ARM Making Chips for Meta – Big Industry Shift? | Tech News of the Week

Welcome back to Tech News of the Week, where Chris and I break down the biggest and weirdest stories in tech. We're a week behind because Chris decided to lose power—how selfish! But we’re back, and we’ve got four spicy news stories to dive into. Let’s go!  

🧠 **Meta Wants ARM-Made Chips**  
ARM might start making its own chips, and Meta is reportedly first in line to buy them. This is a big shift for ARM, which has historically just designed and licensed chip architectures rather than manufacturing its own. If true, this could shake up the chip industry and make ARM a competitor to companies it currently licenses to. The first chips are rumored to launch this summer, so we won’t have to wait long to see what happens. Will this push companies toward RISC-V? Fingers crossed!  
🔗 https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/13/arm-is-launching-its-own-chip-this-year-with-meta-as-a-customer

📖 **Facebook’s AI Reads Minds (Kind Of)**  
FAIR (Facebook’s Fundamental AI Research unit) teamed up with scientists in Spain to create a machine that can read your mind—well, sort of. By analyzing brain activity using M-E-G and E-E-G, they achieved an 80% accuracy rate in predicting what subjects were typing or saying. Right now, the tech is clunky and requires a controlled environment, but smaller, scarier versions are likely on the way. What could go wrong?  
🔗https://www.techspot.com/news/106721-meta-researchers-unveil-ai-models-convert-brain-activity.html

💰 **SolarWinds Goes Private for $4.4B**  
Remember SolarWinds? The company that got hit with a massive supply chain attack in 2020? Well, private equity firms have decided it’s still worth squeezing for cash. Silver Lake and Tomo Bravo bought up a majority stake, and now TurnRiver is taking the whole thing private for $4.4 billion. Expect less innovation, more “cost optimization,” and an eternal cycle of rent-seeking. Somewhere in Middle-earth, Sauron is proud.  
🔗 https://www.darkreading.com/cybersecurity-operations/solarwinds-private-billions

🖥️ **AI is Just Fancy Copy-Paste, Confirms Study**  
A new report shows that AI-assisted coding is leading to lower code quality. GitClear analyzed 200 million lines of code and found that, surprise surprise, AI-generated code is often just old code copied and pasted with minimal thought. Google’s own research backs this up, showing rising defect rates in published code. Microsoft even warns that overreliance on AI is killing critical thinking skills. So, uh… we’re definitely headed toward a bright, bug-free future, right?  
🔗 https://www.gitclear.com/ai_assistant_code_quality_2025_research