Gen Z can’t catch a break. Entry-level jobs are vanishing; some 40% of bosses say they plan to hire fewer grads because AI can do the job cheaper, and young workers are routinely slammed for showing up late and refusing to put in overtime for free. Cisco’s president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel isn’t buying it — he’s just handed one of the company’s biggest jobs to a 27-year-old he found hidden in the org chart “five levels” below him. “I’ve given him unlimited tokens because he’s going to refactor code,” Patel told Fortune at a small roundtable dinner. “So I’m like, you can go, you can go nuts.”

The “him” is Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, or “Paddy,” as Patel affectionately calls him. He joined Cisco in 2025 after the $429 billion tech giant acquired EzDubs, the real-time translation startup Krishnamurthy cofounded in 2023. And despite coming in as a former founder with CEO experience, he was, in Patel’s words, “buried away in the organization doing something unstrategic.” That changed when Patel dropped into Cisco’s San Francisco office, and the pair got talking.

Krishnamurthy reckoned he could rewrite Cisco’s legacy code with a two-person team. Patel says even the most AI-forward people on his own team weren’t thinking that way. So he has given himself four weeks to prove it, with the final goal of rewriting 98% of Cisco’s legacy code within 24 months. Now, he’s on the hunt for more Paddys: young hires who will “challenge the system and the status quo,” or, as he puts it, be “an energizer bunny that just goes out and kind of revs everyone up.”

My ears perked up when I heard Apple’s new foldable phones were cracking. I licked my lips when the company announced it’s releasing a touch-screen laptop. This was a company that once charged $19 for a polishing cloth, asked $200 for a VESA mount, and sold $700 wheels for the Mac Pro. Now it’s borrowing tired ideas from its competitors and launching hardware its previous leaders rejected.

The once dominant company is struggling to find its feet in an AI-driven post-Tim Cook world. John Ternus is the new CEO — a 25 year veteran of the company with a track record of pushing harebrained hardware schemes like the much reviled Touch Bar and lawsuit inducing butterfly keyboard.

With Ternus at the helm, I feel there’s a good chance Apple’s best days are behind it, that it will have to make do with less, that it’s declasse. Apple, blindsided by AI and relying on crowdpleasing hardware gimmicks, is downwardly mobile. It’s in its slop era. The company that once asked consumers to “Think Different” is now releasing hardware that’s just like everything else on the market.

The lawsuit was brought by an 18-year-old woman from Mississippi known as K.D.B who, according to Reuters, has “described staying awake for hours scrolling social media, losing focus in class and engaging in self-harm using methods shown in social media videos.” Jury selection kicked off earlier this week in Los Angeles.

On Friday, K.D.B’s lawyer announced that she had reached a settlement with Meta after previously settling with TikTok and YouTube. “We remain committed to improving safety for kids on social media apps and holding tech companies accountable, and we are pleased to have brought this matter to a just resolution on behalf of our client,” attorney Emily Jeffcott said in a statement.

Now, Snap is the only remaining defendant in the case. CEO Evan Spiegel is expected to testify in the trial that could last several weeks. If he does take the stand, it will be the first time the Snap founder has appeared in a social media addiction trial. Snap previously settled in another high-profile case involving similar claims. A jury later ruled against Meta and YouTube in the trial and the two were ordered to pay $6 million in damages.

In an interview over beers with the YouTube channel Cheeky Pint, Altman said that local inference, and, by extension, people having DRAM in computers at home, is “quite terrible.” When discussing local inference on home computers with open-source models, Altman discussed the assumption that people will be able to run local AI on their own computers, the ones they may already own or want to build.

Then he explained why that’s a bad idea (at the 29-minute mark): “From a global allocation perspective, actually, it’s quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used 5% of the time,” Altman said. “You want maximum utilization in the cloud if you’re trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment. And somehow many people’s intuition is the opposite of that.”

While OpenAI does have some open-source models, its primary business is in closed-source models that run in data centers, so he’s really defending the company’s business model. OpenAI isn’t exactly threatened by some laptops and gaming rigs just yet, but local AI could mean people one day paying less for subscriptions to models like GPT-6 Luna if they have the power to run them at home. Altman’s talk suggests that the company would prefer that more RAM go to OpenAI’s data centers rather than home computers, which also sparks enthusiast fears of not being able to own your own hardware or software, but rather rent an agent and a computer in the cloud.

In a press release Thursday, the Department of Justice said it had uncovered a large-scale scheme relying partly on AI. The DOJ seized more than $750,000 in cryptocurrency from “a network associated with Kenyan nationals” after data analysis helped flag likely fraudsters. Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division credited new fraud-detection measures implemented by the Trump administration for the arrests. He said that “this is the first international seizure of its kind in Kenya,” while warning fraudsters that the crackdown has only just begun.

[…] At a press conference, McDonald was joined by FBI and Department of Education officials to explain how the scheme works. It starts with bad actors purchasing personally identifiable information (PII) of Americans — most frequently targeting high school graduates who never attended college and went straight into the workforce. Once they have that sensitive data, they fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) while seeking to enroll in universities and community colleges. If accepted, student aid is distributed first to schools to cover tuition and fees, but any leftover money is deposited into bank accounts controlled by the fraudsters. Dozens of Americans have opened bank accounts to act as money mules for fraudsters, the DOJ said.

To keep money flowing, bad actors use AI to fill out applications, complete coursework, and even make it appear that a student is attending virtual sessions. “It looks like the ghost student is actually completing the class,” McDonald said at the press conference. “Some even create the appearance of a fake student in an online classroom to trick schools into believing a real person is present. The goal is to keep the ghost student in school for as long as possible, semester after semester after semester.” So far, the DOE has “identified over 830,000 potentially fraudulent federal student aid accounts created by using this PII of US citizens,” officials said at the press conference. If all those accounts are ghost students, total losses come close to $130 million, the DOJ said.

Chris Low, from investment management firm FHN Financial, said the bulk of what was happening in the stock market was in reaction to some of the biggest tech players such as Amazon and Google. He told Reuters the companies were “showing some pretty significant growing pains as they aggressively pursue the AI build-out.” “The thinking is that these signs suggest that the entire sector is going to slow down.”

Kathleen Brookes, research director at trading firm XTB, said there have been many ups and downs in AI trade in recent months. “Investors have turned ruthless, punishing any signs of disappointment in [third quarter] earnings,” she said. “The AI trade has had a good run in recent years, but now investors want payback, and companies like Alphabet and Intel are in the crosshairs.” […] Brookes noted that November is typically a strong month for stocks. “If we see AI stocks continue to struggle in the coming days, it could suggest the AI trade is past its peak, and investors will be looking for a new theme to drive markets,” she said.

General Motors will pay $220 million to 36 states to settle allegations that it illegally sold private driving behavior and location information to data brokers. As part of the settlement, GM must get drivers’ express consent before it collects or shares their driving and location data — terms that are in line with separate agreements it previously reached with California and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). This settlement does contain a new requirement that GM must have a third party assess the automaker’s compliance with the privacy program it has put in place.

The agreement announced Thursday settles a lawsuit brought by a coalition of attorneys general from 36 states that alleged GM had sold the information to data brokers, which in turn then sold it to insurance providers. “This agreement addresses Smart Driver, a product we ended in 2024, and reinforces steps we’ve taken to strengthen our privacy practices,” GM said in an emailed statement. “Safer, more helpful and personalized experiences are enabled by connected vehicle data, and GM is committed to being clear about what information is used, how it’s protected, and the choices customers have about what they share.”

The settlement comes more than two years after a New York Times report showed how GM and OnStar collected, used, and sold drivers’ precise geolocation data and driving behavior to third parties, including data brokers LexisNexis and Verisk. The data was collected through GM’s Smart Driver program, a free feature contained within its connected car apps that tracked and rated driving behaviors and seat belt use. Data brokers sold this information to insurance providers, which could affect customers’ rates, the NYT reported at the time.

Ofcom, the UK’s online watchdog, said about 150,000 16- to 17-year-olds do not own a passport or driving licence, which are likely to be needed to access age-restricted platforms. The Australia-style ban on under-16s accessing social media services, including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, is due to come into force next spring. The head of Ofcom, Melanie Dawes, said “motivated children” would seek to bypass the restrictions, as has happened in Australia.

On Thursday, Ofcom published an assessment of age verification measures that could underpin the ban, outlining four “highly effective” methods: checking a person’s official ID against a live selfie, a bank verifying an account holder’s age, an official digital ID service like the Young Scot card, or estimating someone’s age via a selfie. However, the watchdog said a form of official ID would probably be needed as a “backstop” for other methods, such as facial age estimation, which could be inaccurate by several years. Ofcom said a cohort of 16- to 17-year-olds could miss out as a result. “This means that people without a form of photo ID will likely need to take steps to obtain one to access age-restricted services,” the regulator said.

There’s no definitive timeline on when this change will roll out to all users, or how the site will work if you’re logged out. (If I send my friend a link to a thread and they aren’t logged in, what will they see?) To start, Reddit will test the logged-in requirement in “select markets outside the US” in the “coming months,” according to CEO Steve Huffman. “We’ll look at the impact on the user experience, on our business, and on the whole Reddit ecosystem, figure out where the right boundaries are, and go from there.” Reddit has also rebuilt and is rereleasing the Reddit app’s incognito mode.

Huffman claims the login requirement is better for Reddit’s user experience and its ads business and is “more protective of Reddit data.” The “vast majority” of unauthorized Reddit access happens “through our logged-out experiences,” though the company will still strike licensing deals of its data with companies, like the deals it made with OpenAI and Google in 2024. Huffman notes that Reddit does not need to know a logged-in user’s identity — “Honestly, we don’t want to know” — just that the user is logged in at all. And he says that more logged-in users lets the company deliver “more relevant ads.”

Teng said the incident was not carried out by one person. While the initial investigation indicated the involvement of a compromised laptop, further digging revealed additional points of breach. […] Blockchain analysis firms TRM Labs and Elliptic have linked the theft to North Korean hackers, with TRM attributing it “with high confidence” to a group known as TraderTraitor, the same group responsible for last year’s Bybit hack.

Elliptic estimated Friday that about 44% of the stolen assets have been frozen, with stablecoins accounting for nearly all of those funds. The firm estimated that attackers still controlled over $3 billion in crypto that token issuers cannot directly freeze.

The hackers appear to have compromised Binance’s wallet-signing infrastructure, allowing them to authorize transactions that drained billions of dollars in cryptocurrency across multiple blockchains, according to the firms. Binance, in its preliminary stage, has conducted an investigation into the hack, which suggests the incident may have begun with a compromised engineer’s laptop. The exchange added that it has found no evidence that wallet passwords were leaked.

What do you need to know — need to know — about Xavier Trudeau? The eldest son of former Canadian prime minister Justin, the teenage Trudeau has recently begun performing R&B under the mononym Xav. But, with all due respect to Xav, do those facts make him a person of note? Should you expect to be able to read about him on Wikipedia? What about Evanescence guitarist Tim McCord, or 2012 Yachtmaster of the Year Rainer Holtorff? All three have had a biography on Wikipedia; all three of those biographies were considered for deletion this year on the grounds that the subjects were not notable enough to warrant a biography at all. Every day, dozens, sometimes hundreds, of Wikipedia biographies — of child actors turned LA realtors, retired ambassadors, soccer players who have played less than 10 minutes of professional soccer — are purged from the world’s free encyclopedia.

It’s not as though Wikipedia, which hosts over 7 million articles in the English language, doesn’t have the space. But Wikipedia has only so many volunteers to monitor its contents. To this day, Wikipedia editors are discovering hoaxes that have gone undetected for decades. The time it takes to verify the release dates of Xav’s three singles is better spent — the logic goes — by asking whether the American Civil War officer Nathaniel Lyon really drank mustard during battle, as was claimed in his Wikipedia biography for 17 years. Wikipedia removed the mustard claim, not because it was proven wrong, but because there was no reliable evidence for it. “We’re not really looking for what’s true,” Britta Gustafson, who has been editing Wikipedia since 2001, told me. “We’re looking for what’s verifiable.” Wikipedia editors do not themselves decide that a person is not notable, only that there is a lack of reliable evidence to support the claim…

The device is built around a simple idea: your apps, screens, entertainment, and AI assistant should be able to come with you wherever you go. On day-one, users have access to millions of familiar mobile apps and games from Google Play, alongside many experiences specifically for XR. Android XR brings familiar hand and voice inputs to AURA, while Gemini makes the experiences more natural and intuitive by working across what users see and do.

With Wired Mirroring, users can plug a computer or handheld gaming console directly into XREAL AURA via USB-C and instantly turn it into a massive private spatial window. That means a laptop, handheld gaming device, or other compatible USB-C device can sit alongside native Android XR apps in a user’s spatial workspace. Whether turning a plane seat into a private multi-monitor setup, watching a movie on a large virtual screen, or playing Android and console games in an immersive spatial environment, XREAL AURA is designed to make spatial computing practical, portable, and useful.

[…] For work, AURA creates a portable multi-window workspace without requiring a physical monitor. Users can open Android XR apps, mirror a laptop, place windows in virtual space, and use Gemini to help understand or act on what is on screen. For entertainment, AURA becomes a private theater on demand. Users can access familiar streaming apps, expand content into a large virtual display, and use electrochromic dimming to create a more immersive viewing experience while remaining aware of their surroundings when needed. For play, AURA supports Android games and compatible mirrored gaming devices, enabling users to play on a large and immersive private display.

Engineers at Proton, which makes the encrypted email service Proton Mail and a suite of privacy- and security-focused products, including an encrypted drive service, an authenticator app, and a password manager, are being pushed to “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.” Workers describe an environment where employees have genuine concerns about security or being asked to develop security products with AI but feel unable to voice them, lest Yen berates them in front of everyone or threatens their employment at the company. “The CEO is in full AI psychosis and has been for a while now,” one of the sources told 404 Media.

Trading has resumed on Polymarket’s flagship international platform after a hack that drained money from the wallets of some traders. A third-party vendor based in the United Kingdom was breached, not the prediction market’s website itself. Law enforcement in the UK have been notified of the incident, the company said. Trading was initially paused while the company investigated for several hours.

On X, prominent traders complained that they had lost money; Blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps reported that around 700 users appear affected, with approximately $2.7 million stolen. Polymarket declined to comment when WIRED asked how many traders were impacted by the breach and how much money was lost, but said it will refund impacted traders.

The hack did not impact users on Polymarket US, the company’s newer platform for people within the United States. Polymarket runs two separate prediction markets; Polymarket US operates as a federally regulated financial exchange within the country, while the flagship Polymarket is a cryptocurrency-based platform that is banned in the United States and a number of other countries.

On Wednesday, Utah’s Attorney General Derek Brown filed charges against Kalshi co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, including 12 counts of online gambling promotion, a third-degree felony, one count of a pattern of unlawful activity, a second-degree felony, and general gambling promotion, a Class A misdemeanor. The civil lawsuit calls Kalshi a “back-alley gambling den,” and Attorney General Brown didn’t mince words in a statement to Gizmodo.

“Gambling is illegal in Utah, whether you place the bet, run the game, or promote it. Calling it a ‘prediction market’ doesn’t change what it is, and being federally registered doesn’t put a company above the law,” said Brown. “A federal court has already ruled that Utah’s gambling laws apply to Kalshi,” continued Brown. “Kalshi kept taking bets from Utahns anyway. That is illegal, and we’re putting a stop to it.”

[…] The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has been jumping into action to protect Kalshi and Polymarket by filing lawsuits against any state that brings charges against the betting sites. President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is a paid advisor to both companies. The CFTC announced Wednesday that it was suing the state of Utah as part of its “commitment to maintaining its exclusive jurisdiction over CFTC-registered prediction markets.” The argument is that the feds alone should be regulating these sites.

“Utah seeks to shut down prediction markets across a wide variety of markets,” CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig said in a statement. “Event contracts do not just serve hedging and investment purposes — they also provide the public with information about the outcome of future events. Congress entrusted the CFTC to be the federal regulator with sole responsibility to oversee these markets,” continued Selig. “As I’ve said before, the CFTC has the expertise and responsibility to defend its exclusive jurisdiction over commodity derivatives, and that’s exactly what we’ll do.”