What goes up must go down. After a record maple syrup harvest last year, Canada’s crop of the brown stuff has come crashing down like a stack of flapjacks that was piled too high. 

Driving the news: Canadian maple syrup output fell to a five-year low, dropping 40.1% from last year due to sudden temperature swings and intense storms which killed sap flow. 

As if renewing your real passport wasn’t a big enough pain, you may soon need an internet passport to get into your favourite Reddit thread. 

Driving the news: Per TechCrunch, Worldcoin — a crypto project co-founded by Sam Altman — has created integrations for World ID, its iris-scanning identity verification tool, for some major digital platforms, including Shopify, Reddit, Telegram, and Minecraft.

Forget a Justin Bieber collab — as Tim Hortons expands into its newest locale, it should be looking for a stamp of approval from Blackpink or BTS.  

What happened: Tim Hortons opened its first-ever location in Seoul today and plans to open 150 more locations in South Korea within the next five years. It’s the seventh Asian country to get a Tims after China, India, Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Singapore.

The problem: One way scientists have tried to avoid cutting people open for surgery is by injecting a photo-sensitive ink that can harden into replacement tissues, but light can’t penetrate very far through skin and organs.

The solution: Researchers at Duke University and Harvard Medical School have developed an ink that hardens when vibrated by sound waves

Governments often play catch-up on regulating new technologies, but when it comes to AI, they are beginning to make up some ground.

What happened: The EU passed its Artificial Intelligence Act, only the second set of AI laws passed by a governing body. China implemented rules for generative AI in August, but the EU’s rules are more far-reaching.

Icy, cold, chilly…words that are appearing both in weather reports and outlooks on the tech market this week.

Driving the news: Regardless of what part of the tech ecosystem you look at, the last week has come with headlines that suggest financial struggles are going to stick around:

The UN COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai went into overtime as environment ministers made like us in university and pulled an all-nighter desperately trying to finish a project.

Driving the news: COP28’s president is expected to announce the conference’s final draft of commitments sometime this morning despite the conference technically ending yesterday. Negotiations went deep into the night over how strict fossil fuel reduction goals should be.

They say you can’t teach an old newspaper new tricks, but The Grey Lady wants to get with the times and dabble in AI. 

What happened: The New York Times hired an editorial director of AI initiatives to chart a path forward for using AI in its newsrooms as more media companies experiment with the technology — a slight change in pace given its approach to AI has been cautious so far. 

When all else fails, try finding answers to today’s problems in the ol’ history textbooks. 

What happened: The federal government is rolling out a catalogue of pre-approved home designs to speed up housing development in the midst of a nationwide shortage — one that continues to fuel some of the most expensive housing costs seen across all G7 nations. 

Like a bartender with a generous pour, TikTok creators have been reeling in the tips. 

What happened: TikTok has become the first non-gaming app to see users spend US$10 billion on the app. Per TechCrunch, the surge in spending has come from TikTok’s in-app purchases of “coins” — a virtual currency that users can spend to tip the app’s creators.

Canada proposed a new strategy to slash methane emissions by offering cattle farmers incentives if they feed their cows food that will make them burp less. 

Yes, we are dead serious.

What happened: The plan would give farmers offset credits for switching their cows to feed with additives (like oil and extra grain) that reduce the amount of methane cattle produce. These credits can then be sold to companies to help them meet emissions reduction goals. 

It’s starting to look like investors might be happier watching BlackBerry the movie than BlackBerry the company.

What happened: BlackBerry is walking back IPO plans for its Internet of Things (IoT) division — which creates in-car operating systems used in 235 million vehicles, among other things — and will promote John Giamatteo, president of its cybersecurity division, to CEO.

Look away, Blue Jays fans: Shohei Ohtani just signed the biggest contract in pro sports history, and despite some dedicated flight tracking and internet sleuthing, it’s not with Toronto. 

Driving the news: Baseball phenom Shohei Ohtani agreed to a 10-year US$700 million contract (not a typo) with the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend, the largest ever in professional sports history.

The EU is once again leading the charge on regulating tech, this time with a new set of rules for AI businesses. 

What happened: The European Union has reached a deal to establish the world’s most comprehensive AI legislation to date, including strict regulations for AI model developers and restrictions on the use of AI in biometric surveillance. 

On this week’s episode of Free Lunch by The Peak, we sat down with Brian Armstrong to talk about what's going on with crypto in Canada and what the future holds for the industry.

Our picks for what to eat, read, watch, and listen to this weekend.

Tesla is learning the hard way that the only thing Scandinavians love more than skiing and cured seafood is the right to collective bargaining agreements. 

Driving the news: Denmark and Norway’s largest private sector unions and Finland’s transport union plan to halt the delivery of all Tesla vehicles destined for Sweden that come through their ports if the company fails to reach a labour deal with striking Swedish workers.

Would you be the face of a Russian disinformation campaign for $200? Well, that’s exactly the situation in which a handful of celebrities found themselves this week.  

Driving the news: Several famous faces like Elijah Wood and Priscilla Presley were tricked into making videos that were edited and used to attack Volodymyr Zelensky, the latest in a series of organized efforts by Russian trolls to warp perceptions around the war in Ukraine. 

What is end-to-end encryption?

A messaging system where only the users can participate. This means your internet provider, mobile provider, law enforcement and even the company that makes the app you are using can’t read your messages.

Anyone paying attention to Google’s big AI announcement on Wednesday may have been left with two main questions: how is it different from ChatGPT, and is it any good?