Chipocalypse Now: Processor Design Flaw Affects Billions of Devices
Intel and other chipmakers are in the hot seat after a major flaw was revealed in processors used in billions of devices. Russell Brandom, Reporter at The Verge, was with us to break down the latest developments in the cybersecurity scare.
After taking a backseat following news of chip design flaws that impacted billions of devices, Apple has finally spoken up, revealing all Mac systems and iOS devices are affected. Most big tech companies, including Google and Amazon, responded promptly to the security threat. Brandom says disclosure about these kind of issues is tricky, but adds that companies must have fixes for the flaws when they make the official announcement in order to prevent attackers from compromising the devices.
Brandom says the biggest impact of the flaw won't be seen on your phone or laptop. He’s most worried about the impact on cloud services like AWS and Google Cloud.
The gaming industry has been under the spotlight so far this year following some big mergers and acquisitions. This week featured earnings of three major gaming companies, but also Meta and for the latter, things are not doing too hot. Joining Cheddar News to break it all down was Kenny Rosenblatt, President and Co-Founder of Arkadium.
While it was a volatile week in tech as Meta experienced the biggest one-day drop in the history of the U.S. stock market, industry giant Amazon reported 40 percent growth — largely on the strength of the cloud. Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, joined Cheddar News to break down how the e-commerce company stock managed to pop despite headwinds against its core retail business. "It's all about cloud because of sum of the parts, you could argue, amazon could be $3,500/$4,000 stock just based on cloud," he said. Ives also addressed the apparent the differing impact of Apple iOS changes on Facebook and Snapchat.
Following Ford's earnings miss, the stock price dropped despite a bullish outlook from the auto giant. Karl Brauer, an executive analyst with ISeeCars.com, joined Cheddar to break down why investors may not be sold on the carmaker because of the ongoing factor of supply constraints. "The product is not an issue. There's really good product coming from them, including the electric vehicle side, and the demand is not an issue. There's plenty of demand, but nobody really has a solid grasp on when we're going to get past the supply chain issue," said Brauer.
Image-sharing app Pinterest reported big beats on its Q4 earnings for the top and bottom lines. The social platform surprised investors after seeing a decline in users while earnings and revenue were much higher than expected.
