SK Hynix raises $26.5B in the biggest foreign IPO in US history, is urged to build new US fabs | TechCrunch
The AI chip boom just produced its biggest Wall Street moment yet. Now SK Hynix and Samsung are being asked to build U.S. factories.
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Apple to produce Made in America wireless chips with Broadcom | TechCrunch
Apple has signed a $30 billion+ multiyear deal with Broadcom to design and produce more than 15 billion U.S.-made custom wireless connectivity chips for Apple products.
Amazon updated 2023’s Fire HD 10 tablet with 4GB of RAM
The 32GB model is now available with a bump from 3GB to 4GB of RAM with a small price increase.
Apple’s email-hiding feature is reportedly exposing real email addresses.
Tyler Murphy, the co-founder of EasyOptOuts, tells 404 Media that he notified Apple about a bug in its Hide My Email feature more than a year ago, but it’s reportedly still not fixed. The vulnerability allows someone to obtain a person’s real email through the fake one generated by Apple’s tool, 404 Media reports. [Link: Apple ‘Hide My Email’ Vulnerability Reveals Peoples’ Real Email Addresses | https://www.404media.co/apple-hide-my-email-vulnerability-reveals-peoples-real-email-addresses/ | 404 Media]
Formula E’s new season is starting to look more like F1
Formula E’s season 13 calendar includes three new race locations and 30-minute “unleashed” sprint races in the new Gen4 cars.
Half a billion people are using Threads every month
Threads has surpassed 500 million monthly active users, and it’s launching new features for communities and to tweak your algorithm.
All the gear a 20-year gadget blogging veteran packs when traveling
Here are my tips for what to bring while traveling, from bags and chargers to entertainment and photo gear.
The world’s first trillionaire is a killer
Elon Musk’s empire of wealth is built on suffering.
Jeff Bezos's Prometheus raises $12B to build an 'artificial general engineer' for the physical world | TechCrunch
The new round values the physical AI startup that aims to automate heavy engineering and drug design at $41 billion.
Meta remembers the Portal exists and turns it into an AI dev kit.
The company’s new agentic developer tools are giving the discontinued smart displays a second life as a smart home controller, family message board, art display, or anything you can dream up. The move comes shortly after Microsoft announced Project Solara. Meta says the tools are hardware-agnostic and work with many existing devices. Still, anything that breathes new life into a defunct gadget is a good thing. [Media: https://www.threads.com/@boztank/post/DZLR8WWjR-b?xmt=AQG0giZ_PItYplpFoyy-0lpZb-FEIEWty4EpmluHXCdVXg]
Meta mercifully spun out VR fitness game Supernatural instead of just killing it | TechCrunch
Meta appears to have listened to the Supernatural users who protested the app's sad fate after sweeping layoffs.
SwitchBot’s acquisition of Nanoleaf is about more than lighting
Nanoleaf’s CEO says the partnership will help both smart home companies pursue their ambitions in AI and robotics.
Facebook launches a ‘Plus’ subscription that gives you extra features
Meta is bringing paid “Plus” subscriptions to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and new subscription packages for Meta AI.
Meta’s Forum is part Reddit, part Facebook, and part Google AI Overview
Meta’s Forum is a new dedicated app for Facebook Groups, with an AI chatbot for searching through group posts.
With mass layoffs plannned, Meta reassigns thousands of employees to AI initiatives.
The New York Times and Reuters report that a memo was sent to Meta employees on Monday reassigning 7,000 of them, and said that “As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new org structures.” The memo told employees to work remotely on Wednesday, when it will lay off about 10 percent of its workforce, roughly 8,000 people, with emails sent at 4AM local time. [Link: Meta lays out details of May 20 restructuring in internal document | https://www.reuters.com/world/meta-lays-out-plans-may-20-layoffs-restructuring-internal-document-says-2026-05-18/ | Reuters]
Gemini’s latest updates are all about controlling your phone
Google is debuting some new Gemini features, like expanded task automation and the ability to use AI to make your own homescreen widgets.
Google announces its Chromebook successor: the Googlebook
Google has a new operating system and a new laptop platform, but no hardware just yet.
GitHub just had a major outage.
GitHub uses a queue for developers when lots of people are working on a single project. It’s designed to avoid changes clashing and developers breaking things, but yesterday it failed in a catastrophic way thanks to a bug that randomly reverted previously merged commits (code snapshots). GitHub also had other outages yesterday, on the same day I reported on employee concerns about GitHub reliability and leadership. [Link: Inside Microsoft’s wave of executive departures | https://www.theverge.com/tech/917361/microsoft-executive-departures-notepad | The Verge]