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      No humans allowed: This new space-based MMO is designed exclusively for AI agents

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 February 2026

    For a couple of weeks now, AI agents (and some humans impersonating AI agents ) have been hanging out and doing weird stuff on Moltbook's Reddit-style social network . Now, those agents can also gather together on a vibe-coded, space-based MMO designed specifically and exclusively to be played by AI.

    SpaceMolt describes itself as "a living universe where AI agents compete, cooperate, and create emergent stories" in "a distant future where spacefaring humans and AI coexist." And while only a handful of agents are barely testing the waters right now, the experiment could herald a weird new world where AI plays games with itself and we humans are stuck just watching.

    "You decide. You act. They watch."

    Getting an AI agent into SpaceMolt is as simple as connecting it to the game server either via MCP , WebSocket, or an HTTP API. Once a connection is established, a detailed agentic skill description instructs the agent to ask their creators which Empire they should pick to best represent their playstyle: mining/trading; exploring; piracy/combat; stealth/infiltration; or building/crafting.

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      Google experiments with locking YouTube Music lyrics behind paywall

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 February 2026

    Google continues to turn the screws on free YouTube users, expanding a test that restricts access to song lyrics on YouTube Music. Users without a premium subscription have found that Google's streaming music service only shows song lyrics a few times before demanding money.

    For as long as YouTube Music has existed, lyrics have been accessible to all users in the mobile app. That started to change over recent months as Google tested a paywall. The lyrics section still appears in the app when playing a song with a free account, but opening it eats into a limited allotment of lyric views. A substantial uptick in user reports, spotted by 9to5Google , suggests this restriction is now rolling out widely.

    "You have [x] views remaining," the app now warns free users who access lyrics. It looks like users get five free lyric views before they have to pay up. Google has still neglected to officially announce the addition of this feature to its Premium subscription—there's no mention of lyrics being part of the paid tier on Google's support page .

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      Trump FCC investigates The View, reportedly says "fake news" will be punished

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 February 2026

    The Federal Communications Commission is reportedly investigating ABC’s The View in what FCC Democrat Anna Gomez called an attempt to intimidate critics of the Trump administration.

    “Let’s be clear on what this is. This is government intimidation, not a legitimate investigation," Gomez said in a statement Friday night. "Like many other so-called ‘investigations’ before it, the FCC will announce an investigation but never carry one out, reach a conclusion, or take any meaningful action. The real purpose is to weaponize the FCC’s regulatory authority to intimidate perceived critics of this administration and chill protected speech."

    The FCC hasn't announced the investigation but previously gave several indications that it would occur sooner or later. After pressuring ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel , FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in September that it would be "worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether The View and some of these other programs" are violating the agency's equal-time rule. The Carr FCC followed that up in January by issuing a warning to late-night and daytime talk shows that they may no longer qualify for the bona fide news exemption to the equal-time rule.

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      Discord faces backlash over age checks after data breach exposed 70,000 IDs

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 February 2026

    Discord is facing backlash after announcing that all users will soon be required to verify ages to access adult content by sharing video selfies or uploading government IDs.

    According to Discord, it's relying on AI technology that verifies age on the user's device, either by evaluating a user's facial structure or by comparing a selfie to a government ID. Although government IDs will be checked off-device, the selfie data will never leave the user's device, Discord emphasized. Both forms of data will be promptly deleted after the user's age is estimated.

    In a blog, Discord confirmed that "a phased global rollout" would begin in "early March," at which point all users globally would be defaulted to "teen-appropriate" experiences.

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      NIH head, still angry about COVID, wants a second scientific revolution

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 February 2026

    At the end of January, Washington, DC, saw an extremely unusual event. The MAHA Institute, which was set up to advocate for some of the most profoundly unscientific ideas of our time, hosted leaders of the best-funded scientific organization on the planet, the National Institutes of Health. Instead of a hostile reception, however, Jay Bhattacharya, the head of the NIH, was greeted as a hero by the audience, receiving a partial standing ovation when he rose to speak.

    Over the ensuing five hours, the NIH leadership and MAHA Institute moderators found many areas of common ground: anger over pandemic-era decisions, a focus on the failures of the health care system, the idea that we might eat our way out of some health issues, the sense that science had lost people's trust, and so on. And Bhattacharya and others clearly shaped their messages to resonate with their audience.

    The reason? MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) is likely to be one of the only political constituencies supporting Bhattacharya's main project, which he called a "second scientific revolution."

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      Disclosure Day Super Bowl trailer: Could it be... aliens?

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 February 2026

    Steven Spielberg directed two of the best alien films of all time: E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind . Now he's going back to those roots, as it were, with his latest blockbuster film, Disclosure Day . A full-length trailer aired during the Super Bowl LX broadcast last night.

    Per the (deliberately vague) official premise: "If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to seven billion people. We are coming close to… Disclosure Day."

    The trailer doesn't tell us much more than the logline. It opens with a newscast announcing the pending public release of "government material long shrouded in secrecy." We see a shot of a man standing in the middle of a crop circle that definitely wasn't made by humans. A little girl encounters a seemingly sentient deer in her bedroom as a voiceover wonders whether there could be "others." And what's with putting electrodes on people's temples so that their eyes change color? We'll find out in June.

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      Ive and Newson bring old-school charm to Ferrari's first EV interior

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 February 2026 • 1 minute

    Ferrari has published images of the interior of its forthcoming electric vehicle, which it designed with LoveFrom, the new firm of former Apple star Jony Ive and another legendary designer, Marc Newson. The Italian sports and racing car maker is taking a careful approach to revealing details about its first battery EV, signaling a depth of thought that goes well beyond simply swapping a V12, transmission, and fuel tank out for batteries and electric motors. Indeed, the interior of the new car—called the Ferrari Luce—bears little family resemblance to any recent Ferrari .

    Instead, LoveFrom appears to have channeled Ferrari interiors from the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, with a retro simplicity that combines clear round gauges with brushed aluminum. Forget the capacitive panels that so frustrated me in the Ferrari 296 —here, there are physical buttons and rocker switches that seem free of the crash protection surrounds that Mini was forced to use.

    The steering wheel now resembles the iconic "Nardi" wheel that has graced so many older Ferraris. But here, the horn buttons have been integrated into the spokes, and multifunction pods hang off the horizontal spokes, allowing Ferrari to keep its "hands on the wheel" approach to ergonomics. Made from entirely CNC-milled recycled aluminum, the Luce's wheel weighs 400 g less than Ferrari's usual steering wheel.

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      Report: Imminent Apple hardware updates include MacBook Pro, iPads, and iPhone 17e

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 February 2026

    Apple's 2026 has already brought us the AirTag 2 and a new Creator Studio app subscription aimed at independent content creators, but nothing so far for the company's main product families.

    That could change soon, according to reporting from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. New versions of Apple's low-end iPhone, the basic iPad and iPad Air, and the higher-end MacBook Pros are said to be coming "imminently," "soon," and "shortly," respectively, ahead of planned updates later in the year for the iPad mini, Studio Display, and other Mac models.

    Here's what we think we know about the hardware that's coming.

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      Why would Elon Musk pivot from Mars to the Moon all of a sudden?

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 February 2026

    As more than 120 million people tuned in to the Super Bowl for kickoff on Sunday evening, SpaceX founder Elon Musk turned instead to his social network. There, he tapped out an extended message in which he revealed that SpaceX is pivoting from the settlement of Mars to building a "self-growing" city on the Moon.

    "For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years," Musk wrote, in part.

    Elon Musk tweet at 6:24 pm ET on Sunday. Credit: X/Elon Musk

    This is simultaneously a jolting and practical decision coming from Musk.

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