TSMC executive Cliff Hou revealed that the chipmaker's projected need for semiconductor manufacturing tools rose from a baseline estimate late last year to 1.5 times that figure by Q1 and 1.9 times by July, driven by new fabs in Taiwan and the U.S. plus upgrades to existing plants. Despite the near-doubling in equipment requirements, TSMC's 2026 capital expenditure guidance has only risen from an initial $52-56 billion range toward roughly $64 billion, a far smaller percentage increase.
Walmart has discounted the CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme prebuilt desktop by 21%, dropping it from $1,769.99 to $1,399. The system pairs Intel's Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti (8GB VRAM), 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a 1TB SSD.
A dark web marketplace called Nexus was offering digital scans of over 153 million driver's licenses from the US and Canada, along with 10 million ID cards, 3 million travel documents and half a million medical cards, affecting roughly 170 million people. Journalist Brian Krebs traced the data to a Louisiana-based ID verification firm and found the license of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth among the leaked files. The FBI has opened an inquiry, and the Nexus service disappeared from the dark web the same day Krebs published his findings.
WIRED's latest buying guide picks IQAir's AirVisual Pro, priced around $330, as the best overall air quality monitor for tracking indoor and outdoor conditions. The device measures PM2.5, AQI, temperature, humidity and other pollutants on an easy-to-read display, while the $28 Temptop S1 is recommended as a reliable budget alternative.
A new analysis argues that Google's Pixel phones have plateaued, with yearly hardware and software updates offering little meaningful improvement over previous generations. The piece contends that fragmented AI features, scattered branding, and incremental design changes are making Pixels feel unexciting compared to rivals.
Newly released emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request show DOGE affiliate Christopher Sweet, an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, worked with colleague Scott Langmack to seek academic credit for his work at HUD. The pair drafted a framework describing his time building an AI tool called SweetRex — designed to flag agency rules for rescission — as graduate-level research spanning AI, data science, and regulatory law, rather than a standard internship.
Microsoft has identified a malware campaign named TerminalFix that mimics Cloudflare and other trusted verification pages to trick Windows users into pasting commands into PowerShell or Command Prompt. Unlike earlier ClickFix attacks that used the Run dialog for simpler commands, TerminalFix's terminal-based approach lets attackers run longer, multi-stage scripts that establish persistent proxy access into a victim's machine and network.
The fire department in Kanazawa, Japan has released an Instagram video asking people to leave paramedics' removed shoes exactly where they were placed, rather than tidying them as is customary. Officials explained that crews position their footwear deliberately so three stretcher bearers can step in quickly without jostling a patient or dislodging an oxygen mask, and rearranging them can cost about 30 seconds during an emergency.
New research examining phone-free classroom policies, now adopted by a growing number of states, finds essentially no measurable improvement in student test scores and only marginal shifts in other outcomes like behavior. Cell phone restrictions in schools aren't a new phenomenon either—Maryland first banned phones and pagers in classrooms back in 1989 to curb communication tied to illegal activity.
Hohem has introduced the Eyepic, a handheld stabilized camera that competes with devices like DJI's Osmo Pocket and Insta360's Luna Ultra. Its key differentiator is a magnetic camera module that detaches from the gimbal grip and functions as a standalone action camera, wearable via a lanyard or clipped to clothing. The module shoots 4K video at up to 60fps and is waterproof to over 32 feet, while streaming a 1080p preview wirelessly to the grip's rotating touchscreen from up to 32 feet away.
An executive order signed by President Trump declares a national emergency over foreign-made bulk-power equipment, giving the Energy Department authority to block or restrict transactions involving certain grid and data center components. Analysts say Chinese suppliers provide significant portions of the transformers, switchgear, batteries and optical technology that power U.S. data centers, exposing a vulnerability in America's AI infrastructure buildout even as U.S. firms lead in chips and compute hardware.
A new PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis, cited by Bloomberg, projects that worldwide spending on data centers could reach $31.6 trillion by 2050, with more than $15 trillion of that total in the United States alone. Under a more optimistic scenario involving faster AI adoption, PwC estimates spending could climb as high as $50 trillion over the next 25 years.
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