Ken Kutaragi—the former chairman and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE)—met with retro PlayStation enthusiasts earlier this month. Almost three weeks later, news outlets have just familiarized themselves with Julian Domanski's happy (March 1) social media post. The Tokyo-based professional videographer/photographer spent some time with the "The Father of the PlayStation," as well as an extremely rare piece of console gaming history: "I never thought I'd see something so rare, but today I actually got to fondle a Nintendo PlayStation! The last one in existence was believed to have sold at auction for $300,000. Turns out the ex-CEO of Sony CEI has one in his closet. Ken Kutaragi, top bloke. Signed my PS1 too!" Back in the late 1980s, Sony and Nintendo started work on a CD-ROM version of the 16-bit Super Famicom (international SKU: SNES). Sony unveiled a prototype "Play Station" at the 1991 Consumer Electronics Show; apparently Nintendo's internal reference name was simply "SNES-CD."

Famously—a day later—the House of Mario broke away from this partnership and ended up working with Philips; resulting in the extremely underwhelming CD-i home entertainment system. Kutaragi and colleagues formed Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) in late 1993, and proceeded with the development of their first-gen proprietary 32-bit RISC-based console design. Ultimately, the PlayStation would far surpass Nintendo's N64 (expensive cartridge format) gaming platform in terms of sales by the late nineties. Since then, hardcore collectors have spent countless hours tracking down Nintendo PlayStation prototypes. Rumors had spread about only two-hundred units being produced back in the day. Domanski's mentioning of a $300K+ winning bid harkens back to another former SCEI executive; Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson. As reported by VGC, the other example: "was once owned by the first CEO of Sony's games division." This BBC article does a good job of describing a bizarre chain of events; ending with Ólafsson's prototype being sold for $360,000, including a $60,000 buyer's premium fee. Kutaragi's variant seems to be in much better condition, and sports slightly different external markings—most notably; a strong blue PlayStation logo.

The "standard" ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 OC Edition is already a really an "astronomically expensive" prospect (if you can find available stock); launch MSRP was $2800, but retailers pushed that figure beyond the $3000 mark. An even fancier golden variant exists—as a reminder; news outlets picked up on the existence of a "Dhahab" model early last month. This luxuriously decorated collector piece was likely introduced as a regional exclusive, for MENA (Middle-East and North Africa). This week, ASUS managed to sneak one gold encrusted sample out to San Francisco, California.

Ernest Cheng—Director of Marketing at the firm's North American branch—shared a photo (via LinkedIn) of the very unique ROG Astral RTX 5090 Dhahab OC Edition model; freshly scribbled on by Jensen Huang during GTC 2025. The ASUS exec commented on this blessing: "graphics card is one of a kind when it's been anointed. But it says a lot more when it's a Golden ROG RTX 5090 Astral." Press outlets reckon that this extremely special item will be auctioned off for charity; the presence of Team Green CEO's autograph and slogan ("RTX ON!") will boost its value severalfold. A Jensen Huang-signed ROG MATRIX RTX 4090 PLATINUM card attracted a top bid of $16,000; Der8auer (aka Roman Hartung) was officially congratulated as the winner back in late 2023.

Update 18:02 UTC: ASUS has confirmed that it will be supporting a local charity: "we are extremely honored to have this special edition ROG Astral RTX 5090 Dhahab OC graphics card, signed by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. This card will be officially auctioned to support relief efforts for the California wildfires in Los Angeles."

A South Korea-based hardware enthusiast—Harukaze5719—has discovered a curious listing of ZOTAC's GeForce RTX 5090 SOLID OC model on a Chinese auction site (asking price: ~$4175 USD). This finding was shared with their audience, via a social media post—a screenshot was accompanied by harukaze5719's short and succinct message: "OMG..." Officially, NVIDIA and its board partners cater to the Chinese hardware market with a restricted variant of the flagship "Blackwell" GPU—GeForce RTX 5090D. Despite under-the-hood nerfing, this region-exclusive model still offers enviable performance (when pushed).

The "full fat" GeForce RTX 5090 GPU appears to be an even hotter commodity—with demand (at launch) exceeding far exceeding supply. ZOTAC's South Korean branch warned potential customers about difficult conditions almost two weeks ahead of Blackwell's market debut on January 30. Harukaze5719 has likely expressed semi-personal frustration over apparent South Korea market-destined ZOTAC stock turning up for sale in China. So-called "Chinese GPU shopping tourists" could have made the journey to a South Korean PC hardware store, with their sole objective being the acquisition of GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards. Tom's Hardware has gathered various related tidbits from Japanese and Taiwanese news sources—where local TV coverage explored the events of last week's launch event.

A Japanese seller active on Yahoo Auctions has been listing PlayStation 5 prototypes consoles—their time limited (24 hour) offerings have probably been implemented to dodge the wrath of Sony Corporation's legal team. A "Prototype 2—not for sale" devkit was made available last week and eventually sold for around $5500 (JP¥ 800,000). A "Prototype 1" unit was purchased for JP¥551,000 (~$3810) over the weekend, and another auction was created this morning—the unmarked system started off at JP¥600,000 (~$4150). The seller has gained some notoriety within the enthusiast scene, due to their acquisition of other rare bits of hardware, including PSP development kits.

It is believed that these PS5 prototypes pre-date the devkit that leaked prior to PlayStation 5's official launch, so hardcore collectors could be enticed by the prospect of owning unusual items. Sony's very thorough tracing system will likely result in these units being unusable, but members of the gaming community are puzzled by the corporation's lack of action—given the seller's ability to acquire and sell all sorts of PlayStation development equipment, with vintages from over a decade ago.

If you're reading this news post right now, you have been making use of the World Wide Web. Easily one of the most relevant inventions in humanity's history, the World Wide Web has become an inextricable part of our lives, either personal, technological, commercial, political, or otherwise. It has become a fabric of reality, and has been the enabler of technological innovations such as the blockchain (in all possible protocols and permutations that currently exist), as well as an enabler for NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens). An NFT is a guaranteed, authenticated original digital file, essentially - and it doesn't matter how many copies of a given digital file are eventually made, the nature of the blockchain makes it so that ownership of the original work is crystal clear throughout the public blockchain sphere.

As such, it's in one way poetic that the Internet's source-code, as developed by Tim Berners-Lee, has now been married to an NFT - a piece of art that exists only in the online world. Auctioned with a $1,000 starting bid, the NFT for the world wide web includes the original time-stamped programming files, containing 9,555 lines of code written by Berners-Lee. This includes the implementations of the languages and protocols ( HTML, HTTP, and URIs) also written by Tim, and which are still the cornerstone of today's internet. The NFT also includes a 30-minute animated visualization of developers writing the code, a letter written by Berners-Lee where he explains the creation process, and a digital "poster" of the code featuring a graphic of his signature. All four items are digitally signed, and are thus authenticated as non-fungible originals - which led to the NFT's final sale price of $5.4 million.