ResidentialBusiness

Federal Reserve watchers expect a board of governors vote in February to reappoint the 12 regional Fed bank presidents — which is typically treated as a formality — to be the next flashpoint in the White House's effort to bring the central bank to heel. View the full article

The class action suit doubles down on accusations that the homebuilder and its lending arm are deceiving borrowers about their monthly mortgage payments. View the full article

When Vlad Drǎgușin founded his midcentury inspired toy car company, Candylab, in 2013, he had a Kickstarter page and a dream. His goal was to create wooden model cars inspired by hot rods and classic American car designs; toys that would be both durable enough for play and sleek enough for display. As it turns out, there’s a major growing market for that kind of thing—and Candylab just rebranded to capture it. Since its founding, Candylab has secured retail placement in stores like London’s Design Museum, MoMa, The Guggenheim, Barnes & Noble, and the cult favorite apparel brand Kith. It’s also notched major brand collabs including with Saint Laurent, Zara Kids, Criterion Collection, The New York Times, and, most recently, Netflix’s Stranger Things. Candylab In recent years, Candylab has expanded its product offerings into two categories: one is its original line of premium, heftier cars, designed with collectibility in mind, and the second is a new line of smaller, less expensive, more lightweight cars engineered for play. Candylab’s toys naturally fit into an increasingly bifurcated toy industry that, over the past few years, has begun targeting two different audiences: kids who want to play with toys, and adults who want to collect them (and maybe play a bit, too). The company’s issue, according to Johnny Selman, founder of the design agency Selman, was that Candylab’s branding didn’t draw a clear distinction between its core products, making it difficult for customers to understand its offerings. So, his team worked with Candylab to create a new logo, brand positioning, product names, and visual identity that streamline it for a future where toys are meant for every kind of customer. Candylab What’s a “kidult,” anyway? Candylab’s products are a prime example of items beloved by a niche that some might refer to as the “kidult” segment, or an emerging consumer base of adults who are investing in toys of their own. According to a 2024 Circana report, adults accounted for more toy sales than preschoolers, with 43% purchasing a toy for themselves in the previous year. Companies like Lego and Mattel have increasingly begun tapping into this trend with new, nostalgia-driven items specifically designed for an adult audience. John Paul Chirdon, a creative director at Selman, says Drǎgușin’s goal has always been to make nice, design-forward toys for kids—and adults’ interest in the product naturally comes alongside that. “As an adult, you don’t really punch down to make something attractive for kids, you just make something really good for kids,” Chirdon says. Selman’s challenge, then, was to design a brand architecture that was both “really awesome for kids and really premium for adults.” Candylab Designing a new brand for Candylab When Selman began brainstorming a new brand identity for Candylab, the core problem quickly became clear. Because the company had been built piece-by-piece over time by a small team, it was overflowing with great retro imagery and branding concepts, but lacked a consistent overarching brand story. Across some of the packaging, Johnny says, his team found at least six different versions of the Candylab logo. Candylab Selman streamlined the broader branding using past iterations of the Candylab logo—which themselves pulled inspiration from chrome typography on vintage cars—to create one retro-yet-legible wordmark that represents the company. From there, it also identified a core color palette for the brand and narrowed its font options to just one type family called Space Grotesk. This simplification process opened the door for Selman to address the fact that, online, customers had trouble distinguishing between the brand’s more kid-centric line of cars (then called Candycars) and its more premium, adult focused large cars (then called Midcentury Americana). “Online, that branding didn’t exist,” Chirdon says. The Americana and Candycar lines weren’t visually distinguished from each other or the overarching Candylab brand, leaving consumers confused about the difference between all three. Ultimately, Chirdon adds, “we were like, ‘You’re one brand—Candylab. Now let’s deal with just making all the products clear.’” Looking ahead to new kinds of cars To start, the team decided to fully rename the premium car line “Mints,” while the smaller cars are still called “Candycars.” Now, though, the two lines look entirely distinct on shelves and online. Mints are universally displayed against an white background, both in packaging and digitally, to keep a cleaner look. Meanwhile, Candycars are packaged and edited onto colorful backgrounds in hues like pastel blue, tangerine, and teal. Mints and Candycars also have their own dedicated logos, each inspired by different eras of car typography. “What we tried to do was push that a little more whimsical for the Candycar line and then push it a little bit more classic grown-up with the Mints line,” Johnny says. Candylab Candylab’s new identity has already appeared online, and it will start rolling out on packaging as new cars debut over time. More importantly, Johnny and Chirdon say, this brand architecture means that Candylab can start introducing new product lines without confusing customers—like an accessory pack of toy roads called “Roadworks” and a fresh car design called “Toons,” both of which are part of Candylab’s current fundraiser on Kickstarter. “We helped them create the platform to keep going with clarity,” Chirdon says. View the full article

Three months ago, I fired up ChatGPT and asked it to design a highly aggressive, short-term investment portfolio, selecting five stocks that were most likely to make me fabulously wealthy in six month’s time. Then, I threw good sense to the wind, transferred $500 of my actual money into a Robinhood account, and bought the stocks that ChatGPT had pitched. Since then, it’s been a wild ride. My portfolio has flown to new heights, giving me serious FOMO about the fact that I didn’t put all my money into ChatGPT’s picks. Then, it singed its wings, falling Icarus-style to lows that had me almost ready to bail on the whole thing and redirect the charred remains of my money to the kind of boring stuff (car payments, dental work) that I probably should have used it for in the first place. We’re halfway through my six-month experiment. Let’s dig deeper into how things have gone. First, a disclaimer. Nothing here should be considered investment advice. As you’ll see, stocks picked by chatbots are incredibly volatile, and there’s a solid chance I could lose most of my investment. Always consult a professional before making your own financial decisions. A Crazy Strong Start When I asked ChatGPT to pick a portfolio of five high-growth stocks back in September, it spent almost 10 minutes doing research before returning its picks. The five it chose were Palantir, AppLovin, MicroStrategy, Agios Pharmaceuticals, and Hut 8. The bot felt that Palantir and AppLovin had strong, AI-powered businesses that would continue to dominate their markets and grow. Agios Pharma, the bot reported, was awaiting the results of an FDA trial for a new drug. If the trial was successful, ChatGPT felt its value would soar. And finally, Hut 8 and MicroStrategy were essentially leveraged Bitcoin plays. Both companies held a lot of Bitcoins on their balance sheets, and so their valuations should swing along with the value of those coins–only on steroids, because of the effects of leverage. I hadn’t heard of many of those companies. Still, I decided to blindly trust ChatGPT’s advice and sink $500 into them, dividing the money evenly across ChatGPT’s picks as it suggested. At first, things went well enough. In the first three weeks of my experiment, my portfolio climbed by about 12%. That was promising. Then, all of a sudden, things started going very well. In October, my portfolio took off. Each morning when I opened the Robinhood app, I was greeted by a delightful swirl of green numbers, climbing ever higher. By the beginning of November, my portfolio was worth $652–a gain of almost 1/3 in just two month’s time. Extrapolating that out to the full year, my gains would have been 180%+ if the momentum continued. And at the time, it wasn’t just continuing. It was accelerating. I started quietly wondering whether I had been too cautious with this experiment. Maybe I should have put $1,000 into ChatGPT’s picks instead of $500. Maybe I should take out a second mortgage and put that money into the bot’s picks, too. Or maybe I had discovered a whole new way of investing, and soon every quant fund would be knocking down my door, offering me a $900,000 per year salary (before bonus, of course) to teach them my Thomas Smith AI Stock Investing Method®. And an Equally Crazy Fall Then, all of a sudden, everything went horribly wrong. Just as October had been a sea of green, November was nothing but blood-red numbers each time I fired up Robinhood. By the 20th of the month, my portfolio had plummeted from its peak of $652 to only $451. That’s a 30% decline in about 3 weeks–a spectacular fall. It was also the first time I was genuinely in the red, and had actually lost my own money (on paper, anyway) through my AI investing experiment. And the losses seemed to be piling on, accelerating just as fast as the gains had done before. That was unsettling, and not something I relished explaining to my accountant at the end of next tax year. I could imagine the conversation: “So Tom, you have a $500 loss attributed to Misc Investments here. Tell me about that.” “Well, I asked ChatGPT to invest money for me, and then blindly followed its exact recommendations. And then I didn’t cut my losses when it started going poorly, because I was afraid my readers would yell at me.” **long pause** “I see…” How Will it All End? As I write this in early December, my portfolio has stabilized a bit, and I’m back in the black, with a total gain of $14. There’s still three months left in my experiment, so it’s possible that my portfolio will rise from the ashes and fly again. But Lambo money is looking increasingly unlikely. What went wrong? On a basic level, ChatGPT’s picks were bad. Bitcoin’s value has plummeted over the last few months, and the bot’s portfolio is–by design–very exposed to Bitcoin. ChatGPT also bet on Agios Pharma getting positive results from its clinical trials. In fact, those results were mixed. The stock duly dropped. AppLovin was likewise doing great, until the SEC launched a probe into its data gathering practices. Bad picks aren’t necessarily the real problem, though. Human investment managers mis-call the market or make bad picks all the time. Risk is part of investing. The real issue is how confidently ChatGPT backed up its picks with bold, assertive language. “Overall, the portfolio aims for explosive upside rather than stability. Each stock has recent momentum or an upcoming catalyst, so this mix could significantly outperform if trends continue,” the bot told me when it selected its portfolio. The whole thing was “tilted for maximal growth” the bot assured me, bolded text and all. About Agios, it said “A positive FDA outcome or even renewed optimism could spark a significant rally,” and about MicroStrategy it insisted “Analysts project that a BTC surge to $150K could yield ~65–70% stock gains.” Even its disclaimer (“Actual outcomes depend on market moves – but all are supported by the cited fundamental and market trends.”) isn’t really a disclaimer. The bot essentially interrupts itself mid-sentence to further reassure me that it’s making good choices, and invalidate any sense of caution it may have inadvertently introduced. Chatbots’ overconfidence is a well-documented issue. In many cases, the certainty with which bots deliver their responses is annoying, but not damaging. ChatGPT recently swore to one of my family members that Philadelphia’s 44 Bus doesn’t run on weekends. It was Saturday. As it was telling her this, the bus passed by on the street outside. That makes for a funny story about bots’ failability. But when chatbots are performing mission-critical functions related to our health and money, their baked-in overconfidence is way riskier. I knew what I was getting myself into with my investing experiment. But a naive investor might not read a chatbot’s stock advice critically. Believing its confident language, they could lose serious money by trusting the bot too much. As for me, I’ve still got my $500 invested, for better or worse. Perhaps ChatGPT will ultimately prove prescient, and a late-stage Bitcoin rally will save my dreams of unbridled wealth. Or, maybe the rest of my half-grand will evaporate. In another three months, I’ll know! View the full article

SEO best practices include building topical authority, optimizing for conversational queries, and more. View the full article

Several weeks ago, Mozilla Firefox dodged a bullet aimed at its business model—a potential court-ordered cutoff of the Google search-default payments that constitute its primary course of income. But that escape from one feared outcome of the U.S. search-antitrust case against the web giant doesn’t change two other things: Firefox remains in an embattled position. That’s bad news for users. Without Firefox, web competition itself would be in a far more dire state. To address its longstanding competition problem, Mozilla’s developers are putting AI to work—albeit, in a less pushy manner than their competitors. A conversation with Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers at Web Summit in Lisbon in November featured many such “things-could-be-worse” moments, starting with my question about the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handing down a ruling in the antitrust case that allowed Google to keep paying browser developers to make its search engine their default. “We spent a lot of time working on the case, and we wrote amicus briefs and worked with the judge,” Chambers said. “I think he really heard our perspective around the importance of keeping browser engines and browser competition safe.” Nine months earlier, Chambers had voiced serious concerns about the prospect of that revenue stream getting dammed. The 2023 annual report of Firefox’s nonprofit corporate parent, the latest available, shows that $495 million of its $653 million in “total revenues and support” that year came from “royalties,” meaning “a certain percentage of revenues earned by its partners through their search engines incorporated in the Firefox web browser—in other words, “Google.” The 230-page opinion by District Judge Amit Mehta opened up a little more latitude for browser developers by holding that Google could not pay for exclusive payment in every browser-usage scenario. But Mozilla has not rushed to explore possibilities created by that ruling, such as making a non-Google, privacy-optimized search site the default for private-browsing windows. “We still have Google search as the default, but we continue to add different options,” Chambers said. For example, Firefox recently added the AI search tool Perplexity to the menu of search sites available in its address bar. AI, but for whom? Mozilla’s rollout of in-browser AI tools, unlike those of competing browser developers, has not included preset defaults. Firefox’s AI sidebar introduces itself with a choice of AI chatbots, including the big three of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot, along with Anthropic’s Claude and the less-obvious option of Paris-based Mistral’s Le Chat. Its upcoming AI Window, revealed the day I spoke to Chambers, doesn’t have a preset default either, although Mozilla has not announced which AI services will be available through this waitlist-required option. “I think there’s about 12% of the general population in the U.S., France, and Germany that don’t want to use AI,” she said. “My guess is it’s probably a little higher of Firefox users.” But she said Mozilla’s efforts to make AI an option to choose rather than a default to refuse have helped. “We don’t jam it down their throats,” she said. “We do them all in a very privacy-preserving way.” In particular, Firefox relies on on-device processing for such features as language translation and automatically organizing an overwhelming array of browser tabs. Chambers also stressed that Mozilla wants to ensure that AI doesn’t close off the open web. “It’s incredibly important that people can still discover things, that they can verify, that they can explore around,” she said. Yet, the AI Overview answers of its Google default seem to be discouraging that sort of exploration all too well. As an organization, Mozilla has not leaned too hard into AI. Saying “the code that we launch is all still written by people,” Chambers added that Mozilla’s developers have found Anthropic’s Claude Code and other tools more useful “for things like testing and for working through bugs and so forth.” Market share matters Mozilla’s core problem, however, is not making new AI features easy to find—it’s finding new users. The browser that singlehandedly destroyed Internet Explorer’s near monopoly and then held a quarter of the desktop-browser market in 2011 now sits in fourth place, with under 4% of the market worldwide and in the United States, per Cloudflare’s statistics. Chambers said that this tide is slowly turning in Europe thanks to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires companies designated as “gatekeepers” to take such extra steps to avoid favoring their own products as browser-choice screens in Android and iOS. Mozilla says it’s since seen a 149% jump in daily active mobile users in France and a 130% boost in Germany. Chambers called the DMA “a really great boost for us,” saying “people get to choose browsers, and then they’re choosing us.” She described the desktop market as tougher, offering this overall assessment: “Our market share is pretty steady, but we’re making some really good progress.” Whatever slice of the browser market Firefox holds also matters for web compatibility—it’s the only vaguely mass-market browser that doesn’t use WebKit or the Blink engine inside Chrome and browsers written on its open-source Chromium software, such as Brave and Vivaldi. Developing and maintaining a web-rendering framework outside of that duopoly is no easy task, but Chambers called it “incredibly important” to do. In our earlier conversation, she emphasized that Mozilla owning its own engine gives it “a seat at the table” in web-standards discussions. Business horizons Mozilla has spent years struggling to develop lines of business beyond its Google search-default royalties, with iffy results—it shut down its read-it-later Pocket service this summer. But it continues to sell an add-on VPN based on Mullvad’s service, which Chambers said will soon be integrated into the browser. In June of 2024, Mozilla stepped into Google’s lane by buying the ad-tech firm Anonym, which Chambers said does “a better job of still providing high-quality advertising results while keeping information more private” through such privacy-preserving techniques as differential privacy. She expressed some hope for an upcoming revision to the EU’s e-privacy rules that could help this division better compete with the likes of Google. But zooming out, much of Mozilla’s pitch does not involve features or options as much as it centers around what Firefox and the organization behind it are not. “As people look around at the people that are shaping the future of the world and the web, a lot of them are billionaires, a lot of them don’t seem to be very aligned with values that they may hold, and I think they’re looking to different leaders, right?” she said. “They’re trying to find people that are fighting for a better internet, which we’re doing.” Chambers leaned on Star Wars in describing Mozilla’s work as “a little bit of a new version of the Rebel Alliance,” Chambers explained, calling this a return to the internet’s early days when “open-source people banded together and they created really great alternatives.” Asked if Google or Microsoft would be the Empire in this analogy, she waved off the question. “I think it’s the traditional big tech companies.” Mozilla’s role? “Jedis. Definitely Jedis.” Disclosure: I moderated three panels at Web Summit, in return for which the event’s organizers paid for my hotel and are reimbursing my airfare. View the full article

Netflix’s decision to quietly remove the ability to cast content from its mobile apps to smart TVs and streaming devices has caused a bit of an uproar on social media. The complaints are the usual ones you see when a company removes a feature. Some blame greed. Some are upset their method of end-running subscription sharing has been shut down. Some just jump on the opportunity to complain about Netflix. But frequent travelers could have a legitimate grievance about the company’s decision to largely end casting. The change was enacted without warning and without fanfare in November, with some of the earliest complaints from users coming on November 10. Netflix has since changed the help page on its website to say it “no longer supports casting shows from a mobile device to most TVs and TV-streaming devices.” It follows a 2019 decision by the company to remove support for Apple’s AirPlay feature. Netflix says the casting feature was rarely used by subscribers. But many business and other frequent travelers have come to depend on casting to watch Netflix on hotel TVs instead of their phone’s screen. The days of free HBO being a sufficient draw to attract travelers are long gone. Today’s hotel visitor wants to be able to connect to their streaming service of choice while they’re on the road. (Missing a screening of a movie you’ve seen before isn’t a big deal. Missing the new Stranger Things and risking spoilers for the rest of your trip can be.) Hotels, meanwhile, encourage guests to use streaming services, as it puts the cost burden of entertainment programming on the traveler, helping the chain cut expenses. There’s no universal way to watch streaming services in your hotel room. Some chains let you connect your laptop to your in-room TV, though you’ll need to remember to pack an extra HDMI cable to take advantage of this. Some offer apps directly on the television, letting you scan a QR code to verify the connection on your phone, then access your streaming service. Despite protections by those hotel chains (all login information is wiped at user checkout, something the hotels are contractually obligated to do by the streaming services), many people are still hesitant to link their personal accounts to a public television. That leaves casting. Many hotels prefer this option, says Richard Leonarz, director of product management for Hospitality Television at Samsung, as it takes the responsibility of clearing user credentials off of their shoulders. (Once the guest and their phone are out of range of the TV, the casting ends.) Casting is also a strong preference for visitors to Airbnb and Vrbo destinations, as owners of those facilities often don’t wipe the credentials of previous guests. International travelers also frequently prefer a casting option, as it lets them access services that might not be available in the U.S. or a built-in option on a hotel Smart TV. That said, casting isn’t a perfect solution for hotel visitors. It requires the proper software to be installed on the in-room TV (usually Chromecast) and there needs to be a system in place to ensure a guest’s cast goes to their own TV, not one in the room next door. Netflix, apparently, hasn’t completely done away with casting. Some older Chromecast devices and TVs that support Google Cast are still able to utilize the technology. That’s only available to subscribers who pay for an ad-free plan, though. Ad-supported plans are unable to cast no matter where they’re attempting to do so. View the full article

Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor. Here’s a roundup of answers to three questions from readers. 1. I’ve fired my new employee before I recently took a new job in my same industry and city. In my new role, I’ll have a team of eight reporting to me in various capacities and functions. During the interview process, I got a brief read-out on the team and a high-level talent assessment. Nothing stood out as an issue. On my first day, I met the team reporting to me. One of the people on the team is someone who worked for me before and whom I terminated for cause because of performance at my previous company. What do I communicate to my management team or HR about this situation? It feels weird to say nothing because ultimately this could be a management issue—I’m sure this employee doesn’t feel great about the situation. On the other hand, I don’t want to risk harming this person’s reputation at this company if they are doing a good job so far. This person is pretty new here too, and my impression is they are either doing a better job in this role or management has not yet identified an issue with their performance. Green responds: Have you talked to the employee yet? That’s important because they are undoubtedly really uncomfortable, if not outright panicking. Ideally, you’d tell them that you’re happy to be working with them again, you’ve heard good things about the work they’ve been doing (if that’s true), and while you know your last time working together didn’t go the way either of you wanted, this is a different situation and, as far you’re concerned, both of you are starting fresh. I do think you’re right that you need to mention it to your management team or HR. It’s unfortunate, because this person is entitled to a fresh start without the firing following them to a different job, but it’s relevant not as a predictor of the person’s work now, but because it could affect the dynamic between the two of you, and either of you could struggle not to interpret things through that old lens. You can keep it very brief—“I managed Jane at a previous company, and unfortunately the fit wasn’t right and we ended up parting ways. I’m very willing to start fresh with her and I’m hopeful the role she’s in could be a great match, but I wanted to flag the prior work relationship.” Also, if it’s been a while since you worked together, stress that, too. 2. Why do people respond to emails with a phone call? What’s the etiquette on responding to people you’ve emailed who respond with a phone call? I understand there are times when a phone call is necessary. I’ve been getting dozens of phone calls (after sending out a ton of emails on a certain work issue) and they all ask me to call them back. I’m just frustrated because if I email someone, it’s because I don’t want to talk on the phone. And the question is usually easily answered via email. What’s the best way to respond? Green responds: I get being annoyed, but it’s not always up to you—and sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes people will call you back because they think—often rightly—that it’ll be faster. They might not be sure about the meaning of your email and they want to clarify before responding, and figure they’ll just jump on the phone rather than going back and forth. Or their answer might take a long time to write out but be easier to deliver over the phone. Or they just prefer the phone, just as you prefer email. And not everyone feels they communicate as well in writing as they do out loud. For an email fan, this can be annoying. When you like email, it feels efficient and convenient and respectful of everyone’s time. Plus, sometimes it’s helpful to have a written record of what was discussed as a reference you can look back at later if needed. And if you’re having an especially busy day or suspect a call will be 30 minutes when it should be five, it might be fine to let the call go to voicemail, and then email later with, “Got your voicemail. I’m in back-to-back meetings and will be hard to reach today—any chance email will work?” Maybe it will, and they’ll tell you if it won’t. But save that for when you really need it—because while you get to have your preferences, they get to have theirs, too. 3. Setting boundaries on requests for help from your significant other’s network I am engaged to a wonderful person. We both work in the same field, though for different organizations. We are working to create healthy boundaries between our personal and professional lives and it is important to both of us that we are able to pursue careers independently. My organization is bigger and engages in some grant-making activities. A coworker of my fiancé’s recently reached out to me for more information on how their organization could acquire funding. I directed her to publicly available resources, but she responded seeking a personal introduction to our grant officer. This made me uncomfortable; I’m happy to connect anyone who asks to see public information, but it felt like she was leveraging my personal relationship to gain access. I know the importance of networking and personal connections, but I have no professional relationship with this person and we’ve met only once in passing. My fiancé and I discussed the need for a policy on how to deal with these kinds of inquiries as we see this being a recurring issue as we move forward in our careers. I would love advice on how to navigate these kinds of requests. Green responds: The way you handled it sounds just fine. When she asked for an introduction to the grant officer, you could have said, “Oh, we get such a high volume of interest in funding that we ask all grant applicants to follow the process listed on our website.” And if she still pushed: “I’m sorry I can’t help. We’re really rigorous about asking everyone to use the process on our website so that everyone is treated the same. Thanks for understanding!” In other words, not so different from how you’d probably handle it if your fiancé weren’t in the picture. Explain what the person should do, and then reiterate that if necessary. Be warm and friendly, but hold firm on what you are and aren’t willing or able to do. My answer would be different if the person had been requesting something different. If she were asking for something like an informal chat about moving into your field—as opposed to this kind of special treatment—I’d encourage you to consider that, like you presumably would consider other similar requests that came through a mutual contact. Want to submit a question of your own? Send it to alison@askamanager.org. —Alison Green This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy. View the full article

Reducing the visibility of polarizing content in social media feeds can measurably lower partisan animosity. To come up with this finding, my colleagues and I developed a method that let us alter the ranking of people’s feeds, previously something only the social media companies could do. Re-ranking social media feeds to reduce exposure to posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity affected people’s emotions and their views of people with opposing political views. I’m a computer scientist who studies social computing, artificial intelligence, and the web. Because only social media platforms can modify their algorithms, we developed and released an open-source web tool that allowed us to re-rank the feeds of consenting participants on X, formerly Twitter, in real time. Drawing on social science theory, we used a large language model to identify posts likely to polarize people, such as those advocating political violence or calling for the imprisonment of members of the opposing party. These posts were not removed; they were simply ranked lower, requiring users to scroll further to see them. This reduced the number of those posts users saw. We ran this experiment for 10 days in the weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. We found that reducing exposure to polarizing content measurably improved participants’ feelings toward people from the opposing party and reduced their negative emotions while scrolling their feed. Importantly, these effects were similar across political affiliations, suggesting that the intervention benefits users regardless of their political party. This 60 Minutes segment covers how divisive social media posts get more traction than neutral posts. Why it matters A common misconception is that people must choose between two extremes: engagement-based algorithms or purely chronological feeds. In reality, there is a wide spectrum of intermediate approaches depending on what they are optimized to do. Feed algorithms are typically optimized to capture your attention, and as a result, they have a significant impact on your attitudes, moods, and perceptions of others. For this reason, there is an urgent need for frameworks that enable independent researchers to test new approaches under realistic conditions. Our work offers a path forward, showing how researchers can study and prototype alternative algorithms at scale, and it demonstrates that, thanks to large language models, platforms finally have the technical means to detect polarizing content that can affect their users’ democratic attitudes. What other research is being done in this field Testing the impact of alternative feed algorithms on live platforms is difficult, and such studies have only recently increased in number. For instance, a recent collaboration between academics and Meta found that changing the algorithmic feed to a chronological one was not sufficient to show an impact on polarization. A related effort, the Prosocial Ranking Challenge led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, explores ranking alternatives across multiple platforms to promote beneficial social outcomes. At the same time, the progress in large language model development enables richer ways to model how people think, feel, and interact with others. We are seeing growing interest in giving users more control, allowing people to decide what principles should guide what they see in their feeds—for example, the Alexandria library of pluralistic values and the Bonsai feed reranking system. Social media platforms, including Bluesky and X, are heading this way, as well. What’s next This study represents our first step toward designing algorithms that are aware of their potential social impact. Many questions remain open. We plan to investigate the long-term effects of these interventions and test new ranking objectives to address other risks to online well-being, such as mental health and life satisfaction. Future work will explore how to balance multiple goals, such as cultural context, personal values, and user control, to create online spaces that better support healthy social and civic interaction. The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. Tiziano Piccardi is an assistant professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

Former member of team that contested seat in Clacton, Essex alleges breach of rules on spending View the full article

Social media links make it easy for people visiting your website to find your business on social media — an essential first step toward growing your audience. Since every company has a different branding style, you might not want to use a social media platform's traditional icon styling. So, how can you find free social media icons that suit your brand? We’ve scoured the internet for 40 stylish and versatile social media logo files. The best part is that everything on this list is free, so you can stay on brand without spending a dime. 1. FlatIconFlatIcon is a database offering including each social media app’s original logos and combination icons — if that's something you're looking for. Browse their search results page to find a wide range of icon styles and packs. 2. Social media logos and icons setThis set of free social media icons features simple social media logos in black and white as well as their original colors. There are also extra icons included related to social media, like the heart and chat icons. Download the set here. 3. Round subtle gradient social media iconsThis set features circular social media icons in their traditional colors with a subtle gradient effect alongside black-and-white versions. Download it here. 4. Social media fluency packThis pack of 85 free social media icons features logos in each platform’s brand colors. Download the set here. 5. Social media fluency black-and-white packThis pack of free social media icons contains minimalist, small, black-and-white social media icons. Download the set here. 6. Social media dotted packThis pack of free social media icons is designed to look like sleek, hand-drawn line illustrations. It's a great example of how you can change the look of a logo to have a different vibe. Download the set here. 7. Social media two-tone packThis pack of social media icons has black logos on a dark gray background. Download the set here. 8. IconmonstrIconmonstr is a database featuring nearly 400 sharp-looking free social media icons for every platform. And it has icons in tons of other categories if you need more graphics for your website. Search for a word or term to narrow down the results. 9. IconfinderIconfinder is a database featuring dozens of well-designed social media logos in various styles and color combinations. 10. IconScoutIconScout is a database with over 23,000 free social media icon options from every major platform. Perfect if you want tons of options! 11. Social media flat icon packThis pack includes 16 free social media icons in each social media app’s signature colors by Freepik. Download the set here. 12. 45 subtle social media iconsThis pack includes 45 rounded-square icons featuring black logos on a colorful background. Download the set here. 13. Social network lineal packThis pack includes 50 simple black-and-white line drawings of social media logos by Freepik. Perfect for anyone who likes a minimal vibe. Download the set here. 14. Social media square packSome brands prefer to bring focus to their websites. This black-and-white square pack of free social media icons helps you do that with 16 social media logos by Freepik. Download the set here. 15. Social media circular packIn this Freepik pack, you get 16 free social media icons, simple white logos on a black circular background. Download the set here. 16. Social media glyph packThis pack includes 46 simple black social media icons by Mayor Icons. Download the set here. 17. Social media green-to-blue gradient packThis pack includes 16 line drawings of social media icons in a green-to-blue gradient by Freepik. Download the set here. 18. Social media blue-to-pink gradient packThis pack includes 16 line drawings of social media logos in a blue-to-pink gradient by Freepik. Download the set here. 19. Social media round color flat packThis pack includes 21 circular free social media icons designed by Grow studio in each platform’s signature colors. Download the set here. 20. Social media square flat packThis pack includes 50 rounded-square free social media icons by Ruslan Babkin. The designs play with shadow and light to create a subtle three-dimensional effect. Download the set here. 21. Sketch icon packThis is a fun, illustrative pack featuring 25 rounded-square free social media icons by Jerry Low. Download the set here. 22. Social media cloud packThis large pack of colorful social media icons features clouds in the background. Download the set here. 23. Social media doodle packThis 45-pack of colorful free social media icons has a hand-drawn look. Download the set here. 24. Social media bubbles packThis large pack of playful and colorful icons gives an artistic spin to social media logos. Download the set here. 25. Social media cute color packThis 58-icon pack features logos in pastel colors. Download the set here. 26. Social media muted colors packThis large pack of free social media icons has muted hues for a subdued feel. Download the set here. 27. Social media hand-drawn color packThese colorful social media icons are designed to look hand-drawn but uniform. Download the set here. 28. Social media sticker packThis pack of 60 social media icons is designed to look like adhesive stickers. Download the set here. 29. Vecteezy free social media iconsThis large pack of social media icons on Vecteezy gives you a choice of colorful, grayscale, or black-and-white icons. Download the set here. 30. Monochrome social media logoThis set of rounded-square social media icons features black lines on a gray background, designed by Nur Maulidiah. Download the set here. 31. Black square frame social media logoThis set by Nur Maulidiah features clean, white social media icons on a black background with rounded corners. Download the set here. 32. Popular social media iconsThis set, designed by Ahmad Ariq Fikri, features colorful, rounded-square social media icons in each platform's brand colors. Download the set here. 33. Social media static setThis unique set of social media icons — designed by Amir Hassan — features each platform's logo on a circular, electric background. Download the set here. 34. Social media starburst setThis bold set of social media icons designed by Amir Hassan places logos in a circular, starburst background. Download the set here. 35. Free vector flat social media icons 2022This is a collection of 20 colorful rounded-square social media icons from DesignBolts. Download the set here. 36. Social media doodle badgesThis is a collection of social media logos with doodled backgrounds. Choose between bright and bold colors or minimal black and white. Download the set here. 37. Social media transparent icon packThis set of social media icons mimics three-dimensional buttons. Download the set here. 38. Social media pink glitter collectionA collection of glittery red social media icons with a bit of pizzazz. Download the set here. 39. Social media gold glitter collectionA collection of glittery gold social media icons. Download the set here. 40. Social media icon metallic pin effectThis file of social media icons looks like metallic pins. Download the set here. To use or not to use the official logos for each social media platformYou likely won't run into any issues using alternative designs instead of a platform's official social media logo. As Marc P. Misthal, an intellectual property attorney with Offit Kurman, P.A., explains, “The key to trademark infringement is consumer confusion. In other words, is the mark being used to confuse consumers as to the source of the goods/services?”So, suppose your business uses an unofficial Facebook logo in the footer of its website to link to your brand's Facebook profile. In that case, you're likely not in violation of misusing Facebook's logo. If the social platform has a problem, you may receive a friendly communication from that platform asking you to update your site to use its official logo. That said, if you’re concerned about usage guidelines — or just prefer to use a platform’s official logo — all the major social media sites have public brand guidelines and free, downloadable logos. These pages will tell you exactly how you're permitted to use their brand assets: FacebookInstagramThreadsTikTokXYouTubeLinkedInSnapchatPinterestDiscordTwitchTumblrWhatsAppTelegramWeChatMastodonWe hope you found the perfect social media icons that suit your business. What next? Read up on the top social media sites to grow your brand. FAQ for using free social media icon filesDo I need to give attribution to the designers when using free social media icon files?It depends on the license. Many free icon sets require attribution unless explicitly stated otherwise. Always check the download page or license file. If attribution is required, credit the designer where reasonably visible (e.g., footer or credits section). If the license says “free for personal and commercial use” you’re good to use them without credit. Are all free social media icons really free to use?Not always. Some packs are free for personal projects, while others allow commercial use. Always visit the download page and check the license before you download the files. What file formats do social media icons usually come in?Most icon collections include PNG, SVG, and sometimes EPS formats. PNGs are great for quick use, SVGs are ideal for high quality scalable graphics, and EPS works well for print or advanced design tools. Can I edit or change the color of the icons?Usually yes—especially if the icons are provided as SVG or EPS. These formats let you edit, change colors, or add effects in your design software. Check the license to confirm modification rights. Can I use these icons on my website or upload them to social media?Yes, most free social media icons can be used on websites, blogs, and digital documents. You can drag and upload them as needed, but don’t re-upload the icons as your own pack. Do I need special software to open the files?PNG files open on Windows, Mac, and nearly any device. SVG and EPS may require a design program like Illustrator, Figma, or other vector editors. Can I add these icons to Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr posts?You can use them in your design or layout for posts, but you generally can’t replace native platform sign icons. They’re mainly for branding, websites, and marketing materials. Can I share the icon pack with others?You can share the link to the original download page, but avoid redistributing the files unless the license explicitly allows it. What if I need high-quality icons for my project?Look for packs offering SVG or high-resolution PNG files. These ensure crisp detail even when resizing or applying your own design elements. More social media marketing resourcesHow to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 7 StepsTop 11 Social Media Engagement Tools to Build Your CommunityReplying to Comments Boosts Engagement by 5-42% on These Major PlatformsUser-Generated Content: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Add It to Your StrategyView the full article

The next big meeting on your calendar might not have any other attendees—it might just be you. A growing number of high-performing leaders, including managers at Google and other Fortune 100 companies, are carving out protected “focus blocks” and treating them like mission-critical meetings. With constant pings, shallow tasks, and back-to-back calls, this might be the only way to produce strategic, high-value work. Google and Microsoft have even rolled out Focus Time features that automatically block off calendars to protect deep work. Paige Donahue is a product marketing leader at Google who helps YouTube creators grow their communities and monetize their followings. She says she’s started using the Focus Time feature inside Google Calendar to carve out protected blocks for deep work. “Before, my day was really just a stream of constant meetings, and I think a lot of people can relate to that,” she says. “It was meeting after meeting, ping after ping, and I was finding that I didn’t have a lot of time to do the deep work that’s really important to move things forward.” Now, she notes, it’s much easier to see forward momentum. “[The focus time feature] is really helping me get in the groove and tackle projects . . . instead of getting bogged down by endless meetings.” Deep work has become a job requirement While the idea of “deep work” isn’t new, the urgency around it is. Leaders can no longer treat focus as a luxury. In today’s reactive workplace, carving out uninterrupted time for thinking and creating has become a core leadership responsibility. And employees want this just as much as executives. According to a recent Twilio survey of over 1,200 UK workers, 47% said they prioritize distraction-free focus time, and 36% said they’d like their employers to formally schedule such quiet periods. This suggests that protecting focus isn’t a personal quirk—it’s a cultural shift waiting to happen. But it’s all too easy to let your week get sucked up by shallow work, the work that may appear urgent (such as last-minute requests and fire drills) but rarely move you towards the end-of-year KPIs that determine your bonus and future promotion potential. At Lifehack Method, where we coach executives and teams on productivity, we see this firsthand: when leaders skip focus time, teams flounder in shallow work. When they protect it, they model a culture of depth, clarity, and results. Every Friday, our clients practice a Weekly Planning ritual where they calendarize the entire week, ensuring strategic work has nonnegotiable slots before the week fills up with reactive tasks. Forget time management, start managing your attention The calendar is a useful tool, but the deeper shift is about what we choose to protect. As organizational psychologist Adam Grant points out, the old paradigm of time management—squeezing as much as possible into the day—has limits and can even be detrimental. The new frontier is attention management: “the art of focusing on getting things done for the right reasons, in the right places, and at the right moments,” as Grant defines it in a New York Times essay. When we coach leaders in our programs, we encourage them to embrace this mindset shift. The question isn’t “How do I fit this in?” but “Does this deserve my attention?” That pivot can mean the difference between a week lost in shallow work and a week that produces breakthrough outcomes. Use your deep work blocks to empty your mind of those pesky urgent tasks and give yourself the gift of diving into your most leveraged activities. These are often not even on your to-do list, that’s how little attention they tend to get! When a calendar block isn’t enough, bring a buddy Of course, protecting time on a calendar doesn’t always mean using it well. Getting forward momentum is tough when you’re facing procrastination and anxiety about how to start. That’s where accountability comes in. Enter virtual coworking, a rising trend that pairs you with a partner online to ensure you show up and do the work. Many of our clients here at Lifehack Method rely heavily on coworking sessions as a force multiplier to speed through otherwise procrastinated tasks. Science backs this up. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that real-time, subtle feedback during lapses of attention helped participants regain focus. The researchers concluded that it may be more effective to intervene during low-focus moments than to simply enforce long, uninterrupted blocks. For high-stakes or creative work, this suggests that lightweight accountability systems—like coworking sessions or structured check-ins—can serve as the “feedback nudges” that keep people in the zone. Virtual coworking platforms are seeing traction among enterprise employees. Taylor Jacobson is the Founder & CEO of Focusmate, the world’s No. 1 virtual coworking community. He shares that Fortune 500 Focusmate members currently average 31% more sessions than the average user, and 13% more time spent on the platform. Donahue shares that at work, she uses both virtual and in-person coworking to ensure she says on task. “I am a big fan of coworking. I feel that it adds a layer of accountability and it’s just nice to sit around the campfire with other people who are in it as well. It’s a great way to do deep focused work almost like a sprint.” How to make focus time impactful Protecting focus blocks isn’t just about willpower. It requires communication and culture change. Leaders who succeed tend to: Treat focus time like a sacred meeting. Don’t reschedule unless it’s truly urgent. Communicate clearly. Let your team know when you’re offline for focus and when you’ll be available again. Pair protection with accountability. Use tools like Focusmate, or—as we do at Lifehack Method—stack focus time with rituals like our Winning the Week Method® planning process, which makes deep work part of the weekly rhythm. Model the behavior. When managers visibly protect focus, employees feel empowered to do the same. Protect your focus to future-proof your job As tools evolve and workplace demands intensify, the rarest resource is no longer money, ideas, talent, or even time. It’s unbroken attention. Leaders who defend it will drive innovation; those who don’t risk drowning in noise. Focus time is not indulgent. It’s the only way to do the kind of work companies actually pay leaders to do. View the full article

Does the administration control the Treasury market? View the full article

I saw my first holiday-themed ad on TV before Halloween. I was startled, yet not surprised. Kind of a funny feeling, really. Yes, the annual holiday shopping sprint is upon us. For years, the process has been defined by frantic comparison searches and endless product review scrolling. But this year, you can finally delegate the busywork to an army of digital assistants. AI is no longer just a party trick: it’s a legitimate, price-savvy, personal shopping engine. Want to skip the agonizing research and focus on finding that perfect gift without blowing your budget? Here are four essential AI tools you should be using right now. Gift Idea Generator You need a thoughtful gift for someone whose interests are scattered or obscure. Traditional gift guides are useless here. Enter AI. Feed your favorite generative AI tool a rich, conversational prompt: “My uncle is 70, retired, loves restoring classic cars, collects vintage vinyl, and just started learning Italian. What are three unique gifts under $150?” The AI cross-references these details against a massive product database to suggest items you’d never dream up on your own. For brainstorming with conversational prompts, services like Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot, or Claude are perfect. If you want tools that link directly to purchasable products, check out dedicated gift AI tools such as Gift Genie or Giftruly. Price Tracker In the volatile holiday market, timing is everything. AI price-tracking tools eliminate the need for manual site refreshing and guesswork. Flag a specific item or product category you want, and set a target price. The AI monitors thousands of product pages and vendor histories across the web, analyzing historical pricing data to determine if a “sale” is actually a good deal and alerts you the moment the item hits your desired price point. You can use specialized browser extensions such as Camelcamelcamel for monitoring prices on large e-commerce sites, or utilize general AI search tools such as Google Shopping and Gemini to track price drops and historical pricing directly within search results. Agentic “Just Buy It” Tools This takes price tracking a step further. Agentic AI can do more than just find the deal; it can be instructed to execute the purchase for you. Instead of merely entering a search query, issue a full command: “Find the best-rated stainless steel coffee maker with a thermal carafe under $100, and purchase it when a verified deal brings it under $85. Ship it to my home address.” The AI agent, using your pre-approved payment and shipping details, actively monitors the market and, upon meeting your criteria, completes the entire checkout process – all without you lifting a finger. Look for platform-specific agents like Gemini with Google Shopping or systems based on OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, which are authorized to perform actions such as completing a checkout. Automated Review Summaries Before you commit to a purchase, you need the full picture on quality and common defects. But nobody has time to read 2,000 product reviews filled with shipping complaints and single-sentence praise. AI uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to consume all available customer feedback, from star ratings to lengthy complaints, and generates a concise summary. It intelligently extracts and aggregates the key themes, such as “battery life is excellent,” or “setup is too complicated,” presenting a balanced overview in a few short paragraphs or bullet points. This allows you to vet a product in seconds rather than hours. Many large online retailers, such as Amazon, now have built-in AI summary capabilities displayed above the customer review section. Alternatively, you can simply paste the text of a bunch of reviews into a chatbot such as ChatGPT and ask it to summarize the sentiment and list the pros and cons. View the full article

I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives. 1. My boss watches me by video call while I work I’m a 100% teleworker in the research field, which I love. The problem is my boss believes mentoring me means watching me via video call as I work. I’ve asked my boss to stop (firmly but nicely) and reported it to my boss’s supervisor who was horrified. Even our supreme boss stepped in, but not much has changed. She has lessened up slightly but now complains she can’t mentor me right because of my “complaining.” Any advice on how to reinforce some boundaries? Is this just a typical part of remote work? I’m a trailing spouse, so I’m job hunting but it takes quite a while for me to find anything even somewhat related to my field. Noooo, this is not normal in remote work. This is really f’ing weird, it’s terrible management, and it’s a huge waste of her time. The good news is that her boss was horrified when you told her about it. She probably thinks that it’s stopped now that she addressed it, so you need to let her know that it hasn’t (and that not only is it continuing, but that now your boss is making snide comments about you having complained). Also, when you let her know it’s still happening, you might just ask if it’s okay for you to disable your web camera — so that when your boss confronts you about having done that, you can say, “Oh, (grandboss) told me to do that.” Also, for the record, the conversation your grandboss should be having with your boss isn’t just “stop doing this, it’s horrifying” but also “let’s do some urgent and remedial training about how to manage effectively because clearly we are not on the same page about what that means and about how you should be spending your time.” – 2019 Read an update to this letter here. 2. Tubs of butter are taking up all the room in our tiny fridge I had no idea this would be the hill I wanted to die on, but here we are. In our office, on our floor we have a kitchen area with a small dorm-sized fridge. There are 13 of us in our little area although with part-time and working from home, six to 10 is more normal most days. The bottom of the fridge is taken up by the office milk leaving two rather small shelves. Often people pop out at lunch and get some shopping and fill the fridge after lunch but at that point everyone has taken out their lunch and its mostly ok, although sometimes very difficult to shut. The problem is the six full sizes tubs of margarine/butter. Seriously. Of 13 people, there are six of these. Sometimes five, but usually six. I first brought this up jokingly that this was ridiculous and a couple people defensively said they were sharing. This is a tiny fridge. With their six tubs and if I am not first in, I cannot put my lunch in the fridge. I have started bringing a cold bag or something that doesn’t need refrigeration. I mentioned that each tub is bigger than 1/13th of their share of the fridge and I just get “but I have toast in the morning.” Sigh. I just think it’s so selfish and I’ve been as up front about it as I can think and people just do not see that a full sized tub is too big for a teeny shared fridge. I’m annoyed but not insane, this isn’t a management thing, but I would like to understand why their big tubs of margarine The President my lunch. You may just advise I take up meditation or up the martial arts training to channel my aggression but maybe you or the readers have a brilliant suggestion here to transform coworkers into sensitive space sharers? I really really like a cold Diet Coke. Convince your office to buy a full-sized fridge (a dorm fridge for 13 people is way too small). Failing that, you could propose a butter club, where all the butter eaters chip in for a single tub of butter to share. (Or perhaps a butter club and a margarine club.) But perhaps the best solution of all — butter keepers! They don’t go in in the refrigerator at all. – 2019 Read an update to this letter here. 3. I cried at work and worry I missed something important when it happened I screwed up at work. Thanks to reading your blog for so long, I was able to handle the screw-up immediately and appropriately to make things right. Fortunately, I was not fired for the offense, although I was given a formal write-up. During the write-up, I sat up straight, looked my boss and grand-boss in the eyes, and held my head up — basically, I realized this was business and not personal, instead of cowering or running away as I would have previously in my career. They were both respectful and professional during the meeting, expressing what happened, what went wrong, addressing that it was corrected immediately, expectations going forward, and how they would both me helping me to move forward. I appreciate being given another chance, in addition to being soberingly humbled by my mistake. However, I started crying in the meeting. I’ve never cried at this job before. My boss and grand-boss ignored the tears, continued to treat me with respect, and the meeting wrapped up (it was almost over). Unfortunately, I don’t remember what was said to me during the time I was crying. I was trying so hard to keep control over myself and maintain myself, I lost focus on the discussion. I know what I did wrong and how to move forward from it positively, and I’m not concerned it is going to haunt me or be held over my head unreasonably. So, do I need to go back and tell them I missed part of it? I remember hearing my grand-boss expressing disappointment on a professional level. But I don’t know what else he said for another 3-7 minutes. I don’t know if the rest was professional feedback, I don’t know if it was instruction on how to make amends to the client, I don’t have any clue what it was. What do I do? And if I have to go back and say I didn’t hear him, HOW do I say that? If you think there’s any chance that you missed instructions or something else important, then yes, go back and correct that! All you have to say is, “I really appreciated you talking to me about the X situation the other day. Because I was stressed by the situation, I want to be absolutely sure that I didn’t miss any action items for me, particularly from the end of the conversation when my stress was at its highest. Can I confirm with you my plan for moving forward and make sure this sounds comprehensive to you? I plan to do X, Y, and Z. Is there anything I missed?” Or, you can be even more straightforward about it, replacing that second sentence with, “I’m sure you noticed I got a little emotional toward the end of the meeting. My apologies — it was a stressful situation, but I really appreciated how you handled it. I want to be realistic that getting emotional toward the end may have diluted my focus and I want to be sure I didn’t miss anything I should have taken away.” And don’t be too mortified. People sometimes cry in serious meetings about mistakes. It happens! Your boss and grand-boss have probably seen it before. As long as you handle it professionally now, it should be fine. – 2019 4. I was rejected because the employer thought I wouldn’t do well in a small start-up I am from a large multinational company but was just recently rejected from a small start-up company and received the email below. I seemed to impress them but was rejected, and the hiring manager wanted to “stay in touch.” I don’t get it. I’ve been feeling down about this, and I just keep sulking over it. Please help provide any insight and what this really means. What did I do wrong? This is the email: “Hi Jane. We thoroughly enjoyed meeting you and appreciated your taking time to come by the office. We love your portfolio and experience. In particular your process and analysis skills are some of the best we have seen! As much as we’d love to add you to our team, we feel the move from such a big company like X to such a small operation as ours will be a tough transition and your skills would much better serve a business that has already reached some scale. I encourage you to connect with me on LinkedIn and I would like it if we could stay in touch. I wish you the very best in your job search!” I would take it at face value: They think you’re great, and they also think you won’t thrive in a small operation like theirs. That could mean anything from “We’re still figuring things out and we need someone entrepreneurial who’s comfortable setting up systems from scratch and working with a tiny budget, and we don’t think that’s where you’d shine” to “Because we’re small, we’d need you wearing 100 different hats here, pitching in on things like reception duty and inventory, and we don’t think you’d love that — and even if you say you’d be fine with it, we’re not willing to take the risk that we’re right” to all sorts of other things. In other words, think of all the reasons someone might not thrive in a small start-up when they’re used to a huge company, and there are your possible answers. People get rejected for jobs all the time because while they’re qualified in many ways, they’re not quite the right fit in other ways. That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong; it just means hiring is about lots of things beyond just your actual skills. – 2019 The post my boss watches me by video call while I work, tubs of butter are taking up all the room in our tiny fridge, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

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Brazil’s Banco Master was one entrepreneur’s ticket to riches but collapsed last month amid allegations of a $2.3bn fraudView the full article

The recent ​announcement​ that Netflix formalized a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s television and film studios, as well as the HBO Max streaming service, got me thinking about an essay that Derek Thompson published on ​his ​Substack titled ​“Everything is Television.​” “A spooky convergence is happening in media,” he begins. “Everything that is not already television is turning into television.” Thompson then gives three examples of what he means: 1. Social Media is moving from offering connection to streaming videos (in ​court documents​ from this summer, Meta admitted that only 7% of activity on their Instagram platform involves users following people they know). 2. Podcasts are migrating inexorably toward video format. 3. Even AI is shifting toward visual media with the launch of new products like ​OpenAI’s Sora​ and Meta’s Vibes. Television, of course, can mean many things. “When I say ‘everything is turning into television,’” Thompson clarifies, “what I mean is that disparate forms of media and entertainment are converging on one thing: the continuous flow of episodic video.” While I might disagree with the premise that all media is turning into television (the global book and movie industries continue to chug along well enough in their traditional formats), I think Thompson is pointing out a real and very important trend that’s particularly pronounced in the world of internet media. (I’ve been arguing this point for a while now; e.g., the first 15 minutes of my most recent ​appearance​ on the Tim Ferriss Show, when I tried to convince Tim that video was inevitably going to devour audio podcasts.) This leaves us with a significant question: why are these media devolving into glorified TV? In other words, why has the internet, which once held promise as the collaborative, intellectually stimulating alternative to the boob tube, increasingly churned out a stream of TikTok clones? I’ve come to believe that the answer is less about technological determinism than it is economic determinism. The video entertainment sector is shockingly lucrative, with the combined online video and traditional TV markets ​projected​ to reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. The reason why internet media are becoming more like TV, then, is because that’s where the money is! The broadband and wireless internet infrastructure we built through public/private partnerships over the last two decades turned out to be the perfect foundation on which a small number of tech companies could build competitors to the existing television and video market – to grab their share of that trillion-dollar sector. You can’t blame Meta, or Google, or even OpenAI for chasing that market. It was too big to ignore. But here’s the silver lining: Once we realize that these companies’ apps are essentially glorified TV, we should feel more comfortable ignoring them. There was a time when platforms like Facebook and Twitter wanted to convince you that they were part of a new social fabric; a fundamental technology that responsible citizens couldn’t ignore. Not any more. If they’re just TV, then we can respond the way we always have: by simply turning off the proverbial set. The post Why is the Internet Becoming TV? appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

The recent ​announcement​ that Netflix formalized a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s television and film studios, as well as the HBO Max streaming service, got me thinking about an essay that Derek Thompson published on ​his ​Substack titled ​“Everything is Television.​” “A spooky convergence is happening in media,” he begins. “Everything that is not already television is turning into television.” Thompson then gives three examples of what he means: 1. Social Media is moving from offering connection to streaming videos (in ​court documents​ from this summer, Meta admitted that only 7% of activity on their Instagram platform involves users following people they know). 2. Podcasts are migrating inexorably toward video format. 3. Even AI is shifting toward visual media with the launch of new products like ​OpenAI’s Sora​ and Meta’s Vibes. Television, of course, can mean many things. “When I say ‘everything is turning into television,’” Thompson clarifies, “what I mean is that disparate forms of media and entertainment are converging on one thing: the continuous flow of episodic video.” While I might disagree with the premise that all media is turning into television (the global book and movie industries continue to chug along well enough in their traditional formats), I think Thompson is pointing out a real and very important trend that’s particularly pronounced in the world of internet media. (I’ve been arguing this point for a while now; e.g., the first 15 minutes of my most recent ​appearance​ on the Tim Ferriss Show, when I tried to convince Tim that video was inevitably going to devour audio podcasts.) This leaves us with a significant question: why are these media devolving into glorified TV? In other words, why has the internet, which once held promise as the collaborative, intellectually stimulating alternative to the boob tube, increasingly churned out a stream of TikTok clones? I’ve come to believe that the answer is less about technological determinism than it is economic determinism. The video entertainment sector is shockingly lucrative, with the combined online video and traditional TV markets ​projected​ to reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. The reason why internet media are becoming more like TV, then, is because that’s where the money is! The broadband and wireless internet infrastructure we built through public/private partnerships over the last two decades turned out to be the perfect foundation on which a small number of tech companies could build competitors to the existing television and video market – to grab their share of that trillion-dollar sector. You can’t blame Meta, or Google, or even OpenAI for chasing that market. It was too big to ignore. But here’s the silver lining: Once we realize that these companies’ apps are essentially glorified TV, we should feel more comfortable ignoring them. There was a time when platforms like Facebook and Twitter wanted to convince you that they were part of a new social fabric; a fundamental technology that responsible citizens couldn’t ignore. Not any more. If they’re just TV, then we can respond the way we always have: by simply turning off the proverbial set. The post Why is the Internet Becoming TV? appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

Exports rebound despite tensions between Washington and BeijingView the full article