Foreign Attackers Want You Mad
Don't play into their game.
Hey folks,
Flying high above the West Coast right now on my way to Seattle for a connecting flight to Seoul, so no recording today. But there are some good stories I couldn't pass up writing about.
Definitely pay close attention to the big story. It highlights efforts to make you mad in order to undermine the U.S. I rarely think tech stories are vital. This one is.
Tom
Big Story
"Efforts by Russia, Iran, and China to sway U.S. voters may escalate, new Microsoft report says | AP News"
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"Microsoft Warns Foreign Disinformation Is Hitting the U.S. Election From All Directions | WIRED"
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Microsoft released a report Wednesday detailing efforts by foreign adversaries to make people in the U.S. upset, mostly over the upcoming election.
Microsoft accuses Russian teams of creating fake videos to smear presidential candidates. It also accuses Chinese teams of social media campaigns targeting candidates who are critical of China. Iranian actors are accused of surveying election-related websites in preparation for some kind of interference.
Many of these efforts fail to gain traction, but, as with spam, only a few need to succeed to achieve their aims. The campaigns work by trying to get their message spread by real people so they seem more credible. Several campaigns have succeeded this way.
The governments of Russia, China, and Iran all deny any involvement in these campaigns.
In my opinion, this is the most important election issue. You and everyone you know need to be aware that this is happening and not unwittingly participate in its spread. They don't want to change votes or help any particular candidate so much as stir up anger between people. When you see a post that infuriates you, even if it’s from someone you know is real, stop. Consider whether it might have originated as a way to make you feel mad, and reconsider engaging with it in any way. Even trying to convince the sender they’re wrong is engagement and exactly what these malicious actors want you to do.
If what you're responding to or posting yourself isn't making things better or building bridges, it's likely serving foreign interests. Be aware.
Briefs
"Intel (INTC) Wins EU Court Fight in €1.06 Billion Antitrust Battle - Bloomberg"
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This is what I mean when I go on and on about how these regulatory decisions and antitrust cases take years and often end up the reverse of how they started.
In 2009, when I was still at CNET, we covered the fine against Intel in the EU for allegedly abusing its dominant market position to suppress competition from AMD by offering rebates to PC makers who used Intel chips.
Fifteen years later, the EU’s Court of Justice ruled the regulators failed to prove the allegations. And this isn't even over. A separate part of a lower court ruling kept in place a €376.36 million fine for paying manufacturers not to launch products with competing chips in them. Intel is still appealing that fine. There appears to be a better chance it will stick, but don't hold your breath. Even if it does, it's a much lower amount, and Intel has had more than a decade to set aside the money for it.
"Kroger and Walmart Deny ‘Surge Pricing’ After Adopting Digital Price Tags - The New York Times"
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Kroger, Walmart, and other grocery stores are rolling out Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL), digital shelf tags that make it easy to change what item is there and what it costs. This saves employees time and reduces paper waste. However, it has caused some opportunistic lawmakers in the U.S. to stoke fears that the stores will use facial recognition to raise prices for some people by updating the tags on the fly. They leave out the part of the process where the store would have to track you and recognize you at checkout, correlating what price it showed you with the item you're buying. Granted, Amazon's "just walk out" technology could do that, but it's being pulled from stores more often than added, and Kroger and Walmart don't use it.
More plausible would be store-wide price increases during peak shopping times or ahead of shortages. This just makes it easier.
Kroger says it has no plans to implement dynamic pricing or facial recognition. Walmart says it has no plans to implement dynamic pricing or use facial recognition to affect pricing, which means it does use facial recognition for other things.
I call FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) on this one.
"Nvidia boosts India push with Hindi language model and partnerships"
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On Thursday, Nvidia announced Nemotron-4-Mini-Hindi 4B, a small language model in Hindi that can run locally on devices. It also announced partnerships with Indian companies, including one of its largest, Reliance Industries. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said by the end of this year, India will have “20 times more compute” than it did over a year ago.
"iOS 18.2 adds support for web apps with custom browser engine"
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"iPhone 16 orders cut by around 10 million units for 4Q24–1H25; no evidence yet that Apple Intelligence could boost iPhone shipments in the near term | by 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) | Oct, 2024 | Medium"
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"Apple releases second wave of Intelligence features via new developer betas – Six Colors"
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Apple's iOS 18.2 beta is out, giving a sneak peek at what new features will come in the update. One of them lets users in the EU save web apps to their home screen from browsers other than Safari. The update also adds the Image Playground, Genmoji, Visual Search, and ChatGPT integration.
Meanwhile, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Apple has slowed down production of the new iPhone non-Pro models. This brings the estimate of 2H24 production down from 898 million to 84 million. Kuo also expects iPhone SE 4 production to begin in December.
Interesting Reads
"Intel's former CEO tried to buy Nvidia almost two decades ago"
Read more"212 million contract will finally get San Francisco trains off floppy disks"
Read more"Almost All Meteorites That Hit Earth Are Coming From the Same Three Places, Scientists Discover"
Read more"Startup Hugging Face aims to cut AI costs with open source offering | Reuters"
Read more"Raspberry Pi releases higher performance AI HAT+ — 13 and 26 TOPS variants | Tom's Hardware"
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