Fast Company

Fifty-seven years ago, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. Most Americans won’t ever step foot on the moon, or even see it up close. But with this week’s “buck moon,” you can get a pretty good view.  Here’s everything you need to know about July’s full moon, which hits its peak on Wednesday, July 29, at 10:36 a.m. ET. Why is it called a “buck moon”? July’s full moon is annually labeled the “buck moon”

This summer, millions of people have felt the dire consequences of climate change while facing extreme, record-breaking heat. And the Big Oil companies fueling those heat waves are seeing their profits soar, a new analysis finds.  In the first quarter of 2026, the world’s six biggest oil companies—BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies—saw a combined net income of $23 billion. For Q2, that figure is expected to nearly double to $45 billion, according to an Oxfam report based o

You might want to refill your coffee mug before you dive in here. While coffee consumption has long been linked to improved liver health, a team of researchers has uncovered new biological evidence that explains why it can lower your risk of cirrhosis, liver cancer, and liver-related death. According to the study, published earlier this month in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, a team of researchers at Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University in Los Angeles concluded that

The release of the Chinese AI model Kimi K3 was a flashpoint in the AI world, sharpening the debate over whether the most capable models should be closely held by individual companies, usually U.S. tech firms, or freely and transparently distributed in the tradition of open-source software. Not only did the high-performing Kimi K3 challenge the cherished Silicon Valley notion that Western AI labs still lead their Chinese counterparts in large language models (though likely by only a hair), bu

It’s built into your phone. Into your email. Into your search engine. Artificial intelligence is everywhere—to the point that avoiding it seems nigh on impossible. But there are ways to disable or ignore AI features, and librarians around the world are teaching their tech-averse patrons the ropes. “Avoiding AI” workshops are springing up at libraries, where patrons who may not be familiar with the technology can hear the pros and cons of its use, as well as get step-by-step instructions on ho

Apple will now let you lease an iPhone for as little as $17.99 a month. Yes, you read that right. On Tuesday, the tech giant launched a new program called Apple Upgrade, a partnership with “buy now, pay later” service Klarna that enables U.S. customers to pay for certain Apple products via monthly installments. Along with the iPhone, Apple announced that the Apple Watch, Mac, and iPad are also eligible for lease online through the Apple Store, in the Apple Store app, and at Apple Store lo

A YouTube Premium membership is about to come with a ton of new programming. According to an NBCUniversal announcement, starting early next year, YouTube Premium will be available in a bundle with Peacock Premium.  Peacock Premium Plus has already been available via YouTube Primetime Channels since late June. Under the new deal, Peacock content will be available to millions of YouTube Premium subscribers as well. The deal will also extend NBCUniversal’s multiyear distribution agreement with Y

Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay $5.5 billion to tie up remaining lawsuits that claim its talc products caused ovarian cancer. The drugmaker, which has been fighting talc-related lawsuits for more than a decade, said that the settlement is conditioned on at least 95% of remaining claimants participating. A U.S. bankruptcy court judge denied a $9 billion settlement proposed by company subsidiary Red River Talc last year that would have been one of the biggest mass tort settlements in his

A corporate fad of “tokenmaxxing” on artificial intelligence technology is hitting its limits as workplaces throwing AI at everything are seeing the costs rise without a similar spike in productivity.What started as tech industry-fueled springtime hype over squeezing as much AI-generated work as possible out of products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude has shifted to a summertime backlash.“It’s very easy to create something you don’t need with AI,” said Vincent Gusdorf, head of AI an

The Trump administration is preparing to ramp up funding by hundreds of millions of dollars for programs designed to counter China’s growing influence around the world, after it had put a halt to many of those initiatives last year during a flurry of budget and personnel cuts.The administration notified Congress late last week that it intends to spend $175.8 million to replace outdated and aging undersea telecommunications cables in the Caribbean and Central America to prevent China from moving

Visa Inc. is preparing to lay off about 2,600 workers, or about 7% of its workforce, the payments processing giant confirmed with Fast Company. The cuts come as the company faces an ever-changing payments landscape, increasingly disrupted by smaller, nimbler fintech startups, and as it focuses more on AI-driven efficiency gains. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Tuesday, media outlets including Bloomberg reported that Visa is getting ready to lay off about 2,600 workers.

When a devastating heat wave, hurricane, flood or wildfire strikes, people often want to know: How much did human-caused climate change influence this event, if at all? For many years, scientists could answer that question only in general terms. They knew that human-caused climate change was increasing the frequency or intensity of some kinds of extreme weather, but determining its influence on a particular event was much more difficult. Today, researchers can provide a scientifically grou

On the heels of a $1.5 billion copyright infringement ruling against Anthropic, OpenAI has adjusted ChatGPT’s programming to refuse requests to mimic the style of well-known authors. While the chatbot used to happily write in the voice of professional writers, attempts to convince it to do so now are met with a polite refusal and an suggested alternative. Fast Company, for instance, asked ChatGPT to write a story about a family in the Depression in the voice of John Steinbeck. The chatbot

A couple of years ago, I started falling asleep with Apple’s AirPods Pro in my ears.I’m a side sleeper, so this involves trying to carefully tuck my head into my pillow in a way that minimizes ear pain. It also means being jolted awake by low battery warnings during the night, then waiting for enough charge to pop them back in again. The ordeal is worthwhile, though, just to block out snores and calm my racing brain with a podcast or some ambient noise.This makes me an ideal candidate for Ozlo’s

For Warren Buffett’s authorized biography, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, the billionaire investor gave writer Alice Schroeder unprecedented access to explore his opinions and philosophy of life. That exploration resulted in a book filled with rare gems. On the topic of career advancement, consider what Buffett said: “People ask me where they should go to work, and I always tell them to go to work for whom they admire the most. It’s crazy to take little in-between

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to clear the way for an executive order from President Donald Trump that could dramatically change mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections.The Justice Department asked the justices to halt for now lower court decisions blocking the sweeping changes in nearly half the country.The request comes shortly after Trump delivered a primetime address elevating his yearslong push to raise doubts about the legitimacy of elections, and

On Monday, shares of Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) rose 1.17% and the tech giant became the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, with a market cap of $4.95 trillion.  It took the title from Nvidia, which saw its shares (Nasdaq: NVDA) fall 4.99%, ending the day with a $4.77 trillion valuation. The chipmaker has held the spot for over a year after taking it from Microsoft.  All three companies are part of the so-called Magnificent 7 bundle of stocks, with the others being Google parent

Political advertising disclosures in the U.S. used to be fairly simple. Since 2002, campaigns recorded commercials for television and radio that have been required to include information about who paid for them along with language that they approve this message. Political advertising today isn’t always that straightforward. Thanks to AI and paid influencers, plenty of political ads don’t follow that standard script anymore, leaving voters in the dark that what they’re seeing. Instead of just

Shares in major U.S. chip and memory companies, including Micron, Sandisk, and Intel, are sinking this morning in premarket trading after the stock prices of similar companies in Asia got hammered hard. Here’s what you need to know—and what’s behind the current fall in chip stocks. What’s happened? It was a bad day for chip stocks in Asia, where the markets are already closed for the day. In South Korea, major chipmakers saw their stock prices plunge. Memory giant SK Hynix Inc. (KS

Most conversations about AI-ready leadership focus on the technology— which workflows to rebuild, which tools to buy. True, the CEO must endorse these decisions but that isn’t their role. In the AI era, their role is one of people transformation and the readiness that matters most is their own willingness to lead it first. At Star, we call this “organizational recomposition,” and it is by far a harder job than many realize. It means taking the talent, skills, and capabilities of the people yo