Johnathan Smith

Asian shares nosedived on Monday after the meltdown Friday on Wall Street over U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff hikes and the backlash from Beijing.

(Image credit: Ahn Young-joon)

TVs offer us an escape from the real world. After a long day, sometimes there’s nothing more relaxing than turning on your TV, tuning into your favorite program, and unplugging from the realities around you.

But what happens when divisive, potentially offensive messaging infiltrates that escape? Even with streaming services making it easy to watch TV commercial-free, it can still be difficult for TV viewers to avoid ads with these sorts of messages.

That’s especially the case with budget brands, which may even force controversial ads onto TVs when they’re idle, making users pay for low-priced TVs in unexpected, and sometimes troubling, ways.

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Heads up to those living on lunar base in 2032: DUCK!!

The likelihood of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting the Moon, during Christmas 2032, has more than doubled.…

'Nonpartisan' intelligence chief booted less than two years into the job

President Trump yesterday fired the head of the NSA and US Cyber Command and his deputy.…

The administration revealed how they calculated the tariffs. Buried in that math is a straightforward answer to a question Trump has long refused to answer: How much will his tariffs raise prices?

(Image credit: Brendan Smialowski)

While semiconductors are exempt (for now at least) from Trump's tariffs, other components going into our PCs are not. According to Tom's Hardware, which spoke to multiple system integrators, tariffs are about to hike PC costs by at least 20%, with system integrators hurt the most. The tariff package imposes a 54% rate on Chinese goods, 34% on top of earlier tariffs, and significant duties on Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam products. These countries supply essential PC components such as SSDs, RAM, cases, and graphics cards. Wallace Santos, CEO of Maingear, highlighted the immediate effects on production: "Tariffs have a direct impact on our cost structure… which we have to pass down to our customers." He further explained that some suppliers have halted production in China, leading to scarcity and escalating costs. Santos estimates that prices for his PCs will rise "20 to 25% as a result of the tariffs."

Other company leaders express concern over the limited alternatives available. Kelt Reeves, CEO of Falcon Northwest, stated, "Sadly the overwhelming majority of PC component manufacturing is not done in the US and never has been. There's no US alternative supplier for most PC parts." Reeves added that even US-based system integrators are "facing skyrocketing costs" due to the tariffs, which are set to worsen an already challenging market situation caused by ongoing GPU shortages. Jon Bach, CEO of Puget Systems, shared his perspective in a recent blog post, noting that his company might absorb some costs to minimize consumer price increases. However, even before the latest tariff updates, Bach predicted a price rise of "20 to 45 percent by June." Critics of the tariffs warn of broader economic issues. Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, condemned the policy as "massive tax hikes on Americans that will drive inflation, kill jobs on Main Street, and may cause a recession for the US economy." With these tariffs taking effect, the PC industry faces a period of adjustment marked by increased costs and significant supply chain challenges.

Intel and TSMC have reportedly reached a tentative agreement to form a joint venture for operating Intel's U.S. fabs.

But his emails! Sharing them with Google!

Senior members of the US National Security Council, including the White House national security adviser Michael Waltz, have been accused of using their personal Gmail accounts to exchange sensitive information.…

Donald Trump's new tariff plan imposes sweeping import taxes on nearly all U.S. trading partners starting in April, but key exclusions, especially for semiconductors, offer relief to American tech firms even as high-tech goods from Asia face steep price hikes.

Today SemiAccurate is announcing it's largest expansion to date with the acquisition of AnandTech.
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Staffers began receiving termination notices this morning as part of a major restructuring at HHS. Some senior leadership are on their way out too.

(Image credit: Kayla Bartkowski)

NVIDIA's stellar quality control with the $2,000 GeForce RTX 5090 saw quite a few customers end up with cards that had fewer ROPs than they should—168 as opposed to its original spec of 176. The 8 fewer ROPs results in a roughly 5% drop in performance. When you're ponying up over two grand, this is the last thing you want. But what if we told you there are cards out there were more ROPs than they should have? We have with us an ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 LC graphics card that we detected 192 ROPs on. That's right, the card has all the 192 ROPs active that are present in the "GB202" silicon, or two ROP partitions (16 ROPs) more than it should have. We received our ROG Astral RTX 5090 LC sample just a few weeks ago, and haven't had time to thoroughly test it yet, because we're in the middle of a full retest with new games and new drivers.

The ASUS ROG Astral LC is a factory overclocked card, with ASUS giving the card a generous OC to benefit from the liquid cooling solution (2580 MHz boost vs. 2407 MHz reference or +7.1%). To account for that, we tried our best to clock the card back down to reference specs, which is presented as the orange bar. This still isn't the same card as the RTX 5090 Founders Edition, because the superior cooling solution and power limits mean that the GPU enjoys better boost frequency residency, but this is as close as we can get to simulating reference spec. We ran the card through a battery of game tests, which show an average of 8% performance gains over the RTX 5090 Founders Edition.

FCC chair Brendan Carr said he wants a review all of Disney's DEI practices — both past and present — to determine whether the company has ever violated any FCC regulations.

(Image credit: Richard Drew)

Intel's board to shrink from 14 to 11 as three directors will not seek re-election later this year.

The most insane new EV, in my opinion at least, isn't a crazy-fast sports car, it's the living room sized Escalade IQ which is the biggest EV SUV in America by a long way. It has a battery that's more than double the capacity of a Tesla Model X SUV which gives this behemoth a claimed 460 miles of driving range. The downside? It weighs somewhere around 9,000 pounds. Ouch.

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The Atomic Spectroscopy Group provides standardized measurements used across wide swaths of science and industry. The Trump administration plans to cut it.

(Image credit: N. Phillips/NIST)

According to an analyst, Broadcom and Nvidia are reportedly close to adopting Intel Foundry as their manufacturing partner.

Despite comments suggesting high costs in the U.S., analysts found that producing chips at TSMC's Arizona fab costs less than 10% more than in Taiwan.

ASRock cleaned up and removed debris from a customer's failed ASRock AM5 motherboard. Despite clear signs of socket damage, the board booted up on its original BIOS, passing "long-term stress tests."