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Pakistan gets almost all its oil and gas from the Middle East, where U.S. and Israeli bombing of Iran have caused crude prices to blow past $150 a barrel and tankers can’t get through the Strait of Hormuz. But it has one edge in the crisis: a rapid, recent shift to solar power. The country’s solar boom started in the wake of the Ukraine war, when Pakistan couldn’t afford to buy liquefied natural gas and that led to power outages. “It also led to soaring electricity bills,” says Rabia Babar, an energy market analyst at the Pakistan-based nonprofit Renewables First. Some power bills were as much as 30-40% of people’s income, sometimes more than they were spending on…

The CEO of Crypto.com, Kris Marszalek, announced on Thursday that he was laying off 12% of the company’s staff. Marszalek cited AI as the driving factor behind the layoffs. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Thursday, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek took to X to announce that the company was cutting 12% of its staff. Marszalek cited AI as the reason for the layoffs. In the X post, Marszalek said that Crypto.com was “joining the list of companies integrating enterprise-wide AI” and suggested that those who do not embrace artificial intelligence won’t be around for long. “Companies that do not make this pivot immediately will fail,” Marszalek wr…

On the one hand, the fact that Walmart passed $1 trillion in market cap is notable, but not especially surprising. The company has long been the largest company in the world, measured by revenue. Almost everyone is familiar with the small five-and-dime store that started in one of the most rural towns in America and grew up to become the biggest retailer in the world. On paper, this looks like just another milestone in a 64-year-old success story. But a closer look at how Walmart just hit a market cap reserved almost exclusively for tech giants reveals how the company has changed, even in just the past three years. For the past six decades, Walmart was the king of…

Nearly 90,000 bottles of children’s ibuprofen have been recalled across the United States, according to an enforcement report this week from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Strides Pharma Inc. has recalled 89,952 bottles of Children’s Ibuprofen Oral Suspension following customer complaints of a “gel-like mass and black particles” in the medicine. The India-based company had manufactured the ibuprofen for Taro Pharmaceuticals U.S.A., Inc. based in Hawthorne, New York. The recall comes from Strides Pharma’s Bridgewater, New Jersey, subsidiary. Strides Pharma initiated the recall on March 2, with the FDA labeling it a Class II recall on Monday, March 16…

The dangerous heat wave shattering March records all over the U.S. Southwest is more than just another extreme weather blip. It’s the latest next-level weather wildness that is occurring ever more frequently as Earth’s warming builds. Experts said unprecedented and deadly weather extremes that sometimes strike at abnormal times and in unusual places are putting more people in danger. For example, the Southwest is used to coping with deadly heat, but not months ahead of schedule, including a 110-degree Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) reading in the Arizona desert on Thursday that smashed the highest March temperature recorded in the U.S. On Thursday, sites in Arizona and south…

Fans of the Bachelor franchise are accustomed to hearing that the upcoming season will be the most “shocking” one ever. But this time, it’s the events leading up to the season that have been hard to believe. In fact, the life of season 22’s Bachelorette became so controversial, the latest season won’t even make it on air. On Thursday, just days before the newest season of The Bachelorette, starring Taylor Frankie Paul, star of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, was scheduled to premiere, ABC pulled the plug. The shocking news came shortly after TMZ published a video from 2023 which showed Paul kicking, hitting, and throwing chairs at her ex-boyfriend, Dakota Morte…

Three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk’s xAI this week, claiming the company’s image-generation tools were used to morph real photos of them into explicitly sexual images. The high school students, who are seeking to proceed under pseudonyms, filed the lawsuit in California, where xAI — Musk’s artificial intelligence company — has its headquarters. They are seeking class-action status in order to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of victims like themselves who either are minors or were minors when sexually explicit images of them were created. According to the lawsuit, Jane Doe 1 was alerted anonymously in December that someone was distributing sexually…

Shares in Super Micro Computer (Nasdaq: SMCI) are falling off a cliff this morning after news that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged the company’s cofounder and two other associates with conspiring to deliver restricted AI technology to China. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced that it was charging three men with ties to Super Micro Computer (aka Supermicro) for export-control violations related to AI technology. The three individuals, the DOJ alleges, conspired “to divert high-performance computer servers assembled in the United States and […

When Huckberry launched its newsletter 15 years ago, the retailer included a section that defied the advice of ecommerce experts by including links to stories and content that its employees thought might be of interest to its outdoors-minded community. “That is like rule No. 1: You do not link off of your site,” Ben O’Meara, Huckberry’s chief brand officer, said during a panel discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. The Austin-based company’s philosophy then, as it remains today, he said, is that there’s value in putting customers first and recognizing they’re not always in the mood to buy something. “We are providing a service to you outside of just the pr…

The tech industry has spent the past few years focused on AI as a productivity engine, rewriting code, optimizing search, and automating customer service at scale. Now a more delicate transformation is underway., with agentic AI is moving into human resources. A new wave of startups and enterprise platforms claims algorithms can screen candidates, predict attrition, and recommend career paths faster than managers. The pitch is simple. AI promises less administrative work and more consistent decision-making. As these systems take on more responsibility, they are beginning to redefine what the “human” in human resources means. “Concerns are valid, because unlike other e…

Fallingwater, the iconic Pennsylvania home architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed to sit over a running stream, just rebranded. But it doesn’t have a logo, and that’s intentional. “A logo’s purpose is to provide a cognitive shortcut to brand essence—but Fallingwater’s iconic elements, the cantilevered house and its landscape, are too rich to compress graphically, yet too essential to abstract,” says Amy Blackman, founder of L.A. design firm Fruition Co., that worked on the rebrand which went live last week, said in a statement. Unsplash The new brand also comes with updated fonts and an expanded color palette that was inspired by nature and the natural materials…

Twenty years ago, Jack Dorsey changed the world. He opened his phone and sent a message to a new platform he had created: “just setting up my twttr”. That post carries the ID 20. (A post he shared last week has the ID 2032161152470565367—a small detail that captures how dramatically the platform has scaled in the intervening decades.) just setting up my twttr — jack (@jack) March 21, 2006 Following that first message, Dorsey’s short-form social network quickly cemented its role in our digital lives. In 2009, as a plane landed on the Hudson River in New York, users followed events in real time as people posted from the scene. In 2011, Sohaib Athar, then living in …

Everything is bigger in Texas, they say—including an economic boom there in recent years. Austin, in particular, consistently ranks among the fastest-growing metro areas in the country, and is vying to become one of the top startup hubs. Meanwhile, the state has successfully lured hundreds of companies to relocate to Texas in recent years. In 2024, Texas surpassed New York as the top employer of workers in the financial services industry, and it will up the ante with the opening of the Texas Stock Exchange later this year. This is the latest sign that the state, the eighth-largest economy in the world, is becoming a global financial and business powerhouse. “E…

High-speed winds and sideways rain swept through the courtyard of Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro. Participants received instructions to stay put. This was both bad and good. It was bad because we were all stuck. At the same time, it was good, because at least we were stuck an hour before my keynote address. We were at a climate conference in Brazil for the week, where I was due to present a speech on design thinking and leadership. This was something I took more as a suggestion than a mandate. My first slide featured a Mary Oliver quote on it that said, “There is only one question: how to love this world.” The wind howled. One of the producers panicked. I had a…

We’ve all got an inner critic in our heads. You know its voice: it’s the one who berates you when you make a mistake, who peers over your shoulder and critiques your work unfavorably, or who tells you you’re useless and worthless when things don’t go to plan. Inner critics can thrive in work environments—especially fast-paced environments where there is little room for error, or where you’re responsible for people on your team. The question is how you interact and deal with your inner critic. Obeying them without question is neither sustainable nor healthy. But silencing or completely ignoring them isn’t recommended either, as this can easily lead to reckless or e…

Box CEO and tech thought leader Aaron Levie says he recently met with 20 enterprise AI and IT leaders and came away with insights into what everyone, especially the stock market, wants to know: how—and how fast—large U.S. companies are adopting AI for core business functions. In a post on X, he outlined the main themes he heard. Had meetings and a dinner with 20+ enterprise AI and IT leaders today. Lots of interesting conversations around the state of AI in large enterprises, especially regulated businesses. Here are some of general trends: * Agents are clearly the big thing. Enterprises moving from… — Aaron Levie (@levie) March 19, 2026 Here’s a closer look a…

Last fall, Chives took over Reddit. It started when a cook who belonged to the massive social site’s r/kitchenconfidential community pledged to practice his chive-cutting skills every day and post photos so that others could rate his technique. Thousands among the group’s 1.8 million weekly visitors weighed in, and soon he became known as “Chivelord.” All went well until day 31, when a commenter claimed that the latest image he’d posted was the same as the one from day 23, only flipped. A scandal—known, inevitably, as Chivegate—boiled over. Chivelord confessed to the subterfuge, explaining that car troubles had prevented him from cutting chives that day. He …

Once upon a time, there were two guarantees when getting a new job: a 401(k) and a work wife/hubby or bestie. No one assigns you. There’s no official moment. One day, they are just there. The person who can help you translate your boss’s cryptic email, exchange eyerolls after annoying comments at the staff meeting, or share your emergency stash of M&M’s at 3 p.m. But then 2026 happened and many of us work with colleagues we’ve only seen from the shoulders up on Zoom. So, I must ask, are work besties even a thing anymore? Or are they an outdated artifact of the pre-video conference culture? Why You Need a Work BFF Science backs up the value of office b…

Happiness has been a bit thin on the ground these days. The headlines are grim, loneliness and disconnection are rising, and work pressures seem to multiply by the day as new technologies, global unrest, and social upheaval collide. In the midst of all that, searching for joy may feel a bit . . . selfish. Even absurd. But none of these forces seem likely to resolve themselves anytime soon. Work will remain demanding. The news cycle will keep churning. Which raises a practical question: if the world isn’t getting lighter anytime soon, how do we find a little more lightness inside it? That doesn’t mean ignoring the difficulties around us. But you will be better…

Spring is a glorious, warm season after the harsh cold of winter—filled with light and more sun-induced vitamin D. Friday, March 20, 2026 (at exactly 10:46 a.m. ET), marks both its triumphant return in the Northern Hemisphere and the spring equinox. So, get ready for longer days, warmer weather, and flower blooms that may cause sneezing. Let’s take a deeper look at the science behind seasons and what exactly an equinox is. What causes the seasons? The tilt of the Earth’s axis as it orbits around the sun is what causes seasons. Depending on that angle, different parts of the world receive different amounts of sunlight. In the Northern Hemisphere, we experie…