#hardware-3

#hardware-3

RAM prices are skyrocketing, driving up the cost of products that rely heavily on memory. The price of Raspberry Pi boards has now soared to the point where two 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 boards will cost you as much as a new laptop.

The new Arduino Ventuno Q is a very different beast. For one, it's powered by the Dragonwing IQ-8275 chipset. This contains an 8-core Kryo CPU (2x Gold Prime at 2.35GHz + 2x Gold at 2.1GHz + 4x Silver at 1.95GHz) and an Adreno 623. The Ventuno Q offers up to 16GB of RAM and up to 64GB of eMMC storage plus an M.2 NVMe Gen 4 connector for SSDs.

After Google released its TurboQuant compression algorithm, which can purportedly drastically reduce the amount of memory required for certain AI workflows, stock prices for memory manufacturers dropped significantly.

Retail point-of-sale systems today offer a wide range of options for peripherals and hardware. Their technical specifications play a major role in selection, and big retailers often choose multiple vendors to reduce a single point of failure. This gives them an advantage to negotiate price or support as well. Technically, these peripherals also require updating with new models and may have new feature sets. This necessitates the redevelopment of point-of-sale applications, increasing development costs.

The RG GO1, which doesn't have a price or specific release date yet, features a 2.5-inch IPS LCD screen in the center of the controller. This can be used for various tasks, including reprogramming buttons and turning on rapid fire settings. The just-revealed controller also includes heartbeat sensors in the grips. Why? Anbernic says it will let you "monitor your well-being during intense sessions."

All of the appliances and systems are brand-new: the HVAC, the lighting, the entertainment. Touch screens of various shapes and sizes control this, that, and the other. Rows of programmable buttons sit where traditional light switches would normally be. The kitchen even has outlets designed to rise up from the countertop when you need them, and slide away when you don't.

The Game Boy family of handheld consoles was groundbreaking, making gaming more accessible to millions worldwide. Nintendo's portables beat off technologically superior competition from the likes of Sega's Game Gear and Atari's Lynx. They became home to foundational moments for the medium, from what is still arguably the definitive version of Tetris to the birth of Pokémon. Yet with the iconic gray monolith launching in 1989, it's now pushing 40-and playing those important classics gets tougher every year.

Steve Syfuhs, a Principal Engineering Manager at the Windows behemoth, managed to release the magic smoke from a Raspberry Pi 5 in five minutes, he says. Outside his day job dealing with authentication, Syfuhs is not averse to a bit of tinkering. He's not alone. Microsoft has more than its fair share of curious people, keen to poke hardware to see what it does.

AI-driven memory and storage price hikes have been the defining feature of the PC industry in 2026, and hobbyists have been hit the hardest-companies like Apple with lots of buying power have been able to limit the price increases for their PCs, phones, and other gadgets so far, but smaller outfits like Valve and Raspberry Pi haven't been so lucky.