The USA has been in a cold war with China over semiconductor manufacturing for the last few years, but a fresh set of rules laid down by the USA's Bureau of Industry and Security last week has made it virtually treason for US citizens to "support" Chinese semiconductor factories. Not just the latest and greatest stuff (which Taiwan's TSMC and South Korea's Samsung are in control of), but any technology that directly manufactures or supports the manufacture of relatively mainstream gear 128-layer NAND, 18nm DRAM and 16nm "logic chips with non-planar architectures". As a result, ASML has pulled all its employees with US citizenship out of China, leaving many factories in the lurch and and YMTC (who manufacture a huuuge amount of NAND) unable to make 3D NAND memory.
Meta proudly announced back in February that they hit 300,000 monthly active users in Horizon Worlds, their virtual reality/metaverse/Second Life clone we all love to make fun of. According to internal documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal, that figure plummeted to 200,000 a few months later, only 9% of worlds built by creators are ever visited by at least 50 people, men outnumber women in Horizon by two to one and most users don't return after one month of using the platform. I'm sure this has nothing to do with Meta's share price going from $320-$350 at the start of the year to the $140-$120 its hovered around the last few months.
On Friday, SpaceX formally requested the Pentagon take over funding Starlink in Ukraine, asking for US$400m to keep access going in the war zone for 12 months (the monthly RRP of every Starlink terminal). Elon then jumped on Twitter to defend the decision, saying the expectation SpaceX fund the service indefinitely with data usage "up to 100X greater than typical households" is "unreasonable" and that he is simply following the recommendation of a former Ukrainian diplomat, who told Elon to "fuck off" after old mate put up a poll suggesting Ukraine surrender to the Russians. 48 hours after asking the Pentagon for money, Elon changed his mind, tweeting "the hell with it.. even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we'll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free". Thank you Elon, you're the best, I like your memes they are very funny, great cars too. Occupy Mars lol!
Cop a look at this prototype iPod. According to Tony Fadell, it's a "P68/Dulcimer iPod prototype we (very quickly) made before the true form factor design was ready. Didn't want it look like an iPod for confidentiality — the buttons placement, the size — it was mostly air inside — and the wheel worked (poorly)". Nice photo of it compared to the iPod that eventually made it to market. I miss my iPods. I am an old man. Apple used to be cool.
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