America is one of the world's biggest food importers. It relies on EU nations, Mexico, Canada, China, India, and many other countries for products like seafood, fruit, olive oil, sugar, and cheese. President Donald Trump is threatening tariffs on many of these countries, which could make food more expensive for Americans at grocery stores. We explore where America gets its food and what's at stake if trade relations are jeopardized.

• Daniel Meursing is the CEO of Premier Staff, a luxury event staffing company in LA.
• He worked as server and started his own company living frugally at his mom's house in the suburbs.
• Meursing had to learn to be honest with himself as a CEO to grow his revenue and scale the business.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Daniel Meursing, CEO of Premier Staff. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I moved to New York and signed with New York Model Management in 2015. I was 19 and worked for a catering company as a "model server." The pay was $27 an hour, and it was a good side gig. I was also a brand ambassador for a friend's staffing company working at pop-up events.

In 2019, I moved back to LA, to live with my mom in the suburbs. I had obtained my license as a mortgage lender and was working at a loan company.

Times were lean, so I also took gigs working for an event staff company in LA.

A guest at a party I was working at in LA approached me and asked if I could staff a couple of his art parties every month. He'd been impressed by my work managing high-profile guests at the party. I had some experience managing events, so agreed.

Within a few weeks of meeting this client, I had staffed my first party. I was nervous and had no idea what I was doing. I had to learn how to file invoices and pick a business name, Premier Staff.

Finding staff for these early events was hard, and I'd often ask friends to help out last minute. I was never confident staff would show up on time or in the right uniform. In the beginning, I led every event on-site.

The parties went smoothly because I would walk around the space like a madman, making sure everything was perfect.

I made about $22,000 in 2019 from managing my events and working for other staffing companies, reinvesting those wages back into my business.

I was also fired from my mortgage lending job that year. My heart wasn't really in mortgage lending, and I was excited about my new opportunity. It felt like a sign.

I was eating McDonalds every day to keep costs low

I was living off credit cards and cobbled together $4,000 to purchase the website domain "premierstaff.com." I spent six months building the website and creating the brand. I ate $5 meals at McDonalds and invested everything back into the business.

I launched Premier Staff in October 2019. I was young enough to afford the risk of starting a business and was fortunate to live with my mom.

One of the main things that helped me get a second client was optimizing my website to rank on Google and creating a Google Business listing. This is how my second client, L'Amour Events, reached out the following month. They produced weddings in Beverly Hills and hired me as one of their on-site coordinators.

People began calling to book events from my Google listing. When I started booking several events per day, I knew I needed to hire trustworthy people to lead them. I built an internal leadership training program to teach my leaders how to keep clients happy.

We provided luxury staff and helped coordinate event spaces, schedules, and timings. From October 2019 to February 2020, I was gathering solid momentum, and my revenue was growing.

COVID shut our revenue to zero

There was no work during 2020. It was disheartening. I got a job as a mortgage lender again. Interest rates had cratered, and the lending business was booming.

In 2021, My business was still shut down. But I got a call from a client asking to hire 50 people in a week's time for a wedding. They must have found my website or Google listing.

I said yes, hoping I could figure it out. Other staffing agencies had closed down or were scared of COVID.

I contacted the managers at other agencies and asked them to help me. I figured that if I had good leadership, I could pad the rest out with less experienced staff. After that event, I was back in business.

This client ended up being a big wedding producer and loved our service. She gave us referrals and repeat business. In 2021, I expanded very quickly because I said yes to everyone and captured a lot of business quickly.

We made about $250,000 in revenue in 2021, even though it was half a year of trading. We worked on The Kid LAROI's 18th birthday party, the week his song with Justin Bieber became No. 1 on the charts. They did a performance with pyrotechnics at the event.

Hiring my first full-time employee was a huge factor in our ability to scale. I hired a young, quick-texting micro influencer. She was naturally good at finding people to help me last minute and handling back-and-forth communications. I think the scariest part for entrepreneurs is hiring the first employee, but it has a big impact on the business.

In 2022 and 2023, we brought in around $950,000 in revenue. We focused on building infrastructure and internal systems and brought in just over $1 million in revenue last year.

You have to be honest with yourself as a CEO

If you want to be a CEO and lead, you have to reinvent yourself and be willing to learn. You have to have uncomfortable conversations with yourself about anything that may be holding you back. I'm a sole owner. I don't have partners, investors, or formal business education. My business is just trial and error.

There was a point where I hit a cap in my growth. The company was doing well, but I wasn't hitting the projections I'd envisioned. I could've blamed the economy and my team or made excuses. But, being honest with myself, I was taking on things I enjoyed within the business that weren't helping move the business forward.

As CEO, I need to ensure the company's growth. So, I realigned my focus to where I was needed most. Since I've done that, we've closed much bigger deals. In 2025, I hired a sales and marketing team and we've brought in $250,000 in revenue by mid February.

Look past the glitzy phone launches, and you'll find some truly bizarre, sometimes ingenious devices and concepts lurking in the halls of Mobile World Congress.

• Neurofit created an app that incorporates somatic exercises to help treat chronic stress.
• The company uses AI to help with tasks like coding and language translation.
• This article is part of "How AI Is Changing Everything: Small Business," a series exploring how small businesses are using AI for success.

Whether it's work or family-related pressures, an unexpected health scare, or a sudden life change like a big move, we all experience stress.

But there's a big difference between short-term, acute stress and chronic stress, which accumulates over time and potentially affects physical health.

Many mindfulness apps are effective at addressing acute stress but may not be as helpful for chronic stress. Neurofit, a mental wellness app that focuses on movement, is trying to close this gap.

The app, developed by the husband-and-wife team Andrew and Loren Hogue, leverages neuroscience and what they call "nervous system fitness" to help users reduce stress and improve mental clarity through somatic exercises. Somatics is a field of movement studies and bodywork that focuses on the body's physical perceptions and experiences, emphasizing conscious movements that increase the mind-body connection.

With just a three-person team, Neurofit relies on AI to deliver its program and engage users. The small business uses AI in three key ways: mental health coaching, app coding and development, and language translation.

Andrew Hogue, a serial entrepreneur with a background in software engineering, cofounded Neurofit in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when rates of anxiety and depression soared. Five years later, many people are still recovering from that collective trauma.

Loren Hogue, a former lawyer who trained to become a master somatic coach, learned that chronic stress affects physical health just as much as mental health.

Neurofit uses neuroscience- and evidence-based methods to address chronic stress and burnout, anchoring its program on somatic movements and mindfulness activities proven to reduce stress.

The Neurofit app has a daily check-in function where users assess how they feel about different parts of their lives, including career and family, and securely collects this data to understand each user's "stress fingerprint," Andrew Hogue said.

The app compiles biometric data, such as heart rate and nervous system recovery, and combines this with information about each user's stress profile and physiology to provide personalized guidance and insights. It analyzes a user's unique stress patterns over time and tailors exercises and coaching to the individual's needs.

Product development, coding, and translation help

Neurofit also uses AI for coding. Andrew Hogue used it to develop an app specifically for Apple Watches, something he'd never done despite his experience as a software engineer. He said AI reduced the learning curve, guiding him through the coding process to develop an Apple Watch app in just a few days to complement Neurofit's existing iOS app.

Neurofit has also adopted AI to reach a global audience.

The company uses GPT-4o from OpenAI— a generative AI tool that can create new content from virtually any source material — to translate mental health and wellness articles in the app's content library into more than 40 different languages. The technology allows Neurofit to translate content faster and more affordably than using human translators, saving the company $1,500 to $2,000 for each language, Andrew said.

Loren Houge said AI also helps Neurofit increase accessibility and equity.

"By driving down the cost of care, AI-driven tools are poised to serve far more diverse populations from anywhere, not just tech-savvy or privileged groups," she said.

But adopting AI hasn't been foolproof. The technology initially produced subpar language translations, but they improved over time with better data inputs. It experienced a similar problem with its content library, as ChatGPT 3.0 initially delivered lower-quality results as the team added more internal links, visuals, and graphics to its content pages. Andrew Hogue said these issues have been resolved over time.

It's just another reminder that you can't rely solely on AI tools; a human always should be in the loop.

The Hogues said it's critical for small businesses new to AI to start with small test cases, look for repetitive tasks to easily automate, and use the technology to augment — rather than replace — human empathy and connection.

Loren Hogue added that ethical and privacy safeguards are nonnegotiable, especially in healthcare.

"Robust data protection needs to be built into every step, starting at the design phase, so users feel safe sharing biometric information," she said.

Ultimately, they believe the potential for AI to have a positive effect on people's mental health may outweigh the possible risks.

"We believe AI can transform mental health care into a more proactive, holistic, preventive, and personalized domain," Loren Hogue said, "one that supports not only immediate mental and emotional well-being, but also long-term physiological resilience and longevity."

Correction: March 5, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated the generative AI tool Neurofit uses to create new content. The company uses GPT-4o, not ChatGPT 3.0.

• Emily Pitcher got a job at Meta straight out of college but was laid off in 2023.
• Despite exceeding expectations and receiving other accolades, she couldn't find a regular job.
• She took her unemployment as an opportunity to develop a game and launch her business.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Emily Pitcher, a 25-year-old content creator and game developer from Los Angeles. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I was valedictorian of my high school and graduated from college with honors. I've always valued excellence, so it was such a treat when, just out of college in 2021, I landed a contract job at Meta that turned into a full-time, six-figure job as a content designer around the start of 2022.

I worked on every major surface of Instagram, including profiles, explore, search, and home. I got to work on features that were used by so many people.

My first annual performance rating was "exceeds expectations" on all markers, and I was given a raise. I thought I was doing really well at the company. Then two months later, in April of 2023, I was laid off.

For the first time, I realized that hard work doesn't always reap rewards. Finding full-time work felt impossible, but struggling to find a job pushed me to give my passion project a shot.

I planned to work in Big Tech for a while, but layoffs happened across the entire industry

I was laid off via a generic email as part of a series of mass layoffs. The message cited that Meta had changing business needs, and my role was no longer needed. I was devastated.

My true passion has always been indie video games, but I planned to stick around in Big Tech for several years before starting my own studio. I thought I had done really well at a big company like Meta. When I got laid off, it messed with my worldview.

I started applying to more tech jobs, and after four months of unemployment, I landed a contract role at Yahoo as a content designer, which kept me afloat. That job ended a few months later, and I was back to being unemployed.

There were so many Big Tech layoffs happening at the time.

I was on Forbes 30 under 30 and still couldn't find a job

I had been making some money from content creation promoting my indie game, Gold Lining, which I'd been developing with some friends since college.

In the midst of my unemployment, I was included in Forbes 30 under 30 for my work on the game.

It felt like such a jarring discrepancy. On one hand, I received this esteemed achievement and was being told I was a part of the next generation of changers in the game industry. On the other hand, I was crying alone in my bedroom because I couldn't even land a regular job. It felt very dystopian.

I thought maybe being on Forbes 30 under 30 would help me get a job, but it didn't. Nobody cared.

I started a hobby project to help me cope with my failures

Around this time, I started hating the game I was developing with my friends. We were receiving rejection after rejection from investors, and I found myself trying to appease them at the expense of my own better judgment. I wanted to get back to making games I loved.

I decided to start a hobby project as a way to cope with the anxiety of my two colossal failures — unemployment and a failing game. My honest hope was just to reignite my spark for game development.

I stepped away from Gold Lining in July 2024, and that same month, I came up with the idea to develop Lily's World XD, a psychological horror game where players investigate a young girl's computer.

I made a little Instagram video promoting its development, which got over 2 million views. Now, I fully finance myself through content creation about my journey building Lily's World XD.

Working for myself has been challenging, but I'm taking this time to give my dreams a shot

I feel so lucky that I'm able to pursue my passion at such a young age, but I still have anxiety every day that it's all going to stop working out because content creation is so futile.

I'm still learning how to manage the anxiety and overwhelm of being my own boss. When I was working at Meta, I'd turn my work brain off after work. Now, I lay in bed at night, still thinking about a bug in my game or stressing about a video that isn't performing well.

It can be tough, but leaning on my network of fellow game developers and content creators for support has been extremely helpful. I'm taking this as my chance to give my dreams a shot, and I won't hold back.

If you were laid off from your dream job and would like to tell your story, please email the editor, Manseen Logan, at [email protected].

• David Fano, the CEO of Teal, has put reports on PIPs and watched others complete them successfully.
• His keys to overcoming a PIP are to avoid defensiveness, maintain your reputation, and self-promote.
• If you get let go in the end, make sure you keep your relationships intact and leave gracefully.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with David Fano, the 44-year-old CEO of Teal based in New York. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Before founding Teal, an AI company, I worked as a consultant for WeWork for three years before becoming an executive. I held several titles there, including Chief Growth Officer.

Throughout my career, I've seen performance improvement plans from different perspectives: I've put people on PIPs myself, coached people through them, and had direct reports put their direct reports on PIPs, too.

When on a PIP, it's easy to feel unempowered because they're scary and uncomfortable. People make mistakes when on PIPS that can ultimately cost them their jobs. Here are four of them to be aware of.

1. Don't get defensive

The first mistake people make when they get put on a PIP is they get defensive. They don't realize that you can't argue your way out of a PIP — you can't undo it.

PIPs are premeditated and aren't just done on a whim. If a manager is trying to indicate that you have a performance challenge, getting defensive is the worst thing you can do.

Let's say you're an engineer and not hitting your deadlines. You don't want to say, "It's because the product team didn't give me a clear spec," or, "It's because we cut the budgets."

Even if you think your manager is wrong, their feedback is false, or you disagree entirely, you must try to understand their perspective.

That's not to say that you'll never get a chance to share your side; you usually have months to do that with whoever put you on the PIP, as they are the person who you ultimately should try to convince why you shouldn't be on one. Still, you have to listen first.

Get curious and seek feedback. If you want to come out on the other side, you must listen and approach it with an open mind.

2. Don't tarnish your reputation

Another mistake you shouldn't make is tarnishing your reputation. Your reputation belongs to you, and it transcends employers.

The biggest way people hurt their reputation is by thinking: You know what? I'll get fired in three months anyway, so I'm just going to quit.

Your manager might just think the dynamics are wrong — and they might still think you're great. Or, maybe your company realizes you're just in the wrong department. If you work at a big enough organization, there may be other open roles that you're a better fit for.

3. Don't forget to learn from it

As you sit on a PIP, you may think that you can't fix it or that it's irreparable. Even if you feel that to be true, don't miss the opportunity to improve and learn from the feedback.

PIPs usually come with a timeline and are very structured. Essentially, they're building a paper trail for why they're eliminating your position.

If they're giving you feedback, use it as a learning opportunity. Take that time to build those muscles because even if learning doesn't save you in your current job, it will help you in your next job.

Understand that getting feedback is a chance to grow and recognize when you can improve. Although all feedback is important, PIP feedback will cost you a job if you don't address it.

4. Don't forget to self-promote

At work, sometimes people assume that if they come in and do hard work, everyone will notice. That's just not true. Usually, those who tactically self-promote and make sure those who placed them on the PIP are aware of their wins and contributions tend to move up.

If you're put on a PIP and feel you're doing incredible things, you might think, How do they not know? Maybe the mistake is that you're too humble and letting your team have all the credit, so they think you're not doing anything.

If you're on a PIP, ask yourself: What are you doing weekly to ensure they don't forget you? Then, remind them regularly.

Document everything you're doing. Send a weekly update via email or Slack if that works better for your team, and also set up regular check-ins with your manager. You want continual feedback. Remember, they're not waiting until the end of the PIP to form their opinion on your performance — they're forming it immediately.

If you're fired, go gracefully

If you're let go at the end of the PIP, you have to accept it. Relationships go with you, so try to build as many as you can, maintain your identity, learn what you can from the experience, leave gracefully, adjust, and start looking for something new.

If you stay, understand that it's not likely you got off the PIP and are automatically good to go. You received feedback about things they were worried about, so continue to build their confidence in you and make them feel good about why you're there. Reiterate why it was the right decision to keep you.

Mobile World Congress 2025 is well under way in Barcelona, Spain, and while there’s still one day left, the mobile-focused show has already delivered lots of new laptops, smartphones, concepts, and innovative accessories.

Some of the biggest announcements were made over the weekend, so we want to make sure you didn’t miss anything. Here are the best gadgets that have debuted at MWC 2025 so far, but there’s still more to come. You can catch up on all of our coverage of the show right here.

Newnal AI phone

Undeterred by the failure of the Humane AI pin, the creators of the Newnal AI phone still believe AI has the potential to become a very useful virtual assistant. To ensure it’s tailored to your needs and life, the company says the phone trains an AI model on your personal information sourced from Meta, Google, as well as your medical records and financial data. There are definite privacy concerns, and all of that info is used to create an AI-powered assistant that looks and sounds like you’re occupying the top portion of the split-screen phone. If you don’t think bossing around an uncanny valley version of yourself is creepy, the phone is expected to launch on May 1st for $375. Fair warning: We have no idea if it actually works. Or how.

Samsung Display’s folding handheld console concept

Many of the most innovative devices making their debut at MWC are concepts that could one day make their way into consumers’ hands. Samsung’s Display group demonstrated a few different prototypes including an asymmetrical Z Flip-style phone that folds in two places leaving the middle of its screen visible, and a larger folding display hidden inside a briefcase. Its most interesting concept was a Nintendo Switch-style handheld console with a hinge in the middle allowing it to fold in half for improved portability.

Lenovo ThinkBook Flip concept

The ThinkBook Flip concept uses the same flexible OLED screen as Lenovo’s ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 that’s expected to arrive as early as June 2025 and start at $3,499. But instead of the screen extending out from beneath the laptop’s keyboard to increase screen real estate, on the ThinkBook Flip it’s static and designed to fold backwards. That will potentially allow the Flip to be used as a more traditional 13.1-inch laptop, as a 12.9-inch tablet, or as a laptop with an abnormally tall 18.1-inch display. The lack of a motorized mechanism could also make the ThinkBook Flip cheaper, if it ever sees the light of day.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra

Following the launch of the Xiaomi 15 Ultra in China, the company announced a UK and European launch for its latest flagship phone with pricing at around $1,600, although there’s no word on a US launch yet. Although some may find the 15 Ultra’s quadruple rear camera with an asymmetrical lens layout downright ugly, the phone features a new 4.3x periscope lens paired with a 200-megapixel 1/1.4-inch-type sensor with improved low-light performance that left us thoroughly impressed in our review.

Nubia Focus 2 Ultra

Anyone who can remember fidgeting with the original iPod’s scroll wheel will appreciate a specific feature on the Nubia Focus 2 Ultra smartphone. Surrounding the camera bump on the back of the phone is a physical spinning dial – similar to the dials found on DSLR and mirrorless lenses – that can be used to adjust the camera’s zoom level or switch between a series of filter presets. There’s no word on whether the dial can be used with other smartphone apps, but using it as a tiny steering wheel would be a satisfying way to play racing games.

Lenovo Yoga Solar PC concept

What if you didn’t have to worry about your laptop’s battery life as long as the sun was shining? That’s the idea behind Lenovo’s Yoga Solar PC concept featuring 84 solar cells integrated into the laptop’s lid. When positioned in direct sunlight for 20 minutes, the laptop’s solar panel will generate enough electricity for an hour of video playback. The company says it’s still evaluating power output in other lighting conditions, but the solar charging capabilities could still be a welcome fallback for times when a power outlet isn’t available.

Xiaomi Modular Optical System smartphone concept

Portability is a limiting factor when it comes to how good smartphone photography can get. To create a mobile device that offers photographic capabilities closer to what you can get from mirrorless cameras, Xiaomi is resurrecting an old Sony idea with magnetic lens attachments. The company’s Modular Optical System concept uses lenses that are actually self-contained cameras with sensors larger than what you’ll find in any smartphone. Captured images are processed by the phone the lens is attached to so they’re immediately available to share, and while a smartphone with a giant lens hanging off the back might be a little awkward to use, the temporary approach means the phone maintains its slim form factor the rest of the time.

Infinix solar smartphone concept

Lenovo wasn’t the only company at MWC staring at the sun for inspiration. Chinese phone brand Infinix demonstrated a concept smartphone at the show with an integrated solar panel on the back. Using more efficient perovskite solar cells like companies such as Anker do, Infinix’s says its SolarEnergy-Reserving technology can charge a phone at up to 2W speeds in optimal lighting conditions, although leaving your smartphone in the sun for a few hours to charge isn’t going to help with overheating.

HMD Amped Buds

What sets the HMD Amped Buds apart from other wireless earbuds aren’t their ANC or IP54 splash-resistance. It’s their charging case featuring a 1,600mAh battery that can keep the buds running for an impressive 95 hours before the case needs a power top-off. But if you’ve got a smartphone that’s dying at an inopportune time, the Amped Buds’ charging case can also be used to reverse wireless charge for Qi2-compatible mobile devices. That’s not quite enough power to fully recharge a smartphone, but when these launch in April 2025 for around $206, it could be enough of a boost for a couple extra hours of use.

Nothing Phone 3A and 3A Pro

After a multitude of leaks and official teases from the company, Nothing officially announced its 3A and 3A Pro phones at MWC. Both feature 6.77-inch displays, Android 15, and Snapdragon 7S Gen 3 chipsets paired with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. The 3A Pro, which starts at $459, features a 3x periscope telephoto lens while the $379 3A’s zoom capabilities are limited to 2x. They’re both well-equipped midrange phones, but stand out with the introduction of a new feature Nothing calls Essential Space that uses AI to extract and store useful information from screenshots, voice memos, and photos.

Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro

Imagine a pair of wireless earbuds that don’t lose their connection when you wander too far away from your smartphone or computer. Xiaomi’s new Buds 5 Pro are the first earbuds to feature Qualcomm’s S7 Pro chip, first announced in October 2023, that can stream audio at a much higher bandwidth over Wi-Fi. Your wireless connection will remain strong as long as you’re within range of your Wi-Fi network, but the buds can fall back to a standard Bluetooth connection when Wi-Fi isn’t available. The Buds 5 Pro are available now for $240, but at launch are only compatible with the Xiaomi 15 and 15 Ultra smartphones.

Tecno Spark Slim concept

The Galaxy S25 Edge that Samsung teased at its Unpacked event earlier this year already has some thin competition. Tecno’s Spark Slim concept measures in at 5.75mm thick with a 5,200mAh battery – larger than what’s included in the Galaxy S25 Ultra – while the Galaxy S25 Edge is rumored to be 6.4mm thick. We don’t yet know when the Galaxy S25 will launch, but it will probably be a lot sooner than this concept since Tecno hasn’t announced any plans to put the Spark Slim into production.

Realme 14 Pro and 14 Pro Plus

Can’t be bothered to unlock your phone and check a weather app to see what the temperature is? The Realme 14 Pro and 14 Pro Plus are available with a pearl white finish featuring thermochromic pigments that change from white to blue when exposed to temperatures below 61 degrees Fahrenheit. Not as accurate as a thermometer, but at least you’ll know if you need to grab a light jacket. The phones first launched in India in January, but are now coming to Europe with a price tag that starts at around $450.

Lenovo ThinkBook 3D laptop concept

The 3D fad may have passed, but Lenovo hasn’t entirely given up on it just yet. The company’s ThinkBook 3D laptop concept uses a combination of directional backlighting and user head tracking to simultaneously display both 2D and 3D content on screen without the need for any special glasses. Lenovo also created an accompanying AI ring concept that allows users to navigate and interact with 3D content using gesture-based spatial controls since trackpads and computer mice are limited to just two dimensions.

Update, March 5th: Added new announcements from the show.

The cameras on our phones won’t stop getting bigger. Xiaomi’s new 15 Ultra is dominated by an enormous ring of cameras on the back, Nothing has rethought its camera layout from scratch to fit a periscope into the Phone 3A Pro, and consistent rumors suggest that even Apple is going to strap a big ol’ camera bar onto the back of its iPhone 17 Pro models later this year. But why stop there? What if you could get all of the heft and weight of a real camera and burden your phone with it? What if we could make your phone camera much, much bigger?

That’s what both Xiaomi and Realme have attempted to do at this year’s Mobile World Congress, with two very different concept phones that each attempt to bridge the gap between a smartphone and a DSLR.

Realme’s attempt is the most familiar. In fact, its “interchangeable lens concept,” which mounts a full DSLR lens onto the existing camera island of its concept phone, is remarkably similar to a concept that Xiaomi already showed off in 2022. The phone here is itself custom, not based on any of Realme’s existing smartphones, and includes two typical cameras on the rear, plus a third, customized one-inch-type sensor from …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The camera specifications are middling on paper, but it's the cool-looking chassis and light-up backside that always gets us.

For a phone show, there’s an awful lot of cool non-phone stuff at Mobile World Congress this year. Take Lenovo’s ThinkBook Flip concept, which answers the question: “What if your laptop unfolded, and then unfolded again?” Samsung’s Display group has been apparently thinking along the same lines, because it has some interesting new folding concepts at MWC including a briefcase screen and a foldable gaming handheld, which I want, like, yesterday.

Samsung Display is, of course, a display manufacturer, so these concepts are just that. They’re demonstrations of what its screens could maybe, possibly do in the hands of another manufacturer. But they’re still cool as hell, and they were very popular with MWC attendees who had to constantly be told to stop trying to touch them. That was especially true of this Switch-style portable gaming handheld mockup, which opens fully flat and folds in half for storage when you’re done playing.

I don’t know if it’s the fun colors or the portability aspect, but it’s super compelling and just begs to be picked up. This, again, is not allowed, but I found someone to fold it and unfold it for me.

A PR rep was allowed to handle the gaming handheld, but nobody at the booth was authorized to touch the screen briefcase. So all I could do was look at it from a distance and admire its resemblance to the LG briefcase TV. Except, you know, with a folding screen. It’s not clear exactly how you’d use the thing — do you prop it up on its side? Maybe the briefcase would have a kickstand of some kind? Unclear. Still cool, though.

The other attention-grabbing concept on the booth was this asymmetrical Z Flip-style phone I’ve affectionately named The Claw. When it’s fully open it looks basically like a normal slab screen, but it closes with two hinges to leave part of the inner screen visible. It’s neat, but seems completely impractical and I’d be way too nervous about debris getting to the inner screen since it’s not totally protected. I do like the two-tone finish, though.

Samsung had an assortment of other examples and concepts on the booth, some of which we’d just seen at CES. If you can imagine a screen that stretches, bends, or flexes in some way, then Samsung Display probably has one. And you know what? I love them for that.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

At the annual trade show in Barcelona, we saw an ultra-slim smartphone, a solar-powered laptop, and Google's Astra technology baked into its Gemini assistant, coming to Android phones soon.

The Nothing 3A phones were just announced with a new take on the company’s “make tech more fun again” ethos. These devices have improved hardware over the Phone 2A, updated cameras, and a new feature called the Essential Space to store and index your miscellaneous screenshots, voice memos, and photographs, all through a dedicated button. Starting at $379 for the 3A and $459 for the 3A Pro, they offer solid specs for their midrange prices — and a look at what Nothing has been working on for this AI-centric moment.

The 3A and 3A Pro are mainly differentiated by their cameras, which you’ll notice just by glancing at the two devices. The 3A Pro’s prominent round camera housing includes a 3x periscope telephoto lens; the 3A offers a standard 2x zoom. Both phones include a 50-megapixel f/1.8 main camera and an 8-megapixel ultrawide. The telephoto cameras on each use a 50-megapixel sensor for lossless crop zoom: 4x for the 3A and 6x for the 3A Pro.

They’re big phones, each with a 6.77-inch display, and the 3A Pro feels especially chunky with the protruding camera housing. Both use Nothing’s striking translucent back panel design for a bold look, which balances an awkward camera bump on the 3A Pro. When I started using the phone I felt like my fingers were constantly bumping against the housing. I’ve adjusted to it after a few days and dig its Pop Socket-esque functionality.

The phones come with Snapdragon 7S Gen 3 chipsets, 12 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage, which is generous for the midrange class. They ship with Android 15 and Nothing is promising three years of OS updates and six years of security patches — a decent, if not the best, software policy for a budget phone. They’re being offered in the US through Nothing’s beta program.

Nothing Phone 3A and 3A Pro sample images

The Glyph interface and LED light strips are still present, but Nothing seems to be shifting its efforts toward software features. The Essential Space is a new place to save screenshots, voice memos, and images, like Google’s Pixel Screenshots app. It answers the eternal question: what do I do with this thing?

Is your photo gallery cluttered with pictures of stuff you want to remember? Do you wish you had somewhere to keep all those inspiration photos for your bathroom makeover? Do you yearn for a place to put the information in an email you keep searching your inbox for every time you need it? Then you get what the Essential Space is all about. You save stuff there, it uses AI to pull out relevant bits of information, and it helps organize what would otherwise be left floating around your phone somewhere.

Using the Essential Key to add things to the Essential Space took a little adjustment. It’s right where I’m used to the power button sitting, so I kept pressing it unintentionally. A single press will capture a screenshot, and a double tap opens the app so you can browse through your collections. This feels backwards for reasons I can’t quite explain, but I’ve mostly gotten used to it.

Nitpicking aside, I think Nothing is onto something. I added screenshots of travel information for an upcoming flight that are otherwise spread across emails and apps. The Essential Space keeps it in one tidy spot and is good at pulling key timing and dates from the screengrabs. It’ll even make a little to-do list for you. It didn’t quite get everything right about my connecting flight, but I think that’s because the date wasn’t visible in both screenshots. The software seems to do a decent job when it has complete information to work with.

The functionality is pretty simple right now. Nothing has more on the roadmap like a mode that starts recording a voice memo when you flip the phone over, and the ability to automatically organize related content into collections. It seems like a useful feature with a smart AI layer, rather than something that leans into AI just for kicks.

The 3A is available to order March 4th and ships March 11th. The 3A Pro goes up for order March 11th, and will ship starting March 25th.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

• Sabina Hitchen hired her husband as her VP of strategic partnerships in 2020.
• She was looking for someone with his skillset, and the business has grown since he joined.
• They work from separate rooms and prioritize dates to make it work and not affect their marriage.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sabina Hitchen, the 45-year-old founder of Press for Success. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I worked in PR for years before starting my company, Press for Success, a PR platform and community, in 2017. My husband, Alex, has worked in media since he was 18.

We met in 2012 when I was running from a rainstorm in NYC and went into a restaurant where he'd walked in the other entrance — it was like a romcom. I just wanted to read with a glass of wine, and he came up and sat with me. We haven't stopped talking since.

When we finally decided to go 'Facebook official,' we realized we had 200 friends in common but had never met. Even with his background, I never expected to hire him for my company. Now, he's my employee.

Like most couples, we used to weigh in on each other's work

He was there when I had the idea of Press for Success; he even named it when we were newly married.

A year before the pandemic, he left his 9-5 job in media to start media consulting.

When the pandemic hit, our daughter was very young, and I didn't want to quit my job. I love being a mother, but I saw so many women leaving their jobs to care for their kids, and I knew that wasn't the right decision for me.

We decided my husband would quit his job instead

My husband became our daughter's full-time caregiver so I could build my business. He quit in July 2020, and we lost about 60% of our income as I had returned to my business after working at less than full steam as a new mom.

I worked 24/7 to become our primary breadwinner and started making enough to make up for his lost income.

A year into that setup, he suggested we either move back to NYC and he'd start working in consulting again (we'd been staying in Maine during the pandemic as an escape from the city) or we figure out something else. That's when I considered hiring him as VP of strategic partnerships and collaboration for my business.

His skillset fit what I needed

I didn't want to hire him because he was my husband or needed work — his skills fit my company's needs. I needed someone who understood media and PR and could inspire people and command a room. We decided, "Let's just see what happens."

He joined my small team and took a slight pay cut, but we see this as an investment in something bigger.

We saw a therapist to ensure we were approaching it correctly. She told us to give ourselves six months to see if it felt right, and if it didn't, we could walk away without it being a failure in our relationship.

It worked. There are days when one of us has been hurt or upset, but we don't hold grudges and move past it.

He's always been encouraging of my career

I used to say, "My husband works with me," and he said, "No, your husband works for you." I thought that was so sexy. He knows I've been building my business for years and respects what I've built.

Compartmentalization makes working together feel seamless. We can butt heads on a work idea and then leave it behind to go to a family barbecue where I can be who I need to be as a wife and mom.

We both take our daughter to school every morning and on the way there, we sing Kidz Bop and jam out with her. The minute it's just us in the car, we're talking about workshops we're planning and our members' challenges.

We also physically separate while working

We tried to work in the same space initially, but I interrupted him constantly. Working apart while Alex is at an office during the day allows me to miss him. Having separate spaces gives us some of the mystery back.

We also work on separate things: He works on partnerships and collaborations while I'm leading the community and planning workshops.

Even working on individual projects, I had to let go of a lot of ego. I thought, "What is he going to think of me teaching?" and "This is my stage," but when I shared the stage with him, he lit up, and people loved him.

It's been amazing, but I did have to tell him he can't call me darling while we're on a live broadcast.

We also prioritize having date nights

In the beginning, every time my parents would babysit, we would work through our date nights. I forgot what it was like to date my husband. Now, we plan a fun date night weekly.

Doing business well is like forced therapy on yourself, which is the same as marriage. Many people say it's a risk working together, but it gives us power over our family's destiny.

Since he joined the company, it has grown in every way, including revenue. What started as a course platform is now a thriving membership community with a new platform, an app, and soon-to-come real-time text alerts.

I get to do what I love with the person I love for a higher purpose, which feels amazing.

• Building relationships well is widely considered to be a desirable soft skill in the workplace.
• You might call it 'networking.' But Langni Zeng has been calling it 'biz rizz.'
• Zeng, who learned people skills at McKinsey, shared her top tips for developing 'biz rizz.'

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 25-year-old Langni Zeng, based in LA. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

During my college years studying business at Queen's University in Canada a lot of my fellow students' parents were VPs at big organizations.

There's a certain culture to their backgrounds around the way you dress, how you speak, and what you talk about. One big culture shock for me was learning how to pick wine at dinner.

My dad is an engineer, and my mum is a former lecturer, so I wasn't very exposed to corporate America. I didn't grow up around corporate functions or know what investment banking or the consulting space was like.

At college, I learned more about consulting and saw it as a good field for someone like me who wanted to be a generalist and work on problem-solving. I took part in consulting extracurriculars and landed an internship at McKinsey for the summer of my third year.

After the internship, I joined McKinsey full-time as a business analyst in 2021.

I stayed at McKinsey for around two years and then left to take on a director of strategy and business operations role for a tech company. My tenure at McKinsey strengthened my ability to build relationships in professional environments, a skill that has helped me throughout my career. I've also been using a fun term to describe this skill: biz rizz.

Mentors helped me with relationship-building skills

When I started at McKinsey, I was linked up with a professional development manager who helped staff me on projects. In consulting, you don't really have a set manager and team — it's all project-based. Every few weeks or months, you're working with new people, clients, and often in new cities.

There are obviously hard skills consultants should have, like making Excel models and analysis, but also soft skills — the ability to build relationships with clients. Some of this was formally taught, such as in a training session about trust, but I also developed soft skills organically.

One of my biggest barriers to developing relationships in the workplace was confidence and comfort. At McKinsey, you can be 21 sitting in a room with C-Suite executives, which can be intimidating. You overthink in those situations about what's appropriate to say.

When my parents found out I had this job, they advised me to keep my head down, but I think professional relationship-building is important. I tried figuring out how to network and make small talk.

I was lucky to have great mentors on my first projects. One of my managers coached me to present to a C-suite executive. One of my mentors told me to think about the executive as my friend's uncle or someone I know in real life to make things feel more familiar.

At first, I struggled to relate during some conversations with my peers. Travel came up a lot; I didn't grow up skiing in the Alps or playing golf. Going to business school helped train me for these conversations, and my background wasn't as big of a constraint as I thought. I think the key is to be authentically yourself.

Having 'biz rizz' has helped me throughout my career so far

I used feedback from the teams I worked with to gauge how well I was developing my relationship-building skills.

On one project, I was tasked with preparing a celebration at the end of our off-site. It was a circle of appreciation. Everyone had to say what they appreciated about someone they were assigned, like a secret Santa.

I wrote a funny poem with silly rhymes about the person I was assigned, who was a client. I was more experienced at that point, so could confidently gauge what was appropriate. Earlier in my career, I wouldn't have done something like that. Afterward, the key stakeholder from that client referenced the poem for months after the off-site.

Soft skills like this can strengthen your reputation and relationships at work. They have been helpful beyond my time at McKinsey.

In a previous job, I was a director of strategy and business operations for a tech company. I was trying to facilitate change management and worked with leaders across different functions. You have to build trust-based relationships to get people to align with your vision. This can be hard when you're younger or new, but my time at McKinsey taught me how to engage with senior stakeholders.

At times when I've done coffee chats or mentorship sessions with students, a lot of their questions are about what grades they need or tactical skills they should build to get a certain job. That's all important, but another really important part is how you network and build a personal brand.

Here are some of my top tips for building 'biz rizz'

I've been casually using the term 'biz rizz' among friends for years. "Rizz" became a popular slang term used to refer to charisma, so we'd use 'biz rizz' to describe professional relationship-building. I posted a TikTok about this last year, which really took off.

One of my relationship-building tips is to end every interaction with the question, "How can I help?" or tell them, "If there's anything you need, let me know." This can be seen as strategic because people like it when you help them, but it's also a generally positive thing I'd do with people in my network.

Another big piece is communication. People really respond to a good speaker who is concise and eloquent. I was not naturally a good speaker, but being part of an international case competition team at college and doing presentations at McKinsey helped me with this.

Be authentically positive. Don't think of networking as a ploy to advance your interests, but think about how you can have the most fun working with people.

Many people perceive networking as kissing up to senior leaders, but I think it goes beyond that. I've learned so much and gotten so many opportunities from it.

Do you have a story to share about professional networking? Contact this reporter at [email protected]

• Kieran Culkin won the best supporting actor award for "A Real Pain" at the 2025 Oscars.
• Culkin has been in the industry since he was a child.
• Fellow Oscar winners Leonardo DiCaprio and Jodie Foster were child stars, too.

Kieran Culkin concluded his awards season with a bang, winning the Oscar for best supporting actor thanks to his performance as Benji Kaplan in Jesse Eisenberg's "A Real Pain."

But while Culkin may be best known for his Oscar-winning role and as Roman Roy in the satirical drama "Succession," the 42-year-old has been in the spotlight for decades.

Turns out, there was more than one Culkin in the "Home Alone" movies; Kieran played Fuller McCallister, a cousin of Kevin McCallister, famously played by Culkin's older brother, Macaulay.

"What Kieran loves more than anything is for people to go up to him when they meet him and talk about 'Home Alone,' so I did, yeah," Eisenberg told People about his costar in January.

Culkin's journey from child star to Oscar winner isn't unique, either. From Leonardo DiCaprio to Jodie Foster, here are 10 Oscar winners who got their start as children.

Samsung and Lenovo had the most interesting folding concept devices to show off at the annual trade show in Barcelona.

• "Anora" director Sean Baker made history at the Oscars on Sunday.
• He won each of his four nominations, including the biggest prize of the night, best picture.
• The indie filmmaker previously told BI he doesn't try to make his films more palatable to studios.

If you didn't know Sean Baker's name before Sunday night, you definitely do now.

The director made history at the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday, becoming the first filmmaker to win four Oscars in one night for the same film. (Walt Disney won four Oscars in 1953, but for four separate films; Bong Joon Ho won four in 2020 for "Parasite," but one was for best international feature, which is technically awarded to the country, not the filmmaker.)

"Anora," a dramedy about a young stripper who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch, snagged Baker statues for best director, best original screenplay, best editing, and best picture. The film's lead, Mikey Madison, also picked up a surprise win, beating out frontrunner Demi Moore in the best actress category.

Though Baker was relatively unknown to the general public until now, the buzzy indie filmmaker didn't come out of nowhere. I spoke to Baker in October, months before "Anora" would sweep the Oscars, about his body of work and the state of moviemaking.

Sean Baker's movies are critically acclaimed, but were largely ignored by major awards bodies before 'Anora'

After graduating from New York University's filmmaking program in 1998, the New Jersey-born Baker quickly found his niche by focusing on marginalized communities. Half of his features, including "Anora," are specifically about sex workers.

But making his work more palatable and marketable to a wider audience was never on the agenda.

"I was always shooting myself in my foot. I was always doing something that would make my film probably not accessible to the mainstream," Baker said, citing his inclusion of an unsimulated sex scene in 2012's "Starlet," a movie about porn stars, as an example.

Before "Anora," Baker's most successful film in terms of awards recognition was "The Florida Project," his 2017 slice-of-life drama about a 6-year-old girl and her unemployed single mom living out of a budget motel in Kissimmee, Florida, just outside Walt Disney World. As with "Anora" and most of his movies, Baker pulled quadruple duty, directing, writing, producing, and editing.

Though largely regarded as Baker's best work to date, outside of awards from critics' organizations, Baker didn't earn any statuettes for it — only star Willem Dafoe clinched an Oscar nomination for his supporting role as the motel's owner.

Given his track record with flying under the radar, Baker told BI last fall that he was stunned that "Anora" had broken through to mainstream acclaim.

"I thought it was going to be extremely divisive, quite honestly," he said.

Baker is an outspoken supporter of independent film and theatrical releases

Baker made four speeches at the Oscars, thanking his team, his cast, the film's distributor Neon, his fellow producers (including his wife, Samantha Quan), and the sex workers who have opened up their world to him over the years. He also took the opportunity during his best director win to zoom out and give an impassioned plea to support the theatrical experience.

"Watching a film in the theater with an audience is an experience. We can laugh together, cry together, and, in a time in which the world can feel very divided, this is more important than ever," Baker said, adding that the experience is "under threat" with theaters, particularly independently owned ones, closing down at unprecedented rates.

"If we don't reverse this trend, we'll be losing a vital part of our culture," he said.

Amid ever-shrinking theatrical release windows, Baker implored filmmakers to keep making films with the big screen experience in mind and asked distributors to focus on theatrical releases.

It's something he also touched on during his wins at both the Directors and Producers Guild Awards in February, where he asked his fellow filmmakers to demand 90-day windows for their films to play in theaters. (IndieWire reported that in 2024, the average theatrical window was a mere 32 days across 85 wide-released movies, dropping off over 13% from the previous year.)

Baker has openly criticized Hollywood's risk-averse tendency to bet on blockbusters and IP-driven films over original dramas. That criticism hasn't always come across well, as when Baker told the Associated Press last year that he missed "mature films for adults" that didn't have explosions or superheroes or weren't genre films.

Some took his lament to be a dig at superhero movies and horror films. Baker clarified his stance to BI and bemoaned coming across as "snotty" in that soundbite.

"I didn't in any way mean to be slamming those films. I actually love action films — it's why I went to NYU, to make the next 'Die Hard' or 'RoboCop,'" he told BI. "What I was trying to say is I wish studios were still making other films."

Baker pointed out that it makes sense why studios prioritize those films, knowing that they'll perform better financially. "Genre films essentially are the films that are keeping theaters alive, and therefore I cherish them, and I am so happy they're there," he said. "But I just would love more variety — dramas and dramedies and just everyday human stories."

He maintained that these explosion-less films are just as cinematic, and just as important to see on the big screen surrounded by a crowd of fellow film lovers. "Anora" was Baker's proof of concept: "I want 'Anora' to be something that is better in a theater with a crowd on the big screen."

That "Anora" has been embraced in this way is a huge win for indie filmmaking, one that should serve as a clue to studios that these movies are worth the marketing effort — it's the director's most financially successful film to date, netting over $40 million worldwide on a $6 million budget.

"I'm just trying to make the best film possible," Baker told BI. "When something is too commercial, there's a reason why. It's often watered down in order to reach the widest audience possible. And therefore, it is not as perhaps provocative or edgy, because it needs to be pretty vanilla to reach everybody."

The 97th Academy Awards may have been a fairytale ending for Baker as a filmmaker, but perhaps it will also be the fairy godmother the indies need.

Closing out his acceptance speech for best picture, Baker put it plainly.

"I want to thank the Academy for recognizing a truly independent film. This film was made on the blood, sweat, and tears of incredible indie artists. And long live independent film."

• Diane Warren is tied for the longest losing streak in Academy Awards history.
• At the 2025 Oscars, Warren lost her 16th bid for best original song.
• Her nominations include songs performed by Celine Dion, Aerosmith, Lady Gaga, and Becky G.

Diane Warren went home empty-handed from the 2025 Oscars on Sunday, marking her 16th straight loss for best original song.

"I'm consistent as fuck," Warren told Variety on the after-party red carpet. "I'm the Terminator of the Oscars — I'll be back. That's in my Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. I'm coming back. You can't get rid of me."

Warren, who has also written pop hits with stars like Taylor Swift, Mariah Carey, and Cher, is the most-nominated woman in the category's history. She is tied with Paul Francis Webster and trails just two others for the all-time record: Johnny Mercer (18) and Sammy Cahn (26). However, of those four legendary songwriters, only Warren has never won the award.

In fact, only one other person has been nominated for 16 Oscars without a single win: sound mixer Greg P. Russell, whose last nomination (and loss) was in 2013 for his work on the James Bond film "Skyfall." (Russell should have been up for his 17th sound mixing award in 2017, but his nomination was rescinded for "violation of Academy campaign regulations," Deadline reported.)

As of Sunday, Warren is tied with Russell for the longest losing streak in Oscar history. All 16 of her nominated songs are listed below in chronological order.

• Celebrities flocked to the Vanity Fair Oscar party in Los Angeles on Sunday.
• The red carpet had plenty of high-fashion looks, but some stars didn't wear their best outfits.
• Kim Kardashian's gown looked out of place, and Megan Thee Stallion's dress was a little too daring.

The 2025 Academy Awards came and went on Sunday, and A-list stars closed out the night at Vanity Fair's annual Oscar after-party in Los Angeles.

Celebrities arrived at the event in red-carpet attire, and many Oscars attendees changed into second looks for the evening.

There were plenty of stylish outfits at the event, but there were also stars who didn't nail their looks, from poorly tailored outfits to dresses that didn't suit the occasion.

Take a look at the outfits that missed the mark at the Vanity Fair after-party.

• The Vanity Fair Oscar Party was held in Beverly Hills on Sunday night following the Oscars.
• Rachel Zegler, Cynthia Erivo, and Mikey Madison changed outfits for the night's event.
• Their looks were even better than what they wore to the actual awards ceremony.

Celebrations didn't stop after the 2025 Oscars concluded on Sunday night.

Following the awards ceremony, dozens of stars headed to the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, where many of them showed up in different outfits for the annual bash.

Here's a look at the stars who wore even better looks to the second event, including Mikey Madison and Kylie Jenner.