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If you use Firefox, and you're lucky, then you might be getting a free VPN. Over the next few months, Mozilla says it will be testing a "free, browser-only VPN" for some users, but you'll need to rely on the luck of the draw if you want to try it yourself. That's because Mozilla is only enabling the feature for randomly selected users, at least for now. The announcement technically came in June, but fortunate writers at a number of different tech sites are now reporting that they're finally starting to see the feature pop up. How Firefox's free VPN comparesThe VPN, once fully implemented, would put Firefox in competition with Opera and Microsoft's own Edge browser, but ahead of other alternatives like Chrome and Safari, which do not offer free VPNs at time of writing. The key selling point here, it seems, is that Firefox VPN will run on Mozilla's VPN network, which likely means it will use the same respected Mullvad servers as Mozilla's paid VPN service. Incidentally, Mullvad is currently Lifehacker's favorite VPN for privacy. That said, don't expect the same functionality from the free offering as a full Mozilla VPN subscription. While Mozilla VPN can encrypt all web traffic from up to five devices at once, Firefox VPN only covers your browser. Also, while Mozilla VPN offers servers across 30 countries, allowing you to act as if you're browsing in that country, Firefox VPN will instead automatically connect to the nearest available server, which is likely to be in the same country as you. Still, the move is a boon for privacy, as the free VPN will hide your IP address and mask your traffic from your ISP. As for Mozilla itself, the company says it will collect "only the technical data needed to keep Firefox VPN reliable and secure," and will automatically delete logs linked to your account after three months. Firefox VPN also purportedly "never logs the websites you visit or the content of your communications," and there are no stated usage limits at this time. All of that is great news, particularly as governments and websites start to ask for more personal data. Sadly, you likely won't be able to use Firefox VPN to get around a website block in your state (unless it happens to direct your traffic through another state, if you're lucky), but it's always a good idea to let websites and ISPs collect as little personal information about you as possible. How to check if you have the free Firefox VPNBecause the VPN is only going out to random testers at the moment, it could take a while until you're actually able to access it. Check if you can try out Firefox VPN by opening the browser and seeing if there's a VPN setup prompt in the top-right corner, next to the toolbar. If it's there, hit the Next button to begin. The setup process will guide you through turning it on, which will involve signing into (or creating) a Mozilla account and hitting a toggle. To turn Firefox VPN off after enabling it (useful if a website blocks VPN traffic), simply click the VPN icon in the Firefox toolbar and toggle it off. View the full article

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, I’m focusing on the role of NSFW material on AI platforms, which could be complicated when AI platforms turn into social platforms. I also look at a powerful new Anthropic model for free Claude chatbot users. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. Sam Altman welcomes NSFW to AI Sam Altman casually said on X Tuesday that OpenAI is planning to introduce NSFW content on ChatGPT as soon as December. The comment, which came at the bottom of a discussion about user mental health, raises all kinds of questions about user safety and trust, and about what audiences OpenAI really wants to serve. Altman says the company hopes to implement a new age–gating mechanism through which users will prove they’re old enough to consume adult content. On ChatGPT, that implies frank discussions about sex with the chatbot, or maybe some forms of entertainment such as role-playing with sexy AI companions. Elon Musk’s xAI has already gone well down that road with its AI Companions, which launched during the summer within the Grok chatbot. The companions, reserved for Premium subscribers on the Grok app, have a “NSFW” mode and are willing and ready to engage in sexy conversation. The way Altman frames NSFW AI sounds similar to Musk’s approach to appropriate content. “As part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults,” he wrote on X. So it’s not hard to imagine ChatGPT going down some of the roads xAI has taken. To some extent, this may apply to image generators too. Musk has already gone there. In August, xAI released the image generator Grok Imagine, which reportedly has a “spicy mode” that lets users create sexually explicit content, including partial female nudity, via text prompts. Will OpenAI’s new permissive attitude about adult content on ChatGPT extend to its other products as well? The company’s second-hottest product is the new Sora 2 image generator. The difference between Sora 2 and Grok Imagine is that Sora is a social app. Using the Sora 2 app is a lot like using TikTok, only all the content that’s viewed, shared, and created on it is AI-generated, not shot with cameras. That social aspect raises the stakes in the appropriateness question. Right now OpenAI is tightly controlling the content created on Sora 2 (currently invite only). No sexual content is allowed, and the company says it puts an even tighter filter on Sora generations that will be shared socially. The company is using both content moderation AI and human reviewers to detect material that might violate its guidelines. It provides a way for users to report offensive videos and uses an AI algorithm to detect accounts bearing the hallmarks one would associate with being owned by a minor. But the company also says it’s taking an iterative approach to its content moderation, so today’s tight moderation standards could loosen in the future. This could be especially problematic when it comes to the image and likeness rights of Sora users. One of the main features of the Sora app is “cameos” where users can feature their own likeness, or their friends,’ or certain celebrities, in their video creations. Allowing NSFW content in this context could open up all kinds of safety and reliability problems for users, and for OpenAI. Altman was surprised by the splash his “erotica” post made on Tuesday. On Wednesday he tried to explain further in another tweet: “As AI becomes more important in people’s lives, allowing a lot of freedom for people to use AI in the ways that they want is an important part of our mission . . . Without being paternalistic we will attempt to help users achieve their long-term goals. But we are not the elected moral police of the world. In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example) we want to do a similar thing here.” And, safety concerns aside, the “adult” side of life has always been well represented on technology platforms from VHS to VR to social media. OpenAI’s acceptance of adult content isn’t likely to make ChatGPT any dumber or less useful, but it may give millions more people another reason to start using the chatbot. Anthropic brings a gift to free Claude chatbot users with new Claude Haiku 4.5 model Anthropic announced its new Claude Haiku 4.5 model Wednesday, which will become the default model for all free Claude.ai users. The model may be the most powerful model currently available to free users of chatbot apps. The arrival of Haiku 4.5 just two weeks after Claude Sonnet 4.5 suggests that things are still moving quickly on the research front. The new Haiku model matches Anthropic’s previous flagship Sonnet 4 model in software coding and even exceeds it in computer use tasks. “Five months ago, Claude Sonnet 4 was a state-of-the-art model,” Anthropic says in a blog post. “Today, Claude Haiku 4.5 gives you similar levels of coding performance but at one-third the cost and more than twice the speed.” It also makes applications like Claude for Chrome run faster. For business users, Haiku 4.5 can be used to power multi-agent workflows where multiple instances of the model work in parallel or collaborate with larger models. For example, Sonnet 4.5 (currently considered Anthropic’s best model for AI agents) can plan complex projects while several Haiku 4.5 subagents quickly complete individual tasks. The model’s speed and cost efficiency make it particularly well-suited for real-time applications including chatbots, customer service, financial analysis, and research, Anthropic says. What does “human-centered” AI really mean? I first came to know of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence around 2020. It’s an interdisciplinary research institute focused on developing and guiding AI in ways that prioritize human values, ethics, and societal benefit. I had a vague understanding of the concept in 2020, but as AI advanced, post-ChatGPT, I realized that it may be among the most important themes of the 21st century. There are active and passive ways to use AI. You can ask AI to do your work for you, to create a final product. Or you can work with the AI, using it to pull knowledge and inspiration out of yourself. So many of us struggle to stay in that productive thinking space long enough to pull out good ideas. “Thinking through” something is difficult and requires concentration. Even good ideas that seem to pop up out of nowhere need to be carefully examined to find logical pitfalls. One AI researcher told me that he uses AI as a kind of thinking partner to help him stay engaged in that deep thinking space by providing thoughtful, sometimes critical, feedback. This example is a simple expression of human-centered AI, in which the AI is used as an enabler, not as a proxy for human creation. The problem is this: AI may advance to the point where it is good enough to reason through hard problems and create a good expression of a solution (or an important insight) at the end. In more and more use cases, the AI may be good enough to allow the human to relax while the computer does the work. And the tech industry has no qualms about offering us conveniences (like app-based food delivery) or entertainment (Netflix) that lets us disconnect our brains. But the tech industry has never sold anything as capable as AI. The more use cases in which the AI does the work, the more that human beings are sidelined. We may end up relaxing ourselves into irrelevance and then extinction. More AI coverage from Fast Company: The memeification of Sora 2 Are large language models the problem, not the solution? Exclusive: Big Philanthropy teams up to take on Big AI Overheating at night? An AI-enabled mattress cover could be the answer Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. You've probably heard of the upstart tech brand Nothing by now, but if you haven't, here's a quick TLDR: The UK-based tech startup aims to make products like cellphones and headphones that incorporate innovative features and designs at a low price point. The company released its new smartwatch this summer, the CMF Watch 3 Pro, and it's already discounted by 20%. Originally $99, you can now grab one for $79. Bluetooth Call AI Smartwatch with Energy Score, Heart Rate Tracking, Sleep Monitor, GPS & 130+ Sport CMF Watch 3 Pro $79.00 at Amazon $99.00 Save $20.00 Get Deal Get Deal $79.00 at Amazon $99.00 Save $20.00 Bluetooth Call AI Smartwatch with Energy Score, Heart Rate Tracking, Sleep Monitor, GPS & 130+ Sport CMF Watch 3 Pro $79.00 at Amazon $99.00 Save $20.00 Get Deal Get Deal $79.00 at Amazon $99.00 Save $20.00 Bluetooth Call AI Smartwatch with Energy Score, Heart Rate Tracking, Sleep Monitor, GPS & 130+ Sport CMF Watch 3 Pro $79.00 at Amazon $99.00 Save $20.00 Get Deal Get Deal $79.00 at Amazon $99.00 Save $20.00 SEE 0 MORE The CMF Watch 3 Pro is designed for "everyday users and casual fitness explorers," and just given the price, it's already a strong contender for best budget smartwatch/fitness tracker of 2025. The most impressive aspect of this watch is its direct ChatGPT integration: You can use voice prompts to ask the chatbot questions or set reminders, among other things. One neat feature is its ability to record voices and auto-transcribe conversations or notes (great for work meetings or class). How well it works, though, remains a bit of an open question, as it has yet to be widely reviewed. If you've used the CMF Watch 2 Pro, you'll already be familiar with the design, which hasn't changed much. It's still got a round display with a rotating crown on the top right, though the display is a bit bigger—1.43 inches compared to the Watch 2 Pro's 1.32 inches. Nothing kept the auto brightness adjustment, which is determined by the built-in sensor and makes it very practical to walk outdoors from a dimmer indoor setting and vice versa. They also kept the dual-band GPS support with access to five satellite systems, providing greater accuracy when tracking your outdoor activities. The real upgrades come mainly from the software. The Watch 3 Pro has over 130 sport modes, compared to 120 on the older model. The battery now lasts 13 days with a single charge, which is two days longer than before. It's certainly in the running for the best sub-$100 smartwatch you can buy right now. Apple AirPods Pro 2 Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $197.00 (List Price $249.00) Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge 256GB Unlocked AI Phone (Titanium JetBlack) — $819.99 (List Price $1,099.99) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $319.00 (List Price $349.00) Blink Mini 2 1080p Indoor Security Camera (2-Pack, White) — $34.99 (List Price $69.99) Ring Battery Doorbell Plus — $149.99 (List Price $149.99) Blink Video Doorbell Wireless (Newest Model) + Sync Module Core — $69.99 (List Price $69.99) Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen, 2-pack, White) — $79.99 (List Price $99.98) Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K (2nd Gen, 2023) — $49.99 (List Price $49.99) Shark AV2501S AI Ultra Robot Vacuum with HEPA Self-Empty Base — $359.89 (List Price $549.99) Amazon Fire HD 10 (2023) — (List Price $139.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

When the lights finally dimmed at the 2025 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show last night, the first thing guests saw was a gold light emanating from backstage. Model Jasmine Tookes, nine months pregnant, opened the show in a gold macramé dress with drop pearls and a pearl and crystal wing in the shape of a clamshell. Art buffs might notice that the shell is a callback to Sandro Boticelli’s renaissance painting “Birth of Venus,” symbolizing sensuality, divine beauty, rebirth, and new beginnings. The cultural reference is a more elevated and considered nod to womanhood than the show’s previous themes, which have included “Santa’s Helpers” or “delicious sweets.” The look—and the show—certainly marked a new moment for Victoria’s Secret. And that was the intention of CEO Hillary Super, who said so in a note left at each seat. The show “marked a new era of sexy,” she wrote. “Not one defined by a single look or mood, but by something deeper: the feeling of being truly comfortable and confident in your own skin.” Victoria’s Secret is in dire need of a reset, and its new executive creative director Adam Selman delivered in this first time producing the mega-show. Selman joined Victoria’s Secret in April following three years as chief design officer at Rihanna’s rival lingerie brand Savage x Fenty, as well as running his own self-named label and Adam Selman Sport (ASS). If you can’t tell by his sport label, Selman is not especially self-serious, but he is astute and forward-thinking, and his design and styling sensibilities deftly balance sophistication and fun. (The 2012 VS fashion show look and crystal naked dress he designed for Rihanna at the 2014 CFDA awards are ones for the history books.) Selman’s goal was to bring capital-F fashion back to the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, and in the process give the Victoria’s Secret brand a cultural revamp. In the week leading up to the show, he told me that the pressure was setting in. “I’ve realized in the past few days that I’m the one person who oversees the whole thing.” He pulled it off. The 2025 Victoria’s Secret show was so well-executed it may have outpaced the current authority of the actual brand and product. But Selman still has his work cut out for him. Everyone knows Victoria’s Secret. Following years of design and cultural irrelevance, not to mention self-inflicted business challenges including a toxic work culture and entrenched misogyny, and hundreds of store closures over the past five years, it’s been a long time since tastemakers have cared. Rihanna A new era for an old mall brand Selman isn’t the only one tasked with trying. Victoria’s Secret has undergone nearly complete creative and brand marketing leadership changes since last year’s show. Super, who joined from Savage x Fenty just before the show last year, is still in. But Sarah Sylvester, executive vice president of brand marketing for Victoria’s Secret, who we spoke to about this event last year, is out. Earlier this year, the company made a slew of new exec-level appointments, mostly women: Anne Stephenson, its chief merchandising officer, as president; Ali Dillon, former president of Alex Mill as president of Pink, Amy Kocourek as president of beauty (formerly chief merchandising officer at Kendra Scott), and Selman as ECD in April. In May, the company also hired Elizabeth Press as its CMO, who formerly held the role at Anthropologie. Rihanna These hires, and the company’s renewed focus on its fashion show, are in service of what Victoria’s Secret calls its new “path to potential” growth strategy. It wants to build on its 4% Q2 comparable sales growth, reestablish Victoria’s Secret as an “authority in bras,” rebuild Pink as a distinct brand, and grow its beauty business. “Brand awareness is incredibly high for this brand,” Elizabeth Preis, CMO of Victoria’s Secret, tells me about the objective of the fashion show. “It’s more about brand relevance and brand consideration for the audience that doesn’t currently shop with us.” (The company will also closely track show metrics like site visits, impressions, and social engagement, Preis says.) Candice SwanepoelAdriana LimaJoan SmallsBella HadidAngel ReeseJasmine TookesAlex ConsaniGigi HadidYasmin WijnaldumAlessandra Ambrosio A FASHION FANTASY WORLD Selman’s overall vision for the show was to elevate it by applying the creative direction one might have as the head of a fashion maison, not a languishing mall brand. For this year’s show, he crafted the narrative around an overall story arc (the theme is day to night), rather than the disparate themed sections that anchored previous shows. “The show’s so big, the expectations are big, the personalities within it’s big, so I wanted to come up with a simple idea,” says Selman. “When I came into the brand, one of the first things I kept hearing on repeat was that Victoria’s Secret is unique in that we are the first thing she puts on and the last thing she takes off and I love that sort of sentiment. So I took that idea and I’m doing the context of day to night with the show.” Gigi Hadid The golden first chapter that focused on the brand’s nudes and was opened by a radiant Tookes was followed by a hot peony pink “Bombshell” chapter. But you wouldn’t know it without looking at the run of show. A circular stage emerged down the runway and showgirls with pink feather fans danced over from the aisle. Then, model Gigi Hadid emerged in an oversize peony opera coat, quickly followed by Irina Shayk in a crystal fan headpiece and Paloma Elsesser in pink peony petal wings. The preshow comments, at least on Victoria’s Secret’s owned channels, called for long-standing brand icons: big hair, more glitter, and the return of models like Adriana Lima. (“People want a little fantasy and there’s no better brand to do that,” says Preis.) This section brought all that, but not in a way you’d expect. It was a sparkling glamorous, Ziegfeld-fantasy-inspired morning. Adriana Lima “That’s our first collection, or the first section of the show, and how that could come to life in a more fashion forward, thoughtful way?” he asks. The show chapters arc toward dusk and bring in other moods and brand codes. The Pink halftime show was an exception and a weak chapter overall; with jean jackets, layered bikinis and black sweatpants that didn’t communicate a new point of view. “Hot pursuit” opened with a grainy black and red interstitial mimicking old movie reviews and washed the runway in scarlet red, along with a slew of provocatively sexy custom designs, including a custom crystal backless minidress and G-string worn by model Amelia Gray and custom chrome angel wings worn by model Alex Consani. “Magic hour” followed, and brought outfits in gradient pinks, mandarins, and lilacs, followed by a black lace and crystal sparke in “black tie.” Each chapter, by the way, links up with a fragrance—a play for its emerging beauty lines Renewed brand heritage Like many resurgent brands, the strategy is to shed what isn’t working and leverage the cultural cachet of the brand heritage that does work. The trick is to reinterpret it in a new way that can reestablish contemporary relevance in the current market. The term “fashion-forward” came up again and again as a way this show would be new and more relevant. People complained last year that the garments looked cheap; the look of the clothes and styling were a night and day difference this year. “If you know my work, it’s all centered around playfulness and color and expression, so that’s a big theme,” he says. Referencing the shows of high-end designer brands, Selman says he sought to elevate the experience and integrate codes that stem from the brand’s history throughout each chapter of the show, and nod to what’s happening in culture more broadly. “I’m trying to think about the world that we’re building beyond just the show here,” he says. One such example: Selman says he’s showing how Victoria’s Secret can tap into current fashion trends through lingerie styling in the show, a fantasy with real-world applications. “Naked dressing is so in right now, and showing our customer how to wear the product in a maybe a more fashion-forward way that resonates with fashion and culture outside of just the show” is another focus. TikTok With a runtime of about 40 minutes (about four times longer than a maison show), 72 looks, and 45 million of digital viewers, he brought the spectacle. Along with a team of experts, Selman directed promo, motion design, event production, set design, model casting, curated front row seating, cast musical guests, and the looks themselves, down to the giant crystal earrings. Joan Smalls Selman worked with artisans in Paris and Italy to create the jeweled wings model wear on stage, its own lofty design challenge. Selman crafted remarkable reinterpretations of wings as headpieces, too, like the golden headpiece Joan Smalls wore in the opener, gracing her head like a dainty set of Apollo’s wings, or Precious Lee’s peony petal and crystal headpiece or Anok Yai’s stunning pink fringe and pearl headpiece in the bombshell segment. “Today more than ever before, retail, if it’s going to be successful, there has to be an entertainment factor,” says Preis. “Victoria’s Secret created this incredible experience, right?” says Selman. “It is the biggest fashion show in the world and so there’s so much rich history and so much joy around it, too. We have ravenous fans around those events, so I think it’s about owning it and really leaning into what we’re good at.” Fans seem to want the fun and the spectacle of it all. Angel Reese Pleasure, but not to please everyone The Victoria’s Secret show is a glitter bomb of frothy pleasure, but it’s not out to please everyone. “It’s fun when it’s real,” says Selman. “Everything feels so phony right now. The more real that you can give people—that’s when things will really come to life. I think we can’t be everything to everyone.” Precious Lee Selman says his show is for anyone who wants to be a part of it—but it’s okay if that’s not you. “I want everyone to see themselves in this brand. I want everyone to see themselves in the show and the power that we can provide; the power that lingerie can provide. If you see yourself in it, we welcome you. And if you don’t see yourself in it, that’s cool, too. We still welcome you.” Iris Law Brands rarely can make everyone their customer; in fact, it’s a fool’s errand to try—as long as your core audience buys in. The G-string-thin fine line for Victoria’s Secret however, is whether it can truly capture what’s historically sellable about the heritage brand—the glitz, glamour, and sex appeal—while shedding the historically bad associations: getting women to buy into sex that’s embodied through the male gaze and packaged us up as campy Christmas gifts, candy, or calendar girls. I want to look hot, and for me personally, that and taste are not mutually exclusive qualities. “What does sexy mean in the future?” asks Preis. “There’s not just one definition. It’s really how it makes one feel and makes one feel good about themselves. We can and we should own that position. We already are known for that, and that’s something that we should continue on with.” View the full article

US president to speak with Russian leader for the first time since Alaska meetingView the full article

Hans Marsalek’s grandson is the fugitive Wirecard fraudster who runs spies for Russia in western Europe View the full article

Components of the index all rose, including the highest reading for sales expectations in the next six months since the start of the year. View the full article

When my teenage son developed mysterious symptoms, I followed the same path anyone else would: I put his health in the hands of a team of medical professionals. Multiple myeloma is a rare blood cancer. It is so uncommon in 17-year-olds that it doesn’t appear on diagnostic checklists. Despite having no clear starting point to work from, my son’s doctors worked their way to an accurate diagnosis through a process of trial and error, bouncing ideas off each other and testing and discarding hypotheses until they could tell us what was wrong. The process felt inefficient and uncertain at a time when I wanted fast answers and cast-iron guarantees. But this messy and distinctively human approach saved my son’s life. AI promises to improve processes like this, replacing the fallible and unpredictable human mind with the analytic power of trained and tested algorithms. As someone who helps organizations implement AI technology, I know just how much potential it has to make processes and workflows more efficient. But before we start replacing human judgment at scale, we need to think carefully about the hidden costs that can come with productivity gains. A recent study in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology presented some sobering findings for AI maximalists. Physicians who spent several months working with AI support in diagnostic roles showed a significant decline in unassisted performance when the technology was withdrawn. This kind of “deskilling” effect isn’t unique to either medicine or AI. We have known for years that extensive GPS use leads to a decline in spatial memory and that easy access to information reduces our ability to recall facts (the so-called “Google effect”). Most people are willing to accept these cognitive losses in exchange for convenience. And that is a trade-off that individuals need to decide for themselves. But when it comes to organizations and institutions, things are more complex. The first concerns that leap to mind are worries about losing access to our AI tools after outsourcing our skills to them. What if the system crashes or performance drops off? While this is a real problem, it is nothing new. We can design backup solutions where necessary, just as we always have with technology. But there is another set of problems that cannot be resolved simply by putting guardrails in place. Human skill sets are important not just because they let us act on those skills, but also because they let managers and decision-makers understand and supervise what is happening on the frontlines. If physicians lose their diagnostic chops, who will validate or audit the output of the algorithms? Who will notice that the edge cases—the patients with statistically implausible diseases—are not being diagnosed correctly? And, perhaps most importantly, who will take responsibility for the algorithmic judgments, whether they are right or wrong? For most organizations, maintaining public trust is a core part of their relationship with society. Just as we won’t eat in a restaurant if we don’t trust the kitchen to deliver safe food, so we avoid products and services that we believe may harm us. Without accountability, trust is impossible. As an IBM training manual put it nearly 50 years ago: “A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.” The same principle holds true for AI. Without a clear accountability trail that leads to a human decision-maker, it becomes impossible to hold anyone responsible for any harms that arise from the AI’s behavior. And this accountability deficit can destroy the legitimacy of an institution. We can see these dynamics at work in the U.K.’s 2020 exam grading debacle. At the height of the COVID pandemic, with normal exams cancelled, the U.K. government used an algorithm to assign grades. The algorithm imported biases and systematically favored children from wealthy backgrounds. But even if it had worked perfectly, something critical would still have been missing: institutions that can justify their decisions to those affected by them. Nobody will be satisfied by an algorithmic explanation for a result that might have lifelong effects. Ultimately, the government reversed course, replacing the AI judgment with assessments made by each student’s teachers. What this means for your organization The challenge isn’t whether to use AI—it’s how to implement it without creating dangerous dependencies. Here are specific actions leaders, managers, and teams can take: Implement AI rotation schedules: Ensure that teams rotate periodically from AI-assisted work to manual work to maintain core competencies. Create skill preservation protocols: Document which human capabilities are mission-critical and cannot be outsourced. Establish accountability chains: Specify which decisions require human sign-off. Institute “analog days”: Schedule regular sessions where teams solve problems without AI tools. Design edge case challenges: Create exercises focusing on unusual scenarios AI might miss. Maintain decision logs: Create institutional memory of the value and role of human judgment by documenting when and why you override AI recommendations. Practice explanation exercises: Regularly require team members to explain AI outputs in plain language—If they can’t explain it, they shouldn’t rely on it. Rotate expertise roles: Ensure multiple people can perform critical tasks without AI support, preventing single points of failure. Warning signs your organization is too AI-dependent Watch for these red flags that indicate dangerous levels of dependency: Teams can’t explain AI recommendations Acceptance of AI results without validation has become the norm Staff miss errors or outliers that the AI overlooks Employees express anxiety about performing tasks without AI assistance Simple decisions that once took seconds now require AI consultation If you spot any of these signs, you need to intervene to restore human capability. The path forward My son’s cancer was successfully diagnosed thanks to structured redundancy in his care team. Multiple specialists approached the same problem through different lenses. The bone specialist saw what the blood specialist missed. The resident asked the naive question that made the senior doctor reconsider. This kind of overlap can look like inefficiency at times, but if we don’t work to retain it, we lose something vital. We should not shy away from the advantages AI can offer when it comes to analytical speed and pattern-recognition. But at the same time, it is essential that we shield the decision-making process from being overwritten by a single algorithmic voice. We must keep humans in the loop both because they can look beyond statistical likelihood and because they can be held accountable for their final decisions. Yes, maintaining human capabilities alongside AI will be expensive. Training tracks that preserve human skills, AI-off drills, and rigorous human audits all cost money. But they preserve the institutional muscle memory that holds the whole edifice up. The cost of losing the human perspective is one we cannot afford to bear. View the full article

During a recent New York Fashion Week, a wood-paneled boutique popped up in SoHo next to Louis Vuitton and Bottega Veneta. On the racks were tailored, wide-leg jeans and simple black Henley dresses that signaled understated elegance. But unlike those of neighboring boutiques, the clothes weren’t from a storied European maison de couture. They were some of the newest collections from Scoop and Free Assembly, two brands led by Brandon Maxwell, creative director at the House of Walmart. The pop-up—which featured items priced between $8 and $75—was part of the Bentonville, Arkansas–based retailer’s strategy to get its products in front of urban shoppers who might not be familiar with its growing array of fashion-forward budget brands. The SoHo stint was just one of the ways chief merchant Latriece Watkins— a 25-year veteran of the company who joined the C-suite in 2023—is positioning Walmart to appeal to a broader spectrum of shoppers. “Our goal is to refresh and elevate all of our fashion brands,” Watkins says. “We’re only 10% of the way there.” For six decades, Walmart has been the go-to retailer for rural, lower-income Americans. But at a time of inflation and economic uncertainty, Americans of all backgrounds are more budget conscious. “Prices have gone up for three years,” says Mickey Chadha, a retail analyst at Moody’s. “Even the wealthy are looking to save money, and they’re gravitating toward Walmart.” This presents the retailer with the opportunity to win over more affluent consumers, snagging them from competitors like Target and Amazon. Watkins has been introducing higher-end brands, like Apple, Sonos, and Nike’s Air Jordan, both into stores and on Walmart.com. Her team is also developing and refreshing private labels that look premium but are inexpensive, with a focus on growth areas, such as apparel. In addition to working with Maxwell to reimagine the Scoop and Free Assembly lines, Walmart relaunched No Boundaries last year. The 30-year-old fashion brand, which generates $2 billion a year, has been updated to appeal to the tastes of Gen Z, with prices under $15. This July, the company unveiled Weekend Academy, a new trendy label for tweens. Watkins is also targeting Walmart’s grocery business, which makes up 60% of its sales. Last April, the company launched Bettergoods, its first new private-label food brand in two decades; the line of 400 attractively packaged globally inspired food items has quickly lured new customers into stores. “They’re already among the fastest-moving items we sell,” Watkins says. The strategy is working: While roughly 45% of Walmart’s customers earn less than $50,000 a year and only 7% earn more than $100,000, the company’s share of high-income customers is expanding. In the first half of 2024, households earning more than $200,000 drove growth in the grocery business, making up 8% of customers. And in the third quarter of 2024, customers who earn more than $100,000 accounted for 75% of Walmart’s gains in market share, a trend that continued in 2025. Now, Watkins’s challenge is to continue winning over deeper-pocketed customers while keeping the budget-conscious ones happy. “We have a core customer we will never alienate,” she says. “But we now have an opportunity to delight them with merchandise that goes beyond the essentials.” The typical Walmart store looks nothing like its swanky New York pop-up. Under fluorescent lights, you’ll find aisles stacked with 120,000 products, from cereal to apples to sneakers to candles. Watkins’s team of merchants selects every one of these goods. Just as importantly, they’re responsible for how much each item costs. “As merchants, we take a ton of responsibility for the prices customers see,” Watkins says. Price has always been Walmart’s critical advantage. When Sam Walton founded the company in 1962, he had the radical idea of selling products as cheaply as possible when the conventional wisdom among retailers was to charge the highest price the customer was willing to pay. Walton’s approach meant lower margins, so he focused on selling in volume, creating vast stores in small, rural towns underserved by other retailers. By pursuing this approach—the most successful in retail history—Walmart has become the largest company in the world by revenue, to the tune of $681 billion in 2024. It has 10,750 stores in 19 countries. In the United States, its 4,605 stores are within 10 miles of 90% of the population. And since Walmart’s prices remain 10% to 25% lower than those of its competitors, it often serves as the primary retailer for low-income families in nonmetropolitan areas, according to research by the Analysis Group. Watkins has no intention of changing this. “We’re going to keep serving the customer who has trusted us for years,” she says. Yet Watkins believes her team has an opportunity to serve a wider demographic by adding more products to the assortment. Walmart’s merchants track the tastes of higher-income consumers and bring in premium brands that will appeal to them. In recent years, that’s included Oxo kitchenware, De’Longhi coffee makers, and La Roche-Posay skincare. Walmart pores over its store data, selectively placing these higher-end products in areas with higher incomes. All of them also appear on Walmart’s website, which includes half a billion items. “It’s a formula that’s working,” says Chadha. “Walmart is growing year over year by gaining customers on the high end without losing customers on the low end.” But adding upscale brands can only take a retailer so far. The way to turn someone into a regular Walmart customer is to get them hooked on products they can’t get elsewhere—which is why Watkins is so focused on bolstering the company’s private labels. “We want to have an assortment of items that customers want to repeat-purchase,” says Watkins. “If you make an item people love, they will come back for it again and again.” Of Walmart’s 90 house brands, 22 generate upwards of a billion dollars in annual revenue, including Wonder Nation kids’ clothing, Ozark Trail outdoor gear, and Onn electronics, which includes TVs and tablets. These brands have historically focused on no-frills essentials. But to appeal to richer customers, Watkins is rolling out in-house brands that focus on quality and design. The move is straight out of Target’s playbook at a time when the Minneapolis-based retailer is flagging. Over the past two decades, while Walmart was serving rural, working-class Americans, Target was capturing trendy urbanites by focusing on good design. Target partnered with high-end designers to create cheaper versions of their products and launched private labels that mimicked the popular new brands on the market. But over the last year, Target’s sales have declined amid operational challenges and boycotts from consumers over its reversal on DEI initiatives. This has given Walmart an opportunity to win over some of Target’s waffling shoppers. Bettergoods is Walmart’s first big play to steal Target’s thunder. After researching food trends, Watkins’s team noticed that Walmart’s customers were looking for more global flavors, plant-based ingredients, and foods that cater to dietary restrictions. “Our food business is so large that we have insight into everything that’s happening in the food industry,” she says. “It was clear that the customer profile was changing.” In response, the company developed Bettergoods specialty grocery items, including macarons, gochujang sauce, and mushroom umami seasoning, that wouldn’t be out of place at a pricier retailer. Even so, 70% of Bettergoods products cost less than $5. While other Walmart food brands have a budget aesthetic, Bettergoods has a custom typeface and multicolor packaging that looks as good as in-house brands at Target and Whole Foods. This positioning is paying off. So far, 60% of people who buy the brand have never previously purchased from Walmart’s private labels, and their repurchase rate is 40%. Bettergoods also introduces shoppers to other Walmart offerings. “Walmart is succeeding at picking up a share of the wealthy consumer’s basket,” says Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester. “If they start shopping at Walmart for food, they may pick up tablecloths, bug sprays, and socks.” To help build knowledge of its house brands outside the store, Walmart has recently created an influencer network to showcase its private labels on social media, and last fall, it embarked on a 29-city “Style Tour” in a blue camper van that let people shop items from 15 of its fashion labels. “We’ve been able to expose our assortment to people who don’t have stores as close to them but can access these products the same or next day by shopping online,” Watkins says. “Our differentiator is our ability to serve customers in multiple ways, all at the same time.” Thanks to Watkins’s merchandising strategy, more high-income consumers are now online-only Walmart shoppers—an important step in helping Walmart catch up to Amazon’s e-commerce dominance. Over the last decade, Walmart has invested in its website, from launching a third-party marketplace to improving delivery speeds to offering a Prime-like membership program called Walmart+. At $100 billion, Walmart’s online sales are significantly smaller than Amazon’s $480 billion, but they are growing twice as fast—by 20% in 2024, compared to Amazon’s 11% sales growth. Last year, Walmart dispatched 6.5 billion items via same- or next-day delivery. “The e-commerce capabilities of Walmart and Amazon are head-to-head at this point,” says Chadha. “Walmart’s advantage is that it has a significant store footprint, which they can integrate into their e-commerce by turning them into distribution centers.” In some cases, Watkins says wealthy consumers order from Walmart’s website in order to shop the budget retailer discreetly, but she believes elevating product design and quality will help change people’s perceptions. “I received a note from someone who said she got so many compliments on a dress she wore to her friend’s wedding. No one knew it was from Walmart,” she says. “We’re focused on being a place where people feel so good about their purchases, they want to tell their friends about it.” View the full article

For a generation of young Americans, choosing where to go to college — or whether to go at all — has become a complex calculation of costs and benefits that often revolves around a single question: Is the degree worth its price? Public confidence in higher education has plummeted in recent years amid high tuition prices, skyrocketing student loans and a dismal job market — plus ideological concerns from conservatives. Now, colleges are scrambling to prove their value to students. Borrowed from the business world, the term “return on investment” has been plastered on college advertisements across the U.S. A battery of new rankings grade campuses on the financial benefits they deliver. States such as Colorado have started publishing yearly reports on the monetary payoff of college, and Texas now factors it into calculations for how much taxpayer money goes to community colleges. “Students are becoming more aware of the times when college doesn’t pay off,” said Preston Cooper, who has studied college ROI at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “It’s front of mind for universities today in a way that it was not necessarily 15, 20 years ago.” Most bachelor’s degrees are still worth it A wide body of research indicates a bachelor’s degree still pays off, at least on average and in the long run. Yet there’s growing recognition that not all degrees lead to a good salary, and even some that seem like a good bet are becoming riskier as graduates face one of the toughest job markets in years. A new analysis released Thursday by the Strada Education Foundation finds 70% of recent public university graduates can expect a positive return within 10 years — meaning their earnings over a decade will exceed that of a typical high school graduate by an amount greater than the cost of their degree. Yet it varies by state, from 53% in North Dakota to 82% in Washington, D.C. States where college is more affordable have fared better, the report says. It’s a critical issue for families who wonder how college tuition prices could ever pay off, said Emilia Mattucci, a high school counselor at East Allegheny schools, near Pittsburgh. More than two-thirds of her school’s students come from low-income families, and many aren’t willing to take on the level of debt that past generations accepted. Instead, more are heading to technical schools or the trades and passing on four-year universities, she said. “A lot of families are just saying they can’t afford it, or they don’t want to go into debt for years and years and years,” she said. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been among those questioning the need for a four-year degree. Speaking at the Reagan Institute think tank in September, McMahon praised programs that prepare students for careers right out of high school. “I’m not saying kids shouldn’t go to college,” she said. “I’m just saying all kids don’t have to go in order to be successful.” Lowering college tuition and improving graduate earnings American higher education has been grappling with both sides of the ROI equation — tuition costs and graduate earnings. It’s becoming even more important as colleges compete for decreasing numbers of college-age students as a result of falling birth rates. Tuition rates have stayed flat on many campuses in recent years to address affordability concerns, and many private colleges have lowered their sticker prices in an effort to better reflect the cost most students actually pay after factoring in financial aid. The other part of the equation — making sure graduates land good jobs — is more complicated. A group of college presidents recently met at Gallup’s Washington headquarters to study public polling on higher education. One of the chief reasons for flagging confidence is a perception that colleges aren’t giving graduates the skills employers need, said Kevin Guskiewicz, president of Michigan State University, one of the leaders at the meeting. “We’re trying to get out in front of that,” he said. The issue has been a priority for Guskiewicz since he arrived on campus last year. He gathered a council of Michigan business leaders to identify skills that graduates will need for jobs, from agriculture to banking. The goal is to mold degree programs to the job market’s needs and to get students internships and work experience that can lead to a job. A disconnect with the job market Bridging the gap to the job market has been a persistent struggle for U.S. colleges, said Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, a think tank that studies the workforce. Last year the institute, partnering with Strada researchers, found 52% of recent college graduates were in jobs that didn’t require a degree. Even higher-demand fields, such as education and nursing, had large numbers of graduates in that situation. “No programs are immune, and no schools are immune,” Sigelman said. The federal government has been trying to fix the problem for decades, going back to President Barack Obama’s administration. A federal rule first established in 2011 aimed to cut federal money to college programs that leave graduates with low earnings, though it primarily targeted for-profit colleges. A Republican reconciliation bill passed this year takes a wider view, requiring most colleges to hit earnings standards to be eligible for federal funding. The goal is to make sure college graduates end up earning more than those without a degree. Others see transparency as a key solution. For decades, students had little way to know whether graduates of specific degree programs were landing good jobs after college. That started to change with the College Scorecard in 2015, a federal website that shares broad earnings outcomes for college programs. More recently, bipartisan legislation in Congress has sought to give the public even more detailed data. Lawmakers in North Carolina ordered a 2023 study on the financial return for degrees across the state’s public universities. It found that 93% produced a positive return, meaning graduates were expected to earn more over their lives than someone without a similar degree. The data is available to the public, showing, for example, that undergraduate degrees in applied math and business tend to have high returns at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, while graduate degrees in psychology and foreign languages often don’t. Colleges are belatedly realizing how important that kind of data is to students and their families, said Lee Roberts, chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, in an interview. “In uncertain times, students are even more focused — I would say rightly so — on what their job prospects are going to be,” he added. “So I think colleges and universities really owe students and their families this data.” The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. —Collin Binkley, AP Education Writer View the full article

For small business owners navigating the complexities of modern technology, the introduction of Gemini CLI extensions promises a significant upgrade to workflow efficiency. Google has unveiled this new framework designed to allow users to customize and enhance their command-line interface (CLI) experience, integrating tools typically used across various platforms directly into the terminal. Gemini CLI is an open-source, AI-powered agent that streamlines tasks for developers and businesses alike. With the rapid growth of more than one million developers already utilizing this innovative tool since its launch, the release of the Gemini CLI extensions presents a golden opportunity for small business operators to enhance their productivity without the typical learning curve associated with integrating new technologies. As Google emphasizes, “The best tools are the ones that adapt to you, not the other way around.” The use of Gemini CLI extensions allows small business owners to consolidate their tools into one platform. No longer will you need to switch between your command line and various applications. This integration means tasks can be executed quickly and seamlessly, thereby saving valuable time. The ease of installation is another benefit, as users can simply type “gemini extensions install ” into the command line, making it accessible even to those who may not be highly technical. Key players in the industry, such as Dynatrace, Elastic, Figma, Harness, Postman, Shopify, Snyk, and Stripe, are contributing to this ecosystem. By leveraging these partnerships, Gemini CLI extensions enhance functionality and provide a tailored experience that meets diverse small business needs. For instance, integrating payment services like Stripe or design platforms like Figma can simplify operations by allowing users to manage multiple aspects of their business from one terminal. What sets these extensions apart is their built-in “playbook.” These pre-packaged, installable integrations come equipped with instruction sets that enable the AI to understand and utilize new tools effectively from the outset. This means that users can expect meaningful results from their very first command, bypassing the need for extensive setup or training. However, while the benefits of Gemini CLI extensions are compelling, small business owners should also be aware of potential challenges. The integration of multiple tools into a single platform can create complex workflows that may require additional training or adjustments. Additionally, as with any new technology, there is an inherent learning curve that could temporarily impact productivity for teams trying to adapt. Furthermore, relying heavily on an AI-powered tool might bring concerns regarding data security and privacy, particularly for small businesses handling sensitive customer information. Owners will need to weigh these risks against the substantial efficiency gains that could be achieved. Despite these considerations, the future looks promising for small businesses willing to embrace Gemini CLI extensions. With the capacity to simplify day-to-day tasks, reduce context switching, and enhance productivity, these tools stand to make a marked impact on how small business owners operate daily. As industries evolve and competition becomes increasingly fierce, integrating such technologies could provide a distinctive advantage. In a world where time is money, the ability to streamline operations could offer small business owners the edge they’re looking for. As Google indicates, the implementation of Gemini CLI extensions is about personalizing the command-line experience to tailor it to individual needs. For small businesses ready to adapt, the integration of Gemini CLI could not only simplify operations but also lead to significant time savings and productivity boosts. As small businesses explore the potential of these innovations, further information can be accessed through the original Google blog post here. Image via Gemini This article, "Gemini CLI Extensions Launch: Customize Your Command Line Experience" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

For small business owners navigating the complexities of modern technology, the introduction of Gemini CLI extensions promises a significant upgrade to workflow efficiency. Google has unveiled this new framework designed to allow users to customize and enhance their command-line interface (CLI) experience, integrating tools typically used across various platforms directly into the terminal. Gemini CLI is an open-source, AI-powered agent that streamlines tasks for developers and businesses alike. With the rapid growth of more than one million developers already utilizing this innovative tool since its launch, the release of the Gemini CLI extensions presents a golden opportunity for small business operators to enhance their productivity without the typical learning curve associated with integrating new technologies. As Google emphasizes, “The best tools are the ones that adapt to you, not the other way around.” The use of Gemini CLI extensions allows small business owners to consolidate their tools into one platform. No longer will you need to switch between your command line and various applications. This integration means tasks can be executed quickly and seamlessly, thereby saving valuable time. The ease of installation is another benefit, as users can simply type “gemini extensions install ” into the command line, making it accessible even to those who may not be highly technical. Key players in the industry, such as Dynatrace, Elastic, Figma, Harness, Postman, Shopify, Snyk, and Stripe, are contributing to this ecosystem. By leveraging these partnerships, Gemini CLI extensions enhance functionality and provide a tailored experience that meets diverse small business needs. For instance, integrating payment services like Stripe or design platforms like Figma can simplify operations by allowing users to manage multiple aspects of their business from one terminal. What sets these extensions apart is their built-in “playbook.” These pre-packaged, installable integrations come equipped with instruction sets that enable the AI to understand and utilize new tools effectively from the outset. This means that users can expect meaningful results from their very first command, bypassing the need for extensive setup or training. However, while the benefits of Gemini CLI extensions are compelling, small business owners should also be aware of potential challenges. The integration of multiple tools into a single platform can create complex workflows that may require additional training or adjustments. Additionally, as with any new technology, there is an inherent learning curve that could temporarily impact productivity for teams trying to adapt. Furthermore, relying heavily on an AI-powered tool might bring concerns regarding data security and privacy, particularly for small businesses handling sensitive customer information. Owners will need to weigh these risks against the substantial efficiency gains that could be achieved. Despite these considerations, the future looks promising for small businesses willing to embrace Gemini CLI extensions. With the capacity to simplify day-to-day tasks, reduce context switching, and enhance productivity, these tools stand to make a marked impact on how small business owners operate daily. As industries evolve and competition becomes increasingly fierce, integrating such technologies could provide a distinctive advantage. In a world where time is money, the ability to streamline operations could offer small business owners the edge they’re looking for. As Google indicates, the implementation of Gemini CLI extensions is about personalizing the command-line experience to tailor it to individual needs. For small businesses ready to adapt, the integration of Gemini CLI could not only simplify operations but also lead to significant time savings and productivity boosts. As small businesses explore the potential of these innovations, further information can be accessed through the original Google blog post here. Image via Gemini This article, "Gemini CLI Extensions Launch: Customize Your Command Line Experience" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. The Arlo Pro 5S 2K Spotlight Camera (2-Pack) is currently down to $129.99 from its usual $329.99 on Amazon, marking its lowest price yet, according to price trackers. That’s a big drop for a wireless home security setup that doesn’t require drilling, wiring, or professional installation. Arlo Pro 5S 2K Spotlight Camera - 2 Pack - Security Cameras Wireless Outdoor, Dual Band Wi-Fi, Color Night Vision, 2-Way Audio, Home Security Cameras, Home Improvement, White – VMC4260P $129.99 at Amazon $329.99 Save $200.00 Get Deal Get Deal $129.99 at Amazon $329.99 Save $200.00 Each camera records in 2K resolution, detailed enough to capture faces, license plates, and small movements clearly. The footage stays sharp even when you zoom in digitally, which cheaper models often struggle with, notes this PCMag review. Both cameras come with built-in spotlights and color night vision, so you’ll see what’s happening even in low light. The motion-activated lighting adds visibility, and you also get two-way audio, so you can talk to delivery drivers or scare away a raccoon if needed. These cameras are easy to place anywhere since they run on rechargeable batteries and don’t need cables. You can mount them indoors, outdoors, by the garage, or overlooking a backyard gate. Plus, these cameras can operate on dual-band wifi (2.4GHz and 5GHz), which means a stronger and more reliable signal no matter where you place them. When they detect motion, you’ll get instant notifications on your phone and can view a live feed through the Arlo app. As for battery life, Arlo says each charge lasts a few months, depending on how often the cameras record, and you can easily check battery levels in the app. There are a few catches, though. You don’t get local storage out of the box—you’ll either need to buy the Arlo Smart Hub ($99) or pay for an Arlo Secure subscription. The plans start at $7.99 per month for one camera and go up to $17.99 for unlimited ones, unlocking cloud storage, smart alerts, and object detection. Without a plan, you can still use live view and basic notifications. On the bright side, the Arlo Pro 5S 2K integrates well with Alexa, Google Assistant, SmartThings, and IFTTT, so it fits into most smart home setups (and even Apple HomeKit if you pair it with the hub). Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods Pro 2 Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $197.00 (List Price $249.00) Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge 256GB Unlocked AI Phone (Titanium JetBlack) — $819.99 (List Price $1,099.99) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $319.00 (List Price $349.00) Blink Mini 2 1080p Indoor Security Camera (2-Pack, White) — $34.99 (List Price $69.99) Ring Battery Doorbell Plus — $149.99 (List Price $149.99) Blink Video Doorbell Wireless (Newest Model) + Sync Module Core — $69.99 (List Price $69.99) Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen, 2-pack, White) — $79.99 (List Price $99.98) Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K (2nd Gen, 2023) — $49.99 (List Price $49.99) Shark AV2501S AI Ultra Robot Vacuum with HEPA Self-Empty Base — $359.89 (List Price $549.99) Amazon Fire HD 10 (2023) — (List Price $139.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

There is a distinction between good investment and bad speculation — the likelihood is we are experiencing both View the full article

Taiwan’s leading computer chip maker, TSMC, said Thursday that its net profit surged nearly 40% in the last quarter, boosted by the surge in use of artificial intelligence. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. is the world’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer. It reported a net profit of a record 452.3 billion new Taiwan dollars ($15 billion) in the July-September quarter, higher than analysts’ forecasts. The company earlier said its revenue jumped 30% year-on-year in the last quarter. TSMC has been building chip fabrication plants in the United States and Japan to help hedge against risks from China-U.S. trade tensions. The chipmaker is a major supplier to companies such as Apple and Nvidia. “Demand for TSMC’s products is unyielding,” Morningstar analysts wrote in a note this month. “Given TSMC’s dominance, we doubt the company would be hindered if it faced tariffs on shipments to U.S. customers. We expect AI demand to stay resilient.” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick proposed last month that computer chip production be divided 50-50 between Taiwan and the U.S. Taiwan — where the majority of global chip manufacturing is currently based — rejected that idea. The company has committed $100 billion in U.S. investments, including building new factories in Arizona, on top of $65 billion that it pledged earlier. —Chan Ho-Him, AP Business Writer View the full article

Sadiq Khan’s attendance draws criticism and follows scrutiny of Labour politicians for receiving lavish giftsView the full article

Back in 1987, President Ronald Reagan made a televised speech defending the principles of free trade, and slamming tariffs as a misguided policy that drives up prices and ultimately hurt American businesses, workers, and consumers. Now a Canadian ad campaign aimed at Americans is using that speech to remind Republican voters that Reagan’s views are still relevant. “High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars,” Reagan said. “Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs.” The ad began airing this week on Newsmax and Bloomberg, and will expand to Fox News, Fox Sports, NBC, CBS, CNBC, ESPN, and ABC. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Tuesday during a speech “I’m a big Ronald Reagan fan . . . We’re going to launch a $75 million ad, and we’re going to repeat that message to every Republican district there is, right across the entire country.” This work follows a December ad campaign that focused on the negative impact of tariffs on trade. According to a September report from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, the province’s real GDP growth is projected to slow to 0.9% this year and 1.0% next year due to the impact of U.S. tariffs. It comes at an awkward time, as automaker Stellantis announced a change in plans, moving production of its Jeep Compass model from Ontario to Illinois. The federal Canadian government is threatening to sue to company over the decision. This isn’t the first time advertising from the north has been aimed at Americans. In December, the Ontario government ran ads on Fox News and during NFL games to remind U.S. viewers that the Canadian province is America’s third biggest trade partner, and the main export buyer for 17 states. And in July, Quebec ran a series of tourism ads to encourage Americans to keep visiting despite The President threatening Canadian sovereignty. The new Reagan spot is a soft sell, using Americans’ own words to try and persuade them of a different tack on tariffs. But that gentler, more polite (dare I say Canadian) approach may not last long. Since President The President started pontificating about a 51st State, Canadians have reacted strongly by boycotting American goods and traveling south significantly less. The “Elbows Up” sentiment drove down U.S. travel in July by more than 30%—the seventh consecutive month of declines over 2024—and are buying more Canadian-made goods. On Wednesday, Ontario premier Doug Ford blamed President The President and his tariffs for the Stellantis decision. “That guy, President The President, he’s a real piece of work,” Ford said. “I’m sick and tired of rolling over. We need to fight back.” View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Garmin watches are great for running, but are a bit tricky to work with when you’re trying to track strength training in the gym. (I have some tips here on how to make the most of that strange experience.) But an app called LiftTrack makes up for Garmin’s shortcomings, giving you the Garmin-based strength experience that maybe Garmin should have given you in the first place. Workout creation makes more sense with LiftTrack Credit: Beth Skwarecki LiftTrack is an app (available for iOS and Android) that helps you to create workouts, schedule workouts, and view your history of workouts and lifts. If you’ve used an app like Hevy or Strong to track strength training, you’ll be familiar with the idea. Create a workout in LiftTrack, and the experience is similar to those strength training apps: you’ll choose exercises, say how many sets and reps you plan to do, and arrange them into the order you’d like, supersetting pairs of them if you like. In Garmin’s own app, the process is backwards: you arrange blocks of work and rest, assigning exercises to them afterward. You can’t change weight or reps from one set to another unless you break the exercise out of its little repeat loop and create a new block. It’s an interface that makes sense for HIIT but not so much for a traditional gym workout of squats and curls. LiftTrack has some built-in strength programs (as does Garmin) and an AI routine builder (which Garmin does not). After creating a workout, you can sync it to your calendar for a given day, or set up a repeating schedule so that your bench press workout will appear every Monday. Your Garmin watch will pick up on the routineLiftTrack’s underlying features, like the ability to sync a workout to your calendar, are features Garmin has had all along. Garmin just doesn’t connect them to each other well. For example, there’s no simple way to tell Garmin that you want to bench every Monday. But Garmin does have a calendar that will automatically offer you a bench press workout if you set it up that way. So to do the workout, you just show up to the gym, select Strength Training on your Garmin watch, and the day’s workout will pop up asking if you’re ready to start. As you go through the workout, your watch will record your reps and let you indicate the weight you used. Once the workout is finished, the data syncs back to LiftTrack. LiftTrack lets you view your history and progressViewing a strength workout after the fact has never been super easy in the Garmin app. You can view today’s workout, yes, but you can’t easily get a big-picture view of things like how the weight you can squat has trended up over time. LiftTrack, once again, provides what Garmin does not. I can see my strength training history on a calendar (without any runs or other workouts cluttering it up), view my most recent workouts, and see charts of my progress on each lift. Based on that history, LiftTrack can then update your next workout, recommending that you go a little heavier if you were able to lift more than expected last week. In short, it’s everything that Garmin should have included in their strength training feature, but didn’t. View the full article

Noninterest income at the Minneapolis-based company jumped more than 10% while asset quality improved and expenses held steady. View the full article

The The President administration is looking to provide an additional $20 billion in financing for Argentina through a mix of financing from sovereign funds and the private sector. That would come on top of the $20 billion credit swap line that the U.S. Treasury pledged to Argentine President Javier Milei and his government this month to bolster the South American nation’s collapsing currency. “We are working on a $20 billion facility that would complement our swap line, with private banks and sovereign funds that, I believe, would be more focused on the debt market,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters Wednesday. He called it “a private-sector solution” and said “many banks are interested in it and many sovereign funds have expressed interest.” At a White House meeting Tuesday with Milei, Republican President Donald The President said his administration wanted to help “our neighbors” with the aid package, but he also suggested that the money could be pulled if Milei’s party did not prevail in the Oct. 26 midterm elections. “If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” The President said. The Argentine peso weakened slightly Wednesday after The President’s comments. The peso depreciated about 0.7%, with the dollar — the currency Argentines rely on to save — trading at 1,395 pesos, compared with 1,385 pesos the previous day. On Wall Street, shares of major Argentine companies rose slightly after dropping as much as 8.1% Tuesday upon The President’s comments. In Argentina, the opposition’s criticism was swift. Former President Cristina Fernández, who is under house arrest after a corruption conviction, wrote on social media: “The President to Milei in the United States: ‘Our agreements depend on who wins election.’ Argentines … you already know what to do!” Martín Lousteau, president of the centrist Radical Civic Union, said “The President doesn’t want to help a country — he only wants to save Milei,” and that “nothing good can come of this.” Maximiliano Ferraro, head of the opposition Civic Coalition, called The President’s comments “a blatant act of extortion against the Argentine Nation.” Vulcano reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina. —Fatima Hussein and Andrea Vulcano, Associated Press View the full article

Chancellor faces lobbying from lenders not to raise taxes on the sectorView the full article

Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet are the five largest corporations by market cap, with the value of their combined shares totaling more than $16 trillion. These firms each pull in multiple billions of dollars in profit annually, and so pay tens of billions of dollars in annual taxes, too. But like other corporate giants in the S&P 500, the companies are also spending massive amounts on shareholder payouts, funneling trillions of dollars to wealthy shareholders through stock buybacks and shareholder dividends. Over the past five years, those five largest companies spent more than $1 trillion on stock buybacks and dividends, according to a new analysis from Oxfam—more than five times what they paid in federal taxes over the same time period. Looking at the entire S&P 500, the largest U.S. companies spent nearly $1.6 trillion combined on stock buybacks and dividends in 2024 alone. That’s triple the income of the poorest 27 million U.S. households combined, which totals $498 billion. ‘Unprecedented’ shareholder payouts “There’s been an unprecedented level of shareholder payouts in recent years,” says Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead for economic justice at Oxfam. That includes both dividends paid out to shareholders and also stock buybacks, which is when companies buy their own stocks, thereby making their stock price go up. (Since many executives also have stock-based compensation packages, this also increases their pay.) Oxfam’s latest analysis provides a snapshot of those payouts, and the way corporations are spending their cash. To Oxfam, money spent on shareholder payouts are funds that could have gone to other internal investments, like raising worker wages or making a company more sustainable. The nonprofit also wants to highlight the disparity between these payments and how much companies pay in taxes. Corporate taxes have been on the decline since the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed during President The President’s first term. Under that law, the effective tax rates for large corporations fell from an average of 22% to an average of 12.8%, thanks to a lower overall rate and a range of tax loopholes. If those five companies had paid pre-Tax Cuts and Jobs Act rates, Oxfam calculated that they would have paid an additional $168 billion in taxes over the past five years. The President’s recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act continues this trend, making permanent the TCJA tax cuts that were set to expire and bringing the effective corporate tax rate to as low as 12%, “the lowest rate in U.S. history,” per Morgan Stanley. The OBBBA also gives the biggest corporations nearly $1 trillion in new tax breaks. A possibility for change There’s a misconception, Riddell says, that shareholder payouts are a “rising tide” that will lift all boats in our economy. In reality, these actions “overwhelmingly benefit the top 1% and wealthy executives,” she says. “The bottom half of the United States owns just 1% of the stock market and very little of the overall retirement pie.” And when it comes to tax breaks, there’s an idea that when corporations save this money, they invest it elsewhere, like in workers or R&D. In reality, tax breaks fuel those enormous shareholder payouts. “Corporate tax savings aren’t being passed on to workers or consumers,” she says. “They’re being funneled to wealthy shareholders and executives.” Along with tax rates and stock buybacks, the Oxfam analysis also highlights the issue of enormous CEO pay: Over the past five years, the CEOs of the five largest U.S. companies made an average of $52 million annually—more than 1,000 times what a typical worker earns in a year. These actions are fueling the growing inequality in our country, and they’re a direct result of policy, Riddell says. They’re also occurring at a time when millions of Americans will soon lose their healthcare and access to food assistance because of funding cuts. But that means policymakers could take action to change these trends, too. That includes taxing or banning buybacks, capping dividends, supporting worker ownership, and adjusting the corporate tax code. (President Biden proposed tripling the tax that companies pay on stock buybacks, but the measure didn’t advance.) “What this analysis shows is that the corporations can drive inequality by enriching wealthy shareholders and directly through their compensation,” Riddell says. “But also it shows that there is a possibility for change.” View the full article

People remember many things about Windows 95, which turned 30 a couple of months ago. There were its signature new features, such as the Start Button, taskbar, and long file names. The launch event—hosted by Jay Leno—at Microsoft’s campus. The TV commercials with the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.” The crowds of PC users so eager to get their hands on the upgrade that they descended on computer stores at midnight. Here’s a fact about Windows 95 that isn’t exactly iconic: It was the first voice-enabled version of Microsoft’s operating system. A collection of technologies known as the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI) provided support for speech recognition and synthesis, letting developers create apps that could speak and be spoken to. But SAPI didn’t go on to revolutionize how people used Microsoft products. Neither did any of the numerous other voice-centric technologies it has developed over the decades, such as its 1990s Auto PC car platform and the ill-fated Siri counterpart Cortana. “It’s kind of amazing to think about it, really,” muses Microsoft executive VP and consumer CMO Yusuf Mehdi. “It’s probably been 30, 40 years since there was a new input mechanism for your PC. We had the keyboard, and then we introduced the mouse. There has not been another input mechanism.” Like many of the people presently charting a future for Windows, Mehdi has seen much of that history firsthand as a Microsoft employee—34 years of it, in his case, and though he’s glossing over touchscreens and styluses—both of which are part of Microsoft’s own Surface line and have their devotees—his overarching point stands. For all the ways Windows has evolved, the basic means of interacting with it have remained enduringly resistant to change. Yusuf Mehdi Once again, Microsoft is trying to overcome that. The company is announcing a Windows 11 update that lets you seek help from its Copilot AI by talking to it, with the response also coming in spoken form. Known as Copilot Voice, the feature leverages Copilot Vision, a technology—first previewed a year ago—that can scan the contents of your screen to suss out what you’re working on, whether you’re perusing a social media feed in your browser, crafting a business proposal in Word, or studying for an exam. If voice input and output provide the interface for this new Windows experience, Copilot Vision is the glue that holds it together. “It doesn’t require Copilot to have programmatic understanding of every app in the world,” says Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s president of Windows + Devices, who will soon mark his 25th anniversary at the company. “It just sees what you allow it to see and infers the world. It helps you with the task that you’re probably engaged in at that point in time.” Generative AI—including technologies Microsoft gets from its partner OpenAI—makes that possible. As corporate VP of Windows experiences (and 24-year Microsoft veteran—see a pattern here?) Navjot Virk puts it, “The point is not just that you can talk to your PC, the point is that the PC now understands you.” But making AI make sense in Windows is only partially about the technology performing as promised. In a world full of AI features that can feel like needy, uninvited distractions, Microsoft wanted this one to be welcome. Users must explicitly opt into Copilot Voice and Copilot Vision and use the wake word “Hey Copilot” to summon them. And even then, they’re designed to be unobtrusive complements to the familiar keyboard-and-mouse experience. “People know what they want to do,” says Virk. “We should make sure we get out of their way, but give them the tools that they will use.” That’s a sharply different vision from the one Microsoft rolled out at a May 2024 event with the lofty tagline “A new AI era begins.” The era in question involved a new class of laptop, called Copilot+ PCs, that packed powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon chips. Yet they were short on AI-related features compelling enough to justify buying a new computer. This time, Microsoft is concentrating on making AI available and appealing to all Windows 11 users, regardless of the machine they’ve got. The question the company asked itself, Mehdi says, is “What does a real AI PC look like in this next phase?” In some ways, its answers are utterly straightforward. Even so, putting the real in “real AI PC” will keep it busy for years. The ultimate AI proving ground For all its mundane workaday ubiquity, Windows is a demanding proving ground for AI. According to Microsoft, the operating system is currently running on 1.6 billion devices, a figure that includes both Windows 11 and the theoretically moribund Windows 10. Sure, some of its users are early adopters eager to be wowed by the latest technology, even in imperfect form. But many more just want Windows to be a reliable, surprise-free tool to accomplish daily tasks. Their bar for finding AI palatable isn’t lower than that of the enthusiasts—it’s higher. Those 1.6 billion devices also reflect an endless array of manufacturers, models, and configurations—a formidable challenge when it comes to deploying a voice interface that consistently works well. Not that long ago, PC-based voice-controlled assistants tended to interrupt themselves and otherwise fail to engage with the world in ways that were fluid and natural, notes Microsoft technical fellow Stevie Bathiche (26 years at the company). “That’s because [they] didn’t have a high-quality audio pipeline,” he says. “Now that’s solved.” Pavan Davuluri Microsoft’s solution borrows from work it originally did for Cortana and Teams and involves technologies such as beam forming, which help a PC block out irrelevant ambient noise. That helps even with basic Copilot Voice features that don’t sound like huge deals in themselves: the “Hey Copilot” wake word and ability to say “Goodbye” to conclude an AI session. But the most challenging part was what came in between: getting the AI to correctly handle everyday tasks as users might phrase them, regardless of their degree of AI savvy. With consumer AI in its typical current form, “If you know how to craft that perfect prompt and go into super detail, you can get a lot of bang out of it,” says Virk. “But how do we make this superpower accessible to every single user of Windows?” In several demos, the company showed me Copilot responding to briefly expressed spoken requests. In one, it explained how to disentangle multiple Spotify listeners’ data so the service’s year-end Wrapped summary wouldn’t be a meaningless mishmash. It also made style suggestions based on a Pinterest feed, defined physics concepts mentioned in class notes, and did the math to adjust the ingredients in a handwritten recipe to produce a larger batch. The closest it got to showing off was when it aided a songwriting example by humming a funk riff in G minor. All of this emphasizes the simple, practical, and broadly applicable. One reason why: The stinging reaction to Windows Recall, a feature Microsoft announced at its May 2024 event. By capturing an ongoing stream of screenshots, Recall gave the operating system a memory. The idea was that users would find value in AI being able to scour their past activity in intimate detail. But the technology was invasive, turned on by default, and unencrypted. After critics called it a privacy nightmare, Microsoft took Recall back to the drawing board and didn’t release it for almost a year. Naturally, the company now says it regards the whole kerfuffle as a teachable moment. “We have taken those learnings and really applied them and internalized them to everything new that we have,” says Virk. “First and foremost, the discussion that happens on the team is, ‘How will somebody understand the value of this? Will they be comfortable? Will they feel like they have control? Do they always know what is happening?’ Transparency is an important core tenet for our experiences.” Only some of those experiences are rolling out to all Windows 11 users immediately. Additional ones will be available in test form to users who subscribe to the Windows Insider early-access program. Those include features called Connectors that hook Copilot into apps such as Outlook and OneDrive, giving it far more access to your data than Copilot Vision can divine by analyzing the screen. (Yes, Microsoft says Connectors will be available to third-party developers, too.) Connectors are crucial to Copilot starting to get more agentic—able to perform complex tasks on the user’s behalf with some measure of autonomy. Other purveyors of AI are developing similar technologies. For example, OpenAI already has a ChatGPT agent (known as Agent) and integrations (also called Connectors). By building this sort of AI directly into Windows, which already serves as a hub for so many people’s work, Microsoft has the opportunity to make it particularly powerful. But as AI works more independently and gains access to additional data, the potential for security and privacy issues rises. Chastened by its Recall misfire, Microsoft emphasizes that its agent-related features are opt-in and engineered to receive only the access they need. Even before these features reach general availability, Windows is using multiple AI models in an agentic manner below the surface. As the operating system responds to a user’s request, “The big model creates the plan and the reasoning behind it,” explains Bathiche. “It says, ‘You do this, do this, do this.’ The small model is tuned to essentially say, ‘Yeah, let me take that instruction and translate it to what that actually means on the screen.’” That division of labor hints at a future when Windows, and computing in general, get atomized into bits of software negotiating with each other—a scenario that’s been predicted for decades and is only now going beyond the theoretical. Windows Insider members will also be the first to gain access to Ask Copilot, a new feature that puts Copilot directly on the taskbar, allowing them to initiate a typed AI session without firing up the existing Copilot app. Like “Hey, Copilot,” that may not sound like a huge whoop. But it’s key to Microsoft’s long-term goal of letting Windows call on AI in whatever way they prefer at any given moment. “You can get going with Copilot straight out of the gate,” says Davuluri. “And it can be chat, it can be voice, it can be vision. It can be any combination of them.” The road to Jarvis Ultimately, it’s impossible to ponder Windows’ future except in the context of its first 40 years. The graphical computing environment—not yet a full-blown operating system—shipped in 1985 and struggled at first. Only with 1990’s Windows 3.0 did it become a hit. Then new trends, such as multimedia and the web, only strengthened its position. In recent years, Windows—for all the enormity of its user base—has maintained a low profile. Indeed, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is justly admired for reimagining the company for an age that doesn’t revolve around Windows or any other desktop operating system. Had it clung to its past rather than broadened its horizons, it likely wouldn’t be the world’s second most valuable company today. Could voice and AI put Windows back in the spotlight? Mehdi doesn’t mention Apple’s recent travails in AI, but he’s clear that he sees an opportunity for Microsoft to bound forward more quickly than its eternal competitor. ”We’re going to have an open window,” he says. “And Apple is not going to be in this window for quite some time.” Thinking ahead over the next decade, Mehdi told me, Microsoft would love to turn Copilot into the real-world equivalent of Tony Stark’s ultracapable AI butler Jarvis. Still, he and the Microsoft executives I talked to mostly kept the hype in check. None of them suggested that voice might totally supersede today’s graphical interface in the way Windows once replaced MS-DOS’s text-based command line. Microsoft Jarvis, should it come to exist, will likely still support keyboard and mouse input—just like Windows 1.0. “We think this is the next interface because it’s additive,” stresses corporate VP of design and research for Windows + Devices Marcus Ash, who has been at Microsoft since 1999 (not counting a brief detour at Stripe) and was part of the team that created Cortana. “It gives you more things that you can do. But you can also go back to the way that you use things if that’s comfortable for you.” Which is not to say Microsoft won’t make every effort to make the case for Windows’ latest attempt to bake in voice technology. That undertaking will include a TV campaign showing the new features in action. “We’ve not advertised Windows in that kind of fashion in a while,” says Mehdi. “So we do have confidence in what we’ve got here.“ Once upon a time, Microsoft signaled that a Windows update mattered by rebranding it: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7. Not this time. Four-year-old Windows 11 is still Windows 11—additional evidence the company is trying to err on the side of underselling what it’s created. “Historically, we’ve changed names,” says Mehdi. ”Pavan and I were like, ‘Shoot, should we have [called it] Windows 12 or Windows 20 or something?’ We didn’t even think about it. We were spending our whole time working on the product. But it has that magnitude. And it’s obviously all with the backdrop of what’s happening in the world of AI.” If this new voice-enabled operating system wins hearts, it will be because its benefits speak for themselves. View the full article

If you have a stressful job, meditation can help—but it’s not easy to meditate at work. A new workplace pod is designed to help by giving you a private place to take a break, run through a guided meditation or breath work, and begin to experience benefits like improved focus and reduced burnout. OpenSeed, the startup behind the Iris Pod, launched in 2018 after founder Jonathan Marcoschamer attended a 10-day silent meditation course. He wanted to keep meditating during the day, but was working in an open plan office. “I couldn’t find anywhere to meditate,” he says. He also wanted to help make meditation more accessible for other people. So he started work on a prototype of a pod that could sit in a larger space. The first version was installed at companies like Deloitte and Morgan Stanley, where Marcoschamer says that it’s used as often as 16 times a day. The new version, in production now for delivery in early 2026, was developed over the last few years with Yves Behar’s Fuseproject, along with the Mexico City-based design studio Tuux. When you step inside the womb-like pod and close the door, a light outside shows that it’s occupied. Made from wood and wool felt panels and softly lit, it feels welcoming. “At the onset, we asked one question: how do we make an environment that as soon as you stepped in, it made you feel calmer?” says Marcoschamer. The panels, with wood sandwiched between two layers of felt fabric, help isolate sound so you don’t hear coworkers when you’re inside. On a tablet, you choose a program—a meditation to help boost energy, for example, or to calm you down after a stressful meeting. Music helps guide your breath, synchronized with the lighting. The floor and seat gently vibrate. Lavender and other essential oils offer aromatherapy. The sessions are designed to last around 10 minutes. Fuseproject designed the large pods to ship flat and then be easily assembled on site—drawing on the team’s previous experience with prefab homes—rather than delivering the product in a giant crate. “Shipping is always such a high cost, both in terms of the final price point of the product and environmental cost,” says Behar. The pod can be assembled within a few hours. (Initially, the team also planned to use recycled, 3D-printed wood for the structure, but the new technology wasn’t quite ready for this type of application.) The pods can be used in places beyond offices; one of the newest customers is a cancer treatment center, where OpenSeed plans to study how using the pods reduces stress. Other hospitals already used the first version of the product for doctors and nurses on breaks, but now it will also be used by patients. A correctional facility will provide the pod for police officers. The product is pricey, at $22,500 plus shipping and installation fees, but Marcoschamer argues that in a large office where it’s frequently used, the cost per use is low. “We’re seeing so many high-end wellness centers with all these very expensive treatments,” he says. “We want this to be something that’s accessible.” View the full article

This week, fintech company Karta announced a new premium credit card designed with a very specific user in mind: American nonresidents with U.S. bank accounts—and high net worths. It’s designed to compete with other premium credit cards on the market, and thus, is available to customers who have a bank or brokerage account with a minimum balance of $150,000 in assets all without a Social Security number. It also offers similar perks and benefits to other premium travel cards, such as the Citi Strata Elite, the Chase Sapphire Reserve, or the American Express Platinum Card. Those include access to exclusive events, a Priority Pass Select membership that provides access to airport lounges, travel and auto insurance benefits, and the ability to earn points redeemable for flights or hotels. Also, in the same vein as other premium cards, Karta’s card has an annual fee of $300, which is considerably less than others in the space. Karta’s also announced that it’s raised $5.4 million in seed money from Canary, Clocktower Ventures, and FJ Labs, among others, and that it’s partnering with nearly two dozen U.S. financial institutions to get it into customers’ hands. “It’s designed for known residents who have U.S. assets,” says Freddy Juez, the founder and CEO of Karta. Juez says that the offering is taking aim at a problem that many nonresidents in the U.S. have: They have a lot of money in the bank, but may lack a Social Security number or tax identification credentials. That means they can’t, or have a lot of trouble, getting a credit card, and many high-net-worth individuals in Juez’s target customer segment may want one to take advantage of some of the perks offered by other cards. Also worth noting is that the credit cards these customers can get—usually in their native countries of Brazil, Argentina, and others—may have very high international swipe fees (which would be in the mix if they’re using the card in the U.S.) and interest rates. For instance, while an American Express may charge a foreign transaction fee of 2%, Juez says a card issued in Brazil could charge as much as 10%. Additionally, credit card interest rates in the U.S. tend to hover around 20%, whereas in Brazil, the average rate, as of June, was 450%. That makes for some compelling reasons to look for an alternative card for those in Karta’s target demographic. American Express offered such a card, the International Dollar Card, but started to phase it out at the end of 2024. Juez saw the market opportunity—he estimates there are tens of millions of potential customers—and jumped on it, hiring Fernando Delceggio, the former head of acquisition and new business development from AMEX International Dollar Cards (IDC), to help build out Karta’s new card. “I hired him immediately,” says Juez, and “now he runs it.” Also of note: The card is entirely managed through WhatsApp, the messaging platform owned by Meta. Customers can make disputes, ask questions, inquire about dinner reservations, and more—all through WhatsApp, and at the direction of AI agents. Juez says the reason for that is that the card’s target customer is wealthy Latinos, and Brazilians, in particular, and that “Brazilians are insane about WhatsApp.” “Latinos use WhatsApp in the same way or at the same level that Americans use simple texting,” he says, which is what made WhatsApp a sort of natural fit for the card—from a tech and cultural standpoint. While there is a risk in relying on WhatsApp—a third-party messaging platform that could presumably pull the rug out from under Karta—Juez says that Karta has thought ahead. “Everything we’ve built is in-house, and WhatsApp is there as the communications channel,” he says. So, in the worst-case scenario, Karta could move everything to another channel or platform. “But I think the incentives are aligned with what Meta wants to achieve,” he notes, since Meta wants more people to use WhatsApp, and Karta’s offerings could be one way to get them there. Juez, too, says that this premium card offering is only the beginning for Karta in the U.S., and he says the company could branch out after a few years into other financial offerings, such as bank accounts. And he’s confident, after less than a year in operation, that he’s tapped into a sizable and underserved customer segment, as evidenced by the company’s fast growth. “When I hired Fernando, he told me this was going to be a slow process. He said I’d only get one or two banks to become partners in six months,” Juez says. “We’ve gotten 22 banks in six months. That tells you how good the product is.” View the full article