Saturday, February 28
Daily News Stuff 28 February 2026
Febrile Edition
Febrile Edition
Top Story
- OpenAI has raised $110 billion in new investment from Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank - sort of - valuing the company at somewhere between $730 billion and bankrupt. (Trading View)
A lot of the stories just report the numbers and not the strings wrapped around them.
Amazon for example chipped in $50 billion, but only $15 billion up front. The rest requires OpenAI to either deliver AGI - human-level intelligence - or a successful IPO. And the deal requires OpenAI to commit to an additional $100 billion in spending on Amazon's cloud services, on top of the $38 billion deal they've already signed.
Nvidia invested $30 billion - much less than the $100 billion discussed previously but not a small amount either - apparently on similar conditions that OpenAI spend all of that and more on Nvidia chips.
SoftBank is also in for $30 billion, but I've seen no details of what they are getting out of it other than a slice of the pie.
Tech News
- A new California law requires all operating systems to require age verification at the time of account setup. (PC Gamer)
All of them. Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, all 600 actively developed Linux distributions, the various BSD flavours, OpenVMS, OS/360 running on a virtual machine, the ZX Spectrum emulator you just vibe coded using Claude Code, the uncounted millions of Docker containers spun up automatically every day, all of them.
From a Reddit post included in that article:What really scares me is that we have lawmakers stupid enough to propose a law like this.
Colorado is considering a similar law.
This is basically impossible for California to enforce. Worst case, they are too stupid to know that. Best case, it is performative.
Even if Linux Mint decides to add some kind of age verification, to comply with CA law, there's no reason anyone would choose that version. There are hundreds of other jurisdictions in which Mint operates that don't require this kind of stupidity. It's more likely that they will put a disclaimer on their website "not for use in California".
Time to wall them off until the infection burns itself out.
- We choose not to go to the moon, and not to do the other things, because they are hard. (The Guardian)
The Artemis III mission to land humans on the moon, won't.
Also the Artemis II mission to do a lunar flyby has been pushed back from March to April at the earliest.
- The US federal government has blacklisted Anthropic's Claud AI system from government use after discussions with the Department of War broke down. (CNBC)
Reportedly Anthropic insisted on final control over when, where, and how its systems were used. This did not go down well, or indeed, at all.
Update: OpenAI has just signed a deal with the US government, saying, basically, "Talk to us! We have no discernable moral or ethical fiber whatsoever! And boy do we need money!" (CNN)
- The JapanNext (deep breath) JN-282IPS4KP-HSP is a 28.2" 3840x2560 monitor with 100% sRGB and 95% DCI-P3 colour coverage and a stand supporting height adjustment, tilt, swivel, and pivot. (Notebook Check)
Priced at $262 in Japan, which is where JapanNext sells its products. You can't have one.
But what you can pick up from Amazon is a Gawfolk (who?) monitor using the same panel for $140. It has two HDMI 2.0 ports that limit refresh rates to 50Hz, and two DisplayPort 1.4 ports that provide the full 60Hz.
There's also a Crua (who I have heard of, as a maker of cheap monitors generally) model available that swaps one of the DisplayPort ports for USB-C - I think, details are very much lacking - for $160.
The Crua model is also available in Australia, at A$189 - US$135 - including tax and delivery.
I think I'll give it a try. The stand is not likely up to much, but it has a 75mm VESA mount so it can easily be replaced with something more solid and flexible. I've been tempted by the BenQ RD280U which uses the same panel again but is priced at A$1099.
I'd point to reviews of the Crua or Gawfolk models but... There aren't any.
Musical Interlude
Disclaimer: Get back to Paradise with you!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:48 PM
| Comments (8)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 716 words, total size 6 kb.
Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, February 28 2026 07:55 PM (Xd0ag)
2
Age verification - I'm reminded of something Charles Babbage said: "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." Or, in this case, provoke such a law. He had a nice way of saying somebody was a babbling idiot.
Posted by: Frank at Saturday, February 28 2026 08:29 PM (zCiG7)
3
Frank, I've always loved that quote and wind up muttering it to my coworkers once or twice a year.
"It's more likely that they will put a disclaimer on their website "not for use in California"."
I saw a youtube video saying some BSD distro's already done this. MidnightBSD, which I've never heard of before (although I really only know of the big 4)
"It's more likely that they will put a disclaimer on their website "not for use in California"."
I saw a youtube video saying some BSD distro's already done this. MidnightBSD, which I've never heard of before (although I really only know of the big 4)
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, February 28 2026 11:53 PM (1zWbY)
4
"t limit refresh rates to 50Hz, and two DisplayPort 1.4 ports that provide the full 60Hz."
Ugh. This is where I engage my inner snob.
Ugh. This is where I engage my inner snob.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, February 28 2026 11:56 PM (1zWbY)
5
Since I live in Colorado, I occasionally check a couple of YouTube channels that cover such issues. A recent video on one made the comment that California's law is more sensible than Colorado's proposed one, noting that (among other useless and unenforceable provisions) Colorado's would require every website in the world that permitted sign-up accounts to do age verification.
If I weren't already retired with my closest family here in the state, I'd be looking to move somewhere else where things might be less lacking in common sense. I swear my Congressional representative isn't living in the same reality that I am.
If I weren't already retired with my closest family here in the state, I'd be looking to move somewhere else where things might be less lacking in common sense. I swear my Congressional representative isn't living in the same reality that I am.
Posted by: wheels at Sunday, March 01 2026 01:03 AM (AxWHc)
6
You've mentioned KTC monitors before, and I'm pretty sure I picked up a 1440p monitor a year ago based on your notes. I revisited the Amazon listing for KTC at the end of the year and found a 4K monitor with similar specs (95% DCI-P3, 125% sRGB, see https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DLBH932R). It periodically goes on sale for around US$160. I bought that and put it on my spare PC. Looks great though I see odd coloration when I enable HDR in Win11. Something to check on later... Also IIRC, its HDMI port is ~59Hz which is probably a limitation of the controller chip under the hood of this monitor as well as the Gawfolk.
Posted by: George B at Sunday, March 01 2026 01:05 AM (GX/mQ)
7
Frenz,
California and Colorado are fraud by mail states, and those legislatures do not represent anything other than fraud. I propose that I am in compliance with the state of california, we use a post office based age verification mechanism. If Twink McBogusson can obtain a ballot for that name, he must surely be a real person and an adult.
Anyway, the sex and drugs are flowing in that bunker beneath Sacramento in the final days of the Newsome regime.
(I jest. I underestimate how ignorant that legislature crazies are of technology, and assume that they must be doing some LSD to forget their basic educations in calculus, computer security, statistics, and thermodynamics.)
Artemis was a crap idea in the first place. DIE in space is just a stupid and pointless exercise.
Anyway, instead of blowing up non-communist women and minorities with SLS hardware, we can just wait some years and then hire SpaceX to drop payloads of communists. (Which of course is pointless if we get Advanced Air Mobility working, but...)
California and Colorado are fraud by mail states, and those legislatures do not represent anything other than fraud. I propose that I am in compliance with the state of california, we use a post office based age verification mechanism. If Twink McBogusson can obtain a ballot for that name, he must surely be a real person and an adult.
Anyway, the sex and drugs are flowing in that bunker beneath Sacramento in the final days of the Newsome regime.
(I jest. I underestimate how ignorant that legislature crazies are of technology, and assume that they must be doing some LSD to forget their basic educations in calculus, computer security, statistics, and thermodynamics.)
Artemis was a crap idea in the first place. DIE in space is just a stupid and pointless exercise.
Anyway, instead of blowing up non-communist women and minorities with SLS hardware, we can just wait some years and then hire SpaceX to drop payloads of communists. (Which of course is pointless if we get Advanced Air Mobility working, but...)
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, March 01 2026 02:18 AM (rcPLc)
8
Though, in fairness I understand that some intelligent educated people did use LSD without losing all of their mental capacity immediately, so I picked the wrong joke.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, March 01 2026 02:20 AM (rcPLc)
59kb generated in CPU 0.0174, elapsed 0.1408 seconds.
58 queries taking 0.1298 seconds, 369 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
58 queries taking 0.1298 seconds, 369 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
