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Blizzard Entertainment employees represented by the Communications Workers of America have voted to approve their first union contract, ending roughly two years of negotiations. The agreement covers about 1,900 workers and includes wage increases, hybrid work terms, disability and remote-work accommodations, expanded severance, and a requirement that Blizzard bargain over AI use in the workplace.
The United Nations passed a resolution, backed by the African Union, urging adoption of map projections that preserve the true relative size of continents instead of the 500-year-old Mercator projection. The vote passed 164 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenting country. Togo's foreign minister argued that maps shape how people understand the world's balance of power.
Workers' rights group LaborLab has released new tools letting employees see which consultants and law firms their employers hire to resist unionization efforts, and how much money is being spent. The launch highlights a roughly $1.7 billion industry of union avoidance specialists that, per Labor Department data, about 75% of employers rely on when facing organizing drives.
Google confirmed it is rolling out major changes to how Search functions across the European Union, following a $1 billion fine tied to alleged Digital Markets Act violations. The update forces Google to display results from competing vertical search services, such as Expedia or Booking.com, ahead of its own Flights and Hotels products in categories like travel and dining. New carousels will rank listings using Google's algorithm, but with details like real-time pricing removed.
Using Bluetooth or other signal jammers is banned in nearly all countries except for limited military use, under laws like the US Communications Act of 1934 and FCC regulations, alongside international rules from the ITU. These devices can disrupt Wi-Fi, medical equipment, security systems, and even emergency responder communications within a wide radius.
U.S.-based employees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia, voted decisively to unionize under Communications Workers of America Local 9415. The election, overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, followed a July push for recognition after a supermajority of workers signed union cards, a request management initially declined to honor voluntarily. The vote is part of the broader Wiki Workers United campaign spanning multiple countries where Wikimedia staff work.
The piece traces how Western Electric, the manufacturing backbone that later became central to AT&T's Bell System, was founded in 1872 by Enos Barton and Elisha Gray—the same Gray who disputed Alexander Graham Bell's claim to inventing the telephone. Gray bought out co-founder George Shawk and became half-owner of the firm, partly intending to manufacture his own competing telephone design.
A former UK Competition and Markets Authority official has filed a £2 billion ($2.7 billion) lawsuit against Apple on behalf of app developers, alleging that its App Tracking Transparency system imposes tougher restrictions on outside developers than on Apple's own services. Apple maintains that all developers face identical requirements under the policy.
Unionized staff at The New York Times and The Athletic issued a unanimous statement opposing a potential deal linking The Athletic with prediction-market company Kalshi. They cite New York's attorney general, who found Kalshi operates as an illegal, unlicensed gambling platform posing financial risk to users, and argue that any deeper partnership would compromise journalistic independence and credibility.
An open-source project uses autonomous Claude 5.1 agent swarms to research, model, and validate browser-based 3D reconstructions of real-world locations, starting with San Francisco's Union Square. The system generates buildings, storefronts, traffic, and pedestrians from open data like OpenStreetMap and public imagery, packaged as runnable Three.js applications rather than relying on a game engine or proprietary 3D tiles.
Prediction market Kalshi issued its first-ever lifetime ban to former congressman George Santos after finding he bet on markets tied to his own attendance at Trump's State of the Union address while publicly making misleading statements to move contract prices. Kalshi's compliance team found Santos profited nearly $18,000 from the scheme and fined him $71,356, while the CFTC separately ordered him to return his profits and paid its own $17,500 penalty.
Prediction market platform Kalshi has permanently barred former Congressman George Santos from its service, marking the company's first-ever lifetime ban. The action stems from allegations that Santos manipulated betting markets tied to whether he would attend President Trump's State of the Union address earlier this year.