🌎 The gig’s up

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Here’s what you need to know

A new rule in the US will make it harder for employers to classify their workers as independent contractors. The Biden administration’s policy, set to take effect March 11, could help some gig workers gain as much as $18,000 a year in income and job benefits.

The global economy is going to have another lackluster year, the World Bank said. The international financial institution expects a slowdown for the third consecutive year, citing high interest rates, inflation, and a weaker Chinese economy.

 The Twitter CEO that Elon Musk ousted has resurfaced with an AI startup. Parag Agrawal’s company, which is building software for large language model developers, has reportedly raised about $30 million.

Credit card balances hit a new high in the US. Against a backdrop of rising debt piles, delinquencies are slowly accelerating—a reminder of why so many people think the country’s economy isn’t as sturdy as it looks.

NASA delayed its crewed Artemis mission to the Moon until 2025. The decision to push the program back by about a year will give contractors more time to finish their technology. Meanwhile, a different private Moon trip launched this week isn’t going to land.

CES dispatch: Haptic cushions, paper screens, and Ballie

At its core, CES is a place to show off cool new things—not unlike the World’s Fairs of yore, just with much better TVs and mobile phones than the ones first debuted there in the 40s and 70s, respectively.

Here are the gadget releases that caught our eye today:

💺 A cushion for gaming chairs that rumbles with the pitter patters of raindrops

📜 Display technology that makes phone screens look and feel more like paper

😜 A two-screen laptop that’ll surely make you stand out at Starbucks

⚽ A soccer-ball sized robot called Ballie that projects visuals on walls and turns on lights

👂 A Google TV that’ll finally be able to connect to earbuds 

Jobs are growing the fastest in these US cities

It’s a great time to be in the US labor force, but workers in certain cities are benefiting more than others.

Among larger metropolitan areas with at least 1 million residents, Jacksonville, Fla., Raleigh, NC, and Las Vegas saw the greatest positive changes in employment from November 2022 through 2023.

If you’re not really about those cities, maybe those in Texas, Pennsylvania, or Utah may be more your speed? Quartz’s Laura Bratton has the 20 cities in the US that saw the most job growth last year.

Pop quiz: Where Nvidia says AI robots are coming to next

It’s likely that generative AI will one day make it a lot faster to take a robot from idea to reality—and chipmaker Nvidia has thoughts on which sectors are next in line to benefit from that.

Question: In a call Monday, Nvidia’s vice president of embedded and edge computing Deepu Talla listed the industries the company sees as the next big adopters of AI-powered robots. Which one of the sectors below wasn’t named?

A. 🏗️ Construction
B. 📚 Publishing
C. 🛒 Retail
D. 🚜 Agriculture

The correct answer is B., Publishing. But there is another industry Nvidia specifically called out—find out which one in Michelle Cheng’s latest for Quartz.

Quartz’s most popular

💊 Elon Musk has responded to a bombshell report on the concerns about his drug use

🥶 3M is freezing pension plans, even as other companies like IBM find the practice outdated

📺 “Fool Me Once” may not be prestige TV, but it shot to the top of Netflix’s charts—all according to plan

🌍 How boards, investors, and workers can support CEOs who are willing to tackle climate change

🫥 LG unveiled a fully transparent TV

☕ Starbucks has to open a new store every 3 days to reach its goal in India

Surprising discoveries

More than half of humanity lives in a place that has a nationwide election this year. Yep—that’s more than 4 billion people, making it the biggest election year in history.

Buffalo, New York is red hot. Definitely not temperature wise, but in a real estate sense.

Flowers are having less sex. Fewer pollinators mean pansies are learning to fertilize themselves.

Chicago has a new tourist attraction. Make a pilgrimage to the city’s rat hole.

The Associated Press didn’t accept “drive-thru” as a legit spelling until 2010. We ordered up fun facts about the past, present, and future of drive-thru technology from Angela Pagán from The Takeout for the latest episode of the Quartz Obsession, and she delivered.

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