• I stayed in a cylindrical tiny home hotel in Germany during a train trip through Europe in 2022.
• The 106-square-foot home made smarter use of space than any tiny home I’ve seen in the US.
• The European tiny home was two stories and less than half the size of the US tiny homes I’ve booked.

As a New Yorker who’s rented several cramped apartments over the years, tiny homes inspire me.

Making the most of a minimal square footage requires some creativity. I often book fun-sized accommodations when I travel, hoping to discover new space-saving hacks to make the most of my own little dwelling.

From Florida, Maryland, and Tennessee to Canada, Austria, and Switzerland, I’ve stayed in several tiny Airbnbs around the world.

None of those homes utilized indoor space as efficiently as this tiny home hotel in Germany, which I found on Airbnb back in 2022.

I was looking for tiny stays in Germany when I found one with a unique, cylindrical shape that packed a lot inside, so I booked it for two nights for $140.

The Airbnb was part of a tiny home hotel in Neustrelitz, Germany, called Slube. The company designs minimal concrete “Slubes” for up to two people.

There are three types of Slubes: a one-story Basic, a two-story Home, and a Tower, which is two stories with a rooftop terrace. I booked a Home Slube.

It was less than half the size of any tiny home I’d stayed in before.

The 16-foot-tall Slube with two floors was 106 square feet. Prior to this stay, the tiniest home I’d ever booked was 250 square feet.

There was no physical key to my room. I checked in with a code sent to my phone.

When I arrived by train from the airport in Berlin, I didn’t see any employees at the tiny home hotel.

At first, I was confused, but then I checked my email. A message from Slube informed me I’d be staying in room five and could check in by myself.

Inside, the 53-square-foot bottom level had a bathroom on the right, a sitting area on the left, and a ladder to the second floor.

The sitting area had a foldout table that I could push against the wall to save space.

Across from a foldout table was a bench with two seat cushions in lieu of a couch.

I stored my luggage beneath the bench.

This tiny home utilized more vertical space than those I’ve seen in the US.

There were hooks and storage cubbies above the bench, so I stored all my clothing and toiletries on the first floor.

I was impressed by the amenities packed into such a small room.

In the back right corner of the sitting area, there was a nook with built-in shelves that housed a small coffee machine, a hair dryer, and a few dishes.

The bathroom had an efficient layout.

There was a curtain separating the showerhead and sink from the toilet and storage space.

Even with two windows, I felt I had enough privacy.

The first-floor windows had a film covering most of the glass, letting in natural light without sacrificing privacy.

After checking out the first level, I headed up the ladder to the second-floor bedroom.

I thought it was easy to climb, but it could be challenging for some.

There was a latched gate at the top of the ladder, which I imagine was installed to prevent people from falling.

Knowing I was securely fastened into the bed area made sleeping easier.

The bedroom was the same size as the living space and bathroom combined — 53 square feet.

The floor space was covered by a comfy, full-size bed. The pillows had the ideal ratio of fluff to firmness for my neck and head.

Above the bed was a mounted TV equipped with Netflix and other streaming services.

Before bed, I watched some of my favorite shows on Netflix.

I used the lower platform on the far side of the bed as a nightstand.

It had easily accessible outlets, a pocket for the TV remote, and more space for my electronics and water bottle.

Above the bed, a large window opened so I could let the breeze into my room.

It had a blackout curtain for privacy and blocking early morning light.

The Slube also had smart electricity that made my stay feel a tad luxurious.

I controlled the lights and temperature of each story from my phone.

I found it fascinating that this tiny home truly left no space unused, from the loft bed to the wall cubbies.

I can’t stick a second story into my own rental, but the European tiny home still gave me inspiration for how I could make better use of my space, starting with vertical storage hacks.

• Kevin O’Leary agreed to scale back his proposed Utah data center project.
• The concession follows pressure from Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams, who wanted a 75% cut.
• The project has drawn concerns over water, energy use, and its rural footprint.

Kevin O’Leary has agreed to scale back his proposed Utah data center project after pressure from a top state lawmaker.

On Thursday, O’Leary pledged to cut the proposed 40,000-acre Stratos development in Box Elder County in half, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Most of the remaining project area would be left as open space, O’Leary wrote in a letter to Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams.

It’s a major concession in the fight over one of the country’s most closely watched AI infrastructure projects. The proposed data center — dubbed the Stratos Project — has sparked a wave of backlash from community members who are concerned about rising energy prices, water use, and environmental damage.

The initial project was expected to require 7.5 to 9 gigawatts, making it one of the largest data center projects in the US.

In a press release responding to the project’s reduced scale, Adams wrote that O’Leary had agreed to all of the conditions outlined in a demand letter he sent to the famed “Shark Tank” investor on Monday, including scaling back the project area and dedicating new water to the Great Salt Lake.

“O’Leary’s concessions in response to the demand letter I sent are a positive step forward,” Adams wrote.

The proposal still faces a lengthy review process. Adams said “no approvals or permits have been applied for, let alone issued,” and that written commitments, permitting, and environmental review would be required before the project could move forward.

A representative for O’Leary Digital didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Daniela Amodei waded into the discourse around companies overspending on AI.
• The Anthropic president is optimistic that much more capable AI models are on the way.
• Anthropic’s AI use is tracked without a leaderboard, she said.

Daniela Amodei has entered the tokenmaxxing discourse in Silicon Valley — and no, Anthropic does not have an AI leaderboard.

At Thursday’s Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, the Anthropic president and co-founder took a question about tokenmaxxing, where developers use as much AI as possible and rack up huge bills with unclear business payoffs.

Amodei was diplomatic, but offered a bullish vision.

She said that though AI models have dramatically improved over the last two years, this isn’t the end state of their progress.

“I actually think there’s a lot more distance to go still for what the models will be able to do two to four, six to eight years in the future,” Amodei said.

The executive also said businesses will find new ways to use the tools, and learn together as a larger community.

She acknowledged that workers are reckoning with a new paradigm, where they’re directed to use AI and sometimes even tracked by their employers.

“Today there’s this feeling that’s like, ‘Oh, like AI, you know, the leaderboards, and it’s like I have to use it, and what am I going to use it for?'” Amodei said. “My hope is that over time it’ll be more incorporated into the day-to-day of how humans do our work, how we communicate together, and that there will actually be a lot more value realized in a way that feels really good to people.”

Anthropic does not have a token-usage leaderboard, she noted, though the company does track general use of the company’s Claude products as teams work.

“But there’s not like, ‘You must use AI and you must use Claude’,” she added.

Claude Code, Anthropic’s juggernaut AI-coding product, is one of the main drivers of the tokenmaxxing discourse.

The tool uses significantly more tokens — the units of AI input and output — than a classic chatbot interface. That gap grew more substantial with the advent of agents, which a user can direct to autonomously churn through tasks. Anthropic and OpenAI partly charge on a per-token basis, so the boom in AI coding has fueled a surge in revenue.

Companies are navigating how to spend on AI, after some executives at top companies encouraged a freewheeling attitude. Amazon recently shut down an informal, employee-made leaderboard that tracked the use of AI tokens.

“Please don’t use AI just for the sake of using AI,” Dave Treadwell, an Amazon senior vice president, told staff.

A similar leaderboard at Meta was taken down by the employee who made it, The Information reported. It had been titled “Claudeonomics.”

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• Challenger said AI was the cited reason for 40% of job cuts in May.
• In 2026, AI is the leading reason companies cite for layoffs.
• The outplacement firm also said this isn’t “yet the jobpocalypse some predicted.”

AI may not be a complete disaster for jobs yet, but companies are citing it more than any other reason when announcing layoffs, according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The global outplacement firm’s latest report said AI accounted for 40% of 97,006 job cuts by US-based employers in May, the highest monthly total since Challenger began tracking AI as a reason for layoffs in 2023. So far in 2026, Challenger says 87,714 cuts have been attributed to AI, far surpassing the total of 54,836 in 2025.

“AI isn’t yet the jobpocalypse some predicted,” Andy Challenger, labor and workplace expert and chief revenue officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement accompanying the report. “Like spreadsheets and email before it, the technology will ultimately make workers more productive, but our data shows companies are already acting on it, citing AI for more cuts than any other reason.”

Overall, Challenger found that May 2026 saw the highest number of layoffs since 2020, when 397,016 job cuts were announced during the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Technology remains the leading sector for layoffs by “a wide margin,” the report said.

The extent to which AI is to blame for layoffs is highly contested, including, not surprisingly, by those whose companies are directly involved in the AI boom. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said companies were “AI washing” their layoffs, blaming the nascent technology for their decisions when other business factors were at play.

Elsewhere, Apollo Global Management’s chief economist Torsten Sløk wrote last week that he sees “zero evidence of job losses because of AI,” citing the ADP National Employment Report.

Outside of AI, Challenger’s report found that so far this year, the next biggest reasons attributed to layoffs are “market and economic conditions,” which have been cited for 69,645 cuts; “closings,” which have been cited for 66,733 cuts; and “restructuring,” which has been attributed to 52,249.

• The US Army’s new command and control system is more mobile and spread out across posts.
• Soldiers said it doesn’t take long to break down the post and they’re still connected while moving.
• The mobile, dispersed posts also help troops blend in on the electromagnetic spectrum.

Future warfare will be fast-paced and chaotic. That’s forcing the US Army to rethink the field posts that are increasingly in their enemy’s crosshairs.

The problem for the US is straightforward: Command posts send and receive a high volume of transmissions on battlefield information that an advanced adversary, like Russia or China, could detect and target.

Ukraine has shown this vulnerability by strikes on Russian command posts and killing more than a dozen generals.

These threats have shifted the US Army’s thinking on its new warfighting system, Next Generation Command and Control. The technology, also called NGC2, is a total revamp of how the Army communicates and fights. Most of the capabilities have only been built over the last few months.

Last month at Fort Carson, Colorado, the Army ran a division-level drill with NGC2. The scenario involved a blue and red team fighting alongside many of the capabilities, like electronic warfare, cyber systems, and space-based effects, that the Army anticipates it could face in a potential conflict. It was the most complex testing of NGC2 thus far, with troops wargaming the system in a realistic combat scenario.

“We learned a lot about how to employ that technology and what it feels like when that technology is employed against you,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, commander of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, told reporters.

On the ground at Fort Carson, various camouflage tents were spread far out across miles, each concealing vehicles with computers running NGC2. These vehicles make up the command posts for NGC2, designed to be further away from one another and, most importantly, mobile and potentially more survivable.

Anduril Industries was the prime contractor that built the 4th ID’s command system under a $100 million contract awarded in 2025.

With the computers in the vehicles themselves, the post can rapidly move to another location. All that needs to be done is breaking down the tent and some other logistics equipment.

“I’d say at the most, like about 30 minutes for us to set up, tear down,” Maj. Dan Hickox told Business Insider outside the command post where soldiers identified enemy targets. The netting that covers the post takes the most time. At other posts, the timeframe was similar. Soldiers could pack up, load the vehicle, and get on the move in half an hour or less.

The posts themselves being dispersed across areas, sometimes miles, and not within visual contact, was initially jarring. “If you were to tell me about eight months ago that I would be by myself” not near complimentary teams, Hickox said, “I probably would have a heart attack. I need to get in there in person, sit down next to people, be able to talk. But now there is chat architecture and everything else, it doesn’t make any difference.”

Command posts are relay points for information and communication regarding every aspect of warfighting, from targeting to medical support, tracking enemy movements, and monitoring how the fight is going. Inside these posts, Army leaders and specialists act as the hubs of intelligence and situational awareness that inform battlefield decisions.

Since these posts are vital to a force’s ability to fight, they are prime targets. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that command posts with large and static footprints can be found, targeted, and destroyed quickly. Ukraine’s success in attacking Russian commanders has shown the US that its command posts are too big and noticeable, and the Army has been rethinking how to shrink and disperse posts to become smaller nodes that are more survivable.

While the vehicle is on the move to another location, soldiers can still communicate, run through data, and keep connected to other posts. There may be a drop in loading or sending time, but it’s not too much to notice. And each command post has built-in redundancy, meaning its functions — like finding targets — can be done by another post if the post is offline or is damaged.

“The fact that we have the ability to maintain communications with folks and it’s not just exclusive to chat” but also voice call, Hickox said, “is really impressive.” It reduces the downtime between an order and reports as it’s executed, small delays that can add up.

Having the posts be mobile and easy to set up gives soldiers more options for keeping their signatures obscured on the electromagnetic spectrum. Soldiers said the vehicle could be driven to a number of locations that would help it hide or reduce its chances of being electronically detected, such as a ditch or within trees. In an urban environment, the post could be moved to a built-up area.

And while on the move, the vehicle can more blend into the noise, whether by operating on the same frequencies or connections as other systems or vehicles, or by looking similar on the spectrum to other Army assets so it’s difficult for the enemy to tell who’s who.

Soldiers follow guidelines from command on how to hide in the spectrum, crank up the noise to overwhelm frequencies, or which networks to use. If they lose connection or get jammed, there are backup ways to send data on NGC2.

“I think a lot of it comes down to what we think the enemy is going to be able to monitor and then adjusting from there,” Lt. Col. Tim Chess told Business Insider.

The exercise more broadly ramped up the use of electronic warfare effects on soldiers, including interference and jamming. Some electronic warfare objectives were what Ellis described as learning opportunities, like soldiers identifying the source of jamming and then destroying it in order to resume connection.

“So they also feel the effects of what happens when you destroy it or why you should focus on it because then your radio communications and your digital communications all get better,” he said. “We’re balancing some learning objectives with also reinforcing some good behaviors.”

The surge in interest for retro tech is about more than nostalgia.

VHS tapes, CD players, and Game Boys are making a comeback as younger consumers seek technology that feels simpler and more intentional.