Tech Time by Tim #62

I don’t usually put links inside these little teasers, but this GIF perfectly encapsulates my experience returning to the tech industry after a brief but comfy break. Who the hell wrapped OpenAI in tinfoil and put it in the microwave!? If AI drama isn’t quite to your tastes, this week’s menu also features opening and closing windows of opportunity, green bubbles, bad passwords, sabotage, stockpiles, aaaaaaand. A thread left dangling…

At A Glance

A quick overview of this week’s content.

·?????? The Week That Was: To CTRL ALTman, Opening and Closing Windows Of Opportunity

·?????? Cyber Safety Blanket: Not To Burst Your Green Bubble But, 123 – A Bad Password This Be!

·?????? Rules of Engagement: Sabotage And Stockpiles, A Thread Left Dangling

The Week that Was:

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

To CTRL ALTman:

Both OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and I took 5 days off from work before getting back to the grind. His break was rather more chaotic than mine though. The return to the office seems to have been particularly awkward. Somewhat buried in the hysteria over Altman tabbing out for a bit was the willing departure of an executive at major rival Anthropic, which OpenAI’s now-ousted board attempted to merge with, to no avail.

Now, we could spend all newsletter – and then some going through the couple dozen press releases, opinion pieces, and other assorted articles on the matter. I have about 69 of them, which is pretty nice, but not very practical. So let’s cut to the chase. The most popular theory focuses on OpenAI’s chief scientist Illya Sutskever. Disclaimer, the situation is still too chaotic and rapidly changing to say anything with certainty, this is simply the most popular narrative at the time of writing.

Supposedly Sutskever convinced OpenAI’s other former board members to fire Altman, at which point Altman’s loyal lieutenant Greg Brockman also quit. His very upset wife then called Sutskever in tears. Sutskever felt bad then and was about to feel a whole lot worse. Unfortunately for Sutskever and the former OpenAI board, the investors, and staff of OpenAI were on Altman’s side. Investors in particular wanted heads to roll. And roll they did.

Altman coming back is being lauded by some as a ‘return of the king’ moment. That’s not quite right though. The real king of OpenAI was never Sam Altman, it was Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. Indeed, you’ll notice that there’s a policymaker with no particular tech background amongst those new board members. This is for the same reason that Microsoft has only ever owned 49% of the company. OpenAI, and especially Microsoft have been under a regulatory microscope this entire year, it would be insane for Nadella to go for a direct takeover when he already, as I’ve been saying all this time, functionally owns the company anyway. That is what it truly means to CTRL ALTman. Whether he defected to Microsoft or came back to OpenAI was only ever a superficial difference in the grand scheme of things. AI training and operations are simply too ruinously expensive right now. Microsoft has the funds and the infrastructure Altman needs. He’s still actively looking for a way out from under Nadella’s thumb, but has not quite found it yet. LINK

Opening and Closing Windows Of Opportunity:

Microsoft announced that Windows, the operating system traditionally housed on computers and laptops, will become an app. The press release focused, unsurprisingly, on Apple’s ecosystem, I can’t help but be fascinated by the many ways in which Microsoft was been able to breach Apple’s walls with what are essentially air raids from its ‘cloud.’ Gaming is, as ever, the tip of the spear here, but it’s not all silver linings as far as that industry is concerned. In fact, despite the optimism with regard to the uptick of successful independent ‘indie’ projects, there are also the dark clouds of ever-increasing job insecurity hanging overhead. Let’s talk about windows of opportunity, both opening and closing.

The engines of success behind the record profits and technical breakthroughs of tech companies are their employees. Yet three-quarters of software engineers who act as whistleblowers face retaliation by executives still fiercely opposing better rights and protections for gig workers. Unionization remains one of the major battlefields across the tech world, with car company Tesla seemingly losing ground in Sweden, whilst game developer SEGA’s American branch allegedly threatened workers with termination if they unionized.?

This turn of events has left me with a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth as I look at the Steam Autumn sale that’s just started. I wonder about services such as Nvidia Geforce Now & Game Pass, Samsung & Boosteroid, and whatever Google was hoping to accomplish by buying Epic. Supposing any one of these succeeds at doing the seemingly impossible and breaking Steam’s iron grip on gaming, what then? Unless the worsening layoff crisis is addressed, I feel like these services will end up rotting from within, as the lack of talent necessary to make truly visionary system sellers catches up with the industry.

Cyber Safety Blanket:

Covering important cyber security developments so you sleep a little more soundly at night.

Not To Burst Your Green Bubble But…

Not to burst your green bubble, but Apple being forced to adopt the more modern RCS standard for its texting service iMessage won’t get rid of the discrimination against Android users in the US. For those just joining us, Apple absolutely dominates the US market, and whether you socially live or die there as a teenager depends on the color of your chat bubble when texting friends. If your bubble is blue, you (socially) get to live, if it’s green (meaning you don’t have an iPhone) your social life is already dead before the message has even crawled across the badly outdated network.

Network access and performance inequality are two reasons why texting is still massively popular in the US, whereas the rest of the world has long since moved on to the more advanced and multiplatform world of chatting apps. Technologically speaking, there’s no logical reason for anyone to use iMessage over something like WhatsApp or Discord. It’s a cultural thing. Notable in this regard though is that iMessage does have significant advantages over other texting protocols such as basic RCS. such advantages include end-to-end encryption and more advanced multimedia-sharing capabilities. Basic RCS, the kind Apple will be adopting, can’t do those things, the more advanced version Apple won’t be adopting can. We call this ‘malicious compliance,’ technically doing what you’re ordered to do, but in the most passive-aggressive way possible.

Last week I actually covered that part of Smartphone newcomer Nothing’s (yes, they’re called Nothing) strategy to break through in the US was a way to hack into the iMessage ecosystem. It was made clear that there were significant security risks involved with the process, but I don’t think those are why the app is being shut down. I think the app already served its purpose by making the ‘green bubble’ debate much more visible and tangible for people. The green bubble is such a big deal to some people that they are willing to risk catastrophic data hygiene violations in order to get around it. That, in and of itself, is far more interesting about the ban of this workaround than the actual ban itself. LINK

123 – A Password This Be!

This past week, Nordpass, owned by Nord Security, shared statistics about the most commonly used passwords around the world. Nord Security also owns NordVPN, a popular Virtual Private Network (VPN) service. Three stick out here: people use passwords such as ‘UNKNOWN’ and ‘shitbird’, Chelsea scored better on a password ranking than it did in the early 2023 season, and the privacy service provider that has itself suffered multiple high-profile breaches, can actually read all user’s passwords in order to compile this list.

This password ranking, whilst seemingly innocent enough, is part of a sort of surveillance culture that we think is new, but which has actually existed at scale since at least the early 1900s… since the 1880s if you want to be technical about it. The idea was that through close, attentive observation of workers at all times, it would become possible to find and eliminate inefficiencies, optimize workflows, and ultimately get more done in less time, using fewer resources. The NordPass Top 200 passwords fit into this tradition. Speaking charitably, it can be interpreted as calling out people’s passwords in the hopes of improving personal data hygiene.

I think lessons in data hygiene would have been very useful for whoever ended up with the weak link at Bangladesh’s National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre (NTMC). A huge trove of personal information was published on an unsecured online database by the NTMC which hackers enthusiastically helped themselves to. Imagine not even be bothered to use the hackable in seconds password 123456? LINK

Rules of Engagement:

Ethics and legal matters regarding tech engagement.

Sabotage And Stockpiles:

Captain Obvious was in town again this past week, helpfully reminding us that Google has been actively sabotaging rival Mozilla's Firefox browser for years. Generous as he is, Captain Obvious also shared that this will likely continue for many more years to come, at least if Google’s November 14th arguments in its ongoing antitrust court case are any indication.

Despite Google’s best efforts, I am still watching YouTube on Firefox. Quite like how, despite the US’s best efforts, China still has plenty of chips and plenty of options. Where there is a will there’s a way, and where there’s a wallet, so too is there a faster way. In previous newsletters, I covered the release of Huawei’s new flagship phone the Mate 60, its 7nm chip a big middle finger to US efforts to curb Chinese access to advanced technologies such as Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) lithography. The Mate 60 was such a big deal because, as I wrote at the time, Chinese companies shouldn’t have been able to make a chip like that if the sanctions worked as intended.

That brings us to one of the Achilles heels of sanctions, namely that they can’t do anything about existing capabilities or stockpiles such as Tencent’s big supply of Nvidia h800 chips. These are used for AI training and operations. They aren’t the best, but they don’t need to be as far as political and reverse engineering utility are concerned. That’s the key thing to keep in mind as we look toward the Biden administration’s new focus on sanctioning advanced semiconductor packaging. They can and will hurt Chinese companies, but quite like the Mate 60 situation, these sanctions won’t be able to entirely stop Chinese companies, nor take away their already existing capacity. LINK

A Thread Left Dangling:

Another week, another round of ‘Twitter’s definitely dead this time for real!’ articles. And they’ll be correct eventually, as glories must fade…eventually. But this week was certainly not that week. I’m somewhat disappointed in how seemingly impotent Meta’s ‘Threads’ alternative to Twitter appears to have been as the OpenAI mutiny drama popped off. And where did that drama pop off? Twitter, of course.

We can all sit here and pretend like we primarily have civilized, wholesome conversations about philosophy and puppies on social media (some certainly do, bless you a lot). But let’s not kid ourselves. Much of the engagement on these platforms comes from rage. Rage engages like nothing else, which is why I often speak of the term ‘enragement’ (rage + engagement) when it comes to (anti)social media. The kinds of people most active on social media are those obsessed with instant gratification. They want raw, unfiltered, real-time coverage of breaking news. They want hot takes, heated exchanges, and sick burns. For better or worse, nothing before or since Twitter has done it quite like Twitter.

Social media user acquisition and retention is extremely hard and expensive. That’s why Discord is shutting down its AI chatbot Clyde and chat app Signal’s CEO had another frank discussion about the costs of operating the service. These are relevant to the conversation around Threads and Twitter because, whilst there is much that Elon Musk can be held accountable for, Twitter's bleeding money isn’t something he caused. It’s debatable whether he’s made it worse, many would definitely say yes to that, but social media monetization is super difficult in general. The core value proposition of swift, efficient communication with a flexible and intuitive UI is so airtight that it’s exceedingly hard to wedge paywalls in there. Privacy is so important to trust and user retention that ads can’t be pushed too aggressively. Regulators are getting wiser and wiser at data mining and profiling, and well…regulators are still on the warpath. In fact, they’re even calling in the National Guard to force tech CEOs to appear in congressional hearings over in the US now. LINK

A Nice Cup of Serendipity:

Cool bits and bobs from around the web.

Anti-Theft Vending Machine LINK

What’s Cooking? LINK

Nap Time LINK

Hide And Seek LINK

Open Source Radio Waves LINK

Soundtrack Profile LINK

eBay GPT LINK

Oh Hi Marc LINK

Climate Agreements LINK

Extra CRISPR LINK

Less Salt LINK

The Deep End:

A weekly batch of long-form content recommendations.

Brockman 7 Months Ago:

A TED talk by Greg Brockman that’s well worth revisiting in light of present circumstances. Did it age like wine or like milk? You be the judge. LINK

The Escapees:

An interview with former Escapist employees for those who want more details on that situation. LINK

A Fireside Chat:

A chat with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and OpenAI’s potential former Head Scientist Illya Sutskever. Also very interesting in light of present circumstances. LINK

Europe’s (Potential) Hidden Security Crisis:

An Irish NGO’s rather dramatic allegations of how foreign states and threat actors are exploiting Real-Time Bidding (RTB) for data. LINK

Twitter’s Former Head Of Trust And Safety Breaks Her Silence:

An interview with Twitter’s former head of trust and safety on the lose/lose scenarios she often found herself in. LINK

One More Thing…

I had a really interesting conversation with a colleague the other day about Spin doctors. I really respect this colleague. He’s a very experienced and wise man. He’s daring and outspoken. I’d not often seen him shaken the way he was once I mentioned the word ‘spin doctor.’ It was kind of ironic how strongly he implored me to stay as far away from spin doctors as possible, even as the practice of spinning narratives to suit agendas burrows deeper and deeper into the collective psyche of the tech world. Of course, I didn’t think of asking at the time, but I wanted to ask him how he supposed an analyst such as myself should avoid looking for the answers that his job demands he seeks.

I’d get my answer to that question sooner than expected. Another colleague had been struggling a bit. Some stuff went wrong which wasn’t entirely within her control, yet she was responsible for them, and thus held accountable. I talked to her for quite some time about this, explaining how important it was to have facts straight, not to get causality wrong, to place blame where it doesn’t belong, or to understate one’s own accomplishments. It suddenly hit me ‘Ah, so that’s it isn’t it, spin doctors would be the kinds of people to use storytelling to harm and divide. It should be used to unite and to heal. I thought that was pretty profound, and I respected that colleague who warmed me of spin doctors just a little bit more.

Then later that day, after dinner, my mother put on the political debates meant to help people decide who to vote for in our upcoming elections. She listened intently to every person who may ultimately end up (mis)representing our country. It was at this point that a simpler answer presented itself to me. Just why my esteemed colleague disliked spin doctors so much. I thought “My god these people are annoying, who taught them to speak like that?”. Oh…