Impact of Tariffs on Tech Companies’ Stock Performance #1812

Lead story for Monday, April 8. Tech stocks swing widely as the Trump administration reaffirm global tear tariff plans. It's totally rattled markets after last week's 1,800,000,000,000.0 sell off Despite early losses, major players like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Nvidia have closed higher.

Apple and Tesla ended in the red, although Tesla came back up in after hours training while hopes of tariff delays briefly buoyed cement sentiment, Wall Street brace for a broader economic fallout with corporate leaders warning of rising costs and slowed growth. Well, obviously, the tariffs have been everything in the news. And, one thing is for sure, it has not, gone without notice of of really all the tech stories because it's it's just really everywhere and anywhere.

This particular discussion, we've seen that TSMC have one of the biggest one day, or Taiwan having one of the biggest day drops and specifically TMC took took a took a big hit. We know that Bitcoin is down in a significant way. We know that lots of activity is is happening in the market, really due to this volatility. But at the same time, we're starting to see countries like well, the EU coming and say, hey. We wanna do zero for zero. Another a number of countries saying zero for zero.

We will see where all of this leads, in really the the coming, coming weeks. But, one thing for sure, stock prices are just a little bit crazy. I wanna welcome you to episode 1,812.

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strong. So just a little bit of a change to the setup today, and I'm still tweaking everything because I feel like I'm not completely, dialed in here. We've been having some trouble with some audio. And, apparently, on the stream from time to time, it makes a little noise and a noise that we can't track down. Now part of my original plan when I was coming back to The Philippines, I was gonna run everything on a Mac mini. And, I finally got the new webcam in.

And so I'm currently running everything now on a Mac mini. And there's really two issues that I have with the new setup so far. Eyeballs. My eyeball seems to be always appears to be looking down versus the camera even I'm looking directly at the camera right now. Also the green screen, I guess for a better words, the keying is not perfect. I see a lot of green around the edge of my head. Maybe it's because the shirt I'm wearing today. And really that's the that's the two main

things. So hopefully, we've got the the audio situation, solved. It's something to do with maybe running on a power supply. I I don't know. But I'll be listening back to the audio and make sure there isn't the little that we kept hearing. It's always something for sure. And, we want to provide the best and and this really sets everything up to the point where when I go home, all I do is turn things off. I don't have to unhook the laptop, and and and I can still tie the machines together.

So, so far so good. Pretty happy. But, anyway, we'll see if the audio quality has improved. So enough on on this discussion. Let's, go get into the rest of the stack. And I do wanna thank our insiders. We'll cover all our insider donations on the next, show.

Now, obviously, Apple. Apple apparently flew three airplanes of gear back before the tariffs went into effect of phones, laptops. So they got as much stock out of China as they could, and they basically have said they are going to now, ramp up production, in India, which, to me as like, okay. So, you know, one way to avoid one way to avoid tariffs, is, you know, again, not doing as much business in the country where tariffs are so high and China has doubled down. And and if they don't acquiesce,

there's gonna be additional tariffs on China. So we'll see what happens, tomorrow. That will be the you know, that'll be the telltale sign here of of what is to happen for sure. Oh, it was five airplanes full of iPhones and other products, in just three days. Oh, they flew them out of India? How many they fly out of China? Now these reserves are gonna help things for a few days, but people have been rushing to the Apple Store to pick stuff up.

And as I talked about, buyer electronics before the tariffs kicked in, but now it's now it's too late. But at the same time, Apple say they're gonna source more iPhones from India's as a potential tariff fix. How about just bring in manufacturer, back to The United States? But, of course, that will take, some time, to accomplish. GM's, UK

design team imagines an electrified Corvette. So we will see. But, again, the futuristic new electric powered Corvette, was done by the design team in Birmingham, England. The team developed a hyper car design inspired by aviation industry with a sculpted aerodynamic design and, keeping the, the typical, core of that, lines for better for better guess. There's been more discussion about the White House, chat group and and how it actually happened. And I didn't even know this is a thing.

How did they add this guy to the chat? Well, the outlet says because he had approved a Siri suggestion to update the contact at some point. So I didn't know Siri would suggest updates to contacts.

If it's it's true, I guess, that Siri can make these suggestions based on info like phone numbers and and that it finds in your text messages, some something you can disable in iOS settings apps. But perhaps Siri never should have had had the chance to end up tangled it in a national security scandal here. For in the Guardian, the White House is authorized to use the signal because there's no alternate platform to text in real time across different agencies.

And I I completely, agree with that based upon my prior life. But, interesting that this was all caused by an automated update that they opted into. Windows 11 is rumored to have a new start menu redesign that could eat up a huge chunk of desktop space for some user, although it can be tamed. You might get a flashback to Windows eight, but, really don't panic here. Microsoft looks to be mulling a redesign for the start menu, and we saw that last week in hidden

testing. And now we've caught a glimpse of what it looks like with the phone link side panel enabled. This configuration start menu takes up most of the desktop, but there's a switch that you can flick to change it. So, for those of you that are, hardcore Windows users, taming the start menu can be, can be challenging at times. Vaio is announcing that it's, advertising tariff free laptop prices for a limited time.

So they're promoting current prices on laptop stock that hasn't been affected by the, by the import tax. So very, very simple. All Japan has to do is come to table, have a discussion, and, if this can be fixed. We'll see how fast these, these tariff changes happen as, as countries, acquiesce. What do you guys think? I'd love to hear your your thoughts. Jeff me drop me an email [email protected].

Potential NASA Earth science cuts highlight budget uncertainty. Of course, I think there's a lot of stuff that's gonna become uncertain. Some NASA Earth science missions have, have been told to prepare termination plans given the potential for major budget cuts in the agency's overall science activities.

Representative George Whiteside, Democrat of California, vice ranking member of the House Science Committee, said at a congressional roundtable, during the Fortaleous Space Symposium that he had recently learned the Earth science missions in formulation and those extended operation after their prime missions have been asked for repair termination plans starting for fiscal twenty twenty six. Now, they haven't done this officially, but basically told them to start planning. Now here's my thing.

We know that a lot of science projects are limited in scope. They're gonna go for ninety, a hundred and twenty, a year, two years, three years. And oftentimes, those missions get extended and those missions get extended with significant budget impacts. So I I can foresee people being held, to make sure that their mission times are exactly what they're supposed to be, and not a day longer, in this current, and if you need longer, you should have planned that in in the in the very, very beginning.

Google's AI mode can now see and search with images. Google is adding multimodal capabilities to its search centric AI mode that enables it to see and answer questions about images as it expands access to AI mode to millions of more users. Of course, ChatGPT has been able to do this for a very long time. It's been able to see and answer questions about images. So, I think they're about a year behind in in this regard. So, good to see this to come to Google AI.

SpaceX has scored 5,900,000,000.0 line share of Space Force launch contracts. ULA won 5,400,000,000.0 before everyone freaks out. SpaceX got 5.9, ULA got 5.4, and Blue Origin got 2.4. So SpaceX is due 28 missions. ULA is gonna get 19, and Blue Origin is expected to get two missions. So amazing that, Blue Origin got 2,400,000,000.0 for two missions

while Elon Musk got 5,900,000.0, for 28 missions. A little bit of a disparity there in total number of emission counts and, not the best bang for the buck for sure for the US government. Apple's twentieth anniversary iPhone could bring major design overhauls. This has been rumored, rumored, rumored, rumored. And according to Bloomberg, the company's developing a special pro model featuring more glass elements to market's two decades of existence.

The company is also expected to launch a foldable iPhone alongside the redesigned pro, but it's unclear if that would be first or second iteration. Reports currently point to a 2026 launch for a foldable iPhone, and Apple remains the only major smartphone manufacturer without a foldable device. I think I would just prefer not to have one. Amazingly, the US government was spent still been using magnetic tape.

The US government says it will save a million dollars a year by getting rid of magnetic tape, so there's still a place for tape in 2025. Question question question. The GSA has decommissioned 14,000 tapes and an unknown 14,000 tapes and an unknown amount of tape drives that had to be maintained. The data is being moved to new unknown media platforms that appears to have worm capabilities. Of course, that's, write once, read a multiple or read many.

So they're about to save about a million dollars a year, no longer needing

tapes. Being coming out by the Port Of Seattle, they say 90,000 people were impacted by the ransomware attack. This was the data that was stolen in August of twenty twenty four and, that forced the port to isolate critical systems which impacted the Seattle Tacoma International Airport, Fisherman's Terminal, and Port Marina's it operates. By mid September, the port confirmed that ransomware was used in the attack, and, they refused to pay the $6,000,000 ransom.

So, good at them for not paying the ransom, and hopefully their their support, their backups were were good. You know, that's that's always the the challenge. Apple's rumored Smart Home Hub has another setback. There's been a number of rumors suggesting Apple has been working on a Smart Home display

to rivals Google Nest, Amazon Echo for a while. The device was initially expected to be revealed this year, but according to the latest reports from Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, Apple's considering a delay until 2026 for the smart home device, said Gurman said in his Power On newsletter that major engineering hiccups related to the revamped Siri voice assistant have ended up delaying

the project. So, that will get pushed. X is gonna clamp down on oh, that's that's nice. Elon is gonna clamp down on parody accounts. So from April 10, accounts which impersonates another user person must use keywords such as fake or parity at the start of their account names, not at the end. The platform will also require parity accounts users to hold a put a different image, belonging to those,

yeah. The platform will also require parity account holders who dis use different images to the x accounts belonging to those they seek to represent. Some users complain about confusion caused by parity counts on the platforms, such as those even in person impersonating, Elon. So, this will be a change. And, they won't peep they wanna know when people know there's a parity count. Even I have to look at sometimes look at the accounts and make sure that they are who they say they are.

Microsoft is apologizing after publishing Siri is, like, going crazy. Siri, never mind. Microsoft apologizes after publishing incorrect software prices. The prices were temporarily wrong and published on April 5 for April 1 no less. They admitted to publishing the wrong prices. They were rectified on April 4.

The 5% hike only affects monthly subscriptions, but I guess there was a a bigger error that, that was published. So, good. April's full, that was a mistake. Serial giant, k w Kellogg, reveals a data breach, but it's lacking any real data. Fortunately well or Impact. Fortunately, so far, only four people seem to be affected, and, this could be connected to the recent Clio file transfer breach. So, pretty good as only four people. So not a big, big one, but still they did reported it.

The United Kingdom is banning fake reviews and sneaky fees for online products. They banned outrageous fake reviews and sneaky hit but it's a sneaky hidden fee. New measures under the DMCC came into force on Sunday require online platforms to transparently include all mandatory fees within a product's advertised price, including booking or admin charges. We'll also target so called dripped pricing in

which additional fees like platform service charges are dripped in during a customer checkout process that dupe them into paying a higher price than expected. The ban aims to, bring to an end the shock that online shoppers get when they reach the end of their shopping experience. So, change here in The UK and those of you that do business in The UK. Now the EU has basically said they're going to propose a zero tariff, for all products and services in the EU.

But others in the EU are talking different. Speaking ahead of today's extraordinary meeting in the European Union, trade ministers' focus was for the French government was clear that the trading bloc's response to blanket tariffs

on goods could include services bringing US tech giants within its scope. Sofia Primus told the media last week that the response to sweeping US tariffs on EU goods at 20% would hit would hit digital services. You responded to US tariffs on aluminum and steel last month, but the blanket tariff announced by the president, which have wiped trillions of dollars of global stock market valuation require another response. They say the second response will cover all

products. I want to stress this. Services will be included. She said the deal of service including those provide Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft would be in scope. So whenever you think about the tariffs,

definitely getting people to the table to talk. I've actually been asked to review this. I'm not home to get one of these, the OOFY new robot mower. And here's one thing I told him. I says, I've got a big you know, I got one property that's three acres that I share in mowing and then my sister's place is like, you know, half an acre of grass. So is this thing really gonna work? The Oofy's new robot, Maurer, uses smart vision to trim your grass. The e 15 and e 18 don't need GPS, nowhere to go.

So that's that's curious. But Anchor's lifestyle brand OOFY has already swallowed a big chunk of the robot vacuum market, and now it's got sites set in your yard. The company has been sharing details of its first two robot mowers since the start of the year, and now they're ready to start selling them. And, what's the price on these? Does it say cable covering lungs up to 800 square meters while the e 18 will conquer

yards up to 1,200 square meters. Don't think that's gonna get it. I guess, per charge, has a 4,200 milliamp milliamp battery. What else? Gonna be wow. $1,600 for e 15 and $19.99 for the e 18. You can hire a lot of kids to mow a lot of lawn for that kind of money. That is for sure. That is for sure. Chrome is gonna patch a decade old old flaw that lets sites peek at your history. After twenty three years, the privacy plumbers finally arrived to clean up this mess.

The privacy attack referred to as browser history

sniffing involves reading the color values of web links on a page to see if the linked pages have been visited previously. Websites commonly consist of HTML files that describe page structure, JavaScript files that contain code for interactivity, and CSS files that describe page styling. CSS includes a pseudo class visited that can be applied to an anchor or area elements which have an href property.

So web publishers and third parties capable of running scripts have used this technique to present links on a page for visitors and then check how the visitors browser set the color for those links on the rendered web page. When the technique first emerged, this could be done by including a script. So, basically, they could see where you had been. So that it that is going away. Tesla shares tumble after bullish analyst Dan Ivy slash prices slash price target by 43.

I I think great time to buy Tesla. Really do. I think it's gonna come back. People are, you know, this is this is only a temporary temporary situation. People are gonna come back to those vehicles. I truly believe it. Doge plans now reportedly include Doge yeah. Doge plans now reporting include an IRS hackathon. So they're planning to hold a hackathon next

week in order to create mega API for accessing internal revenue service data. Well, it says the API would be used to move the data into a cloud platform, potentially a third party one to serve as the read center of the agency systems. We know that they're all on COBOL right now. So this is all an attempt to try to modernize. Dodd's hackathon plans include pulling together dozens of IRS engineers in DC to build the API

among third party providers. The department's repost discussed involving is Palantir, the company for its known vast data collections and government surveillance and analyst work. Dodge's aim is to finish the API work in thirty days. A time a time lamb one IRS implode excuse me. A time line one IRS employee told Wired it's not technically possible and would cripple the IRS. Will you these guys don't know how Elon works.

Wire says Doge operators orchestrating their projects are 25 year old Gavin Kliger and HealthTech CEO Sam Korcos. The Washington Post reported that Korcos had pushed the agency to lift restrictions it placed on Kilgore's access to its systems and proposed an agreement to share IRS data across the government.

So one of the sources Wired spoke to said the schematizing and understanding the IRS data doges after would take years, and these people have no experience, not only government, but in IRS or or with taxes or anything else, it's data. Anyone that says you can't make major changes to a system in thirty days obviously has never worked in the tech world. Let's let's be frank. You know, come on. Monumental changes can happen in thirty days, and there's only so many data entry lines.

If, you know, if this has all been stored in databases, what, several thousand, two, three, four thousand? How many forms? How many data entry points on those forms? Every one of those then can can become an API call. Our subset of data can be made in API call. I think people are gonna be surprised. I I I really do. And if this what it takes to get the system modernized, Yeah. Writing the the new UI, it's gonna take more than thirty days, but the API, shouldn't be that long.

It really, really shouldn't. Billions and billions and billions of dollars have been wasted trying to modernize the the IRS. So, you know, when some somebody that works at the IRS says this can't be done, I don't think they understand exactly who they're who they're talking about here. Alright. Relatively short show today.

Thank you for being here. News has just been all over the tariff stuff. Hopefully, we've cleaned up all of the audio issues and, there's no more beeping sounds. And, this I just needed to do this anyway. So, all the gear was here and just a matter of reconfiguring OBS and, moving some of the stuff on the desk around. So I think I'm in my final configuration now. So time will tell, how this ultimately, works out. But, yeah, having the Mac on the side and being able to use it as a second monitor,

perfect. They got the big fat monitor on the desk here. So, plenty of workspace and a fully capable Mac Mini that, doesn't need to move, stays right here when I leave. So, just again, changes here at the studio. Alright. If you've

got comments on today's show, or don't forget about the sponsor GoDaddy. Geetna central dot com forward slash godaddy. And, of course, don't forget about becoming an insider at geeknewscentral.com/insider. We have a comment about the show at geek news on x, [email protected], for email. Of course, geeknews.chat is where our online website is for participating and having, internal discussions. I wanna thank everyone for being here today.

I'll be back with you on Thursday for another edition of the Geekness Central podcast. Everyone take care. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.