In the United States, the presidency of Donald Trump has both inflated and legitimized a swath of bigoted, nationalist groups and precipitated a disturbing rise in hate crimes. Most recently, on August 12 in Charlottesville, Virginia, white nationalists spearheaded by the KKK gathered under the mantle of a “Unite the Right” rally that swiftly turned violent, as one of their number plowed a car into counterprotesters and left a local justice advocate dead.

While the escalating tensions in the U.S. have necessitated a cultural and societal reckoning, the U.K. has been facing a crisis of its own. Earlier this summer, two deadly attacks were carried out in London and Manchester. Tragedy should beget empathy and an understanding that one incident does not reflect the motives of an entire population, but often it sparks the reverse. In the aftermath of the Manchester and London attacks, both of which were carried out by people of Muslim descent, Islamophobic hate crimes, already on the rise in the wake of Brexit and the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the country, have increased fivefold.

Working with the agency Blue State Digital (BSD)–known for developing Barack Obama’s digital campaign strategy for the 2012 election–HOPE not hate has, this year, redesigned itself for the first time since launching in 2004. The nonprofit pairs research with community-level organizing; its efforts to rally locals against the fascist British National Party in 2010 prevented the Nick Griffin-led coalition from making any political gains, and the party has since unraveled. Similarly, beginning in 2014, HOPE not hate worked made use of BSDs digital campaign platform tools to activate young voters to shut out the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP). Their efforts boosted youth voter turnout by over 50% and prevented UKIP politicians from securing seats in Parliament, but the party’s Euroskeptic and anti-immigrant rhetoric lives on through the Brexit decision and the resulting wave of hate crimes.

Around four months ago, HOPE not hate revealed its new design: the word “hate,” almost fully obscured by a yellow bar bearing the word “hope.” “This is an activist organization,” Patel tells Fast Company. “We wanted to think of a brand identity that really encourages and embodies action in every single aspect. The beautiful simplicity of the logo is that is really reflects the nonprofit’s mission to strike out hate.”

“We want people to take this and use it,” says BSD creative director Chomoi Picho-Owiny. “And in doing so, we kind of broke branding principles.” Because HOPE not hate has had a presence in the U.K. for over a decade, many of its supporters were attached to the old design, which Picho-Owiny says mimics the prevailing logic of the time: Develop a logo, put it on everything, don’t tweak it.

The new logo, he says, is more of an identity system. “The idea is to strike out hate, and you can do that anywhere–if you see a hate word on the school playground or on the subway, use this principle and strike it out.” (Through the nonprofit, organizers and activists will be able to source yellow tape labeled with “hope” to do this literally.) BSD’s approach to HOPE not hate’s new identity, Picho-Owiny says, is inspired by movements like Black Lives Matter, which respond to conditions, rather than remaining rigid.

Having just emerged a few months ago, the new logo is still settling in as the image of HOPE not hate. While the nonprofit continues its research and advocacy work–its focus lately has been on stopping Defend Europe, a far-right, anti-Muslim organization masquerading as a humanitarian outfit concerned over the treatment of refugees in the Mediterranean–Patel hopes that the nonprofits supporters will start thinking about how to translate the ethos embodied in the new logo into action.

This story reflects the views of this author, but not necessarily the editorial position of Fast Company.

This morning, Merck CEO Kenneth C. Frazier announced on Twitter that he is resigning from President Donald Trump’s American Manufacturing Council in direct response to the president’s failure to denounce the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. Many are applauding the move. I am not. And I will not applaud any other business leaders who are involved with the Trump administration who now feel compelled to finally remove their involvement and support.

Nobody should be surprised by Trump’s mealy-mouthed bullshit statement that the death and injuries on Saturday were a result of hate “on many sides.” Trump won’t condemn Nazis, white supremacists, bigots, misogynists, and hate groups in the so-called “alt-right” because they helped get him elected. He has appointed them to his cabinet. Hate crimes have been on the rise since took office. He has emboldened groups that have always simmered in the U.S.

What happened on Saturday is sickening and scary and shameful. But it also represents a boiling point of the kind of rhetoric (white men shouting “we will not be replaced”) that Trump has fanned the flames of for years. Business leaders and others who are marking this as their final straw shouldn’t get our congratulations; they should get our scrutiny. Why has it taken them this long?

Note: Trump responded to pressure on both the left and right by eventually condemning white supremacists and neo-Nazis by name earlier today (two days after the terrorist attack), but for me, that does nothing to change the fact that he has long proven he condones the ideology.

What: How To Make A Blockbuster Movie Trailer, a video that is less a tutorial than a deconstruction of the current craze in movie trailer editing.

Who: YouTubers Auralnauts.

Why We Care: Although trailers are intended to rile viewers up about movies they haven’t seen, so many rely on cinematic grammar they’ve seen a million times before. Last year, Cracked.com released a thoughtful skewering of trailer tropes in many different genres. This new video, though, is concerned with just one kind: big-budget, high-stakes, probably-superhero-infested hits.

It’s hard to tell where some of the trends it calls out began. The “BWAAA” sound feels very Christopher Nolan-ish, but he’s not one for the “unexpected cover of a classic hit” that follows. (See, for instance, the use of “Behind Blue Eyes” on Transformers 5.) What is clear is that you have seen this trailer before. The Aurualnauts crew has been paying close attention and they have nailed this formula exactly. Maybe next time an overtaxed editor is trying to make you feel feelings about Decepticons, they’ll try something different.

That’s according to the American Working Conditions Survey (AWCS) survey. The report was the result of online surveys polling more than 3,100 U.S. workers in 2015.

This squares with what we know about toxic workplace cultures at Uber, Tesla, Fox News, and among the venture capital community. A survey of more than 200 women who work at Silicon Valley‘s best-known companies found that 60% have been sexually harassed on the job. A broader study by Cosmopolitan in 2015 found as many as 1 in 3 women reporting being sexually harassed at work.

Key findings from the AWCS survey:

• Almost half (46%) don’t work regular hours on a daily basis.
• Most Americans (two-thirds) frequently work at high speeds or under tight deadlines, and 1 in 4 perceives that they have too little time to do their job.
• A little more than one-third (38%) say they have opportunities to advance.
• Telecommuting is rare: 78% say they’re required to be present in their workplace during working hours.

The Empire State comes in at No. 45 out of all states and the District of Columbia for having the fewest childcare centers per capita. That’s according to WalletHub’s latest survey on the best and worst states to have a baby.

WalletHub’s analysts compared all 50 states and D.C. across four key dimensions: 1) Cost, 2) Healthcare, 3) Baby friendliness, and 4) Family friendliness.

New Jersey, California, and Florida all ranked for having the highest cost to deliver a baby (either by cesarean section or conventional birth), and Alaska, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, and D.C. all had the highest annual cost for infant care. Given that the cost of childcare is as much as a four-year degree in some states, it’s no wonder that some parents step off the career track to save money by staying home.

Related: These Are The Best Places To Work For New Fathers

One of Tesla’s top employees is joining Google Brain. Chris Lattner started working at Tesla in January as VP of Tesla’s autopilot software and departed in June. Prior to that, Lattner spent over a decade at Apple, where he helped develop the widely used programming language Swift. During his brief time at Tesla, he helped the company develop a replacement for a platform that had been designed around MobileEye technology.

I'm super excited to join Google Brain next week: AI can't democratize itself (yet?) so I'll help make it more accessible to everyone!

— Chris Lattner (@clattner_llvm) August 14, 2017

In June, Lattner noted that Tesla “isn’t a good fit” for him, and that he was exploring other opportunities. According to Bloomberg, a now-deleted update to his resume said, “In the end, Elon and I agreed that he and I did not work well together and that I should leave, so I did.”

At Google Brain, he’ll be working on making the company’s open source machine learning library Tensorflow more accessible, he says. The Alphabet project is focused on deep learning and artificial intelligence, both on the research and product side.

It’s one of many efforts aimed at “democratizing” AI. Last week, former Google Brain head Andrew Ng launched a new online course aimed at bringing AI learning to the masses. And on Friday, Lattner’s former boss—who lately has been warning of the risks around AI— announced that his nonprofit AI project, OpenAI, had designed an algorithm that defeated the best human players in an e-sports competition.

What: Peyton Manning enjoys the great outdoors in this new campaign for smartphone case brand OtterBox

Who: OtterBox, CP+B Boulder

Why we care: As sports superstars go, Peyton Manning will go down in history as one of the most willing to look like a complete and utter goof for a laugh. I think it all started on SNL many moons ago in a United Way PSA spoof, but soon graduated to IRL commercials for ESPN, Oreo, MasterCard, and Gatorade. Now the future Hall of Famer is back at his self-depreciating best with OtterBox. Can you picture Michael Jordan piggy-backing on a giant Otter like a toddler? Or Wayne Gretzky getting spraying the face with a fire extinguisher? Exactly.

In New York City, you need a license to pet-sit someone’s dog (at least if you want to be paid). In Louisiana, you need a license to become a florist. Nine states require funeral attendants to be licensed before starting work. 

The number of jobs–from cosmetology to interior design–requiring government-issued licenses is on the increase. About 29% now require one, up from less than 5% in the 1950s, according to economists Morris Kleiner and Alan Krueger. In that time, the share of licensed workers in the U.S. workplace has jumped fivefold. And the requirements on many occupations–including training and education, tests, fees and even character assessments–are also on the rise, say critics of the regulations.

License regimes emerge when states, cities, counties, or the federal government regulate an activity, often in the interest of public safety. New York’s pet-sitting law, which requires licensees to buy insurance and use designated kennels, is meant to “ensure [the] health and safety of pets and reduce risks to public health,” the city’s Health Department says (though it very rarely enforces the regulation).

It’s tempting to see positive news in this licensing trend–that workers are becoming professionalized (that is, competent and trustworthy) and that consumers are being protected from fly-by-night operators. But, rather than protecting the public or raising standards, critics see workers being frozen out of potential jobs, and incumbents (whether companies or individuals) protecting profits and wages. 

“Licensing creates a fence that people trying to get into that occupation have to climb over, while, at the same time, protecting people within the fence who are already practicing the occupation, who would have to compete against them,”says Jason Wiens, policy director at the Kauffman Foundation, an entrepreneurship-focused think tank. “It’s an anti-competitive practice that has negative barriers to entrepreneurship.”

Onerous occupational licensing has traditionally been a bugbear of the libertarian right, which wants government out of the way of the market. But recently the issue has been taken up by more liberal economists as well, including Kreuger, a professor at Princeton. In an extensive report on the topic, the Obama White House, where Kreuger was chief economist, argued that licensing requirements raised the cost of goods and services, restricted employment, and made it more difficult for workers to cross state lines.

“Some economists say more licensing has contributed to less mobile labor markets, because people don’t move between jobs as much, as well as to declining economic dynamism in the United States, particularly in the rate of new business creation,” Wiens says.

The effect is felt strongly by low-income workers, according to a study by Stephen Slivinski, a senior economist at the conservative Goldwater Institute. He finds that states with the most licensing requirements on low-income jobs tend to have the fewest opportunities for low-income workers. Louisiana, Oregon, and Mississippi have the most of these requirements, he says; Vermont, South Dakota, and Ohio have the fewest. In a 2012 report, the Institute of Justice looked at the requirements on 102 low- or moderate-licensed jobs. On average, they required nine months of training, at least one exam, and the payment of $209 in fees.

Licensed companies enjoy a 15% “licensing premium” compared to unlicensed ones, Kleiner and Kreuger show. But, licensing arrangements themselves can seem quite random, not a function of real safety or service concerns. “Two states may have vastly different requirements for getting a license, which raises the question about the the arbitrary nature of these regulations,” Wiens says.

For example, California requires fire alarm installers to complete 900 days of training, pay a fee, and pass an exam. Nevada, next door, requires no education or training for the same workers. Michigan sees that security guards get three years of education and training; most other states require little more than 10 days.

Training requirements often seem out of proportion to risk, either to the customer or the worker. More than 60 occupations have greater average licensing burdens than emergency medical technicians. The average EMT only completes 33 days training. But the average cosmetologist, who cuts hair, tends skin, and smoothes nails, spends 372 days in training, the Institute of Justice‘s study says.

Cosmetology, truck and bus drivers, and pest control specialists are the most commonly licensed professions. About 1,100 occupations are regulated in at least one state, but only 60 are regulated in all 50 states, the White House report said. California licenses the most occupations.

Labor secretary Alexander Acosta recently gave broad (and vague) support for occupational licensing reform at the federal level. In the past, Congress has discussed reciprocity of licensing, where workers can take licenses across state lines more easily. But Wiens says the most important actions are likely to be taken by the states, if at all.

He wants state policymakers to weigh more carefully where licenses are needed, for instance by looking at the public benefit (or otherwise) that other states have experienced. He wants more emphasis on licensing alternatives, like registrations and certifications. And he suggests we pay more attention to licensing boards, often composed of people from the occupations and professions they’re overseeing. “There’s a conflict of interest there. States could populate those boards with more people who are not practicing members of that profession,” he says.

States can also set up “sunrise” and “sunset” commissions to look at whether licensing rules meet key tests like improving health and raising service standards. Florida, for example, allows both, looking at rules before they’re signed into law, and then also at regular intervals. Occupational licenses may make sense at the time they’re enacted, says Wiens, but, given their economic importance, they need to maintain their relevance.

Millions and millions of people around the world have little or no access to good internet service. The reasons range from government instability to bad economies to challenging terrain. And that’s why there’s a boom in efforts to deliver internet connectivity from the skies.

The best known of those efforts are Facebook’s giant Aquila drone and Project Loon from Alphabet’s X. Now, there’s a new entrant–one with some impressive money behind it. According to Xconomy, Altaeros Energies, a Massachusetts startup, has closed a $7.5 million round of funding to develop a network of tethered blimps that provide connectivity. All told, Xconomy wrote, Altaeros has raised $20 million, with the latest funds coming from SoftBank Group.

It’s not clear which of these technologies will end up being the most successful, or serving the most people. What is clear is that the world needs more and better internet service, and if it has to come from above, then we need as many people working on the problem as possible.

Early today news broke that Shonda Rhimes has signed a multi-year deal with the streaming giant.

Earlier today, Benchmark Capital sent a letter to Uber employees attempting to explain why the firm is suing the company’s former leader and CEO, Travis Kalanick:

As you know, Travis resigned in June at the request of a large group of shareholders which included Benchmark. It was a rare and extremely difficult step for us. But we acted out of a deep conviction that it would be better for Uber, its employees, and investors to have a fresh start.

The letter goes on to say that Kalanick’s continued involvement in Uber’s day-to-day operations is preventing Uber from moving forward and making good on all the commitments it agreed to: namely, hiring a new CEO, CFO, and revamping the company’s culture. You can read the full letter here.

In response, Kalanick has issued a public statement regarding Benchmark Capital’s letter and lawsuit accusing him of fraud:

Like many shareholders, I am disappointed and baffled by Benchmark’s hostile actions, which clearly are not in the best interests of Uber and its employees on whose behalf they claim to be acting. Since 2009, building Uber into a great company has been my passion and obsession. I continue to work tirelessly with the board to identify and hire the best CEO to guide Uber into its next phase of growth and ensure its continued success.

This is the first time Kalanick has spoken publicly about Benchmark Capital’s lawsuit, which aims to take him off the board. The statement comes as Kalanick’s lawyers are making initial steps to counter Benchmark’s suit. They say the amended voting terms that Benchmark Capital is suing over require complaints to be handled in arbitration. You can see the terms of the voter amendment over at Axios.

Microsoft is still busy doing damage control after Consumer Reports said last week that it would no longer recommend Surface computers, as a result of their high failure rate. The downgrade was based on a user survey that included a total of 90,000 responses across all bands.

An internal Microsoft document about the reliability of the Surface surfaced on Sunday that didn’t immediately seem to help Microsoft’s case.

The document, acquired by longtime Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott, showed that in the three-month period just after the launch of the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book in late 2015 and early 2016, Microsoft saw unusually high return rates for the products.

Thurrott recalls that in early 2016 Microsoft executives blamed the high return rates on Intel, the maker of the new Skylake processors used in the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book. Thurrott remembers the executives calling the Skylake chips “buggy” at the time.

But the blame may have been misplaced. Thurrott:

Since then, however, another trusted source at Microsoft has provided with a different take on this story. Microsoft, I’m told, fabricated the story about Intel being at fault. The real problem was Surface-specific custom drivers and settings that the Microsoft hardware team cooked up.

So the leaked document paints a decidedly unflattering picture of the original build of the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 and Microsoft’s initial comments about quality issues.

But the document also says something important about the Consumer Reports findings. The publication came under fire from some analysts Friday for downgrading a whole line of computers based on a survey for which it would provide precious little detail.

Consumer Reports said on Friday it would not divulge the number of Surface owners on whose comments it had based its findings, other than that its published results include only brands with at least 300 responses. Nor would it provide reliability scores for specific Surface models. That means that we don’t know whether the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book problems acknowledged in the leaked document are to blame for CR‘s blanket refusal to recommend any device in the Surface line.

What Is A Failure?

I once managed a large reliability and satisfaction survey at PCWorld, like my colleague Harry McCracken did before me. I can tell you from experience that the line between subjective and objective observations by computer owners is often blurry. Events that survey takers described as “reliability” problems were often better described as “ease of use” problems.

The manager of the whole Surface line at Microsoft, Panos Panay, points out in the leaked memo that this may have been an issue in the Consumer Reports survey, too. The survey scored computers on the number of “failures” reported within two years of ownership. Panay points out that the definition used by Consumer Reports might lead to an easily rectified problem like a temporarily frozen or unresponsive touch screen being counted as a “failure.”

The Consumer Reports downgrade is a very big deal for Microsoft. The Surface has gotten lots of good vibes from the media and become a multi-billion-dollar business, but the machines’ sales have fallen for two consecutive quarters. Watch for the company to go into full-court press to contain the ill effects of Consumer Reports‘ damaging vote of no confidence.

In the wake of violent clashes and an apparent act of domestic terrorism that left one woman dead at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend, tech platforms from GoDaddy to Google are rethinking their links to such extremists. But so far, Apple hasn’t made any moves to address the availability of far-right podcasts on iTunes.

Fash the Nation, a far-right, white nationalist podcast with ties to neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, spent much of its latest, two-hour episode recounting Saturday’s events in Charlottesville from the alt-right perspective—condemning the media, blaming Antifa and Black Lives Matter for the violence, and airing interviews with rally organizers. By and large, the show is more rhetorically restrained than sites like the Daily Stormer, but its hosts nonetheless find time to speak disparagingly of Jews and African-Americans, while also suggesting that Charlottesville police should have opened fire on anti-racism counterprotesters on Saturday. In the past, the show’s hosts have used racial slurs, discussed the alleged intellectual inferiority of African-Americans, and denigrated Jews, LGTBQ people, and other groups.

Of course, hate speech isn’t illegal in the U.S. and is protected by the First Amendment, but much of what is said on Fash the Nation–a show that was previously banned from SoundCloud–does appear to violate the content restrictions listed on Apple’s Podcasts Connect dashboard. Podcasts may not contain “content that could be construed as racist, misogynist, or homophobic,” according to Apple’s list of restrictions.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

A website used to organize inauguration protests on January 20, 2017, in Washington, D.C. is now the target of a request for data by the U.S. government that is unusual—and, says one legal analyst, “chilling.”

After pursuing legal action against about 200 protesters and attempting to extract data from 100 locked phones seized during the event, the Justice Dept. is now seeking to identify other participants with a demand to the web hosting company DreamHost: turn over the 1.3 million IP addresses of the computers that visited disruptj20.org, along with the contact information, submitted comments, email content, and photos of thousands of people.

The L.A.-based web hosting service received the government’s warrant on July 20, and objected to it the next day, TheHill reports. “That information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment,” the company wrote in a blog post on Monday. “That should be enough to set alarm bells off in anyone’s mind.” 

The company also says it notified one customer of the pending warrant on their account. In a motion, prosecutors argued that DreamHost offered no basis for claiming the warrant is overly broad. A hearing is scheduled for Friday in Washington.

“If you visited the site, if you left a message, they want to know who and where you are—whether or not you did anything but watch TV on inauguration day,” wrote Ken White, an attorney who blogs at Popehat.com.“This is chilling, particularly when it comes from an administration that has expressed so much overt hostility to protesters, so relentlessly conflated all protesters with those who break the law, and so deliberately framed America as being at war with the administration’s domestic enemies.”

As The Register observes, such a broad request isn’t completely without precedent. “The Department of Justice has a history of asking for everything, and then accepting something less if there’s resistance, which doesn’t happen all the time. In 2006, for example, the DoJ sought search records from at least 34 internet service providers in a quixotic effort to uphold the doomed 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA).”

The exec announced late on Monday that he would stop advising the president, following in the footsteps of Under Armour founder and CEO Kevin Plank and Merck CEO Ken Frazier, in the wake of Trump’s initial comments on Charlottesville. In his blog post, Krzanich, who came under fire for planning a Trump fundraiser during the campaign (which he later canceled under pressure), wrote:

“I have already made clear my abhorrence at the recent hate-spawned violence in Charlottesville, and earlier today I called on all leaders to condemn the white supremacists and their ilk who marched and committed violence. I resigned because I want to make progress, while many in Washington seem more concerned with attacking anyone who disagrees with them. We should honor – not attack – those who have stood up for equality and other cherished American values. I hope this will change, and I remain willing to serve when it does.”

For a couple of years now, people within Apple have been excitedly talking about augmented reality (AR) headsets or glasses. And, as with most Apple products, there’s a lot of internal disagreement about how the product should look and operate. That’s one of the (rather unsurprising) points from a (very good) recent piece from Tim Bradshaw at the Financial Times about Apple’s search for the “next big thing.”

Augmented reality headsets like Microsoft’s HoloLens analyze the surfaces and objects in a real world environment, then place interactive digital objects within it. But inside Apple, engineers and designers are contemplating different ways of going about this, each defined by the level of independence of the headset from the paired iPhone.

This contest of ideas is driving the discussions of various types of AR wearable products. Until now, much of the conversation about a potential Apple AR headset or glasses has focused on a device that would see the world through its own cameras and sensors, and project digital content on tiny displays within the lenses.

That’s roughly what the HoloLens does. Most people I’ve spoken to, however, say the components needed to jam all that functionality into a sleek and stylish pair of glasses won’t be widely available for years. It might be the “home run” scenario–certainly worth prototyping and developing–but Apple could choose to go for a “base hit” instead, at least in the near term.

A “Base Hit”

“One group of engineers is said to be advocating for a pair of glasses that have 3D cameras but no screens, leaving the iPhone as the hub and main display,” Bradshaw writes, citing unnamed sources within Apple.

“Such a device might have more in common with Snapchat’s $130 video-camera Spectacles than Microsoft’s bulky and expensive HoloLens AR headset . . .” Bradshaw writes. “However, no final decision has been made on the product’s final formulation.”

Not that Snapchat’s Spectacles are setting the world on fire. Despite a lot of positive press, Snap sold only about 41,000 of the glasses in the June-ending quarter, way down from the roughly 62,000 it sold in the previous quarter. (Rest assured Apple didn’t miss this factoid).

A pair of glasses offering the same features but bearing the Apple logo and fitting into the Apple ecosystem would likely fare better. And they would very likely use a cooler, more understated design than the quasi-cartoonish one used in the Spectacles (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Above Avalon analyst Neil Cybart says the fact that competing groups are working on AR wearables within Apple is significant.

This idea certainly tallies with Tim Cook’s very enthusiastic comments about AR, and with the fact that Apple seemed to lay the groundwork for future AR hardware by releasing to developers the means of creating AR experiences through its ARKit developer toolkit.

Cybart believes, however, that none of the Apple glasses prototypes–even the least technically challenging Spectacles-like option–is likely to become a real product anytime soon.

“While some market observers continue to position a pair of AR glasses from Apple as imminent, there just isn’t any evidence to support the claim,” Cybart writes. “Instead, we are still looking at a product being one to two years away at a minimum.”

There’s a third option, and likely one we’ll see. Apple is likely to give the AR glasses projects time to develop internally, let the components market mature, and wait until consumers are warmed up to the idea of AR glasses, before finally trotting out a new piece of hardware.

In the meantime, it will very likely build additional sensors into new iPhones that support Pokémon-style phone-based AR experiences. We’ll have to wait a while for the whole experience to migrate to a hands-free wearable we wear over our eyes.

The Microsoft founder donated 64 million Microsoft shares–of 5% of his total shares–valued at $4.6 billion on June 6, Bloomberg reports. That donation is the largest by Gates in 17 years. In 1999 he gave away $16 billion worth of Microsoft shares and in 2000 he gave away $5.1 billion worth of shares. So who was the lucky recipient of the donation? The SEC filing that revealed the donation doesn’t say who or what organization received the shares, but Bloomberg speculates it could be the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where Gates has given most of his donations to in the past.

The ruling comes after Microsoft demanded a startup called hiQ Labs stop scraping LinkedIn users’ data. The startup then sued Microsoft and now a judge has ruled in the startup’s favor, reports the Wall Street Journal. LinkedIn user data is valuable, which is why Microsoft bought the social network in the first place. By scraping the publicly available user data, Microsoft alleged that hiQ Labs was violating the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But the judge disagreed and instead said LinkedIn was “unfairly leveraging its power in the professional networking market for an anticompetitive purpose.” For its part, Microsoft said “This case is not over. We will continue to fight to protect our members’ ability to control the information they make available on LinkedIn.”

Shortly after a startup called ComiXology unveiled its digital comics app, a board member received an email with an Excel file revealing all of the purchases made on the app. After a day of digital sleuthing revealed that the sender was a twentysomething in Seattle, CEO David Steinberger opted for a soft approach. “Hey, can you help me understand how you got this?,” he asked. “Oh, it was easy,” said the culprit. “I just hacked your app.”

“So, we hired him,” laughs Steinberger. “He still works for us.”

Nowadays, Amazon—which acquired ComiXology three years ago—might not take as kindly to such antics. But the anecdote illustrates a company ethos that Steinberger and cofounder/CTO John Roberts have tried to maintain since founding their company a decade ago: have heart, build karma, and work together to figure out solutions.

“We’ve taken care, culturally speaking, to define what’s important to us, and how we behave and relate to our customers,” says Steinberger. “When you’re 10 people in a room and everyone can hear conversations, they’ll pick up a founder’s mentality. When that grows to 50-60 people, we have to [formally] define what it means to work for ComiXology, and how to think about ourselves.” Today, the company has over 100 employees in its New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle offices.

The task of maintaining the individuality and values that propelled its initial success became more challenging when ComiXology integrated itself into a conglomerate the size of Amazon in 2014. Three years on, Steinberger—who continues as ComiXology CEO and also helms the digital comics business on Amazon’s Kindle ebook platform—has not only expanded upon the two companies’ common corporate values, but is creatively incorporating assets from Amazon to hone ComiXology’s business.

Life At Amazon

Although ComiXology’s focus on employee development and consumer experience meshed well with Amazon’s leadership principles, Steinberger particularly stresses empathy as part of problem solving. “Go above and beyond in consideration of all the people you work with, put ourselves in the retailers’, publishers’, and customers’ shoes, understand their perspectives, and have fun being a fan,” he says.

That approach survived a test early in the merger, when iPhone and iPad users railed against ComiXology for canceling their ability to purchase comics through the iOS app, in order to circumvent Apple’s cut of transaction dollars.

“That was the hardest thing we ever did,” says Steinberger of ComiXology’s attempts to win back customers’ trust after the switch. “We spent the first eight months with Amazon making it as easy as possible to go from a ComiXology website purchase to reading it on the app. But there’s no question it adds a click or two. We tried to respond with understanding, acknowledging when it’s harder for customers, and how to make it easier for them.”

The intertwining with Amazon not only has the Kindle and ComiXology apps sharing comics titles, but has also led to ComiXology streamlining its internal communications, infrastructure, and analytics via processes built by its parent company.

“We’re very integrated compared to some subsidiaries, so it’s important for us to balance the Amazon way, because we exist within and run parts of Kindle, with keeping the spirit of ComiXology in place,” says Steinberger. “It took us awhile to get used to a very writing-centric culture. [At Amazon,] there are no PowerPoint presentations. When you present an idea, it’s in narrative form. It helps me think ahead of time what people’s questions might be, and creates more critical thinking, so you make better decisions.”

“Amazon’s very data oriented,” he adds, “where the ComiXology startup did more stuff on gut. We’ve become much more data-oriented and less gut-oriented over time.”

That synergy has led to some profitable initiatives. Last year, the company launched the highly successful ComiXology Unlimited—a monthly subscription service, similar in concept to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, that offers access to some 10,000 comics. This year, it started publishing original comics, and added Marvel titles and a recommendation menu. The goal is to lure new subscribers, increase reading frequency, and introduce existing readers to other genres, and it’s working: Recent ComiXology figures revealed new customers comprising 60% of free trials, and ComiXology Unlimited increasing customers’ reading frequency by 58% and encouraging 74% of subscribers to try new genres.

Behind the service, some pretty powerful technology is at work. “We dialed up machine learning to assist with the comics it recommends,” says Steinberger. “We see a future where text recognition could be super helpful. Even people recognition in drawings could be super cool.”

Winning The Digital Comics Category

Ten years ago, a Julliard-trained Steinberger traded a struggling singing career for a New York University MBA. It culminated with him winning an NYU business-plan competition—and $50,000 in seed money—with an idea for an online comics fan community and digital pull list (individual preorders) of upcoming comics to help users plan their purchases. He, along with Roberts and a third co-founder (Peter Jaffe, who left after the Amazon purchase) spent the next 18 months finding time outside their day jobs to create that first app. As its technology became more sophisticated, the business expanded in subsequent years to offer web tools enabling comic book retailers to enhance their online presence and apps facilitating reading and purchasing of digital comics across platforms.

Despite pre-existing players, ComiXology managed to outpace some half-dozen competitors through a combination of factors:

Supporting Retailers. ComiXology debuted with an online service that helped comics fans manage their in-store subscriptions with their local shop. In 2009, it started selling digital comics, focusing on discounted back-list single issues, and directing readers to local retailers selling current titles. Soon after, it began offering incentives to local comic shops offering ComiXology digital retailer storefronts on their websites, giving brick-and-mortar shops a way to make money from the sales of digital comics. When the company began selling new single issues the same day the print issues released, it offered these digital comics at the same price as print.

Retailers and publishers warmed to the idea after discovering that the existence of these digital comics didn’t lead to a decline in retail purchases. And when ComiXology landed an exclusive deal with DC Comics in mid-2010, its competitive edge solidified. Today, the company sells day-and-date digital titles, and says that they continue not to cannibalize print sales, as readers often buy the same titles in both formats, or some as digital and some as print.

As the digital-comics business got going, “competitors came in saying new comics should be 99 cents. They thought they were Steve Jobs or something,” says Steinberger. “All the other companies were like, `We’re gonna disrupt comics.’ We were creating a safe system that had ComiXology connecting print publishers, retailers, and consumers.”

Guided View. ComiXology’s proprietary Guided View technology, which enables users to read a panel at a time on small screens, became its secret sauce. “When we launched, we were the only people doing anything like Guided View, which offered a better and easier experience [than competitors],” says Steinberger. “There was an inherent respect for the storytelling and artform that I felt was missing from cutting up panels onto iPhone size images, and I wanted something better. I wanted the feeling, timing, and beats of a comic book where the speech bubbles would work on a tiny device. That’s what Guided View did from an attitude point of view, and it’s a part of why we succeeded.”

Steinberger came up with the idea, crafting a rudimentary demo via slides in Apple’s Keynote presenttion app, and hired an iOS developer to transform it into reality. “There were a lot of people who tried to copy it, but there are lots of subtle animation tricks to make it feel really good that people don’t seem to understand,” he says.

Respecting The Artform. Steinberger believes that another less quantifiable but essential ingredient to ComiXology’s success was his ability to excite others in his vision—a skill he developed in his former musical career. “Singing an art song is like telling a story,” says Steinberger, who recently resumed singing lessons and occasionally performs at a Brooklyn church. “It taught me how to prepare to talk about something, tell a story, be concise, have a point of view. Connecting with an audience is akin to pitching the company, raising money, relaying company values to our staff, and getting people excited and aligned. That takes the ability to communicate and inspire and I totally connect that to performing.”

Finding New Audiences

ComiXology’s future goals involve finding organic ways to reach a wider variety of potential readers by leveraging other Amazon divisions. For example, the company recently published trading cards of comic creator all-stars curated by director Kevin Smith, who hosts the Geeking Out talk show on Amazon subsidiary IMDB. It also engaged a giveaway promotion with Amazon-owned Fabric.com at this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego.

“We heard that cosplayers were buying comics only to research costumes,” says Steinberger. “We wanted to get them connected to the stories. We hired a VP of strategy who is also a cosplayer to look into communities that look like they should be reading comics.”

There are no plans yet for Amazon Studios to formally mine ComiXology for potential shows, the way other comic publishers, such as IDW, have created in-house production development arms. But Steinberger still sees untapped markets, given the comics industry’s burst of singular, alternative, and niche titles, and an increase in female readership.

“People looking back will give this time, from the 2000s to now, a name for what this age of comics is going to be called,” he says. “We’re on the edge of a huge explosion of diversity.”

Last month, two senior cell biologists at the prestigious Salk Institute brought a lawsuit against their employer for systematic pay discrimination and for condoning an “old boys club” culture that marginalized female scientists. These days, charges of pay disparities and even gender-hostile work environments are unsurprising; media accounts of both are ubiquitous. What’s so deeply troubling, though, about the charges against Salk is that they come at a time when the number of women graduating with STEM is growing. This year, women earned more than half of the 13,000 doctorate degrees awarded in life sciences alone–the latest evidence that Title IX, the 1972 law which promised equal educational opportunities for women, is creating an upward trend.

As research, lawsuits and personal anecdotes mount, it’s apparent that the increase in numbers of women in STEM has not resulted in greater equality in careers. Even more disturbing is that the disparities and hostilities many female career scientists encounter are continuations of circumstances that began when they were students. In short, Title IX cannot be viewed in isolation from its impact on women as they continue in the professions.

Read our interview with Hill about sexism, race, and how far we still need to go.

There is ample data to illustrate the connection between what happens in universities and what happens after graduation. Consider the highly regarded, double-blind Yale study in which participating science faculty at universities across the country rated nearly identical student applications. The only difference was the names that accompanied the materials. Faculty were less likely to offer mentoring to applicants whose names were associated with being female. Those same faculty were more likely to rate presumptive male applicants as significantly more competent and “hirable,” and to offer male students bigger salaries. This bias may explain one researcher’s findings that in prestigious, career launching labs run by National Academy of Sciences members and Nobel Prize Laureates, men are up to 90% more likely to be awarded postdoctoral positions than women.

Race can be a compounding factor. The National Science Foundation’s own data shows that women of color have been consistently underrepresented at advanced education and career stages in most STEM fields. A report from the Medical Foundation at Health Resources in Action traced discrepancies in career advancement for scientists of color all the way back to elementary school education and found that mentoring opportunities and access to resources in universities are difficult to obtain. As Joan Bennett, a Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology at Rutgers, put it, “Men who are in power and giving out money don’t understand race and gender” and are less likely to show commitment to including women of any race or ethnicity in their work.

Perhaps a more practical solution lies with academic institutions and professional associations, which often act as accrediting bodies, committing to take concrete actions. To begin with, academic institutions must pledge to evenly distribute support among students, as too much anecdotal evidence shows that senior-level, male faculty have never trained a female or a minority scientist. Withholding institutional support to those scientists whose records indicate bias is in order.

Evelynn Hammonds of Harvard University, who studies the history of science, notes that “the race/gender science divide is one of the greatest threats to equality that we face today.” As the divide harms individual victims, the limited research workforce available to foster scientific innovation injures us all.

More inclusion makes for better science. To get there, female scientists like the Salk cell biologists will and should continue to sue to enforce their right to equal pay and bias-free work environments.  But universities, their funders, and the professional organizations whose approval they seek must begin by addressing discrimination early in career paths.  The better science that we all deserve demands that we address discrimination in schools.

Anita Hill, a noted leader in combating discrimination, is Of Counsel to Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a leading, national plaintiffs law firm, and also a professor at Brandeis University.