The Morning After: Kim Kardashian is the face of Beats’ skin-colored earbuds

Kim Kardashian has teamed up with Apple on a custom version of the Beats Fit Pro. The new Beats x Kim collab comes in a trio of skin tones that Kardashian says are designed to either “blend in or stand out.” You’re still just your standard Beats Fit Pro underneath that skin-colored plastic. But don’t expect to find them in all the usual places when they go on sale on August 17th. In-person sales are limited to 10 Apple Stores (including 5th Avenue, Regent Street and Champs-Élysées) and several fashion chains and department stores. They will go on sale online on August 16th at 10:00am ET.

It’s going to be a busy day for tech: Samsung’s big Unpacked event kicks off at 9am ET, just a few hours from now. We are and will be live streaming all announcements – watch with us, !

— Mat Smith

The Biggest Stories You May Have Missed

Fairings cost between $4,200 and $8,900 extra.

Ford will open orders for the next wave of F-150 Lightning reservation holders this Thursday, but those buying the electric pickup starting this week will need to dig deeper into their pockets. The automaker is raising prices by $4,200 to $8,900, depending on equipment. Ford cited “significant material cost increases and other factors.”

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The measure provides $52 billion for domestic chipmakers.

President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law. The $280 billion measure will provide significant financial support to American semiconductor companies. It provides $52 billion in tax credits and funding for US chipmakers to expand domestic production. In a rare episode of bipartisan unity, the Senate voted 64 to 33 in favor of the bill. “America invented the semiconductor, but over the years we’ve moved semiconductor manufacturing overseas,” Biden said ahead of the ceremony. He added: “A third of core inflation last year was due to high car prices, which were driven by semiconductor shortages.”

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This is the first major expansion for Amazon One in grocery stores.

Amazon’s handwriting-readable payment technology will soon be available in more than 65 Whole Foods stores in California. As long as you link your palm and payment card to the service, all you have to do is wave your hand over a scanner to complete your purchase. While you still have to stop at a checkout terminal, you don’t have to pull out a phone like you do with Amazon’s camera-based Just Walk Out system.

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Another lawsuit between the two companies.

Google has sued Sonos because its new voice assistant infringes seven patents related to its own Google Assistant technology. It’s the latest battlefront in a long-running smart speaker war between the companies. Sonos’ voice control assistant arrived in June and allows users to issue commands with the phrase “Hey Sonos,” much like Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant. In the complaint, Google said it “has worked for years with Sonos engineers to implement speech recognition and voice-activated device control in Sonos products … and even made its Google Assistant software available to Sonos for years.”

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