Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Without going into detail about what might happen to the $52 billion in subsidies from the CHIPS Act under his administration, Donald Trump said tariffs on foreign computer chips, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals are coming “in the near future.” He also namechecked DeepSeek’s AI releases, saying, “...coming up with a faster method of AI and less expensive, that’s good. I view that as a positive if it is fact and it is true, and nobody knows, but I view that as a positive.”In the speech at the House GOP Issues Conference held at the Trump National Doral Resort in Miami Monday afternoon, he said that to return the production of these goods to the US, “we don’t want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program Biden has.” Instead the incentive for manufacturers will be “they will not want to pay a tax.”Bloomberg reports that later, in comments to reports, Trump said he wanted a tariff rate “much bigger” than 2.5 percent.This is despite the outcome of the trade war with China during his first administration that expanded China’s trade surplus with the US between 2018, when the tariffs began, and 2021. A CTA report from last year cited by TechCrunch said Trump’s proposed tariffs could increase prices on laptops and tablets by 46 percent, game consoles by 40 percent, and smartphones by 26 percent.He also said that “we will have more plants built in the next short period of time than ever before because the incentive will be there,” however it’s unclear how many of those will be like The Stargate Project’s first datacenter in Texas, which was in the works well before the start of his administration. Last fall, the Commerce Department said that by then, it had “announced over $30 billion in proposed CHIPS private sector investments spanning 23 projects in 15 states” with 16 new manufacturing facilities in the works.He also said of DeepSeek that “instead of spending billions you will spend less and hopefully come up with the same solution,” even as OpenAI, Softbank & co. say they’re preparing to spend $500 billion on AI datacenters.Update, January 27th: Added details from Bloomberg.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Following years of litigation, a federal court has finally ruled it unconstitutional for the FBI to search communications of US citizens collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In a ruling unsealed last week, US District Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall decided that these “backdoor” searches violate the Fourth Amendment.As noted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, FISA allows federal intelligence agencies to collect swaths of foreign communications “in the name of ‘national security.’” Even though some of those communications might involve US residents, the government has argued that requiring warrants “would hinder the FBI’s ability to obtain and act upon threat intelligence.” In 2023, the FBI conducted more than 57,000 “US person” data searches, marking a 52 percent decrease from 2022.This particular decision stems from a case involving Agron Hasbajrami, a permanent US resident who was arrested in 2011 over accusations that he planned to join a terrorist organization in Pakistan. However, the government failed to disclose that part of its case rested on emails it obtained without a warrant through Section 702 of FISA. An appeals court in 2020 ruled that these types of searches might be unconstitutional, but now it’s official. Judge DeArcy Hall found the FBI’s warrantless search of US data “unreasonable” under the Fourth Amendment:While communications of U.S. persons may nonetheless be intercepted, incidentally or inadvertently, it would be paradoxical to permit warrantless searches of the same information that Section 702 is specifically designed to avoid collecting. To countenance this practice would convert Section 702 into precisely what Defendant has labeled it – a tool for law enforcement to run “backdoor searches” that circumvent the Fourth Amendment.Congress reauthorized Section 702 of FISA last year, and it’s set to expire again in 2026. The EFF is asking lawmakers to create a “legislative warrant requirement so that the intelligence community does not continue to trample on the constitutionally protected rights to private communications.”

Illustration: The Verge Google said today that it plans to update Google Maps to reflect President Trump’s January 20th executive order to change the names of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali to the Gulf of America and Mount McKinley, respectively.The company noted on X the updated nomenclature will appear once the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated.“We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” the company posted on X. It added that when “name changes vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name. Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too.”Denali was named Mount McKinley until 2015.The US Department of the Interior said last week it plans to follow the executive order to implement the name changes.“The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, under the purview of the Department of the Interior, is working expeditiously to update the official federal nomenclature in the Geographic Names Information System to reflect these changes, effective immediately for federal use,” the Department of the Interior said on Friday.An Apple spokesperson wasn’t immediately available to comment on its plans for Apple Maps.

When it comes to building a new PC or diagnosing an older one, there can be many hurdles to overcome. Some issues may have multiple causes, and it is advantageous to start ruling them out by starting with the easier ones. For instance, if the PC is not receiving any power, the power supply, motherboard, or even the case could be the cause.

Another Windows update, another round of headaches. Every time Microsoft pushes out an update for its operating systems, it's a small gamble to see what breaks and how severe the bugs get. Well, if the torrent of user reports is anything to go by, it seems that the latest Windows 11 24H2 update has been causing misery with some vital services.

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