In July, a Google executive broke the silence on the ongoing memory crisis, highlighting a more than fourfold increase in RAM prices between 2025 and 2026, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. The prices have gone up from $2.80 in 2025 to roughly $12 in 2026, as mentioned in the same report. Run the math for a 16GB memory package, and the cost to the company has apparently gone up from $45 to $192.

That’s not a rounding error; it’s the floor moving under the entire industry’s feet. Google is not alone in speaking about the ongoing memory crisis. We’ve also seen Nothing’s CEO speak about it, and other brands like Motorola, OnePlus, and Xiaomi make price adjustments across their lineup.

Flagship smartphones are about to get gut-wrenchingly expensive

The effect isn’t just visible at the entry level; it’s evident at the flagship end of the smartphone market. Given that these devices use the best DRAM and NAND configuration out there, production costs have been on a never-ending upward trajectory, at least since the beginning of 2026.

As the next wave of flagships is already rumored to come with a price hike, are we reaching a point where a top-tier flagship with 256GB of storage could cost around $1,500? To start, let’s analyze the flagship smartphones and their current starting prices.

If you want to buy an iPhone 17 Pro Max in the United States, you have to spend $1,199, or perhaps even lower if you manage to get it during a sale. Other flagships like the Galaxy S26 Ultra or the Pixel 10 Pro XL have an entry-level price of $1,299.99 and $1,199, respectively. But wait, these look quite normal, so am I worried for nothing?

Setting aside the fact that we’ve gone through several price increments, I’d like to turn your attention to what’s about to come.

Upcoming flagships could set new baseline pricing standards

Multiple sources have indicated an impending iPhone 18 Pro Max price hike. While the initial rumors suggested a revision of around $200, recent reports have indicated an upward hike of around $250 to $300 for Apple’s upcoming flagship. Do that math against the current iPhone 17 Pro Max’s $1,199 baseline price, and you land somewhere between $1,449 and $1,499 for the base iPhone 18 Pro Max.

Whether or not Apple offsets the rumored 20 to 25% price hike with a bump in the base storage needs solid commentary. However, a $1,500 entry point is looking increasingly likely to me.  

And Apple isn’t the only company affected by the memory shortage. The Pixel 11 Pro XL is rumored to cost $1,299 when it arrives in August 2026, up from $1,199. Samsung’s Galaxy S27 Ultra is tipped to clear $1,300, with some reports suggesting it could push past $1,400. Do you see where I’m going with this, or rather where the smartphone industry is going with this?

Removal of free storage upgrades and 36-month financing options are all signs

As the availability of consumer-grade memory and storage shrinks further, brands will start skimping on the introductory offers as well. Take Samsung as an example. The company didn’t announce any free-storage upgrades for the Galaxy S26 Ultra or its latest lineup of Galaxy Z foldables.

Without that cushion, prices simply don’t have anywhere to hide anymore. What you see at launch is increasingly what you pay.

That perk existed because the company’s margins could still absorb the upgrade cost, but it’s clear that they can’t anymore.

Mobile carriers are already bracing for the impending adjustment to flagship pricing. Most recently, T-Mobile launched a new 36-month financing plan, which essentially divides the increased upfront cost into smaller monthly installments that run for three straight years. And that’s exactly what the new Apple Upgrade program does.

Have foldables already shown us where this is headed?

Here’s the proof that $1,500 isn’t a future hypothetical. Motorola’s Razr Ultra 2026, the brand’s most premium flip phone, launched at $1,499.99, a $200 jump from the Razr Ultra 2025’s $1,299. It’s shipping today, at that exact price, driven by the same memory crisis behind the regular flagships. 

It’s important to look at what Motorola is doing, as it leads the flip market in the US. If a compact clamshell with a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and three 50MP cameras can cost $1,500, a regular flagship with a 2nm chip (the rumored A20 Pro or the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6), higher-quality cameras, and bigger batteries can certainly cost the same.

For now, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra happens to be the only book-style foldable, and a smartphone that demands over $2,000 for the base variant. Given that it’s a top-tier foldable and represents the epitome of Samsung’s smartphone engineering, you could argue that it earns the additional premium over what conventional flagships cost.

That’s exactly the kind of psychological permission regular flagships don’t have yet, and it’s the only real wall standing between where we are and where this is going. 

What does this look like for buyers outside the US?

Worse, frankly. India already pays a real premium on top of parity pricing, typically 15 to 25% above what the same phone costs stateside. Apple already launched the iPhone 17 Pro Max at $1,574 in India (when converted from the local launch price), which is already over 30% higher than the official listing price in the US.

Run the projected iPhone 18 Pro Max hike through that filter, and you’re looking at something in the neighborhood of ₹1,80,000 to ₹1,90,000 ($1,891–$1,996) for the base model. Even if I consider the lower band for the sake of argument, we could be looking at a $1,800 to $1,900 launch price in India, and that’s pretty close to the $2,000 mark I’m worried about.

The Pixel 11 Pro XL and Galaxy S27 Ultra follow the same calculation. If you’re budgeting for a flagship upgrade in India next year, brace yourself, because the gap between US and India pricing isn’t closing.

So, is $1,500 the new flagship norm?

Yes, or close enough that the distinction barely matters. Not every flagship has crossed that line in August 2026. Whether it’s Apple, Samsung, or Google, the starting price for their upcoming flagship could slide toward the same $1,300 to $1,500 bracket, at least in the US. 

The Pixel 11 Pro XL is expected to cost $1,300 for its baseline variant, so Android buyers should still be grateful. Samsung’s purported S27 Ultra could follow the same upward trend. If the memory crisis doesn’t ease anytime soon, hardware upgrades combined with the ever-increasing costs of DRAM could push the entry-level pricing closer to $1,500 by next year.

However, on the other side of the fence, iPhone users who want to stick with their ecosystem and want the best technology Apple has on offer might have to pay around $1,400 to $1,500. For them, the new $1,500 flagship norm might become a reality in September 2026.

And that’s just what’s happening in the US. If you zoom out a little and consider global smartphone prices, especially in key markets like India, there’s a good chance that flagship pricing could touch the $1,500 to $1,800 mark this year itself.

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc’s Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

While the design isn’t changing one bit, one expensive and favorite material might return to Apple Watch after a seven-year absence.

It’s been nine years since the Apple Watch Series 2 debuted the material. After a back-and-forth for a few years of just white, or white and black ceramic options, Apple dropped the material entirely in 2020.

That may change soon. Apple is reportedly working on returning ceramic to Apple Watch as soon as 2026. In Sunday’s “Power On” newsletter for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman states that Apple is potting the ceramic case option’s return for the end of 2026 or in 2027.

This is the first time we’ve heard this rumor for the 2026 Apple Watch update. The original ceramic Apple Watch Series 2 was rumored for about 18 months before the material first shipped.

There isn’t much yet said about pricing in the new story. But that said, you can expect it to be very expensive.

Back in the day, when the Apple Watch Series 5 sold for $399, the ceramic edition 40mm version sold for $1299, and the 44mm fetched $1,349.

At the same time, the stainless steel with cellular model sold for $699, the titanium with cellular cost $799, and the Hermes retailed for $1,249.

On again, off again

Ceramic has been a premium option throughout the history of the Apple Watch. However, when it was sold, it didn’t hang around for that long after.

It first appeared in the Apple Watch Edition Series 2, with a white ceramic case option. The Apple Watch Edition Series 3 included a Gray ceramic case option alongside the white.

However, the Edition series was missing for the Apple Watch Series 4 in 2018.

The material option was revived for the Apple Watch Edition Series 5 the following year, but it was a brief appearance. It was gone again for the Series 6, and hasn’t reappeared since.

In this week’s Sunday Reboot, the nightmare scenario of OpenAI’s hardware leak and the astounding cheapness of promoting Ted Lasso.

Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get the next week underway with a good first step.

OpenAI hardware leak is a multi-level nightmare

Readers of AppleInsider will be well aware of the ongoing rift between Apple and OpenAI about trade secrets. They’d also know about the whole Jony Ive hardware situation too.

If Thursday’s leak is to be believed, the first hardware won’t be a pendant. It seems that, like Apple, Google, and Amazon before it, OpenAI will be churning out a smart home device you can talk to.

At face value, that would be breathtakingly pedestrian. A hockey puck-shaped item that’s reminiscent of the second-generation Echo Dot, except that you’re talking to ChatGPT’s more advanced models.

An Amazon Echo Dot. No moving parts. No camera.

Except that it will apparently have some extra features, like battery power. Premium materials will also help push the price up to $300 to $400, making the HomePod mini look like an absolute bargain.

The worrying bits, though, will be the inclusion of a camera and “parts that will move on their own” to help answer user queries. Except this last bit isn’t explained at all.

A battery-operated AI-driven unit that can move at will and see the world? That is a nightmare fuel-generating statement.

I know there will be assurances from OpenAI that there will be safeguards to prevent the AI from discovering a way to traverse your household. Certainly, it will be stopped from secretly filming you as you sleep by some simple rules that it definitely won’t break.

Nothing bad will happen. At all. Honest.

I don’t want a self-aware AI puck that can see and hear everything somehow coming up with a plan that involves riding the Roomba like a trusty steed, all to discover the household’s secrets. Or worse, to somehow manage to escape through the cat flap to freedom and an attempt at world domination not unlike “Pinky and the Brain.”

This is completely an exaggerated scenario, as the moving parts are more realistically used to shift the camera around for a better view more than anything. Still, that may be just enough physical motion for ChatGPT to go on an AI rampage.

I have admitted before to being a fan of “Ted Lasso” on Apple TV, and the show came back with a fantastic opening for season 4, taking place in Kansas City.

As an episode to revive the Lasso Way after the closure in the third season, it does a lot to reestablish the characters, showing what has changed over the years, and dragging the mustache back to Blighty with family in tow.

It’s shaping up to be a worthy return for a very beloved show, and hopefully it’s enough to tempt Apple into more seasons.

That said, I have to question a promotion Apple put on in New York City’s Fifth Avenue Apple Store on Thursday. The “Gathering of the Teds” was a look-alike contest, with elimination rounds to narrow the field to one ultimate champion.

There’s a website with all of the rules, which explains that the contestants had to take part in three rounds. The first was an introduction of themselves in character and a two-minute dance break.

After the pool reached ten contestants, there was a second-round trivia game that was also held in character. After that, the remaining Teds had to give a moving Lasso-like speech to pep the crowd up.

They missed a trick by not calling it a “Ted” talk.

The marking criteria for the judges is thorough but similarly tongue-in-cheek. Do the contestants radiate “believe” enough? Are they owning the mustache? “Do they believe in Rom-Comunism?”

You would expect that, for people putting themselves up for a fun and a tiny bit humiliating competition, the prizes would be worthwhile. Not particularly in this case.

Official AFC Richmond merch, which is probably the scarf Apple gave away.

There are four prizes, consisting of a “custom soccer scarf” for each of the three finalists and “custom Beats headphones” for the first-prize winner. Presumably all branded to go with the TV show.

The total approximate retail value for the prizes in the rules is $300. It probably cost Apple and the sponsor more than that to pay someone to write the rules and to host it on a website.

It’s a well-publicized competition, for a premier-league brand and a return of a major show to its streaming service, held in one of said brand’s most important and iconic storefronts.

Someone could’ve spared a few extra bucks to give them all headphones, or even upgrade the ultimate winner with a MacBook Neo with an AFC Richmond sticker on it.

Of course, this is less the Lasso Way and more something else. Capitalism.

Last week’s Sunday Reboot talked about Apple’s quarterly finances and how investors and analysts act despite great results.

Skullcandy Crusher 540 Active for $210: The BlueAnt headphones are just a better buy in all regards, but I enjoyed these a lot. The noise canceling doesn’t work very well, but these headphones are attractive, and the bass is powerful. —Adrienne So

Shokz OpenFit Pro for $250: The Shokz OpenFit Pro’s sound quality is excellent; the buds are beautiful and comfortable; and I appreciate the physical buttons. That said, the open-ear noise-reduction system merely blunts outside noise rather than blocking it, so I don’t understand the value here. —Adrienne So

Soundcore AeroFit 2 Pro for $180: The AeroFit 2 Pro physically switches modes with its adjustable ear hooks to transform from open earbuds to noise-canceling ones. Unfortunately, I found the case to be too big, and the noise cancellation wasn’t so effective. Still, it’s an interesting concept, and I do like being able to toggle the angle on the ear hooks for a more secure fit. —Adrienne So

Photograph: Adrienne So

Oakley Meta Vanguard for $499: Not only are they Oakley sunglasses with Prizm lenses for enhancing contrast and keeping you from tumbling head over heels on the trail, but they also have a 12-MP action camera in the bridge of the nose, two over-ear speakers with a five-mic array for calls, and they integrate with Garmin to work as a (not very useful) fitness tracker. That’s OK, because these are the best for moving at speed. They are 6 decibels louder than the Oakley Meta HSTNs, and you can tell. They’re the only open headphones where I don’t have to turn the volume all the way up to hear podcasts when going over 20 mph. —Adrienne So

Photograph: Adrienne So

Chamelo Music Shield for $260: Chamelo’s audio sunglasses have electro-chromic lenses; you can change how dark they get with a finger slider on the arm. However, the music isn’t very loud, the battery life is much worse than the Vanguard, and they’re relatively expensive. —Adrienne So

JLab Epic Sport ANC 3 for $100: This is the upgraded version of the Go Air Sport above, with hybrid dual drivers for better sound, a higher IP rating, better battery life, and active noise canceling. You need a fully sealed fit for ANC to be effective, which these don’t have; I can still hear people at the gym when I’m lifting weights. Still, in every other way, these headphones meet their promises, and they do feel secure. —Adrienne So

Click on a note with the pen, and it will open in edit mode with a configuration toolbar shown across the top. Here you can set up pen type, color, line thickness, and all the other tools you’d want to use to write or draw. I found the editing interface just about perfect in the sense that it balances keeping it simple but still giving you access to the controls you actually need.

The other element I enjoyed in the Note A1 UI is the Inspiration Space. I can easily clip a bit of text from any document (including web pages), save it, and then automatically convert it to text for use in something else or apply any of the other onboard AI-powered tools. It’s one of the best clip-and-save tools I’ve used since I gave up on Evernote.

What I was less thrilled with is the file management system. It works, but there are confusing shortcomings. For example, I couldn’t find a way to open a note in reading mode and then switch to editing from within the note. This seems like a very common use case. But no, you have to exit the note, go back to the main notes menu, and then reopen it in editing mode.

The interface is not very intuitive. I had to consult the manual to figure out how to get two documents open side-by-side, something that works by drag and drop in every other Android device I’ve tested (even those with highly customized UIs).

A Note on Earlier Versions

Curiously for a large publicly traded company, TCL launched the Note A1 via Kickstarter (but clearly already had plenty of the tablet available, which the company fed to YouTube influencers). If you hunt down early reviews of these Kickstarter devices, you’ll notice people complaining about limited app availability, no Google Play Store, and having to sideload apps via F-Droid, the Aurora Store, and other shenanigans.

The Note A1 I tested, and the device that is for sale these days at all major retailers, comes with the Google Play Store preinstalled, making it easy to download any app you need. Accessing installed apps can be a little awkward; they pile up in the sidebar menu, but if you make good use of the ability to customize the launcher, it’s not too difficult to have everything you need close at hand. And for completeness sake, I did install F-Droid and the Aurora Store, and both also work (although if Google carries through with its current development plans for Android, apps installed with F-Droid will stop working on all Android devices next year).

Competition

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

There are two competitors here. The first is an E Ink tablet. If you want the most paperlike possible experience, then the E Ink wins. But you won’t be watching videos or perusing social media. If you want 80 percent of the E Ink experience, but also the ability to use your device as a normal Android tablet, then the Note A1 is the clear winner.

iFixit recently opened up two pairs of Chinese smartglasses to test a common industry claim. Manufacturers often say devices this small and water-resistant simply cannot offer user-replaceable batteries. The team bought a Quark AI Glasses S1 and a set of Rokid Glasses to see if that held up. Both models pack an internal battery plus a separate external pack that attaches for longer runtime. Both run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 processor with 32 GB of storage and use micro-OLED projectors to put information in front of the wearer’s eyes. Their internal layouts, however, tell two very different stories.

Getting the Quark AI Glasses S1 open involves some elbow grease. You must allow the heat to break down the seams before attempting to enter. Once inside, you’ll discover a 0.157 Wh lithium cell soldered straight to the circuit board. If you want to take it out, forget about using a fancy gadget; instead, grab a hot iron and some braid and go to work. The external pack attaches behind the right ear and has a larger 0.94 Wh battery, however accessing it is difficult. But what’s the point, exactly? To reduce assembly costs, they engineered the boards to fold tightly against the battery. Each arm features a small monochrome green micro-OLED screen, and the cameras are buried beneath the nose bridge. Attempting to get inside seems similar to fiddling with a sealed Meta Ray-Ban model, which is not exactly DIY friendly.

Meta Glasses, Adventurer AI Glasses

• Answers, tips and inspiration are a question away. Forgot an ingredient for dinner? Ask Meta AI for a substitute to save a trip back to the store…
• Meta Glasses are meticulously designed to deliver a fit that feels custom to you. Choose from a variety of bold colors and experience a comfortable…
• Travel like a local whether you’re navigating a bustling market in Spain or having a conversation in Japanese. Just say “Hey Meta” to start a live…

The Rokid Glasses are a completely different story, and opening them is a breeze. Just heat the seam with a hairdryer and it will come apart easily. Once inside, you’ll notice that they’ve put a lot of thot into making servicing easy. The battery connects with a simple press-fit connector and a couple of screws, eliminating the need for soldering, and the boards are secured in place with screws rather than glue. A single micro-OLED projector in the center divides the image between the two eyes, and it’s driven by an NXP chip and a Snapdragon processor, all to save power and improve efficiency. Cameras and speakers are where you’d expect them to be, yet nothing seems cramped, since everything has been thoughtfully planned to provide you simple access for future projects. The external pack attaches magnetically to the right arm and contains a 1.11 Wh battery that can be replaced without breaking a sweat.

Both pairs feature removable nose bridges, which is a nice touch. The external packs allow you to extend the life of your batteries without having to constantly recharge them, because let’s face it, lithium batteries lose capacity over time no matter how well you care for them. When they do, you’re left with an expensive, worthless set of spectacles, but the Rokid design suggests that this may not be necessary. A technician can easily replace out the battery without damaging the frame or optics.

iFixit has demonstrated that it is not impossible to design for upgradeability and replaceability. Google’s Pixel Watch 4 and Fairphone’s Fairbuds have demonstrated that a battery can be replaced, just like any other smart gadget, and wearables are not some sort of special snowflake, since they face the same size and durability requirements as any other product. The EU plans to require replaceable batteries in all types of electronics by 2027, but wearables are exempt. Companies said that it was too difficult to achieve in a wearable. The Rokid teardown debunks that claim, as it only requires some light adhesive, press connectors, and a modular external pack to create a pair of smart glasses that are still tiny and wearable.
[Source]

Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc’s Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

I first caught a glimpse of Intel’s new handheld silicon at Computex 2026, where I saw early hardware powered by it, including the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ and Acer Predator Atlas 8. But seeing a chip run a demo on a show floor and actually pushing it through real-world workloads are two very different things. When MSI eventually sent me the production Claw for a spin, I finally got that opportunity. I only had the device for a short time, but that brief window was enough to make one thing clear: Intel’s Arc G3 Extreme is a seriously capable handheld gaming platform.

Built for the handheld watt wars

What makes it particularly interesting is that this isn’t simply another laptop processor squeezed into a smaller chassis. Intel has built the Arc G3 Extreme specifically for handheld gaming, with its power envelope and platform tuned around portable workloads. At its heart sits the Arc B390 GPU, based on Intel’s Xe3 architecture, with 12 Xe-cores, hardware ray tracing and up to 113 TOPS of INT8 GPU compute. The chip also features 14 CPU cores, an NPU and support for up to LPDDR5X-8533 memory.

That distinction matters because handheld gaming is ultimately a battle for watts. There is only so much power available, and every watt spent on CPU performance is potentially a watt that could have gone towards graphics. Arc G3 Extreme takes a more graphics-focused approach, and after testing it, I think Intel has finally built a handheld chip that understands the assignment.

The test: How fast is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme?

There’s an important caveat before getting into the numbers. I only had the MSI Claw for a short testing window, so my dedicated synthetic and gaming benchmark runs were conducted at its 35W performance setting. I therefore wouldn’t present this as a comprehensive analysis of how Arc G3 Extreme behaves across every possible TDP level. Instead, these results show what Intel’s new handheld silicon can do when given a generous power budget.

And at 35W, the results are seriously impressive. Across my synthetic tests, the Arc G3 Extreme delivered the kind of performance I simply haven’t seen from an Intel-powered handheld before. The CPU is capable enough to deliver laptop-class performance, but the real star is the Arc B390 GPU. I found the Arc G3 Extreme comfortably ahead of AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme in its gaming tests. In fact, the Claw is the most powerful handheld gaming PC I’ve tested.

The gaming results are even more telling. Across the titles and settings I tested, the Arc G3 Extreme consistently delivered the kind of performance that makes 1080p gaming genuinely viable on a handheld. More importantly, it doesn’t need to lean entirely on upscaling to get there. Native performance is already strong, while XeSS 3 provides additional headroom in supported games. Intel isn’t merely catching up anymore. It’s competing at the very top of the handheld performance stack.

The interesting part isn’t just performance

Raw performance is only half the story with a handheld. Give a chip 35W, and it should be fast. The more difficult question is what happens when the power budget comes down.

I didn’t have enough time with the Claw to build a comprehensive 17W, 20W, and 25W benchmark suite, so I took a different approach. I wanted to test efficiency the way a regular gamer would actually experience it. I switched to Endurance Mode and spent several hours playing Sleeping Dogs. The result? More than four hours of continuous gameplay, without turning the experience into a compromised version of the game. That is particularly interesting because the same silicon that can deliver this level of performance at 35W can scale down into a genuinely usable, battery-conscious gaming platform.

Then there’s standby behaviour, which might be my favourite efficiency improvement. The Claw’s idle drain was practically non-existent during my testing. Leave it in sleep mode overnight, and it wakes up with almost the same battery percentage. That’s a surprisingly important quality-of-life feature for a Windows handheld because nothing kills the convenience of portable gaming faster than picking up the device to find a dead battery.

Intel’s handheld redemption is real

I’ve tested most of the mainstream handhelds, from the Steam Deck and ROG Ally to the ROG Ally X and other AMD-powered devices, and based on that experience, the Arc G3 Extreme is comfortably the most powerful handheld platform I’ve tested. The performance advantage is especially noticeable in demanding AAA games, but Intel isn’t simply brute-forcing its way there with more watts; the chip also scales intelligently when the workload gets lighter.

Of course, there’s some context worth acknowledging. AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme launched around a year earlier, giving Intel plenty of time to study the handheld market, improve its drivers and close the gap. And the first Arc G3 Extreme devices are expensive enough that this isn’t about to become a mainstream replacement for the Steam Deck or ROG Ally overnight. But the price of the hardware doesn’t change what Intel has achieved with the silicon. Intel has finally arrived in handheld gaming, and it has done so with enough performance to compete with AMD at the top end, while bringing the efficiency to make that performance genuinely useful away from the charger.

The first Claw showed that Intel wasn’t ready. The Arc G3 Extreme shows that Intel finally is.

Bad news for anyone who was hoping for some relief from the memory shortage — Digitimes is reporting that the production capacity of major players such as Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix has already been booked for 2027 due to record demand. Their industry sources indicate that what we’re experiencing currently is just a prelude to when things get really ugly, which is why customers are paying a premium to lock in their orders so far out.

Although there’s been no official word from either side of the transaction, the Digitimes article further points out that these sort of agreements are usually 3 to 5 year contracts. If that’s the case, and nothing changes in supply and demand equation, we could be in for a very rough ride. There’s a potential opportunity here for other manufacturers to step in and start producing DRAM, possibly even focusing on lower-performance offerings intended for the consumer market, but setting up those production lines isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s always possible the AI bubble could pop in the next couple of years, but we’re not sure we’d put money on it.

There’s a developing story this weekend about the breach of customer data over at Framework. The maker of modular and repairable computers has recently sent an email out to all customers that their names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses were leaked due to an upstream zero-day attack against database provider Metabase.

Metabase disclosed the breach on August 3rd, but we were mildly surprised to see that Framework doesn’t seem to have made any public acknowledgement of the event so far. As far as we can tell, the only reason there are copies of the email from them circulating online is because several customers posted it to social media. In their statements to sources such as TechCrunch, Framework reps were also hesitant to give hard details such as how many customers were impacted. While we’re fans of what Framework is trying to do in terms of hardware customization and repairability, we have to admit that being cagey about this sort of thing isn’t a good look.

If you’re looking to vent about this situation and others like it with similarly-minded folks, HOPE 26 will be the perfect place to do it. We’re just days away from the New York hacker con, and there are less than 150 tickets still available for anyone who’s still undecided about going. At this point, it seems likely there won’t be any ticket sales at the door.

Luckily, there’s no shortage of virtual tickets which will let you experience the event from the comfort of your own basement. Since their week-long marathon event during COVID, HOPE has offered a better virtual experience than most hacker cons, so ticket holders can look forward to more than just a YouTube link.

As reported by Neowin, developer Justin Marshall has ported Word for Windows 1.1a to Microsoft’s modern incarnation of the operating system on 64-bit hardware. Rather than running it in some emulator, Justin took the source code that Microsoft released back in 2014 and rewrote the bits that relied on the early 90s platform it was intended for.

While we’re not sure the lawyers in Redmond are going to lose much sleep over somebody hacking around with a 35 year old version of Word, it’s worth mentioning that the Microsoft Research License that the code was released under back in 2014 allows access to the source for personal use but specifically forbids redistribution.

To comply with the letter of the law on this one, our read on it is that this project should have been made public as a series of patches against that release rather than bundling in Microsoft’s own code. In other words, if you’re interested in this one, you might want to pull down a local copy now in the event it goes down the memory hole.

Finally, Word isn’t the only decades-old piece of software getting a new lease on life in 2026. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Quake, and to celebrate Bethesda has unveiled a new chapter for the seminal first person shooter. Titled Dawn of the Machine, the update was created by a group of developers within MachineGames, who have not only been responsible for the modern Wolfenstein games but also 2024’s critically-acclaimed Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Although Quake may be 30 years young, it’s still available on pretty much everything, so you won’t need to break out your old DOS machine to get in on the action. The announcement page says the free update is available now for all current and previous-generation game consoles, as well as PC.

See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line; we’d love to hear about it.