The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), under acting director Russell Vought, canceled proposed new rules this week that would have protected Americans’ sensitive private data—including financial data, credit history, and Social Security numbers—from being collected by data brokers without consent and sold to advertisers and other third parties.
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here.
Trump’s Middle East tour is all about AI diplomacy
The U.S. enjoys its superpower status mainly because of two things:
National parks posting thirst traps on TikTok was not on anyone’s 2025 bingo card.
Recently, a Yellowstone National Park fan account has gone viral for pairing clips of adult entertainers and shirtless celebrities with sweeping shots of the park’s natural beauty.
Students are still setting fire to their Chromebooks for TikTok—and now they’re facing the consequences.
Fast Company first reported on the #ChromebookChallenge trend last week, following a series of school evacuations caused by students igniting laptop fires. The fires are started by inserting items such as pencils, paper clips, and pushpins in
At its annual Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View next week, Google will try to rally developers around one of its next big bets: Android XR. Later this year, Samsung is set to release the first VR headset powered by the spatial computing operating system, and Google is aiming to attract as many developers as possible to build apps for the devic
It’s not just the “gesture” of a $400 million luxury plane that President Donald Trump says he’s smart to accept from Qatar. Or that he effectively auctioned off the first destination on his first major foreign trip,
X users who interacted with the chatbot Grok on Wednesday were confronted with replies about the legitimacy of white genocide in South Africa—often regardless of context.
In one post, a user in a thread on a congressional hearing asked Grok if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spreads misinformation. Grok wrote an equivocal paragraph about RFK and then abruptly shifted its focus to South Africa. “On the South Africa topic, I’m i
High-performance computing, or HPC for short, might sound like something only scientists use in secret labs, but it’s actually one of the most important technologies in the world today. From predicting the weather to finding new medicines and even
Ever wonder why the sound of rain makes you instantly drowsy, but a ticking clock drives you up the wall? That’s because not all noise soothes the brain in the same way. Sleep sounds might seem like just background buzz, but they’re carefully engineered to allow your brain to let go. Behind every babbling brook or rainforest storm track is an intricate design meant to quiet the mind, block out distractions, and nudge you toward sleep.
As more people rely on sleep sounds to wi
Uber is on Wednesday launching its own version of a bus system along busy routes, calling it its most affordable ride option yet.
The rideshare company has introduced Route Share, a new service offering pickups every 20 minutes along busy corridors during weekday commute hours. Available from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. local time, the service will launch in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Boston, and Baltimore
Riders can select the