Mon. 08/03 – The TikTok, Microsoft, Trump Ban...

OpenAI leaned toward delaying its IPO to 2027 rather than budge from Altman's $1T valuation, rattling tech stocks. The government had OpenAI stagger GPT-5.6's release over security concerns. Microsoft hiked Xbox prices again, and SpaceX teased a Starlink mobile network. Sources: ...  Show more

Apple hiked Mac and iPad prices 15-25% on the memory crunch; iPhones held steady. Anthropic accused Alibaba of distilling Claude 28.8 million times. IBM detailed a 0.7nm chip, Facebook revived its Creator Studio app, and Kalshi chased a $40B valuation. Apple raises Mac, iPad, and ...  Show more

Calls to ban TikTok or force its sell-off from its parent company ByteDance are gaining momentum, especially after reports of ByteDance’s surveillance of several U.S. journalists. And could Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI mark the end of Google’s search monopoly?

Plus: ...

The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz discuss the Apple Vision Pro review rating, changes to the TikTok app, streaming news, and more. Further reading: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not The Vision Pro is a computer for the age of walled gardens Apple’ ...  Show more

After months of anticipation, President Biden finally signed the TikTok divestment into law this week. It will force ByteDance to either sell TikTok to another company within a year, or see the app banned from US app stores. Is this a wise move to rid control of the social app fr ...  Show more

Stories discussed this week; Election tech was supposed to clean up the Iowa caucus … Iowa's caucus fracas shows we're still too ignorant about how … America is bad at voting (it isn’t just Iowa) US attorney general says tech and telecom industries should invest in Huawei competi ...  Show more