What's on Your Mind?

A new album called “Is This What We Want?” features a stellar list of more than 1,000 musicians—and the sound of silence. With contributions from artists including Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Cat Stevens, and Damon Albarn, the album was released Tuesday to protest proposed British changes to artificial intelligence laws that artists fear will erode their creative control. The U.K. government is consulting on whether to let tech firms use copyrighted material to help train AI models unless the creators explicitly opt out. Critics of the idea fear that will make it harder for artists to retain control of their work and will undermine Britain’s creative industries. Elton Joh…

Today, February 25, is a make-or-break day for Super Micro Computer (aka Supermicro) and its stock, which trades on the Nasdaq under the SMCI ticker. That’s because by the end of today, the beleaguered server company needs to file its delinquent Form 10-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). If it fails to do so, the company’s shares may be delisted from the Nasdaq. Here’s what you need to know about its stock price ahead of the deadline and the possible outcomes should Super Micro Computer fail to meet its requirements. SMCI stock price sinks ahead of filing deadline As of the time of this writing, in early trading SMCI’s stock price is down…

Home Depot broke a two-year slump in same store sales during the fourth quarter as customer demand improved in a housing market that has been buffeted by soaring mortgage rates and a scarcity of homes up for sale. Revenue for the Atlanta company climbed to $39.7 billion from $34.79 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet were calling for $39.15 billion. Home Depot Inc. said Tuesday that the extra week in the quarter added approximately $2.5 billion in sales for the period. Sales at stores open at least a year, a key indicator of a retailer’s health, edged up 0.8%. In the U.S., comparable store sales rose 1.3%. It is the first quarterly increase since January 2023 and much …

The airline industry is notoriously hard to decarbonize: large jets traveling long distances can’t feasibly use batteries, and sustainable aviation fuel is still only produced in tiny volumes. As airlines explore a range of options, United Airlines Ventures’ Sustainable Flight Fund just invested in one possible solution—a system that uses crushed rocks to capture CO2 for use in fuel or to store underground. The fund announced today that it invested an unspecified amount in Heirloom, a company that uses a powder made from limestone to pull CO2 from the air, relying on the material’s natural ability to absorb the greenhouse gas. At a facility in California’s Central…

An annual United Nations conference on biodiversity that ran out of time last year will resume its work Tuesday in Rome with money at the top of the agenda. That is, how to spend what’s been pledged so far—and how to raise a lot more to help preserve plant and animal life on Earth. The talks in Colombia known as COP16 yielded some significant outcomes before they broke up in November, including an agreement that requires companies that benefit from genetic resources in nature—say, by developing medicines from rainforest plants—to share the benefits. And steps were taken to give Indigenous peoples and local communities a stronger voice in conservation matters. But two w…

As Fashion Week takes over New York, London, and Milan, designers aren’t just showcasing their collections on the runway—they’re taking over LinkedIn. The job-seeking platform reports a fivefold increase in live fashion show broadcasts over the past three years, with 85% of luxury brands turning to the professional social network to reach those with money to spend. LVMH and Louis Vuitton set the trend in 2019, making live fashion shows on LinkedIn the core of their engagement strategy. The move quickly paid off. After unveiling a new men’s collection in Shanghai, the brand drew nearly a million potential luxury buyers in just three days. Soon fashion powerhouses…

Patrón says all the tequila it has ever made since 1989 has been free of additives. The brand is now ready to get loud and talk about it. This week, Patrón is debuting a new additive-free marketing campaign that will run across digital, print, and out-of-home advertising in key markets including New York City and Los Angeles. The additive-free copy features lines like “Our secret ingredient is that we have no secret ingredients” and “When tequila is this good, additives don’t add anything.” Since Patrón’s inception, the brand says it has only made tequila with three ingredients: 100% weber blue agave, water, and yeast. The few exceptions are for the brand’s liqueu…

Riddle me this: What exactly is Trello? Despite counting myself as a heavy-duty power user of the product for well over a decade now, it’s a question I’ve long struggled to answer. Technically, Trello has always seemed to fall into that group of apps folks like to frame as “project management tools”—products like Asana, ClickUp, and Notion that do a pinch of everything and are as much note makers, info savers, and life managers as they are project organizers. But Trello in particular has always been a bit of a chameleon. Personally, I’ve used it for everything from storing story ideas to mapping out my weekly newsletters and even organizing my home workouts. Part of what …

The intense red color of classic lipstick traditionally comes from an unlikely source: crushed bugs that live on cactus plants in South America. It takes tens of thousands of the ground-up insects to make just a pound of the vivid red dye. The red coloring, called carmine, also shows up in food—from red velvet cupcakes to sausages, gummy candies, and some versions of strawberry yogurt. In the cosmetics industry, major brands started moving away from carmine in the 2010s because of ethical concerns. A growing number of consumers wanted vegan makeup. (Crushing bugs also creates an allergen because of other bug parts that end up in the dye.) But because synthetic dyes do…

After 16 years of experiments to bring Photoshop apps to the phone, Adobe is launching its most convincing attempt yet. Called Photoshop Mobile and available in the App Store today, it’s Adobe’s first earnest attempt to build a Photoshop on mobile with the same unique powers that have made it so popular on desktop. This new Photoshop has been built from the ground up specifically for the phone, where it can sync seamlessly with Photoshop versions on the web and desktop. (An Android version is due this summer.) Pros will appreciate a few big technical headlines: You can have an unlimited number of layers, and there is no restriction on file sizes. (Vector drawing tools are…

Few self-help ideas are as prevalent and widely celebrated as the advice to “just be yourself.” Whether in job interviews, workplace interactions, or career choices, we are frequently encouraged to act “authentically”—without compromise or concern for external pressures. While this sounds comforting and empowering, authenticity as an interpersonal strategy is fundamentally flawed and at odds with hundreds of scientific studies on emotional intelligence, social skills, and career success. As I illustrate in my forthcoming book, Don’t Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated and What To Do Instead, authenticity is not a helpful life hack, but rather a misguide…

When Apple first introduced MagSafe for the iPhone in 2020, I did not fully appreciate it. iPhones had supported wireless charging for a few years at that point—and Android phones started doing so in 2012—and while MagSafe offered faster and less finicky charging, it didn’t really change how you use your phone. Over time, though, Apple’s magnetic charging and docking system has blossomed into an important piece of the Apple accessory ecosystem. All of which makes the lack of MagSafe on the new iPhone 16e a letdown. It’s not the only compromise Apple made in pursuit of a $600 price tag: It also has just one rear camera lens, only two color options, and a front came…

“Competency checking” is a practice that imposes extra scrutiny on Black professionals and people of color, challenging their qualifications, intellect, and ability to advance. There are three primary ways competency checking is deployed in the modern workplace. The first is the assumption of Black intellectual inferiority and/or a lack of qualifications. This can manifest in low expectations, marginalization, and extreme micromanagement. (More simply: If someone assumes, consciously or unconsciously, that all Black people are intellectually inferior, they may question the person and their qualifications more closely during an interview and, once hired, pay much more …

Ford has used some version of its famous script logo for more than a century, but despite its widespread usage, people are scratching their heads over a detail they just noticed. In a viral TikTok, user Monica Turner asked viewers to pick the correct version of the automaker’s logo, one with a funny-looking flourish on the logo’s “F” and one without. Viewers were split on which version they thought was correct, and to some commenters’ surprise, it’s the one with the curlicue. Side by side and to the untrained eye, the real Ford logo looks fake next to its dupe. In the age of corporate blanding, the curlicue flourish reads as fake, but it’s been there as f…

Hey ChatGPT, you talk too much. You too, Gemini. Like many LLMs, you are insufferable. You make Fidel Castro’s 6-hour speeches feel like haikus. I ask, “why do you LLMs talk so damn much?” and in response, you churn out a 671-word answer that resembles a third-grade essay—75% of it devoid of any real meaning or fact. You ramble about how much you ramble. You are incapable of giving me one straight answer, even if I carefully craft a two-paragraph prompt trying to coerce you into it. When I finally get you to respond with one monosyllable, you ruin it by adding a long apologetic promise that it will never ever happen again. Apparently I’m not alone in my ire. I’ve been…

As organizations grapple with rapid developments in technology and policy while also balancing shifting market conditions and financial realities, having a deep bench of leadership talent is crucial. However, a recent survey from TalentLMS, found that 45% of managers say their companies aren’t doing enough to develop future leaders. One of the key issues is that companies are using a narrow scope in offering leadership development opportunities, says Nikhil Arora, CEO of learning technology company Epignosis, the parent company of TalentLMS. “A lot of companies kind of limit the leadership development to the top 1%, leaving behind the remaining 99%,” he says. Aror…