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Just under a year after the rebirth of the Kickstarter favorite Pebble smartwatch, the founder of that tech gadget is debuting the company’s next product. The Pebble Index 01 is a smart ring of sorts, but instead of focusing on health data or sleep cycles, the sole purpose of this ring is to help wearers remember thoughts that bolt out of the blue during the middle of the day. “Do you ever have flashes of insight or an idea worth remembering? This happens to me five to 10 times every day,” Eric Migicovsky, who shepherded Pebble from Y Combinator to an angel investment of $375,000 to the record-setting Kickstarter campaign, wrote in a blog post. “If I don’t write d…

Every December, something strange happens inside companies. Decisions that were stuck for months suddenly fly through. Projects get approved. Budgets get finalized. People stop debating and finally choose. Leaders usually chalk this up to “year-end energy” or “the holiday push.” That is an easy story, but it hides what is actually going on. December forces leaders into a tighter frame. There is less time to overthink, fewer acceptable choices, and clearer expectations. In other words, the environment is designed in a way that produces commitment instead of delay—even though for complex, novel strategic bets, the calendar alone is rarely enough. This isn’t holiday …

Any office party can be challenging, but holiday office parties are particularly stressful. After all, the season brings a set of demands—including the need to be “merry and bright” when you may not feel that way. To survive this end-of-year event (and to use it to advance your career), here are three strategies that will work wonders. 1. Use Holiday Parties as a Chance to Get to Know New People There are good reasons to circulate broadly at your next holiday party and not to hang out with people you already know. Clustering with friends can lead to excessive drinking, and with that comes danger to your health and safety. Staying with your pals or people you wo…

In the tournament of pop culture—an arena increasingly obsessed with charts, data, and stat lines—Taylor Swift has, by most measures, already emerged the victor. In her nearly two decades in the public eye, she has become a billionaire by engineering one of the most dependable fan bases on the planet: a legion willing to buy every vinyl variant for her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, and generate such collective frenzy at her 149-date Eras Tour that it registered as seismic activity. Swift has become something like an institution, around whom various rituals and practices have formed, whether the exchanging of friendship bracelets or sharing easter eggs wi…

There’s a statistic that’s been making the rounds for the better part of a decade that says the average person is exposed to about 10,000 ads every day. This has always sounded a tad suspect, as it amounts to an ad every six seconds of our waking day (it has since been debunked). But maybe the reason it’s persisted this long is because it really feels true. Our feeds are saturated with ads. The airwaves, TV broadcasts, sports sidelines, team jerseys, and our streamers are full of them. Now artificial intelligence is threatening to make that 10,000 ads a day statistic a reality. Agency Genre.ai has made AI-generated ads for IM8, Popeye’s, and Qatar Airlines, …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the Pandemic Housing Boom, from summer 2020 to spring 2022, the number of active homes for sale in most housing markets plummeted as homebuyer demand quickly absorbed almost everything that came up for sale and sellers had ultimate power. Fast-forward to the current housing market, and the places where active inventory has rebounded to 2019 levels (due to strained affordability suppressing buyer demand) are now the very places where homebuyers have gained the most power. At the end of November 2025, national active housing inventory for sa…

Like many of you, I grew up watching It’s a Wonderful Life on television every holiday season. Frank Capra’s beloved film was a comforting part of our holiday tradition, often playing in the background while my family wrapped presents, cooked, or otherwise made merry. Although the film was made in 1946, its lessons about money, power, and community seem remarkably relevant (and more poignant than ever) in 2025. Despite the passage of nearly 80 years, Americans are still facing many of the same issues that the citizens of Bedford Falls dealt with. Rewatching George Bailey regain his hope can offer us a modern blueprint for handling these timeless economic woes. …

CNBC and its sister networks, including USA, Golf Channel, and E!, are spinning off from their former parent company Comcast NBCUniversal to form a new publicly traded company called Versant. As part of the new company, some of the brands in the portfolio have to rebrand to get rid of NBC’s iconic Peacock mark, CNBC included. CNBC’s new logo, which goes live December 13, might take viewers some time to get used to. The financial news network’s new logo was designed in house to easily match the preexisting visual assets it uses on air. The typography of the mark based is on the network’s font, Gotham, and it shows a triangle cutting into the letter N and float…

Can ChatGPT dethrone Gemini? Is Tim Cook capable of leading Apple into the next wave of AI? As 2025 winds down, journalist and podcast host Kara Swisher cuts through the noise and decodes what’s really happening across OpenAI, Meta, Google, and more. Then, Swisher sizes up the state of Disney, Netflix, and the escalating bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid R…

Your smartphone is only as good as the charge it holds. It doesn’t matter if you have the newest flagship iPhone or Android—when the device’s battery dies, all the bells and whistles don’t mean diddly. And manufacturers know it. For years, Apple and Google have managed to pack increasingly larger-capacity batteries into the phones they make. The larger the battery, the longer your phone can stay charged. But in recent years, both companies have also been turning to software features on their phones’ operating systems to help maximize battery life. Apple added several software-based battery maximization enhancements in iOS 26. Google has done the same with its popu…

Imagine you’ve set the goal of running a marathon that’s 90 days away. You’ve hired a trainer who says this a less than optimal amount of time, but if you stick religiously to her fitness routine, nutrition plan, and sleep schedule, you’ll be ready come race day. Cheat in any of those three areas, she warns, and you won’t be able to run 26.2 miles on three month’s notice. Let’s assume you feel pretty good about your odds of following through in each area. You believe there’s a 70% chance you’ll stick with the fitness routine, a 70% chance you’ll stick with the nutrition plan, and a 70% chance you’ll stick with the sleep schedule. What are your odds of doing all three…

Humans are a unique species, because of our collective knowledge of our own mortality. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the average life expectancy for males in the United States is 75.8 years. That means entertainer extraordinaire Dick Van Dyke is defying statistics by turning 100 years old this Saturday, December 13. As he reaches this milestone birthday, let’s take a look back at his impressive career, what he credits his longevity to, and how he plans to celebrate. We’ll also cover how you can get in on the action and celebrate the Mary Poppins actor. A brief Dick Van Dyke biography Richard Wayne Van Dyke was born in West P…

The fallout from the The President administration’s dramatic cuts to American public media is only just beginning. The governing group that oversees public educational TV in Arkansas voted on Thursday to split with PBS, the national public broadcast network best known for Sesame Street. The network formerly known as Arkansas PBS will rebrand as Arkansas TV, making it the first state public broadcast network to part with the national network synonymous with public access TV. The state network will officially sever its ties to PBS on July 1, 2026, at the beginning of Arkansas’ next fiscal year. Its commission framed the decision as a cost saving measure, citing a lo…

This holiday season isn’t quite so merry for American shoppers as large shares are dipping into savings, scouring for bargains, and feeling like the overall economy is stuck in a rut under President Donald The President, a new AP-NORC poll finds. The vast majority of U.S. adults say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries, electricity, and holiday gifts in recent months, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Roughly half of Americans say it’s harder than usual to afford the things they want to give as holiday gifts, and similar numbers are delaying big purchases or cutting back on nonessential pur…

I personally can never bring myself to tell people that I’d rather forgo their gift and just get cash instead—or better yet, a Venmo. It feels almost too blunt, a cheap shot. So each year, when I unwrap another pair of socks, I smile through gritted teeth. I feel a twinge of guilt in admitting it. But, to my relief, it appears I’m not the only one. A new Wells Fargo survey finds younger generations are driving a shift toward digital cash gifts, choosing convenience and flexibility over traditional wrapped presents. A staggering 45% of Gen Z and 42% of millennials say they’d rather receive digital payments, compared with 27% of Gen X and just 10% of baby boomers. …

If the holiday hustle and bustle is stressing you out, the night sky is providing a perfect moment to pause and wonder at some majesty this weekend, as the Geminid meteor shower (Geminids) is set to peak. The Geminids are technically active annually—this year, from around December 1 through 21, and the action peaks on the evenings of the 12th and 13th. Let’s take a look at the science and history behind this cosmic phenomenon, before we dive into how best to view it. When was the Geminid meteor shower first discovered? These days, the Geminid meteor shower is considered by NASA to be “one of the best and most reliable annual meteor showers.” The event s…

Wealthfront Corp. is looking to rake in the wealth after going public on Friday. The Palo Alto-based automated digital wealth platform raised $486 million after selling 43.6 million shares, putting the company’s valuation at roughly $2 billion. Wealthfront shares began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker “WLTH.” The company made more than 34.6 million shares of common stock available for the IPO for $14—an offering that expires on Monday, December 15. The stock was up around 4% by mid-afternoon on Friday afternoon after trading began. To mark the occasion, the company’s leadership—including CEO David Fortunato, cofounder and chairman Andy Rachleff, a…

Time magazine has named the “Architects of AI” as its 2025 Person of the Year, a decision that has sparked significant backlash from gamblers who lost out on semantics. The companies behind AI tools and infrastructure aren’t “AI” in the literal sense, so prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket ruled that anyone betting on “AI” doesn’t win. As author Parker Molloy pointed out on Bluesky, gamblers on the site are not pleased. “Someone please explain to me how this is not a trick?” one user complained after betting on billionaire Elon Musk on Kalshi. “Person of the year is a singular title…” “ThE aRcHiTeCtS oF AI,” another user wrote. “Fuck you pay me.” Oth…

President Donald The President was sued on Friday by preservationists asking a federal court to halt his White House ballroom project until it goes through multiple independent reviews and wins approval from Congress. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is asking the U.S. District Court to block The President’s White House ballroom project, which already has involved razing the East Wing, until it goes through comprehensive design reviews, environmental assessments, public comments, and congressional debate and ratification. The National Trust, a privately funded organization, argues that The President, by fast-tracking the project, has committed multiple…

The holiday season means time with family and new memories, but it can also mean lots of spending—sometimes too much. From gifts to travel plans to grocery shopping, costs can pile up and become overwhelming, especially in a difficult economic environment. Holiday shopping can bring joy, but it’s important to stick to a budget and avoid going into debt, said shopping expert Trae Bodge. “I’m really emphasizing that shoppers look for ways to save as much as possible this season. So we don’t bring that debt into the next year,” Bodge added. Here are some expert recommendations to make the most out of your budget this holiday season: Plan your gift list and sh…

This week, a new fashion boutique quietly opened in SoHo. Much like its neighbors, H&M and American Eagle, the new shop features racks of affordably priced, trendy apparel. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was another fast fashion label, but it’s not: it’s Target. Target has retrofitted its existing SoHo store as a “design-forward concept store,” with a focus on fashion and beauty. The store’s entrance, which features a long hallway drenched in the brand’s iconic red, is full of racks with sparkly skirts and faux-fur jackets for holiday parties. Target has dubbed this area “The Drop” and will feature new, seasonal merchandise that is updated every six to eight we…

Onetime cryptocurrency mogul Do Kwon was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison after a $40 billion crash revealed his crypto ecosystem to be a fraud. Victims said the 34-year-old financial technology whiz weaponized their trust to convince them that the investment — secretly propped up by cash infusions — was safe. Kwon, a Stanford graduate known by some as “the cryptocurrency king,” apologized after listening as victims — one in court and others by telephone — described the scam’s toll: wiping out nest eggs, depleting charities and wrecking lives. One told the judge in a letter that he contemplated suicide after his father lost his retirement money in the scheme. …

A federal appeals court on Thursday backed a ruling that held Apple in civil contempt for brazenly defying an order designed to open its iPhone app store to other payment systems besides its own, but the decision also reopened a door for the company to collect commission from the rival options. The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals mostly validated a scalding contempt order issued in April by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for violating a key part of her September 2021 findings in a legal battle instigated by video game maker Epic Games. But the Ninth Circuit’s 54-page decision overturned one key part of G…

Ford Motor Co. has stepped up technology in its popular F-150 pickup to combat the ever-evolving techniques car thieves have at their disposal. It is the latest cat-and-mouse move that the automaker hopes will help customers avoid the costly and frustrating process that occurs when vehicles are swiped and includes a feature that won’t allow an engine to start even if a key fob is in the pickup. Motor vehicle thefts recently have been on the decline in the U.S. after several years of increases. Still, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that more than 850,000 vehicles were stolen in the U.S. in 2024, pegging losses at $8 billion. But thefts dropped 2…

In the past decade, AI’s success has led to uncurbed enthusiasm and bold claims—even though users frequently experience errors that AI makes. An AI-powered digital assistant can misunderstand someone’s speech in embarrassing ways, a chatbot could hallucinate facts, or, as I experienced, an AI-based navigation tool might even guide drivers through a corn field—all without registering the errors. People tolerate these mistakes because the technology makes certain tasks more efficient. Increasingly, however, proponents are advocating the use of AI—sometimes with limited human supervision—in fields where mistakes have high cost, such as health care. For example, a bill in…