With a new streamlined application, its easier than ever to apply to Fast Companys Best Workplaces for Innovators. Here are six reasons why you should apply to our seventh annual BWFI program.
6 reasons to apply
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Outstanding achievement in business innovation
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Winson Lau has always had contingency plans. But he wasn’t prepared for data centers.Lau relies on water and electricity to operate his thriving export business in Malaysia’s Johor province, where he raises a kaleidoscope of tropical fish in rows of aquariums, including albino fish with red spots that can fetch up to $10,000 from collectors. His contingency plans in the event of an outage involve an intricate system of purifying wastewater through friendly bacteria and an alarm system to quickly switch to backup power.But these measures can’t compete with the gigantic, power-guzzling and thirsty data centers being built in Johor. The province is on track to have at least 1.6 gigawatts of data centers at any given moment from nearly nothing in 2019, making it the fastest-growing data center market in Southeast Asia, according to a report published in April.Data centers are large, windowless buildings filled with racks of computers that need lots of electricity. To prevent overheating, they rely on energy-intensive air conditioning systems using pumped water. Increasingly used by tech companies for running artificial intelligence systems, the power demand from future facilities in Malaysia may rise to over 5 gigawatts by 2035, according to researchers at Malaysia’s Kenanga Investment Bank. This is more than half of Malaysia’s entire renewable capacity in 2023.Over 95% of the energy available to Malaysia in 2022 was from fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. The country is now fifth-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas globally. And with planned renewable projects, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said in September that the country was “confident of a surplus of energy” to fuel large projects and keep exporting.But Lau doesn’t fancy the chances of his homegrown business competing against the foreign-funded behemoths for energy. Even without data centers, Malaysia is susceptible to power interruptions because of storms, including one that lasted 30 minutes last year and killed 300,000 fish, costing Lau over $1 million. He worries that data centers would result in longer outages.To survive, he is moving to Thailand and already scouting potential locations for a new fish farm.“Big data center is coming and there is shortage of power,” he said. “It’ll be crazy.”
Costs versus benefits
Malaysia is betting that potential economic growth from data centers justifies the risk. Once touted as an Asian tiger on the cusp of becoming rich, its industries shrunk in the late 1990s after the Asian financial crisis. It has since languished in the middle-income trap. Data centers, the government hopes, will modernize its economy and indirectly create thousands of high-paying jobs.But experts worry that Malaysia, and others like Vietnam, Indonesia and India vying for billion-dollar investments from tech giants, may be overstating data centers’ transformative capabilities that also come at a price: Data centers gobble up land, water and electricity while creating far fewer jobs than they promise. Most data centers provide 30 to 50 permanent jobs while the larger ones create 200 jobs at most, according to a report by the American nonprofit Good Jobs First.Add to this the rapid increase in power and water use and some experts like Sofia Scasserra, who researches digital economies at the Amsterdam-based think tank Transnational Institute, said that tech companies exploiting resources in poorer countries while extracting data from their populations to get rich is akin to “digital colonialism.” She compared data extraction to silver mining in Bolivia, which enriched colonial Spain but left nothing behind for Latin America.“They are extracting data in the same way. Data doesn’t even leave (behind) taxes,” she said.Indeed, only a small portion of Malaysia’s data center capacity is actually for Malaysian users. Through a network of submarine cables that fans out into the world, they service East Asia, China, and Europe. And the data centers themselves are run by foreign companies like America’s Equinix and Microsoft as well as Chinese competitor GDS Holdings that works with tech giants like Alibaba.These data centers are also on the front lines of AI competition between the U.S. and China. Shortly before he left office, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration proposed new rules that would limit exports of advanced AI chips made by U.S. companies like Nvidia, part of a strategy to deprive China and other U.S. adversaries from gaining access to AI technology through data centers in places likes Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Although it’s unclear if the Trump administration will retain the policy, which hasn’t yet taken effect, GDS Holdings saw its stock drop more than 18% on the day of the announcement.
Filling the void
For now, artificial intelligence is driving the hunger for even more data centers, with tech companies seeking out biggerand cheapersites worldwide as a part of a “global strategy,” said Rangu Salgame, chairman and CEO of Singapore’s Princeton Digital Group, which is building a 170-megawatt site in Johor. Data centers larger than 40 megawatt typically need land the size of seven football fieldsabout enough power for 36,000 American homes, according to data center service provider Stream Data Centers.That’s costly to build in rich nations like the U.S., which over time has built more data centers than any other country but where land comes at a high price. Enter Malaysia, with its inexpensive land, excess power capacity and tax incentives. The country was the fastest growing data center market in Asia Pacific in the first half of 2024, according to global real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield. This makes Malaysia the eighth-largest data center market in terms of operations and the fifth-largest behind China, India, Japan and Australia when accounting for projects already in the pipeline.Globally Malaysia ranks 14th in terms of operational capacitystill smaller than Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublinbut it is on track to be among the top 10 markets in five to seven years, according to Pritesh Swamy, who heads research on data centers in Asia for the real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.“We are talking about a region that really grew at a pace that nowhere in the world has seen,” Salgame said.Next door to Malaysia is Singapore, which paused the construction of new data centers in 2019. The moratorium was over concerns that the energy-guzzling infrastructure was straining the tiny country’s limited resources. In 2019, data centers consumed 7% of the total electricity in the city-state that imports both power and water while aiming to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. They have been trying to build data centers sustainably since 2022, when the moratorium ended.In the meantime, Malaysia has stepped in to fill the void, attracting investments of over $31 billionthree times the investments for 2023in the first 10 months of 2024, according to research by real estate firm Knight Frank. Johor already has 22 mostly foreign data centers spanning over 21 hectares, according to the research firm Baxtel. That’s the equivalent of nearly 40 football fields, although not all of the daa centers are operational.
Concerns over power and water shortages
The data centers that are running look anonymous from the outside. But they can be identified by the telltale signs of barbed wire fences, CCTV cameras, and patrolling security guards. Elsewhere, a thicket of cranes and workers operating construction machinery is transforming the landscape in the sleepy province.Salgame said that he hoped data centers could accelerate clean energy growth and experts like Putra Adhiguna of the Jakarta-based think tank Energy Shift Institute agreed that this could happen, but warned that the sheer volume of unforeseen, future demand complicates the transition.“Add data centers on top of that, it just becomes much more challenging,” he said.Tropical Malaysia is warmer than the countries that were initially preferred by data centers, including Ireland, and would require more water and power for cooling, said Alex de Vries, the founder of Digiconomist, a research company studying the unintended consequences of digital trends. He said that these companies are moving to new countries after their promises of economic growth were found to be “empty.” And while new solar or wind farms can be built faster than other forms of energy, data centers need a lot of electricity from the get-go.“These big tech companies are trying to distract you from the really simple math,” he said.Malaysia acknowledges that the energy demand from data centers is “substantial” but believes that Johor’s rise as a “data center powerhouse” will make it a “key player in Southeast Asia’s digital ecosystem,” said Malaysian Investment, Trade and Industry minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz in an email. He added that Malaysia was writing efficiency guidelines for data centers and has a policy to let them buy clean energy directly from producers.But concerns are rising among residents about potential water shortages in the futureechoing the concerns of other developing countries like Chile. Malaysia, like much of Southeast Asia, is at risk of extreme weather including drought, according to a 2022 U.N. climate change report. Francis Hutchinson, an analyst at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said that Johor has faced recent disruptions and new stressors, like a growing population and water parks to boost tourism, could exacerbate the crisis.“Water, more than power, is a potential issue,” he said.
AP writer Eileen Ng contributed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island contributed to this report..
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Anirruddha Ghoshal and Vincent Thian, Associated Press
Kentucky Fried Chicken is being uprooted from its ancestral home state in a shake-up announced Tuesday by its parent company that will relocate the chain’s U.S. corporate office to Texas.The food chain now known as KFClaunched by Colonel Harland Sanders and his secret blend of 11 herbs and spiceswill be based in Plano, Texas, and about 100 KFC corporate employees will be relocated in the next six months, said Yum Brands, which owns KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.The relocation of KFC’s corporate office from Louisville brought a quick response from political leaders in Kentucky.“I am disappointed by this decision and believe the company’s founder would be, too,” Gov. Andy Beshear said in a statement. “This company’s name starts with Kentucky, and it has marketed our state’s heritage and culture in the sale of its product.”Beshear, a Democrat, said he hopes Yum rethinks moving KFC employees out of Kentucky. Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg also expressed disappointment with the corporate reshuffling of workers to Texas, noting that the brand “was born here and is synonymous with Kentucky.”Yum said the move is part of its broader plans to designate two brand headquarters in the U.S.in Plano and Irvine, California. KFC and Pizza Hut will be headquartered in Plano, while Taco Bell and Habit Burger & Grill will remain based in Irvine, the company said. Yum added that 90 U.S.-based employees who have worked remotely will be asked to eventually relocate to the campus where their work occurs.Yum and the KFC Foundation will maintain corporate offices in Louisville, the company said. The governor and mayor said they were grateful those jobs are being retained in Kentucky’s largest city.“I’ve asked to meet with the Yum CEO soon and am heartened Yum will retain its corporate headquarters and 560 employees here,” Greenberg said in his statement. “I will work tirelessly with Yum’s leadership to continue growing its presence in Louisville.”Employees being shifted will receive relocation and transition support, the company said.Yum said that designating two brand headquarters is meant to foster greater collaboration among its brands and employees.“These changes position us for sustainable growth and will help us better serve our customers, employees, franchisees and shareholders,” Yum CEO David Gibbs said in a news release.Yum also announced it would provide a $1 million endowment to the University of Louisville’s College of Business to fund Yum-sponsored scholarships. And the company said KFC will continue its brand presence in Louisville with the goal of building a first-of-its-kind flagship restaurant.KFC’s ties to Kentucky run nearly a century deep. In 1930, at a service station in Corbin, Kentucky, Sanders began feeding travelers and spent the next nine years perfecting his blend of herbs and spices, as well as the basic cooking technique, KFC’s website says.And the goateed entrepreneur’s likeness is known globally, having been stamped on KFC restaurant signs and chicken buckets. There are now over 24,000 KFC outlets in more than 145 countries and territories around the world, the brand’s website says.
Bruce Schreiner, Associated Press
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order meant to expand access to and reduce costs of in vitro fertilization and issued a presidential memorandum calling for “radical transparency requirements” from the government, which he suggested could reduce wasteful spending.
On the campaign trail, Trump called for universal coverage of IVF treatment after his Supreme Court nominees helped to overturn Roe v. Wade, leading to a wave of restrictions in Republican-led states, including some that have threatened access to IVF by trying to define life as beginning at conception.Trump, who was at his Florida residence and club, Mar-a-Lago, on Tuesday, also signed another executive order as well as a presidential memorandum. The second executive order outlined the oversight functions of the Office of Management and Budget, while the memo requires the government to detail the “waste, fraud and abuse” that’s found as the Department of Government Efficiency, overseen by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, looks to cut government spending.DOGE has often fallen short of the administration’s promises of transparency. Musk has taken questions from journalists only once since becoming Trump’s most powerful adviser, and he’s claimed it’s illegal to name people who are working for him. Sometimes DOGE staff members have demanded access to sensitive government databases with little explanation.Trump took more than 30 minutes of questions Tuesday on a range of topics and bashed the Biden administration throughout, highlighting issues such as its handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, Venezuela policy, and Russia’s war in Ukraine.Trump said he thought he had a “good chance” to end Russia’s war in Ukraine but bristled at suggestions that the U.S. and Russia had begun negotiations to end fighting without Ukraine playing a role. He even seemed to suggest that Ukraine was to blame for a war that began only after Russia invaded that country.“Today I heard, ‘Well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years,” Trump said of Ukraine’s leaders. “You should have never started it.”In anticipation of questions about his administration’s efforts to slash federal spending, the president said he wrote down examples of government programs around the world which he then listed off at length. They included funding to promote voter turnout in India and social cohesion initiatives in Maliall of which Trump suggested collectively amounted to fraud.Asked about the White House’s arguing in a court filing that Musk wasn’t the head of Trump’s government efficiency efforts, Trump said: “You could call him an employee, you could call him a consultant, you could call him whatever you want. But he’s a patriot.”Trump said he thinks “women and families, husbands, are very appreciative” of his executive order on IVF, which offers a possible solution when a woman has trouble getting pregnant. The procedure involves retrieving her eggs and combining them in a lab dish with a man’s sperm to create a fertilized embryo, which is then transferred into the woman’s uterus in an attempt to create a pregnancy. IVF is done in cycles, and more than one may be required.Barbara Collura, president and CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, said that what the White House put out “looks extremely promising.”“The biggest barriers for people to building their families are the out-of-pocket costs, the lack of insurance coverage for this care,” she said.Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat, said: “Donald Trump’s executive order does nothing to expand access to IVF. In fact, he’s the reason IVF is at risk in the first place.”Duckworth said if Trump is going to follow through on his campaign promise to provide free IVF, he can start by supporting her legislation that would require insurance plans to cover IVF.Trump, who spent the morning at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, spoke to reporters hours before his first joint TV interview with Musk aired in prime time on Fox News Channel. The president acknowledged during it that “inflation is back,” but noted that he’d only been in office a few weeks and insisted “I had nothing to do” with prices that remain stubbornly high.Trump mentioned during that same interview that Musk is “probably not that happy” with things like tax breaks for electric vehicles likely not being included in tax legislation now being discussed in Congress, but he said Musk didn’t seek special treatment for Tesla.“I haven’t asked the president for anything, ever,” Musk added. Asked about potential conflicts of interest between Musk’s governmental efforts and his businesses and how they will be handled, Trump said, “He won’t be involved” and Musk said he’d recuse himself.Musk has drawn criticism from Democrats in Congress and others for the methods he and his team at DOGE are using to cut spending, including foreign aid, and eliminate jobs across the bureaucracy.The joint interview follows Musk’s appearance with Trump in the Oval Office last week, when both defended Musk’s approach to federal cost-cutting.Also Tuesday night, an awards program was held at Mar-a-Lago by America’s Future. That’s a conservative group led by Mike Flynn, who briefly served as national security adviser in the Republican president’s first term. The program aims to preserve individual rights and promote American values and traditions, according to its website. The event honored one member each from the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Space Force.The event included a poolside reception, musical performances and dinner in Mar-a-Lago’s Grand Ballroom. The lineup included such names as Russell Brand, Ted Nugent, and Mike Tyson.Trump made an appearance at the event, according to video posted on social media Tuesday night, addressing the crowd on the patio as he stood near Tyson, Flynn and Nugent and declaring, “This is very, very friendly territory.”Trump praised the men, including Flynn, who was one of the leading proponents of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The president called him “the real deal” and indicated he wanted to bring Flynn into his administration, saying he offered him “about 10 jobs.”“Anytime you want to come in, you know that, Mike, OK?” Trump said.Flynn resigned from the first Trump administration less than a month after Trump’s inauguration. He was charged in 2017 with lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russians on Trump’s behalf. He twice pleaded guilty, but Trump pardoned him in the final weeks of his presidency.
Price reported from New York. Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Chris Megerian in Washington and Laura Ungar in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this report. Follow the AP’s coverage of President Donald Trump at https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump.
Darlene Superville and Michelle L. Price, Associated Press
Airbnb is suing the City of New Orleans for requiring the company and short-term rental platforms ensure properties they market are in compliance with city laws.“What we’re looking at now due to Airbnb’s lawsuit is that they do not want to be regulated,” City Council President J.P. Morrell said in a late afternoon Tuesday statement.Airbnb said its lawsuit comes “after exhausting all available paths toward sensible solutions.”For years, New Orleans leaders have struggled with how to manage the influx of illegal short-term rentals catering to the millions of visitors who flock to The Big Easy annually while managing a lack of affordable housing.A federal court struck down a 2019 New Orleans policy barring short-term rentals at properties owned by out-of-state residents. The city responded by adopting new regulations in 2023 mandating Airbnb owners live on site and limiting short-term rentals to one per block, but enforcing these rules proved difficult and illegal properties were easily able to resurface on Airbnb, city leaders say. A federal appeals court is currently reviewing these policies.Last year, the city council adopted regulations set to go into effect in June requiring Airbnb and other companies verify that all New Orleans properties listed on their platform have permits from the city. Morrell called the policy a “game-changer” that would “gut the ability to illegally list fake permits and Airbnbs.”Airbnb said it should not be tasked with implementing the city’s policies. The company has pushed back against other cities’ efforts to regulate it, including suing New York and San Francisco.
Airbnb decries the city’s regulatory ‘regime’
In its lawsuit filed in federal court last week, Airbnb said it has no responsibility for the actions of its hosts, citing the same law that protects social media companies from liability for users’ posts. And the company denied that it had any obligation to verify listings were in compliance with city regulations, which it described as a “highly punitive enforcement regime.”“It is the government’s job to enforce its laws, not Airbnb’s,” the lawsuit said. It described the city’s regulationsincluding in some cases requiring a lottery for permitsas a violation of homeowners’ rights.Airbnb also protested having to turn over “confidential, sensitive, and private data” such as taxes and fees it collected and the number of bookings per property in monthly reports submitted to the city.A “typical host” in New Orleans earned $16,000 in 2023 and “hosting strengthens local economies and contributes to the cultural richness New Orleans is known for,” the lawsuit states.
An abundance of illegal Airbnb listings
There are currently about 1,350 non-commercial short-term rental properties with legal licenses, according to City of New Orleans data.But there are more than 7,000 active Airbnb listings in New Orleans revealing thousands of illegal short-term rentals, said Angela Owczarek, an affordable housing advocate with the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative.New Orleans is experiencing an affordable housing crisis mirroring many cities around the country, said Monique Blossom, director of policy at the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center.The city had a deficit of 47,000 housing units that someone making at or below the city’s median income could afford, according to a 2022 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The city has a population of less than 400,000 residents based on U.S. Census data.“Airbnbs and short-term rentals play into that, taking residential units off the market and saving them for tourists instead of having them available for the families that want to live and work in New Orleans or who are already here,” Blossom said.Airbnb said in a statement that the city’s short-term rental regulations do not address the issues underlying its housing challenges, such as high insurance costs.Morrell, the city council president, suggested the lawsuit meant the city should ban Airbnb. “If we cannot regulate short term rentals, there will not be any,” he said.Another councilmember, Oliver Thomas, said the city should first wait to see how pending litigation plays out. Other councilmembers and a City spokesperson did not provide comment.
Skyrocketing costs for some Airbnb owners
Airbnb’s lawsuit includes several other plaintiffs who are short-term rental property owners in New Orleans, including longtime Airbnb hosts Bret Bodin, 64, and Brad Newell, 47, who bought a home together in the historic Treme neighborhood in 2013.Renting out the property’s attached guesthouse and loft on Airbnb appealed to them because they could still have friends and family visit, Newell said.With skyrocketing insurance, utilities, and inflation, the couple have become more dependent on Airbnb and say they struggled because the city’s regulations limited them to only renting out one of their guest spaces.“What started off as kind of side-income turned into essential income,” Newell said. “We’re all getting hit with unexpected rising costs, and we’re just trying to keep up.”
Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96.
Jack Brook, Associated Press/Report for America
The U.S. Justice Department’s senior ethics official resigned on Tuesday, after President Donald Trump’s administration pulled him off his duties and assigned him to a new sanctuary cities working group, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The official, Bradley Weinsheimer, decided to accept the government’s deferred resignation offer rather than accept the reassignment, the latest in a string of nonpolitical career Justice Department officials who have resisted efforts that they say politicize investigations.
Dozens of career Justice Department officialswho normally remain in office from one administration to the nextin cities including Washington and New York have been fired, reassigned or quit since Trump took office on January 20, after he vowed to rapidly shake up a department that he says was used against him during his years out of power.
Last week, seven people resigned in protest, including two top officials who oversee the most politically sensitive investigations, after acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered them to drop criminal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Weinsheimer, a 34-year department veteran who was named to his current role as associate deputy attorney general during Trump’s first term, provided ethics counsel to department officials related to conflicts of interest, including on decisions related to when they should be recused from working on particular cases.
He also reviewed disciplinary recommendations by the Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates attorney misconduct, and referrals for discipline or prosecution from the Office of the Inspector General.
Weinsheimer did not return a request for comment. When Reuters tried to reach him in the evening on Tuesday, his government email responded with an auto-generated message saying he was “on administrative leave pursuant to the deferred resignation program.”
On January 27, around the same time Weinsheimer was reassigned, Bove delegated all ethics-related decisions to two political appointees.
One of them, Kendra Wharton, previously worked alongside Bove and Todd Blanche, the president’s nominee to serve as deputy attorney general, to help defend Trump against criminal charges in New York alleging he falsified records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star.
The other, Bove’s chief of staff Jordan Fox, graduated law school in 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile.
“Bradley is the senior career ethics official at the Justice Department and provides advice to people across the country and in the building on really important and weighty matters,” said Joyce Vance, the former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, noting that the job he performed was apolitical.
She said the reassignment of ethical decision-making to two political appointees is troubling, adding: “This is evidence that the Justice Department is being weaponized.”
Chad Gilmartin, a spokesman for the Justice Department, rejected any criticism of the move by Bove to delegate the ethics decision-making to Wharton and Fox.
“Kendra has a decade of experience as a criminal defense lawyer, which is exactly the mindset we want in such a role,” he said. He added that Fox “is a highly respected attorney.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche and Bove, who will serve as principal associate deputy attorney general once Blanche is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, all previously served as defense attorneys for Trump.
The White House has previously argued that the Department of Justice was weaponized against Trump when it pursued charges against him for retaining classified documents and subverting the 2020 election.
The department dropped both cases after Trump won the November 2024 election, citing a longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
On Bondi’s first day as Attorney General, she issued a directive creating a new “weaponization working group” that would be tasked with reviewing two criminal cases brought against Trump by former Special Counsel Jack Smith for retaining classified documents and trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election, as well as Trump’s conviction in New York.
Sarah N. Lynch, Reuters
Ever wondered what it would be like to wake up in Pompei on eruption day? How about how it would have felt to be a passenger on the Titanic? Now you dont need to. A new TikTok trend lets you travel back in time via artificial intelligence and experience the POV of someone living though that time period.
From waking up as a caveman in 40 B.C. to being the last person on earth in 2087, many of the most viral videos have been posted by creator @timetravellerpov. The inspiration behind my videos is the desire to bring history to life in a way that feels immersive, @timetravellerpov tells Fast Company over email. Each one is designed to transport viewers into different eras, myths, and alternate realitiesmaking them feel like theyve stepped into another world. While the account posted its first video just at the start of this year, it has quickly grown to over 329,000 followers with over 5.7 million likes.
@timetravellerpov POV: You wake up as the last person on Earth in 2087 #history #historytok #ai #apocalypse original sound – Time Traveller POV
One viral example drops you in 1351 London during the Black Plague. The clip begins in bed before the POV takes you for a walk through the muddy streets. Here, everyone is sick and hungry. All you have left is a crust of bread, which you give to a beggar child. You visit your sick mother in the quarantine zone and try not to catch the deadly disease. Spoiler alert: It doesnt end well.
@timetravellerpov POV: You wake up in 1351 During the Black Plague #history #historytok #ai original sound – Time Traveller POV
Each video takes @timetravellerpov around four hours to bring to life. You can tell the content is AI because, obviously, cameras didnt exist in the 14th Century. However, the content is realistic enough to receive over 18.6 million views and thousands of comments. Shoutout to the camera man, one person wrote. The only right way to use ai, another added. I just died in pompeii now Im here give me a break, a third commented.
I believe my videos have resonated with so many people because they tap into nostalgia, curiosity, and the desire to explore places and moments we could never otherwise experience, says @timetravellerpov. For me, its all about creating that wow momentwhere someone watches and says, I feel like Im actually there.
While the Black Plague might not be everyones first choice of time period to travel back to, the trend has since taken an even darker turn. Other POV videos posted by different creators include being a student during COVID-19, a worker in the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, or living through President John F. Kennedys assassination.
But the trend isnt just for experiencing the darkest days in history. For those wishing to travel back to happier times, one of @timetravellerpovs videos lets viewers experience a day in the life of a child living in England in the 2000s. Here, the POV takes you under a parachute in the school playground and on a trip to the now-defunct video store Blockbuster.
@timetravellerpov POV: You wake up as an English Kid in the 2000s #history #historytok #ai #nostalgia #nostalgic #CapCut original sound – Time Traveller POV
I know this is AI, but damn that felt real, one viewer commented under the video. Nah this is too sad, take me back to Pompeii, added another.
Shares in Super Micro Computer, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMCI) are once again rising in premarket trading this morning. As of the time of this writing, SMCI stock is up over 6% to $59.25 per share. That rise is in addition to the more than 16% rise in the stock yesterday.
When looking back year-to-date, Super Micro Computer (aka Supermicro) has seen shares rise over 83% as of yesterdays close. It is now at highs not seen since late August when a spate of bad news, including alleged accounting issues, kicked off a months-long drop in the stocks price.
The turnaround in SMCIs stock price fortunes has been especially evident over the last five days. During that time, SMCI shares were up over 30% as of yesterdays close. But why? There are two likely reasons:
Supermicro ‘believes’ it will file critical SEC paperwork on time
One of the problems that have rattled Supermicro investors is companys delayed filing of its Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The form should have been filed last year, and if Supermicro does not file it by February 25, which is next Tuesday, the company could be delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange.
But as Fast Company previously reported, Supermicro last week announced that it believes it will be able to make that deadline. The statement was music to investors ears.
Supermicro continues to work diligently toward the filing of its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, and its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended September 30, 2024,” the company said in a statement. “Based on information currently available, the Company believes it will make such filings by February 25, 2025.”
A strong 2026 forecast
Last week, Supermicro announced its second-quarter fiscal 2025 results. With those results, the company also updated its projected revenue for full-year fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026. While Supermicro lowered its fiscal 2025 projected revenue forecast, the company raised its 2026 forecast.
Supermicro now suggests that it will make over $40 billion in revenue in fiscal 2026. Some of that revenue increase is partly due to another companyNvidia. As companies adopt the new line of Nvidia Blackwell GPUs to power their AI needs, many will need the server racks that Supermicro makes to deploy them, thus giving Supermicro sales a boost.
With our leading direct-liquid cooling (DLC) technology and over 30% of new data centers expected to adopt it in the next 12 months, Supermicro is well positioned to grow AI infrastructure designs wins based on NVIDIA Blackwell and more, CEO Charles Liang said last week. He continued, [We] will expand our leadership as the premier US-based data center infrastructure solution provider.
Where does SMCI stock go from here?
Of course, revenue forecasts are just thatforecasts, not guarantees. And despite Super Micro Computer’s statement that it believes it will be able to file its delinquent SEC form by next Tuesdays deadline, nothing is certain until the forms are actually submitted.
Yet investor optimism seems strong regardless given SMCIs stock price surge over the past five trading days and since the beginning of the year.
But even though SMCI stock is up over 30% in the past five days and over 83% since the beginning of the year, the companys stock price is still down by more than 30% over the past 12 months as of yesterdays close.
Where it goes from here is anyones guess, but the next big driver of its rise or fall will likely be confirmation of whether it was able to file its missing 10-K form by February 25.
Union leaders have described President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Labor as a friend of organized labor. But as her confirmation hearing begins Wednesday, advocates for workers’ rights question whether Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be able to uphold that reputation in an administration that has fired thousands of federal employees.Chavez-DeRemer, a former Republican member of Congress from Oregon and former mayor of a small city on the edge of liberal-leaning Portland, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, the first stop in her confirmation process.During her one term as a congresswoman, Chavez-DeRemer’s voting record earned her strong union support. Some political observers surmised that Trump picked her as his labor secretary as a way to appeal to voters who are members of or affiliated with labor organizations. She is the daughter of a Teamster member.Before she lost her House reelection bid in November, Chavez-DeRemer backed the PRO Act, legislation that would allow more workers to conduct union organizing campaigns and penalize companies that violate workers’ rights. The bill, one of former President Joe Biden’s priorities, passed the House in 2021 but didn’t gain traction in the Senate.If confirmed as secretary, Chavez-DeRemer would be in charge of the Department of Labor’s nearly 16,000 full-time employees and a proposed budget of $13.9 billion in fiscal year 2025. She would set priorities that impact workers’ wages, ability to unionize, and health and safety, as well as employers’ rights to fire employees.But it’s unclear how much power Chavez-DeRemer will be able to wield as Trump’s Cabinet moves to slash U.S. government spending and the size of the federal workforce. During his first month in office, the president froze trillions of dollars in federal funding and offered buyouts to most federal workers.His administration last week started laying off nearly all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection. Billionaire Elon Musk, who leads Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, has called for getting rid of entire agencies.“The Department of Labor is the agency where people in building are supposed to wake up every day thinking about how they can improve the lives of working people,” said Adam Shah, director of national policy at Jobs with Justice, a nonprofit organization that promotes workers’ rights. “It’s quite possible that no matter what the secretary of labor stands for, the billionaire embedded in the Trump administration, who is so keen on destroying the institutions, will be interested in gutting the Department of Labor.”In January, Trump fired two of three Democratic commissioners serving on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that enforces civil rights in the workplace. He also fired the acting chair of the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve as an NLRB member, as well as General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. Wilcox sued the Trump administration, arguing that federal law protects her from being arbitrarily dismissed.Republicans have made inroads with working-class voters. Despite decades of labor unions siding with Democrats, and Trump’s apparent support for firing striking workers, his populist appeal gained him votes from rank-and-file union members.Many major unions, including the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers, endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential race. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse a candidate, and Teamsters leader Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention. The Teamsters have endorsed Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination.Some observers expect Chavez-DeRemer to receive more votes from Senate Democrats than some of Trump’s other Cabinet selections did. But the same positions that won her support from unions may make her a harder sell with business groups; the American Trucking Associations and the International Franchise Association said they hoped she would disavow her past support for the Pro Act by working to get it overturned.Emily Twarog, an associate professor in the school of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois, said a question mark hangs over the labor secretary-designate even if she gets the Senate committee’s approval.With the ongoing efforts by the current administration to limit or eliminate certain government functions, “how much will she actually be able to do to help workers in the Department of Labor if there’s limited funding and restrictions put on the work that can be done?” Twarog said.
Cathy Bussewitz, Associated Press
What do prison and business have in common? At first glance, nothing. One is a place where hope and trust are scarce, and every decision you make is a matter of survival. The other is a world built on innovation and collaboration, full of opportunities. But when you strip them both down to their core, youll find the same thing: leadership. And not the kind of leadership you read about in glossy books. Im talking about real-life, earned leadership.
My name is Andre Norman, and I was once sentenced to more than 100 years in prison. That kind of time breaks most men. But I worked day in and day out to earn my freedom and, after 14 years, I reentered the world as a completely different man. While I was behind bars, before I realized my life didnt have to end in prison, I rose through the ranks of the gang system. As a prison boss, I managed gang activities from within the maximum-security walls, one of the toughest environments on the planet. But I soon realized that, even though I had a sense of leadership, I was the King of Nowhere.
During two years of solitary confinement, I made a decision that changed everything. I set my sights on Harvard University. It was a big goal for someone in my position, but I knew if I wanted it badly enough, I could make it happen. From that moment, I worked backward, using the same skills that had helped me survive in prison: reading people, networking, communicating. And in 2015, my dream became a reality: I earned a fellowship at Harvard Law School.
In prison, leadership wasnt a titleit was survival. You had to know how to read people. If you make the wrong call, it could cost you your life. I didnt have the luxury of guessing. I had to know. Is this person going to kill me today, or are they someone I can work with? Behind bars, you learn quickly that loyalty isnt given, its earned. And trust? Trust is the most valuable currency of all.
When I got out and started working with CEOs and leaders, I realized that the business world is not so different from the world I left behindbesides the fact that nobody is coming to the table with a knife. Still, the principles of leadership dont change. In prison, nobody cares about your title. They dont follow you because you say youre in charge. They follow you because youve proven you can lead. Its the same in business. Your people arent going to trust you just because of your org chart. Theyll trust you because youve shown them that youre worth trusting.
If Ive learned one thing, its that leadership is universal. Whether youre behind bars or behind a desk, the same rules apply. Here are a few of the rules Ive picked up along the way:
Comfort is the enemy of success
Comfort is a trap. In prison, getting comfortable meant letting your guard down. And letting your guard down could mean losing everything. The same applies to leadership. When you and your team settle into a rhythm that feels safe, you stop growing. The best leaders embrace discomfort because its a sign of growth and progress.
Make better people, not just better businesses
Prison taught me that the strength of your crew determines the strength of your leadership. If youre only focused on hitting numbers or meeting deadlines, youre missing the bigger picture. In business, just like in life, better relationships build better outcomes. As a leader, your job isnt just to make sure the work gets done, its to help your team to grow into the best versions of themselves. When you invest in your people, the results take care of themselves.
Accountability isnt punishment
Holding people accountable doesnt make you the bad guy. Accountability is love. It means you care enough to challenge your team to be better, just like you challenge yourself to be a better leader. In prison, accountability was life or death. In business, its the difference between mediocrity and greatness. When you hold people accountable, youre not punishing themyoure showing them you believe in their potential.
Communication is everything
In prison, a single misstep in communication could lead to chaos. The same goes for business. Effective communication isnt just about what you say but how you say it. Even more importantly, its about how you listen. Great leaders read between the lines and notice whats been left unsaid. Their goal isnt to be the loudest voice in the room, but to create space for people to speak up. Communication is the glue that holds your team together.
Golden handcuffs are still handcuffs
Handcuffs trap leaders, too. The question is: Are you in your position because youre passionate about the work, or because of the allure of money, status, and power? Leadership can feel like a cage, even when its lined with perks. If you feel constrained, its time for a change. You can walk away. Or you can simply break free from monotony by seeking out fresh challenges that inspire and stretch you.
Leadership isnt a positionits a practice. Its something you work at each and every day. Leadership is earned through action and proven in the moments when you step up, even when its hard. So, you have a choice: to lead with purpose or to go through the motions. The leaders who make the biggest impact are the ones who never stop doing the work.
What does your leadership look like?
