Hard-On-Tech

Dell XPS 14 Panther Lake Laptop Hits 43 Hours In Battery Test Beatdown Of M5 MacBook Air

By ckasprzak | TkOut | April 4, 2026 | CPU, Hardware, Intel, x86
The Hot Take: If this is true, I feel ARM may have serious competition on their hands.

Many believe that Apple makes the most efficient laptop chips and that MacBooks have the best battery life because the Arm ISA supposedly offers superior performance and efficiency over the crufty x86 ISA. But that is not the case. Apple's products are relatively strong because Apple's engineers do an excellent job at designing them for a

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Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% In March

By ckasprzak | TkOut | April 4, 2026 | Linux, Software
The Hot Take: This is good, as Windows 11 is just a pile of poop these days. I'm waiting on native support from game publishing houses, as I hate abstract/emulation layers. We still need the peripheral companies to publish apps to control all those RGB's on our systems and keyboards too.

Valve's March 2026 Steam Survey shows Linux gaming usage jumping to a record 5.33% share -- more than double macOS's 2.35%. Phoronix reports: Steam on Linux was never above 5% and easily an all-time high for the Linux gaming marketshare, especially in absolute numbers. It was a massive 3.1% spike in March while macOS also jumped surprisingly by 1.19% to 2.35%. The Steam Survey numbers show Windows losing 4.28%, down to 92.33%. Part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers. Month over month they report a 31.85% drop to the Simplified Chinese language use and English use increasing by 16.82% to 39.09%. Other languages also showed gains amid the massive decline in Simplified Chinese use. The latest numbers for March show around a quarter of the Linux gamers are running Steam OS. Due in part to the Steam Deck APU being a custom AMD product and the popularity of AMD hardware on Linux for its open-source nature, AMD CPU use by Steam on Linux gamers remains just under 70%. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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TSMC plots an Arizona gigafab land grab

By ckasprzak | TkOut | April 4, 2026 | Hardware, Manufacturing, TSMC
The Hot Take: The Fab competition is heating up states side from the look of it.

A new report claims TSMC wants an Arizona “GigaFab” cluster that can rival what it produces in Taiwan. DigiTimes says TSMC’s US plans have already “exceeded expectations” and the outfit is now eyeing a total of 12 fabs. The idea is to mirror the kind of fab network it runs in Hsinchu, Taiwan, only with more cactus and less typhoon risk. The report reckons TSMC’s and Taiwan’s combined US investment could hit half a trillion dollars, with the spending framed as groundwork for something bigger than a couple of token plants. That is a lot of concrete for a country that still argues about potholes. DigiTimes claims TSMC will add two more wafer fabs and two more advanced packaging fabs in Arizona, taking the state to 12 projects in total. The pitch is that this is not just TSMC shipping in kit and engineers, but a wider supply chain shift, so more production stays on US soil. Of course, building chips in the US is not cheap. The report flags higher costs for facilities, labour and depreciation per wafer, but says the early phases are ploughing on regardless. For some reason, the planners seem to be only interested in building data centres in the hottest places in the US, making issues like water and power really tricky. “Supply chain sources say that the plan for these 12 factories is TSMC’s largest overseas investment in history. It has transformed from an initial risk diversification base into an important extension base for advanced processes and packaging, becoming a key to the reconstruction of semiconductor manufacturing in the United States.” DigiTimes ties the fresh confidence to a recent US-Taiwan tariff agreement, with the US administration supposedly lining up incentives via economic and labour support. If that is the deal, Arizona is about to become an expensive negotiating chip. Experts quoted in the report argue the scale was inevitable because 70 per cent of TSMC’s customers are US fabless firms. They want supply security without the political choke points that come with keeping everything in Taiwan. That demand keeps dragging TSMC’s capex higher quarter after quarter, because it is stuck feeding both the front-end wafer crunch and the back-end packaging crunch. Every AI compute outfit wants a slot, and TSMC is the one holding the clipboard. Someone even floated that TSMC could surpass the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple in market value by 2030, which is the sort of prediction that always sounds clever until the next cycle bites.  

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Samsung ramps Texas fab as engineers gather for 2nm push

By ckasprzak | TkOut | April 4, 2026 | Hardware, Manufacturing, Samsung
The Hot Take: So USA looks to be having 3 foundries that will be able to produce 2nm chips. This is great news.

Samsung Electronics has reportedly moved into the equipment installation and testing phase at its foundry in Taylor, Texas, transitioning from construction to operational setup for 2nm production. More than 3,000 engineers from Samsung and global equipment suppliers have begun gathering at the site, according to ET News, signaling the start of large-scale ramp-up activities.

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Intel buyback signals shift beyond austerity as chipmaker regains confidence

By ckasprzak | TkOut | April 4, 2026 | Hardware, Intel, Manufacturing
The Hot Take: This is GREAT indication that Intel is clawing its way back.

Intel's US$14.2 billion buyback of its Ireland fab stake signals a shift beyond austerity, reflecting improved finances, renewed confidence in AI-driven CPU demand, and a strategic move to regain full control of key manufacturing capacity amid persistent global semiconductor supply constraints.

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Google research suggests encryption technique used by Bitcoin will be cracked by quantum computers around 2029 — search giant says quantum attacks need to be prepared for now

By ckasprzak | TkOut | April 4, 2026 | Hardware, Quantum Computing
The Hot Take: Interesting. I mean with the limitless compute of quantum computing it's more than possible.

New research from Google suggests that future quantum computers will develop quickly enough to pose a risk to elliptic-curve cryptography, used in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, as soon as 2029, and its researchers say action should be taken now to prepare.

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