The Format #016

With Christmas around the corner, there has been a lot of hype in the air. The GTA VI trailer dropped, and seems on track to become equally as culturally significant as the 5th. Google dropped Gemini, for a day it was referred to as ‘the ChatGPT killer’, then the morning after people realised the demo video was heavily edited…

It’s also been a very good fortnight (or maybe I should be saying Fortnite?) for Epic Games, with a big win in Court and a huge release for their Fortnite-Lego collaboration.

With the tech debrief out the way, here are some of the more interesting updates and articles we’ve found this week:

Epic Win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight

This has been a hard fought battle over 3 long years. Epic vs Google. With Google being found guilty on every count. The actual outcomes are yet to be decided, but there’s a good chance it will mean that anyone could introduce their own app store on Android with their own transcation fee % (or lack of).

‘Fortnite’ Has Actually Made The Metaverse After Everyone Else Quit

While the title may be one of the most cringe attention grabs I’ve seen all week, the message itself is interesting. Fortnite have pivoted from the survival game they became known for, with one specific user group, to an entertainment hub for very different types of users and engagement. They have a music place, a racing place, a Lego world, a place to be creative, a place to game, a place to chill with friends and basically every IP in existence. Fortnite is far from what it once was…

GPT-3 sized models in 565 lines of code

This is quite a technical read, but the key takeaway, open source large language models are getting smaller and more powerful. With the amount of people in the open source community working on this, it’s happening at a very fast rate. The implications… it’s easier to train and own your own models without depending on a certain company whose CEO could leave on any given weekend.

Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone

With millions of AI images now being generated every day, this feels like information we should have been told a long time ago… The (only) good news being that smaller and more task specific AI models are significantly better for the environment than big general purpose ones. This lines up with our vision of the future with smaller, lightweight and more portable applications becoming the norm.

OPENFORMAT News:

Momentum is increasing as we roll into the holiday season…

Headlines:

• New senior developer 🙌🏽

• Released version 0.2 of Launchpad (management interface for interacting with OPENFORMAT ecosystem )

• Released version 1.2 of SDK (everything needed to easily build Web3 applications)

• Released version 1.0 of “Pre Launch” - the pre launch gamified waitlist for startups

• 1st Phase of transaction model in place

• Hedera integration has started

• Version 2 of “get started” template for developers to wrap their existing or new applications in game mechanics

• Two new companies building with OPENFORMAT which we’ll announce soon.

• The waitlist queue is open 🔥🔥🔥

Head over to openformat.tech to get into the queue for early access. You’ll also be getting a taste of what’s coming and what can be built as you interact with our V1.0 “pre launch” application (open source coming soon 👀).

App to Eco-System with OPENFORMAT

Mark as always does a great job of bringing our vision for the future to life. In this case it’s by using the hit app ‘Wordle’ as an example application, only in this world its called…Hyper-Wordle. After writing this Andy and Mark set out to turn this from theory to reality with a ‘Hyper-Wordle Template’ so developers can build along and add their own game in the Wordle ecosystem.

And that’s all for this week.

Have a great weekend, Dan and the OPENFORMAT team 👋🏽

Prompt (generated using Dalle-3): “A vivid and clear portrayal of a courtroom battle between a Lego character and Google. The Lego character, animatedly arguing, is in sharp contrast with a character whose head is a prominent, unmistakable Google logo, looking visibly startled and taken aback. The judge, another Lego figure, looks on intently, holding a gavel. The courtroom is lively, filled with Lego furniture and a diverse crowd of Lego spectators, emphasizing the playful and unmistakable theme of Lego versus Google.”