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Lunar Radio Telescope to Unlock Cosmic Mysteries
Isolation dictates where we go to see into the far reaches of the universe. The Atacama Desert of Chile, the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the vast expanse of the Australian Outback—these are where astronomers and engineers have built the great observatories and radio telescopes of modern times. The skies are usually clear, the air is arid, and the electronic din of civilization is far away.
It was to one of these places, in the high desert of New Mexico, that a young astronomer named Jack Burns went to study radio jets and quasars far beyond the Milky Way. It was 1979, he was just out of grad school, and the Very Large Array, a constellation of 28 giant dish antennas on an open plain, was a new mecca of radio astronomy.
But the VLA had its limitations—namely, that Earth’s protective atmosphere and ionosphere blocked many parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and that, even in a remote desert, earthly interference was never completely gone.
Could there be a better, even lonelier place to put a radio telescope? Sure, a NASA planetary scientist named Wendell Mendell, told Burns: How about the moon? He asked if Burns had ever thought about building one there.
“My immediate reaction was no. Maybe even hell, no. Why would I want to do that?” Burns recalls with a self-deprecating smile. His work at the VLA had gone well, he was fascinated by cosmology’s big questions, and he didn’t want to be slowed by the bureaucratic slog of getting funding to launch a new piece of hardware.
But Mendell suggested he do some research and speak at a conference on future lunar observatories, and Burns’s thinking about a space-based radio telescope began to shift. That was in 1984. In the four decades since, he’s published more than 500 peer-reviewed papers on radio astronomy. He’s been an adviser to NASA, the Department of Energy, and the White House, as well as a professor and a university administrator. And while doing all that, Burns has had an ongoing second job of sorts, as a quietly persistent advocate for radio astronomy from space.
And early next year, if all goes well, a radio telescope for which he’s a scientific investigator will be launched—not just into space, not just to the moon, but to the moon’s far side, where it will observe things invisible from Earth.
“You can see we don’t lack for ambition after all these years,” says Burns, now 73 and a professor emeritus of astrophysics at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The instrument is called LuSEE-Night, short for Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment–Night. It will be launched from Florida aboard a SpaceX rocket and carried to the moon’s far side atop a squat four-legged robotic spacecraft called Blue Ghost Mission 2, built and operated by Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas.
In an artist’s rendering, the LuSEE-Night radio telescope sits atop Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 2 lander, which will carry it to the moon’s far side. Firefly Aerospace
Landing will be risky: Blue Ghost 2 will be on its own, in a place that’s out of the sight of ground controllers. But Firefly’s Blue Ghost 1 pulled off the first successful landing by a private company on the moon’s near side in March 2025. And Burns has already put hardware on the lunar surface, albeit with mixed results: An experiment he helped conceive was on board a lander called Odysseus, built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, in 2024. Odysseus was damaged on landing, but Burns’s experiment still returned some useful data.
Burns says he’d be bummed about that 2024 mission if there weren’t so many more coming up. He’s joined in proposing myriad designs for radio telescopes that could go to the moon. And he’s kept going through political disputes, technical delays, even a confrontation with cancer. Finally, finally, the effort is paying off.
“We’re getting our feet into the lunar soil,” says Burns, “and understanding what is possible with these radio telescopes in a place where we’ve never observed before.”
Why Go to the Far Side of the Moon?
A moon-based radio telescope could help unravel some of the greatest mysteries in space science. Dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, and gravitational waves could all come into better focus if observed from the moon. One of Burns’s collaborators on LuSEE-Night, astronomer Gregg Hallinan of Caltech, would like such a telescope to further his research on electromagnetic activity around exoplanets, a possible measure of whether these distant worlds are habitable. Burns himself is especially interested in the cosmic dark ages, an epoch that began more than 13 billion years ago, just 380,000 years after the big bang. The young universe had cooled enough for neutral hydrogen atoms to form, which trapped the light of stars and galaxies. The dark ages lasted between 200 million and 400 million years.
LuSEE-Night will listen for faint signals from the cosmic dark ages, a period that began about 380,000 years after the big bang, when neutral hydrogen atoms had begun to form, trapping the light of stars and galaxies. Chris Philpot
“It’s a critical period in the history of the universe,” says Burns. “But we have no data from it.”
The problem is that residual radio signals from this epoch are very faint and easily drowned out by closer noise—in particular, our earthly communications networks, power grids, radar, and so forth. The sun adds its share, too. What’s more, these early signals have been dramatically redshifted by the expansion of the universe, their wavelengths stretched as their sources have sped away from us over billions of years. The most critical example is neutral hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, which when excited in the laboratory emits a radio signal with a wavelength of 21 centimeters. Indeed, with just some backyard equipment, you can easily detect neutral hydrogen in nearby galactic gas clouds close to that wavelength, which corresponds to a frequency of 1.42 gigahertz. But if the hydrogen signal originates from the dark ages, those 21 centimeters are lengthened to tens of meters. That means scientists need to listen to frequencies well below 50 megahertz—parts of the radio spectrum that are largely blocked by Earth’s ionosphere.
Which is why the lunar far side holds such appeal. It may just be the quietest site in the inner solar system.
“It really is the only place in the solar system that never faces the Earth,” says David DeBoer, a research astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley. “It really is kind of a wonderful, unique place.”
For radio astronomy, things get even better during the lunar night, when the sun drops beneath the horizon and is blocked by the moon’s mass. For up to 14 Earth-days at a time, a spot on the moon’s far side is about as electromagnetically dark as any place in the inner solar system can be. No radiation from the sun, no confounding signals from Earth. There may be signals from a few distant space probes, but otherwise, ideally, your antenna only hears the raw noise of the cosmos.
“When you get down to those very low radio frequencies, there’s a source of noise that appears that’s associated with the solar wind,” says Caltech’s Hallinan. Solar wind is the stream of charged particles that speed relentlessly from the sun. “And the only location where you can escape that within a billion kilometers of the Earth is on the lunar surface, on the nighttime side. The solar wind screams past it, and you get a cavity where you can hide away from that noise.”
How Does LuSEE-Night Work?
LuSEE-Night’s receiver looks simple, though there’s really nothing simple about it. Up top are two dipole antennas, each of which consists of two collapsible rods pointing in opposite directions. The dipole antennas are mounted perpendicular to each other on a small turntable, forming an X when seen from above. Each dipole antenna extends to about 6 meters. The turntable sits atop a box of support equipment that’s a bit less than a cubic meter in volume; the equipment bay, in turn, sits atop the Blue Ghost 2 lander, a boxy spacecraft about 2 meters tall.
LuSEE-Night undergoes final assembly [top and center] at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and testing [bottom] at Firefly Aerospace outside Austin, Texas. From top: Space Sciences Laboratory/University of California, Berkeley (2); Firefly Aerospace
“It’s a beautiful instrument,” says Stuart Bale, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, who is NASA’s principal investigator for the project. “We don’t even know what the radio sky looks like at these frequencies without the sun in the sky. I think that’s what LuSEE-Night will give us.”
The apparatus was designed to serve several incompatible needs: It had to be sensitive enough to detect very weak signals from deep space; rugged enough to withstand the extremes of the lunar environment; and quiet enough to not interfere with its own observations, yet loud enough to talk to Earth via relay satellite as needed. Plus the instrument had to stick to a budget of about US $40 million and not weigh more than 120 kilograms. The mission plan calls for two years of operations.
The antennas are made of a beryllium copper alloy, chosen for its high conductivity and stability as lunar temperatures plummet or soar by as much as 250 °C every time the sun rises or sets. LuSEE-Night will make precise voltage measurements of the signals it receives, using a high-impedance junction field-effect transistor to act as an amplifier for each antenna. The signals are then fed into a spectrometer—the main science instrument—which reads those voltages at 102.4 million samples per second. That high read-rate is meant to prevent the exaggeration of any errors as faint signals are amplified. Scientists believe that a cosmic dark-ages signature would be five to six orders of magnitude weaker than the other signals that LuSEE-Night will record.
The turntable is there to help characterize the signals the antennas receive, so that, among other things, an ancient dark-ages signature can be distinguished from closer, newer signals from, say, galaxies or interstellar gas clouds. Data from the early universe should be virtually isotropic, meaning that it comes from all over the sky, regardless of the antennas’ orientation. Newer signals are more likely to come from a specific direction. Hence the turntable: If you collect data over the course of a lunar night, then reorient the antennas and listen again, you’ll be better able to distinguish the distant from the very, very distant.
What’s the ideal lunar landing spot if you want to take such readings? One as nearly opposite Earth as possible, on a flat plain. Not an easy thing to find on the moon’s hummocky far side, but mission planners pored over maps made by lunar satellites and chose a prime location about 24 degrees south of the lunar equator.
Other lunar telescopes have been proposed for placement in the permanently shadowed craters near the moon’s south pole, just over the horizon when viewed from Earth. Such craters are coveted for the water ice they may hold, and the low temperatures in them (below -240 °C) are great if you’re doing infrared astronomy and need to keep your instruments cold. But the location is terrible if you’re working in long-wavelength radio.
“Even the inside of such craters would be hard to shield from Earth-based radio frequency interference (RFI) signals,” Leon Koopmans of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said in an email. “They refract off the crater rims and often, due to their long wavelength, simply penetrate right through the crater rim.”
RFI is a major—and sometimes maddening—issue for sensitive instruments. The first-ever landing on the lunar far side was by the Chinese Chang’e 4 spacecraft, in 2019. It carried a low-frequency radio spectrometer, among other experiments. But it failed to return meaningful results, Chinese researchers said, mostly because of interference from the spacecraft itself.
The Accidental Birth of Radio Astronomy
Sometimes, though, a little interference makes history. Here, it’s worth a pause to remember Karl Jansky, considered the father of radio astronomy. In 1928, he was a young engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, N.J., assigned to isolate sources of static in shortwave transatlantic telephone calls. Two years later, he built a 30-meter-long directional antenna, mostly out of brass and wood, and after accounting for thunderstorms and the like, there was still noise he couldn’t explain. At first, its strength seemed to follow a daily cycle, rising and sinking with the sun. But after a few months’ observation, the sun and the noise were badly out of sync.
In 1930, Karl Jansky, a Bell Labs engineer in Holmdel, N.J., built this rotating antenna on wheels to identify sources of static for radio communications. NRAO/AUI/NSF
It gradually became clear that the noise’s period wasn’t 24 hours; it was 23 hours and 56 minutes—the time it takes Earth to turn once relative to the stars. The strongest interference seemed to come from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, which optical astronomy suggested was the center of the Milky Way. In 1933, Jansky published a paper in Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers with a provocative title: “Electrical Disturbances Apparently of Extraterrestrial Origin.” He had opened the electromagnetic spectrum up to astronomers, even though he never got to pursue radio astronomy himself. The interference he had defined was, to him, “star noise.”
Thirty-two years later, two other Bell Labs scientists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, ran into some interference of their own. In 1965 they were trying to adapt a horn antenna in Holmdel for radio astronomy—but there was a hiss, in the microwave band, coming from all parts of the sky. They had no idea what it was. They ruled out interference from New York City, not far to the north. They rewired the receiver. They cleaned out bird droppings in the antenna. Nothing worked.
In the 1960s, Arno Penzias and Robert W. Wilson used this horn antenna in Holmdel, N.J., to detect faint signals from the big bang. GL Archive/Alamy
Meanwhile, an hour’s drive away, a team of physicists at Princeton University under Robert Dicke was trying to find proof of the big bang that began the universe 13.8 billion years ago. They theorized that it would have left a hiss, in the microwave band, coming from all parts of the sky. They’d begun to build an antenna. Then Dicke got a phone call from Penzias and Wilson, looking for help. “Well, boys, we’ve been scooped,” he famously said when the call was over. Penzias and Wilson had accidentally found the cosmic microwave background, or CMB, the leftover radiation from the big bang.
Burns and his colleagues are figurative heirs to Jansky, Penzias, and Wilson. Researchers suggest that the giveaway signature of the cosmic dark ages may be a minuscule dip in the CMB. They theorize that dark-ages hydrogen may be detectable only because it has been absorbing a little bit of the microwave energy from the dawn of the universe.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
The plan for Blue Ghost Mission 2 is to touch down soon after the sun has risen at the landing site. That will give mission managers two weeks to check out the spacecraft, take pictures, conduct other experiments that Blue Ghost carries, and charge LuSEE-Night’s battery pack with its photovoltaic panels. Then, as local sunset comes, they’ll turn everything off except for the LuSEE-Night receiver and a bare minimum of support systems.
LuSEE-Night will land at a site [orange dot] that’s about 25 degrees south of the moon’s equator and opposite the center of the moon’s face as seen from Earth. The moon’s far side is ideal for radio astronomy because it’s shielded from the solar wind as well as signals from Earth. Arizona State University/GSFC/NASA
There, in the frozen electromagnetic stillness, it will scan the spectrum between 0.1 and 50 MHz, gathering data for a low-frequency map of the sky—maybe including the first tantalizing signature of the dark ages.
“It’s going to be really tough with that instrument,” says Burns. “But we have some hardware and software techniques that…we’re hoping will allow us to detect what’s called the global or all-sky signal.… We, in principle, have the sensitivity.” They’ll listen and listen again over the course of the mission. That is, if their equipment doesn’t freeze or fry first.
A major task for LuSEE-Night is to protect the electronics that run it. Temperature extremes are the biggest problem. Systems can be hardened against cosmic radiation, and a sturdy spacecraft should be able to handle the stresses of launch, flight, and landing. But how do you build it to last when temperatures range between 120 and −130 °C? With layers of insulation? Electric heaters to reduce nighttime chill?
“All of the above,” says Burns. To reject daytime heat, there will be a multicell parabolic radiator panel on the outside of the equipment bay. To keep warm at night, there will be battery power—a lot of battery power. Of LuSEE-Night’s launch mass of 108 kg, about 38 kg is a lithium-ion battery pack with a capacity of 7,160 watt-hours, mostly to generate heat. The battery cells will recharge photovoltaically after the sun rises. The all-important spectrometer has been programmed to cycle off periodically during the two weeks of darkness, so that the battery’s state of charge doesn’t drop below 8 percent; better to lose some observing time than lose the entire apparatus and not be able to revive it.
Lunar Radio Astronomy for the Long Haul
And if they can’t revive it? Burns has been through that before. In 2024 he watched helplessly as Odysseus, the first U.S.-made lunar lander in 50 years, touched down—and then went silent for 15 agonizing minutes until controllers in Texas realized they were receiving only occasional pings instead of detailed data. Odysseus had landed hard, snapped a leg, and ended up lying almost on its side.
ROLSES-1, shown here inside a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, was the first radio telescope to land on the moon, in February 2024. During a hard landing, one leg broke, making it difficult for the telescope to send readings back to Earth.Intuitive Machines/SpaceX
As part of its scientific cargo, Odysseus carried ROLSES-1 (Radiowave Observations on the Lunar Surface of the photo-Electron Sheath), an experiment Burns and a friend had suggested to NASA years before. It was partly a test of technology, partly to study the complex interactions between sunlight, radiation, and lunar soil—there’s enough electric charge in the soil sometimes that dust particles levitate above the moon’s surface, which could potentially mess with radio observations. But Odysseus was damaged badly enough that instead of a week’s worth of data, ROLSES got 2 hours, most of it recorded before the landing. A grad student working with Burns, Joshua Hibbard, managed to partially salvage the experiment and prove that ROLSES had worked: Hidden in its raw data were signals from Earth and the Milky Way.
“It was a harrowing experience,” Burns said afterward, “and I’ve told my students and friends that I don’t want to be first on a lander again. I want to be second, so that we have a greater chance to be successful.” He says he feels good about LuSEE-Night being on the Blue Ghost 2 mission, especially after the successful Blue Ghost 1 landing. The ROLSES experiment, meanwhile, will get a second chance: ROLSES-2 has been scheduled to fly on Blue Ghost Mission 3, perhaps in 2028.
NASA’s plan for the FarView Observatory lunar radio telescope array, shown in an artist’s rendering, calls for 100,000 dipole antennas to be spread out over 200 square kilometers. Ronald Polidan
If LuSEE-Night succeeds, it will doubtless raise questions that require much more ambitious radio telescopes. Burns, Hallinan, and others have already gotten early NASA funding for a giant interferometric array on the moon called FarView. It would consist of a grid of 100,000 antenna nodes spread over 200 square kilometers, made of aluminum extracted from lunar soil. They say assembly could begin as soon as the 2030s, although political and budget realities may get in the way.
Through it all, Burns has gently pushed and prodded and lobbied, advocating for a lunar observatory through the terms of ten NASA administrators and seven U.S. presidents. He’s probably learned more about Washington politics than he ever wanted. American presidents have a habit of reversing the space priorities of their predecessors, so missions have sometimes proceeded full force, then languished for years. With LuSEE-Night finally headed for launch, Burns at times sounds buoyant: “Just think. We’re actually going to do cosmology from the moon.” At other times, he’s been blunt: “I never thought—none of us thought—that it would take 40 years.”
“Like anything in science, there’s no guarantee,” says Burns. “But we need to look.”
This article appears in the February 2026 print issue as “The Quest To Build a Telescope That Can Hear the Cosmic Dark Ages.”
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If you primarily want a tablet device to mark up, highlight, and annotate your e-books and documents, and perhaps sometimes scribble some notes, Amazon’s new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft could be worth the hefty investment. For everyone else, it’s probably going to be hard to justify the cost of the 11-inch, $630+ e-ink tablet with a writeable color display.
However, if you were already leaning toward the 11-inch $549.99 Kindle Scribe — which also has a paper-like display but no color — you may as well throw in the extra cash at that point and get the Colorsoft version, which starts at $629.99.
At these price points, both the Scribe and Scribe Colorsoft are what we’d dub unnecessary luxuries for most, especially compared with the more affordable traditional Kindle ($110) or Kindle Paperwhite ($160).
Announced in December, the Fig color version just began shipping on January 28, 2026, and is available for $679.99 with 64GB.
Clearly, Amazon hopes to carve out a niche in the tablet market with these upgraded Kindle devices, which compete more with e-ink tablets like reMarkable than with other Kindles. But high-end e-ink readers with pens aren’t going to deliver Amazon a large audience. Meanwhile, nearly everyone can potentially justify the cost of an iPad because of its numerous capabilities, including streaming video, drawing, writing, using productivity tools, and the thousands of supported native apps and games.
The Scribe Colorsoft, meanwhile, is designed to cater to a very specific type of e-book reader or worker. This type of device could be a good fit for students and researchers, as well as anyone else who regularly needs to mark up files or documents.
Someone particularly interested in making to-do lists or keeping a personal journal might also appreciate the device, but it would have to get daily use to justify this price.
The device is easy enough to use, with a Home screen design similar to other Kindles, offering quick access to your notes and library, and even suggestions of books you can write in, like Sudoku or crossword puzzle books or drawing guides. Your Library titles and book recommendations pop in color, which makes it easier to find a book with a quick scan.
Spec-wise, Amazon says this newer 2025 model is 40% faster when turning pages or writing. We did find the tablet responsive here, as page turns felt snappy and writing flowed easily.
Despite its larger size, the device is thin and light, at 5.4 mm (0.21 inches) and 400 g (0.88 pounds), so it won’t weigh down your bag the way an iPad or other tablet would (the iPad mini, with an 8.3-inch screen, weighs slightly less). You could easily stand to carry the Kindle Scribe in your purse or tote, assuming you sport a bag that can fit an 11-inch screen. Compared with the original Colorsoft, we like that the Scribe Colorsoft’s bezel is the same size around the screen.
The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft features a glare-free, oxide-based e-ink display with a textured surface that makes it feel a lot like writing on paper. This helps with the transition to a digital device for those used to writing notes by hand. It also saves on battery life — the device can go up to 8 weeks between charges.
Helpfully, the display automatically adapts its brightness to your current lighting conditions, and you can opt to adjust the screen for more warmth when reading at night. But although it is a touchscreen, it’s less responsive than an LCD or OLED touchscreen, like those on iPad devices. That means when you perform a gesture, like pinching to resize the font, there’s a bit of a lag.
Like any Kindle, you can read e-books or PDFs on the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft tablet. You can also import Word documents and other files from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive directly to your device, or use the Send to Kindle option. (Supported file types include PDF, DOC/DOCX, TXT, RTF, HTM, HTML, PNG, GIF, JPG/JPEG, BMP, and EPUB.) Your Notebooks on the device can be exported to Microsoft OneNote, as well.
The included pen comes with some trade-offs. Unlike the Apple Pencil, the Kindle’s Premium Pen doesn’t require charging, which is a perk. It has also been designed to mimic the feel of writing on paper, and it glides fairly well across the screen. Without a flat side to charge, the rounded pen doesn’t have the same feel and grip as the Apple Pencil. It’s smoother, so it could slip in your hand.
Amazon’s design also requires you to replace the pen tips from time to time, depending on your use, as they can wear down. It’s not terribly expensive to do so — a 10 pack is around $17 — but it’s another thing to keep up with and manage.
There are 10 different pen colors and five highlight colors included, so your notes and annotations can be fairly colorful.
When writing, you can choose between a pen, a fountain pen, a marker, or a pencil with different stroke widths, depending on your preferences. You can set your favorite pen tool as a shortcut, which is enabled with a press and hold on the pen’s side button. (By default, it’s set to highlight.) If you grip your pen tightly and accidentally trigger this button, you’ll be glad to know you can shut this feature off.
The writing experience itself feels natural. And while the e-ink display means the colors are somewhat muted, which not everyone likes, it works well enough for its purpose. An e-ink tablet isn’t really the best for making digital art, despite its pens and new shader tool, but it is good for writing, taking notes, and highlighting.
From the Kindle’s Home screen, you can either jump directly into writing something down through the Quick Notes feature, or you can get more organized by creating a Notebook from the Workspace tab.
The Notebook offers a wide variety of notepad templates, allowing you to choose between blank, narrow, medium, or wide-ruled documents. There are templates for meeting notes, storyboards, habit trackers, monthly planners, music sheets, graph paper, checklists, daily planners, dotted sheets, and much more. (New templates with this device include Meeting Notes, Cornell Notes, Legal Pad, and College Rule options.)
It’s fun that you can erase things just by flipping the pen over to use the soft-tipped eraser, as you would with a No. 2 pencil. Of course, a precision erasing tool is available from the toolbar with different widths, if needed. Thanks to the e-ink screen, you can sometimes still see a faint ghost of your drawing or writing on the screen after erasing, but this fades after a bit (which may drive the more particular types crazy).
There’s a Lasso tool to circle things and move them around, copy or paste, or resize, but this probably won’t be used as much by more casual notetakers.
There are some other handy features for those who do a lot of annotating, too.
For instance, when you’re writing in a Word document or book, a feature called Active Canvas creates space for your notes. As you write directly in the book on top of the text, the sentence will move and wrap around your note. Even if you adjust the font size of what you’re reading, the note stays anchored to the text it originally referenced. I prefer this to writing directly in e-books, as things stay more organized, but others disagree.
In documents where margins expand, you can tap the expandable margin icon at the top of the left or right margin to take your notes in the margin, instead of on the page itself.
A Kindle with AI (of course)
The new Kindle also includes a number of AI tools and features.
The device will neaten up your scribbles and automatically straighten your highlighting and underlining. A couple of times, the highlighting action caused our review unit to freeze, but it recovered after returning to the Home screen with a press of the side button.
Meanwhile, a new AI feature (look for the sparkle icon at the top left of the screen) lets you both summarize text and refine your handwriting. The latter, oddly, doesn’t let you switch to a typed font but will let you pick between a small handful of handwritten fonts (Cadia, Florio, Sunroom, and Notewright) via the Customize button.
The AI tool was not perfect. It could decipher some terrible scrawls, but it did get stumped when there was another scribble on the page alongside the text. Still, it’s a nice option to have if you can’t write well after years of typing, but like the feel of handwriting things and the more analog vibe.
The AI search feature can also look across your notebooks to find notes or make connections between them. To search, you either tap the on-screen keyboard or toggle the option to handwrite your search query, which is converted to text. You can interact with the search results (the AI-powered insights) by way of the Ask Notebooks AI feature, which lets you query against your notes.
Soon, Amazon will add other AI features, too, including an “Ask This Book” feature that lets you highlight a passage and then get spoiler-free answers to a question you have — like a character’s motive, scene significance, or other plot detail. Another feature, “Story So Far,” will help you catch up on the book you’re reading if you’ve taken a break, but again without any spoilers.
The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft comes in Graphite (Black) with either 32GB or 64GB of storage for $629.99 or $679.99, respectively. The Fig version is only available at $679.99 with 64GB of storage. Cases for the Scribe Colorsoft are an additional $139.99.
from the too-stupid-by-half dept
I have to admit: the first one-and-a-half paragraphs of this CNN report had me thinking the Trump administration was shedding another pretense and just embracing its inherent shittiness.
Justice Department officials are expected to meet Monday to discuss how to reenergize probes that are considered a top priority for President Donald Trump — reviewing the actions of officials who investigated him, according to a source familiar with the plan.
Almost immediately after Pam Bondi stepped into her role as attorney general last year, she established a “Weaponization Working Group” …
We all know the DOJ is fully weaponized. It’s little more than a fight promoter for Trump’s grudge matches. The DOJ continues to bleed talent as prosecutors and investigators flee the kudzu-esque corruption springing up everywhere in DC.
But naming something exactly what it is — the weaponization of the DOJ to punish Trump’s enemies — wasn’t something I ever expected to see.
I didn’t see it, which fulfills my expectations, I guess. That’s because it isn’t what it says on the tin, even though it’s exactly the thing it says it isn’t. 1984 is apparently the blueprint. It’s called the “Weaponization Working Group,” but it’s supposedly the opposite: a de-weaponization working group. Here’s the second half of the paragraph we ellipsised out of earlier:
…[t]o review law enforcement actions taken under the Biden administration for any examples of what she described as “politicized justice.”
The Ministry of Weaponization has always de-weaponized ministries. Or whatever. The memo that started this whole thing off — delivered the same day Trump returned to office — said it even more clearly:
ENDING THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Administration officials are idiots, but they’re not so stupid they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t actually want to end the weaponization. They just want to make sure all the weapons are pointing in one direction.
Trading in vindication hasn’t exactly worked well so far. Trump’s handpicked replacements for prosecutors that have either quit or been fired are a considerable downgrade from the previous office-holders. They have had their cases tossed and their careers as federal prosecutors come to an end because (1) Trump doesn’t care what the rules for political appointments are and (2) he’s pretty sure he can find other stooges to shove into the DOJ revolving door.
The lack of forward progress likely has Pam Bondi feeling more heat than she’s used to. So the deliberately misnamed working group is going to actually start grouping and working.
The Weaponization Working Group is now expected to start meeting daily with the goal of producing results in the next two months, according to the person familiar with the plan.
Nothing good will come from this. Given the haphazard nature of the DOJ’s vindictive prosecutions efforts, there’s still a chance nothing completely evil will come from this either. It’s been on the back burner for a year. Pam Bondi can’t keep this going on her own. And it’s hell trying to keep people focused on rubbing Don’s tummy when employee attrition is what the DOJ is best known for these days.
Filed Under: doj, donald trump, pam bondi, trump administration, vindictive prosecution, weaponization
The rule, issued by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, bans code written in China or by Chinese-owned firms from vehicles that connect to the cloud. By 2029, even their connectivity hardware will be covered under the same restrictions.
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Valve revealed its lineup of upcoming hardware in November, including a home PC-gaming console called the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame, a VR headset. At the time of the reveal, the company expected to release its hardware in “early 2026,” but the current state of memory and storage prices appears to have changed those plans.
Valve says its goal to release the Steam Frame and Steam Machine in the first half of 2026 has not changed, but it’s still deliberating on final shipping dates and pricing, according to a post from the company on Wednesday. While the company didn’t provide specifics, it said it was mindful of the current state of the hardware and storage markets. All kinds of computer components have rocketed in price due to massive investments in AI infrastructure.
“When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now. But the memory and storage shortages you’ve likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then,” Valve said. “The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).”
Valve says it will provide more updates in the future about its hardware lineup.
What are the Steam Frame and Steam Machine?
The Steam Frame is a standalone VR headset that’s all about gaming. At the hardware reveal in November, CNET’s Scott Stein described it as a Steam Deck for your face. It runs on SteamOS on an ARM-based chip, so games can be loaded onto the headset and played directly from it, allowing gamers to play games on the go. There’s also the option to wirelessly stream games from a PC.
The Steam Machine is Valve’s home console. It’s a cube-shaped microcomputer intended to be connected to a TV.
When will the Steam Frame and Steam Machine come out?
Valve didn’t provide a specific launch date for either. The initial expectation after the November reveal was that the Steam Frame and Steam Machine would arrive in March. Valve’s statement about releasing its hardware in the first half of 2026 suggests both will come out in June at the latest.
How much will the Steam Frame and Steam Machine cost?
After the reveal, there was much speculation on their possible prices. For the Steam Frame, the expectation was that it would start at $600. The Steam Machine was expected to launch at a price closer to $700. Those estimates could easily increase by $100 or more due to the current state of pricing for memory and storage.
Spotify is rolling out a feature called which lets fans learn a bit more about their favorite tunes. This “brings stories and context” into the listening experience, sort of like that old VH1 show Pop Up Video.
How does it work? The Now Playing View houses short, swipeable story cards that “explore the meaning” behind the music. This information is sourced from third parties and the company promises “interesting details and behind-the-scenes moments.” All you have to do is scroll down until you see the card and then swipe.
This is rolling out right now to Premium users on both iOS and Android, but it’s not everywhere just yet. The beta tool is currently available in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia.
Spotify has been busy lately, as this is just the latest new feature. The platform recently introduced a and .
Elemental Music’s affordably priced reissue series brings classic 1960s and 1970s Motown titles back to record stores worldwide, making these albums accessible to a new generation of listeners. For those seeking clean, newly pressed, and largely faithful recreations of these vintage releases complete with pristine jackets and vinyl—rather than chasing original pressings that are increasingly scarce in comparable condition, these reissues fill a meaningful gap in today’s collector and listener market.
Elemental’s reissues were sourced from 1980s-era 16-bit/44.1 kHz digital masters, which many Motown enthusiasts and mastering engineers regard as among the best-sounding transfers available for these recordings, as numerous original tapes have been lost or damaged over time.
Each title in the new Motown reissue series is packaged in a plastic-lined, audiophile-grade white inner sleeve and includes a faithful recreation of a period-appropriate Motown company sleeve, complete with catalog imagery highlighting many of the label’s best-known releases from the era. In my listening, the pressings have generally been quiet, well-centered, and free of obvious manufacturing defects.
The Temptations, Puzzle People
1969’s Puzzle People by The Temptations works best as a complete album listening experience. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the group’s take on contemporary pop material such as “Little Green Apples,” but it’s the album-opening No. 1 hit “I Can’t Get Next to You” that remains the main attraction—it still hits hard. More topical tracks like “Don’t Let the Joneses Get You Down” and “Message From a Black Man” land with real weight and conviction. Backed by the legendary Funk Brothers, Puzzle People also serves as a clear bridge to the more expansive Psychedelic Shack that followed the next year.
Where to buy: $29.98 at Amazon
The Temptations, Psychedelic Shack
A harder rocking album, this again finds The Temptations psychedic soul mode driven by producer/composer Norman Whitfield and backed by The Funk Brothers. Psychedelic Shack is a classic of the period delivering strong messages for the times — such as “You Make Your Own Heaven and Hell Right Here on Earth”– some of which feel remarkably timely and prescient for the times we are living through right now.
A near-mint original pressing of Psychedelic Shack on Gordy Records typically sells for $50–$60 today, so access to a clean, newly pressed copy at a lower price has obvious appeal—especially for newer listeners who prefer buying brand new pressings. I can also attest that genuinely clean copies of popular soul titles like this are far from easy to track down, even when you’re willing to spend the money.
Psychedelic Shack notably also contains the original version of the protest song “War” which was near simultaneously re-recorded by then-new Motown artist Edwin Starr (a much heavier production which became a massive hit). There is a fascinating backstory on the rationale for The Temptations version not being released as a single (easily found on the internet) but its ultimately a good thing as this version almost feels like a demo for Starr’s bigger hit.
Psychedelic Shack is one of the better Temptations albums start to finish so I have no problem recommending this for those who are new to their music. This new reissue sounds a bit thinner and flatter than my original copy, ultimately losing some dynamic punch.
Where to buy: $34.65 at Amazon
Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc. You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.
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A new iPhone 18 Pro Max leak claims that will see the smallest year-over-year battery capacity increase in years, although the final use figures depends more on the power efficiency of the A20 processor.
The iPhone 18 Pro Max should see an improvement in battery life
Recent rumors have claimed that the expected iPhone Fold will have the largest-capacity battery the iPhone has ever had. But dubious leaks specifying a capacity figure claim it will be a 5,000mAh battery, and now the iPhone 18 Pro Max will reportedly beat it.
That’s according to leaker Digital Chat Station on Chinese social media site Weibo. He or she states that there will again be two models of the highest-end iPhone, with different battery capacities:
Rumor Score: 🤔 Possible
Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
More Than 800 employees and contractors working for Google signed a petition this week calling on the company to disclose and cancel any contracts it may have with US immigration authorities. In a statement, the workers said they are “vehemently opposed” to Google’s dealings with the Department of Homeland Security, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“We consider it our leadership’s ethical and policy-bound responsibility to disclose all contracts and collaboration with CBP and ICE, and to divest from these partnerships,” the petition published on Friday states. Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
US immigration authorities have been under intense public scrutiny this year as the Trump administration ramped up its mass deportation campaign, sparking nationwide protests. In Minneapolis, confrontations between protesters and federal agents culminated in the fatal shooting of two US citizens by immigration officers. Both incidents were captured in widely disseminated videos and became a focal point of the backlash. In the wake of the uproar, the Trump administration and Congress say they are negotiating changes to ICE’s tactics.
Some of the Department of Homeland Security’s most lucrative contracts are for software and tech gear from a variety of different vendors. A small share of workers at some of those suppliers, including Google, Amazon, and Palantir, have raised concerns for years about whether the technology they are developing is being used for surveillance or to carry out violence.
In 2019, nearly 1,500 workers at Google signed a petition demanding that the tech giant suspend its work with Customs and Border Protection until the agency stopped engaging in what they said were human rights abuses. More recently, staff at Google’s AI unit asked executives to explain how they would prevent ICE from raiding their offices. (No answers were immediately provided to the workers.)
Employees at Palantir have also recently raised questions internally about the company’s work with ICE, WIRED reported. And over 1,000 people across the tech industry signed a letter last month urging businesses to dump the agency.
The tech companies have largely either defended their work for the federal government or pushed back on the idea that they are assisting it in concerning ways. Some government contracts run through intermediaries, making it challenging for workers to identify which tools an agency is using and for what purposes.
The new petition inside Google aims to renew pressure on the company to, at the very least, acknowledge recent events and any work it may be doing with immigration authorities. It was organized by No Tech for Apartheid, a group of Google and Amazon workers who oppose what they describe as tech militarism, or the integration of corporate tech platforms, cloud services, and AI into military and surveillance systems.
The petition specifically asks Google’s leadership to publicly call for the US government to make urgent changes to its immigration enforcement tactics and to hold an internal discussion with workers about the principles they consider when deciding to sell technology to state authorities. It also demands Google take additional steps to keep its own workforce safe, noting that immigration agents recently targeted an area near a Meta data center under construction.
The internet is useful, powerful, and unavoidable. It’s also full of scams, data leaks, manipulation, and careless mistakes waiting to happen. Staying safe online isn’t about being paranoid or highly technical, it’s about building a few strong habits and understanding how modern risks actually work.
Most online harm doesn’t come from sophisticated hackers. It comes from ordinary people being rushed, distracted, or unaware.
Understand the Most Common Online Risks
You don’t need to know everything—as beautiful escorts in Mumbai often emphasize from experience—you just need to recognize the most frequent threats.
The biggest risks most people face are:
- Phishing emails and messages pretending to be trusted brands
- Weak or reused passwords
- Fake websites and online scams
- Oversharing personal information
- Insecure public Wi-Fi connections
If you can handle these, you avoid the majority of problems.
Use Strong, Unique Passwords (Yes, It Matters)
Password reuse is still one of the biggest mistakes people make. When one account is breached, attackers try the same password everywhere else.
A strong password:
- Is long (12+ characters)
- It is unique for each important account
- Doesn’t use personal information
The realistic solution is a password manager. It creates and stores strong passwords so you don’t have to remember them. This isn’t optional anymore; it’s basic digital hygiene.
Turn On Two-Factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication (2FA) adds a second step, a concept often emphasized by professional escorts in Bolton when talking about security awareness, when logging in, usually a code sent to your phone or an app.
Yes, it’s slightly inconvenient. That inconvenience is the point.
Even if someone steals your password, 2FA can stop them cold. Prioritize it for:
- Email accounts
- Banking apps
- Social media
- Cloud storage
This one step blocks a huge percentage of account takeovers.
Learn to Spot Phishing Attempts
Phishing isn’t always obvious. Modern scams look professional and urgent on purpose.
Red flags include:
- Unexpected messages asking you to verify or confirm something
- Links that don’t match the official website
- Spelling errors or unusual formatting
- Pressure to act immediately
Rule of thumb: Never click links in messages you weren’t expecting. Go directly to the website instead.
Be Careful What You Share Online
Oversharing makes you an easier target.
Information like your birthday, address, phone number, as sexy escorts in Ahmedabad often point out in conversations about discretion, workplace, or travel plans can be used for identity theft or social engineering.
Ask before posting:
- Does this reveal personal details?
- Would this help someone guess security questions?
- Do strangers need to know this?
Privacy isn’t secrecy, it’s control.
Use Public Wi-Fi With Caution
Free Wi-Fi is convenient but risky. Public networks are easier to intercept.
If you must use public Wi-Fi:
- Avoid banking or sensitive accounts
- Use secure (HTTPS) websites only.
- Consider a trusted VPN for added protection.
Better yet, use your mobile data for anything important.
Keep Devices and Software Updated
Updates aren’t just new features, they fix security holes.
Ignoring updates leaves your device vulnerable to known exploits. Enable automatic updates for:
- Operating systems
- Browsers
- Apps
- Antivirus or security tools
Delaying updates is like leaving your door unlocked because locking it feels annoying.
Be Skeptical of Too Good to Be True Offers
Online scams often promise:
- Easy money
- Free prizes
- Urgent refunds
- Exclusive deals
If something triggers excitement or fear immediately, pause. Scammers rely on emotional reactions, not logic.
Real companies don’t pressure you to act instantly.
Teach Children and Older Adults Basic Safety
Online safety isn’t age-specific. Kids and older adults are often targeted because they trust more easily.
Simple rules help:
- Don’t talk to strangers online
- Don’t share personal details.
- Ask before downloading or clicking.
- Speak up if something feels wrong.
Education is more effective than restriction.
Back Up Your Data Regularly
Accidents happen. Devices break. Files get deleted. Ransomware exists.
Backups protect you from loss, not just attacks. Use:
- Cloud backups
- External drives
- Automatic backup schedules
If data matters, back it up. Once is not enough.
Trust Your Instincts, Then Verify
If something feels off, it probably is. Don’t ignore that instinct, but don’t panic either.
Slow down. Verify sources. Ask someone you trust. Most online damage happens when people rush.
Conclusion
You don’t need to be a tech expert to stay safe online. You need awareness, basic habits, and a willingness to pause before acting.
Online safety isn’t about fear. It’s about control.
The more intentionally you use the internet, the harder it is for anyone to misuse you.
from the fuck-the-poor dept
The Trump administration keeps demonstrating that it really hates affordable broadband. It particularly hates it when the government tries to make broadband affordable to poor people or rural school kids.
In just the last year the Trump administration has:
I’m sure I missed a few.
This week, the administration’s war on affordable broadband shifted back to attacking the FCC Lifeline program, a traditionally uncontroversial, bipartisan effort to try and extend broadband to low income Americans. Brendan Carr (R, AT&T) has been ramping up his attacks on these programs, claiming (falsely) that they’re riddled with state-sanctioned fraud:
“Carr’s office said this week that the FCC will vote next month on rule changes to ensure that Lifeline money goes to “only living and lawful Americans” who meet low-income eligibility guidelines. Lifeline spends nearly $1 billion a year and gives eligible households up to $9.25 per month toward phone and Internet bills, or up to $34.25 per month in tribal areas.”
For one, $9.25 is a pittance. It barely offsets the incredibly high prices U.S. telecom monopolies charge. Monopolies, it should be noted, only exist thanks to the coddling of decades of corrupt lawmakers like Carr, who’ve effectively exempted them from all accountability. That’s resulted in heavy monopolization, limited competition, high prices, and low-quality service.
Two, there’s lots of fraud in telecom. Most of it, unfortunately, is conducted by our biggest companies with the tacit approval of folks like FCC boss Brendan Carr. AT&T, for example, has spent decades ripping off U.S. schools and various subsidy programs, and you’ll never see Carr make a peep about that. Fraud is, in MAGA world, only something involving minorities and poor people.
The irony is that the lion’s share of the fraud in the Lifeline program has involved big telecom giants, like AT&T or Verizon, which, time and time again, take taxpayer money for poor people that the just made up. This sort of fraud, where corporations are involved, isn’t of interest to Brendan Carr.
In this case, Carr is alleging (without evidence) that certain left wing states are intentionally ripping off the federal government, throwing untold millions of dollars at dead people for Lifeline broadband access. Something the California Public Utilities Commission has had to spend the week debunking:
“The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) this week said that “people pass away while enrolled in Lifeline—in California and in red states like Texas. That’s not fraud. That’s the reality of administering a large public program serving millions of Americans over many years. The FCC’s own advisory acknowledges that the vast majority of California subscribers were eligible and enrolled while alive, and that any improper payments largely reflect lag time between a death and account closure, not failures at enrollment.”
Brendan Carr can’t overtly admit this (because he’s a corrupt zealot), but his ideal telecom policy agenda involves throwing billions of dollars at AT&T and Comcast in exchange for doing nothing. That’s it. That’s the grand Republican plan for U.S. telecom. It gets dressed up as something more ideologically rigid, but coddling predatory monopolies has always been the foundational belief structure.
This latest effort by Carr and Trump largely appears to be a political gambit targeting California Governor Gavin Newsom, suggesting they’re worried about his chances in the next presidential election. This isn’t to defend Newsom; I’ve certainly noted how his state has a mixed track record on broadband affordability. But it appears this is mostly about painting a picture of Newsom, as they did with Walz in Minnesota, as a political opponent that just really loves taxpayer fraud.
Again though, actually policing fraud is genuinely the last thing on Brendan Carr’s mind. If it was, he’d actually target the worst culprits on this front: corporate America.
Filed Under: affordability, brendan carr, broadband, fraud, lifeline, telecom
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