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We may earn a commission from links on this page. Right now, if you live in the U.S. and you're familiar with lock screen ads, it's probably from your e-reader, your PC, or maybe even your refrigerator. Plenty of devices with screens in them like to subsidize costs by running ads, but American smart phones have been surprisingly good at keeping your lock screen clear. Until now. "Nothing" experiments with lock screen adsIf you haven't heard of Nothing, I don't blame you. The Android phone company made waves back in 2022, largely on the back of its founder, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, but it only recently started making phones on par with flagship devices like the Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy. Mostly, the brand has instead become known for its mid-range accessories and budget phones, which pack in a lot of power for their price points, but otherwise stand out through trendy and minimalistic designs. It's a smaller market, but a loyal one. That's why it's a bit odd to see the company put both its minimalism and fandom at risk by putting ads on its lock screens, via a new "Lock Glimpse" feature. Added in Nothing OS 4.0 late last week, when turned on, the feature will show you one of a rotating selection of wallpapers, which all feature linked content via text at the bottom of the image. For instance, a wallpaper showing a strawberry sundae might look spiffy, but in practicality, it's essentially an ad for a page with a strawberry ice cream recipe. Don't take my word for it—if you're looking for a smoking gun, Reddit users have found permissions agreements linking the feature to Chinese digital ad company BOYUAN (more on that later). Users were not happy, as seen on social media platforms like X, where some threatened to flash their own custom operating systems to their phones instead of using Nothing's own, while others compared the move to similar "features" from OnePlus and Motorola that are largely not live in the United States. Not exactly a great look for a company that sells itself on image. To Nothing's credit, the feature is off by default for now. But the company's response to the backlash paints a picture that those fans may not be happy with, regardless of where they live. "Moving forward, on select non-flagship devices, we'll start including a carefully considered selection of third-party apps and services that don't disrupt the Nothing OS experience you love," Nothing posted to its site over the weekend. Lock Glimpse was stated as one such service. The reason for all this? Cost. Nothing's post was upfront about the "razor-thin margins" the company has to operate on to keep up with major players like Apple and Google, and said that both Lock Glimpse and "pre-installed partner apps" would be a way to continue to hit the mid-budget price point it's become known for. Worse, while the company said the feature would continue to remain off-by-default on its current Phone (3a) model, it made no such promises about the upcoming Phone (3a) Lite, which comes out later this week, and is the "first entry-level smartphone with Nothing's signature transparent design." While Nothing said it intends to give users "full control over features like Lock Glimpse" in the future, it's not hard to imagine a future where the feature is enabled by default, and pre-installed alongside apps that the owner didn't ask for, even on global releases. Nothing's lock screen ads matter, even if you don't own a Nothing phoneAgain, Nothing isn't the first smartphone brand to push lock screen ads. Other low-budget or mid-budget phone companies do so as well—most notably Motorola with a feature called Glance and OnePlus with a feature called Lock Screen Magazine. But Nothing's decision to join the flock points to a potential sea change, both in terms of manufacture and distribution. First, Nothing does not focus on hardware so much as experience. Even its most powerful phone at the moment uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s chip, which is a weaker version of the Snapdragon 8 line you'll find in phones like the Samsung Galaxy series. The selling point, then, comes in software like Nothing OS, which the company pitches as "clean," "beautifully functional," and "mindful." Lock screen ads don't match that vision, at least to me, and that Nothing felt compelled to include them means it's willing to risk its main differentiating factor to up earnings. By my measure, that's a canary in the coal mine for the pressures any smartphone company that's not big enough to eat development costs is facing right now. Nothing tends to be pretty upfront in its communication, so I've reached out for more information and will update this post if I hear back, but it's not a great sign for the industry at large. Which brings me to my second point: While Motorola and OnePlus' lock screen ads have been around for a while now, they've only recently started making their way to the U.S. via test launches, and Nothing's implementation both makes them live for everyone with an impacted phone, regardless of region, and breaks promises the company behind most of these ads has made before. As it turns out, BOYAUN, the company behind Nothing's Lock Glimpse feature, also powers Glance and Lock Screen Magazine. And while Glance had previously told Android Police that it doesn't plan to introduce lock screen ads in the U.S. like it has in regions like India, instead relying on charging users a "subscription fee for access to premium news on their lock screen," here they are. I try to avoid speculation when I can, but taken together, these two facts mean it's very possible that other low- and mid-budget phones will follow Nothing's lead in the future. Lock screen ads have been bad enough abroad, but it's something that U.S. users now may have to get used to. The silver liningThat said, while lock screen ads are something to be ready for, they aren't necessarily going to ruin your phone. They're just going to make it more annoying to set up. I believe Nothing when it says it will give users control over Lock Glimpse, largely because even Glance and Lock Screen Magazine can be turned off. The latter two being far less image focused companies than Nothing, it would be strange to see Nothing break its promise here if they aren't. The same goes for Nothing saying pre-installed apps will be "easy to remove." But still, any extra steps you require of a user means more people are just going to put up with the default. Don't be surprised if, once more phones start to display lock screen ads out of the box, you see your less tech-literate friends end up using them without even knowing that's the case. Which is why this is still an issue, and why it's reassuring that, at least in Nothing's case, Lock Glimpse is only coming to certain phones (again, Nothing's blog said that flagships models will be spared). Being that this brand is already a bit niche, it's probably not going to be the company to normalize lock screen ads, especially because the cheaper models that are more likely to get Lock Glimpse have limited carrier support in the U.S. Still, Nothing's phones with Lock Glimpse are technically available here, and so they might be the first time some Americans are seeing lock screen ads. Plus, they're also exposed to the same market pressures as all of their competitors, which means they're probably not the last time we'll see them, either. Lock screen ads in the U.S. are now no longer a question of "if." Just of "when." View the full article

Marketing, technology, and business leaders today are asking an important question: how do you optimize for large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude? LLM optimization is taking shape as a new discipline focused on how brands surface in AI-generated results and what can be measured today. For decision makers, the challenge is separating signal from noise – identifying the technologies worth tracking and the efforts that lead to tangible outcomes. The discussion comes down to two core areas – and the timeline and work required to act on them: Tracking and monitoring your brand’s presence in LLMs. Improving visibility and performance within them. Tracking: The foundation of LLM optimization Just as SEO evolved through better tracking and measurement, LLM optimization will only mature once visibility becomes measurable. We’re still in a pre-Semrush/Moz/Ahrefs era for LLMs. Tracking is the foundation of identifying what truly works and building strategies that drive brand growth. Without it, everyone is shooting in the dark, hoping great content alone will deliver results. The core challenges are threefold: LLMs don’t publish query frequency or “search volume” equivalents. Their responses vary subtly (or not so subtly) even for identical queries, due to probabilistic decoding and prompt context. They depend on hidden contextual features (user history, session state, embeddings) that are opaque to external observers. Why LLM queries are different Traditional search behavior is repetitive – millions of identical phrases drive stable volume metrics. LLM interactions are conversational and variable. People rephrase questions in different ways, often within a single session. That makes pattern recognition harder with small datasets but feasible at scale. These structural differences explain why LLM visibility demands a different measurement model. This variability requires a different tracking approach than traditional SEO or marketing analytics. The leading method uses a polling-based model inspired by election forecasting. The polling-based model for measuring visibility A representative sample of 250–500 high-intent queries is defined for your brand or category, functioning as your population proxy. These queries are run daily or weekly to capture repeated samples from the underlying distribution of LLM responses. Tracking tools record when your brand and competitors appear as citations (linked sources) or mentions (text references), enabling share of voice calculations across all competitors. Over time, aggregate sampling produces statistically stable estimates of your brand visibility within LLM-generated content. Early tools providing this capability include: Profound. Conductor. OpenForge. Consistent sampling at scale transforms apparent randomness into interpretable signals. Over time, aggregate sampling provides a stable estimate of your brand’s visibility in LLM-generated responses – much like how political polls deliver reliable forecasts despite individual variations. Building a multi-faceted tracking framework While share of voice paints a picture of your presence in the LLM landscape, it doesn’t tell the complete story. Just as keyword rankings show visibility but not clicks, LLM presence doesn’t automatically translate to user engagement. Brands need to understand how people interact with their content to build a compelling business case. Because no single tool captures the entire picture, the best current approach layers multiple tracking signals: Share of voice (SOV) tracking: Measure how often your brand appears as mentions and citations across a consistent set of high-value queries. This provides a benchmark to track over time and compare against competitors. Referral tracking in GA4: Set up custom dimensions to identify traffic originating from LLMs. While attribution remains limited today, this data helps detect when direct referrals are increasing and signals growing LLM influence. Branded homepage traffic in Google Search Console: Many users discover brands through LLM responses, then search directly in Google to validate or learn more. This two-step discovery pattern is critical to monitor. When branded homepage traffic increases alongside rising LLM presence, it signals a strong causal connection between LLM visibility and user behavior. This metric captures the downstream impact of your LLM optimization efforts. Nobody has complete visibility into LLM impact on their business today, but these methods cover all the bases you can currently measure. Be wary of any vendor or consultant promising complete visibility. That simply isn’t possible yet. Understanding these limitations is just as important as implementing the tracking itself. Because no perfect models exist yet, treat current tracking data as directional – useful for decisions, but not definitive. Dig deeper: In GEO, brand mentions do what links alone can’t Estimating LLM ‘search volume’ Measuring LLM impact is one thing. Identifying which queries and topics matter most is another. Compared to SEO or PPC, marketers have far less visibility. While no direct search volume exists, new tools and methods are beginning to close the gap. The key shift is moving from tracking individual queries – which vary widely – to analyzing broader themes and topics. The real question becomes: which areas is your site missing, and where should your content strategy focus? To approximate relative volume, consider three approaches: Correlate with SEO search volume Start with your top-performing SEO keywords. If a keyword drives organic traffic and has commercial intent, similar questions are likely being asked within LLMs. Use this as your baseline. Layer in industry adoption of AI Estimate what percentage of your target audience uses LLMs for research or purchasing decisions: High AI-adoption industries: Assume 20-25% of users leverage LLMs for decision-making. Slower-moving industries: Start with 5-10%. Apply these percentages to your existing SEO keyword volume. For example, a keyword with 25,000 monthly searches could translate to 1,250-6,250 LLM-based queries in your category. Using emerging inferential tools New platforms are beginning to track query data through API-level monitoring and machine learning models. Accuracy isn’t perfect yet, but these tools are improving quickly. Expect major advancements in inferential LLM query modeling within the next year or two. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Optimizing for LLM visibility The technologies that help companies identify what to improve are evolving quickly. While still imperfect, they’re beginning to form a framework that parallels early SEO development, where better tracking and data gradually turned intuition into science. Optimization breaks down into two main questions: What content should you create or update, and should you focus on quality content, entities, schema, FAQs, or something else? How should you align these insights with broader brand and SEO strategies? Identify what content to create or update One of the most effective ways to assess your current position is to take a representative sample of high-intent queries that people might ask an LLM and see how your brand shows up relative to competitors. This is where the Share of Voice tracking tools we discussed earlier become invaluable. These same tools can help answer your optimization questions: Track who is being cited or mentioned for each query, revealing competitive positioning. Identify which queries your competitors appear for that you don’t, highlighting content gaps. Show which of your own queries you appear for and which specific assets are being cited, pinpointing what’s working. From this data, several key insights emerge: Thematic visibility gaps: By analyzing trends across many queries, you can identify where your brand underperforms in LLM responses. This paints a clear picture of areas needing attention. For example, you’re strong in SEO but not in PPC content. Third-party resource mapping: These tools also reveal which external resources LLMs reference most frequently. This helps you build a list of high-value third-party sites that contribute to visibility, guiding outreach or brand mention strategies. Blind spot identification: When cross-referenced with SEO performance, these insights highlight blind spots; topics or sources where your brand’s credibility and representation could improve. Understand the overlap between SEO and LLM optimization LLMs may be reshaping discovery, but SEO remains the foundation of digital visibility. Across five competitive categories, brands ranking on Google’s first page appeared in ChatGPT answers 62% of the time – a clear but incomplete overlap between search and AI results. That correlation isn’t accidental. Many retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems pull data from search results and expand it with additional context. The more often your content appears in those results, the more likely it is to be cited by LLMs. Brands with the strongest share of voice in LLM responses are typically those that invested in SEO first. Strong technical health, structured data, and authority signals remain the bedrock for AI visibility. What this means for marketers: Don’t over-focus on LLMs at the expense of SEO. AI systems still rely on clean, crawlable content and strong E-E-A-T signals. Keep growing organic visibility through high-authority backlinks and consistent, high-quality content. Use LLM tracking as a complementary lens to understand new research behaviors, not a replacement for SEO fundamentals. Redefine on-page and off-page strategies for LLMs Just as SEO has both on-page and off-page elements, LLM optimization follows the same logic – but with different tactics and priorities. Off-page: The new link building Most industries show a consistent pattern in the types of resources LLMs cite: Wikipedia is a frequent reference point, making a verified presence there valuable. Reddit often appears as a trusted source of user discussion. Review websites and “best-of” guides are commonly used to inform LLM outputs. Citation patterns across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews show consistent trends, though each engine favors different sources. This means that traditional link acquisition strategies, guest posts, PR placements, or brand mentions in review content will likely evolve. Instead of chasing links anywhere, brands should increasingly target: Pages already being cited by LLMs in their category. Reviews or guides that evaluate their product category. Articles where branded mentions reinforce entity associations. The core principle holds: brands gain the most visibility by appearing in sources LLMs already trust – and identifying those sources requires consistent tracking. On-page: What your own content reveals The same technologies that analyze third-party mentions can also reveal which first-party assets, content on your own website, are being cited by LLMs. This provides valuable insight into what type of content performs well in your space. For example, these tools can identify: What types of competitor content are being cited (case studies, FAQs, research articles, etc.). Where your competitors show up but you don’t. Which of your own pages exist but are not being cited. From there, three key opportunities emerge: Missing content: Competitors are cited because they cover topics you haven’t addressed. This represents a content gap to fill. Underperforming content: You have relevant content, but it isn’t being referenced. Optimization – improving structure, clarity, or authority – may be needed. Content enhancement opportunities: Some pages only require inserting specific Q&A sections or adding better-formatted information rather than full rewrites. Leverage emerging technologies to turn insights into action The next major evolution in LLM optimization will likely come from tools that connect insight to action. Early solutions already use vector embeddings of your website content to compare it against LLM queries and responses. This allows you to: Detect where your coverage is weak. See how well your content semantically aligns with real LLM answers. Identify where small adjustments could yield large visibility gains. Current tools mostly generate outlines or recommendations. The next frontier is automation – systems that turn data into actionable content aligned with business goals. Timeline and expected results While comprehensive LLM visibility typically builds over 6-12 months, early results can emerge faster than traditional SEO. The advantage: LLMs can incorporate new content within days rather than waiting months for Google’s crawl and ranking cycles. However, the fundamentals remain unchanged. Quality content creation, securing third-party mentions, and building authority still require sustained effort and resources. Think of LLM optimization as having a faster feedback loop than SEO, but requiring the same strategic commitment to content excellence and relationship building that has always driven digital visibility. From SEO foundations to LLM visibility LLM traffic remains small compared to traditional search, but it’s growing fast. A major shift in resources would be premature, but ignoring LLMs would be shortsighted. The smartest path is balance: maintain focus on SEO while layering in LLM strategies that address new ranking mechanisms. Like early SEO, LLM optimization is still imperfect and experimental – but full of opportunity. Brands that begin tracking citations, analyzing third-party mentions, and aligning SEO with LLM visibility now will gain a measurable advantage as these systems mature. In short: Identify the third-party sources most often cited in your niche and analyze patterns across AI engines. Map competitor visibility for key LLM queries using tracking tools. Audit which of your own pages are cited (or not) – high Google rankings don’t guarantee LLM inclusion. Continue strong SEO practices while expanding into LLM tracking – the two work best as complementary layers. Approach LLM optimization as both research and brand-building. Don’t abandon proven SEO fundamentals. Rather, extend them to how AI systems discover, interpret, and cite information. View the full article

The Federal Reserve will almost certainly cut its key interest rate on Wednesday and could signal it expects another cut in December as the central bank seeks to bolster hiring. A cut Wednesday would be the second this year and could benefit consumers by bringing down borrowing costs for mortgages and auto loans. Since Fed chair Jerome Powell strongly signaled in late August that rate cuts were likely this year, the average 30-year mortgage rate has fallen to about 6.2% from 6.6%, providing a boost to the otherwise-sluggish housing market. Still, the Fed is navigating an unusual period for the U.S. economy and its future moves are harder to anticipate than is typically the case. Hiring has ground nearly to a halt, yet inflation remains elevated, and the economy’s mostly solid growth is heavily dependent on massive investment by leading tech companies in artificial intelligence infrastructure. The central bank is assessing these trends without most of the government data it uses to gauge the economy’s health. The release of September’s jobs report has been postponed because of the government shutdown. The White House said last week October’s inflation figure may not even be compiled. The shutdown itself may also crimp the economy in the coming months, depending on how long it lasts. Roughly 750,000 federal workers are nearing a month without pay, which could soon start weakening consumer spending, a critical driver of the economy. Federal workers laid off by the The President administration’s Department of Government Efficiency efforts earlier this year may formally show up in jobs data if it is reported next month, which could make the monthly hiring data look even worse. Powell has said that the risk of weaker hiring is rising, which makes it as much of a concern as still-elevated inflation. As a result, the central bank needs to move its key rate closer to a level that would neither slow nor stimulate the economy. Most Fed officials view the current level of its key rate — 4.1% — as high enough to slow growth and cool inflation, which has been their main goal since price increases spiked to a four-decade high three years ago. The Fed is widely expected to reduce it to about 3.9% Wednesday. WIth job gains at risk, the goal is to move rates to a less-restrictive level. Kris Dawsey, head of economic research at D.E. Shaw, an investment bank, said that the lack of data during the shutdown means the Fed will likely stay on the path it sketched out in September, when it forecast cuts this month and in December. “Imagine you’re driving in a winter storm and suddenly lose visibility in whiteout conditions,” Dawsey said. “While you slow the car down, you’re going to continue going in the direction you were going versus making an abrupt change once you lose that visibility.” In recent remarks, the Fed chair has made clear that the sluggish job market has become a signficant concern. “The labor market has actually softened pretty considerably,” Powell said. “The downside risks to employment appear to have risen.” Before the government shutdown cut off the flow of data Oct. 1, monthly hiring gains had weakened to an average of just 29,000 a month for the previous three months. The unemployment rate ticked up to a still-low 4.3% in August from 4.2% in July. Layoffs also remain low, however, leading Powell and other officials to refer to the “low-hire, low-fire” job market. At the same time, last week’s inflation report — released more than a week late because of the shutdown — showed that inflation remain elevated but isn’t accelerating and may not need higher rates to tame it. Yet a key question is how long the job market can remain in what Powell has described as a “curious kind of balance.” “There have been some worrisome data points in the last few months,” said Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander, an investment bank. “Is that a weakening trend or are we just hitting an air pocket?” The uncertainty has prompted some top Fed officials to suggest that they may not necessarily support a cut at its next meeting in December. At its September meeting, the Fed signaled it would cut three times this year, though its policymaking committee is divided. Nine of 19 officials supported two or fewer reductions. Christopher Waller, a member of the Fed’s governing board and one of five people being considered by the The President administration to replace Powell as Fed chair next year, said in a recent speech that while hiring data is weak, other figures suggest the economy is growing at a healthy pace. “So, something’s gotta give,” Waller said. “Either economic growth softens to match a soft labor market, or the labor market rebounds to match stronger economic growth.” Since it’s unclear how the contradiction will play out, Waller added, “we need to move with care when adjusting the policy rate.” Waller said he supported a quarter-point cut this month, “but beyond that point” it will depend on what the economic data says, assuming the shutdown ends. Financial markets have put the odds of another cut in December at above 90%, according to CME Fedwatch — and Fed officials have so far said little to defuse that expectation. Jonathan Pingle, chief U.S. economist at UBS, said that he will look to see if Powell, at a news conference Wednesday, repeats his assertion that the risks of a weaker job market remain high. “If I hear that, I think they’re on track to lowering rates again in December,” he said. —Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Sony’s WH-1000XM series has long been the gold standard for noise-canceling headphones, and while the new WH-1000XM6 has taken the spotlight, the WH-1000XM5 remains a standout, especially at a lower price. Right now, they’re down to $284.99 at Walmart, a notable drop from their usual $399.99 list price and lower than Amazon’s current $328 listing. Sony WH-1000XM5 Headphones $284.99 at Walmart $399.99 Save $115.00 Get Deal Get Deal $284.99 at Walmart $399.99 Save $115.00 These are the same award-winning headphones that were lauded when they launched in 2022, with PCMag giving them 4.5 out of 5 stars for their sound, noise cancellation, and comfort. They still rank among the best wireless headphones available, and this discount makes them a smarter buy than ever for anyone who doesn’t need the very latest model. The WH-1000XM5 uses 30mm carbon fiber drivers powered by Sony’s Integrated Processor V1, and that combo still sounds excellent in 2025. Music has depth and balance, with enough punch to handle bass-heavy tracks without losing detail in vocals or instruments. What’s impressive is how little the audio quality changes when ANC is turned on, something cheaper models often struggle with. The noise cancellation itself is among the strongest you’ll find, easily cutting out low-frequency hums from engines or chatter in public spaces. As for connectivity, these headphones connect over Bluetooth 5.2 and support AAC, SBC, and LDAC codecs (meaning you get high-resolution audio over Bluetooth, provided your device supports it), plus multipoint pairing if you juggle between devices. Comfort and design are other strengths. The lightweight frame and soft-fit leather earcups make long sessions easy, whether you’re working, commuting, or zoning out on a flight. That said, the touch controls on the earcups can take some getting used to—swipes for volume, taps for play/pause—but you can fine-tune them in the Sony Sound Connect app, which also lets you tweak EQ settings and ANC sensitivity. Battery life is solid at around 30 hours with ANC on, and they charge quickly through USB-C. There’s also a 3.5mm audio jack for wired listening when you don’t want to think about battery life. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods Pro 2 Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $169.99 (List Price $249.00) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $299.00 (List Price $349.00) Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus — $29.99 (List Price $49.99) Shark AV2501AE AI XL Hepa- Safe Self-Emptying Base Robot Vacuum — $299.99 (List Price $649.99) Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam, White with Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen), White — $59.99 (List Price $99.99) Blink Video Doorbell Wireless (Newest Model) + Sync Module Core — $29.99 (List Price $69.99) Blink Mini 2 1080p Indoor Security Camera (2-Pack, White) — $27.99 (List Price $69.99) Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 with Ring Chime Pro — $149.99 (List Price $259.99) Introducing Amazon Fire TV 55" Omni Mini-LED Series, QLED 4K UHD smart TV, Dolby Vision IQ, 144hz gaming mode, Ambient Experience, hands-free with Alexa, 2024 release — $699.99 (List Price $819.99) Blink Outdoor 4 1080p 2-Camera Kit With Sync Module Core — $51.99 (List Price $129.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

Decision to put migrants in former army barracks marks policy reversal by Keir StarmerView the full article

As more and more drivers purchase electric vehicles, some people have voiced concerns about how the EV boom could further strain our aging, stressed electricity grid. More EVs means more electricity demand, which could require costly infrastructure upgrades or limit when drivers can charge if demand is too high. But one long-talked about promise of EVs is that they could actually make our electricity grid more resilient. Through bidirectional charging, EVs could essentially act as batteries parked outside your home, powering houses so that they don’t need to rely on outside electricity. They could also even send energy back to the grid. A handful of EVs can already power your home during an outage, including the Ford F-150 Lightning. And Ford is expanding how its EV drivers can take advantage of bidirectional charging. Through its Home Power Management program, F-150 Lightning owners can use their trucks to power their homes when electricity prices from the grid are high, easing energy burdens and saving people money on their monthly bills. It also gives customers the ability to send energy from the trucks back to the grid, in some instances earning them money from their electricity company for doing so. “We see an opportunity here where our vehicles can be part of the solution rather than compounding the problem,” Dave McCreadie, director of Ford’s EV-Grid Integration Strategy and Business Development, said during a recent press briefing on the program. The rollout is currently limited, but Ford expects to expand a Home Power Management pilot in 2026. At a time when EV sales are lagging and EV tax credits have expired—and as homeowners across the country are seeing their energy bills increase—Ford hopes potential customers see these features as another benefit to owning an EV. A personal power plant to lower energy bills Backup power has been a feature in the F-150 Lightning since its release in 2022. After major hurricanes like Helene in North Carolina and Beryl in Texas, F-150 Lightning owners used their trucks as generators, allowing them to keep the lights on and the refrigerator running when the power went out. A fully charged F-150 Lightning can power a home for three days; if that power is rationed, it can last up to 10 days. Backup power only works when the grid goes down. Home Power Management, however, allows EV owners to use their trucks to power their homes even when the grid is up and running. The idea is that customers can charge their EVs overnight during offpeak hours, when electricity rates are low. Then, when demand peaks and rates go up, they can use their EV to power their homes. That both offsets a homeowner’s electricity bills and frees up power from the grid to go elsewhere. The home in question is now essentially “invisible” to the grid, the automaker explains. In June 2024, Ford partnered with Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) and Sunrun, a home solar and battery company, to launch the country’s first vehicle-to-home pilot program, allowing EV owners to use their vehicles to power their homes anytime, not just during an outage. Brian Foreman, an F-150 Lightning owner in Highland, Maryland, was the first customer to do so, essentially turning his EV into his own personal power plant. Ford didn’t share exactly how much Foreman saved on his electricity bills, but says that customers can save an average of $42 per month, or $500 per year, by using the vehicle-to-home capability. “When most people would be concerned, ‘I’ve got an electric vehicle, my electricity bill is going to go up,’ well now you have this offset. Your vehicle is actually working for you in your driveway while it’s parked,” said Ryan O’Gorman, senior manager of energy services business strategy and delivery at Ford. Brian Foreman Sending energy to the grid—and making money In the summer of 2025, Foreman joined two other BGE customers for another pilot, this time one that allowed customers to use their F-150 Lightnings to send power to the grid. This turns the EVs into “distributed power plants,” per the utility company, which also paid customers for the energy they shared. Instead of just saving customers money on their electricity bills, this next step in Ford’s Home Power Management program lets EV owners make money through their EVs. The participants could earn up to $1,000 for the power they provided between July and September. Using your F-150 Lightning to power your home during peak energy demand or to send power to the grid does require extra equipment: an inverter called the Home Integration System, created by Ford and Sunrun. That equipment is also needed if you want to use your truck to provide backup power during an outage, so some customers already have it installed. The Home Integration System costs $3,895, and installation can be another $3,000, though those prices vary. That expense is on top of the price to buy and install a home EV charger. Some Ford customers received a free charger and installation through the automaker’s Ford Power Promise program, but for those that missed out on that opportunity, a level 2 Ford Charge Station Pro costs another $1,310 plus installation, which can vary from $200 to $1,000, depending on any wiring upgrades your home needs. That means there is an upfront cost to eventually being able to offset your energy bills or make money by providing power through your EV. But Ford says its F-150 Lightning is cost competitive to buying a 10-kilowatt stationary backup generator for your home—plus, it’s a generator you can drive around. Looking ahead for Ford Currently, a handful of customers in just nine states are using Ford’s Home Power Management capabilities, including Maryland, Georgia (where Ford did a six-month pilot program with energy provider Southern Company focused on commercial fleets), and Vermont (where energy expert Peter Schneider tested the program with Ford, using it to power his home, and reduce grid strain, during extreme heat there this past summer). Getting this system set up requires working with utility companies, which have to provide approval and permits for EVs to be interconnected with the grid in these ways. Automakers also work with utilities to communicate about peak demand, with software that automatically charges an EV at grid-friendly times. “Ford trying to maintain communications with hundreds and even thousands of electric utilities across the country is an untenable business solution,” McCreadie said. “We found that other automakers were having the same problem.” Ford worked with BMW and Honda to create ChargeScape, a joint venture that launched in 2024, which basically acts as “connective tissue,” McCreadie explained, to link utilities and automakers, and integrate EVs into the grid. Though vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid charging is a goal for the EV industry at large, Ford says it’s ahead of the pack with its recent pilot programs. Ford and Michigan-based DTE Energy have also recently launched a new program piloting the vehicle-to-home capabilities, starting with a group of 15 Ford employees. Through that pilot, DTE Energy will pay participants for using their EVs to power their homes during times of high electricity demand. But EV owners don’t have to do anything themselves; the system is entirely automated. DTE Energy will send notifications to ChargeScape to schedule when participants EV’s provide power for their homes. Though it’s only available to Ford employees right now, the automaker says it’s working with DTE to hopefully expand the program to the general public later on in 2026. View the full article

You know a theory is janky when even its Wikipedia page has “(pseudoscience)” in its title. That’s the case with so-called “biorhythms,” or periods of 23, 28, and 33 days that supposedly predict how mentally, physically, and actively on-point you’ll be on any given day. The concept of biorhythms is all over social media and has been for years, so you might think there's some legitimacy to it, but it's essentially hogwash. There are, however, other ways to track your “peaks” in productivity that are more scientifically sound. The difference between a biorhythm and circadian rhythmThe idea behind biorhythms is that over the course of month-long periods, your physical, emotional, and intellectual aptitudes fluctuate rhythmically, up and down, so you should be attuned to your personal schedule and act when each of them is at the top of one of its cycles. The first problem here is pretty obvious: Not only does this thinking dictate that you can or should be productive only once a month or so, but it gives you permission to coast when you perceive yourself to be on the low end of one of these so-called rhythms. If you're patiently waiting for a biorhythm to spike, your responsibilities and tasks can add up, which will leave you with a bunch of stuff to do—and much of it, left alone for so long, will likely have become urgent. Scientists have looked into this and deemed it balderdash, but the enduring belief in this phenomenon has led to some money grabs wherein influencers or other hucksters try to sell you products that can help you “hack” your own biorhythm to maximize your energy, productivity, and happiness. Now, you might have heard of circadian rhythms and assumed biorhythms are roughly the same thing. In fact, they're quite different. Per the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, circadian rhythms are the physical, mental, and behavioral changes that flow along a day-long cycle and they’re triggered by light and dark. There’s a whole science behind it (chronobiology), but what it amounts to is this: You get tired when it gets darker, your body sleeps at night, and you should be awake in daylight to get stuff done, ideally feeling alert. You can put a lot of energy into “hacking” your rhythm, but it’s all the obvious stuff: Sleep at night, don’t exert yourself or look at your phone before bed, go outside in the morning, stick to a schedule, etc. Biorhythms aren’t real, but circadian rhythms are. You’ll be more productive if you get consistent and good sleep. You don’t need to track peaks and valleys or subscribe to hokey apps to master this. Instead, focus on getting quality sleep and maximizing what you are doing during those precious daylight hours. If you're still looking for a structure to fill the void left by the false promise of biorhythms, let's get into the Yerkes-Dodson Law. The Yerkes-Dodson lawSome peaks and valleys are worth tapping into. The Yerkes-Dodson law models the relationship between stress levels and performance, showing how experiencing some stress and urgency can make you more productive. It’s been around since 1908, when psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson discovered it, and looks like a curve when it’s mapped out on a matrix, just like supposed “biorhythms” do. It looks like an upside-down U; on the left, you have your low-stress moments, on the right you have your high-stress moments, and in the middle, you have your peak, or the time when you’re just stressed enough to be productive but not totally overwhelmed. The Y-axis shows peak performance at the top and worst performance at the bottom, so you’ll notice that your poor performance times are aligned with having too little and too much stress. When you don’t have enough stress, you’ll be uninterested in your task. When you have too much, you’ll be too anxious to get it done well. The hypothesis Yerkes and Dodson came up with came around after studying the effects of electric shocks on mice’s ability to perform tasks. As stress increases, ability also increases—to an extent—because you have motivation. So there is, in fact, a "rhythm" that counts for something, and that's the way your interest and stress fluctuate. You don't need to spend any money on an app or self-help book, but you should pay attention to how interested you are in a task at a given time—plus how motivated you feel in that moment. When no one is coming over to visit, for instance, you probably aren't as interested in cleaning your house as you would be if their arrival was in a day. You don't have stress or urgency. On the other hand, if they were arriving in 30 minutes and your place was a mess, you'd be so stressed you might not know where to start. The peak time to clean, then, might be the morning before they get there. You're interested and motivated, but not freaking out. Apply that same thinking to any task you need to accomplish. Pay close attention to how you feel in the lead-up to doing it so you can identify your own peak stress and peak productivity times. It helps to prioritize your to-dos and schedule your days and weeks thoroughly. Parkinson's Law goes hand in hand with Yerkes-Dodson, for instance. It says that the longer you give yourself to do something, the longer you'll naturally take to get it done, so you should give yourself less time overall. Having a smaller window in which to work on pressing tasks will up the urgency, aligning you more with the peak of Yerkes-Dodson. Pre-plan your weeks using prioritization techniques like the Eisenhower Matrix and task batching, thinking about when you'll have just the right amount of urgency to motivate you to do each task. View the full article

AI tools can help teams move faster than ever – but speed alone isn’t a strategy. As more marketers rely on LLMs to help create and optimize content, credibility becomes the true differentiator. And as AI systems decide which information to trust, quality signals like accuracy, expertise, and authority matter more than ever. It’s not just what you write but how you structure it. AI-driven search rewards clear answers, strong organization, and content it can easily interpret. This article highlights key strategies for smarter AI workflows – from governance and training to editorial oversight – so your content remains accurate, authoritative, and unmistakably human. Create an AI usage policy More than half of marketers are using AI for creative endeavors like content creation, IAB reports. Still, AI policies are not always the norm. Your organization will benefit from clear boundaries and expectations. Creating policies for AI use ensures consistency and accountability. Only 7% of companies using genAI in marketing have a full-blown governance framework, according to SAS. However, 63% invest in creating policies that govern how generative AI is used across the organization. Source- “Marketers and GenAI- Diving Into the Shallow End,” SAS Even a simple, one-page policy can prevent major mistakes and unify efforts across teams that may be doing things differently. As Cathy McPhillips, chief growth officer at the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, puts it: “If one team uses ChatGPT while others work with Jasper or Writer, for instance, governance decisions can become very fragmented and challenging to manage. You’d need to keep track of who’s using which tools, what data they’re inputting, and what guidance they’ll need to follow to protect your brand’s intellectual property.” So drafting an internal policy sets expectations for AI use in the organization (or at least the creative teams). When creating a policy, consider the following guidelines: What the review process for AI-created content looks like. When and how to disclose AI involvement in content creation. How to protect proprietary information (not uploading confidential or client information into AI tools). Which AI tools are approved for use, and how to request access to new ones. How to log or report problems. Logically, the policy will evolve as the technology and regulations change. Keep content anchored in people-first principles It can be easy to fall into the trap of believing AI-generated content is good because it reads well. LLMs are great at predicting the next best sentence and making it sound convincing. But reviewing each sentence, paragraph, and the overall structure with a critical eye is absolutely necessary. Think: Would an expert say it like that? Would you normally write like that? Does it offer the depth of human experience that it should? “People-first content,” as Google puts it, is really just thinking about the end user and whether what you are putting into the world is adding value. Any LLM can create mediocre content, and any marketer can publish it. And that’s the problem. People-first content aligns with Google’s E-E-A-T framework, which outlines the characteristics of high-quality, trustworthy content. E-E-A-T isn’t a novel idea, but it’s increasingly relevant in a world where AI systems need to determine if your content is good enough to be included in search. According to evidence in U.S. v. Google LLC, we see quality remains central to ranking: “RankEmbed and its later iteration RankEmbedBERT are ranking models that rely on two main sources of data: [redacted]% of 70 days of search logs plus scores generated by human raters and used by Google to measure the quality of organic search results.” Source: U.S. v. Google LLC court documentation It suggests that the same quality factors reflected in E-E-A-T likely influence how AI systems assess which pages are trustworthy enough to ground their answers. So what does E-E-A-T look like practically when working with AI content? You can: Review Google’s list of questions related to quality content: Keep these in mind before and after content creation. Demonstrate firsthand experience through personal insights, examples, and practical guidance: Weave these insights into AI output to add a human touch. Use reliable sources and data to substantiate claims: If you’re using LLMs for research, fact-check in real time to ensure the best sources. Insert authoritative quotes either from internal stakeholders or external subject matter experts: Quoting internal folks builds brand credibility while external sources lend authority to the piece. Create detailed author bios: Include: Relevant qualifications, certifications, awards, and experience. Links to social media, academic papers (if relevant), or other authoritative works. Add schema markup to articles to clarify the content further: Schema can clarify content in a way that AI-powered search can better understand. Become the go-to resource on the topic: Create a depth and breadth of material on the website that’s organized in a search-friendly, user-friendly manner. You can learn more in my article on organizing content for AI search. Source: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content,” Google Search Central Dig deeper: Writing people-first content: A process and template Train the LLM LLMs are trained on vast amounts of data – but they’re not trained on your data. Put in the work to train the LLM, and you can get better results and more efficient workflows. Here are some ideas. Maintain a living style guide If you already have a corporate style guide, great – you can use that to train the model. If not, create a simple one-pager that covers things like: Audience personas. Voice traits that matter. Reading level, if applicable. The do’s and don’ts of phrases and language to use. Formatting rules such as SEO-friendly headers, sentence length, paragraph length, bulleted list guidelines, etc. You can refresh this as needed and use it to further train the model over time. Build a prompt kit Put together a packet of instructions that prompts the LLM. Here are some ideas to start with: The style guide This covers everything from the audience personas to the voice style and formatting. If you’re training a custom GPT, you don’t need to do this every time, but it may need tweaking over time. A content brief template This can be an editable document that’s filled in for each content project and includes things like: The goal of the content. The specific audience. The style of the content (news, listicle, feature article, how-to). The role (who the LLM is writing as). The desired action or outcome. Content examples Upload a handful of the best content examples you have to train the LLM. This can be past articles, marketing materials, transcripts from videos, and more. If you create a custom GPT, you’ll do this at the outset, but additional examples of content may be uploaded, depending on the topic. Sources Train the model on the preferred third-party sources of information you want it to pull from, in addition to its own research. For example, if you want it to source certain publications in your industry, compile a list and upload it to the prompt. As an additional layer, prompt the model to automatically include any third-party sources after every paragraph to make fact-checking easier on the fly. SEO prompts Consider building SEO into the structure of the content from the outset. Early observations of Google’s AI Mode suggest that clearly structured, well-sourced content is more likely to be referenced in AI-generated results. With that in mind, you can put together a prompt checklist that includes: Crafting a direct answer in the first one to two sentences, then expanding with context. Covering the main question, but also potential subquestions (“fan-out” queries) that the system may generate (for example, questions related to comparisons, pros/cons, alternatives, etc.). Chunking content into many subsections, with each subsection answering a potential fan-out query to completion. Being an expert source of information in each individual section of the page, meaning it’s a passage that can stand on its own. Provide clear citations and semantic richness (synonyms, related entities) throughout. Dig deeper: Advanced AI prompt engineering strategies for SEO Create custom GPTs or explore RAG A custom GPT is a personalized version of ChatGPT that’s trained on your materials so it can better create in your brand voice and follow brand rules. It mostly remembers tone and format, but that doesn’t guarantee the accuracy of output beyond what’s uploaded. Some companies are exploring RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) to further train LLMs on the company’s own knowledge base. RAG connects an LLM to a private knowledge base, retrieving relevant documents at query time so the model can ground its responses in approved information. While custom GPTs are easy, no-code setups, RAG implementation is more technical – but there are companies/technologies out there that can make it easier to implement. That’s why GPTs tend to work best for small or medium-scale projects or for non-technical teams focused on maintaining brand consistency. Create a custom GPT in ChatGPT RAG, on the other hand, is an option for enterprise-level content generation in industries where accuracy is critical and information changes frequently. Run an automated self-review Create parameters so the model can self-assess the content before further editorial review. You can create a checklist of things to prompt it. For example: “Is the advice helpful, original, people-first?” (Perhaps using Google’s list of questions from its helpful content guidance.) “Is the tone and voice completely aligned with the style guide?” Have an established editing process Even the best AI workflow still depends on trained editors and fact-checkers. This human layer of quality assurance protects accuracy, tone, and credibility. Editorial training About 33% of content writers and 24% of marketing managers added AI skills to their LinkedIn profiles in 2024. Writers and editors need to continue to upskill in the coming year, and, according to the Microsoft 2025 annual Work Trend Index, AI skilling is the top priority. Source: 2025 Microsoft Work Trend Index Annual Report Professional training creates baseline knowledge so your team gets up to speed faster and can confidently handle outputs consistently. This includes training on how to effectively use LLMs and how to best create and edit AI content. In addition, training content teams on SEO helps them build best practices into prompts and drafts. Editorial procedures Ground your AI-assisted content creation in editorial best practices to ensure the highest quality. This might include: Identifying the parts of the content creation workflow that are best suited for LLM assistance. Conducting an editorial meeting to sign off on topics and outlines. Drafting the content. Performing the structural edit for clarity and flow, then copyediting for grammar and punctuation. Getting sign-off from stakeholders. AI editorial process The AI editing checklist Build a checklist to use during the review process for quality assurance. Here are some ideas to get you started: Every claim, statistic, quote, or date is accompanied by a citation for fact-checking accuracy. All facts are traceable to credible, approved sources. Outdated statistics (more than two years) are replaced with fresh insights. Draft meets the style guide’s voice guidelines and tone definitions. Content adds valuable, expert insights rather than being vague or generic. For thought leadership, ensure the author’s perspective is woven throughout. Draft is run through the AI detector, aiming for a conservative percentage of 5% or less AI. Draft aligns with brand values and meets internal publication standards. Final draft includes explicit disclosure of AI involvement when required (client-facing/regulatory). Grounding AI content in trust and intent AI is transforming how we create, but it doesn’t change why we create. Every policy, workflow, and prompt should ultimately support one mission: to deliver accurate, helpful, and human-centered content that strengthens your brand’s authority and improves your visibility in search. Dig deeper: An AI-assisted content process that outperforms human-only copy View the full article

The world’s largest retailer has announced massive job cuts before the holidays. On Tuesday, Amazon said in a memo to staff that it will lay off 14,000 employees. Here’s what you need to know about the Amazon layoffs, and why these aren’t the last jobs that Amazon will likely cut in the future. What’s happened? On Tuesday, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, Beth Galetti, announced the company was eliminating “approximately 14,000” positions. Galetti sent a memo about the layoffs to Amazon employees, which was then published to the Amazon website. The headcount reduction of 14,000 positions is less than the up to 30,000 job cuts that Reuters had reported in the hours before Galetti’s memo was made public. However, it still represents one of the largest single layoff rounds of 2025. It also comes just days after competitor Target announced it was laying off 1,800 corporate roles. Amazon did not say which 14,000 jobs would be eliminated, but the memo specified that they would be “corporate workforce” positions, suggesting Amazon’s warehouse workforce is safe from the cuts. But that is to be expected as Amazon would be unlikely to reduce its warehouse staff ahead of the busy holiday season. According to PitchBook, Amazon has a total workforce of more than 1.5 million employees. Why is Amazon laying off 14,000 employees? In the memo, Galetti stated that the layoffs are a continuation of Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s September 2024 directive to strengthen Amazon’s culture and teams. In 2024, that strengthening resulted in a return-to-office (RTO) mandate. In 2025, strengthening your culture apparently means cutting your workforce. “The reductions we’re sharing today,” Galetti’s memo states, “are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs.” But Galetti continued, explaining that the main driver for the cuts is—you guessed it—artificial intelligence. “The world is changing quickly,” Galetti said. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones).” Because of this, Galetti said that Amazon is convinced it needs to become a leaner company with “fewer layers.” The “layers” here are people. Amazon could cut even more jobs next year While the 14,000 job cuts Amazon announced today are devastating to the workers and their families who are affected, Amazon may not be done cutting positions. In the memo, Galetti added that “looking ahead to 2026,” Amazon expects to hire in key areas, “while also finding additional places we can remove layers.” How has Amazon’s stock price reacted? While the layoffs are devastating to the workers losing their jobs, Wall Street often sees layoffs as a good thing. That’s because laying off a large number of workers is usually the fastest way for a company to cut costs and thus increase its bottom line. But if Amazon was hoping to see a stock price boost from its layoff announcements this morning, the company is going to be disappointed. As of this writing, Amazon’s stock price (Nasdaq: AMZN) is relatively flat in premarket trading. It’s up just half a percent to around $228.22 per share. As a matter of fact, Amazon’s stock price for 2025 hasn’t moved much. Year to date, the company’s share price is up just 3.4%. That’s compared to the Nasdaq’s 21% gain in the same period. Amazon is expected to share its third-quarter 2025 financial results on Thursday, October 30. View the full article

Google added a very useful feature to the Google Search Console Insights report named query groups. It does what it is named, it groups similar queries together as one, so you can see how your site is performing for that specific topic, instead of individual queries.View the full article

Those who are bearish on US democracy should not extend their pessimism to the economyView the full article

Knowing when to refresh content versus create new pages comes down to user value, topical focus, and measurable SEO outcomes. The post Ask An SEO: Is It Better To Refresh Content Or Create New Pages? appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Early in my career, I was fortunate to cross paths with a mentor who changed how I saw design—and myself. He ran a small studio whose influence reached far beyond its size. He led with a quiet confidence and quick wit, showing how intelligence and humility could coexist in the creative process. I was passionate about the craft, but there was still so much more to learn about the tools, and about business. He taught me how to infuse storytelling into design. How to navigate constraints. How to bring meaning to every project, not just the ones that sparked instant excitement. He reminded me that creativity thrives on play and curiosity, and that if you lose joy in the process, the work suffers. Those experiences taught me that mentorship is about passing down not just skills, but a way of seeing and approaching the work. The guru form of mentorship—the close, sustained one-to-one relationship between an experienced guide and an eager apprentice—has given way to something more imaginative and community-based. For me, much of that evolution has been visible through creative networks like AIGA that champion connection and professional growth. In addition, platforms like ADP List help creatives solve problems and refine their portfolios through focused, 20-minute feedback exchanges. Inclusive group-based initiatives such as Break the Wall blend workshops, one-on-one meetings, and targeted training to build confidence and open doors for underrepresented creatives. This new wave of mentorship redefines how we learn from each other in a post-pandemic world when proximity is no longer a given. It challenges the belief that deep creative growth depends on shared physical space, replacing it with something more fluid and democratic. How are these new approaches enriching creative mentorship, and what do we risk losing along the way? The Demise of Guru Mentoring During the era of the hands-on mentor, you didn’t just learn what someone did. You absorbed how they thought, often through shared experiences. When I joined Fifty Thousand Feet in 2004, the lessons my mentor taught me became the foundation for how I approached creative leadership and helped grow the practice. I learned that mentorship doesn’t stop with one relationship; it becomes part of how you lead—and help others to lead. When more experienced designers remind their teammates that trust is as essential to great design as aesthetics, mentorship becomes collective. It becomes how we grow together. When the pandemic hit, creative studios went quiet. Overnight, our way of working, defined by proximity and spontaneity, was replaced by screens and schedules. We lost the informal learning that happens in passing: the sketch on someone’s desk, the overheard critique, the unplanned spark of collaboration. Many leaders tried to re-create that closeness through digital tools. We held virtual check-ins and all-hands meetings. But something was missing. The energy of shared space, the easy conversations, the sense of momentum, was hard to replicate. Collaboration became more intentional, but less organic. In that absence, the creative industry began searching for new models that could sustain connection and growth in a hybrid world. The Rise of New Mentorship Models What followed was a burst of experimentation. Across the industry, new forms of mentoring have gained momentum since the pandemic, combining structure with flexibility and access. Micro mentorship has become a favorite starting point. These short, focused sessions meet creatives where they are, helping them refine portfolios, shape presentations, or overcome creative blocks. The approach trades hierarchy for immediacy. For younger designers, it opens the door to multiple mentors instead of one. For mentors, it offers the chance to share expertise in moments that matter most. At the same time, peer learning communities are reshaping how creatives connect. These networks erase titles and encourage reciprocity. One week you are the mentor, the next you are the learner. Younger professionals bring fresh fluency in tools and culture, while veterans share hard-won perspectives. That exchange keeps creative cultures evolving. Even traditional apprenticeship models are changing shape. Adobe’s Creative Apprenticeship, for instance, links aspiring designers with more than 200 creative leaders and 35 agency partners. It borrows the rigor of the studio system but scales it globally. Meanwhile, digital communities of practice have become the connective tissue of the industry. Organized around disciplines or shared challenges, they create space for ongoing dialogue, workshops, and portfolio exchange. Together, these models show that mentorship did not vanish in the pandemic. It adapted. It became faster, more open, and more human in its reach. The Benefits of Peer Learning and Community New forms of mentorship break down barriers of geography, hierarchy, and privilege. A designer in Nairobi can now receive feedback from a creative director in New York. A freelancer can find a sense of belonging in a global online forum. They also diversify the voices shaping creative careers. Traditional mentorship often reflected proximity—who sat near whom, who belonged to which agency, who got noticed. Community-based mentorship opens the door to people with different experiences, disciplines, and perspectives. That diversity fuels innovation by exposing creatives to new ways of thinking and working. Peer and micro-mentorship also allow for real-time feedback rather than waiting for annual reviews or rare moments of contact. They make mentorship a living part of the workday. And perhaps most importantly, they distribute the emotional labor of mentorship. Instead of depending on one relationship, creatives can build a constellation of guides, akin to a network that evolves as their career does. What We Risk Losing Yet efficiency has its costs. The quiet accumulation of trust and shared history that forms the long arc of mentorship is harder to replicate online. Tacit knowledge, the kind that comes from watching how someone handles conflict or reads a room, can be difficult to transfer in a virtual environment. There is something to be said for the value of serendipity, too. In-person work creates unplanned learning: the overheard insight, the offhand comment that sparks an idea. Virtual platforms tend to optimize for structure, not discovery. Without care, mentorship risks becoming transactional, something to schedule rather than something to live. Blending the Old and the New But we don’t have to lose the good things about one-to-one mentorship. The future of creative mentorship might not be about choosing one model over another. It’s about synthesis. The one-to-one relationships that shaped generations of creatives can coexist with today’s distributed, community-driven systems. The key is to preserve the human connection at the heart of mentorship while expanding who gets to participate. For creative leaders, that means being intentional about creating the conditions where mentorship thrives. Make it part of your culture, not an HR program. Pair senior and junior talent on projects and encourage them to exchange feedback in both directions. Create small circles or pods where peers can learn from each other. Recognize mentorship in performance reviews, not just deliverables. Use digital platforms for access, but keep curiosity, trust, and generosity as your operating principles. Mentorship is how creative culture renews itself. Whether it happens across a desk or across a screen, it remains the most human way we learn to create, lead, and grow. View the full article

Google has expanded access to the Google Business Profiles' what's happening feature to multi-location restaurants and bars in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. When it launched in May it was only available for single-location restaurants.View the full article

Google Ads has supposedly added more integration between the main Google Ads platform and reporting and the niche Local Service Ads platform. Some can now see conversion tracking actions in the Google Ads interface.View the full article

Google is rolling out map pin clicks in the Google Ads and Google Local Service Ads reporting. This can be found under Campaigns view, then under Segment, and then under Click Type.View the full article

Google's John Mueller was asked what is the best CMS, content management system, is for SEO and ranking well on Google Search. John replied that all the modern CMS platforms are fine and there are no big differences, SEO-wise, between any of them.View the full article

Turn one piece of content into many. Learn a 5-step multimodal content strategy to expand reach, repurpose efficiently, and improve AI visibility. View the full article

Robyn Denholm urges investors to support billionaire chief’s package ahead of crucial November 6 voteView the full article

Step-by-step YouTube SEO guide with tactics, AI updates, Shorts optimization, and downloadable checklist. View the full article

In January 2025, subway riders at the 59th Street-Lexington Avenue station in Manhattan noticed a surprising new addition: spiked metal partitions between each fare gate. Some commuters called the partitions “silly and foolish.” Others said they were “a waste of money.” Over the past nine months, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has rolled out the same spiked partitions to 183 stations across the subway network, with more on the way. Like spikes on a handrail prevent people from sitting on it, these metal screens (which the MTA calls “sleeves”) are designed to prevent people from hoisting themselves over the turnstiles. They’ve also turned what was already an inhospitable system into an actively hostile public space. The MTA argues it has good reason to take these measures. About 40% of the agency’s operating budget comes from fares and tolls, meaning every tap and every swipe helps keep trains and buses running. But many riders aren’t paying at all. In 2024, fare evasion on the subway cost the agency around $350 million, though it topped $1 billion if you include unpaid buses, trains, and tolls. At 59th Street-Lexington Avenue, the spiked partitions, which were custom-made specifically for the New York subway, seem to have worked. According to an April 2025 MTA press release—four months after installing the mechanisms—fare evasion at the station dropped by roughly 60%. There is no way of knowing, however, if the drop is due to the “sleeves” or the other measures the MTA introduced at that station, including turnstiles with larger “fins,” and new “anti back-cocking” mechanisms to prevent people from squeezing in through the turnstile without paying. It is also possible that offenders simply moved on to a nearby station that hasn’t been retrofitted with these anti fare-evasion designs. Earlier this year, the MTA began piloting modern, glass-paneled gates at a limited number of stations, combined with gate guards now stationed at more than 200 locations. These efforts helped the MTA collect $5 billion in fare revenue in 2024, up $322 million from the previous year. The apparent success poses two uncomfortable questions: Should we accept a fortified, unwelcoming subway if it really does deter people from jumping the turnstile? And is there really no better way to get people to pay? Flickr A worldwide challenge Fare evasion is a global headache with no standardized solution, and different cities have taken different approaches to stopping it. In Paris, officials have relied on a growing army of fare inspectors and hefty fines. Transport for London, which lost more than $170 million in revenue to fare dodgers in the capital city in 2023, is considering adding AI-enabled, extra-tall ticket barriers to trap offenders. Meanwhile, Queensland, Australia, recently slashed train and bus fares from as much as $6.23 to a flat 50 cents, and fare evasion plummeted. New York’s MTA, for its part, has mostly favored enforcement. In 2022, it convened a Blue-Ribbon Panel on Fare Evasion to recommend solutions. The panel’s report suggested promoting the city’s Fair Fares program (which offers half-priced MetroCards to low-income residents), partnering with public schools to teach students transit etiquette, redesigning fare gates as part of a 2025-2029 Capital Plan, and posting gate guards to deter evasion. A spokesperson for the MTA told Fast Company that the agency’s “aggressive strategy” stems directly from those recommendations, but declined to specify whether any education and outreach campaigns have been implemented so far. For now, the retrofitted gates and guards appear to be working: Subway fare evasion across the entire network dropped by 30% in 2024. Flickr “How far do we have to go?” The New York City subway—rat-infested and delay-prone as it may be—is one of the city’s most vital public spaces. It may lack the allure of a park, or the quiet of your local public library branch, but it brings millions of people together across class, race, and borough lines. “The subway is known as a place that generates community, where you see people different from you, sometimes even start conversations,” says Setha Low, a professor of anthropology at the City University of New York. “Making it into a fearful environment, making it less inclusive, isn’t going to help the MTA get people back on the subway.” The spiked walls haven’t yet reached Low’s local station in Brooklyn, but when shown a photo of the spiked sleeves at Barclays Center, she drew comparisons to the kind of barbed wire she’s seen across Latin America, where she conducted fieldwork for 15 years. The problem, she says, isn’t just that the measures look hostile, it’s that they reflect a growing citywide aesthetic. Hostile architecture—a term describing exclusionary urban design like spikes on flat surfaces or benches with dividers to deter sleeping—first spread across New York in the 1970s, when the city was facing budget crises and rising homelessness. Over the past decade, it has multiplied and morphed. Inside Moynihan Train Hall on Madison Avenue, and in Low’s own subway station in Brooklyn, benches have disappeared altogether—a strategic decision from the city to prevent unhoused people from sleeping in public spaces (see also the MTA’s new leaning benches). “I walked 30 blocks down Madison Avenue the other day, and there wasn’t one place to sit down,” Low says. From the city’s perspective, these new subway barriers are efficient. They maintain order, improve safety, and protect revenue. But that logic comes with a cost. “I think it’s legitimate to think about the psychological impact of how we internalize these surveilled, parceled structures all around us,” says Jon Ritter, a clinical professor of architecture at New York University. “Assuming [the spiked partitions] work as deterrents, it raises the question: How far do we have to go to achieve the public good of fare collection?” Unsplash Going beyond infrastructure Not everyone jumps a turnstile for the same reasons. A 2019 study of the Transantiago system in Santiago, Chile, grouped fare evaders into four types: those who evade as protest, those who do it because the risk is low, those who see no value in paying, and those who simply forget. Milad Haghani, a researcher and principal fellow in urban resilience and mobility at the University of Melbourne in Australia, has developed his own understanding of the factors at play. These include how difficult it is to physically evade a fare, the quality and reliability of the service, the cost of the fare relative to the local minimum income, and the perceived likelihood of getting caught. The MTA’s current strategy—taller gates, spiked partitions, human guards—addresses only the first factor: physical difficulty. “It makes fare evasion harder,” Haghani says, “but it doesn’t address why people choose to evade in the first place.” He adds that when service quality is poor, people often justify evasion as a form of protest. And in New York, where locals regularly complain about unreliable weekend service or aging infrastructure that floods during storms, the MTA is giving them plenty to protest about. (Did we mention the rats?) In July, the MTA celebrated a small victory after its spring  survey reported 57% subway rider satisfaction—its highest since 2022. What was left unsaid, however, was that more than 40% of riders remain dissatisfied. “If the goal is genuinely to reduce fare evasion,” says Haghani, “physical enforcement has to be paired with improving service and restoring trust. Passengers are far less likely to avoid paying when they believe the fare is fair.” Until the MTA finds a way to improve its service and restore trust, the spikes might have to do. But if they also stop New Yorkers from feeling like the subway is a safe and inclusive space for everyone, there might be an even bigger price to pay. View the full article

Job losses come as chief executive oversees a cost-cutting drive amid increased AI spendingView the full article

As a mother of two little girls, I expected that puberty would be a tempestuous time for our family, full of emotional roller coasters and bodily changes. I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon. When my oldest daughter turned 9, her pediatrician said she could get her period within the year. I was blindsided: When I was growing up, girls expected to get their periods around the age of 13. I rushed out to buy a pack of menstrual pads to keep in her backpack, in case she gets her first period in school, and ordered The Care and Keeping of You, the iconic puberty guide that has sold 8 million copies since it debuted in 1998. I’m far from the only flummoxed parent. Generation Alpha girls—the oldest of whom are just entering middle school—are expected to go through puberty between six months and two years earlier than their parents. But don’t panic. Help has arrived in the form of Less Awkward, a company that provides resources that allow children, parents, and schools to better navigate puberty. Less Awkward is the brainchild of a pediatrician, Cara Natterson, who has written extensively about puberty (including serving as the medical consultant on The Care and Keeping of You), and a puberty educator, Vanessa Kroll Bennett, whose career has been devoted to helping girls build self-esteem. In the past, parents could look back at their own adolescence as a guide for what might happen to their children, but today’s kids are experiencing adolescence differently than any previous generation. And while there’s an abundance of resources for early childhood, it’s far harder to find reliable information about how to navigate this brave new world of puberty. Many parents today are looking for reliable parenting information beyond books, and through other forms of media such as apps, podcasts, Instagram, and TikTok. Dr. Becky Kennedy, a guru for parents of young children, has mastered the art of speaking to Gen Z and millennial parents on social media and through her new AI-powered app that provides parents with answers tailored to their specific problems. Natterson and Bennett are following a similar playbook, picking up where Dr. Becky leaves off, and guiding families through the transitions children will face between the ages of 8 and 18. It’s an approach that seems to be resonating with parents, who are willing to pay to use these services. Natterson and Bennett started Less Awkward in 2021 as a podcast called This Is So Awkward. And as their audience has grown to more than 2.5 million listeners a month, so have their ambitions. They recently turned Less Awkward into a full-fledged resource for parents with puberty-aged children, including a $10 a month hub that gives them access to videos, workshops, and even an AI chatbot that allows parents to ask specific questions and receive answers trained on Less Awkward content. And this year, they’re expanding into schools with a curriculum meant to improve the way kids learn about puberty. Given the relative lack of resources for parents of tweens and teens, Natterson and Bennett want to provide trustworthy, evidence-based advice that is tailored to the very unique circumstances today’s kids are facing. But it turns out, this is also a recipe for a new kind of parenting business. “There is this wide open lane,” Bennett says. “We wanted to fill it quickly because we believe we can change a child’s trajectory if we can surround them with empathy and community during these years, rather than ignoring or judging them.” The Brave New World of Puberty Over the past five years, the media has been flooded with unsettling stories about how puberty is shifting earlier. In 2022, The New York Times reported that girls were developing breasts as young as 6. Last year, NPR described how more girls were getting their periods before the age of 9. Parents everywhere began to panic. Doctors have been observing this trend for several decades now. In 1997, Marcia Herman-Giddens, then a physician’s associate in the pediatric department at Duke University Medical Center, published a longitudinal study of 17,000 girls, which found that they were hitting puberty at the age of 10, a year earlier than girls in the 1960s. Many studies since have found that all over the world, puberty in girls has dropped by about three months per decade since the 1970s. We see a similar pattern, though less extreme, in boys. Researchers don’t fully understand why this is happening. But newer studies—the ones which newspapers have covered in recent years—suggest that earlier puberty may be the result of obesity, childhood stress, and the use of hormone-disrupting chemicals in our personal care products. All of this set off alarm bells. As puberty experts, Natterson and Bennett are very familiar with these studies. But as they saw the panic this news provoked among adults, they were concerned about how little attention people were paying to the kids going through this new experience of puberty. “There was so much Monday morning quarterbacking about what’s causing this earlier puberty,” Bennett says. “What we cared about was the 45 million kids going through puberty right now. They need reliable information from adults who aren’t freaking out.” When they looked around, they couldn’t find many resources for parents and kids trying to navigate these years. Natterson, who helped write the updated version of The Care and Keeping of You, arguably the most influential puberty guidebook on the market, believed that families were craving more knowledge and guidance—particularly since puberty itself is evolving. But while there is an abundance of resources about each stage of early childhood, there are relatively few resources for tweens and teens. “The parent industry drops kids like hot potatoes after kindergarten,” Natterson says. Natterson and Bennett have theories about why this is the case. For one thing, many adults today dealt with the trials of puberty on their own, without much support from their parents or communities, so they assume their job is to distance themselves from their children during these years. There are also many cultural stereotypes that teenagers are intolerable, prone to violent mood swings, and rude to adults. Even some doctors and psychologists avoid working with adolescents. “It’s an intimidating stage of life,” Bennett says. “It’s unpredictable. And people are scared of dealing with young people’s reactions.” Dr. Rebekah Fenton, who specializes in adolescent medicine (and has no connection to Less Awkward), observes that many pediatricians are not very comfortable speaking with teens, and she wishes there were more resources for them to learn how to speak with older patients. “When we’re dealing with older children who are seeing changes in their own bodies, we really should be having conversations with them directly,” she says. “But there’s a gap in our training when it comes to learning how to speak with teens.” Making It Less Awkward Less Awkward began as a pandemic project. In 2021, in the midst of the lockdown, Natterson and Bennett poured their energies into launching a podcast targeted at parents called This Is So Awkward. They began by covering the basics of puberty today, like when a girl can expect to get her period, how to talk to tweens about sex, and why kids experience emotional swings. The show quickly developed an audience, racking up hundreds of thousands of listeners, and Natterson and Bennett began to tackle more complex and nuanced questions about the sociocultural impacts of earlier puberty. For instance, even though girls’ bodies are developing faster, they are not more emotionally mature; yet other people might sexualize them because they look older than they are. “When strangers on the street are sexualizing 9-year-olds, this has an impact on their mental health and self-esteem,” Bennett says. “But we don’t need to assume that young girls are going to have these negative outcomes. There are plenty of things we can do to intervene.” Soon, Natterson and Bennett were flooded with requests to conduct workshops at schools and other organizations. It wasn’t long before they couldn’t keep up with these requests. Their solution was to write a book so they could get their ideas into the hands of more people. In 2023, they published This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained. It explains the science of puberty as well as covers their approach to parenting, which is all about staying connected to children during this period and creating spaces for conversation. Fenton believes it is critical to offer parents and kids more information about puberty and thinks it is good that Less Awkward is creating resources that are easy to digest. “The main resource families have access to these days is books, and many are very research-heavy rather than practical,” she says. “This information needs to be in a form that parents and children will be able to receive it, like social media posts, podcasts, and videos.” Now, Natterson and Bennett are thinking about how to make their content accessible across even more formats. They’ve spent the last few years building “The Hub,” a website that makes it easy for parents to access all of the Less Awkward content, organized by theme, at a price of $10 per month. If a parent is trying to help their child deal with acne or a friendship problem, they can search for the topic and find everything from short social media videos to long-form podcasts that address the issue. They’ve also built an AI tool on the site that is trained on all of Natterson and Bennett’s work, allowing parents to ask more specific questions and get Less Awkward-approved answers, tailored to their situations. This approach is similar to Dr. Becky Kennedy, who became a guru to millennials during the pandemic when she started posting short-form parenting advice videos on Instagram and TikTok. This blossomed into a book called Good Inside, and more recently evolved into an AI-powered app that answers parents’ questions on the go, using Kennedy’s methodology. Beyond the book Natterson and Bennett are now taking their content a step further and bringing it to schools. There isn’t a standardized sex education curriculum that schools across the country use today, and there is a lot of variation in terms of what content they cover. But broadly, many educators aren’t being equipped to handle the complexities of puberty in 2025—from the fact that it is happening sooner to the ways that technology is impacting childhood. They’ve launched a school-based health education course called That Health Class that provides teachers with the tools to educate kids from fourth grade to high school. They’ve tailored the content to each age, and go beyond biology to consider the sociocultural aspects of puberty. Fifth graders will learn about physical anatomy and periods, but there are also modules about body image, social media, and consent in relationships. By the time kids get to eighth grade, there is a module about sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and how to prevent them. “Sex ed is not reliable if its outdated,” Natterson says. “We’re trying to offer relatable content in whatever form a kid and their trusted adults can best receive it.” The curriculum comes with decks and videos that teachers can use in the classroom, as well as professional development content for the educators. And it also gives access to The Hub, so parents can view parallel lessons, allowing them to understand what their children are learning and engage them in conversations. “The kids need to be educated about modern puberty, but so do teachers who are teaching them,” Natterson says. While Fenton applauds Less Awkward for helping to spread knowledge about puberty and make the concept less terrifying, she hopes they—and other puberty educators—continue to make a lot of their content free. “I’m always a little worried education is available to parents who have the resources, even though every parent needs it,” she says. “We should be trying to make as much high-quality, reliable information as possible free.” If there’s one message that Bennett wants people to take away from the whole Less Awkward approach, it’s that puberty doesn’t have to be such a difficult time for children, parents, and their teachers. In her experience, it can also be a very rich time of connection between children and their parents, laying the foundation for a deeper lifelong relationship. But to get there, we need to rewrite the cultural narrative about puberty. “We all have baggage and trauma from these years,” Bennett says. “But it doesn’t have to be like this. We can rewrite the script.” View the full article

The influential nonbank mortgage company is calling for a "do no harm" approach to housing and finds comfort in officials' stated guardrails to that end. View the full article

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough is ready to spill the tea in a new newsletter. Called The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe, the revamped newsletter for the popular morning show on the network that will soon be called MS NOW (the name change is official on November 15, the network says) took its inspiration from the world of print magazines. It’s designed to be part of a larger flywheel to grow and connect with the show’s audience. “We wanted something that was visually arresting, that was simple, elegant, and that people could read and get insight from,” Scarborough tells Fast Company. The newsletter will be sent in the early afternoon, Monday through Friday, and feature daily, original illustrations from illustrator Natalie Sanders. Scarborough says if the secret to Julia Child’s cooking is butter, butter, and butter, the secret to the newsletter will be “white space, white space, and white space.” This isn’t meant to be a dense newsletter. “I don’t want picture, block of text, picture, block of text, picture block of text,” Scarborough says, adding that editor Graydon Carter’s work at Vanity Fair and the newsletter Air Mail “was a bit of an inspiration for me.” “I liked how he still focused on the visual,” he says. As MSNBC’s outgoing parent company, Comcast’s NBCUniversal, splits into two, its cable portfolio—consisting of MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen, E!, SyFy, and the Golf Channel—is becoming an independent company called Versant. That means for the first time in its 30-year history, MSNBC is operating independently from NBC News. Per the breakup agreement, the liberal-leaning cable news and opinion network has to drop the “NBC” from its name, hence the rebrand to MS NOW, an acronym for “My Source for News, Opinion, and the World.” It has built out its own Washington bureau for news gathering and signed a multiyear deal with the London-based Sky News for international coverage, and the shows are adapting to a future in which an increasing number of people watch clips online instead of on traditional TV. Standing on its own also means MS NOW shows will need to build deeper relationships with their audiences and find new revenue models at a time when cable subscribers continue to cut their cords. Already, the network is building a live events business as a new revenue line, and the Morning Joe newsletter shows how it’s building new digital products to be integrated with the show. The Tea extends the Morning Joe brand into the afternoon, with each issue including one daily video from the morning’s show, and it also gives the hosts a direct line to their audience. Subscribers will get exclusive invites to virtual town halls with Scarborough, cohosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist, and others, and each issue will include a form for reader questions that the network says will be answered in future issues or shows. Scarborough says the look of the newsletter is “a bit more avant-garde than any cable news show,” and considering he’s no longer working for a traditional TV news conglomerate parent company, like GE or Comcast, he’s rethinking the tone and approach he can take with the newsletter. Scarborough says he told MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler that “we’re going to be taking chances, and I can’t have people freaking out every day.” He tested the network’s front office in a mock-up prototype newsletter that dropped an f-bomb in the daily quote section. The only questions they got back from the mock-up issue were technical, like about wrapping the text around the images, but there were no qualms about the expletive. “That is like, whoa, we’re not in Kansas anymore, baby,” Scarborough says. “I do want something that is going to be culturally relevant, politically relevant, wherever that may be, and they’re giving us freedom to do that.” He describes the mentality of Versant as that of a startup and says it’s “radically different than what we’ve seen over the past 20 years.” When considering names for the newsletter, Scarborough says he and his team considered names that played off Morning Joe, like The Press, but The Tea seemed to better capture the tone he was going for. “Everybody said, ‘Oh no, no, no, we can’t do that. It’s not serious enough.’ I go, ‘Exactly,’” Scarborough says. View the full article