What's on Your Mind?

When you visit the Samsung booth this week at the Mobile World Congress 2026—which, as always, is being held at the Fira Gran Via convention center in Barcelona—you can make your way past the array of brand-new devices to find a timeline of old Galaxy S phones mounted to a wall. It’s a neat piece of history, but I’m not sure it had the intended effect. Rather than demonstrating Samsung’s progress over the years, it highlights how the South Korean tech giant—still the No. 2 phone maker in the world, right behind Apple, according to data from Counterpoint—has been treading water at the top of its lineup. This year’s Galaxy S26 Ultra, announced a few days before the …

Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor. A reader asks: Last fall, I left a beloved job and assisted them in hiring two people to replace me. One was an internal hire, the other required an outside interview process. We received over 50 applications, narrowed it down to 13 phone interviews, then seven in-person interviews, and finally made a very satisfying hiring decision. At each step along the way, I sent out polite rejection emails to those who didn’t make the next level. It was very professional, and a…

We’re only two months in, but 2026 is already shaping up to be the year of agents. The current surge began with Claude Code, which achieved critical mass over the holidays. That led to all kinds of lobster-themed software names (long story), which culminated in OpenClaw, an open-source agent creation and management system. It might also be a stealth marketing campaign for Apple to sell a ton of Mac Minis, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s too early to say what kind of productivity gains the current wave of agents will create, but the push to agents is undeniable. It’s also very exclusive. For all the talk of, “the only coding language you need to know is English…

Job interviews can trip up even the most qualified candidates with verbal landmines. In this article, we discuss specific phrases candidates should avoid using in interviews and more effective alternatives recommended by experts. Discover common phrases that send the wrong message to interviewers, as well as stronger alternatives that demonstrate genuine value, so you can effectively communicate your skills and experience. Lead With Curiosity, Not Critique If you’re interviewing for a tech role, here’s a fast way to tank your chances: Walk in and immediately trash the company’s systems. You know the move. “Honestly, your system is outdated. I’d replace it with some…

My team often jokes about the “Vulcan Mind Meld.” They say I need to share a brain with a founder before we can write a check. They aren’t wrong, but the process isn’t science fiction. It’s usually just a walk. Specifically, it’s a walk to the Stanford Dish. The path is a 3.5-mile loop in the foothills above the university. It’s steep, exposed, and offers little place to hide. I don’t take founders here for exercise. I take them here because the controlled environment of a boardroom practically demands rehearsed answers. The trail does not. I don’t prepare a script for these walks. In fact, that’s the point. The pitch is already done; I know the metrics. Now I…

Every important endeavor in your life needs some kind of North Star to help you determine whether you’re succeeding. Fitness professionals recommend having an overarching goal when planning a workout regime. Similarly, it’s valuable to have strategic aims for your career. Professional goals are important, because they help you evaluate which of a variety of paths available to you is the ideal one to pursue. For example, if your aim is to play a leadership role in a company, then you might choose to get an advanced degree that hones your leadership skills. That time in school might slow your progress in getting promotions in your vertical in the short term, but will en…

U.S. figure skating champion Alysa Liu captivated audiences during the 2026 Winter Olympics. Now, the young skater is offering some life advice. The 20-year-old won two gold medals in the recent Milan-Cortina games, charmed crowds with her style, cheered on her competitors, and offered her refreshing take on skating for joy, rather than medals. Liu told Today.com she had some nontraditional advice about pushing kids to continue to play sports, even when they want to quit. To put it simply, the Olympian said: “Don’t.” “It does not work,” she explained. “The kid knows himself pretty well, and it’s just never good to force anything.” While Liu’s advice is s…

When I was in high school in the 1990s, my physics teacher pulled me aside with a question he couldn’t shake: “How do they get every computer in the world to talk to every other computer?” He’d seen how hard it was to agree on basics like electrical outlets or phone dialing standards. Yet suddenly we had this internet thing where a machine in Thunder Bay could talk to one in Tokyo in milliseconds. No central planner. No global treaty. Somehow it just worked. The real answer is less magic and more mindset: a systems principle called Postel’s Law. In plain language: Be strict in what you send; be generous in what you accept. When I talk to you, I should do my…

In too many organizations, design is treated as a downstream function or even a cost center. In the best case, it’s a nice-to-have that is applied to refine or beautify after strategy is set, budgets are approved, and decisions are largely already locked. It could be used to communicate strategic choices made earlier in the innovation or creation process. Perhaps it is leveraged in the sales and business development process. Yet the world’s most forward-looking organizations do the opposite: They start with design. To begin, let’s establish the fact that I do not believe design is about aesthetics or brand polish. Design is a strategic lens—a way of seeing syste…

At the Exceptional Women Alliance, we enable high-level women to mentor each other to achieve personal and professional happiness through sisterhood. As the nonprofit organization’s founder, chair, and CEO, I am honored to interview and share insights from thought leaders who are part of our peer-to-peer mentoring.  This month, I introduce to you Alma Derricks. With broad experience ranging from strategy partner at Deloitte to global sales and marketing leader at Cirque du Soleil, she is the founder of REV, an award-winning strategy consultancy that crafts and launches distinctive campaigns and new ventures for the world’s most coveted brands. For decades, she has he…

A Florida man initially began using Google’s Gemini AI platform last August for assistance with typical queries. By early October, the chatbot had driven him to commit suicide, claims a lawsuit filed against the tech giant on Wednesday. The father of Jonathan Gavalas is suing Alphabet, Google’s parent company, for monetary and punitive damages after discovering troubling messages in the chat logs that the 36-year-old exchanged with Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google’s latest AI model at the time. In the span of less than two months, the chatbot took on an outsized role in Gavalas’ life by adding fuel to his already “clear signs of psychosis,” stoking a quasi-romantic relationship…

Nuclear detonation could mark the start of World War III, plunging the planet into the deadliest conflict in human history. But on the bright side, it could have turned a profit for a few lucky gamblers. Prediction platform Polymarket lets users bet on everything from pop culture to global politics to the amount of times Elon Musk will post on X in a week. But one of its latest markets seems to have crossed an ethical line: an event titled “Nuclear weapon detonation by…?” where users could bet on when a nuclear bomb would go off. After major backlash online, the event has been archived, but not before Polymarket users bet more than $838,000 total, predicting that …

Over the last 50 years, the chasm between average worker pay and CEO compensation has cracked wide open. Between 1978 and 2024, chief executive pay spiked by 1,094%, according to the Economic Policy Institute—which means the average CEO earns 281 times the average worker. A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive research organization, captures how this disparity persists across some of the largest companies in the country and how the low-wage workers they employ are forced to rely on public benefits. The report drew on the S&P 500 and tallied a list of 20 companies that have been dubbed the “Low-Wage 20,” which includes some of the u…

Utah-based outdoor retailer Sportsman’s Warehouse may be closing some of its stores in the near future. “As part of the Company’s review of its stores, we have identified about five stores for potential closure due to underperformance and lack of profitability,” Sportsman’s Warehouse wrote in its Fiscal Year 2025 financial results press release. Sportsman’s Warehouse did not respond to Fast Company’s request for comment on which stores it identified at the time of publication. Sportsman’s Warehouse has 148 locations spread across 32 different states. The brand is mostly centered around western states, with 17 stores in California, 14 in Washington, and 13 in U…

When fintech company Block laid off 40% off its workforce last week, CEO Jack Dorsey explained the decision in a memo to employees that he also shared on social media. He was eliminating more than 4,000 jobs in the name of AI efficiency, he said, even though the company’s profitability was increasing. Though much of his letter was addressed to those who were losing their jobs, he ended with a note to those who’d be staying on. “What I’m asking of you is to build with me,” Dorsey wrote. “We’re going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. How we work, how we create, how we serve our customers.” But one Block employee who survived th…

Seventy-three-year-old Delroy Lindo just received his first Oscar nomination of his career—and he has advice for anyone who’s been in their fields for decades like he has. “The first thing that you have to come to terms with as an actor is being rejected,” the actor told The Wall Street Journal this week. That’s key for anyone trying to make it in Hollywood. But Lindo, who plays blues musician Delta Slim in Best Picture nominee Sinners, has been working in the industry since moving to New York in his 20s, and finally got his first Academy Award nomination this year (for Best Supporting Actor). He told the Journal that he wouldn’t be where he is today without trus…

Elon Musk is expected to take the stand in a shareholder trial on Wednesday in San Francisco, where he’s accused of making false and misleading statements that drove down Twitter’s stock price before he bought the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022. The lawsuit was filed in October 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of Twitter shareholders who sold the stock between May 13 and Oct. 4, 2022, a few weeks before Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized. It claims Musk violated federal securities laws by making false, public statements that “were carefully calculated to drive down the price of Twitter stock.” T…

Apple’s new 13-inch laptop, the MacBook Neo, is a cheap MacBook in the era of expensive PCs, when AI’s endless appetite for memory has caused the price of computers to skyrocket. Its $599 starting price isn’t much more than what a couple of sticks of DDR5 will cost these days. The secret to the low price? The Neo isn’t driven by your typical laptop chipset, but the same architecture inside your iPhone. It’s an iPhone with a 12.9-inch screen and keyboard. But the Neo design is largely based on nostalgia. Its colorful anodized aluminum computer body—a callback to the classic iPod minis and nanos so coveted by gen Z and Alpha—is more a retro-release than something n…

While social media platforms have a habit of copying each other, there’s one area where TikTok is forging its own path. TikTok doesn’t use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for direct messages, the BBC reports. In contrast, the security measure is used by Meta Platforms for services like Facebook and WhatsApp. It’s also integrated into Signal, Apple, and Google’s in-device messages, and Snapchat. End-to-end encryption means only those involved in a conversation can read those messages. These other platforms argue this is critical for users’ privacy as it means the companies and law enforcement are unable to see any of the content that users send. However, in its…

Bombs are falling across the Middle East as the United States and Israel try to bring Iran to heel. But while physical infrastructure is toppling in Iran, the country’s digital armies are still fighting with force. Groups linked to the Iranian regime have hit Jordanian gas firms, as well as businesses in the UAE and Qatar, as part of its Great Epic cyber offensive. Countries including the UK, whose military base in Cyprus has been hit by Iran-linked missiles, have begun warning businesses to prepare for possible Iranian cyberattacks. That raises a bigger question: How did Iran become such a formidable force in cyberwarfare, and to what end? A cyber shock to th…