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FTSE 100 group failed after disclosure of billions of dollars of off-balance sheet debtsView the full article

Emily Falk is a Professor of Communication, Psychology, and Marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Communication Neuroscience Lab and the Climate Communication Division of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Her work has been covered in the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Forbes, and Scientific American, among other outlets. What’s the big idea? Every moment is filled with how we’ve decided to spend our time, and that time defines us. We make value judgements (often automatically) of our options and follow similar patterns, day in and day out. When we decide we want to change in some way, it can be extremely difficult to snap out of our typical decision-making to opt for something else, even if we genuinely care about living differently. By understanding how the brain calculates values to drive daily decisions, we can learn how to explore paths that are more aligned with new goals and evolving self-image. By expanding the power and possibility of our choices, we increase the capacity for inner, societal, and cultural growth. Below, Emily shares five key insights from her new book, What We Value: The Neuroscience of Choice and Change. Listen to the audio version—read by Emily herself—in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Our brains shape what we value. Neuroscience research (first in monkeys and then in humans) has shown that a network of brain regions, known as the value system, computes our daily choices in a process called value calculation. This happens whether we’re aware of it or not. Each choice we make is first shaped by what options our brain considers. When I imagined choosing between a run or doing extra work, other options like heading to a karaoke bar with my coworkers or going for a walk with my grandma rarely entered the calculation. In the next phase of decision-making, the value system assigns a subjective worth to each choice based on our past experiences, current context, and future goals. Going for a run is hard. It’s the end of the day, and I’m already tired. Sure, the run would be good for my health, but look how many unread emails there are…so I choose to finish up the emails. After we choose, the value system keeps track of how things went, making us more likely to repeat choices that were more rewarding than we expected and less likely to repeat choices that were less rewarding than we expected. After choosing the work, my body felt kind of blah, but my students were making progress on interesting problems, and that felt good. The value our brains assign to different options is dynamic and can shift depending on context, like what mood we’re in, what other people are saying or doing, and which parts of the choice we pay attention to. Understanding this can help us identify opportunities to change, and ways to align choices with our bigger-picture goals and values. For me, I knew I needed to find a way to make moving around and spending time with people I love more compelling to my brain in the moment. 2. Our brains shape—and limit—who we are. Our sense of who we are is an important factor in shaping our choices. Neuroscientists have identified brain regions that help construct our sense of “me” and “not me,” and when we make decisions this self-relevance is deeply intertwined with the value system. Together they guide us toward choices that are aligned with our perceptions of who we already are. “We tend to favor choices that reinforce our existing identity, sometimes at the cost of new opportunities and experiences.” Having a coherent sense of who we are can be useful, but it also limits us. We tend to favor choices that reinforce our existing identity, sometimes at the cost of new opportunities and experiences. When I kept choosing work, my identity as a hard-working researcher who always hits deadlines and invests in mentoring students weighed heavily on my value calculations. I didn’t think of myself as an athlete, and in the process, I deprived myself of chances to improve as a runner, dancer, or any number of other options. A mountain of research data shows that I’m not alone in this. Most of us cling to ideas and behaviors we consider “ours,” a phenomenon called the endowment effect. Sometimes, this helps us affirm our core values and reinforce choices that are compatible with longer-term goals, but it can also leave us with a bounded notion of self, meaning that it limits the way we see ourselves. When confronted with evidence that our past behaviors weren’t optimal, or that others want us to do things differently, it can make us defensive, leading us to double down on past choices, which can make change harder. When my grandma told me that she wished we could spend more time together, I barely let her finish the sentence before defensively explaining that of course we spent time together—she’d come to my house and hang out with my kids while I cooked dinner, and often we’d even steal a few minutes to walk around the block together. But, no, she patiently explained, that was not what she was after. It wasn’t until later when I was able to think about what really matters to me that I could see that what she was asking for was something that I wanted too. 3. We don’t decide alone. Neuroscientists have identified brain regions that help us understand what other people think and feel. The brain’s social-relevance system helps us connect and coordinate with other people, also shaping the decisions we make. Our sense of what others are doing or thinking strongly affects what we choose, what we’re willing to change, and the possibilities we consider. Feeling a sense of status, belonging, and connection serves as a powerful reward, and we often make choices shaped by these forces. When I imagined what other researchers were doing, I imagined them hard at work making progress—not going for runs or walks with their grandmas. It was important to me to be seen as a serious scientist. When I imagined my collaborator’s appreciation of my speedy email replies and my students’ gratitude for timely feedback, the decision to keep working made even more sense. “Feeling a sense of status, belonging, and connection serves as a powerful reward.” But, although the social relevance system can help us understand others, it can also mislead us. I was imagining what others would think and feel if I left work, and my social relevance system was very convincing, even though in reality, I didn’t actually know. I had never fact-checked those assumptions. The same can be said when our social relevance system paints such a vivid picture that we feel certain we know why a co-worker didn’t invite us to lunch or why our spouse is frustrated. By keeping us aligned with others, the social relevance system can do useful things like keep us current on trends. Or it can do harmful things like deluding us into agreeing with popular but patently false social media posts. It also shapes what we think is acceptable and desirable regarding whether we should spend a beautiful autumn afternoon at the office or on a jog. 4. We can work with our brains to create change. Many of us have been taught that hard work and pain are necessary for achievement. Theodore Roosevelt went so far as to suggest that “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…” But neuroscience research highlights that small shifts in how we frame decisions can change our value calculations. My hope is that understanding how this works might make change easier. Our value system serves as the bridge between where we are now and where we want to be, and the self- and social-relevance systems shape what we value. If we want to change ourselves, the people we care about, or even society, we need to harness these systems and leverage key ingredients for change, such as shifting focus, letting go of defensiveness, and expanding where the inputs to our value calculations come from in the first place. Based on what we know about the brain’s value system, we can shift our focus to different aspects of a situation to align our emotions with our objectives. For instance, we can leverage the brain’s natural tendency to prioritize immediate gratification to make future-oriented choices feel more rewarding in the present. Instead of choosing between immediate and future rewards, we can find ways to bridge them. Returning to the whisper in the back of my mind, reminding me to spend more time with my grandma, I knew I needed to find a way to make walks with Grandma Bev compatible with the other immediate pressures factoring into my value calculations. One day, walking home from work, a podcast episode created a small bridge in my thinking. The episode of How to Save a Planet highlighted the joy of biking. What if, instead of driving to Bev’s, arriving stressed from the traffic and struggling to find parking, I biked? What if I had some time to myself outside and got some exercise on the way? The immediate reward of checking something off of my work to-do list was offset by the opportunity to enjoy a bike ride in addition to the reward of spending time with my grandma. Hearing these regular people on the podcast teetering around on bikes also made me think that I could be that kind of person too. “We can shift our focus to different aspects of a situation to align our emotions with our objectives.” There was still the issue of not wanting my grandma to be right when she pointed out that we weren’t spending much quality time together. Should I admit I was wrong? Using what we know about the self-relevance system, to combat defensiveness, we can focus on “self-transcendent values,” which focus on the things that matter most to us. Zooming out like this to focus on our core values, or the well-being of others and the world, allows us to see that being wrong about something doesn’t have to mean we’re a bad person, or that everything about us has to change. We can hold onto a core sense of self while opening ourselves to changing what’s not working and letting go of preconceived notions of who we are. Finally, turning to the social relevance system, the people who most immediately come to mind when we make choices get an outsized influence. When I was thinking about the people I spent my days with at work, it made work rewards salient. And this isn’t just true when it comes to decisions about how we spend our afternoons. All kinds of decisions, from the products we buy to what we think is important politically, are shaped by the voices we imagine most readily. Research shows that the people we spend time with are often similar to us in many ways. To counteract known biases in the social relevance system, we can audit who is and isn’t part of our social networks and actively bring in new ideas through what we read, listen to, and spend time with. This expands our universe of choices, provides new and unexpected perspectives, and improves our ability to come up with creative solutions to problems. 5. Shaping the future starts in our minds. Our choices don’t just shape our own lives; they ripple outward, influencing culture and collective values. Research shows that norms are deeply shaped by those around us. Just as observing others influences our value calculations, we serve as role models for the people who see what we do. In this way, our own value calculations influence the people around us. When I share stories about my grandma with my students and colleagues, I’m not just telling them about my family. I’m opening a possibility for them to prioritize spending time with their loved ones. Consciously and unconsciously, our actions change what others value. The ways we see ourselves can influence what is possible for others, and what we think is possible shapes the culture of the future. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. View the full article

Chili’s and TGI Fridays are in a full-blown mozzarella stick feud. Last week, TGI Fridays unveiled its new menu with a post on X: “New menu’s out. mozz sticks hit harder. happy hour’s calling. life’s good.” The next day, the chain appeared to throw shade at its fast casual rival, Chili’s Grill & Bar. new menu’s out. mozz sticks hit harder. happy hour’s calling. life’s good. — TGI Fridays (@TGIFridays) May 13, 2025 “Somebody tell [chili pepper emoji] to stay in their lane,” TGI Fridays posted on May 14. “Y’all are not mozzarella stick people. We are. That’s it. That’s the tweet.” Chili’s clapped back by sharing a screenshot of the post: “@ us next time… Also, we honestly didn’t know you were still open. Congrats!” @ us next time… also, we honestly didn’t know you were still open. congrats! pic.twitter.com/t32gxjNivm — Chili's Grill & Bar (@Chilis) May 15, 2025 Plot twist: the original tweet wasn’t even real. It was part of a marketing stunt pulled off by Chili’s. “The gag is this wasn’t even a real tweet,” TGI Fridays admitted in a reply to a commenter. the gag is this wasn't even a real tweet 😅 — TGI Fridays (@TGIFridays) May 16, 2025 Even so, the jab likely stung. TGI Fridays has only 85 restaurants left in the U.S., down from about 270 at the start of last year. Its parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2024, blaming the pandemic for ongoing financial struggles. Just last month, the chain closed another 30 locations. “OMG, I think I just witnessed a murder,” one X user wrote. Another added insult to injury: “they closed the Fridays near me….and opened another chilis…” Chili’s responded: “was probably for the best.” was probably for the best — Chili's Grill & Bar (@Chilis) May 16, 2025 Fans also dredged up a 2021 lawsuit against TGI Fridays over its frozen mozzarella sticks, which were found to contain cheddar instead of mozzarella. “Do they actually contain mozzarella now or nah?” one person asked. Refusing to back down, TGI Fridays proposed a showdown. “Is the cheese pull challenge accepted or nah??” the company asked. is the cheese pull challenge accepted or nah??🥱🥱🥱 https://t.co/fDHmZiIbrj — TGI Fridays (@TGIFridays) May 15, 2025 So… Team Chili’s or Team Fridays? View the full article

More severe storms were expected to roll across the central U.S. this week following the weather-related deaths of more than two dozen people and a devastating Kentucky tornado. The National Weather Service said a “multitude of hazardous weather” would impact the U.S. over the next several days—from thunderstorms and potentially baseball-size hail on the Plains, to heavy mountain snow in the West and dangerous heat in the South. Areas at risk of thunderstorms include communities in Kentucky and Missouri that were hit by Friday’s tornadoes. In London, Kentucky, people whose houses were destroyed scrambled Sunday to put tarps over salvageable items or haul them away for safe storage, said Zach Wilson. His parents’ house was in ruins and their belongings scattered. “We’re trying the hardest to get anything that looks of value and getting it protected, especially pictures and papers and things like that,” he said. Here’s the latest on the recent storms, some tornado history, and where to look out for the next weather impacts. Deadly storms claim dozens of lives At least 19 people were killed and 10 seriously injured in Kentucky, where a tornado on Friday damaged hundreds of homes and tossed vehicles in southeastern Laurel County. Officials said the death toll could rise and that three people remained in critical condition Sunday. Wilson said he raced to his parents’ home in London, Kentucky, after the storm. “It was dark and still raining, but every lightning flash, it was lighting up your nightmares: Everything was gone,” he said. “The thankful thing was me and my brother got here and got them out of where they had barricaded themselves.” Survey teams were expected on the ground Monday so the state can apply for federal disaster assistance, Gov. Andy Beshear said. Some of the two dozen state roads that had closures could take days to reopen. In St. Louis, five people died and 38 were injured as the storm system swept through on Friday, according to Mayor Cara Spencer. More than 5,000 homes in the city were affected, she said. On Sunday, city inspectors were going through damaged areas to condemn unsafe structures, Spencer said. She asked for people not to sightsee in damaged areas. A tornado that started in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton traveled at least 8 miles (13 kilometers), had 150-mph (241-kph) winds, and had a maximum width of 1 mile (1.6 kilometers), according to the weather service. It touched down in the area of Forest Park, home to the St. Louis Zoo and the site of the 1904 World’s Fair and the Olympic Games that same year. In Scott County, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of St. Louis, a tornado killed two people, injured several others, and destroyed multiple homes, Sheriff Derick Wheetley wrote on social media. The weather system spawned tornadoes in Wisconsin and temporarily enveloped parts of Illinois—including Chicago—in a pall of dust. Two people were killed in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., by falling trees while driving. The storms hit after the The President administration cut staffing of weather service offices, with outside experts worrying about how it would affect warnings in disasters such as tornadoes. A history of tornadoes The majority of the world’s tornadoes occur in the U.S., which has about 1,200 annually. Researchers in 2018 found that deadly tornadoes were happening less frequently in the traditional “Tornado Alley” of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, and more frequently in parts of the more densely populated and tree-filled South. They can happen any time of day or night, but certain times of the year bring peak “tornado season.” That’s from May into early June for the southern Plains, and earlier in the spring on the Gulf Coast. The deadliest tornado in Kentucky’s history was hundreds of yards wide when it tore through downtown Louisville’s business district in March 1890, collapsing multistory buildings including one with 200 people inside. Seventy-six people were killed. The last tornado to cause mass fatalities in Kentucky was a December 2021 twister that lasted almost five hours. It traveled some 165 miles (266 kilometers), leaving a path of destruction that included 57 dead and more than 500 injured, according to the weather service. Officials recorded at least 41 tornadoes during that storm, which killed at least 77 people statewide. On the same day, a deadly tornado struck the St. Louis area, killing six people at an Amazon facility in nearby Illinois. More storms threaten in coming days Thunderstorms with potentially damaging winds were forecast for a region stretching from northeast Colorado to central Texas. And tornadoes will again be a threat particularly from central Kansas to Oklahoma, according to the weather service. Meanwhile, triple-digit temperatures were forecast for parts of south Texas, with the potential to break daily records. The hot, dry air also sets the stage for critical wildfire conditions through early this week in southern New Mexico and West Texas. Up to a foot of snow was expected in parts of Idaho and western Montana. —Matthew Brown and Carolyn Kaster, Associated Press View the full article

If you’re like most folks, you use your home's entryway to hang a few coats, store an unruly pile of shoes, and give you a place to drop your keys and the mail when you walk in. If you have the space, you might use it as a full-fledged mud room—a space to shed your wet coats, boots, and umbrellas before stepping into the house proper. But your entryway could be a lot more than that—especially if you live in a small space and need to make use of every inch of square footage. Just because it’s a space you and your guests pass through on the way to somewhere else doesn’t mean you can’t use it for other purposes. And you can enhance the space for the guest experience as well, turning a transitional room no one remembers into a multi-functional space. Here are seven options for getting more out of your entryway. Use it as an office spaceIf you ever work from home or just need a space to do household paperwork or to noddle away at your hobbies, your entryway can easily be transformed into a tiny office. A fold-down desk that compresses into an unobtrusive wall unit when not in use, combined with an adjustable stool or other mobile seating that can be used for putting on and taking off shoes when you’re not working, is all you need. If you have the wall space, throw in extra shelving or a narrow filing cabinet (or combination piece like this filing cabinet/printer stand/shelving unit) for maximum office storage in a minimal footprint. When you’re not working, you can fold everything up and instantly have a clear entryway again. Turn it into a libraryNeed a place to store your books and set up a cozy reading nook? The entryway could be that spot. A row of shelves (or other book storage) along one wall, a small but comfy chair (with a slim console table for cups of tea or literary cocktails), and a floor lamp that’s great for reading, and you’re all set. When not in use, this area can also set a warm, comfortable vibe for visitors. Assemble a gallery displayIf you have lots of art pieces, collectibles, or mementos to display, your entryway is an ideal place to put them all. Hanging pictures or installing floating shelves to display your items not only beautifies the space, giving it a cohesive and personal style, it also makes it a lot more inviting for guests. Instead of moving through a chaotic or antiseptic place that pushes them to kick off their shoes and get into the main part of the house as quickly as possible, your entryway could be a place people want to linger. Build a conversation nookIf your home lacks a space to sit and chat without distractions, your entryway might be the ideal spot. If you have room for a shallow sofa like this one, or a pair of small accent chairs like these, you can set up a spot where you can visit with guests. Having a space like this in your entryway also makes it ideal for those casual encounters with neighbors—instead of standing awkwardly in the doorway for fifteen minutes, invite them in to sit. Add storageIf you’re hurting for storage space, consider all that underused wall and floor space in your entryway. You can store anything there, after all—it doesn’t have to be entryway-related, and no one will ever know what’s in those drawers and cabinets unless you tell them. Even a small foyer can be made into a storage paradise with some shelving, a shallow wardrobe or armoire, or a dual-purpose storage bench. Use it as a barYou want to host sophisticated gatherings fueled by social lubricants, but your bar is currently also your kitchen counter? Look to your entryway. A narrow bar cart against one wall could be the answer. If you want to make it a space people will linger in after securing their cocktails, add some floating shelves at counter heights (typically 36-48 inches high) to set down glasses. To really commit, a slim beverage refrigerator for beer, wine, and mixers next to the bar cart is a great addition. Turn it into your family information centerYour entryway can be the place where everyone in the house knows to look for daily information. A cork board or chalkboard (or a combination) mounted in the entryway makes it easy for everyone coming and going to check the day’s schedule, look for reminders, or pick up and drop off items for later retrieval. This can be a better option than the kitchen because it will be the last and first place people see when leaving or entering the house, increasing the chances that you’ll actually remember the things you’re reminding one another about. (When you have guests staying over, it’s also a perfect spot to mark down things like the WiFi password or important phone numbers.) View the full article

COO Joseph Gormley weighed in on cuts at the securitization guarantor and efforts to improve the industry's efficiencies and the government's. View the full article

The Mortgage Bankers Association latest forecast reflects the industry's current views on where their business is going, said Mike Fratantoni. View the full article

Agreement ranges over food, fishing, defence and youth mobility, but much remains to be finalisedView the full article

One of the main topics of this newsletter is the quest to cultivate sustainable and meaningful work in a digital age. Given this objective, it’s hard to avoid confronting the furiously disruptive potentials of AI. I’ve been spending a lot time in recent years, in my roles as a digital theorist and technology journalist, researching and writing about this topic, so it occurred to me that it might be useful to capture in one place all of my current thoughts about the intersection of AI and work. The obvious caveat applies: these predictions will shift — perhaps even substantially — as this inherently unpredictable sector continues to evolve. But here’s my current best stab at what’s going on now, what’s coming soon, and what’s likely just hype. Let’s get to it… Where AI Is Already Making a Splash When generative AI made its show-stopping debut a few years ago, the smart money was on text production becoming the first killer app. For example, business users, it was thought, would soon outsource much of the tedious communication that makes up their day — meeting summaries, email, reports — into AI tools. A fair amount of this is happening, especially when it comes to lengthy utilitarian communication where the quality doesn’t matter much. I recently attended a men’s retreat, for example, and it was clear that the organizer had used ChatGPT to create the final email summarizing the weekend schedule. And why not? It got the job done and saved some time. It’s becoming increasingly clear, however, that for most people the act of writing in their daily lives isn’t a major problem that needs to be solved, which is capping the predicted ubiquity of this use case. (A survey of internet users found that only around 5.4% had used ChatGPT to help write emails and letters. And this includes the many who maybe experimented with this capability once or twice before moving on.) The application that has instead leaped ahead to become the most exciting and popular use of these tools is smart search. If you have a question, instead of turning to Google you can query a new version of ChatGPT or Claude. These models can search the web to gather information, but unlike a traditional search engine, they can also process the information they find and summarize for you only what you care about. Want the information presented in a particular format, like a spreadsheet or a chart? A high-end model like GPT-4o can do this for you as well, saving even more extra steps. Smart search has become the first killer app of the generative AI era because, like any good killer app, it takes an activity most people already do all the time — typing search queries into web sites — and provides a substantially, almost magically better experience. This feels similar to electronic spreadsheets conquering paper ledger books or email immediately replacing voice mail and fax. I would estimate that around 90% of the examples I see online right now from people exclaiming over the potential of AI are people conducting smart searches. This behavioral shift is appearing in the data. A recent survey conducted by Future found that 27% of US-based respondents had used AI tools such as ChatGPT instead of a traditional search engine. From an economic perspective, this shift matters. Earlier this month, the stock price for Alphabet, the parent company for Google, fell after an Apple executive revealed that Google searches through the Safari web browser had decreased over the previous two months, likely due to the increased use of AI tools. Keep in mind, web search is a massive business, with Google earning over $175 billion from search ads in 2023 alone. In my opinion, becoming the new Google Search is likely the best bet for a company like OpenAI to achieve profitability, even if it’s not as sexy as creating AGI or automating all of knowledge work (more on these applications later). The other major success story for generative AI at the moment is computer programming. Individuals with only rudimentary knowledge of programming languages can now produce usable prototypes of simple applications using tools like ChatGPT, and somewhat more advanced projects with AI-enhanced agent-style helpers like Roo Code. This can be really useful for quickly creating tools for personal use or seeking to create a proof-of-concept for a future product. The tech incubator Y Combinator, for example, made waves when they reported that a quarter of the start-ups in their Winter 2025 batch generated 95% or more of their product’s codebases using AI. How far can this automated coding take us? An academic computer scientist named Judah Diament recently went viral for noting that the ability for novice users to create simple applications isn’t new. There have been systems dedicated to this purpose for over four decades, from HyperCard to VisualBasic to Flash. As he elaborates: “And, of course, they all broke down when anything slightly complicated or unusual needs to be done (as required by every real, financially viable software product or service).” This observation created major backlash — as does most expressions of AI skepticism these days — but Diament isn’t wrong. Despite recent hyperbolic statements by tech leaders, many professional programmers aren’t particularly worried that their jobs can be replicated by language model queries, as so much of what they do is experience-based architecture design and debugging, which are unrelated skills for which we currently have no viable AI solution. Software developers do, however, use AI heavily: not to produce their code from scratch, but instead as helper utilities. Tools like GitHub’s Copilot are integrated directly into the environments in which these developers already work, and make it much simpler to look up obscure library or AI calls, or spit out tedious boilerplate code. The productivity gains here are notable. Programming without help from AI is rapidly becoming increasingly rare. The Next Big AI Application Language model-based AI systems can respond to prompts in pretty amazing ways. But if we focus only on outputs, we underestimate another major source of these models’ value: their ability to understand human language. This so-called natural language processing ability is poised to transform how we use software. There is a push at the moment, for example, led by Microsoft and its Copilot product (not to be confused with GitHub Copilot), to use AI models to provide natural language interfaces to popular software. Instead of learning complicated sequences of clicks and settings to accomplish a task in these programs, you’ll be able to simply ask for what you need; e.g., “Hey Copilot, can you remove all rows from this spreadsheet where the dollar amount in column C is less than $10 dollars then sort everything that remains by the names in Column A? Also, the font is too small, make it somewhat larger.” Enabling novice users to access to expert-level features in existing software will aggregate into huge productivity gains. As a bonus, the models required to understand these commands don’t have to be nearly as massive and complicated as the current cutting-edge models that the big AI companies use to show off their technology. Indeed, they might be small enough to run locally on devices, making them vastly cheaper and more efficient to operate. Don’t sleep on this use case. Like smart search, it’s also not as sexy as AGI or full automation, but I’m increasingly convinced that within the next half-decade or so, informally-articulated commands are going to emerge as one of the dominate interfaces to the world of computation. What About Agents? One of the more attention-catching storylines surrounding AI at the moment is the imminent arrival of so-called agents which will automate more and more of our daily work, especially in the knowledge sectors once believed to be immune from machine encroachment. Recent reports imply that agents are a major part of OpenAI’s revenue strategy for the near future. The company imagines business customers paying up to $20,000 a month for access to specialized bots that can perform key professional tasks. It’s the projection of this trend that led Elon Musk to recently quip: “If you want to do a job that’s kinda like a hobby, you can do a job. But otherwise, AI and the robots will provide any goods and services that you want.” But progress in creating these agents has recently slowed. To understand why requires a brief snapshot of the current state of generative AI technology… Not long ago, there was a belief in so-called scaling laws that argued, roughly speaking, that as you continued to increase the size of language models, their abilities would continue to rapidly increase. For a while this proved true: GPT-2 was much better than the original GPT, GPT-3 was much better than GPT-2, and GPT-4 was a big improvement on GPT-3. The hope was that by continuing to scale these models, you’d eventually get to a system so smart and capable that it would achieve something like AGI, and could be used as the foundation for software agents to automate basically any conceivable task. More recently, however, these scaling laws have begun to falter. Companies continue to invest massive amounts of capital in building bigger models, trained on ever-more GPUs crunching ever-larger data sets, but the performance of these models stopped leaping forward as much as they had in the past. This is why the long-anticipated GPT-5 has not yet been released, and why, just last week, Meta announced they were delaying the release of their newest, biggest model, as its capabilities were deemed insufficiently better than its predecessor. In response to the collapse of the scaling laws, the industry has increasingly turned its attention in another direction: tuning existing models using reinforcement learning. Say, for example, you want to make a model that is particularly good at math. You pay a bunch of math PhDs $100 an hour to come up with a lot of math problems with step-by-step solutions. You then take an existing model, like GPT-4, and feed it these problems one-by-one, using reinforcement learning techniques to tell it exactly where it’s getting certain steps in its answers right or wrong. Over time, this tuned model will get better at solving this specific type of problem. This technique is why OpenAI is now releasing multiple, confusingly-named models, each seemingly optimized for different specialties. These are the result of distinct tunings. They would have preferred, of course, to simply produce a GPT-5 model that could do well on all of these tasks, but that hasn’t worked out as they hoped. This tuning approach will continue to develop interesting tools, but it will be much more piecemeal and hit-or-miss than what was anticipated when we still believed in scaling laws. Part of the difficulty is that this approach depends on finding the right data for each task you want to tackle. Certain problems, like math, computer programming, and logical reasoning, are well-suited for tuning as they can be described by pairs of prompts and correct answers. But this is not the case for many other business activities, which can be esoteric and bespoke to a given context. This means many useful activities will remain un-automatable by language model agents into the foreseeable future. I once said that the real Turing Test for our current age is an AI system that can successfully empty my email inbox, a goal that requires the mastery of any number of complicated tasks. Unfortunately for all of us, this is not a test we’re poised to see passed any time soon. Are AGI and Superintelligence Imminent? The Free Press recently published an article titled “AI Will Change What it Means to Be Human. Are We Ready?”. It summarized a common sentiment that has been feverishly promoted by Silicon Valley in recent years: that AI is on the cusp of changing everything in unfathomably disruptive ways. As the article argues: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asserted in a recent talk that GPT-5 will be smarter than all of us. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei described the powerful AI systems to come as “a country of geniuses in a data center.” These are not radical predictions. They are nearly here. But here’s the thing: these are radical predictions. Many companies tried to build the equivalent of the proposed GPT-5 and found that continuing to scale up the size of their models isn’t yielding the desired results. As described above, they’re left tuning the models they already have for specific tasks that are well-described by synthetic data sets. This can produce cool demos and products, but it’s not a route to a singular “genius” system that’s smarter than humans in some general sense. Indeed, if you look closer at the rhetoric of the AI prophets in recent months, you’ll see a creeping awareness that, in a post-scaling law world, they no longer have a convincing story for how their predictions will manifest. A recent Nick Bostrom video, for example, which (true to character) predicts Superintelligence might happen in less than two years (!), adds the caveat that this outcome will require key “unlocks” from the industry, which is code for we don’t know how to build systems that achieve this goal, but, hey, maybe someone will figure it out! (The AI centrist Gary Marcus subsequently mocked Bostrom by tweeting: “for all we know, we could be just one unlock and 3-6 weeks away from levitation, interstellar travel, immortality, or room temperature superconductors, or perhaps even all four!”) Similarly, if you look closer at AI 2027, the splashy new doomsday manifesto which argues that AI might eliminate humanity as early as 2030, you won’t find a specific account of what type of system might be capable of such feats of tyrannical brilliance. The authors instead sidestep the issue by claiming that within the next year or so, the language models we’re tuning to solve computer programming tasks will somehow come up with, on their own, code that implements breakthrough new AI technology that mere humans cannot understand. This is an incredible claim. (What sort of synthetic data set do they imagine being able to train a language model to crack the secrets of human-level intelligence?) It’s the technological equivalent of looking at the Wright Brother’s Flyer in 1903 and thinking, “well, if they could figure this out so quickly, we should have interstellar travel cracked by the end of the decade.” The current energized narratives around AGI and Superintelligence seem to be fueled by a convergence of three factors: (1) the fact that scaling laws did apply for the first few generations of language models, making it easy and logical to imagine them continuing to apply up the exponential curve of capabilities in the years ahead; (2) demos of models tuned to do well on specific written tests, which we tend to intuitively associate with intelligence; and (3) tech leaders pounding furiously on the drums of sensationalism, knowing they’re rarely held to account on their predictions. But here’s the reality: We are not currently on a trajectory to genius systems. We might figure this out in the future, but the “unlocks” required will be sufficiently numerous and slow to master that we’ll likely have plenty of clear signals and warning along the way. So, we’re not out of the woods on these issues, but at the same time, humanity is not going to be eliminated by the machines in 2030 either. In the meantime, the breakthroughs that are happening, especially in the world of work, should be both exciting and worrisome enough on their own for now. Let’s grapple with those first. #### For more of my thoughts on AI, check out my New Yorker archive and my podcast (in recent months, I often discuss AI in the third act of the show). For more on my thoughts on technology and work more generally, check out my recent books on the topic: Slow Productivity, A World Without Email, and Deep Work. The post AI and Work (Some Predictions) appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

Hard-fought reset lays bare the realities of the post-Brexit relationshipView the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The Oura ring can give you a ton of data on your sleep, health, and fitness, but you need to pay for a $5.99/month subscription to see all of it. So what happens if you get an Oura ring but don’t pony up for the subscription? Here’s the full rundown, with screenshots of exactly what you’ll see—and a little-known way of getting data the app doesn’t show you.. As I explain in my review of the Oura ring 4, you should budget for both the ring and its ongoing subscription if you want to get the data and analysis the Oura ring is famous for offering. The subscription isn’t for premium extras; it’s for the basic functionality of the app, without which there isn’t much point to wearing the ring. But! There is a way to get the data the ring collects, without going through the app. It comes as a spreadsheet download, so it’s not useful for casual “how did I sleep last night?” use, but it's fine if what you really want is to do some data analysis. I’ll explain how to get that below, but first, let’s see what the app looks like sans subscription. The app only shows scores and meditations (mostly) The two screens you get without a subscription. Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Oura Here’s what you’ll see in the Oura app: not much. You’ll get a score for each of Activity, Readiness, and Sleep. Each score is out of 100—higher is better—and comes with a label like “good” or “optimal.” That’s it. No heart rate, HRV, hours of sleep, stress timeline, Advisor chatbot, meal tracking, none of that. Just three somewhat inscrutable numbers. Without raw data, I don’t consider these scores useful at all. (Imagine somebody asking “how did you sleep?” and you answer “82,” like they’re supposed to know what that means.) You do still get an Explore tab, which contains guided meditations and a few Oura tutorials, such as a one-minute video explaining what your readiness score is supposed to mean. Interestingly, after doing a meditation on my no-subscription account, I don’t see my heart rate or HRV during the session, but I do see some text giving my “baseline” for each of those measures. That’s not my most recent night’s reading, though. For that, you need to go download a spreadsheet. For comparison, a sampling of what you get with a subscription. Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Oura You can download your data from Oura’s website, even without a subscriptionAlright, here’s the fun stuff. If you are OK with getting your data in spreadsheet form, you can download it directly from the Oura website. Go to cloud.ouraring.com. If you had a subscription, you’d be able to view some cool graphs on your dashboard, but you don’t, so the page is mostly blank. Tap on My Account and scroll down to Export Data. You’ll see a list of .csv and .json files. The very first one, sleep.csv (I think that link will work for you if you have an Oura account) is probably the most useful. Go ahead and bookmark that link on your phone, and you can check it in lieu of checking the app. A partial view of sleep.csv (there are tons more columns than I can show in one screenshot). Credit: Beth Skwarecki From this spreadsheet, you can see your resting heart rate, HRV, and pretty much everything else that Oura logs every night. Your total sleep duration, for example, is in the 21st column, and it’s recorded in seconds. (28,410 seconds is about 7 hours and 54 minutes, if I’m doing my math right.) Explore the other files to see which ones have the data you’re most interested in. These are the downloads available without a subscription. Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Oura You need to give Oura a payment card to set up your ring in the first placeIf you want nothing to do with the subscription at all, there’s an important caveat: The only way to set up your Oura ring (when it first arrives) is to sign up for a free trial that rolls into a regular subscription. So if you want to avoid giving Oura any payment information at all, you’re out of luck. You can cancel the subscription renewal immediately after signing up, though, which will mean you won’t be charged. View the full article

Russian leader’s comments follow phone call with US President Donald The PresidentView the full article

Mortgage brokers say hurdles more pressing than a high interest rate environment range from nationwide inventory shortages to property tax increases. View the full article

Jake Knapp is a designer, investor, and general partner at Character Capital. He has spent the last 25 years helping companies create products that people genuinely love. He helped build Gmail, co-founded Google Meet, and has worked with hundreds of startups, including Blue Bottle Coffee, One Medical, and Slack. What’s the big idea? The foundation of success is shockingly simple, and yet most teams get bogged down for months trying to strategize a new idea. Making your next big project a hit relies on creating a powerful Founding Hypothesis from the get-go. When done right, this method ensures that everyone’s voice gets heard, there is enough clarity to accelerate experimentation, and a smart product gets to stand in a dazzling spotlight. Rather than wasting time, money, and missing opportunities, starting a project thoughtfully allows teams to move confidently and quickly toward solutions. Below, Jake shares five key insights from his new book, Click: How to Make What People Want. Listen to the audio version—read by Jake himself—in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Project beginnings are a hidden goldmine The beginning of a new project is a moment of massive opportunity. With a strong beginning, we define the right strategy, gain confidence, and build momentum. Without a strong beginning, it’s nearly impossible to succeed. Beginnings are crucial, but beginnings are totally overlooked. The world’s most popular approach to starting projects is chaos. Meet, and meet, and meet. Talk, and talk, and talk. Churn out slide decks, documents, and spreadsheets that no one reads. Outlast your opponents in a political cage match. Finally, rely on a hunch and commit to years of work. That’s the old way—and it is bonkers. Doing things the old way, it can take six months or more to develop a strategy. The old way is like assembling IKEA furniture by tossing parts, an Allen wrench, and a dozen squirrels into a broom closet, then hoping for the best. We don’t have to accept the old way. We can redesign how we start projects. We can structure the first hours so that we get the best contribution from every team member, make smart decisions, and find a winning strategy as fast as possible. 2. Most teams skip the basics Teams that build winning products share some fundamental traits. They know their customers, and the problem they can solve for them. They know which approach to take—and why it’s superior to the alternatives. And they know what they’re up against—and how to radically differentiate from the competition. These teams have mastered the basics. When I first began working with startups, I was embarrassed to ask founders basic questions like “Who are your competitors?” or “How will you differentiate?” because I didn’t want to waste their time or appear naive. “Smart, motivated people who respect their colleagues can still struggle to get on the same page.” But once I worked up the courage, I learned that if I asked three co-founders to write down their startup’s target customer, I got three different answers. If I asked a team what differentiated their product from the competition, I would witness a sixty-minute debate. Smart, motivated people who respect their colleagues can still struggle to get on the same page. Mastering the basics might be obvious, but it’s not easy. 3. A clear strategy starts with a clear calendar Business as usual stands in the way of mastering the basics. In the modern workplace, we’re supposed to attend meetings with teammates, managers, business partners, etc. We’re supposed to stay on top of our email and messages. We’re supposed to juggle multiple projects. And, of course, we’re supposed to meet deadlines and deliver results. But if we think we can take on ambitious projects and make them click with customers while bouncing along through business as usual, ricocheting from one context to the next, we’re fooling ourselves. Figuring out a project’s strategy takes intense focus. Choosing the best opportunity among many options takes intense focus. Designing and building a prototype to test our hypothesis? Yup, that, too, requires intense focus. The normal way of working does not allow for intense focus—especially intense focus that is shared by multiple members of a team. The solution is straightforward: make the difficult decision to call a timeout, drop everything—all the constant emails, constant meetings, constant context switching—and come together to think hard, make big decisions, and master the basics. 4. Silence and structure generate the best ideas The group brainstorm is our species’ natural response to collaboration. Gather a bunch of hunter-gatherers from the Ice Age and ask them to build a hut, and you’ll get a group brainstorm. Gather a bunch of Royal Society scientists from 17th-century England and ask them to come up with a business plan, and soon they’ll be shouting ideas and ordering out for pizza and sticky notes. “The normal way of working does not allow for intense focus.“ Group brainstorms are in our DNA. They’re fun—at least, for extroverts. But they don’t work. They produce mediocre ideas. They exclude those uncomfortable in the group, those who don’t excel at verbal sales pitches, and those who do their best thinking in silence. When it’s time to define your strategy, do not brainstorm out loud. Do not have an open-ended discussion. Instead, work alone together. Give each person time to generate proposals in silence, review others’ proposals in silence, and form opinions and vote in silence. 5. Strategy is better understood as a hypothesis Until a solution clicks with customers, “strategy” is just an educated guess. In one way or another, that guess is almost certainly wrong. Maybe we’re differentiating on speed when people care most about simplicity. Maybe we chose the wrong problem or the wrong customer. First guesses might be off by a lot or a little—but they are almost always off. So, instead of writing strategy documents, start with a Founding Hypothesis. A Founding Hypothesis is a simple Mad Libs-style sentence that describes the essential guesses behind every project: “If we solve [problem] for [customer] with [approach], then they will choose it over [competition] because our solution is [differentiation].” “First guesses might be off by a lot or a little—but they are almost always off.” The Founding Hypothesis is simple, and that’s exactly what makes it powerful. Products click when they make a compelling promise. That promise must be simple, or customers won’t pay attention. Best of all, once you’ve written a Founding Hypothesis, there’s no hiding behind slides, charts, and projections. Your educated guess is standing in a dazzling spotlight, and you’ll want to experiment, right away, to find out if the hypothesis is correct. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. View the full article

Continuing the steady stream of news about the upcoming Switch 2 console, Nintendo has now revealed that it's improved the console's ability to find lost Joy-Con controllers. The company demonstrated this in a video posted in the Nintendo Today app, which is available on Android and iPhone. How to locate missing Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-ConsTo find your missing Switch 2 Joy-Cons, go to the home screen, open the Controllers menu, and select Search for controllers. Now, select the missing controller to start your search. If you don't have the Nintendo Today app, check out this Bluesky post to see the feature in action. A similar feature was available on the original Nintendo Switch, where you could remotely trigger Joy-Con controllers to rumble, which would hopefully help you find them. Still, now you can go beyond a simple rumble. With the Switch 2, missing Joy-Cons will now vibrate and play a beeping sound, which should make it easier to hear your poor controller's cries for help. This process is quite similar to pinging your iPhone or Apple Watch. Nintendo hasn't yet revealed any speaker features for the Switch 2 Joy-Con, so it's likely the beeping sound is actually just some a retuned rumble. Still, that does paint an impressive picture of what HD Rumble 2 can do. This is not the only quality-of-life improvement Nintendo has confirmed for the Switch 2. Recently, the company revealed a charging limiter and the ability to lock the Switch 2 with a PIN. There's also support for third-party USB-C webcams. Still, not everyone will feel the need to spend more money to get the Switch 2. If you're on the fence, click through to compare the Nintendo Switch 2's specs with the original Switch. And don't forget to check out the list of games coming to the Switch 2, or the new mouse controls feature. View the full article

Federal Reserve Vice Chair Philip Jefferson said the central bank is in the "early stages" of enabling banks to pledge assets to both the Federal Home Loan Bank and discount window liquidity facilities. View the full article

Mortgage bonds supported by government-backed companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were trading slightly wider Monday morning after Moody's Ratings downgraded the US late last week.

Spain has ordered Airbnb to block more than 65,000 holiday listings on its platform for having violated rules, the Consumer Rights Ministry said Monday. The ministry said that many of the 65,935 Airbnb listings it had ordered to be withdrawn did not include their license number or specify whether the owner was an individual or a company. Others listed numbers that didn’t match what authorities had, it said. Spain is grappling with a housing affordability crisis that has spurred government action against short-term rental companies. In recent months, tens of thousands of Spaniards have taken to the streets protesting rising housing and rental costs, which many say have been driven up by holiday rentals on platforms like Airbnb that have proliferated in cities like Madrid and Barcelona and many other popular tourist destinations. “Enough already with protecting those who make a business out of the right to housing,” Consumer Minister Pablo Bustinduy told reporters on Monday. Airbnb said that it would appeal the decision. Through a spokesperson, the company said it did not think the ministry was authorized to rule on short-term rentals—and that it had utilized “an indiscriminate methodology” to include Airbnb rentals that do not need a license to operate. Last year, Barcelona announced a plan to close down all of the 10,000 apartments licensed in the city as short-term rentals by 2028 to safeguard the housing supply for full-time residents. The ministry said it had notified Airbnb of the noncompliant listings months ago, but that the company had appealed the move in court. Spain’s government said Madrid’s high court had backed the order sent to Airbnb. Bustinduy said it involved the immediate removal of 5,800 rental listings from the site. Two subsequent orders would be issued until the nearly 66,000 removals are reached, he said. Spain’s government said the first round of affected properties were located across the country, including in the capital, Madrid, as well as in the regions of Andalusia and Catalonia, whose capital is Barcelona. —Suman Naishadham, Associated Press View the full article

This story originally appeared in Global Voices. A decade after the first assessment, the 2025 Ranking Digital Rights Index: Big Tech Edition reveals a landscape of paradox. While some of the world’s most influential digital platforms demonstrate incremental improvements in transparency, particularly in governance disclosures from Chinese companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent, the overall picture suggests a concerning inertia. In a world grappling with rising authoritarianism, the use of AI tools, and ongoing global conflicts, the report shows that many Big Tech companies are largely continuing with “business as usual,” failing to address critical issues. The concentration of power within Big Tech remains a central concern. The report highlights how companies like Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft have aggressively acquired competitors, consolidating their dominance in the digital landscape. This market concentration, where Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon capture two-thirds of online advertising revenue, grants them power over online access and information flows. Despite increasing scrutiny from legal systems, evidenced by rulings against Google for illegal monopolies in search and advertising, the political influence of Big Tech appears to have increased. The symbolic image of US Big Tech CEOs in the front row of the presidential inauguration underscores their deep connections with government bodies, potentially hindering much-needed oversight at a time when human rights and democratic structures face unprecedented challenges globally. This dominance is further exacerbated in a context of conflict. “Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft have all developed tools meant for war and integration with lethal weapons. Their cloud infrastructure has powered military campaigns,” reveals the report. Ranking Digital Rights also calls attention to propaganda, especially on X and platforms owned by Meta. Lack of transparency While the report highlights pockets of progress, particularly among Chinese companies (Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu), showing increased transparency in governance, patterns have been spotted throughout the analysis that raise concerns. Though Meta has shown improvements in disclosing how its algorithms curate content and has enhanced security with default end-to-end encryption on some messaging services, significant shortcomings persist across the industry. A common issue is the widespread lack of transparency in how companies handle private requests for user data or content restrictions, with Samsung notably disclosing no information in this area. The very engines of Big Tech’s profit—algorithms and targeted advertising—remain largely opaque. Despite the known risks for democracies linked to disinformation and election interference, none of the assessed companies achieved even half the possible score in this area. Alphabet and Meta even showed slight declines in transparency related to their targeted advertising practices. Most companies fail to disclose information about advertisements removed for violating their policies or provide evidence of enforcing their ad targeting rules. X declined significantly more than other companies analyzed. “The company’s transformation from the publicly listed Twitter to the privately held X Corp. and the elimination of its human rights team coincided with a significant drop in transparency across its governance, freedom of expression, and privacy practices,” the report emphasized. X failed to publish a transparency report in both 2022 and 2023. While a report finally surfaced in September 2024, it fell outside the assessment’s cutoff. Even more troubling is the reported removal of years’ worth of transparency reports dating back to 2011. Finally, the report points to a troubling pattern of policy evolution. Companies like Meta and YouTube have been revising their content policies in ways that have sparked widespread concern, such as Meta dismantling its third-party fact-checking program in the US and YouTube removing “gender identity” from its hate speech policy. Global Voices covered the consequences of this policy in Africa, and also how fact-checking practices are needed amidst digital authoritarianism, especially during elections, such as the case of Indonesia. This suggests a potential shift towards justifying existing behaviors rather than upholding previously embraced principles. The 2025 RDR Index demonstrates stagnation at a critical time. While acknowledging some positive developments, the report also calls for a renewed effort from different stakeholders, especially civil society, investors, and policymakers. View the full article

Credit downgrade is symbolic blow to American prestige and should spur Washington to get its fiscal house in order View the full article

You are probably hearing other business owners refer to the term “the second bite” with a big smile on their faces. The second bite refers to the opportunity that arises after a business owner sells less than 100 percent of their ownership stake. By leaving chips on the table, business owners have the chance to partner with a private equity firm to accelerate growth and business value. This can lead to a second bite which comes during the next sale of the business. At some point, many great businesses reach an inflection point: a time when the owner wants a partner who can help preserve and enrich the future of the business (and do it in the right way). When a business owner is selling and thinking ahead to a second bite (rolling equity and exiting again down the line), the three most important elements to focus on are: 1. Pick your dance partner wisely It is essential to find a partner who is a good fit for your business and its growth. This partner will work with you for the next three to seven years. To accelerate the business’s value, you have to bring in great talent, technology, and tools. The right business partner will help you make sure you invest in the right things at the right time. You have to assess the following: Does your potential partner share and support your vision for the next growth stage? Can they provide operational, financial, or strategic resources to accelerate growth? Do they have a track record of treating team members and founders well? Just like when dating, make sure you learn all you should before you agree to get married. 2. Roll the dice A lot has changed over the past 10 years, and now that capital is more founder-friendly, it means there are more opportunities for an owner to stay involved and “roll the dice.” It provides great outcomes for founders, and investors are more willing to partner with founders and create founder-friendly terms where they work hard on alignment while honoring the founder’s ability to take the next step. Set clear expectations on the equity rollover terms, clarify governance and control rights, i.e., will they remain on the board or continue in an operational role, and define liquidity terms and a clear timeline for how and when to monetize the second bite. 3. Align on growth plans and your participation Sellers and buyers must agree on how value will be created, whether through organic growth, mergers and acquisitions, or operational strategies. Also, the owner’s involvement can directly impact their second bite’s value. So, it’s essential to determine if you as the owner will be involved in day-to-day operations or you’ll be taking on a more strategic role. The second bite is an opportunity we’re seeing more frequently now, and it’s here to stay. It’s an excellent chance for founders to stay involved and participate in that accelerated growth with their new partner. View the full article

If you're a Firefox user, you need to update your browser. Mozilla has released a security patch for two zero-day vulnerabilities identified at the recent Pwn2Own hacker contest held in Berlin. Zero-days are critical security flaws that have been actively exploited or publicly disclosed before an official fix is available. Browsers are targets for malware, and Firefox isn't the only browser to discover zero-day exploits in recent days. Earlier this month, Google released an emergency patch for Chrome to address a high-severity vulnerability (CVE-2025-4664) that permitted full account takeover—CISA later confirmed that this flaw was being actively exploited in attacks. (If you're using Chrome, you should consider other privacy-focused browser alternatives anyway.) Zero-days discovered in FirefoxBoth zero-day exploits discovered at Pwn2Own Berlin are out-of-bounds flaws that allow attackers to read or write data, potentially gaining access to sensitive information or permitting code execution. CVE-2025-4918 allows read or write on a JavaScript Promise object (a proxy value for a process that hasn't been completed yet) while CVE-2025-4919 permits read or write on a JavaScript object (a collection of "properties," which are associations between keys and values). CVE-2025-4918 was discovered by Edouard Bochin and Tao Yan from Palo Alto Networks, while CVE-2025-4919 was reported by Manfred Paul—each won $50,000 for their hacks. The following versions of Firefox are vulnerable to these flaws and should be updated: Firefox before 138.0.4 Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) before 128.10.1 Firefox ESR before 115.23.1 Firefox for Android While Mozilla was quick to address these flaws, the company notes that neither broke out of Firefox's "sandbox," which would be required in order to take control of a target's machine. That's a good sign for Firefox's overall security, as attackers at previous Pwn2Own competitions successfully broke out of the sandbox. Still, Mozilla recommends all users install the new patches as soon as possible. How to update Firefox to the latest versionIf you're a Firefox user, make sure your browser is up to date. You can check which version you're on by going to Firefox > About Firefox. Click the Restart to Update Firefox button if it appears. View the full article

Britain and the European Union hailed a new chapter in their relationship Monday after they sealed new agreements on defense cooperation and easing trade flows at their first formal summit since Brexit. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who met European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other senior EU officials in London for talks, said the deals will slash red tape, grow the British economy and reset relations with the 27-nation trade bloc since the U.K. left the EU in 2020. “Britain is back on the world stage,” Starmer said. “This deal is a win-win.” Von der Leyen called the talks a “historic moment” that benefits both sides. More broadly, she said it sends a message at a time of global upheaval that the U.K. and EU are “natural partners standing side-by-side on the global stage.” Britain’s opposition parties slammed the deals as backtracking on Brexit. “We’re becoming a rule-taker from Brussels once again,” Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said. Under the deals, a new U.K.-EU defense and security partnership will allow the U.K. to access a EU defense loan program worth 150 billion euros ($170 billion.) Other agreements include removing some checks on animal and plant products to ease food trade across borders, and a 12-year extension of an agreement allowing EU fishing vessels in U.K. waters. While the EU is the U.K.’s largest trading partner, the U.K. has been hit with a 21% drop in exports since Brexit because of more onerous border checks, laborious paperwork and other non-tariff barriers. Post-Brexit visa restrictions have also hobbled the cross-border activities of professionals such as bankers or lawyers, as well as cultural exchanges, including touring bands and school trips. Resetting relations Since becoming prime minister in July, Starmer has sought to reset relations with the EU, following years of tensions in the wake of the U.K.’s 2016 Brexit referendum. Post-Brexit relations have been governed by a trade agreement negotiated by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Starmer thinks that can be improved in a way that boosts trade and bolsters security. Starmer hailed Monday’s agreements—the third package of trade deals struck by his government in as many weeks following accords with the U.S. and India—as “good for jobs, good for bills and good for our borders.” Burgers, fishing and youth mobility The defense pact will allow Britain’s defense industry to access cheap loans from a new EU loan program to buy military equipment, in part to help Ukraine defend itself. In trade, officials say they will reduce routine border checks and costs on some food imports and exports to make it easier for goods to flow freely. The changes will mean the U.K. can sell products like British burgers and sausages to the EU again, officials said. “We know we’ve had lorries waiting for 16 hours, fresh food in the back not able to be exported, because frankly it’s just going off, red tape, all the certifications that are required, we absolutely want to reduce that,” Cabinet Office minister Thomas-Symonds, who led the negotiations, told the BBC. In fisheries, the deal means European fishing boats will have access to U.K. waters until 2038. While economically minor, fishing has long been a sticking point and symbolically important issue for the U.K. and EU member states such as France. Disputes over the issue nearly derailed a Brexit deal back in 2020. The talks also included a youth mobility plan that’s expected to allow young Britons and Europeans to live and work temporarily in each other’s territory, though no details were provided. That remains a politically touchy issue in the U.K., seen by some Brexiteers as inching back toward free movement. The U.K. has similar youth mobility arrangements with countries including Australia and Canada. Starmer has stressed that the U.K. won’t rejoin the EU’s frictionless single market and customs union, nor agree to the free movement of people between the U.K. and the EU. Opposition objects to a ‘surrender’ Some of the trade-offs may prove difficult for Starmer, who faces growing challenges from the pro-Brexit and anti-immigration Reform U.K. party and accusations of “betraying” Brexit. Reform, which recently won big in local elections, and the Conservatives have called the deal a “surrender” to the EU. U.S. President Donald The President, who has backed Brexit, could also be a potential headache for Starmer. “The reset could still be blown off course by disagreements over how to consolidate existing areas of cooperation like fisheries and/or external factors, such as a negative reaction from the U.S. to the U.K. seeking closer ties with the EU,” said Jannike Wachowiak, research associate at the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. —Sylvia Hui, Pan Pylas, and Jill Lawless, Associated Press View the full article

34-year-old held on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger lifeView the full article

Bath & Body Works just announced its second new CEO in three years, and he’s coming straight from a leadership shakeup at Nike. According to a press release published this morning, Daniel Heaf will take over at Bath & Body Works, effective immediately. Heaf arrives at the company fresh off of his most recent executive position at Nike, a role which he departed in March after management chose to eliminate his role, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg. Bath & Body Works’ current CEO, Gina Boswell, has stepped down from the position after just over two years. Alongside the CEO swap, Bath & Body Works also pre-announced better-than-expected first quarter results this morning. Per the press release, the company expects net sales to increase year-over-year by 3% to $1.4 billion for the quarter ending on May 3. It also maintains its initial full-year 2025 guidance that net sales are expected to rise by 1% to 3%, a change that the company says reflects a 10% tariff on Chinese goods but excludes any other potential tariffs. So far, investors haven’t been sold on the news of Heaf’s new role: Since market close, stock is down 1.42% as of this writing. Who is Daniel Heaf? Before joining Bath & Body Works, Heaf held leadership roles at both the BBC and Burberry. Most recently, he served a six-year stint at Nike. According to his LinkedIn, Heaf started at Nike as the vice president of global direct digital commerce. From there, he moved up to become the vice president of Nike Direct, the company’s direct-to-consumer branch, during which time he oversaw 45,000 employees across 41 countries and “more than doubled the business to $22.3 billion in five years,” per the press release. Heaf’s last position as Nike’s chief strategy and transformation officer started in 2023 and came to an unceremonious end this March. Bloomberg found that his position was eliminated as part of a larger corporate overhaul spearheaded by Nike CEO Elliott Hill, who took the helm in October. Hill has been fighting an uphill financial battle amidst the The President administration’s global trade war, given that Nike’s main country of import, Vietnam, is currently facing an impending 46% tariff. In March, Nike announced middling third quarter financial results and warned of a potentially worse fourth quarter, which ends this month. In his new role at Bath & Body Works, Heaf says he plans to harness the company’s “extraordinary untapped potential” and lead it into its “next chapter of growth.” “Together, with the foundation of an iconic brand, more than 50,000 associates, tens of millions of active loyalty members, and a strong North American store footprint and supply chain, we have an opportunity to become the defining home fragrance and beauty brand of choice globally,” Heaf said in the press release. View the full article