In a few months, you'll no longer be able to rent a Nintendo 3DS to guide you around the Louvre and tell you about the pieces exhibited in it. The website Nintendo Everything has spotted a notice in Louvre's official website, stating that the Nintendo 3DS console audio guides "will go out of operation in September 2025." It also stated that the 3DS will be replaced by a new system, but the museum has yet to reveal more details about it. Is the Louvre swapping the 3DS for the Switch or a more traditional audioguide device? Guess we'll find out in a few months. 

The Louvre has been offering Nintendo 3DS audio guides since 2012 as a €6 rental. It can tell you about exhibits in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. It can also tell you about the history of the palace and not just the artworks inside it, as well as give you access to high-resolution images of select artwork so you can zoom in and see the smallest details. But if you've ever gotten lost inside big museums, you may perhaps consider its geolocation tracking capability its best feature. The Louvre is massive, and with 782,910 square feet of space to explore, it's very much possible to lose your way and not find an exit when you need it the most. 

Nintendo's Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrated how the 3DS worked as a Louvre audio guide and location tracker over a decade ago, and you can watch it below.

Volkswagen has recalled 2025 ID.Buzz electric vans, because their rear seats are only configured for two people but are wide enough to fit three. According to the NHTSA note (PDF) found by Electrek, Volkswagen is recalling 5,637 vehicles, which were manufactured between September 18, 2024 and February 11, 2025. The removable third-row of the 2025 ID.Buzz are only fitted with seatbelts for two people. However, its seating surface width exceeds the value specified for two occupants under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208, which sets the standards to reduce the number of deaths in the event of a crash. 

In other words, the third row of the 2025 ID.Buzz is wide enough to require three seatbelts. As it is, it'll be very easy to fit a third person in, and they will have no protection while the vehicle is on the road, increasing their likelihood of getting injured or dying if they get into an accident. Volkswagen intends to fix the issue by installing permanent "unpadded trim parts" to limit the surface width where passengers can sit on the rear bench. The 2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz electric van was released in the US in November 2024 and has a starting price of $60,000. It has an EPA-estimated range of 234 miles on a full charge and comes in several possible color schemes. 

Volkswagen

In an earnings call for the quarter ending in March, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company expects to pay around $900 million for US tariffs for the months of April to June. Apple saw limited impacts from tariffs for the months January through March, which doesn't come as a surprise since most of the government's new import taxes didn't exist before April. The company was also able to optimize its supply chain and inventory before then. Cook admitted that Apple can't give a precise estimate of the impact tariffs will have on the company in the coming months because the Trump administration's rules could still change the future. 

"For the June quarter, currently, we are not able to precisely estimate the impact of tariffs as we are uncertain of potential future actions prior to the end of the quarter," the CEO explained. The $900 million figure came from the company's estimates, assuming "current global tariff rates, policies and applications do not change for the balance of the quarter and no new tariffs are added." Investors seemed relieved that Apple is only slated to spend $900 million to pay the new taxes, which is a drop in the bucket for a company valued at over $3 trillion. When an inventor asked what tariffs would look like for Apple after June, though, Cook said: "I don’t want to predict the future, because I’m not sure what will happen with the tariffs."

"For our part, we will manage the company the way we always have, with thoughtful and deliberate decisions, with a focus on investing for the long term, and with dedication to innovation and the possibilities it creates," Cook assured investors. Apple posted a quarterly revenue of $95.4 billion, up 5 percent year over year, for January to March 2025. Apple told CNBC that it's manufacturing half the iPhones meant for the US in India instead of China, which would mean lower tariff rates for the company. It will also manufacture most of its other products for the US in Vietnam. 

Apple has updated its App Store guidelines to comply with the orders of a California court, which required the company to immediately stop collecting commissions on purchases that weren't paid through the App Store. As noticed by 9to5Mac, the most prominent change in the guidelines states that there are now no prohibitions on "buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase," as long as it's for an app on the US storefront. Further, developers don't have to request for an entitlement from Apple to be able to offer external link purchases on apps for the United States storefront anymore. 

In the section stating that certain applications, such as reader apps and apps that sell goods and services, cannot encourage users to opt for third-party purchasing methods in-app, Apple added that the prohibition doesn't apply to apps on the US store. "The App Review Guidelines have been updated for compliance with a United States court decision regarding buttons, external links, and other calls to action in apps," Apple said in a statement.

These changes come as a result of a recent ruling by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who found that Apple violated her 2021 ruling for Epic Games' lawsuit against Apple. Back then, she ordered Apple to allow developers to direct users to other payment systems that would let them avoid paying the company a 30 percent cut.

However, Apple still took a 27 percent cut from external purchases, prompting Epic Games to accuse the company of non-compliance in a new legal filing last year. Apple also showed users a "scare screen" when they try to make external purchases, discouraging them from using third-party payment systems. In addition to ordering Apple to stop collecting fees from purchases made outside the App Store, Gonzalez Rogers also prohibited Apple from creating rules that would prevent developers from presenting customers with buttons and links for external payments

In response, Epic chief Tim Sweeney announced that Fortnite will be coming back to iOS next week. He also said that the video game company will bring back Fortnite on iOS for everyone and will drop all litigation regarding the issue if Apple adopts the no-commission policy worldwide, but that doesn't seem to be the case for now. Other companies are now also looking to roll out updates that would allow them to bypass Apple's commission for external payments. One of them is Spotify, which announced that it had already submitted an update that would allow customers in the US to pay outside the App Store. 

You can expect to see a lot of "We got xxx before GTA VI" memes in the coming days, because Rockstar Games has announced that it's pushing back the long-anticipated game's release. In a statement, the developer said that Grand Theft Auto VI is now set for release on May 26, 2026. Last year, the company said that the game will be available sometime this year, but it will now be fully missing the 2025 release window. Rockstar didn't explain why it was pushing back the game's availability. It just said that its goal for every game has "always been to try and exceed [its players'] expectations" and that Grand Theft Auto VI is no exception. "We hope you understand that we need this extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve," it added.

Rocktar's parent company Take-Two Interactive wrote in its fourth quarter 2024 earnings report that it narrowed down the game's previously announced 2025 window to fall of this year. Clearly, that's no longer going to happen. GTA VI follows the criminal duo Lucia and Jason in an open-world game set in Leonida, the fictional equivalent of Florida. 

Tools for Humanity, a startup co-founded by Sam Altman, has launched its its World eyeball-scanning identity verification system in the US. During an event in San Francisco, Altman reportedly said that World's technology provides "a way to make sure humans remained central and special in a world where the internet had a lot of AI-driven content." Altman is also one of the founders and is currently the CEO of OpenAI, which is perhaps the most prominent artificial intelligence company today. 

World was used to be known as Worldcoin until Tools of Humanity decided to focus on the digital ID aspect of the project rather than the cryptocurrency part, because the Biden administration didn't have a friendly stance towards crypto. The project uses basketball-sized spherical objects called the Orb to scan a user's irises, which it then turns into a unique IrisCode for them. It will then use that information to create a World ID for the user that they can use to log into integrated platforms, including Minecraft and Reddit. Users who get verified will get some of the project's cryptocurrency for free. 

Tools for Humanity said World keeps some access to user's data to ensure they aren't double-scanning their biometrics. But it also said that most of the personal data it collects remains decentralized, anonymized and supposedly impossible to reverse-engineer to identify someone. World is opening six locations in Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Nashville, Miami and San Francisco where people can get their irises scanned. 

During the event, the project also revealed that it's working on a smaller, smartphone-shaped device called the Orb mini that can verify a person's identify. It eventually intends to turn it into a mobile point-of-sale device. The project has introduced new partnerships, as well: It will soon launch the World Visa card for people who've had their identities verified, and it will pilot its identity and age verification tools with Tinder in Japan. 

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has ruled that Apple violated her own ruling back in 2021 on the lawsuit Epic Games filed against Apple a year before. Now, it's ordering (PDF) Apple to stop collecting commissions on purchases that weren't paid through the App Store effective immediately. In 2021, Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple did not hold an App Store monopoly. However, she also said that the company must allow developers to direct users to other payment systems that would let them bypass the 30 percent commission fee it collects from App Store purchases. 

In a legal filing by Epic Games last year, it accused Apple of non-compliance, since it still took a 27 percent cut for purchases made outside the App Store and even showed users pop-up screens warning them that paying outside its own store may not be secure. For members of the iOS Small Business Program, it took a smaller 12 percent commission. But the judge explained in her new ruling that Apple wasn't supposed to collect any fee at all. "Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this court’s injunction," she said. 

In addition to prohibiting Apple from collecting fees for external purchases, she also barred the company from showing users "scare screens" discouraging them from using third-party payment systems. She prohibited Apple from creating rules that would prevent developers from presenting customers with buttons and links for external payments, as well. Apple said it will pursue an appeal, but that it will comply with the court's orders. "We strongly disagree with the decision. We will comply with the court's order and we will appeal," an Apple spokesperson told The New York Times. 

In her ruling, Rogers said that the documents Apple submitted last year showed that App Store lead Phil Schiller advocated for the company to stop collecting fees on web links during a 2023 meeting. But Apple's former Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri convinced Tim Cook otherwise. Cook also asked his people to revise the scare screen for web links "to reference the fact that Apple’s privacy and security standards do not apply to purchases made on the web.” Apple knew exactly what it was doing and "at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option," Gonzalez Rogers wrote. Further the company's Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, allegedly lied under oath to hide the truth. Thus, the judge has asked the US attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate Apple and Roman for criminal contempt.

In a tweet, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney announced that it will bring back Fortnite for iOS in the US next week. He also promised to return Fortnite to the App Store worldwide — and to drop any lawsuit covering the issue — if Apple applies a commission-free tax-free payment framework everywhere.

During an earnings call, Samsung's chief financial officer Soon-cheol Park told reporters that "ongoing uncertainty surrounding US tariff policies continues to pose a potential risk of demand slowdown." According to Financial Times, Park said that US tariff policies and stronger export controls against artificial intelligence products are expected to have an impact on product demand in the second half of the year. In addition to a downward trend on sales, the company also expects tariffs to raise prices for the components it uses on its mobile phones, which will have further impact on its revenue. 

Samsung's call discussed its results for the first quarter of 2025, which ended on March 31. The company posted KRW 79.14 trillion in revenue ($55.6 billion), an all-time quarterly high mostly due to strong Galaxy S25 sales. It also posted KRW 6.7 trillion ($4.7 billion) in profit, which is slightly lower than the previous quarter's KRW 6.5 trillion ($4.6 billion). 

Despite the record revenue, Samsung's chip business already took a hit due to tougher US export controls to China on chips used in hardware for artificial intelligence. The division posted KRW 1.1 trillion ($774 million) in operating profit, down from KRW 2.9 trillion ($2 billion) last quarter. Financial Times previously reported that Samsung had a boost in profit in the first quarter of the year thanks to Chinese customers stockpiling memory chips ahead of US tariffs, but the impact of US export restrictions overshadowed the increase in orders. The publication has also noted that the tariffs the US will be imposing on semiconductors and consumer electronics will lead to an increase in prices of its smartphones and TVs, which are mostly made in Vietnam and Mexico, respectively. 

Toyota and Waymo have announced that they've entered a preliminary agreement, along with the former's mobility tech subsidiary, Woven by Toyota, Inc. To be clear, they're not in the midst of developing anything yet — they're still exploring a potential collaboration between them. Ultimately, however, the goal is to develop a new autonomous vehicle platform together, presumably for robotaxies. They're also aiming to "leverage Waymo's autonomous technology and Toyota's vehicle expertise" for future personal vehicles. 

In their announcement, the companies said they're looking to incorporate aspects of Waymo's technology into Toyota vehicles meant for sale to consumers, as well as to accelerate the development and adoption of driver assistance and automated driving technologies. Waymo's work, so far, has been focused on developing robotaxis that riders can hail through an app. The Alphabet-owned company currently operates Waymo One, a fully autonomous ride-hailing service, in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles. It deploys Waymo One vehicles through Uber in Austin, and it's planning to expand the service to Las Vegas, San Diego, Miami and Atlanta sometime this year. This potential partnership could expand the reach of Waymo's tech.

"Waymo's mission is to be the world's most trusted driver. This requires global partners like Toyota that share our commitment to improving road safety and expanding accessible transportation. We look forward to exploring this strategic partnership, incorporating their vehicles into our ride-hailing fleet and bringing the magic of Waymo's autonomous driving technology to Toyota customers," said Tekedra Mawakana, the co-CEO of Waymo. 

Amazon has finally launched its first batch of Project Kuiper internet satellites on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. The company was supposed to send the first 27 satellites in the constellation, which will eventually be comprised of more than 3,200 satellites, on April 8. However, the event got pushed back. A previous Bloomberg investigation claimed that Kuiper was way behind schedule, because the company was struggling to ramp up the production of its satellites. If true, the company will have to ask for an extension from the FCC to fulfill its commitment to the government, requiring it to put 1,600 satellites in orbit next summer. 

An Amazon spokesperson denied that the company was having manufacturing issues, however. They said that Amazon was on track to support its target and that it will continue increasing its production and launch rates. Around seven hours after launch, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that the company has confirmed that its "first 27 production satellites are operating as expected in low Earth orbit." Amazon now has over 80 launches scheduled with ULA on top of the Atlas V and the aerospace corporation's newer Vulcan Centaur heavy lift vehicles. The company's goal is to provide internet access to far-flung regions not typically reached by conventional internet connections. Its staunchest rival, SpaceX's Starlink, already has over 7,000 functioning satellites in orbit.