Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

It’s that time of year. Fall is around the corner, but it still feels like summer on some days. In an age of global warming, this transitional season is likely to stretch out longer than it did before. Designers are aware they need to create jackets and coats appropriate for this in-between season. The market is now full of good options beyond the outdoorsy puffer or fleece that will keep you at the right temperature. Many are designed to be good for both work and life, allowing you to look put-together for the office, but also relaxed enough for weekends. We’ve scoured the market for five coats that offer an additional layer, along with some style and polish, th…

Whether it’s Sam Altman surreptitiously stealing GPUs from a Target, trying to make a break for the door under the gaze of security cameras as he tucks a box containing a valuable computer chip under his arm, or Super Mario appearing in Star Wars, the rupture in reality brought about by OpenAI’s AI-generated video social network, Sora, is significant. What previously would have been decried as deepfaked videos have gone viral on social media in the last two days, while also outstripping the release of Meta’s competing product, Vibes. Users, including some OpenAI employees on social media, have been revelling in their ability to create outlandish content involving rea…

You probably know filmmaker and actor Taika Waititi from directing work like the Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok or the Oscar-award-winning film Jojo Rabbit. What you might not know is that he’s also the creative mind behind multiple Old Spice ads, a bout of early 2010s PSAs for his home country of New Zealand, and some of the most iconic Super Bowl commercials of all time. From the early days of his career, between directing short films and appearing in acting gigs, Waititi has kept up a consistent cadence of ad work, ranging from spots for local names like the New Zealand Transport Agency to bigger brands like Samsung. Even as his Hollywood work has expanded, ad work r…

Several weeks ago, Mozilla Firefox dodged a bullet aimed at its business model—a potential court-ordered cutoff of the Google search-default payments that constitute its primary course of income. But that escape from one feared outcome of the U.S. search-antitrust case against the web giant doesn’t change two other things: Firefox remains in an embattled position. That’s bad news for users. Without Firefox, web competition itself would be in a far more dire state. To address its longstanding competition problem, Mozilla’s developers are putting AI to work—albeit, in a less pushy manner than their competitors. A conversation with Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers at Web Su…

Almost 1 million Frigidaire minifridges are being recalled because they pose the potential to catch fire, according to a notice from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) released on Thursday. The notice expands an earlier recall from 2024. Canada-based Curtis International is recalling another 330,000 minifridges, on top of the 634,000 minifridges it recalled back in July of 2024. The company has received at least six reports of the model EFMIS121 minifridges catching fire, with property damages, per the CPSC notice. The minfridges were sold exclusively at Target stores nationwide and online at Target.com from January 2020 through October 2023, for a…

Meet the new CEO of Sam’s Club: Latriece Watkins. As you’ll hear from my interview with Watkins this week’s episode of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies podcast, she is a Walmart veteran, who began her career in the real estate division in 2006. Over the next two decades, she rose up through the ranks to become Walmart’s chief merchant in 2023, making her one of the most powerful people in the retail industry, responsible for choosing the $500 billion worth of products the company sells every year. In recent years, Watkins has made a deliberate attempt to woo higher income consumers into stores by introducing higher-end brands, like Sonos and LaRoche Posa…

AllBirds Inc. was valued at $4 billion less than five years ago. Now, it will be sold for just $39 million. The shoe company on Monday announced a definitive agreement with American Exchange Group (AXNY), which involves selling all of its intellectual property, assets, and liabilities. Privately held AXNY owns a number of brands, including Aerosoles, Ed Hardy, and Jonathan Adler. “We are incredibly thankful to our teams for the work they have been doing to fuel our product engine, build awareness of Allbirds and deliver an engaging customer experience,” Allbirds CEO Joe Vernachio said in a statement. The sale has already been approved by Allbirds’ boar…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. As ResiClub has closely documented, Florida has been the epicenter of U.S. housing market weakness in 2025. However, KB Home executives now believe the worst may be behind them—at least for their business—in the Sunshine State. While giant homebuilder KB Home—which has a $4.3 billion market capitalization—isn’t ready to call it an inflection point for the entire state, it believes its price cuts in Florida were more than sufficient to stabilize demand for its business. In fact, it may have cut too deeply in Florida and could now need to raise pri…

If you have travel plans this weekend and don’t necessarily need to travel, you may be in luck. A massive winter storm is forecasted this weekend—dubbed Winter Storm Fern by the Weather Channel—and could bring crippling ice and heavy snow to more than 30 states stretching from Arizona to Maine. With some 230 million Americans potentially affected, many airlines are preemptively warning travelers about potential weather-related disruptions and offering travel waivers in advance. The major U.S. carriers have issued alerts to travelers with flights scheduled out of airports across more than 20 states, though the terms for changing your travel plans can vary significa…

Halloween candy shoppers who bought Reese’s pumpkin-shaped candy said they felt tricked when the picture on the outside packaging didn’t exactly match the treat inside. They were so upset, in fact, that they filed a lawsuit in late 2023 seeking $5 million in damages. Now a judge has dismissed their claims. At issue is Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins, whose wrappers show an image of a pumpkin-shaped candy with a jack-o’-lantern face carved into the chocolate outer layer. In reality, the chocolate inside is faceless. In a class-action suit filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida, plaintiffs claimed Reese’s candy wrappers were deceptive. …

Aerospace company Starfighters Space, which operates the world’s only commercial supersonic aircraft fleet out of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, is down double digits after major gains following completion of its initial public offering (IPO) last week. Starfighters Space’s stock price has had a volatile ride in the days since, and Tuesday was no exception. On Tuesday, shares of the stock, which are trading under the ticker symbol FJET, were down 55%, just one day after Monday’s record gains, when it soared a whopping 371%. The Florida-based company completed its IPO last Wednesday, with shares beginning to trade on the NYSE American the next day. The company ra…

A few years ago, I read an article that changed how I think about bourbon. It wasn’t about distilling or aging. It was about bread. Bread Is Broken by Ferris Jabr explores how modern industrial farming stripped grains of their flavor and nutritional value in exchange for higher yield, longer shelf life, and cost efficiency. As I read, I kept wondering if flavor has been lost in wheat; what does that mean for the wheat in our whisky? So, I called Dr. David Van Sanford, a wheat breeder at the University of Kentucky, to ask if anyone had studied how farming practices impact flavor. He paused and said, “You’re the first person who’s ever asked me that.” That one q…

Everyone is talking about it in group chats, at the supermarket, and at the gas pump. No, it’s not Heated Rivalry—it is the “monster” winter storm that is set to hit the U.S. this weekend, traveling from Texas across the Southwest, into the Southeast, and finally into the Mid-Atlantic states and into New England. The storm is forecast to dump a whopping ten to 20 inches of snow, creating dangerous conditions for about half the nation, according to the Washington Post. Widespread heavy snow, sleet, damaging ice, and a potential nor’easter could affect as many as 230 million Americans from Friday, January 23 to Monday, January 26, bringing temperatures below zero, …

For the first time in eight years, pay TV is rising. According to the latest Cord-Cutting Monitor report from analyst firm MoffettNathanson, the number of subscriptions to linear video packages actually rose during the third quarter of 2025. The estimates, which include subscriptions to virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs) like YouTube TV, show that the pay-TV industry had 303,000 subscriber additions in the third quarter, marking the first quarterly gain since 2017. However, the research notes that the increase was “reasonably small” and seasonal given that it happened during the quarter when the NFL season began, meaning it could pote…

Rob Reiner, the son of a comedy giant who became one himself as one of the preeminent filmmakers of his generation with movies such as “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally …” and “This Is Spinal Tap,” has died. He was 78. Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, were found dead Sunday at their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. A law enforcement official briefed on the investigation confirmed their identities but could not publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Authorities were investigating an “apparent homicide,” said Capt. Mike Bland with the Los Angeles Police Department. The Los …

From return-to-office mandates, anxiety about AI taking (or reshaping) jobs, and a highly competitive atmosphere for recent graduates and other job seekers, 2025 has been a year of change. It’s also been a big year of change for women in the workplace, with a record number exiting the workforce. And, according to a new report, women are now also less inclined to seek promotions. LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. just released their 2025 Women in the Workplace report based on a survey of 124 organizations employing around 3 million people. The survey research found that while companies overwhelmingly say that diversity (67%) and inclusion (84%) are top priorities, just…

Users of several trendy AI tools will now be able to demonstrate their proficiency with the software directly in their LinkedIn profile. On January 28, the company announced partnerships with three vibe coding platforms—Lovable, Relay.app, and Replit—that will allow qualified users to link their accounts on those apps to their accounts on LinkedIn, adding certificates based on their proficiency with the tools. The level of certification can increase over time as people continue to use a tool and demonstrate their sophistication with it, says Pat Whelan, head of career products at LinkedIn. While the details of the certification process are up to the individual partner c…

If your sofa was made between 1970 and 2014, its foam is likely loaded with flame retardants—chemicals that can escape into dust and end up in the air you breathe. A new study led by the California Department of Public Health shows the payoff of swapping it out: people who replaced their old, chemical-filled sofas or chairs with new, flame-retardant-free models saw levels of one common chemical, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), drop by half in just over a year. The chemicals became ubiquitous in upholstered furniture thanks to older regulations in California. The state’s large market meant that flame retardants were used in furniture nationwide. The tob…

If you’re planning on buying a PC, laptop, or cell phone in the coming months, a word of advice for you before Christmas: Buy now, not later. Prices are likely set to spike in the new year—due to a shortage of memory chips. Memory and storage for DRAM and NAND, two major types of computer memory, have seen costs rise between 30 and 40%, year-on-year—in some cases, they’re even doubling. This impacts the bill of materials (BOMs), or the cost of individual items to make, PCs, and especially low-end smartphones, where margins are thin and the proportional cost increase is more severe. The sudden spike in memory prices is part of a decades-long pattern of semiconducto…

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…

The 42nd Sundance Film Festival kicks off this week in Park City, Utah. It will be the last edition in its longtime home and the first without its founder Robert Redford, who died in September at age 89. But even in this time of transition and change, the festival’s main focus — the movies — remains as vibrant and fresh as ever with 90 features premiering through Feb. 1. And three of them feature pop star Charli xcx. “It’s a broad, eclectic and bold program,” Sundance public programming director Eugene Hernandez told The Associated Press. Hernandez said the lineup for the festival’s final year in Park City has a “mixture of new, exciting voices paired with som…

Every holiday season feels high stakes, but 2025 may be the most unforgiving yet. Consumer demand remains resilient, but retailers are facing a tangle of economic headwinds, from tariffs and supply chain volatility to rising ad costs and leaner teams. In an uncertain economy, the margin for error shrinks, and the cost of a slow site or a fragile storefront grows even steeper. For years, retailers have measured holiday readiness by promotions, inventory planning, and staffing strategies. But there’s a blind spot: performance readiness. How fast, resilient, and visible your digital storefront is when shoppers show up can determine whether you hit your holiday forecast o…

OpenAI said Tuesday it has reorganized its ownership structure and converted its business into a public benefit corporation and two crucial regulators, the Delaware and California attorneys general, said they would not oppose the plan. The restructuring paves the way for the ChatGPT maker to more easily profit off its artificial intelligence technology even as it remains technically under the control of a nonprofit. Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings and California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in separate statements that they would not object to the proposal, seemingly bringing to an end more than a year of negotiations and announcements about the future …