What's on Your Mind?

Japanese regulators on Tuesday accused U.S. tech giant Google of violating anti-monopoly laws, echoing similar moves in the U.S. and Europe. Google Japan said in a statement that it found the action “regrettable.” It said it has invested in Japan significantly to promote innovation as a technology leader. The Japan Fair Trade Commission’s “cease and desist order” says Google must stop the preinstallation of the Google search engine in Android smartphones, which it said in effect shuts out competition. It’s unclear if Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., based in Mountain View in the Silicon Valley, will take legal action to fight the order. In the U.S., a judge rule…

Former President Joe Biden returns to the national stage Tuesday to elevate liberal concerns that President Donald The President’s agenda is threatening the health of Social Security. The 82-year-old Democrat has largely avoided speaking publicly since leaving the White House in January. That’s even as The President frequently blames Biden for many of the nation’s problems, often attacking his predecessor by name. Biden is expected to fight back in an early evening speech to the national conference of Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago. While Biden has made a handful of public appearances in recent weeks, Tuesday’s high-profile address…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Last week, Zillow announced a new policy that bans home listings from appearing on the platform if they were first listed for sale in private networks more than 24 hours before appearing on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). That’s an attempt by Zillow to keep more inventory on the “public” housing market. “If a listing is online, it should be online everywhere. . . . If a listing is marketed to any home shoppers, it should be marketed to all home shoppers,” wrote Zillow. The announcement comes as some brokerages, most infamously Compass, ar…

One of the best performing stocks on the market yesterday was Webull Corporation (Nasdaq: BULL), which saw its shares surge nearly 375% in a single trading session to end the day at $62.90. The stock price surge in BULL occurred on its second trading day after the stock-trading platform merged with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to go public. But in premarket trading today, BULL shares are down a significant amount—about 15% as of the time of this writing. Here’s what to know about the stock and what could be next for Webull shares. What is Webull? Webull Corporation is the owner of the Webull trading platform. The online platform allows users to …

You’re already juggling competing deadlines, back-to-back meetings, and strategic priorities. Then the Slack message arrives: “Hey, can you just take care of this?” It’s not in your job description. It’s not aligned with your goals. And it’s not the first time. Whether it’s managing logistics, picking up someone else’s project, or being asked to take notes again—many workers are routinely handed tasks that fall outside their role. Often, it’s framed as being a “team player.” But over time, these extra asks can add up to chronic overwork, blurred boundaries, and a stalled career trajectory. Handling these situations well isn’t about being difficult—it’s about being…

Elon Musk is a visionary genius to some, unpredictable and dangerous to others. Love him or loathe him, Musk’s personality looms as large as his net worth. This is consistent with decades of scientific research highlighting a strong connection between personality and entrepreneurial talent. There is a range of character traits and dispositions that make entrepreneurs different from others, especially when they succeed in their ventures. Psychologists often describe personality in terms of the Big Five traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism) and also warn about the “Dark Triad” of darker traits (Narcissism, Machiavellianism, …

Before media outlets began comparing OpenAI’s Sam Altman with the father of the atomic bomb, and before Amazon’s Jeff Bezos got jacked, we had Nathan Bateman, the iron-pumping, AI-developing tech broligarch played by Oscar Isaac in the 2015 film Ex Machina. Written and directed by Civil War helmer Alex Garland, Ex Machina is ostensibly about a modern-day Turing test. Bateman, the mastermind behind a Google/Facebook surrogate, has secretly developed a humanoid AI and arranged for talented coder Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) to fly out to his remote compound for a week to determine whether Ava (Alicia Vikander) exhibits enough consciousness to pass for human. You know, sort …

In Los Angeles, the scars of recent wildfires are still visible. Small businesses are fighting to regain their footing. A trio of NBA legends are pitching in to help. Social Change Fund United (SCFU), founded in 2020 by Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Paul, has teamed up with fintech platform Stackwell and the National Basketball Players Association to launch the Visionary Ventures Program. The pilot kicks off in L.A. with a clear goal: equip small business owners with the tools, resources, and capital they need to build sustainable operations. Through financial education, grant funding, and ongoing development support, Visionary Ventures merges access with ac…

When I first met Krea co-founders Victor Perez and Diego Rodriguez in 2023, the industry was scrambling to understand the a-bomb of generative AI. But inside their work-live condo in Hayes Valley, San Francisco—decorated with an Eiffel Tower built from La Croix cans—the duo painted a confident vision of the future: One where they could build a platform not just about “generating” AI media, but a toolset to offer an artisan level manipulation of this new technology. They wanted to consolidate the world of AI models, then blur the bounds of media as we understand it, erasing the divisions between images, video, and sound in a new era powered by computational intelligen…

Charging a car, or electric vehicle, typically takes about 350 kilowatts. Charging an entire ocean freighter, or electric vessel, could take 20 megawatts, roughly 57 times more power. It’s a striking difference in power and generating capacity, and illuminates the challenges and opportunities behind greening the freighters and container ships crisscrossing the earth’s oceans. Across the Atlantic, maritime green energy provider NatPower Marine is developing the infrastructure to establish the world’s first operational electrified shipping corridor between Ireland and England. This includes electric boats and chargers and the renewable energy projects—which include…

A new ad from the Coca-Cola Co. opens with a shot of a typewriter clacking out Stephen King’s The Shining. The viewer follows a passage being written in an old-timey typeface until there’s a reference to a bottle of Coke. Suddenly, the type appears as the cola company’s script logo. The ad is part of a new campaign called “Classic” running in Spain and the U.K., in which Coca-Cola highlights instances when its brand name appears in literature by rendering them in the books’ original first-edition typefaces. The passages are printed in black, and references to either “Coke” or “Coca-Cola” in passages from King’s The Shining, J. G. Ballard’s Extreme Metaphors, and V. S.…

A new Marvel movie, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, is set to arrive in July, and fans are already invested in its marketing campaign. Earlier this month, the film’s Instagram account uploaded a promo poster, and people have been reacting. On the subreddit r/marvelstudios commenters praised the poster’s minimalistic design and color scheme. (“The art for this movie has been [to] die for. Man. Whoever is doing this graphic design should be proud,” read one comment.) The retro-futuristic design features only two colors: sky blue and white. Overlapping figure fours surround white silhouettes of Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and the Thing standing in t…

During Milan Design Week—which encompasses Salone del Mobile, a furniture fair now in its 63rd edition, and Fuorisalone, the exhibitions held off-site—the Lombardian city transforms into a spritz-fueled celebration of all things design. Historic villas open their doors to become showrooms for new products and furniture, interior designers and architects flex their creativity in site-specific installations, and emerging practitioners debut work to an international audience that is eager to discover fresh, exciting ideas. And let’s not forget the brands. Milan Design Week has transformed from an interiors-focused event into a significant platform for fashion, auto…

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Despite the popular image of a strong leader as one who makes bold decisions and sticks with them, great leadership actually requires adapting to changing circumstances. A course of action that seemed like a great idea on one day may be a clear losing proposition when additional information becomes available. A complexity with changing your mind as a leader is that your previous choices and plans affect a number of other people’s lives. People who work for you are currently working to implement the plan you laid out. Others, like clients or suppliers, may be planning future e…

If you were to drink improperly recycled toilet water, it could really hurt you—but probably not in the way you’re thinking. Advanced purification technology so thoroughly cleans wastewater of feces and other contaminants that it also strips out natural minerals, which the treatment facility then has to add back in. If it didn’t, that purified water would imperil you by sucking those minerals out of your body as it moves through your internal plumbing. So if it’s perfectly safe to consume recycled toilet water, why aren’t Americans living in parched Western states drinking more of it? A new report from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the…

When Paige DeSorbo was applying to colleges, her mom suggested broadcast journalism school. “You would be a great news anchor,” she said. DeSorbo agreed; she always loved reading off a teleprompter and ended up attending journalism school in upstate New York. Today, the Bravo reality TV star, 32, isn’t exactly reading off a teleprompter, but she is constantly addressing the public. DeSorbo and her best friend and former Summer House castmate Hannah Berner parlayed their weekly Instagram Live musings into a podcast, Giggly Squad, in 2020. There, they bring comedic takes to everything from tariffs (chamoy pickles should have an extra tariff, they decided recently) to t…

At first glance, your Kindle might seem like a no-frills reading device: straightforward, minimal, and focused on the basics. Kind of like an actual book, huh? But beneath its simple exterior lies a surprising range of features, tools, and tricks designed to make reading smoother, smarter, and more enjoyable. So, whether you’re a seasoned reader or new to Kindle, here are five hidden gems to take your reading experience to the next level. Double-Tap to Turn PagesAmazon may have killed off physical buttons, there’s a new feature that might help ease the pain. If you’ve got the most recent Kindle Paperwhite or the new Kindle Colorsoft, you now have access to double-tap func…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. April is Earth Month and that means all I want to do is talk about plastic. Last August, I learned of a new study that revealed that the human brains studied were nearly 0.5% plastic by weight. Let that sink in. Plastic has infiltrated our bodies so thoroughly that it’s likely now a measurable part of our minds. Shouldn’t our brains just be, well, brain matter? How did we get here? For…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. PFAS contamination is everywhere: clothing, household products, even the water we drink. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), aka “forever chemicals,” are engineered to last, making them commonplace in manufacturing but devastating to human health and the environment. While regulators scramble to set new limits, traditional water treatment methods aren’t keeping up. For industry, th…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. AI won’t replace doctors anytime soon. Despite the clickbait headlines and the reports of chatbots outperforming doctors on this-or-that clinical task, medicine will always depend—literally and figuratively—on human touch. What’s interesting, though, is how AI seems to be improving that human touch. Thanks to notetaking apps, doctors can stop typing and be more present in the precious …