What's on Your Mind?

The Interborough Express line—the long-awaited light-rail link between Brooklyn and Queens in New York City—hasn’t broken ground yet. But on my computer screen, one part of the route is already operational. A new simulation game called Subway Builder lets you design, build, and operate subway systems in 26 U.S. cities, from New York to Boston to San Francisco. The game uses real-life U.S. Census Bureau and employment data to map where residents and workers live, allowing you to simulate realistic passenger flows. Players must also contend with real-world constraints like tunnels, viaducts, existing foundations, and road layouts. The goal is to design a subway …

Every day another industry leader proclaims that everything will change with AI. While there is no question AI is the most transformative tech shift since the industrial revolution, all the hype means leaders lack real answers about how those changes will roll out or improve critical decisions that will impact the future of their business. As the CEO of a technology company that has invested over $2 billion in evolving our cloud and managed services platform over the past 14 years, I have seen firsthand how foundational innovation sets the stage for transformational leaps. Two years ago, we recognized that AI had matured from future potential to strategic imperative—p…

There’s no shortage of challenges facing employers and the U.S. workforce. From economic concerns to the impact of AI, both workers and organizational leaders are navigating big changes. One trend deserves particular attention: working mothers are reevaluating their place in the workforce. As reported by the Washington Post, the share of mothers aged 25 to 44 with young children who are in the workforce is on the decline, reaching its lowest level in more than three years. This shift has direct implications for recruiting, retention, and overall market competitiveness. But it also opens the door for leaders to make a meaningful difference for their employees. Unde…

Protein powders are notoriously hit-or-miss when it comes to taste. But according to a new study from Consumer Reports (CR), gym bros and casual proteinmaxxers should be less concerned with how their protein powders taste, and more concerned about whether they might contain lead. The study, published on October 14, tested 23 of the most popular protein powders and ready-to-drink shakes for heavy metal contamination. CR purchased multiple samples of each product, including two to four distinct lots, over a three-month period beginning in November of 2024. The samples were then tested for protein, arsenic, cadmium, lead, and other elements. The results were st…

Senate Democrats are poised for the 10th time Thursday to reject a stopgap spending bill that would reopen the government, insisting they won’t back away from demands that Congress take up health care benefits. The repetition of votes on the funding bill has become a daily drumbeat in Congress, underscoring how intractable the situation has become as it has been at times the only item on the agenda for the Senate floor. House Republicans have left Washington altogether. The standoff has lasted over two weeks, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, even more without a guaranteed payday and Congress essentially paralyzed. “Every day that goes by, the…

Nestle will cut 16,000 jobs, new CEO Philipp Navratil said on Thursday, as the world’s largest packaged food company seeks to cut costs and win back investor confidence. The jobs being cut represent 5.8% of Nestle’s around 277,000 employees. Navratil said Nestle had raised its cost savings target to 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.77 billion) from 2.5 billion francs by the end of 2027. U.S. import tariffs are a headwind for Nestle, despite the bulk of the company’s U.S. sales being manufactured locally, while food producers across the board are grappling with fragile consumer confidence and changing habits as people seek to eat more healthily. “The world is changin…

Who doesn’t love a little cinnamon sprinkled on their toast or oatmeal? Unfortunately, lovers of the spice now have more things to worry about. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has expanded its list of ground cinnamon products to avoid over fears that they could contain elevated levels of lead. Here’s what you need to know about the latest cinnamon products the FDA is warning consumers to avoid. What’s happened? On October 10, the FDA updated its ongoing list of ground cinnamon products that consumers should avoid due to fears that the products may contain elevated levels of lead, which could be harmful. The most recent updates to the list of products…

Back in 1987, President Ronald Reagan made a televised speech defending the principles of free trade, and slamming tariffs as a misguided policy that drives up prices and ultimately hurt American businesses, workers, and consumers. Now a Canadian ad campaign aimed at Americans is using that speech to remind Republican voters that Reagan’s views are still relevant. “High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars,” Reagan said. “Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs.” The ad began airing this week on Newsmax …

The The President administration is looking to provide an additional $20 billion in financing for Argentina through a mix of financing from sovereign funds and the private sector. That would come on top of the $20 billion credit swap line that the U.S. Treasury pledged to Argentine President Javier Milei and his government this month to bolster the South American nation’s collapsing currency. “We are working on a $20 billion facility that would complement our swap line, with private banks and sovereign funds that, I believe, would be more focused on the debt market,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters Wednesday. He called it “a private-sector solution” and …

Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet are the five largest corporations by market cap, with the value of their combined shares totaling more than $16 trillion. These firms each pull in multiple billions of dollars in profit annually, and so pay tens of billions of dollars in annual taxes, too. But like other corporate giants in the S&P 500, the companies are also spending massive amounts on shareholder payouts, funneling trillions of dollars to wealthy shareholders through stock buybacks and shareholder dividends. Over the past five years, those five largest companies spent more than $1 trillion on stock buybacks and dividends, according to a new ana…

People remember many things about Windows 95, which turned 30 a couple of months ago. There were its signature new features, such as the Start Button, taskbar, and long file names. The launch event—hosted by Jay Leno—at Microsoft’s campus. The TV commercials with the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.” The crowds of PC users so eager to get their hands on the upgrade that they descended on computer stores at midnight. Here’s a fact about Windows 95 that isn’t exactly iconic: It was the first voice-enabled version of Microsoft’s operating system. A collection of technologies known as the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI) provided support for speech recognition and synthesis, lett…

If you have a stressful job, meditation can help—but it’s not easy to meditate at work. A new workplace pod is designed to help by giving you a private place to take a break, run through a guided meditation or breath work, and begin to experience benefits like improved focus and reduced burnout. OpenSeed, the startup behind the Iris Pod, launched in 2018 after founder Jonathan Marcoschamer attended a 10-day silent meditation course. He wanted to keep meditating during the day, but was working in an open plan office. “I couldn’t find anywhere to meditate,” he says. He also wanted to help make meditation more accessible for other people. So he started work on a prototyp…

This week, fintech company Karta announced a new premium credit card designed with a very specific user in mind: American nonresidents with U.S. bank accounts—and high net worths. It’s designed to compete with other premium credit cards on the market, and thus, is available to customers who have a bank or brokerage account with a minimum balance of $150,000 in assets all without a Social Security number. It also offers similar perks and benefits to other premium travel cards, such as the Citi Strata Elite, the Chase Sapphire Reserve, or the American Express Platinum Card. Those include access to exclusive events, a Priority Pass Select membership that provides ac…

For a generation of young Americans, choosing where to go to college — or whether to go at all — has become a complex calculation of costs and benefits that often revolves around a single question: Is the degree worth its price? Public confidence in higher education has plummeted in recent years amid high tuition prices, skyrocketing student loans and a dismal job market — plus ideological concerns from conservatives. Now, colleges are scrambling to prove their value to students. Borrowed from the business world, the term “return on investment” has been plastered on college advertisements across the U.S. A battery of new rankings grade campuses on the financial benefits…

Taiwan’s leading computer chip maker, TSMC, said Thursday that its net profit surged nearly 40% in the last quarter, boosted by the surge in use of artificial intelligence. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. is the world’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer. It reported a net profit of a record 452.3 billion new Taiwan dollars ($15 billion) in the July-September quarter, higher than analysts’ forecasts. The company earlier said its revenue jumped 30% year-on-year in the last quarter. TSMC has been building chip fabrication plants in the United States and Japan to help hedge against risks from China-U.S. trade tensions. The chipmaker is a major supplier to compani…

When my teenage son developed mysterious symptoms, I followed the same path anyone else would: I put his health in the hands of a team of medical professionals. Multiple myeloma is a rare blood cancer. It is so uncommon in 17-year-olds that it doesn’t appear on diagnostic checklists. Despite having no clear starting point to work from, my son’s doctors worked their way to an accurate diagnosis through a process of trial and error, bouncing ideas off each other and testing and discarding hypotheses until they could tell us what was wrong. The process felt inefficient and uncertain at a time when I wanted fast answers and cast-iron guarantees. But this messy and distinctive…

During a recent New York Fashion Week, a wood-paneled boutique popped up in SoHo next to Louis Vuitton and Bottega Veneta. On the racks were tailored, wide-leg jeans and simple black Henley dresses that signaled understated elegance. But unlike those of neighboring boutiques, the clothes weren’t from a storied European maison de couture. They were some of the newest collections from Scoop and Free Assembly, two brands led by Brandon Maxwell, creative director at the House of Walmart. The pop-up—which featured items priced between $8 and $75—was part of the Bentonville, Arkansas–based retailer’s strategy to get its products in front of urban shoppers who might not be f…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, I’m focusing on the role of NSFW material on AI platforms, which could be complicated when AI platforms turn into social platforms. I also look at a powerful new Anthropic model for free Claude chatbot users. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. Sam Al…

When the lights finally dimmed at the 2025 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show last night, the first thing guests saw was a gold light emanating from backstage. Model Jasmine Tookes, nine months pregnant, opened the show in a gold macramé dress with drop pearls and a pearl and crystal wing in the shape of a clamshell. Art buffs might notice that the shell is a callback to Sandro Boticelli’s renaissance painting “Birth of Venus,” symbolizing sensuality, divine beauty, rebirth, and new beginnings. The cultural reference is a more elevated and considered nod to womanhood than the show’s previous themes, which have included “Santa’s Helpers” or “delicious sweets.” The loo…

Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea have sharply increased their use of artificial intelligence to deceive people online and mount cyberattacks against the United States, according to new research from Microsoft. This July, the company identified more than 200 instances of foreign adversaries using AI to create fake content online, more than double the number from July 2024 and more than ten times the number seen in 2023. The findings, published Thursday in Microsoft’s annual digital threats report, show how foreign adversaries are adopting new and innovative tactics in their efforts to weaponize the internet as a tool for espionage and deception. AI’s potent…

U.S. stock indexes are ticking higher on Thursday following an encouraging signal for the artificial-intelligence boom. The S&P 500 rose 0.4%, though trading has been erratic this week, and stocks have repeatedly swung between gains and losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 85 points, or 0.2%, as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.7% higher. Technology stocks helped lead the way after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. reported a bigger jump in profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Chief Financial Officer Wendell Huang also said TSMC expects “continued strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies” g…

It’s been two years since Howard Schultz retired from the board of directors of Starbucks, a company he founded and led for decades, but he still enjoys chatting with customers—as he did on Tuesday before sitting down for a wide-ranging interview with Dan Roth, editor-in-chief of LinkedIn. Schultz was curious to know what a customer thought of the coffee chain’s protein lattes that debuted last month and he says there’s no better place to source this information than one of the 40,000-plus Starbucks locations around the world. A sense of curiosity is important for a business leader, as well as a willingness to “be in the mud” and learn directly from customers, Schultz…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Speaking Tuesday at the National Association for Business Economics meeting in Philadelphia, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell offered his clearest reflection yet on the Fed’s pandemic-era mortgage bond buying. He acknowledged that the central bank may have kept purchasing mortgage-backed securities (MBS) for too long—but he also suggested that those purchases may have had a smaller effect on the housing market’s trajectory than some assume. “Regarding the composition of our purchases, some have questioned the inclusion of agency MBS purchases …

Uber’s U.S. drivers and couriers have a new way to earn extra money. The ride-hail app announced on Thursday a new pilot program that will offer gig workers the opportunity to train artificial intelligence (AI) through so-called “digital tasks.” They include simple, quick tasks for workers such as uploading photos, recording themselves speaking in their native language, and submitting documents written in different languages—which are then fed into AI models. Uber already offers this for gig workers in India. “A lot of these tasks are digital, meaning you can do them from your phone . . . from anywhere, and at the same time create earnings opportunities,” Sac…

After months of uncertainty, some federal student loan borrowers will soon have their debt canceled. But there’s a hook: You must be enrolled in a very specific program and have made sufficient payments to qualify. Some borrowers have been receiving notices in recent weeks that read: “You are now eligible to have some or all of your federal student loan(s) discharged because you have reached the necessary number of payments under your Income-Based Repayment (IBR) Plan.” The IBR plan, first introduced in 2007, offers debt cancellation after 20 or 25 years of repayment, depending on the age of the loans. Nearly 2 million borrowers were enrolled in this program as o…