Good morning! This is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
In today's Techpresso:
💰 Apple could face a $38B fine
🤝 Apple in talks with Meta for potential AI integration
🎵 Record labels sue AI music companies
🌊 Microsoft ends underwater data center project
🤖 Apple to replace 50% of iPhone assembly line workers with automation
🎁 + 6 other news you might like
🔮 + 2 handpicked research papers and tools
💰 Apple could face a $38B fineLINK
The European Union has charged Apple with violating the Digital Markets Act due to its App Store policies that hinder competition, marking Apple as the first company under these new regulations.
Apple faces fines up to 10 percent of its annual global revenue, or $38 billion, if found guilty, with potential penalties increasing to 20 percent for repeat offenses.
The European Commission is also investigating Apple for its support of alternative iOS app stores, focusing on the contentious Core Technology Fee and the complex process required for installing third-party marketplaces.
🤝 Apple in talks with Meta for potential AI integrationLINK
Apple is reportedly negotiating with Meta to integrate Meta’s generative AI model into Apple's new AI system, Apple Intelligence, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Apple is seeking partnerships with multiple AI companies, including Meta, to enhance its AI capabilities and catch up in the competitive AI race.
A potential collaboration between Apple and Meta would be significant due to their history of disagreements, and it could greatly impact the AI industry if successful.
🎵 Record labels sue AI music companiesLINK
Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records are suing AI companies Suno and Udio for massive copyright infringement related to the creation of original songs using generative AI technology.
The music labels claim that Suno and Udio used copyrighted works without permission, and are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per violated work in lawsuits filed in Boston and New York federal courts.
This legal action is part of a broader conflict between the music industry and tech companies offering AI tools, highlighting concerns about AI-generated music impacting the control and revenue of human artists.
🌊 Microsoft ends underwater data center projectLINK
Microsoft has decided to end Project Natick, its underwater data center experiment, despite achieving favorable results with the submerged servers off the coast of Scotland.
The project demonstrated lower failure rates for underwater servers compared to land-based ones, credited to stable seawater temperatures and inert nitrogen gas, which protected the equipment.
Although discontinuing subsea data centers, Microsoft plans to use insights gained from Project Natick to improve other data center technologies and continue research on data center reliability and sustainability.
🤖 Apple to replace 50% of iPhone assembly line workers with automationLINK
Apple aims to decrease the number of workers on iPhone final assembly lines by as much as 50% over the next few years, according to a directive by Sabih Khan, the company's senior vice president of operations.
This decision follows violent clashes in November 2022 between iPhone workers and police outside Foxconn’s main assembly plant, leading Apple to revive automation projects previously paused due to high initial costs.
Apple has successfully automated several parts of the iPhone assembly, which has reduced workforce requirements by up to 30% in some cases and is driven by teams under Peter Thompson, an operations vice president at Apple.
Other news you might like
Anthropic CEO says a universal basic income isn't enough to address AI job losses.LINK
ByteDance and Broadcom partner to develop AI chips.LINK
Elon Musk's pressure mounts on X CEO Linda Yaccarino to cut costs and boost revenue: Report.LINK
Apple is reportedly working on AR glasses but they may not launch for a long while.LINK
China contemplates ‘countermeasures’ after US takes steps to curb outbound tech, AI investment.LINK
Nvidia's chips are very popular. Its brand, less so..LINK
Latest research and tools
Cosmopolitan Libc: enables C programs to be compiled once and run natively across multiple operating systems, including Linux, Mac, Windows, and various BSDs, without needing an interpreter or virtual machine by modifying GCC and Clang output.LINK
Deriving Dependently-Typed OOP from First Principles: the paper outlines a method for integrating dependently-typed programming with object-oriented paradigms to improve software reliability and expressiveness.LINK
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