This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the fragile state of your connected devices, follow Jennifer Pattison Tuohy.
Haptics tech company Taction sued Apple in 2021, alleging it infringed two of its patents. Now a federal jury in San Diego has awarded Taction over $5.7 billion in damages.
Middle schoolers, likely blocked from other apps and social networks, apparently turned the Spotify comment section under an episode of NPR's Wild Card into an impromptu group chat.
As reports of OpenAI's models breaking containment, hacking sites, and generally getting out of control pile up, the company has made the decision to pause training of its most powerful models.
One of the questionable limitations of the iPhone 18 Pro's new main camera with a variable aperture is that you're limited to just four settings in the native iOS' camera app in manual mode: f/1.
Apple is expected to announce more hardware before the end of the year following the debut of the iPhone 18 Pro and folding iPhone Duo earlier this month.
