Good Morning! The LA Sheriff's Department started 2025 with an unexpected Y2K flashback as their legacy dispatch system crashed, forcing a return to paper logs and radio calls. Over in Hollywood, director Jon M. Chu is putting Apple Vision Pro through its paces, using the $3,499 headset for virtual screening rooms and remote VFX reviews on Wicked. Meanwhile, major AI players like xAI and Anthropic are hitting scaling walls with their next-gen models, suggesting we might be reaching the limits of brute-force AI development.

— Forrest Knight & Meghanadh Vasireddy

LASD's Y2K-Style Bug: Legacy CAD System Fails on New Year's

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) kicked off 2025 with an unexpected throwback to Y2K-era tech problems. Their Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system crashed as the calendar turned, forcing the nation's largest sheriff's department to revert to manual operations.

The system failure stems from a critical date-handling limitation in their legacy CAD infrastructure. Key issues include:

• Single-point-of-failure architecture maintained by just one programmer (now retired)

• System reportedly "thinks it's July 2003" and won't interface with other department systems

• Warning signs dated back to 2003 about the system's inability to handle 2025

Deputies are now operating via radio dispatch and paper logs, reminiscent of 1980s procedures. While 911 systems remain functional, the department lacks modern dispatch capabilities and data collection tools. This situation highlights the critical risks of maintaining legacy systems without proper succession planning or modernization strategies.

Industry Takeaway: This incident serves as a stark reminder for tech professionals about the importance of systematic legacy system modernization and the often-overlooked risks of date-handling in older software. It's Y2K all over again, just two decades later.

Apple Vision Pro Takes Hollywood: Behind the VFX of 'Wicked'

While Apple Vision Pro's $3,499 price tag might raise eyebrows, director Jon M. Chu's innovative use of the spatial computing headset during Wicked's post-production demonstrates its potential in professional creative workflows. The mixed-reality device is proving particularly valuable in high-end video production, where remote collaboration and precise visual feedback are crucial.

In a groundbreaking implementation, Chu leveraged Vision Pro's spatial computing capabilities to:

• Transform his home into a virtual screening room with displays larger than traditional studio monitors

• Facilitate real-time collaboration with VFX teams across multiple continents

• Enable intuitive interaction with footage through gesture controls, including direct annotation and zoom functionality for detailed VFX review (e.g., "this ear looks weird on the goat")

Technical Impact: The three-dimensional interface, controlled through eye tracking, hand gestures, and voice commands, effectively bridges the gap between traditional post-production tools and immersive spatial computing. This workflow suggests potential applications in other technical fields where precise visual feedback and remote collaboration are essential, from architectural visualization to engineering design reviews.

The film is now available on the Apple TV app, featuring 3D optimization for Vision Pro users.

AI Model Scaling Hits Speedbumps

The AI industry is facing an interesting challenge as we enter 2025: scaling limitations. While throwing more compute power and data at AI models was previously a reliable strategy for improvement, recent developments suggest we might be approaching diminishing returns.

Major AI players are experiencing unexpected delays in their flagship model launches:

• xAI's Grok 3: Missed its end-of-2024 deadline despite access to 100,000 H100 GPUs

• Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Opus: Scrapped after completion, citing economic concerns

• Google and OpenAI: Reportedly facing setbacks with their next-gen models

Technical Implications: The pattern suggests we're hitting the limits of conventional scaling laws in AI development. While previous generations saw significant performance jumps through increased computing power and larger datasets, the gains are diminishing. This has led companies to explore alternative approaches beyond the "bigger is better" methodology.

Industry Impact: This trend could mark a pivotal moment in AI development, pushing the field toward more innovative training techniques. For developers and researchers, it highlights the need to focus on architectural innovations and novel training approaches rather than relying solely on computational scaling.

🔥 More Notes

• Nvidia Earns 2024’s Biggest Gain in Market Cap Amid AI Boom

• Other World Computing (OWC) Names Matt Dargis as Chief Revenue Officer

• Siri “unintentionally” recorded private convos; Apple agrees to pay $95M

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