The Daily Crunch 08/30/16

Will the new aliens we found help Apple pay its $14.5 billion EU tax bill? All that and more in The Daily Crunch for August 30, 2016. And if you're trying to figure out how to say "Hello" to that self-driving car you just met, have I got a startup for you.

1. Apple gets a $14.5 billion tax bill

Typically when a big tech company gets hits with a penalty from some kind of governing body, the amounts are laughably small compared to the penalized company's coffers. But not so for a $14.5 billion bill the European Commission says Apple owes Ireland over what it identifies as unpaid corporate taxes. To be clear, this is the EC saying one of its member states is owed money because of violations of EU law, not Ireland itself claiming the back taxes are owed. And Tim Cook is not impressed. He's not impressed at length, in fact.

2. Drive.ai wants self-driving cars to be chattier as well as smarter

A new startup is lifting the curtain on its product, an aftermarket autonomous driving system that includes not only steering, breaking and gas controls, but also a way to communicate the car's intent to humans around it, including other drivers and pedestrians. Autonomous cars are going to be the first robot most people interact with, their argument goes – they absolutely need to nail the social part of that arrangement.

3. Uber and Google's competition strains their official ties

Speaking of self-driving cars, that's likely the primary cause of the increasing continental drift occurring between Uber and Google. David Drummond, longtime Alphabet SVP, has officially left Uber's board as a result of the increased competition between the two. That's not all that's going down: Uber has been hard at work ramping up its own mapping efforts, and I hear through the grapevine it wants Google entirely out of that part of its business as soon as possible.

4. If aliens are receiving this, send me a sign

Hello, is it me you're looking for? That might be the message SETI researchers in Russia received last May, but then again it might just be something else entirely. The just-disclosed transmission definitely merits more study, but the media was quick to jump on the possibility that this is aliens reaching out, when in all likelihood it isn't. But maybe it is. I want to believe.

5. Facebook's news robots can't be trusted

Facebook got into a tangle it clearly didn't want any part of when it came out that a team of human news editors were actually curating trending news topics spit out by its algorithms. The problem with people is that they can have selection biases, which critics claimed might influence the political leaning of news appearing on FB. So, to fix the problem, FB went robot-only – which promptly resulted in totally fake news from a fake news outlet climbing the ranks. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

6. ... and yet Zuck trusts FB AI to run his home

Fact-checking news may not be the strong suit of Facebook-created AI, but apparently it can manage running Mark Zuckerberg's household just fine. The CEO was in Rome doing a Q&A when he started talking about his progress on his yearly challenge for 2016 – creating a smart home assistant that combines voice control with image recognition and connected device control. Billionaire problems need billionaire solutions.

7. 7 is for iPhone Day – Sept. 7 specifically

iPhone Day is finally almost upon us – Apple sent out invites for a special event on September 7, which is... oh wow that's next week. New iPhones are basically a lock, but there should be lots more unveiled there as well, so keep it glued to TechCrunch on the day for all the news.