This marks the seventh co-founder exit since xAI was founded in 2023.

Toby Pohlen is the latest co-founder to leave xAI, announcing his decision to resign just weeks after two others left.

The Elon Musk-owned xAI lost three co-founder in the weeks after his space-tech company SpaceX bought xAI for a reported $250bn. The combined business is worth an estimated $1.25trn, and could gain more after a planned initial public offering this year.

xAI had previously acquired X, the social media platform, last March.

In a post on X, Pohlen thanked Elon Musk for taking him on board. “I’ve learnt more about execution, speed, and product perfectionism than I could ever have imagined. Thanks for everything,” he said. Musk responded, “Thanks for helping get xAI to where it is.”

Pohlen is the seventh co-founder to exit xAI in three years, following Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu, who left earlier this month. Kyle Kosic left in 2024, followed by Igor Babuschkin and Christian Szegedy in 2025.

Greg Yang, another co-founder, announced last month that he would be stepping down after being diagnosed with Lyme disease. Pohlen had worked in Google DeepMind as a research engineer for more than six years before founding xAI.

The flurry of exits leaves behind Musk, Manuel Kroiss, Zihang Dai, Guodong Zhang and Ross Nordeen at the company.

Earlier this month, Ireland’s data protection watchdog launched a “large-scale” inquiry into X following the Grok ‘nudification’ fiasco. This investigation followed separate similar inquiries launched by the  European Commission and the UK government.

Meanwhile, a year-long inquiry by French authorities has expanded to probe Grok’s possible role in disseminating Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes. California also launched a similar investigation into X and Grok’s parent company xAI last month.

Alongside this, the EU is continuing with a separate, years-long investigation into X to assess if the platform mitigated risks stemming from its recommender systems, including the impact of the recently announced switch to a Grok-based recommender system.

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from the ctrl-alt-speech dept

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed.

In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Ben is joined by Casey Newton, founder and editor of Platformer and co-host of Hard Fork, a podcast that makes sense of the rapidly changing world of tech. Together, they discuss:

Play along with Ctrl-Alt-Speech’s 2026 Bingo Card and get in touch if you win!

Filed Under: age verification, ai, artificial intelligence, casey newton, content moderation

Companies: anthropic, discord, reddit, tiktok

Hair loss isn’t always dramatic. It can be incremental. You start noticing a bit more scalp in harsh bathroom lighting; a tiny bald spot when you tie your hair up in a ponytail. The shower drain is more clogged than usual. Not long ago, hair loss treatments meant topical remedies, supplements, or a flight to Turkey. Luckily, red light therapy brings the potential for hair regrowth into your home—no clinical appointment required.

Beyond skin rejuvenation, research suggests red light therapy can help energize hair follicles, increase blood circulation in the scalp, reduce inflammation, and lower dihydrotestosterone levels—a hormone that causes hair loss and thinning. Red light therapy also supports adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production, which helps provide oxygen and blood flow to the scalp and triggers follicles to remain in the hair growth phase.

To determine the best red light therapy for hair growth, I tapped three WIRED tech reviewers who’ve dealt with hair loss themselves. We assessed red light therapy caps, hands-free helmets with full scalp coverage, and low-level laser therapy or photobiomodulation devices for 16 weeks. Along the way, we reviewed the research, spoke with dermatologists, and tracked ease of use. These are the favorites that produced meaningful results and earned our trust.

Be sure to check out our other hair care guides, including Best Dry Shampoos, Best Heat Protectant Sprays, and Best Hair Dryers.

Best Red Light Helmet

CurrentBody’s LED Hair Growth Helmet is a wearable, cord-free, Bluetooth-enabled device aimed at improving hair’s density, thickness, and overall condition. Each panel on the helmet has 12 red lights (120 total), which are on a spectrum of 620 to 660 nanometers (nm). The 620-nm red light helps improve scalp health by promoting circulation, and the 660-nm red light penetrates deeper, reaching through the epidermis and dermis to the hypodermis, where it stimulates growth and repair at the follicle root. According to CurrentBody, you only need to use the device for 10 minutes a day, and you’ll see results within 12 weeks.

My hair grows famously slow. I got a pixie cut in the spring of 2011, and my hair did not touch my shoulders until the end of 2013. My hair is also super fine. It tangles easily and often breaks off (my ends are chronically dry and split). After 12 weeks, I didn’t notice a huge difference in length (and I got a haircut halfway through testing), but I did notice that my hair seemed to be sprouting new follicles along my scalp and sideburn area in particular. I started to see small baby hairs along my hairline that I had never seen before. My stylist commented that my hair felt thicker, and I noticed less breakage and hair caught in bristles when brushing. My balding roommate also tested it (although not daily like me) and said that his hair felt thicker and that there was new growth around the scalp.

The helmet comes in two sizes: medium for a skull circumference of 21.3 to 23.2 inches, or large, for 23.3 to 25 inches. (I opted for medium, and it was too large for my head size.) The device sits on a base and is charged via a USB-C cord. It takes about three hours to fully charge, and it stays on a single charge for about a week. The device is powered on by the press of the single button located under the charging port. The circular earmuffs protect sensitive ears with a cushy, removable faux leather cloth, and they can be adjusted several inches up or down to ensure a comfortable fit. The screen on the right earmuff indicates the time left in the treatment session, and the helmet automatically turns off when the 10 minutes are up. You can also connect the device to Bluetooth and play any type of music or video while wearing it, because God forbid I be left alone with my thoughts for 10 minutes a day. Just make sure your hair is clean and dry before use.

My only complaints are that the ear covers aren’t the easiest to adjust while wearing and would oftentimes pull out my hair while I removed or adjusted the helmet. Nevertheless, this is the best red light therapy for hair growth. Just you wait, I’ll look like Fabio on the cover of a romance novel by next year. See full review here. —Molly Higgins

French professional football club Olympique de Marseille has confirmed a cyberattack after a threat actor claimed on Monday that it breached the club’s systems earlier this month.

Founded 126 years ago, Olympique Marseille competes in the Ligue 1, the top tier of the French football league system, and was the first French club to win the UEFA Champions League in 1993.

On Tuesday, Olympique Marseille issued a statement confirming that it had been hit by a cyberattack, following claims by a threat actor that they had breached some of its servers.

The threat actor has also leaked a sample of the allegedly stolen information on a hacking forum, claiming to have stolen a database containing Olympique Marseille staff and supporter information.

“Olympique de Marseille has announced that it was recently the target of an attempted cyberattack, in a national and international context marked by a resurgence of attacks targeting large organizations,” the football club said.

“Thanks to the immediate mobilization of our technical teams and specialized service providers, the situation was quickly brought under control. To date, all our activities are continuing as normal and in complete security, and we are continuing our investigations into the scope of the incident. The club would like to reassure its supporters that no banking details or passwords have been compromised.”

While Olympique Marseille didn’t provide further details about the incident, the threat actor says the stolen database contains information on 400,000 individuals, including their names, addresses, order information, email addresses, and mobile phone numbers.

​They added that the allegedly stolen data also includes information on more than 2,050 Drupal CMS accounts, including 34 OM staff and 1,770 contributors and moderators.

“Today I am selling Olympique de Marseille (OM) dump from feb 2026, iconic french football club in Ligue 1, online boutique for merch, fan memberships, massive supporter base in france and worldwide,” the threat actor said.

Although Olympique Marseille has yet to confirm a data breach, it reported the incident to the French data protection authority (CNIL), filed a complaint, and advised fans to “remain vigilant against phishing attempts, and report any suspicious activity.”

An Olympique Marseille spokesperson was not immediately available for comment when contacted by BleepingComputer earlier today.

In November, the French Football Federation (FFF) also disclosed a data breach after attackers gained access to administrative management software used by football clubs using a compromised account.

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A Scholastic Book Fair cash register appears for sale on eBay, and Michael MJD simply wants to get his hands on it for a closer look. It turns out to be a PAX E500 POS terminal that Scholastic had customized for their traveling sales events. These devices would process orders for books, posters, pencils, and anything else was piled up in those brief, generally chaotic classroom installations.

The front is a large touchscreen that launches Scholastic’s proprietary point-of-sale software. This is directly next to a magnetic stripe and chip card reader, so you can use your credit card. Along the bottom, there’s a thermal receipt printer waiting to be fed paper, as well as its own button to release new rolls. Moving to the back, we have a set of practical connections: a cash drawer port and an obsolete barcode scanner, power, dual Ethernet ports labeled LAN A and another, as well as an HDMI output and audio connector attached to a little extension board secured in place by a single tiny screw. A small camera looks ahead and is primarily used to scan QR codes associated with Scholastic’s e-wallet system. An internal battery is built in to keep the gadget running for a few minutes if the power goes out; however, it only showed 7% when it was still plugged in.

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When you turn it on, the screen lights up with a digital voice informing you that additional paper is required or that the printer cover is open, just the standard safety checks. The software then prompts you for a PIN, which by default is 9999, as well as your login credentials. The following screen displays a summary of all the facts from the last time it was used, including the fair chairperson’s name and tax settings. The fact that it may be used offline is deliberate; Scholastic fairs are frequently held in locations such as gyms or libraries that do not always have dependable internet access, so it retains all transactions locally until it can reconnect. You also have a training mode that allows you to practice without any actual money moving hands, which is definitely a smart idea. MJD adds a variety of goods to a mock order, including erasers, hand pointers, deep ink stickers, a plethora of pencils and pens, and even gift cards.

Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow) is installed on the machine, but it has been heavily modified to create a version dubbed PDroid that is specifically tailored for secure payment systems. But you won’t find the Google Play store anywhere, and if you try to enable unknown sources or developer mode, you’ll receive a notice telling you can’t; this is all due to some extremely strong security regulations in place. Any attempts to sideload programs are immediately shut down by the system simply because you cannot change the security settings to make them operate. Other pre-installed apps on the system include a payment device manager, which was last updated in March 2022, and a little tool called a connectivity suite, which will assist you in getting your data uploaded after you’re finished. Unplugging your TV and using an HDMI cord to mirror your screen to an external display works great, but the printer itself will not work during any simulated checkout process. That’s presumably because when you try to print receipts, it starts taking a lot of power, putting the machine into battery saver mode, and even when you’re plugged in, the status bars turn orange and the printer just stops operating.