Linked List: September 20, 2024

Friday, 20 September 2024

Qualcomm Is Trying to Acquire Intel 

Lauren Thomas, Laura Cooper, and Asa Fitch, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

Chip giant Qualcomm made a takeover approach to rival Intel in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be one of the largest and most consequential deals in recent years. A deal for Intel, which has a market value of roughly $90 billion, would come as the chip maker has been suffering through one of the most significant crises in its five-decade history.

A deal is far from certain, the people cautioned. Even if Intel is receptive, a deal of that size is all but certain to attract antitrust scrutiny, though it is also possible it could be seen as an opportunity to strengthen the U.S.’s competitive edge in chips. To get the deal done, Qualcomm could intend to sell assets or parts of Intel to other buyers.

Intel — once the world’s most valuable chip company — had seen its shares drop roughly 60% so far this year before The Wall Street Journal reported on the approach. As recently as 2020, the company had a market value above $290 billion.

If you’d told me even just 10 years ago that one of these two would acquire the other in 2024, I’d have lost my shirt betting it would be Intel acquiring Qualcomm, not the other way around. What an ignominious demise this would be for the company that put the silicon in Silicon Valley. But here we are.

Danny Boyle’s ‘28 Years Later’, a $75 Million Feature Film, Was Shot Using iPhone 15 Pro Max 

Carlton Reid, writing for Wired:

The use of Apple smartphones as the principal camera system on 28 Years Later was subsequently confirmed to Wired by several people connected with the movie, detailing that the particular model used to shoot was the iPhone 15 Pro Max. [...]

Several arthouse films have been shot with iPhones, including Sean Baker’s Tangerine (2015) and the Steven Soderbergh drama Unsane (2018), but these movies were limited-release, low-budget offerings compared to 28 Years Later. The new film’s $75 million budget is only part of the franchise’s total, with 28 Years Later being the first of a new trilogy; all three coming zombie films are being scripted by screenwriter Alex Garland, who is reuniting with Boyle and Mantle after helming Civil War, released earlier this year.

Right there, in your pocket, all day every day.

Austin Mann’s iPhone 16 Pro Camera Review: Kenya 

Austin Mann:

Over the past week we’ve traveled over a thousand kilometers across Kenya, capturing more than 10,000 photos and logging over 3TB of ProRes footage with the new iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max cameras. Along the way, we’ve gained valuable insights into these camera systems and their features. [...]

The moment I learned about it, I knew exactly how I wanted to test it: a photo shoot with Craig.

A few months ago, my friend Bobby Neptune introduced me to Craig, one of the last remaining super tusker elephants roaming the earth. He is unique not only because of his enormous tusks, but also because of his extremely gentle demeanor and his curious habit of often approaching safari cruisers. I knew if we were lucky enough to find him, it might be a great opportunity to put the new Ultra Wide sensor to the test.

Bobby got on the phone with David, a local maasai who tracks Craig daily, and we met up with him to see if we could locate this beautiful animal.

I had dinner with Mann and a few other photo-nerd friends in California last week, after the Apple event, and when he told me his plan for Kenya — particularly his hope that they’d be able to find Craig — I crossed my fingers. What a magnificent animal.

Absolutely stunning work — still and video — from Mann, too. Inspiring to know that this same camera is in my pocket every day.

Shohei Ohtani’s Game for the Ages 

Los Angeles Dodgers DH Shohei Ohtani entered last night’s game in Miami with 49 stolen bases and 48 home runs for the season. Only five other players in MLB history have ever hit 40 home runs and stolen 40 bases in a season. No player had ever achieved a 50-50 season.

Ohtani went 6-for-6, hitting 3 homers, stealing 2 bases, and knocking in 10 RBIs — thus breaking 50 in both categories in the same game. Unreal. It’s the second-greatest single-game performance by a hitter in baseball history. (Everyone knows the greatest, especially Dodgers fans.)

Postscript: I want to add my sincere kudos to Marlins manager Skip Schumaker (great baseball name). Asked why he didn’t walk Ohtani intentionally, he replied, “That’s a bad move, baseball-wise, karma-wise, baseball-gods-wise. You go after him and see if you can get him out.” That’s what he said to the media after the game. During the game, in the dugout, when asked if the Marlins should walk Ohtani, he put it even better: “Fuck that.”

Elon Musk, Useful Idiot 

Speaking of “Leon” Musk, here’s Victor Tangermann, writing for The Byte:

In March, the US government accused the founder of Moscow-based company Social Design Agency of orchestrating a “persistent foreign malign influence campaign” on behalf of the Kremlin. The propaganda operation, dubbed “Doppelganger,” involved spreading memes, deepfaked videos, and falsified documents online to alienate the West from Ukraine and its leadership following Russia’s 2022 invasion.

The company is overseen by a top aide to Russian president Vladimir Putin, and has attempted to discredit Ukraine’s military and political leadership by flooding social media with propaganda.

And as it turns out, infamously gullible billionaire and X-formerly-Twitter owner Elon Musk appears to have gotten duped by the campaign. In October 2023, Musk shared a meme to his millions of followers showing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky straining his face, with the caption reading: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.”

According to leaked documents obtained by a number of European media outlets, the meme — alongside a number of other posts that were not shared by Musk — was put together by none other than the Social Design Agency.

Most people might reconsider their social media habits after finding out they inadvertently shared Russian-made propaganda memes.

Cards Against Humanity Sues Elon Musk (SpaceX) for $15 Million 

Cards Against Humanity:

We have terrible news. Seven years ago, 150,000 people paid us $15 to protect a pristine parcel of land on the US-Mexico border from racist billionaire Donald Trump’s very stupid wall.

Unfortunately, an even richer, more racist billionaire — Elon Musk — snuck up on us from behind and completely fucked that land with gravel, tractors, and space garbage.

Just look at it! He fucked it.

How did this happen? Elon Musk’s SpaceX was building some space thing nearby, and he figured he could just dump his shit all over our gorgeous plot of land without asking. After we caught him, SpaceX gave us a 12-hour ultimatum to accept a lowball offer for less than half our land’s value. We said, “Go fuck yourself, Elon Musk. We’ll see you in court.”

European Commission Opens ‘Specification Proceedings’, Ostensibly to Tell Apple Exactly What to Do 

The European Commission yesterday:

Today, the European Commission has started two specification proceedings to assist Apple in complying with its interoperability obligations under the Digital Markets Act (‘DMA’). [...] Pursuant to Article 8(2) of the DMA, the Commission may, on its own initiative, adopt a decision specifying the measures a gatekeeper has to implement to ensure effective compliance with substantive DMA obligations, such as the interoperability obligation of Article 6(7) DMA.

The first proceeding focuses on several iOS connectivity features and functionalities, predominantly used for and by connected devices. [...] The Commission intends to specify how Apple will provide effective interoperability with functionalities such as notifications, device pairing and connectivity.

The second proceeding focuses on the process Apple has set up to address interoperability requests submitted by developers and third parties for iOS and IPadOS [sic]. It is crucial that the request process is transparent, timely, and fair so that all developers have an effective and predictable path to interoperability and are enabled to innovate. [...]

The Commission will conclude the proceedings within 6 months from their opening.

As ever with the Commission and their bureaucratese, I’m unsure whether this announcement is perfunctory or an escalation. But I think it’s an escalation, and they’re so irritated by Apple’s refusal to cave to the “spirit” of the DMA while complying with the letter of the law, that they’re simply going to tell Apple exactly what they want them to do in six months. This is not going to go well, as it seems they’re going to demand Apple offer third-party peripheral makers and software developers the same access to system-level software that Apple’s own first-party peripherals and software have. I’m not even sure why they’re having proceedings, because this press release makes it sounds like they’ve already decided.

Also worth noting: Margrethe Vestager is on her way out, about to be replaced by Spanish socialist Teresa Ribera, a career climate expert (which, possibly, might give her an affinity for Apple, far and away the most climate-friendly large tech company) with no experience in competition law. To me that makes Ribera an odd choice for the competition chief job, but apparently that makes sense in the EU. It remains unclear to me whether Ribera supports Vestager’s crusade against the DMA’s designated “gatekeepers”. If she doesn’t, is this all for naught?

Sidenote: Honest question: Can someone explain to me the Commission’s use of boldfacing? In the first 265 words of the press release, 66 of them are bold, across 13 different spans. They seemingly use boldfacing the way Trump capitalizes words in his tweets: indiscriminately. I find it highly distracting, like trying to read a ransom letter. It’s not just this press release, they do it all the time.