When you enter a crowded market like music subscriptions a few years late like Amazon did, you’d better come up with some clever tricks to lure customers your way. For Amazon, which is riding high on the success of its line of Echo voice-controlled smart devices, that can only mean one thing: Tie music to said devices ever more tightly in the hopes of wowing listeners.
Today, Amazon announced support for activity-based voice search on its Amazon Music Unlimited subscription service. That means you can ask Alexa for things like “ambient music for meditation,” “songs for running,” or as the company’s press release is eager to point out, “songs for making babies” or “hooking up” (for those who aren’t quite ready for the commitment of producing offspring, but still want to have a good time).
For some, there may be something just a little weird about asking an artificially intelligent robo-speaker for sex music. But by building out more and more nuanced and functional voice control options for its music service, Amazon is hoping you’ll find it useful enough to forget Apple and Spotify–and overlook just how creepy the future is getting.
In this, the year of our Lorde, we have thus far been given the 20-year-old’s incredible sophomore album, Melodrama, approximately 78 killer jumpsuit outfits, and perpetual trademark Lorde dance moves. You know what combines all these things into one? The new music video for her beating heart bop “Perfect Places.”
The video, out today, features Lorde looking very The Most Dangerous Game. She stalks around a New Zealand-y epic landscape donning a series of great outfits, see: pale pink corseted bloomers, a flowing yellow dress that would make Beyonce proud, and a blood-red half parka, half ballgown that we applaud for its utilitarian style. She dances with lightbulbs, she swims in a jungle cavern, she stares unblinking into our souls.
Lorde has been killing the music video game this album cycle. With “Green Light,” we saw her taking over city streets and dancing on top of cars in that now-iconic hot pink dress, perfectly matching the inner tempo of that rushing, running single. That video was directed by Grant Singer, who also did the visuals for “Perfect Places.” Seems like a pretty effective team.
In interviews, Lorde has spoken about how she spent several days on the island of Waiheke in New Zealand, writing Melodrama tracks in blissful isolation. Maybe the video for “Perfect Places” functions as a travelogue. She tans, sips tea, and romps around the beach while writing forceful lyrics like, “What the fuck are perfect places anyway?”
But honestly, we can’t imagine a more perfect place than drinking out of the champagne bottle on a remote tropical island with Lorde by our side.
Does something feel different about the world today? Is Mercury in retrograde? It’s not. Rather, it may be that you can sense that the world has outstripped its annual resources, well before the year is over. We’re now living on extra resources we can’t afford to lose.
Every year, the Global Footprint Network (GFN), a California research group, calculates how much “annual demand on nature exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.” And each year the news gets gloomier. Because the world is using more and more resources relative to the planet’s ability to replenish itself, Earth Overshoot Day–the point at which global demand exceeds global supply–is earlier and earlier. Last year, the day fell on August 8. This year, it fell on August 2. Twenty years ago, it was still in October.
If everywhere lived like the United States, the world would require five whole Earths to sustain itself. [Source Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center]In effect, the world needs 1.7 times its available annual resources to meet global demand–the definition of unsustainable. Developed countries are particularly out of whack. If everywhere lived like the United States, the world would require five whole Earths to sustain itself, GFN says. By contrast, India’s population uses far fewer resources, so if everywhere lived like India, we’d require only 0.6 Earths each year. The group blames carbon emissions from power generation and over-exploitation of forests and oceans, reducing the ability of both to renew themselves.
GFN has a more positive message in 2017, though. There are plenty of solutions already available that can help get Earth back in better balance, it argues. “If we moved Overshoot Day five days a year, we’d be back to one planet by 2050. And we have the solutions to do that,” Mathis Wackernagel, CEO of the GFN, tells Fast Company.
Better management of refrigerants would give us a total of 9.5 days by 2050, for instance. Aggressively adopting onshore wind turbines would offer another nine extra days. Reducing food waste would give us 7.5 days back. And greater adoption of plant-based diets, as opposed to resource-intensive meat-prevalent diets, would give us seven days by mid-century. Cutting CO2 emissions in half by the same date would deliver almost three months, putting Overshoot Day back to November–roughly where it was in the late-1970s.
GFN calculates the effect of these solutions using figures from Project Drawdown, a project led by the ecologist Paul Hawken (we covered that in detail here) and McKinsey, which has done similar work, with similar projections. Hawken ranks solutions according to their greenhouse gas impact, finding that the food sector is more important for reducing carbon emissions than energy and that replacing cooling chemicals in fridges and air conditioners could have dramatic results many times more important than reducing CO2. Deploying the top 80 solutions identified by Hawken would be enough to start drawdown–the point at which atmospheric greenhouse gases begin to subside–starting in 2020.
At the same time, GFN has also released a personal footprint calculator to show how individuals factor into the mix. Plugging in data on your house size and type, how much you use air travel and transit, and whether you run a car shows how many Earths are needed to support your lifestyle. I’m ashamed to say I needed at least eight Earths (if you fly, it bumps up the numbers a lot).
Given that Overshoot Day is getting earlier each year, you might expect Wackernagel to be pessimistic. But, despite Trump’s disavowal of climate science and environmental priorities in general, he’s more sanguine than when we spoke to him last year. He points for instance to how renewable energy is gaining price parity with fossil fuels in many places, how U.S. states and cities are taking up the environmental slack from the federal government, and how China is strongly committed to ecological remediation in its latest Five Year Plan. The world isn’t yet back to replenishment rate or anywhere near it. But that’s not an impossibility in the future, given the solutions available.
Three Square Market, the Wisconsin vending tech company that stirred up controversy by offering implantable RFID chips to its employees, held a party Monday where experts injected the chips into workers with syringes. Tortilla chips were also served, according to footage from news station WRAL.
The company shared some comments from employees who opted in and out of getting the devices implanted.
“Just like when I piloted Google Glass, I’m proud to test consumer integration of new technology,” said Eric Bloms, director of IT, who got a chip.
Cole Person, a warehouse associate, didn’t.
“As of right now it’s too new and not common in the U.S.,” he said. “If it becomes more standardized, I would consider it. I just don’t see the point of getting one when I think we should just have a card that has a RFID chip in it to get into the building and use in the market like most other companies do for security purposes.”
The company also released a video showing a newly chipped worker using the device to make a purchase from one of the company’s vending kiosks. I wrote more about the chips and controversy here.
Imagine you’re driving a car down the road when all of a sudden the dashboard catches on fire. This was the experience of Koh Seng Tian, an Uber driver in Singapore who had just dropped off a customer. In a detailed report, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Uber bought more than 1,000 Honda Vezels and continued to rent them after they were recalled in April 2016. It’s worth reading the full story, but one of the craziest tidbits is that 65% of affected vehicles were still not fixed as of February (Uber says they’ve since fixed all the cars).
For Uber, this story is particularly unwelcome as it seeks to repair its relationship with drivers, many of whom feel ripped off by the company. In June, Uber announced a 180-day campaign of improvements for drivers, which it kicked off with in-app tipping. But a little extra change–which, by the way, isn’t coming out of Uber’s pocket–is likely little consolation for putting their safety at risk.
Two separate media outlets have now reported that Facebook is working on a couple of living room devices that you can talk to (like Amazon’s Echo). While there’s a lot we still don’t know about the devices, the fact that they’re being created by Facebook makes them immediately interesting for a number of reasons.
One of the devices is said to be a smart speaker with no screen, while the other, Bloomberg reports, is a laptop-size touchscreen with a wide-angle lens camera that can use artificial intelligence to detect people in the room. It also has sensitive microphones, allowing users to talk to it like they might talk to a nearby person. A speaker on the device might carry the voice of someone at the other end of a video chat.
“. . . the large screen and smart camera technology could help far-flung people feel like they’re in the same room, which aligns with chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg’s mission of bringing Facebook users closer together,” Bloomberg‘s Sarah Frier and Mark Gurman write.
A similar vision underpinned Facebook’s decision to acquire the virtual reality company Oculus Rift. Mark Zuckerberg envisioned a virtual space within which Facebook users (or their avatars) could commune. He saw a compelling way to extend the Facebook experience from the desktop or mobile into a promising new tech frontier. We got a hint of that during Facebook’s F8 conference with Spaces.
Zuckerberg likely sees the new hardware devices as a chance to extend Facebook into the real world–the kitchen or living room–and to leverage the hot new ambient voice user interface popularized by the Echo.
But there are obvious problems with this plan.
Why Do I Need It Again?
First of all, Facebook has no track record developing hardware that people want. The “Facebook Phone” from way back in 2013, which put a Facebook-developed interface on a phone manufactured by HTC, was a flop. More importantly, though, these two new products raise basic questions about utility and privacy. Exactly what pain point does a Facebook screen in the living room address for Joe Consumer?
“Until you use one, the added value they bring on top of other forms of communication you already have–including video chat on your smartphone–is not necessarily clear,” says GlobalData analyst Avi Greengart in an email to Fast Company.
Greengart also points out that Facebook is not alone in this market. “Amazon’s Echo Show already provides drop-in, wide-angle, [and] tabletop video chat in a product consumers may be purchasing for something else–Alexa, IoT control, kitchen timers, music, etc.,” he writes.
Big Ears, Big Eyes, Big Brain
And the more we learn about the rumored Facebook devices–especially the one with the always-watching camera eye and the always-listening microphone ear–the more reason for concern there seems to be about privacy. (Facebook, we’re told, is even working on a 360-degree camera for the touchscreen device, so it can see the whole room.)
Lots of companies are and will be selling ambient voice devices for the home, and for lots of different reasons. Facebook’s entire business is based on the trade of a free social network for data about its users that’s used to target ads. With personal data collection so basic to Facebook’s way of doing business, some may wonder if it’s the right company to put an always-watching, always-listening gizmo in the living room.
“This new device should scare anyone who values their privacy,” says analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy in a note to Fast Company. “Facebook . . . needs to not only have the most robust user profiles but also have a delivery mechanism to deliver ads–this new device does both.”
“Amazon’s Echo Look brought cameras and microphones into our dressing rooms and bathrooms and this new device appears to bring all of this capability into the living room,” Moorhead adds.
Arriving Early To The Party
“One of my big regrets is that Facebook hasn’t had a major chance to shape the mobile operating system ecosystem,” Mark Zuckerberg told my colleague Harry McCracken in 2015. As iOS and Android were establishing themselves, Facebook was a very young company just getting up on its legs, and hurrying to move its core social network service onto smartphones. It was simply too soon in the company’s history to launch a major operating system. Had it been able to, Facebook could have controlled far more of the mobile user experience, instead of operating within the confines of an app.
One of the reasons Facebook bought Oculus was so that it could control the whole VR experience–to create and control not only the services but the platform itself.
Well, the next wave is the ambient voice device space popularized by Amazon’s Echo–likely a technology that will end up touching far more users far more often than VR will in the immediate future. Zuckerberg doesn’t want to be late for this party. That’s why we’re very likely to see some new Facebook home devices announced at F8 next year.
My advice to Facebook: If you want to put your eyes and ears in my living room, collect my data, and show me ads, the device itself should be free. Otherwise, no deal.
Last weekend, hackers and researchers attending the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas weren’t surprised to find out how vulnerable electronic voting machines are to hacking when they tested their security defenses. But it was a wake-up call to several dozen election officials visiting the event, who used the occasion to get some valuable advice to better prepare them for upcoming elections in 2018 and 2020 amid widespread concerns over Russian hacking of voting systems.
How vulnerable were some of the machines? “Just to give you an example, the first successful hack was 90 minutes into the day on Friday,” Joseph Hall, chief technologist of the Center for Democracy and Technology, tells Fast Company.
To be fair, the machine hacked first was a device called the WinVote, made by now-defunct Advanced Voting Systems. It was dubbed “the worst voting machine in America” in a 2015 Slate article, around the time it lost its certification for use in Virginia elections. (It’s now believed to be out of use). Within a few hours, researchers had managed to “Rick Roll” conference attendees with the machine, manipulating it into playing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” video. But other machines didn’t fare much better.
“Every single one of them had some sort of weakness,” Hall says.
The organizers of what they called the Defcon Voting Village bought about 30 voting machines, of roughly four different types, through eBay and government surplus sale sites like GovDeals. While researchers have for over a decade been warning of flaws in electronic voting machines that could let hackers disable them during elections or even tamper with vote totals, organizers say the event marks perhaps the first time that the security community at large was invited to tinker with the machines. Security researchers were even permitted to disassemble the machines to examine their hardware or dump data from onboard microchips. And, argues Defcon founder Jeff Moss, they effectively debunked claims from voting machine makers that flaws in the devices were only vulnerable to attacks from experts who’ve extensively studied the equipment.
“It turns out that people who have never seen these machines before were able to compromise them in a couple of hours,” Moss says. “They also got some novel results—some new things researchers had never even considered or knew were possible.”
Some devices had exposed USB ports that let hackers surreptitiously install software or even connect keyboards to them, and one even had a built-in SD memory card that wasn’t mentioned in any of its documentation, meaning officials wouldn’t even know to monitor it for tampering, he says. One device used to store lists of eligible voters apparently hadn’t been properly erased before being sold as surplus, meaning it still had personal information like names and addresses for hundreds of thousands of voters. Moss says the organizers are working with the county where the machine was used to handle the potential data breach appropriately.
Some machines had internal components protected by nothing more than the locks typically used to secure hotel minibars.
“It’s very easy to pick those locks,” Hall says.
And more flaws may be discovered as attendees continue to study their findings and data from the weekend.
Until fairly recently, voting security researchers were hamstrung by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 federal law designed to make it illegal to circumvent anti-piracy protections on media like DVDs. Makers of digital voting equipment argued the law prevented security experts from exploring the workings of the machines until 2015, when they were granted an exemption through a procedure in the law.
“Without having that change in interpretation of the law, this Village would not have been possible,” says Harri Hursti, cofounder of Nordic Innovation Labs and one of the organizers of the Village.
But many of the voting machines now in use date back more than a decade, from when Congress allocated more than $3 billion to help state and local election agencies replace old mechanical voting equipment in the wake of the “hanging chad” issues of the 2000 presidential election. Many of the machines bought then now not only face security problems, but also increasingly expensive costs to maintain their aging components, but it can be difficult for election officials to find the funds to replace them.
“The standards have been improving, and the stuff you can buy on the market right now is much better than it was the last decade,” says Hall. “Unfortunately, a lot of what’s out there is stuff that was available then.”‘
Some local officials came to the Voting Village to get a better understanding of exactly what the flaws are in their own election equipment—and how they can help prevent tampering in an actual election.
“A lot of these county commissioners were really desperate to learn anything on these machines, because all they have to go by is marketing material,” Moss says.
For example, officials with vulnerabilities from exposed USB ports might establish ways to keep those ports securely covered during an election. But ideally, many researchers say, elections should move away from digital touch screens and voting records and back to an older technology: paper. Paper ballots can still be scanned by electronic equipment to avoid human error or malfeasance, but they create a physical audit trail that purely digital ballots lack, especially if they’re sealed post-election and protected by strict chain-of-custody procedures.
“Without that paper trail, you’re kind of left in the dark, not knowing how do you actually audit the votes,” says Jay Kaplan, cofounder and CEO of Bay Area security firm Synack.
The organizers of the Voting Village say they hope the publicity will spur more jurisdictions to upgrade their voting equipment and procedures. They also hope to have a more extensive Village at next year’s Defcon, complete with entire networks of voting machines, tabulating machines, and the other equipment used behind the scenes in an actual election.
“There’s never been an actual security test of an actual voting network,” Moss says. “Never has there been a complete system tested, which is crazy, because that’s how you deploy these things: as a complete system.”
If there’s one reason customization is gaining ground in the beauty world, it might be that the industry has long overlooked the needs of women of color. Few brands carry enough shades on the deeper end, and those that do aren’t necessarily diverse when it comes to undertone. These women have more choices now, as beauty brands recognize the value, both monetary and otherwise, in serving women of color. (It likely helps that beauty bloggers like Jackie Aina regularlycall out brands for failing to create products with women of color in mind.) And with the advent of beauty startups like MatchCo, which scans your skin and whips up a batch of foundation personalized to your skin tone, women are no longer at the mercy of makeup brands.
But customization doesn’t come cheap—one bottle of MatchCo’s foundation will set you back $49—and many women want to test out a product before making a purchase. For women of color, the hassle of buying a product that might not pair with their skin tone, even one that is customized, is too real. Below, we’ve compiled a list of makeup brands that, slowly but surely, are doing right by women of color—and can be found at the drugstores Sephora or Ulta.
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Maybelline
The drugstore historically hasn’t offered women of color much selection, but that is slowly changing. Maybelline is one brand that has recently attempted to correct that oversight: In May, Maybelline added 16 new shades to one of its most popular foundations, the Fit Me! Matte + Poreless Foundation. That followed an expansion of its Super Stay Better Skin Foundation line last fall (albeit only by four shades). Even Maybelline’s lipstick lineup offers a variety of “nude” shades. Here’s hoping Maybelline’s next move is to upgrade its paltry shade range for concealers and powders.
Iman Cosmetics
Inclusivity is pretty much this brand’s raison d’être. Iman Cosmetics is a step up from drugstore—both in terms of price and range—despite being carried by the likes of Walgreens. The brainchild of supermodel Iman, the brand foregoes diversity across its lighter shades in favor of focusing on darker skin tones. Iman was founded way back in 1994 and aimed to serve not just black women, but all women with melanin. “The mission statement has not changed,”Iman told the New York Times a few years back. “It was for women of skin of color and addressing skin tone.”
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Laura Mercier
With the exception of brands like Iman, the shade and product range of drugstore brands pales, quite literally, in comparison to that of high-end brands. A cursory glance at Sephora will tell you that a brand like Laura Mercier carries 20 shades in most of its foundation lines—including its new launch from earlier this month, the Flawless Fusion Ultra-Longwear Foundation—which offers a variety of textures and finishes. Earlier this year, Laura Mercier came out with a medium to dark version of its cult favorite translucent setting powder.
Lancome
In 2014, Lancome was lauded for appointing Lupita Nyong’o its first black ambassadress and, the following year, for making her the face of a new campaign—and shade expansion—for their Teint Idole Ultra Long Wear Foundation. That was actually the result of a wide-ranging effort by parent company L’Oreal to make its brands—which include Maybelline and NYX—more inclusive, as Fast Company wrote in 2015. L’Oréal’s Women of Color Lab was created specifically to make products for darker skin tones; Balanda Atis, who heads up the lab, was also responsible for Maybelline’s increased diversity in shade range.
Like Lancome, Cover FX has an impressive shade range, boasting 40 shades, split up by undertone, across three foundation lines with varied formulation. But Cover FX doesn’t stop there: The brand also offers 25 colors of its Custom Cover Drops—pure pigment that customers can combine with other foundations, moisturizers, and primers, to whip up exactly the color and coverage they want.
Bobbi Brown
Barely a year after launching her eponymous brand, Bobbi Brown released a set of yellow-toned foundation sticks. It was her first face product and a unique one at that, given its emphasis on yellow undertones rather than pink undertones. The foundation stick is now available in 31 shades, and a number of other Bobbi Brown foundations come in almost as many shades. In its lipstick range, Bobbi Brown gives women of color nude options that won’t wash them out, while many of its blushes are dark enough to show up on deeper skin.
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MAC Cosmetics
MAC is particularly popular among women of color because it’s one of the few brands that has long catered to a spectrum of skin tones. (I can attest to this as an Indian American woman—MAC’s concealer was the first that didn’t make my skin look ashy.) MAC categorizes its face products by both undertone—neutral warm vs. neutral cool—and skin color, which is why you’ll find that fans of the brand have vastly different undertones and melanin levels. Plus, MAC’s range of products—be it for eyes, lips, or face—is hard to beat. Its classic bullet lipstick boasts 230 shades, which doesn’t even account for the countless other lip products carried by the brand; MAC sells 18 foundations, one of which is available in 48 shades, and its powder blush comes in 42 colors. It’s hard not to be inclusive when you sell enough lipsticks to fill a 7-drawer PR package.
If a manager propositions his employee and defends his behavior by suggesting it’s just “two consenting adults,” what do we think? Outrageous and immoral behavior that ignores the power relationship.
Greylock seems to be practicing what Hoffman preaches. This week, The Information reported that Greylock’s COO, Tom Frangione, had been asked to resign last month when the firm “learned of some behavior that would represent a significant lapse of judgment.” Frangione had reportedly entered into an “inappropriate” relationship with an employee, though according to Axios, the relationship was consensual.
“Within three days of first hearing the claims, we investigated, asked for Tom’s resignation, and he agreed,” Greylock told Fast Company in a statement. And that’s not all:
We care deeply about our team and about having a positive work environment. We have already taken immediate and specific action with regard to HR, including bringing on an HR lead, and establishing a 3rd party point of contact for Greylock employees. We are also training our entire team, and formalizing our broad code of conduct policy.
The decency pledge did what it was designed to do. It made people feel safe coming forward with information about unacceptable behavior. We are grateful to the team members who came forward because it allowed us to act on the matter swiftly.
It’s clear Greylock acted swiftly in part because of Hoffman’s public stance, but also because of the very public discussion of Silicon Valley culture wrought by Caldbeck–who resigned in June after reports that he sexually harassed multiple women and that his behavior had been something of an open secret in Silicon Valley.
In contrast, Greylock’s response was a conscientious one, and one that indicates that Hoffman and the firm mean what they say. But it also raises questions about romantic relationships in the workplace, whether they can coexist alongside workplace power dynamics and whether they should be welcome in the workplace at all.
Hierarchy Matters
It goes without saying that workplace hierarchies complicate even consenting relationships between managers and employees. I wrote recently about how we could legally regulate the VC-founder relationship, to help address and deter sexual harassment even in an informal setting. But consenting relationships are a gray area. Is there a way to legally regulate consensual workplace relationships? Could companies discourage such relationships in employee handbooks or as a matter of policy? And more importantly, should they?
It’s tempting to say yes in this moment. But laying down the law is extreme and might ultimately be ineffective. Workplace relationships are already frowned on at many companies; anyone carrying on a relationship with a coworker, particularly at a smaller company, probably keeps it under wraps, regardless of what their employee handbook prescribes.
As is usually the case, issuing a moratorium on dating in the workplace wouldn’t stop employees from doing it. And at larger companies with hundreds of thousands of employees, it’s far too sweeping a decree: Employees may be in entirely different departments or work out of different cities altogether. Not only that, regulating workplace relationships could actually have the opposite effect; male entrepreneurs and VCs may take a page out of the Mike Pence playbook and steer clear of working with women altogether to avoid being accused of inappropriate behavior.
The reality is, many of us spend the majority of our time at work, and that’s often where you meet new people. There’s plenty companies can do to address harassment without resorting to regulating their employees’ dating lives—starting with taking action when male employees interpret a business meeting over drinks as an invitation to make unwanted advances.
Actually, they may dislike you so much that they want to quit. According to the results of Comparably‘s year-long survey of 36,000 workers across the technology sector–from Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Uber to smaller VC-funded, privately-held startups–one in three people may be eyeing the door because of a coworker they can’t stand.
Among the most likely to be irritated enough to quit:
43% of women
32% of men
46% of people in business-development roles
45% of people in design roles
Seventy percent of workers under 25 and the same share of those over 56 aren’t terribly bothered by annoying colleagues, though. On the other hand, a solid 40% of those between the ages of 36 and 40–right at the peak of their career–are feeling the coworker-caused frustration. And the higher the level of education, the higher the irritation factor: 47% of PhDs vs. 26% of high-school diploma-holders say they’re considering quitting over bad blood in the office.
Work friendships might be one factor in these variations. Encouragingly, 51% of men and 55% of women reported having a work BFF, and research suggests that people who cultivate friendships at work are more productive and motivated to succeed.
Looking more closely, 57% of workers under 30–the age group that’s less likely to quit because of a bad colleague–say they have a close friend at work, the most of any age group. The under-25 set also like hanging out with their coworkers after hours; nearly a quarter (23%) do that every week. As workers get older, though, their chances of having work buddies to hang out with goes down.
The lesson? Keep your friends close, now and always.
After a massive hack breached its walls, HBO was haunted by the vision of a major threat against Game of Thrones lurking out there like a group of White Walkers bearing down on the North. Now, the fourth episode from Season 7 of Game of Thrones has leaked online, according to the Telegraph, and download links have been shared on Twitter. The episode is titled “The Spoils of War.” As the Telegraph notes, based on the logos that show up in the leaked episode, it appears the hacked version was from an Indian TV channel. Additionally, Varietysays the leak was not connected to the recent HBO hack,but instead came from Star India, a pay-TV distribution partner.
The GoT episode is slated to air this Sunday. Don’t rush off to try and download it now, because pirating is still a crime and intense cliffhangers are not a defense recognized by any court.
Thanks to the internet, we live in a world where Outback Steakhouse has to make an official statement denying the fact that they are a front for a cult. On July 27, Twitter user @eatmyaesthetics sent out a graphic display of Outback Steakhouse’s, um, satanic real estate layout, noting that, in several cities when the company’s outposts were mapped out, they fell into pentagram formations. It’s basically the plot of Ghostbusters 2 but with bloomin’ onions.
— balenci-who? aga ☭ (@eatmyaesthetics) July 27, 2017
While the entire premise was patently ridiculous, we’ve all seen enough movies to know that’s what they want us to believe. Soon Twitter was running wild with the idea and other users were mapping Outback Steakhouse locations around the country.
Soon enough, the idea that Outback Steakhouse was the front for some sort of satanic cult that was attempting to make “a philosopher stone” or reincarnate Zuul was going viral. The press had no choice but to contact Outback Steakhouse for an official statement. The company told the Daily Dot that it had “no plans” to bring about the end of the world or summon an ancient Babylonian god. It only had plans to “bring bold steaks and Bloomin’ Onions to our guests!” It was also finally able to fire off a corporate-approved tweet that suggested the stores were actually laid out in the form of one of their giant fried onions, noting that, “If the Bloomin’ Onion is evil then we don’t want to be nice.”
Kangaroos, cupcakes, a serious superhero, and a frowning poop emoji are all in the running to be Unicode’s next top emoji. Earlier this week, Unicode president Mark Davis revealed the new “draft candidates” emojis that could be coming to an iPhone near you when Unicode 11 is available for download in 2018, according to Emojipedia. While Unicode 10 hasn’t even been released yet (we still have to wait for that vomiting face emoji), it’s nice that the Unicode Consortium is giving users plenty of time to think of an appropriate backstory for that frowning poop emoji. Other draft candidates include bagels, a party hat-wearing face, a roll of toilet paper, a woman wearing flats (heavens, what will they think of next?), redheads, mosquitos, hippos, and a lotion bottle that is perfect for Silence of the Lambs texts.
As MacRumors notes, the next step is for the Unicode Consortium to decide on the list of final candidates at its next meeting in October 2017, sometime in the beginning of 2018, when the new characters will be named.
As depicted in the thinly veiled cinematic fiction of The Circle, tech companies like Facebook and Google contain their own miniverses. They have housing, transportation and all manner of lifestyle options for their employees to peruse. These companies are like insular nation-states unto themselves, grafted upon the physical geography of America and the digital geography of the globe. They might as well have their own currency.
French graphic designer Jade Dalloul has now made that prospect a reality. His latest project is called Brand Currency, and it depicts what it would look like if companies produced their own dollars and cents.
The money comes in denominations ranging from 1-500, festooned with the visage of their founders. Although most of these brands hail from the tech world, inescapable companies like Starbucks are represented as well. The money itself looks legit enough that it’s easy to imagine spending it–and pondering what it would mean if it really did exist is where the art in this project really happens.
Look through the slides above to see what it might look like if companies that basically have a license to print money actually did so.
Last month, the Trump administration pushed out the start date of the International Entrepreneur Rule, an initiative introduced by President Obama with the intent of encouraging entrepreneurs from other countries to build their companies in the U.S. The rule would have allowed entrepreneurs to live here for 30 months without obtaining a visa, and would have gone into effect last month. For now, the White House has delayed the start date to March, but the goal is to roll back the program altogether.
In the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is accepting feedback on the proposal to eliminate the International Entrepreneur Rule. Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration reform nonprofit FWD.us has created a website where the public can send messages to the DHS until August 10 expressing their support for the rule. This is, of course, a decision the tech community feels strongly about: FWD.us also joined a group of other tech coalitions, companies, and investors organized by the National Venture Capital Association that sent a letter to the DHS urging them to reconsider the Trump administration’s proposal and to start accepting applications from foreign-born entrepreneurs come March.
Is internet shopping like TheTruman Show–a movie about a man who thinks himself free, but whose life is actually controlled by a TV producer? Are we online consumers like Truman Burbank, hopelessly and blissfully naive while titanic companies control our fate? Are the prices we pay online a function of a competitive market, or are our choices framed in ways we don’t quite fathom?
These provocative questions are posed in a fascinating book about how platform internet companies (Amazon, Facebook, and so on) are changing the norms of economic competition. Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy argues that these companies, with their immense data advantage, are effectively making their own rules in the marketplace, beating back new market entrants, and disadvantaging customers.
As the internet took off in the 1990s, it was said, by some dreamy-eyed commentators, to be a giant-killing, democratic medium–a sort of anti-Walmart. You could start a business from your bedroom. You could win a $100 million in venture capital while still in your bathrobe. The internet was to emancipate commerce and to embody Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”–the beneficial, and mutual, economic effect that comes from people acting aggressively in their own self-interest.
Or, as the authors say in the book: “We, like Truman, may think that we’re ordinary consumers with ordinary lives with unremarkable purchases. We have no idea about how, and the extent to which, we are being exploited.”
Traditionally, when companies acted anti-competitively, they formed cartels in back rooms to agree on prices instead of competing to see which could have the most affordable product. On the internet, competition and competition law is perverted in several new ways, Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke argue.
First, computers are trained to track and respond to market conditions. Amazon, with its 80 million Prime subscribers, dynamically adjusts its prices every few minutes to match other retailer’s prices. Uber raises prices in surge periods, allegedly obeying laws of supply and demand on its grid (the balance of drivers and passengers) but in a way that’s opaque to the outside world.
Second, platforms engage in behavioral techniques (“discrimination”) tailoring offerings to different customers. Armed with data about you, they change prices (or discounts) to reflect who is shopping, adjusting based on where you live, when you shop, how often you visit a site, what you’ve bought in the past, and even what device you use. Someone surfing on a MacBook as opposed to an Android smartphone may be charged more.
And third, internet companies co-operate in partnerships online, being both rivals and collaborators (“frenemies”). Ezrachi and Stucke expect companies to deepen their abilities to understand marketplace dynamics, even to the point of predicting what their rivals will do in the future. They sketch a scenario where companies together have a “God-like view” of the market (the phrase is from a mode in the Uber app available to the company) to the point of being able to peer into entire supply chains. They may know that a competitor has ordered extra stock for the Christmas season, and react with their own purchases to keep up.
Moreover, as computers begin to learn-by-doing, they’ll develop the artificial intelligence to automatically adjust prices and offers, effectively taking over some managerial decision-making. The computers will collude by rapidly pricing off one another, in effect fixing prices without human intervention.
These scenarios create problems for traditional competition law because the collusion isn’t necessarily driven by executives who are ultimately accountable. It’s, in some sense, structural. Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has summed the perspective of the platform owners and how they can plausibly claim to be removed from their companies’ pricing activities. “We are not setting the price. The market is setting the price . . . We have algorithms to determine what that market is,” he said in 2013 of surge pricing.
Concerns about unaccountable algorithms come at a time when many economists already worry about concentration in the U.S. economy. From transportation to warehousing, the largest companies have gained market share in recent years. The U.S. government has tended to go easy on mega-mergers and, according to distinguished legal observers, given up the mantle of antitrust enforcement. The airline industry is now dominated by just four companies. In telecommunications, about one third of the country now has only one choice of broadband provider. This concentration allows companies to raise prices and freeze out potential competitors, say critics, and it may be a factor in stagnating worker wages and the low rate of new business formation. (This week, Democrats laid a new economic agenda that promises to beef up competition policy).
A new generation of trustbusting intellectuals, mostly on the left, but also on the right, has called for the government to update its views on how competition is promoted, arguing that the internet throws up unprecedented problems. Amazon, for instance, is criticized for its dual role as retailer and marketplace for other merchants. “The concern for small and medium sized enterprises is that if a majority of us are using Amazon, and they are selling on Amazon, it is able to exert market power in its relationships with sellers. It means they use that [power] to sell something directly because they’re vertically integrated and able to push out other sellers,” Ezrachi says.
Amazon is also branching out into the physical world, buying up Whole Foods and developing the Amazon Go concept store. That raises the future question, Ezrachi says, of whether Main Street could become a Truman Show as well. Amazon has long been accused of having too much power in the books market, dictating terms to publishers and having a lot of say over whether a title succeeds or otherwise.
“The greater Amazon’s power, the more profits will remain with them instead of with their suppliers,” Ezrachi says. “If markets become more efficient [and consumers benefit], that’s great. But it could also have an impact on our culture, our neighborhoods, and even, you could argue, on freedom of expression. There’s room for us to be vigilant about how increased consolidation on these platforms can affect our welfare in society.”
Astronomers are pretty excited about the big rager they just heard about. You’ll have to bring your own red Solo cups, though, because there are no Costco stores near Neptune’s equator. Scientists working at the Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii, just spotted the super storm raging across the distant planet. The storm is massive, spanning roughly 5,600 miles (9,000 km), aka almost the size of Earth, but the scientists don’t think its girth is its most interesting trait. Instead, they think the storm’s location is “extremely surprising.” The storm also appeared to get “much brighter” between June 26 and July 2, according to a press release issued by the Keck Observatory this week.
“Normally, this area is really quiet and we only see bright clouds in the mid-latitude bands, so to have such an enormous cloud sitting right at the equator is spectacular,” says Ned Molter, the UC Berkeley grad student who spotted the storm complex in an announcement. His advisor, Imke de Pater, initially thought it was the Northern Cloud Complex spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope back in 1994, but they’ve now decided that this is a different cloud complex. “This big vortex is sitting in a region where the air, overall, is subsiding rather than rising,” said de Pater. “Moreover, a long-lasting vortex right at the equator would be hard to explain physically.”
For now, they’ll just continue investigating the colossal rager, which is probably the astronomy equivalent of putting Neptune on double secret probation.
After a few years of selling cheap unlocked phones on its own in the United States, Huawei may get a real shot at the U.S. market in a partnership with AT&T. The Informationreports that AT&T will sell a high-end phone similar to the Mate 10, which Huawei will reportedly reveal for European markets in October.
Why should consumers care? For one thing, even Huawei’s best phones tend to be less expensive than the iPhone and Samsung’s high-end Galaxy phones. Huawei’s previous flagship, the Mate 9, launched in the United States last March for $600 unlocked—$120 cheaper than the Galaxy S8 and $150 cheaper than the iPhone 7 Plus. The Mate 9 had a tie-in with Amazon Alexa as well, so Huawei’s next phone could lean on Amazon’s virtual assistant to stand out. The Information notes that wireless carriers sell roughly three quarters of all smartphones sold in the United States, making this tentative deal pretty important for the world’s third-largest phone maker.
Research house IDC says in a new report that worldwide revenues for the augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) market will increase by 100% or more over each of the next four years. Total spending on AR/VR products and services, IDC says, will “soar from $11.4 billion in 2017 to nearly $215 billion 2021.”
IDC may be reacting in some measure to Apple’s entry into the augmented reality space with its ARKit development tools, which could eventually send consumer augmented reality apps mainstream. IDC believes consumer and retail AR/VR will drive growth in the near term, but will be overtaken by investment by corporations in the new technology.
“As next-generation hardware begins to appear, industry verticals will be among the first to embrace it,” says Tom Mainelli, program vice president, devices and AR/VR, at IDC. “They will be utilizing cutting-edge software and services to do everything from increase worker productivity and safety to entice customers with customized, jaw-dropping experiences.”
This past weekend Fast Company went all in on the Panorama Music Festival in New York City.
The three-day event on Randall’s Island was entirely filled with music, sensory experiential art installations, trendy food and exclusive merchandise from dozens of amazing performers. Goldenvoice, The organizers of the festival, worked tirelessly to make sure the sophomore edition of Panorama improved upon its predecessor. One of the major criticisms and concerns from concert-goers heard throughout the inaugural festival was that, just like anything else in New York City, the space was too small. The two main stages didn’t seem to be quite as far away from each other as possible, resulting in some sonic overlap. This time, Panorama underwent some careful reorganizing, and even added a fourth stage called “The Point” for up-and-coming artists.
One major mishap on day two: the Floor of the tented-venue dubbed “The Parlor” collapsed during Isaiah Rashad’s performance. The in-demand rapper and Kendrick label mate was tending to the packed crowd and his set was cut short, all of the following scheduled acts were shifted up in times and dates.(The organizers are probably at this moment working on solutions to make sure it doesn’t happen again at Panorama 2018.) Overall the event was a major success and operated smoothly aside from that hiccup, and set a high bar for future festivals.
Below is a photo essay designed to capture the entirety of the festival, and head to Fast Company’s Instagram to see even more photos and outtakes from Panorama.
Slideshow: The People at Panorama
The Portraits at Panorama
Bishop Briggs [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Fast Company: How do you handle new ideas?
Bishop Briggs: When someone brings a new idea, I love it so much. I eat it up, I’m hungry for it. I think collaboration and having fresh ideas and sometimes old ideas they make a difference to the room. They can change the direction of a song, and that is something that I am not afraid of, I’m more so excited about.
Vance Joy [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Fast Company: How do you solve creative differences?
Vance Joy: When working with a group of people, and there is a difference of opinion that occurs… The best way, for me at least, to handle it is to let that persons idea be fully executed. See their idea out to its end. Then see what you are left working with. Wait for them to get it out then assess it, so you don’t step on anyones toes and reduces the negative energy.
Shallou [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Fast Company: What inspires you to make music?
Shallou: Natural Beauty inspires me a lot. Nature. I try to create soundscapes to fit outdoors. It’s Atmospheric type of stuff. I evolved from basic bedroom electronic music to incorporating actual instruments to make it as musical as possible. In our latest Spotify sessions, we just added a piano, guitars and full string quartet trying to bring the real instruments back.
Vince Staples [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Fast Company: Any tips for anyone trying to get noticed?
Vince Staples: Personally I never focused on getting noticed nor think I cared about getting noticed. I just do what I do and it happened. If [success] is to come, then it’s to come. If you are significant in what you are doing you will get noticed. Do what your passion leads you to for a lack of a better fucking words.
Mura Masa [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Fast Company: What is your go-to source for inspiration when you hit a creative roadblock?
Mura Masa: I like things that fuse different mediums, for example, Fashion is art meets the utility of clothing. I also draw inspiration from film but… mainly the soundtracks to films. I was watching this Talking Heads Live DVD called “Stop Making Sense” and it’s shot just like a film. It’s a treat for the eyes and ears.
The Performances at Panorama
Frank Ocean [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Frank Ocean and Spike Jonze [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Solange [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Solange’s band and stage set up was all red. [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Vance Joy [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Vince Staples [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Tyler, The Creator [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Tame Impala [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Nine Inch Nails [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Mura Masa [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]NAO on stage with Mura Masa [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]MØ [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]MGMT [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Jamila Woods [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Justice [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]S U R V I V E [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]6lack [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Alt-J [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Snakehips [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]A Tribe Called Quest [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]A Tribe Called Quest [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]A Tribe Called Quest [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]A Tribe Called Quest [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Bishop Briggs [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Bleached [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Cashmere Cat [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Cloud Nothings [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]Future Islands [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]
