Hackaday’s February 8, 2026 links column is a seven-story technology roundup, not a deep dive on one subject. It moves from the end of Brookhaven’s RHIC collider and Waymo’s human remote assistance to Bitcoin’s then-current price swings, a Windows app deprecation, a Curiosity rover finding, satellite-orbit arithmetic, and an alternative way to browse Wikipedia.
What this Hackaday edition covers
Written by Tom Nardi, the February 8, 2026 column pairs brief context with commentary across particle physics, autonomous vehicles, cryptocurrency, Windows software, Mars science, orbital mechanics, and web browsing. The items are independent links rather than competing products or a single argument.
RHIC shuts down as Brookhaven plans the EIC
The roundup reports that Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) shut down on February 6, 2026, after 25 years of operation. Its planned successor, the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), is intended to use the same tunnel and reuse much of RHIC’s hardware, with activation planned for the mid-2030s. That is a long-term facility transition: the EIC was not operating in the column’s account.
Waymo’s remote assistance is not remote driving
The column summarizes testimony by Waymo chief safety officer Dr. Mauricio Peña at a U.S. Senate hearing. When a vehicle encounters a situation its onboard systems cannot resolve, it can contact a human “remote assistance operator.” Hackaday’s account says those operators do not literally drive the vehicle remotely.
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The policy question raised in the roundup is how much influence a human helper has over a vehicle’s decisions and how transparently that role is explained. Senator Ed Markey raised concerns about transparency and the influence of overseas operators. The column summarizes the testimony; it does not establish how often assistance is requested or provide a transcript-level account of operator authority.
Bitcoin’s February 2026 price move was a snapshot, not an explanation
Summarizing CNN’s David Goldman, the roundup says Bitcoin had fallen below US$63,000 for the first time in more than a year and a half, then rebounded to just under US$71,000 “as of today” in the column’s publication-time account. Those are historical figures from February 2026, not current prices.
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Goldman’s interpretation, as summarized by Hackaday, connected the move with global uncertainty, improving AI, and Bitcoin returning toward levels before the 2024 U.S. election after promised policy changes had not materialized. That is an attributed reading of market events, not proof that any one factor caused the price change.
Windows 3D Viewer’s deprecation affects new downloads
Hackaday reports that Microsoft deprecated its Windows-integrated 3D Viewer in February 2026. Installed copies would remain usable, but Microsoft would no longer officially offer the app for download; the roundup also notes a web-based alternative Microsoft recommended.
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Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →This describes the app’s status at the time of the column. Check Microsoft’s current support information before relying on a download route or alternative, since software availability can change.
Curiosity’s organic compounds are not evidence of life
The roundup summarizes a NASA report on organic compounds detected by the Curiosity rover. Its careful point is that the non-biological processes studied could not account for all of the compounds. That narrows the explanations considered; it does not establish that life, past or present, produced them.
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Some compounds could have geological or meteoritic origins, and scientists do not fully understand how long such compounds can persist under Martian conditions. The result is therefore a constrained finding about candidate explanations, not a life-detection announcement.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.A satellite-per-volume estimate depends on an unrealistic distribution
Mathematician John Cook’s estimate, as reported in the column, starts with roughly 12,500 low-Earth-orbit satellites and divides the orbital volume among them, yielding about 100,000,000 km³ per satellite. The calculation assumes satellites are evenly distributed. In reality, they are clustered, so the figure is an illustrative average—not a measure of collision probability or a literal amount of usable personal space around each spacecraft.
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Xikipedia turns Simple English Wikipedia into a feed
Xikipedia is an open-source project that presents Simple English Wikipedia articles in an endless feed and suggests reading based on a user’s interests. Hackaday’s angle is that this offers a more intellectually stimulating alternative to ordinary scrolling. It is one small web-browsing project among the column’s varied links, not a product comparison or recommendation to buy anything.
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