Two federal judges ruled nearly simultaneously on Friday that President Donald Trumps administration must continue to fund SNAP, the nations biggest food aid program, using contingency funds during the government shutdown.
The judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island gave the administration leeway on whether to fund the program partially or in full for November.
The rulings came a day before the U.S. Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown.
The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nations social safety netand it costs about $8 billion per month nationally.
Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states, as well as the District of Columbia, challenged the plan to pause the program, contending that the administration has a legal obligation to keep it running in their jurisdictions.
The administration said it wasnt allowed to use a contingency fund with about $5 billion in it for the program, which reversed a USDA plan from before the shutdown that said money would be tapped to keep SNAP running. The Democratic officials argued that not only could that money be used, but it must be. They also said a separate fund with around $23 billion is available for the cause.
In Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell ruled from the bench in a case filed by cities and nonprofits that the program must be funded using at least the contingency funds, and he asked for an update on progress by Monday.
Along with ordering the federal government to use emergency reserves to backfill SNAP benefits, McConnell ruled that all previous work requirement waivers must continue to be honored. The USDA, during the shutdown, has terminated existing waivers that exempted work requirements for older adults, veterans, and others.
The courts ruling protects millions of families, seniors, and veterans from being used as leverage in a political fight and upholds the principle that no one in America should go hungry, Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said of the Rhode Island decision.
There were similar elements in the Boston case, where U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled in a written opinion that the USDA has to pay for SNAP, calling the suspension unlawful. She ordered the federal government to advise the court by Monday as to whether they will use the contingency funds to provide reduced SNAP benefits for November or fully fund the program using both contingency funds and additional available funds.
Defendants suspension of SNAP payments was based on the erroneous conclusion that the Contingency Funds could not be used to ensure continuation of SNAP payments, she wrote. This court has now clarified that Defendants are required to use those Contingency Funds as necessary for the SNAP program.
It wasnt immediately clear how quickly the debit cards that beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded after the ruling. That process often takes one to two weeks.
The rulings are likely to face appeals.
States, food banks, and SNAP recipients have been bracing for an abrupt shift in how low-income people can get groceries. Advocates and beneficiaries say halting the food aid would force people to choose between buying groceries and paying other bills.
The majority of states have announced more or expedited funding for food banks or novel ways to load at least some benefits onto the debit cards used in the program.
At a Washington news conference earlier Friday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, whose department runs SNAP, said the contingency funds in question would not cover the cost of SNAP for long. Speaking at a press conference with House Speaker Mike Johnson at the Capitol, she blamed Democrats for conducting a disgusting dereliction of duty by refusing to end their Senate filibuster as they hold out for an extension of healthcare funds.
A push this week to continue SNAP funding during the shutdown failed in Congress.
To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a family of fours net income after certain expenses cant exceed the federal poverty line, which is about $31,000 per year. Last year, SNAP provided assistance to 41 million people, nearly two-thirds of whom were families with children.
By Michael Casey, Geoff Mulvihill, and Kimberlee Kruesi, Associated Press
Associated Press reporter Lisa Mascaro contributed.
Its certainly been a spooky week for the Walt Disney Co. and Google. The two corporations are in the midst of a carriage dispute that has resulted in a blackout of Disneys networks on Google-owned YouTube TV, leaving viewers unable to access popular channels including ESPN and ABC.
Disney began notifying viewers on October 23 about the dispute and warning that its networks could be removed from the pay-TV streaming platform.
All of that came to a head in the last 48 hours as the two parties failed to come to an agreement on a new deal, and YouTube TV began removing Disneys networks about 30 minutes before the previous carriage deal expired at midnight Eastern time.
One area of contention between the two seems to be around pricing, with Disney asking for rate hikes that Google isnt agreeing to.
A number of YouTube TV subscribers complained on social media about having their access cut, with some noting how the situation is reminiscent of the contract battles that have long plagued cable television.
I’ll never forget how liberating it was in 2018 to cut the cord & subscribe to YouTube TV, John Martin, a radio host on sports station 92.9 FM ESPN, wrote on X, adding that “Nothing good ever lasts, kids.
I wish cable just figured it out,” one X user wrote. “[This] should be the time they try to win others back but basically are like, hold my beer. hah, another user wrote. Still another said: I just switched, and now I have to find ANOTHER streaming platform.”
Companies play the blame game
Reached for comment, Google directed Fast Company to a statement released by YouTube on Thursday.
Last week, Disney used the threat of a blackout on YouTube TV as a negotiating tactic to force deal terms that would raise prices on our customers, the post on YouTubes blog read. Theyre now following through on that threat, suspending their content on YouTube TV. This decision directly harms our subscribers while benefiting their own live TV products, including Hulu + Live TV and Fubo.
The post continued to say that while the situation is a frustrating and disappointing outcome for YouTube TV subscribers, the company said it was urging Disney to work constructively to reach a fair agreement that restores their networks to YouTube TV.
If an agreement wasnt reached and the content remained off YouTube TV, Google said it would offer subscribers a $20 credit.
Disney, meanwhile, is pointing the finger at Google, accusing the tech giant of using its market dominance to eliminate the competition and undercut the industry-standard terms that it says it has already negotiated with other distributors.
Unfortunately, Googles YouTube TV has chosen to deny their subscribers the content they value most by refusing to pay fair rates for our channels, including ESPN and ABC, a Disney spokesperson said. Without a new agreement in place, their subscribers will not have access to our programming, which includes the best lineup in live sportsanchored by the NFL, NBA, and college football, with 13 of the top 25 college teams playing this weekend.
On Friday, a memo was shared with Disney Entertainment and ESPN employees from Disney Entertainment co-chairs Dana Walden and Alan Berg and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro, regarding YouTube TV. The memo, obtained by Fast Company, reiterated a similar sentiment as the statement.
The three executives wrote that Googles actions make clear how little regard they have for their customers and are consistent with an attitude which has been prevalent throughout our negotiationsYouTube TV and its owner, Google, are not interested in achieving a fair deal with us.
The bottom line is that our channels are extremely valuable, and we can only continue to program them with the sports and entertainment viewers love most if we stand our ground against tactics that threaten the integrity of our business and the value of our creative work, the note concluded.
Which channels are being blacked out?
The networks impacted and being removed from YouTube TV include ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, Freeform, FX, FXX, FXM, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, SEC Network, Nat Geo, Nat Geo Wild, ABC News Live, ACC Network, and Localish, as well as ESPN Deportes, Baby TV Espaol, and Nat Geo Mundo for those with the Spanish plan.
This isnt the first time that corporations have butted heads over the distribution of television content, nor is it the first time that YouTube TV has gotten into disputes with other entertainment giants.
Paramount Global (now Paramount Skydance), Fox Corporation, and NBCUniversal all recently battled with the streaming service, though they were able to eventually reach a deal to avert a blackout.
YouTube TV also previously dropped Univision and other TelevisaUnivision-owned networks in September after the two parties could not come to an agreement.
Meanwhile, Disney and Charter Communications had a public dispute over a renewal in 2023, though the two parties were able to resolve the problem to avert a blackout.
The impact on subscribers
Experts in the industry said those who suffer most from these ongoing carriage renewal disputes are the customers.
Brandon Katz, director of insights and content strategy at Greenlight Analytics, said that while carriage disputes have always been present in the linear pay-TV era, the fragmentation of current at-home entertainment makes the lapses much more noticeable, especially when dealing with sports broadcast rights that are strewn across the small-screen ecosystem.
When consumers are juggling multiple subscriptions, often directed by access to specific content such as sports channels, their removal causes added friction, Katz told Fast Company. That friction often leads to a temporary spike in cancellations and, in this instance, perhaps a short-term bump in ESPN Unlimited and/or Disney Bundle sign-ups. Convenience, cost, and access rule consumer decision-making in the convoluted streaming era.
YouTube TV is estimated to be the fourth-largest multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) in the United States, rivaling traditional cable providers with around 10 million subscribers. That means it wields enormous leverage, although Katz did point out that blackouts caused by disputes like this typically dont last too long.
Even when these disputes result in a blackout, they don’t usually extend past a couple weeks, Katz said. I fully expect YouTube TV and Disney to reach a deal in the near future. However, the increasing frequency of these disputes and the overextended nature of sports rights these days make it particularly frustrating for consumers, who ultimately vote wih their wallets.
Ted Bundy had courtroom groupies. Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez were sent love letters in prison. Now, in the age of social media, thousands like, share, and thirst in the comments over stylized fan edits of serial killers. Theres a term for this psychological phenomenon: hybristophilia.
A new study has found a connection between young womens engagement with this type of TikTok content and their sexual attraction to criminals.
Those who liked or repeatedly watched clips glorifying notorious serial killers, such as Bundy and Dahmer, or fictional villains like Joe Goldberg from Netflixs You, scored higher for hybristophilia than those who scrolled past such content, according to the peer-reviewed research published in the journal Deviant Behavior, the only journal that specifically and exclusively addresses social deviance.
The findings also indicate that personality traits like Machiavellianism and psychopathy are strong predictors of these tendencies.
Previous research on hybristophilia often focused on women already in relationships with convicted offenders. Instead, researchers at the University of Huddersfield, aimed to explore how this attraction emerges in younger generations, particularly through social media platforms like TikTok.
The study analyzed 66 TikToks and 91 comments posted between 2020 and 2024, then surveyed nearly 100 female TikTok users aged 18 to 27, measuring hybristophilia levels, empathy and dark personality traits.
As seen in the recent reaction to Healthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione, who has been obsessively idolized online and sent fan mail in prison, the halo effect can play in these killers favor.
Conventionally attractive offenders like Mangione often have their crimes minimized, while researchers found comments like Daddy or Smash commonly used in reference to notorious serial killers.
Some users even expressed what the study called a victim fantasy, with 7.6% of participants admitting to having sexual fantasies about conventionally attractive offenders like Bundy.
In their research, the studys authors found violent behaviors were often romanticized, recast as crimes of loyalty or passion. Some expressed the belief that love could reform the killers, a theme the researchers called I Can Fix Him.
In some cases, social media users conflated the serial killers with their Hollywood counterparts, a phenomenon known as actor-offender transference. Attraction to actors like Zac Efron or Evan Peters, who played Bundy and Dahmer on-screen, then spilled into attraction to the real-life killers.
For those concerned that innocently scrolling social media will suddenly have them fantasizing about serial killers, dont fear.
The study found exposure to content romanticizing offenders on a social media feed did not by itself predict an attraction to criminals. Only when users engaged in the content by watching, commenting, or otherwise interacting, did a link present itself.
Amazon is leading the U.S. stock market on October 31 to the finish of another winning week and month.
The S&P 500 was virtually flat after giving up a modest gain from the morning. The index is still near its all-time high set on October 28, and it’s on track to close a third-straight winning week and a sixth-straight winning month, which would be its longest monthly winning streak since 2021.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 102 points, or less than 0.2%, as of 1 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.
Amazon led the way after jumping 10.3%. The retail giant was by far the strongest force pushing upward on the market after reporting profit for the latest quarter that blew past analysts expectations. CEO Andy Jassy said growth for its booming cloud-computing business has reaccelerated back to a pace it hasnt seen since 2022.
Because Amazon is so massive, worth roughly $2.4 trillion, its stock movements carry more weight on the S&P 500 than almost any other company’s.
Another highly influential stock, Apple, was having less of an effect even though it’s bigger than Amazon. Apple, which is worth more than $4 trillion, was swinging between modest gains and losses and was most recently up 0.1%.
It likewise delivered a better profit report than analysts expected, though by not as big a margin as Amazon did. CEO Tim Cook said Apple benefited from strong revenue for both its iPhone lineup and its services offerings, which include its app store.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, online message board Reddit jumped 12.1% to erase losses from earlier in the week after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Coinbase Global rose 6.8% after the crypto exchanges profit likewise topped expectations.
Outside of earnings reports, Netflix added 3.3% after the video streamer announced a move that could make its stock price more affordable but still leave its investors holding the same amount. Netflix will undergo a 10-for-1 stock split, where it will give nine additional shares to every investor with one.
They helped offset a 4.8% drop for AbbVie, even though the medicine maker reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. Analysts pointed to how it’s beating forecasts by less than before, and expectations may have been high after AbbVie’s stock came into the day with a strong 28.4% gain for the year so far.
The pressure is on companies to deliver strong growth in profits to justify the huge gains their stock prices have made since April. Criticism has been growing that the stock market has become too expensive.
A day earlier, the S&P 500 slumped 1% as investors appeared unnerved by big increases in spending that Meta Platforms and Microsoft are planning as part of the investment spree underway in AI technology. Financial markets also appeared skeptical that President Donald Trumps trade truce with China would put an end to tensions between the two countries.
Additional drops on Friday of 1.6% for Microsoft and 2.2% for Meta were two of the heaviest weights on the U.S. market.
In stock markets abroad, indexes dipped in Europe following a mixed finish in Asia.
Stocks fell 1.4% in Hong Kong and 0.8% in Shanghai after data showed factory activity in China contracted in October for a seventh straight month and at the fastest pace in six months.
Japans Nikkei 225, meanwhile, jumped 2.1% to another record after a report showed industrial production rose more in September than expected.
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased after their spurt higher in the middle of the week, when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that another cut to interest rates in December is not a foregone conclusionfar from it.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury dipped to 4.09% from 4.11% late on October 30, but its still above the 3.99% level it was at before Powells warning.
Other central banks have halted cuts to rates or hinted at pauses recently, and it seems this is it for the 2025 easing season in developed economies, economists at Bank of America wrote in a BofA Global Research report.
By Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Business Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
Check your medicine cabinet: A major pharmaceutical company has just recalled nearly 600,000 bottles of a blood pressure medication due to the potential presence of a potentially cancer-causing chemical.
According to three different recall notices shared by the FDA, the New Jersey-based drugmaker Teva Pharmaceuticals USA has voluntarily recalled several lots of the blood pressure medication prazosin hydrochloride. Heres what to know:
What happened?
According to the FDAs reports, about 590,000 bottles of prazosin hydrochloride have been recalled due to presence of N-nitroso Prazosin impurity C above the Carcinogenic Potency Categorization Approach (CPCA) acceptable intake limit.
Essentially, that means drug testing found that the affected bottles contained a concentration of nitrosaminea potential carcinogenthat was above the acceptable levels established by the FDA.
The FDA has categorized this recall as a Class II, meaning, a situation in which use of or exposure to a violative product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote.
Which blood pressure medication was recalled?
The recall includes bottles of Prazosin Hydrochloride in 1 mg, 2 mg, and 5 mg concentrations. There are three different recall numbers for each of these doses, cinlduing:
D-0104-2026; 181,659 bottles of a 1 mg dosage
D-0105-2026; 291,512 bottles of a 2 mg dosage
D-0106-2026; 107,673 of a 5 mg dosage
Full lot numbers for every affected batch of the medicine can be found here.
What should I do if I have recalled medication?
In a statement sent to NBC Chicago, Teva said that anyone with the affected medication should contact their pharmacy to determine what to do with the remaining quantities, and noted that it has already sent letters to its customers with instructions on returning the recalled product. The company added that it has not yet received any complaints about the medication.
Its important to note that, during similar cases in the past, the FDA has advised patients to continue taking these medications until they have an alternative, because a heart attack is a more immediate risk than cancer.
Teva did not immediately respond to Fast Company‘s request for comment.
YouTube TV viewers can no longer see Disney channels including ABC and ESPN after the two sides failed to agree on a new content distribution deal.
Other channels that vanished from Google’s pay TV platform include the Disney Channel, FX, and Nat Geo.
Google’s pay TV platform said in a blog post late Thursday that Disney had followed through on a threat to suspend its content amid the negotiations.
The breakdown could impact coverage of some college football games on Saturday, as well as NBA, NFL, and NHL games.
YouTube is the largest internet TV provider in the U.S. with more than 9 million subscribers. Hulu, owned by Disney, is next, with about half that many subscribers.
Viewers have become aware of the dispute in recent weeks because of warnings being scrolled across their screens.
YouTube said Disney used the threat of a blackout as a negotiating tactic that would have resulted in higher prices for its subscribers. Disney’s move to take down its content also benefits its own streaming products Hulu + Live TV and Fubo, YouTube said.
We know this is a frustrating and disappointing outcome for our subscribers and we continue to urge Disney to work with us constructively to reach a fair agreement that restores their networks to YouTube TV, it said.
YouTube said it would give subscribers a $20 credit if Disney content unavailable for an extended period of time. YouTube TVs base subscription plan costs $82.99 per month.
Disney said that YouTube TV is refusing to pay fair rates for its channels and has chosen to deny their subscribers the content they value most,” pointing out the number of Top 25 teams playing this weekend.
With a $3 trillion market cap, Google is using its market dominance to eliminate competition and undercut the industry-standard terms weve successfully negotiated with every other distributor,” Disney said. The company said that it was committed to reaching a resolution as quickly as possible.
Earlier this week, I had AI handle all of my grocery shopping.
Using Perplexitys Comet browser, I provided a link to my shopping list on Google Keep, then asked it to put everything in my cart for a Kroger pick-up order, making sure to select previous purchase items when multiple options are available. Within a few minutes, Comet had picked out all the correct itemsincluding the taco shells and fake meat we usually get for taco nightand plopped me onto the check-out page.
This kind of scenario explains why so many AI companies are now trying to build their own browsers. Perplexitys Comet and The Browser Companys Dia both became widely available without an invite earlier this month, and OpenAI launched its own ChatGPT Atlas browser for MacOS last week. Opera has started previewing an AI-powered browser called Neon, and Microsoft Edge has an experimental Copilot Actions feature that can browse the web on your behalf.
These browsers all promise to automate away the mundane aspects of navigating the internet, and there are momentslike when it deals with your grocery listin which that seems pretty compelling. But these AI browsers also bring some serious security, privacy, and usability trade-offs that make me cautious about using them.
This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jareds weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get more tips every Tuesday.
Whats an AI browser, anyway?
Most folks dont think about web browsers all that much, but theyre incredibly important pieces of software. Swapping Chrome for a more privacy-oriented browser like Brave or DuckDuckGo, for instance, can sharply reduce how much data companies collect about you online, while power user browsers like Vivaldi can help you deal with tab overload. (See my browser field guide for more details.)
AI browsers, meanwhile, aim to take the friction out of using AI. With ChatGPT Atlas, for instance, the default search box leads to ChatGPT instead of Google, and theres an Ask ChatGPT button that answers questions about the current page in a chat sidebar. You can also ask for details from your other open tabs or dig up pages from your browsing history.
Unless youre constantly using AI, some of this stuff can seem superfluous. Opening ChatGPT or Claude in a browser tab (or using their dedicated mobile and desktop apps) isnt that burdensome, and you can summarize a web page just by including a link in your query.
What really makes AI browsers interesting, though, is their ability to interact with your personal context.
For instance, I manage all my bookmarks in Raindrop.io. While reviewing my tech news bookmarks in ChatGPT Atlas, I asked for one-line summaries with links to each item, in the style of the weekly roundups in my newsletter. I still had to rewrite each summary, but Atlas at least got me started and saved me time copying and pasting links into the text. This was only possible because Atlas was signed into Raindrop and could see the contents of my bookmark list.
More ambitiously, these browsers promise to navigate through web pages automatically. The AI companies call this agentic browsing (a term that makes me nauseous for reasons I cant quite articulate).
Getting Perplexity Comet to fill up my Kroger cart is one example, but heres another: A couple months ago, I asked Comet to cancel my trial subscription to the airport concierge service Clear. I had already signed to Clears website, and from there Comet navigated the labyrinthine menu system, initiated a cancellation request, and then handled the mandatory customer support chat on its own. What would have been a five- or 10-minute process took seconds. (My wifes AI-free cancellation experience went a lot differently.)
Ive been down on AI agents before, but I think theres potential when theyre built into a browser youre already using and are focused on reducing mindless busywork.
What are the trade-offs?
Heres where I get stuck with these AI browsers, though: Most of the time, I dont want to use them and am wary of doing so.
Worst of all, these browsers are security minefields. A web page that looks benign to humans can include hidden instructions for AI agents, tricking them into stealing info from other sitesan attack method known as prompt injection. If youre signed into sensitive accounts like your bank or your email provider in your browser, simply summarizing a Reddit post could result in an attacker being able to steal money or your private data, Braves security researchers wrote last week. No one has figured out how to solve this problem.
If you can look past the security nightmares, the actual browsing features are substandard. Neither ChatGPT Atlas nor Perplexity Comet support vertical tabsa must-have feature for meand they have no tab search tool or way to look up recently-closed pages. Alas also doesnt support saving sites as web apps, selecting multiple tabs (for instance, to close all at once with Cmd+W), or customizing the appearance. Compared to all the fancy new AI features, the web browsing part can feel like an afterthought.
Screenshot
Regular web search can also be a hassle, even though youll probably need it sometimes. When I typed Sichuan Chili into ChatGPT Atlas, it produced a lengthy description of the Chinese peppers, not the nearby restaurant whose website and number I was looking for. (These browsers should be more like Dia, which intelligently routes queries to either AI or Google based on what you ask for.)
Meanwhile, the standard AI annoyances still apply in the browser. Getting Perplexity to fill my grocery cart felt like a triumph, but on other occasions the AI has run into inexplicable walls and only ended up wasting more time.
There may be other costs to using these browsers as well. AI still has usage limits, and so all this eventually becomes a ploy to bump more people into paid tiers. Beyond that, Atlas is constantly analyzing the pages you visit to build a memory of who you are and what youre into. Do not be surprised if this translates to deeply targeted ads as OpenAI starts looking at ways to monetize free users.
How Im handling it
For now, Im only using AI browsers in small doses when I think they can solve a specific problem. Even then, Im not going sign them into my email, bank accounts, or any other accounts for which a security breach would be catastrophic. Its too bad, because email and calendars are areas where AI agents could be truly useful, but the security risks are too great (and well-documented).
That said, AI browsers have an air of inevitability now, especially with OpenAI entering the arena. While some browser makers may reject AI on principleas Vivaldi has doneothers like Chrome and Edge will continue borrowing ideas from the likes of Comet and Atlas, pulling them directly into their mainstream browsers. The reality is that you might soon be using an AI browser whether you intended to or not.
This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jareds weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get more tips every Tuesday.
If you plan to hand out chocolate this Halloween, you might be in for more trick than treat.
The price of cocoa remains high after spiking last yeara trend that has shoppers turning away from a perennial favorite sweet treat, even on a holiday that revolves around candy.
Compared with the Halloween season last year, chocolate costs more this year, and consumers are buying less of it. Overall, candy prices have risen a whopping 78% since 2020, according to an analysis from consumer finance site FinanceBuzz, which tracked candy prices across four major retailers. A 100-piece bulk bag of Halloween candy costs an average of $16.39 in 2025, up from $9.19 in 2020 and $14.06 just one year ago. Those yearly price surges have regularly outpaced inflation, which is already putting shoppers in a pinch.
In its earnings call Thursday, Hershey noted holiday sales this Halloween were disappointing and that it planned to study pricing, pack types, and its broader candy lineup through the lens of the consumer in light of underwhelming sales. The companywhich owns candy brands like Reeses, Kit Kat, and Yorkraised prices over the summer to cope with the rising cost of cocoa.
Because cocoa is a seasonal commodity, companies that rely on it lock in their prices in advance, leading to a lag time between the key ingredients price fluctuations and what consumers wind up paying in-store for a packaged product.
Sweet tooth alternatives
Price hikes have driven consumers away from chocolate, but theyve turned toward sugar-forward candies as an alternative. In the run-up to Halloween, U.S. chocolate candy sales had already dipped by 8% compared with 2024, and thats not including the sweets-buying rush closer to the Friday holiday this year, when the majority of Halloween candy is sold.
While chocolate demand softens, non-chocolate options like gummy and hard candies are getting more popular with younger consumers, according to a seasonal report from NielsenIQ.
Shoppers buying Halloween candy early broadly turned toward non-chocolate options, with sales up 4.5% this year through September, according to market research group Circana. In the same period, chocolate candy sales dipped by 13.7%.
Cocoa in crisis
Chocolate is more expensive now due to a complex interplay of factors, but climate-caused excessive heat and intense rains in particular have taken their toll in cocoas key regions, sending the commoditys price sky high. In the U.S., persistent inflation and Trumps chaotic trade deals have also impacted the price of imports like cocoa, which cant be grown domestically. Last year, the price of cocoa reached historic highs, rising past $10,000 per metric ton.
Because the global appetite for chocolate hinges on a single region in Africa, cocoa is uniquely vulnerable to forces outside of farmers controlparticularly extreme weather events that are worsening as the planet warms. The climate crisis is expected to cause accelerating agricultural losses for staple crops like corn and wheat around the globe, and cocoa is no different.
Cocoa prices leveled off some in mid-2025, but the substance that makes chocolate chocolate still costs triple what it did before 2023, leaving consumers to eat higher prices or leave the sweets on the shelf.
Even if shoppers stick it out with chocolate this Halloween, they might be getting less for more. Candy aisle faves like Mr. Goodbar, Rolo, and Almond Joy have quietly slipped into new packaging that no longer entices buyers with the promise of milk chocolate.
That change in verbiage is a hint that major candy companies like Hershey and Nestlé are dropping the cocoa content in some classics with new recipe reformulations that rely less on chocolates star ingredient. If your Halloween candy doesnt taste quite as sweet this year, it might not just be because you paid more.
Spot the robins egg blue of a Tiffany box, and you know theres luxury inside. Or the sturdy brown of the UPS truck, and you expect reliable service. Yellow Minions make you smile, and Valentinos vivid Pink PP Collection makes you want to step out and step up.
Color is more than decoration. Color is a powerful tool that drives business and creates cultural relevance. The right hues build trust, drive sales, and make brands unforgettable, while the wrong ones can cost you customers and credibility.
The launch of Coke Life in a green rather than familiar red can probably contributed to the products uphill battle with consumers. Even tinkering with a color combination as simple as the Gaps white-on-blue logo can face business backlash, as the company found out when it tried to rebrand in 2010, but the company soon returned to the original due to the rebrands unpopularity.
Leading brands use color strategically and employ trend forecasting to stay relevant as consumer expectations shift. Heres how to think about color like a leading brand.
COLOR SPEAKS DIRECTLY TO THE SUBCONSCIOUS
Simply put: Colors drive emotions, and emotions drive purchasing behavior. The brain processes visuals faster than text, so colors trigger subconscious associations that shape perception before other messages make their way in. For consumers connecting with a brand or product, color helps them instantly categorize products and streamlines their decision-making.
It happens fastcustomers form judgments about products within the first 90 seconds of interaction, with up to 90% of that assessment based solely on color. In less time than a commercial break, the right color choices can earn consumers trust, evoke their excitement, or tap their aspiration. The wrong choices can turn buyers away just as quickly.
This is why certain industries, informed by cultural appetites, gravitate toward specific palettes. In the United States, tech companies and banks often use blues and neutrals to project reliability, because American consumers associate blue with stability and trust.
Consumer perceptions of color vary globally, so brands must know their markets. In some cultures, for example, a bride traditionally wears white for a wedding, but in other cultures white signifies mourning. Getting it wrong can confuseor even repelconsumers.
THE BUSINESS CASE FOR COLOR
Companies that invest in a smart color strategy create lasting visual associations that foster trust and loyalty, which can be deepened even further by using signature colorsthink: iconic Tiffany Blue. Such associations help consumers understand what experience they can expect from the brand and are one of the fastest ways to communicate the brands value and build trust.
Color increases brand recognition by 87% and influences up to 85%of product purchasing decisions, according to Pantones proprietary research. In fact, a Rochester Institute of Technology study found that 69% of respondents said theyd forgo a product whose color was unappealing, even if they needed the product.
With color so consequential to consumers, it should matter just as meaningfully to brands. When Philips wanted to signify the revolutionary nature of their OneBlade Hybrid Razor to their target demographic of young Italian men, they selected a bold, tangy yellow-green that popped off the shelf and tapped into young mens quest for individuality.
The right color strategy enhances engagement, increases brand value, and strengthens market resilience, ensuring your company remains competitive over the long term.
COLOR DECISIONS ARE CRITICAL IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Brands that forecast color trends dont just follow the marketthey define the market. This is especially crucial for fashion, technology, and consumer goods, where trends change quickly, and aesthetics and emotional appeal strongly influence buying decisions.
Consumers are drawn to brands that are not just on-trend but ahead of the curve. Hitting the right color in one season is valuable, but consistently setting and capitalizing on trends cements a brands leadership.
And in an omnichannel world, consumers expect a seamless experience, so brands need to ensure their colors remain consistent across websites, apps, and retail displays. Specially designed Barbie Pink and Minion Yellow, for instance, brought the unique experience to life recognizably and consistently everywhere these fictional characters went.
Inconsistent visuals flout customer expectations, weaken brand recognition, confuse consumers, and even signal unprofessionalism or poor quality. Back in the Kodak Instamatic days, factories did not standardize the yellow packaging, with some boxes appearing darker and others lighter. Customers shied away from the darker yellow boxes, thinking they were older and contained older film.
COLOR CAN KEEP YOUR BUSINESS IN THE BLACK
The right color choices can mean the difference between profitability and missed opportunity. For example, Krafts decision to define and standardize a globally recognizable Heinz 57 Red translated into real results tableside in Turkey. The Heinz 57 Red-focused ad campaign strengthened brand discernmentwith 97% of customers able to visually tell the difference between Heinz and competitors post-campaignand supported both a 24% rise in usage of Heinz ketchup and 73% fewer non-Heinz ketchup refills by street food vendors. [KK1]
Color influences perception, drives purchasing behavior, and creates instant recognition, all factors that directly impact a brands bottom line. Consumers make snap judgments based on color, research shows, and those judgments translate into trust, engagement, and sales.
Investing in color isnt optional in todays competitive landscape color is key to staying relevant, recognizable, and in the black.
Sky Kelley is the president of Pantone.
Imagine living in a house with the latest smart home system: lights dim on voice command, your thermostat learns your schedule, your refrigerator orders milk before the carton runs out. Its practical yet delightful. It improves your daily life.
Now imagine that same house built on shaky foundations: the electric wiring is aging, and the plumbing is rotting. No matter how advanced your devices are the structure wont support them reliably.
Thats the difference between AI and blockchain. AI is the smart tech; blockchain is the well-designed infrastructure that ensures everything works reliably, predictably, and with integrity.
Similar to how a home needs both features and structure, our digital economy will demand both AI and blockchain. One amplifies capability, the other ensures resilience.
The real promise of blockchain
Just as cloud computing once seemed abstract until it powered every app, blockchain quietly is becoming the fabric woven into how money moves, contracts are enforced, and systems operate with one another.
For leaders, innovators, and builders, our job is to see past the surface-level headlines and recognize structural shifts. Thats where we are with blockchain. Paying attention now determines whether youll lead the next economyor scramble to adapt after the rules have changed.
Two areas in particular highlight how blockchain and AI together can reshape finance: programmable money and transparency in financial records.
1. Programmable money
One of the biggest opportunities is programmable money used by AI-driven agents. Programmable money is digital currency with built-in logic. It can move, settle, or trigger actions automatically based on predefined conditions and rules, releasing payment only when goods are delivered, paying employees instantly after clocking out, or compensating an AI agent the moment it completes a task.
An AI agent is a bit like a personal assistant. It interprets requests, figures out how best to deliver on them, and improves over time. They can act autonomously to complete tasks and make decisions to meet your requests.
These AI agents dont only work during traditional hours, and they dont have an identity according to traditional regulatory frameworks, yet they need reliable ways to be compensated in real time. Blockchain-backed stablecoins are a natural solution.
Consider an example of this powerful combination in real estate: An AI agent confirms the accuracy of documents, closes a transaction, and disburses funds. If its a Sunday morning and payment rails like ACH or wires are closed, how does the transfer clear? Stablecoins enable settlement on digital time, not bankers hours.
This is already moving from theory to practice. For example, Google just announced an Agents Payments Protocol, which provides a blockchain-based framework for ecommerce transactions conducted by AI agents. Other leading payment companies like PayPal, Mastercard, and American Express also are embracing this technology.
This is a clear example of the intersection of AI and blockchain for a pragmatic use case.
2. Financial transparency
Underwriting offers another example of the importance of applying blockchain principles to AI. AI is now shaping how risk is assessed, and loans are priced. That creates real concerns about fairness, bias, and explainability. Regulators and consumers alike want to know why a loan was denied and what data drove the decisions, breaking open the black box of financial decision-making.
Blockchain offers an answer. It can record AI-driven activity (data inputs, validation steps, approvals, compliance checks), creating a verifiable record across a variety of consumer products like mortgages or credit cards. Instead of a vague application denied, consumers would know the exact reason, like missing income verification or a high debt-to-income ratio. For approvals, the record would highlight the inputs behind the interest ratecredit score, income, loan-to-valueso borrowers know what mattered most. With the same validated data applied across applicants, regulators can verify fairness while consumers gain clarity.
Together, AI and blockchain dont just deliver speed. They deliver financial systems that are more transparent to regulators, more understandable to consumers, and ultimately more durable.
The long game belongs to blockchain
AI is transformative because it amplifies what we already do. Its the smart home app that learns your lighting preferences based on circumstance. Blockchain is different. Its the building department, inspector, and the wiring behind the walls: setting the rules for what can be built, verifying the work, and powering the entire system.
For consumers, opaque financial decisionslike sudden credit card fee increases, shifting interest rates, or unexplained loan denialshave long been the norm. The combination of AI and blockchain is poised to change that bringing clarity to the individual and accountability to the system.
For leaders and innovators, the blueprint for the future is straightforward:
Prepare for an AI future by building a strong blockchain foundation as rapid growth in transaction activity will demand scalable, composable infrastructure
Leverage transparent, fair, and accurate design principles so AI decisions can be explained, verified, and defended.
Move beyond pilots by embedding blockchain into mission-critical workflows where speed, settlement, and reliability are non-negotiable.
The intersection of AI and blockchain is shaping up to be a massive market reset. Those who embrace it now will define what comes next.
Michael Tannenbaum is the CEO of Figure.
