Electric scooter company Bird filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, marking the end to a difficult year for the micromobility unit that was once a venture capital darling.
Bird said in a release that it was entering “into a financial restructuring process aimed at strengthening its balance sheet and better positioning the company for long-term, sustainable growth.” The company will operate as normal, it said, as it works toward profitability.
If you are an executive planning for 2024, your scenario planning likely still includes the dreaded “R” word (recession), or at least predictions of slower growth. Add to that the continued emphasis on profitable growth, now the gold standard for business outcomes, and there is no shortage of proposed change initiatives on the table. Effectively the equivalent of New Year’s resolutions for companies, the real challenge is how to get your company to commit to the change th
Season’s greetings from Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech report. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or you’re reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Wednesday morning. Your feedback and ideas are most welcome. Send them to me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com.
I will be taking next week off, which means that this is the final Plugged In of the year. Thank
Mars is only as good as its toilets.
Five days into a two-week simulated Mars mission in December 2022, the holding tank for the habitat’s RV-style latrine clogged, unleashing a stench that threatened to derail two years and thousands of dollars of scientific preparation.
This technically still being Earth, albeit a remote part, the “analog astronauts” could have called for a plumber. But doing so would have defeated the purpose of holing up in the Mar
I just spent $50 at the grocery store on ham, salami, cheese, bread, and pickles. Things have officially gotten out of hand.
As such, it’s more important than ever this holiday season to make sure you’re getting the best deals possible. And instead of inundating you with a laundry list of apps and sites, here’s a short list of truly handy tools that can save you money online and in stores.
Honey
Arguably your best bet for online shopping, H
The social publishing and reading app Flipboard is embracing interoperability with the fediverse.
The fediverse, a system of decentralized social networking services that includes Mastodon and video sharing software PeerTube, lets users of independently run social hubs see and interact with each other’s content. A common standardized protocol called ActivityPub lets independently owned servers in the fediverse talk to one another, similar to how industry standards make it pos
Among the things that 2023 will be remembered for is the vast amount of time the tech industry spent fretting about ever-smarter AI someday overpowering the people who created it. But one of the year’s major tech stories was the tale of an uprising that actually happened—and it was all about people, not machines.
In April, Reddit announced that it would begin charging heavy users of its API—the firehose of data from its 100,000 communities (or “subreddits&#x
Google has agreed to pay $700 million and make several other concessions to settle allegations that it had been stifling competition against its Android app store — the same issue that went to trial in another case that could result in even bigger changes.
Although Google struck the deal with state attorneys general in September, the settlement’s terms weren’t revealed until late Monday in documents filed in San Francisco federal court. The disclosure
If two of the latest Apple Watches are on your holiday shopping list, don’t dawdle for much longer because the devices won’t be available to buy in the U.S. later this week if the White House doesn’t intervene in an international patent dispute.
Apple plans to suspend sales of the Series 9 and Ultra 2 versions of its popular watch for online U.S. customers beginning Thursday afternoon and in its stores on Sunday. The move stems from an October decision by the In
Just about a year ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster obesity drug, Wegovy, for use in teens ages 12 and up with a BMI at or above the 95th percentile for their age and sex. The decision came a little more than six months after the drug was approved for adults.
You might ask, why the hurry? And, do teenagers really need weight-loss drugs?
According to the CDC, 22% of adolescents aged 12 to 19 years have obesity. Since the 1