Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Thursday.
- After discussing layoffs to cut costs, WeWork CEO Adam Neumann treated employees to tequila shots and a private performance by a member of Run-DMC. Neumann told his staff to lay off 20% of the company's workers each year, according to an article from The Wall Street Journal detailing Neumann's management style.
- Facebook is launching a $149 camera that sits next to your TV and lets you video chat with your WhatsApp and Messenger friends. On Wednesday, the social networking giant unveiled a host of new devices that it says are right in line with its overall mission of connecting people.
- Disney CEO Bob Iger has said that Disney and Apple would likely have combined if Steve Jobs were still alive. Jobs was a board member of The Walt Disney Company and majority shareholder of the animation studio Pixar, which Disney acquired in 2006.
- WeWork cofounder Rebekah Neumann reportedly demanded employees be fired within minutes of meeting them because she disliked their 'energy'. The WeWork executive and wife of CEO Adam Neumann made the demands according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
- Lyft is battling yet another lawsuit from a passenger who says the ride-hailing company enabled sexual predators. New York resident Alison Turkos alleged in a lawsuit filed in a San Francisco court on Tuesday that she was abducted at gunpoint by her Lyft driver in 2017, and then raped by two other men.
- Google has finally absorbed the healthcare arm of AI firm DeepMind, the British company it acquired in 2016 for $500 million. The integration is happening some 10 months after Google originally announced it and leaves the status of one DeepMind cofounder, Mustafa Suleyman, uncertain.
- Barack Obama has said any president should avoid TV and social media when making a decision because it 'clouds your judgment'. Obama was speaking on Wednesday in San Francisco and his remarks appeared to be a tacit criticism of President Trump.
- Amid Snap's struggles as a public company, CEO Evan Spiegel has given this advice to founders: 'Don't go public'. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel was asked at an investor conference what advice he had for founders taking companies public for their first time.
- Apple's VP of communications Steve Dowling is reportedly leaving the company after 16 years. Dowling's tenure at the tech giant has included Tim Cook's first 5 years as CEO and a host of new product rollouts.
- A quantum computing startup that spun out of a Harvard lab has raised $2.7 million in seed funding from investors including Samsung. Aliro creates tools that make it easier for developers to write software to run on quantum computers without worrying about setting up the hardware.
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."
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Animated map shows how cats spread across the world
Tags:
business insider