Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Six hours after OpenAI’s launch of GPT-4.1, Sam Altman was already apologizing. This time, it wasn’t about hallucinations or bias or Scarlett Johansson. No, it was about the model name. GPT-4.1 seemed nonsensical to many, difficult to parse from their already launched models like GPT-4o and GPT-4.5. “How about we fix our model naming by this summer and everyone gets a few more months to make fun of us (which we very much deserve) until then?” Altman wrote. Streamers take the brunt of the internet’s name-mocking: Are you a Hulu, Tubi, or Fubo subscriber? But AI companies are just as bad, if not worse. Their model names are often incoherent and unmemorable. From S…

How can a razor brand market their products online when the word “razor” is shadowbanned. Start an OnlyFans, of course. London-based razor brand Nimbi, which launched at Erewhon in January 2024, began posting on TikTok last summer but noticed their views were disappointingly low. Turns out, it’s because they were using the word razor, which is on TikTok’s list of shadow-banned (meaning TikTok was limiting who could see their content). So, Nimbi got creative. Co-founder Anna Reid first suggested the idea of making an OnlyFans account as a joke. But it made a lot of sense. Most brands would steer well clear of posting on a platform infamous for sexually explicit c…

Cloud storage services conveniently let you store and access documents, photos, videos, and more from any device. The best part? Many top providers offer free plans that are surprisingly capable. But with so many options, how do you choose the right free cloud storage service? Let’s take a look at some of the leading free online storage services available today. Google Drive Google Drive offers 15 GB of storage, shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. That’s one of the most generous free storage amounts, and the service offers seamless integration with Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides). It’s also got a user-friendly interface and solid s…

While there seems to be no relief in sight for the high cost of eggs, it almost feels counterintuitive for people to celebrate two cracking, but it is a welcome distraction from the current political turmoil. Two bald eagles in Big Bear, California, have just become parents again to two chicks, with the potential for a third. This is egg-cellent news. Here’s everything to know about Jackie and Shadow’s journey to parenthood: Jackie and Shadow’s origin story Jackie and Shadow have been together since 2018. Shadow actually stole Jackie from another male, which is unusual for eagles who normally mate for life. They successfully raised two chicks but also exp…

“Violence is just part of the job. Every nurse and healthcare worker experiences it at some point.” Sentiments like this echo across American hospitals and healthcare facilities, capturing a disturbing and growing reality. Though Americans think of nursing as the most trusted profession, we often fail to see that it’s also one of the most dangerous. An alarming 8 in 10 nurses face violence at work. As a result, healthcare workers are more than four times as likely to be injured by workplace violence than workers in all other industries combined. Despite these staggering numbers, the full extent of this epidemic may not be fully understood because nurses and ot…

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 here. OpenAI says it will release an open-source model–but why now? OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Monday that his company intends to release a “powerful new open-weight language model with reasoning” in the next few months. That would mark a major shift for a company that has kept its models proprietary and secret since 2019. The announcement wasn’t a total surprise: After the groundbreaking Chinese open-source model DeepSeek-R1 showed up in January, Altman said during a Reddit AMA that he realized…

Years ago, I asked my born-organized sister how she managed to keep her place looking so nice all the time. She gave me an odd look and replied, “I put things away when I’m done with them.” I’m reminded of this infuriating conversation whenever I read most introductory budgeting advice. Money experts will assure their audience that creating a successful budget is simple. “Just track your income and spending and make sure the second number is lower than the first,” they say, often with a tone that makes it sound like they’re worried about your ability to tie your own shoes. But most people need to know how to do these supposedly simple things. And just as my siste…

AI is poised to reshape businesses, but too many executives are oversimplifying its potential, focusing on automation rather than collaboration. As someone who’s spent my career studying the future of work, I’m excited about AI’s breakthrough potential—but cautious of the narratives being rushed into the spotlight. Recently, I reviewed Anthropic’s study, Which Economic Tasks Are Performed with AI? Evidence from Millions of Claude Conversations, and found that AI’s real impact isn’t as clear-cut as many believe. While AI is transforming business, leaders are overlooking key realities about AI’s impact and its real-world applications. Here’s what many are still getting…

America’s fast casual restaurants are almost universally struggling. But a few chains are betting on one universally beloved fried finger food to draw customers back into booths: the humble mozzarella stick. Over the past year or so, the fast casual sector has faced a chilling effect as inflation and rising menu prices continue to drive consumers away. Last year, chains including Red Lobster, Tijuana Flats, Buca di Beppo, and BurgerFi all sought bankruptcy protection. Others, like Dine Brands (the owner of Applebee’s and IHOP) and Darden (the owner of Olive Garden) have recently reported lackluster financial results. Amidst this dreary environment, Chili’s, the f…

A new technology can pinpoint victims of intimate partner violence four years earlier than other detection systems and with 80% accuracy. The Automated Intimate Partner Violence Risk Support System (AIRS) utilizes clinical history and radiologic data to pinpoint patients seen in the emergency room who may be at a risk for intimate partner violence (IPV). Developed over the past five years, AIRS has been rolled out to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Emergency Rooms in Boston as well as surrounding primary care sites. Currently, the tool has been validated at the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center and is being evaluated by the Alameda Health Syste…

It’s been less than a year since the world’s largest dam removal project was completed along 420 miles of the Klamath River, near the border of Oregon and California. But if you look at the river now, you might not know that four dams had ever been in place. Instead of concrete walls and artificial reservoirs, the river is now free-flowing—and parts of the former infrastructure have been replaced by wildflowers that are in bloom. Los Angeles Times “It’s been an incredible transition,” says Ann Willis, California regional director at American Rivers, a nonprofit that supported Native American tribes in a decades-long fight to take out the dams. “It’s really strange …

TikTok just updated its desktop viewing experience to offer a smoother UX, expanded features, and more ways to watch. I wish it would go back to how it was before. It’s no secret that TikTok has a mobile-first design. Its beloved hyper-specific algorithm and For You page, as well as its wholehearted embrace of short-form video, has inspired copycats the likes of which include everyone from Instagram to LinkedIn and Substack. TikTok has even changed the fabric of culture itself, shortening attention spans and shaping the music industry as we know it. While TikTok shines on mobile, its desktop experience has historically been significantly less intuitive. The new de…

When it comes to wealth, most of us think about money. You measure your financial wealth by looking at your assets and your debts. But there are other areas in your life where you can be wealthy, including time. Would you consider yourself time-affluent or are you living the life of a time pauper? “Time wealth is all about freedom to choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, and when you trade it for other things,” says Sahil Bloom, author of The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life. Building time wealth is about awareness and action, says Bloom. Be aware that time is your most precious asset and the…

Forget SpongeBob SquarePants, Sesame Street, and the sourdough starter craze: a depressed German loaf of bread named Bernd das Brot is celebrating his 25th anniversary as the reluctant star of a children’s television program that accidentally became equally popular with adults. A cult classic in Germany, Bernd das Brot (Bernd the Bread) is a puppet renowned for his deep, gloomy voice, his perpetual pessimism and his signature expression, “Mist!” (Think “crap!” in English.) Played and voiced by puppeteer Jörg Teichgraeber, Bernd is a television presenter who wants nothing to do with TV and can’t wait to go home to stare at the wallpaper. This year, his friends—…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Last week, Zillow announced a new policy that bans home listings from appearing on the platform if they were first listed for sale in private networks more than 24 hours before appearing on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). That’s an attempt by Zillow to keep more inventory on the “public” housing market. “If a listing is online, it should be online everywhere. . . . If a listing is marketed to any home shoppers, it should be marketed to all home shoppers,” wrote Zillow. The announcement comes as some brokerages, most infamously Compass, ar…

A new consensus is growing within the scientific community about climate change: The goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050, as set out in the Paris Agreement, is probably out of reach. We’ve already experienced the first full calendar year beyond this threshold, with last year’s global average temperature being 1.6 C higher than that of the preindustrial era. And while a single year at this level isn’t enough to confirm without a doubt that the Paris goal is a goner, several recent scientific papers have come to the same unsettling conclusion that a new era of warming has already begun. How hot will things get within our lifetimes? The answer…

Throughout February, a measles outbreak has been growing in West Texas. The potentially deadly disease, once eliminated from the United States in terms of its continuous transmission, has been making a comeback in recent years as vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine movements rise. Unfortunately, this outbreak has now had deadly consequences. Earlier this week, it was reported that one unvaccinated Texas child has died as a result of the outbreak. The unfortunate event, along with the continued spread of the disease, has left many asking whether they need a measles vaccine booster shot. Here’s what you need to know. About the measles vaccine The good news is that…

The death of downtown is now a familiar refrain. Central business districts (CBDs) in cities around the world—once bustling centers of office work—were hit hard by the pandemic and the shift to remote work, leading many to predict they would never fully recover. But instead of demise, downtowns are being reinvented. And Tokyo is leading the way. Traditional downtown business districts in cities around the world were defined and dominated by vertical towers where legions of white-collar professionals and support staff were stacked in isolated office buildings. The world’s largest metropolitan area is pioneering a new model where the city itself increasingly takes o…

StubHub’s 2024 revenue surged 29.5%, it reported on Friday in its U.S. initial public offering paperwork, as the online ticketing marketplace moves ahead with its long-sought New York flotation. A handful of companies are moving ahead with stock market listings despite volatility arising from uncertainty around U.S. trade policy. Nvidia-backed startup CoreWeave and Swedish fintech Klarna are among the companies gearing up to go public in New York. StubHub, one of the biggest secondary ticketing marketplaces for live events, will sell new shares in the proposed offering, it said. Its revenue jumped to $1.77 billion in 2024, compared with $1.37 billion a yea…

China appears to be pursuing a calculated effort to recruit recently laid-off U.S. scientists—particularly those with expertise in artificial intelligence—to relocate or contribute remotely to research operations based in Shenzhen. This campaign is reportedly being driven by a network of entities linked to a shadowy Chinese technology conglomerate. In March, advertisements offering “full-cycle support” for relocation to Shenzhen were placed on LinkedIn, Craigslist, and in several major international publications. (I was alerted to one such newspaper ad through a friend in the city.) The timing coincides with a wave of budget-driven layoffs across U.S. federal agencies…

After six years in the game, Nuuly, the clothing rental service from Urban Outfitters, has done what few thought possible: turned a profit. In an industry full of flashy failures and billion-dollar burns, Nuuly is quietly winning with a strategy that’s shaking up fashion and business. View the full article

WeWard, an app that offers real-world rewards for walking, announced Wednesday it’s signed tennis champ Venus Williams as an investor and ambassador for the app. The app, which offers users points called Wards for steps taken, lets users track their movements or import pedometer data from tools like iPhone’s Apple Health, Android’s Google Fit, or Fitbit. When they’ve racked up enough Wards, they can be redeemed for gift cards, charitable donations, or even cash deposits to user bank accounts. “We’ve decided to do something very simple,” says cofounder and CEO Yves Benchimol. “We just give cash to people to walk.” In addition to tangible rewards, users can also…

As an app designed to facilitate gay hookups, popular site Sniffies has had a limitation since it started in 2018—it was only accessible via web browser. Until Monday, when the map-based cruising site debuted its Apple-approved iOS app. Building an app that complies with Apple’s notoriously stringent content moderation—and total ban on apps that directly serve adult content—was a challenge for Sniffies, which wears its sexuality proudly. Its users, which it calls “cruisers,” do, too. Many users put nude images as their cover photos, meaning adult content is visible from the second the platform is opened in a browser. The company needed to tame the experience for…