☕️ Apple and Intel reach preliminary chip deal

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In today's Techpresso:

🤝 Apple and Intel reach preliminary chip deal

🔗 Google adds more website links to AI Overviews

🔒 EU calls VPNs “a loophole that needs closing” in age verification law

📉 Sales of motherboards are collapsing

📡 FCC extends foreign router deadline to 2029

🚗 Tesla Model Y becomes first car to pass new NHTSA tests

🎁 + 9 other news & articles you might like

🧰 + 6 trending tools

📚 + 2 trending papers & reports

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• Apple has signed a preliminary agreement with Intel to manufacture some of the chips that go into Apple devices, according to The Wall Street Journal, ending more than a year of intensive talks between the two companies.
• It's not yet clear which Apple products Intel will make chips for, but earlier reports from Ming-Chi Kuo and Jeff Pu suggested M-class chips for Macs and iPads in 2027, with iPhone chips possibly following in 2028.
• The US government played a key role in the deal, with President Trump personally advocating for Intel to Tim Cook at the White House, which fits the administration's push to secure new business for the partly US-owned chipmaker.

• Google is rolling out changes to AI Overviews and AI Mode that add more links to outside websites, including a new "Further Exploration" section at the bottom of answers that suggests related articles in a bullet point list.
• The "Further Exploration" box may also surface follow-up bait questions, and in the example Google shared, a search about urban green spaces points users to content covering specific projects in New York and Singapore.
• A separate "Expert Advice" section will pull snippets from news stories, reviews, public forums, and social media posts tied to the query, with each entry linking out so readers can jump to the full conversation.

• The European Parliamentary Research Service has flagged VPNs as a "loophole that needs closing" in age-verification laws, warning that minors are increasingly using the privacy tools to slip past online checks for restricted content.
• The EPRS paper points out that VPN downloads surged after mandatory age checks took effect in the UK and several US states, and notes that some advocates want VPN access itself gated behind age verification.
• Utah's SB 73 became the first US law to directly target this workaround by defining a user's location through physical presence rather than IP address, while the EU may add similar child-safety rules to its Cybersecurity Act.

• Skyrocketing RAM prices tied to AI data center demand are dragging down motherboard sales, with Taiwan's four biggest makers — Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, and MSI — sharply cutting their 2026 shipment projections by roughly 25 to 30 percent.
• Asus expects to ship only 10 million motherboards in 2026, down from 15 million last year, while Asrock projects a drop from 4.4 to 2.7 million as DIY builders skip purchases they can't fully equip.
• The DDR5 shortage has rippled outward, pushing Valve to likely delay its Steam Machine, forcing Apple to raise Mac prices, hiking console costs, and reportedly leading Nvidia to cancel its RTX 50 Super lineup.

• The FCC has pushed back its deadline for software and firmware updates on foreign-made Wi-Fi routers and drones to January 1, 2029, giving these already-authorized devices two more years of vendor support than the earlier 2027 cutoff.
• The Office of Engineering and Technology cited "public interest" in granting the waiver, noting that blocking updates would leave millions of consumer devices open to vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit without vendor patches.
• New foreign-made routers and drones are still banned unless makers get a "conditional approval" from the Pentagon or DHS, which Netgear and eero have received but DJI and TP-Link have not.

• Tesla's 2026 Model Y is the first car to clear NHTSA's updated driver assistance safety tests, passing eight evaluations including pedestrian automatic emergency braking, lane keeping assistance, blind spot warning, and blind spot intervention under the New Car Assessment Program.
• Tesla was the only manufacturer to submit a vehicle, after the Trump administration in September 2025 delayed the requirement from model year 2026 to 2027 at the request of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which Tesla does not belong to.
• While NHTSA certified the Model Y's basic features, its Office of Defects Investigation escalated a probe in March 2026 into 3.2 million Teslas running Full Self-Driving, citing crashes where the system missed pedestrians, red lights, and oncoming traffic during glare, fog, and debris.

Other news & articles you might like

• SoftBank reportedly slashes OpenAI-backed loan from $10 billion to $6 billion as lenders balk at private AI valuations LINK

• Airbnb says AI now writes 60% of its new code LINK

• Sony says "efficient" AI tools will lead to even more games flooding the market LINK

• Anthropic signs $1.8 billion AI cloud deal with Akamai, Bloomberg News reports LINK

• The Wayback Machine faces another threat from AI — ridiculously expensive hard drive prices LINK

• How Silicon Valley sold Washington an AI race LINK

• ByteDance raises 2026 capex by at least 25% amid AI boom, rising memory costs, sources say LINK

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