Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Hiring an executive assistant (EA) to delegate work tasks and life admin to has long been something reserved for celebrities and Fortune 500 executives. But that belief might now be changing, as rank-and-file workers decide they, too, want a taste of the EA experience. As Callum Borchers wrote earlier this month in The Wall Street Journal, more workers outside the C-suite are finding assistants—virtual, in person, or AI, and sometimes just for a couple of hours a month—to help with everything from booking bouncy castles to managing work calendars. Nowadays, everyone’s schedules are packed right down to the last minute. Plus, labor has never been easier to offload…

The government shutdown that began Wednesday will deprive policymakers and investors of economic data vital to their decision-making at a time of unusual uncertainty about the direction of the U.S. economy. The absence will be felt almost immediately, as the government’s monthly jobs report scheduled for release Friday will likely be delayed. A weekly report on the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits — a proxy for layoffs that is typically published on Thursdays — will also be postponed. If the shutdown is short-lived, it won’t be very disruptive. But if the release of economic data is delayed for several weeks or longer, it could pose challenges, particul…

Truly unlocking the value of AI is about more than new technology; it’s about leadership. Now that artificial intelligence is giving employees back hours of time every day, organizations must help their workers reimagine their roles beyond routine output and start contributing in ways that AI can’t. View the full article

If you handle hiring, generic AI-generated cover letters are probably a familiar foe by now. Nearly two-thirds of job seekers are using AI to help craft their applications. It’s understandable. In a world where some job seekers are having to send up to 50 applications to land a role, tools like ChatGPT enable them to cast their net wide and increase their chances. But this spray-and-pray approach to job hunting is a headache for hiring managers. It’s driving the volume of applications up and the quality down, making it harder to spot great candidates. The natural knee-jerk reaction from HR is to start playing a game of “I spy AI.” If we can just root out the …

A major Japanese beverage producer says it has been hit by a cyberattack that left its operations disrupted for the fifth day on Friday, and Japanese media are reporting that stocks of the company’s popular beer and other beverages are running low in some stores. Asahi Group Holdings said its computer systems were hit by a cyberattack on Monday, creating glitches that have affected orders, shipments, and a customer call center in Japan. Overseas systems were not affected. A company spokeswoman told the Associated Press on Friday that the problem had still not been fixed, though some emergency shipments were made on Wednesday, with employees entering information into com…

The AI arms race turned a new page on Monday, as OpenAI and chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced that the two have agreed to a new partnership to create new data centers powered by AMD’s chips. The deal could also see OpenAI take a roughly 10% stake in AMD. Specifically, the partnership sees OpenAI committing to buying 6 gigawatts of AMD GPU chips, with the initial gigawatt deployment scheduled for the second half of 2026. The deal will ultimately see OpenAI deploy the remaining gigawatts over multiple years and multiple hardware generations. The deal also sees AMD issuing a warrant for as many as 160 million shares of AMD stock to OpenAI. Those shares…

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Ear-splitting ads on Netflix and Hulu are no more—at least if you live in California. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Monday that requires streaming services to prevent commercials from cranking the volume when they think the viewer might have popped into the next room for a snack. Unlike many pieces of legislation, California SB 576 is short and sweet. Starting next July, any streamer that serves video to California residents “shall not transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany.” The bill cites a federal version of the law designed for traditional broadcast TV, extending the rules to …

Camping. Why anyone would put themselves through an odyssey of gross insects and pooping in holes is beyond me, but you do you, Steve. I’ll do me. However, if I were forced to go sleep in the woods, I would like to use this new camping mattress by Chinese sleep startup Mazzu created in collaboration with London-based design studio Layer. It looks like the closest thing to a Four Seasons bed this side of the Rio Grande. Or any río (just don’t get me close to a river). The Mazzu Camping Mattress isn’t your typical inflatable pad that promises comfort on-the-go but delivers back pain for a week. It’s built around 72 precision-engineered elastic spring units—pre-c…

Square, the point-of-sale system owned by Jack Dorsey’s Block, is announcing a number of new upgrades today—including one that will make it easier for business owners to accept payments in Bitcoin. On Wednesday, the company made three announcements: An expansion of its platform for restaurants (including AI-voice ordering and a bigger, broader Grubhub integration) A conversational AI assistant embedded in its dashboard to answer questions, called Square AI Square Bitcoin: An integrated Bitcoin payment and wallet system for business owners The upgrades and announcements are designed to help business owners control their costs, dig up more insights withi…

I grew up in the Netherlands, so I know the upsides of living in Europe. I also know how hard it is to build a company here. The rules change across borders, funding is limited, and things move slower than they should. When we started Remote, we knew we had to think globally but also anchor in the U.S. It’s the biggest tech market, and succeeding there gives you the best chance to scale everywhere else. That choice wasn’t unique to us. More and more European founders are making the same call. What’s changed is the timing of the move. Expanding to the U.S. used to happen once companies were well-established in Europe. Now they’re showing up earlier and moving faster. …

The J.M. Smucker Co. says it doesn’t have a problem with other companies selling their own prepackaged, crustless sandwiches like its own popular Smucker’s Uncrustables. They just have to get their own design. Uncrustables is on its way to becoming a $1 billion brand, so of course there will be knockoffs, but according to Smucker, a recent Trader Joe’s version of Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches is a bit too blatant. The company is using the design of the Trader Joe’s product and packaging to prove its point in a new lawsuit. Smucker accused the grocery store chain of “an obvious attempt to trade off of the fame and recognition” of Uncrustab…

Every day another industry leader proclaims that everything will change with AI. While there is no question AI is the most transformative tech shift since the industrial revolution, all the hype means leaders lack real answers about how those changes will roll out or improve critical decisions that will impact the future of their business. As the CEO of a technology company that has invested over $2 billion in evolving our cloud and managed services platform over the past 14 years, I have seen firsthand how foundational innovation sets the stage for transformational leaps. Two years ago, we recognized that AI had matured from future potential to strategic imperative—p…

People remember many things about Windows 95, which turned 30 a couple of months ago. There were its signature new features, such as the Start Button, taskbar, and long file names. The launch event—hosted by Jay Leno—at Microsoft’s campus. The TV commercials with the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.” The crowds of PC users so eager to get their hands on the upgrade that they descended on computer stores at midnight. Here’s a fact about Windows 95 that isn’t exactly iconic: It was the first voice-enabled version of Microsoft’s operating system. A collection of technologies known as the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI) provided support for speech recognition and synthesis, lett…

During a recent New York Fashion Week, a wood-paneled boutique popped up in SoHo next to Louis Vuitton and Bottega Veneta. On the racks were tailored, wide-leg jeans and simple black Henley dresses that signaled understated elegance. But unlike those of neighboring boutiques, the clothes weren’t from a storied European maison de couture. They were some of the newest collections from Scoop and Free Assembly, two brands led by Brandon Maxwell, creative director at the House of Walmart. The pop-up—which featured items priced between $8 and $75—was part of the Bentonville, Arkansas–based retailer’s strategy to get its products in front of urban shoppers who might not be f…

When the lights finally dimmed at the 2025 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show last night, the first thing guests saw was a gold light emanating from backstage. Model Jasmine Tookes, nine months pregnant, opened the show in a gold macramé dress with drop pearls and a pearl and crystal wing in the shape of a clamshell. Art buffs might notice that the shell is a callback to Sandro Boticelli’s renaissance painting “Birth of Venus,” symbolizing sensuality, divine beauty, rebirth, and new beginnings. The cultural reference is a more elevated and considered nod to womanhood than the show’s previous themes, which have included “Santa’s Helpers” or “delicious sweets.” The loo…

The most common email messages I receive these days are obviously AI-generated pitches for guests to appear on my podcast. They all begin the same way, with a praising reference to one of my recent episodes—usually the second-to-last posted show. “Your recent interview with so-and-so was penetrating, and got to the heart of the problem of x or y.” Then comes the crucial pivot: “John Dough’s work takes that problem even further . . .” And then the pitch for John Dough to be on the podcast. The problem is not just that the publicist used AI to shotgun the known universe of podcasters with pitches artificially customized to their shows. It’s that the comparisons and con…

If you’ve noticed that the internet feels different lately—more cluttered, harder to navigate—you’re not imagining it. The system is breaking down in real time, and by 2026, researchers predict that 90% of web content will be AI-generated. Quality journalism is disappearing behind paywalls while feeds fill with noise designed purely to capture attention. An innovation that was supposed to democratize information is now drowning us in it. I know this intimately because I helped build it. As founder of AppNexus, which sold to AT&T for $1.6 billion, and former CTO of Right Media, I created the technology that became the backbone of digital advertising, a multibillion…

If there’s any doubt whether people are willing to pay $900 for a premium credit card, just look at the latest quarterly results for American Express: The credit card issuer reported Friday that it beat third-quarter earnings estimates and raised its full-year outlook. It’s been a month since American Express refreshed its Platinum line of credit cards, raising the annual fee by $200 to $895, and that change is already paying dividends. The company has seen “strong” demand for these cards and more than 500,000 people have requested the New York-based issuer’s new pocket mirror card. “The initial customer demand and engagement exceeded our expectations, with new U…

For decades now, Google has been the unquestioned champion of search—our digital oracle, the first and last stop for every question, from “What’s the best pizza place near me?” to “How many protons are in a carbon atom?” But here’s the key difference now: while Google has started to incorporate AI with features like AI Overviews and the new AI Mode, a traditional keyword search is great for finding facts, but not so great at understanding context. It’s like asking a librarian for a book on “dogs” and expecting them to know you really want to know how to train a puppy. You might get a whole library, but you still have to find the right book yourself. That’s w…

Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN and HBO, announced Tuesday that it is up for sale after receiving unsolicited interest from multiple potential buyers. The news adds a new wrinkle to an already-planned shakeup at the media giant. In June, WBD announced plans to cleave the company into two separate publicly traded companies. The company’s streaming and studio brands—which include HBO, HBO Max, Warner Bros. Pictures, and New Line Cinema—would be part of Warner Bros., while Discovery Global would oversee its cable networks that include CNN, TNT Sports, and Discovery. Though it’s not abandoning plans to split the company, WBD indicated in its announce…

This month, Southwest Airlines unveiled a new cabin design that’s already rolling out in new planes across its fleet. It includes slimmer seats, updated amenities, and lots and lots of blue. The new cabin was revealed on October 14, and there are currently six aircrafts in operation with the revamped design. For Southwest, this design is part of what it calls a larger “transformational plan.” So far, that plan has included nixing some of its most iconic brand features—like its “bags fly free” policy and flat cost open seating arrangement—in order to compete in an airline industry that’s increasingly reliant on charging ancillary, “premium” fees to drive up profits. …

There are bigger, better-known tech brands than Logitech, but few have ever rivaled its quiet but pervasive impact on how people engage with the digital world. Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, but with equally deep roots in Silicon Valley, the 44-year-old company helped to popularize once-unfamiliar devices such as computer mice and webcams. Those are still two of its marquee product lines. But Logitech also makes a dizzying array of other accoutrements for personal and business computing, including keyboards, headphones, speakers, microphones, videoconferencing equipment, tablet accessories, gaming controllers, and more. Despite playing in a variety of categor…