Starlight News

Guides & notes from the tools bench ✦

·7 min read

GPT-6 Astra Found 2 Zero-Days No Human Had Seen. OpenAI Just Called an AI Model 'Critical' for the First Time

OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra on September 3, 2026, the first model to cross the 'Critical' cybersecurity threshold in its own Preparedness Framework. It scored 100% on ExploitBench, independently found two real zero-day vulnerabilities during testing, and ships with the offensive side of that capability blocked for ordinary accounts.

Read the guide
·6 min read

DocuSign Charges $10 a Month for 5 Signed PDFs. Two Free Tools Do the Same Job

Signing a PDF electronically rarely requires a subscription. Apple's Preview app and Adobe Acrobat Reader's Fill & Sign are both free, DocuSign's cheapest plan is $10/month for five documents, and U.S. law makes an e-signature valid for most paperwork, with real exceptions.

·7 min read

ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini All Train on Your Chats by Default Now. The Off Switch Doesn't Delete Anything

As of September 2026, personal ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini accounts all default to using your conversations to train future models. All three treat the training toggle and deleting your chat history as two separate settings, and Anthropic keeps a carve-out even when it's off.

·6 min read

Google Assistant Shuts Off on Android This Week. Only 2 Device Types Keep It, and Your Phone Isn't One

Google began permanently removing Google Assistant from Android phones, tablets, Wear OS, and Android Auto on September 4, 2026, with Gemini taking over and no setting to switch back. Cars with Google built-in and very old, low-memory phones are the only exceptions.

·6 min read

Twitch Shows Your Emote at 28 Pixels. Most People Design It at 28 Pixels. That's the Problem.

Twitch requires every emote in three exact sizes, 28x28, 56x56, and 112x112 pixels, PNG with a transparent background, and only Affiliates and Partners can submit them at all. The actual workflow streamers use to make one that still reads clearly at chat size.

·6 min read

Sony and Warner Chappell Want Up to $150,000 for Every Song Claude Was Trained On

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell sued Anthropic on August 28, 2026, alleging a torrenting and scraping campaign that pulled in tens of thousands of copyrighted compositions to train Claude. It's a separate, far larger case than the ~500-song Concord Music Group lawsuit already underway.

·7 min read

OpenAI Cuts Cursor Off From Its Models on November 12, After SpaceX's $60 Billion Buyout

OpenAI is ending direct model access for Cursor, proposing November 12, 2026 as the cutoff, after SpaceX closed a $60 billion all-stock acquisition of Cursor's parent Anysphere on August 14. A personal API key keeps chat working but not Tab, autocomplete, or Background Agents.

·6 min read

Why Your AI Chatbot Suddenly "Forgets": Context Windows, Explained With Real Numbers

A context window is the hard ceiling on how much of a conversation an AI model can hold at once, measured in tokens. When you cross it, the oldest parts of the chat fall out of view. Here's what that limit actually is on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude right now, straight from each provider's own docs.

·7 min read

ChatGPT's Free Plan Just Went Unlimited. Here's What $0 Actually Buys on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude

OpenAI removed ChatGPT's free-tier message cap in August 2026, Google is giving eligible US college students a free year of its $19.99/month AI Pro plan, and Anthropic still won't publish a number for Claude's free tier. The real limits on each, straight from the source.

·6 min read

OpenAI Kills the Assistants API on August 26. Here's What Actually Breaks

OpenAI's Assistants API stops answering every request on August 26, 2026, with no grace period and no automated way to move old chat threads over. Zapier zaps, custom support bots, and Azure OpenAI assistants built on it break unless someone rebuilds them on the Responses API first.

·6 min read

PDF Viewers Only Guarantee 14 Fonts Exist. That's Why Your Group Project Looks Different on Everyone Else's Laptop

A PDF can look perfect on the computer that made it and wrong on every other one, and the reason is almost always font embedding. What the “standard 14” fonts are, why everything else needs to travel inside the file, and how to fix it before you submit.

·8 min read

Google Cut New Accounts to 5GB of Free Storage. Here's Every File Size Limit That Actually Matters in 2026

Discord, Gmail, Slack, WhatsApp, X, and Google all cap what you can send differently, and the caps keep moving. The real numbers for each, straight from their own help pages, plus how to actually get a file under the line.

·7 min read

Suno's Copyright Bill Could Hit $9.1 Billion. Its Fix: Watermark Every Song.

Days after Universal and Sony moved to add 61,026 tracks to their copyright suit against Suno, pushing potential damages past $9 billion, the AI music company announced audio watermarking, fingerprinting, and new download limits. What actually changed, and what didn't.

·7 min read

The FBI Warned People About Fake File Converter Sites. Here's What Happens When You Hit Upload.

A free online converter or editor isn't one thing, it's three: a server your file gets sent to, a retention policy you probably haven't read, and, in a growing number of cases the FBI has flagged, outright malware. Here's what's actually happening when you click upload, and how to tell the difference.

·6 min read

Solana Locks About $0.16 in Every Empty Token Account You Forget to Close

Every SPL token account on Solana holds a small refundable SOL deposit called rent. Sell the token and the account usually doesn't close itself, so the deposit stays locked until you close it yourself. Here's what rent actually is, why it exists, and how to get it back.

·8 min read

Claude Now Hides a Watermark in Every Word It Writes. There Is No Off Switch, and No Tool Can Strip It

Anthropic now embeds an invisible, machine-readable watermark in all text from new Claude models, everywhere Claude runs. What the mark proves, what breaks it, why images are different, and what it means if you get accused of using AI.

·6 min read

The EU Can Now Fine AI Companies €15 Million for Skipping a Deepfake Label

Article 50 of the EU AI Act took effect on August 2, 2026: AI chatbots must disclose they're AI, deepfakes must be labeled, and AI-generated content needs a machine-readable mark. It applies to any provider whose output reaches an EU user, not just EU companies, with fines up to €15 million or 3% of global turnover.

·6 min read

Instagram Strips Your Photo's GPS Data. Gmail and Discord Don't.

Every photo you take can record exactly where you were standing. Some platforms remove that before anyone sees it — and the ones people actually send files through often don't. Here's which is which, and how to check your own photos.

·7 min read

How to Convert a PNG to SVG for Cricut (Without Paying for Design Space Access)

A practical guide to getting clean, cuttable SVG files from any image — which settings actually matter for vinyl, why photos never work, and how to avoid the stray specks that ruin a cut halfway through.

·7 min read

71% of Students Now Use AI for Homework. Here's a Free Study Stack That Never Uploads Your Notes

RAND's American Youth Panel found AI homework use jumped from 48% to 62% in a single semester, and back-to-school spending just hit a record $43.3 billion. Here's a free, browser-based study workflow — record, transcribe, OCR, and organize — that doesn't push your lecture audio or handwritten notes to anyone's server.

·7 min read

Google Charges $124.99/Month to Remove the Gemini Notebook Watermark. Here's How to Do It Free.

The only official way to strip the watermark from Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) exports is the AI Ultra plan. We compared every alternative — extensions, desktop apps, upload sites, and browser-local tools — on price, privacy, and what actually still works after the June 2026 redesign.

·5 min read

Your Browser Became an AI Computer and Nobody Announced It

WebGPU turned the browser tab into a place where real AI models run on your own hardware — no uploads, no API keys, no server bill. What that unlocks in 2026, and where it still falls down.

·5 min read

Discord Boost Levels in 2026: What Each Tier Actually Unlocks

Banners at Level 2, animated banners at Level 3, and sticker slots that quadruple along the way. A plain-English guide to what boosting really gets your server — and how to be ready for it.

·6 min read

PNG to SVG: How to Vectorize Any Image (and Why Colour Count Is the Whole Game)

Turn a blurry PNG into a razor-sharp SVG that scales forever. What vectorizing actually does, why the number of colours matters more than any other setting, and how to get clean files for Cricut, vinyl, and the web.

·5 min read

NotebookLM Is Now Gemini Notebook — What Changed, and Does Watermark Removal Still Work?

Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook in July 2026 and shipped code execution, Gemini 3.5, and deeper Search integration. Here's what actually changed for everyday users — and what it means for exported videos, PDFs, and slides.

·6 min read

Every Social Media Image Size That Actually Matters in 2026

Discord banners, X/Twitter headers, and stickers — the exact pixel sizes, file limits, and safe zones for 2026, plus free browser tools that export them correctly the first time.

·6 min read

How to Add Subtitles to Any Video for Free (Without Uploading It)

Auto-generate captions, export an SRT, and burn subtitles into your video — entirely in your browser. A practical 2026 guide, plus an honest look at the popular caption apps.

·5 min read

How to Run a Giveaway That Feels Fair (and Actually Is)

Random name pickers, spin wheels, and the psychology of a fair draw. How randomness really works, why duplicate entries change the show but not the odds, and how to run a draw nobody disputes.

·4 min read

How to Remove the NotebookLM Watermark in 2026 (Video, PDF & Slides)

Google's NotebookLM stamps its watermark on Video Overviews, PDF reports, and slide decks. Here's how to remove all three for free, in your browser, without uploading anything.

·5 min read

The Best Free PDF Tools That Run Entirely in Your Browser

Merge, split, sign, convert, and reorganize PDFs without uploading a single byte. A tour of browser-native PDF editing in 2026 — and why local-first beats upload sites.

·4 min read

Local-First Tools Are Quietly Eating the Web

Whisper transcription, AI background removal, OCR, and video processing now run in a browser tab with zero uploads. Here's why the upload-and-wait era of web tools is ending.

More guides brewing under the starlight ✦