# Warren Buffett Retires As Berkshire Hathaway CEO After 55 Years
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 01:22:01 2026-01-01
Warren Buffett is retiring as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at age 95, ending a 55-year run that reshaped how generations of Americans think about investing. "The 95-year-old, often referred to as the 'Oracle of Omaha' and the 'billionaire next door,' will relinquish the title after a career that saw him turn a failing textile firm into one of the most successful asset managers in the world," reports NBC News. From the report: Greg Abel, the 63-year-old lesser-known CEO of Berkshire's energy business, will take the helm of the conglomerate on Thursday. Buffett will remain its chairman.
Under Buffett's leadership, Nebraska-based Berkshire has thrived at the intersection of Wall Street and Main Street, with investments in industries ranging from railroads and insurance to candy and ice cream.
Along the way, while living in the same house he bought for just over $30,000 in the late 1950s, he redefined investing for the American public with his folksy and practical advice, became one of the wealthiest people on Earth and dedicated much of that fortune to philanthropy. Berkshire's most significant tech bet was initiated in 2016 when it invested $1 billion. Apple has since become Berkshire Hathaway's largest single holding, representing over 20% of the portfolio and valued at more than $65 billion.
While Buffett largely avoided pure tech for decades, Buffett long considered technology a blind spot, famously saying "I wish I had" bought Apple earlier.
Throughout the years, Buffett expressed his disinterest in cryptocurrency and said he would "never own bitcoin," referring to it as "probably rat poison squared" and a "gambling token."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/226259/warren-buffett-retires-as-berkshire-hathaway-ceo-after-55-years?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 01:22:01 2026-01-01
Warren Buffett is retiring as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at age 95, ending a 55-year run that reshaped how generations of Americans think about investing. "The 95-year-old, often referred to as the 'Oracle of Omaha' and the 'billionaire next door,' will relinquish the title after a career that saw him turn a failing textile firm into one of the most successful asset managers in the world," reports NBC News. From the report: Greg Abel, the 63-year-old lesser-known CEO of Berkshire's energy business, will take the helm of the conglomerate on Thursday. Buffett will remain its chairman.
Under Buffett's leadership, Nebraska-based Berkshire has thrived at the intersection of Wall Street and Main Street, with investments in industries ranging from railroads and insurance to candy and ice cream.
Along the way, while living in the same house he bought for just over $30,000 in the late 1950s, he redefined investing for the American public with his folksy and practical advice, became one of the wealthiest people on Earth and dedicated much of that fortune to philanthropy. Berkshire's most significant tech bet was initiated in 2016 when it invested $1 billion. Apple has since become Berkshire Hathaway's largest single holding, representing over 20% of the portfolio and valued at more than $65 billion.
While Buffett largely avoided pure tech for decades, Buffett long considered technology a blind spot, famously saying "I wish I had" bought Apple earlier.
Throughout the years, Buffett expressed his disinterest in cryptocurrency and said he would "never own bitcoin," referring to it as "probably rat poison squared" and a "gambling token."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/226259/warren-buffett-retires-as-berkshire-hathaway-ceo-after-55-years?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Stewart Cheifet, Computer Chronicles Host, Dies At 87
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 01:22:01 2026-01-01
Pibroch(CiH) writes: According to the obituary linked, Stewart Cheifet of Computer Chronicles fame has died. The obituary states he passed Dec 28, 2025. Cheifet and Digital Research founder Gary Kildall hosted the public television show The Computer Chronicles starting in 1984, and Stewart continued to host the show well into the 1990s. He was well-known for his affable presence and adeptness at interviewing guests and finding out the straight dope about their products. He had recently undergone spinal surgery and had somewhat disappeared from public view after the death of his wife Peta in 2024.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/2149206/stewart-cheifet-computer-chronicles-host-dies-at-87?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 01:22:01 2026-01-01
Pibroch(CiH) writes: According to the obituary linked, Stewart Cheifet of Computer Chronicles fame has died. The obituary states he passed Dec 28, 2025. Cheifet and Digital Research founder Gary Kildall hosted the public television show The Computer Chronicles starting in 1984, and Stewart continued to host the show well into the 1990s. He was well-known for his affable presence and adeptness at interviewing guests and finding out the straight dope about their products. He had recently undergone spinal surgery and had somewhat disappeared from public view after the death of his wife Peta in 2024.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/2149206/stewart-cheifet-computer-chronicles-host-dies-at-87?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Tech Startups Are Handing Out Free Nicotine Pouches to Boost Productivity
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 01:22:01 2026-01-01
The Wall Street Journal reports that a growing number of tech startups are stocking offices with free nicotine pouches as founders and employees chase sharper focus and stamina in hyper-competitive AI-era work environments. The Wall Street Journal reports: Earlier this year, two nicotine startups -- Lucy Nicotine and Sesh -- made branded vending machines filled with flavored products for analytics company Palantir Technologies. Both machines are in the company's Washington, D.C., offices. The pouches are free for employees and guests over the age of 21, a spokeswoman for Palantir said. Palantir pays to stock the nicotine products.
Alex Cohen, a startup founder based in Austin, Texas, said he was first exposed to nicotine pouches in the workplace after seeing tins of Zyns on the desks of his software engineers. His company, Hello Patient, makes AI-powered healthcare-communication software. "They were very productive, so I thought maybe there's something here," he said. Those engineers soon asked him if he could buy it for the office.
Cohen said he initially bought the nicotine pouches as a joke for social media. He posted a picture of a drawer in his startup's office filled with nicotine pouches made by different brands with the caption, "We're hiring." "Then, I accidentally got addicted," said Cohen. He said he uses around two to three pouches a day. His go-to flavors are mango or minty. Cohen said he has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and he has found that the pouches can provide a quick productivity boost. "It helps with reining in my focus because it is a stimulant," he said. Today, Hello Patient has a nicotine-pouch fridge in its office kitchen.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/2238231/tech-startups-are-handing-out-free-nicotine-pouches-to-boost-productivity?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 01:22:01 2026-01-01
The Wall Street Journal reports that a growing number of tech startups are stocking offices with free nicotine pouches as founders and employees chase sharper focus and stamina in hyper-competitive AI-era work environments. The Wall Street Journal reports: Earlier this year, two nicotine startups -- Lucy Nicotine and Sesh -- made branded vending machines filled with flavored products for analytics company Palantir Technologies. Both machines are in the company's Washington, D.C., offices. The pouches are free for employees and guests over the age of 21, a spokeswoman for Palantir said. Palantir pays to stock the nicotine products.
Alex Cohen, a startup founder based in Austin, Texas, said he was first exposed to nicotine pouches in the workplace after seeing tins of Zyns on the desks of his software engineers. His company, Hello Patient, makes AI-powered healthcare-communication software. "They were very productive, so I thought maybe there's something here," he said. Those engineers soon asked him if he could buy it for the office.
Cohen said he initially bought the nicotine pouches as a joke for social media. He posted a picture of a drawer in his startup's office filled with nicotine pouches made by different brands with the caption, "We're hiring." "Then, I accidentally got addicted," said Cohen. He said he uses around two to three pouches a day. His go-to flavors are mango or minty. Cohen said he has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and he has found that the pouches can provide a quick productivity boost. "It helps with reining in my focus because it is a stimulant," he said. Today, Hello Patient has a nicotine-pouch fridge in its office kitchen.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/2238231/tech-startups-are-handing-out-free-nicotine-pouches-to-boost-productivity?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# DarkSpectre Hackers Spread Malware To 8.8 Million Chrome, Edge, and Firefox Users
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 00:22:02 2026-01-01
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cyber Press: A newly uncovered Chinese threat group, DarkSpectre, has been linked to one of the most widespread browser-extension malware operations to date, compromising more than 8.8 million users of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera over the past seven years. According to research by Koi.ai, the group operates three interconnected campaigns: ShadyPanda, GhostPoster, and a newly identified one named The Zoom Stealer, forming a single, strategically organized operation.
DarkSpectre's structure differs from that of ordinary cybercrime operations. The group runs separate but interconnected malware clusters, each with distinct goals. The ShadyPanda campaign, responsible for 5.6 million infections, focuses on long-term user surveillance and e-commerce affiliate fraud. Its extensions have appeared legitimate for years, offering new tab pages and translation utilities, before secretly downloading malicious configurations from command-and-control servers such as jt2x.com and infinitynewtab.com. Once activated, they inject remote scripts, hijack search results, and track browsing activity.
The second campaign, GhostPoster, spreads via Firefox and Opera extensions that conceal malicious payloads in PNG images via steganography. After lying dormant for several days, the extensions extract and execute JavaScript hidden within images, enabling stealthy remote code execution. This campaign has affected over one million users and relies on domains like gmzdaily.com and mitarchive.info for payload delivery.
The most recent discovery, The Zoom Stealer, exposes around 2.2 million users to corporate espionage. These extensions masquerade as productivity tools or video downloaders while secretly harvesting corporate meeting links, credentials, and speaker profiles from more than 28 video conferencing platforms, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. The extensions use real-time WebSocket connections to exfiltrate data to Firebase databases, such as zoocorder.firebaseio.com, and to Google Cloud functions, such as webinarstvus.cloudfunctions.net.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/2021253/darkspectre-hackers-spread-malware-to-88-million-chrome-edge-and-firefox-users?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 00:22:02 2026-01-01
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cyber Press: A newly uncovered Chinese threat group, DarkSpectre, has been linked to one of the most widespread browser-extension malware operations to date, compromising more than 8.8 million users of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera over the past seven years. According to research by Koi.ai, the group operates three interconnected campaigns: ShadyPanda, GhostPoster, and a newly identified one named The Zoom Stealer, forming a single, strategically organized operation.
DarkSpectre's structure differs from that of ordinary cybercrime operations. The group runs separate but interconnected malware clusters, each with distinct goals. The ShadyPanda campaign, responsible for 5.6 million infections, focuses on long-term user surveillance and e-commerce affiliate fraud. Its extensions have appeared legitimate for years, offering new tab pages and translation utilities, before secretly downloading malicious configurations from command-and-control servers such as jt2x.com and infinitynewtab.com. Once activated, they inject remote scripts, hijack search results, and track browsing activity.
The second campaign, GhostPoster, spreads via Firefox and Opera extensions that conceal malicious payloads in PNG images via steganography. After lying dormant for several days, the extensions extract and execute JavaScript hidden within images, enabling stealthy remote code execution. This campaign has affected over one million users and relies on domains like gmzdaily.com and mitarchive.info for payload delivery.
The most recent discovery, The Zoom Stealer, exposes around 2.2 million users to corporate espionage. These extensions masquerade as productivity tools or video downloaders while secretly harvesting corporate meeting links, credentials, and speaker profiles from more than 28 video conferencing platforms, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. The extensions use real-time WebSocket connections to exfiltrate data to Firebase databases, such as zoocorder.firebaseio.com, and to Google Cloud functions, such as webinarstvus.cloudfunctions.net.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/2021253/darkspectre-hackers-spread-malware-to-88-million-chrome-edge-and-firefox-users?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# OpenAI Is Paying Employees More Than Any Major Tech Startup in History
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 23:22:01 2025-12-31
OpenAI is paying employees more than any major tech startup in history, with average stock-based compensation hitting roughly $1.5 million per worker in 2025. "That is more than seven times higher than the stock-based pay Google disclosed in 2003, before it filed for an initial public offering in 2004," reports the Wall Street Journal. "The $1.5 million is about 34 times the average employee compensation of 18 other large tech companies in the year before they went public." From the report: To keep its lead in the AI race, OpenAI is doling out massive stock compensation packages to top researchers and engineers, making them some of the richest employees in Silicon Valley. The equity awards are inflating the company's heavy operating losses and diluting existing shareholders at a rapid clip. As an AI arms race intensified this summer, frontier labs such as OpenAI faced pressure to increase employee pay after Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg began offering pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars -- and in some rare cases $1 billion -- to top executives and researchers at rival companies.
Zuckerberg's recruiting blitz swept up 20-plus OpenAI personnel, including ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao. In August, OpenAI gave some of its research and engineering staff a one-time bonus, with some employees receiving millions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. The financial data, shared with investors over the summer, shows that OpenAI's stock-based compensation was expected to increase by about $3 billion annually through 2030. The company recently told staff it would discontinue a policy that required employees to work at OpenAI for at least six months before their equity vests. That development could lead to further compensation increases.
OpenAI's compensation as a percentage of revenue was set to reach 46% in 2025, the highest of any of the 18 companies except for Rivian, which didn't generate revenue the year before its IPO. Palantir's stock-based compensation equaled 33% of its revenue the year before its IPO in 2020, Google's was 15% and Facebook's was 6%, the analysis shows. On average, each company's stock-based compensation made up about 6% of revenue among tech companies the Journal analyzed in the year before their IPOs, according to the Equilar data.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/204215/openai-is-paying-employees-more-than-any-major-tech-startup-in-history?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 23:22:01 2025-12-31
OpenAI is paying employees more than any major tech startup in history, with average stock-based compensation hitting roughly $1.5 million per worker in 2025. "That is more than seven times higher than the stock-based pay Google disclosed in 2003, before it filed for an initial public offering in 2004," reports the Wall Street Journal. "The $1.5 million is about 34 times the average employee compensation of 18 other large tech companies in the year before they went public." From the report: To keep its lead in the AI race, OpenAI is doling out massive stock compensation packages to top researchers and engineers, making them some of the richest employees in Silicon Valley. The equity awards are inflating the company's heavy operating losses and diluting existing shareholders at a rapid clip. As an AI arms race intensified this summer, frontier labs such as OpenAI faced pressure to increase employee pay after Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg began offering pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars -- and in some rare cases $1 billion -- to top executives and researchers at rival companies.
Zuckerberg's recruiting blitz swept up 20-plus OpenAI personnel, including ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao. In August, OpenAI gave some of its research and engineering staff a one-time bonus, with some employees receiving millions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. The financial data, shared with investors over the summer, shows that OpenAI's stock-based compensation was expected to increase by about $3 billion annually through 2030. The company recently told staff it would discontinue a policy that required employees to work at OpenAI for at least six months before their equity vests. That development could lead to further compensation increases.
OpenAI's compensation as a percentage of revenue was set to reach 46% in 2025, the highest of any of the 18 companies except for Rivian, which didn't generate revenue the year before its IPO. Palantir's stock-based compensation equaled 33% of its revenue the year before its IPO in 2020, Google's was 15% and Facebook's was 6%, the analysis shows. On average, each company's stock-based compensation made up about 6% of revenue among tech companies the Journal analyzed in the year before their IPOs, according to the Equilar data.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/204215/openai-is-paying-employees-more-than-any-major-tech-startup-in-history?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Trump Administration Removes Three Spyware-Linked Execs From Sanctions List
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 23:22:01 2025-12-31
Reuters reports that the United States Department of the Treasury under the Donald Trump administration has lifted sanctions on three executives linked to the spyware firm Intellexa. Reuters reports: The move partially reverses the imposition of sanctions last year by then-President Joe Biden's administration on seven people tied to Intellexa. The Treasury Department at the time described the consortium, opens new tab, launched by former Israeli intelligence official Tal Dilian, as "a complex international web of decentralized companies that built and commercialized a comprehensive suite of highly invasive spyware products."
Treasury said in an email that the removal "was done as part of the normal administrative process in response to a petition request for reconsideration." It added that each of the individuals had "demonstrated measures to separate themselves from the Intellexa Consortium."
The notice said sanctions were lifted on Sara Hamou, whom the U.S. government accused of providing managerial services to Intellexa, Andrea Gambazzi, whose company was alleged by the U.S. government to have held the distribution rights to the Predator spyware, and Merom Harpaz, described by U.S. officials as a top executive in the consortium.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/1959207/trump-administration-removes-three-spyware-linked-execs-from-sanctions-list?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 23:22:01 2025-12-31
Reuters reports that the United States Department of the Treasury under the Donald Trump administration has lifted sanctions on three executives linked to the spyware firm Intellexa. Reuters reports: The move partially reverses the imposition of sanctions last year by then-President Joe Biden's administration on seven people tied to Intellexa. The Treasury Department at the time described the consortium, opens new tab, launched by former Israeli intelligence official Tal Dilian, as "a complex international web of decentralized companies that built and commercialized a comprehensive suite of highly invasive spyware products."
Treasury said in an email that the removal "was done as part of the normal administrative process in response to a petition request for reconsideration." It added that each of the individuals had "demonstrated measures to separate themselves from the Intellexa Consortium."
The notice said sanctions were lifted on Sara Hamou, whom the U.S. government accused of providing managerial services to Intellexa, Andrea Gambazzi, whose company was alleged by the U.S. government to have held the distribution rights to the Predator spyware, and Merom Harpaz, described by U.S. officials as a top executive in the consortium.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/1959207/trump-administration-removes-three-spyware-linked-execs-from-sanctions-list?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.