Robinhood removed GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, and Nokia from its trading platform on Thursday, leaving investors unable to buy the highly volatile stocks. From a report: The discount brokerage informed clients they can close out positions in the affected stocks but cannot purchase additional shares, according to numerous screenshots shared on Twitter. The move came before markets opened on Thursday. The stocks that were removed have all surged in recent trading sessions as day-traders united in Reddit forums like WallStreetBets frenetically buy the names to push their share prices higher. The phenomenon has already fueled massive losses for numerous hedge funds and caught the attention of regulators and the White House. Joshua Topolsky, a technology reporter and commentator, said: "Literally Robinhood just told the world that you can play until someone bigger than you doesn't like the game anymore. Brand suicide."

Thelasko shares a report from CNET: Navistar, the company formerly known as International Harvester, announced on Wednesday that it's partnering with GM and OneH2 for a "complete solution for customer implementation of a zero-emission long-haul system," which is a fancy way of saying an entire ecosystem devoted to electric trucking. The group will work together on the trucks themselves, in addition to the ancillary stuff required to keep them operating.

It starts with the trucks, which in this case will be International RH Series hydrogen fuel-cell electric trucks. Each RH Series semi will get two GM Hydrotec fuel cell power cubes, each of which contains more than 300 hydrogen fuel cells in addition to the management systems that run the whole show. Navistar plans to have these trucks ready for commercial purchase in the 2024 model year, with test models operating in a pilot phase by the end of 2022. The hope is that these trucks will pack a range of 500 miles or more with a fueling time of less than 15 minutes and Navistar hopes that its propulsion system will sport a per-mile cost similar to diesel.

When it comes to the fuel itself, that's where OneH2 comes into play. Navistar will rely on the company for the production, storage and safe delivery of the compressed hydrogen required to power the trucks. To deepen the partnership, Navistar announced that it will purchase a minority stake in OneH2, as well. OneH2 doesn't just deal in gas-station-style fill up locations; the company has a mobile fueling solution, too, which should help in the early stages as the US' hydrogen fuel infrastructure is still very much in its infancy. [...] Navistar has chosen J.B. Hunt Transport to be in charge of its vehicles during the pilot program. J.B. Hunt, a name you've likely seen on the highway, will put Navistar's GM-powered International models on dedicated routes to see how these vehicles perform in place of traditional diesel-powered semi trucks.

Astronomers have used a combination of telescopes to reveal a system consisting of six exoplanets, five of which are locked in a rare rhythm around their central star. "The researchers believe the system could provide important clues about how planets, including those in the Solar System, form and evolve," reports Phys.Org. From the report: The first time the team observed TOI-178, a star some 200 light-years away in the constellation of Sculptor, they thought they had spotted two planets going around it in the same orbit. However, a closer look revealed something entirely different. "Through further observations we realised that there were not two planets orbiting the star at roughly the same distance from it, but rather multiple planets in a very special configuration," says Adrien Leleu from the Universite de Geneve and the University of Bern, Switzerland, who led a new study of the system published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The new research has revealed that the system boasts six exoplanets and that all but the one closest to the star are locked in a rhythmic dance as they move in their orbits. In other words, they are in resonance. This means that there are patterns that repeat themselves as the planets go around the star, with some planets aligning every few orbits. A similar resonance is observed in the orbits of three of Jupiter's moons: Io, Europa and Ganymede. Io, the closest of the three to Jupiter, completes four full orbits around Jupiter for every orbit that Ganymede, the furthest away, makes, and two full orbits for every orbit Europa makes.

The five outer exoplanets of the TOI-178 system follow a much more complex chain of resonance, one of the longest yet discovered in a system of planets. While the three Jupiter moons are in a 4:2:1 resonance, the five outer planets in the TOI-178 system follow a 18:9:6:4:3 chain: while the second planet from the star (the first in the resonance chain) completes 18 orbits, the third planet from the star (second in the chain) completes 9 orbits, and so on. In fact, the scientists initially only found five planets in the system, but by following this resonant rhythm they calculated where in its orbit an additional planet would be when they next had a window to observe the system.

More than just an orbital curiosity, this dance of resonant planets provides clues about the system's past. "The orbits in this system are very well ordered, which tells us that this system has evolved quite gently since its birth," explains co-author Yann Alibert from the University of Bern. If the system had been significantly disturbed earlier in its life, for example by a giant impact, this fragile configuration of orbits would not have survived.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: New coronavirus variants seem to be cropping up everywhere. There's one from the U.K., which is more contagious and already circulating in the United States. There's one from South Africa, which is forcing Moderna and Pfizer to reformulate their COVID-19 vaccines and create "booster" shots, just to make sure the vaccines maintain their efficacies. But for some scientists, the most worrying variant might be the newest one. A variant called P.1, which emerged in early December in Manaus, Brazil, and by mid-January had already caused a massive resurgence in cases across the city of 2 million people. [...] The concern with P.1 is twofold: scientists don't understand why the variant has spread so explosively in Brazil, and the variant carries a particularly dangerous set of mutations.

While the variant from the U.K. took about three months to dominate the outbreak in England, P.1 took only about a month to dominate the outbreak in Manaus. In addition, Manaus had already been hit extremely hard by the virus back in April. One study estimated that the population should have reached herd immunity and the virus shouldn't be able to spread easily in the community. So why would the city see an even bigger surge 10 months later? Could P.1 be evading the antibodies made against the previous version of the virus, making reinfections easier? Could it just be significantly more contagious? Could both be true? "While we don't *know* exactly why this variant has been so apparently successful in Brazil, none of the explanations on the table are good," epidemiologist Bill Hanage, at Harvard University, wrote on Twitter.

Reinfections are a serious concern for several reasons. First off, like the variant from South Africa, P.1 carries a cluster of mutations along the surface of the virus where antibodies -- especially the potent antibodies -- like to bind. "They are kind of the major targets of the immune system," says virologist Penny Moore at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. "So when we see a whole lot of mutations in [those surfaces], it raises the possibility that the mutations might be conferring immune escape." That is, the mutations are helping the virus evade antibodies or escape recognition by them. In essence, the mutations are providing the virus with a type of invisibility cloak. And thus, now we have a game of "cat and mouse," says virologist Ravi Gupta, between the virus and the vaccine. The virus finds ways around the vaccine (and our immune system), says Gupta, and so the manufacturers have to reformulate the vaccines (or else we run the risk of getting infected twice).

International law enforcement agencies said on Wednesday they had dismantled a criminal hacking scheme used to steal billions of dollars from businesses and private citizens worldwide. Reuters reports: Police in six European countries, as well as Canada and the United States, completed a joint operation to take control of Internet servers used to run and control a malware network known as "Emotet," authorities said in a statement. "Emotet is currently seen as the most dangerous malware globally," Germany's BKA federal police agency said in a statement. "The smashing of the Emotet infrastructure is a significant blow against international organized Internet crime."

German police said infections with Emotet had caused at least 14.5 million euros ($17.56 million) of damage in their country. Globally, Emotet-linked damages cost about $2.5 billion, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine's General Prosecutor said police had carried out raids in the eastern city of Kharkiv to seize computers used by the hackers. Authorities released photos showing piles of bank cards, cash and a room festooned with tangled computer equipment, but did not say if any arrests were made.

An anonymous reader writes: AT&T lost 617,000 customers from DirecTV and its other TV businesses in the final quarter of 2020, capping a year in which it lost nearly 3 million customers in the category, AT&T reported today. AT&T today also informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that it has taken "noncash impairment charges of $15.5 billion" related to its ongoing DirecTV debacle. AT&T said the $15.5 billion charges reflect "changes in our management strategy and our evaluation of the domestic video business... including our decision to operate our video business separately from our broadband and legacy telephony operations." This operational decision "required us to identify a separate Video reporting unit and to assess both the recoverability of its long-lived assets and any assigned goodwill for impairment," AT&T said.

AT&T said it also logged "charges of approximately $780 million from the impairment of production and other content inventory at WarnerMedia, with $520 million resulting from the continued shutdown of theaters during the pandemic and the hybrid distribution model for our 2021 film slate." The charges were added to AT&T's Q4 expenses. As a result, AT&T reported a $13.9 billion net loss in the quarter, compared to a net profit of $2.4 billion a year ago. Q4 revenue was $45.7 billion, down from $46.8 billion year over year. The Q4 net loss swung AT&T to a full-year net loss of $5.4 billion.

AmiMoJo shares a report from Live Science: In his inaugural address last week, President Joe Biden called for unity. But how can Americans come together, given what seems to be growing political contention and deep divides? New research suggests the answer can be found in stories, not statistics. People respect those they disagree with more when their position comes from a place of personal experience, not facts and figures, finds a new series of experiments published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is especially true when the personal stories are rooted in experiences of harm or vulnerability.

"In moral disagreements, experiences seem truer than facts," said Kurt Gray, a psychologist and director of the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding at the University of North Carolina. For the new research, Gray and his colleagues focused on how facts versus experiences affected people's perceptions of their opponent's rationality and their respect for that opponent. Over 15 separate experiments, they found that, although people think they respect opponents who present facts, they actually have more respect for opponents who share personal stories.

Yesterday, Clash announced it was acquiring Byte, a short-form video app launched by Vine cofounder Dom Hofmann. The announcement comes "at a time when TikTok itself now appears to be here to stay," reports CNN. From the report: Dubsmash, another TikTok competitor with a similar algorithmic feed serving up entertaining videos, was acquired last month by Reddit. Meanwhile, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, which launched a TikTok clone called Reels days after then President Donald Trump said he would ban TikTok, recently admitted "TikTok is ahead." He also hinted at a need for Instagram to simplify or consolidate its video product offerings.

Clash was one of the many competitors that seemed poised to benefit from TikTok's troubles. Like TikTok, Clash lets users upload short videos set to music and offers an algorithmic feed serving up content it thinks you'd like. Byte offers a similar experience, except with hidden follower counts and likes. [...] The Byte app will "continue to have the same great in-app experience" Clash said, but it will add new ways to monetize and other features. Clash said it's working on ways for its creators to earn money directly on the platform, including from viral videos and top fans giving payments on a regular basis, which it hopes will help it stand out in a crowded market.

According to The Verge, Discord has banned the r/WallStreetBets server for allowing "hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings." It did not ban the server for financial fraud. We have also learned that Reddit's WallStreetBets subreddit has been set to private. Here is Discord's full statement: The server has been on our Trust & Safety team's radar for some time due to occasional content that violates our Community Guidelines, including hate speech, glorifying violence, and spreading misinformation. Over the past few months, we have issued multiple warnings to the server admin.

Today, we decided to remove the server and its owner from Discord for continuing to allow hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings.

To be clear, we did not ban this server due to financial fraud related to GameStop or other stocks. Discord welcomes a broad variety of personal finance discussions, from investment clubs and day traders to college students and professional financial advisors. We are monitoring this situation and in the event there are allegations of illegal activities, we will cooperate with authorities as appropriate. UPDATE: Reddit says the subreddit's moderators were the ones to make it private. According to The Verge's Dieter Bohn, the mods now say that "We are unable to ensure Reddit's content policy and the WSB rules are enforceable without a technology platform that can support automation of this enforcement. WSB will be back."

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Stories to help you get caught up:
Former SEC Chairman Calls For an Agency Investigation Into Online Stock Trading Platforms
AMC Spikes 260% as Day Traders Ignite Shorted Stocks like GameStop, BlackBerry, and Bed Bath & Beyond
GameStop Jumps After Hours As Elon Musk Tweets Out Reddit Board That's Hyping Stock
GameStop Stock Jumps To New Record
Gaming the System: How GameStop Stock Surged 1,500% In Nine Months

Apple yesterday released a new version of iCloud for Windows 10, and based on multiple reports and the update's release notes, it appears Apple is introducing an iCloud Passwords extension designed for Chrome, which will allow "iCloud" Keychain passwords to be used on Windows machines. MacRumors reports: As noted by The 8-Bit and a few other sources, the update adds support for an "iCloud" Passwords Chrome extension." After installing version 12 of "iCloud" for Windows, there's a new "Passwords" section in the app with an "iCloud" Keychain logo. When attempting to use the feature, though, the "iCloud" app prompts users to download a Chrome extension, but the extension is broken and clicking to install leads to a broken web page.

This is likely a bug that will be addressed in the near future, and it sounds like when it is functional, Windows users will be able to access their "iCloud" Keychain passwords on their Windows machines through the Chrome browser. It's not clear if Apple will offer this extension for Mac machines in the future as well, and it appears to be limited to Windows at this time.

During its fourth-quarter earnings announcement, Tesla unveiled the long-rumored refresh for its Model S sedan. CNET reports: On the outside, the Model S has a new front bumper with slightly different intakes, a tweaked rear diffuser and new 19- and 21-inch wheel designs. All of the exterior trim is now finished in black to match the Model Y, but the paint color palette remains the same, with white being the only no-cost option. The interior is the star of the show, though. It's been completely redesigned, marking the Model S' first major update since its debut in 2012. There's a large 17-inch central screen much like that of the Model 3 and Model Y, but the S retains a 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster in front of the driver, as well. Tesla says the new center screen is basically a gaming computer with 10 teraflops of processing power, and the released images show it running the popular fantasy RPG game Witcher 3.

Most radical is the new steering wheel. It isn't exactly a wheel anymore, instead looking like a yoke right out of Star Wars or Knight Rider. There are no stalks, either, meaning the turn signals, lights and other typical features are now controlled by touch buttons on the "wheel." There's more carbon fiber or wood trim covering parts of the dashboard and door panels, and the door cards and center console have been redesigned for more storage space and better looks. The rear seats look more sculpted and have a new fold-down armrest with cupholders. Rear-seat passengers get an 8-inch screen that offers the same infotainment and gaming functions as the main screen, and it even works with wireless gaming controllers. The Model S has three-zone climate control, a 22-speaker audio system, heated seats all around (and ventilated front seats), ambient lighting and a glass roof as standard. White, black and beige remain the only interior color options. The maxed-out "Plaid Plus" model, which comes in at $139,990, features over 1,100 hp and will hit 60 mph in under 2 seconds. "It also boats a sub-9-second quarter-mile time, a top speed of 200 mph and a range of over 520 miles," reports CNET.

An anonymous reader writes: GitLab, the increasingly popular DevOps platform, today announced a major update to its subscription model. The company is doing away with its $4/month Bronze/Starter package. Current users will be able to renew one more time at the existing price or move to a higher tier (and receive a significant discount for the first three years after they do so). The company's free tier, it is worth noting, is not going away and GitLab argues that it includes "89% of the features in Bronze/Starter."

To ease the pain, Bronze users will be able to renew their existing subscription before January 26, 2022 for an additional year at the existing price. They can also opt to move to the Premium tier at a discounted price for the next three years, starting at $6/user/month in Year 1, but that price then goes up to $9/user/month and $15/user/month in Year 2 and 3 respectively. For new users, the Bronze package is no longer available, starting now. With this change, GitLab now offers three tiers: Free, Premium and Ultimate (it's also doing away with the "Silver/Premium" and "Gold/Ultimate" naming). "The Bronze tier, we were selling at a loss," GitLab founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij told TechCrunch. "We were just losing money every time we sold it -- just on hosting and support. To be a sustainable business, this was a move we had to make. It's a big transition for our customers but we want to make sure we're a sustainable company and we can keep investing."

The city of Miami on Wednesday uploaded a copy of the Bitcoin white paper to its municipal website, joining a growing chorus of governments and companies now hosting bitcoin's original blueprint. From a report: Mayor Francis Suarez emphasized his commitment to "turn Miami into a hub for crypto innovation" in his tweet announcing the upload. He's been pumping the U.S. city's potential as a landing ground for California tech expats for weeks on social media. Miami is the "first municipal government to host Satoshi's white paper," Suarez asserted. Also see: Twitter thread on who else is participating.

Some major brokerage houses have begun to respond to a frenetic surge in the price of shares of companies that has been attributed to rabid buying by individual investors on social-media platforms. From a report: On Wednesday, TD Ameritrade said it was restricting trading for GameStop and AMC Entertainment Holdings, as well as other names, amid a triple-digit percentage surge in the price of those companies in recent days. "In the interest of mitigating risk for our company and clients, we have put in place several restrictions on some transactions in $GME, $AMC and other securities," a spokeswoman for TD Ameritrade told MarketWatch, referring to the ticker symbols of the companies. "We made these decisions out of an abundance of caution amid unprecedented market conditions and other factors," she said. Charles Schwab, which bought TD Ameritrade but is still operating as an independent retail brokerage platform, said that it has tightened margin requirements in some of those trading names, including GameStop. A Schwab spokeswoman said that the platform changed its margin requirements, or how much an investor can borrow, on Jan. 13 and said it has placed "restrictions in place on certain transactions in GME and other securities."