Today’s executive order takes a different route to propping up coal: artificially inflating demand. “The Secretary of War, in coordination with the Secretary of Energy,” the order reads, “shall seek to procure power from the United States coal generation fleet by approving long-term Power Purchase Agreements, or entering into any similar contractual agreements, with coal-fired energy production facilities to serve Department of War installations or other mission-critical facilities.”

The justification for this seems to come from an alternate reality with little relationship to the US grid. “It’s going to be less expensive and actually much more effective than what we have been using for many, many years,” Trump said at the event. “And again, with the environmental progress that’s been made on coal, it’s going to be just as clean.” None of that is true.

The executive order instead seeks to highlight coal’s supposed ability to produce a constant power output, touting the “proven reliability of our coal-fired generation fleet in providing continuous, on-demand baseload power.” This seemingly ignores Texas’ recent experience, in which coal plants contributed significantly to the collapse of the state grid, having gone offline for a wide range of reasons.

The Trump administration, however, has rarely let spurious justifications stand in the way of its preferred policy actions. The key action here is likely to be locking the military into long-term contracts that would persist beyond the end of Trump’s term in 2029.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/trumps-latest-plan-to-revive-coal-power-make-the-military-buy-it/

It’s possible the Wikimedia Foundation will act even if the volunteer editors decide to maintain the status quo. “We know that WMF intervention is a big deal, but we also have not ruled it out, given the seriousness of the security concern for people who click the links that appear across many wikis,” Mill wrote.

Blogger tried to uncover founder’s identity

The Wikipedia request for comments acknowledged that whether to blacklist would be a difficult decision. There are “significant concerns for readers’ safety, as well as the long-term stability and integrity of the service,” but “a significant amount of people also think that mass-removing links to Archive.today may harm verifiability, and that the service is harder to censor than certain other archiving sites,” it said.

An update to the request for comments yesterday indicated that the attack temporarily stopped, but the malicious code had been reactivated. “Please do not visit the archive without blocking network requests to gyrovague.com to avoid being part of the attack!” it said.

The code’s first public mention was apparently in a Hacker News thread on January 14, and Patokallio wrote about the DDoS in a February 1 blog post. “Every 300 milliseconds, as long as the CAPTCHA page is open, this makes a request to the search function of my blog using a random string, ensuring the response cannot be cached and thus consumes resources,” he wrote. The Javascript code in the Archive.today CAPTCHA page is as follows:

 setInterval(function() { fetch("https://gyrovague.com/?s=" + Math.random().toString(36).substring(2, 3 + Math.random() * 8), { referrerPolicy: "no-referrer", mode: "no-cors" }); }, 300);

In August 2023, Patokallio wrote a post attempting to uncover the identity of Archive.today founder “Denis Petrov,” which seems to be an alias. Patokallio wasn’t able to figure out who the founder is but cobbled together various tidbits from Internet searches, including a Stack Exchange post that mentioned another potential alias, “Masha Rabinovich.”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/wikipedia-might-blacklist-archive-today-after-site-maintainer-ddosed-a-blog/

In short, the state attorneys general object to the document treating facts as facts, as there have been lawsuits that contested them. “Among other things, the Manual states that human activities have ‘unequivocally warmed the climate,’ that it is ‘extremely likely’ human influence drives ocean warming, and that researchers are ‘virtually certain’ about ocean acidification,” their letter states, “treating contested litigation positions as settled fact.” In other words, they’re arguing that, if someone is ignorant enough to start a suit based on ignorance of well-established science, then the Federal Judicial Center should join them in their ignorance.

The attorneys general also complain that the report calls the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change an “authoritative science body,” citing a conservative Canadian public policy think tank that disagreed with that assessment.

These complaints were mixed in with some more potentially reasonable complaints about how the climate chapter gave specific suggestions on how to legally approach some issues and assigned significance to one or two recent studies that haven’t yet been validated by follow-on work. But the letter’s authors would not settle for revisions based on a few reasonable complaints; instead, they demand the entire chapter be removed because it accurately reflects the status of climate science.

Naturally, the Federal Judicial Center has agreed. We have confirmed that the current version of the document no longer includes a chapter on climate science, even though the foreword by Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan still mentions it. The full text of the now-deleted chapter has been posted by the RealClimate blog, though.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/us-court-agency-pulls-climate-change-from-science-advisory-document/

The FCC Media Bureau’s January 21 public notice to broadcast TV stations said that despite a 2006 decision in which the FCC exempted The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from the rule, current entertainment shows may not qualify for that exemption. “Importantly, the FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption,” the notice said.

The Media Bureau’s January 21 notice said the equal-time rule applies to broadcast TV stations because they “have been given access to a valuable public resource (namely, spectrum),” and that compliance with “these requirements is central to a broadcast licensee’s obligation to operate in the public interest.”

The FCC notice got this detail wrong, according to Harold Feld, a longtime telecom attorney who is senior VP of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. The equal-time rule actually applies to cable channels, too, he wrote in a January 29 blog post.

“Yes, contrary to what a number of people think, including, annoyingly, the Media Bureau which gets this wrong in its recent order, this is not a ‘public interest obligation’ for using spectrum,” Feld wrote. “It’s a conditional right of access (like leased access for cable) that members of Congress gave themselves (and other candidates) because they recognized the power of mass media to shape elections.” The US law applies both to broadcast stations using public spectrum and “community antenna television,” the old name for cable TV, Feld pointed out.

This doesn’t actually mean that people can file FCC complaints against the Fox News cable channel, though, Feld wrote. This is because the FCC “has consistently interpreted Section 315(c) since it was added as applying only to ‘local origination cablecasting,’ meaning locally originated programming and not the national cable channels that cable operators distribute as part of their bundle,” he wrote.

Leno ruling just one of many

In any case, Feld said the Media Bureau’s “guidance ignores all of the other precedent that creates settled law as to how the FCC evaluates eligibility for an exemption on which broadcast shows have relied.” While the FCC cited its Jay Leno decision, Feld said the Leno ruling was “merely one of a long line of FCC decisions expanding the definition of ‘news interview’ and ‘news show.’”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/trump-fcc-investigates-the-view-reportedly-says-fake-news-will-be-punished/

Badalich confirmed that Discord is bracing for some users to leave Discord over the update but suggested that “we’ll find other ways to bring users back.”

On Reddit, Discord users complained that age verification is easy to bypass, forcing adults to share sensitive information without keeping kids away from harmful content. In Australia, where Discord’s policy first rolled out, some kids claimed that Discord never even tried to estimate their ages, while others found it easy to trick k-ID by using AI videos or altering their appearances to look older. A teen girl relied on fake eyelashes to do the trick, while one 13-year-old boy was estimated to be over 30 years old after scrunching his face to seem more wrinkled.

Badalich told The Verge that Discord doesn’t expect the tools to work perfectly but acts quickly to block workarounds, like teens using Death Stranding‘s photo mode to skirt age gates. However, questions remain about the accuracy of Discord’s age estimation model in assessing minors’ ages, in particular.

It may be noteworthy that Privately only claims that its technology is “proven to be accurate to within 1.3 years, for 18-20-year-old faces, regardless of a customer’s gender or ethnicity.” But experts told Ars last year that flawed age-verification technology still frequently struggles to distinguish minors from adults, especially when differentiating between a 17- and 18-year-old, for example.

Perhaps notably, Discord’s prior scandal occurred after hackers stole government IDs that users shared as part of the appeal process in order to fix an incorrect age estimation. Appeals could remain the most vulnerable part of this process, The Verge’s report indicated. Badalich confirmed that a third-party vendor would be reviewing appeals, with the only reassurance for users seemingly that IDs shared during appeals “are deleted quickly—in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.”

On Reddit, Discord fans awaiting big changes remain upset. A disgruntled Discord user suggested that “corporations like Facebook and Discord, will implement easily passable, cheapest possible, bare minimum under the law verification, to cover their ass from a lawsuit,” while forcing users to trust that their age-check data is secure.

Another user joked that she’d be more willing to trust that selfies never leave a user’s device if Discord were “willing to pay millions to every user” whose “scan does leave a device.”

This story was updated on February 9 to add comments from Discord and k-ID, and to clarify that government IDs are checked off-device.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/discord-faces-backlash-over-age-checks-after-data-breach-exposed-70000-ids/

Another signal of declining enforcement: Through September of last year, the EPA issued $41 million in penalties—$8 million less than the same period in the first year of the Biden administration, after adjusting for inflation. This suggests “the Trump Administration may be letting more polluters get by with a slap on the wrist when the Administration does take enforcement action,” the report reads.

Combined, the lack of lawsuits, penalties, and other enforcement actions for environmental violations could impact communities across the country, said Erika Kranz, a senior staff attorney in the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, who was not involved in the report.

“We’ve been seeing the administration deregulate by repealing rules and extending compliance deadlines, and this decline in enforcement action seems like yet another mechanism that the administration is using to de-emphasize environmental and public health protections,” Kranz said. “It all appears to be connected, and if you’re a person in the US who is worried about your health and the health of your neighbors generally, this certainly could have effects.”

The report notes that many court cases last longer than a year, so it will take time to get a clearer sense of how environmental enforcement is changing under the Trump administration. However, the early data compiled by the Environmental Integrity Project and other nonprofits shows a clear and steep shift away from legal actions against polluters.

Historically, administrations have a “lot of leeway on making enforcement decisions,” Kranz said. But this stark of a drop could prompt lawsuits against the Trump administration, she added.

“Given these big changes and trends, you might see groups arguing that this is more than just an exercise of discretion or choosing priorities [and] this is more of an abdication of an agency’s core mission and its statutory duties,” Kranz said. “I think it’s going to be interesting to see if groups make those arguments, and if they do, how courts look at them.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/under-trump-epas-enforcement-of-environmental-laws-collapses-report-finds/

The loss triggers remedies, including an injunction preventing additional sales of stolen goods and refunding every customer who bought them. Feldman’s client must also turn over any stolen goods in their remaining inventory and disgorge profits. Other damages may be owed, along with interest. Ars could not immediately reach an attorney for the plaintiffs to discuss the sanctions order or resulting remedies.

Failla emphasized in her order that Feldman appeared to not appreciate “the gravity of the situation,” repeatedly submitting filings with fake citations even after he had been warned that sanctions could be ordered.

That was a choice, Failla said, noting that Feldman’s mistakes were caught early by a lawyer working for another defendant in the case, Joel MacMull, who urged Feldman to promptly notify the court. The whole debacle would have ended in June 2025, MacMull suggested at the hearing.

Rather than take MacMull’s advice, however, Feldman delayed notifying the court, irking the judge. He testified during the heated sanctions hearing that the delay was due to an effort he quietly undertook, working to correct the filing. He supposedly planned to submit those corrections when he alerted the court to the errors.

But Failla noted that he never submitted corrections, insisting instead that Feldman kept her “in the dark.”

“There’s no real reason why you should have kept this from me,” the judge said.

The court learned of the fake citations only after MacMull notified the judge by sharing emails of his attempts to get Feldman to act urgently. Those emails showed Feldman scolding MacMull for unprofessional conduct after MacMull refused to check Feldman’s citations for him, which Failla noted at the hearing was absolutely not MacMull’s responsibility.

Feldman told Failla that he also thought it was unprofessional for MacMull to share their correspondence, but Failla said the emails were “illuminative.”

At the hearing, MacMull asked if the court would allow him to seek payment of his fees, since he believes “there has been a multiplication of proceedings here that would have been entirely unnecessary if Mr. Feldman had done what I asked him to do that Sunday night in June.”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/randomly-quoting-ray-bradbury-did-not-save-lawyer-from-losing-case-over-ai-errors/

A few Senate Democrats introduced a bill called the ‘‘ICE Out of Our Faces Act,” which would ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from using facial recognition technology.

The bill would make it “unlawful for any covered immigration officer to acquire, possess, access, or use in the United States—(1) any biometric surveillance system; or (2) information derived from a biometric surveillance system operated by another entity.” All data collected from such systems in the past would have to be deleted. The proposed ban extends beyond facial recognition to cover other biometric surveillance technologies, such as voice recognition.

The proposed ban would prohibit the federal government from using data from biometric surveillance systems in court cases or investigations. Individuals would have a right to sue the federal government for financial damages after violations, and state attorneys general would be able to bring suits on behalf of residents.

The bill was submitted yesterday by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who held a press conference about the proposal with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). The Senate bill is also cosponsored by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“This is a dangerous moment for America,” Markey said at the press conference, saying that ICE and CBP “have built an arsenal of surveillance technologies that are designed to track and to monitor and to target individual people, both citizens and non-citizens alike. Facial recognition technology sits at the center of a digital dragnet that has been created in our nation.”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/ice-out-of-our-faces-act-would-ban-ice-and-cbp-use-of-facial-recognition/

As Neocities grew, Drake told Ars that much of his focus has been on improving content moderation. He works closely with a full-time dedicated content moderation staffer to quickly take down any problematic sites within 24 hours, he said. That effort includes reviewing reports and proactively screening new sites, with Drake noting that “our name domain provider requires us to take them down within 48 hours.”

Microsoft prohibits things like scraping content that could be considered copyright infringement or automatically generating content using “garbage text” to game the rankings. It also monitors for malicious behavior like phishing, as well as for prompt injection attacks on Bing’s large language model.

It’s unclear what kind of violations Microsoft found ahead of instituting the complete block; however, Drake told Ars that he has yet to identify any content that may have triggered it. He said he would promptly remove any websites flagged by Microsoft, if he could only talk to someone who could share that information.

“Naturally, we still don’t catch 100 percent of the sites with proactive moderation, and occasionally some problematic sites do get missed,” Drake said.

Although Drake is curious to learn more about what triggered the blocks, he told Ars that it’s clear that non-violative sites are still invisible on Bing.

One of the longest-running and most popular Neocities sites, Wired Sound for Wired People, is a perfect example. The bizarre, somewhat creepy anime fanpage is “very popular” and “has a lot of links to it all over the web,” Drake said. Yet if you search for its subdomain, “fauux,” the site no longer appears in Bing search results, as of this writing, while Google reliably spits it out as the top result.

Drake said that he still believes that Bing is blocking content by mistake, but Bing’s automated support tools aren’t making it easy to defend creators who are randomly blocked by one of the world’s biggest search engines.

“We have one of the lowest ratios of crap to legitimate content, human-made content, on the Internet,” Drake said. “And it’s really frustrating to see that all these human beings making really cool sites that people want to go to are just not available on the default Windows search engine.”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/neocities-founder-stuck-in-chatbot-hell-after-bing-blocked-1-5m-sites/

Apple made Lockdown Mode for people at high risk

CART couldn’t get anything from the iPhone. “Because the iPhone was in Lockdown mode, CART could not extract that device,” the government filing said.

The government also submitted a declaration by FBI Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky that said the agency “has paused any further efforts to extract this device because of the Court’s Standstill Order.” The FBI did extract information from the SIM card “with an auto-generated HTML report created by the tool utilized by CART,” but “the data contained in the HTML was limited to the telephone number.”

Apple says that LockDown Mode “helps protect devices against extremely rare and highly sophisticated cyber attacks,” and is “designed for the very few individuals who, because of who they are or what they do, might be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats.”

Introduced in 2022, Lockdown Mode is available for iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It must be enabled separately for each device. To enable it on an iPhone or iPad, a user would open the Settings app, tap Privacy & Security, scroll down and tap Lockdown Mode, and then tap Turn on Lockdown Mode.

The process is similar on Macs. In the System Settings app that can be accessed via the Apple menu, a user would click Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Lockdown Mode, and then click Turn On.

“When Lockdown Mode is enabled, your device won’t function like it typically does,” Apple says. “To reduce the attack surface that potentially could be exploited by highly targeted mercenary spyware, certain apps, websites, and features are strictly limited for security and some experiences might not be available at all.”

Lockdown Mode blocks most types of message attachments, blocks FaceTime calls from people you haven’t contacted in the past 30 days, restricts the kinds of browser technologies that websites can use, limits photo sharing, and imposes other restrictions. Users can exclude specific apps and websites they trust from these restrictions, however.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/fbi-stymied-by-apples-lockdown-mode-after-seizing-journalists-iphone/