10 things in tech you need to know today

Chairman and Co-CEO of Salesforce Marc Benioff attends a session at the 50th World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 21, 2020.

REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

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1. Salesforce might buy Slack. The move would signal a more aggressive foray into office-communication software for Salesforce.
   
   
2. Amazon Web Services experienced a major outage. Scores of websites rely on the internet infrastructure to function and the outage knocked out services like Roku.
   
   
3. DoorDash is paying $2.5 million to settle a lawsuit. The settlement addresses a 2019 lawsuit that accused the company of misleading customers in how it issued tips for its delivery drivers.
   
   
4. France will tax Big Tech. France has notified companies including Facebook and Amazon that it is levying its new 3% digital services tax for this year.
   
   
5. The UK will spend millions to help companies avoid Huawei. The UK will spend £250 million ($333 million) to remove Huawei equipment from the country's 5G roll-out after security concerns.
   
   
6. Apple is standing behind its indicted security chief. The iPhone manufacturer is standing behind one of its executives who is accused of offering 200 iPads to the Santa County Sheriff's office in exchange for concealed carry permits.
   
   
7. Facebook's ad-banning AI is hurting small business owners. Facebook's efforts to crack down on violations of its ad policies are mistakenly penalizing advertisers over selling benign products like dog posters and jewelry.
   
   
8. A hacker claims to have user data from Parler. Amid a Twitter storm about an alleged hack of the conservative social media site a hacker says that he accessed actual user information from Parler. 
   
   
9. Coinbase will suspend margin trading. The cryptocurrency exchange is preventing customers from placing new margin trades, a form of leverage, after guidance from the CFTC. 
   
   
10. Exclusive: VCs named their top 100 startups of 2020. All year, Business Insider asked venture-capital investors to name the rising-star startups in areas like tech, healthcare, retail, and finance.

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