Author: Manuel Bosque

Pennsylvania sued TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court on Aug. 11, 2026. According to the state’s complaint, the lawsuit accuses TikTok of violating state consumer protection laws and harming young users.

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The complaint says TikTok gave users and parents a misleading picture of harmful content and the safeguards available to younger users. It also alleges the company may have labeled some material as “infrequent” or “mild” to help secure a 12+ or 13+ rating, while using endless scroll, autoplay, and notifications on the For You feed to push reward-based, compulsive use.

Pennsylvania links that design to teen anxiety, depression, and body-image issues. The complaint points to teenTALK, a 2025 review that tied problematic use to higher anxiety and depression in users under 24, along with a study that, the filing says, found symptoms can rise after 20 minutes. It also cites figures in the complaint showing daily use climbing from 27.4 minutes in 2019 to 55.8 minutes in 2023.

If you follow policy, this case deserves a close look. TikTok called the claims “misleading and inaccurate” and pointed to screen-time limits and privacy settings for users under 16. Pennsylvania now joins more than a dozen states, Washington, D.C., California, and New York in a fight over infinite scroll, autoplay, feeds, and late-night alerts, not only the content itself. Researchers are still arguing over clinical addiction versus craving, tolerance, and withdrawal-like patterns of use. You can track the filing in Pennsylvania court records.

Apple finally showed its first foldable iPhone on September 9, 2026, and it’s called the iPhone Duo. Pre-orders open October 16, it goes on sale October 23, and pricing starts at $1,999.

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On the hardware side, the iPhone Duo has a 5.4-inch outer display, a 7.6-inch inner screen, an A20 Pro chip, dual batteries, and 48MP main and ultra-wide cameras. Storage starts at 256GB and goes all the way up to 2TB, with pricing beginning at $1,999. Still, iOS 27 may end up doing as much to define the Duo as the hardware itself. Apple is bringing in Split View, iPad-style layouts, sidebars, and smoother transitions when you open and close the phone, so apps sit more naturally on the larger screen.

Apple says the passport-style iPhone Duo is its thinnest iPhone yet at 5.2mm unfolded. It’s also supposed to hide the crease better, thanks to a 100-component hinge, custom adhesives, and a matte finish, although you’ll still notice the crease when you run a finger across it. At the same time, water resistance, stylus support, under-display selfie cameras, and crease reduction already show up on foldables from Samsung, Oppo, Google, and Honor, so when the Duo is closed, it feels more polished than groundbreaking.

If you’ve been waiting for a foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo looks like a solid one to buy. Foldables still account for a small part of the phone market, but Apple could give the category a real lift by bringing more visibility, stronger carrier backing, and better app support, mostly by making foldables feel finished instead of experimental. Durability questions, repair costs, software optimization, and how well it lands in Asian markets are still hanging there. You can pre-order the iPhone Duo from Apple on October 16.

Retroid took the wraps off the Retroid Pocket Duo today. It’s a dual-screen Android clamshell built for Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS-style play, and Retroid says it’ll start at $270, or $250 on preorder. That puts it under the better-known AYN Thor just as rising memory costs are pushing rival handheld prices higher.

On the hardware side, Retroid says the Retroid Pocket Duo packs a 5.5-inch 1080p 120Hz AMOLED main screen, plus a 4.5-inch 120Hz AMOLED second screen, Dragonwing Q-7790 graphics in the same ballpark as a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, expected Android 16, and a 6,000mAh battery. The idea is DS, 3DS, and a big chunk of PS2 and GameCube. There’s also the $150 Retroid Pocket Duo Lite, which drops down to dual 60Hz IPS panels and a QCS6125 that’s closer to a Snapdragon 665, and the Retroid Pocket Duo Lite still doesn’t have a ship date.

If you want the key emulation workloads without paying AYN Thor money, this feels like a pretty compelling buy. The AYN Thor now starts at around $260 and climbs to $330, $480, and $550, based on AYN’s current pricing, even though it still wins on raw specs with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, a 6-inch 1080p 120Hz AMOLED top screen, a 3.92-inch 60Hz AMOLED lower panel, and up to 16GB of RAM. Even so, Retroid is pretty clearly going after value here, taking aim at the AYN Thor, Ayaneo Pocket DS, and Anbernic RG DS Plus, at least until broader side-by-side testing shows what the real-world performance actually looks like.

You can preorder the Retroid Pocket Duo now from Retroid. The Retroid Pocket Duo Lite has only been announced so far.

Malone Lam is 22, from Singapore, and lives in Miami. In the US, he has pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge tied to a $263 million cryptocurrency theft and laundering operation that, according to court filings, ran from October 2023 through May 2025.

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The filings say Lam was part of a 12-person group that went after wealthy crypto holders using social engineering during that period. One of the biggest hits came in August 2024, when more than 4,100 Bitcoin were taken from a victim in Washington, DC, worth about $230 million at the time. Other thefts, the filings say, ranged from $800,000 to tens of millions. Lam could face up to 20 years in prison, and a status hearing is set for December 8.

Prosecutors say the group grew out of Minecraft connections involving Jeandiel Serrano and Veer Chetal. From there, investigators say, members posed as Google employees and staff at crypto exchanges, set off security alerts, and pressured victims into handing over access to their wallets. The money, prosecutors say, paid for 31 exotic cars, houses in Los Angeles, Miami, and the Hamptons, private jets, bodyguards, designer goods, and nightclub spending that reached $500,000. Lam was arrested in September 2024. Marlon Ferro, meanwhile, was sentenced to 6.5 years for handling burglaries when the scams didn’t work.

If you keep an eye on enforcement cases, this plea is one to watch, and the court filings are where to follow it. They show that associates have already pleaded guilty, that Veer Chetal is expected to testify, and that 12 more defendants, some believed to be in Dubai, were charged in May 2025.

Apple says Apple Reference Image is a new opt-in feature for the iPhone 18 Pro. It’s meant to help you check whether a photo has been changed after it was taken, and it’s arriving ahead of the iPhone 18 Pro lineup going on sale September 18.

Here’s how Apple says it works: if you shoot in Reference mode, the main camera sensor cryptographically signs the image data at the pixel level. Apple’s Private Cloud Compute then develops that into what the company describes as an unalterable reference image. You can look at it alongside the standard photo, compare it against later edits, and treat it like a digital negative at a time when synthetic images and heavy manipulation are getting easier to make and easier to spread.

That could matter a lot for photojournalism, documentary work, or evidentiary photography. But it won’t tell you what’s true. At best, it may show whether the image file itself was altered. It can’t confirm whether a caption is false, whether something important was left out of the frame, whether the composition is misleading, who posted it, when it was taken, or whether the claims attached to it hold up.

Apple is also going its own way here instead of using the broader C2PA standard. That may make the Apple side of the experience smoother, but it also raises questions about how well this will work across other systems. Apple says support for Google’s SynthID is coming later this year.

If you care about having a camera record you can trust a little more, keep an eye on this.

Apple says the iPhone 18 Pro lineup goes on sale more than 65 countries and regions. Apple Reference Image won’t launch in China, and users in the EU won’t be able to capture in Reference mode on iPhone 18 Pro hardware, even though iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 will still be able to develop and view reference images.

Right now, Apple hasn’t announced the iPhone 16, iPhone 17, iPhone 17e, iPhone Air, or iPhone 18 Pro. It also hasn’t confirmed any iPhone price increases, no matter what some reports are saying about Apple quietly bumping prices.

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What those reports mostly hinge on is a $100 increase on several older iPhones. One example even lists an iPhone 16 at $799, then argues it’s a worse deal than a supposed iPhone 17e because the 17e would have more storage and a newer chip. Maybe. But until Apple actually launches those phones or posts pricing on its own site, that belongs in the rumor pile, not the news column. And yes, even if the same report says the iPhone 16 would still have better cameras and faster charging, that doesn’t make the pricing claim official.

Still, this is something to keep an eye on. Apple has been dealing with higher hardware costs, and multiple outlets have already reported that the iPhone 15 Pro Max cost more to build because of parts like the A17 Pro and the new telephoto system. Apple also gave us a pretty clear example with the iPhone 15 staying flat while the iPhone 15 Pro Max went up by $100. That suggests the company may attach price increases to higher-end features. I’ve been tracking these changes, and that explanation lands as a lot more believable than claims based only on shortages or on unverified iPhone 18 Pro Max battery numbers.

If you want confirmed pricing, check Apple’s official iPhone pages. That’s still the cleanest source. Future models could absolutely get more expensive, though, with semiconductor supply, geopolitics, tariffs, exchange rates, micro-OLED displays, and a bigger push into in-house Apple silicon all in the mix.

Ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, Donald Trump has floated the idea of sending every adult American citizen a $5,000 payment if Republicans take both the House and the Senate.

Speaking in Dallas, Trump called it a “dividend” and urged supporters to vote “as if I’m on the ballot,” even though he isn’t. Do the math and the plan lands somewhere around $1.2 trillion to $1.35 trillion for roughly 240 million adults, added to a national debt that’s already above $40 trillion.

Trump argues tariff revenue could help cover it. The numbers don’t come close. Gross customs revenue from January 2025 through June 2026 came to about $284 billion, and analysts say net revenue was closer to $118 billion once refunds and interest are counted, which still leaves a gap of about $1.08 trillion.

For anyone who follows U.S. politics closely, this is one to watch, mostly because it looks tailored to drive Republican turnout. Critics immediately called it vote-buying. Trump has tried versions of this pitch before too, including a $2,000 tariff rebate and a “DOGE dividend,” and neither of those ever became law.

There’s also the basic question of whether it could happen at all. Congress would have to approve it under the U.S. Constitution’s Appropriations Clause. Legal analysts are split. Economists are warning about inflation and larger deficits. Sen. Bernie Moreno has backed the idea, Democrats have brushed it off, and even some Republicans don’t seem comfortable with it.

Google Maps on Android Auto seems to have picked up a strange intermittent bug: the speedometer disappears, and for some people the speed limit indicator disappears right along with it.

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User reports make the whole thing harder to pin down. It can show up one day, then be gone the next. One phone has it, another doesn’t. People have floated a few theories, including a specific Google Maps or Android Auto version, account settings, a server-side test, or switching between beta and stable builds. So far, though, nothing’s been confirmed.

The timing makes it even more frustrating. The speedometer reportedly only started reaching beta testers in July 2026, and it still hasn’t rolled out to everyone. So some of you are losing a feature that only just arrived. At the same time, other complaints about missing stop signs, traffic lights, and live traffic point to a wider Google Maps rendering issue, and that may overlap with an older traffic bug.

If you use Google Maps a lot in the car, keep an eye on this. Google hasn’t acknowledged the problem, and it’s still not clear which phones , cars, versions, accounts, or regions are affected.

Google Maps and Android Auto are both available on Google Play. Until Google says something, all you can really do is try different versions or wait it out. That’s happening while Android Auto 17.3 and 17.4 are also rolling out to fix separate crashes and connection failures that have reportedly affected Waze users too.

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