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Dan Anderson writes:Two weeks ago, I set up an AI agent on a Raspberry Pi.A week later, my agent-Figaro-taught itself to play NetHack... and then things got weird (in the best way).Highlights so far:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:The galaxy is almost invisible, but its gravity gives it away:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:Plus 3 new goon squads targeted critical infrastructure last year:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:Modifying firmware or using open-source software would probably become illegal:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:Billions of files were left exposed:

HeadlineEditor writes:Forget about Discord - this proposed legislation in Colorado requires each OS user to have an age associated with it. I wonder if they're worried about children pretending to be adults, or adults pretending to be children.-Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date or age of the user of that device to provide a signal regarding the user's age bracket (age signal) to applications available in a covered application store;

AnonTechie writes:

hubie writes:Study by the University of Bonn shows that positive effects are still evident even six weeks later:

An Anonymous Coward writes:

hubie writes:Astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets around single stars, but few around binary stars - even though both types of stars are equally common. Physicists can now explain the dearth:

hubie writes:Red Hat's toolkit offers governments and enterprises a way to measure the control they actually have over their data, infrastructure, and operations in this era of geopolitical cloud anxiety:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.slashgear.com/2102659/mandatory-digital-vehicle-lien-title-illinois/

upstart writes:Concrete "battery" developed at MIT now packs 10 times the power:

canopic jug writes:Privacy is prerequisite for free thought, dissent, experimentation, and innovation, which are in turn prerequisites for democracy.At NBTV, Naomi Brockwell has posted four reasons why limits on privacy are absolutely not a price worth paying for mainstream adoption.

hubie writes:Penn Medicine researchers find that earplugs work better in protecting sleep from traffic noise, challenging the widespread use of ambient sound machines and apps marketed as sleep aids:

canopic jug writes:A while back, Freenet Africa had a nice background piece about software luminary and founder of the software freedom movement, Richard Stallman (aka RMS). The article covers his background starting with the GNU project and following through to the current, ongoing fight for digital freedom.

NASA releases "Starliner Propulsion System Anomalies during the Crewed Flight Test"VLM writes:https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-releases-report-on-starliner-crewed-flight-test-investigation/To quote Cheryl Warner, NASA News Chief, "At a news conference on Thursday, NASA released a report of findings from the Program Investigation Team examining the Boeing CST-100 Starliner Crewed Flight Test as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program."The direct link to the redacted report is:https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/nasa-report-with-redactions-021926.pdf?emrc=76e561Redacted? "For the full report, which includes redactions in coordination with our commercial partner to protect proprietary and privacy-sensitive material is available online."Its 311 pages and they're not providing a summary so it is likely to be extremely juicy and spicy, as NASA historically doesn't water down press releases for many other reasons. So I know what I'll be reading with breakfast tea later this morning.So the facts are above. My separate opinions below.I'd give it a different take than the report as I've read it so far; they designed a semi-disposable cost-reduced capsule but space projects ALWAYS take longer so if backflowing oxidizer will inevitably very slowly eat the o-rings in the helium manifold, well, its going to sit around a long time before launching so its going to eat thru, thats the nature of space program delays. Or propellant residue plus CO2 will rot out thruster nozzles given enough time, and space programs being space programs they will indeed be given time to sit around and slowly rot. They still are not sure about the RCS thrusters jamming but it seems likely to be a lack of ground testing during R+D; teflon is like a viscous liquid over a long time while under stress, key being over a long time.The "Hardware Longevity and Sparing Concerns" section hints to me that the program is about to be cancelled if it doesn't cancel itself first. Reads like they're not permitted under the terms of the investigation to recommend program shutdown but they wanted to recommend it anyway.The report follows that with numerous identified management failures at NASA and Boeing. This is the new Boeing, which is no longer competent, so "NASA's hands-off contract approach limited insight" precisely when Boeing needed adult supervision as they've downsized, outsourced, refused to recruit, or otherwise eliminated their competent adults for various reasons over the years. But who knows, what do y'all think?Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

An Anonymous Coward writes:It opens inside Bing in your default browser:

owl writes:https://buttondown.com/creativegood/archive/its-time-to-get-rid-of-networked-cameras/

upstart writes:Researchers have described a novel mechanochemical process that can store gases safely in powders, using very little energy, in a repeatable process:

upstart writes:Cosmic mystery of the impossibly high-energy neutrino solved by "dark charge" model of black holes :

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://gizmodo.com/theres-a-new-term-for-workers-freaking-out-over-being-replaced-by-ai-2000723019

An Anonymous Coward writes:

canopic jug writes:Software engineer Kevin McDonald has investigated the topology of the Internet itself before. He enjoys the open data archaeology of this nature. In this recent edition, he has used BGP routing to visualize the Internet again.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/palo_alto_q2_26/

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://gizmodo.com/bacteria-frozen-inside-5000-year-old-ice-cave-is-crazy-resistant-to-antibiotics-2000723002

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/openclaw-security-fears-lead-meta-other-ai-firms-to-restrict-its-use/

fliptop writes:Texas is suing TP-Link Systems, a California-based maker of wi-fi routers, accusing it of concealing its ties to China and potentially exposing American users' home networks to hackers:

fliptop writes:Canadian uranium developer NexGen Energy has held preliminary talks with data centre providers about securing finance for a new mine that could supply fuel for power plants needed for artificial intelligence, its CEO said on Wednesday:

AnonTechie writes:[Source]: ETH Zurich (Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich)

hubie writes:Sony has made streaming anime pricier since buying Crunchyroll:

hubie writes:"This is definitely not about dogs," senator says, urging a pause on Ring face scans:

fliptop writes:The quality of the education that our children are receiving in America's public schools just continues to go down. At one time, the concern was that not enough students were taking advanced courses. But now we have reached a point where a very large portion of our high school graduates cannot read effectively, cannot write effectively and cannot do basic math effectively:

hubie writes:Brace Yourself For Price Surges Ahead!

edinlinux writes:Humanoid robotics has advanced incredibly in the past year.This is a robot show by Unitree, a leading Chinese maker that appeared this week during Chinese New Year celebrations on their national CCTV network.The robots breakdance, do acrobatics, fight with numbchuks [sic]... incredible. The video speaks for itself!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUmlv814aJo [4:50 -Ed]Reuters reported on the Gala a couple of days ago, saying:

hubie writes:Penn biologists and collaborators show that collective intelligence doesn't emerge by rewarding the most accurate individuals but by rewarding those who improve the group's prediction as a whole:

jelizondo writes:ScienceTech Daily published a very interesting story about bonobos being able to track imaginary objects:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/dna-inspired-molecule-breaks-records-for-storing-solar-heat/

upstart writes:New ClickFix attack abuses nslookup to retrieve PowerShell payload via DNS:

owl writes:https://www.righto.com/2026/02/8087-instruction-decoding.html

hubie writes:Security devs forced to hide Boolean logic from overeager optimizer:

hubie writes:Scientists discover the brain circuit that keeps mice awake in unfamiliar environments, shedding light on why we often sleep badly on the first night in a new place:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:Suleyman says lawyers, accountants, and marketers could be at risk:

upstart writes:Senator: ICE and CBP "have built an arsenal of surveillance technologies":

upstart writes:AI vision systems can be very literal readers:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:Why are criminals stealing used cooking oil from Scotland's chip shops?

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:John Carmack proposes fiber-optic loops as high-speed AI cache

upstart writes:Europe's $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:The company recently announced a major restructure resulting in job losses, as well as a return-to-office mandate:

upstart writes:Anthropic Launches New Model That Spots Zero Days, Makes Wall Street Traders Lose Their Minds: