TECH

TSMC CEO is optimistic about Arizona chip quality despite challenges, most advance tech will remain in Taiwan

TSMC is facing significant challenges in its efforts to establish advanced chip production facilities in the United States. Despite a $65 billion investment in three massive factories in Arizona, TSMC's CEO, C.C. Wei, has reiterated that the company's most advanced chip technology is likely to remain in Taiwan for the foreseeable future.

Speaking at a National Taiwan University event, Wei outlined a series of obstacles that have slowed progress and increased costs for TSMC's U.S. expansion. These challenges include complex compliance issues, local construction regulations, and various permitting requirements that have significantly extended the project timeline.

"Every step requires a permit, and after the permit is approved, it takes at least twice as long as in Taiwan," Wei said, highlighting the stark contrast between the regulatory environments in the two countries. Other challenges include a shortage of skilled workers, gaps in the supply chain, and a lack of established regulations specific to chip plant construction.

To address these issues, TSMC has taken extraordinary measures. Wei revealed that the company invested $35 million to establish 18,000 rules in collaboration with local governments, hiring a team of experts to navigate the complex regulatory landscape. Additionally, TSMC has faced significantly higher costs for essential supplies, such as chemicals, which are five times more expensive in the U.S. than in Taiwan.

To mitigate the labor shortage, TSMC has resorted to relocating half of its construction workers from Texas to Arizona, incurring additional costs for relocation and accommodation.

Despite this, Wei remains optimistic about the quality of chips that will be produced at the Arizona facility. At a recent earnings conference, he expressed confidence in achieving the same level of quality as in Taiwan and anticipated a smooth ramp-up process.

During the call, Wei noted that TSMC had accelerated the production schedule for its first fab in Arizona, which began high-volume production in the fourth quarter of 2024. The fab utilizes N4 process technology with yields comparable to TSMC's facilities in Taiwan. "With our strong manufacturing capability and execution, we are confident we can deliver the same level of manufacturing quality and reliability from our fab in Arizona as we do from our fabs in Taiwan," he said.

Plans for a second and third fab in Arizona are also on track, Wei confirmed during the earnings call. "This is where we will utilize even more advanced technologies, such as our N3, N2, and A16 nodes, based on our customers' needs," he added.

The U.S. government has thrown its full support behind TSMC's investment, offering a $6.6 billion grant as part of its strategy to diversify the geographic distribution of chip manufacturing, which is currently heavily concentrated in Asia, particularly Taiwan.

However, at the event, Wei noted that the most cutting-edge chip technology might not reach American shores as quickly as some in the U.S. had hoped. This is not new information: TSMC has consistently maintained that the majority of its chip manufacturing, especially for the most advanced chips, will remain in Taiwan.

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TECH

Microsoft Is Making It Easier And Possibly Cheaper To Repair Busted Xbox Consoles

Boss battles can be frustrating, but even more infuriating is when your game console gives up the ghost. I had this happen with an Xbox One X back in the day, and fortunately it was under warranty (and thus easy to have replaced). For those who are not so fortunate, Microsoft announced it is expanding its repairability program that should make it easier to get your busted Xbox console fixed. It might also be cheaper, though that remains to be seen.

What this entails is an expansion of in-person repair options for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, by way of a partnership with uBreakFix by Asurion and it's nearly 700 participating store locations spread out across the United States. Before this partnership, official in-person console repairs were only offered via Microsoft's own support channels through the Microsoft Store.

Microsoft also confirmed that this includes its three newest Xbox models, including the 2TB Xbox Series X Galaxy Special Edition, 1TB Xbox Series X Digital Edition in Robot White, and 1TB Xbox Series S in Robot White.

"Additionally, replacement components for the three Xbox Series X|S console options are now available for purchase via the Microsoft Store and replacement console parts are also now available for purchase online via the Microsoft Repair Hub on iFixit," Microsoft announced. "With the purchase of replacement components previously limited to controller parts and only available through the Microsoft Store, these additional repair options allow players to choose the repairability solution that works best for them, even if their console is out-of-warrant.

Microsoft says the expanded repair program will result in reduced waste, promote the re-use of Xbox hardware, and reduce the company's environmental impact. Tying into that, it also announced plans to eliminate single-use plastics from its packaging this year, by switching to fully paper and fiber-based options. It's all part of a broader sustainability effort.

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DIGITAL LIFE

The FBI forced China-backed malware infecting US computers to self-destruct

PlugX, a malware family designed to remotely control infected machines, is a persistent threat that's existed since 2008. A specific variant of this Remote Access Trojan was recently targeted and essentially wiped off the internet by the FBI and a few international partners.

The Justice Department and the FBI recently announced a multi-month operation that took down a variant of the PlugX family of malware. The malicious tool was developed by a hacking team known as "Mustang Panda," the FBI said, with the entire operation being sponsored and funded by Chinese authorities. The malware was designed to infiltrate, infect, and control thousands of PCs and networks around the world.

Mustang Panda has been active since at least 2014, the recently unveiled FBI affidavit said. The group targeted government and private business organizations based in the US, Europe, and Asia, along with a few Chinese dissident groups. Owners of systems infected by PlugX are usually unaware of the ongoing infection, which is why the recent self-destruct operation delivered a significant blow against the threat.

The US agency leveraged its partnership with French law enforcement authorities, and France-based cyber-security company Sekoia.io. Sekoia researchers were successful in discovering a feature hidden within PlugX's code, which could receive a "self-destruct" instruction from its command-and-control (C2) server. The C2 IP address was hard-coded in the malware, so the FBI was able to effectively seize the entire system.

The PlugX family of Remote Access Trojans is known for its extensive ability to execute commands coming from remote C2 servers. Cyber-criminals can easily extract relevant machine information from the infected systems, capture the screen, send keyboard and mouse events, reboot the system, manage services and the Windows Registry, and more.

Starting in August 2024, the FBI and the Justice Department obtained nine warrants required to organize the PlugX self-destruction operation. The judge authorized the deletion of the PlugX infection from approximately 4,258 Windows PCs and networks based in the US, and the operation was concluded earlier this month.

Furthermore, the FBI got in touch with the actual US victims of the RAT malware through their respective internet service providers. According to Jacqueline Romero, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, this long-term PlugX infection involving thousands of computers shows how reckless and aggressive Chinese-sponsored hackers are. US authorities were able to effectively deal with this threat thanks to an international "whole-of-society" approach to protecting US cyber-security.

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DIGITAL LIFE

New guide offers framework to measure AI's energy consumption

Advanced computing and data centers are massive energy consumers. In fact, a recent report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that U.S. data centers consumed about 4.4% of total electricity in 2023 and projects them to potentially triple consumption by 2028. Widespread deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) is a driving factor of this rise in energy consumption and is already having an economic impact as electricity costs rise for consumers.

Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are shining a light on this energetic cost of computing. Along with investigating methods to make computing more energy efficient, researchers are working to disseminate tools and insights beyond the research sphere to industry software professionals.

A recent result of these efforts is "A Beginner's Guide to Power and Energy Measurement and Estimation," a new NREL report developed in partnership with Intel that outlines key considerations for machine learning developers and practitioners seeking to use energy measurement tools and interpret energy estimates.

"With AI playing a growing role in both research and industry, its increasing impact on energy consumption has become a shared challenge we can tackle together," said Hilary Egan, data scientist and lead NREL author on the report. "Through this guide, we wanted to provide AI professionals with an introduction to energy estimation that opens the door to more sustainable decision-making in computing."

Taking AIm: Partnering to address AI's energy use challenge...NREL's commitment to reducing computing's—and AI's—energy consumption inspired the launch of the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis (JISEA) Green Computing Catalyzer in 2022. The Green Computing Catalyzer is one arm of JISEA's Catalyzer Program exploring strategic areas for investment in future energy opportunities and brings together researchers, universities, and industry partners to analyze pathways to reduce computing's energy impact.

Over its tenure, the Green Computing Catalyzer has supported efforts to quantify and catalog the energetic costs of machine learning and NREL's advanced computing systems, with the goal of providing a means for more transparency and accountability in computing. These efforts caught the attention of Intel, which leads its own collection of Responsible AI initiatives.

Together, the Green Computing Catalyzer and Intel developed "A Beginner's Guide to Power and Energy Measurement and Estimation," aiming to equip developers with the skills they need to conduct productive energy measurement in their computing. This allows developers and their companies to make informed decisions about the sustainability of their systems.

"Sustainability has been a longstanding priority at Intel, both before the advent of AI and now," said Ronak Singhal, senior fellow in the Datacenter and AI group at Intel. "NREL's contributions were crucial in bringing to life our shared publication, which equips developers with the skills to make intelligent measurement decisions—a vital first step on the road towards sustainability in AI."

Shaping a measurement framework for AI's energy usage...While some AI/machine-learning developers and cloud companies are beginning to incorporate energy considerations into the development of their various models, there is no uniform standard framework for measuring energy use across all computational levels. The new guide serves as a helpful resource to make energy efficiency tools and procedures more accessible, while establishing a framework for measuring energy at the system, job, application, and code levels.

The report offers a roadmap for determining computing's energy usage from both hardware and software perspectives and discusses the challenges of interpreting these measurements as useful estimates. It also contains practical tips and real-world scenarios that illustrate the application of different energy considerations that can be used across the computing industry.

Practitioners using the guide will start at the beginning of the energy project measurement workflow: determining the key questions to answer. The guide then walks through how to determine the appropriate and feasible measurement tools to gather the data that then must be analyzed and interpreted. Finally, the roadmap helps practitioners and their companies determine the sufficiency of the analysis, which may lead to refinement of questions and measurements.

Overall, the report provides measurement, analysis, and interpretation guidance from the system level—how a collection of workloads affects energy usage—to the code level—quantifying the energy consumed by parts of a job or application.

"The Catalyzer Program addresses critical, intersectional energy challenges," said NREL's Kristin Wegner Guilfoyle, Catalyzer Program lead. "This roadmap helps achieve that goal by connecting the progress made by energy-efficient computing researchers with the innovations driven by software developers and practitioners."

Provided by National Renewable Energy Laboratory

 

TECH

Microsoft announces new job cuts across divisions following perfomance-based layoffs

Microsoft is implementing new job cuts across its business, impacting employees across gaming, experience & devices, sales, and security divisions. The news arrives just a week after Microsoft said it was making performance-related cuts, which are unrelated to the latest layoffs.

A Microsoft spokesperson said that the layoffs would affect a small number of employees without specifying exact numbers, reports Business Insider, which cites two people familiar with the matter.

Employees started receiving notifications on Tuesday about layoffs in Microsoft's security unit. The Redmond giant was criticized by the US government last year for security lapses in what it called the "preventable" Exchange Online email service hack by a China-linked group.

In May 2024, the company launched its "Secure Future" initiative, telling employees that security had become a "top priority" that trumped everything else when it comes to importance. Microsoft even started tying security performance directly to employee reviews and compensation.

Microsoft's cuts to its gaming division come almost exactly a year after the company laid off around 1,900 people from this segment, primarily affecting Activision Blizzard employees who arrived following Redmond's $68.7 billion acquisition of the gaming giant. Some workers from Xbox and ZeniMax were also impacted.

It was reported yesterday that CEO Satya Nadella could have shut down the Xbox division in 2021. Instead, he decided to acquire ZeniMax Media and Activision Blizzard.

It's not just Nadella who is looking to replace poor performers. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week announced that 5%, or around 3,625 employees, of its low performers were being moved out. Zuckerberg said Meta typically manages out people who aren't meeting expectations over the course of a year, but the process will be expedited. Those being released will be replaced by new hires throughout 2025.

Microsoft has laid off approximately 12,550 employees since the start of 2020. During the same period, Nadella's compensation has risen 78%, from $44.3 million in fiscal year 2020 to $79.1 million in fiscal year 2024.

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DIGITAL LIFE

Why would someone hack into schools? Cybersecurity experts explain why they are easy targets

A nationwide breach that has exposed the data of students and teachers around the country underscores how vulnerable educational institutions are to cyberattacks because of a lack of resiliency investments, Northeastern University cybersecurity experts say.

On Jan. 7, PowerSchool, a software company that provides educational services to more than 60 million students in K-12 schools throughout the world, announced that the data of some customers had been compromised as part of a hack on its systems.

Using stolen credentials, hackers accessed PowerSchool's portal to steal information from teachers and students including names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, grade point averages, bus stops and medical information.

"It's one thing when your own data gets compromised, and we all generally don't feel great about it, but we are talking about your children who are either not online or barely online," says David Choffnes, executive director of Northeastern University's Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute. "To have their sensitive information exposed like this is a huge problem because, while those of us that are grown-ups have a certain amount of our lives left, it's nowhere near as much as kids. Their information will be exposed for much longer."

K-12 schools are often the target of cyberattacks because they are historically underfunded when it comes to cybersecurity infrastructure, Choffnes says. Additionally, hackers understand how valuable the data of children can be and that those affected are often more willing to pay top dollar to prevent sensitive information from getting released.

"Who do attackers target? They attack the most vulnerable and valuable," Choffnes says.

Cyberattacks in schools are on the rise, and according to the U.S. Department of Education K-12 schools throughout the country are roughly having five cybersecurity incidents per week.

A 2024 trends report from the State Educational Technology Directors Association revealed that the top priority for state education tech leaders is bolstering cybersecurity measures, but many believe there is a lack of state funding to adequately address the situation.

"We all know that high schools and middle schools often have the least amount of funding for enhancing or strengthening their security," says Aanjhan Ranganathan, a Northeastern professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences and cybersecurity expert. "They have enough funding problems already."

"Most of their systems are likely outdated and therefore have old security vulnerabilities that should have been patched," he adds. "There's a whole bunch of low-hanging fruit for hackers to get into."

PowerSchool has not shared the scope of the attack, but individual school districts throughout the country who are customers have been notified. The company says it is working with Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm, and the FBI to investigate the issue and will release a detailed report by Jan. 17.

On the customer end, PowerSchool has taken a number of steps to address the situation, including instructing customers to rotate their passwords. Meanwhile, it is monitoring the dark web to see if any information has been exposed, and is offering credit monitoring services to those affected, according to a report from the cybersecurity trade publication Bleeping Computer.

Notably, PowerSchool confirmed in an FAQ page to customers that it paid a ransom to the hackers to prevent the release of the data, noting that it had received a video showing the data being deleted, Bleeping Computer reports.

Ranganathan says a video alone cannot be trusted as proof that data has been deleted.

"It absolutely doesn't make sense for you to believe a video of data being deleted," he says. "Even if you or I deleted something on our devices, it's still there and can be very easily recovered."

Choffnes added there are concerns with agreeing to pay ransoms.

"In the microscopic view of things, that sounds good because that means this data hopefully is no longer going to be exposed. Bigger picture though, if you pay a ransom, that encourages more of the same activity and incentivizes attackers to go and steal stuff because they expect to get paid, which is not good for society."

How the hackers got access to the unauthorized login data is still unclear. One explanation is that it was obtained through an email phishing attack, but Ranganathan says hackers can be creative in getting this information.

"Kids are often on Discord servers playing games," he says. "This is exactly the same place where hackers hang around. It only takes one or two hackers to say, 'Hey, give me your credentials. Let's play around with school data and see what we can get.' There are so many ways you can trick people into giving their usernames and passwords."

Provided by Northeastern University

 

DIGITAL LIFE

Company launches tool to help interpret employees' feelings

Companies that use data in their decision-making can experience growth of 15% to 25% above the market average, according to data from the McKinsey consultancy. It is no wonder that data-driven HR has been the key to more strategic people management and capable of transforming challenges into opportunities.

However, one question challenges many organizations: how to transcend quantitative data and understand the real feelings and perceptions of employees? This is where artificial intelligence (AI) emerges as a solution.

Pin People, a leading platform for organizational research and employee experience management, specialized in serving large companies throughout Brazil and Latin America, has launched the Comments Deep Dive, a tool that uses generative AI to deeply analyze the opinions of surveys applied to employees, providing richer and more personalized insights.

This innovation allows HR managers and leaders to explore complex and varied topics, enriching the information collected through open questionnaires, in addition to ensuring agile and impartial analyses of large quantities of responses, often thousands of comments, a humanly impossible task.

“Instead of limiting ourselves to 20 or 30 questions with closed answers — that is, when companies agree not to ask everything —, we want to go further to capture what really matters to people in their daily experiences at work,” highlights Frederico Lacerda, CEO of Pin People.

Comment Deep Dive: how does it work?...Comment Deep Dive is a tool that supports HR teams and leaders in reading and interpreting texts, facilitating the generation of qualitative analyses. For example: to understand employees’ perception of the work model, a company can use Pin People’s Comment Deep Dive tool.

Based on employees’ responses to one or more internal surveys with open questions or space for comments, the tool uses generative artificial intelligence to identify phrases related to the topic, detecting language patterns and grouping related topics, for example, “home office” or “quality of life”. Each phrase is analyzed to determine whether the sentiment of the text has a positive, negative or neutral tone. Finally, the tool compiles the results and provides a clear overview of employees' opinions on the topic in question, helping the company identify what is working well and what needs to be improved — including collecting and prioritizing suggestions made by respondents.

The new functionality is the first step towards transforming the traditional organizational listening process, which is often limited to predetermined questionnaires that do not reflect the true diversity of employees' thoughts and feelings.

“Traditional structured research is no longer adequate; in today's world, which puts people at the center, companies need to invest in a more qualitative, individualized and personalized employee experience. To achieve this, a fully structured and closed questionnaire tends not to be enough”, says Lacerda.

Personalization and efficiency...Already being applied to several clients and with expansion planned for 2025, this new solution represents a significant advance in the way companies can use artificial intelligence (AI) to meet emerging needs in human resources management. This development is in line with the trend of using technology to optimize processes and results.

According to a Gartner forecast, by 2025, around 60% of global companies are expected to adopt AI to perform predictive analysis that helps understand and anticipate patterns of engagement, turnover and performance of their employees.

Pin People’s Lacerda highlights that adopting AI to analyze new and existing data from companies can help optimize HR operations and increase the accuracy of talent engagement and development strategies, aligning people management practices with the dynamic demands of the global market.

This allows HR to explore additional topics and identify relevant insights that can influence strategic decisions, including changes in research methodologies. “By increasing the productivity and assertiveness of leaders and HR, it also offers personalization to employees. It is a mutual benefit that, if implemented correctly by organizations, can yield extraordinary results,” says the executive.

In addition, the implementation of the Feedback Deep Dive reflects a broader movement towards more human-centered work practices, recognizing that employees expect and deserve a more personalized approach from their employers.

“In the past, companies were at the center, and people needed to adapt to them. Today, the scenario has been reversed: people expect and demand from companies a more personalized experience focused on their individual needs,” says Lacerda.

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