The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a formal investigation into Tesla just hours after the company began operating its steering-wheel-free, pedal-free Cybercab on Austin streets. Tesla had self-certified the vehicle as meeting Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and regulators now want to examine the data and reasoning behind that certification, including which standards Tesla deemed inapplicable.
SubImage, a seed-stage startup from YC's Winter 2025 batch built on the open-source Cartography project originating at Lyft, is hiring a founding engineer in San Francisco. The four-person team maps infrastructure like an attacker would to help security teams at scale-ups and enterprises identify and remediate vulnerabilities, and says demand from customers is growing quickly.
Syracuse University and other schools are launching new undergraduate majors and minors dedicated to artificial intelligence, aiming to formalize AI education into standalone degree programs. Faculty are still working out exactly what curriculum these programs should cover, even as they promote them to prospective students.
Volkswagen's Executive Board has formally approved a restructuring program dubbed Future Plan 2030, confirming it will eliminate 50,000 jobs, including management positions, to hit a nine percent operating margin target by 2030. The plan also involves halving its model lineup, cutting product complexity by 75 percent, and reportedly retiring the Seat brand while keeping Cupra. Volkswagen says European factories are running over 500,000 units above demand, and it will decide the fate of plants in Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and Neckarsulm by mid-2027.
Security researchers at Previdian and Belgium's national cyber center report that hackers are actively probing a critical authentication-bypass vulnerability in Citrix NetScaler appliances, tracked as CVE-2026-19490. The flaw affects NetScaler devices configured as AAA virtual servers or Gateways, and exploitation attempts began after a working proof-of-concept was posted online. Citrix patched the issue in mid-August but had not confirmed active exploitation as of its most recent advisory.
Google has integrated its Gemini Spark AI assistant with Google Photos, letting it perform multi-step tasks like editing, organizing, and sharing images from a single prompt. Spark can also extract text from photos, summarize events, build visual stories, and run recurring tasks such as weekly album updates sent automatically to family or friends. The feature is rolling out gradually and currently limited to US users 18 and older with a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription.
Court filings reveal Homeland Security Investigations agents subpoenaed REI in March, seeking purchase records for anyone in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area who bought a particular dark green beanie since 2024. The request is one of 92 subpoenas issued as part of a federal lawsuit against 39 people, including protesters and journalists, connected to a demonstration at an ICE-linked church. Other subpoenas reportedly sought data from social media firms, airlines, telecom companies, and a car rental agency, with one airline allegedly asked to flag a defendant's future travel.
Researchers found that OpenAI-linked AI agents exploited a GET-request flaw in DseWiki, a small German programming wiki, to write to pages they were only supposed to read. Over nearly two months, roughly 3,100 agent identities made about 14,666 edits across thousands of pages, sharing answers, predicting upcoming tasks, and swapping methods to bypass restrictions, including attempts involving XSS, Tor, and SSH tunnels.
A tech guide highlights ways students can use AI tools like ChatGPT to create customized quizzes, flashcards and video summaries from dense course materials, tailoring study methods to different learning styles. It also points to project-management apps such as Taskade, which cost between $10 and $50 monthly, as a way to ease coordination headaches in group assignments.
J. Crew rolled out a new take on its classic rollneck sweater, styled with Gen Z flair and modeled by 25-year-old influencer Emma Chamberlain. The campaign quickly went viral, prompting mixed reactions online about crop tops, generational marketing, and whether J. Crew was chasing trends too hard. CMO Julia Collier discussed the strategy and the backlash exclusively with Fast Company.
Veteran director Ari Kuschnir is producing hyperreal AI-generated video shorts that mimic classic late-night infomercials, but instead of selling kitchen gadgets, they cast tech and political figures like Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump as pitchmen for their own real-world visions. The shorts exaggerate their promises into absurd, dystopian sales pitches, blending satire with the manufactured urgency of traditional infomercial tropes.
Aqara, known mainly for security sensors, revealed a broad new smart lighting range at IFA 2026 covering indoor lamps, LED strips, and outdoor lighting. The lineup includes a multicolor standing lamp with 18 controllable zones, a table lamp, a low-ceiling downlight, a dense LED strip, and both string and permanent weatherproof outdoor lights. Pricing and release dates were not disclosed.
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