So you’ll no longer be pulling up in your Apple Car. But you could soon be coming home to an Apple Robot that follows you around the house. Take it from the guy in ER with a vacuum cleaner stuck to him: don’t get any ideas when your wife is away.

The lowdown

• 🤖 Google is planning to charge for an AI-powered search engine.

• 🕺 Skydance is in exclusive merger talks with Paramount.

• 🥇 Gold sets another record above $2,300.

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Tobin tax

Proposed by James Tobin, the American economist and Nobel prize winner, a Tobin tax is a tax on currency exchanges to discourage excessive and speculative trading. He suggested it as a way of stabilizing currency markets after the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates collapsed in 1971.

Imagine you’re exchanging money to go on a trip abroad. Normally, you'd just pay whatever the current exchange rate is. But with a Tobin tax, there would be a small tax added to that exchange. By making it slightly more expensive to trade currencies frequently, the hope is to discourage short-term speculation and promote more stable, long-term investment.

The Tobin tax hasn’t yet been imposed, given how difficult it is to get international agreement. But in 2013, Italy became the first country to extend its financial-transaction tax to another area: high-frequency share trading.

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Apple explores home robotics as the next big thing

Apple is considering a push ($) into personal robots, an area it thinks could become one of its ‘next big things’, according to Bloomberg which cites people familiar with the matter.

Engineers have been exploring a mobile robot that can follow users around the house as well as a table-top home device that uses robotics to move a display around. It’s not yet clear which approach Apple might take, or whether either will be released. Although the smart display is much further developed than the mobile robot, it has been added and removed from the company’s product roadmap over the years.

Apple has also been exploring other home electronics ideas for the home at a secret facility near its Cupertino campus, which looks like the inside of a house. Projects include a home hub device with an iPad-like display.

The push into home electronics comes as Apple is under growing pressure to find new sources of revenue. It recently scrapped its electric car project and its Vision Pro goggles are expected to take years to become a major money maker.

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