Remote work policies designed to attract top talent are becoming security vulnerabilities as state-sponsored hackers seek employment at cryptocurrency firms. Coinbase has implemented mandatory in-person orientation and US citizenship requirements for sensitive roles after detecting North Korean IT workers attempting to infiltrate the company through remote positions.
CEO Brian Armstrong revealed on Stripe cofounder John Collison's podcast that the exchange now requires fingerprinting and live video interviews after discovering coordinated efforts involving US-based facilitators who reship laptops and attend virtual interviews on behalf of foreign operatives.
Cisco, the San Jose-based technology giant, has announced another round of layoffs affecting Bay Area workers, marking a familiar pattern of reporting skyrocketing revenue followed by drastic job cuts. From a report: According to Aug. 13 WARN filings with California's Employment Development Department, the company will eliminate 221 positions across its Milpitas and San Francisco offices.
WARN documents are generally required by the state in the event of mass layoffs. Employees were notified of the layoffs on Aug. 14 and their terminations will be effective Oct. 13. The most cuts, affecting 157 jobs, largely in software engineering roles, were at Cisco's Milpitas office at 560 McCarthy Blvd.
Cisco's San Francisco office at 500 Terry A. Francois Blvd. will cut 64 positions, according to the filing. The filings came the same day Cisco released its fourth-quarter earnings, which reported $14.7 billion in revenue, an 8% increase from the same quarter last year. Revenue for the 2025 fiscal year was $56.7 billion, up 5% from the previous year.
Certains le craignaient lors de l’annonce du remaniement à la tête du studio Cloud Chamber en début du mois, suite au constat de 2K Games que la narration de BioShock 4 était à chier : des salariés ont été licenciés il y a quelques heures. Rod Fergusson a également été nommé responsable du studio, lui qui avait auparavant travaillé sur la toute fin de BioShock Infinite, puis qui était passé chez Blizzard entre-temps. Nos confrères d’IGN ont eu accès à un mail interne, expliquant la décision :
Le développement du prochain jeu BioShock est en cours depuis plusieurs années. Bien que nous soyons enthousiasmés par les éléments fondamentaux du gameplay du projet, nous avons décidé, en accord avec la direction du studio, de retravailler certains aspects essentiels à un jeu BioShock. Nous avons donc réduit la taille de l’équipe de développement afin de nous concentrer sur ce travail et de consacrer plus de temps au développement du jeu.
Pour l’instant, le nombre de développeurs mis à la porte n’a pas été communiqué, mais il semblerait que certaines équipes aient été presque entièrement décimées.
Edit du 21/08 : 80 personnes ont été licenciées, ce qui représente environ 30 % des effectifs du studio. Source : Bloomberg.
Kyte, a rental car startup once touted as a modern alternative to Hertz, has shut down after years of rapid growth followed by mounting financial troubles. From a report: Founded in 2017, the San Francisco company built its brand by delivering rental cars directly to customers' doors, eliminating the paperwork and long waits of traditional counters. At its peak, Kyte operated in 14 U.S. cities, managed a fleet of more than 2,000 vehicles and raised nearly $300 million from backers including Goldman Sachs and Ares Management.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued ticket reseller Key Investment Group for evading purchasing limits to buy up thousands of tickets to live events including Taylor Swift's Eras tour and resell them at a markup, according to a complaint filed in Maryland federal court on Monday. From a report: The Baltimore, Maryland-based company, which operates ticket resale sites including TotalTickets.com, used thousands of Ticketmaster accounts, including fake or purchased accounts, the FTC said.
Ticketmaster faced intense criticism after its botched 2022 sale of tickets to Swift's much-hyped Eras tour, when billions of requests from Swift fans, bots and ticket resellers overwhelmed its website and the company canceled a planned ticket sale to the general public.
For one Swift concert in Las Vegas in March 2023, Key Investment Group and its affiliates used 49 different accounts to purchase 273 tickets and evade a 6-ticket purchase limit, netting more than $119,000 in revenue on resales, the FTC said on Monday. The company made more than $1.2 million reselling 2,280 Swift concert tickets it purchased in 2023, the agency said.
Fujifilm will increase prices on most of its US camera lineup starting August 30, marking the second price adjustment this month following retailer-announced increases two weeks earlier. The company cited "volatile market conditions" in its official statement. The recently released X half and X-E5 cameras will maintain their launch prices, while the backordered X100 VI faces price changes. The company characterized the adjustments as a long-term solution to uncertainties including tariffs and manufacturing circumstances.
Sam Altman's brain-chip venture is exploring the idea of genetically altering brain cells to make better implants. "The company, which has been referred to as Merge Labs, is looking at an approach involving gene therapy that would modify brain cells," reports Bloomberg. "In addition, an ultrasound device would be implanted in the head that could detect and modulate activity in the modified cells." From the report: It's one of a handful of ideas and technologies the company has been exploring, they said. The venture is still in early stages and could evolve significantly. "We have not done that deal yet," Altman told journalists at a dinner Thursday in San Francisco, referring to a question about a brain-computer interface venture. "I would like us to." Altman said he wants to be able to think something and have ChatGPT respond to it. [...]
For years, researchers have been studying how to genetically change cells to make them respond to ultrasound, a field called sonogenetics. The idea Merge is considering to combine ultrasound with gene therapy could take years, some of the people said. Ultrasound has attracted significant attention recently as a possible brain therapy. Other companies are exploring the idea of using ultrasound transmitters outside the brain to massage brain tissue, with the goal of treating psychiatric conditions. That kind of technology has shown promise in research studies.
Il y a quelques jours, Remedy (Max Payne, Alan Wake, Control) a publié ses résultats financiers pour la première moitié de 2025. Nos confrères de GamesIndustry.biz l’ont parcouru, et nous rapportent que contre toute attente, FBC: Firebreak a rapporté de l’argent au studio sur le deuxième trimestre. En effet, lors de sa sortie, le nombre de joueurs sur Steam s’est écroulé quasiment instantanément, assorti de nombreuses critiques négatives, fustigeant le manque de scénario et, plus globalement, de contenu. Mais le jeu était également disponible dans les abonnements de Sony et Microsoft, respectivement le PlayStation Plus et le Xbox Game Pass, dont les redevances ont permis au groupe finlandais d’avoir des revenus de 30 millions d’euros sur les six premiers mois, soit une augmentation de 43 % par rapport à la même période en 2024. Cependant, Remedy n’est pour autant pas satisfait des résultats sur Steam, puisque d’après les journalistes, il espérait que la plateforme de Gaben soit le « principal canal de vente aux consommateurs sur PC ». Raté.
Rarement un jeu « correct » aura su se vautrer avec une telle grâce.
Pourtant, à la rédac, on avait testé en coopération sur deux soirées, et on avait trouvé le jeu plutôt agréable, amusant et plus profond qu’il n’y paraissait au premier abord. Certes, 40 € étaient sans doute un prix trop élevé, mais les critiques des joueurs ne semblaient pas spécialement fondées. Pour tenter de rebondir, l’équipe a prévu de publier un gros patch en septembre, propulsé par une campagne marketing. On verra bien ce que ça donnera. Si vous voulez plus de détails sur les résultats du studio, n’hésitez pas à consulter l’article de GamesIndustry.biz (en anglais).
hackingbear shares a report from Bloomberg: Top U.S. chip-equipment supplier Applied Materials was sued by a rival in China over alleged trade secret theft, a further escalation in the technology war between the world's two largest economies. Beijing E-Town Semiconductor Technology Co. filed a lawsuit with the Beijing Intellectual Property Court against Applied Materials, according to a company statement (PDF) to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The Chinese chip-gear maker alleged that the Santa Clara, California-based company illegally obtained, used and revealed its core technologies related to the application of plasma source in treating the surface of wafers, the statement said. The court has filed the case but has not begun a trial, E-Town added.
Applied Materials earlier hired two employees from E-Town's fully owned US subsidiary, Mattson, and they were privy to the Beijing company's proprietary plasma technologies, the filing said. Applied Materials filed a patent application crediting the duo as inventors with the National Intellectual Property Administration in China after the two joined the Santa Clara company, the Beijing firm said, alleging that the content revealed trade secrets co-owned by E-Town and Mattson. "The patent application violated the rules of China's Anti-Unfair Competition Law, and it infringes on trade secrets, and has caused significant damage to the plaintiff's intellectual property and economic interests,â E-Town said in the filing, adding that Applied Materials is also suspected of marketing and selling the technologies involved in the case to Chinese customers. E-Town is asking the court to demand that Applied Materials stop using its trade secrets and destroy related materials. It's also seeking about 100 million yuan ($13.9 million) in recompense for damage.
PayPal payment processing has been unavailable for Steam purchases in most countries since early July 2025, Valve has confirmed, with functionality limited to transactions in U.S. dollars, Euros, British Pounds, Japanese Yen, Australian dollars, and Canadian dollars. In a statement to RockPaperShotgun, the company said one of PayPal's acquiring banks terminated all Steam transaction processing. Valve linked the bank's decision to previous Mastercard-related content restrictions. The disruption began in early July 2025 when PayPal notified Valve of the immediate termination, leaving millions of users in affected regions without PayPal access and no certain timeline for resolution.
An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI is considering ways to bring in additional revenue, and bringing ads to ChatGPT is one option on the table. While being interviewed on Decoder, ChatGPT head Nick Turley said he's "humble enough not to rule it out categorically," but hedged that OpenAI would need to "be very thoughtful and tasteful" about how ads could be integrated into ChatGPT.
"We will build other products, and those other products can have different dimensions to them, and maybe ChatGPT just isn't an ads-y product because it's just so deeply accountable to your goals. But it doesn't mean that we wouldn't build other things in the future, too," Turley said. "I think it's good to preserve optionality, but I also really do want to emphasize how incredible the subscription model is, how fast it's growing, and how untapped a lot of the opportunities are."
Kodak says it remains confident it can avoid shutdown despite filing required "going concern" disclosures about $500 million in debt obligations due within 12 months. The 133-year-old photography company plans to draw approximately $300 million from its U.S. pension fund in December to pay off a significant portion of its term loan before maturity. Chief Marketing Officer Denisse Goldbarg said the disclosure was mandatory under accounting rules but Kodak would emerge virtually debt-free.
Igor Babuschkin, co-founder of xAI, has left the company to start Babuschkin Ventures, a VC firm focused on AI safety and humanity-advancing startups. TechCrunch reports: Babuschkin led engineering teams at xAI and helped build the startup into one of Silicon Valley's leading AI model developers just a few years after it was founded. "Today was my last day at xAI, the company that I helped start with Elon Musk in 2023," Babuschkin wrote in the post. "I still remember the day I first met Elon, we talked for hours about AI and what the future might hold. We both felt that a new AI company with a different kind of mission was needed."
Babuschkin is leaving xAI to launch his own venture capital firm, Babuschkin Ventures, which he says will support AI safety research and back startups that "advance humanity and unlock the mysteries of our universe." The xAI co-founder says he was inspired to start the firm after a dinner with Max Tegmark, the founder of the Future of Life Institute, in which they discussed how AI systems could be built safely to encourage the flourishing of future generations. In his post, Babuschkin says his parents immigrated to the U.S. from Russia in pursuit of a better life for their children.
Prior to co-founding xAI, Babuschkin was part of a research team at Google DeepMind that pioneered AlphaStar in 2019, a breakthrough AI system that could defeat top-ranked players at the video game StarCraft. Babuschkin also worked as a researcher at OpenAI in the years before it released ChatGPT. In his post, Babuschkin details some of the challenges he and Musk faced in building up xAI. He notes that industry veterans called xAI's goal of building its Memphis, Tennessee supercomputer in just three months "impossible." [...] Nevertheless, Babuschkin says he's already looking back fondly on his time at xAI, and "feels like a proud parent, driving away after sending their kid away to college." "I learned 2 priceless lessons from Elon: #1 be fearless in rolling up your sleeves to personally dig into technical problems, #2 have a maniacal sense of urgency," said Babuschkin.
Selon le Financial Times, OpenAI et son dirigeant Sam Altman voudraient investir dans une nouvelle entreprise, qui concurrencera Neuralink. Leur volonté : connecter le cerveau humain à des ordinateurs pour les contrôler.
After over 130 years in business, Kodak has warned it may not survive. From a report: The Rochester, New York-based Eastman Kodak Co. offered a bleak picture of its financials in earnings reports and filings, tracking a second quarter loss and sending shares tumbling in early trading Tuesday, Aug. 12. The iconic brand said in Monday, Aug. 11 government filings that there is "substantial doubt" about the company's ability to continue, as it faces more than $470 million in debt and slashes its pension plan in an attempt to remain afloat.
"Kodak has debt coming due within twelve months and does not have committed financing or available liquidity to meet such debt obligations if they were to become due in accordance with their current terms," the company said in its filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. [...] In its most recent earnings report, Kodak said its consolidated revenues were $263 million at the end of the quarter on June 30, a decrease of $4 million since the same period last year. Gross profit decreased 12% compared to last year's second quarter end, Kodak disclosed, and its cash balance sits at $155 million, marking a loss of just under 23% since the end of December.
Jim Continenza, Kodak's Executive Chairman and CEO, said tariffs have not had a "material impact" on its businesses, noting the domestic production of many of its products such as printing plates, film, inkjet presses and inks and pharmaceutical ingredients. Kodak's chief financial officer David Bullwinkle said in the company's Aug. 11 statement it plans to focus on its advanced chemicals and materials sector moving forward, and said the cut to its retirement program is going toward paying down its debt. He said the company expects to "have a clear understanding" by Friday, Aug. 15 of how it will meet its debt obligations. "For the second half of the year, we will continue to focus on reducing costs today and converting our investments into long-term growth," Bullwinkle said.
Sans avoir été sollicitée par Google, la startup d'IA Perplexity a envoyé une offre pour racheter le navigateur Chrome pour 34,5 milliards de dollars. Elle veut devancer ses concurrents, alors que Google risque de devoir vendre son navigateur, à cause d'un procès antitrust aux États-Unis.
Spirit Airlines has warned investors that it may go out of business, just months after exiting bankruptcy. From a report: In a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, it said there was "substantial doubt" over its "ability to continue as a going concern within 12 months." The budget airline said it was harder to make money because of weak demand for domestic leisure travel and "elevated domestic capacity," meaning increased competition on such routes. Spirit reported a net loss of $245.8 million for the second quarter of 2025, up from a $192.9 million loss for the second quarter of 2024.
theodp writes: The New York Times reports from the CS grad job-seeking trenches: Growing up near Silicon Valley, Manasi Mishra remembers seeing tech executives on social media urging students to study computer programming. "The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary," Ms. Mishra, now 21, recalls hearing as she grew up in San Ramon, Calif.
Those golden industry promises helped spur Ms. Mishra to code her first website in elementary school, take advanced computing in high school and major in computer science in college. But after a year of hunting for tech jobs and internships, Ms. Mishra graduated from Purdue University in May without an offer. "I just graduated with a computer science degree, and the only company that has called me for an interview is Chipotle," Ms. Mishra said in a get-ready-with-me TikTok video this summer that has since racked up more than 147,000 views.
Some graduates described feeling caught in an A.I. "doom loop." Many job seekers now use specialized A.I. tools like Simplify to tailor their resumes to specific jobs and autofill application forms, enabling them to quickly apply to many jobs. At the same time, companies inundated with applicants are using A.I. systems to automatically scan resumes and reject candidates.
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke announced Monday he will step down to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors, with Microsoft restructuring the subsidiary's leadership rather than appointing a direct replacement.
Microsoft developer division head Julia Liuson will oversee GitHub's revenue, engineering and support operations, while chief product officer Mario Rodriguez will report to Microsoft AI platform VP Asha Sharma.
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke announced Monday he will step down to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors, with Microsoft restructuring the subsidiary's leadership rather than appointing a direct replacement.
Microsoft developer division head Julia Liuson will oversee GitHub's revenue, engineering and support operations, while chief product officer Mario Rodriguez will report to Microsoft AI platform VP Asha Sharma.
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