Free Republic

SEOUL – The middle ground between China and the United States is collapsing under South Korea’s feet as it is torn in opposite directions by the two giant economies it seeks to balance between. On the one hand, it is being “requested” to submit detailed information on its flagship industrial sector to the United States – which is also pressuring the country’s number-two memory chipmaker to halt shipments of advanced machinery to China. That move could halt an upgrade to a major DRAM fab, in a sector where large-scale capital investment is crucial. On the other hand, the country’s diesel...

Hundreds of requests for details on the specifics of the container shipping backlog. So, I spent 3 days calling sources, digging for details and gathering information on the substantive issue at hand. The epicenter of the problem is not what is being outlined by financial media, corporate media and politicians who have a specific interest in distracting from the issues at hand. This has nothing to do with COVID-19. The issues being discussed today relate to events that happened a long time ago. As a matter of fact, it was so predictable that Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home...

Hundreds of requests for details on the specifics of the container shipping backlog. So, I spent 3 days calling sources, digging for details and gathering information on the substantive issue at hand. The epicenter of the problem is not what is being outlined by financial media, corporate media and politicians who have a specific interest in distracting from the issues at hand. This has nothing to do with COVID-19. The issues being discussed today relate to events that happened a long time ago. As a matter of fact, it was so predictable that Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home...

The great computer chip shortage of 2021 will likely get worse before it gets better. This conclusion was reached following brief study and anecdotal review. Moreover, while COVID lockdowns may have initially triggered the shortage, several decades of shortsighted decisions and simmering geopolitical tensions make it much more than a matter of fixing a few broken links in the supply chain. Here’s why… The world’s top two leading chip companies are Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics. These two Asian firms, combined, control more than 70 percent of the semiconductor manufacturing market. The U.S., which was once a leader,...

When it comes to so-called smart gadgets, owning just isn't what it used to be. Samsung made that clear earlier this month when it told customers that it can, at any time, remotely disable any and every Samsung TV connected to the internet. The Aug. 6 announcement came in response to the theft of an unspecified number of TVs in South Africa in July, and was likely the first time many customers had ever heard of Samsung's TV Block Function. The feature allows Samsung to remotely check if "TV units have been unduly activated," and "is already pre-loaded on all...

Governments around the world are implementing vaccine mandates and vaccine passports with varying degrees of severity, but all of them are shooting for the endgame of universal human inoculation. Mainstream media and Big Tech “arbiters of truth” at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others are all in on the plan. They may not have all the details, but they know the basic tenets of their two responsibilities. First, they must amplify all pro-vaccine content. Then, they must suppress all anti-vaccine content. These two practices have brought the joie de vivre to authoritarians in Silicon Valley and in newsrooms across the nation....

It was a huge deal when South Korea decided to convict Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong—also known as Jay Y. Lee in the west—for bribery in one of the most bizarre scandals in the country’s history. It was also massive when, after getting off easy in 2018, Lee was sent back to prison in January. Well, buckle up folks, because Lee is set to be released from prison... and it’s believed the global chip shortage may have been a factor.... ...The decision is a fraught one. Business leaders hope that Lee returning to his position will help Korea maintain its status...

Care to take a 360-degree look at what appear to be Samsung's latest foldable phones, smartwatches and earbuds? Well-known Twitter tipster Evan Blass is happy to oblige. Blass, whose Twitter handle is @evleaks, served up some delicious animated GIFs for Samsung fans Friday night, along with the simple note "#GalaxyUnpacked 11 August 2021." That would suggest, of course, that Samsung plans to tout the featured gadgets at an Unpacked event next month. The event would follow Unpacked shindigs that went down in April, March and January. The snarfable GIFs posted by Blass appear to show the rumored Galaxy Z Fold...

My Samsung 8S+ won't display FR properly. A few days ago it shrunk the screen so that everything is super small with long text strings. I can access anything but it is a pain in the butt because the more I zoom up the further out I have to pan back and forth to read it. And yes I am logged on 🤪 Thanks

We just had some Major Announcements about ARM Development that changes Intels X86 future! Here's what we found out! (spoiler alert -- they have met the enemy and it is them)

A new electrode that could free up 20% more light from organic light-emitting diodes has been developed at the University of Michigan. It could help extend the battery life of smartphones and laptops, or make next-gen televisions and displays much more energy efficient. The approach prevents light from being trapped in the light-emitting part of an OLED, enabling OLEDs to maintain brightness while using less power. In addition, the electrode is easy to fit into existing processes for making OLED displays and light fixtures. "With our approach, you can do it all in the same vacuum chamber," said L. Jay...

Walmart will give 740,000 employees free Samsung smartphones by the end of the year so they can use a new app to manage schedules, the company announced Thursday. Employees will only be able to use work features on the new Me@Walmart while on the clock, the company said. "The idea of this app started as a way to manage associates' schedules and has grown into our single in-store app for U.S. associates, saving them time and helping them be more efficient," the company said. Earlier this year, Walmart announced pay increases for nearly a third of its U.S. workforce of...

Bought a 32" Samsung QLED smart Tv for the RV. Have a TP Link using as an access point. My TV and phone connect to my network flawlessly. I launch Screen Mirroring on my iPhone and the TV shows up as a device to connect to. I select that device (TV). The TV shows a passcode on the screen and I enter it into the phone. So all is good, right? The stupid smart TV then says... "Cannot connect to the Samsung Server"? Samsung says there is no workaround. The TV must be connected to the internet even though Apple...

Last September, when Arm trotted out the Neoverse V1 design and made it available, the N2 design was not yet available. But as of this announcement, today, it is. Both the Ampere Computing Altra and the Amazon Web Services Graviton2 processors, which are the two production-grade Arm server chips in the market today, are based on N1 cores and platform designs, with various customizations...With the V1 platform, Arm is designing cores and the uncore regions of a hypothetical processor using either 7 nanometer or 5 nanometer processes, presumably either at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp or Samsung Electronics, which have fabs...

Nvidia just made some MASSIVE announcements in terms of ARM-based computers, so they're now joining Apple and AMD in the fight against Intel and their x86-based chips.

The Committee on Liberatory Information Technology has announced a long-standing Chromebook bug that could reveal user location history. Evidently already on the radar of Google, the platform has a feature allowing anyone with physical access to your device to connect as a guest and view your Wi-Fi logs. Of course, once said intruder has accessed these logs, they would then need the technical knowhow to make sense of them. However, if they are skilled enough, they may be able to track your place history by viewing your Wi-Fi network access over the past seven days. It turns out the bug...

If you're experiencing a bunch of apps suddenly crashing on your recent Samsung phone, you're not alone. This afternoon US time, reports from dozens, then hundreds of users on the Samsung subreddit started coming in, complaining of apps crashing on their phones, constantly and seemingly at random. It's causing some major headaches.

SEOUL: The de facto chief of South Korea's Samsung business empire was convicted Monday over a huge corruption scandal and jailed for two and a half years, in a ruling that deprives the tech giant of its top decision-maker. Lee Jae-yong, vice-chairman of Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest smartphone and memory chip maker, was found guilty of bribery and embezzlement in connection with the scandal that brought down president Park Geun-hye. Lee "actively provided bribes and implicitly asked the president to use her power to help his smooth succession" at the head of the sprawling conglomerate, the Seoul Central District...

The new year has barely started, but we're already getting ready to see the first big flagship phone of 2021 - and right after CES to boot. The internet has been flooded with leaks and speculation about the Samsung Galaxy S21 over the past several months, but now the big launch event is finally upon us. “Galaxy Unpacked: Welcome to the Everyday Epic” kicks off on January 14 at 7 a.m. PT/10 a.m. ET/ 2 p.m. GMT, and will see Samsung finally lift the curtain on this highly anticipated phone. Here's everything you need to know so you can tune...

Google’s high-handed tactics with US regulators have come back to haunt it, with critics saying the tech giant set the stage for a dramatic showdown with the Department of Justice nearly a decade ago. The DOJ last week sued Google, accusing it of using anti-competitive tactics to maintain its search engine’s dominance over rivals. The focus of the suit — massive cash payments to smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung to make Google’s search engine the default option on their devices — is a fresh one. But industry sources say the Silicon Valley giant has nevertheless made itself vulnerable to...