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.
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