The Winter Olympic Games have begun, and once again the sport of curling is set to draw in scores of new converts.

Although dominated by Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, and Scotland, many eyes during the 2026 Winter Olympics will be on the team from host country Italy thanks to Stefania Constantini and Amos Mosaner, the reigning Olympic and world curling champions in mixed doubles.

Regardless of which country takes home the gold, the real attention during the Olympics this year might be on the cool gadgets curlers use. Somewhat similar to a game of shuffleboard played with brooms and stones, curling has seen some pretty interesting advances in the gear that’s used on the ice.

In addition to raw skill and strategy, here’s everything you need to know about the state of the sport.

Scottish Stones

Nearly every curling stone—the round rock that slides down the ice—comes from the same place: Ailsa Craig. The 99-hectare island site in the Firth of Clyde inlet on Scotland’s west coast is known for its granite, and by extension its ability to provide enough of it to outfit curlers the world over.

Each stone must weigh between 19.96 and 17.24 kilograms and is made from one of two varieties of Scottish granite, common green and blue hone. These two types are the most resistant to heat and humidity and to the cracks and condensation that can form thanks to the 28 meters of ice the stones slide on during competitions.

The stones used at the Olympics, as well as the World Championships, are produced by Kays of Scotland. Many curling stones also come from Canada Curling Stone. (The sport has seen a recent spike in popularity in Canada.) Both companies produce the stones using a meticulous process of grinding and polishing.

Broom Boom

In addition to the stones, the main tools necessary to curl are a broom and shoes—this is where advancements in gear really come to the fore. For one, there are scores of sensors and microchips that allow players to manage the power of their throws.

For another, there are new-and-improved brooms that allow sweepers to maximize their skills. More than anything, what curlers need to work a broom are dexterity, physicality, and coordination. But beyond that, good tools don’t hurt.

“Broom technology continues to be a major focus because the physical demands of the sport continue to evolve, and one of the biggest challenges is finding the right balance between weight, strength, and effective energy transfer,” says Dale Matchett, general manager at curling equipment company BalancePlus.

As with any kind of sporting equipment, quality depends on how much a team or player is willing to spend. Carbon fiber brooms are best for their combination of strength and lightness. Composite fiber works well for midrange players. Fiberglass is the cheapest option. The broom’s handle and bearing factor into its weight and sweeping efficiency.

• NASA formally approves personal smartphones for government missions beginning with Crew-12
• Artemis II will carry consumer phones alongside traditional spaceflight imaging equipment
• Fast-tracked hardware approval marks a procedural shift inside NASA operations

NASA has confirmed its astronauts will now be allowed to carry personal smartphones on crewed missions, starting with Crew-12 and the delayed Artemis II flight.

Crew-12 is scheduled to travel to the International Space Station in mid-February 2026, while Artemis II is now expected to launch in March.

Earlier this year Donut Lab caused quite the furore when they unveiled what they claimed was the world’s first production-ready solid state battery, featuring some pretty stellar specifications. Since then many experts and enthusiasts in the battery space have raised concerns that this claimed battery may not be real, or even possible at all. After seeing the battery demonstrated at CES’26 and having his own concerns, [Ziroth] decided to do some investigating on what part of the stated claims actually hold up when subjected to known science.

On paper, the Donut Lab battery sounds amazing: full charge in less than 10 minutes, 400 Wh/kg energy density, 100,000 charge cycles, extremely safe and low cost. Basically it ticks every single box on a battery wish list, yet the problem is that this is all based on Donut’s own claims. Even aside from the concerns also raised in the video about the company itself, pinning down what internal chemistry and configuration would enable this feature set proves to be basically impossible.

In this summary of research done on Donut’s claimed battery as well as current battery research, a number of options were considered, including carbon nanotube-based super capacitors. Yet although this features 418 Wh/kg capacity, this pertains only to the basic material, not the entire battery which would hit something closer to 50 Wh/kg.

Other options include surface-redox sodium-ion chemistry with titanium oxide. This too would allow for fast charging and high endurance, but Donut has already come out to state that their battery is not capacitor-based and uses no lithium, so that gets shot down too.

Combined with the ‘cheap’ and ‘scalable’ claims this effectively shoots down any potential battery chemistry and architecture. Barring some amazing breakthrough this thus raises many red flags, especially when you consider Donut Lab’s major promises for investors that should make any reasonable person feel skittish about pouring money into the venture.

Sadly, it seems that this one too will not be the battery breakthrough that we’re all waiting for. Even new chemistries like sodium-ion are struggling to make much of inroads, although lithium-titanate shows real promise. Albeit it not with amazing power density increases that would make it better than plain lithium-ion for portable applications.

‘It’s been a rollercoaster year for Irish SMEs looking to raise capital,’ said Caroline Gaynor, chair of the IVCA.

For the first time since 2018, annual venture capital (VC) funding into Irish technology small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has fallen, according to the Irish Venture Capital Association (IVCA) Venture Pulse report. 

The report, which was published today (8 February), in partnership with Irish law firm William Fry, indicated that funding in 2025 fell by 23pc to €1.1bn – a decline from 2024’s record €1.48bn. A total of 186 deals were completed in 2025, down from 217 in 2024 – representing a drop of 14pc.

Meanwhile, funding in the fourth quarter specifically fell by 46pc to €291.4m.

For Sarah-Jane Larkin, the director general of IVCA, the fourth quarter and IVCA’s research highlighted the weakness of not being able to tap into local private capital. “A major reason for the 46pc decline in fourth quarter funding was the 71pc fall off in international investment,” she said.

“Another reason for the decrease in international funding may be that US investors may be overly focused on local AI opportunities and certainly the amount of money being invested there is sucking up a lot of venture capital. Unicorn status is being achieved by early stage start-ups in generative AI in the US much quicker than in the past.”

The lack of overseas investment, according to Larkin, is reflected in the significant drop in deals valued at more than €30m, which saw a drop of more than 33pc compared to 2024 at €540.8m. In the fourth quarter specifically, this category fell by 69pc to €111m.

Funding in the €10m-30m range for the year overall also fell, dropping 14pc to €269.4m, while deals under €1m dropped by 26pc to €21.3m.

However, the IVCA indicated that transactions for other smaller rounds held up “reasonably well” in 2025, with funding in the €3m-5m category rising by 39pc to €113.8m. There was a small decline of 3pc in the €1-3m range to €102.2m, and seed funding dropped by 5pc to €141m.

The top five funding deals in quarter four were quantum computing company Equal 1 (€30m), Shorla Oncology (€25m), Aerska (€17m), Fresco (€15m) and Luminate Medical (€14m). 

Life science companies attracted the most funding in 2025 in Ireland, raising 40pc of the total at €461m. This was followed by software at €156m, cybersecurity with €136m, AI and machine learning with €104m, and fintech with €96m. 

Remaining positive

“It’s been a rollercoaster year for Irish SMEs looking to raise capital,” commented Caroline Gaynor, who is the chair of IVCA. She suggested that instability as a result of US president Donald Trump’s tariffs has, in part, led to the worst second quarter on record seen in the last 10 years. 

“In addition, the fourth quarter saw a 71pc retreat from the Irish market by international investors from €470m to €132.4m. This may be due to hesitation and uncertainty by US VC firms due to a number of factors including an ‘America first’ focus, negativity from across the Atlantic about Europe and the impact of a weakening dollar.”

However, Gaynor said she remained positive about Irish entrepreneurs looking to raise capital in 2026. She explained that the Irish Government’s Seed and Venture Capital Scheme 2025 has a record allocation of €250m and the benefits of the scheme should be coming into effect shortly. 

“Progress is being made on the Government’s important Enterprise Scaling Fund 2, as well as other policy measures to mobilise capital to Irish SMEs. Current geopolitical events have highlighted the need for us to be more self-reliant, have more access to local capital and not be dependent on overseas investors to fund our indigenous tech sectors.”

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A new open-source and cross-platform tool called Tirith can detect homoglyph attacks over command-line environments by analyzing URLs in typed commands and stopping their execution. 

Available on GitHub and also as an npm package, the tool works by hooking into the user’s shell (zsh, bash, fish, PowerShell) and inspecting every command the user pastes for execution.

The idea is to block deceptive attacks that rely on URLs containing symbols from different alphabets that appear identical or nearly identical to the user but are treated as different characters by the computer (homoglyph attacks).

This lets attackers create a domain names that looks the same as that of a legitimate brand but have one or more characters from a different alphabet. On the computer screen, the domain looks legitimate for the human eye, but machines interpret the anomalous character correctly and resolve the domain to the server controlled by the attacker.

While browsers have addressed the issue, terminals continue to be susceptible as they can still render Unicode, ANSI escapes, and invisible characters, says Tirith’s author, Sheeki, in the description of the tool.  

According to Sheeki, the Tirith can detect and block the following types of attack:

• Homograph attacks (Unicode lookalike characters in domains, punycode, and mixed scripts)
• Terminal injection (ANSI escapes, bidi overrides, zero-width chars)
• Pipe-to-shell patterns (curl | bash, wget | sh, eval $(…))
• Dotfile hijacking (~/.bashrc, ~/.ssh/authorized_keys, etc.)
• Insecure transport (HTTP to shell, TLS disabled)
• Supply-chain risks (typosquatted git repos, untrusted Docker registries)
• Credential exposure (userinfo URLs, shorteners hiding destinations)

Unicode homoglyph characters have been used in the past in URLs delivered over email that led to a malicious website. One example is a phishing campaign last year impersonating Booking.com.

 and hidden characters in commands are very common in ClickFix attacks used by a broad range of cybercriminals, so Tirith could provide some level of defense against them on supported PowerShell sessions.

It should be noted that Tirith does not hook onto Windows Command Prompt (cmd.exe), which is used in many ClickFix attacks that instruct users to execute malicious commands.

Sheeki says the overhead of using Tirith is sub-millisecond level, so the checks are performed instantaneously, and the tool terminates immediately when done.

The tool can also analyze commands without running them, break down a URL’s trust signals, perform byte-level Unicode inspection, and audit receipts with SHA-256 for executed scripts.

The creator assures that Tirith performs all analysis actions locally, without making any network calls, does not modify the user’s pasted commands, and does not run in the background. Also, it does not require cloud access or network, accounts, or API keys, and does not send any telemetry data to the creator.

Tirith works on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and can be installed through Homebrew, apt/dnf, npm, Cargo, Nix, Scoop, Chocolatey, and Docker.

BleepingComputer has not tested Tirith against the listed attack scenarios, but the project has 46 forks and almost 1,600 stars on GitHub, less than a week from being published.

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Deep tech startups in sectors such as space, semiconductors, and biotech take far longer to mature than conventional ventures. Because of that India is adjusting its startup rules, and mobilizing public capital, hoping to help more of them make it to commercial products.

This week, the Indian government updated its startup framework, doubling the period for which deep tech companies are treated as startups to 20 years and raising the revenue threshold for startup-specific tax, grant, and regulatory benefits to ₹3 billion (about $33.12 million), from ₹1 billion (around $11.04 million) previously. The change aims to align policy timelines with the long development cycles typical of science- and engineering-led businesses.

The change also forms part of New Delhi’s effort to build a long-horizon deep tech ecosystem by combining regulatory reform with public capital, including the ₹1 trillion (around $11 billion) Research, Development and Innovation Fund (RDI), announced last year. That fund is intended to expand patient financing for science-led and R&D-driven companies. Against that backdrop, U.S. and Indian venture firms later came together to launch the India Deep Tech Alliance, $1 billion-plus private investor coalition that includes Accel, Blume Ventures, Celesta Capital, Premji Invest, Ideaspring Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and Kalaari Capital, with chipmaker Nvidia acting as an adviser.

For founders, these changes may fix what some see as an artificial pressure point. Under the previous framework, companies often risked losing startup status while still pre-commercial, creating a “false failure signal” that judged science-led ventures on policy timelines rather than technological progress, said Vishesh Rajaram, founding partner at Speciale Invest, an Indian deep tech venture capital firm.

“By formally recognizing deep tech as different, the policy reduces friction in fundraising, follow-on capital, and engagement with the state, which absolutely shows up in a founder’s operating reality over time,” Rajaram told TechCrunch.

Still, investors say access to capital remains a more binding constraint, particularly beyond the early stages. “The biggest gap has historically been funding depth at Series A and beyond, especially for capital-intensive deep tech companies,” Rajaram said. That is where the government’s earlier RDI fund is meant to play a complementary role.

“The real benefit of the RDI framework is to increase the funding available to deep tech companies at early and growth stages,” said Arun Kumar, managing partner at Celesta Capital. By routing public capital through venture funds with tenors similar to private capital, he said, the fund is designed to address chronic gaps in follow-on funding without altering the commercial criteria that govern private investment decisions.

Siddarth Pai, founding partner at 3one4 Capital and co-chair of regulatory affairs at the Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association, said India’s deep tech framework avoids a “graduation cliff” that has historically cut companies off from support just as they scale.

These policy changes come as the RDI fund is beginning to take shape operationally, Pai said, with the first batch of fund managers identified and the process of selecting venture and private equity managers under way.

While private capital for deep tech already exists in India — particularly in areas such as biotech — Pai told TechCrunch the RDI Fund is intended to act as a nucleus around which greater capital formation can occur. Unlike a traditional fund-of-funds, he noted, the vehicle is also designed to take direct positions and provide credit and grants to deep tech startups.

India’s deep tech funding grows

In terms of scale, India remains an emerging rather than dominant deep tech market. Indian deep tech startups have raised $8.54 billion in total to date, but recent data point to renewed momentum. Indian deep tech startups raised $1.65 billion in 2025, a sharp rebound from $1.1 billion in each of the previous two years after funding peaked at $2 billion in 2022, per Tracxn. The recovery suggests growing investor confidence, particularly in areas aligned with national priorities such as advanced manufacturing, defence, climate technologies, and semiconductors.

“Overall, the pickup in funding suggests a gradual move toward longer-horizon investing,” said Neha Singh, co-founder of Tracxn.

In comparison, U.S. deep tech startups raised about $147 billion in 2025, more than 80 times the amount deployed in India that year, while China accounted for roughly $81 billion, data from Tracxn shows.

The disparity highlights the challenge India faces in building capital-intensive technologies, even with its wealth of engineering talent. So the hope is that these moves by the Indian government will lead to more investor participation over the medium term.

A longer-term signal

For global investors, New Delhi’s framework change is being read as a signal of longer-term policy intent rather than a trigger for immediate shifts in allocation. “Deep tech companies operate on seven- to twelve-year horizons, so regulatory recognition that stretches the lifecycle gives investors greater confidence that the policy environment will not change mid-journey,” said Pratik Agarwal, a partner at Accel. While he said the change would not alter allocation models overnight or eliminate policy risk entirely, it increased investor comfort that India is thinking about deep tech on longer time horizons.

“The change shows that India is learning from the U.S. and Europe on how to create patient frameworks for frontier building,” Agarwal told TechCrunch.

Whether the move will reduce the tendency of Indian startups to shift their headquarters overseas as they scale remains an open question.

The extended runway strengthens the case for building and staying in India, Agarwal said, though access to capital and customers still matters. Over the past five years, he added, India’s public markets have shown a growing appetite for venture-backed tech companies, making domestic listings a more credible option than in the past. That, in turn, could ease some of the pressure on deep tech founders to incorporate overseas, even if access to procurement and late-stage capital will continue to shape where companies ultimately scale.

For investors backing long-horizon technologies, the ultimate test will be whether India can deliver globally competitive outcomes. The real signal, Kumar of Celesta Capital said, would be the emergence of a critical mass of Indian deep tech companies succeeding on the world stage.

“It would be great to see ten globally competitive deep tech companies from India achieve sustained success over the next decade,” he said, describing that as the benchmark he would look for in assessing whether India’s deep tech ecosystem is maturing.

Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.

What should you do once you’ve finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I’ve also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc’s Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc’s Wordle today page for the original viral word game.