Egg prices have been plummeting.
That’s great news for American shoppers, but bad news for American farmers.
The average price of a dozen eggs at the grocery store is $2.58, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s about half of what many consumers were paying a year ago.
Bird flocks have been on the rebound after last year’s avian flu outbreak, but that has farmers suddenly selling at a loss.
The next wave of tech devices may not have a screen. You might not realize that they’re recording you. And you might not even realize they’re tech gadgets at all.
Qualcomm, whose chips power smartphones from major Android device makers, launched a new chip Monday for new products along those lines. The company says it’s seeing growing interest from tech companies in devices that look like pendants, pins, glasses, and other discrete items worn on the body.
Tech companies are racing to predict whether AI’s popularity will result in a new hit product, similar to how the internet laid the foundation for the smartphone. Qualcomm’s chips power millions of devices from companies like Samsung, Motorola, Meta and many others, so its new commitment could be a sort of bellwether for the consumer tech world.
In 1957, an amateur archaeologist working at a Native American site in Maine discovered a perplexing treasure: a 900-year-old silver Norse coin that dated to the late Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066).
The artifact, sometimes called the “Maine Penny,” is now in the Maine State Museum. Its discovery has raised a number of questions — mainly, how did it get there, and does its presence in Maine mean the Viking reached the Pine Tree State?
The Vikings were expert seafarers with outposts from Ukraine to Canada, so it’s conceivable that they could have reached Maine. The Vikings and their descendants had colonies in Greenland that existed from the late 10th century to the 15th century. They also had an outpost at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland, Canada, that was in use during the 11th century.
Researchers at the Center for AI Safety and Scale AI have published “Humanity’s Last Exam” — a test designed to measure how close today’s most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) models are to meeting or exceeding human-level knowledge across several domains.
The test was launched in January 2025, but scientists outlined the framework and their thinking behind its design for the first time in a new study published Jan. 28 in the journal Nature. It contains a corpus of 2,500 questions across more than 100 subjects, with input from more than 1,000 subject-matter experts from 500 institutions across 50 countries.
The exam consists of multiple-choice and short-answer questions, each of which has a known solution that is “unambiguous and easily verifiable but cannot be quickly answered by internet retrieval.”
Established businesses with large funding and significant revenue have the budgets for marketing and advertising firms. Tiny companies, like a jewelry-making business that started in a garage or a clothing line based in someone’s bedroom, can’t always market the same way. However, many creative marketing options exist for businesses that sell handmade goods.
This guide offers tips for handmade businesses to help get the word out about artisanal products that many customers value over mass-produced goods.
1. Build your own website.
“Anyone who has aspirations of being successful selling their products online needs a website, period,” said Jonathan Peacock, founder of Zibbet. “When promoting your brand online, you need somewhere to send them. This must be a website that you own, not a marketplace store like Etsy.”
Insurance risk refers to the possibility of something going wrong that would expose your business – or the insurer – to financial damages. Business risk and insurance risk often overlap. By fully understanding the different types of business risk, you can better understand insurance risk and thus how insurance can protect your business from serious problems.
Here are the four main categories of risk to consider:
Operational: Operational risk addresses your business’s day-to-day dealings, including handling equipment, workers, customers, and your overall product or service. By insuring tangible assets like equipment and property, you can mitigate risk, and by protecting your business operations from outside events, like natural disasters, you’ll be covered.
You already sense it. The game has tilted toward collaboration as the new face of competition. A small business competing in isolation is like an individual bringing a knife to a gunfight, especially when big corporations have tanks and missiles.
In market after market, firms that once fought for inches now build lanes together, then race in them. The giants signpost the shift. Apple and Samsung are dueling for smartphone sales, while Samsung’s component arm supplies the OLED displays that make iPhones glow. This summer, they even expanded their partnership, and Samsung now supplies chips from a Texas factory for Apple’s iPhones. Apple and Google wrestle for mobile mindshare, yet Google pays Apple billions each year to be the default search engine on iPhone. The rivals compete in devices and services, while cooperating where both gain reach and revenue.
Scour LinkedIn jobs and you’re sure to come across half a dozen listings like the following: “Content Reviewer: Review AI content for clarity. Set your own hours.”
There are variations of these roles, but the deluge on job boards means one thing: training AI models is a real business. One World Economic Forum survey shows the fastest-growing skill in the marketplace is “AI and big data.”
Despite my initial hesitation about AI (I’m a writer, so I’ve had concerns about AI replacing my role), I decided to get on board with data annotation and AI data training. I’ve spent the last few months hopping from company to company, and I’d like to share an insider’s view of my experience.
Google’s Gemini app is stepping into the spotlight with its latest feature: enhanced audio verification capabilities that could significantly benefit small business owners. With a focus on responsible AI use, Gemini aims to streamline content creation while ensuring copyright compliance—a crucial balance in today’s digital landscape.
At the heart of this innovation is the integration of SynthID, Google’s imperceptible watermark that identifies AI-generated content across various media formats, including audio. For small business owners who rely on original content to promote their brands, this is an important tool. By uploading audio files into the Gemini app, users can now quickly verify whether the content was generated using Google AI, helping to prevent the unintentional use of copyrighted materials.
“This new verification feature helps creators know if their content is safe to use,” said a Google representative. “It broadens the capacities of the Gemini app and reinforces our commitment to responsible AI development.”
Small businesses are taking bold steps into 2026, choosing to increase their marketing budgets even amid economic uncertainty. A recent report from Constant Contact reveals that 68% of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) expect to boost their marketing expenditures to combat looming inflation, highlighting a resilient mindset in a challenging economic landscape.
Amidst ongoing concerns about rising costs—cited as the primary worry by 41% of small business owners—the data suggests a strategic pivot. Instead of retreating from marketing efforts, these entrepreneurs are gearing up to seize new opportunities. “Small business owners are entering 2026 with a clear directive: do more, but do it smarter,” said Smita Wadhawan, Chief Marketing Officer at Constant Contact. This insight underlines a collective shift in thinking about marketing as an essential investment rather than a discretionary expense.
The report shows that 74% of small business owners plan to invest more time in marketing strategies in 2026. With apprehension about economic pressures, the focus is on maximizing the effectiveness of both financial resources and time spent.
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