555: It's Good to be the King

If you're going to come at the king, you better not miss; now it's Apple's turn to make everyone feel pain.

And our spicy take on why AI safety is really about stopping a movement.

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• Apple says UK could 'secretly veto' global privacy tools — Apple has attacked proposals for the UK government to pre-approve new security features introduced by tech firms.
• Apple won’t give up control of the iPhone — The EU wants to weaken Apple’s gatekeeper power, and the company is on the wrong side of history by fighting it.
• Apple’s Proposed Changes Reject the Goals of the DMA
• AI companies will need to report safety tests to US government | AP News — Chief among the 90-day goals from the order was a mandate under the Defense Production Act that AI companies share vital information with the Commerce Department, including safety tests.
• New GitHub Copilot Research Finds 'Downward Pressure On Code Quality' — "We find disconcerting trends for maintainability," explains the paper's abstract. "Code churn -- the percentage of lines that are reverted or updated less than two weeks after being authored -- is projected to double in 2024 compared to its 2021, pre-AI baseline. We further find that the percentage of 'added code' and 'copy/pasted code' is increasing in proportion to 'updated,' 'deleted,' and 'moved 'code. In this regard, AI-generated code resembles an itinerant contributor, prone to violate the DRY-ness [don't repeat yourself] of the repos visited."
• Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not - The Verge — The Apple Vision Pro is the best consumer headset anyone’s ever made — and that’s the problem.
• Apple Has Sold Approximately 200,000 Vision Pro Headsets — Apple has sold upwards of 200,000 Vision Pro headsets, MacRumors has learned from a source with knowledge of Apple's sales numbers. Apple began accepting pre-orders for the Vision Pro on January 19, so the headset has been available for purchase in the U.S. for 10 days.
• Apple Vision Pro Review — We have rounded up some of the videos below from well-known YouTube creators and reporters, including Marques Brownlee, Joanna Stern, and others.
• President Biden is preparing to announce chipmaker subsidies. — So says The Wall Street Journal in a report this morning that his administration will give “billions of dollars” to the likes of Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), both of which have started US manufacturing projects, although TSMC, at least, is behind schedule.