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 wrote.

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Elon Musk told podcast host Dwarkesh Patel and Stripe co-founder John Collison that space will become the most economically compelling location for AI data centers in less than 36 months, a prediction rooted not in some exotic technical breakthrough but in the basic math of electricity supply: chip output is growing exponentially, and electrical output outside China is essentially flat.

Solar panels in orbit generate roughly five times the power they do on the ground because there is no day-night cycle, no cloud cover, no atmospheric loss, and no atmosphere-related energy reduction. The system economics are even more favorable because space-based operations eliminate the need for batteries entirely, making the effective cost roughly 10 times cheaper than terrestrial solar, Musk said. The terrestrial bottleneck is already real.

Musk said powering 330,000 Nvidia GB300 chips -- once you account for networking hardware, storage, peak cooling on the hottest day of the year, and reserve margin for generator servicing -- requires roughly a gigawatt at the generation level. Gas turbines are sold out through 2030, and the limiting factor is the casting of turbine vanes and blades, a process handled by just three companies worldwide.

Five years from now, Musk predicted, SpaceX will launch and operate more AI compute annually than the cumulative total on Earth, expecting at least a few hundred gigawatts per year in space. Patel estimated that 100 gigawatts alone would require on the order of 10,000 Starship launches per year, a figure Musk affirmed. SpaceX is gearing up for 10,000 launches a year, Musk said, and possibly 20,000 to 30,000.

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World’s most prominent cryptocurrency peaked at $126,000 in October 2025, only to see its value slump steeply

Bitcoin’s price sank to $63,000 on Thursday, its lowest level in more than a year, and half its all-time peak of $126,000, reached in October 2025. A months-long dip in cryptocurrency prices has tanked shares of companies that have increasingly invested in bitcoin, exacerbating broader stock market jitters.

Bitcoin rode a high during Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency in 2024 and throughout 2025; its price steadily increased as the president made one industry-friendly move after another. Crypto’s largest currency hit $100,000 for the first time in December 2024 and even rose to a record high of $126,210.50 on 6 October, according to Coinbase. But bitcoin’s valuation has dipped over the last few months, falling especially hard in January and the start of February.

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Featuring an unlikely animal friendship, the commercial boasts enough patriotic iconography to verge on self-parody

Three years after its sister brand, Bud Light, faced a rightwing boycott over a transgender spokesperson, Budweiser’s new Super Bowl ad, American Icons, contains absolutely nothing that could be mistaken for social progress. Instead, it features an unlikely friendship between two animals whose blood runs red, white and blue: a bald eagle and a Clydesdale horse, the Budweiser icon. An adorable foal trots out of a barn, and the viewer is injected with a single minute of American iconography so pure that it would make Lee Greenwood nauseous.

The horse meets a struggling baby bird who gets caught in the rain, prompting the horse to stand over the bird as a roof. The pair become pals and grow up together, the bird riding on the horse’s back as it grows larger. It falls off a few times, but, like George Washington at Valley Forge, it never gives up. Finally, the horse jumps over a log while the bird spreads its wings above, and we get a slow-motion image of something like Pegasus. We realize the bird, now fully grown, is a majestic bald eagle, taking to the sky as Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird reaches its climax. Two farmers look on while drinking Budweiser, as the words “Made of America” appear on the screen. “You crying?” one asks. “The sun’s in my eyes,” says the other.

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• France 36-14 Ireland

• Bielle-Biarrey scores twice in dazzling display

The Six Nations is under way and already a couple of things are ­crystal clear. It is going to take a seriously good team to beat France in Paris in this year’s championship and watching them attack is already a genuine treat. Ireland were not so much beaten as outplayed by ­opponents who will be even more dangerous with a dry ball at their disposal.

Never mind the argument about brief in-game adverts during ITV’s coverage. Irish fans would ­probably have preferred a total 80-minute blackout or, failing that, an entire evening of cookery programming. Instead those back at home had to watch the visitors being ­repeatedly sliced and diced by ­apparently ravenous hosts. Talk about eating your greens.

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Shabana Mahmood insists deportations will rise, as Labour government is accused of promoting ‘harmful stereotypes’ of migrants

Nearly 60,000 unauthorised migrants and convicted criminals have been removed or deported from the UK since Labour took office, the Home Office has said.

The announcement came amid claims that the government was promoting “harmful stereotypes” by equating migration with criminality.

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Mark Francis Ford has been held without bail for five months after authorities arrested him in Indiana

A man accused of molesting a disabled boy whom he met while working as a Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans has been indicted on child rape charges, according to authorities.

Grand jurors seated in New Orleans’ state criminal courthouse on Thursday handed up a nine-count indictment against Mark Francis Ford, nearly five months after authorities arrested him and jailed him without bail. The document charges Ford, 64, with aggravated rape of a child; raping a person suffering from a physical disability preventing resistance; two counts of molesting a juvenile; another three of indecent behavior with a minor; and kidnapping.

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• Al-Nassr forward reportedly unhappy with transfer policy

• ‘No one determines decisions beyond their own club’

Cristiano Ronaldo has been told by the Saudi Pro League that “no individual – however significant – determines decisions beyond their own club” amid a dispute over transfer spending.

The Portuguese superstar, who turned 41 on Thursday, is believed to be unhappy with Al-Nassr’s lack of activity in the January transfer window.

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Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） has added a photo to the pool:

banzainetsurfer has added a photo to the pool:

Aoba Ward, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide August 1967

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Economist Thomas Piketty, writing for Le Monde (archive) on the success of Europe’s social democratic model and countering “the narrative of a ‘declining’ continent”:

If someone had told the European elites and liberal economists of 1914 that wealth redistribution would one day account for half of national income, they would have unanimously condemned the idea as collectivist madness and predicted the continent’s ruin. In reality, European countries have achieved unprecedented levels of prosperity and social well-being, largely due to collective investments in health, education and public infrastructure.

To win the cultural and intellectual battle, Europe must now assert its values and defend its model of development, fundamentally opposed to the nationalist-extractivist model championed by Donald Trump’s supporters in the United States and by Vladimir Putin’s allies in Russia. A crucial issue in this fight is the choice of indicators used to measure human progress.

For these indicators, Piketty mentions some of the same factors that economist Gabriel Zucman detailed in his Le Monde piece I posted in December:

More leisure time, better health outcomes, greater equality and lower carbon emissions, all with broadly comparable productivity: Europeans can be proud of their model, argues Gabriel Zucman, director of the EU Tax Observatory.

Tags: economics · Europe · Gabriel Zucman · politics · Thomas Piketty

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OSLO (ANP/AFP) - De Noorse justitie is een onderzoek begonnen naar vermeende corruptie door een voormalige premier, ex-voorzitter van een Nobelcomité en voormalige chef van de Raad van Europa, Thorbjørn Jagland. Aanleiding tot het onderzoek zijn recent opgedoken contacten van Jagland met de inmiddels overleden Amerikaanse zedendelinquent en investeerder Jeffrey Epstein.

Het Openbaar Ministerie spreekt van gekwalificeerde corruptie, wat duidt op ernstige verdenkingen over corruptie met betrekking tot hooggeplaatste functionarissen, grote hoeveelheden geld of gerelateerd aan georganiseerde misdaad.

De sociaaldemocraat was maar kort premier in 1996 en 1997. Maar hij was later tien jaar lang secretaris-generaal van de Raad van Europa en jarenlang voorzitter van het Nobelcomité dat de Nobelprijs voor de Vrede toekent. De in de VS vrijgegeven documenten over het zedenschandaal Epstein brengen veel topfiguren in verlegenheid. Epstein omringde zich met invloedrijken en beroemdheden.

SEATTLE (ANP) - Amazon heeft in het vierde kwartaal opnieuw een hogere omzet en winst behaald. Het techconcern bleef profiteren van groei bij de divisie die clouddiensten aanbiedt. Ook groeiden de inkomsten uit advertenties.

De omzet steeg in het voorgaande kwartaal met 14 procent naar 213,4 miljard dollar. Onder de streep bleef er 21,2 miljard dollar over, tegen 20 miljard dollar in dezelfde periode een jaar eerder.

Bij de cloudtak Amazon Web Services (AWS) stegen de opbrengsten met 24 procent tot 35,6 miljard dollar. Dat is de sterkste groei in dertien kwartalen, stelt topman Andy Jassy in een toelichting. Amazon is met zijn clouddiensten 's werelds grootste aanbieder van rekenkracht in datacenters. Het bedrijf profiteert onder meer van de vraag naar diensten op het gebied van kunstmatige intelligentie (AI).

MADRID (ANP/AFP) - Koning Felipe van Spanje heeft zijn medeleven betuigd aan de slachtoffers van de overstromingen in met name de regio Andalusië. In een speech tijdens een werkbezoek in Madrid zei de vorst dat hij en koningin Letizia bezorgd zijn en aan "de duizenden mensen en gezinnen die deze uren en dagen met angst en onzekerheid beleven" denken.

De provincies Cádiz en Málaga zijn het zwaarst getroffen. Op veel plaatsen viel in 24 uur tijd 100 tot 200 millimeter regen. In het plaatsje Grazalema, aan de voet van een berg op ruim 900 meter hoogte, viel zelfs meer dan 500 millimeter regen in een dag. De komende tijd blijft het slecht weer in de regio.

Volgens de krant El Diario zijn zeker 8000 mensen geëvacueerd in Andalusië. De regen en wind veroorzaakten al overstromingen, aardverschuivingen en het instorten van gebouwen. De leider van de Spaanse regio, Juanma Moreno, vertelde verslaggevers dat vijftien gemeenten waren afgesloten doordat meer dan tachtig wegen waren geblokkeerd.