Good morning, imagine you can have a ‘digital twin’ that can take all the work meetings for you. Well, Zoom’s CEO might turn it into reality.

In today’s issue:

• Netflix and Spotify will now pay for Canadian news.

• WestJet announced new UltraBasic fare, but there a catch.

• TD Bank employee bribe and money laundering scandal.

• AI clones in meetings.

• AI outage: all major platforms down.

• More tech stuff

• 5 tools to boost your productivity.

Let’s get into it.

CANADA

💰️ Netflix and Spotify will now pay for Canadian news

Netflix and Spotify must now contribute to a fund supporting Canadian news and content production, per the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) - Bloomberg CA

The details:

• Foreign streamers must pay 5% of their annual Canadian profits into a fund.

• The fund supports local TV and radio news, Indigenous content, French-language content, and diverse creators.

• Expected to add $200 million annually to Canada’s broadcasting system.

Why?
To equalize competition between tech giants and traditional broadcasters, ensuring continued support for Canadian news content.

BIZ BITES

✈️ WestJet’s new UltraBasic fare: the name says it all

WestJet introduced a new ultra low-cost fare, the UltraBasic, no carry-ons, no seat choice, and no reward points, pretty much nothing other than a place to sit on the plane.

💸 TD Bank employee bribe and money laundering scandal

A former TD Bank employee, Gerry Aquino Vargas, took $200 bribes to help clients move millions to Colombia, bypassing anti-money-laundering measures.

SOFTWARE

👬 AI clones in meetings

Zoom founder Eric Yuan aims to revolutionize enterprise software by allowing "digital twins" to attend meetings on your behalf.

Yuan believes AI can free up time for employees, allowing them to focus on more important personal matters.

Zoom’s ambition: the company aims to expand beyond video chat, venturing into documents, email, and other productivity tools to compete with Microsoft and Google.

The impact: This innovative approach of “digital twins” could revolutionize how we interact with work, potentially increasing productivity and work-life balance by minimizing unnecessary meeting time.

AI

🪫 AI outage: all major platforms down

OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini and Perplexity AI experienced simultaneous outages early Tuesday morning, causing widespread disruption among users.

What happened:

• ChatGPT was down from 7:33 AM PT to 10:17 AM PT, with its site indicating it was at capacity.

• Claude displayed server errors and resumed functioning after 12:10 PM ET.

• Perplexity showed over-capacity messages and had intermittent issues, resolving around the same time as Claude.

• Google's Gemini also reported brief disruptions according to user reports.

Is this concerning?
The simultaneous downtime of multiple major AI platforms raises concerns about the reliability and resilience of these platforms.

TECH BITES

👓️ Netflix in VR coming soon with Meta Quest

Meta Quest headsets will soon allow users to stream Netflix directly from its web browser, updating the outdated Quest app.

🤖 Elon Musk delays Tesla’s AI plans to prioritize X instead

Elon Musk redirected 12,000 of Nvidia’s H100 GPU chips intended for Tesla to X (formerly Twitter), delaying Tesla's $500 million processor acquisition.

PRODUCTIVITY

🛠️ 5 Tools to Boost Your Productivity

1. 📊 Sheet AI: Put AI in your Google Sheets.

2. 🐦 Postwise: Craft viral Tweets in seconds.

3. 🕵️‍♂️ GPT Zero: Detect whether an essay is ChatGPT or human-written.

4. 🦾 Resolve: ChatGPT-powered customer service chatbots.

5. 🖋️ Easy Peasy AI: Create amazing blog posts 10X faster with AI tools.

FEEDBACK

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