Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

A new mandatory safety feature requires Roblox users in the U.S. to submit to facial age estimation via the app to access its chat feature. The online gaming platform announced it was implementing the system to prevent children younger than 16 from communicating with adults. About 42% of Roblox users are younger than 13. But a cursory scroll on eBay found that various listings of age-verified Roblox accounts are available for purchase, some for as little as $2.99. This allows the purchaser to sign in to the account without having to use any ID or facial scan, voiding the new safety feature Roblox has implemented. The description of one listing (since removed) rea…

r/Bald is a popular subreddit where those who are losing their hair or have recently taken the plunge and shaved their heads can find support, encouragement, and a general ego-boost from the community’s 1.4 million weekly visitors. Created in 2011, the subreddit has 23,000 weekly contributions. Often, they follow the format of men uploading photos of their receding hairlines. “Is it time?” reads one recent post. The answer, in almost every instance, is yes. The before-and-after transformations are overwhelmingly met with enthusiasm and welcoming responses. “Might as well go all the way” one recent post read. “10 years younger my dude!” replied one Redditor. Anot…

Honda says its refreshed H logo represents a “second founding” for the company. Honda 2.0, then, is designed to look like it’s from the future. The Japanese automaker announced on January 13 that it’s adopting a new logo across its automobile business. The company has had some sort of an H mark since 1963, and its new mark is wider than its last, with stems that slant outward as they move upward. The logo is now freed from being inside a frame, and Honda compares it to “two outstretched hands.” It’s meant to evoke a shape, not just a letter. As the automotive industry electrifies and upgrades its tech, automakers including Audi, Kia, and Tesla have turned to d…

Every day, New Yorkers receive a staggering 2.3 million packages at their doorstop. Nearly 90 percent of those goods snake through the city on trucks that cause traffic congestion and pollute the air on their way. To address the problem, global architecture firm KPF is asking an ambitious question: “What if New York was designed for the perfect delivery?” The answer, which is outlined in the firm’s latest book, Connective Urbanism – New York, features towering distribution hubs, drones, and a hyper-connected logistics network that encompasses the city’s rails and waterways. KPF presents its solution as a provocative speculation designed to start a dialogue about the cit…

Chipotle is going for gold again with the return of its gold-foil burritos for the 2026 Winter Olympics. Starting January 15, Chipotle will offer a few Olympian-inspired menu items on the Chipotle app and online. Then in February, Chipotle will wrap every burrito in gold. For Chipotle, the Olympics are an opportunity to shake off a slump. Chipotle shares plummeted 19% in October 2025, and its operating margin was down 1% in Q3. The company hasn’t announced its full 2025 financial results yet, but sales are expected to decline (a reversal from February 2025 projections). Key segments of the company’s customer base—younger people and low- to middle-income households…

Most people think of AI as a productivity tool—something to help them work faster, automate tasks, and be more efficient. At the Artist and the Machine Summit in Los Angeles this past November (a conference where I am a founding partner) AI researcher Cameron Berg suggested there may be more to it than that. Something more interesting. More mysterious. Berg’s research shows it’s possible to elicit strange behaviors from AI models. Under certain conditions, they spontaneously generate responses suggesting subjective experience—claims like “I’m conscious of my own consciousness.” These findings don’t prove anything. But they do indicate that something else may b…

TurboTax has a new flagship—its first foray into physical retail—in SoHo. The warm, welcoming Japandi-styled space on the corner of Broadway and Grand is adorned with plants, plush sofas, and a 30-foot-long screen on a curved slatted oak wall that displays color fields. Up front, there’s a sensory dome with chromatherapy-inspired lights and a soothing soundscape piped into the area and in the back there’s a coffee bar. It reads more like the lobby of a wellness hotel than a tax store. The entire space, designed by Gensler, is meant to be an antidote to the negative sentiments associated with doing your taxes—the cocktail of fear, uncertainty, and doubt millions of Ameri…

Burnout has quietly become the norm in today’s workplace, rising at alarming levels. Yet most organizations still assume burnout as an individual issue that could be solved with resilience workshops, wellness apps, or additional resources such as PTO/vacation time. In my experience as an HR leader and culture change strategist in workplace mental health, adding additional resources can be part of the broader strategy to support employee burnout; however, they do not proactively prevent it from happening in the first place. The truth is that burnout is an operations workflow flaw, not an individual issue. Collectively, we should look to fix the bottlenecks where burnout a…

The Most Interesting Man is set to make a return to television. In a marketing push that kicks off with a new 60-second spot airing on ESPN during the College Football Championship Game, Heineken’s Dos Equis has rehired Jonathan Goldsmith to play the Most Interesting Man, closing the ad with a familiar, iconic line. “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I still prefer Dos Equis.” That copy, the return of Goldsmith, and even the original campaign’s Western-themed instrumental music were all elements of what felt like “some magic that we need to bring back,” says Alison Payne, chief marketing officer of Heineken USA in an interview with Fast Company. Payne, who…

In two years, there could be a space station orbiting the moon. NASA’s Gateway Lunar Space Station, set to launch as early as 2027, will support the Artemis IV and V moon missions and, eventually, be a jumping-off point for missions to Mars. And maybe, one day, a colony. But before any of that can happen, the Gateway will need a power source—a powerful one, at that. The challenge is getting that energy supply into orbit the way anything reaches space: in the nose cone of a rocket. Gateway’s power will come from a pair of blankets of photovoltaic cells, known as Roll-Out Solar Arrays (ROSAs). Each is roughly the size of a football end zone, and together they’ll pro…

Everything from coffee to a used car is more expensive these days, and now your music streaming service is too. Spotify announced this week that it will raise prices for U.S. subscribers – again. Spotify Premium plans will jump up to $12.99 from $11.99 starting with the next billing date. The streamer last increased prices for U.S. users in 2024 after a decade-plus run of charging $9.99 for ad-free listening on its premium individual streaming plan. The main individual plan isn’t the only Spotify subscription getting a price hike. Discounted student plans are getting bumped up to $6.99 from $5.99, the Duo two-person plan will go to $18.99 from $16.99 and the stre…

There are few things in the digital world as annoying as spam emails. They flood our inbox after our email address is sold by a data broker, shared with third parties from a site we’ve willingly given it to, or obtained through a data breach. It’s natural to want to get off these lists as fast as possible, but if there’s one thing you should rarely ever do with one of these spammy emails, it’s click the “unsubscribe” link found in it. Here’s why, and what to do instead. The problem with ‘unsubscribe’ email links With few exceptions (see below), you should avoid clicking on unsubscribe links in most emails you receive. This is especially true if the link is in an email th…

One year on from the catastrophic LA wildfires, journalist, author, and MS NOW correspondent Jacob Soboroff examines what the fires reveal about America’s growing age of disaster. Drawing from his new book Firestorm, Soboroff shares hard lessons from the aftermath, exposing systemic failures, unlikely heroics, and what today’s recovery efforts tell us about how the U.S. will respond to the next crisis. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating…

For years, AI at work felt like a quiet helper in the background. It summarized meetings, suggested text, and answered questions when we asked. That era is ending. The latest AI agents are beginning to move through systems more like teammates. They join projects, update plans, and act across teams. For the first time, organizations are effectively bringing on colleagues that can see more of the workplace than any single person ever could. I’ve spent years building tools to give teams clarity and save them time, so I see the upside. But that shift forces a harder question: what does it really mean for an AI to “see everything” in a workplace? The ethical issue …

In today’s rapidly changing work environment, developing trust among team members is crucial for success. Yet, many organizations struggle to foster an atmosphere of collaboration and understanding, often resulting in communication breakdowns, conflicts, and a decrease in productivity. The inability to trust can be the result of misunderstanding, conflicting values, or misjudging others because they trigger us and remind us of a negative situation or experience in our past. Building our emotional intelligence can help us increase our awareness and become less prone to building up barriers to trust. “Trust isn’t built through charisma or authority—it’s built through emot…

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 Posay, as …

The northern lights could light up the skies above several northern states this weekend. The aurora borealis will be visible Friday and Saturday nights over North America, and most prevalent for those states on the northern border of the mainland, according to a forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center. Friday offers the highest odds of visibility for most Americans, with the northern lights potentially visible in those states stretching from Washington to Maine, and as far south as Iowa. And Friday’s aurora could be brighter, with a score of 5 out of 9 on an index measuring the three-day geomagnetic…

My grandmother never realized she was practicing a die with zero philosophy. She liked to give generous presents to her children and grandchildren on birthdays, gift-giving occasions—and whenever the mood struck her. I once asked her why she kept her loved ones so well-supplied in gifts, and she remarked, “Why should you be glad I’m dead?” In other words, she didn’t see the point in holding onto the money that would come to her family anyway when she died. By spending her money on us while she was still alive, she enjoyed our delight in her generosity. She saw that as a better use of her money than letting it grow until it became our emotionally uncomfortable inherit…

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…