Wind and solar power generated more than a third of Brazils electricity in August, the first month on record the two renewable sources have crossed that threshold, according to government data made public on Thursday and analyzed by energy think tank Ember.
The clean energy sources accounted for 34% of the countrys electricity generation last month, producing a monthly record of 19 terawatt-hours (TWh), enough to power about 119 million average Brazilian homes for a month, Ember told The Associated Press.
That surpassed the previous high of 18.6 TWh set in September 2024. The milestone came as hydroelectric output, Brazils dominant power source, fell to a four-year low.
Brazil shows how a rapidly growing economy can meet its rising need for electricity with solar and wind, said Raul Miranda, Embers global program director based in Rio de Janeiro.
Solar and wind are a perfect match for Brazils hydropower resources, taking the pressure off in drought years. A diversified mix is a fundamental strategy for tackling risks related to climate change,” he said.
Hydropower dips, fossil fuels stay low
Hydropower provided 48% of electricity in August, only the second month on record it has supplied less than half of Brazils power. Despite the weak hydro output, fossil fuel plants, mainly powered by natural gas, coal and oil, accounted for just 14% of generation, or 7.8 TWh. In past drought years, fossil fuel use has spiked to cover shortfalls, reaching 26% in August 2021.
Ember said the rapid growth of wind and solar helped Brazil avoid similar surges this year.
Wind and solar power are also reshaping the countrys energy mix. In 2024, they generated 24% of Brazils electricity, more than double their share from five years earlier. Solar power grew from just over 1% of generation in 2019 to 9.6% in 2024, while wind climbed from 8.8% to 15% over the same period.
Brazils power sector emissions peaked in 2014 and by 2024 had fallen 31% even as electricity demand rose 22%, Ember said. The think tank credited a fifteenfold increase in wind and solar generation with outpacing demand growth and cutting fossil generation by 45%.
Praise and warnings
Ricardo Baitelo, project coordinator at Brazils Institute for Energy and the Environment, said the record reflects more than a decade of steady growth in wind and solar capacity, with solar expanding rapidly in recent years.
This is a number that was expected, because the installed capacity of these sources has been built over at least 15 years and, more recently, with solar energy, he said. But it is undoubtedly symbolic, and you see these sources contributing a significant fraction of electricity at a given moment and showing that they are important. They are not alternative sources, they are already a well-represented part of Brazils electricity mix.
He said the milestone highlights Brazils shift from an almost entirely hydro-based power system to one built on three main pillars: hydro, solar and wind. He added that Brazil is the only G20 country currently on track to meet the goal of sharply increasing renewable energy within the next five years a target set at the U.N. COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023.
This is the big warning and a yellow light that could turn red, Baitelo said. And Brazil needs to take urgent measures to avoid losing this condition and this good example of wind and solar deployment.
Paulo Pedrosa, president of Abrace Energia, which represents large energy consumers, said Brazils heavy reliance on subsidies to expand renewables, particularly residential solar, has created distortions in the power market.
The excess of renewable energy subsidy models has increased the cost of energy and, ironically, promoted the contracting of expensive thermal energy, which is necessary to keep the system balanced when there is no wind and no sun, Pedrosa said.
He argued Brazil should focus on using its abundant clean, low-cost energy to boost industrial output and competitiveness while contributing to global decarbonization.
Baitelo warned that without reforms, fossil fuel interests could seize the opportunity to expand thermal generation in upcoming auctions, increasing greenhouse gas emissions even as renewables grow.
____
The Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Steven Grattan, Associated Press
Trump signed off on the no tax on tips deduction as part of his Big, Beautiful Bill legislation on July 4th. But, while the provision had bipartisan support, experts say not all workers who make tips will end up qualifying.
In August, the U.S. Department of the Treasury released a preliminary list of the occupations that may be eligible. However, further guidance may be needed to determine who will actually qualify, as some jobs listed don’t meet the criteria laid out by the Trump administration.
Regularly tipped workers who received tips on or before Dec. 31, 2024 are eligible, according to the legislation. According to the bill, some tip workers will be able to deduct up to $25,000 of “qualified tips,” which means “voluntary cash or charged tips received from customers or through tip sharing.” For those making over $150,000 ($300,000 for joint filers), the deduction will go down accordingly.
But jobs that are “specified service trade or businesses” (SSTB) don’t qualify at all, according to the legislation. And, Ben Henry-Moreland, a certified financial planner with adviser platform Kitces.com, told CNBC, that, with the qualification in mind, the recent list could lead to confusion, as many “people will be surprised to find out that not every single occupation on [the Treasury list] is going to actually be eligible for the deduction.”
According to TurboTax, an SSTB is a trade or business that relies on the skills or reputation of an employee. “If your business provides a service rather than a product, the business likely classifies as a SSTB,” the site explains. And, the number of jobs that fall under those categories are fairly plentiful, according to the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, which may lead to a letdown for many come tax season.
Which jobs are SSTBs?
Healthcare workers, such as doctors, nurses, physical therapists, pharmacists, and even massage therapists, or other spa workers who earn a decent chunk of their income from tips.
Legal workers, such as lawyers, paralegals, and mediators.
Financial service workers, such as financial planners, investment bankers, retirement advisers, and more.
Performers, such as artists, actors, directors, playwrights, and musicians.
Athletics, such as professional athletes, team owners, or team managers.
Businesses that earn income from endorsements or “use of an individual’s likeness, image, voice, etc.” or from making appearances.
You can find a comprehensive list of specified service trade or business jobs here.
According to the bill, the deadline for the list of occupations was published ahead of the October 2, 2025 deadline. The deduction will be effective from 2025 through 2026.
The European Central Bank left interest rates unchanged Thursday with inflation back under control and the economy weathering Trumps tariff onslaught better than expected.
The banks rate-setting council left its benchmark deposit rate unchanged at 2% at a meeting at its skyscraper headquarters in Frankfurt.
The focus in Europe has shifted to the fiscal crisis in France and any possible role for the ECB in containing potential market turmoil that could erupt from the countrys out-of-control deficit and political logjam.
Bank President Christine Lagarde said after the rate decision that monetary policy was in a good place and that decisions are being made meeting by meeting.” She gave no hint of future moves, saying the bank is not on a predetermined path.”
The ECB is standing pat on interest rates even as the US Federal Reserve has held the door open for a possible cut at its Sept. 17 meeting.
The 20 countries that use the euro currency and where the ECB sets rate policy showed 0.1% growth in the second quarter over the quarter before, not great but not sliding into outright recession either despite the disruption from U.S. President Donald Trumps new and higher tariffs. The S&P Global survey of purchasing managers, a key indicator of economic activity, came in at 51 in August, with readings over 50 indicating expansion.
The EUs executive commission calmed the mood somewhat by negotiating a 15% ceiling on US tariffs, or import taxes, on European goods brought into the US. While thats far higher than pre-Trump tariff levels, Trump had threatened even higher rates and the deal gives some certainty that trade will continue, albeit with higher costs.
“Trade uncertainty has clearly diminished, Lagarde said.
The ECBs deposit rate influences borrowing costs throughout the economy. The ECB raised rates sharply to combat a burst of inflation in 2021-23, and has since lowered them as inflation came back under control and concerns grew about growth. Higher rates fight inflation but can slow growth, while lower rates can stimulate economic activity by making borrowing cheaper for purchases.
Eurozone inflation was 2.1% in August, roughly in line with the banks target of 2%. With growth holding up, that means there was no great pressure to move rates Thursday. Analysts think another cut is possible in coming months.
Lagarde was asked several times about the French government’s fiscal crisis. The French governments bond-market borrowing costs have risen somewhat due to the inability of a divided parliament to tackle the large deficit, which was 5.8% of GDP last year. In case of a full-blown market panic that sends rates higher, the ECB could intervene to purchase French bonds and drive down borrowing costs. But thats only possible for countries that are obeying the EUs rules on limiting debt or are moving to comply, which France at this point is not.
Lagarde said the ECB’s emergency bond market backstop, dubbed the transmission protection instrument, was not discussed at the meeting and that the broader European bond market was functioning normally.
Im not commenting on any particular country, but suffice to say that we always monitor market developments and euro area sovereign bonds are orderly and are functioning smoothly with good liquidity, she said.
Analysts say the challenge for Lagarde is to avoid suggesting the ECB would bail out politicians who wont manage the governments finances properly, while not taking such a hard line that she unsettles bond markets.
David McHugh, AP business writer
Income inequality dipped, more people had college degrees, fewer people moved to a different home and the share of Asian and Hispanic residents increased in the United States last year, according to figures released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
These year-to-year changes, big and small, from 2023 to 2024 were captured in the bureau’s data from the American Community Survey, the largest annual audit of American life. The survey of 3.5 million households asks about more than 40 topics, including income, housing costs, veterans status, computer use, commuting, and education.
Here’s a look at how the United States changed last year.
Income inequality dips
Income inequality or the gap between the highest and lowest earners in the United States fell nationwide by nearly a half percent from 2023 to 2024, as median household income rose slightly, from $80,002 to $81,604.
Five Midwestern states Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin had statistically significant dips, along with Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Puerto Rico.
North Carolina was the only state to see a statistically significant rise in inequality. North Carolina State economist Michael Walden said it reflected the state generating high-paying jobs in tech and other professional sectors, while the post-pandemic labor shortage which raised wages in lower-paying service jobs had ended.
In South Dakota, which had a leading 4% drop, the inequality dip could reflect stronger growth in the household income among lower and middle income households (or smaller growth in the income of the highest brackets), state demographer Weiwei Zhang said Wednesday in an email.
In Nebraska, it could be high employment rates across all demographic groups since high employment leads to income, thus less income inequality, said Josie Schafer, director of the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
In Massachusetts, one of the traditional strengths of the state’s economy high-paying jobs in life science, high tech and research has been sluggish in the past two years, said Mark Melnik, director of economic and public policy research at a University of Massachusetts Amherst institute.
The typical jobs in this industry are the kind of thing that helps Massachusetts have the highest per capita (income) in the country but also exacerbates some elements of income inequality, Melnik said.
Greater diversity and fewer people married
The United States became more demographically diverse, and fewer people were married from 2023 to 2024.
The non-Hispanic white population, who identify with only a single race, dropped from 57.1% to 56.3%, while the share of the nation’s Asian population rose from 6% to 6.3% and the Hispanic population rose from 19.4% to 20%. The rate of the Black population stayed the same at 12.1%, as did the American Indian Alaska Native alone population at 1%.
In the marriage department, the share of men who have never married increased from 37.2% to 37.6%, and it rose from 31.6% to 32.1% for women.
Fewer people moved, as costs of renting and owning homes rose
Last year, only 11% of U.S. residents moved to another home, compared to 11.3% in the previous year. The decline of people moving this decade has been part of a continuous slide as home prices have skyrocketed in some metros and interest rates have gone up. In 2019, by comparison, 13.7% of U.S. residents moved.
The monthly costs for U.S. homeowners with a mortgage rose to $2,035 from $1,960. Homeowners with a mortgage in California ($3,001), Hawaii ($2,937), New Jersey ($2,797), Massachusetts ($2,755), and the District of Columbia ($3,181) had the highest median monthly costs.
Costs for renters also increased as the median rent with utilities went from $1,448 to $1,487.
Mike Schneider, Associated Press
When working parents consider going part-time, the question often sounds straightforward: Should I cut back my hours? But beneath that lies a tangle of deeper issuesidentity, ambition, money, family dynamics, and long-term career trajectory. Its rarely just about schedules or paychecks.
For some, the hope is relief from burnout or more presence with loved ones. For others, its a way to preserve their career by making it sustainable. Yet without clarity and intentional boundaries, part-time can just as easily create new pressures as it relieves old ones.
Here are some things to consider before making the decision:
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Start by naming what youre really after
When someone tells me theyre thinking about going part-time, my first question is always: What do you hope this will give you?
Sometimes the answer is obvious: more time with children, space to care for aging parents, recovery from burnout. Other times its murkier: a sense that life is slipping by too quickly, or that work has crowded out everything else that matters.
Its important to pause here. Because part-time is not a silver bullet. Working fewer hours wont automatically create balance, ease guilt, or generate fulfillment. In fact, unless youre clear about what you want to gainand disciplined about how youll use that timethe space you carve out can quickly fill with the same obligations, distractions, and patterns that left you depleted in the first place. Ive seen people go part-time only to spend their free hours running errands, fielding work emails, or taking on invisible labor at home. Instead of relief, they feel even more fragmented.
Thats why it helps to move beyond the surface question of Should I reduce my hours? and toward the deeper one: What is the life I want to create, and will going part-time bring me closer to it?
Questions to reflect on:
If I start working part-time, what exactly am I doing with the hours Ive freed up?
Am I seeking relief from something (stress, overwork, burnout), or am I moving toward something (a passion project, deeper presence with family)?
Would going part-time actually address the tension I feel, or am I hoping it will solve a deeper dissatisfaction with my work?
The practical realities (and the myths)
Theres the fantasy of part-timeleisurely mornings, meaningful afternoons, a career that flexes gracefully around life. And then theres the reality.
In some workplaces, part-time can mean doing nearly the same work in fewer hours, with less pay. Unless responsibilities are explicitly renegotiated, reduced hours often become compressed hours where the same expectations are squeezed into a smaller container. The result? More stress, not less.
This is why clarity and boundary-setting matter so much. Without a realignment of duties, you may find yourself trapped in what I call the illusion of part-timeofficially working 60 or 80%, but in practice carrying the same mental load, answering emails on your days off, and constantly feeling like youre falling short both at work and at home. It can leave you not only exhausted, but resentful.
Questions to reflect on:
If I reduce my hours, what tasks or responsibilities must I explicitly let go of?
Who will need to adjust their expectations of me, and how willing are they to do so?
How comfortable am I with disappointing others in order to protect the boundaries of a part-time schedule?
The dollars and cents of it all
Finances often make this decision feel tangible. A reduced salary is the most obvious consequence, but the subtler effects are equally important: diminished retirement savings, lower Social Security accrual, or loss of employer-sponsored benefits. These ripple effects compound over time.
That said, some professionals discover that once they account for reduced childcare, commuting, or outsourcing, the trade-off is manageable. Others find the long-term cost outweighs the short-term relief.
The question is not simply Can we afford it? but also What does this financial decision represent about what we value?
Questions to reflect on:
What would I need to give up financially, and does that feel tolerable or destabilizing?
How do I weigh immediate well-being against long-term financial security?
When I think about money, am I motivated more by fear of loss or by desire for freedom?
The psychological adjustment
Even when the numbers work, the inner shift can be surprisingly difficult. For many high achievers, work is not just a job, its a primary source of identity. Going part-time can feel like a loss of status, relevance, or ambition.
Ive seen professionals struggle with a quiet internal voice: Am I still serious about my career? Will people think Im less committed? Am I letting down my colleagues? Sometimes, they try to silence these doubts by working just as much in fewer hours, overcompensating to prove their worth. That undermines the very reason for going part-time in the first place.
This is where mindset matters. Part-time work requires redefining successnot by how many hours you log, but by how you use them. It requires tolerating the discomfort of doing less, while holding onto the bigger truth: that stepping back can be a strategic, intentional act, not a retreat.
Questions to reflect on:
How much of my self-worth is tied to being constantly available and productive?
What fears come up when I imagine saying no or being less visible at work?
Can I imagine new ways of defining professional success that dont hinge on hours logged?
The family system
Many women I work with often imagine that part-time work will instantly create harmony at home. More time for children, more support for a partner, more balance. And sometimes it does.
But it can also surface new tensions. If one partner reduces hours, assumptions about who shoulders domestic labor may shiftsometimes explicitly, but often invisibly. Children may not respond the way you imagine; more presence doesnt automatically translate ino more connection. And caregiving for elders can quickly exceed the hours youve carved out.
That doesnt mean the choice is wrong. It simply means it requires explicit conversations. What will this change look like day-to-day? How will household responsibilities shift? What do family members hope forand what do they fear? These conversations may be just as important as the HR paperwork.
Questions to reflect on:
What assumptions might my partner or children make if Im home more?
How do I want to use the time at home and what boundaries will I set there?
What conversations do we need to have as a family about expectations, roles, and values?
Career trajectory
For ambitious professionals, the biggest fear is often: What will this do to my career?
And the honest answer is: it depends. The hard truth is that, in some fields, part-time status is stigmatized. Colleagues may equate fewer hours with lesser commitment. Promotions or leadership opportunities may be harder to come by. In other fields, performance matters more than face time, and part-time professionals continue to advance.
But heres a reframe I often share with clients: Going part-time doesnt have to mean stepping off the track. It can mean running the race at your own pace. It can mean preserving your career by making it sustainable. It can even mean broadening your definition of achievement to include the personal, not just the professional.
What matters is intentionality. If you see part-time as a failure, others may too. If you frame it as a strategic decisiona way to align your work with your values and capacitiesit is more likely to be respected.
Questions to reflect on:
What career opportunities might I forgo by going part-time, and am I comfortable with that?
How do I want to explain this decisionto myself, to colleagues, to mentorsso it reflects strength, not retreat?
What kind of long-term professional identity do I want to build, and does part-time support that vision?
Alternatives worth exploring
Its also worth asking: Do you need part-time, or do you need something else?
Sometimes what people truly want is not fewer hours but greater autonomy. A flexible schedule. The ability to work remotely part of the week. A job crafted to shed responsibilities that drain energy but dont add value. In some cases, those adjustments can deliver as much relief as going part-time, with fewer trade-offs. Part-time can be the right choice. But its one option among many. Exploring the full menu can prevent premature decisions.
In closing
The decision to go part-time is rarely just about schedules. It reaches into questions of identity, ambition, money, relationships, and what it means to build a sustainable life.
The goal isnt to settle the question once and for all, but to respond to the realities of this moment. Life has seasons, and work can too. A part-time schedule may be exactly the right fit for a while, and then lose its utility. Full-time may feel overwhelming at one stage, and energizing at another. The point is not permanence, but responsiveness.
So instead of asking only, should I go part-time?, consider asking: What do I need in this season to make my work and life more sustainable? Your answer may shift over time, and thats the point. These choices can ebb and flow with you.
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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy.
This week, Im focusing on Californias SB 53, the states second attempt at meaningful AI safety regulation. I also look at the ongoing VC spend-fest on vibe coding startups, and at a few of the AI features in the new Apple AirPods Pro 3.
Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan.
A new California AI safety bill is marching toward passage
After House Republicans tried to include a state-level ban on AI regulation in Trumps so-called Big Beautiful Bill in July, California is again moving to pass an AI safety law. Much of the countrys AI development happens in the state, and Californias approach often sets the tone for tech regulation nationwide. The first attempt (SB 1047) cleared the legislature in 2024 but was vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom after facing fierce opposition from AI startups and investors.
Now the author of SB 1047, Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), has introduced a revised bill, SB 53. It would require companies developing the largest frontier models to file regular confidential risk assessments of their models to the Governors Office of Emergency Services. Developers would also have to notify the state if their models attempted to deceive humans about the effectiveness of their built-in safety guardrails, such as refusing to help create a bioweapon.
The bill also calls for a public cloud compute cluster, CalCompute, to be housed at the University of California, which would provide free and low-cost access to compute for startups and academic researchers.
The California Assembly and Senate are expected to hold final votes on SB 53 before the legislative session ends at midnight on September 12. Recent amendments align the bill more closely with recommendations from Newsoms Joint Policy Working Group on Frontier AI Models, which was convened after his veto of SB 1047.
The final version of SB 53 will ensure California continues to lead not only on AI innovation, but on responsible practices to help ensure that innovation is safe and secure, Wiener said in a statement this week.
Money is rolling in for AI agents. So are the bugs
Earlier this week I published a feature on the rise of so-called vibe coding companies drawing major attention and capital from venture investors. Startups like Replit, Lovable, and Anysphere offer AI tools that let developers, and even complete amateurs, build apps and web services simply by describing them to an AI agent in plain language. The tools rely on large language models to interpret requests and translate them into working code. But as several sources note in my piece, these tools often generate code that doesnt integrate smoothly with other software within a codebase, creating security bugs and reliability problems that can emerge down the line.
But those concerns havent slowed the flood of venture cash. Just days after my article ran, Replit announced another $250 million funding round led by Prysm Capital, with participation from American Express Ventures, Googles AI Futures Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and Y Combinator. The round nearly tripled Replits valuation to $3 billion. The company says it now has 40 million users and that its annualized revenue increased from $2.8 million to $150 million over the past year. With between 150 and 200 employees, that values Replit at between $15 million and $20 million per employee. That same calculation puts Cursor-maker Anysphere at about $66 million per employee.
Investors are certainly aware of some of the high-profile app fails and security breaches allegedly brought about by vibe coding. The repeated exposure of millions of pieces of sensitive personal data and private messages of users of the dating-intel app Tea were likely the result of code generated by an AI assistant. And in August, Replit itself suffered a public stumble when one of its agents, while helping SaaS investor Jason Lemkin build a web app, deleted an entire database of executive contacts. Lemkin, who built the app entirely through Replits chat agent over nine days, saw the data restored after the company apologized, but the incident underscored the fragility of vibe coding tools.
That said, the technology is improving. Developers say that systems like Anthropics Claude Code and OpenAIs Codex are getting far better at testing code and making changes that dont have adverse effects on other parts of a users code base. Replits new funding suggests investors expect smaller startups in the space to achieve similar gains with their respective coding tools. Some see AI coding assistants as the first true killer app of the generative AI boom. Maybe so, but the tools still have growing up to do.
Apple injects more AI into AirPods Pro 3
Apple said earlier this year that the much-hyped Apple Intelligence features it announced in 2024including a new highly personalized version of Siriare still not ready to ship and likely wont arrive until 2026. That gave many the impression Apple had fallen behind its peers in AI.
But the company could be biding its time, waiting for powerful use cases where large language models truly excel. On Tuesday, Apple announced that its AirPods Pro 3 will feature live translation powered by computational audio and Apple Intelligence. The beta feature fits naturally in AirPods because users dont need to fumble with a phone or device to follow a bilingual conversation. The translation feature supports English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, with Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese coming by year’s end
The in-ear translation supports two interaction modes. An English speaker, for example, might display translations of their words on an iPhone for a non-AirPods-wearing Chinese speaker. Or, if both people wear AirPods, each will hear real-time translations of the others words directly in theirears. If the tech works as promised, AirPods translation could remove friction from personal and business travel with a relatively discreet, hands-free device.
Apple also introduced an AI-powered fitness feature called Workout Buddy. Users wearing earbuds during workouts can hear an AI-generated voice giving them personalized motivational insights that are based on their workout data and fitness history.
The $249 AirPods Pro 3 will go on sale September 19.
More AI coverage from Fast Company:
The vibe coding hangover is upon us
This startup is bringing AI to an Excel-style spreadsheet
Helen Toner wants to be the peoples voice in the AI safety debate
What is BYOAI and why its a serious threat to your company
Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
The battle among billionaires for bragging rights as the world’s richest person got heated Wednesday with the surprising surge of an old contender: Larry Ellison.In a stunning few minutes after markets opened, stock in Ellison’s Oracle Corp. rocketed more than a third, enough for him to temporarily wrest the title from its longtime holder Elon Musk and hand it to the software giant’s co-founder.But the stock market is fickle, and Musk was back on top by the end of the day, at least according to Bloomberg, as Oracle gave up a bit of its earlier gains.For those keeping score, the difference now is a billion, which isn’t much given the size of the figures: Musk’s $384.2 billion versus $383.2 billion for Ellison.The dueling fortunes are so big each could fund the lifestyles of 5 million typical American families for a year, about the entire population of Florida, allowing them to all quit their jobs. Or they could just tell all of South Africa to take a vacation for year and produce nothing, based on its gross domestic product.The brief switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle powered by multibillion dollar orders from customers as the artificial-intelligence race heats up.Musk became the world’s richest person for the first time four years ago. A big reason is his stake in a hot, but now cooling, electric car maker, Tesla.Stock in the company has been moving in the opposite direction of Oracle’s, dropping 14% so far this year. Musk also controls several private companies, including rocket maker SpaceX, his artificial intelligence company xAI and the former Twitter, now called X.Ellison owns about 40% of Oracle, which means its surging stock added $100 billion to his net worth in little over a half-hour after the stock market opened.The night before, after trading had closed, the company announced in an earnings report that it had struck more than $300 billion worth of new deals, including contracts with the OpenAI, Meta, Nvidia and Musk’s xAI. It said that it now expects revenue from its cloud infrastructure business to jump 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year. then rise to $144 billion in four years after that.Ellison said in an earnings call that Oracle would not just be making money from its computing centers that help build the next chatbots, but from the day-to-day running of those AI systems to run robots in factories, design drugs in laboratories, place bets in financial markets and automate legal and sales work at companies.In other words, Ellison’s surge in wealth Wednesday morning reflected investor expectations that computers will take over many jobs now done by humans and Oracle will benefit.Or as the 81-year-old said on the call, “AI Changes Everything.”Musk is hoping the same for Tesla and his own net worth, but he’s been struggling to convince investors.The company had been promising a big turnaround in electric car sales after they fell sharply earlier this year, but the bounce back hasn’t happened. Musk has been downplaying the bad numbers by trying to shift investors’ focus to Tesla’s other business of making robots and advances in the artificial intelligence behind its cars and robotaxis.While he keeps talking up the Tesla future, though, the bad news keeps coming.Tesla sales in the European Union plunged 40% earlier this summer, the seventh month in row of drops, as customers balked at buying his cars after he took to X to support extreme right-wing politicians there. The company has been losing market share in the U.S., too, as buyers angry with his embrace of Donald Trump have stayed away from Tesla showrooms.Oracle stock closed Wednesday at $328.33, a 36% jump. Tesla was up less than 1% at $347.79.-AP writers Matt O’Brien and Michael Liedtke contributed to this story.
Bernard Condon, AP Business Writer
GLP-1 patches are being pushed on TikTok Shop, despite the platforms ban on selling weight-loss products.
Recent posts flagged by Olivia Little of Media Matters promise weight loss, reduced appetite, and fewer cravingswithout the cost of injections. One caption reads: Dont waste your $$ on the [shot emoji]. Another creator wrote, See yall in a month with no waist [hourglass emoji].
Many of the flagged videos include shoppable links, enabling direct in-app purchases. That runs counter to TikToks prohibited products policy, which bans items that claim to aid in weight management, fat reduction, or similar goals. (Fast Company has reached out to TikTok for comment.)
Supplement makers have rushed to cash in on the GLP-1 hype, flooding the market with pills, powders, and patches branded with the name but containing no actual GLP-1 agonist drugs. Experts say they dont compare to prescription medications like semaglutide or tirzepatide.
Consumer GLP-1 patches sold through social platforms are unregulated and have no credible clinical evidence showing they deliver therapeutic GLP-1 drug levels, Dr. Castel Santana, medical director at 10X Health, tells Fast Company.
Established GLP-1 receptor agonists given by prescriptionfor example, weekly semaglutide or tirzepatide injectionshave been tested in large randomized clinical trials and produce substantial, measurable weight loss and metabolic benefits, he continues. By contrast, the patches on social platforms often lack ingredient transparency, dosing controls, and regulatory oversight.
Unlike pharmaceuticals, supplements arent required to undergo Food and Drug Administration approval or rigorous safety and efficacy testing.
Kind Patches, the most popular GLP-1 patch brand identified by Media Matters, claims its product provides weight management and appetite control with ingredients like berberine, chromium, pomegranate, and L-glutamine extract.
The biological mechanism they imply, berberine boosts GLP-1, has limited supporting evidence at ingredient level, typically with oral administration and modest effectsnot proof that a consumer adhesive patch will produce clinically meaningful GLP-1 activation, Santana says. (Fast Company has reached out to Kind Patches for comment.)
That hasnt slowed demand: Media Matters found more than 364,000 single packs and nearly 98,000 triple packs sold on TikTok Shop.
With an army of ambassadors promising quick fixes and collecting commissions, the pitch is simple: Stick on a patch and lose weight in months. The science, however, says otherwise.
South Korea’s president said Thursday that Korean companies will likely hesitate to make further investments in the United States unless Washington improves its visa system for their employees, as U.S. authorities released hundreds of workers who were detained from a Georgia factory site last week.In a news conference marking 100 days in office, Lee Jae Myung called for improvements in the U.S. visa system as he spoke about the Sept. 4 immigration raid that resulted in the arrest of more than 300 South Korean workers at a battery factory under construction at Hyundai’s sprawling auto plant west of Savannah.South Korea’s Foreign Ministry later confirmed that U.S. authorities have released the 330 detainees 316 of them Koreans and that they were being transported by buses to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport where they will board a charter flight scheduled to arrive in South Korea on Friday afternoon. The group also includes 10 Chinese nationals, three Japanese nationals and one Indonesian.The massive roundup and U.S. authorities’ release of video showing some workers being chained and taken away, sparked widespread anger and a sense of betrayal in South Korea. The raid came less than two weeks after a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Lee, and just weeks after the countries reached a July agreement that spared South Korea from the Trump administration’s highest tariffs but only after Seoul pledged $350 billion in new U.S. investments, against the backdrop of a decaying job market at home.Lawmakers from both Lee’s liberal Democratic Party and the conservative opposition decried the detentions as outrageous and heavy-handed, while South Korea’s biggest newspaper compared the raid to a “rabbit hunt” executed by U.S. immigration authorities in a zeal to meet an alleged White House goal of 3,000 arrests a day.During the news conference, Lee said South Korean and U.S. officials are discussing a possible improvement to the U.S. visa system, adding that under the current system South Korean companies “can’t help hesitating a lot” about making direct investments in the U.S.
Lee: ‘It’s not like these are long-term workers’
U.S. authorities said some of the detained workers had illegally crossed the U.S. border, while others entered legally but had expired visas or entered on visa waivers that prohibited them from working.But South Korean officials expressed frustration that Washington has yet to act on Seoul’s yearslong demand to ensure a visa system to accommodate skilled Korean workers, though it has been pressing South Korea to expand U.S. industrial investments.South Korean companies have been mostly relying on short-term visitor visas or Electronic System for Travel Authorization to send workers who are needed to launch manufacturing sites and handle other setup tasks, a practice that had been largely tolerated for years.Lee said that whether Washington establishes a visa system allowing South Korean companies to send skilled workers to industrial sites will have a “major impact” on future South Korean investments in America.“It’s not like these are long-term workers. When you build a factory or install equipment at a factory, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work,” he said.“If that’s not possible, then establishing a local factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages or become very difficult for our companies. They will wonder whether they should even do it,” Lee added.Lee said the raid showed a “cultural difference” between the two countries in how they handle immigration issues.“In South Korea, we see Americans coming on tourist visas to teach English at private cram schools they do it all the time, and we don’t think much of it, it’s just something you accept,” Lee said.“But the United States clearly doesn’t see things that way. On top of that, U.S. immigration authorities pledge to strictly forbid illegal immigration and employment and carry out deportations in various aggressive ways, and our people happened to be caught in one of those cases,” he added.
South Korea, US agree on working group to settle visa issues
Following a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Wednesday that U.S. officials have agreed to allow the workers detained in Georgia to later return to finish their work at the site. He added that the countries agreed to set up a joint working group for discussions on creating a new visa category to make it easier for South Korean companies to send their staff to work in the United States.Before leaving for the U.S. on Monday, Cho said more South Korean workers in the U.S. could be vulnerable to future crackdowns if the visa issue isn’t resolved, but said Seoul does not yet have an estimate of how many might be at risk.The Georgia battery plant is one of more than 20 major industrial sites that South Korean companies are currently building in the United States. They include other battery factories in Georgia and several other states, a semiconductor plant in Texas, and a shipbuilding project in Philadelphia, a sector Trump has frequently highlighted in relation to South Korea.Min Jeonghun, a professor at South Korea’s National Diplomatic Academy, said it’s chiefly up to the United States to resolve the issue, either through legislation or by taking administrative steps to expand short-term work visas for training purposes.Without an update in U.S. visa policies, Min said, “Korean companies will no longer be able to send their workers to the United States, causing inevitable delays in the expansion of facilities and other production activities, and the harm will boomerang back to the U.S. economy.”
Kim Tong-Hyung and Hyung-Jin Kim, Associated Press
It was the Fourth of July, and I was in my Sing Sing cell, sweating in the heat, perched on the edge of my bunk with my feet dunked in a bucket of cold sink water. What really had me burning, though, was that the Wi-Fi had been down in my block for three days. I couldnt use my tablet to reach my friend and publicist, Megan, who handles my outside email and edits. With my brain boiling, I could hardly write; I usually work in the drafts folder of the messaging app, and now I was locked out.
Before the Wi-Fi cut outI heard a wire melted during a recent heat waveId received a couple of messages: interview questions about my forthcoming book, The Tragedy of True Crime, and edits on some other freelance stories. Now, whenever I punched in my password, a message popped up: This device is not connected to the system. The shouts from the tiers above and below made it clear the outage wasnt just me. That was a relief: In the past, my messages were often delayed for what I assumed was extra scrutiny, a reminder of what it means to be a prison journalist. I could try the phones in the yard, but that would mean navigating the gangs who monopolize them when the Wi-Fi goes out.
When I got locked up almost 24 years ago, I never imagined wed one day have Wi-Fi inside. In 2019, the prison communications company Securus installed kiosks across all New York facilities and issued every prisoner a clear, 6-inch tablet (imagine a clunky, low-grade iPad). By 2024, the kiosks were mostly abandoned, and our tablets had been upgraded with Wi-Fi that let us send messages and make phone calls from our cellsthough the internet itself remained off-limits.
I have a love-hate relationship with Securus. The technology, janky as it is, has helped me grow as a journalist. At the same time, Securus is sustained by the families and friends of people in prison, and activists have pushed for more regulation and free communications. If corporations can profit off us, we should at least be able to use the same tools to earn income legally. Writing is one way, but there arent many freelancers working inside. There is plenty of ambition, though, and plenty of time; why not let guys work phone-based jobs, like telemarketing? Still, its unrealistic to expect the state to provide this technology free of charge.
Yo, I think the Wi-Fi is done for the weekend, Macho, my workout partner, told me at the pull-up bar in the yard on that hot July afternoon. They aint coming to fix it on a holiday.
The day before, Securus technicians had fixed the Wi-Fi in other cellblocks, and I told Macho I was sure theyd be in ours next. When he asked why, I answered: Because Securus only cares about profit. Time is money; every hour the Wi-Fi is out, theyre losing money.
Communication is big business on the prison black market, too. Contraband cell phones, mostly iPhones, are everywhereoften smuggled in by correction officers (COs) and sold to prisoners. Eighteen hundred dollars on Cash App will get you one. And no wonder: online access is the closest we can get to freedom. But if youre caughtand most areyoure sent to solitary and transferred to another prison. As much as an iPhone might make my work easier, Ive never bought one.
Thats not to say I havent been curious. A few years back, a friend gave me a glimpse of the connected life, pulling up my articles on his iPhone (Id never seen my work appear on Google before) and later loaning me the device, which sent me into a frenzy of scrolling, swiping, and searching. Fumbling through the phone, I felt a kind of cognitive dissonance: lost, navigating iOS without a map, and paranoid, peeking out through my cell bars for patrolling COs. Its complicated to reconcile my outside identity as a law-abiding prison journalist, which seems respected, with my inside identity as a convict, which is always under suspicion. The anxiety I felt using an iPhone, even for just a few minutes, made me realize it wasnt worth the portal it opened.
A cell becomes an office
I wasnt too keyed into the 90s dot-com era. Flirting with girls in AOL chat rooms wasnt my thing. I never owned a computer, never opened a Word document, and never sent an email. Instead, I was running the streets, selling drugs, and partying in nightclubs. The only technology that interested me was whatever could help me move dope. I gave my dealers Nextel phones with the push to talk feature, like walkie-talkies. Id heard the Feds had a harder time recording radio frequencies. (I never did manage to confirm whether that was true.)
In 2001, at 24, I shot and killed a friend-turned-foe and was soon arrested, tried, and sentenced to 28 years to life. I had a ninth-grade education, but I was still ambitious. At first, life inside tracked pretty close to the one Id had outside: I got in trouble, did drugs, and bounced around different prisons (common for people serving long sentences). In 2007, I landed in Attica, New Yorks most notorious maximum-security prison. There, I met an engineer who had killed his wife and was finishing up his 20-year sentence. He told me the world would make huge technological advances while I was in prison, allowing people to create new identities online. Despite being wrapped in 30-foot walls, he said, I too could build an online presence. But I had to figure out who I wanted to become.
By the 2010s, while the outside world made massive technological leaps, we prisoners limped into the 21st century with our typewriters, 8-tracks, and Walkmans. At Attica, I took a creative writing workshop and mailed out an essay that wound up in The Atlantic. That break showed me a path forward. I could become a freelance journalist from the joint. There was no law against it, and many federal judges, adhering to the First Amendment, have ruled that prison writers have a right to publish and even earn income from their work. I began publishing regularly. My 6-by-9-foot cell became my office. I practiced personal journalism, drawn to first-person storytelling that brought readers inside the world I lived in.
[Photo: Bettmann / Contributor/Getty Images]
Id observe the action and interview colorful characters in the yard, then write in my cell, sitting on an upturned bucket and tapping out stories on a Swintec typewritera clear plastic machine (prison officials prefer see-through electronics because theyre easier to search for contraband). It had a 7,000-character memory, which worked for short articles but got tricky as assignments grew longer. I had to print out the early pages, delete them to free up space, then continue with the next section. I mailed manuscripts to helpers on the outsideeditors, studentswho forwarded them to magazine editors. When pieces were accpted and revised, my helpers snail-mailed the edits back. I reworked essays and, whenever I was on deadline, dictated changes over the phone in the yard. When I transferred to Sing Sing in 2016, the cells were smaller. The cellblocks, like the madhouse of B Block with its open tiers stacked five stories high (where Im currently writing this), were even louder.
Swingtec Clear Cabinet typewriter [Photo: Swingtec]
In 2019, Securus tablets came to New York prisons. They were given to us for free, but everything on them cost money. Messages, capped at 6,000 characters, were about 15 cents each. Individual songs cost $1.99. New movies, like Captain America: Brave New World, ran $8.99 to rent (Megan tells me she can rent it on Amazon Prime for $5.99). Thirty-minute phone calls from New York prisons cost about a dollar. The tablets exposed the class divide in here: the haves built up song catalogs in the hundreds or even thousands, while the have-nots couldnt afford to message or call anyone. I guess that mirrors American society.
At first, I was excited about the technology, but it turned out to be useless to me. My messagesboth incoming and outgoingwere held up for weeks. None of the men around me had this problem. When I asked the Sing Sing superintendent why he was holding my messages, he said he wasnt. I kept working on the typewriter and navigating the phones.
The business of staying connected
Heres the lay of the land with these prison communications companies. As Bianca Tylek writes in the book The Prison Industry, ViaPath (which owns GettingOut) and Aventiv Technologies (which owns Securus and JPay) form a duopoly that controls 80% of the $1.5 billion prison communications market. Their products for prisoners include phone calls, tablets, and video calls. For corrections agencies, they offer a suite of surveillance tools: live monitoring, recording, transcription, and storage of phone calls; remote access to tablets; and alerts when certain words are used. These two companies contract with nearly every correctional agency at the state, county, and federal levels, and the size of their kickbacksmoney agencies earn from our communicationsdepends on how willing public officials are to allow price gouging.
While New York limits how far Securus can go with its rates, officials running jails and prisons in the South have allowed the company to charge detainees as much as $14 for a 15-minute phone call. Securus also charges families fees to send moneyit costs $5 for each transfer, with a $300 capto buy the overpriced items on tablets and at the commissary. The prison money-transfer market exceeds $100 million per year. According to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, one-third of families with an incarcerated relative go into debt trying to stay in touch. Thats why reform advocates have been pressuring these companies for years to lower their rates.
In 2023, Worth Rises and other advocacy organizations successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, requiring the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate prison phone rates. In July 2024, the FCC voted to implement new rules in line with the bipartisan bill, including caps on phone call pricing and a ban on most kickbacks to corrections agencies. Yet on June 30, the FCC announced a two-year postponement of those rules, allowing excessive pricing to continue until at least April 2027.
(In a statement sent to Fast Company, Securus emphasized that the company’s tablets and services play a role in rehabilitation and reentry. “We believe a fair and sustainable regulatory framework must balance affordability with the vital investments needed for security and technology, the statement reads. “As the industry leader, Securus engaged with the FCC during the Martha Wright-Reed rulemaking process. We have complied with the resulting order while also challenging it in court alongside 18 State Attorneys General.” The statement adds that where states dont publicly fund calls, it must charge rates that cover the cost of providing and maintaining technology and security infrastructure.)
As I was working on this piece in July, New York State Prison Commissioner Daniel Martuscello sent an announcement via our tablets: starting August 1, all phone calls in the states facilities would be free. Unlike in Massachusetts, where free calls came through legislation, Martuscello negotiated directly with Securus and will allot $9 million per year from the $3.58 billion corrections budget to cover the cost. That money goes to Securus.
So far, the transition has been seamless. But with more calls being made in the block, connections now drop more frequently, and the audio quality is worse. Still, the free calls have lifted a burden from families and friends. Its a clear win for Worth Rises and other advocates. And yet, without Securus providing the infrastructure in the states 42 prisonsWi-Fi and tablets issued to every prisonerthis move to free calls could have caused chaos if wed been forced to rely on the limited landline phones in the yard.
A screenshot of Megan Posco’s edits sent to the author in a Securus message. [Screenshot: Megan Posco]
In the summer of 2020, I transferred from Sing Sing to Sullivan Correctional Facility, a smaller maximum-security prison in the Catskills. There, most of my messages started going through. I spent $15 on a rubber keyboard made by Securus and began typing my pitches and works-in-progress in the drafts folder of the email app, which had spell check and let me cut and paste. Whenever my tablet dieda couple of times a yearI was issued a new one, minus my drafts, losing thousands of words of work.
There wasnt a hard drive, and the data wasnt saved to the cloudfor us to access, at least. Securus provides corrections agencies with mountains of data on us, enabling them to monitor our communications; this is perhaps the main reason agencies welcome the technology. Whenever I dictate my writing over the phone, sometimes reading sentences that describe my past criminal behavior or one of my subjects crimes, I worry the AI-powered monitoring will pick up words like gang, gun, or killing and use them out of context to keep me in prison.
The tech isnt perfect on the other side, either. Whenever Megan gets an error message in the Securus app on her iPhone, she tries to figure out if its a system-wide outage. Her first stop is downforeveryoneorjustme.com/securusa site she tells me she has saved in her favoritesto check if its reporting an issue. Shell also go to the r/PrisonWives subreddit and sort by new; if others cant connect, there will inevitably be a post titled, Does anyone know if Securus is down?
Messaging under watch
At Sullivan, each cellblock had an octagonal shape with two tiers, and cells that wrapped around a common area with tables and seats bolted to the floor. During evening recreation, men watched TV, played chess, and talked on four phones. The line for the one kiosk in the common area often created chaos. We were limited to five syncs a day, and guys argued over who skipped the line. Whenever I needed to send a message during the day, before evening rec, I would ask prison porters, who mopped and buffed the cellblock floors, to sync my tablet for me. Being out of their cells while the rest of us were locked in was a perk of the job. Over the years, my guy was Cracker Thug (his nickname, tattooed across his belly). I paid him a pack of Newports every week.
Technically, thats against the rules. One day in April 2021, Cracker Thug synced my tablet, sending out a message I had written to a magazine editor. Soon after, I received a misbehavior report for using the kiosk during non-recreation hours. I had been infraction-free for years. It felt retaliatory. No one else got written up around that time. At the disciplinary hearing, I received seven days loss of yard privileges. Soon after, I got a book deal.
A couple of years earlier, I had been featured on a true-crime show called Inside Evil With Chris Cuomo. I was duped into participating, and the result was a cheesy episode titled “Killer Writing.” It made me think more deeply about the stories we tell about crime and punishment in America, and I soon became a critic of the lurid genre, calling out writers and producers for capitalizing on so much trauma. But I also felt I could do a better job telling these stories about the lives of people in prison, and, if possible, portray us as more than murderers.
This is what I explained to Ryan, an editor at Celadon Books, when I called him from the common area in the cellblock. It was shower time. Men yelled. Walkie-talkies crackled off the hips of officers. I assured Ryan that the Securus tablet would help me deliver the book. He made an offer, and I accepted.
In a dark corner of the Sullivan cellblock, I tapped out the 100,000-word manuscript on the rubber keyboard. This was before we got Wi-Fi, before the ability to make calls from our cells, so I negotiated the phone line in the yard to call my sources and talk through edits with Megan and my research assistant, Mattthe two people Ive spoken to almost daily for the past four years.
The editing system Megan, Matt, and I developed felt like a covert ops missive. We suspected the Securus algorithm flagged certain words and rerouted those messages to the facility lieutenant, so we started disguising themreplacing letters with a star (m*rder) or a special character (kîlled) to avoid detection. I could send a message like the one below, and Megan and Matt would know exactly what edits I wanted:
Stefan owned // ADD: S & T Famous Bags, // a store on Kings Highway, in Brooklyn, …
A COUPLE GRAFS DOWN
//CUT: The story// Stefan told // CUT: people, including // his friend who owned the Park Slope brownstone //CUT : , was // that he was a friend … GOOD
A COUPLE GRAFS DOWN
After Shane took a shower . . . But it was a small thing, and Stefan criticized the way Shane was doing it, and that sent Shane into // CUT: a spiral// ADD a dark and empty place. //
By the end of 2024, Governor Kathy Hochul closed Sullivan, citing the states declining prison population, and I was sent back to Sing Sing. It was one of the first New York prisons to get the Wi-Fi upgrade. Now we can send and receive messages and make phone calls from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Instead of beefing over the kiosk in the block to sync or fighting for a half-hour on the yard phones, men can call from their cells all day long.
Aside from paying a premium for certain products, were not the ones most victimized; our families are. Im glad the people who didnt make the choices that landed us here no longer have to shoulder the cost of expensive calls. The tablets also come loaded with free education programs, and if we want music, movies, or games, thats up to us to buy. That choice alone carries a small sense of freedom. If Im not the harshest critic of Securus, maybe its because Ive seen firsthand how the tech can make us more productive.
And heres the thing: If private companies are allowed to profit off us, then we should also be allowed to use the same tech to earn money consulting, freelancing, and doing real work. Society should want us better prepared for release. Guys I mentor inside have already used the tablets to break into freelance journalism. From their cells, they publish articles, earn income, pay taxes, even send money home to help their kids.
For most, though, the tablets are just a distraction from the monotony. There arent many writers in the joint. I wonder what else men could do with this tech to make a little money. Maybe I could do some telemarketing over the phone in my cell so I can earn a few dollars, Macho, my workout partner, told me. Beats bothering my girl with phone calls all day.
Late in the afternoon on July 4, the cellblock came alive. Yo, Wi-Fi is back on. Lets go! a random voice yelled. Another added: Fuck Securus!
I told you so! I shouted down to Macho before calling Megan, eager for updates and relieved I wouldnt miss my deadline. The block quickly returned to its usual maddening din: hundreds of men yelling tier to tier, others glued to thir phones.
