Technologies

Apple to Use New Chips Made in Arizona

«This is an incredibly significant moment,» said Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Apple will be using microchips produced by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. factory based in Phoenix, CEO Tim Cook said Tuesday at the event for the facility’s upcoming expansion.

«Today is only the beginning,» Cook said. «Today we’re combining TSMC’s expertise with the unrivaled ingenuity of American workers. We are investing in a stronger, brighter future, we are planting our seed in the Arizona desert. And at Apple, we are proud to help nurture its growth.»

President Joe Biden and chief executives from AMD and Nvidia were also in attendance at the event.

«Apple had to buy all the advanced chips from overseas. Now they’re going to bring more of their supply chain home,» Biden said. «It could be a game-changer.»

TSMC is already building a chip fabrication plant, or fab, in the Arizona city — a $12 billion investment to make processors with the newer 5-nanometer manufacturing process it uses to make iPhone processors and other chips today. At a ceremony to mark the arrival of the first chipmaking equipment at the fab, it announced it’ll also make improved 4nm chips there and build a second fab to make significantly more advanced 3nm chips. The total investment: $40 billion.

The new chips won’t be powering next year’s iPhones, though, because building fabs takes a long time. TSMC broke ground on its 5nm fab in April 2021, and it won’t start producing chips until 2024. The newly announced 3nm fab won’t make chips until 2026.

Customers of TSMC currently rely on fabs in Taiwan, but modern fabs in the US could help ensure a US supply of processors too. More US chip manufacturing also can encourage a broader manufacturing ecosystem, including some business partners that supply chipmakers with equipment and materials and others that test, package and assemble chips after they’re made.

It’s unlikely the US will match the breadth of Asia’s electronics manufacturing anytime soon, but if politicians and businesses get their way, the semiconductor industry might avoid the fate of industries like steelmaking and textiles that largely vanished from the US.

Processors are critical to just about every modern product and industry, not just phones and laptops. They are used to control cars, refrigerators, military hardware, toys and power plants. A global chip shortage triggered by the COVID pandemic kept products like Ford F-150 pickups and Sony PlayStation 5 consoles out of customers’ hands and revealed just how vulnerable global supply chains are.

The TSMC expansion comes weeks after Micron’s $20 billion «megafab» investment in New York announced in October, which ultimately could reach $100 billion, and Intel’s announcement of $20 billion in two new fabs outside Columbus, Ohio, which also could reach $100 billion investment this decade.

More disruptions are possible. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed that political borders aren’t necessarily fixed. That has particular importance to Taiwan, the island nation that China claims as its own and that’s home to most of TSMC’s manufacturing.

All these forces combined to nudge Congress into passing the CHIPS and Science Act. It promises nearly $53 billion in subsidies for fabs, research into the semiconductor technology that underpins processors and spending to train future workers. And it’s a much more assertive industrial policy than the US had in the past, when most chipmaking moved overseas to its current stronghold in Asia.

«We saw during the pandemic that something that we took for granted, global supply chains, were actually a key vulnerability for economic and our national security,» Ronnie Chatterji, acting deputy director for industrial policy at the White House’s National Economic Council, said in a press briefing.

Biden lobbied for the CHIPS funding and has touted it often as a success in rebuilding US manufacturing abilities. The idea is to try to encourage private companies to make their own investments knowing they’ll find an economically favorable climate.

«This is a marked departure from the economic philosophy that has governed for much of the last 40 years in this country,» said Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council. With the old strategy, «you said that government should get out of the way, cut taxes for large companies, cut regulations, and assume that the American economy and American families would benefit.»

The new policy can mean a subsidy of about $3 billion to boost fab construction that otherwise costs about $10 billion. That makes the US more competitive with Asian countries like Taiwan, South Korea and China, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has said. Intel has a major presence in Chandler, immediately next to Phoenix, and is building $20 billion in new fabs there.

TSMC’s Arizona fabs will employ about 10,000 people overall, 4,500 of them working directly for TSMC. In addition, building the fabs employs more than 10,000 construction workers, the company said.

In addition to the over 10,000 construction workers who helped with construction of the site, TSMC Arizona’s two fabs are expected to create an additional 10,000 high-paying high-tech jobs, including 4,500 direct TSMC jobs. When complete, TSMC Arizona’s two fabs will manufacture over 600,000 wafers per year, with the estimated end-product value of more than $40 billion.

One big fan of TSMC’s expansion is Nvidia, which relies on TSMC to manufacture its graphics chips and AI accelerators. «Bringing TSMC’s investment to the United States is a masterstroke and a game-changing development for the industry,» CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.

Deese and Chatterjee stopped short of promising that the new investments would benefit from the CHIPS funding. Details of how to apply won’t even arrive until the first quarter of 2023. But they pointed to comments from chip manufacturing executives who touted the legislation as a reason for their US investments.

«The passage of the CHIPS and Science Act was absolutely critical in providing the long-term certainty for companies like TSMC to expand their footprint and really expand their investment commitment to the United States,» Deese said.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for April 4, #193

Three of the four categories are especially tough today. Here are hints and the answers, for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, No. 193, for April 4.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

I only solved one of the four categories for today’s Connections: Sports Edition on my own, so if you need help, you’re not alone.

The yellow category was pretty simple, but after that I couldn’t make any connections. It might help if you know a lot about a certain NBA player’s resume. Read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Do better.

Green group hint: March Madness.

Blue group hint: Six-time all-star.

Purple group hint: Think Wimbledon.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Not meeting expectations.

Green group: Teams in the Women’s Final Four.

Blue group: Teams Kawhi Leonard has played for.

Purple group: Ends in a piece of tennis equipment.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is not meeting expectations. The four answers are bust, disappointment, dud and failure.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams in the Women’s Final Four. The four answers are Bruins, Gamecocks, Huskies and Longhorns.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams Kawhi Leonard has played for. The four answers are Aztecs, Clippers, Raptors and Spurs.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ends in a piece of tennis equipment. The four answers are bracket, eyeball, horseshoes and internet.

Quick tips for Connections: Sports Edition

#1: Don’t grab for the easiest group. For each word, think about other sports categories it might fit in – is this a word that can be used in football, or to describe scoring options?

#2: Second meanings are important. The puzzle loves to use last names and even college names that mean other things, to fool you into thinking they are words, not names.

#3: And the opposite is also true. Words like HURTS might seem like a regular word, but it’s also the last name of at least one pro athlete.

Technologies

Skip Your iPhone’s Lockscreen: Here’s the Hidden Flashlight Trick You Need to Know

A couple of taps can really make a difference on your iPhone.

Not long ago, your iPhone’s lockscreen would only allow two app shortcuts that you couldn’t change: camera controls and a flashlight toggle. However, iOS 18.2 allows you to customize these shortcuts to almost anything you might want. This small but impactful change is one of many ways iOS 18 supercharges customization for iPhone and iPad users. But what if you still want an easy-to-access way to toggle your flashlight without unlocking your phone?

Apple introduced an accessibility feature in iOS 14 that, once enabled, allows you to perform actions by just tapping on the back of your phone. The feature is called Tap Back and it remains a sleeper feature that’s sneakily hidden away in your settings menu. Enabling Tap Back essentially allows you to create a button on the back of your iPhone to perform an action without needing to take up any space.

Once you have Tap Back enabled, it doesn’t take long to see how much of a game-changer it can be with its added convenience. Below, we’ll show you how to set it up so a couple of taps on the back of your iPhone will let you launch just about anything you want.

For more, check out what’s in the latest iOS 18.4 release.

How to set up Back Tap on iPhone

Whether you want to link Back Tap with your flashlight, camera or launch a different iPhone app, the path through your iPhone settings begins the same way.

On your compatible iPhone (iPhone 8 or later), launch the Settings application and go to Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. Now you have the option to launch your action (in this case, your flashlight) with either two or three taps. Although two taps is obviously faster, I would suggest three taps because if you fidget with your phone, it’s easy to accidentally trigger the accessibility feature.

Once you choose a tap option, select the Flashlight option — or a different action if you prefer. You’ll see over 30 options to choose from, including system options like Siri or taking a screenshot, to accessibility-specific functions like opening a magnifier or turning on real-time live captions. You can also set up Back Tap to open the Control Center, go back home, mute your audio, turn the volume up and down and run any shortcuts you’ve downloaded or created.

You’ll know you’ve successfully selected your choice when a blue checkmark appears to the right of the action. You could actually set up two shortcuts this way — one that’s triggered by two taps and one that’s triggered by three taps to the iPhone’s back cover.

Once you exit the Settings application, you can try out the newly enabled Back Tap feature by tapping the back of your iPhone — in my case, to turn on the flashlight. To turn off the flashlight, you can tap on the back of your iPhone as well, but you can also just turn it off from your lock screen if that’s easier.

For more great iPhone tips, here’s how to keep your iPhone screen from dimming all the time and canceling all those subscriptions you don’t want or need.

Technologies

All the Nintendo Games You Can Update to Switch 2 for Free

Bad news: Mario Kart World will cost $80. Good news: These classic games will get free revamped versions for Switch 2.

Nintendo’s Switch 2 launch event on Wednesday has upset some fans for one key reason: pricing. The new console will be released on June 5 at a starting price of $450, and it will have new games, like Mario Kart World, Kirby Air Riders and Donkey Kong Bananza. But those games could cost as much as $80 (and that’s before factoring in possible tariffs).

Fortunately, Nintendo has also announced that some Nintendo Switch games will get free updates to improve playability on the upcoming console.

«By connecting your Nintendo Switch 2 to the internet, you can download free updates that may improve performance or add support for features such as GameShare in select games,» the company posted.

Here are all the Nintendo Switch games that can get a free update for the Switch 2.

Nintendo also announced that other Switch games will have upgraded versions of the base game, called Switch 2 Editions. These games, which include The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, may offer improved graphics, unique ways to play the game with the Switch 2 hardware, and other features.

You can buy a digital or physical copy of these games if you’re purchasing them for the first time. But Switch 2 Edition games are not free if you already own the Switch version of one of these games, so you’ll have to buy an upgrade pack to play the updated version.

It’s unclear how much Switch 2 Editions of games and upgrade packs will cost, and it’s also unclear how upgrade packs will work with physical versions of Switch games.

The Nintendo Switch 2 will also be backward compatible with certain games. While we don’t know all the Switch games that will be playable on the Switch 2, we know some Switch games have startup (PDF) or in-game (PDF) compatibility issues with the upcoming console.

For more on the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, here’s what we know about the upcoming console and what to know about games like Mario Kart World and Duskbloods.