Loading summary
Transcript2 lines
- [00:05]
A
Welcome to the TechMean write home for Monday, April 14th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today you know that meme of Ebenezer Scrooge shouting out the window, hey boy, what tariff regime is it today? Sam Altman again implies ChatGPT usage has exploded. If you're coding with AI, a big new vulnerability you need to know about. And is Apple pivoting the Vision Pro to the type of product I thought they should have done all along? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Time for another exciting episode of tariff roulette. Over the weekend, the Trump administration announced that smartphones, laptops, hard drives, processors, memory chips and machines used to make semiconductors would receive exemptions from reciprocal tariffs. Quoting Bloomberg this is a large hole in the US Tariff wall that will spare key firms like Apple and consumers of laptops and phones from sticker shock, an analyst said. But many other consumer, intermediate and capital good from China still face prohibitively high US Tariffs. This exemption only covers one segment of the US Economy. President Trump on Saturday declined to elaborate on the exemptions, but hinted at further developments on Monday. I'll give you that answer on Monday. We'll be very specific on Monday, he told reporters on Air Force One. We're taking in a lot of money as a country, we're taking in a lot of money. End quote. More on that in a second. The idea of Monday another shoe dropping. But at this point we was it all over but the shouting. No one had to worry anymore about $2,000 iPhones in the fall. Maybe the real treasure was the mishigas we made along the way. Well, even at the time people were expressing doubts. Here are just a few tweets and skeets and whatnot that I collected over the weekend. A lot of the chatter focused on okay, cool, some of the tariffs are gone. Good for Apple and other big folks. But what about the little guy that maybe doesn't have the clout of an Apple or Google to get these exempt? And what about the supply chain? Like great that the gadget itself, its whole self wouldn't be tariffed. But what about all the constituent parts that go into the gadget? If they're still tariffed, then the gadget itself will still be more expensive, right? Here's Tony Stark on Mastodon. So right now, if someone wants to import all of the parts needed to make a computer, they have to pay a massive tariff. But if they import the fully assembled computer, there is no tariff. Wow. Truly a genius plan to reshore tech Manufacturing and Michael Kaley on X. They simply don't understand what the costs of tariffs will be. You can hide the headline costs of iPhones and laptops, but the effects on all prices, not to mention production itself via supply chains, can't be handled by one time exemptions and bribery. Mana Glacias if you're a business owner who doesn't have Tim Cook's clout or Apple's lobbying budget, you're out of luck I guess. And Derek Thompson quote, imagine trying to manage a supply chain. Right now every 48 hours the White House is announcing or unannouncing or re announcing or creating massive carve outs to a new trade rule. Why would anyone anywhere build a new factory under these conditions? End quote well dear listener, I bet you can't imagine where this all went. Could it be more contradiction and confusion? You bet. U.S. commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick came out yesterday and warned that consumer electronics exempt from tariffs may yet still be included in semiconductor tariffs, likely coming in a quote month or two. So not out of the woods yet. In fact, you know when you thought you were maybe out of the woods a day ago, turns out I don't know. There is no spoon. Quoting the FT Donald Trump signaled that smartphones and other consumer electronics imported to the US From China would face tariffs, dealing a blow to hopes of a reprieve for big tech companies such as Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft. Nobody is getting off the hook for the unfair trade balances and non monetary tariff barriers that other countries have used against us, especially not China, which by far treats us the worst, the US President wrote on his Truth social platform. His administration on Friday excluded phones, chip making equipment and certain computers from steep reciprocal tariffs in what was seen as a significant boost for technology groups whose stocks plunged after Trump unleashed a global trade war this month on what he called Liberation Day. But on Sunday, US Officials played down the exemptions, warning that such products would be reexamined as part of a government probe into semiconductors, which face a separate round of tariffs. What he's doing is he's saying they're exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, said U.S. commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, referring to Trump. But they're included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two, end quote. When asked to clarify whether tariffs on Apple iPhones might, quote, come back in a month or so, Lutnick replied, quote, correct. That's right. We need our medicines and we need semiconductors and our electrical electronics to be built in America, end quote. Later on Sunday Trump wrote on social media that the U.S. would be, quote, taking a look at semiconductors and the whole electronic supply chain in the upcoming national security tariff investigations, end quote. Lutnick and Trump's comments will spark further uncertainty on Wall street on Monday about the impact of the president's tariff rollout, which has been marked by a series of reversals that have caused a share price roller coaster and a sell off last week in the $29 trillion US Treasuries market, end quote. Again, I don't know what to tell you. Even if I check the stock market opening right now as I'm recording this, what's the point? Because something else in one direction or another will probably have happened by the time you hear this. President Trump told reporters he would announce the tariff rate on imported semiconductors over the next week, giving some flexibility to certain companies. Quoting Axios, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he traveled back to D.C. from Mar a Lago. Administration officials would likely discuss tariffs on products like iPhones and tablets. With companies, quote, because you have to show a certain flexibility. Nobody should be so rigid, end quote. When asked if there would be flexibility for some products, Trump replied, for some products, end quote. He declined to say which ones, end quote. Okay, so even if this new needle gets threaded, somehow, tech companies still face this. China has suspended exports of a wide range of rare earth minerals and magnets that are crucial for making semiconductors, robots, drones, cars and other products. Quoting the New York Times. Shipments of the magnets essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles have been halted at many Chinese ports while the Chinese government drafts a new regulatory system. Once in place, the new system could permanently prevent supplies from reaching certain companies, including American military contractors. The official crackdown is part of China's retaliation for President Trump's sharp increase in tariffs that started on April 2. On April 4, the Chinese government ordered restrictions on the export of six heavy rare earth metals, which are refined entirely in China, as well as Rare earth magnets, 90% of which are produced in China. The metals and special magnets made with them can now be shipped out of China only with special export licenses. But China has barely started setting up a system for issuing the licenses. That has caused consternation among industry executives that the process could drag on and that current supplies of minerals and products outside of China could run low. If factories in Detroit and elsewhere run out of powerful rare earth magnets that could prevent them from assembling cars and other products. With electric motors that require these magnets, companies vary widely in the size of their emergency stockpiles for such contingencies, so the timing of product disruptions is hard to predict. The so called heavy rare earth metals covered by the export suspension are used in magnets, essential for many kinds of electric motors. These motors are crucial components of electric cars, drones, robots, missiles and spacecraft. Gasoline powered cars also use electric motors with rare earth magnets for critical tasks like steering. The metals also go into the chemicals for manufacturing jet engines, lasers, car headlights and certain spark plugs. And these rare minerals are vital ingredients in capacitors, which are electrical components of the computer chips that power artificial intelligence servers and smartphones. One American mining leader, James Litinsky, the executive chairman and chief executive of MP Materials, said that rare earth supplies for military contractors were of particular concern. Drones and robotics are widely considered the future of warfare and based on everything we are seeing, the critical inputs for our future supply chain are shut down, he said. End Quote Sony has hiked PlayStation 5 prices in Europe, the UK, Australia and new Zealand, citing a challenging economic environment. The PS5 Pro, though, remains the same price. Quoting CNBC, Sony said it has made the tough decision to raise prices against the backdrop of a challenging economic environment, including high inflation and fluctuating exchange rates. Serkan Todo, CEO of Tokyo based games consultancy Catan Games, said it was likely that Sony will also raise PS5 prices in the US I would be very surprised if Sony was able to keep the PlayStation prices in the US stable. Now is the right time for the company to hike prices because user backlash would be comparably limited, toto told CNBC on Monday. So yes, I expect Sony to raise prices in the US eventually, once it's at least a bit more clear where exactly tariffs are headed. It's not the first time that Sony has boosted prices for the console, which is now more than five years old. It previously undertook hikes in 2022 in various countries and regions, then further lifted the console price in Japan last year. End quote don't you just love accounting? Sometimes it feels like you need to take a master's level accounting class just to understand how to use your accounting software. Well, here's some easy to use accounting and invoicing software that makes something complicated as simple as it could be. With FreshBooks, it streamlines your invoicing and payment processes, saving you valuable time on data entry while keeping your finances organized. No accounting classes required. With FreshBooks, you'll save time and get peace of mind. Run your billing books and payroll on the same platform, build invoices in seconds, get paid twice as fast. Create reports that allow you to instantly see the health of your business. Stay organized for tax time and compliant with tax regulations. Collaborate with clients, manage billing and track project profitability. Why not give this a shot? Switching to FreshBooks is painless, even if you're coming from another accounting tool. FreshBooks makes migrating your data simple and their support team is ready if you need help. Don't wait for the stress to pile up. Head to FreshBooks and get 70% off for four months. No credit card required. Let FreshBooks handle your taxes so you can focus on what you do best. There is a growing expense eating into your company's profits. It's your cloud computing bill. You may have gotten a deal to start, but now the spend is sky high and increasing every year. What if you could cut your cloud bill in half and improve performance at the same time? Well, if you act by May 31, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can help you do just that. OCI is the next generation cloud designed for every workload where you can run any application, including any AI projects, faster and more securely for less. In fact, Oracle has a special promotion where you can cut your cloud bill in half when you switch to OCI. The savings are real. On average, OCI costs 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking. Join Modal, Skydance Animation and today's innovative AI tech companies who upgraded to OCI and saved offer only for new US Customers with a minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify for half off@oracle.com Techmeme that's oracle.com Techmeme Sam Altman suggests that ChatGPT users have doubled in just the past few weeks, and that quote 10% of the world uses our systems imply a number close to 800 million users globally. Quoting Forbes since late 2024, ChatGPT's user base has been growing at an astonishing rate with the release of several products that have gone Viral, including its March 25 introduction of a new image generation feature, which creates images and videos in various styles, including that of Studio Ghibli, the legendary Japanese studio that created film classics like My Neighbor Totoro. On March 31, Altman posted on X that ChatGPT had added a million users in just one hour. This thanks to Ghibli mode, which was trending. Chris Anderson of TED asked Altman in an onstage interview if any consideration had been given to compensating artists for creating works in their style. Altman said in time, there might be a way for certain prompts to trigger automatic payments for creators who opt in and explained for now, guardrails are in place to prevent the model from generating copyrighted protected works. But Altman also said OpenAI was lightening guardrails around speech harms and making it less restrictive in image generation to be more responsive to users wanting less sensor censorship End Quote Devs Let me warn you about something new to worry about if you're using AI to write your code, say hello to slop squatting. Quoting the Register as we noted in March and September last year, security and academic researchers have found that AI code assistants invent package names. In a recent study, researchers found that about 5.2% of package suggestions from commercial models didn't exist, compared to 21.7% from open source or openly available models. Running that code should result in an error when importing a non existent package, but miscreants have realized they can hijack the hallucination for their own benefit. All that's required is to create a malicious software package under a hallucinated package name and then upload the bad package to a package registry or index like pypy or NPM for distribution. Thereafter, when an AI code assistant re hallucinates the co opted name, the process of installing dependencies and executing the code will run the malware. The term slop squatting was coined by security researcher Seth Larson as a spin on typo squatting, an attack method that tricks developers into installing malicious packages by using names that closely resemble popular libraries. Unlike typo squatting, slop squatting doesn't rely on misspellings. Instead, threat actors could create malicious packages on indexes like pypy and npm, named after ones commonly made up by AI models in coding examples. A research paper about package hallucinations published in March 2025 demonstrates that in roughly 20% of the examined cases, 576,000 generated Python and JavaScript code samples. Recommended packages didn't exist. The situation is worse on open source LLMs like Code Llama, DeepSeek, WizardCoder, and Mistral. But commercial tools like ChatGPT4 still hallucinated at a rate of about 5%, which is significant. Although there are no signs that attackers have started taking advantage of this new type of attack. Researchers from open source cybersecurity company Socket warn that hallucinated package names are common, repeatable, and semantically plausible, creating a predictable attack surface that could easily be weaponized. The only way to mitigate this risk is to verify package names manually and never assume a package mentioned in an AI generated code snippet is real or safe. Using dependency scanners, lockfiles and hash verification to pin packages to known trusted versions is an effective way to improve the research has shown that lowering AI temperature settings reduces hallucinations, so if you're into AI assisted or vibe coding, this is an important factor to consider. Ultimately, it is prudent to always test AI generated code in a safe, isolated environment before running or deploying it in production environments. Finally today from my of course they are file Our Mark Gurman Apple Scoop this Monday is that Apple is working on a lighter and cheaper Vision Pro and a Mac tethered model with ultra low latency. Hey, nobody likes my idea that I floated many times, but here's my argument. People easily pay $3,000 for a computer. Heck, I myself have paid $1,500 just for a monitor. So? So if you position the Vision Pro as a computer, people might pay up for a computer that comes with an infinite display. Quote the new plan is to release a model that makes the headset both lighter and cheaper. The current version weighs nearly one and a half pounds and can often strain a wearer's neck and head. Many people who wear it for long periods of time require third party straps to alleviate the discomfort. The fact that Apple offers this option on its website is an acknowledgment of the issue. One of the new headsets will seek to address these issues, though, so reducing the costs may be even more challenging with the possibility of tariffs. The Vision Pro, at least the first version, is made in China. The other headset in development could be even more intriguing. In January, I reported that Apple had scrapped work on augmented reality glasses that would tether to a Mac. Instead, it's now working on a Vision Pro that plugs into a Mac. The difference between the two ideas is the level of immersion. The canceled device had transparent lenses. The product, still in the works, will use the same approach as the Vision Pro. The idea is to create an ultra low latency system for streaming a user's Mac display or for connecting to high end enterprise applications. Some customers have been using the Vision Pro for things like viewing imaging during surgery or for flight simulators. Those are two areas where a user would want the least amount of lag possible, something that can't be guaranteed by a fully wireless system. Still, all of this is a stepping stone toward Tim Cook's grand Vision, which hasn't changed in a decade. He wants true augmented reality glasses, lightweight spectacles that a consumer could wear all day. The AR element will overlay data and images onto real world views. Cook has made this idea a top priority for the company and is hell bent on creating an industry leading product before Meta can. Tim cares about nothing else, says someone with knowledge of the matter. It's the only thing he's really spending his time on from a product development standpoint. Once again, reminder that I'm coming to you from a hotel in Denver right now. So if you hear a buzzing in the background, it's because unfortunately I'm recording next to the refrigerator. Tomorrow I'll be talking to you from a cabin in Estes Park. Maybe I'll record outside by the creek tomorrow, weather permitting. Though I should have my own room to record in too. We'll see. Check my socials for pics of our horseback riding in the desert yesterday on a horse with no name. Talk to you tomorrow.
- [19:30]
B
Find yourself looking for a new job or change in career? Monster.com is here to help. We are not only here to bring you job postings, but also AI interview prep and salary tools, expert career advice and top notch resume services. We've got everything you need to land your perfect job fit. Discover the magic of finding the ideal job. With Monster.com, your future starts now. Visit Monster.com today. Your next job opportunity is just a click away.