Daily Tech News 17 January 2026

• Taiwan has reached an agreement with the US for a $500 billion investment project in return for a tariff reduction from 20% to 15% and tariff waivers during the construction of new factories. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That amount includes $250 billion of direct investment and $250 billion of credit guarantees by Taiwan's government, but it also includes $100 billion of already-planned investment by TSMC.
  
  If you're throwing literally hundreds of billions of dollars around for Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturers setting up in the US, maybe earmark a few billion for Nanya to expand consumer DRAM production.
  
  
  
• Because Samsung sure ain't doing it. (WCCFTech)
  
  Samsung is expecting a 5% increase in DRAM production in 2026 - and that's in the face of unprecedented shortages and a projected additional 30% increase in demand over the course of this year.
  
  The Big Three are just begging for Taiwan or West Taiwan to eat their lunch.

• AMD's long-awaited dual-vcache CPU was a no-show at CES but increasingly looks real. (WCCFTech)
  
  Dubbed the 9950X3D2, it keeps leaking in benchmark results. It is exactly two 9850X3D CPU complexes in a single package - 16 cores and 192MB of cache running at up to 5.6GHz.
  
  
  
• If you're in the market for a four-port 400Gb Ethernet switch, Mikrotik has one. (Serve the Home)
  
  $1295. And considering it has the same bandwidth as a 640-port 2.5Gb switch - if such a thing existed - that's pretty darn cheap.
  
  
  
• ChatGPT Go is now available at $8 per month. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  With ads. But of course with ads, as OpenAI is bleeding cash like a US federal agency under a Democratic president's second term.
  
  
  
• OpenAI says its new ads won't influence answers. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It will lie to you exactly the same as the more expensive plans.
  
  
  
• TSMC says AI demand is endless, just like tulip bulbs. (Ars Technica)
  
  But you can eat tulip bulbs.
  
  
  
• Naya Connect is a very keyboard. (Liliputing)
  
  It has a fairly standard 85-key layout - a little cramped but it does include the Four Essential Keys - plus an optional 6-key macropad, plus an optional 24-key numeric keypad, plus an optional 24-key macropad with either blank keys or a assortment of 84 interchangeable icon keys to choose from, plus an optional trackball with four buttons and four macro keys, plus an optional trackpad with four macro keys, plus an optional haptic dial (that is, it gives programmable physical feedback) with an integrated trackpad and four macro keys, plus an optional 3D mouse with six degrees of freedom... With four macro keys.
  
  With five choices of keyswitch, keycaps in either black or white, and the metal frame in either plain aluminium or black anodised aluminium.
  
  The basic keyboard costs $119 (with your choice of colours and keyswitches), while the full setup costs... A lot. Well over $1000. They have an early-bird "All-in" bundle that isn't complete and that's already $917.
  
  
  
• Microplastics from washing clothes could be hurting your tomatoes. (Washington Post) (archive site)
  
  You heard them. Stop putting tomatoes in with your laundry.
  
  So, how solid is this study?

  "Sometimes microplastics can have a positive impact on soil or plant properties, and sometimes it could be negative," Djuric said.

  So you're saying maybe I should put tomatoes in with my laundry?
  
  
  
• Fixing the HTTP rate limit header specification. (Dotat.at)
  
  A 429 response means you're asking too many questions, go away. The new spec tries to tell you how long you should go away for, but at the moment it assumes that everyone involved is equally stupid. This is an attempt to fix that.
  
  
  
• Played some more Hytale today. It runs at 30fps on low settings on my laptop, which means it should run faster on just about anything else, since my laptop has a 2880x1620 screen and five year old integrated Vega 8 graphics and I habitually run it in silent mode (with the fan speed turned all the way down). It's a great system for doing work, lousy for playing games.
  
  Also, in Hytale low graphics settings look basically the same as "epic" graphics. The main change there is the render distance, just as with Minecraft, so unless you spend all your time looking to the horizon it make little difference.
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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