Author: Frank Salvato

U.S. transportation safety officials have launched a formal investigation into Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle unit Waymo after multiple reported incidents in which its self-driving robotaxis illegally passed stopped school buses in Austin, Texas, raising serious safety concerns; this action by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) follows earlier scrutiny from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and a voluntary recall of thousands of Waymo vehicles intended to fix software issues, yet reports indicate violations continued after software updates, prompting school officials to urge operational restrictions and intensifying federal examination of self-driving tech safety protocols. Sources: https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/23/waymo-probed-by-national-transportation-safety-board-over-illegal-school-bus-behavior/https://www.reuters.com/world/us-safety-board-opens-probe-into-waymo-robotaxis-passing-stopped-school-buses-2026-01-23/https://www.webpronews.com/autonomous-ambitions-hit-a-stop-sign-ntsb-scrutinizes-waymos-handling-of-school-buses/ Key Takeaways • Federal…

The Department of Justice has reportedly launched a criminal investigation into allegations that HR and payroll unicorn Deel recruited a corporate spy within rival firm Rippling, a dramatic escalation of the year-long spying and litigation saga between the two Silicon Valley startups. According to multiple reports, grand jury subpoenas were issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California in connection with claims that Deel executives directed an employee at Rippling to steal confidential information, including sales leads, product roadmaps, and customer data. Deel has publicly denied any awareness of a criminal investigation and says it will…

Researchers and Polish officials say that a late-December attempt to knock out large portions of Poland’s energy grid was carried out by Russian government–linked hackers using destructive “wiper” malware known as DynoWiper. The Slovakian cybersecurity firm ESET analyzed the malicious code and found similarities to past campaigns by the Sandworm unit of Russia’s GRU military intelligence, concluding the attack was most likely state-sponsored. Polish authorities described the incident as the strongest cyberattack on their infrastructure in years and said it targeted two combined heat and power plants as well as systems managing communications with renewable energy sources. Despite the sophistication…

Microsoft confirmed that it provided the FBI with BitLocker full-disk encryption recovery keys to unlock encrypted laptops belonging to suspects in a Guam federal fraud investigation after the FBI obtained a warrant, in the first publicly confirmed case of the tech giant handing over such keys. This disclosure comes amid broader concerns that Microsoft’s default practice of backing up BitLocker recovery keys to its cloud when users set up Windows 11 with an online account creates a lawful access point for authorities, unlike competitors that use zero-knowledge encryption where even the company cannot access keys; Microsoft says it receives around…

Researchers from Drexel University and Seoul National University have developed a new stretchable organic light-emitting diode (OLED) that can double in size without losing brightness or performance—a significant advancement toward truly flexible, wearable displays. By replacing the traditionally brittle transparent electrode (indium tin oxide) with a MXene-based transparent electrode material, the team achieved record performance, maintaining high brightness and efficiency even as the display is stretched. This innovation also uses specialized organic layers to guide charge and recycle energy, further improving stability under strain. Applications could span from clothing-integrated screens to real-time health sensors, though challenges remain, such as improving…

Researchers at Columbia University have trained a humanoid robot to learn lifelike lip movements by observing human speech and singing in YouTube videos, marking a major step in human-robot interaction. This robot, developed in the Creative Machines Lab, taught itself how to move 26 facial motors beneath flexible synthetic skin by first watching its own reflection in a mirror to understand facial mechanics and then studying hours of YouTube footage of people talking and singing to associate audio with corresponding lip shapes. The resulting system uses a vision-to-action learning model to convert sounds directly into synchronized lip motion without traditional…

Researchers have spent more than a decade studying an ultrathin coating for electronics that initially appeared to offer exceptional insulating properties, only to discover that a previously undetected measurement leak led them astray. A new investigation into a 2010 “miracle measurement” found that what was thought to be a breakthrough insulating layer was compromised by a hidden leakage path that skewed results for years, undermining confidence in the material’s purported properties and prompting engineers to re-evaluate the data and experimental setup. Independent scrutiny has revealed the source of the anomaly and suggests ways to correct future measurements as the field…

Adobe has officially unveiled major updates to its video editing suite, introducing a new set of AI-powered tools in the latest version of Premiere and After Effects designed to accelerate workflows and empower creators with smarter editing capabilities. These enhancements include an AI-driven Object Mask feature that lets editors automatically create and track masks around people or objects with a simple hover-and-click action, as well as redesigned shape masks that track subjects up to 20 times faster. Adobe also integrated its Firefly Boards ideation platform directly into Premiere, enabling collaborative AI-assisted storyboarding and pre-production workflows. This rollout precedes the 2026…

Security researchers have uncovered a coordinated campaign of malicious Google Chrome browser extensions that were publicly available in the Chrome Web Store and disguised as legitimate productivity or security tools. These extensions specifically targeted widely used enterprise human resources (HR) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms such as Workday, NetSuite, and SAP SuccessFactors, tricking users into installing them and then quietly stealing authentication credentials and session tokens. Once installed, the extensions performed a range of harmful actions including siphoning cookies tied to login sessions to remote attackers, blocking access to administrative security pages so legitimate incident response is obstructed, and…

Recent U.S. patent data over the last five years shows that the fastest-growing areas of technological innovation are not in buzzy fields like autonomous vehicles or generative AI but in technologies tied to batteries, sustainable materials, and electrolytic processes used for clean fuels, according to analytics from IFI CLAIMS. Patent filings related to these areas now outpace filings in many traditional “hot” tech segments, signaling a shift in where companies are investing their R&D efforts. This trend coincides with broader declines in overall U.S. patent applications, which fell about 9% in 2025 to the lowest level since 2019 after a…