Google Confirms Pixel 11 Price Bump; MacBook Ultra Rumors; Amazon Wants over 5,000 Satellites for Mobile Service; ChatGPT is Blocking Requests to Copy an Author’s Style Now

The Pixel 11 series is getting a price increase. Google has confirmed it. 9to5google.com reports that Google is blaming it on the severe shortage of RAM memory chips…which is affecting all smartphones. The shortage has bumped wholesale prices on 1 Gig of ram from $2.80 i 2025 to $12 this year…that’s a hell of a price hit. Google will trim the entry level Pixel 11 back from 16 Gigs of ram to 12 Gigs. The rumored starting price of all the phones will likely go up $100…similar to what we are hearing from Apple about its new phones coming out in September. Thank your friendly neighborhood AI company and their giant data centers for this…as they have hoarded a huge chunk of the memory chip supply worldwide for the data centers. 

Apple has a higher end MacBook coming, dubbed the Ultra so far. According to macrumors.com, here are some of the highlights some of the analysis expect. One of the banner features is reported to be a touch screen…exclusively made for Apple by Samsung. It will also have a hole punch camera instead of the notch at the top. The Ultra is supposed to be noticeably thinner and lighter than present MacBook Pros. Part of the way that is achieved is a hybrid OLED panel which sheds a layer needed by the mini-LED backlight screen. Apple has been working on a reinforced hinge so the top part with the screen will stay put when touched. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg says the form factor will stay pretty similar…14 and 16 inch sizes, with the keyboard and trackpad staying the same. On the down side…it looks like they will take away the HDMI, MagSafe, and SD card slots. Besides the price, that will be a deal breaker for me. I need the HDMI and all the USB-C ports to run my recording system. The Ultra should be out in early 2027.

Amazon is aiming to launch up to 5105 satellites into low earth orbit. Engadget.com notes that SpaceX has thousands of satellites in orbit, but those primarily support their satellite based internet service, StarLink. Amazon has a different idea. They want to provide voice, messaging, data, and emergency services connections to smartphones and other mobile devices that are out of normal cellular range. Apple has partnered with a satellite company that does a more limited version of this…offering emergency service and short texts, but Amazon in offering actual voice service to the public would be quite a jump. Amazon just has a few hundred of the satellites in orbit so far, but it plans to launch limited service late this year. 

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is now refusing to copy the ‘exact style’ of various authors. Arstechnica.com says that the large language model will still offer to capture the ‘feeling’ by  incorporating some of the common features found in those authors’ work. If that seems like splitting hairs to you, you aren’t alone. It may be enough for OpenAI to dodge legal action by authors who have alleged large-scale copyright infringement du to models trained on their work. In the US, copyright law generally protects only a specific expression of an idea, not the more intangible style of an author. But an AI-generated stylistic imitation could become infringing if it becomes “substantially similar” to the work of the original author. Will this be enough to avoid more litigation? Good question…stay tuned.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.