Linked List: April 21, 2025

Monday, 21 April 2025

The Information: ‘Meta Asked Amazon, Microsoft to Help Fund Llama’ 

Kalley Huang and Erin Woo, reporting for The Information (via Ed Zitron, who summarized it on Bluesky):

Meta Platforms over the past year asked Microsoft, Amazon and others to help pay the costs of training Meta’s flagship large language model, Llama, according to four people briefed on the discussions. Meta’s overtures reflected worries about the growing costs of its artificial intelligence development, according to two of the people. [...]

Meta in particular has faced questions about the business logic behind its AI development, given that Llama is open-source software, freely available for anyone’s use. That makes it difficult to turn into a business. And Meta makes money primarily from advertising and has little experience in selling business software.

While Meta held its most serious discussions with Amazon and Microsoft, it has also discussed the idea with Databricks, IBM and Oracle, as well as representatives from at least one Middle Eastern investor, according to two of the people briefed on the discussions. Meta was still in discussions with companies about the Llama Consortium as recently as the start of this year, the two people said.

“Would you consider throwing a few sacks full of your cash on this bonfire of our cash that we’ve been burning?” is a hell of a pitch.

In its discussions with other companies, Meta primarily asked for money. It also sought servers or other resources that would offset the cost of training its models, according to two of the people briefed on the discussions. In return for their assistance, Meta discussed offering other companies promotion of their services alongside Llama — for example, a Meta executive might appear at a conference hosted by a consortium partner — or providing more insight into the training process for the model, one of those people said.

Pay a little and a Meta representative will show up at your developer conference. Pay more and a Meta rep won’t show up at your developer conference.

Larry David: ‘My Dinner With Adolf’ 

Larry David, in a column for The New York Times:

He loved that story, especially the part where Hitler shot the dog before it got back into the car. Then a beaming Hitler said, “Hey, if I can kill Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals, I can certainly kill a dog!” That perhaps got the biggest laugh of the night — and believe me, there were plenty.

I have been reliably informed that, having linked approvingly to Bill Maher’s “book report” on his dinner with Trump, I must also link to David’s report of dinner with Adolf.

Yours Truly on The MacRumors Show 

Just in case you haven’t had enough of me on various recent podcasts, I had the pleasure of joining hosts Dan Barbera and Hartley Charlton on The MacRumors Show, talking mostly about Apple Intelligence and the future of the Vision platform. Fun!

Why Do AI Company Logos Look Like Buttholes? 

Radek Sienkiewicz:

If you pay attention to AI company branding, you’ll notice a pattern:

  1. Circular shape (often with a gradient)
  2. Central opening or focal point
  3. Radiating elements from the center
  4. Soft, organic curves

Sound familiar? It should, because it’s also an apt description of ... well, you know.

A butthole.

How Tim Cook Navigated Out of Trump’s Tariffs on China, For Now 

Jeff Stein, Elizabeth Dwoskin, and Cat Zakrzewski, reporting for The Washington Post:

As President Donald Trump’s enormous new tariffs on China rippled through global supply chains, Apple CEO Tim Cook went to work behind the scenes.

Cook spoke to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last week about the potential impact of the tariffs on iPhone prices, two people familiar with the phone call said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations that were previously unreported. Cook spoke with other senior officials in the White House, the people said. And he refrained from publicly criticizing the president or his policies on national television, as many other executives have over the past several weeks.

By the end of the week, the Trump administration agreed to exempt from import duties electronic products that Apple produces in China, an action that also granted a reprieve to other large U.S. firms, including HP and Dell. Trump did so despite the recommendations of senior White House aide Peter Navarro, who had wanted the taxes to remain in place, the people said.

Three points:

  1. Tim Cook manages this dance with aplomb. This is not a “good system”. But given the way Trump operates, what Cook managed here is not merely good for Apple but better policy, period.

  2. Howard Lutnick is a lickspittle moron with the demeanor of a used car salesman who knowingly sells overpriced lemons to suckers. Here he is on Meet the Press a few weeks ago bragging that “The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones — that kind of thing is going to come to America.” Keith Olbermann mentioned in a recent episode of his podcast that Lutnick is a dead ringer for Morrie Kessler, the bookmaker of “Morrie’s Wigs” fame from Goodfellas, and I can’t un-see it.

  3. Peter Navarro is such a profound dope and abject fraud — seriously, he’s not even good at making up phony names — that he makes Lutnick seem like a credible, responsible official.