Hey everyone! On the flip side of last week's issue about how AI exposes a significant attack surface, this week we're exploring the inflection point in offensive security tooling. Over the past few weeks, I've been watching new releases drop that genuinely change how we approach testing. Not…

Maybe you, like me, read Matt Shumer's viral piece about AI eliminating 50% of white-collar jobs in the next 1-5 years and maybe you, like me, thought… Oh. Isht. It’s well-crafted, detailed, and structured to make you feel like you're getting the inside scoop from someone who knows. (And that…

Get updates Follow @mattshumer_ Get early access to future reviews and builds. Think back to February 2020. If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas. But most of us weren't paying close attention. The stock market was doing…

Gift a 404 Media subscription to a friend. Chatbots may be able to pass medical exams, but that doesn’t mean they make good doctors, according to a new, large-scale study of how people get medical advice from large language models. The controlled study of 1,298 UK-based participants, published today…

WASHINGTON (AP) — A leading U.S. health official on Sunday urged people to get inoculated against the measles at a time of outbreaks across several states and as the United States is at risk of losing its measles elimination status. “Take the vaccine, please,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Centers for…

Get Webworm straight to your inbox Support my work, and get my weird wormholes delivered directly to you! Hi, Can I begin assuring you that today's Webworm is positive and hopeful. And useful. But it has to start with a short rant for context. Last week I felt like I wanted to extract part of my…

We plan our lives like we're editing a movie trailer. The trip to Portugal, or the product launch, or the transformation photo at the gym. The big moment where everything crystallizes into meaning. We accumulate these peaks in our imagination, and then arrange them into a montage that proves our…

Fears that software companies are facing an extinction event are exaggerated, but other dangers are real Feb. 4, 2026 at 11:49 am ET Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, left, with Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, at a conference. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News Artificial intelligence won’t destroy the software…

Last week, news broke that Amazon would be laying off 16,000 workers. Here was the headline ​from an article​ about this news published in Quartz: The implication of this framing is clear: AI is taking jobs. Nothing in the body of this article contradicts this idea. It describes the number of people…

Evidence is piling up of a weakening labor market that could dampen an otherwise sanguine U.S. economic outlook this year while also paving the way for more interest rate cuts. This week saw a raft of jobs-related data — none of it good: Private hiring was nearly flat in January, according to ADP ,…

Summary ECB, BoE hold ratesRBA delivers first rate hike in two yearsMarkets anticipate more Fed easing LONDON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Central banks in big economies are parting ways, with Australia this week raising interest rates for the first time in two years, while others are taking a more cautious…

Photo by Sean Sinclair on Unsplash The most interesting people I know aren’t trying to be interesting. Thank God. They’re saying what they actually think and wearing what they actually like, pursuing hobbies that genuinely fascinate them, regardless of whether those hobbies are cool. The most…

Did the circular AI economy just wobble? Last week it was reported that a much-discussed $100bn deal – announced last September – between Nvidia and OpenAI might not be happening at all. This was a circular arrangement through which the chipmaker would supply the ChatGPT developer with huge sums of…

In this article GOOGLAAPLAMZNMSFTNVDAORCLMETA Big Tech companies have seen over $1 trillion wiped from their market cap over the past week, as fears over AI spending sparked a sell-off. Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet all saw their shares fall in the week up to market close on…

Flawed economic models mean the accelerating impact of the climate crisis could lead to a global financial crash, experts warn. Recovery would be far harder than after the 2008 financial crash, they said, as “we can’t bail out the Earth like we did the banks”. As the world speeds towards 2C of…

Try GOLD - Free We use cookies to provide and improve our services. By using our site, you consent to cookies. Learn more about our privacy policy Climate change is already shrinking your salary BBC Science Focus | February 2026 No matter where you live, a new study has found warmer temperatures are…

WARSAW, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Poland will launch an investigation into possible links between the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Russian intelligence, as well as any impact on Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday. The U.S. Justice Department's recent release of millions of internal…

SummaryCompanies Microsoft faces pressure over AI spending and OpenAI concentration riskMeta's AI investments boost revenue and ad targetingTesla plans to double spending on AI and autonomous vehiclesMeta gains 10%, Microsoft drops a similar amount Jan 29 (Reuters) - Big Tech earnings so far this…

At the time, the ChatGPT-maker expected the deal negotiations to be completed in the coming weeks, people familiar with the plans said. But the talks haven’t progressed beyond the early stages, some of the people said. Now, the two sides are rethinking the future of their partnership, some of the…

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that he will nominate former Federal Reserve official Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the Fed, a pick likely to result in sharp changes to the powerful agency that could bring it closer to the White House and reduce its longtime independence…

Chat & Ask AI, one of the most popular AI apps on the Google Play and Apple App stores that claims more than 50 million users, left hundreds of millions of those users’ private messages with the app’s chatbot exposed, according to an independent security researcher and emails viewed by 404 Media.…

Research shows AI helps people do parts of their job faster. In an observational study of Claude.ai data, we found AI can speed up some tasks by 80%. But does this increased productivity come with trade-offs? Other research shows that when people use AI assistance, they become less engaged with…

Jan 29th 2026|4 min read Listen to this story AI Narrated Solving fiendish maths problems, making complex medical diagnoses, conjuring up new software in moments: the feats of generative AI get more impressive by the day. But anxiety about its social consequences is mounting, too. Kristalina…

This blog is written in collaboration by Amy Chang, Vineeth Sai Narajala, and Idan Habler Over the past few weeks, Clawdbot (now renamed Moltbot) has achieved virality as an open source, self-hosted personal AI assistant agent that runs locally and executes actions on the user’s behalf. The bot’s…

NEW YORK (AP) — The worst day for Microsoft in years is yanking the U.S. stock market away from its record heights on Thursday. The fever in the gold and metals markets may be breaking, meanwhile, as prices pull back following their jaw-dropping runs. The S&P 500 dropped 1.1% after flirting with its…

In this article MSFT-58.29 (-12.10%)IGV-5.77 (-5.94%)NOW-15.14 (-11.68%) ServiceNow Inc. signage during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, March 20, 2025. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images Software stocks on Thursday slid deeper into an ongoing intense sell-off this year as…

NEW YORK (AP) — As layoffs pile up, workers are feeling increasingly anxious about the job market. In the U.S., economists have said that businesses are largely at a “no-hire, no fire” standstill, leading many to limit new work, if not pause openings entirely amid economic uncertainty. Hiring has…

Logo text Could the next great fantasy screen franchise be here? Apple TV believes so. The streaming giant has closed what has been described as an unprecedented deal to land the rights to the Cosmere books, the fictional literary universe by fantasy author Brandon Sanderson. The first titles being…

Robert Lemos, Contributing WriterJanuary 21, 2026 5 Min Read Source: CoreRock via Shutterstock Browser security is far from perfect, but technologists and cybersecurity researchers have built a security model that, for the most part, works. However, artificial intelligence (AI) agents could be…

Gold (GC=F) continued to rise on Monday after breaking above $5,000 an ounce earlier than Wall Street expected. Futures hit the major milestone on Sunday, raising questions about the stunning speed of the rally in precious metals. Gold's surge has become a hallmark of the “debasement trade,” with…

3 hours ago - Economy Neil Irwin Add Axios on Google Add Axios as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Add Axios on Google Illustration: Rae Cook/Axios The financial headlines overnight were full of speculation about currency interventions by the Japanese and U.S. governments.…

Wearing helmets, gas masks and camouflage fatigues, the federal agents took aim and prepared to open fire. “It’s like Call of Duty,” one could be heard saying via a TV mic, referring to a first-person shooter military video game. “So cool, huh?” This was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis on…

Listen•8 minutes 00:00/07:48 The big AI companies promised us that 2025 would be “the year of the AI agents.” It turned out to be the year of talking about AI agents, and kicking the can for that transformational moment to 2026 or maybe later. But what if the answer to the question “When will our…

When I published AI’s $600B question a year ago, the question was whether AI could ever generate enough revenue to justify the money being put in the ground. Now, with talk of 100 GW or even 250 GW of energy buildouts for AI data centers, we’ve reached a new high water mark. AI’s $600B question…

Will the race to artificial general intelligence (AGI) lead us to a land of financial plenty – or will it end in a 2008-style bust? Trillions of dollars rest on the answer. The figures are staggering: an estimated $2.9tn (£2.2tn) being spent on datacentres, the central nervous systems of AI tools;…

A recent MIT Media Lab study reported that “excessive reliance on AI-driven solutions” may contribute” to “cognitive atrophy” and shrinking of critical thinking abilities. The study is small and is not peer-reviewed, and yet it delivers a warning that even artificial intelligence assistants are…