Weekly Roundup: 16 February – 22 February 2026

It’s been a busy week in tech, with AI ethics continuing to be a hot topic alongside the usual self-hosting developments. The balance between open source ideals and corporate influence is, as ever, a delicate one. Let’s dive into the details.

AI & Machine Learning

Nvidia and OpenAI abandon unfinished $100B deal in favour of $30B investment A massive deal falling through, but being replaced by a merely huge investment – classic AI consolidation. I’m interested to see how this revised arrangement affects the competitive landscape. Will it foster more innovation, or just further entrench the positions of the major players?

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward This is a chilling reminder of the potential for AI to be weaponized. The fact that an AI agent can be used to generate a hit piece, and that the operator is difficult to trace, highlights the urgent need for ethical guidelines and regulations in the AI space. It also makes you wonder if the operator should be held responsible for the libel.

UAE’s G42 teams up with Cerebras to deploy 8 exaflops of compute in India More compute heading to India is a great sign for the democratization of AI. This partnership between G42 and Cerebras could provide a significant boost to AI research and development in the region, fostering innovation and competition.

Keep Android Open F-Droid makes a crucial point. The increasing enclosure of Android is a genuine threat to open source. We need to actively support initiatives that promote a truly open and customisable mobile ecosystem.

Self-Hosting & Infrastructure

Seerr is finally out! The merger of Overseerr and Jellyseerr into Seerr is fantastic news for self-hosted media enthusiasts. A unified codebase and combined efforts should lead to even better features and a more streamlined experience. I’m definitely looking forward to giving this a try.

BrainRotGuard - I vibed-engineered a self-hosted YouTube approval system so my kid can’t fall down algorithm rabbit holes anymore This is a brilliant and highly practical application of self-hosting. Taking control of the content your children consume is paramount, and this project demonstrates how self-hosting can empower parents to do just that.

Turn Dependabot off A controversial take, but one that resonates. The author argues that Dependabot’s constant stream of PRs often creates more noise than signal. It’s a valid point that highlights the importance of carefully evaluating and managing dependencies, rather than blindly accepting updates.

Development & Tools

I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs Who knew the CIA had such useful Git tips? Jokes aside, this is a handy little command for cleaning up merged branches. Always good to find practical gems hidden in unexpected places.

Django ORM Standalone⁽¹⁾: Querying an existing database Using the Django ORM outside of a full Django project is an underappreciated technique. This post provides a clear and concise guide to getting started.

Quick Links

• Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras - A reminder of the growing anti-surveillance movement.
• Wikipedia deprecates Archive.today, starts removing archive links - Archive integrity is crucial; this is a necessary, if unfortunate, step.
• I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure - A sobering look at the challenges of building a business solely on EU infrastructure.
• The path to ubiquitous AI (17k tokens/sec) - A deep dive into the technical requirements for widespread AI adoption.
• Facebook is cooked - An opinionated, but not entirely inaccurate, take on Facebook’s declining relevance.

What I’m Building

This week, I’m focusing on refining the agent orchestration layer within the Quartalis AI ecosystem. My goal is to make the interactions between different AI models more seamless and efficient.