Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

America’s housing market is finally starting to tip in favor of aspiring homeowners. A new analysis from Realtor.com reveals that nearly two-thirds of the biggest housing markets in the U.S. have now moved into “balanced” or “buyer-friendly” status, while only a quarter of the major markets still favor sellers. That’s in sharp contrast to 2021, when low interest rates and a buying frenzy gave sellers the upper hand in 98% of the top U.S. housing markets. Out of the top metros, only 26% qualify as seller’s markets right now, with a relatively large ratio of home shoppers to housing stock. Of those cities, 46% are in what Realtor.com calls a “balanced-loosening” pha…

Today’s U.S. farmers and agricultural businesses are navigating a complex landscape, with unique near-term and long-term challenges that include intensified global competition, record trade deficits, rising costs, and more frequent and extreme weather events. These challenges have created economic instability across the entire agriculture sector with U.S. row crop farmer net income remaining persistently low for the third straight year. Estimates from the University of Illinois show that corn and soybean farmers could face a net loss of between $50 and $70 per acre this growing season. On top of this, global acreage has leveled off at 2.3 billion acres and the avera…

Part of a figure skater’s job is to make their routine look as effortless and graceful as possible, as if they’re floating on ice and soaring into the air through sheer force of will. In reality, they’re often launching themselves multiple feet into the air with what amounts to sand bags on their feet; generating hundreds of pounds of centripetal force through rotations; and landing on a blade that’s just 3/16 of an inch wide. At the 2026 Winter Games in Milan and Cortina, Italy, NBC is using an AI tool developed by a former MIT researcher to help audiences understand just how mind-boggling the feats of today’s Olympic athletes are. Jerry Lu Jerry Lu is a 202…

You don’t have to be an avid reader of restaurant industry trade publications—though I can attest that they are oddly fascinating—to realize that everything’s getting more expensive. The good news is that there’s an easy way to counteract those rising menu prices. By purchasing discounted gift cards, you can defray the cost of fast-food, fast-casual, and sit-down chains, and maybe even some other retailers that have nothing to do with stuffing your face. All you need is a place to find authentic, cheap gift cards and a little foresight on when to buy them. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue …

The trope of the starving, broke artist has long maintained a place in the public imagination, even as it has morphed into idealized notions of “‘hustle” or “grindset.” “It’s cool to romanticize [that lifestyle] for a little bit and use it as part of your motivation,” says L.A.-based rising musician Gidi, “but at a certain point we gotta be able to see the fruits of our labor.” For many artists and songwriters, the fruits are there in the form of royalties—they’re just exceedingly difficult to harvest. In the labyrinthine world of the music industry, royalty collection is particularly complex. There are hundreds of music streaming platforms operating in hundreds of c…

With music streaming, users have gotten used to being at the mercy of algorithms. But French music streamer Deezer is making it easier for its subscribers to make the algorithm work for them. The company unveiled an update to its mobile experience that doubles down on its emphasis on personalization and sharing to set it apart from larger competitors like Spotify and Apple Music. “The new features we’re introducing today give users more control over their algorithm, greater flexibility to personalize their experience, and easy ways to share content with their friends, even beyond Deezer,” CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release. Rolling out over the nex…

He’s not a movie buff, so New York musician Larry Saltzman doesn’t always watch the Oscars. This year, however, he’s got a rooting interest. Saltzman taught actor Timothée Chalamet how to play guitar for the role of Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown.” In turn, Chalamet earned a best actor nomination and the film is also up for best picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday. A guitarist who’s performed with Simon & Garfunkel, Bette Midler and David Johansen, as well as in the pit at Broadway productions “Hairspray” and “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” Saltzman has developed a specialty in teaching actors how to play music for their roles. Besides Chalamet, recent pupils …

Anil Menon might have the world’s spaciest resume. After several years as a NASA flight surgeon, he became SpaceX’s medical director in 2018, where he authored research on the effects of space on the human body. In 2021, he was selected as a NASA astronaut and has spent the past several years training for his own journey to space. Along the way, he also supported his wife, Anna Menon, who traveled to space on a private mission in 2024 and was herself selected as a NASA astronaut last year. Somewhere in the margins, Menon has also served as an Air Force Reserve member and emergency room doctor. Now, he’s finally heading to space himself. This July, Menon will trave…

At the new ad agency Ability Machine in Nashville, creatives have access to a full suite of tools ranging from podcasting and photography studios to lighting equipment and design software. They also have quiet sensory rooms, dimmable lights, and a flexible seating system. Every part of the agency, from the way it tackles projects to the physical space it works from, is designed with its staff in mind, who are all adults with intellectual disabilities. The Ability Machine describes itself as a studio “powered by neurodiverse minds” that turns creativity “into both purpose and a paycheck for adults with varying abilities.” So far, Ability Machine has already worked wit…

Variant, a generative design tool that promises endless UI exploration, recently introduced a feature most creative people and designers have used for decades: the eyedropper. In Variant, the tool picks vibes: It lets you click on one AI-generated interface and inject its aesthetic DNA—typography, spatial relationships, and color palettes—into another. After so much hype around “vibecoding” and its text-based imprecision, seeing a familiar, direct manipulation tool applied to generative AI feels great.​​ The new AI modality takes a nice step to close the gap between the impenetrable ways of large language model black boxes and the tools designers actually use with the…

Within Walmart, employees known as merchants make decisions about which products the company carries online and in stores, as well as pricing for those items. Naturally, the job involves plenty of data analysis, with merchants breaking down sales numbers by product category, sales channel, region, brand, item characteristics, and other factors. But manually running all of those reports and examining results using tools like Excel can be time-consuming, especially when merchants need to run multiple reports. “You can see how these reports can become time-consuming when analyzing customer behavior across so much data,” says Brian Knapp, senior vice president for mer…

Every friend group has one person who’s always running late. If you can’t think of one, chances are you’re that friend. Now, a newly launched app called Lately is here to help you stay on time for everything from meetings to dinner plans. Created by developer Erik MacInnis, Lately sends users timely nudges—30, 10, and five minutes before it’s time to leave. As the self-acknowledged “late one” in his friend group, MacInnis tells Fast Company that the idea for Lately struck during a fishing trip gone wrong. He had assumed it would take 20 minutes to get there, got sidetracked by replying to emails, left five minutes late, and the drive ended up taking 30. “When I ar…

The influential AI researcher François Chollet has long argued that the field measures intelligence incorrectly, that popular benchmarks reward a model’s ability to memorize vast amounts of data rather than navigate novel situations and learn new skills. Only recently, with the rise of autonomous AI agents, have companies begun to take that critique seriously. On Tuesday, the ARC Prize Foundation, which Chollet founded with Zapier cofounder Mike Knoop, released a new and more difficult version of its benchmark. The test, called ARC-AGI-3, may offer the clearest measurement yet of how close today’s AI agents are to human-level intelligence. It consists of more than a t…

I can tell you the exact moment when a new browser called Deta Surf clicked for me. I was getting a demo from Deta cofounder Max Eusterbrock, and he showed me how Surf can take screenshots of web pages and add them to a digital pinboard. But unlike a standard screenshot, this one contained a link to jump back to the web page it came from, and its content was searchable from Surf’s menu system. Aha, I thought. Too often, I’ll open dozens of tabs on a certain topic, only to forget which page had the quote or chart I was looking for. Surf solves that problem by making it easier to revisit what you’ve researched. It’s as if a browser was built around the idea of bookmarking, …

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 …

This week, fintech company Karta announced a new premium credit card designed with a very specific user in mind: American nonresidents with U.S. bank accounts—and high net worths. It’s designed to compete with other premium credit cards on the market, and thus, is available to customers who have a bank or brokerage account with a minimum balance of $150,000 in assets all without a Social Security number. It also offers similar perks and benefits to other premium travel cards, such as the Citi Strata Elite, the Chase Sapphire Reserve, or the American Express Platinum Card. Those include access to exclusive events, a Priority Pass Select membership that provides ac…

Ever miss the thrill of the 2016 Pokémon Go craze? A new anti-swiping dating app has come to fill that void, but instead of cute Pokémon you can catch yourself a hot date. These days, trying to find a partner IRL, whether at a bar or reluctantly joining a singles running club, is no easy task. Dating apps are still one of the most common places for people trying to meet The One, but . . . have you seen the apps? 2024 has been widely dissed as the year the dating apps died. Both Bumble and Match Group saw stock prices steadily decline since reaching all-time highs in 2021. Left Field, the latest dating app launched in New York City this week, has the goal to combat…

Is it even worth having a kid in the AI era? It’s the question at the heart of The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, a new documentary about the promise, peril, and uncertainty surrounding artificial intelligence. Codirected by Charlie Tyrell and Academy Award winner Daniel Roher, the film follows Roher, a soon-to-be father, as he tries to understand how AI works, what risks it may carry, and what kind of world he and his wife are bringing their son into. Along the way, he encounters both AI’s loudest skeptics and its most ardent utopians. The film features dozens of experts, including CEOs like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, longtime r…

The Flying Sun 1000 is exactly what its name implies: a very powerful light source that flies. It is not as strong as the sun, but fitted with a powerful 3,333-watt light source—the equivalent of a typical flood lamp in a stadium—it is enough to turn night into day instantaneously. This drone is aimed at commercial and government users for the rapid deployment of industrial-level lighting solutions, such as construction and engineering jobs, area security, and disaster relief efforts that require 24-hour operation. A single operator can deploy the Flying Sun in minutes, instantly illuminating as much as 130,000 square feet. According to its manufacturer, Freefly Systems, …

A new battery from Chinese company CATL, the world’s largest electric vehicle battery manufacturer, can be fully recharged in under seven minutes. Charging that battery from 10% to 80%—often considered an ideal maximum charge to protect the battery’s health—takes less than four minutes. It’s a striking technological advancement that closes the gap between EVs and gas vehicles—and beats out a recent battery advancement by Chinese EV giant BYD. China has come to dominate the electric vehicle and battery industries, and companies there are continuing to make impressive leaps forward. Shenzhen-listed shares of CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited…