GoKawiil
Tech News
Andrew Lakeman, a former Old School RuneScape developer at Jagex, was sentenced after a years-long investigation found he abused his internal access to steal players' virtual gold and items starting around 2018. He converted roughly £300,000 of stolen in-game currency, along with other funds, into about £364,829 in cryptocurrency before Cambridgeshire police caught him following an internal trap set by Jagex.
A researcher describes developing an economic theory over several months with help from Anthropic's Opus and Fable AI models, which surfaced counterarguments and relevant papers during the process. The work has evolved into a formal paper co-authored with a researcher from the Stockholm School of Economics, building on the task-based automation framework of Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo. The paper claims to combine classical economic scarcity models with technology-driven wage effects to explain how aggregate wages are set, a question the author says mainstream economics has not fully resolved.
Andrew Lakeman, a former Jagex employee known as Mod Jed who worked on Old School RuneScape since 2015, received a three-year suspended prison sentence after being convicted of stealing over $400,000 worth of in-game gold and selling it on black market sites. Jagex uncovered the scheme after noticing suspicious account recovery patterns starting in 2018, then secretly altered its firewall setup to trace the thefts back to him.
New York City Public Schools banned student-facing AI tools for all K-8 classrooms this week, allowing only a limited set of approved programs for high schoolers, while Los Angeles Unified is enacting a similarly tighter policy for the 2026-27 school year. The move reverses the more permissive stance both districts adopted starting in 2023, after they initially banned ChatGPT outright when it launched in late 2022.
Investor Brad Feld shares a personal reflection on Labor Day weekend, noting that at 60 he's increasingly focused on what truly matters. He shares a list his partner Amy texted him identifying life's real luxuries, including time, health, rest, and meaningful relationships, rather than material wealth.
New research examining phone-free classroom policies, now adopted by a growing number of states, finds essentially no measurable improvement in student test scores and only marginal shifts in other outcomes like behavior. Cell phone restrictions in schools aren't a new phenomenon either—Maryland first banned phones and pagers in classrooms back in 1989 to curb communication tied to illegal activity.
New York City has imposed a temporary ban on artificial intelligence use in classrooms through middle school, while also setting new limits on student screen time. High school students, by contrast, will gain access to AI literacy courses under the new policy.
Harvard Business School has launched an eight-week online entrepreneurship program priced at $699 that uses AI-generated avatars of its faculty to provide round-the-clock guidance to participants. The course lets aspiring founders interact with digital clones of professors instead of relying solely on scheduled lectures or office hours, and early participants have reportedly responded positively.
Several startups, including one called Fambot, are building AI tools designed to handle household logistics such as school emails, sports schedules, and meal planning. The pitch targets parents overwhelmed by constant notifications, group chats, and app pings from activities like scouting and soccer.
A roundup covers Meta's reckoning moment alongside separate stories: the real-world impact of school phone bans, the rise and fall of a self-styled 'Nostradamus of AI' figure, and Nvidia's push to power robotics infrastructure globally.
Schools nationwide are increasingly restricting student phone access during the day, often using lockable pouches or storage systems. Early research on these policies shows students report better mood and social interaction, but academic performance and classroom attention have not meaningfully improved.
A Harvard Business School survey found that about half of U.S. workers favor working from home, with 40% willing to accept a pay cut of at least 5% for the option to telecommute. The trend is fueling interest in launching home-based startups, with several viable small-business ideas requiring no traditional office space.