Best of Tech News — February 2026

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   Article

   Hacker News·9w

   How I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

   A decade-long personal project building a family e-paper dashboard called Timeframe, evolving from a Magic Mirror LCD to jailbroken Kindles, then Visionect e-paper displays, and finally a 25.3" Boox Mira Pro with real-time updates. The system aggregates calendar, weather, and smart home data, with Home Assistant now serving as the primary data source. Key architectural decisions include removing the database and Redis from the Rails backend, using file-store caching, and a status-indicator design philosophy that only surfaces actionable information. The project remains a work-in-progress with hardware cost and distribution challenges still to solve.

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   Article

   Hacker News·9w

   Leaving Google has actively improved my life

   A personal account of leaving Google's ecosystem after years of declining search quality and the introduction of AI features in Gmail. The author switched to Proton for email and Brave/DuckDuckGo for search, finding both to be superior alternatives. Key arguments include: Gmail's algorithmic sorting is unwanted, Google Search keeps users on Google rather than the open web, Google's dominance is maintained through dark patterns and a $20B deal with Apple rather than genuine user preference, and the 'free services' model is a trade-off for privacy and data. YouTube remains the one unavoidable Google product due to network effects.

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   Article

   The Palindrome·10w

   The Palindrome in 2026

   Tivadar Danka outlines his 2026 plans for The Palindrome newsletter: finishing his Machine Learning From Zero book with from-scratch algorithm implementations, creating more explainer videos, launching monthly live workshops for paid subscribers (starting with Mathematics of Machine Learning on March 7th), building a team of contributors inspired by distill.pub, and developing nb2wb—an open-source tool for converting Jupyter Notebooks to web publishing platforms. The newsletter has grown from 16,835 to 39,663 subscribers since May 2025.

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   Video

   TechLinked·11w

   Ha Ha We Don't Buy Things Anymore

   PlayStation now offers console leasing in the UK through PlayStation Flex, with no clear buyout path. Ring cancelled its partnership with Flock Safety after backlash over mass surveillance concerns. China successfully tested its moon mission hardware while Bezos and Musk continue their space race rivalry. SpaceX argued it should be regulated as a railroad to avoid labor laws. Spotify's CEO claims developers haven't written code since December thanks to AI. Meta is working on facial recognition for smart glasses again. Apple added Android transfer tools to iOS, and a new laundry-folding robot costs $10,000 upfront.

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