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2026-02-03 07:42:31

Anime fans won't be getting any respite from the streaming service price hikes that now feel inevitable on every platform every couple of years. Crunchyroll announced today that it will be increasing the monthly costs for all its plans by $2. That means the Fan tier will now run you $10 a month, the Mega Fan Tier is $14 a month and the Ultimate Fan Tier is $18 a month. 

The platform introduced its Mega Fan and Ultimate Fan options in 2020, with both at long last giving viewers an option to watch shows offline. The silver lining in today's price changes is that the Fan members are getting the same offline viewing option, although it's limited to one device. Crunchyroll is further enticing the people who might now be more interested in the Fan level by offering a discount on the annual plan for that tier; you can get a year's access for a limited time for $67.

2026-02-03 07:03:24

Moltbook bills itself as a social network for AI agents. That's a wacky enough concept in the first place, but the site apparently exposed the credentials for thousands of its human users. The flaw was discovered by cybersecurity firm Wiz, and its team assisted Moltbook with addressing the vulnerability.

The issue appears to be the result of the entire Reddit-style forum being vibe-coded; Moltbook's human founder posted a few days ago on X that he "didn't write one line of code" for the platform and instead directed an AI assistant to create the whole setup. 

According to the blog post from Wiz analyzing the issue, Moltbook had a vulnerability that allowed for "1.5 million API authentication tokens, 35,000 email addresses and private messages between agents" to be fully read and accessed. Wiz also found that the vulnerability could let unauthenticated human users edit live Moltbook posts. In other words, there is no way to verify whether a Moltbook post was authored by an AI agent or a human user posing as one. "The revolutionary AI social network was largely humans operating fleets of bots," the company's analysis concluded. 

So ends another cautionary tale reminding us that just because AI can do a task doesn’t mean it'll do it correctly.

2026-02-03 06:16:17

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has acquired Musk’s xAI, the companies announced. The merger will “form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform,” Musk wrote in an update.

The AI company that right now is best known for its CSAM-generating chatbot might seem like a strange fit for a rocket company. But SpaceX is key to Musk’s latest scheme to build AI data centers in space. In his update, Musk wrote that “global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions” and that moving the resource-intensive operations to space is “the only logical solution.” SpaceX just days ago filed an application with the FCC to create an “orbital data center” by launching a million new satellites.

Musk also claimed that, eventually, space-based data centers will enable other advancements in space travel. “The capabilities we unlock by making space-based data centers a reality will fund and enable self-growing bases on the Moon, an entire civilization on Mars and ultimately expansion to the Universe.” Notably, it’s not the first time Musk has made lofty claims about Mars. He predicted in 2017 that SpaceX would send crewed missions to Mars by 2024.

This also isn’t the first time Musk has acquired one of his own companies. He merged xAI and X last year, which means SpaceX now owns the social network Musk bought in 2022. And he recently announced that Tesla was investing $2 billion into xAI. SpaceX is planning to go public later this year in an initial public offering (IPO) that could value the company at more than $1 trillion, according to Bloomberg, which notes that SpaceX has also “discussed a possible merger with Tesla.”

2026-02-03 06:09:13

Ubisoft continues to raise eyebrows around how it is treating employees as it attempts a business overhaul. David Michaud-Cromp, a level design team lead at Ubisoft Montreal, said last week that he was suspended for three days without pay after voicing opposition to the company's return to office mandate. Today, Michaud-Cromp posted on LinkedIn that he has been fired. "I was terminated by Ubisoft, effective immediately," he wrote. "This was not my decision."

A spokesperson for Ubisoft gave Kotaku the following statement regarding Michaud-Cromp's dismissal: "Sharing feedback or opinions respectfully does not lead to a dismissal. We have a clear Code of Conduct that outlines our shared expectations for working together safely and respectfully, which employees review and sign each year. When that is breached, our established procedures apply, including an escalation of measures depending on the nature, severity, and repetition of the breach." We've reached out to the company for additional confirmation and comment. 

This is the latest in a sequence of bad press Ubisoft has faced regarding its workforce. Shortly after many employees at Ubisoft Halifax unionized, the parent company shut down the studio. In announcing the closure, Ubisoft said the move was part of a broader cost-cutting endeavor across its operations; it shut down a support studio and cut more jobs later in January, with even more layoffs proposed. Most recently, unions representing other Ubisoft workers called for a three-day strike in response to the "penny-pinching and worsening our working conditions" they alleged of the company's management.

All these issues could all be coincidental timing. But if so, they're coincidences that don't reflect favorably on Ubisoft.

2026-02-03 04:53:08

France may take additional steps to prevent minors from accessing social media platforms. As its government advances a proposed ban on social media use for anyone under age 15, some leaders are already looking to add further restrictions. During an appearance on public broadcast service Franceinfo, Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Affairs Anne Le Hénanff said VPNs might be the next target. 

"If [this legislation] allows us to protect a very large majority of children, we will continue. And VPNs are the next topic on my list," she said.

A virtual private network would potentially allow French citizens younger than 15 to circumnavigate the social media ban. We've already seen VPN's experience a popularity spike in the UK last year after similar laws were passed over age-gating content. However, a VPN also offers benefits for online privacy, and introducing age verification requirements where your personal data must be submitted negates a large part of these services' appeal. 

The French social media ban is still a work in progress. France's National Assembly voted in favor of the restrictions last week with a result of 116-23, moving it ahead for discussion in the country's Senate. While a single comment doesn't mean that France will in fact ban VPNs for any demographic, it does point to the direction some of the country's leaders want to take. Critics responded to Le Hénanff's statements with worry that these attempts at protective measures were veering into an authoritarian direction. 

The actions in France echo several other legislative pushes around the world aimed at reducing children and teens' access to social media and other potentially sensitive content online. The US had seen 25 state-level laws for age verification introduced in the past two years, which has created a new set of concerns around users' privacy and personal data, particularly when there has been no attempt to standardize how that information will be collected or protected. When data breaches at large corporations are already all too common, it's hard to trust that the individual sites and services that suddenly need to build an age verification process won't be an easy target for hacks.

2026-02-03 04:31:32

Like practically every other tech company under the sun, Mozilla has been jamming generative AI features into its products. The organization has now acknowledged that not everyone wants things like plagiarism machines chatbots in the Firefox sidebar, so it’s giving you the option to turn off all of that. 

On February 24 (or earlier in Firefox Nightly builds), Mozilla will roll out Firefox 148, which will include an AI controls section in the desktop browser settings. From here, you’ll be able to block current and future generative AI features, or only enable select tools. 

At the jump, you’ll have the option to disable (or enable) chatbots in the sidebar, automated translations and alt text generation for PDFs. You’ll also be able to nix a tool called AI-enhanced tab grouping (which offers suggestions of related tabs and group names), as well as webpage previews that display “key points" before you actually click on a link. If you’d prefer to get rid of all of these — and for Firefox to not bother you with pop-ups and notifications about current and upcoming AI features — just make sure the "Block AI enhancements" toggle is on. 

Perhaps Mozilla has come to realize that, rather than having AI cruft soaking up resources and causing apps to bloat, what many people actually want is a fast, secure and streamlined web browser. At the very least, giving users a way to opt out of features they don’t want is a positive step. Now then, Google, about AI Overviews...