Earlier today, Samsung released its Q2 results, which were a mixed bag with many business units underperforming. However, none were doing as poorly as Samsung's memory business which made a loss of 4.36 trillion Won or around US$3.4 billion. Although not mentioned in the financial report, Reuters are reporting that Samsung is looking to cut production of NAND and DRAM further, as the publication is pointing out that Samsung's chipset business as a whole lost a staggering 8.9 trillion Won or US$7 billion. That said, the loss wasn't quite as bad as in the first quarter of the year and Samsung is expected to cut the loss in half for Q3.

In a statement to Reuters, Samsung said "Production cuts across the industry are likely to continue in the second half, and demand is expected to gradually recover as clients continue to destock their (chip) inventory." This suggests that the expected recovery isn't going to happen as soon as the DRAM and NAND manufacturers expected, as there simply isn't enough demand for either product. SK Hynix has already announced that it's cutting production a further five to 10 percent for NAND, but the company doesn't appear to have had quite as big losses as Samsung. For the time being, this is good news for consumers, as RAM and SSD pricing is about as low as it has ever been. However, with production cuts from all the three major manufacturers of DRAM and NAND, prices will most likely start going up soon, especially as Samsung is said to have depleted most of its inventories.

As we're nearing the end of 2022, there is more news about layoffs and this time around it's Micron that is looking at laying off some 10 percent of its workforce. The company announced its FQ1 '23 earnings today, or fiscal quarter one 2023, since not all companies follow the standard year when it comes to financial reporting. Micron saw revenues of US$4,085 billion for the quarter, down from US$6,643 billion in the previous quarter and down from US$7,687 billion the same quarter a year ago. However, the company made a net loss of US$195 million.

Micron's CEO Sanjay Mehrotra stated "Micron's strong technology, manufacturing and financial position put us on solid footing to navigate the near-term environment, and we are taking decisive actions to cut our supply and expenses. We expect improving customer inventories to enable higher revenue in the fiscal second half, and to deliver strong profitability once we get past this downturn." These decisive actions include cutting 10 percent of its workforce according to Reuters, although this won't take place until sometime in 2023. Micron is also planning a cut in its CAPEX plans for its fiscal 2024, i.e. the company won't be investing as heavily as planned in new fabs, despite being granted money to do so by the US government.

Corsair, one of the world's leading PC component brands, is being hit hard by macroeconomics and consumers' choice - and sometimes need - to keep more dollars in their pockets. According to its own internal accounting, the company has announced that it expects between $10 and $11 million dollars in losses for 2Q 2022 (April-June) throughout its business. Remember that this isn't a case of a company being too specific in its product line and taking the heat from it; Corsair has one of the most diverse lineups in PC components, ranging from memory, water and air cooling, SSDs, peripherals, and even monitors.

Not unlike other businesses, which have seen inventory levels soar on account of much lower than expected sales, Corsair too has seen its warehouses starting to fill up - not unlike the company's financials, there's less and less oxygen within its warehouses as inventory piles up. Corsair did say it expects business to pick up considerably in the third quarter, as it has seen an uptick in enthusiast-level PC gaming sales (likely spurred by the dropping prices of GPUs as miners dump their graphics cards in expectation of Ethereum's Merge event, set for September). The increase in sales leads the company to believe it will achieve a 35% YoY (year-over-year) growth throughout the second half of 2022, which will hopefully be enough to push the company back above the red line.

VR has been hailed as the next coming of truly ingenious, engrossing, enveloping experiences, and to some extent, it already does offer those. There are still limitations to the technology and the level of realism it can impart (there is a whole slew of senses we need to trigger for truly enveloping experiences, of course), but I feel we sometimes get somewhat limited in the way we look at VR. Of course, we can all imagine video games built in VR - and when we do, we likely imagine them as they were presented to us in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One.

Then there are other use-cases, such as real-estate experiences that place you right inside your future home and allow you to see the changes you'd make. Architecture design, engineering, game world design, even strolls through museums, your mind a subatomic particle able to instantly travel to foreign countries and explore their marvels. All for this, mind you, without ever leaving the comfort of our home, without the required expenses and no wasted time with travelling or passport checks - all, however, simulated. But what if VR could go even further? What if VR could be used as a coping mechanism? What if you could meet your dead parents, siblings... Or children? This is the story I bring to you today: of how VR was used to reunite a mother with her deceased seven-year-old girl. This is the story of Ji-sung and her daughter Nayeon.