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U.S. President Donald Trump said Palestinians would not have the right of return to the Gaza Strip under his proposal to redevelop the enclave, according to excerpts from a Fox News interview. In a transcript released on Monday, Trump added that he thought he could make a deal with Jordan and Egypt to take the displaced Palestinians, saying the U.S. gives the two countries “billions and billions of dollars a year.” Asked if Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza, Trump told Fox: “No, they wouldn’t because they’re going to have much better housing,” according an excerpt Fox News broadcast on Monday. “I’m talking about building a permanent place for them,” he said, adding it would take years for Gaza to be habitable again. In a shock announcement last week, Trump proposed resettling Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians. His remarks to Fox were the first time he said they would have no right of return. Residents of Gaza have broadly rejected any suggestion of moving from the strip, as has the Palestinian Authority and the militant group Hamas that administers Gaza. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Trump’s statement that Palestinians would not be able to return to Gaza was “irresponsible.” “We affirm that such plans are capable of igniting the region,” he told Reuters on Monday. When Trump introduced his proposals last week, including one for the U.S. to take over Gaza, he drew rebukes from allies throughout the world. Palestinians and regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia rejected the proposal outright. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met Trump last week, praised the proposal to resettle Palestinians. He said: “They can leave, they can then come back, they can relocate and come back. But you have to rebuild Gaza.” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will depart later this week for his first visit to the Middle East in the job, said Palestinians would have to “live somewhere else in the interim” while strip was rebuilt. Rubio met Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty in Washington on Monday for talks on regional stability, Egypt’s foreign ministry said on X, as Cairo fears Palestinians could be forced across Egypt’s border with Gaza. In portions of the interview broadcast on Sunday, Trump reiterated his plan to buy and own Gaza. In the latest excerpt released on Monday, Trump said between two and six communities could be built for the Palestinians “a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is.” “I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent,” he told Fox. Susan Heavey, Simon Lewis, and Nidal Al-Mughrabi, Reuters
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The U.S. military will no longer allow transgender individuals to join the military and will stop performing or facilitating procedures associated with gender transition for service members, according to a memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth filed in court on Monday. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month that took aim at transgender troops in a personal wayat one point saying that a man identifying as a woman was “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” “Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused,” Hegseth said in a memo dated Feb. 7 and filed on Monday with the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. “All unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for Service members are paused,” he said. Hegseth said individuals with gender dysphoria already in the military would be “treated with dignity and respect,” and the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness would provide additional details on what this would mean. The military has about 1.3 million active-duty personnel, according to Department of Defense data. While transgender rights advocates say there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members, officials say the number is in the low thousands. A poll from Gallup published on Monday said 58% of Americans favored allowing openly transgender individuals serving in the military, but the support had declined from 71% in 2019. Last week, a U.S. judge asked lawyers for Trump’s administration to ensure that six military members who sued to stop the executive order targeting transgender troops are not removed from service before further court proceedings are held. Civil rights organizations had filed for a temporary restraining order after a service member alleged that she was told she must either be classified as a man or be separated from the military. Miriam Perelson, a 28-year-old female transgender service member based at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, had said she was required to leave the sleeping area for female troops, given a cot in an empty classroom and not allowed to use the female restrooms. Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart, Reuters
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“Insane project idea: all of wikipedia on a single, scrollable page, Patina Systems founder Tyler Angert posted on X earlier this month. “Even better, an infinitely scrolling Wikipedia page based on whatever you are interested in next?” replied Bloomberg Beta VC James Cham. WikiTok, added Angert. insane project idea: all of wikipedia on a single, scrollable page— Tyler Angert (@tylerangert) February 3, 2025 New York-based app developer Isaac Gemal stumbled across the discussion the following evening. Within two hours, WikiTok was live. If you’re the type to instinctively pull up Wikipedia to fact-check anything and everything, this app is made for you. WikiTok users can swipe through an endless stream of Wikipedia article stubs, discovering random facts and interesting information along the way. Damn this is really cool, much better for the brain, one X user posted. The rabbit hole we didn’t know we needed. knowledge discovery powered by attention span instead of search terms. finally, a productive way to waste time, another added. Free from invasive tracking and endless notifications, this app offers the closest thing to guilt-free scrolling. Instead of feeding you content based on an algorithm, it delivers a truly random selection of Wikipedia articles, pulled straight from the Wikipedia API and displayed in a TikTok-style interface. Each entry appears with an image from the corresponding articleand if something catches your interest, a simple tap on “Read More” opens the full Wikipedia page in your browser. Gemal made the code for WikiTok available on GitHub, allowing anyone to modify or contribute to the project. Currently, the web app supports article previews, sharing capabilities, and 14 languages across both desktop and mobile browsers. As the community grows, new features are expected to roll in as contributors get involved. The app is currently algorithm-free and Gemal plans to keep it that way. “I have had plenty of people message me and even make issues on my GitHub asking for some insane crazy WikiTok algorithm,” Gemal told Ars Technica. “And I had to put my foot down and say something along the lines that we’re already ruled by ruthless, opaque algorithms in our everyday life; why can’t we just have one little corner in the world without them?” One little corner, in other words, without doomscrolling.
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Last month, Elon Musks social media platform X announced it was launching a digital wallet service. Users would be able to transfer money from their bank accounts to a wallet on X, bringing the platform one step closer to its much-promised Everything App destiny. The announcement was met on Bluesky and X with a torrent of jokes on a similar theme: the wallet inspector. Congrats to Elon on his long-awaited move into the wallet inspector business, wrote Edward Niedermeyer, author of a book on Tesla. And that was before Musks Department of Government Efficiency started poking around inside the national treasury. Its early still, but the wallet inspector is already the frontrunner for the defining meme of 2025. It comes from a 1993 Simpsons episode called Homer Goes to College, written by Conan OBrien. In the pivotal scene, Homer has just gotten a trio of nerds expelled from their university, and he feels remorseful about it. No sooner does one of the geeks assure him they can take care of themselves, though, then they are confronted by the town thief, who introduces himself as the wallet inspector, and holds out his hand in solicitation. The group doesnt hesitate for a second, leaving the thief stunned that his dumb plan succeeded. Its funny to contemplate a thief lazy enough to give the wallet inspector gambit a go. Its also funny to imagine a squad of marks so sheltered and credulous, they believe this is standard procedure. And it may be funniest of all to think about a third party like Homer observing this exchange and, in the scenes final beat, despairing: Thats not the wallet inspector. That the same versatile term can be deployed to evoke three separate sets of behaviors may be why it already seeped into cultural vernacular years ago. But the convergence of so much openly shady behavior and corresponding gullibility in recent months has made the wallet inspector especially relevant in 2025. Its an ideal flourish for a moment when the mere suggestion of legitimacy, and a lack of shame, can take you seemingly anywhere. The day-to-day experience of life in 2025when our institutions are crumbling, the barbarians are no longer even at the gates but within them, and no wretched outcome seems off the tableis pushing those with the capacity to take it all in toward a mindset of total distrust. Anyone steeped in that worldview can only look upon their neighbors who still have faith in anythinglaws, public safety, basic decencyas grade-A suckers. When a legal scholar thinks the constitution is inherently inviolable, even after daily evidence of Musk and his minions openly flouting it, they are ready for the wallet inspector. When a Republican Senator who lived through the past decade is still surprised Donald Trump did not stick to his word, its inspection time. And when DraftKings offers its gambling-addled user base a premium subscription tier with increased odds, that wallet is gone. People lob plenty of inspection allegations at the saps of the tech realmthose lured in to recent memecoin rug pulls by the Hawk Tuah Girl or the president, for instance, along with anyone who ever invested in NFTs. They use the meme to describe the U.S. government handing over untold billions to AI companies, based on the adorable belief that a Chinese company could never in a million years undercut themand they deploy it to shrug at everyone fooled by all the visual slop coming down the pike in the AI boom. And there was only one way to frame it when one of Xs lesser-known advertisers turned out to be, fittingly enough, a literal wallet inspection operation. All the wallet inspector talk seemed to hit a crescendo when X announced its digital wallet service; then, Musks team obtained access to the U.S. Treasury. The DOGE crew reportedly now has at their inexperienced fingertips data on Social Security numbers and banking information. They are effectively inspecting Americas walletand Americas top officials are just handing it over. The wallet inspector meme makes for a devastating way to describe anyone too trusting of plainly false assurances, the people making those assurances, and the Homer-like observers who dont quite seem to understand what is happening, much less mount any meaningful opposition. Its the rhetorical embodiment of a free-fall era where so many people in positions of authority seem to be openly running scams, and the people meant to protect evryone else are either also running scams or are getting scammed themselves. Its wallet inspectors all the way down.
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E-Commerce
T-Mobile has launched a wide-scale beta satellite-to-cell service using SpaceX’s Starlink, aimed at extending service to remote areas or “dead zones” that cell towers can’t reach. The satellite-messaging service will be free to use until July, even if you arent a T-Mobile customer (that means you, Verizon and AT&T users). Starlink, a satellite internet service that provides high-speed broadband internet to rural areas, is owned by SpaceX CEO and Trump adviser Elon Musk. The wireless carrier made the announcement Sunday with a big ad during the first quarter of the Super Bowl. While it’s free until July for all, after that, only T-Mobile’s customers can add the plan for $15 a month; those with T-Mobile’s premium Go5G Next plan will get it at no extra cost. T-Mobile Starlink uses satellites orbiting the Earth at more than 200 miles an hour to deliver cell phone signals creating text messages to and from locations that traditional cell towers cant reach, known as “dead zones.” In the future, users will also be able to send images, use data, and make voice calls. Its a massive technical achievement and an absolute game changer for ALL wireless users, T-Mobile president and CEO Mike Sievert said in a statement. Were still in the early daysI dont want to overhype the experience during a beta testbut were officially putting no bars on notice. Dead zones, your days are numbered at the Un-carrier. How does Starlink satellite texting work? “If you can see the sky, youre connected with T-Mobile. Its that simple, Mike Katz, T-Mobile’s president of marketing, strategy, and products, told Fast Company. When a cell phone is out of cell tower range, the phone automatically connects to the T-Mobile Starlink. The technology works on “most smartphones from the last four years,” including iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones, and most operating systemshowever, the iPhone’s latest operating software, iOS 18.3, did not add Starlink to the handset (it merely added SAT as an onscreen option instead of LTE or 5G, according to Forbes). T-Mobile Starlink also broadcasts Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) nationwide to anyone in range of the signal and with a compatible devicewhich could be a literal game changer, enabling users to send and receive potentially life-saving messages in places impacted by severe weather and natural disasters or in remote hiking areas. How do I sign up for Starlink’s beta test? Sign up for the satellite service beta here. It is free for everyone, but spots are limited, according to T-Mobile. Once enrolled, you may have to wait a few days before you can send text messages. Can I also make Starlink satellite calls? No, currently the free beta service only supports text messages including SMS, RCS, and iMessageno satellite calls. Nor can you send your favorite video clips from last night’s Super Bowl, where the T-Mobile Starlink ad first ran, as data is not yet available.
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