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EU’s Big Bite 🍏💸
What's Appening: Apple EU Fine, Gemini Stack Overflow, X Calls, Intel Nano Chips, Polkadot
3Advance Team
March 05, 2024
SPOTIFY HAILS EU IN BATTLE VS APPLE
👀 TLDR:
In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover Apple’s troubles with the EU and its brawl with Spotify. The EU has fined Apple $2B - much more than expected - for abusing its position in music streaming. But Apple is not taking the ruling lying down, and it released a lengthy statement that draws significant battle lines with the world’s largest music streaming platform, Spotify. Elsewhere, we have news on Google tapping up developer platform Stack Overflow to help get Gemini back on its feet while Claude 3 has been released to further challenge OpenAI’s dominance. We’ve also got Updates on X, Apple Cars, and web3 fashion. Our Stat of the Week looks at the tiniest chips you can imagine. The GPT of the Week is a fun haunted house simulator. And What’s dAppening salutes the web3 builders amid the crypto hysteria.
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Our Top Take 🎬
🍏🥊 Apple – Shots Fired from All Sides as EU Hands Out $2B Fine
The EU has fined Apple $2 billion for “abusing” its market dominance – around four times as much as was originally predicted. As we wrote a couple of weeks ago, the fine came as Apple was accused of unfairly promoting its own music services over rivals’, breaking EU antitrust laws. Apple will appeal the fine, claiming the EU Commission failed to find any negative impact on consumers. In a statement, Apple also threw shade at Spotify (which originally brought the case before the EU), accusing it of holding the monopoly in the music streaming space, pointing out that Spotify “pays Apple nothing” while benefiting from Apple’s ecosystem. Apple’s statement is lengthy and feisty, and it mentions Spotify no fewer than 39 times (39!). It’s clear Apple is taking this personally, and what they want everyone to know is that running an App Store (and all the services that come with it) is expensive. It’s worth considering that all free apps are subsidized by the paid apps. This was a model that helped the App Store grow to what it is, and although we all like to rip on that 30% fee, the reality is that things might get worse as Apple is forced to change how they do business. With continued legal battles with Epic Games, and now these massive rulings from the EU, some big changes may be coming, and those things we’ve taken for granted (we’re looking at you PUSH notifications) might not come so easy. #AppleFine Read more here.
🦾 GPT of the Week: Escape the Haunt 👻
This week’s Custom GPT is Escape the Haunt. This time, we go a little leftfield with our GPT of the Week, highlighting Escape the Haunt, an AI adventure game in which you are tasked with escaping from a haunted hotel. Yes, GPTs can be fun games and social simulators, too, and this one is trending at no.1 in the Lifestyle Section on the GPT Store. The game is fun, challenging, and a little addictive, as you solve text and image-based puzzles to avoid traps and escape the monsters within. You can check it out here.
Other Stories 🗞️
🤖 Anthropic’s latest Claude model beats GPT-4 in Benchmarks.
OpenAI’s top competitor Claude just released their latest model that they claim is superior to ChatGPT in its performance. Among other things, Claude 3 is better at following multi-step instructions and includes a higher token count, on par with Google Gemini. Check it out here.
♊ Google – Gemini to Be Enriched with Stack Overflow Data
Google is making another shrewd data move, this time with Stack Overflow, the Q&A site for developers. Following up on the Reddit deal we reported on last week, it’s another indicator that “it’s the data, stupid”, and Google knows a thing or two about that. #DataDealing Read more here.
🗞️ The Best of the Rest: Other News in Brief
☎️ X Switches on Audio and Video Calling. X Premium users can now call their favorite trolls and conspiracy theorists directly on the app. Neat. As you might expect, the biggest trend on the platform has been instructions on how to disable the feature. Read about it here.
👗 Luxury Brands Will Embrace Crypto. All those EU laws everyone is talking about aren’t only about red tape. Some experts are predicting that luxury fashion brands will embrace on-chain through the EU’s new Digital Products Passports. Full story here.
🚗 Apple Set to Scrap Electric Car. Like so many Apple products, its autonomous electric vehicle was a closely guarded secret and subject to a lot of speculation. Reports now state that the company is scrapping the idea entirely. Details right here.
🧐 Stat of the Week: 1nm
🤏🍟 Intel – Tiny Nano Chips Will Start Production in 2027
While Intel has been losing ground to Nvidia in the chip-making market, the company is still innovating, and we were intrigued to see its announcement of the 10A chips, which will begin production in 2027. 10A chips measure 1nm, i.e., about a billionth of a meter or the size of a couple of atoms. It’s an extraordinary goal, but it’s worth noting that size does matter. These nano chips offer more processing power by being tightly packed together on a chip, while also reducing power consumption. #NanoChips Read more here.
🕸️ What’s dAppening?
🏗️⛓️ Polkadot – 500,000 MeWe Social Media Users Move Seamlessly on Chain
Everyone is talking about the big moves in crypto right now, with Bitcoin rocketing toward all-time highs. But as we have said numerous times, the longevity of web3 depends on utility, not tokens pumping and dumping. A quick case in point happened recently when the entire MeWe social media platform was moved on-chain via the Polkadot platform, effectively moving it from Web 2 to web3. The migration of half a million users – who will now own and control their data – was both historic and seamless, and it arguably didn’t gain enough attention as people are transfixed on surging crypto prices. When the dust settles, it’ll be those building web3 utility that become the real winners in the crypto sector. #CryptoUtility Read more here.
Meanwhile at 3Advance...
This week, we're thrilled to be heading to South by Southwest (SXSW)! Among the highlights is our client, the Freedom Forum, who will be hosting the 1A House from March 8th to 10th. This event promises an engaging lineup of performances dedicated to celebrating and bringing attention to the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Back at our headquarters, the 3Advance team is hard at work on a significant project: the overhaul of Today's Front Pages 2.0. After originally launching the mobile applications several years back, we've been entrusted once again to revamp the infrastructure and enhance the website's functionality. Behind the scenes, we're implementing substantial design and user experience enhancements in stealth mode. Stay tuned for an exciting update in the next few weeks regarding the project's relaunch!
For those of you in Austin, I'm looking forward to engaging discussions on the First Amendment, artificial intelligence, and more. Hope to see you at the 1A House!
🎧 📺 Check out the What’s Appening Podcast and Video Episodes