An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reported record fourth-quarter earnings and said it expects AI chip demand to continue for years. During an earnings call, CEO C.C. Wei told investors that while he cannot predict the semiconductor industry's long-term trajectory, he remains bullish on AI. "All in all, I believe in my point of view, the AI is real -- not only real, it's starting to grow into our daily life. And we believe that is kind of -- we call it AI megatrend, we certainly would believe that," Wei said during the call. "So another question is 'can the semiconductor industry be good for three, four, five years in a row?' I'll tell you the truth, I don't know. But I look at the AI, it looks like it's going to be like an endless -- I mean, that for many years to come." TSMC posted net income of NT$505.7 billion (about $16 billion) for the quarter, up 35 percent year over year and above analyst expectations. Revenue hit $33.7 billion, a 25.5 percent increase from the same period last year. The company expects nearly 30 percent revenue growth in 2026 and plans to spend between $52 billion and $56 billion on capital expenditures this year, up from $40.9 billion in 2025.

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Six mois après l’ouverture des précommandes, le Trump Phone n’a toujours pas été expédié. Saisie par Elizabeth Warren et dix autres élus démocrates, la Federal Trade Commission est appelée à enquêter sur les promesses de fabrication américaine et les retards répétés de Trump Mobile.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said this week that his company's software engineering headcount has remained "mostly flat" over the past year as internal AI tools have delivered substantial productivity gains. Speaking on TBPN, Benioff said he has about 15,000 engineers who are "more productive than ever." The company has redirected its hiring efforts toward sales and customer engagement roles, hiring 20% more account executives this year as it pushes its Agentforce agentic AI service. Human salespeople remain essential for explaining the "intricacies and nuances" of agentic AI to skeptical enterprise customers, he argued. Other parts of the business have seen deeper cuts. In a separate appearance on The Logan Bartlett Show, Benioff said that Salesforce had reduced its customer support workforce by roughly 50%.

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theodp writes: Code.org, the nonprofit backed by AI giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon and whose Hour of AI and free AI curriculum aim to make world's K-12 schoolchildren AI literate, points job seekers to its AI Use Policy in Hiring, which promises dire consequences for those who use AI during interviews or take home assignments without its OK. Explaining "What's Not Okay," Code.org writes: "While we support thoughtful use of AI, certain uses undermine fairness and honesty in the hiring process. We ask that candidates do not [...] use AI during interviews and take-home assignments without explicit consent from the interview team. Such use goes against our values of integrity and transparency and will result in disqualification from the hiring process." Interestingly, Code.org CEO Partovi last year faced some blowback from educators over his LinkedIn post that painted schools that police AI use by students as dinosaurs. Partovi wrote, "Schools of the past define AI use as 'cheating.' Schools of the future define AI skills as the new literacy. Every desk-job employer is looking to hire workers who are adept at AI. Employers want the students who are best at this new form of 'cheating.'"

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Amazon is turning to an Arizona mine that last year became the first new source of U.S. copper in more than a decade, to meet its data centers' ravenous appetite for the industrial metal. The mine was restarted as a proving ground for Rio Tinto's new method of unlocking low-grade copper deposits. Rio signed a two-year supply pact with Amazon Web Services, a vote of confidence for its Nuton venture, which uses bacteria and acid to extract copper from ore that was previously uneconomical to process. The move by Amazon is the latest example of a technology company rushing to secure the power and critical materials necessary to build and operate artificial-intelligence data centers. The Nuton copper will satisfy only a sliver of Amazon's needs. The biggest data centers each require tens of thousands of metric tons of copper for all the wires, busbars, circuit boards, transformers and other electrical components housed there. The 14,000 metric tons of copper cathode that Rio expects the Arizona Nuton project to yield over four years wouldn't be enough for one of those facilities. Rio deployed its bioleaching process in the recent restart of a mine east of Tucson and has partnerships to take the technology to several others in the Americas. The idea is to uncork the low-grade ore left behind at old mines and is key to Rio's plans to boost output when new discoveries are harder than ever to bring online and copper demand is surging. [...] "We work at the commodity level to find lower carbon solutions to drive our business growth," said Chris Roe, Amazon's director of worldwide carbon. "That means steel, and that means concrete, and it absolutely means copper with regard to our data centers." Roe said the copper will be routed to companies that produce components for Amazon's data centers. As part of the deal, Amazon is supplying Rio with cloud-computing and data analytics to optimize Nuton's recovery rates and help the miner expand production.

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