Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

If you’re sick of paying for subscription services, Tesla has some bad news for you. The EV maker announced Wednesday that going forward, its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software will only be available as a monthly subscription – not a one-time payment. Tesla CEO Elon Musk broke the news on X, the social media platform he owns, noting that the shift will happen on February 14. “FSD will only be available as a monthly subscription thereafter,” Musk wrote, offering no details about how that change would affect the software’s pricing. While the price of access to Full Self-Driving (FSD) mode has fluctuated over time, the current one-time purchase price for the sof…

Accessibility is often treated as a technical problem. Does it meet standards? Is it ergonomic? Is it safe? Those questions matter, but they are incomplete. Many products fail not because they don’t function, but because they make the user feel singled out. Shame is one of the most powerful barriers to product adoption, and it is rarely discussed in design reviews. People delay using canes, grab bars, hearing aids, or mobility supports even when they would meaningfully improve daily life. Why? Because many products still communicate something the user does not want to say out loud: Something is wrong with me. If we want accessible design to succeed, and we want pe…

OpenAI never wanted to build a chatbot. As an early beta tester for OpenAI’s GPT-3 model, I can vouch for the fact that the company was caught totally off guard by ChatGPT’s runaway success. An email that OpenAI sent me on November 28, 2022—just two days before ChatGPT came to market and kicked off a trillion-dollar, multiyear, economy-distending AI scramble—didn’t even mention the new interface. Rather, it bragged about the company’s then-revolutionary “DaVinci” model and how it could “deliver clearer, more engaging, and more compelling content” and allow developers to “take on tasks that would have previously been too difficult to achieve.” From th…

Households that have bought Ben’s Original rice products will want to check their pantries right away. The brand, owned by food giant Mars, has issued a voluntary recall for select rice products. At issue is the possibility of small stones mixed in the rice, which could cause intestinal and other damage if consumed. Here’s what you need to know about the Ben’s Original rice recall. What’s happened? On October 10, Ben’s Original announced a voluntary recall of some of its rice products. That recall notice was later published on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) website on October 14. The voluntary recall was initiated after Ben’s Original di…

For its first brand refresh in 13 years, Domino’s updated its color palette, packaging, and font to look more engaging. When it came to making new tagline, though, the Michigan-based pizza chain is trying something unique: they just added more Ms to their wordmark. Mmm. Domino’s announced a rebrand Wednesday that includes brighter reds and blues and a new font called Domino’s Sans that was designed to “be thicker and doughier” and proves that using sans serifs doesn’t have to be bland. Team members will get new branded gear to wear in the kitchen and out delivering orders, and there’s a reimagined suite of new pizza boxes, including one black-and-metallic-gold box des…

Being laid off is bad enough. Falling victim to “strategic realignment” or “the growth playbook”? That’s just adding insult to injury. Last week, Amazon shared a memo sent to staff as the company implemented mass layoffs. The post detailed the overall reduction in its corporate workforce of 14,000 roles (about 4% of its white-collar workforce). While news of the layoffs attracted media attention, the focus across social media wasn’t so much on the contents of the memo as the headline itself: “Staying nimble and continuing to strengthen our organizations.” “Corporate buzzword masterclass,” Morning Brew wrote in a now-viral post on X. “You weren’t fired, you w…

From “fake it till you make it” to “stay in your lane,” SXSW festival goers reveal the worst career advice they’ve ever been given and why it stuck with them. View the full article

In the early days of the current AI boom, The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. It was a seismic move, but perhaps the most notable thing about it is what came after. In the subsequent months, publisher after publisher signed licensing deals with OpenAI, making their content available to ChatGPT. There were others who chose litigation, certainly, but most major media companies opted to take some money rather than spend it on lawyers. That changed last week when Ziff Davis filed its own copyright lawsuit against OpenAI. Ziff owns several major online properties, including Mashable, CNET, IGN, and Lifehacker, and garners a massive amou…

Early in my career, I learned a valuable lesson that has stayed front and center. I was working for a company struggling to meet its marks. We were doing fine, but not knocking it out of the park. I walked into a quarterly business review, confident in our marketing metrics. We were hitting or surpassing every KPI, and I presented our achievements with pride. My CEO made a statement that stopped me in my tracks: “Marketing success means nothing unless the company as a whole is winning.” That moment was a turning point. In our focus on metrics, it’s easy to overlook what really matters. It’s a lesson I was grateful to learn early and one I believe every leader should e…

If you don’t want to be left behind by the AI revolution, you really need to start paying for it. At least that’s become the common refrain among some AI enthusiasts, who seem intent on instilling FOMO in less technical users. The free versions of ChatGPT and Claude, they say, are woefully inadequate if you want to understand where things are headed—so stop being a cheapskate and hand over your $20 (or $200) a month like the rest of us. “Judging AI based on free-tier ChatGPT is like evaluating the state of smartphones by using a flip phone,” HyperWrite CEO Matt Shumer recently wrote in a widely shared essay on AI’s impact. “The people paying for the best tools, an…

On Tuesday, SoftBank, the Japanese financial giant, announced plans to dump all 32 million of its shares in Nvidia, the AI chip maker. The news won’t be the needle that pops the AI bubble, but it did cause enough of a stir to make Nvidia’s shares drop 2% Tuesday morning. The bad vibes were muted somewhat by news of what SoftBank says it will do with the proceeds of the sell off, along with those from the sale of some of its $9.17 billion T-Mobile stake: The firm will double down on another big bet in the AI space–OpenAI. SoftBank expects to directly invest $30 billion in OpenAI this year, according to its second-quarter financial statement in September. And it had …

If you’re embarrassed every time you have to hand over that Gmail address you came up with in 2006, you’re in luck. Google is finally allowing users to change their Gmail username without creating an entirely new account. The update will allow you to edit your email address to any that isn’t taken. Until now, Google only offered the option to create an alternate email and forward your mail to a new @gmail.com address. But, if you wanted any of your documents, pictures, or other media, then it required you to transfer all the data over—a process that is far from smooth. Now, Google is offering the ability to keep all of that information, whether you’ve changed y…

Sales has historically been a true proving ground for new technological breakthroughs. CRM systems, predictive analytics, tools that promise better targeting, faster follow-up, and higher close rates have to be proven, or shown to be false in the realm of sales. The next technology to be proven is agentic AI. Agentic AI will create the most profound transformation sales will undergo in this century. Agentic AI systems can act independently, pursue goals, adapt to context, and collaborate with humans through the duration of a sales cycle, no matter how short or elongated. AI alone already saves sales team members over two hours a day in admin tasks, and agentics will …

For the ladies of the Las Vegas Aces and the Phoenix Mercury, it’s time to leave it all on the court. The 2025 WNBA finals start tonight (Friday, October 3) at 8 p.m. ET. Notably, this is the first year that the WNBA finals are a best-of-seven games format. The Aces may be favored to win, but don’t count out the scrappy Mercury squad. Let’s take a deeper look at how these two teams got here, their strengths, and how to tune in. A season and playoffs recap The WNBA consists of 13 teams, with the top eight moving onto the postseason playoffs. This year, the Minnesota Lynx, Las Vegas Aces, Atlanta Dream, Phoenix Mercury, New York Liberty, Golden State V…

SoftBank Group will acquire digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge Group in a deal valued at $4 billion, the companies said on Monday, as the Japanese investment firm looks to deepen its AI-related portfolio. The acquisition would expand SoftBank’s exposure to digital infrastructure as the Japanese conglomerate is positioning its portfolio to focus on artificial intelligence. DigitalBridge shares rose about 9.7% to $15.27 on Monday, following a 45% rise earlier this month after Bloomberg News first reported the acquisition talks. The $16 per share offer represents a 15% premium over DigitalBridge’s closing price on Friday and values the company at $2.92…

Shares opened mixed in Europe on Tuesday after slipping in Asia as some regional markets wrapped up trading for the year. Crude oil prices edged higher and gold and silver resumed their ascent. U.S. futures were flat. In Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi rang out the final session for 2025 in a traditional year-end ceremony. “By realizing a Japanese economy that earns the trust of investors around the world, we will create a virtuous cycle in which global capital flows into Japan,” Takaichi said. The benchmark Nikkei 225 shed 0.4% to 50,339.48, its first year-end close above 50,000. It ended 2025 up nearly 25%. With just two trading days left before the y…

You may have seen warnings that Google is telling all of its users to change their Gmail passwords due to a breach. That’s only partly true. Google is telling users to change their passwords, but not because of a breach that exposed them. In fact, Google’s real advice is to stop using your password altogether. Here’s what I mean. The breach traces back to Salesforce, whose systems were compromised by the hacker group known as ShinyHunters (also tracked as UNC6040). Attackers obtained business-related Gmail data, including contact lists, company associations, and email metadata. No actual Gmail account credentials were stolen, but the nature of the stolen data makes ph…

Ikea just launched a new collection of speakers that double as actual pieces of art. The collection, which includes three round bluetooth speakers, two lamp speakers (called the Kuglass), and one new version of Ikea’s beloved Fado lamp, was made in collaboration with the Swedish designer Tekla Evelina Severin (also known as Teklan). Severin, who is known for her work as a colorist, photographer, and designer, brings a keen eye for color and pattern to the designs, turning a product that might otherwise be an eyesore into one worthy of display. In fact, it would be difficult to even recognize the products as speakers upon first glance. Tekla Evelina Severin Thi…

Apparently any place looks better if you just say it’s Japan. That’s according to a TikTok trend, dubbed the “Japan effect.” First reported in Casey Lewis’s youth trends newsletter After School, the trend has users making slideshows of two images. For all intents and purposes they are the same, except one is labelled with the original location and the second is labelled Tokyo, Japan. The idea being that the “Japan effect” is so strong, just the location tag can filter how we perceive an ordinary street or an average American neighborhood. Scrolling through the comments, those watching these TikTok videos genuinely believe the second image looks better than the f…

Many major platforms provide personalized “year in review” features that highlight how users have spent their time over the past year. Spotify Wrapped is the most popular of these summaries, but Apple Music, Snapchat, Deezer, and others also offer them. And now, internet users have a new year-in-review feature to check out this year: YouTube Recap. Here’s what you need to know about the video site’s year-in-review and how to access it—especially if you’re looking to kill some time while waiting for Spotify Wrapped 2025 to come out. What is YouTube Recap? YouTube Recap is Google’s just-announced year-in-review feature for its YouTube platform. The pers…