Tag: apple vision pro

Categories
AI crypto technology

Amazon by Jeff Bezos examines Perplexity by... Jeff Bezos

There was not one overarching news item this week, but these are the ten things in the world of technology and innovation that caught my eye.

1. Grand Theft AI

For writing this newsletter, I take notes during the week of topics that seem interesting to me. On Saturday, I ask four AI search engines to rank them in order of relevance: ChatGPT from OpenAI, Gemini from Google, Claude from Anthropic and Perplexity, from Grand Theft AI.

At least, that's what The Verge calls the creators of Perplexity by seemingly systematically committing plagiarism:

"Perplexity is basically a profit-seeking middleman on high-quality sources. The original value of search engines was that by collecting the work of journalists and others, the results from, say, Google, sent traffic to those sources.

But by providing an answer instead of directing people to a primary source, these so-called "answer engines" deprive the primary source, ad revenue, and keep that revenue for themselves. Perplexity belongs to a group of vampires that includes Arc Search and Google itself.

But Perplexity has gone a step further with its Pages product, which creates a summary report based on those primary sources. It is not just quoting a sentence or two to directly answer a user's question - it creates a fully aggregated article and it is accurate in the sense that it actively plagiarizes the sources used.

Forbes discovered that Perplexity bypassed the publication's pay wall to provide a summary of an investigation the publication did into the drone company of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt."

So Perplexity is stealing journalists' copyrighted work. Reason for Wired to launch an investigation that was summarized with the headline, "Perplexity is a bullshit machine."

Forbes has written a neat summary of the storm brewing around Perplexity's hijacking. According to Reuters, Perplexity is not the only AI company whose business model is to steal and sell other people's information, yet there is reason enough to ask Perplexity itself how it is. So I asked it this question:

Perplexity gives a painful answer about itself.

That is a clear answer, even with neat source citation above the answer.

Amazon by Jeff Bezos examines Perplexity by Jeff Bezos

The funny thing is that AWS, Amazon's hosting arm, has launched an investigation into Perplexity's practices. Because like many AI companies, Perplexity runs on AWS servers, perhaps also because it is partly funded by Amazon founder and major shareholder Jeff Bezos.

"AWS's terms of service prohibit abusive and illegal activities and our customers are responsible for complying with those terms," Amazon said, but in practice it won't be too bad because Bezos will never allow his own investment in Perplexity to be wiped out by Amazon.

2. MIT pioneer finds generative AI overrated

MIT Professor Emeritus of Robotics Rodney Brooks finds Generative AI, the type of AI based on Large Language Models (LLMs) such as Perplexity and ChatGPT, impressive technology, but perhaps not as capable as many suggest. " I'm not saying LLMs aren't important, but we have to be careful how we evaluate them," Brooks told TechCrunch.

He says the problem with Generative AI is that while it is perfectly capable of performing a certain set of tasks, it cannot do everything a human can, and humans tend to overestimate its capabilities.

"When a human sees an AI system perform a task, they immediately generalize that to things that are similar and make an assessment of the AI system's competence; not just performance on that task, but competence around it," Brooks said. "And they tend to be very overoptimistic, and that's because they're using a model of a person's performance on a task."

He added that the problem is that generative AI is not human or even human-like, and it is wrong to ascribe human capabilities to it. Brooks' view echoes analyses by Martin Peers and Jenn Zhu Scott, which I wrote about earlier this month.

By the way, some self-reflection is not foreign to Brooks: on his own blog, he tracks the accuracy of his own predictions. Including self-conceived color system, very interesting.

3. Applications for Solana ETFs.

Applications were filed on Thursday and Friday for permission from US financial authorities to launch exchange-traded funds(ETFs) for cryptocurrency Solana.

Solana dropped last month, but still rose 648% in the last year

It marks an extraordinary last year for Solana, in which it grew rapidly as a platform for decentralized applications due to high speed, low cost and good development tools, and also saw the value of the SOL token increase by as much as 648%.

After Bitcoin, Ethereum and BNB, Binance's token, Solana is now the fourth largest cryptocurrency in the world measured by total market value. Judging by developments, Solana will pass BNB before the end of this year and become the third largest cryptocurrency in the world after Bitcoin and Ethereum, not counting stable token USDT (the digital counterpart to the dollar).

SEC vs. Metamask

It wasn't all celebration in the world of Web3, as the crypto world likes to call itself these days. On Friday, it was announced that the U.S. securities watchdog SEC is filing a lawsuit against Consensys, best known as the maker of the popular Metamask wallet.

According to the SEC, Consensys operates Metamask as an unregistered broker. A substantively nonsensical argument, since Metamask provides a technical service where users exchange cryptocurrencies with each other. The SEC's argument would mean that the sale of envelopes is also subject to regulation because people sometimes put money and sometimes gift cards in them to give or sell to each other.

Rather, the value of the SEC should be to use meaningful definitions to determine the difference between when a cryptocurrency is a means of payment, when it is an investment and when it is a voting card. The difference between a love letter or a death threat is in the content of the text, not the form of transmission.

President Biden and his comrade Gary Gensler, head of the SEC, are as savvy in the crypto world (excuse, Web3 world) as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are in the fight against windmills. In a presidential race that, at least until last week's debate, still seemed difficult to predict, it is also politically awkward of Biden to continually battle Web3 (I'm learning).

The percentage of voters among people active with technology and Web3 is high, while few votes can be won by continuing to kick against Web3 in this way. Smart politicians do not make neck-and-neck issues about which at best they can stumble and with which they can win little. Meanwhile, Trump appeared as a cheerful guest on a popular technology podcast.

Tesla fell 24% in the last year, but rose 7% this week

It was otherwise a rather soporific stock market week, with Nvidia recovering slightly from a share price decline due to profit grabs earlier this month. Microsoft is again the world's most valuable company, Apple number two and Nvidia number three.

As often said, let's look again at the end of the year. Unlike Professor Brooks, I hardly ever predict anything, but the prediction that Nvidia, unlike Microsoft and Apple, will come out with downright spectacular third-quarter earnings, I dare you.

4. Three tons of damages due to faulty facial recognition

The U.S. city of Detroit is paying three hundred thousand dollars in damages to a man who was wrongly designated a shoplifter due to improper use of facial recognition technology.

It won't be the last time that too much reliance on complex technology leads to the wrong conclusions. With facial recognition, more often a problem is that people of color are confused with each other.

iPhone users can test it for themselves on their own photos. If there are no dark-skinned people among them at all, it might be a clue to get out of one's own bubble more often.

5. Electric car battery charges in 4 minutes 37

British start-up Nyobolt has charged an electric car's battery from ten percent to eighty percent in just four minutes and thirty-seven seconds. This breakthrough, demonstrated with a purpose-built concept sports car on a test track, surpasses the current performance of Tesla superchargers, which take about fifteen to twenty minutes for a comparable charge.

The question, of course, is what this technology will cost and how soon fast chargers will be available en masse. Tesla recently had to sharply scale back its ambitions to install an infrastructure for fast chargers across the United States. So the question is with which partners Nyobolt will do the rollout.

6. 'Apple builds cheaper Apple Vision Pro'

The plan was to make a standard version of the Vision, as with the iPhone, and a more expensive Pro line. However, the plans seem to have changed and the result seems to be that a new Apple Vision will be on the market for just over half the money, but with a much worse resolution.

Unlike with phones, resolution is critical with a VR device. It is that very aspect that was rated so highly when the Vision Pro was introduced. But the device is too expensive and apparently that quality cannot be mass produced at a lower price for now.

Not plagued by false modesty, for a comprehensive analysis I gladly refer to my piece from last May in which I wrote:

"All the omens are that the Apple Vision Pro will be a flop - a flop by Apple standards, that is. But that's not a bad thing at all. At least Apple is trying to develop something new again, and that's better than unimaginatively buying back its own shares for hundreds of billions, as it has in recent years."

The good news for Apple is that the iPhone 16 does appear to be a sales success. Not only because of a new "capture" button, but because the expected AI features will only work on the iPhone 15 Pro with the A17 Pro chip.

No less than two hundred and seventy million iPhone owners have not updated it for four years, but if they want to use AI they will now have to. And that's good news for Apple.

7. Bad news for people with fear of flying

It's not because the media have seen articles about it click extremely well and thus there is a lot of media coverage of the phenomenon, it also turns out to be reality: Clear Air Turbulence (CTA), turbulence in clear weather, is more common than ever.

Last month, one person was killed and several passengers seriously injured when a Singapore Airlines plane bounced up and down for a minute. Surprisingly, for once it wasn't Boeing's fault.

This research from the University of Reading shows that severe turbulence in clear weather in the North Atlantic, for example, was 55% more frequent in 2020, than in 1979, "consistent with the expected effects of climate change.

8. Marc Andreessen looks back on Mosaic and Netscape

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of investment firm Andreessen Horowitz (known for Facebook, Airbnb, Instagram, Zoom and many other successful companies), look back at the breakthrough of the Internet, when Andreessen co-founded Mosaic (the first Internet browser with, how is it possible, pictures!) and Netscape, the company that launched the dotcom boom.

The recap is especially interesting because the gentlemen both share many insights relevant to anyone working in the field of innovation and technology. This podcast is highly recommended.

Also frequently recommended by me: the two books Ben Horowitz wrote about entrepreneurship. First, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, about building a startup, with especially sharp analysis about what he did wrong with his company Opsware and what lessons he and the reader can learn from it.

But What You Do Is Who You Are, on how a company can build (or tear down) its own culture, is also very worth reading; even if you don't work at a startup but value a good company culture and a pleasant place to work.

9. Why women need less exercise than men

There is a difference between the sexes, which I have suspected for some time; but this time research has been done on how much exercise we need for a healthy heart and for once it is in favor of women.

A study of four hundred thousand people shows that men need to exercise five hours a week to achieve maximum positive effects for their hearts, compared to women only two and a half hours a week.

Why men are more likely to have heart attacks and at younger ages than women and what we can do about it to prevent heart failure is clearly explained in this short video from the BBC.

10. Tracer webinars: Wednesday, July 3, July 10 and July 17.

This is the sixty-first edition of this newsletter and except for the Christmas period, the appearance has always been weekly. During the summer period I switch to a monthly newsletter, so the next editions will appear on August 4 and September 1. Only on a special event will I send an update in between if possible.

True enthusiasts 😉 Don't have to miss me all month, because this summer I'm presenting a series of webinars on the Tracer token and the Carrot (carbon removal) smart contract.

Next Wednesday, July 3, at noon Dutch time is the first webinar, in which Tracer Chief Business Officer Gert-Jan Lasterie will cover Tracer's tokenomics and explain why the token still costs $0.75 cents in the current private round and double, $1.5 cents, at the public sale later in the third quarter. Sign up for Wednesday's webinar here.

The next webinar, on Wednesday, July 10, at noon, with Tracer Chief Technology Officer Philippe Tarbouriech, will focus on the Carrot (carbon removal) smart contract and how the carbon removal credits are tokenized, and then qualified based on "grade": the duration of CO2 removal. Sign up for that Wednesday, July 10 webinar here.

Special webinar: marketing and PR in Web3

On Wednesday, July 17, there will be a webinar on the latest developments in marketing and PR from Web3 projects with a very special guest. Who that is I will announce on X and LinkedIn, so follow me there for that information and other smaller updates over the summer.

Hope to see you in the webinars and if not, see you August 4!

Happy summer,

-Michiel

Categories
technology

Apple Vision Pro better than expected

It costs a little, but then you have something.

Apple has been surpassed by Microsoft as the world's most valuable company, and the former stock market darling still got a whirl from Wall Street despite rising sales, while virtually all tech companies rose. Perhaps that is precisely why there was a lot of attention on the launch of the Apple Vision Pro, the mixed reality headset that Apple itself for some reason calls "spatial computing.

When the Apple Vision Pro was announced last year, I wrote: 

'All the omens are that the Apple Vision Pro will be a flop - a flop by Apple standards, that is. But that's not a bad thing at all. At least Apple is trying to develop something new again, and that's better than unimaginatively buying back its own shares for hundreds of billions, as it has in recent years.' 

Because the price is too high at $3,500 to break open a mass market, there is no reason to change opinion about the Vision Pro's short-term business impact.

Apple is on its way to $500 billion in annual sales, so before any new product raises an eyebrow when going through the annual figures, it has to come close to the annual sales of Apple's least contributing product. That's the iPad, which still did $7 billion in sales last quarter. To get anywhere near that, Apple would have to sell a few million copies of the Apple Vision Pro, which is not going to happen with the current model at this price.

Vanity Fair was invited by Apple CEO Tim Cook to learn about the Apple Vision Pro, which led to this revelation from the reporter:

'When I turn it off, every other device feels flat and boring: my 75-inch OLED TV feels like a TV from the '90s; my iPhone feels like a flip phone from yesteryear, and even the real world around me feels surprisingly flat. And here's the problem. 

In the same way I can't imagine driving a car without a stereo, in the same way I can't imagine not having a phone to communicate with people or take pictures of my children, in the same way I can't imagine trying to work without a computer, I can envision a day when we all can't imagine living without augmented reality (AR). 

When we become more and more encapsulated by technology, to the point that we crave these glasses like a drug [...], the dopamine rush that this resolution of AR can deliver.'

Most reviews were less lyrical than this one, but mostly positive. The bottom line is that Apple has once again succeeded in developing a surprisingly special and high-quality product. And yet, there's something nagging.

Apple tries to solve an unsolvable problem

Wired correctly states that a "killer app" has not yet been found for the Apple Vision Pro. It is not yet the ultimate entertainment device and that is not because of the quality of the image, the sound or the controls, because they are extremely good. It's because of the applications, and then not even the "content," the traditional video narration form in picture and sound. The problem lies in the lack of new communication applications between people.

Now I am not neutral when it comes to VR and AR, having worked at VR pioneer Jaunt for a few years. I experienced the exact same experience in Jaunt's test lab as the Vanity Fair journalist, because good VR has an almost hallucinatory effect. But you remain a spectator in someone else's film.

And the core of the Internet's success is not information, transaction or entertainment. It is communication between people. The great breakthrough of social media was not caused by expensive content from movie studios or game developers, but by movies like Charlie Bit My Finger.

Despite all the success of social media like Facebook and Instagram, the messaging service Whatsapp is being used more intensively by users. And just when it seemed that the market for messaging apps was saturated, Telegram managed to attract as many as a quarter of a billion new users in 2023, bringing the total number of users to 700 million people. The demand for communication options between people seems inexhaustible.

So the big question for Apple becomes not how it can develop even flashier VR and AR applications, or how it gets Netflix to create apps for the Vision Pro; but whether it manages to develop interpersonal communication applications for the Apple Vision Pro that are as useful, funny and addictive as ever text messaging. As an enthusiast, I wish Apple would focus on that and, for example, permanently disband its entire automotive division. How many electric automakers does the world need?

Is TikTok the answer?

Especially when it comes to communication between people, TikTok has proven to be a phenomenon. When it seemed like the social media market had been completely nailed shut by Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, with Snapchat and Twitch as boutique stores, dances appeared on this originally Chinese app that were emulated worldwide. For dance requires no spoken language, only a sense of rhythm or a glaring lack of embarrassment.

Meanwhile, TikTok has become so big that Wired wrote an extensive profile on the company's Singaporean CEO, who had to answer to the US Congress for the second time last week, with a senator going out of his way to appear as racist and anti-Chinese as possible to his constituents. Incidentally, the Singaporean Internet responded within 24 hours with a hilarious video.

I'm curious what a TikTok app on the Vision Pro would look like and what you could do with it. Dance together, or watch movies together, so that using the Vision Pro at least becomes a shared experience?

Or is it Joe Rogan?

Once upon a time, the world's most popular podcast maker Joe Rogan hosted the TV show Fear Factor, a derivative of Now or Neverland. In that tv-show from the Netherlands, home of the cheapest television forms where the talent does not get paid (remember Big Brother or The Voice?), contestants from the Netherlands and Belgium had to complete tasks such as jumping out of a building while holding an egg that was not supposed to break, or eating worms while the host yelled at them "do it for your country, eat those worms for the Netherlands!

Joe Rogan, the American Hans Kraay Junior, signed a new contract with Spotify this week that will net him as much as a quarter of a billion dollars. Interestingly, it is not even an exclusive contract with Spotify, so Rogan will be seen and heard on multiple platforms.

Rogan's podcasts are recorded representations of the most basic form of communication since the dawn of mankind: two people talking to each other. Rogan's success lies in his curiosity.

He is actually interested in his guests and never tends to want to be clever at the expense of his guests. Maybe he's not that smart, which is always the criticism of him, but perhaps that's exactly what makes his podcasts accessible to a wide audience.

I would not be surprised if there are millions of people who, with an Apple Vision Pro on their heads, want the feeling of sitting at the table next to Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, or Quentin Tarantino or Lance Armstrong, as a third person. Not even to participate on equal footing, but to experience an interesting conversation up close. The mere fact that this kind of application is relatively easy to make is a reason to conclude that the Vision Pro is underrated.

Because it may quietly take five years and three versions of the Vision Pro before the device finds its killer apps combined with a good price, but then Apple will have a new successful form of personal computer on its hands alongside the Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Losing seventy billion in market cap the week the Apple Vision Pro hit the market? Investors should be ashamed of themselves.

Categories
AI crypto technology

'Minister' makes the Netherlands look utterly ridiculous in Asia

Asia Tech Summit 2023 in Singapore

'Be curious, not judgmental.' That's the message of my favorite Ted Lasso series. Mindful of that credo, I attended the Asia Tech Summit in Singapore this week, followed the launch of the Apple Vision Pro, the magic glasses of glasses, and tried to get to the bottom of the lawsuit filed by U.S. authorities against crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase. Unfortunately, things already went wrong during the first hour of the Asia Tech Summit, in which Secretary of State Van Huffelen was overcome by an overdose of unfounded self-confidence. 

Dutch pride abroad, 'minister' of digitization Alexandra van Huffelen

The Asia Tech Summit is particularly interesting because it brings together business and government institutions, with the idea that both sides develop an understanding of the challenges facing the other. Singapore Finance Minister and incoming Prime Minister Lawrence Wong provided the kickoff, after which Kaja Kallas (Estonia's first female prime minister) and Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand's youngest ever prime minister) paved the way for the first substantive panel, on the opportunities and threats of AI. Participating in this was State Secretary Van Huffelen, along with the president of Microsoft Asia and Nvidia's board member who deals with AI.

As the only other Dutch speaker, I was above average in my interest in Ms. Van Huffelen, and Google learned that she had a typical resume for a Dutch administrator: having been an alderman (sustainability in Rotterdam), director of a semi-governmental body (GVB in Amsterdam) and as State Secretary of Finance, she had inherited the Supplement affair, from which it is difficult to judge from a distance how adequately she had handled this painful dossier.

Nothing wrong with that, I thought, in the spirit of Ted Lasso, stay positive! After all, with the Supplements affair still in the back of her mind, hopefully she had taken a ride in Singapore on the phenomenal subway (clean, fast, cheap and safe, only resembles the GVB subway from very distant places because it is also transportation on rails) and would surely show some humility and modesty? So I expected and hoped, but nothing could be further from the truth. The state, which for incomprehensible reasons is heralded abroad as Minister of Kingdom Relations and Digitalization, went in with a straight leg almost from the kickoff.

Strategic action plan

For those with a strong stomach, the entire session can be watched back here, but the gist is that Van Huffelen sees mostly threats in AI and noted disappointment at the very beginning that nothing more has been heard of the idea of stopping AI development for six months. This is especially strange because the Dutch cabinet produced a policy paper as early as 2019 under state secretary Keijzer of EZ, which mostly sang the praises of AI. Participating in that cabinet was D66, Van Huffelen's party, and she even joined it as state secretary in 2020. There is a NL AI Coalition(NL AIC), in which government, business and knowledge institutions work together, and there is an AINed foundation that may spend 204.5 million Euros of government money to stimulate AI in the Netherlands.

In 2019, a policymaker thought a baby wearing VR glasses from Lidl had something to do with AI

Van Huffelen did not say a word about this and pretended that AI is viewed exclusively with a critical eye in the Netherlands. Her substantive contribution can be summarized as a series of clichés that the citizen comes first (gosh) and should not be forgotten (boy) and that there is more to life than making a profit; the latter she must have learned from the tens of thousands of victims of the Supplements affair.

For me, the moment at the very beginning was crucial, when it became apparent that Van Huffelen is either particularly ignorant or particularly underhanded. A combination of the two I would not rule out after her performance. After 1 minute 50, Van Huffelen literally said:

" We have seen many problems with AI, I have seen that in my country, even the AI that the government used turned out to be very biased."

state secretary Alexandra van Huffelen

Excuse me, to dismiss the Supplements affair, which has ruined the lives of tens of thousands of people, in which over 2,000 children were placed out of their homes and on which the cabinet fell in which Van Huffelen, nota bene, was himself responsible for this dossier, as a result of AI, is downright disgraceful.

Therefore, this brief refresher for Ms. Van Huffelen, who seems to have no active memory of the Supplements affair:

  • until 2019, dual citizenship was a selection rule in the Tax Department. That is a policy decision made by *people*. These victims were extra checked, for years, without knowing it, and could not appeal the inclusion in this group of extra checked. This was Kafka for anyone with a foreign last name.
  • The Personal Data Authority concluded that the Tax Authority's processing was "unlawful, discriminatory and therefore improper" which constituted a serious violation of the AVG. The Dutch Tax Authority itself violated Dutch law! (It is therefore downright bizarre that as recently as January 17 of this year, this article was published on the Belastingdienst's site, reporting that everything went perfectly by the book).
  • Officials at the top of the Inland Revenue stopped benefits from people even though they knew they were entitled to them. Up to the highest level, it was decided to continue this unlawful approach for years .
  • Inland Revenue officials demanded punishment for executives, but none were punished.

In short, the Surcharge Affair is an accumulation of wrong and evil policy instructions. It has nothing, but nothing, to do with AI. Because AI is precisely about machine learning, computer programs that get smarter as more data is added to them. Whether the Surcharge Affair was in part due to institutional racism or racial profiling I leave to sociologists and activists, but in any case it was "just" the work of incompetent and scummy people.

Ms. Van Huffelen apparently wanted to score with party colleagues tens of thousands of miles away. Perhaps the next D66 newsletter will contain a glowing passage about how their state lectured the big bad Microsoft. In any case, it will be bonus points in certain circles if Van Huffelen aspires to a job in Brussels and wants to further profile herself as a fighter for civil rights against tech capitalism. After all, she certainly wanted to profile herself.

Ready steward at the Evening Walk

Each speaker received in advance an explanation of the dress code, "business casual (for gentlemen: suit, no tie). I don't know what her letter said, but I'm sure it wasn't "ready steward at the Evening Four. Van Huffelen's yellow dress and particularly ungainly appearance by Asian standards stood out more than her substantive contribution.

If someone in Asia makes a comment on a panel with which you disagree, you don't say, especially as a representative of a country, 'that is not true.' Then you say, for example, 'I have a different viewpoint.' Or: 'another way of looking at this, is xyz'. In the audience, people wondered aloud whether Van Huffelen was wearing a beach dress and whether she had confused her islands, because 'the yellow of Cory Aquino was in the Philippines, not Singapore.' An ill-mannered Dame Edna is not what you want to portray as the Netherlands in one of the largest global markets.

The most embarrassing moment, although I wonder if Ms. Van Huffelen caught it, was when a real minister, Josephine Teo of Singapore's Ministry of Communications and Information, announced the creation of the AI Verify Foundation. Not a policy paper without clear goals, but a foundation in which business and government jointly establish tests that companies and governments worldwide can use to test AI applications. Teo emphasized that AI is so important especially for small countries like Singapore because it can increase a country's efficiency and production without additional human labor. No question.

Quantum computing near, threatens cryptography

There were more interesting announcements at the Asian Tech Summit. First, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat reported the creation of the National Quantum-Safe Network Plus (NQSN+). That's a mouthful and requires some explanation, this site reports:

'The National Quantum-Safe Network (NQSN+) focuses on establishing a national platform and testbed for a systematic build-out of quantum-safe communication technologies, by evaluating security and demonstrating the integration of quantum-safe applications, best practices and use cases.

The main goal is to deploy commercial quantum-secure technologies for trials with government agencies and private companies; to conduct in-depth evaluations of security systems; and to develop guidelines to support companies in adopting such technologies.'

Singapore aims to secure the crucial banking sector for the long term, hence the creation of this quantum-secure network. Indeed, the importance of quantum computing will grow rapidly in the coming years. The most engaging moment during the panel I participated in, on the future of Web 3.0, was when IBM Fellow Ray Harishankar explained (starting at 25.30) why quantum computing is crossing the path of the modern Internet and will be able to retroactively crack current cryptography.

Harishankar expects that between 2030 and 2035 quantum computers suitable for specific applications will become available. His message is as simple as it is ominous: to be ready for quantum computing in 2030, organizations must have their cryptography in order now because no password will soon be safe.

Singapore is collaborating on security and standardization with South Korea, which last month announced as much as $2.6 billion dollars to invest in quantum technology research. I already can't wait to hear what Secretary of State Van Huffelen has against quantum technology. 

Apple Vision Pro better device than expected, but for what?

What woman spends $3499 on ski goggles that mess up heur hair?

Apple finally announced the Apple Vision Pro, the first step toward a completely new form of computing. Marques Brownlee explained in this particularly good video what the Vision Pro excels at and where the challenges lie for Apple. I was surprised that the introductory price is still $500 higher than expected: $3499 is not the price buster of the month. For that, though, the Vision Pro is packed with high-quality sensors.

As an Apple fanboy, I was pleasantly surprised by the all-new interface: nothing keyboard and mouse, but delicate eye-tracking. Look at something and the glasses see it. Blinking becomes the new buying 😉 Even though it will probably take a decade for Apple headsets to generate a significant portion (more than 10%) of sales, it's great to see that Apple is finally trying something big and hard again and not spending billions on stock buybacks.

Zuckerberg responds

Mark Zuckerberg was smart enough to take extensive time (nearly 3 hours!) right after Apple's announcement to comment with Lex Fridman. He had a strong argument that the Apple Vision Pro seems to be made for solitary use and not for communication with others. For the Apple Vision Pro and its successors, that indeed seems like the next step, as users of the iPhone but even the Apple Watch use their devices primarily to communicate, in the case of the Apple Watch as a receiver.

The complete integration of the Apple ecosystem between Mac, iPhone, Apple watch and Vision Pro will be fascinating to follow. Over the next few years, it will be interesting to see what applications Apple develops to try to make the Vision Pro a mass-market product. I remain convinced that the biggest obstacle will be getting women excited about putting on a device that messes up their hair and makeup. Then the utility or fun of an Apple Vision Pro would have to be enormous.

Zuckerberg himself, meanwhile, has the greatest possible difficulty motivating and enthusing his people. The Washington Post reported that even before the latest round of layoffs in May, which brought the total number of layoffs at Meta to as many as 21,000 jobs, confidence in his leadership among staff had fallen to 26%. Even for a Dutch politician, that would be pathetically low.

Notable links

First, two reading tips for any person interested in AI and for "Minister" Van Huffelen:

  • Why AI will save the world. Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, particularly successful as an investor this century, explains in a lucid speech why AI has mostly positive aspects.

Further:

  • Interesting video in which Twitter founder Ev Williams talks about how he feels about Twitter under Elon Musk. An interview that gives the impression that the demise of his brainchild really hurts him.

Spotlight 9: The SEC goes wild on crypto exchanges

Sleepless week on stock markets, except for crypto exchanges

It was a soporific week in the stock markets, with the old school S&P 500 outperforming the tech funds. All the negativity about Bitcoin was apparently already priced in, as BTC barely dropped amid all the uproar over the announcement that the U.S. SEC has filed charges against Binance.

Last year I wrote about Binance's lack of commitment to combating money laundering. More surprising is the charge against Coinbase that the company sold shares without having the necessary licenses. In doing so, the SEC takes the position that at least some cryptocurrencies should be considered shares.

At the same time, it is not conclusively established that the SEC has the authority to pursue charges if elected representatives of the people are drafting legislation in the area the SEC is just now moving into. Former Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Casey, now the editorial boss at Coindesk, wrote a comprehensive analysis of the legal battle unfolding in the U.S. at the intersection of crypto and politics.

The shadow that the FTX debacle cast over the crypto sector has global repercussions. Also in Singapore, where unlike the Netherlands, failures do have consequences. Employees of sovereign wealth fund Temasek who invested in FTX and lost $275 million dollars (still less than one percent of invested assets) saw their salaries cut.

How much was not disclosed, but although investigations showed that all procedures had been followed, the fraud and theft by Bankman-Fried and consorts, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund managers was severely punished. I find this heavily punished, because in the end Bankman-Fried simply stole from his investors and customers, but maybe I am too Dutch and used to incompetent souls rolling from one cabinet to another.