Tag: big tech

Amazon ‘Prime Air’ To Expand Drone Delivery To Nearly 500 US Cities This Year

Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery service, first teased by Jeff Bezos in a 2013 60 Minutes interview as a way to get packages under 5lbs to customers in 30 minutes or less, represents the broader push toward autonomous aerial last-mile logistics that could bypass traffic and cut delivery times dramatically. 

After years of regulatory hurdles with the FAA, technical iterations, and limited trials, the service has matured into a commercial offering using the MK30 drone, which hovers to drop packages.

A major breakthrough came in 2024, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted Amazon a waiver allowing its drones to fly beyond the visual line of sight of their operators, and has already completed hundreds of thousands of deliveries in 2026 across 11 sites in seven states. 

Today Amazon announced plans to expand it to nearly 500 US cities and towns by year-end – a roughly sixfold increase – bringing ultrafast options (as quick as 30 minutes) to tens of millions more customers in places like the Chicago, Atlanta, Cleveland, Syracuse, and Boise metro areas.

The drones will primarily operate in suburban areas, away from skyscrapers and major airports that could complicate operations.

Amazon describes the aircraft as “highly autonomous,” with onboard cameras and sensors for navigation, obstacle detection, and safe delivery.

The cameras do not transmit a live video feed, according to the company.

The company also sought to address the potential concern about noise.

“During drop-off, the sound level is below that of an idling delivery truck parked curbside and lasts about 30 seconds,” Amazon said.

Someone standing outside may hear a sound “comparable to a window fan on low” as the drone arrives, while people indoors may not hear it at all, the company added.

Prime Air delivery is free for Prime members on orders of at least $50, but orders below that threshold carry a $2.99 delivery fee, while customers without a Prime membership are charged $4.99.

Keep reading

States take Meta to trial in California in the biggest fight yet over social media harms to children

Of the thousands of lawsuits Meta faces over child safety on its platforms, none may be more consequential than one going to trial this week in California.

States are seeking extensive financial damages that could, in theory, total as much as $1.4 trillion, plus changes to how the company operates Facebook and Instagram.

The lawsuit accuses the social media giant of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features that get children addicted to its platforms. It also claims that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law.

“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. Its motive is profit, and in seeking to maximize its financial gains,” the lawsuit says.

Dozens of states filed the lawsuit three years ago. The trial set to begin Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California, features four of the states as plaintiffs — California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. The other 25 states are expected to have trials later.

Meta said it disputes the allegations, and the trial evidence will show its commitment to supporting young people. “We’ve listened to parents, worked with experts and law enforcement, and conducted in-depth research to understand the issues that matter most,” the company said in a statement.

States seek to land a major blow against Meta
For Meta, which already lost two pivotal cases over harms to children and teens this year, the stakes are high. The company reported a rare profit decline last month, in part due to $2.4 billion in legal expenses.

The $1.4 trillion figure, which Meta disclosed in a legal filing, is almost as high as the Menlo Park, California, company’s entire market capitalization — that is, the value of all its outstanding shares on the stock market. Paying it would inevitably put Meta Platforms in bankruptcy and perhaps put the company under state ownership.

“The state attorneys general are going for the gusto,” said Eric Goldman, a professor and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. “They are trying to set the definitive precedent in this case and they have asked for extraordinary damages and they are going to seek extraordinary structural remedies if they succeed.”

Meta calls the possible penalty “untethered to any claimed violation” by the states.

“A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement,” Meta said in a July 6 filing with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

If Meta loses the trial, the court would have wide discretion over the size of any financial penalty, and legal experts say anything close to $1.4 trillion would be unlikely.

“It’s not plausible in the sense that Meta doesn’t have that much money and could not get it,” said James Grimmelmann, a law professor at Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech. “An award that large would put Meta into bankruptcy, wipe out its owners, and effectively result in the states owning Meta.”

Keep reading

Apple Trains Custom AI Model For China With Alibaba’s Help

Apple has trained a custom large language model specifically for the Chinese market, utilizing technical support from Alibaba Group, according to Reuters. 

This arrangement would make Apple the first foreign company cleared by Beijing to offer a proprietary AI model in China.

The custom model is expected to power portions of Apple Intelligence when the AI suite rolls out to mainland China via an upcoming iOS update.

This marks a strategic shift from Apple’s earlier plan to rely solely on third-party Chinese models for its regional generative AI features. According to the report, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude – which Apple pairs with its own technology in Western markets – are unavailable in China.

In July, China’s Cyberspace Administration officially registered Apple’s generative AI service, clearing the primary regulatory hurdle that had kept Apple Intelligence off local devices.

Under this approved framework, Alibaba’s Qwen model will integrate into Apple Intelligence across compatible iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Vision Pro headsets sold in China, while Baidu’s technology will separately support search-related features.

It remains unclear exactly how Apple’s proprietary model will divide tasks with Qwen and Baidu, as the technical breakdown between the systems has not yet been disclosed.

China remains one of Apple’s most crucial markets. Until now, the lack of native AI capabilities on Chinese iPhones has put Apple at a distinct competitive disadvantage against domestic rivals like Huawei, which have aggressively marketed AI-equipped handsets.

Apple Intelligence began rolling out globally in October 2024, but Apple said at the iPhone 16 launch that September that mainland China availability was “subject to regulatory approval.” The CAC’s July 15 registration came roughly 22 months later, clearing Apple alongside six other on-device generative AI services from Huawei, Samsung, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE.

The wait proved costly in a market Apple has been winning back. IDC put Apple’s China smartphone share at 18.1 percent in the second quarter, up from 13.9 percent a year earlier on 24.4 percent shipment growth – the strongest gain of any major brand, and enough to move Apple from fifth place to second. Huawei held the lead at 22.6 percent. They were the only two vendors to grow at all as overall shipments fell 4.3 percent to roughly 66 million units, a fifth straight quarterly decline driven by rising memory costs and fading government subsidies.

Apple’s gains came from holding iPhone 17 pricing steady while Android rivals raised theirs, and from signaling second-half price increases that pulled demand forward – mechanics that flatter one quarter rather than establishing a trend. Domestic rivals shipped on-device generative AI features throughout the wait.

Reporting has indicated Apple evaluated Baidu, ByteDance’s Doubao and DeepSeek before settling on Alibaba as its primary model provider. Apple has said nothing publicly about the arrangement – every confirmation to date has come from Alibaba and Baidu, or from the regulator’s own filing. No mainland launch date has been announced.

Keep reading

Tech Bros Run the Marxist Playbook

Can Marxism offer a framework for understanding artificial intelligence (AI) and the tech bros behind it?

This is not to suggest that Marxism is a viable economic system or a practical alternative to capitalism. It’s not. But Karl Marx was a heterodox economist before he became an ideologue, and some of his ideas are powerful tools for understanding economics, even if his overall program was a failure.

Let’s use some of those tools to understand the rise of AI oligarchs and the future of AI.

We begin with Marx’s main idea: the abolition of private property. How do tech bros feel about private property? They steal it. If you can simply take private property, then it’s not private. Marx would approve.

The AI gang does this by scraping vast amounts of internet content for use in training their large language models (LLMs). That material includes copyrighted books, magazine articles, academic papers, images, music and countless other forms of intellectual property (IP).

Do tech bros pay royalties? Do they pay licensing fees? Sometimes, but often they don’t. They take what they want like internet pirates, or the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution in 1917.

In fact, AI models have used my nine books in their training sets. Google, Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta have paid me nothing. Anthropic offered to pay me $37,000 for some (not all) of my books. I accepted the offer, but I still haven’t received the payment. Maybe I’ll call my lawyer about that before their IPO.

The point is that much of the AI crowd behaves no differently than the imperialists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, who exploited land, resources and human capital, including slavery, while paying little or nothing in return.

V. I. Lenin called imperialism “the highest stage of capitalism.” But Lenin never met a tech bro. They put imperialists to shame.

Keep reading

X Warns Australia’s Censor Wants Reach Beyond Australia

X has told the Australian Senate committee that a proposal expanding the powers of the nation’s top censor would let the regulator demand documents from people outside of Australia. The only connection that would be required for X to have to hand over documents to Australia’s eSafety Commissioner is that the person is “affiliated” with a platform.

The submission, published Tuesday, targets the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. The bill cleared the House of Representatives on July 1 and hit the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee on the same day. That committee will report on August 25.

The changes would “compel any person outside Australia…to provide information and documents merely because they are ‘affiliated’ with a company,” X said in a filing.

X described that as being “in clear conflict” with international legal principles, warning that the amendment “raises potential for a severe impact on international comity.”

X said the plans gave no “due regard to procedural fairness, privacy, the broader impacts on online services, and Australia’s digital economy.”

A company that fails to take “reasonable” steps to keep under-16s off its platform currently faces a penalty of up to A$49.5 million or 30,000 penalty units. The bill doubles that to A$99 million, around US$69 million, for systematic breaches.

Under the bill, eSafety could also compel the records from the third-party digital ID vendors that platforms hire, as well as from app store operators.

Those vendors hold face scans, ID document images, and inference data drawn from Australians who handed over sensitive data in order to stay on the platform after Australia banned social media for under 16s.

The bill would give the government regulator a legal route into all of that data that it recently mandated to be collected.

eSafety complained to the panel that its current authority to compel documents lags behind that of other regulators and that it’s left to depend on “representations from providers about their own compliance.”

Keep reading

Instagram to Ban Creeps Filming Harassment Videos with Meta Smart Glasses

Instagram has announced a new policy prohibiting videos captured with Meta smart glasses that feature harassment of strangers in public spaces, targeting creeps who film pranks and pickup attempts without clear consent. Meta’s smart glasses have picked up the nickname “pervert glasses” due to their misuse.

Business Insider reports that Instagram head Adam Mosseri revealed the platform’s crackdown on certain types of content filmed using Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses in a recent Instagram story response. The new policy specifically targets videos showing harassment of unsuspecting individuals in public locations, including the controversial pickup artist videos and prank content that have proliferated on social media platforms.

“If you’re posting content that is taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line kind of videos that we’ve heard of and seen, then we’re going to take the content down,” Mosseri stated. “We don’t want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform. So we’re trying to fight that every way we can.”

The policy change comes after increasing concerns about the misuse of Meta’s smart glasses technology for creating questionable content. There is a growing trend of videos appearing on TikTok and Instagram Reels where content creators film themselves executing pranks on service industry workers while wearing the glasses. These pranks often cross the line into harassment territory, with examples including incidents where creators spray fart spray into candles at retail stores and then ask employees to smell them.

Following the policy announcement, Business Insider discovered that at least two major accounts belonging to pickup artists who filmed themselves approaching women while wearing Meta glasses had been deactivated. Both accounts previously boasted followings exceeding one million users. A Meta spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that these accounts were removed for violating the new policy regarding harassing content filmed with the smart glasses.

However, details about the policy’s enforcement mechanisms remain unclear. Meta has not provided specific information about what exactly constitutes a violation under the new rules or how the company plans to systematically identify and remove offending content.

Keep reading

“USA Isn’t A PiggyBank For Europe”: Trump Launches Section 301 Probe Into EU Over Big Tech Fines

Trump Says US Begins Section 301 Investigation on Europe 

President Trump wrote on Truth Social that the US will launch a Section 301 investigation into the European Union for “robbing American companies, in turn, the American Taxpayer.” 

Trump said Brussels is using America as a “PIGGYBANK” by fining Big Tech companies billions and billions of dollars.

Trump listed the technology companies that have been fined a combined billions of dollars:

After having fined Apple, for no reason at all, 15 Billion Dollars, Meta, 3 Billion Dollars, Amazon 2.5 Billion Dollars, and many others, we have just been informed that Google, a truly advanced and amazing group, has been fined yet another 1 Billion Dollars, without explanation. This brings the Google total to over 18 Billion Dollars!

Trump continued:

This illegal and highly discriminatory practice started at these high levels during the first year of the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration, but it’s not going to continue during the Trump Administration.

He added:

The United States of America is not a “PIGGYBANK” for Europe, nor will we allow it to be!

Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that we will immediately initiate a 301 Investigation into the practice of “ROBBING” American Companies and, in turn, the American Taxpayer.

The European Union will pay a very big price for this illegal and highly unethical conduct, which I have consistently warned them about.

The penalties will be entirely reversed and, we anticipate, a substantial TARIFF to be placed on them at the earliest possible moment.

Keep reading

Meta worker who developed ‘digital experiences for kids’ admits to trying to sext child in undercover NYC sting

A New York City engineer who said he created “digital experiences for kids” at social media giant Meta was busted after he admitted to trying to sext a 13-year-old during an undercover sting.

Josh Felker, 44, who’s now on leave from the Facebook parent company, admitted he had been grooming and sexting someone he thought was a teen girl during a sting by Predator Poachers Long Island, a vigilante group that seeks to catch would-be pervs.

“Even though inappropriate things had already gone on, I just almost wish I could be her dad,” Felker, who is married and has a small child, shockingly told a member of the group posing as his would-be victim’s grandmother on the phone, according to video of the encounter set to be released Monday.

Felker, who listed his job on a now-deleted LinkedIn account as an Engineering Manager who built “digital experiences for kids” for Meta reached out to the group’s 13-year-old “decoy account” in May and has been messaging them regularly since, the group said. 

It didn’t take long before Felker allegedly started making a slew of sick remarks — including trying to teach the girl how to masturbate — while sending multiple photos and videos of himself doing the same and even trying to set up days to meet her in person, Mike Villani, one of the predator catchers who led the poach, told The Post. 

Keep reading

Google just had its first negative cash flow quarter due to massive AI spending

Google has reported its financial results for the second quarter of 2026 (PDF), and as usual, the search giant raked in an unfathomable amount of money. Google saw total revenue of $119.8 billion, beating analyst expectations by a comfortable margin. Despite that, the company’s stock has taken a hit. Along with all that revenue, Google has announced a further increase in its AI-fueled capital expenditures (or capex). The company is actually spending so much on AI infrastructure that it has negative cash flow for the first time.

Search was the largest chunk of Google’s income, accounting for $63.3 billion. Google Cloud pulled in $24.8 billion, a significant 23.8 percent increase from the first quarter. This shows there is massive demand for Google’s AI services. Google also earned $12.9 billion from its subscriptions, platforms, and devices portfolio, as well as $11.1 billion from YouTube ads. The company managed to goose that last one by more than 12 percent since last quarter as it made YouTube ads even longer.

A significant chunk of Google’s revenue comes from investments. When you subtract those non-cash earnings, Google’s operating cash flow for Q2 2026 was about $39.1 billion. That’s not the most the company has ever seen, but it’s a healthy 40 percent increase from Q2 2025. The problem is that Google’s spending has also gone up—a lot.

Before this latest round of financial updates, Google told investors it was expecting $180 billion to $190 billion in capital expenditures for 2026. Like other AI-obsessed tech behemoths, Google is burning cash on building and running the data centers powering its AI models. These numbers were already well above the $91 billion Google spent in 2025. The company now says it’s planning to spend as much as $205 billion on infrastructure in 2026.

As a result of its increasing AI demands, Google reports it spent $44.9 billion expanding its AI footprint in the second quarter, and you don’t need an accounting degree to know which number is larger. With $39.1 billion in cash income, this spending left Google with -$5.8 billion free cash flow.

To be clear, Google is still profitable—wildly so. It’s also sitting on a war chest of more than $100 billion. But free cash flow is an important metric that goes to the overall health of a business. This is the actual money a company takes in to fund its operations without selling investments or taking out new loans. So it’s notable that Google’s free cash flow has dipped into negative territory for the first time since going public.

Google’s stock price took a hit overnight on the news, dropping about 4.5 percent. It has continued to trend downward today.

Keep reading

Google’s New Recovery Option Stores a Clip of Your Face

Google’s newest account-recovery option asks for something no password ever required: a moving image of the account holder’s face, kept on the company’s servers.

Selfie video sign-in, launched July 23, records a short clip of the user turning their head on cue. When someone is locked out, Google matches a fresh clip against the stored one to decide whether to let them in.

The head movements are the security pitch.

They let Google’s systems tell a live face from a photograph or a prerecorded loop, the same trick it uses to turn away deepfakes.

Those checks all serve the accuracy of the match.

They say nothing about how much of the face Google stores, or for how long.

The company’s assurance covers only the storage. In its words, the video is “encrypted at rest, meaning it’s securely stored even when it’s not being used.”

Encryption at rest is a claim about how the file is stored. It says nothing about who can open it.

Its systems have to read the enrolled video to check any new face against it, so Google can decrypt the footage on demand. Encryption that only the account holder could open would rule that out, and Google has not claimed it.

Passkeys, hardware keys, and authenticator apps already restore a locked account with no biometric anywhere in the process.

Google added the face scan on top of them.

By default, the company says the clip stays with verification and recovery. A separate setting asks the user to release the same data toward developing Google’s products.

The feature is opt-in and reversible. Eligible accounts around the world can switch it on, and account holders can delete the stored clip at any time.

The company has not said how long it keeps that clip while the feature runs, or where the footage is handled.

Keep reading