Brian McCullough (0:04)

Welcome to the Techmeme write home for Thursday, April 10th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, at the time of this writing, the tariffs are back off. But who knows what will happen by the time you hear this. OpenAI sues back. Google wants a framework for AI agents to talk to each other. Oh, and how many iPhones can you pack in a jumbo jet? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Well, you know, I guess JK jk jk. I'm sure you've heard that a lot of the Trump tariffs were reversed yesterday. And as I type these words, the stock market is a bit down this morning, but yesterday afternoon the Nasdaq jumped more than 12% on the news of the tariff reversal. Nvidia closed up 18.7%, Apple closed up 15.5%, Meta 14.8%, Amazon 12%, Microsoft 10.1% and Alphabet 9.9%, though there is this quoting CNBC, the president also said in a social media post that he was raising the tariffs imposed on imports From China to 125%, quote, effective immediately due to the, quote, lack of respect that China has shown to the world markets. End quote. China, which is the US's third largest trading partner, earlier Wednesday said it would increase its tariff rate for imports from the US to 84%, end quote. Now, now, this 90 day tariff pause does give Nintendo, whose stock closed up 11.7%, time to prep the Switch 2's US launch on June 5th. After all, I guess quoting Bloomberg, roughly a third of Switch two units are assembled in Vietnam, which would have been subject to a 46% levy, but now only faces the 10% universal tariff imposed by Donald Trump's administration. Nintendo can focus all that production on the US and stock up as many units as possible over the next three months. The company is preparing for what the industry expects to be the largest gaming console launch launch in history. Hoisin Corp. One of three main Switch 2 assemblers, shipped more devices in February to the US from Vietnam than in the previous six months combined, according to customs data provided by NBD. That suggests Nintendo can build a stockpile of millions of consoles from the Southeast Asian country in time for the June launch. Notably, almost all of Hoisen's production went to the US starting January, from about 11% to 2/3 over the previous 12 months, the data showed. There is no Plan B for the company beyond the 400 Switch 2, which will soon be the key platform for its popular game franchises. Nintendo is diversifying its business to better tap a rich library of intellectual property and beloved characters via film, merchandise and theme parks. But to do that, it must have a thriving platform and expanding user base. If the tariffs stay at 10%, Nintendo probably keeps pricing at $450 and just takes the hit on margins, said Bernstein analyst Robin Zhu. At 46%. Vietnam tariffs I expected them to raise by $50 to $100. End we believe the Switch 2's bill of materials is around $400, meaning Nintendo will still be selling consoles at a loss in the US with the 10% tariff. But the loss would be something Nintendo would be able to absorb, said Hideki Yasuda of Toyo Securities. Sony is in a tougher situation, as Most of its PlayStation production is in China and it may be forced to hike PS5 prices in the US in the near future. PC makers showed one path to navigating the tariff uncertainty over the first quarter by stockpiling inventory in the US and doing away with discounts. End quote. Ye on that, I continue to be fascinated by airlift stories like this, quoting Reuters Tech giant Apple chartered cargo flights to ferry 600 tons of iPhones, or as many as 1.5 million units to the United States from India after it stepped up production there in an effort to beat President Donald Trump's tariffs, sources told Reuters. Apple wanted to beat the tariffs, said one of the sources familiar with the planning. The company lobbied Indian airport authorities to cut to six hours the time needed to clear customs at the Chennai airport in the southern state of Tamil N that do down from 30 hours, the source added. The so called green corridor arrangement at the airport in the Indian manufacturing hub emulated a model Apple uses at some airports in China, the Source said. About six cargo jets with a capacity of 100 tons each have flown out since March, one of them this week, just as the new tariffs kicked in, the source and an Indian government official said. End quote. So this is fun. From our friend John Gruber Quote this sounds like one of those puzzles job interviewers often ask, but there's a practical relevance at the moment. What's a ballpark estimate for how many iPhones Apple might have hustled to ship into the US on those five freight planes ahead of the new tariffs. Ryan Jones tackled it in a post on x a whopping 12 days of sales at most. Here's the math. B747 freighter carries £300,000. Boxed iPhone is 0.9 pounds, which would equal 350,000 iPhones per plane. I like Jones's ballpark math there. Let's not worry about volume. Just wait. If we're wrong about the volume, it can only mean fewer new inbox iPhones can fit per plane. There's no way to safely exceed the weight limit of a plane. Jones also estimates that Apple sells about 150,000 new iPhones in the US per day, at least in the typical April June quarter, which I concur is a good ballpark figure. So each plane can carry a little over two days worth of US domestic iPhones. That means, if the Times of India is correct, that Apple transported five planes full of iPhones and other products from India to the US in just three days during the final week of March. Those five planes combined carried at the most about 12 days worth of new US iPhones. Now that's just from India. And those are just the five planes the Times of India heard about. It seems safe to presume Apple might have hustled even more planes out of China and Vietnam. But again, at most, each plane full of Apple products carries about two days worth of products. We did our napkin math using iPhones, but one full plane equals two days of inventory. Can't be far off the mark. No matter what the mix of products is in each plane's cargo hold. 350,000 iPhones packed onto a single plane is a lot of iPhones. Sending a few million units across a dozen or more planes is quite literally tons of iPhones. But Apple sells about 50 tons of new iPhones in the US alone every day. We all know that Apple's iPhone business is huge, but when you start to consider it in practical terms like this, it's just staggering. End quote. The US Senate has confirmed former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins as SEC chair, succeeding Gary Gensler. Atkins is widely expected to support crypto friendly policies. Quoting Bloomberg, Atkins, approved Wednesday in a 52:44 vote, is expected to scale back regulation, reduce corporate disclosures and make SEC rules friendlier toward cryptocurrency companies, which battled in court with predecessor Gary Gensler. The new chair will also need to monitor the volatility triggered by the trade levies. Atkins is a familiar face at the SEC's headquarters. He served as a commissioner from 2002 to 2008, a stretch that included two pivotal moments for the agency the fallout from the Enron accounting scandal and the start of the global financial crisis. The SEC already has made major changes since Gensler departed on Trump's Inauguration Day. Under acting chair Mark Ueda, the regulator not only has dropped more than 10 high profile crypto enforcement cases, but also rolled back deadlines to comply with Gensler ERA rules and it easier for companies to reject shareholder proposals. The agency ended the court defense of embattled rules requiring companies to disclose climate related risks and greenhouse gas emissions. Atkins will lead a much leaner agency. At least 500 SEC employees have taken deferred resignation and buyout offers to leave the regulator as the Trump administration pushes for across the board cuts to federal agencies, end quote this has gotten a bit lost in the mix of headlines, but OpenAI has countersued Elon Musk, claiming harassment and asking a federal judge to stop Musk from any further attacks in a case over OpenAI's future structure. Quoting Reuters through press attacks, malicious campaigns broadcast to Musk's more than 200 million followers on the social media platform he controls, a pretextual demand for corporate records, harassing legal claims and a Sham bid for OpenAI's assets, Musk has tried every tool available to harm OpenAI, the company wrote in a filing in Musk's existing lawsuit against OpenAI in U.S. district Court for the Northern District of California. OpenAI asked the judge to stop Musk from any further attacks as well as be, quote, held responsible for the damage he has already caused. The two parties are set to begin a jury trial in spring next year. In a post on X, the social media platform which Musk owns, OpenAI said Elon's nonstop actions against us are just bad faith tactics to slow down OpenAI and seize control of the leading AI innovations for his personal benefit. End quote Google has announced Agent to Agent, an open interoperability protocol to enable seamless collaboration between AI agents across diverse frameworks and vendors. Quoting Testing catalog aimed at enterprises, the protocol seeks to address the challenges of siloed systems by standardizing communication between agents, thereby automating complex workflows and enhancing productivity. Supported by over 50 technology partners including Salesforce, SAP, SAP ServiceNow and MongoDB, A2A provides a universal framework for AI agents to securely exchange information, coordinate actions and integrate across enterprise platforms. The A2 protocol operates on key principles such as compatibility, discovery, task management, collaboration and user experience negotiation. For instance, agents can publish their capabilities via JSON Formatted Agent cards, allowing client agents to identify the most suitable remote agent for the task. The protocol also facilitates lifecycle management for tasks, enabling real time synchronization between agents. Built on established standards like HTTP and JSON, A2A ensures compatibility with existing systems while prioritizing security. Google has released A2A as open source, inviting contributions from the broader community to refine and expand its functionality. The protocol complements Anthropic's Model Context Protocol or MCP and is positioned as a higher level abstraction for agent communication. Google plans to launch a production ready version later this year. This initiative significant for enterprises striving to implement AI driven automation across diverse systems. By enabling interoperability between specialized agents, A2A addresses a critical barrier to scaling agentic AI solutions. Industry leaders such as Deloitte have highlighted its potential to unify workflows and reduce integration costs. By the way, Google has also introduced Firebase Studio, an AI powered IDE that lets developers create custom mobile and web apps, APIs, backends and front ends in their browsers. So that's good for you devs, but good for the rest of us. WordPress has launched an AI tool to help users build simple websites using a chat interface available to users for free to compete with similar offerings from Squarespace and wix. With all the whipsaws in the markets recently, it can be intimidating to focus on investing for your future. But it doesn't have to be. April is Financial Literacy Month. That's right, they made a whole month reminding you to finally take control of your money. Good news is you don't need 30 days. Acorns makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future in just five minutes. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the spare money you've got right now. Even if all you've got is spare change, you don't need to feel like financial wellness is impossible. Acorns gives you small, simple steps to get you and your money on track. And you don't need a ton of time. Like I said, you can create an Acorns account and start investing in just five minutes. Basically, Acorns does the hard part so you can give your money a chance to grow. Sign up now and join the over 14 million all time customers who have already saved and invested over $25 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.com ride or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns tier one compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures@acorns.com Rise hey freelancers, we know what your days look like. You juggle clients, deadlines and that endless to do list. But when it comes to tax time let's face it, the stress is real. That's why I'm here to talk about FreshBooks, the cloud accounting software designed to make the hard part easy. With FreshBooks, you'll save time and get peace of mind. Imagine having all your expenses neatly organized, your profit and loss report ready to go, and a clear picture of your business health all in just a few clicks. No more late nights, drowning in paperwork or searching for lost receipts. And it's not just about taxes. FreshBooks automates your workflow year round. Snap photos of your expenses on the go, send professional invoices in seconds, and track payments seamlessly. Then, when tax time does come, everything's prepped and ready for your accountant. Heck, you can even give them custom access to your FreshBooks account for free. Working with your accountant has never been so easy, so why not give it 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.com and try it. Free for 30 days, no credit card required. Let FreshBooks handle your taxes so you can focus on what you do best. That's freshbooks.com get started today and thank yourself tomorrow. Meanwhile, OpenAI has launched the Pioneers Program, which aims to work with multiple companies to design tailored AI benchmarks for specific domains like legal and finance. Because we already have controversy about broad based benchmarks for AI models, so it would be useful to have frameworks for specialized AI areas like that. Quoting TechCrunch the new OpenAI Pioneers program will focus on creating evaluations for AI models that set the bar for what good looks like, as OpenAI phrased it in a blog post. As the pace of AI adoption accelerates across industries, there is a need to understand and improve its impact in the world, the company continued in its post. Creating domain specific evals are one way to better reflect real world use cases, helping teams assess model performance in practical, high stakes environments. As the recent controversy with the crowdsource benchmark LM arena and Meta's Maverick model illustrate, it's tough to know these days precisely what differentiates one model from another. Many widely used AI benchmarks measure performance on esoteric tasks like solving doctorate level math problems. Others can be gamed or don't align well with most people's preferences. Through the Pioneers program, OpenAI hopes to create benchmarks for specific domains like legal, finance, insurance, healthcare and accounting. The lab says that in the coming months. It'll work with multiple companies to design tailored benchmarks and eventually share those benchmarks publicly, along with industry specific evaluations. The first cohort will focus on startups who will help lay the foundations of the OpenAI Pioneers Program, OpenAI wrote in the blog post. We're selecting a handful of startups for this initial cohort, each working on high value applied use cases where AI can drive real world impact. Companies in the program will also have the opportunity to work with OpenAI's team to create model improvements via reinforcement fine tuning, a technique that optimizes models for a narrow set of tasks. OpenAI says the big question is whether the AI community will embrace benchmarks whose creation was funded by OpenAI. OpenAI has supported benchmarking efforts financially before and designed its own evaluations, but partnering with customers to release AI tests may be seen as an ethical bridge too far end quote finally today, according to the International Energy Agency, global electricity demand from data centers will exceed 945 terawatt hours by 2030, and US data centers are set to account for nearly 50% of electricity demand growth by that same year 2030. And you guessed it, AI is the driver behind all that. Quoting Silicon Republic, the comprehensive report finds that AI will be the most significant driver of the surge, with electricity demand from AI optimized data centers projected to more than quadruple by the end of the decade. Data centers in the US Will account for nearly half of the growth in electricity demand in the country between 2025 and 2030, the IEA reports. Current estimates suggest that the US is the second highest energy consumer, using just more than 4,000 TWh of electricity annually. This, however, is leagues behind the top consumer, which sits at more than 8,300 terawatt hours a year. The US government places significant emphasis on the growth of the AI sector. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump announced a private sector funding of $500 billion into OpenAI's infrastructure, which is said to secure American leadership in AI. More recently, AI usage has been promoted and encouraged within government departments driven by AI use. The US economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy intensive goods combined, including aluminum, steel, cement, chemicals, the IEA writes. While advanced economies, which include much of the global north, would drive more than 20% of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030, this development sets some of these countries back on a track for higher energy demand after years of being in stagnation or decline, the report says. A 2024 Central Statistics Office report showed that data centers accounted for more than a fifth of Ireland's electricity consumption at 21%, overtaking urban dwellings, which consumed 18% of the total electricity used in 2023. AI is one of the biggest stories in the energy world today, but until now policymakers and markets lacked the tools to fully understand the wide ranging impacts, said IEA Executive Director Faith Birol. Global electricity demand from data centers is set to more than double over the next five years, consuming as much electricity by 2030 as the whole of Japan does today. The effects will be particularly strong in some countries. For example, in the United States, data centers are on course to account for almost half of the growth in electricity demand, in Japan, more than half, and in Malaysia as much as one fifth. While the increase in electricity demand for data centers led by AI will drive up emissions, this will be small in the context of the overall energy sector, the report finds. Moreover, AI could accelerate innovations in the energy industry as the technology continues to become integral to scientific discoveries. This could lead to advancements in energy tech such as batteries and solar. With the rise of AI, the energy sector is at the forefront of one of the most important technological revolutions of our time, birol said. Said AI is a tool, potentially an incredibly powerful one, but it is up to us, our societies, governments and companies, how we use it. End quote. By the way, I was clearly wrong to trust those 10 year olds at that birthday party the other weekend. The Minecraft movie is a big monster hit. I guess this is why I don't do the Hollywood box office Ride home. Talk to you tomorrow.