Skip to main content

Apple Reportedly Agreed to Intel Chips To Avoid White House Tariffs

1 month 2 weeks ago
According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Apple agreed to use Intel's U.S. chipmaking plants after White House officials pressured Tim Cook during tariff-relief talks last summer. MacRumors reports: In August 2025, Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Washington to lobby the Trump administration to drop its proposed 100 percent tariff on semiconductor imports -- a levy that would have raised costs across Apple's product line. Apple reportedly secured an exemption after pledging to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S., although many of those investments were already planned. During the meetings, president Trump and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick are said to have urged Cook to use Intel's fabrication plants to make some of Apple's chips. The link between the tariff talks and the Apple-Intel deal had not been previously reported. Almost a year later, Trump announced via his Truth Social platform that Apple would begin using Intel-made chips in some products. "We need to design and build our Chips right here in America," the president posted. The news sent Intel shares to record highs. According to a person familiar with the negotiations cited by the WSJ, Apple plans to have Intel make chips for both Mac laptops and iPhones. The report doesn't say which chips or in what volume, and Apple is expected to remain reliant on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, for the majority of its custom silicon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BeauHD

Cloudflare Precursor Watches Your Mouse and Keyboard To Decide If You Are Human

1 month 2 weeks ago
BrianFagioli writes: Cloudflare has launched Precursor, a new behavioral bot detection system that monitors mouse movement, typing cadence, scrolling, clipboard activity, page visibility, and other signals across an entire browsing session. The system is designed to catch advanced bots that can run JavaScript, use real browsers, and pass traditional CAPTCHA challenges. Cloudflare says Precursor does not record actual keystrokes and instead studies timing and rhythm. The company also says the data is not tied to user identities or persistent profiles. Even so, software that watches how people move and type throughout a visit raises privacy concerns, especially as Cloudflare claims bots now generate roughly 57 percent of all Internet requests.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BeauHD