• Disha Lamba moved to the US to study in 2021, but she struggled with being far from her family.
• She also didn't like some of the restrictions that would come with life on an H-1B visa.
• In May 2026, Lamba left her job and moved back to India, a decision she sees as worth it.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Disha Lamba, 28, who lives in Gurugram, India. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I was born and raised in India. As an introvert, I liked being in my comfort zone, but my dad dreamed of sending me to the US for my master's.

His friends' children went to the UK and the US and achieved so much. He wanted the same for me. In 2021, at 23, I went to NYU for a master's in computer engineering. I'd only seen New York in movies, but I quickly fell in love with it.

I had a great life in the US, but decided to move back in May 2026, primarily to be closer to family. I also wasn't OK with the restrictions that come with the H-1B visa.

New York transformed me

I owe a lot of my current personality to my five years in New York. Managing things on my own in a new environment made me really ambitious. I became more confident and had a high sense of individuality. In India, I never thought about traveling to another part of the country, and I didn't realize I loved hiking before coming to the US.

America exposed me to opportunities. In India, while studying information technology at undergrad, I was interested in data science, but lacked the confidence to pursue it. At NYU, I had good professors who spoon-fed me information about machine learning and data science, which really helped.

New York is a hub for conferences and meetups, and I attended many. At one event, I met a senior data scientist at CVS Health, who encouraged me to apply to his company. I landed a data scientist role there in 2024.

The job market was rough around that time, and a few of my friends moved to other countries because they couldn't find jobs or secure visa sponsorship.

Living away from family was hard

CVS sponsored my H-1B visa, and I was informed that I was selected in the lottery in March 2026. However, my plan had always been to eventually return to India, and by that point, I'd already decided.

I had a great life in the US — I was happy with my job and social life, and I had a six-figure salary, but I felt lonely.

When the clock hit 5 p.m., there wasn't anyone around to ask me how my day was. I had friends, but friends can't be your family. I kept having to organize my video calls with my mom — who's my best friend — around the time difference.

I missed my family and realized I was much happier and content around them. I wanted to be there for big celebrations and support my parents during good and bad times. I feared being far away if something bad happened.

My second reason for wanting to move back was the visa restrictions. Once you're on an H-1B, you need a new visa stamp to travel and return to the US, and getting a stamping appointment in India can be a pain. Since the H-1B is generally granted in three-year increments, I felt there'd be a lot of ongoing visa management.

The H-1B can also make it harder to change employers, pursue additional income streams, or take a career break.

The H-1B visa has its pros, but I wasn't OK with the cons.

I'm exploring options in India

I resigned from CVS and flew home to Gurugram, a satellite city southwest of New Delhi, to live with my parents and brother. I liked working in the healthcare industry, where I felt I could make an impact, and I liked my team and manager. I questioned my decision because I felt I was giving up a lot to move home.

In India, I can choose to build a startup, change employers, and do a side hustle without worrying about visa restrictions. I decided to take a two-month career break when I returned to India, relying on savings. It's a luxury that comes from not being on an employment visa.

I haven't got a job offer in hand yet, but I think India offers similar career opportunities to the US. Big companies like EY, Mastercard, and American Express have offices near me.

I'm embracing the little things

I miss certain things about the US. I used to love walking around after work and staring at the New York skyline, but where I am now, the sidewalks aren't as walkable, and the public parks aren't as clean.

But at home in India, we have house help, which means I don't have to cook or clean, so I have more time to pursue my passions. If you're earning well, you can live comfortably here.

I still get anxious about whether I made the right decision, but getting to hug my parents every morning reminds me it was worth it. Our family starts the day with a chat over a cup of green tea. The little things we take for granted are also the things that matter.

Business Insider confirmed she was employed by CVS. CVS declined to respond to a request for comment.

A State Department spokesperson told Business Insider, "Our embassies and consulates around the world, including in India, are prioritizing thoroughly vetting each visa case above all else."

With its increasingly varied phone lineup, Google has an option for everyone. While we've assessed the best Google Pixel phone for most people, the right choice will depend on whether you want a larger or smaller phone, a regular or foldable phone, or a dedicated zoom lens.

As we've come to expect from Google's own phones, regardless of price, you can count on all Pixels to exhibit superb camera quality and dependable performance.

Google has just refreshed the main Pixel line, launching four new models in August: the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and Pixel 11 Pro Fold.

We're in the middle of reviewing all of them right now and will update this guide accordingly once we've put them through our rigorous tests and lived with them for a while. We expect them to replace our picks for the older Pixel 10 line featured in this guide soon, even if they are only looking like iterative upgrades this generation, as stock of last year's phones is already drying up.

From our previous testing, the best Google Pixel phone for most people was the Pixel 10 - but expect the Pixel 11 to take that prize very soon. Both are excellent choices for Android fans or iPhone users looking from the other side of the fence, and they offer the best overall value within the company's current lineup. The Pixel 10a is also the best option in the budget range.

Our top picks for the best Google Pixel phone

• Best overall: Pixel 10 - See at Amazon
• Best budget: Pixel 10a - See at Amazon
• Best camera: Pixel 10 Pro - See at Amazon
• Best camera (with bigger screen & battery): Pixel 10 Pro XL - See at Amazon
• Best foldable: Pixel 10 Pro Fold - See at Amazon

New Pixels we're currently testing at home

• Pixel 11 (MSRP $899) - See at Amazon
• Pixel 11 Pro (MSRP $1099) - See at Amazon
• Pixel 11 Pro XL (MSRP $1299) - See at Amazon
• Pixel 11 Pro Fold (MSRP $1899) - See at Amazon

Best overall

When describing the Google Pixel 10, I can't help but use the word "awkward." The $499 Pixel 10a that arrived back in March beats the originally $799 Pixel 10 in a couple of ways - bigger battery, better selfie camera, better colors and textures - but the RAM and PixelSnap alone justify the upgrade to the Pixel 10 in my eyes, let alone the rear cameras. For most buyers, skipping the Pro for the 'regular' Pixel 10 is an easy choice, as you get 88% of the Pro's experience for a fraction of the price.

What visually sets the Pixel 10 apart from its brethren is that its rear glass sports a polished finish rather than a matte one, which not only makes it a fingerprint magnet but also makes it a bit more slippery in the hand. However, its matte aluminum frame and PixelSnap phone grips make up for it. Those don't help how slippery the phone is face-down, though; the way the Pixel 10 drifts across uneven tables feels uncannily like an air hockey table.

The touchscreen under that Victus 2 cover glass can get plenty bright, but its PWM dimming is still noticeably worse than Apple's or Samsung's, and the new sensitive eyes toggle did nothing on the days I enabled it. My eye-strain headaches were less intense than on the Pixel 10 Pro XL but still noticeably more frequent than on my Samsung or on the pOLED Pixel 10a, though, as with any flicker sensitivity, your migraine triggers may vary.

The Pixel 10 may not have quite as much memory as the Pro models, but 12GB helps the Tensor G5 smoothly shift from app to game to camera and back without dropping either from memory, and I saw none of the multitasking hiccups I did on the 10a. Gaming was mostly smooth, and without full-day gaming, I got at least a full day per charge. We're sadly stuck with 15W wireless charging and 30W wired charging, as well as a smaller battery than the 10a's, but I'll take it to get the Pixel 10's triple-camera array.

We don't get the Pro-level controls on the regular Pixel 10 — though, really, the only one you'll miss is the full-resolution toggle — but we do get up to 20x zoom and double the number of optical presets compared to the Pixel 10a. 20x zoom doesn't sound like much compared to the gimmicky 100x zoom on the 10 Pro XL, but it was perfect for vacation pics and handled fireworks. Auto Best Take makes even mundane selfies seem a bit more magical, while Camera Coach and Edit for Me give amateurs a little leg up on their framing and levels, should they need it.

Best budget

If you want the best Pixel without spending flagship money, the Google Pixel 10a is the easy recommendation. At $499, it delivers strong everyday performance, strong battery life, useful AI features, and what I still consider the best camera experience you'll find in a new phone under $500. It's an iterative update over the Pixel 9a rather than a dramatic leap, but Google's formula continues to deliver outstanding value.

The Pixel 10a is comfortable to hold thanks to its flat profile, satin-finished plastic back, and aluminum frame, while the flush camera design means it finally sits flat on a desk. Google skips the PixelSnap magnetic charging system found on the Pixel 10, but that's a reasonable compromise for a phone at this price.

The Tensor G4 handles everyday apps, streaming, multitasking, and casual gaming with ease, rarely feeling like a budget device. Battery life easily lasted me through full days of heavy use, and faster wired charging is a welcome improvement over the previous generation. The only noticeable limitation is the 8GB of RAM, which can occasionally struggle when switching between particularly demanding apps or leaning heavily on AI features.

Google's Gemini tools are among the phone's most useful additions. Ask to Edit makes it remarkably easy to remove unwanted people or objects from photos, while Camera Coach and Auto Best Take help you capture better shots before you even start editing.

The camera remains the Pixel 10a's biggest strength. Everyday photos look consistently great, Night Sight performed particularly well in my testing, and Google's image processing continues to produce reliable, natural-looking results. Zoom performance is still the weakest part of the camera system, with image quality dropping noticeably beyond about 2x, but it's an acceptable trade-off at this price.

Buy the Pixel 10a if you want the best Pixel for the money. Spend more on the standard Pixel 10 if you want a faster chip, better zoom photography, and PixelSnap charging. Otherwise, the Pixel 10a gets the fundamentals right, making it the best budget Pixel for most people, with the strongest balance of price, performance, battery life, and camera quality for the money.

For more on this model, check out Ara's full Google Pixel 10a review.

Best camera and battery

The only Android phone to support 25W Qi2.2 wireless charging naked — because Samsung was too chicken to put magnets in the Galaxy S26 Ultra — the Pixel 10 Pro XL is the first daily driver phone I've rocked without a case in years. PixelSnap may not be as robust an accessory line as I'd like, but being able to swap from a wireless charger to a kickstand to a PopSocket and back without needing a sticker or case feels liberating.

Caseless grip use comes in handy because the mirror-finish, SIM-trayless frame feels slick at times. It's even more slippery face-down on a table, nearly yeeting itself off a slatted wood table twice, but the wide triple-camera bar keeps it steady and stable when face-up.

Those cameras are absolutely the selling point of the Pixel 10 Pro XL, especially when paired with Google's processing secret sauce and Gemini-powered add-ons like Auto Best Take, which combines the best frame from each person to save your selfies and group shots. Asking Gemini to edit your photos can be painless for simple edits — especially Magic Eraser — but it can't save a blurry take, like the 100x zoom Google claims for the 10 Pro XL. Stick to 20x or less; the 1x-to-5x photos I took during Magic Kingdom's fireworks turned out fantastic, and daytime color fidelity is better than Samsung's.

Processing burst photos while playing Pokémon Go around the parks was the biggest stressor I could throw at Google's Tensor G5, and apart from some predictable heat buildup in 90-degree sunshine, it handled it better than most of my Pixels and some Samsungs. Even my most visually intense game was silky smooth, even after six hours straight. The only times the phone slowed down were, ironically, during AI tasks like making images in Pixel Studio.

Apart from Pixel 10-exclusive features like Magic Cue — which hasn't triggered once in over a week — Pixel's software remains the same 'streamlined' version of Android with the same strange Settings arrangement. If you haven't used a Pixel before, please try one in person, not just for the software but for the screen.

I found myself getting headaches and eye strain about twice as fast on the Pixel 10 Pro XL compared to my old Galaxy S23. Google added a 'sensitive eyes' setting that was supposed to reduce the migraines and strain caused by the flickering of PWM dimming. Just like the iPhone 17's Display Smoothing, it doesn't really have an appreciable effect, in either my daily use or in testing by PWM expert Nick Sutrich. This doesn't impact everyone, but if you're in that 10% of smartphone users, look elsewhere.

Best foldable

While the new Pixel 11 Pro Fold (which we're currently testing) sees Google's hefty foldables slim down a little, the 10 Pro Fold is still a worthy option, especially as it's often found with a decent discount.

Google's recent foldables remain the only ones on the market with both water and dust resistance, and their strong build quality gives them higher durability scores than Samsung and Motorola.

It has excellent cameras and built-in support for Google's latest Gemini AI features. It's also a vast improvement over Google's first shot at the foldable phone market, 2023's Pixel Fold. 

What sets the Pixel 10 Pro Fold apart is its exterior 6.4-inch display, which offers a familiar, traditional phone experience when using the cover screen in folded mode. By contrast, many other foldable phones have awkwardly narrow cover screens and offer a somewhat unfamiliar and uncomfortable experience when folded, often leading to many typos due to a cramped keyboard. 

The Pixel 10 Pro Fold also has an eight-inch interior tablet display, which is noticeably larger than the tablet displays of its competitors and makes it an ideal hybrid device to watch videos or use apps more comfortably. 

The Pixel 10 Pro Fold does make some compromises on camera quality compared to the regular Pixel 10 Pro line, but it's much more geared toward media viewing and productivity, as it's excellent for writing docs or browsing spreadsheets - more so than any other phone we've tested, thanks to its size.

How we test Google Pixel phones

We test Google Pixel phones through standardized methods, but most importantly, we've used each model extensively as our main daily drivers. We've tested every Pixel phone since the very first model was released in 2016, so we have extensive experience with the line.

We test Pixel phone performance by running common, popular apps and games to ensure Google's Tensor processors are as snappy and smooth as most people expect. To evaluate the potential longevity of Tensor processors, we keep older Pixel models up to date with the latest version of Android and assess performance by running the same apps and games. We also consider battery health, which significantly impacts the performance of older phones. The older Pixels we use to evaluate longevity have optimal battery health.

We exhaustively test Google's growing list of AI features, an important part of the Pixel experience. Across compatible devices, we also evaluate and compare the accuracy and efficiency of the latest iterations of the Gemini and Gemini Advanced AI chatbots.

For camera quality, part of our testing involves taking photos of the same scenes across our phone reviews with each lens. Whenever a new Pixel is released, we bring its contemporary competitors to take pictures at the same time of day and time of year for the best and most accurate comparison.

The hundreds of personal photos we take with Pixel phones have the greatest impact on our camera quality evaluation, as they best reflect the photos most people take with their phones and what it's like to use the camera app under day-to-day conditions. Personal photos also reveal a camera's strengths and weaknesses that a controlled test doesn't.

FAQs

Which is the newest Google Pixel phone?

Google released its newest phones, the Pixel 11, 11 Pro, 11 Pro XL, and 11 Pro Fold, on August 20, 2026. Before that, the Pixel 10a was released on March 5, 2026.

How long are Google Pixel phones supported?

In the past, Google surprisingly had some of the shortest support windows for its entries among the best Android phones, even though Google itself develops Android and produces Pixel phones.

However, with the Pixel 8 series, Google finally started offering a longer support window that competes with or surpasses most Android phones: seven years of Android upgrades and security updates from their respective release dates.

Previous Pixel models have shorter support windows for Android upgrades and security updates, and most also receive security updates longer than they get Android upgrades.

• Deciding what to cook every night was one of the most exhausting parts of my week.
• I started ordering meal kits for just two dinners a week.
• Having fewer meals to plan has significantly reduced my mental load.

There are a few questions in my household that irritate me more than "What's for dinner?"

I think it's the casual assumption that I have created a meal plan for the week, done all the food shopping and prep, and gotten dinner on the table at exactly the time everyone wants it, all while trying to accommodate my kids' likes and dislikes. Not to mention the cleanup after.

We are a family of four, and just the idea of "What's for dinner?" can be exhausting. Every parent deals with this every night, but that doesn't make it any less of a pain in the butt, even when my husband helps out.

I tried a meal subscription plan

This past spring, I was at peak meal-planning-overwhelm, when I remembered I'd gotten a card in the mail offering a discount if I signed up for a particular meal delivery subscription — one that we had used in the past right after my second kid was born — but hadn't tried in years. "Their food was pretty good," I mused to myself. The wheels started turning, and the next thing I knew, I had signed the family up for two meals a week.

The impact was immediate and incredible — for me, at least. Just having those two nights a week covered for dinner made such a huge difference in my mental load.

Deciding what to eat is what bothered me the most

Grocery shopping was not my main inconvenience; it was deciding what to have for dinner each night, and then all the prep work. It felt like I was wasting so much mental energy on what we should have, did we have that too recently to have it again this week, does one child hate it so much that she won't eat it even though the other child loves it, and so on.

I could do more than two days a week, but then the service starts getting pricey for our budget.

Another thing I love is that meal delivery lets me try recipes I wouldn't usually make. If a recipe calls for spices or sauces I don't typically have in my kitchen, I find I'm less inclined to make it. But when every ingredient is sent to me in the exact amount needed, I'm all in.

I am not a gourmet chef. I do not toil over recipes of my own invention until I've perfected them. But I do know how to follow a recipe and cook the basics, and the meal delivery services I've tried make it even easier. Each recipe gives you step-by-step instructions and the exact amount of every ingredient. And if you can't stand cooking, some services offer pre-made meals that just need to be heated up.

These days, I am no longer irritated when someone asks, "What's for dinner?" I simply say, "Chicken burrito bowls," or "Pork stir fry with lettuce cups," and go on my merry way.

Do both kids love every meal every time? Absolutely not. But the subscription has lots of options every week, so I can easily find meals that work for everyone most of the time. Then I find it much less daunting to have a meal plan for the remaining nights of the week. And that to me is worth its weight in gold.

• Meta's smart glasses have a PR problem.
• So the company is trying to calm consumer nerves with a new PR campaign and privacy settings.
• Some event organizers and venues, meanwhile, are restricting Meta's glasses.

The small camera installed in Meta's AI smart glasses has become a problem for the company and the public.

Photos and videos captured by Meta glasses have proliferated on social media, and not all of them are consensual. Clips of content creators harassing women and recording their reactions covertly have become a trend, raising concerns about privacy.

"Are you a secret code?" one male content creator asked a woman in an Instagram video. "Because I'm trying to crack you." Some social media users have dubbed Meta's product "pervert glasses."

It's all a bad look for Meta. So the company is making moves to get ahead of the negativity. It has recently publicized new privacy settings for its glasses and has launched a PR blitz to explain them.

Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth posted an Instagram video on Friday, for example, in which he explained how the smart glasses' hands-free camera works.

"We designed this camera to be noticed by the people around you, so in every pair of glasses we make, there's a capture LED on the front, and it lights up when someone's taking photos or videos for the gallery," Bosworth said.

Bosworth said the camera has no off switch. It stops working if people try to cover or deactivate it.

"We took this issue all the way across Meta, and we've been taking down content and even whole accounts connected to people misusing the glasses," Bosworth said.

Alex Himel, the vice president of wearables at Meta, also attempted to calm nerves on Friday in a Threads post. He said Meta's smart glasses will not allow users to record if the camera's LED light is blocked before or during recording.

"We're going to keep rolling out updates like this to make sure the capture LED can reliably alert bystanders when photos or videos are being captured for someone's gallery," Himel said.

While the company has suspended accounts that use the cameras to harass people, Business Insider's Katie Notopoulos reported last week that it hasn't been able to catch them all.

Meta has taken strides to make their smart glasses a must-have accessory. The company has partnered with megastars like Kylie Jenner and Teyana Taylor, and it produced a star-studded Super Bowl LX ad to drum up hype.

As AI smart glasses become increasingly accessible, some event and venue organizers are taking a cautious approach with guests. Burning Man told attendees at the 2026 festival, which starts Monday, that they can bring smart glasses, but must get consent before filming anyone. New York City nightclub Basement updated its no-photo-and-video policy to include smart eyewear.

"Anyone bringing smart glasses into the venue, whether wearing them or carrying them in a bag, will be asked to leave and may be permanently banned," the venue said in an Instagram post on Friday.

Organizers for the DEFCON Hacking Conference told attendees in July that smart glasses and similar items are prohibited.

In his Instagram video, Bosworth urged users to watch for the LED light that indicates the cameras are recording.

"Please remember," he added, "the light is there for everyone."

If you're looking for a complete home theater-in-a-box, the Samsung HW-Q990F is an excellent place to start. Instead of fussing with big tower speakers, lots of wires, and an AV receiver, this package offers a much more manageable audio solution with a soundbar, wireless subwoofer, and two wireless rear speakers. Not only does the Q990F simplify listening, but it offers an impressive 11.1.4-channel Dolby Atmos experience with a big cinematic punch.

I've been reviewing and obsessing over audio products for more than a decade, and this system delivers on its promise. The number of features and level of performance packed into the Q990F are remarkable. And though I'm a big fan of powerful single-unit soundbar models, like the Sonos Arc Ultra, there's something nice about getting all the components you need for a true surround sound experience in one box.

That said, buyers should note that Samsung also offers a newer 2026 version of this soundbar, called the Q990H. The 2026 model is physically identical, but it has a few new software features. The Q990H is meant to replace the Q990F, but as long as the Q990F is in stock at a lower price, it remains the better buy and our pick for the best soundbar on the market.

Setting up the Q990F is a piece of cake

The Q990F goes from box to home theater speaker system in record time. The package comes with the soundbar unit, one subwoofer, two rear speakers, power cables, two optional mounting brackets for the rears, a remote control, and an HDMI cable. The hardest part of the setup was lugging the hefty, 16-pound soundbar to my media console.

At first glance, the rear speakers don't have many distinguishing features, but it's easy enough to figure out that the metal mesh side faces inward, directing the sound toward the listener. The subwoofer has exposed drivers on either side and can be placed anywhere in the room, though a corner is ideal for its lower frequencies. While the rear speakers and subwoofer connect wirelessly to the soundbar, each component still needs to be plugged into a power outlet.

If you've bought a Samsung TV within the last few years (2022 and newer), you can connect the Q990F soundbar to your display wirelessly with full Dolby Atmos support. Otherwise, there's an eARC HDMI port on the bottom of the soundbar for wired connectivity to any HDMI-enabled TV. There's also an optical port for older TVs, but that connection won't deliver high-bandwidth audio or Dolby Atmos playback. I don't love that the ports are on the bottom of the soundbar, which makes them a pain to access, but you shouldn't need to fiddle around with them too much after your initial setup.

The soundbar also has two handy HDMI 2.1 passthrough ports. These connections can be used to pair a media device, such as a streaming player or gaming console, with the soundbar and pass its video to your TV. Since they're version 2.1, these ports offer full support for sending 4K/120Hz signals, which is ideal if you want to pass video from a PS5 or Xbox Series X system.

A time-tested design with a few small tweaks

The Q990F is the 2025 iteration in Samsung's long-running Q9 series of flagship soundbars, and it sticks closely to the same general design the brand used in the last few generations. This model is a different shade of black that looks like dark gray to me. And although the soundbar remains nearly identical in size to previous versions, it's still big. At 48.5 inches wide, 2.8 inches high, and 5.4 inches deep, the Q990F is longer, wider, and taller than the Sonos Arc Ultra, for instance. It's also heavier.

Packed inside the main soundbar are 15 drivers. That includes two up-firing and four side-firing ones to bounce sound around and above the listening area. The rear speakers also have up- and side-firing drivers to enhance their Dolby Atmos capabilities. I didn't find the rears too obtrusive in size, but I wouldn't want them any bigger. They each measure around 7.5 inches tall and 5.5 inches deep. Coated in the same dark gray color, they aren't particularly attractive as decor. They're straight out of the corporate collection, but they get the job done.

While the system is designed well overall, I have one gripe with the soundbar's integrated text display, which is hidden behind its plastic grille. It's so small that it needs to scroll a bunch to display any settings, modes, or messages it tries to convey. This was also the case on older Q990 models, but this choice is increasingly outdated.

So, while you can change settings on the soundbar using the remote control, I would recommend using the Samsung SmartThings mobile app instead. This app is compatible with most Samsung devices and isn't purpose-built for home theater, but it works well. My only complaint is that it doesn't display the current audio format that the soundbar is playing.

That kind of information is useful if you want to confirm whether your system is properly receiving Dolby Atmos or other high-quality audio signals. As it stands, there's no way to see this in SmartThings. For those interested, this information is available on the tiny, scrolling soundbar display when you press the "i" button on the remote. But it should also be in the app.

Sound quality is thoroughly impressive and immersive

The Samsung Q990F's main selling point is its high-end sound quality with an impressive 756W of total power. And it doesn't disappoint. From the moment I turned the system on and pressed play on "Dune II," I was impressed. The subwoofer offered plenty of rumble, and the rear speakers instantly engulfed me in a sand-filled soundscape.

When watching movies, tires screeched with piercing clarity, and bullets fired with pointed sharpness. I cycled through the soundbar's different audio modes, such as Surround, Standard, and Adaptive Sound, to find the best option for my tastes. I was satisfied with each for different uses, but the nuances are there for those who care.

Dolby Atmos support is another big draw of the Q990F, as this feature allows the soundbar to simulate audio effects coming from above your head. You can learn more about the format in our Dolby Atmos guide. In this regard, the system performed beautifully. I ran through movies like "Ready Player One," "Top Gun: Maverick," and other titles with fun immersive scenes, and loved what the soundbar offered. All the drivers worked in conjunction to create a dome of audio, drawing me into the movies.

The Q990F's subwoofer has been tweaked compared to previous models, with a more compact, sealed design built to reduce rattle. Though I couldn't directly compare it to the older ported subwoofer, I certainly like this new one's smaller size. Plus, it still packs a full-throttle punch. I didn't find the need to tweak any EQ settings when watching movies, but if you do, you can likely squeeze out even more oomph to shake your decor or annoy your neighbors.

The Q990F also supports Samsung's SpaceFit Sound Pro feature, which adapts the audio to your room's physical dimensions. There's no lengthy configuration process; instead, you simply toggle it on and off in the SmartThings app. I noticed a slight difference in the audio performance, but not enough to be strict about turning it on. My living room is a rectangle without any odd reflections, so there's not much for it to adapt to. But to my ears, this feature did offer slightly tighter sound with less reverberation.

There are a few other audio tricks you can use with the SmartThings app. For instance, in the advanced sound settings, you can activate "Moderate Bass," which turns the subwoofer off and lets the main soundbar handle all low-frequency duties. Apartment dwellers might find this useful.

There's also a "Private Rear Sound" function in the Surround Speaker Setup section. This option diverts all audio to the rear speakers, so the sound playback is (theoretically) closer to the people sitting between the two rear speakers. The sound quality wasn't anything special in this mode, but it does make for a neat way to watch TV after the kids have gone to bed.

Like previous Q990 soundbars, this model supports Samsung's Q-Symphony feature, which uses a compatible Samsung TV's speakers in concert with the Q990F. I've always been a bit torn about Q-Symphony as a concept. After all, people are buying a soundbar to get better speakers than the small ones on their TVs, so why would I still want to use those? In practice, though, the feature doesn't distract from what the soundbar provides. However, I'm not sure that my Frame TV added anything worthwhile, audio-wise, to the experience.

The Q990F is also great for music, and it doubles as a smart speaker

As much as the Q990F is a powerhouse for watching movies and TV shows, it's also a good general-purpose soundbar for listening to music and other living room tasks. For example, it ticks nearly all the boxes for wireless playback, including Bluetooth, WiFi, Chromecast, Apple AirPlay, and Spotify Connect.

I had no problems linking it to my iPhone through all of those protocols. I also used the Apple Music app on my Apple TV streaming player to play Dolby Atmos spatial music, and it sounded terrific.

Whether you find spatial music gimmicky or not, I like that the Q990F has so many connection methods. It's easy to AirPlay a playlist to the speaker while you make dinner, for example.

The Q990F also has built-in support for Amazon Alexa, so you can use voice controls and access digital assistant functions.

How does the Q990F compare to the Q990H?

In 2026, Samsung released a new version of this soundbar, called the Q990H. However, the Q990H is essentially identical to the Q990F in physical design. The only notable difference is a few new software features.

These new functions include Sound Elevation, which is designed to make it seem as if the dialogue is coming from the center of your TV screen, and Auto Volume, which is supposed to maintain volume levels across content so there aren't sudden spikes when changing the channel or source.

Though those features are nice to have, they're not worth paying extra for while the Q990F is still in stock for a lower price.

Should you buy the Samsung Q990F soundbar?

The Samsung HW-Q990F is a fantastic high-end soundbar. It's a complete surround sound system in a box that delivers a thunderous clash of sound to any living room. For people who want a full home theater experience without having to piece together multiple speakers and a receiver, this is an obvious choice. It comes with all the components you need and doesn't overcomplicate things.

The soundbar has a full retail price of $2,000, but is often on sale for under $1,500, and is sometimes discounted to just under $1,000. That's an excellent value for what you get, but it's still a solid chunk of change. And though this system is more compact than a full-sized speaker setup, it's still a decent-size commitment, with a separate subwoofer and two satellite speakers. As such, it's not ideal for smaller apartments.

It's also important to remember that stock is likely going to get harder to come by over the coming months, and the newer Q990H is expected to drop in price as the year goes on. Once their pricing evens out, the Q990H will be the better buy. But for now, the Q990F holds onto its spot as the top Dolby Atmos soundbar and surround sound system we recommend.

• Google Maps now shows "Lake America" to US users after Trump ordered the name change.
• Canadian users will still see "Lake Ontario," while others will see both names.
• MapQuest went viral for refusing to change the name, while Apple Maps still says "Lake Ontario."

Google Maps has made the switch — for Americans, at least.

A search on the mapping app on Sunday shows the name "Lake America" for the body of water adjoining northern New York and southern Ontario, known until very recently — and still to most — as Lake Ontario.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that he said would "immediately" rename the body of water to "Lake America." Canadian officials have said they will not recognize the new name.

In a blog post, Google said it changed the lake's name after the US Geographic Names Information System, the federal government's official database of place names, did the same.

"Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see 'Lake America,'" the company said.

Canadian users will still see "Lake Ontario," according to Google. Viewers in the rest of the world will see both names.

As of Sunday, Apple Maps still says "Lake Ontario." The company did not respond to a request for comment sent on Sunday.

Trump made the switch in retaliation after trade talks between the longtime allies broke down last week. The Trump administration imposed an additional 50% tariffs on many Canadian goods on August 22. Canada then responded in kind. Trump is now threatening 50% tariffs on auto and steel imports from Canada.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that those tariffs would be "devastating on the US."

"A tariff on Canada is nothing more than a tax on the American people," he said.

Many Google Maps users wondered if the company would follow Trump's lead after the president announced the change. MapQuest, the original online mapping service that Google obliterated despite having a near 10-year head start, briefly returned to prominence last week by refusing to change the name of the Great Lake.

"We're not changing it," the company said in one post. In another, the company invited users to name the lake "whatever you want."

The stalwart "we're not changing it" post has more than 5 million views on X. None of the account's 24 posts in July got more than two likes.

Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister who bowed out of trade negotiations after he said the United States introduced "unfair" last-minute changes, wrote in a post on X that "naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario."

"The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari'io, which, appropriately, means 'the lake is beautiful, the lake is big'," Carney said.

Trump also renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" shortly after returning to office, part of an effort to restore what he called names that honor "American greatness."

Google, owing to its policy of following GNIS designations, also now refers to the body of water as the "Gulf of America" on Google Maps.

• Claude seems to be a music fan.
• Sony Music and Warner Chappell sued Anthropic on Friday.
• The music companies said Anthropic trained its Claude AI models on stolen, copyrighted works.

Sony Music and Warner Chappell want Anthropic to pay up.

The publishing companies filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in a Northern California district court on Friday. Anthropic cofounders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann were also named in the filing.

"Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have conducted a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale in order to develop, operate, and reap enormous profits from Anthropic's 'Claude' series of artificial intelligence ('AI') models," the companies said in the complaint.

Anthropic denied the accusations in a statement. "We disagree with the publishers' claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court," the company said.

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music said Anthropic collected "thousands upon thousands" of copyrighted songs, including 80s anthem "Eye of the Tiger," Marvin Gaye's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You," and Taylor Swift's "Paper Rings."

In the lawsuit, the publishing companies said Anthropic has pirated their copyrighted works through a range of methods, including two digital archives, Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. In June 2025, a judge ruled that Anthropic downloaded over 7 million pirated books to train Claude.

"Among the many millions of books that Defendants torrented from these illegal pirate websites were books containing the lyrics and sheet music to hundreds or more of Music Publishers' copyrighted musical compositions, identified in Exhibit A. Those works include 'Livin' On a Prayer,' 'September,' 'Great Balls of Fire,' 'Ramblin' Man,' and 'Hallelujah,'" the lawsuit says.

As a result, Claude models generate identical or near-identical copies of the copyrighted work in their responses to users, the companies alleged. In the lawsuit, the companies said training Claude on copyrighted content allows it to produce AI-generated lyrics that will ultimately compete with human-made songs.

Sony Music and Warner Chappell requested a jury trial. They're seeking statutory damages from Anthropic, including up to $150,000 for each composition it used to train Claude.

"Even the most revolutionary of technologies must develop within the bounds of the law, and Anthropic's Claude models are no different," the companies said in the complaint.

The AI industry has been targeted by a slew of copyright lawsuits since large language models like Claude and ChatGPT began to transform society.

Tech companies need troves of data to train their AI models, and go to great lengths to acquire it. Most recently, historians and archivists have accused AI companies of acquiring large numbers of antique books and feeding them into their LLMs, destroying them in the process.

Last September, Anthropic agreed to pay over $1.5 billion to authors to settle a class-action lawsuit related to pirated works. OpenAI, too, has faced several copyright lawsuits in recent years, including one from The New York Times and another from Encyclopedia Britannica.

• Four years ago, my cat and I moved into my childhood home with my parents out of necessity.
• It's been nice to save money and bond more with my family during this stage of life.
• This arrangement lasted longer than expected, and moving out feels like it's going to be tough.

The day after Thanksgiving, I learned I'd have to move out of my beloved century-old, two-bedroom apartment in Kansas City.

My building had been taken over by a management company in another state.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the beginning of a Hallmark movie in which the protagonist unites with her neighbors to successfully push back against a corporate takeover (all while finding love along the way).

Instead, I found myself panicking about my next move while grieving the comfortable life I'd been so proud to have built over the seven years I'd rented that space.

A few weeks later, my parents suggested that my cat and I move back into my childhood home in the suburbs nearby. As much as living with mom and dad in my 30s felt like it could be embarrassing or a huge step back, it felt like the best choice. So, I did.

I planned to stay for just a few months, but it's now been four years — and leaving feels more difficult than I ever anticipated.

Financially, this setup has been a blessing

My parents live in a home that they have been paying a mortgage on for nearly 30 years. It's much cheaper than anything on the rental market, and my financial contributions aren't even close to what I'd be paying if I lived elsewhere.

It's also been freeing not to chase roommates down for their share of the rent. I've cut back on my expenses even more by no longer paying for WiFi or electric bills, and doing laundry at home instead of a laundromat.

My parents have always purchased enough food for a full household, even when they were empty nesters. This means food is rarely in short supply, and my grocery bill is less, too.

Luckily, they also stock up on some great snacks and subscribe to a weekly May through October Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box full of organic produce that I cannot get enough of.

To further contribute to the household, I like to offer support through physical labor and chores. Personally, I love to cook, bake, and run errands for the family. I also run errands for my grandmother, who lives close by, which helps me check in with her more regularly.

Our dynamic has shifted, and I'm enjoying getting to enjoy my parents in a new way

Living with my parents in my 30s is very different from when I was a kid or even a teenager.

I had been away for a number of years, living in other cities and on my own, and that independence has earned me more of my parents' trust.

They now realize I am too old for rules — for the most part. In time, they have backed down on strict curfews and specific chore guidelines. We've also been able to have important conversations around expectations.

I've made it clear that respecting this household and keeping my parents informed about my plans is still important to me, but that it might look different now that I'm older.

For example, when I first moved back, my dad was constantly checking in on me. It was difficult to deal with, especially because I'm a freelance creative with a varied social life and shifting schedule.

Still, I can understand a father worrying about their kid. A brief chat about my age and level of responsibility helped us find common ground and build trust around checking in as needed.

Sharing a space with my parents as an adult has also helped me see them as they are now, from a perspective that is so different and less selfish than the one I had in my adolescence.

I have gotten to work alongside them and admire the career people they are firsthand. I enjoy their respective skills and hobbies, and even the lively debates we stir up while watching a new TV show.

I didn't plan to stay long, but now I worry about how difficult leaving will be

Moving back home wasn't such a step backward after all. I have been able to jump into the gig economy full force, contribute regularly to the household, and spend time with family.

My "few months" at home with my parents has turned into four years.

Although I have plenty of savings that would allow me to move out and live comfortably, I've taken my time finding a stable living situation that makes sense for me.

However, leaving home and all its comforts will be a lot harder than I thought this time around.

Still, no matter where I end up, I'll continue to connect with my parents, whether taking my mom to concerts or trying new burger spots with my dad. I will also still offer to pick up sticks from the river birches in their backyard that I made them promise not to get rid of.

Everyone's timeline is unique and circumstances are different. I feel lucky — not embarrassed — I've got family to fall back on. And my parents will (most likely) always be my favorite roommates.

Hospitals are notorious for bad food.

When patients eat poorly, it can increase the price of their stay by 30%. Malnourishment costs the US healthcare system billions each year.

But offering good food isn't easy. Many hospitals operate on negative margins. Some have a budget of as little as $4 per patient meal according to US Foods.

Now, one New York City medical network is changing the cliche thanks to an unexpected character: a Michelin-starred chef. We paid a visit to learn how Northwell Health went from getting one-star food reviews to serving up five-star dishes like seared scallops and lobster linguine.

After an eventful start to the tournament with mixed doubles, the first round of the final Grand Slam of the year is officially underway. We've compiled absolutely everything you need to know about where to watch the US Open, including free and global streaming options.

Carlos Alcaraz, in his first competition back since a wrist injury that sidelined him for the past few months, and Aryna Sabalenka will attempt to defend their titles at this year's US Open. Other than men's No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who is sitting out this year's tournament with an injury, all of the usual big-hitters are scheduled to compete. Keep reading to learn how to tune in from anywhere.

Where to watch the US Open for free

Select matches from the US Open will live stream on 9Now in Australia. Viewers just need to create an account if they don't already have one, and then they're all set to start streaming. In the US, fans can catch some of the action at no cost by using a free trial of a live TV service, such as YouTube TV or Fubo.

How to watch the US Open from anywhere

Tennis fans who are away from the location where their desired streaming service works can still keep up with their viewing options (including the free ones) with the help of a VPN. Short for virtual private networks, VPNs are handy tech tools that help people temporarily alter the virtual location on their electronic devices. They're popular services among those looking to upgrade their cybersecurity and keep up with their usual websites and apps while traveling abroad.

Proton VPN is one of the best VPNs on the market. It's user-friendly (even for beginners), includes several security perks, and offers a massive selection of global servers.

Where to watch the US Open in the US

ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC will carry broadcast coverage in the United States. Matches that aren't broadcast will be available as ESPN+ exclusives. The best way to catch all of the action is with an ESPN Unlimited subscription. At $32 a month, ESPN Unlimited unlocks full live streams from flagship ESPN channels (along with ESPN on ABC content) and streaming-exclusive ESPN+ programming.

ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 are also available through live TV services, along with several other channels. These are great options if you're looking for a month-to-month cable alternative or seeking out something with a free trial. Fubo and YouTube TV are two of our top recommendations right now.

Fubo offers ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 in its Sports + News plan, which costs $65 a month and features around 30 channels. New users can get $10 off their first month after a free trial. These channels are also available in Fubo's pricier Pro and Elite packages, which offer upward of 200 channels. All three of these plans also unlock ESPN Unlimited at no extra cost, so you'll be able to catch those ESPN+ exclusive matches.

YouTube TV also carries ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 in both its Main plan and Sports plan. The Main plan costs $83 a month, but new users can get $15 a month off their first five months of service with a special deal. The Sports plan is also running a limited-time offer, which will discount the first six months of service from $65 a month down to $45 a month. New users can get a free trial of either plan.

Where to watch the US Open in the UK

In the UK, the US Open will be shown on Sky Sports. Tennis fans can tune in with a Sky TV plan. Prices depend on contract specifics, and you can learn more in our guide to the best Sky TV deals and plans. Viewers looking for a little less commitment can also stream Sky Sports programming through Now, which offers various memberships, including a £15 single-day pass.

Where to watch the US Open in Australia

Australian tennis fans hoping to watch absolutely every match at the US Open will need a paid Stan Sport subscription. This costs $30 a month ($10 a month for a base Stan subscription, plus an additional $20 a month for the Sport add-on). Channel Nine and 9Now will offer select free coverage in Australia. This is available to live stream after creating a free login. While fans might not be able to catch every match for free at first, coverage has been pretty comprehensive as the tournament has worn on in past years.

Who is favored to win the US Open?

Carlos Alcaraz is the favorite to win the men's singles tournament. On DraftKings (at the time of writing), Alcaraz is the +250 favorite, with Alexander Zverev at +300 and Novak Djokovic at +700. Aryna Sabalenka is the +330 favorite for the women's tournament, with Coco Gauff at +450 and Iga Swiatek at +550 (at the time of writing).

Where is the US Open held?

The US Open takes place in Queens, New York. The tournament is held at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• My adult kids often ask me to take over when their children won't sleep.
• I follow the parents' routines while staying calm and adjusting to each child's needs.
• Sometimes I walk out of the bedroom with a sleeping grandchild just minutes later.

I must have inherited my mother's magic touch for putting kids to sleep. It drives my kids crazy.

While I was visiting my son and daughter-in-law recently, she confided that bedtime had become a nightmare. I offered to give her a break by putting my grandson to bed. I was prepared for a struggle since we were at their house, and he knew his mom was in the next room.

We took him to his room after his bath to put on his PJs and sleep sack. It was already darkened and droning with white noise. After she left the room, I gave him a hug and kiss while softly telling him I loved him and that it was now time for dodo. I put him down, and that was that. He squirmed a bit, but I rubbed his back for a couple of minutes until he settled down. Then I sat on the bed opposite his crib and read on my phone until he fell asleep. No hassle, no crying, no standing up.

This is not the first occurrence. Frequently, my exasperated kids have relinquished naptime to me when visiting. It is understood by everyone that Grand-maman will put the children to sleep.

I try not to react smugly to their parents' astonishment as I walk out of the sleeping child's room five minutes later.

Calm is contagious

Rocking a baby to sleep remains one of my favorite and calming things in the world. As a young mother, I would especially look forward to those breaks, justifying my taking all the time I needed to put my child to sleep and glean some much-needed serenity myself.

For babies, my strategies consist of following their parents' lead. I stay on top of their current routine and stick to their order of things. Bathtime, quiet time, dark rooms, a pacifier, a bottle, a soft blanket, or a special plushie are no-brainers.

After running through their usual preliminaries, I sit in the bedroom rocking chair, holding them just firmly enough to help them settle without restricting movement so much that it provokes a struggle. I create sensory rhythmic patterns with my breathing, humming, patting, or rubbing circles on their back. Usually, that works. If not, small adjustments like standing and swaying, or switching from rubbing to patting and vice versa, are often enough. Once I have found a successful method for one child, I stick to it the next time.

I am gentle but firm and use all of my tricks

If they do start to fuss, it is important not to let it escalate to the point of prolonging the process. Sometimes, taking a break and trying again is necessary. I ask myself: Is he overtired? Not tired enough? When was his last sleep and for how long? Is he feeling well? Has there been an abnormal disruption that threw him off his routine? I let those answers guide my next steps. If the child is upset or unwell, I take him to another room to help him reset, dimming the lights and turning off anything noisy.

For older kids, negotiation is often necessary. I remind them why quiet time is important: we have more fun later when we're not grumpy. I offer to read a story or play a children's meditation or story from my phone. I lay beside them in a darkish, quiet room and intentionally take loud, deep rhythmic breaths to encourage them to mimic me. The younger ones usually fall asleep, but the older ones who have outgrown naps at least rest, which is always helpful.

Different strokes for different little folks

It is important to remember that each child is different. Some like to be rocked, some like to be laid down with a back rub, and others like to stand and sway. I adapt to whatever works for them and stick to it. Consistency is key.

I usually wait until they are calmed down, then ease them into bedtime with whatever feels familiar and comforting. Sometimes that’s rocking and humming; sometimes it’s just staying close and reassuring them until they settle. If they resist, I keep it gentle and remind him that it’s bedtime and that Grandma loves them.

• Russia is advancing slowly through the Donbas as Ukraine prepares to defend its last major strongholds.
• Ukrainian commanders say the fight for Kramatorsk and Sloviansk could become brutal battles of attrition.
• Analysts warn the outcome may hinge on Ukraine's ability to keep troops supplied under relentless drone and air attacks.

There is a moment before the camera begins rolling when the young Ukrainian commander says, "History is repeating itself for us in the Donbas. Unfortunately." Then he falls silent.

A few minutes later, the man, known by the call sign "Fleshka," takes a seat on a weight bench in the garden of a house in an eastern Ukrainian village, just a 30-minute drive from the nearest Russian troops. Every morning, he benches 80 kilograms here before returning to the screens where he coordinates the destruction of Russian assault units through the live feeds from his drone operators.

"I hope it will be a long fight. This is our land, and we will fight for every meter of it," Fleshka says once the camera is rolling. A few meters away stands his comrade "Sascha," another unit commander with the 33rd Brigade. "It's going to be a brutal meat grinder," he predicts, describing a bloody war of attrition. "But I'm glad to be part of it."

Fleshka, 24, and Sascha, 26, belong to a new generation of young Ukrainian commanders helping lead the defense of the last Ukrainian-held bastions in the Donbas. Both have spent years fighting on the front lines. They were involved in the drawn-out Battle of Bakhmut in 2023 and later took part in Ukraine's offensive in Russia's Kursk region at the end of 2024. Today, each man is responsible for more than 80 soldiers serving in a combined drone-and-infantry unit.

The Donbas is comprised of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Russia has captured almost all of Luhansk, while Ukraine controls just under one-fifth of the Donetsk region, an area of roughly 5,000 square kilometers, about five times the size of Berlin.

The question is increasingly not whether Putin's army will seize the remaining Ukrainian-held territory in Donbas, but when.

According to information obtained by WELT from conversations with representatives of a leading European intelligence service, Russian forces could reach the outskirts of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk by early 2027. The two cities form the center of the last major Ukrainian defensive belt in the Donbas.

Intelligence officials predict that Russian troops could complete the conquest of most of the region by next year. The human cost of that campaign, however, would likely be staggering. Hundreds of thousands more Russian soldiers could be killed or seriously wounded in the process.

Since the start of the war in 2022, Russia's military has suffered around 1.4 million casualties, according to estimates by analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, including up to 450,000 dead and nearly one million wounded.

Military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady, author of Attack: When War Comes to Us, offers a somewhat more optimistic assessment for Ukraine. Russia's advance, he argues, is progressing at its slowest pace since winter. "At the current rate, Donetsk region would not be fully captured until the early 2030s," he says.

A slowdown, however, should not be mistaken for a stabilization of the front lines. In some sectors, Kyiv's military position is deteriorating. Russia enjoys local superiority in first-person-view drones on certain stretches of the front, in some cases by a ratio of 10 to one. Meanwhile, 3,000-kilogram guided glide bombs continue to inflict heavy losses on Ukrainian forces in front-line areas.

Gady believes it's possible that Russian troops could reach Kramatorsk and Sloviansk as early as spring or summer 2027, but only under one condition.

"Russia needs mobilization if it wants to sustain or increase the current pace," he says. "Moscow is unlikely to do this before the elections, and if it does, Ukraine has no equivalent response available."

According to Gady, Russia's General Staff estimates that newly mobilized troops need around four months before they can have a meaningful impact at the front. A mobilization this autumn could therefore begin to shape events during the first half of 2027.

Col. Markus Reisner of the Austrian Armed Forces says Russia's summer offensive has so far fallen well short of Kremlin expectations. Nevertheless, Putin's troops continue to advance "slowly but steadily".

The decisive factor in the battle for the Donbas, he argues, will be Ukrainian logistics.

"The single most important capability influencing the fight for the Ukrainian defensive belt around Kramatorsk and Sloviansk is the ability to supply the defenders in those cities. If Russian forces succeed in disrupting those supply routes, Ukrainian defenders will be able to hold out only for a limited period."

Already, much of the resupply effort relies on heavy multicopter drones and uncrewed ground vehicles. Russian forces are systematically targeting these systems while simultaneously attempting to prevent the reinforcement and rotation of Ukrainian troops.

Reisner's warning is stark: "If the Ukrainians fail to break this vicious cycle, the defensive belt will fall." Ukrainian brigade commanders also acknowledge that Russia ultimately possesses the resources required to conquer the Donbas.

"Of course, Russia has the potential," Vadym Krykun, commander of the Lubart Brigade, told WELT earlier this year. "It remains the second-largest army in the world. The question is how far Russia is willing to go, how much further it is prepared to mobilize its economy and its population."

Krykun has been fighting in Donbas for more than a decade. Russian troops first entered the region in 2014, and fighting has continued ever since.

As recently as last year, there were hopes that a settlement over eastern Ukraine might pave the way for a ceasefire or even peace. At the end of 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed withdrawing Ukrainian troops from parts of the Donbas as part of a peace initiative, on the condition that Russia also withdraw and that the area be converted into an internationally monitored demilitarized zone, or "free economic zone." The Kremlin rejected the proposal, which was also supported by the United States.

The troops led by Fleshka and Sascha operate heavy "Vampire" and "Nemesis" bomber drones in the Donbas that can strike targets up to 50 kilometers away. They are complemented by reconnaissance drones, drone-based mine-laying systems, and ground robots.

"Our primary focus right now is eliminating their drone operators," Sascha says. "We located the enemy, bombed the position, and mined the area around it. So I would advise them to leave their foxholes and get as far away as possible."

His soldiers, he says, are doing everything they can to keep Ukrainian infantry alive. "The longer the infantry survives, the longer the cities hold."

Fleshka explains that the so-called "death zone," the area in which soldiers must expect drone attacks at any moment, has expanded dramatically in recent months.

The kill zone now stretches 20 kilometers deep in some places, and up to 50 kilometers in others.

"When they use small groups and start moving, and we detect them, nobody wants to let them get away," Sascha says. "Our priority is to eliminate them. There are so many Russians that they simply do not care. I don't know, it's a complicated subject. We eliminate them without much difficulty, but there are just so many of them."

Sascha then describes the Russian tactic in greater detail.

"The enemy sends people forward one at a time. Ten groups essentially means ten individuals."

If one reaches the designated position, another ten groups are sent forward. Eventually, one gets through, then another, then another, until six soldiers have assembled and can continue advancing together.

"Well, let's put it this way: it's a good tactic. An interesting tactic. I haven't come across anything quite like it before," he says.

According to Gady, this method of gradual infiltration and attrition is central to Russia's approach. "Cities do not fall through breakthroughs or house-to-house combat. They fall through exhaustion."

Fleshka fears that Druzhkivka could be the next city to come under serious threat.

"They have shifted their focus toward Sloviansk. They are already fighting in Mykolaivka."

Sascha also expects a fierce battle for Sloviansk. He insists that his men are ready. "It will be like Chasiv Yar. But how long did they assault Chasiv Yar? About a year, if I remember correctly."

He points to the terrain surrounding Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. "The landscape here works in our favor and against theirs. We hold the high ground and have cover. It will be a brutal meat grinder."

Experts doubt that a complete Russian conquest of the Donbas would necessarily persuade the Kremlin to enter serious ceasefire negotiations. "Putin will adjust his war aims depending on the condition of Ukraine's defenders," says Reisner.

Russia is presently targeting what he describes as one of Ukraine's Achilles heels: the critical shortage of air-defense ammunition, particularly for Patriot systems.

"The first major attacks indicate that Putin plans to subject Ukraine to sustained large-scale strikes this winter. He is following a strategy of exhaustion inspired by Svechin, the well-known Soviet military theorist."

Gady argues that, from Moscow's perspective, the Donbas may represent only an intermediate objective.

"The Donbas is an interim goal, not the final one. Russia's strategic objective remains bringing Ukraine back into its sphere of influence. According to Ukrainian intelligence, planning already exists for future operations toward Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Odesa, even if no timelines have been defined."

A genuine de-escalation, he adds, is politically difficult for Moscow.

"It would require scaling back Russia's war economy and explaining to the population why the war is being brought to an end."

This story, which first ran on WELT, comes courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from The Telegraph, POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.

• My people-pleasing tendencies kept me in a job that wasn't the right fit for too long.
• I prefer more structure and feedback than I was getting, and needed a change.
• After quitting, family and friends have said I seem lighter and happier.

As the oldest of five children, I've always seen things through. I've been the responsible one, the one who gets it done, and, most importantly, a self-imposed people-pleaser. These are just a few of the reasons it was so hard to quit a job that I devoted a decade to.

As a freelance writer, it's sometimes hard to find work, let alone steady work. I knew I could count on this position, but I also knew my mental health was being affected by it. There was less structure than what I preferred, and it just wasn't a good fit for me or the way I prefer to work, which includes plenty of routine, organization, and feedback.

It took me some time to come to a decision

I stuck it out for a while, constantly weighing whether to quit or stay. Staying meant a consistent income, continuing to contribute to my household, and having financial security (or as much as freelancing can give!). Quitting meant no financial security, and given my people-pleasing nature, I was terrified of leaving my other coworkers.

I was even more scared of what future employers would think about my decision. To quit or not to quit was a question I pondered for over a year. Since I was so indecisive and constantly worried about this choice, I knew my mental health was suffering. I was worried all the time, I had insomnia, gastrointestinal issues, and my often anxiety-induced epilepsy had reared its ugly head.

Finally, my husband and I talked, and he mentioned how he had been observing how upset I was. Earlier in the year, we had decided I'd stick it out until I found other work with similar pay. I had yet to find that other work, though, which made my decision even more nerve-racking. During our conversation, my husband talked about how he would support me if I quit, and we'd figure things out as we always did. He just wanted to see me happy and less stressed. That was very reassuring, but my perfectionism continued to rear its ugly head.

My husband said he'd supported my decision, and a therapy session solidified it

During a late May therapy session, I was discussing this yet-to-be-determined decision. My therapist saw how exasperated I was and simply and bluntly asked: "What is keeping you there?" She also reminded me that people leave jobs all the time for many reasons, and there was no reason to worry. It was a total lightbulb moment. I decided then and there that I was going to quit. The very next week, I left the organization.

It was a scary, yet oddly refreshing feeling. I felt free and excited for the next chapter. A tradition my husband has kept up for years is handwritten letters to me on my birthday and our anniversary. A lot of my July birthday letter talked about how he knew my decision wasn't easy, but he was proud that I did it. He said quitting was a brave thing to do, and he loved me even more for doing it.

After quitting, I've been happier and have had opportunities come my way

Since I left the organization, I have had so many opportunities come my way. Naturally, most of my worries have dissipated, even though there is still some financial uncertainty as I finish out the year. Family and friends have said I sound lighter and happier. I've been writing regularly for a few publications, and now I have more time to pitch publications and search for jobs.

My decision was the best idea for me, as it helped with my mental health and made me more inspired and excited for what's to come than ever before. It also reiterated how my husband and I are a team, and sometimes when one of us is down, the other steps up, and vice versa. All in all, the phrase "you got this" was something I repeated multiple times throughout this process. Now, I'm looking forward to whatever comes next.

• Vanessa Banh bought her first home but never planned on living in it.
• Bahn turned the four-bedroom home into two Airbnb properties, then turned the garage into two more.
• She said she'd rather make extra money than live in one of the units.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Vanessa Banh, 28, a former accountant turned entrepreneur who bought a four-bedroom house with a garage in Modesto, California, and turned it into four separate Airbnb properties. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I feel like my generation is half and half on whether they want to own a home.

Personally, I think it's really expensive now compared to our parents' generation. The cost of living and our wages compared to the cost of housing is just outrageous.

For me, I was always looking for different ways to get more money. I listened to a lot of real estate people and gurus, and thought owning a house was the way to go to build assets and real wealth long-term. So why not start now if I can?

I bought a house for $347,000 in 2022 as a fixer-upper and took my time.

It was actually a cash or hard-money loan-only sale. I had a friend who's a hard money lender, and he looked at the property, and he was like, "I can lend this for you." So we purchased it through him through hard money.

Then we were able to refinance it back out to a conventional loan within a month because it wasn't bad; it was just really old and needed some updating.

I knew later on I was going to turn it into a rental.

If you want to buy a house through the conventional route, you have to live in it for at least a year before you turn it into a rental.

The renovations took a year and a half, so that met the criteria already.

We closed in May 2022, but we didn't really start working on the renovations until August. My dad and I handled the renovations, took our time, and finished in July 2023.

I was just thinking about a long-term rental, but during the renovation process, my dad had different subcontractors walk through and give us some ideas.

I was also listening to a lot of podcasts — "Biggerpockets" and all that stuff — so I was like, "This could be an Airbnb."

Maybe six or eight months into the process, I thought, "Let's try to Airbnb this thing and see how it goes."

My first two Airbnbs were successes, so I turned my garage into two more

Renovations cost about $60,000. We had to replace the roof and add a whole new AC, so those were the biggest costs.

Everything else was just standard flooring, a new bathroom, new tile, and all that stuff.

When we were renovating the house, one of the subcontractors who my dad had brought up to help with one part of the rental said, "In this section of the house, you could literally make this its own little unit right here."

The layout was really perfect for it because there's already a door there, so all we had to do was just add a little stove and a little sink, and add a double lock on the door so it functioned as a separate unit.

So now there are two units in the house.

One of the units was rented out mostly for traveling professionals, which I didn't anticipate. Traveling nurses would come and stay for three months at a time — there was basically no vacancy. I didn't realize there was something called mid-term rentals. So I was like, "Wow, this is actually quite amazing."

I averaged about $3,500 to $4,500 in revenue. Cash flow was about $1,000 to $1,500 because my mortgage was about $2,000 and utilities and all that stuff was about $500.

I had a garage on the property that was just collecting dust.

When I bought this house, I was already imagining how we could turn that garage into an ADU. But it was more like, "How do I get enough money to build this out?"

I feel like the little unit in the back was working really well for me, and it seemed like there was a lot of demand for traveling nurses and traveling professionals.

My one-bedroom, one-bathroom unit was already going for $1,800, so I thought, if I can squeeze in two studios in the garage, I can get almost more than $1,800 times two.

It took me a few years of stacking cash.

After the renovation for the first two units was done, I started learning how to wholesale and flip homes. I was learning and actively doing that, and then I got enough cash to finally be able to start the next renovation process.

Once my plans were all done and final, I got three bids from contractors and started the renovation in November 2025. I always hoped that I would finish the garage conversion by the end of 2026. We finished in January 2026 — my contractor moved really fast.

The contractor's bid was about $100,000. After it was completely done, I paid another $8,500 because of miscellaneous costs, the city fees, and the architect's design.

The construction debt will be paid off in a few years, but it felt like the right move

I finished construction for the garage units in January, then I finished furnishing everything and getting it all ready for Airbnb by late February. In March, I started getting my first bookings.

For the first few months, I had a new-listing discount because if you have no reviews on Airbnb, it's harder for guests to book it. So to make it a little more competitive, I had a lower rate. I was bringing in about $1,600 to $1,800 per unit for the first few months.

But essentially, right now I'm getting about $2,000 each for the units, so I doubled the revenue I could make.

Of course, it also cost almost double for the construction because of the permits — I had to pay for two permits and all that because it's two ADUs.

I'm kind of paying myself off right now. I think it's going to take about two years to just pay that whole debt off, and then after that, it'll be fully cash-flowed.

I view real estate as a way to get ahead. I can absolutely live in one of my units, but if I can make money off of it — another $2,000 a month — I would rather do that right now. That's where my head's at right now.

I was like, "How do I optimize the current home that I have to make me more money?" Because I don't have a W-2, what can I do to help myself get into a better financial position?

I knew the first step was to own a home.

• My sister and I were both laid off from our jobs around the same time as our parents died.
• We decided to start a small business, selling vintage items, which is something our mom taught us.
• The small business is helping us through unemployment and face the grief.

When I walk into a suburban mid-century house with my sister, we're on the hunt for treasures that will make our customers happy — but we also like to marvel at the elaborate wallpaper in the bathroom.

We have time now to sift through the junk drawers and basement bookshelves. Within the last few years, we both were laid off from our jobs as writers and editors. While we continue to fling our résumés into the ring, we keep ourselves busy at estate sales and thrift stores.

We come from a family of thrifters and estate-sale lovers; our mother was an avid collector with an eye for beautiful and valuable antiques. She taught her three daughters how to find treasures in the junk —what to look for, how to bargain, and which cleaning potions worked best to restore items to their former glory.

I've always enjoyed the thrill of the hunt, but I never imagined turning our shared love for vintage into a small business.

My sister and I were laid off

I sensed a wave of layoffs coming in digital media before it happened. A strange mix of optimism and despair coursed through me as I tried to regroup. I quickly landed a new job, only to be let go from that role a year later.

Meanwhile, my younger sister had lost her job as part of mass layoffs at a major corporation. We were both reeling while grieving the loss of our mother and now also caring for our elderly father in our childhood home.

With the looming threat of AI, the job market looked bleak.

Layoffs disrupt and disorient. It's hard to know how to spend your time when there's suddenly so much of it. It's easy to sink into the couch and think your new job is just remembering to shower and watching every episode of "Love Island."

Facing job loss — and the grief of losing both of our parents within six years — my younger sister and I first reviewed our mom's epic collection for items we could sell. We also started hitting estate sales, thrift shops, antique malls, and garage sales more frequently.

Starting a business together was the answer

As we gathered more goods, I decided to make it official and established Travel Far Now Vintage, an Etsy shop, in 2023.

I handle most aspects of the business — packing, shipping, and accounting — and I rely on the keen curatorial eye of my younger sister, who can walk into any estate sale or thrift shop and score the most unusual vintage items hidden in the heaps.

Together, we found unexpected joy during some of the most challenging years of our lives.

There's no shortage of tasks to fill the time — from sourcing to cleaning, listing to packing, shipping to accounting, posting, and connecting with new clients — the business keeps us energized against the lethargy of layoffs.

Consistency is key. While we continue to search for meaningful full-time roles, running a vintage business keeps us alert, active, and curious about the objects we collect within an ever-changing marketplace.

Luckily, no two days are alike. There's always someone looking for that exact vintage object that connects them with the past.

The business has also helped us heal

Running a vintage business is the ultimate crash course in grief, with lessons on letting go at every turn.

There's an alchemy to this work. By giving abandoned objects a second chance at life, I've developed a deeper appreciation for the fleeting nature of time.

I've come to think of myself as a "memory merchant," dealing in nostalgia through vintage objects and the stories they tell about our lives.

When a client reaches out to me about an analog Sunbeam timer for sale, it's not just about the timer, but about connecting with a core memory in their childhood kitchen. Hearing these stories helps me connect with my own memories and make peace with the past.

Our vintage shop is an ode to our mother — the ultimate thrifter and sifter — who taught us the ropes. When we're out shopping, we always hear our mom's voice in the aisles.

"Do you know what this is?" she asks with a twinkle in her eye. "Yes, Mom, we know," we answer, and continue scanning the shelves for more unique treasures.

Operating this small vintage business with my sister has strengthened our bond as we remember our mom together. The search alone is therapeutic, but it's also immensely healing to know we can breathe new life into old things.

We're looking for the brightest up-and-comers on Wall Street.

Since 2017, Business Insider's Rising Stars of Wall Street list has highlighted the young professionals redefining the finance industry. We've featured traders rewriting the playbook, investors shaping private markets, and influential dealmakers across firms such as Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, BlackRock, and Citadel, who quickly left their mark.

Many of these honorees have since risen to lead businesses and shape the industry's direction.

We're now seeking nominations for our fall 2026 list, and we want to hear from you. Submit your suggestions via this form.

In the meantime, meet the stars we've highlighted in the past.

2025's Rising Stars of Wall Street

The latest class of young finance leaders you need to know — and what you need to know about them.

Advice and hacks from the top

We asked the 2025 Rising Star honorees for their top tips for college grads, how they spent their first big paychecks, and about their routines.

A look at past Rising Stars of Wall Street lists

Meet the classes of the past, made up of individuals who continue to succeed in one of the most competitive industries in the world.

• I recently moved from a single-family home to a small apartment.
• During the move, I had to sort through my possessions and decide what to keep and what to let go of.
• I realized I didn't need most of my stuff, though I did keep a Tupperware bowl from my childhood.

Recently, after a major change in my personal life, I relocated from a single-family home to a 660-square-foot apartment. Transitions are hardly ever easy. Among all the uncertainty that comes with moving from a large living space to a smaller one is figuring out what to do with all your stuff. It's a weird predicament to be in, standing inside what is soon to be your former house, surrounded by possessions and knowing that not all of them can come with you.

When I started packing things up, some decisions took all of two seconds. The television was coming with me. So were my clothes, kitchenware, and the handful of pieces of furniture that would actually fit in my new apartment. Easy.

After that, though? That's when the real decisions get made.

I made three piles to help me decide what to take with me

I found myself standing in the middle of the room holding things that had somehow survived every move I'd ever made. Empty iPhone boxes? Straight into the trash. Old moto jacket? That one stayed in my hands for a long bit while I tried to decide whether I still liked it or just liked the version of myself who used to wear it.

Before long, I'd created three piles: keep, donate, and one more — the one that kept growing, and growing, and growing. The pile of "indecidables."

As a kid, we had a very old-school, oversize yellow Tupperware bowl that served primarily as our popcorn bowl, but my mom used it at Christmastime to store her cookies. When I tell you this bowl is big, I mean you had to carry it with both hands, even as an adult. And I certainly didn't need it. I also didn't have a place to store it. It was in and out of the toss pile more times than I care to mention.

Decluttering during the move changed my relationship with possessions

Downsizing is low-key grief. You don't realize the invisible burden your possessions have been until it's time to part ways with them. Every box you tape shut is a decision. Every trash bag, a choice.

As I began settling into my new place, I figured I'd miss the stuff I couldn't keep. What really surprised me, though, was how quickly it all kind of faded from my consciousness. It made me wonder whether I'd been hanging onto all of it for all those years because I needed it, or because I hadn't bothered to stop to ask if I still did.

A few weeks after moving in, I needed my drill to put something together. After searching high and low for the thing, I came to the horrifying realization that somewhere along the way, during my downsizing, the drill had either been tossed or donated. I was pretty annoyed with myself at first, wondering what other important things hadn't made it to the new place.

The weird thing is, other than the drill, I couldn't recall a single other item that I actually missed. I guess I'd thought of all my stuff as just that: one big collective item. When I tried to break that image down into individual possessions, I began to realize that maybe none of it was nearly as important as I'd always thought.

Still, though, I did end up grabbing that oversize Tupperware bowl as I was leaving. The thing is, I can't really point to a single defining memory associated with it. It wasn't the bowl from my birthday party or the one my mom always mixed cookie dough in, or anything like that. It was simply...there. Filled with popcorn during movie nights. Filled with Christmas cookies every December. It had been part of the background of my life for so long that leaving it behind felt stranger than finding a place for it in my new apartment.

However, I still don't know where to keep it. It doesn't fit comfortably in any cabinet, so it wanders from shelf to countertop to pantry. But every time I see it, I'm reminded that not every possession earns its place because it's useful. Some earn it simply because they've quietly been with us for the whole time.

I had my second child two months ago, so although I feel like a pro this time around, I'm still surviving on minimal sleep and changing routines. So, I really thought about what would brighten a new mom's day and even have a practical component to help with this (exhausting) time in her life.

Call me crazy, but I believe a gift for a new mom should be… for the new mom. Unless you know she specifically wants a gadget for her baby, I suggest sticking with a surprise just for her. If you were to ask a new mom what she wants, she'd probably say "more sleep." Since you can't buy that, I leaned into gifts that'll make her days easier, cuter, or sweeter.

See more of the best gifts for her, including options for your wife or sister.

Our favorite gifts for new moms

• A dishwasher-safe companion — HydroJug x Anthropologie 40 oz. Traveler Water Bottle
• A sleek grip on her health — Oura Ring 5, available on Amazon
• A non-last-minute bouquet — The Bouqs Co. Flower Delivery Service, available at The Bouqs Co.

A guaranteed hot cup of coffee

Ember Smart Mug 2, available at Amazon

She'll never have to drink lukewarm coffee again. Thanks to the Ember mug, a hot drink is waiting for her when she wants it. The smart design maintains beverage temperature between 120 and 145 degrees Fahrenheit and is controlled via an app. One of my favorite parts of this gadget is that it remembers the last setting I had it on, so it's always at the right temperature when I use it again.

A gentle push for deep sleep

Nodpod Sleep Mask, available at Amazon

An eye mask meets a weighted blanket with the Nodpod. Ideal for side and back sleepers, the four-pod design is the strap-free solution to better relaxation. It hits the pressure points just right to offer a stress-reducing experience before she drifts off. The brand calls it three-minute magic— and it's one of our favorite sleep masks, too!

A sweet way to rep her new name

Gorjana Mama Wilder Necklace, available at Gorjana

She went through nine months of pregnancy and an involved delivery, so she earned every bit of being called mama. Gorjana is one of our favorite brands for affordable fine jewelry. This Gorjana necklace is 18-karat gold-plated and adjustable, ranging from 16 to 18 inches. Gorjana is also donating 10% of net sales from mama necklaces to Baby2Baby. If you want to go with a more personalized name plate necklace with her child's name, we also like Oak and Luna.

A personalized story from her baby

The Hope Haus Personalized Book, available at Etsy

Written as a love letter from baby to mommy, this Etsy book is customized with the baby's name, age, and the name they use for their mom. It'll quickly become the story she reaches for at bedtime as she rocks her little one to sleep. Don't be surprised if she sheds a tear over the tender story that reminds her how sweet this time is.

A time-saving way to feel like herself again

Shark Beauty FlexStyle Hair Blow Dryer & Multi-Styler, available at Amazon

One of the best gifts you can give a new mom is the chance to feel more like herself, and that may involve getting ready in the morning. I have this Shark blow-dryer and styler system, and I love that it dries my strands quickly without too much heat. It comes with various attachments for drying, smoothing, curling, and more, so she can feel like a woman, not just a mom.

A high-quality upgrade to her everyday basics

Quince Mongolian Cashmere Tee, available at Quince

I swear by Quince clothing, so I know she'll feel a little more put-together without sacrificing comfort in this cashmere tee. She might already own the brand's viral $50 cashmere sweater, but now she'll be ready for the warmer weather ahead. The super-soft top comes in a range of colors, including spring-worthy pastels. It's also available in plus-size.

A shiny way to track her health

Oura Ring 5, available on Amazon

It's more important than ever for a new mom to keep an eye on her health, and the Oura Ring 5 can help her do just that. It monitors sleep (or lack thereof), activity, stress, heart health, and dozens of other metrics. The nifty device offers up to nine days of battery life, so she won't have to add another to-do item to her list. Read our Oura Ring 5 review.

A personalized tote for all of her extras

L.L.Bean Boat and Tote, available at L.L.Bean

She probably already has a diaper bag, but trust me: The beloved L.L.Bean tote will not go to waste. It comes in a range of sizes and colors, and you can even customize it with a name, single letter, or initials. Pro tip: Select the long handle option so she can throw this bag over her shoulder, or see more of the best canvas tote bags we've tested.

A quiet way to watch shows and catch up on podcasts

Apple AirPods 4, available at Amazon

When she doesn't want to risk waking the baby while catching up on her favorite podcast or needs to keep her hands free for pushing the stroller, these wireless earbuds will do the trick. With up to 30 hours of battery life, she can wear these during seemingly never-ending overnights to stay entertained. I use my AirPods every single day, and they especially come in handy when my baby insists on a contact nap.

Read more on the best Apple AirPods.

A luxe pajama set

Cozy Earth Bamboo Stretch-Knit Pajama Set, available at Cozy Earth

Prepare to introduce her to her new favorite pajamas with this Cozy Earth bamboo set, one of our favorite cooling pajamas. Available in long- and short-sleeve styles with pants or shorts, in multiple colors and sizes XS-XXL, this set is the definition of luxurious PJs. I own two pairs — don't sleep on the limited-edition patterns! I love the relaxed fit and button-up design, which comes in handy for breastfeeding.

See more of the best women's pajamas.

Skincare that guarantees a magical glow

Charlotte Tilbury Immediate Skin Revival + Flawless Base Kit, available at Nordstrom

Whether she goes fresh-faced or wears makeup, she'll be glowing with this Charlotte Tilbury set that hydrates and plumps for a glowy look. The set includes the brand's beloved Magic Cream, often described as a "facelift in a jar." No amount of sleep deprivation can stand up to this strong trio.

A spa experience at home

Renpho Foot Massager Machine, available at Amazon

If she can't get to the spa, bring the spa to her! This foot massager features deep-kneading technology to target the entire foot. It has three squeeze intensities for a custom experience, and the optional heat function is just the cherry on top. She'll be happy to unwind from busy days with some TLC.

A better quality bouquet

The Bouqs Co. Flower Delivery Service, available at The Bouqs Co.

You can't go wrong with flowers… that is, if you actually put thought into them instead of grabbing a sad-looking bundle at the last second. Take the extra time with a bouquet from The Bouqs. Co., which is comprised of responsibly sourced farm-fresh flowers. You can expect a bold, beautiful creation like she's never received before. The Bouqs also offers many next-day delivery options and same-day delivery in select cities. See more of why it's our favorite flower delivery service.

A heartfelt flower that will never die

Glitter Design Co. Keepsake Flower Craft, available at Etsy

Surprise her with the first gift from her little one. This Etsy keepsake craft lets you dip the child's hand in paint and press it onto a flower. The personalization on the pot is adorable, too, so it's truly a thoughtful surprise that'll last long after her favorite flowers have wilted.

A hands-free way to get out the door

Kizik Camden Slip-On Sneaker, available at Nordstrom

Her hands are full these days, so make it easier for her to leave the house. These new Kizik Camden sneakers will become her go-to white sneakers. I never understood why my husband and dad like this brand so much until I got these shoes myself. There's no bending down and no tying of laces, which is ideal when I have both kids in tow. Read our Kiziks review.

A safer way to enjoy a candle

Marycele Candle Warmer Lamp, available on Amazon

As much as she loves candles, she might be wary of lighting them as often with a baby around. A candle warmer lamp. It warms the wax to release the delicious scent — all without an open flame. This Marycele option comes in a variety of fun colors and shapes, making it a piece that doubles as home décor. (I bought a candle lamp warmer from this brand for my mom two Mother's Days ago, and she still uses it at her office!)

A leakproof tumbler to stay hydrated (and keep drinks cold)

HydroJug x Anthropologie 40 oz. Traveler Water Bottle

Chances are that she's not drinking enough water, but she'll be happy to reach for this Hydrojug Anthro collab spelling out Mom" in Anthro's signature bistro tile print. I use my 40-ounce cup every day, and I love being greeted by ice-cold water next to my bed during a 3 a.m. feeding. The smart design means it fits in my car's cupholder, too, and has a leak-proof straw design. Pro tip: Upgrade your gift by presenting it with fresh flowers.

A versatile machine to get her caffeine in

Ninja Luxe Café Premier 3-in-1 Espresso Machine, available at Amazon

It goes without saying that coffee becomes even more important at this time in her life, and a legit espresso machine will keep her properly caffeinated. The Ninja Luxe Café Premier brews espresso, coffee, and cold brew, so she can brew whatever coffee beverage she desires on demand. The built-in milk frother means cappuccinos and lattes are on the horizon, too!

A cozy reminder that she's doing amazing

Favorite Daughter Mom Crew Socks, available at Amazon

If she's not one to blast "mom" on her clothing or accessories, this three-pack of cotton-blend crew socks will be just right. Even the most confident moms deserve a reminder that they're doing a great job, and these Favorite Daughter socks do just that. The brand was founded by celebrities and fellow moms Erin and Sara Foster.

A custom charm of her baby

Mona Customizable Portrait Pendant, available at Raiz

Consider Raiz's custom charms the modern-day locket. Upload a photo of her newborn and Raiz will convert it into a miniature photo-frame charm to capture a moment she'll proudly wear day to day. These small charms are handmade in California from brass with 24k PVD Coating (Gold Color) or Rhodium-Plated Brass, and they also introduced an heirloom collection made of sterling silver or 14K gold for an indulgent gift. They can be worn individually on a bracelet or necklace, or grouped in a cluster of charms.

A sweet treat to end a long day

Milk Bar The Cookie Faves Tin, available at Milk Bar

Postpartum hunger is real, and she more than anyone deserves a sweet treat. From the famous Milk Bar bakery in New York City, this cookie tin offers four flavors: Compost Cookies, Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookies, Confetti Cookies, and Chocolate Chip Chunk Cookies. Each one is individually wrapped, so she can enjoy them over time.

• Sergio Freitas is a senior director of engineering at Cisco and oversees 10 to 20 agents daily.
• Now that agents are writing more code, it requires more review, Freitas said.
• While he's not putting in more hours, he said the work is faster-paced and can feel more intense.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sergio Freitas, senior director of engineering at Cisco, based in Lisbon, Portugal. His identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I started as a software engineer, became a manager, and currently work as a director of engineering at Cisco, with four teams based in Portugal.

Software engineering has always gone through changes. There are always new technologies you have to learn, like programming languages or frameworks. Now, it's the way engineers work that's changing rapidly, and in the last year, it's changed significantly. People have to adapt to that, and that can cause stress.

The biggest change came after frontier models launched at the end of last year, like Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5. That's when AI really started to be embedded in our workflows, and we began delegating and working with agents to do software engineering. We were using AI before, but more for autocomplete and prompting.

Agentic AI has changed our work

Our work as software engineers has changed from crafting the code to be focused on architecture, design, managing workflows and agentic orchestration. Engineers are shifting from manual work to becoming system architects and workflow orchestrators, allowing them to solve larger, more complex architectural problems.

The agents are like teammates and I manage 10 to 20 agents daily, which manage other agents. The number of agents they manage depends on the complexity of the task. The main orchestrator agent can spawn sub-agents to complete specific tasks.

They're always running and they're aware of collaboration platform notifications, GitHub pull requests, and other integrations when given explicit permission. For example, based on the description of a ticket in Jira, which is our project management and issue-tracking tool, an agent creates the code, and then that has to be reviewed by the person who owns the agent. It then goes through a review process, where at least two engineers have to review the code.

About four months ago, we moved into loop engineering, where, instead of the agent asking questions, it loops, or keeps working until it gets the final response.

Sometimes, depending on what needs to be done, the agent can ask for authorization to connect to certain systems or perform certain operations. More and more, it's autonomous, but strict guardrails remain.

I'm reviewing more work

There's a lot of value in having AI work with engineers, but they need to be conscious about reviewing the code. Everything that gets delivered to production is the human's responsibility, not the agent's.

I'm not working more hours, but there is an aspect of AI that brings, in many occasions, more work to the table because it can do more.

Cisco focuses a lot on security. So there are a lot of security scans you need to run, and conversations with the legal team that need to happen.

It's a faster-paced job

As engineers adapt to this new way of working, some initial fatigue comes from the ability to do more. You have to shift your attention a lot, which slows you down if you're not completing tasks end-to-end.

As engineers adapt to higher daily output and multi-threaded collaboration with agents, they need to build new mental habits around multitasking and asynchronous review, which is a different cognitive exercise from traditional coding.

It's a wider scope. At the end of the day, you feel you were more focused, but not in the way when you're coding and have to be in the zone for extended periods.

Crafting code was a skill that you built, and not many people had it. It kind of felt like a superpower of being able to create something from scratch and code it yourself. If you're really into the code-crafting piece, it's a big change that some engineers struggle with.

At the end of the day, it felt lighter. Now with the management of agents, it's faster-paced.

• Micro dramas should be easy to ignore: How big could the market be for low-budget soap operas, designed to be consumed in one-minute chunks?
• Pretty big, it turns out: Possibly $14 billion a year.
• Much of that comes from China, where micro dramas started. But US apps like CandyJar say they're seeing real growth. And TikTok is looming …

What if you could watch short videos on your phone? What if you could pay people to watch those videos?

I know, I know: I'm describing Quibi, the infamous app that flopped in 2020.

But: I'm also describing micro dramas — low-budget movies cut into one-minute chunks. And those do seem to be working: Consumers may be spending as much as $14 billion on them this year.

Most of that spending is happening in China, where the genre took off. But micro dramas are breaking through in the US, too: Mainstream video platforms like Peacock are adding them to the mix, and US-based companies like CandyJar say they're seeing very fast growth as well.

It may be that micro dramas have limited appeal, and won't grow beyond their current audience — primarily women looking for quick diversions, via Harlequin-style romances. But even if micro dramas end there, they would still represent a real change in the way at least some Americans get, and pay for, entertainment.

Ali Albazaz thinks they will become much bigger: He's the CEO of Inkitt, a startup that began as a platform for amateur writers, which is now morphing into a micro drama player. It's the company that owns CandyJar, and which has also launched Ironblood, a micro drama vendor aimed at dudes who are happy to watch AI-generated action/adventure tales.

I think also think it's possible that micro dramas get truly big in the US. But it's also possible to imagine that when that happens, the industry will be dominated by TikTok and Meta's Reels.

Those platforms are already the main way apps like CandyJar find their customers. So why not just keep the whole thing for themselves?

And indeed, TikTok is trying out multiple ways to tackle micro dramas, including a free, ad-supported app, as well as a paid version.

"The competition is ruthless," Albazaz acknowledges. "There is risk and threat from every side."

Albazaz walked me through micro drama economics and audience in the most recent episode of my Channels podcast, which also included an industry overview from Hernan Lopez, who runs the Owl & Co. entertainment consultancy. You can hear both conversations in their entirety here. The following is an edited excerpt of my talk with Albazaz.

Peter Kafka: There's no shortage of short-form entertainment out there. Reels and TikTok give it to me for free, and they tune it to what I want.

What are micro dramas providing that isn't already there, and why do people pay to watch them?

Ali Albazaz: The user-generated content that you get on TikTok and so on don't do serialized content. So you don't have full dramas being told.

Micro dramas really taught us that you can chop the movie into 90-second-long episodes and then sell individual episodes or a subscription.

What's your budget for these shows?

It costs about $200,000 to do a physical production in Los Angeles at this point. You can go from $150,000 to $300,000. We tend to be at the higher end.

Does the production value matter to consumers? A lot of the stuff I see seems to be … the polite word, I guess, is "inexpensive." It seems like people are quite comfortable with that. What is the urge to up the ante on your end?

You're correct to say that the majority of micro dramas look [like] very low-quality. But we really have very high expectations from our team, and we really want to stand out that way.

CandyJar, and most micro dramas, are aimed towards women. You also recently launched Ironblood — action/adventure aimed at men. With those shows, you really lean into the idea that you're making them with AI. Why is that important to disclose, and are you worried about AI pushback?

AI is allowing us to create movies that would normally be predominantly-CGI based, very, very cheaply.

You can't afford Marvel-level CGI, but you can do an AI version of it.

That's right. We had so many great stories that are superhero and action-based, and previously it would cost us $200 million to go out and produce them.

But some people who are using AI try to hide it, and if it comes out that they're using it, it's a scandal. You guys clearly don't think that's a problem.

We don't want to lie, right? We want to be open and honest with our users.

Do these adventure stories that you're telling on Ironblood have the same budget as the romances you're showing on CandyJar?

No. They end up being significantly cheaper. We're talking $10,000 to $50,000.

What's the future of your business? Figuring out other micro drama formats? Or trying to branch out into things like traditional TV shows and movies?

We're building the operating system for storytellers, whether they want to create a bestselling book, audiobook, or movie.

We want to have movies that you can watch in the cinema. We want to create theme parks at some point. The idea is to really help storytellers tell their stories in all possible formats.

• The AI trade is full of bottlenecks.
• Some, like power and memory, are bullish for those investments.
• But market pros say one hurdle presents a new risk: data center backlash.

You've probably seen the protests and spirited town halls full of concerned citizens opposing a new data center in their backyard.

It's part of a growing grassroots trend that's mobilized people across the political spectrum. The noisy, water-hogging structures, they say, are a blight on their communities, and some projects have been canceled as a result of the opposition.

Unlike other bottlenecks within the AI trade like power and memory compute, which have resulted in a kind of scarcity that's been bullish for assets linked to those industries, market experts say public hate for AI data centers is a risk investors need to be aware of.

"Markets operate within rules set by voters and governments…and those rules are becoming more restrictive," Nohshad Shah, head of fixed income sales EMEA at Citadel Securities, wrote last week. "The next compute bottleneck may not be silicon, or even electricity…it may be permission."

So far, the movement to oppose data centers has proven successful in many places.

According to The Atlantic Council think tank, 75 data center projects across the US, worth roughly $130 billion, were delayed or cancelled when local communities stood together in protest in the first quarter of 2026. A Fayetteville, Georgia resident who helped block a data center construction project in his home town told Business Insider that the experience showed him how much power locals truly have to stymie new projects.

Meanwhile, governors such as New York's Kathy Hochul and Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro have cracked down on data centers. The trend prompted Morgan Stanley analysts to flag local opposition movements as a growing problem for the AI trade, a sentiment that more investors are coming to share.

Andrejka Bernatova, founder and CEO of investment firm Dynamix Corporation, told Business Insider that while she still sees power as a major constraint for the data center movement, she also views local opposition as a problem that shouldn't be written off.

"I think investors absolutely need to pay attention to it," she told Business Insider. "We are already seeing firsthand that the growth of AI and data centers is constrained by power. If you then add permitting, siting and local community opposition, obviously that makes getting these projects built even harder."

Others say that it has already become a problem for the AI trade and that investors should position accordingly. Max Kulyk, CEO of wealth management firm Chicory Wealth, said that his team regards it as a significant risk that is likely to get worse.

"A slowdown results in fewer orders for the physical inputs and semiconductors into datacenters, while also limiting the compute available for AI models," he said. "It could also delay revenue for some companies that took on large amounts of debt to finance their datacenter buildouts. This outcome hurts semiconductors, physical AI inputs, and hyperscalers alike."

Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management, has a similar concern, noting that data opposition could slow the AI adoption rate at a time when a dearth of compute power is already pushing token prices up, making it hard for businesses to pay for their AI use.

"I would say that land is the next concern in the data center build out with a fair amount of Not In My BackYard (NIMBY) that is showing up in local and mid-term politics that does make sense as a bottleneck," he added.

• Business Insider's reporter Charissa Cheong spent hours interview people who took career breaks.
• She turned the interviews into her series My Big Break, which explores how the people bounced back.
• She learned a lot from the interviewees, including how sacrifice can be character-building.

Over the past four months, I've spent hours interviewing people who were brave enough to take a career break.

I wanted to know if and how they overcame the many obstacles career returners face when trying to crack the job market. It all built up to the series My Big Break, which told a diverse range of stories, from stepping away to care for a child with autism, caring for parents until their final breaths, and moving to another country with family and leaving a job behind.

As someone who isn't planning a career break any time soon, one thing I didn't expect was to learn so much from the people who shared their stories with me. Although their journeys weren't always smooth, I took comfort in seeing how they adapted, found ways to move forward in their careers, and learned lessons that shaped their character.

Here are three lessons I learned.

1. Your network can help your career comeback

In my fantasy career break, I'd be offline and unplugged as much as possible. But the more interviews I did, the more I noticed how big a difference staying in touch with one's network can make in a comeback.

When Nicki Schroeder, a UK-based media lawyer, tried to re-enter her industry after 10 years, her contacts helped her get back up to speed, meaning she was prepared for her successful job interview. The same contacts then equipped her with a list of key precedents decided while she was out of the workforce.

Talking to Schroeder made me reflect on how significant help from people you know and trust can be, especially when you feel a bit rusty after taking time off.

In the case of Ramya Ramesh, a semiconductor professional who worried she'd never get another job after a six-year career break, her former colleagues encouraged her to apply for an opportunity in her old department. Meanwhile, Adam Stewart, an ex-Googler who took an eight-month break, said that he turned to former colleagues for advice about his next steps, while also making new connections.

2. A career break is an opportunity to open yourself up to new things

Not all of the people I spoke to returned to their original industry. Mounika Chinnam and Natasya Pawanteh both felt reentering their industries would be challenging after long absences.

The tech industry had transformed significantly during Chinnam's seven-year break, so she was open to non-technical jobs. Becoming an intern for a digital marketing company at 31 with colleagues who were younger than her felt a little strange, but it enabled her to land a full-time role in a new industry.

Pawanteh thought it would be an uphill battle getting anyone in geology to give her a chance after a seven-year break. She tried volunteering, leading to her transition into nonprofit work.

Seeing how happy Pawanteh and Chinnam seemed in their new industries, which they may not have landed in had they not taken a career break, made me consider the value of trying new things and keeping an open mind.

I felt similarly inspired when I met Glenn Stephenson, who took a break from his "safe" career at PwC to experiment with his own business. I like to think of myself as open to new things, but seeing someone take such a big leap made me question how far I'd go to explore an idea or passion.

3. Sacrifice can be character-building

I'm still at a relatively early stage in my career, and my friends and I often discuss whether we'd want to pause work when we have kids. I've never been sure how to answer, partly because my parents worked while I was growing up.

Meeting people like Schroeder and Pawanteh, who stepped back to become carers, gave me an insight into the costs and sacrifices that come with pausing a fruitful career to invest in someone else.

Hearing about the energy and effort they expended, I felt challenged by how, as good as having a fulfilling job is, our collective focus on climbing corporate ladders, getting promoted, and garnering likes on LinkedIn can make us quite self-centered. It's something Pawanteh captured well when she talked about why she decided not to return to her geology career.

To quote from her as-told-to essay: "I'd loved geology since I was 16, but I realized I had a selfish outlook on life, all about me, me, me. Caring for my parents made me realize what it's like to be present for another human being."

Her story in particular made me hope that, if there came a time when a loved one needed me, I'd have the love and selflessness required to put my career aside for them.

As Pawanteh said of her parents in her as-told-to essay: "It was a privilege to look after them until the end of their days, and I think that will be the greatest achievement of my life."

You can read all the stories mentioned here in Business Insider's series, My Big Break.

• Warren Buffett celebrates his 96th birthday on Sunday.
• He's retired as CEO, bet big on Alphabet, and ramped up his giving over the past 12 months.
• Here are the highlights from the legendary investor's landmark year.

Happy birthday, Mr. Buffett.

Investing legend Warren Buffett turns 96 on Sunday, and the 12 months since his 95th birthday have been truly transformational, featuring a huge career move and a major new investment. He's also accelerated his charitable giving and dispensed plenty of his trademark wit and wisdom.

Into the next chapter

For his Thanksgiving message, Buffett penned a love letter to his hometown of Omaha, reflected on his good fortune, and thanked the many people who helped him throughout his life.

Buffett, who has pledged to donate virtually all of his wealth to good causes, said he would speed up his giving as he wanted his children to be the ones who distribute his fortune.

He also encouraged his followers to learn from their mistakes, choose good role models, live up to the obituaries they want for themselves, and care for others.

"When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world," he wrote. "Kindness is costless but also priceless."

Buffett retired as Berkshire Hathaway CEO at the end of December after six decades in charge. He remains chairman of the company, which he transformed from a failing textile mill into a $1 trillion juggernaut.

Sharing life lessons

Buffett shared several pieces of life advice during a CNBC interview aired in January but filmed in May 2025.

The billionaire warned against getting into debt as it leaves people "underwater" and unable to escape.

He urged parents to practice what they preach and set good examples for their kids: "If you want to have good children, be a good parent."

Buffett also recommended people find jobs they love so much that the "paycheck is incidental to what you're doing."

The bargain hunter also vented about high asset prices constraining him from deploying Berkshire's capital, which has caused its cash pile to balloon.

He said he'd be "willing to spend $100 billion this afternoon," as he'd much rather have that money in a quality business than in cash.

The past and the present

Berkshire's annual report highlighted Buffett's remarkable track record: Berkshire stock rose by about 6,100,000% between 1965 and 2025, trouncing the S&P 500's roughly 46,100% return, including dividends, over the same period.

It also showed the power of Buffett's stock picks. Berkshire's Apple stake was worth 10 times its cost base at the end of December. Coca-Cola was up 21-fold, American Express was up 45-fold, and Moody's was up 51-fold.

In a March interview with CNBC, Buffett said his life hadn't changed much since retiring as CEO. He's still commuting to Berkshire's headquarters in downtown Omaha five days a week, and continuing to pick stocks and field calls about potential acquisitions, albeit with his successor Greg Abel having the final say.

Buffett also sat for a surprise interview during Berkshire's annual shareholder meeting in May. He warned of a "gambling mood" in markets, describing it as a "church with a casino attached."

He said it was "not an ideal environment" for deploying cash, so he and his team were having to "pick our spots."

Buffett also cracked a few jokes, replying when asked whether he'd met the new managers of some of Berkshire's key holdings: "I haven't met the old managers."

Still in the mix

In his July letter about his philanthropy, Buffett said he hoped to distribute his entire Berkshire fortune, over $140 billion, to good causes by the end of 2034.

Buffett also told CNBC at the time that he'd "read a great deal" about his friend Bill Gates' ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and that while it was a "distasteful" situation, everyone makes mistakes when judging people.

In the same interview, Buffett said he made the surprising call to invest in Alphabet last summer. Berkshire built that stake from scratch to nearly $38 billion by the end of June, making Google's parent company the third-biggest position in its stock portfolio after Apple and American Express.

If Buffett is still behind that bet — likely given his early involvement, the size of the wager, and his confirmation that he's still picking stocks as chairman — it could be his last big play.

Weeks away from his 96th birthday, Buffett said he felt fortunate to be alive and healthy, and while he was "losing marbles," he'd "accumulated marbles for a longer time than I deserved, and that's just a matter of luck."

• Tech companies are competing fiercely for workers who can help them win the AI race.
• We asked eight tech workers for their dream employers — and the companies they'd pass on.
• Some favored OpenAI or Anthropic, while others preferred Big Tech.

While tech companies are pouring billions into AI infrastructure, they are also competing fiercely for AI talent — and the AI boom is reshaping the choices available to workers.

Alongside established giants like Apple, Google, and Amazon, frontier AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic now offer the chance to work at the edge of a technological shift, with potentially significant financial upside. Meanwhile, years of tech layoffs have made job security a bigger consideration for many workers.

We asked eight tech workers about their dream employer, the Big Tech companies they're most and least interested in, and whether they've pursued jobs at OpenAI or Anthropic. (Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.)

AI labs have come calling. I haven't pursued them.

Abhinav Bohra is a senior applied scientist at Amazon. He's in his 30s and lives in Seattle.

Have you tried to land a job at an AI lab like OpenAI or Anthropic?

A couple of recruiters for AI labs have reached out to me, including one at another Big Tech company. I took the calls but never pursued them.

Labs hire people to make models smarter. I build recommendation engines, and a frontier lab has no real use for one yet: no catalog, no sellers, no shoppers to rank for. The day one of them runs an actual marketplace, people like me get very interested in them. We're not there yet.

Between Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and NVIDIA, which company would you most (or least) want to work for?

Amazon, which is boring, so here's the runner-up: NVIDIA. Recommendation at scale has become an inference cost problem. Running a big model once is cheap. Running it for every search and every shopper in real time is where the money goes. When your unit of progress is the millisecond, NVIDIA sits upstream of everything.

Each company could be a good fit for someone in my field, but I also imagine they all have teams I'd love and teams I'd dread.

I'd choose Anthropic for its values

Mike Kostersitz is a senior director, product management at Nike. He's in his early 60s and lives in Oregon.

If you could work for any tech company, what would it be?

If I had to look outside Nike, Anthropic would be my dream employer. The pull is real, and the company's stated values align more closely with my own than some other companies.

I took note when earlier this year, Anthropic refused a Pentagon push to strip out restrictions on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons use, a stand their own CFO said could cost the company billions in revenue. That's the kind of "values over dollars" moment most companies only talk about.

I don't expect that to hold forever. Once they IPO, the pull toward shareholder value will grow, and I'd expect other priorities to erode over time as a result. But I'd still pick Anthropic as my top choice.

Between Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and NVIDIA, which company would you most (or least) want to work for?

Apple, hands down, I love the products and what the culture represents. Least would be Amazon. I have a number of friends who are current or former Amazon employees on the tech side, and not one of them has ever seemed excited to go to work there or felt like they were making a difference, beyond the paycheck being strong.

I haven't applied to OpenAI or Anthropic

This tech worker is a software engineer at Meta.

If you could work for any tech company, what would it be?

Honestly, the answer might be where I already am: Meta. The frontier labs get the headlines, but hyperscalers like Meta and Google are doing the same caliber of work: not just core model training and fine-tuning but building the insane infrastructure needed to serve this to billions of users.

One reason I haven't tried to land a job at an AI lab like OpenAI or Anthropic is that the labs are running on investor capital, while the hyperscalers fund their AI push from core businesses that already make enormous money. They have different risk profiles, and I've been happy with mine.

Between Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and NVIDIA, which company would you most (or least) want to work for?

Most: Setting Meta aside, Google is the obvious choice for me. It's one of the few companies doing everything in-house, from TPUs to frontier models to products. That full stack under one roof is appealing.

Least: Probably Apple, and honestly that's about fit, not the company. They build incredible products and their engineering is world class, but their working model is very different from what I'm used to. Teams there tend to work on a focused slice under a lot of confidentiality, while my career so far has been end-to-end ownership, seeing a system from design through production and operations.

I'd choose SpaceX over any Big Tech company or AI lab

This tech worker is a tech lead at a company in the insurance industry. He's in his early 40s and lives in Atlanta.

If you could work for any tech company, what would it be?

If I could work for any tech company tomorrow, I'd choose SpaceX. Few organizations on the planet operate with that level of ambition, engineering rigor, and mission clarity. Being part of a team pushing toward interplanetary travel would be an opportunity to contribute to something far bigger than any one company.

Between Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and NVIDIA, which company would you most (or least) want to work for?

NVIDIA is the company I would choose. It is defining the future of accelerated computing and AI rather than reacting to it.

NVIDIA and the AI labs are compelling, but I'd still choose Google

Sachin Jain is a data analyst at Google.

If you could work for any tech company, what would it be?

It would still be Google, and I'm genuinely grateful that I get to work there. That said, OpenAI and Anthropic would be incredibly compelling as well. They're at the forefront of one of the biggest technological shifts of our generation, and I think any engineer or data professional would find that exciting.

Between Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and NVIDIA, which company would you most (or least) want to work for?

Aside from Google, I'd probably say NVIDIA. They've built an incredible competitive moat by creating a level of dependency across the AI ecosystem that's hard to match.

Beyond the business itself, I've always admired the culture they've cultivated. Employees don't seem to be constantly looking over their shoulders, worried about the next round of layoffs, which is becoming increasingly rare in tech. And of course, Jensen Huang is someone I really respect.

I'd rather work at a smaller employer than the hottest tech company

This tech worker is a software engineer at a startup. She's in her 20s and lives in the Northeast.

If you could work for any tech company, what would it be?

What I value most today is a remote-first environment, the ability to influence what gets built, and a culture where I can spend my time solving interesting technical problems instead of navigating constant internal politics. At this stage of my career, I'd rather work at a smaller company where I have meaningful ownership than be one person in a very large organization.

Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic are particularly high on my list. I'm not especially motivated by working at whichever company is getting the most attention at the moment. Prestige and compensation alone aren't what motivate my career decisions anymore.

Between Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and NVIDIA, which company would you most (or least) want to work for?

I'd probably lean toward Alphabet, Microsoft, or Apple, but the specific role would matter much more than the company name. I'm less drawn to Meta than some of the others because it has gone through significant organizational changes and layoffs in recent years.

Anthropic is my dream employer — I'd maybe pass on Microsoft

This tech worker works for a large tech company.

If you could work for any tech company, what would it be?

If I could walk into any company tomorrow, it would be Anthropic. I like that they are going after the enterprise side and actually improving specific lines of business, not just shipping a chatbot. And with the talk of them heading toward public markets, the upside is hard to ignore.

Between Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and NVIDIA, which company would you most (or least) want to work for?

Most to least: Amazon, Alphabet, NVIDIA, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft last.

Microsoft is last for me because I think they are behind on AI, and it shows on the consumer product side. Copilot, from my own use and from what I hear in the market, has not landed the way it should and people are underwhelmed.

OpenAI tops my list

Sneja Shah is a senior technical program manager at the software company Red Hat. She's in her 30s and lives in California.

If you could work for any tech company, what would it be?

If I had to look outside my current employer, OpenAI would be my top choice. The opportunity to work on products that are fundamentally changing how people work, learn, and create is incredibly exciting.

Anthropic would also be high on my list because of its emphasis on responsible AI development and long-term safety.

Between Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and NVIDIA, which company would you most (or least) want to work for?

Among those companies, I'd choose NVIDIA because it's enabling nearly every major advancement in AI. Microsoft would be a close second because of how rapidly it's integrating AI across enterprise products and productivity tools.

Do you have a story to share? Reach out to the reporter via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com, or via Signal at jzinkula.29.

• Retiring abroad requires more than choosing where to live.
• Federica Grazi, who helps retirees relocate, shared her advice for deciding whether to move and how to plan.
• She says trial stays and healthcare planning are vital before relocating.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Federica Grazi, 34, who is based in London. She is the founder of Mitos Relocation Solutions, an advisory firm that helps retirees move abroad. It has been edited for length and clarity.

There's often a big gap between people who dream of retiring abroad and those who actually take the first step toward it. For many, hesitation gets in the way, and the idea of moving remains a dream.

People are often drawn abroad by the lifestyle, but making a successful move means considering the full picture, like healthcare, aging, and the tax implications of residing in a new location.

Here are the five things I recommend everyone do before they retire abroad.

1. Test-drive your potential new home

Spend an extended trial period, say three months, in the place you're thinking of moving to. It's not about visiting for a week in July or August. Go in the offseason and try living like a local, thinking about what your everyday life would look like.

Rent an apartment, speak with locals and expats, and join community Facebook groups.

I've had clients for whom something as simple as getting medication from a pharmacy became an important test of whether they could see themselves living somewhere.

2. Turn the dream into a decision

If you're unsure about retiring abroad, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. The key is not to let inertia take over and leave it as a dream, but to move from a question mark to a clear yes or no.

In addition to spending a trial period in the country, you can do smaller things like speaking to others who have already moved to the destination to understand how it works in practice, or get advice from an expert who can give you a full rundown. They could even go on a scouting trip for you.

3. Don't rush

If you decide to retire abroad and you're excited about it, don't rush the move. Changing residency is an important moment, so make a clear plan for what needs to happen before you leave.

Think about whether you need a visa, housing, and even how you'll move your pet. You should also deal with things that aren't necessarily pleasant, like your will.

4. Think about taxes

People often focus on the lifestyle abroad and think, "I love it here. I'll figure everything else out later." But that can lead to big tax mistakes, which need to be addressed before you move.

If you only discover a problem after the tax year has ended, there might not be much you can do about it.

5. Take healthcare seriously

Healthcare is something you want to be thinking about before you need it. How do you access it? How much will it cost? What might happen if you end up in the hospital?

If you wait until something goes wrong, you could find yourself having to react and needing to navigate an unfamiliar healthcare system before you're fully integrated.

Often, when people say they hated living abroad and moved back, it's because they didn't do enough research or preparation beforehand.

Retirement abroad should be a period of joy and expansion. Doing the planning beforehand means that once you arrive, you can actually enjoy it.

• Kelan and Brittany Kline built The Savvy Couple blog into a seven-figure online business success.
• They achieved a $1 million net worth by balancing income growth with controlled lifestyle spending.
• "We make a plan for our money every month," Kelan said.

For Kelan and Brittany Kline, improving their finances came down to a simple idea: widen the gap between what they earned and what they spent.

The couple, who once worked traditional jobs as a jail deputy and elementary school teacher, were newly married and carrying roughly $40,000 in student-loan debt when they began rethinking their finances.

They attacked both sides of the equation. On the income side, they built The Savvy Couple, a personal-finance blog that eventually grew into a seven-figure online business. On the spending side, they focused on keeping their lifestyle relatively stable as their income increased.

The couple said their household net worth — including the estimated value of their businesses, investments, and primary residence — surpassed $1 million in 2020. Business Insider reviewed a screenshot from their Rocket Money account showing a seven-figure net worth.

Here are three principles they said helped them spend less without feeling permanently deprived.

1. Think about what a purchase costs in time

One of the biggest shifts for the Klines was mental. They started thinking about purchases not simply in dollars, but in hours of work.

"We had a realization that, with our 9-to-5s, we were trading our time for money," Kelan told Business Insider. "Every purchase we had, we were not actually paying for it with money. We were actually paying it with our time."

A $50,000 truck, for example, might represent months of work. A $100 dinner might translate into several hours on the job.

"It kind of gives you that perspective of, 'Is this worth my time to purchase it?'" he said.

2. Know the difference between frugal and cheap

The Klines don't equate frugality with always buying the least expensive option.

"There's a very distinct difference between being cheap and frugal," Kelan said.

A cheap shopper, for example, might buy the least expensive vacuum and have to replace it repeatedly. A frugal shopper, on the other hand, might pay more upfront for something that offers better value and lasts longer.

The goal, he said, is to ask which option provides the most value without costing unnecessarily more.

That mindset also helped them resist lifestyle inflation as their earnings grew. They stayed in their starter home for seven years, drove used cars, rarely ate out, and spent roughly five years as a one-car household.

"You don't have to increase your lifestyle to be happy," Kelan said. Rather than succumb to lifestyle inflation, they directed more of the growing gap between their income and expenses toward debt repayment and investments.

3. Give every dollar a job — including fun money

The Klines still track their spending and stick to a monthly budget.

"We make a plan for our money every month," Kelan said. While some people view budgeting as restrictive, they see it differently: "When you give yourself a budget and make a plan every month, you're actually giving yourself freedom to spend the money where you want it and where you get the most joy and fulfillment from."

That includes discretionary spending. For example, Brittany enjoys buying coffee, so the couple deliberately builds personal spending money into their budget. Today, they said, each of them gets about $200 a month to spend however they want, up from roughly $100 earlier in their journey.

The point isn't to eliminate everything enjoyable, but to cut more aggressively in areas that matter less while preserving spending they value.

Sometimes the sacrifice is temporary

The couple did go through periods of much stricter spending, particularly when they were focused on eliminating their student loans.

"Sometimes it's temporary pain to get to the end goal that you want," Kelan said. He remembers declining invitations to eat out or meet friends for drinks and cutting restaurant spending to roughly once a month. "We sacrificed a ton when we were paying off debt."

The key, in his view, was knowing that the restrictions had an endpoint. Rather than thinking they would live that way forever, they treated the cuts as a short-term sprint toward a specific goal.

Once the debt was gone, money that had previously gone toward loan payments could instead be invested or spent on things they valued more.

• It's Warren Buffett's 96th birthday, his first since stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO.
• The legendary investor bought his first stock at 11 and built a $1 trillion company.
• Buffett made billions by investing in stocks like Coca-Cola and buying businesses like Geico.

It's Warren Buffett's 96th birthday, his first since stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO. He remains chairman of the storied company.

Buffett retired from the top job at the turn of this year, marking the end of an era that saw the legendary investor transform a failing textile mill into a $1 trillion conglomerate over six decades.

Here's a look back at Buffett's remarkable life.

Born to do business

Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on August 30, 1930, at the height of the Great Depression. He was the second of three children and the only son of Howard, a stockbroker and later a congressman, and Leila, a homemaker.

The investor started his business career at six, selling Juicy Fruit chewing gum door to door. He later resold individual bottles of Coca-Cola from a pack, delivered newspapers, and built up a pinball machine business, which he later sold.

Buffett was 11 when he bought his first stock, Cities Service Preferred, and filed his first tax return at 13. He bought a farm at 14 and rented it to a tenant farmer.

When he was 16, he had amassed $5,000, around $85,000 in today's money.

Learning from the best

Buffett majored in business at Wharton before transferring to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and graduating in 1950, at the age of 19.

Around that time, he read Benjamin Graham's "The Intelligent Investor," which introduced him to the key tenets of value investing, such as buying stocks so cheap that they provide a "margin of safety."

Buffett enrolled at Columbia Business School after learning Graham taught there. After graduating, he worked for his father's company for a year before joining Graham's investment firm, where he received a masterclass in analyzing companies and identifying bargain stocks.

In 1952, at age 22, he married a college student, Susan Thompson, and the pair had their first child, Susan or "Little Susie," in 1953. He began teaching night classes on investing and inviting family and friends to invest their money with him. In 1956, as Graham prepared to retire, Buffett moved back to Omaha and prepared to launch his firm, Buffett Partnership.

Buying and building

Buffett embraced Graham's trademark "cigar butt" approach of sniffing out cheap stocks with "one last puff" of value, such as Sanborn Map Company and Dempster Mill Manufacturing. His partnership's assets grew from about $100,000 to $20 million as his outperformance attracted more investors and his returns compounded.

He and his wife had their second child, Howard, in 1954, and their third, Peter, in 1958. Buffett also met Charlie Munger in 1959, who encouraged him to shift from buying dirt-cheap businesses to "wonderful companies at fair prices."

In 1962, Buffett began acquiring shares of Berkshire Hathaway, a struggling textile mill. He seized control of the company in 1965 after its management agreed to buy him out, then tried to shortchange him.

Buffett Partnership also invested in American Express after its stock plunged during the Salad Oil Scandal, and in Disney after Walt Disney gave Buffett a personal tour of Disneyland and sold the investor on his vision.

Partnerships, old and new

Buffett acquired insurers such as National Indemnity, paving the way for him to use "float" — premiums collected before claims are paid — as a source of low-cost, permanent capital for investing.

In 1969, the investor grew concerned about overvalued assets and a lack of compelling opportunities, so he decided to wind down his Buffett Partnership and return his partners' money while retaining a significant stake in Berkshire. The firm's assets had reached $104 million in 1970, reflecting, in part, a compounded annual return of 31% since 1956.

Buffett invested in the Illinois Bank and Trust Company in 1969, acquired See's Candies in 1972, built a stake in the Washington Post Company, and bet on other businesses such as Blue Chip Stamps. Munger also became his formal business partner and joined Berkshire as vice-chair.

By age 45, Buffett's wealth had grown to about $34 million, or roughly $210 million today.

Deals of a lifetime

Berkshire invested in car insurer Geico and other companies such as Capital Cities/ABC and Wesco Financial, as Buffett began seeking out businesses with "moats" or durable competitive advantages.

His wife moved to San Francisco in 1977 to pursue singing and activism. She introduced Buffett to a friend, Astrid Menks, who moved in with Buffett and took care of him, and whom Buffett would marry after Susan died in 2004.

In 1983, Berkshire acquired Nebraska Furniture Mart. In 1985, Buffett became a billionaire at age 55, appearing on the Forbes 400 list that year.

Status and scandals

Buffett's yearly shareholder letters, colorful interviews, and annual shareholder gatherings made him a celebrity and earned him the moniker the "Oracle of Omaha."

He had built a billion-dollar stake in Coca-Cola by 1989, drawn by its global brand, pricing power, and cash generation. He also invested in Gillette and established a stake in Wells Fargo.

Buffett met Bill Gates at a 4th of July event in 1991 and became fast friends with the Microsoft cofounder. He also stepped in as interim chairman of Salomon Brothers after a Treasury bond scandal threatened his investment in the bank. He delivered a message to employees in testimony to Congress in 1991: "Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless."

Buffett's buying spree

Berkshire acquired the other half of Geico for $2.3 billion in 1996, paid $22 billion in stock to take over reinsurer General Re in 1998, and led an investor group to buy MidAmerican Energy in 1999.

Buffett capitalized on the dot-com crash, scooping up Benjamin Moore in 2000, Shaw Carpets in 2001, Fruit of the Loom and Pampered Chef in 2002, and Clayton Homes in 2003.

Capitalizing on crisis

After Susan's death in 2004, Buffett made philanthropy a greater priority. In 2006, he pledged the vast majority of his Berkshire stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four of his family's foundations, foreshadowing his cofounding of the Giving Pledge in 2010.

Buffett continued to make acquisitions, including Iscar, an Israeli precision toolmaker, in 2006, and Marmon, an industrial conglomerate, in 2007. He also acquired BNSF Railway for $34 billion in 2010: Berkshire's largest acquisition up to that point.

During the financial crisis, Berkshire's cash reserves, risk management, and willingness to "be greedy when others are fearful" led to a flurry of lucrative deals with Goldman Sachs, General Electric, Dow Chemical, Mars, Harley-Davidson, and other companies.

Buffett hired Todd Combs in 2010 and Ted Weschler in 2011 as investment managers to help him oversee Berkshire's stock portfolio. A year later, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent successful radiation treatment. He also gained public prominence for supporting a "Buffett Rule" that would close loopholes to prevent situations like his own, where his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did.

Berkshire partnered with 3G Capital to acquire Heinz, which later became Kraft Heinz, for $23 billion in 2013.

Preparing for a new era

In 2015, Berkshire made its biggest deal yet when it shelled out $37 billion for Precision Castparts. Between 2016 and 2018, Berkshire spent around $36 billion to build a roughly 5% stake in Apple, which more than quadrupled in value to above $170 billion by 2023, making it easily Berkshire's number-one holding and one of the most lucrative bets in its history. Berkshire has pared the position by about 75% over the past three years.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted Buffett to cash out his stakes in the "Big Four" US airlines. But he's made several big bets since, such as buying Dominion Energy's natural gas assets for $10 billion, purchasing stakes in five of the largest Japanese trading companies, and acquiring Alleghany for $12 billion, which added businesses such as Squishmallows-maker Jazwares to Berkshire's stable.

Berkshire also paid more than $11 billion over about seven years to acquire Pilot Flying J, a truck-stop chain that had been one of the country's biggest private companies.

Buffett lost his right-hand man and one of his closest friends when Munger died in November 2023, a few weeks shy of his 100th birthday and still in the job.

Berkshire's market cap breached $1 trillion in late 2024, ranking it among the world's most valuable companies.

During Buffett's tenure as CEO, Berkshire's shares rose by 6,100,000% or nearly 20% a year between 1964 and 2025, far above the benchmark S&P 500's roughly 46,000% or 10.5% annual return with dividends included over the same period.

Buffett prepared his shareholders for his departure, outlining his estate plan and naming Greg Abel, Berkshire's head of non-insurance operations, as his successor in 2021.

But he still stunned the business world in May 2025 when he announced that he would step down as CEO at the end of the year.

10. New era begins

Abel succeeded Buffett as Berkshire's CEO on New Year's Day 2026, marking the end of Buffett's 55-year tenure. But Buffett remains the company's chair, and still comes to the office five days a week.

He wasn't on stage at Berkshire's shareholder meeting this year, but spoke briefly to thank outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook and sat for a live interview on the day. It was clear to this reporter after spending a few days in Buffett's hometown of Omaha that his legacy would live on.

Buffett made the call to invest in Google's parent company, Alphabet, in the third quarter of last year. Berkshire has grown that stake to nearly $38 billion as of June 30, making Alphabet the third-biggest position in its stock portfolio after Apple and American Express.

The business icon, who has given away more than half of his wealth since 2006, has charged his children with giving away virtually all of his remaining $144 billion fortune to worthy causes by the end of 2034.

• My children are college graduates. I'm still paying their rent, and I'm OK with that.
• A college degree may be an important step toward financial stability, but it takes time to accumulate and transfer wealth.
• We cover rent, but the help comes with conversations, actionable planning, and an end date.

When our youngest child graduated from college, my husband and I were overwhelmed with pride. There we were, two first-generation college graduates who had somehow managed to get both of our children through college.

But right next to that pride was another emotion: fear.

We weren't afraid that they wouldn't be successful; we've always believed in them. Our fear stemmed from knowing that a college degree doesn't always translate into financial stability. That's especially true for some Black graduates entering a financial system that hasn't historically given Black families the same opportunities to build and pass down wealth.

So, while I proudly watched my kids cross the stage to receive their diplomas, I was already thinking about what would come next. For us, that means continuing to pay their rent while they get their footing.

We've put thought into this decision

Our decision to pay our grown children's rent — ages 23 and 25 — may look like coddling to some people. But for us, it's intentional. Neither mine nor my husband's parents went to college, and we didn't have very many people to call when things got tight. Over the years, we've built a comfortable life without a safety net, one paycheck at a time. We're using that comfort to give our children the runway we never had.

There's data that backs up what my husband and I already know from experience. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Black college graduates, age 25 to 34, earn roughly $14,000 less per year than their white peers with the same degree. Additionally, more of them graduate with debt, with 52% of Black students graduating with at least $25,000 in student loan debt compared to 41% of white students according to a Survey of Consumer Finances by the Federal Reserve.

Even with our help, our children graduated with a small amount of student loan debt.

Our support comes with a plan

To give them both time to focus on building their careers and saving money, we pay their rent. Of course, this arrangement comes with a caveat. We talk openly about finances and set concrete goals to help them get closer to financial independence. Our conversations include a phase-out timeline, with a goal of ending our rent support six months to a year after they have consistently worked and saved, so they understand that their rent coverage isn't indefinite. This is something we'll reevaluate as a family over time.

We've set emergency fund targets and worked through credit-building strategies together. We even encourage them to save a little more anytime they can, so they're building a cushion of their own. To keep them motivated along the way and moving toward the finish line, we celebrate every milestone, such as reaching a savings goal or paying off a debt.

We're buying them time

We're not the only family doing this. A survey by AARP found that 75% of parents with a child age 18 or older support them in some way. A February 2026 Pew Research Center study found that nearly half of Black adults ages 18-29 (47%) reported they received financial assistance from family in the previous year.

Our plan isn't perfect, but we stand by it. Our intention is not to try and shield our children from the real world. We simply want to buy them time. Instead of worrying about a missed rent payment, they can focus on building their careers. We want to give them a foundation sturdy enough that, one day, they can build that bridge — or a stronger one — for their own kids.

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics published new job projections for 2025 to 2035.
• Employment of word processors and typists is expected to fall the quickest.
• Automation is a key reason some of the jobs are expected to decline.

Automation is set to reduce the need for some jobs over the next decade, like order clerks and switchboard operators.

New Bureau of Labor Statistics projections show which jobs may rapidly grow between 2025 and 2035, and which may shrink. Word processors and typists are projected to experience the largest percent decline, falling 34%. It's one of 206 jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics classified as having "very high" exposure to AI.

The 12 jobs with the largest projected percent declines typically aren't high-paying. Most of them earned less than the national median annual wage of $50,980 in 2025.

Employment of foundry mold and coremakers, as well as metal and plastic patternmakers, is projected to decline, partly due to businesses' ability to leverage 3D printers. For word processors and typists, BLS said other workers are taking on these duties, and "traditional typing methods continue to be replaced by automated processes through use of machine learning (ML) technologies."

Telemarketers and mining roof bolters are set to see changes in demand for different reasons. For telemarketers, BLS said the "share decreases as the Do Not Call registry from the FCC continues to grow, and companies increasingly use alternative digital marketing methods." For roof bolters, it's due to a preference for surface mining over underground work.

Overall, US employment is projected to rise 3.5% over the decade, down from 10.9% growth in the decade earlier. Some jobs are expected to increase due to the care of an aging population.

The private healthcare and social assistance sector is expected to have a bounty of opportunities, accounting for 37% of the 5.9 million jobs projected to be added to the US.

• British soldiers say that different types of drones present different types of challenges.
• Ground drones can be too costly, and aerial drones can have issues with power, loitering time, and range.
• I was on the ground at a recent testing ground where troops put models through their paces — and told me about pros and cons.

British soldiers are testing the trade-offs of using drones both in the air and on the ground — and the challenges that come with each.

At a recent US-led exercise in the Mojave Desert, thousands of soldiers gathered to try out new technologies, including uncrewed systems. British troops at the training were experimenting with which types of drones were best suited to specific tactics and missions, and shared what they most want from these systems.

Lessons from the exercise included how systems performed in extreme heat and on rugged desert terrain, whether soldiers had enough drones for their missions amid electronic warfare and connectivity issues, and how drones can be most useful.

The British Army's current experimentation unit, the 2nd Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment, was present at the exercise alongside the unit that will take over their experimentation role, the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. The latter unit also has experience with drones, including a recent exercise with Ukrainian forces. Business Insider also attended the exercises.

Capt. Wick Willett, a mortar platoon commander with the 1st Battalion Irish Guards, said he and his troops had seen the strengths and weaknesses of drones. "I think there are challenges with both air and ground vehicles," Willett told Business Insider, adding that what helps work through those issues are "these robust trials that we're going through now."

The British Army approaches testing of drone systems through two different processes: experimentation and trials. Trials are designed to take a drone, "put it through its paces, and test it to see if it does what the Army wants it to do" before it's acquired, Lt. Col. John Black, commander of the 2nd Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, told Business Insider. This includes safety and integration tests.

Experiments are more focused on applying a system to specific use cases, such as ground robots to make front-line logistics easier or safer, or aerial drones for reconnaissance.

Willett said he noticed the need for uncrewed ground vehicles to be more consumable, meaning troops could be able to use, lose, or break them more flexibly without worrying about the costs or feasibility of replacing them, "and in order to be consumable, they need to be at a certain price point per unit."

Other soldiers expressed similar sentiments about ground robots, saying the systems could sometimes feel too high-end to use effectively in tactical settings. Black said his experience after testing dozens of UGVs was that the systems were often too expensive to be used in larger volumes and be expended.

Other issues with ground vehicles include driving over certain terrain, the impact of heat on systems and batteries, and the types of missions that are best suited, such as logistics runs and breaches that could be too dangerous for humans.

Willett said that ground robots can be harder to figure out how to use than uncrewed aerial vehicles, but "there are equal challenges" with flying drones as well, including the range, battery power, and loitering time. Having enough UAVs to make them expendable is also a challenge.

"You need to have enough systems that you could, for example, if you want to observe a particular area, you need to have enough systems in your magazine to be able to put one up and then, before that one runs out of charge, there's another one up to take over the role," he added.

With the large amount of drones used by both Ukraine and Russia in mind, Western officials have been considering the need for soldiers to have a large number of drones available to them.

One US Army commander said earlier this year that based on his unit's experience, a brigade needed between 1,000 and 1,500 a week in a sustained combat operation. "We need drones at scale. We need to treat them like ammunition," he said at the time.

Stew Leonard Jr. is greeted like a celebrity as he makes his way through his family's business. Known as Connecticut's "Disneyland of grocery stores," Leonard's locations come complete with animatronics, petting zoos, and costumed mascots. Every few feet, a customer does a double-take and rushes over. Mostly, they want to say hello or ask for a selfie. A few have constructive criticism to share.

Over by the Stew Leonard's Farm Fresh Five, a band of singing milk cartons, a mom with two young kids approaches him. She has an idea to make the restrooms more family-friendly, showing a picture of a rest stop bathroom with child-sized toilets and superior design. Stew Jr. tells her to forward the picture to his team.

Stew Jr. has been president of the small-but-mighty grocery empire since 1982, for 44 of the company's 57 years. He moves with the ease of a graduating senior walking their high school halls: He knows where everyone and everything is, and they know him. But Stew Jr. won't be the face of Stew's for much longer.

Walking with Stew Jr., but going mostly unrecognized, are his successors. His daughter, Blake Leonard, 41, will step in as president, and his nephew, Jake Tavello, 38, will take over as CEO. Blake is more likely to hop into photos with her father, while Jake — outfitted in a store uniform — more quietly hovers behind the lens.

Stew Jr. has been the heart and soul of Stew Leonard's for decades — not only its president and CEO, but the literal continuation of its namesake and the person loyal customers know and trust. Blake and Jake will not only be taking over a quirky, beloved chain. They're hoping to become a case study in how family businesses can remain successful — and stay in the family — as they're passed down through generations.

It's a challenge familiar to millions of Americans. More than half of US business owners are over the age of 55, at a time when America is about to undergo a Silver Tsunami — a once-in-a-generation transfer of wealth. For family businesses, it's even more fraught, since the third generation is seen as the inflection point for a family business, with one famed research paper finding that 30% of firms make it to the second generation, 13% make it to the third, and just 3% to the fourth.

For Stew Leonard's, the transition is a delicate process, and the family has planned a meticulous handover spanning four years.

"I have devoted my life to this. I grew up here, literally, as a little kid," Stew Jr. said. "I would be devastated if the next generation didn't carry the torch."

Stew Leonard's is a Connecticut institution. A decade ago, this very publication proclaimed it the best grocery store in America, and its lore has only grown since. It's become a go-to destination for TikTokers. In 2024, it was featured on "The Bachelorette," when contestant Jeremy Simon tried to woo Jenn Tran, the titular bachelorette, by bringing her to the store during their visit to his hometown.

"I think there were probably a few people who thought it was kind of weird, like, 'Why would he take you to a grocery store?" Simon tells me when I reach him by phone. But fans responded that "this looks like the coolest grocery store ever — and they love the date," he says.

Today, the chain has eight locations in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, and employs over 2,500 people. All stores are built around the same design concept, first dreamed up by Stew Leonard Sr.: a single, one-way aisle (think: Ikea) with the star of the show, the dairy section, arriving halfway through.

Disneyland was an inspiration when Stew Leonard Sr. founded the company, and there are still numerous references to be found. Workers dress up as Clover the Cow and Stewie the Duck (When I visited the flagship location in Norwalk, the store advertised character meet-and-greets with its own characters, as well as Paw Patrol and Disney favorites.) A life-size rendering of Stew Sr. in a dairy truck waves at shoppers as they enter the store, much like the iconic statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse that greets visitors to the Magic Kingdom.

But while Disney started as a family-run company under Walt and his brother Roy, it went public early in its history, and leadership moved beyond the family after the second generation. Stew Leonard's, which is privately owned and employs six third-generation family members — including three recent third-generation promotions — hopes to remain in the family's hands.

The first time Stew Leonard's was passed down, back in 1982, Stew Jr. wasn't given much of a choice. He remembers his father taking him out to the store's famed rock, etched with the company's ideals: "Rule 1: the customer is always right! Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, read rule 1." There, Stew Sr. had informed him that he was being named president of the family business.

Never mind that Stew Jr., who was 27 and fresh out of business school at UCLA, had gone to California to get away. He was still considering a pivot to something like Microsoft or Apple. His father had decided on a different path. "Oh, by the way, congratulations," is how Stew Sr. framed the promotion that would rewrite the path of his son's life.

"I was like, 'Whoa, what? Wow, thanks," Stew Jr. tells me. "It wasn't like, 'Sit down, let's talk about your new compensation package. Or, here's your new duties that you're supposed to do.'"

Still, Stew Jr. took up the mantle and never looked back. He further professionalized the company's "chaotic and unorganized" culture and created the governance structure that undergirds the coming transition, mandating that Leonard family members aren't allowed to work for the company for at least two years after graduating from college.

Then, in 1991, Stew Sr. was arrested and later imprisoned for tax fraud in 1993. Stew Jr. told Westchester Magazine in 2015 he remembered when he received the call that IRS agents had arrived at the Norwalk location, "it was like when JFK was shot, you remember exactly what you were doing." With his father in prison, Stew Jr. was thrust into the role of CEO. Despite the upheaval, he's opened six new locations, including some in (gasp) New Jersey. It's hard to tell exactly how much the grocery empire has raked in — Stew Leonard's isn't a publicly traded company — but the Hartford Business Journal reported that revenue was $116 million in 1991. Per the store's PR, revenue now sits around $550 million. And, when it came time for him to retire, Stew Jr. was determined to do better.

Alejandro Cárdenas Villa, a family-enterprise attorney and the author of "Legacy Traps: Why Family Businesses Fail And How To Protect Yours," said that family businesses have five specific make-or-break risks to account for. They need to be able to constructively address conflict, establish governance structures and objective performance measures, ensure that family members are not dependent on the business, and that those who are actually involved are trained to understand the business. At least some of those considerations seem to be top of mind in Stew Jr.'s slow stepping away.

"It's probably the hardest thing to have your kids work for you because on one hand you want to act like a dad to them, but on the other hand, you have to be a boss," Stew Jr. said. He says you never want to force your kid or family back into the family business. Ideally, you want to present it as somewhere exciting for them to land.

His other difficulty: letting go.

"I just really want to never go away," he says, "I don't think I'll go away, but I have to let the leash out."

Blake, the oldest of Stew Jr.'s four daughters — Stew Leonard III, her brother, drowned as a small child — was never told outright that the stores would be her future. Instead, they were omnipresent. Life as a kid was shaped by visits to the store and the stories her father would bring home from work.

Playdates with friends would include dressing up in cow or duck costumes. During sleepovers on the floor above the store, Blake and her friends would be awoken at 4:30 in the morning by the dulcet tunes of Cindy Celery and Larry Lettuce, animatronics perched over the produce section. At the age of five, Blake was put to work putting sprinkles on ice cream cones.

If the business had been less tactile, Blake isn't sure she'd be as passionate. But the grocery stores were a special, physical place. That didn't mean Stew's felt pre-ordained. As she got older, Blake's interest turned to wine.

After college, she spent a decade working her way up in the wine industry, becoming a certified sommelier and working in New York City and California. As her career progressed, she didn't know whether she would end up back at the family business. And starting at the bottom built confidence; in her first wine role, she wheeled deliveries to clients, waking up at 4 a.m. to dust off bottles and coordinate deliveries. Nobody there knew what Stew Leonard's was. Blake lived in Napa, working for a winery, and went to New York City to sell wine and do a yearlong program at the Culinary Institute of America. Toward the end of her time in wine, she knew she wanted to head back home.

"I saw if I came back here, I wasn't going to leave," Blake says. "And so for me, there was just that moment where I was like, 'Okay, I would love to — and I think I'm ready.'"

Tavello first came to the store in utero when his mom was pregnant, and spent pretty much every summer working there as a teen. After college, he spent two years working at a rival chain, Wegman's, which is also one of the largest and most successful family-owned supermarket chains in the US. (The Leonard family considers the Wegmans' friends, or, at the very least, comrades in keeping the family grocery business alive and robust.) He returned to Stew's in 2015 to run the Danbury store.

Tavello described it as an exercise in trust: He felt like he was walking on eggshells at first, managing workers who had been there for upward of 30 years (he was in his 20s at the time).

"Over time, they got to see that on my drive home, I wasn't calling Stew, and they could trust me," Tavello says. Throughout our time in the store, Tavello is the consummate polite salesperson — pointing out trendier items like pickle-everything and the butter-covered soft serve. His favorite section of the store was the fresh mozzarella.

Part of the new generation's challenge will be maintaining and updating some of the brand's campiness — something that looms large for both the parents bringing their kids in for entertainment, and for the nostalgic TikTok generation.

"When I bring my kids through Stew's, the same exact things that I loved over 30 years ago when I was a kid are the things my kids today are loving," Blake says. She adds, "I think that we'll keep evolving, but we really want to keep the heart and soul and what you get so excited about with Stew Leonard's the same."

Tavello says that he was inspired by a visit to Sesame Place with his children, who eagerly watched a character parade featuring Elmo. Now, Stew's has its own character parade.

Still, working for your dad or uncle isn't all chocolate milk and apple cider doughnut holes.

Blake Leonard's first performance review with her dad didn't go great. She sensed he was tired. He made some fair points, but was more blunt than he needed to be.

"He walked in, and I could just tell that he was tired," Blake said. "Because I'm his daughter, he could probably lower his kind of barriers, not be as whatever he wanted to be to me that day."

It was the type of experience that you may want to call your dad to complain about — if they weren't the one giving you the tough talk in the first place. After taking some time to process it, Blake thanked him for the honest feedback, though she said his points could have been delivered differently. Stew Jr. says he was a "little tough" on her, but that his goal was to improve on the way his own dad had handled such moments. "I had him stop doing it because he would give me all 10s," Stew Jr. says. He had to say: "Dad, it's not helpful."

It goes both ways. He's asked Blake and Jake to review him… he's still waiting for their feedback.

Blake says this second transition is being handled much more intentionally than the first. If her grandfather's generation figured it out as they went, with her father at the helm, many more guardrails have been put in place. "I don't love to call them that, but it gave us a little bit of a framework for our future," Blake says.

Part of that planning is splitting Stew Jr.'s job in two.

The family says that the divided role is playing to each of the dual heirs' respective strengths: Blake is more outgoing, while Jake is more operationally minded.

I asked Blake if she thought stopping for pictures and receiving the adoring public would fall to her after Stew Jr. phases out. She says she thinks so. It's part of the tricky balancing act that the Leonard family has to toe. It's not just a familial succession — it's an experiment in incorporating a community, and almost cultlike following, into what's usually litigated in boardrooms and family roundtables.

Jennifer Strom, an advisor at the Family Business Consulting Group who works with the Leonards, says the company is better positioned than most to weather the transition. Stew Leonard's culture is "pretty much incomparable" to that of any other family Strom has worked with, she says. Their next generation is engaged, the brand is strong, and their bench is deep. Even if they don't agree on everything, they're willing to come to the table. Blake says that the whole Leonard clan gets together at least once a year to discuss the business. As third-generation-ers — or G3, in the business-school parlance — Blake and Jake's journeys reflect an inflection point for Stew's.

By the time a family business reaches its third generation, it has to balance both its original goal of building a successful business and a more intentional approach toward the larger legacy that's accumulated over time. It's the leap from haphazardly announcing to your kid that they're going to take over to creating an internal governance system that can balance complex family dynamics.

"We are very intentional about not ignoring the family dynamics and actually calling them out," Strom says of the conversations she has with clients. "So any past resentments that exist, we get out on the table and say, 'Okay, despite that, what do we agree to? And what do we want to set up for the future?'"

That's part of the especially sticky nature of crafting a family succession plan. It's one thing to fire a low performer; it's another when that person is related to you.

Strom says she's seen chairs knocked down, pens thrown, screaming, and declarations that family members will never speak to one another again. Emotions aren't inherently bad — Strom is also trained as a therapist — they show when families are getting to the issues they really do need to work out at the table. And there are moments when families are fighting so much, and not happy, or feel stuck, that Strom will sit down with them and ask if they really want to keep the business going.

Sitting across from Stew Jr. in his office — Blake and Jake eventually joining us around the table — I was struck by how engaged he still is in the business. For one, he's done his homework on me and even quotes from a few of my previous articles. I notice a printout on his desk with my headshot and a few paragraphs summarizing my work. It's the kind of reception I expect from a Fortune 500 CEO.

Stew Jr. is also deep in the weeds about the day-to-day business, and at one point ticks off how different products were faring on TikTok. When I ask him if he personally uses the app, he points me to his heirs apparent and a PR person. Both Blake and Jake have an online presence, so this is perhaps an area where the younger generation might have a leg up.

Stew Jr. has a few more years left at the helm, and he clearly takes pride in knowing and greeting everyone we encounter while working on the floor. He often stops to share workers' life stories with me. He talked about how the company has brought in a slew of immigrants (some of whom we met throughout our stroll) and has given those workers training, pay, and strong benefits. It's, as Stew Jr. says, "really, the American dream" — hard workers starting on the ground floor and working their way up.

The American dream, social media dominance, and a family legacy: All of that is a lofty edict to place upon the shoulders of Blake and Jake, who are preparing to balance the stewardship of a beloved brand with making their own marks.

After our tour wraps up, Stew Jr. has to run to a CNN news hit to discuss how tariffs are affecting tomato prices. On the way out of his office, Blake and Jake start meandering ahead, making their way back to the sales floor. As I walk out with Stew Jr., our photographer stops and asks to take a picture of him under his office's sign, which proclaims "Stew Leonard Jr. - President."

"I guess that's an old sign, isn't it?" Stew Jr. says.

• Nicholas Charriere had a kid before entering Y Combinator.
• He kept his kid mostly a secret. "I don't want people thinking I'm not as hardcore," he said.
• Charriere said that talking about having a kid was "not the vibe."

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nicholas Charriere, the 36-year-old cofounder of Mocha, an AI app builder. He lives in the Bay Area. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up in France. I studied math and physics. Then I discovered Hacker News, and I started learning all about entrepreneurship. I decided: I want to be in technology, and I want to be a founder.

I moved to San Francisco after my studies with that goal. It took six years to sort out visa issues. After that, I didn't really have a cofounder, and I got a great offer from Cruise, so I took that. I spent four years there.

Then, when I was 29, I joined another startup where the founder had an amazing pitch.

I waited really long to start my own company, and that's a big source of regret. By the time I went into Y Combinator at 33, my daughter had been born. I deeply wish I had done it before.

I didn't tell my YC batchmates about my daughter

I always knew I wanted to have a family. I grew up in a family of four kids with a very happy childhood. I married my wife 10 years ago. She was my one and only match on Hinge.

I had to have a big conversation with my wife about starting my own company. The baby was very young, and it made everything a lot harder. I had to secure funding quickly.

One advantage as an older founder was that I had a pedigree. Getting into YC and raising money was easier than when you're 20 and have no résumé. I felt very old in YC, though. And being a dad was a whole other type of feeling old. I was in a different stage of life.

At some point, you go on a retreat with all the other founders. Everybody's really young, and there's a generation gap where they behave differently. My cofounder and I were like: "Want to grab beers, guys?" They were like: "We don't drink."

That weekend, I told a few people about my daughter because I had a feeling they had kids. I learned some did, and that they were also being hush-hush about it. We had a group chat where we sent each other pictures of the babies. We're still friends, and it was a strong bonding moment. It was also very hard for them.

I've been reading Hacker News, the tech forum owned by YC, for many years, and they don't talk about being dads. I thought: "I'm surrounded by founders, and founders don't talk about this."

In YC, everyone's trying to up-intense each other. Like, "I didn't sleep for three days." Or, "We're flying to New York to just talk to a customer." Saying "I just had a kid and I love spending time with them" is not the vibe. It wouldn't fit.

People are really nice to each other in YC, but you're all competing. You're competing for the fundraise. You're competing to be the best YC startup.

I remember debating for a long time whether to tell my YC partner, Diana Hu. They choose you, they bet on you, and if you do well, they make money. So, I obviously didn't go up to her the first night we met and say: "I'm expecting a kid." For weeks, I debated: Should I say it?

I remember bringing it up because of founder salaries. You're not sure what to pay yourself when you're in YC. It was a bit awkward, because I was supporting my wife and had a kid. It's not greed, but there's a minimum here to not be in the deep red.

I brought it up with Diana and told her about my daughter. She was like: "You should absolutely pay yourself what you need to live, because if not, you will give up more readily, and building a company is all about not giving up." It was great advice.

When you do bring it up, the reactions are actually fine. Most of the fear of bringing it up was in my own head. I didn't want people to think I'm not as intense or hardcore as the founder who just talked about 996.

The age question still nags at me

The biggest lesson I've learned is that having kids and doing this startup means everything else is gone. There's no TV. There are no video games. I walked my dog, which is a blessing, because it meant I moved my body around. Sleep was tough.

You can observe that Silicon Valley is ageist by looking at the ages of the people around you. At companies in the startup scene, there are fewer older people.

It's unspoken but very true: If you optimize your hiring to have some experience but young enough that they don't have families yet, which is the 26-32 age bracket, you get the best value.

There are no role models when you're a parent. You don't meet a lot of people like: "This is me, but 20 years ahead." I never found that in Silicon Valley.

I was CEO of Mocha for three years. We had some success, got to 300,000 users and a few million in ARR. It wasn't enough. 2026 is a really weird moment where competition is insane. We were competing with Lovable and Replit, both of which were absolute rocket ships.

I was going to either raise a Series A or shut down. My second kid was being born when this decision had to happen. I think it was a bad business with bad margins. Rather than take more investor money, I thought it was better to quit.

We didn't succeed, so we clearly could've done things better. I always have a voice in my head saying, "If you put in more hours, if you created a culture where people left later and worked weekends, you would've made it." That voice has been nagging at me.

I always felt we should be going harder. But there were limits I was putting on myself to do right by my kid and my wife. I had a really hard time asking that of my employees.

• Delis and other restaurants are using AI to make menus.
• The results are often horrifyingly unsettling, like perfectly round shrimp.
• I asked one deli in Chicago why they used AI for their menu — and they had a reasonable answer.

Chris Murphy said he was on his lunch break from his job as a server at a restaurant in downtown Chicago when he walked to the nearby Chi-Town Deli to buy a sandwich. As he scanned the menu, he noticed something unsettling: All of the images were actually AI-generated monstrosities.

"Immediately I clocked [AI use] from the glossy sheen, the sameness of every sandwich, that weird lettuce that looks like it's made of bricks, and the horrifying Lovecraftian Reuben sandwich that they were all pictures of AI monstrosities," Murphy told Business Insider.

I called the Chi-Town Deli and talked to manager Ali Malik. He told me that the AI-generated sign was made by an employee and was put up several weeks ago while they wait for the delivery of a new sign with real photographs. The creepy AI Reubens are a placeholder for now, he said.

So at least in the case of the Chi-Town Deli, the answer to the question, "Why would anyone OK such obviously sloppy AI?" appears to be: "Because it's only temporary and doesn't matter that much."

This does seem to be part of a larger trend — many other restaurants and delis are using AI for menus and signs. And customers seem to hate it.

People have been sharing online photos of very clearly AI-generated food on menus, ranging from humorously uncanny to downright nauseating. At one point, while discussing this story with my editor, I had to close Slack because I couldn't bear to look at the trytophobia-inducing image of a holey burrito he had sent me a link to.

It's not hard to guess why a small deli owner might resort to using AI-generated images of their menu instead of paying someone to take photos. These are small business owners in an industry with rising costs and tight margins; your local corner store is unlikely to have much of a marketing budget. Many of the examples people have shared on social media are from cheap eats-type places, not fancy restaurants or big chains.

It's not like deli photography was so great before AI, either. A lot of delis I've been to have used stock images that they clearly didn't take themselves to show various food offerings. A few years ago, my local deli renovated and put up a massive collage of stock images of foods in the window that defied all logic of cuisine and aesthetics. I didn't find it particularly appealing, but the outside signage had zero effect on my frequency of visits for snacks and toilet paper (often).

I'm not saying it's great that these places are using AI to create food monstrosities, but I'm saying I understand. If AI is going to erode society — and maybe it is — deli signage isn't necessarily what I imagine will be the front lines. Or maybe it is. Like a perfect shrimp doughnut, I keep going in circles on that.

• Mo Zohourian turned to AI training when he couldn't land a traditional 9-to-5.
• He started on generalist projects at $15/hour and now makes $100/hour as a sales specialist.
• Even though he had 15 years experience in sales, Zohourian said his AI career has grown much faster.

This is an as-told-essay based on a conversation with Mo Zohourian, who works as a contractor for AI training companies, specializing in sales management. His work and project rates have been confirmed by Business Insider. Zohourian also consults on AI for small businesses and founded Annotation Academy, an educational platform for AI training. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I moved to Canada from Iran in 2023 and started searching for jobs. I had 15 years of experience in entrepreneurship and sales management, but after back-to-back interviews, I was not getting hired.

I had been applying for about 10 months when I saw an ad on LinkedIn offering work for $15 per hour to train AI, no experience needed. Because I didn't have a job, I said, "Okay, I'll give it a shot," but I was skeptical. I didn't even tell my wife that I started doing it until I received the first payment.

A few years later, I've built a career around AI. I now earn $100 per hour on AI evaluation as a specialist in sales management. I also consult for small businesses on how to use AI and have launched a platform to teach others how to become AI trainers.

It's been crazy. I never thought that AI would be my profession when I started doing it.

My sales experience helped me move on to higher-paying AI training projects

Initially, the work was inconsistent, and I was still looking for full-time jobs.

About three months in, I got a project for $30 an hour. The company I was doing work for had assessments you could take, and by passing them, you would be eligible to work on more important projects. I took and passed assessments for English literature, reasoning, and mathematics. I started making $35 an hour.

I started doing work for multiple companies. Sometimes I'd make $45 an hour on a project, other times $70. There isn't a baseline. Sometimes a project pays less than the one you did before it. As a freelancer, you don't have the same leverage. It is what it is. You can take it or leave it.

Everything changed when the expert jobs started to show. The biggest jump in pay and consistent work was when I started getting assigned sales projects, because that was my expertise.

Initially, the expert projects were limited to STEM fields such as physics, chemistry, and coding. As soon as they started to look for sales experts, I already had a good track record of high-quality tasks on all the platforms, so I was able to get on projects. If I hadn't had a history on these platforms, I don't think I would've gotten the higher-paying sales projects.

Now I work as a sales manager expert on high-stakes projects. I've been consistently getting on projects for $100 an hour for the past 10 months.

These projects are so different from when I started AI evaluation, when everything was so easy — just writing a prompt, writing two responses, and writing a simple justification. Now, with agentic AI and the more powerful models, the tasks are completely different and more complex.

I work a lot, but AI training gave me flexibility and the freedom to start my own business

I stopped applying to full-time jobs about three months after I started AI evaluation, but I still thought AI training was a transition job. It wasn't until about a year of AI training that I was sure it was what I wanted to do.

I typically spend 20 to 40 hours a week on AI training. There may be a one- to two-week pause, or even a monthlong pause, in a project. I always have the option to start another project. But because I have my own business, I use those windows to be more focused on what I am doing personally.

Currently, my priority is my business. I started a firm as an AI consultant helping small businesses use AI to be more efficient. I got my first client, a meal prep company, through someone I met at a party last year. I also launched Annotation Academy, an online platform where I teach people how to do AI evaluation. I got my first paying client for that on launch day in June.

I work a lot, from early in the morning to late at night. But because I can set my own schedule, I still have the luxury of spending time with my son — dropping him off, picking him up, taking him to classes. I can live a life that I love in a way that I could not if I had a full-time job.

My businesses are profitable, but I don't pay myself a salary from them. Because of my AI evaluation job, I can reinvest that money into the company for future expansion and live on my income from AI evaluation.

When I started AI training, I had some savings and was not under great financial pressure. That helped me stay in AI evaluation when the work was inconsistent. The tasks were also much simpler then, so I was able to grow in the work as the tasks became more difficult. But there is a huge demand right now for people who can deliver and who have domain expertise.

This job changed my life in a good way. After working in sales for 15 years, I was attached to it. You think you can develop faster in an industry that you built a foundation on. But for me, I could never find the quick advancement that I found in AI training.

• Labor Day is the best time to buy furniture, with retailers offering the year's steepest discounts.
• We rounded up massive markdowns on editor-tested couches and other furniture from brands we trust.
• Skip the cheap dupes. Use your savings to invest in quality construction and white-glove delivery.

Buying furniture online has always been risky, but skipping the Labor Day weekend furniture sales means missing out on some of the best discounts of the year. Best-case scenario: you snag a great sofa at a fair price without leaving your house. Worst case? You're staring at 24 cardboard boxes in your living room, questioning all of your life choices, and possibly ending up in a bizarre TikTok feud with the brand's CEO.

To save you from becoming the internet's next cautionary tale, I asked BI Reviews home editor Jaclyn Turner for her unfiltered advice on buying a couch sight-unseen. She just published a major overhaul of our guide to the best sofas, so her takes are highly specific, somewhat controversial, and entirely correct:

• Run the "cost-per-use" math before you add to cart. Treat buying a couch like buying clothes and calculate your cost per sit. A $1,800 sectional you'll sit on daily for five years costs about $0.98 a day — a bargain for a comfortable lounger. By comparison, a trendy $300 outdoor side table you set a drink on 4 times over the summer costs $75 per use. Spend the money where your comfort and your daily life interact, save on the accent pieces.

• "Washable" is not the selling point you think it is. A machine-washable cover sounds genius until you're sweating through a 45-minute wrestling match trying to jam a dense cushion back into shrunken canvas. Prioritize stain-resistant performance fabrics that can take a coffee spill, and budget $100 for a professional deep-clean once a year instead.

• If you can, factor white-glove delivery into your bottom line. Before you start browsing, mentally tack $150 to $200 onto your total budget to cover assembly. Let the pros navigate the narrow stairwells and do the heavy lifting — it's an upfront investment in your peace of mind. Sacrificing your weekend and your sanity to an Allen wrench is rarely worth the upgraded shipping fees you "save" at checkout.

With these ground rules established, you're ready for the main event. Labor Day is historically the best time to buy furniture, and retailers have been slashing prices early. Whether you're replacing your sofa, upgrading your dining set, or finally investing in a standing desk, we've rounded up the best Labor Day furniture sales you can shop right now, from brands and retailers we've tested and trust.

The best Labor Day couch, sofa, and sleeper sofa sales

Labor Day is historically the best time of the year to buy a couch, with direct-to-consumer brands and major retailers rolling out their deepest markdowns. To save you from decision fatigue and bad framing, I've culled through hundreds of editor-tested sofas, sleeper couches, and sectional deals.

The best Labor Day mattress sales

Some mattress brands are notorious for running perpetual "sales," but Labor Day is the one weekend when the discounts are legitimate. Whether you're a side sleeper hunting for pressure relief or simply tired of waking up with lower back pain, we've filtered out the marketing gimmicks. These are the absolute best savings on editor-vetted hybrid and memory foam beds — complete with generous, risk-free trial windows so you can actually sleep on your decision.

More of the best Labor Day furniture sales

I'll be updating this guide with new markdowns across patio, outdoor, and home accent categories, so check back as more deals drop ahead of Labor Day.

• Javoris Hollingsworth had a tenured position teaching organic chemistry.
• During the pandemic, he and his wife started "Gracie's Corner" for their own kids.
• Two years after launching, he resigned from teaching to work on the show full-time.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Javoris Hollingsworth and Arlene Hollingsworth, founders of Gracie's Corner. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My wife and I started Gracie's Corner out of necessity. We were both working as professors during the pandemic, and we were using every resource we had to keep our three kids occupied.

One of those resources was YouTube. But I noticed, there weren't many characters who looked like our kids. In such a diverse world, it's important that everyone feels seen.

I started working with my daughter Graceyn, who is 13 now, to create a fun, educational show with Black characters.

My wife's private practice helped fund the show

At first, it was slow. That first year, we were just getting our grounding. I would write songs that Graceyn sang, recording them in a closet in our house. Our videos had like 100 views.

My wife was also a professor at the time and had a private practice as a psychologist. She took on more clients to help pay for Gracie's Corner, and we also pulled from savings to make videos. We were hoping that we would be able to pay the production costs at some point.

Money wasn't my primary driver; this was really a passion project. Still, I also wanted to feel like we weren't investing our money into this black hole.

I left my professor position after going viral

The second year, in 2022, one of our videos went viral. That's when things really started taking off. In the spring of 2022, I resigned from my tenure position to work on Gracie's Corner. My wife videoed the moment when I left my office for the last time. It was momentous. I thought I would retire from academia, working my way up, and that would be my life story.

Leaving the security of a tenured job was a somewhat tough decision. At the same time, the purpose I felt made it easier. As a professor, I have an impact in the classroom, but only on a handful of students in front of me. With Gracie's Corner, I could have an impact on a global scale.

My days involve a little creativity and a lot of business

The creative side of the business comes easily to me. I write the songs, and we now have a team of animators who bring them to life. We record with Graceyn every other week because we want her to have a good balance between Gracie's Corner and the rest of her life.

The business side is much more demanding. Most of my time is dedicated to building that up, because the business acumen is what keeps you moving. I'm meeting with partners and overseeing the construction of a recording studio and office space we're building.

I hope to leave the business to my kids

Working in academia was never a job that would make a ton of money. Now that my wife and I have both left academia to work on Gracie's Corner, we're comfortable. We've been able to reinvest a lot back into the company to help it grow.

Every time our content reaches families in their living room, that's success to me. A major moment was our first NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Animated Series in 2023. We were nominated alongside Disney and all these major platforms. That was a "we made it" moment for me.

I want Gracie's Corner to be Sesame Street 2.0. Our goal is that, 50 years from now, we've created something global that can be passed down to our kids. We want to have an impact not only with our show, but with our story itself: we're the family who started an animation empire. Who would have ever thought?

• My grandparents had a complicated marriage, but remained together.
• When my grandmother developed cancer, the illness brought them closer than I'd ever seen.
• They died three months apart, at the exact same hour and minute.

My grandmother got ovarian cancer in her 70s. The initial sign came on New Year's Eve, when Gram, who often said overeating was one of her greatest flaws, thought she had simply done that. She had eaten too much Chinese food, and that was why she threw up. Or so my grandmother reasoned.

Next came the weight loss. She'd struggled with her weight for most of her adult life, so the pounds falling off suddenly was concerning. She'd been a shining example of a healthy older woman until the cancer diagnosis.

Gramps, on the other hand, had health battles from birth. He was born with hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. Time after time, he faced health issues. He had back issues from the military and heart issues starting in his late 40s. He went out on permanent disability after his third heart attack in his 50s. He had heart disease, testicular cancer that he beat, and throat cancer that stole his voice. It also caused him to go into cardiac arrest long enough that we thought he would have brain damage. He did not. Gramps was never healthy, but always strong.

My grandfather was terrified of my grandmother's diagnosis

They both were. Each in their own way. Both of my grandparents were strong-willed, built of the toughest resolve. They were hard workers who had been born to immigrants. They had each worked their way up in their respective fields and had shown me the value of an unwavering work ethic. Gramps went to work through almost anything. Used to battling one form of illness or another for most of his life, he still continued to move forward. Illness never caused any sort of weakness in his determination.

As strong as my grandfather was, when he found out my grandmother was sick, it terrified him. He wanted, and had always planned, to be the one to go first. He was the sick one. She was the rock, at least in terms of physical health. Because he had never planned to live without her, there were so many things he didn't know how to do. The tasks of managing the house fell to my grandmother. When she discovered she had cancer, my grandfather was lost in so many ways.

Their marriage wasn't easy

While their marriage had not always been easy, they had always loved each other. My grandmother, who had been married twice before, insisted the third time was the charm. Cliché, but true. Gram and Gramps shared a mutual love of socializing, trips, and outings on the wooden boat we owned. The weekends of my youth were filled with visits from their friends. They often flew off to tropical lands, without my brother and me.

Illness brought them together in a different way. It was a deeper connection, perhaps because they knew it would be the thing to take them from one another. Or maybe because they were sharing a new experience. Either way, they battled it together. Gram and Gramps learned to appreciate and love each other in a pure and infinite way.

While I've witnessed sickness pull people apart, for my grandparents, it strengthened their marriage. They lived in the present and left past slights behind. It was an unbelievable journey that I felt blessed to watch. I remember my aunt saying that illness had changed them, softened them. She was right. While Gram and Gramps' bodies were weaker, illness had made them better versions of themselves.

They died months apart, but at the same time to the minute

When Gram went to a rehabilitation center for an extended period, Gramps' health declined. He entered the hospital in July, and we got to spend his final hours with him. He died on July 7. Gram, one of the strongest women I knew, showed grace and fierce tenacity when he died. She brought us comfort by sharing a letter that she and Gramps wrote together about their wishes after death. I still have that letter.

Gram died three months later. Remarkably, it was at the exact hour and minute that my grandfather did. Their unfaltering devotion to each other, while battling illnesses that would end their lives, taught me what devotion really looks like.

It was remarkable to watch them fall in love all over again and let go of all the past wrongs. Until they got sick, I hadn't thought much about the marriage vow, "In sickness and in health." Through their renewed commitment in the hardest times of their marriage and their lives, I finally understood.

Marriage lasted beyond the initial phase of love and became something far greater — undying devotion until the very end.

• My family visited the Obama Presidential Center playground, and my kids, 6 and 9, had a blast.
• Located in Chicago's Jackson Park, the play area serves up fun for kids of all ages and abilities.
• There's lots to see and do, but not much shade for now.

When the Obama Presidential Center opened its doors earlier this summer, so many things caught my eye.

The 19.3-acre campus within Chicago's Jackson Park is home to beautiful native gardens, contemporary art, and historical artifacts. Truly, all things I want to experience. But as a mom with two kids who usually have some serious energy to burn, I was also quite thrilled to see how extensive the playground is.

It's one of the largest outdoor playgrounds my children, 6 and 9, have had the chance to explore. It's split between two levels and offers a multitude of activities for kids of different ages and abilities.

Here's what my family of four experienced during our visit on a cloudy summer evening.

The campus was well-marked and easy to navigate.

Located within Jackson Park on Chicago's South Side. The playground sits just north of the entrance closest to the Home Court facility, a 60,000-square-foot athletic and event space.

The campus has lots of maps and directional signs throughout, making it easy to make your way around.

The fenced-in playground space felt secure.

The playground had two entrances, both of which were staffed by third-party security guards when we visited around 5 p.m. on a weekday.

My kids are old enough to know that if we visit a playspace, they need to stay within its walls or gates until I say otherwise, but knowing there is an additional set of eyes (and legs) to watch the littler children near these access points certainly offers some extra peace of mind.

There were multiple play spaces that catered to different ages.

Signs on display let visitors know that the play space called The Duck was designed for kids ages 2 to 5. The remaining spaces were designated for those ages 5 to 12. Though the two nest swings at the northernmost area were designated for "children of all ages."

The play structures had a lot of whimsy.

The playground was filled with imaginative shapes and designs that offered plenty of inspiration. This area with a giant frog and a lily pad was part of The Duck space, which was geared to kids 3 to 5, but my 9-year-old daughter ran straight for it. I let her have some fun since there were no younger kids around at the time.

The area for younger kids had a sandbox.

The Duck play area also had a large sandbox. I appreciated this addition, as many of the parks near where I live in Westchester, NY, have been eliminating this classic element from their modern playground renovations.

There was also a fountain for water play off to one side of the sand area, but I asked my kids to try to stay clean on this particular visit.

There were multiple hydration stations in and around the playground.

Access to ice-cold water is a must, especially on a hot day. I appreciated that the playground had multiple hydration stations in and around it to refill water bottles or let my kids take a long sip from a fountain.

An added bonus: the fountains had great water pressure, so my kids didn't need to get their mouths anywhere near the spout to get a drink.

Natural elements were mixed into the modern playspace.

There were multiple ways for children to get to and from the Climbing Forest area of the playground, including smooth ramps, a climbing option (of course), and a path that resembles a nature trail — the preferred route for my kids.

Slides connect the two levels of playspaces.

Two long slides, accessible by foot or wheel, connect the upper tree-themed play structures to the lower lagoon-themed play areas.

The slides are shaded by a canopy, which is nice since they are metal and would probably get fairly hot when the sun is out.

While we were visiting, an attendant was monitoring slide usage, but didn't seem to be guiding the children or other visitors in any way.

Warning: these slides are fast. My son got off and said, "That was fast. Too fast." But then he went down them three more times. My husband, who also took a turn, almost went over the side of one of them and certainly pulled something.

There's more than meets the eye.

At first glance, this dragonfly-shaped climbing structure seemed like it might not offer much for my kids. The closer we got, the more we noticed that there was plenty to do in, on, and around it.

Strategically placed handgrips encouraged kids to climb on top, while suspended nets allowed them to rest within the insect's body. It also housed a few great hide-and-seek spots.

Kids who love to climb and hang have multiple options.

Every time you turned a corner at this park, there was something new — and usually surprising — to play on. The structures seemed to cater to a wide range of ages, abilities, heights, and confidence levels.

Shade is hard to come by — for now.

Like the rest of the campus, the space is beautifully landscaped. There are pollinator-friendly plants everywhere you look and many, many trees that will offer shade — one day.

For now, most of the plantings are fairly young, so the playground is very exposed. Families visiting during peak sun hours should plan to have sunscreen and hats on hand.

A public restroom was close to the playground.

A clean, easily accessible restroom is a must-have for a primo playground. While not directly connected to the activity area, this lovely stone option was just a few minutes' walk from the south entrance to the playground.

Those pushing strollers could avoid the stairs by walking a little further to get around them.

I was also told by a fellow parent that there are restrooms in the Home Court building, so those may be worth checking out if the building is open.

It can be tricky to keep an eye on your kids.

While I loved that the playground had multiple spaces, levels, and activities, these qualities could also be seen as a downside.

The bi-level design made it hard to keep an eye on multiple kids who wanted to explore different areas. If my kids were younger or the space was more crowded, I would definitely have been running around a lot more, trying to make sure they were staying safe and happy.

Caregivers looking after young kids will likely want to stick to one designated area at a time during the visit.

The area has a lot of seating.

Each play area was lined with benches and other seating options so that parents and caregivers could relax while the kids ran around.

There is also a smaller area with a few picnic tables for those looking to enjoy a meal or snack time while at the playground.

Nearby, prepared families can use the grills.

Adjacent to the playground, and just outside the Home Court basketball pavilion, are many more picnic tables along with a few communal grills.

No one was enjoying this space while we were there, but I can imagine it would be a lovely place to meet up with some friends.

The space is inclusive.

With the exception of the sandbox, the play spaces were suspended over either wood chips or rubber surfaces, which are popular in most modern parks. Though you may need to walk around to get where you are going, strollers, scooters, or wheelchairs could easily access both levels of the playground and its various structures.

There were only a handful of swings at the park, two of which could accommodate riders who require ADA-compliant equipment.

There are other notable places to visit within Jackson Park.

We ended up at the playground after a long day of exploring at the nearby Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, where my kids had a blast. The presidential center is just a quick (or longer, depending on your leg length) walk, about 10 minutes for us, south.

Wooded Island, also located within Jackson Park, is accessible by two pedestrian bridges and is worth a quick visit. If you enter on the north end, you'll quickly be greeted by the entrance to the Garden of the Phoenix. My kids had a great time wandering along the one-way path in the Osaka garden, spotting some cool water birds and admiring the koi fish. We also saw not one, but two engagements take place in the picturesque spot in the short time that we were there.

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pushed back on claims that China is driving US data center opposition.
• Abbott said his data center pivot was driven by legitimate concerns from Texans.
• Researchers have questioned the impact of a Chinese social media campaign on the data center debate.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott isn't buying the Chinese psy-op theory.

In a Fox News interview on Friday, the Texas governor pushed back against the notion that China is influencing the data center debate in the United States.

"I haven't done it because of anything said by China, I've done it by listening to and working with constituents and seeing real problems they're facing in their communities," Abbott said of his recent moratorium on data center construction in Texas.

"None of that has anything to do with China," he added.

X said on Thursday that it uncovered a 200,000-strong Chinese bot farm and that a couple hundred of those accounts posted disparaging content about data centers "in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy."

The disclosure prompted a fresh wave of I-told-you-sos from the members of the tech industry, who say vast numbers of Americans are being duped by cheap, AI-produced Chinese propaganda, and that anti-data-center sentiment in the United States was, as a result, illegitimate.

What X didn't disclose, said Darren Linvill, a researcher at Clemson University, is that many of those bots had zero engagement and were likely quickly deactivated by X before they could garner a following.

On Fox News on Friday, host Will Cain raised X's disclosure and asked Abbott whether "real concerns" about data centers in the United States were "being driven by China."

Abbott said that China is certainly attempting to influence data center sentiment, but added that his recent pivot against the compute factories was the result of legitimate concerns raised by Texans in communities where they're being built.

"We know what the power demand was going to be for the state of Texas, which was five times the current ability to provide power," Abbot said.

Once a staunch supporter of data center construction in Texas, Abbott has recently pivoted.

Abbott introduced new standards for AI data center projects in Texas, including directing the state's utility commission and grid operator to protect residents from associated infrastructure costs. He also suggested a ban on data center development in rural Texas and said that projects must undergo an audit before moving forward.

Abbott said earlier this month that his administration had halted some 1,800 AI data center projects in the state.

AI data centers are an existential issue for AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, which rely on them to power their products.

All across the country, however, Americans are rallying to fight against AI data centers, which can cost billions to build and span hundreds of acres. Many are concerned about how the sprawling facilities will affect the environment, utility prices, water resources, and noise levels. Some just don't like AI.

The effectiveness of any Chinese campaign, which has been pushed by right-wing commentators, tech bros, and Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary, who is developing a data center in Utah, was disputed by several researchers who study misinformation campaigns.

Samuel Woolley, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, said the only reports he's seen about Chinese AI data center propaganda have come directly from Big Tech companies, which he said have a "vested interest" in data center development in the United States. X is owned by Elon Musk, whose companies need AI data centers to survive.

"We have to take research that's potentially political with a pinch of salt," he said.

• Colorfulkoala's $23 high-waisted, full-length leggings are a #1 bestseller on Amazon. They also come in a 7/8 length with or without pockets.
• I was skeptical about the quality, but after many wash and dry cycles, my two pairs still look new.
• They're also comfortable, squat-proof, and comparable to high-end leggings brands.

I'm a bit of a leggings snob. As someone who works from home, I live almost exclusively in loungewear, and leggings are my essential closet workhorse. It's tough to find a pair that's comfy enough to lounge in all day, stays put through a workout, holds up through wash and dry cycles, and looks presentable enough to wear out — especially if you're not looking to spend $90. But the Amazon-favorite Colorfulkoala legging check all those boxes and more.

A bestseller on Amazon, the Colorfulkoala High Waisted Full-Length Leggings have amassed over 53,000 glowing reviews. At $22.99 a pair, they're on the more affordable end, which made me skeptical that they wouldn't be very high-quality or durable. But I was immediately taken by the buttery soft feel, and after many washes and dry cycles, I can confirm they have kept their shape and the fabric feels the same as the day I got them.

What Colorfulkoala leggings are like to wear

These lightweight leggings truly feel like a second skin. My favorite part is that they have a super high waist (hits just above the navel) that offers a bit of tummy smoothing without being suffocating. They stay put all day — through sitting, standing, and spin class — without rolling down or dropping. This means I'm comfortable wearing them with a cropped top. (Psst: No camel toe!) Since they're on the lightweight side, these are my go-to leggings for spring through fall, but in the winter, I opt for something a little thicker for added warmth.

I own two pairs — the solid black full-length and the army green splinter camo in full-length — and there are slight differences between the solid and patterned variations. The solid, which is made of 80 percent nylon/20 percent spandex material, is almost cool to the touch, while the 75 percent polyester/25 percent spandex patterned version has a bit more of a matte finish that reminds me of Lululemon leggings.

A bonus for pet owners: The solid version is better than average at keeping lint and pet hair at bay (I found the patterned style to be a bit more prone to clinging bits, but still relatively not bad). Opacity is often a false promise for yoga pants, but the darker shades are actually pretty squat proof (I have not tried the lighter color range, so I can't vouch for those). 

Sizing and fit

I usually wear a medium in leggings, but a small fits me perfectly in these. At 5-foot-7, the full-length pair hits just above my ankle. They're also available in a 7/8 length, which our 5-foot-1 executive editor says fits her like a full-length legging.

The bottom line

Colorfulkoala leggings look and wear like a high-quality pair of buttery soft leggings for a fraction of the price. The flattering high-waisted fit stays in place, and the fabric maintains its shape and quality after washing and drying. These yoga pants are a great wallet-friendly option for lounging or fitness.

• I had a baby in New York and in Puerto Rico. Both experiences were different in many ways.
• Wait times for doctor appointments in Puerto Rico were longer, likely due to physician shortages.
• I had to buy my epidural and some supplies in advance, but my husband had more access to amenities.

When I moved from Brooklyn to Puerto Rico two years ago, with my husband and then-3-year-old son, we were firmly "one and done."

Life with a toddler in New York City was too hard; we spent weekends at chain-link fence-enclosed playgrounds that were either shadeless and sweltering in the summer or freezing and depressing in the winter, struggled to find affordable childcare, and didn't have the village it takes to raise a kid.

Moving to Puerto Rico changed our tune. The near-constant sunshine, excellent and affordable bilingual schools, easy access to beaches, and welcoming people who instantly became our community had us considering a second.

Fast forward to April 2026, and we welcomed a baby girl in San Juan.

My first child, now 5, was born in Southampton, New York, in August 2021. From the moment I started looking for an OB-GYN in San Juan, my experience being pregnant and giving birth in New York and Puerto Rico was strikingly different.

Here are some of the biggest contrasts I noticed.

In Puerto Rico, I had a hard time finding an OB-GYN open to new patients, and my appointments took forever

I kept hearing from friends and fellow parents from my son's school that they were taking entire mornings or afternoons off work for standard doctor appointments — multi-hour waits were that common.

I didn't believe it until I regularly found myself waiting three hours to see my obstetrician. In Southampton, I considered a 30-minute wait a bad day.

A potential reason is Puerto Rico's severe doctor shortage. Lower reimbursement rates and wages than on the mainland have contributed to a long-running physician exodus, with many doctors leaving for better pay and working conditions.

Those who remain can end up juggling a lot of patients and overscheduling themselves to keep up, leading to the long wait times I (and many others) experience.

On top of that, it took me quite some time and a lot of searching to find an OB-GYN who was taking new patients in the first place.

Things I took for granted in New York had to be purchased from the hospital pharmacy in Puerto Rico

In Southampton, I just showed up to give birth — I didn't really have to think about pillows, epidurals, or diapers.

In San Juan, patients must purchase these items from the on-site pharmacy. Pillows were $8 a pop, so I brought my own from home. I also brought my own blankets instead of buying them.

I ended up buying a mandatory baby care kit (containing things like a T-shirt, swaddle blanket, and diapers) and a delivery kit (with a hairnet and scrubs for my husband) for $35 and $25, respectively.

I was offered a bedpan for another $15 but declined. Had I had a boy I wanted circumcised, I would've had to purchase a circumcision tray for $100.

I had to buy my epidural in advance — and getting it was a whole process

In Southampton, I didn't fill out any forms before arriving at the hospital, asked for the epidural once I got there, and received it with no fuss. As far as I remember, it was fully covered by our insurance.

In San Juan, I went through pre-admission, in which I filled out tons of paperwork a week before my due date.

Part of pre-admission included purchasing an epidural. Many fellow moms who had given birth at the same hospital warned me that it sometimes runs out of epidurals, and to make sure they know I want one (and boy, did I want one!) well in advance.

Thus, I purchased an epidural from the billing department for $1,000. I then had to make an appointment with a member of the hospital's anesthesia provider group, present them with the paid invoice, and answer dozens of questions related to my medical history.

Once in labor, the anesthesiologist came to my bedside and gave me a presentation — including diagrams — explaining in great detail how the epidural works and asking for consent before administering it.

My husband was well-fed and got a full bed to sleep in for a small extra fee

In Southampton, I received a private room with an ensuite bathroom without having asked for it — lucky for me, the maternity ward at the hospital there doesn't have any other kind.

My husband slept in a chair and complains about how uncomfortable it was to this day (I don't remember there being enough room for another bed).

And while I received three full meals a day, my husband wasn't provided any food — he was begrudingly given a cup of coffee when asked. That said, on our last night at the hospital, we were provided a celebratory steak dinner for two, which was sweet.

In San Juan, I was given a list of different hospital rooms to choose from during pre-admission, ranging from shared ones with limited visitor allowances to private suites with mini fridges and extra space.

Each room cost a different amount — the nicer ones weren't covered by insurance and had to be prepaid — and came with different amenities.

The one we chose, for example, came with full meals for the patient's partner, and so my husband received a tray of food every time I did.

It was also spacious enough to allow him to sleep on a full bed, which cost an additional $10 per night and could be folded and tucked away when not in use.

Ultimately, I had a positive experience giving birth in Puerto Rico

It was certainly interesting to give birth in separate parts of the United States, and my experience is just my own. Every hospital and every birth experience is different, even if two people are having a baby in the same city.

Despite long waits and some surprising quirks, my pregnancy care and delivery in Puerto Rico went smoothly, and I have no complaints.

• I use my Costco executive membership to shop at the warehouse and feed my family of five.
• Kirkland Signature ground beef and farm-raised tilapia are some of my favorite protein sources.
• My whole family loves the Columbus turkey bacon and Amylu Andouille chicken sausages.

At a time when online grocery shopping is often the most convenient option, Costco is one of the only stores I still visit in person.

As an executive member of 18 years, I count on the store's items to help me feed my family of five without spending a fortune.

And although I always love trying new products, here are nine tried-and-true items that almost always end up in my cart.

Costco is a great place to buy red meat in bulk.

Red meat is expensive nowadays, so I like to buy ground beef in bulk at Costco.

I divide it into four freezer bags to spread over several meals, including Egyptian-style kofta and beef stew.

Pita bread is a staple in my house.

I use Kirkland Signature pita bread for Egyptian-style hawashi sandwiches — a filling lunch that's inexpensive to make.

I'm hoping Costco comes up with a whole-wheat version of this pita in the future.

My son makes an excellent seafood pasta using Kirkland Signature farm-raised tilapia.

Each of the Kirkland Signature frozen tilapia loins is individually wrapped, making it to make it easy to thaw just the amount I want to cook.

My teenage son has mastered a tilapia bake in the oven with Lawry's garlic salt, black pepper, ground cumin, ground coriander, onions, and peppers.

He serves it with spaghetti for a seafood pasta that costs about $5 per person — way less than we'd pay at a restaurant for a similar meal.

Amylu Andouille chicken sausages are delicious.

My whole family loves the spicy Amylu Andouille chicken sausages. Sometimes we grill the entire links. Other times, I slice and cook them in a skillet with onions and peppers, and serve over rice.

I always buy a pack of Kirkland Signature organic eggs.

I like to combine Kirkland Signature organic eggs and some chicken sausage to make a baked egg casserole. However, these never go to waste, as the whole family enjoys having eggs for breakfast.

My whole family loves the Columbus turkey bacon.

No one in my family complained when I replaced pork bacon with Columbus uncured turkey bacon. This package includes four vacuum sealed packs, making it easy to portion and store.

Turkey bacon works great with eggs for breakfast, and as part of one of our favorite quick meals: bacon-chicken sandwiches.

I love buying Poppen smoked Norwegian salmon slices.

Costco is the only place near me I've been able to find Poppen smoked Norwegian salmon. The slices are thicker and easier to separate than most other smoked salmon I've bought.

Plus, it comes with a delicious honey-mustard dill dressing that makes it an easy meal to enjoy with pita bread, lettuce, and red onions.

Kirkland Signature chicken breast fillets taste great when baked or thrown in the air fryer.

We use the Kirkland Signature lightly breaded, fully cooked chicken breast fillets for those aforementioned bacon-chicken sandwiches.

They can be baked or air fried, and they're a great shortcut for meals calling for breaded chicken.

The BelGioioso Italian cheese board is so versatile.

The BelGioioso Italian cheese board comes with slices of provolone, fontina, Parmesan, and Asiago.

These slices work great for cheeseburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, or on a charcuterie board with crackers, fruit, and cold cuts.

Curious to know what other shoppers put in their carts? Check out our other Costco diaries here.

• OpenAI said it will end its contract with Cursor, a startup that was acquired by SpaceX.
• The company pointed to past conduct by Twitter, another Elon Musk-owned company.
• OpenAI said it would not provide Cursor access to future models, including Astra.

OpenAI said it's ending its contract with Cursor, a coding startup recently acquired by SpaceX, because it doesn't trust an Elon Musk-owned company to comply with its terms of service.

The company said in a statement published on Friday night that it plans to shut off Cursor's access to OpenAI models on November 12.

"This decision was incredibly tough, as we care deeply about our models being broadly available for developers," OpenAI said. "We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk's companies violating contracts."

Spokespeople for SpaceX and OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment.

OpenAI did not accuse Cursor of violating any terms. It instead pointed to past conduct by another Musk-owned company, Twitter, which Musk bought in 2022 and merged with SpaceX earlier in February.

OpenAI said in its blog post that Twitter had previously violated the terms of its contract, citing a New York Times story reporting that Musk cut off OpenAI's access to Twitter's data. OpenAI also wrote that the SpaceX CEO said under oath earlier this year that xAI had violated OpenAI's terms by training Grok from OpenAI's output.

Musk said at the time that it was "partly" true that xAI had distilled OpenAI's models, The Verge reported in April.

OpenAI said that it uses "custom contracts" with large partners like SpaceX to ensure compliance. The partnership OpenAI had with Cursor provided a "limited time window" to cancel the agreement after the acquisition, the company said.

SpaceX officially acquired Cursor this month for $60 billion. The deal gives the coding startup access to SpaceX's computing power.

Michael Truell, a cofounder and the former CEO of Cursor, responded to OpenAI's decision on X on Friday night.

"We're sorry to see that OpenAI put out a note saying they plan to block Cursor users from accessing OpenAI models in three months," Truell wrote. "OpenAI models serve about 5% of Cursor user traffic, and we're speaking with the OpenAI team to resolve this."

Cursor, an AI coding editor, offers models from several companies inside its software, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and SpaceXAI. Its website lists OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Luna, Sol, and Terra models that paid users can access through its software.

It's unclear which Cursor users or models will be affected by the shutdown. OpenAI said that it will not provide "future models" to Cursor, including its coming Astra model.

The decision is the latest escalation in the long-running feud between Musk and OpenAI.

In 2024, Musk, an OpenAI cofounder and early backer, sued the company, its CEO, Sam Altman, and others over its shift from a nonprofit research lab to a partially for-profit entity.

In May, a federal jury found that Musk waited too long to bring the case forward, missing the statute of limitations.

Musk said he plans to appeal the decision.

• Chick-fil-A is celebrating its 80th birthday by going all in on nostalgia.
• Its new menu turns two classics — chicken and waffles and s'mores — into five limited-time items.
• I tried all five, and the best gave chicken and waffles a spicy upgrade.

Nostalgia is one of the hottest fast-food trends of the year, with many chains leaning into the past to grab customers' attention.

Chick-fil-A has spent much of 2026 embracing that strategy, in honor of the chain's 80th anniversary.

At the top of the year, the chain declared it a year of "Newstalgia," introducing retro cups and packaging while making soda-fountain-inspired floats and Frosted Sodas permanent menu items.

Its latest limited-time menu takes the strategy a step further by combining two familiar American favorites: chicken and waffles and s'mores.

Launched nationwide on August 24, the lineup includes three versions of a chicken-and-waffles sandwich, served with bacon, honey butter, and syrup, as well as a S'mores Milkshake and S'mores Frosted Coffee.

"Chicken and waffles and s'mores are much-loved classics, and we challenged ourselves to bring those flavors to our menu in a playful and unexpected way," Allison Duncan, Chick-fil-A's director of menu and packaging, said in a statement.

The menu quickly began attracting attention online, showing how effectively fast-food chains can turn comforting flavors into something that still feels novel and social-media-ready.

While online reviews of the new menu were largely positive — one TikTok creator said they waited over an hour in the drive-thru line just to try it — others said they found the waffles can get soggy even without the added syrup, and the overall flavor profile can border on too sweet.

I tried all five new items to see whether Chick-fil-A's latest nostalgia play lived up to the hype, and while I wouldn't order some of the items again, I walked away convinced that the trend isn't disappearing anytime soon.

Business Insider reached out to Chick-fil-A for comment on this story.

Chick-fil-A's new menu has turned two nostalgic flavors into five limited-time items.

Chick-fil-A launched its new lineup of chicken-and-waffles sandwiches nationwide on August 24, following a limited test in 2025.

The menu includes three new breakfast sandwiches made with the chain's original, spicy, and grilled chicken filets, plus a s'mores-flavored milkshake and frosted coffee.

Each sandwich swaps a traditional bun for two maple-flavored waffles and adds bacon, honey-butter spread, and a side of syrup.

I started with the classic chicken-and-waffles sandwich.

The sandwich stacked Chick-fil-A's original breaded chicken filet between two maple-flavored waffles with three strips of bacon and honey-butter spread. It cost $8.95, excluding tax and fees.

I didn't agree with some social media users who said the sandwiches were too sweet, since I expected a maple-waffle sandwich to be sweet. Plus, a portion of classic syrup came on the side, giving me control over how much extra sweetness I added to each bite.

The large filet extended beyond the waffles, making it feel much more substantial than a typical fast-food breakfast sandwich.

All three sandwiches also come in a larger size once lunch and dinner start being served at the chain.

The sandwich came topped with three strips of bacon and honey butter.

Lifting the top waffle revealed that the sandwich's construction was actually quite simple.

Most of the sandwich's flavor came from the contrast between the salty chicken and bacon and the sweet waffles, honey butter, and syrup.

The classic version tasted like a weekend brunch condensed into one sandwich.

The bacon added just the right amount of saltiness and savory flavor, while the chicken breast was moist and crispy. The sweet maple waffles balanced it all out, adding a touch of autumn to this sandwich.

It felt more like eating a comfort-food brunch than ordering a standard chicken sandwich from a drive-thru.

Of the three versions, this one delivered the most straightforward version of the nostalgia theme.

The spicy chicken added more contrast to the sweet-and-savory combination.

The spicy chicken and waffles sandwich used the same waffles, bacon, honey butter, and syrup as the original. However, the darker, more heavily seasoned crust distinguished it from the classic version.

The sandwich cost slightly more than the original. It was $9.39, excluding tax and fees.

The heat lingered after each bite instead of hitting me right away.

The salty bacon reinforced the sandwich's savory side, while the honey butter softened some of the spice. I used the syrup sparingly, since the waffles already brought plenty of maple flavor.

Overall, the spicy chicken created a more balanced contrast between sweetness, salt, and heat. Of the three sandwiches, this was my favorite, as I thought it packed the most flavor.

Lastly, I tried the grilled chicken-and-waffles sandwich. It offered a lighter-looking take on the same indulgent concept.

The third version replaced the fried chicken with one of Chick-fil-A's grilled filets. Its visible grill marks and thinner profile made this look noticeably different from the first two sandwiches.

Without the breading, it also appeared less heavy, although the bacon, waffles, and honey butter still made it a substantial meal.

It cost $9.05, excluding tax and fees.

Without the breading, the bacon became much more prominent.

The bacon flavor came through much more heavily on this sandwich than with the other variations.

Despite the leaner filet, the sandwich still delivered the recognizable flavors of chicken, waffles, bacon, and maple. The grilled chicken just made each bite feel lighter than the fried version.

However, I thought the sandwich wasn't as decadent or flavorful as the other two, and I'd be most inclined to order the spicy version again.

The s'mores drinks completed a menu built almost entirely around nostalgia.

The S'mores Milkshake ($8.25) blended Chick-fil-A's vanilla-flavored soft-serve with marshmallow-flavored syrup, chocolate shortbread, and graham-cracker crumbles, while the S'mores Frosted Coffee ($7.99) used many of the same ingredients but added cold brew.

The milkshake felt more like a full dessert, while the coffee offered a slightly more balanced way to get the same campfire-inspired flavors.

Both were very sweet, which was a bit much for me first thing in the morning. If you have a sweet tooth, they might be up your alley.

Together with the sandwiches, both drinks turned familiar memories — toaster waffles in my parents' kitchen and making s'mores by the campfire — into new, social-media-friendly formats.

The new nostalgia-fueled menu tracks with industry trends.

The National Restaurant Association recently ranked comfort foods as 2026's second-biggest overall restaurant trend, while Circana found that nostalgia-based restaurant promotions can often generate a larger increase in transactions than value deals at chain restaurants — another huge trend across the industry.

Rather than simply reviving discontinued products — as Taco Bell did with its Decades menu — Chick-fil-A has used familiar, nostalgic flavors to create something new.

The new menu shows that the fast-food nostalgia trend still has plenty of room for reinvention and experimentation … while remaining delicious.

• Eldercare costs have soared as families juggle financial strain and caregiving for aging loved ones.
• Dozens of families told Business Insider that they've made financial and health sacrifices.
• Four families explain how they've navigated the skyrocketing costs of long-term care.

Kim Berling anticipates living a very long life. Much of it, though, may not go as she wants.

Berling, 66, and her husband, 72, have cared for her 99-year-old mother-in-law. Both work to support her as her memory fades and her health declines. Berling and her husband, who lives in Albuquerque, make the nine-hour drive to visit her in Texas once a month and help pay for caregivers. Neither of them has anything saved for their long-term care.

"We work because we have to, not because we want to," Berling said.

Over the past few months, Business Insider has spoken to dozens of families navigating long-term care for their loved ones and themselves. Reporters have spoken to families spending six figures each year on dementia care, spending a year's worth of paychecks on home renovations to accommodate loved ones, and quitting high-paying jobs to take on full-time caregiving.

In nearly every case, caregiving hurt finances across generations and positioned families to make painful sacrifices to ensure their loved ones received the best care possible. In every case, families said caregiving was a labor of love.

"It wasn't inexpensive or easy for my grandparents to stay at home," Erin Dentmon wrote in an essay about her grandparents. "There's no magic number of children or magic amount of money that would make it so. But it was possible."

Business Insider recently reported on the skyrocketing prices of eldercare across nursing homes, assisted living, and at-home care. Prices for care have, on the whole, increased faster than overall consumer prices, meaning families have been digging into savings to cover what some families said is over a decade of care.

There are many driving forces behind the price hikes, which have increased by 212% for nursing homes since 1997. Higher insurance premiums, transportation costs, and caregiver wages have pushed up facility costs, coupled with the exodus of care workers during the pandemic and immigration crackdowns. Some families told Business Insider that costs have spiked at their loved ones' facilities because of private equity involvement.

Many families said that they've opted for at-home care, which comes with its own sticker shock. A few families said that at around $30 an hour for a caregiver coming for 40 hours a week, that's over $60,000 a year. These non-medical caregiver costs, up from a median of about $21 per hour in 2018 to $35 per hour in 2025, have led some to leave their communities to become primary caregivers.

"At the same time, demand is growing," said Howard Gleckman, a nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute, a public policy research organization. "Younger people with disabilities are living longer. The Baby Boomers are aging and also living longer."

A family is spending $11,000 a month for their mother-in-law's care

Berling, who has five adult children, said she became her mother-in-law's caregiver after she fell off a ladder and broke her femur at 92. Her home care now costs about $6,600 a month, though other expenses bring the total to $11,000. Long-term care insurance has helped cover some of the costs, though she and her husband cover the deficit.

"We're grateful that these costs aren't as high as what I often see," Berling said. "I hear of a lot of caregiving situations where people are shuffled off to state facilities, or children who have had to quit work to care for a parent."

Another family spent $100k to move 3 aging parents into 2 tiny homes on their yard

Linda Barton, 55, and her husband were concerned that their parents couldn't live on their own anymore, so they purchased and renovated two tiny homes in their yard. The combined costs were under $100,000, as her husband did much of the wiring and installations himself.

The decision has been somewhat of a relief, as she knows at all times what's happening to her two parents and her father-in-law. However, the cost of hiring three caregivers, who are not covered by Medicare, has put them at a crossroads.

"If we don't pay for caregivers, we end up sacrificing work when they need something," Barton said. "It's a constant balancing act for us between our finances, helping them, and making sure we still have money when we're older."

One family had their 6 adult children help care for their aging parents, and it still cost them $4,000 a week

Erin Dentmon estimates her grandparents' 24/7 paid care costs upward of $16,000 a month — even with their six children combining for about 180 hours of care each week.

Her grandparents, who died in 2024 and 2025, wished to live at home. Dentmon's mom and her siblings held "family meetings" every Sunday to divide and conquer caregiving tasks, including personal care, outdoor maintenance, and legal paperwork.

"It's hard to ignore that the most important resources my grandparents had in their final years are becoming increasingly scarce," Dentmon said. "Two siblings, or an only child, simply can't do as much work as four, five, or six."

And some have their parents move in with them to cut down costs

After a dementia diagnosis and a major fall, Carla Romagnano's mom needed 24-hour care, but after her dad died unexpectedly, the family decided that her mom should move in.

In October 2023, her mom relocated to Idaho, and Romagnano hired home care to help with her mobility. Romagnano, in her 60s, began sleeping on the couch outside her bedroom to ensure her mom is safe each night. She said she can't retire, though she hopes to work for another five years to reach 50 years at her company.

"Our calendars are full, between anything I need to do for myself and my mom's doctor's appointments," she said. "In just one year, I drove 800 miles to take care of doctor visits, prescriptions, and all that. The year before, it was 600. You don't realize that until you actually go over it and see."

• Photographer Allen Cooley spent more than $20,000 on hard drives in 2025 as storage costs jumped.
• He used Claude to catalog old drives and identify files he could safely delete for reuse.
• The tool saved him thousands in new costs, though video work may eventually force him to buy more.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Allen Cooley, photographer, director, and founder of Allen Cooley Photography, a commercial, beauty, and portrait studio based in Atlanta, Georgia. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I've been working professionally as a photographer since about 2006, and for most of my career, I barely had to think about the price of hard drives. They were a basic cost of doing business.

Now, I have to be strategic about every drive I buy.

I started noticing a spike in hard drive prices toward the end of 2025. When I went back through my receipts, I found that I'd paid $400 for a 4-terabyte drive in 2022. Today, a comparable drive costs around $1,200.

When I tallied up what I'd paid in 2025 for drives, it was over $20,000. That's why I stopped buying them entirely this year.

Luckily, I've accumulated hundreds of hard drives over my career. Every new job, I'd simply buy a few more. So, 20 years and thousands of jobs later, I've become something of a hard-drive hoarder — and that habit is finally paying off.

How I used AI to solve my problem

Commercial photography requires a lot of storage. I usually need three or four portable drives for a job, and sometimes as many as five or six. And because a client might come back three years later to renew the assets, I have to keep the files long after a shoot is over.

On a recent campaign that involved both video and still photography, buying that amount of new drives would have cost me $4,000 to $5,000.

That was money I didn't want to spend.

So, I used Claude to help me build a program that catalogs what's stored across my drives. Now, I can search for a file, find every drive that contains a copy, and figure out what I can safely delete to free up space.

Instead of manually organizing hundreds of drives, I can essentially have a conversation with my archive. It's saved me days, if not weeks, worth of work.

The irony isn't lost on me: I believe demand from the data centers powering AI is one reason storage has gotten so expensive, and then I turn around and use Claude to help me avoid spending thousands of dollars on new drives.

I don't know how long I can avoid buying more drives

How long I can keep avoiding new hard drives depends on how much work comes in.

If I'm shooting only still photography, I can probably keep this going for a while. Video is different. I'm primarily hired to shoot video and stills together, and those jobs require so much storage that eventually I'll need more drives.

Also, my business is down about 30% from its peak in 2023. Last year was particularly rough, and this year has been roughly flat compared with last year.

I don't blame all of that on the advertising industry. Earlier in my career, I worked 10- or 13-hour days, answered emails at midnight and on weekends, and made myself extraordinarily accessible.

Now I have two young daughters, and I'm more likely to spend my time at a soccer game or taking one of them somewhere. So when I look at that decline, I know some of it reflects a choice I've made to spend less time working.

Still, I'm watching the industry closely.

The cost of doing business has gone up while, in my experience, companies and agencies are reallocating their budgets or spending less on some traditional photography and advertising work.

I also don't expect hard-drive prices simply to return to what I was used to paying. My guess is that eventually another manufacturer could step in to serve consumers who need cheaper storage.

Until then, I'm going to keep being resourceful with what I have. If work picks up, I'll probably have to start buying drives again. If it doesn't, I can make these hundreds of old drives last a lot longer.

While the bulk of the NCAA football action won't start up until next week, the first games of the regular season kick off this week. We've rounded up everything you need to know about where to watch college football Week 0.

The first games of the season are available across several channels. If you don't want to read any further, you can live stream most games through a live TV service (like YouTube TV or Fubo) in the US and select games through DAZN in the UK and other international markets. You can access your streaming options from anywhere with a VPN.

Where to watch college football in the US

Week 0 games are spread across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ACC Network, FOX, NBC, CBSSN, The CW, ESPN+, and YouTube in the US. A few other channels and services (including the SEC Network, FS1, Big Ten Network, and the Peacock streaming service, among others) will carry additional games throughout the regular season, but those won't come into play until after Week 0.

The best way to watch the most college football games in one place is through a live TV streaming service. YouTube TV and Fubo are two of our top recommendations right now.

YouTube TV carries every channel you'll need (outside of streaming exclusives) in both its Main and Sports plans. YouTube TV's Main Plan (100+ channels) costs $83 a month, but new users can get $15 a month off their first five months after a free trial. The platform's Sports Plan (30+ channels) is also on sale. Subscriptions typically cost $65 a month, but first-time customers can get $20 off their first six months after a free trial.

Fubo offers a similar selection of college football-friendly channels across its Pro, Elite, and Sports + News packages. The budget-friendly Sports + News plan costs $65 a month, but new users can get $10 off their first month after a free trial. The pricier Pro and Elite plans also come with introductory offers and free trials. All three plans unlock ESPN Unlimited (more on that below) at no extra cost.

ESPN will come into play for several games this weekend. For games that aren't nationally broadcast and instead appear on ESPN+, you'll be covered by signing up for the cheaper ESPN Select tier, which costs $14 a month following a recent ESPN price hike. For those seeking access to full live streams from ESPN networks (including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and the ACC Network), the pricier ESPN Unlimited tier will be necessary. ESPN Unlimited costs $32 a month and also unlocks access to ESPN+ streaming-exclusive content.

Fans looking to watch a one-off game on another network, such as San Jose State vs. USC on NBC or Memphis vs. UNLV on FOX, can access those in the aforementioned live TV streaming services. These networks also have their own stand-alone streaming services. You can live stream NBC programming with the Peacock Premium Plus tier, which costs $20 a month following a recent Peacock price hike. Similarly, FOX One offers FOX coverage for $20 a month. There's also a FOX One and ESPN Unlimited bundle, which is available for $40 a month.

Where to watch college football in the UK and other regions

DAZN holds the broadcast rights for college football games in many countries outside the US, including the UK. DAZN will offer up to 25 college football games each week, including some free coverage. Subscription prices vary by region and contract details.

How to watch college football from anywhere

College football fans traveling abroad can keep up with their usual streaming options with the help of a VPN. Short for virtual private networks, VPNs are apps that let people temporarily change their virtual locations. This way, their favorite websites and apps work from anywhere in the world exactly as they would back home. A VPN is also a strong way to boost cybersecurity.

NordVPN is one of the best VPNs on the market. It's reliable, user-friendly, and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

• See also: Best sports streaming services | ESPN streaming service | How to watch NFL games

Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• Homeowners are still staying put, making it hard for homebuyers to find available homes for sale.
• The good news is that homebuilders are stepping up their efforts, especially in the South.
• Realtor.com ranked the top 10 metros for buying a newly built home, and most are in the Carolinas.

Nearly halfway through the year, the housing market remains stuck in a familiar rut: Many homeowners with low mortgage rates are staying put, leaving prospective buyers to compete for the few homes available for sale.

The good news is that homebuilders are stepping up construction efforts, particularly in the South, according to a report from Realtor.com. The company ranked the 10 metros where buyers are most likely to find a newly built home at a competitive price.

"New construction is one of the most important ways to expand the supply of homes available to buyers, but the opportunity is not evenly distributed across the country," said Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner. He added that builders in the South are constructing homes "at prices that compete with, and in some cases beat, existing homes."

North and South Carolina dominate the ranking, with six metros appearing on the list. In recent years, the Carolinas have attracted many Americans with their relatively affordable home prices and cost of living, as well as draws such as small-town charm and historic sites.

Florida in particular has been a major source of inbound migration to the Carolinas, especially North Carolina. State-to-state migration data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that nearly 40,000 people moved from Florida to North Carolina in 2023 — the largest number of movers from any state, including South Carolina.

Native Floridian Kimberly Jones previously told Business Insider that she moved to North Carolina in 2025 for a lower cost of living and to build a home she could afford.

It appears that builders are responding to that demand, too. Here are the 10 best metros to buy a newly built home, according to Realtor.com.

10. Columbia, SC

• New construction share of listings: 25.5%
• New construction premium: -3.0%
• New construction days on market: 45

9. Durham-Chapel Hill, NC

• New construction share of Listings: 33%
• New construction premium: 8.7%
• New construction days on market: 68

8. Madison, WI

• New construction share of listings: 30.8%
• New construction premium: 12.5%
• New construction days on market: 70

7. Winston-Salem, NC

• New construction share of listings: 33%
• New construction premium: 9.7%
• New construction days on market: 64

6. Chattanooga, TN-GA

• New construction share of listings: 26.8%
• New construction premium: 10.1%
• New construction days on market: 66

5. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN

• New construction share of listings: 30.1%
• New construction premium: 5.1%
• New construction days on market: 52

4. Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC

• New construction share of listings: 29.5%
• New construction premium: 4.7%
• New construction days on market: 65

3. Boise City, ID

• New construction share of listings: 53.4%
• New construction premium: -4.5%
• New construction days on market: 61

2. Greenville-Anderson-Greer, SC

• New construction share of listings: 33.4%
• New construction premium: -1.6%
• New construction days on market: 60

1. Charleston-North Charleston, SC

• New construction share of listings: 24.8%
• New construction premium: -12.2%
• New construction days on market: 48

• Since I was a kid, I wanted to attend a HBCU, so I applied to Clark Atlanta University.
• I loved being around other Black students and professionals, but I was racking up debt.
• The school set me up for success, but I don't want my kids to attend a HBCU.

Since I was 11, I dreamed of attending a historically Black college or university.

That dream started at Morgan State University in Baltimore, where I spent two weeks each summer in a program focused on leadership and academics.

For a preteen growing up in Baltimore City, Morgan felt like another world. I had seen drug deals outside my front door and heard gunshots while playing hide and seek with friends. My mother refused to let our neighborhood define what I thought was possible for my life.

At Morgan, I saw Black students carrying backpacks and briefcases, preparing for careers and building futures. They looked like the life my mother kept telling me I could have.

But it's not the life I think my kids need.

I applied to one college

When college application season came, I applied to one school: Clark Atlanta University.

My guidance counselor warned me to give myself more options. I had a high GPA and felt certain I would get in.

Then summer 2006 came, and my friends started receiving acceptance letters. Finally, I checked my mail and saw the message I had been waiting for. I had been accepted.

My excitement faded when I saw the cost.

Tuition, room and board, books, and fees added up quickly. It was around $25,000 altogether. I had scholarships, but they did not come close to covering the bill. The university told me its grant money had already been used and encouraged me to apply again the next semester.

My mother agreed to cosign a loan. At 18, I signed paperwork for debt that would follow me for the next 20 years.

I spent 4 years finding a way

Clark Atlanta's motto is "Find a way or make one."

I lived up to that motto. I stood in financial aid lines that wrapped around corners. My classes in the mass media arts major were sometimes dropped because my account was not updated in time.

I looked at the technology available at nearby universities and wondered why my department had so much less. I even attended career fairs at other schools because I wanted access to more employers.

My family had taken on significant debt with private loans. I did not expect luxury, but I expected functioning facilities, reliable administration, current technology, and strong career opportunities. Unfortunately, I felt Clark Atlanta struggled in most of these areas when I attended from 2006 to 2010.

In my department, the School of Mass Media Arts, there was only one small radio station and one television studio. I wanted to volunteer so I could get hands-on experience with the equipment, but there were far more students interested than there were available spots.

That was frustrating, especially when I visited friends at nearby Georgia State University. As a large public university, they had multiple studios and state-of-the-art equipment. The difference in access and resources was hard to ignore.

Still, Clark Atlanta gave me something important: I found belonging. I studied under Black professors. I watched students who came from backgrounds like mine become leaders, entrepreneurs, and graduate students.

I gained confidence in who I was, and that mattered, but it does not erase what the experience cost.

I see college differently as a parent

At 18, I chose college partly with my heart. I wanted Black excellence and a place where I felt understood.

Now I am a parent, and my priorities have changed. Even though not all HBCUs are created equal, I would not encourage my children to choose one simply for the experience, especially if it means taking on more debt for fewer resources.

My kids, who are now 7 and 9, do not need college to introduce them to Black excellence. They can experience that through the people around them, books, museums, travel, history, and everyday life.

When they choose a university, I want the decision to be centered on what will best prepare them for their desired careers. I want them to look at academic programs, costs, scholarships, internships, and facilities.

If that school is an HBCU, I will support them, but the HBCU experience alone will not be enough for me.

I loved Clark Atlanta. It helped shape me into the strategic communication consultant I am today. I can value what it gave me and still question what I had to pay to get it.

Editor's Note: Clark Atlanta Univeristy did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

• A Ukrainian sergeant said supporting gear is harder to get for his air defense unit than missiles.
• It uses MANPADS that down Russian jets and aircraft, but needs batteries and ways to find targets.
• Equipment like drone detectors and electronic warfare systems is "hard to get," he said.

The hardest shortage facing one Ukrainian shoulder-fired air-defense unit isn't necessarily missiles, its battery sergeant told Business Insider. It's some of the equipment that helps crews find targets and keep their systems running.

The soldier, who uses the call sign Yankee, serves in a front-line unit equipped with man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS, which fire shoulder-launched missiles able to engage low-flying aircraft, as well as cruise missiles and drones.

Weapons like these, which include the US Stinger, Polish Piorun, and Soviet-designed Igla, have been a key part of Ukraine's short-range air defense in front-line areas, protecting troops and operations from attacks.

Yankee said that for him, at least, one of the hardest things "is finding resources. Secondary resources, not the weaponry, but electronic warfare stuff."

He said some of the devices that help his team detect threats and keep its equipment working are "hard to get." What is hardest to find is "mostly electronics."

"I'm talking more about devices that locate the drones and warn you," Yankee said. "I'm talking about stuff like EcoFlows, batteries, big batteries, because we have a shortage of them, just in general, just a mass shortage."

Ukrainian soldiers are increasingly using drone detectors, including small handheld or vehicle-mounted models, to warn of certain incoming enemy drones by detecting their radio frequencies.

EcoFlows are portable power stations that can power or recharge essential gear such as radios and communications equipment, Starlink terminals, laptops and tablets, drone equipment, electronic warfare systems, and sensors.

These, and batteries in general, are especially important because soldiers are often far from power outlets, and Russian attacks often shut down energy infrastructure. Running a portable generator would be much louder and might reveal their positions.

Electronic warfare systems are also vital for Ukraine as it tries to disrupt Russia's communications and jam its drones.

Despite their importance, this equipment isn't always easy for units to obtain in sufficient quantities. Some of the gear is much newer and less readily available than supplies like ammunition. And while demand is high, some equipment still isn't being produced in large quantities. In some cases, there are also distribution bottlenecks that affect availability.

Unlike many Western militaries, Ukraine's military doesn't have a highly centralized system for weapons procurement. Units often buy or receive gear themselves, including through crowdfunding.

There are advantages to this setup for rapid innovation because units engage manufacturers directly, but the system can also result in uneven distribution, leaving some units facing shortages.

Ukrainian foundations, units, and other groups that are involved in sourcing and crowdfunding equipment for troops often ask for gear like batteries and detectors, with some describing them as items that air defenders regularly need.

MANPADS and the units that operate them are important for Ukraine. Units, service members, and officials have reported missiles taking down Russian drones, helicopters, and aircraft, and Western analysts have credited MANPADS with making penetrating low-altitude Russian fixed-wing and helicopter sorties too costly for Russia to continue.

A report last year from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US think tank, said that Ukraine's integration of MANPADS operators into its air defense teams forced Russian pilots to choose between flying high and being targeted by ground-based air defenses or flying low and facing MANPAD missiles. These short-range defenses relieved the pressure on Ukraine's ground-based systems, allowing them to "survive and eventually recover."

Yankee's unit provides air defense for infantry who need to get to the zero line, the far edge of the front line, and, as a result, "we participate in battle," he said.

He said that conditions there can be so dangerous that moving just 300 meters can take 7 days of waiting for safe conditions and protection. Moving even that short distance, he said, "can be like a question of life and death."

Yankee spoke with Business Insider at Operation Legio, a Norway-led multinational program that trains and equips Ukrainian forces, including at a purpose-built camp in Poland. He said he was learning NATO standards and tactics, combining Western practices with his existing battle-won skills before returning to Ukraine.

Yankee said he uses the Stinger and Igla systems. Ukrainian soldiers have, at times since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, reported shortages of MANPADS missiles, saying those shortages allowed Russian forces to be bolder because they knew the Ukrainians couldn't try to stop as many of their attacks.

But Ukraine's military has not suffered critical shortages of them the way it has with larger, surface-to-air missiles, and allies have announced new deliveries throughout the war.

Not everything is consistent across the force though. Ukraine's military disseminates weapons and ammunition according to operational need, so one unit could be well supplied for critical missions while another comes up short.