ARS Technica.

"TSMC's $100 billion pledge won't resurrect U.S. chip making."

Views expressed in this science and technology update are those of the reporters and correspondents. Accessed on 27 March 2025, 1533 UTC.

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

 ARS Technica

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TSMC’s $100 billion pledge won’t resurrect US chipmaking, says Intel’s ex-CEO

Gelsinger doubts TSMC's US impact

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s pledge to spend an extra $100 billion on advanced manufacturing plants in the US will do little to help the country restore its global lead in chipmaking, according to Pat Gelsinger, who was forced out as chief executive of Intel late last year. His comments come less than a month after the White House hailed the investment from TSMC, the world’s large

After 50 million miles, Waymos crash a lot less than human drivers

Ars Technica - All content / 4h

The first ever fatal crash involving a fully driverless vehicle occurred in San Francisco on January 19. The driverless vehicle belonged to Waymo, but the crash was not Waymo’s fault. Here’s what happened: A Waymo with no driver or passengers stopped for a red light. Another car stopped behind the Waymo. Then, according to Waymo, a human-driven SUV rear-ended the other vehicles at high speed, cau

OpenAI’s new AI image generator is potent and bound to provoke

OpenAI integrates image generation in ChatGPT

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Ars Technica - All content / 2h

The arrival of OpenAI's DALL-E 2 in the spring of 2022 marked a turning point in AI, when text-to-image generation suddenly became accessible to a select group of users, creating a community of digital explorers who experienced wonder and controversy as the technology automated the act of visual creation. But like many early AI systems, DALL-E 2 struggled with consistent text rendering, often pro

Today

Auto industry braces for chaos as Trump sets 25% tariff on all imports

Ars Technica - All content / 36min

Yesterday afternoon, once the markets were closed and could no longer react immediately, US President Donald Trump announced that starting on April 2, all imported automobiles and many imported car parts will now be subject to an extra 25 percent tariff. Despite Trump's rhetoric during his election campaign and since taking office, tariffs are paid for by those importing the goods, not the export

Yesterday

After a spacecraft was damaged en route to launch, NASA says it won’t launch

Expedition 72 astronauts arrive ISS

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Three weeks ago, NASA revealed that a shipping container protecting a Cygnus spacecraft sustained "damage" while traveling to the launch site in Florida. Built by Northrop Grumman, Cygnus is one of two Western spacecraft currently capable of delivering food, water, experiments, and other supplies to the International Space Station. This particular Cygnus mission, NG-22, had been scheduled for Jun

Newer Kindles get a work-around for touchscreen page-turning in new software update

Kindle update adds double-tap page turns

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Ars Technica - All content / 18h

Amazon discontinued 2016's Kindle Oasis in early 2024, and since then, the company hasn't offered a new e-reader with physical page turn buttons or any other alternative to touchscreen input. There still isn't a Kindle with buttons, and the feature seems unlikely to return, but buyers of the latest Kindle Paperwhite or the Kindle Colorsoft are getting a possible consolation prize in the new 5.18.

Measles quickly spreading in Kansas counties with alarmingly low vaccination

First measles case reported Tennessee

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An eruption of measles is spreading quickly in Kansas, with cases doubling in a week and spreading to three new counties, some with vaccination coverage among kindergartners at pitiful levels as low as 41 percent. Coverage of 95 percent or greater is thought to protect communities from onward spread of the extremely contagious virus. In an update Wednesday, March 26, Kansas Department of Health a

With Vulcan’s certification, Space Force is no longer solely reliant on SpaceX

ULA Vulcan rocket certified for NSSL

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The US Space Force on Wednesday announced that it has certified United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket to conduct national security missions. "Assured access to space is a core function of the Space Force and a critical element of national security," said Brig. Gen. Panzenhagen, program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, in a news release . "Vulcan certification adds launch capacity,

Google makes Android development private, will continue open source releases

Google moves Android development in-house

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Google is planning a major change to the way it develops new versions of the Android operating system. Since the beginning , large swaths of the software have been developed in public-facing channels, but that will no longer be the case. This does not mean Android is shedding its open source roots, but the process won't be as transparent. Google has confirmed to Android Authority that all Android

The Atlantic publishes texts showing Trump admin sent bombing plan to reporter

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President Trump and administration officials claimed this week that no classified information about war plans was shared with a journalist, despite The Atlantic report that specific plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen were included in a Signal chat the reporter was inexplicably invited to. The Atlantic initially declined to publish the exact text of the most specific message sent in advance of

Also, a Rivian EV spinoff, wants us to “move beyond cars”

Rivian launches micromobility startup Also

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There's a new "exciting, small EV" on the way, to be launched early next year by Also, a spinoff of the electric vehicle maker Rivian. Details are light on exactly what that product will be, but don't go expecting a $20,000 electric hatchback or the like—think more like an e-bike. Also will be into micromobility, not competing with Mini or Smart. Also started out as an internal project to see if

Gemini 2.5 Pro is here with bigger numbers and great vibes

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Just a few months after releasing its first Gemini 2.0 AI models , Google is upgrading again. The company says the new Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental is its "most intelligent" model yet, offering a massive context window, multimodality, and reasoning capabilities. Google points to a raft of benchmarks that show the new Gemini clobbering other large language models (LLMs), and our testing seems to ba

F1’s cruel side is on show as Red Bull to fire Liam Lawson after 2 races

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Being Red Bull Racing 1 teammates with Formula 1 driver Max Verstappen is a hard ask. The Dutch driver took his fourth consecutive world championship last year, dominating the sport to such an extent that he led the points table across a 63-race, 1,029-day streak that only ended with McLaren and Lando Norris' victory in Australia earlier this month. Now we believe he's going to have his second te

Discredited anti-vaccine advocate will lead CDC study on vaccines and autism

Vaccine skeptic leads autism study

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A discredited anti-vaccine advocate who has no medical background and who has been disciplined for practicing medicine without a license will reportedly lead a questionable federal study on vaccines and autism—despite a large volume of existing research that has found no link between the two and despite a thorough debunking of claims that vaccines cause autism. Late Tuesday, The Washington Post r

Broadcom’s VMware says Siemens pirated “thousands” of copies of its software

VMware sues Siemens for unlicensed software

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VMware is suing the US arm of industrial giant AG Siemens. The Broadcom company claims that Siemens outed itself by revealing to VMware that it downloaded and distributed multiple copies of VMware products without buying a license. VMware filed the lawsuit ( PDF ) on March 21 in the US District Court for the District of Delaware, as spotted by The Register . In the complaint, VMware says that it

Lawsuits targeting diversity efforts in science are multiplying

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On March 5, Do No Harm, an organization that advocates against diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in medicine, among other issues, sued the American Chemical Society for its Scholars Program , which provides financial support to chemistry students from underrepresented backgrounds. The complaint argues the program is illegal because it is not open to white and Asian students. Around two wee

Does all intelligent life face a Great Filter?

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“Where is everybody!?” It was around 1950. UFO mania had recently ramped up across the world, with dozens of reported sightings of strange flying machines fueling rampant speculation regarding their origins. The eminent physicist Enrico Fermi was visiting his colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that summer, and the mealtime conversation turned to the subject of UFOs. Very q

Firm wins Space Force funding to provide an “aircraft carrier” in orbit

Gravitics wins Space Force contract

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In recent years, the US military has made much of a concept known as tactically responsive launch. This essentially means that if there is some rapidly developing threat in space—say an adversary takes out a key national defense satellite—the military would like the capability to rapidly fuel a satellite on Earth, mate it to a rocket, and launch it into space. The US Space Force first demonstrate

Mar 25, 2025

ESA finally has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

ESA to launch European Launcher Challenge

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The European Space Agency is inviting proposals to inject competition into the European launch market, an important step toward fostering a dynamic multiplayer industry officials hope, one day, will mimic that of the United States. The near-term plan for the European Launcher Challenge is for ESA to select companies for service contracts to transport ESA and other European government payloads to

RFK Jr. claws back $11.4B in CDC funding amid wave of top-level departures

CDC experiences leadership turmoil

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More heavy blows are landing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to reports Tuesday that reveal a wave of high-level departures from the country's beleaguered health agency. The agency is also losing $11.4 billion in funding for responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was largely doled out to chronically underfunded state health departments. This afternoon, the Associat

Open source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries

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Software developer Xe Iaso reached a breaking point earlier this year when aggressive AI crawler traffic from Amazon overwhelmed their Git repository service, repeatedly causing instability and downtime. Despite configuring standard defensive measures—adjusting robots.txt, blocking known crawler user-agents, and filtering suspicious traffic—Iaso found that AI crawlers continued evading all attemp

Praise Kier for Severance season 2! Let’s discuss.

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Severance has just wrapped up its second season. I sat down with fellow Ars staffers Aaron Zimmerman and Lee Hutchinson to talk through what we had just seen, covering everything from those goats to the show's pacing. Warning: Huge spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 follow! Nate: Severance season 1 was a smaller-scale, almost claustrophobic show about a crazy office, its "waffle parties," and the perso

No cloud needed: Nvidia creates gaming-centric AI chatbot that runs on your GPU

Nvidia launches Project G-Assist

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Nvidia has seen its fortunes soar in recent years as its AI-accelerating GPUs have become worth their weight in gold. Most people use their Nvidia GPUs for games, but why not both? Nvidia has a new AI you can run at the same time, having just released its experimental G-Assist AI. It runs locally on your GPU to help you optimize your PC and get the most out of your games. It can do some neat thin

Napster to become a music-marketing metaverse firm after being sold for $207M

Infinite Reality acquires Napster for $207M

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Infinite Reality, a media, ecommerce, and marketing company focused on 3D and AI-powered experiences, has entered an agreement to acquired Napster. That means that the brand originally launched in 1999 as a peer-to-peer (P2P) music file-sharing service is set to be reborn again. This time, new owners are reshaping the brand into one focused on marketing musicians in the metaverse . Infinite annou

We’ve outsourced our confirmation biases to search engines

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People are often quite selective about the information they'll accept, seeking out sources that will confirm their biases, while discounting those that will challenge their beliefs. In theory, search engines can potentially change that. By prioritizing results from high-quality, credible sources, a search engine could ensure that people found accurate information more frequently, potentially open

FBI probes arson of Tesla cars and facilities, says “this is domestic terrorism”

FBI investigates domestic terrorism against Tesla

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation yesterday launched a task force "to try to nail the criminals setting fire to Tesla vehicles and charging stations," and is looking into an anarchist blog that has been "calling for more" attacks, The New York Post reported . "The bureau has received reports of 48 instances so far this month related to Tesla vehicles, dealerships and charging stations and is in

Momentum seems to be building for Jared Isaacman to become NASA administrator

Jared Isaacman endorsed for NASA Administrator

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With the vast majority of President Donald Trump's cabinet members now approved by the US Senate, focus is turning to senior positions within the administration that are just below the cabinet level. The administrator of NASA is among the most high-profile of these positions. Nearly four months ago Trump nominated private astronaut Jared Isaacman to become chief of the space agency, but he has ye

Apple barred from Google antitrust trial, putting $20 billion search deal on the line

Apple risks losing Google deal

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Apple has suffered a blow in its efforts to salvage its lucrative search placement deal with Google. A new ruling from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals affirms that Apple cannot participate in Google's upcoming antitrust hearing, which could leave a multibillion-dollar hole in Apple's balance sheet. The judges in the case say Apple simply waited too long to get involved. Just a few years ago, a hi

After DDOS attacks, Blizzard rolls back Hardcore WoW deaths for the first time

2 TTPs

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OnlyFangs guild quits after DDoS

World of Warcraft Classic 's Hardcore mode has set itself apart from the average MMO experience simply by making character death permanent across the entire in-game realm. For years, Blizzard has not allowed any appeals or rollbacks for these Hardcore mode character deaths, even when such deaths came as the direct result of a server disconnection or gameplay bug. Now, Blizzard says it's modifying

Report: Boeing asks Trump admin to weaken penalties in 737 Max crash case

Boeing seeks to withdraw guilty plea

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Boeing is trying to withdraw a plea agreement and obtain more lenient treatment from the Trump administration in a case involving two deadly 737 Max crashes, The Wall Street Journal reported today . Boeing previously agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States. Boeing could still plead guilty but face weaker penalties than it agreed to last year if the Justice Department and

Netflix expands HDR support with HDR10+

Netflix adds HDR10+ streaming support

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Netflix announced today that it has started offering HDR movies and shows in the HDR10+ format. Since December 2014, when season 1 of Marco Polo debuted, Netflix has supported the HDR10 and Dolby Vision formats. Like Dolby Vision, HDR10+ is a more advanced form of HDR that uses dynamic metadata fine-tuned to specific content. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision let creatives set how each frame looks, enablin

Europe is looking for alternatives to US cloud providers

Europe seeks alternatives to US cloud

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The global backlash against the second Donald Trump administration keeps on growing. Canadians have boycotted US-made products , anti–Elon Musk posters have appeared across London amid widespread Tesla protests , and European officials have drastically increased military spending as US support for Ukraine falters. Dominant US tech services may be the next focus. There are early signs that some Eu

How Polestar engineers EVs that can handle brutal winters

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Polestar provided flights from Los Angeles to Lulea and accommodation so Ars could visit Polestar's winter testing site. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. LULEA, Sweden—Staring out the window of a puddle jumper descending from Stockholm into Lulea, I spy frozen seawater for the first time in my life. Not nearly as much as I expected, though, for the middle of February at the northern en

Mar 24, 2025

As preps continue, it’s looking more likely that NASA will fly the Artemis II mission

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Late Saturday night, technicians at Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the core stage for NASA's second Space Launch System rocket into position between the vehicle's two solid-fueled boosters. Working inside the iconic 52-story-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, ground teams used heavy-duty cranes to first lift the butterscotch orange core stage from its cradle in the VAB's cavernous transfer ai

UK on alert after H5N1 bird flu spills over to sheep in world-first

Bird flu detected in sheep

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The H5N1 bird flu has spilled over to a sheep for the first time, infecting a domesticated ruminant in the United Kingdom much like it did US dairy cows, according to UK officials. The single sheep—a ewe—in Yorkshire, England, was confirmed infected after captive birds on the same property had tested positive for the virus, according to an announcement Monday. The ewe's milk was found to be posit

You can now download the source code that sparked the AI boom

AlexNet source code released publicly

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On Thursday, Google and the Computer History Museum (CHM) jointly released the source code for AlexNet , the convolutional neural network (CNN) that many credit with transforming the AI field in 2012 by proving that "deep learning" could achieve things conventional AI techniques could not. Deep learning , which uses multi-layered neural networks that can learn hierarchical representations directl

After borking my Pixel 4a battery, Google borks me, too

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It is an immutable law of nature that when you receive a corporate email with a subject line like "Changes coming to your Pixel 4a," the changes won't be the sort you like. Indeed, a more honest subject line would usually be: "You're about to get hosed." So I wasn't surprised, as I read further into this January missive from Google, that an "upcoming software update for your Pixel 4a" would "affe

Trump administration accidentally texted secret bombing plans to a reporter

Goldberg accidentally joins secret chat

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A prominent journalist knew the US military would start bombing Houthi targets in Yemen two hours before it happened on March 15 because top Trump administration officials accidentally included the reporter on a Signal text chain in which they discussed the war plan. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, described the surprising leak of sensitive military information in an a

Should we be concerned about the loss of weather balloons?

Meteomatics unveils reusable weather radiosonde

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Due to staff reductions, retirements, and a federal hiring freeze, the National Weather Service has announced a series of suspensions involving weather balloon launches in recent weeks. The question is, will this significantly degrade forecasts in the United States and around the world? On February 27, it was announced that balloon launches would be suspended entirely at Kotzebue, Alaska, due to

Current SEC chair cast only vote against suing Elon Musk, report says

Elon Musk served summons SEC lawsuit

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A new report says that when the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Elon Musk less than a week before President Trump's inauguration, only one member—the current chairman—voted against filing the lawsuit. The vote behind closed doors was 4–1, with three Democrats and Republican Hester Peirce joining to support the lawsuit over Musk's late disclosure of a Twitter stock purchase in early 2022,

How a nephew’s CD burner inspired early Valve to embrace DRM

Valve's early challenges with piracy

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Back in 2004, the launch of Half-Life 2 would help launch Steam on the path to eventually becoming the de facto digital rights management (DRM) system for the vast majority of PC games. But years before that, with the 1998 launch of the original Half-Life , Valve cofounder and then-CMO Monica Harrington said she was inspired to take DRM more seriously by her nephew's reaction to the purchase of a

“MyTerms” wants to become the new way we dictate our privacy on the web

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Author, journalist, and long-time Internet freedom advocate Doc Searls wants us to stop asking for privacy from websites, services, and AI and start telling these things what we will and will not accept. Draft standard IEEE P7012 , which Searls has nicknamed "MyTerms" (akin to "Wi-Fi"), is a Draft Standard for Machine Readable Personal Privacy Terms. Searls writes on his blog that MyTerms has bee

Oops: Google says it might have deleted your Maps Timeline data

Google accidentally deletes Timeline data

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The Google Maps Timeline has long been a useful though slightly uncomfortable feature that maintains a complete record of everywhere your phone goes (and probably you with it). Google recently changed the way it stored timeline data to improve privacy , but the company now confirms that a "technical issue" resulted in many users losing their timeline history altogether, and there might not be any

Did Red Bull build an undriveable car? Questions from the Chinese Grand Prix.

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Formula 1 spent this past weekend in Shanghai for the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix. There was a little something for everyone: entertaining racing on-track, different winners for the sprint and Grand Prix, some driver and team intrigue, rumors of a potential technical shake-up happening soon, and a bit of an argument that exposes the entertainment side of the sport. Once out in the countryside, skyscr

Genetic testing company 23andMe declares bankruptcy

23andMe files for bankruptcy

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On Sunday, the genetic testing and heritage company 23andMe announced that it had entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy and was asking a court to arrange its sale. The company has been losing money for years, and a conflict between its board and CEO about future directions led to the entire board resigning back in September. Said CEO, Anne Wojcicki, has now resigned and will be pursuing an attempt to pur

The 2025 Cadillac Optiq: Sensibly sized and improves on the Equinox EV

Cadillac launches luxury EV lineup

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Cadillac provided flights from Los Angeles to San Fransisco and accommodation so Ars could drive the Optiq. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. Badging on the rear of the new Cadillac Optiq may confuse some American buyers. This crossover is fully electric, so the alphanumeric nomenclature can't refer to engine displacement—and not horsepower, either. Instead, 500E4 refers to 500 Newton-m

Can we make AI less power-hungry? These researchers are working on it.

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At the beginning of November 2024, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected Amazon’s request to buy an additional 180 megawatts of power directly from the Susquehanna nuclear power plant for a data center located nearby. The rejection was due to the argument that buying power directly instead of getting it through the grid like everyone else works against the interests of other

Mar 23, 2025

David Blaine shows his hand in Do Not Attempt

David Blaine discusses South Park parody

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Over the course of his long career, magician and endurance performer David Blaine has taken on all kinds of death-defying feats: catching a bullet in his teeth, fasting for 44 days, or holding his breath for a record-breaking 17 minutes and 4 seconds, to name a few. Viewers will get to see a different side of Blaine as he travels the world to meet kindred spirits from a wide range of cultures in

This launcher is about to displace the V-2 as Germany’s largest rocket

Isar Aerospace to launch Spectrum rocket

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Seven years ago, three classmates at the Technical University of Munich believed their student engineering project might hold some promise in the private sector. At the time, Daniel Metzler led a team of 40 students working on rocket engines and launching sounding rockets. Josef Fleischmann was on the team that won the first SpaceX Hyperloop competition . Together with another classmate, Markus B

Trump administration’s blockchain plan for USAID is a real head-scratcher

Trump plans blockchain for USAID

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According to a memo circulating among State Department staff and reviewed by WIRED, the Trump administration plans to rename the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as US