Linked List: April 2025

Wednesday, 23 April 2025

Trump Administration Calls E.U. Fines on Apple and Meta ‘Economic Extortion’ 

Reuters:

“This novel form of economic extortion will not be tolerated by the United States,” a White House spokesperson said. “Extraterritorial regulations that specifically target and undermine American companies, stifle innovation, and enable censorship will be recognized as barriers to trade and a direct threat to free civil society.”

Clear as Mud 

From the European Commission’s announcement today, “Commission closes investigation into Apple’s user choice obligations and issues preliminary findings on rules for alternative apps under the Digital Markets Act”:

Under the DMA, Apple is required to allow for the distribution of apps on its iOS operating system by means other than through the Apple App Store. In practical terms, this means that Apple should allow third party app stores on iOS and apps to be downloaded to the iPhone directly from the web.

The Commission takes the preliminary view that Apple failed to comply with this obligation in view of the conditions it imposes on app (and app store) developers. Developers wanting to use alternative app distribution channels on iOS are disincentivised from doing so as this requires them to opt for business terms which include a new fee (Apple’s Core Technology Fee). Apple also introduced overly strict eligibility requirements, hampering developers’ ability to distribute their apps through alternative channels. Finally, Apple makes it overly burdensome and confusing for end users to install apps when using such alternative app distribution channels.

So is the entire idea of the Core Technology Fee disallowed? Or is the fee too high? Does Apple need to just make app distribution free and unfettered, no fees, no restrictions?

Who knows? The fine is clear — €500M — but what exactly Apple did wrong and should change now is not.

‘60 Minutes’ Chief Resigns as CBS Corporate Parent Paramount Prepares to Fellate Trump 

Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin, reporting for The New York Times:

CBS News entered a new period of turmoil on Tuesday after the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, said he would resign from the long-running Sunday news program, citing encroachments on his journalistic independence. [...]

“It’s clear the company is done with me,” Mr. Owens said, according to a recording that was obtained by The Times. The correspondents Lesley Stahl and Scott Pelley were in attendance — Ms. Stahl choked up as she praised Mr. Owens, and noted that he had “taken a hell of a beating” — and Anderson Cooper dialed in from Rome, where he was covering Pope Francis’ death for CNN.

During the meeting, Mr. Owens alluded to his displeasure with additional layers of oversight that CBS executives had placed on the program. “In a million years, the corporation didn’t know what was coming up — they trusted ‘60 Minutes’ to report the stories and program the broadcast the way ‘60 Minutes’ saw fit,” he said. Any change to that arrangement, he added, created “a really slippery slope.”

Mr. Owens also discouraged his staff from quitting in protest. “I do think this will be a moment for the corporation to take a hard look at itself and its relationship with us,” he said.

Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She has expressed a desire to settle Mr. Trump’s case, which stems from what the president has called a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on “60 Minutes.”

Legal experts have dismissed that suit as baseless and far-fetched. Many journalists at CBS News — the former home of Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace — believe that a settlement would amount to a capitulation to Mr. Trump over what they consider standard-issue gripes about editorial judgment.

Journalistic outlets need owners who are committed to the cause. It’s that simple.

European Commission Fines Apple €500M and Meta €200M for Breaching Digital Markets Act 

The European Commission:

Today, the European Commission found that Apple breached its anti-steering obligation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and that Meta breached the DMA obligation to give consumers the choice of a service that uses less of their personal data. Therefore, the Commission has fined Apple and Meta with €500 million and €200 million respectively. [...]

Non-compliance decision on Apple’s steering terms

Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple’s App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases.

The Commission found that Apple fails to comply with this obligation. Due to a number of restrictions imposed by Apple, app developers cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store. Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers. The company has failed to demonstrate that these restrictions are objectively necessary and proportionate.

As part of today’s decision, the Commission has ordered Apple to remove the technical and commercial restrictions on steering and to refrain from perpetuating the non-compliant conduct in the future, which includes adopting conduct with an equivalent object or effect.

The fine imposed on Apple takes into account the gravity and duration of the non-compliance.

This finding — and the scope of the fine (roughly $570M converted from euros) — was completely in line with (at least my) expectations. Apple booked about $184B in profit last year, so this fine is about 0.3% of that. Maybe Apple just considers this the new cost of doing business in the EU? It’s not nothing, but it’s about 1/80th of the theoretical maximum fine the EU could have assessed, $39B.

Something, not nothing, but definitely not a big deal. Teresa Ribera, the EC competition chief, is clearly trying to thread a political needle here. Fines big enough to create the impression that the EU is asserting itself, but small enough not to actually be all that inflammatory amidst the Trump-initiated mad-king trade war. Even Ribera’s job title — Executive Vice-President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition — seems designed to de-escalate tensions. Margrethe Vestager was adamantly against American companies. Ribera is not.

Non-compliance decision on Meta’s “consent or pay” model

Under the DMA, gatekeepers must seek users’ consent for combining their personal data between services. Those users who do not consent must have access to a less personalised but equivalent alternative.

In November 2023, Meta introduced a binary ‘Consent or Pay’ advertising model. Under this model, EU users of Facebook and Instagram had a choice between consenting to personal data combination for personalised advertising or paying a monthly subscription for an ad-free service.

The Commission found that this model is not compliant with the DMA, as it did not give users the required specific choice to opt for a service that uses less of their personal data but is otherwise equivalent to the ‘personalised ads’ service. Meta’s model also did not allow users to exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data.

The wild thing about this is that all sorts of companies in the EU use the “pay or OK” model. I get that the whole point of the DMA is that the named “gatekeepers” have to play by different rules because they’re “gatekeepers”, but back in 2018, no less an authority than former EC competition chief Margrethe Vestager said, “I would like to have a Facebook in which I pay a fee each month, but I would have no tracking and advertising and the full benefits of privacy.” That’s exactly what Meta has offered. And it turns out, actual EU citizens don’t want that. They’d almost all rather use Meta’s products free of charge with targeted ads than pay a fair price to use them without tracking. So now the EC has moved the goalposts and insists Meta must, effectively, give away their products for pennies on the dollar.

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.

Sunday, 20 April 2025

The Talk Show: ‘The Best Hatched Plan’ 

Special guest Glenn Fleishman returns to the show for episode 420 on 4/20, but everyone’s sober, I swear. Topics include Trump’s dumb tariffs and Glenn’s smart new edition of his book Six Centuries of Type & Printing.

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Dekáf Coffee Roasters 

My thanks to Dekáf Coffee Roasters for sponsoring last week at DF. Dekáf started with a simple question over a late-night cup of decaf: why do coffee lovers who skip the caffeine have to skip the craft too?

Dekáf believes those who drink coffee purely for its flavor are the true connoisseurs. While other roasters treat decaf as a side project, they’ve made it their entire mission. They’re dedicated to creating exceptional decaffeinated coffee that stands toe-to-toe with the world’s finest caffeinated beans.

I drink coffee every single day. I literally can’t remember the last day I didn’t have coffee in the morning. A few years ago, though, age started catching up to me and I stopped drinking coffee after lunch or so, lest it screw with my sleep. I really missed my afternoon coffee though. Why I didn’t think to try decaf I don’t know, but Dekáf sent me a few samples earlier this month and it’s been a revelation. In addition to fully decaffeinated roasts, they also have some half-decaffeinated roasts, and they’re absolutely delicious — my style of roast, for sure — and they don’t leave me jolted into the evening. Maybe you like tea, but I don’t. I like coffee, and I love being able to have a cup or two late in the afternoon again. It’s so good.

Also, I’m a big believer that you can judge a book by its cover. Just look at the Dekáf brand. It’s perfect. Color, typography, artwork — so cool, so spot-on for what they do.

Dekáf offers 9 single origins, and 6 signature blends. You won’t believe it’s decaf. That’s the point. Even better, get 30% off with code: DF.

Friday, 18 April 2025

A Few DF Sponsorship Openings 

Weekly sponsorships have been the top source of revenue for Daring Fireball ever since I started selling them back in 2007. They’ve succeeded, I think, because they make everyone happy. They generate good money. There’s only one sponsor per week and the sponsors are always relevant to at least some sizable portion of the DF audience, so you, the reader, are never annoyed and hopefully often intrigued by them. And, from the sponsors’ perspective, they work. My favorite thing about them is how many sponsors return for subsequent weeks after seeing the results.

I’ve got three openings left through the end of June:

  • April 21–27 (next week)
  • May 12–18
  • May 26–June 1

If you’ve got a product or service you think would be of interest to DF’s audience of people obsessed with high quality and good design, get in touch.

Federal Appeals Court Says Trump DOJ ‘Would Reduce the Rule of Law to Lawlessness’ 

CNN:

A federal appeals court rejected the Trump administration’s request that it halt the next steps Judge Paula Xinis is seeking to take in the case concerning a migrant who was wrongly deported to El Salvador, with a strident warning about the rule of law and the possibility the dispute presented an “incipient crisis.”

The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals said in its seven-page ruling Thursday that the Trump administration’s assertions in the case “should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

The unanimous ruling was written by Judge Harvie Wilkinson, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan. In it, he was extremely critical of the administration’s effort to undo some of Xinis’ recent orders in the case, sounding alarm bells about how its maneuverings in the matter have resulted in the two branches “grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both.”

Quoting from Wilkinson’s order:

It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.

This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.

The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order.

No minced words. No equivocation. No histrionics either. Just calling it like it is. More like this, please. This needs to be faced head-on, with plain language.

E.U. Delayed Fines for Apple and Meta Just Before Trade Talks With U.S. Started 

Kim Mackrael and Sam Schechner, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link):

The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, had initially planned to announce cease-and-desist orders targeting the tech giants on Tuesday and had informed at least one of the companies of that timing, people familiar with the matter said. Both companies could have also been slapped with fines.

The decision to postpone the announcement was made shortly before EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič met with U.S. officials in Washington on Monday, for his first in-person talks since President Trump announced a 90-day pause on some tariffs. In addition, this week Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met with Trump, who said he would have “very little problem” making a trade deal with the EU.

The rulings are still expected to go ahead, and it isn’t immediately clear how long the delay might last.

Pretty much what I thought happened to these fines.

Thursday, 17 April 2025

Spending More to Get Less Is Good? 

Brian X. Chen, in a column at The New York Times headlined “Why a Tariff-Inflated $2,000 iPhone Is Nothing to Fear”:

Don’t panic. Even if tariffs did cause the iPhone’s price to surge, we would have plenty of cheaper options, like buying last year’s phone model instead of the latest and greatest.

The most important lesson we can learn from the turmoil: The only consistent way to save money on tech is to use devices for as long as possible, which requires maintaining them as you would a car, and upgrading only when you must.

This whole angle is no surprise coming from the tech columnist whose advice to readers who think their aging phone cameras don’t perform well in low light is “Just use flash.” If phone prices go up because of Trump’s tariffs, all phone prices are going to go up, including those for older models, whether you’re buying new or used. There is no silver lining here. Spending more to get a years-old phone sucks too.

Take the iPhone 16 as an example. Its $800 price tag can easily inflate to $1,080, since you may also buy:

  • An iPhone case for $50
  • AirPods for $130
  • 256 gigabytes of storage for $100

So if you buy things that aren’t an iPhone — like AirPods — the price of an iPhone goes up. Got it.

The anti-“big tech” bias here is so obvious. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a similar article in the Times about how it’s no big deal, nothing to worry about, if the price of cars doubles under these tariffs.

Wednesday, 16 April 2025

Glenn Fleishman’s Kickstarter for ‘Six Centuries of Type & Printing’ 

Glenn Fleishman:

The book Six Centuries of Type & Printing briskly tells the story of the evolution of type and printing, starting with early documented efforts and surviving artifacts from China and Korea, and introducing Gutenberg and his innovations. It then takes you through each generation of increasing sophistication in metal and relief printing until the abrupt 20th century shift into flat offset printing, which was made possible through photographic and digital improvements, and phototypesetting and digital composition.

I’ve got the first edition of this book, which was included with Fleishman’s rather preposterously elaborate Tiny Type Museum and Time Capsule five years ago. It is a self-exemplifying achievement: a handsomely designed printed object about how it came to be possible to create and produce handsomely designed printed objects.

That first edition from five years ago, however, was printed letterpress, and was a very limited edition. This new edition, while still exquisite, will be printed offset and is very much affordable. The print/e-book bundle is just $32.

The Kickstarter campaign is 92% of the way to its goal, with, as I type this, 28 hours to go. If you even vaguely suspect you’ll enjoy this book, I bet you’ll love it. Fleishman is such a good writer and he so clearly both knows and loves the subject matter. There’s no better combination. I just took my copy down to flip through before posting this, and I got sucked in to a re-read.

Man of the Hour: Judge James Boasberg 

Josh Kovensky, reporting for TPM:

In a withering 46-page opinion on Wednesday, D.C. Chief Judge James Boasberg laid out how he came to believe that the Trump administration was acting in bad faith during its Alien Enemies Act removals.

Boasberg set the stage for potential contempt prosecutions in the order. He also detailed what he came to see as the Trump administration’s scheme to shield its plan to use rarely invoked wartime powers to remove more than 100 Venezuelans to a Salvadoran detention facility, depriving them of due process and the courts of the ability to review what was taking place.

Below are five points on Boasberg’s opinion.

I’d never heard of Boasberg until recently, but he has a rather distinctive surname. Turns out he’s also the judge presiding over the FTC v. Meta antitrust case that’s in court this week. Busy man.

Update: Turns out he’s also the judge in the lawsuit “alleging Trump officials violated federal record-keeping laws by using a Signal group chat to discuss looming military action against Yemen’s Houthis.”

Wink Martindale Dies at 91 

Dennis McLellan, writing for the Los Angeles Times (News+ link):

Over the decades, according to his website, Martindale either hosted or produced 21 game shows, including “Words and Music,” “Trivial Pursuit,” “The Last Word” and “Debt.” “That’s a lot of shows,” he acknowledged in a 1996 interview with the New York Daily News. “It either means everybody wants me to do their show or I can’t hold a job.”

Martindale was best known for hosting “Tic-Tac-Dough,” the revival of a late 1950s show, which aired on CBS for less than two months in 1978 but continued in syndication until 1986.

Unlike tic-tac-toe, in which two players simply try to get three Xs or three Os in a row in a nine-box grid, “Tic-Tac-Dough” required contestants to select a subject category in each of the nine boxes, everything from geography to song titles. Each correct answer earned the players their X or O in the chosen box.

“Tic-Tac-Dough” achieved its highest ratings in 1980 during the 88-game, 46-show run of Lt. Thom McKee, a handsome young Navy fighter pilot whose winning streak earned him $312,700 in cash and prizes and a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.

It’s funny what you remember from childhood. I was only seven then, but I remember McKee’s winning streak. He was like the proto Ken Jennings. There was some kind of gimmick on the show where if you won ten games in a row — which almost never happened — you also won a car as a bonus. So McKee won eight cars. As I recall it — I was seven, so I could be wrong — all eight cars he won were exactly the same model, because that was the show’s current promotional partner. I remember thinking that was absurd, and my dad explaining to me that he could just sell them.

Anyway, in one of my programming classes in high school, we had to create a big final project. We had to work in pairs because there weren’t enough computers for every student in the class. My friend and I wrote a tic-tac-toe game in Applesoft BASIC. (To be honest, I wrote most of it, but he did the typing.) I remember three things about that game:

  1. We used the number pad keyboard layout for entering moves, with each numeral corresponding to a square on the board, which I thought (and still think) was a pretty clever UI for tic-tac-toe:

    789
456
123

  2. You could play two-player or against the computer, and while the computer was pretty good, it couldn’t play perfectly. I was very frustrated that while I could, of course, play perfect tic-tac-toe myself, I couldn’t figure out how to code an algorithm for unbeatable play in BASIC.

  3. Our name for the game: Wink.

Meta Botches Redaction of Slides in Antitrust Trial, Angering Google, Apple, and Snap 

Wes Davis, The Verge:

During Meta’s antitrust trial today, lawyers representing Apple, Google, and Snap each expressed irritation with Meta over the slides it presented on Monday that The Verge found to contain easy-to-remove redactions. Attorneys for both Apple and Snap called the errors “egregious,” with Apple’s representative indicating that it may not be able to trust Meta with its internal information in the future. Google’s attorney also blamed Meta for jeopardizing the search giant’s data with the mistake.

This is yet another one of those situations where the botched redactions were just objects layered atop the supposed-to-be-redacted material in a PDF file, leaving the original layer’s content intact but just visually occluded. In 2025 you either have to be really bad with computers to do this, or you did it this way on purpose. Perhaps we should apply Occam’s razor and presume it’s just Meta displaying their usual regard for privacy.

You can properly redact a PDF digitally, but botched digital redactions are so commonplace (and at times disastrous and/or humiliating) that when then Attorney General William Barr released the Mueller Report in 2019, the DOJ printed the unredacted original, did the redactions on paper, and then scanned it back in to create the redacted PDF.

The WSJ Reports on How Elon Musk Manages His ‘Legion’ of Children and Harem of Mothers 

Dana Mattioli, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (main link is a gift link; also, here’s a News+ link):

Musk has had at least 14 children with four women, including the pop musician Grimes and Shivon Zilis, an executive at his brain computer company Neuralink. Multiple sources close to the tech entrepreneur said they believe the true number of Musk’s children is much higher than publicly known.

Imagine having 14 acknowledged children but your friends suspect the actual number is “much higher”. What a profound weirdo this guy is.

Cryptocurrency influencer Tiffany Fong was covering disgraced crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried’s downfall when Musk started liking and replying to her posts. Musk’s interactions ramped up as Fong posted more political content in support of Trump, and Musk followed her last summer.

That sort of attention from Musk on X, where he has 219 million followers, sent droves of followers to Fong, which was a financial boon. More engagement meant more earnings for her as part of a revenue-sharing program for creators on X.

During the height of her interactions with the billionaire owner, Fong earned $21,000 on the platform in a two-week period in November, according to a screenshot she posted. That was about when Musk sent her a direct message asking if she was interested in having his child, according to people familiar with the matter. The two had never met in person.

Fong didn’t move forward with Musk because she pictured having children in a more traditional nuclear family, but confided to a few friends about the approach — including St. Clair, whom she knew as another conservative social-media figure — and how she worried that turning him down could hurt her earnings.

Once Musk learned that Fong disclosed the request to others, he chided her for not using discretion, according to the people, and unfollowed her. That contributed to a fall in her engagement, and her earnings declined.

There’s arguably an insinuation here that something crooked happened to Fong’s Twitter/X earnings after she declined Musk’s offer, but there doesn’t have to be for it to be sick. It’s just gross that Musk’s M.O. is to hit up suddenly popular women and ask if they’d like to have his children, and to lavish money-earning public attention on them while courting them.

DOGE Dingalings Cut Off Funding for CVE Program 

Jessica Lyons, reporting for The Register:

US government funding for the world’s CVE program — the centralized Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database of product security flaws — ends Wednesday.

The 25-year-old CVE program plays a huge role in vulnerability management. It is responsible overseeing the assignment and organizing of unique CVE ID numbers, such as CVE-2014-0160 and CVE-2017-5754, for specific vulnerabilities, in this case OpenSSL’s Heartbleed and Intel’s Meltdown, so that when referring to particular flaws and patches, everyone is agreed on exactly what we’re all talking about.

The good news: they were ready. Announcing the CVE Foundation:

Since its inception, the CVE Program has operated as a U.S. government-funded initiative, with oversight and management provided under contract. While this structure has supported the program’s growth, it has also raised longstanding concerns among members of the CVE Board about the sustainability and neutrality of a globally relied-upon resource being tied to a single government sponsor.

This concern has become urgent following an April 15, 2025 letter from MITRE notifying the CVE Board that the U.S. government does not intend to renew its contract for managing the program. While we had hoped this day would not come, we have been preparing for this possibility.

In response, a coalition of longtime, active CVE Board members have spent the past year developing a strategy to transition CVE to a dedicated, non-profit foundation. The new CVE Foundation will focus solely on continuing the mission of delivering high-quality vulnerability identification and maintaining the integrity and availability of CVE data for defenders worldwide.

Figma Files for IPO 

You will recall that in September 2022, Figma entered into an agreement for a $20 billion acquisition by Adobe, but abandoned the deal 15 months later.

Monday, 14 April 2025

ChatGPT Can Now Remember and Reference All Your Previous Chats 

Samuel Axon, writing for Ars Technica:

Some time ago, OpenAI added a feature called “Memory” that allowed a limited number of pieces of information to be retained and used for future responses. Users often had to specifically ask ChatGPT to remember something to trigger this, though it occasionally tried to guess at what it should remember, too. [...] Users could enable or disable this feature at will, and it was automatically off for specific chats where users chose the “Temporary Chat” option — sort of ChatGPT’s version of incognito mode.

The new improvements announced today go far beyond that.

Now, where there was once a checkbox in ChatGPT’s interface to disable or enable memory tracking, there are two checkboxes. “Reference saved memories” is the old memory feature, which is basically a limited repository of essential facts. The second is the new feature: “reference chat history.” This allows ChatGPT to use all prior conversations as context and adapt future responses accordingly.

I’ve been using ChatGPT for a while now. I don’t think I’m a particularly heavy user at all, and I haven’t tried, in particular, to, I don’t know, open up about myself personally. But I ask it what I want to know. So, in the current version, I prompted it with “Describe me based on all our chats — play it straight.” Here’s its response:

You’re sharp, analytical, and deeply detail-oriented. You care a lot about precision — whether it’s language, data, or historical facts. You’re not satisfied with vague answers; you want the right one, ideally backed by sources or structured data. You’re a power user, technically literate, and comfortable with scripting and command-line tools (especially on macOS), often turning to automation and custom scripts to solve problems.

You follow the tech world closely, especially Apple — its hardware, chip architecture, software updates, and even historical product launches. But you’re not just interested in specs; you care about the bigger picture too, like corporate strategy, antitrust laws, and privacy policies.

You also track U.S. politics, legal frameworks, and electoral history with the same demand for precision and sourcing. And you’ve got a thing for language — choosing the right word, understanding nuance, and occasionally searching for just the right adjective (bonus points if it’s rare or elegant).

Outside of that, you have a strong grasp of sports stats (especially NFL and MLB), media history (Letterman, SNL, classic film), and a dry, sometimes playful sense of humor. You don’t show off, but you clearly know your stuff.

I’m probably not the right person to judge that response, but I think it’s pretty good.

Here’s the response I got when I asked Siri “Describe me based on all our chats — play it straight”:

I don’t see that person in your Contacts.

From last week’s blockbuster report by Wayne Ma at The Information, “How Apple Fumbled Siri’s AI Makeover”:

Giannandrea often has described to employees his belief that machine learning can lead to incremental improvements in products, eventually adding up to major gains, a concept he refers to as hill climbing. He also has expressed a dim view of chatbots in the past, telling Apple employees before and immediately after the release of ChatGPT that he didn’t believe they added much value for users.

Seth Godin on How to Win an Argument With a Toddler 

Seth Godin:

You can’t.

That’s because toddlers don’t understand what an argument is and aren’t interesting in having one.

Toddlers (which includes defensive bureaucrats, bullies, flat earthers, folks committed to a specific agenda and radio talk show hosts) may indicate that they’d like to have an argument, but they’re actually engaging in connection, noise, play acting or a chance to earn status. It can be fun to be in opposition, to harangue or even to use power to change someone’s position.

Sunday, 13 April 2025

WorkOS: Scalable, Secure Authentication 

My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at DF. Modern authentication should be seamless and secure. WorkOS makes it easy to integrate features like MFA, SSO, and RBAC. Whether you’re replacing passwords, stopping fraud, or adding enterprise auth, WorkOS can help you build frictionless auth that scales.

New features they launched just last month include:

  • WorkOS Connect — “Sign in with [Your App]”
  • WorkOS Vault — Encryption Key Management (EKM) and Bring-Your-Own-Key (BYOK)
  • AuthKit Integrations — Native support for several new identity providers including LinkedIn, Slack, GitLab, BitBucket, Intuit, and more.

Future-proof your authentication stack with the identity layer trusted by OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, and Vercel.

Bill Maher on His Dinner at the White House With Donald Trump 

Bill Maher personifies the difference between a liberal (which he is) and a leftist (which he isn’t). But he’s been a stridently vocal critic of Trump since long before Trump even ran for president. Maher was the first person on television to correctly predict that Trump, if he lost the 2020 election, would attempt to remain in office. Maher and Trump, however, are mutual friends with Kid Rock, and Rock arranged for Trump to invite Maher to the White House for a private dinner. UFC chief and Meta board member Dana White was also there. A decade ago even imagining this guest list for a White House dinner would have been a warning that you ought to lay off the drugs. Today, this is normal.

On this clip from his show this weekend, Maher reports on the dinner. What it was like. What Trump was like. Turns out, in private, Trump turns it off. He was normal. Or, well, normal for Donald Trump. He wasn’t what we see in public. I find that fascinating. Not exculpatory. Just interesting. Is he “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats!” crazy 24 hours a day, or just when the cameras are on?

Some on the left are absolutely losing their shit over Maher for this. I don’t get it. This is the single most interesting report on Trump I’ve seen in years because it’s real. Maher didn’t come out of the dinner brainwashed. He’s not now saying Trump is doing a good job. He’s not now saying things are in any way OK. He spent his whole monologue before this report rightfully skewering Trump’s humiliating weeklong tariffs tantrum. After the report, Maher interviewed total nutjob Steve Bannon and literally shoved a copy of the Constitution in Bannon’s face when Bannon started blathering about Trump running for a third term in 2028. From Maher’s preface to his report:

“Oh my god Bill, are you going to say something nice about him? What I’m going to do is report exactly what happened. You decide what you think about it. And if that’s not enough pure Trump hate for you I don’t give a fuck.”

The whole episode was great.

‘What It Feels Like, Right Now’ 

Crackerjack essay by Chuck Wendig:

Maybe it’s like turbulence on an airplane, you think. Just a bumpy unpleasant awful experience you gotta get through. But when turbulence hits it’s not because the pilot is a guy who doesn’t “know planes,” when turbulence hits they don’t disappear the ninth row people out the airlock because they “look different” and are “probably causing the problem.” Planes don’t have airlocks, do they? Whatever. My brain is spray cheese.

Chris Whipple on the End of the Biden Administration 

Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Chris Whipple’s new book on the final years of Joe Biden’s presidency, under the headline “Did Aides Cover Up His Mental State — or Was It Group Delusion?” (News+ link):

The president’s wobbly state should have been a flashing warning light. At his first meeting with Biden, Ron Klain, his former White House chief of staff, who was in charge of debate prep, was startled. He’d never seen Biden so exhausted and out of it. He seemed unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. The president appeared obsessed with foreign policy and uninterested in his second-term plans. During one prep session in Aspen Lodge, the presidential cabin, Biden suddenly got up, walked out to the pool, collapsed on a lounge chair, and fell sound asleep. Yet his advisers were undaunted. With unintended irony, one of them explained their strategy to me: “An early debate would quiet fears that the president was infirm.”

Jiminy.

Jamelle Bouie on Trump’s Tariff Obsession 

Jamelle Bouie, writing at The New York Times (gift link):

There is a hypothetical president with a hypothetically similar agenda who could answer these questions. This actual president cannot. He did not reason himself into his preoccupation with tariffs and can neither reason nor speak coherently about them. There is no grand plan or strategic vision, no matter what his advisers claim — only the impulsive actions of a mad king, untethered from any responsibility to the nation or its people. For as much as the president’s apologists would like us to believe otherwise, Trump’s tariffs are not a policy as we traditionally understand it. What they are is an instantiation of his psyche: a concrete expression of his zero-sum worldview. [...]

You could even say that this need to dominate — this overwhelming drive to show mastery — is constitutive of Trump’s self. There must be a loser, or else there is no Trump. [...] The upshot of this understanding of Trump’s personality is that there is no point at which he can be satisfied. He will always want more: more supplicants to obey his next command, more displays of his power and authority and more opportunities to trample over those who don’t belong in his America.

There’s no point to this other than a vain attempt to get every other country in the world to come begging to Donald Trump for mercy. Which isn’t going to happen.

Saturday, 12 April 2025

Warren Buffett’s 2024 Report to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders 

Warren Buffett’s annual shareholders letters are always a must-read. The honesty, clarity, and striking humility of his prose stands out in a world where corporate communications — from companies of any size — tend to be bland and obfuscating. This year’s letter, published back in February, is no exception. Two sections stood out to me. First, in a section titled “Mistakes — Yes, We Make Them at Berkshire”:

Sometimes I’ve made mistakes in assessing the future economics of a business I’ve purchased for Berkshire — each a case of capital allocation gone wrong. That happens with both judgments about marketable equities — we view these as partial ownership of businesses — and the 100% acquisitions of companies.

At other times, I’ve made mistakes when assessing the abilities or fidelity of the managers Berkshire is hiring. The fidelity disappointments can hurt beyond their financial impact, a pain that can approach that of a failed marriage.

A decent batting average in personnel decisions is all that can be hoped for. The cardinal sin is delaying the correction of mistakes or what Charlie Munger called “thumb-sucking.” Problems, he would tell me, cannot be wished away. They require action, however uncomfortable that may be.

During the 2019-23 period, I have used the words “mistake” or “error” 16 times in my letters to you. Many other huge companies have never used either word over that span. Amazon, I should acknowledge, made some brutally candid observations in its 2021 letter. Elsewhere, it has generally been happy talk and pictures.

I have also been a director of large public companies at which “mistake” or “wrong” were forbidden words at board meetings or analyst calls. That taboo, implying managerial perfection, always made me nervous (though, at times, there could be legal issues that make limited discussion advisable. We live in a very litigious society.)

At 94, it won’t be long before Greg Abel replaces me as CEO and will be writing the annual letters. Greg shares the Berkshire creed that a “report” is what a Berkshire CEO annually owes to owners. And he also understands that if you start fooling your shareholders, you will soon believe your own baloney and be fooling yourself as well.

As the great physicist Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Second is an entire section, not complaining, but instead proudly declaring, that last year Berkshire set the record for the highest single-year corporate income tax payment in United States history:

Huge numbers can be hard to visualize. Let me recast the $26.8 billion that we paid last year.

If Berkshire had sent the Treasury a $1 million check every 20 minutes throughout all of 2024 — visualize 366 days and nights because 2024 was a leap year — we still would have owed the federal government a significant sum at yearend. Indeed, it would be well into January before the Treasury would tell us that we could take a short breather, get some sleep, and prepare for our 2025 tax payments. [...]

Berkshire’s activities now impact all corners of our country. And we are not finished. Companies die for many reasons but, unlike the fate of humans, old age itself is not lethal. Berkshire today is far more youthful than it was in 1965.

However, as Charlie and I have always acknowledged, Berkshire would not have achieved its results in any locale except America whereas America would have been every bit the success it has been if Berkshire had never existed.

So thank you, Uncle Sam. Someday your nieces and nephews at Berkshire hope to send you even larger payments than we did in 2024. Spend it wisely. Take care of the many who, for no fault of their own, get the short straws in life. They deserve better. And never forget that we need you to maintain a stable currency and that result requires both wisdom and vigilance on your part.

Again, that was written back in February. Prescient as always.

Smartphones and Computers Are Now Exempt From Trump’s Latest Tariffs 

Auzinea Bacon, CNN:

Electronics imported to the United States will be exempt from President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, according to a US Customs and Border Protection notice posted late Friday. Smartphones, computer monitors and various electronic parts are among the exempted products. The exemption applies to products entering the United States or removed from warehouses as early as April 5, according to the notice.

The move comes after the Trump administration imposed a minimum tariff rate of 145% on Chinese goods imported to the United States. The tariffs would have a major impact on tech giants like Apple, which make iPhones and other products in China.

Roughly 90% of Apple’s iPhone production and assembly is based in China, according to Wedbush Securities’ estimates. Analysts at Wedbush on Saturday called the tariff exclusion, “the best news possible for tech investors.”

Here’s Commerce Secretary Emily Litella making the announcement on Weekend Update.

Friday, 11 April 2025

Anker, a Chinese Company, Has Already Started Raising Its Prices on Amazon 

Reuters:

China’s Anker, one of Amazon’s largest sellers offering products from power banks to phone cases, has raised prices on a fifth of its products on the U.S. platform since Thursday, in a sign that tariffs on Chinese goods are being passed on to U.S. shoppers.

Some 127 Anker products have seen an average increase of 18% since Thursday last week, with the majority of those occurring after Monday, April 7, when U.S. President Donald Trump added an extra 50% import duty on Chinese goods, according to data from e-commerce services provider SmartScout.

Tariffs driving up consumer prices is as sure a thing as rain making you wet. But it’s worth pointing to the evidence as it comes in, because unlike rain’s wetness, the “emperor sure does have clothes” MAGA contingent is trying to argue that tariffs don’t have this obvious effect.

European Travel to the U.S. Plummets 

Financial Times reporter John Burn-Murdoch has a summary on Bluesky of his co-bylined report for the Financial Times:

Visitors from western Europe who stayed at least one night in the US fell by 17 per cent in March from a year ago, according to the International Trade Administration. Travel from some countries — including Ireland, Norway and Germany — fell by more than 20 per cent, an FT analysis of ITA data showed.

The trend poses a threat to the US tourism industry, which accounts for 2.5 per cent of the country’s GDP. Some airlines and hotel groups have warned of waning demand for transatlantic travel and a “bad buzz” about visiting the US. The total number of overseas visitors travelling to the US dropped by 12 per cent year-on-year in March, the steepest decline since March 2021 when the travel sector was reeling from pandemic restrictions, according to the ITA data.

Well, I’m sure it will turn around when the April figures come out, after Trump’s tariff madness and the news that Secretary of State Marco Rubio — supposedly one of the few sane voices in the 2.0 Trump kakistocracy — has signed a two-page argument that noncitizens can be deported for their beliefs, a.k.a. thought crimes.

“In just two months [Trump] has destroyed the reputation of the US, shown one way by diminished travel from the EU to the US,” said Paul English, co-founder of travel website Kayak. “This is not only one more terrible blow to the US economy, it also represents reputation damage that could take generations to repair.”

We need more clearheaded statements like this from business leaders. Just state the truth plainly. The only side English took with this statement is the side of the truth.

Chinese Finance Ministry Calls Trump’s Tariff Hikes ‘A Joke in the History of World Economics’ 

Reuters:

“The U.S. side’s imposition of excessively high tariffs on China seriously violates international economic and trade rules, runs counter to basic economic principles and common sense, and is simply an act of unilateral bullying and coercion,” China’s Finance Ministry said in a statement. [...]

“Even if the U.S. continues to impose even higher tariffs, it would no longer have any economic significance and would go down as a joke in the history of world economics,” the Finance Ministry’s statement added.

“If the U.S. continues to play a numbers game with tariffs, China will not respond,” it added. However it left the door open for Beijing to turn to other types of retaliation, reiterating that China would fight the U.S. to the end.

None of this is funny at the moment, but Trump has beclowned himself with these impulsive nonsensical tariffs. No matter how this ends up, he will go down in history looking like a fool for this. In terms of history, what will be remembered in decades to come, he’d have far less embarrassed himself by shitting his pants in public. He came into office less than three months ago with the US economy being the strongest in the world, by far. Everything that’s happened since has been the direct result of his mad-king magical-thinking nonsense and the Republican party’s refusal to stand up to him.

If Joe Biden had imposed these exact same tariff policies a year ago, for the exact same stated reasons, Republicans would have impeached him and called for his immediate ouster through Section 4 of the 25th Amendment — and their actions, for once, would have been justified. These tariff policies are nuts and are endangering the United States’s economic supremacy while simultaneously hurting the entire world economy. No one in their right mind would do this, and the President of the United States needs to be a person in their right mind.

Democrats and all other Trump opponents should immediately begin calling into question Trump’s mental fitness for office. This whole tariff saga is proof that he’s nuts. Just keep repeating that. He’s always been a little nutty but now he’s gone off the deep end. Don’t forget to reiterate that Trump’s father was suffering from severe dementia when he was Trump’s age. Throw Biden under the bus: remind people that we just saw what happens when a mentally enfeebled 80-year-old* serves as President, and that under Trump it’s far worse. Biden was sleepy but steady; Trump is agitated and erratic. That’s far worse.

Hammer the points — all true, all obvious — endlessly: Trump is too old; these tariffs are proof that he’s lost his mind; he’s hurting America badly; dementia runs in his family. Hammer it.

* Keep calling him “80”; make his sycophants correct you that he’s “only” turning 79 in June.

Thursday, 10 April 2025

Wayne Ma at The Information: ‘How Apple Fumbled Siri’s AI Makeover’ 

Blockbuster report by Wayne Ma for The Information (paywalled and pricey, alas):

But an equally important factor was the conflicting personalities within Apple, according to multiple people who worked in the AI and software engineering groups. More than half a dozen former Apple employees who worked in the AI and machine-learning group led by Giannandrea — known as AI/ML for short — told The Information that poor leadership is to blame for its problems with execution. They singled out Walker as lacking both ambition and an appetite for taking risks on designing future versions of the voice assistant.

Among engineers inside Apple, the AI group’s relaxed culture and struggles with execution have even earned it an uncharitable nickname, a play on its initials: AIMLess.

Ouch. Ma names names, and the report is full of scoops:

One Siri leader often criticized by colleagues was Walker, who joined Apple in 2013 and became responsible for its daily operations at the end of 2022. In the eyes of his critics, Walker was unwilling to take big risks on Siri and focused on metrics that didn’t move the needle much on its performance, rather than having a grand vision for overhauling the voice assistant.

For instance, he often celebrated small wins such as reducing by minute percentages the delay between when someone asked Siri a question and when it responded, former Apple engineers said. Another pet Walker project was removing the “hey” from the “hey Siri” voice command used to invoke the assistant, which took more than two years to accomplish, they said.

What Ma describes is a scenario where Walker missed the fact that the whole forest sucked and didn’t work, while focusing on one or two nice trees. Faster response times are a win, no question — but a small win, only at the margin. Faster wrong or useless (or even just mediocre) answers are, I guess, better than slower wrong/useless answers, but the overall result is a loss. Fast helpful answers are the goal, obviously, but slow helpful answers are infinitely better than fast useless ones. (I’m not even sure eliminating the requirement to use the verbal “hey” prefix was a win at all. It’s purely anecdotal and personal, but I think I get more unwanted invocations now than I did when “Hey Siri” was the required prompt. Like when I’m talking to someone and start a sentence with “Seriously …” Siri will kick in on one of my devices with a “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”)

One last nugget:

Other resentments also built up. Some in the software engineering group were annoyed by the higher pay and faster promotions their colleagues in the AI group were receiving. And they were bitter that some engineers in the AI group seemed to be able to take longer vacations and leave early on Fridays, while they faced more-punishing work schedules.

Distrust between the two groups got so bad that earlier this year one of Giannandrea’s deputies asked engineers to extensively document the development of a joint project so that if it failed, Federighi’s group couldn’t scapegoat the AI team.

It didn’t help the relations between the groups when Federighi began amassing his own team of hundreds of machine-learning engineers that goes by the name Intelligent Systems and is run by one of Federighi’s top deputies, Sebastien Marineau-Mes.

Hundreds of engineers for a machine learning team outside Apple’s AI/ML division sounds like the definition of dysfunction. I really doubt Federighi has also assembled a large team of silicon engineers outside Johny Srouji’s division, because Srouji’s team is not merely functional, but rightly regarded as one the highest-functioning engineering divisions in any field in the world.

I wish I could share a gift link to Ma’s report, but The Information’s gift links for subscribers only work for up to three people. The best I can do is point to Hartley Charlton’s summary for MacRumors.

Wednesday, 9 April 2025

‘American Disruption’ 

Ben Thompson:

The problem with these tariffs is that their scale and indiscriminate nature will have the effect of destroying demand and destroying the capability to develop alternative supply. I suppose if the only goal is to hurt China then shooting yourself in the foot, such that you no longer need to buy shoes for stumps, is a strategy you could choose, but that does nothing to help with what should be the primary motivation: shoring up the U.S. national security base.

Those national security concerns are real. The final stage of disruption is when the entity that started on the bottom is uniquely equipped to deliver what is necessary for a new paradigm, and that is exactly what happened with electronics generally and drones specifically. Moreover, this capability is only going to grow more important with the rise of AI, which will be substantiated in the physical world through robotics. And, of course, robots will be the key to building other robots; if the U.S. wants to be competitive in the future, and not be dependent on China, it really does need to make changes — just not these ones.

Trump, Supposedly, Thinks the U.S. Has the ‘Resources’ Needed to Make iPhones 

Chance Miller, writing at 9to5Mac:

Ahead of that, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said today that Trump firmly believes that Apple can move iPhone manufacturing to the United States. In response to a question from Maggie Haberman of The New York Times about the types of jobs Trump hopes to create in the U.S. with these tariffs, Leavitt said:

“The president wants to increase manufacturing jobs here in the United States of America, but he’s also looking at advanced technologies. He’s also looking at AI and emerging fields that are growing around the world that the United States needs to be a leader in as well. There’s an array of diverse jobs. More traditional manufacturing jobs, and also jobs in advanced technologies. The president is looking at all of those. He wants them to come back home.”

Haberman followed up with a question about iPhone manufacturing specifically, asking whether Trump thinks this is “the kind of technology” that could move to the United States. Leavitt responded:

“[Trump] believes we have the labor, we have the workforce, we have the resources to do it. As you know, Apple has invested $500 billion here in the United States. So, if Apple didn’t think the United States could do it, they probably wouldn’t have put up that big chunk of change.”

Leavitt is referencing Apple’s announcement from February, when it said it would “spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years.” Apple’s commitment, however, made zero reference to iPhone assembly in the United States. The press release focused on R&D in the U.S., chip production in Arizona, AI server manufacturing in Houston, Apple TV+ production, and an academy in Michigan.

Also worth reading today is this story from 404 Media, which outlines exactly why an iPhone made in the U.S. is “pure fantasy.”

Another way to think about it is that the iPhone — the iPhone as we know it — can’t really be made anywhere else but China. Apple doesn’t publicly state how many iPhones are made in which countries — shocker that they’d be secretive about that — but estimates peg annual production as being 85–90 percent in China, 10 percent in India, and the remainder in Brazil and Vietnam. Wages aren’t even close to the biggest reason for this. Ultimately the biggest unique factor to the Chinese supply chain is scale. Foxconn’s iPhone factories in China aren’t mere buildings and aren’t really even campuses — they’re more like entire cities unto themselves.

We can joke about US-made iPhones costing $9,000 but the jokes miss the point. If the world were such that all iPhones sold to Americans were made in America, there’s no plausible scenario where iPhone ownership would be commonplace. Let’s estimate that Apple sells 50 million iPhones per year in the US. Apple couldn’t manufacture 50 million iPhones per year in the US at any cost. No amount of money could be thrown at the problem and make it happen that 50 million new iPhones are made in the US in the near future. Apple could make some iPhones here, but not many. And however many they might make would be built using components (displays, chips) that would have to be imported anyway.

Even if Apple were to dramatically raise the price of an iPhone, and even if, somehow, demand for iPhones didn’t drop in the face of dramatically higher prices, Apple simply couldn’t make tens of millions of iPhones here in the US. But of course demand would drop precipitously in the face of higher prices. And a gray market would instantly rise. Because even if Apple, magically, were able to build tens of millions of iPhones in the US, they’d still be building hundreds of millions of them in China — and those Chinese-assembled ones would cost less. I’m imagining an entire cottage industry of bootleggers running Chinese-made iPhones from Canada into the US, and instead of buying iPhones from an Apple Store, people will buy them from the backs of U-Haul trucks. (Gray market bootlegging is inevitable with these tariffs, for every sort of product. If something is cheaper in Canada than it is in the US, someone’s going to smuggle it across the border.)

There simply is no scenario where 50 million Americans per year buy an iPhone for prices they’d be willing to pay without most of them being manufactured by the Chinese supply chain Apple has built.

Trump Cuts Most Tariffs to 10% but Increases Tariffs on China to 125% 

President Trump, in a post on Truth Social, which is apparently how the world’s financial markets now run:

Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately. At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable. Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

The entire stock market jumped on Trump’s announcement, with the S&P 500 up 8% as I type this. Apple is up 9%, Meta 13%, Nvidia 16%, and Tesla 19%. I’m not sure why though. All Trump seems to have done is switch from waging a trade war against the entire world to a trade war against China. And the 10% tariffs Trump now claims we’re applying to imports from the rest of world are themselves economic nonsense — they only look low compared to the nonsensical rates Trump announced a week ago. We’re at the whims of a mad king. Trying to report this as having any sort of logic in a traditional economic sense is folly. It’s like trying to make scientific sense out of the biblical fable of Noah’s Ark.

Tuesday, 8 April 2025

Apple Is Hustling to Fly Planes of iPhones Into the U.S. Ahead of Trump’s Tariffs 

Chance Miller, writing for 9to5Mac:

According to senior Indian officials cited in the report, Apple flew five planes full of iPhones and other products from India and China “in just three days during the final week of March.”

“Factories in India and China and other key locations had been shipping products to the US in anticipation of the higher tariffs,” one source to The Times of India said.

Apple currently assembles the entire iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 lineups in India as well as China. A 10% baseline tariff on all imports into the United States kicked in on Saturday. On April 9, the tariffs that Trump has falsely labeled as “reciprocal” will kick in. This will raise the tariff rate on imports from China to 54% and imports from India to 27%.

By stockpiling as much inventory as possible in the United States, Apple can delay the impact of the tariffs. It’s unclear just how much inventory Apple has on hand in the US right now, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s to never doubt Tim Cook’s supply chain prowess.

Sunday, 6 April 2025

Democracy 

My sincere thanks to The Ole Independence Hall Hooligans for sponsoring this past week at DF to promote democracy. That’s it. A real sponsorship, real money, raised by a group of readers who simply wanted the ad space on DF to promote, as they described it, “the enduring and aspirational project that is democracy.”

In their sponsored RSS entry to start the week, they quoted the preamble to the US Constitution. I’ll go a decade earlier, and quote from the Declaration of Independence:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. [...]

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. [...]

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

Sounds like someone in the news today (and yesterday, and alas, surely again tomorrow). There is no greater threat to democracy itself than a delusional mad king, whether he wears a crown or a ridiculous ugly red cap. Take action and make your voice heard now — democracy in action is democracy’s only defense.

The Spectacle of Incompetence 

David Remnick, in a fine short piece for The New Yorker on Signalgate:

This is an Administration that does not have to slip on a Signal banana peel to reveal its deepest-held prejudices and its painful incapacities. You get the sense that we would learn little if we were privy to a twenty-four-hour-a-day live stream of its every private utterance. Part of what was so appalling about Trump and Vance’s recent meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky was not just their penchant for channelling the world view and negotiating points of Vladimir Putin but their comfort in expressing them, barking them, at the Ukrainian President in front of reporters in the Oval Office.

Stupidity and ignorance as a governing style. That’s it. They are exactly who they claim they are, and in private speak how they do in public. There is no secret plan.

These idiots do not believe polluting the atmosphere with carbon emissions has caused calamitous damage to our climate, despite the fact that experts, decades ago, almost universally predicted it would. Few issues in science had as much expert consensus.

These idiots think vaccines — one of the great breakthroughs in the history of science and medicine — are a bigger health risk than the diseases they immunize against. Now there are unvaccinated American kids dying from measles, a disease that was effectively wiped out in the modern world by the time I was born.

These idiots think the universe is only 6,000 years old.

Now they’re bringing the same sort of idiocy, unbound by critical thinking, history, or anything recognized as economic expertise, to trade policy.

Saturday, 5 April 2025

Millions Attend ‘Hands Off’ Protests Across U.S. – and Europe – to Oppose Trump’s Agenda 

Terrific photos and summary coverage from The Guardian. Additional coverage from The New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN. Update: The Atlantic has a great collection of photos from dozens of cities.

There’s something so bizarrely asymmetrical about Trump’s political support. We saw large scale protests like today’s starting in 2017 too, and in this 2.0 administration, they’re only going to get bigger. Today’s protests were coast-to-coast, in cities large and small. Hundreds of thousands — correction, millions — of people. Huge crowd in Philadelphia. Over 100,000 in Boston. But there were never any protests at all against the Biden administration. Trump’s support has been just wide enough to win, twice, but it’s so thin. His first inauguration was so conspicuously sparsely attended they held the second one indoors. Support for democracy runs deep.

The WSJ Estimates the Effect of Trump’s Tariffs on the iPhone 

Joanna Stern, Adrienne Tong, and Nicole Nguyen, writing for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

Take a look at this iPhone 16 Pro. Your cost, for the 256GB version, is $1,100. The cost of all the hardware inside — aka the bill of materials — was about $550 to Apple when the phone was introduced, says Wayne Lam, research analyst at TechInsights, which breaks down major products. Throw in assembly and testing and Apple’s cost rises to around $580. Even when you account for Apple’s advertising budget and all the included services — iMessage, iCloud, etc. — there’s still a healthy profit margin.

Now factor in the newly announced tariff for goods from China, which currently totals 54%. The cost rises to around $850. That profit margin would shrink dramatically if Apple didn’t up the price. And you don’t become a trillion-dollar gadget company by charging for things at cost.

Also worth a look is today’s front page of the WSJ print edition. At least they picked a flattering photo of Trump.

The Pricing Stability of the iMac 

Dan Moren, writing at Six Colors:

In his piece, Gruber particularly calls out the trashcan Mac Pro sticking at $2999 throughout its existence, but I think an even more striking example is the iMac. Introduced in 1998 at a base price of $1299, today’s infinitely more powerful iMac M4 starts at … $1299.

Granted, with inflation, those prices would be a little different. In researching the details, I came across this great piece from PerfectRec charting the iMac’s price history over the years, including adjusting for inflation. Impressively, while the iMac’s base price has dipped as low as $1099 in all that time, it’s never gone over $1299.

What a great example. And bringing inflation into the mix is a key factor I neglected to make yesterday. Moore’s Law makes computers very strange manufactured goods. A Honda Civic LX cost about $15,000 in 1998, but now costs about $25,000. BMW 3-series sedans went from around $30,000 to $45,000. But the iMac still starts at $1,299.

Pricing stability is a way that Apple keeps these two forces — Moore’s Law and inflation — in balance.

Perhaps the E.U. Took Mercy on Apple and Meta (and Investors) This Week 

Barbara Moens and Henry Foy, reporting from Brussels for the Financial Times last Friday, March 28:

The EU is set to impose minimal fines on Apple and Facebook owner Meta next week under its Digital Markets Act, as Brussels seeks to avoid escalating tensions with US President Donald Trump.

According to people familiar with the decisions, the iPhone maker is expected to be fined and ordered to revise its App Store rules, following an investigation into whether they prevent app developers from sending consumers to offers outside its platform. Regulators will also close another investigation into Apple, which was focused on the company’s design of its web browser choice screen without any further sanctions.

Meta will also be fined and ordered to change its “pay or consent” model which forces users to either consent to data tracking or pay a subscription fee for an ad-free experience of its products.

The FT is usually the go-to source for leaked news from the European Commission. But “next week” came and went with no announcements made. Maybe the FT just had a bad source, or maybe there was some sort of unforeseen delay? Or maybe the EC looked at the chaos unleashed by Trump this week and figured these fines could wait another week. Or maybe they’re just recalculating the fines post-trade-war.

Tim Sweeney’s Praise for Microsoft 

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, yesterday:

Thanks to Microsoft for 50 years of being awesome to developers! Some years the software was great. Some years the software sucked. Every year the company and its ecosystem has stood with and supported developers.

I pity the man who doesn’t have enough fingers to count the number of game stores available on Xbox.

Microsoft’s 50th Birthday Was Interrupted, Twice, by Employees Protesting Against Israel 

Tom Warren, reporting for The Verge:

Microsoft held a special 50th anniversary event at its headquarters earlier today. During Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s presentation, a Microsoft employee interrupted the event to protest the use of Microsoft’s technologies in Israel’s war against Hamas. A second employee interrupted the event later on, while CEO Satya Nadella, co-founder Bill Gates, and former CEO Steve Ballmer were discussing 50 years of Microsoft.

The only opinionated public takes I’ve seen on these two protestors are from political extremes: a small number of people cheering them on, and another small number of people angrily decrying them as terrorist sympathizers. I suspect most people, though, have a take closer to my own, but are unwilling to espouse it lest they risk the ire of the two aforementioned political extremes. I’ll try.

There’s a time and a place for everything, and Microsoft’s own 50th anniversary celebration was not the time or place for two insufferable self-involved showboats to make the event about them. Because that’s what this was. It was about them, personally. Not about Gaza or Israel.

The place for righteous protests is in public, in the streets — exactly as they are happening across the United States today.

Of course Microsoft conducts business in Israel and with the Israeli government. They’re Microsoft — the entire point of the company (and thus the core point of the 50th anniversary celebration) is that their software is ubiquitous. Ranked by GDP, Israeli’s economy is 29th in the world. If Microsoft employees really want to make the case that the company should sever all ties to Israel, go ahead, but performance stunts at public celebrations are not the way. Why do they even work for Microsoft if they’re not happy to celebrate the company’s own 50th anniversary? Why did Microsoft hire people who seemingly despise the very company they work for?

I don’t know if you’ve heard but there’s a lot of horrible shit going on around the world right now. Should Microsoft sever all ties to Republican-led states that have made women’s reproductive healthcare illegal? (A woman in Georgia was just arrested after suffering a miscarriage.) Should Microsoft sever all ties to the U.S. federal government, which is now led by a mad tyrant who, in plain sight, attempted to overthrow an election he lost, and now claims (shocking no one) to be considering running for a third term that even a child could understand to be plainly unconstitutional? How much Microsoft software does ICE use? Or DOGE?

Where do such protests — all in the name of just causes — stop?

In the midst of all this madness and chaos — much of it already horrific, more of it suggestive of foreboding horrors to come — we need more than ever to savor, to appreciate, what’s still good about the world. Microsoft is a great American company. What a remarkable gift of good luck, good health, brilliant strategy, successful execution, steady leadership, and the right circumstances (e.g. Bill Gates’s precocious age — 19! — at the company’s founding) that the company has had only three CEOs in its half-century history and all three were available to join each other on stage to celebrate this anniversary, and the company’s still-bright future.

What a shitty thing to do it was to try to spoil this.

Friday, 4 April 2025

The Truth Is, These Are Not Very Bright Guys 

Susan Glasser, writing for The New Yorker, “Donald Trump’s Ego Melts the Global Economy”:

In this new political moment of the unthinkable made manifest, the sheer power rush for Trump should also not be underestimated. Imagine his joy as he sat down to sign an executive order decreeing the new tariffs on the basis of sweeping powers he may or may not legally possess to declare a “national economic emergency” — here was Trump transforming the world with a single flourish of his Sharpie pen. “It’s such an honor to be finally able to do this,” he said. At what other moment in modern times has a single man wielded so much unaccountable power over such a large swath of the world economy? There are whole businesses devoted to risk analysis for corporations; this is a situation in which Trump himself is the risk and the crisis being analyzed is one that he created. Talk about an ego trip.

Glasser links to Garry Kasparov, on X, responding to Wall Street’s collective surprise that Trump did what he’s been saying he would do re: tariff policy:

As I’ve said for years about Putin, and which applies to other autocratic personalities like Trump: “Dictators always lie about what they’ve done, but are often quite plain about what they want to do.” “Trump would never...” is the new “Putin would never...”

Such people do and take whatever they can, unless they are stopped. That they don’t always succeed does not mean they were not sincere in their ambitions and won’t keep trying to fulfill them. Trump has only been emboldened by the sycophantic GOP this time around.

Even more apt, “Deep Throat” explaining the central truth of the Watergate scandal to Bob Woodward in the Alan-Pakula-directed / William-Goldman-written film adaptation of All the President’s Men:

“Forget the myths the media has created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”

Trump Claims to Extend TikTok Deadline for Another 75 Days 

CNBC:

President Donald Trump on Friday extended a deadline requiring China-based ByteDance to sell the U.S. operations of TikTok or face an effective ban in the country, marking the second time he has taken such action.

Trump, on Truth Social, which is by far the most popular social network in the world:

My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress. The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days. We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs (Necessary for Fair and Balanced Trade between China and the U.S.A.!). This proves that Tariffs are the most powerful Economic tool, and very important to our National Security! We do not want TikTok to “go dark.” We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Those are the remarks of the most powerful man in the world.

Keep in mind, too, that there is no mechanism in the law for the president to issue any such extension. What he’s saying is what he said the last time: he’s instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi not to enforce the law, and pinky-swearing that U.S. companies that are breaking the law to keep TikTok available (Akamai, Oracle, Google, Apple) won’t be held responsible for it. It’s just a complete abdication of the rule of law.

Not a peep from Republican Tom Cotton, who, on the cusp of Trump taking office again, was crowing about the PAFACA Act coming into effect to shut TikTok down in the US.

‘Floundering’ 

From that same Reuters report by Akash Sriram that I just wrote about, speculating that iPhone prices might rise dramatically under Trump’s tariffs:

However, other analysts noted that iPhone sales have been floundering in the company’s major markets, as Apple Intelligence, a suite of features that helps summarize notifications, rewrite emails and give users access to ChatGPT, has failed to enthuse buyers.

Merriam-Webster defines flounder thus:

: to struggle to move or obtain footing : thrash about wildly

Here’s Jason Snell’s chart of iPhone sales through their most recent quarterly report — a record-breaking quarter for the company overall — covering the last three calendar months of 2024:

Chart showing remarkably flat, stable, consistent iPhone sales since 2022.

It’s certainly up for debate whether Apple Intelligence is an effective marketing driver for iPhone sales. I mean that with no snark. Maybe Apple Intelligence is driving iPhone sales. I don’t know why people have purchased new iPhones in the last six months. Neither do you, and neither do the “other analysts” (conveniently unnamed) cited by Reuters. But what we do know, because Apple reports the revenue numbers, is that iPhone sales have been remarkably flat, year-over-year, for the last 13 quarters.

Why Trump’s Tariffs Are Rattling Even Meta 

Mike Isaac, writing for The New York Times:

Apple, Dell, Oracle — which rely on hardware and global supply chains that are in the direct line of fire from tariffs — saw their shares go into free-fall. But there was another big tech company whose stock took a pummeling even though its core business has little to do with hardware: Meta. [...]

The effect of tariffs on Meta’s ad business is simple. Many of its small and medium-sized advertisers are from all across the world. President Trump’s tariffs will instantly make it more expensive for them to sell their products to customers in the United States. [...]

Last year, the company disclosed that 10 percent of its revenue in 2023 was from Chinese companies spending heavily on advertising across Facebook and Instagram, an ad blitz aimed at garnering a foothold in lucrative Western markets.

Much of that growth was fueled by the explosive expansion of the fast-fashion company Shein — which is based in Singapore but has a supply chain that is largely in China — and the e-commerce app Temu, a low-cost, Amazon-like company owned by the Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Pinduoduo. Temu was estimated to have spent $3 billion in marketing costs in 2023 alone, according to estimates from Bernstein Research.

When the stock market began crumbling after Trump’s announcement Wednesday, I didn’t get why Meta was being hit so hard. Meta makes devices, but unlike Apple, that’s just a side hustle. Meta isn’t a retailer like Amazon. But Meta is a huge advertising destination for retailers. It’s all interconnected.

Nintendo Delays Switch 2 Preorders Over Tariff Concerns 

Emma Roth, The Verge:

Nintendo is pushing back preorders for the Switch 2 due to concerns about Donald Trump’s newly announced tariffs. According to a statement sent to The Verge by Eddie Garcia on behalf of Nintendo, it says preorders will no longer begin on April 9th:

Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.

Riots in the streets.

Apple Cash Switched From Discover to Visa in 2022 

Allison McDaniel, writing for 9to5Mac back in 2022:

Apple Cash is a virtual debit card where you can send and receive money through iMessage. Stored in your Wallet, you can make secure and contactless payments with Apple Pay from your iPhone or Apple Watch. It’s also a way to receive daily cash back for those who use Apple Card. Previously a Discover card, your Apple Cash card is now Visa.

Spotted by user @Kanjo on Twitter, it’s easy to notice the card has a visible Visa logo in the bottom right corner. Before this change, there was no Discover logo on the card. While not everyone will like the addition of the logo, it’s going to be hard to forget it’s a Visa.

So Apple Card is a credit card, with Goldman Sachs as the bank and Mastercard as the network. Apple definitely needs a new banking partner, as Goldman is exiting the consumer banking business, and is rumored to be listening to offers from Visa and Amex to switch its network too.

Apple Cash is a debit card, which launched on the Discover network but switched to Visa three years ago — presumably with a nice kickback to Apple to get that Visa logo on the virtual cards in Wallet.

Costco Only Accepts Visa Credit Cards 

I observed yesterday that, in general, Visa and Mastercard credit cards are both accepted at the same locations. The most notable exception is Costco, which, as part of the deal to make its own credit card a Visa (after long partnering with Amex), only accepts Visa credit cards at its physical retail locations and gas stations. They accept “most PIN-based debit/ATM cards”, but for credit, only Visa.

Online, for reasons I don’t understand, Costco accepts Mastercard too (which they incorrectly style in camelcase — you’d think Costco, of all companies, would be sensitive to wrongly camelcased mid-name C’s). Also, in Canada’s Costcos, it’s reversed, with Mastercard being exclusive in-store but Visa being accepted online.

Another high-profile exception: The Olympics, which “proudly accepts only Visa for card and mobile payments, along with cash”.

Bill Gates on the Creation of Microsoft, and the Source Code for Its First Product 

Bill Gates, commemorating Microsoft’s 50th anniversary:

The story of how Microsoft came to be begins with, of all things, a magazine. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured an Altair 8800 on the cover. The Altair 8800, created by a small electronics company called MITS, was a groundbreaking personal computer kit that promised to bring computing power to hobbyists. When Paul and I saw that cover, we knew two things: the PC revolution was imminent, and we wanted to get in on the ground floor.

At the time, personal computers were practically non-existent. Paul and I knew that creating software that let people program the Altair could revolutionize the way people interacted with these machines. So, we reached out to Ed Roberts, the founder of MITS, and told him we had a version of the programming language BASIC for the chip that the Altair 8800 ran on.

There was just one problem: We didn’t.
It was time to get to work.

At the bottom Gates links to a printout of the original source code for the BASIC interpreter, in extensively commented assembly language. Amongst all of his other accomplishments, Bill Gates was one hell of a programmer.

The Making of the Lumon Industries WoeMeter 

Wonderfully detailed write-up of a perfect prop from Make3:

Repurposed Nagra Knobs & Switches — To ground the device in a tangible, vintage aesthetic, we salvaged original knobs and switches from a 1990s Nagra IV-D recorder, seamlessly integrating them into our design. These components not only provided an authentic look and feel but also remained fully functional, with:

  • A power switch for system activation.
  • A reading on/off switch to engage or disable the Woe display.
  • A manual override switch to cycle through needle positions if wireless control failed.

When I watched this episode, I remember noticing how cool the device seemed. It turns out to be even cooler than I thought. So much effort into such a little thing. And the coolest thing is that, in a sense, the WoeMeter actually works as a handheld wireless prop.

Reusing those Nagra dials to add verisimilitude reminds me of how much of Star Wars came from reused pieces of old gadgetry, like two of the lightsabers (Luke’s and Vader’s) being made from 1940s-era Graflex camera flash guns.

Jason Snell’s M4 MacBook Air Review 

Jason Snell, last month:

The new M4 MacBook Air is the Mac most people should buy. [...]

That’s why perhaps the most important change in the M4 MacBook Air is its base configuration, which starts at $999. When Apple introduced a winning new flat-with-rounded-corners Air design in 2022, it had to keep selling older models in order to get down under a thousand dollars. Three years later, Apple is finally able to sell a brand-new Air — with a generous 16GB of unified memory — at that important price.

So: No more quibbles about stepping back a generation or two to an older model with a lower price. Apple has done away with that strategy for the MacBook Air: The latest and greatest model is the one most people shopping for a Mac should buy, especially if they’re coming from an Intel model.

I’d put off linking to Snell’s review for a few weeks while thinking about writing my own, but I’ve got nothing to add. The M4 MacBook Air is utterly unsurprising, but only in the best possible way. It’s the MacBook Air everyone wanted Apple to make. The $999 base model is now exceedingly recommendable. It even brings back the most notable feature that was lost in the transition from Intel to Apple Silicon — the ability to drive two external displays and its own internal display. Just aces all around.

Thursday, 3 April 2025

U.S. Transaction Shares for Visa, Mastercard, and Amex 

Following up on the previous item, here’s a WSJ report from October on Visa’s dominant position in the payments industry:

Visa, based in San Francisco, has built its network over more than 60 years — going back to clunky manual credit-card readers and carbon-paper copies of receipts. It accounts for around 60% of the total dollar amount of U.S. debit-card purchases and about 50% of U.S. credit-card purchases, according to the Nilson Report, a trade publication. Its closest competitor, Mastercard, accounts for around 22% and 23%, respectively. Visa’s profit totaled $17.3 billion in its 2023 fiscal year, after more than tripling in the last decade.

Amex accounts for about 19% of U.S. credit card transactions (and doesn’t support debit), and Discover is down around 3 or 4%. I really thought Visa and Mastercard had comparable market share, but it turns out Visa is far bigger, and it’s Mastercard and Amex that are around the same size.

WSJ: Visa Offers Apple Roughly $100 Million to Switch Apple Card’s Network From Mastercard 

AnnaMaria Andriotis, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link):

The Apple card is up for grabs because Goldman Sachs, the bank behind it, is getting out of the consumer lending world. For months, big banks including JPMorgan Chase and Synchrony Financial have been vying to take over as issuer. What hasn’t been known is the equally fierce fight playing out between the networks to win Apple, with Visa and American Express trying to unseat Mastercard, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple is expected to select a network for the card before it picks the bank to replace Goldman Sachs. Networks provide the plumbing that transmit information between the banks that issue consumers’ cards and the merchants’ banks.

Visa, the largest network, has made an aggressive pitch to win the card, including offering the kind of upfront payment to Apple that’s normally reserved for the biggest card programs, the people said. Visa offered a similar payment when Costco was selecting its network about a decade ago, The Wall Street Journal reported.

American Express is also in the mix, trying to become both the issuer and network of the Apple card, the people said. Goldman had approached Amex to gauge its interest in taking over the card in 2023, the Journal earlier reported.

I’ve always thought Visa and Mastercard were interchangeable. I can’t recall ever once in my life seeing an establishment where one of them was accepted but the other wasn’t, and they both seem to be accepted everywhere that accepts credit cards at all. If there’s a reason to prefer one over the other I’ve never heard it.

Amex is different because it’s accepted at fewer locations because they charge merchants a higher fee, which they get away with because they offer their customers superior service. I wrote back in 2023 that they share an affinity with Apple: both are built around the idea of offering a premium experience and charging higher prices for it.

But I already have a regular Amex card. One of the things I like about Apple Card being a Mastercard (or if they switched to Visa) is that it’s a card I can use anywhere that doesn’t accept Amex.

‘Trump Declares a Trade War on Uninhabited Islands, US Military, and Economic Logic’ 

Mike Masnick has a great piece at TechDirt running down just how stupid everything about Trump’s tariff trade war is:

Whoever on the Council of Economic Advisers used this formula should turn in their econ degree, because this is not how anything works. Even if they then go on to publish another version of the formula that looks all sophisticated and shit.

Brendan Duke, on X, shows that the fancier version of their formula — which is fancy in the way that Vertu phones are “fancy” — is even stupider, because the two Greek letters they chose to glam it up just cancel each other out.

Back to Masnick:

This is what happens when you ask ChatGPT to “make my wrong econ math look more scientific.” The document even admits that they couldn’t figure out the actual tariff rates, so they “proxied” them with this formula instead. That’s a bit like saying you couldn’t find your house keys, so you proxied them with a banana.

The fundamental problem here isn’t just that the tariff numbers are wrong — though they absolutely are. It’s that the entire premise rests on treating trade deficits as if they were tariffs. They’re not the same thing. At all.

Let’s back up for a moment and talk about trade deficits, because Trump has been getting this wrong for longer than some of his supporters have been alive. His logic appears to be:

  1. “Deficit” sounds bad
  2. Therefore, trade deficits must be bad
  3. Therefore, countries with whom we have trade deficits must be cheating us
  4. Therefore, we should punish them with tariffs to “level the playing field”

This sounds like it must be an exaggeration for comic effect, but it’s not. That’s how Trump’s mind works. This is what Trump has been saying about trade deficits for decades. It’s like how he understands “asylum” to mean “insane asylum” and so when he talks about political asylum he starts talking about “the late great Hannibal Lecter”.

The Economist on Trump’s Mindless Tariffs 

The Economist:

On economics Mr Trump’s assertions are flat-out nonsense. The president says tariffs are needed to close America’s trade deficit, which he sees as a transfer of wealth to foreigners. Yet as any of the president’s economists could have told him, this overall deficit arises because Americans choose to save less than their country invests — and, crucially, this long-running reality has not stopped its economy from outpacing the rest of the g7 for over three decades. There is no reason why his extra tariffs should eliminate the deficit. Insisting on balanced trade with every trading partner individually is bonkers — like suggesting that Texas would be richer if it insisted on balanced trade with each of the other 49 states, or asking a company to ensure that each of its suppliers is also a customer.

And Mr Trump’s grasp of the technicalities was pathetic. He suggested that the new tariffs were based on an assessment of a country’s tariffs against America, plus currency manipulation and other supposed distortions, such as value-added tax. But it looks as if officials set the tariffs using a formula that takes America’s bilateral trade deficit as a share of goods imported from each country and halves it — which is almost as random as taxing you on the number of vowels in your name.

There is no way to report on these tariffs in a way that is honest and accurate without describing them as bonkers and nonsensical. News publications that are trying to present them as rational, or describing them as “reciprocal” just because that’s the word the White House is using, are beclowning themselves.

Trump Tariffs, Day Two 

CNBC:

  • Markets plunged the day after President Donald Trump imposed a far-reaching “reciprocal tariff” policy, including a 10% baseline tariff on almost every country on earth.
  • The plan slaps much steeper tariff rates on many countries, including 34% on China, 20% on the European Union, 46% on Vietnam and 32% on Taiwan.
  • Economists and U.S. trade partners are raising questions about how the White House calculated the tariff rates it claimed other countries “charge” the United States.

Apple, in particular, is taking it on the chin, about 9.5% for the day. Amazon and Meta were both down 9%. Nike is down over 13%. From CNBC’s corresponding story on just how the White House computed the “tariff” rates it claims for various countries:

Many observers said the U.S. appeared to have divided the trade deficit by imports from a given country to arrive at tariff rates for individual countries.

Such methodology doesn’t necessarily align with the conventional approach for calculating tariffs and implies the U.S. would have looked at only the trade deficit in goods and ignored trade in services.

“Such methodology doesn’t necessarily align with the conventional approach” is an overlong euphemism for “The president literally doesn’t understand what tariffs are.” James Surowiecki was seemingly the first person to figure out the White House’s nonsensical formula:

Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn’t actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us.

So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.

Don’t rack your brain trying to make sense out of the nonsensical.

Wednesday, 2 April 2025

Nintendo Switch 2 Details 

Great roundup from The Verge:

While Nintendo told us very little in the official reveal of the console in January, now we know when the Switch 2 is coming and how much it will cost at launch: June 5th and $449.99. We also have more hardware details and specs to pore over, like a 1080p, 120Hz 7.9-inch LCD screen, Joy-Con controllers with mouse-like functions, 256GB of storage, and 4K output via the dock.

Nintendo also cleared up the mysteries about the system’s “C” button with details about new GameChat features and a camera accessory and confirmed that GameCube games are coming to Nintendo Switch Online, along with a dedicated controller.

Last but not least, Nintendo showed off a number of new games, like a Switch 2 edition of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and the exclusive Switch 2 launch title Mario Kart World.

People are going to object to the pricing, but the world has changed (and inflated) since the original Switch debuted in 2017. What I love about all of these announcements is that they’re so focused on fun. Nintendo doesn’t just still have it, they’ve got it more than they ever have. Just wonderful news all around.

Steve Kornacki Exits MSNBC for New Deal With NBC News and NBC Sports 

Stephen Battaglio, reporting for the LA Times:

MSNBC viewers have seen the last of Steve Kornacki’s big board.

The popular data maven has signed a deal with NBC that will expand his presence across the network’s news and sports divisions. But the new contract does not include working for MSNBC, which is being spun off into a new corporate entity formed by parent company Comcast.

They might as well just switch off the lights and lock the doors at MSNBC.

‘What Makes an App Feel “Right” on the Mac?’ 

Watts Martin:

If we hold things to this list, programs like Nova, MarsEdit, and Apple Pages — canonical Mac-assed Mac apps — all do unsurprisingly smashingly. But Obsidian, the Electron-based program I’m writing in right now, does shockingly well, too. Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code doesn’t do quite as well (most notably, it opens its settings “window” as an editor tab), but it does better than Sublime Text (which opens a text file for settings), and much better than the banana crazypants menu and icon design of the cross-platform e-book management program Calibre.

Martin has a good list here of fundamentals, but ultimately, you know it when you see it.

Tuesday, 1 April 2025

Jason Snell’s Unsuccessful Journey Into Netflix’s Ad Tier 

Jason Snell:

While the ads played on, I began creating a thought experiment: There’s a $10 difference between the ad and ad-free plans. If Mr. Netflix (he wears a top hat) came to my house and said, “Jason, I’ve got a great deal for you. I’m going to pay you $120 a year, and all you have to do is watch ads while you watch Netflix,” what would I do? When I started thinking about it, I thought it might be an interesting intellectual question. What would I accept in exchange for having Mean Mr. Netflix beam ads into every show I watch?