The U.S. passes a massive broadband plan, Sony and TSMC are teaming up to build a chip production facility in Japan, and McAfee has gone private, again.
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It’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Wednesday, November 10, and I’m your host, Jori Negin-Shecter.
The U.S. just passed a massive $65 billion broadband plan to connect underserved areas in the country. As a part of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs act, the fund is the largest ever in U.S. broadband. Out of the whole, $42.45 billion will go towards subsidies for ISPs to build infrastructure. Furthermore, $14.2 billion will go towards providing affordable network access to low-income households. Although the figure is already impressive, it’s nearly half of the $100 billion U.S. President Joe Biden had proposed earlier this year.
Sony and TSMC are partnering to build TSMC’s first chip production plant outside of Taiwan. The $7 billion facility will be built in Kumamoto to produce chips for vehicles and camera sensors. According to the Wall Street Journal, the region was chosen for its plentiful supply of water, a critical resource for chip production. The deal is still under regulatory review, but its construction is slated to begin in early 2022. Once completed, the plant is expected to produce 45,000 12-inch wafers each month.
Finally, Cybersecurity firm McAfee has gone private for $14 billion, just over a year after going public. A consortium, led by Advent International Corporation and Permira Advisers, scooped up the company for $12 billion in cash, along with more than $2 billion in debt. The company has had a turbulent history of going private and public since its founding in 1987. It first went public in 1992, then again in 1999 after a merger, before being acquired by Intel in 2011, and subsequently spun off as its own division in 2016.
And now for something a little different. A hand sign, popularized by social media, has helped in the rescue of a missing girl. The hand sign, in which a person places their thumb in their palm and folds their fingers over top of it, was developed by the Canadian Women’s Foundation to indicate domestic violence. The hand sign became popular during the initial stages of lockdowns due to a reported increase in instances of violence at home, per an article from the BBC. One driver called the police after spotting a 16 year old girl signaling to them from a car driven by an older male, leading to the arrest of the 61-year old man.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire Newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. If you have a suggestion or tip, please drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thanks for listening, I’m Jori Negin-Shecter.