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European Commission officials heading to IMF and World Bank spring meetings advised to travel with basic devicesView the full article

Here’s a question: How can you boost the performance of your Instagram posts and reels in one minute or less? The answer lies in your Instagram Stories. I do this for every post I share on Instagram, and it never fails to help my content gain traction. That’s because reposting my feed posts to my Instagram stories helps my most engaged followers (read: my mom) see my Instagram content, which might not have popped up on their feeds yet. It all has to do with the way the Instagram algorithm for stories works — which, yes, is different from the feed algorithm. Your Instagram Stories tray will always feature the stories of Instagram users you watch and engage with most often — and vice versa. Your biggest fans will likely always see your stories front and center, before they even begin to scroll their feeds. So, sharing all your new content to your Instagram Stories makes sure the folks most likely to engage with it see it. They’re the group of followers most likely to tap over to your new posts, flick through the carousel, watch the entire Instagram reel, and hopefully, double-tap or comment. And the more engagement your feed post receives, the better it will perform. Really, it’s a no-brainer. Another bonus: it’s so, so simple to do. And, if you’re really organized, you can schedule an Instagram Story in advance, too. 👀 Here’s exactly how to share an Instagram post to your Instagram Stories. How to share a feed post to your Instagram StoryHere’s how to add a post to your story in just a few taps on the Instagram app. Note that this will work for your own content, as well as someone else's (as long as an Instagram reel, carousel, or photo is public, you can share it to your Instagram stories): On the Instagram app, find the post you want to share (your own or someone else’s — as long as it’s from a public account). Tap the paper airplane icon underneath the post (the same one you’d use to send it in a DM).Select ‘Add to story.’Instagram will pull the Instagram post into a stories draft, where you can move it around, resize it, rotate it, and customize it with text, GIFs, stickers, or drawings — whatever fits your vibe. When you’re ready, tap the ‘Your Story’ button.All done! Screenshots showing how to share an Instagram post to your Instagram Stories.✨ When you share a feed post to stories on the Instagram app, it automatically includes the original account’s username and links back to the post itself. If someone taps it, they’ll head straight to the feed post. How handy is that? Note: You won't be able to share your stories on Instagram's website (sometimes referred to as Instagram desktop version). The feature is only available on the Instagram app. A pro tip for sharing your post to Instagram stories: if you have time, add some fun context, GIFs, or stickers before you hit publish. I always like to add some commentary with text, just so folks who see the post in my stories get a little something extra (no matter how small!). More on this below. 📌If you have a public account and want to prevent others from sharing your posts to their stories, you can toggle this setting off under Settings → Privacy → Story.Schedule your Instagram Stories along with your postNow, when I’m really organized, I like to schedule a little ‘promo’ story whenever I schedule Instagram content. That way, all of the work is done ahead of time, and my new Instagram post immediately finds its way to my most engaged followers. Doing this with Buffer is really easy — and available on the free plan, too. Here’s how: Step 1: Schedule your postIf you’re not already signed up to Buffer, you can do that here. It’ll take you less than two minutes to create your account, and you’ll be prompted to connect a channel (Instagram, in this case, straight away).From there, click on the ‘+ New’ button on the top right, and choose ‘Post.’ (You can also tap directly in your calendar or queue — there are several ways to start a new post in Buffer.)Choose Instagram (and any other channels you might like to crosspost to), upload your video or photo/s, and add your caption.When you’re happy with your post, hit ‘Add to queue’ (or choose a specific time). Voila, your post is scheduled!Step 2: Schedule your storyClick on the ‘+ New’ button on the top right, and choose ‘Post.’Choose Instagram, Click on ‘Story’ right at the top of the window.Upload your video or photo/s, and add your caption. (I always like to share the thumbnail here instead if I created one for Instagram Reels, for example.)Add any text you’d like to appear, or note music, links, and other tags you’d like to add. I always like to add a link to my Instagram profile (don’t worry — if you choose ‘Notify me’ posting, you can edit the font and placement before posting!).If you opted for notification posting, you’ll get a notification on your phone when the time comes to post — be sure you have the Buffer app installed on your phone to get this.From there, all you need to do is follow the prompts, and you’ll be taken right to the Instagram app, where you can edit and add your text, music, location, link, and more.When you’re ready, post your story as normal.When you’re happy with your post, hit ‘Add to queue’ (or choose a specific time). Voila, your post is scheduled! Note that since the feed post won’t be ‘live’ when you schedule your post, your followers won't be able to tap on the post in the story and be taken straight to your content. That’s why adding your Instagram profile link to the ‘link’ sticker is really handy here. Tips for making reposted content more engagingAs I touched on above, sharing a feed post to stories is a great first step — and even that simple action may well help boost your reach and engagement. Still, if you want to get the most out of this nifty little tactic, you might want to spend some time getting a little more creative. Here are a few easy ways to do just that: 1. Add a caption or contextIt's always best not to assume your followers will know what they’re looking at. A quick line explaining what or why you’re sharing a post goes a long way. Bonus points if you can add a little intrigue or spotlight the value you're sharing in the post. Here are some ideas: “ICYMI: This post covers all the tips about [insert niche here] that I wish I’d known sooner.”"This reel about [niche] took me about 20 takes to film! 😆 Worth every second.”2. Use stickers to spark interactionInstagram’s built-in stickers make it easy to start a conversation or get feedback. Plus, the easy action of reasoning to a poll or answering a question can help boost the engagement and reach of your story — in turn, hosting the engagement and reach of your feed post. Some ideas: Poll sticker ("Have you tried this?" "Which would you have chosen?"Question box (“Any questions about this?” / “Want me to cover this in more detail?”)3. Share video commentary on your stories firstIf you’re comfortable on camera, record a quick video talking about your post or adding a behind-the-scenes detail. It’s a low-lift way to really help build a connection with your followers and show up more authentically. For example: “This tip came from a real conversation I had with a client last week…” Be sure to finish with something like, "I'll add the post to my next story so you can tap over!" Why you can't share a post to your story on InstagramAre the above options not working for you? If you’re trying to share someone else's post to your stories and you don't see the option when you tap the paper airplane icon, there may be several reasons for this. Here they are (and what you might be able to do.) 1. The account is privateOnly posts from public Instagram accounts can be shared to stories. If the post was shared by a private Instagram account, you won’t see the option to add it to your story — even if you follow them. 2. The account has sharing disabledEven public accounts can turn off the ability for people to share their posts to stories. It’s a privacy setting that’s easy to toggle on or off. If you want to double-check yours: Go to your Instagram SettingsTap Privacy > StoryScroll to SharingToggle Allow Resharing to Stories on or offIf this setting is turned off on someone else’s Instagram account, you won’t be able to share their feed post to your story. 3. You might need to update the Instagram appSometimes Instagram’s newer features (or small glitches) are resolved with a quick app update. If sharing used to work and suddenly doesn’t, try: Updating the Instagram app from your device’s app storeLogging out and back in4. You're trying to share on the Instagram websiteAs I mentioned above, the ability to share posts to your stories is only available in the Instagram app, not on Instagram.com in your browser. This one is easy enough to fix, however — just save the link of the post, if necessary, and hop over to the app version to share. Sharing your posts to stories is a win-winSharing your Instagram Reels, carousels, and photos to your stories is a simple tactic with loads of benefits. It helps drive more views, likes, and comments on your latest post — and it gives you a chance to add extra context, personality, or commentary around your post. If you’re focused on growing your following on Instagram, I’d highly recommend making this step part of your posting routine! View the full article

Google is testing yet another search feature that generates new queries on Google Search. This one is named "Ask a follow-up" and they are sported with the Gemini stars next to them.View the full article

Microsoft is testing yet another variation for its favicons in the Bing Search snippets. This one uses a dark gray background, with a circle formatted favicon, next to the search result snippets.View the full article

“Who am I to tell them how to make decisions?” This anxiety-induced thought played like a broken record in my head as my first leadership training event approached in my new role as a training director. Talking in front of 40 leaders, most of whom were older than my ripe old age of 30 at the time felt like the perfect opportunity for them to see right through my lack of expertise and expose me as the fraud I was. Years ago, while working at a regional bank, I was promoted from trainer to leading a training team in another department. My prior roles as a sales trainer and human resources consultant allowed me to build a company-wide reputation as an expert on complicated sales processes and navigating employee benefits and hiring processes. This new role pushed me out of the payment division into the retail branch banking side. In other words, it was way out of my comfort zone. And at this first training event, I could no longer rely on my expertise to help me feel safe, trusted, or relevant. The Sky Parted That first event was tough. Afterward, I admitted to my manager, “Who am I to tell them what to do? I’ve been a manager for about five minutes and most of these leaders have been managers for 15 years.” The question she posed to me next transformed my relationship with expertise for a lifetime. She asked, “What if your job is not to be the expert up there, but to facilitate the expertise in the room?” It was like the sky parted and the sun emerged. Of course that was the answer. Because I had been promoted throughout my career due to my level of expertise, it was natural for me to assume that in my new role, expertise was the only way I could add value. Instead of being the expert, I had to rebrand myself as a leader who could facilitate, promote, and grow the expertise around her, whether it be in a training room, on my team, or even now leading my own coaching and speaking practice. Managers looking to break their identity as the expert and the go-to can benefit from undertaking a similar rebranding campaign. People will likely continue to reach out to you, hoping for you to provide quick answers or jump in to help them fix an issue the way you used to. But it’s critical that you teach others how to see and use you in a new way so that you can advance to more strategic levels of leadership. This is easier said than done. After all, people have grown accustomed to your old ways of working. Here are some common situations that can keep your stuck in the expert identity trap and some strategies to consider to avoid it. THE GUILT TRAP Moving into a new leadership role can sometimes unsettle colleagues accustomed to our old ways of working. They may (intentionally or not) attempt to elicit guilt, saying things like, “You used to do this for me” or “People are going to be upset about this change.” While these concerns may be valid, your role is to redirect any resistance toward productive outcomes. A helpful response might be, “That’s true, and moving forward, my focus is on working on this strategic project development for my team.” Here are some other questions you can ask to redirect their energy: I know I used to handle this issue. How can I help you get the resources you need to move forward? I could give you the answer and I would also love to help you self-source for future needs. Where have you looked so far? I understand that people may be upset that I’m not involved any longer. What ideas do you have to help support them moving forward? THE HABIT TRAP As I rose to new levels of leadership in my corporate roles, if I continued saying yes to too many requests to do the work myself, people would continue to expect this of me. As a result, I would have been too busy delivering training without enough time to plan for, coach, and develop my direct reports. It would also mean my team loses out on valuable development opportunities and meaningful work. In every conversation, you have the opportunity to set the tone for your leadership, for the team, and for yourself. This includes expressing your expectations and having clear boundary conversations to redistribute and delegate work that is no longer yours. This might sound like: Jane handles this project now. I’d be happy to coordinate an introduction and handoff. Matt will be leading this initiative from now on. I’d be happy to schedule time for us to connect and coordinate transitions. THE COMFORT TRAP When you are promoted, comfort can get the best of your leaders if they continue assigning the same tasks as they did before the promotion. Because they value your speed and competence, this can hinder your growth in your new role. To avoid this, proactive communication is key. In my experience making this shift, I proactively communicated with my leader by clearly defining which projects I’d handle personally and which I’d delegate. I also encouraged my leader to reset expectations with her peers, making it clear my team would take on more project work as I transitioned into higher-level responsibilities. Aligning with leadership across the organization ensures that both you and your team are positioned to grow into new opportunities. This might sound like: I’d like my team to take on this project moving forward, so I can uplevel. How should we best communicate this to your peer group? Instead of me, my team will be leading these events. How should we best inform your peers so they know to go to Susie instead of me? THE FREE TIME TRAP You have excused yourself from meetings you don’t need to be a part of and successfully delegated work. Now what? The mindset shift from “respond and react” to “think and plan” is challenging. One of my clients said it best: “I’m staring at a blank Word document that is supposed to be our annual strategic plan and I don’t know where to begin.” This space can feel disorienting and lead to the question, “If I’m not doing the visible work, then how am I adding value?” The key is to turn non-doing into an opportunity for growth and clarity. Focus on creating value by developing a new expertise setting strategic goals and coaching your team to achieve them. Try reflecting on some basic questions like: What did our team accomplish in the last month? Quarter? Year? What opportunities exist in our organization or market? What threats may hinder our progress or ability to succeed? Do I have the talent on my team to accomplish our future goals and objectives? What does good coaching, development, or support look like to achieve our goals? What key relationships do I need to repair, retain, or cultivate to ensure we reach our team’s goals? Breaking free from the expert trap requires you to redefine your value as a leader. The real measure of leadership is not in having all the answers but in cultivating the conditions for others to grow, contribute, and step into their own expertise. As you navigate this transformation, ask yourself: “What legacy do I want to leave? Do I want to be the person who always had the answers or the leader who empowered others to find their own?” View the full article

Stock market frenzy after The President inauguration has boosted earnings across Wall StreetView the full article

Google is experimenting more with shopping carousels, this time, showing products and then which articles are recommending those products. These can be shown in best of articles and recommended in articles. View the full article

The Buffalo, New York bank's loans edged higher in the first quarter while deposits fell 1.7% from a year ago. The bank also lowered its full-year outlook for loans and deposits. View the full article

Microsoft is testing trending icons on Bing Search's related searches section. We've seen both Google and Bing use trending icons in various search features over the years, but now Bing is testing them on the related searches feature.View the full article

The White House has miscalculated the balance of power in its tariff war with ChinaView the full article

Total of 15 people face charges after Gambling Commission probe View the full article

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Regular readers of Modern CEO know I often cite advice and anecdotes from Bill George, the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic and executive fellow at Harvard Business School. I share his words in part because of the depth of his experience and his extensive body of work, including True North, Authentic Leadership, and 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis. Still, I began to wonder if I had become overly reliant on his insights and set out to find other leadership experts. And who better to ask than George himself? What follows are edited excerpts of a wide-ranging conversation on the “next Bill George,” the difference between management and leadership, and—because I couldn’t help myself—George’s advice for leading organizations in these supremely chaotic times. Modern CEO: Who’s the next Bill George, if there is such a thing? Bill George: No. 1 would be Hubert Joly, the former CEO of Best Buy. He’s doing an amazing job at Harvard Business School, running CEO programs there, and wrote a book, The Heart of Business. And he’s got a major research study, which I’m sure will result in a [new] book, on frontline workers. He’s doing really good work and has a keen understanding of business purpose, values, and how one leads in this very chaotic period we are in. Within the business community, the best CEO in the world today is probably Satya Nadella at Microsoft. Others I would mention are Mary Barra [of GM], Doug McMillon of Walmart, and Dave Ricks at [Eli] Lilly. There are a lot of great CEOs out there right now—but I don’t know if any of them are going to write about it. Most academics prefer to write about management rather than leadership, and I think that’s a terrible mistake. Many of the management techniques we have talked about over the last 30 to 50 years are woefully outdated. There’s no such thing as a 10-year strategic plan anymore. You can do one, but it’s meaningless because the world’s changing so rapidly. MC: Can one teach leadership without having been a leader? BG: That’s a really good question. [Former Harvard Business School Dean] Nitin Nohria is a brilliant teacher of leadership. I actually do think you need practice in leading. MC: We can’t do a 10-year strategic plan anymore, but is there enduring advice on how to manage in chaos? BG: Leadership is much more difficult today than it was when I was a CEO or even 10 years ago. Why? Because the external world is changing so rapidly. One has to be very adaptive. Not all leaders are trained to deal with this world—they’re trained to run businesses, to gain market share, to innovate with new products, to come up with creative, new marketing plans to make money, to manage the finances skillfully, to create more cash to please the stock market. Those are all the traditions. But today most of the issues one faces have to do with external factors. The great leaders have to be very skilled in how they deal with external events. We had 9/11, the meltdown of the banks in 2008, COVID, which affected every single human being on the planet in one way or another, and now the chaos that’s taking place in trade and other things as a result of leadership in the United States. You have to be adaptive; you have to be flexible. But beyond that, I think there has to be a grounding, and that is your purpose or your mission and your values. And if you’re not grounded in that as a company, you’re going to be in [trouble]. A good example is Meta. Mark Zuckerberg is all over the map, and he’s not going to fare well in this environment. He’s a brilliant guy, created the whole field of social media, but he’s not going to do well in this because he is not well grounded. One has to lead with clarity about purpose and clarity about values. And that means you have to be clear in your own values. MC: There’s no shortage of people offering leadership advice on LinkedIn and TikTok. Is there information overload? BG: I think a lot of those writers are looking for an edge. A lot of the academics are thinking, “How can I do something different?” MC: How are you advising CEOs to manage through uncertainty at this moment? BG: First, be out there talking to your people all the time about your purpose and values. [Say,] “We’re not deviating from that as a company.” Second, keep your head down and run the business really well. Don’t deviate from what your business’s basic core strategy is. Three, if you’re a global company, you have to be global. I actually think we will continue to be a global world, but [tariffs are] causing CEOs to really have to reset the bar. Who is the next top leadership guru? Which next-gen CEOs and leadership authorities should Modern CEO know? Send your recommendations to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’m eager to expand my network of experts. Read more: CEO wisdom Mass Mutual’s CEO on the No. 1 leadership trait What SAIC CEO Toni Townes-Whitley learned from Satya Nadella Steve Ballmer has cracked the code on CEO second acts View the full article

This is a programming note that I am completely offline for the Passover holiday today. In fact, this post was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today - so you know I am offline. Passover is/was Sunday and Monday...View the full article

Japanese group cites ‘challenging economic environment’ as The President’s tariffs throw supply chains into uncertaintyView the full article

Find out how data clean rooms can empower marketers to thrive in a digital landscape marked by user privacy awareness. The post Data Clean Room: What It Is & Why It Matters In A Cookieless World appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

For some, Microsoft Teams is a necessary evil: the modern day equivalent of an ever-ringing desk phone. But the fact is that in many organizations, it’s become an essential tool for communication and collaboration. And as long as you’re using it, you might as well transform your Microsoft Teams experience from simply functional to truly powerful. Here are some quick tricks you should be using to get the most out of Microsoft Teams. Slash your way around the interface Slash commands save you time by providing quick access to frequently used features. Simply type a forward slash (/) in the search box at the top of the screen and a list of available commands will appear. Here are a few helpful ones to keep at the ready: /chat: Initiate a chat with someone. /away: Set your status to “Away.” /dnd: Activate “Do Not Disturb” mode to silence notifications. /call [Name]: Instantly initiate a call with a specific contact. Use keyboard shortcuts to cut down on clicks The time you spend mastering keyboard shortcuts in Teams will pay off in spades down the road. Better yet, many shortcuts are universal across applications. Here are a few key Teams shortcuts that work in Windows: Ctrl + Shift + I: Mark the message you’re sending as important. Ctrl + O: Open your current conversation in a new window. Ctrl + E: Go to Search. Ctrl + N: Start a new chat. Mac users: Substitute “Ctrl” with the Command key. To find a full list of shortcuts, click the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner next to your profile photo and select the “Keyboard shortcuts” item. Save messages for future reference Teams had a handy “Save” feature that allowed you to bookmark messages. Then it became the “Bookmark” feature, which allowed you to—you guessed it—bookmark messages. Now it’s gone for some reason. But! There’s a workaround of sorts. If you forward messages to yourself, it creates a personal repository of notes that you can reference whenever you like. If you find a message you’d like to save, hover over it and when the three-dot menu pops up, use the “forward” feature to send it to yourself. To access your saved messages, find yourself in the “Recent” section of the Chat pane. Better yet, hover over your chat with yourself, click the three-dot menu, and select “Pin” to stick yourself to the tippy top of the Chat section for good. Schedule messages to send later Need to send a message outside of work hours, but don’t want to disturb your colleagues? Sandbagging and want to make it look like you’re burning the midnight oil? Teams allows you to schedule messages to be sent at a later date and time. Note that this feature works only for new posts you create in Teams channels—not in chats and not in replies to others’ posts. To schedule a message, craft your post, click the plus icon in the lower-left corner, and choose the “Schedule message” option. Your post will stay in place, but will now have a delivery message at the top. Click it and you’ll be able to reschedule it or cancel it. View the full article

When Paule Tenaillon was head shoe designer at Chloé, she was responsible for designing hundreds of shoes a year. With each design, she had to consider many factors: The Chloé aesthetic, trends, heel height, materials. But there was one issue she didn’t think much about. “Comfort was never a consideration,” Tenaillon says. “Nobody ever asked me to make a comfortable pair of shoes. But it bothered me, because it’s important to me to wear shoes that are comfortable.” Now, Tenaillon is on a mission to make the most uncomfortable shoe in the world comfortable. Her shoe label, Nomasei, is releasing a stiletto model for the first time, full of small design tweaks that she believes will make the spiky heel more wearable. Bringing comfort to a notoriously uncomfortable heel This week, the brand launches two stiletto designs, the “BeforeSunrise” sandal ($575) and the “Gattaca” pump ($595), which are both inspired by the sleek, minimalist aesthetic of the 1990s, when both of these movies came out. To make the shoe as comfortable as possible, the heel is relatively short at 3 inches high, making it just a smidge taller than a kitten heel. It is placed close to the ball of the foot, creating more stability and balance. The heel also tapers out and there is memory foam padding in the toe box, both of which relieve pressure. Since the brand launched in 2019, customers had asked for stilettos. This presented Tenaillon with a new challenge, since the thin, pointed heel of a stiletto puts a lot of pressure on the ball of the foot. For months, Tenaillon created prototypes, which she had many women wear-test for comfort. Ultimately, the breakthrough came when she studied the design of tango shoes, which allow the dancer to pivot gracefully, while remaining stable. Inspired by dance shoes, Tenaillon has designed stilettos with a tapered heel that relieve pressure and support balance, along with two two buckled straps that adapt to the wearer’s foot, keeping it firmly in place. “I lived in Buenos Aires for five years, where I danced a lot,” she says. “Tango shoes are often stilettos, but women wear them to dance all night.” Leaving A Luxury House Tenaillon and her cofounder Marine Braquet had spent their lives wanting to work in fashion. And for the most part, all of their dreams came true. They each made their way through some of the most storied Parisian brands. Tenaillon had designed for everyone from Givenchy to Chanel; Braquet, the former footwear designer for Chloé, previously worked for Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior. But inside the luxury houses, things weren’t so rosy. Tenaillon says that when she started her career in the early 2000s, she was designing two collections of shoes a year. But in the decades that followed, the industry sped up, churning out more and more styles every few months, to keep customers coming back for more. This was also when fast fashion emerged, ripping off runway looks and selling them for a fraction of the price. In response, the luxury brands had to keep one step ahead. Tenaillon was so stressed, she ended up in the hospital from exhaustion. “We were just on a hamster wheel,” Tenaillon says. “Creativity just became poorer and poorer.” Braquet, who worked on the business side, was also burning out. “I just stopped loving my job,” she says. “But before we gave up on fashion, we decided we would give it one last shot.” So together, they sketched out a plan to create a shoe label that focused on the things they loved most about luxury shoes: craftsmanship, beauty, careful attention to detail. And they would throw in something else that the high end brands didn’t have: comfort. Designing Wearable Luxury Shoes The founders launched Nomasei in 2019, creating a selection of heels and boots that start at around $500. They’ve partnered with an Italian factory that also makes shoes for Hermes, leveraging Baquet’s extensive experience manufacturing shoes for luxury brands. Nomasei sells products online in both Europe and the United States. But months after opening the business, the pandemic struck and the world went into lockdown. Nobody was interested in pricey designer shoes, so the nascent brand went into hibernation. Eventually, around 2022, people wanted to get out of the house again, clad in beautiful outfits. And after spending years wearing sweatpants and slippers, comfort was an even greater priority. To Tenaillon, this just reinforced her commitment to comfortable design. She has spent the past five years designing a selection of shoes that stand out aesthetically, but that women can wear all day. And unlikes her previous jobs, Tenaillon now has the freedom to design slowly with a lot of attention to detail. She takes time to review what is on the market, creating pieces that are unique. On the website, each product has elaborate notes from Tenaillon about her approach to the design. When it comes to comfort, there are many tricks that can make a heel more comfortable. Part of Tenaillon’s strategy has been to create block heels that distribute weight more evenly. Most Nomasei shoes, including the popular Adora and Baghera sandals, have these wide heels. In some, like the Taxi and Frenchkiss, there is also a platform, which makes the heel feel less high. Shoes like Venus are very popular with brides because they go nicely with wedding dresses, while being very walkable. Besides the heel, Tenaillon believes that customizing the fit of the shoe to the wearer’s heel is important. So most shoes come with many straps whose buckles can be adjusted to fit the ankle and bridge of the foot. And there is memory foam in the heels to provide some cushioning. All of these features have made Nomasei a cult brand, with fans that include Bella Hadid, Kristen Stewart and Nicole Kidman. Six years after leaving Chloé, Braquet and Tenaillon aren’t looking back. And indeed, they’re now competing with some of the brands they once worked for. But they believe that designing comfortable, well-made shoes sets them apart. “We’re two very different women, with different tastes, and at different phases in life,” says Braquet. “But we both love shoes and expect them to be comfortable. The same is true for our customers.” View the full article

Artificial intelligence has transformed how companies process data and make decisions—but Silicon Valley’s biggest players are already chasing what could be the next technological breakthrough: quantum computing. Unlike AI, which accelerates existing processes, quantum computing promises to unlock entirely new capabilities, from simulating molecules for drug discovery to solving problems far beyond the reach of today’s fastest supercomputers. The industry is projected to reach $2 trillion by 2035, according to McKinsey. At Nvidia’s GTC 2025, quantum computing took center stage with a dedicated “Quantum Day,” where experts explored its potential to tackle problems such as weather modeling and drug discovery—challenges that even AI models and hardware-accelerated computers struggle to handle. Major tech players including Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Nvidia are developing proprietary quantum technology, exploring how it can integrate with AI models to create future-ready infrastructure. But there’s a key hurdle: scaling qubits. Qubits—the fundamental units of quantum data—must scale into the thousands for quantum computing to surpass the capabilities of AI. Unlike classical bits, which exist as 0 or 1, qubits can exist in multiple states simultaneously, enabling exponentially faster processing of complex calculations. To address this, California-based Atom Computing is working alongside Microsoft. In September 2024, Microsoft announced a collaboration with Atom to build the world’s most powerful quantum machine, offering a scalable commercial system available for order. By November 2024, the companies had entangled 24 logical qubits and successfully ran a quantum algorithm using 28 logical qubits. As of 2025, Atom Computing’s neutral atom-based system features 1,180 qubits. But is the technology ready for complex real-world use cases? “There is no single, concrete number of logical qubits and associated performance metrics that will suddenly unlock every possible application,” Remy Notermans, Director of Strategic Planning at Atom Computing, told Fast Company. “Around 100 logical qubits, certain scientific applications can be explored that will go well beyond classical computing capabilities, and economically valuable applications are expected to become accessible at around 1,000 logical qubits.” How Atom Computing Stacks Up Against Competitors Atom Computing’s systems use trapped neutral atoms as qubits—a proprietary approach that allows for precise control. Unlike ionized atoms, neutral atoms retain all their electrons. The company also uses laser cooling and optical tweezers to trap and manipulate individual atoms. Other quantum computing companies—including D-Wave, Phasecraft, Zapata Computing, and Algorithmiq—are also developing infrastructure and algorithms to optimize today’s quantum hardware. Notermans said Atom’s flagship system currently enables 50 working logical qubits. “With an aggressive roadmap, we anticipate having 100 working logical-qubit and 1,000 logical-qubit systems commercially available in the next few years,” he said. “The high scalability of our neutral atom technology means we have better logical qubits that is significantly faster than other approaches.” When asked what made Microsoft confident in Atom’s long-term potential over other approaches like superconducting or trapped ion qubits, Atom Computing Chief Product Officer Justin Ging cited scalability and flexibility as key advantages. “Neutral atom technology enables multiple critical platform capabilities such as high-fidelity gate operations, all-to-all qubit connectivity, long coherence times, and mid-circuit measurement with qubit reset and reuse,” Ging told Fast Company. “A lot of valuable R&D work can be done with Atom’s current systems, which have all the building blocks to construct many logical qubits, allowing researchers to explore error-correction and efficient logical-qubit algorithms for unlocking the first scientifically valuable applications.” Beyond the challenge of scaling qubits, Ging noted that quantum computing is inherently capital-intensive. “Practical quantum tech should not be held to similar timeline expectations as the software industry,” he said. “Quantum chemistry and materials science applications show a lot of promise for being first to take advantage of quantum computing systems that have around 100 logical qubits.” Why Investors Are Betting on Quantum-AI Integration While quantum computing is still evolving toward commercial practicality, big tech is betting on its potential to enhance AI model computation. AI models require vast amounts of energy, but integrating quantum computing could improve efficiency and boost reasoning capabilities. “Quantum computing will augment AI supercomputers to tackle some of the world’s most important problems, from drug discovery to materials development,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote in a recent blog post announcing the company’s Accelerated Quantum Research Center. One notable breakthrough in the quantum-AI sector is Google’s Willow quantum chip, which solved a random circuit sampling (RCS) benchmark problem in just five minutes—a task that, according to Google, would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10 septillion years to complete. “Current AI models are trained on massive datasets that are primarily based on the human experience,” Notermans explained. “If an AI model alone is used to answer a question in problems related to drug discovery, there is going to be a significant uncertainty in its ability to answer the question reliably. Quantum computers can be used alongside to generate quantum-physics-based data that can supplement an AI model’s training dataset, making the overall performance of the AI model more accurate.” Whether a powerful new paradigm emerges by combining classical and quantum computing to transform AI capabilities remains to be seen. View the full article

In the handful of years since generative AI became both a zeitgeist technology and common dinner table conversation topic, people across the design industries—ranging from independent graphic designers to tech executives—have landed on a curious mantra to justify its use: it’s just a tool. In this very publication, in 2023, designers Caspar Lam and Yujune Park, wrote that “if we see a designer’s role as communicating and connecting ideas to humans in meaningful ways, AI image-generation becomes another tool and avenue for creative expression.” This perspective is not unique to them. Josh Campo, the CEO of Razorfish, extolling the virtues of AI for creatives in Forbes, wrote that, “beyond enhancing efficiency, AI is opening doors to possibilities that creative teams didn’t have previously,” but he cautions readers to remember that “AI is just a tool.” As part of a CNBC feature on graphic design and AI, Nicola Hamilton, president of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers (Canada), says that one of the most repeated statements about AI by designers is, indeed, that it is “just a tool.” She precedes this observation by noting that “dealing with new technology is nothing new” for designers. Some have even gone so far as to suggest AI is like a pencil. In a LinkedIn post, Peter Skillman, the global head of design for Philips, tells us that “Al is just a tool,” and then offers us to engage with his post by asking: “What’s your take on Al in the context of humanity-centered design?” My take, if you’re not going to read the rest of this article, is that AI is very bad for the world, Peter. Very, very bad. I think it’s important to note that not everyone who is excited about AI (nor the folks who are concerned about it) is an adherent of the “just-a-tool” logic. There’s also the “it’s not just a tool! It’s even better!” crowd. I’ll refrain from engaging with this form of AI boosterism because I think that the “just-a-tool” logic is more difficult to dismiss. The “it’s not just a tool” crowd also includes folks circulating other AI promotional discourses such as, “AI isn’t just a tool, it’s a creative partner” and “it’s not a tool, it’s a paradigm shift.” These and other superlatives, however, like the “just-a-tool” logic, mask the material and ideological realities of AI, as well as its class politics—the way its use furthers the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class. The great AI ‘panic’ One of the pillars of the “just-a-tool” logic is to suggest that those who are skeptical or worried about any new technology are simply “panicking” technophobes or just don’t understand it. Using this approach to accuse the more deliberative and discerning members of society of being somehow opposed to progress is much more effective than the “paradigm shift” or “it’s more than a tool” approach to talking about AI. It might seem reasonable to be apprehensive of a “paradigm shift,” but it feels much less reasonable to have reservations about something that is “just a tool.” Indeed, if, as Hamilton said, designers have been dealing with new technologies for as long as the field itself has existed, then any apparent panic by a designer to AI must be an overreaction. New technology, says Hamilton, is an “evolution,” and, by this logic, to resist an evolution that is itself merely a tool is to be construed as opposing progress without reason. And even if one is panicking, the adherents of the “just-a-tool” logic might remind us that “technological panic is not new.” To construe resistance to new technologies—regardless of their real impacts—as “panic” is designed to frame any kind of skepticism as unreasonable. But panic is precisely what we should be doing. We should panic about generative AI, in part because its harms far outweigh any benefit to any designer or any member of the working class. When one looks at the landscape of the actual uses of AI—from political disinformation campaigns to AI CSAM to non-consensual sexually explicit material, to voice–cloning used to scam people out of their life savings—panicking seems pretty reasonable. Even if the aforementioned panic appears reasonable, we supposedly have nothing to worry about when it comes to concerns about job loss. Hamilton tells us that “[AI] will likely make some designers redundant. . . . In the same way that Canva made some designers redundant, or the introduction of computers pushed some folks out of the industry. It’s all the more reason . . . to look for ways we can make it work for us.” Many in the capitalist class—such as the World Economic Forum and Price Waterhouse Cooper—have gone as far as telling us that AI will create more jobs than it eliminates. Though some folks who are invested in the maintenance of the status quo have attempted to substantiate this claim, there are three issues that I think complicate it. First, some job loss attributed to automation, as Aaron Benanav so elegantly demonstrates, is the result of deindustrialization and a shift to a much less employment-stable service sector, with underemployment and underreported unemployment becoming significantly more commonplace. Second, innovation under capitalism is characterized by a “race to the bottom,” or attempts to cut costs at every turn. Today, technologies such as genAI often serve to lower operational costs in a quest to juice quarterly earnings and ensure that the stock buybacks offered to shareholders are as lucrative as possible. And lastly, technology does not operate within a vacuum. It does not operate along some predetermined line of “development,” and it doesn’t just *poof* appear without people determining its design criteria, meaning how it functions and who benefits from those functions. The reality is that any efficiencies gained from the use of AI are not beneficial to anyone that doesn’t already have power and privilege in society. For the working class, it doesn’t really matter if more jobs get created, or if we are more productive, because most of the benefits will accrue to a shrinking number of capitalist oligarchs. Meanwhile, everyone else still suffers under conditions of decreasing real wages and increasing precarity. The class politics of this situation are crucial for clearly assessing advances in AI. The myth of human centricity The “just-a-tool” logic resonates with the idea that designers can be liberated to concern themselves with the choreography of systems and not pixels. In its 2025 Future of Jobs Report, The World Economic Forum pegged Graphic Design as the 11th fastest “declining job” per the predictions of employers (emphasis mine). UX jobs, along with Service Design, Customer Experience, and other more systems-oriented roles, will continue to grow. So while the nature of design jobs might be changed by AI, maybe the number of jobs won’t really change. And perhaps there’s a mutually-beneficial trade off, in which people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford high quality bespoke design work can use generative AI, enabling professional designers to focus their creativity on “wicked problems.” Such a perspective, however, is a privileged one and does not take class, capital, or the wellbeing of the planet into account. A systems-level approach to design—one that looks at the journeys of users through product-service ecosystems—should itself take into account the deleterious effects of AI on individuals, societies, and the environment, instead of accepting the purportedly benevolent purposes to which we are told it is put. Let’s take a moment and look at the Adobe Express commercial about the founder of Yendy, a skincare brand that seeks to challenge the exploitative nature of supply chains and support small-scale farmers in Northern Ghana. Sounds like a pretty cool company, as far as one can glean based on the information on its website and social media. Adobe’s commercial, however, is effectively instrumentalizing folks from the African continent to promote a technological “tool” that is itself inherently racist and colonialist. Designers who see genAI as “just a tool” might be relatively unbothered by Adobe’s genAI, and might see this commercial as benign, if not heart-warming. But if such designers are truly “human-centered” (or “humanity-centered”) as they might claim, how could they watch that commercial and not think about the people in the Global South being exploited by the very technological developments that enabled the founder of Yendy to use Adobe Express in the first place? What about the colonialist history of AI itself and the ongoing neocolonialism of tech corporations? What about the global flows of wealth to companies in the Global North from the Global South? Or the environmental implications? Furthermore, suggesting that AI is a tool that enables non-designers to make their ideas into reality while enabling designers to think at a higher level, contributes to the obfuscation of AI (and design’s) real issue: Technological innovation under capitalism is at odds with a just and sustainable way of living for everyone. Why a tool isn’t just a ‘tool’ The last thing that I want to say about the “just-a-tool” logic is that the word “tool” itself is not inherently bad. But to suggest that something is just a tool is very problematic, indeed. In 1973, Ivan Illich put forward what is to me the most compelling approach to thinking about tools, which he understands in a broad and far-ranging sense, with tools including everything from hammers to highway infrastructures. Tools enable us to do things, but they also constrain our activities. They shape what is possible and the effects we can have on the world around us. On this account, tools are understood with a nuance that the “just-a-tool” logic itself negates. Tools, argues Illich, should be contextualized, understood through their relationships to the people that use them and who are affected by that use. Most importantly, writes Illich, the design criteria for all tools should be democratically determined. This is the opposite of the situation in which we have found ourselves today. In our modern world, AI “tools” have been foisted upon us by tech oligarchs hellbent on squeezing every last cent of surplus value out of the working class, and because our understanding of the nature of tools is so deeply impoverished, we feel as though we must accept them on their terms. But history shows that this also doesn’t need to be the case. Any further developments in AI must be met by resistance like that of the Luddites, who sought to destroy technologies that undermined their craft, exploited and endangered their comrades, and augmented surplus value for the capitalist class without enabling those who lost their jobs to share in the supposed wealth creation. And the working class must demand that the design criteria for any new technological innovation be democratically determined. Advances in computing could genuinely benefit the international working class if those very people were able to determine the design criteria for those innovations, taking into account the systemic interrelationships of labor and environment. What those technologies, those tools—including those used by designers—might look like is nearly impossible to imagine today. But if, as Father John Culkin wrote in 1967, “we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us,” we better start reshaping our tools, and we must do so by any means necessary. View the full article

Two recent executive orders could speed up the administration's push to rollback regulations, but they also change the notice-and-comment rulemaking process. View the full article

Sale is part of plan by the company to divest non-core assets View the full article

It is 6 p.m. You have logged off from work and are unwinding with a glass of wine. You turn on the TV, but instead of Netflix, you click on a new app called 6pm in Paris, and spend the next 30 minutes learning French. Not on your desk. Not on your phone. But on your couch, watching a short movie. This is the vision behind a new language learning platform that recently launched. 6pm in Paris merges Netflix’s addictive streaming format with the short lessons style of Masterclass. The concept is simple yet effective: Each week, you pick a short film from a curated collection of French licensed movies. Then, you dive into the story and language through an informal video lesson called “After Short.” You can watch the films with dual subtitles and adjust the playback speed to your preference. Diligent learners can also review a phrasebook of key words and idioms, then take a short quiz to reinforce their knowledge. While apps like Duolingo are pouring resources into AI and gamified learning, 6pm in Paris is choosing culture—and therefore the human experience—as its primary lens. “A big part of our vision is to be a window on the language, and the people, and the culture,” says CEO and cofounder Lea Perret, who dreamed up the company with cofounder and COO Julien Frei. If people take to the format, you can soon expect 6pm in Tokyo, and 6pm in Rio—and basically 6pm anywhere. Julien FreiLéa Perret Learning as a lifelong journey Perret imagined 6pm in Paris as a way to help students learn French beyond the classroom. “Most people will sell you methods to learn French in three weeks, but it doesn’t work like that; it’s a lifelong endeavor,” she says. And if you want to spend a lifetime learning a language, it has to be entertaining, or else you will throw in the towel. Originally from Toulouse, France, Perret moved to New York 17 years ago and has been teaching French in the U.S. since then. In 2013, she cofounded Coucou French Classes, which provides in-person classes in New York and Los Angeles. Since the pandemic, her team also launched online classes to over 50,000 students. Today, the company remains profitable, but 6pm in Paris is here to fill a gap that Coucou couldn’t: to help people immerse themselves in French culture. While Perret was at Coucou (she left to run 6pm in Paris) students would often ask her for additional resources to help them improve their French. In response, she would send them a “17-pager” recommending, among other things, French books and TV shows to watch. (Yes, Call My Agent featured on the list.) These shows, however, can be too long, which can wear out the learner, and the subtitles can be either inaccurate or incomplete, completely skipping quintessentially French filler words like “euh” or “eh ben.” This approach, she says, can take learners away from real language experiences and make it harder for them to connect the spoken word with its written form. The 6pm philosophy With 6pm in Paris, the team is hoping to address many of these challenges with shorter, more digestible films and customizable subtitles that were crafted in-house to perfectly match the dialogue. For now, the team has licensed more than 60 short films by local filmmakers. These range from sci-fi to rom-coms to documentaries. The shortest lasts a mere two minutes; the longest clocks in at 25. (My personal favorites so far are Cloud Paradise, and Amoureuxse, both of which boast excellent storytelling.) By next year—if the team can raise the $1.2 million they need to grow—they want to start producing films in-house, which would allow them to tailor the content to various levels by, for example, streaming down the dialogue so actors don’t talk over each other. They also expect to launch a whopping 170 masterclasses covering grammar for all levels. The series will feature short, digestible episodes delving into French conjugation. “We believe in grammar, we just think there is entertaining efficient way to bring it to people so it doesn’t feel like a chore,” says Perret. The current selection is more suitable to someone with an intermediate understanding of French, but the team maintains this shouldn’t preclude anyone from subscribing to 6pm in Paris. In fact, they believe that segmenting learners by levels—and tailoring content accordingly—is the wrong approach. The 6pm in Paris philosophy is that one of the most essential ingredients to learning a new language is exposure. “Sure, you can start by learning the phrase, ‘je m’appelle Lea et j’habite à New York,’ but what’s point of knowing how to say that if you don’t understand what the person replies to you?” she says. According to Perret, Americans are obsessed with talking, but even more important are listening and comprehension. By watching a short film in French, even with English or French subtitles, you can slowly soak up the language, notice how words are spelled, and train your ear before ever uttering a single word. As someone who moved to a French-speaking country at age 7 and was encouraged to sit at the back of the class and “just listen,” I can attest to the efficiency of this method. (I was fluent in less than a year.) TV as a learning tool Research backs this up, and many studies show that watching TV shows, especially with O.G. subtitles, can be a surprisingly effective way to build your real-world language skills. According to a 2022 study from researchers in Turkey, 44 participants from Kosovo who watched Turkish TV series with subtitles for one to two years saw measurable improvements in all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing.) Another study from Spain shows that university students who watched Friends over the course of seven weeks, and with English subtitles, learned more informal English (like slang and idioms) than those who used Spanish subtitles. Television might be the greatest source of first language input, and learning a foreign language by watching TV is more common than it might seem. According to a recent survey performed by the research platform AtomRadar for Fast Company, 43% of participants have tried to learn a foreign language by watching TV shows or movies. Of these people, 60% found it effective. AtomRadar, which surveyed a representative panel of 300 American adults over 18, also found that younger people are substantially more likely to have tried learning a foreign language through movies and TV, with 55% of 18 to 24 year olds having tried it, compared to only 30% of 55 to 64 year olds. (Once again, I can relate as I distinctly remember looking up the definition of “rooting for someone” after a love triangle materialized on the teen-cult TV show One Tree Hill.) 6pm in Paris isn’t the first company to recognize the potential for cinema to double as a learning tool. FluentU uses beginner-friendly movie trailers and music videos to teach you vocabulary and grammar in context. Lingopie offers a streaming library of foreign-language TV shows with interactive subtitles. And France Channel, which lets you stream French films and series otherwise unavailable in the U.S., markets its platform as a way to learn the language through immersion. Earlier this year, Duolingo, too, recognized the power of cinema with a Korean campaign in collaboration with Netflix. Korean course sign-ups had jumped 40% after the first season of Squid Game aired in 2021, so when season 2 rolled around in 2025, Duolingo launched Squid Game-themed vocabulary lessons, a TikTok filter that could test your pronunciation skills, a K-pop music video, and a music video featuring Duo the owl suited up as a Pink Guard. Is 6pm in Paris worried about all the competition? Not in the slightest. She notes that her team wasn’t inspired to start a new company to fill a gap in the market, but to meet their students’ needs. The outputs may be similar but the motivations are different. The company is still too young to gauge success, but the first few months show promise: After a beta run with Coucou students, the team opened up the platform to the public and leaned heavily on a marketing campaign to attract subscribers. So far, 1,300 people have joined (and 70% of users who started with a free 7-day trial have converted to a paid subscription). Three quarters of subscribers log in every week to watch the weekly film, followed by the “after short.” For now, you can only watch on your laptop or by casting to a Smart TV. But once the team secures more backing, they plan to upgrade to a more robust (and pricier) streaming platform that supports native TV apps. Some years down the line, you could soon turn on your TV, click on your 6pm streaming app, and choose which language you want to learn based on the culture you want to discover. “I want it to be as easy as ‘you turn on TV, go to 6pm in Tokyo and discover many things about the Japanese culture,” says Perret. “I do believe there would be lot more understanding, and the world would be a better place if we knew more about each other.” View the full article

Near Atlanta, the diverse suburb of Morrow, Georgia, is an EV charging desert. If you live in an apartment in one neighborhood and own an electric car, you might have to drive 20 minutes to get to a public charger. That’s why a local green bank wanted to support a new charging station in the area. It should have been a simple project, beginning with a small group of six chargers. Then came The President. “We’re talking about a project that could have been up and running by now,” says Reginald Parker, president of Freedmen Capital Foundation, a green bank in Georgia. “It had a month’s delay. Over the last month, prices have gone up. The market has changed tremendously. And that type of uncertainty for the project adds costs that small businesses, in general, are not ready for.” Exactly the type of project that the green bank wanted to support Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan bill that Congress passed in 2022, there was funding for the work. Last year, the first national green bank opened with $5 billion in funding from the IRA. The organization started creating a network of state and local green banks. (Despite the name, these aren’t typical banks with deposits. Instead, they’re institutions that make green loans for projects like community solar installations or green building retrofits.) Freedman Capital Foundation, named after a late-1800s bank established for formerly enslaved people, was chosen to be part of the network. The new charging station was exactly the type of project that the green bank wanted to support. “The communities that are EV charging deserts are the first and hardest hit by climate impacts,” Parker says. Helping residents switch to EVs can help cut emissions. It can also reduce air pollution and help people save money on fuel. “It also builds energy independence,” he says. “Oil and gas are derived from some foreign sources. Electricity is all domestic.” One part of the charger project had already been funded. A grant from the Department of Transportation helped cover the cost for the local utility to set up the electric infrastructure needed for the chargers. The small organization that will operate the charging station, called TABT, is paying to install the chargers. The last piece of the funding—the money to cover a loan for the equipment—came from the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a program created by the IRA. The President pauses IRA funds On his first day in office, The President issued an executive order telling agencies to pause all funds under the IRA. At first, grantees under the EPA program could still access the money sitting in their accounts. But in February, The President-appointed EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said that the EPA would revoke contracts for the fund. The agency made baseless accusations of fraud. It froze $20 billion in grants. Citibank, directed by the government, froze the money in the account of Coalition for Green Capital, the nonprofit running the national green bank. Freedmen Capital Foundation was able to get its funds from the nonprofit just before that account was frozen. But the EPA warned it not to move forward on projects. “Everything had to stop,” says Parker. At the same time, some of the EPA’s grantees, including the Coalition for Green Capital, sued to force Citibank to unfreeze the money. A federal judge blocked the freeze. Appeals are still underway, and the money at Citibank still isn’t accessible. But the first court order meant that Freedmen was able to begin using the money it already had. (Another piece of its funds, for technical assistance, got stuck in the freeze.) In March, the utility finished upgrading the electric infrastructure needed for the chargers. If the project had happened normally, TABT could have ordered the chargers in advance. Installation could have started right away; the process could have taken as little as a week, and the chargers could be in use now. But because of the delays from the EPA’s actions, nothing was ready to go. ‘Instead of making investments, we are wasting time and resources’ Freedmen Capital Foundation has been scrambling to finalize the loan for the project. The President’s chaotic rollout of tariffs means that the cost of supplies for making EV chargers—from steel to electronics—will jump. “If we weren’t able to move within the next week or two, the owner would be subjected to higher prices,” Parker says. Despite the delays, the project is unusual in that it’s able to move forward. Most projects that were set to receive funding through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund are now stuck in limbo, waiting for the next stage in a lawsuit. A judge may issue a preliminary injunction this week that allows organizations to access their money, though the government will immediately appeal and could try to claw the money back. “From solar energy in Arkansas to hydropower in Alaska, local projects that lower energy costs and support domestic manufacturing aren’t currently able to move forward, forcing communities to wait for the jobs and economic opportunity they’re counting on,” says Brooke Durham, a spokesperson for Climate United, a nonprofit that received a $6.97 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grant that was frozen. “Instead of making investments and delivering on those promises, we are wasting time and resources fighting an unnecessary battle in court. This program isn’t about politics; it’s about saving money for hard-working Americans who are struggling to pay for groceries and keep the lights on.” View the full article

Researchers test AI agents from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google to learn what makes them interact with advertising The post Marketing To Machines Is The Future – Research Shows Why appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

User-generated content (UGC) is non-sponsored content created by users instead of brands. View the full article