Textbooks will have you believe this is a simple question with an equally simple answer. And it is in theory, but there's quite a bit of nuance to unpack.
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Fundamentally, random access memory (RAM) is the memory your device thinks with, and read-only memory (ROM) is the memory it remembers with. RAM holds whatever the processor is working on and it's all lost when power is cut; ROM stores the permanent instructions a device needs to start up with, retaining them regardless of power state.
But hardly anything in a modern device is truly read-only anymore. That includes the bits still named after ROM, such as firmware chips in PCs and the "ROM" Xiaomi lists on spec sheets for phones like the Redmi 13.
What RAM does
Everything you open on a device involves RAM. When you open a browser tab, for example, it gets copied from storage into RAM, allowing the processor to reach it quickly (a matter of nanoseconds). DRAM is the most dominant type of RAM, and it stores each bit as a charge in a tiny capacitor that gets refreshed thousands of times per second. It can't be refreshed if power is cut, so if that happens, everything stored there disappears.
If you're a PC enthusiast or have built your own rig, you'll probably be familiar with the (now wildly expensive) DDR5 sticks they use. Phones and thin laptops use a different type (LPDDR) that's soldered to the board, while graphics cards cluster GDDR chips around the GPU. Higher RAM capacity means you can run more apps, open more tabs and play more powerful games before the system starts swapping to slower storage.
We saw conventional DRAM contract prices rise by a staggering 90 to 95 percent quarter-over-quarter at the beginning of the year (according to TrendForce). That's because AI data centers are absorbing virtually all the supply as companies race to get them built, like NVIDIA's plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI to build 10 gigawatts of AI data centers. While that specific deal is stalled, it's one illustration of many to show what's driving prices up to highs never seen before and cutting supplies to regular consumers.
Last year, Micron announced it would kill its Crucial consumer brand so it can focus more on high-margin AI data center demand. It ceased operations back in February. This isn't the first time a memory crunch has hit consumers: Huawei blamed slower P10 devices on a memory shortage back in 2017, after it discretely mixed faster and slower flash chips in the same phone model.
How ROM stopped being read-only
Ilbusca/Getty Images
The earliest ROM chips had their data physically built into the circuitry, so any changes meant going back to the factory for new silicon. Programmable ROM (PROM) got around this in 1956. Its inventor, Wen Tsing Chow of American Bosch Arma, designed it so the US Air Force could load targeting data into missile guidance computers by blowing microscopic fuses inside the chip. But since you can only blow a fuse once, every write to PROM was permanent, including any inevitable mistakes.
Intel engineer Dov Frohman then came along in 1971 with the EPROM, an erasable chip he developed after investigating a reliability fault in another Intel product. Each EPROM carried a small quartz window, and shining UV light through it for a few minutes wiped the chip clean for reprogramming. EEPROM later dropped this by making erasure electrical. Fujio Masuoka of Toshiba then pushed the idea to its conclusion with flash memory, which was introduced as NOR flash in 1984 and followed with NAND flash in 1987. You'll now find NAND in every SSD, smartphone, memory card and USB on the market.
Even though the firmware chip on your PC's motherboard is still called the BIOS ROM, it's actually a small flash chip that gets rewritten with firmware updates. It's the same story on your phone, where the ROM Xiaomi lists for the Redmi 13 is regular UFS or eMMC flash with system partitions locked to read-only. Fun fact: You might have come across proper ROM chips in the form of old plastic game cartridges. That's why the files ripped from them for emulators are called ROMs.
Proper factory-set ROM does still exist, but you're only going to find it in the deepest depths of cheap electronics; tiny microcontrollers running code that'll never change. Everywhere else, RAM still means what it did six decades ago, while ROM has become the de facto shorthand for whatever memory you're not supposed to touch. %!s()
Hundreds of protesters have been detained in Delhi during the latest demonstration by the Gen-Z-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) calling for electoral reforms.
The group said its founder Abhijeet Dipke - who began the movement in May after India's Chief Justice likened some jobless young people to "cockroaches" - was detained with other leaders shortly after landing in Delhi.
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Tens of thousands of security personnel were deployed and roads barricaded ahead of the demonstration, though the CJP insisted it would go ahead.
Delhi Police has not commented on the detentions, but had refused permission for the protest to take place at Jantar Mantar, a landmark in the Indian capital.
The group - who are not registered as a political party in India - are seeking electoral reforms just months before crucial state elections.
It has also demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over allegations of manipulating voters' lists - which the Election Commission has denied.
Under Kumar's leadership, India's election commission has undertaken a mammoth exercise to update electoral rolls nationwide - it said this was a routine exercise to weed out dead, duplicate or ineligible voters.
But in many states, the exercise has been shrouded in controversy, with tens of thousands of people alleging they have been wrongly removed.
The CJP - and opposition parties - accuse Kumar of favouring Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the way the electoral rolls are being updated.
The Election Commission and the BJP have denied this.
Before arriving in Delhi, the CJP's founder Dipke said: "If you think you can stop us by threatening us with jail or trying to intimidate us with the fear of imprisonment, you are mistaken."
He and and two other leaders, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, were detained on their flight from Mumbai on Saturday.
The group claimed the three men have been taken to an undisclosed location. Delhi Police have not commented.
Ajinkya Shinde, the CJP's new designated leader while the others are in detention, released a video telling protesters that "if Delhi Police tries to stop you, wherever they stop you will become your Jantar Mantar".
Student activist Neha Bora, who had also been detained by Delhi Police, urged demonstrators to "hold the line".
The large number of protesters expected to descend on Delhi were unable to get anywhere close to Jantar Mantar due to the heavy security presence and road blocks.
Announcements could be heard across the city, asking people to co-operate with the police.
One protester, Sabika Muzaffar, told the BBC she and her mother expected to be detained.
"On the way to the protest site, instead of reciting hymns and verses as we usually do, my mother and I were rote learning our lawyer's number," she said.
She said that showing up to protest was "her way of defending the country and its democracy".
A few minutes after Muzaffar spoke to the BBC she was taken away by police.
Several trains to and from major Delhi stations had been cancelled and dozens of metro stations were closed from Friday night.
Buses packed with detained protesters were seen being driven away from the protest site. %!s()
Jesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com.
CLEVELAND -- The Chicago White Sox don't have a name for it yet, but one of their executives thought "Pitching Chaos Squared" or even "Pitching Chaos x 10" fit the bill for this team, one that's trying to bullpen its way to the World Series. And now the White Sox will need the formula to save their season in Game 5 of the American League Division Series on Saturday night in Cleveland.
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The White Sox aren't the first to attempt to ride an unorthodox pitching plan through October -- just the latest and perhaps the most dramatic. For Chicago, the term "starting pitcher" is more likely to be just the guy getting the ball first than the one they're relying on to take them deep into the game.
"Is it creative?" general manager Chris Getz asked during his team's division series matchup with Cleveland. "It is. Do we need to be different? We do. But we're also leaning into the strengths of our pitching staff and our team."
Those strengths include young starters-turned-relievers, along with a veteran group leading the way. The buy-in from players, the willingness to do whatever it takes and the execution on the mound have helped lead the White Sox to their first playoff series win in more than two decades.
"Can't say that I wouldn't enjoy having five starters that can provide seven, eight innings and perhaps give you ... a complete game," Getz said. "I mean that would be fantastic. I would be just as excited.
"But you've got to look at what's in front of you, the reality of things, and that's not how we're set up."
Operated at its best for the first four games of Chicago's postseason run, the strategy helped the White Sox sweep past the Houston Astros and move within one run of the American League Championship Series with consecutive wins to open the ALDS. But the difficulty of executing the plan for an extended period was apparent in back-to-back home losses to the Guardians.
Whether Chicago's postseason party continues with a Game 5 win or the season's biggest surprise comes to an end this weekend, the baseball world is getting a taste of Chicago's "pitching chaos" now -- but it's actually something that began long before appearing under the October spotlight. It has become the improbable story of the 2026 White Sox.
"We don't have starters or relievers," pitcher Sean Burke said. "Just a bunch of pitchers."
"You don't have to get ready if you stay ready"
Coming off three consecutive 100-loss seasons, the White Sox were far off the national radar entering the season, so it's understandable that their penchant for leaning into the bullpen from the beginning of the season didn't register. During the regular season, Chicago led the league by a wide margin in the use of openers, and it began from the first series when none of the starters pitched into the fifth inning against the Milwaukee Brewers. After traditional starters struggled throughout the first half, the White Sox ramped up the unconventional practice down the stretch.
But the White Sox have taken it to another level in the playoffs, becoming the first team in MLB history to win four straight games in a postseason with its starter going four or fewer innings in each. In fact, the White Sox were the first to win three. Overall, their ''starters'' have thrown just 12⅔ innings while their pen has eaten up the rest: 41⅓ innings.
What is the secret to executing such an unusual strategy? The White Sox believe it begins with communication, keeping pitchers informed of their evolving roles and having tough conversations when needed.
"If I take the ball from you, you're allowed to be upset about that, but knowing we're going to root on the next guy," manager Will Venable told ESPN. "There's a follow-up you need to do. The more we've done it, guys are more understanding. We've had those conversations."
As the season wore on, that communication fostered buy-in from the entire pitching staff. If a player was being used as an opener the next day, it provided clarity for his preparation. If his wasn't, he knew he could be called upon at any time.
"You don't have to get ready if you stay ready," lefty Anthony Kay said. "For guys like me, [Erick] Fedde and Davis [Martin] that haven't done it much, you kind of just stay locked in the whole time."
For those veterans, that has meant learning how to pitch out of the pen in the playoffs after starting all season. Kay made 31 starts and registered 158 innings on the mound during the regular season but has pitched in multiple roles during the postseason. He joined the list of Chicago playoff openers in Game 2 against Cleveland, pitching just one-third of an inning before giving way to Sean Newcomb -- who then handed duties off to that day's bulk pitcher, Burke.
"We teed that up the day before," Venable said. "We brought them all in the room, those three guys -- Kay, Newcomb and Burke -- and said, 'Bear with us here because we don't know how this is going to shake out.'"
Burke has become one of the faces of the staff, pitching a team-high 9⅓ innings over two appearances during the postseason, but nobody embodies the chaos more than Grant Taylor. The 24-year-old right-hander has already pitched in four games this postseason, completing multiple innings twice and collecting two saves before a rough outing in Game 4. It's hard to picture a scenario where the White Sox take Game 5 without Taylor on the mound in a meaningful spot.
"What we've seen out of Grant Taylor throughout the playoffs is more or less remarkable," Getz said.
No matter the task assigned or the experience of the pitching asked to fill it, Getz acknowledges the success of the strategy has been dependent on one thing.
"We've got buy-in because this all hands-on-deck approach is not only something that we believe in, but the players are all-in as well," he said. "So there hasn't been any friction on that front. These guys are playing selfless baseball."
"Is this going to catch up with us?"
The earlier part of Chicago's postseason schedule was ideal for unleashing its pitching plan. Matching up with the Houston Astros in the wild-card round and then Cleveland meant the White Sox weren't seeing the type of deep and potent offense built to wear staffs out in October.
Perhaps even more importantly, the schedule played right into their hands. Sweeping Houston provided an extra day of rest between series, and the division series schedule included days off between each of the first three games.
Can that continue in a potentially grueling best-of-seven ALCS against a deeper Rays lineup -- if Chicago survives Saturday night in Cleveland?
"I've been asked many times: Eventually is this going to catch up with us?" Getz said. "Well, at least in the 2026 season, you look at the schedule and it's like, well, it's worked for us. Why can't it further?"
Those were Getz's words before his team's 9-5 loss in a Game 4 when four of his top relievers allowed all of Cleveland's runs. Even with the off days, arms might be dragging at this time of year.
Now Saturday night, in the biggest game the franchise has played since closing out its World Series title in 2005, Chicago's hopes will come down to how much gas its pitching staff has left in the tank.
"They want me to chill out a little bit just for health's sake," Taylor said earlier in the series. "But we have postseason baseball games to win, so I'm going to keep the foot on the gas pedal, and I think the rest of the guys are too." %!s()
Silent Hill's resurrection is one of the happier stories to emerge from the games industry in recent years. After spending roughly a decade locked in a Konami cupboard, Silent Hill has received three new entries published by Konami in as many years, all of which arrived to positive reviews and, seemingly, healthy sales. But if Silent Hill 2 Remake, Silent Hill f, and Silent Hill: Townfall still haven't satisfied your craving for allegorical horror in foggy towns, fret not, because Konami has plenty more plans for the series' ongoing revival.
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In an interview featured in Famitsu (via IGN), Silent Hill producer Motoi Okamoto explained that Konami is "relieved" by both the critical and commercial reception to the aforementioned three games. "All three titles we initially announced were able to be released successfully," Okamoto said, adding that, "they've also received high praise, and we are satisfied with it."
Okamoto went on to say that the games released so far only represent the "first wave" of Konami's planned games for the series, and that there's not one but two additional waves on the drawing board. "Successfully launching this 'first wave' comes with great relief, but we're not stopping here; we must think of the second and third waves," Okamoto stated. "We can't share specific details, but we're currently looking at a number of projects."
Silent Hill Townfall - Official Launch Trailer - YouTube
It's a very different situation from where Silent Hill was only a few years ago. During the chat, Okamoto revealed that persuading Konami's executive to pursue new entries in the series has been challenging, especially after the cancellation of Hideo Kojima's Silent Hills in 2015.
While Okamoto eventually got Silent Hill 2's remake greenlit, he was convinced that "just one remake is not enough". According to the producer, his reasoning was "if there were only one release, wouldn't people think that the development is going to be cancelled again?"
While Konami is keeping details of its future Silent Hill projects under wraps, we do know about one of them already. After its excellent remake of Silent Hill 2, Bloober Team is turning its attention to the 1999 original. Remaking the original will represent an interesting challenge, considering how much simpler its narrative is compared to its legendary sequel, and I'm curious to see how Bloober Team will approach it.
As for whether NeoBards Entertainment and Screen Burn Interactive will return to the series after their takes on Silent Hill, this is yet to be confirmed. But according to our resident Silent Hill expert Elie Gould, both developers certainly have what it takes. In their Silent Hill f review, Elie described the Japan-set action-horror as a "true return to form". As for exploring the Scottish town of St Amelia, Elie wrote that Screen Burn "absolutely understands what makes a great Silent Hill game" in their Silent Hill Townfall review.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims. %!s()
United States President Donald Trump says he has agreed a deal to release stocks of diesel fuel from Russia to try to ease high fuel costs in the US before November’s midterm elections.
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However analysts told Al Jazeera that the deal will likely have little effect on easing the global energy crisis while European countries could refuse to buy from Russia altogether.
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list 1 of 3US stocks slide as oil prices fluctuate over renewed Iran war fears
list 2 of 3Putin tells Trump peace talks are unlikely, cites Ukraine drone attacks
list 3 of 3Russia kills 15 in Ukraine as US hosts ‘productive’ talks to end war
end of list
The agreement comes despite years of sanctions on Russia over its war on Ukraine, the latest of which were announced last month by the US and specifically targeted buyers of Russian oil.
Here’s what we know:
What has Trump agreed with Putin?
On Friday night, Trump announced on social media that after a “highly successful discussion” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it had been agreed that Russia would “immediately” supply more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel fuel to the US and global marketplace.
Another 500,000 tonnes would be released in November, and a further 1 million tonnes sometime after that, Trump said. He added that, based on the current condition of its diesel refineries, Russia would then deliver another 3 million tonnes of diesel.
Trump claimed that this move, along with what he described as “total control” by the US of the Strait of Hormuz, would bring down diesel prices in the US and the rest of the world.
“Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority,” he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Trump later thanked Putin for the deal, telling reporters outside the White House on Friday: “To be honest, we have massive amounts of oil coming into our country, and it’s diesel which is what we want.”
Putin said in a statement on Friday that Russia “confirmed its willingness to supply oil and petroleum products to the US market and global markets at large”.
Why is there a global diesel crisis?
Global fuel prices have surged as a result of both the US-Israel war on Iran and Russia’s war on Ukraine. Tehran has largely closed off the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas supplies had been shipped in peacetime, since the US and Israel first launched strikes on Iran in February.
The recent attack on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, another key oil export route from the Gulf, as well as attacks by Yemen’s Houthis around the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb strait have compounded supply disruptions.
Meanwhile, oil refineries and energy and port facilities have come under heavy attack in both Russia and Ukraine.
Global fuel inventories have plummeted, and diesel prices reached record highs in both the US and Europe in September.
Last week, the Group of Seven countries agreed to release 100 million barrels of emergency reserves of diesel and crude oil after a US pressure campaign on the European Union in which the Trump administration threatened a US ban on its diesel exports.
Hamad Hussain, a climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, told Al Jazeera last week that the impact of the G7 release “would be short-lived given that this is just a temporary solution to the supply crunch”.
[Al Jazeera]
How has the diesel crisis affected the US?
Surging diesel prices in the US saw the national average rise to a record $6.52 a gallon (3.79 litres) in September, more than twice the price from a year earlier. The national average is currently $6.20, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).
The US is the world’s largest diesel exporter. Its inventories have fallen sharply since the Iran war began and remain below normal levels despite refiners increasing their output.
In September, US lawmakers and Trump floated restricting diesel exports in a bid to lower consumer costs. Trump also called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to halt attacks on diesel fuel targets, accusing him of causing a shortage after Ukraine ramped up its strikes on Russia’s oil industry this year, aiming to disrupt its energy industry, which it uses to fund its war effort. Trump did not single Russia out for similar treatment over its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Trump is particularly concerned about bringing down the price of diesel before the US midterm elections. The Iran war is already deeply unpopular and many small-business owners in his MAGA (Make America Great Again) support base rely on diesel being affordable.
Consumers are feeling the effects of rising prices as diesel is used by truckers to transport food and products and by farmers operating machinery. The latest Pew Research Center polling indicated that the economy is the most important issue for 84 percent of registered voters.
States that voted for Trump and typically support candidates from his Republican Party, like Iowa and Kansas, are now seen as battlegrounds in the November 3 elections, putting Trump under pressure to avoid a Republican defeat.
What does this mean for US sanctions on Russian oil?
The US banned imports of Russian oil and gas in 2022 under the Biden administration in response to the invasion of Ukraine in February that year.
A sweeping Russian sanctions law passed in Congress last month and signed by Trump also targets countries that buy Russian oil and gas. The Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 expanded existing sanctions and aimed to pressure Putin by targeting officials, banks and shadow tankers that facilitate the Russian energy trade.
It also gave Trump the power to impose 100 percent tariffs on the top five importers of Russian oil and natural gas.
After Trump’s announcement on Friday, the US Department of the Treasury said the Office of Foreign Assets Control was “immediately issuing a temporary general license to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market”.
Isn’t Russia having a fuel crisis of its own?
Yes, it is, giving analysts reason to doubt that Russia will be able to release as much diesel as Trump is promising.
Neil Atkinson, former head of the International Energy Agency’s oil industry and markets division, told Al Jazeera that he is sceptical about Russia being able to do this.
“In the very short term, it’s very hard to see how Russia can deliver the volumes that are talked about in the deal other than at the expense of its domestic market,” he said.
Russia was previously the world’s second-largest diesel exporter after the US. But Russian diesel and gas exports in the third quarter of this year were at 190,000 barrels per day compared with 690,000 barrels per day in the second quarter and 850,000 barrels per day in the first quarter, explained Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a maritime intelligence analyst with the shipping analytics company Windward, citing data from the commodities tracker Vortexa.
Russia, therefore, banned diesel exports in July in a bid to meet domestic demand and in late September expanded the ban until the end of October.
Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy facilities have also contributed to the fuel crisis in Russia. Putin has admitted that 1 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product has been affected by Ukrainian attacks.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said its air strikes have destroyed more than half of Russia’s oil refining capacity. In July, it also struck hundreds of Russian shadow fleet tankers in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, affecting the delivery of gas to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Bockmann told Al Jazeera that Russian domestic shortages were “so acute that over the third quarter for the first time we saw Russia import gasoline and diesel and gas oil”.
She added that “as recently as this week”, a ship carrying diesel and gas oil arrived in the port of Vysotsk.
Last week, Russia said it would consider a partial lifting of diesel export restrictions in the case of overproduction. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told the Russian parliament that the domestic market was balanced and “if diesel production exceeds domestic demand, we will consider partially reopening exports.”
Russia typically produces double the diesel needed to meet its domestic needs, according to the International Energy Agency. It has different standards of diesel suitable for different temperatures. Its summer-grade diesel for temperatures over 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) may be released to make way for the winter and Arctic grades needed domestically in the coming months.
How has Ukraine reacted?
Trump’s announcement came as US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, were meeting with Ukrainian officials and European negotiators in Miami, Florida, to discuss ending the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fifth year.
Zelenskyy reacted to the announcement, saying it was “a weak decision by strong partners”.
He said the deal “plays into Russia’s hands,- allowing it to kill more, wage war for longer”.
Can Russian diesel ease the pressure on global prices?
On Friday, Putin said he was “convinced [the agreement] will have a positive impact on the entire global economy”.
The Russian president also noted that “an agreement was reaffirmed to maintain personal contacts between the presidents of the two countries and to continue cooperation across their respective administrations, security services and agencies.”
Analysts said the agreement will do little to address the global energy crisis, however.
Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG Group, told Al Jazeera that the Trump-Putin deal to release Russian diesel is a short-term solution and “another classic Trump deal”.
“Announce an ‘agreement’ with an unpleasant dictator with impressive headline numbers and no certainty that any of the objectives will be achieved,” he said. “Even if some of the diesel does make it out of Russia, it is only a short-term solution given the globe’s daily consumption of diesel is around 30 million barrels,” which is roughly the total amount that could be released under the outlines of the deal that Trump announced.
Bockmann also told Al Jazeera that it is unclear how much impact releasing Russian diesel will have on reducing prices and global shortages.
“I’m not sure how effective the issuing of the general licence will be in allowing volumes to be imported at levels that are going to impact the domestic price of diesel in the US,” she said.
Atkinson said the volumes announced by Trump – even if Russia could manage to provide them – “don’t really move the needle very much” on prices because the US uses about 3.7 million barrels of diesel a day.
There are also indications that European countries may not even buy diesel from Russia.
“It’s very hard to see how a European government could, in all morality, buy oil from Russia when the whole point of the last four years is that Europe has been trying to wean itself off Russian oil and gas supplies as soon as practical,” Atkinson said. %!s()
![[Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/INTERACTIVE-MIDDLE-EAST-iran-hormuz-shipping-aug-27-2026-1787815800-1788488337.webp?w=770&resize=770%2C962&quality=80)