Calls to limit Iran enrichment will fail, nuclear chief says

3 hours ago

Iran’s nuclear chief said on Thursday that demands by adversaries to limit the country’s uranium enrichment program would fail.

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said such calls were “wishful thinking” and could not stop Iran’s nuclear activities.

“No law or individual can stop us,” Mohammad Eslami said, adding that past actions by adversaries, including the current war, had failed.

IRGC Quds Force chief says forces made enemies regret actions

4 hours ago

IRGC Quds Force chief Esmail Ghaani said on Thursday that forces had delivered what he described as “regret-inducing lessons” to the enemies during the war with the US and Israel.

In a statement carried out by state media,he praised what he called the “axis of resistance,” saying their actions were courageous and decisive.

The "axis of resistance" is a term coined by slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to describe anti-US and anti-Israeli groups and governments in the Middle East.

He thanked fighters for their efforts and said they remained vigilant and prepared.

Costa Rica designates IRGC, 3 Iran-backed groups as terror organizations

4 hours ago

Costa Rica designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, in a move that also blacklisted three other Iran-backed groups in the region.

Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and Houthis in Yemen were also designated.

The government made the decision on Monday, according to the ministry, which said the measurewas taken in line with Costa Rica’s international commitments to combat terrorism and its financing.

The move will "allow intelligence authorities and judicial bodies tostrengthen their prevention, investigation, and prosecution capabilities, acting more decisively against any logistical and financial support networksthat may be operating within the country to sustain these organizations,” the foreign ministry said.

Costa Rica declara como organizaciones terroristas a Hezbollah, Hamás, el Cuerpo de la Guardia Revolucionaria Islámica (CGRI) y Ansar Allah, también conocida como la milicia Houti pic.twitter.com/Vpi8pltujz

— Cancillería Costa Rica 🇨🇷 (@CRcancilleria) April 9, 2026

It added that the designation would help intelligence and judicial authorities strengthen their abilityto prevent, investigate and prosecute logistical and financial support networks linked to the groups.

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202604096568

My Quest to Solve Bitcoin’s Great Mystery

4/8/26. (Article 1)

Bitcoin’s creator has hidden behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamotofor 17 years. But a trail ofclues buried deep in crypto lore led to a 55-year-old computer scientist named Adam Back.

One evening in the fall of 2024, my wife and I were sitting in traffic on the Long Island Expressway when, tired of listening to the jazz-funk station I often played on our drives, she switched to a podcast.

It was “Hard Fork,” the New York Times tech show, and the hosts were discussing a new HBO documentaryclaiming to have unmasked Bitcoin’s pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto.

I was instantly riveted. I had long considered the question of Satoshi’s true identity one of our age’s great enigmas and had poked at it before without success. Two years earlier, I had even spent several months researching a book on the subject. But I soon realized I was out of my depth and reluctantly gave up.

Hearing that someone else might have finallyidentified the shadowy figurewho had revolutionized finance,spawned a $2.4 trillion industryand amassed one of the world’s biggest fortunes in one stroke of staggering genius aroused in me a mixture of admiration and envy. I couldn’t wait to watch the film. As soon as we got home that night, I logged in to the HBO Max app and pressed play.

In the end, I found the conclusion of “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery”unconvincing: HBO singled out a Canadian software developer based on what seemed like very thin evidence. But as I watched what was an otherwise entertaining romp through the world of crypto,one scene caught my attention.

Adam Back, a British cryptographer and leading figure in the Bitcoin movement, sat on a park bench in Riga, Latvia, his shirt untucked under a brown coat. The filmmaker casually rattled off the names of several Satoshi suspects. At the mention of his own name, Mr. Back tensed up, strenuously denied he was Satoshi and asked that the conversation be kept off the record.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/business/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto-identity-adam-back.html?

>>24481560

(Article 2)1/2

Adam Back Denies He Is Satoshi Nakamoto in Response to Times Investigation

“Dr. Adam Back has consistently stated that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto,” his company said in a statement. “What is not speculative is Adam’s foundational contribution to Bitcoin.”

The British computer scientist Adam Back said on Wednesday that he is not the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin known as Satoshi Nakamoto,after a New YorkTimes investigation presented evidence that he is.(reading the article there is no confirmed proof, it’s a tiny clue)

“I’m not satoshi,” Mr. Back said on the social media platform X on Wednesday. He added thathe is merely one of a number of developers who came “so close yet so far” to building something like Bitcoin.

The true identity of the creator of the world’s first cryptocurrencyhas remained hidden for 17 years. The Times’s investigation, led by reporter John Carreyrou, showed that Mr. Back had, in a series of obscure emails, outlined almost every feature of Bitcoin a decade before Satoshi did.

It showed that duringSatoshi’s two and a half years posting frequentlyonline,Mr. Back largely disappeared from forumsdiscussing Bitcoin, only toreappear soon after Satoshi famously vanished in 2011. (“Largely disappeared” is not “completely disappeared”, so it’s not confirmed. Typical NYTS writing)

And it foundstriking similarities between Mr. Back’s and Satoshi’s online posts and emails.

Contacted for the investigation,Mr. Back denied that he is Satoshi and chalked up its findings to a series of coincidences. He reiterated that on X on Wednesday, saying that much of the article featured “a combination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests.”

Mr. Back was a member of the Cypherpunks, a group of anarchists formed in the early 1990s whowanted to use cryptography — the art of securing communications through code— to free individuals from government surveillance and censorship.

Satoshi is believed to have been a Cypherpunk because of the group’s interestin digital money that could not be traced by the government, and because he announced his white paper on a forum where many Cypherpunks congregated.

(https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/business/adam-back-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin.

>>24481612

2/2

For the article, the Times reporters compiled all of Satoshi’s known writings and assembled alist of his writing quirks, and collected the archives ofthree internet mailing lists where Cypherpunks gatheredin the 1990s and 2000s. They then conducted several analyses, assisted by artificial intelligence,which found that Satoshi’s quirks matched Mr. Back’s own writing more closelythan any other Cypherpunk. Asked about this for the article, Mr. Back replied:

“It’s not me, but I take what you’re saying that this is what the A.I. said with the data.But it’s still not me.”. (The AI didn’t give statistics of how close he was Satoshi, so did the writer not ask about how likely it was? Kind of sloppy article)

Mr. Back’s tweets on Wednesday did not mention the A.I. analysis. But he said that his frequent Cypherpunks posts in the 1990s made his views more prominent than others. He said that because he posted so prolifically, he might appear to have more in common with Satoshi than “others with similar interests but posting 20x less.”

Mr. Back runs Blockstream, a Bitcoin-focused company that has been valued as high as $3.2 billion. “Today’s New York Times __story is built on circumstantial interpretation of select details and speculation___,not definitive cryptographic proof,” a Blockstream spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday. “Dr. Adam Back has consistently stated that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto.What is not speculative is Adam’s foundational contribution to Bitcoin.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/business/adam-back-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin.html

LAUREN GOODE BUSINESS APR 6, 2026

The Ridiculously Nerdy Intel Bet That Could Rake in Billions

Advanced chip packaging is suddenly at the center of the AI boom. Intel is going all In. (1/3)

SIXTEEN MILES NORTH of Albuquerque, in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, an Intel chip plant sits on more than 200 acres of land.The site was established in the 1980s, part of it built on top of a sod farm. In 2007, as Intel’s business faltered, operations in one of the key fabs, Fab 9, came to a halt. Employees say families of raccoons and a badger took up residence in the space.

Then, inJanuary 2024, the dormant fab was booted up again. Intel funneled billions into the facility, including $500 million it was granted from the US CHIPS Action Group . Now, Fab 9 and its neighbor, Fab 11X, are critical infrastructure for one of Intel’s quietly fast-growing businesses: advanced chip packaging==.

Packaging involves combining multiple chiplets, or smaller components, onto a single, custom chip. Over the past six months, Intel has been signaling that its advanced packaging business, which operates within theFoundry chip-making arm of the company, is having a growth spurt. The company’s efforts around this have it going head-to-head with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, which far surpasses Intel’s production in terms of scale.

But in an era where AI is driving demand for all kinds of computing power, andleading nearly every major tech company to consider making its own custom chips, Intel thinks this effort can help itgrab a bigger slice of the AI pie.

During a quarterly earnings call in January, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan claimed thatIntel’s packaging is a “very big differentiator” from competitors. Chief financial officer Dave Zinsner said on the same call that the company expects tosee revenue from packaging “come in even beforewe start tosee meaningful wafer revenue.” Zinsner said he hadrevised his packaging revenueprojections over the past 12 to 18 months, from hundreds of millions of dollars to “well north of $1 billion.”

Zinsner elaborated on this in March at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom conference, when he calledIntel's packaging “ironically, the more interesting part of the Foundry business todays are,” adding that the company was “close to closing some deals that are in the billions of dollars per year, in terms of revenue on packaging.”

Multiple sources say thatIntel has been in ongoing talks with at least two large customersfor its advanced packaging services:Google and Amazon, which both make their own custom chips but outsource parts of the fabrication process.

These deals would be a boon for beleaguered chipmaker Intel, which is attempting a comeback—partially funded by the US government—after years of stagnation and missing out on mobile chips.

A spokesperson for Google, Lee Fleming, declined to comment, saying that Google doesn’t publicly discuss its supplier relationships. Amazon spokesperson Doron Aronson also declined to comment.Intel said it does not comment on specific customers.

Intel’s ambitions for its advanced packaging business depend largely on whether the company can secure outside customers like these tech giants. In a Since 2024, the company has effectively been split into two: There’s the long-standing “product” side, where Intel designs and sells cost-efficient CPUs to PC makers and data centers; and the aspirational Foundry side, where Intel makes advanced semiconductors==.

https://archive.ph/Njq3g

>>24481727

(2/3)

Intel’s Foundry plans and the number of advanced chip systems it can yield are closely watched signals among tech analysts and investors, who in recent years have seen Intel cycle through CEOs and start and stop fab buildouts. Zinsner, for one, said at the Morgan Stanley conference that henow believes Intel Foundry’s packaging business can achieve the same 40 percent gross marginsthat it claims on the rest of its products.

It’s still an extremely challenging proposition. “Packaging is not as easy as saying ‘I want to run 100,000 wafers per month,’” says Jim McGregor, a longtime chip industry analyst and the founder of Tirias Research,referring to a continuous flow of chips in various stages of production. “It really comes down to whether Intel’s [packaging] fabs can make deals. If we see them expanding those operations more, that’s an indicator that they have.”

Last month, Anwar Ibrahim, the prime minister of Malaysia, revealed in a post on Facebook that Intel is expanding its Malaysian chip-making facilities, which were first established back in the 1970s. Ibrahim said the head of Intel’s Foundry, Naga Chandrasekaran, had“outlined plans to commence the first phase” of expansion, which would include advanced packaging.

“I welcome Intel's decision to begin operations for the complex later this year,” a translated version of Ibrahim’s post read. An Intel spokesperson, John Hipsher, confirmed that it’s building out additional chip assembly and test capacity in Penang, “amid rising global demand for Intel Foundry packaging solutions.”

Package Store

According to Chandrasekaran, who took over Intel’s Foundry operations in 2025 and spoke exclusively with WIRED during the reporting of this story,the term “advanced packaging” itself didn’t exist a decade ago.

Chips have always required some sort of integration of transistors and capacitors, which control and store energy. For a long time the semiconductor industry was focused on miniaturization, or, shrinking the size of components on chips.As the world began demanding more from its computers in the 2010s, chips started to get even more dense with processing units, high-bandwidth memory, and all of the necessary connective parts.

Eventually, chipmakers started to take a system-in-packages or package-on-package approach, in which multiple components were stacked on top of one another in orderto squeeze more power and memory out of the same surface space. 2D stacking gave way to 3D stacking.

TSMC, the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturer, began offering packaging technologies like CoWoS (chip on wafer on substrate) and, later, SoIC (system on integrated chip) to customers.Essentially, the pitchwas that TSMC would handle not just the front end of chip-making—the wafer part—but also the back end, where all of the chip tech would be packaged together.

Intel had ceded its chip manufacturing lead to TSMC at this point but continued to invest in packaging. In 2017 it introduced a process called EMIB, or embedded multi-die interconnect bridge, which was unique because it shrunk the actual connections, or bridges, between the components in the chip package. In 2019, it introduced Foveros, an advanced die-stacking process.The company’s next packaging advancement was a bigger leap: EMIB-T.

Announced last May, EMIB-T promises toimprove power efficiency and signal integrity between all the components on the chips. One former Intel employee with direct knowledge of the company’s packaging efforts tells WIREDthat Intel’s EMIB and EMIB-T are designed to be a more “surgical” way of packaging chips than TSMC’s approach.

Like most chip advancements, this is supposed to bemore power efficient, save space, and, ideally, save customers money in the long run. The company says EMIB-T will roll out in fabs this year.

https://archive.ph/Njq3g

>>24481742

(3/3)

Unsurprisingly, AI has been a big catalyst for these changes. “Because of AI, advanced packaging has really come to the forefront,”? Chandrasekaran said. “Even more so than the silicon itself,chip packaging is going to transform how this AI revolution comes to fruition over the next decade.”

Intel began readying for mass production of EMIB-T in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. The Rio Rancho facilityhouses around 2,700 Intel employees, roughly 200 less than it had last year; Tan slashed Intel’s workforce after he took over as CEO. The surrounding land is arid desert. As is the case with a lot of tech infrastructure expansions,local advocacy groups have expressed serious concernsabout Intel’s water usage and the fumes the plant is giving off. (Intel claims it recycles water at the Rio Rancho site.)

A short tour inside Rio Rancho’s Fab 9 doesn’t reveal much to the untrained eye.It’s slightly less “clean” than Intel’s Fab 52 semiconductorplant in Arizona,since its method of removing air particles is different there, but the standard clean room precautions and sanitized, zipped-up suits are still required for entry.Inside the fab, hair-thin silicon wafers are mounted, diced, and mold-grinded.

Katie Prouty, the Rio Rancho site plant manager and a 31-year veteran of Intel, emphasizes during a walk-through that one ofIntel’s selling pointsfor advanced packaging is that customers can opt to use Intel for any part of the process, or “enter and exit the highway” at any point.A customer can, for example, purchase wafers from one entity, then come to Intel’s fabs for the next step; or contract with an outsourced semiconductor assembly and test company for traditional chip packaging, then use Intel for advanced packaging.

“That’s not something Intel did before. We never took in other customers’ wafers,” Prouty said. “That’s been a huge mindset shift.”

Competent, cutting-edge technology? Check. Chips packaged specifically for AI? Check. Flexibility for customers with certain needs? Check. So, where are all the customers?=

One former Intel employee, speaking on background, said thatIntel’s target packaging customers may be hesitant to announce partnerships with Intel for a couple reasons. They’re either waiting to see if the company can deliver on its fab expansion promises, orthey’re concerned TSMC could potentially allocate fewer wafers to customersonce they say they’re using Intel for packaging.

It’s not the tech itself they would be taking a risk on, the former employee added; it’s the broader market dynamics.

Chandrasekaran is more circumspect.“I think we want to be very disciplined around the idea of: We don’t talk about our customers==. Successful foundries don’t say, ‘We have signed up these customers.’ We want the customers to talk about our product.”

Intel may want toconsider adopting another motto: If they come, we will build it—and at great capital expense.The big indicator that the customers have arrived, Chandrasekaran says, will be a notable jump in Intel Foundry’s spending.“As we sign up these customers, we’ll have to increase our capital expenditures,” he says. “And then the street will see it.”

(Thank God I kept my Intel stocks, even as I lost money, I still had faith due to their expertise.)

https://archive.ph/Njq3g