Daily Tech News 12 April 2026

Top Story

• Sam Altman may control our future. Can he be trusted? No. (New Yorker) (archive site)
  
  As the article goes on to explain, fuck no.
  
  
  
• My baby deer plushie told me that Mitski's dad is a CIA operative. (The Verge)
  
  Nobody ever expects the Butlerian Jihad.

Tech News

• The AI RAM shortage is also affecting SSD prices. (The Verge)
  
  The Verge definitely has its thumb on the pulse of the tech world here.
  
  
  
• You can save 57% on a Corsair 96GB memory kit at just $499. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  No you can't. Just kidding.
  
  
  
• On the other hand, reader Rick C checked online prices at Micro Center and they are 60% lower than the sticker prices shown in yesterday's article. Or rather, the sticker prices were inflated by 150%.
  
  Micro Center doesn't deliver online orders; you have to pay for and pick up the item in person. Still I'd expect a bigger fuss if prices in store were that much inflated over the prices they advertise online.
  
  
  
• If you were planning to start your own manned space program in this time of precented memory prices, you're in luck: NASA has released the Apollo code as open source. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Core memory is back, baby!
  
  
  
• Installing every Firefox extension. (Jack.Cab)
  
  As the article notes, not all of them. 8 were deleted by Mozilla while the download was running and 42 couldn't be found, but still around 84,000 extensions.
  
  And... It worked. Kind of.
  
  It did use 37GB of RAM just to load the start page.
  
  
  
• Samsung's memory business is now more profitable than Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, or Microsoft. (WCCFTech)
  
  Though it still falls a little short of Apple.
  
  
  
• Qualcomm is working with CXMT to develop custom RAM for smartphones. (WCCFTech)
  
  While the Big Three memory manufacturers are making bank, the two former also-rans - China's CXMT and Taiwan's Nanya - are grabbing everything they can.
  
  
  
• Flash storage maker Sandisk just invested a billion dollars in Nanya, for example and Kioxia, formerly Toshiba's SSD division, invested around half a billion. (Simply Wall St, Evertiq)
  
  SSDs - at least, good ones - need DRAM cache. Sandisk and Kioxia don't make DRAM. Nanya does, and not only that, but 90% of its production is still DDR4 which is not what current computers use but is what SSD controllers use.
  
  
  
• ProPublica journalists walk off the job in the first US newsroom strike over AI. (NiemanLab)
  
  "We'll go on strike!"
  "That's right! You'll have a national journalists' strike on your hands!"
  "And whom will that inconvenience?"