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      Victory for Elon Musk: US labor board abandons authority over SpaceX

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 11 February 2026

    The National Labor Relations Board abandoned a Biden-era complaint against SpaceX after a finding that the agency does not have jurisdiction over Elon Musk's space company. The US labor board said SpaceX should instead be regulated under the Railway Labor Act, which governs labor relations at railroad and airline companies.

    The Railway Labor Act is enforced by a separate agency, the National Mediation Board, and has different rules than the National Labor Relations Act enforced by the NLRB. For example , the Railway Labor Act has an extensive dispute-resolution process that makes it difficult for railroad and airline employees to strike. Employers regulated under the Railway Labor Act are exempt from the National Labor Relations Act.

    In January 2024, an NLRB regional director alleged in a complaint that SpaceX illegally fired eight employees who, in an open letter , criticized CEO Musk as a “frequent source of embarrassment." The complaint sought reinstatement of the employees, back pay, and letters of apology to the fired employees.

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      Apple releases iOS 26.3 with updates that mainly benefit non-Apple devices

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 11 February 2026 • 1 minute

    Apple has just released the latest major updates for iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26 Tahoe, and all the other operating systems it released back in September of 2025. The 26.3 updates for these operating systems are fairly mild, focusing mostly on bug fixes and security patches, but Apple is adding a handful of iPhone features designed to make it easier to use third-party devices in Apple's ecosystem.

    The first is a "transfer to Android" feature that will facilitate switching away from Apple's phones into the Android ecosystem. Apple offers to transfer "photos, messages, notes, apps, and more," as well as the user's phone number, but won't transfer things like Bluetooth pairing information or sensitive data from the Health app.

    Whether third-party apps can have their data transferred is likely tied to the AppMigrationKit developer framework that Apple added in iOS 26.1. Apps using this framework can import and export data to and from other devices and also access and download content the app has stored in the cloud. Apple notes that AppMigrationKit only functions for transfers from an Apple device to a non-Apple device; Apple already has several systems in place for preserving and transferring data and settings when upgrading from one iPhone to another.

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      China showcases new Moon ship and reusable rocket in one extraordinary test

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 11 February 2026

    China's space program, striving to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030, carried out a test flight of a new reusable booster and crew capsule late Tuesday (US time), and the results were spectacular.

    The demonstration "marks a significant breakthrough in the development of [China's] manned lunar exploration program," the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement. China and the United States are racing to accomplish the next human landing on the Moon in a competition for national prestige and lunar resources. The Long March 10 rocket and Mengzhou spacecraft, both tested Tuesday, are core elements of China's lunar architecture.

    The launch of a subscale version of the Long March 10 rocket, still in development, provided engineers with an opportunity to verify the performance of an important part of the new Mengzhou capsule's safety system. The test began with liftoff of the Long March 10 booster from a new launch pad at Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island, China's southernmost province, at 10 pm EST Tuesday (03:00 UTC or 11 am Beijing time Wednesday).

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      Smart home PSA: Apple's "new architecture" for Home app becomes mandatory today

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 11 February 2026 • 1 minute

    In 2022, Apple announced it was adopting a "new Home architecture" for its smart home ecosystem to improve its performance and reliability and make it possible to support different kinds of accessories. Although it was mostly an invisible update when it worked properly, some users who attempted to switch to the new architecture when it first rolled out in iOS 16.2 ran into slow or unresponsive devices and other problems, prompting Apple to pause the rollout and re-release it as part of iOS 16.4 .

    If you put off transitioning to the new architecture because of those early teething problems or for some other reason, Apple is forcing the issue starting today: You'll need to update to the new Home architecture if you want to continue using the Home app, and older iOS and macOS versions that don't support the new architecture will no longer be able to control your smart home devices. The old version of the Home app and the old Home/HomeKit architecture are no longer supported.

    If you're like me, you hit an "upgrade" button in your Home app years ago and then mostly forgot about it—if you open the Home app on a modern iPhone, iPad, or Mac and don't see an update prompt, it means you're already using the updated architecture and don't need to worry about it.

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      What's next after the Trump administration revokes key finding on climate change?

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 11 February 2026

    Following three of the warmest years on record , as scientists reckon with climate tipping points and states and cities grapple with the escalating cost of extreme weather and more intense wildfires , the Trump administration this week is expected to formally eliminate the U.S. government’s role in controlling greenhouse gas pollution.

    By revoking its 17-year-old scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, the Environmental Protection Agency will demolish the legal underpinning of its authority to act on climate change under the Clean Air Act.

    EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will be alongside President Donald Trump for an event Wednesday focused on boosting U.S. use of coal, as mercury and air toxics standards are repealed. That is expected to be a prelude to Zeldin finalizing the endangerment finding repeal, an assignment the president handed him in an executive order signed on the first day of his second term in office.

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      Feds end "10-day" closure of El Paso airspace after less than 10 hours

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 11 February 2026

    The Federal Aviation Administration halted flights into and out of El Paso International Airport on Tuesday night at 11:30 pm local time (1:30 am EST Wednesday) and said the restrictions would remain in place for 10 days.

    In its notice , the FAA also restricted air space extended in a radius of 10 nautical miles from the airport.

    However, less than 10 hours later and without any additional explanation, the FAA ended the restrictions. "The temporary closure of airspace over El Paso has been lifted," the federal agency said on social media . "There is no threat to commercial aviation. All flights will resume as normal."

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      America, it's time to think beyond leather for luxury car seats

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 11 February 2026

    A long time ago, in (I believe) an issue of Car Magazine from the mid-1990s, the designer Gordon Murray shared his thoughts about a possible four-door follow-up to the McLaren F1 .

    Road cars weren't really his thing. Until then, his career had been focused on Formula 1 car design, and he brought that sport's obsession with weight savings with him. Were he to design a sedan, he'd trim the interior with textile, not leather. After all, wool made fine suits and coats, Murray reasoned, and it would save weight.

    A four-door McLaren never happened during his tenure, nor has one appeared since. Murray now runs his own boutique hypercar company, which also builds no sedans. But the idea that high-end cars could use something other than leather has stuck with me, especially after driving BMW's i7, which  debuted in 2022 with a premium cashmere wool interior . More recently, new EVs have experimented with interesting textile alternatives to leather. Two good examples are the BMW iX3 and the Audi A6 , though neither can be ordered with these textile options in the US.

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      FDA refuses to review Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 11 February 2026

    The Food and Drug Administration has refused to review Moderna's application for an mRNA flu vaccine, the company revealed Tuesday.

    While the move came as a surprise to the high-profile vaccine maker, it is just the latest hostility toward vaccines—and mRNA vaccines in particular—from an agency overseen by the fervent anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In his first year in office, Kennedy has already dramatically slashed childhood vaccine recommendations and canceled $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccines against potential pandemic threats.

    In a news release late Tuesday , Moderna said it was blindsided by the FDA's refusal, which the FDA cited as being due to the design of the company's Phase 3 trial for its mRNA flu vaccine, dubbed mRNA-1010. Specifically, the FDA's rejection was over the comparator vaccine Moderna used.

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      SpaceX's next-gen Super Heavy booster aces four days of "cryoproof" testing

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 10 February 2026

    The upgraded Super Heavy booster slated to launch SpaceX's next Starship flight has completed cryogenic proof testing, clearing a hurdle that resulted in the destruction of the company's previous booster.

    SpaceX announced the milestone in a social media post Tuesday: "Cryoproof operations complete for the first time with a Super Heavy V3 booster. This multi-day campaign tested the booster's redesigned propellant systems and its structural strength."

    Ground teams at Starbase, Texas, rolled the 237-foot-tall (72.3-meter) stainless-steel booster out of its factory and transported it a few miles away to Massey's Test Site last week. The test crew first performed a pressure test on the rocket at ambient temperatures, then loaded super-cold liquid nitrogen into the rocket four times over six days, putting the booster through repeated thermal and pressurization cycles. The nitrogen is a stand-in for the cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen that will fill the booster's propellant tanks on launch day.

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