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Greetings! Your latest quick tech update is here:
☀️ On this day: On August 22, 1932, the BBC began making its own television programmes from a basement studio in Broadcasting House, London, using John Logie Baird's 30-line mechanical system. The opening broadcast featured Baird himself alongside a performing sea lion, a ju-jitsu demonstration and a painter at work. The picture was 30 lines tall and the BBC abandoned the mechanical system entirely by September 1935 in favour of electronic television.
What’s happening:
💸 Amazon raises Echo, Kindle, and Fire TV prices
💰 TikTok pays $400 million over kids' privacy violations
🍎 Apple cuts 200 jobs across Siri and Vision Pro
☀️ Tesla quietly killed its solar roof after ten years
🏃 China's new robot runs faster than Usain Bolt
+ 📊 Daily poll and results
+ 📈 Trending tools and resources
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Hand-picked news:
💸 Amazon raises Echo, Kindle, and Fire TV prices ↗️LINK
Amazon raised prices across Echo, Kindle, Fire TV, and Eero lines by up to 60 percent, blaming significant increases in memory and storage component costs in a statement to Fortune.
Cheap devices took the biggest hit. The Echo Dot jumped from $49.99 to $79.99, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max rose to $84.99, and the base Kindle now costs $149.99.
Apple raised HomePod Mini prices this summer for the same reason. The AI memory crunch keeps reaching further down the shelf, and Amazon's cheapest gadgets absorbed the worst of it.
💰 TikTok pays $400 million over kids' privacy violations ↗️LINK
TikTok and ByteDance settled with the Justice Department for $400 million, paying $300 million immediately and another $100 million once the company's prior FTC agreement gets vacated.
The 2024 suit accused TikTok of letting under-13s create accounts, collecting data through Kids Mode, and repeatedly ignoring parent requests to delete their children's information.
The DoJ credited TikTok's ownership overhaul and new safeguards. The app also just regained access to federal work devices, so the year is going considerably better than the last few.
🍎 Apple cuts 200 jobs across Siri and Vision Pro ↗️LINK
Apple cut over 200 positions, roughly 100 from the Vision Pro team and 100 more from Siri and Intelligent Systems Experience, the group handling AI integration across devices, Bloomberg reported.
Apple confirmed the cuts and said it will create new roles while eliminating others. Sources say the company is reshuffling to concentrate on newer AI efforts and upcoming devices.
Apple raised Mac and iPad prices this summer, launched a leasing program, and now trims the headset team. The AI buildout that drove up memory costs is reshaping Apple from several directions.
☀️ Tesla quietly killed its solar roof after ten years ↗️LINK
Tesla scrubbed the solar roof from its website, with the product URL and all support pages now redirecting to the generic solar landing page. Electrek reported the disappearance first.
Tesla targeted 1,000 installs per week but hit roughly 20 to 40 by 2022. Custom tiles required custom manufacturing equipment, so low volume kept per-unit costs high. Some quotes reached $200,000.
Owners also reported underproduction, warping parts, and melting underlayment. A roof that gets hot and makes less power than promised turns out to be a tough sell at luxury prices.
🏃 China's new robot runs faster than Usain Bolt ↗️LINK
Unitree revealed Superman on August 17, a prototype humanoid the company says hits 12.66 meters per second and clears a 2 meter standing jump, beating both human records.
The reveal landed two days before Unitree's Shanghai debut, where shares closed 460% above the 150.80 yuan IPO price and valued the robot maker near $50 billion.
Unitree built Superman in just over three months and gave it no hands or grippers, so the fastest humanoid alive can outsprint Bolt but cannot pick anything up.
Today’s Poll:
Vote and find out about the result tomorrow.
Yesterday’s Poll Result:
Do you think apps should be forced to kill infinite scroll?
A) Yes - 71% 🏆
B) No - 29%
Reader’s opinion:
“YouTube is already doing it. Already you can no longer watch YouTube shorts endlessly. It's a rabbit hole of wasted time, hours can disappear that way so yes if they don't do it vountarily, apps should be forced to.”
“Parents have to step in at some point. I do, however, very much think the other "features" such as the beauty filters and the algorithms themselves need to be addressed in the apps, as well as their addictive nature in general.”
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