Today: 7 February 2026
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Engineer Turns Disposable Vape into Blazing-Fast Web Server with Only 24KB Memory

Engineer Turns Disposable Vape into Blazing-Fast Web Server with Only 24KB Memory

Unlikely Web Server: A Vape Pen’s Hidden Computing Power Disposable vape pens are usually seen as trash once the nicotine runs out, but inside they often hide surprisingly capable electronics. Bogdan Ionescu – an engineer and hobbyist known as “BogdanTheGeek” – discovered this when he cracked open some “fancier” vape models. Instead of the typical mystery “blob” IC, he found a marked chip from Puya (a Chinese chipmaker) Tomshardware. It turned out to be a Puya PY32F002B microcontroller: a tiny Arm Cortex-M0+ running at 24 MHz with 24 KB of flash storage and 3 KB of RAM Tomshardware. These specs are not stellar
17 September 2025
Spotify vs Apple Music vs YouTube Music – The 2025 Streaming Showdown (Pricing, Quality, AI & More)

YouTube Music’s Exclusive Fan Perks vs Spotify, Apple & More – A New Era of Superfan Rewards?

YouTube Music’s New Tools to Reward Superfans YouTube Music just announced a trio of new features aimed at bringing artists and fans closer together. Unveiled at YouTube’s “Made On” event in mid-September 2025, these tools mark a significant push to deepen artist-fan connections on the platform techcrunch.com. Here’s what’s new on YouTube Music: These features follow on the heels of YouTube Music’s 10th anniversary updates in August 2025, which added more social and interactive elements. The service introduced collaborative “Taste Match” playlists (combining friends’ music tastes, similar to Spotify’s Blend), badges for listeners (like “First to Watch” or “Top Listener”),
17 September 2025
Quantum Breakthrough: UK Startup Unveils First Quantum Computer Built with Standard Silicon Chips

Quantum Breakthrough: UK Startup Unveils First Quantum Computer Built with Standard Silicon Chips

Background: A Quantum Computer Built on Everyday Silicon Quantum Motion’s announcement represents a significant first in quantum computing: a functioning quantum computer built entirely using conventional silicon chips instead of the esoteric hardware typical of quantum labs. The London-based startup – a 2017 spinout of University College London and Oxford University – was founded by professors John Morton and Simon Benjamin specifically to pursue CMOS-based quantum processors datacenterdynamics.com. After several years of research and prototyping, the company unveiled its breakthrough system on September 15, 2025, as part of a UK government-backed initiative to commercialize scalable quantum hardware tomshardware.com. The new
17 September 2025
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3D-Printed Ghost Guns Won’t Stay Anonymous: How Digital Fingerprints Could Track Every Part

3D-Printed Ghost Guns Won’t Stay Anonymous: How Digital Fingerprints Could Track Every Part

Introduction: Ghost Guns and Digital Fingerprints 3D printing has opened the door to amazing innovations – custom tools, spare parts, even artistic creations – but it also has a dark side. In recent years, hobbyist 3D printers have been used to produce unregistered, untraceable firearms known as ghost guns. These DIY weapons lack serial numbers and skirt traditional gun regulations, making them appealing to criminals. A chilling example came in late 2024, when a ghost gun was implicated in the murder of a healthcare executive engineering.washu.edu engineering.washu.edu. This incident underscored why law enforcement is anxious about ghost guns: they’re effectively
17 September 2025
Intel Core Ultra 3 205 vs Core i3-14100 & Ryzen 5: Arrow Lake’s Budget Beast Redefines Entry-Level CPUs

Intel Core Ultra 3 205 vs Core i3-14100 & Ryzen 5: Arrow Lake’s Budget Beast Redefines Entry-Level CPUs

<br> Architecture & Specs: Arrow Lake’s Core Ultra 3 Goes Hybrid Intel’s Core Ultra 3 205 represents a major architectural step up for Intel’s budget tier, introducing the hybrid core design and silicon innovations of the Arrow Lake-S generation into an entry-level CPU. It packs 8 total cores (12 threads) in a 4P + 4E configuration – a first for the “Core i3/Ultra 3” class which was previously limited to 4 cores. The four Performance cores are based on Intel’s latest “Lion Cove” microarchitecture (successor to Raptor Cove), while the four Efficiency cores use the new “Skymont” design, both fabricated
17 September 2025
AMD’s Secret CPU Launch Shakes Up the Market: Four New Ryzen Chips Take Aim at Intel

AMD’s Secret CPU Launch Shakes Up the Market: Four New Ryzen Chips Take Aim at Intel

The Four New Ryzen CPUs at a Glance AMD’s new CPUs cover a surprisingly wide range of the Ryzen family. Below is a quick rundown of each chip’s key specifications and what makes it unique: In summary, AMD’s four new chips include two Zen 5 models aimed at delivering high performance per core at lower cost (by stripping out the iGPU), one unusual Zen 4 chip that repurposes a partially defective die for entry-level use, and one last gasp of Zen 3 for the ultra-budget segment. This mix shows AMD is leaving no stone unturned in its product lineup –
17 September 2025
Nvidia’s Unreleased GTX 2080 Ti Prototype – A More Powerful Turing Flagship That Never Launched

Nvidia’s Unreleased GTX 2080 Ti Prototype – A More Powerful Turing Flagship That Never Launched

Background: The RTX 2080 Ti and Turing’s Debut Nvidia launched the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti in September 2018 as the flagship of its then-new Turing architecture. Priced around $1,199 at launch, the RTX 2080 Ti was the first consumer GPU to introduce real-time ray tracing and AI DLSS features, marking a major technological leap in graphics. According to Tom’s Hardware, it “was the flagship offering at that moment, bringing ray tracing to the masses for the first time” Tomshardware. The card featured 11 GB of GDDR6 VRAM and delivered the highest gaming performance of its generation, well ahead of any
17 September 2025
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Japan’s $300 Million Undersea Cable Gamble: Inside the Global Race to Secure the Internet’s Lifelines

Japan’s $300 Million Undersea Cable Gamble: Inside the Global Race to Secure the Internet’s Lifelines

Japan’s Bold Move: Subsidizing Cable-Laying Ships Japan’s decision to bankroll NEC’s purchase of undersea cable vessels signals a major policy shift to protect the nation’s digital lifelines. According to officials, Tokyo is prepared to front hundreds of millions of dollars so that NEC – Asia’s biggest undersea cable installer – can acquire ocean-going cable-laying ships of its own Tomshardware Lightreading. Each such ship is a massive specialized vessel (costing about $300 million apiece) equipped to carry and slowly spool out thousands of kilometers of fiber-optic cable across ocean floors. Until now, NEC has owned zero of these, relying instead on leasing
17 September 2025
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Belgium’s Space Boom: From Small Nation to Satellite Powerhouse

Belgium’s Space Boom: From Small Nation to Satellite Powerhouse

Key Facts at a Glance Historical Evolution: From Early Collaborator to ESA Pillar Belgium’s journey in space began in the 1960s, making it one of the earliest European nations involved in space endeavors Belgium. In 1962 the government formed Belgospace, an industry-academia forum to coordinate Belgium’s participation in Europe’s first space organizations (ELDO for launchers and ESRO for science satellites) Switchtospace. Belgium became a founding member of ESA in 1975 and embraced a multilateral approach – recognizing that pooling resources was the way for a small country to achieve big goals in space Belgium. Over decades, Belgium honed specific strengths
17 September 2025
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Mars Life Clue, Deadly Heat & Tech Breakthroughs – Science News Roundup (Sept 16–17, 2025)

Mars Life Clue, Deadly Heat & Tech Breakthroughs – Science News Roundup (Sept 16–17, 2025)

Sources Medicine & Health: UC San Diego Health (press release via ScienceDaily) sciencedaily.com sciencedaily.com; ScienceDaily (Sep 16) sciencedaily.com; SciTechDaily scitechdaily.com scitechdaily.com.Space & Astronomy: Imperial College London (press release via ScienceDaily) sciencedaily.com sciencedaily.com; Symmetry Magazine (Fermilab/SLAC) symmetrymagazine.org symmetrymagazine.org; Sci.News sci.news sci.news.Climate & Environment: The Guardian theguardian.com theguardian.com; UNC Chapel Hill (press release via SciTechDaily) scitechdaily.com scitechdaily.com; Florida Atlantic University (press release via SciTechDaily) scitechdaily.com scitechdaily.com.Physics: Symmetry Magazine symmetrymagazine.org symmetrymagazine.org; Sci.News sci.news.Technology: University of Florida (press release via SciTechDaily) scitechdaily.com scitechdaily.com.Other: Sci.News sci.news sci.news; Sci.News sci.news.
17 September 2025
Rare Meteor Shower, Auroras & Planetary Spectacles: Skywatch Alert (Sept 17–18, 2025)

Rare Meteor Shower, Auroras & Planetary Spectacles: Skywatch Alert (Sept 17–18, 2025)

Key Facts Below is your full skywatching guide for the nights of September 17–18, 2025, with details on each phenomenon and tips for viewing. Clear skies! Meteor Showers: Slow Shooting Stars of September Chi Cygnids – a Rare 5-Year Meteor Shower: The headline event is the chi Cygnid meteor shower, a newly confirmed minor shower that appears to produce enhanced activity roughly every five years earthsky.org foxweather.com. First noticed after an outburst in 2015, the Chi Cygnids have shown bumps in meteor counts in 2010, 2015, 2020, and now 2025 earthsky.org. NASA/SETI astronomer Peter Jenniskens and colleagues detected increased meteors
17 September 2025
Rocket Launch Frenzy, Solar Surprises & Space Race Showdowns: 48 Hours of Space News (Sept 16–17, 2025)

Rocket Launch Frenzy, Solar Surprises & Space Race Showdowns: 48 Hours of Space News (Sept 16–17, 2025)

Rapid-Fire Rocket Launches and Satellite Deployments SpaceX’s Starlink blitz: SpaceX continued its high-frequency launch campaign, highlighting how routine orbital deployment has become. On Wednesday, Sept. 17, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites into a polar low-Earth orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California spaceflightnow.com. Liftoff occurred at 8:43 am PDT (15:43 UTC), and about eight minutes later the veteran booster (B1088 on its 10th flight) landed on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com. This “Starlink Group 17-12” mission was SpaceX’s 83rd Starlink launch of 2025, pushing the year’s Starlink satellite tally above 2,000 deployed so
17 September 2025
Tech Shockwaves: Slimmest iPhone, TikTok’s Lifeline & Space Glitches – Major Tech News (Sept 16–17, 2025)

Tech Shockwaves: Slimmest iPhone, TikTok’s Lifeline & Space Glitches – Major Tech News (Sept 16–17, 2025)

Key Facts Consumer Electronics: Slim Phones and Smart Glasses Apple’s Thinnest iPhone Yet: Apple’s fall product event introduced the iPhone Air, a dramatically slimmed-down iPhone that Apple billed as its biggest design shake-up in eight years reuters.com reuters.com. At just 5.6 mm thick, the iPhone Air is thinner than even its rival Samsung’s 5.8 mm Galaxy S25 Edge reuters.com. Inside the razor-thin chassis, Apple managed to fit its latest A19 Pro processor and claimed “all-day” battery life reuters.com reuters.com. The device carries a single rear camera (a trade-off to achieve the ultra-thin design) and uses an eSIM-only approach – something analysts warned
17 September 2025
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MediaTek’s 2nm Superchip Breaks Cover – Taking on Apple, Qualcomm & Samsung in the Next-Gen SoC Race

MediaTek’s 2nm Superchip Breaks Cover – Taking on Apple, Qualcomm & Samsung in the Next-Gen SoC Race

MediaTek’s First 2nm Flagship SoC – A New Milestone MediaTek’s announcement marks a major milestone: its first flagship chip built on TSMC’s new 2nm process has been successfully taped out (design finalized) as of September 2025. This makes MediaTek one of the very first companies to adopt TSMC’s 2nm node, alongside industry giants. The chip is expected to enter volume production by late 2026, aligning with TSMC’s roadmap for 2nm mass production. According to MediaTek, the development highlights the company’s long-term partnership with TSMC and its ability to deploy bleeding-edge semiconductor technology across diverse applications. Notably, TSMC’s 2nm (N2) technology
16 September 2025
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Battle of the EV Charging Standards: Tesla’s NACS vs. CCS2 vs. CHAdeMO – Who Will Rule the Roads in 2025?

Helios vs. Tesla: Inside the Solar-Powered EV Charging Platform Shaking Up the Industry

Helios Charging’s Clean Energy Platform Explained Helios Charging is positioning itself as a clean energy disruptor in EV infrastructure, blending renewable power and fintech-like innovation into EV charging. Announced in Denver on Sept. 15, 2025, Helios’s new platform is essentially an online marketplace for funding EV charging stations and solar projects oilprice.com. It connects accredited investors (think corporations or high-net-worth individuals) with project opportunities that need capital – for example, installing a bank of EV fast chargers at a shopping center, or building a solar-covered charging hub on a highway. In return for funding these developments, investors receive tax equity
16 September 2025
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High-Stakes Drone Showdown: Why the U.S. Is Scrambling to Catch Up with Russia in Ukraine’s War

High-Stakes Drone Showdown: Why the U.S. Is Scrambling to Catch Up with Russia in Ukraine’s War

Drones Take Center Stage in the Ukraine War Unmanned aerial vehicles – drones – have become central to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, redefining how wars are fought. What began in 2022 with ad-hoc use of hobby drones to spot artillery has exploded into a full-scale “drone war.” Both Russia and Ukraine now deploy vast fleets of drones on the front lines, from tiny quadcopters to loitering munitions (self-destructing attack drones). Analysts note this war is built “not around a few elite systems but around millions of small, cheap, and expendable drones deployed by soldiers at the front”. These drones perform reconnaissance,
16 September 2025
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Energy Guzzlers: Ranking Countries by Per Capita Energy Use in 2024

Energy Guzzlers: Ranking Countries by Per Capita Energy Use in 2024

Key Facts & Highlights: Global Energy Consumption at a Glance (2024) The world’s energy appetite has never been larger. Global primary energy consumption reached an unprecedented level in 2023–2024, driven by post-pandemic economic activity and extreme weather energy needs. According to the Energy Institute’s review, consumption hit about 620 exajoules in 2023 – up 2% from the previous year dieselnet.com. This growth pushed energy-related CO₂ emissions over 40 billion tonnes for the first time dieselnet.com, a troubling milestone for climate observers. Fossil fuels still dominate the global energy mix, accounting for 81.5% of primary energy use dieselnet.com. Oil and coal
16 September 2025
Solar vs. Coal vs. Nuclear: Lazard’s 2025 Report Reveals the Cheapest Power Source

Solar vs. Coal vs. Nuclear: Lazard’s 2025 Report Reveals the Cheapest Power Source

Introduction: The Race for the Cheapest Energy Source What is the cheapest form of energy today? It’s a complex question fueled by falling renewable costs, volatile fossil fuel prices, and urgent climate concerns. To cut through the noise, analysts often turn to the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) – a metric that compares the all-in lifetime cost of different power sources. LCOE represents the price a generator must receive per unit of electricity to cover its construction, financing, and operating costs over its lifespan cbsnews.com. In essence, it’s a “apples-to-apples” benchmark of what it costs to produce a megawatt-hour (MWh)
16 September 2025
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OpenAI’s Teen ChatGPT Revealed – Safe AI Revolution or Too Little, Too Late?

OpenAI’s Teen ChatGPT Revealed – Safe AI Revolution or Too Little, Too Late?

What Is the Teen Version of ChatGPT? OpenAI’s teen version of ChatGPT is a tailored, safer mode of the popular AI chatbot designed specifically for users aged 13 to 17. It was unveiled in mid-September 2025 as part of OpenAI’s push to make ChatGPT “meet [teens] where they are” developmentally openai.com. This means the AI will respond differently to a 15-year-old than it would to an adult, with built-in awareness of the user’s age and maturity level. Key features and differences of the teen ChatGPT include: It’s worth noting that OpenAI’s terms of service always prohibited users under 13 (due
16 September 2025
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Global Markets on Edge as Fed Rate Decision Nears: Asia Optimistic, West Cautious

Global Markets on Edge as Fed Rate Decision Nears: Asia Optimistic, West Cautious

The world’s financial markets are fixated on the Federal Reserve’s upcoming rate decision, which is shaping up to be one of the most consequential of the year. Investors across Asia, Europe, and the Americas are bracing for the Fed’s policy announcement on Wednesday, widely expected to deliver the first U.S. rate cut of 2025 reuters.com. This anticipated shift in U.S. monetary policy comes amid a complex global economic backdrop – one marked by moderating inflation, signs of slowing growth, and pockets of geopolitical tension. With stock indices recently at or near record highs and bond yields retreating, markets have been
16 September 2025
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Stock Market Today

Oracle stock rebounds from eight-day skid as $20 billion share-sale plan looms

Oracle stock rebounds from eight-day skid as $20 billion share-sale plan looms

7 February 2026
Oracle shares jumped 4.65% to $142.82 Friday, ending an eight-day slide but remaining down 22% since Jan. 27. The company has set up a $20 billion at-the-market stock program and completed a $25 billion senior notes sale to fund cloud expansion. Oracle’s liabilities stood at $174.5 billion as of Nov. 30, 2025, before the new financing. Investors remain focused on dilution risks and the pace of capacity growth.
ASML stock price snaps back as AI spending bets return, with ex-dividend date next

ASML stock price snaps back as AI spending bets return, with ex-dividend date next

7 February 2026
ASML shares rose 3.84% Friday in Amsterdam to 1,193.80 euros, rebounding with global chip stocks after Amazon signaled a sharp increase in AI-related capital spending. The stock goes ex-dividend Feb. 9 ahead of a 1.60-euro interim payout. ASML’s Nasdaq shares climbed 4.64% to $1,413.01. Despite Friday’s gains, the Amsterdam listing finished the week about 2.5% lower.
Mastercard stock price: MA slips as Dow hits 50,000; jobs and CPI data next week

Mastercard stock price: MA slips as Dow hits 50,000; jobs and CPI data next week

7 February 2026
Mastercard shares closed down 0.6% at $548.74 Friday, trailing gains in Visa and American Express. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 2.47% to a record 50,115.67. Mastercard disclosed a new cybersecurity partnership in the UAE and raised compensation for two top executives. U.S. jobs and inflation data, delayed by a government shutdown, are due next week.
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