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When the federal government shutdown on October 1, it started a chain reaction of income problems for federal workers. Roughly 900,000 government employees are now on furlough. Another 700,000 are working without pay because their jobs are too critical for them to stay home. To add insult to entirely preventable injury, the current administration has indicated that it may not provide the legally mandated back pay to these workers once the shutdown is over. Considering the fact that getting another job during the furlough may require the government employees agency approval (and wouldnt help critical employees working without a paycheck), the shutdown could be a personal financial disaster for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Only 1.8% of all American workers have Uncle Sam for a bossbut that doesnt mean the other 98.2% of us are exempt from furloughs, sudden income loss, or bizarre grandstanding from unrelated departments that lead to you coming in to work for no pay for weeks on end. (Well, maybe not that last one.) Thats why its so important for all workers to know these financial strategies that can help you safely get to the other side of income loss: Calculate your bare minimum budget If you havent done so before your income loss, sit down and figure out your baseline monthly expenses. These are the expenditures that are essential for maintaining your life, such as rent or mortgage payment, utility bills, groceries, transportation, and childcare. Generally, this is a relatively easy number to calculate. Start with your fixed expenses, like your rent and childcare, and estimate your fluctuating expenses like groceries and utility bills, by calculating the average cost over the past six to 12 months. The number you come up with is your bare minimum monthly budget, and it gives you a framework for figuring out how to live sustainably while your income is paused. Contact your creditors If you are carrying credit card debt, student loans, or other debts, contact your creditors to find out if there are ways to pause payments or reduce your monthly payment requirements during the period of income loss. While this will generally increase the amount you owe over time, it can give you the breathing room you need in the moment, and reduce your bare-minimum monthly budget number. Determine if youre eligible for unemployment Furloughed government employees (as well as furloughed private sector workers) may be eligible for unemployment benefits, depending on local and state regulations. Unemployment benefits are generally based on your past earning history and most benefits are limited to 26 weeks. Each state has a minimum and maximum weekly benefit amount for unemployment benefits. For example, in Wisconsin, the minimum weekly unemployment benefit a Cheesehead could receive is $54 and the maximum is $370. These amounts vary greatly from state to state, with Massachusetts boasting the highest weekly maximum at $1,033 and Puerto Rico having the lowest maximum benefit at $190 per week. Unemployment benefits are not available for all types of income loss. Going on strike, having to work without pay (as current excepted government workers are doing), or getting fired for cause would make you ineligible for unemployment benefits. But if you can collect unemployment, these benefits can help keep you afloat until your income resumes. Compare your savings (or unemployment benefits) to your needs Assuming you have savings set aside, you can compare it to your monthly minimum number to determine how many months you can afford to go without your income. In an ideal world, you will have an emergency fund equal to three- to six-months worth of living expenses. That should help you feel more confident about your income loss, since you know you can weather quite a long period without it. Unfortunately, only 46% of Americans have enough savings set aside to cover three months worth of expenses according to a 2025 Bankrate report. If you dont have a robust savings account (or any at all), and youre eligible for unemployment benefits, you can alternatively make the same type of comparison between your monthly minimum number and your potential unemployment checks. Figure out alternative income sources Depending on which agency they work forand if theyre still clocking into a job theyre not getting paid forfederal employees may not be able to take on alternative employment while waiting out the shutdown. But that doesnt mean theyre out of luck for finding other sources of income. For example, a furloughed employee might make a list of things theyre willing to sell and create a schedule for selling them. Having a schedule gives them more time to get the best prices for those items and also provide a sense of security about where next months money will come from because theres a plan in place. Other options include renting out a room in your house or selling your services as a freelancer. Any options for keeping some money coming in while waiting for your primary income to resume can help relieve your financial stress during the shutdown. Dont let the shutdown keep you down Losing your income through no fault of your own feels infuriating and demoralizing, especially if you have no idea when to expect its return. But calculating the minimum you need to maintain your lifestyle can help you feel more in control. From there, you can ask for some breathing room from your creditors and determine if youre eligible for unemployment. Then look at how long your savings and unemployment benefits can sustain you. To make sure the process can last as long as the current political temper tantrum, make a plan for alternative sources of income that you can implement as needed. All this together creates a blueprint for surviving and thriving through income loss, even if it stretches on for a long time.
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E-Commerce
SpaceX’s Starlink orbital internet satellites are falling out of low earth orbit at an increasingly alarming rate, with one to two satellites now reentering Earths atmosphere every single day. According to Harvard-Smithsonian Center astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, that number will only go up as more satellites end their useful lifetime and the low earth orbit (LEO) constellation numbers skyrocket. This is as much a design problem as anything. While the numbers vary, right now there are around 10,200 active satellites in low earth orbit. Of those, about 8,475 are Starlinks. In other words, about 80% of all those satellites belong to Elon Musk’s company. By 2030, the European Space Agency expects the number of satellites in LEO will increase to about 100,000. This is mostly thanks to SpaceXwhich plans, pending regulatory approval, to expand its fleet to a staggering 42,000 satellitesbut also to Starlink-clone networks like Jeff Bezos’s 3,200-satellite Kuiper, and the Chinese GuoWang and Qianfan, which plan to launch a total of 18,000 units combined. Designed to fall Each Starlink satellite has a five-year lifespan. They zip across the sky in low earth orbit. There, objects still feel about 95% of the gravity we experience on the ground. What keeps them from plummeting is their sideways velocity of 17,000-plus mph. These vehicles are essentially falling around the Earth, inches at a time. But even at that altitude, the thin atmosphere creates drag, with air particles hitting and slowing the satellites down. To compensate, they fire up their onboard krypton and argon thrusters, which lift them up to maintain their orbital path. When the fuel runs out, the satellite can no longer boost, its orbit decays, and it comes crashing down. Before that time comes, SpaceX de-orbits the satellites on a controlled crash, allowing them to aim at an empty stretch of ocean as opposed to making a random entry. Why this is a problem As McDowell explainsand SpaceX itself admitssome satellites will not disintegrate upon reentry, though they are designed to do so. They [Starlink satellites] are designed to completely burn up, McDowell said in a recent interview with EarthSky. Now we’re not sure we really believe that they really burn up, but at least for the most part they melt. There have been many other incidents of space objects falling to Earth, including big chunks of space stations like the American Skylab and the Soviet Salyut 7; parts of rockets like a European Ariane 5 nose; satellites like the Russian Kosmos 2251 (which collided with an Iridium communications satellite); and even the trunk of SpaceX’s very own Crew-9 Dragon spaceship. But thanks to the extraordinary number of units deployed, the Starlink constellation represents an outsize concern to everyone on Earthand also to other satellites in low earth orbit. If one of Musk’s satellites crashes against another satellite, it could start a chain reaction called the Kessler Syndrome, which you can see in action in Alfonso Cuaróns film Gravity. This is the nightmare of runaway debris collisions devastating all low earth orbit satellites. A single crash could create cascading debris fields, wiping out the infrastructure of global GPS, communication, financial systems, and weather monitoring. Worst-case scenario, it could plunge civilization into chaos. Right now, SpaceX is essentially launching bullets into an orbital game of Russian roulette. With thousands of Starlink satellites circling the globe, McDowell says that the current de-orbit rate is just the beginning. As the first generation of Starlinks reach their five-year expiration date, we are seeing four or five satellites per day being intentionally plunged back to Earth. This number is set to multiply as more and more Starlinks get to their end of life. As the constellation grows into the tens of thousands, we risk turning our upper atmosphere into a perpetual fireworks show of burning toxic metal that sometimes crashes into Earth. Designed for full demise Back in July 2024, Musks company assured regulators and the public that its satellites were designed for “full demise,” claiming they would vaporize into harmless dust. That turned out to be fantasy: Eight months later, New Scientist revealed that a 2.5-kilogram chunk of aluminum from a Starlink satellite slammed into a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada. SpaceX was forced to admit that this piecea modem enclosure lidwas supposed to have vanished completely but didn’t. Musks safety guarantees were proven wrong by a 5-pound piece of metal lying in a farmer’s field. SpaceX claims this has happened only once with a satellite that was part of a failed launch. However, in January 2025 a new fireball crossed Chicago’s sky. As he posted on X at the time, McDowell believes this was Starlink-5693. In response to McDowells post, Michael Nicolls, VP of Starlink engineering at SpaceX,said it was an uncontrolled reentry caused by a faulty component. The worrying bit of his explanation: There is still work to do to guarantee this, especially for satellites with degraded attitude control. But as you noted, the sats nearly completely demise upon reentry.” [my emphasis] Too much junk SpaceX now claims it uses a “belt-and-suspenders approach” to safety, the nerd way to refer to using multiple redundant systems to prevent a single point of failure. It says the risk of human harm is “less than 1 in 100 million.” The company has said that for its Starlink V2 Mini satellite, about 5% of a satellite’s mass could potentially survive reentry, but insists its mostly harmless silicon fragments with the impact energy of a falling apple. Musk claims his latest Starlink V2 satellites are designed with better altitude and attitude controls to target reentry corridors with high accuracyroughly within 10% of an orbit ground track, which translates to about 10 minutes of flight time. SpaceX says it conducts plasma chamber tests simulating atmospheric conditions to better understand how components break up during reentry, seeking to improve prediction of debris survival. But no matter the improvements, every new satellite launched adds to an increasingly fragile orbital environment. SpaceX hasnt replied to Fast Companys request for comment. But theres more to consider beyond potential bodily harm. As these satellites burn up, they pollute the stratosphere with metal particles, creating what scientists call “anthropogenic meteor showers.” Researchers are now raising alarms that these metals, particularly aluminum, could linger for years and catalyze the destruction of the ozone layer. Atmospheric chemist Daniel Murphy told Science magazine in November 2024, Almost no one is thinking about the environmental impact on the stratosphere. Laser mass spectrometry studies detected elevated levels of lithium, aluminum, copper, and lead in the stratosphere, exceeding natural meteor input. These metals come from satellite reentries and may nearly double natural metal aerosol concentrations, threatening ozone protection. Currently, about 2,000 satellite reentries per year emit 17 metric tons of aluminum oxide nanoparticles into the stratosphere. The figure is rapidly rising as mega-constellations multiply. Astronomer Samantha Lawler told Science, We cant keep using the ground and the atmosphere as a dumpster. Heres how the European Space Agency CEO Josef Aschbacher warned about the existence of Musks satellites to the Financial Times back in 2021: You have one person owning half of the active satellites in the world. Thats quite amazing. De facto, he is making the rules. The rest of the world including Europe . . . is just not responding quick enough. We are watching as a billionaires unchecked ambition reshapes the orbital commons without real oversight. Space isnt meant to be Musks backyard. While humanity pays the price, Musk just shrugs and keeps aiming at planetary domination.
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E-Commerce
Its hard to believe, but were only a few weeks away from Halloween, and after that comes Novemberand the unofficial start of the holiday season. If you travel during this time, youll know that finding cheap flights can be difficult. To get the best prices, people traditionally turn to comparison sites like Kayak and SkyScanner. However, as artificial intelligence seems to be taking over everything, and the tech industry wont stop shouting about its benefits, I decided to try three conversational AI tools to see if they could help me find the cheapest flight deal for the Thanksgiving period. Heres how that went. Flights listed on ChatGPT The first tool I turned to was AI chatbot king, ChatGPT. I gave it the following prompt for a hypothetical holiday trip, which is the exact same prompt I issued the other AI chatbots I tried for this article: I want you to find me the cheapest tickets for a round-trip flight for this Thanksgiving period. My departure city is New York City, and my destination city is Dallas. ChatGPT asked me a series of questions about trip specifics, including exact dates and preferred airports, or gave me the option for defaults it selected (all NYC DFW/DAL airports from Wednesday, November 26, 2025 to Sunday, November 30, 2025). I chose the latter. OpenAIs chatbot then spit out a bunch of information, including which airlines and airports had the cheapest options, and asked me if I wanted to see further results on specific itineraries. It even offered to show me total landed cost options (which means it would let me know how much the flight would cost if I checked bags, too). It also offered to set up price alerts for me. But it didnt stop there. As ChatGPT will carry on a conversation for as long as you want (and as I didnt want to ask and answer questions for 30 minutes), the chatbot also gave me three ABC options: A Show me the three absolute cheapest round-trip itineraries (all carriers, show baggage fees). B Show me the three best nonstop options (if any) ranked by total cost & convenience. C Compare a cheap Spirit/Frontier itinerary versus a reliable nonstop (AA/Delta) including checked-bag costs. [ChatGPT previously told me low cost carriers often show the lowest base fares]. I chose option A. Ultimately, ChatGPT returned three itinerary options with the absolute cheapest with one checked bag being between $190 and $220. It also gave me a direct link to the carriers website so I could book that option. Flights listed on Google Flight Deals Now that I had ChatGPTs answer, I next gave the same prompt to Googles new Flight Deals, its AI-powered Google Flights search tool. Google launched Flight Deals last month, billing it as an AI-powered search tool within Google Flights that is designed for flexible travelers whose number one goal is saving money on their next trip. Flight Deals lets you prompt the service like you would as though youre talking to a friendin natural languageand it will return flight itineraries that best fit your needs. I entered the same prompt I used with ChatGPT. Frustratingly, Flight Deals then asked me to confirm where I was flying from. I replied with NYC and then had to also select New York from the drop-down menu. However, I only received one result: a $249 nonstop United flight from Monday, November 24, to Friday, November 28. Flight Deals said it checked departures between Nov 24 and Nov 27, and returns between November 28 and December 1, which generally matches the Thanksgiving period I indicated in my prompt. A disclaimer for the results stated that The results shown are flights that are either significantly cheaper than usual for a route, time of year, trip length, and seating class, or are among the lowest-priced options for destinations that match your search. Unlike ChatGPT, Google Flight Deals did not allow me to ask follow-up questions or provide any tips on finding cheap flights. It also didnt tell me whether the $249 flight included checked baggage. Clicking on the sole result took me to Google Flights traditional interface, which showed additional flight results. Flights listed on iMean.ai Finally, I gave the same prompt I used for the others to iMean.ai, one of a growing number of dedicated conversational AI travel assistants. Even though iMean.ai’s interface looks like a more colorful version of ChatGPT, the sites AI agent didnt waste time asking me questions in an attempt to refine my prompt like OpenAIs chatbot did. Instead, it informed me that it searched through 302 flight options and determined that the best itinerary matching my query was one that split the departure and return flights between two airlines. The outbound flight leaves New York City on Wednesday, November 26, and the return flight leaves Dallas on Sunday, November 30. The total cost: $334. iMean.ai’s agent, like ChatGPT, provided me with the option to continue chatting with it to ask more questions or refine my needs. And unlike ChatGPT, iMean.ai displayed the results in a useful split-screen interface that helpfully laid out details, such as flight times, for each leg of the trip. Clicking on the accompanying View button took me to Kayak, where I could buy the selected tickets. Should you use AI chatbots to find cheap flights? In the end, consulting with three different AI tools resulted in the agents returning three different flight options for my hypothetical Thanksgiving trip, all on different dates, different airlines, and at different price points (ChatGPT: $190 to $220, Google Flight Deals: $249, iMean.ai: $334). Based on price alone, ChatGPT found me the cheapest tickets for a flight from New York City to Dallas during the Thanksgiving period. But though I was happy with the price, the experience of using AI chatbots to help me find cheap flight deals left me with a nagging feeling: uncertainty. ChatGPT presented me with too many questions and options. I felt that if I kept engaging with it, I would be sucked into a never-ending succession of possibilities that would make it nearly impossible to choose. When was the right time to stop prompting and make a choice? I didnt know. Conversely, Google Flight Deals provided me with a single option. This left me unsure as to whether it was actually the best choice (according to ChatGPT, no). iMean.ai was a mix of the two. It was conversational like ChatGPT, but provided fewer options, like Google Flights. However, it also presented me with an option that was more expensive than the ones both ChatGPT and Google Flight Deals presented, leaving me questioning its results. Ultimately, my experience with the three chatbots left me wanting to return to the traditional flight comparison websites, like Skyscanner and Kayak, that I am used to. If youre thinking of using chatbots to find deals on flightsfor this upcoming holiday season, it cant hurt to check out various AI agents to see what information they return, but Id still check the results of any AI recommendations against the results of traditional flight checking tools.
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E-Commerce
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