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We may earn a commission from links on this page. In Lifehacker’s series, “A Guide to Automating Your Entire Home,” we’re highlighting all the ways you can power your home with autonomous technology, room by room. Whether you want to build a smart security system, turn a “dumb” device smart, or simply control your lights from your phone, this guide will help walk you through it. So, you want to start a smart home, but you don't know where to begin? Whether you're starting a smart home from scratch or figuring out how to configure the one you already have, the good news is that it's much less of a headache now than it used to be. Smart home tech has undergone significant simplification in recent years, partly due to the consolidation of platforms and standardization of connected protocols. You just choose your path based on the ecosystem you want to operate in, and then build out your repertoire of devices—things like video doorbells, security cameras, and smart lights—from there. It's all fairly straightforward at that point, so the important thing is choosing the right smart home ecosystem before you begin. The main players here are Google, Apple, and Amazon, which you'll want to choose by determining which control interface you'd prefer. That's because the Matter protocol that most modern smart devices work on is compatible with all three, so it's really the software experience that matters most here. That said, you will also occasionally also run into the Z-Wave and Zigbee protocols when setting up legacy devices, so it's important to double check your chosen ecosystem's support for these if you have a lot of old gear sitting around. (Usually, this relies less on your software and more on your hubs—or, in other words, the central devices that anchor your smart home devices together.) With that explained, let's run through everything you need to know to pick a smart home ecosystem. Google Home The Google Nest Audio. Credit: Florence Ion/Lifehacker Anyone who is already deeply embedded in the Google ecosystem, whether through an Android device, Chromebook, or the Chrome browser, will probably find this ecosystem to be the most comfortable for them. The Google ecosystem is a smart home platform built entirely around the Google Home app and Google Assistant—soon to be Gemini. That means it seamlessly integrates with your Google account and other services, including Gmail, Google Photos, and YouTube, which is a huge plus for people that make heavy use of those apps. On a hardware/protocol level, devices like the Nest Hub smart display and Nest Wifi Pro mesh router are equipped with Matter, so again, they'll work with most current smart home devices. Additionally, they also serve as Thread border routers, with Thread being a low-power protocol that helps maintain your devices' connection throughout your smart home. Additional smart devices with Thread built in help extend that range, but these can help boost it if you notice it's lacking. As for the software experience, your Nest Hub smart displays and Google speakers will act as your smart home's control interface. Or, you could also use an Android device with hands-free "Hey, Google" activated to control your smart devices. iPhone users can tap into this ecosystem natively through iOS, too, although it relies on a combination of the Google app and Google Home apps. Additionally, you'll need an external Nest device, like a Nest Hub or a Google TV Streamer (4K), to act as an anchor. Android users are fully embedded into the ecosystem, meaning less of a reliance on Google's smart home apps, but there are ways to set up Shortcuts on iOS that partially replicate this experience. The best part about the Google smart home ecosystem is that it's compatible with third-party manufacturers, including some of the more obscure ones on the market, such as Rachio, a smart sprinkler controller, and Wiz, Philips Hue (Signify)'s budget-friendly line. Google also has the strongest track record for contextual voice commands, and the company will continue to build on it even as Gemini starts powering the helm. Google says that Gemini will bring more natural language conversations and deeper intelligence in automations. Even if you don't care for voice assistants, the Google Home ecosystem also has a robust smart home routines editor. It's a newer offering since Matter was rolled out, but it has helped enhance the relative tinkerability of the platform. Apple HomeKit The Apple HomePod mini serves as a hub for HomeKit. Credit: Florence Ion/Lifehacker Apple HomeKit, controlled by the Apple Home app, is the preferred smart home ecosystem if you already have an iPhone, iPad, and/or Mac in your life. Apple relies on a combination of wifi, Bluetooth, and Thread for connections, and a specific Apple device is required to act as an anchor for your smart home control. This could be a HomePod (second generation), HomePod mini, or Apple TV 4K (second generation, or third generation with 128GB storage), all of which have the requisite components for acting as Thread routers. It's also worth noting that the iPhone 16 Pro functions as a Matter controller, but you'll still need a "core" device, such as a HomePod mini, to enable remote access, shared control within the household, automations, and routines, as well as end-to-end encrypted video. As is standard inside Apple's walled garden of highly curated but less-open apps, its smart home ecosystem adheres to the idea that it should be secure and well-managed. Apple is the curator of device compatibility within this ecosystem, so while it supports Matter, it also requires third parties to undergo a strict MFi certification process, which stands for "Made for iPhone/iPad." Apple maintains a list of devices that have been certified for use with its products. If you're already accustomed to this lifestyle, it's not a significant change from the status quo, but it can make building out your smart home with Apple seem limited compared to doing it with Google or Amazon. However, an upside to Apple's smart home ecosystem is that it's particularly privacy-focused, especially compared to Google and Amazon's ecosystems. HomeKit prioritizes local processing, relying on devices like the HomePod to execute routines and commands rather than pinging external servers. Apple will also allow you to encrypt security footage from HomeKit-compatible cameras, ensuring it is never transmitted to the company's servers. This contrasts with Google, which still heavily relies on cloud servers for video storage and advanced features, like face detection. The Gemini smarts coming to Google Home will also initially rely on cloud processing. Amazon Alexa The Amazon Echo Dot. Credit: Florence Ion/Lifehacker Amazon was the first to introduce consumer-ready smart home products, all the way back in 2014. Since the days of its first smart speaker and early forays into Alexa, the Amazon smart home ecosystem has become the most robust and expansive option compared to those of Google and Apple, even if it doesn't rely on a familiar interface you might be used to from your Android or iOS phone. Connection is primarily based on wifi, although some Amazon Echo smart speakers and displays also serve as Zigbee hubs. This low-power protocol has served as a de facto standard for many older smart home devices, but don't expect support for modern gear to be lacking. To that end, Amazon has fully embraced Matter from the get-go. Most of the Echo devices currently available also serve as Matter controllers and/or Thread border routers. Alexa-compatible devices are also generally more affordable compared to other offerings. Amazon's Alexa voice assistant runs the show, and its companion app is what you'll use to configure commands, set automations, and select services that are connected. However, the digital assistant has seen little consumer-facing action in recent years, with Amazon focusing on foundational improvements to its backend instead. We're still waiting for Amazon to provide more details about its long-term strategy for ambient computing, dubbed Alexa+, which is currently in early access. The idea is that Alexa will work in the background, turning on lights and adjusting the climate in your home without you having to utter a word. You can sign up to try out the contextual chatbot before it's live. When it does launch, Alexa+ will require a monthly subscription of $20 per month unless you're already an Amazon Prime member. A "classic" version of Alexa will still be available for basic voice commands, such as playing music, setting timers, and executing pre-configured routines. Matter: The smart home unifierWith the three major smart home ecosystems explained, let's dive more into their protocols. I've mentioned it a few times already, but the most important word to know when putting together a smart home or updating an existing one is Matter. Matter is a unifying protocol that took years of coordination between major companies and trade organizations, such as the Consumer Standards Alliance (CSA), to become the pre-eminent standard connecting the modern smart home. It is not an ecosystem, but rather a language that enables devices from various ecosystems to communicate with one another. Matter was introduced to solve a fragmentation problem that was affecting the adoption of the smart home. If you're not sure your smart devices will be able to communicate with each other, you might hold off on buying anything at all, which hurts the whole industry. Matter operates on top of existing network protocols, such as wifi and Thread. It works with all major smart home ecosystems, as well as some lesser-known ones. Although Matter is still in its nascent era, its existence can help you avoid getting locked into a specific ecosystem. The standard has also helped simplify setup, and it's more future-proof than the previous generation of smart home devices. Z-Wave and Zigbee: Old faithfulsZigbee and Z-Wave have been around for a long time, dating back to the early days of the smart home. Before wifi became a sufficient enough connector for low-power devices, these two protocols were the primary method of communication between them. If you were shopping for smart devices that required energy efficiency, such as a motion sensor or smart light switch, you would rely on either Zigbee or Z-Wave to connect. Zigbee and Z-Wave were designed to be energy-efficient, which is why many battery-powered smart gadgets use these protocols. Zigbee and Z-Wave also employ a mesh network architecture, which allows each device logged onto the network to act as a repeater to help extend the signal's range. This is exceptionally helpful in building out the smart home in large homes and hard-to-reach spots, such as basements and backyards. These protocols are still highly relevant if you're planning to build a robust, automated smart home, and they're often the best connection choice for battery-powered sensors and devices. Matter is merely the bridge that allows you to bring all your Zigbee and Z-Wave devices into a single app for control. Most recently released smart home hubs, such as this one from Aeotec, support both Zigbee and Z-Wave, in addition to Matter and wifi. Automations: The best part of having a smart homeThe allure of the smart home is that you could have everything, from your lights to your air conditioning, scheduled and programmed without having to command it beforehand. For each ecosystem, the fundamental logic of automations and routines is generally the same: They follow the "if this happens, then trigger this action" principle. In many cases, you don't need voice input to have these kinds of "ambient" actions working throughout your home. Each ecosystem has its own name for these. Amazon refers to them as "routines," while Apple and Google call them "automations." (Google used to call them routines, but it's transitioning away from that moniker.) The concept remains the same across the board. Google Home's automations are relatively straightforward. They can be triggered by a specific time of day or based on a combination of conditions. For instance, you can set up a "leaving home" automation that's based on your location. When your phone is detected outside a preset geofence, your Nest cameras can automatically turn on and start recording. At the same time, your lights could dim to a minimal level, and any doors with smart locks could be set to lock automatically. All of these settings can be easily configured right in the Google Home app. For users who need more sophisticated, conditional logic, Google also offers an online script editor to build custom routines. Apple HomeKit's Automations are more privacy-focused, as they occur on-device and rely on a hub, such as the HomePod mini or Apple TV 4K, for remote execution. You can easily set automations through the Apple Home app on iOS or iPadOS. Automations involve triggers such as a person arriving or leaving the home, a specific time of day, a HomeKit-compatible sensor being triggered, or a change in accessory status, like when a smart bulb turns on. And like Google's Routines, Apple's Automations can adjust scenes, which are preset combinations of device settings and individual accessories across the home. Amazon's Routines work similarly. They need a key trigger, whether it's a voice command, motion detection from a sensor, or a device status, like an open door. Alexa is great for controlling lights and smart plugs, playing music and podcasts on specific devices, and even sending messages to another Alexa-enabled device, whether it's an Echo smart speaker or the Alexa app on someone's phone. Amazon's Alexa routine builder has long been regarded as one of the most user-friendly options on the market. We'll see if it maintains that status when Alexa+ comes into the fold. Before the introduction of Matter, you had to be careful about which devices you brought into your smart home, as different ecosystems and brands often didn't work together. Matter's entire reason for existence was to unify the fragmented market, where an Apple HomeKit accessory would not work with a Google Home speaker. While Matter, as a protocol, doesn't handle automations, it does allow devices to communicate with a hub that works across various ecosystems. The hub can, for instance, enable a motion sensor from a different manufacturer to be used as a trigger for a smart light from a different ecosystem, with Matter acting as the bridge. How to choose the right smart home ecosystemUltimately, I can't tell you which is the best smart home ecosystem for you, because it's entirely up to your needs and preferences. If you are particularly privacy-focused, the Apple HomeKit ecosystem may be precisely what you want, even with its higher cost and fewer offerings. If you're a diehard iPhone and Mac user, it's also the way to go. The same applies to Android users who are already logged into a Google account and embedded into the ecosystem. If you're in a mixed-platform smart home, the best way to choose your unifying anchor is to consider which voice assistant you prefer to communicate with. If you're fine with Siri and prefer the idea of commands being executed on-device, stick with HomeKit. If you're a big fan of Google and you have existing Nest products, or even a Chromecast, that's the way to go. And if you'd rather have the simplest experience among the three, Amazon's Alexa remains the easiest to interface with. View the full article

Legal experts say the outcome of Slaughter v. The President, which considers The President's termination of a Federal Trade Commission member, could have profound implications for Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook's litigation, which in turn could determine the future autonomy of the central bank. View the full article

Company appoints Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström co-chief executives as co-founder becomes executive chair View the full article

Special committee investigating auto parts group’s financing also examines whether collateral was ‘commingled’View the full article

The philanthropist is as close as the world’s strongmen get to a cross-border demonView the full article

For decades, the baby food aisle has been dominated by big players like Nestlé, which makes Gerber brand products, and Danone, whose brands include Happy Family. Angela Vranich and Ben Lewis—high school sweethearts turned entrepreneurs—wanted to change this. Even though they didn’t yet have children, they believed that millennial parents were looking for new sources of food for their growing families. “Millennials had spent their twenties drinking fresh-pressed juices and eating salads,” Vranich says. “When they started having kids, they were looking for food that was more nutritious than what they grew up eating.” In 2017, the pair launched their direct-to-consumer startup, Little Spoon. They used their previous experience in the food industry to develop a line of baby food that uses organic, non-GMO ingredients, and abides by EU standards of quality, which are higher than those in the United States. Customers could order products on the brand’s website and have them delivered, saving them regular trips to the grocery store. According to the company, since that launch Little Spoon has delivered 80 million meals to families across the country, and now feeds more than 3% of babies in the U.S. It has expanded beyond baby food, creating developmentally appropriate food all the way into preschool, including a large selection of products for toddlers that are designed to be nutritious and fun to eat (like nuggets in the shape of spoons to better scoop up sauce!). Little Spoon’s full-plate meals and school lunches have been particularly popular. As of September 30, the brand is available at Target locations across the country. The brand’s 23 products will be spread out across five aisles, from fresh baby food in the fridge section to shelf-stable snacks in the grocery section to frozen chicken nuggets in the freezer aisle. Little Spoon’s redesigned packaging provides more insight into its products’ nutritional content. “While some parents love getting food delivered, many others prefer shopping in stores,” says Lewis. “As we grow, we want to make sure we’re meeting the needs of all our customers.” Vranich and Lewis believe that for Little Spoon to scale, it’s crucial to go beyond the direct-to-consumer model. And they’re not alone. Designing for Retail Little Spoon is among a number of food startups that got their start in the DTC boom of the mid-2010s and are now graduating into grocery stores to reach a broader market and tap into customers’ shopping habits. In their effort to appeal to millennial consumers whose tastes are different from those of their parents, these innovative companies are beginning to change the food industry (think Brightland and Graza olive oils, Fly by Jing and Brooklyn Delhi sauces, Magic Spoon cereal, and Olipop soda). All of these brands offer a fresh take on the category, using more nutritious ingredients than their incumbent counterparts. Some have incorporated more protein. Others have focused on more diverse, global flavor profiles. Much like Little Spoon, these brands connected with consumers on social media and grew slowly at first, but expanded production as they started to scale. Building a food brand involves complex logistics and extensive quality-control checks. “It’s not just about developing a really compelling product,” Lewis says. “We needed to find factories that we could trust and that would make our food up to our specifications.” Nearly a decade after the DTC boom, many startups realize that the direct-to-consumer model can only take a brand so far. Only 3% of U.S. shoppers get their food exclusively online; the other 97% shop in a physical store at least monthly. That’s why you can now find Graza and Fly by Jing at Whole Foods, and Daily Harvest, Magic Spoon, and Olipop at Target. Hitting a new target Launching at a major retailer is no small task. While many DTC food brands have grown large customer bases through their e-commerce websites, stocking shelves at a national retail store involves producing at a much larger scale. And for startups, this involves working closely with their network of suppliers and factories. Lewis says revving up Little Spoon for the Target launch involved a substantial increase in production. “It took us a long time to get our production up to the scale that Target requires,” Lewis says. “We had to work with our existing factories and find new ones so we could deliver trucks and trucks of food to meet Target’s demands.” Vranich says they also had to rethink the company’s packaging for retail. For one thing, many customers will not be familiar with the brand. So to increase brand awareness, Little Spoon made its logo much bigger. Then there’s the issue of what’s inside each package. When customers visit the Little Spoon website, they can scroll through images of the food; when a package arrives at their doorstep, it’s not covered with images of food but rather cartoons that will appeal to kids. For instance, in Little Spoon’s line of toddler school lunches, the website features images of chicken nuggets and sauces, but the exterior packaging has a funny picture of a cartoon nugget wearing sunglasses and getting dunked in sauce. “Shopping for food in store is a very different customer experience than shopping online,” Vranich says. All of these food startups are still a fraction of the size of the larger incumbents, but their growing popularity is sending a jolt to the food industry, prompting larger players to create similar offerings. For instance, Trader Joe’s has been accused of ripping off startups, creating copycats of Brooklyn Delhi and Fly by Jing sauces. And Little Spoon appears to have prompted other baby food brands to focus on reformulating their products to make them organic and more nutritious. For Vranich, the key to staying ahead is to continue innovating on every aspect of the product. For example, she says she’s very proud of being the only kids’ brand that makes squeezable yogurt and smoothies in packages with fun ridges on the edges that are both pleasant to look at and easy to hold. Little Spoon’s food development team also works hard to create fun meals that kids will actually eat, like a “brunch lunch” that features little chicken maple sausages, crunchy granola, a zucchini muffin, and an organic smoothie bowl. “We’re constantly coming up with new products,” Vranich says. “It’s a way to keep our existing customers coming back for more, but it also means we’re ahead of the rest of the market.” View the full article

Experts are warning that tariffs on pharmaceuticals are likely to increase shortages of essential medications. The government’s ongoing investigation into the national security implications of importing pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients is widely understood as a precursor to sector-specific tariffs, which a White House advisor has said are likely. On the other hand, the administration recently issued a new executive order laying the groundwork for tariff exemptions for some pharmaceutical products imported from countries that reach trade agreements with the United States. As a result, manufacturers, pharmacists, doctors and patients are in limbo. Digital health companies that make access to prescription medication simpler are also at risk. But I already know firsthand what a drug shortage looks like. I am the CEO of Oar Health, a company that helps people struggling with alcohol misuse get access to prescription medication to drink less or quit. And naltrexone, the recommended frontline medication for treating alcohol use disorder, has been in shortage for more than a year. Here’s what I’ve learned: Patients suffer when essential medications are unavailable Throughout the naltrexone shortage, I have heard from patients who have found medication critical to their recoveries. But instead of celebrating and building upon their progress, they were worried about continuing their treatment. Retail and mail order pharmacies alike told patients that they could not refill their prescriptions nor provide a reliable estimate of when they would. Patients documented their experience and concern in social media posts. As someone who took naltrexone for more than five years, I can relate to their unease. When a medication is proving helpful in one’s recovery, the last thing a patient should be forced to do is remove that tool from their toolkit. Beyond alcohol use disorder, direct-to-consumer telehealth companies like Ro, Hims, Nurx, and Cove have increased patient access to safe, effective medications across a broad range of health conditions. But access depends on availability. Tariffs on generic medications could harm patients who rely on everything from anti-depressants to birth control to migraine relievers to erectile dysfunction and hair loss treatments. The generic drug supply chain is fragile Americans often assume that generic medications will always be cheaply available from multiple manufacturers and at every pharmacy. This assumption is incorrect. In the case of naltrexone, a shortage of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient meant that manufacturers had to slash production. Coupled with an increase in demand for the medications used to treat alcohol problems, shortages spread and prices went up. But input shortages are not the only vulnerability in the supply chain. Manufacturing complexity, quality concerns, and geographic concentration have contributed to an increase in the number and duration of generic drug shortages according to the research organization U.S. Pharmacopeia. 253 drugs are in shortage in 2025 according to the American Society of Health System Pharmacists after reaching an all-time peak of 323 in 2024. Because generic drug manufacturing, distribution and pharmacy dispensing all have very low profit margins, a cost increase — including from tariffs — at any point in the supply chain is likely to be disruptive. Facing even marginally higher costs, a manufacturer may decide that producing a generic drug is no longer economical. And, as our experience shows, the industry lacks the redundancy to make up the difference. Industry can adapt, but not overnight I am proud to say that we have kept medication in hand for every Oar Health member throughout the shortage. But it has not been easy. Many of our members worked with us during the most acute phases of the shortage, shifting from shipments of 90 tablets to 30 tablets at a time out of concern for others who needed access to the medication. We also drastically reduced marketing budgets and briefly stopped accepting new patients, meaning that people who could have benefited from treatment did not. Over time, we have seen API availability improve and manufacturers increase or restart production. But regulatory bottlenecks, manufacturing setup costs, and uncertainty about demand mean that bouncing back after a supply shock is a process measured in months and years, not days or weeks. More than 18 months after the FDA officially declared a naltrexone shortage and almost two years after patients and pharmacists first began reporting problems, naltrexone remains in shortage. This is unfortunately common. The average shortage lasts 18 months and can span as much as 15 years. Similarly, industry participants agree that reshoring manufacturing, a potential goal of tariffs, would be timely and costly. The bottom line I started Oar Health so that more of the 28 million Americans with alcohol use disorder could get access to safe, effective, FDA-approved medication proven to help them drink less or quit. Our more than 10,000 members and the millions of Americans who rely on essential generic medications are counting on policymakers to remember them. View the full article

Remember CDs? There’s a new company betting that, if you don’t already, you’re about to. Jewel is a Norwegian company specializing in manufacturing high-end display cases for CDs. The brand recently soft-launched online in Europe and is planning to expand to the U.S. in the coming months. It offers products that range from an $130 freestanding case that fits four CDs to a $300, 16-slot case designed to be mounted directly onto the wall. Launching a CD-based brand more than 20 years after CDs hit their peak feels like a counterintuitive prospect. After all, how many people even own a CD player these days? But Marius Brandl, Jewel’s founder, says the brand’s thesis is simple: Vinyl records have had their renaissance. CDs are next. Are CDs on the rise? Retro tech and physical media have experienced an undeniable comeback, in part driven by young consumers looking to cut back on social media. Gadgets like iPods (yes, those are considered retro), Game Boys, film cameras, and even pagers have seen a resurgence. And, as Brandl notes, that applies to the music industry, too. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), vinyl posted its 18th straight year of growth in 2024, generating $1.4 billion in retail revenue, its highest share of physical format revenue since 1984. Meanwhile, CDs may have fallen out of fashion in the mid-2000s, but they’re not a dead medium. In 2024, the RIAA reports, 33 million CDs were sold in the U.S., up 1.5% from 2023. For some fanbases, they’re becoming a more popular collector’s item: Taylor Swift, for example, has a longstanding partnership with Target and tends to sell several versions of her albums in the format, including the upcoming Life of a Showgirl album, which will include three exclusive CDs. Charli XCX also gave the CD an injection of instant cool last summer, when her brat CDs sold out almost instantly. “What’s interesting is the generation born before and after the year 2000, especially in Europe, have really, really been collecting [CDs],” Brandl says. “My feeling is that CDs will have a comeback.” The making of a CD brand in 2025 Brandl’s idea for Jewel—a brand name inspired by the plastic “jewel case” that most CDs come in—actually started back in the ‘90s, when he was in college. Brandl remembers attending a party where he saw a table strewn in CDs, and wondering to himself whether there might be a better way to organize and display them. At the time, Brandl’s concept of a grid-based display case received lots of positive feedback from his professors, who saw the CD as a promising new medium. He only made it to early development stages, though, before realizing that he couldn’t find a way to both display the CDs and open their cases without damaging them, and the idea fizzled out. When Brandl’s close friend convinced him to revive the idea in 2023, Brandl spent more than half a year developing the right blend of rubber to hold each jewel case inside his display prototype. The rubber, which lines two sides of each square-shaped slot, needed enough grip to keep the cases from sliding, but not so much that the cases would break when opened. “The rubber was the biggest challenge, and also how to be able to make it not to be too expensive to produce,” Brandl says. He adds that the acrylic, aluminum, and hardware that serve as the backbone of the displays are all premium materials sourced from European manufacturers, which has bumped up the brand’s price points. “Instead of making it as cheap as possible with cheap materials, we thought, ‘The ones who will buy this are probably the ones who like music so much that they have a nice Hi-Fi system, and they want new design solutions.’” Given that Jewel just launched, Brandl says it’s difficult to measure sales numbers at this stage. From inside his street-level office in Oslo, though, he talks with interested customers every day who stop by to take a closer look at the product. “The people are from eight, nine yearsold to 82 years old,” Brandl says. “I think the ones between 17 and 25 show the most interest. And I tell them, ‘Your parents and grandparents and great grandparents listen to LPs. But the CD—that’s your generation’s physical connection to music.’” View the full article

We know that having friends at work is good for your performance and happiness. But could ChatGPT replace your happy hour bestie? According to a new study from KPMG that surveyed more than 1,000 professionals, almost all (99%) would be open to the idea of an AI chatbot assuming the role of close friend or trusted companion at work. That same study teases out a separate, also compelling thread: 45% of workers reported feelings of loneliness at work. That’s a huge jump, up nearly double from last year. On top of that, the survey found that friendship seems to be a big priority for most workers—even over money. More than half (57%) of those surveyed said they would take a salary 10% below market rate if it meant being able to have close friends at work, as opposed to accepting a salary 10% above market rate and having no close friends at work. (Whether they’d be willing to take a pay cut for a chatbot is another matter.) Still, it begs the question: Would people settle for Gemini as a “close friend at work”? The survey results suggest it’s possible. Plus, compared to “traditional” (read: human) colleagues, AI is always happy to assist, is hyperefficient, and doesn’t complain when delegated tasks or when offered criticism. (There’s also the fact that one in three U.S. employees say they would rather scrub a toilet than ask a human colleague for help.) From therapists to relationship counselors to romantic partners, AI-powered digital companions are rapidly emerging as alternatives to any number of human relationships. Now AI may well be ready to assume its newest role of work spouse. “This reflects a deeper truth: People are craving connection,” Sandy Torchia, vice chair of talent and culture at KPMG, told Fast Company. “When something shows up consistently, listens without judgment, and responds in a supportive way, it starts to feel familiar—even comforting.” We already know that having a work bestie or office ally isn’t just good for happiness, it’s good for productivity and performance. Employees in the KPMG survey said that having workplace friendships increases their motivation to go above and beyond their job description. But right now, we have zero idea whether any of these benefits transfer to a human-chatbot work friendship. What we do know is that the worker value on friendship is growing; 87% of employees consider work friendships “very important.” And the youngest workers value workplace friendships more than their older counterparts: 90% of Gen Zers surveyed said those friendships are very important, compared to 77% of boomers. The trend is playing out alongside an increase in public familiarity and comfort with AI tools. In the past couple of years, the share of U.S. employees who say they have used AI in their role a few times a year or more has nearly doubled, from 21% to 40%, according to a Gallup survey in June. While this is predominantly for work-related tasks, chatting with AI can also reduce stress, anxiety, and loneliness for some users, according to a 2023 study published in The Journal of Medical Internet Research. Of course, correlation doesn’t mean causation when it comes to chatbots being used more as stand-ins for human friends at work. But even if employees don’t want AI to step into the role of friend, almost all surveyed in the KPMG report said they would like to use AI to aid their friendships in some capacity; 98% said they would like AI systems to connect them with coworkers based on shared interests. It’s still early days in terms of widespread chatbot adoption, so who knows what will happen. For now, don’t count on a bot to fully replace your gossip buddy by the watercooler. “AI can mimic aspects of friendship; it can’t replace the depth, nuance, and emotional resonance of human relationships,” Torchia says. “That’s where employers have a real opportunity—to engineer environments where authentic connection can thrive.” View the full article

More than a month after the The President administration forced a nearly complete wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut to stop construction—costing the developers more than $2 million per day—the project just resumed work. On August 22, the government issued a stop-work order for the Revolution Wind project, which is designed to power 350,000 homes. It cited unspecified “national security concerns” despite years of review by federal agencies including the Department of Defense. Hundreds of workers were left idle. On September 22, a federal judge granted the developers a preliminary injunction to allow construction to continue. Judge Royce Lamberth, appointed to the U.S. District Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, said that the The President administration’s arguments were “the height of arbitrary and capricious,” and noted that if construction didn’t begin immediately, the project was at risk of failing completely. But the project, which is 80% done, still faces some risks. And the government’s attack makes it less likely for other offshore wind projects to be built—even after The President is out of office. The The President administration could still challenge the project The government has 60 days to file an appeal. That may not happen: It’s possible that the administration could give up. “The court’s opinion is right on in terms of the utter illegality of what the government was attempting to do here,” says Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation. “So it may be that they just decide to take the loss. But they might appeal, and if they do, the developer has to weigh that risk against the urgency of getting this project completed.” One industry legal expert told Fast Company that even within the administration, some Interior Department staff want to focus on other things—like building more oil and gas projects or a $625 million plan to “rescue coal”—rather than trying to kill the offshore wind industry, especially at a time when the president argues that there’s an energy emergency. Still, The President may want to appeal. “The administration has what we’ve described as a retaliatory posture towards offshore wind,” says Timothy Fox, managing director at the research firm ClearView Energy Partners. “To the extent that it doesn’t like losing, they may try to look for any avenue or any lever they can pull to try to stop this project.” It’s different from the Empire Wind project in New York (which the administration also tried to stop but then let proceed after New York’s governor reportedly made a backroom deal with The President to allow an unpopular gas pipeline to also move forward in the state). There, The President can point to getting something in return. In the case of Revolution Wind, the administration clearly lost, and may want to keep fighting. What are the odds of an appeal? An appeal is unlikely to succeed. The government would have to argue that there was a clear reason to stop the project, something that the first judge found that it had failed to do. But “who’s on the bench hearing the appeal is incredibly important,” says Mark James, a professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School. The case shouldn’t win on the merits, experts say, but judges sympathetic to The President might find creative ways to interpret the law. (That could also be true if the case reaches the Supreme Court, though it’s more likely that the Court would decline to hear the case; it chose not to hear a case about the neighboring Vineyard Wind project.) Agencies took a long time to carefully review the project, like other wind projects, before the permits were issued in the first place. “Part of the reason offshore wind projects have, to date, overcome judicial challenges was because the Biden administration knew that these projects would be challenged in court,” Fox says. “They didn’t want to move fast in the short term just to lose on the back end. So they took their time issuing permits that could withstand judicial review.” Sinding Daly adds, “What I would say is that in normal times, it’s probably pretty low risk to go forward [with construction] because of the speciousness of the lawsuit. But we’re not in normal times, clearly. And so it’s very hard to make predictions.” In theory, the government could also try to find a new reason to stop work on the project, though that would go back to the first judge and almost certainly be shot down. The administration can also carefully monitor construction to look for any potential compliance issues that would allow it to temporarily stop or slow the project again. Construction is racing forward As the threat from the government continues, workers are racing forward on the wind farm. In total, the project will include 65 massive wind turbines that will power homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Forty-five turbines are in place now. Installing the remaining 20 will take around three months. Crews also have to finish installing cables and connecting the power. Testing everything will take more time. It’s not clear how much can be finished before winter weather pauses the work. There could be other challenges, including whether specialized vessels that the developers need to lease for construction will still be available as long as the company needs them. Revolution Wind declined to comment on how much the delay over the past month has changed the overall timeline for the project. It may still be possible that it could finish next year, as planned, barring further legal delays. Once complete, since all of the federal permits were already issued, the project should be safe to begin sending power to shore. A chilling effect on offshore wind The government is still trying to revoke its approval of multiple other offshore wind projects, including SouthCoast Wind, a giant development near Massachusetts, and the Maryland Offshore Wind Project. Other projects are facing lawsuits that the federal government is declining to fight. The industry is also facing rising costs. It’s extremely unlikely that any new projects will start during the The President administration. But it’s also becoming less viable for projects to move forward afterward. States like Massachusetts have told utilities they need to invest in offshore wind. But that won’t work without federal support as well. “I think this administration is purposely trying to scare away the industry even after they leave office,” says Fox. “A future administration may support the industry—even to the extent that the Biden administration did—but developers and financiers may be wary of investing in a capital-intensive sector with a long lead time that faces such demonstrable election risk. To put it more simply, can you plan a project and get it online all within a four-year period of an administration that says they like offshore wind, before the next The President 3.0?” It could set a precedent beyond just the offshore wind industry. A future climate-focused president could decide to revoke existing permits for gas projects, for example. “A future administration could say, ‘Okay, let’s use this growing executive power to stop projects that we don’t like.’ Even if a court ultimately strikes down that action, like you’ve seen with Revolution Wind, it just injects so much uncertainty and risk,” Fox says, adding, “We’re hearing from some of our clients that this is among the most difficult times to invest in the energy sector, which is ironic, given the growing power demand. The political uncertainty is growing.” View the full article

As press releases go, it was a mic drop moment. On September 4, OpenAI announced that it was coming after LinkedIn. And it was coming after job search specifically. For those unfamiliar with the story, it was reported across multiple sources that not content with torpedoing Google, education, interpersonal relationships, and entire industries such as psychiatry or management consultancy (both smugly considered untouchable until about 15 minutes ago), OpenAI is now coming after the age-old industry of human resources. Specifically, the $300 billion company wants to streamline the process of hiring by automatically matching candidates to roles via context alone, without the need for titles, résumés, applications, or screening—a fully automated, frictionless match between resource and need, run at zero cost in a fraction of the time it would take Becky from HR to book meeting room 14B next Tuesday, but with near-infinite scope and efficiency. It’s yet another cold, logical extension of artificial intelligence’s purported ability to reduce human intuition down to a series of predictable algorithmic factors. LinkedIn Dethroned? Now, let’s be fair. OpenAI’s proposition assumes (probably rightly) that virtually all future roles will require some degree of AI knowledge or fluency. Moreover, the press release breathlessly proposes an OpenAI Academy, one that will train the machine-picked workers of the future on how to best serve their artificial overlords. But will this really be enough to dethrone LinkedIn? An incumbent platform of over 1 billion people who now spend the bulk of their time not in job search or hiring, but in perpetual AI comment-discussions about the nature of “authenticity” while posting Canva-selfies of their weekend getaway to Puglia? Perhaps we should first recognize that human resources is one of the oldest and most safeguarded functions within the corporate world, holding out defiantly as personal assistance, finance, and even marketing have been variously usurped by automation. It’s a curiously old-fashioned industry in many respects, relying on judgments about physical appearance and behavioral norms such as eye contact and punctuality—characteristics that in any other sector would be subordinated to one’s ability to deliver value or output. But recently, HR has gone through something of a transformation, and it’s safe to say that LinkedIn has been at the heart of that. In fact, the world’s largest business platform been an unwitting catalyst for an onslaught of AI-driven fraud—both from candidates (either building fake AI profiles or even replacing themselves in Zoom interviews with omniscient AI avatars), or from dubious recruiters (leveraging advanced AI tools to build fictitious companies in order to solicit payment or personal details). The market is now flooded with AI cover letters, AI résumés and AI-curated portfolios, while on the other side of the table, the screening process is often (and increasingly) handed off to AI scanning software, in order to save valuable time filtering out unsuitable candidates before proceeding to a final interview—one that may ultimately be conducted and processed by an AI avatar. Surely then it’s simply a short step to full automation, one that removes these very ghosts in the hiring machine? Perhaps. But I’d suggest that any scholar of organizational psychology would hold a very different view. The intangibles We can look, for example, at evidence highlighting the predictive power of nonverbal cues such as vocal tone, facial expressions, and body language in forecasting later job performance. A 2022 Harvard Business Review piece, on the other hand, cautioned that automated interviews may be prone to missing these types of “intangible” characteristics—potentially valuable employee attributes (say, curiosity or resilience) that might only be registered via live human interaction. Yet suffice to say, these same factors are also deeply subjective. Economists have long shown that reliance on intuition and first impressions can also be a major source of bias in recruitment, perpetuating disparities around race, gender, and class. AI proxies Whatever the case, the stark reality is that we now find ourselves in an era where a growing majority of both candidates and recruiters are using AI as proxies. And in this world, the very notion of authentic observation—whether helpful or not—is starting to erode. But—I hear you cry as one—surely HR isn’t just about hiring? It’s about people management, professional development, organizational health, and so many other things? Yes—except that of all these functions, hiring has historically required the highest amount of dedicated resource, training, and physical presence, far outstripping what can now be done by AI in areas such as coaching, psychometric testing, and even therapy. If we delegate the very function of organizational building itself, what remains must necessarily become diminished, at least in part. To circle back then to OpenAI, perhaps iterative machine learning will finally win out. Perhaps time might tell us that the match between employee and role is near-flawless in an AI, dehumanized world. And yet, it may also be this very unpredictability of human nature that will represent the biggest loss to a future workforce. And as to the suggestion that OpenAI’s hiring platform will take down LinkedIn itself? If it can somehow balance hiring efficiency with the high level of fluffy, eye-pleasing pseudo-business interactions that now so predominate on LinkedIn itself, perhaps. But to do that, you’d need to first understand a little of the idiosyncrasies of human nature, in order to build (and foster) an appropriately “sticky” forum—if only for the reason that “business” is a gateway into so many other areas of recreational and emotional life. And doing that, I’m afraid to say, still requires a deeply human sensibility. View the full article

Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich described proposal as a ‘resounding diplomatic failure’ that would ‘end in tears’View the full article

You don’t need a perfect jump shot or the exhaustive knowledge (or opinions) of Stephen A. Smith to land a career in sports. You can get far on passion and a desire to spread that love of the game throughout an increasingly fan-driven world. Sports marketing—which encompasses everything from managing multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals and crafting social media campaigns for local teams to coordinating fan activation at the Super Bowl—is one of the most robust components of the sports industry, which is worth at least $500 billion globally. To understand the state of play in this arena, Fast Company analyzed nearly 2,800 job listings on Google for Jobs between April and June 2025. We classified hiring organizations into four types: property rights holders (e.g., leagues and teams), media organizations, brands, and agencies. And we divided the jobs themselves into three categories: strategy, creative, and experiential. We then looked at the salaries, job requirements, and locations involved. The results reveal an industry that’s more accessible and geographically diverse than you might expect, with plenty of opportunities for people lacking in both educational pedigree and, presumably, athletic ability. Who’s Hiring Property rights holders account for the highest number of jobs listed for any organization type, at about 34% of listings. And it’s not just the most recognizable leagues and teams looking for help, though the L.A. Clippers are in the market for a director of sales innovation. Miami University, youth sports company 3Step Sports, and the United Football League’s (UFL’s) Memphis Showboats are all hiring. Media companies (such as Amazon and NBCUniversal) account for more than 26% of jobs; brands (think Nike, Lululemon, and Red Bull) represent more than 20%, and agencies (like Playfly Sports, Excel Sports Management, Two Circles, and Endeavor) make up more than 18%. But these different types of organizations aren’t uniformly looking for the same kinds of people. Media companies are the likeliest to hire for creative roles, with 41% of listings geared toward jobs developing and shepherding content. Agencies and brands are disproportionately likely to headhunt for people working in strategy, with those roles accounting for 60% and 52% of openings, respectively. And property rights holders need people to promote game day, making those kinds of companies the most likely to hire people to fill positions in experiential marketing. Geography Although remote work accounts for the highest number of listings, two cities emerge as sports marketing hubs: Atlanta and New York. (Chicago is a distant third.) What explains Atlanta’s prominence? It’s home to five professional sports teams: the Hawks (NBA), Dream (WNBA), United (MLS), Falcons (NFL), and Braves (MLB). It’s also the HQ for brands known for getting their names in front of sports fans, such as Coke, Home Depot, and Delta. Charlotte, at No. 5, punches above its weight with its three major-league teams. It’s also home to the Charlotte Motor Speedway, plus branches of major agencies like Octagon and Wasserman. Salary Across organization types, salaries start out roughly the same (north of $50,000 on average) and increase mostly in lockstep. Nike, despite 2024 revenues being down nearly 5% year over year, is among the brands shelling out the most, offering about $250,000 for two upper-level roles. Amazon MGM Studios is among the highest-paying media companies, dangling $223,250 for a senior-level job. As far as agencies go, Game Seven and Saatchi are the top spenders. Game Seven’s $375,000 for a “global head of accounts” is the highest salary in our entire dataset. Full-Time Versus Contract The vast majority of sports marketing jobs are full-time, at about 81%. The second most common type of employment are internships at more than 8.3% of openings, followed by part-time jobs at 7.7%, and contractors at a surprisingly low 3%. Education If you’re looking to break into the industry and haven’t even started your freshman year of college, your best bet is to major in marketing. Forty-five percent of listings that stated a preference for any educational degree mentioned marketing in particular. But that’s not your only option. The next most common requests are business (28%), communications (24.1%), sports management (15.2%), and journalism (7.4%). Brands are the most likely employers to ask for marketing degrees: 73.3% of jobs at these companies require them. But there’s a good chance you won’t need a degree at all. The majority of agency and media listings don’t ask for one. Neither do nearly 40% of listings from brands nor 30% of listings from property rights holders. Of course, whether employers quietly prefer candidates to have one is another matter. Methodology We extracted jobs from the Google for Jobs search module monthly from April to June 2025, resulting in 2,774 jobs when duplicates were removed. We used a combination of Gemini and manual tech token search to extract information on salary, company type, job type, and educational background. The categorization of jobs as full-time or contract/internship and their geographic locations were contained as separate structured fields in Google’s data. Monthly and hourly salaries were standardized to yearly rates by multiplying the rate by 12 for monthly salaries, and by 2,080 for hourly salaries. View the full article

In summer 2019, Bob McDonough took a full stack web development coding bootcamp at the University of Pennsylvania. An English-turned-telecommunications major in college, McDonough had been working at a bar while sending out job applications for positions he barely wanted. Most paid below $50,000 a year, an undesirable salary for a 27-year-old in Philadelphia. McDonough says his “degree really wasn’t doing it” for him. “So, I figured I’d add a certificate to stack my résumé,” he says. What McDonough was doing was upskilling—the practice of learning new skills or sharpening old ones to attain maximum desirability in the job market. While taking this web dev course, McDonough wasn’t sure it would be worth the time and cost. But by the end, he had a “polished portfolio,” he says, a filled-out GitHub and new skills added on LinkedIn. Within three months of completing the course, McDonough had a salaried job at a design studio. “Someone saw my profile and gave me a call pretty quickly,” he says. But he’s not sure job seekers could replicate his experience today. The skillsets deemed desirable seem to be shifting faster than ever, and job seekers are reporting dismal experiences on the market. In the 2010s, “upskilling” may have just meant enrolling in a coding academy and hoping for the best. But fast, seismic changes like the rise of AI have quickly made a path to professional staying power much murkier. “Ten years ago, completing a certificate might have been enough to land a role in high-demand fields,” says Nora Gardner, senior partner at McKinsey. The days of taking a General Assembly course and landing a plum coding job may be gone. In this Premium story, you’ll learn: Hear from workers who upskilled—and whether or not it led to new jobs Learn out-of-the-box ways to make yourself desirable beyond “learn Python” What employers are actually looking for, beyond certifications on LinkedIn The uncertainty surrounding AI is immense, and the job market continues to be rough: In an August survey by the New York Federal Reserve, participants reported a new low of 44.9% likelihood of finding a new job should they lose theirs. On top of that, research from the McKinsey Global Institute suggests around 10% of American workers may need to switch jobs by 2030. But 45% of employed survey respondents said that “their need for more or different work experience, relevant skills, credentials, or education was the top barrier to finding a new job.” And yet, the way to upskill effectively doesn’t resemble the path McDonough took just a few years back. But that doesn’t mean upskilling courses are obsolete. Combined with continued on-the-job development, the dedication can communicate to employers the soft skills it takes to succeed in a rapidly evolving workforce: adaptability, willingness to learn, and resilience. Mixed messages Multiple sources told Fast Company that employers are emphasizing experience over specific skillsets. But learning the latest tech in the workforce goes a long way. Diana Rocha, 37, a London-based product manager at predictive hiring company Applied, took a DeepLearning AI course on Coursera a few months ago. Then she went to Workera—a site where people can test their upskilled skills—and tested in the 75th percentile. She put that all on her LinkedIn in August, a quiet month professionally in London, but immediately saw at least two to three companies or recruiters reaching out to her per week, compared to the previous one to two per month, she says. Rocha originally got her Applied job by upskilling, too, via a master’s program and Coursera courses on behavioral economics. However, Rocha isn’t sure the recruiters recently reaching out on LinkedIn were only attracted to her new AI prowess. LinkedIn also shows her years of product management roles. Rocha says employers who contacted her were looking for that alongside the newer AI skills, so it’s unclear if upskilling truly led to the spike in recruiter interest. However, McKinsey’s Gardner says it’s the mix of both existing and upskilled experience that will most likely get candidates seen. If you’ve worked in your field for decades, “certifications can signal commitment to learning,” she says. “But the differentiator is how they’re put into practice. Applying AI tools to improve workflow efficiency demonstrates adaptability in a way a credential alone cannot.” Easier than you think? Today, McDonough has a new job, coordinating web content at a law firm. But his experience from the design role he landed via upskilling taught him to stay on top of the latest technology. He says he scouts YouTube and Reddit to “see what people are talking about,” he says. “If I click on something that has 300 comments, then I know I’m probably in the right spot.” Learning while on the job is key to useful upskilling. While Molly Johnson-Jones, CEO and cofounder of job search platform Flexa, says organizations hawking upskilling courses often “sell a dream,” she adds that workers looking to switch careers can start doing so within their current company. Johnson-Jones says to identify “what bits of your role could seep into moving towards that new role.” Say you want to transition from marketing into tech: Find ways to collaborate more with your company’s tech team, she suggests. Get to know the department leads. Doing that relies on soft skills: empathy, interpersonal awareness, and emotional intelligence that make workers effective collaborators and pleasant to be around. We’re told these are the skills that AI will never snatch away from humans. Are those things even upskillable, though? Lisa Lie, founder of “microlearning app” Learna, thinks so. Her company provides 10-minute-or-less lessons on skills like “boosting confidence,” “thinking differently,” and “working with anyone.” Run by experts like psychologists and performance coaches, each short lesson begins by setting out a problem, followed by the expert walking users through the best language to use to diffuse a contentious situation with a coworker, for example. Lie doesn’t call them “soft skills,” because “they’re not optional or easy,” she says. “If AI is taking care of repeatable tasks, the value of people skills just went up.” ‘You have to stay on top of it’ Upskilling can feel like throwing yet another stressor atop the existing mountain of stress that comes with being a working professional. But Gen Z appears ready to meet this future. Per Flexa’s Work Index study, which looked at more than 40,000 job posts and almost 30,000 job seekers, members of Gen Z are 68% more likely than older generations to prioritize personal development in their job search. Though millennials, both McDonough and Rocha have adopted this approach. Based on their own experiences landing new jobs as a direct result of upskilling—it does seem to work. And if the youngest workers are prioritizing upskilling, it may well be the future. “The tech moves so quickly,” McDonough says. Instead of just taking a course like he did in 2019, he suggests job seekers looking to upskill today “stay up to date, read, [and] listen to podcasts on what people are doing.” “The AI hype is going to calm down at some point,” says Rocha. And yet? “I wouldn’t like to be left out because I didn’t upskill on that front.” McDonough agrees. AI might be today’s hottest thing, but company executives are always reading about the latest trends, tech, and shifts, deciding what skills to hire for. “You have to stay on top of it,” he says, “or else you’ll fall behind.” View the full article

A decade ago, inventor Jeneva Bell launched a startup called Ruggable that seemed radical at the time: A rug brand with products that you could throw in your home washing machine when they got dirty. Rugs have been a household staple for thousands of years, adding warmth and color. But wool and cotton rugs are delicate and require expert cleaning—which creates challenges for people who have toddlers, or pets, or cups of coffee that occasionally spill. Bell knew there was another way, so she designed a rug with two parts—a base and a polyester top layer—that could be separated and cleaned in a home washing machine. She believed that if she created a product that looked and felt like a traditional rug but was easily washable she would have a massive business. And she was right: Ruggable now has nearly 1,000 employees, and its annual revenue is in the nine-figure range. Today the company is launching its most innovative product yet. It’s called the All-in-One rug, and it doesn’t have a separate base and top layer. Instead, it looks and feels much like a traditional rug. It has a textured, cushioned feel, but it’s been carefully designed to be rolled up and washed in a home machine. The company is releasing this new design in two textures, Plush and Tufted, in four sizes, priced from $119 for runners to $1,299 for the largest size (10 feet by 14 feet). Washability Isn’t Easy Bell spent two years tinkering in her garage before launching Ruggable. She took apart dozens of traditional rugs to understand their structure, identifying which parts were designed to provide padding, texture, or softness. The final rug she created was a two-part set: a rug base that went on the floor, and a soft top layer made of polyester that could be removed, thrown in a household washing machine, and laundered at least 20 times without wearing out. “Jeneva effectively deconstructed the rug into its core elements,” says Nicole Otto, Ruggable’s new CEO. The company took off quickly. And while some consumers loved the original rug system, feedback from others proved instrumental to continued innovation. The very first Ruggable rugs were very thin, with almost no pile. They added warmth to a cold floor and were useful under wheeled office chairs, but they couldn’t compete with thicker, fluffier rugs. So Ruggable’s team developed plusher, yet still washable, upper layers. “The past decade has been all about reconstructing the rug, but doing so in a way that makes it washable,” Otto says. The idea for an all-in-one rug came in part from customer feedback. There are some benefits to a two-part rug system, like being able to swap out the outer later seasonally. But some customers found it laborious to have to separate the outer and bottom layers every time the rug needed to be washed. “Some people also found it hard to perfectly line up the two layers or get out the air bubbles between the layers,” says Maria O’Brien, Ruggable’s VP of global design. To design the all-in-one, Ruggable’s R&D team had to be strategic about each layer. They wanted to create a plush, cushioned feel under foot, which adds bulk. Adding a base layer to serve as a rug pad increases the size and weight of the final product. All of these factors affect washability; if the rug is too thick or rigid, it won’t fit into a home machine. For several years, Ruggable tested different materials in its prototypes. The result is the All-in-One collection, which comes in two textures: Tufted, with a 7-millimeter pile height; and Plush, with a 14-millimeter pile height. Both are made from 100% polyester that has a waterproof barrier for stain resistance. They’re also both significantly thicker than the company’s original flat woven designs, which are just 2 millimeters high, as well as most other washable rugs on the market, which tend to be fairly thin. Originally, the Ruggable team wanted to create an even plusher, fluffier rug with a higher pile, but being washable was key. (Tufted All-in-One rugs up to 8 feet by 10 feet are compatible with home washers; Plush rugs up to 6 feet by 9 feet are compatible with home washers. They weigh between 10 pounds and 85 pounds, depending on size.) This outer layer is now glued to a middle layer of foam that adds a cushioned feel, and then a thin backing that is nonslip, serving as a kind of rug pad. “When you’re designing products, you’re usually cost engineering,” O’Brien says. “But here, we were weight engineering. We needed to make sure the final product was flexible, and not too stiff, dense, or tight to fit in a washing machine.” A big market A decade after Ruggable’s founding, washable rugs are more common, as consumers are looking for low-maintenance home decor solutions. According to a report by analytics firm Market Intelo, the global washable rug market was valued at $6.2 billion last year, and it’s forecasted to hit $13.7 billion by 2033. While Market Intelo’s report notes that Ruggable is a standout player in the space, there’s increased competition, including Lorena Canals, Karastan, and Nourison. In fact, washable rugs are ubiquitous, available everywhere from Ikea and Walmart to Amazon. Ruggable aims to maintain its dominance through continued innovation. To meet consumers’ varying aesthetic preferences, O’Brien says the company has been open to collaborations. It has worked with designers Iris Apfel, Jonathan Adler, and Justina Blakeney, the Netflix show Bridgerton, and Architectural Digest magazine, among others. Since Ruggable manufactures its rugs in its own factories in California and Illinois using digital printing technology, it can make rugs on demand, allowing for a wide array of offerings. Ruggable is now trying to expand beyond its primary market of the United States. North America currently leads the washable rug market, making up 38% of global market share, but Europe and the Asia-Pacific region are now showing interest in the trend. Otto says Ruggable is investing heavily in expanding to Australia, the U.K., Germany, and France. “Having such a diverse range of styles allows us to connect with a diverse consumer base around the world,” she says. “We’re finding that wanting a rug that can be easily washed is a universal desire.” View the full article

Streeting shoots down rumours of VAT on private healthcareView the full article

Below, Joe Nucci shares five key insights from his new book, Psychobabble: Viral Mental Health Myths & the Truths to Set You Free. Joe Nucci is a licensed psychotherapist. As a content creator, he contextualizes mental health misinformation. His videos at @joenuccitherapy reached over 10 million people in the first six months of posting and his writing can be found in his newsletter, Psychobabble. What’s the big idea? Psychobabble replaces mental health misconceptions with liberating truths that can help readers avoid misinformation, navigate important debates in the mental health field, and better maneuver their own therapy journeys. The problem is not that therapy has gone mainstream, but that some of the assumptions we have absorbed from therapy culture are actually holding us back from healing, growing, and solving our problems. 1. Psychotherapy heals mental illness, not “problems of living.” Therapy works, but it doesn’t work for everything. Somewhere along the way, as mental health got destigmatized, we started to believe we could apply therapy to more than just mental illness. We started to believe it could save us from more than depression, trauma, and addiction. We started to believe that it could make us the ideal partner, the perfect parent, or help us achieve profound psychological comfort in all aspects of life. Unfortunately, there is no pill and no therapeutic intervention that can erase all of life’s struggles. And yet, therapy is often marketed as a cure-all for anything life throws at you. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with going to therapy to vent or if you’re bored or lonely. Furthermore, therapy can be quite effective in helping you with subclinical or nondiagnostic problems, like dating issues or struggles with a life transition. But there is a big difference between needing therapy and being able to benefit from it. Knowing where that line is can be really helpful in terms of maximizing how to get the most benefit from your therapy journey. It makes you a smarter consumer of therapy services and better at navigating self-help misinformation. Maybe you need to go to therapy, or maybe the answer to your problem can be found elsewhere. If you’re not sure, speaking to a qualified therapist can help you figure that out. 2. Mental health is about agency, not identity. One of the dangers of therapy culture going viral is that mental health has become a form of identity and social currency. In certain places, mental health has become popularized. People collect labels like badges, flaunting their self-awareness: “I am anxiously attached.” “I am neurodivergent.” “I am an empath.” In the book, I share a patient’s story that is all too common. She could articulate every piece of her psychological history. She was practiced at naming her emotions and fluent in therapy-speak. But she wasn’t changing. She wasn’t healing. She was stuck and suffering from it. She didn’t need more self-awareness. While becoming self-aware is often the first step, the magic of therapy isn’t about the analysis; it’s about translating that insight into action. It is about having hard conversations, naming her needs, and making the call she’d been avoiding for weeks. “Diagnosis is a doorway, not a destination.” Mental health shouldn’t be about figuring out “what” you are. It’s about being able to transform your attachment style, optimizing your life around your neurodivergency, or harnessing your empathy in an adaptive way. It’s about building your capacity to be better. Diagnosis is a doorway, not a destination. A diagnosis is useful in the sense that it informs a treatment plan. Holding onto your diagnosis as an identity without building the capacity for agency is just taking extra steps to stay exactly where you are in life. That is not the promise of the mental health field. The promise is to transform what you can and accept the rest as problems of living. 3. Therapists are not value-neutral. Therapists are taught to be nonjudgmental, but nonjudgmental doesn’t mean value-free. Every therapist brings a worldview into the room. They have their own pasts, politics, and values. A bad therapist will pretend that they are perfectly neutral. This kind of therapist is blissfully unaware of how their own personal lives impact the work you are trying to accomplish in the session. A good therapist will be aware that they are not a blank slate. They are self-aware enough to consider how they might say something that’s more about them than about you or why you are seeking their help. They will withhold sharing when it’s not clinically appropriate. But a great therapist? A great therapist can be simultaneously aware of how their past or personal values might influence them while honoring that your past and life philosophies may differ. They may even talk about their differences to assist in your healing. “A good therapist will be aware that they are not a blank slate.” The unfortunate truth is that some therapists feel emboldened to let their personal worldview encroach on their patients’ worldview. Some therapists see themselves as activists advancing a certain agenda. It could be political or philosophical. It might mean encouraging a client to end a relationship, label a parent as toxic, or reframe social dynamics as systemic harm. Sometimes that’s warranted. But sometimes it’s projection. 4. Tragedies don’t always result in trauma. Trauma is real, but so is the casual misuse of the term. Not everything bad that happens to you is a trauma. It’s inaccurate to say that events are traumatic in themselves because two people can get into the same car accident and one will develop PTSD while the other one will not. A trauma response is not about the past. It’s about the present moment and your current relationship to the thing that happened to you. Sometimes, pain metabolizes naturally. Sometimes, people move forward without assigning their suffering a trauma diagnosis. And that’s not repression—it’s capacity. By insisting that everyone has trauma, we risk flattening a wide range of emotional experiences into one narrow framework. We must consider the dynamics of grief, growth, and the full range of negative human experiences that shape our lives. Disappointment, regret, embarrassment, and heartbreak are hard, but they are not necessarily traumatic. Calling them trauma can subtly reinforce the idea that we are fragile and need clinical intervention to process every difficulty. This rebranding is surely good for therapists who want a steady stream of patients, but the idea culturally undermines resilience and turns the lens inward in ways that are often disempowering. 5. Therapy-speak can be medicine, or a weapon. One of the best things about therapy is that sometimes, when you name something—when something becomes conscious through language—that thing no longer has power over you. I’ve seen firsthand how being able to name trauma or abuse can provide relief almost instantly. I’ve personally experienced the agency I’ve gained from being able to articulate a dynamic that was previously ineffable. But if language can heal us, it can also hurt us: A patient once said, “I’m drawing a boundary,” right after cutting off a friend without explanation. Was it a boundary? Or was it a way to avoid a hard conversation? “He gaslit me” sometimes means “He disagreed with me.” “I’m dysregulated” becomes shorthand for “I don’t want to talk about this.” We think we’re speaking the language of healing. Sometimes, we’re just dressing up our defenses. Sometimes, using psychology jargon is just a logical fallacy—an appeal to authority. When we do this in a way that allows us to be more disconnected from ourselves and from each other, that is the opposite of the promise of the field of mental health. Learning these concepts is a little bit like learning a new language. At the beginning, it’s important to stay rigid with your grammar and pronunciation. Over time, as you become more fluent, it’s less about the words you use and more about how you use them. It’s not about labeling gaslighting correctly or incorrectly. It’s about knowing how to handle it when somebody disagrees with you and knowing what to do if somebody is trying to gaslight you. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. View the full article

The ChompSaw is a power tool made for kids to cut, craft, and create with cardboard. Its unique design makes it perfectly safe for little hands to use and easily carve precise corners or elegant edges through old boxes. Developed by college friends Kausi Raman and Max Liechty, ChompSaw raised $1.2 million in less than a month on Kickstarter and has already sold more than 30,000 units online. The ChompSaw is a winner of Fast Company’s 2025 Innovation by Design Awards. View the full article

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The evidence is mounting. There was a time when a college degree all but guaranteed a job. Not anymore. For decades, entry-level roles served as the primary on-ramp into the workforce for college graduates. They offered young professionals a foothold—an opportunity to build experience, earn income, and grow into long-term careers. But today, that pathway is rapidly eroding. And it’s leaving an entire generation of educated workers without a clear way in. Today’s college graduates are facing one of the most hostile job markets in recent memory, especially when it comes to entry-level roles. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported a 9.3% unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree holders aged 20 to 24 in August 2025, almost double the average unemployment rate for all workers. In the U.S., entry-level hiring is down 23% compared to March 2020, which is more than the 18% decline in overall hiring, according to research from LinkedIn. Additionally, a 2023 study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that fewer than 60% of graduates had a job six months after finishing their degree. The culprit? It’s a cocktail of economic uncertainty, cautious corporate spending, and accelerating automation. When capital becomes more expensive—as it has with persistently high interest rates until recently—companies rethink where every dollar goes. In this new calculus, entry-level roles are often the first to be cut. These positions don’t immediately generate ROI, require onboarding and training, and often take time to ramp up. Instead of hiring junior talent, companies are choosing to redistribute work across existing teams, lean more heavily on AI, or simply delay the hire indefinitely. We’ve effectively created a hiring freeze for the next generation of workers. Freelancing as a New Path Forward Danielle Farage, a Gen Z content creator and workplace advocate, saw this play out firsthand. After graduating in the middle of the pandemic, she took a corporate job, only to be laid off shortly after. Instead of waiting for the job market to stabilize, she started her own business. Today, she runs a thriving career built on public speaking, marketing consulting, and digital content creation. “I decided it was time to bet on myself,” Danielle said. “My generation is disillusioned with the old playbook. We want transparency, flexibility, and purpose. If companies can’t offer that, we’ll build it ourselves.” That’s exactly what thousands of Gen Z workers are doing. The Upwork Future Workforce Index study found that 53% of skilled Gen Z workers are already freelancing, batting above the average of 28% of all skilled workers who are freelancing. What’s more, 53% of Gen Z freelancers are working full-time hours, many on sophisticated, strategic projects across industries like AI, creative design, and business consulting. They aren’t dabbling—they’re building careers. And counter to what many may think, Gen Z freelancers are nearly twice as likely to have a postgraduate degree as their employed peers. They’re also using freelancing as a way to learn faster. They pitch clients, negotiate contracts, deliver outcomes, and adapt in real time. These are not the soft-skill-lite roles typically assigned to entry-level employees. This is a crash course in entrepreneurship. Rachel, a freelancer and former political science major, told me she turned to freelancing after a quarter-life crisis. “I was burnt out working in law and policy,” she shared. “Freelancing gave me the flexibility to adventure, find a home, earn what I needed, and take care of myself while building a business that works around my chronic illnesses.” The Paradoxical Skills Requirements for Entry-Level Roles The very traits employers claim to seek—resilience, creativity, and initiative—are being honed more rigorously in the freelance economy than in traditional workplaces. Freelancing isn’t just work. It’s self-education. It teaches you how to sell your skills and ideas effectively, because every project starts with a pitch. It builds time management, as there’s no manager keeping tabs—your schedule is yours alone to manage. It sharpens self-advocacy, requiring you to confidently price your value, set boundaries, and push back against scope creep. And it turns personal branding into a lived skill, as you become your resume, portfolio, and reputation all at once. As Danielle Farage put it, “No one’s going to sell you like yourself. And most full-time roles don’t teach you that.” This reality is backed by research: Upwork found that Gen Z freelancers report higher levels of intrinsic motivation, self-determination, and creative satisfaction than their full-time peers. Many feel more connected to their work, not less. And while much has been said about AI eliminating jobs, Gen Z freelancers are actually ahead of the curve. They are significantly more likely to train themselves on generative AI tools—61% versus 41% of their traditionally employed counterparts. These are the muscles Gen Z needs to build—not just to survive today’s job market, but to thrive in tomorrow’s economy. The Freelancing Fork in the Road Gen Z doesn’t need to freelance for life, but it’s a smart first step. It offers a way to earn income while the job market remains uncertain, build a portfolio of real-world experience, and develop business, communication, and leadership skills at a much faster pace than many entry-level roles allow. Most importantly, freelancing puts Gen Z back in the driver’s seat. No waiting for a recruiter to respond. No agonizing over rejection emails. Freelancing is about building skill, hustle, and forward momentum. And in a world where the entry-level job may not be coming back anytime soon, that kind of self-directed momentum might just be the most important credential of all. View the full article

Across all sectors of the economy, there is a lot of churn in leadership right now going all the way to the top. The C-suite and its equivalent in many organizations has become a merry-go-round. When a new leader is hired into a key role, they must quickly get adapted to how things work in order to make positive changes while breaking as few things as possible. Great leaders have strategies to enable them to engage their new team quickly and institute change effectively. Here are four strategies that are critical. 1. Meet your team In a leadership role, you are likely to have many teams in your portfolio. In order to do anything successfully, you need to know who you have working for you, how their teams function, and which groups can be relied on to carry out their work. No matter how much intel you get from others before starting the role, there is no substitute for sitting down with the teams and getting to know them. This can take a while, so it may seem like a waste of time. But, talking strategically and tactically with the leaders who work for you can give you a sense of their capacity to understand, collaborate, and implement your vision moving forward. High-level leaders can never understand every detail of what every team is doing, of course. But, it is important for leaders to know the portfolios of the people who report to them, the strengths and weaknesses of those portfolios, and the pros and cons to the structure of the organization as it is. 2. Listen first Too often, leaders come in wanting to prove that they deserve to be in their role. So, they start by issuing orders. The assumption is that good leadership involves information flowing from the leader down to the team. Great leadership is collaborative. A leader must understand the situation in the organization, where the problems are, and what goals are just about ready to be achieved. That can only be done by asking good questions and listening to the answers. You want to find out the concerns of your direct reports so that you can develop plans to address them. You also want to understand the ways that the capacities of your teams can help you to achieve goals that are important to you. You’ll only find that out by hearing what people are trying to tell you. Listening also helps to develop trust. People are more apt to want to follow your strategic recommendations when they are tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of their team. When the teams reporting to you feel understood, they are much more likely to engage and to adopt your goals as their own. Ultimately, great leaders get teams to work with them and not just for them. 3. Find a quick win Much of high-level leadership involves significant strategic plans that can take quarters or even years to implement fully. In order to get teams to follow you on that longer journey, it is valuable to demonstrate that you can achieve a goal. Through the conversations you have and the listening you have done to understand your teams, find a short-term goal that would lead to a meaningful step toward one of the major strategic pillars you would like to pursue. Then, engage with the teams that can help to achieve that goal and work with them to help make it happen. Provide the resources and guidance to move the project forward. The key for these quick wins to succeed is to use your growing knowledge of the organization to merge your strategic vision with the tactical strengths of your teams. That way, the success of the venture feels like something that could not have been done prior to your engagement with the team. That success helps to provide additional trust that longer-term projects will also succeed. 4. Transitions are better than purges Of course, no organization is perfect, and it is often necessary to move people and positions around. There may be great people playing the wrong roles. And sometimes, there are people on the team who are not contributing enough to warrant keeping around. There is often an urge to cut people immediately to make a clean break and move forward. And when a team is bloated and has a lot of redundancy, that is often necessary. But, the management and leadership members of the team are also are likely to have a lot of institutional knowledge that will help you to better understand how to achieve your aims. That is where slowing things down can be helpful. After all, the new people you put in place may be aligned with your vision for the future, but they may not know which processes in the organization were put in place to keep other demons at bay. Creating an overlapping period of transition can help new people to get up to speed on how to be effective in their new roles while also providing a humane exit ramp to those who will be moving on. View the full article

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Global dealmaking is up by a third this year, setting 2025 up to be the best 12-month stretch since 2021 View the full article