Waymo's robotaxis have racked up at least 24 safety violations involving school buses in Austin since the start of the 2025 school year, and a voluntary software recall the company issued in December after a federal investigation has not fixed the problem.

Austin Independent School District initially reported at least 19 incidents of Waymo vehicles failing to stop for buses during loading and unloading -- illegal in all 50 states -- prompting NHTSA to open a probe. At least four more violations have occurred since the software update, including a January 19th incident where a robotaxi drove past a bus as children waited to cross the street and the stop arm was extended.

Waymo also acknowledged that one of its vehicles struck a child outside a Santa Monica elementary school on January 23rd, causing minor injuries. Austin ISD has asked Waymo to stop operating near schools during bus hours until the issue is resolved. Waymo refused. Three federal investigations have been opened in three months.

Memory prices across DRAM, NAND and HBM have surged 80 to 90% quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026, according to Counterpoint Research's latest Memory Price Tracker. The price of a 64GB RDIMM has jumped from a Q4 2025 contract price of $450 to over $900, and Counterpoint expects it to cross $1,000 in Q2.

NAND, relatively stable last quarter, is tracking a parallel increase. Device makers are cutting DRAM content per device, swapping TLC SSDs for cheaper QLC alternatives, and shifting orders from the now-scarce LPDDR4 to LPDDR5 as new entry-level chipsets support the newer standard. DRAM operating margins hit the 60% range in Q4 2025 -- the first time conventional DRAM margins surpassed HBM -- and Q1 2026 is on track to set all-time highs.

Kris Marszalek, the co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, has paid $70 million for the domain AI.com -- the highest price ever publicly disclosed for a website name, according to the deal's broker Larry Fischer of GetYourDomain.com.

The entire sum was paid in cryptocurrency to an undisclosed seller. Marszalek plans to debut the site during a Super Bowl ad this weekend, offering a personal "AI agent" that lets consumers send messages, use apps and trade stocks. The previous domain sale record was nearly $50 million for Carinsurance.com, per GoDaddy.

TikTok's endless scroll of irresistible content, tailored for each person's tastes by a well-honed algorithm, has helped the service become one of the world's most popular apps. Now European Union regulators say those same features that made TikTok so successful are likely illegal. From a report: On Friday, the regulators released a preliminary decision that TikTok's infinite scroll, auto-play features and recommendation algorithm amount to an "addictive design" that violated European Union laws for online safety. The service poses potential harm to the "physical and mental well-being" of users, including minors and vulnerable adults, the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's executive branch, said in a statement.

The findings suggest TikTok must overhaul the core features that made it a global phenomenon, or risk major fines. European officials said it was the first time that a legal standard for social media addictiveness had been applied anywhere in the world. "TikTok needs to change the basic design of its service," the European Commission said in a statement.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced a sweeping plan to shore up the country's auto industry and accelerate its electric vehicle transition, the latest in a series of moves to reduce Canada's deep economic dependence on the United States as American tariffs continue to batter the sector.

The plan includes financial incentives for carmakers to invest in Canada, a new tariff credit scheme for manufacturers like General Motors and Toyota, and the reintroduction of EV buyer rebates. Canada will also enact stricter vehicle emissions standards and has set a goal of EVs comprising 90% of car sales by 2040. Carney at the same time scrapped a 2023 EV sales mandate introduced by former PM Justin Trudeau that automakers had called too costly.

The announcements follow a deal last month with China to ease tariffs on Chinese EVs and an agreement with South Korea to encourage Korean car manufacturing in Canada. Roughly 90% of Canadian-made vehicles are exported to the US, and thousands of auto workers have lost their jobs since Trump imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian cars and parts last year.

Google's Quick Share-AirDrop interoperability, which has been exclusive to the Pixel 10 series since its surprise launch last year, is headed to a much broader set of Android devices in 2026.

Eric Kay, Google's Vice President of Engineering for the Android platform, confirmed the expansion during a press briefing at the company's Taipei office, saying Google is "working with our partners to expand it into the rest of the ecosystem" and that announcements are coming "very soon." Nothing is the only OEM to have publicly confirmed it's working on support, though Qualcomm has also hinted at enabling the feature on Snapdragon-powered phones.

Automattic and the Internet Archive have released a free, open-source WordPress plugin that automatically detects broken outbound links on a site and redirects visitors to archived Wayback Machine copies instead of serving them a 404 error.

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer, which launched last fall and is available on WordPress.org, runs in the background scanning posts for dead links, checking for existing archived versions, and requesting new snapshots when none exist. It also archives a site's own posts whenever they are updated. If the original link comes back online, the plugin stops redirecting.

Pew Research has found that 38% of the web has disappeared over the past decade, and WordPress powers more than 40% of websites online.

BMW may have retreated from its controversial plan to charge monthly fees for heated seats, but the German automaker is pressing ahead with subscription-based vehicle features through its ConnectedDrive platform.

A company spokesperson told The Drive that BMW "remains fully committed" to ConnectedDrive as part of its global aftersales strategy. Features requiring data connectivity will likely carry recurring fees.

Microsoft has finally delivered on its promise to integrate Sysmon -- the long-standing system monitoring tool from its Sysinternals suite -- directly into Windows, a move that should make life considerably easier for enterprise administrators who have struggled with deploying and managing the utility across thousands of endpoints.

The functionality landed this week in Windows Insider builds 26300.7733 (Dev channel) and 26220.7752 (Beta channel). Sysmon allows administrators to capture system events through custom configuration files, filter for specific activity, and pipe the data into standard Windows event logs for pickup by security tools and SIEM pipelines. Mark Russinovich, Microsoft technical fellow and Winternals co-founder, has previously noted the lack of official customer support for Sysmon in production environments -- a gap this integration addresses. The feature ships disabled by default and requires PowerShell to enable. Microsoft notes that any existing Sysmon installation must be uninstalled before activating the built-in version.

Google's much-anticipated plan to merge Android and ChromeOS into a single operating system called Aluminium is shaping up to be a drawn-out, complicated transition that could leave existing Chromebook users behind, according to previously unreported court documents in the Google search antitrust case.

The new OS won't be compatible with all existing Chromebook hardware, and Google will be forced to maintain ChromeOS through at least 2033 to honor its 10-year support commitment to current users -- meaning two parallel operating systems running for years.

The timeline itself is messier than Google has let on publicly, the filings suggest. Sameer Samat, Google's head of Android, called the merger "something we're super excited about for next year" last September, but court filings describe the "fastest path" to market as offering Aluminium to "commercial trusted testers" in late 2026 before a full release in 2028.

Enterprise and education customers -- the segments where Chromebooks currently dominate -- are slated for 2028 as well. Columbia computer science professor Jason Nieh, who interviewed Google engineers as a witness in the case, testified that Aluminium requires a heavier software stack and more powerful hardware to run.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google Home users, your long nightmare is over. The platform has finally added support for buttons. The release notes for a February 2 update state that several new starter conditions for automations are now available, including "Switch or button pressed."

Smart buttons are physical, programmable switches that you can press to trigger automations or control devices in your smart home, such as turning lights on or off, opening and closing shades, running a Good Night scene, or starting a robot vacuum. A great alternative to voice and app control when you want to control multiple devices, smart buttons are often wireless and generally have several ways to press them: single press, double press, and long press, meaning one button can do multiple things.

Alphabet is plotting to dramatically expand its presence in India [non-paywalled source], with the possibility of taking millions of square feet in new office space in Bangalore, India's tech hub. From a report: Google's parent company has leased one office tower and purchased options on two others in Alembic City, a development in the Whitefield tech corridor, totaling 2.4 million square feet, according to people familiar with the deal. The first tower is expected to open to employees in the coming months, while construction on the remaining two is set to conclude next year.

Options in the real estate industry give would-be tenants the exclusive right to rent, or in some cases buy, a property at a predetermined price within a specific time frame. It's also possible Alphabet will not exercise the option to use the additional towers. If it does take all of the space, the complex could accommodate as many as 20,000 additional staff, which could more than double the company's footprint in India, said the people, asking not to be identified because the plans aren't public. Alphabet currently employs around 14,000 in the country, out of a global workforce of roughly 190,000.

[...] US President Donald Trump's visa restrictions have made it harder to bring foreign talent to America, prompting some companies to recruit more staff overseas. India has become an increasingly important place for US companies to hire, particularly in the race to dominate artificial intelligence.

Adobe has emailed users of Adobe Animate to let them know the popular animation and game development program will be discontinued on March 1, an abrupt decision that has angered animators and game developers who say the tool remains an industry standard in television and game production.

Animate, the successor to the once-popular Flash, is widely used for graphic creation, animation and building games in HTML5. The company has not offered a reason for the shutdown. On BlueSky, artist and animator Julia Glassman wrote that many television productions, games, and animated media still rely on Animate and Flash pipelines and cannot simply pivot to entirely new software.

sinij writes:

Automakers have increasingly implemented door handles that retract into the bodywork for aerodynamic reasons, but they are now off limits in China.

My issue is with electronic-only door latch mechanism. It should be possible to open the door from both inside and outside the car in case of complete power loss.

alternative_right writes: Fintraffic's national traffic priority system, which is set to be introduced this summer, will recognize the location of an emergency vehicle and automatically change the lights to green to facilitate its passage.

(Why isn't everyone doing this already?)

Microsoft is reevaluating its AI strategy on Windows 11 and plans to scale back or remove Copilot integrations across built-in apps after months of sustained user backlash, according to a Windows Central report citing people familiar with the company's plans.

Copilot features in apps like Notepad and Paint are under review and could be pulled entirely or stripped of their Copilot branding in favor of a more streamlined experience. The company has paused work on adding new Copilot buttons to any other in-box apps. Windows Recall, the screenshot-based search feature delayed by an entire year in 2024 over security and privacy concerns, is separately under review -- Microsoft internally considers the current implementation a failure and is exploring ways to rework or rename the feature rather than scrap it entirely, the report said.

Apple's long-standing dominance over its electronics supply chain is eroding as AI companies outbid the iPhone maker for critical components like chips, memory and specialized glass fiber, giving suppliers the leverage to demand that Apple pay more. CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the pressure during a Thursday earnings call, noting constraints in chip supplies and significant increases in memory prices.

Nvidia has overtaken Apple as TSMC's largest customer, CEO Jensen Huang said on a podcast; Apple had held that position by a wide margin for years. DRAM prices are set to quadruple from 2023 levels by year-end and NAND prices will more than triple, according to TechInsights.

The firm estimates Apple could pay $57 more for memory in the base iPhone 18 due this fall compared to the base iPhone 17 currently on sale -- a significant hit on a device that retails for $799.

The U.S. laid fiber-optic cables to a record number of homes last year as billions of dollars in federal broadband grants and a surge in data-center construction fueled an enormous buildout, but the industry does not have enough workers to sustain the pace.

A 2024 report by the Fiber Broadband Association and the Power & Communication Contractors Association projects 58,000 new fiber jobs between 2025 and 2032 and estimates 120,000 workers will leave the field in that period, mostly through retirement -- a combined shortage of 178,000. The gap is especially acute among splicers, who fuse hair-thin filaments by hand, and directional drill operators.

Telecommunications line installers and repairers earned annual median wages of $70,500 for the year ended May 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, against a $49,500 national median. Push, a utility-construction firm, raised hourly pay for fiber crews by 5% to 8% in each of the past several years and expects the pace to quicken.

Talks "are at a standstill" for Anthropic's potential $200 million contract with America's Defense Department, reports Reuters (citing several people familiar with the discussions.") The two issues?

- Using AI to surveil Americans
- Safeguards against deploying AI autonomously

The company's position on how its AI tools can be used has intensified disagreements between it and the Trump administration, the details of which have not been previously reported... Anthropic said its AI is "extensively used for national security missions by the U.S. government and we are in productive discussions with the Department of War about ways to continue that work..."

In an essay on his personal blog, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned this week that AI should support national defense "in all ways except those which would make us more like our autocratic adversaries.
A person "familiar with the matter" told the Wall Street Journal this could lead to the cancellation of Anthropic's contract: Tensions with the administration began almost immediately after it was awarded, in part because Anthropic's terms and conditions dictate that Claude can't be used for any actions related to domestic surveillance. That limits how many law-enforcement agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation could deploy it, people familiar with the matter said. Anthropic's focus on safe applications of AI — and its objection to having its technology used in autonomous lethal operations — have continued to cause problems, they said.
Amodei's essay calls for "courage, for enough people to buck the prevailing trends and stand on principle, even in the face of threats to their economic interests and personal safety..."

The Wall Street Journal says that Meta "might be reaping some of the richest benefits from the AI boom so far." Meta's revenue grew 22% year over year in 2025 to $201 billion, and the company expects even bigger gains in the current quarter, potentially as high as 34%. That is huge growth for a company that brought in nearly $60 billion in the latest three-month period. And Zuckerberg signaled that Meta was just scratching the surface of AI's potential. "Our world-class recommendation systems are already driving meaningful growth across our apps and ads business. But we think that the current systems are primitive compared to what will be possible soon," he said on a call with investors and analysts...

[Meta's Chief Financial Officer Susan] Li said the company doubled the number of graphics-processing units that it used to train its ad-ranking model in the fourth quarter and adopted a new learning architecture. Those actions led users to click on ads on Facebook 3.5% more often and to a gain of more than 1% in conversions, meaning purchases, subscriptions or leads, on Instagram, she said. Other AI-related improvements led to a 3% increase in conversions across its family of apps. On the ad-buying side, Meta has also been working toward using AI to automate ad creation for businesses that want to advertise their products or services on Facebook and Instagram. On the call, Li said the combined revenue run rate of video-generation tools hit $10 billion in the fourth quarter.
In short, CNBC reported, Meta's stock price surged over 10% this week "after showing signs that AI investments are boosting the bottom line."

Benjamin Black, an internet analyst at Deutsche Bank, explained the connection to the Wall Street Journal. "The more compute the ad platform gets, the far better it performs, and that's a real structural advantage that Meta has. If you can see that yesterday's spend is driving this month's growth, then as a good business person, you're going to continue to feed the beast."

CNBC says now Meta "plans to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion on its AI build-out this year. That's nearly double what it spent in 2025."