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Its a story that sounds almost too outrageous to be true. Deel, a $12 billion company in the HR tech space, is facing serious allegations of corporate espionage, according to a lawsuit filed by its competitor, Rippling. The lawsuitfiled earlier this month in a California courtclaims Deel orchestrated a “multi-month campaign to steal a competitors business information with help from a corporate spy.” Rippling alleges that Deel planted an employee to infiltrate its operations, targeting customers in an effort to lure them away. According to the suit, the alleged spying lasted over four months. During that time, the employee (identified in court documents only by the initials D.S.) is said to have “obsessively and systematically accessed Slack channels where he had no legitimate business interest,” conducting more than 6,000 searches. Rippling reportedly discovered the mole after setting a trap: a honeypot Slack channel filled with fake information suggesting it contained sensitive, potentially damaging details about Deel. The channel was irrelevant to the employees role in payroll operations, yet he accessed itconfirming suspicions. When confronted, the alleged spy reportedly hid in a bathroom at Ripplings Dublin office. The evidence in this case is undeniable, said Alex Spiro, legal counsel for Rippling, which is valued at $13 billion. The highest levels of Deels leadership are implicated in a brazen corporate espionage scheme, and they will be held accountable. Deel, for its part, denies all allegations. Weeks after Rippling is accused of violating sanctions law in Russia and seeding falsehoods about Deel, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims, a spokesperson said in a statement provided to the media. We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims. Regardless of the outcome, the case underscores a growing concern around insider threats and corporate espionageand raises questions about how well companies protect their sensitive information. Insider threats are a huge problem for organizations, says Alex Bomberg, chairman of Intelligent Protection International and an expert in security and counterespionage. Its really not uncommon. He adds that while insider threats typically involve disgruntled employees taking proprietary information to new employers, the level of alleged coordination in this case is rare, but still a real risk. The situation might have been avoidable with better internal controls, says Alan Woodward, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey. If your documents are that sensitive, why arent they partitioned in some way? he asks. If you put something in a Slack channel and anyone has access . . . they’re going to be able to see it. Even basic file management tools like Microsoft SharePoint offer permission-based access control, he notes. Industrial espionage and stealing trade secrets is not exactly unknown, and recruiting somebody from another company isnt either, Woodward continues. But this case highlights a broader issue: Many organizations underestimate the risk posed by insider threats. Most of a companys assets walk out the door at 6 oclockbecause the knowledge lives in their heads, he says. Thats why employee satisfaction and robust internal safeguards are crucial. A lot of hacks are done because somebodyeither maliciously or inadvertentlyis compromised,” Woodward says. According to Intelligent Protections Bomberg, stronger internal security policies could have prevented the breach. Its about rule-setting, about creating a capable guardian, and making sure that one person doesnt have access to everything, he says. Thats something that appears not to have happened here.”
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E-Commerce
By most accounts, it’s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month for Elon Musks Teslaand it might be about to get worse. Tesla shares surged to their highest-ever peak after the 2024 election, but since mid-December, theyve been on a sharp decline. (The company lost 15% of its total value in just one day last week.) The EV brand is facing a number of headwinds: Sales have plummeted in Europe and China; the war against Chinese competitor BYD is heating up; and Tesla showrooms across the U.S. are facing an influx of protests and vandalism in response to Musks draconian cuts to the federal government. To top it off, some analysts are now warning that the increased risk of vandalism against Tesla vehicles could result in inflated insurance prices for drivers. “Kia Challenge” 2025 version According to a March 2025 analysis by Bankrate, the average cost of full-coverage car insurance for a Tesla Model 3 is $3,495 a year, compared to the national average of $2,678. To put the number in context, an Audi Q5 cost $3,023 to insure, while a Ford F-150 cost just $2,608. To be fair, car insurance rates are rising across the board, in no small part because of increased damage from climate change-induced extreme weather events. And according to a 2024 report from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, EVs are typically 20% more expensive to insure than gas-powered cars, a gap that Bankrate attributes to steeper repair costs due to specialized parts. Still, Tesla vehicles tend to be pricier to insure than other EVs: In an interview with Newsweek, Insurify data journalist Matt Brannon confirmed that the Tesla Model 3, Model Y, and Model X are the most expensive EVs to insure as of February 2025. (In 2023, Tesla even launched its own insurance provider, called Tesla Insurance, as a response to the high premiumsbut that initiative came with a slate of its own problems.) Tesla insurance rates could be set to soar even higher. In the same Newsweek piece, Bankrate insurance analyst Shannon Martin explained that vandalism is one factor insurance companies consider when setting premiums. While frequent vandalism isn’t as much of a concern as high-collision rateswhich Teslas have also historically struggled withshe says it can factor into how insurance companies set their prices. A recent example of insurance company backlash against a problematic vehicle can be found in 2023’s “Kia Challenge,” where TikTok users shared a simple hack that made it easy to steal certain models of Kia and Hyundai vehicles. The trend led to multiple class-action lawsuits and caused State Farm, Allstate, and Progressive to restrict coverage of the models altogether. In an interview with WCNC Charlotte at the time, Bankrate senior analyst Ted Rossman said that the thefts were driving up available insurance rates by as much as 17%. Now, Tesla may be facing a problem thats nearing those Kia and Hyundai proportions. Vehicles at Tesla showrooms, charging stations, and privately owned cars have been burned, painted, and defaced with swastikas. Reports of vandalism against Tesla have become so frequent in recent months that President Trump threatened to call the occurrences acts of domestic terrorism and, in a transparent effort to boost the brands reputation, held what was essentially a Tesla infomercial on the White House lawn. Time will tell whether insurance companies see this trend as enough justification to raise prices or refuse coverage to Tesla owners altogether. In the meantime, this might be the push that regretful Tesla owners needed to give up on disguising their vehicles and trade them in instead.
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E-Commerce
In the forests of eastern Australia, satin bowerbirds create structures known as bowers. The males gather twigs and place them upright, in two bundles, with a gap in the middle, resulting in what looks like a miniature archway. All around the bower the bird scatters small objectsshells, pieces of plastic, flower petalswhich all possess the same property: the color blue. Studies suggest that the purpose of the bowers is to impress and attract females. But their beauty and intricacy has left some researchers wondering whether they shouldnt be considered art. A male bower bird, left, stands by as two females inspect his work. [Photo: doug/Flickr] Of course, figuring out whether something is a work of art requires answering some tricky philosophical questions. Are animals even capable of creating art? And how can we tell whether something is a work of art rather than just a coincidentally beautiful object? As a philosopher and artist whos interested in aesthetics and biology, I recently wrote about the evolution of behaviors in animals that could be seen as art. A contested concept First, its important to outline various theories of what makes something a work of art. Theres a general agreement that art must have some sort of producer and some possible or intended audience. In this way, its similar to other forms of communication. But the rest of the picture is unclear, and theres no universally agreed-upon definition of art. In fact, art has proven so difficult to define that Scottish philosopher W.B. Gallie once suggested it might be an essentially contested conceptan idea for which there is no correct definition. That being said, some popular views have emerged. Leo Tolstoy famously suggested art is a conduit for emotion, writing in 1897 that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them. Plato and Aristotle emphasized the representational role of art: the idea that a work of art must in some way mimic, depict, or stand in as a sort of sign for something else. Some philosophers believe that creating art requires intention; for example, a sculptor will mold clay with the intention of having it look like Abraham Lincoln. And nonhuman animals, theyll argue, simply dont have the right kind of intentions for art-making. Art, beauty, and sex And yet, its not clear how much intention really does matter for art. Philosopher Brian Skyrms has pointed out that communication arises even in animals that plausibly do not have sophisticated intentions like our own. For example, fireflies signal to mates with flashes, and this seems to be largely an evolved behavior. Communication can even emerge via simple reinforcement learning, as when a dog learns to associate a certain call with dinner. These arent instances of art. But they reveal how meaningful signs or representations can operate without the need for complex intentions. Given that much art also serves a communicative role, I argue that theres reason to think that art might be able to come about in less intention-demanding ways too. Ornithologist Richard Prum also takes a communicative view of art, but one where art is meant to be evaluated for its beauty. The beauty of a work functions as an indicator of the artists reproductive fitness, or their having good genes, and this can apply to both humans and animals. Charles Darwin, musing about birds in The Descent of Man, also thought at least some animals appreciate beauty: When we behold a male bird elaborately displaying his graceful plumes or splendid colours before the female, whilst other birds, not thus decorated, make no such display, it is impossible to doubt that she admires the beauty of her male partner. Some might not like an account like Prums, since it seems to allow creations like bowers to count as art. And yet, as philosopher Denis Dutton points out in his 2009 book The Art Instinct, mate attraction and fitness broadcasting can be the primary motivation behind many human works of art too: just consider the stereotype of the sex-hungry rock musician. Whale ballads and pig paintings I think its safe to say some animal creations dont count as art. The webs of most spiders, though intricate and carefully designed, appear to exist for utilitarian purposes and serve no evaluative or communicative function. The same goes for most anthills. But what about animal songs? The structures of the songs of humpback whales are complex, featuring parts and repeated patterns that researchers often describe as themes and verses. The songs are longsometimes up to 30 minutes. Because males perform these songs primarily during mating season, its plausible that female whales assess them for their beauty, which serves as a way to gauge the singers genetic fitness. Details of songs even vary from whale population to population, often changing over the course of a mating season. Then there are animals that have been trained to make art. Pigcasso was a pig in South Africa whose trainer taught her to paint on canvas via reinforcement learning. The trainer would pik out the colors for Pigcasso, and Pigcasso would do the brushing. Was Pigcasso really an artist? Were her paintings works of art? Pigcasso was plausibly making these paintings for reasons other than her own desire to communicate or make something beautiful; she was motivated, at least in part, by piggy treats. The trainer chose the colors. But Pigcasso did, in the end, have some aesthetic freedom: She had control over her brushstrokes. Off the coasts of Japan, male white-spotted puffer fish create impressive nests to attract females. The male puffer fish uses his mouth to remove rocks from the sand and his body to wiggle out long, strategically placed grooves. The finished product is a multi-ringed sand mandala about 6 feet in diameter. Like the bowers, the nests of the puffer fish are beautiful and involve mate attraction. Yet some researchers argue that since these sorts of works all look roughly the same (have the same shape, use the same materials, and so on) theyre more likely the result of evolved, inflexible dispositions than more creative processes. But its worth noting that many human works of art bear core similarities as well. Many paintings use flat surfaces, oils, or acrylics. Many songs follow the same chord patterns. And would we still consider human sculptures art if we discovered much about the motivation to build them could be explained by evolution? I wager we would. Birds bust a move Many human cases of art involve more than one person, sometimes even a large group. Think of all the people it takes to make a modern film. Does anything like that happen in animals? Consider the blue manakin bird of South America. Male blues will form groups, often of three or more, which then practice an elaborate song-and-dance routine to later perform in front of females. The practice is detailed and dutiful. The groups hone their moves. This involves learning and memorization, not just genetics. Flaws in the performance are challenged and corrected. Sometimes during practices, a juvenile male will even fill in as a mock female. Its not the Beatles. But the similarity to music groups seems hard to deny. At the same time, its worth wondering whether, beyond conveying their eagerness to mate, the birds are trying to say or express anything more with their performance. And do they know its beautiful? All this leaves room for doubt about whether animals really make art. To me, a key question is whether theres any animal art that doesnt have to do with mating, and instead expresses something more complex or sentimental. Without being able to get into the heads of animals, its hard to say. But its plausible that humans arent alone in their artistic pursuits. Shawn Simpson is a visiting lecturer in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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