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The return-to-office (RTO) push at companies such as Amazon and AT&T—which both required employees to be back in the office full-time this month—has been met with discontent and frustration from much of their workforces. Some Amazon employees have said they are looking for new jobs, if they haven’t left already, while people at both companies have reportedly struggled to even find an open desk. But other leaders are not letting the prospect of low morale or limited workspace derail their plans to return to the office full time in 2025. According to a memo obtained by Business Insider, the latest addition to the mix is Dell, which had already tested the waters with…

This week, the startup Humane—which raised $240 million to build an iPhone-killing AI Pin—announced its sale to HP for $116 million. While far short of the company’s original $1 billion asking price, it’s astonishing the brand scrapped for anything at all. A product that had promised to change the world instead became a worldwide laughing stock, indicative of the worst tendencies of Silicon Valley founder hubris. Universally panned, Humane sold fewer than 10,000 units. Sometimes its returns outpaced its sales. Units could catch fire. Humane co-founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno thanked their few loyal customers by announcing their Pins would no longer work…

The Postwar design phenomenon known as mid-century modernism has been back—and thriving—for years now. In addition to a steady stream of new products from major retailers that cash in on the clean curves of the past, people continue to buy originals, reissues, and knockoffs of icons like the Eames Lounge Chair in droves. But if there’s one person I’d wager loves it just a bit more than the rest of us, it’s journalist Dominic Bradbury. In the wake of his tomes Atlas of Mid-Century Modern Masterpieces and Atlas of Mid-Century Modern Houses, today Bradbury is back with another book: Mid-Century Modern Designers, a hulking A to Z chronicle of 300 design pioneers known an…

One of the largest non-profit blood centers in the country, New York Blood Center (NYBC), said it was hit with a ransomware attack over the weekend and is now experiencing disruptions in its services, including longer than normal processing times for blood donations, plus the cancelling and rescheduling of some blood donations. NYBC provides blood to over 200 hospitals in the northeast, including New York and New Jersey, and transfusion-related medical services to over 500 hospitals across the nation. “At this time, we do not have a specific timetable for system restoration,” NYBC said in a statement on its website. “We are working diligently with third-party expe…

Unwanted phone calls are out of control. Whether it’s a robocall trying to sell you something or spam calls from scammers trying to rip you off, it’s enough to make you want to stop answering your phone. So what can you do to stop them? The scourge of unwanted phone calls has been branded an epidemic by consumer groups, while the Federal Communications Commission says it’s the top consumer complaint. The calls are a nuisance to many ordinary people, some of whom have complained to The Associated Press. “I need help on getting spam calls to stop,” one reader said in an email. She’s getting up to 14 calls a day despite the countermeasures she’s employed. As the name impl…

Over the past few weeks, both Meta and Microsoft have announced that they will be conducting company wide performance-based layoffs. Meta even put a marketing spin on the practice of getting rid of employees based on poor performance, calling it “non-regrettable attrition.” On the surface this may make sense: leaders want to ensure every individual at the company is making an impact in some way and contributing to the bottom line. And here’s the biggest mistake that can occur during performance-based layoffs: deciding to embark on this process assuming that there are well-defined goals and metrics for individuals, and a clear understanding of what “good” versus “poor” per…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Doom-and-gloom narratives about artificial intelligence going rogue to the detriment of humans are a staple of popular culture. For some people, just say “AI,” and visions of Skynet from the Terminator movies taking over the world will instantly pop into their heads. Skepticism about AI isn’t just in the realm of science fiction, of course. As AI becomes more mainstream, legitimate concern…

In news outlets, business publications, and scholarly journals, there is a crescendo of commentary about the combined power of human intelligence and artificial intelligence. Without question, that convergence is already yielding exciting discoveries in many fields. Yet a third, equally crucial, kind of intelligence is being left out of the discussion: nature’s intelligence. The idea that nature itself displays the hallmarks of what we understand as intelligence—the ability to learn, to encode those learnings in new, more effective models, and to continually adapt—is not altogether new. Leonardo da Vinci understood this well. Nature was his teacher and his inspira…

Meta Quest 3 users will now be able to explore detailed 3D scans of sculptures, rock formations, plant life, and other interesting objects from around the world. The 3D images, which users can virtually zoom in on or walk around, are part of a new app from Pokémon Go-maker Niantic called Into the Scaniverse. Last year, the company released the latest version of a smartphone Scaniverse app letting users create detailed images of public scenes or objects within their phones, with the ability to add public images to a shared map. Already, the map includes more than 50,000 3D scenes, including renderings of Stonehenge, ancient ruins in Europe, Japanese temples, and even a shr…

In sports, time-outs are a strategic weapon. Super Bowl teams don’t just go full speed from kickoff until the clock runs out; they pause at the right moments to regroup, recalibrate, and regain momentum. In business, the same principle applies. High-performing teams know when to stop, reassess, and make adjustments before forging ahead. Yet, in our relentless, always-on work culture, calling a time-out can feel counterintuitive. Speed is glorified. We celebrate hustle. For many, Mark Zuckerberg’s motto, “Move fast and break things,” has been the dominant approach to innovating in the digital age. And now, with AI supercharging efficiency, the obsession with speed has …

You know you’ve said it. We all have. “Mmm, that looks so delicious—I want to try some!” That’s because when it comes to what we eat, it’s not just a matter of taste. What foods and drinks look like—the colors we see before the first morsels or sips hit our taste buds—have mattered to people for millennia. And nowhere has that been more blatant than the American food palate, where the visual spectrum we choose from includes not only the primary colors but artificial ones that nature couldn’t even dream up. For well over a century, food manufacturers in the United States have used synthetic dyes in their products as part of their production and marketing efforts. O…

A trippy, futuristic grocery store. A pit stop on an interdimensional road trip. A radio station in another realm. These might sound like products of a particularly vivid fever dream, but they’re actually separate exhibitions from Meow Wolf, the immersive entertainment company known for its wild art installations. And now, Meow Wolf is headed to New York City with a brand new otherworldly museum, it was announced today from the stage of SXSW 2025. While the NYC installation’s opening date has yet to be announced, it will be Meow Wolf’s seventh museum overall. The company already operates five distinct experiences in Las Vegas; Grapevine, Texas; Houston; Denver; and Sa…

As global temperatures rise and there’s a seemingly endless series of climate disasters, it’s natural to look to technology as a solution. From carbon capture (where emissions aren’t released into the atmosphere but buried in the ground) to geo-engineering (where particles are sprayed into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and lower temperatures), green innovations are frequently touted as the way to resolve our continued reliance on fossil fuels. But in our eagerness for silver bullets, we may be susceptible to optimism bias, focusing too much on potential benefits while ignoring many of the negative effects or drawbacks. A 2022 essay in Nature argues that many of t…

It doesn’t take long for Christer Collin and Ola Wihlborg to assemble the newest credenza from Ikea. Collin is a 42-year veteran of the company, specializing in product development. Wihlborg is one of the company’s most senior designers, having created dozens of pieces of furniture sold by the retailer since 2004. The two Swedes are lifting parts and turning hex wrenches in a second-floor conference room in Trnava, Slovakia, just outside the capital, Bratislava. This is where Inter Ikea Group (one of two Ikea parent companies) operates one of its more than 30 furniture and furnishings factories through its subsidiary, Ikea Industry, and where a sizable number of the retai…

The chief executive of streaming giant Netflix on Thursday announced a $1 billion investment to produce some 20 films and TV series in Mexico annually over the next four years. Speaking at President Claudia Sheinbaum‘s morning press conference in Mexico City, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said he looked forward to entering more partnerships with producers in the Latin American nation. Sheinbaum said the investments in the film industry should produce many jobs beyond immediate production needs, such as hospitality for actors and crew members, fashion designers and also spur tourism. “It’s an industry that gives a lot of mileage to the economy,” Sheinbaum said. “It’…

Global sustainability models are failing. They’ve been designed to showcase ethical trade and environmental responsibility, but they fundamentally misunderstand how global supply chains operate—especially the critical, unseen work at the beginning of essential value chains such as critical minerals. For decades, these models have burdened African merchants, miners, and farmers—the backbone of global industries from cocoa to lithium—while corporations further along the chain claim the benefits. The systems celebrate end products, like sleek electric vehicles (EVs) or iPhones, while ignoring the heavy lifting at the start of the work, where it’s most difficult. Th…

As I write this, the most pleasing sound is washing over me—gentle waves ebbing and flowing onto the shore. Sadly, I’m not actually on some magnificent tropical beach. Instead, the sounds of the sea are being generated by my Mac. Yet, more than just being pleasing to the ear, this sound, and others the Mac can generate, have helped boost my focus in recent months when I’m under deadline and trying to get work done. The feature is called “Background Sounds.” Here are some of the benefits I’ve gotten from it and how you can use it, too. The pandemic made me realize background sounds help me focus I know some writers who need absolute silence when they are workin…

As a leadership advisor, I’ve worked with countless executives who wrestle with failure—some fearing it to the point of paralysis, others glorifying it without extracting real lessons. Failure is inevitable. Growth is optional. The difference between leaders who thrive and those who stagnate isn’t the absence of failure—it’s how they respond to it. Fear of failure holds many organizations back, stifling creativity, slowing innovation, and fostering a culture of risk aversion. But failure, when embraced correctly, is one of the most powerful catalysts for growth. The problem? Too many leaders either avoid failure altogether or celebrate it without reflection. The k…

Parents, rejoice: For the first time ever, there’s a Lego brick so tiny that you can’t see it, let alone step on it. The brick in question is a microscopic sculpture created by U.K.-based artist David A Lindon. It’s made from a standard red square Lego, and it looks like one, too, aside from the fact that it measures just 0.02517 millimeter by 0.02184 millimeter (about the size of a white blood cell). As of this month, the brick has snagged the Guinness World Record for the smallest-ever handmade sculpture, measuring four times smaller than the previous record holder. We’ve seen lunar Legos, renewable Legos, and giant Legos, but this brick might just be the most i…

Apple rolled out its newest iPhone app called Invites, which lets iCloud+ subscribers create and share invitations to anyone, regardless of whether they have an Apple account or Apple device. Hosts have control over the events. They can choose what details they want included in the invite preview, like a home address and what image to use as a background. The event page also integrates the Maps and Weather apps so that attendees know how to get there and what the forecast will be. Within an event, attendees can manage RSVPs, contribute to Shared Albums dedicated to specific events, and collaborate on Apple Music playlists. Invites is available on the App Store s…

Amazon has agreed to pay nearly $4 million to settle charges that the e-commerce company subsidized its labor costs by taking tips its delivery drivers received from customers, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb said Friday. The settlement came four years after Amazon forked over $61.7 million to resolve a complaint the Federal Trade Commission brought over similar accusations. In 2022, the office of D.C.’s attorney general at the time followed up with a lawsuit alleging Amazon violated the District’s consumer protection laws by misleading residents about how tips paid digitally were used. According to the lawsuit, the affected drivers were…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists use an economic model known as the Zillow Market Heat Index to gauge the competitiveness of housing markets across the country. This model looks at key indicators—including home price changes, inventory levels, and days on market—to generate a score showing whether a housing market favors sellers or buyers. Higher scores point to hotter, seller-friendly metro housing markets. Lower scores signal cooler markets where buyers hold more negotiating power. According to Zillow, a score of 70 or above means it’s a “strong sellers mark…

Today, no matter where you are in the world, it’s not unusual to find yourself working alongside an analyst from Amsterdam, a strategist from San Francisco, or a designer from Dubai. As companies look increasingly further afield for workers, they unlock a range of benefits—from wider talent pools that make it easier to find specialized talent to the injection of new perspectives that offer insights into diverse customer bases. While most business leaders agree that developing the right workplace model is crucial to their company’s success, only 24% feel their organization is actually ready to fully embrace a distributed workforce. The list of potential reasons for thi…