Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 03/05 – Digg Is Back!

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 TechMame right home for Wednesday, March 5th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. Elon can't stop OpenAI, but the case will go on. Trump wants to stop the Chips Act immediately. Apple releases more new Macs today. If you can believe it, Dig is back. They're coming for Reddit. And the AI chatbot that might have passed the uncanny valley when it comes to AI generated speech. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. A. U.S. judge has denied Elon Musk's effort to halt OpenAI's for-profit shift, saying Elon failed to. to meet the burden of proof. But the judge did let other aspects of the suit proceed. Quoting Bloomberg, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers wrote in her order that she wants

Starting point is 00:01:18 to resolve Musk's claims quickly, given, quote, the public interest at stake and potential for harm if a conversion contrary to law occurred, Rogers said she will hold an expedited trial solely on the core claim that Open AIs conversion plan is unlawful and, quote, potentially the interrelated contract-based claims, end quote. The timing is significant because, because OpenAI is already in talks to win approval for its conversion from officials in Delaware and California, a process that's expected to be complex. We're pleased the court has offered an expedited trial on the court claims driving this case, which, in its words, present urgent issues in the public's interest, Mark Toberoff, Musk's lawyer said in an email,

Starting point is 00:01:57 we intend to accept the court's offer, end quote. So this sort of seems like an initial setback for Elon's efforts. Open AI is not immediately frozen in its tracks, but given that we have been told the earliest this trial would happen would be late 2026 or 2027 even. The fact that this is getting expedited is probably positive for Elon. He'll have his day in court and sooner rather than later. While addressing Congress last night, President Trump said to get rid of the $52 billion CHIPS Act and use the leftover money to reduce debt or any other reason. So there goes that, I guess. Somebody check on Intel, quoting Bloomberg. Your Chips Act is a horrible, horrible thing. The president said in a prime time address to Congress on two.

Starting point is 00:02:44 Trump implored U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson to get rid of the legislation and use whatever is left over to reduce debt or any other reason. His remarks were met with applause in a chamber that passed the Chips and Science Act less than three years ago. Vice President J.D. Vance, whose home state of Ohio won a massive Intel project thanks to the law, stood up to show his support for its revocation. The Chips Act is among the most significant U.S. forays into industrial policy in more than a generation. It's set aside $39 billion in grants plus loans and 25% tax breaks to revitalize American semiconductor manufacturing as well as $11 billion for chip research and development. The aim was to reduce reliance on Asia for electronic components that power everything

Starting point is 00:03:24 from smartphones to massive data centers. Trump, however, has consistently derided a program he regards as a waste of government funds, arguing tariffs would achieve the same outcome while filling coffers. Republicans have also indicated that they want to repeal what they see as social provisions of the chips act. That could involve eliminating labor-friendly relations or environmental requirements. Officials on both sides of the aisle have touted the Chips Act as crucial to U.S. national and economic security, and Trump could have a hard time getting congressional support to repeal it. Dozens of GOP lawmakers voted for the measure, and many red districts have won factories or other projects supported by the law, end quote.

Starting point is 00:04:06 More product unveilings from Apple this morning. Apple updated the Max Studio with an M4 Max Chip starting at $1999 plus, and an M3 Ultra starting at 3,000. $1,99 plus with up to 32 cores, including 24 performance cores, shipping from March 12th, quoting the verge. Apple says the M4 Max Studio is up to 3.5 times faster than the original M1 Max version with a 14 to 16 core CPU and 32 to 40 core GPU, like the M4 Max MacBook Pro. This version of the studio starts with 36 gigabytes of RAM, up from 32 gigabytes in the M2 model, and can be had with as much as 128 gigabytes,

Starting point is 00:04:50 a bump from the 96-gibite ceiling of the M2 Mac Studio. Like its outgoing predecessor, it starts with 512 gigabytes of SSD storage, but can go as high as 8 terabytes. Meanwhile, the Mac Studio with an M3 Ultra Chip sounds like it's going to scream. It gets up to 32 cores, 24 of which are performance cores, something Apple notes is 50% more than any previous Ultra Chip. The GPU has a base-60 core configuration that maxes out at 80 cores, and Apple says it has a 32-core neural engine for machine learning and AI applications.

Starting point is 00:05:20 The M3 Ultra version of the studio has 96 gigabytes of RAM to start, but it can go up to a gobsmacking 512 gigabytes of RAM, enough to run some of the largest local AI models locally. Finally, you can bump the base 1 terabyte internal storage to as high as 16 terabytes, end quote. But wait, there's more. Apple updated the $999-13-inch and 11. $1,19015-inch MacBook Airs with an M4 chip, offering a 10-core CPU and an 8-core GPU, and a blue color option shipping from March 12th. But speaking of chips, again, say hello to the M3 Ultra,

Starting point is 00:05:58 built from two 3-nometer M3 Max chips, offering Thunderbolt 5, a new Ultra Fusion packaging architecture, and 80-core GPU, and up to 512 gigabytes of memory. Quoting Tom's hardware. In a demo, I saw the M3 Ultra run Cinema 4D, where an artist wanted to who spread foliage around the landscape. Using LM Studio, they created a Python script to scatter the assets, pasted it into Cinema 4D, and it was done. What could have taken a day took just minutes.

Starting point is 00:06:26 From there, they were able to open Maxon Redshift to see a high-quality preview with hardware ray tracing. In addition, I saw, but did not play an early demo of Cyberpunk 2077, which is coming this year for Max, running on the hardware, locked at 60 frames per second, thanks to V-Sync on the monitor with full ray tracing, end quote. Remember Dig? arguably the first social network of the Web 2.0 era of a breakthrough. If you don't remember Dig, you might only know that it was the social network that Reddit dethroned. Reddit is what Dig was trying to be, but thanks to a bad redesign, its community decamped to Reddit en masse, and the rest is history. Well, Dig founder Kevin Rose has repurchased Dig, the site he founded in 2004 with plans to resurrect it as a competitor to Reddit, ironically with help from Reddit co-founder Alexis O'Hanion. The two former rivals have joined. joined forces to reimagine what a community-focused platform could be in today's fractured social media landscape. The partnership represents a surprising twist in their shared history. Back in 2005, O'Hanian had identified Dig as the enemy when he and Steve Huffman launched Reddit.

Starting point is 00:07:33 While Dig initially thrived, raising millions in funding and fielding acquisition offers from companies like Google, it eventually faltered following an unpopular redesign. Users abandoned the platform, and in 2012, Dig was sold off in pieces while Rose departed, but quoting the verge. Rose and a group of what he calls brainstorming partners, which included Ohanian, design and product exec, Justin Mazzel, and even folks like blogger and Twitter co-founder Ev Williams started to talk about whether AI might be able to help them build a better social platform. I would call Alexis up and we would chat, Rose says, and we'd be like, hey, what if, what if? And a lot of those things started giving us

Starting point is 00:08:08 both butterflies in the stomach situation where you're like, oh, this could be cool, this could be really cool, end quote. The new dig will initially launch as an invitation-only mobile focus platform in the coming weeks. Rose and O'Hanian have raised funding from their respective venture firms, true ventures and 776, and assembled a small team of engineers and designers. Mezzell will serve as CEO with Rose as board chair and O'Hanian joining the board. The revamped platform will leverage AI to enhance user experience and moderation, potentially offering features like translating discussions into fictional languages and reducing spam and harassment. Most crucially, they plan to prioritize empowering moderators with better tools. In area both entrepreneurs believe has been neglected

Starting point is 00:08:48 in social media. What we never focused on is the back end, Ohanian reflected, but it's the back end that really, really matters. Rose acknowledges the initial reaction may be muted with some viewing it as merely nostalgic. However, he believes dig's nimbleness will be advantageous against larger, slower-moving competitors. We won't have everything we want Dig to be on day one, Rose said, but a year from now, we will be having a very different conversation, end quote. There have been so many stories recently of this crypto company that was being investigated, but the investigation has been called off, that crypto company facing regulatory scrutiny, but it's been called off, so I'm just going to use this as a placeholder for all of that.

Starting point is 00:09:31 Yuga Labs, creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs says the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has closed its investigation into the company without taking enforcement action, adding NFTs are not securities. So, officially now, meme coins are not securities, and NFTs are not securities either, quoting to Crypt. Uga Labs had been under SEC scrutiny since 2022 over whether it's NFT offerings and ape coin token distribution violated federal securities laws. The company welcomed the decision calling it a huge win for the NFT industry. The company also labeled the move as a boon for all creators pushing our ecosystem forward.

Starting point is 00:10:05 NFTs are not securities, it said. The floor price for board apes on the NFT marketplace OpenC jumped 3.8% on Monday from 13.39-Eath to a local peak of 13.9th. still, bored apes, once championed by celebrities as status symbols and part of a broader cultural movement, have seen their value decline sharply. The floor price, which peaked at 153.7 ETH nearly three years ago during the last crypto bull run, has dropped by about 91% according to Coin Gecko data, end quote. So, given this change, regulatory environment, can bigger fish get off the hook? I guess it's worth a try, isn't it? Sources tell Bloomberg that Google representatives asked DOJ officials in a meeting last week to back away from a push to break up the

Starting point is 00:10:53 company citing national security concerns. Quote, the Biden administration in November had called for Google to sell its Chrome web browser and make other changes to its business, including an end to billions of dollars in exclusivity payments to companies, including Apple. Although Google has previously pushed back on the Biden-era plan, the recent discussions may preview aspects of the company's approach to the case as it continues under the Trump administration. A federal judge is set to rule on how Google must change its practices following hearings scheduled for next month. Both sides are due to file their final proposals to the judge by Friday. Google's argument isn't new, and it has previously raised these concerns in public in response to antitrust pressure from

Starting point is 00:11:29 regulators and lawmakers, but the company is reupping the issue in discussions with officials at the department under Trump because the case is in its second stage, known as the remedy phase, during which the court can impose sweeping changes on Google's business. After the Justice Department proposed its remedy in November, Kent Walker, Google's chief legal officer, said in a blog post that the department was pursuing a, quote, radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America's global technology leadership. In a separate post in January, unrelated to the department's case, Walker highlighted the company's work with the government in using artificial intelligence to police cybersecurity threats. During their meeting last week,

Starting point is 00:12:04 company representatives argued that Google's critical importance to the U.S. economy and national security requires a softer touch, according to the people. They didn't raise specific threats from the DOJ proposed changes. The people said, end quote. Finally, today, let me tell you about Sesame AI, because apparently their speech model demo has many users expressing astonishment at its realism, with some testers reporting emotional connections to the voice assistant. Quoting Ars Technica, I tried the demo, and it was genuinely startling how human it felt, wrote one Hacker News user who tested the system. I'm almost a bit worried. I will start feeling emotionally attached to a voice assistant with this level of human-like sound.

Starting point is 00:12:48 In late February, Sesame released a demo for the company's new conversational speech model or CSM that appears to cross over what many consider the uncanny valley of AI-generated speech, with some testers reporting emotional connections to the male or female voice assistant Miles and Maya. In our own evaluation, we spoke with the male voice for about 28 minutes, talking about life in general and how it decides what is right or wrong based on its training data. The synthesized voice was expressive and dynamic, imitating breath sounds, chuckles, interruptions, and even sometimes stumbling over words and correcting itself. These imperfections are intentional. At Sesame, our goal is to achieve voice presence, the magical

Starting point is 00:13:28 quality that makes spoken interactions feel real, understood, and valued, writes to the company in a blog post. We are creating conversational partners that do not just process requests they engage in genuine dialogue that builds confidence and trust over time. In doing so, we hope to realize the untapped potential of voice as the ultimate interface for instruction and understanding, end quote. Another example, a demonstration video on Reddit shows a simulated argument between a boss and an embezzling employee where it's apparently difficult to distinguish the human from the AI. The system achieves its realism through two collaborative AI models based on meta's Lama architecture. Rather than using the traditional two-stage approach of many text-to-speech systems,

Starting point is 00:14:08 Sesame's CSM integrates processing into a single-stage multimodal transformer that jointly handles text and audio tokens. Their largest model uses 8.3 billion parameters and was trained on approximately 1 million hours of primarily English audio. In blind tests without context, human evaluators showed no clear preference between CSM-generated speech and actual human recordings. However, with conversational context, evaluators still preferred real human speech, indicating remaining gaps in fully contextual speech generation. Sesame AI acknowledged current limitations on Hacker News, noting the system is still too eager and often inappropriate in its tone, prosity, and pacing with issues in conversational flow. Today, we're firmly in the valley, but we're optimistic we can climb out, they wrote. The technology has evoked strong responses. One Reddit user

Starting point is 00:14:54 wrote, this is the first time I've experienced something that made me definitely feel like we had arrived. The first time I've had a real, genuine conversation with something I felt was real. Many describe the experience as jaw-dropping or mind-blowing. Others find it unsettling. Mark Hackman, senior editor at PC World reported feeling freaked out after his interaction with Sesame, noting how the AI's voice eerily resembled someone from his past. Some users have compared it favorably to open AI's advanced voice mode for chat GPT, particularly appreciating Sesame's willingness to roleplay confrontational scenarios that chat GPT refuses. Despite its technical impressiveness, such advancements carry significant risks for deception and fraud. The ability to generate convincingly human-like

Starting point is 00:15:34 interactive speech could supercharge voice fishing scams, allowing criminals to impersonate family members, colleagues, or authority figures with unprecedented realism. Sesame plans to open source key components under an Apache 2.0 license. Their roadmap includes scaling up model size, increasing dataset volume, expanding language support to over 20 languages, and developing fully duplex models for more natural conversations. Game recommendation for you, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. I bought it to play with my 8-year-old who's obsessed with all things, knights and medieval stuff, but as sometimes happens, I've fallen in love with it myself and ended up just doing all the admin and stuff in my free time, gathering herbs, sharpening swords so he can play freely.

Starting point is 00:16:25 It's really sort of an amazing historical simulator, much recommended if you have the time to be sucked into a game world. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 03/05 – Digg Is Back!

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