Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

More than 900 complaints that mention SpaceX or its Starlink internet service have been filed with the Federal Communications Commission over the past five years, according to files obtained through a public records request. The complaints provide a view into how the technology has already evolved into a critical lifeline for some rural U.S. residents. They also provide insight into some of the leading issues that frustrate Starlink customers, including variant—and sometimes disappointing—internet speeds, as well as poor customer service. The documents obtained by Fast Company come from the FCC, the federal agency that regulates telecommunications providers. Cus…

Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill, the once-popular barbecue casual-dining restaurant chain, has reportedly abruptly closed all of its remaining locations. The closures suggest a bleak fate for the nearly 30-year-old BBQ brand and come just months after both its direct owner, Twin Hospitality Group, and that company’s parent, FAT Brands, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Numerous local media outlets across the country have reported that their Smokey Bones restaurants abruptly and permanently closed yesterday, April 28. Those reports include ones from Indiana’s WANE 15, Pennsylvania’s TribLive, and Rhode Island’…

AI agents have already started buying on behalf of customers. Yet most merchants still lack the infrastructure to serve them. That disconnect sits at the center of PayPal’s first U.S. Agentic Commerce Pulse Survey, based on responses from 498 decision-makers across small businesses, mid-market firms, and large enterprises. Nearly 95% of merchants report that they can already track or observe traffic originating from AI agents, including web crawling from systems like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. But only about one in five have structured their product catalogs in machine-readable formats that those same agents can actually interpret and act on in real time. Many also la…

Five Grand Slam titles and more than a decade as the world’s highest-paid female athlete. But the fiercest competition Maria Sharapova describes may be the one she’s navigating now. In her second act as an investor, entrepreneur, and podcaster, she discusses what the court never prepared her for: the deals she walked away from, the candy brand she built and ultimately shuttered, and what it really takes to sit across the negotiating table from Nike. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversatio…

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…

Bill Ackman has made a lot of noise in recent years. On Wednesday, that noise came in the form of ringing the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange, in honor of the initial public offering of his hedge fund, Pershing Square. Here’s what you need to know about Ackman’s latest move and the Pershing Square IPO. What is Pershing Square? Pershing Square Inc is the parent company for Ackman’s hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, and the closed-end management company Pershing Square USA. What is being offered on the market? Shares in Pershing Square Inc. and Pershing Square USA are being put on the market in a combined IPO, with two stocks. …

Lots of people claim that writing poetry is something only humans can do. It requires emotion, wordcraft, and the unique body of painful, jubilant lived experience that only a person can accumulate. To which I say, “phooey.” Poems are words. And today’s Large Language Models are incredibly good at manipulating words. An AI should be able to beat the Poes and Frosts of the world at their own game. To put that theory into practice, I teamed up with my friend Jared Bauman, built an AI-powered poem generator, and released it into the world for anyone to discover and use. I never expected what people would do with it. Here’s what happened. Powerful calc…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. While softness—and even outright weakness—remains in parts of Florida’s housing market, the intensity of the downturn in Florida has eased somewhat in recent months. While the ResiClub team is huge fans of looking at year-over-year shifts in home prices—especially when using an index that helps account for mix shift—the truth is that year-over-year changes are also slightly lagging. One way to get ahead of year-over-year home price shifts is by looking at seasonally adjusted month-over-month home price shifts as measured by the Zillow Home Value …

Uber Technologies is doing everything it can to save its customers’ time, but for CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, the company’s sixth annual GO-GET event in New York City was something of a trip through time. On Wednesday, Khosrowshahi and other members of Uber’s leadership unveiled a slew of new features, and also announced Hotels on Uber, a new hotel-booking feature, working in concert with Expedia, a company for which Khosrowshahi previously served as CEO. The feature allows users to book hotel rooms directly in the Uber app, similar to how they’d hail a ride or order food through Uber Eats. Khosrowshahi said that travel was Uber’s “next frontier,” and that “taking all …

San Francisco may have a reputation for being AI-obsessed and chock-full of antisocial tech nerds, but those are only stereotypes—right? A viral post from a San Francisco tech worker brought all the city’s clichés into focus, after he visited New York City and was seemingly amazed by people interested in anything other than AI. Parv Sondhi, a San Francisco-based project manager with experience at Apple, eBay, and UC Berkeley, took to social media to share his observations after spending a week in New York City. In his post, he remarked on seeing “very few AI ads or billboards around” and coming across “way more artists.” Sondhi seemed especially wowed by how s…

Google’s transition into the era of artificial intelligence continued to pay off for its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., which on Wednesday announced another quarter of stellar growth that helped to more than double its already lofty market value during the past year. Alphabet earned $62.6 billion, or $5.11 per share, during the January-March period, an 81% increase from the same time last year. Revenue climbed 22% from last year to $109.9 billion. Both numbers easily surpassed the analyst projections that steer investors. Alphabet’s stock price rose more than 6% in extended trading after the numbers came out, setting up the shares to hit a new high during Thursd…

We are living through the most rapid and sweeping digitalization in history. The average adult touches their phone hundreds if not thousands of times a day. And yet, at this moment of peak digital saturation, a countermovement is taking shape in schools, governments, and research institutions. More and more people have reached the conclusion that for human beings to think well, learn deeply, and stay mentally healthy, we may need significantly less technology. Consider what’s happening in education. Australia passed legislation banning children under 16 from social media entirely. Sweden, having spent a decade rolling tablets into every classroom and replacing textboo…

In the music video for “Runway,” Lady Gaga’s collaboration with Doechii for The Devil Wears Prada 2 soundtrack, the wardrobes are high fashion and the musicians and their dancers serve, pose, and vogue. Colorful and camp, it’s everything you’d expect considering the subject matter of the song is about turning dance floors into runways. For some viewers, though, it just looks like a Target commercial. The post activity for Popcrave’s tweet about the “Runway” music video is filled with commenters pejoratively comparing the clip to a Target ad. It’s not hard to see why. Swap out the black-and-white lines on the video’s main set with red-and-white circles, and i…

Executive leaders today face mounting pressure to boost productivity and innovation with AI. Employees—on the other hand—report low trust in organizational change and limited information about how AI will impact their work (or whether it’s going to replace the jobs that the company hired them to do). According to a December 2025 Gartner survey of 110 CHROs, 95% reported undertaking AI-related initiatives in their organizations. But while many companies are experimenting widely with AI, most organizations are struggling to translate AI investment into something that actually improves their businesses. Why AI adoption isn’t that simple AI adoption is uniquely dif…

If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve probably seen the marketing for The Devil Wears Prada 2, whether it’s a glamorous outfit from Anne Hathaway or Meryl Streep all over social media or a Diet Coke can plastered with the signature double-spiked red heel. The global press tour, which spanned cities such as Mexico City, Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai, culminated at the movie’s star-studded world premiere at New York City’s Lincoln Center earlier this month with Hathaway, Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci present. As studios promote trailers for upcoming releases, it’s no surprise that they’re also using premieres as massive marketing vehicles as well. …

Elon Musk on Thursday sparred with an attorney for OpenAI during his third day of testimony in the contentious trial over the company’s pivot from nonprofit status to a for-profit venture valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. The trial centers on the 2015 birth of the ChatGPT maker as a nonprofit startup primarily funded by Musk. It pits the world’s richest person against Sam Altman, a fellow OpenAI co-founder he accuses of betraying promises to keep the company as a nonprofit dedicated to humanity’s benefit. Tempers have flared on both sides of the high-stakes trial, as the morning began with an existential discussion about the future of humanity — complete with r…

Apple posted strong results for its quarterly earnings on Thursday, but investors’ attention is also focused on the upcoming CEO change and the tech firm’s artificial intelligence strategy. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced earlier this month he will be stepping down from the role, with Apple’s head of hardware engineering, John Ternus, assuming the role later this year. The January-March results announced Thursday reflect the continued momentum of iPhone sales. Cook said in a statement that it was the company’s best March quarter ever, with “double-digit growth across every geographic segment.” The company earned $29.58 billion, or $2.01 per share, in the January-March per…

Raising Cane’s, the Louisiana-based chicken finger chain known for its tangy sauce, crinkle fries, and thick Texas toast, is continuing to expand. This May, Cane’s will open locations in seven states, including its first in one. The company recently told USA Today that the new openings will kick off on May 12 and continue through May 27 with new restaurants coming to California, New York, North Carolina, Maryland, Florida, and Ohio. Additionally, Arkansas will get its first-ever Raising Cane’s in the Jonesboro area. Two other locations — Oklahoma City and Lexington, Kentucky — will reopen, on May 4 and May 18, respectively, after being revamped. “We’re staying co…

Spirit Airlines looks like it’s getting spirited away. The airline is preparing to shut down, after attempts to establish a $500 million bailout from the The President administration fell through, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal. Negotiations for the government lifeline had been underway for weeks as Spirit’s cash reserves dwindled, but investors have reportedly balked at the prospect of the federal government becoming a majority owner of the company. Despite reports saying that the company is prepping to cease operations, a company spokesperson declined to comment when asked by Fast Company, and said that “Spirit is operating as usual.” O…

Chriselle Lim didn’t come from a perfume background, but she didn’t let that stop her. She realized there is always room for new brands that bring a different perspective. View the full article

Consolidation is all the rage in the video game world these days. In the past year, Ubisoft created a new gaming subsidiary with Chinese tech giant Tencent, while Electronic Arts announced a $55 billion deal led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund that will take the company private. An industry that, just a decade ago, included more than a dozen publicly traded game makers now has only a handful left. Take-Two Interactive Software has managed to remain independent while rivals, including Activision-Blizzard and EA, have been absorbed. And as it continues digesting its 2022 acquisition of Zynga, CEO Strauss Zelnick says the company is already eyeing its next acqui…

You know, there was a plague before COVID. Lots of people came down with it every morning and evening: the agony of traffic and train delays. Commuting sucked, and everyone agreed on that. Then remote work came along and, all of a sudden, having to go into the office disappeared for millions. But something else disappeared, and no one really talks about that part. If you listen closely to parents now, you’ll hear it. They miss the commute. Sort of. They don’t miss fighting for a seat on the subway. And no one is longing for the good old days of gridlock. But they do miss what that time offered them. I didn’t realize it either until it was gone. Catching our bre…

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…

In late April, indoor golf and entertainment brand Five Iron Golf launched its first location in Saudi Arabia after nearly three years of coordination with Golf Saudi, an affiliate of the country’s massive sovereign wealth fund. The golf center, located on the ground floor of the Public Investment Fund Tower—the fund’s headquarters and the tallest building in Riyadh—offers a similar mix of simulators, leagues and lessons, and food and music as other Five Iron locations both in the U.S. and abroad, says Jared Solomon, cofounder and CEO of the brand. “People are hitting golf balls, they’re having fun, they’re eating food,” he says. “They’re not drinking, because the…

The Iran war risked reigniting after the U.S. tried to force open the Strait of Hormuz for commercial shipping, though a ceasefire seemed to be holding Tuesday even after the United Arab Emirates said Iran fired missiles and drones at it. Iran’s powerful parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, accused the U.S. of undermining regional security with the effort to end Iran’s stranglehold on the strait and warned that Tehran will respond. The U.S. military said two American-flagged merchant ships successfully transited the strait on Monday, the first day of the effort, and that it fired on Iranian forces, sinking six small boats that were target…