A Harrowing Journey, A Last Goodbye
I made it to my mother’s funeral, in Chigasaki, Japan, flying overnight from Paris, with a half-hour to spare.
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Chipmakers Must Be Held to Their Capex Promises
By Bolaji Ojo
Semiconductor foundries and chipmakers like Intel, Samsung, TSMC and TI have in the last year promised to spend as much as $400 billion on new fabrication facilities in scattered locations around the globe over the next decade, potentially jacking up capital expenditure in the industry to historic heights.
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The Tortuous Road to My Mother’s Funeral
This is a story in development. As I write it, I still don’t know how it will turn out. Uncertainty is the name of the game.
It started last weekend, with my mother’s death. Kiyoko Yoshida survived many trials in her life — including, when she was a teenager, the A-bombing of Hiroshima. She endured the death of my big sister, Mariko, and stoically took over the job of raising Mariko’s two sons, though she was over 60 at the time. She survived the passing of my father, and ultimately, she even outlasted Covid-19. Finally, she just quietly withered away at the age of 93.
Because of pandemic protocols imposed by the Japanese government, the last time I saw my mother was November 2019.
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In Praise of a NATO-Like Semiconductor Alliance
As the pandemic took hold two years ago, among the unforeseen consequences were crippling supply chain disruptions. We’ve since figured out the toilet paper supply-demand equation, but remain a long way from fixing the strategic global semiconductor manufacturing pipeline.
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Fostering Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa
What’s at stake?
Across the continent, a growing entrepreneurial community stands ready to ensure that Africa doesn’t miss out on the transformational benefits of the digital economy. It’s incumbent on government, business, and educational institutions to support their efforts.
By Fred Ohwahwa
The Digital Age has arrived in Africa, as evidenced by rising mobile penetration and usage figures for widely adopted social networking and communications applications, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp. From small businesses to large, the young to the elderly, rural areas to the urban centers, digitization is gradually becoming a way of life on the continent.
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Who’s Driving — and Crashing — My Robocar?
It often takes a tragedy for people to see the flip side of a promising and lucrative new technology. This applies to the pioneer who operates a highly autonomous vehicle as test driver or to an average Joe or Jane who rides as a passenger in a robotaxi.
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If HD Maps Make Driving Safer, They May Make Walking More Dangerous
By Peter Norton
Technology companies like Mobileye say their high-definition (HD) digital maps can make our roads safer. But it’s up to the rest of us to ensure that they really do.
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A Blurred Line: AV Capability and Human Responsibility
We know that humans and machines can coexist. They’ve been doing it for centuries. But the key to this harmony is knowing what machines can—or can’t — do, and defining the human role in this equation.
In the world of autonomous driving, I see society teetering above a slippery slope. On the one hand, transparency about AV capabilities is decreasing. A California Superior Court ruling last week allows Waymo to treat certain safety-related crash data as trade secrets. On the other hand, human drivers are growing both more complacent and more confused about their responsibilities in highly but not fully automated vehicles.
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Nvidia Bid for Arm: Was It Just a Lark?
By Bolaji Ojo
The collapse last week of Nvidia Corp.’s proposed acquisition of semiconductor IP vendor Arm Plc surprised very few, but it still left us with (too) many questions, most of them unanswerable.
How did Nvidia wobble into such a quagmire and how can the industry avoid such in future? Nvidia paid a hefty price for the unconsummated deal. The company lost its $1.25 billion deposit, drew the ire of competitors and some of its own OEM customers, and injected unnecessary controversy into its operations. Nvidia will recover from the negative impacts of the deal and may have reaped some benefits, but was the plan worth the wasted time and resources?
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AV Hearing Sparks More Questions than Answers
What’s at stake?
Last week’s congressional hearing on autonomous vehicles (AV) exposed the limited knowledge among lawmakers on what automated vehicles are, let alone differences between AVs and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) — which look like disclaimers in the fine print for most people. The hearing could have used more discussion to clarify complex AV issues and elevate the debate beyond the talking points of special-interest groups.