Never underestimate the power of a middle-aged British man with time on his hands. I should know; my dad is one.
My second-favorite middle-aged British man, who goes by Atomic Shrimp online, leverages that time to be the most entertaining scambaiter I’ve ever seen. (For the uninitiated, scambaiting is the art of purposely playing along with a scam to waste as much of the scammer’s time as possible. It’s great.)
Apple’s federal lobbying spending surged in 2025, reaching a record $10 million after a nearly 30% year-over-year increase. Here are the details.
Apple breaks the $10M barrier in federal lobbying
Earlier today, Bloomberg reported on the overall increase in tech-sector lobbying spending. Notably absent from the report was Apple, which is usually among the industry’s top lobbying spenders.
9to5Mac checked the US Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act records and found that Apple spent an even $10 million on federal lobbying in 2025. That is a 27.9% increase from 2024, and marks the company’s highest annual lobbying total on record.
Källa: Apple spent a record $10 million on U.S. lobbying in 2025 – 9to5Mac
In addition to denying X and xAI’s demand, the judge also decried the case’s excessive discovery requests and disputes. Here are the details.
Court’s patience wears thin
Last year, X and xAI filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, following Elon Musk’s claim that their partnership to integrate ChatGPT into iOS was preventing competing AI apps from succeeding in the App Store. The accusation was promptly debunked by X’s own users.
Källa: Judge denies Musk’s bid to force OpenAI to hand over source code – 9to5Mac
Early last year, Apple agreed to settle a class action lawsuit regarding ‘unlawful and intentional recording’ of conversations with Siri. The issue dates back to 2019, and the company denies any wrongdoing. Since then, Apple has taken efforts to improve Siri privacy, but it still settled this case to go forward.
Claims started being accepted mid last year, and now users are starting to receive their payouts.
To qualify for the settlement, you must’ve purchased a Siri-enabled Apple device between September 17, 2014 and December 31, 2024 and experienced an ‘unintended Siri activation.’
Källa: iPhone users begin to receive payouts from $95 million Siri privacy settlement – 9to5Mac
A partial government shutdown on Friday is looking more likely after a second fatal shooting in Minnesota involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Soon after the killing of US citizen Alex Pretti, some Senate Democrats who supported the bipartisan deal to reopen the government in November said they would oppose a six-bill funding package if it includes the Department of Homeland Security.
That leaves the broader funding measure short of 60 votes; Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Saturday night that “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.”
Källa: Second Minnesota shooting by ICE raises chances of a partial government shutdown
The iPhone 18 Pro’s Dynamic Island is changing. And now, thanks to a new leak, we may know exactly how much smaller it’s going to be. Here are the details.
iPhone 18 Pro’s new Dynamic Island could be 35% smaller
Until recently, rumors about the iPhone 18 Pro’s Dynamic Island cutout have been consistent in only one way: they’ve said that it’s changing.
Some sources indicated the change would be more radical, with the cutout shrinking to a hole-punch size and moving to the top-left corner. Others, however, indicated we’ll simply get a smaller version of the existing pill-shaped design.
Källa: Here’s the new size of iPhone 18 Pro’s Dynamic Island, per leaker – 9to5Mac
