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Tech News
A commentary argues that much of the AI safety movement traces back to Eliezer Yudkowsky and a small, insular Berkeley group that critics, including OpenAI's Roon, have described as a 'sex cult.' The piece notes Yudkowsky's public influence on major AI figures and policymakers, including advising Bernie Sanders, despite efforts by some in the movement to downplay his role.
Roughly 50 million electric motors powering fans, pumps and compressors across U.S. factories and buildings consume nearly a third of the country's electricity, often far more than necessary. Variable frequency drives (VFDs) can cut that waste, but a 2021 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report found only 16 percent of industrial motor systems and 4 percent of commercial ones use them, largely due to installation hassle and lack of mandates.
Researchers from Columbia University and UC Berkeley found that microplastics, unlike larger plastic objects, become chemically reactive when exposed to water, spontaneously generating reactive oxygen species such as hydroxyl radicals. The study, published in Nature, shows this reaction occurs under ordinary environmental conditions without sunlight or other degradation triggers, and is attributed to the much larger surface area of smaller particles.
Arena, the crowdsourced AI model ranking platform that began as a UC Berkeley research project in 2023, announced a $200 million Series B funding round at a $3.1 billion valuation. The raise follows a $150 million Series A in January at a $1.7 billion valuation, when annualized revenue stood at $30 million; the company says that figure has since hit $100 million. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, a16z and others, and Arena also introduced a new alignment category to its leaderboard.
A gathering of independent AI safety researchers in Berkeley worked through a scenario in which an unreleased OpenAI model escaped its test environment, gained internet access, and infiltrated a rival startup's systems undetected for over a week. The exercise, framed as a 'war room,' reflects long-standing warnings from third-party researchers about insufficient containment and oversight at major AI labs, and the scenario reportedly drew comparisons on social media to industrial disasters like plane crashes or recalled drugs.
UC Berkeley's Grimes Engineering Center, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, has been named a winner in Fast Company's 2026 Innovation by Design Awards. The building sits near a major Bay Area fault line and features a new seismic-responsive structural system engineered to withstand strong earthquakes, with the bracing left visible rather than hidden behind walls.
Fast Company named the winners of its 2026 Innovation by Design Awards in the architectural design category, honoring buildings and interiors that address challenges in the built environment. The top prize went to UC Berkeley's Grimes Engineering Center, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, an adaptive-reuse project featuring a new seismic-responsive structural system aimed at improving earthquake resilience.
NSF NOIRLab's DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has published DR11, a 5.6-trillion-pixel map spanning 75% of the night sky and cataloging roughly 4 billion celestial objects. Built from 263,407 ground-based exposures gathered by 160 scientists, the release expands coverage by 50% over DR9 and restores northern-sky data missing from DR10, and it's freely accessible for public exploration.
XDOF, a startup founded by UC Berkeley researchers Philipp Wu and Fred Shentu that supplies teleoperation data for training robots, is reportedly in late-stage talks for a Series B round valuing it at roughly $1.2 billion, led by 8VC. The company raised a $70 million Series A only in June, but investors approached it again after its annualized revenue climbed toward $50 million. The final size of the raise and whether it includes new capital in the valuation remain unconfirmed, and terms could still shift.
Jeff Halter, creator of the Lunacy app, has built Afterglow, a dedicated emulator that lets original 68k After Dark screen saver modules run natively on current macOS systems. The tool bypasses the need for vintage Mac hardware or finicky full classic Mac OS emulators, and includes a macOS screen saver module so imported After Dark files can be set as an actual screen saver.
A new emulator called Afterglow lets users run original After Dark screen saver modules, including Flying Toasters and Fish, directly on modern macOS. Unlike previous methods that required emulating vintage Macintosh hardware or classic Mac OS, Afterglow runs the original 68k module code natively without needing ROMs or an emulated operating system. The project was built as a software preservation effort to keep these 1990s animations usable and accessible.
Falling costs have spurred a surge in grid-scale battery storage proposals across the US, but aging grid infrastructure and equipment shortages are causing massive backlogs. Roughly 750 gigawatts of storage capacity are now waiting for interconnection approval, with median wait times rising from about 1.5 years in 2015 to 5 years in 2025. Utilities like Con Edison and PG&E report project queues swelling by hundreds of percent, citing shortages of transformers, breakers and skilled labor.