Archive for September 23, 2024

Monday, September 23, 2024

Sequoia’s spctl and csrutil

Rich Trouton:

On macOS Sequoia, running the [sudo spctl –global-disable] command to disable Gatekeeper produces the following output:

Globally disabling the assessment system needs to be confirmed in System Settings.

This seems to be an intentional change—security through preventing automation.

Jeff Johnson (Mastodon):

Today I learned that I can no longer change the startup security policy or disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) on any of the boot volumes.

[…]

When I open Terminal app in the recovery volume and enter csrutil disable to disable SIP, I get the following error:

csrutil: Failed to update security configuration for "Sequoia": Failed to create paired recovery local policy

I’m not sure what’s happening here. It seems like installing Sequoia changed something in his Mac’s firmware so that csrutil no longer works with previous macOS versions, either.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-25): Rich Trouton:

Now that the spctl tool can no longer separately manage Gatekeeper, management profiles are the best way to manage Gatekeeper on macOS Sequoia. For more details, please see below the jump.

ISO8601DateFormatter and Fractional Seconds

Toomas Vahter:

DateFormatter is used for converting string representation of date and time to a Date type and visa-versa. Something to be aware of is that the conversion loses microseconds precision. This is extremely important if we use these Date values for sorting and therefore ending up with incorrect order. Let’s consider an iOS app which uses API for fetching a list of items and each of the item contains a timestamp used for sorting the list. Often, these timestamps have the ISO8601 format like 2024-09-21T10:32:32.113123Z. Foundation framework has a dedicated formatter for parsing these strings: ISO8601DateFormatter.

[…]

Fortunately this can be fixed by manually parsing microseconds and adding the missing precision to the converted Date value.

.withFractionalSeconds only preserves three digits. Cocoa trivia: NSISO8601DateFormatter is an NSFormatter, not an NSDateFormatter.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-25): calicoding:

ISO8601DateFormatter also isn’t Sendable (but DateFormatter is) 🫠. Makes it difficult to declare a shared instance for parsing dates from and API on a background thread.

See also: Ole Begemann.

Intel Foundry

Ben Thompson:

Stratechery has, from the beginning, operated with a great degree of reverence for tech history; perhaps that’s why I’ve always been a part of the camp cheering for Intel to succeed. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that the need for cheerleading has been clear for as long as I have written this blog: in May 2013 I wrote that Intel needed to build out a foundry business, as the economics of their IDM business, given their mobile miss, faced long-term challenges.

Unfortunately not only did Intel not listen, but their business got a lot worse: in the late 2010’s Intel got stuck trying to move to 10nm, thanks in part to their reluctance to embrace the vastly more expensive EUV lithography process, handing the performance crown to TSMC.

[…]

Intel’s is technically on pace to achieve the five nodes in four years Gelsinger promised (in truth two of those nodes were iterations), but they haven’t truly scaled any of them; the first attempt to do so, with Intel 3, destroyed their margins. This isn’t a surprise: the reason why it is hard to skip steps is not just because technology advances, but because you have to actually learn on the line how to implement new technology at scale, with sustainable yield. Go back to Intel’s 10nm failure: the company could technically make a 10nm chip, they just couldn’t do so economically; there are now open questions about Intel 3, much less next year’s promised 18A.

CNBC (via Hacker News):

Intel said it’s creating a separate entity for its foundry business, a structure that could allow it to raise outside funding.

The chipmaker has spent roughly $25 billion on the foundry business in each of the past two years.

The company’s stock has lost almost 60% of its value in 2024.

Pat Gelsinger (via Hacker News):

Specifically, Intel Foundry will produce an AI fabric chip for AWS on Intel 18A. We will also produce a custom Xeon 6 chip on Intel 3 that builds on our existing partnership, under which Intel produces Xeon Scalable processors for AWS. More broadly, we expect to have deep engagement with AWS on additional designs spanning Intel 18A, Intel 18AP and Intel 14A.

[…]

Earlier today, we also announced that Intel has been awarded up to $3B in direct funding under the CHIPS and Science Act for the U.S. government’s Secure Enclave program. This program is designed to expand the trusted manufacturing of leading-edge semiconductors for the U.S. government.

[…]

To build on our progress, we plan to establish Intel Foundry as an independent subsidiary inside of Intel. This governance structure will complete the process we initiated earlier this year when we separated the P&L and financial reporting for Intel Foundry and Intel Products.

[…]

Through our voluntary early retirement and separation offerings, we are more than halfway to our workforce reduction target of approximately 15,000 by the end of the year.

Tim Culpan (via Hacker News):

TSMC’s first Arizona chips are now in production, and Apple is ready to be the first cab off the rank with mobile processors made using the foundry’s 5nm process.

Apple’s A16 SoC, which first debuted two years ago in the iPhone 14 Pro, is currently being manufactured at Phase 1 of TSMC’s Fab 21 in Arizona in small, but significant, numbers, my sources tell me. Volume will ramp up considerably when the second stage of the Phase 1 fab is completed and production is underway, putting the Arizona project on track to hit its target for production in the first-half of 2025.

WSJ (via Hacker News):

Chip giant Qualcomm made a takeover approach to rival Intel INTC in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be one of the largest and most consequential deals in recent years.

A deal for Intel, which has a market value of roughly $90 billion, would come as the chip maker has been suffering through one of the most significant crises in its five-decade history.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-25): Richard Lawler and Sean Hollister (via Hacker News):

If a deal were made — and survived regulatory scrutiny — it would be a massive coup for Qualcomm, which reentered the desktop processor market this year as a part of Microsoft’s AI PC strategy after years of dominance in mobile processors.

Previously:

Cohost to Shut Down

cohost (via Hacker News):

We have come to the decision to cease operations of cohost and anti software software club due to lack of funding and burnout.

[…]

cohost will become read-only on Tuesday, October 1st. At this time, we will make best-effort attempts to keep the servers online through the end of 2024.

Development focus has immediately shifted to data export.

Previously: