The Morning After: Monday, November 6th 2017

Investor woes.

Mat Smith
·Bureau Chief, UK
Updated ·2 min read

Good Monday morning to you! We've had a weekend of bad news involving investors in the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Meanwhile, Apple is reminding its customers about both the pros and cons of its new screen technology on the iPhone X and Microsoft ends its free upgrades for Windows 10.

This complicates social networks' bids to distance themselves from Russia.Russia funded Facebook and Twitter investments through tech magnate

Russia's entanglement with American social networks just got decidedly complicated. Leaked documents obtained by the Guardian and others have revealed that two state-owned Russian institutions, the oil giant Gazprom and VTB Bank, funded investments in both Facebook and Twitter through Russia-born tech luminary Yuri Milner's investment company, DST Global. Milner acknowledged the investments in chats with the Guardian but maintained that neither Facebook nor Twitter were told where the funding for the investments had come from. He added that he didn't know Gazprom had supported the Facebook stake, and that VT's backing didn't give it a say over Twitter's decisions.

Prince Al-Waleed has money in Apple, Lyft, Twitter and other tech giants.

Saudi Arabia arrests one of tech's biggest investors

Saudi Arabia is in the midst of a crackdown on alleged corruption, and its dragnet has caught one of the tech world's most important investors: The country has arrested Prince al-Waleed bin Talal on money laundering charges. He has major stakes in satellite TV providers and in recent years has been one of the largest individual investors in a number of well-known tech giants, including Apple and Lyft. The royal is particularly important to Twitter's fate. He poured $300 million into the social network in 2011, and his stake is second only to that of Twitter co-founder Ev Williams.

Cupertino is dealing with OLED technology's technical limits for the first time.
Apple reminds iPhone X owners they're using an OLED display

Apple's bezel-less X is its first iPhone with an OLED screen -- a technology known for its greater contrast and saturation but also for its tendency to get burn-in. To make sure customers understand that their $1,000 phone might suffer from image persistence in the future, the company has updated the iPhone X's display support page to explain how an OLED screen works... And why you might have complaints.

But wait, there's more...