Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Efforts to hollow out the federal workforce by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have resulted in a dramatic rise in layoff announcements. The latest monthly data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows that employers in the United States announced more than 172,000 layoffs during February, which was an increase of 245% from January and the highest monthly total since mid-2020, during the pandemic. Further, it was the highest number of layoffs for the month of February since 2009, in the middle of the financial crisis and subsequent Great Recession, when more than 186,000 layoffs were announced. So far, through the first two mo…

It’s been a rough week for the tech industry. First, Salesforce announced it would lay off more than 1,000 employees, and now another enterprise software maker has announced even deeper job cuts. Yesterday, Workday, Inc. (Nasdaq: WDAY), maker of cloud-based human resources software, announced that it would lay off 1,750 employees—or roughly 8.5% of its global workforce. These layoffs add to a rough start for the tech industry in 2025, which has seen major tech giants, including Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, trim their workforces. Here’s what you need to know about Workday’s layoffs. Roughly 8% of Workday’s employees are impacted Workday yesterday announced …

At a recent groundbreaking for one of our data center campuses, three members of the community told our team, “Great, we’re going to get a Trader Joe’s now.” It may sound funny, but this is one small part of the data center effect. Having Starbucks and Whole Foods establishments in the neighborhood famously have been associated with higher property values. Data centers also boost the communities where they’re located, by creating jobs and supporting revitalization efforts, for example. Of course, the industry faces criticism too, often based on outdated perceptions that don’t reflect advances in design and sustainability. But public opinion is shifting—partly tha…

Today, February 25, is a make-or-break day for Super Micro Computer (aka Supermicro) and its stock, which trades on the Nasdaq under the SMCI ticker. That’s because by the end of today, the beleaguered server company needs to file its delinquent Form 10-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). If it fails to do so, the company’s shares may be delisted from the Nasdaq. Here’s what you need to know about its stock price ahead of the deadline and the possible outcomes should Super Micro Computer fail to meet its requirements. SMCI stock price sinks ahead of filing deadline As of the time of this writing, in early trading SMCI’s stock price is down…

On Friday, Trader Joe’s issued a recall on yet another product: its frozen Organic Acai Bowls. A recall notice was posted on the company’s website, explaining the recall was due to the risk of plastic inside the frozen meal. “Out of an abundance of caution, please discard any Trader Joe’s Organic Acai Bowls, as the product may contain foreign material (plastic), or return them to your neighborhood Trader Joe’s store for a full refund,” the message reads. Notices were also spotted in Trader Joe’s locations. While Trader Joe’s has voluntarily removed the product from shelves, the recall hasn’t made it to the Food and Drug Administration yet. As of Monday morn…

In mountain ranges around the world, glaciers are melting as global temperatures rise. Europe’s Alps and Pyrenees lost 40% of their glacier volume from 2000 to 2023. These and other icy regions have provided freshwater for people living downstream for centuries—almost 2 billion people rely on glaciers today. But as glaciers melt faster, they also pose potentially lethal risks. Water from the melting ice often drains into depressions once occupied by the glacier, creating large lakes. Many of these expanding lakes are held in place by precarious ice dams or rock moraines deposited by the glacier over centuries. Too much water behind these dams or a landslide into t…

In the second season of Severance, there’s an unexpected character: a child supervisor named Miss Huang, who matter-of-factly explains she’s a child “because of when I was born.” Miss Huang’s deadpan response is more than just a clever quip. Like so much in the Apple TV+ series, which has broken viewership records for the streaming service, I think it reveals a devastating truth about the role of work in the 21st century. As a scholar of childhood studies, I also see historical echoes: What constitutes a “child”—and whether one gets to claim childhood at all—has always depended on when and where a person is born. An age of innocence? Americans are deeply in…

Embarking on a personal transformation, often termed a “glow up,” encompasses more than just external changes; it’s about building confidence and holistic wellbeing. While the multi-billion-dollar beauty industry offers numerous products to aid in this journey, an accessible and potent tool is often overlooked: music. Scientific research underscores the profound impact of music on essential aspects of well-being, including sleep quality, stress management, and exercise performance. By integrating music into these areas, one can enhance overall health and, consequently, personal appearance. Music and sleep: Your secret weapon for restorative rest Good sleep hygi…

Throughout history, when pioneers set out across uncharted territory to settle in distant lands, they carried with them only the essentials: tools, seeds and clothing. Anything else would have to come from their new environment. So they built shelter from local timber, rocks and sod; foraged for food and cultivated the soil beneath their feet; and fabricated tools from whatever they could scrounge up. It was difficult, but ultimately the successful ones made everything they needed to survive. Something similar will take place when humanity leaves Earth for destinations such as the Moon and Mars – although astronauts will face even greater challenges than, for exam…

The discount retailer that plans to take over and operate hundreds of Big Lots stores is closer to deciding which locations it will save. Some 200 Big Lots leases have been designated to be transferred to Variety Wholesalers, the North Carolina-based owner of Roses and other discount chains, new court documents show. In a bankruptcy filing dated Monday, Big Lots said it will transfer the locations as part of its agreement with Gordon Brothers, the restructuring and investment firm that took control of the embattled retailer earlier this year. The list includes Big Lots locations across more than a dozen states, mostly in the South and Midwest regions. It’s un…

Lindsay Orr was active and healthy, running marathons and hiking all around Colorado. During pregnancy, she developed a persistent headache and dangerously high blood pressure—hallmark symptoms of preeclampsia, a leading cause of preterm birth as well as maternal mortality and morbidity. She was induced at 32 weeks to save her and her baby’s life. Now, two years later, she continues to experience the long-term impact of preeclampsia as Lindsay developed chronic high blood pressure, a condition she never had before pregnancy. Pregnancy complications like preeclampsia, preterm birth, and fetal growth restriction are dangerous for mom and baby. These complications ca…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. The famous computer scientist Bill Joy once said, “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” If you want to build something on the bleeding edge, you must have an open ecosystem that can pull in as many ideas as possible, skills and talents that exist beyond the four walls of your office building. This is the ethos of open source, the idea that the world is open …

Remember when TikTok went nuts for “Dubai chocolate”? Well, that fervor is now causing an international shortage of pistachios. The trend took off in 2023 when food reviewer Maria Vehera posted a video unwrapping and eating the high-end chocolate bar. The chocolate (called “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” in a nod to the traditional Arab dessert) was originally launched in 2021 by boutique Emirati chocolatier FIX. Vehera’s video has since racked up over 124 million views and is widely credited with sparking the “Dubai chocolate” craze. Instantly recognisable by its vibrant green filling, TikTokers flooded the platform with enthusiastic taste tests of the bar, which is sol…

Pay transparency is having a moment. Across Europe and beyond, new regulations are pushing organizations to disclose salary bands, justify pay differences, and confront longstanding inequities. It is a necessary shift and it’s long overdue. But there is a risk that, in focusing exclusively on base salary, companies miss a more elusive and equally consequential driver of inequality: the bonus gap. Bonuses, incentives, and variable pay are often treated as secondary components of compensation. They are not. In many roles, they represent a substantial share of total earnings. More importantly, they are where discretion thrives and bias follows. I learned this early. …

By now everyone knows that scrolling social media isn’t exactly good for you. But did you know it might be making you sweat? Researchers from the psychology department at Durham University tracked the physiological responses of scrolling on social media and found a rather strange side effect. The researchers asked 54 young adults to browse Instagram for 15 minutes while monitoring their heart rate and their skin conductance (which would tell how much sweat they produced). Compared to reading a news article on a phone, they found scrolling Instagram made people’s heart rates slow down and, simultaneously, made them sweat more. From the control group, who just read the…

Those of us living in the harsher climates can all commiserate about what felt like a really long winter. It was cold! And windy! Perfect weather for staying inside, inert, and keeping warm with dense carbs and saturated fats. Well, the party’s over. As the chill of winter melts away and spring begins to bloom, it’s time to shed those extra layers—both figuratively and literally. So whether you’re counting calories, trying new workouts, or simply trying to move a little more, these free tools are here to help you reach your goals. MyFitnessPal MyFitnessPal (iOS, Android) is a do-it-all weight loss tool that helps you monitor your daily food intake, exer…

Featuring Matthew Prince, Cofounder and CEO, Cloudflare. Moderated by Brendan Vaughan, Editor in Chief, Fast Company. With a quarter of the global internet powered by Cloudflare—its network provides service to over 300 cities across more than 100 countries—the company is at the helm of delivering content and connecting millions. But as AI-powered bots grow at a prolific rate and cybersecurity risks become increasingly sophisticated, ensuring the safety of the internet requires innovative thinking. Join Cloudflare cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince for a one-on-one conversation on how the company plans to tackle the challenges of the future. View the full article

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…

A popular “true crime” YouTube channel has been pulling in millions of views with videos about gruesome murders. As it turns out, None of them are real. One of those videos, titled “Husband’s Secret Gay Love Affair with Step Son Ends in Grisly Murder,” claimed to detail a gruesome crime in Littleton, Colorado. After it amassed nearly two million views, viewers reached out to local reporter Elizabeth Hernandez. But there was no record of the crime—because it never happened. The murder was entirely fabricated by a YouTube channel called True Crime Case Files that used ChatGPT and AI-generated imagery. According to 404 Media’s Henry Larson, over 150 similar videos ha…

Over the past few years, experts have been sounding the alarm over how much time Americans spend alone. Statistics show that we’re choosing to be solitary for more of our waking hours than ever before, tucked away at home rather than mingling in public. Increasing numbers of us are dining alone and traveling solo, and rates of living alone have nearly doubled in the past 50 years. These trends coincided with the surgeon general’s 2023 declaration of a loneliness epidemic, leading to recent claims that the U.S. is living in an “anti-social century.” Loneliness and isolation are indeed social problems that warrant serious attention, especially since chronic stat…

When workers repaved part of Interstate 94 near Minneapolis last fall, it looked like they were pouring ordinary concrete. But instead the highway was the first to use a new, near-zero-emissions material. It’s one of a series of large projects to use material from C-Crete, a Bay Area-based startup. Shortly, the highway was repaved, and the company poured slabs and foundations at San Francisco International Airport. Earlier in the summer, it also poured a floor slab in a super-tall skyscraper under construction in Manhattan, the future headquarters of JPMorgan Chase. Other projects are underway now. [Photo: courtesy C-Crete Technologies] Producing cement, the gl…

In 2014, Stephen Hawking voiced grave warnings about the threats of artificial intelligence. His concerns were not based on any anticipated evil intent, though. Instead, it was from the idea of AI achieving “singularity.” This refers to the point when AI surpasses human intelligence and achieves the capacity to evolve beyond its original programming, making it uncontrollable. As Hawking theorized, “a super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble.” With rapid advances toward artificial general intelligence over the past few years, industry leaders and scientists have express…

Kate Aronowitz tells me she first set out in graphic design because it felt like a discipline that helped her bring order to things. Many years later, she has a love-hate relationship with being labeled “a creative” because the creative process, as she sees it, is not just about art and design—it’s as much about solving problems as it is building things from scratch. She also believes everyone can be creative under the right circumstances. As portfolio operations lead at Google Ventures, Aronowitz has collaborated with some of the world’s most inspiring and hardworking founders. And now she has the opportunity to shape and inspire the next generation of students at S…

Over the past three months, in a small print shop in Toronto, a group of people has been hard at work making the impossible possible: a book that can be read only when you pour water over it. The “Dehydrating Book” is the first of its kind. It was printed with a special hydrochromic ink that is invisible to the naked eye and becomes visible only when it’s wet. It is 100% waterproof and ships in a pouch full of water. Why? To raise awareness about the global water crisis. [Photo: The Gas Company Inc.] The project is a close collaboration between Water for People, a global nonprofit that helps bring clean water and sanitation systems to underserved communiti…

Dairy cattle in Nevada have been infected with a new type of bird flu that’s different from the version that has spread in U.S. herds since last year, Agriculture Department officials said Wednesday. The detection indicates that distinct forms of the virus known as Type A H5N1 have spilled over from wild birds into cattle at least twice. Experts said it raises new questions about wider spread and the difficulty of controlling infections in animals and the people who work closely with them. “I always thought one bird-to-cow transmission was a very rare event. Seems that may not be the case,” said Richard Webby, an influenza expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital…