👨‍💻 Discord Rival gets overwhelmed by mass exodus of players fleeing age-verification crackdown

People aren’t exactly taking kindly to Discord’s decision to roll out its privacy-invading age verification checks worldwide. In fact, there’s so much frustration with the move that rival voice-chat tech TeamSpeak says its servers have been completely overwhelmed by the exodus of disgruntled Discord users.

As reported by PC Gamer, TeamSpeak has posted to X to warn users that “current hosting capacity has been reached in many regions, especially in the US,” along with an exploding cat meme.😹

Later TeamSpeak posted to X that 2 new regions are now open for communities creation: Frankfurt 3 and Toronto 1, and they'll continue monitoring usage across regions and will expand capacity as demand increases.

@QSIMedia

🔬Scientists develop living building material that grows and self-heals over time

The Canada Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale showcases Picoplanktonics, a 3D-printed architectural installation embedded with living cyanobacteria. These organisms capture carbon through photosynthesis and mineral precipitation, slowly reinforcing the structure. Laboratory studies show cumulative carbon sequestration over 400 days, while on-site caretakers maintain precise conditions for survival.

The printed structures within Picoplanktonics represent 4 years of interdisciplinary research conducted by Canadian architect and bio-designer Andrea Shin Ling and her collaborators in material science, biology, robotics, and computational design at ETH Zurich.

The project explores living materials for sustainable architecture, demonstrating passive carbon capture, self-strengthening structures, and the potential of co-creating built environments with biological systems, although large-scale impact remains a future challenge. The team indicates that scaling up the material to a level that could significantly reduce atmospheric CO₂ concentrations would necessitate much larger quantities.

Could buildings of the future become self-sustaining environmental systems? 🤔

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🇺🇸🇯🇵Trump announces first $550 billion Japan investments under US trade deal

Donald Trump has announced от Truth Social about the first tranche of investments under the US-Japan trade deal on Tuesday. This marks the start of what he described as a 'historic trade deal to revitalize the American Industrial Base, create hundreds of thousands of great American Jobs, and strengthen our National and Economic Security like never before'.

The package includes funding commitments for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Texas, a large-scale gas-fired power plant in Ohio, and a critical minerals processing plant in Georgia. 👏

@QSIMedia

🇺🇸 US military strikes drug trafficking boats in the Pacific and Caribbean, eliminating 11 narco-group members.

U.S. conducts three lethal kinetic strikes on three vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations that were engaged in narco-trafficking operations, as part of Operation Southern Spear. 11 male narco-terrorists were killed, 4 on the first vessel in the Eastern Pacific, 4 on the second vessel in the Eastern Pacific, and 3 on the third vessel in the Caribbean. No U.S. military forces were harmed. 🙏

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🧑‍⚖️ Bayer agrees to $7.25 billion proposed settlement over thousands of Roundup cancer lawsuits

Agrochemical maker Bayer and attorneys for cancer patients announced a proposed $7.25 billion settlement Tuesday to resolve thousands of U.S. lawsuits alleging the company failed to warn people that its popular weedkiller Roundup could cause cancer.

The proposed settlement comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to hear arguments in April on Bayer's assertion that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of Roundup without a cancer warning should invalidate claims filed in state courts. That case would not be affected by the proposed settlement. But the settlement would eliminate some of the risk from an eventual Supreme Court ruling. Patients would be assured of receiving settlement money even if the Supreme Court rules in Bayer's favor. And Bayer would be protected from potentially larger costs if the high court rules against it.

Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018, disputes the assertion that Roundup's key ingredient, glyphosate, can cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Because of lawsuits, Bayer already has stopped using glyphosate in Roundup sold in the U.S. residential lawn and garden market.

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⚡ Elon Musk rolls out Grok 4.2 public beta for use

"Grok 4.20 is BASED. Grok 4.2 will be about an order of magnitude smarter and faster than Grok 4 when the public beta concludes next month. Still many bug fixes and improvements landing every day. The public beta gives us more critical feedback to address," - posted Musk on X.

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🤖 NVIDIA’s CEO to unveil chips the “world has never seen before” at this year’s GTC

At CES 2026, Nvidia showcased its Vera Rubin AI lineup, revealing it was in full production and included 6 newly designed chips, including the Vera CPUs and Rubin GPUs. And now, while speaking with Korean media, NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang says this year's GTC will see the unveiling of products.

"We've prepared several new chips the world has never seen before. Nothing is easy because all technologies are at their limits, but nothing is impossible when such a team (consisting of Nvidia and SK hynix memory engineers) comes together," - Huang said.

There are no technical details - they will be revealed during the Next GTC Event, which starts on March 15, 2026, in San Jose (California). At the same time, it can be assumed that it would likely be either a derivative chip coming from the Rubin lineup, such as Rubin CPX, or NVIDIA could throw a surprise and decide to unveil their next-gen Feynman chips, which are known to be 'revolutionary' as well, but that remains to be seen. 🤔

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🔥 XRP Ledger rolls out members-only DEX for regulated institutions

❗️The XRP Ledger has activated a new “Permissioned DEX” amendment, a technical upgrade designed to let regulated institutions trade on XRPL without opening markets to everyone.

The change, known as XLS-81, allows the creation of permissioned decentralized exchanges that work like XRPL’s existing built-in DEX, but with a key difference. A permissioned domain can restrict who is allowed to place offers and who is allowed to accept them, creating a gated trading venue where participation can be tied to compliance requirements such as KYC and AML checks.

The feature is aimed at banks, brokers and other firms that may want onchain settlement and liquidity but cannot interact with fully open DeFi markets. For these players, the ability to control access is not optional but forms the minimum requirement.

💎 The activation also adds to a growing set of “institutional DeFi” primitives XRPL has been rolling out this month. Token Escrow, or XLS-85, went live last week, extending XRPL’s native escrow system beyond XRP to all trustline-based tokens and Multi-Purpose Tokens, including stablecoins such as RLUSD and tokenized real-world assets.

🔥 Together, the two upgrades create a more complete toolkit for regulated finance on XRPL. Token escrow allows conditional settlement for assets issued on the network, while the permissioned DEX provides a controlled venue for trading them.

#Stellar

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🧑‍⚖️ Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to face jury in landmark social media addiction trial

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to testify Wednesday at a groundbreaking social media addiction trial. Meta, as well as YouTube, are accused of intentionally designing addictive features that hooked a now-20-year-old woman as a child and harmed her mental health. The lawsuit brought by the young woman, identified by her lawyer as “Kaley,” and her mother is the first of more than 1,500 similar lawsuits to go to trial. The 12 jurors in Los Angeles will hear testimony until late March to decide whether Google-owned YouTube and Meta's Instagram bear any responsibility for the mental health problems suffered by Kaley G.M.

Zuckerberg’s witness testimony in a landmark social media addiction trial will give the Meta chief executive a chance to defend the efforts the company says it has taken to protect young users.

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🔥 Pi Network’s eligibility for the new ISO 20022 gold standard is contested as the core team prioritizes MiCa

With Pi Network (PI) being built on a modified version of Stellar Lumens (XLM), market watchers are guessing whether Pi Coin has the same regulatory-compliant status like XLM. Previously, Stellar Lumens (XLM) was named along with Ripple (XLM), Algorand (ALGO) & a few more DLT-based blockchains as compliant with SWIFT’s new global messaging standard.

Notably, the fact that Pi Network (PI) is built on Stellar’s code doesn’t guarantee a spot in this carefully selected list. While Pi’s core dev team is actively exploring the mobile mining chain’s alignment with various cross-border platforms, the current regulatory environment suggests Pi is lined up better for EU’s MiCa regulations, prioritizing this instead of ISO 20022. 🤔

#Stellar

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📱 Apple ramps up work on Glasses, Pendant, and Camera AirPods for AI era

Apple Inc. is accelerating development of 3 new wearable devices as part of a shift toward AI-powered hardware, a category also being pursued by OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc. The company is ramping up work on smart glasses, a pendant that can be pinned to a shirt or worn as a necklace, and AirPods with expanded AI capabilities, according to people with knowledge of the plans. All 3 devices are being built around the Siri, which will rely on visual context to carry out actions.

The smart glasses potentially can be released in 2027 and the AirPods and pendant potentially being released as early as this year or next year.

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🧪Scientists redesign fentanyl to preserve pain relief while reducing deadly side effects

Fentanyl ranks among the most powerful medications available for treating intense pain. However, its benefits come with serious hazards, including a high potential for addiction and respiratory depression, a dangerous slowing of breathing that can be fatal. Because of these risks, doctors must carefully restrict its use even though it is highly effective.

Researchers at Scripps Research have now redesigned fentanyl at the molecular level, creating a new version that maintains its strong pain-relieving effects while reducing its tendency to suppress breathing. The study, published in ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, indicates that further refinements could lead to safer opioid medications with lower risks of addiction, overdose, and death.

Drugs such as fentanyl occupy a complicated role in modern health care. They were once introduced as groundbreaking pain treatments with minimal addiction risk (claims that have proven tragically false). Even so, they remain indispensable in hospitals and emergency settings for treating severe acute pain, despite the well documented dangers associated with their use.

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↗️ Amazon’s Rivian Electric Van fleet jumped 50% In 2025

American e-commerce giant Amazon has significantly increased the number of Rivian-made electric delivery vans in its fleet. The online marketplace now has over 30,000 custom-built Rivian Electric Delivery Vans (EDV) transporting parcels across the US and in some parts of Europe, according to the EV startup’s fourth-quarter shareholder letter.

That’s a 50% boost from the end of 2024, when Amazon had over 20,000 Rivian EDVs in its fleet, signaling that the California EV maker is on the right track to deliver on its promises. As a reminder, Amazon and Rivian signed an exclusivity agreement in 2019 for 100,000 electric delivery vans by 2030.

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💻 Microsoft says bug causes Copilot to summarize confidential emails

Microsoft says a Microsoft 365 Copilot bug has been causing the AI assistant to summarize confidential emails since late January, bypassing data loss prevention (DLP) policies that organizations rely on to protect sensitive information.

According to a service alert seen by BleepingComputer, this bug (tracked under CW1226324 and first detected on January 21) affects the Copilot "work tab" chat feature, which incorrectly reads and summarizes emails stored in users' Sent Items and Drafts folders, including messages that carry confidentiality labels explicitly designed to restrict access by automated tools.

Microsoft has since confirmed that an unspecified code error is responsible and said it began rolling out a fix in early February. As of Wednesday, the company said it was continuing to monitor the deployment and is reaching out to a subset of affected users to verify that the fix is working. 🙏

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