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Tech News
Apple announced App Store tax updates taking effect immediately in Morocco, the Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania, reflecting new or increased VAT and digital sales taxes. Starting September 14, Apple will also update app and in-app purchase prices in Israel, Indonesia, Morocco, and the Republic of the Congo for developers who haven't set those regions as their base storefront.
Hugging Face has released Microduck, a roughly 10-inch bipedal robot shaped like a duck that costs $400. It packs 15 motors, a camera, a depth sensor and two inertial measurement units, plus an articulated beak for picking up objects, and ships with built-in behaviors like walking, sitting, crouching and skating that can be triggered via gamepad. It's the company's second robot after Reachy Mini, and its software stack is open-source, letting developers teach it new skills through reinforcement learning and simulation.
Rivian disclosed in a regulatory filing that CFO Claire McDonough will leave the company by the end of October to take a CFO role at GE Vernova and move closer to family on the East Coast. Vice president of finance Derek Mulvey will serve as interim CFO while Rivian searches for a permanent replacement, and the company said the exit does not stem from any internal disagreement.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, the UAE's national security advisor, and co-investors control a 49% stake through StringZ Holding RSC in WLTC Holdings, the parent company of a planned Trump-linked crypto bank. A Trump family-affiliated entity holds an additional 38% stake. Tahnoon previously invested $500 million in World Liberty Financial, another Trump-backed crypto venture, in January 2025.
Special Master Jose Linares has denied the Justice Department's motion to reconsider his earlier ruling allowing Apple to obtain documents from 14 federal agencies, including the CIA, FBI, NSA and Department of Defense. The DOJ had argued Linares used the wrong legal standard and that Apple's requests were overly burdensome and only marginally relevant, but Apple countered that these objections failed on every point, and Linares agreed.
After the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an FCC order that extended discounted 'lowest unit charge' TV ad rates to political parties and joint fundraising committees, the National Republican Congressional and Senatorial Committees said they will petition the Supreme Court. The 4th Circuit denied their request for an emergency stay but issued the mandate immediately, clearing the way for a Supreme Court appeal.
Meta's settlement with attorneys general from 29 states, which includes up to $18 billion in payments and new child safety measures, contains a clause shielding Meta from COPPA-related lawsuits over its use of children's data. The exemption applies specifically to data used to build and test an age-verification model meant to detect users under 13, and Meta must build this system within a year of the agreement taking effect. The deal explicitly bars use of under-13 data for ad targeting or algorithmic optimization, though critics note enforcement could be tricky.
A wave of polls and news reports indicates widespread American opposition to data centers, Flock surveillance cameras, and Meta's AI-equipped Ray-Ban glasses, which critics have nicknamed 'pervert glasses.' Recent events, including a grand jury declining to indict a man filmed damaging Flock equipment and protestors against data centers gaining online praise, underscore how deep and public this hostility has become.
YouTube announced eligible U.S. creators can now tag Amazon products directly within shorts, long-form videos, and livestreams to earn a share of resulting sales. The feature integrates Amazon's catalog natively into YouTube's Shopping Affiliate Program, replacing the older method of pasting Associates links in video descriptions. Creators can also enable auto-tagging, letting YouTube's systems scan past uploads to identify and tag eligible products automatically.
Barret Zoph, who co-founded Thinking Machines with Mira Murati after leaving OpenAI in 2024, returned to OpenAI in January but departed again after just five months leading enterprise AI sales. He has now joined Google as vice president of research, where he previously worked, to apply his reinforcement learning and post-training expertise to Gemini.
A startup called Generation claims a combination of two generic drugs can reverse aging effects, citing informal reports from a small group of participants describing benefits like improved vision, better grip strength, and increased libido. The company plans a larger trial of 100+ people, but is already distributing the drug to others before any rigorous evidence confirms its effectiveness. The trial will be overseen by alternative-medicine practitioners, including a doctor previously linked to promoting FDA-discredited covid-19 treatments.
Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Seth Moulton are clashing over artificial intelligence ahead of Tuesday's Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary. Moulton has seized on Markey's admission during a debate that he didn't know if he used AI on his devices, using it to argue for generational change, while Anthropic-backed nonprofit Public First Action has funneled $500,000 to a pro-Markey PAC citing his record on AI regulation.