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February 1 was National Change Your Password Day, a well-intentioned reminder that, ironically, highlights everything wrong with how we think about security in 2026. Here’s the truth: if you spent the first day of the month dutifully changing “Summer2025!” to “Winter2026!” across your accounts, you didn’t make yourself safer. In fact, you might have made things worse. Decades of Bad Advice We’ve spent decades teaching people the wrong lessons about password security. Add a number. Throw in a special character. Change it every 90 days. These requirements were etched into our collective consciousness, repeated by IT departments, enforced by login forms, and internalized by millions of users who thought they were doing the right thing. Meanwhile, the actual threat landscape evolved in an entirely different direction. Today’s attackers aren’t sitting at keyboards manually typing password guesses. They’re running offline brute force attacks with dedicated GPU rigs that can attempt 100 billion passwords per second against hashing algorithms like MD5 or SHA-1. At that speed, your clever substitution of “@” for “a” buys you microseconds of additional security. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which sets the gold standard for cybersecurity guidance, understands the new reality. Their latest digital identity guidelines represent a fundamental shift in how we should think about password security, and it’s not what most people expect. Length Beats Complexity Every Time NIST’s guidance is refreshingly straightforward. Length matters far more than complexity. A password should be at least 15 characters, but those characters don’t need to be a cryptic jumble of symbols that you’ll inevitably forget (or worse, write on a sticky note). Instead, NIST endorses the concept of “passphrases” or multiple words strung together that are easy to remember but difficult to guess. “DontAskMeToChangeMyPassword” is more secure than “P@ssw0rd!” and infinitely easier to recall. Even more surprising to many, NIST no longer recommends requiring special characters or numbers, and they’ve abandoned the practice of forcing regular password changes. Why? Because these rules don’t make passwords more securethey just make them harder for humans to manage, which leads to predictable workarounds that actually weaken security. Passwords Are the Problem, Not the Solution But here’s where NIST’s guidance gets really interesting. They acknowledge that even the strongest password is fundamentally insecure. Phishing attacks don’t care how long your password is. Data breaches expose credentials regardless of complexity. And with over 3,000 data breaches in 2025 alone, the question isn’t whether your password has been compromisedit’s how many times. NIST’s primary recommendation isn’t about crafting the perfect password. It’s about moving beyond passwords entirely. They emphasize multifactor authentication (MFA) as essential, not optional. They champion passkeyscryptographic keys stored on your devices that can’t be phished, guessed, or stolen in database breaches. They endorse password managers that generate and store unique credentials for every account. Organizations are realizing that the password is the problem, not the solution. Passwordless authentication isn’t a futuristic concept anymore. It’s a practical necessity for companies serious about security and user experience. What You Should Actually Do If you must use passwords (and let’s be honest, you probably still need them for many accounts), follow NIST’s guidance. Make them long, use a password manager, and enable MFA everywhere it’s available. Better yet, embrace passkeys when offeredthey’re more secure and more convenient than any password could ever be. But the real question isn’t “how do I create a better password?” It’s “why am I still relying on passwords at all?” Instead of changing your password on National Change Your Password Day, why not change your entire approach to authentication?
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E-Commerce
The MAGA movement has always been partly about culture, but lately conservative politics have fully ventured into the entertainment realm. Between the theatrical release of the Melania documentary, the drastic and ongoing reshuffling of the offerings at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Kid Rock-headlined alternative to Bad Bunnys upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, the cultural MAGA-verse has shifted from backlashes and boycotts to counterprogramming. The anti-halftime spectacle will provide an interesting temperature check of the impact of these efforts. The AllAmerican Halftime Show, organized by Turning Point USA, is billed as an explicitly conservative counterprogram to the official Apple-sponsored show featuring Latin phenom Bad Bunny. Kid Rock will be joined by mid-level country artists Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and Gabby Barrett. The show will be broadcast on Turning Points YouTube and social media accounts, as well as on several conservative networks such as OAN. He’s said he’s having a dance party, wearing a dress, and singing in Spanish? Cool, Kid Rock said in a press release. We plan to play great songs for folks who love America. A proud Puerto Rican, Bad Bunny is, of course, American, but he performs mostly in Spanish and has been openly critical of the Trump administration and ICE, making him a MAGA foe. So in a pop culture iteration of alternative facts, Turning Point and the MAGA-verse envision a world in which Kid Rock is a bigger attraction than the global superstar who was last years most-streamed artist on Spotify and just won the Grammy for best album on February 1. It seems delusional that Kid Rock can divert a significant audience from the years premier sports-cultural moment. What viewers it does gather will likely be motivated by anti-Bad Bunny spite. We cant wait to watch the incredible show theyre about to put on, Turning Point boasted of its counter-lineup. We know millions around the country will be watching too.” (Last years Super Bowl audience was around 127 million people; Animal Planets halftime-show alternative, the Puppy Bowl, attracted about 12.8 million viewers.) This counterprogramming strategy echoes a conservative tactic that long predates MAGA in the realm of information and persuasion. Rather than (or in addition to) complain about news sources they disagreed with, conservatives built their own alternatives, from Fox News and its newer, even more conservative rivals to popular radio talk shows and a slew of online media. No need to try to get your message through someone elses media when you can just program your own content. Something like that strategy seems to have worked for first lady Melania Trump, who doesnt give a lot of interviews but is the subject of the documentary Melania, the contents of which she essentially controlled. Though lambasted by critics and mocked for a nationwide release on some 1,800 screens, the film did fairly well for a documentary, taking in $7 million on its opening weekend (experts predicted $5 million, skeptics close to $1 million). Theres still basically no chance it will earn back the $75 million Amazon paid to acquire and market the project, but all the jeering arguably brought Melania more attention and may well have motivated MAGA loyalists to head to the theater. Again, spite seems like a more significant motivator than enthusiasm. Still, its not clear how well the cultural version of MAGA counterprogramming plays out over time. Consider the most prominent test case to date, the travails of the Kennedy Center, as cultural signpost. Last year Trump seized control of the centers agenda, reorganizing the board, installing loyalists, and naming himself chair. Artists such as Rhiannon Giddens and Issa Rae canceled events, as did producers of a planned Hamilton run of performances. Evidently unfazed, Trump took an unusually active role in choosing recipients of the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors, including Sylvester Stallone, George Strait, and Kiss. Critics argued the choices had more to do with political loyalty than artistic merit. But perhaps more to the point, the seemingly populist counterprogramming of a traditional Kennedy Center lineup did not play well in the cultural marketplace: Trump, who personally hosted the event, predicted it would pull the ceremonys largest-ever broadcast audience, and instead it drew the smallest. Regardless, Trump proceeded to add his name to the venueinspiring more cancellations from performersand more recently to announce the center would close for two years for improvements. One thing that reportedly needs refurbishing is the list of visiting performers: CNN quoted an insider saying that thanks to mounting cancellations and trouble lining up new performances, there would not have been any programming to announce. So while we have to wait and see how the Turning Point halftime show plays out against Bad Bunny (and the Puppy Bowl), counterprogramming has become more than just a MAGA-friendly strategy. Its apparently the only programming the MAGA-verse has to look forward to.
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E-Commerce
Watching the Super Bowl without cable keeps getting more expensive. NBC will not offer a free stream of Super Bowl LX in 2026, an NBCUniversal spokesperson confirmed. Instead, cord cutters will need a Peacock Premium subscription, which costs $11 per month for the ad-supported tier. Cable subscribers who want to stream the game can log on to NBC’s apps. This isn’t the first time NBC has put the big game behind a paywall. It also required a Peacock subscription in 2022, but back then you could still stream the Super Bowl for free on your phone via the NFL or Yahoo Sports apps. (Also, a month of Peacock cost just $5 at the time.) It wasn’t always this way. In the late 2010s, before pay TV subscriptions entered a free fall, all the networks would stream the Super Bowl free of charge with minimal friction. Over the past five years, they’ve added new layers of complexity, requiring free trials, account sign-ups, and, in NBC’s case, hard paywalls. Here’s how availability has shifted over the past decade. 2016: Free on CBS apps/website 2017: Free on Fox apps/website 2018: Free on NBC apps/website 2019: Free on CBS apps/website 2020: Free on Fox apps/website 2021: Free on CBS apps/website 2022: Peacock or NBC login required on TVs; free on NFL mobile app 2023: Free on Fox apps/website 2024: Paramount+ required, free trial available 2025: Free on Fox’s Tubi app with sign-in 2026: Peacock or NBC login required, no trial This is the first year in which neither the host network nor the NFL will offer any free way to watch the game. The league stopped offering free mobile access in 2022, when it launched its NFL+ streaming service, and Peacock doesn’t offer free trials. A few free work-arounds still exist. Those who get decent antenna reception from a nearby NBC station or affiliate can watch the Super Bowl for free over the air. Some live TV streaming services that carry NBC also offer free trials, though the cost of forgetting to cancel is steep: Hulu + Live TV charges $90 per month after a three-day trial, while YouTube TV has a 21-day trial followed by a $60-per-month promo rate for two months. Both trial offers are for new subscribers only. Those options aside, the cheapest way to watch the Super Bowl will be to eat the cost of a Peacock subscription, even if it’s only for a month. Like most streamers, Peacock lets you cancel immediately after signing up and still provides the full month you paid for, with no auto-billing at the end. Paying $11 for a single sporting event might sting, but at least it gets you the Winter Olympics as well. Lightshed Ventures analyst Rich Greenfield says that combo may explain why NBCUniversal is willing to paywall the big game, even if it means forgoing some ad impressions from free viewers. “When you have so much firepower, they likely know youll convert versus giving so much high-value content away for free as part of a trial,” Greenfield says. Either way, the trend is likely to continue in the years ahead. Paramount+ stopped offering free trials after a price hike in January, and Fox could eventually try to push its new $20-per-month Fox One subscription service instead of serving the game on Tubi. Its a reflection of the overall state of the streaming industry, which initially used low prices and ad-free viewing to lure in new subscribers. For networks like NBC, CBS, and Fox, profits from the cash cow cable business helped fund those endeavors. But as traditional pay TV subscriptions plummeted, and Wall Street began looking for profits from the streaming side, the cost of access has increased. Free Super Bowl streams are a casualty of that shift. Despite its reputation as a major event for advertiserswith 30-second ads selling for $8 million on average in 2026the networks are increasingly deciding that they’re better off putting the big game behind paywalls. Check out Jareds Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter for more streaming TV advice.
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E-Commerce
Prices for a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl on NBC this year averaged $8 million. For the privilege of paying that, advertisers are required to spend an additional $8 million to buy ad time on other NBC sports broadcasts and the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. With that much money invested (all before any is spent on actually creating a Super Bowl campaign) brands need to ensure they get your attention. This year, Rocket Mortgage and Redfin are aiming to do that by combining three things that will produce a large Venn diagram of interest: Lady Gaga singing Mr. Rogers’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”; a heartwarming commercial airing during the game; and, most crucially, giving viewers the chance to win a million-dollar house. [Photo: Rocket Cos.] Rocket Cos. CMO Jonathan Mildenhall says any successful Super Bowl campaign needs to have three different stages. The only way to win at the Super Bowl is to win a disproportionate share of conversation pregame, as well as during game, and, increasingly, the progressive brands are talking about postgame conversation, Mildenhall says. For us the pregame was Lady Gaga behind the scenes, then during the game there is the spot, and we’re announcing the Great American home search for people to participate in over the days after the game. So Mildenhall is playing Super Bowl chess, not checkers. [Photo: Rocket Cos.] Great American Home Search On February 4, Redfin (acquired by Rocket last year) announced the contest, calling it a “never-been-done-before scavenger hunt” and inviting people to download or update the Redfin app to participate. The search begins February 8 at 8 p.m. ET, immediately after Rocket and Redfins Super Bowl spot airs. Redfin will then release six app-exclusive clues over the next 48 hours for players to use Redfins search tools and filters to find the million-dollar home, which actually appears directly in the commercial. The first eligible player to solve all six clues and identify the home wins the house. It’s a double-play attempt both to get people’s attention and immediately boost Redfin’s competitive muscle amid category leaders Zillow and Realtor.com. “Turning up and just speaking to America using celebrities, bad jokes, and flashing a logo quickly becomes invisible, so we have to do a massive activation,” Mildenhall says. “Calling this activation the Great American Home Search is a deliberate attempt to create a strategic lockout from the biggest competitors because I want people to spontaneously associate Redfin and home search.” [Photo: Rocket Cos.] Neighborhood watch The audience-participation aspect of Rockets strategy is just one lever the company is pulling for the Super Bowl. The spot itself is another. Mildenhall says the creative behind the ad was inspired by the stark reality of how disconnected most of us are from the people we live next door to. According to a March 2025 Pew Research Study, only about 26% of Americans know most of their neighbors. And the percentage of people who know and trust their neighbors has decreased 8% since 2015. This is part of the reason why Rocket enlisted Lady Gaga to reinterpret the Fred Rogers classic Wont You Be My Neighbor? After teasing fans with a behind-the-scenes video of Gagas recording session a week before the game, the actual Super Bowl ad shows the emotional roller coaster of moving and the evolving dynamics of neighborhoods through the eyes of two teenage girls. Mildenhall says the goal is to spark a more culturally significant conversation with America about being better neighbors and being a better neighbor as a civic responsibility. Americans ache for something and we see it in the stats. People are lonelier than ever before and need excuses and reasons to connect, Mildenhall says. People are struggling to find inspiration to connect with their neighbors. And we are going to be culturally significant brands because we’re going to tap into the cultural tension that can help lift up more Americans than any other tension. And this story is pressing into the loneliness that people feel in their own neighborhoods. For most brands, having the Great American Home Search would be enough. But Rocket and Redfin have added the layer of a tearjerker spot scored by Lady Gaga. The combination of classic Super Bowl ad storytelling with audience participation to drive app downloads puts this on the short list for best all-around big game spot. [Photo: Rocket Cos.] Setting the tone Last year, Rockets Super Bowl ad revolved around the dream of home ownership. According to a variety of recent studies, anywhere between 85% and 94% of Americans believe owning a home is good for the country and a fundamental stepping stone to the American dream. The ad Own the Dream was set to John Denvers classic Country Roads. The twist was that coming out of the commercial break, the brand had arranged for the song to be played in the stadium, so as the ad ended, viewers came back to the game with the crowd singing the same song in real time. It was viewed nearly 250 million times on social media, and brand awareness has gone from 23% to 37%, according to the company. Mildenhall says when he met with Lady Gaga for this years ad, she was very respectful of the original song but he wanted it to be something different. His message was, This cannot be a lullaby to America, it has to be a rallying cry to America. He adds that she was up to that, went into the studio, and it’s amazing. For years, Rocket went for comedy in its Super Bowl spots, with big laughs from the likes of Jason Momoa (2020), Tracy Morgan (2021), and Anna Kendrick (2022). But Mildenhall says that while both the Morgan and Kendrick ads won the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter, it wasnt the right fit for the brand. Every time that somebody gets their mortgage, refinances their home, or gets out of bad credit card debt, were helping people get into college, or buy the house, and facilitating the American dream, he says. But our past approach would kind of cheapen that because we were getting celebrities doing jokes, and there’s nothing really funny about what we do. The short long game Most Super Bowl ads are what marketers call top-of-funnel work, basically vibes-based brand building for the longer term. But Mildenhall says marketers are under incredible scrutiny from their board and shareholders about every dollar, and its tough to show short-term value in longer-term brand marketing. A creatively executed contest is a shortcut to short-term results, even in the Super Bowl. DoorDash pioneered this concept with DoorDash All the Ads in 2024, getting more than 8 million contest submissions and 11 billion impressions. And its in-game ad was just a promo code. Rocket is combining that with Lady Gaga singing Mr. Rogers over a heartwarming story about an emotional part of the American dream. The spot itself is a great piece of brand marketing, but its also got a clue for the contest embedded in it, which will encourage contestants to watch it over and over. Meanwhile, the contest is driving downloads of the Redfin app, which will undoubtedly satisfy short-term justification of the big game investment. We’re going to ensure that we’ve got eyeballs on the spot looking for the home, but it’s only after it airs that the first of six clues are given, and the remaining six clues are given over a 48-hour period to ensure that Rocket and Redfin are in the postgame conversation, Mildenhall says. So the new strategy that I would implore all marketers to be thinking about is you’ve got three stages of Super Bowl investment and one of those stages has to be dominated by your audience participation. If you win that house, though, just remember to learn your neighbors names.
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E-Commerce
When Howard Schultz joinedand later acquiredStarbucks in the 1980s, he was deeply inspired by the communal culture of Italian coffee bars. From the beginning, Schultz envisioned Starbucks as more than a transactional stop for coffee. He wanted to build a community-centered space for people to congregate and connect. That vision helped redefine what a coffee shop could be. In recent years, however, that vision has lost momentum. Shifts in how and where people work, rising costs, and intensifying competition have challenged Starbuckss dominance in the coffee shop landscape. In New York City, the company recently lost its position as the citys largest coffee chain to Dunkin, according to a report from the Center for an Urban Future. Starbucks has since closed 42 stores in the cityroughly 12% of its New York locationsas part of a broader $1 billion restructuring plan that shuttered 400 metropolitan stores nationwide. The company that once felt like it occupied every corner is now becoming more selective with its presence. As part of that reset, CEO Brian Niccol, former CEO of Chipotle and Taco Bell, is attempting to reestablish Starbucks as a true third place, distinct from both home and work. The third place is not something we need to reinventits who we are, Schultz said at the Starbucks Leadership Experience 2025. The strategy, branded Back to Starbucks, calls for a shift away from the grab-and-go model that has dominated in recent years and toward a more inviting in-store experience with comfy chairs, couches, and power outlets, according to a CNN report. Starbucks plans to renovate 1,000 U.S. storesabout 10% of its domestic locationsas part of the effort. As Niccol pushes to restore the brands third place ethos, Starbucks is betting that customers still want a place to stay, not just a place to order, in a market increasingly built around speed, convenience, and efficiency. By Leila Sheridan This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister website, Inc.com. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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E-Commerce
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