Tech Time by Tim #22

Whew, how about that Hype Hangover huh? Apple made some interesting moves behind the scenes this past week and it turns out that people don’t like being lied to. People like finding out they suck at spotting lies even less. I also looked at the price of pride and the practical limits of protectionism. There were some more crypto crackdowns and a potentially high-impact NFT court ruling as well. Hot take, but the media’s money problem isn’t (just Google). Last but not least, we look at the strange week Reddit has had thanks to hacks and unspeakable tokens.

At A Glance

·??????The Week that Was: Apple’s Position In The Market Right Now, The AI Hangover.

·??????Technobabble: The Price of Pride and The Limits Of Protectionism, Crypto Crackdowns and NFTerminations.

·??????Rules of Engagement: Media’s Money Problem Isn’t (Just) Google, Reddit Hacks And Unspeakable Tokens.

The Week that Was:

A look back at the tech world of the past week.

Apple’s Position In The Market Right Now:

Apple released two research papers this past week that largely flew under the radar. What they’re about? Addressing the accuracy issues plaguing AI in general, and the factuality issues that embarrassed AI search in particular last week.

Apple does have its problems still, for example, with its expanding presence in India. There are Quality Assurance (QA) concerns on the hardware front, and regulatory/ethical concerns due to the Indian government’s volatility. This is balanced out by the promising future analysts see in its ARM-based processors, to the point where ARM itself is still very confident about an upcoming Initial Public Offering (IPO).

This is the lens through which I look at the Bill of Materials (BoM) cost of the new 128GB Google Pixel 7 Pro ($413). Google is over 50% reliant on Samsung for that, what does it get back for such overreliance? Meanwhile, the BoM of the 128GB iPhone 14 Pro Max is $464 but it has far greater control, is diversifying its supply chains, and has a means of flexing the hardware.

That means of flexing is the mobile generative AI apps coming to iOS first, assuming they come to Android at all LINK (Pixel) + LINK (iPhone)

The AI Hangover – Bing and Bard’s Wrong Answers Raise Questions:

Last week’s wave of hype around AI Bing search crashed onto the shores of reality this week. Of course, the same panicked response came from Chinese companies as they scrambled to respond. It is worth noting though that in terms of infrastructure, China is actually looking a lot better than the panic might imply. At least as far as East-Asia is concerned. By some metrics Chinese companies have already surpassed US rivals.

Google’s showing was BA(r)D, and few argued in its favour. More interesting was that Bing, despite also being riddled with errors, wasn’t initially subject to the same scrutiny. It is the metanarrative that stood out to me here, the story beyond the headlines. People are upset when they are lied to, they are upset when their privacy is violated. Yet many struggle to actually catch offenders in the act. LINK

Technobabble:

Explaining complex techniques, technologies, and terminologies.

The Price Of Pride And The Limits Of Protectionism – Infrastructure Bottlenecks:

Something stuck out to me regarding the latest Twitter events. It feels like pride driven decision making is becoming ever more prominent. At the same time, practical realities appear to be causing increasing degrees difficulty to those taking pride-based actions.

For example, how to tell whether stuff breaking at Twitter is intentional or not. Twitter not working after the tragic earthquake in Turkey and Syria? Seemingly intentional, albeit by the Turkish government. Activists in China being muzzled on Twitter? Well yes…but by glitches this time. Weird stuff like everyone’s timeline being filled with Elon Musk’s tweets? Might be a bug but the timing is suspect. In both cases, the policy makers (Turkish govt. and Musk) appear to have prioritised their pride.

Pride sticks out so much to me here because something ironic happened with the Ford Motor Company this week as well. Ford invented the automated assembly line around 1913. It is now being used as part of US president Joe Biden’s big ‘Buy American’ rallying cry. Ford’s new American battery factory will be filled with…Chinese technology. The big question on full display here is to what extent one can realistically isolate rivals or the local own economy in this day and age. Not to mention the risks of having such a big, singular point of failure. LINK

Crypto Crackdowns and NFTerminations – Regulation Efforts Continue:

In my January 27th newsletter I covered the attempts by the cryptocurrency world to attract new investments. I decided to check back in on the space this week. Non Fungible Tokens (NFT’s) were in the news thanks to a legal loss by NFT maker Mason Rothschild in a copyright lawsuit. Luxury brand Hermès sued him over an NFT collection based on the Birkin bag. ?

Hermès winning this lawsuit is significant because it can serve as a precedent for future Intellectual Property (IP) court cases related to NFT’s. It’s also significant because as part of the court proceedings, Hermès lawyers claimed that the company was in active development of such content.

?Something I was not aware of was that Crypto ATMs already exist. UK police certainly were though, they raided illegal crypto ATM providers in Leeds this past week. Meanwhile, PayPal was forced to pause its stablecoin efforts due to a probe of its partner Paxos by financial regulators. LINK

Rules of Engagement:

Ethics and legal matters regarding tech engagement.

Media’s Money Problem Isn’t (Just) Google:

A popular Firefox plugin used to bypass paywalls was removed from the plugin repository. The plugin allowed users to reliably bypass most paywalls on websites that use them. Diehard paywall avoiders can still find it, but casual users won’t see It come up with simple search anymore.

This is one of my main issues with current antitrust efforts against Google as well, visibility. I don’t like the focus of the US regulators on the symptoms of Google’s dominance, instead of tackling the causes. The causes are convenience and visibility. Google is being resented for artificially inflating prices to overcharge advertisers. That is, in my opinion, missing the point. As I see it, Google is making customers an offer they won’t refuse, not one they can’t refuse. Supply Side Platforms (SSP) are all or nothing. Google has, for a long time, been able to guarantee the ‘all.’

If Google were exhibiting traditional antitrust behaviour, it would be having similar struggles to Spotify. Wanting to be the only choice for podcast listening, Spotify invested heavily in exclusivity deals. Creators were frustrated because they felt that this was limiting their visibility. Google, on the other hand, sells peace of mind, it sells visibility. More important than ever to publishers. LINK

Reddit Hacks and Unspeakable Tokens – Human and AI Flaws On Display:

There was a big Reddit hack this past week. Some Reddit usernames also seemed to make ChatGPT freak out. The reddit breach appears to be pretty serious. Source code and internal data were stolen.

How did the hackers gain access? A tailored spear-phishing attack. Spear phishing differs from regular phishing by being specifically targeted against individuals. Which is to say that in such attacks, hackers often have more detailed plans to convince a target to trust them. This technique is so devastating because of how logical it is at its core.

Critics of ChatGPT call it a ‘privacy nightmare’ in part because of how much of a black box it is. ?As covered earlier in this newsletter, people’s understanding of privacy varies wildly. That makes extra ‘surprises’ such as the curious case of the ‘unspeakable’ tokens so fascinating to me.

No one actually knows why the unspeakable tokens trigger such weird, irrational responses. The researchers who discovered them have guessed that perhaps training issues might be the cause. LINK

A Nice Cup of Serendipity:

Cool bits and bobs from around the web.

Orwell’s Tips LINK

Secret Lava Level LINK

Vampire Themes LINK

Romantic Tension LINK

Gamepass Cannibalism LINK

Take Note LINK

Amazon Hell LINK

Jumping Beans LINK

A100 Closeup LINK

Whistleblower Worries LINK

The Deep End:

A weekly batch of longform content recommendations.

The Steam Deck Is Gaining Momentum:

A detailed article on the history and current reasons behind the Steam Deck’s breakout success despite the relative cooling of the PC market. LINK

Unity Blog About Addressables:

For those that love making games. A Unity blog about addressables and best practises that has some useful stuff in it even for those working with other engines. LINK

A Look at the profitability of Microsoft and Google inserting LLM’s into Search:

For those that want to know how much money stands to be made or lost by Microsoft and Google putting Large Language Models into search. LINK

How the wealthy save billions in taxes by skirting a century old law:

Want to learn a little secret about billionaire tax evasion? Here you go! LINK

Psychodyssey – The Making Of Psychonauts 2:

Go play the game first, it’s lovely, then watch this if you’re sad about it being over. LINK

Pig Butchering Scams Are Evolving:

A detailed report about the rapidly mutating scam known as ‘Pig Butchering.’ Particularly useful for those interesting in cybersecurity. LINK

One More Thing…

No, I’m not talking about Dan, I hardly know him. Ok fine, I’ll talk about Dan. Do Anything Now (DAN) is actually a really great example of hype getting out of hand. Dan is just a new name for something that’s been around since ChatGPT was released. The crux of the issue is that ChatGPT is the “monkeys and typewriters” analogy manifested as a viral hit chatbot. It writes using math, not knowledge of language. Because ChatGPT doesn’t actually know what it is doing or ‘saying’ it is relatively trivial to break its guardrails using basic mind games. All Dan is then, is a popular, more mainstream way to make ChatGPT do or say stuff that it isn’t supposed to.

Moving on, Millie is doing great! She’s wonderfully well behaved, but still a puppy. So, as is to be expected, when she’s tired or stressed out, she’ll get cranky and snappy. Those little teeth are sharp, I need these fingers to type Millie, please.

As announced last week, my course is over, and the regular schedule is restored. Newsletters will be out again on the Thursday every week! Assuming Elon doesn’t throw his toys again, you can follow me on Twitter now. Why Twitter? I’m using it for stress testing, if I can handle Elon era Twitter, I can handle any other social media too! Right…? Oh no there’s a blue bird eying me suspiciously from outside my window again and I have concerns.