PCWorld examines how AI data centers are driving up RAM prices and reducing availability for laptop consumers, while manufacturers increasingly solder memory chips directly to motherboards. This trend forces users to pay higher upfront costs for desired RAM configurations since future upgrades become impossible, unlike traditional laptops with replaceable components. The combination of AI-driven demand and non-upgradeable designs creates lasting performance limitations for power users and higher costs for all consumers. By now, you've probably heard a thing or two about AI, specifically how AI data centers are hoarding massive amounts of RAM and taking it away from consumers. That surge in demand has rippled outward, affecting everything from environmental impact to rising RAM prices, and it's a real bummer if you're in the market for a laptop in 2026.

Chinese firms are building battery plants from Europe to North America, promising jobs while prompting local concerns about the environment, politics, and who really benefits. When the rest of WIRED subscribers get their hands on our next print magazine, you, dear readers of Made in China, can proudly say you heard about it here first. The issue is all about China and includes stories about robots, AI boyfriends, a Chinese town that became the crystal capital of the world, and a Chinese DNA database built for family reunions. Like this newsletter, the issue is our attempt to document how deeply Chinese technology now shapes everyday life--no matter where you live in the world. As part of the issue, I reported a story on how Chinese lithium battery companies like CATL, BYD, and Gotion are now building factories on nearly every continent.

More than 75% of City firms now use AI, with insurers and international banks among the biggest adopters. More than 75% of City firms now use AI, with insurers and international banks among the biggest adopters. UK exposed to'serious harm' by failure to tackle AI risks, MPs warn Consumers and the UK financial system are being exposed to "serious harm" by the failure of government and the Bank of England to get a grip on the risks posed by artificial intelligence, an influential parliamentary committee has warned. That is despite looming concerns over how the burgeoning technology could disadvantage already vulnerable consumers, or even trigger a financial crisis, if AI-led firms end up making similar financial decisions in response to economic shocks. More than 75% of City firms now use AI, with insurers and international banks among the biggest adopters.

PCWorld reports that Nvidia and Micron are making emotional appeals to consumers while PC users express frustration with big AI companies' practices and self-serving motives. Memory vendors predict DRAM and SSD shortages lasting until mid-2027, while new tariffs on advanced computing chips and potential Steam Machine pricing over $1,000 add to consumer concerns. The article highlights how corporations use emotional messaging to mask financial interests, advising consumers to remain skeptical of such appeals.

With grid operators confronting rising uncertainty from renewable integration and a broader push toward electrification, Demand-Side Management (DSM) -- particularly Demand Response (DR) -- has attracted significant attention as a cost-effective mechanism for balancing modern electricity systems. Unprecedented volumes of consumption data from a continuing global deployment of smart meters enable consumer segmentation based on real usage behaviours, promising to inform the design of more effective DSM and DR programs. However, existing clustering-based segmentation methods insufficiently reflect the behavioural diversity of consumers, often relying on rigid temporal alignment, and faltering in the presence of anomalies, missing data, or large-scale deployments. To address these challenges, we propose a novel two-stage clustering framework -- Clustered Representations Optimising Consumer Segmentation (CROCS). In the first stage, each consumer's daily load profiles are clustered independently to form a Representative Load Set (RLS), providing a compact summary of their typical diurnal consumption behaviours. In the second stage, consumers are clustered using the Weighted Sum of Minimum Distances (WSMD), a novel set-to-set measure that compares RLSs by accounting for both the prevalence and similarity of those behaviours. Finally, community detection on the WSMD-induced graph reveals higher-order prototypes that embody the shared diurnal behaviours defining consumer groups, enhancing the interpretability of the resulting clusters. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real Australian smart meter datasets demonstrate that CROCS captures intra-consumer variability, uncovers both synchronous and asynchronous behavioural similarities, and remains robust to anomalies and missing data, while scaling efficiently through natural parallelisation. These results...

Two representatives re-introduced a'click-to-cancel' bill to end sneaky fee traps. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Two elected officials hope their new bipartisan bill will help finally put an end to the mountains of unwanted subscription renewal fees plaguing everyday consumers. "Subscription traps have become an accepted inconvenience for American consumers. Too many companies rely on deceptive business models that force people to jump through hoops just to cancel," Representative Amodei said in a joint statement .

I asked my MIT class to consider why some of the advances that MIT Technology Review's journalists thought would change our world never really did--and what we can learn from the flops. Every year, publishes a list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. In fact, the 2026 version is out today. This marks the 25th year the newsroom has compiled this annual list, which means its journalists and editors have now identified 250 technologies as breakthroughs. A few years ago, editor at large David Rotman revisited the publication's original list, finding that while all the technologies were still relevant, each had evolved and progressed in often unpredictable ways. I lead students through a similar exercise in a graduate class I teach with James Scott for MIT's School of Architecture and Planning.

Product ranking is the core problem for revenue-maximizing online retailers. To design proper product ranking algorithms, various consumer choice models are proposed to characterize the consumers' behaviors when they are provided with a list of products. However, existing works assume that each consumer purchases at most one product or will keep viewing the product list after purchasing a product, which does not agree with the common practice in real scenarios. In this paper, we assume that each consumer can purchase multiple products at will. To model consumers' willingness to view and purchase, we set a random attention span and purchase budget, which determines the maximal amount of products that he/she views and purchases, respectively. Under this setting, we first design an optimal ranking policy when the online retailer can precisely model consumers' behaviors. Based on the policy, we further develop the Multiple-Purchase-with-Budget UCB (MPB-UCB) algorithms with $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret that estimate consumers' behaviors and maximize revenue simultaneously in online settings. Experiments on both synthetic and semi-synthetic datasets prove the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Did Microsoft do anything right in 2025? From AI overload to price hikes, little Microsoft did during 2025 was worth applauding. Can you name one single, solitary, success Microsoft had in 2025? In the years that PCWorld has catalogued Microsoft's wins, failures, and head-scratching "WTF" moments, there's always been a mix of high points and lows.

Instacart settles Federal Trade Commission's claim it deceived US shoppers Instacart has agreed to pay $60m in refunds to settle allegations brought by the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that the online grocery delivery platform deceived consumers about its membership programme and free delivery offers. According to court documents filed in San Francisco on Thursday, Instacart's offer of "free delivery" for first orders was illusory because shoppers were charged other fees, the FTC alleged. "The FTC is focused on monitoring online delivery services to ensure that competitors are transparently competing on price and delivery terms," said Christopher Mufarrige, who leads the FTC's consumer protection work. An Instacart spokesperson said the company flatly denies any allegations of wrongdoing, but that the settlement allows the company to focus on shoppers and retailers. "We provide straightforward marketing, transparent pricing and fees, clear terms, easy cancellation, and generous refund policies -- all in full compliance with the law and exceeding industry norms," the spokesperson said.