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Head's true genius—and that of his character, Giles—lay in quietly filling in the gaps in every scene

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Founders and investors, like Cloudflare founder Matthew Prince (left) and legendary venture capitalist Vinod Khosla (right), faced off online over the weekend. Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile via Getty Images; Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images Founders are publicly airing their "nightmare" interactions with venture capitalists. They shared on X what they say have been some of their worst experiences with investors. Legendary VC Vinod Khosla joined the fray. Over the past few days, some Silicon Valley tech founders have taken to the internet to publicly roast the venture capitalists they once pitched. The kefuffle began last week when Greg Isenberg, the host of "The Startup Ideas Podcast," posted to X about his experience raising a $15 million Series A. "12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going," Isenberg wrote, referring to an unnamed general partner. Isenberg said he continued his presentation, sharing slides with an investor he called an "unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair." "That's venture capital," he wrote. Venture capital is the financial engine of the tech industry. Founders with an idea rely on them to kick-start or turbocharge their fledgling companies. Typically, this is not a loan, but an equity exchange. The earlier a VC invests, the riskier the investment. When a company succeeds, however, the returns can be astronomical. Uber founder Travis Kalanick, responding to Isenberg, said that the venture world has changed over the years. Investors, he said, once took a more casual approach to pitch meetings. In 2001, Kalanick said he pitched an investor who was sitting in his "parked Lexus." Kalanick was sitting in the passenger seat. Kalanick said the investor "grabbed" his laptop, placed it "on his large belly," pressed it against the steering wheel, and began flipping through the slides himself. "2001 fundraising hit different," he said. The back-and-forth went viral among the niche community of already-successful millionaire and billionaire founders who are terminally online, and the pile-on began. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said a Sequoia partner passed on Cloudflare because "he didn't think a woman could lead a security infrastructure company." Cloudflare was founded in 2009 by Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn. The internet services company is now valued at almost $90 billion. Prince said he also once met with Khosla Ventures about investing in Cloudflare's Series C. Vinod Khosla, the legendary tech investor and the firm's namesake, took Prince and his fellow founders out to dinner, Prince wrote. Near the end of the conversation, Prince recalled, Khosla leaned over and said, "I'm impressed with you, not so much with them, what if you fire them and I'll give you all their stock?" Prince said he was so offended he never spoke to Khosla again. Other founders responded to Prince, adding their own experiences dealing with Khosla. It was enough for Khosla to spend his Saturday responding to the accusations, firing off over a dozen X posts. In some, he denied the stories and asked for evidence, but in most, he repeated a single mantra: Honesty is the best policy. "I am often wrong but always give honest opinions. Some find this harsh, but hypocritical politeness hurts founders," he wrote in one post. "Brutal honesty gives them a chance to evaluate it and accept or reject the opinion. Great founders elect for honesty. It is not fun to offer brutal honesty." Khosla Ventures declined to comment when reached by Business Insider. Some industry insiders came to Khosla's defense. Blake Byers, an early-stage investor and founder, said Khosla founded one of the pioneering companies of the modern computer industry — Sun Microsystems — before becoming one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capitalists. "He is one of the truest VCs to ever do it," he wrote. Apologies, I may sometimes be wrong, but I will always give entrepreneurs my best and honest opinion, popular or not. https://t.co/mxtSeepnIT — Vinod Khosla (@vkhosla) June 7, 2026 Mark Cummins, an angel investor and robotics expert, said he began pitching a partner at a French firm, only for the investor to interrupt with questions about his parents' careers. "What did your father do?' the partner asks me in a thick French accent," Cummins wrote. When Cummins said his father had trained as a theoretical physicist before going into business, the partner replied: "Aha! Your father was a failure!" Then, after Cummins said his mother had been a biochemist before becoming a schoolteacher, the investor said, "Also a failure!" Cummins said he responded, "I have a hundred employees and we need funding. 'Would you like to hear about my company?'" In a conversation largely dominated by men, Claire Vo, the founder of ChatPRD, an AI product management platform, said an investor once interrupted her pitch to say he was glad she wasn't trying to have kids while building a company. "I love an opportunity to tell a nightmare VC story!" she wrote. She later turned one of Khosla's posts defending himself into what she called a "pop punk banger." turning the latest vc crashout on the timeline into a pop punk banger https://t.co/KLFZRWY04h pic.twitter.com/tKcaBceQ8q — claire vo 🖤 (@clairevo) June 7, 2026 Read the original article on Business Insider

Wall Street Journal: KPMG survey: only 26% of companies have a comprehensive view of their AI costs, while 50% have some visibility and 22% have none or only see costs after billing  —  Only 26% of companies say they have a comprehensive view of their AI costs, according to a new survey

The author is teaching her daughter independence by letting her pack her own bag when they travel. Courtesy of the author I started teaching my daughter to pack when she was 3 years old. Packing together helps build her independence and decision-making. I hope the extra effort now will pay off as she grows older. I started teaching my daughter to pack when she was 3 years old, which, I know, sounds inefficient at best and slightly unhinged at worst. Packing with a preschooler is slow. It turns a 30-minute task into a 90-minute one. It involves delicate negotiations over which stuffed animals are "essential," last-minute outfit swaps as she re-discovers her favorite sparkly boots, and frequent distractions. If saving time today were the goal, I would simply do it myself. But my perspective changed after I heard versions of the same complaint from multiple mothers; they were still packing for their teenagers. Not just occasionally helping or reminding, but fully responsible for it. That dynamic doesn't appear suddenly at 13; it builds over time. So I decided to start while my toddler still craves independence with a fervor, hoping it will pay off over the next decade. The first step was participation, not decision-making The first time we "packed together," I did almost all of the work in advance. I pulled everything she would need and laid it out on the floor of her room, alongside an open suitcase. My toddler wasn't choosing items or deciding quantities. She happily folded clothes with me, shoved them into packing cubes, and put the packing cubes into the suitcase. The author doesn't want to be packing for her daughter when she's a teen. Courtesy of the author This participation also helped her mentally prepare for the coming travel. As we packed bathing suits, we talked about going to the pool and the beach. Her blankie gets packed because we'll be sleeping in a new place, so she'll want to have something familiar. She'll wear her sneakers to the airport because we'll be walking more than usual. Especially with toddlers, a smooth trip starts with helping them understand what the experience will be like before we get there. That mental preview reduces friction later. The next step was constrained choice Once that baseline was established, I shifted one variable: selection. Instead of laying everything out myself, I told her what we needed, and she got to pick: six T-shirts, five pairs of shorts, two bathing suits. Then she went to her drawers and chose them. That changed the task meaningfully. She still wasn't determining quantities or planning for contingencies, but she was making decisions within a defined framework. I separated "what do we need?" from "which specific items do we bring?" and introduced them in sequence. The author admits it takes longer to pack now. Courtesy of the author She's also responsible for helping put everything into her suitcase, which makes it easier to say no to the constant requests to bring additional toys and books. For shorter trips, if it fits into her carry-on after her essentials, she can bring it. On longer trips with a checked bag, she gets one packing cube for toys and books so she can decide what she most wants to bring. One major step is that now she has a suitcase that is clearly hers. For our coming trip to Asia, she's packing into a light pink MiaMily suitcase that I gave her for her most recent birthday, now enthusiastically decorated with stickers. It's a ride-on suitcase that she sits on proudly, like her travel throne. That shift sounds small, but it changes how she approaches the task. It's no longer a shared family suitcase or something I'm managing on her behalf—it's her suitcase, and she treats it that way. The goal is a gradual handoff I'm not trying to create unrealistic independence at 3. Over time, I can shift more of that responsibility to her by asking her to suggest quantities, to think through activities, and to identify what might be missing. It does take longer now. There's no way around that. But if the alternative is still packing for her a decade from now, the tradeoff is worth it. Read the original article on Business Insider

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After my dad died when he was 52 years old, I changed my priorities and figured out how I truly wanted to live the rest of my life. Jordan Mautner My dad planned to travel and do so much once he retired, but he died at 52 before he had the chance. Losing him pushed me to live life differently, like skipping college to travel to Europe instead. I'm grateful I live a life focused on new experiences and adventure, not stability and savings. Throughout his life, my dad was incredibly focused on being successful and providing for our family, trying to ensure all of us had the best possible future. He was good at it, too. He built us a beautiful home by the beach, studied with me so I'd get straight A's, and took our family on countless vacations to Hawaii and Yosemite — all while running a business and putting money into his retirement fund. Along the way, he postponed a lot of things he wanted to do, like finally taking that trip to Europe, buying his dream car, and relocating to Hawaii with my mom so they could spend their days sipping mai tais under the shade of a palm tree. It was OK, he'd say, because once he retired, maybe in his 60s or 70s, he'd do all of those things. But then he got sick at 51. One year later, at 52, he was gone. I was only 15 then, and I didn't know how to handle losing the bravest man I knew. It was so unfair, and life suddenly felt incredibly short. My dad planned to travel and experience so many grand things after retirement, but never got the chance. I didn't want the same to happen to me. His death changed my priorities and how I thought about the future A photo of my dad and me on a beach in Malibu. Jordan Mautner Losing my dad left me yearning to experience things he didn't get to. I didn't want to wait until an uncertain retirement; I wanted to live my life now. After high school, I didn't end up going to college, which, before my dad's death, was the only option I saw for my future. Instead, I started working and saving up money to travel. By the following summer, I was able to make my way to Europe. As I ate fresh slices of pizza in Naples and took in the sights from the top of the Eiffel Tower, I felt like my dad was right there with me. That trip gave me a taste of a life I wanted to live. I've traveled to France and other countries around the globe. Jordan Mautner Shortly after, I decided to pursue teaching English abroad in Mexico. It was another chance to see more of the world, but starting from scratch in a new country and learning a new language wasn't easy. It took time to find friends, and I didn't always have a steady paycheck — but what I didn't make up for in my savings account, I was making up for in life experiences. After a few years, I had become fluent in Spanish, traveled throughout Mexico, and found a passion for writing and playing guitar. My confidence grew, and I felt I could do this somewhere else. So in my early 30s, where years prior I would've thought I would be married with children, I packed up and moved to Europe, single, with some savings and no steady job waiting for me on the other side. I landed in Spain and started building a life from scratch again in Barcelona. It was incredibly lonely at times, and I often compared myself to friends back home in Los Angeles, who had steady careers and were beginning to have kids. But then I would think of my dad and how he'd always tell me I could achieve anything I put my mind to. I reminded myself that I chose this path. I was seeing the world and making my way in it, even if it wasn't always easy. I'm glad I've chosen to plan a life around experiences, not stability I spent several years traveling and living in places like Mexico. Jordan Mautner I'm nearly 40, and I've been in Barcelona for almost seven years now. In that time, I've built a community and met and married the love of my life. I don't have children yet, and my writing career is still blossoming. I still haven't prioritized growing my savings account or making concrete retirement plans. It can be a risky way to live, and sometimes I'm scared of what the future may bring, but losing my dad so young made me realize that nothing in life is guaranteed. I'd rather enjoy the present and grab opportunities as they arise rather than wait and potentially never get to take them — and I'm grateful for everything my dad taught me, even if I only had him for 15 years. Read the original article on Business Insider

Business Insider producer Olivia Nemec visits Intel's most advanced chip plant and holds a semiconductor wafer. Dmytro Savchuk/Business Insider I got rare access inside Intel's factory, where it makes some of the world's most advanced chips. The plant is so tightly controlled that paper, white light, and even footsteps can become problems. The trip made me realize that making the chips powering everyday life means protecting them from us. I knew visiting Intel's chip factory would be different when they told me I couldn't wear my regular deodorant. Or lotion. Or hairspray. Or makeup. Before I'd even boarded the plane to Oregon, Intel sent my videographer and me a long list of things we couldn't wear or bring into its factory in Hillsboro. No Velcro. No Bluetooth. No phones unless they were on airplane mode. The list kept going. That was my first clue I was about to step into a place governed by a very different set of rules. In March, after months of planning with Intel, I got rare access to one of its chip factories — the kind of place the tech industry calls a fabrication plant, or fab. Inside, Intel makes some of the most advanced semiconductors in the world. Chips run almost every part of modern life: laptops, phones, chatbots, washing machines, fighter jets, and the data centers behind AI. Demand for these chips is skyrocketing, with annual semiconductor sales expected to reach $1 trillion by 2027. I went behind the scenes to see the complicated and delicate manufacturing process that's so controlled, it permanently changed how I think about what it means to be clean. What it takes to get inside Intel's fab Olivia Nemec suits up to head inside Intel's fab. Dmytro Savchuk/Business Insider I arrived on a rainy Oregon morning in my best walking shoes, per Intel's instructions. We'd be covering a lot of ground, and they weren't kidding. The fab in front of us was enormous — bigger than an aircraft carrier. We walked about 10 minutes to the gear-cleaning room. Just beyond it sat a room full of what I estimated to be billions of dollars in Intel chips. "Each little tiny speck can cause a defect, which would destroy the chip," Chris Auth, Intel's vice president of manufacturing development and our guide for the day, told me. We scrubbed down every piece of camera equipment with sterilizing wipes. Not just the obvious surfaces. We extended the tripod legs, wiped them down one by one, collapsed them, and wiped them down again, hunting for any nook that might be hiding dust. Then came the gowning room, a chamber so big it could have swallowed my New York studio apartment many times over. It was packed wall-to-wall with bunny suits, each worth about $1,000, according to Intel. I got to wear one for the day. But first, I had to figure out how to put it on. "So you kinda wanna scrunch up your suit so that the sleeves don't touch the ground here," Auth said, once he'd slipped on his hood. Every piece had to connect in the right order. The onesie snapped onto the hood. The boots attached to the suit. My first pair of gloves got tucked under the sleeves. A second pair went on top to trap the skin particles my hands were shedding. I've visited factories before that worried about visible contaminants — a bracelet falling off, an earring coming loose. Intel worried about invisible ones. The kind your body releases constantly without asking permission. That also explained why my notebook had to stay outside. Regular paper sheds microscopic particles, and here, even that can be enough to ruin a chip. Intel handed me a special cleanroom notebook that doesn't shed. Then I stepped onto the fab floor. Intel's most precious room Producer Olivia Nemec and Intel's Chris Auth stand in front of an ASML lithography tool. Dmytro Savchuk/Business Insider In a place this tightly controlled, I was oddly thrilled by what looked like hot-pink equipment everywhere. But it wasn't actually pink. The gigantic room glowed under yellow light to protect the chips. Any other wavelength could damage a chip while it's being made. "Under yellow light, everything that looks pink to your eyes is actually red," Tyler Osborn, Intel's director of advanced packaging technology development, later told me, gently bringing me back to reality. Nothing about the fab felt quite real, though. There were more robots than people. The few people who were there all looked the same in hooded suits. Employees told me they often recognize one another by how they move. "You get to know people's gait," Osborn said, his voice muffled by the layers covering everything but his eyes. Robots zipped by on overhead tracks, carrying sealed boxes of wafers — the thin slices of silicon that chips are built on — around the factory, keeping them out of human hands. People, I learned, are too inefficient for this work. Robots need to move thousands of wafers a day. Not to mention, humans can be clumsy. I couldn't stop wondering what would happen if someone in a rush tripped and sent a box of wafers flying. "Mistakes are very, very costly," Auth said. "You're somewhere in the $50,000 to $500,000 range just for one wafer." Each robot carries 25 wafers at a time. "So now you're into the millions for just one box," he said. Even my footsteps felt like a risk An Intel fabrication plant worker walks past a row of billion-dollar tools. Intel Foundry The chips are about the size of a fingernail. But Intel isn't just controlling that tiny patch of space. It is trying to steady an entire factory around something microscopic. "We're building the world's smallest features in some of the world's biggest factories," Auth said. The fab is built in layers, with a foundation designed to absorb outside shocks — earthquakes, nearby machinery, even low-frequency vibrations from air-conditioning units in neighboring buildings. "It comes down to microvibrations," Bob McMillan, Intel's life safety and systems manager, told me. That was the moment I became unusually aware of my own footsteps. I felt like a giant moving through a world built for things far smaller and more delicate than me. Everything in the fab was choreographed to protect the chip, which made me wonder what would happen if all that control failed in the smallest possible way. So I asked what would happen if a beard hair got into one of these machines. "You're done," McMillan said. "A hair is huge," Auth later explained. A single human hair can be a million atoms thick. Some of the structures Intel is building are just a few atoms wide. The entire factory works like a machine Producer Olivia Nemec and Intel's Chris Auth walk on a ventilated floor. Dmytro Savchuk/Business Insider It was hard to hear anyone over the constant hum of gigantic tools. Then I realized the building wasn't just full of machines. It was one. Even the floor was working. It stretched beneath us like a giant metal sieve, perforated with holes as far as I could see. They were there to pull particles away from the wafers — catching anything rogue that escaped our suits in less than 60 seconds. "We change all the air in this factory about that quickly," McMillan told me. They filter the air over and over because, at any given moment, there can't be more than eight particles bigger than a micron floating in every cubic meter of air. The room you're sitting in right now probably has millions. To me, that was hard to fathom. I was standing inside one of the cleanest places on Earth, which was reassuring and also vaguely unsettling. Regular life suddenly seemed impossibly filthy. Why making chips is so hard Intel's Chris Auth holds a completed wafer. Dmytro Savchuk/Business Insider A single chip takes about three months to make, and almost nothing can go wrong. In that time, it moves through roughly 2,000 steps, and thousands of machines spread across the factory. "There's 12 football fields of clean room space here," Auth said. He later told me it costs about $20 billion to build a fab like this. By comparison, One World Trade Center cost about $3.9 billion to build. Despite the price tag, the US government has made building chips in America a top priority. About 90% of the world's most advanced chips are made in Taiwan, which Washington sees as a major geopolitical risk as China threatens to take the island by force. That's why, no matter how hard these chips are to build, the White House says the US needs more factories like this one. Right now, Intel is the only American company designing and manufacturing advanced logic chips on US soil. I left thinking about how fragile modern life is Producer Olivia Nemec and Intel's Chris Auth walk through the main hallway in the chip fabrication plant. Dmytro Savchuk/Business Insider When we got back to the gowning room and took off our hoods, I realized I'd almost forgotten what everyone we'd spent the day with actually looked like. Then I got my phone back, stepped back into normal life, and had a thought I still can't shake: we live in a world that runs on chips. To make them, however, we have to create an entire environment designed to protect them from us. Read the original article on Business Insider

Cara Katz says parents who use AI should not be judged. Courtesy of Cara Katz Cara Katz is a 36-year-old working mom to a toddler. She has been using AI at work for at least six years. She said people shouldn't judge moms who use AI — they aren't the ones to blame for the ethical concerns around it. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Cara Katz. It has been edited for length and clarity. A little over a year ago, AI became more prevalent in my mom communities than it had been in years prior. I had been familiar with and using AI for about six years at work, where there was a lot of skepticism about its use — and back then, it wasn't something we used at home. Fast-forward to about 18 months ago, and parents started using it to increase efficiency, saving time and maximizing output in their personal lives. At first, it was mainly parents in tech and marketing, but now it's being used by parents with no tech experience. We didn't feel any shame about it at first, but things have changed thanks to the explosion of public opinion about using AI. Since I've started using it at home, I've saved myself at least 10 hours a week. I'm tired of being judged for it. I use it to plan our week Scheduling is my favorite way to use AI at home because it saves me the most time, though it can be slightly complicated. I used to spend most Sundays planning our week as a family of three. I work from home, and my husband works from home two days a week. My daughter goes to transition school, which is two hours of school two days a week. We don't have any organized childcare, but she does have enrichment activities like music and gym. Cara Katz uses Claude to plan her daughter's week and care. Courtesy of Cara Katz My husband and I take turns caring for our daughter, but if both of us are busy, I plan for a babysitter to have her in the house or to take her out. It makes for a really busy schedule to arrange and remember. I started using Claude Code, which sounds scary, but it's just a chatbot for code writing. It can be used exactly the same way as Claude. It walked me through how to organize our Google calendars — our daughter's calendar and our separate work calendars. Claude reads them all, and I prompted Claude to create this beautiful, color-coded HTML calendar. I also fed it my daughter's periphery schedules — like library events for the month — and trained it on her preferences. Every week, it sources events that she would be interested in, and puts them into the calendar. It sends our babysitters' recommended times, based on their previous work-time preferences, and asks them to agree to the date and time provided to have our daughter. We then publish the schedule on Netlify, press "deploy," and it creates a password-protected website that caregivers can view. If there is any chance, I enter that change, and it automatically updates and emails everyone a link leading us back to the website. These days, I spend five minutes here and there on scheduling. It also plans my shopping list AI does all of my grocery planning. It runs a full inventory of my pantry to know what we already have, knows all of our preferences, knows my daughter and husband are celiac, and even knows my husband's blood results. It uses all of this information to design a shopping list and meal plan. I connect Claude to DoorDash and Uber Eats to get our groceries delivered. You can set it up so that this happens automatically, but I like to have a look at the list before I pay. I followed my daughter's developmental milestones with AI I think moms get freaked out by developmental milestones — we know milestones exist, but aren't taught that there is a range within these milestones. When my daughter was a baby, I built a Claude project that researched which milestones she should be hitting. I asked for an updated list of activities we could do each week to help her achieve her developmental milestones. We printed it out and ticked off the activities. When we went to the pediatrician for a check-up, we knew where she was developmentally before we even walked through the door. We could then have empowered conversations with the doctor. I get more time with my kid I love going back to my mom communities after being pelted with strong opinions from people who say that hate AI. We are buying back time with our kids using AI. My mental workload has lightened. It's hard for me to take people who are angry about AI seriously. It is easy to be theoretically morally angry. It is quite different to sit across from a single mom, stay-at-home mom, or a working mom who struggles to pay bills, or spend time with their family, and tell her not to use AI because it probably uses less water than big organizations do. Read the original article on Business Insider

“What is being sold is this idea of productivity and efficiency,” says Kate Brennan, associate director of the AI Now Institute, an AI-policy research center, “and what that means for the people doing the actual work is rarely part of the conversation.” The post Here’s How Long It Will Take for AI to Reach Its Potential appeared first on AI Now Institute.

Because the alternative is much too dangerous The post We Should Train AI to Betray Its Users appeared first on Towards Data Science.

Ali Hynek bought her kids screen-free old-school devices. Courtesy of Ali Hynek Ali Hynek is a 45-year-old mom of four in Utah whose children had been asking for smartphones. Instead of smartphones, Ali bought her kids a boom box, a recorder, a rotary-style phone, and a Walkman. Her 10-year-old son, Ethan, is particularly keen on the Walkman and spends hours listening to music. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ali Hynek. It has been edited for length and clarity. For a couple of years, my four kids have been asking for smartphones. Being aware of the negative impacts of smartphones, for kids and adults, my husband and I have told the kids they won't be getting smartphones until they are at least 17. We've discussed with them about why we've made this decision, explaining our reasoning rather than just making a blanket rule. Even though I think they understand why they aren't allowed smartphones, I'm aware that they sometimes feel they are missing out, as so many kids in school have them. But they've had watches they can make phone calls from, and we'd be open to getting them a little brick phone (like the old Nokia ones) to communicate with family and friends, as we don't have a house phone. Ali Hynek banned smartphones for her four kids. Courtesy of Ali Hynek A little over a year ago, inspired by my sister's love of VHS tapes, I went thrift shopping to find some "old school" analog ways to listen to music. It would be a chance for the kids to tinker and learn how we used to listen to music before smartphones and streaming. They started making their own mixtapes I found a stereo boombox, the kind that had a CD and tape player, an old rotary-style phone, and a radio that you have to manually change the channels with a little knob. When I brought it all home, the kids were intrigued and curious about each item. While this once had been the only way I listened to music, my kids had never even seen these devices. It was all new to them. Ali Hynek's kids started making their own mixtapes at home. Courtesy of Ali Hynek To hold their interest, I took them thrifting to find tapes and CDs to listen to, but the music we found early on was a bit boring for the kids. Instead, I suggested they could make their own mixtapes — like I used to do when I was a kid. I bought a bunch of blank tapes and one of those 90s recording devices and let them experiment by finding songs on the radio, and pressing "record" when a song came on that they liked and "pause" when the song finished. By the end, they had personalized mixtapes with all their favorite songs. It brought back many good memories of my childhood. I got my 10-year-old a Walkman at his request Ethan, my 10-year-old son, particularly liked our experimentation with analog music devices. At the same time, he was watching "Guardians of the Galaxy" and saw that one of the characters often walks around with a Walkman and headphones. "Can I get one of those?" he asked me. I took him to several thrift stores, and we couldn't find one. They were really expensive on eBay, but I found one on Amazon for a little over $30. I bought it, and we found Aerosmith and "Guardians of the Galaxy" tapes that he could listen to. Soon after we got the Walkman, we went on a long road trip. Ethan sat for hours, looking out the car window while his music played on repeat. It was like road trips in the 90s, when all you could do was listen to music and watch the world passing you by. At home, he just walks around with the Walkman attached to his side, headphones in. I often find him lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, and listening to his music. Since then, my other three children have also had their own Walkman and headphones, and have taken to listening just like Ethan. My 4 kids want to shop for cassette tapes All four of them often want to go to thrift stores with me to hunt for cassette tapes to play. We recently found a Madonna tape, and I bought a Billie Eilish tape online. I doubt this is just a fad. It feels more like what it's like to learn to ride a bike — once you've done it, you'll always love it. They have latched onto this way of listening to music, and I haven't sensed that their excitement is waning. If anything, they get more and more excited to hunt for new tapes to listen to — it's like a treasure hunt. I love watching them enjoy music. I love that we have another hobby we can do together. I love that their faces aren't always glued to a screen. I love having flashbacks to my own childhood. Read the original article on Business Insider

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Inside the early 2025 senior exec meeting where Apple admitted its AI failures; Tim Cook became intimately involved in Apple's AI roadmap around the same time  —  Also: What to expect at WWDC 2026.  —  A top secret meeting finally got Apple to take its AI crisis seriously.

Massachusetts ranked as the most educated state in the US in a recent Business Insider list. Jorge Salcedo/Shutterstock Massachusetts ranked as the most educated state in the US. It also has the highest median household income among the 50 states, at $104,828. The state combines a high density of universities with a highly skilled, high-earning workforce. Education across the US varies significantly across regions and state lines, but one place dominates national rankings for the opportunities it offers students. Business Insider recently ranked the most and least educated US states based on the share of adults 25 and older with a bachelor's degree or higher, using 2024 Census data. Massachusetts ranked highest, with 48.3% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and it also had the highest share of adults with advanced degrees, with 22.6% having a professional and graduate degree. That means nearly half of Massachusetts adults have a bachelor's degree, and more than 1 in 5 have advanced further in their academic path, earning a professional or graduate degree. Massachusetts is home to some of the country's top universities The state has a high education density: Hubs like Cambridge and Boston have long been known as higher education powerhouses in the US and are home to institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Northeastern University, and Tufts University, among many others. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University are the state's most prestigious institutions. Yousif Al Saif/Shutterstock Together, those schools make Massachusetts a magnet for students, professors, researchers, startups, and employers. They also support the state's economy and its concentration of fields that prize advanced degrees, including biotech, healthcare, finance, education, engineering, and technology. The state stands out in K-12 education The state's education pipeline starts long before college, with the state budget prioritizing funding for its rank-topping education. In 2024, Massachusetts spent about $22 billion on public-school expenditures, or $23,165 per student, according to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The state ranked seventh-highest in per-student expenditures for elementary and secondary education that year, according to Census data. This investment in schools is visible in national rankings. In 2025, the Massachusetts Academy of Math & Science, one of the highest-achieving public high schools in the state, ranked third among all public schools nationwide. The elementary and secondary education in the state then funnels into the public and private colleges and universities. In the 2024-2025 school year, about 65% of Massachusetts' high school graduates who enrolled in college after graduation did so at Massachusetts colleges and universities, according to the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Massachusetts' emphasis on higher education aligns with its economy, which is driven by ambitious workers in highly skilled fields — and ranked as the best state economy in the US. Massachusetts also has some of the nation's highest-earning households In 2024, the state had the highest median household income among all 50 states at $104,828, ranking slightly ahead of New Jersey and Maryland, which had similar median household incomes. For a lot of Massachusetts residents, however, a large portion of their household income goes towards affording to live in the state, which has the third-highest housing burden in the US. On average, renters spend 51.5% of their income on housing, while homeowners spend 33.7%, making the state less affordable than other states with similar median incomes, such as New Jersey and Maryland. Massachusetts has the third-highest housing burden as a share of median income in the US. Belia Koziak/Shutterstock Some of the state's most famous institutions also produce some of the nation's highest-earning graduates. MIT topped the list, with former students having a median income of $162,000 four years after graduation, according to Department of Education College Scorecard data. The result is an economy influenced by education: Massachusetts is home to top universities and research institutions, strong educational outcomes, and well-paying roles that lean on advanced knowledge. Together, these factors help explain why the state scores highest in both degree attainment and household income. Read the original article on Business Insider

We got rare access inside Intel's semiconductor operation in Oregon to see how some of America's most advanced chips are made. As tensions with China rise, Washington is betting on Intel, the only American company that both designs and manufactures advanced chips in the US, to help rebuild domestic chipmaking. We visited its cleanroom, its R&D lab, and a packaging operation no media had ever visited before to see how Intel plans to do it. Read the original article on Business Insider

An introduction to multi-agent systems The post Building a Multi-Agent System in Python appeared first on Towards Data Science.

The author's son got her into soccer. Courtesy of Jamie Davis Smith I've never been much of a sports fan. That is, until my son got me into soccer. Now, I'm desperately trying to get us tickets to the World Cup. For most of my life, I thought I hated all sports. My current quest to go to the World Cup doesn't make sense to most people who know me. Yet, I am feverishly searching for World Cup tickets that won't require me to take out a second mortgage on my house. I'm often mistaken for a sports fan I grew up in Philadelphia, which arguably has the most passionate fan base in the world. I can frequently be spotted in Eagles or Phillies gear. Like most Philadelphians, I have a huge crush on Gritty, the unhinged Flyers' mascot who rose from the sewers beneath the city to become the most beloved, and perhaps most controversial, mascot on the planet. It would be easy to mistake me for a sports fanatic, so I often have to explain my passion isn't for sports-ball. Instead, I love Philadelphia and (almost) everything associated with the city, including its unyielding passion for sports. On the rare occasions I attend baseball games, I find excuses to leave my seat and wander the stadium, and sometimes make an excuse to leave early. I have watched every Super Bowl the Eagles have played and even went to Philadelphia to celebrate a win with an epic Super Bowl parade. However, I still need someone to explain the rules of football to me because, despite my ride-or-die loyalty to the Birds, I'm not interested enough in the sport to learn how the game is played. Before soccer, the author wasn't much of a sports fan. Courtesy of Jamie Davis Smith My son introduced me to soccer, and I never looked back My boredom and disinterest in the nitty-gritty of sports took an abrupt turn when my youngest son started playing soccer at school and quickly became a zealot. When I took my son to his first soccer match, a DC United game where we now live in Washington, DC, I was dreading it. I tried to feign excitement for his sake, but I knew deep down I would be incredibly bored. However, what I found surprised me and got me hooked on the sport almost immediately. The soccer stadium was much smaller than the enormous arenas I usually associate with major league sports. That meant I could see well and feel immersed in the action, even from the cheap seats. There were fireworks at the start of the game and every time our team scored, and I loved the celebration with a spectacle usually reserved for the Fourth of July. Plus, soccer is much easier for me to follow than other sports. As someone with a relatively short attention span, I appreciate that the game is short at just 90 minutes. Additionally, the fans are fun. I love that supporters' clubs at matches make a lot of noise with drums, adding energy to the experience. The author's son plays soccer. Courtesy of Jamie Davis Smith Soccer has become a way of life Since I went to that first match, soccer has become a way of life. My son is on a travel team and plays several times a week. The first chapter book my son read, The Academy by TZ Layton, was about soccer, and I recently picked him up from school early so he could meet the author and get his books signed among throngs of other young soccer fans asking pointed questions about plays in the books. My family travels frequently, and we visit soccer stadiums whenever and wherever we can to take tours and learn about the sport's history. When the Club World Cup, a FIFA tournament to determine the world's best men's soccer team, was in the United States last summer, we traveled to Philadelphia to see my son's favorite team, Real Madrid, and waited outside the hotel where the players were staying so my son could catch a glimpse of the players up close. Then, I sat enthralled through the entire match, even through a torrential downpour, and didn't mind a bit. Sometimes I don't recognize myself. Who is this person who genuinely knows players, strategy, and the names of more than a few teams in the league? I now understand why soccer is the world's most popular sport. The author is hoping to go to the World Cup with her son. Courtesy of Jamie Davis Smith Now, I have World Cup fever As soon as my son and I learned that the United States would be hosting World Cup games in 2026, we were excited and determined to make it to at least one match. Yet I have tried repeatedly to get tickets and failed. I struck out repeatedly in various World Cup lotteries, including several "exclusive" presales I could access with my credit card. Still, I am committed to finding a way to experience the World Cup with my son, and not just for him. As a newly minted bona fide soccer fan, I know I will love the experience as well. Moreover, spending my formative years around Philadelphia sports fans who pride themselves on rioting whether they win or lose has prepared me well for any soccer hooligans I might encounter. I am ready for the biggest sporting event in the world, if I could only find a ticket. My son constantly reminds me that since I found a way to bring my daughter to see Taylor Swift, I can make this work, too. Like many disappointed soccer fans, I am hoping outrageously inflated resale prices drop as the World Cup draws closer, although that was not my experience with the Eras Tour. Nevertheless, if my son and I can't make it to an actual match, we will still enjoy the World Cup by going to watch parties and any other special events we can find, but it won't be the same. I'm not sure what my next step will be, but I am in too deep to give up now. Read the original article on Business Insider