TravnikovDev

The prompt gold rush split in two: flea markets and factories. In 2026, both will make noise, but only one will survive scale.

My AI research agent pulled the raw data, and the pattern is loud. Consumers hoard templates. Teams need control. Governance keeps everyone out of the headlines.

The flea markets:

• PromptBase, FlowGPT, PromptHero, and AIPRM put prompts on shelves. AIPRM claims over 2 million users. OpenAI’s GPT Store has millions of custom GPTs. Easy to browse, great for creators, but quality is hit or miss and prompts go stale fast.

The factories:

• LangSmith, Vellum, PromptLayer, and Langfuse treat prompts like code: versioning, evals, tracing, releases. After Humanloop shut down in 2025, teams migrated here. Why? Copy-paste prompts in Notion break the minute models update.

TravnikovDev

You don’t need Plus to stop hitting the “you’re out of messages” wall. OpenAI just rolled out a cheaper middle lane that covers most of what normal people actually use.

It’s called ChatGPT Go - a low-cost plan aimed at folks who outgrow Free but don’t want to pay full Plus. In India, it’s roughly 400 rupees a month, and there’s a promo that gives a full year free if you sign up now. After that, it auto-renews unless you cancel. That’s about one-fifth the price of Plus.

My AI research agent pulled the raw docs and news so you don’t have to. Here’s the no-BS version.

What you get vs Free - more messages, image generation, file uploads, advanced data analysis, and a longer memory so it remembers you better. This is the everyday toolkit: brainstorm text, analyze spreadsheets, plot charts, and whip up images without begging the model to keep up. Think scooter that finally stops stalling at green lights.

What’s murky - OpenAI doesn’t publish hard numbers for consumer caps. Your real limit is whatever the app sh

TravnikovDev

Porn usually adopts new tech first. This time it didn’t. We have AI girlfriends printing money, but no mainstream, fully AI‑generated porn videos. Where is it?

My AI research agent pulled the receipts, and the answer isn’t sexy: it’s boxed in on every side.

Technically, the wow‑demos are short. You can get a gorgeous 10‑second clip, but try holding the same face, body, and voice across minutes with complex motion and multi‑camera cuts and it falls apart. Hands go weird, contact looks floaty, lips drift. And the kicker - the best video engines flat‑out block sexual content. The models won’t let you.

Data is a desert. There isn’t a large, clean, performer‑consented explicit video dataset. Scraping big porn sites mixes in unknown consent and age risk - that’s not a gray area, that’s a red siren. No serious team wants to train on a legal grenade.

Law turned the screws. In the US, making or distributing sexual deepfakes is now a crime in many cases, and platforms must rip them down fast. The Supreme Court let

TravnikovDev

The flashiest thing at CES wasn’t a headset. It was a LEGO brick that tells your phone to stay home. 🧱

My AI research agent pulled the raw details from LEGO’s CES pages and first hands-ons, and the story is simple: LEGO Smart Brick is a normal-looking 2x4 stuffed with sensors, LEDs, and a tiny speaker. Twist it, tap it, swoosh your starfighter - it answers with lights and sound. Dock a SMART minifig or drop a SMART Tag tile nearby - it changes behavior on the fly. No app required for core play.

This is the anchor of LEGO’s new SMART Play platform. First wave is Star Wars, planned for March 1 in select markets, with preorders widely reported to open Jan 9. Think X-wing engines ramping when you swoosh, blaster cracks when you hit the turret tile, lightsaber clashes when Vader clicks in. It snaps into builds like any brick, not a bulky hub glued on top.

Why this exists: parents want less screen time, kids want feedback now. Previous LEGO tech leaned on phones or coding kits. This keeps the magic in your hands

TravnikovDev

The new Atlas does not want to dance for YouTube - it wants a badge to work your line. Boston Dynamics took the show pony, ripped out the hydraulics, and sent it to the factory floor.

My AI research agent pulled the raw data on this, and the numbers line up with the pivot. Electric Atlas was teased in 2024 - the product version landed Jan 5, 2026 - and it is framed for one job: industrial material handling.

What changed? Electric actuators - stronger, quieter, easier to service. A wider range of motion - joints that twist past human limits to reach into cramped bins. New hands - pinch and power grips for actual parts, not props. About 4 hours of runtime - plus an autonomous battery swap in under three minutes. This is uptime thinking, not demo thinking.

And yes, there is a real demo. In October 2024, Atlas autonomously moved automotive engine covers from supplier containers onto a mobile sequencing dolly. It took a list of bin locations, used vision to find parts, grabbed them, inserted them, and recovered

TravnikovDev

Your friend drops a throwaway reply on Threads and it racks up thousands of views. Looks fake, right? It isn’t bots - it’s a buffet with too many eaters and not enough cooks.

My AI research agent pulled the raw data on this, and the pattern is boring but real. Meta plugged Threads straight into Instagram’s social graph. That means your words ride on top of existing follow networks in the US like a free subway transfer. Meta says over 150 million people use it monthly - take that with salt - but you can feel the feed move. There’s more demand for fresh text than there is supply, so the algorithm shoves even simple replies into a lot of eyeballs.

Are they juicing numbers? They don’t need to. The platform counts “views” like most social apps do - an impression when someone scrolls past. It’s generous. And Threads is still young, so the feed is thirsty. Early movers look huge because the room is big and the mic is loud.

How do you actually get popular on Threads? Act like you’re texting a group chat, not prese

TravnikovDev

Your friend didn’t hack Threads. Threads hacked your expectations.

New networks do this - they make small stuff look big. A throwaway reply can rack up thousands of views because the room is starving and the speakers are loud.

My AI research agent pulled the raw data on this, and the numbers don’t lie: Meta says over 150 million people open Threads every month. And when a platform is young, the feed is thirsty. It will over-serve almost anything that looks like a conversation.

Here’s the unsexy mechanics:

• Threads rides Instagram’s spine. You import follows, get shoved into suggestions, and your replies are treated like posts. One sentence under a popular thread can splash into timelines of people who never followed you.
• A “view” is not a deep read. If your reply flashes across a screen for a heartbeat, it counts. If it’s shown in multiple places, it can count multiple times. Feeds refresh fast; your number inflates faster.
• Early on, the algorithm runs wide to learn. Think freight train dragging every

TravnikovDev

The loudest Christmas flex this year wasn’t a bigger tree. It was a front yard that danced on beat.

My AI research agent pulled the raw threads on what actually changed this season. It even tapped out mid-scrape, but the signal was clear: 2025 belonged to neighborhood light shows powered by cheap parts and stubborn patience, not robot Santas or flying reindeer.

The recipe that blew up: a $10 Wi‑Fi microcontroller the size of a matchbox, pixel-by-pixel LED strips, and a free firmware that lets you choreograph lights like a tiny stadium. Add a sequencing app that snaps to your playlist, and suddenly your shrubs have better rhythm than your cousin at karaoke. The new common smart-home language finally behaved, so timers and scenes worked without five apps fighting. Kids could trigger surprise effects with little tap-to-trigger tags by the door. Some folks even mapped tiny projectors to their facades, so snow drifted on brick without a single inflatable.

City drone shows are the freight train. Gorgeous, expens

TravnikovDev

No, Samsung did not just invent a silver battery that will triple your car’s range. If that were true, silver prices would look like a meme stock and every automaker would be camped outside Samsung’s office with blank checks.

I had my AI research agent pull the raw trail on this, and here’s the boring-but-true version. Samsung’s battery arm has been working on solid-state cells. Years ago, their research lab showed a lab cell that used a whisper-thin silver-carbon layer near a lithium metal anode. Key words: lab cell, thin layer. Not a “battery soup,” not a product, and definitely not a 2 to 3 times range upgrade for your car next year.

Why use a bit of silver at all? It helps guide where lithium plates during charging so the cell doesn’t form needle-like spikes that kill it. That’s clever science. But it’s a paper cut of silver, not a vat. Turning that into a factory product is a different beast entirely - yields, cost, safety, supply, warranty. The stuff that never fits in a TikTok.

Also, silver batterie

TravnikovDev

Parents are hunting a little red cube that turns kid ideas into real stickers in seconds. It sold out in days last Christmas. But is it actually the most popular gift or just the loudest one on TikTok?

My AI research agent pulled the receipts, and the signal is strong. Stickerbox from Brooklyn startup Hapiko is a voice-to-sticker printer for kids. Press the white button, say the idea, see a line drawing on a tiny screen, hit print, and boom - a peelable sticker to color and trade. It’s screen-light, hands-on, and priced at 99 bucks with roughly 180 stickers in the box.

How it works without the fluff: kid speaks, speech-to-text turns it into words, safety filters clean it up, an image model spits out simple line art, thermal printer rolls it out. No ink, no mess. Real parents and reviewers call it “magic,” and for once that word fits. The loop is short and addictive in a good way - make, print, share, repeat.

Why Wi-Fi matters: prompts go to the cloud for the heavy lifting and moderation. That’s how it stay