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For many high-impact runners, it fels like Mom and Dad are fighting. Strava, the popular fitness-tracking app, is suing the fitness wearable giant Garmin over alleged patent infringement and breach of conduct. The lawsuit, filed Sept. 30 in a Colorado district court, alleges that Garmin is infringing on two patents segments and heatmaps and also broke a written agreement between the two companies, as first reported by DC Rainmaker. For many athletes, Strava and Garmin go together like Oakley sunglasses and On Running shoes. A trend report published last year by Strava showed that Garmins Forerunner was among the most popular smartwatches for its users. If you didn’t track your run on Garmin and upload it to Strava, did it even happen? Now with a number of big races coming up, including the Chicago and New York City marathons, athletes are not taking the recent news well. When Garmin is going to stop uploading data to Strava on November 1st and thats literally the date of your marathon youve been training for a big PR for, one running influencer posted on TikTok. “Have you see the news that Mom and Dad are fighting?” ultra-runner Andy Glaze said in another video. “I’m sitting here with my thousand-dollar watch and my $80 app and thinking, can we just get a family meeting and start getting along again?” Already, some are taking sides and pledging their loyalties to one or the other, or joking about giving up on running altogether now that they may not be able to easily track their runs and post for their followings to see. On Thursday, Matt Salazar, Stravas chief product officer, took to Reddit to defend the companys lawsuit. Setting the record straight he shared that Garmin was requiring their logo be displayed alongside all activity posts or they will cut off access permitting Garmin activities to be uploaded to Strava. “We consider this blatant advertising. These new guidelines actively degrade your user experience on Strava,” Salazar wrote. The post, however, was met with widespread criticism, with the most upvoted replies calling Stravas stance hypocritical at best. So how do I get rid of the Strava logo when I want to share my data on social media? one Reddit user asked. As a premium (paid) Strava member I want to be clear that Strava’s only of use to me if works with Garmin, another wrote. The moment Strava no longer syncs with Garmin connect is the last time I open Strava. Fast Company has reached out to Garmin and Strava for comment. So what happens now? Likely nothing. Its in neither companys interest to stop the steady flow of data from Garmin to Strava, as the online backlash to the news of the lawsuit has shown. For those planning to simply switch to another smartwatch, like Suunto, in case the integration between the two companies does end, bad news: The Finnish brand has launched its own lawsuit against Garmin for patent infringement. Maybe its a sign to go back to when every 5K didnt need to be posted on social media.
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E-Commerce
Skyscanner, a leading global travel booking site, released its 2026 Travel Trends report on Thursday. And the forecast for the year ahead includes trips down the supermarket aisle, literary-inspired itineraries, in-flight beauty routines, and some surprising trending destinations (looking at you, New Haven). If travel in 2025 was about collective experiences, the new travel mindset for 2026 is clearits no longer solely about community connections, its about prioritizing travelers’ individual interests and passions. The report also looked at the role AI is likely to play in travel search and planning in 2026: 54% of travelers said they felt confident using AI to plan their trips in 2025’s survey, up from 47% in 2024. Skyscanner, a search engine for flights, car rentals, and hotels, based its global survey on data from 22,000 travelers. Below are 7 travel trends to look out for in 2026, according to the report. Vending machines over fancy restaurants For one, travelers are redefining food tourism beyond hard-to-get restaurant reservations. Instead, they’re visiting local supermarkets and convenience stores, trying Tokyo’s vending machines and 7-Eleven Slurpees, and picking up loaves of Icelands geothermal baked bread. 55% of U.S. travelers say they often, or always, visit local supermarkets when abroad. “Glowmads” In 2026, beauty travel will shape where people go and how they explore a destinationin the form of in-flight skincare routines, shopping for local beauty products at global destinations, and visiting retail shops from cult-favorites. 32% of travelers said they do beauty-related activities while traveling because they want to experience local beauty culture. In 2026, 32% of Gen Z plan to seek out beauty treatments and skincare stores while travelingcompared to just 8% of baby boomers. A room with a mountain view Travelers are heading up into the mountains year-round, not just for the ski season, in destinations such as the Dolomites, Nepal, and the Canadian Rockies. Some 80% of travelers polled said they are considering or planning a mountain escape for summer or fall next year. On Skyscanner’s platform, searches for room with a mountain view are up 103% year-over-year globally. Finding friends overseas People are longing for real-time connection with friends and in dating. 53% of travelers have gone, or considered going, overseas specifically to meet new people. Meanwhile, 42% said they are more open to meeting others when theyre traveling, and 29% said its because they feel freer to be themselves. And those travelers are looking to connect on a deep level: 28% said they want to meet people from different cultures/backgrounds, 18% want to make meaningful friendships, and 14% want to explore new destinations with a local. Literary travels People are traveling for destination reading retreats, to destination bookshops and libraries, and to travel the route of a beloved literary character. 55% of travelers said they have booked, or would consider, a trip inspired by literature. Multigenerational trips With more 20-somethings living at home, Gen Z and millennials are embracing multigenerational travel. In the past two years, 52% of Gen Z adults have traveled with their parents, while 25% of millennials have traveled with their children and parents. Hotel retreats More travelers are choosing where to go based on hotels, making the destination about where they stay: 56% of travelers picked a destination based purely on accommodation, including 65% of Gen Z, 70% of millennials, and 38% of baby boomers. Hottest destinations for 2026 Skyscanner also included a list of top 10 trending destinations for 2026, based on year-over-year increases in search: Limon, Costa Rica: +289% Jaipur, India: +107% Bodrum, Turkey: +85% Madeira, Portugal: +78% Vail, Colorado: +78% Zadar, Croatia: +72% Olbia, Italy: +64% New Haven, Connecticut: +39% Bilbao, Spain: +37% Mykonos, Greece: +32% Lesser-known leisure destinations are capturing the attention of U.S. travelers in 2026, said Lourdes Losada, Skyscanner’s director of Americas. Vacationers turn their attention to seaside escapes and gateways to natural landscapes. Many of the trending destinations reflect a desire for unique scenery and memorable, luxurious experiences, from the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica to the mountain vistas of Colorado and beach clubs of Mykonos.
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E-Commerce
Ask the most bullish representatives of big AI companies, and theyll tell you that robotic colleagues and house staff are just around the corner. A massive market for robotic aids, powered by AI brains, could contribute huge sums to the bottom line of tech firms. Elon Musk predicted earlier this year that they could produce $30 trillion in revenue for his companies alone. Picture what those robots are, and your minds eye likely conjures an image of a humanoid robot: Two arms, two legs, a head, all in human-like proportions. Thats what the biggest players in the sector like Tesla, Figure and Unitree see, too: Distinctly human-shaped cutting-edge hardware. Yet the fixation on making robots look human could, perhaps, lead the tech sector into trouble, reckons Jonathan Aitken, a robotics researcher at the University of Sheffield. This makes them harder to design and build well, especially with the kind of robustness and efficiency required to perform tasks in the environment, he says. Aitken points out that the human hand has some 27 degrees of freedom, making it a significantly complex system, which is both lightweight, yet powerful and with significant redundancy in movement. Teslas Optimus robot doesnt include all those degrees, paring it down instead to 22 different degrees of freedom. But it still relies on a huge number of parts, working in tandem. Tendons are tricky It’s little surprise, then, that The Information reports Tesla, which aimed to produce thousands of the robots by this summer, quietly scrapped that goal when they realized that making hands that can grip, move, and manipulate objects at the level of dexterity required, was too tricky. The hand-based holdup is just the start of Teslas travails with its Optimus robots, as Fast Company has previously reported. But its not unique to Musks company. Smaller connections like human-sized digits on humanoid robots that come into frequent use can also wear and tear more easily than larger joints, powered by actuators, the robotic equivalent of muscle: pumps that turn power into movement, and connected by planetary roller screws, which have been described as the expensive secret behind humanoid robots. Tendons are tricky, says Scott Walter, one of the worlds leading experts on robot design and the chief technical advisor for Visual Components, a manufacturing production design company. They are likely having creep elongation over time and abrasion issues that hinder long term reliability, he says. It’s not just the weaker elements of the robotic joints, like tendons, that would face abrasion issues, he says. The regular rubbing can damage contact surfaces, made from aluminum. But even the actuators at a humanoid hand-sized scale can be tiny and finicky in terms of maintenance. Only a handful of manufacturers, many of them based in China, can produce actuators at the scale and standard needed for such frequent use. Better than human It all begs the question of why tech firms are building robots that look like humanshands and allin the first place. Aitken says theres no good reason why a robot needs to resemble a human, adding that the better question is what a robot would look like if designed specifically for the tasks it was expected to carry out. However, one way that humanoid robots may be an impovement on their more mundane-looking alternatives is in how they interact with the environment weve built up over centuries. The easiest robot to adapt into the world are humanoid robots because we built the world for us, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last year. Its not just in terms of what happens when robots get let loose in the world. Its also how they are trained to interact with that environment. We also have the most amount of data to train these robots than other types of robots because we have the same physique, said Huang, whose company is developing the GR00T operating system for robots. The humanoid form is ideal for general purpose robotics, especially as a drop-in replacement for human tasks, Walter says. But for special or narrow applications, different form factors make sense. Others agree that humanoids arent always up to the job. The humanoid form factor is somewhat of a red herring, says Aaron Dollar, professor of mechanical engineering and computer science at Yale University. Yes, it makes for a more complex system that introduces a lot of additional challenges over simpler form-factors. But we haven’t figured out how to reliably do practical dexterous manipulation in simpler systems, either. Its unsurprising, then, that Tesla is struggling with Optimus. Optics versus utility Aitken suggests that the reason Musk has chosen a humanoid design has more to do with optics than utility. Undoubtedly Optimus is driven by the sci-fi view of what a humanoid robot is, given the sleek lines and frame. But there’s no need for it to look in this way as it’s just an aestheticarguably though, people may find it more acceptable in this form as it fits the public perception of a robot. However, humanity has been more welcoming of change than we perhaps would think in the last century or more: Weve hopped into planes and cars that would have looked out of place or unusual and gotten used to it, just as we have to mobile checkouts and other odd-looking tech thats come our way. Non-humanoid robots could be just another example where we adapt. It’s for that reasonthe belief that humanoid robots will soon be encroaching into our lives, and interacting with people, and need to seem non-threatening. Aitken points out that from an object manipulation, payload carrying capacity, and stability perspective a quadruped robot with an arm attached to the top of it may well be a better option than a humanoid. The question is whether this would seem more threatening, he says. I do think that people may well find the look of it a little more challenging.
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E-Commerce
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