Dr. Semiconductor transformed an ordinary garden shed into a facility for the assembly of actual working memory chips. He had already set up the air filters and controls a few months before to maintain dust levels low enough to allow for careful operations.

The materials needed began with silicon wafers, which served as the operation’s base. Each one was broken down into tiny pieces with highly exact cuts following natural crystal lines, just to prepare them ready for what was to come. The wafers were then cleaned with acetone and isopropanol to remove any surface imperfections that might cause problems later. Once they were thoroughly cleaned, they were placed in a furnace set to 1,100 degrees Celsius. An oxide layer began to grow on the surface and increased to a thickness of approximately 3,300 angstroms, since this insulating barrier serves as the foundation for all subsequent transistors and capacitors.

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To begin creating the circuit layout, a slurry of photoresist and liftoff resist was spun evenly across the oxide. The appropriate pattern masks were then applied, allowing ultraviolet light to reveal the necessary locations. The photoresist that was exposed to UV light was then scraped away, revealing clear pathways to the silicon beneath, where the circuitry will be created. Then dry etching was used to cut out the paths all the way through the silicon.

The areas were then converted into conductors by doping them; all that was required was to lay a phosphorus-rich glass on top, then heat and anneal it at high temperatures, and all of the phosphorus atoms ended up in the silicon. This constructed the routes that each transistor need to function. Following that, a second round of resist coating and ultraviolet patterning specified the transistor gates and capacitor plates. This time, another oxide layer began to form in similar locations, but it was thinner, measuring around 20 nanometers, and the furnace temperature was slightly lower, at 950 degrees Celsius. This oxide layer was more limited in the amount of charge it could carry.

The next step was using hydrofluoric acid to create microscopic holes in the oxide where the metal would eventually be bonded. Next, a thin, uniform layer of metal was formed using a technique called sputtering. When the resist was removed with a solvent bath, the metal gates, contacts, and capacitor caps remained in their respective placements. That was it; the 5by4 array was built and placed on the wafer, with transistor gates smaller than a micron and each cell measuring a mere micrometer across.

Probes made contact with the finished cells to begin the first tests, and when a small voltage was supplied to the gate, the transistor flashed on and off exactly as it should. A capacitor was charged to 3 volts and then held for around 2 milliseconds before slowly leaking away. The fact that it didn’t carry that charge for very long meant that the cells needed to be updated far more frequently than the memory inside a standard computer, but the basic principle worked perfectly. Data entered and exited through the transistor switch, just as it does with DRAM in principle.
[Source]

The incoming CEO said he was ‘lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs’ and to have had Tim Cook as a mentor.

Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple’s CEO after 15 years in the role. The company has announced John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, as his successor. Company shares went up marginally following the announcement.

Starting 1 September, Cook will assume the role of chairperson of Apple’s board. Ternus will be joining the board.

The new CEO’s position will be taken over by Johny Srouji, whose current role as the senior vice president of hardware technologies will expand to absorb the Ternus’s responsibilities.

“Cook’s legacy will be defined by steady [and] disciplined operational stewardship … [yet] he has not overseen a step-change innovation that would reset Apple’s competitive position for the next two decades,” commented Forrester VP principal analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee.

“That’s where John Ternus comes in. Ternus is a hardware engineer, which signals that Apple will seek differentiation in its physical products even as it looks to reframe the device as a substrate for intelligent experiences.”

Chatterjee added: “But he must resist the temptation of incrementalism that has plagued Apple of late and escape the iPhone’s gravitational pull in his quest for the next disruptive form factor.”

The company is still reliant on the iPhone as it seeks its next growth engine.

Cook joined Apple in 1998 and became CEO in 2011. Under his leadership, Apple grew from a market value of around $350bn to more than $4trn. His tenure as CEO saw the introduction of the Apple Watch, AirPods, iCloud, Apple Pay and more.

Ternus, who joined Apple’s product design team in 2001, became vice president of hardware engineering in 2013. He joined the executive team in 2021, and had been widely viewed as next in line to succeed Cook.

The outgoing CEO is stepping down at a time when Apple, and many alike, face increasing supply chain issues, memory crunch, geopolitical tensions, AI adoption woes and regulatory pressure. But despite these factors, the company posted “record” earnings in the quarter past.

“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer [and] the soul of an innovator”, said Cook. “He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future.”

Ternus added: “Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor.

“It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Parsity and delivered to your inbox for free!

The Individual Contributor–Manager Fork: It’s Not a Promotion. It’s a Profession Change.

When I was promoted to engineering manager of a mid-sized team at Clorox, I thought I had made it.

More money. More stock. More visibility. More proximity to senior leadership. From the outside, and on paper, it was clearly a promotion.

I had often heard the phrase, “Management isn’t a promotion. It’s a job switch.” I brushed it off as cliché advice engineers tell each other to sound wise.

It turns out both things were true. It was a promotion. It was also an entirely different job.

And I was nowhere near ready for what that meant.

A Shift in Priorities

There’s surprisingly little training for new managers. As engineers, we’re highly technical and used to mastering complex systems. Many of us assume managing people will be easier than distributed systems. Or we assume it’s just “more meetings.”

Both assumptions are wrong.

Yes, I had more meetings. But what changed most wasn’t my calendar, it was how my impact was measured. As an individual contributor, my output was visible. Code shipped. Features delivered. Bugs fixed.

As a manager, my impact became indirect. It flowed through other people.

That shift was disorienting.

So I fell back into my comfort zone. I started writing more code. I tried to be the strongest engineer on the team. It felt productive and measurable.

It was also a mistake.

By trying to be the number one engineer, I was neglecting my actual job. I wasn’t supporting senior engineers. I wasn’t unblocking systemic problems. I wasn’t building career paths. I was competing with the very people I was supposed to enable.

Management is about amplification.

Learning to Redefine Impact

The turning point came when I began each week with a simple question:

What is the single most impactful thing I can do right now?

Often, it wasn’t code. It was writing a document that clarified direction. It was fixing a broken process with a single point of failure. It was redistributing ownership so that knowledge wasn’t concentrated in one person.

I started deliberately removing myself from implementation work. I committed to writing almost no code. That forced trust. It also revealed gaps in the system that I could address at the right level: through coaching, documentation, hiring, or process changes.

Another major shift was taking one-on-one meetings seriously.

Many engineers dislike one-on-ones. They can feel awkward or devolve into status updates. I scheduled them every other week and approached them with a mix of tactical alignment and human check-in.

I rarely started with engineering questions. Instead:

• Are you happy with the work you’re doing?
• Do you feel stretched or stagnant?
• What’s frustrating you right now?

Burnout doesn’t show up in Jira tickets. Neither does quiet disengagement.

Those conversations helped me anticipate turnover, redistribute workload, and build trust.

I also spent more time thinking about career ladders. Was I giving my team the kind of work that would help them grow? Was I hoarding high-visibility projects? Was I clear about what senior-level impact looked like?

That work felt less tangible than code, but it moved the needle far more.

Why I Went Back to IC

Ultimately, I returned to the individual contributor track.

Part of it was practical: I was laid off from my management role, and the market rewarded senior IC roles more strongly at the time. But if I’m honest, the deeper reason was simpler.

I love writing code.

I enjoy improving systems and helping people, but the part of my day that energized me most was still building. Management required relinquishing that. You can’t be absorbed in technical implementation and deeply people-focused at the same time. Something has to give.

Personally, I don’t need to climb the corporate ladder to feel successful. And you might not have to. Many organizations offer technical leadership tracks that are truly in parity with management when it comes to salary bands. Staff and principal engineers steer strategy without managing people.

If you want to remain deeply technical, you should think very carefully before moving into people management. It requires surrendering control over implementation and focusing on alignment, growth, and long-range planning. If you don’t genuinely care about those things, you won’t just be unhappy, you’ll make your team unhappy.

A Simple Test Before You Choose

Before taking a management role, ask yourself:

• Do I get energy from solving people-problems every day?
• Am I comfortable measuring impact indirectly?
• Would I be satisfied if I rarely wrote production code again?
• Do I want leverage or craft?

There’s no right answer.

The IC/manager fork isn’t about prestige. It’s about what kind of work you want your days to consist of.

Choose based on energy, not ego.

—Brian

Stanford University’s AI Index is out for 2026, tracking trends and noble developments in artificial intelligence. This year, China has taken a notable lead in AI model releases and industrial robotics compared to previous years. AIs are rapidly reaching benchmarks and achieving high levels of compute, but public trust in AI and confidence in government regulation of AI is mixed.

Read more here.

Much like large language models have learned from existing texts, new AI physics models are being trained on simulation results. This results in “large physics models” that can simulate situations in transportation, aerospace, or semiconductor engineering much faster than traditional physics simulations. Using new AI physics models “can be anywhere between 10,000 to close to a million times faster,” says Jacomo Corbo, CEO and co-founder of PhysicsX.

Read more here.

Kyle McGinley is an IEEE Student Member pursuing a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering at Temple University. Joining IEEE helped him to develop the skills necessary for real-world teams. “In school, they don’t teach you how to communicate with people. They only teach you how to remember stuff,” he says.

Read more here.

Michael Jackson is once again back in the cultural conversation. New movie Michael, starring Jaafar Jackson — Michael’s own nephew — in the leading role, lands in theaters this week, following the singer’s life and career from The Jackson 5 to the peak of his solo career.

Michael | Official Trailer – YouTube

Watch On

However, this isn’t the be-all and end-all of Jackson’s story, particularly considering the singer’s untimely death weeks before his 2009 This Is It tour was supposed to start.

A previously undocumented data-wiping malware dubbed Lotus was used last year in targeted attacks against energy and utilities organizations in Venezuela.

The malware was uploaded to a publicly available platform in mid-December from a machine in Venezuela and has been analyzed by researchers at Kaspersky.

Before the cripling stage, the attacker relies on two batch scripts that prepare the system for the final payload by weakening defenses and obstructing normal operations.

According to the researchers, the Lotus data-wiping malware is designed to completely destroy compromised systems by overwriting physical drives and eliminating recovery options.

“The wiper removes recovery mechanisms, overwrites the content of physical drives, and systematically deletes files across affected volumes, ultimately leaving the system in an unrecoverable state,” Kaspersky says in a report today.

Given the timing, the observed activity aligns with geopolitical tensions in the region, which culminated this year on January 3 with the capture of Venezuela’s then-president, Nicolás Maduro.

Around mid-December 2025, the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) suffered a cyberattack that disabled its delivery systems. The organization blamed the United States for the incident.

It should be noted that there is no public evidence indicating that PDVSA’s systems were wiped in the attack or details about the nature of the attack.

Preliminary activity

Kaspersky’s report notes that the attacks begin with the execution of a batch script (OhSyncNow.bat) that disables the Windows ‘UI0Detect’ service, and performs an XML file check to coordinate execution across domain-joined systems.

A second-stage script (notesreg.bat) is executed when certain conditions are met. It enumerates users, disables accounts via password changes, logs off active sessions, disables all network interfaces, and deactivates cached logins.

The malicious code then enumerates drives and runs ‘diskpart clean all’ to overwrite them with zeros. It also uses ‘robocopy’ to overwrite directory contents, Kaspersky found.

In the next phase, it calculates the free space and uses ‘fsutil’ to create a file that fills the disk, making it harder to restore the wiped data.

After preparing the environment for data destruction and performing some wiping actions itself, the batch script decrypts and executes the Lotus wiper as the final payload.

Lotus wiper deployment

The Lotus wiper operates at a lower level, interacting with disks via IOCTL calls, retrieving the disk geometry, clearing USN journal entries, wiping restore points, and overwriting physical sectors, not just logical volumes.

The malware performs multiple actions, summarized as follows:

• Enables all privileges in its token to gain administrative-level access.
• Deletes all Windows restore points using the Windows System Restore API.
• Wipes physical drives by retrieving disk geometry and overwriting all sectors with zeroes.
• Clears the USN journal to remove traces of file system activity.
• Deletes files by zeroing their contents, renaming them randomly, and removing them (or scheduling deletion on reboot if locked).
• Repeats cycles of drive wiping and restore point deletion multiple times.
• Updates disk properties using IOCTL_DISK_UPDATE_PROPERTIES after the final wipe.

Kaspersky suggests that system administrators should monitor for NETLOGON share changes, UI0Detect manipulation, mass account changes, and disabling of network interfaces, which are all precursor activities.

They say that unexpected usage of ‘diskpart,’ ‘robocopy,’ and ‘fsutil’ is also a red flag.

A general recommendation against wipers and ransomware is to maintain regular offline backups whose restorability is frequently validated.

AI chained four zero-days into one exploit that bypassed both renderer and OS sandboxes. A wave of new exploits is coming.

At the Autonomous Validation Summit (May 12 & 14), see how autonomous, context-rich validation finds what’s exploitable, proves controls hold, and closes the remediation loop.

Claim Your Spot

The Apple Watch‘s blood oxygen sensor has been at the center of what feels like a never-ending tennis match of legal back-and-forth.

In 2020, the Apple Watch Series 6 launched with the sensor that measures your blood’s oxygen saturation (SpO2), which is how much oxygen red blood cells pick up from your lungs and transport to the rest of your body. That same year, global medical technology company Masimo filed a lawsuit claiming that Apple’s sensor infringed its patents. In 2023, the US International Trade Commission sided with Masimo and imposed an import ban on Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 models.

However, on Friday, the ITC declined Masimo’s request for another import ban on the Apple Watch and said it wouldn’t review a preliminary ruling finding that the redesigned Apple Watch doesn’t infringe Masimo’s patents. This is a major win for Apple. 

Unless Masimo decides to appeal the decision, Apple can bring blood oxygen monitoring back to its devices. 

But based on the history of this case, it may not be the end of this match. 

The history of Apple’s blood oxygen ban

The ITC became involved in the Masimo and Apple legal battle in 2021, and in January 2023, it upheld that Apple violated Masimo’s patents. Then, in December 2023, the ITC banned Apple from importing its watches, including the Series 9 and Ultra 2, into the US. 

To avoid the ban, Apple disabled blood oxygen sensing on its devices. 

Ahead of the Apple Watch Series 11 launch, Apple reintroduced blood oxygen sensing in August 2025, which was approved by the US Customs and Border Protection. It got around the ban by using a paired iPhone to display blood oxygen levels instead of the Apple Watch. Masimo sued US Customs over this decision. 

In November 2025, a jury for the US District Court for the Central District of California found that Apple infringed one of Masimo’s patents and awarded the company $634 million in damages. Apple told AppleInsider that it plans to appeal, claiming that the patent expired in 2022.

Though the ITC has rejected another ban on Apple’s blood oxygen feature and declined Masimo’s request to review the ruling in Apple’s favor, Masimo may continue the battle, especially given its November win, after which the company released a statement saying, “We remain committed to defending our IP [intellectual property] rights moving forward.”

An Apple representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Masimo declined to comment.

In the meantime, if your curiosity gets the best of you, you could always purchase a pulse oximeter. It’s a device that estimates your blood oxygen level by measuring the light that passes through your finger. No messy legal battles involved.

Redwood Materials has laid off around 135 employees, or roughly 10% of its workforce, as it restructures to better accommodate its growing energy storage business, TechCrunch has learned.

The cuts come just five months after Redwood cut 5% of its workforce, and three months after it closed a $425 million funding round that boosted the battery recycling company’s valuation to north of $6 billion, as TechCrunch previously reported.

It’s been a difficult time in the battery industry lately. Earlier this month, battery recycler Ascend Elements filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing “insurmountable” financial challenges. Some battery-makers have also restructured or gone out of business as the automotive industry in the U.S. has backed away from its most optimistic and ambitious plans to transition to electric vehicles.

But Redwood Materials founder and CEO JB Straubel told employees that this new round of cuts is not a sign that the company is heading down the same path.

“Redwood today is the strongest it’s ever been,” Straubel wrote in an email to the workers who weren’t laid off, according to a copy viewed by TechCrunch. “The materials business is well on its way to profitability and has an exciting roadmap ahead.”

Straubel noted that Redwood “continue[s] to dominate the US battery recycling market” but also touted the company’s “great momentum” in its new energy storage business. Redwood has recently announced deals with Crusoe AI and, most recently, electric automaker Rivian to provide recycled batteries that can be used to power those companies’ facilities. The company declined to comment beyond the contents of Straubel’s email.

In his message, Straubel wrote that “parts of the company have expanded faster than needed to support the direction” of Redwood. As a result, he said Redwood is making cuts across multiple divisions, including the engineering and operations organizations, according to an employee who was granted anonymity to discuss the layoffs.

“We are confident that we can deliver on our critical projects with a smaller team that is more focused,” he wrote. “We have successfully adapted to changes in the market that have bankrupted many of our competitors.”

Straubel went on to write that he is “more excited than ever with our path ahead as we build the most integrated and cost-effective critical materials and energy storage business in the world.”

“This is a self-sustaining business and will continue to make this company more valuable over time. We have the team and the technology to do what no other company can,” he wrote.

Workers who were laid off were told by Redwood’s chief HR officer that the layoffs were made “to sharpen our focus, our work and the size of our teams to support the direction Redwood is going in the future,” according to a copy of her email, which was viewed by TechCrunch.

Employees who were laid off are receiving severance and paid health benefits, according to Straubel’s email, as well as “career transition assistance.”

“I am grateful to the approximately 135 employees who we say goodbye to today — they’ve all contributed to building Redwood,” he wrote.

Google has made its Gemini Notebooks feature free for all users. Now, instead of starting over every time, you get a space where chats, files, and instructions live together and build on each other. Google describes these notebooks as personal knowledge bases, which is another way of saying Gemini can finally remember what you were doing and keep going.

Notebooks are great for the small, repeated things that usually fall apart because you have to keep re-explaining them. You don’t need them for big, complex projects, but once you start using them, you might just default to them when engaging with Gemini. To get the most out of Notebooks takes a few attempts, but here are some useful tips to make them the perfect way to have Gemini remember you and how you work.

1. Treat a notebook like your “ongoing life admin” space

Modders Delca and Trxye have spent years pouring their hearts into a fan project that reimagines legendary Tomb Raider adventures in side scroller fashion, which is a tall job for anyone, but they’ve pulled it off with flying colors. They’ve created 11 levels inspired by the series’ first three games, and you’ll be guiding Lara Croft through reinvented places such as Peru, Greece, Venice, and the sunken ship the Maria Doria, all of which have been updated with a 2D twist.

Delca had already dabbled in an official Tomb Raider Remastered collection, but when Trxye joined the team about a year ago, the two of them went back to the drawing board and started from scratch. That kind of attention has paid off handsomely, as new game feels like a love tribute to the originals, but with a unique twist all its own.

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The gameplay is just as you remember it, with Lara still able to run over platforms, dive into water, climb walls, and fight monsters with the same timing and weight as before. According to classical physics, she can still perform a swan dive that ends horribly if there is concrete waiting for her, and those traps will spring shut just as quickly as before. Secrets are still hidden in places that fans used to memorize (and then carefully avoid) back in the day.

The audio and visuals are all from the PlayStation era, so the soundtrack and Lara model are exactly what fans of the franchise would expect. In terms of gameplay, Delca and Trxye painstakingly selected 11 levels that take in a variety of environments, including rainforests, ancient ruins, freezing Antarctic bases, and the opulent halls of Atlantis. Each one has been painstakingly rebuilt level by level to operate precisely in the side scroller style, resulting in platforming sequences that demand precise leaps, fighting, and puzzles that take just as much careful thought as before.

The release date is slated for May 2026, and all you have to do is go to TRCustoms.org, the main site for Tomb Raider fan creations, and download the game with no account or purchase required.
[Source]