Daily Tech News 29 July 2022

• The CHIPS act - delivering $52 billion in subsidies to the massively profitable semiconductor industry - has passed Congress after being bloated out to $280 billion. (The Verge)
  
  Your tax dollars at work.
  
  Won't stop Intel raising chip prices.
  
  
  
• You might ask why Intel was pushing so hard for its cut of the mud pie when it's been having one record quarter after another and the answer is the gravy train just fell off a bridge. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The company posted a $500 million quarterly loss on a year-on-year revenue drop of 17% and an accompanying drop in gross margins, which is not a pleasant combination.
  
  
  

• A big part of that Intel loss was an inventory write-down as they close their Optane storage business. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Optane is faster and more robust than flash and cheaper and denser than RAM, but at the same time it's more expensive and less dense than flash and slower and less robust than RAM, putting it in an awkward place.
  
  It never got the volume in sales to drive the price down, so now it's gone for good. It was an attractive option - at least on paper - for enterprise databases, but I'm not sure if it made much difference in reality.
  
  
  
• Back on the CHIPS act recipients will be banned from building new fabs in China. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That provision is probably aimed at companies like Samsung, which is considering a $200 billion investment in US-based fabs. Samsung already operates fabs in China for older, lower-tech processes - as does TSMC.
  
  
  
• Nirvana Finance - one of those bullshit blockchain "stablecoins" - just got wiped out. (Coindesk)
  
  Someone borrowed $10 million - unsecured, anonymous, and online - and created a fake transaction to drain funds from Nirvana before paying the loan back and running off with the stolen funds. Like paying with a cheque and closing your bank account before it can be cashed.
  
  
  
• Instagram says, "Apparently we are not the phone company after all. Who knew?" (The Verge)
  
  Oh.
  
  
  
• Twitter is raising prices. (The Verge)
  
  Even The Verge is skeptical of this one.

posted by Pixy Misa at 05:00 AM

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