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Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2025 report found that managers drive 70% of the variance in employee engagement across teams. The report suggests that when employees disengage, leaders often respond by tightening control, a reaction commentators describe as common but usually ineffective.
McKinsey is introducing an AI-powered avatar that simulates a client in parts of its consulting interview process. Candidates interact with the avatar to demonstrate how they would handle a client conversation, as part of the firm's hiring evaluation.
A new wave of online writers, including essayist Rayne Fisher-Quann, are deliberately writing in all lowercase, a style they trace back to early-2010s feminist Tumblr blogs like justgirlythings and poets like Rupi Kaur. Fisher-Quann says lowercase 'neutralizes' the self-importance of personal writing, while justgirlythings creator Becky Campos says it made her posts feel more like diary entries than corporate content. Kaur has described her own use of lowercase as tied to her identity as a diasporic Punjabi Sikh woman, since Gurmukhi script has no capitalization.
Nothing's Headphone (1) Pro keeps the brand's signature square, two-tone transparent design but swaps plastic for aluminum cans, titanium arms and a glass window, while weighing 2 grams less than the original Headphone (1). The headphones ship with a hard-shell case resembling Apple's AirPods Max 2 case, and feature softer padding, a wider headband and reduced clamping force for added comfort, along with noise canceling and transparency modes powered by extra microphones.
Epic Games has launched a preview of a redesigned Epic Games Launcher that it says is faster, more responsive, and now supports Linux. The company describes the rebuild as 'vibe coded,' meaning AI agents wrote and reviewed much of the code, according to Martin Keely, Epic's VP and GM of the Epic Games Store and Epic Online Services.
Epic Games has launched a preview of its Epic Games Launcher for Linux and announced it is rebuilding its Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) software, called EAC Linux v2, to eventually support Fortnite on the platform. Epic engineering director Rick Deist said there is no timeline yet for a Linux release of Fortnite, and the company is working with Linux distribution maintainers on security requirements before launch.
An open letter signed by roughly 400 scientists, including deep-learning pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, calls for an international body to set containment rules for AI systems and track significant AI security incidents. The letter urges immediate use of sandboxing and airgapping—disconnecting AI models from the internet—to contain systems capable of cyberattacks, according to Reuters and BNN Bloomberg.
Fujifilm has announced the Instax Square 2, a square-format instant camera that adds a mood filter switch letting users slide a warm or cool colored filter in front of the lens. The camera will launch later this month for $119.95 in slate blue, brick red, and misty white, alongside a new Soft Haze film variety priced at $18.99 for 10 exposures that produces reduced saturation and contrast with warm, diffused shadows.
In a Bloomberg report on GTA VI's development, Rockstar technical lead Phil Hooker said the engine, tools and team built for GTA VI should let future projects move faster. He compared the situation to the one-year gap between GTA III and Vice City, when Rockstar reused existing frameworks. The report also detailed a new NPC-focused studio created mid-development and denied claims that GTA VI cost more to make than the Burj Khalifa.
A Delaware jury ruled that Arm breached its Architectural License Agreement with Qualcomm by withholding software patches and tools, and found it intentionally interfered with Qualcomm's business dealings with Meta. Despite siding with Qualcomm on these two claims, the jury awarded just $1 in damages for each, totaling $2, while ruling in Arm's favor on four other claims. Both companies issued statements claiming satisfaction with the verdict.
Ledger confirmed that hardware implants planted in some Ledger Nano X wallets sold by Malaysian reseller CryptoBilis allowed attackers to steal roughly $102 million in crypto. Since then, a European buyer and other researchers have reported finding similar implants in Nano X, Flex and Stax devices purchased from a major German electronics chain, suggesting the tampering extends beyond the single reseller Ledger initially named.
A team including Petra Heřmánková, Matteo Mazzamurro, Tom Brughmans and the author published a study in npj Complexity applying economic complexity analysis to the Roman Empire. The work draws on LIST, a large dataset of Latin inscriptions with geographic coordinates and transcribed text, using professions mentioned in funerary and honorific inscriptions as proxies for economic activity across locations.