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A new mandatory safety feature requires Roblox users in the U.S. to submit to facial age estimation via the app to access its chat feature. The online gaming platform announced it was implementing the system to prevent children younger than 16 from communicating with adults. About 42% of Roblox users are younger than 13. But a cursory scroll on eBay found that various listings of age-verified Roblox accounts are available for purchase, some for as little as $2.99. This allows the purchaser to sign in to the account without having to use any ID or facial scan, voiding the new safety feature Roblox has implemented. The description of one listing (since removed) rea…

Imagine you’re talking to someone and they suddenly start to add advertising to the exchange. What might that look like? In a 1965 episode of the classic sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, the protagonist uses her magical powers to create fake parents for herself in order to impress a date. She crafts them to be “just like the people on television commercials,” making them speak using sentences from commercials. Her synthetic “parents” appear friendly and normal—until they start talking, reciting ads verbatim for products like “streak-away” for gray hair, dish soap, “Grippo” denture adhesive, and deodorant. They have so much to say, yet communicate nothing at all. Somethin…

The new year is a time for resolutions. This year, governments, platforms, and campaigners all seem to have hit on the same ones: Children should spend less time online, and companies should know exactly how old their users are. From TikTok’s infinite scroll to chatbots like xAI’s Grok that can spin up uncensored answers to almost any question in seconds, addictive and inappropriate online options leave legislators and regulators worried. The result is a new kind of arms race: Lawmakers, often spooked by headlines about mental health, extremism, or sexual exploitation, are turning to age gates, usage caps, and outright bans as solutions to social media’s problems. Jus…

Next week’s “Free America Walkout” is asking Americans to walk out of work (and school) on Tuesday, January 20, to disrupt “business as usual” in protest of the The President administration’s recent actions and policies, including its treatment of immigrants, attempts to curb democracy, recent abuse by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, and the recent fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. The protest’s main organizers are the Women’s March. The group came to prominence the day after President Donald The President’s first inauguration in 2017, when it organized a massive nationwide protest, drawing hundreds of thousands of Americans …

As we head into the new year, I am facing a daunting prospect. After over 34 years in higher education as a professor and administrator, I’m moving to the private sector to support more effective teaching practices. I would classify this change as a significant career pivot. I am changing market sectors (public sector to private) and shifting from serving a single institution to a global base of clients. Decisions like this are not to be made lightly. It is important to ensure that you are making this move to run toward something attractive and not just away from something that frustrates you. Here are three important considerations if you think a significant career m…

Well, this could be awkward for Americans traveling abroad. Beginning on January 21, the U.S. will indefinitely suspend immigrant visa processing from 75 countries as part of the The President administration’s crackdown on immigration. While the suspension only applies to those visas needed for employment or to join family in the U.S.—and not student or tourist visas—it includes many beloved travel destinations for Americans. The countries selected—including the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Thailand—were deemed “high risk of public benefits usage” by the State Department, according to a statement on Wednesday. The ban goes into effect next week, at which time no immigran…

A surging stock market and a flurry of deal-making padded the profits of Wall Street’s two big investment banks, which both saw a double-digit jump in profits in the fourth quarter. Goldman Sachs’s net earnings rose 12% from a year earlier, posting a profit of $4.62 billion, or $14.01 a share. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley said it earned $4.4 billion, or $2.68 per share, compared to a profit of $3.71 billion, or $2.22 per share, compared to a year earlier. Wall Street has been bolstered by the The President administration’s deregulatory policies, which have led corporations to seek out mergers and acquisitions, as well as the surge of investor interest in artificial i…

The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate is now down to its lowest level in more than three years. The benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage rate eased to 6.06% this week, down from 6.16% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. One year ago, the rate averaged 7.04%. The last time the average rate was lower was Sept. 15, 2022, when it was at 6.02%. Meanwhile, borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also fell this week, dropping to 5.38% from 5.46% last week. A year ago, that average rate was at 6.27%, Freddie Mac said. Lower mortgage rates boost homebuyers’ purchasing power, good news fo…

An investigation into a sprawling betting scheme to rig NCAA and Chinese Basketball Association games ensnared 26 people, including more than a dozen college basketball players who tried to fix games as recently as last season, federal prosecutors said Thursday. The scheme generally revolved around fixers recruiting players with the promise of a big payment in exchange for purposefully underperforming during a game, prosecutors said. The fixers would then place big bets against the players’ teams in those games, defrauding sportsbooks and other bettors, authorities said. Calling it an “international criminal conspiracy,” U.S. Attorney David Metcalf told reporters …

President Donald The President on Thursday announced the outlines of a health care plan he wants Congress to take up as Republicans have faced increasing pressure to address rising health costs after lawmakers let subsidies expire. The cornerstone is his proposal to send money directly to Americans for health savings accounts so they can handle insurance and health costs as they see fit. Democrats have rejected the idea as a paltry substitute for the tax credits that had helped lower monthly premiums for many people. “The government is going to pay the money directly to you,” The President said in a taped video the White House released to announce the plan. “It go…

A federal judge on Thursday cleared the way for a New York offshore wind project to resume construction, a victory for the developer who said a The President administration order to pause it would likely kill the project in a matter of days. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, an appointee of President Donald The President, ruled construction on the Empire Wind project could go forward while he considers the merits of the government’s order to suspend the project. He faulted the government for not responding to key points in Empire Wind’s court filings, including the contention that the administration violated proper procedure. Norwegian company Equinor owns Empire Wi…

Wikipedia unveiled new business deals with a slew of artificial intelligence companies on Thursday as it marked its 25th anniversary. The online crowdsourced encyclopedia revealed that it has signed up AI companies, including Amazon, Meta Platforms, Perplexity, Microsoft, and France’s Mistral AI. Wikipedia is one of the last bastions of the early internet, but that original vision of a free online space has been clouded by the dominance of Big Tech platforms and the rise of generative AI chatbots trained on content scraped from the web. Aggressive data collection methods by AI developers, including from Wikipedia’s vast repository of free knowledge, has raised…

If you are Verizon customer, like me, you’ve probably been scrambling to make phone calls, send texts, and get online since Wednesday, due to a massive, nationwide service outage. (I am writing this from my local food co-op outside Boston, where I am using the internet in their cafe.) The mobile giant says the issue has now been resolved, however, some customers are saying they’re still without service. Some 1.5 million users reported the prolonged outage on Downdetector, which still had some 893 reports (as of around 2:30 p.m. ET). That’s over 24 hours after customers first started losing service around noon ET on Wednesday, with iPhone users reporting an “SOS” icon,…

The president was barely a year into his administration when a health care debate began to consume Washington. On Capitol Hill, partisan divides formed as many Democrats pressed for guaranteed insurance coverage for a broader swath of Americans while Republicans, buttressed by medical industry lobbying, warned about cost and a slide into communism. The year was 1945 and the new Democratic president, Harry Truman, tried and failed to persuade Congress to enact a comprehensive national health care program, a defeat Truman described as the disappointment of his presidency that “troubled me the most.” Since then, 13 presidents have struggled with the same basic questi…

In recent years, there’s been a wave of studies reporting that humans are basically full of microplastics: They’ve been found in our brains, arteries, and even in placentas. But some scientists, quoted and cited in an article published by the Guardian this week, have critiqued some of those findings, saying that microplastics research has been muddied by issues like contamination and false positives. One chemist even told the outlet that these criticisms are “​​forcing us to re-evaluate everything we think we know about microplastics in the body.” However, other scientists who study microplastics and human health say that this framing is overblown. While…

Rejection stings. If you’re on the job hunt right now, it’s likely something you’ve grown accustomed to, if not entirely numb to. Considering more than one in four workers without jobs has been unemployed for at least half a year, chances are that comes with a tidal wave of rejection emails. The entry-level job market is also the toughest it’s been in years, with only 30% of 2025 graduates finding jobs in their fields. One TikTok creator, however, has made it her personal mission to collect rejections like gold stars, documenting her challenge to receive 1,000 instances of being told “no” in one year. Just 71 “nos” into her journey, she’s already seen how embraci…

President Donald The President took to social media on Thursday threatening to crack down on protests in Minnesota, as federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers face off with protestors in the streets on Minneapolis following the death of Renee Nicole Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE agent. The threat follows renewed clashes there overnight after a federal agent shot a local man in the leg after allegedly resisting arrest during a “targeted traffic stop,” according to CNN. There are also reports ICE officials are going “door-to-door” in Minneapolis, showing up at people’s homes, which Vice President JD Vance said will “ramp up” as more ICE tro…

If the byproduct of a raid on a Washington Post journalist’s home is to deter probing reporting of government action, the The President administration could hardly have chosen a more compelling target. Hannah Natanson, nicknamed the “federal government whisperer” at the Post for her reporting on President Donald The President‘s changes to the federal workforce, had a phone, two laptops, and a Garmin watch seized in the Wednesday search of her Virginia home, the newspaper said. A warrant for the raid said it was connected to an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials, said Matt Murray, the Post’s exe…

2025 unleashed the enormous potential of AI. According to Pew Research, 62% of adults say they interact with AI at least several times a week, and 73% of U.S. adults say they are at least a little bit willing to let AI assist with their day-to-day activities. However, while most people today use AI primarily for answering their questions or researching products to buy, the real opportunity isn’t in better search functionality alone. In the consumer tech industry, we are at the threshold of a generational opportunity to leverage AI to make people’s lives better and more meaningful, saving them time on what they need to do so they can focus on doing what they want to do…

A reader asks: A while back, an employee who reported to me (I’m a man) became visibly pregnant soon after she started. But she never brought it up. Not with me, not with HR, not with anyone. I didn’t ask her about it, though nearly everyone else in our office asked me. I cringed when I responded since it was obvious she was pregnant but I felt that I needed to protect her privacy. I felt like I was walking around on pins and needles with this very obvious elephant in the room. Her job description included occasionally lifting objects up to 40 pounds, and the only way I treated her differently was that I went out of my way to pick up anything remotely heavy. E…

With a ring of massive columns and seating for more than 70,000 people, President Donald The President may be getting the football stadium of his dreams. Renderings have just been released of the proposed design for a new stadium for the Washington Commanders NFL team, and the aesthetic is right in line with an architectural style the The President administration has been championing with increasing passion. The stadium is an oval of dozens of white columns recalling the classical-influenced architecture of some of the capital’s most recognizable buildings. Designed by the architecture firm HKS, the stadium’s concept takes one of the most familiar elements of …

In 2025, employers cited artificial intelligence as the rationale for nearly 55,000 layoffs at companies like Amazon and Microsoft. And with the new year barely underway, we’re already seeing a new crop of AI-related job cuts. Citigroup is cutting over a thousand jobs, according to Bloomberg, and in a memo this week, CEO Jane Fraser warned of more layoffs later this year. “Over time, we can expect automation, AI and further process simplification to reshape how work gets done,” she added. Meanwhile, Meta is conducting more layoffs in its virtual reality division, cutting about 1,500 jobs as part of a broader strategic shift to invest further in AI. Given these r…

An ailing astronaut returned to Earth with three others on Thursday, ending their space station mission more than a month early in NASA’s first medical evacuation. SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego, less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station. Their first stop was a hospital for an overnight stay. “Obviously, we took this action (early return) because it was a serious medical condition,” NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman said following splashdown. “The astronaut in question is fine right now, in good spirits and going through the proper medical checks.” It was an…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, I’m focusing on how and why AI will grow from something that chats to something that works in 2026. I also focus on a new privacy-focused AI platform from the maker of Signal, and on Google’s work on e-commerce agents. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. …

I was born an only child, but now I have a twin. He’s an exact duplicate of me—down to my clothing, my home, my facial expressions, and even my voice. I built him with AI, and I can make him say whatever I want. He’s so convincing that he could fool my own mother. Here’s how I built him—and what AI digital twins mean for the future of people. Deepfake yourself From the moment generative AI was born, criminals started using it to trick people. Deepfakes were one of the first widespread uses of the tech. Today, they’re a scourge to celebrities and even everyday teenagers, and a massive problem for anyone interested in the truth. As criminals were …