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You might not have noticed if you’re the type to upgrade your smartphone frequently, but the main cameras that they use have been getting wider and wider in their field of view throughout the years. While phones are now indisputably the most popular cameras in the world, most manufacturers have settled on a type of lens that used to be considered quite exotic and challenging to use in the camera space. The main camera on the iPhone 17 Pro, for example, has the same field of view as a 24mm lens on a full-frame camera, which is the general photographic standard for measuring focal lengths. This is a perspective that few companies would have considered using on a point-and-shoot camera in the past—it’s compositionally awkward for a non-zooming lens. Nonetheless, it is clearly now a new standard of its own. Another way But what if there’s another way? Recently, I’ve been using the Z80 Ultra from Nubia, a relatively niche consumer brand owned by the Chinese telecoms giant ZTE. Nubia’s core philosophy around smartphone cameras is that we’ve gone way too far out with 24mm lenses—instead, there’s a lot to be gained by bringing things back to 35mm. For much of photographic history, the 24mm-ish lenses we’re all so used to now were considered pretty wide. Fabled German camera maker Leica, for example, didn’t start designing 24mm lenses until the ‘90s; its classic focal lengths throughout much of the 20th century were 50mm, 35mm, 28mm, and 21mm. Anything wider than 24mm was typically referred to as ultrawide, while 35mm was at the longest end of the “wide-angle” spectrum. And 35mm lenses on smartphones aren’t new—in fact, most devices in the early days used that kind of lens. This held for every iPhone all the way through to the iPhone 5S in 2013, which came in slightly longer than 28mm-equivalent. By the time of the iPhone XS in 2018, the field of view had widened to around 26mm, and 2022’s iPhone 14 Pro went wider still, to about 28mm. More stuff in view Why the shift? One obvious advantage to a wider lens is that you can simply fit more stuff in the shot. The 28mm focal length is easier to use than 35mm for shooting groups of people, for example. The field of view also tends to be easier to design physically shorter lenses for, which was critical as phones started to get thinner. And if you want a 35mm-equivalent field of view, you can always crop in from the wider focal length; Apple has been actively promoting this as a built-in feature in recent years with 1.2x (28mm) and 1.5x (35mm) options in the iPhone camera app. But you do lose the qualities of a native 35mm-equivalent lens when you do this. Cropping your image will always compromise on quality to some extent, and you don’t get the same compressed perspective that comes from a longer focal length. 35mm is a natural perspective that offers more subject isolation with blurrier backgrounds than if you were using a 28mm-equivalent lens on the same sensor. There’s a reason Fujifilm opted for 35mm on its ultra-popular X100 line of enthusiast compact cameras. A worthy option While I wouldn’t say the Nubia Z80 Ultra has the world’s greatest camera system—its image processing leaves a lot to be desired when compared to the likes of Oppo and Xiaomi—the shooting experience is good enough to convince me that 35mm is a worthy route to pursue. Coupled with a genuinely useful two-stage shutter button, the 35mm lens on the Z80 Ultra just feels more like a real camera than most other phones. Of course, sometimes you will want a wider perspective. Nubia’s answer to that is simply to provide an 18mm-equivalent ultrawide camera that’s capable enough for you to crop into 24mm and get passable results. Even the highest-end phones have been compromising on ultrawide camera hardware in recent years, but the Z80 Ultra’s ultrawide has a relatively huge 1/1.56” inch sensor—that’s as big as the main camera on many upper midrange phones. The 24mm results aren’t going to blow you away, but they’re more than serviceable. Refreshing choices Camera design is always about trade-offs, so it’s refreshing to see a phone that makes different choices; the 35mm main lens on the Z80 Ultra is just one of them. Nubia also opted for an almost-invisible under-display selfie camera, for example, which gives you a genuinely full-screen image when watching video—at the expense of, well, selfie quality. While the execution isn’t fully there just yet, I really think Nubia is onto something with this 35mm design. Coupled with a strong 18mm ultrawide, a solid 70mm telephoto, and a real shutter button, the Z80 Ultra presents a photographer-forward system that feels meaningfully different to other phone cameras. When it comes to photography, what’s not in the frame is just as important as what is. Smartphone cameras have come to dominate the world, so it’s worth considering the trade-offs when it comes to their wider perspective. View the full article

In 2010, Phil Gilbert was a longtime startup entrepreneur when IBM acquired the software company he ran. The “slower, process-oriented culture” was a struggle for someone who was used to the faster pace of startup life, he writes in his new book, Irrestible Change: A Blueprint for Earning Buy-In and Breakout Success. When IBM tapped him to lead a transformation of the company, it was a daunting task. Over the next few years, Gilbert guided IBM’s shift toward design-thinking and re-trained thousands of employees to work differently, all without mandating a thing. Today, he sees corporate mandates as pointless: They don’t work, he says. And yet, they’re ubiquitous—take the RTO mandates that companies are enforcing, often to the frustration of their employees. At Paramount, about 600 workers took a voluntary buyout rather than accept the company’s 5-day RTO mandate. But change is inevitable, whether it’s about remote work or AI integration. So how do companies get employees on board? Gilbert, now a leading culture change expert, spoke with Fast Company about the lessons he learned from his undertaking at IBM and what company leaders should know about getting employee buy-in for their own change initiatives. We’re in a time when companies are undergoing and implementing lots of changes, from RTO to AI to DEI—all the acronyms. In your book, you talk about the importance of treating change like a product. What do you mean by that? My predisposition, based on years of experience, is that mandating changes in the workplace is hugely inefficient and hugely ineffective. Cultures drive outcomes. Mandating culture changes to achieve different outcomes doesn’t work. [At IBM], I had to start thinking, “Okay, if those two things are true, how do I change a culture without mandating it?” And it hit me that this is very much the same problem that any startup faces: bringing a new product to market. You have a new solution to a problem, and nobody knows who you are. It struck me that what I was really doing was constructing a new product for the marketplace that was IBM. I had to make this product so desirable that the teams would choose to adopt it. And in doing so, they would work better together and deliver better outcomes. That was an aha moment of, “Oh, I’ve done this before. I know how to build products, I know how to deliver products.” If you’re thinking about introducing this [change] as a product, you have to understand that a product is bigger than a technology. A product is much more holistic than just a single tool. We have to name it. We have to put the brand values into it. You have to prove value. RTO is something so many companies are struggling with. You talk about making change desirable, but what advice do you have for leaders when the change they want to implement is getting pushback? I’m telling leaders today, “If you are getting pushback from people returning to the office, don’t think it’s on them—it’s on you.” If you introduce something that people reject after giving it a try, there’s one of two reasons: The first one is that it’s not actually a good idea. The second one, which is more common, is that it’s not a bad idea, but you have not executed it very well. I’m a big believer in people being at the office, but not for the reason most leaders are saying today. I’ve come across company after company where the CEO will say, “Get back to the office because collaboration is better.” And then when you get to the office, you find out that three-quarters of your team is not even in that location. Collaboration is actually happening very well over Zoom and Teams and Webex. It’s all the other stuff that makes up a person’s career and a person’s wisdom, the collaborations that are not happening via Zoom, [that we’re missing]. Those are the experiences we should be majoring on in our physical spaces, and they should be apparently valuable. That’s what irresistible change is all about. It’s about reversing the ownership of noncompliance. In the old model, noncompliance was a failure of the employee: “They don’t get it. I’m going to start looking at the badge readers every day and find out who badged in and who badged out and when they did it.” That’s the old model, and it engenders resentment from day one. The irresistible change model says, “If folks aren’t coming back to the office and staying willingly, why is that? And what can I do to make that environment so valuable to them that they want to be there?” What surprised you most during the transformation at IBM? I believed in this thing called the “frozen middle.” I thought middle management was resistant to change—that had been my experience. So when I designed the program, [I thought], I’ve got to keep the very top engaged—that meant our CEO, her directs, and their directs. And I have to keep the workers at the edge very engaged. They’re the canaries in the coal mine. My assumption was that we would get to the middle over time. A couple years into the program, [our] research showed that middle managers did not resist change. In fact, they were almost as rabid about change as the people at the edge, the earlier-career people. But middle managers do the hardest job in the business. They’re the translators. They’ve got to translate the high-level strategy and communications to the very senior people. And they’ve got to rationalize the chaos of what’s going on on the ground. This role of translation is very hard, and we had just made it exponentially harder because we introduced new teams under their purview that were operating in radically different ways from their old teams. We hadn’t given them the tools to manage teams that were using these new practices. Once we acknowledged that and gave them the tools, their ability to manage these teams was greatly expanded. That was a huge accelerant. Had we had that at the beginning, we would have shaved at least a year, if not two, off the program. If people could take one lesson from your book, what would you want that to be? The first question I ask every CEO when I’m approached—unfortunately, I’m not approached as often as I’d like to be before the transformation starts; I’m typically approached after it’s failed—is, “Tell me about the teams you’ve put through the program.” And almost always, I hear something like this: “Oh, our best people. We pulled them off their projects. A tiger team.” Getting those first teams correct is a huge part of winning or losing. These are not cherry-picked employees. These are teams that are funded to do what they’re going to do, whether you transform them or not. These are not innovation teams in some cool office in San Francisco with bricks and exposed ductwork and VW buses sticking out of the wall. These are teams in your mainstream business—whoever is on them. Virtually everybody gets that wrong. View the full article

Senior figures appear to gear up for a post-Starmer future; others see briefings as cock-up rather than conspiracy View the full article

When most people think about immigration enforcement, they picture border crossings and airport checkpoints. But the new front line may be your social media feed. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has published a request for information for private-sector contractors to launch a round-the-clock social media monitoring program. The request states that private contractors will be paid to comb through “Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, VK, Flickr, Myspace, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Reddit, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc.,” turning public posts into enforcement leads that feed directly into ICE’s databases. The request for information reads like something out of a cyber thriller: dozens of analysts working in shifts, strict deadlines measured in minutes, a tiered system of prioritizing high-risk individuals, and the latest software keeping constant watch. I am a researcher who studies the intersection of data governance, digital technologies, and the U.S. federal government. I believe that the ICE request for information also signals a concerning, if logical, next step in a longer trend, one that moves the U.S. border from the physical world into the digital. A new structure of surveillance ICE already searches social media using a service called SocialNet that monitors most major online platforms. The agency has also contracted with Zignal Labs for its AI-powered social media monitoring system. The Customs and Border Protection agency also searches social media posts on the devices of some travelers at ports of entry, and the U.S. State Department reviews social media posts when foreigners seek visas to enter the United States. ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies already search social media. What would change isn’t only the scale of monitoring but its structure. Instead of government agents gathering evidence case by case, ICE is building a public-private surveillance loop that transforms everyday online activity into potential evidence. Private contractors would be tasked with scraping publicly available data to collecting messages, including posts and other media and data. The contractors would be able to correlate those findings with data in commercial datasets from brokers such as LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR along with government-owned databases. Analysts would be required to produce dossiers for ICE field offices within tight deadlines—sometimes just 30 minutes for a high-priority case. Those files don’t exist in isolation. They feed directly into Palantir Technologies’s Investigative Case Management system, the digital backbone of modern immigration enforcement. There, this social media data would join a growing web of license plate scans, utility records, property data, and biometrics, creating what is effectively a searchable portrait of a person’s life. Who gets caught in the net? Officially, ICE says its data collection would focus on people who are already linked to ongoing cases or potential threats. In practice, the net is far wider. The danger here is that when one person is flagged, their friends, relatives, fellow organizers, or any of their acquaintances can also become subjects of scrutiny. Previous contracts for facial recognition tools and location tracking have shown how easily these systems expand beyond their original scope. What starts as enforcement can turn into surveillance of entire communities. What ICE says and what history shows ICE frames the project as modernization: a way to identify a target’s location by identifying aliases and detecting patterns that traditional methods might miss. Planning documents say contractors cannot create fake profiles and must store all analysis on ICE servers. But history suggests these kinds of guardrails often fail. Investigations have revealed how informal data-sharing between local police and federal agents allowed ICE to access systems it wasn’t authorized to use. The agency has repeatedly purchased massive datasets from brokers to sidestep warrant requirements. And despite a White House freeze on spyware procurement, ICE quietly revived a contract with Paragon’s Graphite tool, software reportedly capable of infiltrating encrypted apps such as WhatsApp and Signal. Meanwhile, ICE’s vendor ecosystem keeps expanding: Clearview AI for face matching, ShadowDragon’s SocialNet for mapping networks, Babel Street’s location history service Locate X, and LexisNexis for looking up people. ICE is also purchasing tools from surveillance firm PenLink that combine location data with social media data. Together, these platforms make continuous, automated monitoring not only possible but routine. ICE is purchasing an AI tool that correlates people’s locations with their social media posts. Lessons from abroad The U.S. isn’t alone in government monitoring of social media. In the U.K., a new police unit tasked with scanning online discussions about immigration and civil unrest has drawn criticism for blurring the line between public safety and political policing. Across the globe, spyware scandals have shown how lawful access tools that were initially justified for counterterrorism were later used against journalists and activists. Once these systems exist, mission creep, also known as function creep, becomes the rule rather than the exception. The social cost of being watched Around-the-clock surveillance doesn’t just gather information—it also changes behavior. Research found that visits to Wikipedia articles on terrorism dropped sharply immediately after revelations about the National Security Agency’s global surveillance in June 2013. For immigrants and activists, the stakes are higher. A post about a protest or a joke can be reinterpreted as “intelligence.” Knowing that federal contractors may be watching in real time encourages self-censorship and discourages civic participation. In this environment, the digital self—an identity composed of biometric markers, algorithmic classifications, risk scores, and digital traces—becomes a risk that follows you across platforms and databases. What’s new and why it matters now What is genuinely new is the privatization of interpretation. ICE isn’t just collecting more data, it is outsourcing judgment to private contractors. Private analysts, aided by artificial intelligence, are likely to decide what online behavior signals danger and what doesn’t. That decision-making happens rapidly and across large numbers of people, for the most part beyond public oversight. At the same time, the consolidation of data means social media content can now sit beside location and biometric information inside Palantir’s hub. Enforcement increasingly happens through data correlations, raising questions about due process. ICE’s request for information is likely to evolve into a full procurement contract within months, and recent litigation from the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center against the Department of Homeland Security suggests that the oversight is likely to lag far behind the technology. ICE’s plan to maintain permanent watch floors—open indoor spaces equipped with video and computer monitors, that are staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year—signals that this likely isn’t a temporary experiment and instead is a new operational norm. What accountability looks like Transparency starts with public disclosure of the algorithms and scoring systems ICE uses. Advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union argue that law enforcement agencies should meet the same warrant standards online that they do in physical spaces. The Brennan Center for Justice and the ACLU argue that there should be independent oversight of surveillance systems for accuracy and bias. And several U.S. senators have introduced legislation to limit bulk purchases from data brokers. Without checks like these, I believe that the boundary between border control and everyday life is likely to keep dissolving. As the digital border expands, it risks ensnaring anyone whose online presence becomes legible to the system. Nicole M. Bennett is a PhD candidate in geography and the assistant director at the Center for Refugee Studies at Indiana University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

US president says he intends to pursue legal action because UK broadcaster ‘defrauded the public’View the full article

Below, co-authors Suzy Burke, Rhett Power, and Ryan Berman share five key insights from their new book, Headamentals: How Leaders Can Crack Negative Self-Talk. Suzy, president and co-founder of the leadership consultancy Accountability Inc., is an organizational psychologist and seasoned executive with an exceptional track record in a diverse array of businesses, from a Fortune 20 technology company to a highly successful beverage start-up. She is also a National Institute of Mental Health scholar and member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches Agency. Rhett is the CEO and co-founder of Accountability Inc. and was named the #1 Thought Leader on Entrepreneurship by Thinkers360. He is also a Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coach. His expertise has been featured in Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Wall Street Journal, and on CNBC. Ryan is the founder of Courageous and host of the Courageous Podcast. For over 25 years, Ryan has helped corporations who are stuck, scared, or stale to choose courage. He has counseled many companies, including Google, Procter & Gamble, Kellogg’s, Kraft Heinz, LA Galaxy, and Snapchat, to name a few. What’s the big idea? Leaders aren’t failing because they don’t have a strategy or skill. They are stuck because of their internal battles—their self-talk—not because of the challenges happening with customers or in the market. Headamentals is about directing that inner voice so that it becomes a competitive advantage and helps you build great teams. Once you fix that conversation in your head, you fix how you lead, connect, and perform. Leading others starts with self-leadership. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Suzy, Rhett, and Ryan—below, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Self-talk is the hidden saboteur of leadership We’ve always had societal-scale worry wars, but we like to refer to the pandemic as Worry War I. Now we are in Worry War II, which confronts the rising cost of food, the emergence of AI, the erosion of empathy at work, and political division. If Worry War I was the pandemic, fueled by isolation and fears of illness, then Worry War II is pandemonium. It is all these forces—pushing us, nudging us, spiraling us out—and each of us is dealing with it in our own way. Layer on top of that the things we told ourselves as kids, what our parents might’ve said, which have stuck in our minds. You start to see why we’re spiraling and where our self-talk comes from. Think of that voice inside your head: Where does yours come from? That voice triggers how you show up in different situations. Sometimes a self-talk spiral is triggered by what’s happening in the world right now, like when you try to watch the news. Or other times, even as an older adult, your self-talk can spiral when something reminds you of a challenging experience or feeling from your childhood. Self-talk, unbeknownst to those around you, can spiral out of control and become a hidden force holding back yourself and your teams. 2. Every leader has a monster The hardest part of being a leader isn’t the market pressure. It’s not the late nights, the impossible deadlines, or even your fiercest competitor. The hardest part is the voice in your head that makes you rewrite an email at midnight because of how it might land, pause before you speak (even when you’re the expert in the room), and turns every compliment into a question mark. This voice is the one that whispers, or sometimes roars, that you don’t belong. That voice doesn’t just shape your day, it shapes everything. It determines whether you share your thoughts in that high-stakes meeting or let the moment pass; whether you inspire confidence or let doubt leak into the room; whether your team feels a calm, steady presence or the weight of uncertainty. It shapes the culture your team breathes every single day. What gets celebrated, what gets overlooked, and what never gets said out loud. “Your self-talk becomes team talk.” If you want a team that’s bold, resilient, and innovative, it doesn’t start with your strategy. It doesn’t start with your offsite. It starts with a conversation happening in your head—that’s your monster. And almost every leader has one. What matters is whether this voice is left in charge, because when your monster speaks, your team listens. Your self-talk becomes team talk. According to the National Science Foundation, we have up to 60,000 thoughts a day: 80 percent of them are negative, and 95 percent are repetitive. That’s 48,000 mental reruns of doubt every single day. Given that reality, it is no surprise that most of us wrestle with imposter syndrome: 62 percent worldwide, 71 percent in the U.S. If you’re a high achiever, that percentage is even greater. Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientific minds in history, once confessed that he felt like an involuntary swindler. The man who reshaped our understanding of the universe worried that he was faking it. Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice, has also admitted to feeling like a fraud. She once said in a speech, “I’m always looking over my shoulder, wondering if I measure up.” And Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks, admits that very few people get into the CEO seat and truly believe they belong. If Einstein can doubt his brain, Sotomayor can doubt her success, and Schultz can doubt his right to the corner office, then self-doubt isn’t a glitch. It’s the default. Your monster doesn’t care about your resume, titles, or trophies. 3. Your mindset isn’t fixed Your mindset is programmable, and you are the programmer. To program it, it’s important to understand why we’re plagued by our monsters in the first place. The answer is evolution. Our brains are wired for survival, not growth. Our brain’s default mode fixates on past threats to help us avoid future danger. If you were laughed at for speaking up in class, your brain filed that away so that now, when you’re thinking about speaking up in a meeting, that same voice might whisper don’t. If your first boss pounced on every small slip, your inner critic learned that imperfection equals incompetence. Years later, it still sounds the alarm. “Don’t try to ignore your monster.” Conventional wisdom says to cast your inner critic as a bully and either ignore, suppress, or conquer it. But our monsters are trying to protect us, not destroy us. The moment you step outside of what’s familiar—giving tough feedback, launching a bold idea, taking on a new role—you invite risk and vulnerability. That’s when your monster pipes up, saying, What if you fail? But staying safe trades impact for comfort and progress for predictability. The irony is that true psychological safety doesn’t come from avoiding risks, but rather from knowing that you can take them and still be okay. Don’t try to ignore your monster. Get curious about it. The 3-C Maverick Method as a tool for reframing negative self-talk in real time: Catch, Confront, Change. When you think about something, it shapes how you feel about it, which in turn shapes how you act. When you recreate the story you tell yourself, you change the outcome. If you see setbacks as invitations to grow, then feedback stops feeling like criticism and begins building confidence. That’s the power of changing the conversation in your head. You often can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you think about it and respond. This is the essence of cognitive reframing and our antidote to negative self-talk, and the cornerstone of our three-step method: Catch yourself when your mind is saying you’re not smart or tough enough to succeed. Your emotions are an alarm system. Anxiety is often the first indicator that the monster is moving in. Tune in, identify the counterproductive thought. Confront that thought. Challenge your monster with facts that prove it wrong. Change the narrative by reframing the story your monster is telling you. 4. There is more than one type of monster Sports coaches say you practice 95 percent of the time for the 5 percent of the time that you actually play. In business, it is almost entirely the opposite. Think about how long the orientation phase is as a company: you’re given an hour of orientation to find out where you’re supposed to go, and then practice is over. But we need more practice, specifically for retraining the brain to have stronger tools for dealing with self-talk. There are five monster archetypes holding us back that we need to practice dealing with. We call these cognitive distortions CAMOS, because they camouflage or conceal your truth: Catastrophizer – assumes the worst will happen, even if it probably won’t. Always Righter – needs to be right, no matter what. Mind Reader – tries to tell you what you’re thinking, before you even know what that is. Over-generalizer – takes one bad thing and paints everything with it. Should-er – lives by unrealistic “should” and “musts,” creating unnecessary pressure. 5. Self-talk can be your leadership plutonium All leaders eventually discover that self-talk is their most powerful, volatile energy source. It can fuel extraordinary growth or cause quiet, invisible damage. Every day, there’s a voice running in your head—evaluating, judging, predicting, doubting, encouraging—and it never stops. As a leader or founder, that voice becomes the unseen soundtrack for your company. We tend to think of our thoughts as private, but they’re not. They leak out in our body language, decisions, energy, and how we communicate. When a founder walks into a room and he’s full of stress, teams don’t just hear it; they feel it. If your self-talk is full of fear, your team starts to operate out of fear. If your self-talk is reactive, your team becomes reactive. But if your self-talk is grounded in belief and clarity, then your team learns to respond the same way. You can’t create a calm, confident, accountable team if you’re running around with a chaotic inner dialogue. Culture starts with what you say to yourself in those private moments before the big decision, before the investor pitch, or before the tough conversation. Leaders who have built billion-dollar companies share the quality of disciplined thinking. They don’t let the wrong stories take root. They challenge their own narratives and are intentional about what they say to themselves because they know it shapes how they show up for everyone else. Plutonium, like the power of self-talk, can power cities or destroy them. The teams that are winning are not just on the same page strategically, but are also on the same page emotionally and mentally. They’ve built shared language and a rhythm of confidence and clarity that amplifies everyone’s performance. That alignment is leadership plutonium. When your self-talk and your team’s talk are synced, you’ve created an unstoppable force. Enjoy our full library of Book Bites—read by the authors!—in the Next Big Idea App. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. View the full article

Recriminations fly in Downing Street after prime minister highlights weakness of his own position View the full article

Sir Keir Starmer’s allies say prime minister is prepared to fight any attempt to topple himView the full article

Self-growth requires two things parents often lack: time and energy. Between cleaning messes, cooking meals, and managing extracurriculars, the average parent gets just two hours a week to focus on personal development. Growth doesn’t stop when you become a parent. Raising children offers lifelong learning. Yet, for parents used to measuring their success in qualifications and promotions, it often doesn’t feel like growth—especially when you’re sleep-deprived and energy-drained. To them, professional development and personal development are one and the same. It’s no wonder 50% are left feeling as if parenthood has hijacked or delayed their growth. As Headway’s productivity coach, I’ve seen this situation play out all too many times. Working parents worry they’re falling behind, so they spend every spare second they have trying to catch up, often sacrificing their sleep, social life, and self-care. It’s mentally taxing and typically leads to self-doubt, burnout, and parents putting their career growth on pause rather than any meaningful progress. Ambition on hold: Self-improvement is designed for the childless Growing by almost 5% annually, the global personal development market is on track to reach $69 billion by 2032. With a constant flow of new material from leading experts, it’s never been easier to improve yourself. Unless, of course, you’re a parent. When the best self-help books span hundreds of pages, for those lucky to find two hours a week for themselves, it’s a nonstarter. Parents aren’t excluded from growth by ability or desire, but by design. The booming self-improvement industry simply wasn’t built for those without free evenings and quiet weekends. Parents might not be reading a book a week or asking for career development funding, but they still want to learn. They do, and they try, sneaking in learning while the children are napping, during their commute, or over the weekend instead of resting. But it rarely sticks. And when it doesn’t, it can feel like failure. That sense of falling behind fosters frustration, discouragement, and hopelessness. While the most laborious moments of parenthood are temporary, 41% admit that having children has sapped their ambition, and 18% say it has “destroyed” their career prospects. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right tools and approach, parents can keep learning and growing without burning out or putting their children second. Burp, feed, learn, repeat: Making self-growth possible for parents Traditional approaches to self-growth—long courses, bulky books, and complicated apps—aren’t compatible with the realities of raising children. What parents need is short and flexible content and tools that enable micro-learning, enabling them to make progress in small pockets of time without making learning draining or burdensome. Studies show it’s no less effective. In fact, micro-learning can boost knowledge retention by as much as 20%. Even small amounts of consistent learning add up, making progress possible for parents without feeling like they’re sacrificing in other areas of life or constantly falling behind. How to maintain your self-growth during parenthood (without losing sleep) If it feels like you have to choose between parenting and personal development, here’s how you can banish the self-doubt and get your self-growth back on track: Set realistic goals: Hustle culture insists we should sleep less and do more, but it doesn’t work. Burnout isn’t effective for learning. You’ll just spend your free time worrying about your job performance, stressing over your home life, and questioning whether you should give up. Speak to your employer: Your productivity may slump, but your employer already knows you’re capable. Have the conversation and ask how they can support you. They might offer a few hours out of the workday each week for personal development or cover the cost of a micro-learning subscription. Show yourself compassion: Parenthood is never easy, despite what some claim. You will face interruptions, skip days, and completely forget things you learned five minutes ago. That’s normal, so show yourself some compassion. Learning to be kinder to yourself is still a form of growth, even if it doesn’t come with a certificate or qualification. Remember, this isn’t forever: “My career is over,” “The person I was is gone,” “I’ll never achieve my goals.” It’s easy to fall into a mindset of doom and gloom, but that’s the sleep deprivation talking. Kids grow up, demand less time, and normalcy resumes. View the full article

International energy watchdog sets out new pessimistic scenario to reflect fading commitment to climate changeView the full article

Performance has lagged at Paul Singer’s hedge fund amid concerns that large size is barrier to strong returnsView the full article

Europe’s manufacturing champion is in free fall. Economists are suggesting radical steps to save what is leftView the full article

Dismembering salary sacrifice is a short-sighted tax grab that will accelerate the UK’s retirement savings crisisView the full article

The issue is The President’s Achilles heel — and the US president knows itView the full article

Arjun Sethi says users are hindered by dire warnings and hurdles that slow down transactions View the full article

One-off phone call between national security adviser and Russia’s foreign policy aide said to have ‘not gone well’View the full article

Second-lien mortgages make up the collateral pool. Those assets normally have a high expected loss severity, but the borrowers appear to be of prime credit quality. View the full article

Third-quarter mortgage earnings revealed swings in profitability, but the real story, according to the Chairman of Whalen Global Advisors, is that hedging MSRs is unnecessary for well-managed lenders. View the full article

On Tuesday, SoftBank, the Japanese financial giant, announced plans to dump all 32 million of its shares in Nvidia, the AI chip maker. The news won’t be the needle that pops the AI bubble, but it did cause enough of a stir to make Nvidia’s shares drop 2% Tuesday morning. The bad vibes were muted somewhat by news of what SoftBank says it will do with the proceeds of the sell off, along with those from the sale of some of its $9.17 billion T-Mobile stake: The firm will double down on another big bet in the AI space–OpenAI. SoftBank expects to directly invest $30 billion in OpenAI this year, according to its second-quarter financial statement in September. And it had already committed $19 billion to the $500 billion Project Stargate infrastructure initiative (with OpenAI and Oracle). To bankroll these commitments, Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s CEO, likely needed to free up funds. Hence the Nvidia sell-off. For years, Son has talked about SoftBank’s strategy to invest in the “computing platforms of the future,” including AI. His firm amassed a reported $4 billion stake in Nvidia back in 2017, only to dump the shares in 2019. At the time Son had called Nvidia the “the core company of the AI revolution.” He now believes that OpenAI will be that core company. During SoftBank’s annual general meeting in June, Son declared he is “all in” on OpenAI. He’d always wanted to be an early major investor in the AI super-startup, he said, but Microsoft beat him to the punch. OpenAI, he predicted, will one day go public and eventually “become the most valuable company in the world,” he said. Nvidia reported $46.7 billion in revenues during its July-ending quarter (and crossed $4 trillion in market cap), while OpenAI doesn’t expect to turn a profit until 2029. But by divesting of Nvidia and doubling down on OpenAI, Son can play a more active role in the platform’s expansion via initiatives like the Stargate Project, which will finance a major buildout of AI infrastructure. SoftBank is still indirectly entwined in Nvidia’s fortunes, which also rest on the broad expansion of AI. The entire stock market is being propped up by confidence in big tech companies that are investing huge amounts in AI. Investors are placing a lot of faith in the idea that generative AI, a mostly unproven technology, will create valuable new efficiencies for businesses in the coming years. Compounding the concern is the fact that a relatively small group of wealthy companies–SoftBank, Nvidia, and OpenAI–are investing in each other, which has fed fears that they’re involved in a sort of self-inflating bubble. It’s unclear if or when that bubble will popThat bubble may well pop at some point. For nowUntil then, Son has made his preference clear: software over hardware, a bet that feels like a big vote of confidence for AI. View the full article

Availability of electricity to keep models running is becoming the critical factor in technology’s developmentView the full article

Party’s MPs grow frustrated with prime minister’s leadership as crucial Budget nearsView the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The 2021 Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Touch isn’t new, but it still has a few good years of life in it, especially if you need a solid secondary laptop for home, travel, or light work—and it's on sale for $599.99 on StackSocial right now. It’s powered by an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 chip that can reach up to 4.7GHz, paired with 12GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. That combination is fast enough for multitasking, web browsing, and even moderate creative work. The touchscreen is a bonus, making it easy to scroll, tap, and zoom without relying on a trackpad. This model also runs Windows 11 Home, so despite being from 2021, it feels current in terms of interface and usability. It’s a brand-new unit, although it doesn’t come with a manufacturer's warranty. However, third-party coverage is optional for $59.99. Design-wise, the soft-touch finish of this device feels premium and resists fingerprints better than glossy surfaces. The 15.6-inch full HD display offers good brightness and color clarity for streaming, editing, or everyday tasks, while the slim bezels make the screen feel larger than it is. It weighs just under four pounds, which is manageable for commuting or moving between rooms. Lenovo also added a fingerprint reader built into the power button for quick sign-ins, as well as a physical webcam shutter for privacy, a feature not often seen in older laptops at this price point. The Dolby Audio-tuned speakers aren’t groundbreaking but do a decent job for music and calls. The IdeaPad 5 isn’t a powerhouse by today’s standards, but it holds its own as a practical all-rounder. If you’re editing videos or gaming, newer models will make more sense. But if you're looking for something fast, comfortable, and modern enough for writing, streaming, or working from a café, this still fits the bill. The battery lasts up to 11 hours, and the USB-C port supports fast charging and external displays, keeping it versatile even a few years later. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods Pro 2 Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $169.99 (List Price $249.00) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $324.99 (List Price $349.00) Shark AV2501AE AI XL Hepa- Safe Self-Emptying Base Robot Vacuum — $297.99 (List Price $649.99) Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus — $24.99 (List Price $49.99) Amazon Fire HD 10 (2023) — $69.99 (List Price $139.99) Sony WH-1000XM5 — $328.00 (List Price $399.99) Fitbit Versa 4 Fitness Smartwatch (Black) — $160.99 (List Price $199.95) Blink Outdoor 4 1080p Wireless Security Camera (5-Pack) — $159.99 (List Price $399.99) Google Pixel 9 128GB Unlocked 6.9" OLED Smartphone (Obsidian) — $544.98 (List Price $799.00) Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Plus 1080p Security Camera (White) — $99.99 (List Price $179.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

In a culture overwhelmed with ridiculous beliefs, an unlikely hero of rationality has emerged: reality star Kim Kardashian. Kim raised a healthy amount of skepticism of psychics in a recent TikTok video: In case you don’t follow the ins-and-outs of reality stars, Kim K.'s recent life cycle/plot development sees her trying to become a lawyer. She’s been taking an apprenticeship in the industry and presumably studying hard. She also consulted psychics, who read tea leaves or whatever and concluded that she would pass the California bar exam. Except, sadly, she did not. “Psychics are full pathological liars” —Kim Kardashian“All of the fucking psychics that we have met with, and that we’re obsessed with, are all fucking full of shit,” Kardashian said to her 10 million TikTok followers. “They all collectively, maybe four of them, told me I’m going to pass the bar. So they’re all full pathological liars. Don’t believe anything they say.” According to a 2024 survey, about 20% of Americans love The Kardashians, and about 26% of Americans believe in clairvoyance. I have nothing but vibes to back this up, but I bet the circles for “Kardashian fan” and “believer in psychics” in the American Venn diagram have a lot of overlap. Kardashian isn’t preaching to the skeptics; she’s talking to the true believers, as she once was. Kardashian has personal credibility here, given her long history of talking to mediums and psychics, and there’s something extra convincing about someone with skin in the game. This wasn’t some meaningless test for Kim Kardashian; she was asking about something that was important to her, and she wasn’t doing it from a skeptical point of view. Where Kim Kardashian’s psychics went wrongA savvy psychic tries to avoid making predictions that can be proven true or false. A medium might say, “Your Dad is up in heaven, and he’s super proud of you,” but if they want to stay in business, they won’t say, “Your Dad says the stock certificates are in the attic in the green trunk,” because when you check the trunk—if there even is a trunk or an attic—the jig is up. Without knowing it, Kardashian put her psychics in a bind. By asking point blank whether she was going to pass the bar or not, Kardashian forced a binary decision. It’s understandable they unanimously landed on “you’ll pass,” because that’s what she wanted hear. "The fates are unclear at this time!” is too wishy-washy, and "You're going to fail, girl," would likely get you disinvited to the mansion. But I am surprised no one went with, “I can’t tell the time frame, specifically, but you will become a lawyer in the future.” That’s what I would have said. (I’m available for psychic readings.) Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to being unaware of anything Kim Kardashian does. View the full article

When Amazon proposed building its Project Blue data center in Tucson, Arizona, the company faced intense pushback. Residents raised concerns about the enormous amounts of water and electricity that the data center would need, two major ways such projects impact the environment, especially in a desert city. Ultimately, Tucson’s town council rejected the proposal (though its developer hasn’t given up). But the story highlights both the growing environmental impacts of data centers, and how location matters to that impact. A study published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability makes that connection even clearer. Led by researchers at Cornell University, the study analyzed the environmental impact that data centers could have in the U.S. as their growth continues, and created a state-by-state look at where those data centers should go to avoid the worst effects. The growing impact of AI Data centers demand a lot of electricity, so much so that they are straining our energy grid. In order to quickly meet that growing energy demand, developers are building more fossil fuel infrastructure, like natural gas power plants. The data center surge has also delayed the planned retirements of coal plants. The current rate of AI growth in the U.S. would put 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2030, the study authors found. That’s equivalent to adding 5 to 10 million cars to the country’s roads. That growth would also drain 731 to 1,125 million cubic meters of water every year—as much as 6 to 10 million Americans’ annual average household water usage. All together, that means the AI industry “is unlikely to meet its net-zero aspirations by 2030,” the study reads, without massively relying on carbon offsets—which the researchers call “highly uncertain”—or water restoration efforts. Still, researchers didn’t only want to see the environmental trajectory that this AI boom would take. They also wanted to figure out what choices could “steer it toward sustainability,” Fengqi You, a Cornell engineering professor who led the study, said in a statement. How location matters The location of data centers matters to those impacts, and developers could cut data centers’ environmental footprints by building them in different places, the researchers found. Some data centers are being planned in regions that are already water scarce, like Arizona or Nevada, even though data centers require a lot of water themselves. Instead, locating projects in regions with lower water-stress and improving cooling efficiency could cut water demands by 52%, per the study. In other places, the massive surge of data centers can strain the grid or water resources; Virginia, for example, is the biggest data center market in the world, with more than 600 facilities clustered around Washington, D.C., and Richmond. Data center companies have wanted to be close to workers in D.C., but continuing to build data centers there just adds to that strain. What powers the grid that supports a data center matters too. Some states like New York may have energy grids powered by more renewables or may be investing in more clean energy, which means fewer carbon emissions. But just focusing on reducing a project’s carbon footprint could actually increase its water footprint, the researchers found. Conversely, putting data centers in the best locations for water use reduced their overall carbon footprint, too. Researchers used a combined carbon- and water-focused strategy to find the best places to build data centers to minimize their environmental impact. And those states are clustered in the midwest, specifically Texas, Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota. The researchers acknowledge that certain technologies, like better liquid cooling and improved server utilization, could bring down data centers’ environmental impact too—potentially removing 7% of carbon dioxide and lowering water use by 29%. Those are just more decisions, like location, that companies could consider when building more data centers. “This is the build-out moment,” You said. “The AI infrastructure choices we make this decade will decide whether AI accelerates climate progress or becomes a new environmental burden.” View the full article

If there's one thing all of us smartphone owners have in common, it's that our devices rarely have enough battery life. Some phones are better than others, especially when paired with battery-saving settings, but in general, it's a universal anxiety to feel like your phone might die before you reach a charger again. There are many reasons your smartphone's battery might drain fast, but some of the likeliest culprits are poorly-designed apps. Some of these programs use too much processing power when you're actively using them, while others needlessly run in the background. You can always check your device's battery stats to see which apps are the worst offenders, but what if you know know an app was a battery anchor before downloading it in the first place? The Play Store's new battery warningsAs of March 1, 2026, that will be the new reality. In just a few months, when you tap on an app in the Play Store, you might see a new alert that wasn't there before. Underneath the usual details, like the app's name, developer, reviews, and rating, you'll see a red warning, stating something to the effect of, "This app may use more battery than expected due to high background activity." I don't know about you, but that would get me thinking twice about downloading it. According to the Android Developer Blog, this has been in the works for some time. In partnership with Samsung, the company rolled out a new metric in beta earlier this year called "excessive partial wake locks," which aimed to reveal to developers when their apps "excessively" wake the display. Following this beta program, Google says it refined the algorithm it uses to calculate this rating, and has now rolled out the metric to all developers. Going forward, if an app wakes the screen for a total of two hours in any given 24 hour period, Google will note it as excessive. If 5% of an app's user sessions are excessive over a 28 day period, it crosses the "bad behavior threshold." This can result in a number of different consequences for the app: Google may first pull it from discovery surfaces in the Play Store. That could seriously impact an app's total installs, as users won't find it without searching for the app directly. Of course, Google may also affix the app's Play Store page with the aforementioned battery alert, which will also discourage users from downloading it. The onus is now on app developers to correct this "bad behavior" in their apps by March of next year. Hopefully, any battery hogs on your smartphone will be fixed in the next few months, but if not, keep an eye on their Play Store pages. If you see this alert, you might want to uninstall the app entirely. This isn't the first time the Play Store rolled out a feature to root out bad apps. Last year, the marketplace launched live threat detection to highlight apps that might be spreading malware. The Play Store has also tested alerts that would warn you about apps that are frequently uninstalled, or that have a significantly lower active user count than competitor apps. View the full article