Welcome back to our Sunday edition, a roundup of some of our top stories. Pet owners spent an estimated $3.9 billion on pet insurance in 2023. You'll want to read this before buying it for Kitty and Flopsy.
Hundreds of millions of people turn to Google each day to get their questions answered.
How Google finds, categorizes, and ranks that information is constantly evolving. An entire industry has developed to help those who want to show up on the first page of search results.
In the past, some users might have noticed subtle changes from time to time: a result seems better tailored to their needs, or is delivered that little bit quicker. For most, these tweaks might pass them by.
Not anymore.
From the sharp shift towards showcasing Reddit and similar platforms to the bumpy rollout out of the generative search experience, Google is transforming itself before our eyes.
What's clear: Google's efforts to disrupt itself are already having a profound impact on the information ecosystem. We're all in on the ride.
Andrej Sokolow/Getty Images; F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI
Amazon's chip ambitions
Amazon is struggling to compete with Nvidia's dominance over AI chips — and it's another sign of how far behind it is in the generative-AI race.
Low usage, "compatibility gaps," and project-migration issues are putting millions of dollars in cloud revenue at risk, according to confidential internal documents and people familiar with the situation.
Fewer American men than ever are working right now, and unemployment insurance may be at least partially to blame.
The way firings are handled might affect whether guys get hired in the first place. If you are going to get taxed for employees that get laid off, you're going to be a lot more hesitant about hiring.
Fixed-rate mortgages guarantee homeowners will pay the same amount each month for decades. But when mortgage rates shoot up, they can also prevent homeowners from selling.
In Denmark, sellers are able to earn a profit when they trade in their low mortgage rates for more expensive ones, making it easier to move even when rates rise. This helps keep the housing market from locking up — and is something America can learn from.
Vivek Ramaswamy has a plan for BuzzFeed. There's just one problem.
The Insider Today team: Matt Turner, deputy editor-in-chief, in New York. Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York.
Trash balloon sent by North Korea into South Korea
South Korea Defense MInistry/AP
North Korea floated another 720 trash-filled balloons into South Korea, local reports said.
Pyongyang says it is retaliation for activists sending anti-North Korean leaflets across the border.
Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, called the balloons "sincere presents."
North Korea launched another 720 balloons across its border with South Korea Saturday night, carrying plastic bags full of cigarette butts, scraps of cloth, and waste paper.
Pyongyang says it was retaliation for activists sending anti-North Korean leaflets and USB drives containing K-pop music across the border.
South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said 720 balloons carrying trash were floated into the country, while Reuters quoted a figure of 600.
Since last Tuesday, North Korea has sent up between 850 and almost 1,000 balloons across the demilitarized zone, spreading trash in the capital Seoul and other parts of the country.
The trash balloons adds to a recent series of provocative steps by North Korea, including its failed spy satellite launch on Monday and a barrage of short-range missile launches on Thursday seen as an attempt to demonstrate the country's ability to preemptively strike its neighbor.
The South Korean military advised citizens not to touch the balloons, warning of possible danger, said the Yonhap News Agency.
The government in Seoul sent text alerts informing the public that unidentified objects from North Korea had been detected in the skies above the city and that the military was responding to them, per the Associated Press.
Balloons hang on utility poles.
Jeonbuk Fire Headquarters via AP
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo on Sunday denounced North Korea's launch of trash balloons as a "depraved provocation," adding that such actions were "unacceptable to the international community," said the Yonhap News Agency.
"The government will deal with them calmly, focusing on securing national safety," Han said.
Sung Tae-yoon, director of national policy in the presidential office, said, "North Korea's ballistic missile provocations, GPS jamming, and trash balloons harm our people and threaten our security."
Balloons with trash sent by North Korea into South Korea South Chungcheong Province, South Korea, on Wednesday, May 29, 2024.
South Korea Defense Ministry/AP
South Korea's military deployed chemical rapid response and explosive clearance teams to recover debris from approximately 260 North Korean balloons discovered across the country on Tuesday night.
According to the military, this first barrage of balloons contained manure but no hazardous substances such as chemical, biological, or radioactive materials.
South Korea's defense ministry confirmed the presence of fertilizer to NBC News, not human excrement, which earlier reports had speculated — though the outlet said human feces were sent by North Korea in 2016.
Some of the balloons were equipped with timers, suggesting that they were intended to release the trash in midair, AP reported.
Libby Brooks wanted to move out of her parents' house, so she started budgeting.
The 50/30/20 method worked for a while, but she found it didn't allow her to pay off her debts.
Switching to the 50/20/20/10 method gave her more ability to work toward financial goals.
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Libby Brooks, 27, who lives in Wisconsin, about her budgeting journey. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I began to budget after college when I had a significant amount of zeros in my bank account I hadn't had before.
I started my first post-college job in January 2020 as a project manager in the power generation industry. The starting salary was $65,000. I previously worked as a bartender and waitress during college, so it was a salary jump.
When I started the role, I lived at home with my parents, so my expenses were low, and my disposable income was high. When COVID hit, I tended to shop online, overspending on clothes. I wasn't taking inventory of the things I was buying or thinking about whether I actually needed them.
My behavior started to change around August 2020 because I wanted to move out of my parent's house. Realizing how much I'd need for a security deposit and furniture made me want to get my finances under control.
My budgeting journey has evolved since I first started saving to move out. Four years later, I've been able to personalize my budget system to my financial goals and feel more in control of my debt and spending habits.
The 50/30/20 rule was an easy introduction to budgeting
When I first started to think about budgeting, I used a spreadsheet to keep track of what I was spending my money on and the amount. I read some personal finance books, which is how I came across the 50/30/20 rule.
The rule was very simple and easy for me to understand, like an equation. I could simply take the income that hit my bank account and divide it out into those different percentages. 50% of my income goes to needs, 30% on wants and 20% on savings.
Brooks initially budgeted using the 50/30/20 method.
Courtesy of Libby Brooks
Under my necessary expenses, I had $100 set aside every month for my dog's expenses, including food and grooming. And later when I moved into an apartment with my boyfriend, I spent around $800 a month on rent. I commuted to work in my car and gas cost between $300 and $400 a month, I was also spending money on groceries and medical expenses.
Under non-essential expenses, I'd budget around $200 a month for dining out with friends and between $300 and $500 for shopping.
Within the 20% put toward savings, I typically contributed around $200 to my 401(k) and $100 to my emergency fund with every paycheck, so roughly twice a month.
I was able to move out of my parent's house and into an apartment with my partner in January 2021. We split the security deposit and the first and last month's rent equally between us. I saved 20% of my paycheck between August and December to afford to move.
I switched to the 50/20/20/10 rule to make room for my financial goals
I used the 50/30/20 rule until the end of 2021, but I started feeling frustrated because it seemed like I was running out of money every month.
I had been putting 20% into savings, but after learning more about personal finance, I wanted to spend more on my financial goals. I want to become debt-free by the time I'm 30, which means contributing more than my minimum monthly payment toward my car and student debt and putting more money into my emergency fund.
However, whenever I contributed over $100 to my emergency fund or any other financial goal in a month, I felt I was running out of money. I was putting all of my expenses, necessary and non-essential, on a credit card to gain the benefits of credit card points, but I would then have to pull money from my emergency fund for some months to cover this credit card bill.
I tweaked the rule to pay off my debt faster
I realized that the 50/30/20 rule didn't really account for my financial goals of paying off debt.
I came across a TikTok creator talking about the 50/20/20/10 budgeting rule. For them, that meant allocating 50% to necessities, 20% to non-essentials, 20% to savings and 10% to investments. At the beginning of 2022, I decided to put my own spin on this method and use that final 10% for my financial goals, like saving and paying off my debts.
I switched jobs in April 2022, and my current salary is $109,000. Per month, I take home around $5,800. I budget $3,100 for necessities, $1,075 for non-essentials, $650 for savings, and around $960 for my financial goals bucket. That doesn't break down exactly into a 50/20/20/10 framework, but I see the rule as more of a guideline.
I got engaged in February 2023, so I decided to use the 10% financial goals bucket on saving for my wedding instead of paying off debt. After my wedding, the breakdown may change.
I think it's important to be flexible with your budgeting.
I've had to cut spending on shopping, but I feel better about my financial goals
Since switching to the 50/20/20/10 rule, I've felt less stressed. Previously, it was more challenging to prioritize financial goals, and it felt like I was going over budget, even though I could usually cover my expenses in the end.
Now I've increased my savings budget and decreased my unnecessary spending, I feel more confident in my finances. I set up an auto-deposit into multiple savings accounts, so it runs on autopilot, and I don't have to think about it.
Right now, the focus is saving for my wedding, but with this budgeting system, I plan to pay off my student loan and car payments by 2027 and 2029. I have a full picture of where my money goes each month, so I know how much I can afford to throw at my debts to work toward a $0 balance.
I spent more on new clothes as my salary increased — around $800 to $1,000 monthly. Because I was factoring this into my 50/30/20 budget, I could afford it. Nowadays, I'm allocating $100 to $200 for shopping and using clothing rental services to save money.
Renting clothes gives me a similar feeling from shopping but it's more sustainable and doesn't crowd up my closet.
The great thing about personal finance is you can always make changes according to what fits best with your lifestyle.
Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications company, has become one of the world's biggest tech names.
It started off manufacturing equipment before venturing into smartphones and more.
Here's how it rose to compete with tech titans like Apple.
Huawei has become one of the world's biggest, most controversial tech companies over nearly 40 years.
The Chinese tech giant started as one of the world's leading networking equipment producers, making items such as base stations, routers, modems, and switches that provide phone service and internet access worldwide.
It has expanded its product line to include wearable devices and, most notably, smartphones, which have become a major competitor to Apple's iPhone in China.
The company had about 207,000 employees as of 2023 and operates in over 170 countries and regions. In the same year, Huawei hit nearly $100 billion in revenue and more than $12 billion in profit.
Ren Zhengfei, the CEO and founder of Huawei, came from humble beginnings but was worth $1 billion as of 2022, according to Forbes.
Still, the company has been mired in controversy, with the US accusing the Chinese company of stealing trade secrets.
Here's how a tiny IT technology firm in China became a rival to Apple — and became seen as a national security threat in parts of the world.
Ren Zhengfei founded Huawei in 1987 when he was 44 years old in an apartment in Shenzhen, China.
Ren Zhengfei is the 79-year-old CEO of Huawei.
Reuters
Ren said Huawei's registered capital was roughly 21,000 yuan, or just under $3,000 as of May 2024. He said he didn't receive "a single penny" from the Chinese government and pooled funds from outside investors.
The CEO said he had no experience building a company.
Huawei started as a reseller of telephone switch equipment made by a Hong Kong manufacturer.
"We worked very hard and made our first money during those early years," Ren said in Huawei's docu-series.
When Huawei's business boomed, the Hong Kong company stopped supplying Huawei with routers, forcing the startup to develop its own telecommunication products.
Huawei focused on research and development for its initial telecom products during the 90s.
Employees worked around the clock when Huawei first started out.
INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP via Getty Images
Since major cities in China were dominated by big players, Huawei sold telecom equipment to rural areas that could withstand harsh weather conditions.
By 1995, the company generated nearly $220 million in sales, according to the BBC.
Lyu Ke, a member of Huawei's supervisory board, said in the company's docu-series that during its early days, employees worked day and night without leaving the building for almost a month.
"If you feel tired, you go for sleep, take a shower, and go back to work," Lyu said.
In the 2000s, Huawei decided to expand its operations beyond China.
Huawei's first years weren't easy.
Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The first few years in the overseas market were rough as they struggled to sell their equipment to customers.
"After I started Huawei, it was very difficult to ensure the company's survival," Ren said in a 2019 interview with CBS.
By 2000, its international sales reached US$100 million, and by 2005, international contract orders exceeded domestic sales for the first time.
During its foray beyond China, Huawei started to enter the consumer device market.
The Huawei U626 (pictured) was the company's first 3G phone.
Ricky Wong/MCT/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
In 2004, the company shipped its first phone, the C300, with features like basic voice calls and SMS, a text messaging service.
Two years later, the company released the Huawei U626 — its first 3G phone — with a color screen, camera, and faster data connectivity, an effort to enter the advanced phone market.
The company released a USB modem in 2006, which could be plugged into computers to access the internet.
By the late 2000s, Huawei reached a series of financial milestones.
Despite some rough years, Huawei carried on through the 2000s.
STR/AFP via Getty Images
Between 2008 and 2009, contract sales increased by 46% — most of which came from overseas — and generated close to $23.3 billion in revenue, according to Reuters. The company was also seeking to expand in the US.
Following the success of its smartphones, Huawei expanded into wearable devices
Since the success of its cellphones, Huawei has ventured into more smart devices.
Michael Dalder/Reuters
In 2015, the company released the Huawei watch, which combined typical watch functions with modern smartwatch features.
By 2019, the telecom giant seemed to be leading the 5G revolution for faster wireless connection globally
Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei remains CEO.
AP Photo/Vincent Yu
As of February 2019, the company had more than 30 contracts for 5G and deployed more than 40,000 5G stations globally, the LA Times reported, demonstrating its global influence. Huawei execs claimed that the company was ahead of America's most advanced providers in developing the technology.
Huawei employees reportedly say the pay is stellar despite the tough work environment.
Huawei is known for its intense work culture.
Tingshu Wang/Reuters
One former employee said workers get juicy bonuses that "usually exceed our base salary" for finishing projects.
"It's just obscene amounts," the employee told the LA Times in 2019.
Another employee told the outlet that Huawei gives employees the option to buy company shares if they hit performance goals.
The compensation for workers seemed to have offset the company's so-called "wolf culture," where some were expected to take on the work of three people, sources told the LA Times.
In performance reviews, Chinese staff are reportedly ranked A, B, C, or D, where workers are pitted against one another to succeed.
Workers who received a score of A got double the bonuses employees who scored B got, a Shenzhen-based employee told the Times. Those who scored C — which 10% of staff must get — for two consecutive years were fired.
Huawei's smartphones, one of its most successful consumer products, are now a rival to Apple's iPhone in China
The Huawei Mate 60 rivals the latest iPhone.
Wang Gang/Getty Images
The company introduced Ascend, its first line of smartphones, in 2010 in a move to enter the global smartphone market following the release of the iPhone.
Two years later, Huawei launched the Ascend P1 S, which was said to be one of the thinnest smartphones in the world at the time. It later released high-end phones like the Mate and P Lines, and lower-end devices with its offshoot brand Honor.
Still, Huawei's ascent to the international arena has included controversies
Huawei faced major accusations regarding confidential information from multiple companies.
Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Image
In 2003, hardware giant Cisco sued Huawei, accusing the company of stealing network router technology, which Huawei eventually settled.
Then, in 2010, Motorola hit the Chinese company with a suit alleging that Huawei conspired with several Motorola workers to steal trade secrets. Motorola agreed to drop the suit in 2011.
And in 2017, a jury decided that Huawei misappropriated trade secrets belonging to T-Mobile in a series of incidents that occurred in 2012 and 2013.
The United States saw Huawei as a potential threat to national security
Donald Trump signed an executive order that banned Huawei products from the US in 2019.
Getty Images
The US and other countries have expressed concerns that Huawei's equipment could be used for espionage by China.
In 2012, the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee released a report asking US companies to avoid using Huawei products because of cybersecurity concerns. In 2018, AT&T killed a deal with Huawei to sell its smartphones across America.
Between 2017 and 2018, as tensions between the country and the company rose, the Donald Trump administration restricted federal agencies like the Department of Defense from using the telecom giant's equipment.
In 2019, the US cracked down even further on Huawei, with former president Trump signing an executive order laying the groundwork to block it from selling equipment in the country. The blacklisting has since been expanded, and diplomatic tensions between China and the US have also ramped up.
In 2018, Meng Wanzhou, the CEO's daughter who is also Huawei's CFO, was detained in Canada on fraud and sanctions violation charges
Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.
REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson
Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada and subsequently placed under house arrest on extradition request by the US DOJ under the indictment of bank and wire fraud. The US accused her of sidestepping sanctions on Iran by selling technologies through the company Skycom.
The CFO awaited extradition to the US for three years.
In 2021, she was released from house arrest and returned home to China as part of an agreement with the US Justice Department.
Huawei continues to step up its competition against the iPhone in China
Huawei's new Pura70 phone has three cameras, just like the iPhone Pro.
CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty Images
As of early 2024, Apple lost its edge in China in smartphone sales, a major market, to local rivals like Huawei as iPhone sales declined.
Huawei's $960 Mate 60 Pro debuted in 2023 and wowed consumers and analysts as a viable alternative on the heels of an iPhone ban for Chinese government officials.
As if the Mate 60 wasn't enough, in 2024, Huawei introduced another series of smartphones called the Pura 70, starting at $760.
Huawei didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment before publication.
Homes in Mokošica, Croatia, where flat roofs can signal that the owners intend to build additional floors.
Joshua Zitser/Business Insider
Many Croatian millennials are being priced out of cities like Dubrovnik.
House prices and limited space have inspired a very practical solution. BI went to investigate.
Parents build floors on top of their homes to make room for their adult children and grandkids.
Bogdan Dascalescu, 37, stands on the balcony of his home, surveying the view of Mokošica — a suburb of Dubrovnik situated just across a major bridge.
Though more affordable than the city's picturesque Old Town, property prices here are still beyond the reach of most locals his age.
On this drizzly day in mid-April, he gestured toward a few seemingly unfinished buildings with flat, concrete roofs. Some had metal rods protruding from their edges, while others featured piles of scattered bricks.
Dascalescu explained that these usually signify expansion plans, both of the families and of the buildings themselves.
Flat roofs, metal spikes, or a pile of bricks are often tell-tale signs of an upcoming home expansion.
Joshua Zitser/Business Insider
While some Gen-X and boomers bought land in Mokošica before Croatia's War of Independence in the 1990s, or shortly afterward, when property prices were relatively low, millennials have been largely priced out.
And given Mokošica's hilly and rocky terrain, expanding properties horizontally is challenging. The landscape means there's a scarcity of affordable land to buy and build on.
Devoted parents unwilling to leave their children in the lurch have devised a practical solution: building additional floors on top of their existing homes for their kids and grandkids to live in.
Diana Marlais and Bogdan Dascalescu on the terrace of their home with one of their children.
Joshua Zitser/Business Insider
When Dascalescu, originally from Romania, moved to Mokošica in 2017 with his Croatian wife, Diana, buying a home in Dubrovnik wasn't financially viable.
Instead, they moved into Marlais' parents' home, which had already been expanded to house other family members.
Originally a two-bedroom, two-story home, Marlais' father built two more stories soon after his eldest son got engaged. Now, Dascalescu and Marlais live on their own floor, beneath her brother and his children, who live beneath their parents.
Homes like this in Croatia often feature lockable doors for each level, with internal or external staircases connecting the individual spaces inside.
The entrance to Diana Marlais and Bogdan Dascalescu's floor in their multi-story, multi-generational home.
Joshua Zitser/Business Insider
The popularity of this set-up comes down to price, according to a Croatian real-estate expert.
"Adding an additional floor to a house is currently the most affordable option for young families," Filip Brkan, a member of the Real Estate Business Association of the Croatian Chamber of Economy, told BI.
He noted that in Croatia, where the average construction cost is about $140 per square foot, adding 1,000 square feet this way can cost about $150,000 — considerably cheaper than buying a new home.
Brkan said what's happening in Mokošica is happening in suburbs across Croatia, reflecting an ongoing housing crisis in which "young people practically have nowhere to live."
A view of Mokošica, a suburb of Dubrovnik in Croatia.
Joshua Zitser/Business Insider
Eurostat, the EU statistical office, notes that house prices in Croatia have climbed steadily over the past decade, and last year experienced the highest annual increase among the 27 member states.
"In Dubrovnik, not only are property purchase prices extremely high, but also rental prices," Brkan said. "Young people have no real alternative."
Extra floors aren't always for kids
Dubrovnik's Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has stringent conservation rules that mean you "can't build sideways, you can't build up to make the fourth floor," says Ivan Vukovic, a 43-year-old tour guide and lifelong Dubrovnik resident.
But in Mokošica, more relaxed planning regulations mean that the solution of adding floors remains a popular one.
But there are still limitations to expanding family homes in the suburbs, Nenad Lipovac, a professor of physical planning at the University of Zagreb, told BI.
Homeowners must adhere to local ordinances, obtain building permits, and often have to factor in height restrictions, he said.
Lipovac also noted that flat roofs, iron bars, and scattered bricks don't always signal plans to house additional family members; they could stem from financial constraints or pauses in construction, which are common in summer months.
Given the lucrative potential of short-term rentals, Croatian homeowners might also be building rooftop apartments for tourists, to generate extra income, he added.
However, even if the intention behind leaving roofs flat is to expand properties to allow younger family members to live there, Lipovac said there's no guarantee millennials will want this, or that the additional floors will ever be built.
In fact, flat roofs can become a permanent feature, he said, with houses remaining "unfinished forever."
Trinity Howard conducts loyalty tests through Lazo.
Trinity Howard; Alyssa Powell/BI
Trinity Howard's personal experience with a cheating boyfriend inspired her to help other girls.
She's now a loyalty tester for Lazo, charging $70 per mission to see if a boyfriend will cheat.
Howard conducts 15-20 loyalty tests a week and says 90% of the men who respond to her fail the test.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Trinity Howard, a 22-year-old loyalty tester in Tampa. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Before I became a loyalty tester, I had my own run-in with cheating.
I was in a toxic relationship for two years during high school. Despite my commitment to loyalty, my first love turned out to be a cheater.
Throughout our relationship, I always knew he had another girl on the side. I often saw them sitting together at lunch or talking at school, but when I confronted him, he would say, "I'm going to end it," and "I will block her," but he never meant it.
I decided to test his loyalty and texted him using a fake number, posing as the other girl. When he wanted to meet up with her, I agreed to that, too. I grabbed his things from my house, and at 2 a.m., I showed up as her. We broke up that night.
I didn't know it then, but that was my first loyalty test, and it's now my full-time job.
I became a loyalty tester for others
Not long after I caught my own boyfriend, I made a TikTok video sharing my story, and it quickly blew up. I woke up with more than 300,000 followers on TikTok, mainly girls wanting me to test their boyfriends. I realized this could be a great way to help others who've experienced the same hurt.
I told my new following to DM me if they were interested in a loyalty test and that I'd do it free of charge. As more women took me up on my offer, my new gig started to take up more and more of my time.
I was also in school, had homework, played softball, and worked out — it became very hard to juggle everything, so I began to request donations. I told my audience that I'd make those who offered a donation of their choosing my priority. Some donated $5.00, and some even donated $50.00.
Even after I started requesting donations, there were still thousands of women messaging me for my help. It was a lot of work.
I became a loyalty tester on Lazo
In 2023, the founders of Lazo, a platform specializing in relationship loyalty tests, contacted me. They found me on TikTok and asked if I would offer my service through their platform. I agreed. Now, I do loyalty tests for a living and help even more women than when I did it on my own. I mostly test boyfriends but have tested about five husbands since I started.
When users come to Lazo needing a loyalty test, they can pick the 'tester' they want based on location, hobbies, interests, hair color, and other things they think their significant other might be into. There are roughly 400 testers on the platform. Loyalty testers have different prices, depending on the price they set for themselves.
I have a set fee of $70 for a "mission." Lazo takes $21, and I keep $49.
Depending on how many I can handle, I do 15 to 20 missions a week. Sometimes, a mission can take a little over an hour, but others can take up to a week if not more.
Unfortunately, a lot of the girls who come to Lazo are usually right about their cheating boyfriends.
Once I take on a mission, I get to work
Before hiring me, users tell me what social media platform their boyfriend is on, where he lives, and what he likes. They'll tell me if he likes a flirty girl or if I need to take it slower and get to know him first. At that point, I can accept or decline the mission. I've declined around 30 missions because they were under 18.
I send a request to follow the boyfriend on social media, and if the boyfriend accepts my request, I'll DM him, using my first name and middle initial, and a photo of me. If the guy responds to me and interacts with my message, 90% of the time, they will fail the mission. Though many also do tell me they have a girlfriend.
A Lazo mission.
Courtesy of Trinity Howard
When messaging, I'm careful about being too straightforward because that comes across as suspicious, so I take my time and try to get to know them. As I talk with the boyfriend, I show the girlfriend what the messages look like. The girlfriend then determines if the boyfriend is cheating or not.
Sometimes, a girlfriend will see that he likes my pictures on social media and call that a fail. Other times, it needs to be more blatant, like the boyfriend wanting to meet up with me or asking if I am single.
Requesting to meet in person is an immediate fail
I've had guys want to meet in person before, and then they get caught because the girlfriend will show up instead of me. I've had men want to Facetime me to see where I am. It rarely happens, but in those situations, I avoid Facetime and just hop on the phone instead.
Since I make videos on TikTok, even though I try to block them, I've had some boyfriends recognize me, but it's always been after they failed or when they were already on the way to failing.
After the girlfriends decide if it is a pass or fail, the mission ends.
This job has changed how I think about relationships
Since becoming a loyalty tester, I've had a lot of people ask if it changes how I view relationships and men. Honestly, in a way, it does. Although I believe partners should be 100% loyal to each other, through these loyalty tests and personal experience, I know not everyone shares that belief.
I plan to do this long-term. It's sad to me that cheating goes on so much in relationships, but I'm happy to help where I can.
Saudi Arabia has embarked on its ambitious project to build a city in the shape of a line.
While the concept of linear urban design has existed since the 19th century, few have attempted it.
Business Insider asked architects, urban planners, and academics whether a line is a good shape for a city.
Saudi Arabia is constructing a huge mirrored city in the desert.
The Line, as it has been named, is actually a megacity consisting of two skyscrapers that was originally intended to stretch out for 170km, with the aim to eventually house nine million people.
Officials have called it an "architectural masterpiece" and a "revolution in urban living."
Although recent reports suggest the plans have been scaled back, the 2.4km still due to be built will be the largest linear city in existence if it is completed.
As a concept, linear living is nothing new.
"It is ambitious but hardly revolutionary," Anirban Adhya, a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Lawrence Technological University, told Business Insider.
Following the Industrial Revolution, many urban planners looked to alternative city layouts to tackle booming populations.
The Spanish architect Arturo Soria is widely credited with designing the first linear city, "La Ciudad Lineal," in 1882 on the outskirts of Madrid. Around forty years later, in 1924, renowned Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier offered another radical alternative with his "Ville Radieuse," a linear, ordered metropolis full of green space.
The Soviet urbanist Mikhail Okhitovich was sent to a gulag in 1930 for his "economically crippling" proposal to transform the city of Magnitogorsk into eight ribbon-like strips converging on a factory.
"It has been common for urban planners to argue for a new future as a reaction to what they claim to be an 'unsustainable;' existing situation of their time. The Line in Neom is no different," said Adhya.
But revolutionary or not, is the idea of building a dense metropolis in the shape of a line a good one?
"The Line" at Neom, a string of cities connected by an underground transport system.
Neom
Compared to traditional layouts, the benefits of linear cities include efficient public transport, ready access to nature, and a more egalitarian lifestyle. Theoretically endless, they can easily extend as populations expand.
Proposals for The Line echo many of these promises.
The project's website presents the city as a solution to mass urbanization and the climate crisis, depicting it as a sustainable carless utopia that will preserve 95% of the region's land.
Neom's designers claim that all essential services will be accessible within five minutes, and nature will be just a two-minute walk away. AI-powered technology throughout the city will enhance sustainability and maximize residents' life expectancy, they say.
"There is no right shape for a city — they typically evolve over time, based on natural, cultural, transportation, political, and economic factors," Mona Lovgreen, a partner at Canadian architecture firm DIALOG, told BI.
She believes that if designed correctly, The Line's linear form would make it accessible and facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources along its entire length.
Construction of Neom.
Neom
Though she said its goals may be exaggerated, Lovgreen believes the vision of The Line is admirable.
"It challenges us to rethink urban design and discover new ways to make cities efficient, livable, and sustainable."
It could set a trailblazing example for how to use AI to improve sustainability and energy efficiency, something US urban planners should replicate, Lovgreen added.
The focus on convenience and services being within reach also shows promise, Adhya said, pointing to successful examples already underway in cities like Paris and Portland.
In "smaller chunks and pieces," the linear structure of The Line could work, Adhya said.
'Bland and monotonous'
While some practical sides of the structure have potential, all experts BI spoke to saw fundamental issues with the lived experience inside linear cities.
"The Line could be a fascinating place to visit and experience, but I'm still unsure of whether humans are designed to live in such a rigid and prescriptive structure," Lovgreen said.
The Line is formed of modules that can each house 80,000 people, able to move about through a horizontal and vertical transport system.
This publicity image shows a design for 'The Line', a part of the planned Saudi Arabian desert megacity in NEOM.
Neom
"Compared to other urban designs like grid layout, radial layout, ring layout, or some combination of these, human experience in a strictly linear urban development can lack interest and variation," explained Adhya.
"Certain parts of the city could become too far and segregated."
The repetition of infrastructure and kit-of parts would be "bland and monotonous," lacking the unique character that other cities offer, said Lovgreen.
"Ultimately, the psychological impact of living in such a regimented environment may affect residents' well-being," she told BI.
This type of structure is not only monotonous, but can limit social cohesion, according to John Gold, a professor of Urban Historical Geography at Oxford Brookes University.
"Linear cities are an extreme form of urban dispersal — community development and social cohesion still need centrality," Gold told BI.
Another challenge in Neom's design is its over-reliance on technology and the public transport system, experts said. If something went wrong, the entire system would crumble, they warned.
"Most cities have network redundancy, where multiple options are available if a specific connection or intersection is blocked. A linear city may not have this capability," explained Lovgreen.
The site of NEOM in Tabuk Province, Saudi Arabia.
NEOM
Lastly, in spite of The Line's proclamations of sustainability, its huge mirrored walls could be harmful ecologically both in terms of unnecessary heat gain within the structure as well as being detrimental for the migratory flight paths of billions of birds.
But the big issue, according to Gold, is "who would actually want to live in such a 'city'?"
"These schemes, and the Saudi one is a classic example, map out a hi-tech utopian future but never engage with people as they really are. In my opinion, linear city schemes are best left as design exercises for third-year architectural students," Gold said.
The offers and details on this page may have updated or changed since the time of publication. See our article on Business Insider for current information.
Want financial happiness? Avoid bad spending habits.
Yuri Arcurs peopleimages.com/Getty Images
Harvard professor Arthur Brooks emphasized curbing bad spending habits for financial happiness.
Brooks noted that rising credit card debt is affecting the financial well-being of many Americans.
Mindful spending and investing in long-term assets are key to overcoming financial stress.
Brooks, a professor of the practice of public and nonprofit leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of management practice at the Harvard Business School, was a guest on the financial news and education site TheStreet on May 27 to discuss the science of balancing wealth with emotional well-being.
The author of 11 books said overcoming financial stress hinges on tackling lifestyle creep — such as living above your means or using things like raises to elevate your lifestyle instead of building your savings —and poor money management. Brooks also pointed out that the recent surge in credit card debt highlights the pitfalls of borrowing for consumption, which he called detrimental to financial well-being.
"The biggest source of stress that people make is, is not that there's not enough money, but they make mistakes with their money," Brooks saidon TheStreet.
Borrowing for consumption is the most damaging financial habit
Brooks pointed to the recent rise in credit card debt as a factor that affects many people's financial happiness.
"The No. 1 mistake that people make is that they borrow money for consumption," Brooks said, adding that people should never borrow money to consume. "The No. 1 predictor of how your finances can drive down your happiness is borrowing for your own consumption."
Data collected by JPMorgan Chaseshows that credit card delinquencies have soared since 2022, surpassing mortgages as the most common form of default.
Consumer delinquency rates
JPMorgan Chase Co.
Brooks called borrowing for consumption the opposite of progress toward financial well-being, which can to financial happiness.
Alternatively, he noted that mortgages and student loans can be considered debt that leads to progress and happiness since both can be investments in the future. However, people should avoid taking out student loans to attend a more expensive school just because they can get loans to pay for it, he said.
To be sure, inflation has not helped people limit their spending and avoid lifestyle creep in the last couple of years as the prices of necessities like groceries and medical care have increased.
But, according to Brooks, the solution isn't making more money: for some, the boost in earnings can damage personal finances through lifestyle creep.
Brooks pointed to the example of somebody passing up a car they can afford and buying one twice as expensive because it's nicer.
"Think about the normal sources of avoidable stress that people have is that they want to consume, they want to buy something," Brooks said. "They want some stuff in their life and they don't have the means to pay for it yet. So they go into debt for it."
Have you experienced lifestyle creep in the last four years and are willing to talk about how you managed or overcame it? Reach out to this reporter at cgaines@businessinsider.com.
She lives with her husband Stephen, 67, and their two dogs in Robinson, Illinois. They find it difficult to make ends meet, and Dacus often worries about paying for groceries and healthcare.
A few years ago, Dacus said she could afford "wants," like an item at the thrift store, and she and Stephen could travel on the weekends. They even had some savings for retirement.
Social Security is the couple's only source of income. Dacus receives $854 a month, and her husband receives $1,286 a month, according to documents reviewed by Business Insider. Additionally, her household qualifies for $23 a month in SNAP benefits to buy food.
"If we worked a 40-hour week from Monday through Friday with my income, it would come out to like $2 an hour," she said, comparing her Social Security income to a full-time work salary. "They're paying $12 an hour or something over at McDonald's."
Dacus is one of the millions of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck. Her income places her above the federal poverty line, but her household income still isn't enough to make ends meet. Like ALICEs — people who are asset-limited, income-constrained, and employed — Dacus doesn't qualify for most forms of government assistance.
Fifty-two percent of boomers have $250,000 or less in retirementassets, per an April report from the Retirement Income Institute, the retirement-focused research arm of the Alliance for Lifetime Income. What's more, the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey found that more than half of Americans over 65 have an annual income of $30,000 or less.
And, if lawmakers don't intervene, the US Social Security fund is expected to dry out by the late 2030s.
"It scares us to death because we'll still be here, God-willing," Dacus said. "How are we to survive?"
With no savings and credit card debt, Dacus struggles to make ends meet
Last fall, the couple moved to Robinson from Blytheville,Arkansas. They wanted to be closer to Dacus' brother and were able to buy a housefor less than $50,000 using settlement money from a lawsuit. She isn't sure they would be able to afford stable housing if they had to pay rent.
Dacus said she never has "any extra money" anymore. The couple has nearly $10,000 in credit card debt and had to drain their savings account to afford housing, groceries, and healthcare.
Sometimes, Dacus has to request an advance on her Social Security check to buy food because her SNAP benefits aren't enough.
To make sure she and Stephen have enough to eat, Dacus depends on food banks. She has been turned away before for having the wrong ZIP code — food banks typically manage demand by only serving households with specific addresses — but Dacus said the nearest food bank to her is across town.
Dacus is anxious about affording her car, utility, and cellphone bills. Unless they have a required vaccination, she can't take her dogs to the vet. She and her husband rarely celebrate Christmas and anniversaries because they can't afford gifts.
"It's a struggle," she said. "Even our change container only has about $1.50."
Most of the couple's prescriptions and basic medical bills are covered by Medicare, but they don't have Medicaid, meaning their insurance doesn't cover long-term care or other non-emergency medical expenses. And, a few weeks ago, Stephen received a cancer diagnosis. They aren't sure yet what kind of treatment he will need, but Dacus saidif insurance won't cover it, it could be financially "catastrophic."
She wishes there were more resources for older adults. Dacus has tried to apply for government assistance besides SNAP, but her options are limited. She said it's especially difficult to get help when you don't have children or if you live in a rural area.
"A lot of people think that, with Social Security, you get this big check, and you can move to Florida, and you could buy a boat and go fishing," said said. "That's not what it is."
Are you an older adult struggling to make ends meet? Are you open to sharing your story? If so, reach out to this reporter at allisonkelly@businessinsider.com.
For technology to change the global balance of power, it needn't be new. It must simply be known.
Since 2017, the Chinese Communist Party has laid out careful plans to eventually dominate the creation, application, and dissemination of generative artificial intelligence — programs that use massive datasets to train themselves to recognize patterns so quickly that they appear to produce knowledge from nowhere. According to the CCP's plan, by 2020, China was supposed to have "achieved iconic advances in AI models and methods, core devices, high-end equipment, and foundational software." But the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in fall 2022 caught Beijing flat-footed. The virality of ChatGPT's launch asserted that US companies — at least for the moment — were leading the AI race and threw a great-power competition that had been conducted in private into the open for all the world to see.
There is no guarantee that America's AI lead will last forever. China's national tech champions have joined the fray and managed to twist a technology that feeds on freewheeling information to fit neatly into China's constrained information bubble. Censorship requirements may slow China's AI development and limit the commercialization of domestic models, but they will not stop Beijing from benefiting from AI where it sees fit. China's leader, Xi Jinping, sees technology as the key to shaking his country out of its economic malaise. And even if China doesn't beat the US in the AI race, there's still great power, and likely danger, in it taking second place.
"There's so much we can do with this technology. Beijing's just not encouraging consumer-facing interactions," Reva Goujon, a director for client engagement on the consulting firm Rhodium Group's China advisory team, said. "Real innovation is happening in China. We're not seeing a huge gap between the models Chinese companies have been able to roll out. It's not like all these tech innovators have disappeared. They're just channeling applications to hard science."
In its internal documents, the CCP says that it will use AI to shape reality and tighten its grip on power within its borders — for political repression, surveillance, and monitoring dissent. We know that the party will also use AI to drive breakthroughs in industrial engineering, biotechnology, and other fields the CCP considers productive. In some of these use cases, it has already seen success. So even if it lags behind US tech by a few years, it can still have a powerful geopolitical impact. There are many like-minded leaders who also want to use the tools of the future to cement their authority in the present and distort the past. Beijing will be more than happy to facilitate that for them. China's vision for the future of AI is closed-sourced, tightly controlled, and available for export all around the world.
In the world of modern AI, the technology is only as good as what it eats. ChatGPT and other large language models gorge on scores of web pages, news articles, and books. Sometimes this information gives the LLMs food poisoning — anyone who has played with a chatbot knows they sometimes hallucinate or tell lies. Given the size of the tech's appetite, figuring out what went wrong is much more complex than narrowing down the exact ingredient in your dinner that had you hugging your toilet at 2 a.m. AI datasets are so vast, and the calculations so fast, that the companies controlling the models do not know why they spit out bad results, and they may never know. In a society like China — where information is tightly controlled — this inability to understand the guts of the models poses an existential problem for the CCP's grip on power: A chatbot could tell an uncomfortable truth, and no one will know why. The likelihood of that happening depends on the model it's trained on. To prevent this, Beijing is feeding AI with information that encourages positive "social construction."
China's State Council wrote in its 2017 Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan that AI would be able to "grasp group cognition and psychological changes in a timely manner," which, in turn, means the tech could "significantly elevate the capability and level of social governance, playing an irreplaceable role in effectively maintaining social stability." That is to say, if built to the correct specifications, the CCP believes AI can be a tool to fortify its power. That is why this month, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's AI regulator, launched a chatbot trained entirely on Xi's political and economic philosophy, "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" (snappy name, I know). Perhaps it goes without saying that ChatGPT is not available for use in China or Hong Kong.
The government of China has launched a chatbot trained entirely on Xi Jinping's political and economic philosophy.
Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via Getty Images
For the CCP, finding a new means of mass surveillance and information domination couldn't come at a better time. Consider the Chinese economy. Wall Street, Washington, Brussels, and Berlin have accepted that the model that helped China grow into the world's second-largest economy has been worn out and that Beijing has yet to find anything to replace it. Building out infrastructure and industrial capacity no longer provides the same bang for the CCP's buck. The world is pushing back against China's exports, and the CCP's attempts to drive growth through domestic consumption have gone pretty much nowhere. The property market is distorted beyond recognition, growth has plateaued, and deflation is lingering like a troubled ghost. According to Freedom House, a human-rights monitor, Chinese people demonstrated against government policies in record numbers during the fourth quarter of 2023. The organization logged 952 dissent events, a 50% increase from the previous quarter. Seventy-eight percent of the demonstrations involved economic issues, such as housing or labor. If there's a better way to control people, Xi needs it now.
Ask the Cyberspace Administration of China's chatbot about these economic stumbles, and you'll just get a lecture on the difference between "traditional productive forces" and "new productive forces" — buzzwords the CCP uses to blunt the trauma of China's diminished economic prospects. In fact, if you ask any chatbot operating in the country, it will tell you that Taiwan is a part of China (a controversial topic outside the country, to say the least). All chatbots collect information on the people who use them and the questions they ask. The CCP's elites will be able to use that information gathering and spreading to their advantage politically and economically — but the government doesn't plan to share that power with regular Chinese people. What the party sees will not be what the people see.
"The Chinese have great access to information around the world," Kenneth DeWoskin, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan and senior China advisor to Deloitte, told me. "But it's always been a two-tiered information system. It has been for 2,000 years."
To ensure this, the CCP has constructed a system to regulate AI that is both flexible enough to evaluate large language models as they are created and draconian enough to control their outputs. Any AI disseminated for public consumption must be registered and approved by the CAC. Registration involves telling the administration things like which datasets the AI was trained on and what tests were run on it. The point is to set up controls that embrace some aspects of AI, while — at least ideally — giving the CCP final approval on what it can and cannot create.
"The real challenge of LLMs is that they are really the synthesis of two things," Matt Sheehan, a researcher and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me. "They might be at the forefront of productivity growth, but they're also fundamentally a content-based system, taking content and spitting out content. And that's something the CCP considers frivolous."
In the past few years, the party has shown that it can be ruthless in cutting out technology it considers "frivolous" or harmful to social cohesion. In 2021, it barred anyone under 18 from playing video games on the weekdays, paused the approval of new games for eight months, and then in 2023 announced rules to reduce the public's spending on video games.
But AI is not simply entertainment — it's part of the future of computation. The CCP cannot deny the virality of what OpenAI's chatbot was able to achieve, its power in the US-China tech competition, or the potential for LLMs to boost economic growth and political power through lightning-speed information synthesis.
Ultimately, as Sheehan put it, the question is: "Can they sort of lobotomize AI and LLMs to make the information part a nonfactor?"
Unclear, but they're sure as hell going to try.
For the CCP to actually have a powerful AI to control, the country needs to develop models that suit its purpose — and it's clear that China's tech giants are playing catch-up.
The e-commerce giant Baidu claims that its chatbot, Ernie Bot — which was released to the public in August — has 200 million users and 85,000 enterprise clients. To put that in perspective, OpenAI generated 1.86 billion visits in March alone. There's also the Kimi chatbot from Moonshot AI, a startup backed by Alibaba that launched in October. But both Ernie Bot and Kimi were only recently overshadowed by ByteDance's Doubao bot, which also launched in August. According to Bloomberg, it's now the most downloaded bot in the country, and it's obvious why — Doubao is cheaper than its competitors.
"The generative-AI industry is still in its early stages in China," Paul Triolo, a partner for China and technology policy at the consultancy Albright Stonebridge Group, said. "So you have this cycle where you invest in infrastructure, train, and tweak models, get feedback, then you make an app that makes money. Chinese companies are now in the training and tweaking models phase."
The question is which of these companies will actually make it to the moneymaking phase. The current price war is a race to the bottom, similar to what we've seen in the Chinese technology space before. Take the race to make electric vehicles: The Chinese government started by handing out cash to any company that could produce a design — and I mean any. It was a money orgy. Some of these cars never made it out of the blueprint stage. But slowly, the government stopped subsidizing design, then production. Then instead, it started to support the end consumer. Companies that couldn't actually make a car at a price point that consumers were willing to pay started dropping like flies. Eventually, a few companies started dominating the space, and now the Chinese EV industry is a manufacturing juggernaut.
The generative-AI industry is still in its early stages in China.
Similar top-down strategies, like China's plan to advance semiconductor production, haven't been nearly as successful. Historically, DeWoskin told me, party-issued production mandates have "good and bad effects." They have the ability to get universities and the private sector in on what the state wants to do, but sometimes these actors move slower than the market. Up until 2022, everyone in the AI competition was most concerned about the size of models, but the sector is now moving toward innovation in the effectiveness of data training and generative capacity. In other words, sometimes the CCP isn't skating to where the puck's going to be but to where it is.
There are also signs that the definition of success is changing to include models with very specific purposes. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a recent interview with the Brookings Institution that, for now, the models in most need of regulatory overhead are the largest ones. "But," he added, "I think progress may surprise us, and you can imagine smaller models that can do impactful things."A targeted model can have a specific business use case. After spending decades analyzing how the CCP molds the Chinese economy, DeWoskin told me that he could envision a world where some of those targeted models were available to domestic companies operating in China but not to their foreign rivals. After all, Beijing has never been shy about using a home-field advantage. Just ask Elon Musk.
To win the competition to build the most powerful AI in the world, China must combat not only the US but also its own instincts when it comes to technological innovation. A race to the bottom may simply beggar China's AI ecosystem. A rush to catch up to where the US already is — amid investor and government pressure to make money as soon as possible — may keep China's companies off the frontier of this tech.
"My base case for the way this goes forward is that maybe two Chinese entities push the frontier, and they get all the government support," Sheehan said. "But they're also burdened with dealing with the CCPand a little slower-moving."
This isn't to say we have nothing to learn from the way China is handling AI. Beijing has already set regulations for things like deepfakes and labeling around authenticity. Most importantly, China's system holds people accountable for what AI does — people make the technology, and people should have to answer for what it does. The speed of AI's development demands a dynamic, consistent regulatory system, and while China's checks go too far, the current US regulatory framework lacks systemization. The Commerce Department announced an initiative last month around testing models for safety, and that's a good start, but it's not nearly enough.
The digital curtain AI can build in our imaginations will be much more impenetrable than iron, making it impossible for societies to cooperate in a shared future.
If China has taught us anything about technology, it's that it doesn't have to make society freer — it's all about the will of the people who wield it. The Xi Jinping Thought chatbot is a warning. If China can make one for itself, it can use that base model to craft similar systems for authoritarians who want to limit the information scape in their societies. Already, some Chinese AI companies — like the state-owned iFlytek, a voice-recognition AI — have been hit with US sanctions, in part, for using their technology to spy on the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. For some governments, it won't matter if tech this useful is two or three generations behind a US counterpart. As for the chatbots, the models won't contain the sum total of human knowledge, but they will serve their purpose: The content will be censored, and the checks back to the CCP will clear.
That is the danger of the AI race. Maybe China won't draw from the massive, multifaceted AI datasets that the West will — its strict limits on what can go into and come out of these models will prevent that. Maybe China won't be pushing the cutting edge of what AI can achieve. But that doesn't mean Beijing can't foster the creation of specific models that could lead to advancements in fields like hard sciences and engineering. It can then control who gets access to those advancements within its borders, not just people but also multinational corporations. It can sell tools of control, surveillance, and content generation to regimes that wish to dominate their societies and are antagonistic to the US and its allies.
This is an inflection point in the global information war. If social media harmfully siloed people into alternate universes, the Xi bot has demonstrated that AI can do that on steroids. It is a warning. The digital curtain AI can build in our imaginations will be much more impenetrable than iron, making it impossible for societies to cooperate in a shared future. Beijing is well aware of this, and it's already harnessing that power domestically, why not geopolitically? We need to think about all the ways Beijing can profit from AI now before its machines are turned on the world. Stability and reality depend on it.
Linette Lopez is a senior correspondent at Business Insider.