All the Claw things (News)

16 Feb 2026 · 6 min · 3 chapters

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In short

The Changelog: Episode Summary - All the Claw Things (News)

Episode Overview In this episode, Peter Steinberger of OpenAI provides insights into his transformative journey with OpenClaw, the emergence of innovative alternatives like ZeroClaw and Mimiclaw, a discussion on performance issues in Postgres, and reflections on the impact of AI on our lives.

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Key Discussions

  1. OpenClaw and Peter Steinberger's Vision
  2. Peter Steinberger's Journey
  3. Transitioned from a developer to a key figure in AI research.
  4. Emphasizes the limitless possibilities and changes in his career.
  • Vision for OpenClaw
  • Steinberger aims to change the world rather than merely expand a business.
  • Collaborating with OpenAI to enhance the project.
  • OpenClaw will be structured as a foundation to support data ownership and foster innovation.
  1. ZeroClaw: A Compelling Alternative
  2. Overview
  3. Positioned as "claw done right," ZeroClaw focuses on efficiency.
  • Key Features
  • Operates on low-cost hardware ($10) with minimal memory requirements (less than 5 MB).
  • Claims significant advantages in terms of performance compared to OpenClaw.
  • Competition with OpenClaw
  • While ZeroClaw offers compelling benchmarks, OpenClaw's comprehensive approach may overshadow feature-for-feature competition.
  1. Mimiclaw: AI on a Budget
  2. Technical Specs
  3. Runs on a cheap ESP32-S3 board.
  4. Functions as a personal AI assistant with local memory and the ability to connect via Telegram.
  • Significance
  • Highlights the potential of affordable AI solutions leveraging minimal resources.
  1. Sponsored Segment: Postgres Performance Insights
  2. Common Misunderstandings
  3. Tuning Postgres is insufficient for performance issues in high-demand scenarios.
  • Indicators of Underlying Problems
  • Rising ingest demands and the need for real-time data without sacrificing query capabilities.
  • Architectural Considerations
  • Emphasis on the importance of architecture decisions over merely adjusting parameters.
  1. The AI Vampire: A Commentary by Steve Yegge
  2. Concept of the AI Vampire
  3. AI can drain human energy and creativity.
  • Value Capture
  • Acknowledges the need for builders to consider how to capture value in a landscape where AI may consume more than it gives.
  1. The Day the Telnet Died
  2. Incident Overview
  3. Significant drop in global Telnet traffic linked to a security vulnerability (CVE 2026-24061).
  • Implications
  • Suggests that outdated technology may face increased security scrutiny and operational challenges.

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Conclusion and Call to Action The episode highlights crucial developments in open-source AI technologies, emphasizes the importance of effective architecture in software, and provides thought-provoking insights on the relationship between humans and AI. Listeners are encouraged to subscribe to The Changelog newsletter for further updates and resources.

Additional Recommendations

  • Listen & Subscribe: Follow The Changelog for regular updates on software development and open-source news.
  • Engage with Content: Like and review the podcast to support ongoing discussions in the tech community.

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Keywords

  • OpenClaw
  • ZeroClaw
  • Mimiclaw
  • AI Impact
  • Postgres Performance
  • Software Development
  • Open Source

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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Inside OpenClaw's Journey and Vision

0:45 to 2:56

Discussion on Peter Steinberger's insights about OpenClaw and its community.

“Peter Steinberger shares details from inside the whirlwind he's been living in since OpenClaw's moment.”

Innovations in ZeroClaw and Mimiclaw

2:56 to 3:15

Exploring the advancements and comparisons between ZeroClaw and Mimiclaw.

“Plug it into USB power, connect to Wi-Fi, and talk to it through Telegram.”

Reflections on AI's Impact and the Future of Telnet

4:16 to 6:10

Insights on the societal effects of AI and a cautionary tale about Telnet.

“or follow the direct link in the newsletter.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:28What up, nerds? He went from a dev in relative obscurity to creating the fastest growing repo in GitHub history to being at the frontier of AI research and development in a matter of months. We live in absolutely wild times. Okay, let's get into this week's news. OpenClaw, OpenAI, and the future. Peter Steinberger shares details from inside the whirlwind he's been living in since OpenClaw's moment. Quote, There's an endless array of possibilities that opened up for me.

1:08End quote. OpenClaw could have become a huge company, but Peter's not interested in that. Quote, What I want is to change the world, not build a large company, and teaming up with OpenAI is the fastest way to bring this to everyone. End quote. Great news for Peter isn't necessarily good news for the open source community. Here's his vision for the future of OpenClaw. Quote, The community around OpenClaw is something magical, and OpenAI has made strong commitments to enable me to dedicate my time to it, and already sponsors the project. To get this into a proper structure, I'm working on making it a foundation.

1:41It will stay a place for thinkers, hackers, and people that want a way to own their data with the goal of supporting even more models and companies. ZeroClaw is claw done right. One of my favorite facets of the open source ethos, and I say this sincerely, is the sentiment that anything you can do, I can do better. OpenClaw's success made ports, copies, and remixes inevitable. In that way, ZeroClaw was also inevitable. Quote, zero overhead, zero compromise, 100 % rust, 100 % agnostic, runs on$10 hardware with less than 5 megs of RAM. That's 99 % less memory than OpenClaw and 98 % cheaper than a Mac Mini.

2:22End quote. That's a long list of bumper sticker comparisons, but it's also a pretty compelling one. Zero Claw's creators provide benchmarks demonstrating the performance comparisons, but Open Claw's batteries-included approach and gravitational pull might make it difficult to compete with feature for feature. On the other hand, agents are pretty good at cranking out features. Mimiclaw runs on a$5 chip. If you were impressed by Zero Claw's$10 hardware claim, Get a load of Mimiclaw. Wait till they get a load of me. Quote, Mimiclaw turns a tiny ESP32-S3 board into a personal AI assistant. Plug it into USB power, connect to Wi-Fi, and talk to it through Telegram.

3:03It handles any tasks you throw at it and evolves over time with local memory. All on a chip the size of a thumb. End quote. No Linux, no Node.js, just pure C. It's now time for sponsored news. Tuning Postgres won't fix your performance problems If your team is still debating shared buffers while dashboards time out This is your sign to listen up Tiger Data wrote a post that lays out six practical signs That performance issues aren't a tuning problem anymore Once workloads become high ingest, high cardinality, and time-oriented You eventually outgrow incremental knob turning You can squeeze query plans and memory settings for a while, but not forever The red flags look like this Recent data needs to be fast while older data still has to stay queryable.

3:49Ingest keeps climbing, long-range analytics compete with real-time reads, and storage costs balloon without compression. At that point, just tune Postgres turns into a loop. It's not that Postgres failed you. Your architecture decisions mattered more than parameter tweaks once scale and workload shape changed. Postgres is still the foundation, but it needs the right primitives for time series patterns, data tiering, compression, and continuous aggregation. Read the full breakdown at tigerdata.com or follow the direct link in the newsletter. The AI Vampire. This Steve Yeggy confessional, I mean article, describes why he believes AI is starting to kill us, Colin Robinson style.

4:28Quote, if you'll recall from what we do in the shadows, Colin Robinson was an energy vampire. Being in the same room with him would drain people. That's pretty much what's happening. Being in the same room with AI, it's draining people. End quote. Steve spends some time explaining why that's the case, even taking some of the blame for it. But most of this post is about how we builders should be thinking about value capture in the agentic world and some solid advice on making sure we're capturing some of the value that is otherwise being drained from us, vampire style. The day the telnet died. Quote, on January 14th, 2026, global telnet traffic observed by gray noise sensors fell off a cliff.

5:09A 59 % sustained reduction, 18 ASNs going completely silent, five countries vanishing from our data entirely. Six days later, CVE 2026-24061 dropped. Coincidence is one explanation, end quote. I would love to claim that anyone still running Telnet in 2026 doesn't care about security, but that might be naive. People have their reasons and they're usually more founded than we think they'll be. But after this event, you might not be able to run a Telnet daemon on the internet anymore, even if you have a good reason. Oh, and to the authors of this post, nice homage. Don McLean would be proud if he had any idea what you're talking about.

5:47Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? That's the news for now. But go and subscribe to our ChangeLog newsletter for the full scoop of links worth clicking on, such as... We mourn our craft. A real-time global intelligence dashboard. And agentic anxiety. Get in on the newsletter at changelog.news. Have yourself a wonderful week. like subscribe and five star review the show if you dig it and i'll talk to you again real soon

From the publisher

Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI, ZeroClaw is "claw done right", MimiClaw runs on a $5 chip, Steve Yegge on managing the AI Vampire, and the day the telnet died.

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