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Amazon’s new Echo Dot Max is a $99 ball. Its Echo Studio is a $199 ball. Its Echo Show is a tablet (starting at $179), attached to a ball. For its grand refresh of its Alexa-powered line of speakers and tablets, Amazon spent three years rethinking the foundations of its audio engineering to conquer the home theater market in the most spherical manner possible. “Legitimately—they sound really good,” says our senior editor Liz Stinson, after a listening test. But from my own discussions with the design team, it’s clear that what Amazon has created are not just new voice assistants, or even mix-and-matachable speakers capable of creating a 3D soundscape for movies an…

China’s factory activity shrank for a sixth straight month in September, the longest slump since 2019, an official report said Tuesday. The official manufacturing purchasing managers index, or PMI, improved to 49.8 from 49.4 in August. But it remained below the 50-cutoff level between contraction and expansion on a scale of 0 to 100. A private sector PMI survey by the credit research and rating startup RatingDog was more upbeat, with September’s overall PMI rising to 51.2 from 50.5 in August. The mixed manufacturing measures reflect persisting sluggish domestic demand and uncertainties over trade tensions with the United States. More detailed data measuring new orders…

A federal judge agreed Monday to temporarily suspend the The President administration’s plan to eliminate hundreds of jobs at the agency that oversees Voice of America (VOA), the government-funded broadcaster founded to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., ruled that the U.S. Agency for Global Media cannot implement a reduction in force eliminating 532 jobs for full-time government employees on Tuesday. Those employees represent the vast majority of its remaining staff. Kari Lake, the agency’s acting CEO, announced in late August that the job cuts would take effect Tuesday. But the judge’s ruling pres…

U.S. consumer confidence declined again in September as Americans’ pessimism over inflation and the weakening job market continued to grow. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index fell by 3.6 points to 94.2 in September, down from August’s 97.8. That’s a bigger drop than analysts were expecting and the lowest reading since April, when President Donald The President rolled out his sweeping tariff policy. A measure of Americans’ short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market fell to 73.4, remaining well below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead. Consumers’ assessments of their current econom…

In the early days of the internet, collectors traded rare whiskey and wine on eBay alongside Beanie Babies and vintage sneakers. But then, in 1999, six months after closing down firearm sales, eBay announced they would ban the sale of alcohol and tobacco products as well. “As a general rule, these laws are just so complex and contradictory, that we just decided that in the best interest of our users to prevent that situation from ever occurring,” then-spokesman Kevin Pursglove said. More than 25 years later and almost a century after the end of Prohibition, the regulatory environment is no less forgiving, and the resale of spirits online has been scattered acros…

You’re in a meeting when your boss suggests changing a number to make the quarterly report look stronger. Heads nod. The slides move on. You feel a knot in your stomach: Do you speak up and risk being branded difficult, or stay silent and become complicit? Most people picture defiance as dramatic outbursts. In reality, it’s often these small, tense moments where conscience collides with compliance. I first saw the power of defiance not in the workplace, but closer to home. My mother was the ultimate people-pleaser: timid, polite, eager to accommodate. Barely 4 feet, 10 inches tall, she put everyone else’s needs above her own. But one day, when I was 7, I saw a dif…

The Al-Mujadilah Center and Mosque for Women in Doha, Qatar, is the first mosque built for women. Architect Liz Diller designed the 50,000-square-foot complex to combine modern elements with traditional features. In addition to a prayer space, it also houses a library, classrooms, an event space, and café. The project is a winner of Fast Company’s 2025 Innovation by Design Awards. View the full article

Sinking morale. Low productivity. Lots of gossip. Quiet quitting. Sloppy work. Cynicism. Talent leaving. These are all examples of “culture rot”: the slow, subtle unraveling of what made a good company good. “You can feel it before you can name it,” Tara Kermiet, a corporate burnout strategist, explained in a recent TikTok post. “It’s less about one big event, and more about the daily drift that no one claims responsibility for.” Instead of some big scandal or massive profit loss, culture rot is the gradual, subtle decay of a team’s culture. It’s fueled by bad, unaccountable leaders, and is characterized as a slow straying from original core company values. Your …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. As ResiClub has closely documented, Florida has been the epicenter of U.S. housing market weakness in 2025. However, KB Home executives now believe the worst may be behind them—at least for their business—in the Sunshine State. While giant homebuilder KB Home—which has a $4.3 billion market capitalization—isn’t ready to call it an inflection point for the entire state, it believes its price cuts in Florida were more than sufficient to stabilize demand for its business. In fact, it may have cut too deeply in Florida and could now need to raise pri…

Every holiday season feels high stakes, but 2025 may be the most unforgiving yet. Consumer demand remains resilient, but retailers are facing a tangle of economic headwinds, from tariffs and supply chain volatility to rising ad costs and leaner teams. In an uncertain economy, the margin for error shrinks, and the cost of a slow site or a fragile storefront grows even steeper. For years, retailers have measured holiday readiness by promotions, inventory planning, and staffing strategies. But there’s a blind spot: performance readiness. How fast, resilient, and visible your digital storefront is when shoppers show up can determine whether you hit your holiday forecast o…

If you’ve ever flipped over a Walmart snack or frozen pizza to check the ingredients list, the company’s about to make that label a whole lot cleaner. The retail giant just announced it’s giving its U.S. private food brands a major makeover, cutting out synthetic dyes and dozens of other additives you probably can’t pronounce. Altogether, the retailer is removing synthetic dyes and 30 ingredients from store brands including Bettergoods, Freshness Guaranteed, Great Value, and Marketside. Artificial sweeteners, certain preservatives, and fat substitutes are among the ingredients being phased out. The full list of every synthetic dye and ingredient being removed is …

President Donald The President’s administration said Wednesday it was putting a hold on roughly $18 billion to fund a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey and the city’s expanded Second Avenue subway project because of the government shutdown. The White House budget director, Russ Vought, said on a post on X that the step was taken due to the Republican administration’s belief the money was based on unconstitutional diversity, equity and inclusion principles. In a statement, the U.S. Transportation Department said that it had been reviewing whether any “unconstitutional practices” were occurring in the two massive infrastru…

It’s official: AOL‘s dial-up internet has taken its last bow. AOL previously confirmed it would be pulling the plug on Tuesday (Sept. 30) — writing in a brief update on its support site last month that it “routinely evaluates” its offerings and had decided to discontinue dial-up, as well as associated software “optimized for older operating systems,” from its plans. Dial-up is now no longer advertised on AOL’s website. As of Wednesday, former company help pages like “connect to the internet with AOL Dialer” appeared unavailable — and nostalgic social media users took to the internet to say their final goodbyes. AOL, formerly America Online, introduced many hou…

Tesla has raised lease prices for all its vehicles in the U.S. after a $7,500 federal tax credit that helped boost electric vehicle sales expired, according to the company’s website on Wednesday. The change follows the end of tax incentives under sweeping legislation passed by Congress, which eliminated the $7,500 credit for new EV leases and purchases, as well as a $4,000 credit for used EVs, effective September 30. Tesla and its rivals had been passing these credits on to customers through competitive lease offers. The monthly lease of the electric vehicle manufacturer’s best-selling Model Y increased to a range between $529 and $599, from a range of $479 to…

Scientist and global activist Jane Goodall, who turned her childhood love of primates into a lifelong quest for protecting the environment, has died at the age of 91, the institute she founded said on Wednesday. Goodall died of natural causes while in California on a speaking tour, the Jane Goodall Institute said in a social media post. “Dr. Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,” it said on Instagram. The primatologist-turned-conservationist spun her love of wildlife into a lifelong campaign that took her from a seaside English village to Africa an…

Not even half of the spots in the 48-team field have been claimed. The schedule of matches won’t be finalized until December. And other than host nations U.S., Canada and Mexico, nobody has any idea where or when they’ll be playing. Millions of soccer fans worldwide evidently don’t seem to mind any of those points. Tickets to next year’s FIFA World Cup officially go on sale Wednesday. The buyers will be those who were selected, out of 4.5 million applicants in a lottery that took place last month, to have the first formal chance to purchase tickets over the next few days. FIFA said lottery winners have been, or will soon be, informed by email. There are unique…

Your company rolls out an AI agent to assign tasks, draft updates, and nudge overdue approvals. But within days, it’s flagging completed work, tagging the wrong people, and creating confusion instead of clarity. It’s a familiar outcome for companies that adopt agentic AI without the workflows, data, or systems to support it. New research from Wrike reinforces that disconnect: 74% of employees say their company treats data like gold, yet most don’t manage it well enough for AI to use it effectively. Even the smartest, most context-aware tools stall without strong foundations. And automation doesn’t fix broken operations—it magnifies them. To get agentic AI ri…

The government shutdown that began Wednesday will deprive policymakers and investors of economic data vital to their decision-making at a time of unusual uncertainty about the direction of the U.S. economy. The absence will be felt almost immediately, as the government’s monthly jobs report scheduled for release Friday will likely be delayed. A weekly report on the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits — a proxy for layoffs that is typically published on Thursdays — will also be postponed. If the shutdown is short-lived, it won’t be very disruptive. But if the release of economic data is delayed for several weeks or longer, it could pose challenges, particul…

ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s value has soared to a sky-high $500 billion following a secondary sale of its shares held by current and former employees. Reuters reported Thursday that the group of employees unloaded around $6.6 billion in shares in the deal, pushing OpenAI’s valuation well north of its current valuation of $300 billion. During the secondary sale’s open window, OpenAI shareholders offloaded their stock to an investor group that included SoftBank, Thrive Capital, T. Rowe Price, Dragoneer Investment Group, and Emirati state-owned AI investment firm MGX, according to a source who described the deal’s details to Reuters. While $6.6 billion in shares cha…

Organizations are scrambling to keep up with employees using AI tools like ChatGPT, text generators, and automation platforms to help them at work. The phenomenon is known as Bring Your Own AI. And while workers are hitting performance goals faster, they’re also exposing companies to unprecedented legal and security risks. View the full article

Investors are celebrating a major shake up in how FICO scores will be shared with mortgage lenders, as shares of parent company Fair Isaac have rallied more than 20% on Thursday. That stock rally follows FICO’s announcement on Wednesday of a new pricing model that will allow mortgage lenders to calculate and distribute credit scores directly to borrowers, thereby eliminating the need to rely on the three nationwide credit bureaus for this information. In addition to its legacy pricing model, lenders can now opt for a direct license option that will save them up to 50% on per-score FICO fees. The FICO score is one of a few different credit scoring models that help …

If you handle hiring, generic AI-generated cover letters are probably a familiar foe by now. Nearly two-thirds of job seekers are using AI to help craft their applications. It’s understandable. In a world where some job seekers are having to send up to 50 applications to land a role, tools like ChatGPT enable them to cast their net wide and increase their chances. But this spray-and-pray approach to job hunting is a headache for hiring managers. It’s driving the volume of applications up and the quality down, making it harder to spot great candidates. The natural knee-jerk reaction from HR is to start playing a game of “I spy AI.” If we can just root out the …

Creating a standout résumé or cover letter is your first (and sometimes only) chance to make a strong impression with prospective employers—to really sell yourself. But there’s a caveat, HR experts say: don’t sound desperate. While we’re taught to tailor résumés for the job and really showcase accomplishments, experts argue there’s such a thing as going overboard. Employers could find it off-putting. Or worse, they could think you’re overrepresenting your credentials. According to job search platform FlexJobs’ 2025 Job Search Trends Report, one in three professionals admitted to lying on a résumé or cover letter—often to appear as the “perfect fit” or to meet pe…

From on-again-off-again tariffs, economic uncertainty, and layoffs, fresh graduates are in one of the toughest job markets in recent history. More than half do not have a job lined up by the time they graduate, and the unemployment rate for young degree holders is the highest it’s been in 12 years, not counting the pandemic. Fast Company writer María José Gutierrez Chavez breaks down the 5 ways recent grads can break through the entry-level job “glass floor.” View the full article

Uncertainty is the defining condition of our time. The pandemic reminded us how quickly our systems can fracture. Today, with political shifts, economic instability, and technological disruption intersecting, leaders are preparing for more turbulence ahead. From where I sit, however, there are nearly 2 million reasons to be optimistic. America’s 1.9 million nonprofits make up a fiercely resilient force for scaling impact to our toughest challenges. They deliver food and housing, safeguard youth wellbeing, respond to natural disasters, and fight for fairness and opportunity. They are trusted by millions of people across many topic areas—and they are built to move fast…