Google Pixel 3 Launch Date; Tesla Drops Nvidia Chips for Roll Your Own; Wells Fargo-Homes Lost Over Computer ‘Error’; TSMC Hit By Virus; Apple Deletes Most Alex Jones Podcasts

It now appears that Google will launch the Pixel 3 phones on October 4th…making it the 3rd year in a row they have rolled out handsets on that date. 9to5google.com says there are some rumors that Google could begin actually selling the phones on that date, but they suggest taking that with a grain of salt…or maybe a whole salt shaker!

Tesla is rolling their own, and will drop Nvidia chips. Elon Musk says the auto maker is building its own chips that are optimized for machine learning. Arstechnica.com reports that they have been working on the chips for 3 years, and it will be out next year. The chips are designed to be backward compatible, so older hardware can be swapped out, giving Tesla owners a big performance boost. Musk claims that most CPU and GPU chips do neural network in ‘some kind of emulation mode,’ but the Tesla ones will ‘run the neural net at a bare metal level.’

An SEC filing has shown that around 625 customers of Wells Fargo were either denied loan charges or didn’t receive loan modification offers they were entitled to…with about 400 losing homes at lest partly as a result. According to engadget.com, the bank revealed a ‘calculation error’ in a loan modification tool as the culprit. The error was in place between April 2010 and October 2015. Wells now says it is ‘providing remediation’, including an $8 million fund set aside for those affected.

TSMC, which makes some of the chips for Apple’s iPhones, was hit with a ‘debilitating’ computer virus that attacked many of its fabrication tools Friday night. Macrumors.com reports that they are 80% back to normal, but issued a warning that customers…including Apple…may have shipments of chips delayed. TSMC has been making A12 processor chips for the 2018 iPhones. The company says no confidential info was taken, and that the virus came from a ‘misoperation’ during the installation of software for a new process.

Apple has followed actions by Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify, and deleted most Alex Jones and Infowars podcasts, citing hate speech that violates its guidelines. Reuters.com says Apple purged the entire library for 5 of Jones’ 6 Infowars podcasts. The only survivor was ‘RealNews with David Night’ as of last night.