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In a rapidly evolving financial landscape, technology is transforming how money moves—making payments of tomorrow faster, smarter, and easier than ever before. Consider this snapshot of the near future: You’re in a taxi on the other side of the world. You pay your driver with the same digital wallet you use at home, and he receives the money in his wallet linked to the local instant payments network. He’s set a rule in his bank app—“send 30% of every payout to my family back home”—and funds are converted immediately to a third currency and delivered to relatives in a country thousands of miles away. Nobody needs to download a new app or think about payment methods…

For years, social media companies have disputed allegations that they harm children’s mental health through deliberate design choices that addict kids to their platforms and fail to protect them from sexual predators and dangerous content. Now, these tech giants are getting a chance to make their case in courtrooms around the country, including before a jury for the first time. Some of the biggest players from Meta to TikTok are facing federal and state trials that seek to hold them responsible for harming children’s mental health. The lawsuits have come from school districts, local, state and the federal government as well as thousands of families. Two trials are now u…

Behind its glittery facade, Claire’s is a financial mess. The tween retail icon behind millions of ear piercings and Y2K accessories filed for bankruptcy in August 2025, closing hundreds of stores and selling its North American business for just $104 million. So how does a brand with $1.4 billion in global sales end up with more than $500 million in debt? Fast Company staff writer Elizabeth Segran has been covering the company’s ups and downs for years. In this episode of FC Explains, she breaks down the full Claire’s story, from its mall-era dominance and surprising pandemic comeback to its failed IPO, crushing debt load, tariff difficulties, and the rise of sleeker…

The biggest drama in Hollywood in recent months hasn’t been on the silver screen but in the boardrooms of two of the most powerful companies in the industry. In December, streaming giant Netflix announced its intention to acquire legendary Hollywood studio Warner Bros. after its planned separation from Discovery Global. The proposed merger has sparked heated debate in Hollywood about the future of the cinema industry, and now, one of the most successful filmmakers in the world, James Cameron, has entered the fray. ‘Titanic’ director calls proposed merger ‘disastrous’ Many in Hollywood have not publicly spoken out against the proposed Netflix-Warner Bros…

You can put a lot of different things in fried rice, but certainly not glass. Unfortunately, that might be an ingredient in certain packages of Trader Joe’s chicken fried rice. Frozen food manufacturer Ajinomoto Foods North America is recalling more than 3 million pounds of chicken fried rice products due to potential glass contamination. The recall includes products with both Ajinomoto and Trader Joe’s branding. The manufacturer, based in Portland, Oregon, notified the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) after it received four customer complaints of glass in the rice. As of Thursday, February 19, no related inju…

As the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games unfold, something is unmistakable: Women are driving the moment. They’re leading highlight reels. Headlining broadcasts. Powering the storylines fans are sharing and following in real time. From figure skating to freestyle skiing to hockey, women athletes aren’t a side stage to the Games—they are the main event. And the data backs up what we’re all seeing. In new international research from Parity and SurveyMonkey surveying nearly 12,000 adults across the U.S., Canada, the UK/Ireland, and Australia, women’s events are as popular as—or more popular than—men’s events in the majority of Winter Olympic sports. High-profil…

Hello again, welcome to Fast Company’s Plugged In, and a quick note: A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a game I was vibe-coding using Claude Code, and said I would share it once I finished it. Here it is, along with more thoughts on the uncanny experience of collaborating with AI on a programming project. Late Show host Stephen Colbert and his network, CBS, are still at odds over why his planned interview with James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for a Texas U.S. Senate seat, didn’t air last Monday. In Colbert’s account, CBS lawyers forbid the broadcast after Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr said talk show interviews might trigger the FCC’s …

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand Wednesday to defend his company’s practices in a landmark trial that could determine whether social media companies can be held liable for alleged harms to children. But if the defendants lose, the implications could extend far beyond social media. The case centers on Meta and Google, with plaintiffs alleging that services like Instagram and YouTube are intentionally designed to keep users, especially kids, engaged—a dynamic they say can lead to harmful mental health effects, including addiction. The trial is widely viewed as a test case for roughly 1,500 similar lawsuits waiting in the wings. Meta and Google deny th…

Can a headline-making squabble with a client actually be good for a brand? This week’s dispute between the Department of Defense and Anthropic, a high-profile player in the super-competitive field of artificial intelligence, may be just that. The dispute involves whether the Pentagon, which has an agreement to use Anthropic technology, can apply it in a wider range of scenarios: all “lawful use” cases. Anthropic has resisted signing off on some potential scenarios, and the Pentagon has essentially accused it of being overly cautious. As it happens, that assessment basically aligns with Anthropic’s efforts (most recently via Super Bowl ads aimed squarely at prominent …

The retail platform eBay is set to acquire fashion resale app Depop from Etsy in a $1.2 billion transaction. Ostensibly, the deal will help eBay to cultivate a new audience of Gen Z and Gen Alpha shoppers. But I think there’s a deeper reason that eBay might want to lock Depop down: it’s simply the best looking resale interface out there right now. The deal was announced on February 18 in a press release from Etsy. It’s expected to close some time in the second quarter of 2026, and, per an email sent to Depop’s customers, after the merger Depop will remain a stand-alone brand within eBay and retain its name, brand, and platform. For eBay, acquiring Depop makes a …

“I really want to see a mass driver on the moon that is shooting AI satellites into deep space,” Elon Musk said last week when he announced his plan to go to the moon. “It’s going to be incredibly exciting to see it happen.” He’s right. I want to see it too, although probably we will both be dead before his vision is realized. The lunar mass driver—essentially a cannon that uses magnetic power to accelerate an object—is a key component to launch the million satellites Musk wants to put in orbit around the Earth. But Musk wasn’t the first person to come up with the idea. Smarter people than him thought about this in the 1970s as the solution to a key problem for human …

Even if you barely use AI, pretty soon you’ll be paying the price for it. Due to the demands of AI data centers, memory supplies are drying up for all kinds of devices, from phones and laptops to desktop PCs and game consoles. Three companies control nearly all the world’s DRAM production—Micron Technology, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix—and they’ve shifted production toward the type of RAM that those data centers run on. This comes at the expense of RAM for consumer electronics, resulting in a shortage that could last into 2028. It’s early days for the fallout, but what sounded like an abstract concern in 2025 is quickly becoming real, as electronics makers ra…

Stacie Haller, a consultant for executives, recently had a meeting with a former business owner in his early 80s. He’d sold his business, started playing golf, and discovered something about himself: he found golf extremely boring. And now, even though he doesn’t need to be, he’s back on the job market. “’I’m so vital’,” he’d told Haller, “’I’m still in the game’.” Haller is a senior herself. She says could have stuck with retirement after getting furloughed from her recruiting job during the pandemic. Instead, she started independently consulting for senior executives and for Resume Builder. Now? She’s working part-time and earning as much as she did befor…

From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, many executives think that bringing employees back to the office is the secret to restoring productivity. But they’re wrong. That’s not what’s happening in those newly populated offices. Instead, your employees are more likely to be joining video calls from company desks and wearing noise-canceling headphones while doing work they could have done at home. Only now they’re paying $20 to commute and eating sad desk salads to get through the day. The timing couldn’t be more ironic. A new wave of return-to-office (RTO) mandates arrive just as companies pour millions into AI initiatives designed to automate work, eliminate roles, an…

Below, George Newman shares five key insights from his new book, How Great Ideas Happen: The Hidden Steps Behind Breakthrough Success. George is an associate professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and he has spent his career trying to unravel the mysteries of what creativity is and where it comes from. His research has been featured in the New York Times, The Economist, BBC, Scientific American, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. What’s the big idea? Most of us think great ideas are conjured from within—some mysterious well of genius possessed by a special few. But if you listen closely to history’s mos…

The human brain is engineered to ignore most of what it sees and hears, according to the neuroscientists I interviewed for the audio original Viral Voices. If that’s the case, how are you supposed to make a memorable impression? The empowering news is that if you understand how the brain works, what it discards, and what it pays attention to, you’ll be far more persuasive than you’ve ever imagined. Persuasive people have influence in their personal and professional lives. BRAIN RULES FOR THE WORKPLACE “The brain doesn’t pay attention to boring things,” says John Medina, a molecular biologist at the University of Washington and author of the bestseller Brain Rul…

At first glance, it could be the trailer for a new Hollywood blockbuster starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. “This was a 2 line prompt in seedance 2,” Irish filmmaker Ruairí Robinson clarifies in a caption on X of the 15-second clip, which shows two of the industry’s biggest stars locked in a fistfight on a crumbling rooftop, complete with sweeping camera angles and crisp sound effects. This was a 2 line prompt in seedance 2. If the hollywood is cooked guys are right maybe the hollywood is cooked guys are cooked too idk. pic.twitter.com/dNTyLUIwAV — Ruairi Robinson (@RuairiRobinson) February 11, 2026 The viral AI-generated clip has garnered more than 1.8 milli…

You may be loyal to United, but the airline really wants you to show your loyalty by carrying around a United MileagePlus credit card or debit card. Chicago-based United Airlines announced a major overhaul to its frequent flyer program on Thursday, with better benefits arriving soon for its cardholders. While the airline cheerily billed the changes as giving travelers “new reasons” to have one of its credit or debit cards, the changes mean that non-cardholders will soon accrue fewer rewards than they currently do. The biggest change is that starting on April 2, United MileagePlus cardholders can earn up to four times more miles on travel booked with the airline th…

West Virginia’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against Apple on Thursday accusing the iPhone maker of knowingly allowing its software to be used for storing and sharing child sexual abuse material. John B. McCuskey, a Republican, accused Apple of protecting the privacy of sexual predators who use iOS, which can sync images to remote cloud servers through iCloud. McCuskey called the company’s decisions “absolutely inexcusable” and accused Apple of running afoul of West Virginia state law. “Since Apple has so far refused to police themselves and do the morally right thing, I am filing this lawsuit to demand Apple follow the law, report these images, and stop re-v…

By now, the so-called “Staples Baddie” may have crossed your feed with her tutorials and informational videos exploring her workplace. TikTok creator @blivxx, known online as Oblivion, started getting attention in January for highlighting niche services and products offered at Staples. It’s a distinctly Gen Z approach to social media. Videos from Staples Baddie (whose real name is Kaeden) feature ASMR, heavy slang, and an authenticity that has viewers—and brands—hooked. Comments on Kaeden’s videos range from tame (“Staples better give you your flowers asap” on a January 21 post about business cards) to unhinged (“Staples did my BBL” on a February 6 video about the…

Picture a jazz quartet mid-performance. The bassist anchors the rhythm with meticulous precision—years of practice evident in every note. The saxophonist, meanwhile, closes her eyes and ventures into uncharted melodic territory, responding to something she heard in the drummer’s improvised fill three bars ago. What you’re witnessing isn’t chaos, nor is it rigid execution. It’s something far more valuable: the dynamic interplay between discipline and imagination that produces work no one has ever heard before. This is exactly the capability that distinguishes organizations that merely survive disruption from those that shape it. In an era defined by the rapid-fire …