Nintendo's biggest ROM chip supplier is bowing out of the business

Nintendo's biggest ROM chip supplier is bowing out of the business

fivenewscrypto    novembre 06, 2026   

For years, the AI industry's insatiable demand for memory and storage has had plenty of knock-on effects on the price and availability of PC components like RAM, SSDs, and GPUs. Now those shortages are also squeezing the supply of ROM chips that power physical Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 game cartridges.

Chip manufacturer Macronix announced in its third-quarter earnings report that the company's production of ROM chips "has reached its end" and that it will begin "gradually decoupling from the game industry," as reported by Taiwanese news site BigGo Finance. That could be an issue for Nintendo, which, analyst David Gibson notes, uses Macronix as its "main memory chip maker" for physical game cartridges.

That ROM production—which has shrunk 39 percent in the last year and now represents just 5 percent of Macronix's business—is being crowded out by production of more lucrative in-demand chips like NOR- and NAND-based memory and eMMCs, the company said. With Macronix's production capacity stuck at 25,000 12-inch wafers a month—and $1.2 billion in planned new capacity taking a year or more to spin up—less profitable ROM chips are taking up wafer space that can earn more through other types of chips.

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Hackers exploited iOS and Android flaws to infect phones

Hackers exploited iOS and Android flaws to infect phones

fivenewscrypto    novembre 05, 2026   

Hackers possibly linked to the Kremlin exploited previously patched iOS and Android flaws in an attempt to hack visitors of multiple websites, including one celebrating the 250th anniversary of American independence, researchers said Wednesday.

The attackers, which the researchers assessed with “moderate to high confidence” were part of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, targeted other sites, many with links to that country’s ongoing war against Ukraine. The attacks began when iPhone or Android users visited one of potentially hundreds of different sites. JavaScript injected into the traffic then profiled the device. The final payloads, tailored to the type of platform visiting, attempted to steal browser cookies and, in some cases, Wi-Fi passwords and full mobile device data.

Wielding DarkSword

One of the impersonated sites was america250.org, belonging to a non-partisan group of lawmakers, business executives, and at least one former member of the Trump administration. The attackers registered america250[.]holiday and used it as a reverse proxy to america250.org. The imposter website delivered content from the real one but added malicious JavaScript into it.

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Uranium cubes reveal why the German nuclear project failed

Uranium cubes reveal why the German nuclear project failed

fivenewscrypto    novembre 05, 2026   

During World War II, physicists on the Manhattan Project worried that the Nazi German nuclear program might achieve the first nuclear bomb before the US and its allies. That's not what transpired, but historians have debated just how close the Germans came to achieving criticality in their last attempt at building a reactor: the B8 pile. Werner Heisenberg, who led that effort, claimed that they were close and had only needed a little more uranium. But according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus, that was not the case: The project simply didn't have sufficient uranium and heavy water to build a working bomb, given the design they were using.

This particular research started in 2013, when University of Maryland physicist Timothy Koeth—a co-author on the new paper—received the gift of a mysterious heavy metal cube from a friend. He instantly recognized it as one of the uranium cubes used by German scientists in their unsuccessful attempt to build a working nuclear reactor. Only 14 such cubes are known to exist today.

In 2019, we reported on Koeth’s quest to track down the cube’s origins, as well as several other similar cubes that had somehow found their way across the Atlantic. At the time, Koeth and his partner in the quest, then-graduate student Miriam “Mimi” Hiebert, had tracked down 10 such cubes around the US. For instance, the Smithsonian Institute had a German uranium cube in storage. They tracked a third cube to Harvard University, where it was regularly passed around to students in introductory physics classes as a curiosity.

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VMware releases vSphere Express for virtualization on up to 128 cores

VMware releases vSphere Express for virtualization on up to 128 cores

fivenewscrypto    novembre 05, 2026   

After alienating many long-time small- to medium-sized business (SMB) customers, Broadcom’s VMware is trying to appeal to its smaller customers.

Today, the virtualization company announced vSphere Express, a lower-end virtualization offering for organizations that require “cost-effective essential virtualization.”

vSphere Express comes after many customers reported that VMware was pushing them to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), the flagship private cloud bundle that has many features SMBs don’t need and is expensive. Some SMB users have reported that VMware sales representatives previously told them that vSphere Standard, VMware's prior entry-level virtualization offering, wasn’t available anymore.

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Ted Cruz aims to stack FCC with Republicans before Democrats take Senate control

Ted Cruz aims to stack FCC with Republicans before Democrats take Senate control

fivenewscrypto    novembre 05, 2026   

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is aiming to widen the Republican majority on the Federal Communications Commission before Democrats take over control of the Senate in January 2027.

Just before the Republicans' midterm loss, Cruz yesterday announced a November 10 nomination hearing for Trump's FCC nominee, Danielle Thumann Severs. In his final two months as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Cruz seems set on moving the Thumann Severs nomination to a full vote of the Senate.

Confirming Thumann Severs would give Republicans an unusual 3-1 advantage on the FCC. That could become a 3-0 advantage at the end of 2027 because FCC Democrat Anna Gomez would have to leave the commission at that time if Trump does not agree to renominate her.

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The DEA banned a drug some opioid users called a miracle

The DEA banned a drug some opioid users called a miracle

fivenewscrypto    novembre 05, 2026   

In 2012, as the driver of deaths in the opioid crisis began moving from prescription pills to heroin, Laura Bohn was tasked with finding safer drugs to manage pain.

Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in 2017 she and other scientists revealed in the science journal Cell that several compounds—including a particularly promising one called SR-17018—could relieve pain in mice without causing respiratory depression. That’s a big deal, because respiratory depression is typically what causes people using opioids to stop breathing and die.

Bohn, senior associate vice president of research at University of South Florida Health, says her team filed a patent on SR-17018. They went on to discover that mice using the chemical did not develop a high tolerance for it and that mice already dependent on morphine—a powerful opioid—could consume SR-17018 to reset their tolerance without suffering from painful withdrawal symptoms.

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California fights "preposterous" Trump admin demand to scrap state broadband laws

California fights "preposterous" Trump admin demand to scrap state broadband laws

fivenewscrypto    novembre 05, 2026   

California is accepting $1.42 billion in broadband grant funding from the Trump administration, but the state is not accepting the Trump administration's demand that it stop enforcing a net neutrality law and other telecom regulations.

California's stand against the Trump administration could result in multiple legal battles involving the state, federal government, and Internet providers seeking government funds. Although California told the federal government it would accept the money, it is reserving the right to challenge the condition imposed by the US. The state could delay or cancel plans to distribute broadband grants depending on how the process unfolds.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) decided last year that states must agree not to enforce any rate regulation or net neutrality rule on ISPs that receive money from the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. California had to decide whether to accept its share of the fund despite that restriction. California is slated to spend $1.42 billion to deploy broadband to 270,571 locations and may ultimately receive up to $1.86 billion from BEAD for a mix of deployment and non-deployment projects.

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