Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

A new wave of phishing scams is targeting iPhone users with alarming messages warning that their iCloud storage is full—and experts say users should proceed carefully. How the iCloud Storage Phishing Scam Works “Social engineering attackers use impersonation and manipulation to first gain your confidence and trust,” Apple warns. “Then, they trick you into handing over sensitive data or providing them with access to your account information. They use a variety of tactics to impersonate a trusted company, entity, or someone that you know.” According to Consumer Affairs, the scam typically arrives via text or email disguised as an official Apple notification, warn…

Congrats! You got your first job! While you may have had temporary jobs while going to school, you might be feeling a variety of emotions, including excitement as well as some anxiety at the prospect of a first full-time job. While being hired means your employer believes that you already have the basic technical skills and academic knowledge to succeed, emotional intelligence will make the difference between thriving and surviving. Emotional intelligence is commonly described as your ability to recognize and understand your own emotions while also having an understanding of other people’s emotions. This is critical in your first job as it determines how well others w…

There were moments leading up to the 30th WNBA season where it appeared as if it wasn’t going to happen. Thankfully, after a lengthy 17-month negotiation where both the players and owners were heard, that is not the case. The new season of women’s basketball kicks off tonight (Friday, May 8) with three exciting games. Here’s everything you need to know to tune in. Who is favored to win it all? Hot off their 2025 championship, the Las Vegas Aces want to continue their streak. The team has won three of the last four, including consecutive wins in 2022 and 2023. The women have more than momentum on their side. Most of their players are returning this yea…

Prediction markets have now turned their focus to hantavirus, a rare but severe category of viruses transmitted from rodents to humans, after several cases were identified earlier this month aboard an Atlantic cruise operated by Oceanwide Expeditions. It’s a serious situation that has drawn global concern: Several passengers have tested positive for the illness, at least three cruise participants have died, and a number of others on the trip are reportedly experiencing symptoms. Amid growing anxiety about the illness and, no doubt, memories of the nerve-racking first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, some people have taken to prediction markets to bet on what might …

Wendy’s shares rose on Friday after the fast-food giant reported stronger-than-expected quarterly earnings, beating analyst estimates despite poor U.S. store performance, with U.S. same-restaurant sales falling 7.8%. That slow but steady growth reflects the burger chain’s effort to turn around sales by shedding low-performing American restaurants and improving menu quality. The plan comes amid an overall decline in fast-food store traffic, as American consumers grapple with higher prices and the cost of food and living soars. “We are in the early innings of our turnaround,” Ken Cook, Wendy’s CFO and interim CEO, told analysts on Friday’s earnings call. In the …

Chili’s has had a major comeback in recent years. The casual dining chain turned 50 last year, and recently reported 20 consecutive quarters of growth. Chili’s CEO Kevin Hochman told Business Insider that the success of the chain boils down to two things: marketing and operations. “We have a saying here: marketing brings them in, and ops brings them back,” Hochman told BI. Hochman shared this sentiment with analysts and investors during an earnings call with investors last year. It’s clear the Tex-Mex chain has continued to lean in on that strategy. “The marketing has to be exciting,” Hochman said. “And then the operators are in charge of creating that ex…

The Pentagon is releasing “never-before-seen” files on UFOs. The files, many which have been under wraps for decades, can now be accessed by anyone online. The Friday release includes the declassification of 162 files on what the government officially calls unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) these days. These files can be found under a new tab on the Defense Department’s website. The move follows a presidential order that came in February, which called for greater transparency around UAP. “The American people can now access the federal government’s declassified UAP files instantly. The latest UAP videos, photos, and original source documents from across the entir…

Schools and universities across the country are recovering from an outage that knocked down Canvas, an online platform that manages exams, course notes, lecture videos, and grades. The disruption tied to a cyberattack hit in the middle of finals period for many colleges, a high-stress time when students and instructors rely heavily on the platform. By late Thursday, Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, said the platform was available again to most users. The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft. On Friday, Instructure and Canvas no longer appeared on a site w…

An in-person remote position sounds like an oxymoron, but that’s exactly what athletic supplement company Inno Supps was advertising in a LinkedIn job posting that’s gone viral for all the wrong reasons. Though its listing for a senior copywriter was labeled as remote, job seekers were quick to call out the fine print at the top of the job description: “Please apply only if you are willing to eventually work onsite in Henderson, Nevada,” it read. “While this role is listed as ‘remote’ for visibility, it is an onsite position and requires in-office presence.” Inno Supps was apparently looking to capitalize on the gap between the demand and supply for remote work. A…

If you’ve taken the New York City subway lately, you might’ve seen an ad that’s driving social media wild. The ad shows messages from two employees: Steve, who says he’s “not coming in today sry,” and an AI sales agent named Ava, who says she booked 12 meetings and researched 1,269 prospects. The ad’s header reads, “Fire Steve. Hire Ava.” In other words, fire humans and replace them with AI. goddamn this sucks pic.twitter.com/InMUGd0y1A — F♯A♯∞, fka ☕️ (@coopercooperco) May 7, 2026 The ad comes from AI company Artisan, which offers an AI agent to replace low-level sales representatives. The company is known for its controversial anti-human advertising—and the…

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is just one month away. That event will see Apple launch the next iterations of the software that powers its various devices, including iOS 27 for the iPhone. But Apple will also be rolling out a new version of iOS before then, and it will feature an enhancement that will benefit Android users as much as Apple’s own. Here’s what you need to know. iOS 26.5 brings encrypted RCS messaging to iPhone Apple’s iMessage protocol has long had end-to-end encryption for texts sent between Apple devices. But for texts sent between Android phones and iPhones, encryption has always been absent. And that wasn’t the fault of …

If you’ve been debating whether or not to pick up a Nintendo Switch 2 then you’ll want to act soon. Nintendo says it is raising the Switch 2’s price from $450 to $500 in the U.S. due to “changes in market conditions,” most notably the global shortage of random access memory (RAM). The change is set to go into effect on September 1. Similar price increases will simultaneously occur in Canada ($630 CAD to $680 CAD) and Europe (€470 to €500). In Japan, the system’s MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price) will rise a bit earlier, going from ¥49,980 to ¥59,980 on May 25. Nintendo blames the widespread change on the fact that market condition changes are lik…

The literature world is up in arms after a prominent author, who also serves as the national ambassador for young people’s literature, denigrated the quality of the majority of children’s literature. Mac Barnett recently published an essay collection for adults, titled Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children. In his book, he wrote, “So I now offer Barnett’s Addendum to Sturgeon’s Law: Maybe more like 94.7 percent of kids’ books are crud.” The sentence references science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon’s famous 1957 defense of the science fiction genre. Sturgeon wrote that “ninety percent of everything is crud,” and investigated why science fiction among al…

As concerns mount over artificial intelligence and its rapid integration into society, tech companies are increasingly turning to faith leaders for guidance on how to shape the technology — a surprising about-face on Silicon Valley’s longstanding skepticism of organized religion. Leaders from various religious groups met last week with representatives from companies including Anthropic and OpenAI for the inaugural “Faith-AI Covenant” roundtable in New York to discuss how best to infuse morality and ethics into the fast-developing technology. It was organized by the Geneva-based Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities, which seeks to take on issues such as extremism, ra…

While many AI companies are betting their products can be useful to a broad segment of businesses, a startup called Emanate is taking the opposite approach, building highly targeted tools designed for complex sales transactions in the industrial materials sector. Founder and CEO Kiara Nirghin says the somewhat esoteric market, which includes manufacturers, distributors, and service providers working with materials from steel building materials to metal piping, has intricate sales processes involving generating quotes for bespoke orders, connecting existing customers with goods they may need, and proactively finding new customers. The industrial materials sector,…

Artificial intelligence—surely the most hyped technological development to seize the spotlight in a generation—does not appear to be very popular with the American public. A clear majority recognize AI is a big deal, but recent Pew Research Center polling found more concern than excitement, particularly in its impact on creativity and relationships. Quinnipiac surveys find opinions souring even as usage rises. It’s associated with job losses, cheating, dubious advice, excessive energy consumption, and a variety of doomsday scenarios up to and including the eradication of humanity. In March, 57% of respondents to an NBC poll said the risks associated with the technolo…

Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. Upon hearing of a celebrity’s death, have you ever been startled to realize that they hadn’t left us long ago? That happened to me last weekend. Except the dearly departed in question wasn’t a person, but a company: Ask.com, the web property forever better known by its original brand, Ask Jeeves. For years, I wrote about Ask quite regularly. But when its owner, media conglomerate IAC (which is in the process of changing its own name to People Inc.), announced it had shut down the site as of May 1, it was its first time in the news in more than 15 years. The last time before that was in November 2010, when…

Twenty years ago, if you asked the average person what Google was, they’d tell you it was a search engine. The company became synonymous with searching for information online, reaching a level of dominance no search engine had seen before, or has seen since. Ask the average person today and they’d probably tell you the same thing. Except Google isn’t just that anymore. It’s a far more complicated company, one trying to be all things to all people, and arguably succeeding at none of them. Google is now a five-layer company, says David Bader, director of the Institute for Data Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. One of the key layers is AI, which coul…

When Anna Jarvis set out to establish a national Mother’s Day in the early 20th century, her goal was to honor her own mother’s legacy of activism, sacrifice, and maternal devotion. She envisioned a national day of gratitude where all Americans expressed their thanks and admiration for their own mothers. But just a few short years after successfully getting official recognition for the holiday, Jarvis was horrified to see Mother’s Day commercialized to benefit florists and greeting card companies. Jarvis petitioned to recall the holiday she had championed. One imagines Jarvis banging her head against the wall if she could see us now, since Mother’s Day spending co…

Pinterest’s newest ad starts with two young women doomscrolling in the dark. It’s a familiar nightly ritual for millions. As one of them slumps on the bed in a Reels-induced semicoma, the other gets an idea and opens . . . you guessed it, Pinterest. Suddenly, an energetic dance track fills the room, and the two are inspired to get their best ’fits together for a night out. It ends with the tagline, “The best thing you can find online is a reason to go offline.” When the business model for every other social platform revolves around your attention and time spent as their primary product for brand advertising dollars, this may feel like a counterintuitive strategy…

Burger King’s slogans have long emphasized personalization, like “Have It Your Way” and “Your Rule.” Now there’s a text generator that lets you personalize its logo, too. A new Burger King logo font generator lets users customize the red, rounded letters that sit between the logo’s burnt-orange-colored buns. It’s by Pixel Frame, a website that makes album cover and logo text generators for everything from Drake’s discography to Dragon Ball Z and Donkey Kong. Just a few words will render big and bold in the logo generator, but the text will become increasingly squished and stacked as you add more text, with one line stacked on top of the other like hot-off-the-gril…

Below, Piera Gelardi shares five key insights from her new book, The Playful Way: Creativity, Connection, and Joy Through Everyday Moments of Play. Gelardi is a creative entrepreneur. She cofounded the media brand Refinery29 and, more recently, the creative wellness company NoomaLooma. What’s the big idea? Playfulness means being curiously, creatively, and courageously engaged with life. Being playful isn’t the easy choice. It requires showing up authentically, risking looking silly, and trying something that might not work. In a world that rewards performance and polish, choosing play is a quiet act of courage that will help you feel alive. Listen to the a…

If you’re like me, your bank statement looks like a graveyard of monthly $9.99 charges for apps and web services that somehow add up to the price of a used Honda Civic every year. Somewhere over the last decade or two, software companies turned us from owners into renters. And quite frankly, the landlords are getting greedy. But here’s the good news: Whether you’re on a Mac or a PC, there are world-class alternatives that don’t require a monthly tribute to a corporate overlord. We’re talking professional-grade tools that are either free forever or have free tiers so robust you’ll forget the paid version even exists. Stop renting your digital life. Here are…

When communications worker Suzanne Selkow decided to open her own consulting practice, she realized that going solo meant fewer opportunities to “turn to a colleague for a gut check,” she says. Knowing herself to get bogged down in “decision paralysis,” she figured she needed some kind of outside perspective as she launched her business. So she turned to a different kind of mentor—she created an AI career coach using Anthropic’s Claude. “I figured that was actually a practical use case for an LLM—to be able to take some of those bigger-picture ideas that I had workshopped with a human coach, and turn it into a week-by-week [business] plan,” she says. Now mon…