Apple’s resistance to Cupertino’s proposed «head tax» on employees paid off because the city backed down from putting it to a vote in November. Mayor Darcy Paul says the city wants more input from businesses before revisiting the tax. Now he wants Apple to help fund a hyperloop line in Cupertino. From the Silicon Valley Business Journal:

[Mayor Paul] said he believes there’s a strong possibility that Silicon Valley tech companies like Apple would ‘heavily subsidize’ construction of a cutting-edge transportation solution in their own back yard and that no new tax should be imposed until that possibility is fleshed out.

Apparently Paul thinks Elon Musk’s hyperloop concept—a sealed tube that transports people at high speed—is the way to bring in more tax revenue.

Japan Display Inc., a Japanese manufacturer known for producing iPhone screens, unveiled some futuristic technology at a recent event.

The presentation, perhaps unintentionally, highlighted the company’s challenges in reducing its reliance on screens for mobile phones, which account for 80 percent of revenue. Samsung Electronics Co. and Sharp Corp. earlier this week reported earnings that took a hit from sluggish global smartphone sales and JDI is due to report first-quarter results on Aug. 8. In addition, Apple is shifting to next-generation organic light-emitting diode displays, which JDI doesn’t produce in mass quantities.

I love me some futurism, and it’s good to see Japan Display start to branch out now that we seem to be in peak smartphone.

CNET looked at Apple’s track record over the past few years to pick the most likely date for the new iPhone announcement and came up with Wednesday, September 12th. That takes into account the days of the week and time in September Apple usually chooses for its iPhone events. Next, they looked at prior announcement proximity to Labor Day. They say,

For the last six years, Apple held its iPhone announcements on either a Tuesday or Wednesday, and usually no later than the second full week of September…For 2018, Labor Day falls on Monday, September 3. So, if Apple follows its recent pattern, the company would announce its new iPhones the following Tuesday or Wednesday: September 11 and September 12.

Considering the negative connotations that go along with September 11th in the United States, that leaves the 12th. Since first deliveries follow about a week and a half later, that means we’ll have new iPhones in our hands on September 21st.

New payment systems abound. Artificial Intelligence mania continues. AIs interrogating other AIs and probing their minds. AIs doing cancer diagnosis. And mostly right but sometimes wrong. Facial recognition bites back. Can we keep up?  It’s all in Particle Debris page 2.