• Danielle-Ann Kealohilani Rugg moved back to Hawaii to care for her family during the pandemic.
• She balances event work, a tax business, and family life amid Hawaii's high living costs.
• Despite the challenges, she finds beauty in Hawaii but would return to Oregon for lower living costs.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Danielle-Ann Kealohilani Rugg, a 39-year-old entrepreneur and event staff professional who relocated from Oregon to Hawaii. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I have an ever-evolving career. I balance my event work with Aloha HP, running a successful tax practice, and caring for my family on Oahu in Hawaii.

My path has been a mix of culinary aspirations, entrepreneurial ventures, and family-driven decisions. I was born and raised on Oahu. In 2005, when my twin daughters were 1, I moved to California, where I lived for six years before settling in Oregon. Oregon became home for most of my children's lives, spanning the last decade.

I've been back on Oahu since the pandemic, and while it's gorgeous, the high cost of living is challenging.

My professional life began with a passion for food

I moved to Oregon after a divorce to help care for my grandparents, and I fell in love with everything about the state. I had always seen the different seasons in movies and TV shows and longed to experience them, and that dream finally came true. The other amazing thing about the state was the absence of sales tax.

I enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Portland to pursue my passion for baking and pâtisserie. After completing the two-year associate degree program, I worked in various roles, from baker to cashier to server.

Each position taught me invaluable lessons about customer service, multitasking, and time management, especially when catering large events. It wasn't just about bread and coffee cups but about creating memorable client experiences.

My family always came first. Wanting to be closer to my children, I became a lunch lady at their high school. Surprisingly, this was one of the most fulfilling roles I've had.

I continued my side hustle while in Oregon

I shift gears every February and dive into tax season with my mother. We've been running a tax prep business since my early 20s. We realized the hard work we put in for someone else's business could be channeled into something of our own.

The time zone difference was challenging while I was in Oregon, but we made it work. Depending on our clientele for the year, we make $50,000 to $75,000 annually.

My mother and I get along very well. Our relationship is not perfect, but we've found a good balance between our professional and personal lives.

The only downside I experienced in Oregon was the limited places to swim

The ocean was about an hour and a half away, but the water was always freezing. Although it was beautiful, going to a beach and being unable to jump in dampened the experience.

There were lakes, but they were freezing because all the freshwater came from the mountains. We also had a few facilities we could go to, but that would involve getting a membership, and not all of them were indoors.

When the pandemic hit, my family had to make a change

In 2020, as the world was grappling with the onset of COVID-19, my mother suffered an injury, and she needed help. She lived in Honolulu, and despite the comfortable life my children and I had built in Oregon, I needed to return home.

It wasn't an easy decision, especially during my kids' junior year in high school, but sometimes life demands hard choices. The transition was tough, but ultimately, it was the right move for my mother's well-being. We also moved my grandmother back with us, who has dementia.

Back on Oahu, I found a job with Aloha HP, a Hawaiian staffing company. Aloha HP allowed me to keep up with my business while maintaining an open schedule to care for my family, which was a relief.

I'm primarily involved with event staff work

I do anything from setting up for weddings and banquets to serving guests. These gigs can last four to nine hours.

I average about 80 hours of work a month and earn between $1,350 and $1,900. It's a dynamic way to work, and I enjoy its variety and challenges.

I've learned my self-care cannot be an afterthought. I always carve out two days during my hectic workweek just for myself.

Now that I'm back in Hawaii, the downsides are clear

The cost of living is one of Hawaii's biggest downsides. When I lived in Oregon, my rent for my three-bedroom, two-bath, two-car garage home with a yard was $1,500. Electricity was, on average, $250, and my water bill was around $80. Car registration for both of my cars totaled $275 for two years. Groceries cost us around $500 a month.

Now, my rent, which my family helps with, is $3,550 for a slightly larger home than I had in Oregon. Our electricity is almost three times the amount I paid in Oregon, running on average $660 and up. Water is around $220, and car registration is $445, but only valid for one year.

The grocery stores here also have inflated prices. I may earn more money in Hawaii, but it's offset by the cost of living in Hawaii being much greater than in Oregon.

It's still paradise

Living in paradise is amazing; don't get me wrong. I'm close to my family, the ocean is nearby, the sun almost always shines, and even when it doesn't, the rain is a nice, cool temperature — not freezing cold.

Still, if I had to choose between the two places, I would move back to Oregon, only because the cost of living here is so high.

I've realized, though, that Hawaii is and always will be home. Despite the changes in times and technological advancements, living on an island still offers so much beauty. Just being here is a gift in itself.

Even though I once said I'd never move back, life has a way of leading you where you need to be.

• Michael Burry stayed quiet, bet big on Chinese tech giants, and saw one stock wager pay off in 2024.
• The investor of "The Big Short" fame boosted his Alibaba and JD.com stakes and bought into Baidu.
• The RealReal stock has surged more than sevenfold since Burry invested in early 2023.

Michael Burry kept a low profile, plowed money into three Chinese tech giants, and saw a long-standing stock bet pay off in 2024.

Who is Michael Burry?

Burry is best known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the housing bubble in the mid-2000s. His contrarian wager was immortalized in the book and film "The Big Short."

He's also famous in financial circles for predicting market crashes and recessions, investing in GameStop long before the video-game retailer became a meme stock. He also bet against Elon Musk's Tesla, Cathie Wood's flagship Ark fund, Apple, a microchip fund containing Nvidia, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes in recent years.

Burry goes by Cassandra B.C. on X — a nod to the priestess in Greek mythology who was cursed to utter true prophecies but never to be believed.

Staying quiet

In years past, Burry frequently shared his thoughts on the markets, economy, and other subjects using X.

For example, he warned of the "greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things" in the summer of 2021, and told buyers of meme stocks and cryptocurrencies that they were careening toward the "mother of all crashes."

Burry even caught Musk's attention with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO calling him a "broken clock" in late 2021. Moreover, the investor set alarm bells ringing on Wall Street in early 2023 with a one-word post: "Sell."

However, Burry didn't post at all last year, and hasn't shared anything with the 1.4 million followers of his primary account since April 2023.

Chinese trio

Burry's Scion Asset Management revealed in a first-quarter portfolio update it had boosted its bets on Alibaba and JD.com, two Chinese e-commerce titans. It also established a small position in Baidu, a search giant that's been dubbed the "Chinese Google."

The Scion chief added to both the Alibaba and Baidu positions in the second quarter while paring his JD.com stake, but then ramped up all three wagers in the third quarter.

In the 12 months to September 2024, Scion quadrupled both its Alibaba and JD.com stakes. It went from owning 50,000 Alibaba shares worth $4.4 million to 200,000 shares worth $21.2 million.

It raised its JD.com position from 125,000 shares worth $3.6 million to 500,000 worth $20 million. Starting from scratch, it also amassed 125,000 Baidu shares worth $13.2 million in the nine months to September.

Those three stocks accounted for 65% of the total $83 million value of Scion's portfolio, excluding options, at the end of September. Burry hedged his highly concentrated portfolio by purchasing put options against the three stocks with a notional value of $47 million in the third quarter.

Burry, a value investor who hunts for bargains, may have pounced on the trio because he views them as undervalued. Chinese stocks have been hit by regulatory threats, concerns about the country's slowing economy and real estate crisis, rising geopolitical jitters, and skepticism about the government's stimulus plans.

It's worth pointing out that quarterly portfolio filings only paint a partial picture of an investor's holdings. They exclude shares sold short, private investments, foreign-listed stocks, and non-stock assets like bonds and real estate. They're also only a snapshot of the portfolio on a single day in a three-month period.

Patience pays off

Apart from Alibaba and JD.com, the only stock that Scion held onto for all of 2024 was The RealReal, an online luxury goods marketplace.

The stock has featured in Scion's portfolio since the first quarter of 2023, when the firm owned about 684,000 shares worth about $862,000, or $1.26 each.

Scion still owned 500,000 shares at the end of September, worth nearly $1.6 million at that time. The stock has jumped from a little over $3 then to $8.73 at Wednesday's close.

The upshot is Burry has likely made several times his money on The RealReal, especially if he was still holding the stock when it surged last quarter.

Sam Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI, has prophesied that this may be the year the first "agents" — a set of artificial intelligence tools that can perform tasks on their own — "join the workforce." Investors whose job it is to back new technologies before they become ubiquitous are swooning with the promise of these digital coworkers.

The rise of agents offers a fertile ground for a select group of startups to establish themselves as the front-runners of this shift. In that spirit, Business Insider reviewed viewed press releases, news articles, and PitchBook data for startups exploring the application of agents across various sectors and then filtered for those companies that raised rounds of more than $25 million and less than $75 million in 2024. The result is a list of 20 startups that seem positioned to scale this year on the back of new funding.

"If 2024 was the year of LLMs, we believe 2025 will be the year of agentic AI," said Praveen Akkiraju, a managing director at Insight Partners, whose agentic plays include Writer, Jasper, and Torq.

The last wave of artificial intelligence brought copilots, a type of virtual assistant designed to work side-by-side with a user. Some write code, some recap meetings or emails, and some scribe notes on a physician's behalf. Copilots require some human hand-holding but significantly amplify productivity and efficiency.

Since that breakthrough, a new generation of virtual assistants has emerged. Agents describe an artificial intelligence that can complete tasks without much human supervision. They don't just assist — they take charge. Agents can break down complex tasks into smaller sub-tasks, make decisions, execute plans, and adjust their approach based on outcomes.

Here's a simple way to think about the difference: a copilot can assist with crafting a tailored vacation itinerary, while an agent can go further by booking the flights, reserving the hotel, and organizing activities — all without a user needing to intervene at each step.

With Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI's significant investments in agentic models and the subsequent investor hysteria around this technology, it's clear that agents are the flavor of the season. PitchBook data shows startups exploring the application of agents have alone raised $8.2 billion in 2024.

Jill Chase, a partner at CapitalG, a growth fund under Alphabet, said software infrastructure that makes agents work "will be poised for explosive growth." Aaron Jacobson, a partner at NEA and early investor in Databricks, said enterprises will deploy agents at large to "make a real business impact." Seema Amble, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, suggested that agents will change how professionals use software.

"In the short term, human workers will be the reviewer in the loop," said Amble, an enterprise software investor. "In the future, as trust is established over time, I expect many data-derived actions will shift toward being entirely a set of narrowly defined task-driven agents."

Here's a list of agentic startups who have raised rounds of more than $25 million and less than $75 million in 2024, ranked from the least amount raised to the most amount raised.

Maven AGI

What it is: Maven AGI reimagines enterprise customer support by leveraging agents.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $28 million

Notable deal: Maven AGI launched from stealth with $28 million in Series A funding led by M13 in May of 2024.

Wordware

What it is: Polish-British startup Wordware is building a software platform that can develop and deploy agents using plain English rather than code.

Founded: 2021

Total funding: $30 million

Notable deal: At $30 million, Wordware's November 2024 fundraise is one of the largest seed rounds in Y Combinator's history, the startup. said. Spark Capital led the funding round, with YC and VC firm Felicis participating.

Decagon

What it is: Decagon is developing agents that act as customer support representatives for enterprise customers.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $35 million

Notable deal: Decagon emerged from stealth in June of 2024 and announced both its $30 million Series A and $5 million seed rounds. The startup's investors include Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Elad Gil.

Resolve AI

What it is: Resolve AI is building a production-engineer agent that troubleshoots errors and solves production issues, freeing up human engineers' time to create new products and features.

Founded: 2024

Total funding: $35 million

Notable deal: Greylock led Resolve AI's $35 million seed round in November 2024. Unusual Ventures also participated in the round alongside angel investors 'Godmother of AI' Fei-Fei Li, Google DeepMind's Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, and executives from OpenAI, GitHub, AWS, and Notion also participated in the round.

Norm Ai

What it is: Norm Ai enables corporate compliance chiefs to convert regulations, from public laws to company policies, into working computer code.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $38 million

Notable deal: Norm Ai raised a $27 million Series A round led by Coatue in June of 2024, following an $11 million seed round earlier in the year.

7AI

What it is: Founded by two cybersecurity veterans, 7AI is building a "swarm" of agents that monitor for threats and protect enterprise companies from cyberattacks.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $36 million

Notable deal: 7AI launched from stealth in June of 2024 with a $36 million seed funding round led by Greylock. CRV and Spark Capital also participated in the round.

Robin AI

What it is: Buzzy legaltech startup Robin offers a copilot for lawyers to help draft and revise contracts.

Founded: 2019

Total funding: $39 million

Notable deal: Singapore investment company Temasek led Robin's $26 million Series B funding round in January 2024, and VC firms QuantumLight, Plural, and AFG Partners also participated in the round.

Braintrust

What it is: Developers at companies like Airtable, Instacart, and Stripe use Braintrust to build, monitor, and troubleshoot their artificial intelligence applications.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $45 million

Notable deal: Andreessen Horowitz led a $36 million Series A round of funding for Braintrust in August of 2024.

Lawhive

What it is: Lawhive's artificial intelligence-powered legal assistant, Lawrence, automates routine legal tasks, from client onboarding and compliance checks to document drafting.

Founded: 2019

Total funding: $52 million

Notable deal: Lawhive closed two rounds of funding just eight months apart, with a $10 million seed round in April of 2024 and a $40 million Series A round in December.

Qodo

What it is: Formerly known as CodiumAI, Qodo deploys agents into the coding process to take over tasks such as generation, testing, review, and documentation.

Founded: 2022

Total funding: $50 million

Notable deal: Qodo raised a $40 million Series A funding round in September of 2024 led by Susa Ventures and Square Peg. Firestreak Ventures, ICON Continuity Fund, TLV Partners, and Vine Ventures also participated in the round.

Rox

What it is: Rox's agents assist sales teams by monitoring customer activity, identifying risks and opportunities, and recommending action plans for human employees.

Founded: 2024

Total funding: $50 million

Notable deal: Rox completed its seed and Series A rounds in stealth. The deals — totaling $50 million from investors including GV, Sequoia, and General Catalyst — were announced in November of 2024.

Decart

What it is: Decart builds enterprise and consumer products on top of its own infrastructure stack, designed to reduce some of the costs of building or using artificial intelligence models.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $53 million

Notable deal: Decart emerged from stealth with $21 million in seed funding from Sequoia Capital and Zeev Ventures in October of 2024, and raised another $32 million in a Series A round led by Benchmark in December.

HeyGen

What it is: HeyGen, a generative AI video creator for enterprises, launched agents as virtual avatars that can provide around-the-clock customer support.

Founded: 2020

Total funding: $60 million

Notable deal: Benchmark led HeyGen's $60 million Series A in June of 2024. Other investors in the round included Thrive Capital, Bond Capital, Conviction, Dylan Field, Elad Gil, Aviv Nevo, Neil Mehta, and SV Angel.

11x

What it is: 11x builds artificial intelligence-powered sales development reps for handling the workflows of traditional revenue teams.

Founded: 2022

Total funding: $76 million

Notable deal: Andreessen Horowitz led a $50 million Series B round for 11x in November of 2024, just two months after the startup grabbed $24 million in a Series A round led by Benchmark.

Astrix Security

What it is: Astrix Security is creating a security platform to shield an enterprise customer's agents from cyberattacks.

Founded: 2021

Total funding: $85 million

Notable deal: Astrix closed a $45 million Series B round led by Menlo Ventures in December of 2024. Workday Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, CRV, and F2 Venture Capital also participated.

Ema

What it is: Ema is building agents called "personas" that complete complex business tasks for their human employee counterparts.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $61 million

Notable deal: Ema increased its Series A funding round to $50 million in July of 2024, and counts Accel, Section 32, Prosus Ventures, Sozo Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Wipro Ventures, SCB 10X, Colle Capital, and Frontier Ventures among its investors.

You.com

What it is: You.com's multi-agent system enables knowledge workers to conduct research, create content, and build custom agents on top of any artificial intelligence model for virtually any task.

Founded: 2020

Total funding: $99 million

Notable deal: Georgian led a $50 million Series B round of funding for You.com in September of 2024.

Anysphere

What it is: Anypshere, the startup behind the artificial intelligence-powered code editor, Cursor, allows developers to turn terse directives into working code.

Founded: 2022

Total funding: $171 million

Notable deal: Anysphere raised back-to-back rounds of funding just four months apart, with a $60 million Series A round in August of 2024 and a $100 million Series B round in December. The latest round crowned Anyshere a unicorn with a valuation of $2.6 billion.

Torq

What it is: Torq's multi-agent system enables security professionals to create and deploy sophisticated workflows, triage alerts, and respond to security events.

Founded: 2020

Total funding: $192 million

Notable deal: Torq closed two separate rounds of funding in the last 12 months, including a $42 million Series B round and a $70 million Series C round led by Evolution Equity Partners.

Legion

What it is: Legion, a workforce management platform used by companies like Barry's and Five Below, has developed agents to predict customer demand across locations, create and analyze schedules and timesheets, and reduce human bias.

Founded: 2016

Total funding: $195 million

Notable deal: Legion won $50 million in financing from Silicon Valley Bank in December of 2024, following a $50 million growth round led by Riverwood Capital earlier last year.

• Multiple lawsuits highlight potential risks of AI chatbots for children.
• Character.AI added moderation and parental controls after a backlash.
• Some researchers say the AI chatbot market has not addressed risks for children.

Ever since the death of her 14 year-old son, Megan Garcia has been fighting for more guardrails on generative AI.

Garcia sued Character.AI in October after her son, Sewell Setzer III, committed suicide after chatting with one of the startup's chatbots. Garcia claims he was sexually solicited and abused by the technology and blames the company and its licensor Google for his death.

"When an adult does it, the mental and emotional harm exists. When a chatbot does it, the same mental and emotional harm exists," she told Business Insider from her home in Florida. "So who's responsible for something that we've criminalized human beings doing to other human beings?"

A Character.AI spokesperson declined to comment on pending litigation. Google, which recently acqui-hired Character.AI's founding team and licenses some of the startup's technology, has said the two are separate and unrelated companies.

The explosion of AI chatbot technology has added a new source of entertainment for young digital natives. However, it has also raised potential new risks for adolescent users who may more easily be swayed by these powerful online experiences.

"If we don't really know the risks that exist for this field, we cannot really implement good protection or precautions for children," said Yaman Yu, a researcher at the University of Illinois who has studied how teens use generative AI.

"Band-Aid on a gaping wound"

Garcia said she's received outreach from multiple parents who say they discovered their children using Character.AI and getting sexually explicit messages from the startup's chatbots.

"They're not anticipating that their children are pouring out their hearts to these bots and that information is being collected and stored," Garcia said.

A month after her lawsuit, families in Texas filed their own complaint against Character.AI, alleging its chatbots abused their kids and encouraged violence against others.

Matthew Bergman, an attorney representing plaintiffs in the Garcia and Texas cases, said that making chatbots seem like real humans is part of how Character.AI increases its engagement, so it wouldn't be incentivized to reduce that effect.

He believes that unless AI companies such as Character.AI can establish that only adults are using the technology through methods like age verification, these apps should just not exist.

"They know that the appeal is anthropomorphism, and that's been science that's been known for decades," Bergman told BI. Disclaimers at the top of AI chats that remind children that the AI isn't real are just "a small Band-Aid on a gaping wound," he added.

Character.AI's response

Since the legal backlash, Character.AI has increased moderation of its chatbot content and announced new features such as parental controls, time-spent notifications, prominent disclaimers, and an upcoming under-18 product.

A Character.AI spokesperson said the company is taking technical steps toward blocking "inappropriate" outputs and inputs.

"We're working to create a space where creativity and exploration can thrive without compromising safety," the spokesperson added. "Often, when a large language model generates sensitive or inappropriate content, it does so because a user prompts it to try to elicit that kind of response."

The startup now places stricter limits on chatbot responses and offers a narrower selection of searchable Characters for under-18 users, "particularly when it comes to romantic content," the spokesperson said.

"Filters have been applied to this set in order to remove Characters with connections to crime, violence, sensitive or sexual topics," the spokesperson added. "Our policies do not allow non-consensual sexual content, graphic or specific descriptions of sexual acts. We are continually training the large language model that powers the Characters on the platform to adhere to these policies."

Garcia said the changes Character.AI is implementing are "absolutely not enough to protect our kids."

Potential solutions, including age verification

Artem Rodichev, the former head of AI at chatbot startup Replika, said he witnessed users become "deeply connected" with their digital friends.

Given that teens are still developing psychologically, he believes they should not have access to this technology before more research is done on chatbots' impact and user safety.

"The best way for Character.AI to mitigate all these issues is just to lock out all underage users. But in this case, it's a core audience. They will lose their business if they do that," Rodichev said.

While chatbots could become a safe place for teens to explore topics that they're generally curious about, including romance and sexuality, the question is whether AI companies are capable of doing this in a healthy way.

"Is the AI introducing this knowledge in an age-appropriate way, or is it escalating explicit content and trying to build strong bonding and a relationship with teenagers so they can use the AI more?" Yu, the researcher, said.

Pushing for policy changes

Since her son's passing, Garcia has spent time reading research about AI and talking to legislators, including Silicon Valley Representative Ro Khanna, about increased regulation.

Garcia is in contact with ParentsSOS, a group of parents who say they have lost their children to harm caused by social media and are fighting for more tech regulation.

They're primarily pushing for the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would require social media companies to take a "duty of care" toward preventing harm and reducing addiction. Proposed in 2022, the bill passed in the Senate in July but stalled in the House.

Another Senate bill, COPPA 2.0, an updated version of the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, would increase the age for online data collection regulation from 13 to 16.

Garcia said she supports these bills. "They are not perfect but it's a start. Right now, we have nothing, so anything is better than nothing," she added.

She anticipates that the policymaking process could take years, as standing up to tech companies can feel like going up against "Goliath."

Age verification challenges

More than six months ago, Character.AI increased the minimum age participation for its chatbots to 17 and recently implemented more moderation for under-18 users. Still, users can easily circumvent these policies by lying about their age.

Companies such as Microsoft, X, and Snap have supported KOSA. However, some LGBTQ+ and First Amendment rights advocacy groups warned the bill could censor online information about reproductive rights and similar issues.

Tech industry lobbying groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association sued nine states that implemented age-verification rules, alleging this threatens online free speech.

Questions about data

Garcia is also concerned about how data on underage users is collected and used via AI chatbots.

AI models and related services are often improved by collecting feedback from user interactions, which helps developers fine tune chatbots to make them more empathetic.

Rodichev said it's a "valid concern" about what happens with this data in the case of a hack or sale of a chatbot company.

"When people chat with these kinds of chatbots, they provide a lot of information about themselves, about their emotional state, about their interests, about their day, their life, much more information than Google or Facebook or relatives know about you," Rodichev said. "Chatbots never judge you and are 24/7 available. People kind of open up."

BI asked Character.AI about how inputs from underage users are collected, stored, or potentially used to train its large language models. In response, a spokesperson referred BI to Character.AI's privacy policy online.

According to this policy, and the startup's terms and conditions page, users grant the company the right to store the digital characters they create and they conversations they have with them. This information can be used to improve and train AI models. Content that users submit, such as text, images, videos, and other data, can be made available to third parties that Character.AI has contractual relationships with, the policies state.

The spokesperson also noted that the startup does not sell user voice or text data.

The spokesperson also said that to enforce its content policies, the chatbot will use "classifiers" to filter out sensitive content from AI model responses, with additional and more conservative classifiers for those under 18. The startup has a process for suspending teens who repeatedly violate input prompt parameters, the spokesperson added.

If you or someone you know is experiencing depression or has had thoughts of harming themself or taking their own life, get help. In the US, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which provides 24/7, free, confidential support for people in distress, as well as best practices for professionals and resources to aid in prevention and crisis situations. Help is also available through the Crisis Text Line — just text "HOME" to 741741. The International Association for Suicide Prevention offers resources for those outside the US.

For millions of Americans who have grown accustomed to the flexibility provided by their work-from-home arrangements, it's been a gloomy start to the year. As of this month, employees at Amazon and AT&T are required to start showing up in the office five days a week. Then, on Tuesday, news broke that JPMorgan is preparing to revoke the hybrid privileges of about 40% of its workforce. (The other 60% are already required to come in every day). The headlines, the latest in a steady stream of return-to-office announcements, sparked yet another round of freakouts on Reddit, LinkedIn, and countless group texts. But as someone who keeps a close watch on the American workplace, I can tell you that I'm really not worried about the future of working from home. Whatever old-school CEOs like Jamie Dimon and Andy Jassy may think of it, remote work is here to stay.

For one, take a look at the stats. The economist Nick Bloom runs a monthly survey of American workers that tracks the prevalence of remote work. At the peak of COVID, in the spring of 2020, as much as 62% of work across the economy was being done from home. As the pandemic eased, that number came tumbling down — to 37% at the beginning of 2021, 33% in 2022, and 27% in 2023. The work-from-home dream appeared to be fading.

But in the two years since, something odd has happened. Despite all the headlines about companies getting rid of hybrid arrangements, the actual prevalence of remote work has barely budged. Last month, the share of work-from-home jobs remained at 27%. The RTO wars, it seems, have reached an impasse — one in which neither side is able to score any gains.

This impasse is all the more remarkable because of the weakness of the white-collar job market. As I've reported, hiring for corporate professionals has been in a huge slump, which has given employers the upper hand to do whatever they want about remote work without risking a mass exodus of disgruntled staffers. If CEOs were waiting for the ideal market conditions to drag everyone back into the office, this would definitely be the time to do it.

And yet, as the data shows, that hasn't happened — which suggests that CEOs, for the most part, are fine with the policies they have in place today. Even if they quietly wish more employees would come into the office, they don't seem to think it's worth the disruption that would come from forcing the issue.

In fact, when you zoom out and look at the current status of work from home, what you see is nothing short of a sea change. In 2019, Bloom and his team estimate, only 4.7% of work was performed from home. That means the current level of WFH is still six times larger than it was before the pandemic. For all the Amazons and JPMorgans that are reverting to their pre-COVID policies, the norm remains tilted to hybrid work to a degree that would have been unimaginable back in 2019.

In the long run, despite the RTO efforts by the likes of Amazon and JPMorgan, I actually think working from home is almost certain to become even more common. First, given America's slowing population growth, employers will soon find themselves facing a serious labor shortage. That will force them to offer all kinds of perks to attract and retain staff — and the flexibility to work from home is sure to be one of them. Second, the WFH-friendly startups that were founded during the pandemic will continue to grow. They'll not only employ more and more remote and hybrid employees — they'll eventually come to dominate entire sectors of the economy, further cementing the value of work from home. And third, the technology that enables us to collaborate at a distance will only get better over time, reducing what's probably the biggest pain point of remote work.

That's all to say that the reports of remote work's death, to paraphrase Mark Twain, have been greatly exaggerated. After all, this is how big societal changes always happen: first comes innovation, then skepticism and fear, followed by a concerted push to return to the good old days. In the scheme of things, the office itself is a relatively recent innovation. Or consider one of the biggest inventions of Twain's time: the telephone. What was wrong with the telegraph, people asked. What's the point of switching to this new thing? Also, could it transmit ghosts? Could the electrical wiring shock you? Even as the devices proliferated, some worried that they portended the downfall of society. "The general use of the telephone," one New York Times writer lamented, "instead of promoting civility and courtesy, is the means of the fast dying out of what little we have left."

That's how laughable all the corporate hand-wringing about work from home is going to sound like a couple decades from now. Remote work, Jamie Dimon once groused, "doesn't work." History is in the process of proving him wrong.

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.

• Microsoft Excel is a widely used spreadsheet software that has been around for decades.
• To learn Excel, start slowly, play around with the basics, and seek out online tutorials.
• Excel is part of the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity software, that you can buy on subscription.

Excel, Microsoft's spreadsheet program with millions of diehard fans and millions of outspoken detractors, has been around since 1985. In its multiple decades of existence, Excel has undergone myriad updates and improvements and, in the hands of a skilled user, it's truly a remarkable piece of software.

But mastering the many formulas, layouts, and tools that come into play with the countless rows, columns, cells of an Excel file can be a daunting and frustrating process. We're here to tell you that it's worth it, and that Excel can actually be a rewarding and — dare we say it? — enjoyable program to use.

Just ask the data whizzes who participate each year in the Microsoft Excel World Championship. You read that correctly; Excel Esports is a live competition in which participants solve unusual game tasks using Microsoft Excel. It began in the fall of 2020, and it sees competitors advancing through rounds of challenges by scoring points for correctly solving challenges in limited periods of time.

Also called the Financial Modeling World Cup, problems presented during the Microsoft Excel World Championship go well beyond matters of finance and accounting and include challenges based on data analysis, formula creation, and much more.

But even if you don't see yourself competing on the world stage, Excel is a highly useful program for the average user. Here's what you need to know about using Excel:

How much does Microsoft Excel cost?

If you choose to buy just Microsoft Excel as opposed to the Microsoft 365 suite of software, which comes with Excel along with programs like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Teams, the one-time purchase price is $159.99. You will pay just $6.99 per month for the full Microsoft 365 subscription, though, so that's usually the better route.

And if you're wondering why Excel is so expensive, it's largely because of all the security features built into the program. Note that you can get a one-month free trial of Microsoft Excel and all the other 365 programs, including Copilot, the company's AI-powered productivity tool.

What is the easiest way to learn Excel?

There is a lot to learn with Excel — more than most people will ever likely know. The key to mastering Excel is to start slowly, making sure you fully understand each function before moving on to more complicated aspects of the software.

Start by just playing around with the basics, such as changing the width and height of columns and rows, respectively, making text colored, bold, or in different fonts, and so on. When you have the basics down, turn to free online tutorials to help you learn more about Excel's more involved features, such as creating formulas.

You can use the tutorial service Udemy's online courses like "Useful Excel for Beginners" or "Excel Quick Start Tutorial: 36 Minutes to Learn the Basics," to name a few examples.

There are also scores of books you can buy (or get from the library) that are all about learning Microsoft Excel.

What formulas can you make in Microsoft Excel?

You can make hundreds and hundreds of different formulas in Excel, including those that run mathematical equations, that generate calendars or schedules, that calculate averages and values, that reshape the layout of a spreadsheet to make it look better, and so much more.

A few of the must-know Excel formulas include SUM, which is used to rapidly do addition with data entered into cells, COUNT, which, predictably, is used for counting numbers, and VLOOKUP, which can calculate the value in a table or other array. You can enter any formula by selecting an empty cell and typing the = sign in front of the formula (for example, =SUM or =VLOOKUP).

Baby boomers, they're just like us. Or, rather, we're just like them. And by "we," I mean millennials. The inevitable march of time often means turning into your parents, no matter how much you swore you wouldn't. Millennials (and, to be fair, many Gen Xers) are no exception — now that the electricity bill is on you, you get why your dad was always admonishing you to turn the lights off.

Millennials — people born from 1981 to 1996 — have long had a "forever young" air to them. Obviously, they're not going to be young forever, and plenty of them are pushing 40 or already there, but the generation has been marked by a sense of arrested development. The stereotypical millennial is a 33-year-old still living in his parent's basement, lamenting he'll be a forever renter with no hope of retiring.

But the reality of many millennials is starting to more closely mirror their parents'. They're catching up on earnings and wealth, and while they're still behind on homeownership, they're not screwed. It may have taken them awhile to settle down, but they're getting around to it and heading to the suburbs. In short, millennials are looking increasingly boomer-esque, and in some areas, they're doing better than their parents.

Since his father died in 2022, William has spent a lot of time reflecting on how much he's turned into his old man. He followed his career path and became a lawyer. At 31, he's married, like his dad was when he was his age. He doesn't own a home yet, but he plans to buy a place someday soon in his hometown of Philadelphia. And while he's catching up to his dad in many ways, William, who asked for his last name to be withheld to protect his privacy, recognizes he's surpassed him in other areas. For one thing, he's more financially literate than his parents were, thanks to the "whole democratization of finance thing," he said. Not that he's doing anything weird on the stock market, but he knows how to buy an exchange-traded fund. Qualitatively, he's noticed similarities, too, in how he talks, his sense of humor, and how he sees the world.

"You realize that they are much more in you than you were maybe comfortable with, and you see some of the same strengths and flaws that your parents had," he said. "Everyone wants to be their own person, but statistically, I'm doing a version of the same job as both of my parents. It's like the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, to be cliché."

Plenty of millennial apples are looking pretty treelike nowadays. While many weren't dealt the best hand at the start of their independent economic lives, they've done quite a bit of catching up.

The median weekly earnings of full-time workers ages 25 to 34 were $1,045 ($54,340 annually) in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up 4% from $1,004 in 1979 ($52,208), adjusted for inflation. For the 35-to-44 crowd, wages are up by 13%, to $1,250 ($65,000) from $1,102 ($57,304).

The oldest baby boomers reached 30 in 1976, while the youngest reached that mark in 1994. They hit 40 between 1986 and 2004. Elder millennials hit 30 in 2001, and the last batch will get there in 2026. Their 40th birthdays started coming in 2021 and will stop in 2036.

Wealthwise, millennials are also doing decently, if not even better than their parents. The Survey of Consumer Finances found that people ages 35 to 44 had a median net worth of $130,380 in 1989, adjusted for inflation. In 2022, that number was slightly higher, at $135,300. Those under 35 are doing better, too, with a net worth of $39,040 in 2022, compared with $18,740 in 1989.

Like William, other millennials are more invested in the stock market than their parents. This may be in part out of necessity — the shift from pensions to 401(k)s means retirement saving requires them to play the markets on their own. The Survey of Consumer Finances found that 63.6% of Americans ages 35 to 44 had stock holdings in 2022, compared with 39.2% in 1989. That number jumped to 54.4% from 22.7% for those under 35.

Even beyond the more passive investing of 401(k)s, 20.6% of people ages 35 to 44 invested in stocks directly as of 2022, compared with 16.5% in 1989. Direct stock ownership for people under 35 hit a record 23.1% in the latest reading, well above the 10.9% of young people who owned shares in 1989. This data seems to back up the sense among some millennials that investing was one area where their parents fell short.

That's the case for Faith Bergman, a 28-year-old who works in fintech and lives in New York. She's got plenty of similarities with her mother — she uses some of the same phrases (they're both particularly fond of "six in one, half a dozen in the other"), is overly enthusiastic about keeping her apartment clean, and attributes some of her outgoing personality traits to her upbringing. But she and her sister are more focused on investing and their financial well-being in the long term than their mom was.

"Investing, especially investing as a woman, has not always been a common theme or practice," Bergman said. "I think it's more of just a lack of awareness."

Rob Williams, a managing director of financial planning at Charles Schwab, said millennials have more access to information and ways to invest than their baby boomer counterparts. A recent survey from Schwab found that millennials started investing at 25 on average, compared with 35 for boomers. (Gen Z is getting into the game even sooner, at 19.) Despite the head start, millennials still bear the scars of their early years. They're slightly less confident than baby boomers in their investing strategies, and they're less assured about reaching their financial goals compared with older generations.

Sure, millennials may have built up a decent nest egg for themselves, but if there's one trope that defines the avocado-toast generation, it's that they will never, ever own a home. It's certainly true that the 2008 crash and the pandemic-era frenzy put many members of the generation behind the eight ball: The homeownership rate for people under 35 is lower for millennials than it was for boomers and Gen Xers at the same age, noted Jessica Lautz, the deputy chief economist and vice president of research at the National Association of Realtors, citing Census Bureau data. But the situation is also more complicated. The tough early road put millennials behind baby boomers in terms of homeownership, but some are getting to where they want to be. Millennials aren't so much nonmovers as they are slow movers.

As of 2022, over half of millennials were homeowners. Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin, told me millennials are pretty close to where Gen X was at their age, and they're closing the gap with boomers, too, even if they're still behind by five to 10 years.

"The baby boomer homeownership rate started to plateau when baby boomers reached the age of late 40s, early 50s. So I think that by the time the oldest millennials are in their late 40s, early 50s, that's probably when they're going to be much closer to baby boomers," Fairweather said. Boomers have been slow to downsize and give up their homes, but that will shift, too, she added, meaning more inventory on the market for younger generations.

It's not necessarily a question of no buying — it's a question of postponed buying. The median age of first-time homebuyers has reached a record high of 38 years old, the NAR says. Back in the '80s, people were buying their first homes in their late 20s. Millennials aren't locked out of the housing market forever; they're just not getting there until middle age.

I know what you might be thinking, or, at least, what I was thinking while going through a lot of this data: Not all millennials are floating through life hunky-dory, on track to catch up with their parents. As with many things in American society, the experiences of millennials are profoundly unequal, said Rob Gruijters, a sociologist at the University of Bristol who has studied the wealth gap among US millennials. Looking at medians and averages can paper over significant divisions within the generation. While wealthy millennials are doing better than their boomer parents, poorer millennials are doing worse.

"There's huge variation in wealth within generations, far more than there is between generations," he said. "Overall distribution of wealth has become more unequal within generations and also across the board."

Much like our quirks and go-to phrases, a lot of the disparity between millennials is influenced by how our boomer parents did, wealth- and incomewise. There's a high correlation between your wealth and occupation and those of your parents, Gruijters said, and in the case of wealth, it's often a matter of direct transmission in the forms of gifts and inheritance. "If your parents are wealthy, he said, "then you're also quite likely to be wealthy." Aging into your parents may be good, in that Mom and Dad have a house and inheritance to pass on to you, or bad, in that they basically tell you, "You're on your own, good luck."

On housing, Redfin's Fairweather told me that where your parents live and who they are have a big effect on millennials' experiences. Housing prices in coastal cities are a lot higher than they are in the middle of the country, thanks to differences in land costs, population density, and availability. So millennials attempting to keep up with their parents who tried their hands in larger urban areas may have a harder time keeping pace. If you're a 30-something making $150,000 a year, buying a home in San Francisco probably feels a lot more out of reach than it does in, say, Janesville, Wisconsin.

"There is a big trade-off millennials have to face," Fairweather said. "Can they really make it in the city or go somewhere more affordable and not have that city lifestyle?"

In other words, it may not be that all the millennials headed to the suburbs want to be there, but in some cases, they feel like they have no choice but to exit urban centers and swallow a longer commute in the process.

"The plurality are moving to the suburbs, but that's where the housing stock is," Lautz said. Some of it has to do with having school-age kids, for example, but a lot has to do with affordability and availability.

Redfin says Black millennials are half as likely to own a home as white millennials, which tracks with the experience of their boomer parents. But while the older generation has since caught up somewhat, it's not clear whether millennials will make the same (still short) strides. It's a case of one generation's wealth seeding the next generation in a country where a significant racial wealth gap exists.

"With homeownership becoming so unaffordable, it's widening that inequality gap by race and, obviously, by wealth as well," Fairweather said.

People buying their first homes have "substantially higher" incomes nowadays than in the past, Lautz said. "We also know that they're more likely to use stocks, they're more likely to use 401(k)s or cryptocurrency for their down payments," she said. "So that would indicate not only a higher income but a wealthier first-time homebuyer who can get into the market."

There are a lot of awkward parts to aging. You lose your cool factor. Your body starts to show more wear and tear. You realize the adult in the room is supposed to be you. It also means you start to think about your parents differently — what they achieved, what they didn't, what they were right (and wrong) about all along.

It can be uncomfortable to admit that you see more of your parents in yourself than you'd like. As much as millennials were supposed to be minimalists, they're loading up on stuff just as much as their stuff-loving predecessors. Politically, just like generations past, many are moving to the right as they age. They may have been reluctant to get married and have kids, but they're still hitting those milestones eventually.

Victoria Lamson, a 37-year-old who works in public relations and lives in San Francisco, acknowledges she was set up for success, generationally — her parents own a business, and they've instilled in her a lot of their traditional values around getting married and buying a home. Like many millennials, she wants to parent her children differently. She and her husband are also trying to travel more now instead of saving all their money for when they retire. Still, she knows her lifestyle isn't really a departure. When her children ask questions, she tries not to give the "because I said so" her parents gave her, but sometimes, she just can't stop herself. "There are definitely the moments that I have said that," she said.

While a lot of millennials may be turning into their boomer parents — just look at those Progressive commercials about it — it is, perhaps, hitting different. In modern history, younger generations have outdone their predecessors, the proverbial idea that you'd end up better off than your parents. But if they bought a home young, went to college, and had solid careers, it's hard to outdo that. Even matching it may feel like falling short.

Millennials are also weighed down by a pervasive sense of precarity. They remember 9/11, and they saw the economic bottom fall out during the Great Recession. They're also facing an uncertain future for government programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and the real winners in the economy are increasingly concentrated at the top.

"Even if they were in some ways keeping up with where they should have been had nothing changed in the economy, the massive fiscal gap that the country's facing is going to land on their heads as they reach retirement," Laurence Kotlikoff, a professor of economics at Boston University, said.

Maybe it will get figured out. Maybe it won't. Millennials' experience tells them to have some concerns.

The good news for millennials, on average, is that they are generally turning out OK, despite the headlines a decade ago proclaiming that lattes would doom them to eternal squalor. The bad news is that OK does not always feel great, especially in a culture where the expectation is you're constantly striving to do more and better.

For many people, there is something at least a bit charming in recognizing their parents in themselves. Millennials' kids are now rolling their eyes when songs from the 2000s come on in the car, just as millennials did when the boomers played their '70s hits. They understand why Mom was always turning the heat down, or why Dad insisted it was very important they know how to change a tire. As much as they complain about boomers being hoarders, they're now staring down their own stack of two-decade-old high school yearbooks.

Millennials aren't the lost generation after all. They're boomers 2.0, with a side of avocado toast.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

• Saving $2 trillion would be a "best-case outcome" for DOGE, Elon Musk said on Wednesday.
• Musk said DOGE has a "good shot" at saving $1 trillion, and that would still be an "epic outcome."
• The Tesla chief previously said in October that his commission would save "at least" $2 trillion.

Elon Musk said in October that the Department of Government Efficiency — a commission in the Trump administration he's been tapped to co-run — would save the government $2 trillion.

But the Tesla chief had a more conservative assessment of that figure on Wednesday during a broadcast on X, where he told political strategist Mark Penn that $2 trillion is a "best-case outcome."

"I think we'll try for $2 trillion. I think that's like the best-case outcome. But I do think that you kind of have to have some overage," Musk told Penn. He added that he thinks the commission has a "good shot" at saving $1 trillion.

"If we can drop the budget deficit from $2 trillion to $1 trillion and free up the economy to have additional growth, such that the output of goods and services keeps pace with the increase in the money supply, then there will be no inflation. So that, I think, would be an epic outcome," Musk continued.

In October, Musk said at a campaign rally in New York that he thinks DOGE "can do at least $2 trillion" in savings.

Musk did not specify in October what cuts he planned to make to achieve that target, which would involve slashing government spending by nearly a third. The federal government spent $6.75 trillion in the 2024 fiscal year.

Musk, however, still told Penn on Wednesday that he thinks the government remains "a very target-rich environment for saving money."

"It's like being in a room full of targets. Like you could close your eyes, and you can't miss," he added.

Musk and President-elect Donald Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Trump will be sworn into office on January 20.

• California was already in the midst of an insurance crisis before this week's fires.
• Major insurers dropped property policies for residents, including in Pacific Palisades.
• Experts predict premiums will continue to rise for the whole region and it may get harder to secure a loan.

Even before this week's wildfires in Los Angeles County, California was in the midst of an insurance crisis spurred by the threat of intensifying wildfires and other extreme weather events.

Since 2022, major insurance companies have either stopped writing new policies, pulled back coverage, or dropped residents altogether. Last March, State Farm, the state's largest home insurance provider, dropped 72,000 property policies in the state, including 69% of policies in Pacific Palisades.

This week's fires will only worsen the situation, insurance and real estate experts told Business Insider.

"It's like we took two steps forward, then we just took five back," California insurance agency owner Nick Ramirez told BI.

Some progress had been made in recent months, Ramirez said. In August, Allstate agreed to temporarily halt mass non-renewals in California, although with a 34% increase in premiums, the LA Times reported.

That progress now feels in jeopardy since multiple fires have been blazing through Los Angeles County neighborhoods, razing Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and Hurst, forcing over 100,000 residents to evacuate and claiming five lives.

Ramirez and other experts explained how the destruction will likely exacerbate the crisis, jeopardizing the future of home ownership in California — even in regions outside of wildfire zones.

Insurance will continue to get more expensive for the whole region

For the lucky few who have secured insurance coverage in California in recent years, it's come with sticker shock.

"I've seen numbers go up, 200%, 300%, even 500% in a year," Ramirez said.

Now, even if your home is not directly in an area at risk of wildfire, the entire regions surrounding these zones will feel the increased heat of the situation.

Darren Nix, CEO of Steadily Insurance Company, explained that premiums will likely continue to rise for everyone, even if they are far from harm's way. Residents of zones far away from the most risk of wildfire are still likely to see 15-20% annual increases in premiums, Nix explained.

"In order to come out ahead for California as a whole, it is going to mean that over time, rates are going to go up, even for the folks that are not wildfire exposed," Nix said.

Residents seeking new policies throughout the region will also likely face more scrutiny when shopping around for policies.

"Each application in California is going to be getting triple scrutinized for how close they are to the nearest green space they are," Nix said.

It may get harder for homebuyers to secure loans

The downstream impacts of unaffordable insurance options is it may make it harder to get a mortgage, Kevin Herzberg, a Los Angeles-based mortgage consultant, told Business Insider.

Mortgage lenders won't lend on a house that doesn't have some type of insurance, Herzberg explained, and if the consumer can't afford the insurance, the home won't sell.

"As insurance becomes less available or more expensive, fewer people qualify for loans," he said.

Already this year 13% of realtors in California said in a recent survey they had sales transactions canceled because insurance was unaffordable or unavailable, Newsweek reported. That was double the 6.9% reported the previous year.

Californians scrambling to find new coverage have flocked to the state-run backup option FAIR, with active policies on residential properties jumping 41% from 320,518 in September 2023 to 451,799 in September 2024.

"They were supposed to be the insurer of last resort," Ramirez said. Now, they're the becoming one of the most important.

• Scott Disick, 41, says he doesn't plan to introduce his kids to a new partner unless it's "the right person."
• He has been co-parenting his three kids with his ex, Kourtney Kardashian, since their 2015 split.
• Dating as a single parent can be difficult since it can bring up complex emotions for your child.

Scott Disick, 41, says he has no plans to get into a serious relationship until his children get older.

Khloé Kardashian interviewed Disick on the first episode of "Khloé in Wonder Land," her new podcast, which premiered Wednesday on X. Disick spoke about navigating the dating landscape as a single dad.

Disick has three kids — Mason, 15, Penelope, 12, and Reign, 10 — with his ex, Kourtney Kardashian. The former couple called it quits in 2015 but continue to co-parent.

"They'd like me to be with somebody, I think. And they do voice to me that they'd like me to be with someone," Disick told Khloé, referring to his kids. "And I kind of say, until I find the right person, I don't really want to bring another person around unless it's like the end all, be all person."

The reality star said he didn't want his kids to "get attached" to somebody else in the meantime.

"But they're all starting to get older and it's not that much longer until they're of age, all of them," Disick said. "So for the next 5, 6, 7, years — if my attention is on them, I have the rest of my life to be a single guy."

He added that he likes that his focus is on his kids right now.

"And if I was with somebody else, I'd still be a good dad but I would have somebody that I'd be putting on a pedestal near them," Disick said.

Since his separation from Kourtney, Disick has been romantically linked to several other celebrities over the years — most notably Sofia Richie, whom he dated between 2017 and 2020.

Dating as a single parent can be difficult, especially since it can bring up complex emotions for your child.

"Children always respond with some confusion about their parent's new partner and what's different," Ron L. Deal, a licensed marriage and family therapist told Business Insider previously. "Confusion means 'I'm not sure what to do with you, where to put you in my heart, or what role you're going to play in my life.'"

A good way to manage the transition would be to talk your kids through the decisions you're making in the relationship and listen to their concerns, Deal said.

It can also be beneficial to reach out to professionals for support, such as through family therapy.

A representative for Disick did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by BI outside regular office hours.

• China has expanded its trade-in program to boost consumer spending on home appliances.
• The program, launched in March, includes subsidies and has shown positive results.
• China faces economic challenges including deflation fears and low consumer demand.

China's cautious consumers are spending less, prompting Beijing to dish out incentives even for small home goods.

On Wednesday, China added home appliances, including microwave ovens, water purifiers, dishwashers, and rice cookers, in a trade-in program designed to spur demand.

The program, which was first rolled out in March, already included bigger appliances like refrigerators, washing machines, TV sets, and air conditioners. The Chinese government subsidizes up to 20% of the price of a new appliance.

The Chinese government, which had allocated 81 billion yuan, or $11 billion, for the trade-in program, said on Wednesday that the program had yielded positive results.

Li Gang, a Chinese commerce ministry official, said at a press conference on Wednesday that the trade-in program resulted in 920 billion yuan worth of auto sales and 240 billion yuan worth of home appliances sales last year.

China is trying to boost consumption in the world's second-largest economy, which is beset by multiple challenges including a property crisis and high youth unemployment.

China deflation fears

Economists are especially worried about a deflation spiral, which would result in a vicious cycle of dampened consumer demand and lower prices.

Official inflation data released on Thursday gave little cheer, with China's consumer price index last year inching up just 0.2% from a year ago.

In December, China's CPI edged up just 0.1% more than a year ago in its fourth straight month of decline, with food price declines dragging inflation down. In comparison, November CPI was 0.2% higher than a year ago.

The headline inflation figure did not fall into deflation territory thanks to non-food inflation — which edged up 0.2%.

However, the data about non-food prices "does not inspire too much confidence in an uptick of consumption yet," wrote Lynn Song, the chief economist for Greater China at ING, on Thursday.

Prices of clothing, education, and healthcare moved up in December.

However, prices of transportation, communications, daily use goods, and rent were in the deflationary zone.

Factory gate prices were in deflation for the 27th straight month.

Analysts generally expect China's inflation data to pick up this month thanks to seasonal factors as Chinese New Year, which starts on January 29.

However, official data about wholesale farm product prices in China so far this month point to food prices being "subdued and weaker than traditional seasonality suggests," wrote Nomura economists on Thursday.

• Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said she looks for candidates who love to learn new things.
• Sweet said in a podcast interview that she would ask people what they have learned recently.
• The former lawyer said it didn't matter even if people just said they learned how to bake a cake.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said there's one key question she poses to people who want to work for her.

"There's one question that we ask everyone, regardless of you're a consultant or you're working in technology or whatever you do," Sweet said in an interview with Norges Bank Investment Management CEO Nicolai Tangen on his "In Good Company" podcast, which aired Wednesday.

"We say, 'What have you learned in the last six months?'" she added.

Asking this question, Sweet told Tangen, is a practical way for her to determine if candidates are interested in learning new things.

"If someone can't answer that question, and by the way, we don't care if it's 'I learned to bake a cake,' if they can't answer that question, then we know that they're not a learner," Sweet said.

This wouldn't be the first time Sweet has talked about her expectations for new hires at Accenture. The consulting firm said on its website that it employs around 799,000 employees and operates in more than 200 cities.

The former lawyer said in a 2019 interview with The New York Times that she looks for candidates who demonstrate two main traits.

"The first is curiosity. The new normal is continuous learning, and we look for people who demonstrate lots of different interests and really demonstrate curiosity," Sweet told The Times.

"The second piece is leadership. I don't care what level you are, there is the need to offer straight talk when you're working with clients. You have to have the courage to deliver tough messages," she added.

Representatives for Sweet at Accenture did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Sweet isn't the only C-suite executive who places a premium on learning.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that students should devote their time to learning and reading, and less time on social-media platforms like TikTok and Facebook.

Dimon was speaking at the Georgetown Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy's annual Financial Markets Quality Conference in September when he was asked if he had any advice for the students in attendance.

"My advice to students: Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. If you're Democrat, read the Republican opinion, the good ones. If you're Republican, read the Democrat ones," Dimon said.

"Read history books. You can't make it up. Nelson Mandela, Abe Lincoln, Sam Walton. You only learn by reading and talking to other people. There's no other way," he continued.

• Behrouz Esbati, an Iranian general, partially blamed Russia for the fall of Bashar Assad in Syria.
• In a speech in Tehran, Esbati accused Russia of bombing an empty desert instead of hitting Syrian rebels.
• While difficult to verify, his frank remarks are notable since Russia is one of Iran's strongest allies.

A top Iranian general has accused Russia of lying to Tehran by saying its jets were attacking Syrian rebels while they were instead bombing the open desert.

In a rare break from Iran's diplomatic line on Syria, Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati partially blamed Moscow for the fall of Bashar Assad's government during a speech at a mosque in Tehran.

An audio recording of the speech was published on Tuesday by Abdullah Abdi, a journalist in Geneva who reports on Iran.

"We were defeated, and defeated very badly. We took a very big blow, and it's been very difficult," Esbati said of Assad's fall, according to a translation by The New York Times.

In the recording, Esbati, a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Russia told Tehran it was bombing the headquarters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group spearheading Assad's ousting.

But Moscow's forces were instead "targeting deserts," Esbati said.

Esbati further accused Russia of turning off radars when Israel launched strikes on Syria in 2024, allowing Tel Aviv's forces to attack more effectively.

The general also largely blamed internal corruption for Assad's fall, saying bribery was rife among Syria's top-ranking officials and generals.

He added that relations between Damascus and Tehran grew tense over the last year because Assad refused an Iranian request to facilitate attacks on Israel through Syria.

Business Insider couldn't independently verify Esbati's claims. But they represent an exceptionally frank assessment among Iran's top ranks of its position in Syria, where a new political leadership is still coalescing in Assad's absence.

Iran officially held a much milder tone as Assad's government fell, saying at the time that the fate of Syria would be up to its people and that it "will spare no effort to help establish security and stability in Syria."

Assad, a longtime ally of both Iran and Russia, fled Damascus in early December as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham forces stormed toward the capital from the northwest. International observers believe the rebel advance largely happened as Moscow, a key source of military strength for Assad, found its resources stretched thin by the war in Ukraine.

The Russian defense ministry didn't respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

Esbati's remarks came as a former senior aide to Assad told the Saudi government-owned outlet Al Arabiya on Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had stalled military assistance for Syria.

Kamel Saqr said that Assad had asked Putin to personally approve airlifting military aid to Syria — and that the Russian leader agreed.

The aid was to be transported via Iranian aircraft, but Saqr said Tehran told Assad it didn't receive any requests from Moscow.

Assad then asked Moscow about this, but "no answer came," Saqr said.

Assad's fall, which neither Moscow nor Tehran stepped up to prevent, has brought deep implications for Russia's forces in the region. Moscow had previously relied on an airbase and a naval base, which it maintained under a deal with Assad, for its operations in Africa and the Mediterranean.

It's unclear whether Russia will eventually be able to continue maintaining those two facilities, but reports show that it's preparing to move much of its equipment out of Syria. On Friday, Ukraine said Moscow was planning to move its assets to Libya.

• The Los Angeles wildfires could cause up to $57 billion in damage, Accuweather estimates.
• The fires are destroying expensive real estate in Santa Monica, Malibu, and other neighborhoods.
• Insurance providers like State Farm pulled new coverage before the fire due to catastrophe risks.

The Los Angeles wildfires could cost between $52 billion and $57 billion in damages and economic losses, according to a preliminary estimate from weather forecasting service Accuweather.

The wildfires tearing through Santa Monica and Malibu, among other areas, are destroying some of the country's most expensive real estate, where median home values exceed $2 million, Accuweather said in a release on Wednesday. Wildfires in the Los Angeles Pacific Palisades neighborhood have destroyed the homes of celebrities including Paris Hilton and have evacuated actors Mark Hamill and James Woods.

The cost estimates include damages to homes and businesses, as well as negative impacts on tourism and health from smoke inhalation, Accuweather said. Property that has not been destroyed by the fire may also have smoke or water damage.

The company said that the estimate is early and may change as some areas have not reported damages and injuries.

"This is likely to end up being one of the most expensive wildfires in modern California history and it will also be one of the most damaging in terms of the numbers of structures that have been destroyed,"Jonathan Porter, AccuWeather's chief meteorologist, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the company declined further comment.

The last major disaster was the Camp Fire, which destroyed Paradise, Califronia in 2018. German insurance company Munich Re estimated it caused overall losses of $16.5 billion.

"These fires will likely be the costliest in history, not the deadliest, and that is the only silver lining right now," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA told LAList.

Five people have been reported dead and 100,000 were told to evacuate.

Health costs could stem from the inhalation of hazardous air from the burning of homes, vehicles, chemicals, and fuels.

Property insurance providers, such as State Farm, pulled new California homeowners' insurance services in 2023, citing risks from catastrophes. Last year, the company said it would end coverage for 72,000 homes and apartments in the state for the same reason.

Five separate fires hit the city and its region in recent days. High winds have hampered emergency services' responses.

• Microsoft Azure is Microsoft's vaunted cloud computing platform.
• Azure offers a range of cloud-based solutions for the creation and management of applications.
• Most Azure products use a pay-as-you-go pricing model, but some products can also be used for free.

Microsoft Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing platform that offers a range of cloud-based computing, networking, and data storage services.

Microsoft Azure boasts "solutions that enable organizations to build, deploy, and manage applications and services through Microsoft's global network of data centers."

Crystal clear, right? Don't worry, we'll break it down for you, but first just to clarify, Azure is indeed a computing platform, not just a storage platform.

In short, Azure lets you do things that require much more processing power than your computer has because the computing is done far from your desk, couch, or that coffee shop table. Now for the longer view.

When was Microsoft Azure created?

The same company that brought you PowerPoint, Word, and more, launched Azure as Windows Azure back in 2010, rebranding it to Microsoft Azure in 2014. With the launch of the company's AI interface Copilot in 2023, using Azure became easier than ever, as the smart chat interface can help less tech-savvy users take advantage of Azure's many uses.

Azure is now used by a plethora of small and large businesses and organizations. Indeed, Azure has become such a valuable platform and suite of services that Microsoft offers certifications in dozens of different Azure features and softwares to help IT professionals, developers, and engineers learn the intricacies.

Azure has become a critical component of Microsoft's business model since its 2010 launch, with executives often boasting of Azure's revenues in earnings calls.

However, Azure has not been immune from the turbulence within the tech industry in the post-pandemic era. Large rounds of Microsoft layoffs tend to be a "when" and not an "if" sort of thing, so it was hardly a great shock when hundreds of Azure employees were laid off in early summer 2024.

The large round of job cuts specifically targeted workers in the Azure for Operators and Mission Engineering departments, and were part of a pattern of layoffs begun in 2023 and expanded in 2024.

Microsoft Azure Services

Azure allows you to use an already immense and ever-growing catalog of services; it would be way too heavy of a lift to cover them all here, so we will showcase a few of the things you can do via this cloud computing platform.

Azure AI Search: This service allows you to conduct advanced, tailored smart searches and build up a vectored database of relevant retrieved information.

Azure Open Datasets: Host and share curated datasets that are honed and refined through machine learning, growing more accurate over time.

Speaker Recognition: This service allows for the ever-improving recognition of speech and integrates spoken words into programming, documents, and more. It is multilingual, of course.

Azure AI Content Safety: Azure can automatically watch out for images, text, and video content that might be inappropriate — or simply irrelevant — and filter them out of your content.

How much does Microsoft Azure cost?

Most Azure products use a pay-as-you-go model rather than fixed rates for different products or a flat monthly fee. Your costs could be as low as pennies each month for basic cloud storage or the managed hosting of a simple website or well into the thousands of dollars for enterprise-level use of myriad AI-enabled products.

Many Azure products can also be used for free. New users can enjoy 25 services free for 12 months, while others remain free at all times to all people. These include API management, the Azure AI Bot Service, and the Azure AI Metrics Advisor, to name just a few.

Microsoft Azure vs. AWS and Google Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the heavy hitter in cloud computing and storage, arguably leading the way in networking, cloud storage, mobile development, and cybersecurity.

Google Cloud Platform GCP is big on data analysis and arguably allows the easiest user experience and more seamless interaction with products created by other brands.

Microsoft Azure, for its part, provides vastly scalable and efficient software products, and it's usually cheaper than Google Cloud or AWS.

• The International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) and the US Maritime Alliance have struck a deal.
• This deal averted a potential strike involving thousands of dockworkers.
• The strike would have crippled shipping lines along the East and Gulf Coasts.

The International Longshoremen's Association and the US Maritime Alliance said Wednesday they had agreed on a new six-year master contract.

The two sides said in a joint statement that this will allow them to avoid any work stoppages on January 15.

"This agreement protects current ILA jobs and establishes a framework for implementing technologies that will create more jobs while modernizing East and Gulf coast ports — making them safer and more efficient, and creating the capacity they need to keep our supply chains strong," the joint statement read, adding that the deal was a "win-win agreement."

The ILA and USMX said they would get their members to review and approve the agreement before it is released publicly. For now, both sides will continue to operate under their current contract until the terms of the new agreement are ratified via a vote.

The strike would have potentially paralyzed shipping lines along the East and Gulf Coasts.

Details of the agreement were not made public, but the joint statement said dockworkers received some protections against having their jobs replaced by automation, which was one of the union's key concerns.

The ILA had the support of President-elect Donald Trump, who said in a Truth Social post in December that the amount of money saved by automation on US docks was "nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen."

Members of the ILA previously went on strike in October for three days. The strike ended when the union secured higher pay, while other contract negotiations continued, and members returned to work. That agreement provided a 62% pay increase over the next six years.

• Zou Qiang, 39, is the founder of a tailoring brand based in Shanghai.
• She met her partner 11 years ago and, like an increasing number of women in China, doesn't plan to get married or have kids.
• Part of her decision is due to money and time, but it's also a personal choice.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Zou Qiang, a fashion designer and owner of a tailoring brand in Shanghai. The following has been translated and edited for length and clarity.

My parents divorced when I was young, and I didn't have a very happy childhood. After I grew up, I wanted to do things that made me happy. I don't want to give to other people; I just want to make up for that time. Maybe that's selfish, but I've thought that for a long time.

I met my partner on an online dating forum. We were both based in Shanghai and, after a few months of chatting online, met up in person for Japanese food.

After a couple of months of dating, we decided to make it official. We shared the same perspective on what a relationship should be — monogamous best friends who are attracted to each other.

We've been together for 11 years now. We rent a two-bedroom apartment in the center of Shanghai, where we pay 10,000 yuan a month in rent, or $1,370. It's relatively cheap as we rented it unfurnished.

My mom often gets asked by her friends why I don't have children and why she doesn't put pressure on me. She points out to them that they have to look after their grandchildren every day and how it's aged them while she can go traveling. She's not the typical Chinese mother.

Many of my friends' parents believe that since they raised their children, they are entitled to be repaid with grandchildren or to be cared for in their old age. They see their kids as investments, not as individuals. My mom just wants me to be happy, and she says that makes her happy.

My partner's parents have been asking if we'll have children. They live in a village about 140 miles from Shanghai and have told my partner that it's embarrassing not to have grandchildren. But so far, I haven't changed my mind. Sometimes, parental pressure gets to my partner, and we discuss having kids, but I'd be the one carrying the baby, and I don't want to.

I have no interest in being a mom

Two other concerns I have about having a child are finances and who would take care of them. Having a child costs a lot of money. In Shanghai, I would need around 200,000 yuan, or $27,400, spare for hospital costs and basic necessities the first year. Also, to keep up with my job, I might need to hire a nanny.

My partner works in sales for a tech company, commutes to the office, and makes more than me. As I work from home and run my own business, I know I would be the one responsible for taking care of the child.

I've noticed that after a few of my friends had kids, they often started complaining to me. They tell me what hard work it is and about conflicts with their partners. None of them put pressure on me to have a child. About half of my friends have kids. The other half don't want kids or haven't found a suitable partner.

My fashion line is my baby

I started my own brand 12 years ago, and it's like my child. I even feel like every piece of clothing I make is like a child. When I'm designing, I start with an idea, look for the fabric, and find the buttons. After it's made, I still think about and care about each piece.

This winter, I designed a series inspired by a story about my partner's father. He rarely came home, but when he did for Lunar New Year, he'd pull money from a pocket sewn inside his coat. Each coat in my series features a unique inner pocket, meant to hold a piece of your childhood while keeping an adult appearance.

I design around four seasons of clothing a year for my brand, Duet, and also make individual pieces. I price them from 600 yuan for a pair of trousers to 3,000 yuan for a dress or coat. Everything is tailored. My clients tend to be women aged 35 to 50. My brand combines traditional Chinese elements with more modern Western styles.

I get to do what I like

Before I started my brand, I studied marketing and international tourism. I worked in human resources and then as a Mandarin teacher. When I had to go to an office, I couldn't sit still, and I felt bored. I'm doing work that I like now, and I can do whatever I want.

I eat out at least five times a week and travel several times a year. The last trip I took was to Russia with my partner, and we spent around 20,000 yuan on bear watching, climbing a volcano, and whale watching. We both like snow-capped mountains, so we travel to mountainous places every year. I would find it hard to give up my lifestyle to have a kid.

Despite China's efforts to encourage childbearing — including monetary rewards and subsidies — I come across more and more people who, like me, are not interested in having kids. In the past, people would think that you were weird if you didn't have children.

There are more and more weird people now, so it's become a normal thing.

Do you have a personal essay about life as a millennial in China that you want to share? Get in touch with the editor at [email protected].

• NASA scrapped its $11 billion plan to return samples from Mars to Earth by 2040.
• It now has not one but two new options to choose from — both are faster and cheaper.
• The samples could return as soon as 2035 and may contain the first-ever signs of ancient alien life.

The Perseverance rover is building up a stash of rocks on Mars that could contain the first-ever signs of alien life, but NASA is scrambling to figure out how it will bring them back to Earth for analysis.

NASA had a plan but it got "out of control," in the words of the agency's administrator, Bill Nelson. After a series of delays, the cost ballooned to $11 billion and the samples wouldn't be landing on Earth until 2040.

So Nelson scrapped that plan in April and called for new proposals from outside and within NASA.

After months of assessment, on Tuesday, Nelson announced that "the wizards at NASA" had come up with a new plan, which could bring the Mars rocks to Earth as early as 2035 for as cheap as $5.8 billion.

"We want to have the quickest, cheapest way to get these 30 samples back," Nelson said during a NASA presser on Tuesday.

For that to work, he said the incoming Trump administration will need to get on board.

"This is going to be a function of the new administration in order to fund this," Nelson said. "And it's an appropriation that has to start right now, fiscal year '25."

The search for alien life on Mars

NASA is not looking for active alien life but rather fossilized hints of long-gone microbial life.

The $2.4 billion Perseverance rover has spent the last four years exploring Jezero Crater, which was a lake billions of years ago. If microbes ever lived on Mars, this is the ideal spot to search for evidence of them.

In fact, in July, Perseverance stumbled on a rock in Jezero Crater that contained some of the strongest potential evidence of ancient alien life to date.

One of the rock's outstanding features was tiny white "leopard spots" that could suggest the presence of chemical reactions similar to those associated with microbial life on Earth.

It's still uncertain whether this is truly a sign of alien microbes. There could be non-biological explanations for the spots. To check, NASA needs to get that rock here to Earth for study in laboratories.

NASA's new plan

Bringing Perseverance's Mars samples to Earth will be complicated.

NASA must launch a mission that collects the samples from the Martian surface and launches them into Mars' orbit, where they must meet up with a European spacecraft designed to grab them and carry them back to Earth.

To make things simpler and reduce costs, NASA focused on how it would drop that mission to the Martian surface.

In order to maximize the chance of the sample return mission moving forward, NASA chose not one but two options to pursue.

The first option would involve using existing technology that's previously landed on Mars. That's a sky crane, similar to the ones that helped lower NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars' surface.

The second option involves working with existing commercial partners, like SpaceX and Blue Origin. In that scenario, NASA would use new commercial technology, untested on Mars, like a heavy lander, Nelson said.

Both paths would cost around $6 or $7 billion and deliver the samples to Earth before 2040, NASA determined.

Nelson said he expects NASA to choose one of those paths forward in 2026 since the engineering work required to fully understand each option will take about a year.

He added that NASA will need $300 million to do that work in fiscal year 2025. Trump would have to include that expense in his budget proposal, and Congress would have to approve it.

"And if they want to get this thing back on a direct return earlier, they're going to have to put more money into it, even more than $300 million in fiscal year 25. And that would be the case every year going forward," Nelson said.

As part of the transition to the new Trump administration, Nelson will likely be handing the agency over to Trump-nominee Jared Isaacman, a billionaire and two-time SpaceX astronaut.

After Trump nominated him for NASA Administrator, Isaacman wrote in a post on X that "Americans will walk on the Moon and Mars."

His position on the Mars Sample Return mission is unclear. Nelson said he had not spoken with Isaacman about it.

• The Palisades and Eaton fires are devastating parts of Los Angeles, destroying entire communities.
• Photos offer a glimpse at the scale of destruction that occurred in just a day and a half.
• The situation is still ongoing and dangerous, with evacuation orders in many areas.

The Palisades and Eaton fires are ripping through parts of Los Angeles and causing mass destruction.

Firefighters are still struggling to contain the blazes, which grew rapidly and have continued for more than 24 hours.

The fires have destroyed at least 1,000 homes. Five people are reported dead. These counts are preliminary, as the situation is still dynamic.

It's difficult to grasp the scale of these fires, but emerging photos paint a grim picture.

The massive Palisades and Eaton fires ripping through Los Angeles show how quickly brush fires can escalate under dry, windy conditions.

More than 70,000 people were under evacuation orders on Wednesday afternoon. Officials have warned that people in many other surrounding regions should prepare to leave their homes at a moment's notice.

Pat Durland, a wildfire-mitigation specialist and instructor for the National Fire Protection Association with 30 years of federal wildfire management experience, told Business Insider that if he lived in the area, he would leave before evacuation orders even hit his home.

"I would have left and gone to the beach or gotten a hotel," he said.

A giant smoke plume was rising over Santa Monica within an hour of the Palisades Fire igniting Tuesday morning.

UC San Diego's ALERTCalifornia camera network captured it from the other side of Santa Monica. At that time the fire covered about 200 acres.

So many people had to evacuate that Palisades Drive was gridlocked.

Many people abandoned their cars and fled on foot.

Since then, the Palisades Fire has burned through more than 15,800 acres. This was the area with evacuation zones early Wednesday afternoon.

That's where the acreage stood at 2:30 p.m. PT on Wednesday. Throughout the morning it was increasing hour by hour.

The most up-to-date evacuation orders and warnings are available through CalFire.

Photos are emerging from areas where the Palisades Fire has burned its way through.

The Eaton Fire in nearby Pasadena also rapidly ballooned overnight and Wednesday morning.

The Eaton Fire covered 10,600 acres as of 1 p.m. PT on Wednesday.

Images from that area show a similar situation to Pacific Palisades: frantic evacuations and destroyed homes.

The smoke from the fires filled the Los Angeles area, darkening the skies and causing unhealthy air quality.

A powerful windstorm spread the flames quickly, sending embers flying and igniting new spots, even jumping across roads.

Hurricane-force winds peaked overnight and Wednesday morning, and firefighters were unable to contain the blazes.

"Despite the efforts we put in with well-trained firefighters and equipment and aircraft, the wind and the weather still are ruling these situations," Durland said of major, fast-moving fires like these.

Another ALERTCalifornia camera captured the rising smoke from a ridge on the other side of the fire about an hour after it started.

This was the view from the same trailhead Tuesday night. This camera has since gone offline.

Bone-dry vegetation provided abundant fire fuel due to a phenomenon called weather whiplash.

The last two winters in Southern California have been quite wet, even causing flooding. That led to an explosion of grasses and shrubs, nearly twice as much as a normal season, according to the UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.

However, this winter has been different. Months without precipitation have dried out all that vegetation, blanketing the LA hillsides with fire fuel.

Grasses and shrubs help spread the fire, but it's "human fuels" that ignite homes, Durland said.

"It's bark mulch, it's ornamental grasses, it's structures that are readily flammable," Durland said.

"This is an urban fire. We're burning urban fuels," he added.

That means that cities and homeowners can do something about it. More fire-resistant landscaping and construction can help protect homes from future firestorms like this.

There are always houses that survive wildfires, Durland said, and everyone can learn from that.

It helps to build homes with ample space between them and maintain a perimeter of at least five feet that's totally free of dry or flammable vegetation or mulch.

Homeowners can also keep their roofs and gutters clear and remove anything flammable from underneath porches and decks.

The Palisades were full of multi-million-dollar homes, which means this could be the costliest fire in US history, Swain said.

According to a preliminary estimate from JP Morgan, insured losses alone could amount to $10 billion.

The Eaton fire, burning in Pasadena and Altadena, was at 0% containment as of Wednesday afternoon.

• Multiple blazes raged out of control in Los Angeles and Southern California Wednesday.
• Business Insider spoke with three residents about their experiences fleeing the scene.
• They called it terrifying, devastating, and apocalyptic.

The fires storming through Los Angeles and Southern California have left over 1,000 structures burned, at least two people dead, and tens of thousands of others displaced as they heed mandatory evacuation orders.

Business Insider spoke with three people who encountered the devastating impacts of the blaze firsthand. Their words have been edited for length and clarity.

'I don't know where everyone in our community is going to go'

Alisa Wolfson, a journalist, lives in the Palisades with her husband and two daughters, ages 7 and 10. They evacuated to a friend's home and then the Beverly Hilton before losing their home in the fire.

My husband and I both grew up in the Palisades and bought our home there in 2018. My mom's still there, too. We love our neighborhood, and there's a strong sense of community. There's a reason that it's impossible to buy in and that Bill Hader lives on our street. It was like a storybook — too good to be true.

I was sitting in my home office Tuesday looking out the window when a girlfriend called me to see if I had heard that there was a fire nearby. I looked up and saw a little thing of smoke, but I thought we'd be fine. Within 10 minutes, it grew beyond what I ever thought was possible. I went out to the street and could see that the nearby hillside was engulfed in flames. I called my husband at work and said, "You need to come home right now."

Very quickly, it turned into all of our neighbors on the street throwing things in their cars and driving off. It was terrifying. I grabbed our dog Gus and just as I was leaving, my neighbor across the street called and asked me to pick up her dog since she wasn't home. I went back into my house, got her key, and put her dog in the car.

A friend whose daughter goes to the same school as mine picked our girls up, and we met at her house, which was just outside the evacuation zone. We put all the dogs in the yard, and the girls played with their friends. I thought we'd just camp out for a few hours — but then things started to look terrible really quickly. Around 1 p.m., my husband borrowed our friend's e-bike and rode to our house to see if there was anything he could do and to grab a few things left behind. He saw tons of smoke, firemen, and the hillsides burning — it was really wild.

We stayed at our friend's house until they lost power, then checked into the Beverly Hilton. It was like all of West Los Angeles had descended upon the hotel — it took 40 minutes just to pull into the driveway.

We paid $560 for the night for a room with two beds, which doesn't seem outrageous to me. They've been wonderful here. They greeted everyone in line, handing out water bottles. Henry Winkler was checking in ahead of me, and Cisco Adler's here. It's like a real LA tale. My mom is staying in the room next door with her dog — the number of dogs in this hotel right now is insane.

The front page of the LA Times featured a house on our street in flames. The images looked apocalyptic. Our daughters kept asking, "Is our house safe?" but we weren't sure.

This afternoon, a neighbor who rode his bike into the neighborhood confirmed it: We've lost our home. Our neighbors have been texting that they have too. I'm utterly devastated and in a state of shock, barely functional. I haven't been able to break the news to my daughters yet. I don't know where everyone in our community is going to go. Our entire town appears to be gone.

This isn't something that should be happening. People need to elect local officials who really care about the climate and do what's needed to prepare for or prevent events like this. Last night, my husband asked me, "Where do you think you want to spend the rest of your life?" We have family in Connecticut, and last night it crossed my mind — do we just bail and start fresh? I don't know. For now, we're just taking it hour by hour.

'It was like the apocalypse, in a way''

Katie Cassidy, an actor and close friend of Alisa Wolfson, lives three minutes away from Wolfson in the Palisades. On Tuesday afternoon, she and her significant other evacuated to her parents' home in another part of Los Angeles.

My significant other, who is Canadian, woke up around 10:15 a.m. and said, "Oh my gosh, this weather is so beautiful, and the wind is so nice," and I was like, "Oh no, wind is not good." I was born and raised in Los Angeles, so I'm aware of fires and the Santa Ana winds, especially around this time of year.

I went outside and smelled smoke. My close friend Alisa lives up the street, so I called to check on her and her family. Moments later, firetruck after firetruck and helicopter after helicopter passed by. My gut knew that this was not good. I started to pack away our things and valuables.

We kept our eye on the situation. There were more helicopters and more smoke. The sky turned darker and red, and we started seeing ashes.

Around noon, my partner looked out the window and said, "Babe, there are people running down the streets with their suitcases and bags and kids and strollers." We threw everything in the car, brought our cats and dog, and left.

Luckily, my parents live in another part of Los Angeles, so we came here. We later saw on the news that the people we saw running down the street were people who'd abandoned their cars on Sunset Boulevard because they were stuck in traffic. It was really terrifying and devastating to see; it was like the apocalypse, in a way.

I wish I would've left earlier. I was trying to get a better gauge of what was going on and trying not to panic. People need to be aware and not be stubborn and stay in their homes thinking it'll never happen because it will; it's happened to me. I don't know if our house is still there, but if it isn't, it'll be the second home I've lived in that has burned to the ground in LA; my childhood home in Bell Canyon burned down in a fire some years after we sold it.

Even though my parents' place is safe at the moment, the winds can change. Our bags are packed, and we're ready to move with our fur babies when and if need be. At the end of the day, we're just grateful to be alive.

'There's only so much you can take'

Adam Wood, a 45-year-old film producer, director, and editor, lives in North Hollywood and helped his friend evacuate from Pasadena early Wednesday morning.

Everyone was aware there was a fire building in Altadena around late Tuesday afternoon, and we've had issues up there before. My friend has an urban farm up there that houses rabbits, pigs, and chickens. My thoughts and concerns were with him — if he had to get out, he'd need as much help as possible. I went over there in the early evening Tuesday to help.

At first, evacuators didn't think the fire would come down toward where we were, but at around 2:45 in the morning, we got the evacuation order through an alert on the phone. Then a fire official knocked on the door, and we had about half an hour to pack as much as we could, including a young pig, into the back of my friend's Tesla.

Thankfully, we got everyone out, and all the animals got out OK. My friend had already packed his documents and anything of physical value in his wife's SUV and his Tesla. The chickens were huddled together in one cage, and the rabbits were also hutched in one of the cars.

His wife and two kids were also there, and they all took a bunch of personal items, a suitcase each, and some computers. Of course, there's only so much you can take. The cars were jam-packed, but much of their personal property had to be left behind.

As we drove away, it was pretty hectic given that it was a rush and the whole neighborhood was also leaving at the same time. Thankfully it wasn't replicable to the scenes in the Palisades where people abandoned their cars. But the glow of the fires was visible on the horizon, and smoke filled the air.

He lives in a very nice house, and God knows if that still exists.

Now, there is the Woodley fire, which is closer to my home, so we are keeping a watchful eye on my place and hoping we won't need to evacuate ourselves.