Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 09/20 – MacOS 15 Sequoia Is Breaking Things

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

You might want to hold off on updating to macOS 15 Sequoia. What, exactly, is Europe trying to get Apple to do? The AI energy crunch means they’re turning Three Mile Island back on. Could AI usage mean we use up all our 5G capacity? And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Sponsors: 1password.com/ride QualiaLife.com/ride and code ride Links: Apple’s new macOS Sequoia update is breaking some cybersecurity tools (TechCrunch) EU to tell Apple how to do interoperability, DMA style (TechCrunch) Microsoft AI Needs So Much Power It's Restarting Site of US Nuclear Meltdown (Bloomberg) AI is stressing networks out - Nvidia thinks AI can help (Fierce Network) Huawei 'super fans' fuming as left empty handed by $2,800 phone launch (Reuters) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: American Vulcan - Palmer Luckey (TabletMag) The Death of the Minivan (The Atlantic) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeBrain Home for Friday, September 20th, 20th, 20th, 24. I'm Brian McCullough today. You might want to hold off on updating to MacOS 15 Sequoia. What exactly is Europe trying to get Apple to do? The AI energy crunch means

they're turning three-mile island back on. Could AI usage also mean we use up all our 5G capacity? And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Some of you should consider pausing on updating to MacOS 15 Sequoia as it appears that the new OS has broken security tools made by the likes of CrowdStrike, Sentinel One, Microsoft, and others. CrowdStrike went so far as to delay support for Sequoia entirely, apparently. Quoting TechCrunch. At this point, it's unclear exactly what is the issue, but it appears to affect several products made by companies that provide software for macOS users and enterprises, which has caused frustration among people who work on and with MacOS-focused

security tools. As a developer of macOS security tools, it's incredibly frustrating time and again to have to deal with understandably upset users and understandably blaming your tools for breaking their Macs when in reality it was Apple's fault all along, said Patrick Wardle, the founder of Mac and iOS Security startup W, and a longtime expert on MacOS security. I get it that writing bug-free software is challenging, but maybe if Apple spent less time and money on marketing and more time on actually testing their software, we'd all be better off. Wirtle told TechCrunch. On the day of Mac OS Sequoia's release, a CrowdStrike sales engineer said in a Slack room for Mac admins that the company had to delay support for the new version of Mac's operating system. I'm very sorry to report that we will not be supporting Sequoia on day one, in spite of our intention and previous track record to support the latest OS within hours of general availability. The engineer said in the message seen by TechCrunch. The engineer also said CrowdStrike sent out a tech alert to customers, adding that, quote, there's quite a lot going on with the changes in the network stack.

We're also tracking some similar issues with other vendors and have feedback and a case into Apple. While we would love for there to be a fast follow patch that resolves this for us, we're acting under the assumption. There won't be and we'll need to fix it in our code with a sensor release, the sales engineer wrote. On Monday, a Sentinel One support account warned customers in the same Mac Focus Slack channel do not upgrade your endpoints until you have a supported Sentinel 1 agent, citing a series of issues with the new MacOS version. Other people in the same Slack reported having issues with Microsoft Defender for MacOS. After the Sequoia update, Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment, end quote. Remember how we spoke this week about those new specification proceedings

that the EU has opened for Apple under the DMA? I don't think I had a firm hold on what exactly that meant, so thankfully, Natasha Lomas at TechCrunch has got us covered. Specifically, with these two latest proceedings, the block will be telling Apple how to provide interoperability to connected devices seeking to tap into iOS's connectivity features, such as in areas like notifications and device pairing. It also plans to instruct it on how to handle interoperability requests from app developers building software for its mobile and tablet platforms, iOS and iPadOS, both of which are regulated as so. called core platform devices under the DMA. The first proceeding focuses on several iOS

connectivity features and functionalities predominantly used for and by connected devices, the commission wrote in a press release. Connected devices are a very large and commercially important group of products, including smartwatches, headphones, and virtual reality headsets. Companies offering these products depend on effective interoperability with smartphones and their operating systems such as iOS. The commission intends to specify how Apple will provide effective interoperability with functionalities such as notifications, device pairing, and connectivity. The second proceeding focuses on the process Apple has set up to address interoperability requests submitted by developers and third parties for iOS and iPad OS.

It is crucial that the request process is transparent, timely, and fair, so that all developers have an effective and predictable path to interoperability and are enabled to innovate, the commission added. Reach for comment. Apple spokesman Julian Trosdorf emailed a statement in which the company wrote at Apple, we're proud of the fact that we've built over 250,000 APIs that allow developers to build apps that access our operating system and functionalities in a way that ensures users' privacy and security. To comply with the DMA, we've also created ways for apps

in the European Union to request additional interoperability with iOS and iPadOS while protecting our users. Undermining the protections we've built over time would put European consumers at risk, giving bad actors more ways to access their devices and data. We will continue to work constructively with the European Commission on a path forward that both protects our EU users and clarifies the regulation, end quote. The Commission has six months to conclude this pair of proceedings after which it says it will send preliminary findings to Apple explaining the measures it is expected to take to effectively comply with the DMA's interoperability obligation. A summary of the EU's findings will also be made public at that time. The two new DMA proceedings

on Apple do not imply the Commission has reached the end of the wider noncompliance proceedings still open on the company, so Apple could still face a DMA enforcement decision and potential fine down the line. However, the EU is clearly looking for quick results for its flagship market contestability regulation. For that reason, the commission is likely to be most keenly focused on finding ways to apply the new toolbox so the DMA can work at pace to reshape Apple's compliance instead of landing a hefty penalty. But clearly, having a big stick to encourage compliance helps, and quote. Constellation Energy plans to invest $1.6 billion to revive the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Yes, that three mile island. But get this. They're reopening it

just to serve one customer. Quoting Bloomberg. The owner of the shuttered a three mile island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will invest $1.6 billion to revive it, agreeing to sell all the output to Microsoft as the tech titan seeks carbon-free electricity for data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom. Constellation Energy, the biggest U.S. operator of reactors, expects three-mile island to go back into service in 2008, according to a statement Friday. While one of the site's two units permanently closed almost half a century ago after the worst U.S. nuclear accident, Constellation is planning to reopen the other reactor, which shut in 2019, because it couldn't compete economically. Microsoft has agreed to purchase the energy

for two decades and declined to disclose financial terms. This is the first time Microsoft has secured a dedicated 100% nuclear facility for its use. The decision is the latest sign of surging interest in the nuclear industry as power demand for AI sores. More than a dozen reactors went dark over roughly the past decade in the face of increasing competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy, but growing demand for electricity from factories, cars, and especially from data centers, has spurred interest in nuclear plants that can provide carbon-free power around the clock. Policymakers on the market have received a huge wake-up call, Constellation Chief Executive Officer Joe Dominguez said in an interview,

there's no version of the future of this country that doesn't rely on these nuclear assets, end quote. Constellation, which has seen its shares jump this year, thanks to mounting investor awareness of the value of power plants, plans to fund the project from its own coffers rather than seek state or federal support. That's in contrast to Holtech International, which is pursuing the only other disclosed effort to restart a closed reactor with about $1.8 billion in conditional. funding from the U.S. Energy Department and the state of Michigan. Nextera Energy has also said

it's considering reviving a closed Iowa reactor in part to supply data center customers, end quote. So we knew that. We knew that AI stuff is gobbling up our energy resources, but what I did not know was that maybe our wireless resources are in danger as well. Invidia has launched something called AI-RAN, which integrates AI into the radio access network, and could allow telcos to run third-party AI apps at the network's edge. But the real purpose here is to keep 5G going, quoting Fierce Network. Invidia is aiming to solve one of the biggest challenges in telecommunications today. How to handle the strain artificial intelligence puts on wireless networks, and it's getting a little help from partners like T-Mobile, Erickson, and Nokia to do it.

In a nutshell, Nvidia, thinks that AI could be the answer to the very problems it is causing. By integrating AI into the radio access network via its new AI-RAN platform, the company believes it can make mobile networks smarter and faster. T-Mobile is set to be the first company to put this hypothesis and product to the test. AI-Ran has, quote, tremendous potential to completely transform the future of mobile networks, but it will be difficult to get right, said Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile in a statement. T-Mobile will work with NVIDIA, Nokia, and Erickson at its Bellevue AI-Ran Innovation Center. to, quote, propel the mobile network industry forward. According to NVIDIA, AI-RAN will leverage

billions of data points to create algorithms that determine optimal network adjustments and predict real-time capacity. It will allow telcoes the ability to run third-party AI applications at the network's edge. A report from mobile experts recently predicted that the rise of AI applications, particularly AI-powered assistance and augmented reality platforms, will soon drive mobile data traffic beyond the capacity of current 5G networks. That's a big problem since traditional networks were built for voice and data. But today's world requires much more. Think autonomous vehicles, smart factories, and generative AI applications. By bringing AI into the heart of network operations, Nvidia is hoping to help Telcos manage their growing network loads while also setting

the stage for the next leap forward, 6G. The idea is that AI-RAN can act as the digital backbone for these emerging technologies. A cohort of companies, including Nvidia, T-Mobile, Nokia, and Erickson are pursuing this opportunity via the AI-Ran. alliance, end quote. Real quickly, because most of us can't buy one of these, but I'm finding it fascinating the popularity of Huawei's $2,800-Mate-X-T trifold phone. Again, this is a phone that kind of folds up three times, accordion style. It's officially gone on sale in China, and pre-orders apparently surpass six and a half million. That's for a phone, number one, that expensive. But also, compare that number to the fact that only 3.9 million foldables of any make shipped worldwide in Q2.

So 6.5 versus 3.9 million for all other foldables. This one phone has handily outsold in pre-orders all the other foldables in the world. There are apparently lines out the door in China, quoting Reuters. At Huawei's flagship shop, some who described themselves as superfans were annoyed after being told that only those whose pre-orders had been confirmed, could buy the tri-foldable mate XT. I've been here since 10 p.m. last night because this tri-folding phone is a first, and I'm excited to support our country, said a university student surnamed Yi. But this is very disappointing. They should have made it clear we can't buy. It was a similar story at the Huawei Wang Fu Jing store in Beijing, where access to the much-hyped

mate XT, which folds three ways like an accordion screen door, was restricted to those whose pre-orders had been confirmed. On the Alibaba-owned Jian Yu platform, there were around 4,760 listings for the new Huawei phone for both sale and pre-orders as a Friday afternoon. The average price for the phones on the platform was $50,000 or $7,000 in the electronics market in Shenzhen. A phone stall vendor said she was selling the most expensive version of the Matext, with the highest memory for $150,000, or $21,000 compared to the store price of $23,991, while she was offering the $2,800 model for more than $4,000, end quote. Time for the weekend long-read suggestions. If you ask me who the best entrepreneur is in the world at the moment, and you assume that we are moving on from saying it's Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, I would without a doubt answer Palmer Lucky.

from kickstarting this era of VR to basically attempting to remake the entire defense industry, I'm fascinated by Palmer Lucky, so grok this long profile from Tablet Mag. Quote, Lucky is the owner of the world's largest video game collection, which he keeps buried 200 feet underground in a decommissioned U.S. Air Force nuclear missile base, which is the kind of thing a man can afford to buy when he single-handedly turns virtual reality from the laughing stock of the technology industry into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise by inventing the Oculus Rift in a camper trailer parked in the driveway of his parents' duplex in Long Beach, California, where at 19 years old, he lived alone and survived on frozen burritos and Mucho Mango, Arizona Tea.

After selling Oculus to Facebook for $2.7 billion and then getting fired by Mark Zuckerberg for making a $10,000 donation to a pro-Trump troll group dedicated to shit posting in real life, Lucky tried his hand at building a nonprofit private prison chain that only gets paid when ex-prisoners stay out of prison. After he decided that would require too much lobbying work, he attempted to solve the obesity epidemic by making food out of petroleum products centrifuged out of the sewer system, a perfectly delicious and low-calorie idea he maintains, which he only ditched because of the marketing nightmare of persuading people to eat remanufactured sewage. In the end, he decided instead to found Anderil Industries, a defense technology startup that makes lethal autonomous weapons

systems, it is now valued at $14 billion. In his spare time, when he is not providing U.S. customs and border patrol with AI-powered long-range sensors, or Ukraine with drones to attack high-value Russian targets, or winning first place in the Texas Renaissance Festival's costume contest with historically meticulous renderings of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn sewn and stitched by his wife Nicole, who's been at his side for 16 of his 31 years on Earth, Lucky recently built a bypass for his peripheral nervous system to experiment with giving himself superhuman reflexes. Vestibular implants to pipe sounds into his skull, so that instead of having to call him and wait for him to pick up, Andrewill employees could just pick up

a designated Palmer phone and talk straight into his head. And a virtual reality had set that by tying three explosive charges to a narrow band photosensor that can detect with when the screen flashes red at specific frequencies, i.e. game over, kills you in real life when you die in a video game, end quote. And then, secondly, finally, from the Atlantic, whatever happened to the minivan? I'm serious, quoting the Atlantic. In the first year of introducing them, Chrysler sold 210,000 Dodge Caravans and Plymouth Voyagers, its initial two models. Overall, minivan sales reached 700,000 by the end of the decade,

the station wagon all but disappeared, but the new design also generated stigma. As the child of the station wagon and the service van, the minivan quickly came to represent the family you love, but must support and also transport. In a nation where cars stood in for power and freedom, the minivan would mean the opposite. As a vehicle, it symbolized the burdens of domestic life. That stigma only grew with time. In 1996, automobile magazine called this backlash somewhat understandable, given that the members of my generation who were at that point young adults had, quote, spent their childhoods strapped into the backseat of one. Perhaps it was childhood itself that seemed uncool rather than the car that facilitated it. In any case, many vans would soon be

obsolesed by sport utility vehicles. The earliest SUVs were more imposing than they are today, hard-riding trucks with four-by-four capabilities, such as the Chevrolet Suburban and Jeep Waggoner. These were as big or even bigger than the plumber kidnapper vans of the 1970s, and they got terrible gas mileage, cost a lot of money, and were hard to get in or out of, especially if you were very young or even slightly old. Yet the minivans' identity had grown toxic, and for suburban parents, the SUV played into the fantasy of being somewhere else or doing something better, end quote. No bonus episodes for you this weekend. Talk to you on Monday.