Tag Archives: apple

Trump’s Tariffs Are a Bruising Defeat for the AI Industry

Posted on by

Trump's lofty tariffs are set to impact the tech industry in a huge way, and will hit the young AI sector particularly hard.

If you follow tech stocks, there's probably one thing on your mind today: Donald Trump's tariffs.

Yesterday, Trump announced his long-teased "reciprocal tariffs" on foreign imports coming into the US. Among them are a 32 percent tariff on Taiwan, 24 percent on Japan, 26 percent on India, and 34 percent on China — all major players in the global tech trade.

As a result, the magnificent seven (M7) stocks — a stock trader term for the current whales of the tech industry: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla — are in a freefall today, as investors sell off their shares to brace for economic uncertainty. Among the tech industry, the stagnant AI sector is being hit particularly hard, as energy costs are anticipated to skyrocket along with the cost of important resources like steel, precious minerals, and semiconductors.

As such, the cost to build and run data centers, the massive facilities that make AI computing possible, is expected to spike as the supply chain adjusts to the new normal.

The vast majority of chips that power these data centers come from hard-hit countries like Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, and Vietnam, while the US makes just 11 percent of its chips at home. Trump's tariffs will force countries from those companies to hike their chip prices, and US companies will no doubt hike their prices to compensate, which will ultimately run off to consumers.

That's a crushing blow for American AI companies, which were already facing the consequences of investor skepticism, lagging revenue, and a disappointing debut AI IPO by CoreWeave.

Broader details about how these tariffs will affect the tech industry are foggy right now, as the stock market is moving at a breakneck pace, but there is one common theme: everything is down. Apple, for example, is heading for its biggest single-day plunge in stock price in nearly 5 years, dropping over 8 percent in just the first few hours of trading. Other M7 stocks are likewise plummeting, with Amazon down almost 9 percent, and Nvidia down by 6.7 at the time of writing. Tesla has continued its months-long cascade with a 7 percent dip so far.

If you're wondering why we're doing this, you're not alone. For decades, the United States has sat atop the global economic food chain. Thanks to years of military and economic supremacy, the US dollar became the world standard, making it easy to export cheap consumer goods as high-paying American jobs became starvation industries in countries dependent on US trade.

Trump's tariffs seem to be an attempt to reverse all that — an economic experiment that's never really been attempted at this scale. The entire move hinges on the bet that companies will shift production from places like Vietnam and Taiwan back into the US, a gamble which business leaders say comes with high costs and even higher risks.

As Trump's tariffs aren't enshrined in law, they could be easily undone by the courts or the next presidential administration, making a long-term investment into, say, a $5 billion semiconductor plant on US soil hard to justify from a business standpoint — and at the end of the day, isn't what this is all about?

More on the AI economy: AI Hype Will Plunge America Into Financial Ruin, Economist Warns

The post Trump's Tariffs Are a Bruising Defeat for the AI Industry appeared first on Futurism.

Original post:
Trump's Tariffs Are a Bruising Defeat for the AI Industry

Manhattan Shows Huge Reduction in Car Crashes After Instituting Congestion Pricing

Posted on by

New Yorkers are seeing huge quality of life wins from congestion pricing so far, a great sign for people-first transit policy.

Wheels Up

The wins keep coming after Manhattan initiated its congestion toll on cars early this month. Now, the latest data is showing a massive decrease in crash related injuries.

New data from the first 12 days of congestion pricing shows that total injuries below 60th street — the zone where congestion pricing takes effect, charging drivers up to $9 to enter — dropped 51 percent compared to the same period in 2024. Total crashes, meanwhile, dropped 55 percent.

The analysis comes courtesy of outspoken transit advocate Gersh Kuntzman and his team at Streetsblog NYC. He cautions that it's too early to take a victory lap, given that the figures do not account for variations in weather between 2024 and 2025, but they are promising. This is the latest indicator that the congestion pricing is working as intended — kids are getting to school faster, the city is quieter, bridges and tunnels are seeing significantly less traffic, and the air is becoming a bit cleaner. And these are just the knock-on effects of traffic reduction.

The real winners are New York City's public transit riders, whom the congestion toll is meant to directly benefit via station improvements, critical infrastructure repairs, extended bus routes, and a resumption of the much-needed 2nd avenue subway extension project, which had been stalled for years.

In other words, if the good news keeps coming, the initiative could become a compelling proof-of-concept for other areas of New York and more crowded cities around the country.

Cutting Edge

That's in a perfect world, of course. While adding friction for cars is looking like a major win for New York so far, it comes at a time when common-sense transit projects across the country are flailing. Some are way overbudget, outsourced to pie-in-the-sky tech startups, or falling to a busted legislative process.

And that's even if a city ponies up the will to make affordable, car-free transit a priority at all.

Going forward, there's very little evidence that investments in crucial infrastructure will be coming from the federal government — Trump has already cut Biden's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in favor of his Stargate gamble — making state and local policy like the Big Apple's congestion pricing all the more crucial.

While other cities spend taxpayer money to beautify parking lots, New City is leading by example and showing the rest of the country what people-first transit policy can do for their communities. In a country dominated by cars, this rare win for public transit is worth imitating.

More on transit: Leftists Plead With Trump Not to Build High Speed Rail System Connecting America's Major Cities

The post Manhattan Shows Huge Reduction in Car Crashes After Instituting Congestion Pricing appeared first on Futurism.

Originally posted here:
Manhattan Shows Huge Reduction in Car Crashes After Instituting Congestion Pricing

Company Claims It Can Charge a Smartphone In Less Than 5 Minutes

Posted on by

Chinese electronics company Realme recently demonstrated a 320 watt charger that fully charged a smartphone in four and a half minutes.

Speed Demon

There's fast charging, and then there's fast charging.

Chinese electronics company Realme has just revealed a new battery charger that it claims can fully top up a smartphone in well under five minutes, LiveScience reports, making it the fastest smartphone charging tech in the world.

The "320 W SuperSonic Charge" can fill a battery cell up to 26 percent in one minute, over 50 percent in two minutes, and takes just 4 minutes and 30 seconds to reach a full charge — which narrowly edges domestic competitor Redmi's 300W charging tech at 4 minutes and 55 seconds, according to GSMArena.

And this isn't just what the tech can do in a lab. In a live demonstration at the Realme Fanfest event on Wednesday, the charger filled a smartphone from 2 percent to 100 percent in an astoundingly quick 4:20 seconds, which is about a full percentage of charge every 2.65 seconds.

But when or if the tech will ever hit the mainstream remains to be seen. For now, Realme's charger is not much more than an impressive tech demo.

Multipronged Approach

It's not some black magic enabling Realme's ludicrous charging speeds. The company said its tech works by charging multiple battery cells simultaneously, instead of just one at a time; most phone manufacturers, including Apple and Android, only use single-cell batteries.

Providing an ungodly amount of wattage definitely helps, too. Generally, smartphone chargers only use five to twenty watts. Fast chargers for iPhones typically don't go higher than 30 watts, though many competitors for other smartphone brands offer 60 to 100-watt chargers. Laptops, meanwhile, typically need around 60 watts to charge, with fast options offering 140 watts.

But Realme's super-speedy charging won't work on just any phone. For its demonstration, the electronics manufacturer used a specially built, 4,420 mAh battery with four separate cells to sap up all that power, which was folded to fit inside the smartphone used in the demonstration.

Warp Drive

It's unclear when Realme will debut this technology commercially. The capabilities are undeniably impressive, but it might be way more than consumers would ever practically need.

And, as we mentioned earlier, there may simply not be a market for this yet, since most phones only use single-cell batteries. And for good reason: pound-for-pound, multi-cell batteries tend to have lower capacities.

There are also potential concerns over how this would affect your phone's battery health. Proper fast charging is considered pretty safe and standard, but 320 watts might be pushing it.

But, all told, it's assuring to know that these speeds are at least possible. And who knows: maybe someone will figure out how to make this stuff work for the rest of us.

More on battery tech: Apple Battery Supplier Working on New Battery Material With 100 Times the Energy Density of Current Tech

The post Company Claims It Can Charge a Smartphone In Less Than 5 Minutes appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to see the original:
Company Claims It Can Charge a Smartphone In Less Than 5 Minutes