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Amazon’s new Alexa Plus voice assistant works with most existing Amazon devices. In the week's least surprising news, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed that the company is exploring ways to bring ads to Alexa Plus, its new generative-AI-powered voice assistant. During a conference call following the company's second-quarter earnings report, Jassy said that "there will be opportunities, as people are engaging in more multiturn conversations [with Alexa Plus], to have advertising play a role to help people find discovery, and also as a lever to drive revenue." Basically, people will talk more to Alexa, so there will be more ways…

A federal jury in Florida found Tesla partly liable for a deadly 2019 crash involving Tesla’s Autopilot driver assist software, according to reports from The New York Times and CNBC. Tesla has been ordered to pay $200 million in punitive damages and about $43 million in compensatory damages, CBS News reports. It’s a rare loss in court for Tesla over Autopilot, which has been linked to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths by the ​​National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The company won two jury trials in 2023 resulting from lawsuits alleging that Autopilot was to blame for crashes, and…

Tim Cook sure knows how to sell an iPhone. Apple has been the target of a fair amount of criticism over the past year, from its AI missteps to a strong distaste for its new design ethos. But the numbers don’t lie, and if Apple knows how to do anything it’s sell iPhones. Specifically, three billion of them, as CEO Tim Cook announced on the company’s earnings call today. That’s an impressive number on its own, but it’s even wilder when you consider that Apple is picking up the pace. The iPhone was introduced in 2007 and the company reached…

Apple is spending a lot on President Donald Trump’s tariffs. During an earnings call on Thursday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the duties could add $1.1 billion to its costs during the September quarter. Cook says Apple has already spent around $800 million during the June quarter, which is less than the $900 million that the company predicted in May. “The bulk of the tariffs that we paid were the IEEPA [International Emergency Economic Powers Act] tariffs that hit early in the year, related to China,” Cook said. Trump’s sweeping tariffs have impacted all of Apple’s devices, which are mainly…

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company is “open” to mergers and acquisitions as it “significantly” increases its investment in AI, as reported by CNBC. Cook’s statements were made alongside the release of Apple’s third-quarter earnings results, which revealed that the iPhone maker raked in $94 billion between April and June, marking a 10 percent increase over the same period last year. The remarks come as Apple continues to be seen as behind the AI race, with its efforts on Apple Intelligence lagging relative to its peers and Meta poaching some of its top engineers. The company is increasingly turning…

The discount makes the 256GB configuration cheaper than the model with 128GB of storage. | Image: The Verge During the most recent Prime Day, the Google Pixel Tablet with Wi-Fi and 256GB of storage briefly dropped to just $309 ($190 off) — but the deal disappeared in a matter of hours. Fast forward to today, and the deal is back, but this time it’s available at Best Buy. Unfortunately, the discount is for today only (or until supplies last) and doesn’t include the speaker dock. Google Pixel Tablet Where to Buy: $499 $309 at Best Buy (256GB, without dock) The…

Reddit knows that it has valuable data from actual people — it’s already reached deals with big AI companies like OpenAI and Google to share its data with them. But Reddit is also investing in improving its own search capabilities, and in its latest note to investors, CEO Steve Huffman says that the company is “concentrating our resources on the areas that will drive results for our most pressing needs,” including “making Reddit a go-to search engine.” Huffman says that “every week, hundreds of millions of people come to Reddit looking for advice, and we’re turning more of that intent…

Mark Zuckerberg’s AI hiring spree is costing a lot of money. His investors don’t care. Meta’s stock price shot up over 10 percent on Wednesday after the company reported better-than-expected earnings. Revenue generated in the second quarter was $47.5 billion, up 22 percent from a year ago. Daily users across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp grew to almost 3.5 billion. Meta also warned Wall Street that it would spend more on data centers and hiring next year. In response to all this, the company’s valuation increased by over $175 billion, or more than 12 Scale AI deals. ”Our business continues…

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday that will suspend the de minimis exemption — which allows packages with goods valued less than $800 to enter the US duty-free — for all countries. Earlier this year, Trump ended the de minimis exemption for goods from China and Hong Kong. The White House says the change goes into effect on August 29th. Per the executive order, for the next six months, goods shipped through the international postal system will either be charged the flat tariff rate based on country of origin (an ad valorem duty) or a specific duty…

Have you ever wondered what bops powerful figures are listening to on Spotify? You'd be amazed what you can get with a profile search - but just in case you want them all in one place, there's the Panama Playlists, a newly published collection of data on the musical listening habits of politicians, journalists, and tech figures, as curated by an anonymous figure. The site appears to have data for a number of notables, including Open AI CEO Sam Altman, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, US Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Late Night host Seth Meyers. Five people featured…