BUSINESS

More than 200 years of data show stocks typically gain in August, while market volatility sits well below average.

The FDA is deciding whether seven peptides like BPC-157 and TB-500 can be legally compounded, potentially opening the door to broader use in Americans.

A Miami board approved the sale of a plot of land currently home to a historic cottage for $2.98 million.

Christie’s One Goal: An Auction to Benefit the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund has USA World Cup merch, items worn by Lionel Messi, Shakira, BTS and Justin Bieber.

While once virtually impossible to imagine, hotels without any on-site staff are becoming more common. Technology can increasingly enable everything from an automated check-in and check-out process to a platform where various services can be called in as the need arises.In the southern Maine town of Kittery, the new Foreside Inn boutique hotel will operate under a 24/7 digital concierge service. Guests with a booked reservation open the door to one of the 24 rooms through their access code while workers will be available remotely through text, email, or phone at any hour that the guest contacts them.The hotel’s management is positioning this type of service as creating the ability to “‘provide a stress-free and effortless stay” and offer “a surprising level of luxury at an exceptional value.” Rooms during the summer months start at $260 per night.Foreside Inn in Maine opens with fully virtual check-in and conciergeKittery is both the southernmost and oldest town in Maine with a permanent population of just over 11,400 people. It is located across the Piscataqua River from Portsmouth in New Hampshire and often serves as a stop for those exploring the New England coast and local food scene.With traffic numbers to this part of Maine and New Hampshire remaining highly seasonal, the remote concierge service is a natural option for a part of the country that will see significantly more isolated visitors at some points of the year. Cleaning staff also get called on site based on booking patterns to prepare for guests’ arrivals and clean the rooms after they check out.Related: Luxury hotels are increasingly betting big on Rwanda travelPreviously, entirely staff-free models have largely been reserved to airport hotels and certain youth hostels with an entirely digitalized “check-in, check-out model.”In recent years, more and more high-end chains have also been offering digital check-in. The city of Dubai has been working with hospitality technology provider Houdini to eventually roll it out to all of the 820 hotels within the city. The same company provides the technology for staff-free check-in at Nobu hotels around the world but in each case the goal is to minimize staff rather than eliminate them entirely; employees are on hand to greet guests and help out with any questions that may arise on site.

The Foreside Inn opened in Maine’s Kittery this summer.Foreside Inn

Staff-free hotels have started popping up in these citiesThe fully digital hospitality experience seems to be seeing the most uptake in New England. In the New Hampshire city of Portsmouth, just a bridge away from the Foreside Inn in Kittery, the historic Treadwell Mansion built in 1818 has also eliminated the traditional front desk for a staff-free experience.More Travel News:Airline to launch unusual new flight to Cayman Islands from the U.S.There is a very cool Irish version of swimming pigs in the BahamasUnexpected country is most luxurious travel destination for 2026Low-cost airline launches easier way to get to Sri LankaGuests who booked one of the 38 apartment-style hotel rooms inside the converted mansion open the door through an access code created through a partnership with Mews digital access platform that then blocks the room once the reservation is over should the guest not extend the reservation or check out.This type of staff-free experience is hugely beneficial to hotel operators as it significantly reduces the number of needed staff while, even in the luxury sphere, guest preferences will vary: Some prefer a faster and sleeker check-in process while others still like the human touch of being welcomed and greeted as special guests.Related: Disney World shuts down part of legendary resort

Two weeks after debuting its more naturalistic GPT-Live audio AI model with full-duplex capabilities (listening and speaking at the same time), OpenAI is bringing it directly into developer workflows. The company announced that GPT-Live now powers the ChatGPT desktop application on macOS and Windows, integrating directly with agentic systems like Codex and ChatGPT Work (which are separate experiences available in the ChatGPT desktop app). When OpenAI initially launched GPT-Live on July 8, 2026, it introduced a continuous audio model capable of listening and speaking simultaneously—eliminating rigid turn-taking while delegating complex reasoning to background models like GPT-5.5. Today’s release expands that conversational layer to technical tasks, enabling software engineers to orchestrate multi-threaded coding jobs, review pull requests, and debug applications using natural voice commands.As such, it could usher in a new era of “hands free” software development and even live, in-person group coding parties for Codex’s more than 5 million weekly active users. Codex, of course, is the name given to OpenAI’s models and harness focused on coding, but which the company has this year expanded into a more general productivity platform. An OpenAI spokesperson told VentureBeat this is the first time voice activation has been included natively with Codex on the desktop. OpenAI posted a promotional video showing some of its employees, Codex developer experience engineer Jason Liu and Codex technical staffer Guinness Chen, speaking to the same ChatGPT desktop app session in the same room, each issuing different instructions and conversing with the same model. New capabilities unlockedAt its core, this integration relies on decoupling the real-time voice layer from the underlying execution engines.While GPT-Live maintains fluid conversation—inserting natural verbal acknowledgments like “got it” without interrupting the user—it passes heavy computational workloads to background reasoning models. On macOS, the desktop application incorporates “Appshots” and screen context features, allowing ChatGPT Voice to analyze the frontmost window alongside local files, codebase structures, and active plugins.This architecture creates a pair-programming dynamic where developers talk through problems conversationally while agents execute tasks asynchronously. Rather than manually stopping coding sessions to type detailed instructions or switch windows, developers direct the system hands-free. The full-duplex engine dynamically decides when to speak, pause, or invoke tools, maintaining conversational state even as background agents process complex code modifications.Directing coding and complex builds with your voice aloneThe central operational capability in this update centers on multi-task execution across Codex and ChatGPT Work environments. Software engineers can initiate multiple concurrent task threads from a single spoken prompt. For instance, a developer preparing to ship a feature can instruct the system to investigate an open authentication bug, review a pending API migration pull request, and generate missing unit tests simultaneously.The desktop application coordinates these actions across disparate contexts, tracing issues through Slack conversations, GitHub repositories, and local codebases.Developers can also verbally convert design mockups into working code, splitting tasks across frontend, backend, and testing layers. With support for multi-folder projects (build 26.715) and remote execution via iOS, engineers can check task progress, answer agent prompts, and redirect active jobs without switching applications or managing individual processes line by line.Proprietary licenseOpenAI’s voice-enabled desktop release operates under a proprietary, commercial enterprise model. Access is restricted to paid subscribers across Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education plans.For individual developers and corporate engineering departments, this commercial structure means the model weights, voice processing pipelines, and agent state architectures remain fully closed. Organizations cannot modify or self-host the underlying systems. Furthermore, tasks initiated via ChatGPT Voice consume standard usage allocations directly from existing Codex and ChatGPT Work plan quotas, treating voice-triggered actions identically to standard agentic workloads.Community reactionsDeveloper communities immediately noted the implications of bringing continuous full-duplex voice to autonomous coding workflows. Reacting to the build 26.715 release announcement—which details voice integration and multi-folder project support—AI Insider journalist @ChrisGPT noted on X: “Today OpenAI will release voice and remote guidance for codex ! One step closer to personal AGI”. Early technical feedback highlights widespread enthusiasm for orchestrating complex agentic tasks hands-free, particularly when stepping away from the workstation or managing build pipelines remotely.

Forecasters said geomagnetic storm conditions would likely make the phenomenon more visible.

Netflix revolutionized home cinematic viewing, first with its DVD subscription service, then with the rollout of its online streaming service. With hundreds of millions of subscribers globally, Netflix is one of the dominant streaming providers in the world, and its stock price has reflected its spectacular growth over the past two decades.As the company grew in popularity and its share price increased, it conducted stock splits to signal its confidence in its continued growth and keep its per-share price low enough to be accessible to individual investorsHere’s a closer look at Netflix’s stock splits since it went public in 2002.Netflix stock split quick factsNumber of stock splits: 3Most recent stock split: November 17, 2025First stock split: February 12, 204When did Netflix conduct its first stock split?Netflix implemented its first stock split less than two years after it underwent its IPO. Two shares were issued for every one held, as of the record date of February 2, 2004, and the post-split trading date was February 12, 2004.Related: Intel’s stock split history (& prospects) explainedWhen was Netflix’s latest stock split? Netflix’s latest stock split was on November 17, 2025, affecting stockholders of record on November 10, 2025. Stockholders were given 10 shares for each one owned. How many times has Netflix split its stock?Netflix has conducted a total of three stock splits: February 2004, July 2015, and November 2025. In 2015, it implemented a 7-for-1 stock split. Netflix’s stock split history at a glanceSplit dateRecord dateSplit typeNovember 17, 2025November 10, 202510 for 1July 15, 2015July 2, 20157 for 1February 12, 2004February 2, 20042 for 1Is Netflix going to split its stock again? Netflix last held its stock split in 2025. Given the time between stock splits, which averaged about 10 years, it’s not likely — as of mid-2026 — the streaming company will split its shares anytime soon.More on stock splits:Does Sandisk pay dividends? Will it split its stock?Has Meta conducted stock split? What sets this ‘Mag 7’ stock apartBoeing’s dividend & stock split history explainedWhat would Netflix’s stock price be in 2026 if it hadn’t conducted any stock splits?Netflix’s share price, had the stock not been split three times, can be calculated by multiplying the current stock price by the cumulative stock split ratio, in this case, 140: Current Netflix stock price x (10 × 7 × 2) = Netflix stock price had the stock never been splitCurrent Netflix stock price x (140) = Netflix stock price had the stock never been splitHad Netflix not conducted stock splits, the share price would be $9,613.80 as of late July. That’s based on Netflix’s closing price of $68.67 on July 21, 2026.How has Netflix’s stock performed?Netflix went public in 2002, with shares priced at $15 during its IPO. Since then, the stock has had a 640-fold gain through mid-July 2026. That compares to an almost sixfold increase for the S&P 500 Index in the same timeframe. In other words, Netflix has outperformed the market massively since its debut in the early oughts. Still, Netflix’s stock was down 25% year-to-date as of this article’s latest update and was down by almost half from its record high set in June 2025, amid concerns about slowing subscriber growth.

Netflix’s stock price performace since IPO using Gloogle Finance data via Google Sheets

Related: AMD’s stock split history (& prospects) explained

President Donald Trump and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are making a fresh move with tariffs on Thursday.

As inflation continues to squeeze household budgets, parents and students are on a mission to find back-to-school bargains.