Interesting announcements
EU might impose further regulation on WhatsApp, as monthly users top 45 million
This increase in users means WhatsApp now qualifies as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). VLOP must carry out risk assessments on the spread of illegal or harmful content, and put in place a mitigation strategy. Fines under the DSA can reach as much as 6 per cent of a company’s annual global sales.
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Apple officially stopped selling new iPhones with Lightning port
Apple started the transition from Lightning port to USB-C with the launch of the iPhone 15 series in 2023. This came after the EU approved a law that required all consumer tech to use USB-C as the charging port by 2024. The launch of the iPhone 16e marks the end of lightning ports in iPhone models.
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Elon Musk’s xAI unveiled Grok 3 AI, claiming it is capable of ‘human reasoning’
The model is on par if not better when compared on certain benchmarks to leading AI models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. The Grok 3 series includes a reasoning model which is capable of mimicking human-like reasoning when it comes to analyzing information the user needs.
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ChatGPT has surpassed 400 million weekly active users
ChatGPT “only” had 300 million users in December 2024. This figure is also twice the weekly active user count reported by the company in August 2024. OpenAI has not revealed the number of paid customers with an active subscription to ChatGPT Plus or ChatGPT Pro.
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Top new products
Nothing Phone (3a)
Nothing Phone (3a) will have a a 6.77-inch AMOLED screen, Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor, 8 GB or 12 GB of RAM and up to 256 GB of storage. It will come with a 5,000mAh battery.
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Galaxy Z Flip FE
Z Flip FE will have a 6.7-inch display, a 50-megapixel main camera and an Exynos processor.
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