The war in Iran has hammered global oil markets, with gas prices in the U.S. spiking significantly. Amid the rise in transportation costs, Amazon has instituted a new 3.5% fuel surcharge for sellers that use its distribution network. The policy has the potential to inflict significant new costs on the untold merchants that rely on the e-commerce giant to sell their products.

Amazon told TechCrunch that the surcharge would be in place for the foreseeable future, although the company said it will continue to evaluate a potential policy shift as market conditions evolve. The news was originally reported by Bloomberg.

“Elevated costs in fuel and logistics have increased the cost of operating across the industry,” a spokesperson said. “We have absorbed these increases so far, but similar to other major carriers, when costs remain elevated we implement temporary surcharges to partially recover these costs.” The spokesperson added that the surcharge was “meaningfully lower than surcharges applied by other major carriers.”

The new policy will take effect on April 17 and will impact sellers who use the company’s Fulfillment by Amazon service, Bloomberg writes. Fulfillment by Amazon, commonly known as FBA, allows companies to send their products to Amazon’s warehouses, where they are packed and shipped to buyers. Amazon doesn’t disclose how many merchants use FBA, but the program underpins the vast majority of third-party sales on its platform.

Amazon first instituted this type of surcharge in 2022—which, not so coincidentally, was the last time crude oil traded over $100 a barrel. What was happening in 2022? Russia had just invaded Ukraine, sending energy markets haywire. Today, the war in Iran—spurred by the Trump administration and the Israeli government’s assassination of the nation’s Supreme Leader—has similarly rocked markets.

Iran is strategically located along the northern border of the Strait of Hormuz—a narrow but critical shipping lane for global oil supplies through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply passes—and the country has sought to block shipping lanes there, a move that has majorly impacted energy prices throughout the world.

Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc’s Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

Kate Knibbs: So, you went twice?

Makena Kelly: Yes, Kate. I went twice.

Kate Knibbs: I missed that.

Zoë Schiffer: Wait, is the Pentagon Pizza thing a joke about the pizza predicting the war?

Makena Kelly: Yeah.

Zoë Schiffer: Oh, my God.

Makena Kelly: Because they had these Pentagon pizza trackers up. When I returned the second night, yes, I came back the second night. Everything was working for the most part. There were still some screens that were turned off, but I never saw any actual Bloomberg terminals. There were some monitory Bloomberg type terminal things that it looked like Polymarket had developed themselves, but the real $50,000 Bloomberg terminal was nowhere to be found. And yeah, the second night, again, it was mostly people looking to gawk at the event, except I did find a couple of people who placed some bets on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. One was named William, and he said he was a member of the military, wouldn’t give me his full name. And he last year got involved in this for the first time by putting in, I think, all of his tax return into Oklahoma City sports betting.

Makena Kelly, archival audio: So, you used Kalshi?

William, archival audio: Yes.

Makena Kelly, archival audio: When did you first start using the service?

William, archival audio: Probably when I got my tax return back.

Makena Kelly, archival audio: OK.

William, archival audio: So, I filed my taxes pretty early and I was like, “Oh, sweet. I got my tax return. What am I going to do with it?” So, I was like, “I’m going to just put it on Kalshi.”

Makena Kelly: He said that he goes up and down 100 dollars, but he hasn’t made any major winnings. Some of the stuff that we’ve heard. Some people making crazy insider bets making millions and millions of dollars. This is just a guy who was interested in this and just plays it for fun, it sounds like.

Brian Barrett: Kate, what do you see when you see a pop-up like this and Polymarket trying to—is it an attempt to legitimize itself to just a marketing stunt? And how does it tie into what you’re seeing with these companies anyway, that there’s the explosive growth that they’ve got trying to reach out to so many people and getting so many people hooked on what they’re offering?

Kate Knibbs: I mean, this particular event definitely seems like a very bald effort to woo DC-based journalists, if nothing else. One thing that Makena said sort of encapsulates what’s going on right now, the thing about the guys in the Palantir hoodies. So, I think it was the same week that this bar opened. Polymarket announced a partnership with Palantir and Palantir is helping them protect the integrity of their sports market. So, Palantir is going to be basically attempting to help Polymarket catch insider traders and market manipulators in all the sports games, which is kind of wild. I actually asked Polymarket last week whether they had any other deals with Palantir when I was trying to get them to say anything about whether they were investigating the Iran bets that have been raising a lot of eyebrows. And they said that Palantir was only helping them with sports, which I thought was freaking weird. And it speaks to how they’re rapidly expanding, but doing so in this really messy ad hoc way that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Because I was like, “If you’re going to get Palantir involved, why wouldn’t you have them do this geopolitical stuff instead of March Madness?” Yeah, wild, wild times.

TikTok points to capacity constraints and slow infrastructure development as the deciding factors in shelving its planned second data centre, but leaves door open to future opportunities.

The need for greater capacity, and the infrastructure development environment – these were the two key factors behind TikTok shelving a planned second data centre in Dublin, a company spokesperson told SiliconRepublic.com today (2 April) while confirming the reported decision.

Instead, the ByteDance-owned company will focus its European data storage expansion in some of its other locations – in particular, sites in Norway and one in Finland.

TikTok said that when looking at its various sites across Europe, it considered where could best meet its growing capacity demands as regards infrastructure and the speed of development, and that the Nordic countries were a better fit for those considerations.

The company said Ireland remained one of its biggest and most important strategic sites in Europe and, should future opportunities arise that did meet its capacity needs in particular, it would remain open to exploring them.

The spokesperson emphasised that the existing data centre operation in Ireland, which came online in 2023, remains fully operational as an important part of its Project Clover, and that TikTok is still very much committed to Ireland.

Project Clover is the Chinese-owned platform’s initiative designed to update its data security practices across Europe, so as not to fall foul of strict European data privacy regulations.

Part of that commitment involves storing the data of more than 150m monthly TikTok users in Europe locally across three data centres. The original stated plan was for two in Dublin and one in Norway.

TikTok had originally planned to lease data centre space at Echelon’s campus in Clondalkin, Dublin, as part of a three-site strategy. However, as Irish newspaper the Business Post was first to report earlier this week, plans for the second Irish data centre have been shelved.

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.

Circuit boards are found in almost every electronic device that consumers use today. When you open your phone, computer, or a basic remote control, green is the first thing you notice. That famous green hue, however, does not come from the board material itself; it is due to a special coating known as solder mask, which covers the copper traces and gives them a green tint.

The solder mask is an essential tool for any board. After etching the copper paths onto the fiberglass basis, they apply a thin layer of polymer. The mask serves two important functions: it protects the copper from oxidation and moisture, which could cause harm, and it prevents solder from bridging between close connections while you’re assembling the item, which can result in short circuits. Without the mask, fragile circuitry could easily be damaged by regular handling or exposure to the environment.

Sale

KAMRUI Pinova P2 Mini PC 16GB RAM 512GB SSD, AMD Ryzen 4300U(Beats 10110U/3500U/N150/N95,Up to…

• 【AMD Ryzen 4300U Processor】KAMRUI Pinova P2 Mini PC is equipped with AMD Ryzen 4300U (4-core/4-thread, up to 3.7GHz), Based on the advanced Zen…
• 【Large Storage Capacity, Easy Expansion】KAMRUI Pinova P2 mini computers is equipped with 16GB DDR4 for faster multitasking and smooth application…
• 【4K Triple Display】KAMRUI Pinova P2 4300U mini desktop computers is equipped with HDMI2.0 ×1 +DP1.4 ×1+USB3.2 Gen2 Type-C ×1 interfaces for…

Green became the go-to color all those years ago, when reliable solder masks first started rolling off the assembly line. The early ones used a combination of certain resins and hardeners that gave out a green tone, and it just so happened that there was an abundance of the green material available at the suppliers. So that became the industry norm. Over time, the industry has developed its entire process around this uniform green colour.

The human eye can tolerate green fairly well, especially when individuals stare at boards for hours on end under strong lighting. Green offers a fantastic contrast against the glossy copper pads and the white letters on top, reducing eye fatigue caused by staring at them for an extended period of time, since other hues have been found to be less durable. Automatic optical inspection equipment also operate better with green boards because their cameras and software have been tuned to work best with that color over time.

The cost of changing colors is also not high enough to make a significant difference. The green mask material requires less pigments in some formulations, making the production process easier because they don’t have to complicate the imaging and development procedures. The tighter design requirements associated with the conventional green color also provide them with more accurate control when exposed to ultraviolet radiation.
[Source]

• HP EliteBook 6 G2q delivers up to 85 TOPS for local AI tasks
• Always-connected 5G experiences require specific hardware and preinstalled eSIM modules
• Service works only on compatible commercial PCs running Windows 11

HP has unveiled the EliteBook 6 G2q, an ultraslim AI PC that relies on Snapdragon X2 Elite or X2 Plus processors to deliver up to 85 TOPS of NPU performance for local AI tasks.

This lightweight laptop, up to 15% thinner than its predecessor, claims to offer always-connected experiences through HP Go 5G service.