What's on Your Mind?

Ed Zitron peels off his green button-up shirt to reveal the gray tee beneath. Now properly uniformed, two cans of Diet Coke queued up before him, he’s ready to record this week’s episode of his podcast, Better Offline, at audio behemoth iHeartMedia’s midtown Manhattan studio. The topic on this July afternoon, as usual, is artificial intelligence. One of Zitron’s guests, screenwriter, director, and producer Brian Koppelman, talks about paying $200 a month for ChatGPT Pro. When Koppelman earnestly asks, “Do you not think AI is mind-bogglingly great at times?” Zitron’s answer—“No!”—comes so quickly it seems to spring directly from his cerebral cortex. It would have b…

A college degree is usually thought of as a ticket to a great job and a secure future. Yet, the job market over the past few years has not been kind to graduates. Rapid changes in technology and uncertainty about the influence of AI on the economy have made it harder for companies to know what their new employees need to know to be successful. I have argued in the past that this uncertainty actually makes college degrees more useful than ever, but higher education is doing a poor job of helping students navigate this uncertainty. Sadly, universities aren’t going to fix this problem by hiring more career counselors. Instead, they’re going to have to do the hard work of…

Syracuse University is rolling out a new “Center for the Creator Economy,” looking to train the new class of influencers, streamers, podcasters and YouTubers. The center, the first of its kind in the U.S., is a joint project between the university’s communications and business schools, and aims to attract students planning to participate in the $250 billion creator economy. With rising unemployment rates, and a college degree no longer unlocking the career opportunities it once did, the creator economy could be a beacon of hope for young graduates in a dismal job market. The number of creators globally is expected to grow at a compound annual rate between 10 and 2…

Sometimes Warren Buffett says something so simple, so obvious, that you almost want to roll your eyes. At 95 years young, he has offered plainspoken advice that has shaped one of the most successful careers in history. But when you hear it, you know it’s truth and part of you wonders: Why haven’t I applied this yet? When we slow down long enough to sit with some of his wisdom—really let it sink in, not just skim it on our phones—his principles can reshape how we lead, how we work, and how we show up in life. The challenge, of course, is in the follow-through. How many of us can read something today and honestly say, “I’m going to start doing this tomorrow”? If you…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. There’s no doubt about it: Housing market softening across the Sunbelt—the epicenter of U.S. homebuilding—has caused homebuilders to lose pricing power over the past year. Amid the additional margin compression, some giant homebuilders are adjusting their strategies. Lennar is finally easing up a little on its market share, taking volume-over-margin strategy, while KB Home—a homebuilder ranked No. 526 on the Fortune 1000—said on December 18 that it plans to lean even harder into built-to-order (more on that below). At the end of last week, KB Hom…

The U.S. government on Thursday released a new crash test dummy design that advocates believe will help make cars safer for women. The Department of Transportation will consider using the dummy in the government’s vehicle crash test five star-ratings once a final rule is adopted, the agency said in a news release. Women are 73% more likely to be injured in a head-on crash, and they are 17% more likely to be killed in a car crash, than men. The standard crash test dummy used in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration five-star vehicle testing was developed in 1978 and was modeled after a 5-foot-9 (175-centimeter), 171-pound (78-kilogram) man. The fem…

First came the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Then came the news Snapchat is constructing a paywall around Memories. The company announced last week that it’s capping users free Memories storage at 5GB. Those who have spent the better part of a decade cultivating massive personal archives on the app will now be forced to either export those Memories or sign up for one of Snapchat’s new Memories Storage plans in order to preserve them. The promise of free unlimited storage has been a big part of Snapchat’s identity. For many, it has long served as something of a time capsule, where users could store and revisit old Snaps long after they expired from the ap…

Dell on Tuesday nearly doubled its annual profit growth target for the next four years, betting on robust demand for its servers that power artificial intelligence workloads. The company, whose customers include Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI and CoreWeave, lifted its expectations for annual growth in adjusted earnings per share to at least 15% from around 8%. Dell also said it expects compounded annual revenue growth between 7% and 9% for the next four years, up from its prior view of 3% to 4%. Insatiable demand for servers that provide the computing power needed to run services such as ChatGPT has turned Dell into one of the biggest winners of the generative AI …

Even as digital and physical threats reach record levels, advances in security and privacy are giving us stronger defenses than ever before. New tools can now scan the wireless spectrum to flag hidden risks, protect faces and voices from AI misuse, map out who has access to sensitive data in real time, and guard large language models against prompt injection and data leaks. Together, these innovations are reshaping how we safeguard both our information and our personal safety. Bastille Networks For keeping tabs on airborne threats Wireless signals are more crowded than ever, from Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to 5G and beyond—and the data they carry is as valuable as anything se…

Believing that digital transformation is about changing technology is like thinking firefighting is about riding in a fire truck. Firefighting is about putting out fires to save lives and property. Digital transformation is about changing how your organization functions and creates value using data, systems, skills, and processes. That might mean building dashboards that give executives real-time visibility across thousands of staff, training hundreds in new ways of working like Agile or DevOps, or automating back-office processes to free up time for higher-value work. The common thread is that technology becomes a catalyst for organisational change in strategy, peopl…

Phones have always been fashion statements. What started as simple cases to protect your phone has evolved into decking out the devices with every accessory imaginable: dangling charms and key chains, PopSockets, phone wallets, straps, and now . . . pockets? Apple just launched a new product called the iPhone Pocket, and it’s effectively a knitted bag for your iPhone. Apple designed the pouch in collaboration with high-end Japanese fashion brand Issey Miyake, whose relationship with Apple stretches back to the Steve Jobs era. (Jobs’s signature turtlenecks were designed by Miyake, who retired the iconic shirts following Jobs’s death in 2011.) The tech giant say…

The New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) parent company Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) said on Tuesday it will invest up to $2 billion into the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket. The move marries the more traditional, regulated NYSE with the riskier prediction markets, and is generally seen as a move by the iconic, 233-year-old exchange to keep up with its competitors by capitalizing on the growing popularity of betting on all kinds of things. “Our partnership with ICE marks a major step in bringing prediction markets into the financial mainstream,” Shayne Coplan, CEO of Polymarket, told Fast Company. “Together, we’re expanding how individuals and institutio…

As 2025 comes to a close, business leaders are inevitably already planning how 2026 will shape up, particularly as the last year proved to be a tumultuous one. The so-called AI boom is still booming, corporate DEI initiatives have shrunk or disappeared altogether, and return-to-office mandates have tightened. No one has a crystal ball to predict emerging technologies, financial headwinds, political hurdles, and market trends for the next year. But that doesn’t mean that companies can sit back—there are steps to take now to help insulate your company against potential turbulence in the coming year, while simultaneously fostering success by focusing on the human aspects…

Hannah Alsark says that Adobe’s top clients—the owners of some of the most protected, most valuable brands and IP in the world—had a stark message for the company regarding Firefly, its generative AI engine: They wanted more, and they wanted better. “They told us they actually needed models that understood all their products, all their brands, their creative direction,” says Alsark, Adobe’s VP of GenAI New Business Ventures. “They have characters, they have particular motion styles, and they needed us to train on that.” Firefly—which uses prompts to create assets across all Adobe’s vector, bitmap, and motion apps—couldn’t do this because it doesn’t understand bra…

When Apple’s AirTag came out four years ago, one of the most obvious uses for it was for luggage. On my long trips to Asia, I always breathe a sign of relief when I glance at my phone and find that my checked suitcase has been loaded onto the aircraft. And I often wish I had one in my carry-on suitcase, especially when the overhead bins run out of space and the flight attendant checks my bag at the gate. July, a fast-growing Australian startup, has become the first luggage brand to incorporate AirTags directly into its suitcases. The technology was made in partnership with Apple and Google, so the tags are integrated with both Apple’s Find My and Google’s Find Hub…

In early 2023, a couple of months after ChatGPT launched and became the fastest-growing consumer application in history, I remember feeling both excited but also a bit overwhelmed by the rapid pace of AI. The barrage of news, product launches, and innovative use cases was relentless. We held an executive meeting at that time and decided to immediately reassign additional teams from other long-planned initiatives to double down on AI. We saw an opportunity to deliver even more value to our customers. My experience is not unique. Across the board, leaders have been aggressively implementing AI to improve productivity, lower costs, and improve communication—but the r…

Fifty minutes into a training session at a gym in lower Manhattan, I’m doing burpees and clean-and-jerks while Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown—all 6 feet, 5 inches of him—is bear-crawling into pushups, then slamming a medicine ball to the ground from overhead. I was lured to this TMPL gym off Astor Place because Brown is a lifelong fitness nut, and he’d shoehorned this workout in on Monday morning between arriving from L.A. the night before and departing again that afternoon. But Brown also wanted me to experience Beyond’s radical new launch, its first product that is not a savory meal option, the way a target customer would: post-workout, desperate for a functional r…

As of yesterday’s market close, Netflix is the only Big Tech company whose stock is trading at four figures, but that will soon change. The TV streaming giant, whose shares closed at $1,089 on Thursday, has announced that it will initiate a stock split next month. That will send the stock’s price per share much lower, though it will not change the company’s fundamental value. Here’s what you need to know about Netflix’s upcoming stock split. What’s a stock split? A stock split is when a company decides to divide the number of its existing shares in order to create new ones—hence the term “split” the shares. A stock can split by any factor a company wan…

French luxury goods company Kering said Sunday it is selling its beauty division to L’Oreal for 4 billion euros ($4.66 billion). Under the agreement, Clichy, France-based L’Oreal will acquire the House of Creed high-end fragrance company as well as licenses to create beauty and fragrance products for Kering brands like Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga. The companies said they will establish a strategic committee to ensure coordination between Kering brands and L’Oréal. Kering and L’Oréal said they are also exploring joint business opportunities in the wellness and longevity market, combining L’Oreal’s innovation with Kering’s deep understanding of luxury clients. T…

A number of airlines are waiving change fees ahead of what is expected to be a major winter storm forecast to hit the Northeast on Friday afternoon, affecting millions of people traveling after Christmas, during one of the busiest times of the year. A winter storm warning from the National Weather Service (NWS) is in effect for New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut from Friday afternoon through Saturday, for up to 9 inches of snow and freezing temperatures, creating the potential hazardous travel conditions, flight delays, and cancellations. 1-6 inches of snow is expected from northeastern Pennsylvania up into New England; while freezing rain and sleet, are expec…

As best I can tell, the über-wealthy believe the world as we know it is ending, that there won’t be enough to go around, and that this means they need to accumulate as much money and land as possible in order to position themselves for the end of days. The way they do that is with an induced form of “disaster capitalism,” where they intentionally crash the economy in order to have some control over what remains. So the function of tariffs, for example, is to bankrupt businesses or even public services in order to privatize and then control them. Stall imports, put the ports out of business, and then let a sovereign wealth fund purchase the ports. Or as is happening r…