
Valve hiked Steam Deck prices by up to $300 as RAMageddon hits consumer electronics. Bloomberg detailed Apple's Siri overhaul ahead of WWDC, Meta rolls out subscription plans for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and Oura unveils a 40% smaller Ring 5.
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Brian McCullough
Welcome to the tech We Write home for Thursday, May 28, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Ramageddon is here, and consumer electronics
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prices might never be the same again.
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Bloomberg details Apple's Siri overhaul ahead of WWDC Meta rolls out subscription plans for Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, and Aura unveils a 40% smaller ring 5 here's what
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you missed today in the world of tech.
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So bad news everybody. The AI induced consumer electronic inflation apocalypse is officially here. If you wanted to buy the Steam Deck OLED today, it will now cost you as much as $300 more than
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it did last week.
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Quoting the Verge, Valve has significantly increased the price of the Steam Deck, but
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now it's also in stock.
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The 512 gigabyte Steam Deck OLED now costs $789, up from $549, while the 1 TB model costs $949, up from $649.
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As I write this, both models are available to buy on Steam with an estimated delivery date of three to five business days.
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The company says the price increase is because of rising memory and storage costs.
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Nothing about the Steam Deck has changed, but these new prices reflect the current
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state of component costs and other global
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logistical challenges across the industry as a whole. We'll keep you updated if some refurbished Steam Deck models are also currently available, including the 512 gigabyte OLED model at
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629 and the 1 TB OLED model at 759. In February, the company had updated the Steam Deck's store listing to say that
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the handheld gaming PC would be out
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of stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages.
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Memory and storage shortages have also created hurdles for Valve's planned launches of the
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Steam Machine and Steam Frame. The company originally wanted to launch those
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in early 2026, but due to the
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shortages, it now expects to ship at
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some point this year.
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Ramageddon hasn't just hit Valve. In April, Lenovo increased the price of
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the Legion Go two by hundreds of dollars, and Sony and Nintendo have announced price jumps for the PlayStation and Switch 2.
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But that's the point I'm trying to underline here.
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It comes first for games, but as
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long as this AI era is on
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us until chip capacity meets demand, unless
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the AI bubble pops, I think the relatively cheap consumer electronics era might be
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over for a while. Expect similar inflation for, say, laptops for cars. Even quoting the Verge again and again,
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this is about gaming. But extrapolate what they say here to
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any consumer electronics product with a memory chip in it.
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For a few glorious years, a $399 portable gadget could run almost anything you'd want to play in 2022, the Steam Deck finally made PC gaming portable and affordable.
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I played through the vast majority of Elden Ring on a Steam Deck agape
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that such a rich world could comfortably
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f between my two hands.
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Today, that Steam deck experience starts at $789, nearly double the price. Similarly, a Nintendo Switch costs $299 at launch.
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But after Nintendo's Switch 2 upgrades and
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changes in market conditions, the starting price of today's Nintendo handheld gaming experience will
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soon be $499 more than a diskless
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PC5 cost at launch, you might say. So what? Doesn't everything cost more right now?
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Well, welcome to Ramageddon tariffs and rising oil prices due to Trump's war on
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Iran, and I can't fully blame Nintendo or Valve. Heck, I credit them for being among the last to raise prices. Meanwhile, desktop PC gamers are beginning to worry their hobby may never be affordable again now that RAM and storage prices have skyrocketed and every chip maker is chasing AI servers.
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Nvidia isn't even officially a gaming company
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anymore at these prices. In today's world, we're just not talking
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about the same kind of product anymore. It's no longer you can afford to try a handheld and experience the joy of gaming everywhere.
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It's you probably have to choose a handheld instead of something else. That kind of zero sum thinking may impact the value of these handhelds in other ways too. One of the joys of the Steam
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Deck was how it made PlayStation's biggest games portable.
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But Sony reportedly won't bring its big single player games to PC anymore.
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It's taking that ball and going home. When I bought my steam deck in 2022, I wasn't sure it would pay off that I would truly become a handheld gamer again.
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I already had a perfectly good home
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built PC, but I didn't need to
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be sure it only cost $400. That's not pocket change, but it's not rent money either. I know I wouldn't have bought a
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thousand dollar handheld back then. I'm torn on whether I would now.
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German has some solid deets on the coming Siri overhaul Apple has redesigned Siri for modern iPhone hardware, making it live inside the Dynamic island as an always on agent that can help users get
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things done across the operating system and within apps.
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The system can draw on web data, personal information and what's on a user's screen to complete tasks. There are two starting points for Siri. The classic approach saying Siri or holding
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down the iPhone's power button is set
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to trigger a redesigned Siri animation in the Dynamic island, the pill shaped screen
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element that Apple introduced in 2022.
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That mode is best suited for voice based queries and search. The second method is entirely new. Apple plans to let users swipe down from the top center of the iPhone
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anywhere in the system to launch a new Searcher Ask interface. The notification center can now be opened by swiping down from the top left.
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That opens a revamped Siri experience designed
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for getting things done or searching by typing, though using voice remains an option.
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This menu also shows the same interface in the current iOS that displays Siri suggestions. That includes eight frequently used apps, functions
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like recent web searches or features like recording a voice memo. There's also a panel for showing the
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weather in the morning or evening. From there, users can launch apps, start text messages, ask about the weather, add calendar appointments, search through notes, trigger shortcuts within apps, or search the web using Apple's new AI powered search system, which competes with tools like Perplexity.
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Results are displayed in a rich text
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card that pops out of the Dynamic Island.
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Users can swipe down further to open
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a Chatbot style conversation inside the Siri app. Apple has also been testing ways to open up iOS 27 to third party AI agents installed through the App Store.
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The company already has a partnership with
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OpenAI's ChatGPT, and it has internally tested
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integrations for Siri and other AI features
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with Google's Gemini and Anth Claude.
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Users will be able to route queries directly to outside AI services from the search or Ask interface.
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There's a button that provides a drop
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down menu of external agent choices.
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The new Siri app itself looks and operates similarly to apps like Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT. The home screen includes a history of previous conversations so users can return to prior chats.
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This can be viewed either as a list or a collection of rectangles that summarize past chats.
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And the conversational interface offers a voice mode, text field and attachment picker for
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uploading documents and photos for context and analysis.
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Siri will be smarter too. In the interface planned by Apple, you
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can ask it for times you are available, for appointments before scheduling something, and for overlapping events. You can also ask the assistant to
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write emails, notes or text messages using information from the web and device content.
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That could include asking for a note to be created about how to fix
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a car engine or an email including your calendar availability Apple is also integrating Siri into the camera app as a dedicated mode alongside existing options like photo and video.
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The feature would replace today's visual intelligence
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experience and lets users take photos and have them analyzed by a third party
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AI agent or put them into a Google Reverse image search.
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Elevating the feature into the camera app
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rather than limiting it to the camera
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control button could increase adoption and help acclimate users to visual AI ahead of future products like smart glasses and camera equipped AirPods.
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End Quote.
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thing Meta has rolled out plus plans for Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp globally and is testing $7.99 per month and $19.99 per month Meta AI plans as well as a $49.99 per month Creator plan
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quoting TechCrunch for a few dollars per
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month, consumers subscribing to Instagram at $3.99, Facebook plus at $3.99 or WhatsApp for $2.99 a month will gain access to extra features like profile customization, super reactions and story insights, among other things.
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In an announcement, Meta's Head of Products Naomi Gleat noted that more fun features will be added in the future.
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Meanwhile, Meta will begin testing other offerings, including professional plans for creators and businesses and AI focused plans for all users.
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These new test branded as MetaOne, which will serve as the company's home for its subscription offerings going forward.
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The new plus plans are tailored to each individual app, with Facebook and Instagram
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focus more on social expression, while WhatsApp focuses on personalization and messaging.
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However, the company tells us the new plans don't replace its existing offering, Meta Verified, which is focused on verification, impersonation,
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protection and extra support.
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This could change in time, but for
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now Meta is not winding down the older plans.
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For starters, the new Instagram plus plan gives subscribers access to extra features.
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Features like the ability to see how many people have rewatched your story in aggregate, as well as the ability to create unlimited audience lists for stories. Beyond the close friends option, users will also be able to spotlight a story once a week for additional views, extend
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a story beyond 24 hours, preview a
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story without showing up as a viewer,
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search their story viewer list to see who is watching, and more.
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Users will also be able to post straight to their profile and highlight without showing up on their followers feed.
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There are also other features like Super Heart animation, reactions for stories, custom app
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icons, custom customizable fonts for profile bios, and access to additional pins for your profile. These features are designed to better serve creators and those looking to grow their
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following and understand their audience, but they could also appeal to heavy users. Facebook offers a similar set of features to Instagram. WhatsApp, however, offers other features like app
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themes, custom ringtones, additional pinned chats and
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list customization, premium stickers and more.
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End quote.
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Another new one to try out Reactor, which says its AI platform can generate video in real time with near zero
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latency, has emerged from Stealth with a
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$59 million Series A LED by Lightspeed. Quoting variety, Reactor says its platform unlocks a new form of media experiences that are no longer pre rendered but generated dynamically and shaped by user interaction. The Reactor platform provides a unified software
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development kit, or SDK, and application programming
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interface, or API, that lets developers build real time interactive applications with just a few lines of code and then run them at scale. World models are redefining what AI can do, moving from systems that generate content in isolation to ones that perceive and
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respond in real time, says one of the founders who is Reactor's CEO.
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We are building the critical layer between the model labs and the developers who
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want to create with them. Our mission is to democratize real time video generation.
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Tatoui says the company has examples of its system in action on its website@reactor.incatui and schmiderchen. After they left, Apple founded Reactor in August 2025. It was germinating in our heads for quite some time, says Teatui.
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Reactor is the combination of our entire careers. It feels like we have been building for this moment for some time.
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Text to video Generative AI systems can take up to 10 minutes to produce 10 seconds of video, says Tia Tui.
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With Reactor, the time to first frame
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with our platform is basically nil, he says.
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We have optimized our platform for this content modality. We can generate videos instantaneously, they can be unbounded, they can run as long as you want.
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And Reactor's platform has applications beyond real
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time video, including software development and robotics.
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What if software is written this way?
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Tia Tui muses.
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In the future, he suggests, humans are going to interact with pixels, not text. Schmidt, who serves as Reactor cto, says companies using its real time AI platform
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include Overworld, a developer of interactive game models. As far as source material, Reactor partners
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with companies that have trained their own
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models and quote, we take their models and optimize them heavily, says Schmidt Chen. Reactor has worked with over a dozen models from different AI labs, Tia Tui
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says the company is in talks with major Hollywood studios about deals.
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Studios want to train their own models internally, he says. The company has a vote of confidence from Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul turned
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investor who has taken a stake in Reactor through his Wonderco holding company.
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Reactor has raised a $59 million round of series A funding led by Lightspeed
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Venture Partners, with participation from investors including WonderCo, Amplify Partners, Sky9 Capital and FPV Ventures. Katzenberg says that when he met with Reactor's founders and saw their demo, I
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was incredibly impress, if not astonished, by just how innovative their approach is to storytelling tools.
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Literally every facet of the production pipeline can be enhanced using these tools, including live action, tv, film, commercial work, animation. Any visual medium can be enhanced by
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the applications from Reactor, he says. With the funding, Katzenberg will join Reactor as a board observer, end quote. I do want to make a quibby joke here given that Katzenberg is involved,
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but honestly, this this kind of would
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be a tool that might make a Quibi type thing more viable all of a sudden if users are the ones generating all the videos in real time.
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Finally today, another Gadget launch, Another gadget price increase Oura has unveiled the Oura Ring 5 with a 40% smaller form factor, improved sensing and repositioned LEDs, on sale from June 4 for $399, which
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is up from the Ring 4's $349. Quoting Bloomberg the Oura Ring 5 is 40% smaller overall than its predecessor, bringing its size and thickness more in line with an ordinary wedding band.
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The company was able to accomplish that in part by reducing the size of the battery pack, while still promising battery
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life of up to about a week on one charge. Aura also said it improved the sensing capabilities, repositioning the LEDs for measuring metrics
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like heart rate and oxygen saturation inside the band for better accuracy.
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There are also new wellness capabilities that
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aim at detecting signs, high blood pressure and sleep apnea.
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Those are also coming to some of the company's older models.
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The new rings go on sale June
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4th and become available for pre order on Thursday.
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Oura's software subscription for full functionality is still priced at $5.99 a month or 699 $69.99 annually.
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Alphabet's Google, which recently rolled out the
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competing Fitbit air band, charges $10 a month for its service, while a whoop band can cost as much as $360 annually. An entry level Apple Watch, which has
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no subscription option, costs $249. Apple Watch Series 11 models start at $399. Besides the revamped design, the company is
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pushing deeper into health tracking, adding features that can detect potential signs of hypertension and sleep apnea.
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A new menu Health Radar examines blood
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pressure and breathing disturbances during sleep by
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looking at patterns over several weeks and how those metrics might change overnight Other changes include the ability to upload previous
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blood work and health records related to
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allergy details, conditions and medications in order to get a fuller picture of one's health. End quote.
Brian McCullough
Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.
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Date: May 28, 2026
Host: Brian McCullough
This episode of Tech Brew Ride Home dives into the so-called "RAMpocalypse," a surge in consumer electronics prices triggered by shortages and rising costs of memory and storage chips in the AI era. Brian McCullough delivers updates on hardware inflation, Apple's big Siri overhaul ahead of WWDC, Meta’s global rollout of new subscription services, a major AI-powered video generation startup emerging from stealth, and the launch (plus price hike) of Oura Ring 5. The episode’s tone alternates between industry-savvy analysis and wry personal commentary.
Memorable Quote:
"I know I wouldn't have bought a thousand dollar handheld back then. I'm torn on whether I would now." — Brian McCullough (05:23)
Notable Quotes:
Notable Quotes:
This fast-paced episode of Tech Brew Ride Home tells a larger story: The era of cheap, abundant consumer electronics may be over (for now), thanks to global chip constraints and ever-higher AI demands. Apple, Meta, and others are rapidly layering in AI and subscription features to compensate, while bold new platforms like Reactor point to new creative possibilities—even as gadgets like the Oura Ring become both smarter and pricier. Expect more of both: innovation and inflation.