By Jennifer Conrad | 08.02.21   | Intel has spent the past few years lurching from one misstep to another. Now, Will Knight writes, the company is betting it can execute a series of tricky manufacturing shifts and a rebranding campaign to convince people that it isn't so far behind the competition after all. Last week, the California-based company said it would roll out new technologies designed to help it compete with TSMC, a Taiwanese chipmaker that, along with South Korea's Samsung, currently makes the most advanced and high performance computer chips. Intel said Qualcomm and Amazon had agreed to be customers for its new foundry business that will make chips for other companies starting in 2024. However, in an embarrassing measure of how the company has fallen behind, Intel also plans to outsource the manufacturing of its most advanced chips to TSMC. A Little Help? The US government is mulling a $52 billion investment in the US semiconductor industry out of concerns that manufacturing of the latest chips, which will be vital to emerging technologies including 5G and AI, is concentrated in Asia. Read about Intel's attempts to turn itself around. |  | This spring, as people lined up for newly available, miraculously effective Covid-19 vaccines, it was easy to imagine a direct and speedy path to a protected society. Instead, we're facing a pandemic of the unvaccinated that threatens even people who are fully vaccinated thanks to the possibility of breakthrough infections. As Gregory Barber reports, last week dozens of influential organizations all decided it's time for vaccine mandates. And on Thursday, President Biden announced 4 million federal workers will now face a choice: attest to their completed vaccination status, or test one or two times a week, wear masks, and face travel restrictions. "Right now, too many people are dying, or watching someone they love die," he said. Biden's announcement followed similar statements from a flurry of major tech firms, including Google and Facebook, which have told their tens of thousands of employees around the country that vaccinations will be required for workers returning to the office, and an earlier raft of mandates from universities, state governments, and medical centers. A Tipping Point? Big tech companies have been a sort of Covid cultural bellwether, leading the shutdown of offices early in March 2020, with many shifting to remote work for the long term. Their actions may make mandates more palatable for employers elsewhere. Read the latest on vaccine mandates. |  | Researchers have found several vulnerabilities in a popular brand of pneumatic tube delivery system that many hospitals use to carry and distribute vital cargo like lab samples and medicine. Pneumatic tubes may seem like wonky and antiquated office tech, writes Lily Hay Newman, yet they're surprisingly common. Swisslog Healthcare, a prominent medical-focused pneumatic tube system maker, says that more than 2,300 hospitals in North America use its "TransLogic PTS" platform. The vulnerabilities that researchers found in Swisslog's Translogic Nexus Control Panels could let a hacker take over a system, take it offline, access data, reroute deliveries, or otherwise sabotage the pneumatic network. What Could Go Wrong? Attackers could target a pneumatic tube system as part of a ransomware attack or monitor delivery data for espionage. They could even potentially disrupt delivery routing or damage samples at high speeds. Read how hospital pneumatic tubes can be hacked. | |
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