Flexing Their Brussels 🇪🇺🤖

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the frantic push to deliver AI regulation on both sides of the Atlantic. Brussels is somewhat ahead of the game, introducing a raft of new rules covering everything from deepfakes to cybersecurity. The White House has also sprung into action, and not a moment too soon. We also have news on Apple stockpiling hardware and rolling back on smartglasses, the influencers facing an AI backlash, the banning of foreign robots, and loads more!

🎬 Our Top Take

🇪🇺🤖 AI – European Union and White House Rush to Regulate AI 

Let’s start with a little addendum to last week’s main story covering OpenAI’s unintentional hacking of another company. Not long after What’s Appening went out, it was reported that Anthropic’s Claude escaped testing and hacked three companies. Crazy stuff, and it underlines the sense of urgency among world governments to get a handle on things, which has ramped up a notch this week. First, to the EU, where the Bloc has introduced a swathe of new regulations and a new dedicated team to enforce them. The regulations are going to cover small stuff, such as labels to say that images are AI-generated, stuff that we’d all like to see regulated, such as monitoring the production of sexually explicit material in areas like revenge porn, and big issues, which include cybersecurity and the development of chemical weapons. The EU will have the power to fine companies, as well as cut off access to the EU market. While a lot of tech regulation from Brussels is usually seen as anathema to US lawmakers, we should note, too, that President Trump is now working with AI leaders to also develop regulatory and protective frameworks. As we said last week, it’s something we should all get behind. #AIRegulation Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: LimeShorts

You can file LimeShorts under ‘notable,’ rather than something we would outright recommend. LimeShorts is a new app from TikTok that delivers on the craze of short-form ‘micro-dramas,’ basically 1-5 minute soap opera episodes designed to be consumed in bite-sized chunks. LimeShorts is based on a freemium model, where you get the first few episodes free, and then get charged if you want more. The cost, at $19.99 per month, seems rather hefty to us. Still, each to their own, we suppose. You can check out LimeShorts for yourself on iOS here and Android here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: $114m

📈📉 Coldcard – Firmware Vulnerability Allows Hackers to Drain Bitcoin

If we had a dollar for every reported hack in the crypto industry….thus, the news that a vulnerability in Coldcard – an offline crypto hardware wallet – allowed hackers to steal up to $114 million in Bitcoin might not seem very earth-shattering. Yet, cold wallet hacks are rare, and you can appreciate the frustration of the users who lost their funds due to a five-year-old weakness in the wallet’s firmware that basically left their seed phrases as ‘guessable’. Those holders did everything right – kept their private keys offline, off exchanges, and in self-custody – and they still ended up losing their tokens. It’s not a great advert for the crypto industry, nor Bitcoin’s promise of being your own bank. #ColdRobbery Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

So you’ve reached the end of our newsletter. You hopefully enjoyed it then! We’ve been running What’s Appening for around four and a half years and are considering its future. Should we keep going? Is it worth it? Is it time to wrap it up? We love seeing it come together, and it’s been a great way to keep in touch with all of you. We’d love to hear what you think, or if you’ve got any ideas to fund it moving forward. Sponsorship? New stewardship? Open to all your thoughts.

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