What's on Your Mind?

Now that AI can control your web browser, the next frontier might be to take over your entire computer. At least that’s what Seattle-based startup Vercept is trying to do with Vy, a currently free Windows and Mac app that can manipulate your mouse and keyboard to automate tedious or repetitive tasks. You just tell it what you’re trying to do, and then it takes control. Vy first launched as a beta for Macs in May, but has now been rebuilt and is available for Windows as well. My experiments with Vy have yielded mixed results. If you’ve ever yelled at ChatGPT for failing to follow instructions, that frustration becomes magnified when AI is piloting your entire compu…

The kinds of videos that do well on YouTube Shorts are depressingly predictable: cute cats, heated arguments, crazy stunts, and plenty of good old-fashioned shots of people suffering low-key injuries. The issue is that the real world produces only so many epic fails. And of the small number that do happen, even fewer are caught on video. Think of all the airplane passenger arguments and dropped wedding cakes that have gone untaped and unposted! Enter Sora. OpenAI’s new video generator is hyperrealistic, and was clearly trained on billions of hours of short-form, vertical video. That makes it incredibly good at generating the kinds of short, grabby videos that pull…

A year ago, I started reading again. I say “again” because, like the countless friends and colleagues I’ve spoken to who have also found themselves swept up in the reading renaissance that’s currently reshaping the book industry—the U.S. market is projected to grow from $40.5 billion in 2024 to $51.5 billion by 2030, with audiobooks and ebooks seeing explosive growth—I’d lost the habit somewhere between the demands of a growing career and the chaos of early parenthood. For too long, reading was relegated to vacations—and even then, I’d be lucky to get through a full book. But last year, something shifted. Twelve months later, I’ve read over 100 books and li…

Whenever my wife and I go to watch a movie together, lately we tend to pick a new theater close to where we live that’s called 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku. There are reclining seats, you get free popcorn in a chill lounge when you arrive, and the supposedly best-in-Japan sound system was tuned by the late music legend Ryuichi Sakamoto. What’s not to like? But when we went to see 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple this past weekend, we realized it was only showing in the auditorium dedicated to ScreenX, a fairly new format that has been picking up some steam of late. I’d heard of it before but I hadn’t ever seen it for myself, so I was happy to check it out in the spirit…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. I tested more than 200 educational sites, apps, and services last year. Some were so confusing that I quickly gave up. Others were too costly. A few went out of business. Many were narrowly useful, e.g., for 3D modeling, math, or music. The top-tier tools have consistently been super valuable for me—in my teaching, in my job at the City University of New York, and as a dad of two daughters. To save you the time and effort of sifting through the chaff, I’m sharing the ones I find most useful. Even if you’re not a teacher, these tools m…

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: I think my manager is burned out. What can I do? A: It’s tough out there for managers, especially middle mangers who are often caught in the—well—middle and may find themselves enforcing unpopular policies that they didn’t create. It’s not explicitly your job to fix your boss’s problems (and you don’t have the power or authority to do so if you aren’t in a leadership role). But, a manager sets the tone for their team and if they are burned out, their enti…

Being tired is practically a personality trait in corporate America — especially in 2025. Everybody is exhausted, it seems. Folks are doing fiftyleven jobs. You’re always juggling tasks, always late for the next meeting because the last one ran long. But when you’re one of the few Black employees at the gig, there’s a subconscious fear of looking like you’re in over your head, especially with the looming fear of layoffs. So you push through, even when you’re running on fumes. You go harder, telling yourself you’ll rest once you get through the busy patch. But that’s a lie. The job is a perpetual busy patch. For months, I kept telling myself I was just tired. Regular tire…

A new browser from the Norwegian company Opera just launched today, and it wants you to stop stressing out so much. The free browser, called Opera Air, is billed as the first-ever “mindful browser.” While existing mindfulness apps like Calm and Headspace can help you take a break to reduce feelings of stress, Opera Air proposes a product that integrates mindfulness directly into working online. The browser comes with a sleek, minimal UI and built-in mindfulness tools—like breathing exercises and binaural beats—so users can code, type, or browse the web and get a brain boost simultaneously. Nikita Walia is a brand strategist at U.N.N.A.M.E.D, the creative partners …

It looks a little like a sleek window AC, but a new device from Chinese appliance giant Midea is actually a reversible heat pump that can both cool and heat a home—and it’s designed to heat efficiently even when the temperature outside drops as low as 22 degrees below zero. The heat pump, called the Midea PWHP, just launched commercially after years of development. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been testing it in freezing temperatures in upstate New York. It works better than my gas furnace, and uses less energy. And the form factor and cost could help heat pumps—which already outsell gas furnaces—spread even faster. A new type of heat pump Like other heat pum…

The line had just died down at Hong Kong’s Apple flagship store on Canton Road when I arrived on what happened to be the release day for the iPhone Pocket, the company’s new and very buzzed-about design collaboration between Apple and Issey Miyake Design Studio. I purchased it immediately—a short one in Sapphire blue, as the cross-body version was already sold out. I observed neither pomp nor circumstance with the overwrought packaging, which I shed on the spot despite its velum-bound elegance and prominent Miyake branding. I was on a working vacation after all, and so I simply looped the Pocket around the strap of my nylon cross-body bag and went about my day in a ci…

When I recently needed to find a last-minute place to stay for a week in Palo Alto, I picked one of the cheapest options on Airbnb: a 13-by-13 foot tiny house. Inside, the main living area was smaller than a parking space. Still, it had room for everything you might find in a typical studio apartment. Along the back, a tiny loveseat disguised a Murphy bed that could be pulled down from the wall; the coffee table was exactly the right size to move to the opposite side of the room when it was time to use the bed. On the other side of the house, there was a minuscule kitchen with a tiny fridge, a two-burner stove, and a sink, next to a semi-normal-sized bathroom with a s…

Does it feel to you like there are way too many AI assistants to keep track of? Between ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, DeepSeek, and others, it’s hard to remember what each one excels at—if anything. Beyond just the underlying differences in large language models, each AI assistant has its own features, integrations, premium features, and peculiarities. I’m writing this guide both for myself and for anyone who wants to stay informed about generative AI. While I have some reservations, I also think it’s worth keeping an eye on what’s available. Rather than getting into the technical details of how these AI assistants work, I’ll focus o…

When my mom was dying, hospice came daily and stayed for about ninety minutes. They answered questions, checked what needed to be checked, and did what good professionals do: They made a brutal situation feel slightly less impossible. And then they left. Ninety minutes go fast when you are watching your mother decline. The rest of the day stretches out in a way that does not feel like time so much as exposure. Every sound becomes a data point. Every small change feels like a decision you did not train for. Her breathing sounds strange. What do we do? How often should we turn her to avoid bedsores? What is the diaper situation, exactly? That was the gap, the lo…

Too many years ago, I remember slotting a 3.5-inch disk into my PC. With my allowance, I’d bought $5 video game design software from a catalog. And as I looked at the terminal, lost without some familiar GUI . . . my coding efforts died. Game design became an abstract concept even as I became a game journalist—a topic sketched in notebooks, theoretically discussed, critically observed. That was, until I loaded Moonlake AI. With $30 million in funding from investors including Nvidia, AIX, Google’s Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, and YouTube founder Steve Chen, the 15-person startup founded by two Stanford PhD students dreams of building complete games—from first person shoo…

I was interviewing for a job as a customer service agent with Anna. She had a low, pleasant voice and she’d nailed the pronunciation of my name—something few people do. I wanted to make a good impression except I had no idea what Anna was thinking because Anna couldn’t think. Anna wasn’t technically a person. She was AI. Not only is AI changing how we do our jobs, it’s also changing how we get jobs. This ranges from using AI to screen resumes, schedule interviews, even conduct them. According to a 2025 report, 20% of companies are using AI to interview candidates. Even so, nothing can replace human recruiters, the folks who’ve deployed Anna into the wild stressed …

Fluorescent lights that softly hum. Magazines nobody reads. A television mounted in the corner playing cable news as a receptionist mispronounces my last name. I am at my first of several doctors appointments intentionally scheduled during the winter holiday season. Not because I’m sick. Because it’s the only week of the year when nothing work-related is fighting for my time. The office is closed. The investors aren’t emailing. The product update notifications have stopped. For seven days I can put my body first. So I schedule the bloodwork. The dermatologist. The physical I’ve been postponing since March. The dentist I keep rescheduling because there’s always…

When I tell fellow tech executives that every employee at sunday, from our engineers to our finance team, must complete a restaurant shift before they can fully onboard, I usually get confused looks. “You mean like, shadow someone?” they ask. No. I mean they tie on an apron, take orders, run food, and yes, deal with the 15-minute wait for the check that our product was literally built to eliminate. It sounds extreme. It is extreme. And it’s also one of the smartest business decisions we’ve made. Here’s why: business is often removed from the industries we serve. We’re keeping that empathy right there. The Empathy Gap in Tech I’ve spent 25 years in the tech …

When my emergency IAR app sounds at 3 a.m., there’s no room for ego, second-guessing, or hesitation. In that critical moment, all that matters is trust, teamwork, and execution. While I have spent decades in the corporate world, some of my most valuable leadership lessons have come from my experience as a volunteer EMS first responder. In the field, when I’m assisting in a life-threatening trauma situation or responding to a car accident, leadership is put to the test under extreme pressure. But whether I’m piloting an ambulance on a dark highway or guiding my company through turbulent times, the principles remain the same: Know your role, remove the noise, maint…

As an introvert, I dread large conferences. I get invited to a number throughout the year, and I usually scramble to find excuses for why I can’t attend. Since I have spent much of my career posing as an extrovert, some people are surprised to discover that I really don’t enjoy networking at large gatherings. I worry about feeling overwhelmed by the crowds, not remembering people’s names, having to sit alone for meals, drawing a blank and not being able to engage in small talk, and, of course, worried I won’t know anyone there. Just thinking through all of this is absolutely exhausting. Last year, I was invited to speak and attend Transform, a conference focused on dr…

We’re more than half a decade removed from pandemic lockdowns—when remote work profoundly upended the 9-to-5—yet the preference for workday flexibility endures, a new report shows. According to the recently released ninth annual State of Hybrid Work report from Owl Labs, a video conference tech company, 65% of workers are interested in a concept the report refers to as “microshifting”: “structured flexibility with short, nonlinear work blocks matched to your energy, duties, or productivity.” In other words: breaking up your work shift into a bunch of tiny ones. Perhaps you log on at 6 a.m. to get a head start, then take a break for a midmorning Pilates class befo…

I recently argued that return-to-office mandates aren’t really about productivity; they’re about control. Ironically, my article published smack-dab in the middle of a September inflection point of increasing office time requirements, a phenomenon Owl Labs dubbed “hybrid creep.” And now, perhaps shockingly, I’ve started a new job with a team that (gasp!) has an office. When I wrote my argument against RTO, I had no inkling that I would soon be back in an office (part-time) myself. I am now basically in a live experiment. So far, it’s changed how I feel about the idea of going into an office. It hasn’t changed my view on RTO. A lab for truly flexible work My ne…