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The U.S. wants Europe to back off its tax probes of Apple and others | Recode Daily: August 25, 2016

The European Commission is overstepping its authority, says the Treasury Department.

Carl Court/Getty Images

.In an unusual step, the Treasury Department sharply criticized the European Commission's investigations into alleged tax avoidance by Apple, Amazon and other U.S. companies — investigations that could result in demands for billions of dollars in underpaid taxes. The Treasury said the probes go beyond the commission's authority, unfairly target U.S. firms and threaten to undermine international tax agreements.
[Saleha Mohsin | Bloomberg]

.Uber lost at least $1.2 billion in the first half of the year, including a $100 million Q2 loss in the U.S., where it had previously said it was profitable. Last year Uber lost at least $2 billion.
[Eric Newcomer | Bloomberg]

.Gawker's banker takes us behind the scenes of the $135 million bankruptcy auction.
[Mark Patricof | Recode]

.If Facebook is showing you ads for stuff you don't care about, it's not doing you or the advertisers any favors. If you want to stop seeing as many irrelevant ads, you can give Facebook some guidance on the topics you're actually interested in using its recently expanded ad-preference settings.
[Kurt Wagner | Recode]

.In the latest episode of Recode Media with Peter Kafka, Rafat Ali talks about building his first company, media news site PaidContent, and how selling the site to the Guardian turned into a dispiriting experience. Ali is happier now, running Skift, a small online trade publication for the travel industry.
[Eric Johnson | Recode]

Apple
By Dan Frommer
It’s been five years since Steve Jobs resigned as Apple CEO.
Mobile
By Peter Kafka
"Mobile" doesn’t equal "on the go."
Policy
By Ina Fried
Climate change and the dearth of women in tech and are topics President Obama hopes to make more progress on before he leaves office.
Virtual reality
By Kurt Wagner
Almost half of VR developers are building content for HTC.
Astronomers have found a potentially habitable planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the red dwarf that is our sun's closest stellar neighbor, a mere 4.2 light years away. Of course, with current propulsion systems, a visit would take more than 80,000 years ... but still!

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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