☁️ 💪 💾 , Contoso
Texas
Joined August 2010
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Think like an economist
Talk like an accountant
Act like a technologist
@dineshsingh2004 That a decade ago I think burned into my brain somehow.
Confirmed: No one wants a Diet ASIC/XPU.
Daishin Securities
CSPs and AI labs: CSPs and AI labs had requested the development of lower-stack HBM products, such as 4-high and 6-high configurations, for use in low-end inference products. Those plans now appear to have been shelved, with 8-high once again emerging as the minimum stack height.
NVIDIA: Rubin’s specifications have changed amid base die supply constraints and requests from customers prioritizing bandwidth over cost efficiency. The original plan called for a mix of 8-high and 12-high HBM, but the 8-high option appears to have been dropped. For Rubin Ultra, scheduled for release in 2027, multiple architectural variants are currently undergoing tape-out. Initial versions are expected to use the highest-specification 8-high HBM4, while subsequent versions are expected to adopt either 8-high or 12-high HBM4E.
AMD: AMD is expected to use a mix of 8-high and 12-high HBM4 in its 2027 products. One notable development is the upcoming MI450, which is expected to increase the number of HBM stacks within the CoWoS package to 12, delivering 288GB of HBM4. The increase from eight to 12 HBM stacks per CoWoS package is a positive development for HBM content over the medium to long term.
OpenAI and Anthropic: OpenAI is expected to adopt 12-high HBM4, while Anthropic is expected to use 8-high HBM4.
⍼ John Nicholson ⍼ retweeted
ACR off via your preferences menu on samsung TVs should not be assumed to actually disable ACR telemetry.
i’ve found several instances where the checks (whether deliberate or not) are either incorrectly implemented or not checked at all.
full report coming.
for journalists: it’s great you’re reporting on this but i’d ask you to send me a dm requesting access to the full report so you’re not making inferences from my decompilation session that isn’t supported by evidence.
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
xitter.cf/log4j/status/211376224…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/chart-of-t…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/new…
⍼ John Nicholson ⍼ retweeted
> The revoked intermediates themselves have no customer impact. They never issued a certificate, so no certificate in use anywhere relied on them.
This is a listed company whose business is digital signatures, completely missing the point. 🤦♂️
Everyone who either had emudhra's certs in their trust store or communicates with such entities who had that, is impacted - not just emudhra "customers". Because many web browsers, operating systems, and cloud provides included these, almost everyone in the world is impacted.
Cloudflare explains the seriousness of the problem:
Global TLS Intermediate CA incident: We’ve updated our incident page with how it happened, who is affected (one US customer ecosystem), what’s not affected, and what we’re putting in place. We will publish the root cause once our investigation is complete.
👉emudhra.com/en/post/certific…
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
eMudhra minimizes the scope by claiming only "one US customer ecosystem" is affected. In reality, 8 of its CA certificates had catastrophically weak private keys (one being simply the number 4), allowing anyone to forge trusted HTTPS certificates for any website on the internet.blog.google/security/prote…
This is just tax fraud (529 can’t have a repayment) on top of an unenforceable contract (signed under 18), being carried out by a member OF the bar…
SARAH: I'm 30. My parents set up a 529 plan for my education. I used it for undergrad and grad school. A year and a half after I graduated they sent me a promissory note I apparently signed as a teenager and told me I owe them $114,000.
GEORGE KAMEL: $114,000. Was that what they put in or the balance of the account?
SARAH: the balance. With compound growth.
JADE WARSHAW: so they want you to repay the interest their investment earned. Money that cost them nothing.
GEORGE KAMEL: did you know this was a loan?
SARAH: I had no idea. My dad is a lawyer. He had me sign it before I fully understood what I was signing.
JADE WARSHAW: Sarah I want to name what happened here. There was a significant imbalance of knowledge and power. A lawyer father. A piece of paper slid across a table. A teenager who trusted him. You didn't sign a loan agreement. You signed something you didn't understand because you trusted the person giving it to you.
GEORGE KAMEL: for tomorrow's conversation. Lead with honesty. Tell them you had no idea. That if you had understood you would never have signed it. That you are grateful for what they did. And that you're asking them to forgive it because a 529 is meant for education.
SARAH: I don't want to seem ungrateful.
JADE WARSHAW: you're not ungrateful. You're blindsided. Say that. Tell them how it made you feel before you talk about the money.
GEORGE KAMEL: and Sarah. Get your own attorney. Find out if this actually holds up. Because I don't think any court would require you to repay compound growth on a gift account.
SARAH: I'm mostly hurt.
JADE WARSHAW: of course you are.
A father spent decades building a daughter's future with a 529 plan.
Then handed her a bill for it a year and a half after she graduated.
The money was never the point.
The relationship is.
And somewhere between a promissory note and a teenage signature he turned a gift into a transaction.
That part can't be undone.
But how the conversation goes tomorrow
can decide what's left of everything else.
New Release of:
github.com/vmware/vcf-readin…
1. Major improvements in @Lenovo converage (Security scanning beefed up a lot).
2. Improved UI elements.
⍼ John Nicholson ⍼ retweeted
@VMware (by @Broadcom) #HybridCloud #VCF - Part 1: Cybersecurity Awareness - VCF Security & Resilience: Starting at the Beginning (by @plankers, @Lost_Signal) @VMwareVCF @vExpert #vExpertVCF dy.si/KUuxZb
⍼ John Nicholson ⍼ retweeted
@VMware (by @Broadcom) #HybridCloud #VCF - Confidential Computing: Who Can See Your VM’s Memory?, with @plankers and Nick Ford (by @virtspeaking - @vPedroArrow & @Lost_Signal) @VMwareVCF #vExpertVCF @vExpert dy.si/Pzdbc
No @Lenovo
/redfish/v1/Systems/1/Storage/controller_slot25 (ThinkSystem M.2 RAID B545i-2i SATA/NVMe Enablement Kit)
Shoudl not return 4 drives lol. There are 2 drive bays.
Late night John vs. the Redfish standard.
⍼ John Nicholson ⍼ retweeted
There is nothing to worry about.
Nothing important is run on PHP or old software—except the water & electrical grid, a few government services like our missile defense systems and a handful of electrified fences at the zoo (for the lions, tigers and cobras).
No @Lenovo
/redfish/v1/Systems/1/Storage/controller_slot25 (ThinkSystem M.2 RAID B545i-2i SATA/NVMe Enablement Kit)
Shoudl not return 4 drives lol. There are 2 drive bays.
Late night John vs. the Redfish standard.
Boo this man.
Ken Griffin of Citadel questions the economics of the AI infrastructure boom:
›What happens when GPU supply exceeds demand & pricing goes into free fall?
›Are today's semiconductor margins sustainable? Are investors overestimating the useful life of GPUs?
“Look, I think this market is actually experiencing people doing research.
For the couple of years, if you were on the thematic program of we're gonna spend hundreds of billions or a trillion dollars in data centers, we're gonna build compute at a scale never seen before, which companies in that story are choke points in supply chains that will have abnormally high margins? And who will be the big winners in this transformation?
Will it be the Microsofts & AWSs who will be the gatekeepers to the foundational models? Like, who's going to earn the economic rents?
But in some sense, like, 'I'm just gonna buy them all. I'm gonna buy the hyperscalers, I'm gonna buy the chip, I'm gonna buy businesses that make things I've never even heard of 5 years ago in Korea and Taiwan & in Japan.'
And now we're reaching a point where people are becoming more discerning.
We do realize that we are seeing extremely high margins in DRAM & MLCCs in areas where there are real supply constraints, but people are now starting to look out 2 years, 3 years. How long is this going to last?
And in particular, I don't wanna be doom & gloom, but GPUs, like airlines, have a very low marginal cost to run.
The incremental seat on an airline that's not full, if you can sell that ticket for $20, you're making money in that seat.
And that's one of the reasons that the airline industry is such a nightmare, is because the moment you have overcapacity, pricing goes into free fall.
We saw this actually with the telecom build-out back in 2000. We built more fiber than we had demand for, & the price of telecommunications just went straight down.
If we reach a point where the provisioning of GPUs exceeds demand for GPUs, marginal pricing will actually go into free fall.
And that really upends all the investment assumptions that people are working with today.
That's issue number one.
And issue number 2 is:
I think people are taking a step back & saying, 'What is the useful life of a GPU?'
Right here, right now, there's people that are earning extraordinary pricing on GPUs that are 5 or 6 years old.
And so there's a growing set of concerns that I can't give the same capitalization rate or the same revenue models to year 7, 8, 9 of a chip in the future that maybe I was using 12 months ago.
So I think we're really grappling with just how far will this demand carry us in the marketplace.”
⍼ John Nicholson ⍼ retweeted
Yes, the real problem is not that Emudhra absolutely screwed the pooch, but that people on the internet made fun of them for it. They’re the victims here.
⍼ John Nicholson ⍼ retweeted
eMudhra CVE checklist
Ubuntu: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
Apple: settings -> general -> software update
Windows: power off -> throw it out, switch to Linux
On one hand we have everyone competent saying we are in compute under supply and it’s getting worse.
On the other side this week we have FT and Gartner.
Which way do you go.
JPMorgan just dropped an ABSOLUTELY INSANE forecast for AI compute.
According to JPMorgan, global AI compute demand is expected to reach roughly 530 GW by 2031, while available supply is projected to reach just 250 GW. That leaves us with a staggering 280 GW shortfall, even after the industry spends hundreds of billions of dollars expanding capacity. We're talking about global AI compute supply potentially QUADRUPLING between 2025 and 2031, yet the shortage is expected to get even WORSE. In fact, JPMorgan estimates the gap between supply and demand could expand from roughly 50 GW today to nearly 280 GW by 2031.
And here's why this matters so much. When demand consistently outpaces supply, the companies controlling scarce compute capacity gain enormous pricing power. This is especially important for neoclouds like $NBIS and $CRWV, which are building out GPU infrastructure to serve customers that simply cannot secure enough compute capacity through traditional hyperscalers. If JPMorgan's projections are even remotely accurate, GPU rental pricing could remain stronger for much longer than investors currently expect, supporting higher utilization rates, long term contracts, and potentially stronger returns on deployed infrastructure. But the opportunity extends FAR beyond neoclouds. Companies like $NVDA and $AMD benefit from the continued need for accelerators, memory manufacturers like $MU benefit from increasing demand for high-bandwidth memory, and networking, storage, power, and cooling providers all become increasingly important as the industry attempts to close this gap.
And this is where I think the market is making a BIG mistake. Investors are so focused on whether AI companies are spending TOO MUCH money that they're overlooking the possibility that the industry STILL isn't spending enough to satisfy future demand. The real constraint isn't necessarily a lack of customers willing to pay for compute. It's the ability to manufacture enough chips, secure enough electricity, build data centers fast enough, and actually bring that capacity online. And that is EXACTLY why I continue to believe the biggest winners in AI won't necessarily be the companies building the models, but the companies supplying the infrastructure required to run them.
