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Apple has revamped its app store policies in the European Union with hopes of fending off escalating fines under the 27-nation bloc’s digital competition regulations.It’s a last-minute bid by the iPhone maker to avoid further charges following a 500 million euro ($585 million) penalty in April. The bloc’s executive Commission punished Apple for preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store, and gave it a 60-day deadline, which expired Thursday, to avoid additional, periodic fines.The changes made by Apple will make it easier for app makers to point users to better deals on digital products and options to pay for them outside of Apple’s own App Store, including other websites, apps or alternative app stores.The California company is also rolling out a two-tier system of fees to accommodate app developers that want to use alternative payments.“The European Commission is requiring Apple to make a series of additional changes to the App Store,” Apple said in a statement. “We disagree with this outcome and plan to appeal.”The commission noted Apple’s announcement and “will now assess these new business terms for DMA compliance,” referring to the EU’s Digital Markets Act. The rulebook was designed to rein in the power of big tech companies under threat of hefty fines worth up to 10% of a company’s global annual revenue.Among the DMA’s provisions are requirements that developers inform customers of cheaper purchasing options, and direct them to those offers.Apple’s restrictions preventing developers from steering users to outside payment channels had been fiercely opposed by some companies. It’s the reason, for example, Spotify removed the in-app payment option to avoid having to pay a commission of up to 30% on digital subscriptions bought through iOS. Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Shares in Nike, Inc. (NYSE: NKE) are trading much higher this morning after the company announced its Q4 2025 results. Yet those results saw Nike post some of its worst earnings in a while, along with a warning that President Trumps tariffs would cost the company $1 billion in the near term. Heres what you need to know about Nikes latest earnings and why the stock is up. Nike reports a revenue decline Yesterday, the iconic shoemaker announced its Q4 2025 and full-year fiscal 2025 earnings. The results werent great. For fiscal 2025, Nike reported full-year revenues of $46.3 billiona 10% decline from fiscal 2024. The companys Q4 2025 revenues totaled $11.1 billiondown 12% from the same quarter a year earlier. The company also posted an earnings per share of 14 cents for its Q4. That EPS was down significantly from the 99 cents the company posted in the same quarter a year earlier. However, perhaps most alarming was the fact that Nike confirmed it would take a $1 billion hit in its current 2026 fiscal year due to the tariffs imposed by President Trump on countries worldwide. The two countries where Nike makes a significant amount of its goods are China and Vietnam. Earlier this year, Trump placed a 46% tariff on goods manufactured in Vietnam and a triple-digit rate on goods made in China. He later reduced both rates, temporarily, to 10% and 30% respectively. Still, Nike chief financial officer Matt Friend said on Nikes earnings call that the tariffs currently in place will result in a new and meaningful cost to Nike, notes CNBC, adding that the company estimates that a gross incremental cost increase to Nike of approximately $1 billion. So why are Nike shares up? You would think that Nikes warning of up to $1 billion in tariff-related costs and its pretty dismal Q4 results would send the stock down, not up. But NKE stock is currently up, and significantly, as of the time of the writing. In premarket trading, NKE shares are currently up over 10% to $68.85. There are a few likely reasons for this. First is that, while Nikes Q4 wasnt anything to write home about, the company actually came in above most Wall Street estimates. Analysts had expected Nike to have a pretty poor quarter already, and indeed, as noted by CNBC, Nike had previously said its Q4 would be the low point of its turnaround. This turnaround involves Nikes pivot to return its focus to athletes and shift away from its recent history of trying to cater to the wider lifestyle segment of the population. The turnaround was initiated after Nike brought in a new CEO, Elliott Hill, last October. For its Q4, analysts had been expecting revenue of $10.72 billion and an EPS of 13 cents. So though Nikes Q4 results were disappointing, especially compared to earlier quarters, its actual revenue of $11.1 billion and adjusted EPS of 14 cents came in above expectationssomething investors typically reward. But another reason the stock is likely rising in premarket trading is also related to that $1 billion hit Nike is expecting. Though the company says it expects the 10-figure hit this financial year, CFO Matt Friend also said Nike expects to fully mitigate Trumps tariff costs over time. Nike will mitigate these tariff costs by using a three-pronged approach: adjusting its supply chain sources getting its suppliers to absorb some of the costs raising prices on U.S consumers later this year NKE shares are still red for the year Despite Nikes 10% price surge this morning, shares in the company are still down significantly for the year. As of yesterdays close, Nike shares were sitting at $62.54down more than 17% for the year. However, that was still significantly above its April lows of nearly $52 per share after President Trump unleashed his Liberation Day tariffs on the world. Over the past 12 months, Nikes shares were down more than 33% as of yesterdays close.
Category:
E-Commerce
If a Gen Alpha tween said, Let him cook, would you know what that meant? No? AI doesnt either. A research paper written by soon-to-be ninth grader Manisha Mehta was presented this week at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Athens. The paper details how four leading AI modelsGPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and Llama 3all struggled to fully understand slang from Gen Alpha, defined as those born between 2010 and 2024. Mehta, along with 24 of her friends (ranging in age from 11 to 14), created a dataset of 100 Gen Alpha phrases. These included expressions that can mean totally different things depending on contextfor example: “Fr fr let him cook” (encouraging) and “Let him cook lmaoo (mocking). According to the researchers, the LLMs had trouble discerning the difference. In particular, AI struggled with identifying “masked harassment,” which is concerning given the increasing reliance on AI-powered content moderation systems. “The findings highlight an urgent need for improved AI safety systems to better protect young users, especially given Gen Alphas tendency to avoid seeking help due to perceived adult incomprehension of their digital world,” the study reads. It wasnt just the AI models that performed poorly; parents didnt do much better. The parent group scored 68% in basic understanding of Gen Alpha slang, nearly identical to the top-performing LLM, Claude (68.1%). While the LLMs did slightly better at identifying content and safety risks in the language, only Gen Alpha members themselves scored highly in understanding the slang, its context, and potential risks. Its nothing new for young people to feel misunderstood by their parents, but now the gap is widening. Members of Gen Alpha, born post-iPhone and known as the iPad generation, have grown up online. Their native language, often sourced from online spaces (most notably gaming), evolves so quickly that whats popular today may disappear within a month. Mehtas research shows that parentsand even professional moderatorsare likely to miss context shifts in comment sections. For example: OMGG you ate that up fr, versus You ate that up ig [skull]. The implications of the study suggest that parents might recognize only a third of the times their child is being bullied in comments, even if theyre closely monitoring their online activity. Simply put, the systems meant to keep kids safe online dont speak their language.
Category:
E-Commerce
Community members whose local Kroger stores are on the chopping block are urging the company to reconsider. Residents in cities impacted by the grocery chain’s recent announcement of store closures, including in Abingdon, Virginia; Kingsport, Tennessee; Gassaway, West Virginia; and Charlottesville, Virginia, have started petitions in hopes of convincing the company to reverse course and keep the stores open. In its Q1 earnings call last week, the grocery retailer announced that it would be closing 60 stores in the next 18 months. Kroger Co (NYSE: KR) expects a modest financial benefit from this decision, but community members losing their stores are concerned about these closures impact on employee livelihoods and food access. Krogers, if you leave you are creating a huge hole in our community, one signatory commented on a petition with over 1,500 signatures. We shop with you specifically and have supported you for decades. Please dont abandon us. Other signatories cite their positive experiences with store employees as a reason to want the stores to remain open. Kroger has stated in its earnings call that affected employees would be offered jobs at other locations. When contacted by Fast Company, a spokesperson declined to comment more specifically on the fates of employees or on the petitions from community members. Food workers’ union involvement Many of these petitions have been started or are supported by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400 Union, a local union chapter that represents Kroger workers in six states and Washington, D.C. Four stores whose employees are represented by the union are planned to close later this year. Through these petitions, the union hopes to show the company that union members and affected communities are united in opposing the closures. “Lets be clear: Kroger is abandoning our communities just so their Wall Street investors can make an extra buck, UFCW Local 400 wrote in a statement to Fast Company. We think our jobs and our access to fresh food are worth more than that and we shouldnt be paying the price for Krogers decisions. In some areas, the union notes, the local Kroger store is the only traditional grocery store left. The problem with food deserts The USDA estimates that 18.8 million people6.1% of the U.S. populationlive in low-income areas more than one mile from a grocery store, or in low-access tracts more than 10 miles from a grocery store. Studies have linked limited access to fresh and nutritious food to negative health outcomes, such as diabetes, cardiovascular issues, and obesity. Kroger has not provided a full list of the 60 stores that will close. However, many of the doomed locations have been revealed by local media reports. “We urge Kroger to reverse course and continue to operate these much-needed stores for the benefit of our members and the customers who depend on them, wrote UFCW Local 700. Krogers stock price jumped from $69.43 to $72.00 between the start of its Friday Q1 earnings call and start of trade the following Monday but has since been slightly trending down.
Category:
E-Commerce
Five years ago, I bought an e-bike. At the time, the motor-equipped two-wheelers were burdened with an iffy reputation. Was it way easier to get up a hill on one than on a bike without a battery? Absolutely. Did that mean people who rode them were lazy or even cheaters? Some cycling enthusiasts thought so. But what if the boost provided by your e-bike motivated you to make longer trips and more of themall powered, in part, by your own pedaling? Having logged almost 10,000 miles on my Gazelle, Im certain its been a guilt-free boon to my well-being. Data backs me up. I thought about that recently while reading about a new study conducted at MITs Media Lab. Researchers divided subjects ages 18 to 39 into three groups and had them write essays on topics drawn from the SAT questions answered by college applicants, such as Do works of art have the power to change people’s lives? One group relied entirely on unassisted brainpower to complete the essay. A second group could use a search engine. And the third could call on ChatGPT. The study subjects wore EEG helmets that captured their brain activity as they worked. After analyzing that data, the researchers concluded that access to ChatGPT didnt just make composing an essay easier. It made it too easy, in ways that might negatively impact peoples long-term ability to think for themselves. In some cases, the ChatGPT users merely cut and pasted text the chatbot had generated; not surprisingly, they exhibited little sense of ownership over the finished product compared to those who didnt have a computerized ghost on tap. Due to the instant availability of the response to almost any question, LLMs can possibly make a learning process feel effortless, and prevent users from attempting any independent problem solving, the researchers wrote in their report. By simplifying the process of obtaining answers, LLMs could decrease student motivation to perform independent research and generate solutions. Lack of mental stimulation could lead to a decrease in cognitive development and negatively impact memory. The study reached those sobering conclusions in the context of young people growing up in an era of bountiful access to AI. But the alarms it set off also left me worried about the technologys impact on my own brain. I have long considered AI an e-bike for my mindsomething that speeds it through certain tasks, thereby letting it go places previously out of reach. What if its actually so detrimental to my mental acuity that I havent even noticed my critical faculties withering away? After pondering that worst-case scenario for a while, I calmed down. Yes, consistently opting for the most expedient way to accomplish work rather than the one that produces the best results is no way to live. Sure, being overly reliant on ChatGPTor any form of generative AIhas its hazards. But Im pretty confident its possible to embrace AI without your reasoning skills atrophying. No single task can represent all the ways people engage with AI, and the one the MIT researchers choseessay writingis particularly fraught. The best essays reflect the unique insight of a particular person: When students take the actual SAT for real, they arent even allowed to bring a highlighter, let alone a bot. We dont need EGG helmets to tell us that people who paste ChatGPTs work into an essay theyve nominally written have lost out on the learning opportunity presented by grappling with a topic, reaching conclusions, and expressing them for oneself. However, ChatGPT and its LLM brethren also excel at plenty of jobs too mundane to feel guilty about outsourcing. Each week, for example, I ask Anthropics Claude to clean up some of the HTML required to produce this newsletter. It handles this scut work faster and more accurately than I can. Im not sure what my brain waves would reveal, but Im happy to reinvest any time not spent on production drudgery into more rewarding aspects of my job. Much of the time, AI is most useful not as a solution but a starting point. Almost never would I ask a chatbot about factual information, get an answer, and call it a day. Theyre still too error-prone for that. Yet their ease of use makes them an inviting way to get rolling on projects. I think of them as facilitating the research before the old-school research I usually end up doing. And sometimes, AI is a portal into adventures I might otherwise never have taken. So far in 2025, my biggest rabbit hole has been vibe codingcoming up with ideas for apps and then having an LLM craft the necessary software using programming tools I dont even understand. Being exposed to technologies such as React and TypeScript has left me wanting to learn enough about them to do serious coding on my own. If I do, AI can take credit for sparking that ambition. Im only so Pollyanna-ish about all this. Over time, the people who see AI as an opportunity to do more thinkingnot less of itcould be a lonely minority. If so, the MIT researchers can say We told you so. Case in point: At the same time the MIT study was in the news, word broke that VC titan Andreessen Horowitz had invested $15 million in Cluely, a truly dystopian startup whose manifesto boasts its aim of helping people use AI to cheat at everything based on the theory that the future wont reward effort. Its origin story involves cofounder and CEO Roy Lee being suspended from Columbia University after developing an app for cheating on technical employment interviews. Which makes me wonder how Lee would feel about his own candidates misleading their way into job offers. With any luck, the future will turn out to punish Cluelys cynicism. But the companys existenceand investors willingness to shower it with moneysays worse things about humankind than about AI. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky
Category:
E-Commerce
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