Slack is becoming an regular communication tool in many offices. It helps cut down on email and can make working with groups, especially remotely, work much more efficiently.

However, most people aren’t using Slack to its full potential. If the service is part of your daily work life, check out these tips for doing everything from finding old conversations to adding your own emojis.

Learn The Keyboard Shortcuts

Learning some of Slack’s keyboard shortcuts can dramatically enhance your productivity. You can check out the full list of options by typing /keys into any channel. Especially useful are Command-Shift-K to browse your DMs and Shift-Esc to mark all of the messages in a thread as read.

Set Reminders

At least once a day, something is said to me in Slack that I need to follow up on at a later time. Whether it’s someone I need to remember to call the next day or email a week from now, creating reminders somewhere else can be tedious, and more often than not doesn’t end up happening.

You can actually set a reminder in Slack. To set one, type /remind[@person or channel] to [what][when]. When that time comes you’ll get a reminder right in Slack. For instance, you might type “Remind me tomorrow to email Bob” or “Remind @john to pick up the programs next Tuesday.”

Use Stars To Create A To-Do List

Whenever a message pops up in Slack you want to remember or need to follow up on you can star it by hovering your mouse to the right of the timecode of a message and highlighting the star. Later on, you can pull up all of the messages you starred by clicking the star icon at the very top of your Slack window and work through them like a to-do list of sorts.

DM From Anywhere

You don’t have to be in a private channel to send a private message to someone. You can send a private direct message from any channel within Slack by typing /msg @name and then what you’d like to send in your message on the same line. Keep in mind, only this message will be sent privately, so if you decide to send another note (or you break up convos into multiple messages like I do), then you’ll need to take /msg @name before each one or your private note will be posted very publicly in the channel you’re in.

Set Word Triggers

You’re probably already getting notifications whenever your name is used in Slack conversations. You can take things a step further to make it so you get notified whenever anyone mentions any term you’re interested in. For instance, if you’re working with a particular client you can set up a notification for her name so you’re notified whenever any team member mentions her in conversation, or you can get notifications for your particular city, office, or even know whenever anyone mentions puppies.

To add notifications for new words, click on your name on the top left hand side of your Slack window, and then select Preferences followed by Notifications, then select the option with keywords, and all whatever words you’d like to see notifications for.

Use The Shrug Shortcut

There are a million and one situations where the shrug emoji can comes in handy. If you need it, you don’t have to type out all the symbols yourself to make it happen, just type /shrug and Slack will put one in for you.

Add Your Own Emojis

Does your team have an image or graphic that means something to the group? Turn it into an emoji. Go to Customize and then Emoji to upload your own emojis to be used within Slack. They just need to be a 128px x 128px square in order to work. Keep in mind that the emojis that you add will be viewable and usable by everyone on your team, so while that emoji of your boss’s face might be funny at the moment, it might not be quite as funny to him or her later on.

Google Calendar Integration

If you use Google Calendar, you can set things up so that you’re notified in Slack when you have a meeting or other calendar notification, provided you’re an admin for the team’s Slack account. To add Google Calendar to your own Slack go to Apps and Integrations, and then select Google Calendar.

The feature has some interesting unexpected advantages, such as the ability to automatically post a Happy Birthday message on an employee’s birthday.

Use GIFs From Giphy

Slack has support for Giphy already built in, making it super easy to send the perfect GIF to fit the conversation you’re having. To activate the integration type /giphy hello into any channel. Afterwards, you’ll be able to search for GIFs directly in Slack by typing /giphy and what you’re looking for. For instance, /giphy party.

Customize Your Search

Finding old conversations doesn’t have to be a pain. You can actually narrow your search down using what you remember about it. You can perform searches such as from:[username], to:[channel or username], in:[channel or username] if you remember who was involved in the chat. You can also search based on time by typing in after:[date], before:[date], on:[date], during:[month/year], or has:[star].

Since CEO Tricia Griffith took the reins at Progressive last July, the company’s stock has been on a tear, rising from around $32.50 to $47. Progressive sells personal and commercial insurance, with a focus on auto, and is perhaps best known for its ubiquitous TV ads featuring Flo in her signature apron. Over on Wall Street, the company has won acclaim for its sophisticated pricing models and smart use of data. “Another month, another great result,” UBS analysts headlined their June report.

Progressive’s strength in auto allows it to trade at a premium, because investors like the sector’s lower volatility and higher returns. But Griffith, a Progressive veteran, sees home insurance as key to further market share gains. “We’ve found that the more products our customers have with us, the longer they stay,” she tells Fast Company. “It’s about making sure we listen to our customer needs and get to those pain points.”

Last week Griffith launched a product called HomeQuote Explorer, one of her first major initiatives as CEO. It’s a revamped, mobile-friendly interface for generating home insurance quotes, including comparison rates. “We were the first ones to offer comparison rates on the auto side. We did it even if we weren’t the lowest price,” says Griffith. “This HQX opportunity is that same thing, but with a more complex product.” (In home insurance there are more variables to assess.) So far, during A/B testing, the company is seeing a double-digit increase in sales versus its older user experience.

There is a lot of hype around insurtech these days. Since 2011, according to CB Insights, insurtech companies have raised $5.67 billion in funding, with many focused on better design. Progressive’s HQX product may not have all the bells and whistles that make mobile apps from startups like Lemonade feel smart and engaging. But the company does have strong brand recognition—and now, a digital experience that may be good enough.

Reddit has raised a boatload of new investment money–$200 million, to be exact. This, according to Recode, puts the company’s valuation at $1.8 billion. 

It’s all part of Reddit’s attempt to revitalize itself. Known as a haven for trolls and other niche online-only communities, the link-sharing community site has plans to build out new products and make itself more amenable to advertisers. A few months ago it revamped its ad platform, and it seems to have even bigger plans.

One tidbit that stands out is Reddit’s plan to completely redesign its site. Recode writes:

[T]he company is literally rewriting all of its code, some of which is more than a decade old. An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into “cards” with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath.

Perhaps this new look will help Reddit welcome more people. Or perhaps it will remain a big place for online fringe communities. You can read Recode‘s write-up here.

What: New trailer for James Corden’s spin-off Carpool Karaoke series.

Who: Apple Music, James Corden

Why we care: We got our first glimpse of this Late Late Show spin-off back in February, but this time there’s something different. Something like Sansa and Arya (aka Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams) in an IRL commute, while we wait for their reunion on Game of Thrones. Will they sing a “Rains of Castamere” duet? Probably not. So there’s that, and a laundry list of other celebrities jumping behind the wheel together to the tune of Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.”

Why do roughly two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck? How do half of all households not use budgets at all? Why are late fees a continued burden on people’s monthly expenses?

Will Tucker-Ray and several colleagues at Ideas42, a nonprofit behavioral design firm, pondered these questions and many more late one night in 2012, while researching what policies or practices might improve personal and consumer finance decisions. Their zaniest solution was also their best. “Somebody said, ‘What if you just had a fuel gauge on the credit card itself, like, it just told you how much you had left.”

It took a few years, but the company has finally built it—or at least a prototype. Feedback Card is a credit-card-shaped device with a built in display window. It syncs with a related phone app that converts your bank account information into a more understandable display, allowing them to mark recurring incoming and outgoing transactions, like when paychecks hit versus the money getting pulled for rent, utilities, a car payment, or some TV streaming subscription.

Take a look, set your savings goal, and load your account information onto to card to go buy stuff. Before or after each purchase, you can press a little on-card button, and it’ll flash how much of your daily, weekly, or monthly allowance you have left to spend. That info is updated in real time by just tapping the card to your phone. You can also link multiple cards for purchases.

“Personal finance is a challenge that we see out in the world, that we see in America, and certainly one that that even we see internally with our own team where it’s just not very enjoyable [to do],” says Tucker-Ray, a manager director at Ideas42 and the leader of this project.

For instance, the average American today has between seven to 10 recurring bills, often coming at different times of the month. At the same time, many common bank or credit card financial tracking services break out spending habits by sector (food, recreation, bills), which isn’t easy or practical to use. “It’s very difficult for people to quickly at a glance know what their financial situation is,” Tucker-Ray says.

Recent scientific research shows that improving people’s understanding of their day-to-day financial situation may well lead to behavioral change. According to the Journal of Consumer Policy, credit card users suffer from what’s been dubbed “imperfect recall,” often underestimating how much they’re really spending when they can’t see the money going out. In one experiment, buyers confronted with receipts that showed a running total each successive transaction ended up spending 10% less overall than their peers.

Building an advanced tech product from scratch is a little different, so the group partnered with NID Security, a global display card manufacturer, and crowdsourced customer feedback about how the app should work and look on Mechanical Turk. Once the team built the prototype, Ideas42 convened a series of random field tests in New York and California, mostly by approaching students on college campuses and community parks.

Rather than sell the product directly, the nonprofit has open sourced its design, which Tucker-Ray says it will share for free with any financial institution, credit card company, or startup interested in marketing some variation in a way that leads to better money management. With some tinkering, it’s easy to see how it might work with Apple Pay, public transportation cards, and electronic benefit transfer programs like SNAP.

“This is something that definitely grows out of our personal frustration with the personal finance tools out there that in some ways seem to just make things even more complicated at times,” says Tucker-Ray. “We wanted we wanted to build something for people that didn’t want to spend all their time budgeting and then make it available to everyone.”

The New York Times reports that Donald Trump has removed Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci—known as “Mooch” by many—from his post as White House communications head.

It’s not clear if he is being assigned another role or totally ousted; perhaps he’ll fall up, since there is no gravity in the White House these days. Who knows.

Scaramucci had the job for only 10 days, and the White House staff roster has been a whirlwind lately by any measure. Perhaps most noteworthy was Scaramucci’s call with the New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza, where he unloaded an expletive-filled tirade on some of his colleagues, including Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus.

With all this, perhaps it would behoove the White House to ponder some tips for hiring the best talent. Mooch was nothing if not divisive. Many people in the White House reportedly had their differences with him, including Sean Spicer. Not only that, but the man seemed to march to the beat of his own drum; he didn’t fit culturally with many in the White House, at least according to numerous reports.

We’ve written frequently in the past about how to hire the best talent. Here’s a short list of some of our tips:

• The One Interview Question That Will Help You Make The Best Hire—Make sure the person is a cultural fit.

• How To Reword A Job Posting To Avoid A Hiring Mistake—When advertising a role to applicants, be very descriptive about what the job entails.

• How I’ve Made Smart Hires As My Company Quadrupled In 10 Months—Employ a hiring team who truly understand an organization’s needs.

These are just suggestions, of course. But it’s always good to think before hiring.

Apple’s June-ending quarter results, to be announced Tuesday, won’t be nearly as interesting and relevant as the forecasts that come with them. All eyes are on the next two quarters, within which Apple will release new iPhones.

Apple won’t report history-making financial results when it reports earnings Tuesday, but nobody’s expecting it, and investors aren’t likely to run for the exits even if the numbers are worse than they project.

The June-ending quarter is always a seasonally slow period for iPhone sales, which represent roughly 60% of Apple’s revenues. That’s because many iPhone owners (and first-time buyers) have already begun to look forward to the new iPhones coming up, which Apple tends to announce and launch in September. People sensibly hold off on upgrading.

This year the slump may be even worse because Apple will likely announce a mold-breaking new iPhone (aka iPhone 8, aka iPhone Pro, aka iPhone X) in September that packs a bunch of new features and a strikingly new design. The potential appeal of that device might cause even more upgrade delays than usual.

When Apple reported that iPhone sales for the March-ending quarter were down from the year-ago quarter, Tim Cook blamed the shortfall on persistent reports speculating on the features in the upcoming phone. We might hear similar explanations during the quarterly call with analysts on Tuesday.

Analysts surveyed by Factset expect Apple to sell 40.7 million iPhones during the June quarter, driving overall revenues of $44.9 billion. This would mark an increase of about 6% over last year’s June-ending quarter.

A Question of Timing?

Adding to the fun is the distinct possibility that the iPhone 8 might arrive late by the standards of previous iPhones. Media and analyst reports have also suggested that due to the complexity of the new iPhone 8, it might not start selling in September alongside the other two new phones–the successors to the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus (likely called the iPhone 7s and 7s Plus). Apple’s forecast for the September-ending quarter might reflect that.

If the iPhone 8 does indeed ship later than its more straightforward siblings, the September-ending quarter will reflect no sales of that device, which many believe will sell for well over $1,000. It could point the way, however, to a huge holiday quarter–assuming the phone is out for that full quarter.

We’ll be reporting Apple’s results Tuesday and offering commentary about any gems that come out of the call with analysts.

In a lab in Finland, inside tiny lab equipment roughly the size of coffee cups, researchers are turning CO2 into food. The process–which can run on renewable energy, and requires only a small amount of water and nutrients–could eventually be used in a home appliance to make protein at home, or a production facility in a desert that could supply nutrition in the middle of a famine.

“The basic raw materials are electricity and CO2,” says Juha-Pekka Pitkänen, principle scientist at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, which is collaborating on the study with the Lappeenranta University of Technology. Inside a bioreactor, electrolysis splits water harvested from the air to create hydrogen. Nutrients like phosphorus are added, along with carbon dioxide that is either captured from the air or from another source. Using these materials, it’s possible to grow a single-cell organism that uses CO2 as its carbon source, and hydrogen as the energy source.

In one application, it could be used to make animal feed. Roughly a third of the world’s arable land is used to grow feed crops for livestock like cows; billions of hectares of forest are cut down each year to plant more of these crops. The researchers envision that farmers might instead have a shipping container on their farm with a bioreactor inside, churning out feed for livestock in a tiny space, with little use of water or other resources.

The project is part of Neo-Carbon Energy, a large Finnish research project that looks more broadly at how to create a fully renewable energy system. That project also includes CO2 capture–sucking carbon dioxide from the air–and for three years, researchers considered how they might be able to make chemicals or fuel from that CO2. That was less successful, but the researchers realized that they could make food instead.

The research is still at an early stage, and the researchers are working on making the process more efficient. It currently takes two weeks to create a gram of protein in one of the small bioreactors. They’re also tweaking how the process can work with renewable energy. It might take another decade before it’s commercially available; in addition to improving the process, the food will also have to go through regulatory approvals and gain market acceptance. But the researchers are optimistic about its potential to help, particularly in areas that struggle to grow food now, and will struggle even more as climate change increases the chance of droughts, heat waves, and catastrophic flooding on farms.

“This doesn’t need any arable land,” he says. “This could be operated in a desert environment–dry and very difficult to use land…This could be an automated system, so then this could be helpful in some parts where famine is the biggest problem.”

The response to HBO‘s nascent series Confederate has been chilly since the show was first announced earlier this month. It’s the latest project from the Game of Thrones team of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, along with married writing duo Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Malcolm Spellman, and it’s set in an alternate timeline in which the Southern states successfully seceded from the Union, and where slavery still exists in modern-day America.

The backlash arrived fast and furious, mostly from prominent black voices but by no means limited to them. Both the show’s creators and executives from HBO defended Confederate, asking viewers to reserve judgment until the eventual premiere. Last night, however, during the East Coast airing of Game of Thrones, organizer April Reign, the woman behind last year’s #OscarsSoWhite campaign, teamed up with other organizers to get #NoConfederate trending worldwide.

“We believe the time to speak up is now, before the show has been written or cast. Before @hbo invests too much money into #Confederate,” she wrote on Twitter.

In response, HBO has again gone on the defensive, issuing the following statement: “We have great respect for the dialogue and concern being expressed around Confederate. We have faith that [writers] Nichelle, Dan, David and Malcolm will approach the subject with care and sensitivity. The project is currently in its infancy so we hope that people will reserve judgment until there is something to see.” The premium cable network appears unmoved by the outcry against Confederate for now. The show is a long way away, however.

Pyotr Levashov, an alleged spammer based in Russia, appeared in a Madrid court Wednesday facing extradition to the United States, the Associated Press reports. He is alleged to have operated a large botnet, using hacked computers to send unwanted commercial emails.

He’s one of at least five Russians arrested on U.S.-linked cybercrime charges while traveling in Europe in the past nine months, according to the report. The U.S. charges against them–involving offenses like money laundering and disseminating hacking tools–don’t appear linked to alleged Russian election interference or necessarily to state-sponsored attacks, though Levashov has allegedly collaborated in the past with Russian intelligence.

With news of a Wisconsin-based tech firm offering implantable microchips to employees, these are the issues an employee should consider.

Over the weekend, developer Steve Stroughton Smith tweeted images of the upcoming iPhone 8 he found in the firmware of the new HomePod smart speaker. The firmware includes a sketch of the front face of the phone (taken up almost entirely by display), and scattered references to a facial-recognition unlock feature. There’s also a notched-out area at the top of the phone that may house the laser and sensor used for facial recognition.

The leak strongly suggests that the facial recognition will be used to authenticate users and unlock the phone, including for high-security services like Apple Pay.

The bezel-less iPhone image can be extracted from Payment_glyph_phone-D22.caar in PassKitUIFoundation.framework with the code pictured pic.twitter.com/HAyDO0E931

— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) July 31, 2017

Apple reportedly had difficulty including a fingerprint sensor in the design of the iPhone 8 because all that display space left no room at the bottom front of the phone for Touch ID. This new leak adds more credence to those reports, and raises the remarkable possibility that Apple will depend on facial recognition as a replacement for the fingerprint reader.

This may seem like a dramatic step forward for the iPhone, or even a risky one, but it’s very unlikely that Apple would release the feature if it didn’t work reliably and securely. In the worst-case scenario, a user might not be able to unlock the iPhone 8 or use Apple Pay using facial recognition, but would have to default to entering a password.

These are interesting times in the world of social virtual reality. Facebook has been putting a lot of energy into building out Spaces, its take on making VR social–and connecting those inside VR to everyone else on Facebook. Then again, Altspace, one of the earliest social VR pioneers, announced last week that it is shutting down, citing rough financial waters in the VR space.

Now comes the news that Sansar, the social VR world built by Linden Lab—whose Second Life was a true pioneer in the so-called “metaverse”—is finally open for public beta. Available for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows PCs, Sansar is not compatible with Second Life, yet will seem familiar to anyone who ever spent time in that groundbreaking virtual world. Sansar creators will be able to access drag-and-drop tools, making it intuitive to add assets from common 3D modeling tools, or bought from Sansar’s store.

It will likely be quite some time before users can experience a wide variety of VR environments in Sansar, but a lot of people have been awaiting Linden’s entry into the space given its work on Second Life. Of course, Second Life’s creator, Philip Rosedale, is now running his own social VR company, High Fidelity. Interesting times, indeed.

An email prankster has successfully fooled multiple White house officials including Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, and Ambassador to Russia-designate Jon Huntsman Jr., reports CNN. In one exchange, the prankster pretended to be the now-fired White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. The fake Priebus emailed the real Scaramucci:

“I can’t believe you are questioning my ethics! The so called ‘Mooch’, who can’t even manage his first week in the White House without leaving upset in his wake. I have nothing to apologize for.”

The real Scaramucci replied:

“Read Shakespeare. Particularly Othello. You are right there. My family is fine by the way and will thrive. I know what you did. No more replies from me.”

The prankster got so many White House officials to fall for his tricks by using a method known as spear-phishing, where he set up fake email addresses so they looked like they were owned by the people he was impersonating.

Imagine you’re at a football game, parched and in need of a beer but don’t feel like waiting in an interminable line. You will soon be able to open an app, order your beverage of choice, then pick it up at the nearest American Green machine. The app will even tell you the location of the nearest machine—for example, in the main concourse outside section 110. When you get there, you scan your fingerprint, verifying your identity and age, and get your beer.

One of American Green’s machines–“the world’s most sophisticated smart-vending operating system”–could also be located in the lobby of your apartment building, stocked with everything from wine to prescription medicine (which you’d only be able to retrieve with a nod from your doctor, who’d have to be willing to work with the network), saving tenants from having to make a trip to the store.

These new vending machines, from American Green Inc., look less like the glass-front hunks of metal seen in schools and laundromats across the country and more like the check-in kiosks in airports–they have touch-screen interfaces, accept both cash and credit, and can be linked to your bank account. Ease of use is nice, but the real convenientappeal for consumers is that they enable the vending of controlled or age-restricted products, including alcohol, pharmaceuticals, casino chips, emergency pregnancy tests, cannabis, and (seriously) even firearms.

Whether you’re more excited or alarmed, the entrepreneurs behind the patent-protected system promise it’s as safe as it is convenient.

“We’ve added smart technology [to vending machines] and age verification through finger vein recognition,” vice president of automated sales and development Lindel Creed told Fast Company. The vein biometric authentication is more secure than basic fingerprint technology, because the veins are located beneath the skin surface–and as Creed explained, considering the kind of variables that might accompany vending machines filled with guns: “If you cut the finger off, the veins collapse.”

American Green consultant Stephen Shearin says so far only a few users have been invited to test the machines under a trial basis. The system was originally designed for the medical marijuana market, allowing dispensary members to pick up their preferred herbal remedy with a swipe of a finger. Theoretically, the tech could be used to bring any vending machine into the 21st century.

“The technology allows for an entrepreneur or business owner to sell things that have restrictions on them, conveniently and safely. In the gun scenario, you could sign up, complete the 24- or 72-hour waiting period, then make the purchase,” Shearin says. “A better application for firearms would be at a gun range, located outside city limits, not sitting somewhere on Fifth Avenue for someone to take in the subway. In the appropriate place, for the business owner who wanted, we can make sure the right person is getting it.”

To date, there doesn’t seem to be any actual interest from the gun community in the American Green machine. Even if there were, selling deadly weapons (or ammunition) out of a vending machine seems entirely unnecessary, no matter how secure. (More guns don’t make America safer.)

The good news is that while that specific use case (like cannabis sales) will be strictly limited by city, state, or federal law, other potential applications are more in sync with the American community at large.

“The exciting questions have to do with adult use,” says Shearin, “but the reality is it’s a system which specifies exactly who you are.” In a school setting, vending of certain products like soda or candy could be restricted to junior and seniors, he says, or to people maintaining straight A’s.

Signing up for American Green’s smart vending network requires meeting with a real-life American Green employees on location, each trained to verify your government-issued ID. But once your account has been created, and your finger’s veins scanned, you get instant access to any linked vending machine anywhere–just not necessarily every product.

The system’s intuitive interface and experience is currently marketed as being “as good as human.”  “What we mean by that is not that machines–hopefully, God help us–will ever be as good or better than humans,” says Shearin. “The fact is we’re social creatures, and there are ways to socially engineer somebody who’s supposed to be checking an ID. Once you’re in the system, and you’ve been scrutinized, it winds up being more convenient than humans.”

The increasingly common American consumer who’d rather not interact with other people–whether that be bartender, pharmacist, or gun salesman–probably can’t wait till these are on every corner.

The Chinese ride-hailer will “support Taxify’s further growth and help it become the most popular transport option in Europe and Africa,” according to Reuters. Neither Didi nor Taxify would reveal how much Didi was investing in the company. Taxify is an Estonian company that has 2.5 million users across Europe and Africa. In 2016 Didi acquired Uber China, and currently has 400 million users.

Apple’s ARKit is the development tool for the upcoming iOS 11 that allows devs to make stunning AR apps and games. But now independent games developer Duncan Walker has found a new use for for it: making incredible-looking films that place compute- generated characters right into the real world (via TNW). Check out a preview of his film, which puts virtual robot commanders on the street with real humans

#Apple#ARKit film making experiments. Shot on #iphone#madewithunity#screenshotsaturday#madewithARKitpic.twitter.com/85ljCdQqHW

— Duncan Walker (@Trashgames) July 29, 2017

The revolving door employment at the White House has made for some seriously compelling reality TV this summer. Things got particularly heated over these past 10 days, during which we lost original cast members Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus, along with special guest star Anthony Scaramucci. These are indeed heady times. However, the fact that the events that would make the greatest TV show ever on Earth 2 if only they weren’t actually happening here on Earth 1–that only makes most Americans appreciate the counter-programming offered by movies and TV shows. This August has no shortage of late summer highlights, including the long-awaited adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, and, well, the less long-awaited adaptation of Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes. Read on to sort out your next few weekends of pop culture escapism.

Movies In Theaters

• Kidnap, opens August 4.
• The Dark Tower, opens August 4.
• Detroit, opens August 4.
• Wind River, opens August 4.
• Annabelle: Creation, opens August 4.
• Step, premieres August 4.
• The Glass Castle, opens August 11.
• The Only Living Boy in New York, opens August 11.
• Good Time, opens August 11.
• Ingrid Goes West, opens August 11.
• The Trip to Spain, opens August 11.
• The Hitman’s Bodyguard, opens August 11.
• Logan Lucky, opens August 18.
• Marjorie Prime, opens August 18.
• Patti Cake$, opens August 18.
• Polaroid, opens August 25.

Movies To Watch At Home

• Maz Jobrani: Immigrant, premieres August 1st on Netflix.
• Columbus, premieres August 4.
• Fun Mom Dinner, premieres August 4.
• Open Water 3: Cage Dive, premieres August 11.
• Whose Streets?, premieres August 11.
• Gook, premieres August 18.
• Tulip Fever, premieres August 25.
• Death Note, premieres August 25.

Albums You Should Hear

• Randy Newman – Dark Matter, out on August 4.
• Frankie Rose – Cage Tropical, out on August 11.
• Kesha – Rainbow, out on August 11.
• Oneohtrix Point Never – The Good Time [OST], out on August 11.
• Grizzly Bear – Painted Ruins, out on August 18.
• Loretta Lynn – Wouldn’t It Be Great, out on August 18.
• Rainer Maria – S/T, out on August 18.
• UNKLE – The Road Part 1, out on August 18.
• EMA – Exile In The Outer Ring, out on August 25.
• Iron & Wine – Beast Epic, out on August 25.
• Liars – TFCF (Themes From Crying Fountain), out on August 25.
• Queens of the Stone Age – Villains, out on August 25.
• The War on Drugs – A Deeper Understanding, out on August 25.
• Widowspeak – Expect The Best, out on August 25.

Things To Watch On Your TV Or Your Computer

• Manhunt: Unabomber, premieres August 1st on Discovery.
• Baroness Von Sketch Show, premieres August 2nd on IFC.
• The Lowe Files, premieres August 2nd on A&E.
• The Sinner, premieres August 2nd on USA.
• The Chris Gethard Show, premieres August 3rd on truTV.
• The Guest Book, premieres August 3rd on TBS.
• What Would Diplo Do?, premieres August 3rd on Viceland.
• Comrade Detective, premieres August 4th on Amazon.
• Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, premieres August 4th on Netflix.
• Carpool Karaoke, premieres August 8th.
• Difficult People, premieres August 8th on Hulu.
• Mr. Mercedes, premieres August 9th on DirecTV/AT&T.
• Saturday Night Live: Weekend Update,premieres August 9th on NBC.
• Atypical, premieres August 11th on Netflix.
• Get Shorty, premieres August 13th on Epix.
• Marlon, premieres August 16th on NBC.
• Marvel’s The Defenders, premieres August 18th on Netflix.
• Halt and Catch, premieres August 19th on AMC.
• Episodes, premieres August 19th on Showtime.
• South Park, premieres August 23rd on Comedy Central.
• There’s… Johnny!, premieres August 24th on Seeso.
• Disjointed, premieres August 25th on Netflix.
• The Tick, premieres August 25th on Amazon.
• MTV Video Music Awards, premieres August 27th on MTV.

Books To Read

• Black Panther Vol. 1 by Ta-Nehisi Coates, out on August 15.
• How to Disappear by Sharon Huss Roat, out on August 15.
• Depression & Other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim, out on August August 22.
• Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo , out on August 22.
• The Burning Girl by Claire Messud, out on August 29.
• Basic Witches: How to Summon Success, Banish Drama, and Raise Hell with Your Coven by Jaya Saxena and Jess Zimmerman, out on August 29.

[Photo Mash Up: Maja Saphir for Fast Company; Source Photos: Glass Castles: Jake Giles Netter, courtesy of Lionsgate;  Death Note: James Dittiger, courtesy of Netflix; Gook: Melly Lee, courtesy of Birthday Soup Films;  Sinner: Brownie Harris, courtesy of USA Network; Carpool Karaoke: courtesy of Apple; Step, Whose Streets?: Autumn Lin Photography, courtesy of Magnolia Pictures]

I used to have quite the setup for making music. In the basement of my parents’ house, I had rigged up an array of microphones around a drum kit, guitar amp, and bass amp, all feeding into a multi-track recording interface on a nearby desktop PC. I’d spend hours down there during high school and on break from college, creating my own albums just for fun.

But over the past dozen years, I’ve let that hobby languish. I have a drum kit in my own basement now, but after a full day of work followed by family time, the prospect of setting up an elaborate recording session seems exhausting–and it’d probably wake the kids anyway. So I’ve spent my precious downtime on more relaxing pursuits, such as watching TV and playing video games.

All of that started to change last month when I bought a 10.5-inch iPad Pro. Although Apple’s tablet doesn’t restore the glory of my old setup, its hardware and software turn music creation into a low-key activity. And at this point in my life, that’s the only way it’s going to happen at all.

Ready To Play

Making music on the iPad doesn’t just mean swiping and tapping on a touch screen. You can also connect real, physical instruments through the iPad’s Lightning connector.

For guitar, I use an Apogee Jam ($99), which amplifies and digitizes the signal from any quarter-inch audio cable. It’s compatible with Apple’s GarageBand software and lots of other iOS apps. (Some cheaper products send analog audio through the iPad’s headphone jack, but that introduces a lot of background noise.)

I also picked up a 37-key MIDI keyboard from iRig. MIDI keyboards don’t any make sound on their own, but instead send instructions to synthesizer apps, telling them which notes to play. Like the Apogee Jam, the iRig Keys also connects through Lightning, and draws power from the iPad.

In theory, I could use these instruments with other devices, like my Windows desktop PC or my Surface Pro 3. And I have dabbled on those machines a bit, mostly using the venerable FL Studio music production software.

But compared to Windows, the iPad does a better job of getting out of the way so I can focus on the music. The battery lasts 10 hours, and playing music doesn’t drain the charge like some Windows applications can, so I can still spend an evening on music even if two-thirds of the battery is already depleted. And because all of the iPad’s apps are optimized for touch screens, I’m never frustrated by tiny menu buttons or arcane keyboard shortcuts. Those factors, along with the iPad’s compact size, mean that I can sit down and start playing pretty much anywhere.

While this was true of older iPads as well–and I had a brief stint with making music on a third-generation iPad several years ago–the iPad Pro feels more like it was made for music creation. Saving and loading songs requires just a split second, and the iPad never hangs when switching between apps. I don’t anticipate running out of space with my iPad Pro’s 256 GB of storage, which is now just a $100 step up from the base $650 model with 64 GB of storage. The built-in stereo speakers are also decent enough for light track editing when headphones are out of reach.

GarageBand Grows Up

Beyond the hardware, the iPad’s music software is more conducive to casual music creation than anything I’ve found on Windows.

When it’s time to record, I use GarageBand, which launched on iPad in 2011 for $5 before eventually becoming a free app. Professional musicians may scoff at Apple’s music software, given its reputation for excess simplicity and canned audio loops, but over the years it’s become deceptively powerful.

Along with ready-made hooks, GarageBand provides a slew of virtual instruments for creating your own beats and melodies–controlled with either a MIDI keyboard or the touch screen–and the selection has expanded over time with more drum kits and a powerful built-in synthesizer. For guitar and bass input, GarageBand provides several amps and effects pedals to chain together.

The best part of GarageBand, however, is its extensibility. In 2013, Apple added a feature called Inter-App Audio, which lets users record audio into a GarageBand track from third-party apps. This allows me to connect an app like ToneStack to get more tones and effects out of my guitar. All I have to do is choose “Inter-App Audio” from GarageBand’s instrument menu, open up ToneStack to choose my amp and effects, then jump back into GarageBand to start recording.

A newer feature called Audio Units goes further, letting you control external instruments and effects within GarageBand itself. The subtractive synthesizer app NS1, for instance, provides all of its controls in a module above the standard GarageBand keyboard, so I never have to leave the app. (Unfortunately, Audio Units has only been around on iOS since January, so fewer apps support it compared to Inter-App Audio.)

With these tools, you can easily fall down a rabbit hole of new sounds and instruments. For a few bucks, I picked up a Nintendo-style chiptune synthesizer called SquareSynth from the App Store, along with a a clone of the classic ARP Odyssey synthesizer from the 1970s. (Re-creations of classic synths abound in the App Store, from the Minimoog to the Prophet VS.) While the cost of these apps—generally between $5 and $30— is higher than most App Store fare, they’re still far cheaper than the musical hardware they emulate. For a hobbyist like me, that means the barriers to experimentation are much lower.

Hidden Complexity

Granted, GarageBand isn’t the only program that can use Inter-App Audio and Audio Units, and other recording apps may offer more flexibility for professionals. What makes GarageBand so alluring is how it includes everything you need to get started on a basic level. When you’re ready to add more sounds through other apps, they’re just a few taps away.

In that sense, GarageBand is a microcosm of the iPad as a whole. On the surface, it’s so simple that practically anyone can use it, but underneath lie a growing number of complexities for users to seek out. In GarageBand, that means more sounds and effects through Inter-App Audio and Audio Units, along with modular connectivity to physical instruments. On the iPad, it means powerful software features like Split View, the app dock, and the Files app, along with connectivity to physical keyboards and other hardware. Just as you can still use an iPad for nothing but Netflix and Facebook, you can build a song full of canned audio loops in GarageBand without ever knowing about the full-blown recording studio beneath the surface.

I didn’t buy an iPad Pro with music creation in mind. My main goal was to use it as a laptop replacement when I was away from my desk, with some lighter activities like Twitter and gaming on the side. But layer by layer, GarageBand pulled me in, and I’ve rediscovered a hobby that I thought I’d lost.

If you’re commuting home in Los Angeles on the bus, that means waiting an average 20 minutes or more at a stop. Uber, by contrast, has an average wait time of five minutes. While the growth of ride-hailing in the city probably isn’t entirely responsible for its steep drop in bus riders, it’s a factor. So L.A.’s transit agency is in the early stages of considering another option: public transit on demand, called up via an app.

It’s not the only city thinking about the possibility of Uber-like city shuttles. Some, like Kansas City, have run trials with private companies. Others have already switched to an on-demand service for paratransit (transit for those with disabilities or the elderly) which typically uses an old-fashioned scheduling system. For cities planning a shift in services, a new simulator could help them visualize how agency-owned “microtransit” would work in their locations.

“Cities know this is necessary,” says Rahul Kumar, VP of revenue at TransLoc. “They see the success Uber and Lyft are having, but they have so many things on their plate that it’s really difficult for them to solve this problem.”

The company has an existing product that some agencies are now using to run demand-response, flexible options for safe rides, and paratransit. But the new simulator could help other cities also decide to make the shift–and analyze whether on-demand service also makes sense to replace or supplement some regular city bus routes. Because agencies use the simulator in combination with a pilot, it doesn’t have a separate cost; the simulator and a year-long pilot can cost between $10,000 and $25,000.

Dayton RTA, like some other agencies, is already partnering with a ride-hailing company–in their case, Lyft–to connect people living in more rural parts of the county with areas where buses are more frequent (during the current pilot, this service is free; other areas, like sprawling, suburban Orange County, California, partially subsidize Lyft rides). But Dayton’s work with TransLoc will begin transforming existing services that use its own vehicles.

For an older paratransit rider with unpredictable health issues, on-demand service could make it possible to get to same-day appointments; for the transit agency, it makes it less likely that rides will be canceled, helping the service run more efficiently. “We definitely [expect to] see savings through productivity,” says Policicchio. Though some riders might not have smartphones, the service will use TransLoc’s web booking platform; the same operators that currently schedule paratransit rides can manually input ride requests for those who can’t use the app.

Microtransit might also help cities make better use of buses by replacing those buses with on-demand shuttles on little-used routes, and moving buses to increase service in areas where rides are crowded. “When we look at where we’re running fixed-route services where it’s extremely low productivity, low ridership, if we can invest those service hours somewhere else, providing microtransit can be a lower-cost option, but still provide service to those areas where we pulled our fixed route,” he says.

Cities could use the new simulator to see how microtransit might be used to increase access to work for poorer neighborhoods, or access to grocery stores for food deserts, or to solve the “first mile/last mile” problem for public transportation, where people end up driving to work because they can’t easily reach a train station or other transit hub.

When TransLoc works with a transit agency on a simulation, it begins by asking cities what they hope to accomplish, and looks at vehicles that a city owns that could be used for the new service (while the technology could be used with full-size city buses, it often might make sense to repurpose smaller vans or even supervisor vehicles). Then it plugs in as much data as a city has available. In the past, the company used its algorithm to manually run simulations with the agencies it has worked with so far; the new simulator automates and streamlines the process, helping make it more accurate.

Just because people could use microtransit doesn’t mean they will. “Where it gets a little complicated isn’t really in the data, but it’s that intangible behavioral characteristic,” says Kumar. “How to shift the mind-set of a user, how to shift their behavior and travel patterns, is much tougher than what the data will show.”

When Kansas City ran an experiment with the microtransit company Bridj in 2016 (the startup shut down in April 2017)–offering on-demand rides in the downtown area for $1.50, with the first 10 rides free–only a tiny fraction of people in the area actually used it. In a survey halfway through the year-long test, 40% of people in the area said that they didn’t know it existed. In Finland, Helsinki’s experiment with an on-demand shuttle called Kutsuplus was more popular, but closed down because the city decided it was too expensive.

Still, TransLoc believes that its simulator can make testing a new microtransit service less risky for cities, and it’s talking with dozens of agencies. “I have never seen the market move as quickly as it has toward this demand-driven transportation mode,” says Kumar, who has worked in the public transportation space for 20 years. “I think part of it is that people have an expectation now that things should be on-demand.”

That doesn’t mean that traditional public transportation will disappear, but in the future it may be more seamlessly connected to microtransit, and later, self-driving cars. “There is still going to be a place for fixed-route transportation, high-capacity transit, whether it’s a subway, heavy commuter trains, or even buses,” says Kumar. “Things like microtransit, Uber, Lyft, and others will fill in the blanks, so a city will have fair and equitable transportation regardless of mode. We really believe that we have to blur the borders between modes and optimize everything together.”