Gururu's comment and the quoted text from the article seems like a reasonable possiblity for what's going on.
"we’re developing Intel14A as a foundry node from the ground up in close partnership with large external customers. This is essential to designing a process that meets specific customer requirements and enables us to address a broader segment of the market. Going forward, our investment in Intel 14A will be based on confirmed customer commitments."
That could definitely read that Intel has some customers, and they just don't want to talk about them openly all that much. Lots of possible reasons, depending on who the customers are.
Other thing, personally, is that there's very little ability for "normal" people to request something being manufactured. And at least in part, that probably disincentivizes large customers. It's 1000's of millions of dollars, or it's nothing.
I can't really request a "couple" wafers, or 1000's of chips. Even if I know what I'm doing, and request "just lithography me something" because they require significant upfront Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) & IP integration costs to use Intel's RibbonFET transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery.
Except, even for big people, that's probably still daunting. You can't "try" something. Sign the $1000 million order, or go talk to somebody else. You can't do a "lets try a $million order, or $10 million order, and if we like it, maybe a $1000 million order."
I get that they don't want people to just steal their tech, with some cheapo order, and that below some amount, it's probably more work just trying to even load their files in the machine and print something (even if they know what they're doing). Yet it's probably still a disincentive.
Rumor mill places the wafer cost at $25,000-$30,000 / wafer [1] (which is a whole nother issue with the lack of transparent pricing, ref is a Twitter post...). However, being able to pay double(?, quad?, probably way more, 10x?) that and get a short run wafer would probably have a larger number willing to "try something". (even if it was, "we'll print what you send, and if it's broken and doesn't work, it's your fault").
To be fair to Intel, TSMC is basically almost the same. If you're not Samsung / Nvidia scale, they probably don't want to talk with you.
Edit: Probably for my own reference. The short run stuff is usually referred to as Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) Shuttle Programs and Tower Semiconductor has a relatively well written site [2] describing the basic idea and requirements.
Looking through GlobalFoundries, Advanced Micro Foundry, Microchip Technology, and Tower (people that offer MWP), it's really difficult to find a site that lays out "what we expect from you", "what the base costs are", "what additional fees are", "what you can expect to receive".
Edit2: Actually, the MOSIS people [3] (out of University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering [4]) have a really cool site that shows all the various process design steps and lets you add and remove and create your own). [5]
I hope Intel succeeds at 1.4 and manages to provide sufficient capacity. AFAIK, they are doing 1.8 at their research fab in Oregon, not sure how many wafers it can crank out per month but hopefully they'll manage to transfer the tech to a real fab when demand increases.
I've lost track of Intel's fab cancellations and restarts, I'm not even sure if they have a (near) completed production fab with EUV in place.
Despite following this stuff some, I think I was about as confused to where they were.
Did not realize most of the actual production was still at 4nm range. Apparently mostly Fab 34, Leixlip, Ireland (4nm, 3nm, Meteor Lake). Actually thought it was somewhere in Malaysia or America. "Normal" EUV manufacturing. [1][2]
Apparently, Fab 52 has started making stuff (1.8nm, High-NA EUV, Panther Lake), yet they're still in try-out and testing mode, and not really production. Working fab though. [3]
Wikipedia stuff listed looks kind of weird frankly. Seems like they send them all the way to Malaysia for packaging. Also, really severe difference between 22nm/14nm/10nm sites (9 different sites with at least one size, 4 with all three sizes) and 7nm/4nm/3nm/2nm/1.8nm/1.4nm. Nothing listed on 7nm, only 1 listed 4nm/3nm, 2nm got scrapped, only listing 1.8nm, and 1.4nm. They apparently moved a bunch of stuff around also to be more confusing. 10nm became Intel7 and 7nm became Intel4. [4]
After reading through the Shopify website, this story's confusing. This is kind of what Shopify advertises. Like, it's basically their service.
Initially read this, and thought they were some other retailer with quasi-direct sales, and Amazon was scraping, and then listing stuff like it was on Amazon. Yet, Shopify from [1] and [2]:
Their spiel is "Unify your marketing ... all from one place." and then they go on to list Target, Walmart, eBay, and ... "Amazon". (also Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat) "Sell everywhere people scroll, search, and shop"
It's literally their business. That's what you pay them to do. "Sync your product catalog to the leading marketplaces, then easily manage and fulfill every order in one central place."
Couple things that are "maybe" honestly wrong. Maybe opted out of Amazon as a partner, inside Shopify? Also, inventory not actually being updated and communicated to Shopify / Amazon correctly?
The way this site reads it seems like you could find out you have some influencer spokesperson and your products are on Walmart shelves somewhere and not even realize it.
Don't know about the rest of the article, yet this part is insane sounding
"reclusive chief executive, Kevin Rountree, of whom no public photographs exist, was named The Sunday Times “business person of the year".
The company has a £6,000,000,000 market cap, and the CEO was named business person of the year by The Sunday Times for FTSE 100 leadership. Operates a global gaming business with 1000's of employees, 570 stores, 7,000 independent retailers, dozens of official events, and probably 100's to 1000's of sponsored events. Subreddit with over 1 million members, and an estimated 2.4 million+ monthly visitors to community sites. Fans known to be kind of obsessive.
Nobody has ever photographed them. Ever.
No talks, no conferences, no presentations, no public appearances, no Q&A's, no recorded video conferences, no awards acceptances, ... nothing.
The CEO. Main executive management. Set company strategy. Managing operations. Serve as main link to the company. Drive company culture. Act as public face for the organization.
What the article was actually saying was "A check on LinkedIn and a quick Google search didn't turn up anything".
It's like the 1970s sensational stories about paparazzi camping out on hotel balconies with massive telephoto lenses to get a photo of the Kiss members without their makeup, because absolutely nobody had any idea who they might really be.
There's a possibility the Games Workshop wiki image is a generic stock business person place holder.
The Australian science fiction writer Greg Egan strongly asserts no image of him appears on the internet ... and yet images are returned if you search his name and profession ... they are all different.
Cool project, and at least with the New Yorker images there's such an enormous amount of diversity that there's actually quite a bit to compare against.
Also, just really cool to see quite how much diversity there has been in New Yorker front page images. Not actually that many archives that provide such a clear, easily viewable format just for browsing through all the art and looking at how the New Yorker has changed it's art style over time. Quite a few would probably qualify as "art" in and of themselves.
Also, some kind of neat discoveries while browsing through the archive. "Crazy, that looks like a Far Side ... wait, that's cause Gary Larson drew the cover." No idea Gary Larson did any magazine covers. [1]
Did something kind of similar a while back with Magic the Gathering cards, except it was using the Perceptual Hash from https://www.phash.org/ The visual clustering display (such as this example from 5th Edition [2]) I think is what some people are suggesting would be valuable. Provide an idea about "why" they're related.
Been a long time (2018), yet pretty sure it was two dimensional "Image Feature Extraction" kinda of like this other example [3] with card colors collapsed to a single average color to give an idea of color pattern distribution.
Boring answer. Your first case - testing for app development, web development, display variations, device feature variations.
A little bit of @hnburnsy's answer, with segmented logins and emails separated by phones with layered restoration so it's difficult to accidentally get bricked by having one system get malware, system faults, or other failures. Two-Factor Auth also gets separated around between devices.
At least one way to look at this is from generally agreed upon "world issues" [1], since the subject is "make the world a better place." Survey among the 8,000,000,000, and a large percent would agree that many are issues.
Of those, ones that I personally think are actually meaningful, and less subject to opinion, tend to be mostly "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" [2] as a starting point for evaluation.
Basic needs that must be met for survival, and which significant portions of the population in many areas have difficulties with.
- air, water, food, heat, clothes, shelter, and sleep
Security needs to not be in a constant state of suffering and worry
- health security, personal security, emotional security, financial security
Of those listed on the article for "global issues" that then speak to many of those.
- poverty alleviation, malnutrition and lack of food / water access, waste (consumer waste, food waste, waste disposal, landfills, recycling, water pollution, air pollution), human rights (exploitation, abuse, enslavement, torture).
Of the climate change stuff, there's a lot that's unfortunately too easy to argue about. However, there's a few that maybe meet standards where large numbers would agree.
- desertification, ecosystem collapses, large scale biome losses / deforestation
Of a lot of the rest, unfortunately (also personal opinion) many are just too easy to argue about, and heavily dependent on where you're from, perspective, and relation to a group or area.
- terrorism, migration, democracy, big data (?), carbon, inclusiveness
Quite a few of the rest, I agree they're issues, just whether they reach the level of global critical / catastrophic issues? Many also seem to be issues that have recently gotten everybody's attention, yet there is suspiciously little mention of things like "lack of shelter / clothing access", "lack of heat sources", "sleep deprivation", "basic needs health care access"
Used to work in the government, and they had a Likelihood / Consequence Risk Matrix [3] for evaluating some of the flight and mission hazards. Most of the stuff listed personally rates somewhere up on the (Moderate, High, Very High) Likelihood / (Moderate, High, Very High) Consequence. Stuff that would almost always be Yellow to Red, and require mitigation actions or attempts. Many of the ones that don't meet my criteria tend to be too easy to fight about the Likelihood or the Consequence results. "Is 'Big Data for Sustainable Development' a near term Moderate+ likelihood / consequence?" Seems too easy to argue about to be on the United Nation's critical list of global issues.
Anyways, best attempt at providing advice on "make the world a better place." Frankly, think most people's work on Earth probably does not meet the criteria.
"The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. On the sixth day of Hate Week... it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally."
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. [...] We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
It looks like propaganda. Day after, and then all the American news sites post stories about Venezuelans celebrating? Looks like propaganda. Almost no dissenting stories, no real discussion. Blackhawks and missiles at night, and hooray, spontaneous street parties, and news reporters just happen to be there to capture their "spontaneous" rejoicing. Reuters, Bloomberg, ABC, NBC. Rejoicing, dreams of democracy, yatta. CBS seems like one of the only sites that actually carried somewhat balanced coverage of people burning US flags, and no to American war.
General survey of ferry prices in the 25+ meter range to give you an idea. Length number can be changed to filter for longer / shorter. There's 37 in the 25+ range, 19 in the 50+ range, and 11 in the 100+ range currently, although a few false positives on the keyword matches.
Needs verification on the normal user side of the experience. Like noted, unclear whether the ads are completely deleted, or just deleted from what regulators would return in search results.
Later part makes it sounds like the ads were at least deleted from the Japanese / Taiwan results areas completely, and then just redistributed to other geographic areas.
"If an unverified advertiser is blocked from showing ads in Taiwan, for example, Meta will show those ads more frequently to users elsewhere, creating a whack-a-mole dynamic in which scam ads prohibited in one jurisdiction pop up in another."
However, still difficult to tell from the story what the experience of "normal" Japanese / Taiwan users is relative to what regulators view.
Notably, from a different article about fake accounts, and how much they cost, Japan's regulation seems to be working (at least somewhat). [1] Fake Accounts for Facebook Available (US, 157,401, @$0.13/account; Japan, 16, @$3.00/account, Dec 31st, 2025 data)
Other thing, personally, is that there's very little ability for "normal" people to request something being manufactured. And at least in part, that probably disincentivizes large customers. It's 1000's of millions of dollars, or it's nothing.
I can't really request a "couple" wafers, or 1000's of chips. Even if I know what I'm doing, and request "just lithography me something" because they require significant upfront Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) & IP integration costs to use Intel's RibbonFET transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery.
Except, even for big people, that's probably still daunting. You can't "try" something. Sign the $1000 million order, or go talk to somebody else. You can't do a "lets try a $million order, or $10 million order, and if we like it, maybe a $1000 million order."
I get that they don't want people to just steal their tech, with some cheapo order, and that below some amount, it's probably more work just trying to even load their files in the machine and print something (even if they know what they're doing). Yet it's probably still a disincentive.
Rumor mill places the wafer cost at $25,000-$30,000 / wafer [1] (which is a whole nother issue with the lack of transparent pricing, ref is a Twitter post...). However, being able to pay double(?, quad?, probably way more, 10x?) that and get a short run wafer would probably have a larger number willing to "try something". (even if it was, "we'll print what you send, and if it's broken and doesn't work, it's your fault").
[1] https://x.com/zyl19911/status/1876466680169414861
To be fair to Intel, TSMC is basically almost the same. If you're not Samsung / Nvidia scale, they probably don't want to talk with you.
Edit: Probably for my own reference. The short run stuff is usually referred to as Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) Shuttle Programs and Tower Semiconductor has a relatively well written site [2] describing the basic idea and requirements.
[2] https://towersemi.com/manufacturing/mpw-shuttle-program/
Looking through GlobalFoundries, Advanced Micro Foundry, Microchip Technology, and Tower (people that offer MWP), it's really difficult to find a site that lays out "what we expect from you", "what the base costs are", "what additional fees are", "what you can expect to receive".
Edit2: Actually, the MOSIS people [3] (out of University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering [4]) have a really cool site that shows all the various process design steps and lets you add and remove and create your own). [5]
[3] https://www.mosis2.com/
[4] https://www.isi.edu/
[5] https://www.mosis2.com/fab-service-explorer
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