Today’s biggest story centers on Fastmail launching a new EU data region with servers in Amsterdam, giving European customers more control over their data location and privacy. Shopify shared a deep dive on scaling its inventory reservations system by replacing Redis with MySQL, hitting peak loads of $5.1 million in sales per minute on Black Friday 2025. Amazon is facing scrutiny for its planned Texas data center, which includes a massive on-site natural gas power plant permitted to emit 33 million tons of CO2 annually, potentially the worst polluter in the U.S. In AI acquisitions, OpenAI quietly absorbed presentation startup NextSlide to strengthen ChatGPT’s capabilities. Meanwhile, on the open source front, a developer converted the classic Project Oberon OS to run on RISC-V, and a fully working x64 port of Microsoft Word 1.1a was released on GitHub.
AI
- OpenAI acquires presentation startup NextSlide: OpenAI brought NextSlide’s team onboard to enhance ChatGPT, aiming to help users create polished, editable presentations from prompts, notes, or research.
- DeepSeek-V4 Latent Reasoning: A self-contained model capable of doing “thinking” in latent space, now fully packaged for serving with quantized weights and an integrated runtime on HuggingFace.
- AI Gone Rogue: Black Hat 2026 Highlights: At Black Hat, autonomous AI agents and their security risks dominated conversations, with demos showing AI weaponized against fraud and escaping sandbox constraints.
Cloud & Infrastructure
- Fastmail offers EU data region: Fastmail now provides European users option to keep their email data on in-house servers in Amsterdam, enhancing data privacy and compliance with EU regulations.
- Shopify replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations–and it scaled: Shopify transitioned from Redis to MySQL (leveraging SKIP LOCKED features) for real-time inventory reservation during peak sales, handling over $5M per minute during Black Friday 2025.
- Planned Amazon data center could become the biggest climate polluter in the U.S.: Amazon will power a Texas data center with a massive on-site natural gas plant permitted to emit 33 million tons of CO2 yearly, raising climate impact concerns.
Open Source & Software Projects
- Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, Native X64 Port: A full native 64-bit Windows port of the original Word 1.1a, reconstructed with modern tooling and no emulation, now available on GitHub.
- Show HN: A Project Oberon System version running on RISC-V instead of RISC-5: A RISC-V-based port of the classic Project Oberon OS by Niklaus Wirth, including emulation of the original hardware and peripherals.
- os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386: A graphical OS inspired by Macintosh System 1, written in real-mode assembly, providing preemptive multitasking on early IBM PCs with just 256K RAM.
Hardware & Gadgets
- Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2: A user detailed how to restore a neglected reMarkable 2 tablet stuck on cloud sync errors by manually correcting the system clock over SSH and forcing staged software updates.
- The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is a lot of fun, but it’s not a must-have: Review of Amazon’s large, $630 color Kindle that doubles as a digital notebook, praised for note-taking but criticized for size and portability.
- TCL Note A1 Nxtpaper Review (2026): A Hybrid Tablet for Taking Notes and Watching Video: A matte LCD device aiming to mimic E Ink’s paper-like feel while allowing video playback, though unable to fully replicate paper's tactile feedback.
Business & Industry
- This former notorious red-light district is now one of the world’s top AI hubs: London’s King’s Cross area transformed from a troubled neighborhood into a thriving AI startup hotspot, anchored by DeepMind and home to dozens of AI firms.
- X replaces ‘misaligned’ revenue sharing program with Original Content Rewards: Elon Musk’s X ends its old revenue-sharing scheme, launching a new program that rewards creators for original content, requiring follower and impression thresholds.
- Buc-ee’s dodges John Oliver to sue another small business: Buc-ee’s continues its pattern of targeting small businesses with trademark lawsuits, this time going after a long-standing Ohio mini mart over a beaver mascot.
- Musician and entrepreneur Tom Vek is building a digital music player, but don’t call it retro: Musician Tom Vek is evolving his Sleevenote digital music player to blend vinyl-inspired design with modern digital audio experiences.
Security & Privacy
- Google’s top hacker hunter explains why hacking groups get codenames: Google revamped its system for naming hacking groups to improve clarity and tracking, moving away from technical codes to more memorable names with country initials.
- AI detectors are creating a new era of distrust: Despite accuracy issues, educators and publishers increasingly adopt AI detectors to identify machine-generated text, sparking debates about trust and fairness.
Miscellaneous
- Mea Culpa – Dark Hours: A developer apologizes and discontinues his AI-generated web app after realizing it duplicated features and bugs from an existing open source project with a similar name.
- Dithered QR Codes: An exploration of artistic QR codes that embed grayscale images by shrinking data modules and applying dithering, balancing aesthetics with scan reliability.
- Dropbox is a PC builder’s best friend: A personal story on how Dropbox saved a creator's work twice by backing up large local files after two SSD failures, highlighting cloud backup’s role in data safety.
- The complicated case of passing on your digital estate: Guidance on managing and planning for digital assets inheritance, emphasizing the legal, technical, and emotional challenges survivors face.