daring-rss

Not even worth a full column, just a 90-second social media video. Or “vid”, if you will.

 ★ 

Not even worth a full column, just a 90-second social media video. Or “vid”, if you will.

Read More 

Cherlynn Low:

When you can read what’s on the screen, interacting with it
might make you want to rip your eyes out. Like I said, you’ll have
to move your palm closer and further to your chest to select the
right cards to enter your passcode. It’s a bit like dialing a
rotary phone, with cards for individual digits from 0 to 9. Go
further away to get to the higher numbers and the backspace
button, and come back for the smaller ones.

This gesture is smart in theory but it’s very sensitive. There’s a
very small range of usable space since there is only so far your
hand can go, so the distance between each digit is fairly small.
One wrong move and you’ll accidentally select something you didn’t
want and have to go all the way out to delete it. To top it all
off, moving my arm around while doing that causes the Pin to flop
about, meaning the screen shakes on my palm, too. On average,
unlocking my Pin, which involves entering a four-digit passcode,
took me about five seconds.

On its own, this doesn’t sound so bad, but bear in mind that
you’ll have to re-enter this each time you disconnect the Pin from
the booster, latch or clip. It’s currently springtime in New York,
which means I’m putting on and taking off my jacket over and over
again. Every time I go inside or out, I move the Pin to a
different layer and have to look like a confused long-sighted
tourist reading my palm at various distances. It’s not fun.

One thing all the reviewers seem to agree upon is that the AI Pin feels like an impressive piece of kit: small, lightweight, sturdy, well-made. And it packs a lot into a small factor: camera, laser projector, speaker/microphone. But it’s also seemingly bursting at the seams, battery-life and heat-dissipation-wise. So I get it, me suggesting they should have added something else to the hardware — anything else — would pose a design and engineering challenge.

But with that throat-clearing out of the way: it seems obvious that the AI Pin should have a fingerprint scanner for authentication. You have to touch it for all interactions anyway — it doesn’t listen for a trigger word — so why not add the equivalent of Touch ID? Every single review notes the same thing Low complains about above: authenticating with your passcode takes too long, is error-prone, and you need to do it periodically throughout the day.

 ★ 

Cherlynn Low:

When you can read what’s on the screen, interacting with it
might make you want to rip your eyes out. Like I said, you’ll have
to move your palm closer and further to your chest to select the
right cards to enter your passcode. It’s a bit like dialing a
rotary phone, with cards for individual digits from 0 to 9. Go
further away to get to the higher numbers and the backspace
button, and come back for the smaller ones.

This gesture is smart in theory but it’s very sensitive. There’s a
very small range of usable space since there is only so far your
hand can go, so the distance between each digit is fairly small.
One wrong move and you’ll accidentally select something you didn’t
want and have to go all the way out to delete it. To top it all
off, moving my arm around while doing that causes the Pin to flop
about, meaning the screen shakes on my palm, too. On average,
unlocking my Pin, which involves entering a four-digit passcode,
took me about five seconds.

On its own, this doesn’t sound so bad, but bear in mind that
you’ll have to re-enter this each time you disconnect the Pin from
the booster, latch or clip. It’s currently springtime in New York,
which means I’m putting on and taking off my jacket over and over
again. Every time I go inside or out, I move the Pin to a
different layer and have to look like a confused long-sighted
tourist reading my palm at various distances. It’s not fun.

One thing all the reviewers seem to agree upon is that the AI Pin feels like an impressive piece of kit: small, lightweight, sturdy, well-made. And it packs a lot into a small factor: camera, laser projector, speaker/microphone. But it’s also seemingly bursting at the seams, battery-life and heat-dissipation-wise. So I get it, me suggesting they should have added something else to the hardware — anything else — would pose a design and engineering challenge.

But with that throat-clearing out of the way: it seems obvious that the AI Pin should have a fingerprint scanner for authentication. You have to touch it for all interactions anyway — it doesn’t listen for a trigger word — so why not add the equivalent of Touch ID? Every single review notes the same thing Low complains about above: authenticating with your passcode takes too long, is error-prone, and you need to do it periodically throughout the day.

Read More 

Tom Warren, writing at The Verge:

Microsoft is trying to entice Windows 10 users to upgrade to
Windows 11 with fullscreen prompts 18 months before the end of
support cutoff. Reddit user Woopinah9 spotted a notification
“while in the middle of working,” where Microsoft thanks Windows
10 “customers” for their loyalty with a full-screen message and
then explains the end of support date. You might be expecting a
free upgrade as part of this interruption, but unfortunately for
this Reddit user, their PC can’t upgrade to Windows 11, so it’s
more “hey check out this cool thing we have! oh but you cant have
it,” as one Redditor puts it.

Upon reading this lede, I was more or less thinking “Eh, so what?” Interruptions in the middle of working are annoying, so notifications like this should only appear after a restart or login, at the beginning of work session. That’s a legit gripe. But the basic gist — that Windows 10 is approaching end-of-life for updates, including security fixes, in 18 months, and your PC doesn’t meet the requirements for upgrading to Windows 11 — is something users should be notified about. And it’s not like Microsoft is pulling the plug on Windows 10 early — it shipped in July 2015.

But then I read on:

Surprisingly, Microsoft’s full-screen prompt doesn’t directly
mention that consumers will be able to continue securely using the
operating system beyond October 14th, 2025, if they’re willing to
pay. Microsoft revealed last week that it will cost
businesses $61 per device for the first year of Extended Security
Updates (ESU) for Windows 10. This then doubles to $122 for the
second year and then doubles again in year three to $244.

Microsoft hasn’t detailed ESU pricing for consumers yet, but the
company did previously reveal it will offer these extended updates
to consumers for the first time ever. Schools will be offered a
big discount, with Microsoft offering a $1 license for
year one, which then doubles to $2 for year two and doubles again
to $4 for the third year. Hopefully, non-business users of Windows
10 will get similar discounts, but Microsoft says it will share
details “at a later date.”

What a racket. If Microsoft has engineers working on Windows 10 updates, everyone should get them. It’s wild to think there are teams in Redmond concocting ways to squeeze customers out of money for updates to decade-old PCs.

 ★ 

Tom Warren, writing at The Verge:

Microsoft is trying to entice Windows 10 users to upgrade to
Windows 11 with fullscreen prompts 18 months before the end of
support cutoff. Reddit user Woopinah9 spotted a notification
“while in the middle of working,” where Microsoft thanks Windows
10 “customers” for their loyalty with a full-screen message and
then explains the end of support date. You might be expecting a
free upgrade as part of this interruption, but unfortunately for
this Reddit user, their PC can’t upgrade to Windows 11, so it’s
more “hey check out this cool thing we have! oh but you cant have
it,” as one Redditor puts it.

Upon reading this lede, I was more or less thinking “Eh, so what?” Interruptions in the middle of working are annoying, so notifications like this should only appear after a restart or login, at the beginning of work session. That’s a legit gripe. But the basic gist — that Windows 10 is approaching end-of-life for updates, including security fixes, in 18 months, and your PC doesn’t meet the requirements for upgrading to Windows 11 — is something users should be notified about. And it’s not like Microsoft is pulling the plug on Windows 10 early — it shipped in July 2015.

But then I read on:

Surprisingly, Microsoft’s full-screen prompt doesn’t directly
mention that consumers will be able to continue securely using the
operating system beyond October 14th, 2025, if they’re willing to
pay. Microsoft revealed last week that it will cost
businesses $61 per device for the first year of Extended Security
Updates (ESU) for Windows 10. This then doubles to $122 for the
second year and then doubles again in year three to $244.

Microsoft hasn’t detailed ESU pricing for consumers yet, but the
company did previously reveal it will offer these extended updates
to consumers for the first time ever. Schools will be offered a
big discount, with Microsoft offering a $1 license for
year one, which then doubles to $2 for year two and doubles again
to $4 for the third year. Hopefully, non-business users of Windows
10 will get similar discounts, but Microsoft says it will share
details “at a later date.”

What a racket. If Microsoft has engineers working on Windows 10 updates, everyone should get them. It’s wild to think there are teams in Redmond concocting ways to squeeze customers out of money for updates to decade-old PCs.

Read More 

Re: my postscript wondering how in the world David Pierce’s scathing review of the Humane AI Pin resulted in a 4/10 score — I didn’t realize that The Verge has a page describing their review scale:

We assume the 10-point scale is relatively straightforward, but
below is a short guide as to how we view the numbers. All review
scores are whole points. We no longer use half points or decimals
when scoring a product.

Utter garbage and an embarrassment.
A product that should be avoided at all costs.
Bad — not something we’d recommend.
Mediocre — has multiple outstanding issues.
Just okay. This product works well in some areas but likely
has significant issues in others.
Good. There are issues but also redeeming qualities.
Very good. A solid product with some flaws.
Excellent. A superb product with minor or very few flaws.
Nearly perfect.
The best of the best.

Those are great descriptions and that’s a useful 10-point scale! But by these guidelines, the AI Pin should have gotten a 2. Maybe a 3, tops, but I’d say “should be avoided at all costs” fits. Definitely far short of 4’s “mediocre”.

But this isn’t the first time I’ve found The Verge’s review scoring incoherent.

 ★ 

Re: my postscript wondering how in the world David Pierce’s scathing review of the Humane AI Pin resulted in a 4/10 score — I didn’t realize that The Verge has a page describing their review scale:

We assume the 10-point scale is relatively straightforward, but
below is a short guide as to how we view the numbers. All review
scores are whole points. We no longer use half points or decimals
when scoring a product.

Utter garbage and an embarrassment.
A product that should be avoided at all costs.
Bad — not something we’d recommend.
Mediocre — has multiple outstanding issues.
Just okay. This product works well in some areas but likely
has significant issues in others.
Good. There are issues but also redeeming qualities.
Very good. A solid product with some flaws.
Excellent. A superb product with minor or very few flaws.
Nearly perfect.
The best of the best.

Those are great descriptions and that’s a useful 10-point scale! But by these guidelines, the AI Pin should have gotten a 2. Maybe a 3, tops, but I’d say “should be avoided at all costs” fits. Definitely far short of 4’s “mediocre”.

But this isn’t the first time I’ve found The Verge’s review scoring incoherent.

Read More 

David Pierce, mincing no words at The Verge:

That raises the second question: should you buy this thing? That
one’s easy. Nope. Nuh-uh. No way. The AI Pin is an interesting
idea that is so thoroughly unfinished and so totally broken in so
many unacceptable ways that I can’t think of anyone to whom I’d
recommend spending the $699 for the device and the $24 monthly
subscription. […]

As the overall state of AI improves, the AI Pin will probably get
better, and I’m bullish on AI’s long-term ability to do a lot of
fiddly things on our behalf. But there are too many basic things
it can’t do, too many things it doesn’t do well enough, and too
many things it does well but only sometimes that I’m hard-pressed
to name a single thing it’s genuinely good at. None of this — not
the hardware, not the software, not even GPT-4 — is ready yet.

Ever since Humane de-stealthed and revealed the AI Pin last July, the big question (for me at least) has been whether it’d actually be useful to own a gadget that does what the AI Pin is supposed to do. It’s seemed to me all along that almost everything the AI Pin does would be just as well, if not better, done by a phone with an LLM-powered voice assistant. But Humane has far bigger problems, because the AI Pin clearly doesn’t even do what it’s supposed to. Pierce:

I’d estimate that half the time I tried to call someone, it simply
didn’t call. Half the time someone called me, the AI Pin would
kick it straight to voicemail without even ringing. After many
days of testing, the one and only thing I can truly rely on the AI
Pin to do is tell me the time.

The more I tested the AI Pin, the more it felt like the device was
trying to do an awful lot and the hardware simply couldn’t keep
up. For one, it’s pretty much constantly warm. In my testing, it
never got truly painfully hot, but after even a few minutes of
using it, I could feel the battery like a hand warmer against my
skin. Bongiorno says the warmth can come from overuse or when you
have a bad signal and that the device is aggressive about shutting
down when it gets too hot. I’ve noticed: I use the AI Pin for more
than a couple of minutes, and I get notified that it has
overheated and needs to cool down. This happened a lot in my
testing (including on a spring weekend in DC and in 40-degree New
York City, where it was the only warm thing in sight).

The battery life is similarly rough.

Pierce’s review is so brutal it’s uncomfortable at times. I don’t know where Humane goes from here but this might be impossible to recover from reputationally. It seems borderline criminal that they shipped it in this state. Here’s one more tidbit:

Me: “Play ‘Texas Hold ’Em’ by Beyoncé.”

The AI Pin: “Songs not found for request: Play Texas Hold ’Em by
Beyoncu00e9. Try again using your actions find a relevant track,
album, artist, or playlist; Create a new PlayMusic action with at
least one of the slots filled in. If you find a relevant track or
album play it, avoid asking for clarification or what they want
to hear.”

That’s a real exchange I had, multiple times, over multiple days
with the AI Pin.

I thought perhaps the “u00e9” thing was a CMS glitch, but no — watch Pierce’s corresponding video review and you’ll hear the AI Pin pronounce “Beyoncé” as “beeyonk-backslash-you-zero-zero-ee-nine”.

(Yet, somehow, the AI Pin garnered a 4/10 on The Verge’s review scale. How bad, how broken, would a product experience have to be to get a lower score? Would the reviewer need to be electrocuted by the device to rate it lower? “3/10, sent me to the ER with a nasty burn”? “1/10, it killed my spouse when she tried it”?)

 ★ 

David Pierce, mincing no words at The Verge:

That raises the second question: should you buy this thing? That
one’s easy. Nope. Nuh-uh. No way. The AI Pin is an interesting
idea that is so thoroughly unfinished and so totally broken in so
many unacceptable ways that I can’t think of anyone to whom I’d
recommend spending the $699 for the device and the $24 monthly
subscription. […]

As the overall state of AI improves, the AI Pin will probably get
better, and I’m bullish on AI’s long-term ability to do a lot of
fiddly things on our behalf. But there are too many basic things
it can’t do, too many things it doesn’t do well enough, and too
many things it does well but only sometimes that I’m hard-pressed
to name a single thing it’s genuinely good at. None of this — not
the hardware, not the software, not even GPT-4 — is ready yet.

Ever since Humane de-stealthed and revealed the AI Pin last July, the big question (for me at least) has been whether it’d actually be useful to own a gadget that does what the AI Pin is supposed to do. It’s seemed to me all along that almost everything the AI Pin does would be just as well, if not better, done by a phone with an LLM-powered voice assistant. But Humane has far bigger problems, because the AI Pin clearly doesn’t even do what it’s supposed to. Pierce:

I’d estimate that half the time I tried to call someone, it simply
didn’t call. Half the time someone called me, the AI Pin would
kick it straight to voicemail without even ringing. After many
days of testing, the one and only thing I can truly rely on the AI
Pin to do is tell me the time.

The more I tested the AI Pin, the more it felt like the device was
trying to do an awful lot and the hardware simply couldn’t keep
up. For one, it’s pretty much constantly warm. In my testing, it
never got truly painfully hot, but after even a few minutes of
using it, I could feel the battery like a hand warmer against my
skin. Bongiorno says the warmth can come from overuse or when you
have a bad signal and that the device is aggressive about shutting
down when it gets too hot. I’ve noticed: I use the AI Pin for more
than a couple of minutes, and I get notified that it has
overheated and needs to cool down. This happened a lot in my
testing (including on a spring weekend in DC and in 40-degree New
York City, where it was the only warm thing in sight).

The battery life is similarly rough.

Pierce’s review is so brutal it’s uncomfortable at times. I don’t know where Humane goes from here but this might be impossible to recover from reputationally. It seems borderline criminal that they shipped it in this state. Here’s one more tidbit:

Me: “Play ‘Texas Hold ’Em’ by Beyoncé.”

The AI Pin: “Songs not found for request: Play Texas Hold ’Em by
Beyoncu00e9. Try again using your actions find a relevant track,
album, artist, or playlist; Create a new PlayMusic action with at
least one of the slots filled in. If you find a relevant track or
album play it, avoid asking for clarification or what they want
to hear.”

That’s a real exchange I had, multiple times, over multiple days
with the AI Pin.

I thought perhaps the “u00e9” thing was a CMS glitch, but no — watch Pierce’s corresponding video review and you’ll hear the AI Pin pronounce “Beyoncé” as “beeyonk-backslash-you-zero-zero-ee-nine”.

(Yet, somehow, the AI Pin garnered a 4/10 on The Verge’s review scale. How bad, how broken, would a product experience have to be to get a lower score? Would the reviewer need to be electrocuted by the device to rate it lower? “3/10, sent me to the ER with a nasty burn”? “1/10, it killed my spouse when she tried it”?)

Read More 

Narayana Montúfar, covering the astrological “impact” of Monday’s solar eclipse for Women’s Health:

So, what makes the Great American Eclipse of April 8, 2024 so
special? Ancient astronomers — who, by the way, were also
astrologers — believed that the geographical area where any
eclipse was visible would energetically feel its effects the most.

Astrology fans like to say it’s all just harmless fun, but they also love to wave their hands and pretend their pseudoscience is even vaguely related to the hard science of astronomy. It’s a genuine travesty that the two words in English are so similar. I stumbled across this story earlier in the week and it’s been irritating me like a piece of popcorn stuck in my teeth ever since. Astrologers horning in on the excitement about the eclipse is scientific sacrilege.

Actual science is the great accomplishment of mankind. The antidote to ignorance, religious zealotry, and nonsensical beliefs in general. An eclipse exemplifies, to even the lay-est of laypeople, just how advanced modern science is. We were informed by astronomers, years in advance, exactly when and exactly where the eclipse would occur — down to the second, down to the meter — and everyone in the path of totality could literally see how exactly right those predictive calculations were. We should be celebrating and emphasizing this to laypeople, because these same scientists are the same people who’ve been telling us for decades that we’re destroying our climate with carbon emissions.

So here’s my “by the way” retort to Montúfar’s aside: how many astronomers today — not in “ancient” times — are also astrologers? Spoiler: the answer is fucking zero.

 ★ 

Narayana Montúfar, covering the astrological “impact” of Monday’s solar eclipse for Women’s Health:

So, what makes the Great American Eclipse of April 8, 2024 so
special? Ancient astronomers — who, by the way, were also
astrologers — believed that the geographical area where any
eclipse was visible would energetically feel its effects the most.

Astrology fans like to say it’s all just harmless fun, but they also love to wave their hands and pretend their pseudoscience is even vaguely related to the hard science of astronomy. It’s a genuine travesty that the two words in English are so similar. I stumbled across this story earlier in the week and it’s been irritating me like a piece of popcorn stuck in my teeth ever since. Astrologers horning in on the excitement about the eclipse is scientific sacrilege.

Actual science is the great accomplishment of mankind. The antidote to ignorance, religious zealotry, and nonsensical beliefs in general. An eclipse exemplifies, to even the lay-est of laypeople, just how advanced modern science is. We were informed by astronomers, years in advance, exactly when and exactly where the eclipse would occur — down to the second, down to the meter — and everyone in the path of totality could literally see how exactly right those predictive calculations were. We should be celebrating and emphasizing this to laypeople, because these same scientists are the same people who’ve been telling us for decades that we’re destroying our climate with carbon emissions.

So here’s my “by the way” retort to Montúfar’s aside: how many astronomers today — not in “ancient” times — are also astrologers? Spoiler: the answer is fucking zero.

Read More 

Jack Guy, CNN:

Now, an updated game named Scrabble Together adds “a second side
to the board that is collaborative and faster-paced to make
gameplay more accessible for anyone who finds word games
intimidating,” according to a statement from Mattel published
Tuesday.

Instead of competing, players collaborate to complete goal cards,
and there are helper cards if assistance is required.

Mattel said it conducted research among British board-gamers that
shows that competitiveness is perceived as declining in younger
generations.

Being forced to play this version of the game sounds like the penalty one should suffer if they get caught cheating in the real version. Competition is one of the most fun things in the world.

 ★ 

Jack Guy, CNN:

Now, an updated game named Scrabble Together adds “a second side
to the board that is collaborative and faster-paced to make
gameplay more accessible for anyone who finds word games
intimidating,” according to a statement from Mattel published
Tuesday.

Instead of competing, players collaborate to complete goal cards,
and there are helper cards if assistance is required.

Mattel said it conducted research among British board-gamers that
shows that competitiveness is perceived as declining in younger
generations.

Being forced to play this version of the game sounds like the penalty one should suffer if they get caught cheating in the real version. Competition is one of the most fun things in the world.

Read More 

Eric Migicovsky:

If you haven’t heard of Beeper before, welcome! We make a
universal chat app — one app to send and receive messages on 14
different chat networks. You might have also heard about Beeper
Mini, our briefly available iMessage-on-Android app.

While the Beeper Mini/iMessage thing is where Beeper garnered, by far, the most publicity, it was always a sideshow from their primary goal of building a universal messaging app for multiple (14!) platforms. Think of it like a modern-day Adium.

In many ways, our journey has only just begun. Beeper has just
over 115,000 users and was, until today, in beta. Given
the state of the messaging landscape today, we believe there is a
huge opportunity for us to push boundaries and create new
experiences in chat. The majority of other chat apps have
stagnated, entrenched in their positions, with no significant new
players emerging since Discord’s launch in 2015. Given
the state of the messaging world, we’ve long felt the need for a
strong ally with the resources to support us on our quest.
Automattic has a long history of putting user control and privacy
first with open source, and great bilateral relationships with
Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Matrix and others that we hope can
usher in a new era of collaboration. […]

This is a big bet. Automattic is doubling down on chat after their
acquisition last year of Texts.com, a messaging app with
a similar mission. Our teams and products will merge, and I will
take on the role leading the team as Head of Messaging. It will
take a bit of time for us to integrate and combine forces under
the Beeper brand. We’ve got big plans!

I’d describe Texts.com as having not just a similar mission as Beeper, but the exact same mission. I’ve been using Texts on my Mac as my primary interface to Twitter/X DMs for over a year (since Twitter shut down third-party clients like Tweetbot and Twitterrific). I don’t get a ton of Twitter DMs, and I get fewer now than ever before, but Texts offers a better interface to them than Twitter/X itself does. I also have my Instagram, WhatsApp, and Signal accounts connected to Texts. If I used any of those platforms heavily, I’d rely on their dedicated apps. But I don’t, so a universal messaging inbox is better. I’m more interested in having one central place to check than anything else for those platforms.

As for iMessage, here’s Matt Mullenweg:

A lot of people are asking about iMessage on Android… I have zero
interest in fighting with Apple, I think instead it’s best to
focus on messaging networks that want more engagement from
power-user clients. This is an area I’m excited to work on when I
return from my sabbatical next month.

Smart.

 ★ 

Eric Migicovsky:

If you haven’t heard of Beeper before, welcome! We make a
universal chat app — one app to send and receive messages on 14
different chat networks. You might have also heard about Beeper
Mini, our briefly available iMessage-on-Android app.

While the Beeper Mini/iMessage thing is where Beeper garnered, by far, the most publicity, it was always a sideshow from their primary goal of building a universal messaging app for multiple (14!) platforms. Think of it like a modern-day Adium.

In many ways, our journey has only just begun. Beeper has just
over 115,000 users and was, until today, in beta. Given
the state of the messaging landscape today, we believe there is a
huge opportunity for us to push boundaries and create new
experiences in chat. The majority of other chat apps have
stagnated, entrenched in their positions, with no significant new
players emerging since Discord’s launch in 2015. Given
the state of the messaging world, we’ve long felt the need for a
strong ally with the resources to support us on our quest.
Automattic has a long history of putting user control and privacy
first with open source, and great bilateral relationships with
Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Matrix and others that we hope can
usher in a new era of collaboration. […]

This is a big bet. Automattic is doubling down on chat after their
acquisition last year of Texts.com, a messaging app with
a similar mission. Our teams and products will merge, and I will
take on the role leading the team as Head of Messaging. It will
take a bit of time for us to integrate and combine forces under
the Beeper brand. We’ve got big plans!

I’d describe Texts.com as having not just a similar mission as Beeper, but the exact same mission. I’ve been using Texts on my Mac as my primary interface to Twitter/X DMs for over a year (since Twitter shut down third-party clients like Tweetbot and Twitterrific). I don’t get a ton of Twitter DMs, and I get fewer now than ever before, but Texts offers a better interface to them than Twitter/X itself does. I also have my Instagram, WhatsApp, and Signal accounts connected to Texts. If I used any of those platforms heavily, I’d rely on their dedicated apps. But I don’t, so a universal messaging inbox is better. I’m more interested in having one central place to check than anything else for those platforms.

As for iMessage, here’s Matt Mullenweg:

A lot of people are asking about iMessage on Android… I have zero
interest in fighting with Apple, I think instead it’s best to
focus on messaging networks that want more engagement from
power-user clients. This is an area I’m excited to work on when I
return from my sabbatical next month.

Smart.

Read More 

Man, I hope this doesn’t throw a kink into the Liam Neeson-starring The Naked Gun reboot that’s shooting this year.

 ★ 

Man, I hope this doesn’t throw a kink into the Liam Neeson-starring The Naked Gun reboot that’s shooting this year.

Read More 

Ashley Belanger, reporting for Ars Technica:

The US Department of Commerce has proposed another round
of CHIPS Act funding up to $6.6 billion for Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which President Joe Biden
hopes will “support the construction of leading-edge
semiconductor manufacturing facilities right here in the United
States.”

With this award — which includes additional funding up to $5
billion in low-cost government loans — TSMC has agreed to
increase funding in Arizona fabrication plants to $65 billion.
That’s the largest foreign direct investment in a new project in
US history, the Commerce Department said, and it will fuel
construction of TSMC’s third Arizona fab. […]

But analysts told the Financial Times that the US is still
moving too slowly to become a global chip leader. One engineer
told FT that by 2028, “Nvidia and other AI chip vendors are likely
to have migrated to 2nm” process technology, ahead of the TSMC
Arizona fabs reaching that goal. In January, TSMC Chairman Mark
Liu told investors that Taiwan-based fabs “will start 2nm mass
production next year” and that the company has “plans to build
‘multiple’ more fabs operating on that technology” in Taiwan, FT
reported.

The goal should be to jump ahead of Taiwan, not merely catch up. I suspect that’s just not remotely feasible, though. Still though, any domestic chip fabrication is better than no domestic chip fabrication.

 ★ 

Ashley Belanger, reporting for Ars Technica:

The US Department of Commerce has proposed another round
of CHIPS Act funding up to $6.6 billion for Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which President Joe Biden
hopes will “support the construction of leading-edge
semiconductor manufacturing facilities right here in the United
States.”

With this award — which includes additional funding up to $5
billion in low-cost government loans — TSMC has agreed to
increase funding in Arizona fabrication plants to $65 billion.
That’s the largest foreign direct investment in a new project in
US history, the Commerce Department said, and it will fuel
construction of TSMC’s third Arizona fab. […]

But analysts told the Financial Times that the US is still
moving too slowly to become a global chip leader. One engineer
told FT that by 2028, “Nvidia and other AI chip vendors are likely
to have migrated to 2nm” process technology, ahead of the TSMC
Arizona fabs reaching that goal. In January, TSMC Chairman Mark
Liu told investors that Taiwan-based fabs “will start 2nm mass
production next year” and that the company has “plans to build
‘multiple’ more fabs operating on that technology” in Taiwan, FT
reported.

The goal should be to jump ahead of Taiwan, not merely catch up. I suspect that’s just not remotely feasible, though. Still though, any domestic chip fabrication is better than no domestic chip fabrication.

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