a hotel into transitional housing for San Francisco’s homeless population. The housing-renovation project is a partnership between Benioff, San Francisco mayor London Breed, and the local homeless advocacy group Tenderloin Housing Clinic.
  9. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels says the best day of his year was when Amazon turned off its largest Oracle data warehouse. On November 1, Amazon switched off its largest Oracle database and moved over to its own data warehouse, Redshift.
  10. E-scooters are sending dozens of people to emergency rooms, and the companies appear to have a double standards when it comes to safety. In Austin alone, one emergency room is seeing 10 injuries a day from scooters, the hospital's ER director told CNET.

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