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The headache of planning a ski trip stands in sharp contrast to the freedom of effortlessly slicing down the slopes once you actually get up the mountain. If youre tired of worrying about squeezing all of that gear into your car or wrestling with tire chains in the cold, Ubers latest option for getting you to the slopes is one way to go. The company continues to broaden the services you can book through its app, and now Uber wants you to not only hail one of its rides up the mountain, but also book your ski pass on the way. Through a partnership with Vail Resorts, Uber is offering an option to buy an Epic Pass through the app. The Epic Pass, sold by Colorado ski giant Vail, is one of the big two multi-resort passes that avid skiers and snowboarders buy each season to unlock access to a huge swath of slopes. (The other option, the Ikon Pass by Vails rival Alterra Mountain Company, isnt available through the Uber app.) The Epic Pass packs a punch as far as ski destinations go, offering unlimited access to Colorados Vail and Breckenridge resorts, Park City in Utah, Heavenly in California, and Whistler Blackcomb in Canada. Right now, the main pass will set a single adult back $1,121, though prices go up the closer it gets to opening day. Other passes offer a handful of mountain days at a discount for what individual lift tickets would cost, but booking one through Uber doesnt confer any special perks. After the Epic Pass sales period closes in December, Uber users will apparently be able to book normal lift tickets to any Vail resort through the app. We are thrilled to offer skiers and snowboarders alike a convenient and reliable way to get to the mountain this season, Uber’s director of engineering Adib Roumani said in a press release. “With Uber Ski, you can spend more time enjoying the fresh mountain air and less time worrying about how to get there. Uber on ice Uber will also continue to offer specially outfitted rides through Uber Ski, which is a special tile that pops up seasonally in the services area of the app. The company first added this option back in 2019, giving riders in many mountain-adjacent U.S. cities a way to know that their ride can a) actually make it up a mountain, and b) fit bulky skis and snowboards. Since its launch, Uber has expanded Uber Skis area to include more snowy spots in the U.S., as well as in France and Switzerland in Europe. Support for Canadian slopes is on the way soon, according to the company, and all Uber Ski rides can be booked up to 90 days in advance. Uber Ski is just the latest premium offering from the ride-booking company, which advertises a dizzying array of ride options, from UberXL (for groups of up to six passengers, like the ones available through Uber Ski) and Uber Premier (luxe rides) to Uber Pet (for when your non-human companion comes along). Ubers increasing push into niche and luxury optionsand partnerships like the one it just struck for the Epic Passcan help the company cash in beyond its core ride-booking business. Unless youre a seasoned pro, the logistics of carting your gear up a mountain in inclement weather can put a damper on a ski day before it even gets started. For families and friend groups that travel away from home for an extended trip or only make it to the slopes a few days each season, Uber Ski offers a compelling transportation optionespecially if youre splitting the bill.
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E-Commerce
Verizon is planning to cut about 15,000 jobs in the telecommunications company’s largest-ever layoffs as part of a restructuring under its new CEO, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday. The layoffs, affecting about 15% of its workforce, are set to take place as soon as next week, the person said. Verizon’s shares rose about 1.4% on the news. They have largely stagnated over the last three years, with a gain of 8% compared with the S&P 500’s near-70% rise. A Verizon spokesperson declined to comment. The cuts, following the appointment of former PayPal boss Dan Schulman as CEO in early October, are aimed at its non-union management ranks and are expected to affect more than 20% of that workforce, one source said. Verizon also plans to transition around 180 corporate-owned retail stores into franchised operations, the source added. The Wall Street Journal reported the cuts earlier. Verizon is battling rising competition as subscriber growth slows and cautious consumers are unwilling to buy premium wireless plans. It has faced mounting pressure from rivals AT&T and T-Mobile US as the U.S. wireless market matures. Schulman said last month that Verizon understood it needs aggressive change, including “cost transformation, fundamentally restructuring our expense base.” “We will be a simpler, leaner and scrappier business,” he added. Schulman, a Verizon board member for seven years, has said he does not want to hike prices and seeks to be more customer-focused. “Our financial growth has relied too heavily on price increases. A strategic approach that relies too much on price without subscriber growth is not a sustainable strategy,” he said last month. Verizon had about 100,000 U.S. employees at the end of 2024, after cutting almost 20,000 over three years. Last year, it announced a reduction of 4,800 employees through a voluntary program and took a nearly $2 billion charge. In 2018, Verizon said about 10,400 employees would leave under a prior voluntary exit program. Verizon maintains the highest price points in the sector, a strategy that analysts have said is difficult to sustain amid rising competitive intensity. Craig Moffett, senior analyst at MoffettNathanson, said the new CEO’s first commitment was to stop the bleeding from subscriber churn, which would require subsidizing expensive handsets for a huge number of Verizon’s subscribers to keep them from leaving. “The obvious question was how Verizon planned to pay for that. Now we know,” Moffett said. “What we don’t know is whether these cost reductions will actually help to offset the higher planned costs of retention” of customers. In recent years, Verizon spent $52 billion to acquire key wireless C-band spectrum in a 2021 auction and struck a $20 billion deal to acquire Frontier Communications last year. It also spent $6 billion to acquire prepaid mobile phone provider TracFone Wireless. By David Shepardson and Harshita Mary Varghese, Reuters
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E-Commerce
For decades, Adobes software tools, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, have been the universal language of visual communication, shaping how marketers, artists, and brands build the modern creative world. As artificial intelligence transforms the nature of work and how we define productivity, the 42-year-old creative tech company is reinventing itself once again, transforming the worlds creative supply chains through its AI ecosystem. Designers and marketers globally are using Adobe Firefly for generative image creation, Substance 3D for photorealistic modeling and digital twins, Express for rapid on-brand content production, and Experience Manager for orchestrating assets across global campaigns.AI should help you work faster and with more precision, while you stay in control of the craft, says Hannah Elsakr, vice president of GenAI New Business Ventures at Adobe. Firefly Custom Models and our new Adobe Firefly Foundry allow large brands to build proprietary, IP-protected models trained on their own assets. The impact is reaching every corner of the creative industry. At Tapestry, the parent company of luxury brands Coach and Kate Spade New York, AI is doubling as a force multiplier. The company is using Adobe Firefly Custom Models, an AI system trained on the brands patterns, textures, and archival details to accelerate design without losing the essence of its iconic craftsmanship. When ideas crystallize, Tapestrys design teams turn to Adobe Substance 3D to create digital twins: hyperrealistic 3D versions of handbags, shoes, and accessories that look and behave like the real product. [Image: Adobe] At Kate Spade, we are in an exciting phase of brand reinvention, and we are embracing innovative technologies to elevate our creative process, says Lissette Siesholtz, senior director of leather goods technical design at Kate Spade New York. AI serves as a tool to expand the possibilities of design, helping us push boundaries and explore new directions. Siesholtz added that designers take ideas generated in Firefly and refine them across other tools, including Illustrator and Photoshop, to perfect each concept for commercialization. This leads to agility, as marketers can preview products earlier and campaigns can be built in parallel with the new design. AI is rewriting the creative supply chain AI is also powering the marketing muscle for some of the worlds most recognizable brands. Newell Brands, for instance, the company behind household names like Elmers Glue, Sharpie, and Paper Mate, is reimagining its entire content supply chain to keep pace with the speed of digital culture. When the team began planning Elmers massive back-to-school campaign, they faced a familiar challenge: too much to create, and too little time to do it. Instead of traditional photo shoots, the team utilized Adobe Firefly to generate hundreds of visuals, from texture-rich close-ups to lifestyle scenes, with each uniquely tailored to Elmer’s distinct brand aesthetic. A great example is the Elmers cut-paper custom model. Instead of physically cutting paper and gluing pieces, we trained a custom Firefly model to create that fun, energetic style at scale, says Samantha Tuttle, director of marketing & commercial excellence at Newell Brands. Our designers and insights teams actively monitor consumer perceptions around AI. Paper Mate and Yankee Candle have since adopted similar workflows, using Fireflys AI capabilities to test illustrations and visual variations that improved engagement across global markets. Nick Hammitt, chief marketing officer at Newell Brands, explains that the brands distinctive styles, whether Elmers playful paper-cut visuals or Paper Mates hand-drawn illustrations, were all originally crafted by hand. While AI now accelerates production, the human touch remains essential. People are at the beginning and the end verifying quality, brand alignment, and safety. Adobes partnerships now stretch from Mattel, using Firefly to create packaging and storytelling for Barbie, to Coca-Cola, which codeveloped Firefly Design Intelligence, an AI-powered design system that helps brands maintain creative consistency worldwide. AI can imitate style, but not soul As brands increasingly use AI across design, marketing, and production, the creative workforce is racing to keep up. A new report from creative tech platform Envato, surveying more than 1,700 creatives globally, found nearly half of creative professionals use AI daily for client work, with 50% using AI significantly more than they did six months ago. Artists believe the future depends on balance: using AI to enhance the creative process, but never allowing it to define or dilute human expression. AI can never truly understand the emotional texture of human creativity, because it lacks the ability to feel, says Santanu Hazarika, a multidisciplinary visual artist. Art is born out of experience, conflict, reflection, and emotion, which can only be mimicked by the system. Hazarika noted that when technology becomes universally accessible, the creative landscape fills with repetition, a kind of aesthetic homogeneity that emerges when tools are used without personal language or depth of intent. If AI is used merely to mimic or replicate an existing artists work, it becomes an act of duplication rather than creation, he says. So the next time you glance around your desk: the coffee cup with its sleek label, the packaging on your favorite snack, the app you used to order lunch, AI was there somewhere in its creation, quietly shaping the world around you.
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E-Commerce
AI can do a lot of things. It can write your emails. It can make your grocery list. It can even interview you for a job. But now, more and more people are depending on AI for things that require real human qualities: life coaching, therapy, even companionship. Scott Galloway, best-selling author and professor of marketing at New York Universitys Stern School of Business, says the real problem with synthetic relationships is what they lack: any kind of struggle or challenge that comes with maintaining real relationships. Leaning on AI In a recent social media post, Galloway calls AI a rabbit hole that is “sequestering us from each otherand while it may mimic human relationships in some ways, it may actually take up space where human beings could be. Or should be. Thats driving us apart, Galloway argues. He says that people are “leaning on” their AI relationships in ways that they used to lean on human beings. That may happen because, sure, other human beings aren’t always readily available. He says AI relationships are easier to maintain . . . but thats the whole point. In a bad way. “You need to be mindful of the fact that these things are not real humans, he says. They are meant to keep you on the screen, and to sometimes be supportive to a fault.” AI gives people exactly what they’re craving. Maybe even too much. What’s still missing Regardless of the comfort it may provide to many, Galloway says that AI is lacking in some key areas. For starters, it can’t show real compassion or empathy. On top of that, it isn’t always honestor at least, not honest enough. The author says there is real danger in bots that tell people what they want to hear, rather than what they may need to hear. According to Galloway, it’s prime territory for getting stuck in a cycle of consuming what he calls “empty calories: Basically, AI acts like a friend, but is a friend that tells you exactly what you want to hear a true friend? Not so much. AI cooperates, where a human being might push back. Galloway says that lack of “friction,” or any sort of real challenge, may be appealing. Who wouldnt want a drama-free echo chamber that validates your own worldview and offers no consistent pushback . . . that is, unless you specifically engineer a prompt for an LLM to do so? That ease is a draw, but Galloway says it also takes away the true essence of a relationship. Because real human relationships are hard. But theyre kind of supposed to be. The greatest reward According to Galloway, it can be totally tempting to make friends with AI because while it’s easy to do, human relationships are exactly the opposite. It takes not just time and energy, but also really learning what other people need, how to respond, and show up for them. Thats the key to making friendships or romantic relationships last. But its a lot of work. “It is difficult to establish the pecking order of friends, and approach people and express friendship.” For some people, its easier to just avoid it altogether. And AI makes it even easier. Still, according to Galloway? Human relationships are essential not in spite of the workbut because of it. It isnt about ease; its about the work, the challenge. And the payoff. In essence, it’s the struggle to maintain relationships that helps people grow, or that makes the relationship worth it. Sending text dumps to ChatGPT just doesnt hit the same. “People are messy, complex,” Galloway says. “And that is why it is so f****** rewarding.”
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E-Commerce
Disney reported $22.46 billion in revenue for the quarter, which just missed analyst expectations and resulted in a 5% drop in premarket trading on Thursday. The entertainment divisionwhich includes the companys streaming, linear networks, and theatrical businesssaw a 6% drop in revenue. Streaming did see some gains: Disney+ and Hulu ended the quarter with 196 million subscriptions, an increase of 12.4 million subscribers from the previous quarter. However, Disneys linear networks dropped 16% to $107 million, compared to this time last year, while operating income fell 21%. The companys theatrical releases also saw declines with both the drop in linear networks and theatrical business driving the mixed results.In a letter to shareholders, the company attributed the decrease in its domestic linear networks to lower advertising fueled by the continued decline in viewership as well as political advertising, which had a $40 million negative impact on results compared to this time last year. For sports, Disney reported a 2% increase in revenue to $4 billion, while operating income of $911 million, a decrease of $18 million compared to the year before with domestic ESPN operating income declining 3%. The company cited that higher marketing and programming and production costs were partially offset by higher advertising and subscription and affiliate revenues. Meanwhile, domestic advertising revenue in sports increased 8%.The overall decline across linear networks continues to fuel the trend of cord-cutting consumers who are migrating to streaming with ad dollars making a shift that way as well. The recent quarterly earnings also come as Disney and Google continue their ongoing carriage dispute which resulted in several of Disneys networks going dark on YouTube TV. Some analysts estimated that a two-week blackout on YouTube could cost Disney about $60 million in revenue. Disney CEO Bob Iger addressed the feud on the earnings call saying that the company is working hard to close the deal: Were hopeful that well be able to do so on a timely enough basis to at least give consumers the opportunity to access our content over their platform.
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E-Commerce
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