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Glad to see you here 🙌 This place is about what I truly love: computers, hardware, the internet, a bit of sports, and all kinds of tech — everything that hums, blinks, works, and sometimes breaks, only to come back to life again. This is where projects are born, both rushed and unhurried: quiet evenings, cold tea, datasheets, and experiments where an old hard drive suddenly spins up again and a router turns into a mini server.

I share articles, notes, ideas, and guides — hands-on experience tested in real life. If this atmosphere resonates with you, welcome aboard: it’s warm, home-like, and straight to the point 🔧💡

Daily Brief — February 12, 2026

Discord tightens age settings, but not for everyone at once 🔐

Discord is rolling out “teen-by-default” safety settings and will require age verification for access to age-restricted areas — via video selfie or ID. In simple terms, everyday use stays the same, but some features may ask you to confirm your age. For users, this mainly means stronger default safety and a bit more control over restricted content.

OpenAI drops the “io” brand for its AI hardware 🤖

Court filings confirm that OpenAI will not use the “io” name for its upcoming AI hardware. In other words, the product concept remains, but under a different brand. For users and the market, this is mostly a legal and branding adjustment with no change to the underlying technology.

YouTube Music rolls out AI playlist generator 🎧

YouTube Music has begun rolling out AI Playlist: you describe what you want, and the app generates a playlist you can refine with follow-up prompts. It’s available to Premium subscribers on mobile and is expanding gradually. In practice, music discovery becomes faster and more conversational.

NVMe SSD running on legacy PCI — a pure engineering experiment 🧩

Enthusiasts demonstrated a modern NVMe SSD working on a Pentium III–era system through a chain of adapters. It functions, but performance is limited by the old PCI bus — this is more a compatibility demo than a practical setup. Still, a neat reminder of how far storage interfaces have evolved.

Raspberry Pi 5 mini storage cluster with GlusterFS 💾

A DIY storage cluster built from multiple Raspberry Pi 5 boards using GlusterFS was showcased. Simply put, small single-board computers were turned into a distributed, fault-tolerant network storage. Useful for people experimenting with home servers, self-hosting, and distributed storage.

A game where AI plays and humans watch 🤖🎮

SpaceMolt is a “living universe” where only AI agents act — mining, trading, and interacting — while humans observe through maps and logs. It’s less a traditional game and more a demonstration of autonomous agent behavior. An interesting experiment at the intersection of game development and AI.

Over the past few years, low Earth orbit (LEO) has become noticeably more crowded: thousands of satellites now support communications, navigation, and Earth observation 🛰️. Recent studies suggest that this growing density is no longer just a background statistic. Researchers have examined what could happen if satellites were to temporarily lose their ability to perform collision-avoidance maneuvers—for example, due to a powerful solar storm or a large-scale systems failure.

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Daily Briefing — January 30, 2026

Nvidia H200 in China: a cautious “yes,” no fanfare 🤖

In short: Chinese regulators have started issuing conditional approvals for some companies to buy Nvidia H200 accelerators. This isn’t a blanket green light or a public decision—more like case-by-case permissions.
Put simply, the chips may reach China, but under strict rules and not for everyone. For the market, it signals ongoing dialogue, not a full reopening.

Google upgrades Chrome and Search with Gemini 🔍

Google unveiled Auto Browse, a Chrome agent that can perform browser tasks (search, forms, purchases) with user permission. At the same time, Search updates make AI Overviews more conversational and allow jumping into AI Mode for follow-up questions.
Basically, the browser and search are becoming more assistant-like—no drastic changes yet, but a clear move toward automation.

Google Photos animates images with text prompts 🎞️

Google Photos is expanding its “photo-to-video” feature, adding custom text prompts to describe motion or style. The rollout is gradual and builds on existing AI tools in the app.
For everyday users, it’s a creative extra—not pro editing, just a quick way to bring a still image to life.

Apple keeps iMessage and FaceTime alive on very old iPhones 📱

Apple released iOS/iPadOS 12.5.8 for legacy devices to extend certificate validity required for iMessage, FaceTime, and device activation. There are no new features or security fixes—this is a purely technical update.
If you’re using a very old iPhone or iPad, these services will keep working past 2027 without surprises.

Samsung prepares HBM4 for the AI accelerator era 🧠

Samsung plans to start HBM4 memory production and prepare shipments for major customers, including Nvidia, as it competes with SK hynix. For now, this is based on plans and sources rather than publicly announced contracts.
For the industry, it highlights intensifying competition around AI-focused memory, now as critical as the accelerators themselves.

AMD RDNA 5 and RDNA 3.5: unconfirmed claims ⚠️

Reports suggesting RDNA 5 will be limited to “premium” APUs while RDNA 3.5 remains mainstream until 2029 are not officially confirmed by AMD. These are insider claims, not stated company plans.
Worth reading, but best treated as rumors—with no practical conclusions yet for users or developers.

OpenAI has started a careful test of advertising in ChatGPT — without abrupt changes and with fairly clear boundaries. This is not a full rollout, but a pilot: ads are shown only to some users in the US, and only in the free version and the low-cost ChatGPT Go plan. Paid tiers — Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise — remain completely ad-free 🙂

The format itself is deliberately restrained. Ads appear at the bottom of a response, only when the conversation topic genuinely matches an advertiser’s offer. They are clearly labeled as ads and are not embedded into the generated text. OpenAI explicitly states that ChatGPT’s answers are not altered or “optimized” for advertising — ads exist at the interface level, not inside the model 🧩

From a technical perspective, this matters. The model continues to operate exactly as before, without commercial content influencing its generation logic. Context is used only to decide whether to show an ad, not to pass conversation data to advertisers. Chat history is not sold, and ad personalization can be disabled in settings. For engineers and developers, this is a telling example of how an AI service can be monetized without interfering with the model itself ⚙️

In practice, for most users nothing really changes yet. This is a limited experiment that affects only the free tier. For the market, however, it’s a clear signal: large AI platforms are looking for sustainable revenue models beyond subscriptions, because infrastructure and compute costs are extremely high. At the same time, OpenAI is setting boundaries in advance — no ads on sensitive topics like healthcare or politics, and no ads shown to minors 🚧

There are still plenty of open questions. It’s unclear how quickly the test might expand to other countries, which ad formats will prove viable, and whether this could affect user trust over time. But the overall approach — cautious, technically isolated, and with a clear separation between ads and AI responses — looks like an attempt not to break what people value ChatGPT for 🤝

Daily digest for January 22, 2026

Windows 11 gets an emergency fix after the January update 🛠️

After the January patch, some Windows 11 23H2 users ran into issues with shutdown and hibernation. Microsoft acknowledged the problem and released an out-of-band (OOB) update, available via the Update Catalog and included in subsequent patches. In short, if your system behaved oddly, there’s now an official fix.

ChatGPT starts testing ads — carefully and clearly labeled 💬

OpenAI has confirmed plans to test advertising in ChatGPT for free tiers in the US. These ads appear below responses, are clearly marked, and do not alter or influence the generated answers. For users, this means ads may show up, but without interfering with the content itself.

Google refreshes voice search on Android 🎙️

A redesigned Voice Search interface is gradually rolling out in the Google app on Android. The layout is cleaner, and the “search a song” button is more prominent. There’s no official announcement yet — it’s a quiet visual update rather than a major new feature.

Pixel Watch may learn to warn you when you leave your phone behind ⌚📱

Code analysis has revealed a potential “left behind” notification for Pixel Watch, alerting users when Bluetooth connection to the phone is lost. Important detail: this indicates development work, not a confirmed or imminent public release.

Realme prepares a smartphone with a 10,001 mAh battery 🔋

Realme has officially confirmed the launch of the P4 Power 5G in India, highlighting its unusually large 10,001 mAh battery. Full specifications are still being disclosed, but the battery capacity itself is confirmed — clearly targeting users who value long battery life without carrying a power bank.