Paramount Global is cutting 3.5% of its U.S. workforce as customers switch away from traditional pay-TV bundles in today’s shifting media landscape and uncertain economy.
The latest round of layoffs come as the media giant prepares to merge with movie studio Skydance Media. Paramount Global parent company National Amusements and Skydance Media agreed to merge last July, but it is still waiting for regulatory approval.
Paramount, owns Paramount Pictures movie and television studios, Paramount+ streaming service, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, Comedy Central and the CBS television network, including CBS News.
Shares in Paramount Global (PARA) were trading up about 1% in late morning trading, at the time of this writing.
Here’s what to know.
What happened?
On Tuesday, Paramount’s co-CEOs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins notified staff of layoffs in a memo, which said the 90% of those impacted would be notified on Tuesday, according to CNBC.
Last August Paramount began the process of reducing its U.S.-based workforce by 15% after laying out a cost-cutting plan.
The layoffs are just the latest to hit the beleaguered media industry, which has seen staff cuts at Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, to name a few.
Paramount Global by the numbers
In Paramount Global’s latest round of earnings, for the first quarter of 2025, ending March 31st, 2025, the media company reported an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.29, missing analysts estimates; quarterly revenue of $7.19 billion, slightly beating analyst expectations of $7.14 billion; and forecast earnings would grow by 54.67% next year, from $2.25 to $3.48 per share.
The company is next slated to report Q2 earnings in early August.
Since Friday, protests over immigration raids have erupted across Los Angeles. The demonstrations escalated after President Trump deployed the National Guard into the city on Saturday. Troops used aggressive tactics to disperse the rallies, including firing rubber bullets, using flash-bang stun grenades, and spraying tear gas into the crowds. The photographs emerging from the weekend are unsettling.
An unlikely symbol of whats happening in the city has emerged in images of protesters near Gloria Molina Grand Park taking cover behind hot pink benches, chairs, and tables. Demonstrators frequently use whats available around them as barricades, and often thats street furniture: trash cans, benches, construction signsanything that can be picked up and moved. But those hot pink seats tell an L.A.specific story of the conflict at hand.
[Photo: Apu Gomes/Getty Images]
Designed by the architecture firm Rios, Grand Park has been at the center of the pro-immigrant demonstrations. It is adjacent to Los Angeless City Hall and just a few blocks away from the Metropolitan Detention Center, a site where protesters gathered and where ICE is holding its detainees. The park itself was designed to represent Los Angeless multicultural population and to be a park for everyone.
Rios was adamant that the public space feature movable seatinglike in New Yorks Bryant Park and Pariss Luxembourg Gardensso that visitors had flexibility in how they used it (aside from sleeping on them), so they designed a custom collection to meet those needs.
The furniture is made from powder-coated aluminum, and the hot pink color nods to the hue of the flowers that grow in equatorial countries, where many of the citys residents have roots, and to the bougainvillea vines found throughout the city. When the park opened 11 years ago, it was furnished with hundreds of these pieces, more specifically 26 freestanding benches, 41 wall-mounted benches, 120 cafe tables, and 240 cafe chairs, all made by the Southern California manufacturer Janus et Cie.
Grand Molina Park, ca. 2012. [Photo: Channone Arif/Flickr]
The park is a place for people to come together and find community, says Andy Lantz, the co-CEO and creative director of Rios. This idea of being able to reconfigure the use of the space with movable furniture was fundamental to making it a park for all.
In the years since it opened, the park has become the gathering place Rios intended, hosting weekend dance parties, morning yoga classes, food trucks, and political rallies. The community-focused nature of the space represents whats at risk because of the raids. Angelenos are worried about their friends and neighbors and are doing what they can to protect their communities and civic values. Amid this context, the furniture found a new use to provide security and protection.
While endless configurations was part of the furniture design brief, Lantz never imagined what that might mean in the context of a demonstration. He experienced a flood of emotion when he first saw photographs of protesters using the powder-coated aluminum furniture as a shield. The benches, which are about six feet long and weigh 70 pounds, have just the right dimensions to cover a human body when propped on its side; a chair, which weighs about 25 pounds, can be held up by its wire frame and crouched behind. I’ve looked at [the photos] multiple times todayI’ve been proud, I’ve been upset, I’ve been startled, he says. Seeing our work repurposed in a moment of collective action was humbling and powerful.
Since Grand Park opened, Rios has used the Civic collection of street furniture in parks it designed in Palm Springs and Houston, among other cities. Bright blue editions are also present in New Yorks Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Lantz wonders if the events that happened over the last few days in L.A. will inspire designers to think about the parks they make in new ways. As designers, do you need to start thinking of public space as defensible for these types of actions? he says. It seems that the design brief for street furniture just got a lot more complicated.
June 14 is shaping up to be a big day, with millions of Americans expected to take to the streets in an event dubbed “No Kings Day,” which organizers have said will likely be the largest single-day turnout of the anti-Trump, pro-democracy protest movement since President Donald Trump took office for a second term in January.
Organizers expect 1,800 rallies will take place on Saturday for “a nationwide day of defiance” in every state and major city across the countryexcept Washington, D.C., as to avoid clashes with the Army’s 250th anniversary celebrations, which will be held that day in the nation’s capital (more on that below).
In a statement to Fast Company, the No Kings organizers described their event as “peaceful, organized, and united.” They added: “Make it clear: We dont do kings in this country.”
The No Kings website further explains: “From city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, we’re taking action to reject authoritarianismand show the world what democracy really looks like . . . On June 14th, were showing up everywhere he [Trump] isntto say no thrones, no crowns, no kings.”
The No Kings protest is sponsored by Indivisible and a broad coalition of over 180 partner organizations, including: the ACLU, Common Cause, Greenpeace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Standing Up for Science, and a number of unions, including the Communication Workers of America and teacher federations.
“Even conservative estimates say that 3.5 million people turned out for the Hands Off mobilization on April 5,” Indivisible’s Ezra Levin told Fast Company. “No Kings [in the U.S] is on track to exceed that by millions more . . . With events [in] red states, blue states, purple states, rural areas, suburban areas, urban areas, United States, North America, Europe, South Americawere all over.”
The anti-authoritarian, pro-democracy protests aim to counter President Trump’s multimillion-dollar military parade in Washington, D.C., that day to celebrate the Armys 250th anniversary, which will be held on Trumps 79th birthday, which is also Flag Day.
According to the Associated Press, Trump has long wanted a military parade, which is expected to feature 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles, and 50 helicopters on a route from Arlington, Virginia to the National Mall, where there will be a fireworks display.
The Army initially estimated that the cost for the day’s birthday celebrations, including the parade, would range from $25 million to $45 million, with the cost now looking closer to $40 million, according to USA Today. The celebrations come at a time when the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has slashed budgets and jobs at federal agencies, including the Defense Department, per the AP.
The parade’s enormous price tag has further angered many Americans and Trump critics already fed up by the president’s overall mishandling of the economy from tariffs to immigration, which has been dubbed the TACO presidency, for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
Apple has killed the future of computing. With iPadOS 26, it turned the dream of computing visionaries like Alan Kay and Jef Raskin (and of Steve Jobs and Jony Ive, too) into an overpriced touchscreen MacBook with an optional keyboard.
Back when it launched in 2010, the iPad was meant to be the escape hatch from the cluttered, file-strewn, window-management hellscape of traditional computing. It was the ultimate expression of Kay’s Dynabook, a book-like device that was mostly screen. Kay, a legendary Xerox PARC computer scientist, imagined that the Dynabook would democratize access to computers without people having to learn arcane coding languages.
Today, though, the iPad has become a cluttered compromise. Apple has transformed the iPadOS into MacOS with some touch UX details. Now you can make apps run in windows that can overlap each other, just like the way you can run many iOS and iPad apps in the Mac. There are menus and submenus too, which run across the top of the screen in some apps, just like the Mac (but, unlike the Mac, they are not a permanent UX element, appearing and disappearing depending of the app you are running). Windows can tile, turning it into a finger-clickable oversize pop-up window.
[Image: Apple]
The power of modal UX
Apple believes that all this brings more power to the user. I would argue that it detracts from it, like Raskin discovered while developing the first Macintosh computer before Jobs took it away from him in 1981. He was a computer engineer, artist, writer, and human interface expert, who originally advocated leaving the command line interface for computers with a single purpose that anyone could use without training, like a toaster or an immersion blender in the real world. These information appliances would have the right buttons, software, and network connectivity to perform specific tasks effortlessly. Raskin envisioned them becoming invisible to userspart of their daily life.
Eventually, he realized that having one gadget for each task was impractical. His answer was the mouse and graphical user interfaces, which he believed could bring computing a bit closer to his original idea. A computer could have programs focused on specialized taskslike word processors, painting programs, or a calculatorwith specialized interfaces designed so people could understand them intuitively.
He started the Macintosh project at Apple in 1979, hiring legends like Bill Atkinson, the father of the menu bar and countless other fundamental graphic UX elements (who sadly recently passed away), Andy Hertzfeld, the main architect of the Mac’s system software, and Burrell Smith, who created the Mac’s hardware. He brought on other luminaries like Steve Capps (who later helmed the Newton project, the origin of the iPhone and the iPad), Bruce Horn (who created the Finder), and Susan Kare (who designed all the Mac’s icons and made all things wonderful in the pixel world), and they went on a mission to realize Raskin’s vision.
Their genius ushered in the second computing revolution. And yet, the Mac wasnt the solution Raskin had in mind. It required users to manage files and windows. It required them to learn conventions and navigate through menus, even if it was orders of magnitude more intuitive than the command line. Soon, it got too complicatedand still is to this day. No matter how many clean-up attempts Apple has tried, it’s fundamentally too complex.
It wasnt until the iPhone and touchscreens that Raskins idea materialized thanks to apps that turned to the phone into a specialize device for each task. Later, the iPad became the ultimate expression of that powerful idea. It embodied Raskins core philosophy: an immersive device focused and modal, that could transform instantly into the tool you neededa sketchpad, a typewriter, a comic book reader, a video editor. Billions of people around the planet instantly got it. One app, full screen, your mind uncluttered. The complexity was hidden; its purpose was clear.
The iPad was, as I wrote back for Gizmodo when it came out, the future. It wasnt perfect by any means, but it had the potential to become the ultimate computing device. Years later, I changed my Mac for an iPad Pro. I loved it. The iPad put me in the zone and minimized distraction. I used it exclusively for several years and only changed to a Macbook Air because I needed to use Premiere for new projects.
[Image: Apple]
A squandered golden opportunity
Which brings me back to iPadOS 26 and trying to understand its very existence. Fifteen years after Apple first introduced the iPad as a new form of computing we’ve landed back on the Mac. The company that once championed simplicity against the tyranny of overlapping windows and nested menus has now bolted those things onto the iPad. With iPadOS 26 the iPad is not a truly liberated information appliance anymore, free from desktop baggage. And its certainly not a full-fledged Macas it still lacks the power-user features, the robust file system, and the sheer flexibility of macOS.
We didnt need a decade and a half to arrive at a mediocre compromise. If Apple had truly lost faith in the iPads unique visionthe vision that differentiated itthey should have had the guts to kill it. Just kill the damn thing and make a MacBook Air with a detachable keybard. Go ahead. Slap touchscreens on every Mac in the line and call it a day. Just dont make an iPad thats less than it was meant to be, clumsily aping the thing it was supposed to replace.
Perhaps clinging to the original idea of a new computing paradigm is an untenable idea. But this compromise feels particularly bad right now, right at the very moment where theres a clear window of opportunity for Apple.
Maybe the iPad should have gone totally away from the Mac and doubled down on AI. Maybe the iPad was already in the right place to become the true future of computing. It was a blank canvas. The right opportunity to reimagine computing around AI, to make it useful in a more natural way that is not constrained by the size of the iPhone (which I still think is the only true AI device, just too small to be useful for many things).
And no, I don’t know what that looks like. That’s why Apple’s UX designers get paid. What I do know is Apple might have squandered its chance to create a completely new AI-based computer user experience.
While the world and private enterprise are adopting AI rapidly in their workflows, government isnt far behind. The U.K. government has said early trials of AI-powered productivity tools can shave two weeks of labor off a years work, and AI companies are adapting to that need. More than 1,700 AI use cases have been recorded in the U.S. government, long before Elon Musks DOGE entered the equation and accelerated AI adoption throughout the public sector. Federal policies introduced in April on AI adoption and procurement have pushed this trend further.
Its unsurprising that big tech companies are rolling out their own specialist models to meet that demand. Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, announced last week a series of models tailored for use by government employees. These include features such as the ability to handle classified materials and understand some of the bureaucratic language that plagues official documents. Anthropic has said its models are already deployed by agencies at the highest level of U.S. national security, and access to these models is limited to those who operate in such classified environments.
The announcement follows a similar one by OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, which released its own government-tailored AI models in January to streamline government agencies access to OpenAIs frontier models.
But AI experts worry about governments becoming overly reliant on AI models, which can hallucinate information, inherit biases that discriminate against certain groups at scale, or steer policy in misguided directions. They also express concern over governments being locked into specific providers, who may later increase prices that taxpayers would be left to fund.
I worry about governments using this kind of technology and relying on tech companies, and in particular, tech companies who have proven to be quite untrustworthy, says Carissa Véliz, who researches AI ethics at the University of Oxford. She points out that the generative AI revolution so far, sparked by the November 2022 release of ChatGPT, has seen governments scrambling to retrofit rules and regulations in areas such as copyright to accommodate tech companies after theyve bent those rules. It just shows a power relationship there that doesnt look good for government, says Véliz. Government is supposed to be the legislator, the one making the rules and enforcing the rules.
Beyond those moral concerns, she also worries about the financial stakes involved. Theres just a sheer dependency on a company that has financial interests, that is based in a different country, in a situation in which geopolitics is getting quite complicated, says Véliz, explaining why countries outside the United States might hesitate to sign on to use ClaudeGov or ChatGPT Gov. Its the same argument the U.S. uses about overreliance on TikTok, which has Chinese ties, amid fears that figures like Donald Trump could pressure U.S.-based firms to act in politically motivated ways.
OpenAI didn’t respond to Fast Company‘s request for comment. A spokesperson for Anthropic says the company is committed to transparency, citing published work on model risks, a detailed system card, and collaborations with the U.S. and U.K. governments to test AI systems.
Some fear that AI companies are securing those big DoD bucks, as programmer Ashe Dryden put it on Mastodon, and could perpetuate that revenue by fostering dependency on their specific models. The rollout of these models reflects broader shifts in the tech landscape that increasingly tie government, national security, and technology together. For example, defense tech firm Anduril recently raised $5 billion in a new funding round that values the company at over $30 billion.
Others have argued that the release of these government-specific models by AI companies isnt [about] national security. This is narrative laundering, as one LinkedIn commenter put it. The idea is that these moves echo the norms already set by big government rather than challenging them, potentially reinforcing existing issues.
I’ve always been a sceptic of a single supplier for IT services, and this is no exception, says Andres Guadamuz, an AI researcher at the University of Sussex. Guadamuz believes the development of government-specific AI models is still in its early phase, and urges decision-makers to pause before signing deals. Governments should keep their options open, he says. Particularly with a crowded AI market, large entities such as the government can have a better negotiating position.
This year has not been kind to retailers in terms of store closures. But brick-and-mortar shops are not the only retail category that has experienced a decline in 2025. Banks are closing retail locations, too.
One of Americas largest regional banks, Flagstar, closed 24 branch locations on May 30. The closures come after the banks parent company, Flagstar Financial, announced in January that it would be shuttering 60 branches this year. Heres what you need to know about the latest Flagstar branch closures.
Whats happened?
On May 30, Flagstar shut 24 bank branches for good, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which is an independent bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The OCC regulates national banks in the United States.
In its weekly bulletin for the period from May 25 to May 30, 2025, the OCC says that 24 Flagstar Bank branches were closed. However, the closures did not come as a surprise, as the company announced in January that it would shutter 60 branches.
As Banking Dive previously reported, Flagstar Financial announced it would close the locations in an effort to consolidate its retail footprint and cut $600 million in operating costs from its balance sheet by the end of the year.
Running physical locations incurs significant operating costs, and as more people turn to online banking first and try to avoid visiting branches if possible, those branches are used less, leading to a reduced return on investment for banks.
Which Flagstar Bank branches have closed?
According to the OCC, 24 Flagstar Bank branches closed on May 30. The branch closures impact locations in five states: Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Ohio.
New York saw the most Flagstar Bank branches close in this round, with nine locations shutting down. Michigan and New Jersey saw six locations each shutter. Indiana saw two close and Ohio one.
Fast Company reached out to Flagstar for comment and to ask if additional closings are expected.
Here are the locations of the closed branches in each state.
Indiana
5770 COVENTRY LANE FORT WAYNE IN
2926 MISHAWAKA AVENUE SOUTH BEND IN
Michigan
210 WEST HURON STREET ANN ARBOR MI
29049 JOY ROAD WESTLAND MI
914 CHARLEVOIX DRIVE GRAND LEDGE MI
4675 32ND AVENUE HUDSONVILLE MI
5151 CORPORATE DRIVE TROY MI
500 WOODWARD AVENUE, Detroit, MI
New Jersey
949 BROADWAY BAYONNE NJ
142 BROAD STREET ELIZABETH NJ
36 FERRY STREET NEWARK NJ
198 JEFFERSON STREET NEWARK NJ
2624 MORRIS AVENUE UNION NJ
133 S. LIVINGSTON AVENUE LIVINGSTON NJ
New York
30TH AVENUE, ASTORIA, NY
625 ATLANTIC AVENUE BROOKLYN NY
102 DUFFY AVENUE HICKSVILLE NY
1608 KINGS HIGHWAY HOMECREST (BKLYN) NY
66-77 FRESH POND ROAD RIDGEWOOD NY
65-30 KISSENA BLVD. FLUSHING NY
509 OLD COUNTRY ROAD PLAINVIEW NY
194-02 NORTHERN BOULEVARD FLUSHING NY
100 JERICHO QUADRANGLE JERICHO NY
Ohio
ONE NORTH HAWKINS AVE. AKRON OH
Flagstar’s stock price soars since closure announcement
While many people prefer the ease and convenience of online banking, closures of physical bank branches can still have a negative impact on communities and certain groups of individuals.
This is particularly true for older individuals who may not be as adept at using the internet or app-based banking, or who may simply prefer to visit a physical branch location to discuss their banking needs with a representative.
Still, financial companies looking to cut costs often turn to branch closures as the quickest way to do so (that, and employee layoffs). And investors in those banks generally react favorably to those types of moves.
Indeed, since Flagstar announced in January that it would close 60 branches, the companys stock price (NYSE: FLG) has soared. At the start of the year, FLG stock was trading in the $9 range. But by the end of January, after the company announced the branch closures, FLG stock jumped to nearly $12 per share.
Year-to-date, FLG stock is currently up over 27% as of the time of this writing. On April 25, Flagstar Financial announced its Q1 2025 earnings, in which the company revealed that its operating expenses declined 22% year-over-year.
The company says that as of March 31, Flagstar Bank held $97.6 billion in total assets, $73.9 billion in total deposits, and operated approximately 400 locations. Its online branch locator tool shows that as of today, there are 363 Flagstar Bank locations in the United States.
The U.S. and China held a second day of talks Tuesday in London aimed at easing their trade dispute, after President Donald Trump said China is “not easy” but the U.S. was “doing well” at the negotiations.A Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng met U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer for several hours on Monday at Lancaster House, an ornate 200-year-old mansion near Buckingham Palace.Wang Wentao, China’s commerce minister, and trade negotiator Li Chenggang are also in Beijing’s delegation.Lutnick said as he arrived Tuesday morning that the talks were “going well,” and he expected them to continue all day.Asked late Monday how the negotiations were going, Trump told reporters: “We are doing well with China. China’s not easy.”The two sides are trying to build on negotiations in Geneva last month that agreed to a 90-day suspension of most of the 100%-plus tariffs they had imposed on each other in an escalating trade war that had sparked fears of recession.Since the Geneva talks, the U.S. and China have exchanged angry words over advanced semiconductors that power artificial intelligence, visas for Chinese students at American universities and rare earth minerals that are vital to carmakers and other industries.Trump spoke at length with Chinese leader Xi Jinping by phone last Thursday in an attempt to put relations back on track. Trump announced on social media the following day that the trade talks would resume in London.China, the world’s biggest producer of rare earths, has signaled it may ease export restrictions it placed on the elements in April, alarming automakers around the world who rely on them. Beijing, in turn, wants the U.S. to lift restrictions on Chinese access to the technology used to make advanced semiconductors.Trump said that he wants to “open up China,” the world’s dominant manufacturer, to U.S. products.“If we don’t open up China, maybe we won’t do anything,” Trump said at the White House. “But we want to open up China.”
Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this story.
Jill Lawless, Associated Press
The hit 1962 song Up on the Roof reminds listeners that when the world is getting you down, at night the stars put on a show for free.
While not expressly stated in Carole King and Gerry Goffins lyrics, it’s implied that the moon gets in on the action and romance as well.
About once a month, the night sky takes things to the next level with a full moon. Junes offering, which is nicknamed the Strawberry Moon by the Old Farmers Almanac, is extra special for those in the Western Hemisphere because its peak will be at its lowest in almost 20 years thanks to a major lunar standstill. Lets break down the science of it all before we discuss how best to view the nighttime spectacular.
Strawberry Moon: What’s in a name?
The origin of the Strawberry Moon nickname comes from Native American culture and has nothing to do with the appearance of the full moon. The Algonquian, Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota people used the moniker because that’s when the delicious summertime fruit is ripening and ready to be picked. This year, because of the moons low position and the wildfires in Canada, the orb might actually have a pinkish tint.
Why is the full moon so low this month?
The Strawberry Moon is always low because of the time of year. The orb is always opposite the sun and Junes full moon takes place around the same time as the summer solstice, when the sun is at its highest point.This year it is even lower because of a recent major lunar standstill. The Earth orbits the sun and the moon orbits the Earth, but in different planes. This 5 degree tilt impacts the appearance of the moon in the night sky. Every 18.6 years, this tilt goes through a cycle of change.
When the moon is in the highest or lowest periods of this cycle, it is called a major lunar standstill.
When is the best time to see the Strawberry Moon?
The Strawberry Moon will reach peak illumination at 3:43 a.m. on Wednesday, June 11. If that seems too early, never fear, you can catch it this evening (Tuesday, June 10) and it will already appear full to the naked eye. Theres no need to lose any sleep.
In fact, thanks to the moon illusionthe phenomenon that makes the orb seem bigger near the horizon because our brains compare it to nearby objects, such as trees and buildingsit is better to view it when it is rising:
If you are in New York City, this takes place at 8:26 p.m ET
Moon watchers in Los Angeles should look up at 8:05 p.m. PT.
To find out when the moonrise occurs in your city, use this handy tool from TimeandDate.
Once you know the optimal time, head up on a roof, preferably away from city lights and enjoy the show. Your cares might just drift right into space like King and Goffin promised.
Apple is calling it the biggest redesign in history. Starting this fall, iOS, MacOS, iPadOS, and WatchOS will all be unified under a single design paradigm for the first time: What Apple is calling Liquid Glass.Introduced this week at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Liquid Glass is a highly articulated reskin of iOS and its other software, intentionally launching with feature parity to not rock the boat and leaving hundreds of millions of customers unsure of how to use their phones. In the future, its more of a question mark. Its a UX framework that can be exactly as ambitious as Apple chooses to be.What is Liquid Glass?The basic idea behind Liquid Glass is this: Instead of the opaque windows and menu bars weve grown accustomed to for years, Apple products will be united through an amorphous glass-like interface. Everything from your app dock in iOS and MacOS, the play/pause controls of Apple Music, and the URL bar in Safari to the oversized digits telling time on your phone and the widgets on your desktop, will all be some level of clear.[Image: Apple]The most overt of the updates comes in the form of a new magnifier and slider, which now seem to pop off your screen and bend the text and images underneath like a water droplet. Most of the other updates are more subtle. Turn your phone in your hand, and the new glass app icons appear to catch light around the edges.[Image: Apple]Students of design will know that this is not the first time a big company has introduced transparency as a UX modalitynor even the first time that Apple has done so. The idea traces back to at least 2000 on Apple desktops with its Aqua interface. Aqua was like a digital manifestation of Apples semi-transparent computers at the time (ooh those candy colored iMacs). Apple guru John Gruber reminded me at WWDC that the processor-intensive transparency chugged slowly on those computers for years until they were smoothed out. Microsoft introduced the idea in Windows Vista not long thereafter. And since, it seems that every big tech company from Google (with its interface-as-real-object Material Design standards) to Meta (with its cutting edge augmented reality Orion glasses) has at least flirted with the idea of transparent interfaces.Most recently, Apple used light-catching transparency for the menus of Vision Pro as a means to merge the UI with the environment. Apple confirms that Vision Pro was the inspiration behind extending that metaphor across its devices.[Image: Apple]Trying Liquid GlassIts hard not to acknowledge a certain dichotomy behind the interface. On one hand, it calls attention to itself with gee-whiz animations. (And gosh, its magnifier really is one of the singularly best-rendered UI elements Ive ever seenso much so that it dwarfs the articulation of the rest of the UI.) On the other, its all just glass, so its inherently about disappearing to make way for the other stuff you see: namely your photos, wallpapers, and whatever other media youre pulling up on your screen. Apple has leaned into more customized UI for years. Now, its trying to be the lens through which you view the world.[Image: Apple]I was able to see Liquid Glass working across several devices. For the most part, the glass looks good. However, there are times that a glass menu bar feels muddled with color-heavy medialike that cover art in your Apple Music library. Often, but not always, Apple adjusts to such issues by cross fading the glass between a light mode and dark mode, much like a transition lens. That can feel like a solution to its own problem. But in other momentslike the airier keyboard spanning across the iPad screenits refreshing to get some of your screen back as youre literally less boxed in.Its why I think the most earnest assessment of the updates may have come from Craig Federighi, SVP of software engineering at Apple, when he said during the WWDC keynote that transparency gives the sensation of making your screen appear larger. It does. It basically allows any UI tidbit to feel more like the dynamic island on the top of your iPhone. Instead of cutting your screen off in a straight line, it floats as a little bubble that can grow larger or smaller as you need it. Safari now has a full bleed edge-to-edge web browser with a floating clear URL bar. In this sense, the update feels like a lot of work to give your phone a tiny bit more not-so-functional real estate. But once you see a bigger screen, its hard to accept a smaller one. Its a major reason that, practicality be damned, our phones keep getting bigger. If Apple UI can squeeze another 1 milimeter out of your screen size through software, I imagine that it will feel claustrophobic to go back.[Image: Apple]Where will Liquid Glass take us? The problem with Liquid Glass today is that, beyond a few minor UI tricks, it doesnt do anything new. The public is waiting for Apple to articulate how AI will add meaning in our livesand instead we got a buncha glass. Functionally speaking, Liquid Glass is less significant than the new desktop-inspired windows on iPadOS, which ostensibly turns the iPad into a Mac. I suspect he last major update to the iPhone design language (when iOS 7 shifted to airy sans serifs from its skeuomorphic roots) will feel like a bigger design jump to most people who can remember.One lauded designer friend calls the design update masturbation, while another dubbed it as superficial with no thought. A techie friend dubbed the whole event the worst WWDC ever. To be fair, Liquid Glass really is a mostly superficial update. Theres no significant new functionality added. Its a luxe reskin. Apple says thats by designthat its meant to feel new but familiar, to ease the countless customers across the globe into a new design language without disrupting day-to-day life.No, thats not the most reassuring sentiment from the greatest consumer hardware company in historythat its taking something of a slow and steady evolution to design more akin to auto manufacturing than OS design. However, I can get behind Liquid Glass version one as craft for crafts sake: the height of making a UI feel one with its environment. [Image: Apple]Ill admit some disappointment that Liquid Glasss specular (shiny) effects on the corner of app icons and other UI elements dont actually react to light. These effects are pulled from the turn of your accelerometer rather than reacting to the real lighting sources in your environment. I get that most people probably cant tell, though I suspect their limbic systems could note a difference. And I get that my alternative may be a ridiculous ask that would take even more processing power (and battery life) from your phone. But its also the very premise behind visionOSan operating system that responds to your lighting environment to feel like one and the same thing. Part of me feels like, okay Apple, if were doing thisreally doing this visionOS and reactive glass is the future of everything ideathen lets use real physics. Lets push the boundaries of tangibility to new heights. Make it all real.That high bar aside, where I agree with Apple is what this enables in terms of longer-term strategy. Liquid Glass is a metaphor that feels primed for any permutation of AI or mixed reality that they might build in the future. Its easy to imagine Liquid Glass for something as radical as generative interfaces. In this sense, its a remarkable hedged bet that sets a foundation for a lot of possibilities over the next decade. And in the meantime, all of us simpletons in the flyover states will just feel like their phones just got a teeny bit bigger.I truthfully dont think we can judge Liquid Glass today, and to some extent, I dont know that we can this fall when it arrives on our devices. Its a material metaphor that Apple has introduced but not really tappedand looking at ambitions from competitors like Meta, it may be a UI approach that Apple cant even own. Well only know in two to five years if, in this impossibly exciting era, the wonder glass takes us somewhere new.And in that regard, its an apt metaphor for Apple, too.
It was an unusual question coming from a police officer. Heather Brady was napping at home in San Francisco on a Sunday afternoon when the officer knocked on her door to ask: Had she applied to Arizona Western College?She had not, and as the officer suspected, somebody else had applied to Arizona community colleges in her name to scam the government into paying out financial aid money.When she checked her student loan servicer account, Brady saw the scammers hadn’t stopped there. A loan for over $9,000 had been paid out in her namebut to another personfor coursework at a California college.“I just can’t imagine how many people this is happening to that have no idea,” Brady said.The rise of artificial intelligence and the popularity of online classes have led to an explosion of financial aid fraud. Fake college enrollments have been surging as crime rings deploy “ghost students”chatbots that join online classrooms and stay just long enough to collect a financial aid check.In some cases, professors discover almost no one in their class is real. Students get locked out of the classes they need to graduate as bots push courses over their enrollment limits. And victims of identity theft who discover loans fraudulently taken out in their names must go through months of calling colleges, the Federal Student Aid office and loan servicers to try to get the debt erased.On Friday, the U.S. Education Department introduced a temporary rule requiring students to show colleges a government-issued ID to prove their identity. It will apply only to first-time applicants for federal student aid for the summer term, affecting some 125,000 borrowers. The agency said it is developing more advanced screening for the fall.“The rate of fraud through stolen identities has reached a level that imperils the federal student aid program,” the department said in its guidance to colleges.
Public colleges have lost millions of dollars to fraud
An Associated Press analysis of fraud reports obtained through a public records request shows California colleges in 2024 reported 1.2 million fraudulent applications, which resulted in 223,000 suspected fake enrollments. Other states are affected by the same problem, but with 116 community colleges, California is a particularly large target.Criminals stole at least $11.1 million in federal, state and local financial aid from California community colleges last year that could not be recovered, according to the reports.Colleges typically receive a portion of the loans intended for tuition, with the balance going directly to students for other expenses. Community colleges are targeted in part because their lower tuition means larger percentages of grants and loans go to borrowers.Scammers frequently use AI chatbots to carry out the fraud, targeting courses that are online and allow students to watch lectures and complete coursework on their own time.In January, Wayne Chaw started getting emails about a class he never signed up for at De Anza Community College, where he had taken coding classes a decade earlier. Identity thieves had obtained his Social Security number and collected $1,395 in financial aid in his name.The energy management class required students to submit a homework assignment to prove they were real. But someone wrote submissions impersonating Chaw, likely using a chatbot.“This person is typing as me, saying my first and last name. . . . It’s very freaky when I saw that,” said Chaw.The fraud involved a grant, not loans, so Chaw himself did not lose money. He called the Social Security Administration to report the identity theft, but after five hours on hold, he never got through to a person.As the Trump administration moves to dismantle the Education Department, federal cuts may make it harder to catch criminals and help victims of identity theft. In March, the Trump administration fired more than 300 people from the Federal Student Aid office, and the department’s Office of Inspector General, which investigates fraud, has lost more than 20% of its staff through attrition and retirements since October.“I’m just nervous that I’m going to be stuck with this,” Brady said. “The agency is going to be so broken down and disintegrated that I won’t be able to do anything, and I’m just going to be stuck with those $9,000” in loans.Criminal cases around the country offer a glimpse of the schemes’ pervasiveness.In the past year, investigators indicted a man accused of leading a Texas fraud ring that used stolen identities to pursue $1.5 million in student aid. Another person in Texas pleaded guilty to using the names of prison inmates to apply for over $650,000 in student aid at colleges across the South and Southwest. And a person in New York recently pleaded guilty to a $450,000 student aid scam that lasted a decade.Identify fraud victims who never attended college are hit with student debtBrittnee Nelson of Shreveport, Louisiana, was bringing her daughter to day care two years ago when she received a notification that her credit score had dropped 27 points.Loans had been taken out in her name for colleges in California and Louisiana, she discovered. She canceled one before it was paid out, but it was too late to stop a loan of over $5,000 for Delgado Community College in New Orleans.Nelson runs her own housecleaning business and didn’t go to college. She already was signed up for identity theft protection and carefully monitored her credit. Still, her debt almost went into collections before the loan was put in forbearance. She recently got the loans taken off her record after two years of effort.“It’s like if someone came into your house and robbed you,” she said.The federal government’s efforts to verify borrowers’ identity could help, she said.“If they can make these hurdles a little bit harder and have these verifications more provable, I think that’s really, really, really going to protect people in the long run,” she said.Delgado spokesperson Barbara Waiters said responsibility for approving loans ultimately lies with federal agencies.“This is an unfortunate and serious matter, but it is not the direct or indirect result of Delgado’s internal processes,” Waiters said.In San Francisco, the loans taken out in Brady’s name are in a grace period, but still on the books. That has not been her only challenge. A few months ago, she was laid off from her job and decided to sign up for a class at City College San Francisco to help her career. But all the classes were full.After a few weeks, Brady finally was able to sign up for a class. The professor apologized for the delay in spots opening up: The college has been struggling with fraudulent applications.
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Sharon Lurye, AP Education Writer
