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2026-01-16 08:34:07

Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down as president of Lucasfilm. Although she will continue as a producer for several Star Wars projects, including upcoming movie The Mandalorian and Grogu, the company will now be helmed by a duo in Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan. It's a big changing of the guard for Star Wars fans, and marks the start of a fresh chapter for the sci-fi universe. 

Before taking over at Lucasfilm, Kennedy had seen great success as a producer with a couple little films you may have heard of: E.T. and Jurassic Park. She became Lucasfilm's president in 2012 when the company was acquired by Disney. At that point, it had been several years since the last Star Wars movie; Revenge of the Sith closed out the generally panned prequel trilogy in 2005. Fans' best option for Star Wars content was The Clone Wars, a standalone film and animated series which were well-regarded but primarily popular among the hardcore devotees rather than reaching the widespread cultural relevance of the prior feature films. 

During Kennedy's tenure, Star Wars returned to the big screen with The Force Awakens in 2015. Although that J.J. Abrams-led trilogy was also a roller coaster for many fans, it marked a renaissance for the franchise. Lucasfilm embarked on two standalone movies in Rogue One and Solo, which generated yet more buzz and more money for the company. Star Wars got the full cinematic universe treatment, with critically acclaimed live-action television projects and several new video games. The world fell in love with Baby Yoda. Ewan McGregor finally got to don his Obi-Wan Kenobi robe in a better vehicle. The franchise was back in the mainstream, with the budgets and expectations of media behemoth Disney at its back. No matter your feelings on the current state of Star Wars, it's an impressive accomplishment by Kennedy and a big legacy that she leaves behind at Lucasfilm.

So now that Lucasfilm has arguably ended this phase on a high note, what's next? Dave Filoni moving into the top spot isn't much of a surprise. He's long been seen by fans and seemingly by the company as George Lucas' spiritual successor. Filoni was also the showrunner on The Clone Wars back in the day and has been involved in some capacity with many of the recent TV series, most notably The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. All that history means his new role of President and Chief Creative Officer is pretty expected, and the Star Wars faithful likely feel that they are in good hands. 

As the title implies, Filoni will be responsible for the artistic side of the operation, while as Co-President, Lynwen Brennan will be in charge of the business side. Brennan may be a less familiar name, but her tenure with Lucas' businesses dates back to 1999 when she joined the legendary effects studio Industrial Light & Magic. Dividing the art and the commerce can yield good results if the two are able to find a good synergy. Star Wars has proven that it's a moneymaker even when the films and series aren't particularly well-received, but here's hoping that Filoni and Brennan will each be able to maintain high standards for Lucasfilm and the Star Wars fandom.

2026-01-16 07:32:30

YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed is reporting that ASUS has stopped producing the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to the ongoing memory crunch. In its most recent video, the channel states ASUS “explicitly” told it the RTX 5070 Ti is “currently facing a supply shortage.” As a result, the company has “placed the model into end of life status,” and no longer plans to produce it.

Hardware Unboxed also spoke to retailers in Australia, who told the channel the 5070 Ti is “no longer available to purchase from partners and distributors,” adding they expect that to be the case throughout at least the first quarter of the year. The 5060 Ti 16GB “is almost done as well," with ASUS stating it no longer plans to produce that model going forward either. Both GPUs are 16GB models, making them more expensive to manufacture in the current economic climate. And while there might be some hope of the 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB returning later this year, the channel suggests both are unlikely to make a comeback.

“Demand for GeForce RTX GPUs is strong, and memory supply is constrained. We continue to ship all GeForce SKUs and are working closely with our suppliers to maximize memory availability,” a NVIDIA spokesperson told Engadget. ASUS did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

After uploading its video, Hardware Unboxed published a clarification. “ASUS did not tell us that NVIDIA said the RTX 5070 Ti has been discontinued. ASUS told us there is very little supply of the 5070 Ti, so their own 5070 Ti products (e.g, the Prime and TUF Gaming) have been put into end of life status,” the channel said. “With retailers also unable to source 5070 Ti SKUs from any AIB, this effectively makes it a dead product.”

The AI boom has created an insatiable demand for RAM and other computer components from data center infrastructure companies. In response, many memory manufacturers have shifted their production lines to focus on high bandwidth memory for those clients at the expense of their regular offerings, leading to dramatically increased prices among consumer RAM kits, GPUs and SSDs. In December, Micron Technology announced it would wind down its consumer-facing Crucial brand to focus exclusively on providing components to the AI industry.

ASUS is the first of NVIDIA’s add-in board (AIB) partners to comment on the memory crunch. AIBs are the companies that produce the majority of GPUs you can buy from NVIDIA and AMD. Historically, NVIDIA has provided its board partners with both the die and memory needed to make a graphics cards. However, a recent rumor suggested the company had told it partners they would need to start sourcing memory on their own.

Update 12:55PM ET: Added more context.

Update 2:06PM ET: Added comment from NVIDIA.

Update 6:31PM ET: Added additional comment from Hardware Unboxed.

2026-01-16 07:16:05

After a tumultuous 2025 that saw it lose around 4,000 employees, NASA finally has an operating budget for 2026, and one that largely preserves its scientific capabilities. On Thursday, the Senate passed an appropriations bill funding NASA, alongside the National Science Foundation and a handful of other federal agencies. 

Going into the appropriations process, the president called for a 24 percent year over year reduction to NASA's total operating budget. As part of that plan, the White House wanted to reduce the Science Mission Directorate's funding by nearly half, a move that would have forced NASA to cancel 55 ongoing and planned missions, including efforts like OSIRIS-APEX. The bill effectively rejects President Trump's plan, reducing NASA's total operating budget by just 1.6 percent year over year to $24.4 billion. 

Per the new appropriations, NASA's science budget will stand at $7.25 billion, 1.1 percent less relative to fiscal 2024, while shuffling the remaining funds to focus on different priorities. For instance, the House and Senate allocated $874 million (+8.7 percent) for the agency's heliophysics work; planetary sciences, which oversees missions like New Horizons, was cut to $2.5 billion (-6.5 percent) compared to 2024. At the same time, NASA's STEM engagement office, which the president proposed eliminating, escaped unscathed with its funding maintained at parity.

"It's almost everything we had been asking for, and it's very encouraging to see a House and Senate run by the president's own party agreeing that we need to keep investing in things like NASA science," says Casey Drier, chief of policy at the Planetary Society, a nonprofit founded by Carl Sagan that advocates for the exploration and study of space. "It contains very clear and direct language that not only is this funding made available to these projects, but that it will be spent on the initiatives that Congress states."

Lawmakers also rejected Trump's effort to scuttle the Space Launch System after its third flight. NASA's heavy-lift rocket is billions of dollars over budget, but remains — as of now — the only spacecraft ready to ferry astronauts to the Moon. Compared to the rest of NASA, the fate of the SLS was never really in doubt. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) secured funding for the rocket as part of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill. "I've been saying for a long time you should never underestimate the political coalition behind the SLS, and I think that was very much validated this year," says Drier. 

More importantly, it appears the Goddard Space Flight Center will be safe from further damage. Over the summer, the future of the facility, known for its work on projects like the James Webb Space Telescope, was put in jeopardy. By some estimates, the campus has lost a third of its staff due to workforce cuts, and dozens of buildings, including some 100 laboratories, have been shut down by management. One of the casualties was NASA's largest library, which houses irreplaceable documents chronicling the history of the space race. As part of a "consolidation" effort, many of those documents will be thrown out.

Under the appropriations bill, the Senate has directed NASA to “preserve all the technical and scientific world-class capabilities at Goddard.” It has also instructed the agency to ensure employees of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies are able to continue their work with "minimal disruption." The New York-based office, one of America's leading climate labs, was sent into limbo last spring after the Trump administration moved to shut it down. 

The bill also provides a lifeline for NASA's to bring back samples of Martian dirt collected by the Perseverance rover. Congress has effectively cancelled the official program tied to that ambition, the Mars Sample Return (MSR), but has set aside $110 million for the agency to continue developing technologies for future science missions to the Red Planet. MSR advocates have argued the mission could lead to significant scientific discoveries, but Drier notes the program was "ripe for cancellation" after it became mired in mismanagement. 

"I worry MSR now has this stink of bloat, excess cost and threat of overruns that are really going to make it challenging to restart this without having a dramatically different approach," says Drier, adding that deciding what to do with mission will likely be top of mind for the agency's new administrator, Jared Isaacman. 

The 2026 budget leaves NASA with fewer resources. Even in areas where Congress allocated the same amount of funds as it did in 2024, the agency will need to do more with less due to inflation. Compared to the absolute blood bath that would have been Trump's proposed budget, a marginal funding cut is the best case scenario given the circumstances, but the circumstances remain less than ideal. 

"There will be another presidential budget request coming out in the next couple of months," Drier said. "They could do this all over again if they wanted to."

In the immediate future, NASA and its employees are at least protected from the potential fallout of another impending government shutdown. Congress has until January 30 to fully fund the federal government, and as of earlier this week, it has yet to find a way forward on appropriations for agencies like the Department of Labor.  

2026-01-16 06:43:26

The US and Taiwan have signed an agreement that will see a multi-billion dollar investment into domestic development of semiconductors and related infrastructure. The US Department of Commerce announced that Taiwanese businesses will make an upfront investment of at least $250 billion into their US production capacity, while Taiwan's government will provide credit guarantees of at least another $250 billion in support of the semiconductor industry and supply chain in the US. 

In exchange, Taiwan will receive a better deal on tariffs. Reciprocal tariffs will be limited to 15 percent, compared with the previous 20 percent rate. Generic pharmaceuticals and their generic ingredients, aircraft components, and unavailable natural resources will be not be subjected to reciprocal tariffs under the arrangement. Taiwanese companies with US production will also see increased import amounts without being charged duties under the Section 232 framework.  

According to reports from CNBC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSNC) is already in position to take advantage of the new trade agreement with further expansion in Arizona. The major Taiwanese chip manufacturer had previously committed to investing $100 billion in its US operations over four years. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC in an interview that the current US government wants to bring 40 percent of Taiwan's semiconductor supply chain stateside, continuing to use tariffs as an incentive. "If they don’t build in America, the tariff’s likely to be 100 percent,” Lutnick said.

2026-01-16 06:33:35

After testing the feature in a limited beta, Bluesky is making its "Live Now" badge for streamers available for everyone on the social network to try. Live Now is included as part of Bluesky's v1.114 update, alongside "cashtags," a separate type of hashtag for collecting conversations about publicly-traded companies.

Bluesky first started testing its Live Now badge in May 2025 with a limited group of accounts, including the official NBA account. The feature lets Twitch streamers with Bluesky profiles append a Live Now badge to their profile picture that links directly to their livestream. Live Now badges are limited to Twitch links for now, but Bluesky says "support for other streaming platforms may follow" as it learns from the beta. Linking to other social platforms shouldn't be a radical concept, but since Bluesky's competitor X has tried to prevent users from posting links in the past, the company has made it a point of trying to do the opposite.

Cashtags are a similar attempt to appeal to a certain type of veteran X user. Originally a feature of pre-Musk Twitter, cashtags work like a hashtag, marking posts in a way that makes them easy to find in a search or by tapping the cashtag itself. On Bluesky, by typing a dollar sign ($) and the stock abbreviation of a company (AAPL for Apple, for example), you can add a cashtag to your post that links it to other posts using the same cashtag. So far, the cultural makeup of Bluesky hasn't seemed as business-oriented as X, but the feature suggests Bluesky wants the option to be available for anyone who jumps ship.

2026-01-16 04:54:49

Today, Amazon shared more details about the final chapter of its game New World: Aeternum. The company announced in October that it would wind down support for the MMO, with the Nighthaven season to be its last. New World will be delisted and no longer available for purchase starting today, but the game's servers will not be taken offline until January 31, 2027. People who own the game will be able to continue playing until that date. Nighthaven season will continue through to that end date.

Players who had previously purchased New World: Aeternum will be able to re-download and continue playing up to the shutdown date. In-game currency such as Marks of Fortune will no longer be available to buy starting July 20, 2026, and refunds will not be offered for Marks of Fortune purchases.