What's on Your Mind?

More than any other Apple product, the Vision Pro is still—to quote Bob Dylan by way of Steve Jobs—busy being born. Announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 5, 2023 and shipped the following February, the $3,500 spatial computing headset has evolved some since its first release. This year brought a meaty operating system upgrade and a slightly revised version of the device sporting Apple’s powerful new M5 chip. But much of the progress the Vision Pro has made hasn’t stemmed from the routine tick-tock of software and hardware updates. Apple has also been throwing itself into the equally vital work of getting third-party developers and creators to…

Want to know how much you spent on Uber Eats this past year? If the answer is no, bad luck. Just days after Saturday Night Live dropped a satirical skit about an “Uber Eats wrapped,” Uber brought the feature to life with a year-end recap. Around this time each year, platforms from Spotify to YouTube start rolling out personalized recaps, breaking down how users spent their time over the past 12 months. The next logical step? A full accounting of every Uber trip taken and every guilt-ridden Uber Eats order placed this year. On Monday, the company launched its new year-in-review feature called “YOUBER,” which compiles users’ activity across both Uber and Uber E…

As readers look to curl up with a proverbial good book this winter—and put their holiday bookstore gift cards to work—they’ll be faced with an obvious question: What should they pick up next? “People find it much harder than you think, because there’s so much choice out there,” says Rachel Van Riel, founder and owner of the book recommendation website Whichbook. “Where do you start?” Whichbook employs human readers to classify books along dimensions like moods, levels of violence and sexual content, attributes of the main characters, and length. It’s a process Van Riel says artificial intelligence can’t yet replicate, though it’s still quite mathematical in natu…

There’s no shortage of apocalyptic headlines about the future of work in the era of artificial intelligence. For workers, the technology has inflicted anxiety and uncertainty, provoking questions of when, how many, and which kinds of workers will be replaced. Companies have been propelled into a FOMO fury to integrate AI expediently or miss out on efficiency, cost savings, and competitive advantage. The disruption is inevitable, but from where I sit at the nexus of employee mental health and technology, we’re asking the wrong questions. Enhancing, not replacing, humans As CEO of Calm, I have spent the past year visiting with executives and their teams across the co…

Last week, two fonts became the unlikely stars of a political messaging firestorm, after the The President administration replaced Calibri as its official diplomatic font in favor of Times New Roman, claiming that an initial shift to Calibri in 2023 was part of former President Biden’s “DEIA” agenda. The implication was clear: Calibri was framed as a liberal, Democratic font; while Times New Roman took its place as the The President administration’s more conservative choice. Now, a new study is revealing the major flaw in this logic: font is certainly a political tool, but it’s not inherently partisan. The study, titled “You’re Just Not My Type: How Attitudes Towards …

Experts have compressed their predictions for when artificial general intelligence (AGI)—the type of AI that can equal or exceed human intelligence—will arrive. When predictions were first made in 2023, AGI was expected to arrive in 50 years. Newer estimates say five years. When GPT-5 came out this summer, it demonstrated surprising leaps in reasoning and memory, further accelerating those timelines. Progress is moving faster than anyone anticipated, and what once felt speculative now feels inevitable. Meanwhile, small teams are shipping products that would have required 100-person companies two years ago. The gap between the AGI debaters and the builders (those w…

In the heart of Aceh province in northwestern Sumatra, the Ketiara Cooperative, led by the remarkable Ibu Rahmah, is facing a crisis unfolding as we speak. This community of women-led farmers was devastated by the rare Cyclone Senyar over the Thanksgiving weekend, which caused catastrophic mudslides. Farms have been decimated, homes destroyed, and two vital bridges have been washed away, isolating entire villages and cutting off access to essentials like food, clean water, and electricity. Hundreds of people have died and hundreds more are still missing in their worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami. Grace Farms, a cultural and humanitarian center in New Canaa…

“Mad Max mode” may sound like something out of a video game, but it is a real-life setting for cars currently plying America’s streets. And it poses genuine danger. In an homage to the main character from George Miller’s dystopian 1979 film and its sequels, originally portrayed by current The President supporter Mel Gibson, Tesla created Mad Max mode as an option for vehicles equipped with its “Full-Self Driving” (FSD) system. The Mad Max icon is a mustachioed smiley face wearing a cowboy hat, bearing less of a resemblance to the film’s titular vigilante than to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal. (Warner Bros., which released the films, has not filed suit.) De…

Before food influencers were deep-frying Chipotle burritos, putting an entire serving of mac and cheese on their Chick-fil-A sandwich, and making McDonald’s hash browns into ice cream sandwiches, there was another food-hack-slash-Frankenfood that ruled the internet: the quesarito. This week, Taco Bell brought it back to its official menu. The quesarito is exactly what its name implies: a fully loaded burrito that, instead of being wrapped in a regular tortilla, has been lovingly sealed inside a giant quesadilla. It’s the epitome of fast-food gluttony, and as of December 18, it’s back in Taco Bell stores for a limited time for $6.70 (and a relatively modest 570 calorie…

A reader asks: I run a small business that supplies a product to major companies. To keep the details anonymous, let’s say that we supply garments to a few mid-tier clothing retailers that you can buy in the mall. The problem is that one of my employees two levels down (he reports to someone who reports to me), Dave, behaves as though we’re making clothing for Gucci or Prada. This causes enormous production headaches. It means everything moves much more slowly through his department, because he is extremely conscientious about quality. That is admirable, but it results in things like being short with our subcontractors because they have not produced the products t…

In today’s corporate landscape, optics often precede outcomes, especially in technology-led transformations. Announcements of new platforms, AI-powered strategies, or “digital-first” pledges frequently come long before the underlying infrastructure to support them. That was Ted’s reality as the chief growth officer at a global bank when his CEO unveiled a high-profile “AI-Powered Growth Strategy” positioned as a bold leap forward. The announcement made headlines and thrilled investors, but behind the scenes, the organization wasn’t prepared. Ted was given a skeletal team of two direct reports, a patchwork of third-party tools, and the mandate to partner with five glo…

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In November, Apple laid off dozens of sales employees in a rather unexpected move for the tech giant. Apple is the rare tech company that has steered clear of mass layoffs, particularly among its peers in the trillion-dollar club. The layoffs “came as a surprise” for those who lost their jobs, according to a Bloomberg report—and they impacted some employees who had been with the company for decades. The post-pandemic job market has come to be defined by layoffs, in tech and beyond: A Glassdoor analysis finds that there was a peak in 2023, but layoffs have since continued at a more frequent cadence relative to the years prior. A variety of sectors have been hit hard—a…

As the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) returns to Las Vegas from Jan. 6 to 9, the tech industry is gearing up for its annual spectacle of prototypes, silicon benchmarks and AI-branded gadgets. But one of the most consequential shifts in enterprise technology over the coming year will unfold far from the keynote stages and demo floors. HP, the 85-year-old Silicon Valley company long defined by PCs, printers, and enterprise hardware, is repositioning itself as a work-intelligence platform—where devices learn continuously, services anticipate needs, and AI dissolves the traditional boundaries between hardware, software, and the cloud. Under Jim Nottingham, senior vice p…

Everybody loves the idea of feedback, defined broadly as information provided to someone about their performance, behavior, or actions. This makes a great deal of sense. Indeed, many studies have consistently shown that feedback from others plays an important role in helping us understand who we are, including how we differ from others. It is vital for improving managers’ and leaders’ performance and for helping people evolve and develop, both professionally and personally. Conversely, being feedback-deprived, or having a tendency to ignore it, increases the gap between how good you think you are, and how good you actually are—at times, to painfully delusional lev…

The recent announcement by McKinsey & Company that it plans to cut roughly 10% of its workforce has sent ripples through the consulting world, reigniting debate about the future of the industry. This is not about one firm, one round of layoffs, or one business cycle. It signals an irreversible shift in how value is created in consulting. Having spent a significant part of my career at McKinsey, I saw it grow and flourish in an era when information was scarce. Even basic market intelligence required large teams working for months to gather and synthesize data. The digital age brought a data explosion and democratized access, and McKinsey adapted again by expanding …

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” opened with $345 million in worldwide sales, according to studio estimates Sunday, notching the second-best global debut of the year and potentially putting James Cameron on course to set yet more blockbuster records. Sixteen years into the “Avatar” saga, Pandora is still abundant in box-office riches. “Fire and Ash,” the third film in Cameron’s science-fiction franchise, launched with $88 million domestically and $257 million internationally. The only film to open bigger in 2025 was “Zootopia 2” ($497.2 million over three days). In the coming weeks, “Fire and Ash” will have the significant benefit of the highly lucrative holiday moviegoing corrido…

It’s been a pretty wild year in the world of advertising and brand work. Amid broader industry shifts, there has been some incredible brand work created this year across many different platforms, film, experiences, and more. But as we bring 2025 to a close, I wanted to take a more targeted look at some of the best commercials of this year. I’ve tried to adhere to criteria that includes level of difficulty, creative inventiveness, risk, and sheer entertainment. Despite how much great work is out there, sadly, most advertising can be generously categorized as cultural wallpaper. But these select few pieces of brand weren’t a waste of time—they made me laugh, think…

For 50 years, America’s generosity has been stuck in neutral with charitable giving frozen at 2.5% of GDP. But not because people stopped caring. In 2024, total giving hit record highs, and food banks saw donations surge as families faced delays in SNAP benefits. The heart is there. What’s missing is technology that turns generosity into lasting impact. We can’t solve today’s biggest problems, from food insecurity to climate change to health inequity, without unlocking the full potential of AI. For the first time, technology connects data across causes, predicts needs before they arise, and turns generosity into measurable progress. If generosity is the fuel, AI is th…

Coinbase said on Monday it will buy prediction markets startup The Clearing Company, its tenth acquisition this year, as the crypto exchange looks to expand beyond its core digital assets business. Prediction markets let users buy and sell contracts tied to the outcomes of real-world events, ranging from elections and economic data to sports and policy decisions, effectively turning investors’ forecasts into tradable markets. Supporters say the prices can reflect collective expectations more accurately than polls or forecasts, while critics argue the products blur the line between financial markets and betting, drawing growing scrutiny from regulators. Predict…

December is here, and another year has blown by. Chances are, you’re going to get some time off for the holidays. If so, you may have a week(-ish) to recharge before you have to ramp back up in January. In order to get the most out of your time off, it would be ideal if you could unplug from work completely to give your mind a rest and to focus on family, friends, and yourself. There are a few things you can do to prepare now that will help a lot and will also make your transition back to the office go smoothly. Close as many tasks as possible Research going back almost 100 years finds that when you have a task to complete, you are highly motivated to finish it…

By the end of October, David, who works at a roughly 2,000-person finance firm in New York, already knew he’d be working during the holiday season this year. Usually at the office, he learned he’d at least get to work remotely between December 26 and January 1—with the way the financial calendar fell, it was inevitable that he couldn’t just disappear for clients (like institutional investors and family offices) during that time. He says the schedule doesn’t really bother him. “I’m not in a trench in the middle of a battlefield here. I’m not laying bricks,” he says. “It’s not terribly unrealistic work that they’re asking us to do.” Mainly, he’s expected to respond…

A new extension for Chrome stops AI slop from invading your life. Called Slop Evader, it is a temporal firewall that modifies your Google search queries to exclude any results indexed after November 30, 2022. That is the day the ChatGPT asteroid hit the open web, upending culture and reality as we know it. Installing Slop Evader is easy: just add it to Chrome, toggle it on, and suddenly, the scroll of generative garbage vanishes. You are back in the “old” internet knowing that every article you read is not the product of simulated intelligence. It’s an enticing idea, especially given that the latest estimation is that more than 50% of all new articles on the int…

It’s easy, for me at least, to be cynical about the state of design. Our visual environment can feel bland, everything from brands to buildings homogenized around similar styles. The ever-impending AI takeover can make the future of this work uncertain. My reading around design this year tended to focus on two things: looking back and looking ahead. In looking through design history, I was looking for glimpses of alternative ways of designing: the experimental, the absurd, the weird. And in looking forward, I was searching for hope in a dark time, for answers on how design, and the design industries, move beyond the stasis I feel like we’re in. The intersection of th…

This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jared’s weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get more insights every Tuesday. On a recent evening, I had a mild panic after trying to call my wife and repeatedly getting the same error: “Your call could not be completed as dialed.” She was supposed to come home late that night from an out-of-town trip with some old friends, but I hadn’t heard from her that day and couldn’t recall the timing of her flight. If her phone was merely in Airplane mode, my calls should have gone to voicemail instead of failing to connect outright. In the end, it was just a random network connectivity glitch, solved by a reboot after my w…