Skip to main content

AMD CEO Sees Chips From TSMC's US Plant Costing 5%-20% More

3 weeks 4 days ago
AMD CEO Lisa Su said that chips produced at TSMC's new Arizona plant will cost 5-20% more than those made in Taiwan, but emphasized that the premium is worth it for supply chain resilience. Bloomberg reports: AMD expects its first chips from TSMC's Arizona facilities by the end of the year, Su said. The extra expense is worth it because the company is diversifying the crucial supply of chips, Su said in an interview with Bloomberg Television following her onstage appearance. That will make the industry less prone to the type of disruptions experienced during the pandemic. "We have to consider resiliency in the supply chain," she said. "We learned that in the pandemic." TSMC's new Arizona plant is already comparable with those in Taiwan when it comes to the measure of yield -- the amount of good chips a production run produces per batch -- Su told the audience at the forum.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BeauHD

Laptop farmer behind $17M North Korean IT worker scam locked up for 8.5 years

3 weeks 4 days ago
Plus she has to cough up a slice of Pyongyang’s payday

An Arizona woman who ran a laptop farm from her home - helping North Korean IT operatives pose as US-based remote workers - has been sentenced to eight and a half years behind bars for her role in a $17 million fraud that hit more than 300 American companies.…

Jessica Lyons

Trump, Who Promised To Save TikTok, Threatens To Shut Down TikTok

3 weeks 4 days ago
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Donald Trump vowed to save TikTok before taking office, claiming only he could make a deal to keep the app operational in the US despite national security concerns. But then, he put Vice President JD Vance in charge of the deal, and after months of negotiations, the US still doesn't seem to have found terms for a sale that the Chinese government is willing to approve. Now, Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has confirmed that if China won't approve the latest version of the deal -- which could result in a buggy version of TikTok made just for the US -- the administration is willing to shut down TikTok. And soon. On Thursday, Lutnick told CNBC that TikTok would stop operating in the US if China and TikTok owner ByteDance won't sell the app to buyers that Trump lined up, along with control over TikTok's algorithm. Under the deal Trump is now pushing, "China can have a little piece or ByteDance, the current owner, can keep a little piece," Lutnick said. "But basically, Americans will have control. Americans will own the technology, and Americans will control the algorithm." However, ByteDance's board has long maintained that the US can alleviate its national security fears -- that China may be using the popular app to manipulate and spy on Americans -- without forcing a sale. In January, a ByteDance board member, Bill Ford, told World Economic Forum attendees that a non-sale option "could involve a change of control locally to ensure" TikTok "complies with US legislation" without selling off the app or its algorithm. At this point, Lutnick suggested that the US is unwilling to bend on the requirement that the US control the recommendation algorithm, which is viewed as the secret sauce that makes the app so popular globally. ByteDance may be unwilling to sell the algorithm partly because then it would be sharing its core intellectual property with competitors in the US. Earlier this month, Trump had claimed that he wasn't "confident" that China would approve the deal, even though he thought it was "good for China." Analysts have suggested that China views TikTok as a bargaining chip in its tariff negotiations with Trump, which continue to not go smoothly, and it may be OK with the deal but unwilling to release the bargaining chip without receiving key concessions from the US. For now, the US and China are enjoying a 90-day truce that could end in August, about a month before the deadline Trump set to sell TikTok in mid-September.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BeauHD

Trump promises he won't put his boot on Musk's neck

3 weeks 4 days ago
We're all businesspeople here, right?

Elon Musk could use a win after Tesla's weak second-quarter earnings, and he sort of got it when President Donald Trump proclaimed he wasn't going to use the power of the presidency to destroy his businesses. …

Brandon Vigliarolo

Google URL Shortener Links Will Stop Working Next Month

3 weeks 4 days ago
New submitter davecotter writes: So Google's staring at its old goo.gl links and thinking, "Why is this perfectly functioning service still even a thing?" After many businesses and users adopted it like it was the second coming of the way-too-long hyperlink, Google's now decided to yank the plug. Starting August 23, 2024, you'll get a flashy "don't say we didn't warn you" pop-up, and by August 25, 2025, goo.gl links (unless made by Google itself) will vanish into the 404 abyss. Translation: Thanks for trusting us -- now pack up and find a new shortener.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BeauHD