An Irish parliamentary committee has dismissed the opportunity to grill Apple and Google over their tax affairs in Ireland, despite requests for a change to the way in which it taxes large multinationals that do business in its country.

The move comes weeks after Apple and Google came under scrutiny for the way in which they use tax “loopholes” or “gimmicks” to avoid paying excessive taxes on international sales. It was revealed that Apple used an Irish subsidiary with zero employees to pay less than 0.05% tax on $78 billion over four years.

HTC has today announced its unaudited financial results for the second quarter of 2013, and despite help from the widely-praised HTC One, they do not look good. The Taiwanese firm made just NT$1.25 billion ($41 million) after tax from NT$70.7 billion ($2.35 billion) revenue, which is a staggering 83% fall from the same quarter last year.

Samsung has produced a new Galaxy S4 commercial for Iceland, and it’s possibly one of its weirdest smartphone adverts yet. It features some really strange dancing from a bunch of unconvincing ninjas, and a less than subtle dig at Apple using real apples.

Details are short on the ground, but The New York Times’ Brian X. Chen is reporting on Twitter that Samsung has purchaseds Boxee, maker of the Boxee Box, one of the Apple TV’s main competitors.

“In today’s world, there’s no reason not to be constantly simulated,” says Samsung. “With Apex, you can be constantly watching movies, browsing Facebook, and receiving head from a robotic mouth, all at the same time.”

An absolutely priceless Onion News Network video, with perhaps the best headline of all time: “New Wearable Computer Also Sucks Your Dick.” Check out the video after the jump.