Daily Tech News 12 February 2026

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Why the economics of orbital AI datacenters are so brutal. (Tech Crunch)

It doesn't make much sense unless you're both a major AI company and the world leader in orbital launch capacity, which narrows it down to slightly less than one company.

Even for SpaceX it's not viable until Starship goes into volume production. So far, as the article notes, the rocket hasn't yet achieved orbital flight.

The other major problem is the lifespan of the datacenters. If SpaceX uses cheap silicon solar panels, those will degrade fairly quickly in space. But the current economics of AI chips limits the useful lifetime of the hardware to a similar period to the solar panels - about five years.

But then what? Drop entire datacenters into the ocean? Do the fish need that much compute capacity?
Meanwhile SpaceX's SuperHeavy booster - used to launch Starship - has passed the latest round of testing with flying colours. (Ars Technica)

The company may be ready for a test of its updated Starship V3 by the end of March.

Tech News

An overclocked 9800X3D performs exactly like a 9850X3D. (Tom's Hardware)

No surprise since the 9850X3D is an overclocked 9800X3D.
The 9800X3D remains the best selling CPU at retail outlets. (WCCFTech)

Which is interesting, because it's not exactly cheap.

Second-best seller is the five year old 5800X, which uses DDR4 memory. That's where system builders on a budget are spending their money.

Intel is barely an afterthought in retail CPU sales.
Intel's high-end Nova Lake chips are expected to be large and expensive. (Tom's Hardware)

The 24-core (8P + 16E) chiplets with the large L3 cache are expected to measure 150mm2, about 50% larger than AMD's 12-core (all Performance cores) Zen 6 chiplets with the cache die included. And the top-of-the-line models will include two of those chiplets, manufactured on TSMC's 2nm and Intel's 1.8nm processes.

Still, 48 cores (plus 4 low-power cores on the I/O chiplet) and 288MB of L3 cache is an awful lot for a desktop processor, even if 32 of the cores are efficiency models.

With both these and AMD's 24-core Zen 6 CPUs set to show up later this year, it will be interesting to see how they compare, and if they can still deliver when attached to standard dual-channel DDR5 memory.
Claud Code got dumbed down. (Symmetry Breaking)

Not the AI service itself, but the interface.

Previously it told users what files the AI was examining. Now that feature has been removed and you can only get a summary so devoid of detail as to be useless, or a stream-of-consciousness firehose so packed with detail as to be useless.

The developers working on the tool at Anthropic appear to be actively fighting requests from an increasing number of users to simply change things back.

Musical Interlude

Song is Cough Syrup by Young the Giant. Anime is a whole bunch of great Ghibli movies and also Tales from Earthsea.

Disclaimer: Which is a Ghibli movie.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 BOING!

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at February 12, 2026 04:01 AM (7xyr6)

2 Exercise time!

Maybe l8r.

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at February 12, 2026 04:01 AM (7xyr6)

3 w00t

Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 04:03 AM (+YA9H)

4 G'Day everyone

Posted by: Skip at February 12, 2026 04:03 AM (Ia/+0)

5 Morning all

Posted by: Tuna at February 12, 2026 04:03 AM (lJ0H4)

6 Morning folks.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at February 12, 2026 04:06 AM (BLOW1)

7 >>>Claud Code

-->Claude Code

Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 04:12 AM (+YA9H)

8 Mornin'

Posted by: Puddleglum, cheer up for the worst is yet to come at February 12, 2026 04:19 AM (sAmhv)

9 on the Claude Code article:

1) Anthropic stops i.d.ing "files read" and "patterns searched"
2) Anthropic points to "verbose mode" and tells the user to look there for those answers
3) Anthropic trims "verbose mode"

My bet: Anthropic wanted to get to 3) and the way to get there was to do 1) and 2) first, to makes doing 3) seem to make sense. It's not like Anthropic did 1); then read user replies; and then said SMH o.k. we'll trim verbose mode.

Sounds like all the information the user is asking for is available, just in this other place.

Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 04:21 AM (+YA9H)

10 I might need moar covfefe.
Spell-check is not happy with covfefe.

Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 04:22 AM (+YA9H)

11 Birdbath status?

Posted by: Just Wondering at February 12, 2026 04:31 AM (2Ez/1)

12 AMV - Adieu Perchance to Dream

Lovely.

Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 04:37 AM (+YA9H)

13 An essay on AI taking over the world (pretty much):

https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening

Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 04:39 AM (+YA9H)

14 AI is a surveillance tool, nothing more, nothing less. Every application we find useful is just the surveillance tool in operation. It is the OS of the Panopticon.
Every sunrise, we have vast swarms of birds waking up and heading north.

Posted by: Accomack at February 12, 2026 04:56 AM (8jVAy)

15 Good morning. How big a deal is it that Google bought wiz?

Posted by: Ben Had at February 12, 2026 05:00 AM (0KSrI)

16
If we're going to land on the Moon, Elon has got a lot of work to do. I'm not sure just how far along that's progressing -- see some optimistic claims, but I don't know.

He's got to get Starship HLS working, which is what they're gonna land on the Moon. He's also got to get the on-orbit tanking and refueling going.

Posted by: publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb) at February 12, 2026 05:01 AM (w6EFb)

17 Google raised over $50 billion in new debt earlier this week. That's a lot of data center construction.

I wonder what the aggregate spend is on data centers this year. Electricity production might need some of that dough.

Posted by: Huck Follywood at February 12, 2026 05:05 AM (xJSPn)

18 Which one has the thruster problems? The one that left two astronauts stranded for 6 months or so at the space station after what was supposed to be a week long mission.

Posted by: Common Tater at February 12, 2026 05:07 AM (qp8Hp)

19 Somewhere just under freezing point and don't think getting much above it
Haveca great day horde

Posted by: Skip at February 12, 2026 05:07 AM (Ia/+0)

20 13 An essay on AI taking over the world (pretty much):

https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening
Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 04:39 AM (+YA9H)

What a horribly annoying tic for a writer, maybe an AI:

- But most of us weren't paying attention.
- Not in an "eventually we should talk about this" way.
- We're not making predictions.
- Each new model wasn't just better than the last.
- Not like a light switch.
- Not a rough draft I need to fix.
- I'm not exaggerating.
- It wasn't just executing my instructions.

And that's from the first 2 pages of 11.

Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 05:09 AM (+YA9H)

21 12 AMV - Adieu Perchance to Dream

Lovely.
Posted by: m

Yes. Some of those AMV videos are better than the videos put out by the band.

Posted by: Puddleglum, cheer up for the worst is yet to come at February 12, 2026 05:10 AM (sAmhv)

22 Pixy, your musical choices are generally new to me, always excellent, and I really look forward to each new post. Thanks.

Posted by: Huck Follywood at February 12, 2026 05:10 AM (W6oRy)

23 >> Which one has the thruster problems?

That's Boeing's Space Edsel, the Starliner. Nothing about moon plans depend on it at all, thankfully.

Posted by: publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb) at February 12, 2026 05:11 AM (w6EFb)

24 18 Which one has the thruster problems? The one that left two astronauts stranded for 6 months or so at the space station after what was supposed to be a week long mission.
Posted by: Common Tater

That was Boeing's Starliner.

SpaceX came to the recue with their Crew Dragon. (A Crew Dragon capsule is also permanently docked with the ISS as a lifeboat.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at February 12, 2026 05:11 AM (BLOW1)

25 G'morning, all!

39.9 degrees out.

Compared to yesterdays 59.8, that's a little chilly.

Might wait a bit to go walk.

Posted by: Village Idiot's Apprentice at February 12, 2026 05:14 AM (iMotb)

26 The trend of making it better by making it worse is alive and well it seems.

The same sort of thing is happening to otter ai whereas you could get a nice tight summary, decisions, tasks output, now it's out put is overly verbose, with time stamps and bizarre form mating.

This "improving" things by making it worse is right out of the Microsoft playbook.

Posted by: Thomas Bender at February 12, 2026 05:16 AM (XV/Pl)

27 Sameer Gadhia, lead singer of Young The Giant, was doing his Indian kid thing, and enrolled at Stanford aiming to become a doctor. But he decided to go the rock route instead, which I'm sure was a tough conversation at home.

Sameer’s parents were both musically trained but were surprised, regardless, when he announced that he was quitting college to be a rockstar. As most Asian parents would be, they were “sad and worried – they didn’t want me to fail. I think they didn’t want me to feel dejected.”

Posted by: Huck Follywood at February 12, 2026 05:16 AM (NY5XB)

28 I'm glad people like the AMVs. I pick ones made from series and movies I've seen that are paired with good songs, so I'm not always sure how they'll land with people who haven't spent 30 years watching Japanese cartoons.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at February 12, 2026 05:17 AM (BLOW1)

29 A non anxious presence. Man writes on psalm 4

https://tinyurl.com/mvv83rkf

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at February 12, 2026 05:17 AM (rZCVI)

30 I’ve mentioned this before, but I was astonished to read an interview conducted by Nasa oral history project with a Marquardt engineer, they had the contract for the Apollo era thrusters. They had a lot of problems in the early 60s. Testing is very difficult, because outer space is different. A vacuum chamber large enough was expensive. As soon as you fire, there goes your vacuum.

Overheating, swelling of teflon seals, causing an obstruction in the thrusters. Now fast forward 60 years.

Guess what kind of problems they are having? Overheating, swelling of teflon seals, causing an obstruction in the thrusters. Jeeze louise. Did they even think to talk to that guy? Probably not.

Posted by: Common Tater at February 12, 2026 05:18 AM (qp8Hp)

31 Starship just passed a test of the propellant system and SpaceX plans a March launch on the next flight test. Can't wait.

https://tinyurl.com/44nfy8cw

Posted by: Huck Follywood at February 12, 2026 05:21 AM (NY5XB)

32
The Fall of Boeing is sad. They had a storied history. They built the S-IC, the Saturn V first stage, as well as the lunar rovers.

Posted by: publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb) at February 12, 2026 05:21 AM (w6EFb)

33 Proud dad shares note his son received at school. Faithpot site:

https://tinyurl.com/ye4nrfkc

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at February 12, 2026 05:21 AM (rZCVI)

34 Pixy, your musical choices are generally unusual to me, always obtuse, and I generally open each new post with cautious optimism. Thanks.

Posted by: There. I said it. at February 12, 2026 05:24 AM (2Ez/1)

35
The good or bad thing, depending on your POV, about SpaceX being private, is they don't have to disclose much about what they're doing.

They've supposedly got an actual fligth version of the HLS Starship going.

They'll test one in LEO this year, if all goes to plan, and do an unmanned landing on the Moon in 2027.

Posted by: publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb) at February 12, 2026 05:25 AM (w6EFb)

36 26 The trend of making it better by making it worse is alive and well it seems.

The same sort of thing is happening to otter ai whereas you could get a nice tight summary, decisions, tasks output, now it's out put is overly verbose, with time stamps and bizarre form mating.

This "improving" things by making it worse is right out of the Microsoft playbook.

Posted by: Thomas Bender at February 12, 2026 05:16 AM (XV/Pl)

It's not just AI & M$.

Apple is notroious for moving things around in their GUIs so every time you get a new iOS update you've got to search for where they moved something.

It's done in browsers & other apps a lot, too.

There's no reason for moving stuff around this much other than for make work projects for interface designers who are constantly coming up with new ways to annoy the shit out of people with useless updates moving or renaming elements and their locations.

Posted by: SpeakingOf at February 12, 2026 05:25 AM (6ydKt)

37 "The Fall of Boeing is sad. They had a storied history."

Miss us yet?

Posted by: Fifty year old white guys at February 12, 2026 05:26 AM (2Ez/1)

38 This 3 year old gray wolf walked from remote northern California all the way to Los Angeles. She's going to be a star.

https://tinyurl.com/3jdhedzj

Posted by: Huck Follywood at February 12, 2026 05:26 AM (E8U4I)

39
Elon is calling it "Moonbase Alpha" from some of the promo stuff. Of course, what else?

Posted by: publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb) at February 12, 2026 05:27 AM (w6EFb)

40 >There's no reason for moving stuff around this much other than for make work projects for interface designers who are constantly coming up with new ways to annoy the shit out of people with useless updates moving or renaming elements and their locations.

++++
This is about me, isn't it?

Posted by: The grocery store at February 12, 2026 05:29 AM (2Ez/1)

41 Just as an example; Brave moves around and renames interface items and locations nearly every time they update the iOS browser.

I'm constantly looking around for where they moved the thing I used to know where it was and god forbid they keep it consistent. Then there's always some mysterious looking icon, I've never seen before that they stick in some new place at the top of the app window with every update.

Companies used to wait a few years before totally redesigning an interface and now it's a regular occurrence.

Thankfully Photoshop hasn't changed much in 20 years, Adobe just decides to cram more and mores tuff into smaller spaces.

Posted by: SpeakingOf at February 12, 2026 05:33 AM (6ydKt)

42 Finally decided to pull the trigger on a new TV, moving the old 55" up to the bedroom.

Not having bought a TV in over ten years, the choices are somewhat jaw dropping, and difficult to understand.

But knowing that the WiFi infrastructure is now in place to support an eventual home media server system at some point, I wanted to get something that would be good for that task as well.

And then I stumbled upon this strange, and little talked about Samsung unit, not available in stored, and only directly from Samsung online.

Samsung QN1EF.

Quantum Dot and Mini-LEd.

And as Samsung does online Military Discount and free shipping, it drops down to $1035.00, delivered.

Let's hope that I made the right choice.

I would put up the shortened link, but TinyURL seems to be giving me fits this morning.

Posted by: Village Idiot's Apprentice at February 12, 2026 05:37 AM (iMotb)

43 This is about me, isn't it?

Posted by: The grocery store at February 12, 2026 05:29 AM (2Ez/1)

Yeah that's why I order pickup so the store employee or Instacart shopper can walk around the store for ten minutes trying to figure out where they moved the frozen burritos this week.

Posted by: SpeakingOf at February 12, 2026 05:37 AM (6ydKt)

44 If we're going to land on the Moon, Elon has got a lot of work to do.

Posted by: publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb) at February 12, 2026 05:01 AM (w6EFb)
-

Men at work:

https://tinyurl.com/yfp26tvv

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at February 12, 2026 05:39 AM (7xyr6)

45 An essay on AI taking over the world (pretty much):

https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening

Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 04:39 AM (+YA9H)
-

And now... the video:

https://tinyurl.com/yw4fhtrr

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at February 12, 2026 05:42 AM (7xyr6)

46 Are math skills really all that important?

https://tinyurl.com/3hy27557

Posted by: Village Idiot's Apprentice at February 12, 2026 05:45 AM (iMotb)

47 Samsung QN1EF.

Quantum Dot and Mini-LEd.

And as Samsung does online Military Discount and free shipping, it drops down to $1035.00, delivered.

Let's hope that I made the right choice.

Posted by: Village Idiot's Apprentice at February 12, 2026 05:37 AM

Newer Mini-LEDs are nice.
Hisense and TCL are really going all in on them and putting out some TVs close to OLEDs in brightness, color volume, and motion clarity with high refresh rates.

They have a lot of dimming zones that give you OLED contrast at a much cheaper cost, and the motion clarity makes sports look awesome instead of a smear-fest when the speed picks up.

They are just a lot thicker and heavier than their OLED counterparts but being a lot cheaper can make up for that small problem. They also don't have as good of viewing angles as OLED but if you're sitting in front of your TV instead of off to the side, it isn't a problem, either.

Samsung is going that way totally, so in a few years all of their TVs will be either QD-Mini-LED, QD-RGB-LED, or QD-OLEDs.

I got an LG C5 OLED TV recently and I love it.
I'll probably get a Mini-LED or RGB-LED next time I need a new monitor or TV and then no worries over OLED burn-in.

Posted by: SpeakingOf at February 12, 2026 05:48 AM (6ydKt)

48 For some reason, Elon has reposted a warning about Claude.

https://tinyurl.com/nx7a6z92

Posted by: Huck Follywood at February 12, 2026 05:49 AM (+odZa)

49 Always with you it cannot be done

Posted by: Yoda at February 12, 2026 05:49 AM (cO6Mr)

50 45 An essay on AI taking over the world (pretty much):

https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening

Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 04:39 AM (+YA9H)
-

And now... the video:

https://tinyurl.com/yw4fhtrr
Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at February 12, 2026 05:42 AM (7xyr6)

Aieeeeeee!

Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 05:51 AM (+YA9H)

51 45 And now... the video:

https://tinyurl.com/yw4fhtrr
Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at February 12, 2026 05:42 AM (7xyr6)

48 For some reason, Elon has reposted a warning about Claude.

https://tinyurl.com/nx7a6z92
Posted by: Huck Follywood at February 12, 2026 05:49 AM (+odZa)

Horde mind!

Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 05:54 AM (+YA9H)

52 Elon has also posted the names of nine GOPe Senators who are holding out on voting for the Save Act. Surprised to see Tim Scott on the list.

Capito
Murkowski
Tillis
Collins
Sullivan
Wicker
McConnell
Thune
Scott

Posted by: Huck Follywood at February 12, 2026 05:54 AM (+odZa)

53 youtu.be/iIAEqTvygb8

I really liked this AMV video. I know nothing about Arcade Fire but the song is nice and catchy and it blends with the anime almost flawlessly. A really well done video.

Posted by: Puddleglum, cheer up for the worst is yet to come at February 12, 2026 05:55 AM (sAmhv)

54 Horde mind!
Posted by: m at February 12, 2026 05:54 AM (+YA9H)
================
haha!

Posted by: Huck Follywood at February 12, 2026 05:55 AM (+odZa)

55 "I got an LG C5 OLED TV recently and I love it."

I had pretty much narrowed it down to OLED or Mini-LED before I stumbled on this thing.

And I would never have found it without going to the actual Samsung site, as it's an exclusive to them.

And once I realized that there was free shipping, and the military discount as well, I crossed my fingers and said go for it.

Which now means that I will have to go with a new soon d bar system to give it the full upgrade experience. And the Q-Symphony capable systems seem to be the way to eventually go on that.

Plus, I have to stretch the horizontal width of the three piece entertainment system by 5 inches to fit the 66 inch wide TV into the current 63 inch horizontal spacing.

Posted by: Village Idiot's Apprentice at February 12, 2026 05:58 AM (iMotb)

56 I actually bought a TCL Mini-LED monitor last year that had like 2100 dimming zones last year, and it blew me away with the color volume and brightness with close to OLED deep blacks and contrast.

Problem is after I was wowed by how good it looked I noticed a dead pizel right in the middle of the screen after using it for about an hour.

So I packed it up, took it back to Walmart and got an OLED from Best Buy instead.

I would've kept it if it wasn't for that one failure in quality control.

Posted by: SpeakingOf at February 12, 2026 05:58 AM (6ydKt)

57 "Surprised to see Tim Scott on the list."

I guess he's back from his Honeymoon.

Posted by: Village Idiot's Apprentice at February 12, 2026 05:59 AM (iMotb)

58 piXel, d'oh. ^^^

Posted by: SpeakingOf at February 12, 2026 05:59 AM (6ydKt)

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