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— Joe Brown and Peter Kafka
U.S. diplomats have dropped plans for President Donald Trump to conduct a visit to Britain in January. Trump had been penciled in for a “working visit” in the first month of 2018 to formally open America’s new London embassy. Relations between Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May recently deteriorated in a public spat after Trump retweeted anti-Muslim videos from a far-right British group. Meanwhile, the Senate delayed a vote on its proposed tax bill until today. And the White House plans to force out Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, and replace him with CIA director Mike Pompeo. Economic advisor Gary Cohn and other White House staff may be headed out as well.
[The Telegraph]
Early Uber investor Shervin Pishevar has been accused by several women of making unwanted sexual advances. The co-founder of Sherpa Capital, Pishevar was arrested in London in late May after a woman accused him of raping her; he was “released under investigation” and never charged. And Russell Simmons, founder of hip-hop music label Def Jam Recordings and CEO of Rush Communications, is stepping down from his companies in the wake of an accusation of harassment and sexual assault. [Emily Chang / Bloomberg]
Pinterest’s president and top business executive, Tim Kendall, is leaving the company to build his own health-care startup, which will focus on fighting device addictions, like an obsession with a phone or laptop. It’s a big loss for Pinterest — Kendall oversees Pinterest’s entire business operation, and the company had been expected to begin the IPO process sometime in 2018.
[Kurt Wagner / Recode]
Meal-kit company Blue Apron, which went public in late June, has replaced its co-founder and CEO, Matt Salzberg. Stepping in is the company’s CFO, Brad Dickerson, who joined Blue Apron in February of 2016 after 11 years at Under Armour, where he was CFO and COO. The company’s stock performance has been the worst of any major company that has gone public this year — its $10 a share opening price has dropped to around $3.
[Jason Del Rey / Recode]

Cruise, the self-driving division of General Motors, has hired a former Uber engineer as its first CTO as it prepares to deploy a network of self-driving cars without safety drivers starting in 2019. AG Gangadhar previously headed the Uber unit that Susan Fowler used as an example in her damning essay about toxic workplaces; Fowler has criticized the appointment.
[Johana Bhuiyan / Recode]

Spotify and Tencent are planning to swap equity stakes ahead of planned IPOs next year.
[The Wall Street Journal]

Uber’s new chief legal officer tells staff: If you are surveilling people for competitive intelligence, stop it now. Here’s the memo.

BuzzFeed is losing website traffic as readers head for more traditional news sites. Changes with Facebook’s algorithms could be hurting it, too.

Ginkgo Bioworks, "the organism company," is now worth more than $1 billion. It’s the latest unicorn incubated by Y Combinator.

Trump’s tech foes won big in Virginia’s election. Now they’re focusing their cash and attention on 2018. Reid Hoffman spent $3 million, Ron Conway is newly investing and tech engineers are emboldened to fight.

Artificial intelligence doesn’t have to be evil. We just have to teach it to be good. There’s a pressing need to find a moral compass to direct the intelligent machines we’re increasingly sharing our lives with.

Do teens care about “fake news”? Kara Swisher’s son Louie returns to the Too Embarrassed to Ask podcast: “My English paper is more important than collusion.”

Twitchy without your smartphone? The Substitute Phone was designed to help you with your cravings for swiping and scrolling.