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European security officials believe two Russian space vehicles have 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 t…

A sprawling informal economy of rogue streaming devices has 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 …

Investors were assessing on Wednesday whether 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 tailwin…

Anthropic said today that its AI assistant Claude will 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 bring ads to some of its ChatGPT offerings. Anthropic said its internal analysis of Claude…

Pinterest has sacked two engineers for tracking which workers lost their jobs in a recent round of layoffs. BBC: The company 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 wro…

Google's much-anticipated plan to merge Android and ChromeOS into a single operating system called Aluminium is 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…

Adobe is no longer planning to discontinue Adobe Animate on March 1st. From a report: In an FAQ, the company now says that Animate will now be in maintenance mode and that it has "no plans toâdiscontinue or remove access" to the app. Animate will still receive "ongoing security and bug fixes" and will still be available for "both new and existing users," but it won't get new features. Many creators expressed frustration after Adobe's original discontinuation announcement from earlier this week,…

An anonymous reader shares a report: Speaking during an earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Lisa Su stated that its development of Microsoft's next-gen Xbox SoC is "progressing well to support a launch in 2027." While the comment doesn't outright confirm the next Xbox will release next year, it indicates that the Microsoft could be ready to launch soon. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli writes: Google has quietly retired the ZetaSQL name and rebranded its open source SQL analysis and parsing project as GoogleSQL. This is not a technical change but a naming cleanup meant to align the open source code with the SQL dialect already used across Google products like BigQuery and Spanner. Internally, Google has long called the dialect GoogleSQL, even while the open source project lived under a different name. By unifying everything under GoogleSQL, Google says it wants t…

OpenAI's rivals are cutting into ChatGPT's lead. From a report: The top chatbot's market share fell from 69.1% to 45.3% between January 2025 and January 2026 among daily U.S. users of its mobile app. Gemini, in the same time period, rose from 14.7% to 25.1% and Grok rose from 1.6% to 15.2%. The data, obtained by Big Technology from mobile insights firm Apptopia, indicates the chatbot race has tightened meaningfully over the past year with Google's surge showing up in the numbers. Overall, the c…

Walmart's market cap surpassed $1 trillion on Tuesday, putting the largest U.S. retail chain in an exclusive club dominated by tech groups. Bloomberg adds: The Bentonville, Arkansas-based chain -- a longtime favorite of bargain-hunting consumers -- has flexed its massive scale and supplier network to keep prices low and grab market share across the income spectrum. While Walmart has maintained its appeal to households looking for value, its online offerings are drawing new, wealthier shoppers s…

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google Home users, your long nightmare is over. The platform has finally added support for buttons. The release notes for a February 2 update state that several new starter conditions for automations are now available, including "Switch or button pressed." Smart buttons are physical, programmable switches that you can press to trigger automations or control devices in your smart home, such as turning lights on or off, opening and closing shades, running a Go…

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have more in common with cigarettes than with fruit or vegetables, and require far tighter regulation, according to a new report. The Guardian: UPFs and cigarettes are engineered to encourage addiction and consumption, researchers from three US universities said, pointing to the parallels in widespread health harms that link both. UPFs, which are widely available worldwide, are food products that have been industrially manufactured, often using emulsifiers or artifi…

ClickOnThis writes: NASA has delayed the Artemis II launch to March of this year, after a wet dress-rehearsal uncovered a hydrogen leak. From the NASA article: During tanking, engineers spent several hours troubleshooting a liquid hydrogen leak in an interface used to route the cryogenic propellant into the rocket's core stage, putting them behind in the countdown. Attempts to resolve the issue involved stopping the flow of liquid hydrogen into the core stage, allowing the interface to warm up …