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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During an earnings call in June 2025, KB Home’s McGibney—whose company prefers outright home price cuts over incentives when adjustments are needed—said that some buyers turning to competitors are effectively overpaying for new builds to obtain mortgage rate buydowns. If those buyers need to sell in the near term, he warned, they could find themselves underwater and unable to recoup the artificially high base prices. “I believe that there are [builder] customers that are overpaying for the home to effectively get an incentive… They may potentially be…

Perusing the grocery aisle in the Westside Market on 23rd Street in Manhattan, you might not even notice the screens. They look just like paper price labels and, alongside a bar code, use a handwriting-style font we’ve come to associate with a certain merchant folksiness. They’re not particularly bright or showy. The only clues that they’re not ordinary sticky shelf labels are a barely distinguishable light bulb and, on some, a small QR code. These are electronic shelf labels, chip-enabled screens that some stores are now using to display product prices. Unlike their paper predecessors, the prices aren’t printed in ink but rendered in pixels, and they can change insta…

From AI tools to self-driving cars, new technologies regularly tout themselves as being autonomous. Yet, their companies often have to recruit us humans for help in unexpected ways. The most recent example comes courtesy of Waymo’s self-driving cars. The Alphabet-owned company has been hiring DoorDash drivers to close vehicle doors after a passenger leaves them open, CNBC reports. Yes, Waymo’s whole thing is driverless cars, but it needs another type of driver to show up and fix the simplest things. The arguably embarrassing predicament came to light when an Atlanta-based DoorDash driver shared Waymo’s request on Reddit. It reportedly offered the gig worker $…

When I spoke at the Arabian Business Awards a few years ago, I showed a slide describing research that shows meetings literally make people dumber: a study published in Transcripts of the Royal Society of London found that meetings cause you to (during the meeting) lose IQ points. A bunch of people in the audience took photos of that slide. The same was true when I presented a slide describing research published in Journal of Business Research showing that not only do 90 percent of employees feel meetings are unproductive, but when the number of meetings is reduced by 40 percent employee productivity increases by 70 percent. A bunch of people took photos of th…

A quarter of those under 30 say they’ve used AI for companionship, according to Associated Press-NORC polling. The one thing missing? Somewhere to take your AI Valentine on a date. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, EVA AI decided to solve that problem. The app—where users can text or, more recently, video chat with AI dates—organized a pop-up social experiment at Same Same Wine Bar in Manhattan this week. Over February 11 and 12, the dimly lit space was filled with patrons seated at tables for one, their AI companions propped up on phone stands. Attendees could bring their own existing AI partners or speed date from a selection of 100 characters. “This is another …

Variant, a generative design tool that promises endless UI exploration, recently introduced a feature most creative people and designers have used for decades: the eyedropper. In Variant, the tool picks vibes: It lets you click on one AI-generated interface and inject its aesthetic DNA—typography, spatial relationships, and color palettes—into another. After so much hype around “vibecoding” and its text-based imprecision, seeing a familiar, direct manipulation tool applied to generative AI feels great.​​ The new AI modality takes a nice step to close the gap between the impenetrable ways of large language model black boxes and the tools designers actually use with the…

A dispute between AI company Anthropic and the Pentagon over how the military can use the company’s technology has now gone public. Amid tense negotiations, Anthropic has reportedly called for limits on two key applications: mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The Defense Department, which The President renamed the Department of War last year, wants the freedom to use the technology without those restrictions. Caught in the middle is Palantir. The defense contractor provides the secure cloud infrastructure that allows the military to use Anthropic’s Claude model, but it has stayed quiet as tensions escalate. That’s even as the Pentagon, per Axios, threatens to d…

Monday night’s episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was missing something—an entire interview. But viewers weren’t left in the dark about why—host Stephen Colbert told his audience that CBS didn’t air his interview with Texas State Rep. James Talarico due to concerns it could run afoul of shifting FCC rules. “We were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said on the air Monday. That didn’t stop him from calling out the move in the episode and poking at FCC chair Brendan Carr and CBS—and it didn’t stop him uploading the entire interview to YouTube. But the incide…

What really holds people back from stepping up as allies in support of their marginalized colleagues? For example, why don’t more men say something when they see a colleague or a customer make a sexist remark about a female co-worker? Our research, published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, suggests that people often hesitate to intervene when co-workers are mistreated because they themselves feel disempowered in their organizations and experience distrust and polarization. Our findings run counter to the common assumption that people don’t step up to support marginalized colleagues because they don’t care or are unmotivated. Not seei…

When I cofounded Brilliant Earth in 2005, e-commerce was still in its infancy. I believed technology could reshape the jewelry industry entirely—changing how customers find pieces they love, personalizing their own designs, and reimagining the customer experience. We launched as a digital-first venture to do just that. Now, two decades into our pioneering digital journey, I’ve realized something surprising: Our most sophisticated online tools have actually made in-person interactions more valuable. I believe the brands leading the next wave of innovation aren’t choosing between digital and physical. They’re using digital excellence to help create meaningful in-person …

Baby care brand Frida is facing online backlash after screenshots of sexual innuendos in its marketing materials began circulating on social media. Frida, which describes itself as “the brand that gets parents,” sells a range of baby care, fertility, and postpartum products through major retailers, including Target. Last week, an X user shared images of several products’ packaging, writing: “sexual jokes to market baby products is actually sick and twisted @fridababy this is absolutely appalling and disgusting.” The post has since gained almost five million views on X. Among the examples highlighted is a social media graphic promoting the company’s 3-in-1 Tru…

“I really want to see a mass driver on the moon that is shooting AI satellites into deep space,” Elon Musk said last week when he announced his plan to go to the moon. “It’s going to be incredibly exciting to see it happen.” He’s right. I want to see it too, although probably we will both be dead before his vision is realized. The lunar mass driver—essentially a cannon that uses magnetic power to accelerate an object—is a key component to launch the million satellites Musk wants to put in orbit around the Earth. But Musk wasn’t the first person to come up with the idea. Smarter people than him thought about this in the 1970s as the solution to a key problem for human …

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand Wednesday to defend his company’s practices in a landmark trial that could determine whether social media companies can be held liable for alleged harms to children. But if the defendants lose, the implications could extend far beyond social media. The case centers on Meta and Google, with plaintiffs alleging that services like Instagram and YouTube are intentionally designed to keep users, especially kids, engaged—a dynamic they say can lead to harmful mental health effects, including addiction. The trial is widely viewed as a test case for roughly 1,500 similar lawsuits waiting in the wings. Meta and Google deny th…

Hello again, welcome to Fast Company’s Plugged In, and a quick note: A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a game I was vibe-coding using Claude Code, and said I would share it once I finished it. Here it is, along with more thoughts on the uncanny experience of collaborating with AI on a programming project. Late Show host Stephen Colbert and his network, CBS, are still at odds over why his planned interview with James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for a Texas U.S. Senate seat, didn’t air last Monday. In Colbert’s account, CBS lawyers forbid the broadcast after Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr said talk show interviews might trigger the FCC’s …

Walgreens will lay off hundreds of employees as the pharmacy chain continues to struggle with increased competition and higher-than-desired costs. On top of this, the newly private company is expected to close at least another few dozen retail stores in 2026. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Walgreens has announced that it will cut at least 628 jobs across two states, according to communications it sent to the states in question earlier this month. A Walgreens spokesperson confirmed the layoffs with Fast Company when reached for comment. News of the layoffs was first reported by Bloomberg. The job cuts include 469 positions in the company’s ho…

OpenAI, the maker of the most popular AI chatbot, used to say it aimed to build artificial intelligence that “safely benefits humanity, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” mission statement. But the ChatGPT maker seems to no longer have the same emphasis on doing so “safely.” While reviewing its latest IRS disclosure form, which was released in November 2025 and covers 2024, I noticed OpenAI had removed “safely” from its mission statement, among other changes. That change in wording coincided with its transformation from a nonprofit organization into a business increasingly focused on profits. OpenAI currently faces several lawsuits related to i…

When word started circling that AMC Theaters was screening an AI-generated short film, the internet’s cinephiles took it personally. On Wednesday, some social media users reported that the short was playing in the pre-show before trailers at select AMC locations. A little digging revealed the source: Earlier this week, the short, titled Thanksgiving Day, was announced as the winner of the inaugural Frame Forward Animated AI Film Festival. The prize package included a nationwide theatrical release, which apparently entailed making its way to AMC’s screens. Movie lovers across social media were immediately up in arms. Some called for boycotts. Some found it insultin…

If you walk into a grocery store in the Netherlands or Germany, you might not realize you’re being steered toward plant-based protein, from vegan tortellini to plant-based yogurt. But across Europe and the UK, major retailers are quietly driving that shift. And they’re seeing results at a time when plant-based sales are struggling in the US. Lidl, a budget supermarket, grew UK sales of its private-label plant-based line by nearly 700% from 2020 to 2025. In Germany, France, and Italy, plant-based retail sales are growing across multiple categories, with most of that growth coming from supermarkets’ own brands. Lidl is one of several retailers with a deliberate stra…

Our capacity to juggle several tasks at once is among the most important capabilities of the human cognitive system. Just consider a typical day in the life of a modern human: you glance at your phone while waiting for coffee to brew, skim headlines while half-listening to a podcast, mentally rehearse a client pitch while walking your child to school, reply “noted” on Slack during a meeting while updating a slide deck, check your bank balance while standing in line, and, in a moment of entirely optional productivity theatre, scroll through a friend’s Facebook feed to see what their cat had for breakfast (admittedly, not the most important addition to our already heavy…

Boom Supersonic wants to build the world’s first commercial supersonic airliner. Founded in 2014, the company set out to make air travel dramatically faster — up to twice the speed of today’s passenger jets — while also aiming for a smaller environmental footprint. For years, Boom has focused on developing the high-performance engine technology needed to sustain supersonic flight. Though the company has not yet debuted its revolutionary jet, last year it identified a new and potentially lucrative application for its novel technology: generating electricity for the data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom. Many of these data centers want the kind of f…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has defended the resource-intensive use of AI by comparing it to all the energy—and food—that humans require, sparking a wave of backlash across social media. That comparison, experts in climate and tech spaces say, is misguided, downplays the climate risks associated with AI, and illustrates the disconnect between tech CEOs and the rest of society. Altman’s comments came while speaking to the Indian Express at the India AI Impact summit. The outlet asked him to address some of the common criticisms of AI, including the amount of energy and water the technology requires. “One of the things that is always unfair in this comparison is peop…

When a new general-purpose technology emerges—be it railroads, electricity, computers, etc.—companies react in predictable ways. A small minority tries to reinvent themselves around it; the majority looks first for ways to cut costs. Right now, in the middle of the most significant technological inflection since the internet, many organizations are choosing the second path. They deploy artificial intelligence to automate call centers, reduce head count in back offices, and squeeze marginal gains out of existing processes. They measure “AI ROI” in payroll savings and hours reclaimed. It feels rational. It feels disciplined. It feels safe. It is also the fast…

Ford is recalling nearly 413,000 Explorer SUVs in the U.S. The recall comes after federal regulators warned that a faulty rear suspension component called a “toe link” could restrict a driver’s steering control. According to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recall report, the recall impacts 2017-2019 Explorer vehicles, with the company estimated around 1% of the selected models are affected. The notice also explained that the recall is an expansion of previous NHTSA recall, number 21V537. “The root cause has not been fully determined to date,” a Feb. 20 report explained. “Some reports indicate vehicles experienced a seized CABJ”, which “will resu…