Noah Winter brags he’s been to way more Super Bowls than Tom Brady.Brady competed in 10 more than any other player. But Winter will be part of the Super Bowl spectacle for his 30th straight year this year, not in uniform but as the guy in charge of the celebratory confetti after the game ends.Winter’s company, Artistry in Motion, also makes confetti for rock concerts, movies, political conventions and the Olympics. But the annual blizzard of color falling onto the field at the end of each Super Bowl is probably what he’s best known for.It certainly is what he’s most likely to get asked about at dinner parties. “It’s become an iconic moment,” Winter marvels, sitting in his Northridge, California, office and confetti factory.Jane Gershovich, a photographer who worked for the Seattle Seahawks when they won the Super Bowl in 2014, said that when the confetti falls, everyone wants to play in it. The players and their families have been known to toss it in the air and make confetti angels.“Just seeing the players and their kids engage with it at such a wholesome level, it brings a lot of joy to everyone on the field,” she said.So, what goes into planning and executing a giant confetti drop? Winter fields some questions:
What happens to the losing team’s confetti?
Artistry in Motion trucks 300 pounds (135 kilograms) of two-colored confetti for each of the teams to the Super Bowl. They bring confetti cannons onto the field with about 4 minutes remaining, and line them up around the stadium walls.Even if the teams stream onto the field before the clock runs out, the confetti waits until the timer shows the game is officially over. And the winners’ colors get the go-ahead.“It’s always better to be late then early,” Winter explained. “Sometimes players go out and shake hands. We don’t launch until triple zero on the clock. Over the 30 years, we never have launched the wrong color or launched too early.”The color mix is not 50-50, because some colors dominate on video, so the company has to experiment to find the correct mix.Massachusetts company Seaman Paper has for 25 years manufactured the tissue paper that Artistry in Motion turns into confetti, said Jamie Jones, one of Seaman’s owners. A lot of New England Patriots fans who work there are particularly excited about their part in this year’s Super Bowl.The company makes about 150,000 pounds (68,000 kilograms) of tissue paper a day mostly for gift wrapping and food service.“It’s a very prestigious but not big order,” Jones said of the Super Bowl paper.
How do you get the best flutter?
Winter has found that a rectangular shape is best for confetti because it turns on its axis and hangs in the air.But TV viewers might not realize that there are actually two confetti drops at the Super Bowl one at game’s end, and the other when the Vince Lombardi Trophy is presented to the winning team. That second round of confetti is cut in the silhouette of the trophy.Messages can be printed on the tiny rectangles too. For a handful of Super Bowls, Artistry in Motion printed social media messages on each tiny flag at the request of event sponsor Twitter.Some people ask whether the confetti is cut by hand (it isn’t), and Winter jokes that his hands get tired.
Is the confetti biodegradable?
The tiny rectangular flags of tissue paper are made from U.S.-sourced, 98% postconsumer recycled material, Winter says. The paper is biodegradable.The company makes confetti in the colors of the four final NFL playoff teams. All that isn’t used is recycled.The confetti makes a beautiful mess in the stadium, but cleanup isn’t Winter’s job. Every stadium uses a different approach, depending in part on the field’s makeup. Some use rakes. Others employ leaf blowers, taking care not to degrade the artificial turf.
How do you get into the confetti business?
Winter studied lighting design in college and did pyrotechnic work at venues including the Hollywood Bowl before Disney asked his team to recreate leaves falling and twirling for a live “Pocahontas” show in the mid-1980s. Soon, he was creating confetti for Disney’s daily parade at Disneyland.In 1986, Mick Jagger saw the confetti at Disney and asked Artistry in Motion to make some for a Rolling Stones’ concert at Dodgers Stadium. Then, he brought the fledgling confetti company on tour. Other artists, including Bono from U2, asked that confetti be made for their shows as well.Stadium concerts led to sporting events. The company’s first Super Bowl was in 1997, when the Green Bay Packers defeated the Patriots (pre-Brady) at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. The year before that, Winter had been a pyrotechnician at the Super Bowl, making this year’s game his 30th.In 2025, an estimated 127.7 million people watched the game on TV or streaming.Winter wouldn’t admit to having a favorite team, but he did say he has two brothers who are New York Jets fans, and he has promised to bring them to the Super Bowl to work a confetti cannon if their team ever returns. Quarterback Joe Namath led the Jets to their last Super Bowl, in 1969.
Donna Gordon Blankinship, Associated Press
When Savannah Guthrie made a heart-wrenching plea to the kidnapper of her 84-year-old mother to send “proof of life,” she addressed the possibility of people creating deepfakes.“We live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated,” she said.Before artificial intelligence tools proliferated making it possible to realistically impersonate someone, in photos, sound and video “proof of life” could simply mean sending a grainy image of a person who’s been abducted.That’s no longer true.“With AI these days you can make videos that appear to be very real. So we can’t just take a video and trust that that’s proof of life because of advancements in AI,” Heith Janke, the FBI chief in Phoenix, said at a news conference Thursday.Hoaxes whether high or low-tech have long challenged law enforcement, especially when it comes to high-profile cases such as Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance last weekend from her home in the Tucson area.As technology has advanced, criminals have grown savvy and used it to their benefit, confusing police and the public and masking their identities. The FBI in December warned that people posing as kidnappers can provide what appears to be a real photo or video of a loved one, along with demands for money.Police have not said that they have received any deepfake images of Guthrie. At least three news organizations have reported receiving purported ransom notes that they have given to investigators, who said they are taking them seriously.Investigators said they believe she’s “still out there,” but they have not identified any suspects.Separately, a California man was charged Thursday with sending text messages to the Guthrie family seeking bitcoin after following the case on television. There’s no indication that he’s suspected of having a role in the disappearance, according to a court filing.She appeared in an emotional video on Instagram Wednesday, sitting in between her sister and brother. Her voice cracked as she spoke directly to the kidnapper, saying the family is “ready to talk” and “ready to listen” but also wanted to know that their mother is alive.Images of Nancy Guthrie, publicly shared by family, could be used to create deepfakes, said former FBI agent Katherine Schweit.She said ransom demands over history have evolved from phone calls and handwritten notes to email, texts and other digital tools. A century ago, ransom notes were analog. For example, when the toddler son of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped, a piece of paper demanding $50,000 was found on a windowsill.“Investigative techniques accumulate over time,” Schweit said. “There’s never less to do as years go by; there’s more to do. Digital and forensic work is a perfect example. It just adds to the other shoe-leather work we would have done in years past. Nothing can be dismissed. Everything has to be run to ground.”Schweit said directly addressing a kidnapper, like Savannah Guthrie did in her video, is a tactical move.“The goal is to have the family or law enforcement speak directly to the victim and the perpetrator, and ask the perpetrator: What do you need? How can we solve this? Let’s move this forward,” she said.Janke suggested to reporters that the FBI may have had some influence on Guthrie’s decision to release a video message.“We have an expertise when it comes to kidnappings, and when families want advice, consultation, expertise, we will provide that,” he said. “But the ultimate decisions on what they say and how they put that out rests with the family itself.”Barbara Ortutay and Ed White, Associated Press
President Trump and the Republican party have worked hard over the years to undermine the Affordable Care Act (ACA), leaving fewer people with access to health insurance.
Now, the current administration is launching TrumpRx, a site that offers discounted prices on medications bought out-of-pocket. A note claims that the days of Big-Pharma price gouging are over and that the President has ensured every American gets the lowest prices on prescription medications in the developed world.
How does TrumpRx work?
TrumpRx currently offers 43 brand name drugs, including weight-loss medication like Ozempic and Wegovy alongside things like Premarin and Cortef. It claims that more options are on the way.
Customers can download a coupondisplaying a golden eagleand bring it to participating pharmacies.
If it sounds a lot like GoodRx, there’s a reason. The long-standing discount prescription company is a key integration partner for TrumpRx, connecting pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer.
Transparent direct-to-consumer prescription pricing helps to ensure millions of Americans have access to the healthcare they deserve, Wendy Barnes, president and CEO of GoodRx, said in a statement. “GoodRx gives manufacturers a proven way to launch discounted cash pricing at scale and extend it directly into TrumpRx. Together, were turning the promise of prescription drug affordability into a reality for millions of Americans.
TrumpRx and GoodRx even have similar disclaimers on their respective websites.
Is TrumpRx really helping with healthcare affordability?
At present, TrumpRx has limited options and in some cases less affordable ones than GoodRx. One Bluesky user noted that GoodRx offers generic versions of medications, allowing for much cheaper options. TrumpRx only carries brand names.
Some health experts have openly criticized the effort. TrumpRx is a side show, Sean D. Sullivan, a health economist at the University of Washington, told The New York Times. I consider it not a real, serious effort in service to lowering prescription drug prices for Americans.
Fast Company has reached out to GoodRx to ask about whether TrumpRx will offer any unique discounts or generic medications. We will update this post if we hear back.
Friday is the opening ceremony for the 2026 Winter Olympics. But, if youve spent any time on TikTok over the past week, you might have already got a sneak peek at some behind-the-scenes content courtesy of the athletes themselves.
In 2024, the International Olympic Committee loosened its rules governing what athletes can capture and share on social media. The shift helped spark viral moments during the Paris Games, when Team USA rugby star Ilona Maher and Norways swimmer Henrik Christiansen, whose chocolate muffin reviews became an unlikely hit, took over TikTok feeds.
This year, Olympians have already been posting vlogs of their journeys to the Olympic Village from all over the world. The Team USA ice dancer Emilea Zingas shared a snippet into what makeup she packed for the Olympics, as well as a get-ready-with-me video before her first practice. Dutch speed skater Jutta Leederman, who’s dating American boxer Jake Paul, documented her journey to Milan via private jet.
@zingaskolesnik33 Makeup is packed all my extras/other tools and things I packed yesterday:) #roadtomilanocortina2026 #icedance #iceskatingtiktok @Team USA original sound – Emi and Vadym
Once inside the Village, room tours have become a major draw. Sleeping arrangements, in particular, have drawn attention in recent years, following the Tokyo and Paris Games, where athletes slept on beds made from reinforced cardboard, reportedly designed to discourage intimacy. This time around, a Team GB athlete revealed that the beds are made from sturdier materials.
@nathanpare_ The details everyone wants to know!! Follow along to see the inside scoop of this Winter Olympics. #olympics #winterolympics #roomtour #fyp #teamusa original sound – nathanpare_
If youve ever wondered what Olympians eat in the run up to the games, look no further. South African snowboarder Matt Smith has been rating the food inside the athletes canteen, tucking into Italian staples like lasagna and pizza. The Olympic village gnocchi is my chocolate muffin, American snowboarder Hahna Norman said in a TikTok video of her own.
@thesnowbok Couldnt help but start my canteen exploration in the Italian section. #crosscountryskiing #xcskiing #athlete #milanocortina2026 #nordicskiing @Milano Cortina 2026 Get Lucky – Stay Groove Band
Olympic hauls are no longer limited to medals. Videos of athletes unboxing sponsored gear are going viral, too. Team USAs kit this year comes from Ralph Lauren, along with additional swag from Skims. Team South Korea ice dancer Hannah Lim modeled a North Face puffer jacket and matching luggage, while Canadian speed skater Brooklyn McDougall shared her Lululemon haul.
@brooklyn_mcdougall Come be overstimulated with me thank you @lululemon original sound – brooklyn_mcdougall
Between competitions and training sessions, athletes are also documenting how they spend their downtime. Coca-Cola has outfitted a recreational area with foosball tables, air hockey, and gaming systems, which American ice-dancing duo Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik toured for their nearly 36,000 followers. British ice dancer Phebe Bekker filmed herself attending a sound bath meditation session before being interrupted by media obligations. Speed skater Casey Dawson even treated followers to ice ASMR during a practice at the Milan arena.
@phebebekker Sound bath class in the Olympic village?! #olympics #milanocortina2026 #olympicvillage #coronacero Carefree Days – Peaceful Reveries
In between events, many Olympians are hoping to capitalize on this brief window of hyperattention. The hashtag #winterolympics has already been used in more than 37,000 TikTok posts, while #milancortina2026 has surpassed 900 tagged videos.
As the Games get started, even more content will be coming out of the Olympic Village. After all, competing may be the top priority, but posting about it has become a close second.
Amazon sales surged 14% during the fourth quarter, helped by strong holiday spending and a better-than-expected growth in its prominent cloud computing unit.But shares fell 11% in after hours trading on Thursday as investors appeared to be spooked by the Seattle-based tech company’s plans to increase capital spending by nearly 60% to $200 billion from last year’s $128 billion as it sees opportunities in artificial intelligence, robots, semiconductors and satellites. The company’s fourth-quarter profits also were slightly below analysts’ projections.Wall Street analysts were expecting capital spending to rise to around $147 billion this year, according to FactSet.Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy told investors on the call following the earnings release that it anticipates strong long-term return on the invested capital.“We are continuing to see as fast as we install this capacity, this AI capacity, we are monetizing it,” Jassy said. “So it’s just a very unusual opportunity. I passionately believe that every customer experience that we know of today is going to be reinvented.”The results come as Amazon is slashing about 16,000 corporate jobs in the second round of mass layoffs for the e-commerce company in three months. Amazon said in an emailed statement last week that AI was “not the reason behind the vast majority of these reductions.” Rather, the cuts had more to do with eliminating layers to drive speed.Separately, Amazon said last week it would cut about 5,000 retail workers, according to notices it sent to state workforce agencies in California, Maryland and Washington, resulting from its decision to close almost all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores.That’s on top of a round of 14,000 job cuts in October, bringing the total to well over 30,000 since Amazon’s Jassy first signaled a push for AI-driven organizational changes.Analysts are analyzing retailers’ performances for insight into how shoppers spent during the holidays and what’s in store for 2026.Amazon is also under pressure to shore up confidence that its computing arm Amazon Web Services is just as powerful as Microsoft’s Azure and Google’s Google Cloud platform.Amazon delivered 24% growth for AWS in the fourth quarter, the fastest in 13 quarters, the company said. That followed a 20% growth in the third quarter and a 17.5% increase in the second quarter. In comparison, Google parent Alphabet said Wednesday that its cloud business registered a 48% increase, or nearly $18 billion in revenue.Meta, Apple and other Big Tech firms are expected to ramp up their spending on artificial intelligence this year. After investing $91 billion into capital expenditures devoted mostly to AI, Alphabet said Wednesday that it expects to double down by spending another $175 billion to $185 billion this year.Amazon also continues to invest in its speedy fulfillment network, through a combination of robotics, AI technology and more efficient warehousing.Amazon’s new service called Amazon Now, an ultra-fast delivery that offers delivery on thousands of items in 30 minutes or less, is now available in various cities in India, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates and is being tested in several communities in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, the company said.Amazon is also expanding its same-day grocery delivery to more than 2,300 cities and towns across the U.S.Jassy told investors the company continues to see strong customer response to everyday essentials and groceries.Meanwhile, Amazon is closing almost all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh locations as it narrows its focus on food delivery and its grocery chain, Whole Foods Market.Some of the shuttered stores will be converted into Whole Foods locations, the company said in a blog post last week.Amazon reported net income of $21.2 billion, or $1.95 per share, for the three-month period ended Dec. 31. That compares with $20 billion, or $1.86 per share, in the year-ago quarter.Revenue rose to $213.4 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $187.8 billion in the year-ago period.Analysts were expecting $1.97 per share on sales of $211.4 billion, according to analysts polled by FactSet.Revenue from Amazon Web Services reached $35.6 billion. Analysts were expecting $34.9 billion.Product sales during the holiday period rose 9.4%, the company said.The company said that it expects sales to be between $173.5 billion and $178.5 billion for current quarter.Analysts are projecting $175.6 billion.
Anne D’Innocenzio, AP Retail writer
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans aim to translate the most up-to-date nutrition science into practical advice for the public as well as to guide federal policy for programs such as school lunches.
But the newest version of the guidelines, released on Jan. 7, 2026, seems to be spurring more confusion than clarity about what people should be eating.
Ive been studying nutrition and chronic disease for over 35 years, and in 2020 I wrote Sugarproof, a book about reducing consumption of added sugars to improve health. I served as a scientific adviser for the new guidelines.
I chose to participate in this process, despite its accelerated and sometimes controversial nature, for two reasons. First, I wanted to help ensure the review was conducted with scientific rigor. And second, federal health officials prioritized examining areas where the evidence has become especially strongparticularly food processing, added sugars and sugary beverages, which closely aligns with my research.
My role, along with colleagues, was to review and synthesize that evidence and help clarify where the science is strongest and most consistent.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zo-f0j1E_jY%3Fwmode%3Dtransparent%26start%3D0
The latest dietary guidelines, published on Jan. 7, 2026, have received mixed reviews from nutrition experts.
Whats different in the new dietary guidelines?
The dietary guidelines, first published in 1980, are updated every five years. The newest version differs from the previous versions in a few key ways.
For one thing, the new report is shorter, at nine pages rather than 400. It offers simpler advice directly to the public, whereas previous guidelines were more directed at policymakers and nutrition experts.
Also, the new guidelines reflect an important paradigm shift in defining a healthy diet. For the past half-century, dietary advice has been shaped by a focus on general dietary patterns and targets for individual nutrients, such as protein, fat and carbohydrate. The new guidelines instead emphasize overall diet quality.
Some health and nutrition experts have criticized specific aspects of the guidelines, such as how the current administration developed them, or how they address saturated fat, beef, dairy, protein and alcohol intake. These points have dominated the public discourse. But while some of them are valid, they risk overshadowing the strongest, least controversial and most actionable conclusions from the scientific evidence.
What we found in our scientific assessment was that just a few straightforward changes to your dietspecifically, reducing highly processed foods and sugary drinks, and increasing whole grainscan meaningfully improve your health.
What the evidence actually shows
My research assistants and I evaluated the conclusions of studies on consuming sugar, highly processed foods and whole grains, and assessed how well they were conducted and how likely they were to be biased. We graded the overall quality of the findings as low, moderate or high based on standardized criteria such as their consistency and plausibility.
We found moderate to high quality evidence that people who eat higher amounts of processed foods have a higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia and death from any cause.
Similarly, we found moderately solid evidence that people who drink more sugar-sweetened beverages have a higher risk of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, as well as quite conclusive evidence that children who drink fruit juice have a higher risk of obesity. And consuming more beverages containing artificial sweeteners raises the risk of death from any cause and Alzheimers disease, based on moderately good evidence.
Whole grains, on the other hand, have a protective effect on health. We found high-quality evidence that people who eat more whole grains have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and death from any cause. People who consume more dietary fiber, which is abundant in whole grains, have a lower risk of Type 2 diabetes and death from any cause, based on moderate-quality research.
According to the research we evaluated, its these aspectstoo much highly processed foods and sweetened beverages, and too little whole grain foodsthat are significantly contributing to the epidemic of chronic diseases such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease in this countryand not protein, beef or dairy intake.
From scientific evidence to guidelines
Our report was the first one to recommend that the guidelines explicitly mention decreasing consumption of highly processed foods. Overall, though, research on the negative health effects of sugar and processed foods and the beneficial effects of whole grains has been building for many years and has been noted in previous reports.
On the other hand, research on how strongly protein, red meat, saturated fat and dairy are linked with chronic disease risk is much less conclusive. Yet the 2025 guidelines encourage increasing consumption of those foodsa change from previous versions.
The inverted pyramid imagery used to represent the 2025 guidelines also emphasizes proteinspecifically, meat and dairyby putting these foods in a highly prominent spot in the top left corner of the image. Whole grains sit at the very bottom; and except for milk, beverages are not represented.
Scientific advisers were not involved in designing the image.
Making small changes that can improve your health
An important point we encountered repeatedly in reviewing the research was that even small dietary changes could meaningfully lower peoples chronic disease risks.
For example, consuming just 10% fewer calories per day from highly processed foods could lower the risk of diabetes by 14%, according to one of the lead studies we relied on for the evidence review. Another study showed that eating one less serving of highly processed foods per day lowers the risk of heart disease by 4%.
You can achieve that simply by switching from a highly processed packaged bread to one with fewer ingredients or replacing one fast-food meal per week with a simple home-cooked meal. Or, switch your preferred brands of daily staples such as tomato sauce, yogurt, salad dressing, crackers and nut butter to ones that have fewer ingredients like added sugars, sweeteners, emulsifiers and preservatives.
Cutting down on sugary beveragesfor example, soda, sweet teas, juices and energy drinkshad an equally dramatic effect. Simply drinking the equivalent of one can less per day lowers the risk of diabetes by 26% and the risk of heart disease by 14%.
And eating just one additional serving of whole grains per daysay, replacing packaged bread with whole grain breadresults in an 18% lower risk of diabetes and a 13% lower risk of death from all causes combined.
How to adopt kitchen processing
Another way to make these improvements is to take basic elements of food processing back from manufacturers and return them to your own kitchen what I call kitchen processing. Humans have always processed food by chopping, cooking, fermenting, drying or freezing. The problem with highly processed foods isnt just the industrial processing that transforms the chemical structure of natural ingredients, but also what chemicals are added to improve taste and shelf life.
Kitchen processing, though, can instead be optimized for health and for your households flavor preferencesand you can easily do it without cooking from scratch. Here are some simple examples:
Instead of flavored yogurts, buy plain yogurt and add your favorite fruit or some homemade simple fruit compote.
Instead of sugary or diet beverages, use a squeeze of citrus or even a splash of juice to flavor plain sparkling water.
Start with a plain whole grain breakfast cereal and add your own favorite source of fiber and/or fruit.
Instead of packaged energy bars make your own preferred mixture of nuts, seeds and dried fruit.
Instead of bottled salad dressing, make a simple one at home with olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, a dab of mustard and other flavorings of choice, such as garlic, herbs, or honey.
You can adapt this way of thinking to the foods you eat most often by making similar types of swaps. They may seem small, but they will build over time and have an outsized effect on your health.
Michael I Goran is a professor of pediatrics and a vice chair for research at the University of Southern California.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Its time to become an armchair expert on sports that you only think about every four years. In other words, the 2026 Winter Olympics have arrived.
This years competition takes place in two Italian cities, Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, and the surrounding regions. It is not Cortinas first rodeo, as the city hosted previously in 1956, while the country of Italy has hosted the games three times prior.
The action kicked off on Wednesday, February 4, when the worlds best alpine skiers and curlers strutted their stuff.
Despite the curling, the official Olympic Opening Ceremony takes place today (Friday, February 6). Heres everything you need to know so you can comfortably coach the players from your couch.
Who is the creative force behind the opening ceremony?
Host countries take the duty of putting on a spectacular opening ceremony very seriously. This also means most of the specific details are kept secret until showtime. This year is no exception to the rule.
Many creatives have collaborated to create the opening ceremonies. Balich Wonder Studio is producing and Maria Laura Iascone serves as the director of ceremonies for the Milano Cortina Foundation organizing committee.
While he cant get into specifics, creative director Marco Balich explained to Reuters that the theme of the evening is the Greek concept of harmony and, of course, celebrating the host country of Italy.
We want to show that Italy, though small, has influenced global habits through design, fashion and food,” he mused.
A rendering of an Olympic cauldron. [Image: IOC]
Audiences should be prepared for a big spectacle, spread out for the first time across multiple locations.
The main action will take place at Milans historic San Siro Stadium with simultaneous events taking place at Predazzo, Livigno, and Cortina dAmpezzo. At the conclusion, two Olympic cauldrons will be ignited at the Arco della Pace in Milan and in Piazza Dibona in Cortina dAmpezzo.
Who is performing at the opening ceremony?
A cast of 1,200 volunteer performers, ages ranging from 10 to 70from 27 different countrieswill take the stage. These performers will don 1,400 different costumes and utilize around 1,000 props.
Beyond the volunteers, world-famous musicians and actors will lead their talents to the big event.
Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli are scheduled to perform. Additionally, The White Lotuss Sabrina Impacciatore, Chinese pianist Lang Lang, and Italian singer Laura Pausini will do their thing.
Lets not forget Italian actor and film producer Pierfrancesco Favino and mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli. The Law According to Lydia Poets Matilde De Angelis will narrate the action.
How can I watch or stream the Olympic Opening Ceremony?
To see this technological marvel and cheer on your favorite athlete, all you have to do is tune into NBC, the official channel for all things Olympics.
If you have traditional cable, you’re all set. Cable subscribers can also watch the action on NBCOlympics.com, NBC.com, the NBC app, or the NBC Sports app.
And remember you can watch NBC for free with an over-the-air antenna, you are set.
You can also watch the ceremony on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service.
If Peacock is not in your streaming arsenal, consider a live-TV streaming service that carries NBC, such as YouTube TV, Hulu+Live TV, or Fubo.
Be sure to double-check regional differences before committing to a new monthly charge, as coverage varies.
What time does the ceremony begin?
The event takes place at 2 p.m. ET. If you’re stuck at work and can’t watch, never fear. NBC and Peacock will re-air the ceremony for a special prime-time event at 8 p.m. ET.
The price of Bitcoin has declined dramatically in recent weeks, and cryptocurrency investors are more fearful than ever. In the past 24 hours, the crypto king dipped to the $60,000 rangea low it has not seen since October 2024.
While Bitcoin has now recovered slightly to around $66,000, many analysts and investors still think the token may not have bottomed out yet. Heres what you need to know about Bitcoin’s continued fall, and how low things might go.
Why is Bitcoin falling?
Like most cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin (BTC) has been steadily falling almost since the year began. As Fast Company previously reported, there were two main drivers for this fall.
The first is increased geopolitical uncertainty.
Since the year began, America attacked Venezuela, threatened to take Greenland by force from one of its most important European allies, and is now in a standoff with Iran.
Military conflict almost always affects markets, but until it happens, no one can predict by how much or in what direction. That uncertainty generally leads investors to pull their money from relatively risky assets, like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and park it in safe havens, like gold or the U.S. dollar (USD).
The second recent driver was President Trumps announcement, in late January, the he has selected Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair. The news caused the U.S. dollar to spike, making it more valuable.
And since cryptocurrencies are priced in dollars, the same amount of dollars could buy more crypto, thereby impacting the value of the digital tokens.
In recent days, other factors have pushed Bitcoin down to levels not seen in well over a year.
Those factors include a bearish run in tech stocks. When tech stocks decline, crypto tends to follow suit. Additionally, there have been significant forced liquidations of Bitcoin in recent days. These selloffs happen automatically when Bitcoin hits a certain price level. These automated selloffs can prompt other investors to sell their shares, too, before the price drops any further.
In short, Bitcoin isnt dropping for any one reason. There are numerous factors working against it right now.
Bitcoin isnt the only cryptocurrency that is falling
Without a doubt, Bitcoin is having a bad day. Over the past 24 hours, the token fell as low as $60,074.80. That represented a more than 50% decline from its all-time high of $126,198.07 in October.
At its current price of around $66,378, Bitcoin has now lost more than 42% of its value in the past six months alone. But Bitcoin isnt the only crypto that has suffered a major crash.
As Fast Company reported yesterday, XRP has been getting hammered as of late. In the past six months, the popular token has lost more than 54% of its value.
Other popular tokens, including Ethereum, BNB, and Solana, have also seen incredible drops during the same period.
Crypto greed and fear index hits all-time low
In the wake of this recent crypto crash, it should be no surprise that the majority of cryptocurrency investors are experiencing significant dread at this time.
Indeed, CoinMarketCaps Crypto Fear and Greed Index has now reached an all-time low. The index measures investor sentiment in the crypto market.
An index value of 80-100 indicates that investors are experiencing extreme greed, which often manifests as surging crypto prices. Meanwhile, 60-80 represents greed, 40-60 neutral, and 20-40 fear.
Today, the index has fallen to 5 on the scale, which puts it in the 0-20 range, which means investors are experiencing extreme fear.
A rating of 5 is an all-time low for the index, and is 50% lower than its previous all-time low of 10 during a crypto selloff in November 2025.
Where is the bottom for Bitcoin?
While no one can predict what Bitcoin or any asset will do in the future, what everyone wants to know now is whether Bitcoin has hit its floor or if things are going to get worse.
Crypto-watchers with more positive inclinations might point out that while Bitcoin fell to the $60,000 range in the past 24 hours, it did not fall through that barrier. And the coin has now recovered about 10% of its 24-hour low.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $66,378 at the time of this writing.
However, there are plenty of analysts who think Bitcoin may not have hit the bottom yet.
On February 1, Galaxy Asset Management sent a memo to investors warning that the token could trade in the $56,000 to $58,000 in the near term. Meanwhile, 10x Researchs CEO, Markus Thielen, today told CNBC International that Bitcoin could drop to as low as $50,000.
If thats the case, todays fall is far from the bottom for Bitcoin.
This Sunday will see the Seattle Seahawks face off against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX.
The game will also mark the conclusion of the tenth football season featuring Next Gen Stats, the analytics system that delivers detailed data about every game to coaches and broadcasters through a partnership with Amazon Web Services. Next Gen Stats began in 2015, when the National Football League deployed RFID chips in player shoulder pads and even in the football itself, enabling the league to capture location data multiple times per second through sensors installed throughout stadiums.
It has since become a mainstay of football broadcasts and training sessions, delivering granular insights to a sport that previously could track only a fraction of the complex movements of 22 players and the ball across the field.
Next Gen Stats is part of the vernacular now, says Julie Souza, AWSs global head of sports.
Bringing data to the gridiron
Behind the scenes, dozens of machine learning modelsthe same kinds of systems AWS offers to process business datatranslate the raw numbers generated by the sensors into understandable stats in real time. With the recent addition of 4K cameras to NFL venues, the system can now capture not just player position on the field but the precise position of shoulders, elbows, knees, and hands, generating 29 data points per player 60 times per second. That data is processed by in-stadium AWS servers in roughly 700 milliseconds, then sent to the cloud to feed machine learning models that run in under 100 milliseconds. The result is analytics delivered to broadcasters within about a second, shorter than the NFLs typical broadcast delay.
Announcers are equipped with dashboards that surface key stats, along with AI systems that allow them to ask natural-language questions based on new and historical data, Souza says, such as, When was the last time this particular play happened, or that you know, this metric was achieved? The data is also increasingly used to inform player coaching and off-the-field training, as well as rule changes designed to make the game safer.
AWS helped the NFL run thousands of simulated football seasons that informed the Dynamic Kickoff rule, introduced in the 2025 season. The change helped boost returned kickoffs while reducing the plays historically elevated concussion rate. Whats amazing about that is everything that we had modeled for them is what has panned out from the results, Souza says.
Analytic dashboards also help teams identify players at risk of injury, allowing coaching and training staffs to intervene before injuries occur. Those changes in play and training led to roughly 700 fewer missed games by players last season, she says.
More detailed stats can also help newer fans, including international audiences and younger viewers, understand the game more quickly. Richer player data has enabled new types of broadcasts as well, including animated versions of real games that appeal to families with children, and Amazon Prime Videos Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats stream of Thursday Night Football. Features tested in the Prime Vision stream, such as highlighting players likely to blitz the quarterback, have since made their way into the main broadcast.
You can do all of these different versions of broadcast to serve different and specific audiences, but it’s all coming from that same set of data, says Souza.
A different kind of bowl game
Next Gen Stats data is also used in the NFLs annual Big Data Bowl, an analytics competition that invites contestants to develop new use cases for the leagues vast trove of data, and in some cases leads to jobs with the NFL or individual teams. Souza, who has served as a judge in the competition, says new judging criteria are being added to evaluate how proposed analytics could be conveyed to fans during a broadcast. The shift reflects a broader recognition that even as sports become more driven by data, storytelling remains central.
Everything we’re talking about right now is the sciencethe science, and the engineering, and the analytics, and the rigor, and the math, she says. It only matters if the art is there, and the art is the storytelling.
Hello, and welcome back to Fast Companys Plugged In.
Programming, as it turns out, is just typing.
Talking at Ciscos AI Summit in San Francisco on February 3, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made that pithy observation to sum up the phenomenon of people using AI coding tools to simply describe in plain language software they want to exist, with an algorithm doing the heavy lifting. The comment came during a wild, wide-ranging riff on how AI is changing the world, and Huang kept joking that his chatter might have been influenced by several glasses of wine. (Hey, he was the after-dinner speaker.) But even if alcohol-fueled poetic license was involved, the sentiment captured the present moment.
The earliest evidence that AI could transform how people program computers came even before ChatGPTs arrival, dating to when GitHub released the first version of its Copilot in 2021. At that point, AI was autocompleting snippets of code for humans rather than generating software from scratch. The progress has been radical since then, reflected in the boom for coding agents such as Cursor, Windsurf, Replit, and the industrys current darling, Anthropics Claude Code. Along the way, the act of willing software into reality through AI got a name: vibe coding.
At the Cisco event, Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Marc Andreessen, and other Silicon Valley luminaries talked about the whole industry having arrived at a crucial juncture in the pivot to AI software generation. Anthropics chief product officer, Mike Krieger, whose boss, Dario Amodei, predicted last March that AI would be writing essentially all of the code within a year, suggested thats in the neighborhood of coming trueat least at Anthropic: Right now, for most products . . . it’s effectively 100%.
Along with potentially upending the entire tech industry, AIs ability to write programs could have a powerful democratizing effect on how the world uses technology. For the past few decades, most people who use computers have been wholly dependent on software written by trained professionals. What happens when that trained professional might be an algorithm, available to the masses to create whatever pops into their minds?
Ive been exploring that question since last March, when I used Replit to bring my dream note-taking app to life. The experience was amazing enough that I put up with Replits many rough edges, including its iffy debugging skills, repeated introduction of security flaws, and sycophantic tendency to tell me my ideas were pure genius. Since then, I have had better luck with new and improved versions of the service. Ive also dabbled with several other coding platforms with increasingly impressive results.
But Claude Code, which Ive been using recently to reimagine a game I wrote back in high school, is the most uncanny of them all. As a lark, I fed it my 1980s BASIC code, expecting it would have no clue what to do with something written in such an obsolete language. Instead, it roughed out a modern, web-native version in minutes. Since then, weClaude Code and Ihave been collaborating to improve the game and dress up its graphics.
I say we because it truly feels like were working as a team. Claude builds out my ideas without me having to spell them out in excruciating detail, and sometimes comes up with ones of its own. Its ability to understand what I want the game to do, and why, can feel like it borders on the clairvoyant. When Ive finished fooling around with the new versionsoonIll share it here so you can judge the results for yourself.
(Full disclosure: I had one bizarre issue with Claude Code. For a few days, it labored under the mistaken understanding that some of my requests were examples of prompt injectiona nefarious third party issuing commands meant to interfere with the projectand kept assuring me that it was ignoring them. Despite that, it continued to code up a storm. I asked Anthropic what was going on, but the company hasnt yet provided an explanation.)
Quirks and all, Im thoroughly enjoying making AI-generated software. But I do confess that its brought out my inner Edsger Dijkstra. A celebrated computer scientist and A.M. Turing Award winner, Dijkstra bristled at the notion that anyone should be able to create software. He maintained that proper programming required an especially deep understanding of mathematics. Mere mortals shouldnt even try.
In a 1975 essay, Dijkstra ripped into BASIC, the language I used to write the original version of my game. Created at Dartmouth in 1964 and initially intended for non-techie liberal arts majors, BASIC emphasized approachability over elegance. Instead of demanding too much from these neophytes, it was simple to learn and tolerated sloppy code. He hated it.
As someone who once programmed a fair amount but allowed my skills to atrophy, I am nagged by the fear that vibe coding is a form of cheating. It feels too easy. Im also bothered by the fact that I dont fully understand the code Claude wrote, and in fact have barely glanced at it. In short, I havent been entirely comfortable with the prospect of software becoming something that anyone can make.
Dijkstra, who died in 2002, isnt around to chime in on Claude Code or other forms of vibe coding. I cant imagine hed be thrilled with them, though. In many cases, their algorithms seem to settle for the most expedient approach to a job, resulting in software that may be less than optimal even if it gets the job done. I cheerfully admit to being unqualified to judge Claudes coding proficiency, but my high school programming buddy Charles, who went on to become a professional developer, took a peek and deemed some of its techniques cringe-worthy.
Legitimate reasons exist to be skittish about the quality of vibe-coded software, particularly on the security front. Last week, an app called Moltbooka social network for AI agents< .="" href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/01/ai-agents-now-have-their-own-reddit-style-social-network-and-its-getting-weird-fast/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">made quite a splash. According to security firm Wiz, it also left its database of user information vulnerable to leaks, due to a misconfigured server. Vibe coding may have been to blame.
My reluctance to be responsible for assuring other peoples privacy is the biggest reason why I havent shared any of the productivity apps Ive vibe coded for myself. Presumably, software companies with human engineers in the loopsuch as Nvidia and Anthropichave charged them with vetting the robustness of AIs handiwork. Its tough to imagine the day coming when that isnt essential.
Still, I am slowly getting around to the belief that vibe coding is not an alternative to coding, but a legitimate form of it. Even the most gifted programmer typically needs help translating their work into something a computer can understand. Most of them rely on high-level programming languages that break tasks into the reduced set of low-level instructions a processor performs natively.
Until now, those high-level languages have had names such as Python, JavaScript, Swift, and C++. Thanks to remarkable tools such as Claude Code, they can now have names like English. Im looking forward to seeing what happens once the floodgates break wide open.
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on fastcompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
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