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The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage edged higher this week to just above its 2025 low. The average long-term mortgage rate rose to 6.16%, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. That’s up slightly from 6.15% last week, when the average rate dropped to its lowest level since October 3, 2024. One year ago, the rate averaged 6.93%. Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, rose this week to 5.46% from 5.44% the previous week. A year ago, it averaged 6.14%, Freddie Mac said. Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond marke…

The beginning of a new year ushers in an ominous day in the NFL: Black Monday, the day when coaches are (typically) most at risk of losing their jobs. Black Monday happens the day after the regular season ends, a time when an especially harsh backward review is cast over the wins, losses, and total misses. The casualty list includes Raheem Morris, who lost his job with the Atlanta Falcons on January 4; Kevin Stefanski, Pete Carroll, and Jonathan Gannon (Arizona Cardinals), who were each fired on Black Friday by the Cleveland Browns, Las Vegas Raiders, and Arizona Cardinals, respectively; John Harbaugh, who was fired by the Baltimore Ravens on January 6; and Mike McDa…

Rumors have been circulating online that Microsoft is preparing to cut tens of thousands of jobs. TipRanks reported that the company is “considering massive layoffs” this month, potentially eliminating between 11,000 and 22,000 roles across the Azure Cloud, Xbox, and global sales teams. According to The Seattle Times, the claims appear to have originated on anonymous online forums like Reddit and Blind before rapidly spreading across Bluesky and X, drawing widespread attention and, in turn, swift denials from Microsoft executives. Microsoft’s chief communications officer, Frank X. Shaw, took to X to refute the rumors, calling them “100 percent made up/speculative…

What you do? It starts with what you know. Here are seven ways to learn faster and retain more. 1. Test yourself. A classic study published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest shows self-testing is an extremely effective way to speed up the learning process. Partly that’s because of the additional context you create. Test yourself and answer incorrectly, and not only are you more likely to remember the right answer after you look it up, but you’ll also remember the fact you didn’t remember. (Especially if you tend to be hard on yourself.) So, don’t just rehearse your sales pitch. Test yourself on what comes after your intro. Test yourself by…

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s the next phase of expansion planned by Walmart and drone company Wing. The companies plan to roll out additional locations for drone delivery in metropolitan hubs like Los Angeles, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Miami this year in what they call “the next chapter of the world’s largest drone delivery expansion.” This expansion adds to the 100 stores already planned in metro areas like Orlando and Houston. The drones are expected to start flying in the latter city this week. The expansion will increase Walmart and Wing’s network to more than 270 locations across the country in 2027. “Whether it’s a last-minute ingredient for dinner o…

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 em…

All eyes are on Netflix, which is set to report fourth-quarter earnings after Tuesday’s closing bell. In the ongoing saga over whether will Netflix will acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the streaming giant is now offering to pay all cash for the deal, revising a previous bid that included a mix of stock with cash, according to filing from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). On Tuesday, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery announced the amended agreement, which simplifies the deal for investors who no longer have to worry about Netflix’s fluctuating stock price. The news comes as Netflix continues to stave off a hostile takeover bid from rival Skydanc…

A relatively new category of solopreneur is booming, and its ascent is challenging perceptions of what it means to be self-employed. Since 2018 demand for fractional expertise—or specialized talent that works for one or many firms on a limited or part-time basis—has tripled, according to a recent study by workforce intelligence company Revelio Labs. The most popular part-time executive position, according to the study, is CFO, which makes up 18% of fractional executive roles, followed by CMO at 14% and CEO at 10%. Revelio Labs’ chief economist Lisa Simon says the skyrocketing demand for fractional executives is largely a function of the current job market. She exp…

Spend an hour talking to 37signals CEO Jason Fried, and you’ll find yourself drawn into his fixation on three frustrating facts about productivity tools today: They’re boring. They’re complicated. They’re overpacked with overhyped AI features that fail to do what they promise and end up providing little in the way of practical value. Those same realities are the reason Fried decided to launch Fizzy—a new app that aims to reinvent organization software by undoing everything that’s happened to it over the past several years. Challenging current standards is nothing new to 37signals, of course. Fried and his fellow face-of-the-company David Heinemeier Hans…

From greater flexibility to a sense of ownership and the hope of financial gain, solopreneurship feels like the new American dream. However, there’s a hidden cost to that dream that has nothing to do with the unending hustle that comes with being both a business owner and that business’s sole employee. It’s the undeniable cost to the planet. In 2025, about 41 million businesses in the U.S. were run by a sole individual who is both its owner and only employee. As AI allows for solopreneurs to automate a growing number of tasks, the technology is enabling small businesses—from gigs like content creation to event planner or even niche work like dog grooming or jewelry ma…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Among the 24 price forecasts tracked by ResiClub in our final 2026 home price forecast roundup, the average prediction is a +1.43% increase in U.S. home prices in 2026. Keep in mind that roundup mentioned above looks at forecasts for nationally aggregated home prices. On a regional and neighborhood basis, home price swings can vary greatly from the national figure. For example, on a year-over-year basis, U.S. home prices as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index are up +0.1%, while home prices in the Hartford-East Hartford-Middletown, Connecticut me…

How can you win love and loyalty from your customers, your employees, your fans—and even the people in your life? Taylor Swift answered this question perfectly with just one word: “Overdeliver.” Overdelivering will impress your customers, create loyal employees and fans, and make all your relationships stronger. “I wanted to overserve the fans in terms of the amount of songs that they were going to hear and how far I was going to push myself,” she says in her new docuseries, The End of an Era. As you likely know, she made good on that plan. The Eras Tour show ran three-and-a-half hours, divided into 10 distinct eras covering different albums. Then she added another er…

The 68th annual Grammy Awards will take place Feb. 1 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. This year marks a return to normalcy after the 2025 award show was altered to focus on supporting relief efforts following the devastating Los Angeles-area wildfires. “I think we will see some history-making moments,” Recording Academy CEO and President Harvey Mason jr. told The Associated Press. “With artists being nominated in categories they haven’t been previously nominated in, and a new crop of talent coming through the system this year — I think we’re going to see some really exciting results.” Here’s what you need to know about the 2026 Grammys, including how to str…

A new neighborhood under construction near Sacramento, California, in the rolling foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, looks like a typical subdivision. But it’s one of the first developments designed at a neighborhood scale to withstand wildfires. Each house goes farther than California’s latest building requirements for high-fire-risk zones, from enclosed, ember-resistant eaves to dual-paned, tempered glass windows that can better withstand extreme heat in a fire. The design considers not just each house, but how homes interact, spacing buildings at least 10 feet apart and removing combustible features to prevent fire from spreading between them. Called Sto…

On my phone, there are already videos of the next moon landing. In one, an astronaut springs off the rung of a ladder, strung out from the lander, before slowly plopping to the surface. He is, alas, still getting accustomed to the weaker gravity. In another, the crew collects a sample—a classic lunar expedition activity—while another person lazily minds the rover. A third video shows an astronaut affixing the American flag to the ground, because this act of patriotism is even better the second time around. The blue oceans of Earth are visible, in the background, and a radio calls out: “Artemis crew is on the surface.” America is going back to the moon, and NASA i…

Let me set a scene for you: A manager at a tech company pings his team at 6:01 p.m., asking for a “quick favor before morning?” The millennial responds instantly with “Sure, give me a sec” while texting their partner to warn they will be late for their kids’ game. The Gen X employee gives a thumbs-up emoji and plans to do the work after the kids are asleep. The Gen Z parent has a different vibe altogether, responding, “I’m offline for day care pickup and will handle in the morning,” then logging off. It’s a move that likely stuns most millennial and Gen X colleagues, but this is what happens when boundary-setting appears in a workplace built around p…

February is always difficult in Minneapolis. It’s when the nerve-flaying cold of December and January starts to seem like a dress rehearsal. But this February has proven brutal for other reasons. As thousands of ICE agents storm the city with lethal force, many residents have larger troubles than the arctic weather. Some are terrified of getting detained or deported; others are worried about getting attacked for documenting the chaos or for helping their neighbors. A Minneapolis food scene staple for the past 15 years, Modern Times and its customers have been front row for unrest before. Just six blocks from where George Floyd was murdered six years ago, the Powderhor…

Valentine’s Day is just a week away, and is one of the most popular holidays for consuming chocolates. But according to two notices from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), buyers of select M&M products are at risk of adverse health consequences due to undeclared allergens. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On January 26, Beacon Promotions Inc initiated a voluntary recall of some of its M&M products. Beacon Promotions, based in Minnesota, sells third-party products featuring its clients’ logos and branding. Businesses use promotional product companies like Beacon to produce everything from tote bags to chocolate with their logos, which…

In 2023, the science fiction literary magazine Clarkesworld stopped accepting new submissions because so many were generated by artificial intelligence. Near as the editors could tell, many submitters pasted the magazine’s detailed story guidelines into an AI and sent in the results. And they weren’t alone. Other fiction magazines have also reported a high number of AI-generated submissions. This is only one example of a ubiquitous trend. A legacy system relied on the difficulty of writing and cognition to limit volume. Generative AI overwhelms the system because the humans on the receiving end can’t keep up. This is happening everywhere. Newspapers are being inun…

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. The conversation around energy use in the United States has become . . . electric. Everyone from President Donald The President to the cohosts of Today show has been talking about the surging demand for, and rising costs of, electrons. Many people worry that utilities won’t be able to produce enough power. But a report released today argues that the better question is: Can we use what utilities already produce more efficiently in order to absorb the coming surge? “A lot of folks have been looking at this from the perspective of, Do we need more supply-side resources and gas p…

For the past decade—and really, for its entire 84-year history—the laundry detergent brand Tide has been trying to simplify the process of doing of laundry. From its original all-in-one powder to 1980s-era liquid soap to the 2012 introduction of the packet-based Tide Pod, the brand and its parent company Procter and Gamble have regularly reformulated the core product to accommodate the seemingly simple but highly diverse act of washing one’s clothes. “There are 55 unique steps we’ve identified in the laundry process,” says Marchoe Northern, president of North America fabric care at Procter and Gamble. “Our job is to continue to think about ways to solve today’s modern…

A new $7.25 billion settlement between Bayer and a group of cancer patients could wrap up a huge wave of lawsuits against the company over allegations that it didn’t warn consumers about cancer risks associated with the weedkiller Roundup. Bayer faces more than 180,000 claims over Roundup, which contains the herbicide glyphosate – the chemical at the center of the controversy. Most of those claims are from people who used the weedkiller, which is sold at any hardware or garden store, at home. The lawsuits have prompted Bayer to pull glyphosate out of many products under the Roundup brand, though glyphosate is still commonly used by farmers and in the agriculture busin…

Baby care brand Frida is facing online backlash after screenshots of sexual innuendos in its marketing materials began circulating on social media. Frida, which describes itself as “the brand that gets parents,” sells a range of baby care, fertility, and postpartum products through major retailers, including Target. Last week, an X user shared images of several products’ packaging, writing: “sexual jokes to market baby products is actually sick and twisted @fridababy this is absolutely appalling and disgusting.” The post has since gained almost five million views on X. Among the examples highlighted is a social media graphic promoting the company’s 3-in-1 Tru…

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand Wednesday to defend his company’s practices in a landmark trial that could determine whether social media companies can be held liable for alleged harms to children. But if the defendants lose, the implications could extend far beyond social media. The case centers on Meta and Google, with plaintiffs alleging that services like Instagram and YouTube are intentionally designed to keep users, especially kids, engaged—a dynamic they say can lead to harmful mental health effects, including addiction. The trial is widely viewed as a test case for roughly 1,500 similar lawsuits waiting in the wings. Meta and Google deny th…

The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics may be winding down, but the memories will linger for years to come. The competition began on Wednesday, February 4, with the official opening ceremony on Friday, February 6. A little more than two weeks later, the Games will conclude with an epic closing ceremony on Sunday, February 22. So much action was packed into the event that it was a full-time job keeping up. Since a lot of people have actual full-time jobs, here’s a look back at the highlights, endearing moments, and heartbreaks of the XXV Olympic Winter Games. How can I track 2026 Winter Olympics medals? First things first. You can stay up to date with all of the …