Microsoft has taken legal action against a group the company claims intentionally developed and used tools to bypass the safety guardrails of its cloud AI products. According to a complaint filed by the company in December in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, a group of 10 unnamed defendants allegedly used […]

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If you've been coming to CES for the past decade and hit the marketing panels and keynotes, you would think that every year promises a transformation for our business. This year, the pablum finally feels real and potent; artificial and augmented intelligence applied to marketing and advertising dominated the discussions on the stages and in...

Three Russian citizens were charged with money laundering for their role in operating Blender.io and Sinbad.io crypto mixing services.

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• Business Insider asked three chefs about their favorite breakfast dishes to make in an air fryer.
• Air-fried doughnuts can be just as tasty without the added mess of deep-frying.
• The countertop appliance is perfect for making crispy breakfast burritos and home fries. 

Air fryers are surprisingly versatile. Their ability to make food crispy using little or no oil makes them ideal for adding flavor and crunch to a range of breakfast dishes.

Business Insider asked three professional chefs to share their favorite morning meals to cook in an air fryer.

Here are their top suggestions.

At the end of 2024, a US court authorized the Department of Justice to sell 69,370 bitcoins from "the largest cryptocurrency seizure in history."

At bitcoin's current price, just under $92,000, these bitcoins are worth nearly $6.4 billion, and crypto outlets are reporting that DOJ officials have said they're planning to proceed with selling off the assets consistent with the court's order. The DOJ had reportedly argued that bitcoin's price volatility was a pressing reason to push for permission for the sale.

Ars has reached out to the DOJ for comment and will update the story with any new information regarding next steps.

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Growing up as a Sri Lankan American immigrant, I remember my first visit to a museum in the United States. It was more than a building filled with objects--it was a portal. For me, it bridged the unfamiliar with the familiar, transforming the abstract idea of a new home into something tangible. Museums became spaces...

• Wall Street jobs pay well, but work-from-home opportunities tend to be slim.
• JPMorgan is considering whether to call all its employees back to the office full time.
• Check out the RTO policies at the biggest financial firms like JPMorgan, Blackstone, and Citadel. 

Every day it seems as if another company is calling its workers back to the office five days a week. Amazon's office staff are back to their seats Monday through Friday, starting this month, as are the employees of telecom giant AT&T. JPMorgan Chase is also considering returning to a five-day workweek, according to Bloomberg News. 

Investment banks like Goldman Sachs and hedge funds like Citadel have been at the forefront of efforts to get employees working in the same place since the pandemic kicked off the work-from-home phenomenon. Goldman's CEO David Solomon famously blasted the work-from-home phenomenon as an "aberration" before most Americans were even vaccinated. Citadel's Ken Griffin said he feared that work-from-home was harming the nation and wished President Joe Biden would do something about it. 

So, which Wall Street firms are still letting employees work from home at least part of the time?  Here is our list of back-to-work mandates at the largest financial services companies.

Goldman Sachs 

Goldman Sachs started calling workers back in June 2021 and was initially once of the few financial firms to buck to remote work trend and demand pretty much everyone return to the office five days a week. 

Goldman started by welcoming employees back with ice cream and food trucks to get there. By 2022, it was actively monitoring attendance via ID badge swipes. In 2023, it cracked down on laggards, reminding staffers that the 5-days-a-week policy is for everyone — even during the dog days of summer. 

JPMorgan 

JPMorgan started calling workers back in July 2021 on a rolling basis and by 2022, had developed a hybrid work policy that was supposed to result in just 50% of the bank's employees returning to the office five days a week, including people who work in bank branches or in investment-banking jobs like sales and trading.

By April 2022, Dimon said that 40% of the bank's employees, which then numbered about 270,000, would be permitted to work a few days at home, while about 10% could work from home full time. Everyone else was expected to be in the office five days a week.

The next April, Dimon called all of the bank's managing directors back to the office five days a week, whether they worked in demanding revenue-producing jobs or led back-office departments like technology and compliance. Everyone else must be in at least three days a week. 

Like Goldman, JPMorgan has also been tracking attendance through ID badge swipes, data that it collects into a dashboard that can churn out reports for managers and other senior leaders.    

A spokesman for JPMorgan, which reported having 316,043 workers at the end of September, declined to comment on Bloomberg's reporting that it may soon revert to a five-day-a-week schedule for everyone. He said that roughly 70% of the bank's employees were already back in the office five days a week, while everyone else was back three or four days a week.

Citigroup 

Citi's CEO Jane Fraser is one of the few Wall Street CEOs who has not participated in the work-from-home bashing. Instead, she's embraced a hybrid work policy that currently allows most employees to work three days from the office and two days at home, depending on the job. Bank branch employees, for example, are still required to go in five days a week. 

Fraser has also not shied away from reminding the troops that working from home is a privilege, not a right. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2023, she said that the bank was calling workers with productivity issues back to their desks. 

"We do measure productivity very carefully," she said, according to Bloomberg. "You can see how productive someone is or isn't, and if they're not being productive we bring them back to the office, or back to the site, and we give them the coaching they need until they bring the productivity back up again."

A spokeswoman for the bank said Citi is "committed to our hybrid work model. She said that the majority of employees still work on a hybrid schedule, or at least three days in the office and up to two days remotely.

Bank of America 

Bank of America's policy has morphed over time. In early 2022, it encouraged employees to work from the office more often but left room for flexibility at the manager's discretion. By May of that year, investment banking employees at all levels were being ordered to return to the office between four and five days a week.

Since 2022, Bank of America has required employees who are client-facing, like bankers and traders, to be in the office or meeting with clients five days a week. Everyone else must be in the office three days a week. A BofA spokesman confirmed that the policy established in 2022 remains in place.  

Early last year, the bank issued "letters of education" to employees who were in violation of the bank's return-to-office policies, BI reported. "Failure to follow the workplace excellence expectations applicable to your role within two weeks of the date of this notification may result in further disciplinary action," one of these letters said.

Morgan Stanley 

Morgan Stanley's new CEO Ted Pick has not commented publicly on the company's remote work policy since taking the role in January 2024. His predecessor, James Gorman, however, was a big proponent of working from the office, telling Bloomberg in 2023 that working from home is "not a choice." 

"They don't get to choose their compensation, they don't get to choose their promotion, they don't get to choose to stay home five days a week," Gorman said in an interview in Davos. 

That said, Morgan Stanley has allowed for some remote work, depending on the job. "At Morgan Stanley, we're kind of business unit by business unit. It's three or four days in the office," Gorman said at the time.

BlackRock

BlackRock's employees have been making use of its new Hudson Yards headquarters in New York City. 

The world's largest asset manager has required its employees to work in the office four days a week starting in September 2023, with the option to work from home one day a week, BI previously reported.   

Citadel 

Citadel's Griffin is a true believer that teams work better and faster when they're in the same room. His $66 billion hedge fund and his market maker, Citadel Securities,  have been full time in the office since June 2021.  

"We make so much money because our competition plays in their pajamas – and that's just been a home run for us," Griffin told Goldman partner Raj Mahajan in an interview for the bank's Talks at GS series in June 2023. 

Blackstone 

Blackstone employees have been back in the office five days a week since June 2021. 

To make its staff more comfortable with the initial return to office, Blackstone spent $20 million on Covid safety and specific precautions, a source told BI in 2021, including covering cab fares for employees' commute.

Bridgewater

Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, has kept to a flexible schedule. Since September 2021, the fund has required staff to be in the office a minimum of two days a week. 

 Managers and department heads, however, can require additional days in the office, according to the firm's website. On days employees are in, the firm focuses on taking "advantage of our shared location," it reads. Department heads and managers can require additional days onsite depending on the employee's role and business needs.

Millennium 

Izzy Englander's Millennium experimented with a hybrid working arrangement in 2021. At that time, the firm required its employees to work in the office at least three days a week.

Since then, most employees have been in the office 5 days a week, according to a person familiar with the firm. 

With a change in presidential administration comes speculation among advertisers and their lawyers as to what course the new Federal Trade Commission chair will chart. But this time, ad industry mavens can do more than just read murky tea leaves, because president-elect Donald Trump's choice for chairman is a known quantity: sitting commissioner Andrew N....

• Wall Street newcomers are often highly successful.
• But Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson says a key to success is learning to accept failures.
• Always being ready to up your game as you get promoted is also crucial, he said.

If you're just getting started in your career on Wall Street, Morgan Stanley chief investment officer Mike Wilson has some tough love to share with you: life's only going to get harder.

In an interview with Business Insider in December, Wilson listed a couple pieces of advice he gives to his new hires, interns, and even his kids.

Number one: you're not going to be as successful as you're used to being. Landing a job at an investment bank or research firm is an achievement, with a stellar academic record often being a prerequisite. So many youngsters entering banking are accustomed to outperforming. But failing is a fact of life in banking, Wilson said.

"A lot of people coming to Wall Street are overachievers," Wilson said. "I say, 'My guess is your historical report card has very few Bs on it. Maybe none. And definitely no Cs. And so what you're going to have to get used to coming to Wall Street is you're going to get a bunch of Fs, and you can't even fathom what that feels like."

How you adjust to that feeling will be one factor in how successful you become, he said.

"You picked the stock, it went to zero, everybody knows you made a mistake. How are you going to deal with that?" Wilson said.

"The best investors generally get 55% of their calls correct," he continued. "There are a lot of dynamics that play into being a good investor, a good analyst, a good strategist. But I think the hardest one is learning how to accept failure, learning how to be wrong, admit it, and move on. Acknowledge your mistakes."

Wilson, who is also Morgan Stanley's chief US equity strategist, has put his advice to use in recent years. He was one of the most accurate market forecasters in 2022 amid a market sell-off, but his ongoing bearishness caught up with him in 2023 when the market turned around. He issued a mea culpa, offering more bullish price targets since then alongside the ongoing stock-market rally.

As for his second piece of advice, Wilson said to be ready to continually up your game as you become more successful.

"I have two sons in their 20s, and I always kid around with them. When they're successful at work, I say, 'Congratulations, you're gonna make it to the next level. Guess what: It's going to be harder,'" Wilson said.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing, he said.

"That's life. Every rung is harder, and that's the thrill of it, too, because you're competing at a higher level," he said. "If you're successful, you just understand that dynamic, and that's something I think young people need to know — what exactly they're signing up for."

In the interview, Wilson also shared more general career advice that can apply to people outside of the financial industry as well: stand up for ideas that you have high conviction in. In his role, that means sometimes issuing calls against consensus. He called this taking personal risk.

"You've got to be willing to go take a stand on stuff, whether it's in a meeting, with people you report to, pointing out things that you don't agree with, kind of making a firm stance," Wilson said.

There was a time when baristas just had to write a customer’s name on a cup and call it out. They wouldn’t always get the name right, but more often than not, it went to the right person. The prospect of picking up takeout has, however, become considerably more dicey in this post-pandemic era dominated […]

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• Internal documents say Amazon workers in the UK can apply to work from home up to two days a week.
• Staffers in the Netherlands are following previous guidance of three days in office, BI has learned.
• Amazon implemented a global five-days-a-week return-to-office policy on January 2.

Amazon's five-days-a-week return-to-office policy appears to be more flexible for some European employees than their US-based counterparts.

Employees in the UK can apply to work from home for one or two days a week, while Amazon workers in the Netherlands are following previous guidance allowing them to work from home for up to two days a week, Business Insider has learned.

A copy of Amazon's "Flexible Work Arrangement" policy document for the US, seen by BI, doesn't explicitly say employees can request to work from home for one or two days a week. The document, last updated on December 17, says Amazon "may grant exceptions for work arrangements" to staffers in the US "who are in good standing on a case-by-case basis."

Amazon announced in September that employees globally would be required to work from the office five days a week starting on January 2. Some locations have delayed the five-day RTO policy because of insufficient office space, while in other cases it appears to have been delayed by local employment requirements.

On December 20, Amazon's management team in the Netherlands sent employees an email, seen by BI, that said it had entered into discussions with its works council — an organization representing employees — to define and introduce a flexible working arrangement.

"Until further notice, while everyone is welcome and encouraged to work from the office for five days per week, you may continue to follow the current in-office guidance for your role and team into the new year," it said.

Under that guidance, employees in the Netherlands can work up to two days a week from home until they're notified of the outcome of the discussions between the works council and management, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Nafsika Karavida, an attorney at the law firm Reavis Page Jump, told BI that the differences between Amazon's RTO rollout in Europe and in the US were "most likely due to cultural, legal, and operational differences" that could limit its "ability to act unilaterally."

Karavida added that employers in the Netherlands cannot legally enforce an RTO policy without the approval of a works council.

Like Amazon employees in Germany, staffers in the UK can formally apply to work from home for one or two days a week, an internal policy document seen by BI said. It added that employees based in the UK had a "statutory right to make a formal application" to change their work location, among other working conditions. Approvals will be subject to a three-month trial period, the document said.

Karavida said Amazon's policy in the UK was shaped by flexible-working regulations that took effect last April. "Although these regulations do not grant employees an automatic right to work from home, they obligate employers to consider such requests reasonably on a case-by-case basis," she said.

Amazon faces RTO delays

The UK, Netherlands, and Germany are the latest examples of different implementations of Amazon's five-day RTO policy. An internal list identified more than 40 locations where Amazon's full five-day RTO policy was delayed, including Santa Clara, California; Hamburg, Germany; and Belfast, UK.

Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, said in a September blog post that returning full time to the office would help the company "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

An Amazon spokesperson referred BI to that blog post, in which Jassy also said that "it was not a given" that staffers could work remotely two days a week before the pandemic, adding, "That will also be true moving forward."

In the US, Amazon employees can submit requests for offsite work for a week or for more than 90 days. Those are also reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

But unlike the policies for the UK and Germany, the US's flexible-working document doesn't specifically mention the option for employees to formally apply to work from home for one or two days a week; it details only offsite-work and part-time-work arrangements.

An internal Amazon FAQ document circulated at the time of the RTO announcement last year said employees with existing approval, such as a "Military Spouse Remote Work Exception," didn't need to change where they worked.

“A Florida man pleaded guilty today,” began a Department of Justice press release published on Tuesday. In this case, the ever-infamous Florida Man is none other than Ted Farnsworth, the former CEO of MoviePass’ parent company. His plea comes fewer than four months after another MoviePass leader, former CEO Mitch Lowe, entered a guilty plea of his own.

Farnsworth pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud and another of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. He’ll face a maximum of 20 years in prison for the former charge and up to five for the latter. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled later.

The DOJ charged Farnsworth, 62, with scheming to defraud investors in MoviePass’ former parent company, Helios & Matheson Analytics (HMNY). The agency accused him of making false and misleading representations of HMNY’s and MoviePass’ business to artificially inflate stock and woo investors.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe pleaded guilty to the same charges in September. Lowe reportedly agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and regulators as part of his plea, a detail one can imagine tightened the vise on Farnsworth leading up to his plea.

MoviePass subscribers paid the company $9.95 monthly for what were supposed to be unlimited movie tickets with no blackout dates. Farnsworth and Lowe told investors the business plan was tested and sustainable and would at least break even — if not turn a profit — from subscription fees alone. On top of that, they used buzzwords like “big data” and “artificial intelligence” to claim they could alchemize subscriber data, transforming it into profit.

But according to the DOJ (and… logic), that was never the case. Instead, it was a marketing gimmick to lure in new subscribers and pump HMNY’s stock price.

Farnsworth falsely claimed that MoviePass’ cost of goods (the number of tickets each subscriber bought with their subscription) naturally declined over time, which was in line with his publicly stated expectations. But the DOJ says that was because the company directed MoviePass employees to throttle subscribers who used the service to buy the most movies, preventing them from getting what was promised from their “unlimited” memberships. That aligns with reports from 2019 that employees were ordered to change the passwords of frequent moviegoers.

Unsurprisingly, the company lost money from the plan. A downward spiral commenced, MoviePass and its parent company declared bankruptcy in 2020 and the pair of Florida men in charge of the too-good-to-be-true scheme have admitted their guilt in a federal court.

The company has since been resurrected with a new business model after co-founder Stacy Spikes bought its scraps in 2021.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/former-moviepass-head-pleads-guilty-to-securities-fraud-180603455.html?src=rss

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© TedFarnsworth.com

San Francisco startup Based Hardware announced during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week the launch of a new AI wearable, Omi, to boost productivity. The device can be worn as a necklace where Omi’s AI assistant can be activated by saying “Hey Omi.” The startup also claims Omi can be attached to […]

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The former chief executive of the parent company of MoviePass, Theodore Farnsworth, pleaded guilty to charges of securities fraud and conspiracy after being accused of misleading investors over the service’s “unlimited plan.” Farnsworth also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud as the chief executive of Vinco Ventures, a publicly traded company. Helios & […]

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The clock is officially ticking for TikTok. What once seemed far-fetched now feels more real than ever. After a long, contentious battle--with TikTok arguing that a ban would be unconstitutional and violate free speech rights, and lawmakers citing concerns over data privacy and foreign influence--the app recently lost its legal efforts in the D.C. Circuit...

Vay is hitting the accelerator on its driverless car-sharing service in Las Vegas. The Berlin-based startup, which uses teleoperations technology that lets humans pilot empty vehicles to customers, has been operating a small commercial fleet of retrofitted Kia e-Niro vehicles in certain parts of Las Vegas since January 2024. When customers open the Vay app […]

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Roads are closed but flight disruption has so far kept to a minimum as fires spread in southern Californian

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• AT&T began implementing its staggered five-day return-to-office mandate on Monday.
• Workers told BI that limited available desks and elevators at some locations complicated their office return.
• As more workers are slated to arrive in phases, projects to add capacity are underway.

The first wave of AT&T's five-day return-to-office mandate started on Monday. Conversations with half a dozen AT&T workers across the country this week indicate it hasn't been off to a smooth start.

At the Dallas-based telecom giant's Atlanta offices, AT&T employees told Business Insider that a lack of enough open desks, parking lots that quickly filled up, and a limited number of elevators is complicating the company's plan to phase out hybrid work.

Internal documents obtained by BI suggest that AT&T is aware that its RTO mandate is asking more people to work on-site than the number of workstations it has at some of its offices.

An internal FAQ that was updated last week said that employees in at least one division should expect workstations for 70-80% of those who are assigned to a particular location.

"As a reminder, employees should not leave personal items, make signage, or add name plates on desks," the document said. "These items will be removed."

A spokesperson for AT&T did not provide immediate comment when contacted by Business Insider.

The document follows a memo last month from CTO Jeremy Legg sent to employees that said his AT&T Technology Services division "will not offer one-for-one seating per employee" under the new RTO rules.

One employee at the Atlanta offices told BI on Monday that he arrived before 7 a.m. to ensure he got a workspace.

Another Atlanta worker said he arrived before 6 a.m. and that the available desks he saw had been filled by employees by 9 a.m., at which point some employees sat in the dining area or around conference tables.

"I actually enjoyed coming to the office and even came four to five days a week," the employee said. He said that he felt the working environment "has deteriorated" as more employees returned to the office since last year's three-days-in-office requirement.

The worker said AT&T employees have already been competing for space and sometimes speaking over one another while conducting simultaneous Microsoft Teams meetings. The elimination of hybrid work is heightening those challenges, the employee added.

The two Atlanta workers, as well as employees at other offices, told BI that finding open parking in a timely manner has been a challenge for themselves and for colleagues, especially at offices that have been converted from less-dense cubicle setups to more tightly packed floor plans.

In communications sent to employees, AT&T has said it will continue to monitor workspace capacity and usage and will make adjustments accordingly. Legg's memo said that the company anticipates some percentage of workers to be out of the office each week due to sick days, work travel, vacation, or other reasons.

Workers in Atlanta also reported seeing signs in front of the office's elevators (which they said have seen increasingly long wait times) with motivational quotes recommending they use nearby stairs instead.

Workers said the signs included phrases like "There is no elevator to the top of the corporate ladder," and "There will be challenges, but each step you take brings you closer to who you're meant to be. Take the stairs." It wasn't clear exactly when the signs were placed, but the Atlanta employees said the signs were gone by Tuesday morning.

One of the Atlanta employees told BI that an additional elevator is planned to be installed at the location.

Meanwhile, more workers are slated to arrive this year under subsequent phases of the company's five-day RTO mandate. AT&T previously said different divisions are setting their own schedules according to their business needs.

AT&T's move away from hybrid work follows similar moves from Amazon, Dell, and others that are requiring workers to be in the office for the entire workweek.

"We believe there is great value in having people connecting, collaborating, and innovating together in an office setting," said one AT&T memo, which was distributed after the initial return-to-office mandate was announced in 2023. "Consolidating our work locations will also help us reduce costs and simplify things for our employees and our customers."

Nearly all of the dozen workers BI has spoken to in recent weeks have said they feel that the new rules may be an attempt to reduce its US workforce.

"This is not about collaboration," one of the Atlanta workers said. "If they can cut costs and have people leave because they're uncomfortable, that's the sweet spot."

If you are an AT&T employee who wants to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.

Police say cause of crash under investigation

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