Category: Technology

Which Oura Ring 5 color should you buy?

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The Oura Ring 5 is 40% smaller than its last-gen counterpart, making it a highly attractive and even more non-intrusive wearable. Oura is offering six colors in matte and shiny finishes for the sleek Oura Ring 5, with select colors priced higher. This is nothing new as we saw the same situation with the Ring 4.

Oura eventually expanded the colors available for the Ring 4 with the ceramic lineup, adding up to ten different shades and finishes. It remains unknown whether the brand plans to do the same with the Ring 5. For now, these are all the available colors and finishes of the Ring 5. All of them come in ring sizes six through 13 and are made of titanium.

All the colors of the Oura Ring 5, as well as their pricing

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Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Price is a key decider when choosing which Oura Ring 5 you color should buy

Microsoft 365 Security Webinar – Tech Research Online

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Cybercriminals don’t need to break into Microsoft. They only need to break into your Microsoft 365 environment.

Microsoft 365 is at the centre of modern business operations, but even a single security gap can create significant risk. Many organizations don’t discover vulnerabilities until after an account takeover, phishing attack, or ransomware incident.

This webinar from Net at Work explores the most common Microsoft 365 security risks, real-world attack scenarios, and the practical steps organizations can take to strengthen their defenses.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

  • Why Microsoft 365 has become a primary target for cyberattacks
  • The most common security gaps that put organizations at risk
  • How phishing, account compromise, and ransomware attacks occur
  • Best practices for MFA, access controls, backups, and threat detection
  • Steps to improve your organization’s Microsoft 365 security posture

By submitting this form, you’ll be eligible for a complimentary Microsoft Copilot license with setup and activation included. You’ll also receive expert licensing recommendations and an optional Microsoft environment audit to help optimize efficiency and value.

Andrew Yang thinks the next big startup opportunity is lowering the cost of living

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Entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang has a theory about where the next wave of startup opportunity lies, and it starts with a question most founders aren’t asking: what if the business model was giving money back instead of extracting it?

Yang was inspired by Mark Cuban. Not by his wealth, or his celebrity, but by Cost Plus Drugs — Cuban’s startup that sells pharmaceuticals at cost. Yang made a list.

“Housing, education, food, fuel, transportation, media, and wireless,” Yang told TechCrunch on a recent episode of Equity. “The things we all spend money on.”

He picked wireless and last September launched Nobile Mobile, a new mobile virtual network operator that provides cell service for a fraction of what traditional carriers charge and gives customers money back if they use less data. 

As AI threatens to compress wages and displace workers, Yang sees a business opportunity in bringing down the cost of living. Cost Plus Drugs, Noble Mobile, dumb phone makers like Light Phone, and even online grocery store Misfits Markets are early examples of an emerging business category where the startup’s value proposition is the margin it gives back to the customer.

“AI is going to suck up a lot of the value and the jobs, and then Americans are going to look up and say, ‘How do I meet basic needs?’” Yang said. He believes meeting people’s needs “less expensively” is “a very rich vein of opportunity.” 

That instinct didn’t emerge from nowhere. Yang first launched himself into the public eye during his 2020 presidential campaign, during which he advocated for Universal Basic Income as a means of combating AI-related workforce displacement and wealth concentration. The campaign didn’t succeed but the thesis has only grown more relevant.

Yang is still an advocate for UBI, arguing that the value generated by AI companies needs to be redistributed into the hands of the average American. But whether the government will be the vehicle for that redistribution, or whether it will just use any collected wealth to “plug a hole and do something not terribly productive,” Yang is less certain. 

“There is room for a direct connection between the money and the people,” he said. 

That’s where the market comes in. Where policy fails, Yang argues, market incentives can step in. Noble Mobile is his attempt to prove the point. Since its launch last September, the company has grown to “thousands and thousands” of customers and is bringing in “millions in revenue.”

“We’re unit profitable per customer, but we just share the profits with our subscribers with the idea that it’ll make you happy, you’ll stay around, and maybe you’ll tell your friends and family,” Yang said. 

The pitch is simple. Yang noted that the average monthly savings of $50, invested and compounded over 40 years, could amount to $24,000 — enough for a retirement down payment. And in this economy, who isn’t thinking about little ways they can upgrade their personal finance?

Whether investors will share that enthusiasm is another question entirely. Even if the opportunity is real, capital is concentrated heavily in AI right now, while consumer-facing businesses with thin margins and a social mission are a hard sell.

“I had at least one investor say to me around Noble Mobile, ‘Love you, Andrew, want to work with you — if you could just make this an AI company, we’ll invest,’” Yang said. 

The tide might be changing, though, simply because even the most wealthy, extractive companies need an economy in which consumers have enough buying power to purchase their products. 

“The value being concentrated in the hands of a handful of folks and firms is just bad for everybody,” he said. “There are some folks I know in Silicon Valley who are open to that for a variety of reasons…[like] they just don’t want to have to hire private security.”

Yang encouraged founders and investors to take on problems they’re passionate about and find a way to build a valuable enterprise on top of it.

“Think bigger and more broadly about trying to tackle problems and don’t subscribe so much to groupthink, because there are some valuable opportunities out there,” he said.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Keeping it fun: Nothing debuts its phones, audio lineup at Best Buy in the US

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What you need to know

  • Nothing announced a product expansion to Best Buy across the U.S., bringing its phones and audio devices to even more people.
  • The company states its Phone 4a Pro, Phone 3, Headphones a, and Ear 3 are now available with its full portfolio on the website.
  • Nothing states it recorded a 120% increase in sales in 2025 in the U.S., and it seems it’s looking to keep that streak going.

Nothing believes that there’s no better way to say “Happy Friday” than to announce an expansion of its products in the U.S.

Marking another milestone for Nothing, the company shared a press release today (June 12), detailing its product expansion to Best Buy in the U.S. It states that its phone and audio portfolio “will be available at Best Buy stores nationwide.” Nothing says it’s bringing its products to the store in the U.S. off the back of its success at Best Buy Canada. For phones, Nothing states consumers across the country can find the Phone 4a Pro and the Phone 3 in stores.

2026 Dresner Data Engineering Market Study

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In 2026, 48% of organizations rate data engineering as critical — nearly double the 28% who said the same in 2019. That shift reflects a fundamental change in how organizations are building for AI and analytics performance.

The question is whether your organization is keeping pace.

The 2026 Dresner Data Engineering Market Study documents what is driving that change across hundreds of organizations globally. Among organizations where AI is a cornerstone of business strategy, 88% rate data engineering as critical or very important.

For IT and data leaders ready to evaluate their next move, download this study to understand:

  • Why the highest-ROI business intelligence organizations invest in data engineering differently than their peers
  • Which capabilities and sourcing models define leaders in 2026
  • Where your adoption stands relative to industry and geography benchmarks

South Korea hits Coupang with $400M+ fine for data breach that affected millions

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South Korean authorities have imposed a record-breaking fine of $624 billion won (over $400 million) on retail giant Coupang after a data breach last year compromised the personal data of more than 34 million customers.

Seoul’s Personal Information Protection Commission issued the maximum penalty on Thursday following discovery of the breach in December 2025. The retail giant, which is headquartered in the U.S. but popular in South Korea and likened to the “Amazon of Asia,” had said the months-long data breach allowed a former employee to obtain names, email and shipping addresses, phone numbers and order histories of about two-thirds of South Korea’s population.

Coupang told BBC News that it plans to challenge the regulator’s decision. The fine represents a rare case of a financial penalty issued against a U.S.-based firm. Korean lawmakers have accused some of their American counterparts of imposing political pressure after reports that U.S. representatives were linking the data breach with U.S.-South Korean bilateral ties in response to the case against Coupang’s executives.

U.S. companies rarely face financial sanctions or criminal prosecution for data breaches as a result of lacking laws and enforcement powers.

Qualcomm teases ‘something new,’ and we might see it at Meta Connect

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What you need to know

  • Qualcomm is drawing our attention toward its XR work, stating “something new” is coming to that environment.
  • The company teases a “smarter and more immersive” XR system, which is likely based on its upcoming Snapdragon chip.
  • It leads us to wonder if something big is being prepared for Meta Connect in September, or the new Pico XR headset.

Qualcomm is teasing what’s next in the world of XR, and our minds are wondering: is Meta involved?

Qualcomm started teasing that a “new reality is coming soon” on a short X post this week. Of course, it looks like we should expect its Snapdragon chip to be a part of this major reveal—whenever that’s set to be. The company has been working to create a new chip that it’s positioning as a game-changer for XR.



Handling peak season without scaling headcount

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Scaling support to meet rising customer expectations without increasing headcount is where ecommerce teams stall.

The conversation quickly shifts from “Can we handle the volume?” to “How 
do we maintain service quality, protect revenue, and deliver great customer experiences at scale?”

Learn how ecommerce teams use Fin to automate support without sacrificing customer experience.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

  • Automate returns, refunds, and order changes that once required agents to switch between multiple systems
  • Guide shoppers to the right products with AI that acts like a knowledgeable sales associate
  • Deliver seamless support and sales experiences in a single conversation
  • Free agents to focus on coaching, QA, and higher-value customer interactions

GM joins race to build batteries for AI data centers and the grid

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The race to secure power for AI data centers has spilled over into some unusual places, including the automotive world. 

Battery recycler Redwood Materials kicked off the trend last year with a new energy storage division and a project that attached old EV packs to a Crusoe data center in Nevada. Then, Ford said it was repurposing some of its battery manufacturing capacity to make grid-scale batteries. And now GM is announcing its own — arguably more ambitious — plans for an energy storage system (ESS). 

GM unveiled on Tuesday two new phases in its attack on the energy storage market. The biggest swing by far is GM’s new partnership with energy storage startup Peak Energy. For that partnership, GM is developing an entirely new sodium-ion battery chemistry tailored for grid-scale deployments.

Outside of China, no automaker has announced plans to build sodium-ion cells. 

“The way we’re getting into the market is the easy way, through ESS,” Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery and sustainability at GM, told TechCrunch. “The performance characteristics are just what is needed in that market.”

GM wouldn’t share with TechCrunch how much money it is investing in this energy storage effort. But we do know the company has committed $900 million to commercialize new battery chemistries, an investment that includes a new battery development center.

Sodium-ion batteries work similarly to lithium-ion, but they swap out key materials to make the cells cheaper, longer lasting, and less prone to overheating. The tradeoff is that sodium-ion batteries need to be larger and heavier to store the same amount of electricity. 

Peak Energy has already been working on energy storage systems that use sodium-ion batteries. Because sodium-ion batteries behave differently from lithium-ion, Peak has developed an energy storage system with that in mind. Its grid-scale batteries don’t have cooling systems or fire suppression systems because there’s less risk of overheating. The setup reduces upfront costs, and it should also eliminate costly maintenance, Paul Menson, director of energy storage commercialization at GM, told TechCrunch. 

“This is the manifestation of the hardest part to engineer is no part at all,” he said. “Eliminate the part, eliminate the problem.”

GM plans to sell sodium-ions cells to the startup, which will then integrate them into its products. But that won’t happen right away.

The first GM cells are expected to enter trial production at the company’s Battery Cell Development Center in 2028. TechCrunch was recently given an exclusive look at the new facility, which GM expects will cut about a year from the commercialization process for sodium-ion batteries, reducing costs in the process. 

GM’s sodium-ion cells are still years away from commercial production, however. In the meantime, the automaker will sell lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells to LG Energy Solution for use in its energy storage systems. LG Energy Solution already works with GM through its Ultium joint venture, which makes batteries for the automaker’s EVs.

Alongside the partnerships with LG and Peak, GM announced that it was expanding its work with Redwood Materials, the battery recycling and energy storage startup founded by former Tesla executive J.B. Straubel. 

Redwood already buys scrap from GM’s battery factories and used battery packs from its EVs. GM has a pipeline of around 10,000 packs it’s sending to Redwood, and the startup has been operating a 12 megawatt/63-megawatt-hour migrogrid using second-life packs at a Crusoe data center in Sparks, Nevada. GM said it is buying a 7.2 megawatt-hour Redwood system for use at one of its plants in Michigan, which it estimates will save it around $3 million over its lifetime.

The GM installation is “a step one” for Redwood, Cal Lankton, chief commercial officer for Redwood, told TechCrunch.

Data centers, where Redwood already operates, and industrial sites like GM’s are “vastly different things,” he said. Where data centers might use batteries nearly continuously to absorb some of the power fluctuations from GPUs, industrial sites are more likely to use them to shave off peaks in power demand, which can lower monthly power bills, and use them to provide backup power in case of an outage.

“The factory is really excited because now we’ve got a more reliable factory,” Kelty said. “Ultimately, we’ll be having similar installations like this at all of our factories. It just makes good economic sense.”

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Your Google smart display is finally learning how to hold a real conversation

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What you need to know

  • Gemini for Home is becoming more conversational, replacing rigid voice commands and static responses with a more natural AI experience.
  • Weather forecasts, media controls, news summaries, and overall responsiveness are all getting upgrades through Google Home app version 4.18.
  • Gemini now respects preferred temperature units, answers hour-specific questions, and keeps spoken forecasts aligned with on-screen information.

Talking to a smart speaker may have, at some point, felt like giving commands to a stiff, literal-minded robot. If you didn’t use the exact phrasing, everything went awry. Gemini for Home’s latest Early Access update transforms the experience by replacing static broadcasts with a fully interactive, conversational AI experience.

Gemini for Home Early Access gets a new update with improvements to weather forecasts, media playback, news summaries, and general responsiveness. The changes are being rolled out via Google Home app version 4.18 and may not be available to everyone immediately.