Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Friday, March 22, 2024, I'm Brian McCullough. Today, everyone is analyzing the DOJ's case against Apple. An unpatriable vulnerability in Apple's silicon has been uncovered. Threads joins the Fediverse. How that whole Microsoft hiring the inflection AI team actually maths out and of course, the weekend long-range suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.
So the Fallout from the DOJ suit against Apple is roiling. Lots of people are taking note of the fact that in its lawsuit, the government alleges CarPlay lets Apple exert too much control over the auto industry. Some analysts say the DOJ may be misunderstanding CarPlay or that this is flat out wrong, but this is an interesting detail. Quoting the verge. The DOJ says that like smartphones, vehicle infotainment systems have become a new way in which Apple exhibits
anti-competitive behavior to harm consumers as well as its competitors. Apple's plans to introduce a more immersive version of CarPlay in which the system displays key aspects of the vehicle's functions like speed and HVAC are further evidence of the company's
illegal monopoly over smartphones prosecutors say. By applying the same playbook of restrictions to CarPlay, Apple further locks in the power of the iPhone by preventing the development of other disintermediating technologies that interoperate with the phone, but reside off device, the lawsuit says. The inclusion of CarPlay as well as digital key functions through Apple's wallet feature came as a surprise to some analysts who say that the DOJ may be
misunderstanding the utility and functions of the phone mirroring system. This is especially true for the next generation version, which prosecutors described insidiously as quote, taking over all of the screens, sensors, and gauges in a car forcing users to experience driving as an iPhone-centric experience if they want to use any of the features provided
by CarPlay. That's misleading. Sam, a well-summed principal analyst at Guide House Insights and an expert on vehicle software said quote, even with the next generation systems, OEMs don't actually have to let Apple take over all the screens he said in an email. They can limit the interface to whichever screens they want. Automakers still need to build a basic software interface so vehicle owners can adjust their air conditioning, change the
radio station, or operate native navigation maps. Apple's Smead said they can't assume every vehicle owner has a smartphone, let alone an iPhone that they'll project on their cars and footamets screen, and the car needs to be able to function in the absence of a smartphone. I will note the news though recently that GM was abandoning CarPlay in coming years and ginning up its own Android-based system, not saying this is related to that,
but maybe notable. Over at six colors, Jason Snell says that the DOJ case has some strong points, but also makes silly arguments like Apple affecting the quote, flow of speech via Apple TV+. The document alleges that Apple talks a good game when it comes to privacy insecurity, but that it favors them when it's convenient and not when it's not. It calls Apple's privacy and security justifications and quote, elastic shield that can stretch or
contract to serve Apple's interest. The examples in the document include continuing to rely on the insecure SMS protocol for cross-platform texts and letting Google be the default search engine when more private options are available. Many of the DOJ arguments come down to this. Every feature that Apple builds that makes it harder to switch to an Android phone is fundamentally
anti-competitive. It's clear that the DOJ envisions a competitive smartphone market, or if that doesn't work, performance smartphone market, as one in which there's as little friction as possible when jumping between platforms. This would mean Apple offering third-party app access to features it currently keeps for itself. One could argue that Apple's behavior has already begun to change due to pressure as it launched its new journal app alongside
an API that gives other apps access to the same data as its own app. It also suggests that policies against game streaming and web apps would also come under scrutiny. Some arguments in the document seem silly. A section describes how Apple will use its sinister
market powers to dominate the automotive industry by inflicting CarPlay 2.0 on users. Not only is Apple struggling to get CarPlay into cars by major American manufacturers, but I'm not sure how better integrating our phones, which we love into our car infotainment systems, which we frequently do not love, is some sort of tragic outcome. Update, Neelay Patel of the Verge suggests the implication is that Apple won't let Carmakers support CarPlay
in the future unless they let Apple take over the entire auto interface. That would certainly be a power move, but the DOJ will need to prove that for it to become more than another scary story told around a campfire. And then there's the danger of Apple tech-giant affecting the, quote, flow of speech. How you might ask? The answer is Apple TV+. Where Apple has committed the grave sin of, quote, controlling content. Be right back. Gotta find some pearls to clutch.
And, quote, and finally, I'll share these threads from in-betterage. Quote, Lord, this Apple DOJ stuff is reminding me of writing about Microsoft DOJ and Microsoft European Commission a lot. You start to be able to read the subtle between the lines parts of statements. For example, when Apple says in its response, the accusations, quote, threaten who we are, it's not just fluffy words. It's sending a signal to the DOJ that it regards this fight
as existential. And so an early cheap settlement is unlikely. It's like reading runes. So much fun. Aside, it's worth remembering that the DOJ historically loves a quick consent decree over a long trial. What few people remember is that Microsoft DOJ kicked off in 1993 and was settled with a consent decree in 1994. It took Microsoft breaking that consent decree
to take the case back to court and quote. Unrelated, but I'll note here that researchers have found an unpatiable vulnerability in Apple's M series of chips that lets attackers extract secret keys from Max during cryptographic operations, quoting our as technical. The law, a side channel allowing end-to-end extractions when Apple chips run implementations of widely used cryptographic protocols can't be patched directly because it stems from the micro architectural
design of the silicon itself. Instead, it can only be mitigated by building defenses into third party cryptographic software that could drastically degrade M series performance when executing cryptographic operations, particularly on the earlier M1 and M2 generation. The vulnerability can be exploited when the target cryptographic operation and the malicious
application with normal user system privileges run on the same CPU cluster. The attack which the researchers have named GoFetch uses an application that doesn't require root access only the same user privileges needed by most third party applications installed on a Mac OS system. M series chips are divided into what are known as clusters. The M1 for example has two clusters, one containing four efficiency cores and the other four performance cores.
As long as the GoFetch app and the targeted cryptography app are running on the same performance cluster, even when on separate cores within that cluster, GoFetch can mine enough secrets to leak a secret key. The attack works against both classical encryption algorithms and a newer generation of encryption that has been hard to withstand anticipated attacks from quantum computers. The GoFetch app requires less than an hour to extract a 2048 bit
Diffie Helman key. The attack takes 54 minutes to extract the material required to assemble a Kiber 512 key and about 10 hours for a Delithium 2 key, not counting offline time needed to process the raw data. The GoFetch app connects to the targeted app and feeds it inputs that it signs or decrypts. As it's doing this, it extracts the app secret key that it uses
to perform these cryptographic operations. This mechanism means the targeted app need not perform any cryptographic operations on its own during the collection period. Meta has rolled out Threads Fediverse integration into beta in the US, Canada and Japan, letting users cross-post and view likes from federated platforms like Mastodon.
Threads previewed its Fediverse integration earlier this week during the Fediverse Fed As outlined on its support page, Meta says that you must have a public account to turn on Fediverse sharing, which will allow users to share to other servers, to search for and follow your profile, view your post, interact with your content, and share your content to anyone on or off their server. There are still a few limitations though. The beta
currently doesn't let users view replies and follows from the Fediverse. For example, Meta also can't promise that when you delete a federated post on Threads, it will also get deleted on the other platforms it was shared on. More interesting details on that whole Microsoft hiring Mustafa Suleiman and the inflection team. A source says Microsoft agreed to pay inflection around $650 million when hiring its staff. Mostly via a licensing deal that makes inflections models available for sale
on Azure. The startup is using the licensing fee to help provide its investors with a modest return on their capital according to a second person who is briefed on the arrangement. To cushion the blow for its investors, inflection has promised to pay them more than the value of their investment while allowing them to retain equity in the startup in unusual move
for a company that hasn't been acquired or liquidated. Investors and the company's first major round of funding a $225 million investment from venture firm Graylock, hedge fund, drag-and-ear investment group and others will receive one and a half times their investment according to the person involved in the deal. Investors and a subsequent $1.3 billion
funding round last year will receive 1.1 times their investment the person said. Microsoft invested in both rounds but the vast majority of the funding came from other investors such as former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Nvidia and inflection co-founder Reed Hoffman which together led the later round. Infection likely hasn't spent much of that capital which means it could also use that cash to give the investors
a return. In addition to a $620 million licensing fee, Microsoft has also agreed to pay inflection about $30 million to waive any legal rights related to the mass hiring and it renegotiated a $140 million line of credit that aimed to help inflection finance its operations as well as pay for Microsoft services said the person involved in the deal.
The details of the inflection deal provide a window into the intricate partnerships inked between major providers of cloud services and AI startups which have voracious computing needs related to their large language models. Microsoft, Google and Amazon have poured billions of dollars into AI startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Those startups in turn pay the cloud companies for compute services and also sometimes benefit from revenue sharing agreements.
These deals whose terms are often closely guarded have given big tech companies access to highly coveted AI technology and researchers. They have also allowed those big companies to sidestep the type of antitrust scrutiny that way laid potential tech acquisitions such as Adobe's $20 billion attempted purchase of design software company Figma. The Federal Trade Commission however has recently said it is looking into some of the cloud providers
startup investments. This is the new way the magnificent seven tech stocks are going to do acquisitions. You get the intellectual property and team without FTC scrutiny or approval said Venky Gannisman a managing director at Menlo Ventures which recently led an investment in Anthropic a rival to inflection that has received funding from Google and Amazon.
Microsoft's arrangement with inflection is another reminder that many investments in generative AI may not enjoy the same rocket chip trajectory as OpenAI whose monthly revenue topped $130 million last year. There are increasing signs that many of these startups will find it challenging to grow revenue in a crowded market. Inflection has said it struggled to find an effective business model.
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was sort of a big nothing sauce for our purposes. They unveiled the Surface laptop 6 and Surface Pro 10, largely targeting enterprises, adding a co-pilot key, a neural processing unit for Windows 11's AI features and more. And Reddit closed up 48 percent on its first day of trading yesterday at $50.44 per share valuing the company at about $9.5 billion on a fully deluded basis. Hitting your valuation is one thing. First day pop is another. Shows
that public market investors are salivating for certain types of opportunities. And I would have maybe suspected Reddit was maybe one of the weaker ones. As the morning brew thread I re-threaded yesterday said, looks like IPOs are back on the menu boys. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. And I won't quote as much today just for the purposes of time, but I still have plenty for you. First up, Stephen Levy has an in depth look at the
2017 attention is all you need paper. The breakthrough that led to this AI moment and what will probably go down as epic making and defining in the history of technology. He also profiles the eight Google researchers who co-authored the paper quote, ooze correct, thought a self attention model could potentially be faster and more effective than recurrent
neural nets. The way it handles information was also perfectly suited to the powerful parallel processing chips that were being produced on mass to support the machine learning boom. Instead of using a linear approach look at every word and sequence, it takes a more parallel one look at a bunch of them together. If done properly, use correct suspected
you could use self attention exclusively to get better results. Not everyone thought this idea was going to rock the world, including use corrects father who had scooped up two Google faculty researcher words while his son was working for the company. People raised their eyebrows because it dumped out all of the existing neural architectures. Jacob
use corrects says say goodbye to recurrent neural nets. Here say from dinner table conversations I had with my dad, we weren't necessarily seeing eye to eye in the higher echelons of Google. The work was seen as just another interesting AI project. I asked several of the transformers folks whether their bosses ever summoned them for updates on the project
not so much. But quote, we understood that this was potentially quite a big deal says use correct and it caused us to actually obsess over one of the sentences in the paper towards the end where we comment on future work and quote, that sentence anticipated what might come next the application of transform models to basically all forms of human expression.
We are excited about the future of attention based models they wrote we plan to extend the transformer to problems involving input and output modalities other than text and to investigate images audio and video. A couple of nights before the deadline use correct realize they needed a title for the paper Jones noted that the team had landed on a radical rejection of the accepted best practices most notably LSTM's for one technique attention.
The Beatles Jones recalled had named a song all you need is love why not call the paper attention is all you need the Beatles I'm British says Jones it literally took five seconds of thought I didn't think they would use it and quote. Business week takes a look at the super cheap electric vehicles China is currently churning out quote no American car buyer today can purchase a Chinese brands electric vehicle and no one is really sure
when these EVs will arrive on US shores. But the prospect of cheap Chinese made EVs is already causing sleepless nights into troid the primary threat comes from cars such as B.I.D.'s Seagull hatchback which features angular styling a two tone dashboard shape like a seagull's wing and six airbags there's even a ten inch rotating touch screen for its infantainment system B.I.D.'s company slogan build your dreams is embossed on the rear
of the vehicle. But the car's most extraordinary feature is its nine thousand six hundred and ninety eight dollar price tag that undercuts the average price of an American EV by more than fifty thousand dollars and is only a little more than a high-end Vespascooter such aggressive
pricing by B.I.D. which surpassed Tesla in late twenty twenty three to become the world's largest producer of electric vehicles is indicative of how Chinese auto manufacturers will likely force US makers to pivot away from mainly producing expensive second cars
for the affluent and toward more reasonably priced EVs for the every man for now the Chinese onslaught is being kept at bay in America by stiff tariffs and moves to erect even tougher trade barriers against the US's geopolitical adversary but the Chinese market accounts
for about seventy percent of all EVs sold globally so China's push to lower prices is causing a ripple effect that can't be ignored in the long term even if political maneuvering by American lawmakers manages to slow the Asian giants automotive advance towards the
US the world's most profitable car market and quote finally not tech but the verge takes a look at the sad slow death of the seminal music blog pitchfork quote pitchfork didn't stop doing good work but another wave of changing tech in music and on the broader internet
has seriously reduced its power as a taste maker as a result the internet native publication was acquired and then bungled by an old school magazine publisher speaking with former pitchfork staffers and music writers I wanted to know what is the purpose of a music magazine
now and more critically without journalism what happens to music after conversations with eight people I have come to believe that kind of a nasty certainly doesn't know does anyone else end quote no weekend bonus episodes for you this weekend for the second week in a row our distinguished guest had to rescheduled which means that we might have two bonus episodes next weekend we shall see a scheduling and admin how the sausage of podcasting is made talk to you on Monday.