Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

You wouldn’t pay a surgeon to file your tax return, and you wouldn’t ask your accountant to perform your appendectomy. The same is true for AI: Organizations should start realizing that different AI providers excel at different needs, from coding to specialized research or creative design. Over the coming year, enterprises will absorb a variety of these AI providers’ technologies in earnest and at scale—department by department, role by role. Legal teams will standardize on tools like Harvey. Customer service teams will rely on Glean or purpose-built agents. Development teams may choose resources from Anthropic. Marketing, engineering, finance, and HR will similarly g…

Planes at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport were briefly left flying blind overnight as the airport experienced another radar outage – the second incident in less than two weeks. The most recent radar outage, first reported by ABC news, occurred just before 4 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday and lasted for a minute and a half. “There was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace,” an Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson confirmed in a statement provided to Fast Company. Why New York area planes are…

Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against an individual it says is a moderator on Reddit, accusing him of piracy and facilitating a network of websites that offered pirated Nintendo Switch games. The video game publisher is seeking $4.5 million in damages from James C. Williams, who went by the username “Archbox” on the social media site. (That account has since been suspended.) “Williams not only copied and distributed Nintendo game files without authorization; he actively promoted their distribution and copying to thousands of others across a variety of websites and online ‘communities,’ and knowingly trafficked in unlawful software products aimed at circumventing Ni…

A reader asks: Two years ago, I began managing Craig, who had been doing the same tasks day in and day out for a decade. He hadn’t adapted to new technology, best practices, or industry trends. My first order of business was to coach him and challenge him to grow and learn. For more than a year, we built up a great trajectory. People saw how much his work improved and commented on it frequently, and said he seemed revitalized in many ways. His progress gave me a lot of hope that he could become good at the modern demands of his role. Then about six months ago, Craig suddenly reverted to his old patterns. It was as if the prior year of progress got completely wiped…

Your favorite spot for slow-cooked riblets might be cooked. A number of Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill + Bar restaurants have closed their doors in the wake of mounting financial distress and declining foot traffic, according to a recent bankruptcy filing. The 10 shuttered stores, located in Florida and Georgia, are all owned by an Atlanta-based Applebee’s franchisee that last week became the latest regional restaurateur to seek Chapter 11 protection. The list of impacted locations includes long-standing Applebee’s restaurants near top tourist destinations such as SeaWorld, Walt Disney World, and the Daytona International Speedway. Most of the locations w…

AI is radically changing the future of the workplace — from redefining jobs to fueling the rise of so-called “work slop.” Live on stage at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, Box CEO Aaron Levie, LinkedIn’s Chief Economic Opportunity Officer Aneesh Raman, and Meta’s Head of Business AI Clara Shih share their insider perspectives on AI optimism, uncertainty, and navigating this unprecedented era. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian and recorded live at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Respon…

Knowing the calorie content of foods does not help people understand which foods are healthier, according to a study I recently coauthored in the Journal of Retailing. When study participants considered calorie information, they rated unhealthy food as less unhealthy and healthy food as less healthy. They were also less sure in their judgments. In other words, calorie labeling didn’t help participants judge foods more accurately. It made them second-guess themselves. Across nine experiments with more than 2,000 participants, my colleague and I tested how people use calorie information to evaluate food. For example, participants viewed food items that are generally…

Walk through almost any manufacturing plant today, whether the frontline professionals crushing oilseeds, processing corn, or producing ingredients, and you’ll notice something subtle but important. The tools that help turn agricultural crops into products that feed and fuel the world are getting smarter, more precise, and more capable. Most conversations about the bioeconomy focus on what farmers grow or what consumers buy. But the real transformation is happening in the middle, in the molecular steps that quietly make modern, low-carbon manufacturing possible. Catalysts and enzymes, the biological and chemical tools that convert agricultural inputs into usable mater…

Whether we like it or not, AI has infiltrated the workplace and employees are under pressure to use it. However, according to a new study, you may want to skip asking AI to help you manage matters of the heart. The two-part study, titled “Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence” was recently published in Science. The experiment made the case that using chatbots for personal advice and navigating emotional situations can be harmful because because the system is designed to tell people what they want to hear. Using chatbots may reinforce troubling behavior rather than help people take accountability for harm and apologize. A recent Cog…

For decades, America has told a singular story about success, suggesting that the only acceptable path to success is a four-year degree. Any other trajectory was treated as a detour. Fortunately, that story is changing with new, acceptable ways to achieve success. At both the federal and state levels, the U.S. is gradually reinventing its education system to value skills, not just diplomas. From new federal initiatives like Workforce Pell to state-led Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), policy is beginning to catch up to what the economy has been signaling for years. As a country, we need electricians, plumbers, welders, and builders as much as we need white-collar wor…

If you have gifting to loved ones on your mind, here are some considerations related to taxes and logistics. Gifting logistics Unless you’re writing a check from your bank account, the logistics of gifting funds can get a bit complicated. If you want to gift from your IRA, your only option is to sell a chunk of it, then pay any taxes due, then write a check. That’s not terrible, so long as you understand the tax implications. IRA withdrawals are typically subject to ordinary income tax, along with penalties if you’re not yet 59½. You could also trigger some knock-on tax effects like the income-related monthly adjustment amount. In other words, gifting from your IR…

We’ve been sold a myth about entrepreneurial success: sharpen your skills, tighten your systems, hustle harder. But after years of working with independent professionals across industries, I’ve noticed that the highest performers share something that rarely makes the productivity lists: they’ve intentionally built communities of colleagues, clients, and partners who expand how they think, create, and deliver impact. Community isn’t a “nice to have” for the self-employed. It’s strategic infrastructure. And this is especially important for solopreneurs, entrepreneurs who work primarily solo. The stakes are higher than most solopreneurs realize. According to research…

In the city of Bethlehem, a team of mechanics is currently working around the clock to install a medical fridge, air diagnostic equipment, oxygen supply, and blast-proof windows into one of the most iconic vehicles in the world. The team is tasked with turning Pope Francis’s old popemobile into a mobile health clinic for the children of Gaza—and it could be operational as soon as next week. The project, called Vehicle of Hope, is spearheaded by the Catholic humanitarian organization Caritas, which runs more than 160 agencies across the world that work to provide aid in crisis zones. Caritas Jerusalem, which has advocated for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, currently o…

This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jared’s weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get more insights every Tuesday. On a recent evening, I had a mild panic after trying to call my wife and repeatedly getting the same error: “Your call could not be completed as dialed.” She was supposed to come home late that night from an out-of-town trip with some old friends, but I hadn’t heard from her that day and couldn’t recall the timing of her flight. If her phone was merely in Airplane mode, my calls should have gone to voicemail instead of failing to connect outright. In the end, it was just a random network connectivity glitch, solved by a reboot after my w…

Step outside your front door on any given day, and say goodbye to money without even trying. Just commuting into the office now sets workers back a whopping $55 a day, data suggests. Thanks to the workforce-wide return-to-office push, many workers are back in the office at least a couple of times a week. With it come the coffee runs, desk salads, and after-work drinks that can quickly add up. Videoconferencing company Owl Labs has done the math and broken down the real cost of physically going into work. When in the office, in-person and hybrid workers spend an average of $55 a day, according to the 2025 State of Hybrid Work report: $15 on commuting, $18 on lunc…

Over the course of 2025, deepfakes improved dramatically. AI-generated faces, voices, and full-body performances that mimic real people increased in quality far beyond what even many experts expected would be the case just a few years ago. They were also increasingly used to deceive people. For many everyday scenarios—especially low-resolution video calls and media shared on social media platforms—their realism is now high enough to reliably fool nonexpert viewers. In practical terms, synthetic media have become indistinguishable from authentic recordings for ordinary people and, in some cases, even for institutions. And this surge is not limited to quality. The v…

What’s the closest you’ve ever stood to a drone? I’m not talking about a cute quadcopter, but a military-grade death machine that can carry enough warheads to obliterate a bridge, a tank, or a building? Sure, I’d heard of them. I’d seen them on the news. I’ve closely followed the paper, scissors, rock war in Ukraine where every six weeks the Ukrainians or Russians break the rules with new drone hacks. But it wasn’t until I was standing in front of the Fury, an autonomous plane meant to fly alongside F-16s and other military jets, that our Terminator era of warfare really hit me. This thing looks mean in an unknowable way, like a deep-sea predator that’s shed its …

Beyond the not insignificant work of designing buildings, it can often seem that architects are also tasked with solving some of the biggest problems in the world. From reducing the environmental impact of buildings to increasing access to affordable spaces to fighting climate change to rebuilding what climate change has damaged, the architect’s work can verge on the infinite. For the architecture companies honored in Fast Company’s 2026 Most Innovative Companies awards, this mission creep is part of the appeal. All 10 honorees on this year’s architecture list have made societal challenges and systems-scale shortcomings into side projects of their more straightforward…

WeightWatchers said Tuesday it is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to eliminate $1.15 billion in debt and focus on its transition into a telehealth services provider. Parent WW International Inc. said it has the support of nearly three-quarters of its debt holders. It expects to emerge from bankruptcy within 45 days, if not sooner. WeightWatchers, which was founded more than 60 years ago, has struggled recently. In 2023, the company moved into the prescription drug weight loss business—particularly with the $106 million acquisition of Sequence, now WeightWatchers Clinic, a telehealth service that helps users get prescriptions for drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy an…

New AI features from LinkedIn will soon help job seekers find positions that best suit them—without the need for exact keyword matches or specific job titles. LinkedIn’s new AI-powered job search interface allows users to express their goals in plain language, says Rohan Rajiv, LinkedIn’s head of career products. For example, users can type a phrase like “business development or partnership roles in video games” and still be matched with relevant positions in the gaming industry, even if job listings don’t use those exact terms. Job seekers can also enter more abstract goals like “using brand marketing skills to cure cancer” to uncover marketing roles at pharmaceu…

As of yesterday’s market close, Netflix is the only Big Tech company whose stock is trading at four figures, but that will soon change. The TV streaming giant, whose shares closed at $1,089 on Thursday, has announced that it will initiate a stock split next month. That will send the stock’s price per share much lower, though it will not change the company’s fundamental value. Here’s what you need to know about Netflix’s upcoming stock split. What’s a stock split? A stock split is when a company decides to divide the number of its existing shares in order to create new ones—hence the term “split” the shares. A stock can split by any factor a company wan…

It’s Friday afternoon, and a potential client just emailed, asking about your services. You scramble to find your pricing. (Where did you save that document?) You dig through old emails for a proposal you sent six months ago that you could adapt. You piece something together and curse your past self for not being more organized. This scenario plays out constantly for solopreneurs. Most chalk it up to the chaos of running a business alone. But constantly scrambling will start to cost you as your business grows—and eventually hold you back. Most solopreneurs think that “operations” is something only real companies need: businesses with employees, office managers, a…

Every technological revolution has its awkward adolescence. We’re living through AI’s right now. Recent research from Stanford and BetterUp has given this moment a name: “workslop.” It’s the flood of hastily AI-generated content that clogs inboxes, clutters presentations, and quietly erodes productivity. The email that reads like it was written by a committee of robots. The strategy document with oddly formal phrasing and zero original insight. The presentation deck that says nothing new. If this sounds familiar, you’re not imagining it. And if you’re a manager watching your team’s output simultaneously increase in volume and decrease in quality, you’re not alone. …

Midway while sailing across the Pacific with just his cat named Phoenix, Oliver Widger reflected on why he thinks his many followers—more than a million on TikTok and Instagram—are drawn to his story of quitting his 9-to-5 job and embarking on a journey from Oregon to Hawaii. “The world kind of sucks and, like, I don’t think I’m alone in how I felt with my work,” Widger, 29, told The Associated Press on Wednesday via Zoom. “You can be making $150,000 a year and you still feel like you’re just making ends meet, you know what I mean? And I think people are just tired of that and working really hard for nothing and want a way out.” People are inspired by someone who found …