Rome’s “La Sapienza” university has been targeted by a cyberattack that impacted its IT systems and caused widespread operational disruptions at the educational institute.

The university first disclosed the incident in a social media post earlier this week, saying that its IT infrastructure “has been the target of a cyberattack.”

“As a precautionary measure, and in order to ensure the integrity and security of data, an immediate shutdown of network systems has been ordered,” the organization said.

The university, which is Europe’s largest by number of in-campus students, with over 112,500 enrolled, notified the authorities of the incident and formed a technical task force to initiate remediation and restoration procedures.

As of writing, the university’s website remains offline, and new status updates published on Instagram reflect a continued effort to recover from the cyberattack.

As of yesterday’s announcement, temporary “infopoints” have been set up for students to provide information accessible through digital systems and databases that are currently unavailable.

Although the university has not disclosed much information about the attack type or the perpetrators, Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera claims that the incident is a ransomware attack perpetrated by a pro-Russian threat actor called Femwar02 and resulted in data encryption.

The outlet released the information based on malware characteristics and operational patterns, which are similar to the Bablock/Rorschach ransomware.

This is a ransomware strain that first appeared in 2023, featuring fast encryption speeds and extensive customization options. Cybersecurity company Check Point estimated that it was a project built from bits of the leaked sources of Babuk, LockBit v2.0, and DarkSide.

According to Corriere Della Sera’s sources, a ransom exists, but the university staff has not opened it to avoid triggering the 72-hour timer. Hence, the ransom amount hasn’t been specified.

Currently, the university’s technicians are working together with Italian CSIRT and specialists from Agenzia per la Cybersicurezza Nazionale (ACN) and the Polizia Postale to restore the systems from backups, which have reportedly not been impacted.

Although Rorschach does not operate an extortion portal on the dark web, stolen data could be disseminated or sold to data extortion groups, so the risk of it ending up online remains significant.

Given the situation, students and staff at Sapienza University of Rome should remain on high alert for phishing attacks, avoid clicking links in unsolicited communications, and monitor accounts for suspicious activity.

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This story was published by a Voices of Change fellow. Learn more about the fellowship here.

Over the past two years, I have noticed that when I teach students about any issue in the U.S. or around the world, they express noticeable apathy and disinterest. When our current president was elected, I asked a Latina student how she felt, and she said she likes him because he will “teach her how to make money.” When I pushed back on this and brought up undocumented immigrants, she responded by saying, “Hold up. I’m a citizen, that’s not my problem.”

Recently, a similar problem came up with another student who is Black; he responded to our discussion on genocide by saying he “doesn’t care” and “only wants to make money.”

I care deeply about my students. For me, the apathy and individualism I’m seeing from them are legitimate and concerning. In their eyes, the only things that make life easier are money and power. I feel for them, but what breaks my heart is that this money and power are not, and historically have never been, in the hands of people like my students. Historically, opportunities for marginalized folks have come from working together as a community to fight for the lives and resources we need.

But as of late, I don’t believe our schools are structured to facilitate meaningful opportunities for our students to organize and build community. I am grateful that I was trained to be a content expert in English Language Arts using the most recent research, such as grading for equity, culturally responsive teaching and universal design for learning (UDL). From a curricular standpoint, the practices each of these frameworks offers have helped me create some memorable moments of enduring understanding. Still, these extreme times necessitate more than thoughtful rubrics, scaffolded assignments and culturally representative instruction. I worry that no amount of revelatory critical theory will galvanize my students, most of whom are working-class, to see the value of intellectual rigor.

As the years go on, and our political climate becomes more polarized, I, too, am breaking down. I am increasingly focusing on myself just to survive. If this is my story, with the opportunities I’ve been given and the books I’ve read, then my students are definitely experiencing this tenfold. And on top of that, they come to school to shuffle around between classes, sit down at desks, and learn information that we tell them will free their minds, but then they leave and the conditions don’t change.

The traditional factory schooling model is no longer holding up, and I believe it will one day collapse under the weight of its own obsolescence. When that happens, how do we create an educational experience that centers empathy and galvanizes action? While I don’t necessarily have an answer to this question, I think it’s worth exploring some ideas.

Bringing in Community-Based Organizations

Community-based organizations that support students after school in learning how to organize should be empowered to come to the classroom and lead workshops regularly. The end goal should be students leaving the building on several guided field trips to demonstrate, protest and volunteer.

The challenge with this approach is that I believe it should be done weekly during school hours. If working-class students can’t organize or volunteer due to the innumerable responsibilities they face once they leave our school building, then the only time we have with them to get involved will be during school hours. Therefore, it is our responsibility to create opportunities for community engagement.

Organizing as Project-Based Learning

While project-based learning is an exceptional approach to producing work, what would it be like for students to organize? They pick an issue, and we teach them how to rally for that cause by canvassing, visiting people affected by it or conducting interviews. The goal here is to produce an organizing plan for a cause that interests them. The grade comes from the success of the process, but the work is geared toward addressing social issues in real ways and not just reading about them.

School-Wide Practices

What if, every year, students were expected to organize in some capacity and produce reflections that explicitly ask them to explain how their empathy has increased through their organizing? The only way I see schools continuing is if they are transformed into sites of resistance — thinking hubs for revolutionary action — that takes place during school hours. We cannot, under these current conditions, presume that our students have the time, energy and resources to think about anything we teach them once the bell rings for dismissal.

Teacher Preparation

Teacher education programs would have to be transformed so that, in addition to content mastery, we are trained on how to organize and teach organizing. If schools do not become sites of resistance, I don’t see a future in which our young people will think of school as anything other than a chore they must take on to survive in a world built to keep them feeling small. Unless we teach them their power through collective action, they will grow to facilitate the same dangers that led to their individualism.

I often think about Gil Scott-Heron’s words, “The revolution will not be televised.” When asked what this meant, he responded, “The revolution has to happen here,” pointing to his head. The most valuable learning happens when no one is watching.

Personally, one of my greatest achievements in life has been learning to love myself as I am. But it took years of reading books that explained to me how and why the world was set up to make me hate myself. I came out the other end feeling better about myself — all because of reading and writing. But at the end of the day, I am bound up in the same system of exploitation and poverty that makes my students focus exclusively on themselves. Books freed my mind, but they did not free me from my conditions.

Our ancestors taught us that the structures in place were not built for our most marginalized. As a result, they organized. They saw each other as the resources needed to be free, and more often than not, they did it outside the classroom.

I am increasingly disillusioned by the concept and reality of a classroom as a site of transgression, when the structure of school itself ensures that any transgression can only exist in the mind and not manifest in the real world. The only way to transgress within this schooling system is to create structured, meaningful opportunities to step outside the four walls of our classrooms. We cannot simply read about revolutionary action; we must become it.

The ills of social media are pretty well-known, and the impacts are so well-documented that Meta, YouTube, and TikTok are now facing a lawsuit for making their platforms addictive. Australia has already banned social media for teens under 16 years of age, and multiple other countries are considering similar restrictions. And let’s face it: social media can lead you into a doomscrolling spiral that is an utter waste of time and energy.

Enter Pankaj Tanwar, a developer who just created a Chrome extension that will make you scream at your computer in order to unblock social media sites. “A productivity tool that blocks social media websites and makes you say embarrassing things to unlock them,” says the extension’s description on Google’s web store. But screaming at your PC or Mac is not the whole solution.

This is pretty cool

First, you must hit the loudness threshold while screaming, “I am a loser.” Next, you must increase the tempo of your embarrassing scream to unlock the time for which a blocklisted site becomes accessible. Based on how desperately loud you are, you might unlock a few seconds or minutes worth of social media surfing time.

I tried. I failed.

The open-source tool is aimed at students, at-home workers, and basically any person with a computer who gets distracted quickly and ends up losing valuable time to mindless X or Instagram browsing. By default, the extension blocks X, Instagram, and Facebook. However, if you have other digital vices, ahem, you can simply add the URL and block those sites, too.

I desperately needed it

Once you set up the extension, which also works well in other Chromium-based browsers such as ChatGPT Atlas, you will run into a full-screen blocker every time you try to visit the distracting sites. There’s even a visualizer where you can see the loudness levels of your screen, and a timer underneath that shows you the duration for which the sites will be unlocked.

This won’t be the first project of its kind. Rhys Kentish, a software engineer at a UK-based company, developed an app called Touch Grass that will require you to go out, literally touch grass, and click a snapshot as evidence to unlock distracting apps on your phone.

The 2026 Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks will air on NBC today, Feb. 8, at 6:30PM ET/3:30PM PT. The Big Game will also stream live on Peacock. If you no longer subscribe to cable, don’t have access to NBC over the air and aren’t currently signed up for Peacock, there are still ways to watch Super Bowl LX — and Bad Bunny’s history-making Super Bowl halftime show — for free. Here’s how to tune in.

How to watch Super Bowl LX free:

Date: Sunday, Feb. 8

Time: 6:30 p.m. ET

Location: Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.

TV channel: NBC, Telemundo

Streaming: Peacock, DirecTV, NFL+ and more

2026 Super Bowl game channel

Super Bowl LX will air on NBC. A Spanish-language broadcast is available on Telemundo.

How to watch the 2026 Super Bowl for free

You can stream NBC and Telemundo on platforms like DirecTV and Hulu + Live TV; both offer free trials and are among Engadget’s choices for best streaming services for live TV. (Note that Fubo and NBC are currently in the midst of a contract dispute and NBC channels are not available on the platform.)

In addition to hosting NBC’s Super Bowl broadcast, DirecTV’s Entertainment tier gets you access to loads of channels where you can tune in to college and pro sports throughout the year, including ESPN, TNT, ACC Network, Big Ten Network, CBS Sports Network, and, depending on where you live, local affiliates for ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.

Whichever package you choose, you’ll get unlimited Cloud DVR storage and access to ESPN Unlimited.

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DirecTV’s Entertainment tier package is $89.99/month. But you can currently try all this out for free for 5 days. If you’re interested in trying out a live-TV streaming service for football, but aren’t ready to commit, we recommend starting with DirecTV.

Peacock is the streaming home of the 2026 Super Bowl.

While a regular Peacock subscription begins at $10.99 a month for a Premium Plan and goes up to $16.99 for the ad-free Premium Plus plan, you can get an ad-supported subscription for free if you’re a Walmart+ subscriber. 

Walmart+ members actually get their choice between Paramount+ or Peacock included in their membership at no additional cost. A monthly subscription to Walmart+ costs $12.99, and an annual plan usually costs $98. But you can try the service out totally free. Beyond free Peacock, Walmart+ has additional perks like five free months of Apple Music, discounts on Cinemark movie theater memberships, free shipping and delivery on Walmart purchases, discounts on gas and much more.

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Instacart+ subscribers are able to get an annual Peacock Premium plan (a $109.99 value) for free. After a free 14-day trial, Instacart+ plans cost $99/year, meaning you’ll save more on Peacock simply by subscribing to the delivery service, but you’ll get tons of extras, like free grocery and restaurant delivery and a free subscription to the New York Times Cooking app.

What time is the 2026 Super Bowl?

The 2026 Super Bowl kicks off at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT on Sunday, Feb. 8. Green Day will be performing a pre-game special starting at 6 p.m. ET.

Who is playing in the Super Bowl?

The AFC champions, the New England Patriots, will play the NFC champions, the Seattle Seahawks.

Where is the 2026 Super Bowl being played?

The 2026 Super Bowl will be held at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., home of the San Francisco 49ers.

Who is performing at the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show?

Bad Bunny is headlining the 2026 Super Bowl halftime performance. You can expect that show to begin after the second quarter, likely between 8-8:30 p.m. ET. Green Day will perform a pre-game show starting at 6 p.m. ET. If you’re tuning in before the game, singer Charlie Puth will perform the National Anthem, Brandi Carlile is scheduled to sing “America the Beautiful,” and Grammy winner Coco Jones will perform “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

More ways to watch Super Bowl LX

Apple is keeping the entry level for iPhones at $599, according to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman. In the latest Power On report, Gurman said that the iPhone 17e is “due imminently” and will keep the same price as its predecessor.

Considering we’re about a year away from the iPhone 16e’s announcement, we’re due for a successor to Apple’s more affordable smartphone. According to Gurman, Apple upgraded the new budget-friendly iPhone with MagSafe charging and the A19 chip that’s seen in the iPhone 17 base model. The iPhone 17e will also get Apple’s latest in-house cellular and wireless chips, Gurman reported.

In our review of the iPhone 16e, we weren’t particularly sold because of its limited camera capabilities, particularly when compared to the iPhone 17‘s release a few months later. However, for the same $599 price, Apple’s iPhone 17e is getting a few notable upgrades and will compete with Google’s Pixel 10a. More specifically, Gurman expects Apple to target the emerging economies and enterprise demographics with the iPhone 17e. While Apple faces a lot more competition in overseas markets, iPhone sales have been experiencing a resurgence in China. Apple is even forecasting strong sales for iPhones across Asia, especially in China and India.

On January 26, 2026, an astronaut on the International Space Station looked earthward and captured a view of the Grand Canyon that few people have ever seen. A fresh layer of snow from a few days of flurries clings to the canyon’s rim, framing the huge abyss in stark white against the deep red-brown rock below. The Colorado Plateau looks like a flat canvas sprinkled with dust, while the canyon itself, carved out by the Colorado River over millions of years, plunges into darkness.

Sunlight floods in from the bottom right, throwing lengthy shadows up the canyon walls. These shadows occasionally play a devious trick on you. Flat plateaus might appear high and almost like mountain peaks because most people believe light enters from above. However, the snow on the higher land puts the record straight, telling your eye that the snowy pieces belong on the higher edges, not the valley level. The South Rim is roughly 7,000 feet tall, whereas the North Rim is much higher at 8,000 feet. And you can notice the contrast in the coating of white that remained after the storm passed.

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Warmer air at ground level inside the canyon converted the same precipitation to rain. Phantom Ranch received only 0.06 inches, while the canyon’s margins were holding onto several inches of fresh fall. Winter averages are 58 inches on the South Rim and 142 on the North Rim, so a light dusting like this is not unusual. But from up high in orbit, the contrast is everything, as the snow highlights every twist and curve of the canyon margins, transforming a recognizable landmark into something like to a map of its own elevation lines.

The astronauts on Expedition 74 captured this photo with a Nikon Z9 at 400mm as part of routine Earth observation missions from the station. The files were processed at Johnson Space Center, trimmed, and contrast adjusted to bring out the details without getting too fancy. The archives contain two versions of the photograph, both of which are high enough resolution to show the road along Desert View Drive, which was briefly closed owing to ice during the flurry.

The Winter Olympic Games have begun, and once again the sport of curling is set to draw in scores of new converts.

Although dominated by Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, and Scotland, many eyes during the 2026 Winter Olympics will be on the team from host country Italy thanks to Stefania Constantini and Amos Mosaner, the reigning Olympic and world curling champions in mixed doubles.

Regardless of which country takes home the gold, the real attention during the Olympics this year might be on the cool gadgets curlers use. Somewhat similar to a game of shuffleboard played with brooms and stones, curling has seen some pretty interesting advances in the gear that’s used on the ice.

In addition to raw skill and strategy, here’s everything you need to know about the state of the sport.

Scottish Stones

Nearly every curling stone—the round rock that slides down the ice—comes from the same place: Ailsa Craig. The 99-hectare island site in the Firth of Clyde inlet on Scotland’s west coast is known for its granite, and by extension its ability to provide enough of it to outfit curlers the world over.

Each stone must weigh between 19.96 and 17.24 kilograms and is made from one of two varieties of Scottish granite, common green and blue hone. These two types are the most resistant to heat and humidity and to the cracks and condensation that can form thanks to the 28 meters of ice the stones slide on during competitions.

The stones used at the Olympics, as well as the World Championships, are produced by Kays of Scotland. Many curling stones also come from Canada Curling Stone. (The sport has seen a recent spike in popularity in Canada.) Both companies produce the stones using a meticulous process of grinding and polishing.

Broom Boom

In addition to the stones, the main tools necessary to curl are a broom and shoes—this is where advancements in gear really come to the fore. For one, there are scores of sensors and microchips that allow players to manage the power of their throws.

For another, there are new-and-improved brooms that allow sweepers to maximize their skills. More than anything, what curlers need to work a broom are dexterity, physicality, and coordination. But beyond that, good tools don’t hurt.

“Broom technology continues to be a major focus because the physical demands of the sport continue to evolve, and one of the biggest challenges is finding the right balance between weight, strength, and effective energy transfer,” says Dale Matchett, general manager at curling equipment company BalancePlus.

As with any kind of sporting equipment, quality depends on how much a team or player is willing to spend. Carbon fiber brooms are best for their combination of strength and lightness. Composite fiber works well for midrange players. Fiberglass is the cheapest option. The broom’s handle and bearing factor into its weight and sweeping efficiency.

• NASA formally approves personal smartphones for government missions beginning with Crew-12
• Artemis II will carry consumer phones alongside traditional spaceflight imaging equipment
• Fast-tracked hardware approval marks a procedural shift inside NASA operations

NASA has confirmed its astronauts will now be allowed to carry personal smartphones on crewed missions, starting with Crew-12 and the delayed Artemis II flight.

Crew-12 is scheduled to travel to the International Space Station in mid-February 2026, while Artemis II is now expected to launch in March.