What's on Your Mind?

If you want to instantly reveal your age, just order a hot black coffee — seriously. Gen Z is flipping the script on how coffee is consumed, and spoiler: they like it cold, sweet, and loaded with creamer. For a lot of younger drinkers, that very first cup of coffee was just as likely to be iced as it was hot. And get this—about 85% of Gen Z coffee fans are adding creamer, compared to just 70% of coffee drinkers overall. That shift in taste is making waves in the industry. Nestle, for example, has been rolling out new products to keep up—from cold-dissolving instant coffee to liquid espresso concentrates and all kinds of flavored toppings. “We’ve done a lot of thin…

Fewer than 1% of NCAA Tournament brackets were still perfect after Thursday’s 16-game slate, according to several services where fans attempt the all-but impossible task of predicting every March Madness game correctly — or, barring that, win their office pools. ESPN’s tracker listed 25,802 perfect brackets remaining out of more than 24 million filled out on its site following the final game of the day, Texas Tech’s win over UNC-Wilmington. The NCAA said 0.0938% of more than 34 million brackets were still perfect. The numbers were similar at CBS Sports, where 0.09% of brackets were unblemished following the first day of action. Yahoo Sports said 99.9% of i…

If the thought of being hunted by something that can see your every move makes your skin crawl, you might want to steer clear of Eyes Never Wake. This viral horror game takes immersion to the next level, using your webcam to let a lurking monster track your movements in real time. To survive, players must physically move to avoid detection—ducking under desks, leaning out of sight, and staying perfectly still as the creature stalks the room. The game doesn’t stop at just watching. It listens, too. The game listens, too. With your mic always on, the AI-driven entity reacts to sound, forcing players to stay silent to avoid being found. “Every corner you turn is a ch…

Market manipulation in the cryptocurrency world is rampant—and fewer than 500 people are responsible for as much as $250 million a year in profits and over $3.2 trillion in artificial trading, according to a new study published on Cornell University’s preprint server arXiv. Honglin Fu and colleagues at University College London have developed a tool that can track the coordination of pump-and-dump schemes, where crypto coin holders artificially inflate the price of a cryptocurrency by touting fake recommendations and generating nonexistent hype, making ordinary people intrigued enough to buy into a cryptocurrency before the owners then pull their stake and crash the p…

Severance is a set design wonderland. From a massive mirrored corporate monolith in New Jersey to a classical train station in upstate New York, the show’s distinctive visual language—which has captivated audiences and critics alike—relies on actual places that have been carefully chosen to mess with your head. These aren’t just random pretty buildings. They’re psychological weapons that connect the dots in the same way the writers weave the tapestry of the tale. Severance follows a group of humans that go through a procedure to separate their (outie) real lives from their (innie) corporate bees working for a mysterious industrial conglomerate call Lumon, effectively…

Heathrow Airport, Europe’s busiest, has shut down today, following a fire last night at a nearby electrical substation that caused a major power outage. The closure has disrupted at least 1,350 flights, according to Flightradar24, with some aircraft diverted to alternate airports like Gatwick, Amsterdam’s Schiphol, and Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. What caused the fire? While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, British officials have stated that there is no evidence of foul play. According to the London Fire Brigade, the fire broke out at an electrical substation around 11:20 p.m. on Thursday, involving a transformer containing 25,000 liters of coo…

Quantum computing stocks got pummeled yesterday, with the four most prominent public quantum computing companies—IonQ, Rigetti Computing, Quantum Computing Inc., and D-Wave Quantum Inc.—falling anywhere from over 9% to over 18%. The reason? It has to do with AI chip giant Nvidia. Again. Stocks crash yesterday on Nvidia quantum news Yesterday was a bit of a bloodbath on the stock market for the four most prominent publicly traded quantum computing companies. Here’s a breakdown of how they performed, according to data from Yahoo Finance: IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ): down 9.27% to $21.14 per share Rigetti Computing, Inc. (Nasdaq RGTI): down 9.24% to $8.99 per shar…

What if everything you believe about leadership is holding you back? A 2024 study by Gartner found that 69% of HR leaders don’t think their leaders are fully equipped to lead. And according to Gallup, only 21% of employees strongly agree that their leaders actually inspire them to do their best. That’s a big gap between what leaders intend and what employees experience. The problem? A lot of leaders are following outdated advice. In the pursuit of excellence, they unknowingly buy into myths that hold them back, limit their teams, and stifle real innovation. Whether it’s the belief that speed always wins or that innovation is all about technology, these myths quiet…

One more reminder about our upcoming online event: On Thursday, March 27, at 1 p.m. ET, my colleague Max Ufberg and I will host “The AI Tools We Love Right Now—and What’s Next,” exclusively for Fast Company Premium subscribers. We’ll discuss the AI-assisted productivity tools that are actually helping us get our jobs done, and where we’d like to see the whole category go. Fast Company Premium subscribers can RSVP here. And if you aren’t yet a subscriber, here’s where you can become one. Hope to see you there! It’s the World’s Most Innovative Companies week at Fast Company. Our annual ranking of organizations across 58 industries is live on our site, and bursting w…

During one of the hardest nights of Rachel Platten’s life—amidst postpartum depression, debilitating chronic pain, and mental health challenges—she glimpsed the light at the end of the tunnel. “I was in my studio and reached the apex of I can’t take it anymore,” she says. “The bottom wasn’t there. I just kept falling. In that moment, this wail came out of me that turned into a song. I was crying, mercy to anyone who would hear me, to whatever God that was out there.” “Something was writing through me,” she continues. “I realized: Is there a purpose or meaning in all of this suffering? Am I being dragged down, like I was with ‘Fight Song,’ letting my roots go dee…

If you’re trying to keep an eye on March Madness but you still need to get some actual work done, Google’s Picture-in-Picture Extension feels like a secret weapon. This free Chrome browser extension lets you move any video into a resizable, floating window that sits on top of anything else you’re doing. It’s perfect for keeping the games on in the background while still doing other things on your computer. How to use the Picture-in-Picture Extension Start by downloading the picture-in-picture extension from the Chrome Web Store. In addition to Google Chrome, it also works with most other Chromium-based browsers, including Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, and Microso…

Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture. Just a few years ago, iRobot, best known as the maker of the Roomba, was riding high, with annual revenue topping $1 billion; Amazon bid $1.7 billion to add it to the e-commerce giant’s home technology business. But that deal fell through, and now the Bedford, Massachusetts-based company has reported plunging revenue and steep losses, and recently warned investors of “substantial doubt” about its “ability to continue as a going concern.” With its share price down drastically, it’s now worth about $100 billion. How did the creator of the iconic round robot vacuum—which h…

In a correctional facility just outside of Silicon Valley, a Goodwill store operates inside the prison walls. And the women who are incarcerated there are both the employees and the customers. This Goodwill store, which opened in October 2024, is the first of its kind, and the team behind it hopes that the program will help incarcerated women get back on their feet—whether it’s with a new job or new clothes—as quickly and easily as possible. [Photo: Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department] The shoppers are women who are about to get released; typically about three people come in each day. Traditionally, when a woman is released from Elmwood Facility, she is gi…

Fast Company is the official media partner of Summit Detroit. For the past 17 years, Summit, an organization hosting conferences and immersive experiences around the world, has brought together entrepreneurs and creatives in lush settings that double as vacation destinations—think Tulum, Mexico; Palm Desert, Calif.; Powder Mountain, Utah; and even out on the open sea. This year marks the end of Summit’s larger-scale events as the company pivots toward more intimate gatherings. So it’s little surprise that more than a few eyebrows were raised when Summit announced Detroit as its last big hurrah this June 5-8. [Illustration: Summit] “We came together and decided…