A Kosovar national has pleaded guilty to operating Rydox, a large illegal online marketplace that sold stolen personal information, login credentials, credit card details, and cybercrime tools.

Kosovo law enforcement and Albania’s Special Anti-Corruption Body (SPAK) arrested 28-year-old Ardit Kutleshi and two other Rydox administrators (Jetmir Kutleshi and Shpend Sokoli) in December 2024.

The arrests were part of a joint international law enforcement operation that also shut down the Rydox marketplace, seized the Rydox[.]cc domain, and seized its servers in Kuala Lumpur with the help of the Royal Malaysian Police.

Ardit Kutleshi was extradited from Kosovo to the United States in 2025, when he was charged with crimes related to their Rydox admin role, including conspiracy to commit identity theft, aggravated identity theft, two counts of identity theft, access device fraud, and money laundering.

“Rydox put cybercriminal tools and sensitive data up for sale, including the stolen identities and logins of thousands of people,” said Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division. “The FBI and its foreign partners shut the marketplace down, and now the man who created it and ran it pleaded guilty.”

​According to court documents, between February 2016 and Rydox’s shutdown in 2024, marketplace sellers were involved in over 7,600 sales of login credentials, credit card information, and stolen personal information (including Social Security numbers, names, and addresses) of thousands of U.S. citizens.

Rydox also offered over 321,000 other “cybercrime products” for sale to more than 18,000 users, including various devices, software tools, and materials for committing cybercrimes.

Rydox users had to deposit cryptocurrency into their accounts before making a purchase via Bitcoin (“BTC”), Monero, Ripple, Ethereum, Litecoin, Perfect Money, Tron, or Verge payments that were deposited into a Rydox-controlled cryptocurrency wallet and could be used to buy illicit products, services, tools, and programs from Rydox sellers.

The marketplace also charged registered users a one-time fee (that fluctuated between $200 and $500) to become authorized sellers, who received 60% of the sale proceeds, while the marketplace retained 40% from every sale.

Kutleshi has pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft and money laundering conspiracy and is scheduled to be sentenced on February 9, 2027.

He now faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for money laundering and a minimum penalty of two years in prison for the aggravated identity theft count.

Since the start of the year, the owner of the Incognito dark web drugs market was sentenced to 30 years in prison in February, while a California man who sold fentanyl and methamphetamine on the Nemesis dark web marketplace was sentenced to more than 26 years in federal prison.

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Hollywood studios are turning to film schools for graduates who already know how to use AI video tools, rather than training their own staff, Semafor reported on Thursday.

“How do we find people who already know how to use this?” studios are now asking, Runway chief executive Cristóbal Valenzuela told Semafor.

Runway, which makes AI tools for generating and editing video, has helped build that pipeline. It announced its first university course, with NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, in December 2024. The NYU Tisch course began in January 2025 at the Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center.

USC’s School of Cinematic Arts also runs a graduate AI filmmaking course that uses Runway’s tools, according to the company. In addition, Semafor reported that courses using Runway are taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, MIT, and Harvard, and at universities in Europe and Latin America.

Google and OpenAI run their own programmes. In September 2025, Google Labs launched Flow Sessions, which gives selected filmmakers access to its Flow AI filmmaking tool, along with mentoring and training.

OpenAI, meanwhile, teamed up with Tribeca Studios on a year-long programme. It funded independent filmmakers to make short films with OpenAI’s tools, with premieres planned for the 2026 Tribeca Festival.

Filmmaker Brad Tangonan, who took part in Flow Sessions, told Semafor he expects AI skills to become a requirement for working in film.

“You’re going to have to learn how to use [these tools] if you do want to be in the industry,” Tangonan told Semafor.

The hiring push comes as studios use more AI in production. Netflix said it used generative AI in about 300 titles this year, and it has asked all its staff to build AI fluency.

Google has also moved closer to film studios. In June, it invested $75m in A24 and set up an AI filmmaking research partnership between the studio and Google DeepMind.

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Social media platforms are having a historical moment of reckoning in 2026, and the latest to join the list is TikTok. The short video platform has settled a lawsuit with the state of Alabama, alleging that the platform is addictive by design, exposed teens to violent and self-harm content, and led to a surge in the number of emergency room visits tied to self-harm. The lawsuit claimed that the company misled with its claims that the platform protects teen users from exposure to risky content. 

Now, the company has agreed to settle the lawsuit before it goes to trial, making it the first legal tussle of its kind against a state. “Under the settlement, Alabama will receive a minimum of $100 million, due to the state within 45 days, with the potential to receive up to $300 million if certain conditions are met,” says a press note from the office of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall. 

What’s ultimately changing for at-risk users?

More importantly, TikTok has agreed to implement over half a dozen restrictions to ensure that young users have a safe social media experience, following similar limits implemented by Meta, Snapchat, and even AI platforms like OpenAI in the past few months. Following is the full list of changes that have been proposed by the state of Alabama: 

• A two-hour daily time limit, with parental controls that allow parents to further limit the amount of time their children spend on TikTok.
• “Productive pauses” that interrupt teen users after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to limit endless scrolling.
• “Nighttime access” that restricts children’s access from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., plus restrictions on messaging and push notifications overnight and during school hours.
• Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users.
• Stronger content moderation provisions, including limits on discoverability of teen accounts by adults and parental notification of suspicious interactions between teen users and adults.
• A blanket prohibition on the use of cosmetic filters by teen users.
• A default non-personalized feed for teen users.
• Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.

TikTok won’t be the only platform facing increased heat from regulators over harm caused by social media, especially to young users. A month ago, Meta paid over $17 billion to settle with a bunch of states, and agreed to a wide set of usage restrictions to protect users under the age of 18. Elsewhere, AI companies are also facing heat over mental health, manipulation, and misinformation risks. ChatGPT, for example, will warn parents if a child discusses sensitive topics such as mental health or when they are going through acute emotional distress, while also rolling out more effective parental controls. 

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Merlin Entertainments and Mojang Studios used Saturday’s Minecraft Live stream to confirm Minecraft World Hotel will open in 2027 at Chessington World of Adventures in south-west London, inside a new £50 million land called Minecraft World. The stay sits beside the first official Minecraft theme park land, a project first sketched in March 2026 and now far enough along that construction footage shows coaster track already going in.

Sixty-nine rooms will be packed into a four-story building at Chessington, divided into 20 premium and 49 regular rooms that truly bring the world of Minecraft to life, with biomes, creatures, and items replicated just as they would appear in game. Family rooms will be designed out similarly to Merlin’s Legoland hotels, with larger beds for adults and a separate section for children, often a set of bunks or a trundle bed. The blocky aesthetic can be found everyplace, from Creeper face pillows to wooden chests that double as furniture, block style lighting, and wall scenes, as well as passageways that resemble mineshafts and lifts straight out of a video game. Beds are provided, therefore there is no need to bring your crafting table, as stated on the official page.

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The public spaces are equally immersive as the apartments themselves. The lobby concept picture is packed of detail, with minecart tracks, Steve brandishing a pickaxe, and a newborn zombie dressed as a chicken jockey. Great food is essential in every hotel, and at the Deep Sea Diner, you can eat from tables that are truly surrounded by an underwater setting. The hotel bar is inspired on the Woodland Mansion. Room rates and a release date have yet to be determined, and booking a room is currently unavailable.

Minecraft fans are also in for a treat with the brand new Escape the Nether rollercoaster, which is marketed as the world’s first Minecraft rollercoaster. You get to board a minecart with Steve and Alex and rush through the darkness, avoiding aggressive creatures and lava until bursting out into the Nether portal and splashing into the Overworld. The rules for riders will be announced closer to the event’s start. Chessington Park has also added a new area dedicated to Minecraft World, which will have play spaces, interactive adventures, its own shops and eating, and even the opportunity to meet some of the game’s most famous mobs. It replaces the previous Wild Asia region.

Merlin and Mojang struck a deal in 2024 to bring Minecraft to the UK and US, with £85 million set aside for the two nations, and Chessington is the first of the new venues to launch. No information about other US sites has been given yet. Daisy Mercedes, Merlin’s creative producer, says you’ll be able to sleep inside the game and wake up exactly where you want to be. Filip Keatley Thoms, Mojang’s head for Minecraft Parks and Experiences, stated that the team worked hard to ensure that the game felt as immersive in real life as it does in the game when strolling around the biomes and witnessing the critters in person.