Troy Brown, Elkins’s brother-in-law, informed the Washington Post that he cohabited with the assailant, who had been distressed following his wife’s request for a divorce. “Following the initial disagreement regarding the divorce, he seemed to be losing his sanity,” he relayed to the publication.
“They are the marauders who traded our territory to the Americans,” was Azizi’s comeback referencing the US military installations throughout the Middle East that, together with other facilities, were consistently targeted by Iran’s drones and missiles. The US, he remarked, was “the most formidable pirate globally.”
Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn made its third flight on Sunday, showcasing the company’s first successful orbital-class booster reflight, but the mission ended with a setback for Jeff Bezos’s flagship rocket — a critical part of NASA’s Artemis lunar program.
The 321-foot-tall (98-meter) New Glenn rocket ignited its seven methane-fueled BE-4 engines at 7:25 a.m. EDT (11:25 UTC) Sunday, commencing a gradual ascent from its pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
The core engines, each delivering more than half a million pounds of thrust, accelerated the vehicle past Mach in roughly a minute and a half. About three minutes into flight, the booster shut down its engines and separated from New Glenn’s upper stage, which continued under two BE-3U engines burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
The first stage followed a downrange parabolic trajectory, briefly reaching space before steering itself toward Blue Origin’s offshore landing platform about 400 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral. It relit its motors for two braking burns and touched down on the ship in a smoky but accurate landing less than 10 minutes after liftoff.
The touchdown completed the booster’s second flight — the vehicle, named Never Tell Me The Odds, made its debut with a successful launch and recovery on Blue Origin’s previous New Glenn mission in November. Blue Origin, founded and owned by Jeff Bezos, has repeatedly landed and reused its smaller New Shepard suborbital booster, but New Glenn is much larger and more demanding. It flies to higher altitudes, reaches greater speeds, and is roughly three times the height of New Shepard.
Technicians installed new engines on the booster for Sunday’s mission, though Blue Origin intends to reuse the engines from the November flight on future New Glenn missions, CEO Dave Limp said.
New Glenn gives Blue Origin access to a broader market for launches to low Earth orbit and beyond. SpaceX has demonstrated it can refurbish and relaunch a Falcon 9 booster in as little as nine days, and can fly Falcon 9s five or more times in a week by operating a fleet of reusable boosters across three active pads. Blue Origin executives expect that reusing New Glenn boosters will allow them to achieve a significantly higher launch tempo.
Back in the control room, I take a seat and begin charging the capacitor banks. At this point there’s no turning back except for an emergency shutdown, which would mean losing the shot and waiting for everything to cool.
“Charging.”
The room falls silent. Everyone fixes their gaze on the monitors. No one speaks.
I usually exchange a look with the researcher whose experiment the shot is for — today it’s Joe, a visiting scientist from Los Alamos National Lab, who designed the target we’re about to vaporize. He’s holding his coffee like it’s precious. I return my attention to the console.
“Charge complete. Firing system: shot in three, two, one. Fire.”
I push the button. A heavy thud moves through the building as the accumulated energy is released into the beam. The monitors freeze, capturing the moment of the shot: beam profiles, spectra, diagnostics—these readings give a complete picture of how the laser performed and whether the shot was clean. Down in the vacuum chamber, a spot smaller than a human hair has reached temperatures measured in the millions of degrees.
I lean back in my chair and start logging laser parameters as everyone exhales. A radiation safety officer goes down first to check readings around the target chamber before anyone else can enter. The experimental team follows to collect the data.
Sometimes everything works flawlessly. Other times a shutter fails to open and the shot is lost.
For example, one afternoon in 2023 we’d spent three hours prepping for a high-priority shot. Target aligned. Capacitors charged. I pressed the button and heard nothing. A shutter had failed somewhere in the chain. The monitors stayed frozen, showing black. Nobody said a word. I wrote SHOT FAILED in the logbook and began the hourlong cooldown sequence. That’s the part they don’t show in movies: sitting in silence, waiting to try again. We got the shot four hours later.
This anticipation is part of the job: hours of patience for about ten seconds you never quite get used to. All of it happens beneath a campus where thousands of people walk above, unaware that for a fraction of a second a tiny point of matter hotter than the surface of the Sun existed below their feet.
Ahmed Helal, research scientist, The University of Texas at Austin. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
For the Sussexes, the sole recognition of the business aspect of the journey was found at the conclusion of a five-page pre-tour briefing. It stated: “As with numerous visits of this kind, a limited number of private engagements are included to bolster wider commercial, charitable, and community aims.”
Producers of memory chips are projected to satisfy only 60 percent of demand by the conclusion of 2027.
Producers of memory chips are projected to satisfy only 60 percent of demand by the conclusion of 2027.
As reported by Nikkei Asia, while suppliers are increasing DRAM output, manufacturers are only anticipated to fulfill 60 percent of demand by 2027’s end. The chairman of SK Group indicated that these shortages might persist until 2030.
The leading memory producers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — are actively working on expanding their manufacturing capacity, but barely any of it will be operational before at least 2027, if not until 2028. SK inaugurated a fab in Cheongju in February, but that marks the sole production increase among the trio for 2026.
Nikkei asserts that there needs to be a 12 percent annual increase in production during 2026 and 2027 to satisfy demand. However, Counterpoint Research indicates that only a 7.5 percent increase is being planned.
The new facilities will primarily concentrate on creating high-bandwidth memory (HBM), utilized in AI data centers. Given that these companies are already prioritizing HBM over typical DRAM used in computers and smartphones, it remains uncertain how effectively these new fabs will alleviate the pricing pressures experienced by consumer electronics. Everything from smartphones and laptops to VR headsets and portable gaming devices have experienced price hikes due to the RAM deficit.
“Everything is interconnected as one large, costly, and highly intricate entity, essential for the National Security and Military Operations of the United States of America!” he noted, mentioning that the subterranean facility would feature bomb shelters and healthcare amenities.
The Chicago Land Facebook Group for ICE Sightings, along with its developer Eyes Up, successfully obtained a preliminary injunction against the government.
The Chicago Land Facebook Group for ICE Sightings, along with its developer Eyes Up, successfully obtained a preliminary injunction against the government.
Jorge L. Alonso, a judge in the federal district court for the Northern District of Illinois, stated that the Trump Administration breached the First Amendment when it pressured Facebook and Apple into removing ICE-monitoring groups and applications. Judge Alonso issued a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs, Kassandra Rosado, who operates the ICE Sightings – Chicagoland Facebook group, and the Kreisau Group, developers of Eyes Up.
Judge Alonso referenced a unanimous Supreme Court ruling from a 2024 case where the NRA challenged the former head of the New York Department of Financial Services, Maria Vullo. In that scenario, the court determined that “[g]overnment officials cannot attempt to coerce private entities to punish or suppress beliefs that the government finds unfavorable,” when Vullo urged firms to sever ties with the NRA. Alonso’s ruling continues, stating, “In this case, [Pam] Bondi and [Kristi] Noem did precisely that. They contacted Facebook and Apple and insisted, rather than asked, that Facebook and Apple silence Plaintiff’s speech.”
With regard to the ICE Sightings Facebook group, former Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed on X that an unnamed group “being utilized to dox and target” ICE agents had been eliminated after the DOJ communicated with Meta. Eyes Up, ICEBlock, Red Dot, and other analogous applications have also been removed from app stores, following pressure from the DOJ and public threats of prosecution, including against CNN simply for reporting on the app’s existence.
It is probable that the government will contest this ruling, and the battle will persist. However, the unanimous precedent established by the Supreme Court in 2024 indicates that the Trump administration is likely to encounter significant challenges.
Derek Sylvester’s father established the family’s first Chevrolet dealership single-handedly on Main Street in rural Peckville, Pennsylvania, in 1972.
Since then, the store and family have been a cornerstone of the village, just outside Scranton. That was until late last month when Sylvester and his family finalized a transaction to sell Sylvester Chevrolet to a dealer group based in New York.
“As a family, we made the decision that this might be the right time,” said Sylvester, who at 67 has been considering retirement. “Unless you own a larger store, a significantly larger store, it can be somewhat challenging to generate profit. … It’s all about scale.”
Many of Sylvester’s family members intend to remain at the dealership, but he mentioned they did not feel equipped to continue leading the business given the rapidly transforming automotive retail landscape in the U.S. The industry is encountering a chaotic embrace of fully electric vehicles, technological advancements like artificial intelligence, and increasing pressures from automakers.
Sales of dealerships like Sylvester Chevrolet are happening nationwide at an astonishing rate, as the car sales business, once regarded as the domain of small family-owned shops, has morphed into a profitable trillion-dollar industry that has seen an influx of consolidation and heightened attention from Wall Street and investors in recent times.
While the National Automobile Dealers Association, or NADA, indicates that a vast majority of its U.S. franchised dealers are independent business owners like Sylvester with fewer than six locations, the leading retailers in the country have considerably expanded.
The top 150 dealers were responsible for 27% of all retail and fleet new vehicle sales in 2025, an increase from 24.3% in 2021 and 21.2% in 2015, according to Automotive News’ annual ranking of leading automotive retailers. They additionally controlled about a quarter of dealerships last year, rising from under 20% a decade prior, as stated by the trade publication.
At the same time, top publicly traded dealers such as Lithia Motors and AutoNation have escalated to market caps exceeding $6 billion each. Even online pre-owned vehicle retailer Carvana — boasting a $74 billion market cap, which exceeds the value of most automobile manufacturers it represents — has subtly begun acquiring new vehicle franchises without revealing its plans for the future.
“There’s a substantial amount of capital eager to enter the industry,” Brian Gordon, president of dealer advisory and brokerage Dave Cantin Group, informed CNBC. “Generally, the industry is somewhat unified on how to assess these assets. That fosters a favorable environment for [mergers and acquisitions].”
Multibillion-dollar dealerships have surged during a long-term consolidation that has instilled a grow-or-die mentality for numerous U.S. automotive retailers.
NADA, a trade organization representing franchised dealers, states that the average dealership owner operates between two and three stores, though the most significant growth sector over the last ten years has been in medium-sized dealerships that operate between six and 25 locations.
NADA reports that 90.5% of its nearly 17,000 dealers own between one and five stores, down from 94.4% in 2016. Conversely, 0.2% of dealers possess 50 stores or more, an increase from 0.1% during that same period.
“It’s evident that the industry is consolidating, and it’s an industry that will persist in consolidation,” Gordon remarked. However, he added that this is occurring at all tiers, particularly the transition of mom-and-pop operations to larger entities.
Dave Cantin Group — the advisor for Matthews Auto Group, the dealer group that acquired Sylvester Chevrolet — executes numerous such deals annually and predicts that the momentum of consolidation and mergers and acquisitions will rise this year.
Matthews Auto Group is among many regional dealership firms that have opted to expand. The family-owned business commenced in Vestal — located in central New York, south of Syracuse — in 1973 with a single Chrysler-Plymouth outlet and has since evolved into an approximate $800 million enterprise with 18 locations and 800 employees.
Rob Matthews, a second-generation owner and CEO of Matthews Auto Group, explained that the company’s pursuit of growth is ongoing, aiming to enhance profitability and better compete in its existing markets of New York and Pennsylvania.
“I believe that serves as a distinct competitive edge. Remaining static is likely not the wisest strategy. You are witnessing ongoing expansion,” Matthews stated. “The trend indicates that consolidation will persist to maintain competitiveness.”
This is also why Sylvester expressed his desire to sell his business, insisting on keeping the store’s numerous employees — a component of Matthews’ acquisition strategy.
“There are numerous aspects that, due to our scale, we believe we can truly enhance a store like his,” Matthews shared. “I genuinely find it thrilling as we seek to provide them with additional resources and ensure everyone can continue their work moving forward.”
Wall Street has noticed how profitable and well-protected franchised dealerships are in the U.S. The franchised dealer framework, which exists to sell new vehicles to consumers instead of automakers marketing their vehicles directly, is distinctive and heavily regulated.
“I perceive endless potential. The opportunity for expansion within our company is limitless,” Sonic Automotive President Jeff Dyke conveyed to CNBC during a recent interview. “I believe that having mom-and-pop dealers is advantageous for the industry. However, those mom-and-pop dealers must adapt their mindset.”
Sonic Automotive, a publicly traded company valued at over $2 billion, has expanded from 96 franchised dealership locations in 2015 to 134 by the end of the previous year. The company has also undergone massive growth in its EchoPark used vehicle stores and Sonic Powersports, with revenue surging 58% to $15.2 billion last year.
Others, including Lithia Motors, have adopted even more aggressive growth strategies. The Medford, Oregon-based firm outpaced longstanding dealership group AutoNation to claim the title of top U.S. new vehicle franchised dealer in 2022.
Lithia, with a market cap of $6.3 billion, has implemented a bold growth strategy, seeing its revenue jump from $8.7 billion in 2016 to $37.6 billion last year. The company has nearly tripled its new and used store count from 154 locations to 455 during that period.
John Murphy, a veteran automotive analyst and managing director of strategic advisory at buy-sell advisory firm Haig Partners, asserts that dealerships remain an exceptionally profitable niche for investors, despite a slight cooling phase after businesses enjoyed inflated profits during the Covid pandemic.
“Structurally, there remains significant potential for growth, and there’s increasing interest from existing capital in the dealership sector, particularly from outside participants, private equity family offices, and other financial resources focused on this limited pool of dealers,” he noted. “The upward potential in earnings is growing, and there’s escalating interest, or demand, from the buying side of the market.”
All these factors culminate in a scenario where many mom-and-pop dealerships are primed for acquisition or expansion.
“There are numerous elements complicating competition for a small mom-and-pop dealership,” remarked Talon Fee, a managing director at Dave Cantin Group who facilitated the sale of Sylvester Chevrolet to Matthews Auto Group. “This does not imply that small mom-and-pop dealerships cannot persist and flourish, but they must possess a strategy.”
Fee and others have identified the primary reasons for owners choose to sell, which include a lack of succession planning, increasing competitiveness in the changing industry, and a waning commitment to reinvest in their businesses.
“A significant amount of external capital has found ways to infiltrate the market, particularly since one must be an active operator to gain approval from manufacturers,” explained Gordon from Dave Cantin Group.
Nevertheless, the industry is evolving in various ways, as new automakers like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid strive to circumvent the franchised dealer system and directly market vehicles to customers.
These companies have persistently challenged state regulations to enable such sales, with Rivian recently securing a victory against car dealerships in Washington state by threatening to take its case to voters with a ballot initiative to permit direct sales.
This contributes to the shifting U.S. automotive retail environment that owners like Sylvester and his wife, who also worked at the dealership, have not had to confront in the past. It’s also an aspect that Sylvester and many other small mom-and-pop stores won’t need to contend with upon selling their businesses.
“I have enjoyed a wonderful life, make no mistake. However, everything has its time,” expressed Sylvester, who intends to devote his retirement to managing a 92-acre farm in Pennsylvania. “We earned a decent living. We contributed positively to the community.”
For its initial three decades, Nvidia was not recognized by most unless they were part of the gaming community. Presently, some of its early supporters feel neglected as artificial intelligence has elevated the chipmaker to being the most valuable company globally.
“The gaming sector is no longer the primary engine for the company. There was a time when it indisputably was,” stated Stacy Rasgon from Bernstein Research.
Nvidia pioneered the graphics processing units, or GPUs, that facilitate high frame rates and rendering necessary for optimal video game experiences.
When Nvidia launched its inaugural GPU in 1999, the GeForce 256, they dismissed most employees and faced bankruptcy to accomplish this. Gamers eagerly adopted this new form of processor, reviving Nvidia from near failure.
Currently, as AI demand skyrockets, nearly all of Nvidia’s earnings stem from products catering to that field, shifting away from gaming. With AI chip production limiting the available memory supply, Nvidia has had to navigate difficult choices regarding its focus areas.
In an environment constrained by memory, it is understandable that Nvidia would prioritize its significantly more lucrative data center GPUs like Hopper and Blackwell.
Nvidia’s operating profit margins in its compute and networking segment have averaged 69% over the past three years, in contrast to a 40% margin for the consumer-oriented graphics division.
“I get that they’re going to pursue that. And that saddens me,” remarked Greg Miller, co-founder and host of the widely popular gaming podcast Kinda Funny Games Daily during an interview with CNBC.
“Stick with those who supported you. Gamers have helped you reach this point,” Miller added.
If analyst forecasts are on point, 2026 will mark the first occasion in thirty years that Nvidia does not unveil a new generation of its consumer-oriented GeForce graphics processing units.
Gamers are “extremely significant” to Nvidia, as per an email the company sent to CNBC, clarifying that it is “constantly innovating, assessing, and releasing” new technologies focused on gaming.
The current RTX 50 series of GeForce GPU was presented at CES in January 2025.
However, with 2026 CES and GTC behind, some express concerns that this year may not bring a new generation, although Nvidia frequently presents new hardware as late as September.
While this indicates a significant strategic shift, some gamers argue it isn’t detrimental to their financial plans.
“It’s tough to keep pace. Upgrading every year isn’t feasible, so having some time off and waiting for a vital generation seems to serve gamers well,” stated Tim Gettys, Miller’s co-founder at Kinda Funny Games.
Nvidia’s present phase of AI supremacy commenced two decades ago with the 2006 introduction of its CUDA software toolkit. Suddenly, developers were able to utilize GPUs for general computing tasks as opposed to solely for graphics.
Later, in 2012, Nvidia’s deep learning prowess was established during what many refer to as the pivotal moment for contemporary AI. Nvidia’s GPUs and CUDA were instrumental in creating a neural network known as AlexNet that outperformed all rivals during a notable image recognition competition.
While Nvidia continued producing gaming GPUs, it underscored a new commitment to AI-focused GPUs in 2020 when it acquired high-performance computing chip manufacturer Mellanox Technologies for $7 billion.
Since then, the company has been unveiling new iterations of high-end GPUs consistently, alongside full rack-scale systems for AI tasks such as the new Vera Rubin platform, which CNBC obtained an exclusive preview of in February.
Nvidia does not disclose pricing for its AI chips, yet experts indicate a single Blackwell GPU can be priced up to $40,000, while the Futurum Group assesses a complete Vera Rubin system may reach up to $4 million.
Conversely, Nvidia retails its RTX 50-series gaming GPUs within a range of $299 to $1,999.
During the cryptocurrency highs of 2018 and 2021, Nvidia’s GPUs were sold online at prices up to three times their listed prices as they were pivotal for mining Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Despite price drops when mining shifted in 2022, Nvidia’s current RTX 5090 GPU continues to sell online at prices up to double the retail cost.
Robust demand for last year’s generation may lessen Nvidia’s motivation to launch a new version this year.
However, the memory scarcity is a more probable reason for Nvidia’s gaming setback.
Industry speculations indicate Nvidia has intentions to cut output of its latest gaming GPUs by as much as 40% due to a significant shortage of the general-purpose memory required for GPU production.
Dynamic Random Access Memory, or DRAM, provides rapid, temporary data storage that allows the GPU to execute parallel tasks.
Personal computers, the destination for Nvidia’s gaming GPUs, have been particularly impacted by DRAM shortages. When memory costs increase, producing a GPU becomes more expensive, which eventually affects consumers.
Gartner anticipates that PC prices will rise by 17% this year, leading to a 10.4% decline in PC shipments.
“With how costly everything has become, it’s troubling to see gaming prices increase with no sign of coming down, while Nvidia is evidently pursuing a wholly different consumer segment,” Gettys stated.
If the entry-level consumer PC market collapses by 2028, as Gartner warns, the market for Nvidia’s entry-level gaming GPUs is likely to diminish as well.
Instead, Nvidia will probably conserve limited memory stocks for its AI chips, which carry higher costs and profit margins.
“If there are delays or alterations in the gaming pipeline, it’s likely because they might struggle to produce the cards due to memory shortages,” Rasgon explained. “Every bit of available memory is likely being allocated for AI computing needs.”
High-performance GPUs such as Blackwell and Rubin utilize dense assemblages of a unique DRAM type known as High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM. Rasgon mentioned it requires roughly four times the number of silicon wafers to produce a gigabyte of HBM compared to traditional DRAM types.
“This scenario is depriving the overall market of the kind of memory typically employed for more consumer-oriented applications. It’s simply not obtainable,” Rasgon remarked.
Nvidia informed CNBC that it continues to distribute all GeForce GPUs given robust demand, and is collaborating closely with suppliers to enhance memory accessibility.
“If they are earning threefold and shareholders are threefold more satisfied, then yes, I do believe they will shift away from gaming, despite it being their origin,” Gettys noted.
CEO Jensen Huang did make a significant gaming declaration at the start of his keynote presentation at Nvidia’s annual GTC conference in March, yet the gaming audience was less than thrilled.
Huang unveiled the next iteration of its rendering software named Deep Learning Super Sampling or DLSS, anticipated in the fall. It is renowned for enhancing frame rates by rendering games at lower resolutions and utilizing AI to upscale the visuals, improving gameplay on less powerful systems.
The contention surrounding the new DLSS 5 arises from gamers’ concerns that it employs generative AI to alter the aesthetics of the game. Huang revealed DLSS 5 with a promotional video showcasing photorealistically enhanced versions of characters from popular titles such as Resident Evil Requiem, Starfield, and Hogwarts Legacy.
“I engage in video games because they’re a form of art. Thus, I appreciate seeing the creator’s imprint in the experience,” stated Miller of Kinda Funny Games. “This raised significant concerns among many in the gaming sector amidst widespread layoffs and numerous studio closures.”
As it faces a post-pandemic downturn, the gaming sector has encountered studio shutdowns, canceled projects, and extensive layoffs across major companies like Epic Games, Microsoft’s Xbox, and Sony’s PlayStation.
Gettys appreciated previous iterations of Nvidia’s DLSS for facilitating gaming accessibility on tighter budgets.
“This technology is astonishing in terms of enabling games to run on lower-end systems,” he remarked. “Yet, introducing this generative AI aspect feels extremely disrespectful.”
Gettys’ primary concern is that this leads toward entirely AI-generated games, which he perceives as “definitely the objective.”
Elon Musk has also addressed the potential for this. In a post on X from October, Musk indicated that his xAI gaming studio plans to launch “a remarkable AI-generated game” by the conclusion of 2026.
“You’re effectively modifying the art developed by the creators. And soon enough, you’ll be replacing the developers, resulting in studio closures,” Gettys commented.
Nvidia communicated to CNBC that “Games are an artistic medium that allow developers to share compelling narratives and immerse players in extraordinary worlds. Our RTX technologies serve as instruments enabling game creators to fulfill their imaginative goals – this encompasses rendering methods like ray tracing and path tracing, augmented by AI, such as DLSS Super Resolution, DLSS Frame Generation, and DLSS 5, all collaboratively working to deliver superior performance and visual fidelity.”
During his GTC keynote, Huang asserted that AI will “transform how computer graphics are created.”
In a follow-up Q&A session, Huang addressed claims from the gaming community that DLSS 5 makes games appear uniform.
“They are entirely mistaken,” Huang replied.
He underscored that game developers will maintain control, able to “adjust the generative AI” to correspond with their artistic style.
Over the last ten years, Nvidia has provided cloud gaming through a service called GeForce NOW. The model has developed to offer various subscription levels — including a complimentary option — allowing users to stream games they own on platforms like Steam, utilizing Nvidia GPUs located in data centers rather than on individual devices.
“You observe Xbox and PlayStation, as well as other rivals attempting to bring cloud gaming to players in a logical manner. And Nvidia GeForce NOW has substantially figured that out,” Miller commented.
Gettys stated to CNBC that Nvidia’s streaming platform is far superior “by a vast margin.”
“It offers access to high-level gaming for millions more individuals, even those without the latest hardware. And it’s technology that is truly impressive,” he confirmed.
Advanced Micro Devices is Nvidia’s main competitor in the gaming sector, primarily with its Radeon GPU series.
However, the memory crisis poses a challenge for both entities.
“If Nvidia can’t secure the memory, AMD will struggle as well,” Rasgon stated. “From a sentiment perspective, both brands have their loyal followers and can inspire fanaticism.”
“There’s a clear preference,” Gettys remarked. “If you’re gaming on a PC, you’re inclined to choose an Nvidia card.”
Watch: How AMD evolved into a chip giant and ultimately caught Intel
