Cutpurses

Good morning, you glorious beasts.

Security researchers have cracked McDonald's McHire platform by guessing the admin password "123456".

It took just 30 minutes to expose 64 million job applications, complete with names, emails and chat logs.

The hacker who found the breach was keen to clarify his good intentions:

"I have nothing but respect for McDonald's workers. I go to McDonald's all the time."

We can only assume KFC are frantically updating their password from "KFC2025" this morning.

— Ed & Joe

CRYPTO
A British crypto exchange collapsed

Which means that around 4,000 of Ziglu’s customers won’t get their £2 million back. And it’s all because:

Ziglu spent their savings

After basically bankrupting themselves by offering high-return ‘Boost’ accounts from 2021 that were too good to be true, attracting thousands of new customers, and burning their runway in the meantime. 

They thought that if they could only secure some fat investment, they could recover their losses. But the investment deal fell through. So they turned to their customers’ money.

Which wasn’t illegal in the slightest

As the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says: “Consumers who buy crypto must be prepared to lose all their money”.

If a British crypto exchange goes bust or the owners flee with all your money to the Bahamas, the British authorities are under no obligation to get your money back. 

This is because the FCA doesn’t regulate crypto in the same way it regulates money held in banks, so crypto companies don’t need to ‘ringfence’ customers’ money. 

In short, owners can technically do what they like with it. Which leaves a lot of leg-room for cozening rogues and cutpurses. 

All this goes to show one thing: 

The UK is a bad place for crypto

Britain is lagging behind the EU and the USA in terms of crypto regulation, both of which have imposed clear rules for holding and exchanging crypto assets. 

The FCA has drafted legislation, including providing consumer protections for the some 12 million Brits who dabble in crypto, but this will only come into full force next year. 

In the meantime, Ziglu is looking for buyers

Getting acquired is the only way to recover customers’ funds now. 

Let’s hope any prospective buyer is a good-natured gentleman.

ECONOMY
We’re putting our dreams on hold

According to research by St. James’s Place, which found that over half of young Brits (18-34) are delaying or cancelling big life plans. And it’s all because:

We’re broke

More than a quarter of those surveyed said they’ve gotten poorer in the last twelve months, half of them blaming rising prices, while more than a third said their salaries hadn’t increased enough to keep up with them. 

This should come as no surprise

Even middle-income Brits are poorer than their OECD counterparts, with housing costs nearly 44% higher than the Western European average. 

The difference between a graduate wage and the minimum wage has got smaller year on year since 2000, so that by 2023, the average graduate starting salary is only 30% higher than the minimum wage.

How does this affect them? 

Some are renting longer than planned (10%). No wonder. The income-to-house price ratio has more than doubled since the 1970s. 

Some are not having children because they can’t afford one (8%). Considering the average child costs £1030 per month, this isn’t a surprise. 

Others are delaying or cancelling their wedding entirely (9%) because they can’t foot the bill.

JOBS
Half of job applications contain AI

According to the graduate employment specialist Bright Network. Things are getting so bad that the CEO of Reed praised spelling mistakes in CVs as authentic signs of hoomanity.

TeachFirst has banned online interviews entirely

Being a tad concerned that they’re hiring a bunch of idiots as teachers, the education recruiter is reducing online writing assessments. 

You can’t blame them. There’s been a rise in people using generative AI to answer interview questions. And a teaching company doesn’t want to hire illiterates as teachers - that defeats the whole point of teaching. 

You can’t blame the candidates either

Because all of this started with employers. 

Employers use AI to screen CVs and sift out candidates with no experience. 

Knowing this, the more AI-savvy among us are using AI to generate keywords that CV-screeners are scanning for, and turning the font to white to avoid detection. 

And landing jobs we’re woefully underqualified for. 

It’s a tough job market out there

Since the rollout of ChatGPT in 2022, vacancies for grad jobs, apprenticeships, internships (slavery) and junior roles have fallen by 32%. 

In-person interviews are here to stay, chaps. 

NEWS BITES
This just in…

• 🤷 ☀️ HSBC doesn’t care about climate change anymore. It’s become the first British bank to leave the global financial system’s net-zero target-setting group, following in the footsteps of American banks like JP Morgan and Citigroup which have pulled out of climate and diversity initiatives to please Daddy Trump. Other major British lenders haven’t pulled out, but this might be the first canary in the coal mine. 

• 💈 💸 The economy is changing our hair because the average cost for a haircut today is 30% more expensive than it was 5 years ago. All of this has played into the hands of frugally-minded men, who are adopting hairstyles that don’t need regular maintenance like long hair, taper fades and mullets instead of high-maintenance skin fades. Women, meanwhile, are dying their hair less in favour of balayage, which need only be done twice a year. 

• 🐶 😺 Scientists are exploring how humans can chat with their pets, with £4 million being given to fund the LSE-based research facility, the first scientific research institution dedicated to exploring the consciousness of animals. AI researchers are part of the project, too, who, along with trying to speak with pets, aim to introduce ethical frameworks for using AI on animals. I’m already miles ahead of them: I speak to my dog all the bloody time and we get on just fine. 

• 📉 🧀 There’s been a 25% drop in lab-grown (vegan) cheese sales across the UK in the first quarter of 2025, possibly because it’s more expensive. Meanwhile, good, honest cow cheese sales have risen 3% to the glory of Britannia. Its awful taste might be a factor, too, with 40% of people who buy vegan cheese never buying it again. It might also be because we think it’s profane. 70% of British cheese-lovers view dairy products as ‘natural’. I doubt they’d say the same about lab-grown alternatives. 

• 🍃 🤑 The co-founder of BrewDog is investing £20 million into growing medical cannabis. Martin Dickie has already got a license from the Home Office to grow it, and hopes to grow 200kg of the stuff by the end of this year. Plus, unlike the stuff you dabbled with at uni, Dickie’s doesn’t contain pesticides. British doctors have been able to prescribe medical cannabis since 2018, and up to 60,000 patients benefit from it yearly.