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Shares of Intel jumped 3% Friday as The Wall Street Journal’s Lauren Thomas, Laura Cooper, and Asa Fitch reported that Qualcomm has approached Intel about acquiring it for perhaps as much as $90 billion, citing multiple unnamed sources. The “massive” deal, as the authors put it, is financially daunting, as Qualcomm has just $13 billion in cash and equivalents on its balance sheet against $13 billion of long-term debt. Even a mostly stock exchange would require some large debt raise. Intel, moreover, already has $19 billion of net long-term debt. The deal is much larger than Qualcomm’s attempted acquisition of...

If you’re in the market for a new home appliance and you want that purchase to be as environmentally friendly as possible, you might look for options that feature a label from Energy Star, a symbol backed by the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy specifically to promote energy-efficient products. Each year, Energy Star puts out a list of the Most Efficient appliances, those that the program says “save you money and protect the environment.” The list also features the “most efficient, pollution-reducing products.” Until now, that list might have included gas-powered appliances such as gas dryers, furnaces, and...

Consider that the vast majority of commercial bathrooms in the U.S. don’t even include lids on toilets—meaning that every time someone flushes, a “toilet plume” of droplets explodes into the air, coating the surrounding stall (and the person standing in it) and aerosolizing the bowl’s contents, which can be breathed in and ingested by nearby parties (gross) We also know that COVID-19 has been found in human poop, up to 33 days after infected people have recovered and tested negative for the virus. No amount of handwashing will remove a virus sprayed all over your body. “a huge uptick in...

It’s the year 2038. The word “flavor” has fallen into disuse. Sugar is the new cigarettes, and we have managed to replace salt with healthy plants.
 We live in a society in which we eat fruit grown using genetics. We drink synthetic wine, scramble eggs that do not come from chickens, grill meat that was not taken from animals, and roast fish that never saw the sea. Was this what we had in mind when we started seeking transparency, traceability, and sustainability of our food system many years ago in the early aughts? About a decade ago, we lived through...

President Obama has quietly recruited top tech talent from the likes of Google and Facebook. Their mission: to reboot how government works. BY JON GERTNER For Eric Maland, the whole thing goes back to that San Francisco wedding. Mikey wasn’t there—well, wait, actually, Mikey was there. But Eric didn’t meet him at that point. Eric met some other folks at the wedding who told him they were doing some fix-it stuff in Washington, and it sounded kind of interesting. ADVERTISEMENT And now we’re chatting about it in front of the White House security gate, where we’re waiting to talk with...

Did computer geek Steve Jobs have a system meltdown? On Friday, the svengali-like CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar Animated Studios lashed out at author Fredric Alan Maxwell after he sent Jobs a 4,000-word article he wrote for Fast Company magazine about the untold story of Jobs' biological father, a Syrian immigrant and political science professor named Abdulfattah Jandali. "Are you a nut case?" Jobs demanded, signing the oneliner "Steve." Maxwell fired back: "Are you?" The Montana-based author has been pushing Jobs' buttons for a while, even conducting 18 months of research for an unauthorized biography before Penguin Group's Portfolio...

25 Rules for Leaders Fast Company's recent RealTime San Diego generated a remarkable collection of ideas, tools, and inspirational advice. Here are 25 of the smartest insights that we took away from the event. by Linda Tischler May 2002 Leadership. Innovation. Work. Brand. Technology. Fast Company's flagship event centered around those themes for three days of real learning and just-in-time inspiration last week in San Diego. The roster of RealTime speakers included an Irish grocer, a socially responsible potter, and a pediatric physician, among others -- distinct characters who all shared one common message: This is your time to lead!...