Brian McCullough (0:04)

Welcome to the Tech Meme Ride home for Thursday, May 29, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Nvidia has solid earnings, though they're quite concerned about being boxed out of China. The apparent hack of Victoria's Secret gave me a dad joke title for Today's episode, why DeepSeek's recent R1 update is a bigger deal than even they are letting on, and why the CEO of Anthropic says we should be more worried about the AI he's unleashing than are currently here's what you missed today in the world of tech at the time of this writing, Nvidia is back to being the most valuable company in the world. That comes after Nvidia reported Q1 revenue was up 69% year over year to $44.06 billion above the $43.31 billion that was estimated. Their data center revenue was up 73% to $39.1 billion and their net income was up 26% to $18.78 billion. Quoting CNBC, Nvidia says it expects about $45 billion in sales in the current quarter versus LSEG estimates of $45.9 billion in sales in the July quarter. The company said its guidance would have been about $8 billion higher except for lost sales from a recent export restriction on its China bound H20 chips. During the quarter, the US government informed Nvidia that its previously processor for China would require an export license. Nvidia said it incurred $4.5 billion in charges related to excess inventory for the chip and would have recorded $2.5 billion in extra sales if the chip hadn't been restricted. Nvidia said its gross margin of 61% for the quarter would have been 71.3% if not for the China related charge. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told investors on an earnings call that the $50 billion market in China for AI chips is effectively closed to US industry. The H20 export ban ended our hopper data center, huang said. Despite the political tension, Nvidia's report shows the company is continuing to grow aggressively, powered by demand for its artificial intelligence chips, which are used to build and Deploy applications like OpenAI's ChatGPT. Global demand for Nvidia's AI infrastructure is incredibly strong, said Huang in a statement. End quote. More on that China angle from Bloomberg Quote Huang said that Chinese AI rivals are filling the void left by the departure of US Companies from the market and their technology is becoming more powerful. The Chinese competitors have evolved he said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Huawei Technologies, a Chinese tech company blacklisted by the US Government, has become quite formidable, he said. US Restrictions on exports to China have effectively locked Nvidia out of the country, the largest market for chips, and as a result the company expects to lose out on $8 billion in sales this quarter alone. During a quarterly earnings call Wednesday, Huang spent much of the time arguing that the American government should ease the curbs rather than keeping AI technology out of Chinese hands. The intended purpose of local companies are just finding alternatives, he said. Tencent holdings and other major purchasers of his products can't be blamed for turning to Huawei because they can no longer depend on US Suppliers, he said. Like everybody else, they are doubling quadrupling capabilities every year, Huang said, and the volume is increasing substantially. Huang cautioned that the gap between US Products and Chinese alternatives is decreasing. Huawei's latest AI chip is similar to the performance of Nvidia's own H200, a component that was state of the art until its replacement in recent months. You cannot underestimate the importance of the Chinese market, wang said. This is the home of the world's largest population of AI researchers. Wang said he wants all of the world's AI researchers and developers to be using American technology. Irrespective of the near term revenue success we have had, we can't ignore the fact that the Chinese market is very important, he said. End quote. I actually have some Nvidia news not related to AI. Remember, Nvidia is also a gaming hardware company. Nvidia has debuted a native GeForce now app for Stream Deck, supporting games in up to 4k at 60 frames per second. If you're into gaming, you know that the Stream Deck and similar handhelds is where the growing action is in the gaming sector and having one of the most powerful streaming platforms on that platform now is a pretty big deal. Quoting Windows Central Nvidia's GeForce now has rapidly become my favorite cloud gaming service as it dramatically outperforms Xbox's own cloud platform today. Following up on Nvidia's promise earlier this year, you can download Nvidia GeForce now on your Steam Deck as a native app built for SteamOS and Stream the latest and greatest titles and up to 4K with a dock naturally at 60 frames per second with HDR10 support and DLSS4 upscaling on select games. I've been testing it out for a few weeks now on my Steam Deck. Not only does it give my battery a much needed rest and extend its lifespan by up to 50%, but it's simply the only way I can run games at the performance levels I enjoy, which Valve's Steam Deck isn't always capable of with local rendering. First announced at CES 2025 for Steam Deck, the Nvidia GeForce now native app presents a more seamless way to use your Nvidia subscription and access your full library of games. We've always been able to use the service via a web browser on the Deck, but this app runs straight from gaming mode on stream OS and is much less of a fuss to set up and jump into your favorite games. Graphically intense AAA titles are now possible on my handheld, and there are up to a whopping 2200 supported games from across Steam, Epic Games, Xbox, Ubisoft and Battle.net with over 180 supported PC Game Pass titles. The native app should give the performance of an RTX 4080 GPU with an ultimate subscription and predictably lower if you opt for the middle grade performance tier. It's also wor noting that while you can Enjoy up to 4K streaming at 60 frames per second with the Steam Deck docked, Nvidia is looking into 90 frames per second support for a future release. Everything is done on GeForce now cloud server, so you needn't worry about storage space, streaming textures and downloading game updates. End Quote I tried to come up with some sort of pun joke to go here, but I wasn't able to think of anything. So here you go. Victoria's Secret has taken down its website and replaced it with a message saying we identified and are taking steps to address a security incident. They've also closed some store services. Quoting Bleeping Computer Victoria's secret manages approximately 1380 retail stores in nearly 70 countries and reported an annual revenue of $6.23 billion for the fiscal year ending February 1, 2025. The company says in a message replacing the website that it's Victoria's Secret and Pink stores remain open while operations are being restored. Valued customer we identified and are taking steps to address a security incident. We have taken down our website and some in store services as a precaution. It says our team is working around the clock to fully restore operations. We appreciate your patience during this process. When asked for more details, a company spokesperson has also told Bleeping Computer that Victoria's Secret has hired external experts to investigate the incident. Impact Victoria's Secret has yet to reveal the nature of the incident. We immediately enacted our response protocols. Third party experts are engaged and we took down our website and some in store services as a precaution. We are working to quickly and securely restore operations. We continue to serve customers in our Victoria's Secret and Pink stores. Bleeping computer was told Hilary super, the retailer's chief executive officer, also told employees that, quote, recovery is going to take a while. In a note sent to employees and seen by Bloomberg News two weeks ago, French luxury fashion brand Dior disclosed another cybersecurity incident after unknown attackers accessed data on some Dior fashion and accessories customers. German sportswear giant Adidas has also revealed a data breach last week after threat actors who hacked a customer service provider stole some of its customers data. These incidents follow a series of other attacks targeting retailers across the United Kingdom over the last several months, including Harrods Co Op and Marks Spencer. Marks Spencer is now bracing for a potential profit hit of up to 300 million pounds, approximately $402 million after the breach led to widespread sales and operational disruptions, End quote More from Bloomberg On Wednesday, some employees were locked out of email accounts with passwords not working, according to a person familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because they weren't authorized to speak on the matter, end quote all right, fine. Here's Nick Freshette on Twitter. Quote Somebody knows Victoria's Secret, maybe a lot of them Eyes emoji, end quote Mark Gurman says Apple is about to do something I think they should have done a long time ago. Quote the next Apple operating systems will be identified by year rather than with a version number, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That means the current iOS 18 will give way to iOS 26, said the people who asked not to be identified because the plan is still private. Other updates will be known as IPadOS 26, Mac OS 26, WatchOS 26, TVOS 26 and Vision OS 26. Apple is making the change to bring consistency to its branding and move away from an approach that can be confusing to customers and developers. Today's operating systems, including iOS 18, WatchOS 12, Mac OS 15 and Vision OS 2, use different numbers because their initial versions didn't debut at the same time. The company will announce the shift at its Worldwide Development developers conference on June 9th. The branding will accompany fresh user interfaces across the operating systems and attempt to ensure a more cohesive experience when people move between devices. The new look, dubbed Solarium internally, will include TVOs, WatchOS and parts of Vision OS, Bloomberg News reported this week. End quote okay, now do this for the phones. I think they should name the phones based on yours as well. I do this for a living and even I can't off the top of my head tell you what iPhone number I currently have in my pocket or what this year's model number will be. So they should just call it the iPhone 26. You're welcome. Tim Cook when you're starting off something new, it seems like your to do list keeps growing every day with new tasks, and that list can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything can be such a game changer. And for millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to myownresume writers.com get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style. Accelerate your content creation Because Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. Get the word out like you have a market team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. Turn your big business idea into With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com ride go to shopify.com ride shopify.com ride it seems like we hear about a new round of layoffs every day. So what's the best way to dodge the next round? Get the skills that companies need so you make yourself indispensable. This podcast is sponsored by Udacity. Want to learn skills that command high salaries? Udacity is an online learning platform with courses in AI, data programming, and more. Instead of wasting your time scouring YouTube or prompting ChatGPT, Udacity removes the guesswork so you learn what you need to know and nothing that you don't. When you learn with Udacity, you're not just passively watching videos or reading articles. You're doing practical exercises and projects that prepare you for the job you want. That's why 87% of Udacity graduates say that they achieved their enrollment goal. I've used the generative AI courses to bone up on the latest and so should you. The tech field is always evolving and you should be too. You can try Udacity risk free for seven days. Head to udacity.com ride and use code ride for 40% off your order. Again, that's udacity.com ride for 40% off and make sure you use my promo Code Ride so they know I sent you Deepseek says a recent update to its R1 model can perform mathematics, programming and general logic better than the previous version, and comes close to O3 and Gemini 2.5 Pro in terms of benchmarking. Quoting the Implicator AI newsletter, Deepseek released an Update to its R1 Reasoning Model early Thursday morning. No press release, no fanfare, just a quiet upload to Hugging Face that might reshape how we think about AI competition. The Chinese startup called it a minor trial upgrade. The performance numbers tell a different story. R10528 now ranks just behind OpenAI's 04 mini and O3 models on coding benchmarks. It beats AI's Grok 3 mini and Alibaba's Qin 3. More telling, DeepSeek achieved these gains while using the same basic architecture that sent tech stocks tumbling in January. The upgrade shows dramatic improvements across the board. On the AIM 2025 math test, accuracy jumped from 70% to 87.5%. That's not incremental progress, that's a leap. The model now uses 23,000 tokens per question, compared to 12,000 in the previous version. More thinking equals better results. Simple concept, harder execution. Coding performance saw similar gains. Live code bench scores rose from 63.5% to 73.3%. The model also improved on complex math competitions like HMMT 2025, where pass rates increased from 41.7% to 79.4%. These aren't abstract benchmarks. They measure skills that matter solving hard math problems, writing, working code, reasoning through complex scenarios. DeepSeek's model now handles these tasks at levels that match or beat models companies spending billions on AI development. The original R1 model disrupted the AI world by proving Chinese companies could build competitive models at a fraction of typical costs. US Export controls were supposed to limit China's AI progress, but Deep SEQ showed those limits might be more theoretical than real. This update reinforces that message. The company didn't just maintain its position, it improved performance while competitors scrambled to respond. Google introduced discounted access tiers for Gemini. OpenAI cut prices and released O3 mini, which uses less computing power. Both moves suggest established players feel pressure from Deepseek's cost effective approach. R 10528 brings several practical improvements. The model now supports system prompts, making it easier for developers to customize behavior. Users no longer need special formatting to activate the model's thinking mode. Hallucination rates dropped, meaning fewer made up facts and responses. Function calling improved, allowing better integration with other software tools. These changes matter more than benchmark scores for real world applications. Deepseek also created something unexpected R10528Q038B this smaller model distills knowledge from the larger R1 into an 8 billion parameter package. The result performs as well as models 30 times larger on some tasks. This distillation approach could democratize access to advanced AI reasoning. Smaller models cost less to run and work on less powerful hardware. If Deep SEQ can maintain quality while shrinking model size, it changes who can afford sophisticated AI capabilities. Deepseek's update arrives at a crucial moment for AI development. The industry faces questions about sustainability, cost and access. Can current approaches scale? Do we need better chips or smarter algorithms? Deep Seek Success suggests algorithms matter more than raw computing power. The company achieved top tier performance without access to the most advanced hardware. That lesson applies beyond China's borders. The quiet release also signals confidence in ongoing development. Companies that need marketing campaigns often lack confidence in their products. Deepseek lets the technology speak for itself. End quote. Finally today, this has gotten a lot of chatter online, so I thought I'd share it with you. In an interview with Axios, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodai said AI may wipe out half of all entry level white collar jobs and spike US unemployment around 10 to 20% in the next one to five years. Quoting Axios, Amodai said AI companies and government need to stop sugarcoating what's coming the possible mass elimination of jobs across technology, finance, law, consulting and other white collar professions, especially entry level gigs. Amodai, 42, who's building the very tech technology he predicts could reorder society overnight, said he's speaking out in hopes of jarring government and fellow AI companies into preparing and protecting the nation. Few are paying attention. Lawmakers don't get it or don't believe it. CEOs are afraid to talk about it. Many workers won't realize the risks posed by the possible job apocalypse until after it hits. Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen, amadai told us. It sounds crazy and people just don't believe it. Amodai, who had just rolled out the latest versions of his own AI, which can code at near human levels, said the technology holds unimaginable possibilities to unleash mass good and bad at scale quote cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10% a year, the budget is balanced and 20% of people don't have jobs, end quote. That's one very possible scenario rattling in his mind as AI power expands exponentially. Amadai agreed to go on the record with a deep concern that other leading AI executives have told us privately. Even those who are optimistic AI will unleash unthinkable cures and unimaginable economic growth, fear dangerous short term pain and a possible job bloodbath during President Trump's term. We as the producers of this technology have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming, amadi told us. I don't think this is on people's radar. It's a very strange set of dynamics, he added, where we're saying you should be worried about where the technology we're building is going, critics reply. We don't believe you, you're just hyping it, he says. The skeptics should ask themselves, well, what if they're right? Here's how Amadai and others fear the white collar bloodbath is unfolding. Number one, OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and other large AI companies keep vastly improving the capabilities of their large language models to meet and beat human performance with more and more tasks. This is happening and accelerating. Number two, the US Government, worried about losing ground to China or spooking workers with preemptive warnings, says little. The administration and Congress neither regulate AI nor caution the American public. This is happening and shows no sign of changing. Number three, Most Americans, unaware of the growing power of AI and its threat to their jobs, pay little attention. This is happening too. And then, almost overnight, business leaders see the savings of replacing humans with AI and do this en masse. They stop opening up new jobs, stop backfilling existing ones, and then replace human workers with agents or related automated alternatives. The public only realizes it when it's too late. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.