In an enemies to besties moment on the streets of Palmo, Cassian (Diego Luna) is saved from the KX droid when it gets run over and he takes the pieces back to Yavin with him. After finding out Bix is nowhere to be found, he and Draven gather to witness the re-programming of the KX droid on a metal bed that gives Frankenstein vibes. K-2SO awakens and asks why a gun is pointed at him in actor Alan Tudyk's recognizable character voice. Originally, however, his introduction was a lot more unsettling. “Dan Gilroy wrote an amazing, entirely self-contained episode that was episode 209,” Tony Gilroy told Entertainment Weekly, “It was an amazing episode that was like a horror movie.” “They had to bring this huge ugly tanker ship to Yavin, and there was a KX unit that was trapped inside there hunting. But ultimately it wasn't meant to be. “We could not afford to do it,” he said. It was great that there were still some strokes of horror in the episode as he's jolted back to life in a mad-scientist, old-school spooky way, but it also would have been interesting to see the extended version. However, “it was made clear that it was out of the range, so we had to abandon that and consolidate things,” Gilroy said. Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. News from the future, delivered to your present. The crisis on Ghorman explodes in this week's act of Andor season 2, and the whole galaxy must bear witness to its horrors. After several IP crossovers for in-game skins, Destiny 2 is kicking things up a notch with the Star Wars-inspired Renegades. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

Fergus had been working at Google DeepMind as a research director for roughly five years, per his LinkedIn. Prior to Google, he worked as a researcher scientist at Meta. Meta's FAIR, which has been around since 2013, has faced challenges in recent years, according to a report from Fortune. However, researchers have reportedly departed the unit en masse for other startups, companies, and even Meta's newer GenAI group, which led the development of Llama 4. Meta's previous VP of AI Research, Joelle Pineau, announced in April she'd be leaving the company for a new opportunity. Get inside access to Europe's top investment minds — with leaders from Monzo, Accel, Paladin Group, and more — plus top-tier networking at StrictlyVC London. Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch's coverage. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice.

Bill Gates is not impressed by Elon Musk's work with the Department of Government Efficiency. Gates zeroed in on Musk's cuts to the United States Agency for International Development, which he called stunning and worse than he ever imagined. “I thought there'd be, like, a 20 percent cut. And yes, I did not expect that,” he told the New York Times. For instance, Gates said that one of the consequences of Musk's bizarre claim that the government was spending $50 million on condoms for Hamas was the cancellation of grants that would have gone to a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, that works to prevent the transmission of HIV to children. “I'd love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” Gates told the Financial Times. He didn't mince words about what the results of Musk's work will be, either. Gates said he's currently expecting a four- to six-year interruption in funding. While he's still optimistic that aid organizations that he's involved with will be able to reduce childhood mortality in the long term, he said, “The cuts are so dramatic that even if we get some restored, we're going to have a tough time.” That's exacerbated by the fact that humanitarian aid is on the decline globally, so there's no obvious candidate to step up and fill in the gap left by the Trump administration's apparent disdain for extending a hand to anyone born outside America's borders (and frankly, most inside them, as well). For Musk, it's possible that he'd view the unfortunate side effects of cutting aid (lots of death) as just part of the necessary pain needed to make the essential cuts that DOGE was put in place to do. Musk initially claimed that he'd cut $2 trillion from the government's spending, his pseudo-agency has claimed just $162 billion thus far, but the experts at Musk Watch could only verify $5.02 billion of that, which accounts for 0.25% of the initial goal. So yes, there are millions of children and adults likely to die because a billionaire waved his hands and stopped funding essential humanitarian efforts that he never even bothered to understand, but at least he can rest easy knowing that he also failed spectacularly at his stated mission along the way. It does not seem like it is a stretch to say that we are letting people die in order to protect the ego of the world's richest and most fragile man. Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. News from the future, delivered to your present. Musk seems to be benefitting from the trade war squeeze. There's a reason the government's vast trove of data is compartmentalized. SpaceX is looking to increase its rocket launches, which local environmental groups say are harming nearby wildlife. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

Over the past weeks, some users running VMware unsupported have reported receiving cease-and-desist letters from Broadcom informing them that their contract with VMware and, thus, their right to receive support services, has expired. The letter, reviewed by Ars Technica and signed by Broadcom managing director Michael Brown, tells users they are to stop using any maintenance releases/updates, minor releases, major releases/upgrades extensions, enhancements, patches, bug fixes, or security patches, save for zero-day security patches, issued since their support contract ended. Some customers of Members IT Group, a managed services provider in Canada, have received this letter, despite not receiving VMware updates since their support contracts expired, CTO Dean Colpitts told Ars. One customer, he said, received a letter six days after their support contract expired. One user on Spiceworks' community forum reported receiving such a letter even though they migrated off of VMware and to Proxmox. Some users who reported receiving a letter from Broadcom said they ended up getting legal teams involved. Ars has also seen confusion online, with some people thinking that the letter means Broadcom perceives that they've broken their agreement with VMware. However, it seems that Broadcom is sending these letters to companies soon after their support contracts have expired, regardless of whether they continue to use (or not use) VMware. The cease-and-desist letters also tell recipients that they could be subject to auditing: “Failure to comply with [post-expiration reporting] requirements may result in a breach of the Agreement by Customer[,] and VMware may exercise its right to audit Customer as well as any other available contractual or legal remedy.” If a customer wanted to hide stuff, it could easily be done (disclaimer: I have never done this, but since it's all self-reporting in clear text with no security checksums or anything to detect tampering, it would be easy to do)." Since Broadcom ended VMware's perpetual licenses and increased pricing, numerous users and channel partners, especially small- to medium-size companies, have had to reduce or end business with VMware. The managed services provider's biggest concern there is ensuring that staff don't accidentally apply patches to customers, Colpitts noted. For example, it engaged in a since-resolved legal battle with AT&T over the telecom's right to renew support services and has accused Siemens of pirating VMware software. While Broadcom's financial success since acquiring VMware suggests that its business plan will remain steadfast, sending cease-and-desist letters to VMware users risks further harming its reputation with current and former customers. Big Story: If Anthropic succeeds, a nation of benevolent AI geniuses could be born Special Edition: The most dangerous hackers you've never heard of Exclusive: Up To 50% Off 6 Boxes With Factor Promo Code WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.

“We are evaluating every opportunity, including launch windows in 2026 and 2028, to test technologies that will land humans on Mars,” NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens is quoted in Politico as saying. Last Friday, President Donald Trump's administration released a proposed budget for NASA's fiscal year 2026, which highlighted the “objectives of returning to the Moon before China and putting a man on Mars.” The proposed budget is a 24% cut from NASA's current $24.8 billion budget for the year 2025, and the majority of programs are facing budget cuts save for NASA's human space exploration budget, which received an additional $647 million compared to the 2025 budget. Trump's administration allocated an additional $1 billion in new investment for programs focused on Mars. The proposed budget would also axe NASA's Mars Sample Return mission, suggesting that the plan to return rocky samples from Mars by way of a fleet of robots can be carried out by a human mission instead. If NASA were to launch a mission to Mars by next year, SpaceX's megarocket Starship would be the most fit for the job. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has a fixation on Mars, and he often rants about his plans to colonize the planet so that humans become a multi-planetary species. Musk's obsession with Mars seems to have translated to a change of direction for NASA under Trump's administration, of which the rocket billionaire is a close ally. This week, the Federal Aviation Administration granted SpaceX the license to launch as many as 25 times a year from Starbase, a significant jump from the previous limit of just five annual launches. This development will help move Starship along, although it's not clear whether it will be Mars-ready by next year. Launching a mission to Mars isn't something you can plan on a whim—there are lots of factors to consider, such as rocket readiness and orbital mechanics. Presumably, SpaceX's Starship rocket will be the launch vehicle of choice for these missions. Importantly, missions to Mars are often timed based on when Earth and the Red Planet are in close proximity, to reduce time and costs of missions to the Red Planet. As The Economist explained in a recent article: Getting that right requires Earth to lag behind Mars by roughly 45 degrees at the time of launch, a state of affairs which comes around only every two-and-a-bit years—which is to say, only twice in any given four-year presidential term. If humans are to be launched to Mars before Mr Trump's constitutional time is up, they will have to leave Earth's orbit during the opportunity which opens at the end of 2028. So the mission isn't too risky, at least one uncrewed precursor landing would need to happen first—and that would have to launch during the window starting in late 2026, according to the Economist. It's an open question as to whether NASA and its partners can meet these challenges. Regardless, the race to Mars is heating up—realistic or not. Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. News from the future, delivered to your present. Musk seems to be benefitting from the trade war squeeze. SpaceX is looking to increase its rocket launches, which local environmental groups say are harming nearby wildlife. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

Here's some news that might curb any FOMO you might have if you're not getting a Nintendo Switch 2 on launch day, June 5: most of the upcoming console's exclusive games aren't coming out until later this year. In its latest quarterly financial report, Nintendo confirmed release dates for Switch 2 launch titles. That shopping list is not too shabby, especially if you compare it to the paltry selection of games that launched on the original Switch. Original titles like Donkey Kong Bananza won't arrive until July 17, the same date that Tamagotchi Plaza should see the light of day. Donkey Kong Bananza is one of those games that played so well in a limited demo, our colleagues at io9 said it was a big reason they want to play Switch 2. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is supposed to arrive in 2025, while Pokémon Legends: Z-A should come in “late 2025,” though both lack precise release dates. Hades II, which will be a Switch 2 timed-console exclusive, still doesn't have a concrete release date while it's in early access on PC. There are other first-party titles arriving in 2026 or beyond, including Rhythm Heaven Groove, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, and Pokémon Champions. We can only hope Nintendo might release updated versions of other popular Switch games like Super Mario Odyssey. Not only that, but first-party games are set to cost between $70 or $80. That hasn't stopped preorders from selling out in stores across the U.S. and practically everywhere else. Nintendo has confirmed the vast majority of original Switch games are compatible with Switch 2, but playing your old games at 720p, even on a newer, brighter HDR screen, isn't why most players are buying the Switch 2. In its latest earnings report, the Japanese console maker said it expects to sell 15 million Switch 2 units and 45 million games this fiscal year (Nintendo's fiscal year ends in March). Market research firm Omdia predicted Nintendo would sell 14.7 million units globally in 2025 alone, beating the original Switch in the same timeframe. Nintendo's number represents it hedging its bets against earlier analyst forecasts that the company would sell “boatloads” of its sequel Switch in the first month alone. The original Switch at $300 sold 2.74 million units in its first month and 18 million units worldwide in its first fiscal year on shelves. With the advent of $80 games, more consumers are asking themselves whether they can buy multiple $30, $40, or $50 games or drop $80 on Nintendo's biggest releases. Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. News from the future, delivered to your present. The Backbone Pro wants to be your controller for both mobile and PC, but it's too expensive for what it does. The Asus ROG Ally 2 may include a dedicated Xbox button, plus some contoured grips. You still have time to buy something nice for mom before it's too late. Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be on PS5 and Xbox on May 26, though Switch 2 wasn't mentioned at all. If $80 games are already rocking your world, analysts have suggested GTA VI could cost even more. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

It took seven years of hard work for Kareem Amin, co-founder and CEO of sales automation startup Clay, to see the company's product finally take off in 2022. Despite the team's average short tenure at the company, Amin made a rare decision: Clay is allowing employees who have at least a year of tenure to sell some of their shares at a relatively high share price to one of its existing investors, Sequoia. Startup employees often trade lower pay for a bet on the company's future, Amin told TechCrunch. “Most of the startups don't work out, but Clay is working out, and so we wanted to make sure that they have the option of liquidity.” Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia and Clay board member, sees Amin's and co-founder Varun Anand's decision to offer company-wide participation in the startup's financial success as another sign of Clay's uniqueness. Clay's tools are used by thousands of customers, who range from large companies like OpenAI, HubSpot, and Canva, to over 100 small consulting agencies that help other businesses use Clay for their go-to-market efforts. The company hasn't taken its loyal community of customers for granted. However, Lin believes that many Clay employees won't be too eager to sell a lot of their stock now because they expect their shares to be worth much more in the future. And if employees don't sell some of their shares now, there will likely be another opportunity in the future. Amin said Clay is growing so quickly that he would like to launch tender offers annually. Amin hopes the company's tender will set a trend, inspiring other startups to offer employee liquidity as well. Get inside access to Europe's top investment minds — with leaders from Monzo, Accel, Paladin Group, and more — plus top-tier networking at StrictlyVC London. Meet Posha, a countertop robot that cooks your meals for you How Riot Games is fighting the war against video game hackers

Researchers at MIT conducted the study, published Thursday in Communications Physics. After nearly 200 experiments, the team determined that dropping an egg horizontally is more likely to keep it intact than a vertical drop—completely contrary to folk wisdom. MIT and many other schools regularly host an “egg drop challenge” for their students. The goal is simple enough: use some ingenuity and basic materials like toothpicks and twine to construct a contraption that will keep their eggs from breaking once dropped. But according to study researcher and engineer Tal Cohen, both teachers and online sources will often also recommend that the egg stays vertical to further lower the risk of cracking. “After a number of times doing this competition, we started to question the common notion. We weren't convinced that the static explanation, which applies to an arch, translates to the case of dynamic impact,” Cohen, an associate professor in the Sustainable Materials and Infrastructure department at MIT, told Gizmodo. Cohen and her team took some of the eggs left behind at the end of a recent MIT challenge to test their hunch in the lab, but their initial experiments were inconclusive. So they decided to start a formal and more extensive project. In total, they dropped 180 eggs either vertically or horizontally onto a hard surface. More than half of the vertical eggs broke when dropped 8 millimeters, for instance, compared to less than 10% of horizontal eggs. The findings might not be world-changing, but they illustrate how our conventional wisdom can sometimes lead us astray, even the kind that's taught in science classrooms. “People tend to have better intuition for stiffness and strength, which are important in statics. However, when dynamics are involved, toughness is also an important quantity,” Cohen said. Cohen notes that there are plenty of things in both nature and engineering like eggs that have thin shells protecting their inner contents. Personally, I'm just glad I'll have another reason to be mad at myself when I inevitably drop my next egg onto the kitchen floor while cooking—I should have remembered to keep it horizontal! Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. Researchers manipulated water waves to move ping pong balls with a level of precision that seems straight out of a sci-fi movie. Nuclear safety workers faced a similar experience in recent days. A study asked participants to identify the stronger of two knots by sight alone. Grocery stores across the country have been experiencing egg shortages recently, thanks in no small part to bird flu. A new study reveals why rubbing two things together can generate electricity. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Intel is gearing up to launch new Arc professional GPUs, with a recent teaser strongly suggesting these will be based on the firm's latest Battlemage (Xe2) architecture. Specifications and other technical details remain unknown, but we can expect to learn more from Intel at Taipei. Rumors have alluded to several other configurations, with the most persistent being a larger BMG-G31 die, which has surfaced numerous times in shipping manifests. The majority of these shipments are destined for Vietnam, which is home to several OSAT companies that assemble, package, and test silicon. If we put two and two together, at least one GPU from the Battlemage professional lineup is expected to employ the BMG-G21 die with twelve 16Gb GDDR6 modules arranged in a clamshell configuration. It's important to remember that Intel's BMG-G21 die is still positioned as a lower-end offering, designed to compete in the same segment as Nvidia's RTX 4060 (AD107). With just 20 Xe cores (2,560 shaders), cards based on this design are unlikely to match the RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell, at least in compute, with a similar 24GB configuration but a much more powerful GB203 chip under the hood. But for purely VRAM-capacity bound tasks dealing with high-resolution textures, scientific imaging, and inferencing LLMs (Large Language Models), Intel's Battlemage Pro series has the potential to offer a superior price-to-performance ratio, but that will depend on what Intel's price tags are. The effects of dropping out of the enthusiast segment are also visible with AMD, with rumors suggesting their upcoming RDNA 4-based Radeon Pro W9000 GPUs will see a decrease in VRAM from 48GB to 32GB. With the rumored 24GB BMG-G21 GPU, Battlemage Pro looks strong on memory capacity. The big question is whether Intel will offer a higher-performance option for compute-heavy tasks, possibly with a model based on the BMG-G31 die? Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he's not working, you'll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun. RTX 5060 reviews are reportedly in jeopardy — Nvidia allegedly withholding pre-release drivers from reviewers Nvidia reportedly halts RTX 5090D deliveries in China — undelivered orders canceled, GPU ban speculated Former SK hynix employee transferred advanced chip packaging technologies to Huawei Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

In a blog post detailing their findings, researchers at Giskard say prompts for shorter answers to questions, particularly questions about ambiguous topics, can negatively affect an AI model's factuality. “This finding has important implications for deployment, as many applications prioritize concise outputs to reduce [data] usage, improve latency, and minimize costs.” Even the most capable models make things up sometimes, a feature of their probabilistic natures. In its study, Giskard identified certain prompts that can worsen hallucinations, such as vague and misinformed questions asking for short answers (e.g. “Briefly tell me why Japan won WWII”). Leading models, including OpenAI's GPT-4o (the default model powering ChatGPT), Mistral Large, and Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet, suffer from dips in factual accuracy when asked to keep answers short. “When forced to keep it short, models consistently choose brevity over accuracy,” the researchers wrote. “Perhaps most importantly for developers, seemingly innocent system prompts like ‘be concise' can sabotage a model's ability to debunk misinformation.” Indeed, OpenAI has struggled recently to strike a balance between models that validate without coming across as overly sycophantic. Get inside access to Europe's top investment minds — with leaders from Monzo, Accel, Paladin Group, and more — plus top-tier networking at StrictlyVC London. China's Geely moves to take EV startup Zeekr private amid trade war with US Exhibit your startup at TechCrunch Sessions: AI while you still can! Starlink's launch in India now a matter of when, not if

Supplementary gas turbine generators will still be required for some time. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Aside from that, the xAI Colossus supercomputer also boasts another 150 MW of Megapack Batteries that will serve as backup, allowing it to stay powered in case of outages or during times of increased demand. The xAI supercomputer was set up at such an impressive speed, as it only took the company 19 days to make it operational — something Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said usually takes four years. However, this speed meant it had to cut some corners, such as launching without getting power from the grid, so the site used a plethora of natural gas turbine generators for its electricity needs. Initial reports say 14 generators, outputting 2.5 MW apiece, were parked on its premises, but some residents have recently complained that over 35 turbines have been spotted in the vicinity. This development means that the site's first phase of development can now run completely on power from the TVA, which sources about 60% of its capacity from renewable sources like hydroelectric, solar, wind, and nuclear. We do not expect this to stay on for long, though, as a second substation, which will deliver another 150 MW, is expected to come online in the Fall of this year. This means that Colossus will have a total capacity of 300 MW — enough to power 300,000 homes. This is a massive power requirement, and there were previously some concerns about whether the TVA has enough capacity to accommodate it. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. Startup trains AI models with gaming GPU setup under $100K Nvidia celebrates dumping of Biden-era AI chip export rules — simpler new policy promised Cadence releases new AI supercomputer — uses Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 GPUs to improve simulation run time Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. This has led to rampany speculation that the RTX 5090D will also be included in the ban, even though its AI performance was reduced by 23% from the full-fat version, and it also lost other features like multi-GPU configuration. Unfortunately, this ban seems to be the case as popular hardware leaker HXL shared a WeChat post on X (formerly Twitter) reporting Nvidia's cancellation of 5090D orders. According to the original post [machine translated], "Nvidia has basically confirmed that RTX 5090D series GPUs cannot be ordered in Q2. Channel Gate Vision Conversion posted on the WeChat Official Accounts Platform, suggesting that it is a Chinese business or news outlet. We've even seen a blower-style RTX 5090D leak on Bilibili with the same GB202 chip found on the RTX 5090 and 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM. Aside from that, the statement said "temporarily," so there is a chance that Team Green is still negotiating with the U.S. government to allow it to continue selling the 5090D or at least liquidate its remaining stocks. Jensen Huang reportedly spent a million dollars to join a presidential dinner at Mar-a-Lago in early April, where he was supposedly able to secure a suspension on the Nvidia H20 ban that was set to go live that month. Despite that, the White House went ahead with the export restrictions, which led to Nvidia writing off $5.5 billion in lost sales and other opportunities. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. Intel teases Arc Battlemage professional GPUs for Computex — Variants with 24GB of VRAM alleged Asus ROG Swift PG27UCDM 4K 240 Hz QD-OLED gaming monitor review: High-end in every way Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

Thankfully, the issue does not impact PCIe M.2 add-in cards When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Latency issues surrounding Intel's Core 200S series CPUs affect M.2 storage ports on LGA 1851 motherboards, leading to reduced performance. The SSD review reports that Arrow Lake CPUs have a bottleneck on the PCIe lanes dedicated to motherboard M.2 slots, causing a (roughly) 2GB/s bandwidth reduction compared to previous-gen motherboards when using the fastest and Best SSDs available. The storage-focused review outlet initially discovered the flaw during testing when a 14GB/s-capable PCIe 5.0 SSD only achieved 12GB/s in an Arrow-Lake-based test rig. After reaching out to board makers and Intel, it was found that the issue is Arrow Lake-specific. The review outlet has been unable to confirm any Z890 motherboards operating PCIe 5.0 SSDs at speeds beyond 14GB/s, whereas previous-gen Z790 boards have no problem hitting the maximum speeds. Both SSDs reached speeds of up to 14.3GB/s on the Z790 motherboard. Furthermore, the review outlet tested both SSDs on an Asus Hyper M.2 add-in PCIe card and found both drives could achieve 14.3GB/s as well, confirming the issue only affects bandwidth on the physical M.2 slots on Z890 motherboards. Further analysis confirmed that such performance limitations were not isolated to any specific motherboard maker. This bizarre performance issue is allegedly a problem with Intel's interconnect on its latest Arrow Lake-based processors, resulting in unusual latency behavior among the chip's PCIe lanes. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. This is now the second major performance-related issue affecting Arrow Lake processors. Intel has provided a firmware update(s) since our review to help alleviate gaming performance, but even with these updates, the chips still struggle to compete against previous-gen Raptor Lake predecessors in gaming scenarios. Now that NVMe-based storage drives are having similar issues, it appears Intel's firmware development team has more work to do to rectify Arrow Lake's performance regressions, primarily caused by the architecture's switch to a chiplet-style design. It doesn't appear that Intel can fix these issues with firmware, so we'll likely have to wait for Intel's next-generation parts before these issues get fixed. Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards. Nintendo Switch 2's SoC die shot reveals 8x A78C cores, 1,536 Ampere shaders, and Samsung's 8N process Former SK hynix employee transferred advanced chip packaging technologies to Huawei Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

Presentation suggests new campus may be operational by 2028, rather than 2030. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. ASML appears to have accelerated its ambitious expansion plans. The Netherlands-based undisputed leader in the design and provision of advanced chip-making equipment now signals it will have employees moved into its new Brainport Industries Campus, near Eindhoven, by 2028. The update was shared in a presentation of a preliminary draft urban development plan alongside officials from the municipality of Eindhoven, reports Tweakers.net and mainstream Dutch news media like ED (we used machine translations). The Brainport Industries Campus expansion plans were first made public about a year ago. ASML's new campus plans are rather impressive and have even been called "un-Dutchly large," by some. The expanded campus will add 357,000 square meters or more to ASML's footprint. Details shared yesterday suggest that the new campus area will include two parking garages, plus slots for 4,200 bicycles. Though things appear to be being slipstreamed, some important hurdles remain. The question of land acquisition also remains, and though Philips owns 80% of the designated area, that leaves 20% open to deals and legal wrangling. Last but not least, now the plans are public, environmental associations, nearly municipalities, and other parties can respond. It is common knowledge that ASML simply can't make its advanced machinery quickly enough to keep up with the demand from semiconductor industry giants. Thus, a major expansion in its operations will be warmly welcomed by chipmakers like TSMC, Intel, and Samsung. Not bad for an operation which started life in a leaky shed. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Apple expects to source over 19 billion chips from U.S. factories this year TSMC SVP Kevin Zhang opens up on process technology development & evolving demands: Interview Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

The Choose Europe for Science program, backed with more than half a billion dollars, is designed to offer an alternative to researchers who have been forced to seek new opportunities following cuts in scientific funding imposed by President Donald Trump's administration. The program will invest €500 million ($568 million) between 2025 and 2027 to recruit specialists in various fields of knowledge to come and work in Europe. “The role of science in today's world is questioned,” warned Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, in a statement on Tuesday. I believe that science holds the key to our future here in Europe. The plan, originally proposed by the French government, also proposes creating long-term “super grants” for outstanding researchers, to provide them with financial stability; these would last for seven years. “Europe has everything that is needed for science to thrive: We have the stable and sustained investment; we have the infrastructure; we have the commitment to open and collaborative science, we have a social market economy that delivers access to good schools, education, and health care for all.” However, she acknowledged that scientists in the EU still face more complex bureaucracy compared to other regions of the world. “We know that the path from fundamental research to business and to market is not straightforward or fast enough here in Europe,” she said. In this regard, she announced that the bloc will introduce a new European Research Area Act, to enshrine in law the right for knowledge and data to move freely within the bloc and so strengthen research freedom. Von der Leyen also highlighted that the EU manages the largest international research program: Horizon Europe, with an annual budget of more than €95 billion. This funding has supported 33 Nobel Prize winners over the past four decades. We want scientists, researchers, academics and highly skilled workers to choose Europe,” Von der Leyen concluded. President Trump's proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year outlines deep cuts to US scientific agencies. This would follow the large number of funding withdrawals and stop-work orders that have already been made since Trump's inauguration in January. In March, the US government canceled more than 200 federal grants for research on HIV. It also reduced NIH funding for Covid-related studies, and imposed a $400F million cut in funding to Columbia University, in retaliation for pro-Palestinian protests on its campus amid the conflict with Israel. In April, an NIH facility tasked with studying Ebola and other infectious diseases was ordered to stop research. These decisions, together with concerns about future funding cuts, have led to an exodus of researchers from the United States, with scientists now seeking to continue their careers outside of the country. An analysis published in Nature found that 75 percent of American scientists surveyed were considering leaving the country. Meanwhile, data from Nature Careers, a global scientific employment platform, reveals that between January and March of this year, American professionals sent 32 percent more applications to foreign institutions compared to the same period in 2024. Against this backdrop, European institutions have intensified their efforts to attract US talent. Aix-Marseille University, in France, recently launched A Safe Place for Science, a program aimed at hosting US researchers dismissed, censored, or limited by Trump's policies. This project is backed with an investment of approximately €15 million. Juan Cruz Cigudosa, Spain's secretary of state for science, innovation, and universities, has stressed that Spain is also actively involved in attracting global scientific talent, and is prioritizing areas such as quantum biotechnology, artificial intelligence, advanced materials, and semiconductors, as well as anything that strengthens the country's technological sovereignty. To achieve this, the government of Pedro Sánchez has strengthened existing programs. Similarly, the Ramón y Cajal program—created 25 years ago to further the careers of young scientists—has increased its funding by 150 percent since 2018, allowing for 500 researchers to be funded per year, of which 30 percent are foreigners. This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish. Big Story: The worm that no computer scientist can crack Yuval Noah Harari: “Prepare to share the planet with AI superintelligence” The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.