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As national Democrats search for a unifying theme ahead of the fall’s midterm elections, a California proposal to levy a hefty tax on billionaires is turning some of the party’s leading figures into adversaries just when Democrats can least afford division from within. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders traveled to Los Angeles on Wednesday to campaign for the tax proposal, which has Silicon Valley in an uproar, with tech titans threatening to leave the state. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is among its outspoken opponents, warning that it could leave government finances in crisis and put the state at a competitive disadvantage nationally. At an evening rally near downtown, Sande…

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday invited leaders of some of the top artificial intelligence companies to gather on stage as part of a commitment to build more “inclusive and multilingual” AI around the world. And they did. But what caught some of the audience’s attention, and later went viral on social media, was an awkward interaction between two rival tech leaders: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Modi, host of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, clasped hands with those closest to him — Altman to his left and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to his right — and beckoned all 13 tech leaders to lift their hands up in a chain, like …

At first glance, it could be the trailer for a new Hollywood blockbuster starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. “This was a 2 line prompt in seedance 2,” Irish filmmaker Ruairí Robinson clarifies in a caption on X of the 15-second clip, which shows two of the industry’s biggest stars locked in a fistfight on a crumbling rooftop, complete with sweeping camera angles and crisp sound effects. This was a 2 line prompt in seedance 2. If the hollywood is cooked guys are right maybe the hollywood is cooked guys are cooked too idk. pic.twitter.com/dNTyLUIwAV — Ruairi Robinson (@RuairiRobinson) February 11, 2026 The viral AI-generated clip has garnered more than 1.8 milli…

You may be loyal to United, but the airline really wants you to show your loyalty by carrying around a United MileagePlus credit card or debit card. Chicago-based United Airlines announced a major overhaul to its frequent flyer program on Thursday, with better benefits arriving soon for its cardholders. While the airline cheerily billed the changes as giving travelers “new reasons” to have one of its credit or debit cards, the changes mean that non-cardholders will soon accrue fewer rewards than they currently do. The biggest change is that starting on April 2, United MileagePlus cardholders can earn up to four times more miles on travel booked with the airline th…

You can put a lot of different things in fried rice, but certainly not glass. Unfortunately, that might be an ingredient in certain packages of Trader Joe’s chicken fried rice. Frozen food manufacturer Ajinomoto Foods North America is recalling more than 3 million pounds of chicken fried rice products due to potential glass contamination. The recall includes products with both Ajinomoto and Trader Joe’s branding. The manufacturer, based in Portland, Oregon, notified the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) after it received four customer complaints of glass in the rice. As of Thursday, February 19, no related inju…

The biggest drama in Hollywood in recent months hasn’t been on the silver screen but in the boardrooms of two of the most powerful companies in the industry. In December, streaming giant Netflix announced its intention to acquire legendary Hollywood studio Warner Bros. after its planned separation from Discovery Global. The proposed merger has sparked heated debate in Hollywood about the future of the cinema industry, and now, one of the most successful filmmakers in the world, James Cameron, has entered the fray. ‘Titanic’ director calls proposed merger ‘disastrous’ Many in Hollywood have not publicly spoken out against the proposed Netflix-Warner Bros…

You’re stuck in traffic again, late for work, watching brake lights stretch to the horizon. According to the most recent data in the U.S. (2024), here are some of the ways traffic jams are lowering the quality of life: Americans lost an average of an entire work week sitting in traffic. Commuter costs have surged 16% over the past five years to reach $269 billion annually. Congestion time for commuters has gone up 10% since 2019 and it’s 19% for trucks delivering all the products we buy. Stress increases of 80%, and aggressiveness increases of 52%. Long stretches in traffic lead to back pain, leg pain, and headaches. There’s no one solution to dealin…

As AI use continues to grow, so is frustration with the technology. From strange responses that don’t make any sense to learning curves to how it’s implemented at work, there’s no shortage of AI quirks to get used to. However, how users are responding to those annoyances is vastly different. According to a new report from Adobe Acrobat and Firefly, frustrations are not few. In fact, of the 1,008 AI users survey, 91% said they have abandoned generative AI tasks in favor of non-AI methods over said emotion. Mostly, that’s because writing quality AI prompts is a key strategy in effectively using the tool, but it’s not always totally intuitive. There’s a definit…

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is sounding the alarm bell, warning investors that he is starting to see some similarities between today’s financial landscape and the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis, nearly 20 years ago. “Unfortunately, we did see this in ’05, ’06, ’07, almost the same thing,” Dimon said at the firm’s annual investor day in New York on Monday. “The rising tide lifting all boats, everyone was making a lot of money, people leveraging to the hilt. The sky was the limit.” “I don’t know how long it’s going to be great for everybody,” he explained. “I see a couple of people doing some dumb things . . . they are just doing some dumb things.…

For decades, we’ve been told that the smartest organizations are “data-driven.” The phrase carries moral weight. To be guided by data is to be serious, rational, modern. If you’re not, you’re seen as ideological or sentimental. In the workplace, quantification has become synonymous with credibility and competence. And yet, the more data we accumulate, the less certain we seem to be that we are making better decisions. There’s a paradox. Organizations are drowning in dashboards, KPIs, performance metrics, behavioral traces, biometric indicators, predictive scores, engagement rates, and AI-generated forecasts. We have more data than we know what to do with. We pretend t…

There are a few odors from adolescence that are seared into the brains of most Americans who grew up after the 1980s: the aroma of freshly baked brick pizza in the school cafeteria, the acrid stink of a locker room, and the unmistakable scent of teen boys wearing an unforgivable amount of Axe body spray. The phenomenon of teens dousing themselves in Axe has become so ubiquitous since the brand’s founding in 1983 that over the past few years it’s inspired its own subgenre of memes (see this one and this one, for example). Now Axe has its sights set on a new generation of consumers with a redesigned spray mechanism for its signature product. To mark the occas…

Your colleagues decide in less than a minute whether your email is worth replying to. Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index Report shows that the average employee receives 117 emails a day, and most are skimmed in under 60 seconds. In other words, if your email takes someone more than a minute to understand, there’s a strong chance you won’t be getting a timely response. Well-written emails don’t just make you sound smarter; studies show that they also reduce misunderstandings and speed up responses. Here are five simple ways to get faster email responses, while also helping your recipient preserve mental energy and time. BREAK UP WITH THE EMAIL BRICK Long bloc…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Since the 2008 housing bust and subsequent Great Financial Crisis (GFC), mortgage lending has steadily shifted away from big banks. In the years that followed—amid tighter regulations, higher capital requirements, and elevated litigation risk—many large banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, reduced their mortgage footprint. In that void, nonbank lenders, also known as independent mortgage banks (IMBs), such as Rocket Mortgage, United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), and loanDepot, gained market share. Now, a top Federal Reserve …

In the latest chapter of the pizza wars, Papa Johns announced it is closing hundreds of North America locations during a fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday. It will also cut about 7% of its workforce. In that call, Papa Johns’ chief financial officer and president of North America Ravi Thanawal said the company plans to shutter a total of 300 underperforming restaurants in North America “that are not meeting brand expectations or lack a clear path to sustainable financial improvement, as well as locations where we can effectively transfer sales to a nearby restaurant.” The closures will happen by the end of 2027, with the first two-thirds closed by year end.…

Since taking over the coffee chain in 2024, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol has been on a mission to go “back to Starbucks” and rekindle the feeling of warmth inside the coffee giant. That’s led to new store designs, new employee training, new uniforms, new menu items, and new staffing—which have helped the company break out of a two-year sales rut. But as part of this deep strategic exploration, Niccol made two specific asks for Starbucks’s cross-discipline design team that are being revealed today: an iconic new cup and a new plush chair. As the literal touchpoints between the consumer and the company, “they are the biggest signals we have of warmth, comfort, an…

In early February, the AI world found itself worked up over Moltbook, a social platform for AI agents to communicate and interact. These AI agents allegedly created their own language, their own religion, their own fleets of mini-agents. It’s like The Matrix was happening in front of our eyes. What a boondoggle. I say “allegedly” because it turns out many of these agents were being directed by humans, among other Mechanical Turk-style fakeries. Moltbook is worth a conversation, for sure, but not the one taking place. Here’s how we should really be thinking about it. TOKEN CARNAGE Running AI infrastructure costs are astronomical. Back in 2023, it was est…

Shares in the financial technology company Block soared more than 20% in premarket trading Friday after its CEO announced it was laying off more than 4,000 of its 10,000 plus employees, reconfiguring to capitalize on its use of artificial intelligence. “The core thesis is simple. Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Jack Dorsey said in a letter to shareholders in Block, the parent company to online payment platforms such as Square and Cash App. “A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better,” he said. Dorsey’s comments explicitly naming AI as a key driver behind the move were also posted …

Archer Aviation is installing Starlink on its Midnight electric air taxis, the company announced on February 27. The move, an industry first, will bring “stable, reliable, and high-speed connectivity” to Archer’s vehicles courtesy of Starlink’s low-Earth-orbit satellite internet systems. Starlink capabilities will allow passengers to access the internet in-flight while also enabling better communication between individual aircraft, pilots, and engineers on the ground to create a more integrated and connected infrastructure. The two companies will also work on developing connectivity technology for Archer’s future autonomous aircraft, Archer said. “Connecti…

On Thursday, Block CEO Jack Dorsey announced that his fintech company, which owns Square and Cash App, would be laying off a whopping 40% of its workforce, slashing over 4,000 jobs. Despite a “strong year” in 2025, Dorsey—like many of his tech executive peers—believes AI will enable greater efficiency with far fewer workers. “Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” he wrote in a letter to shareholders. “We’re already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better.” A number of business leaders have seemingly used AI as a smokescreen for layoffs, but Dorsey has e…

The U.S. and Israel’s attack on Iran led to commercial flights disruption on Saturday across the Middle East and beyond as regional airspaces began closing and tens of thousands of travelers around the globe were stranded. Israel, Qatar, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain closed their airspace, while Oman’s Muscat International Airport shut down and all flights were restricted over the United Arab Emirates, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24. Major airlines based in the Middle East with worldwide networks canceled hundreds of flights while many other travelers were unexpectedly diverted to airports across Europe or flown back to departure airpor…

Below, Joe Tidy shares five key insights from his new book, Ctrl + Alt + Chaos: How Teenage Hackers Hijack the Internet. Tidy is the BBC’s first cyber correspondent and a leading voice on cybercrime. He has covered major global cyberattacks and produced widely viewed international documentaries, including a high-profile investigation into Russia’s most wanted cybercriminal. What’s the big idea? Teenage hackers are quietly reshaping cybercrime. They’re not movie-style geniuses, but persistent, socially connected, and often addicted—causing real harm through data breaches and feeding a cycle that leads to ever more serious attacks. Listen to the audio version…

While some parts of the country deal with freezing temperatures and blizzards, Los Angeles sits comfortably in the mid-70s. Beyond the sunshine, the forecast calls for red carpets and celebrity gossip as award season is in full swing. The newly rebranded Actor Awards Presented by SAG-AFTRA is arguably the most emotional and meaningful celebration of the season because it is where fellow performers honor their own. Here’s everything you need to know about the 32nd iteration of the former Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG Awards). The opening monologues While it’s easy to assume that being an actor is all glamour and glory, the opening monologues dispel t…

Let’s be honest: The web browser is the modern-day operating system for everything from managing spreadsheets to pretending to work while reading tech blogs. Google knows this. That’s why the Chrome team announced a trio of new productivity features designed for people who basically live inside their browsers. Best of all? They’re actually quite useful. Here’s what you need to know to get your tab-hoarding, PDF-losing life back in order. Split View You know the drill. You’re trying to reference a document while writing an email, or maybe you’re watching a tutorial while trying to write code. You end up clicking back and forth between two tabs until your eye…