EU Opens New Investigations Into Apple, Google, and Meta

The European Union announced on Monday that it is formally investigating Apple and Alphabet, the owner of Google, for excessive favoritism of their app stores, as well as Meta, the owner of Facebook, for its use of personal information for advertising. The investigations are the first to fall under the jurisdiction of the Digital Marketplace Act since new regulations came into force. The Act aims to tackle the hegemony of large online platforms as ‘digital gatekeepers’. The bill states that companies should allow app developers to direct users to products outside of their own platforms without charging a fee. The committee said it was concerned that the restrictions and limitations imposed by Apple and Alphabet were constraining developers’ ability to promote other services.

Intel and ARM Sign MOU for Emerging Companies Support Program

Intel and ARM signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on March 22, confirming their collaboration on the Emerging Companies Support Program, under which Intel and ARM will jointly support startups with IP and manufacturing, as well as provide financial assistance, to foster innovation and growth. The startups will develop ARM-architecture SoCs for a wide range of devices and servers, which will be manufactured by Intel’s foundry. Intel Foundry and ARM share the belief that in order for technology to benefit everyone, the building blocks of innovation must be accessible to anyone,” said Stuart Pann, head of Intel’s Foundry business.

New Microsoft Patent: Boosting Ray Tracing Performance with SSDs

Microsoft has proposed a new way to deliver ray tracing performance for games in future DXR API updates by reducing the video memory footprint through SSD solid state drives in a recently approved patent. One solution, Microsoft says in the patent, is to create more manageable pools of data that can be controlled by software pointing to LOD pools. Geometry pools could be set up via a command list on the GPU, loaded from bulk storage into host memory for ray tracing processing. Additionally WccfTech has indicated that Microsoft may be planning an update to its DXR API to use the DirectStorage API for the fast data transfers needed for these ray tracing workloads.

Chrome to Get Windows Font Rendering Update

Recently, it was discovered that Microsoft has submitted a new feature to Chrome that integrates the Windows ClearType font rendering scheme, and it’s going to be available in major version 104. Previously, Chrome fonts were rendered using the Skia library, which did not share parameters with Windows’ built-in ClearType, resulting in poor font rendering on high-resolution screens and blurry glyphs.

Spotify Releases Video Courses for UK Users

Spotify launched its fourth category of content after songs, podcasts, and audiobooks, online courses, in the UK on March 25th. The trial is currently only available in the UK, and there’s no word on whether it will be rolled out to more geographies or made permanent. video lessons from third-party platforms such as BBC Maestro, Skillshare, Thinkific, PlayVirtuoso and others will be available on Spotify’s mobile and desktop platforms, with courses in four major categories – music production, creativity, business and healthy living. Courses currently include music production, creative courses, business courses and healthy living. Courses are paid for separately, and users can try up to two episodes of each course.

Apple Pushes AirTag Firmware Early Due to Date Format Error

Previously, on March 19, Apple released a version of AirTag firmware (2.0.73), announcing that AirTag would be pushing the firmware in batches by serial number. Macworld reported that the plan was to start pushing the firmware on March 19 and complete the full push on April 9. iSoftware Updates analyzed the new firmware after finding that all AirTags had received the firmware update on March 19 and found that the 2.0.73 firmware changed the date from the standard “month” date to the date of the AirTag firmware update. After discovering that all AirTags received the firmware update on March 19, iSoftware Updates analyzed the new firmware and found that the 2.0.73 firmware had changed the date from the standard “month/day/2024” to “month/day/24,” which led AirTag to believe that the deployment date was 24 years earlier than 2024, and immediately obtained the update.