Daily Tech News 28 February 2026

• 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.

• 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.
  
  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".

  Colorado is considering a similar law.
  
  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.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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