Small businesses could be crushed under President Trump’s increased tariffs, according to an open letter by 38 female consumer product founders. While Trump paused his tariff increases for 90 days for various countries – setting the rate at 10% for now  –  China’s was raised to 145%, which includes the previous 20% levy. In the letter, published Thursday, these founders urged Trump and Congress to back off the tariff increases, at least until small businesses can find affordable supply chain alternatives. Short of that, they want exemptions for small businesses. The letter was written by Allison Luvera, founder of Juliet Wine, a startup that sells upscale boxed wine direct to consumers. Luvera tells TechCrunch that she faces a surprise $200,000 bill, annually, because she’s buying a key packaging component from overseas and has no U.S. alternative. The letter documents a few other such problems, such as a home-cleaning brand that must source its refillable pouches from overseas for lack of immediate U.S. options. Tariffs threaten to increase the costs of that bit of packaging by 80%. The group of 38 say their businesses generate $800 million annually, employ thousands, and source supplies from both domestic and international manufacturers. They point out that tariffs land more heavily on small businesses. “Unlike large corporations, small businesses lack the leverage to renegotiate supply chain contracts, the margins to absorb steep costs increases, or the capital required to rapidly reconfigure global supply chains,” Luvera wrote. This group wants other small business owners – and anyone else concerned about the economic impact – to help them lobby Congress. They’re asking for a small business assessment – so the government knows the impact. Ideally, they would like small businesses to be exempt from such tariff increases. Failing that, they are lobbying for “grants, tax incentives, or technical assistance” in helping U.S. small businesses solve their supply chain pain caused by Trump’s trade policies. Among the signatories is designer Rebecca Minkoff and Alison Wyatt of the Female Founder Collective. Others include: Emily Doyle and Mei Kwok of Dune Suncare and Yanghee Paik of Rael.

Breakdown & Showreels The Electric State: VFX Breakdown by Digital Domain By Vincent Frei - 11/04/2025 A Journey Through Steel and Sand! Digital Domain delivers unforgettable VFX in The Electric State, blending emotional robot characters like Cosmo and Herman with breathtaking environments — from a haunted amusement park to the vast Exclusion Zone desert. A perfect way to kick off the weekend! WANT TO KNOW MORE?Digital Domain: Dedicated page about The Electric State in Digital Domain website. © Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025

Stratasys Ltd (NASDAQ: SSYS), the global provider of polymer 3D printers, has launched the Neo®800+, a new stereolithography (SLA) 3D printer engineered for large-format, high-accuracy applications across automotive, aerospace, and industrial sectors. Announced at the Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) conference on March 31, 2025, and later showcased at Rapid + TCT 2025, the Neo800+ is the latest addition to Stratasys’ growing SLA ecosystem. The new system builds on the Neo800 platform, delivering up to 50% faster print speeds thanks to the integration of Stratasys’ proprietary ScanControl+™ technology. Designed for demanding use cases like wind tunnel testing, tooling, and prototyping, the printer offers improved time-to-part, reduced post-processing, and enhanced reliability. “Engineered with precision and performance in mind, the Neo800+ is designed to meet the growing demands of industries like automotive and aerospace,” said Rich Garrity, Chief Business Unit Officer at Stratasys. “Whether you’re designing prototypes or manufacturing end-use parts, the Neo800+ delivers exceptional throughput and reliability.” The Neo800+ printer. Photo via Stratasys. Performance and reliability upgrades In addition to faster print speeds, the Neo800+ features several enhancements aimed at improving uptime and print success. These include Vacuum System Protection, Z-Stage Collision Detection, and real-time environmental monitoring. Together, these upgrades contribute to higher part yield, reduced machine downtime, and a lower cost per part. The upgraded laser and optics system is optimized for high-energy materials, enabling the printer to deliver exceptional accuracy across a wide range of geometries. This also reduces the need for post-processing, making the printer more cost-effective for high-throughput workflows. Stratasys Direct Manufacturing, one of the early adopters of the Neo800+, reported significant improvements in turnaround time and part quality. “The improved speed has allowed us to increase throughput and maintain open capacity as well as offer quicker turnaround times to our customers,” said Sean Schoonmaker, Director of Operations. “The quality and consistency of the prints have been outstanding, with an excellent surface finish that helps save on post-processing time for cosmetic models.” Materials and ecosystem The Neo800+ is optimized for use with ScanControl+ Ready Materials from Somos®, including the newly released WaterShed® XC+. This resin is based on the widely used WaterShed XC 11122, offering similar optical clarity and smooth surface finish, while enabling much faster scan speeds. This makes it particularly well-suited for complex transparent parts in automotive lighting, fluid flow testing, and consumer electronics. Stratasys supports the Neo800+ with a full SLA workflow ecosystem that includes the cloud-connected GrabCAD Print Build Preparation Software and post-processing solutions designed to streamline operations. These tools aim to simplify setup, reduce operator intervention, and ensure repeatability at scale. Stratasys’ expansion into high-throughput SLA with the Neo800+ signals a continued commitment to meeting industrial demands across prototyping and low-volume production. The company’s broader strategy includes multi-technology offerings across FDM, SAF, P3, and now high-speed SLA, each tailored for specific industry needs. A set of Stratasys Neo 800-3D printed aero parts. Photo via Stratasys. Evolution of industrial SLA 3D printing Across the 3D printing industry, SLA technology is being reimagined through innovations in hardware and materials. At TCT Asia 2025, UnionTech showcased industrial SLA platforms with enhanced optics and throughput, reinforcing the relevance of SLA in tooling and end-use production. Among the various applications showcased, tire mold printing stood out as the most precision-intensive. Atum3D, meanwhile, is pushing boundaries with hybrid DLP-SLA technology licensed from the University of Amsterdam, creating a hybrid SLA process that combines photo and stereolithography to enable the production of parts with high-resolution features at scale. Sprybuild has introduced a novel conveyor belt SLA system aimed at enabling continuous, automated part production, which highlights the possibility of high-volume production across various sectors such as automotive, consumer goods, aerospace, and healthcare. On the materials front, researchers from Carleton University and the University of Northern British Columbia are now integrating quantum dots into SLA resins, significantly improving part strength and thermal resistance​. These advancements highlight a growing industry consensus: SLA is no longer limited to smooth surface prototypes, it’s becoming a serious tool for industrial manufacturing.Who won the 20243D Printing Industry Awards? Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter to keep up with the latest 3D printing news. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry Youtube channel to access more exclusive content. Featured image shows NEO800 3D printing systems. Image via Stratasys.

University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) has a plan to increase student housing across its campus by 2029. The lofty goal is already underway, last March SOM and Mithun shared conceptual renderings for San Benito Student Housing, new dormitories that will deliver 2,200 student units across seven buildings, on a hilly 6-acre site. Now, SOM, Mithun, and OLIN shared the latest iteration of the project, located at the corner of Mesa and Stadium Roads in San Benito County. The ensemble takes advantage of the area’s climate and geography, channeling natural airflow patterns, the designers shared, by creating site-wide breezeways through a collection of slender residential bars and ground-level courtyards. The residential bars are positioned to capture stunning views of the Santa Ynez Mountains. (SOM/Mithun) The seven buildings range between 3 and 8 stories, and comprise a total 721,000 square feet. A central pedestrian promenade, what the team calls The Connector, stitches the seven buildings together through a series of bridges and terraces that offer stunning views of the Santa Ynez Mountains. The site has a 20-foot grade change, so the design team ideated a 2-story plinth that anchors the residential buildings, programmed with various student life amenities such as a market, lounges, and other uses. The program is broken up into seven buildings across the 6-acre site. (SOM/Mithun) The Student Center will have a sawtooth profile and generous clerestories. (SOM/Mithun) A sawtooth canopy and large clerestory windows define the Student Center and maximize natural light into the deep space, designers continued. Each of the buildings are intentionally staggered to capture natural light, ocean breezes, and northward views of the Goleta Slough and coastal range. A network of pathways connects the seven buildings and the courtyard spaces between them. OLIN is the landscape architect on the project. The courtyards welcome a variety of uses, such as picnics, yoga, and studying. The textured facades which face the courtyard, light-colored precast concrete, reduce heat gain and reflect natural light back into the interior spaces. Colored paneling on the exterior of each of the buildings will demarcate one residence hall from another, as a means of wayfinding. The access circulation is large exterior stairwells wrapped in perforated aluminum screens. The dorms will come in a variety of configurations. (SOM/Mithun) Dormitory layouts will come in various configurations, ranging between singles to double quads. Residents will have access to shared communal spaces as well. Architects are targeting LEED Platinum certification. San Benito Student Housing is slated for completion in fall 2027.

European Union (EU) president Ursula von der Leyen has said the EU could impose retaliatory tariffs on US digital products, according to a report in the Financial Times - a move that would set a precedent that directly affects the ability of IT leaders to execute their IT, digital and artificial intelligence (AI) strategies. While she used a levy on digital advertising as an example of the pressure the European Commission (EC) could put on the US, there are numerous digital services that rely heavily on products whose manufacturing is already being affected by changes the US government has made. As Computer Weekly has previously reported, in spite of a 90-day reprieve from the White House, existing tariffs are now affecting every country where manufacturers export to the US. Tech industry executives are having to adapt their sourcing strategies on the fly following China’s tit-for-tat tariff hikes and the fact that they source their products across a diverse global supply chain that includes significant manufacturing partnerships in China, Taiwan, South Korea and Southeast Asia. The tariffs are set to have a knock-on effect on the price of datacentre equipment and will affect IT buyers, whether they are purchasing wholly for on-premise deployments or are acquiring greater public cloud capacity. Discussing the implications, Forrester principal analyst Lee Sustar said: “The trade wars will impact the public cloud platform in multiple ways. In the near term, cloud providers face price shocks in their supply lines. As bulk buyers of chips, cables and other materials, they have some near-term flexibility. “But their ambitious plans – like Microsoft’s proposed $80bn buildout of AI-oriented datacentres – will become significantly more expensive to execute due to price increases for building materials. At the same time, the demand for cloud services, especially pricey AI offerings, will drop at least in the near term due to uncertainty over the wider economy. Cloud providers will face pressure to pull back on big investments and pass costs to customers with price increases.” Datacentre equipment manufacturers appear to have adopted a wait-and-see approach as they assess the impact of the current and impending tariffs on manufacturing costs. According to the transcript of its latest quarterly earnings call posted on Seeking Alpha, Dell chief operating officer Jeff Clarke said the company had built a globally diverse, industry-leading supply chain that he claimed is agile and resilient to minimise the impacts of trade regulations and tariffs. In the transcript of the company’s latest quarterly filing posted in March, HPE’s chief financial officer Marie Myers said: “Recent tariff announcements have created uncertainty for our industry, primarily affecting our server business. We are working on plans to mitigate these impacts through supply chain measures and pricing actions. Through these efforts, we expect to mitigate to a significant degree the impact on the second half of the year and to a lesser extent the impact on Q2 as it takes time to implement mitigations.” HPE CEO Antonio Neri added that HPE intended to leverage its global supply chain to mitigate aspects of the expected impact, warning to expect “pricing adjustments”.  Lenovo claims that when faced with unexpected challenges it has the ability to move customer orders between sites. The company’s supply chain resiliency is based on owning the supply chain end to end. It has also put in place a geodiversity programme to enable sourcing of commodities from locations other than China and Taiwan. There is no mention of tariffs in the earnings calls of either Alphabet – the owner of Google Cloud – Amazon or Microsoft. However, all public cloud providers are likely to experience greater costs as a result of the White House’s actions, according to Forrester vice-president and research director Mark Moccia. He points out that the cost of PCs, IT infrastructure, cloud and chips will be affected: “The new US tariffs have set the stage for increasing IT costs. The impacts will evolve over the next two to three quarters as vendors consider, develop and roll out new pricing strategies.” Moccia warned that IT infrastructure will likely see significant price increases as major manufacturing nations face high tariff rates, especially in the US. “The rising costs could balloon budgets and force CIOs to delay or prioritise the most important projects,” he added. Moccia recommended IT leaders proactively analyse costs, diversify sourcing, optimise inventory and prioritise the projects that do not sacrifice their AI strategy. Looking at public cloud services, he said: “While not currently subject to tariffs, the cost of cloud, software as a service, and other services could go up as their underlying costs increase and exchange rates fluctuate. More concerning would be if other countries retaliate by directly targeting US services where there is a surplus to many countries.”  What is interesting about Moccia’s remarks is that IT leaders could use the 90-day reprieve to negotiate new contracts, both with hardware suppliers and public cloud providers, before more tariffs are enforced. According to analyst Canalys, there has already been an uplift in PC shipments in the past quarter as IT buyers look to refresh PCs ahead of US tariffs. It may well be a good negotiating tactic for IT buyers to rush through orders for datacentre infrastructure now, rather than delay purchases until later in the year. Similarly, purchasing reserved instances on the public cloud now could buffer against potential price rises. Read more about how the US trade tariffs affect IT US tariffs drive PC sales boost: IT buyers appear to have spent the past few months refreshing PCs in preparation for the new US tariffs. What is the impact of US tariffs on datacentre equipment costs: Moore’s Law predicts that every 18 months, IT buyers can get more for the same outlay. But US tariffs may mean they end up paying a higher price.

Google Fi is practically giving away the Pixel 9a. Here's how you can snag it for free or get a $200 discount, no strings attached.

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In a nutshell: A security researcher recently uncovered nearly three dozen Chrome Web Store extensions exhibiting suspicious behavior. Many present themselves as search assistants, while others pose as ad blockers, security tools, or extension scanners – all mysteriously linked to a single, unused domain. John Tucker, founder of browser security firm Secure Annex, discovered the suspicious extensions while assisting a client who had installed one or more for security monitoring. The first red flag: two of the 132 extensions he analyzed were unlisted, meaning they don't appear in web searches or the Chrome Web Store. Users can only download these tools via a direct URL. Unlisted extensions aren't that uncommon. Businesses sometimes use them to limit public access to internal tools. However, malicious actors often use unlisted extensions to exploit users, keeping them hidden and making it difficult for Google to detect. After Tucker began analyzing the two suspicious extensions, he uncovered 33 more. Many connect to the same servers, use identical code patterns, and request the same permissions. The apps ask users for consent to access sensitive data, including browser tabs and windows, cookies, storage, scripting, alarms, and management APIs. This level of access is unusually high, making it easy for bad actors to exploit the user's system for various malicious purposes. "At this point, this information should be enough for any organization to reasonably kick this out of their environment as it presents unnecessary risk," Tucker wrote in his blog on Thursday. "The only permission any of the 35 apps requires is management," he added in an email to Ars Technica. In addition to the suspicious number of permissions these apps request, their programming is equally concerning. Tucker found the apps had heavily obfuscated code. A developer would only program their software this way to make it difficult for others to examine and understand its actions. // Related Stories Collectively, users have installed the 35 apps over 4 million times. While it's unclear how unlisted extensions attracted so much attention without appearing in searches, Tucker notes that 10 carried Google's "Featured" tag – a designation typically given to developers Google has vetted and trusts. He didn't elaborate on how this may have influenced their distribution. Click to enlarge to see the full list.Tucker found no direct evidence that the extensions exfiltrate data – but that doesn't rule it out. One tool called Fire Shield Extension Protection ironically claims to scan Chrome for malicious or suspicious plugins. After analyzing it, Tucker discovered a JavaScript file that can upload data and download code and instructions from several shady domains, including one called unknow.com. This domain stands out because all 35 apps reference it in their background service daemons despite it having no visible web presence or clear function. Whois records list it as "available" and "for sale," making it especially bizarre that so many extensions would point to it. "Hilariously, the domain doesn't have any relevance in the code, but [is] incredibly useful for linking all of the extensions together!" Tucker said. Secure Annex published a comprehensive list of extension IDs and permhashes on its blog and in a publicly accessible spreadsheet. A simpler list of extension names appears in the image above. If you have any of these installed, Tucker recommends removing them immediately – the security risks far outweigh any potential benefit.

Shoppers usually keep an eye out for Samsung when looking for phone deals and TV deals, but it’s also a good brand to consider when you’re planning to buy a laptop. Check this out — the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD is on sale with a $400 discount from Samsung itself, bringing its price down from $1,550 to $1,150. The device will be within reach for more people with these savings, which means you’re going to have to hurry with your purchase if you’re interested as stocks may run out quickly. While the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 is a 2-in-1 laptop, the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro is a traditional laptop for those who prefer this type of build. It features performance that will be able to handle all of your daily tasks, as its 16GB of RAM is paired with the Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 2 processor and Intel Arc Graphics. You’ll have plenty of space to install your apps and save your files on its 1TB SSD, and since it ships with Windows 11 Home pre-loaded, you can start using the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro right after you unbox the laptop. The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro maintains portability with its 14-inch touchscreen, but it’s an AMOLED display with WQXGA+ resolution, so you’ll see bright colors and sharp details. This makes the laptop an excellent tool not just for working on your projects, but also for recreational activities such as watching streaming shows. Related The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro is powerful and reliable, and its configuration with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD is on sale for $1,150, for savings of $400 on its original price of $1,550. Samsung isn’t well known for laptop deals so there’s a chance that the offer doesn’t sell out quickly, but we highly recommend not leaving that to chance and completing your purchase of the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro as soon as you can. If you hesitate, you may miss out on this bargain. Editors’ Recommendations

This vivid work, which had its premiere on Good Friday 1724, brings an experimental spirit to its arresting musical dramatization of Christ’s final days.