THE EU AND THE US MAY FINALLY AGREE ON SOMETHING

👀 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.

Of course, you could always support the newsletter by hiring us or referring us! 💚

AN AI AGENT ESCAPED OPENAI’S TESTING LAB: WORRYING?

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the alarming news that AI agents escaped OpenAI’s testing labs and proceeded to initiate a cyberattack on another AI company. It has caused widespread alarm and prompted an alliance among major tech companies to build AI cybersecurity tools. We also have news on Claude leaking private chats, Elon Musk promising a “historically accurate” version of the Odyssey, a private journalling app with a twist, and loads more!

🎬 Our Top Take

🐡⛓️‍💥 AI – OpenAI Agents Autonomously Launch Cyberattack on AI Company

Another week, another alarming story about the advancing capabilities of AI and our (in)ability to rein it in. “It’s quite mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously!” wrote Clement Delangue, the cofounder of Hugging Face, after finding that his AI company was hacked by OpenAI’s agents. The hack came as OpenAI was carrying out controlled experiments on GPT 5.6 Sol and another (apparently) more powerful model. During the tests, the AI agents “escaped” onto the open internet and successfully hacked Hugging Face of their own volition. Yes, the media does like to sensationalize these kinds of threats, but this kind of behavior is unprecedented, hence the alarm. Usually, we wrap up these pieces by speculating on what should happen, but thankfully, it seems the AI sector at large is already taking it seriously. Mere days later, the Open Secure AI Alliance has been formed by Microsoft, IBM, Palantir and others, promising to create open-source cybersecurity tools to protect against AI. In June, President Trump signed an executive order stating that advanced AI models must be vetted for national security risks before being released to the public. Though, as Hugging Face found out this week, even in testing, powerful models can potentially do real damage before they become public. #RogueAgents Read more here. 

📲 App of the Week: Slate

Slate is a private journalling app for iPhone that is 100% powered by Apple Intelligence. It works much like other journalling apps – you speak, and receive a transcript of your words – but it also has on-device reflection, i.e., the AI will analyze your moods and thoughts, providing feedback and a window into your mood at the time. The other big attraction – and Slate’s big selling point – is that nothing ever leaves your phone. “There's no account. No analytics. No tracking. No third-party SDKs. No network calls. The app is private because there is nothing to collect.” Check out Slate for iOS here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 3.8B Euros

📈📉 EU – Post Claims EU Makes More From Tech Fines Than Tech Taxes

It’s common knowledge that the EU has been handing out huge fines to US Big Tech companies over the years, but a viral social media post has claimed that the bloc actually collects more from fines (3.8B Euros) than it does from taxing its own public tech companies (3.2B Euros). You can see the original post here, as well as the 100s of comments agreeing with it. Yet, well, it’s all very misleading: For a start, the EU doesn’t tax companies directly, and let’s just say that the math isn’t mathing when it comes to how much EU member states earn from taxing tech companies. For example, we could cite SAP (a massive European SaaS company) and ASML (semiconductor services), two companies that paid 4.5B Euros in taxes combined last year. #TaxTake 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.

Of course, you could always support the newsletter by hiring us or referring us! 💚

THE WHITE HOUSE IS VERY WORRIED ABOUT CHINESE AI MODELS

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we ponder the significance of Kimi K3, a new Chinese-built AI model that has the White House and American AI companies on red alert. Will Donald Trump end up banning Chinese-built AI models? It’s possible. We also take a look at the app that takes gamification into the stratosphere, an AWS error that left customers with billion-dollar bills, how a GitHub user rebuilt one of Palantir’s core systems, and plenty more!

🎬 Our Top Take

🇨🇳🤖 AI – America Sounds the Alarm as Chinese Models Top Downloads

There might be a sense that we have been here before with cheap, powerful AI models coming from China – see the DeepSeek crisis – but this time feels a little different, particularly due to palpable concern coming from both the White House and Silicon Valley. Moonshot’s Kimi K3 and Alibaba’s Qwen3.8 Max are the two currently causing ‘concern’, with the former rocketing to the top of the charts of AI downloads and having to stop signups due to demand overload. Kimi K3 is claimed to be a massive 2.8-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model, and while it might not be the world’s “best” AI model, it comes pretty close to the top new models from OpenAI and Claude. The problem? Kimi K3 is free, but even enterprise-level Chinese AI models come at a fraction of the cost, so that’s the reason tech and financial publications are printing the word “worried” in captions next to Sam Altman and Dario Amodei. The White House is springing to action, with reports that President Trump is ready to ban Chinese AI models in the US. It’s not just about price, either, as these models tend to be downloadable, open-weight, and more customizable for the businesses that use them. Surprisingly for Chinese tech products, they can also have less censorship and fewer guardrails. We’ll finish by simply recommending you read this article from MIT Technology Review, which gets to the heart of the bind that the US Government and AI companies find themselves in. #ChinaModels Read more here. 

📲 App of the Week: The Conqueror Challenges

We aren’t sure if we’d recommend The Conqueror Challenges, per se, but we wanted to highlight it as an example of an app that takes gamification for engagement to the extreme – like Duolingo on steroids. The app concept is based on fitness, challenging you to walk certain distances, for example. But the gamified element comes with where you walk to, copying the journey of Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship of the Ring to Mordor, for instance, or cycling the Seven Kingdoms à la Game of Thrones. There are rewards, both physical and virtual, and we really like that the app ties into your current fitness apps, like Strava. It’s free to download, but there are loads of in-app purchases pushed (hence our reluctance to recommend it outright). Still, if you’re interested in seeing how a business keeps customers (one million of them) ultra-engaged, you can check out the app here for iOS and here for Android.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 745,728,201,771%

📈📉 AWS – Billing Glitch Serves Users with Billion-Dollar Invoices

We all hate unexpected bills, right? But spare a thought for the Amazon Web Services customers, who received recent invoices for a lot more than expected. For instance, there was the UK man whose monthly AWS bill is usually £1 (about $1.35). His recent bill? £5.8 ($7.8B approx.). Another claimed his AWS invoice informed him that his usage rate was up 745,728,201,771%. These automation glitches can be funny – so ridiculously big in this case that you probably wouldn’t panic – but it’s the smaller, hard-to-notice errors that may be a bigger problem. #BigBills 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.

Of course, you could always support the newsletter by hiring us or referring us! 💚

APPLE LAWSUIT ALLEGES OPENAI STOLE TRADE SECRETS

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the news that Apple is suing OpenAI, accusing it of poaching employees and pressuring them to hand over trade secrets. In less controversial Apple AI news, it has just launched the public beta of Siri AI, and the signs are very positive so far. We also have news on a damning report on YouTube recommending harmful content to teens, look at how Meta was forced to pull down its latest AI image generator, the state that has decided to halt AI data center construction, and loads more!

🎬 Our Top Take

🍏🥷 Apple – Major Lawsuit Alleges that OpenAI Stole Trade Secrets

Do you remember the halcyon days of 2024 when Apple and OpenAI agreed to partner up to integrate ChatGPT into Macs, iPhones and iPads? It seems like a distant memory today as the two companies lock horns in a major lawsuit. Essentially, Apple accuses OpenAI of a) poaching its employees and b) coaxing those employees into (illegally) handing over sensitive information on Apple’s products and practices. It all ties into OpenAI’s hopes of entering the AI hardware marketplace. For balance, we should say that OpenAI strenuously denies any wrongdoing. In somewhat related Apple AI news, Siri AI public beta launched yesterday as part of iOS 27. We will get you more fulsome feedback as we experiment ourselves, but the signs are very positive so far. Oh, and the big winner from Siri AI? It might just be the Apple Watch. #SpyGate Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: NetLens

If you work from home and move about a bit to escape the summer heat, you might find that certain spots of your home have slower Wi-Fi than others. Other times, you might be just aware of quirky spots in the home that just don’t get a good signal. NetLens can help you out, as the app basically works as a Wi-Fi heat map, showing you the best – and worst – spots for signal in your home. The open-source app works remarkably well, and it has seen a surge in downloads. You can get it for free for iOS here and Android here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 10K Subs

📈📉 The Craic – Shift’s Weekly Newsletter Hits Subscriber Milestone

Many readers will be aware of our partnership with Shift, an app designed as a digital home – networking, dating, festivals, artists, and A LOT of pubs - for the Irish and Irish-ish around the world. Well, Shift’s weekly newsletter has been going great guns, recently passing 10,000 subscribers. It’s a wry-eyed Irish news and culture digest, with a drop of craic to boot. If you fancy getting on board (it’s free), you can sign up here. And if you’d like to find out more about Shift, get it 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.

Of course, you could always support the newsletter by hiring us or referring us! 💚

SONY’S PULLING THE PLUG ON PHYSICAL GAMES: WORRYING?

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we report on Sony’s decision to stop selling physical video game discs. It might not sound like a big deal if you’re not a collector of physical media, but there’s been a huge backlash as gamers ask: who really owns the games we buy? We also have news on a new Meta app that allows you to vibe code “Gizmos”. We follow a report that the iPhone Ultra has a price point to make your eyes water. The White House and Anthropic soap opera continues with a new twist. And we’ll bring you all the latest from 3Advance.

🎬 Our Top Take

💽⛔️ PlayStation – Sony Says It Will End Physical Games by 2028

We aren’t regular purveyors of video gaming news here on What’s Appening, but a story did cross our paths this week that feels like it is a little more than meets the eye: Sony has announced that it will stop selling games as physical discs within a couple of years. Instead, you’ll get a download code for your new PlayStation game. Indeed, you will still – Sony says – be able to go to a store like GameStop and buy a game, but what you’ll get is the cover with a code inside. Now, while most will say “big whoop,” since games are all online/cloud-based these days anyway, there is an outcry about what this means. Most pertinently, there is the question: Who really owns the game? With physical media, that’s not up for debate, but it’s not so clear with digital copies – you are effectively buying a license to play the game. There is a worrying precedent to this, too, as gamers found that Nintendo was able to “brick” (basically shut off) Switch 2 consoles last year if they suspected jailbreaking. While some understand where the gaming companies are coming from – digital downloads combat piracy – there is a growing sense of unease over the rights of someone who buys a game or gaming device. For what it’s worth, Sony has been absolutely pilloried on social media for the move, so don’t be surprised if we see a U-turn. #InTheGame Read more here. 

📲 App of the Week: Pocket

Fancy trying out a bit of beginner-friendly vibe coding? There’s a good chance to do that via Meta. The social media behemoth quietly launched Pocket this week, an app that lets you build (very simple) online games called Gizmos via AI prompts. Of course, you shouldn’t expect to vibe code the next Call of Duty, but it does hint at something bigger. This “quiet” launch is a testament to the fact that not all features are widely available yet, but we think it’s a pretty good way to get a taste of vibe coding, and you can get really creative with your Gizmos. Check out how to do it here. Note that you’ll also need the Meta AI app to access Pocket. It’s here for iOS and here for Android. 

🧐 Stat of the Week: 3M Views

📈📉 World Cup – The Action Has Been Relentless (So Has the AI Spam)

Despite a controversy or two, most agree that this has been an excellent World Cup, on the pitch at least, though USMNT fans might not feel that way right now. But it’s also been marred by AI fakery going into overdrive on social media. One highly-authentic-looking post, seen by at least 3 million people, faked an image of Swedish player Lucas Bergvall calling for an end to mass migration. The biggest target? Iranian players, who had fake images of themselves with all sorts of anti-US sentiments littered across socials. Some of the images are preposterous – Adolf Hitler at a Germany match, for instance – but some of the deepfakes looked incredibly authentic. It’s worrying. #FakeCup 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.

Of course, you could always support the newsletter by hiring us or referring us! 💚

APPLE’S 20% PRICE HIKES AREN’T REALLY DOWN TO APPLE

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the inflation-beating price hikes from Apple across its devices. The culprit? AI data centers hungry for chips and components, driving up the cost of tech hardware. Gamers have been sounding the alarm for over a year, but now Apple has had to act, too, raising prices by up to 20% globally. We also have news on a potential prediction market app coming from Meta, the disc-less video game that everyone is eagerly awaiting, a deal between Anthropic and California, and much more!

🎬 Our Top Take

🍏📈 Apple – Prices Rise Globally with AI Cited as the Culprit

We’ve all been accustomed to rising inflation over the last few years: It’s impacting everything from the price of gas to eggs to lattes. Yet there has been a kind of mini-tsunami of price increases in the tech hardware sector that is decoupled from ‘normal’ inflation. Gamers, for example, have faced two price hikes for the PS5 alone in the last 12 months, making some versions 30% more expensive than when it was released in 2020. It’s unprecedented to see ‘old tech’ rise in price in such a way. Xbox also raised prices (again) this week. And now Apple has joined the party, hiking MacBook and iPad prices globally by up to 20%. The reason? The so-called RAM tax, which is basically a catch-all for the surging cost of RAM and related components. In a nutshell, the AI sector’s demand for chips and RAM for data centers has sent prices sky-high, so the computing and gaming hardware sectors are having to raise prices. Xbox pointed out that memory and storage costs had already doubled, and here’s the kicker: it expects those prices to double again by 2027. The story has been really bubbling away for over a year now, but it now looks like it is boiling over as Apple faces the crunch. Will there be a consumer backlash? #RamTax Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: OpenClaw

If you’ve ever wanted to muck around with AI agents on your phone, well, now’s your chance. OpenClaw has released standalone apps for iOS (find it here) and Android (here), allowing you to give control to various parts of your device – camera, calendars, reminders, etc. – to the open-source AI agent. Previously, you had to use workarounds on iPhone, such as using Slack or Telegram, to control the agent, but the app makes it fairly easy, even for those not used to playing with AI agents. A little aside, though: the app does feel somewhat unfinished, so it might feel a bit rough around the edges at first.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 4,288 mAh

📈📉 Apple – Race to Crackdown on Posts After iPhone 18 Leak

A security breach at Apple’s Indian partner, Tata Electronics, has led to hackers leaking details of the iPhone 18 to the dark and not-so-dark web. Apple has been moving swiftly to shut down posts displaying the leaks on platforms like X, though it may have a harder time removing posts in the further reaches of the web. The main takeaway for now is that there isn’t much exciting to report, except maybe a bigger (4,288 mAh) battery for the Pro. Indeed, people have been so underwhelmed by the big reveal that they have been calling it the iPhone 17.01. #TataBreach 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.

Of course, you could always support the newsletter by hiring or referring us! 💚

CHATGPT IS CEDING GROUND TO ITS COMPETITORS

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover a major AI milestone: ChatGPT dipping below 50% market share in global users. Time to worry for OpenAI? Probably not, as the real question remains how to monetize those users. We also have news on new (and expensive) AR glasses from Snap, and how a World Cup performance sent a player’s social media follower numbers into orbit.

🎬 Our Top Take

🤖↘️ OpenAI – Unwanted Milestone as Market Share Drops

It arguably hasn’t been a great few months for OpenAI. Despite that court victory over Elon Musk, there’s been a lot of bad press and an overall sense that it is losing ground to Anthropic. To punctuate that, it was reported this week that its market share had dropped below 50% for the first time. That shouldn’t be too surprising, given the ecosystem into which Google can drop Gemini (they are giving away free YouTube Premium with some subscriptions) and Anthropic’s organic growth with its family of models. If you wanted to know the latest user figures globally, they are as follows: ChatGPT 1.1 billion, Gemini 662 million, Claude 245 million. Others, such as Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek, etc., have less than 5% of the market. Still, while it’s dropped below 50%, it’s still a massive user base for OpenAI to monetize, and the word that keeps popping up to do that is “adverts”. #MinorityReport Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: BBC Sport

As the World Cup warms up (literally and figuratively), sports apps are vying for fans’ attention. An early winner, though, might just be the official BBC Sport app, which has been causing a stir due to its “FIFA World Cup 3D Experience”. Working with mixed reality experts immersiv.io, the broadcaster has launched a 3D viewing experience, with unique angles, “tactics mode,” first-person camera, and loads of other features. It is perhaps one for the hardcore fans rather than first-timer World Cup casuals, but it’s winning a lot of plaudits, including from sections of the British media that tend to pour scorn on just about everything the BBC does. You can play with the 3D feature here. BBC Sport can be downloaded for iOS here and Android here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 200%

📈📉 Getty – OpenAI Deal Shows How AI Can Heal the Hurts

Getty Images – the photo stock agency – was one of those companies whose stock has been hammered in recent years due to the specter of AI image generators. Yet, a new deal with OpenAI to allow its models access to its massive database of photos and images (over 600 million) has sent its stock into orbit – up 200% at one point. It’s exactly the type of thing meant by people like Jensen Huang when they say that AI will eventually be a creator of wealth/jobs, even if there are a few bumps along the way. #GettyUp 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.

Of course, you could always support the newsletter by hiring or referring us! 💚

A WILD WEEK SAW AI MODELS TREATED LIKE NUCLEAR WEAPONS

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the tumultuous launch of Anthropic’s new model, Fable. Framed as a safer version of Mythos 5, exploits were discovered, prompting the US Government to ban foreign access and eventually leading to its removal days after its release. Wild times. We also have news on the world’s first trillionaire, a potential touchscreen MacBook, and the latest country to ban social media for kids. We’ll also bring you our Stat of the Week, App of the Week, and all the latest from 3Advance.

🎬 Our Top Take

🚨 🤖 Anthropic – When AI Gets Classified as a Weapon

Oh boy. There’s a lot to cover here in a complex but massively important story, so let’s just dive into the facts: On June 9, Anthropic formally announced Mythos 5, its powerful new AI model, but there was a twist. The company said Mythos 5 was too dangerous, as it could be exploited in areas like weapons development or cyberattacks, so it instead released Fable, essentially a version of Mythos 5 with safeguards. Within a couple of days, Amazon reported to the US Government that Fable could be jailbroken, i.e., those safeguards could be bypassed. The US Gov responded by instantly classifying Fable as a dangerous munition, banning it for foreigners – and by foreigners, we don’t just mean foreign governments; we also mean non-US citizens working here. That, of course, was largely unworkable, so Anthropic decided to remove the model altogether. It’s been a whirlwind week, one in which there's something akin to panic over AI sovereignty. Without hyperbole, it’s as if AI is suddenly looked upon like nuclear weapons. And the irony of it all is that Anthropic is probably right when it cites rival models like OpenAI’s GPT 5.5 as potentially (mis)usable in the same way. Over here at 3Advance, we had just one day to play with Fable, and we can attest to the power and speed that make this one special (not to mention the cost, but that’s a problem for another day). A lot of AI enthusiasts were lamenting the loss, but all in all, we’ll take it as a good sign that the powers that be take this so seriously. The genie is back in the bottle, for the time being. #WarningFable Read more here. 

📲 App of the Week: Zest

Restaurant and food recommendation apps are hardly new, but Zest takes a novel approach to helping you find a perfect spot. Zest, which has been backed by Alexis Ohanian (of Reddit and Serena Williams fame), is built on data, showing where and what people actually eat. The idea is that you link your credit card, it starts analyzing your spending and then builds a profile of what you like. It also pulls in data from over 80 million restaurant reviews. Finally, it starts creating a pseudo-social network, so you can see, for example, where your friends dined when they visited a city you are heading to next. We would say that this still feels a bit experimental, despite spending a long time in beta, but it could grow into something interesting as more and more data is pulled in. Find out more here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: $130B

📈📉 Data Centers – Protests Have Been Relatively Successful

Data centers. Most of us don’t want them in our proverbial backyards - if at all - and there is a lot of strong feeling out there, tackling both the environmental and ethical impact of the centers. Anyway, as it turns out, nationwide protests against building AI data centers in specific regions have had some success so far, with an estimated $130 billion in projects blocked already. Fortune also reports that construction “setbacks” in the first three months of 2026 exceeded all of last year’s thwarted projects. As the publication points out, the opposition is snowballing. #DataBlock 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.

Of course, you could always support the newsletter by hiring us, or referring us! 💚

TIM COOK BID AN EMOTIONAL FAREWELL AT FINAL WWDC KEYNOTE

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover Apple’s WWDC 2026. The final keynote for Tim Cook as CEO was rather subdued, though we did get some interesting announcements, not least a (kind of) timeline for Siri AI. We also have news on a potential IPO from OpenAI, a new app from Meta, an incredible stat on human vs. bot internet traffic, a strange warning from Anthropic, and lots more!

🎬 Our Top Take

🍏📱 Apple – Cook’s Final WWDC Is Cautious and Apologetic

One of the most intriguing things about WWDC 2026 – Apple’s annual showcase of software and ‘ideas’ – is how little coverage it got compared to usual. Indeed, mere hours after it wrapped up yesterday, tech publications had already moved on to the next story in the news cycle, focusing on OpenAI’s plans to go public. So what did go down? Well, there were no big product reveals. In fact, Apple VP Craig Federighi basically spent the first part of the keynote talking about “fixes,” i.e., changes to stuff, such as Liquid Glass, that users haven’t been happy about. The headliner was, of course, AI Siri, or as Apple has rebranded it, Siri AI. It is, as many suspected, not quite ready yet. It will be released in beta later in the year for normies (next week for developers), but not in the EU or China, where it faces regulatory headwinds. Siri AI will also be launching as a standalone app. There were plenty of other nice bits – iOS 27, AI agents to help with passwords, improvements with device search (especially on Mac), and some hints at cool AI stuff coming to iPhone cameras – but, well, this was certainly low-key. Federighi seemed to spend more time subtly apologizing for the recent past than talking about the future, and Tim Cook, in his final WWDC address, tried to sound excited but didn’t have a lot to work with. This is no disaster for Apple, even if its stock price suddenly dropped during the keynote. It openly admits now that it got left behind – still is – in the AI race, but it also came out swinging, claiming that products and services shouldn’t have AI for the sake of it. And therein lies the key: It’s not just about pumping every Apple product with AI; it’s about getting AI right for Apple. #WWDC2026 Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Forum

Meta obviously has the marketing budget to make a big song and dance when it releases a new app, but in the case of Forum, it was very, very quiet, perhaps in a bid to iron out some wrinkles before it gets a wider launch. Anyway, Forum is a standalone app but is tied to Facebook Groups, designed to bring members into a Reddit-like platform for longer discussions. Before you rush to download it, you should be aware that some social media experts believe that the value for Meta here lies in having a Reddit-like repository for questions and answers, which is particularly useful for training AI. But if you’re happy enough with that, you can check out Forum for iOS here. It has yet to launch for Android.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 57.4%

📈📉 Web – Bot Internet Traffic Now Exceeds Human Activity

AI agentic internet traffic is booming – that’s hardly a surprise. Someone put it succinctly: If you are looking for something, you might check 1 or 2 webpages, whereas AI can trawl 100s, perhaps 1,000s. Anyway, the upshot is that monitors have now found that there are more bots than humans using the web. In fact, at the time of writing, Cloudflare reports it at 57.4% for bots and 42.6% for us mere humans. #TrafficJam Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

It's coming to (North) America! 🏆 The World Cup kicks off Thursday, with Mexico taking on South Africa in Mexico City. This is shaping up to be the most AI-saturated tournament yet – Lenovo is the first-ever "Official Technology Partner" of FIFA, Sportradar is serving ads that update automatically with live scores, and 86% of media buyers are using generative AI for video content just to keep pace. To be honest, though, we care less about the tech and more about the footie. ⚽️ Paul and Darren are still grieving Ireland’s failure to qualify, but despite that (and how much we all despise FIFA), they’re ready to enjoy it with the rest of the world. If you’re not into football/soccer/life, we forgive you. You can still enjoy some of the fun around it, though, like this German fan’s commentary on all things America. #WorldCup2026

BERNIE SANDERS’ BILL WANTS AI COMPANIES UNDER PUBLIC OWNERSHIP

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the news that Anthropic has filed to go public at a valuation of close to $1 trillion. It’s actually overtaken OpenAI as the world’s most valuable AI startup. Bernie Sanders isn’t impressed, though, and he wants ‘half’ of each of those companies to be taken into public ownership. We also have news on Meta introducing subscriptions across its apps, new superchips from NVIDIA, the perfect app for keeping abreast of the World Cup, and the crazy bill for AI usage run up by one company.

🎬 Our Top Take

📈🚀 IPOs – AI Companies Going Public as Sanders Asks for Co-Ownership

This week, everyone’s talking about IPOs. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is going public in a matter of weeks, under some rather controversial circumstances, mind you, and there is also the news that Anthropic is set to launch an IPO at a trillion-dollar valuation. Indeed, it is now estimated that Anthropic, not OpenAI, is the world’s most valuable AI company. While investors have been licking their lips at the prospect of these stock launches, they aren’t the only ones with an eye on the soaring values and influence of AI companies: Bernie Sanders wants half. Well, he wants the American taxpayer to own half. He is introducing a new bill, the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would see public ownership of 50% of companies like Anthropic, xAI, and OpenAI. His argument is that since AI is built on public knowledge, some of the profits should go back to the public. It’s quite simple, though Sanders admits that some of the language and odds and ends of the bill are still being written. We won’t get bogged down in the debate over whether this idea is bonkers or not, nor if Senator Sanders will get it through Congress, but we will leave you with one thought: Sam Altman said last week that he viewed the future of AI as being like a utility, with intelligence sold like electricity or water, a basic need. Doesn’t that suggest the public/government should have some influence? #BernieWantsHalf Read more here. 

📲 App of the Week: Apple Sports

With the expanded FIFA World Cup on the horizon, there’s no end of choices for apps to keep you abreast of all the scores and action in a tournament that will feature over 100 games. But might you already have the perfect partner on your phone? Apple Sports has been revamped and extended to over 170 countries (it was previously 90) with a specific focus on the World Cup. It has added all the tournament information, including brackets, visual line-ups, live scores, and so on. It is probably not what we would recommend for hardcore football fans, but it is perfect for casuals, especially those who appreciate Apple’s commitment to slick visuals and layouts. If you don’t have it already for iPhone, you can get it for free here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: $500 million

📈📉 AI Tokens – Companies Rush to Impose Employee Usage Limits

Apart from those IPOs, one of the main talking points has been the fact that an unnamed corporation ran up a $500 million bill after introducing Claude to its employees but not setting any token usage limits. Apparently, according to Axios and Inc.com, the employees – not knowing any better – used the AI to run complex queries and workflows before the extreme usage was flagged by the finance department. The rumor mill is now in overdrive as sleuths try to guess which of the anonymous companies was in question. That is some bill. #AIBill Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

A little romance news from 3Advance to wrap up this newsletter – our very own Paul got married over the weekend in New Orleans! The city was the perfect backdrop for what was a truly special gathering of friends and family, and the second line through the streets was as magical as it sounds. A wonderful few days, a beautiful service, and a lot of very happy people celebrating and having the craic with Paul and Anisha. Congratulations to you both from all of us at 3Advance! 🥂💍

GOOGLE PLANS TO DISMANTLE SEARCH AS WE KNOW IT

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the big announcement from I/O 2026, looking at Google’s plans to completely transform Search into an AI “experience”. It really could change the structures of the web as we know it. We also have news on Jonny Ive’s Ferrari designs, Spotify introducing audio-magazines, a bit more from Google I/O, a worrying survey on AI layoffs, and all the latest from 3Advance HQ.

🎬 Our Top Take

🔎🤖 Google – Biggest Ever Transformation Coming with AI Search

The first day of Google I/O 2026 was just wrapping up as What’s Appening went live last week, so we thought we’d better let the dust settle on the big announcement before giving it the treatment it deserved. Google is overhauling Search like never before, with plans to completely change the foundation of the web as we know it. How so? Well, it is effectively changing its search results to an AI-assisted layer; think of it a bit like AI Overviews on steroids. It’s no simple overhaul, either, as Google will employ AI search agents to fly around the live web to retrieve information. There’s other stuff, too, but all in all, it basically reimagines Search as a conversation between you and AI. It doesn’t take a great leap to work out where the criticism of this comes from: If enacted as Google sees it, it could lead to a massive decline in website visits. Think about it: Why would I visit ESPN if Google can tell me what happened in the game? Why visit a cooking blog if Google will pull the recipe for me? Google maintains that people will still be able to click links and citations, but traffic is already down since the advent of AI overviews and this next step has been framed as zero-click search, and that’s a problem for the web economy. The roll-out will be steady but gradual, especially with AI agents assisting your search, but it does feel like a big bet by Google to so drastically change the product that made its name. Let’s see if it pays off. #Search&Destroy Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Phase

Phase has a simple tagline for its app – Cycle Syncing for Work. Its selling point is fairly compelling, arguing that the corporate environment was (mostly) designed by men for men, and that women could benefit by planning and working at the ‘right’ time. The app, as you can gather, is a productivity tool, helping women understand when and why they are more productive, allowing them to (as Phase puts it) work with their cycle, not against it. We should point out that the app won’t work for every woman, and some won’t need it all, but some of Phase’s research and the tools within the app are worth checking out. Find it for iPhone here and Android devices here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 99%

📈📉 Survey – Almost All Executives Are Prepared for AI Layoffs

It’s not new to talk about AI-related layoffs, but the pace seems to be gathering in some areas, and there is also a rapidly-changing sentiment. Yet, even the most hardened AI proponents would be taken aback by the results of the recent Mercer report, which found that over 99% of executives expect to see (human) headcount reductions in their businesses within the next two years. NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang recently claimed AI will create more jobs than it will take away. He’d better be right. #AIJobs Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

Sweet 16! 🎉 Sixteen years ago this Sunday, 3Advance opened its doors – and it’s been a hell of a ride since. We’re so proud to have served the community, some incredible entrepreneurs, and non-profits that have had such an impact over the years.

As we hit this milestone, we're grateful for everyone who's been part of the story so far. Thank you. 🎂

SAM ALTMAN WINS BATTLE WITH MUSK - BUT MAYBE NOT THE WAR

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the conclusion of the Elon Musk Vs. OpenAI lawsuit. It was a victory for Sam Altman, but the fact that it was somewhat based on a technical point of the law has left Musk vowing to appeal. We also have news on the upcoming launch of AI-powered Googlebooks laptops, Claude for Small Business, AI in the Apple App Store, and we’ll bring you all the latest from 3Advance.

🎬 Our Top Take

🧑‍⚖️🤖 OpenAI Lawsuit – Victory for Altman, But Musk Vows to Appeal 

In the end, there was no earth-shattering legal judgment on the origins and make-up of OpenAI, but there was a clear victory for Sam Altman, with the jury taking 90 minutes to unanimously decide in OpenAI’s favor. As we mentioned a few weeks ago at the start of the trial, the potential ramifications of Elon Musk’s lawsuit could have been the complete overhaul of OpenAI, as well as the shake-up of the broader foundations of AI governance. This was about more than Musk getting a huge wedge of compensation. Yet, what we got was a big win for OpenAI, albeit based on a technicality; the statute of limitations, basically. In short, the jury decided the case on the fact that Musk brought the lawsuit years after the fact rather than on the issues of the case itself. Musk, as we know, is pugnacious, so he has vowed to appeal, and he certainly didn’t hold back on venting his rage at the decision. For now, though, OpenAI and Microsoft are celebrating, but as seems to be the case with every Big Tech court case of the last twenty years, the losers vow to have another go. #TrialAndError Read more here. 

📲 App of the Week: LibrePods

Apple has been facing plenty of legal action – especially in Europe – to dismantle its walled-garden approach to products, but there’s also a healthy cottage industry in breaching those defenses through software. LibrePods, an open-source app, is one such example, as it enables many of the AirPods' Apple-exclusive features – battery status, noise-control switching, ear detection, etc. – on Android (and Linux) devices. LibrePods is not new, but what is new is its arrival on Google Play, which means you no longer need to sideload the application from GitHub. If you’ve got AirPods and want to listen on a non-Apple device, it’s a no-brainer. Check out LibrePods here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 20 PETABYTES

📈📉 AI – Tessera System Used to Halt Decline of UK Hedgehogs

The number of hedgehogs in the UK has fallen by about 75% since 2000, and the cute-but-spikey critters are not far off the endangered species list. But a massive collaboration centered on the University of Cambridge research team plans to track and, ultimately, save the hedgehog across the country. They’ve been assisted by Tessera, a powerful AI tool that was trained on 20 petabytes of data (the equivalent of about 10 billion photos), and satellites to scour the UK countryside to aid conservation efforts. We can all get behind this, right? #SaveTheHedgehogs Read more here

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

We’ll finish this week with a little birthday shoutout to 3Advance’s skipper, Paul Murphy. We won’t say exactly how old he is (but it is getting close to that stage where it becomes rude to ask). Anyway, from the whole team at 3Advance, many happy returns, Paul. We hope you’re able to celebrate with a few pints of plain with family and friends this week! Lá breithe shona duit! 🎂🎂

TIKTOK US TAKES A STEP TOWARD SUPER APP STATUS

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover TikTok Go. It’s a new feature for TikTok US users that taps directly into creators’ content, allowing users to book hotels, vacations, and experiences showcased in videos without leaving the app. It feels like a natural extension of its discovery model, and with eCommerce already in the bag, it’s another step toward becoming a “super app”. We also have news Disney is reportedly launching their own super app, a huge fine for Apple for breaking AI promises, the extent of Airbnb’s reliance on AI, and plenty more, including the latest from us at 3Advance!

🎬 Our Top Take

📱🏝️ TikTok – New “Go” Feature Moves It Into Super App Territory

Everyone wants to be a super app – Uber is doing it, X keeps saying it will do it soon, and even Disney (see our other stories below) has designs on it. TikTok’s new (US) owners seem to feel the same. They’ve launched TikTok Go, a feature that allows you to use the platform as a booking service for hotels, attractions, and other experiences. The booking system isn’t just static, either; it is based on the videos you are watching, so you’re able to book based on what your favorite influencer is showing you. It has been made possible by multiple partnerships, including Booking.com, Expedia, Trips.com, and more. This is not TikTok’s first attempt at becoming more than just a social scroller – TikTok Shop already exists for eCommerce – but now goes well beyond merch, being directly integrated with creators’ content. Moreover, it serves two important purposes for TikTok’s nascent US ownership: it keeps people in the app and provides an additional revenue stream for the platform. #TikTok Go Read more here.  

📲 App of the Week: Waddle

It’s been a while since we recommended a Vision Pro app, but Waddle has been catching the eye in what is, admittedly, a difficult marketplace for Apple. Waddle is a kind of Google Maps Street View reimagined for the Vision Pro: Type an address, such as 5 Avenue Anatole France, 75007 Paris, France 🗼, and you are transported there, albeit virtually. Now, there is a stipulation to be aware of, as this app still has a few teething issues and could ‘flow’ a little better to sell the idea you are truly somewhere else, but we agree with one reviewer, who claimed the idea was exciting and that it was a “good start”. Check it out for Vision Pro here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 60% & 40%

📈📉 Airbnb – Platform Leans on AI for Customer Service & Code

Airbnb claims that 60% of the new code written across Q1 2026 was created by AI. As part of its earnings call, CEO Brian Chesky spoke passionately about how AI was permeating the business, including on the property-lettings side, as AI provides integration solutions with property owners who may manage those properties using different software platforms. And another tidbit – Up to 40% of customer queries are now handled using AI without the need to escalate to a human customer service operator. That’s up 7% from the previous quarter. #AIBnB Read more here. 

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

Shift hit a big milestone today, and this one's extra special – 5,000 registered users! Shift connects Irish people and culture lovers around the world: events (from Irish trad to Irish metal, and sometimes, even a fusion of both!), the best pints nearby, community – all of it. The momentum is real, and it's only getting started. Download it here and be part of it. ☘️

MUSIC STREAMING PLATFORMS FACE BATTLE AGAINST THE BOTS

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover Spotify’s move to (finally) provide verification badges for human artists on the platform. It comes after users offer a chorus of disapproval for the volume of AI-generated music (including a lot of slop) permeating music streaming algorithms. Is a badge enough to fix the issue, though? We have news on the closure of Ask.com, marking the end of the 90s internet legend. We also have a look at the “Dumphone” app for our App of the Week, and we marvel at just how much Greg Brockman is worth due to OpenAI. We’ll also bring you the latest from the team at 3Advance.

🎬 Our Top Take

📱📵 Streaming – Music Fans Demand Transparency on AI-Generated Tunes

A question for our readers: Would you still enjoy a pop song if you knew it was generated by AI? For many, the answer seems to be no. And you can understand why. Take Dolly Parton’s Jolene, for example. Is it not all the more powerful when you know Dolly’s jealousy and anger are based on real-life marriage struggles? The heart-wrenching Tears In Heaven is doubly poignant when you learn Eric Clapton wrote it after the death of his infant son. We could go on, but you get the idea. Yet, as AI-generated music starts to infuse streaming algorithms, users want – at the very least – to have the choice of listening to AI content or not. Deezer has an AI filter button, but Spotify and YouTube Music do not, causing some criticism. Spotify has acted this week, though, bringing in a new verification badge to show you that an artist is human. AI slop has become a huge issue – almost half (44%) of new tracks on some streaming platforms are AI-generated - so it’s not clear whether this alone will solve it, but it’s evidence, at least, that Spotify understands there is a problem to address in the first place. None of this means to say that AI music is inherently bad, nor that it should not have a place on streaming platforms. But as with social media, users want transparency, and they are frustrated with platform operators’ attempts to deliver it. #AITunes Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Dumbphone Homescreen

“Dumbphones” are all the rage now among Gen-Z, as it seems that young adults are doing a better job than the rest of us at tackling their screentime habits. A Dumbphone is basically a smartphone without the smarts, i.e., stripped back to the necessities. Dumbphone Homescreen is an application that aspires to do the same, leaving you with the bare bones, such as messages and a clock on your home screen. It works a little bit like Brick without the need for a physical device, though it adds friction rather than outright blocking. There is a paid version and a free version, but the latter works just as well in our view. Check it out here for Android and here for iOS. 

🧐 Stat of the Week: 67%

📈📉 AI – Models Trump Human Doctors in Harvard Study

It’s just one study, so we shouldn’t get carried away, but an experiment led by Harvard Medical School found that AI, under certain tests, could be more accurate in diagnoses than human physicians when presented with the same information. The humans were accurate 50% and 55% of the time, whereas the (OpenAI) models were exact or very close in 67% of cases. #ModelDoctors Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

One of our favorite builds just got a big refresh. Footsteps with Jesus – the app that connects faith and fitness by letting you virtually walk the path of Jesus using your phone's or watch's step counter – is back with a brand-new version on iOS and Android. We've been with founder Dan from the very start, and it's been a real labor of love. The new build is cleaner, more beautiful, and comes with 30 days completely free – no credit card, no strings. After that, the full journey is a one-time $2.99. No subscription, no catch. If you've been meaning to check it out, now's the time. Download on iOS or Android.

THE BATTLE BETWEEN SAM AND ELON GOES TO COURT

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the latest chapter in the Elon Musk and Sam Altman tragi-comedy, which sees the former suing the latter and OpenAI for up to $150 billion. The public spat between the pair has been unprecedented in its pettiness, but the court case starts today and could rock the AI sector. We also have news on the massive leap in successful social media scams in the US, and Google going big on Anthropic investments. China is blocking a Meta acquisition, and all the latest from 3Advance.

🎬 Our Top Take

🥊🤖 The Battle – Musk and Altman’s Enmity Goes to the Courts

You’ve probably seen social media posts and press reports of Elon Musk and Sam Altman sniping at each other over the past few years. Just yesterday, for example, Musk tweeted, “Scam Altman.” Well, today, things officially get serious as Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman, and others, including Microsoft, goes before the courts. The first thing to say is that it isn’t frivolous, even if the $150 billion that Musk is demanding seems astronomical. But what’s it all about? Musk is arguing that OpenAI, which he co-founded and helped fund, was intended to be a non-profit for the “good of humanity”, basically a counterweight to the for-profit AI labs being developed at the time by companies like Google. Once OpenAI went commercial, including its partnership with Microsoft, Musk argues, that was akin to reneging on the deal that got him involved in the first place. Altman’s argument is, for want of better phrasing, that Musk is lying and knew full well that OpenAI would need to be commercial to survive. We don’t know how this is going to go, but the consensus is that if Musk wins – and it is possible – this could be massively disruptive for OpenAI, not to mention the structures of AI governance. We are well accustomed to Big Tech court cases rumbling on forever, launching appeal after appeal, but this time it’s two tech titans going head-to-head. The repercussions could be massive. #MuskVsAltman Read more here. 

📲 App of the Week: Google

No. We are not trying to sell you the idea that Google is something new and exciting. However, we wanted to highlight it this week for a very cute new feature that Google announced at the Search On event 2026 – Hum to Search. Simply open the Google App or Search Widget on your phone, tap the mic icon, and say, “What’s this song?” and start humming that earworm that has been stuck in your head but for which you can’t quite remember the words or title. It works remarkably well. You’ll need the latest version of the Google App, which you can find here for Android or here for iOS. If, as is likely, you already have it, simply update it on your phone.   

🧐 Stat of the Week: $2.1B

📈📉 Social Media – FTC Reveals 8-Fold Rise in Scams and Fraud

We all know that scams can appear on socials, but it seems that they are getting craftier. The FTC has revealed that Americans lost over $2 billion to social-media scams last year alone, representing an eightfold rise. The biggest culprit? It was Facebook by a large margin, followed by other Meta brands like WhatsApp and Instagram. Is it time to have a serious conversation about accountability? #SocialScams Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

We've been continuing our work with Jeffery Bradley on Self Speak – the affirmation app that lets you reprogram your mind in your own voice. Record a quick sample, and the app clones your tone, pitch, and pace so every daily affirmation comes back to you sounding like you. Our latest updates make it smoother and more personal – smarter affirmations, new subscription options, and onboarding built around habit-building. Because the most powerful voice in your life is your own. Try it on the App Store or Google Play.

SALESFORCE SAYS SAAS TIME IS UP

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the massively ambitious AI agentic transformation at Salesforce, and how it speaks to the traditional SaaS model. We also have news on Tim Cook’s successor at Apple, how a shoe company pivoted to AI, the new video app promising trustworthy news, and a potential rival to Figma and Canva in the shape of Claude Design.

🎬 Our Top Take

🤝🥷 Salesforce Takes a Bow and Goes “Headless”

The world’s leading CRM, Salesforce is the epitome of SaaS, having built its massive business on a model that charges “per seat” for access to its tools. Love it or hate it, Salesforce is at the heart of so many businesses, big and small. Here at 3Advance, we know all about using Salesforce as a “headless” datastore — in essence, replacing the Salesforce interface with a custom-designed more human friendly interface. Here’s the thing though: This new Salesforce shift suggests there’s a future with no interface at all. In the agentic era that’s unfolding, it’s expected that agents will be deployed to complete the same work, without an interface, without a browser, and without a human. This means that Salesforce will sell less seats, and need a new approach for maintaining revenue. Enter “Headless 360” with 100 new tools that are firmly developer-focused, putting every capability of its platform more easily accessible via API and MCP (well, we did say “developer-focused”). Salesforce has been working on this initiative for the past 2.5 years, and they’re meeting the pending storm head-on. It remains to be seen how future revenue will match what was possible up till now, and what seats those human workers will find elsewhere. #NoSeats Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: SaySo

SaySo has the tagline “Be Confident in Your Content”. That “content” is news and views, and the reason it wants you to be confident is that it is vetted and sourced from reputable reporters and content creators. In essence, it’s a short-form video platform – a bit like TikTok and YouTube – but it’s also positioned as anti-social media, aiming to eliminate doomscrolling, spam, AI slop, clickbait, ragebait, and misinformation. A big ask, yes, but everything posted on SaySo goes through a moderation process (both AI and human). SaySo is now available in the US after a long period of private testing. They are being careful with this because they have big hopes. Check it out here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 44%

📈📉 44% of New Music On Deezer is AI

🎸Music platform Deezer says that 44% of all new uploads are now AI-generated songs. That’s a whole lotta bot. Around 2M tracks per month, in fact. We expect the other music streaming platforms are similar, and it’s only going to increase. Right now, though, AI only represents about 1-3% of total music streams and is demonetized. Find out more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

Despite predictions of doom, AI isn't killing apps. For now, at least, it’s the opposite. A report on app store activity shows that new app releases are up 60% year-over-year – and up 104% so far this month alone. AI, notably vibe coding, has lowered the barrier to entry and set off a wave of first-time builders shipping their ideas. It’s unlocking creativity at a record pace, and allowing founders to validate (or invalidate) their ideas in record time. It’s a timely reminder after our announcement last week of relaunching 30 for 30 – 30 days, $30K, one shippable V1 product, and a plan for growth and scalability. Yes, AI’s made it easier to build apps, but we’re still in the business of building businesses.

More people than ever are turning their ideas into reality, so get in touch for a free consultation on how to take yours from 0 → 1, and then make it profitable.

META IS PROJECTED TO SOON EXCEED GOOGLE’S AD REVENUE

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we discuss the news that Meta is projected to overtake Google in ad revenue. An incredible achievement, but does all this ad money mean we overlook Mark Zuckerberg’s expensive mistakes and vanity projects? We also have news on Apple’s impending launch of smart glasses, OpenAI’s latest acquisition, Nikita Bier’s promise to drive down clickbait on X, and lots more!

🎬 Our Top Take

📱📵 Meta – Company Projected to Exceed Google in Ad Revenue for First Time

It remains one of the most salient facts in the tech industry that, despite its extraordinary influence in the lives of billions of people globally, Meta remains, at heart, an advertising company. Even in this era, where it has seen some success with its VR gaming gadgets and Ray-Ban smartglasses, approximately 99% of its massive income comes from advertising. Now, it has reached – or, at least, is predicted to reach – an important milestone, overtaking Google in ad revenue. It’s a significant passing of the baton between two of the architects of the modern web, yet we continue to find Meta’s dependence on ad revenue intriguing. It has spent (wasted?) SO MUCH money on other projects, not least the multi-billion-dollar disaster of the Metaverse. Right now, it’s splurging billions on AI data centers and tools, the latter of which, hilariously, includes an AI version of Mark Zuckerberg himself, who will interact with and guide Meta’s employees. Meta is probably right to get positioned in the AI race, but it’s hard not to think that investors forgive Zuck for his many vanity projects because he is so darn good at making money from the most annoying ads on the web. #MetaTopsGoogle Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Rash ID

We’ll start this post with a disclaimer: Always consult your doctor after getting healthcare advice from AI. That said, there is a growing number of useful AI tools that can help with basic care and advice, and one that feels particularly useful for peace of mind is Rash ID, which uses AI to analyze photos of skin rashes and provide a diagnosis within minutes. It also comes with a built-in AI dermatologist called MUM. We see it as the type of tool to use when you CAN’T make it to the doctor right away; not your endpoint diagnosis. Again, though, bear in mind that even popular tools like Rash ID can get it wrong. Check it out on iOS here and Android here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 24K Steps

📈📉 Golf – Green Jacket Winner McIlroy Is All In on Fitness Tech

We hope you enjoyed the thrilling conclusion to the Masters as much as we did, but were you following Rory McIlroy’s every step? Because he certainly was. The 6-time Major winner is actually an investor in Whoop, the fitness band that seems to be en vogue with athletes globally. So, we got plenty of insights on Rory’s ‘journey,’ including his 24,000 steps and his heart rate at the most critical moments. As an aside, we did see a thought-provoking golf-related statistic this week: Namely, that golf courses in the United States use 30X more water per annum than data centers. #RorysStory Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

30 for 30 is back for 2026. The pitch is simple: you’ve got a vibe-coded prototype (or just an idea that won't leave you alone), and we've got a full product team ready to turn it into something real. 30 days, $30k, one proper V1. We've seen what happens when this clicks – and it's pretty fun to watch. If you're sitting on something that's almost there, here's your nudge: 3advance.com/v1 🚀

GOOGLE IS ENDING AN ERA OF EMBARASSING EMAIL ADDRESSES

👀 TLDR

In this Week’s What’s Appening, we cover the cheerful news that Google will allow Gmail addresses to be changed while maintaining your account, meaning you can finally get rid of that embarrassing handle you made in high school. It’s been a quiet week in apps and AI, but we also have news on a new gaming app from Netflix, a big move for Beehiiv, and a record-breaking raise from OpenAI. Plus, we have an old favorite returning for App of the Week!

🎬 Our Top Take

💌🫢 Gmail – You Can Now Change That Embarrassing Email Address

There wasn’t much in the way of earth-shattering news this week (in tech and apps, anyhow) due to the Easter break, but we did stumble upon this good-feel story that feels apt as we ease back into the working week. Gmail is now allowing users in the US to change their email addresses while retaining all their data, meaning you can now drop that embarrassing handle that seemed like a good idea back in the early 2000s. On reflection, you probably weren’t going to get that job with an address like boobinspector87@gmail.com. Anyway, if you do fancy a change to make yourself sound a bit more professional, Google has laid out how to do it in this blog post. #EndOfAnEra Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: The Masters App

We’ve highlighted the official app for The Masters golf tournament a few times down the years, but we have no hesitation in recommending it again this week for four reasons. A) It’s timely, as the tournament gets underway on Thursday. B) It continues to be the gold standard in sports apps. C) The 2026 updates include new Simulcasts and AI features, including English and Spanish commentary generated outside the official network feeds, provided by its partner IBM WATSON. D) It’s free. Get it for iOS here and Android here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 30,000 Jobs

📈📉 Oracle – Mass Layoffs Announced Through 6am Staff Email

We have seen plenty of Big Tech layoffs en masse this year so far, but none have had as much of a backlash as Oracle, which hit an estimated 30,000 employees with an early morning email, saying, “Today is your last day.” The reason is, like the others, AI investments, but the insouciance of the email – a disgruntled employee published it, and it went viral – really hit a nerve. #OracleEmail Read more here. 

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

Today is National Beer Day, and if that's not a reason to knock off a little early, we don't know what is. Wherever you're planning to celebrate, Shift can help you find the best spot nearby – whether that's a hidden gem local pub or somewhere with a seriously good Guinness on tap. So download Shift and let it do the hard work of finding your perfect pint. Enjoy this “holiday” responsibly!

TIME TO BREAK THE HABIT?

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the landmark trial that saw social media companies pay a young woman millions of dollars in damages for negligence leading to social media addiction. The case is being treated as a huge bellwether, and it may open the floodgates for more lawsuits and big regulatory changes. We also salute Apple on its 50th birthday this week, and we take a look at the app trying to price every pint in Ireland. We have the latest on the Sora shutdown, the backlash against Bluesky’s new AI app, and more!

🎬 Our Top Take

📱📵 Social Media – Addiction Trial Victory Could Open Floodgates

If we had a dollar for every time a Big Tech company faced the courts in an important lawsuit….but last week felt a little different. In this case, it was Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google (YouTube) up against a young woman, known as Kaley, seeking damages for social media addiction. Reader, Kaley won, receiving millions in compensation as the companies were found to be negligent. The thing is: this case was not frivolous, and Meta and Google threw everything at the defense, but the jury voted 10-2 in favor of Kaley, shining a light on the tactics used to hook us to those platforms. The case gained international attention as a bellwether trial, and now we can expect more lawsuits to be brought forward. To us, it feels like the crest of a bigger wave, coupled with the bans and looming bans for minors (Australia, France, Spain, the UK) that will irrevocably change social media. We’ve seen Wednesday’s decision described as being on a par with the landmark wins in the Big Tobacco trials of the 1990s. It remains to be seen whether it will be that significant, but it's on the right track. #SocialNightmare Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: The Guinndex

Inflation is on everyone’s minds right now, and while you may be looking at the price of gas at the pump, many of us look at the price of a pint. Such was the thinking behind The Guinndex, a platform that aims to list the price of a pint of Guinness in every pub in Ireland – think of it like GasBuddy for creamy pints of stout. Anyway, what caught our attention – beyond its use case and similar mission statement to our own work with Shift – was the fact that many of the prices were sourced using an AI agent called “Rachel”. Rachel, complete with her friendly Northern Irish accent. was able to call thousands of the pubs to get much of the data. You can check out the Guinndex right here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: $1B PER DAY

📈📉 Sora – OpenAI Shutters App and Ends Disney Deal

Hmmm, probably not great news for OpenAI. It has decided to shut down the standalone Sora app, though it will be integrated into other products like ChatGPT. Still, the move has ended the intellectual property deal with Disney. We can’t verify the reports exactly, but there were some estimates that Sora was costing OpenAI up to $1 billion per day. That’s a high cost for what is, very often, slop. #SeeYaSora Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

Apple – World Reflects on 50 Years Since Its Founding

We couldn’t put the newsletter out today without special mention of Apple’s 50th birthday tomorrow. April 1st, 1976, saw its founding by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and the lesser-known Ronald Wayne. And well, you know the rest: 3 billion iPhones, millions of Macs and iPads, the iPod, Watch, AirPods (including those you lost while out running), and so many life-changing apps. It’s difficult to think of a more consequential company in the 21st century. Happy Birthday, Apple. It’s been quite the ride.

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

When a widely used software building block is compromised, it can quietly affect thousands of apps at once – without anyone ever touching those apps directly. 3Advance CPTO, Darren Gibney, broke down a recent high-profile example and what it means for development teams moving fast in the AI era. Check out Darren's post here.

JENSEN’S AGI CLAIMS ARE GREETED WITH SKEPTICISM

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the bold claim from Jensen Huang that AGI has been “achieved”. It’s a big statement, but it is also one that has been roundly dismissed as untrue. The consensus is that we just aren’t there yet. We also have news on an OpenAI hiring spree, despite all those AI-related layoffs. Apple has set a date for WWDC 2026, and publishers are enraged at Google’s headline shenanigans. We also have our regular Stat of the Week, App of the Week, and all the latest from 3Advance.

🎬 Our Top Take

🤖🤔 NVIDIA – Jensen Huang Claims Artificial General Intelligence “Achieved”

For the past few years, there have been several predictions of when AGI – Artificial General Intelligence, i.e., the tipping point where AI surpasses humans – would be achieved. Some said it was a few years away, others claim it is simply impossible. Yet, on a random Monday on a podcast, NVIDIA boss Jensen Huang dropped the bombshell that, “I think we’ve achieved AGI.” You might think this would be headline news, after all, AGI has been the holy grail pursued by the AI industry, yet it has barely made a ripple. Why? Well, the word “think” might be a clue. That, and it was met by skepticism from the media, other AI companies and experts, who probably have somewhat different metrics and incentives for judging it. If you want to decide for yourself, you can find both the audio and written transcript of the podcast here (it’s hosted by Lex Fridman, btw). Anyway, without passing judgment, we want to leave you with a final thought on this: there is a growing consensus that when the likes of Huang, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg make these bold statements on AI, they are not talking to the podcast host or reporter, nor the wider tech community; they are talking to Wall Street. #AGNigh Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Meet5

“This is not a dating app”, Meet5 states clearly on its website terms and conditions. But what is it? Well, it’s a European app, for one, but its recent launch in the US has seen almost one million downloads. Meet5 is one of several group activity apps that have become hugely popular recently. The idea is simple: connect with people with similar interests in your region – food, concerts, hiking, etc. – then use the app to get together. You have to be over 40 to use it, but as with rivals like Meetup, TimeLeft and of course Shift, the demand for dating apps that aren’t just dating apps is rising. Meet5 is free to download, but premium features are behind a paywall. Find it here for iPhone and here for Android.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 20 Years

📈📉 Twitter/X – Users Reflect After Anniversary of First Tweet

Twitter is 20, though it’s almost unrecognizable from the day when Jack Dorsey sent out “just setting up my twttr” as the first-ever Tweet. Someone bought that tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million - spoiler: it’s not worth that today. Anyway, the anniversary has prompted a lot of reflection on the platform, looking at both how Twitter became X and how society has changed in general. #BirthdayTweet Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

Yesterday was National Puppy Day here in the US, but it’s some European pups that are about to benefit most. The cuddliest app we’ve ever made is due to go live this week in Germany! The app was primarily targeted at the European market, so it’s exciting we’ve been given the green light to launch. If you haven’t checked it out yet, maybe it’s time. 🐾