Good morning! Here is the tech news you need to know this Monday.
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10 things in tech you need to know today
A female employee at Google speaks out about James Damore's memo, Uber's shareholders ask Benchmark to step aside, and Waymo patents a car shell that would make crashes safer.
A Waymo self-driving car.
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1. A female product designer at Google told Business Insider it was difficult for women at the company not to feel "attacked" after the memo written by fired engineer James Damore. She described most of the claims in the memo as "baseless".
2. A senior London police officer accused Uber of failing to report sex attacks by its drivers, and other serious crimes. Inspector Neil Billany, in a letter to TfL seen by The Times, pointed to an incident where one driver stayed on Uber's books despite an allegation of assault — only to commit a second assult.
3. Music streaming service SoundCloud will live to see another day after a reported $170 million (£130 million) funding round. The investment sees CEO Alex Ljung step down, and former Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor take over the top job.
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4. Twitter users banded together on Sunday to try and identify neo-Nazi protestors at Charlottesville. Most notably, the @yesyoureracist account published photos of protestors and asked for help with identification.
5. Bitcoin hit an all-time high over the weekend, breaking the $4,000 (£3,075) mark. It's only been a week since the cryptocurrency hit $3,000 (£2,306).
6. Facebook has been secretly testing a photo app in China called "Colourful Balloons", similar to its existing Moments app, which collates a user's photos from their phone. Facebook is banned in China, but has long been interested in reaching its users.
7. Amazon is thinking about using technology first developed by the US military to produce pre-prepared food that doesn't need refrigerating. The method involves putting the food in pressurised water, then putting it in the microwave.
8. A group of Uber shareholders want investor Benchmark Capital removed from the board, after it filed a lawsuit against former CEO Travis Kalanick over fraud allegations. The shareholders described Benchmark's actions as "ethically dubious".
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9. James Damore, the fired Google engineer who penned a now-famous memo about diversity, has attempted to justify his position in the Wall Street Journal article, and in a Reddit Q&A session. He said Google was "almost like a cult" to employees, because working there is so all-encompassing.
10. Waymo, Google's self-driving car division, has been granted a patent which might make pedestrians safer in the event of a crash. The patent outlines a type of car shell which would "soften" before a crash.
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