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One of the companies best known for cranking out ultracheap goods is facing a serious investigation in Europe over concerns about illegal products and predatory business practices. The EUs European Commission said Tuesday that it has opened formal proceedings against Shein under the Digital Services Act, which sets ground rules for online services that Europeans use. In the announcement, the commission says it is targeting Shein over worries that the shopping platform is addictive by design, powered by opaque algorithms, and engages in the sale of illegal goods, including weapons and child sexual abuse material in the form of child-like sex dolls. Late last year, French watchdog agency the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control flagged the Chinese online retailer to authorities after finding sex dolls constituting child sexual abuse material for sale along with other pornographic content not restricted by an age gate. These acts fall within the scope of serious criminal offences under French law, the regulator wrote at the time, noting that the violations could be punishable by imprisonment and a 100,000 fine under the countrys criminal code. Based on the findings, French authorities initiated a criminal investigation into Shein over the sale and distribution of child sexual abuse material and kicked off a coordinated European investigation under the Digital Services Act. The French consumer protection agency found childlike sex dolls for sale on Chinese e-commerce site AliExpress, owned by Alibaba Group. In a parallel investigation, French customs agents inspected 200,000 Shein packages for compliance with French laws and found that eight out of 10 products it examined potentially ran afoul of the law, including cosmetics containing banned ingredients and unsafe childrens toys. In response, Shein said that it would restrict the sale of sex dolls and permanently ban “all seller accounts linked to illegal or non-compliant sex-doll products” on its platform. The fight against child exploitation is non-negotiable for Shein, Shein Executive Chairman Donald Tang said in a statement addressing the controversy. These were marketplace listings from third-party sellersbut I take this personally. Regulators catch up to fast fashion Fast fashion retailers like Shein and Temu, which ship lightning fast from China and offer hundreds of thousands of designs, have exploded in recent years. Regulators are only beginning to catch up to the controversial business model, which has seen Shein sprint toward $2 billion in revenue in 2025, in spite of the companys many headwinds. The online shopping frenzy over trendy, ultracheap clothes took off during the pandemic and got a massive boost from TikTok, where Gen Z influencers reveal and review their clothing shipments in haul videos. Shein and other fast fashion retailers rely on a test and repeat model that throws many thousands of clothing designs at the wall to see what sticks, producing small batches of 50 to 100 items. Designs that flop are swiftly retired and if a design takes off, its production scales up to meet demand. While the fast fashion trend keeps TikTok creators well-stocked with fresh content, the phenomenons major players have faced an array of serious concerns during their rise. The fast fashion worlds quick cycles and frequent returns create vast amounts of waste destined for the landfill, not to mention the emissions consequences of shipping so many small packages around the globe on short notice. Beyond the steep environmental price of cheap goods, investigations have found that the laborers constantly sewing new designs for Shein and its ilk often work grueling shifts in difficult conditionsand sometimes those workers arent even old enough to legally be there. Shein also got wrapped up in Trumps tariff wars last year, when the president ended the de minimis loophole that made it possible for Chinese companies to ship small, low-value packages into the U.S. without paying tariffs and extra duties. EU finance ministers followed suit late last year, announcing that Europe would begin to impose customs duties on low value packages shipped into Europe some time in 2026.
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E-Commerce
Right now, criminal and state-sponsored hackers are intercepting and storing encrypted data they cannot yet decode. Likely targets include everything from corporate secrets and medical records to legal agreements and military communications. Why would these actors bother to steal data they cant read? Because they are betting on developments in quantum computing that will eventually let them crack this encrypted data wide open. This isnt a fringe theory. The NSA (National Security Agency), NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), and ENISA (European Agency for Cybersecurity) are all treating this harvest now, decrypt later scenario as a live threat that is serious enough to demand immediate action. The NSA has mandated that all U.S. national security systems must transition to quantum-resistant cryptography by 2035with new acquisitions required to be compliant by 2027. In Europe, ENISA issued updated guidance in April 2025 warning that the threat is sufficient to warrant caution, and to warrant mitigating actions to be taken, and recommending that organizations begin deploying post-quantum cryptography immediately. NIST has launched a parallel global effort to develop the new cryptographic standards on which these transitions will depend. The message from all three bodies is the same: organizations are running a grave risk if they wait until quantum computers can break current encryption standards to begin upgrading. That is the reason business leaders need to pay attention to quantum computing nownot because the technology is ready, but because the risk is grave, and the cost of preparation is trivial compared to the cost of being caught flat-footed. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/creator-faisalhoque.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/faisal-hoque.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Ready to thrive at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity?","dek":"Faisal Hoques books, podcast, and his companies give leaders the frameworks and platforms to align purpose, people, process, and techturning disruption into meaningful, lasting progress.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/faisalhoque.com","theme":{"bg":"#02263c","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420512,"imageMobileId":91420514,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Quantum Computing 101 Classical computers store and process information as bits, where each bit is either a 0 or a 1. Quantum computers, by contrast, exploit the properties of quantum mechanics, working instead with qubits, which can exist in multiple states simultaneously. Tapping into the unusual features of quantum states in this way allows quantum computers to explore vast numbers of possibilities in parallel rather than working through them one by one. This doesnt mean that quantum computers are generally better than, or a replacement for, classical computers. Rather, quantum computers are a specialist tool for handling a specific class of problems that involve enormous combinatorial complexitythe kind of problems where the number of possible solutions explodes so fast that even the most powerful classical supercomputers cant meaningfully explore them. In areas like these, quantum computers have the potential to offer not just incremental improvements on classical computing, but to redefine what is computationally possible in whole fields. Logistics optimization, financial modeling, drug discovery, and cryptography are all examples of fields that involve exactly the kind of combinatorial complexity that quantum computers are built to handle. Of these, it is cryptography that demands the most immediate attention. Hype and Reality Disentangling the reality from the hype about quantum computing is genuinely difficultand not just for casual observers. In January 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested that useful quantum computers could be decades away, sending stocks in quantum-related companies into freefall. By mid-2025, he was far more bullish, describing the field as being on the cusp of an inflection point. If one of the most technically informed CEOs on the planet can shift his assessment that dramatically in six months, the rest of us should be humble about our ability to call the timing. As is often the case with new technologies, there is real momentum on both sides. On the bullish side, Google announced in late 2024 that its Willow quantum chip solved a problem in five minutes that they claimed would have taken a classical supercomputer ten septillion years. In February 2025, Microsoft unveiled its Majorana 1 chip, claiming that they had implemented a new approach to building qubits that could scale faster than competing designs. IBM continues to publish ambitious roadmaps. Credible researchers such as Nathalie de Leon, an experimental quantum physicist at Princeton, say that there has recently been a vibe shift in the fielda growing sense that useful quantum machines could arrive within ten years rather than thirty. I am much more certain that quantum computation will be realized, and that the timeline is much shorter than people thought, Dorit Aharonov, a computer scientist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, told Nature. Capital markets are paying attention too. But the bear case is also serious. Quantum computing stocks like Rigetti and D-Wave have traded at more than 500 times estimated saleswith almost no real-world revenue and few practical applications. The machines remain fragile, error-prone, and require operating temperatures near absolute zero. There is a persistent and uncomfortable pattern in the research: researchers working on quantum computing announce a speedup, and classical computing researchers almost immediately find ways to match it. Quantum computing could be the next big thingor it could be the next hot air balloon. The point isnt to resolve this debate. The point is that smart, informed people disagree sharply about whenor whetherquantum computing will deliver on its promise. And that disagreement should sound uncomfortably familiar. Weve Been Here Before When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, it became the fastest-growing consumer application in history. Within two months, it had 100 million users. Enterprises scrambled to adapt. Boards demanded AI strategies overnight. It felt like a bolt from the blue. But it wasnt. Machine learning as a discipline dates back to the 1950s. Neural networks were being explored seriously in the 1980s. Even looking at the more recent past, the technology had been visibly advancing for over a decade. In 2016, AlphaGo defeated world champion Lee Sedol 41. In 2017, transformer architecture was introduced, which became the foundation for modern large language models. This is not a story about AI. Rather, its a long-running, frequently recurring story about institutional blindness to technological disruption. With AI, the technology was visibly coming, and still most companies were caught without a plan, a team, or any institutional understanding of what was happening. Quantum computing is following a similar pattern: once again we see real scientific progress, genuine uncertainty about timescales, sharp disagreement among experts, and a business community that is mostly not paying attention. Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, said the philosopher George Santayana. So let us remember the general state of unpreparedness around AI, and try to do better with quantum computing. What Businesses Should Do Today The whole point of learning from the AI experience is that preparation doesnt have to be expensiveit just has to start early. 1. Develop organizational literacy. You dont need to hire quantum physicists. You need a small number of peoplein strategy, technology, and risk managementwho can follow developments, read past the hype, and flag when something becomes relevant to your business. The goal is to ensure that when a headline lands about a qubit milestone or a new standard, someone in your organization can tell you whether it matters and why. 2. Identify your exposed workflows. The potential impact of quantum computing on your business extends well beyond cryptography. Which of your core operations involve the kind of complex optimization, simulation, or modeling processes that could be disruptedor where a competitor with quantum capabilities could leapfrog you? You dont need to solve for this today. You need to know where to look when the time comes. 3. Define your trigger conditions. What specific developmentsa demonstrated commercial application in your sector, a regulatory mandate, a breakthrough in error correctionwould move you from monitoring to investing? Set these thresholds now, so that when news breaks, youre executing a plan rather than reacting to a headline. 4. Get your cryptographic house in order. This is the most concrete and most urgent action. The NSA, ENISA, and NIST are all moving toward post-quantum cryptographic standards, but those standards are still evolving. That means you need two things. First, you need an understanding of where encryption actually sits in your organizationwhich of your systems depend on which cryptographic standards and where does encrypted data flow to third parties whose security posture you dont control? Second, you need architecture that lets you swap cryptographic components independently when the standards settle, without forcing a rebuild of everything around them. Engineers call this crypto-agility. Think of it as future-proofing your security not against a specific threat, but against the certainty that the regulatory and threat landscape will keep shifting. None of this is to say that quantum computing is certain to become practically relevant to your organization in the near future or even in any future. Experts themselves disagree over this question. The point is that businesses cannot afford to wait for the experts to reach consensus. If quantum computing becomes practically useful within the next decade, the implications could be enormous. The cost of paying attention is low; the cost of being caught flat-footed could be devastating. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/creator-faisalhoque.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/faisal-hoque.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Ready to thrive at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity?","dek":"Faisal Hoques books, podcast, and his companies give leaders the frameworks and platforms to align purpose, people, process, and techturning disruption into meaningful, lasting progress.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/faisalhoque.com","theme":{"bg":"#02263c","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420512,"imageMobileId":91420514,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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E-Commerce
Hotel magnate Thomas Pritzker will step down as the executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels after details of his affiliation with Jeffrey Epstein were revealed in documents related to the burgeoning investigation of ties between the notorious sex trafficker and the elite and powerful. Pritzker, in a prepared statement, said he deeply regrets his association with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, a long time associate of Epstein who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. I exercised terrible judgment in maintaining contact with them, and there is no excuse for failing to distance myself sooner, Pritzker said in a statement. “I condemn the actions and the harm caused by Epstein and Maxwell and I feel deep sorrow for the pain they inflicted on their victims. There are numerous emails between Pritzker and Epstein included in a cache of Epstein-related documents recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice, with several detailing attempts for dinner meet ups and invitations to various functions. Interactions between the two continued even after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. Emails made public late last year show the crime did little to diminish the desire of that network to stay connected to the financier. Epstein died by suicide while incarcerated in 2019. Pritzker, 75, who is the cousin of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, was the executive chairman at Hyatt for more than 20 years. His retirement is effective immediately. Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian will succeed Pritzker as chairman. Hyatt has more than 1,500 hotels and all-inclusive resorts in more than 83 countries. Revelations of ties to Epstein have led to the departure or ousting of multiple high-profile individuals in recent days. Dubai announced last week that it was replacing the chairman of one of the worlds largest logistics companies, DP World, because of his ties to Epstein. Also last week, Kathy Ruemmler, the top lawyer at storied investment bank Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, announced her resignation after emails between her and Jeffrey Epstein showed a close relationship where she described him as an older brother and downplayed his sex crimes. Brad Karp resigned as chairman of one of the most prestigious U.S. law firms earlier this month, saying news coverage of his exchanges with Epstein had created a distraction. Karp had served as chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison since 2008. The New York firm has advanced the cause of civil rights, handled the legal affairs of corporate power brokers and grown into a multibillion-dollar global enterprise. Late last year, King Charles III striped his brother, formerly Prince Andrew, of all his titles and honors, for his relationship with Epstein. This month, King Charles said that he is ready to support UK police examining claims that his brother gave confidential information to Epstein. Michelle Chapman, AP business writer
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E-Commerce
Restaurant operators have been automating customer service processes for years. Implementing kiosks, self-checkout, and mobile ordering has helped margins and cut labor costs. But now there’s a problem. Friendliness scores dropped 12 points in just one year. Thirty-three percent of customers actively avoid restaurants that feel too automated. And AI is about to flood the market. Here’s the choice operators face: double down on customer-facing automation and watch friendliness scores keep falling or use AI differently. Its time to stop automating what customers value and instead start automating what they don’t see. Smart operators recognize that having AI take orders is not the win. The win is using AI to orchestrate back-of-house operations. That includes tasks like: Making sure your kitchen doesn’t run out of the appetizer everyone wants on Friday night. Triggering loyalty promos when inventory starts piling up. Adjusting labor schedules in real time when online orders spike. Thats AI as a conductor, coordinating information across your tech stack so your staff can focus on what drives loyalty, making guests feel seen. THE NEXT AI REVOLUTION There IS a consumer-facing AI revolution coming. Just not the one operators expect. It’s not in the dining room. It’s on phones, in cars, and through smart speakers. Half of consumers already use AI-powered search for buying decisions. Soon they’ll place orders directly through ChatGPT or voice assistants or their car dashboard. Before long, customers will say, “Hey Siri, order our usual from [Restaurant]” while they are driving. Soon they will be able to order a pizza from the ad they see while watching a game. This isn’t science fiction. The infrastructure is already in everyone’s pockets and living rooms. So now you’ve got a new front door. Great. Except most operators can’t even walk through it. Why? Because their tech stack is a mess: POS doesn’t talk to inventory. The loyalty platform won’t integrate with voice ordering. Menu data is scattered. Operators deploying chatbots to replace hostesses? They’re building on sand. The ones investing in integrated platforms that let AI coordinate inventory, labor, loyalty, and ordering? They’re building the foundation. When voice ordering becomes default, operators can capture more market share. 3 AUTOMATION STRATEGIES Successful automation requires going back to the basics. 1. Audit your tech stack. Look for integration gaps. If your systems can’t share data, you’re not ready. 2. Stop automating guest interactions. Kill pilot programs. Instead, shift the budget to technology that supports operational intelligence, such as predictive inventory, dynamic scheduling, loyalty engines that learn. 3. Clean up your menu data. Make it structured with consistent item names, modifiers, and rules that machines can understand. Make it API-ready, so other systems can reliably query whats available and order it correctly. When voice ordering goes mainstream in 2026, restaurants that can’t be found by AI agents will be invisible. Simple as that. Here’s what it comes down to. AI isn’t replacing your people. It’s making them better. And it’s making sure you show up when someone says “order pizza” to their car. Miss that, and you’re invisible. Savneet Singh is the president and CEO of PAR Technology Corp.
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E-Commerce
Nothing is certain, they say, but death and taxes. But a new idea from Meta could add social media to that list. The tech giant was granted a patent in December that would allow it to simulate a user via artificial intelligence when he or she is absent from the social network for extended periods, including, “for example, when the user takes a long break or if the user is deceased.” The patent covers a bot that could simulate your activity across Metas products, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threadsmaking posts, leaving comments, and interacting with other users. It could even, potentially, communicate directly with people via chats or video calls, the patent reads. Andrew Bosworth, Metas chief technology officer, is listed as the primary inventor, and the patent was first filed in November 2023. A Meta spokesperson tells Fast Company the company has “no plans to move forward with this example.” Withdrawing from a social media platform can affect “the user experience of several users,” the patent reads. “The impact on the users is much more severe and permanent if that user is deceased and can never return to the social networking platform.” Creepy? Sure seems it. Unprecedented? Not as much as you might think. In 2021, Microsoft obtained a patent for a chatbot that would let you talk with dead people, both loved ones and celebrities. Like Meta, Microsoft said it had no plans to use the technologyand Tim OBrien, Microsofts general manager of AI programs at the time, said in a social media post he agreed it was “disturbing.” Meanwhile, startups like Eternos and HereAfter AI let people create a “digital twin” that can engage with loved ones after they have passed away. Meta first publicly discussed the concept of a chatbot for the dead about two-and-a-half years ago, when founder Mark Zuckerberg, in an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman (in the Metaverse, of course), said, If someone has lost a loved one and is grieving, there may be ways in which being able to interact or relive certain memories could be helpful. Zuckerberg did note, however, that the technology could become “unhealthy.” Metas take on a postmortem chatbot would analyze user-specific data, including posts, voice messages, chats, comments, and likes, to build a sense of who the person was. It would amalgamate that data into a digital persona designed to mimic the users activity. The bot would identify that any responses were not actually generated by the user, the patent says, but rather were the result of a simulation. Now, there are some hurdles Meta doesnt mention in the patent. What people say in a direct message to a close friend or loved one isnt necessarily meant for wider consumption. Picture, for instance, one spouse venting to the other about how frustrated they were with their child after some “terrible twos” or teenage incidentonly for that child to later be told by the bot how much they annoyed their now-dead loved one. After all, AI has yet to grasp social niceties, or when silence or a white lie is better than the truth. Presently, when someone dies, Meta offers several options for survivors. The page can be permanently removed (assuming you have the necessary paperwork, such as a death certificate), or it can be turned into a memorial, where people can read past posts and leave messages of their own. As unpleasant as the topic is, Meta has good reason to think about death. One study predicts that by 2050, the number of dead users on Facebook will outnumber the living. By 2100, there could be more than 4.9 billion dead profiles on the platform.
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E-Commerce
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