Amazon’s Zoox will start giving free robotaxi rides through parts of San Francisco as it accelerates its attempt to challenge Waymo’s early lead in the race to transport passengers in self-driving vehicles.
The expansion announced Tuesday will be confined to a few major San Francisco neighborhoods and limited to people who signed up on a waiting list to ride in Zoox’s gondola-shaped robotaxis, which have no steering wheel. The San Francisco launch comes less than three months after the Amazon-owned robotaxi company launched its first ride-hailing service along the Las Vegas strip.
But Zoox still doesn’t charge people to ride in its robotaxis, something Waymo has been doing since its debut in Phoenix five years ago. The free rides are the next major milestone before charging fares like Waymo and traditional ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft, as Amazon tried to make inroads in autonomous driving — a journey that began in 2020 when the e-commerce Goliath bought Zoox for $1.2 billion.
California regulators still have to approve Zoox’s application to charge for rides in San Francisco — a clearance that Waymo received in August 2023 after overcoming safety concerns raised by city officials. Since then, Waymo’s robotaxis have become a familiar sight throughout San Francisco, where some tourists now make a point of hitching a ride in a self-driving car along with hopping on one of the city’s fabled cable cars that have been operating for 152 years.
In another sign of Waymo’s accelerating growth, its robotaxis began extending their routes beyond city streets and onto highways in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. And on Tuesday, announced plans to expand into five more U.S. cities: Miami; Dallas; San Antonio, Texas; Houston, and Orlando, Florida. However, passengers won’t be able to ask for rides in those five cities until next year.
Just as Waymo has already been doing, Amazon is gearing up to bring Zoox’s robotaxis to other major cities, including Austin and Miami. To help Zoox realize its ambitions, Amazon converted a former bus factory into a high-tech robotaxi plant in Hayward, California — about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco. Zoox eventually hopes to make as many as 10,000 robotaxis annually at the plant.
Gen Z isn’t doing too hot, according to Oxford Economics. Their deep dive into the generation’s economic prospects reveals some tough truths: the combination of a stagnant labor market, sky-high housing costs, and low wage growth could lead to "long-term scarring" for younger workers.
But it’s not just the individual Gen Z-ers who are feeling the heat—it’s affecting the economy as a whole. A new report shows that $12 billion a year is being lost because young people aren’t spending as much on housing, transportation, and food since they’re still living at home with their parents.
The main culprit is the job market. Since 2022, hiring has slowed down, and right now it’s at just 3.2%—well below the historical average and on par with the COVID pandemic era. As associate economist Grace Zwemmer puts it, the state of the labor market is crucial for young people’s economic health since they haven’t had the chance to build wealth yet. "Young workers are more vulnerable to economic downturns, and a weak labor market can have a lasting negative impact on wage growth and earning potential."
Currently, Gen Z job seekers (ages 13-28) are up against multiple challenges. Unemployment is rising, especially for those with less experience. The unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds is much higher than the national average: 14% for 16-19-year-olds and 9% for 19-24-year-olds. Oxford’s report points out that a lot of these young people are recent college grads, temporary workers who lost their jobs, or just those who were laid off. In tough times, young workers tend to be the first to go.
Even those who do land a job are facing a tough road. The tight market means they can’t jump from one role to another, gaining skills and higher pay like previous generations could. Normally, young workers benefit from faster wage growth early in their careers, but that’s not happening right now. As Zwemmer notes, wage growth has stalled for workers aged 16-24, and upward mobility is a lot harder to come by.
The lack of job opportunities also means Gen Z is behaving differently in the economy compared to older generations. Without steady work, many can’t afford to move out of their parents’ homes, and that keeps them from spending on essentials like rent, utilities, and groceries. According to the report, there are about a million more young adults (ages 22-28) living with their parents now than before the pandemic, and the resulting decrease in spending has a $12 billion impact on the economy.
That said, there’s still hope for Gen Z. Millennials went through a similar situation after the Great Recession, where more young adults stayed home for longer and faced struggles with early career earnings. But eventually, many of them bought homes and built financial stability. Today, 55% of millennials own their own homes, despite high prices and interest rates.
Until the market conditions improve, Gen Z remains cautious. As Zwemmer points out, their pessimistic view of the labor market could make them even more hesitant to spend, which could delay their economic recovery.
Google is beginning to launch Gemini 3 today, a new series of models the company says is its “most intelligent” and “factually accurate” AI systems yet. They’re also a chance for Google to leap ahead of OpenAI following the rocky launch of GPT-5, potentially putting the company at the forefront of consumer-focused AI models.
For the first time, Google is giving everyone access to its new flagship AI model — Gemini 3 Pro — in the Gemini app on day one. It’s also rolling out Gemini 3 Pro to subscribers inside Search. Tulsee Doshi, Google DeepMind’s senior director and head of product, says the new model will bring the company closer to making information “universally accessible and useful” as its search engine continues to evolve.
“I think the one really big step in that direction is to step out of the paradigm of just text responses and to give you a much richer, more complete view of what you can actually see.”
Gemini 3 Pro is “natively multimodal,” meaning it can process text, images, and audio all at once, rather than handling them separately. As an example, Google says Gemini 3 Pro could be used to translate photos of recipes and then transform them into a cookbook, or it could create interactive flashcards based on a series of video lectures.
You’ll spot some of these improvements across Google’s suite of products, including the Gemini app, where you can build more “full-featured” programs inside the built-in workspace, Canvas. The upgraded AI model will also enable “generative interfaces,” a tool Google is testing in Gemini Labs that allows Gemini 3 Pro to create a visual, magazine-style format with pictures you can browse through, or a dynamic layout with a custom user interface tailored to your prompt.
Gemini 3 Pro in AI Mode — the AI-powered Google Search feature — will similarly present you with visual elements, like images, tables, grids, and simulations based on your query. It’s also capable of performing more searches using an upgraded version of Google’s “query fan-out technique,” which now not only breaks down questions into bits it can search for on your behalf, but is better at understanding intent to help “find new content that it may have previously missed,” according to Google’s announcement.
Google is also not so subtly jabbing at OpenAI, describing Gemini 3 Pro as less prone to the type of empty flattery espoused by ChatGPT. Doshi says you’ll see “noticeable” changes to Gemini 3 Pro’s responses, which Google describes as offering a “smart, concise and direct, trading cliche and flattery for genuine insight — telling you what you need to hear, not just what you want to hear.” The company says it also shows “reduced sycophancy,” an issue OpenAI had to address with ChatGPT earlier this year.
Along with these improvements, Gemini 3 Pro comes with better reasoning and agentic capabilities, allowing it to complete more complex tasks and “reliably plan ahead over longer horizons,” according to Google. The AI model is powering an experimental Gemini Agent feature that can perform tasks on your behalf inside the Gemini app, such as reviewing and organizing emails or researching and booking travel.
Gemini 3 Pro now sits at the top of LMArena’s leaderboard, a popular platform used for benchmarking AI models. A Deep Think mode enhances the model’s reasoning capabilities even further, though it’s currently only available to safety testers.
Gemini 3 Pro is available inside the Gemini app for everyone starting today, while Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the US can try out Gemini Agent in the Gemini app, along with Gemini 3 Pro inside AI Mode by selecting “Thinking” from the model dropdown.
The website of the federal agency that reports the number of people who apply for unemployment benefits each week shows that layoffs stayed quite low during the middle of the government shutdown.
But that’s all it really tells us.
Initial jobless claims totaled 232,000 in the week of Oct. 18, according to an obscure Labor Department database that lists the record of claims going back to 1967.
The database does not include missing jobless-claims figures for the three weeks prior to Oct. 18 or the three weeks after that date.
Typically, the Labor Department would inform the public ahead of time about when such data would be available, and the claims report would be issued via a press release. A partial data release late at night with no announcement is highly unusual.
Before the government shutdown began Oct. 1, new jobless claims totaled 219,000 in the first week of September and 232,000 and 264,000, respectively, in the following two weeks.
More recent information gleaned from U.S. states shows that new jobless claims have hovered between 220,000 and 230,000 for the past month. All the states publicize their own claims data, allowing Wall Street economists to calculate accurate estimates.
Officials at the Labor Department could not immediately be reached for comment.
While the low level of jobless claims in October is good news, it doesn’t reveal much about the health of the U.S. job market. A spate of large companies has announced big layoffs recently, and that could nudge claims higher in the next few months.
More recent employment barometers, meanwhile, suggest companies are not hiring many people. They may even be cutting more jobs than they are adding.
Payroll processor ADP on Tuesday said its weekly snapshot of the labor market suggests that companies are slightly reducing employment.
Wall Street will get a better read on the labor market — if belatedly — later in the week when the Labor Department publishes the backlog of missing jobless-claims data and releases the September employment report on Thursday. That report was delayed for one and a half months.
Federal Reserve officials are also eager to see the postponed reports on employment and inflation. The Fed cut interest rates at its last two meetings because of a weakening labor market.
Fed governor Chris Waller said Monday that he favors another rate cut in December because he thinks the job market has gotten even weaker. Some of his Fed colleagues are less convinced, however, and don’t appear in a rush to cut rates again.
Two-thirds of global organizations expect to slow entry-level hiring in the coming years, according to new research, marking another clear sign that artificial intelligence is reshaping the foundations of the labor market.
The findings come from IDC’s new InfoBrief, “AI at Work: The Role of AI in the Global Workforce,” which was commissioned by the software company Deel. It surveyed 5,500 business leaders across 22 countries in a wide range of industries.
The study found that employers are rapidly adopting AI tools — nearly all have begun implementation — and that automation is already changing or displacing roles on a large scale. In fact, 91% of organizations report that job responsibilities have shifted or disappeared due to AI, with routine tasks being the most affected.
As companies lean more heavily on automation, many say the traditional entry-level pathway to success is narrowing. Seventy-one percent expect greater difficulty training and recruiting future leaders due to the loss of entry-level learning pathways, and 69% say junior employees will have fewer opportunities for on-the-job learning.
“AI is no longer emerging, it’s fully here,” Nick Catino, global head of policy at Deel, said in a press release. “It’s reshaping how we work and how businesses operate.”
Catino emphasized that not only are entry-level jobs changing, but the skills companies are looking for are evolving too. “Both workers and businesses need to adapt quickly. This isn’t about staying competitive, it’s about staying viable,” he said.
Two in three organizations have already invested in AI-focused training to help employees build new capabilities, the survey found, although many cited obstacles like budget limits, low engagement, and a shortage of expert trainers.
Another surprising development from the survey: A mere 5% of organizations still consider a university degree essential for junior roles, with many instead focusing on broader communication, critical thinking, and technical abilities.
But plenty of challenges remain: nearly half of those surveyed said outdated systems are slowing AI integration, and 43% cite a lack of skilled AI talent. Many are offering steep salary premiums — sometimes 50% or more — to recruit specialists, alongside incentives like access to advanced tools and clearer career paths.
The research, which was conducted in September 2025, had responses from leaders across markets, including the U.S., Canada, China, India, the U.K., Australia, and Brazil. Respondents included people in industries ranging from tech and finance to healthcare, retail, logistics, education, and government.
When the world shut down in 2020, Sam Anthony lost the freewheeling life she’d built — full-time house-sitting, stringing together gigs while moving from country to country and city to city. She ended up in Buffalo, New York, a place where she’d gone to high school and sworn never to return. There, despite her initial reluctance, she regrouped, crashing in a student apartment and finding a remote writing job for a travel site.
This year the scaffolding collapsed, too. Google’s algorithm changes and AI-generated snippets in search undercut the site, and the team was downsized. “I keep hearing, ‘We used to hire writers and editors, but now we just use AI,’” Anthony, now 34, told Quartz.
The digital-nomad dream didn’t vanish overnight — it just got smaller. As more Americans look abroad for relief from high housing costs, political rancor, and burnout, demand for visas and remote work is surging, but so are the obstacles. Anthony sees a bottleneck now, in part because the very jobs that once allowed for location independence — content writing, editing, website maintenance, and other freelance digital work — are being squeezed by AI.
The online economy of website traffic has been shaken by AI, too, making it harder to earn a living from small online businesses. At the same time, many of the countries that built “nomad visa” programs are quietly tightening their rules, while employers that tolerated far-flung teams are pulling people closer. Borderless work is running into borders, from the economic to the legal.
The result is a paradox: Just as the new American dream has become leaving America, it’s getting harder to do so.
According to Dana Sumpter, an associate professor at Pepperdine University who studies remote work, “we’re in evolution, not revolution” — not a “complete retraction” but a retreat from pandemic-era remote norms. “There was an extreme push for millions of jobs to be shifted to be done remotely, during a distraught and challenging time period,” Sumpter said. This coincided with labor-market strength that saw employees holding the cards. Now, the pendulum is swinging back, with employers in a stronger position and, in turn, tightening their flexible-work policies.
What concerns Sumpter is the extent to which this corporate tightening of remote-work policies is "done deliberately,” she said, rather than as kneejerk returns to the familiar. “A lot of organizations are bouncing back to what’s comfortable — ‘butts in seats’ — without asking what the work actually requires,” she said. The pushback has some rational motives — mentoring, problem-solving, culture — and some cynical ones, including sunk real-estate costs and managerial control, she said.
Inside the labor market, supply and demand are moving against the dream, too. “Working on a U.S. salary while traveling full-time is becoming more of a dream than a reality,” said Jan Hendrik von Ahlen of JobLeads, a platform that tracks millions of job postings. He explained that the share of fully remote roles is now a thin slice of listings, with on-site roles now dominating again.
“Countries that once welcomed digital nomads — like Portugal and Spain — are changing tax or visa rules, making it harder to stay long-term,” said Olivier Wagner, a CPA who advises expatriates through his firm 1040 Abroad. Clients who once flew under the radar are now being asked to register, insure, and pay like residents, he added. It’s not a crackdown so much as normalization: fewer easy loopholes, more paperwork, and longer stays over quick border-hops.
Do the countries still work for expats? Anil Polat, a veteran nomad who runs the travel-tech site foXnoMad, points to Albania, Vietnam, Uruguay, Thailand, and Mexico, though he adds that local sentiment varies city by city. In his view, the digital-nomad lifestyle isn’t dead, but it’s maturing into something more bureaucratic and less frictionless.
The practical advice is changing, too, Polat explained. Instead of stringing together 90-day stints and hoping no one notices, nomads are getting real residencies, paying into local systems, and staying longer. Perhaps it’s not as Instagram-ready, but it is more sustainable, and not nearly as vulnerable to a platform tweaking an algorithm or AI snippeting traffic away.
For some groups, of course, the loss of flexibility and RTO mandates hits harder, far beyond a lifestyle preference. Sumpter’s research shows that caregivers and disabled workers gained the most from pandemic-born flexible arrangements. So did employees from underrepresented groups who found their homes an effective refuge from office politics.
“When women were forced back without a valid reason, they felt disrespected and left,” Sumpter said. “If a company is going to roll back remote, it needs a very good justification — and real support for those affected.”
Still, looking to the future, Sumpter struck a cautiously optimistic note. “I'm hopeful that, as good research continues to be conducted on the effects, both positive and negative, of remote work arrangements, organizations will pay attention and apply evidence-based tactics to make the best policy choices.” In the best-case scenario, she foresees an era in which “we can grow beyond 'ideal worker norms' and acknowledge that work has changed, meaning that the 8-5 Monday to Friday routine and continuously being 'on' in overworking doesn't serve anyone."
For Sam Anthony, the former travel writer, the future does indeed look different than her freewheeling past, but no less intentional. Anthony recently bought a century-old duplex in Buffalo, where she’s renovating one unit to rent out and planning to spend part of each snow-packed winter abroad. The project, she said, gives her both stability and flexibility — a hedge against an economy that no longer rewards rootlessness. After years of chasing freedom through motion, she’s finding a new version of it while mostly staying put.
Cloudflare says that an hours-long global outage that knocked off several major websites earlier Tuesday was caused by a configuration file that unexpectedly got too big.
" For four hours, ChatGPT, X, Spotify, and multiple online services and websites (including Axios) were dark on Tuesday due to an outage at Cloudflare.
- Cloudflare's services help customers track and manage their internet traffic.
Cloudflare spokesperson Jackie Dutton said the outage was caused by a "configuration file that is automatically generated to manage threat traffic."
- "The file grew beyond an expected size of entries and triggered a crash in the software system that handles traffic for several of Cloudflare's services," Dutton said.
- Cloudflare is expected to share a more detailed explanation of the outage later. As of now, there is no evidence of a cyberattack.
- "We apologize to our customers and the Internet in general for letting you down today," Dutton said. "We will learn from today's incident and improve."
This is just the latest major outage — following similar disruptions at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure — in the past month.
- Most outages are caused by internal issues, such as a misconfiguration or a faulty software update.