NVIDIA is now allowed to sell its second-best H200 processors to China, rather than just the sanction-approved H20 model that China had previously declined to buy, President Trump wrote on Truth Social. The United States will collect a 25 percent tariff on those sales, the Commerce Department confirmed yesterday.
Trump said that he informed China's President Xi Jinping of the decision and that he "responded positively." The Commerce Department is finalizing details and the administration will take the same approach with AMD, Intel and other US companies. He added that the administration would "protect National Security," so the latest Blackwell and upcoming Rubin chips are not part of the deal. The 25 percent tariff would be higher than the 15 percent the White House suggested in August.
Though the administration won't allow NVIDIA to send its latest high-end chips, it was reportedly concerned that the company would lose business to Huawei if it was completely shut out of China's market, according to Reuters. No details about the number of H200 chips or which companies would be eligible to buy them were released. "Offering H200 to approved commercial customers, vetted by the Department of Commerce, strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America," NVIDIA said in a statement.
The decision is not without controversy, though. Several Democratic US senators called it a "colossal economic and national security failure" that will aid China's industry and military. Republican representative John Mollenaar put it in even starker terms. "NVIDIA should be under no illusions China will rip off its technology, mass-produce it themselves and seek to end NVIDIA as a competitor," he said.
Despite the current restriction on Blackwell B200 processors, $1 billion worth of those and other high-end NVIDIA chips have made their way to China via black market sales, according to previous reports. That model, along with the H100 and H200, is far more capable than the H20 chip, which was designed to comply with export restrictions for sale to China. NVIDIA has said that the B200 chip is almost ten times faster than the H200 for some jobs, and the H200 is six times faster than the H20.
Washington's approval doesn't mean that China will purchase NVIDIA's chips, as Beijing has previously told companies not to use US technology. Huawei is currently the most advanced company in that regard and recently unveiled a three-year plan to catch up with NVIDIA and AMD. However, AI chip experts like Richard Windsor have said NVIDIA's tech is still far ahead of anything that Huawei or other Chinese companies can currently produce. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/nvidia-can-now-sell-its-high-end-ai-chips-to-approved-customers-in-china-trump-says-130007458.html?src=rss
Weve all been there: You cant (or wont) get help when something breaks, but the YouTube clip doesnt cover your specific issue. Its what repair gurus at iFixit want to solve with FixBot, an AI-enabled app that talks you through whatever repair youre doing. The chatbot will help you diagnose the problem and then walk you step-by-step through the fix. Plus, its voice-enabled so you wont have to get your phone all smeary when youre elbows-deep in a job. After all, iFixits guides dont just cover fixing your electronics, but everything you might fancy doing yourself, from appliances through to cars and trucks.Unlike traditional AIs, FixBot has been trained on iFixits library of 125,000 guides, its forum and database of repair manuals. The company says theres less risk of hallucination as it pulls from and shows you the schematics its referencing to ensure you dont order the wrong gear. Users can even upload images from their phone, so the app can point out which bit is which. The company is open about its limitations: Its an AI, so its not bulletproof, and its knowledge only runs as far as its library. It can hunt elsewhere for manufacturer data and on other repair forums but youll be warned about the information it pulls from it.In addition, FixBot will keep an eye on your phones battery health in real time to tell you when its time to get a replacement. The tool is, for now, in beta, thanks to the fuzzy way some companies track their battery health, but iFixit is promising greater detail than what you currently get. Plus, when it is time to swap out your battery, you can order the parts and kit all within the app. FixBot is launching for free on both the App Store and Google Play but it wont remain that way forever. At some point, free users will switch to a version with access limits, and will be prompted to upgrade to the paid tier for $4.99 a month or $50 a year.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/ifixits-new-app-uses-ai-to-help-you-repair-your-stuff-130000091.html?src=rss
When the nonprofit Freedom House recently published its annual report, it noted that 2025 marked the 15th straight year of decline for global internet freedom. The biggest decline, after Georgia and Germany, came within the United States.Among the culprits cited in the report: age verification laws, dozens of which have come into effect over the last year. "Online anonymity, an essential enabler for freedom of expression, is entering a period of crisis as policymakers in free and autocratic countries alike mandate the use of identity verification technology for certain websites or platforms, motivated in some cases by the legitimate aim of protecting children," the report warns. Age verification laws are, in some ways, part of a years-long reckoning over child safety online, as tech companies have shown themselves unable to prevent serious harms to their most vulnerable users. Lawmakers, who have failed to pass data privacy regulations, Section 230 reform or any other meaningful legislation that would thoughtfully reimagine what responsibilities tech companies owe their users, have instead turned to the blunt tool of age-based restrictions and with much greater success. Over the last two years, 25 states have passed laws requiring some kind of age verification to access adult content online. This year, the Supreme Court delivered a major victory to backers of age verification standards when it upheld a Texas law requiring sites hosting adult content to check the ages of their users.Age checks have also expanded to social media and online platforms more broadly. Sixteen states now have laws requiring parental controls or other age-based restrictions for social media services. (Six of these measures are currently in limbo due to court challenges.) A federal bill to ban kids younger than 13 from social media has gained bipartisan support in Congress. Utah, Texas and Louisiana passed laws requiring app stores to check the ages of their users, all of which are set to go into effect next year. California plans to enact age-based rules for app stores in 2027.These laws have started to fragment the internet. Smaller platforms and websites that don't have the resources to pay for third-party verification services may have no choice but to exit markets where age checks are required. Blogging service Dreamwidth pulled out of Mississippi after its age verification laws went into effect, saying that the $10,000 per user fines it could face were an "existential threat" to the company. Bluesky also opted to go dark in Mississippi rather than comply. (The service has complied with age verification laws in South Dakota and Wyoming, as well as the UK.) Pornhub, which has called existing age verification laws "haphazard and dangerous," has blocked access in 23 states. Pornhub is not an outlier in its assessment. Privacy advocates have long warned that age verification laws put everyone's privacy at risk. Practically, there's no way to limit age verification standards only to minors. Confirming the ages of everyone under 18 means you have to confirm the ages of everyone. In practice, this often means submitting a government-issued ID or allowing an app to scan your face. Both are problematic and we don't need to look far to see how these methods can go wrong. Discord recently revealed that around 70,000 users "may" have had their government IDs leaked due to an "incident" involving a third-party vendor the company contracts with to provide customer service related to age verification. Last year, another third-party identity provider that had worked with TikTok, Uber and other services exposed drivers' licenses. As a growing number of platforms require us to hand over an ID, these kinds of incidents will likely become even more common. Similar risks exist for face scans. Because most minors don't have official IDs, platforms often rely on AI-based tools that can guess users' ages. A face scan may seem more private than handing over a social security number, but we could be turning over far more information than we realize, according to experts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)."When we submit to a face scan to estimate our age, a less scrupulous company could flip a switch and use the same face scan, plus a slightly different algorithm, to guess our name or other demographics," the organization notes. "A poorly designed system might store this personal data, and even correlate it to the online content that we look at. In the hands of an adversary, and cross-referenced to other readily available information, this information can expose intimate details about us."These issues aren't limited to the United States. Australia, Denmark and Malaysia have taken steps to ban younger teens from social media entirely. Officials in France are pushing for a similar ban, as well as a "curfew" for older teens. These measures would also necessitate some form of age verification in order to block the intended users. In the UK, where the Online Safety Act went into effect earlier this year, we've already seen how well-intentioned efforts to protect teens from supposedly harmful content can end up making large swaths of the internet more difficult to access. The law is ostensibly meant to "prevent young people from encountering harmful content relating to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and pornography," according to the BBC. But the law has also resulted in age checks that reach far beyond porn sites. Age verification is required to access music on Spotify. It will soon be required for Xbox accounts. On X, videos of protests have been blocked. Redditors have reported being blocked from a lengthy number of subreddits that are marked NSFW but don't actually host porn, including those related to menstruation, news and addiction recovery. Wikipedia, which recently lost a challenge to be excluded from the law's strictest requirements, is facing the prospect of being forced to verify the ages of its UK contributors, which the organization has said could have disastrous consequences. The UK law has also shown how ineffective existing age verification methods are. Users have been able to circumvent the checks by using selfies of video game characters, AI-generated images of ID documents and, of course, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). As the EFF notes, VPNs are incredibly widely used. The software allows people to browse the internet while masking their actual location. They're used by activists and students and people who want to get around geoblocks built into streaming services. Many universities and businesses (including Engadget parent company Yahoo) require their students and workers to use VPNs in order to access certain information. Blocking VPNs would have serious repercussions for all of these groups. The makers of several popular VPN services reported major spikes in the UK following the Online Safety Act going into effect this summer, with ProtonVPN reporting a 1,400 percent surge in sign-ups. That's also led to fears of a renewed crackdown on VPNs. Ofcom, the regulator tasked with enforcing the law, told TechRadar it was "monitoring" VPN usage, which has further fueled speculation it could try to ban or restrict their use. And here in the States, lawmakers in Wisconsin have proposed an age verification law that would require sites that host "harmful" content to also block VPNs.While restrictions on VPNs are, for now, mostly theoretical, the fact that such measures are even being considered is alarming. Up to now, VPN bans are more closely associated with authoritarian countries without an open internet, like Russia and China. If we continue down a path of trying to put age gates up around every piece of potentially objectionable content, the internet could get a lot worse for everyone. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-year-age-verification-laws-came-for-the-open-internet-130000979.html?src=rss
As we wrap up 2025, were looking at the years biggest winners: the people, companies, products and trends that made the most impact over the year. Almost at the top of the pile, of course, are the tech billionaires.
According to a recent report by Oxfam, the 10 richest US billionaires (who are all tech leaders, save for Warren Buffet) increased their wealth by $698 billion in 2025. Some of that has been spent treating and lavishing donations on President Trump. Elon Musk reportedly donated nearly $300 million to Trump and Republican allies, and several tech companies have pitched in to build the presidents White House ballroom.
ALLISON ROBBERT via Getty Images
Thanks to updates from Meta, Google, OpenAI and others, AI video is more realistic and easier to make than ever. AI video is everywhere. Its not only overtaken your Facebook and Instagram recommendations, but Meta created an entirely separate feed just for users AI-generated fever dreams. The numbers are huge: OpenAIs Sora, which lets you make AI videos of real people, was downloaded a million times in just a few days. And Googles Veo generated more than 40 million videos in a few weeks of launching. AI slop is here to stay, and its everywhere.
We didnt say the winners would all be positive. But hey, the Switch 2 is great.
Mat Smith
The other big stories this morning
Google and Apple partner on better AndroidiPhone switching
Team Cherry is working on more Silksong content but wont say when itll be released
How Google is laying the foundation for our mixed reality future
Paramount and Netflix both want to spend billions on Warner Bros. Discovery
Good news for WBD?
The Warner Bros. studios water tower. (Reuters / REUTERS)
Paramount wasnt going to let Netflix pick up Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) without a fight. Following the streaming services $82.7 billion deal to buy much of WBD, Paramount is making a hostile takeover bid of $108 billion, pitching directly to WBD shareholders with an all-cash offer of $30 per share, which expires on January 8.
Last week, the WBD board unanimously accepted Netflixs offer of $27.75 per share. That breaks down to $23.25 per share in cash and another $4.50 per share in Netflix stock. Paramount, however, wants to pick up the entirety of WBD, while Netflix only wants the studios and streaming businesses.
Whoever bought (or buys?) WBD would face government opposition from all sides. Paramount had already sent WBD a letter questioning the fairness and adequacy of the acquisition bidding process before its hostile takeover bid.
President Trump warned the Netflix deal could be a problem. According to data from JustWatch, a combined Netflix and HBO would account for 33 percent of the US streaming video market.
Continue reading.
Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada is leaving Bandai Namco
Tekkens leading face and voice for decades.
Katsuhiro Harada is departing Bandai Namco at the end of 2025. He announced the news both with a farewell note shared on X and, of course, an hour-long DJ mix. Haradas 30-year career has been most closely involved with Tekken, and hes a familiar face in the fighting game community.
Harada wrote on X: To everyone who has supported me, to communities around the world, and to all the colleagues who have walked alongside me for so many years, I offer my deepest gratitude.
Continue reading.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-122328464.html?src=rss
Travelodge is launching free wrapping rooms at three UK locations this December, responding to research showing that 40% of parents worry about their children discovering gifts before Christmas morning.
Two years ago, Fairphone launched a pair of modular, fully-repairable headphones called the Fairbuds XL. Now, the Dutch social enterprise is releasing an updated version where the focus isnt just on the quality of its hardware, but on the merits of its raw materials. The 2025 Fairbuds XL ship with new premium 40mm dynamic drivers and stronger N52 rated magnets for more power and enhanced bass response. Listeners should expect to hear improved accuracy in mid and high frequencies thanks to improved audio tuning. And theres a new paper-based speaker membrane thats more refined than what went before.Sound-quality is certainly improved over the predecessor, with cleaner bass and sharper mid and high tones. You can really hear how clean the sound is, especially when youre listening to something lush and orchestral. Going by my memory from two years ago, the ANC seems to be unchanged, able to deal with unwanted sounds like the tapping of my own keyboard with ease. Obviously, you shouldnt go in expecting the same sort of brilliant sound youd get from top tier manufacturers. Although I think Fairphone has likely closed the gap so while youre still a generation or two behind the bleeding edge, its not by a shameful degree. And, if were honest, if youre looking for a pair of cans thatll last you years and years, youre likely able to forgive the absence of the shiniest bells and whistles. Closeup image of the Fairbuds XL (2025) Daniel Cooper for EngadgetIts easy to notice the design changes, too, with the more austere Fairphone logo and the use of solid plastic in place of the original speckled pattern. Sadly, that extends to the little pop of copper found on the four way joystick, which is now a different shade of the same colorway. I get it: A lot of people want their consumer electronics to blend in, but the loss of whimsy pains me a little. Theres some fairly minor but welcome quality of life improvements, including adding automatic power off after 30 minutes. Plus, buyers get the benefit of a three year warranty, and can rest assured the XL are Longtime certified. Longtime is a new European labeling standard for gear built to be long-lived, repairable and supported by a robust repair infrastructure. And, if you already own a pair of XLs, you can buy the new drivers and slot them into your existing cans.Side showing logo.Daniel Cooper for EngadgetBut, in line with Fairphones founding principles, the update is equally focused on the raw materials that have gone into making the 2025 XLs. The PU leather found in the ear cushions hardly a climate friendly material has been ditched in favor of Birds Eye Fabric. Thats a cotton fabric produced with a series of air holes for breathability more commonly found in athleisure products. Similarly the PU found in the headband gets replaced with fabric that reminds me of plenty of other high end sport headphones.Beneath the surface, the new model contains 100 percent fair mined cobalt, copper and silver via mining credits, at least. The rare earth metals used in the speaker magnets are now 100 percent recycled, and they were assembled in a facility using 100 percent renewable energy. Youll also find more than 90 percent recycled aluminum, and 80 percent recycled plastics, with the company pledging to recycle an equal amount of e-waste to every pair sold. Plus, as usual, Fairphone will pay the people who assemble the hardware a living wage bonus to ensure workers can cover their familys needs. Fairbuds XL are available to order today in Europe both from the Fairphone website and select third party retailers. If youre in the US, youll need to wait until later this month, but youll be able to pick them up via Amazon for $229. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/fairphone-updates-its-over-ear-headphones-with-better-sound-080000773.html?src=rss
Letterboxd has introduced its first wave of exclusive digital film rentals for the companys previously announced Letterboxd Video Store. The inaugural collection is themed Unreleased Gems and includes four movies that received awards or acclaim during a film festival. The titles will be available to watch from Letterboxd from December 10 through January 9. Each film is limited to certain geographic markets and the prices will also vary both by title and country. The Unreleased Gems rental titles include It Ends, a mystery-horror that played at SXSW 2025; Sore: A Wife From the Future, which received eight nominations at the 2025 Indonesian Film Festival; Kennedy, a Hindi-language crime-thriller that premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2023; and The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, a drama which received the Un Certain Regard prize from this year's Cannes event.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/letterboxd-video-stores-first-film-rentals-will-be-available-this-week-235426596.html?src=rss
According to a statement from the Public Interest Research Group, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 has removed language that would have granted the US military the right to repair its own equipment rather than requiring it to use official defense contractors for maintenance. This bill is still being considered by Congress, but it is uncertain whether the right to repair language is likely to be re-introduced once it has been removed. "Despite support from Republicans, Democrats, the White House and key military leaders, troops will keep waiting for repairs they could perform themselves," US PIRG Legislative Associate Charlie Schuyler said in a statement from the organization. "Taxpayers will keep paying inflated costs. And in some cases, soldiers might not get the equipment they need when they need it most."A bipartisan bill from Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tom Sheedy was introduced earlier this year to allow the military right to repair access. The topic has been a more piecemeal affair for laypeople in the US, with some states enacting their own laws and federal regulators sometimes intervening to offer consumers more choice in how they seek repairs. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/congress-removes-right-to-repair-language-from-2026-defense-bill-231708835.html?src=rss
Katsuhiro Harada is departing Bandai Namco at the end of 2025. He announced the news both with a farewell note shared on X and, in possibly the coolest exit ever, with an hour-long DJ mix. Harada's 30-year career has most closely been involved with Tekken and he's a familiar face in the fighting game community.He began as a voice actor in the original Tekken game and continued to do so even as he became a director for the series. He has worked on other Bandai Namco titles as a producer, both in and out of the fighting genre. "Each project was full of new discoveries and learning, and every one of them became an irreplaceable experience for me," Harada wrote on X. "To everyone who has supported me, to communities around the world, and to all the colleagues who have walked alongside me for so many years, I offer my deepest gratitude."He closed by saying that over his career, he never DJed at a tournament event. So to mark his departure, Harada posted a full set titled TEKKEN: A 30-Year Journey Haradas Final Mix to SoundCloud. Which is just the most swag move I can think of and a fun way to close out this chapter for fans of the franchise.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/katsuhiro-harada-is-leaving-bandai-namco-after-30-years-223156258.html?src=rss
Despite making some moves to address the proliferation of AI-generated audio on its platform, Spotify failed to catch a copycat making imitations of music by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. The long-running experimental rock band from Australia, has been a vocal critic of Spotify and was one of several artists that took their music off the platform in the summer. The move was in response to the discovery that outgoing CEO Daniel Ek was a leading investor in an AI-focused weapons and military company. Today, a poster on Reddit was recommended what appeared to be an AI-generated copy of one of the band's songs in Spotifys Release Radar playlist. The phony artist was called King Lizard Wizard and it had an album of tracks all sharing titles with songs by the original band and using their original lyrics. Futurism grabbed screenshots of the imposter, although it appears to have since been taken down; only the band's original page appears in searches for both their name and the AI name. However, the phony King Gizzard band's album went unnoticed by the company for weeks before today's social post surfaced it. The Reddit thread points to several other anecdotal cases where someone attempted to trick listeners with AI-generated versions of popular bands. In September, Spotify unveiled a spam filter for catching AI slop, as well as policies for disclosing AI use in the content it hosts and how it would tackle AI impersonations. An instance like this, particularly when it features an artist that had left the platform in protest, creates a pretty big question mark about how well those policies are working. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/an-ai-copycat-of-king-gizzard--the-lizard-wizard-went-unnoticed-on-spotify-for-weeks-220018144.html?src=rss
