US DOJ & TikTok Reach $400M Settlement Over COPPA - DTH

[music] >> These are the daily tech headlines for the week ending Saturday, August 22nd, 2026. I'm Sarah Lane. Let's catch up on some news. TikTok and ByteDance agreed to pay $400 million to settle a US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission lawsuit over children's privacy. The case accused TikTok of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and a previous 2019 consent order. The settlement doesn't require TikTok to admit wrongdoing, but lets the company avoid more litigation. This is one of the biggest children's privacy settlements on records. The Financial Times sources say ByteDance is training a massive AI model with as many as 10 trillion parameters, putting it in the range of the largest frontier systems. The exact size could still change because the model is early in training, but ByteDance appears to want its seed AI team catching up to and Anthropic and other top labs. It also shows China's AI race is not just about cheaper open models, but pushing scale, too. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple is cutting more than 200 jobs across its Siri, Vision Pro, immersive video, and gaming teams as it shifts more resources toward AI and new devices. About 100 jobs are being cut from the Vision Pro team, including much of the headset's gaming team and part of the expensive immersive video group. Another roughly 100 are coming from Siri and software teams. Apple says this restructuring will create at least some new roles. Walmart is adding tap-to-pay at Walmart and Sam's Club stores in the US, including Apple Pay and Google Pay. The rollout starts August 24th at select locations, expanding to all stores and clubs by the end of this year, and reaching fuel stations by mid-2027. After years of trying to push customers towards Walmart Pay and other in-house options, it does sound like Walmart is admitting people just want to tap their phone or card and move on. Open AI cut prices for some GPT 5.6 developer models as businesses keep a closer eye on those AI bills. Luna, its fastest and lowest cost model, is down 80%. Terra is down 20%. The flagship Seoul model price stays unchanged. The interesting part is that Open AI says GPT 5.6 helped make its own infrastructure more efficient, including work that reduced serving costs by about 20%. Micron's AI boom is turning Boise, Idaho into a bigger chip hub. The company announced Micron Research Labs, a $10 billion research center headquartered in Boise as part of its broader US memory chip expansion. CNBC reports the build-out is already showing up in jobs, construction, housing pressure, and local wealth tied to Micron's stock. So, it's a semiconductor story, but also a hometown transformation story. In yet more Idaho news, TechCrunch sources say the Idaho National Laboratory is reviewing whether Chinese-made light detection and ranging sensors, we know them better as lidar, could create security risks if they become common in US vehicles. The concern is not just about supply chain dependence. Lawmakers and industry execs worry about possible spying, data collection, or mass disruption of sensors used in autonomous vehicles. Chinese suppliers like Hesai and RoboSense have driven lidar prices way down, and US automakers are interested. More than 9,300 exposed Amazon Web Services access keys found online between August of 2022 and August of 2026 are reportedly still active. These aren't harmless leftovers. Valid keys can let attackers access cloud services, steal data, spin up infrastructure, or run up costs inside corporate accounts. A good reminder that leaked cloud credentials need to be treated like an active incident. China approved Geely's commercial aerospace arm, GeeSpace, to run a two-year commercial satellite Internet of Things trial. GeeSpace already has 64 GeeSat satellites in orbit and says the network handles about 340 million communication requests per day with use in vehicles, shipping, energy, water systems, and fishing fleets. China's private space sector is growing as it moves satellite operators from launches and constellations into regulated telecom services. Reliable leaker Bill Bilkan of Deal Labs points to Microsoft's Xbox Series X 25 limited edition console costing $900 and launching November 27th, which would coincide with Black Friday. Microsoft previously confirmed the translucent green 25th anniversary console and matching controller, but it hasn't officially announced the price or the dates. >> [music] >> For more analysis of the tech news of the day and the week, subscribe to dailytechnewsshow.com. We do it every day, people. You can find show notes and links to all these headlines there as well. I'm Sarah Lane. Thanks for listening. Enjoy your weekend. Talk to you Monday.