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If you’ve been building consumer hardware for any real amount of time, you know the pattern. Most of these shifts start the same way. The sensor exists, but it’s stuck in clinical settings where it’s expensive, awkward, and not something anyone would realistically use day to day. At some point, someone figures out how to shrink it down enough to fit into a real product, and a few companies take an early shot at turning it into something people actually want. Early on, it’s easy to dismiss. It looks niche, maybe even like a gimmick. But adoption starts to build, usually more gradually than people expect at first. Then it picks up, and within a product cycle or two,…

There’s a surprising amount of science in a bag of potato chips. Researchers have spent decades developing potatoes for chip makers that can grow in all kinds of climates, avoid diseases and pests, sit in storage for months and still deliver a satisfying crunch. They’ve also kept an eye on consumer trends; a shift to snack-size portions has increased the demand for smaller chipping potatoes, for example. “The potato industry is dynamic,” said David Douches, a Michigan State University professor who leads the school’s Potato Breeding and Genetics Program. “The needs change, the costs, the pressures that they have, and the markets change. So we have to adapt to that with …

Compliments come in many forms, and handling them well is an important part of building strong relationships and projecting a positive image. Sometimes a simple “Thank you” will do. But in other cases, praise may have a negative undertone, which you will want to respond to. Still others may be laudatory comments that you can build upon. Here’s how to respond to a broad range of compliments. 1. “I LIKE YOUR STYLE” The best and easiest answer to this compliment is “Thank you.” Whenever someone compliments you on your style (“I love your look” or “I love your purse/tie”), responding with “Thank you” shows grace and appreciation. Don’t undercut those complimen…

I’m addicted to the curtain. That moment when you walk through a dark hall, push through two layers of dark drapes, and whatever you see next—no matter what it is—is a bit of a thrill. It’s one of my favorite motifs of Milan Design Week, when half a million people from around the globe for a citywide celebration of all things design. The hook is Salone de Mobile, the world’s largest furniture trade show. Its 3/4-mile-long fairgrounds feature 1,900 exhibitors from 32 countries. (The fairgrounds are so expansive they actually sit outside Milan in a city called Rho.) But many visitors never make it there, instead exploring Milan’s design districts that are f…

The southern side of the Colosseum in Rome has just undergone a subtle but much-needed facelift. This side of the world-famous monument is where the empire’s elite once entered the grand amphitheater to watch gladiators fight to the death, and where a series of earthquakes over its nearly 2,000-year lifespan have chewed away at the structure. Through deep archaeological research and a clever architectural intervention, the ancient monument’s original layout has been restored after centuries of decay. It’s giving modern day visitors a more accurate sense of how the space was originally used. The project focuses on the southern perimeter of the Colosseum, restoring of …

A twenty-something man once went to a French restaurant in New York—the kind of place with tuxedoed servers. He told the waiter he had never eaten anywhere so fancy and had a hundred dollars to spend, then asked him to bring the best meal he could within that budget. What arrived was a feast worth at least $150, and he was treated like a king. The experience stuck with him. That young man—who would later become a well-known executive coach, profiled in The New Yorker—came to believe in the value of trusting expertise and putting decisions in other people’s hands. It’s a useful lesson for leaders: when you truly delegate, people often exceed your expectations. …

Flipbook feels less like just another AI product launch and more like a small revolt against the dead, rectangular boredom of the prototypical prompt-based AI interface. The project describes itself as an infinite visual browser generated on demand, in real time, where every page is an image and every click opens a deeper visual exploration of whatever caught your eye. Rather than writing a prompt and receiving a torrent of text, with Flipbook you get information from a large language model turned into a beautifully illustrated “book” page that you can click on to drill deeper into a topic. And oh boy, it feels fantastic to me. The idea is both fresh and familiar…

Australia has proposed taxing digital giants Meta, Google and TikTok on a part of their revenue to pay for news reporters. The government released draft legislation Tuesday it intends to introduce to Parliament by July 2 that would create a financial incentive for the social media companies to strike deals with news organizations to pay for journalism. The platforms’ criticisms included that the proposal was a “digital services tax” that misunderstood the evolving advertising industry and would fail to deliver a sustainable news sector. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a monetary value needed to be attached to journalists’ work. “It shouldn’t just be ab…

California-based Ghirardelli Chocolate Company has voluntarily recalled 13 of its powdered beverage mixes over concerns of potential Salmonella contamination. The storied confectionery says it issued the recall after dairy producer California Dairies recalled its milk powder, which is used in the affected powdered beverage mixes. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a recall notice on Tuesday, April 28. To date, no illnesses have been reported. What products are included in the recall? The recall covers a limited selection of powdered beverage mixes packaged for food service and institutional customers. However, Ghirardelli cautions tha…

If I had to name my Mount Rushmore of brands seen as quintessentially American around the globe, it would probably be Levi’s, Harley-Davidson, McDonald’s, and Budweiser. While there are an impressive number of iconic American brands—Apple, Coca-Cola, Nike, Google, Amazon, and Walmart among them—only a few have an identity that is also closely tied to the idea of “America” itself. So it should come as no surprise that Budweiser is tapping that identity to simultaneously celebrate America’s 250th, along with its own 150th anniversary. The brand just launched a new spot called “Great Delivery” to start its summer campaign that will also include limited-edition patr…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the Pandemic Housing Boom, many publicly traded homebuilders achieved record profit margins as home prices soared and homebuyer demand ran red hot. Once the national housing demand boom fizzled out in the summer of 2022, many large homebuilders compressed their margins in order to do affordability adjustments where and when needed to maintain their sales pace. That includes giant homebuilder PulteGroup, which reported on Thursday that it compressed its Q1 2026 gross margin to 24.4%, compared with 27.5% in Q1 2025 and 24.7% in Q4 2025. While th…

It’s understandable that following the announcement that John Ternus will succeed Tim Cook as Apple CEO, people will pore over his résumé for signs of how the company might change. Cook was famously an operations and logistics wizard, handpicked by Steve Jobs to manage Apple with his trademark efficiency. But his successor is more of a mystery. Ternus has been a senior vice president of hardware engineering at Apple for five years, and a VP since 2013, but beyond that he hasn’t been credited with steering the company in a particular direction. All anyone can really say for now is that Apple will be led by someone who is strongly experienced in hardware, which sounds …

For years, it was common for even the biggest tech companies to have annual capital expenditures, or capex, in the single- to low-double-digit-billion range. You might have heard a tech company say it planned to spend $9 billion, $15 billion, or even $25 billion on research, development, and other costs in the upcoming fiscal year. But lately, capital expenditures at the largest tech companies have been off the charts, with some companies now regularly forecasting single-year capex in the hundreds of billions. The driving factor for this is, of course, artificial intelligence (AI). Some of the biggest names in tech are throwing previously unthinkable sums b…

In December 2025, the biggest battery maker in the world, CATL, started what it calls the world’s first large-scale deployment of robots in its Luoyang, China factory. Last week, the State Grid Corporation of China began its $1 billion 2026 plan to deploy a humanoid army to maintain its grid autonomously. And just a few days ago, at the other side of the East China Sea, Japan Airlines announced the beginning of a test program of humanoids to carry luggage at airports. While we listen to Elon Musk tell us how magical and civilization-changing Tesla’s Optimus robots are, Asian countries are light-years ahead of us, deploying humanoids to do their bidding in real-life sc…

You might remember ZenBooths—Amazon’s contribution to corporate well-being. These were booths installed in the middle of warehouses, equipped with a fan, a potted plant, and a monitor playing meditation videos. The company called them mindful practice rooms. Employees called them despair chambers. The internet called them coffins for workers—workers who, incidentally, didn’t even have time to use the bathroom because of crushing productivity demands. ZenBooths are, I think, a fitting metaphor for modern corporate wellness. According to Gallup, employee engagement dropped to 20% in 2025—the lowest it’s been since the COVID-19 lockdowns. Companies are pouring money into…

Artificial intelligence is helping knowledge workers do things that weren’t previously possible, according to a new report from Microsoft. In the company’s 2026 Work Trend Index report, which includes results from a survey of 20,000 knowledge workers who use AI at work, 66% of the AI users surveyed say that AI allows them to spend more time on high-value work, and 58% reveal that they’re producing work they couldn’t have produced just one year ago. That number rises to 80% among a category of AI power users Microsoft dubs “frontier professionals.” “Instead of just automating away what people used to do, and that’s an efficiency gain, what we’re seeing is much more…

It’s the three-row SUV of big-box retail. Target’s bold red shopping cart has always anchored customers inside a Target store, promising a middle-class fancy experience. For the next few years, Target will be replacing its fleet of half a million shopping carts with an even beefier model that promises to hold more stuff while making it easier to maneuver around the store. It’s the first all-plastic design Target will launch nationwide, while paradoxically being more sustainable than Target carts of yore. And yes, it’ll even hold your big dumb cup. “The cart for us is the first touchpoint that the guest meets right when they walk in the store,” says Sarah Deut…

Pressure is an inevitable part of modern workplaces, but when poorly managed, it can quickly turn into harmful stress. The solution isn’t to eliminate pressure from work entirely, but to respond to it in the right way. Even small, intentional shifts can have a significant impact on how we cope, protect our wellbeing, and sustain high performance. Here, six experts share their simple, actionable tips for individuals and leaders that can make a big difference in handling everyday stress more effectively. Reinforce psychological safety Ultimately, whether we feel able to manage stress at work comes down to the environment around us and our relationships with our m…

AI use is becoming pervasive across the legal system, with both experienced staff and absolute novices turning to ChatGPT and other tools to try to make the most persuasive case possible when they arrive in court, even if some of those claims turn out to be literally too good to be true. Last month, top law firm Sullivan & Cromwell was forced to apologize for filing fictitious case names and fabricated quotes in a legal document submitted in a case, as well as citing incorrect statutes in the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. “We deeply regret this occurred,” the firm wrote in an apologetic letter to the judge in a case about an alleged scam operation run out of Cambodia, whi…

Amazon can deliver anything—including, increasingly, eyeballs to advertisers. And now, its upcoming slate of content, including an adaptation of the best-selling novel Fourth Wing and a list of young adult content, is sure to have advertisers excited. The e-commerce giant held its annual Upfront event at the Beacon Theater in New York City on Monday night, showcasing new TV shows, movies, sports, and podcasting content destined for its Prime Video streaming platform and podcasting platforms. While there were big names in attendance—the event included appearances by Oprah Winfrey, Chris Pratt, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Michael B. Jordan, among others—what stole th…

When SpaceX filed an FCC application earlier this year proposing to launch a million satellite data centers into orbit, the company argued the project would have no meaningful environmental impact. On SpaceX’s website, Elon Musk made the case for space-based AI infrastructure in simpler terms: “It’s always sunny in space,” he wrote, arguing that orbital data centers are “obviously the only way to scale.” When SpaceX filed an FCC application earlier this year to launch a million satellite data centers into space, the company said that the plan wouldn’t have any environmental impact. But researchers say the climate calculus is far more complicated than that. Yes…

Yeti’s logo is simple: just its name written in an all-caps sans-serif font, placed within a rounded rectangle. But to speak to new consumers, they’re getting rid of the one element that gives it brand recognition. In a new campaign created in collaboration with Wieden+Kennedy Portland, Yeti deleted the “Yeti” in its logo to make room for other four-letter words, like “Hike,” “Surf,” Golf,” “Fish,” “Hunt,” and “Snow.” They’re all written in the Yeti brand font, which closely resembles the bold grotesque sans serif Archivo Black. For the company, which was founded in 2006 and marks its 20th anniversary this year, it’s about broadening its reach. The word variat…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. A look at the AI landscape for small businesses So much of the conversation around the great AI transformation of business has centered on enterprises, meaning companies with more than 500 employees. That makes sense: For AI and cloud companies, landing a large enterprise customer can mean securing a significant stream of recurring revenue. But if we’re really talking about AI reinventing work and making everyone more productive, small and medium-sized businesses should be a m…

You don’t have to be the loudest person in the room to command it, but these three habits might be quietly costing you credibility without you even realizing it. From the words you choose to how you walk through the door, here’s what to change so your ideas actually land. View the full article

El Niño is “likely to emerge soon,” with an 82% chance of it forming between May and July, and with a 96% chance it will continue from December into February 2027, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center. The report, out Thursday, says while there is “still substantial uncertainty about El Niño’s peak strength” this hurricane season—and it’s too early to tell—the summer outlook does seem ripe for the possibility of creating “very strong” conditions later, as “the strongest El Niño events in the historical record are characterized by significant ocean-atmosphere coupling through the summer.” In addition, N…