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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists use an economic model they call 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 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: Score of 70 or higher = strong seller’s market Score f…

It’s shaping up to be a busy year for initial public offerings from some of the most closely watched companies. Rumors have been floating around for a while now that SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space company, and Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind Claude, could make their market debuts in the summer and by the end of 2026, respectively. And now, a report says that OpenAI—Anthropic’s main competitor, and the owner of ChatGPT—could go public before the end of the year, too. Here’s what you need to know about OpenAI’s rumored IPO plans. OpenAI may go public in 2026 A report from the Wall Street Journal yesterday has investors buzzing: ChatGPT owner…

The following sentence might cause anxiety. As Thanksgiving looms near, it’s time to begin holiday shopping. The current level of inflation makes that even more stressful. How can you show your love without breaking the bank? It turns out, shoppers are turning to off-price retailers such as Ross, T.J. Maxx, and HomeGoods, according to recent earnings reports and data from location analytics company Placer.ai. Let’s break down the numbers. Ross Stores posts rosy earnings It’s fair to say that Jim Conroy, CEO of Ross Stores, is very pleased with the third-quarter earnings report released on Thursday, November 20. The company earned $1.58 per share…

As best I can tell, the über-wealthy believe the world as we know it is ending, that there won’t be enough to go around, and that this means they need to accumulate as much money and land as possible in order to position themselves for the end of days. The way they do that is with an induced form of “disaster capitalism,” where they intentionally crash the economy in order to have some control over what remains. So the function of tariffs, for example, is to bankrupt businesses or even public services in order to privatize and then control them. Stall imports, put the ports out of business, and then let a sovereign wealth fund purchase the ports. Or as is happening r…

Time capsules are designed to be resilient by nature. But no time capsule has survived as long as designers hope “America’s Time Capsule” will. The time capsule, designed for the semiquincentennial of the U.S. founding, is being created by America250, the nonpartisan, congressionally mandated group organizing commemorations for this year. The plan is to bury the time capsule underground in Philadelphia at Independence National Historical Park on July 4, and for it to be opened in another 250 years, in 2276. The problem is time capsules, which are typically buried underground, and exposed to the elements, don’t really last that long. “We’ve unburied some time …

When people complain about a lack of work-life balance, they’re typically feeling that they are spending too much time working. They may be spending a lot of combined time at the office and commuting, or just putting in a lot of hours both at work and at home. Fixing that problem can’t be done abstractly, though. If you’re going to address the balance of work and life activities, you have to start getting specific about where your time is going and where you really want it to go. Think about how you’re spending your time. At work, you’re spending time in meetings, writing documents, engaging with clients, or doing particular technical tasks like coding. Similarly,…

Generative artificial intelligence technology is rapidly reshaping education in unprecedented ways. With its potential benefits and risks, K-12 schools are actively trying to adapt teaching and learning. But as schools seek to navigate into the age of generative AI, there’s a challenge: Schools are operating in a policy vacuum. While a number of states offer guidance on AI, only a couple of states require local schools to form specific policies, even as teachers, students, and school leaders continue to use generative AI in countless new ways. As a policymaker noted in a survey, “You have policy and what’s actually happening in the classrooms—those are two very differ…

Universal Pictures’ two-part Wicked gamble continues to defy gravity at the box office. Just a year after part one brought droves of audiences to movie theaters around the country, even more people bought opening weekend tickets to see the epic conclusion, Wicked: For Good. According to studio estimates on Sunday, Wicked: For Good earned $150 million from North American theaters in its first days in theaters and $226 million globally. Not only is it the biggest opening ever for a Broadway musical adaptation, unseating the record set by the first film’s $112 million launch, it’s also the second biggest debut of the year behind A Minecraft Movie’s $162 million. “The…

Benson Lu’s life revolves around Pokémon. The 26-year-old has played the mobile game Pokémon Go every day for a decade, watches the animated show every week, goes to the local card shop in his Los Angeles suburb to play the brand’s trading card game every week, and has a whopping collection of cards worth more than $70,000. “I don’t remember when was the last day I did not think about Pokémon at all,” he said. In the 30 years since Pokémon debuted in Japan with the 1996 release of Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green for Nintendo Game Boy, the franchise has taken over the globe with its animated shows, mobile games and highly coveted trading cards. Its popularity continues wi…

Most of the executive teams I work with have been investing in AI for a few years. The ones who are frustrated are not the skeptics. They are the believers whose programs have not connected to the P&L. They have the pilots, the internal momentum, the board slide showing everything in flight. What they do not have is a clear line between that activity and business performance, and at this point in the AI cycle, that gap is no longer acceptable. I spent several years running AI at scale inside Kroger and its data science subsidiary 84.51°, where we processed millions of predictions per second across thousands of store locations. We measured work in margin, basket si…

Nissan is recalling thousands of its 2025 and 2026 vehicles due to a flaw which could potentially cause the door to open while driving, increasing the risk of injury or a crash, according to a notice from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Nissan North America, Inc. is recalling approximately 26,432 vehicles, including certain “2025 Altima, Sentra, 2025-2026 Frontier, and 2026 Kicks” because the door strikers, which hold the door in place, may have been improperly welded and can break. The company estimates about 1% have the defect that prompted the recall. “Customers may notice a rattling noise from the door striker if only one side of …

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company,covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. I’m dedicating this week’s newsletter to a conversation I had with the main author of Anthropic’s new and improved “constitution,” the document it uses to govern the outputs of its models and its Claude chatbot. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X @thesullivan. A necessary update Amid growin…

It’s that time again. The calendar has flipped, the resolutions are written, and you’re probably sitting in your office chair at your office desk looking at a lukewarm cup of office coffee, wondering if you’ve really got another year of fluorescent lights and “serendipitous” coworker interactions in you. Let’s make a pact: No more. It’s time to find a great remote job. Unfortunately, you can’t find 21st-century work using 20th-century methods. If you’re still scrolling through the generic “Big Box” job boards and getting buried in 5,000 applications for one role, you’re doing it wrong. Instead, here are the five sites you should check first when you’re looking…

Chain stores have Black Friday. Online marketplaces have Cyber Monday. For local businesses, it’s Small Business Saturday. In the last 20 years, more segments of the retail industry have vied for their own piece of the holiday shopping season. The travel trade has firmly joined the trend with another post-Thanksgiving sales push: Travel Tuesday. On the same day as the nonprofit world’s Giving Tuesday, airlines, hotels, cruise ship companies, travel booking platforms and tour operators get in on the annual spirit to spend by promoting one-day deals. Consumer advocates say there are legitimate savings to be had but also chances to be misled by marketing that conveys a fal…

Scott Adams, the creator of the uber-popular and satirical comic strip Dilbert, has died. He passed away on January 13, after announcing his diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer last spring. He was 68. On Tuesday morning, the cartoonist’s former wife, Shelly Miles, shared the news of his death during a livestream on X. Miles read from a statement that Adams had prepared himself for the occasion. “I had an amazing life,” the statement said. “I gave it everything I had. If you got any benefits from my work, I’m asking you to pay it forward as best you can. That is the legacy I want. Be useful. And please know I loved you all to the very end.” Dilbert was fi…

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating a salmonella outbreak linked to dietary supplement powder that left 45 people sick and a dozen people hospitalized across the country. In the wake of the outbreak, New York-based Superfoods, Inc. has issued a voluntary recall of Live it Up-brand Super Greens dietary supplement powder in the original and wild berry flavors. However, the FDA cautions that additional products might join the recall during its investigation. “To determine a source of contamination, FDA is conducting a traceback investigation of products ill people reported consuming before becoming ill and is working with state partners to sample…

Many resources exist about how to perform well in a formal job interview, but what’s talked about less is how to manage an informal conversation about a job opportunity where the format and success criteria are more ambiguous. The conversation is typically held away from the office over coffee, or even drinks and the ‘interviewer’ may not be taking any notes. These informal discussions most commonly occur at the start and end of a process. However, as headhunter Basil Leroux told me ‘nothing is ever really informal, as opinions and judgements are always being formed.’ In my work as an Executive Career Coach, I often see leaders fail to maximize an ‘informal chat’ as p…

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, said on Friday it will start including ads for those who use the app for free, or have the cheapest subscription, ChatGPT Go. In the coming weeks, the company plans to start testing those ads in the U.S., which will directly relate to user prompts and conversations, “so more people can benefit from our tools with fewer usage limits or without having to pay,” the company said. According to OpenAI, the ads will be “clearly labeled” at the bottom of the chat and users can turn off personalization if they want. As for whether the ads will influence the answers ChatGPT provides, OpenAI said the “responses are driven by what’s objective…

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 …

Having a baby isn’t cheap, but sometimes, even the delivery alone can be a crushing burden on families. According to a new survey, even moms who are insured can end up saddled with medical debt that adds to the financial stress of growing a family. What To Expect, a website that provides new and expecting parents with resources, surveyed 3,285 women on their experiences with labor and delivery charges. The research found that one in four moms have gone into debt due to the costs associated with giving birth. The survey found that, on average, moms are leaving the hospital with around $3,000 in debt. And that’s before the baby expenses—diapers, formula, daycare!—…

People know when a brand genuinely cares about well-being—for employees, customers, and humanity at large. In many cases, it’s an intangible truth they can simply feel—in how they’re treated, how decisions get made, and whether a company’s stated values actually show up in practice. Plenty of brands talk about purpose and people. Fewer live it. And the difference is increasingly obvious. That gap is why “brand well-being” is emerging as a meaningful framework for companies that want to build durable growth—not just short-term performance. At its core, brand well-being recognizes that a brand isn’t a logo or a campaign. It’s a living ecosystem made up of people, cultur…

Tests of ByHeart infant formula tied to a botulism outbreak that has sickened dozens of babies showed that all of the company’s products may have been contaminated. Laboratory tests of 36 samples of formula from three different lots showed that five samples contained the type of bacteria that can lead to the rare and potentially deadly illness, the company said Monday on its website. “Based on these results, we cannot rule out the risk that all ByHeart formula across all product lots may have been contaminated,” the company wrote. At least 31 babies in 15 states who consumed ByHeart formula have been sickened in the outbreak that began in August, according to …

It’s long been the uniform of management consultants and finance bros, but now the humble quarter zip is being embraced by a rather unexpected demographic. ​​Over the past few weeks, FYPs have become dominated by the workwear staple. Young men who previously might’ve been seen exclusively in Nike Tech, have now traded them in for quarter zip sweaters. Across social media, they are sharing styling tips and hosting meetups at malls, all clad in business-casual. The trend gained widespread attention when, in early November, TikToker @whois.jason shared a video of himself sipping a matcha (the beverage of choice for the ‘performative male’) with a friend. Both are we…

As Americans increasingly report feeling overwhelmed by daily life, many are using self-care to cope. Conversations and social media feeds are saturated with the language of “me time,” burnout, boundaries, and nervous system regulation. To meet this demand, the wellness industry has grown into a multitrillion-dollar global market. Myriad providers offer products, services, and lifestyle prescriptions that promise calm, balance, and restoration. Paradoxically, though, even as interest in self-care continues to grow, Americans’ mental health is getting worse. I am a professor of public health who studies health behaviors and the gap between intentions and outcom…

The Thanksgiving travel period is in full swing. Today is the last day before Thanksgiving, which means millions of Americans will be taking to the skies to reach their holiday destinations. And myriad more will also be traveling to airports to pick up their incoming loved ones. But on one of the busiest travel days of the year, flight delays and cancellations are inevitable. Here are some tools to track delays, along with information on which airports are currently experiencing the worst delays and cancellations. FAA says this is the busiest Thanksgiving travel period in 15 years Earlier this week, Fast Company reported on the American Automobile Association (…