Linked List: April 18, 2024

Thursday, 18 April 2024

Google Reorg Puts Android, Chrome, Photos and More Under Leadership of Devices Team 

David Pierce, writing for The Verge:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced substantial internal reorganizations on Thursday, including the creation of a new team called “Platforms and Devices” that will oversee all of Google’s Pixel products, all of Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, Photos, and more. The team will be run by Rick Osterloh, who was previously the SVP of devices and services, overseeing all of Google’s hardware efforts. Hiroshi Lockheimer, the longtime head of Android, Chrome, and ChromeOS, will be taking on other projects inside of Google and Alphabet.

This is a huge change for Google, and it likely won’t be the last one. There’s only one reason for all of it, Osterloh says: AI. “This is not a secret, right?” he says. Consolidating teams “helps us to be able to do full-stack innovation when that’s necessary,” Osterloh says.

I’m sure this is about AI, but I think it’s also about getting the company’s shit together and forming a cohesive strategy for integration with their consumer devices. Lost amid the schadenfreude surrounding the near-universal panning of Humane’s AI Pin is the question of, well, what are the device form factors we need for AI-driven features? I would argue, strenuously, that the phone is the natural AI device. It already has: always-on networking, cameras, a screen, microphones, and speakers. Everyone owns one and almost everyone takes theirs with them almost everywhere they go.

Putting all of Android under a new division led by the guy in charge of Pixel devices since 2016 says to me that Google sees AI not primarily as a way to make Android better, in general, but to make Pixel devices better, specifically. Best-of-class AI, only on Pixels, could be the sort of differentiation that actually results in Pixels gaining traction.

Elizabeth Warren, Still Using Twitter/X: ‘It’s Time to Break Up Apple’s Smartphone Monopoly’ 

Senator Elizabeth Warren seemingly thinks Apple ought to be forced to operate iMessage as a public utility, free of charge. Or something? She doesn’t actually say what she thinks should happen. Is she suggesting Apple be forced to spin off “iMessage” as a separate company? If not, what is she advocating “breaking up”?

Google Fires 28 Employees Who Disrupted Workplaces to Protest Israel Cloud Contract 

Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, in a company-wide memo published at The Verge, under the clear subject “Serious consequences for disruptive behavior”:

Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it. It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to — including our Code of Conduct and Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of Conduct, and Workplace Concerns.

We are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read our policies and apply them to how they conduct themselves and communicate in our workplace. The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior — up to and including termination.

It says a lot about how adrift Google was that “We are a place of business” needed to be stated, but better late than never. I can’t believe they let these goofs occupy Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office for 8 hours before having them arrested. They look and act like college students doing a sit-in at the dean’s office, not professional employees protesting their CEO. In college you pay to be there — students are the customers, ostensibly. At work they pay you, at will.

Meta Releases New AI Assistant Powered by Llama 3 Model 

Alex Heath, reporting for The Verge:

ChatGPT kicked off the AI chatbot race. Meta is determined to win it.

To that end: the Meta AI assistant, introduced last September, is now being integrated into the search box of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger. It’s also going to start appearing directly in the main Facebook feed. You can still chat with it in the messaging inboxes of Meta’s apps. And for the first time, it’s now accessible via a standalone website at Meta.ai.

For Meta’s assistant to have any hope of being a real ChatGPT competitor, the underlying model has to be just as good, if not better. That’s why Meta is also announcing Llama 3, the next major version of its foundational open-source model. Meta says that Llama 3 outperforms competing models of its class on key benchmarks and that it’s better across the board at tasks like coding. Two smaller Llama 3 models are being released today, both in the Meta AI assistant and to outside developers, while a much larger, multimodal version is arriving in the coming months.

I keep circling back to the notion that OpenAI has no moat. ChatGPT is certainly the best-known LLM, and perhaps still the best, but I don’t think that’s any more of a long-term competitive advantage than some company in 1986 having “the best C compiler”. What’s needed are ways to bring LLMs to users. To give them purpose, in products. That’s what Meta is doing, by integrating their AI into all of their major products.

Netflix Will Stop Reporting Subscriber Numbers Next Year 

Todd Spangler, reporting for Variety:

Netflix will no longer report subscriber numbers — which has been a key metric for streaming services for years — beginning with the first quarter of 2025.

The company made the announcement in releasing its first-quarter 2024 earnings Thursday. Netflix handily topped expectations for subscribers net adds, gaining 9.33 million in the period, to reach nearly 270 million globally. It also beat Wall Street expectations on the top and bottom lines. [...]

Despite the Q1 earnings beat, Netflix shares dropped more than 4.5% in after-hours trading Thursday, possibly as investors reacted negatively to the news that the streamer will stop reporting quarterly sub totals.

In its Q1 letter to shareholders, Netflix said that engagement — time spent with the service — is its “best proxy for customer satisfaction.” As such, it will no longer report quarterly membership numbers or average revenue per member (which it dubs “ARM”), as of Q1 2025. Netflix said it will announce “major subscriber milestones as we cross them” but will cease disclosing quarterly subscriber numbers.

I don’t think investors should be alarmed. This is what companies do when their growth phase is over. Apple used to break down unit sales for its various devices and stopped long ago. Netflix is no longer an up-and-comer — they’re the established leader in streaming, and should be judged accordingly. Keeping existing subscribers happy and watching is more important at this point than signing up new ones.

U.S. Court Rules That Police Can Force a Suspect to Unlock Phone With Thumbprint 

Jon Brodkin, reporting for Ars Technica:

The US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination does not prohibit police officers from forcing a suspect to unlock a phone with a thumbprint scan, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. The ruling does not apply to all cases in which biometrics are used to unlock an electronic device but is a significant decision in an unsettled area of the law. [...]

Payne’s Fifth Amendment claim “rests entirely on whether the use of his thumb implicitly related certain facts to officers such that he can avail himself of the privilege against self-incrimination,” the ruling said. Judges rejected his claim, holding “that the compelled use of Payne’s thumb to unlock his phone (which he had already identified for the officers) required no cognitive exertion, placing it firmly in the same category as a blood draw or fingerprint taken at booking.”

“When Officer Coddington used Payne’s thumb to unlock his phone — which he could have accomplished even if Payne had been unconscious — he did not intrude on the contents of Payne’s mind,” the court also said.

Via Jamie Zawinski, who advises never using Touch ID or Face ID. I strongly disagree with that advice. Almost everyone is far more secure using Face ID rather than relying on a passcode/passphrase alone. People who don’t use Face/Touch ID are surely tempted to use a short easily-entered passcode for convenience, and anyone who disables Face/Touch ID while using a nontrivial passphrase is encountering a huge inconvenience every single time they unlock their phone. There’s no good reason to put yourself through that.

My advice is to internalize the shortcut to hard-lock an iPhone, which temporarily disables Face/Touch ID and requires the passcode to unlock: squeeze the side button and either of the volume buttons for a second or so. I wrote an entire article about this two years ago. Don’t just learn this shortcut, internalize it, so that you don’t have to think about it under duress. Just squeeze the side buttons until you feel the phone vibrate. Then it’s hard-locked. Do this whenever you go through security — be it at the airport, the ballpark, or anywhere. If you see a magnetometer, hard-lock your iPhone. If you get pulled over by a cop while driving, hard-lock your phone before you do anything else. (You can still launch the Camera app from the lock screen to record the encounter, if you wish, while the phone remains hard-locked.) Tell everyone you know how to hard-lock their iPhones.

(Also, this ruling is specific to the details of this particular case, and thus only addresses fingerprint authentication, not facial recognition. Those concerned with civil liberties should presume, though, that the same court would rule similarly regarding cops unlocking a device by waving it in front of the suspect’s face. But with “Require Attention for Face ID” — which is on by default — Face ID won’t work if you keep your eyes closed, and I don’t think a court would allow police to force your eyes open. The trick to worry about is the police handing you back your phone, under the pretense that you can use it to make a call or something, and then yanking it from your hands after you unlock it.)

Nothing Integrates ChatGPT With Its Wireless Earbuds and Phones 

James Pero, writing at Inverse:

Nothing’s audio products — including the newly announced Ear and Ear A — are bringing what the company calls an “industry-first” integration with ChatGPT that allows users who also own a Nothing Phone like the recently released Phone 2a to launch the chatbot with a pinch gesture on their Nothing earbuds.

“By integrating ChatGPT with Nothing earbuds, including the new Nothing Ear and Ear A, and with Nothing OS, we’ve taken our first steps towards change, and there’s more to come,” said Nothing CEO, Carl Pei, in a press release.

Looks like it’s time for the DOJ to file another lawsuit against Apple for offering tight integration between its phones and peripherals.