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We keep reading that high quality content is important, but what actually is it? Research suggests the answer is not so clear cut. The post Does AI Actually Reward Quality Content? appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

This month, Anthropic announced that it had built an AI model so powerful it couldn’t be released to the public. Claude Mythos had autonomously discovered thousands of critical security vulnerabilities across all major operating systems and web browsers. Anthropic chose to make the model available only to a consortium of technology companies, giving them an opportunity to patch vulnerabilities and strengthen defenses before models with similar capabilities inevitably fall into the hands of those who would exploit them. This development shines a light on the potential future dangers that the rapid evolution of AI models brings with it. These kinds of powerful models will proliferate, and their spread will create an escalating need for governance policies rooted in the principles of responsible AI. The practice of responsible AI aims to ensure that as AI systems grow more powerful, they remain fair, explainable, and subject to human oversight—governed by ethical principles and accountable structures that protect the people those systems affect. Responsible AI is not something businesses can set aside for the moment and hope to implement in the future. Every AI system deployed without an adequate governance framework creates reputational, legal, and operational risk right now. Those risks will only compound over time. And the dangers are not only technical. A recent survey of 750 CFOs projects roughly 500,000 AI-related job losses in 2026 alone. Responsible AI must account for the societal impact of these systems, not just the operational risks they pose to the organizations that deploy them. Three pillars of responsible AI Ethical foundations. An AI use policy—a list of what people can and cannot do with AI tools—feels concrete and actionable. But a use policy sits downstream from the values that it formalizes. Before developing specific policies, the first thing you will need is clarity about what your organization stands for: the principles that will both guide policies and shape immediate decisions when technological advances blow past current guidelines. Accountability and oversight. Responsible AI fails when nobody owns it. You need clear answers to key governance questions: Who can approve an AI deployment? Who can halt one? And who is accountable to the board when something goes wrong? Organizational accountability is a vital starting point but it is not enough on its own. You’ll also need frontline safeguards that keep humans meaningfully in the decision-making loop, especially when it comes to matters of safety and enduring consequences. Human impact. Every AI deployment affects real people—people whose work changes, who lose their jobs, whose options are shaped by algorithmic decisions, and whose opportunities expand or contract in accordance with the scope of the new models. A responsible AI approach means being thoughtful and deliberate about the human effects of deployment, and actively designing for fairness, dignity, and human augmentation rather than replacement. The 90-day plan that follows is built on these three pillars. Days 1-30: Map The temptation with any governance initiative is to start building immediately. Resist that impulse. The first 30 days of this plan focus on mapping your AI landscape. In most organizations, the AI footprint is significantly larger, more fragmented, and less governed than leadership believes. 1. Map your AI landscape. Inventory every AI system used by the organization or that touches the organization in a significant way, including through “shadow use” of unsanctioned AI systems by employees. In most cases, the number will be significantly higher than leadership initially expects. For each use case, document what the AI does, what data it uses, who it affects, and who is responsible for its governance. 2. Force the worst-case conversations. For every AI use case you identify, ask your leadership team: What’s the worst-case scenario here? This approach is based on the catastrophize step of the CARE framework for AI risk management; the worst-case scenario is deliberately named to provoke the right mindset. The disciplined practice of imagining catastrophic failure aims to surface risks that would otherwise go unnoticed. 3. Triage. In some cases, the risks you uncover won’t be able to wait for you to develop a polished governance infrastructure. If the mapping and catastrophizing processes reveal that an AI system is making consequential decisions with no oversight, no explainability, and no clear owner—escalate the problem immediately. Pause the use of the system or place it under close human review. You don’t need a complete governance framework to act on an obvious risk. 4. Diagnose your culture. None of the governance structures you are about to build will work if your organizational culture isn’t actively engaged with them. You need to answer one fundamental question: Does your organization treat responsible AI as a business priority or as a compliance box to be checked? If the answer is the latter, a comprehensive culture change initiative will be required. 5. Map your decision rights. You need clear answers to four questions: a. Who can approve a new AI deployment? b. Who decides when a system requires governance review? c. Who can halt a deployment? d. Who can reallocate resources to address a newly identified risk? If the answers are ambiguous, your governance framework will have no teeth—decisions will default to whoever speaks the loudest or moves fastest. In this situation, responsible AI will lose every time. Days 31-60: Build In the second phase, the plan’s focus shifts to building the governance infrastructure that will sustain responsible AI over the long term. 1. Develop your ethical framework. Your ethical framework is the set of foundational principles that will guide every AI decision your organization makes, including the ones the policy hasn’t anticipated yet. It should address your commitments around fairness and nondiscrimination, your position on human oversight and the circumstances under which autonomous AI decision-making is and is not acceptable, your approach to employee impact and workforce augmentation, and your stance on the broader societal effects of AI. 2. Begin building the technical architecture. Governance policies without technical infrastructure are just words. Start putting in place the monitoring and data collection processes that your ethical framework needs to become an operational reality: the ability to track what your AI systems are doing, to detect drift and bias, and to produce the evidence your governance reviews will rely on. This work will not be complete by day 60, but the foundations need to be laid. 3. Establish ownership and structure. If responsible AI is a side responsibility bolted onto someone’s existing role, it will always lose out to the part of their job that is used to assess their success. Someone needs to own responsible AI and governance as an intrinsic part of their actual job. Your organization needs a dedicated person or team with both an enterprise-wide view and the authority to enforce the relevant policies. You’ll also need people in each business unit with the responsibility and authority necessary to turn principles into practical governance on the ground. 4. Design your assessment process. Build a structured, repeatable process for evaluating AI systems against your ethical framework. The assessment should produce a clear risk profile for each system, with defined thresholds that trigger different levels of governance review. Not every AI system needs board-level oversight, but you need a mechanism for determining which ones do, and that mechanism needs to be consistent, documented, and enforceable. 5. Realign incentives. People do what they’re rewarded for. If every incentive in your organization points to the importance of speed and cost reduction above all else, responsible AI will be treated as a source of friction—something to route around rather than a necessary part of the work. Tie a portion of leadership evaluation to responsible AI metrics: risk incidents identified and addressed, governance reviews completed, willingness to halt or modify deployments that don’t meet standards. 6. Begin reviews on your highest-risk systems. As soon as you have your ethical framework and assessment process in workable shape, run your first reviews on the systems that your risk inventory identified as the most exposed. You get two things out of this: real findings about your most urgent risks and an early read on whether the governance infrastructure actually works under pressure. 7. Build your skill development plan. Responsible AI requires capabilities most organizations do not yet have. Your leadership needs to understand AI risk well enough to govern it. Your technical teams need bias detection and human-centered design skills. Your frontline managers need to understand how AI is changing the work their teams do. Your legal and compliance teams need to understand the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. Design a targeted development program that addresses the most critical gaps and then build its implementation into the governance cadence. Days 61-90: Embed In the last 30-day stretch, the focus shifts to ensuring the system survives contact with the day-to-day pressures of running an organization. 1. Build exit plans. Every AI system in your portfolio should have a defined exit pathway, documented and owned, that shows how to safely shut it down. These are the exit protocols of the CARE framework, and they must to be put in place before you need them. The time to design a shutdown procedure is not in the middle of a crisis. 2. Establish the governance rhythm. Set up a regular meeting with an outline agenda for monitoring and responding to responsible AI issues. This creates a protected space on the calendar for reviewing the risk landscape, surfacing emerging issues, and assessing the health of your governance processes. 3. Embed governance into operations. Responsible AI cannot live as a separate process that runs alongside normal operations—it needs to be woven into them. Every new AI system above a defined risk threshold requires a governance review before deployment. Every existing system requires periodic reassessment. No exceptions. This is where responsible AI stops being a project and starts becoming part of how you operate. 4. Iterate. By day 90, you have live data—use it. Where are the bottlenecks? What’s working well and what isn’t? Is the culture shifting or is it stuck in place? The aim here is to learn from everything you’ve done so far and use these learnings to iterate the next version of your governance engine. Conclusion Claude Mythos is not an anomaly. It’s a preview of the kind of dangerous capabilities AI models will bring with them in the future. The question is not whether your organization will be affected by AI systems of this power. It will. Rather, the question is whether you will have the governance infrastructure in place when they arrive. Any organization can take significant steps toward putting this infrastructure in place in a single quarter. There’s no excuse for not starting today. View the full article

We all call planet Earth home and benefit from having a healthy dwelling place. Earth Day, which is today (Wednesday, April 22), is a great time to reflect on our responsibility to maintain and preserve this sanctuary for future generations. Let’s take a look at the history of the holiday and some of the festivities and demonstrations taking place around the world this year. Who created Earth Day? While it is now a global event, Earth Day was first conceived by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin and Representative Pete McCloskey of California, and held on college campuses in the United States in 1970. The men were inspired by the student anti-war protest movement. The book Silent Spring, published in 1962 and written by Rachel Carson, also helped change public consciousness and set the stage for environmental awareness. Was the first Earth Day successful? The first Earth Day was considered a protest or teach-in. Twenty million Americans took to the streets to raise awareness about the dangers of unchecked industrial development. To put that number in context, that was about 10% of the population of the United States at the time. This event’s impact helped pass important legislation, such as the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act. It also aided in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). What Earth Day events are happening in 2026? Flash forward to the present, and Earth Day is less protest and more celebration, although protests are happening today too. The theme for Earth Day 2026 is “our power, our planet.” This urges participants to focus on small actions that add up to the greater good, such as reducing plastic use and planting trees. This year also emphasizes innovation, especially in renewable energy. There are many events all over the world to help you learn about how to protect and celebrate the planet. In Kyoto, Japan, events last all month long and include markets, yoga, and sustainability workshops. In Kenya, people are teaming up to clean the Nairobi River. In Padova, Italy, scientists Filippo Giorgi and Carlo Buontempo will take part in a free panel discussion on climate change and how cities can adapt. Closer to home in Santa Barbara, California, the festivities at Alameda Park will take place over the weekend on April 25 and 26. The weekend event includes a green car show and music. Which protests are happening? Going back to its activist roots in Washington, D.C., two rallies are being held. The first by XRDC and Third Act took place on April 21 at 10:30 a.m. ET outside Apple Carnegie Library. The event called on leaders to stop building AI data centers because of the negative impact these have on the environment. The following day, the CCAN Action Fund will lead a group at the Wilson Building to help remind the mayor and the D.C. Council to properly fund climate and environment programs. The event starts at 8:15 a.m. ET. View the full article

Google and WooCommerce announced today that the Google for WooCommerce extension now enables merchants to sell products directly through YouTube. The update connects WooCommerce stores to YouTube channels enabling them to tap into 2.7 billion shoppers. Merchants can tag products in videos and Shorts, where they appear as shoppable cards during playback and in a dedicated shopping tab on the channel. The cards are pulled from the merchant’s existing product catalog They stay synced automatically through Google Merchant Center The same data is reused across YouTube, Shopping, and ads Connect WooCommerce Stores To YouTube Shoppers WooCommerce is an open source […] The post WooCommerce Stores Can Now Sell Products Via YouTube Videos appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

You’ve been told to follow a familiar set of rules for years: always use high-quality creative, keep your brand polished, stay scripted, and follow platform-recommended formats. If you’ve been in ad accounts lately or browsing feeds, you may have noticed something. Attention-grabbing ads don’t always follow those rules. They’re scrappier, less polished, and sometimes even called “ugly ads.” The beauty is that they’re coming out on top. More brands are breaking best practices on purpose to stand out. After all, best practices are an average of what worked best for everyone else in the last six months, give or take. By the time a tactic becomes a platform-recommended rule, the edge has already been sanded off. That’s why breaking best practices works — but only if you understand what’s behind them. Why breaking best practices leads to better-performing ads Before getting into what to change, it helps to understand why the rules exist in the first place. Platforms like Meta and TikTok have a dual incentive: They want you to spend money on advertising. They want users to stay engaged on their platforms. The best practices they promote are designed to create a frictionless experience, pushing ads to look and behave like ads. The problem is that what feels familiar eventually becomes invisible. When you follow the rules too closely, your ads blend into the background noise users have trained themselves to ignore. High-production ads signal “this is an ad” almost instantly, triggering a skip reflex before your hook lands. When your ad looks like something a friend might send, the brain’s defenses stay down just a bit longer, and that can be the difference between a scroll and a conversion. That’s why many of the top-performing ads today don’t look polished or on-brand in the traditional sense. They interrupt patterns instead. Think: Grainy phone footage. Notes app screenshots. Green-screened reaction or commentary videos. Other lo-fi formats are outperforming studio-grade creative. Source: TikTok Ads Manager To apply this, intentionally lower your production value and experiment with formats like point-of-view (POV) shots tailored to different personas. Dig deeper: TikTok ad creative has a shorter shelf life. Here’s how to keep up Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with Founder-led ads: The return of the human Many brands have guidelines designed to make the company look faceless and invincible. They may not want to show a messy, lived-in office, a founder who hasn’t been professionally coached, or anything that breaks a tight, corporate script. But others are tossing that playbook and leaning into founder-led ads that aren’t the polished executive-profile version that was more common. There’s a catch. Rule-breaking only works if it’s authentic. If you fake it, the web will spot it in seconds, and it won’t land the way you expect. We saw this play out in a viral series of videos where McDonald’s CEO appeared in a promotional spot to introduce a new burger. As highlighted in a Dineline video, the execution felt stiff and staged. The CEO carefully lifted the burger, looked into the camera, called it a “product,” and took a small bite from the edge. People online quickly pointed out that it didn’t look like he actually liked the food, so why should consumers? Soon after, Burger King entered the conversation, and its president appeared in one of its kitchens holding a burger with a completely different tone. No hesitation, no corporate pauses — just a big, genuine bite. The lesson is clear: One felt like a product presentation, and the other felt like a real moment. If your leadership, your founder, and your team don’t look genuinely excited about what they’re selling, your customers won’t be either. Rule-breaking should give you the courage to be real, not just “unpolished” for the sake of it. Source: Dineline on YouTube Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. The comment hook hijack You’ve likely seen — and maybe used — a video hook best practice like “show the product in the first two seconds and state the value prop clearly.” Sound familiar? Your ad starts with a screenshot of a negative comment. Let’s say you have a skincare ad that opens with a text bubble: “This probably smells like old socks, and does it even work?” Your founder then spends the next 15-20 seconds smiling, proving it wrong in an unscripted, unpolished way, while applying the product. Using the platform’s native comment bubble and opening with conflict breaks your brand’s positive-association rule, but you’ll gain attention by tapping into users’ natural tendency to watch a digital argument. By the time viewers realize it’s an ad, they’ve already heard your main points and may be on their way to trying the product. Effective advertising still relies on psychology, but now it requires understanding user behavior and how algorithms work. Source: TikTok Creative Center The rebel’s safety net Don’t delete all your polished assets just yet. Breaking the rules is strategic. When it fails, it’s often because the “80/20 rule” gets overlooked. Shifting your entire budget to shaky phone footage overnight isn’t the move. Maintain a baseline of about 80%, and use the remaining 20% to test new, unconventional ads. Standing out doesn’t mean producing bad advertising. Give these a try in your next test campaign: The silent test: Skip trending audio and run a fully silent ad with large, bold captions. In a noisy feed, silence can interrupt patterns. The UI ghost: Create a static image that looks like a platform notification or a low-battery warning, if relevant. It may annoy some viewers, but it can stop the scroll. The algorithmic trust fall: Turn off auto-optimizations in one campaign and use broad targeting if you aren’t already. Let your ugly creative do the filtering. You may find the algorithm performs better when you remove manual guardrails. Don’t follow the rules, understand them Best practices are a starting point, not a strategy. If you’re going to move beyond them, do it systematically. Start with the rule, understand why it exists, ask whether it still applies, and then test the opposite in a structured way. Compare polished and lo-fi, scripted and unscripted, and brand voice and personal voice. In a feed full of brands playing it safe, those who understand the rules — and how to break them intentionally — are the ones getting attention and conversions. Focus on learning faster than everyone else. Skip the guesswork. View the full article

Pakistan’s fatigue-wearing strongman Asim Munir takes unorthodox approach to mediating between two arch-enemiesView the full article

We've been keeping track of the bots, spiders, OpenAI has been releasing. OpenAI just posted about a new bot for ads, it is named OAI-AdsBot.View the full article

Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea property valuations sink close to 2013 levels View the full article

Most SEO strategies are built with one goal: getting people through the door. That usually means driving traffic to the website, ranking for high-volume keywords, and bringing in new users. But what happens after someone signs up or makes a purchase? That part of the funnel often gets ignored. SEO doesn’t stop at acquisition. It can and should be used to support retention, improve onboarding or post-purchase experience, and make your product or offering easier to understand. So let’s break down the opportunity in post-conversion content, why it matters for SEO, and how to identify and optimize it effectively. Table of contents Most brands stop too early The opportunity in post-purchase content SEO benefits of retaining users and reducing churn How to identify high-value post-conversion content Internal linking strategies that keep users engaged Why supporting existing users is good SEO and good business Key takeaways A lot of SEO strategies overlook post-conversion content, even though this type of content is great for an improved user experience. Post-conversion content can include help docs, knowledge bases or product guides serving as long-tail SEO assets. Engaged users generate positive signals, aiding in SEO through branded searches and reduced churn. Identify post-conversion content by analyzing support tickets, customer interactions, and internal search queries. Creating valuable guides and linking related content boosts retention and makes SEO efforts more effective. Most brands stop too early SEO strategies (understandably) love to focus on the top of the funnel: traffic, rankings, and new users. However, conversion isn’t the finish line. After someone signs up or makes a purchase, they’re still searching. They’re still learning, and they’re still deciding if they want to stick with you. This is where SEO can step in to support: Onboarding flows or post-purchase journeys Help docs Community content Knowledge bases All of these are searchable, indexable, and incredibly useful. Not just for users, but for long-term organic growth. The opportunity in post-purchase content Once someone starts using your product or receives their purchase, they often turn to Google (or your internal search) for answers about setup, usage, sizing, care, troubleshooting, or returns, depending on your business and industry. This is where content such as help centers, knowledge bases, product explainers, FAQs, or how-to guides comes into play. If they’re structured well, optimized for real user queries, and regularly updated, they become long-tail SEO machines. Another overlooked asset is community forums or customer reviews/Q&A sections. Real user questions and real answers lead to long-tail keywords and user-generated content that basically maintains itself. SEO benefits of retaining users and reducing churn Retention isn’t just a product or support goal, but an SEO goal too. Engaged users generate more branded searches, click through internal content more often, share links, leave reviews, and make repeat purchases, creating positive engagement signals. Reducing churn means people stay in your ecosystem longer, giving your website content more opportunities to show up, get linked, and build authority. How to identify high-value post-conversion content This part isn’t guesswork; you already have the answers. The key is to tap into the real questions and friction points your users experience after they convert. Here’s how to do it: 1. Support tickets Look at the most common questions that indicate that something is not working or that users don’t understand something. If the same issue keeps popping up, that’s a signal you need better documentation or that your current documentation is not easy to find. How to use it: Turn top support issues into searchable help documents, step-by-step tutorials, or even short videos embedded in your knowledge base or product pages. 2. Customer interactions Your customer-facing teams hear things you won’t get from tickets. They will understand why certain products, features, or steps in the buying journey cause confusion. How to use it: Create content that supports onboarding or post-purchase usage, expands on underused products, features, or clarifies key steps in getting value from what was purchased. Pull direct language from how customers describe problems and try to use it to your advantage. They’ll likely use the same language to search for a solution. 3. Internal search queries Pro-tip: If you have a WordPress website, you can read our guide on how to optimize your internal search. Your internal site or knowledge base search is one of the best indicators of intent. What users search for after logging in or visiting your site tells you exactly what they are struggling with. How to use it: Identify top queries that return poor results or no results. Create or improve content that answers those questions. Optimize titles, headers, and metadata so the right article appears first. 4. Feature usage or product engagement data Low usage doesn’t always mean low interest; it might mean unclear setup, poor discoverability, or hidden value. How to use it: Look at features or products with low adoption but high impact. Interview users who use them and reverse-engineer what made it work for them. Then build content that guides others to the same outcome. Types of high-value content to create Feature walkthroughs or product usage guides: clear, step-by-step guides and how-tos with screenshots or GIFs. Setup checklists: especially for more complex products Integration or compatibility guides Advanced use case tutorials Other explainers and tactful guides for common mistakes These pieces not only improve user experience but also target long-tail search queries, reduce support load, and strengthen retention. Below are examples of great post-conversion content: Internal linking strategies that keep users engaged Post-conversion content shouldn’t live in isolation. It should be linked, surfaced, and reused across your entire ecosystem. Ways to keep users moving: Link between related help documents Add “next steps” CTAs to knowledge base articles Include product education content in lifecycle emails Use breadcrumbs, related content widgets and in-context links Done right, this turns your post-conversion content into an internal SEO web that improves engagement and makes users more confident in using your products. Why supporting existing users is good SEO and good business If your SEO strategy only focuses on acquisition, you’re leaving money (and traffic) on the table. Post-conversion content helps users get more value from your products, reduces friction, and builds long-term loyalty, all while creating indexable, intent-driven pages that search engines can surface at key moments. Want to take action? Start by auditing your post-conversion content. Map out the key moments after signup or purchase, and ensure users receive support at each step. Surface help docs, feature guides, and tutorials where they are needed most and connect them with clear, intentional internal links. SEO isn’t just about discovery. It’s about usability. It’s about confidence. It’s about making sure your users stay, not just show up. If you want to build long-term, defensible growth, that’s where you should be focusing. The post The forgotten funnel: how brands can nurture post-conversion appeared first on Yoast. View the full article

If you’re planning to visit your local Social Security Administration (SSA) office in the near future, be aware that a number of locations across the United States are currently closed for in-person services. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? The Social Security Administration has offices across the United States and around the world in U.S. territories. Most of the time, those SSA offices are open to the public for those who need in-person services. Yet currently, a number of SSA offices are marked as closed for in-person services or just closed entirely, according to a current list of office closings and emergencies on the SSA website. Those disruptions are currently affecting 12 SSA locations in 10 states, plus another location in an overseas U.S. territory. Why are some SSA offices closed? The Social Security Administration has not given a specific reason why 13 of its offices are unavailable for in-person services, but given that the closures are scattered across the United States and a remote territory, it’s unlikely that they are all linked by the same factor. The SSA’s dedicated webpage says that some reasons for a disruption to services at a local office may include: construction inability to permit people to wait outside the office other reasons Fast Company has reached out to the Social Security Administration for clarity on why selected offices are affected. Which Social Security offices are impacted? As of this writing, the Social Security Administration says 13 of its offices are affected by the disruptions. Those include offices in 10 states and one territory. Those locations are: Arizona 325 W 19th St STE 1, Yuma, AZ 85364 (no in-person service until Friday, May 8) California 23311 Madero, Mission Viejo, CA 92691 (no in-person service until Friday, April 24) Florida 111 Racetrack Rd NW B, Fort Walton Beach, FL 32547 (no in-person service until further notice) Hawaii 2200 Main St #125, Wailuku, HI 96793 (no in-person service until Friday, April 24) Iowa 317 Washington St #1, Decorah, IA 52101 (no in-person service until further notice) Maryland 10230 New Hampshire Ave, Silver Spring, MD 20903 (limited to in-person service with an appointment only) Michigan 7800 Outer Dr W Suite 375, Detroit, MI 48235 (no in-person service until further notice) Montana 630 2nd Ave S, Glasgow, MT 59230 (no in-person service until Thursday, April 30) 123 5th Ave, Havre, MT 59501 (no in-person service until further notice) Pennsylvania 700 Grant St, Suite 1204, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 (no in-person service until Friday, April 24) 700 Market St, Bloomsburg, PA 17815 (no in-person service until further notice) West Virginia 1103 George Kostas Dr, Logan, WV 25601 (no in-person service until further notice) The SSA in Northern Mariana Islands is also listed as being closed until Thursday, April 23. Local residents can call 800-772-1213 for assistance. What should I do if my local office is affected? While most of the SSA offices listed above are currently stating they have no in-person service, they say they can still be contacted by telephone. In general, the Social Security Administration says the best way to get help is to use the agency’s website. Alternatively, you can call the Social Security Administration’s national 800 number to get help with your query. That number is 1-800-772-1213. The Social Security Administration says that the agency “can often help by phone and save you a trip to an office.” Are my Social Security payments impacted? No. The disruption at a local Social Security Administration has no impact on your receiving your Social Security benefits on time. View the full article

Here are some early screenshots and videos of the ChatGPT ad management interface that some OpenAI advertisers have access to. You can see that you can create campaigns, ad groups, budgets, CPC limits, conversions and much more.View the full article

The country requires centre-left foreign policy and centre-right reform at homeView the full article

You can start doing your taxes for the 2025 tax year as early as late January 2026. The IRS typically announces the opening of e-filing around January 27, 2025. Nevertheless, it’s essential to prepare in advance by gathering your tax documents before the e-filing window opens. This preparation will help you avoid complications and guarantee you have everything you need for a smooth filing process. Comprehending key dates and requirements can streamline your experience even further. Key Takeaways Tax season for 2025 returns begins on January 27, 2026, when the IRS starts accepting e-filed returns. You can prepare your taxes before January 27 by gathering necessary documents like W-2s and 1099s. Early organization of tax documents helps streamline the filing process and avoid complications later. Review personal information and tax forms carefully to prevent mistakes that could delay processing. Utilize IRS resources and tools to clarify filing requirements and assist in the tax preparation process. When Does Tax Season Start? When does tax season start, and what should you know to prepare? Tax season typically kicks off when the IRS announces the opening of e-filing, usually in late January. For 2025 tax returns, the IRS will likely start accepting filings on January 27, 2026. Although you can start preparing your taxes before this date, actual submissions can’t be made until e-filing opens. To guarantee a smooth filing process, it’s wise to develop a tax preparation checklist ahead of time. This checklist can help you gather all necessary documents, such as W-2s and 1099s, so you’re ready to go. You might be wondering, when can you start doing your taxes? The answer is anytime before the IRS opens e-filing, but be prepared to wait until the official start date to submit. Key Dates for Filing Taxes Key dates for filing taxes are fundamental for staying on track and avoiding unnecessary penalties. For the 2025 tax returns, the IRS will start accepting submissions on January 27, 2025. Although you can prepare your taxes in advance, you won’t be able to officially file until that date. Remember, the deadline for individual income tax returns is April 15, 2026, except you request an extension. If you need more time, you can submit Form 4868 by the original due date to receive an automatic six-month extension. This means your new filing deadline would be October 15, 2026. Nonetheless, it’s imperative to note that any taxes owed must still be paid by April 15, 2026, to avoid penalties. Keeping these key dates in mind helps guarantee you file accurately and on time, which is crucial for a smooth tax season. E-Filing Opening Date for 2025 Taxes As the 2025 tax season approaches, it’s essential to recognize that the IRS will begin accepting e-filed tax returns on January 27, 2025. You can start preparing your returns before this date, but you won’t be able to submit them until the IRS officially opens the e-filing window. This window will remain open until the tax deadline of April 15, 2026. Filing early has its advantages; it allows for quicker processing of your return and can lead to faster refunds. To guarantee a smooth e-filing experience, make sure you have all necessary documentation ready before January 27. This includes W-2s, 1099s, and any other relevant tax forms. Being organized can save you time and help you avoid last-minute stress as the deadline approaches. Importance of Gathering Tax Documents Early Gathering your tax documents early can greatly improve your filing experience and help you avoid unnecessary complications. You can start collecting documents as early as January, before the IRS officially opens e-filing in late January. Organizing your paperwork into categories like income items, deductions, and life changes can streamline the process and guarantee everything’s ready when it’s time to file. Key documents to gather include W-2s, 1099s, and last year’s tax returns, which serve as references for your income and deductions. Preparing early allows you to identify potential credits or deductions you might qualify for, potentially increasing your refund or reducing your tax liability. What to Expect When Filing Taxes When you file your taxes, it’s important to be aware of key dates and necessary documents. The IRS typically starts accepting returns in late January, so you can prepare your information, like W-2s and 1099s, ahead of time. Key Tax Filing Dates Comprehension of key tax filing dates is crucial for a smooth tax season. The IRS typically starts accepting tax returns in late January; for the 2025 tax year, e-filing will open on January 27, 2026. Although you can prepare your returns beforehand, you can’t officially file until the IRS announces that date. Mark your calendar for April 15, 2026, as the deadline for filing individual income tax returns. If you need more time, you can file for an extension using Form 4868, which pushes your deadline to October 15, 2026. Nonetheless, bear in mind that any owed taxes must be paid by the original due date to avoid penalties. Organizing your tax documents early will help guarantee a smoother filing process. Required Documents Preparation Before you start filing your taxes, it’s vital to prepare the necessary documents to guarantee a smooth process. You can begin organizing your information as early as January 2025. Key documents include your unexpired government-issued photo ID, Social Security card or number, last year’s tax returns, and income documents like W-2s and 1099s. If you’re self-employed and received over $20,000 from more than 200 transactions, don’t forget Form 1099-K. To streamline your filing, categorize your documents into income items, deductions, and life changes. Here’s a helpful table to guide you: Document Type Purpose Government-issued ID Verify identity Social Security card/number Confirm eligibility Previous tax returns Reference past information Income documents Report earnings accurately Understanding Tax Credits and Refund Timing Comprehending tax credits and the timing of refunds is crucial for maximizing your financial benefits during tax season. Tax credits, like the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, can greatly lower your tax liability, potentially leading to larger refunds. Refunds are typically issued within 21 days after the IRS receives your electronically filed return; nevertheless, certain credits might delay refunds until mid-February. To get your refund quickly, opt for direct deposit, as the IRS is phasing out paper checks to speed up access to your funds. Be aware that manual reviews of tax returns, often triggered by discrepancies or identity verification, can extend your wait. To avoid such delays and maximize your refund from available credits, verify that all the information on your return is accurate. This attention to detail can make a considerable difference in the timing and amount of your refund. Preparing for Early Tax Filing As tax season approaches, getting a head start on your filing preparations can make a significant difference in your experience. Start by organizing your tax documents into categories like income items, deductions, and life changes. This organization streamlines the filing process and guarantees you won’t miss anything important. Gather necessary documents, such as your W-2s, 1099s, and last year’s tax return, well before the IRS begins accepting e-filing on January 27, 2026. By preparing early, you can identify potential new deductions or credits, which may help maximize your refund or minimize your tax liability. Furthermore, early organization reduces stress and helps you avoid the last-minute rush that often occurs during peak tax season. Taking these proactive steps will enable you to file your taxes more efficiently and effectively, allowing for a smoother experience overall. Common Mistakes to Avoid in Early Filing Beginning your tax filing early can offer many advantages, but it’s essential to be aware of common mistakes that could hinder your efforts. First, make certain you’ve gathered all necessary forms, like W-2s and 1099s, before filing; submitting without these can lead to incomplete returns. Next, double-check your math. Simple errors in calculations can delay processing and may even result in penalties. Furthermore, review your personal information carefully, including Social Security numbers and addresses, to avoid significant issues such as delayed refunds or identity theft. Don’t overlook potential tax deductions or credits, like the Child Tax Credit or Earned Income Tax Credit; missing out can mean a lower refund than you deserve. Finally, consider e-filing instead of submitting a paper return, as e-filed returns are processed much faster by the IRS, allowing you to receive your refund sooner. Stay mindful of these pitfalls to guarantee a smoother filing experience. How to Check Your Refund Status To check your refund status, you can use the IRS’s “Where’s My Refund” tool online, which gives you live updates on your refund’s progress. You’ll need to enter your Social Security number, filing status, and the exact amount of your refund to access this information. If you prefer, you can likewise call the IRS for updates if you’re facing any delays or have questions about your status. Online Refund Tracking Tools When you want to check the status of your tax refund, the IRS offers a reliable online tool called “Where’s My Refund.” This resource allows you to access updates on your refund status within 24 hours if you filed electronically or four weeks after mailing a paper return. To use the tool, you’ll need to enter your Social Security number, filing status, and the exact refund amount. Typically, refunds are issued within 21 days of the IRS receiving your tax return, with electronically filed returns processed faster. Live updates become available on the IRS website starting the same day e-filing opens. Nevertheless, if you filed a paper return, expect processing times to take about six weeks, delaying your access to funds. Call IRS for Updates If you prefer a more personal touch in checking your tax refund status, calling the IRS can be a viable option. You can start checking your status 24 hours after e-filing or four weeks post-mailing your return. To receive updates, have your Social Security number, filing status, and exact refund amount ready. Usually, most refunds are issued within 21 days, but some may take longer because of manual reviews. For quicker access, consider using direct deposit. Steps Details Prepare Information Social Security number, filing status, refund amount Check Time Frame 24 hours after e-filing or 4 weeks after mailing Typical Refund Time Most refunds in 21 days Contact Method Call the IRS Impact of Filing Extensions on Deadlines Filing for an extension can greatly impact your tax deadlines, allowing you more time to prepare your return. By submitting Form 4868 by the original due date, you get an additional six months, pushing your deadline to October 15. Nevertheless, keep in mind that an extension doesn’t extend your payment deadline. Here are a few important points to reflect upon: You must pay at least 90% of your estimated tax liability by the original due date to avoid penalties. Extensions are available for individuals impacted by federally declared disasters, offering further relief. If you miss the extended deadline, you could face additional penalties, making timely filing crucial. Remember, even with an extension, it’s important to stay organized and plan ahead to guarantee a smooth filing process. Being informed about these aspects can help you manage your responsibilities effectively. Assistance Resources for Tax Filing As far as filing your taxes, you have several valuable resources at your fingertips. The IRS Free File and VITA provide free assistance for eligible taxpayers. Furthermore, if you’re a military member or veteran, MilTax can cater to your specific tax needs, ensuring you get the help you deserve during tax season. IRS Online Tools Steering through the domain of taxes can be intimidating, but the IRS provides a range of online tools to simplify the process. You can access these resources anytime at IRS.gov, which can help you navigate your tax obligations effectively. Here are some key tools you might find useful: Check Refund Status: Easily track your refund in real-time. IRS Free File: Eligible taxpayers can file federal taxes electronically at no cost. Interactive Tax Assistant (ITA): Get answers to specific tax law questions to understand your options. VITA Locator Tool: Find free tax preparation assistance through local Volunteer Income Tax Assistance programs. Utilizing these tools can help streamline your tax filing experience and guarantee you meet your obligations accurately. Tax Preparation Services Tax preparation services are invaluable resources that can simplify the often complex process of filing your taxes. Programs like the IRS Free File allow eligible taxpayers to file federal returns electronically for free, typically starting in late January. The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program offers free help to those with modest incomes, with trained volunteers ready to assist in person or online. If you’re in the military, MilTax provides customized tax filing services for you and your family. Furthermore, the IRS Interactive Tax Assistant (ITA) is an online tool that helps answer specific tax law questions. Utilizing these services can help you identify potential deductions and credits, ensuring you maximize your tax benefits without missing valuable opportunities. Government Assistance Programs Maneuvering through the domain of taxes can be challenging, but various government assistance programs are available to make the filing process easier for you. Here are some resources you can utilize: IRS Free File: Eligible taxpayers can file federal taxes electronically for free, accessing various online tax preparation software. MilTax: This free service is designed particularly for military members and veterans, addressing their unique tax situations. Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA): This program offers no-cost tax preparation for individuals with low to moderate income, ensuring you receive all eligible credits and deductions. VITA Locator Tool: Use this tool to find nearby VITA sites where trained volunteers can assist with your tax preparation. These resources can simplify your filing experience considerably. Final Tips for a Smooth Tax Filing Experience Despite preparing for tax season can feel overwhelming, taking a few strategic steps can guarantee a smooth filing experience. First, gather your tax documents, such as W-2s and 1099s, and organize them into categories like income, deductions, and life changes. This organization not only streamlines the filing process but likewise minimizes stress. Consider e-filing your tax return, as it usually results in faster processing and quicker refunds—about 90% of e-filed returns receive refunds within 21 days. Make sure to check the IRS website for updates, as they typically begin accepting returns for the previous year in late January; for 2025 returns, the first e-filing date is January 27, 2026. Finally, utilize IRS resources like the Interactive Tax Assistant and Free File options for additional support and guidance throughout the filing process. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Earliest Date You Can Submit Your Taxes? The earliest date you can submit your taxes typically aligns with the IRS’s official start date for e-filing, which varies each year. Although you can prepare your returns beforehand, you can’t officially file until this date. Filing early is beneficial, as it often leads to quicker processing times and faster refunds. Stay updated by checking IRS announcements for specific dates to guarantee you’re ready when submissions open. Organizing documents in advance helps streamline the process. What Is the $600 Rule in the IRS? The $600 rule mandates that if you hire an independent contractor or freelancer and pay them $600 or more in a tax year, you must issue a Form 1099-NEC. This applies to all payment methods, including cash, checks, or electronic transactions. The threshold is cumulative, meaning multiple smaller payments can add up to the $600 requirement. Failure to issue the form on time can lead to penalties for your business. Can I File My Taxes on January 1st? You can’t file your taxes on January 1st. The IRS doesn’t accept e-filed returns until its official opening date, which usually falls in late January. For the 2025 tax year, that date is January 27. Even though you can prepare your tax documents beforehand, you must wait until the IRS opens e-filing to submit your return. Having everything ready will help you file quickly once the e-filing begins. When’s the Earliest You Can Do Your Income Tax? You can start preparing your income tax return as soon as you have all necessary documents, like W-2s and 1099s, typically available by late January each year. Although you can organize and complete your return before that, you can’t officially e-file until the IRS opens its system, usually around late January. Filing early can speed up processing and refunds, so gather your documents ahead of time for a smoother experience. Conclusion In summary, the 2025 tax season officially starts in late January 2026, with e-filing opening around January 27, 2026. To streamline your filing process, gather your tax documents early, ensuring you have everything needed to avoid delays. Remember to check your refund status and be aware of deadlines, including any potential filing extensions. By preparing ahead of time, you can navigate the tax season more efficiently, thereby making the experience smoother and less stressful. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "What Date Can You Start Doing Your Taxes?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Microsoft Advertising has announced the launch of several new AI features and upgrades across the ad platform. This is to "To help businesses succeed across all three eras of the human, LLM, and agentic web," Microsoft wrote.View the full article

Google Ads has a new help document on AI-Qualified Call Conversions. Google says AI-qualified call leads use Google AI to evaluate call recordings to determine the actual quality of the conversation.View the full article

Google Ads Advisor, which officially began rolling out last November, is rolling out three new features. These features include proactive troubleshooting, 24/7 security monitoring and instant certifications.View the full article

In November 2024, when The President won his second presidential bid, a wave of anxiety across America proved opportune for a burgeoning company. Bluesky saw a 500% surge in new sign-ups, reaching roughly 2.5 million active users on the microblogging platform at the time. It had also raised $15 million in that period ($100 million to date), buoyed in part by its open, “federated” infrastructure, which lets users control their feeds, move their identities across platforms, and sidestep centralized moderation. Mark Cuban called Bluesky a “less hateful world” on the app at the time, while media scholars hailed it as a “compelling alternative” to X. But by the end of 2025, the app’s user base took a nosedive. About 40% fewer active users were reportedly posting to Bluesky, and today the number continues to flatten (if not decline). Once lauded as the heroic anti-X, a more principled and moralistic Twitterverse, Bluesky now appears to be struggling to retain users and build a sustainable, competitive business model. Its identity as an alternative to Twitter drew in waves of oppositional voices, often labeled “Resistance Twitter,” but that positioning may now be its biggest hurdle. Some of its most vocal, self-identified neoliberal users have helped create an echo chamber that can stifle discourse, at times driving prolific journalists off the platform. And experts in decentralized microblogging say Bluesky is running into a familiar problem from Twitter’s early days: how to grow and generate revenue without undermining the authenticity of the user experience. It’s a tricky problem, one with a few possible fixes, according to industry experts, and a familiar one in the digital age. Bluesky arrived with real momentum and promise. It still meets a clear need on the internet: a decentralized, discourse-driven space with rules meant to curb bad-faith behavior like hate speech and spam. Its timing helped. The platform launched into a moment when Elon Musk had just acquired Twitter, renamed it X, and reshaped it into a more chaotic, anything-goes environment. And that chaos hasn’t disappeared. Misinformation and low-quality AI slop circulate on X every day. Yet the platform, for all its flaws, still offers up an interesting array of jokes and commentary—the sort of context mix Bluesky has struggled to replicate. In need of normies? Bluesky had, and arguably has, promise. And “good” intentions, if it’s even appropriate to apply that framework for any for-profit tech company. The app first began as an experiment slash research project by the then-CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey in 2019. Dorsey said he wanted to create an “open and decentralized” social media that would give users more control over their data, and that he believed in content moderation when it came to hate speech, slop, and misinformation. A distinctive stance that Musk actively neglects on X, if he’s not deliberately fanning every day. In 2021, the company brought on software engineer Jay Graber as CEO. But Graber has recently stepped down, creating more fission and uncertainty for the company. (Bluesky did respond to a request for comment.) At the height of anti–far right sentiment leading up to the 2024 election, amid a loud backlash against Musk and the perceived deterioration of X, Bluesky started to feel like a kind of promiseland. It became, for many, a version of “the future liberals want,” a space where users with strong left-leaning politics could gather and thrive. When The President was declared the winner, frustrated Twitter users directed their attention and energy to Bluesky, and almost overnight it began to feel like a new Twitter, or a more orderly version of Liberal Twitter. Sure, there were other alternatives, like Threads and Mastodon, but Bluesky moved faster in capturing both credibility and hype. Creators, journalists, academics, and other power users from X put in the work early, cross-posting and urging their followers to migrate. Many saw immediate traction. A number of people who were once prolific posters on X say they now prefer Bluesky, in part because they trust that most users are real and that interactions feel more authentic. “I like that Bluesky has real people on it, and the people are, in general, more positive and joyful than those on Twitter,” says Ed Zitron, a writer and podcaster with over 175,000 followers. “They talk about things they like, they get excited about stuff, they riff, they commiserate, they actually have some community. It’s nice.” Zitron says he hasn’t had many negative experiences, especially compared with Twitter. And when backlash does come, he doesn’t dwell on it, seeing it as a normal part of any conversation-driven platform. “I think it’s easy to say, ‘well I saw this time where someone got attacked,’ and generalize, but you can point to that happening on any social network.” Another power user, a journalist with tens of thousands of followers who wished to remain anonymous, noted something similar. “It’s by far the friendliest platform to reporters, just structurally, because it doesn’t throttle links,” she says, in that it doesn’t deprioritize or penalize external links like many other micro-blogging mediums do. “Threads, X, IG, TikTok, all of these platforms are so bad for getting people to read your work. People on Bluesky want to amplify news and want to read it.” She notes, though, that Bluesky is not “normie enough,” in that it often feels shaped by the loudest voices, many of them indignant about their causes du jour. Its most active posters are still journalists, scholars, or “Resistance Twitter” pack leaders. The “normies” among your friends, colleagues, and neighbors in everyday life are likely not on Bluesky yet. Without them, the culture and values on the site can feel disproportionately representative. And, as we know with litigating complex socio-political issues with others in our real lives, there is a lot more diversity and friction. In my opinion, and one that’s shared by many studies and scholars, we need ideological checks and balances to keep our own dogmatic frameworks sharp and current. Even irreverent jokes about serious current affairs helps to break up the tonal steering and policing. That dynamic is not unique to Bluesky. All microblogging platforms contend with a small group of loud users dominating the tone. But because Bluesky has struggled to grow its user base, the effect can feel especially constricting. The platform can seem narrow not just ideologically but socially, with too few highly active posters generating the energy and unpredictability that make these networks feel alive. That sense of thin activity shows up in the data: According to a 2025 analysis from the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of so-called news influencers on Bluesky post infrequently, whereas 83% posted on X at least four times per week. Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media at Carnegie Mellon University who’s been studying Twitter alternatives like Bluesky and Mastodon with his students, says “click-based behavior” is creating this teeming of singular discourses. “We see it on every social network: You have folks aligning across ideological concepts following each other and directing each other to different posts that might negate an opinion to the group.,” he says “Could you call it cultish? Not sure, but we’re seeing more of it.” That dynamic can escalate quickly in practice. Late last month, Mark Stern, a SCOTUS reporter for Slate, announced he was going to stop posting to Bluesky after one of his posts was seemingly misinterpreted for being pro-conversion therapy. (In fact, he was merely contextualizing a Supreme Court ruling.) Fervid Bluesky users harassed, dog-piled and successfully ran him off the platform. “I am going to stop summarizing Supreme Court decisions on here as they come down. One comment has been plucked out of context of all my reporting, misread, and used as the basis of a mean-spirited pile-on. I am not going to subject myself to this. If this was your goal, then congratulations,” Stern posted on March 31. (Stern did not respond to a request for comment.) This aggressive and yet overly earnest “pie in the sky” approach to ideological hominy is what’s making it unenjoyable today, experts say. “I had the same thing happen on Bluesky,” says Lightman, in response to the mob that attacked Stern. “I posted something that in my opinion I felt strongly about, and a bunch of people tried to lecture me that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I was like, ‘Holy crap, it’s happening again.’ It drives people away from the platform.” Adventures in AI The other hurdle for Bluesky is building a financially viable business model that doesn’t compromise its core values. Twitter faced it in its early days, too: How does it get advertisers or its users to pay for it? With direct advertising, it may run the risk of creating more spam content and infringing on its ethos and image as a native, user-first place. Recalibrating its algorithm to surface more like-minded content to keep users hooked (the X approach) could also alienate its most devoted users, who hate that aspect of X. “Advertising, algorithmic feeds, these are all things Bluesky has vocally said that they’re not going to do [so] they kind of painted themselves in a corner,” says Ben Pettis, an assistant professor of communications at the University of Richmond. “They can go donation-based, but I’m not sure they’ll be able to sustain themselves with it.” Pettis also suggested bringing notable influencers on the platform, the way Threads and Substack have approached marketing, but he then noted that it might also run counter to Bluesky’s brand: “If companies were to court influencers, my sense is a lot of people would be aware of what’s going on, they might feel it’s inauthentic.” Pettis and Lightman both stressed how difficult this quandary is to solve for all microblogging sites, not exclusive to Bluesky. But the singular problem for Bluesky, by being billed as the utopian anti-Twitter ecosystem, is the cultural and business bind that they’re in that seems to account for its waning activity. “You end up with a core contradiction when you make an online place that’s good for people but it’s not good for business,” Pettis added. (Bluesky did not respond to my request for comment.) In its latest bid to stay relevant, Bluesky launched its own AI tool, called Attie, but it seemed to prompt immediate recoil, even disgust. Many users complained that AI is not what they want or need. In a curt response to a user who expressed this exact sentiment, Graber wrote, “then don’t use it—it’s a separate app.” She then reposted a user who said that the “willful blindness about AI” from those “on the left,” about wanting total dissolution of AI, is shortsighted. The clash between Bluesky leadership and its users over AI integration is not surprising, given the company once took a fairly firm stance against it. While most companies are rushing to adopt or keep up with AI tech, perhaps also willfully and blindly at times, Bluesky’s stark shift from its original ethos suggests the company may be doing everything it can to remain viable. Still, regular Bluesky users seem to enjoy enough of the anti-Twitter features and protections it offers. And the hard truth all social media and tech companies must face is that they have to prioritize user experience above all. That should include a firm, disciplined stance against misinformation and hate speech, while also allowing for a diversity of speech and thought necessary to foster a smart, enriching place for online discourse. I prefer this response But where Bluesky may lack an ideological edge, it does have something that is increasingly rare these days: real human users. While exact metrics or studies showing that most accounts on Bluesky are verified and run by real people are hard to come by, nearly everyone I spoke with pointed to this as the platform’s most redeeming quality, especially compared with X, Mastodon, or Threads. The company is also particularly proud of its efforts to eliminate bots and build stronger verification layers. “The biggest difference is that I can say for certain that the majority of people responding are… actual people?” says Zitron. “This wasn’t always novel.” View the full article

Almost every major currency has gained against the greenback this month amid hopes for end to Iran conflictView the full article

On average, 11 car crashes occur every minute in the U.S. By the time you finish reading this sentence, several vehicle collisions will have happened across the country, some of which were likely fatal. In the world of aviation, the number of crashes involving a U.S. civilian aircraft is about 1,200 per year, and very few of those result in fatalities. Despite the 5,500 American planes that are in the air at any given moment during peak times, collisions are rare, because airspace is designed for safety. Planes are required to communicate with one another and with ground control. No one gets to “opt out.” Our roads are another story. More than 280 million registered vehicles share U.S. streets with trucks, cyclists, and pedestrians—largely without any systemic communication. This isn’t a failure of drivers or technology, but a failure of system design. The real problem is infrastructure, not vehicle safety Anyone who’s waited at a busy intersection understands how much uncertainty we accept as normal. Roadways are open systems with infinite variables—weather, pedestrians, distracted drivers, and aging infrastructure. Communication between vehicles is minimal, and infrastructure is largely silent—and in that gap lies the potential for deadly collisions. When I was a child, I lost a close family member in a car crash. Sadly, that experience is not unique. Later in my career, that loss left me asking: why do we accept a level of loss on our streets that we would never tolerate in the skies? The lesson from aerospace is clear: safety comes from mandatory communication and a shared system design, not from relying on each vehicle to figure it out on its own. A shared safety layer must live in the physical and digital infrastructure itself. AI sensors and models need to be able to see our intersections and highways, understand how vehicles, pedestrians, and other road users interact, and predict risk before collisions occur. Why aerospace is easier In aerospace, safety is designed into the system from day one. During my research years at MIT, working on autonomous systems with NASA and the U.S. Navy, one thing was clear: no aircraft operates in isolation. In both traditional air traffic control and newer systems designed to manage drones, safety isn’t something added later—it’s built on connectivity and constant information sharing. Aircraft continuously share their position and movement through standardized sensing and communication systems. Flight plans and operating rules allow ground systems to understand intent and predict where aircraft are headed next. This creates a shared, real-time picture of the airspace. Humans and automated systems can spot conflicts early, coordinate decisions, and resolve risks long before paths intersect. That shared awareness is why near-misses in the air rarely turn into disasters. Why infrastructure-first intelligence works If we can engineer safety for aircraft moving at hundreds of miles per hour, we can do the same for streets moving at 30. Most traffic systems today are built to react after something goes wrong. Predictive systems are designed to intervene before conflict turns into a crash. But for safety systems to work, intelligence must live in the environment itself—not just inside individual vehicles. Roughly one quarter of crashes occur in intersections (which is unsurprising: we’ve all stood at intersections where everything looked calm until a car ran a red light or a cyclist swerved). These are prime locations for infrastructure-first intelligence. An intelligent intersection works a lot like air traffic control on the ground. Sensors at signals and along the roadway detect what’s happening in real time, whether it’s a vehicle accelerating toward a red light, a pedestrian about to step off the curb, or a cyclist going the wrong way. Edge AI processes that information instantly, predicting potential conflicts. V2X communication, the digital equivalent of in-flight radios, then pushes alerts back out to road users, giving them time to react. Essentially, it’s a loop: detection leads to prediction, which generates an alert and triggers an action, powered by continuously running AI models in the background. The result isn’t perfect foresight, but a safety net that buys precious seconds. And on roads, seconds are what save lives. We don’t need perfect tech to save lives today Cities aren’t ignoring safety, but they often haven’t been given systems designed to manage it effectively. Those that have, have seen incredible results in a short period of time. In Sarasota, Florida, a Smart City Initiative helped reduce crashes by 33 percent at targeted intersections in just one year by turning raw data into actionable insight. The technology gave city officials the clarity they needed to act quickly and deploy countermeasures where they mattered most. The tools already exist. What’s missing is a willingness to treat intelligent intersections as infrastructure, not operational experiments. That means prioritizing high-crash corridors, requiring new signals to be V2X-ready, and investing in systems that deliver measurable outcomes. The measure of success is straightforward: fewer crashes, fewer injuries, fewer deaths. The question is whether we continue to accept preventable harm on our streets or finally build roads as safe, reliable, and networked as the skies above us. View the full article

Berlin publishes its first military strategy since second world warView the full article

AI is redefining how products are both built and experienced, and Samsung is reimagining its place in the tech ecosystem. As Milan Design Week gets underway, Samsung’s president and chief design officer Mauro Porcini pulls back the curtain on the company’s new design manifesto, gets candid about their rivalry with Apple, and shares why a brand known for engineering dominance is now betting its future on something far harder to measure: how a product makes you feel. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob 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 Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. As an Italian in American business, and as a designer working with businesspeople, you’ve always been a little bit of an outsider in some ways in the communities you’re in. Now, as you get to Seoul and you’re the first non-Korean president in Samsung’s history, how much of being an outsider is good or bad? And how do you impact the culture without alienating the people who built it? This idea of being suspended between different worlds — I grew up in Italy, in the north of Italy, with parents from the south, at a moment in time in Italy when the south and the north were really divided. I would go around my neighborhood, and it was clear that I did not belong there. But then when I went to the south on vacation during the summer, I for sure did not belong there either. So already then, when I was a child, I lived in this gray area, suspended between different identities. If you talk to the design world, often they’re like, “Well, but you’re a businessperson.” But then if you talk to the business world, they are totally like, “You are not one of us.” So you don’t belong there either. Often people are uncomfortable when they don’t have a specific label, when they don’t belong. The message I want to send, especially to the new generations of people who are trying to define their identity, is that often in those gray areas, you can design your own identity and be unique and original. Already, when I moved as an Italian to the United States, there were many things that I didn’t understand. They were alien to me. They were weird to me, honestly. But you need to really analyze yourself, analyze the culture you’re facing, and understand what unique strengths you bring to the table. Here, it’s a culture that is very organized. There is this vision coming from the top, and then an army of people that can execute. If used in the right ways, it’s very powerful, because they are able to move really quickly. Obviously, I was called to bring in a vision that adds to the one the company already had in design. So I really spent the past year trying to understand the strengths of the company and how I can bring something different. I’m still in the middle of it. I think you need to be very transparent about the fact that you will have missteps and make mistakes. But again, you also need to show as much as possible what you bring to the table. I’ve seen commentaries on LinkedIn from designers talking about your move to Samsung and kind of finding hope in it. I’m curious what that hope is referring to. Look, I was surprised by those comments too. Design in corporations is somehow struggling. The design community made huge promises in the first decade of this new millennium about the power of design thinking, and then in many instances, design thinking didn’t deliver. Design thinking is important because you need a methodology, you need a process, you need tools, exactly like a painter needs a brush. But then you need the right painter. You need Picasso, because if you give that brush to Picasso, you get something. If you give that brush to my accountant or my kid, you’re going to get something different. Instead, our design community talked too much about the brush, the bristles, the material, and how to design the brush. We forgot that, at the end of the day, what really makes the difference is the thinking of the design thinkers. Do we have the right empathy? Do we read the right signals? Do we have the right intuition? To innovate, you need the tool, you need design thinking, but you also need the right people with the right mindset. You’ve been at Samsung about a year, and you’re announcing this design manifesto for Samsung’s future this week as part of Milan Design Week. So can you give us a taste of that and how that came together? The pillar of what we’re doing with design at Samsung is really making sure that designers are the voice of humanity in the organization. I identified four different territories, four categories we need to focus on. The first one is what I call live longer. Then there is live better, live loud, and live on. Longer means all those technologies, most of them wearable technologies, that we have to monitor your body and help you with your physical and mental well-being. Then there are all those technologies that are there for your safety — the safety of yourself, your loved ones, your pet, your home, your belongings. The second one, live better, is all about using technology to free up time to do what you love most. That dimension is literally about using robots and AI to increase the productivity of what you do, or ideally to do things on your behalf so that you can be free of technology and do whatever you want. With or without technology is up to you. It’s your choice. The third dimension, live loud, is the world of creativity and self-expression. It’s about using technology to express yourself. It could go from creating content for social media all the way to, for instance, creating your startup from the comfort of your living room using those technologies. Then the fourth dimension is what we call live on. It’s about transcending yourself and preserving memories. We are saving pictures and videos of the people we love. I have thousands and thousands of pictures and videos of my family members, and I have almost nothing of, for instance, my grandparents, especially when they were kids. So already today, when people are not with us, either because they are on another side of the world or maybe because they’re not with us in this world anymore, we can preserve their memories, their emotions, their knowledge. But more than ever now, with AI, we can literally build digital twins of people. It will happen organically, because the more we share everything we do with AI devices and AI platforms, the more these platforms will learn about us and will be able to replicate us in some form. My parents are in their 80s. I hope they’re going to live for the next 50 years, but when they’re not with me anymore, if I have a moment of difficulty, I would love to have the possibility to ask my dad, “What would you do if you were me?” In all of this, you see that the technology is just a tool. It is at the service of humanity. When you come up with these four areas, to what extent do you start with, like, “Here are the products we have now, and we have to serve them,” versus, “Here are the questions, and how do I move the products into them?” There are three horizons that we’re considering. One is the short horizon. You start from the products of today and try to advance them in an incremental way, even though, obviously, you always try to figure out if there is something breakthrough that you can implement quickly. Then there is a second horizon, where I need to figure out how I can do something that is more radical. But the area where the four categories apply the most is the long-term horizon. This is where you define the future portfolio of the company. There are products that maybe in the future won’t exist anymore, because robots will do a lot of things that other devices do today. So those devices will need to evolve, need to be redesigned. Let’s say in 10 years’ time, in a house where you have multiple kinds of robots — humanoids, utilitarian robots, and robots that are more about emotional companionship — our appliances will change. The robot will be the main interface between you and some of these appliances. If AI is going to be in your house, how will your TV, your refrigerator, your speakers evolve? What will be their role? What will be the shape of these devices? Where will they be placed? Then you go back to today and start to influence the development of those products in that direction. This is influencing, by the way, eventually strategies of acquisitions, partnerships, or research that you can do. View the full article

On April 7, Anthropic unveiled its most powerful AI model to date. Mythos, it said, will help companies discover vulnerabilities and implement fixes in software models, surpassing “all but the most skilled humans.” Now the patching from that analysis is about to get underway. And people who ignore the updates could find themselves under siege by hackers. Mythos, Anthropic said, found coding weak spots in every operating system and web browser, some of which had been lying in wait for decades. One flaw in OpenBSD, which was designed with security top of mind, had apparently been hidden deep in the code for 28 years. To ward off a possible feeding frenzy from hackers, who exploit weak spots in code, Anthropic has given 40 major tech companies—including Apple, Google, and Amazon—early access to Mythos, letting them identify and fix any previously unknown backdoors. That means your devices are going to alert you to update them. While it’s easy to convince yourself to put that off for a few hours or a day or more, this is a time you’ll want to update as soon as you get the notification. Patches fix the problem, but those fixes can also be reverse engineered by hackers to learn the source of the vulnerability. And, knowing that people are lazy when it comes to system updates, bad actors will work quickly to find a way to exploit those weaknesses in unpatched systems. A critical time for security The discovery of several new vulnerabilities in operating systems, web browsers, and more comes at an especially delicate time. Since the U.S. began “major combat operations” against Iran in late February, authorities have warned of an expected online counterattack by state-sponsored hackers. So far, the U.S. hasn’t seen the sort of activity that some feared, but hacker groups have managed to land some blows. Medical equipment maker Stryker, for instance, saw a global outage across its system. FBI Director Kash Patel saw his personal email compromised. And the Iran-linked Handala claimed last month to have published the personal data of dozens of Lockheed Martin employees stationed in the Middle East. Some experts say bigger attacks could still be looming. “Early-stage cyber activity tends to prioritize disinformation generation, intelligence collection, access development, and operations that directly support military objectives,” says Matt Hull, VP of cyber intelligence and response at NCC Group. “The absence of widely reported incidents should not be interpreted as a lack of activity, but rather as an indication that much of it is occurring below the threshold of public detection.” What you should do To protect your personal and/or business devices, you’ll need to be vigilant. That means acting immediately when your device, browser, or software alerts you that an update is available. If you haven’t already enabled auto-updates on your system, this is a good time to do so. Beyond that, there are several other ways to protect yourself. Back up your data often. Backups are just good cyber hygiene. Ransomware attacks might hold your data hostage, but if you have an up-to-date copy of that data, it’s much easier to recover. Get educated.The primary way many hackers worm their way into a system is via phishing emails and malware. Training yourself, or your employees, not to click on unknown links or open attachments can keep those intruders outside the system. If you’re a business owner, hold regular cybersecurity training events and be sure workers know what to be on alert for. Pay attention to authentication. This would be a good time to consider updating your passwords, or transitioning to a passkey login, which often uses a facial or fingerprint scan. These work by generating a pair of keys (one public, which is stored in the cloud, and one private, which is stored on the device). If a server is compromised, accounts are still protected, as the hacker won’t have both sets of keys. Update hardware and software. If you’re still running an old version of Windows or macOS, or have held on to an older PC or smartphone longer than your peers, it might be time to bite the bullet and upgrade. If your device has reached its end-of-life date, that means the manufacturer will not offer any security updates, making you especially vulnerable. Check with either the product’s manufacturer or a third-party site, such as endoflife.date, to see if your device has crossed this threshold. View the full article

An independent auditor raised "substantial doubt" about the company's viability as it may not be able to extend forbearance deadlines on massive debts. View the full article

The investment property owner says she was stonewalled and humiliated by BofA's loan officers, and that an error-riddled appraisal was short by over $70,000. View the full article

The North Face’s new collection is designed to make camping more accessible for everyone—and it starts with reconsidering the small details that designers often overlook. The Universal Collection is a five-piece set of gear, including a sleeping bag, tent, backpack, slippers, and hat. It was designed in collaboration with ski mountaineer Vasu Sojitra and rock climber Maureen Beck, both of whom are athlete collaborators with The North Face and advocates for the disability community. According to Luke Matthews, design manager of technical equipment for the North Face, the concept for the Universal Collection arose after his team noticed a common complaint from consumers. “Not many camping-focused recreational products exist that are crafted with the disabled community in mind,” he says. Each of the collection’s five items were chosen to cover the essential needs of outdoor exploration, including shelter, warmth, comfort, protection, and storage. They’ve also been designed with a range of new strategies that makes them easier to use for people in wheelchairs, who have limited motor skills, visual impairments, and who live with other disabilities. For the North Face, it’s a project that’s demonstrated how designing with accessibility in mind can result in better products for everyone. “As we dove deeper into understanding the universal design approach, it transformed into a project focused on lowering barriers for everyone, regardless of ability, with the intent to get more people outside,” Matthews says. The North Face is “designing to solve problems” Designing the Universal Collection started with examining each of its constituent items and determining which details could be pain points for customers with disabilities. During this phase, Matthews says, Sojitra and Beck “challenged the team to think more inclusively about the products we make and to take a broader approach to problem-solving, reexamining some of the industry standards and assumptions we have made.” For the sleeping bag, that meant reevaluating one of the object’s most obvious features: the zipper. For some people with physical disabilities or limited motor skills, the double-handed grip required to use a zipper can be an obstacle. “We focused on solving this issue with magnetic closures and we also added key tactile details to make the user experience easier to interact with,” Matthews says. Those tactile details include rubberized panels to make the bag’s components identifiable by touch, as well as oversized loops on draw cords to make adjustments easier. Rather than zippering together, the bag has two insulated side panels—one lighter and one heavier—that fold over on themselves like wings. This method is not only easier for anyone to close, Matthews says, but also allows for better temperature control: On warmer nights, users can sleep with just the light wing down, and when it gets cold, they can stack the heavier wing on top. A similar attention to detail was applied to the design of the Wawona 3 tent. One main challenge that the team identified was the typical complicated setup process, which often involves multiple different pole sizes and complicated attachment points. On the Wawona 3, all of the poles are of equal lengths, and each slides into an easy-catch sleeve rather than a small grommet. “The pole connection detail where the poles insert into the tent is an industry standard solution that we wanted to rethink,” Matthews says. “We updated it from the traditional webbing and grommet style to a pole catch pocket that lowers the effort and dexterity required to connect the pole. This small change makes a big difference in the set up process.” The actual doorway of the tent is low to the ground to accommodate mobility devices, and an expanded entryway makes it easy to enter, exit, and store mobility devices alongside gear. The North Face added high-visibility and reflective fabrics to the front of the tent and the pole sleeves to make the entire set-up more accessible for people with visual impairments. The rest of the collection is smaller, but equally thoughtful: a backpack with magnetic closures and a range of carry methods; a pair of insulated, slip-on shoes that can fit on either foot, and a hat that can be easily adjusted with one hand. Going forward, Matthews says, the Universal Collection will set the tone for a new standard approach of “designing to solve problems” at the North Face. “By considering users with a broader lens and filtering design solutions accordingly, we’re able to design better products for all users, regardless of experience level or physical ability,” Matthews says. “At the end of the day, that’s just a smart business decision.” View the full article