Good morning! Here's the tech news you need to know this Thursday.
1. Apple could be on the hook for $19 billion (£14 billion) in taxes in Europe, and the Obama administration is livid. The European Commission is expected to hit Apple with a massive tax judgment in the next few months.
2. Uber is quietly testing flat fares that make it almost as cheap as a bus. The test, which is running in San Francisco, lets users pay $20 (£15) to lock in a set of 20 flat-fare trips.
3. One of Peter Thiel's fellows has created a new startup that will fund your lawsuit. It uses algorithms to calculate which legal cases might be likely to win, and invests in them.
4. We took a look inside Building 87, Microsoft's mad science laboratory. It's where the company prototypes new ideas.
5. Pokémon Go has a new way to block cheaters. It is going to start showing captchas to users that make them prove they're not a robot.
6. Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs as permanent CEO of Apple five years ago. The stock price has doubled, but Cook has yet to produce a product that can rival the iPhone.
7. A sports writer says he was permanently banned from Twitter after posting GIFs of the Olympics. Jim Weber wrote a blogpost about his ban on LinkedIn.
8. Vice boss Shane Smith predicts a "bloodbath" of media consolidation in 2017. The CEO says his media organisation is building a "war chest" to "go out there and buy market share."
9. Apple has bought a lot of startups we don't even know about. Eddy Cue, the exec in charge of internet services, says Apple buys between 20 and 30 startups a year.
10. An ex-Yelp engineer has raised $6 million (£4.5 million) to make tastier beer. Scott Clark is CEO of artificial intelligence startup SigOpt.
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