Price or volume? We check the numbers.
AI, infrastructure, devices, platforms and security, explained with primary sources and transparent calculations. We separate what changed in price from what changed in volume, and what the data proves from what it only suggests.
The AI Power Paradox: Each AI Task Uses Far Less Energy, Yet Data Center Power Is Set to Double
The IEA says the energy needed for one AI task has fallen at least tenfold a year. It also forecasts that data center electricity will nearly double from 485 TWh in 2025 to 950 TWh in 2030. Both are true, because volume and the amount of work behind each request are growing faster than efficiency.
Read the articleSource: IEA, Key Questions on Energy and AI (April 2026), CC BY 4.0.
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A Stolen AI Key Can Burn $100,000 in a Day
Google's threat researchers describe attacks in which criminals hijack companies' access to AI models and run up the bill. In some cases, charges passed $100,000 in a single day and reached $1 million before access was cut off. The cost is a simple equation, and so is most of the defence.
AI's Next Bottleneck Is Glass: A 180 Million Fiber-Kilometer Shortfall
TrendForce expects the world to need 577 million fiber-kilometers of optical fiber in 2026 and come up 180 million short, about 31% of demand. Factories are nearly full, inventories have shrunk to a month, and new capacity takes up to two years. When volume cannot grow, price does the work.
Anthropic's Revenue Grew 14×. Its Compute Bill Grew 3.8×. Did AI Get Cheaper to Serve?
Anthropic's IPO filing shows revenue rising far faster than spending on computing power. In the first half of 2026, each dollar of revenue needed 55 cents of compute, down from $2.01 a year earlier. The improvement is large and real, but it is not the same as a profitable AI business.
AI Shopping Traffic Grew 71%. Those Visits Now Earn 83% More Than Other Visits.
Adobe's retail data shows two things rising at once: the number of shoppers arriving from AI assistants, and how much each of those visits is worth. A year ago, an AI visit was worth less than half of a typical one. One number is still missing: AI's share of all traffic.
AI Got 80% Cheaper. Why Does Everything AI Touches Cost More?
The price of AI per token keeps falling, yet AI's growth is pushing up the price of phones, PCs, memory and electricity. The data shows both are true at once, and explains why.
The $6.36 Billion Binance Hack Wasn't a Code Bug. Most of Crypto's Biggest Losses Aren't.
The largest crypto theft on record took about 20 minutes and needed no flaw in any smart contract. The data shows why: code bugs cause half of crypto hacks but only 15% of the money lost. The big losses come from keys, servers and people.
Fujifilm Is Making Five Times More Magnetic Tape. AI Data Is Running Into a Hard Drive Squeeze.
Tape, a 70-year-old technology, is growing again. Fujifilm plans to raise tape output about fivefold by fiscal 2028, and tape shipments jumped 57% in early 2026. The reason shows up in hard drive data: Seagate's revenue grew three times faster than the storage it shipped.
Meta's Revenue Rose 26%. Daily Users Grew 3%. Where Did the Money Come From?
In Q3 2026, Meta showed 10% more ads and earned 14% more for each one. Multiply the two and you get almost all of its 26% rise in ad revenue. For the first time in the five quarters we examined, price per ad did more of the work than ad volume.
PC and Phone Shipments Fell About 20%. Did Anyone Actually Spend Less?
Fewer PCs and phones were shipped in Q3 2026 than in any third quarter in years. But smartphone revenue still rose 3%, because the average phone cost 27% more. Here is what the data says about spending, and why PCs are different.
The PHP2Shell Patch Is Out. About Three in Four Exposed PHP Servers Can't Get It.
Two critical PHP flaws were exploited before the fix arrived, and CISA now lists them as attacked in the wild. The patch only covers PHP 8.2 to 8.5. Of internet-facing PHP servers that reveal their version, roughly 74% to 79% run an older branch that gets no fixes at all.
The 1 TB Test: Is Your Memory and Storage Sales Growth Real, or Just Price?
RAM, SSD and HDD prices have risen 2–5× since early 2025. A simple 1 TB test shows how much of today's sales growth is real volume and how much is market price, and why that matters for targets when prices fall.
Why RAM, SSD and Server Prices Exploded in 2025–2026: Inside the Global Memory Crisis
AI data centers are absorbing the world's memory supply. A 32GB DDR5 kit now costs nearly five times its pre-shortage price, server memory is set to rise about 270% in 2026, and relief is not expected before 2027.