After rolling it out on desktop and Android earlier in 2025, Google is finally bringing its built-in Gemini AI experience to iPhone and iPad. It offers new features like summarizing pages and helping you test your knowledge about a subject you’re learning. As with any AI tool, though, it shouldn’t be trusted for anything important given the possibility of hallucinations and other errors. 

When it arrives on your iOS device, tapping the spark icon at the left of the address bar (in place of the Google Lens camera) brings up a “Pages tool” that offers Lens and the new feature, “Ask Gemini.” You can then chat with Gemini about the current web page (by default) or any other topic. It may then offer suggestions that appear in the chat box like: 

• Summarize page: Tap to get key takeaways and insights that help you understand any topic.

• Create FAQ about this topic: Tap to get FAQs based on info from this page and similar sites.

If you elect to just type in the chat window, here are some examples of what you can do:

• Summarize key takeaways from an article

• Explain a complex topic in a different way

• Help you test your knowledge of a new subject you’re learning

• Modify a recipe to meet dietary needs

• Compare information or make recommendations based on your preferences

The response to your chat questions will float over the web page that then shifts to the background. A new chat can be started from the top right corner, and you’ll see a Liquid Glass overflow menu. 

For now, Gemini in Chrome on iPhone and iPad is only supported in the US with the browser language set to English. You need to be signed into Chrome and the feature doesn’t work in incognito mode. Google also noted that the feature is only available to users 18 and older and may not roll out to your device immediately. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/googles-gemini-ai-comes-to-chrome-on-iphone-and-ipad-130003432.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: OpenAI says the cyber capabilities of its frontier AI models are accelerating and warns Wednesday that upcoming models are likely to pose a “high” risk, according to a report shared first with Axios. The models’ growing capabilities could significantly expand the number of people able to carry out cyberattacks. OpenAI said it has already seen a significant increase in capabilities in recent releases, particularly as models are able to operate longer autonomously, paving the way for brute force attacks.

The company notes that GPT-5 scored a 27% on a capture-the-flag exercise in August, GPT-5.1-Codex-Max was able to score 76% last month. “We expect that upcoming AI models will continue on this trajectory,” the company says in the report. “In preparation, we are planning and evaluating as though each new model could reach ‘high’ levels of cybersecurity capability as measured by our Preparedness Framework.” “High” is the second-highest level, below the “critical” level at which models are unsafe to be released publicly. “What I would explicitly call out as the forcing function for this is the model’s ability to work for extended periods of time,” said OpenAI’s Fouad Matin.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Many years ago, I saw a tweet go around that said something like, “You have the same amount of hours in a day as Beyoncé.” On the one hand, that was annoying, because while it’s true, I don’t have the same amount of resources. Still, yes, everyone has the same amount of hours in a day—point made.

But as it turns out, what may be more important thing to understand is that we all have the same amount of hours in a week. That’s the basis for the “168 method,” so named for the number of hours in a week. This productivity technique calls on you to expand your thinking around how much time you really have to get everything done, and act accordingly.

What is the 168 method? 

This idea comes from Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. (Straightforward!) This is one of the few productivity books I recommend, because its premise is actually novel and actionable. The guiding point of the book is that when you think of your time in longer spans, like a week, you realize you have plenty of it and can get things done pretty easily. When you consider an average day, by comparison, you may come to the conclusion you don’t have enough time to do everything you need to do, so you’ll either make excuses or sacrifices, neither of which are helpful in getting it all taken care of. 

When you start thinking about your time on a bigger scale, you can stop letting the daily grind wear you down and breathe a little easier with the knowledge that you actually have a bunch of hours to work with. You can make a longer-term plan, expanding your timelines ever so slightly without giving yourself too much time to take on a given project (which is also a bad thing that can derail productivity).

How to use the 168 method to get more done

Your first task here is to start tracking your time, and I mean militantly. You can use a time tracking software, calendar or scheduling software, a planner, or a regular old spreadsheet, but you have to be diligent and you have to be honest. For at least a week, mark down everything you did and the time it took you to do it, for the full 24 hours of each of the seven days. That includes sleeping, loafing, working, showering, commuting—everything. Be detailed, too. Don’t just mark down “working” from 9 a.m, to 5 p.m. List out the tasks you worked on and for how long, the breaks you took and what you did, and any extra work you did outside of those hours. 

At the end of the week (or two or three weeks, if you’re feeling particularly serious), assess the data by conducting an objective after-action review. Did you need to spend two hours answering emails on Tuesday, or could it have been done in half an hour? What were the distractions that dragged that out? Did you spend as much time on a hobby as you wanted to? If not, when could it have fit in? Maybe Thursday night, when you were scrolling social media? And how did that scrolling make you feel? Was it a necessary moment of unwinding, or would you have felt more accomplished if you’d headed to the gym? (Don’t be too quick to write off your downtime, though, as breaks are also integral to productivity.)

Your answers to these questions will be subjective. There’s nothing inherently wrong with chilling out and doing nothing, or sleeping in, or even dragging your feet on a task. But by laying out a clear, visual schedule showing everything you did (and didn’t do), you can see exactly where, within that 168 hours, you could have done something else. You can then use this data to better plan your future to-do lists and activities. If you know you have some extra time on Wednesday nights, maybe that’s when you should practice the piano or clean the kitchen. If you know you’re taking more time than you need to on compiling inventories at work, cut that down and use the extra minutes for another task. The value in this method isn’t in shaming yourself about how you allocate your time, but in broadening your understanding of that time into a full week, where you almost certainly will find you have unaccounted-for hours that can be put toward the things you didn’t think you had time to do. 

I’m not saying you’ll emerge from this journey on the same level as Beyoncé, but you’ll be on a better level than you were before, which is a start. 

Qualcomm is the undisputed sovereign of mobile connectivity. For over a decade, Snapdragon has been the heartbeat of the Android ecosystem, a technical marvel of efficiency and integration. Yet distinct from Qualcomm’s mobile triumphs, it has a haunting history of struggling to break out of its cellular silo. As the company pivots toward the lucrative AI cloud data center market, the writing is unfortunately already on the wall.

By analyzing the historical playbook of successful market disruption—and Qualcomm’s recent inability to execute it in the laptop space—it becomes clear that its data center effort is likely destined for the same underwhelming fate as its AI PC initiative.

The Playbook for Dethroning Giants

To understand why Qualcomm is struggling, we must first look at what success looks like. Displacing a dominant market leader is not about matching specifications; it is about changing the gravity of the ecosystem. History provides clear examples of how this is done, and in every case, it required a “killer app” available at launch.

When Microsoft decided to enter the console market, Sony’s PlayStation was an unstoppable juggernaut. Microsoft didn’t just ship a box with a hard drive; it secured Bungie and Halo: Combat Evolved. It understood that hardware is merely a stage for software. Without Halo, the Xbox would have likely been a footnote. Microsoft ensured that on day one, there was a compelling, exclusive reason to abandon the incumbent.

Apple followed a similar trajectory with the iPod and iPhone. The iPod was not the first MP3 player, but it was the first to launch with the iTunes ecosystem, solving the music acquisition problem that plagued early rivals. Later, the iPhone’s dominance wasn’t secured by the touchscreen alone, but by the rapid deployment of the App Store. Apple ensured that developers had a lucrative reason to populate its hardware with utility. In both cases, the “newcomer” didn’t just offer an alternative; it offered a complete, superior reality that the incumbent couldn’t immediately replicate.

The Transmeta Trap: The Danger of Premature Announcements

Conversely, the tech graveyard is littered with companies that ignored the importance of timing. The most pertinent warning for Qualcomm is the saga of Transmeta.

In the late 1990s, Transmeta promised to revolutionize computing with chips that were drastically more power-efficient than Intel’s, using software “code morphing” to translate x86 instructions. However, Transmeta made a fatal error: it announced its revolution far too early and generated years of hype before it had a shippable product or a verified ecosystem.

This premature celebration gave Intel the one thing a monopoly should never be gifted: time. Alerted to the threat of low-power computing, Intel pivoted, pouring resources into what eventually became the Centrino platform. By the time Transmeta finally shipped, Intel had neutralized the advantage. Qualcomm appears to be suffering from this same “announcement-itis,” telegraphing its punches at NVIDIA years before it can land them, giving the AI giant ample time to fortify its CUDA moat.

The AI PC Stumble: Failing the “Easy” Test

Qualcomm’s current struggle to gain traction with the “AI PC” and Copilot+ initiative is the smoking gun for future cloud struggles. This should have been the easy win, particularly if it had (which it didn’t) leveraged its connectivity advantage.

Consider the landscape: The modern laptop market is incredibly similar to the tablet market where Qualcomm already shines. The customers are identical; the person buying a high-end iPad Pro is the same demographic buying a Dell XPS or Surface Laptop. The channels are identical; these devices are sold in the same Best Buy aisles, the same carrier stores and arguably have the same supply chain logistics. Even the form factors—slabs of glass and metal with keyboards—are converging.

Despite these massive advantages and the “home court” feel of consumer electronics, Qualcomm’s AI PC launch has been fraught with compatibility issues and consumer apathy. It launched without a “Halo” moment. There was no single application that ran so much better on Snapdragon than on Intel/AMD that it forced a switch. Instead, users were asked to tolerate emulation layers and gaming incompatibilities for the sake of battery life—a trade-off the market has largely rejected.

If Qualcomm cannot leverage its massive mobile dominance to succeed in a market that is 90% identical to its core business, the prognosis for a market that is 100% different is grim.

The Data Center Cliff: A Different Beast Entirely

This brings us to the data center. If the AI PC was an adjacent neighborhood, the AI data center is a different planet.

The similarities that existed in the PC market—channels, customers, form factors—are non-existent here. Qualcomm cannot sell AI server chips at Verizon or Best Buy. The customers are not consumers, but hyperscalers like AWS, Google and Azure, along with CIOs of Fortune 500 companies. These buyers do not care about “all-day battery life.” They care about Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), software stability and developer velocity.

The barrier to entry here is not hardware; it is NVIDIA’s CUDA. CUDA is the operating system of AI. It is a fifteen-year-old fortress of libraries, tools and optimized kernels. For Qualcomm to win, it doesn’t just need a chip that is 10% faster or cheaper; it needs a software stack that allows a developer to switch from NVIDIA to Qualcomm with zero friction.

Currently, Qualcomm’s data center offering lacks this. It’s trying to sell a standalone hardware solution to a software problem. Just as it failed to ensure top-tier games ran perfectly on its AI PCs at launch, Qualcomm seemed unprepared to ensure that the sprawling landscape of AI frameworks runs flawlessly on its cloud silicon. It’s walking into the most hostile market in tech without a map.

What Qualcomm Must Learn to Survive

If Qualcomm hopes to break this losing streak, it must undergo a radical philosophical shift.

First, it must learn silence. Stop announcing “NVIDIA Killers” three years out. Develop in the dark, build the alliances and launch only when the strike can be fatal.

Second, Qualcomm must prioritize software over silicon. The reason the iPhone worked was the App Store; the reason Xbox worked was Halo. Qualcomm needs to pay developers, acquire software firms and build a library of optimized models that makes its hardware the only logical choice for specific workloads. It cannot rely on open-source goodwill to build its drivers.

Wrapping Up

Qualcomm is a titan of mobile, but its repeated inability to translate that success into adjacent markets points to a fundamental misunderstanding of how ecosystems are built. It’s attempting to replicate the “Transmeta” model—hype and hardware specs—rather than the “Xbox” model—ecosystem and killer apps. The AI PC was the test run, a relatively simple transition that Qualcomm is currently fumbling. The data center is the final boss, a market with zero leverage points for a mobile-first company. Unless Qualcomm can fundamentally alter its DNA to become a software-first ecosystem builder, its cloud efforts will likely dissolve into the same vaporware history as its predecessors.

Tourists from Europe and other regions could be asked to provide a five-year social media history before given entry to the United States, according to a new proposal from the US Customs and Border Protection service (CBP). The new rule would affect visitors from countries who normally enjoy relatively easy entry to the US via the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA).

The new proposal cites an executive order issued by President Trump from January titled “Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.” In his first year in office, Trump has been hyper-focused on strengthening US borders and reducing what he calls illegal immigration. 

The US state department will conduct “online presence” reviews for applicants and their dependents and require privacy settings on social media profiles to be made “public.” Applicants must list all the social media handles they’ve used over the last five years and if any information is omitted, it could lead to the denial of current and future visas. The CBP didn’t say what information they were looking for or what could be disqualifying. 

On top of the social media information, CBP may require applicant’s telephone numbers and email addresses used over the last five and 10 years respectively, along with information about family members. 

The new conditions are liable to increase ESTA wait times and drastically boost the cost of enforcing it. The CPB’s document suggests that an additional 5,598,115 man-hours would be required per year, or around 3,000 full-time jobs plus all the costs that entails. Right now, the ESTA application costs $40, allows people to visit the US for 90 days at a time and is valid for a two-year period. 

The mandatory social media reporting and other requirements could discourage travelers. Some Australian tourists who were coming to the US for the upcoming World Cup have now said that they’ve abandoned those plans, according to The Guardian, with one person calling the new rules “horrifying.”

However, when asked if the proposal could lead to a tourism decline in the US, Trump said he wasn’t concerned. “No. We’re doing so well,” he told a reporter. “We want to make sure we’re not letting the wrong people come enter our country.” 

The CPB emphasized that the new conditions were only a proposal for now. “Nothing has changed on this front for those coming to the United States [currently],” a spokesperson told the BBC. “This is not a final rule, it is simply the first step in starting a discussion to have new policy options to keep the American people safe.” 

If implemented, the rule would affect people from 40 countries, including the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Australia and Japan. The largest number of tourists to the US come from Canada and Mexico, accounting for nearly half of the total — however, visitors with passports from those two countries don’t require a visa or ESTA approval. Travel to the US was down three percent this year compared to 2024 as of August 2025, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/us-could-demand-five-year-social-media-history-from-tourists-before-allowing-entry-102751243.html?src=rss

schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: perm from a donor who unknowingly carried a cancer-causing gene has been used to conceive nearly 200 babies across Europe, an investigation by 14 European public service broadcasters, including CBS News’ partner network BBC News, has revealed. Some children conceived using the sperm have already died from cancer, and the vast majority of those who inherited the gene will develop cancer in their lifetimes, geneticists said. The man carrying the gene passed screening checks before he became a donor at the European Sperm Bank when he was a student in 2005. His sperm has been used by women trying to conceive for 17 years across multiple countries.

The cancer-causing mutation occurred in the donor’s TP53 gene — which prevents cells in the body from turning cancerous — before his birth, according to the investigation. It causes Li Fraumeni syndrome, which gives affected people a 90% chance of developing cancers, particularly during childhood, as well as breast cancer in later life. Up to 20% of the donor’s sperm contained the mutated TP53 gene. Any children conceived with affected sperm will have the dangerous mutation in every cell of their body. The affected donor sperm was discovered when doctors seeing children with cancers linked to sperm donation raised concerns at this year’s European Society of Human Genetics.

At the time, 23 children with the genetic mutation had been discovered, out of 67 children linked to the donor. Ten of those children with the mutation had already been diagnosed with cancer. Freedom of Information requests submitted by journalists across multiple countries revealed at least 197 children were affected, though it is not known how many inherited the genetic mutation. More affected children could be discovered as more data becomes available.

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NASA has lost contact with its MAVEN Mars orbiter after it passed behind Mars. When it remerged from behind the planet, the spacecraft never resumed communications. SpaceNews reports: MAVEN launched in November 2013 and entered orbit around Mars in September 2014. The spacecraft’s primary science mission is to study the planet’s upper atmosphere and interactions with the solar wind, including how the atmosphere escapes into space. That is intended to help scientists understand how the planet changes from early in its history, when it had a much thicker atmosphere and was warm enough to support liquid water on its surface.

MAVEN additionally serves as a communications relay, using a UHF antenna to link the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on the Martian surface with the Deep Space Network. NASA’s Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft also serve as communications relays for the rovers, but are both significantly older than MAVEN. The spacecraft has suffered some technical problems in the past, notably with its inertial measurement units (IMUs) used for navigation. In 2022, MAVEN switched to an “all-stellar” navigation system to minimize the use of the IMUs.

MAVEN has enough propellant to maintain its orbit through at least the end of the decade. NASA’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, though, zeroed out funding for MAVEN, which cost $22.6 million to operate in 2024. MAVEN was one of several missions “operating well past the end of prime mission” the proposal would terminate, despite MAVEN’s role as a communications relay.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple on Wednesday released its annual list of the most downloaded apps and games for the year. For the U.S. market, OpenAI’s ChatGPT topped the ranks of free iPhone apps (not including games) with the most installs in 2025. The AI app was followed by Threads, Google, TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail, and Google’s Gemini. ChatGPT made it to No. 4 last year, but the top spot was taken by Chinese shopping app Temu. In 2023, the AI app didn’t make the top-10 list despite being released on the iPhone in May 2023 to a strong debut.

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A startup called Operation Bluebird is petitioning the US Patent and Trademark Office to strip X Corp of the “Twitter” and “tweet” trademarks, hoping to relaunch a new Twitter with the old brand, bird logo, and “town square” vibe. “The TWITTER and TWEET brands have been eradicated from X Corp.’s products, services, and marketing, effectively abandoning the storied brand, with no intention to resume use of the mark,” the petition states. “The TWITTER bird was grounded.” Ars Technica reports: If successful, two leaders of the group tell Ars, Operation Bluebird would launch a social network under the name Twitter.new, possibly as early as late next year. (Twitter.new has created a working prototype and is already inviting users to reserve handles.)

Michael Peroff, an Illinois attorney and founder of Operation Bluebird, said that in the intervening years, more Twitter-like social media networks have sprung up or gained traction — like Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. But none have the scale or brand recognition that Twitter did prior to Musk’s takeover. “There certainly are alternatives,” Peroff said. “I don’t know that any of them at this point in time are at the scale that would make a difference in the national conversation, whereas a new Twitter really could.”

Similarly, Peroff’s business partner, Stephen Coates, an attorney who formerly served as Twitter’s general counsel, said that Operation Bluebird aims to recreate some of the magic that Twitter once had. “I remember some time ago, I’ve had celebrities react to my content on Twitter during the Super Bowl or events,” he told Ars. “And we want that experience to come back, that whole town square, where we are all meshed in there.” “Mere ‘token use’ won’t be enough to reserve the mark,” said Mark Lemley, a Stanford Law professor and expert in trademark law. “Or [X] could defend if it can show that it plans to go back to using Twitter. Consumers obviously still know the brand name. It seems weird to think someone else could grab the name when consumers still associate it with the ex-social media site of that name. But that’s what the law says.”

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Because time is moving at warp speed and Christmas is just 15 days away (despite my best efforts to slow it down so I have time to make meaningful gifts instead of grabbing a bunch of gift cards at the grocery store checkout like I’m going to do), this is a video from There I Ruined It (previously) of Christmas classic ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’ mashed up with Radiohead’s ‘Creep’. I’m not gonna lie, it’s a banger. I just blasted it at max volume for my girlfriend but she stared daggers at me and told me to turn it off. To the song’s credit though, she was on an important business call.

NASA has lost contact with one its three spacecraft orbiting Mars, the agency announced Tuesday. Meanwhile, a second Mars orbiter is perilously close to running out of fuel, and the third mission is running well past its warranty.

Ground teams last heard from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft on Saturday, December 6. “Telemetry from MAVEN had showed all subsystems working normally before it orbited behind the red planet,” NASA said in a short statement. “After the spacecraft emerged from behind Mars, NASA’s Deep Space Network did not observe a signal.”

NASA said mission controllers are “investigating the anomaly to address the situation. More information will be shared once it becomes available.”

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EU regulators say Google’s Play Store changes still don’t meet fairness rules and are preparing a potentially hefty 2026 fine unless Google makes deeper concessions. Reuters reports: Google Play has been in the European Commission’s crosshairs since March, with regulators singling out technical restrictions preventing app developers from steering users to other channels for cheaper offers. Another issue is the service fee charged by Google for facilitating an app developer’s initial acquisition of a new customer via Google Play which the regulator said goes beyond what is justified.

Tweaks to Google Play announced in August to make it easier for app developers to direct customers to other channels and choose a fee model are still falling short, the people said, with the EU antitrust regulator viewing Apple’s recent changes to its App Store as a benchmark. […] Google can still offer to make more changes before regulators impose a fine, likely in the first quarter of the next year, the people said, adding that the timing of any sanction can still change. “We continue to work closely with the European Commission in its ongoing investigation but have serious concerns that further changes would put Android and Play users at risk of malware, scams and data theft. Unlike iOS, Android is already open by design,” a Google spokesperson said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Indie game developer Edmund McMillen hosted a Reddit AMA today offering some more details about his upcoming game Mewgenics. For starters, the Steam release date for this turn-based cat-breeding RPG has been slightly delayed to February 10. The game was first announced all the way back in 2012 and had most recently been slated for a launch some time this year. Part of the long development cycle was so that McMillen could pause to launch Super Meat Boy Forever, the sequel to his Super Meat Boy platforming hit from 2010. Gamers may also know McMillen for The Binding of Isaac, which has had some notable crossovers with titles like Balatro in recent years.   

Other tidbits from the AMA include the promise that McMillen already has DLC ideas, so expect to have additional content release after the base game is available. Although there doesn’t seem to be any lack of replayability in Mewgenics; McMillen said “I currently have 300+ hours across 2 saves and have only beaten the game on one save so far.” There is also a plan to have some console versions of the game, although likely not until much later next year at the soonest, the dev added.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/mewgenics-the-next-game-from-the-binding-of-isaacs-developer-will-arrive-next-february-on-pc-235740063.html?src=rss

This is a video of acrobat and glizzy performance artist Jacob Grégoire performing a series of hot dog tricks. Apparently Jacob is one of Peter Pan’s Lost Boys and never grew out of playing with his food. I respect that. Damn he make them wieners look good! I can’t even begin to guess how many mornings I’ve had a cold hot dog for breakfast, but I guarantee even a tenth of the answer would disgust you.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On Tuesday, India’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade released a proposed framework that would give AI companies access to all copyrighted works for training in exchange for paying royalties to a new collecting body composed of rights-holding organizations, with payments then distributed to creators. The proposal argues that this “mandatory blanket license” would lower compliance costs for AI firms while ensuring that writers, musicians, artists, and other rights holders are compensated when their work is scraped to train commercial models. […]

The eight-member committee, formed by the Indian government in late April, argues the system would avoid years of legal uncertainty while ensuring creators are compensated from the outset. Defending the system, the committee says in a 125-page submission (PDF) that a blanket license “aims to provide an easy access to content for AI developers reduce transaction costs [and] ensure fair compensation for rightsholders,” calling it the least burdensome way to manage large-scale AI training. The submission adds that the single collecting body would function as a “single window,” eliminating the need for individual negotiations and enabling royalties to flow to both registered and unregistered creators.

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SpaceX is planning to raise tens of billions of dollars through an initial public offering next year, multiple outlets have reported, and Ars can confirm. This represents a major change in thinking from the world’s leading space company and its founder, Elon Musk.

The Wall Street Journal and The Information first reported about a possible IPO last Friday, and Bloomberg followed that up on Tuesday evening with a report suggesting the company would target a $1.5 trillion valuation. This would allow SpaceX to raise in excess of $30 billion.

This is an enormous amount of funding. The largest IPO in history occurred in 2019, when the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company began public trading as Aramco and raised $29 billion. In terms of revenue, Aramco is a top-five company in the world.

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RAM, also known as random-access memory (or just memory for short), is an important part of most electronics these days. It essentially allows programs to keep key information at the ready so they don’t have to dig through your storage (like your hard drive or solid state drive) to find it. RAM is in laptops, phones, tablets, gaming consoles, and even cars, and all apps rely on it at least a little bit.

Essentially, if your device has a computer in it, it probably comes with RAM equipped, or it’ll want you to install some before it’ll boot up. But that dependency has become a big problem recently. While RAM has historically been one of the cheaper components for home techies to buy, over the past few months, RAM has gotten much more expensive, going from an afterthought on many people’s budgets to something you have to save for.

There are a few reasons for that, but even if you’re not a hardcore PC builder and you’re not buying RAM outright, these price jumps could still affect you in the long term.

What happened?

Like with most tech shakeups these days, the big reason for the sudden explosion in RAM pricing is AI. Citing trade research firm TrendForce and Korean publication The Chosun Daily, Lifehacker sister site PCMag started reporting on shifting RAM prices in October, and it’s only gotten worse since.

According to these analysts and industry insiders, manufacturers have slowly been focusing more of their attention on RAM specifically meant for AI data centers, with Samsung and SK Hynix in particular prioritizing production of high bandwidth memory that consumer goods don’t use. Tom’s Hardware backed this up with its own reporting in October, saying that these companies have devoted what may be around 40% of global RAM output to a single AI project—OpenAI’s Stargate project. Those are two out of the three biggest RAM makers right now, and while all this was followed by a bombshell last week, the situation already didn’t look good as we entered fall, with a shortage beginning to affect consumer prices.

“This is insanity,” wrote one Reddit user in October, with more pessimism coming around Black Friday, when other users and even publications like other Lifehacker sister site Mashable noticed that some RAM was selling for as high as four-figures, during what was supposedly a sales season.

But the largest RAM price hikes hit at the start of December, following an announcement from the last remaining major RAM producer—Micron. The company, long known for its consumer-focused Crucial series, said it would be leaving the consumer RAM business in 2026 to focus on AI, bringing an end to Crucial’s 30-year history in the process. Since then, RAM prices across several products have jumped even higher, even as RAM producers report doubled profits over last year.

Essentially, as Gartner analyst Shrish Plant told The Verge, “If you are not a server customer, you will be considered a second priority for memory vendors.”

How expensive is RAM now?

While all computer component prices fluctuate, RAM has usually been among the cheaper ones, generally coming in under $100 for a respectable amount from a good brand, or closer to $150 for an upgrade. Those days, it seems, have gone out the window.

A streamer and TikToker I follow, Christian Divyne, recently posted that a RAM kit he bought in April for $90 is now over $400, and he’s not alone. I’ve seen this sentiment all over social media lately, so to check it myself, I went through PCMag’s list of the best RAM for gaming in 2025, and here are the price differences I found from August of 2025 to now.

• G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 32 GB DDR5-7200, was $110 in August, $360 now.

• G.Skill Trident Z5 64 GB DDR5-6400 CL32, was $170 in August, $640 now.

• G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB DDR4-3600, was $46 in August, $105 now.

While this is a small selection of RAM, it’s clear these higher prices are present across the whole industry. PCPartPicker, a popular site where PC building enthusiasts rate parts for their machines, currently says its highest rated RAM is $407, with competing memory often hitting similar highs. Essentially, it’s now difficult to find any RAM below $100, and most likely, you’ll need to pay two or three times more than you might have earlier in the year.

These price jumps are most apparent when buying RAM directly, which mostly affects PC builders, but others will likely feel the crunch soon.

How is more expensive RAM going to affect me?

So far, I’ve only focused on higher prices for people buying RAM outright, which mostly affects PC builders. But if you prefer to buy your tech pre-built, don’t assume that means you won’t end up paying more, too. Laptop, tablet, and phone makers all need to get RAM from somewhere, and as prices increase, they’ll also be affected.

Already, prices at companies like CyberPowerPC, which offers pre-built desktops, have gone up, and modular laptop maker Framework has announced that it will soon follow suit. Even Raspberry Pi, known for making cheap single board computers for home projects, was forced to raise prices on its most recent flagship, while calling out memory costs as the reason.

All of those products are aimed more at enthusiasts, sure, but consider them the canary in the coal mine. Leaker Moore’s Law is Dead recently suggested RAM prices could lead to another price hike for the Xbox, while Dell COO Jeff Clarke said in a recent earnings call that “the fact is, the cost basis is going up across all products.”

Some companies are doing their best to keep consumers from feeling the effects of the shortage. Bloomberg recently reported that Lenovo is currently stockpiling RAM to try to “strike a balance between price and availability” for consumers in 2026, while HP said it might limit the memory inside its devices, but could still end up having to raise prices.

In short, it’s a tough time to be buying tech, even if you’re more casual with your devices. And it might affect more than RAM, too—speaking to The Verge, Research VP at IDC Jeff Janukowicz suggested some companies might skimp on other components, like battery or display, to help avoid raising prices due to increased memory costs. He also suggested that more affordable devices, where corners have already been cut as much as possible, could end up seeing more price increases than others.

Will RAM prices go back to normal?

As Dell COO Jeff Clarke mentioned in that earnings call, this isn’t the first time RAM prices have fluctuated, but he did admit this particular bump is “unprecedented.” While I’d agree that’s true for memory, it does remind me of the graphics card price hikes that happened around the early 2020s.

Graphics card demand is still not a solved problem, as those components are also very useful for AI, but towards the start of the decade, it became very difficult for gamers to get their hands on GPUs, especially for close to MSRP. That was thanks to demand from cryptocurrency miners, which was high enough that Nvidia actually started making its cards worse at mining. Manufacturers reported thereafter that demand was drying up, largely in response to changes in how cryptocurrency works and lowered interest in cryptocurrency overall.

While the AI bubble hasn’t popped (yet), it’s possible RAM could follow a similar cycle if interest in AI starts to cool. Otherwise, it’ll be up to manufacturers to balance supply and demand.

Going back to Clarke’s comments, he said “I’d categorize it as demand is way ahead of supply.” On that note, while Micron is supposedly getting out of the consumer RAM game, Samsung and SK Hynix haven’t stayed silent on the issue.

As reported by Korean outlet Seoul Economic Daily, SK Hynix is planning to spend $500 billion to build new production plants, with the first set to open in 2027. The company also told The Verge that, concerning consumer products, it “is not considering to discontinue the related business.” So, supply could see a boost in coming years.

At the same time, it’s difficult to know for sure when the RAM shortage will clear up. Contrasting SK Hynix, Samsung recently said during an investor relations call (as translated by PCGamer and originally reported on by Tech Insight) that it won’t be “rapidly expanding facilities,” and will instead pursue a much harder to define plan of “maintaining long-term profitability.” Tech Insight took the opportunity to speculate that RAM prices could remain high through 2028.

In short, it’s clear that the market is still volatile, and that companies are still figuring out ways to address pricing. I can’t say for certain when RAM prices will drop again, but going on what those in the industry are saying, as well as similar issues with GPUs in the past, it seems like the key indicators here would be a reduced interest in AI, or increased production capacity.

What if I need to buy RAM now?

In the meantime, because so many electronics need RAM, you may find yourself needing to bite the bullet and buy during the shortage. If that’s the case, here are the best ways to buy RAM right now.

• Buy prebuilt. While smaller prebuilt device manufacturers are already increasing prices, it’s clear that larger device makers like Lenovo are doing their best to keep their customers from feeling the shortage. Right now, Apple has yet to raise prices on MacBooks or the iPhone 17, and devices like the Pixel 10 and Microsoft Surface Laptop are actually on sale. Historically, buying a computer prebuilt instead of building it yourself has come at a premium, but during a component shortage, a large company is going to have more avenues to mitigate costs than you.

• Use less RAM. While I wouldn’t suggest going for less than 8GB of RAM, most users shouldn’t need more than 16GB, even if they want to game. More headroom is good when you can get it, and while it’s been a good suggestion to err on the side of caution in the past, as prices get higher, it might be better to figure out the bare minimum you can skate by with for now.

• Buy now, or choose to wait. This one sounds a bit contradictory, but basically, I wouldn’t expect RAM prices to normalize anytime soon. Take a look at your needs and figure out whether you need a new laptop, PC, phone, tablet, or game console anytime soon. If so, it might be worth going in on one now, before manufacturers like Dell, HP, or even Xbox have a chance to raise prices. If you think you can hold out for a few more years, though, it might be better off waiting to see how the situation plays out rather than trying to build during a shortage. Either way, make your decision soon, because you probably won’t want to be buying RAM as supply starts to shrink even further through 2026.

Qualcomm has acquired RISC-V startup Ventana to strengthen its CPU ambitions beyond mobile, “reinforcing its commitment and leadership in the development of the RISC-V standard and ecosystem,” the company said in a press release. CRN Magazine reports: The San Diego-based company said Ventana’s expertise in RISC-V, a free and open alternative to the Arm and x86 instruction set architectures, will enhance its CPU engineering capabilities and complement “existing efforts to develop custom Oryon CPU technology.” Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Qualcomm, which has already been using RISC-V for some products outside the PC and server markets, said Ventana’s contributions will boost its “technology leadership in the AI era across all businesses,” indicating the broad impact expected by this acquisition. “We believe the RISC-V instruction set architecture has the potential to advance the frontier on CPU technology, enabling innovation across products,” Durga Malladi, executive vice president and general manager of technology planning, edge solutions and data center for Qualcomm, said in a statement. “The acquisition of Ventana Micro Systems marks a pivotal step in our journey to deliver industry-leading RISC-V-based CPU technology across products.”

Further reading: Qualcomm Is Buying Arduino, Releases New Raspberry Pi-Esque Arduino Board

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple released the latest 14-inch MacBook Pro with the powerful M5 chip this October, and ever since then, it has been steadily dropping in price—right now, it’s down to $1,349 (originally $1,599) for the base model. This new price is $50 cheaper than it was during Black Friday, when Lifehacker’s Senior Tech Editor Jake Peterson called it “a ridiculously good value.” At the time of this writing, Amazon is sold out of the base model, but it’s still available at Best Buy.

Apple 2025 MacBook Pro Laptop With M5 chip

10‑core CPU and 10‑core GPU

$1,349.00
at Best Buy

$1,599.00
Save $250.00

$1,349.00
at Best Buy

$1,599.00
Save $250.00

To be honest, this laptop is overkill for most people. The M4 MacBook Air is a more than capable laptop and will get the job done for under $800, but for those who need that extra oomph, like those who do media editing or complex programming, the MacBook Pro will be worth every penny. This is the first laptop Apple makes with the latest M5 chip, which offers significant upgrades in many aspects, like graphics performance compared to the M4.

In addition to performance improvements over the MacBook Air, the Pro model also has a fan, which the MacBook Airs don’t. This should help keep the machine’s temperature down and prevent performance hiccups.

This base model starts with a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU M5 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. PCMag says this laptop is so powerful that you can play most games without issues in its “outstanding” review. If you’re looking for the one of the best laptops Apple has to offer, this is likely the best price you’ll see on it for some time.

Longtime Slashdot reader MadCow42 writes: Canonical just announced that they’re packaging AMD’s ROCm libraries (for AIML and HPC with both data-center GPUs as well as desktop/laptop GPUs), directly into the Ubuntu Universe archive. You can run ROCm on Ubuntu today but you have to install it via a script from AMD and manually remove and reinstall for any upgrades or bug fixes. Having it in Ubuntu as a normal Debian package will make it much easier to install and also to maintain in the long run via normal apt tooling (‘apt upgrade’). This also means that ROCm can be an automatically-installed dependency for other packages, which doesn’t happen today.

And, interestingly, Canonical has committed to providing long-term-support for ROCm in Ubuntu — which is particularly exciting for edge and IoT devices that may have a long life in the field and need regular security patches and updates.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.