All Activity

Generally, when Google wants to take you into AI Mode from an AI Overview, it uses a button that says see more or some variation of that. But now Google is testing "Enter AI Mode" as the call to action.View the full article

The UK’s stagnant economy and the US’s dynamic one are both politically dysfunctional View the full article

Just a heads up, that a small setting within Google AdSense under the vignette ads may trigger your site to get a Google search penalty - specifically for the new back button hijacking search spam rule.View the full article

Google is testing removing some of the action buttons on local panels, Google Business Profiles, including call and share, and replacing it with a numbered show more button. Clicking on that button opens up those additional action options.View the full article

The Self Employment Tax Form, known as Schedule SE, is crucial for anyone with net self-employment income of $400 or more. This form helps you calculate your self-employment tax, which contributes to Social Security and Medicare. It’s filed alongside your IRS Form 1040, 1040-NR, or 1040-SR. Comprehending how to complete Schedule SE correctly can impact your overall tax liability. Let’s explore who needs to file and how to accurately calculate this tax obligation. Key Takeaways The self-employment tax form is Schedule SE, used to calculate self-employment tax obligations for individuals earning $400 or more. Schedule SE is filed alongside IRS Form 1040, 1040-NR, or 1040-SR to report self-employment income. It allows taxpayers to deduct 50% of self-employment tax from their gross income, reducing taxable income. Completing Schedule SE impacts eligibility for future Social Security benefits based on reported earnings. Failure to file or pay self-employment tax may result in penalties and interest charges from the IRS. Understanding Self-Employment Tax Self-employment tax (SE tax) is a crucial aspect of financial responsibility for individuals who earn income through self-employment. This federal tax is applicable if you earn $400 or more in net income. Currently, the SE tax rate is 15.3%, which breaks down into 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. High earners may furthermore face an extra 0.9% Medicare tax. To accurately report your obligations, you must file the Schedule SE form along with your 1040 self-employment tax form. It’s important to note that SE tax is calculated on 92.35% of your net earnings, ensuring you cover both employee and employer portions. Moreover, you can deduct 50% of the self-employment tax paid from your gross income on Form 1040, effectively reducing your taxable income and overall tax liability. Comprehending these details helps you manage your finances effectively and meet your tax obligations. What Is Schedule SE? Schedule SE is an essential tax form for self-employed individuals, as it helps you calculate and report your self-employment tax obligations, covering both Social Security and Medicare taxes. If you have net self-employment income of $400 or more, you’ll need to file it alongside IRS Form 1040, 1040-NR, or 1040-SR. This form not just outlines your tax calculation methodology but likewise allows you to deduct 50% of your self-employment tax, in the end lowering your taxable income. Purpose of Schedule SE When you earn $400 or more from freelance work or other self-employment activities, it’s crucial to understand the role of Schedule SE in your tax reporting. This form helps you calculate and report your self-employment tax obligations. Here’s what you need to know about the Schedule SE: Tax Calculation: It determines your self-employment tax rate of 15.3%, which includes Social Security and Medicare. Filing Requirements: You must file Schedule SE alongside your 1040 schedule SE to report your earnings properly. Deduction: You can deduct 50% of the self-employment tax from your income on Form 1040, reducing your taxable income. Social Security Benefits: Information reported helps determine your future eligibility for Social Security benefits. Filing Requirements Overview Comprehension of the filing requirements for Schedule SE is critical if you’ve earned $400 or more from self-employment activities. You’ll need to file Schedule SE with your IRS Form 1040 to report your self-employment tax obligations. This form is fundamental for various self-employed individuals, including sole proprietors, independent contractors, and partners. On this schedule, you’ll calculate the self-employment tax owed based on your net earnings, which is taxed at a rate of 15.3%. Keep in mind you can deduct 50% of your self-employment tax when determining your taxable income on Form 1040. In particular, make sure you report your net profit accurately on line 7 of Schedule SE to comply with IRS regulations effectively. Tax Calculation Methodology Comprehending how to calculate your self-employment tax is vital for accurately completing your tax return. To do this, you’ll use Schedule SE if your net self-employment income is $400 or more. Here’s how to calculate your self-employment tax: Determine your net profit from self-employment. Multiply that net profit by 92.35% to find your taxable self-employment income. Apply the self-employment tax rate of 15.3% (12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare) to your taxable income. Remember, you can deduct 50% of your self-employment tax from your total income on Form 1040. Filing Schedule SE alongside Form 1040 guarantees you’re accurately reporting your self-employment tax. Who Needs to File Schedule SE? Many individuals engaged in self-employment may need to file Schedule SE if their net earnings from self-employment activities reach $400 or more during the tax year. This includes independent contractors, sole proprietors, and partners providing services to partnerships. If you own a single-member LLC, you’re also required to file Schedule SE once you meet this income threshold. Furthermore, ministers and members of religious orders must file Schedule SE if they earn $108.28 or more, except they’ve filed for an exemption with Form 4361. When you file Schedule C, Schedule SE is automatically generated, making the process easier, except you have zero net income or report statutory income on a W-2. It’s crucial to understand these requirements to guarantee compliance and avoid potential penalties. Filing IRS Schedule SE accurately helps you calculate your self-employment tax and maintain good standing with the IRS. Self-Employment Tax Rate When you’re self-employed, comprehension of the self-employment tax rate is essential for your financial planning. For 2025, the rate stands at 15.3%, which includes contributions to Social Security and Medicare, but earnings over $176,100 are only subject to the Medicare portion. Moreover, if you earn over $200,000 as a single filer or $250,000 as a couple, you’ll face an extra Medicare tax, so being aware of these thresholds can greatly impact your tax liability. Tax Rate Breakdown Comprehending the self-employment tax rate is crucial for anyone earning income through self-employment, as it directly impacts your overall tax liability. The self-employment tax rate is 15.3%, broken down as follows: 12.4% for Social Security on net earnings up to $176,100 for 2025. 2.9% for Medicare on all net earnings, regardless of amount. An additional 0.9% Medicare tax applies if you earn over $200,000 (single) or $250,000 (married). The maximum Social Security contribution is capped at $21,469.20 for the tax year 2025. Earnings Cap Impact Comprehending how the earnings cap affects your self-employment tax liability is vital for effective financial planning. For the tax year 2025, the self-employment tax rate stands at 15.3%, which comprises 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. This rate applies to net earnings up to $176,100. If your earnings exceed this cap, the Medicare tax continues at 2.9%, with an additional 0.9% for single filers earning over $200,000 or married couples over $250,000. Your maximum contribution to Social Security is capped at $17,707.20, reflecting 12.4% of the maximum taxable earnings. To determine your self-employment tax liability, report your net earnings after expenses on Schedule SE, as grasping these limits is fundamental for tax planning. Additional Medicare Tax The Additional Medicare Tax is an important consideration for self-employed individuals whose net earnings exceed certain thresholds. This tax adds an extra 0.9% on income above $200,000 for single filers and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly. Here are some key points to remember: It applies only to income exceeding the threshold; the standard Medicare tax of 2.9% remains for all earnings. There’s no income cap for this additional tax. It’s calculated in addition to the standard self-employment tax rate of 15.3%. You must report this tax on your annual tax return using Form 1040, including it in your total self-employment tax due. Keep these details in mind to guarantee compliance. How to Calculate Self-Employment Tax Calculating your self-employment tax is essential for comprehending your tax obligations. To start, you need to determine your net earnings from self-employment. Multiply this amount by 92.35% to find the taxable income for self-employment tax. For example, if your net income is $50,000, you’d calculate $50,000 x 92.35%, resulting in $46,175. Next, apply the self-employment tax rate of 15.3% to this figure. This rate consists of 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. For 2025, Social Security tax applies up to $176,100. If your income exceeds this threshold, only the 2.9% Medicare tax continues, plus an additional 0.9% for earnings over $200,000 for single filers. Finally, complete Schedule SE and submit it with your Form 1040, using net profit reported from Schedule C or Schedule F to finalize your tax liability. Reporting Self-Employment Tax on Form 1040 Reporting self-employment tax on Form 1040 is an important step for independent workers to guarantee they meet their tax responsibilities. To accurately report your self-employment tax, follow these steps: Complete Schedule SE: File this form alongside your Form 1040 if your net self-employment income is $400 or more. Calculate Tax: Schedule SE determines a 15.3% tax rate on 92.35% of your net earnings, split between Social Security and Medicare contributions. Report on Form 1040: After calculating your tax, enter the amount in the “Other Taxes” section of Form 1040. Claim Deduction: Don’t forget, you can deduct 50% of your self-employment tax, which helps reduce your taxable income. Accurate completion of Schedule SE is significant, as it not just affects your tax liability but impacts your future Social Security benefits. Payment and Reporting Obligations When you’re self-employed, keeping track of your payment and reporting obligations is crucial. You’ll need to make estimated quarterly tax payments using Form 1040-ES if you expect to owe $1,000 or more in federal taxes for the year. At the end of the year, you’ll report your self-employment tax on Schedule SE and include it in the Other Taxes section of Form 1040. Quarterly Estimated Payments Making quarterly estimated tax payments is an important responsibility for self-employed individuals, especially if you expect to owe $1,000 or more in federal taxes for the year. Here’s what you need to know: Use Form 1040-ES to submit your payments. Payments are due on January 15, April 15, June 15, and September 15. Calculate your estimated payment by considering expected income, deductions, and tax credits. Each payment should cover both income tax and self-employment tax obligations. Timely payments are vital, as failure to pay can result in penalties and interest charges from the IRS. Staying on top of these payments helps you avoid unexpected financial burdens when tax season arrives. Annual Tax Filing Filing your annual tax return is a crucial step in managing your self-employment responsibilities, as it allows you to reconcile your estimated quarterly payments with your actual tax liability. If your net self-employment income is $400 or more, you’ll need to file Schedule SE with Form 1040 to report your self-employment tax obligations. The self-employment tax rate is 15.3%, which includes 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. Deductions for Self-Employed Individuals Deductions for self-employed individuals play a crucial role in managing tax liability, as they can greatly lower taxable income. By comprehending and claiming the right deductions, you can notably reduce the amount you owe. Here are some key deductions to take into account: 50% of Self-Employment Tax: You can deduct half of your self-employment tax directly from your income on Form 1040. Business Expenses: Costs like advertising, insurance, and travel can be claimed on Schedule C, lowering your net profit. Qualified Business Income Deduction: You might qualify for a deduction of up to 20% on your qualified business income, further decreasing your tax liability. Home Office Deduction: If you run a home-based business, you can deduct a portion of your mortgage interest, insurance, and utilities based on business use. Consequences of Not Paying Self-Employment Tax Neglecting to pay your self-employment tax can lead to serious financial repercussions. If you fail to pay, the IRS may impose penalties of 0.5% of your unpaid taxes each month, escalating to 5% per month if you don’t file your tax return on time. Moreover, interest charges accumulate daily on any outstanding balance, compounding your financial burden. You might receive a CP2000 notice from the IRS if there are discrepancies between your reported income and their records, suggesting adjustments to your self-employment tax along with penalties and interest. Ignoring these obligations can result in significant consequences, including potential enforcement actions by the IRS to collect unpaid taxes. In addition, not paying your self-employment tax can hinder your ability to qualify for Social Security benefits, as these contributions are directly tied to your tax payments. Taking these obligations seriously is vital to avoid further complications. Common Forms Associated With Self-Employment Tax When you’re self-employed, comprehension of the key forms associated with self-employment tax is vital for managing your finances. You’ll primarily use Schedule SE to report your self-employment tax, alongside Form 1040, if your net earnings reach at least $400. Furthermore, forms like Schedule C, Form 1099-NEC, and Form 8829 play significant roles in income reporting and claiming deductions, impacting your overall tax obligations. Essential Self-Employment Forms Comprehending the crucial forms associated with self-employment tax is important for managing your finances and guaranteeing compliance with IRS regulations. Here are four fundamental forms you should be aware of: Schedule SE – This form reports your self-employment tax, required if your net income is $400 or more. Schedule C – Use this to report profit or loss from your business operations, detailing income and expenses. Form 1099-NEC – Clients issue this form to report any non-employee compensation exceeding $600, which you must include in your income. Form 8829 – If you have a home office, use this form to deduct related expenses, provided it’s your principal place of business. Understanding these forms helps guarantee you’re on the right track with your self-employment taxes. Income Reporting Requirements Comprehending income reporting requirements is essential for self-employed individuals to secure accurate tax filings and compliance with IRS rules. You’ll need to report your income using Schedule C to detail all business income and expenses, which directly affects your self-employment tax calculations. If you receive Form 1099-NEC from clients for non-employee compensation over $600, make sure to reconcile it with your records to confirm accurate reporting. Furthermore, file Schedule SE with your Form 1040 if your net earnings exceed $400, as this form calculates your self-employment tax. If you operate from a home office, use Form 8829 to report related expenses, allowing you to deduct those costs from your taxable income, further impacting your overall tax liability. Deduction and Credit Forms Self-employed individuals often find themselves maneuvering a variety of deduction and credit forms to optimize their tax obligations. Here are some common forms you should be aware of: Schedule C: Use this to report your business income and expenses, fundamental for determining your taxable income. Schedule SE: This calculates your self-employment tax obligations, essential for comprehending what you owe. Form 1040-ES: Ideal for making estimated tax payments, it helps you manage tax liabilities throughout the year. Form 8829: Claim expenses related to the business use of your home, which can considerably reduce your taxable income. Filing Form 1099-NEC is likewise critical for reporting nonemployee compensation, directly impacting your self-employment income calculation. Methods for Calculating Schedule SE When calculating self-employment tax, comprehension of the methods available on Schedule SE is crucial for ensuring accurate tax reporting. You can choose between the “Short Schedule SE” and the “Long Schedule SE.” If your net earnings are below $400 or you meet specific criteria, the Short Schedule SE suffices. On the other hand, if your self-employment income exceeds the Social Security wage base limit or you have both self-employment and church employee income, you’ll need the Long Schedule SE for more detailed calculations. To determine your self-employment tax, multiply your net earnings from self-employment by 92.35%, then apply the 15.3% tax rate. For earnings up to $176,100 in 2025, this tax consists of 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. Special Considerations for LLC Members As a member of an LLC, you need to understand how your income is taxed, especially regarding self-employment tax obligations. Here are some key points to keep in mind: If you’re in a single-member LLC, report your self-employment income on Schedule C, filing Schedule SE if your net earnings exceed $400. Multi-member LLCs typically file taxes as partnerships, requiring each member to report their share on Schedule K-1 and file Schedule SE if needed. You’re subject to self-employment tax at a rate of 15.3% on net earnings, which includes both Social Security (12.4%) and Medicare (2.9%) taxes. Remember, you can deduct 50% of your self-employment tax when calculating your adjusted gross income on Form 1040, providing a tax benefit. Maintaining accurate records of your income and expenses is crucial to guarantee compliance and avoid penalties. How to Handle IRS Notices Receiving an IRS notice can be a challenging experience, especially for those managing their own businesses. If you receive a CP2000 notice, it means there’s a discrepancy between your reported income and the IRS’s records, particularly regarding self-employment tax. It’s crucial to act without delay; failing to respond can incur monthly penalties of 0.5% on unpaid taxes, escalating to 5% if you don’t file your return by the deadline. Review the notice carefully to determine the required actions, whether it’s providing additional information or making payments. Keep in mind that interest charges on outstanding balances accrue daily, compounding the total amount owed. To avoid future notices, maintain accurate records and regularly compare your reported income with IRS records. This proactive approach not just helps you stay compliant but equally minimizes the risk of penalties and stress associated with IRS communications. Resources for Self-Employed Taxpayers Maneuvering through the intricacies of self-employment taxes can be intimidating, but several resources are available to help you comprehend your obligations and maximize your benefits. Familiarizing yourself with these can make tax time less stressful. IRS Tax Topic 554: This provides crucial information on filing requirements and tax benefits for self-employed individuals. Schedule SE Instructions: These guide you on calculating your self-employment tax based on your net earnings. Form 1040-ES: Use this for estimated quarterly tax payments if you expect to owe $1,000 or more in federal tax. Tax Preparation Software: Many programs offer features particularly for self-employed taxpayers, helping you navigate deductions and tax calculations. These resources can improve your comprehension, ensuring you meet your tax obligations during the optimization of your benefits as a self-employed individual. Frequently Asked Questions Do I File a 1099 for Self-Employment? You don’t file a 1099 for self-employment. Instead, clients who pay you $600 or more for your services must issue Form 1099-NEC to report those payments. You’ll receive a copy, which you should compare with your own records to guarantee accuracy. If you notice discrepancies, reach out to the client to resolve them before filing your taxes, helping you avoid complications with tax authorities. Always keep detailed records of your income and expenses. What IRS Form Do I Use for Self-Employment? For self-employment, you’ll need to use Schedule C to report your business income and expenses. If your net income is $400 or more, you must likewise file Schedule SE to calculate your self-employment tax, which is 15.3%. This amount includes contributions to Social Security and Medicare. When completing your Form 1040, keep in mind that you can deduct half of your self-employment tax, which can reduce your taxable income. Is a W-9 Form the Same as Self-Employment? No, a W-9 form isn’t the same as self-employment. The W-9 is used to provide your taxpayer identification information to clients or businesses that pay you, often for freelance work. It helps them report payments to the IRS. Self-employment tax, on the other hand, applies to your net earnings when you earn $400 or more from self-employment. You calculate this tax on your annual return using Schedule SE, not the W-9 form. How Much Is 1099 Self-Employment Tax? If you’re self-employed and receive a 1099 form, you’ll typically pay a self-employment tax of 15.3% on your net earnings. This tax includes both Social Security and Medicare contributions. For 2025, the first $176,100 of your earnings is subject to a 12.4% Social Security tax, whereas all earnings incur a 2.9% Medicare tax. If you earn above $200,000 as a single filer, an additional 0.9% Medicare tax applies. Conclusion In conclusion, comprehending the self-employment tax form, particularly Schedule SE, is crucial for anyone with net self-employment income of $400 or more. By accurately calculating your self-employment tax, you guarantee compliance with IRS regulations during the process and benefiting from potential deductions. Whether you’re an LLC member or a sole proprietor, staying informed about your tax obligations will help you manage your finances effectively. For further guidance, consider utilizing available resources customized for self-employed taxpayers. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Is the Self Employment Tax Form?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

The short answer: Agentic AI is now accessible to small businesses, and it can deliver real efficiency gains. But it works only if your processes, data, and people are ready for it. Moving fast without that foundation will cost you more than it saves. Here’s what small business owners need to know before they automate anything. What Is Agentic AI, and How Is It Different from the AI Tools Small Businesses Already Use? Most small businesses are already familiar with AI that helps write emails, generate content, or answer basic customer questions. That’s generative AI, which is AI that responds when you ask it something. Agentic AI goes further. It doesn’t just respond; it acts. An agentic system can observe a situation, determine what needs to happen, and carry out a sequence of actions to get there, often without human input at each step. In practice, for a small business, that looks like: A customer submits a support request. The agent categorizes it, checks order history, drafts a response, and sends it without anyone reviewing it. A new lead fills out a form. The agent scores the lead, adds it to your pipeline, sends a personalized follow-up, and schedules a discovery call. An invoice arrives. The agent extracts the data, matches it to a purchase order, flags discrepancies, and queues payment for approval. Is Agentic AI Actually Accessible to Small Businesses Now? Yes, and that’s what makes 2025 a real inflection point. A few years ago, deploying an AI agent required a dedicated engineering team and a substantial budget. Today, agentic capabilities are being built directly into the software small businesses already use: their CRMs, project management platforms, customer service tools, and accounting software. The compounding effect is real. Small businesses that begin building familiarity with agentic workflows now will have a meaningful head start over those who wait — not because the technology will become harder to access, but because organizational learning takes time. Simultaneously, the risks of moving too fast are equally real. Automating a broken process doesn’t fix it — it breaks it faster and at greater scale. How Do You Know If Your Small Business Is Ready for Agentic AI? Before deploying any agentic AI, ask yourself these four questions: 1. Do your existing processes actually work? Agentic AI amplifies whatever it touches. If your customer follow-up process is inconsistent or your lead qualification criteria are vague, an agent will execute those inconsistencies at scale. Map the process clearly first, and define what “good” looks like before you ask a system to replicate it. 2. Do you have clean, reliable data? Agents make decisions based on the data they can access. Duplicate contacts, outdated inventory numbers, or incomplete customer records will produce bad decisions at machine speed. Data hygiene is foundational. Do that work before you automate. 3. Who on your team will own the agent’s decisions? Even the most capable agents need a human owner — someone who reviews outcomes, adjusts parameters when things drift, and escalates edge cases. “The AI handles it” is not an accountability structure. Identify that person before you launch. 4. What’s your plan when the agent gets it wrong? Every automated system will eventually make a mistake. Design your recovery path before you need it: How will you know when something has gone wrong? Who gets alerted? How quickly can you override or pause the agent? Where Should Small Businesses Start with Agentic AI? Start with the tasks nobody wants to do anyway. The best early use cases for agentic AI are high-repetition, low-stakes workflows where the cost of an occasional error is manageable and the efficiency gain is immediate. Best entry points for small businesses: Appointment scheduling and follow-up reminders Routine data entry and invoice processing Lead scoring and initial outreach sequencing Internal status updates and report generation Where to hold back for now: Customer complaints requiring empathy or creative problem-solving Sensitive negotiations or relationship-defining conversations Any interaction where tone and judgment materially affect trust Scale gradually. Start with one workflow. Run it in parallel with your existing process for a few weeks. Compare outcomes. Then decide whether to expand. Businesses that pilot carefully end up with more reliable automation than those who try to overhaul everything at once. The Bottom Line Agentic AI is a genuinely powerful set of tools that, applied carefully, can help small businesses operate with the kind of consistency and efficiency that was previously only achievable at scale. The businesses that will get the most out of it won’t be the ones who sprint. They’ll be the ones who take the time to understand what they’re automating, why it matters, and where humans still need to be in the loop. This week, pick one repetitive task in your business that consumes time and produces predictable outputs. Map every step. Ask whether a system could own it. If the answer is yes, you’re ready to take your first step. Further Questions About Agentic AI for Small Businesses What’s the difference between agentic AI and a chatbot? A chatbot responds to inputs but doesn’t take independent action. An agentic AI system can take a sequence of actions across multiple tools and systems to complete a task without a human prompting each step. Think of a chatbot as a reference desk and an agent as an employee who gets things done. How much does it cost to implement agentic AI in a small business? Costs vary widely. Many small businesses access agentic capabilities through software they already subscribe to, such as newer versions of CRM, accounting, or customer service platforms that include agent features at no additional cost. Standalone agentic tools typically range from free tiers for basic use to a few hundred dollars per month for more advanced configurations. Can a small business implement agentic AI without a technical team? Yes. The current generation of agentic tools is designed for business users, not engineers. Most platforms offer visual workflow builders and pre-built templates for common use cases. The harder challenge is organizational readiness, like making sure your processes and data are clean enough for automation to work reliably. Image via Gemini This article, "Agentic AI Isn’t Just for Big Business Anymore — But Don’t Automate Before You’re Ready" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Google is testing having the AI Overview box "Ask Anything" section stick to the bottom of the Google Search box as you scroll down the AI Overview and the search results. This keeps AI Mode in your face during the whole search experience. View the full article

Beijing-backed wealth fund puts 10% stake in London airport on ‘active watch’View the full article

Google Ads is testing a way for advertisers to preview the impact of a change, like adding negative keywords. It seems to be called "Preview impact estimates" and lets you estimate the impact of, in this case, adding specific negative keywords.View the full article

This article is republished with permission from Laser Wars, a newsletter about military laser weapons and other futuristic defense technology. The cruise missile-killing high-energy laser weapon the U.S. Defense Department envisions as part of its ‘Golden Dome for America’ domestic missile defense shield is beginning to take shape. The new Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS)—a collaboration between the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy whose existence was first reported in June 2025—will initially consist of a containerized 150 kilowatt system with potential to scale to at least 300 kw to defeat incoming cruise missile threats, according to the Navy’s fiscal year 2027 budget request. The system will also include Joint Beam Control System (JBCS) “capable of supporting” a 300-500 kw laser weapon, the documents say. The JLWS effort will leverage research and development lessons from the Navy’s 60 kw High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system, which is currently installed on the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Preble, and the Army’s 300 kw Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) system, the first prototype of which the service plans on taking delivery of of later this year. The Navy will also “conduct upgrades” to its High Energy Laser Counter Anti-Ship Cruise Missile Project (HELCAP) testbed “as appropriate” in support of future JLWS testing. While last year’s Army budget request detailed $51 million in mandatory funding for JLWS through the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” reconciliation bill under its ‘Expanded Mission Area Missile’ program element, this year’s request does not contain any R&D funding for fiscal year 2027 but details plans for $337.8 million in spending starting in fiscal year 2028 and running through fiscal year 2031. Based on the budget documents, it looks as though the service plans on closing out its IFPC-HEL activities first before kicking off its part of the JLWS effort. The Navy, however, isn’t waiting around. The service requested $94.825 million under its ‘Directed Energy and Electric Weapon Systems’ program element in fiscal year 2027 (up from just $14.5 million in fiscal year 2026, as previously reported) that includes $79.84 million under its Surface Navy Laser Weapon System (SNLWS) effort to jumpstart JLWS R&D, sustain the service’s lone HELIOS system for future testing activities, and upgrade the HELCAP testbed (which is also receiving a separate $14.978 injection), according to the service’s budget request. The service plans on investing an additional $243.3 million into JLWS R&D under that program element through fiscal year 2031. Together, the Army and Navy requests total a vision of $675.93 million in R&D spending for the JLWS through fiscal year 2031. The Navy plans on awarding $31.7 million in contracts for JBCS development as soon as the fourth quarter of 2026 and the $30 million in contracts for the procurement and testing of containerized JLWS by March 2027, according to budget documents. It seems likely that Lockheed Martin will receive those contract: not only is the defense prime the technical lead on both the HELIOS and IFPC-HEL efforts that will inform the JLWS, but it’s also already developing a containerized version of the former, a company executive revealed in August 2025. It’s worth noting that while the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2027 budget request also contains $452 million in R&D spending for the “development, integration, and assessment” of directed energy weapons in support of Golden Dome, the exact relationship with the Army and Navy’s JLWS efforts is unclear. The Navy budget documents state that the $79.84 million allocated under SNLWS also includes funds to “begin development of a consolidated implementation plan” for all Golden Dome-related directed energy projects, “leveraging synergy and common weapon architectures between these efforts where possible” in coordination with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. The dream of a laser weapon capable of shooting down cruise missiles is nearly as old as the laser itself. The Pentagon first demonstrated the concept in the 1970s with the Navy ARPA Chemical Laser (NACL), a deuterium fluoride system developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that successfully engaged small missile targets but proved far too large and complex for practical deployments. Those same challenges would befall its successor, the megawatt-class Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser (MIRACL), despite the system successfully neutralizing a supersonic MQM-8 Vandal missile during testing in 1989. The Gulf War briefly revived this dream in the U.S. Air Force’s ill-fated Airborne Laser (ABL) program, which consumed more than $5 billion over nearly two decades before its cancellation in 2012. More recently, the Navy’s Layered Laser Defense (LLD) system, developed by Lockheed Martin in conjunction with the Office of Naval Research, successfully downed a target drone simulating a subsonic cruise missile in a 2022 demonstration at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in the military’s latest attempt to validate the concept under realistic conditions. The Pentagon clearly hopes that the JLWS will finally push its laser-based cruise missile defense efforts over the finish line. But as previously reported when the JLWS first became public in June 2025, such threats pose a far more complex challenge for directed energy weapons than the low-cost weaponized drones that are reshaping warfare on battlefields from Ukraine to the Middle East. Cruise missiles fly low and fast, hug terrain, and execute evasive maneuvers that compress reaction time, while their hardened casings require far more sustained energy to defeat than the soft-bodied drones that current tactical lasers are optimized for. Compounding the challenge, atmospheric interference can scatter or absorb beam energy before it reaches the target; even at 300 kw power levels, laser weapons demand a degree of beam control and aim-point precision that no known system has yet demonstrated against a realistic cruise missile threat. After years attempting to scale laser weapons to power levels suitable for cruise missile defense, the Pentagon’s push for a containerized solution also represents a departure from past vehicle-mounted or warship-integrated systems. For the Navy in particular, Chief of Naval Operations (and noted laser weapon champion) Adm. Daryl Caudle has explicitly emphasized the pursuit of modular capabilities that the service can rapidly swap across its surface fleet for particular missions without lengthy and expensive stays in shipyards. Look no further than the service’s October 2025 live-fire test of the Army’s 20 kw Palletized High Energy Laser (P-HEL) system, based on the LOCUST Laser Weapon System from defense contractor AV, from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush. Indeed, the JLWS isn’t the only modular laser weapon the Navy is exploring. The aforementioned Directed Energy and Electric Weapon Systems program element also includes $4.82 million in funding to support the “development, integration and marinization” of the Army’s Enduring High Energy Laser (E-HEL) systems—the modular, 30 kw laser weapon based on lessons from P-HEL and the aborted Stryker-mounted 50 kw Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) system that the service envisions as its first directed energy program of record. The Army planned on procuring two E-HEL units in fiscal year 2026 and another pair the following year, according to the service’s budget request, with plans to “produce and rapidly field” up to 24 systems total in the coming years. With its LOCUST system proven as a counter-drone capability both abroad and at home, AV appears the leading contender to clinch that contract in the coming years. With institutional support for developing and fielding directed energy weapons at scale at a historic high, JLWS may prove a significant opportunity for the Pentagon to finally make its dream of missile-killing laser weapons a reality. But the history of counter-cruise missile laser development is littered with programs that cleared every bureaucratic hurdle only to stumble on the physics and operational realities. A containerized 150 kw system may be a more modest and achievable goal than the behemoths that came before it, but whether JLWS can survive contact with both the budget process and real-world complexities of blasting cruise missiles out of the sky remains the open question. This article is republished with permission from Laser Wars, a newsletter about military laser weapons and other futuristic defense technology. View the full article

More than 900 complaints that mention SpaceX or its Starlink internet service have been filed with the Federal Communications Commission over the past five years, according to files obtained through a public records request. The complaints provide a view into how the technology has already evolved into a critical lifeline for some rural U.S. residents. They also provide insight into some of the leading issues that frustrate Starlink customers, including variant—and sometimes disappointing—internet speeds, as well as poor customer service. The documents obtained by Fast Company come from the FCC, the federal agency that regulates telecommunications providers. Customers can file complaints with the FCC after experiencing issues with internet services, and these complaints will sometimes form the basis for a deeper agency investigation. Some customers will also encourage others to reach out to the FCC to attract the attention of regulators about particular issues they’re facing. The complaints come as U.S. states prepare to hand SpaceX hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to expand Starlink service in their most internet-deprived regions. In these areas, Starlink aims to provide access to the web by connecting people, via a home terminal, to the internet provided by its satellite constellation—and avoid the long and difficult work of installing fiber. SpaceX is now readying for a historic IPO and several upgrades to Starlink, including new satellites, a next-generation gateway station, and expanded direct-to-cell coverage. But the unearthed docs suggest the Elon Musk-owned company has, in some cases, exasperated Starlink users with what they call abysmal customer service. SpaceX’s customer support page lists several ways to get in touch with the company, including phone numbers, a message form, and—for those who use Starlink’s app—a way to file a ticket or seek help from Grok, the AI chatbot developed by xAI (another Musk company that SpaceX now owns). But many customers allege they receive unhelpful automated responses and must wait an extremely long time for assistance, while others say they’re unable to reach SpaceX employees by phone. Some complain the company has “extremely poor performance and speeds” or is “not giving the service they promised.” About 36% of the complaints mention the word support, and about 28% use the term ticket. Some refer to billing or pricing changes, while others focus on issues with Starlink installation. (A number of the complaints also cite conspiracy theories about the impact of cellular service on human health.) A good number of the complaints center on waitlists and slow delivery times for hardware. Several express frustration that the company sent terminals to Ukraine—SpaceX, indeed, provided hundreds of terminals to Ukraine after Russia invaded the country in 2022—before they, themselves, received hardware. “They claimed that inflation and chip shortages were the reason for delays in shipping dishes but yet they were shipping thousands to Ukraine,” one such complaint reads. “Starlink provides a remarkable internet access service, but has very poor customer service. If you are capable of setting it up yourself and troubleshooting it, it works well,” Christopher Mitchell, who leads the community broadband networks initiative at the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance, tells Fast Company. “But if you need assistance, then you may be out of luck. “ SpaceX and the FCC did not respond to a request for comment. The names of the complainants were redacted by the FCC office that handles Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests and cannot be individually verified by Fast Company. Some complaints take a different tack, petitioning the FCC to oppose the spread of Starlink because of their opposition to its CEO, Musk. Others reach out to criticize the paltry state of their existing broadband offerings, then urge the agency to make it easier to buy Starlink (“Starlink rocks,” wrote one person). These complaints come amid broader tensions over the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, a federal initiative that’s meant to subsidize internet providers who expand service in unserved and underserved U.S. states and territories. After a yearslong back-and-forth, SpaceX and other satellite providers finally received this funding, though the company and the states that will dole out the money are still determining how this will actually work. A significant chunk of complaints allege that SpaceX doesn’t provide the internet speeds it advertises. Notably, the company published expected speeds on its website, but also asserts that “Stated speeds . . . and the uninterrupted use of the Services is not guaranteed.” Like other internet providers, Starlink has also experienced outages that have disrupted the internet connections of some customers, enterprises, and even the Defense Department. Some customers, particularly in rural areas, told the FCC that they’ve come to rely on Starlink and that issues with customer service and speed have disrupted their lives. “Starlink is already overwhelmed servicing its existing customer base, and yet we’re about to add a whole bunch more customers,” says Sascha Meinrath, a Penn State professor who has authored research that raises concerns about Starlink’s network capacity. “The question that I’d have for the regulators and grant program officers is, Do you add thousands or millions more customers, setting ourselves up for failure of the program?” Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance says the complaints speak to the frustration that people who live in rural or underserved areas face in finding internet service providers that actually deliver the service they advertise. “We have many providers that make plenty of money from comparatively easy-to-serve customers and do not have much desire to offer a service that could truly be used universally,” he says. “Funny enough, that is even true for new low Earth orbit satellite, where the service can reach almost anywhere on Earth, but customer support is not nearly so readily available.” One operator, who spoke in 2023 with a Starlink customer in Mendocino County, California, noted in one of the complaint documents that the customer had been without internet for more than two days, and had been struggling to get in touch with Starlink. “Their app is not compatible with his phone,” notes from the call say. Another complaint, filed by a person living in Warren County, New York, alleged that they had not received the speeds advertised on the company’s services map, and that issues with Starlink speeds were interrupting their ability to work from home. “We have a special needs child that does most schooling from home and as a result we work from home a lot to care for her,” the person wrote. “While we currently have Starlink, the speed rarely meet[s] those advertised and, on a cloudy day, which is a lot, the speeds plummet,” rendering the service unusable. In November, a Vermont resident reported being without internet for five days after their router failed. Although they purchased a replacement, they were unable to activate it because the process required two-factor authentication, which they could not complete without an internet connection. After repeated calls to Starlink yielded only automated assurances of a callback, the family drove to a nearby town with phone service to submit multiple support tickets, but still failed to reach a human representative. The lack of internet caused issues for the person and their partner, both of whom need to work at home. The partner, who works in medicine, had to drive to a local corner store with Wi-Fi to reach patients. The couple was also vulnerable, the complaint added, because without service, they were unable to remain reachable by their father, who has Parkinson’s. They added, “This is an emergency!!!” View the full article

I joined IBM Research in the early 1990s wanting to be a networking specialist. I spent time in grad school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) working on algebraic coding theory—specifically cyclic codes—for my master’s thesis. Cyclic codes are mathematical patterns that prevent signals from interfering with each other. Think of them as a way to let hundreds of conversations happen in the same room without anyone talking over each other. At the time, I thought that knowledge might never be useful again. But about six months into my job at IBM, serendipity struck. People started asking: is it possible to build a wireless network? Until then, wired networks were the only viable option outside of limited uses of wireless in aviation. But once the FCC gave out spectrum allocations, the need became urgent: how could you prevent hundreds of wireless devices in a building from conflicting with each other? That’s a classic coding problem. And it turned out to be exactly what I had worked on in grad school. I knew the answer right away; I didn’t need to reinvent it. What once seemed like obscure academic work suddenly became the foundation for what we now call Wi-Fi. That’s when I learned an important lesson: curiosity compounds. The questions worth pursuing don’t always yield immediate results. When you allow curiosity to lead you, you never know when it might pay off. Technology alone isn’t enough As we developed the technology and began collaborating with IBM’s product team, I learned another important lesson: you can’t win with technology alone. You also need a deep understanding of the market. We had demonstrated that high-speed wireless connectivity was viable. Still, the product team wasn’t convinced. We saw laptops on the horizon and imagined a world where people could work untethered. But the product team reminded us that customers had already invested heavily in wiring their offices, making Wi-Fi appear impractical. We were disappointed. But that disappointment became a pivotal career moment. I learned that innovation will never succeed on technology alone. Success requires pairing technical innovation with business insight. You can have the best architecture and the most promising idea, but without a clear business model and deep market understanding, it will go nowhere. Growth Mindset There was one final lesson I learned from this experience, and it was more personal. To succeed at IBM, I knew I had to become more than a technologist. I had to develop business skills—to understand markets, economics, customer behaviors, and timing. Later, I found language that encapsulated these lessons in work by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. She wrote about a growth mindset: the belief that capabilities aren’t fixed, and that progress comes through learning, perseverance, and adaptation. My early setback in Wi-Fi taught me exactly that. With a growth mindset, knowledge you think might never be useful can suddenly become critical. I’m not sure I could repeat that coding work today, but I can still understand it. When our quantum team talks about error correction, I get it right away because it is very similar to what I worked on long ago. At IBM, we take this growth mindset philosophy seriously. We encourage IBMers to take ownership of their development and provide extensive resources to help them reach their goals. We also extend this beyond our walls through SkillsBuild, our free platform providing global access to technology and AI education. As technology shifts rapidly—especially in AI and quantum computing—the world needs people who can combine technical depth with market understanding to solve major challenges. For me, it all started with cyclic codes and Wi-Fi, and the recognition that meaningful innovation is as much about mindset and market insight as it is about engineering. My First Job is a recurring series in which prominent business leaders share what their first job was and what they learned from it. View the full article

A comparison of 5 AI search engines show they cite different sources but converge on citing brands, a key to SEO for AI search. The post Comparison Of AI Citation Patterns Offers Strategic SEO Insights appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Brand visibility is your share of presence across search, AI answers, and community platforms. Here‘s how to measure it and grow it in the AI search era. View the full article

Brian Hale, CEO of Mortgage Advisory Partners, warns of overcapacity, rising rates and AI-driven disruption forcing consolidation across the lending industry. View the full article

Check out the next set of names in the 28th edition of National Mortgage News' Top Producers survey, including on how they approach purchase business. View the full article

State mortgage regulators are increasingly treating supervision as enforcement, imposing large fines even when companies fix issues quickly, writes the head of public policy at NewRez. View the full article

The Miami Grand Prix, hosted at the Hard Rock Stadium’s 3.3-mile Miami International Autodrome, will look and feel different this year. In its fifth year, the race will spotlight the city with new experiences, activations like the MSC Yacht Club, and new sight lines for spectators. While relatively new to Formula 1’s 24 Grand Prix race season, the Miami GP’s agreement to serve as a host city until 2041 is an indicator that F1 is focused on investing in the U.S. market. It’s a big departure from F1’s history. “ We used to turn up in the U.S., race, and [then] expect everyone in the U.S. to continue to stay in love with us, engage with us, and that was probably arrogant,” says Liam Parker, chief communications and corporate relations officer at Formula 1. But in 2017, that changed when Liberty Media Corp. acquired F1, recognizing the “enormous opportunity to grow the sport.” F1, currently valued at roughly $3.6 billion, doubled down on the U.S. as a strategic market with its first modern U.S. race, Austin’s Circuit of the Americas. To deepen its U.S. presence, F1 wished for an international, cultural destination. “It was the second race to join us from the U.S. It was a big test case,” Parker says. “If Miami hadn’t gone well, people might have started to say ‘Can F1 really make a success of the U.S.’?” As the U.S. circuit’s first race, Miami GP is designed to set the tone for the rest of the calendar and plays a key role in growing F1 commercially stateside. Designing the Miami Grand Prix Parker recognizes that F1 is not competing with legacy sports like the NFL, NBA, and MLB, but rather with entertainment and people’s attention. For that reason, F1’s recipe for relevancy in the U.S. market has to go beyond the race. Parker says it centers on “people’s mindsets, news feeds, and their lifestyle.” The first Miami GP prioritized a high-quality race, garnering nearly 243,000 spectators and 2.6 million television viewers. That race faced a number of challenges, including extreme heat on the track and in the paddock, which were later resolved. Since then, attendance has grown to around 275,000 people. F1 Miami Grand Prix President Katharina Nowak and her team saw an opportunity to boost the race’s profile by turning the event into a full-on Miami experience. This year, the Miami GP team is embracing the city’s allure, focusing on three core elements: its inaugural fan fest, a man-made marina activation, and its race campus modeled after specific Miami neighborhoods. “We’re starting to think about how we turn the Miami Grand Prix into more than just a three-day weekend and starting to think about this as a full week,” Nowak says, noting that the target audience includes more than purist motorsports fans. The race’s first, free official citywide fan fest seeks to attract newer, casual fans with a “FOMO experience” steeped in entertainment programming, music, brand activations, and food and beverage offerings. Katharina Nowak “We want to make that the first touchpoint,” Nowak says. “If you’re not familiar with Formula 1 [or] don’t really know what it’s about, we give you that first opportunity. There’s no barrier to entry here.” Hosted at what Nowak refers to as one of the most iconic destinations in the world—Miami Beach—the fan fest will also serve as a communal viewing experience for the race, offering an access point for those who can’t make it to the track to view the race live. Beyond fan fest, the team announced a significant hospitality activation in partnership with MSC Cruises. Leaning into Miami as a top destination for cruises and its affinity for premium experiences, they developed the MSC Yacht Club, a five-level, 32,000-square-foot, 264-foot-long temporary structure, inspired by the French Riviera. The “super yacht,” which Miami GP describes as “the most unique hospitality offering,” offers guests a new premium dining and viewing experience of the 57-lap race featuring 19 turns. “Given our layout and where we are in terms of geography, we have a very flat track,” Nowak explains. “Being able to provide our fans with an experience where suddenly they get to see more than just one turn or going into a turn . . . that’s an experience we haven’t been able to offer in the past.” Previously, the marina offered ticketed yacht experiences. Now the Miami GP has opened the experience for general admission, maximizing fans’ access to the track’s turns six through eight. In addition to the Key Biscayne-inspired marina, the team remodeled the rest of the campus after six distinct Miami neighborhoods: Little Havana, Coconut Grove, Miami Gardens, Brickell, Wynwood, and Miami Beach. Each zone will feature its associated neighborhood’s local culture through live music, family-owned restaurants, and art. “We’re super excited to really dive into how every fan is going to experience these zones,” Nowak says. “The West Campus, for example, will be influenced by Little Havana. We are bringing Ball and Chain, which is an iconic live music venue most known for their pineapple-shaped stage, so we’re going to bring that to the West Campus this year for live music and entertainment.” Wynwood’s local restaurants will be featured at the event’s East Campus, along with art murals, installations, and the Art of Hip Hop Museum. A brand moment As F1 grows in the U.S., so do opportunities for global brands, like Lego, Apple, and Disney, looking for authentic ways to activate fans. During last year’s race, the Lego Group created an immersive experience for families that included 10 drivable Lego cars. “We’ve seen how brands and teams and the F1 industry have used Miami and this race as kind of [a] launch platform for their big moments,” Nowak says. “The Lego parade is a good example of that.” The Miami GP aims to attract brands via a “melting pot” fan base. “We’ve got more kids following us, more younger people, more women, more people of diverse backgrounds,” Parker says. “I think the U.S. strategy and the U.S. growth has been a key part in helping us unlock some of those big partnerships.” Lewis Hamilton According to a 2025 F1 and Motorsports Network fan survey, 41% of fans who haven’t attended an F1 fan experience plan to do so in the future. F1 believes it is barely scratching the surface of what’s possible in the U.S.; it will continue to take notes from Miami GP and other stateside circuits. “ The U.S has been one of those markets where it’s taught us what we can do elsewhere,” Parker says. “Miami [is] raising the bar. Austin [is] raising the bar [and] now Vegas. We’ve used that to say to people around the world and other races, how can you raise those bars?” View the full article

Almost everyone’s power bills are going up, but if your home still relies on old-school electric resistance heat or a conventional electric water heater, you’re likely feeling it even more. A new report breaks down how much you could save by switching to a heat pump instead. A single-family home could save an average of $1,530 a year, or $23,000 over the lifetime of a heat pump, according to an analysis from the energy-focused nonprofit RMI. If every potential house across the U.S. made the switch, customers would collectively save more than $20 billion annually, and avoid around 38 million metric tons of CO2 emissions. (Because of modeling challenges, the analysis doesn’t include apartment buildings, so the total number would be even bigger.) A mass shift from old electric heat to heat pumps would also help significantly ease strain on the electric grid. Electric resistance heaters work “essentially just like a giant toaster,” says Ryan Shea, a manager on the carbon-free buildings team at RMI. They’re a highly inefficient way to heat a house or apartment, yet they remain common, used in roughly 25 million American homes. Even more households, about 57 million, rely on the same technology for water heating. Heat pumps, which work by moving heat, are around three times more efficient. They can both heat and cool; new heat pumps are also around 20% more efficient than older air conditioners. The nonprofit’s Green Upgrade Calculator helps estimate how much you could potentially save at a specific address. The biggest savings, unsurprisingly, are in colder climates with particularly high electric bills, such as parts of the Northeast, where the payback period can be just a few years. But the switch can pay off anywhere electric resistance heat is still in use. In Texas, where the older technology remains especially common, homeowners could collectively save nearly $2 billion a year on energy bills if everyone upgraded. In a place like Texas, a mass transition would make a major difference for the grid. “Given the substantial increase in efficiency of the units, they can result in lower peak demand, and when done at scale, address some of the peak demand concerns that are really cropping up,” says Shea. It’s possible to reduce peak winter demand in Texas by 7.5 gigawatts, or the equivalent of 25 gas-fired power plants. By eliminating that extra power use, the grid can be more reliable—helping avoid situations like Winter Storm Uri, where 4.5 million Texans lost power—and can potentially delay building some new infrastructure, helping keep overall power costs lower. The analysis focuses on electric resistance heat, but if you use another type of heating system or water heater, the calculator can estimate your potential savings there, too. Fuel oil and propane are also expensive options, while gas can sometimes be cheaper, though prices remain volatile. In many states, utilities and local governments also offer generous incentives to help homeowners switch away from fossil fuels. Policy can also help nudge more people to switch from older electric heat. Building codes can help make heat pumps the default choice for new construction, for example, or encourage consumers to choose a heat pump when their central air conditioner fails and needs to be replaced. Some utilities offer incentives that make the switch especially simple. Ameren Missouri’s “pay as you save” program covers the upfront cost of new equipment. Customers repay that over time, but their monthly costs are still lower than they were before. Startups in the space also continue to innovate to reduce cost. Jetson, one company, has optimized installation costs, cutting the cost in some cases from $30,000 to $15,000. (With incentives in certain locations, that could drop as low as $5,000.) In California, where costs are particularly high, a former Apple engineer launched a startup called Merino Energy with an alternative to mini-split heat pumps that also significantly reduces cost. In Europe, Aira sells subscriptions to its heat pumps with monthly costs that are as much as 40% less than customers paid on energy bills before. View the full article

Flipbook feels less like just another AI product launch and more like a small revolt against the dead, rectangular boredom of the prototypical prompt-based AI interface. The project describes itself as an infinite visual browser generated on demand, in real time, where every page is an image and every click opens a deeper visual exploration of whatever caught your eye. Rather than writing a prompt and receiving a torrent of text, with Flipbook you get information from a large language model turned into a beautifully illustrated “book” page that you can click on to drill deeper into a topic. And oh boy, it feels fantastic to me. The idea is both fresh and familiar, and it makes me want to trash Gemini forever and make my entire web experience exactly like this. (Note: video has been edited to omit loading times) What does Flipbook do? What makes it exciting is not just the technology, but the interface philosophy behind it. Instead of forcing people to translate curiosity into a litany of text prompts, Flipbook lets them type into a browser-like search bar and then watch as that information appears as a beautiful illustration. Whether you’re interested in learning about the Roman Empire or the romantic jewel of Parque del Retiro, in Madrid, you’ll get a depiction of the basics of that subject. (Warning: Because Flipbook is now a prototype in a small server, it is slow and doesn’t quite render responses in real time as intended). Once the basic subject has been displayed, you can click anywhere on the page and Flipbook will dive deeper, opening a new page of the “book” with dynamically generated illustrations and text. Flipbook treats knowledge less like a database to be queried and more like a landscape to be explored. As the creators—Zain Shah, Eddie Jiao, and Drew Carr—brilliantly put it, the current paradigm of chat boxes and rigid layouts being sold as the future “felt like sipping an ocean of wisdom through a tiny straw.” It feels like the closest thing you will get to an LLM becoming a tactile, analog experience this side of printing an actual illustrated book in real time. It’s HyperCard colliding with AI Flipbook immediately evokes Bill Atkinson’s HyperCard, the legendary 1987 Apple software that packed information into stacks of graphically linked visual cards. This precursor to the World Wide Web let people move through ideas by clicking on drawn buttons and regions of a bitmap screen. In HyperCard, you could draw a house, define the front door as a clickable zone, and link it to another card showing the living room. It was a masterpiece of interactive design, but it required a human to meticulously draw and link every single card. Flipbook is the HyperCard dream fully realized by AI, capturing the same sensation of moving through knowledge spatially rather than linearly. When you click on a visual element—say, the engine of a car or a specific mountain in a landscape—there is no pre-authored card waiting for you. The system analyzes the exact region you clicked, infers what you’re curious about, and hallucinates the next detailed card into existence in real time. It looks like the kind of beautifully illustrated stack HyperCard might have become if it had survived long enough to collide with generative AI. The real break with the web is even stranger than that comparison suggests. By Flipbook’s own description, what you see contains no HTML at all, no conventional interface elements, and no text overlays. Even the text is rendered as pixels by the image model itself—just like HyperCard. That means your computer isn’t downloading code and assembling a layout the way browsers have done for decades. Instead, the AI physically paints the page—text, buttons, and graphics—as a single cohesive image streamed directly to your screen. And if you click on the “animate” button in the lower-right corner, the drawing actually comes alive, moving dynamically as you zoom, with objects in motion or people populating landscapes. Again, don’t expect this to work perfectly. In my experience, the animate button failed to connect, presumably because of the demand and the lack of server power. Shah was refreshingly blunt about the prototype’s underlying reality, calling it a “house of cards of APIs and open models tied together with duct tape.” But the experimental live video stream mode feels brilliant when it works. According to Flipbook, the feature animates each image and creates seamless transitions between states, turning a slideshow into a continuous morphing journey. For that, the authors claim that its video component uses an LTX-based generation system alongside the image generation stack. That matters because it hints at a future in which Flipbook may be animated all the time—not with static illustrated pages but fluid visual environments, which feels positively Harry Potter-esque. The hallucinations Of course, the magic comes with caveats. As its team describes it, the information in Flipbook comes from a combination of an “agentic web search” and the model’s own world knowledge. It basically seeks out information on the internet, looking into reliable sources, and puts things together. But like with any other LLM, inaccuracies can still happen in both the text and the drawing. I saw this myself when drilling through Madrid’s Parque del Retiro, which showed an illustration that vaguely reminds you of the original but it’s clearly wrong. Or when I clicked to know more about the statue of the Fallen Angel—said to be the only statue in the world dedicated to Satan, built at 666 meters above sea level—it showed something that didn’t look anything like the Fallen Angel until I clicked on the statue and Flipbook opened a detailed page with pretty drawings of the real thing. The authors claim, however, that you should expect the same level of accuracy of any other LLM. And as Shah points out, these underlying models will become more accurate, and the system will eventually support robust UIs and let you take real actions, like researching and booking a trip entirely inside the generated canvas. Still, what matters here is not whether Flipbook is complete today. What matters is that it points to an AI future that is finally about experience instead of output, interface instead of an irritating chatbot. It feels a lot more human to enjoy the visual understanding instead of endless text generation. If the past three years of AI have been about asking machines to talk, Flipbook suggests the next phase may be about teaching them how to show things and to educate. This spatial approach to data is why Flipbook may be the most compelling educational use of AI I’ve seen so far. Most chatbots are good at answering questions, but poor at building intuition. Flipbook seems designed for exactly that missing layer: not just telling you what something is, but showing you its context, its relationships, and the next question you didn’t know to ask. View the full article

Build a content marketing funnel that attracts, nurtures, and converts. Compare models, get templates, track ROI. View the full article

On April 27, jury selection began at the Oakland, California, federal courthouse for a high-stakes legal showdown between tech CEOs Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Outside the building, a giant cardboard cutout of Musk (dripping wet in a pair of swim shorts) stared down onlookers, while someone in a robot costume led two protestors around in chains. These visual spectacles are part of a larger protest that’s emerging around the trial—which began with opening arguments on April 28—and the two widely disliked tech bros at its center. The trial stems from a lawsuit, filed by Musk in 2024, which argues that ChatGPT-maker Open AI and its CEO, Altman, abandoned the company’s original mission to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity and not for profit. Musk provided key funding for OpenAI when it was founded back in 2015, before ultimately falling out with Altman over his vision for the company and founding a competitor, xAI, in 2023. Essentially, the trial amounts to two of the world’s richest and most powerful men duking it out over what the future of AI should look like and airing their personal dirty laundry in the process. In response, on-the-ground protestors at the courthouse are using creative works of art to convey one central message: “Everyone sucks here.” “Whoever wins, we lose” The most prominent group organizing outside the Musk v. Altman trial is Tesla Takedown, an action coalition that led nationwide protests against Tesla dealerships in 2025. In a post to the site Action Network, the group announced a gathering on April 27 that it called “Musk vs Altman: Whoever Wins, We Lose.” “Elon Musk is losing the AI arms race as xAI flails and stumbles,” the post reads. “If he wins this case, he severely damages the leader and gives himself a chance to catch up.” Meanwhile, it continues, Altman is “helping The President build killer robots and mass surveillance” and bringing the U.S. closer to a “technofascist” state. “If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that EVERYONE SUCKS HERE. And that’s what we’re making our theme!” The post concludes with a call for protestors to show up at the courthouse with signs and art related to that theme—and attendees did not disappoint. Monday’s protest art bore a striking resemblance to protests in Portland, Oregon, against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in late 2025, which used weaponized ridiculousness—like animal costumes, memes, and silly songs—to punch up at the The President administration. Likewise, protestors outside the Oakland courthouse now are using humor to drum up attention and get their point across. Inflatables, robots, and swimsuit shots On Monday, at least four inflatables mocking Musk appeared amid the crowd. A bright red tube man, in the classic style you might see outside a car wash, waved its arms at passersby while emblazoned with the all-caps declaration “ELON SUCKS.” Someone customized a pair of inflatable punching bags with printouts of Musk and Altman’s faces, encouraging people to take a shot. Another tube man was made specifically in Musk’s image. It parodied a moment in January 2025 when, at an inauguration rally for President The President, Musk appeared to perform a Nazi salute. Videos of this inflatable show its arm repeatedly flinging out to the side at a 45-degree angle before returning to its chest. this is wild — rat king 🐀 👑 (@mikeisaac.bsky.social) 2026-04-27T19:35:19.393Z Some protestors outside the trial embraced a kind of performance art to make a statement. One video taken at the scene shows an individual dressed in a retro sci-fi robot costume, complete with red eyes and a boxy head, wearing the title “Altman’s AI enslaver” below an image of OpenAI’s logo. The robot holds chains linked to the necks of two other protestors. Other people on the scene opted for more typical modes of visual protest: There were plenty of signs featuring mottoes like “Sam Altman, stop lying,” and “Quit ChatGPT,” as well as the aforementioned life-size cutout of Musk in a swimsuit. One of the most quietly striking works of art to emerge was a poster featuring Musk’s face superimposed onto a writhing, multi-limbed creature looming over a mother bottle-feeding her baby. Above this image, the caption reads, “The Creep State is watching!” The poster is the work of the Creep State, an organization that started as a Reddit page dedicated to discussing what it calls “tech broligarchy” that has since morphed into an action group creating art to protest figures including Musk, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen, and others. The group’s work uses 1984-esque visuals and messaging, inspired by B-horror and comic books, to cultivate a sense of dread around America’s most controversial figures in tech. In a statement to Fast Company, a spokesperson from the Creep State explained, “Guerrilla art has been part of movements against tyranny and fascism for generations. This time around, the boot of tyranny is being built by people who want to replace all human creativity, thought, and agency with slop generated by machines. We wanted to anchor our small piece of this movement in human-generated art that sparks the imagination and encourages people to connect in a different way.” Through all of these works, protestors are striking a balance between poking fun at the inherent silliness of the feud at its core while simultaneously drawing viewers’ attention to the very real power that both men wield over the average American. View the full article

Filing your taxes early can be a smart move, but you need to follow specific rules to do it right. First, gather all required documents, like W-2s and 1099s, by January 31. The IRS usually starts accepting returns in late January, giving you the chance to file before the April 15 deadline. Nonetheless, ensuring accuracy is essential to avoid delays or errors. Want to know more about the key benefits and tips for a smooth process? Key Takeaways The IRS typically begins accepting tax returns in late January, allowing early filing before the April 15 deadline. Collect all necessary documents, such as W-2s and Social Security numbers, by January 31 to prepare for early filing. E-filing is recommended for quicker processing and refunds, often received within 21 days with direct deposit. Extensions can be requested for filing but do not extend payment deadlines; taxes owed must still be paid by April 15. Filing early helps protect against identity theft by limiting the time criminals have to file under your name. Understanding Early Tax Filing Comprehending early tax filing is essential for anyone looking to streamline their tax season. You can file taxes early, typically between early January and late March, well before the April 15 deadline. The IRS usually starts accepting returns in late January, so it’s important to gather your required documents—like W-2s, 1099s, and last year’s tax returns—by January 31. Filing early not just helps you avoid the stress of last-minute submissions but can furthermore lead to an instant tax refund. E-filed returns often see refunds processed within 21 days when you opt for direct deposit. Moreover, early filing greatly reduces the risk of identity theft, as it limits the time for criminals to file fraudulent returns using your Social Security number. You’ll likewise have ample time to correct any errors or add deductions, making the entire process smoother and more efficient. Key Benefits of Filing Early Filing your taxes early offers several key benefits that can make the process smoother and more efficient. By submitting your return ahead of time, you can enjoy advantages that not only save you time but additionally provide peace of mind. Faster Refunds: Many taxpayers receive their refunds within 21 days of e-filing with direct deposit, helping you access your money sooner. Identity Theft Protection: Early filing secures your Social Security number and reduces the chance of fraudsters submitting fake returns in your name. Thorough Preparation: Completing your tax return early gives you extra time to gather documents and correct any errors, ensuring everything’s accurate before the April 15 deadline. Important Dates for Tax Filing Taxpayers should be aware of several important dates regarding filing their taxes. The IRS typically starts accepting tax returns in late January; for the 2025 tax returns, this process will begin in late January 2026. It’s important to highlight that the federal income tax filing deadline is April 15. Although you can request extensions for filing, keep in mind that these extensions don’t apply to payment. You can start organizing your tax documents as early as January to prepare for filing, ensuring that all your income and deductions are accounted for. Early filing opportunities exist from early January until late March, allowing you to submit your returns well before the April deadline. With millions of individual tax returns expected by April 15, preparing early helps you avoid the last-minute rush. Keeping these dates in mind can simplify your tax filing experience considerably. Necessary Documents for Early Filing With the tax season approaching, having the right documents ready is fundamental for early filing. To guarantee a smooth process, gather the necessary paperwork ahead of time. Here’s a list of critical documents you’ll need: Government-issued photo ID: An unexpired ID, like a driver’s license, helps verify your identity. Social Security card or number: This is crucial for accurately reporting your income and claiming tax benefits. Income documents: Collect W-2s, 1099s, and unemployment benefit statements to report your earnings correctly. If you’re self-employed, don’t forget to include Form 1099-K for any electronic payments received. Tips for a Smooth Early Filing Process To guarantee a smooth early filing process, it’s essential to stay organized and proactive. Start by categorizing your tax documents into groups, such as income items and deductions. This organization helps streamline your filing and avoids last-minute confusion. Make certain to gather all necessary documentation, including W-2s, 1099s, and last year’s tax returns, by January 31st. Consider e-filing your tax return for quicker processing; this method often allows for direct deposit of refunds, which can mean receiving your money within 21 days. Review any life changes, like marriage or job changes, that might impact your tax status. Early filing lets you identify and correct mistakes or missing documents before the April 15th deadline, which reduces stress and helps you avoid penalties. Frequently Asked Questions What Happens if I File My Taxes Early? When you file your taxes early, you typically receive your refund faster, often within 21 days if you choose electronic filing with direct deposit. Early filing likewise reduces the risk of identity theft, as it secures your Social Security number with the IRS. Furthermore, it gives you more time to gather necessary documents and correct errors, minimizing mistakes. If you owe taxes, you gain extra time to prepare your payment before the April 15 deadline. What Is the Earliest the IRS Will Accept Tax Returns? The IRS typically accepts tax returns starting in late January each year. For 2025 returns, this will likely begin in late January 2026. You can prepare your return beforehand, but the IRS won’t process it until the official date. It’s essential to check the IRS website for the exact start date, as it can change annually. Make sure you have all necessary documents, like W-2s and 1099s, ready by January 31 for smooth filing. What Is the Earliest I Can Do a Tax Return? You can typically start filing your tax return in late January of the following year. For the 2025 tax year, that means you can file as early as late January 2026. To do this effectively, make sure you’ve gathered all necessary documents, like W-2s and 1099s, by January 31. Filing early can speed up processing times and refunds, as well as reducing the chance of identity theft by securing your information with the IRS. Do You Get a Bigger Tax Refund if You File Early? Filing your taxes early doesn’t guarantee a bigger refund. Your refund amount depends on your income, deductions, and credits, which remain unchanged regardless of when you file. Nevertheless, submitting your return early can help you receive your refund faster, typically within 21 days if filed electronically. Furthermore, early filing allows you to secure your personal information with the IRS, reducing the risk of identity theft and potential delays in processing your refund. Conclusion In conclusion, filing your taxes early can bring several advantages, including faster refunds and reduced stress as the deadline approaches. To guarantee a successful early filing, gather all necessary documents by January 31 and double-check your information for accuracy. Remember, the IRS typically starts accepting returns in late January, so you can submit yours quickly. Although extensions are an option, be mindful that they don’t extend payment deadlines. Stay organized and informed to navigate the process smoothly. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "What Are the Rules for You to File Taxes Early?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Filing your taxes early can be a smart move, but you need to follow specific rules to do it right. First, gather all required documents, like W-2s and 1099s, by January 31. The IRS usually starts accepting returns in late January, giving you the chance to file before the April 15 deadline. Nonetheless, ensuring accuracy is essential to avoid delays or errors. Want to know more about the key benefits and tips for a smooth process? Key Takeaways The IRS typically begins accepting tax returns in late January, allowing early filing before the April 15 deadline. Collect all necessary documents, such as W-2s and Social Security numbers, by January 31 to prepare for early filing. E-filing is recommended for quicker processing and refunds, often received within 21 days with direct deposit. Extensions can be requested for filing but do not extend payment deadlines; taxes owed must still be paid by April 15. Filing early helps protect against identity theft by limiting the time criminals have to file under your name. Understanding Early Tax Filing Comprehending early tax filing is essential for anyone looking to streamline their tax season. You can file taxes early, typically between early January and late March, well before the April 15 deadline. The IRS usually starts accepting returns in late January, so it’s important to gather your required documents—like W-2s, 1099s, and last year’s tax returns—by January 31. Filing early not just helps you avoid the stress of last-minute submissions but can furthermore lead to an instant tax refund. E-filed returns often see refunds processed within 21 days when you opt for direct deposit. Moreover, early filing greatly reduces the risk of identity theft, as it limits the time for criminals to file fraudulent returns using your Social Security number. You’ll likewise have ample time to correct any errors or add deductions, making the entire process smoother and more efficient. Key Benefits of Filing Early Filing your taxes early offers several key benefits that can make the process smoother and more efficient. By submitting your return ahead of time, you can enjoy advantages that not only save you time but additionally provide peace of mind. Faster Refunds: Many taxpayers receive their refunds within 21 days of e-filing with direct deposit, helping you access your money sooner. Identity Theft Protection: Early filing secures your Social Security number and reduces the chance of fraudsters submitting fake returns in your name. Thorough Preparation: Completing your tax return early gives you extra time to gather documents and correct any errors, ensuring everything’s accurate before the April 15 deadline. Important Dates for Tax Filing Taxpayers should be aware of several important dates regarding filing their taxes. The IRS typically starts accepting tax returns in late January; for the 2025 tax returns, this process will begin in late January 2026. It’s important to highlight that the federal income tax filing deadline is April 15. Although you can request extensions for filing, keep in mind that these extensions don’t apply to payment. You can start organizing your tax documents as early as January to prepare for filing, ensuring that all your income and deductions are accounted for. Early filing opportunities exist from early January until late March, allowing you to submit your returns well before the April deadline. With millions of individual tax returns expected by April 15, preparing early helps you avoid the last-minute rush. Keeping these dates in mind can simplify your tax filing experience considerably. Necessary Documents for Early Filing With the tax season approaching, having the right documents ready is fundamental for early filing. To guarantee a smooth process, gather the necessary paperwork ahead of time. Here’s a list of critical documents you’ll need: Government-issued photo ID: An unexpired ID, like a driver’s license, helps verify your identity. Social Security card or number: This is crucial for accurately reporting your income and claiming tax benefits. Income documents: Collect W-2s, 1099s, and unemployment benefit statements to report your earnings correctly. If you’re self-employed, don’t forget to include Form 1099-K for any electronic payments received. Tips for a Smooth Early Filing Process To guarantee a smooth early filing process, it’s essential to stay organized and proactive. Start by categorizing your tax documents into groups, such as income items and deductions. This organization helps streamline your filing and avoids last-minute confusion. Make certain to gather all necessary documentation, including W-2s, 1099s, and last year’s tax returns, by January 31st. Consider e-filing your tax return for quicker processing; this method often allows for direct deposit of refunds, which can mean receiving your money within 21 days. Review any life changes, like marriage or job changes, that might impact your tax status. Early filing lets you identify and correct mistakes or missing documents before the April 15th deadline, which reduces stress and helps you avoid penalties. Frequently Asked Questions What Happens if I File My Taxes Early? When you file your taxes early, you typically receive your refund faster, often within 21 days if you choose electronic filing with direct deposit. Early filing likewise reduces the risk of identity theft, as it secures your Social Security number with the IRS. Furthermore, it gives you more time to gather necessary documents and correct errors, minimizing mistakes. If you owe taxes, you gain extra time to prepare your payment before the April 15 deadline. What Is the Earliest the IRS Will Accept Tax Returns? The IRS typically accepts tax returns starting in late January each year. For 2025 returns, this will likely begin in late January 2026. You can prepare your return beforehand, but the IRS won’t process it until the official date. It’s essential to check the IRS website for the exact start date, as it can change annually. Make sure you have all necessary documents, like W-2s and 1099s, ready by January 31 for smooth filing. What Is the Earliest I Can Do a Tax Return? You can typically start filing your tax return in late January of the following year. For the 2025 tax year, that means you can file as early as late January 2026. To do this effectively, make sure you’ve gathered all necessary documents, like W-2s and 1099s, by January 31. Filing early can speed up processing times and refunds, as well as reducing the chance of identity theft by securing your information with the IRS. Do You Get a Bigger Tax Refund if You File Early? Filing your taxes early doesn’t guarantee a bigger refund. Your refund amount depends on your income, deductions, and credits, which remain unchanged regardless of when you file. Nevertheless, submitting your return early can help you receive your refund faster, typically within 21 days if filed electronically. Furthermore, early filing allows you to secure your personal information with the IRS, reducing the risk of identity theft and potential delays in processing your refund. Conclusion In conclusion, filing your taxes early can bring several advantages, including faster refunds and reduced stress as the deadline approaches. To guarantee a successful early filing, gather all necessary documents by January 31 and double-check your information for accuracy. Remember, the IRS typically starts accepting returns in late January, so you can submit yours quickly. Although extensions are an option, be mindful that they don’t extend payment deadlines. Stay organized and informed to navigate the process smoothly. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "What Are the Rules for You to File Taxes Early?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Blog SEO isn‘t just about Google anymore. 11 tips to rank and get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI tools. View the full article