Author: Editor

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shari Williams, a 41-year-old social media strategist based in Chicago. It’s been edited for length and clarity.In 2017, my four-month contract at an advertising agency was wrapping up with no word of a job offer or extension. I thought to myself, “I have to do something crazy to catch their attention.”My husband and friends were skeptical when I told them of my plan to create a dating-app style website to pitch myself as “the perfect match” for the company, but something told me it was going to work.A few weeks later,…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Natalie Holloway, a 37-year-old cofounder of Bala, based in Los Angeles. The following has been edited for length and clarity.The first time I recognized I was experiencing burnout, my husband and I left our advertising jobs and traveled without any set plans. This trip got me out of the nonstop grind mindset I’d functioned in for too long.I came back to corporate work refreshed and inspired in October 2016. Our company, Bala, was supposed to be a side hustle, creating cute wrist and ankle weights inspired by our travels. We never…

Adtech company Fluency has built a platform that helps brands and agencies automate their campaigns across Meta, TikTok, Google, and other platforms. Now, it aims to introduce AI agents to the mix.Large brands and agencies typically manage campaigns across multiple platforms and ad buying tools, known as demand-side platforms, each with separate logins and interfaces.Founded in 2017 in Burlington, Vermont, Fluency created what it describes as a digital advertising operating system. It connects to the various platforms’ application programming interfaces (APIs) and lets its customers manage their digital ads using a single workflow.”It takes a lot of people, and hours,…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sol Rashidi, a former tech executive at IBM, AWS, and Estée Lauder, who is based in Miami. The following has been edited for length and clarity.In the last 15 years, I have built and scaled AI capabilities, and I have over 200 deployments under my belt.I went from being an individual practitioner to running IBM’s enterprise data management practice. I was the chief data officer at Sony Music, the chief analytics officer at Estée Lauder, and the head of technology for AWS’s startup division in North America.All my experiences from 2011…

Rob Reiner, right, and wife Michele Singer Reiner attend the SNL50: The Homecoming Concert at Radio City Music Hall on Friday, Feb. 14 in New York. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP hide caption toggle caption Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Many questions remain following the arrest of Nick Reiner. The 32-year-old is being held without bail on suspicion of murdering his parents, beloved Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner. Nick was arrested Sunday after Rob and Michele were found dead inside their Brentwood, Calif., home. The Los Angeles county district attorney’s office is reviewing evidence in the killings. Former Orange County homicide…

FILE – An FBI seal is displayed on a podium before a news conference at the field office in Portland, Ore., Jan. 16. Jenny Kane/AP hide caption toggle caption Jenny Kane/AP Twelve fired FBI agents allege in a lawsuit that they were unlawfully dismissed for kneeling during a protest for racial justice in Washington, D.C., five years ago. Speaking with Morning Edition, Mary Dohrmann, a former Justice Department prosecutor representing the agents, said current FBI leadership is attempting to “rewrite” what happened outside the National Archives on June 4, 2020, when the agents say they acted in service of public…

Copper prices have exploded to record highs again, not because the world is running out of the metal, but in part because the United States is scooping up so much of it that everyone else is scrambling for what’s left.Benchmark three-month copper hit an all-time high of $11,952 a metric ton on the London Metal Exchange on Friday. It’s now trading around $11,655 per ton, up roughly 33% so far this year.The US has been aggressively stockpiling metal ahead of potential tariffs, pulling huge volumes out of the tradable global system and tightening supplies everywhere else.”US inventory is effectively ‘trapped’,”…

New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued UPS, accusing the shipping giant of systematically cheating thousands of seasonal delivery workers out of millions of dollars in wages.”UPS built its holiday business on the backs of workers who were not paid for their time and labor,” James said in a press release. “UPS’s seasonal employees work brutal hours in the cold to deliver the holiday packages families across the country count on.”According to the lawsuit, an investigation by the attorney general’s office uncovered widespread off-the-clock work, inaccurate timekeeping, and underpayment across dozens of UPS facilities in the state.UPS denied the…

A federal judge expressed skepticism about a pair of lawsuits that victims of Jeffrey Epstein had filed against two banks, suggesting he may dismiss them before they have a chance to go to trial.At the outset of a Monday afternoon hearing in Manhattan federal court, US District Judge Jed Rakoff unfavorably compared the lawsuits against Bank of America and BNY Mellon to two similar lawsuits he had previously overseen, against JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. JPMorgan agreed to settle the case for $290 million. Deutsche Bank agreed to settle for $75 million.Rakoff said the language in the lawsuits against Bank…

Would buying Warner Bros. give Netflix too much power?The streaming giant is telling regulators it won’t, and antitrust experts say the answer ultimately depends on how you define who Netflix competes with.Does Netflix compete with only paid streaming services, a market where it dominates? What about the TV dinosaurs it disrupted, or the social video services nipping at its heels? Could sleep even be a competitor, as its cofounder Reed Hastings famously suggested?Rival suitor Paramount Skydance has slammed the Netflix-Warner Bros. mega-deal as anticompetitive, arguing that it would harm consumers and Hollywood talent. Netflix is by far the largest paid…