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JEROME POWELL SAYS THE AI HIRING APOCALYPSE IS REAL: 'JOB CREATION IS PRETTY CLOSE TO ZERO.'

Jerome Powell warns that AI is significantly impacting job creation, with hiring near zero and major companies citing AI for layoffs. The Fed cut interest rates to address employment risks amid persistent inflation, as AI-driven investments and productivity gains benefit higher-income groups while leaving the broader labor market strained. This poses a complex policy dilemma for the Fed, balancing between employment support and controlling inflation.

ILYA SUTSKEVER'S DEPOSITION IN MUSK VS. ALTMAN

This transcript features portions of a videotaped deposition from October 1 involving Ilya Sutskever in a case titled Musk v. Altman et al. The testimony centers on Sutskever's involvement in the removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI, including his concerns about Altman's alleged pattern of dishonesty and undermining executives, which he documented in a memo for independent board members.

MERCOR QUINTUPLES VALUATION TO $10B WITH $350M SERIES C

Mercor secured $350 million in Series C funding, boosting its valuation to $10 billion. Felicis Ventures led this round with participation from Benchmark, General Catalyst, and Robinhood Ventures. The company, which specializes in providing specialized experts for AI model training, now plans to expand its talent network, refine its contractor-client matching systems, and develop new automation products.

THE BOARD MEETING BLUEPRINT

Your first board meeting decides whether you lead or get managed. This playbook turns updates into operating sessions. Send a tight board pack 72 hours ahead, frame decisions up front, and run a clear agenda that separates performance review from real strategy.

HOW FOUNDERS CAN NAVIGATE TODAY'S INTEREST RATE LANDSCAPE

Interest rate hikes have shifted VC focus from rapid growth to demands for profitability and cash flow. Founders should build resilience, diversify funding sources, and communicate how they're adapting to these financial conditions. Understanding economic cycles and timing fundraising can help navigate the current high-cost capital landscape.

HOW TO EVALUATE A FOUNDING TEAM

Investors assess founding teams by evaluating backgrounds for industry experience, complementary skills, and past achievements. They look for team dynamics that balance technical, operational, and commercial expertise. Strong teams show execution capability, adaptability to pivot, and the ability to recruit and retain talent.

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ASIDE

Aside helps you to answer technical questions during a sales call by showing real-time suggestions from your docs.

FASTSHOT

Create mobile apps with no code using AI.

MOSS

Real-time Semantic Search for Conversational AI.

TRAFFIC IS NO LONGER A RELIABLE GROWTH METRIC

Webflow is treating AI discovery like the new homepage, and the numbers hit hard. 10% of signups now come from LLMs, 91% from ChatGPT, and those visitors convert at 24%, which is six times Google. Rankings reshuffle daily so they measure visibility, comprehension, and conversion while refreshing content fast, mining Reddit, and structuring FAQs.

SERVICENOW'S UGLY UI KEEPS WINNING AND THAT'S THE TELL

Clunky screens keep winning because the real product lives underneath it. Years of ticket flows, approvals, SLAs, and audit trails are welded into one place. That weld traps data and habits. Forward deployed engineers keep closing the last mile customers cannot. Control Tower grows because nothing in enterprise AI ships without guardrails. If you try to attack this, do not chase the whole suite. Take one workflow where value is obvious in weeks, wire into their records, prove fewer escalations or faster MTTR, then expand sideways.

A STRANGE DELIGHT

Anthropic built its AI coding tool with white text on black background, arrow key navigation, and zero mouse support. Snowflake spent years perfecting animated menus that slide and unfurl. Everyone gravitates to the primitive one. The command line puts you close enough to feel the machine working - watching it tick through tasks, seeing its relentless speed without JavaScript bloat. dbt probably succeeded because it started this way too. Thousands of analysts got their first glimpse into computational power through printed logs instead of buttons. Comfort rarely creates emotional experiences. The internet doesn't need more polished minimalism, it needs tools that remind us computers are physical things we can actually feel.

RIGHT-SIZING YOUR STARTUP VISION

Founders should start with a tightly scoped problem that matches their team's resources instead of pursuing overly ambitious “maximum viable products.”

THE PIANO AND THE DJ SET

Building software was once akin to playing the piano—every note deliberate, every line of code your own.

ALPHABET'S GV BACKS SYNTHESIA IN $200M ROUND AT $4B VALUATION TO POWER THE NEXT WAVE OF AI VIDEO

Alphabet's GV led a $200 million funding round for Synthesia, valuing the AI video startup at $4 billion.

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NEW HERODOTUS ANDROID MALWARE FAKES HUMAN TYPING TO AVOID DETECTION

Threat Fabric has detected a new Android malware-as-a-service (MaaS) dubbed Herodotus that is being used in campaigns targeting Italian and Brazilian users through smishing. The malware uses a novel randomized delay of 0.3 to 3 seconds when typing to mimic human typing and evade behavioral detections. Herodotus also provides clients with a control panel to customize the SMS message, as well as the ability to overlay pages mimicking banking and crypto pages to steal credentials, overlay opaque pages to hide malicious behavior, an SMS stealer for MFA interception, and screen recording.

“WE GOT HACKED” EMAILS THREATEN TO LEAK UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA DATA

This past Friday, students and alumni of the University of Pennsylvania received a series of offensive emails from various university email addresses stating that their data had been leaked. The university reported that its incident response team is addressing the issue, but hasn't released more specifics. The article includes a copy of the email, which appears to be politically motivated.

EY EXPOSES 4TB+ SQL DATABASE TO OPEN INTERNET FOR WHO KNOWS HOW LONG

EY accidentally left a massive, unencrypted 4TB SQL Server backup file publicly accessible online, exposing sensitive data that included API keys, passwords, and credentials. The database became accessible due to a misconfigured cloud bucket. The breach's duration is unknown. EY responded swiftly after being alerted and resolved the issue within a week, likely preventing further damage.

METHODOLOGY: HOW WE DISCOVERED OVER 2K HIGH-IMPACT VULNERABILITIES IN APPS BUILT WITH VIBE CODING PLATFORMS

Platforms that enable anyone to build applications without prior coding experience are surging in popularity, but they also introduce serious security concerns. Escape's research analyzed over 5,600 publicly available applications created with these “vibe coding” tools and found more than 2,000 vulnerabilities, along with hundreds of exposed secrets and personal data. Many issues arose from inexperienced users misconfiguring security, particularly when platforms automatically integrated third-party services, such as Supabase, without strict access controls.

KEYS TO THE KINGDOM: A DEFENDER'S GUIDE TO PRIVILEGED ACCOUNT MONITORING

Mandiant uses a three-pillar approach to privileged account monitoring (PAM). The prevention pillar focuses on identifying all identities that can change system state, alter security policy, or reach sensitive data and tiering them into a hierarchy of privileged access. The detection pillar focuses on distinguishing PAM-related detections from regular abuse. The response pillar focuses on ensuring that break-glass accounts work and customizing an incident response plan for privileged accounts.

CODE-IN-THE-MIDDLE: AN INTRODUCTION TO IR

Traditional EDR evasion methods, such as runtime packers and post-compilation obfuscation, are increasingly ineffective due to high-entropy signatures and recognizable patterns, prompting a shift toward compile-time obfuscation using the LLVM Intermediate Representation. This approach applies transformations like control flow flattening and API call hashing during compilation, rather than after. IRvana is a tool that leverages LLVM IR for fileless execution by using lli.exe to directly interpret obfuscated IR files directly. It achieves strong static detection bypass while acknowledging that dynamic behavioral detection remains challenging. Security teams should focus their detection efforts on behavioral analysis and process injection techniques, rather than relying solely on static signatures, as IR-based evasion makes traditional binary analysis significantly more challenging.

part of a broader security strategy. Read the blog

INTRODUCING AARDVARK: OPENAI'S AGENTIC SECURITY RESEARCHER

Aardvark is OpenAI's new autonomous security research agent. Now in private beta, it is designed to help developers and security teams find and fix vulnerabilities. It continuously scans code repositories, prioritizes risks, and proposes targeted patches using AI-powered reasoning.

BUNKERWEB

Open-source and next-generation Web Application Firewall (WAF). Being a full-featured web server (based on NGINX under the hood), it will protect your web services to make them secure by default.

MCP SCANNER

A tool from Cisco AI Defense that scans MCP servers and tools for potential findings using the Cisco AI Defense inspect API, YARA rules, and LLM-as-a-judge.

AUSTRALIA WARNS OF BADCANDY INFECTIONS ON UNPATCHED CISCO DEVICES

Australia's ASD reported that over 400 Cisco IOS XE devices have been compromised with BadCandy webshell malware since July, exploiting CVE-2023-20198, a critical vulnerability that allows remote attackers to create administrative accounts and deploy Lua-based webshells with root privileges. The webshell persists until the device is rebooted, but can be easily reintroduced on unpatched systems, allowing attackers to detect its removal and re-exploit the same endpoints. Organizations must immediately patch affected Cisco IOS XE devices and follow the vendor's hardening guidelines, as state-sponsored actors, including Salt Typhoon, continue to exploit this two-year-old vulnerability for persistent network access.

ECLIPSE FOUNDATION REVOKES LEAKED OPEN VSX TOKENS FOLLOWING WIZ DISCOVERY

The Eclipse Foundation revoked a small number of leaked Open VSX tokens after Wiz discovered some Visual Studio Code extensions exposing access tokens in public repositories. The investigation showed that the leaks were due to developer mistakes, not a compromise. Eclipse has introduced new token formats, tightened security, improved revocation procedures, and is scanning for malicious patterns.

FIREWALLS AND VPNS ARE SO COMPLEX NOW, THEY CAN ACTUALLY MAKE YOU LESS SECURE

Organizations using Cisco or Citrix VPNs are nearly seven times more likely to experience a ransomware attack. This is due to the growing complexity of properly securing on-premises VPNs. SonicWall VPN users were the second most likely to be breached, with a 5.8 times increased rate of incidence.

compliance and security requirements. See how

BTC BRIDGE FLAGGED FOR LAUNDERING MONEY GOT HACKED

A protocol called Garden, which facilitates the swapping of bitcoin across blockchains, suffered a $11 million hack just days after announcing a major milestone.

ARM OPENS ACCESS TO CHIPLET ARCHITECTURES AND AI PLATFORMS

Arm contributed its Foundation Chiplet System Architecture (FCSA) specification to the Open Compute Project, joined the OCP board alongside AMD and Nvidia, expanded its Total Design ecosystem from 20 to over 50 partners, and added its Armv9 Edge AI platform to its Flexible Access licensing program, enabling startups and smaller teams to prototype with production-grade IP at low or no upfront cost.

BLE CHIP LEAKS AES KEYS THROUGH RF SIGNALS: A SUCCESSFUL REMOTE SIDE-CHANNEL ATTACK

Researchers demonstrated a remote RF-based side-channel attack on Nordic Semiconductor's nRF52832 BLE chip, recovering 128-bit AES keys at one meter using 2.4 GHz radio frequency analysis, raising security concerns for automotive and industrial systems.

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THE LENGTHS AMERICANS ARE WILLING TO GO TO MAKE EVERY PENNY COUNT

Americans are finding creative ways to stretch their budgets and get more from every purchase. They're diluting cleaners, using smaller portions of products, shopping at discount stores, buying in bulk, and growing their own food. These habits are hitting consumer companies. Procter & Gamble reported a 2% drop in home and fabric-care volume, while private-label sales stayed flat. One household cut its grocery bill from $1,696 to $1,265 by portioning carefully.

THE 2025 SOCIAL MEDIA SALARY REPORT

Social media compensation is rising most for veterans. Salaries jumped 12% for pros with 12+ years experience, while entry-level pay only matched inflation. B2B specialists earn 10% more than their B2C peers, and those in tech or working in-house at large companies see the highest pay. Titles now matter more - splitting Social Media Manager and Senior Social Media Manager yields a $5K difference in medians.

SAY WHO YOUR PRODUCT IS NOT FOR

People are more likely to choose a product when it highlights who it's not for. Across eight experiments, ads using negative framing such as “Not for light coffee drinkers” or “If you don't like spice, skip this sauce” increased product choice and engagement by up to 48%. This works because it makes products seem more specialized and better aligned with personal preferences. The effect has been strongest for food and drink items tested on US audiences, so results may vary across categories or cultures.

TRAFFIC IS NO LONGER A RELIABLE GROWTH METRIC

Webflow drives AI discovery through 3 automated tactics. It refreshes website content at 5X the normal rate, boosting traffic on updated pages by 40%. Webinars are repurposed into 5-10 content assets each, reducing post-production time by 80% and increasing AI visibility. It also automates FAQs with schema markup, which led to a 24% rise in SEO impressions and 331 new AI citations. This helps its content get cited by models like ChatGPT and drives higher-quality conversions.

AMPLITUDE'S AI VISIBILITY TRACKER

Input your brand name, and this tool will provide data on how it performs across different platforms. It produces insights on competitor comparisons, top cited domains and URLs per prompt, visibility by topic area, and more. It's free to use.

HOW TO ‘HACK' YOUTUBE'S ‘ASK' FEATURE

YouTube's Gemini-powered "Ask" feature is now baked into the analytics backend and provides insight into content engagement. Since it's in beta, it only provides 3 preset prompts at the top of your analytics dashboard. You can click the ‘stop' button in the chat window to pause the tool and then input your own custom prompt.

HOW REDDIT BUILT THE INTERNET'S BEST COMMENT SECTION

Reddit turned its comment section into the platform's main feature. Its design combined upvotes, karma, and nested threads to make discussions scalable, helping it reach over 100K active communities and 2.7B comments a year. The upvote system prioritizes quality over timing, keeping conversations dynamic and rewarding meaningful contributions. Karma and threaded conversations further motivate users to create and explore content in depth.

WHICH MARKETING CHANNEL PROVIDES THE BEST RETURN ON INVESTMENT FOR SMALL GAME PUBLISHERS?

Small game publishers get the best return when paid ads support, not replace, community-driven marketing. TikTok and Reddit increase awareness, but conversions and platform fees can hurt ROI. Publishers like No More Robots spend around $50k pre-launch to maintain visibility, while live events, digital showcases, and streamer collaborations sustain authenticity and word-of-mouth.