♿️ Disability History Month and the Myth of “Inclusive by Default”♿️

LinkedIn has kicked off Disability History Month with a series of posts that all quietly point to the same uncomfortable truth: for all the proclamations about inclusion, disabled people are still being shut out of work at astonishing rates. New EU data shows disabled talent is 24 percentage points less likely to be employed than their peers, and in the UK, the disability pay gap sits at 16% — rocketing to 27% for disabled women. These aren’t marginal differences; they’re structural decisions dressed up as “market realities.”

What’s striking is how consistent the stories are.

But the overarching pattern remains: disabled talent isn’t the problem. The system is. And every story in that LinkedIn thread — from workplace bullying data to inaccessible recruitment to the barriers faced by neurodivergent professionals — draws the same map. The gap isn’t about capability; it’s about design, power and who gets to define “professionalism” in the first place.

📉 So what?
Disability History Month shouldn’t be a hashtag exercise — it’s a reminder that inclusion doesn’t happen through statements, panels or glossy values pages. It happens through dismantling processes that were never built with disabled people in mind. The real test for employers isn’t how loudly they talk about disability inclusion, but how far they’re willing to redesign systems, redistribute power and rethink what talent actually looks like. Because the talent pool isn’t lacking. The imagination is.

📚 Read more:

LinkedIn Disability History Month Storyline – https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/inclusion-starts-with-action-6244133

💼 The Bro Boost💼

LinkedIn has discovered a new growth hack — and unfortunately, it’s not one the platform (probably, maybe we assume too much good intent) intended: women pretending to be men. A wave of female creators have spent the week quietly switching their pronouns to he/him, renaming themselves things like “Simon E”, and rewriting their bios in full “bro-coder start-up evangelist” style. The result? Engagement numbers exploding like they’ve just been featured on a TED stage. One creator reported a 1,600% increase in profile views and 1,300% more impressions after going temporarily “male”. Another saw her reach jump 415% in a single week once she swapped warm, human posts for “transformative leadership synergies”.

LinkedIn insists none of this has anything to do with gender.

The algorithm doesn’t consider demographics, they say — instead it looks at “hundreds of signals”. Maybe! But the anecdotes paint a familiar picture: adopt a more “agentic”, male-coded voice, sprinkle in verbs like drive, accelerate, dominate and scale, and watch the algorithm light up like a ring light at a hustle-culture conference. Women of colour, notably, reported the opposite effect — proving once again that algorithmic bias doesn’t just mirror society; it often intensifies it.

The whole episode says less about LinkedIn’s codebase and more about LinkedIn’s cultural centre of gravity. The platform has slowly drifted from genteel business network to a kind of professional TikTok for ambition — a place where the loudest, most confidently delivered advice often outranks nuance, expertise or even basic sincerity. In that environment, “bro-coded” content naturally wins. It’s assertive. It’s crisp. It’s all about authority. And it flatters the platform’s fantasy of what leadership sounds like: unbothered, certain, kinetic, relentlessly upward.

The tragedy is that creators who tried the experiment mostly hated it. Their authentic voices — warm, wry, thoughtful — got swallowed by a persona that felt like someone doing an impression of a podcast host who says “alpha energy” unironically. The hack worked, but at the cost of sounding like a LinkedIn parody account. And nothing sums up the state of professional culture better than women outperforming themselves… only when performing as men.

📉 So what?
This isn’t just a quirk of the algorithm; it’s a mirror. If “male-coded” language performs better, it’s because professional culture — online and off — still rewards authority over empathy, confidence over nuance, swagger over substance. The bro boost is a symptom of a deeper question every workplace (and platform) has to confront: whose voice counts as “leadership” by default? Until the answer shifts, women — especially women of colour — will keep having to hack systems that were never designed for them in the first place.

📚 Read more:
The Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/22/bro-boost-women-find-linkedin-traffic-drives-if-they-pretend-to-be-men

👵🏽 Bias.exe: Why AI Keeps Erasing Older Working Women👵🏽

Stanford researchers have confirmed what many older women in the workplace already knew deep in their spirit: AI loves to “youth-wash” women and experience-boost men — even when given the exact same information. ChatGPT was asked to generate 34,500 CVs for men and women across 54 jobs… and it consistently made the women younger and less experienced, while turning the men into silver-templed LinkedIn lions ready to keynote a conference. 🦁

The study goes way beyond résumés. By analysing 1.4 million images and videos across Google, IMDb, YouTube, Wikipedia and Flickr, researchers found that women — especially in high-status roles — are visually depicted as younger than men. This pattern then seeps into the text-only world of LLMs, which further amplifies the stereotype. Even when no human face is involved, the models still imagine older men as “leaders” and older women as… invisible. 🫥

The research team — led by Stanford’s Douglas Guilbeault — shows that this isn’t just a glitch; it’s a cultural fingerprint baked so deep into training data that even filters and patches can’t fix it. AI systems “learn” that older men = expertise, while older women = less relevant. It’s not malicious, it’s statistical — and that’s the problem. 🧠

And here’s the kicker: when ChatGPT was asked to rate the résumés it generated, it ranked older men highest, even when they had identical starting profiles to the women. Imagine: we built a machine to automate bias, and it said “say less, I understood the assignment.” 🤖

Meanwhile AI companies keep applying increasingly elaborate “fairness filters” — the tech equivalent of concealer under harsh lighting — hoping no one notices the underlying structure is still skewed. But as Guilbeault puts it, unless training data and model architecture change, bias will keep leaking out like a broken pipe behind a freshly painted wall. 🚰

📉 So what?

This research is a loud reminder that AI systems don’t just reflect inequality — they institutionalise it, quietly reinforcing the exact dynamics workplaces have spent decades trying to undo. As more employers use AI for screening, hiring and performance assessments, gendered ageism risks becoming automated, scaled and normalised. The bigger insight? AI is revealing society’s true biases more honestly than society ever did. We can’t fix the tech without confronting the culture — and that begins with acknowledging that older women aren’t being “forgotten” by systems. They’re being erased. 🧩

📚 Read more:

Stanford Report – https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/10/ai-llms-age-bias-older-working-women-research

💼 PWC💼

PwC’s global chairman — Mohamed Kande, the man running one of the world’s biggest professional services firms — has finally said the quiet part very out loud: the rise of AI means the Big Four may soon hire fewer graduates. Not because they don’t want them, but because the work itself is disappearing. All those classic entry-level tasks — sorting documents, combing contracts, massaging spreadsheets — have been replaced by models that do the job in minutes and don’t need Pret loyalty points. 🧃

He insists this isn’t why PwC cut 5,600 roles globally last year 🙃 but the vibes are not subtle. The firm once planned to hire 100,000 people over five years. Now? “It will be a different set of people,” Kande says — translation: AI engineers in, junior auditors… we’ll get back to you. Meanwhile, PwC says it needs “hundreds” of AI engineers but can’t find them. A classic: restructure the workforce and call it a skills shortage. 🧩

But here’s the uncomfortable bit: entry-level jobs are always the first to feel structural change. Graduate schemes have long been one of the only reliable social mobility routes into elite firms. If automation hollows out the bottom rung, the ladder doesn’t just get shorter — it gets narrower. And historically, it’s talent from underrepresented and lower-income backgrounds who lose access first. 🌉

Meanwhile, geopolitical chaos (hi, Trump tariffs 👋🏾) is boosting consulting demand, meaning senior partners thrive while junior roles quietly evaporate. PwC says new AI jobs will arrive. Maybe. But when industries “reshape”, the people who benefit and the people who are displaced are rarely the same. 🎭

📉 So what?
AI isn’t just changing work — it’s changing who gets into work. If automation compresses early-career hiring, the UK’s already fragile social mobility pipeline takes another hit. The next phase of AI strategy needs to think beyond productivity boosts and start addressing the equity gaps this shift will widen. Firms love to talk about “future talent pipelines”… but if they’re not careful, they’ll end up with pipelines no one can enter. 🚧

📚 Read more:
BBC – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm272510e6jo

🚨 X Marks the (Wrong) Spot

So, X (formerly Twitter, currently chaos) quietly rolled out a new “About this account” feature this weekend — a tool that proudly reveals the country an account is actually posting from, based on IP data. You know, real location… not “USA 🇺🇸 #1776 #Freedom” typed by someone tweeting from a coworking space in Dhaka. 🌍

Within hours, the feature blew up the timeline.

Why? Because a lot of ultra-patriotic MAGA accounts — flag emojis, bald eagles, Trump 2028 banners — were suddenly revealed to be posting from… Eastern Europe, Nigeria, Macedonia, Bangladesh, Thailand, you name it.
Nothing like discovering your favourite “Florida Patriot Dad of 12” is actually a dude in Skopje. 😬

Meanwhile, left-leaning accounts got pulled into the mess too, though often incorrectly — including random misfires showing journalists in places they’d only travelled through. Bier insisted accuracy would soon be “99.99%,” which is exactly the kind of number people say when the situation is… not accurate. 🔢

Then things hit maximum telenovela when screenshots began circulating claiming the U.S. Department of Homeland Security account was based in Israel. DHS denied it (first with a Trump meme, because sure), and the feature was mysteriously disabled… and then returned without the “location at account creation” line. 🕵🏽‍♂️

Mashable later confirmed the feature was pulled because VPNs, Starlink and old IP ranges were causing chaos — including Canadians being labelled American, which is offensive on multiple levels. 🍁

And because the week wasn’t messy enough, TechCrunch confirmed that the U.S. government has officially disbanded DOGE — Elon Musk’s short-lived, meme-named federal cost-cutting unit. The group reportedly saved billions (according to itself), sparked global backlash (according to everyone else), and shut down USAID (according to the body count). Musk already left after falling out with Trump, and some DOGE staff are now allegedly worried about future legal exposure without Musk’s protective “father figure” powers. 🐕

Every single part of this saga feels like a crossover event between Veep, Black Mirror, and a subreddit that definitely should’ve been quarantined. 😵‍💫

📉 So what?

The resurfacing of bot-hunters, foreign influence fear, and algorithmic chaos shows what happens when transparency collides with the messy reality of a platform long held together by vibes and VPNs. The real lesson? Authenticity is about to become a competitive advantage — not because platforms want it, but because users are exhausted by manufactured “patriot” personas, synthetic rage bait, and engineered political noise.

And with DOGE collapsing, X mislabeling half the internet, and public trust in digital institutions dipping further each month, one thing is clear:
In the fight between truth and vibes, vibes still have the lead — but truth is finally making a comeback attempt. 😌

📚 Read more:

NBC News – https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/x-new-location-transparency-feature-questions-origins-maga-accounts-rcna245487
TechCrunch – https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/24/doge-days-are-over-as-trump-disbands-elon-musks-team-of-federal-cost-cutters/
Mashable – https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-rolls-out-country-of-origin-profiles-then-removes-it

🇪🇺 Europe Hits Undo: Brussels Softens GDPR & Puts the AI Act on Snooze🇪🇺

After years of playing global hall monitor, the EU has finally flinched. Brussels — once the undisputed heavyweight champion of tech regulation — is now quietly dialling back both GDPR and the AI Act, blaming “red tape” for Europe’s sluggish growth while Big Tech politely whistles in the background. ✂️

📉

The Commission’s new proposal makes it easier for companies to share anonymised and pseudonymised data, including for training AI models, as long as the magic words “GDPR compliant” appear somewhere. It’s also slashing the continent’s infamous cookie banner pop-ups, handing browser-level controls more power. Shockingly, this is the only part Europeans are unanimously thrilled about. 🍪

🌍

Meanwhile, the AI Act — previously hailed as the world’s strictest AI rulebook — is being nudged gently into an extended gap year. High-risk AI (the systems meant to protect your health, rights, and democracy) won’t face strict enforcement until the EU confirms “standards and support tools” exist. A fancy way of saying: “We built rules the industry can’t actually follow yet.” 🧩

🕊️

EU digital lead Henna Virkkunen insists this is still “the European way” — innovation with rights intact. But leaked drafts have privacy groups howling, accusing Brussels of caving to months of pressure from Big Tech, the Trump administration, and internal heavyweights like Mario Draghi. GDPR is sacred in Brussels, and touching it is basically theological heresy. 🔥

📜

Why now? Because Europe finally admitted what everyone else already knew: it is nowhere in the global AI race. While the US and China scale frontier models, Europe’s startups are buried under compliance before they’ve even found product–market fit. Brussels is terrified of becoming the world’s regulatory museum — great at writing rules, not so great at producing competitive tech companies. 🏛️

🚀

📉 So what?

Europe spent a decade defining global tech regulation — and in one move just acknowledged it overcorrected. That matters. If the EU waters down GDPR and delays AI enforcement, it shifts the whole regulatory centre of gravity. Companies may feel freer to experiment; users may lose protections they assumed were permanent; and policymakers everywhere will take note that even the EU has limits on how far it can go alone. The deeper question: can a region regulate its way into innovation, or does it eventually have to choose between perfection on paper and competitiveness in practice? 💭

📚 Read more:

The Verge – https://www.theverge.com/news/823750/european-union-ai-act-gdpr-changes

🛍️ Colorintech’s Spicy 7: Black Friday Tech Deals That Actually Slap

Black Friday is back — meaning your inbox is currently being assaulted by 700 brands pretending that taking £4 off an RRP is “historic”.
So we’ve done the filtering for you: seven deals that are genuinely good, genuinely discounted, and genuinely useful for founders, creators, professionals and people who simply want nice things.

Let’s get into it.

1. AirPods Pro 2 — the millennial emotional support device

The price has dropped harder than Elon’s reputation.
Still some of the best ANC on the market, perfect for commuting, deep work, or blocking out the colleague who insists on chewing like they’re auditioning for foley sound effects.

• Normal Price: £229

• Black Friday: £169

• Discount: 26% off
  Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CHWZ9TZS

2. MacBook Air M1 — the dependable friend who never lets you down

We’ve said it before: the M1 Air is that reliable friend who always delivers and never asks for anything in return.
Superb battery, more than fast enough for 90% of daily work, and finally priced like Apple remembers the cost-of-living crisis is still a thing. If your current laptop wheezes when you open a Google Doc? Time.

• Normal Price: £699

• Black Friday: £529–£550

• Discount: 21–24% off
  Link:
  https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/macbook-air-13-inch-apple-m1-chip-8-core-cpu-7-core-gpu-8gb-256gb-ssd-spa-mgn63b-a/version.asp

3. Meta Quest 3S — VR that won’t require a GoFundMe

Finally, a mixed-reality headset priced for people who aren’t building in Web3.
Same powerful chip as the pricier Quest 3, but at a price point that doesn’t scream “Silicon Valley midlife crisis”. Great for gaming, prototyping, workshops, or escaping into another universe when the group chat is too loud.

• Normal Price: £289.99

• Black Friday: £229

• Discount: 21% off
  Link: https://www.argos.co.uk/product/4079604

4. Sonos Era 100 — tiny speaker, huge “I rent but I have taste” energy

If your flat is small but your standards are high, this is the speaker.
Rich sound, clean design, and a rare Sonos discount. Perfect for pre-drinks, Zoom calls, dinner parties, coding sessions, and pretending your one-bed is a Soho House annex.

• Normal Price: £199

• Black Friday: £168

• Discount: 16% off
  Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sonos-Era-100-remastered-Bluetooth%C2%AE/dp/B0BXPFL4Y2

5. Dyson Supersonic — the Beyoncé of hairdryers

A rare deal on the most over-engineered, over-hyped, and genuinely brilliant hairdryer ever made.
Fast drying, zero frizz, blessed airflow. If your current dryer sounds like a leaf blower — treat yourself.

• Normal Price: £329

• Black Friday: £279

• Discount: 15% off
  Link: https://www.dyson.co.uk

6. Ninja Double Stack Air Fryer — the patron saint of lazy cooking

This thing has kept more young professionals alive than Pret.
Huge capacity, low energy use, cooks everything quicker than you can say “I should stop getting delivery”. It’s the air fryer equivalent of having a reliable auntie who always makes sure you eat.

• Normal Price: £269.99

• Black Friday: £188

• Discount: 30% off
  Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CVDW9P7F

7. Philips SmartSleep Sunrise Alarm — wake up gently, not traumatised

Rise like the emotionally balanced adult you could be.
Soft sunrise light, calming sounds, and a much kinder morning than the iPhone’s “Radar of Doom”. Perfect for winter SAD and anyone whose sleep cycle is currently held together with wishes and mint tea.

• Normal Price: £179

• Black Friday: £139.99

• Discount: 22% off
  Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07Y1P1H9W

📉 So what?
🔥 Before you get trigger-happy…

• If the brand name looks like a random password: walk away.

• If the RRP looks invented: it probably is.

• If you’re convincing yourself you need an air fryer and an espresso machine and a robot vacuum… breathe.

• Black Friday is about value, not vibes (okay… maybe a little bit vibes).

📈 The tools behind the tech📉

📦Product📦

• Interested in cryptography
• Check if down detector is down

📏Design📏 

• 600 image generations to compare AI models  

👩🏿‍💻Code👩🏿‍💻

• A good SQL game
• Building a search engine that works

🏢The business behind the tech🏢

• Raising whilst having a lawsuit

😃Our EIR program😃

🚀 Scale Your Revenue: Colorintech EIR Programme Returns!

Are you an early-stage founder who is actively building and looking to move from inconsistent revenue to scalable, repeatable growth?

The Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIR) Programme by Colorintech is back with a highly practical session focused entirely on Generating Revenue.
This is not a general talk—it's a targeted initiative for founders who have already achieved some level of traction (generated revenue or raised funding) and need the tactical frameworks to scale responsibly.

What to Expect:

• 90-Minute Revenue Workshop: A practical, peer-led session focused on monetisation strategy, identifying what to double down on, and how to improve capital efficiency.
• Fireside AMA: Get direct, honest insights from experienced founder,
  • We’ve had a last-minute speaker change and are excited to welcome Stephan Eyeson, CEO & Co-founder of Safiyo (acquired by Ackwest) and Director of Emerging Markets at TestSet.
    
    Stephan will be breaking down how he built early revenue, found his first customers, monetised Safiyo, and scaled the business through to acquisition.
• High-Quality Networking: Connect with 30–40 ambitious founders from across the UK over drinks and food.

• Date: Thursday, 27th November 2025
• Time: 5:30 PM onwards
• Location: Virtual
• Target Audience: Early to growth-stage EU founders (Pre-Seed to Seed+) with traction, especially those in the North of England.

Secure Your Place

Spaces are limited to ensure a quality, intimate session. Registration is required.

Register here: https://form.typeform.com/to/Mh8YbCDp

😃HELP US PLEASE!😃

🚀As we're near the end of the year, we're launching our fourth Colorintech community survey! The last three iterations of the survey have been invaluable in helping us understand our community, but also the needs you have. This has allowed us to refine the support we give so it's helpful for you!

We found out: 

Most requested action was more in-person events ->  hosted 25 events (17 in-person) so far this year; 

Working Professionals & Students asked for more job and networking opportunities with recruiters -> ran 12 different events with employers like Netflix, Dojo and Apple and saw multiple people get hired from them;

Founders asked for more on Fundraising, using AI strategically and GTM Strategy -> ran events on Investment Insights, Using AI To Scale Your Business and storytelling as a marketing strategy;

 96.3% of people said they wanted more AI based opportunities ->  launched our Google AI Essential Programme, AI Learning Sprint, and launching our AI Fundamentals Courses early next year!

Now, I wanted to invite you to complete our 2025 survey to see how we can support you further: 
https://form.typeform.com/to/YWeOA8Jb

Please note this survey will take about 10 - 15 minutes to complete. 

The deadline to complete is 25th November 2025!

By completing this survey, you'll be influencing Colorintech and the opportunities we provide in the future so they're more impactful to you.

❓Need help finding work?🙋🏽‍♀️

A government job helping run the country's AI policy,

Check it out here

😃What we are consuming😃

😦Tourists tricked by fake AI Royal Christmas market

💻Facebooks Groups are getting usernames

🕵🏿‍♂️More facial recognition