German competition guardians Face to face with Google, Apple & Co.

Status: 23.06.2021 3:56 p.m.

The big tech companies from the USA are becoming more and more powerful all over the world. There are also new players from China. The Bundeskartellamt does not just want to accept market power.

From Sebastian Tittelbach, WDR

For a few months now, one hears an abbreviation more frequently in the office corridors of the Federal Cartel Office: GAFA. They are the first letters of the really big ones: Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. And Bundeskartellamt President Andreas Mundt has all of these in his sights. “We are talking about the most powerful companies in the world. We’re getting very strong companies in China – so this is by no means an American event, it’s a global trend.”

New rules have been in effect since the beginning of the year

German competition law changed at the beginning of the year. Since then, the cartel watchdogs have been able to take action against Internet companies more easily. And the 400-person authority from Bonn does not shy away from tech giants from overseas worth billions. “It’s not about throwing sand in the machine”says head of the authorities Mundt. “Our aim is simply to end anti-competitive behavior at these companies.”

Amazon already had to reorganize its marketplace under pressure from the Federal Cartel Office. Amazon has given the smaller retailers who offer their goods there more rights. The Federal Cartel Office is currently taking a look at Apple. “We know what kind of universe Apple maintains, and I personally see it that way that restrictions of competition are possible”, so Mundt. “And now let’s see how this process develops.”

The pandemic is leaving its mark

The corona pandemic did not leave the Federal Cartel Office completely without a trace. In 2020, the investigators only went out for a single search – for reasons of hygiene, the head of the authorities said: “We were out last summer, and we’re honestly looking forward to going back out now, if the numbers allow.”

Even without searches, the Bonn authorities found enough evidence to punish companies. She imposed 349 million euros in fines last year. Half a billion less than in 2019, but still well above the long-term average. Above all, steel and aluminum forges, manufacturers of street sewer castings, such as covers made of cast iron or concrete, and wholesalers of pesticides have to pay. Elsewhere, the cartel watchdogs were more flexible because of Corona: in the automotive industry, for example, they approved collaborations between companies so that the supply chains did not collapse completely in the pandemic. “Then other cooperations are possible between companies where you might have concerns outside of the pandemic, then say in the pandemic: The economic situation is such that you can and must cooperate”, explains the head of the Cartel Office, Mundt.

High hopes, more work

He has great expectations of the new competition register, which was launched in the spring. “The competition register is simply about registering companies that owe something. Violation of minimum wage et cetera.” Such companies can be banned from public tenders for three to five years.

The Bundeskartellamt expects more work on merger control in the current year. Because of the pandemic, there could be more company mergers. The cartel office will examine such mergers without any corona bonus, announces the head of the authorities Mundt. Because when companies merge, it is usually forever – but hopefully not the corona pandemic

(Source: Reuters) The leading electric car manufacturer Tesla (USA) will again accept vehicles pay in bitcoin when the process of “mining” this cryptocurrency is certified to use clean energy. Tesla CEO, Billionaire Elon Musk announced the above information on June 13 and immediately caused bitcoin to increase 5.1% in value, to $ 37,360.60 at 1:10 am on June 14 (Vietnam time). Billionaire Musk said Tesla will restore use bitcoin coin in payment transactions when “miners” certify that 50% of the electricity used to “mine” cryptocurrencies is clean energy and identify this as a positive trend in the future. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are the “rewards” obtained after the process of “mining” with specialized miners that solve computational problems that allow linking blocks of transactions (blockchains). This process consumes a large amount of energy. In May, billionaire Musk announced Tesla will no longer accept bitcoin as a means of payment in its purchases. The announcement reverses Tesla’s decision in late March to accept payments in bitcoin and invest $1.5 billion in the digital currency. According to the graph of Bitcoin Mining Power Consumption Index produced by the University of Cambridge (CBECI), the energy use for “mining” cryptocurrency has increased continuously since 2016, even skyrocketing in 2020 and up The current level is 149 terawatt-hours (TWh), an all-time high.

On the evening of May 27 (local time), Megan Thee Stallion and the stars attended the iHeartRadio Music Awards 2021 at Microsoft Theater, Los Angeles. Arriving at the event, she stood out on the red carpet with an old, sparkly golden short off-shoulder dress. The skirt has a diagonal cut that gradually widens from the left shoulder to the right thigh, adding a penetrating fabric to help the beauties show off their “real” curves, the most eye-catching is the “forgot underwear”. Netizens gave many compliments to the rookie female singer of the world music industry. They commented, she has a very natural, healthy body, not limited by any beauty standards. However, some said that the dress did not match the “fertile” body of the star born in 1995. At this year’s awards ceremony, Megan “dominated” the list of nominations with 8 categories. However, she only won the “Best Combination” award with Beyonce in “Savage”. “I really want to thank the fans because without you I would be nothing. I also want to thank my grandmother for believing in me,” she said on stage accepting the award. Accompanying Megan to the awards ceremony was her boyfriend, rapper Pardison Fontaine (31 years old). The two confirmed their relationship in February. Fontaine gave his girlfriend an affectionate cheek kiss, while Megan posed playfully.

WhatsApp will block users who do not accept the new terms after May 15. Photo: WhatsApp After May 15, people who bypass WhatsApp’s new privacy rules will result in that account being restricted from accessing the app and eventually not being able to view the list of chats and calls. voice or video. After a few weeks, that user will be blocked from all resources including sending messages, but the account has not been removed from the system. Within 120 days of receiving the notification and the user stops logging in, that account will be deleted, all data will still be available if the user syncs with Messenger. WhatsApp updated its new policy earlier this year, all users were informed that the service would share data with other Facebook companies. Many users just want their data shared as little as possible, as some reports suggest that WhatsApp is collecting and sharing data related to location, IP address, phone model, operating system, etc. Your operating system, browser, mobile network, ISP, or even information about how you’re texting, calling, groups you’re in, status, profile picture, or the last time the user was online. To use the application, users must accept the new WhatsApp terms. However, the 27 European countries will not be affected by this new policy thanks to a privacy law known as GDPA and users will not have their personal data shared with another 3rd party.

DOGE-1 will send a 40 kg Geometric Energy Corporation satellite to the Moon. This satellite will collect information about the planet Earth. Representatives of the two companies have not announced the contract value paid in Dogecoin. The DOGE-1 program will send a satellite to the Moon on a Falcon 9 rocket. Fees are paid in Dogecoin. Photo: SpaceX. SpaceX vice president Tom Ochinero said the DOGE-1 program “will demonstrate the application of extraterrestrial cryptocurrencies and lay the groundwork for transplanetary commerce.” Earlier, Elon Musk said that SpaceX will “actually put a Dogecoin on the Moon”. However, he made his statement on April 1, so no one is sure if he was joking or telling the truth. SpaceX is not the first company run by Elon Musk to accept cryptocurrency payments. In February, Tesla announced it was buying $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and accepting payments for cars in the currency. The move caused Bitcoin price to surge. In the crypto world, the term “to the moon” is often used to refer to a coin’s value skyrocketing. According to Coinmarketcap, on the morning of May 10 (Vietnam time) Dogecoin is priced at about 0.55 USD, with a market capitalization of 72 billion USD, ranking 4th after Bitcoin, Ethereum and Binance coin. Before that, Dogecoin had 2 strong volatile weekends. On May 8, the news that Elon Musk hosted Saturday Night Live caused the price of Dogecoin to increase sharply. According to Coinmarketcap data, the value of each Dogecoin coin has increased from $0.34 on May 1 to $0.69 as of the morning of May 8. Many fans of Musk and Dogecoin even plan to invite friends over to watch and celebrate if the coin’s price skyrockets. On the morning of May 8, Elon Musk posted on his personal Twitter a picture of him and two other guests of Saturday Night Live. Musk also inserted a picture of the dog Shiba, the symbol of Dogecoin, into the frame. Soon after, the Dogecoin price increased rapidly and reached an all-time high of $0.72 before cooling off. The price of Dogecoin dropped dramatically on the morning of May 9, before Elon Musk hosted Saturday Night Live. Photo: Coindesk. However, before the time of Elon Musk’s broadcast, the price of Dogecoin dropped dramatically. According to the data of Coinmarketcap , from nearly 0.7 USD, Dogecoin dropped to more than 0.5 USD after more than 30 minutes of the program. The market capitalization of this coin dropped from $90 billion to just $68 billion after 1 hour, more than $150 million of leveraged investors was blown away. As expected by many, Elon Musk mentioned Dogecoin in the middle of the show. “Recently, the prices of many cryptocurrencies have increased, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and especially Dogecoin,” replied Elon Musk when asked “what is cryptocurrency”.

Recently, Apple’s vice president of global marketing Greg Joswiak and senior vice president of hardware engineering John Ternus accepted an interview with The Independent. The two executives revealed a lot of information about the company’s future development direction and product planning.

Regarding speculation about the integration of the iPad and Mac product lines, Joswiak responded, At present, Apple does not have the idea of ​​merging the two product lines, they are just trying to make the two products the best products in their respective categories, and will not fall into the “merger” discussion.

When asked why the new iPad Pro uses the M1 chip instead of the A series chip, Ternus said: “ We have been using the best chip for the iPad Pro, and now the best Apple chip is the M1 chip. “The two also discussed the behind-the-scenes story of the new screen for ‌iPad Pro‌.

This is by far the best iPad screen, comparable to Pro Display XDR. The manufacturing team has spent a lot of effort to reduce the thickness of the mini-LED screen, which is a difficult task for Apple. This is by far the best iPad screen, comparable to Pro Display XDR. The manufacturing team has spent a lot of effort to reduce the thickness of the mini-LED screen, which is a difficult task for Apple. In fact, as early as the 2018 WWDC conference, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, explained at the meeting that Apple will not integrate the two product lines. If you consider it from a business perspective, Apple certainly hopes that users can buy iPhone, iPad and Mac at the same time. If there is a competitive relationship between the iPad and the Mac series in product positioning, then users can only buy one device to meet all their needs, which is obviously not in Apple’s commercial interests.

Although Apple has made it clear that it will not merge, Xiao Lei believes that the powerful performance of the iPad Pro will make it more like a “computer” in the future. This year’s new iPad Pro uses up to 16G of running memory and 2T of hard drive. The greater performance of the iPad will definitely drive developers to launch more productive software, and people can use it to complete more daily tasks in the future.

The iPad Pro with a more powerful configuration has also made its product prices higher and higher. Today, the price of the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro is as low as RMB 8,499 and as high as RMB 18,499. In contrast, the lowest price of the MacBook Air is only 7,999 yuan, and the lowest price of the new 24-inch iMac is 9,999 yuan.

For ordinary consumers, the current so high price of the iPad Pro makes it difficult to start. Many people might think why not choose a computer since it’s all at this price? Apple officially said that the iPad Pro will not be merged with the MacBook, but the iPad Pro seems to have “merged” with the price of the computer.

“Coming back in April, the wind sings in summer. There are such blue horizons. The clouds are far away and the sun is far away ”… It is the hum in the soul of music lovers from Duong Thu’s song. April is the time when you feel spring waving for the last time on the sunny horizon, farewell the green color of leaves, clouds, wind … already dark green, hard, and the flower buds bear fruit to wait for the day to ripen … Spring is gone. The glorious summer was at a glance with all but full of sunshine and wind, with the resounding holy showers and thundering thunder. Yellow gerbera. April brings us many hopes and dreams of a burning summer. It is no coincidence that the students all looked up at the arch of the phoenix, watching the bunches of phoenixes that were about to burn a fiery red fire like a youthful soul. Summer is really the season of youth, the season of aspirations, but the moment of changing season still has things to do with … and that shows in this green April. In recent years, when April comes, when the phoenix has not yet bloomed, the yellow flowers have glittered everywhere like a sunny season has come. In Hanoi, people take lilies as the April messenger of nature. The pure, pure white lilies made the season of April more emotional. Heaven and earth is like that, but nature is not equal to the human soul. It is people with anxious love, full of emotions that make up a green April of life. Green April will lead us to a summer of love to come. Green April has returned, with the sea lover, always go to the sea to watch the new waves every day fading, white and creepy of the cold season, now turning deep blue to the end of the horizon of white clouds. In April, there was no feeling and concept of spring and summer, thanks to poetic music that has created such a lovely moment. Human souls and eyes have made a poetic green April flutter. Duong Trang Huong

Easily see familiar images of lovely cats at Gac Mien. Have a pen cup, ruler or watercolor tray set on the table to promote creative ideas for your artwork. Around the table are also meticulous and harmonious décor. There are pictures and unique paintings on the wall of the restaurant. An image of a curled up cat sleeping at the table lamp. Gac Mien did not forget to leave the guests with chess, chess … to be able to train their brain. Besides, the peaceful space of the restaurant is also a place to find the souls of book lovers. Huge bookshelves with old books that not everywhere. A corner with a lovely table lamp, just right for you to sit and read. Gac Mien resided in an old dormitory that seemed discreet and secretive. But the sunlight will follow you from the moment you set foot at the door until you go deep inside. A window frame filled with sunlight. An image of a cat basking in the midday sunlight brings a sense of peace. You can also find a green space where you can sit down and sip a cup of tea, immerse yourself in the cool, quiet atmosphere and enjoy the sun. The outdoor space of Gac Mien. Located in room 306, house A8 of Khuong Thuong Collective Area, 1A Ton That Tung Lane, finding Gac Mien is not easy for strange visitors to visit for the first time. If you have trouble finding this place, please pick up the phone to get help from the super friendly owner! Just gently tug on the other hanging rope, the door will open to welcome you. There is one thing to note, that is Gac Mien always wants to preserve a quiet space for everyone. Therefore, the restaurant usually does not accept the number of guests exceeding 4 people. If you want to have pictures to keep memories, please consult the owner first!