Amazon has released a trailer for the second season of Fallout.

Lucy and Gul travel to New Vegas in search of the girl's father and encounter new challenges.

The series premieres on December 17 on Prime Video.

French authorities lifted Pavel Durov's ban on leaving the country.

French authorities have finally lifted restrictions on the movement of Telegram head Pavel Durov. Prior to this, he was effectively unable to leave the country for almost a year.

After his arrest in August 2024, he was also ordered to post a €5 million bail and report to the police twice a week.

In the spring of 2025, the measures were relaxed: Durov was allowed to make occasional trips to Dubai. However, on November 10, investigators lifted the remaining restrictions, and Durov no longer needed to stay in France or report to the police regularly.

The investigation is ongoing, and Durov continues to deny any wrongdoing.

A mini-program for booking customs inspections at the Chinese-Kazakh border has been launched in the WeChat messenger.

The system allocates separate quotas for Chinese drivers to register in the queue at Kazakhstan's automobile border crossings. The interface in Chinese and Russian eliminates the language barrier and solves the problem of high costs for agency services.

The algorithm is simple:

1️⃣The driver registers in the mini-program and logs in to the system to fill in personal data (passport and driver's license), information about the vehicle, and the insurance policy;
2️⃣Then he selects the estimated date and the name of the Kazakh border crossing to exit the territory of China;
3️⃣After the back-office verification, the driver makes an online payment for the journey.

The program is designed to overcome the queues at the Kazakh-Chinese border in a short time and speed up the delivery of goods before the New Year holidays.

The American public is discussing a wave of "AI layoffs" — as if artificial intelligence has finally reached office workers.

The reason is the large-scale layoffs at Amazon, UPS, and Target: more than 60,000 people in total.

But if you read what the companies themselves say, AI is almost never mentioned as a reason. Amazon is laying off 14,000 corporate positions, the largest reduction in the company's history. Management says that over the years of growth, the business has grown layers of bureaucracy and become too cumbersome. UPS has cut 48,000 jobs, as the company reduces its collaboration with Amazon and shifts to more profitable areas such as healthcare and b2b delivery.

Target is laying off 8% of its office workers after years of stagnant sales and complaints about its overly complex management structure.

We came across a recent study by OpenAI, Harvard, and Duke University, based on millions of real-life conversations between ChatGPT users.

We've read it for you, and here are the key insights:

1️⃣Personal life overcomes work
Over the past year, the percentage of non-work-related messages has increased from 53% to 73%. While working with AI is important, the real value lies in its ability to assist individuals in their daily lives, studies, and personal growth.

2️⃣The most popular cases are "being useful"
77% of all dialogues fall into three categories:
• Practical Guidance — skills, advice, and training,
• Writing — editing, translation, and text generation,
• Seeking Information — similar to searching.
By the way, about 2/3 of "writing" tasks are not generating from scratch, but rather working with already entered text.

3️⃣Programming is not the main focus
Coding accounts for only 4.2% of messages. In other AI products, such as Claude, this percentage is significantly higher. ChatGPT is a more versatile assistant for a wide audience, without a bias towards developers.

AI browsers have learned to bypass paid walls: read closed articles for free.

It turned out that ChatGPT Atlas, Comet, and Edge with AI mode can:

• Completely retell articles due to paywalls
• Bypass blocks — sites do not recognize them as bots
• Keep the context even on protected resources

Regular ChatGPT and Perplexity do not know how to do this — this is a feature of browsers with AI agents.

The European Parliament demands stricter control over marketplaces like Temu, Shein, AliExpress, and Amazon.

The main focus is on dangerous and illegal goods.

What is important for sellers:
✅ the verification of supplies from China will be strengthened;
✅ the risks of card blocks and restrictions will increase;
✅ the EU may introduce personal responsibility for marketplaces, which means that marketplaces will put more pressure on sellers.

Amazon sellers are abandoning sales en masse: commissions are eating up all the margin.

Amazon is facing a crisis among sellers: more and more sellers are refusing to participate in Black Friday and major sales because the sales economics are no longer working out.

According to Western industry media, the main reasons are:

📍rising Amazon fees
📍 increasing logistics costs
📍 rising advertising costs
📍 rising storage costs in warehouses

Many sellers admit that in order to get into Amazon's promotions, they have to work at the edge of profitability or even into the red.

In the past, participating in Black Friday was considered a necessary step for growth. However, more and more businesses are choosing to maintain their margins rather than chase revenue.

This is changing the way businesses operate on the world's largest marketplace, shifting the focus from "increasing volume at any cost" to "surviving in a platform economy."

Microsoft is rebuilding its business model around AI.

CEO Satya Nadella wrote to top managers that the company needs to completely update its approach to business.

The new model should be built around Microsoft Copilot and other AI systems. They will become the basis for all products — from Windows to Office.

In 2010, Microsoft went through a similar transformation: it moved to the Azure cloud architecture and became one of the industry leaders.

Online Apparel Market Set to Nearly Double by 2033 — Global Industry Forecast

📊 The global online apparel market is projected to reach $1.37 trillion by 2033.

Major players include Amazon, Alibaba, JD.com, and ASOS.
Growth drivers:
Rising popularity of online shopping
Mobile app adoption and personalized experiences
New sales formats: live shopping, video demos, AR try-ons

💡 Implications for buyers and sellers:
Online platforms will become the primary channel for apparel purchases.
Sellers need to quickly adapt to new tools and interactive formats.
Opportunities for international expansion exist even for small businesses.

The Apple founding document will be auctioned off for $2-4 million.

Christie's will auction off the three-page 1976 partnership contract that launched Apple Computer. The auction will take place on January 23, 2026.

⏪The document is estimated to be worth $2-4 million, making it the most valuable artifact in the company's history.⏩

The contract was signed by Steve Jobs (with a 45% share), Steve Wozniak (45%), and Ron Wayne (10%). A few days later, Wayne withdrew from the company and sold his share for \$800.

➡️ Both documents will be auctioned as a single lot: the original agreement to found Apple and the agreement to let Wayne go.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has fenced off his Beverly Hills villa with a $165 million fence.

The fence is taller than the legal limit in Los Angeles, which requires that the fence in front of a house be no taller than 1 meter. Instead of demolishing the fence, Bezos pays a $12,000 annual fine, which allows him to keep the fence in place.

🔹 Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows.

The ABC of systems thinking for life and business. Whether it's about the environment, the oil market, or a private company, it's impossible to solve problems without systems thinking.

The №1 book on Amazon in the "Systems Theory" category.

Amazon reduces commissions for sellers in Europe — a response to pressure from Shein and Temu

Amazon announced a major revision of commissions for European sellers.

From December 15, the platform will reduce rates for clothing and accessories:
📍from 7% to 5% for goods up to €15/£15,
📍from 15% to 10% for goods €15-20.

The reductions will also affect fulfillment fees, which will decrease by an average of €0.32 per package. This will strengthen Amazon's position in the competition with Chinese marketplaces such as Shein and Temu, which are actively increasing their market share in the EU.

For sellers, this is an opportunity to reduce costs, while for customers, it is a chance to maintain low prices for popular categories.

Marketplace EBay has registered a trademark in Russia.

Marketplace eBay, which has essentially suspended operations in Russia, has registered a trademark in the country.

According to the documents, the application was submitted last fall. In December 2025, it was registered until 2034. The copyright holder is the American company eBay Inc.

In 2022, eBay suspended accepting orders from customers in Russia and Ukraine due to logistical delays.

Zuckerberg is no longer the youngest billionaire in history.

Forbes released analytics for the 15th anniversary of the 30 Under 30 ranking. The main sensation is that Mark Zuckerberg's record has been broken (he earned his first billion at the age of 23, but now the 22-year-old founders of the AI startup Mercor have become the new record holders).

Interestingly, out of the 46 billionaires in the ranking, 19 have only achieved this status this year (partly due to the AI boom). The top list also includes the founders of the code editor Cursor (aged 25-26) and the founder of Polymarket, Shane Coplan.

Throughout the list's history, only three non-IT-related participants have managed to reach a billion-dollar fortune: Rihanna, LeBron James, and Taylor Swift.

Temu has entered the top 5 of German marketplaces and is scaring European retailers.

At the end of the year, Temu became one of the fastest-growing marketplaces in Europe and entered the top 5 of the largest platforms in Germany.
Growth is 3-4 times per year.

For classic retail, this is a wake-up call:
📍 it is becoming more difficult to push prices
📍 the middle business is losing its share
📍 only those who can scale and automate win

Google will release smart glasses with AI in 2026.

In development is at once several models based on the Android XR operating system.

Some glasses will be "screenless" - only with cameras and speakers for communication with the assistant Gemini. Another version will receive built-in displays in the lenses. Also showed the concept of Project Aura - wired glasses that can replace a work monitor or home theater.

To make the gadget look stylish instead of like a bulky helmet, the tech giant has involved fashion brands Gentle Monster and Warby Parker in the development. The latter has already received $75 million in development investments.

Amazon: AI + Quick Commerce = A New Race.

Today Amazon officially confirmed: the growth in demand for quick commerce (delivery within 10-30 minutes) is enormous, and AI is becoming its core.

What Amazon is doing right now:
🔹 Training models to forecast demand a quarter in advance,
🔹 Optimizing routes and warehouse inventory using AI algorithms,
🔹 Improves marketplace recommendations using new ML models,
🔹 Automates seller workflows, from analytics to product displays.

😨 Shein in court over illegal products — hearings until Dec 19

French authorities require Shein to strengthen filters for age-restricted and prohibited products after inspections. Shein claims the requirements are incorrect as the platform has already paused its marketplace in France.

OpenAI has announced the launch date for ChatGPT's "adult mode."

According to Fiji Simo, the top manager, the option will debut in the first quarter of 2026.

The company is currently testing a model that can accurately distinguish between teenagers and adult users, allowing it to automatically apply the appropriate filters and avoid blocking content unnecessarily.

Recognition algorithms are already being tested in several countries: the neural network must learn to distinguish minors without error before granting access to content.