NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has announced that astronauts on the upcoming Crew-12 and Artemis II missions will be allowed to carry iPhones and other modern smartphones into orbit and to the Moon -- a reversal of long-standing agency rules that had left crews relying on a 2016 Nikon DSLR and decade-old GoPros for the historic lunar flyby.

Isaacman framed the move as part of a broader push to challenge what he called bloated qualification requirements, where hardware approvals get mired in radiation characterization, battery thermal tests, outgassing reviews and vibration testing. "That operational urgency will serve NASA well as we pursue the highest-value science and research in orbit and on the lunar surface," he [1]wrote .



[1] https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2019259382962307393

The CIA has [1]shut down The World Factbook , one of its oldest and most recognizable public-facing intelligence publications, ending a run that began as a classified reference document in 1962 and evolved into a freely accessible digital resource that drew millions of views each year.

The agency offered no explanation for the decision. Originally titled The National Basic Intelligence Factbook, the publication first went unclassified in 1971, was renamed a decade later, and moved online at CIA.gov in 1997. It served researchers, news organizations, teachers, students and international travelers. The site hosted more than 5,000 copyright-free photographs, some donated by CIA officers from their personal travel. Every page now redirects to a farewell announcement.



[1] https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/spotlighting-the-world-factbook-as-we-bid-a-fond-farewell/

Anthropic on Thursday released [1]Claude Opus 4.6 , its most capable model yet, at a moment when the company's AI tools have already [2]spooked markets over fears that they are disrupting traditional software development and other sectors.

The new model improves on Opus 4.5's coding abilities, the company said -- it plans more carefully, sustains longer agentic tasks, handles larger codebases more reliably, and catches its own mistakes through better debugging. It is also the first Opus-class model to feature a 1M token context window, currently in beta.

On GDPval-AA, an independent benchmark measuring performance on knowledge-work tasks in finance, legal and other domains, Opus 4.6 outperformed OpenAI's GPT-5.2 by roughly 144 Elo points. Anthropic also introduced agent teams in Claude Code, allowing multiple agents to work in parallel on tasks like codebase reviews. Pricing remains at $5/$25 per million input/output tokens.



[1] https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-6

[2] https://slashdot.org/story/26/02/04/1810206/as-software-stocks-slump-investors-debate-ais-existential-threat

Automattic and the Internet Archive have released a free, open-source WordPress [1]plugin that automatically detects broken outbound links on a site and [2]redirects visitors to archived Wayback Machine copies instead of serving them a 404 error.

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer, which launched last fall and is available on WordPress.org, runs in the background scanning posts for dead links, checking for existing archived versions, and requesting new snapshots when none exist. It also archives a site's own posts whenever they are updated. If the original link comes back online, the plugin stops redirecting.

Pew Research has found that 38% of the web has disappeared over the past decade, and WordPress powers more than 40% of websites online.



[1] https://wordpress.org/plugins/internet-archive-wayback-machine-link-fixer/

[2] https://blog.archive.org/2026/02/04/inside-the-new-wayback-machine-plugin-for-wordpress/

Western Digital this week laid out a roadmap that stretches its 3.5-inch hard drive platform to 14 platters and pairs it with a new vertical-emitting laser for heat-assisted magnetic recording, a combination the company says will [1]push individual drive capacities beyond 140 TB in the 2030s .

The vertical laser, developed over six years and already working in WD's labs, emits light straight down onto the disk rather than from the edge, delivering more thermal energy while occupying less vertical space -- enabling areal densities up to 10 TB per platter, up from today's 4 TB, and room for additional platters in the same enclosure. WD's first commercial HAMR drives arrive in late 2026 at 40-44 TB on an 11-platter design, ramping into volume production in 2027. A 12-platter platform follows in 2028 at 60 TB, and WD expects to hit 100 TB by around 2030.



[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/western-digital-details-14-platter-3-5-inch-hamr-hdd-designs-with-140-tb-and-beyond

Amazon plans to use AI to [1]speed up the process for making movies and TV shows even as Hollywood fears that AI will cut jobs and permanently reshape the industry. From a report:

> At the Amazon MGM Studio, veteran entertainment executive Albert Cheng is leading a team charged with developing new AI tools that he said will cut costs and streamline the creative process. Amazon plans to launch a closed beta program in March, inviting industry partners to test its AI tools. The company expects to have results to share by May. [...] Amazon is leaning on its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, for help and plans to work with multiple large language model providers to give creators a wider array of options for pre- and post-production filmmaking.



[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/amazon-plans-use-ai-speed-up-tv-film-production-2026-02-04/

Spotify is planning to let premium subscribers in the U.S. and U.K. [1]buy hardcovers and paperbacks directly through its app starting this spring, partnering with Bookshop.org to handle pricing, inventory and fulfillment.

The Swedish streaming company, which entered the audiobook market in 2022, will also introduce a feature called Page Match that lets users scan a page from a physical book or e-reader and jump to the exact spot in the audiobook edition. Spotify will earn an undisclosed affiliate fee on each purchase.



[1] https://newsroom.spotify.com/2026-02-05/bookshop-partnership-page-match-announcement/

The FBI has been unable to access a Washington Post reporter's seized iPhone [1]because it was in Lockdown Mode , a sometimes overlooked feature that makes iPhones broadly more secure, according to recently filed court records. 404Media:

> The court record shows what devices and data the FBI was able to ultimately access, and which devices it could not, after raiding the home of the reporter, Hannah Natanson, in January as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information. It also provides rare insight into the apparent effectiveness of Lockdown Mode, or at least how effective it might be before the FBI may try other techniques to access the device.

>

> "Because the iPhone was in Lockdown mode, CART could not extract that device," the court record reads, referring to the FBI's Computer Analysis Response Team, a unit focused on performing forensic analyses of seized devices. The document is written by the government, and is opposing the return of Natanson's devices.

>

> The FBI raided Natanson's home as part of its investigation into government contractor Aurelio Perez-Lugones, who is charged with, among other things, retention of national defense information. The government believes Perez-Lugones was a source of Natanson's, and provided her with various pieces of classified information. While executing a search warrant for his mobile phone, investigators reviewed Signal messages between Pere-Lugones and the reporter, the Department of Justice previously said.



[1] https://www.404media.co/fbi-couldnt-get-into-wapo-reporters-iphone-because-it-had-lockdown-mode-enabled/

Kalshi, the largest U.S. prediction market, accused a small data startup called Juice Reel of "extortion" after a stock analyst used the company's transaction-level data to argue that prediction market users lose money faster than gamblers on traditional betting apps -- [1]then walked the allegation back hours later .

The equity research analyst Jordan Bender at Citizens found that the bottom quarter of prediction market users lost about 28 cents of every dollar wagered in their first three months, compared to roughly 11 cents per dollar on sites like FanDuel and DraftKings. Kalshi's head of communications told Bloomberg the report was "flat-out wrong" and called the data an extortion attempt. Juice Reel CEO Ricky Gold said Kalshi had actually pressured him to tell Bloomberg the data was inaccurate. Kalshi later issued an updated statement saying it continued to dispute the findings but "after further review, we don't believe the intention was extortion." The company did not provide any data to counter the analysis.



[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-04/kalshi-claims-extortion-then-recants-in-prediction-markets-gambling-feud

Sony announced last month that it plans to pass control of its home entertainment division -- including the two-decade-old Bravia television brand -- [1]to Chinese electronics group TCL through a joint venture in which TCL would hold a 51% stake. The Japanese company was long ago overtaken in sales by South Korea's Samsung and LG and now holds just 2% of the global television market. Sony stopped making its own LCD screens in 2011.

Chinese companies [2]supplied 71% of television panels made in Asia last year, according to TCL, and less than 10% are now produced in Japan and Korea. TCL is close to overtaking Samsung as the world's largest television maker. Sony retains valuable intellectual property in image rendering, and the Bravia brand still carries consumer recognition, but its OLED screens are already supplied by Samsung and LG. The company has been shifting toward premium cameras, professional audio, and its entertainment businesses in film, music, and games -- areas where intellectual property is less exposed to Chinese manufacturing scale.



[1] https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/01/20/1356253/sony-is-ceding-control-of-tv-hardware-business-to-chinas-tcl

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/283ed0a2-48d1-4358-9021-decae9a61541

[1]alternative_right writes:

> The city of Munich has developed its own measurement instrument to assess the digital sovereignty of its IT infrastructure. The so-called Digital Sovereignty Score (SDS) visually resembles the Nutri-Score and identifies IT systems based on their [2]independence from individual providers and 'foreign' legal spheres . The Technical University of Munich was involved in the development.

>

> In September and October 2025, the IT Department already conducted a first comprehensive test. Out of a total of 2780 municipal application services, 194 particularly critical ones were selected and evaluated based on five categories. The analysis already showed a high degree of digital sovereignty: 66% of the 194 evaluated services reached the highest levels (SDS 1 and 2), only 5% reached the critical level 4, and 21% reached the most critical level 5. The SDS evaluates not only technical dependencies but also legal and organizational risks.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~alternative_right

[2] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Munich-makes-digital-sovereignty-measurable-with-its-own-score-11164230.html

BMW may have [1]retreated from its controversial plan to [2]charge monthly fees for heated seats , but the German automaker is [3]pressing ahead with subscription-based vehicle features through its ConnectedDrive platform.

A company spokesperson told The Drive that BMW "remains fully committed" to ConnectedDrive as part of its global aftersales strategy. Features requiring data connectivity will likely carry recurring fees.



[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/09/07/1545202/bmw-drops-controversial-heated-seats-subscription-to-refocus-on-software-services

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/07/12/1616236/bmw-starts-selling-heated-seat-subscriptions-for-18-a-month

[3] https://www.thedrive.com/news/bmw-commits-to-subscriptions-even-after-heated-seat-debacle

Valve has [1]pushed back the launch of its Steam Machine, Steam Frame and Steam Controller hardware from its original Q1 2026 window to a vaguer "first half of the year" target, blaming the ongoing memory and storage shortage that has been squeezing the tech industry.

The company said in a post today that rising component prices and limited availability forced it to revisit both its shipping schedule and pricing plans. Valve had previously indicated the Steam Machine would be priced at the entry level of the PC space.



[1] https://www.theverge.com/games/874196/valve-steam-machine-frame-controller-delay-pricing-memory-crisis

Microsoft has finally delivered on its promise to integrate Sysmon -- the long-standing system monitoring tool from its Sysinternals suite -- [1]directly into Windows , a move that should make life considerably easier for enterprise administrators who have struggled with deploying and managing the utility across thousands of endpoints.

The functionality landed this week in Windows Insider builds 26300.7733 (Dev channel) and 26220.7752 (Beta channel). Sysmon allows administrators to capture system events through custom configuration files, filter for specific activity, and pipe the data into standard Windows event logs for pickup by security tools and SIEM pipelines. Mark Russinovich, Microsoft technical fellow and Winternals co-founder, has previously noted the lack of official customer support for Sysmon in production environments -- a gap this integration addresses. The feature ships disabled by default and requires PowerShell to enable. Microsoft notes that any existing Sysmon installation must be uninstalled before activating the built-in version.



[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/04/microsoft_adds_sysmon_to_windows/

European security officials believe two Russian space vehicles have [1]intercepted the communications of at least a dozen key satellites over the continent. From a report:

> Officials believe that the likely interceptions, which have not previously been reported, risk not only compromising sensitive information transmitted by the satellites but could also allow Moscow to manipulate their trajectories or even crash them.

>

> Russian space vehicles have shadowed European satellites more intensively over the past three years, at a time of high tension between the Kremlin and the West following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For several years, military and civilian space authorities in the West have been tracking the activities of Luch-1 and Luch-2 -- two Russian objects that have carried out repeated suspicious maneuvers in orbit.

>

> Both vehicles have made risky close approaches to some of Europe's most important geostationary satellites, which operate high above the Earth and service the continent, including the UK, as well as large parts of Africa and the Middle East. According to orbital data and ground-based telescopic observations, they have lingered nearby for weeks at a time, particularly over the past three years. Since its launch in 2023, Luch-2 has approached 17 European satellites.



[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/russian-spy-satellites-have-intercepted-eu-communications-satellites/

A sprawling informal economy of rogue streaming devices has [1]taken hold across the U.S. , as consumers fed up with rising TV subscription costs turn to cheap Android-based boxes that promise free access to thousands of live channels, sports events, and on-demand movies for a one-time $200 to $400 purchase.

The two dominant players -- SuperBox and vSeeBox -- are manufactured by opaque Chinese companies and distributed through hundreds of American resellers at farmers markets, church festivals and Facebook groups, according to a report by The Verge. The hardware is generic and legal, but both devices guide users toward pirate streaming apps not available on any official app store.

vSeeBox directs users to a service called "Heat"; SuperBox points to "Blue TV." One user estimated access to between 6,000 and 8,000 channels, including premium sports networks and hundreds of local affiliates. A 2025 Dish Network lawsuit against a SuperBox reseller alleged that some live channels on the device were being ripped directly from Dish's Sling TV service -- Sling's logo was still visible on certain feeds. Dish has pursued resellers aggressively, winning $1.25 million in damages from a vSeeBox seller in 2024 over 500 devices and $405,000 from another over 162 devices. None of this has meaningfully slowed adoption. The market has roots in earlier Chinese-made devices like TVPad that targeted Asian expat communities and reportedly sold 3 million units before being litigated out of existence. SuperBox and vSeeBox simply broadened the audience to mainstream America.



[1] https://www.theverge.com/streaming/873416/piracy-streaming-boxes

Investors were assessing on Wednesday whether [1]a selloff in global software stocks this week had gone too far, as they weighed if businesses could survive an existential threat posed by AI. The answer: It's unclear and will lead to volatility. From a report:

> After a broad selloff on Tuesday that saw the S&P 500 software and services index fall nearly 4%, the sector slipped another 1% on Wednesday. While software stocks have been under pressure in recent months as AI has gone from being a tailwind for many of these companies to investors worrying about the disruption it will cause to some sectors, the latest selloff was triggered by a new legal tool from Anthropic's Claude large language model (LLM).

>

> The tool - a plug-in for Claude's agent for tasks across legal, sales, marketing and data analysis - underscored the push by LLMs into the so-called "application layer," where these firms are increasingly muscling into lucrative enterprise businesses for revenue they need to fund massive investments. If successful, investors worry, it could wreak havoc across a range of industries, from finance to law and coding.



[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/global-software-stocks-hit-by-anthropic-wake-up-call-ai-disruption-2026-02-04/

Anthropic said today that its AI assistant Claude will [1]not carry advertising of any kind -- no sponsored links next to conversations, no advertiser influence on the model's responses, and no unsolicited third-party product placements -- calling Claude a "space to think" that should remain free of commercial interruption. The announcement comes days after Anthropic's chief rival, OpenAI, announced plans to [2]bring ads to some of its ChatGPT offerings .

Anthropic said its internal analysis of Claude conversations found that a significant share involve sensitive or deeply personal topics. An advertising-based model would also create incentives to optimize for engagement and time spent rather than usefulness, Anthropic said, noting that the most helpful AI interaction might be a short one that doesn't prompt further conversation.

Anthropic generates revenue from enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions. The company said it is exploring agentic commerce -- Claude handling a purchase or booking on a user's behalf -- but stressed that all such interactions should be user-initiated, not advertiser-driven. Anthropic has also brought AI tools to educators in over 60 countries and said it may consider lower-cost subscription tiers and regional pricing.



[1] https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-is-a-space-to-think

[2] https://slashdot.org/story/26/01/16/1827203/ads-are-coming-to-chatgpt-in-the-coming-weeks

Pinterest has [1]sacked two engineers for tracking which workers lost their jobs in a recent round of layoffs. BBC:

> The company [2]recently announced job cuts , with chief executive Bill Ready stating in an email he was "doubling down on an AI-forward approach," according to an employee who posted some of the memo on LinkedIn.

>

> Pinterest told investors the move would impact about 15% of the workforce, or roughly 700 roles, without saying which teams or workers were affected. But then "two engineers wrote custom scripts improperly accessing confidential company information to identify the locations and names of all dismissed employees and then shared it more broadly," a company spokesperson told the BBC. "This was a clear violation of Pinterest policy and of their former colleagues' privacy," the spokesperson added.

>

> The script written by the Pinterest engineers was aimed at internal tools used at the company for employees to communicate, according to a person familiar with the firings who asked not to be identified. The person said the script created an alert for which employee names within a tool like the team communication platform Slack were being removed or deactivated, giving some insight into who at the company was impacted by the layoffs.



[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0k670n0ydo

[2] https://slashdot.org/story/26/01/27/1457232/pinterest-cuts-up-to-15-jobs-to-redirect-resources-to-ai

Google's much-anticipated plan to merge Android and ChromeOS into a single operating system called Aluminium is [1]shaping up to be a drawn-out, complicated transition that could leave existing Chromebook users behind, according to previously unreported court documents in the Google search antitrust case.

The new OS won't be compatible with all existing Chromebook hardware, and Google will be forced to maintain ChromeOS through at least 2033 to honor its 10-year support commitment to current users -- meaning two parallel operating systems running for years.

The timeline itself is messier than Google has let on publicly, the filings suggest. Sameer Samat, Google's head of Android, called the merger "something we're super excited about for next year" last September, but court filings describe the "fastest path" to market as offering Aluminium to "commercial trusted testers" in late 2026 before a full release in 2028.

Enterprise and education customers -- the segments where Chromebooks currently dominate -- are slated for 2028 as well. Columbia computer science professor Jason Nieh, who interviewed Google engineers as a witness in the case, testified that Aluminium requires a heavier software stack and more powerful hardware to run.



[1] https://www.theverge.com/tech/869659/aluminium-why-googles-android-for-pc-launch-may-be-messy-and-controversial