The local government authorities covering the London boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster, which share IT systems as part of a joint arrangement, said their focus was 'on protecting systems and data, restoring systems, and maintaining critical services to the public.' The councils, which provide public services like housing, social services, and rubbish collection, did not describe the nature of the cyberattack or blame a particular hacking group. They noted that an investigation into whether data was stolen remains ongoing. Kensington's website said the cause of the cyberattack is 'now established,' but the council 'will not be giving out further details of the incident at this stage' due to an ongoing investigation with U.K. law enforcement agencies. StrictlyVC concludes its 2025 series with an exclusive event featuring insights from leading VCs and builders such as Pat Gelsinger, Mina Fahmi, and more. Plus, opportunities to forge meaningful connections....

Sometimes the smallest detail can change the way you think about the world. This happened to me in 2009, when I read The Original of Laura'which consists of unedited fragments of Vladimir Nabokov's unfinished last novel'and noticed that, after 35 years of writing in English, the author had still struggled to spell bicycle. I had imagined Nabokov's leap away from Russian, his native language, as an instantaneous, effortless transformation, but now I realized that it must have been an ongoing struggle'one that enhanced his dazzlingly precise fiction. I thought back to this moment when I read Ross Benjamin's article in The Atlantic this week, about the 'humbling and unexpectedly exhilarating' process of learning a new language. In his essay, Benjamin, who has translated Franz Kafka's diaries and other major German-language works into English, tallies up the potential costs of a world in which AirPods can translate between languages in real time. For example: AI translation might accelerate the trend of fewer Americans learning second languages outside the home. One in five U.S. households, however, does speak another language inside the home'and mine was among them. As an aspiring writer with Russian-speaking parents, I was determined from a young age to master English. This is one reason I so admired Nabokov, who wrote 10 excellent books in Russian and then, after fleeing Europe for the United States, nine arguably better ones in English. (He also wrote a poem for The Atlantic in 1941 about switching languages.) Who, after reading Lolita or Pale Fire, would assume that the author spoke English with a foreign accent'...

Interestingly, 2018 was defined by what has been described as the 'Great Crypto Crash,' or a massive market sell-off after the boom that took place in 2017. Things had rebounded by 2021, which saw a bull market for crypto and the rise of NFTs and DeFi. That November, Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $68,000. After a bumpy few years, which saw the arrests of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Binance CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao, Bitcoin has rebounded, surging to an all-time high in 2025. Prices reached $113,156.57 on Oct. 15. In announcing its plan to acquire Echo, Coinbase said the two companies shared a similar mission of 'democratizing early-stage investing, so that more people can support the next generation of breakthrough companies.' The buy complemented its earlier acquisition of Liquifi, Coinbase said, noting that: 'While Liquifi strengthened our ability to support builders at the start of their journey, Echo extends that support into fundraising.'...

As Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other companies race to build the most powerful AI systems, Meta had a busy summer on the hiring front. The company poached more than 50 researchers from its competitors by offering multimillion-dollar pay packages, though OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that 'none of [OpenAI's] best people' took the offers. This line of thinking tracks with Meta's recent 'year of efficiency' ' a more sanitized way to describe the company's mass layoffs. At the time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff that 'leaner is better.' Now, it seems that Meta isn't lowering its overall headcount by much, but rather, reorganizing its efforts. The company claims that most of these people impacted today should be able to find another job within Meta. Bring a +1 and save 60%Have a +1 you'd like to bring to Disrupt' Bring them along and save 60% on their pass. Or get up to 30% off on group passes.Join 10,000 founders, investors, and tech leaders ' and save when you come together to the tech epicenter of the year....