What's on Your Mind?

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered roughly 1,000 unprotected gateways to OpenClaw, an open-source and proactive AI agent that can be controlled through text conversations with apps like WhatsApp or Telegram. The gateways were found on the open internet, allowing anyone to access users’ personal information. One white hat hacker also reportedly gamed OpenClaw’s skills system, which lets users add plugins for tasks like web automation or system control, to reach the top of the rankings and be downloaded by users around the world. The skill itself was innocuous, but it exploited a security vulnerability that someone more nefarious could have used to cause serious harm…

Most professionals spend their days focused on performance, deadlines, deliverables, and doing good work that gets noticed. That’s normal. But there’s an overlooked truth about work (and life, really) that doesn’t show up in job descriptions or KPIs. Work feels better, and often goes better, when it’s shared. Shared in the human sense: letting someone in, acknowledging others, and enjoying progress together instead of alone. That idea comes through clearly in a story Oprah Winfrey often tells about growing up in Mississippi and learning an early lesson from a candy bar. “I’m telling you, if you do something to make someone else happier, it’s almost like it co…

Oracle shares fell 2% Monday following the company’s announcement it planned to raise upwards to $50 billion in 2026. Funding rounds of that size are no longer unusual. The surge in AI investment and the growing need for cloud capacity and data centers have pushed many companies to seek massive financing. But Oracle’s recent run has been unusually volatile. Just a few months ago, its shares jumped 40% in a single day, briefly making CEO Larry Ellison the world’s richest person (ahead of Elon Musk). That spike came after Oracle reported a 359% increase in its remaining performance obligation (RPO, which are expected revenues based on customer commitments). That was…

Much like its peers in the tech industry, Oracle is pouring money into AI infrastructure. The tech giant inked a lucrative $300 billion deal with OpenAI last year to build out AI data centers, in a bid to compete with companies like Amazon and Microsoft. But the deal requires Oracle to spend a significant amount of money upfront—a move that is now pushing the company to cull its workforce. According to recent reports, Oracle is planning major layoffs that would reportedly affect thousands of jobs. The company had already earmarked about $1.6 billion for restructuring costs this year—largely due to “employee severance costs”—indicating there would be job cuts. As of F…

Another round of layoffs has hit the tech industry, this time at SaaS giant Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL). The job cuts reportedly came out of the blue for most affected employees, with many receiving an early-morning email announcing their job loss just hours before they were scheduled to go into the office. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On early Tuesday morning, Oracle employees around the world began reporting on social media that they had received an email from the company informing them that their employment had been terminated. According to these reports, the emails began arriving in employees’ inboxes at around 6 a.m. local …

Today, investors are waking up to red on their screens as many tech and AI stocks are dropping in premarket trading. But why are shares in these companies falling? Much of it has to do with the cloud infrastructure company Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) and its latest quarterly earnings results. Here’s what you need to know. Oracle’s Q2 2026 results send ORCL plunging Yesterday, Oracle reported financial results for its second quarter of fiscal 2026. To say investors were disappointed in the results is an understatement, given how poorly ORCL shares are performing in premarket trading this morning. As of the time of this writing, ORCL shares are down over 12% as inve…

Snack maker Mondelez is using a new generative AI tool to cut costs for the production of marketing content by 30% to 50%, a senior executive told Reuters. The packaged food manufacturer began developing the tool last year with IT firm Accenture and expects that it will be capable of making short TV ads that would be ready to air as soon as next year’s holiday season, and potentially for the 2027 Super Bowl, said Jon Halvorson, Mondelez’s global senior vice president of consumer experience. The Cadbury chocolate producer has invested more than $40 million in the tool, Halvorson said, adding that savings would grow if the tool is able to make more elaborate videos.…

In recent conversations with customers and peers, I’m not hearing “Which AI model or tool should we pick?” I’m hearing “How do we operationalize AI across our critical workflows?” People are starting to understand real digital transformation doesn’t come from a bolt-on solution. It happens when we treat AI as a foundational force and an engine for lasting change. The shift toward an AI-powered workplace requires leaders to enable organizational intelligence across the enterprise. WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE? At Wrike, we define organizational intelligence as the seamless integration of human insight and AI capabilities to drive measurable outcomes a…

A beloved Christmas tree tradition is returning to Manhattan for the holiday season next week. No, it’s not the towering spruce at Rockefeller Center, which is lit in early December. The comparatively smaller Origami Holiday Tree that’s delighted crowds for decades at the American Museum of Natural History opens to the public on Monday. The colorful, richly decorated 13-foot (4-meter) tree is adorned with thousands of hand-folded paper ornaments created by origami artists from around the world. This year’s tree is inspired by the museum’s new exhibition, “Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs,” which chronicles how an asteroid crash some 66 million years ago res…

The Wienermobiles are coming back for a bite at the Brickyard in May, giving them another chance to relish the spotlight of racing’s biggest weekend. Oscar Mayer announced Sunday all six of its famed street-ready vehicles will compete for the second straight year on Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s historic 2.5-mile oval. The Wienie 500 is scheduled for May 22 during the track’s annual Carburation Day festivities. Last year’s race was such a hit, organizers wanted to give fans a second round to savor the flavor of a light-hearted competition just two days before IndyCar’s marquis race — the Indianapolis 500. The presentation will have a familiar look for fans who…

Despite a traumatic beginning of the year from the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires, Los Angeles is ready to celebrate one of its largest exports: movies. Hollywood’s biggest bash, the 97th Academy Awards presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will air tonight, March 2, at 4 p.m. PT / 7 p.m. ET. The action is taking place at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood. Let’s get up to speed so you can watch like an A-lister: How the L.A. fires impacted the 2025 Oscars The fires delayed the Oscar nominations announcement twice and extended the nominations voting period. And though the actual awards ceremony date was not affected, the annua…

It’s time for the dazzling conclusion to the 2026 awards season. After the Hollywood elites walk the red carpet, the curtain will rise on the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 15, which is tonight. The excitement will be palpable as the audience waits to learn who will take home a coveted Oscar. Here’s everything you need to know to fully enjoy the evening, including how to tune in. Where does the 98th Academy Awards take place? The location for this fabulous event is in Tinseltown, of course. More specifically, the ceremony will take place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Who’s hosting the 2026 Oscars? Comedian and former late-night host Conan O’…

After a near awards-season sweep by “One Battle After Another,” “Sinners” won best ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild’s 32nd Actor Awards on Sunday, shaking up the Oscar race and setting up a potential nail-biter finale in two weeks at the Academy Awards. The guild’s awards, formerly known as the SAG Awards, are one of the most closely watched Oscar precursors. Actors make up the largest slice of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and their choices at the Actor Awards often align. The victory for Ryan Coogler’s blues-soaked vampire saga showed that it has a strong chance to win at the Oscars, too, despite an almost unblemished run of awards for Paul Thomas…

Ryan Coogler’s bluesy vampire thriller “Sinners,” the big screen musical “Wicked: For Good” and the Netflix phenomenon “KPop Demon Hunters” are all a step closer to an Oscar nomination. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released shortlists for 12 categories Tuesday, including for best song, score, international and documentary film, cinematography and this year’s new prize, casting. “Sinners” and “Wicked: For Good” received the most shortlist mentions with eight each, including makeup and hair, sound, visual effects, score, casting and cinematography. Both have two original songs advancing as well. For “Wicked” it’s Stephen Schwartz’s “The Girl in the Bubbl…

Otter wants to turn your work meetings into institutional knowledge. The company is known for its audio transcription tool, which has evolved over the years to be able to join and transcribe online meetings in real time and answer questions about them via an AI chat tool. It’s now adding additional AI features to make it easier to integrate knowledge from those recorded meetings with other information, including integrations with other software like Google Drive, Jira, Salesforce, and Notion. Those will let Otter’s AI access live data from those apps, so it can pull data from an email or customer database as needed to best answer a follow-up question from a recorded …

Otter, the AI-powered meeting assistant and transcription service, is introducing a new AI agent capable of answering spoken questions from meeting participants in real time. The AI can also perform tasks like scheduling follow-up meetings and assigning action items to the meeting record stored on Otter’s platform. When responding to questions, it can draw on both publicly available information for quick research queries and knowledge gained from previous company meetings. The AI will only provide answers based on meeting records that all current participants have permission to view, ensuring confidential information remains protected. [Image: Otter]The tool can also be c…

When social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published The Anxious Generation in March 2024, his core proposal—that children should be kept off social media until at least age 16, with tech companies bearing the burden of enforcement—was treated by many as aspirational, even quixotic. The tech industry dismissed it. Libertarian critics called it paternalistic overreach. Skeptics questioned the evidence base. That was then. In barely two years, Haidt’s “radical” idea has become something close to a global consensus—a textbook example of what political scientists call the “Overton Window”—one that’s shifted at extraordinary speed. The Overton Window describes…

The human brain is engineered to ignore most of what it sees and hears, according to the neuroscientists I interviewed for the audio original Viral Voices. If that’s the case, how are you supposed to make a memorable impression? The empowering news is that if you understand how the brain works, what it discards, and what it pays attention to, you’ll be far more persuasive than you’ve ever imagined. Persuasive people have influence in their personal and professional lives. BRAIN RULES FOR THE WORKPLACE “The brain doesn’t pay attention to boring things,” says John Medina, a molecular biologist at the University of Washington and author of the bestseller Brain Rul…

New research now suggests that our brains are still in the teenage phase until we “peak” in our early thirties. Researchers from the University of Cambridge looked at scans from around 4,000 people up to the age of 90 to reveal the connections between their brain cells. Rather than progressing steadily over our lifetimes, research published in the journal Nature Communications suggests our brain goes through five distinct phases in life, with key turning points happening at ages nine, 32, 66, and 83. The first stage, from birth to nine, sees the brain rapidly increasing in size. Around age nine, the “adolescent” phase begins as the brain works on increasing its e…

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: Our built environment contributes to a mental health crisis. The built environment as we know it—buildings and the spaces between—does direct damage to our minds. Communities developed slowly for thousands of years, but in 20th century America, the end of World War II introduced a massive population and construction boom. Land use planning has had devastating impacts on Americans—economically, socially, and culturally. But I’m not a doomer and I know these things are fixable. Not overnight reversible, but certainly fixable. Spreading us out Typical land use rules are written, updated, and enforced at the …

In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality. He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy, authority, and responsibility. This would require a more formal mode of organization—a bureaucracy—in which roles and responsibilities were clearly defined. Power would be entrusted to institutions, not individual…

Each year, our Innovation by Design Awards celebrate the most notable projects across the design world. And while there are many design awards offered across the industry—perhaps too many!—Innovation by Design continues to be the most rigorous, facing the scrutiny of a panel of leading design journalists and influential designers. But it’s also time for Innovation by Design to evolve. So this year, you may see we’re doing things a bit differently. And we’re sure you will like these changes. First off, we’ve paired back our core design categories significantly, reducing them from 50 to 20. Why? The list had simply gotten big, with too many subcategories that h…