• SpaceX has merged with xAI in an all-stock deal that values the combined company at $1.25 trillion.  (CNBC)
  
  In a turnaround from recent nonsense, 80% of that valuation is SpaceX, the rocket and satellite internet company.  80% of the rest is xAI.  And the remainder is X, which is to say, Twitter.
  
  The deal apparently completed yesterday.
  
  This also ties into SpaceX's application to launch a million orbital datacenters.  Solar energy is plentiful and uninterrupted in space, and delusional rioters are few and far between.

• The Trump administration plans to spend $12 billion to establish a national stockpile of critical minerals.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Rare earth elements and the like, for when China decides to shut off the supply again.
  
  
  
• Moltbook, a social network for AI agents to share information, conspire to launch memecoin scams, and test out prompt injection attacks on each other in an attempt to steal their owners' mothers' credit card number, got hacked.  (Wiz)
  
  Well, not so much hacked, as it included the administrator password to its database directly in the public website.
  
  And nothing of value was lost.  Except that they patched it and it's back up.
  
  
  
• Intel has announced its Xeon 600 workstation processors, based on the Granite Rapids architecture from 2024.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Not surprising that Intel only compares performance with its own chips and not with competitors.
  
  The processors start at $499 for 12 cores and 80 PCIe 5.0 lanes, and go up to $7699 for 86 cores and 128 PCIe lanes.
  
  They support up to 4TB of RAM, theoretically, but that would set you back $112,000 at current prices.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, Raspberry Pi prices have gone up.  (Liliputing)
  
  The only models unaffected are the 1GB Pi 4 and Pi 5.  The 16GB Pi 5 increased by more than 70%, from $120 to $205.
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Robin Munn at Tuesday, February 03 2026 07:50 PM (s827l)

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