💻 Meta Just Ditched Ray-Ban, Prime Day Deals Are Live & AI Is Costing Thousands of Jobs

Meta has launched its own branded smart glasses line, signaling a major bet that the category is ready for the mainstream — and one of the styles has a surprising celebrity connection. Amazon's Prime Day is in full swing through June 27th, with record-low prices on top wearables, e-readers, and power gear that won't last long. Oracle has quietly cut over 21,000 jobs in the past year, pointing to AI as a key factor in one of the largest tech workforce reductions in recent memory. Valve is expanding SteamOS beyond the Steam Deck, while a new handheld powered by Intel's latest chip is making waves — though its price tag may raise eyebrows. Plus, a newly discovered meteorite is rewriting what we know about the early solar system, and NASA is running quantum physics experiments in space that could change the future of technology.

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Welcome to Technology Daily, your go-to source for the latest in tech news. I'm your host, and today is June 23rd, 2026. We have a packed episode covering Amazon Prime Day deals, big moves in the smart glasses space, exciting handheld gaming updates, some serious AI industry news, and a few fascinating stories from science and space. Let's dive right in.

First up, it's Prime Day season, and if you've been holding off on any tech purchases, now is the time to act. Amazon's annual summer sale is running through June 27th, and there are some genuinely compelling deals worth knowing about.

On the wearables front, the Oura Ring 4 is down to just $226 at Amazon, which is the biggest discount we've ever seen on the 349-dollar smart ring. Yes, the Oura Ring 5 just launched, but here's the thing — none of the new software features are exclusive to the Ring 5. The Ring 4 gets all the same health tracking metrics, and battery life is nearly identical. The only real difference is a slightly thicker band and a less durable coating. For those curious about smart rings, this is a smart entry point.

For readers, the Kindle Paperwhite is on sale for $124.99 — that's $35 off. It's waterproof, has a gorgeous seven-inch display, and the battery lasts weeks at a time. If you want the premium Signature Edition with wireless charging and double the storage, that's down to $144.99, saving you $55.

Power needs covered too — Jackery's whole-home backup power station is half off, which is great timing heading into storm season. And if you're always on the go, Anker's laptop power bank with a massive 25,000 milliamp-hour capacity is about 25 percent off for Prime members.

One fun find: Hoto's 3.6V Electric Screwdriver Kit Pro is down to just $28.49. It's a compact, rechargeable screwdriver with 25 interchangeable bits, three torque settings, and a built-in LED light. Perfect for apartment moves or those small repairs you've been putting off.

Now let's talk about one of the bigger hardware stories this week: Meta has officially broken up with Ray-Ban — at least, sort of. Meta has launched its own branded smart glasses line, separate from the Ray-Ban collaboration that's defined the space for the past three years. The new Meta Glasses come in three styles and seven colors, starting at $299. One style is a collaboration with Kylie Jenner, which has certainly generated some buzz. The glasses carry the same camera, microphones, and AI chatbot as the Ray-Ban versions, just in Meta's own frames. This is a significant pivot — Meta is clearly betting that smart glasses are ready to stand on their own as a mainstream consumer category, not just a fashion accessory.

In handheld gaming, there's a lot happening. Valve has confirmed it is actively working with both Intel and Nvidia to bring SteamOS to a wider range of GPUs. The recently released SteamOS 3.8 update already includes initial firmware for upcoming Intel handhelds, and early testers have gotten SteamOS running on the MSI Claw 8 AI Plus. This is a big deal for anyone who wants the clean, optimized SteamOS experience outside of the Steam Deck.

Speaking of handhelds, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus — the first device with Intel's new Arc G3 Extreme chip — is drawing attention as potentially the most powerful handheld gaming PC on the market. But at $1,799, it faces a steep challenge against the beloved Steam Deck OLED, which starts at $789. First impressions suggest it's impressive hardware, but whether the performance jump justifies more than double the price is a question most gamers will have to answer for themselves.

And on the topic of Valve, the Steam Machine is shipping June 29th starting at $1,049 for the 512GB model — and that price doesn't include a controller. Valve is using a randomized purchase queue to manage demand and make buying feel, quote, less frustrating and more fair. We'll see how that goes.

Now for some AI and industry news worth your attention. Oracle has laid off 21,000 employees over the past year, citing AI as one of the contributing reasons. The company now employs around 141,000 people, down from 162,000. It's another data point in a growing trend of large tech companies restructuring workforces as AI tools take on more tasks.

On a more constructive AI note, OpenAI has launched a new initiative called Patch the Planet, part of its Daybreak cybersecurity program. The effort is aimed at helping open-source projects identify and fix software bugs using AI. It's a meaningful move at a time when open-source security vulnerabilities remain a serious concern across the industry.

Meta, meanwhile, is dealing with some internal turbulence. The company has paused an employee-tracking program after it accidentally exposed sensitive data — including keystroke logs — internally across the company. The program was already controversial, as it involved collecting worker keystrokes to train AI models. The accidental exposure certainly hasn't helped its reception among employees.

Also on the AI front, a new book by Cory Doctorow — sci-fi author and tech journalist — called The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI is generating discussion about how to challenge the structural foundations of the current AI boom. It's a thought-provoking angle worth checking out if you're interested in the broader societal implications of AI development.

In a story that highlights AI's real-world limitations, Sony's new AI Camera Assistant on the Xperia 1 VIII smartphone is getting poor reviews. Reviewers who spent a week with the device say the AI assistant produces some of the worst photos taken on a Sony camera in recent memory. Despite early comparisons to Google's Camera Coach feature on Pixel phones, the Sony implementation falls significantly short. It's a reminder that AI marketing and AI reality don't always align.

In global tech news, China has reclaimed the top spot in the latest supercomputer rankings. What's notable is the approach — China's new Lineshine supercomputer relies primarily on CPUs rather than the GPU-heavy architecture used by most competing systems. It's a different engineering philosophy that's clearly paying off at the highest performance levels.

For a story with broader implications, Amazon has been ordered by a judge to bargain with the Teamsters union, after the court ruled the company violated federal law by refusing to recognize the union. This could have significant ripple effects across the broader labor landscape in the tech and logistics sectors.

And in a deeply troubling story around autonomous vehicles, the NHTSA is investigating a Tesla Autopilot crash in Katy, Texas, that killed a woman inside her home after a Tesla drove into it. The incident is sparking renewed scrutiny of Tesla's driver-assistance systems.

Finally, let's end on something inspiring from the world of science. A rare meteorite has provided evidence of a lost moon-sized world that once orbited the young Sun billions of years ago, before it was destroyed in a catastrophic collision. The discovery is reshaping our understanding of how the early solar system formed. And separately, NASA's upgraded Cold Atom Lab aboard the International Space Station is producing ultra-cold quantum matter in microgravity — experiments that could pave the way for powerful future technologies both in space and here on Earth.

That's all for today's edition of Technology Daily. Whether you're hunting Prime Day deals, watching the smart glasses space evolve, or just keeping an eye on where AI is taking the industry, there's no shortage of stories to follow. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.