Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Trump temporarily exempts iPhonesand laptops from the 125% China
tariffs Amid market turmoil.
New AI compression methods could allowGPT style models to eventually run on
consumer grade hardware, and Meta startsa federal antitrust trial that could lead
to a potential breakup of the company.
(00:24):
Welcome to Hashtag Trending.
I'm your host, Jim Love.
Let's get into it.
President Donald Trump has temporarilyexempted smartphones and computers,
including apple's, iPhones, and MacBooksfrom a sweeping 125% tariff on Chinese
imports following market backlashand fears of a global recession.
(00:45):
The exemption announced lateFriday by US Customs and Border
Protection and formalized in aWhite House Memorandum on Saturday
applies retroactively to April 5th.
It also covers key electroniccomponents such as semiconductors
and flat panel displays.
The move is seen as a reprieve fortech companies like Apple, which
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assembles the majority of its productsin China, although the company is
scrambling to move production to India.
Despite the exemption commerce,secretary Howard Lutnick clarified
that it's only temporary.
He indicated that future semiconductorspecific tariffs will encompass these
electronics, suggesting that smartphonesand laptops may soon face additional
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duties under national securityand semiconductor related tariffs.
The initial announcement of the125% tariff had sparked concerns
of significant price hikes forconsumer electronics and potential
disruptions to global supply chains.
Apple, for instance, had been urgentlyflying shipments of iPhones into the us.
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To avoid the tariffs with analystspredicting that the price of an iPhone
16 Pro Max two fifty six gigabytephone could jump by $350 US, or 29%
to $1,549 US due to the tariffs.
While the temporary exemptionprovides short-term relief, the
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administration's broader trade strategycontinues to, let's say, evolve.
President Trump emphasized the existing20% tariffs related to fentanyl.
Concerns will still apply anddenied any formal tariff exemption.
As an understatement, the situationremains fluid with the administration
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signaling that electronics couldsoon be subject to new tariffs
under different classifications.
Some have suggested those could be ashigh as 54%, but realistically nobody
is certain what's going to happen.
Researchers from MIT,Kaus, ista, and Yandex.
All major institutions from aroundthe world have unveiled a breakthrough
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in compressing large languagemodels, potentially enabling them
to run on everyday consumer hardwarewithout major performance loss.
The new method is called zero quant Vtwo, and it's a quantization technique
that reduces the memory footprintof large language models by lowering
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the precision of the weights andactivations within the neural network.
Now this approach reportedly slashesmemory usage by up to 50% while retaining
over 95% of the model's originalaccuracy on standard benchmarks.
Unlike many compression techniques thatrequire retraining or specialized tuning
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zero quant V two is training free andplug and play designed to work out of
the box across a range of architectures,including Lama, and GPT style models.
.This development could significantly
lower the barrier to running powerful
language models on consumer gradeGPUs, or maybe even edge devices, or
potentially even phones, including setupswithout high-end cloud infrastructure
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or enterprise grade compute.
That opens the door for smallercompanies, researchers, and
even individual developers towork with advanced AI locally.
As large language models grow morepowerful, so do their hardware
demands, but Zero Quad V two representsanother step towards democratizing
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access to ai, bringing capabilitiesonce limited to data centers, into
reach for low resource environments.
The method could also reduce costsand latency for AI applications at
the edge, particularly in privacysensitive or offline scenarios.
the Federal Trade Commission's antitrustTrial against Meta Platforms Inc. Has
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commenced on April 14th in Washington Dc.
This trial follows a nearly six yearinvestigation into whether meta's
acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 andWhatsApp in 2014 were strategic moves
to eliminate competition and maintainmonopoly power in the social media market.
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The FTC alleges that Meta employeda buy or bury strategy acquiring
potential competitors to neutralizethreats to its dominance.
Evidence includes internalcommunications such as a 2012 email
from CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressingthat purchasing Instagram would
neutralize a potential competitor.
Meta contends that its acquisitionshave benefited consumers by enhancing
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the services that the social medialandscape remains competitive,
and he cites platforms like TikTokand YouTube as significant rivals.
The company argues that the FTCscase relies on a narrow definition
of the social media market.
The trial is expected to last severalweeks with key witnesses, including
Mark Zuckerberg, former COO, CherylSandberg and Instagram head, Adam Moser.
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Should the court find Meta in violationof antitrust laws, remedies could include
the divestiture of Instagram and whatsAppmarking a significant shift in the
regulation of technology conglomerates.
The wild card in this situationcould be Donald Trump himself
in his first term as president.
Trump threatened to put Zuckerbergin jail by being offended by
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his treatment on Facebook.
In Trump's second term, Zuckerberghas tried to mend fences.
He donated $1 million to Trump'sinauguration, and he settled a
lawsuit that Trump had filed againsthim by paying Trump $25 million.
I. But if Trump plans tointervene, he has not yet told
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the head of the F-T-C-F-T-C chair.
Andrew Ferguson said his lawyersare raring to go against Meta.
He's also said that he would obeylawful orders from the president.
As always, what happensnext is anybody's guess.
And that's our show.
No shortage of suspense.
But don't keep us in suspense.
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Tell us what you think.
Write me at editorial@technewsday.ca.
You can find me on LinkedIn and ifyou're on YouTube watching this,
just put a comment under the video.
And if you wanna support our show, why notgo to buy me a coffee.com/tech podcast.
That's buy me a coffee.com/techpodcast for the price of a cup of
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coffee per month after tariffs.
You can help us pay the bills.
I'm your host, Jim Love.
Have a marvelous Monday.
I.