Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 04/14 – Tariff Groundhog Day

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

You know that meme of Ebenezer Scrooge shouting out the window? “Hey boy, what tariff regime is it today?” Sam Altman again implies ChatGPT usage has exploded. If you’re coding with AI, a big new vulnerability you need to know about. And is Apple pivoting the Vision Pro to the type of product I thought they should have done all along? Sponsor: Freshbooks.com Links: Apple, Nvidia Score Relief From US Tariffs With Exemptions (Bloomberg) Sony raises PlayStation 5 prices in Europe citing ‘challenging’ economic environment (CNBC) ChatGPT Hits 1 Billion Users? ‘Doubled In Just Weeks’ Says OpenAI CEO (Forbes) LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything (The Register) AI-hallucinated code dependencies become new supply chain risk (Bleeping Computer) Apple Readies Pair of Headsets While Still Looking Ahead to Glasses (Bloomberg) 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 Tech meme right home for Monday, April 14th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. You know that meme of Ebenezer Scrooge shouting out the window. Hey, boy, what tariff regime is it today? Sam Altman, again, implies chat GPT usage has exploded. If you're coding with AI, a big new vulnerability you need to know about, and is Apple pivoting the Vision Pro to the type of product I thought they should have done all along? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Time for another exciting episode of Tariff Roulette. Over the weekend, the Trump administration announced that smartphones, laptops,

hard drives, processors, memory chips, and machines used to make semiconductors would receive exemptions from reciprocal tariffs, quoting Bloomberg, this is a large hole in the U.S. tariff wall that will spare key firms like Apple and consumers of laptops and phones from sticker shock, an analyst said. But many other consumer intermediate and capital goods, from China still face prohibitively high U.S. tariffs. This exemption only covers one segment of the U.S. economy. President Trump on Saturday declined to elaborate on the exemptions, but hinted at further developments on Monday. I'll give you that answer on Monday. We'll be very specific on Monday, he told reporters on Air Force One, we're taking in a lot of money as a country. We're taking in a lot of money, end quote.

More on that in a second, the idea of Monday, another shoe dropping. But at this point, Was it all over, but the shouting, no one had to worry anymore about $2,000 iPhones in the fall. Maybe the real treasure was the Mishigas we made along the way. Well, even at the time, people were expressing doubts. Here are just a few tweets and skeets and whatnot that I collected over the weekend. A lot of the chatter focused on, okay, cool. Some of the tariffs are gone. Good for Apple and other big folks, but what about the little guy that maybe doesn't have the clout of an

Apple or Google to get these exemptions. And what about the supply chain? Like, great that the gadget itself, its whole self, wouldn't be tariffed, but what about all the constituent parts that go into the gadget? If they're still tariffed, then the gadget itself will still be more expensive, right? Here's Tony Stark on Mastodon, quote. So right now, if someone wants to import all of the parts needed to make a computer, they have to pay a massive tariff. But, if you're a massive tariff, but if they import the fully assembled computer, there is no tariff. Wow, truly a genius plan to resure tech manufacturing, end quote. And Michael Cayley on X, quote, they simply don't understand what the costs of tariffs will be. You can hide the headline costs of iPhones and laptops,

but the effects on all prices, not to mention production itself via supply chains, can't be handled by one-time exemptions and bribery, end quote. Madaglacius, if you're a business or business, owner who doesn't have Tim Cook's cloud or Apple's lobbying budget, you're out of luck, I guess, end quote. And Derek Thompson, quote, imagine trying to manage a supply chain right now. Every 48 hours, the White House is announcing or unannouncing or re-announcing or creating massive carve-outs to a new trade rule. Why would anyone anywhere build a new factory under these conditions, end quote. Well, dear listener, I bet you can't imagine where this all went. Could it be more contradiction and

confusion? You bet. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik came out yesterday and warned that consumer electronics exempt from tariffs may yet still be included in semiconductor tariffs likely coming in a, quote, month or two. So not out of the woods yet. In fact, you know when you thought you were maybe out of the woods a day ago, turns out, I don't know, there is no spoon. Quoting the F.T. Donald Trump signaled that smartphones and other consumer electronics imported to the U.S. from China would face tariffs, dealing a blow to hopes of a reprieve for big tech companies such as Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft. Nobody is getting off the hook for the unfair trade balances and non-monetary tariff barriers that other countries have used against us,

especially not China, which by far treats us the worst, the U.S. President wrote on his truth social platform. His administration on Friday excluded phones, chip-making equipment, and certain computers from steep reciprocal tariffs in what was seen as a significant boost for technology groups whose stocks plunged after Trump unleashed a global trade war this month on what he called Liberation Day. But on Sunday, U.S. officials played down the exemptions, warning that such products would be re-examined as part of a government probe into semiconductors, which face a separate round of tariffs. What he's doing is he's saying they're exempt from the reciprocal. tariffs, said U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, referring to Trump, but they're included in the

semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two, end quote. When asked to clarify whether tariffs on Apple iPhones might, quote, come back in a month or so. Lutnik replied, quote, correct, that's right, we need our medicines and we need semiconductors and our electronics to be built in America, end quote. Later on Sunday, Trump wrote on social media that the U.S. would be, quote, taking a look at semiconductors and the whole electronic supply chain in the upcoming national security tariff investigations, end quote. Lutnik and Trump's comments will spark further uncertainty on Wall Street on Monday about the impact of the president's tariff rollout, which has been marked by a series of reversals that

have caused a share price roller coaster and a sell-off last week in the $29 trillion U.S. Treasury's market, end quote. Again, I don't know what to tell you. Even if I check the stock market opening right now as I'm recording this, what's the point? because something else in one direction or another will probably have happened by the time you hear this. President Trump told reporters he would announce the tariff rate on imported semiconductors over the next week, giving some flexibility to certain companies. Quoting Axios, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, as he traveled back to D.C. from Mar-a-Lago,

the administration officials would likely discuss tariffs on products like iPhones and tablets with companies, quote, because you have to show a certain flexibility, nobody should be so rigid, end quote. When asked if there would be flexibility for some products, Trump replied, for some products, end quote. He declined to say which ones, end quote. Okay, so even if this new needle gets threaded somehow, tech companies still face this. China has suspended exports of a wide range of rare earth minerals and magnets that are crucial for making semiconductors, robots, drones, cars, and other products, quoting the New York Times. Shipments of the magnets, essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles have been halted at many Chinese ports while the Chinese government drafts a new regulatory system. Once in place, the new system could permanently prevent supplies from reaching certain companies, including American military contractors. The official crackdown is part of China's retaliation for President Trump's sharp increase in tariffs that started on April 2nd. On April 4th, the Chinese government ordered restrictions on the export of six

heavy rare earth metals, which are refined entirely in China, as well as rare earth magnets. 90% of which are produced in China. The metals and special magnets made with them can now be shipped out of China only with special export licenses. But China has barely started setting up a system for issuing the licenses. That has caused consternation among industry executives that the process could drag on and that current supplies of minerals and products outside of China could run low. If factories in Detroit and elsewhere run out of powerful rare earth magnets, that could prevent them from assembling cars and other products with electric motors that require these magnets. Companies vary widely in the size of their emergency stockpiles for such contingencies,

so the timing of product disruptions is hard to predict. The so-called heavy rare earth metals covered by the export suspension are used in magnets essential for many kinds of electric motors. These motors are crucial components of electric cars, drones, robots, missiles, and spacecraft. Gasoline powered cars also use electric motors with rare earth magnets for critical tasks like steering. The metals also go into the chemicals for manufacturing jet engines, lasers, car headlights, and certain spark plugs. And these rare minerals are vital ingredients in capacitors, which are electrical components of the computer chips that power artificial intelligence servers and smartphones. One American mining leader James Litinsky, the executive

chairman and chief executive of MP materials, said that rare earth supplies for military contractors were of particular concern. Quote, drones. and robotics are widely considered the future of warfare, and based on everything we are seeing, the critical inputs for our future supply chain are shut down, he said, end quote. Sony has hiked PlayStation 5 prices in Europe, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, citing a, quote, challenging economic environment. The PS5 Pro, though, remains the same price, quoting CNBC. Sony said it has made the tough decision to raise prices against the, quote, backdrop of a challenging economic environment, including high inflation and fluctuating exchange rates, end quote.

Circon Toto, CEO of Tokyo-based Games consultancy Catan Games, said it was likely that Sony will also raise PS5 prices in the U.S. I would be very surprised if Sony was able to keep the PlayStation prices in the U.S. stable. Now is the right time for the company to hike prices because user backlash would be comparably limited, Toto told CNBC on Monday. So yes, I expect Sony to raise prices in the U.S. eventually, once it's at least a bit more clear where exactly tariffs are headed, end quote. It's not the first time that Sony has boosted prices for the console, which is now more than five years old. It previously undertook hikes in 2022, in various countries and regions, then further lifted the console price in Japan last year, end quote. Sam Altman

suggests that chat GPT users have doubled in just the past few weeks, and that, quote, 10% of the world uses our systems, which would imply a number close to 800 million users globally. Quoting Forbes. Since late 2024, ChatGPT's user base has been growing at an astonishing rate with the release of several products that have gone viral, including its March 25th introduction of a new image generation feature, which creates images and videos in various styles, including that of Studio Ghibli, the legendary Japanese studio that created film classics like My Neighbor Totoro. On March 31st, Altman posted on X that ChatGPT had added a million users in just one hour, this, thanks to Ghibli mode, which was trending. Chris Anderson of TED asked Altman in an on-stage interview if any consideration had been given to compensating artists for creating works in their style. Altman said, in time, there might be a way for certain prompts to trigger automatic payments for creators who opt in and explained for now, guardrails are in place to prevent the model from generating copyrighted protected works. But Altman also said OpenAI was lightning guardrails around speech harms and making it less restrictive in image generation to be more responsive to users wanting less censorship, end quote. devs, let me warn you about something new to worry about. If you're using AI to write your code, say hello to slop squatting, quoting the register. As we noted in March and September last year,

security and academic researchers have found that AI code assistants invent package names. In a recent study, researchers found that about 5.2% of package suggestions from commercial models didn't exist compared to 21.7% from open source or openly available models. Running that, code should result in an error when importing a non-existent package. But miscreants have realized they can hijack the hallucination for their own benefit. All that's required is to create a malicious software package under a hallucinated package name and then upload the bad package to a package registry or index like Pi Pi or NPM for distribution. Thereafter, when an AI code assistant re-hlusinates the co-opted name, the process of installing dependencies and executing the code,

will run the malware, end quote. And quoting, and quoting. The term slop squatting was coined by security researcher Seth Larson as a spin on typo squatting, an attack method that tricks developers into installing malicious packages by using names that closely resemble popular libraries. Unlike typo squatting, slop squatting doesn't rely on misspellings.

Instead, threat actors could create malicious packages on indexes like Pi Pi and NPM, named after ones commonly made up by AI models in coding examples. A research paper about package hallucinations published in March 2025 demonstrates that in roughly 20% of the examined cases, 576,000 generated Python and JavaScript code samples recommended packages didn't exist. The situation is worse on open source LLMs like Code Llamma, Deepseek, Wizard Coder, and Mistral, but commercial tools like ChatGPT4 still hallucinated at a rate of about 5%, which is significant. Although there are no signs that attackers have started taking advantage of this new type of attack researchers from open source cybersecurity company's socket,

warn that hallucinated package names are common, repeatable, and semantically plausible, creating a predictable attack surface that could easily be weaponized. The only way to mitigate this risk is to verify package names manually and never assume a package mentioned in an AI-generated code snippet is real or safe. Using dependency scanners, lock files, and hash verification to pin packages to known trusted versions is an effective way to improve security. The research has shown that. lowering AI temperature settings, less randomness, reduces hallucinations, so if you're into

AI-assisted or vibe coding, this is an important factor to consider. Ultimately, it is prudent to always test AI-generated code in a safe, isolated environment before running or deploying it in production environments, end quote. Finally today from my, of course they are file, our Mark German Apple scoop this Monday is that Apple is working on a lighter and cheaper Vision Pro, and a Mac tethered model with ultra-low latency. Hey, nobody liked my idea that I floated many times, but here's my argument. People easily pay $3,000 for a computer. Heck, I myself have paid $1,500 just for a monitor. So if you position the Vision Pro as a computer, people might pay up for a computer that comes with an infinite display. Quote, the new plan is to release a model that makes the headset

both lighter and cheaper. The current version weighs nearly one and a half pounds and can often strain a wearer's neck and head. Many people who wear it for long periods of time require third-party straps to alleviate the discomfort. The fact that Apple offers this option on its website is an acknowledgement of the issue. One of the new headsets will seek to address these issues, though reducing the costs may be even more challenging with the possibility of tariffs. The Vision Pro, at least the first version, is made in China. The other headset in development could be even more intriguing. In January, I reported that Apple had scrapped work on augmented reality glasses that would tether to a Mac. Instead, it's now working on a Vision Pro that plugs into a Mac.

The difference between the two ideas is the level of immersion. The canceled device had transparent lenses. The product still in the works will use the same approach as the Vision Pro. The idea is to create an ultra-low latency system for streaming a user's Mac display or for connecting to high-end enterprise applications. Some customers have been using the Vision Pro for things like viewing imaging during surgery or for flight simulators. Those are two areas where a user would want the least amount of lag possible, something that can't be guaranteed by a fully wireless system. Still, all of this is a stepping stone toward Tim Cook's Grand Vision, which hasn't changed in a decade. He wants true augmented reality glasses, lightweight spectacles that a consumer could wear all day. The

AR element will overlay data and images onto real-world views. Cook has made this idea a top priority for the company and is hell-bent on creating an industry-leading product before Meta-can. Quote, Tim cares about nothing else, says someone with knowledge of the matter. It's the only thing he's really spending his time on from a product development standpoint, end quote. Once again, reminder that I'm coming to you from a hotel in Denver right now, so if you hear a buzzing in the background, it's because unfortunately I'm recording next to the refrigerator. Tomorrow I'll be talking to you from a cabin in Estes Park. Maybe I'll record outside by the creek tomorrow.

Weather permitting, though, I should have my own room to record in, too. We'll see. Check my socials for picks of our horseback riding in the desert yesterday on a horse with no name. Talk to you tomorrow.