× + newsletter-2026-02-18
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// Tech news at terminal velocity

cat 2026-02-18.md

Zuck's Court Date, Meta's Chip Binge & The Anti-Ad Pivot

$ cat TLDR.md

• Mark Zuckerberg heads to court in LA to testify on social media addiction

• Meta signs a massive deal to buy millions of Nvidia's Grace and Vera chips

• Perplexity pivots away from ads to win back user trust (and maybe revenue)

Headlines & Launches

Heron Power Bags $140M

Drew Baglino left Tesla and immediately found $140M in the couch cushions to build a giga-scale factory for his new grid-tech startup. Apparently, 'ex-Tesla exec' is still the magic password for VCs.

Source: TechCrunch

🇮🇳 Sarvam AI Bets Big on Open Source

The Indian AI lab just dropped a suite of models (30B and 105B parameters) plus speech tools, betting that open source isn't dead yet. It's a bold move in a world increasingly dominated by closed gardens.

Source: TechCrunch

🎰 Meta Buys All The Chips (Again)

Zuck's empire struck a multiyear deal to deploy millions of Nvidia's Grace and Vera CPUs. It's the first large-scale deployment of Nvidia's CPU-only architecture, proving Meta is still the whale at the hardware poker table.

Source: The Verge

⚖️ Zuckerberg Takes the Stand

Meta's CEO is testifying in a Los Angeles courtroom regarding social media addiction. It's rare to see tech CEOs in the wild without a PR shield, so grab the popcorn.

Source: The Verge

Deep Dives

🛡️ Perplexity Ditches Ads

In a pivot that screams 'please trust us,' Perplexity is distancing itself from the ad model to avoid the 'upsell' stigma. It's a risky bet that users will pay for purity while competitors race to the bottom of the ad-supported barrel.

Source: The Verge

📜 If You're an LLM, Read This

Anna's Archive posted a cheeky but technical look at `llms.txt`, the emerging standard for telling scrapers what's what. It's a fascinating meta-commentary on how the web is restructuring itself to be machine-readable first, human-readable second.

Source: Anna's Archive

🛻 Ford's $30k EV Skunkworks

How do you build a cheap electric truck? Apparently, you hire F1 engineers and run it like a software bounty program. Ford's new strategy involves 3D-printed Lego-like parts and an obsession with efficiency that would make a lean startup blush.

Source: TechCrunch

Engineering & Research

🐧 Asahi Linux Hits 6.19

The heroes porting Linux to Apple Silicon just dropped a progress report. Support is getting shockingly good, proving that with enough reverse-engineering spite, anything is possible.

Source: Asahi Linux

🦆 Shaper: DuckDB Meets Metabase

A new open-source tool that wraps DuckDB into a Metabase-like interface. It's lightweight, fast, and perfect for when you need to visualize data without spinning up a heavy JVM instance.

Source: GitHub

🏎️ Fastest Frontend Tooling

Christoph Pojer dives into the current state of frontend build tools, benchmarking the 'fastest' options for both humans and AI agents. If your build takes longer than a coffee sip, you're doing it wrong.

Source: cpojer.net

Odds & Ends

👩‍⚖️ OpenAI Loses 'Cameo' Battle

A court barred OpenAI from using the name 'Cameo' for its Sora feature, so they renamed it to 'Characters.' Lawyers: 1, AI: 0.

Source: TechCrunch

🍄 DMT: The New Antidepressant?

A small clinical trial suggests DMT is effective for depression, especially if you have a 'mystical experience.' Science is finally catching up to what your hippie friend has been saying for years.

Source: Ars Technica

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