Roku built its streaming player business around a simple proposition: spend relatively little money, plug one into an HDMI port and escape whatever miserable interface came installed on the television.

That escape route just became considerably more expensive.

Roku has raised the U.S. list prices of its entire standalone streaming lineup, with the Roku Ultra increasing from $99.99 to $149.99 and the Streaming Stick 4K climbing from $49.99 to $79.99. The hardware has not been redesigned, and Roku has not announced new features to soften the blow. You are paying more for the same streamer because the AI industry has apparently reached the television stand.

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New Roku Streaming Player Prices

The new U.S. list prices are:

The Streaming Stick 4K receives the largest percentage increase at approximately 60%, while the Ultra and Streambar SE each rise by 50%. 

Roku is temporarily discounting several products back to their previous prices through its online store, while Amazon, Best Buy and other retailers may continue selling remaining inventory at the older figures until it is replenished. That makes the current sale more useful than the usual countdown clock designed to create panic over a remote control. 

Why Is Roku Raising Prices?

A Roku executive told The Desk that shortages involving memory and other components forced the company to increase prices. Manufacturers have shifted more production capacity toward higher margin chips used by AI data centers, tightening supplies of the less glamorous components found inside streaming players, televisions and other consumer electronics. 

The timing is slightly awkward.

Only in May, Roku CEO Anthony Wood argued that Roku OS required less memory than competing platforms, giving the company a bill of materials advantage as component costs increased. Wood described the situation as “generally great for our business.” Less than three months later, the Roku Ultra costs another $50. 

Roku’s hardware business has never been the company’s largest source of profit. The devices place Roku OS inside more homes, where Roku earns money from advertising, subscriptions, transactions and The Roku Channel. Device revenue fell 16% during the first quarter of 2026, while the platform business generated more than 90% of company income. 

That makes these increases more surprising. Inexpensive hardware has always been the front door to Roku’s considerably more lucrative advertising business.

The front door now has a cover charge.

Are Buyers Getting Anything New?

No.

The current Roku Streaming Stick 4K still supports 4K/60Hz video, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HLG, long range dual band Wi Fi and Dolby encoded audio passthrough. It remains a compact and easy to use streamer, but the specifications are unchanged from the model that cost $49.99 last week. 

The Roku Ultra continues to offer HDMI 2.1, Wi Fi 6, Ethernet, USB playback, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, Dolby Atmos and the rechargeable Voice Remote Pro. Those features made sense at $99.99 and earned the Ultra a clear position above Roku’s sticks. At $149.99, the competition becomes much harder to ignore. 

How Do the New Prices Compare?

The $79.99 Roku Streaming Stick 4K now costs twice as much as Amazon’s $39.99 Fire TV Stick 4K Select, which supports 4K and HDR10+ but omits Dolby Vision. Amazon’s $34.99 Fire TV Stick HD also undercuts Roku’s new $39.99 HD model. 

The Google TV Streamer 4K costs $99.99, only $20 more than Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K. Google includes 32GB of storage, 4GB of memory, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, Ethernet, smart home controls and Gemini for TV. It is not as small or portable, but it now looks like the stronger value for a primary home theater system. 

The Roku Ultra remains less expensive than the Apple TV 4K, which now starts at $199, but the gap has narrowed to $49. Apple offers a faster A15 Bionic processor, 64GB of storage, stronger gaming performance, HomeKit integration and tight compatibility with AirPods, HomePods and other Apple hardware. 

Roku still has important advantages. Its interface remains easier to navigate than Fire TV, the platform is broadly neutral about which service receives prominence, and its search and free television offerings are useful. Roku also supports Apple AirPlay, HomeKit, Alexa and Google Home.

The problem is that simplicity feels less persuasive when the simple box costs $150.

Who Should Buy One?

Existing Roku users who value the familiar interface and want another player for a bedroom or secondary television should look for remaining inventory at the old prices.

The Streaming Stick Plus remains the most sensible model for ordinary 4K televisions when discounted to $39.99. Buyers who need Dolby Vision should consider the Streaming Stick 4K, but $79.99 is difficult to recommend when the Google TV Streamer costs only $20 more.

The Ultra still makes sense for users who need Ethernet, USB playback, Wi-Fi 6 and Roku’s best remote. At $149.99, however, it is no longer the automatic premium Roku choice it was at $99.99.

The Bottom Line

Roku has not ruined its streaming players. It has damaged the value proposition that made them so easy to recommend. The interface remains approachable, the app support is extensive and the hardware continues to work well. None of that changed when the price tags did.

The Streaming Stick 4K moving from $49.99 to $79.99 is the hardest increase to defend, while the $149.99 Ultra now sits uncomfortably between the more capable $99.99 Google TV Streamer and the considerably more powerful $199 Apple TV 4K.

Roku says component shortages are responsible, and there is ample evidence that AI infrastructure is consuming memory production that once supplied ordinary consumer products. That does not mean buyers need to accept the first new price they see.

Purchase remaining inventory at the old price, wait for the inevitable promotion or compare the alternatives carefully. Roku may still offer one of the cleanest ways to stream television, but cleanliness apparently costs another $10 to $50 now.

Price & Availability

The new Roku list prices are effective now in the United States.

Roku is currently offering temporary discounts on selected players that return them to their former prices. Amazon, Best Buy and other retailers may also have remaining inventory available at the previous prices.

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TikTok might have failed to meet EU standards for child safety online.

Allowing content posted by minors to be pushed on TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed could be a violation of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Commission has said.

On TikTok, minors can choose to have a public-facing profile. According to EU preliminary findings, this setting enables content published by 16- and 17-year-olds to be algorithmically recommended worldwide.

Exposure like this could result in unwanted contact from bad actors or increase the risk of cyberbullying, the EU said.

The Commission launched formal proceedings into TikTok’s compliance with the DSA in early 2024, which also probed the platform’s potential addictive design and access to data, and resulted in negative preliminary results.

A different line of investigation into the company’s advertising transparency was closed through binding commitments last December.

Today’s (24 July) results are based on an analysis of TikTok’s interface, internal data and documents, as well as interviews with law enforcement officers and child protection experts, according to the Commission.

Content uploaded to the internet is rarely ever removed completely, and the EU said that minors risk lifelong consequences if their content is widely circulated online.

It further said that minors can be easily found through the ‘following’ and ‘followers’ lists of other users even when their accounts are set to ‘private’. Their profile photos also remain accessible to anyone on the internet, including users without a TikTok account.

Under the DSA, platforms accessible to minors must ensure a high level of privacy and safety. TikTok might be failing to meet these standards, the EU said.

The company is up for massive fines of up to 6pc of its global annual turnover if it is ultimately found to be in breach of the law.

The EU wants TikTok to adjust the default settings of minors’ ‘public’ accounts, so that their content is, by default, only visible to those who follow the minor user.

Older minors can have the option of a public-facing account, but their content should never be accessible to a global audience, the Commission warned, arguing that TikTok should not recommend minors’ content to other TikTok users through the For You feed.

“Minors deserve a safe experience from the moment they go online,” said Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy. “A high level of protection should not be an opt-in – it should be the default.”

The investigation, now ongoing for more than two years, also covers the ‘rabbit-hole effect’ of TikTok’s recommender systems and the negative consequences of age-inappropriate experiences on the platform. These probes are still underway.

“Under-18 accounts are private by default and we are one of the only platforms where younger teens cannot use direct messaging or have their content eligible to appear in the For You feed,” a TikTok spokesperson told SiliconRepublic.com.

The ByteDance-owned company said it would continue to engage constructively with the Commission.

TikTok accounts of users under 18 are automatically set to private, the company said, noting that users must be at least 16 to use direct messaging or have their content eligible to appear in the For You feed.

The company also said that it does not recommend accounts belonging to teens to users over 18. It said that users can only find private accounts of minors using ‘followers’ lists if the minor has chosen to make the list public instead of private.

Governments worldwide are cracking down on social media platforms to protect children from online harms, with Australia becoming the first country to blanket-ban major platforms for children under 16.

The EU, has, for years, targeted social media giants for their addictive designs, recommender system feeds and child safety measures with its landmark DSA that carries a hefty penalty for offenders.

The bloc is now considering age-gating sites as a means to address the wider concerns surrounding social media usage by children. France, earlier this week, became the first EU country to ban social media for under-15s.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Qobuz has never had much trouble convincing audiophiles that it sounds good. Convincing them that its app was equally polished has occasionally required a more generous interpretation of the word “polished.”

The latest Qobuz mobile update addresses that problem with a redesigned player for iOS and Android, adding synchronized lyrics, lyric translations, improved queue management and more direct access to recommendations, credits, artist biographies and album descriptions. Version 10.0 reached Apple devices this week, followed by version 10.0.1, while the same feature set is now listed through Google Play. 

What Is New?

The redesigned player adds:

• Time synchronized lyrics
• Lyric translations where available
• Recommendations directly from the playback screen
• Faster access to song credits
• Artist biographies and album descriptions
• Autoplay controls
• Swipe gestures
• Simplified queue management

The new interface keeps more of Qobuz’s editorial and metadata features close to the music rather than sending listeners through several menus to discover who played bass, produced the album or wrote the review. 

That may sound like routine housekeeping, but Qobuz users have waited a long time for built-in lyrics. Until now, anyone determined to follow along had to use a third-party service or remember the words, which becomes increasingly unreliable somewhere after the second verse.

Lyrics Are Not Unique, but the Context Is

Apple Music and Spotify already offer synchronized lyrics and translations, so Qobuz is not inventing a new category.

What makes the update more interesting is how lyrics now sit beside the service’s existing editorial material, detailed credits, album reviews, biographies and high-resolution playback. Qobuz is trying to create a richer listening screen rather than merely enlarging the album cover and placing another AI button underneath it.

That approach fits the platform. Qobuz has consistently emphasized human curation and music journalism, with more than 500,000 pieces of editorial content alongside a catalog of more than 100 million lossless and high-resolution tracks. 

Spotify remains stronger at social discovery and algorithmic recommendations. Apple Music integrates more naturally across Apple hardware. Qobuz’s advantage is that it still behaves as though listeners may want to know something about the album beyond whether the algorithm believes it is suitable for Tuesday afternoon.

Why Should Qobuz Users Care?

The new player reduces friction.

Listeners can examine lyrics, translations, credits, biographies and recommendations without constantly leaving the playback screen. Better queue controls and visible autoplay settings should also make it easier to understand what the app intends to play next, which has not always been one of streaming software’s great acts of transparency.

The update becomes more useful when paired with Qobuz Connect. A phone or tablet can serve as the control interface while compatible streamers, amplifiers and powered speakers pull the lossless or high-resolution stream directly from Qobuz. The mobile app therefore matters even when the phone is not the device producing the sound. 

Qobuz Connect now supports more than 100 hardware and software partners, making the quality of the mobile control experience far more important than it was when listeners often had to use a manufacturer’s own app. 

What Is Still Missing?

The update improves playback and discovery, but it does not solve every Qobuz weakness.

The service still trails Spotify and Apple Music in social features, collaborative listening and some forms of personalized discovery. Lyric availability and translations will also depend on the underlying catalog data, so users should not expect every obscure jazz pressing or regional release to suddenly become karaoke-ready.

Qobuz has also described this as a mobile redesign. Desktop and connected television users should not assume they are receiving the same interface immediately.

The Bottom Line

Qobuz did not need another audio-quality logo. It needed a better player.

Synchronized lyrics and translations bring the service closer to feature parity with Apple Music and Spotify, while the improved queue controls, credits and editorial access play directly to Qobuz’s actual strengths.

The update is not revolutionary, but it makes the app easier to use and gives subscribers more information without turning every listening session into a conversation with an AI assistant.

For a service that charges $12.99 monthly or an effective $10.83 per month with an annual Studio Solo subscription, that is a more convincing improvement than simply raising the price and blaming licensing costs. 

Availability

The redesigned Qobuz player is available now through the latest Qobuz apps for iOS, iPadOS and Android. Try Qobuz for free.

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Meta has announced Facebook Verified, a free badge that will be visible on a user’s profile and is designed to confirm whether that user is a real person or an AI without actually checking that a user is who they say they are.

The new badge is separate from Meta’s existing Meta Verified program and is available to eligible Facebook users who are 18 or older. Users must also be in good standing with Facebook’s community standards before they can be verified.

Alongside profiles, Facebook users will also be able to see a person’s verified status in the Marketplace, Facebook Dating, and Facebook Groups initially. However, Meta has confirmed that it intends to bring the badges to the main feed in the future.

Free, basic verification

Importantly, unlike Meta Verified, Facebook Verified doesn’t require a subscription and is available absolutely free. Users only need to complete the verification process once.

The verification process itself requires Facebook users to record a short selfie video. Facebook then uses the video to check the person’s appearance against their existing profile photos to confirm a match. The process should take just a few minutes.

However, it’s important to know what Facebook Verified actually verifies. Meta says that it means a profile belongs to a real person, not an AI.

Facebook Verified does not necessarily mean that the person is who they say they are. That’s an important distinction to remember when using Facebook from here on out.

Meta says that Facebook Verified will roll out in phases, starting with “select markets.” Unfortunately, it hasn’t confirmed which markets those are.

A massive malvertising campaign is using fake Solana, Luno, and TradingView webpages with malicious JavaScript that instructs browsers to assemble malware directly in memory.

The operation has been active since late 2024 and is localized to 25 languages in 12 countries, primarily in Asia Pacific and Latin America.

A filtering system ensures that only real targets (retail traders and crypto investors) land on the malicious pages, while researchers, scanners, and security bots are redirected to blank pages.

Ad security platform Confiant says that the campaign’s design stands out through its use of the web browser as “a local assembly pipeline” for the malware.

Although the fake portals feature a download button, a ReactJS library on the landing page prepares the browser for a managed download flow, a process typically used for handling various types of file transfers.

According to Confiant’s analysis, the page first registers a service worker, which acts as a download manager and helps build the malware file incrementally.

In the first stage, the page sets up a shared worker that acts as an engine that assembles the malware from components received in the next steps of the attack.

The researchers say that in the second stage “the landing page uses its SharedWorker to request itself for a ‘/config’ response” with seed and size parameters that are randomized and specific for each session.

By rotating these parameters, the threat actors make sure that the resulting malware file has a unique hash to bypass static detection.

Confiant explains that “‘/config’ is an assembly response rather than a normal download response. It returns a template and the inputs the browser needs to build the file locally.”

Remote components retrieved this way and the locally generated bytes are then used to create the malicious payload from a clean version of the Bun executable.

After building the final malware executable, the fake download page hands it to the service worker at the beginning of the process and triggers a same-origin download path.

“From the browser’s point of view, the user is downloading an executable from the landing page domain,” Confiant researchers say, and the mark-of-the-web tag is added, despite some of the components originating from a different source.

The advantage of this technique is that no finished file is transmitted over the network, making detection less likely, and analysis becomes more challenging.

Confiant says that earlier variants of the SourTrade campaign used the StreamSaver project on GitHub to deliver the malicious payload. Since April, though, the operation switched to the same-origin ServiceWorker delivery method.

While Confiant researchers do not reveal the nature of the payload, they found evidence supporting a Bitdefender report in 2025 about a resilient  malvertising campaign that used StreamSaver to distribute malware.

Bitdefender found that the payload had the following capabilities:

• intercept all user network traffic (acting as a proxy)
• collect cookie and password data
• record keystrokes (keylogging) and take screenshots
• steal cryptocurrency wallet data
• establish long-term persistence

Since the SourTrade campaign targets retail traders and crypto investors, users engaged in these activities are advised to avoid downloading financial or cryptocurrency apps from social media advertisements or sponsored search results.

The researchers advise getting executable files from the company’s official website. As an added precaution, they should verify the installer’s digital signature and publisher before running it.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

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Samsung has unveiled three new foldable phones — the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, and the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8. And while the last of that trio falls into its own category, the former two phones have a lot in common.

Aside from having similar names, they’re both book-style foldables, and they also share plenty of specs. But between very different form factors and differences in their respective camera setups, there’s lots to differentiate them, too.

Ripple effect: As rising memory costs push up the prices of everything from PCs and smartphones to game consoles, one key hardware supplier after another has announced that it can no longer delay price hikes. This time it’s Qualcomm, with a fast-approaching adjustment that could make smartphones, tablets, wearables, and some laptops even less affordable.

Qualcomm issued a letter to its clients on Friday warning that its chips will soon become more expensive due to rising supply costs. The company develops chips that power most Android devices, numerous wearables, automotive systems, and a rising crop of Arm-based laptops, so the impact is expected to be widespread.

Bloomberg, which obtained the letter, reports that price hikes will rise by an unspecified double-digit percentage, and will apply to components shipped after September 1. Qualcomm has been unable to escape the skyrocketing supply costs that have impacted Microsoft, Apple, Sony, and numerous other manufacturers.

Memory and storage are the biggest culprits, having quintupled in price since late last year as AI data center construction absorbs most of the available production capacity of DRAM and NAND manufacturers. RAM prices could rise by another 40% to 50% in the third quarter of this year, then an additional 30% to 40% in Q4. The ripple effect has also pushed up the prices of CPUs, printed circuit boards, and other components. Qualcomm at least partially blames its upcoming price hike on the need to find alternative suppliers.

Samsung phones, which are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors, might be the most popular affected products. However, wearable devices like smart glasses and VR headsets also use chips from the same family. Additionally, Microsoft and various PC manufacturers are attempting to promote an alternative Arm-based version of Windows via new lineups of more powerful Snapdragon SoCs.

Qualcomm’s adjustment might also affect Google’s plans to launch a lineup of Snapdragon-based laptops using a new Android-based operating system later this year.

Qualcomm’s products even extend to the AI data centers responsible for the component shortages. The company recently unveiled ambitious plans to compete with Nvidia in the server CPU market.

The situation is expected to worsen next year due to further price hikes from the manufacturer that Qualcomm, Apple, Nvidia, Google, Amazon, Arm, and MediaTek all rely heavily upon: TSMC. Recent reports indicate that the chipmaker will raise prices for most of its semiconductor nodes at least once next year by around 10%, creating a much broader ripple effect.

“Everybody’s on their phone at my program!” joked Charlie Bailey, a librarian in South Philadelphia. He’s just asked his audience to pull out their phones so that he can walk them through the steps of disabling Apple Intelligence and Gemini.

Bailey stands at the front of a library classroom that’s outfitted for children – the focal point is the vibrant rug he’s standing on, which reminds us that M is for “moon” and Z is for “zebra.” But the 20-odd adults in the room aren’t here to learn about the alphabet. They’re at a workshop called Avoiding AI, which, in this context does not stand for “apple” and “igloo.”

“I was inspired by the feeling of people’s frustration with AI tools being kind of forced onto them, and feeling like AI tools we didn’t ask for are suddenly everywhere in our lives,” Bailey told TechCrunch.

Bailey starts the hour-long workshop with an overview of how AI chatbots and other consumer AI tools work, explaining why people might want to use these products, and why they might opt to abstain. Then, he walks through all of the most popular tech platforms and devices, showing step-by-step instructions on the projector to guide people through turning off specific features.

“As a librarian, I think it’s important to see this as advancing digital literacy and helping people reclaim their autonomy over whether they want to use AI tools,” Bailey said. “It’s important, especially when it can be so difficult not to use them, and when the design seems to force adoption.”

Bailey got the idea for the Avoiding AI workshop from Hannah Cyrus, a librarian in Maine. He was one of dozens of librarians from around the world who contacted Cyrus after she published a journal article about developing her own workshop.

“This has never happened before with anything I’ve worked on,” Cyrus told TechCrunch. “Nobody has ever been emailing me like, ‘Can you give me your Intro to Computers slides?’”

At the Bangor Public Library, patrons turn to Cyrus when they need help with anything involving technology.

“More and more, I was getting questions about, ‘How do I turn this [AI] stuff off? Why is it trying to write my emails for me? Why is it trying to summarize my one-sentence email that I can easily read?’” Cyrus said. “I just decided that with so much media hype out there about AI products, it would be a good opportunity to teach people about the basics of what is happening when you’re using this technology, and then getting into how to turn it off if you don’t want to use it.”

Usually, Cyrus’ classes like Intro to Computers get about a dozen attendees. But so many people expressed interest in her first Avoiding AI workshop that she had to cut off registration at 30 people, open a waitlist, and share the workshop on Zoom. Including the livestream, about 70 people attended each of Cyrus’ first two workshops.

When Bailey followed Cyrus’ lead to host a workshop in Philadelphia, the reception was similarly unprecedented. The library’s Instagram post about the “Avoiding AI” event got over 2,000 likes and 220 shares, whereas most of the library’s posts don’t get more than a few dozen likes. He scheduled a second program because the first got too many registrations.