Friday, August 9, 2024

A look at the US' Chips and Science Act two years after its enactment on August 9, 2022, as the Biden administration nearly finishes divvying up $39B in grants (Mackenzie Hawkins/Bloomberg)

Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:
A look at the US' Chips and Science Act two years after its enactment on August 9, 2022, as the Biden administration nearly finishes divvying up $39B in grants  —  The Chips Program Office is tasked with overseeing one of the most ambitious manufacturing comebacks in US history



Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro bans X in the country for ten days, accusing Elon Musk of using X to promote hatred after Venezuela's disputed election (Reuters)

Reuters:
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro bans X in the country for ten days, accusing Elon Musk of using X to promote hatred after Venezuela's disputed election  —  Maduro said he signed a resolution presented by regulator Conatel which “has decided to take social network X, formerly known as Twitter, out of circulation for 10 days.”



Perplexity says its AI search engine answered ~250M queries in July vs. 500M in all of 2023; sources: Perplexity recently raised $250M at a $3B valuation (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Perplexity says its AI search engine answered ~250M queries in July vs. 500M in all of 2023; sources: Perplexity recently raised $250M at a $3B valuation  —  Artificial intelligence app boosts usage and sales despite controversy over its data-gathering techniques



Tuesday, August 6, 2024

Q&A with Intel VP Robert Hallock on the upcoming Lunar Lake chips, Intel using TSMC nodes, and how the Arm vs. x86 power debates are based on a false premise (Vaidyanathan Subramaniam/Notebookcheck)

Vaidyanathan Subramaniam / Notebookcheck:
Q&A with Intel VP Robert Hallock on the upcoming Lunar Lake chips, Intel using TSMC nodes, and how the Arm vs. x86 power debates are based on a false premise  —  With Lunar Lake all set to officially launch ahead of IFA 2024 next month, NotebookCheck had an email chat with Intel's Robert Hallock …



Google losing its US antitrust case may have major ripple effects for Apple, Amazon, and Meta, just as Microsoft's loss in 2000 influenced the Google decision (Steve Lohr/New York Times)

Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Google losing its US antitrust case may have major ripple effects for Apple, Amazon, and Meta, just as Microsoft's loss in 2000 influenced the Google decision  —  Nearly a quarter-century after Microsoft lost a similar case, a judge's decision that Google abused a monopoly in internet search is likely to have major ripple effects.



The US awards South Korea's SK Hynix an initial $450M in grants and $500M in loans to build an advanced chip packaging facility in Indiana under the CHIPS Act (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
The US awards South Korea's SK Hynix an initial $450M in grants and $500M in loans to build an advanced chip packaging facility in Indiana under the CHIPS Act  —  - Firm to get $450 million Chips Act grant, $500 million loan  — Indiana facility focused on advanced packaging, research



Monday, August 5, 2024

After failing to win concessions, ~6,500 unionized Samsung Electronics workers in South Korea, who declared an indefinite strike in July, returned to work (Jin Yu Young/New York Times)

Jin Yu Young / New York Times:
After failing to win concessions, ~6,500 unionized Samsung Electronics workers in South Korea, who declared an indefinite strike in July, returned to work  —  The indefinite strike, the first in the electronics company's history, comprised only a sliver of its labor force and lasted less than a month.



Elon Musk says Neuralink has implanted its device in a second trial patient, who had a spinal cord injury, and 400 of the implant's 1,024 electrodes are working (Rachael Levy/Reuters)

Rachael Levy / Reuters:
Elon Musk says Neuralink has implanted its device in a second trial patient, who had a spinal cord injury, and 400 of the implant's 1,024 electrodes are working  —  Neuralink has successfully implanted in a second patient its device designed to give paralyzed patients the ability …



Analysis: the vast majority of damages from July's CrowdStrike global IT outage will go uninsured; CrowdStrike reported nearly 24K enterprise customers in Q1 (Evan Gorelick/Bloomberg)

Evan Gorelick / Bloomberg:
Analysis: the vast majority of damages from July's CrowdStrike global IT outage will go uninsured; CrowdStrike reported nearly 24K enterprise customers in Q1  —  - Insured losses estimated between $300 million and $1.5 billion  — The days-long outage took a $5.4 billion toll on Fortune 500



Sunday, August 4, 2024

An investigation finds an active trade in Nvidia chips in China despite US restrictions; some Chinese orgs with state military ties have bought restricted chips (New York Times)

New York Times:
An investigation finds an active trade in Nvidia chips in China despite US restrictions; some Chinese orgs with state military ties have bought restricted chips  —  The U.S. is trying to stop China from getting Nvidia microchips to advance its military.  The private sector is fighting back.



Sources: OpenAI has a watermarking tech to detect text written by ChatGPT with 99.9% reliability, but the project launch has been mired in internal debates (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: OpenAI has a watermarking tech to detect text written by ChatGPT with 99.9% reliability, but the project launch has been mired in internal debates  —  Technology that can detect text written by artificial intelligence with 99.9% certainty has been debated internally for two years



Thoughts on first Apple Intelligence beta, which may arrive after the new iPhones launch, Apple's industrial design team leadership reshuffle, and Q3 earnings (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Thoughts on first Apple Intelligence beta, which may arrive after the new iPhones launch, Apple's industrial design team leadership reshuffle, and Q3 earnings  —  The first preview of Apple Intelligence for developers shows just how far the company has to go to live up to the hype.



A look at Jony Ive's work with LoveFrom; Ive bought a city block in SF's Jackson Square and could raise ~$1B with Sam Altman by end of 2024 for an AI device (Tripp Mickle/New York Times)

Tripp Mickle / New York Times : A look at Jony Ive's work with LoveFrom; Ive bought a city block in SF's Jackson Square and could...