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Both Battered And Beloved, Samsung’s Galaxy Note Line Is Back With The Note 8

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When I met rececently with Tim Baxter, the CEO of Samsung Electronics North America, to chat about the company’s new Galaxy Note 8 smartphone, he prefaced the conversation by showing me a video featuring owners of previous Notes rhapsodizing over their phones and expressing giddy anticipation for the new model. The company has said in the past that fans of the Note—a power-user phone whose signature features are its big screen and S Pen stylus—are a passionate bunch. Third-party surveys have reflected that, as have my own anecdotal encounters with Note aficionados over the years. So I wasn’t startled by the idea that people who love the Galaxy Note really love it.

[Photo: courtesy of Samsung]
But the unveiling of the Galaxy Note 8 is unlike that of any of its predecessors, and anyone who’s been paying attention knows why Baxter was particularly keen to emphasize excitement over the new version. The Note 8 is the successor to the Note 7, a phone that debuted last year to favorable reviews and then suffered through a series of PR crises as units caught fire and Samsung failed to solve the problem. Even after the company gave up on the phone altogether, the black-humor jokes about exploding phones persisted, as did in-flight announcements that the model was not safe for air travel.

The Note 7’s woes were so severe and well-publicized that it’s only reasonable to wonder if they permanently damaged the Note’s reputation. But Baxter told me that Samsung quickly concluded that the people who cared about the Note hadn’t abandoned it: “We talked to thousands of consumers during this crisis last year and they said, ‘We love this product and love this brand.'” In research Samsung conducted in the wake of the mess, it learned that 86% of Note owners agreed (strongly or somewhat) with the sentiment “I love my Galaxy Note,” that 74% of them said it was the best phone they’d ever owned, and that 76% couldn’t wait for the new model. “It gives us confidence and underscores the importance of managing that loyalty,” Baxter says.

“We know we had a stumble last fall,” he adds. “We’ve accepted that and learned from that and applied new processes and gotten up and dusted ourselves off and continued to innovate.” Samsung has bounced back a fair amount already: It recently reported record profits and credited strong sales of its Galaxy S8 and S8+ with contributing to that accomplishment. The flammable Note 7 is still fresh enough a memory that the company is emphasizing the testing it’s put the Note 8 through, including having it checked out by UL (Underwriters Laboratories), which isn’t a standard practice for new phones. But barring any surprises, a successful rollout for the new model would be Samsung’s last step in putting last year’s unpleasantness behind it.

Let’s Try This Again

The fact that the Galaxy Note 7 was on the market for less than two months before being permanently withdrawn means that the Note 8 is, practically speaking, as much of a successor to 2015’s Note 5 as it is to the Note 7. (There was no Note 6.) It sports a bunch of features that the Galaxy Note line first got in the Note 7, including iris-scanning technology for security, the ability to use the S Pen to jot notes on the screen even when the display is not fully powered up, IP68 resistance against water and dust, and a reversible USB-C connector instead of old-school MicroUSB. Samsung is even promoting S Pen features such as its 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity—the same as with the Note 7, but double that of the Note 5–as if they were new.

Beyond the aspects it holds over from the Note 7, the Note 8 shares many features and design philosophies with this year’s Galaxy S8 and S8+—most notably its tall-boy display, which goes all the way to the left- and right-hand edges and incorporates a virtual home button rather than needing to leave room for a physical one. That’s how Samsung managed to squeeze a 6.3″ screen into a case that—judging from the time I spent with one—doesn’t feel like any more of a handful than the 5.7″ Note 7. (The downside: As on the S8 and S8 Plus, Samsung relocated the fingerprint scanner to the phone’s backside, where it sits so close to the camera that your fingertip may confuse them.)

The edges of the Note 8’s screen are curved, but less aggressively so than in the case of the Galaxy S8 and S8+; Samsung decided that flatter was better given that people use the S Pen to write on the Note 8’s screen as if it were a piece of paper. The company made the pen more useful by letting you fill up to 100 pages with notes without turning the screen on, and added a clever feature that lets you use it to add special effects to handwritten jottings and then send them to friends as animated GIFs within any messaging app.

[Photo: courtesy of Samsung]
The Galaxy S8 and S8+ have terrific cameras; the Note 8 improves on them by putting two cameras on the back, allowing for both wide-angle and telephoto images, as well as a simulated bokeh-effect blurring of backgrounds. Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus has had similar capability since last fall. But unlike the iPhone 7 Plus, Samsung’s take on the tech includes optical image stabilization on both cameras rather than just the wide-angle one. And its bokeh feature lets you adjust how blurry the background is before you shoot.

To demonstrate the value of image stabilization, Samsung rigged a box to vibrate on demand as a Note 8 and iPhone 7 Plus took photos of a simulated scene with their wide-angle lenses. In this controlled environment, at least, the Note image came out crisp and the iPhone one was a blurry disappointment.

Of course, the Galaxy Note 8’s real rival won’t be the iPhone 7 Plus but rather the next top-of-the-line iPhone, which could well be announced before the Note 8 hits carrier stores on September 15 and will reportedly offer a Note-esque expansive OLED screen. “The two brands that represent 90% of the market are launching flagship products at the same time,” says Baxter, who told me that Samsung thinks that 50 million people in the U.S. will be ready to upgrade their smartphones this fall.

For all the Galaxy Note 7 went through last year—and despite the prospect of competing with a new iPhone that sounds more Note-like than any before it—the Note 8’s animating principle remains the same as it’s been since the first version shipped in 2011. This phone, says Baxter, is for “the consumers that want to do more and do it all and do big things and do great things.”


Google Home can’t shop on Amazon, so it’s working with Walmart instead

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Shopping by voice is getting a bit easier on the Google Home connected speaker through a partnership with Walmart. The world’s largest retailer will start shipping items through the Google Express delivery service in late September, which in turn will allow Google Home users to buy Walmart products with voice commands. Connecting a Walmart account will also provide personalized shopping recommendations, along with the ability to replenish previously ordered products. Google Express already works with Bed Bath & Beyond, Costco, Kohl’s, PetSmart, Staples, Target, Toys R Us, and Walgreens, TechCrunch notes.

Google is also dropping its $95-per-year membership fee from Express, and will ship for free in three days or less when an order meets the store’s minimum purchase requirement. (That’s $35 for Walmart.)

Of course, shopping is already a key feature of Amazon’s rival Echo speaker, which ties into Amazon Prime to deliver many items for free. Google’s speaker seems unlikely to work with Amazon anytime soon, so a broad coalition with other retailers like Walmart will have to suffice.

Since Americans Don’t Take Enough Vacation, JetBlue Made Office Souvenirs

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What: JetBlue created a collection of office souvenirs to cheekily remind us all to take more time off.

Who: JetBlue, MullenLowe

Why we care: Americans don’t take enough vacation. More than half (54%) of U.S. workers are leaving paid time off on the table. Not only is it costing the country an overall economic impact of up to $236 billion, it also makes for terrible souvenirs.

JetBlue decided to prove the latter to us with a new collection of completely underwhelming office souvenirs to illustrate the difference between using your paid time off and not. Why get a fun mug to mark your fun trip to Miami when you could have one that says, “Remember that thing I said in that meeting?”

We all know what Michael Scott would think of this.

Snap is going to produce scripted content, because why the hell not?

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Some might call it a pivot to scripted video.

At an event in Edinburgh, Snap’s chief content officer, Nick Bell, said the company had plans to run scripted content by year’s end, according to The Hollywood Reporter. These programs, he said, would be “complementary” to TV shows–whatever that means.

The idea, it seems, would be for programs to make extra content that would run only on Snap as a way to increase engagement. “Mobile is not a TV killer,” he said. He added that this endeavor is different from Facebook’s original content play because Snapchat is mobile only.

We’ll have to wait and see what kind of scripted videos Snap produces. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Bell already has a few ideas in mind. As Snap continues to try and prove itself–and as its stock continues to slump–it’s projects like these that will dictate whether or not the company will ever make a profit.

Flying food comes to Iceland with a fully operational drone delivery system

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The drones are coming—and they have your lunch.

Drone technology company Flytrex just teamed up with AHA, which is basically Iceland’s version of Seamless, to bring food to hungry Reykjavikers via drone. Simply place your order for chili con carne on AHA, and soon one of Flytrex’s flying drones will drop it off at your house or office. 

The service is a test run for Flytrex, which wants to use drones to make it possible for mom-and-pop shops to compete with Amazon when it comes to one-hour delivery in a way that doesn’t involve sending junior careening through the streets in his Toyota Camry. Reykjavik is just the first stop for both Flytrex and AHA. After a trial period, Flytrex and AHA hope to start delivering packages along multiple routes and directly to consumers’ backyards in Iceland, and soon the rest of the world (just like the plot of Transformers: Age of Extinction).

“We’re making delivery as instant as ordering,” said Yariv Bash, CEO and cofounder of Flytrex. “We’re excited to be working with AHA to make on-demand drone delivery a reality in Reykjavik, and soon around the world.”

This Is How To Nail A Job Interview With A Bumbling Hiring Manager

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Everyone has left an interview feeling they could do the job, but that the interviewer didn’t ask the questions that would allow them to showcase their skills. This problem could cost you a job offer.

The clues for a bad, unprepared, inexperienced, or nervous interviewer are many:

  • Seems distracted
  • A cluttered desk
  • Can’t find your resume
  • Experiences frequent interruptions

The air of distraction is a red flag that helps you recognize the kind of interviewer you are dealing with. You can’t tidy their desk, but you can bring copies of your resume that will help give focus. Use the interruptions to take time to focus on how you will proceed.

When an interruption concludes, you can look down at a note on your pad (always take a notepad–it shows that you pay attention, and makes you look efficient), and say, “We were talking about . . . ”

The bad interviewer often starts with an explanation of why you are both sitting there, and then wanders into a lengthy lecture about the job and/or the company. When the interviewer is speaking, use the time to observe, to discover clues about who you are facing, and to gain insights into the needs of the job.


Related:Three Job Interview Red Flags I Can’t Believe I Almost Overlooked


With inexperienced or unprepared interviewers, you can guide the conversation and claim opportunities to sell yourself by listening and making appreciative murmurs until there is a pause. When the interviewer pauses, ask a job-related question.

These interviews become ones that you can guide without giving the interviewer the feeling you have taken control of the proceedings (because that might be interpreted as you being “a management problem”). Simply turn a one-sided examination of skills into a two-way conversation between professional colleagues with a common area of interest by asking intelligent job-related questions.

1. Prepare: Know The Job, Its Problems, And The Deliverables

Good interview preparation requires you identify each of the component parts of the job:

  • The skills that allow you to execute the responsibility efficiently
  • The problems that are common in that area of responsibility
  • How you identify, anticipate, prevent, and solve those problems when they do arise
  • Thinking about your job in depth like this gives you endless questions to ask. As you will see, asking questions is important to handling the nervous or inexperienced interviewer

With preparation, you can ask questions as they apply to each aspect of the job whenever the rambling interviewer pauses for breath. In the process, you will turn the meeting into a two-way conversation by finishing each answer with a question of your own.

At the beginning of the interview, you might be able to get the interviewer to focus on the skill requirements by asking, “What do you think are the most important responsibilities and the skills of the job?”

Their answer will allow you to talk about the skills you bring to the table in this area. This will demonstrate your real grasp of what is at the heart of this job, and the interviewer will be impressed.

Use questions like:

“Would it be of value if I described my experience with _______?” or

“Then my experience in ________ should be relevant to you, could I give you some details of my experience and accomplishments in this area?” or

“I recently completed a ______ project just like that. Would it be relevant to tell you about it?”

This approach–asking questions that allow you to follow up with your skills and accomplishments in that area–will give the interviewer information to make a favorable judgment on your candidacy that will likely have evaded your competition.

2. Demonstrate That You Won’t Be a Hiring Mistake

Poor interviewers make hiring mistakes. If this has happened recently to this interviewer, they may begin with, or quickly break into, the drawbacks of the job. They may even describe the job in totally negative terms.

Your response:

  • Agree that not all people are suitable for the challenges of this job.
  • Finish with a question that asks the interviewer to lay out the responsibilities of the job (if you haven’t done so before), their deliverables, and the mistakes people all too often make in their execution.

Related: These Are The Worst Answers To The Most Common Job Interview Questions


The interviewer’s answers give you the time to formulate exactly how to sell yourself in that area of responsibility.

Address each of the stated negatives. Illustrate your proficiency in that aspect of the job with an explanation of your experience and how you would handle such problems. Then, share your accomplishments in that area of responsibility.

For example:

Yes, Mr. Smith, successfully managing large federal government contracts without losing money can be extremely challenging. In my nearly six years of experience managing contracts for Federal Contractor, I kept costs below the threshold set by management while complying with the contract. I did this by developing an inventory forecast model that enabled us to successfully . . .

3. Don’t Be Shut Down by Yes/No Questions

If the interviewer keeps asking closed-ended questions–these are questions that demand no more than a yes-or-no answer, you have little opportunity to showcase your skills.

The trick is to treat each closed-ended question as if the interviewer has added to the end of it, “Please give me a brief yet thorough answer.”

So, give your “Yes” or “No” response, and, then follow up. Like this:

Yes, Mr. Smith, I do have experience managing large fixed-price government bids and the resulting contracts. In fact, I have managed bids that had total revenue in excess of $500 million. Determining how to deliver the right parts to the right places at the right times, in compliance with the requirements of the contract, while generating an acceptable profit was very challenging. As the hardware group’s team leader, I managed . . .

Following up the “Yes” or “No” response with juicy, relevant details about your experience and accomplishments wins you the opportunity to show that you have what it takes to do this aspect of the job successfully. As every other candidate faces the same problem, you will stand out as a good candidate whenever you can finesse the situation in this way.

4. Leverage The Interviewer’s Verbal Pauses

Closed-ended questions are often mingled with statements followed by pauses. In these instances, agree with the statement in a way that demonstrates both a grasp of your job and the interviewer’s statement.

For example, after the interviewer has made a statement, your response showcases your experience and knowledge:

That’s an excellent point, Mr. Smith. I couldn’t agree more that the attention to detail you describe naturally affects cost containment, and it’s something many people miss entirely. My track record in this area is . . .

Don’t be afraid to ask questions during those pauses. Questions show interest and engagement with the job, and interviewers make judgments about candidates based both on the statements they make and the questions they ask. The questions you ask show that you get the job and take it seriously.

5. Keep Up Your End Of The Conversation

In addition to asking job-related questions, show engagement with what the interviewer is saying by giving verbal signals. You do this with occasional short, quiet interjections that don’t interrupt the flow of talk, but let the interviewer know you are paying attention: “uh-huh,” “that’s interesting,” “okay,” “great,” and “yes, yes” all work. But be careful not to overdo them.


Related: 5 Ways To Improve Your Company’s Horribly Inefficient Interview Process 


If you don’t fully understand where the interviewer is going with a question or statement, you can win time to think by asking, “Would you run that by me again, please?”

When you ask them to repeat the question, it will not only be repeated, but the question will usually be repeated with more detail, giving you additional information to formulate your answer.

The Bottom Line

Turn a one-sided examination of skills into a two-way conversation between professionals. Demonstrate a good understanding of the job’s deliverables, make it clear that you possess the skills to do the job well, and you will become the top contender.


This article originally appeared on Job-Hunt and is reprinted with permission.

You Will Never Watch A Heist Movie The Same Way After Watching This

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What: A pitch-perfect send-up of perhaps the most beloved and fun scene in any heist movie.

Who: Director Luke Harris, and writers Kevin Tenglin and Dafna Garber.

Why we care: Every now and then, a cliche gets obliterated so thoroughly by a parody that it can never be used again. When it comes to the “assembling the team” cliche, many thought it was done for after that scene in MacGruber. Although not a heist movie, per se, MacGruber found its hero putting together an elite crew of specialists, only to (seven-years-late spoiler alert) immediately explode them all by accident. Lo and behold, though, this cliche is still alive and kicking, perhaps most egregiously across the first 45 minutes or so of Suicide Squad. It will be even more difficult for a filmmaker to attempt a new spin on this scene, though, after watching The Heist.

Over four funny minutes, this short film renders all Ocean’s 11-esque excess completely moot. When an obvious Elliott Gould stand-in asks two Clooney and Pitt knock-offs how they will achieve their daring heist, they begin rattling off necessary team members. The list begins with obvious staples like a wheelman, and quickly escalates to include cliches from other genres–like the white coach of a struggling urban sports team. With snappy editing and a jazzy soundtrack reminiscent of the David Holmes’s Ocean’s 11 score, it’s a breezy watch that, like any good thief, does not outstay its welcome.

This Program Is Aiming To Improve The Lives Of Girls Through Business And Innovation

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Spring Accelerator helps businesses in Africa and South Asia create life-enhancing products and services for adolescent girls ages 10-19. Their goal is to reach over 200,000 girls by 2019.


Americans slept worse than usual after the eclipse

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Watching the sun slowly get swallowed up by the moon may have been fun, but it seems to have had an adverse impact on our sleep. According to data from Eight, a mattress brand that tracks the sleep data of more than 10,000 people with its app-connected mattresses, Americans slept poorly on Monday night. On average, Americans went to sleep an hour and 23 minutes later than usual. They also tossed and turned 32% more than on the previous 90 days.

However, there was one exception to this: People in Wyoming, who were in the path of direct totality, slept deeper than normal.

This Grocery Store Cleared Its Shelves Of Foreign Foods To Make A Statement About Racism

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The incendiary rhetoric surrounding refugees and immigrants has drawn deep divisions among citizens and politicians worldwide. A wide range of companies like Airbnb, Starbucks, Tecate have issued supportive campaigns and policies, and now one of Germany’s biggest supermarket corporations Edeka has something to say–or pull, rather.

A chain in Hamburg recently yanked all foreign food items from its shelves for a day in an effort to show how limiting xenophobia can be. In place of Spanish tomatoes, French cheeses, Greek olives, etc. were signs with messages reading “Without diversity, this shelf is rather boring” or “Our selection knows borders today.”

Edeka could’ve made a heartwarming ad or issued a powerful statement via social, but this tangible demonstration is far more remarkable–least of all for the hit in profits that chain must have lost that day because those are some very bare shelves.

The Way We Board Planes Spreads More Disease

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From the SARS outbreak in 2003 to the Zika epidemic last year, airplanes have often served as ideal vehicles for propagating disease. The forced proximity. The long journey time. The mix of people from different locations. These factors all help illnesses to jump from one person to another, and from one continent to another.

This gives airlines a special responsibility as outbreaks occur. The decisions they make about who to board, and whether to fly at all, can have widespread consequences. And, according to new research, most carriers could do a better job than they do now. By changing how they board passengers, and perhaps by using different types of planes, they could stop people being infected so readily, the study shows.

[Photo: Steve Halama/Unsplash]
The research, led by a cross-disciplinary team at Arizona State University, uses a mathematical model to predict how many people will be infected using different boarding methods. It considers a situation where a single, unidentified person on a plane is infected with Ebola, and how that infection might spread depending on where the person sits, and the way in which the person enters the cabin in the first place.

The bad news is the current way of doing things actually produces the worst results. Boarding people in zones–first class first, business next, back-of-the-plane last, and so on–means that the greatest possible number of people are likely to come into contact with the infected person in Seat 10A. The zonal method sees passengers cluster in aisles as everyone waits to sit down. Mr. Seat 10A, for instance, hovers over the first nine rows as he makes his way to seat.

Zonal boarding may be efficient for airlines and help maintain the distinction between passenger classes. But it’s poor from a health point of view. “The policies that airlines have are designed for reducing time or cost. They are good for the airline. But it’s not beneficial for the people [using the service]. The airlines don’t think of disease outbreaks when they design these policies,” says one of the researchers, Anuj Mubayi, an applied mathematician at ASU.

The research tested several ways of boarding passengers, including a fully random free-for-fall and a zone or section-by-section approach. It finds a “two-section strategy,” where the plane is divided into two sections and passengers “randomly boarded within these sections” would reduce human contact the most, and therefore stop diseases spreading the most effectively. This produces a 27% reduction in the likelihood of an infection being transmitted to another individual, compared to zonal boarding, according to the model.

Moreover, using smaller planes—up to 50 seats—and running a more frequent schedule would also help curb outbreaks. That strategy produces an additional 13% reduction in infection likelihood. (The researchers also looked at different disembarking methods but found this made little difference, as people aren’t clustered together as long).

“We can clearly see a huge advantage for airlines in using different kinds of boarding methods and not stopping these flights.” [Photo: Brasil2/Getty Images]
In an interview, Mubayi says he and his colleagues became interested in the question during the Ebola outbreak in 2014-15. In that case, many airlines across Africa, the Americas, and Australasia stopped flights to and from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Research published in the Lancet journal found that restricting flights and from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone resulted in 2-8 fewer people with Ebola from traveling, compared to no restrictions.

Europe and the U.S. largely resisted outright bans in favor of additional screening procedures). In October, under fire from Republicans during the campaign, the Obama Administration funneled anyone returning from affected regions to one of five airports where check-ups could take place (the U.S. had no direct flights with Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone).

Rather than stopping flights to disease hotspots, Mubayi wants to keep them open while managing the risk. He says this avoids the economic disruption to countries and businesses from diseases, including to airlines that have to shut down their services. “We don’t have actual [economic] numbers in our study, but we can clearly see a huge advantage for airlines in using different kinds of boarding methods and not stopping these flights,” he says.

Mubayi’s team is building a software package it hopes to offer airlines and airports to make decisions during high-risk periods. He says he’s already spoken to airports, including Miami, about adopting the system.

The research indicates that something closer to Southwest Airlines’ random approach to boarding would help reduce people getting sick, even if the method would likely annoy business and first class passengers who would have to tough it with people in coach.

As for how individuals can avoid getting a sick, Mubayi recommends avoiding the back of the plane, where people tend to congregate around the bathroom and kitchen. These seats are most likely to bring you into contact with Mr. 10A.

In extreme situations, Mubayi says it could make sense for airlines to provide masks to people with higher seat numbers, though it’s hard to see this working in practice. I’m not sure I would want to sit next to someone on a long flight if they had an Ebola mask on, even if they were just trying to avoid infection.

The National Park Service is now giving 360 tours of lesser-known parks

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If you never leave your desk, don’t worry. You can fake a vacation with the help of the National Park Service. They just posted a 360 tour of one of their lesser-known parks, and the tour is comprehensive enough to let you get away with pretending you’ve been there.

The Parks 101 series focuses on exploring the lesser-known stories of national park sites to celebrate the National Park’s 101st birthday. In the video, Hamilton actor, Moana recording artist, and Parks 101 ambassador Jordan Fisher leads you on a 360 tour of Channel Islands National Park. The park sits a few miles off the shore of Santa Barbara, California, and its five ecologically rich islands are only accessible via boat or plane. And once you’ve virtually arrived, you may never want to leave. There’s a 1932 lighthouse, dazzling views from Inspiration Point, sea caves for scuba diving, Torrey pines, and thousands of seals. But you know all that because you’ve been there, (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) right ?

Dave Davies says Instagram banned him for impersonating Dave Davies

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For the last few hours, Dave Davies, a founding member of legendary rock band the Kinks, has been engaged in a one-man war with Instagram.

His account has apparently disappeared from Instagram. Based on the screenshots he is posting on his verified Twitter account, it seems that Instagram thinks he’s impersonating himself—or someone. (Admittedly, his brother Ray is much more well-known.) Davies has taken to Twitter to address the kerfuffle via a hashtag, tag-filled, tweet storm. He also posted a video on YouTube hoping his face will be enough to prove he is, in fact, Dave Davies of the Kinks, and conscripted fans into the struggle. Davies tweeted that all of his tour photos have been lost.

We’ve reached out to Instagram for comment. We’ll update this post when we hear back.

#Happy #tenth #anniversary #to #the #hashtag

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One of the defining things about Twitter has always been the degree to which its own users have shaped the service. And 10 years ago today, a Twitter user named Chris Messina proposed a new way to make it easier to find tweets about a given topic. He suggested marking keywords with a pound sign—a convention that quickly caught on and became known as the hashtag.

To celebrate this anniversary, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone has blogged some thoughts and history. I must confess that I’ve never used hashtags much myself—they feel mechanical rather than human, and I’ve never wanted to be associated with those Twitter users who #compulsively #hashtag #for #no #apparent #reason. Still, they’ve not only served the purpose Messina envisioned, but spread far beyond Twitter and become part of our culture. (See: Sophia Amoruso’s book #Girlboss, one of many instances of the hashtag popping up in contexts that serve no useful purpose—but still speak to people on some emotional level.)

These Young Entrepreneurs Are Focusing Their Efforts On The Sustainable Development Goals

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As a four-time entrepreneur, 25-year-old Virginia resident John McAuliff is no stranger to startup pitch competitions; he’s participated in many and won a few. But when he arrived in Oslo, Norway on August 13 for the second annual Young Sustainable Impact (YSI) conference, he knew he was in for something different. Most pitch competitions are a couple days long; YSI is two weeks. And while some events are more about the idea, YSI is determined to produce results. At the end of the conference, the five teams of five entrepreneurs apiece are expected to have a fully fledged proposal for a startup addressing one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, a series of metrics in areas like food, health, and poverty that member nations are trying to hit by 2030.

YSI was launched last year by Maiuran Loganathan, a 19-year-old Norwegian entrepreneur who, in response to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, got inspired to bring his generation more actively into the conversation. The first year of YSI convened 20 entrepreneurs under 20 years old in Oslo, where they split into four teams and worked for a week on business models built around their chosen SDG. Just one of the resulting businesses, Aquasolis–a startup that developed technology to generate electricity and clean water from salt water–is still getting investment.

“We don’t want to be a company that talks about change but doesn’t make anything happen.” [Photo: Vilde Bang Foss/Vilde Media]
For the first iteration of a conference, a 25% success rate is not bad, Didrek Strøhm, YSI’s innovation director, tells Fast Company. But it’s not great, either. “The point of YSI is to create solutions that actually make real change,” Strøhm says. “We don’t want to be a company that talks about change but doesn’t make anything happen.”

So this year, the YSI organizers took a different approach. Instead of welcoming 20 entrepreneurs, all of whom applied on the strength of their own ideas and concepts, and giving them just a week to meld them together into functional business proposals, YSI this year broadened the applicant pool to 25 under 25, divided up the winners into teams based on their interests in March, and gave them five months to begin their proposals via video conference. The application process involves a series of open-ended questions; Strøhm says the organizers were looking to find people with similar passions and unique ways of thinking and executing business proposals to create dynamic teams. At the Oslo conference this year, the teams are working on hammering out the details of their proposals under the tutelage of entrepreneurs and creatives like Keith Sawyer, author of the book Group Genius, and meeting with investors and businesses that can provide technical assistance and funding for a pilot.

“There’s huge potential in getting youth to make something real, to create something that will actually impact the world.” [Photo: Vilde Bang Foss/Vilde Media]
According to Strøhm, the teams, which were selected from a pool of over 10,000 applicants from more than 170 countries, have hit the ground running: One is working with an MIT professor and the water tech company Xylem to develop a cost-effective filter; another is using mapping to address inequality in access to youth mental health services. Also building off SDG 3 (Health and Wellbeing), another team is developing a tracking system for diseases and epidemics. McAuliff’s team is using thermal imaging technology to measure heat loss from buildings and mitigate energy waste accordingly, and the last is addressing UN SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) by applying blockchain and Internet of Things technology to reduce consumer food waste.

“There’s huge potential in getting youth to make something real, to create something that will actually impact the world,” Strøhm says. “If you look at some of the biggest solutions, it comes from people like Mark Zuckerberg–young people who get facilitated in the right direction to utilize their knowledge and skills.” But the YSI organizers also know that experienced people and organizations are vital to facilitate that success. “What we’re trying to do is build a bridge between the youth who are driven and passionate and have a lot of potential and the companies that have a lot of experience and can guide them,” Strøhm says.

“My generation will be the ones doing the lion’s share of the work on meeting these goals.” [Photo: Vilde Bang Foss/Vilde Media]
And for the purposes of addressing the UN SDGs, which are meant to apply globally, the YSI organizers were careful to fill the teams with representatives from a variety of countries; one team, for example, has entrepreneurs from India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Italy, and Taiwan. It’s one thing, McAuliff says, to develop a pitch for an innovation geared at solving a particular city’s problems–in that effort, it might make sense to compile a team made of locals. But to solve global problems, he says, “having people from different countries with different opinions and live experiences is much more likely to lead to a global solution.”

Given that everyone developing their business models in Oslo for the last two weeks of August is currently between the ages of 16 and 25, it’s unlikely that the company they create through YSI will be their last. “My generation will be the ones doing the lion’s share of the work on meeting these goals,” McAuliff says. “For the folks getting involved right now at this young age, this might not be the project of theirs that succeeds. But the people who get involved now and who stick with it; who learn from their experience here and who understand that this is one piece of a much bigger life story–those will be the ones who are, on their third, or fourth, or fifth project, actually really changing the world.”


Can We Trust Dating Apps And Music Services To Police Hate Speech?

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In the aftermath of last weekend’s neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, we’ve watched tech companies scramble to quash hate speech online. And its not just infrastructure-level providers like GoDaddy, Cloudflare, and Google. Media services and social apps are declaring their own war on offensive sentiments within their respective platforms as well.

Spotify, Deezer, Google, DistroKid, and CD Baby all released statements last week vowing to pull hateful music from their services. So did dating apps like OKCupid and Bumble, each of which announced an approach to dealing with hate speech on their platforms.

While few people can muster up legitimate gripes with pulling down content laced with violently racist and otherwise hateful rhetoric, some are sounding the alarm about the long-term implications of handing this kind of authority over to tech companies whose standards and methods for policing hate speech are not always fully disclosed to the public. Whether they’re using algorithms, human moderators, or some combination of the two, the inner workings of these systems are often shrouded in mystery. How is offensive speech defined? Who makes the call to pull content and on what criteria do they base these decisions? Are they humans or machines? If human, what do those teams look like and how are they trained? What guidelines are used in the process?

Fast Company asked several companies about their internal processes for policing hate speech and got a few variations of the same answer: We can’t tell you.

Unlike First Amendment issues in the public square or in the traditional media, hate speech and censorship online are not governed by legal precedents or a set of centralized rules. Rather, each platform and service provider sets its own policy and establishes its own system for dealing with hate speech. This, digital free speech advocates warn, could become a problem in the future.

“Maybe there is room to develop more granular guidelines about types of content and where platforms should have a responsibility, if anywhere, to deal with content of these kinds,” says Jeremy Malcolm, a senior global policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Right now, it’s all very ad hoc. It often depends on who’s at the desk that day. It’s not a conducive environment to free speech, at the end of the day.”

In a recent blog post co-authored by Malcolm, the EFF criticized moves by Cloudflare, Google, and GoDaddy to shut down white supremacists online—not out of deference for the viewpoints of sites like The Daily Stormer, but rather because of the “dangerous” precedent set by companies quashing unpopular speech at the infrastructure level of the internet. The same mechanics used to wipe neo-Nazis from the web, EFF reminds us, could just as easily be used to stifle nonviolent speech in the future.

Drilling down further from the internet’s infrastructure into social networks, music services, and dating apps, the potential for heavy-handedness or blowback is no less serious, according to the EFF.

We’ve already seen the sometimes blurry lines between hate speech and legitimate expression confuse the algorithms and human moderators tasked with keeping apps and networks free of hate. Facebook famously blocked the historical photo a Vietnamese child running from a napalm attack and the video of Philando Castille being killed by a police officer. It has also mistakenly shuttered accounts by LBGTQ members (for using words like “dyke” to describe themselves, for example) and women of color who shared screenshots of racist harassment. On YouTube, videos of the U.S. military destroying Nazi monuments during World War II were taken down for violating hate speech policy. And in its quest to eliminate ISIS recruiting videos and other extremist propaganda, YouTube has given the ax to content with historical and legal value, like videos that document war crimes in the Middle East.

With so many examples like these—and so little information about how these companies’ systems for dealing with hate speech actually work—can the public really trust tech companies to effectively police the sentiments found in art and written posts online?

Policing Music With Opaque Standards

Hate speech can take many forms, from antisemitic slogans shouted in the streets of Charlottesville to Islamophobic epithets tweeted by people with frog avatars to Hitler-worshipping, violence-inciting lyrics shouted by an underground hardcore band. But not every example is quite as straightforward as these, especially in a medium as nuanced and artistically open-ended as music.

Last week, Spotify pulled down music by white power and neo-Nazi bands identified in a post published on Digital Music News (with some help from the Southern Poverty Law Center) and pushed out its own playlist called Patriotic Passion in response to events in Charlottesville. Before long, Deezer, Google, and CD Baby followed suit and zapped white supremacist music from their catalogs. Bandcamp, the artist-uploaded DIY music storefront, told Fast Company that it saw a “small lift in reported accounts” that were dealt with in accordance with Bandcamp’s longstanding policy against hateful content, which the company says it has always enforced.

Bigger, subscription-based platforms like Spotify and Google’s music services seemed to engage in a game of white supremacist whack-a-mole—what appeared to be a sudden, knee-jerk response to the fallout from Charlottesville. While most of these companies have long had policies against hate speech in place, they weren’t aggressively enforcing them. In 2014, Apple removed from iTunes artists whose music spread “white power” messages, following pressure from the SPLC. At the time, Vice’s Noiseywondered why Spotify, Google, and Amazon weren’t doing the same.

But how do we know the content-quashing processes being used aren’t sweeping up non-hateful music? Are the guidelines applied broadly and fairly? How do these companies preempt accusations of double standards—or worse, avoid having a chilling effect on freedom of expression?

“Art is very different than other types of speech,” Malcolm says. “The courts will treat art differently. For example, pornography is treated with a bit more latitude when it’s in an artistic context. You can say the same for music. Music that expresses violent thoughts in lyrics doesn’t mean it should be treated like a blog post declaring you want to kill.”

When asked how it evaluates hate speech in music, a Bandcamp rep says that it relies on its community to flag hateful content for internal review and that it’s “usually pretty obvious” when songs violate its policies. For an online community as close-knit and progressive as Bandcamp’s, that approach may be enough.

Reps from Spotify and Deezer were equally vague in their descriptions of how content is evaluated. Spotify forbids “content that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality, or the like,” a company spokesperson says over email. Spotify’s internal review process, the rep explains, relies on public lists of forbidden content like Germany’s Federal Review Board For Media Harmful to Minors (or BPjM, an acronym of the German translation). The BPjM, a controversial index of digital content deemed harmful to young people in Germany, is not published, so there’s no way to know exactly what’s on it. Last year, the German industrial metal band Rammstein sued the country’s government after being included on the BPjM. While its primary objective is to blacklist violent, racist, and other inappropriate media, the BPjM has been criticized for de facto censorship and the stifling of free speech. Spotify says it also uses data from the Southern Poverty Law Center to identify hate music, ultimately relying on human moderators to judge and take down songs.

Spotify explicitly bans any music that “is in clear violation of our internal guidelines, which includes content that incites hatred or violence.” We asked the company for details on these guidelines, as well as information about who determines which music is in violation of them. They declined to clarify.

How are these questionable tunes identified in the first place? In the case of last week’s white supremacist music takedown, Spotify was tipped off by a blog post on Digital Music News. But there does not appear to be an easy way for the general public to flag hateful music for review. When asked how users can flag objectionable music, a Spotify rep declined to comment.

So, other than an overarching prohibition on music that “incites hatred or violence” and that draws guidance at least in part from Germany’s BPjM media index, we know next to nothing about how Spotify finds, evaluates, and removes music that is purported to encourage hatred and violence.

The policy raises bigger questions about the parameters and limitations of Spotify’s music-zapping machinery. Perhaps most obviously, there’s a lack of detail about whatever line may exist between “inciting” hatred and violence and simply referencing those things.

“Some genres of music have inherently violent lyrics,” Malcolm says. “They tend to be thematically about that darker side of life. That doesn’t mean that they’re violent people.”

There are various sub-genres of heavy metal and hip-hop, for instance, laden with lyrics that most of us would agree are violent and even potentially hateful. Would some of the more graphic, potentially threatening verses from popular metal bands like Cannibal Corpse, Slipknot, and Slayer run afoul of Spotify’s restrictions and risk getting pulled? What about violent rap lyrics by Eminem or N.W.A.? Or verses by militant leftist rap duo Dead Prez that call for white politicians to be assassinated?

Each of these examples (not to mention countless others) may well fall under some exception to Spotify’s content guidelines, but at the moment its broadly-worded policy and lack of public details offer no indication one way or the other.

At Deezer, a content team “reviews our catalog deeply and listens to the music to make sure there is no direct hateful speech within the flagged content,” David Atkinson, head of label relations at Deezer, told us via email. “We do not condone any type of discrimination or form of hate against individuals or groups because of their race, religion, gender, or sexuality, especially any material that is in any way connected to any white supremacist movement or belief system.”

Again, in most cases this policy could offer a clear roadmap—Deezer at least calls out white supremacist ideologies specifically—but details about the parameters and how they’re enforced are just as elusive as other examples. And as the EFF is keen to point out, these solutions may satisfy us amidst the anti-Nazi fervor, but we have no way of knowing how they’ll be implemented in the future.

Swiping Left On Hate: Where Do Dating Apps Draw The Line?

Things can get even murkier when it comes to dating apps. Services like Tinder, OKCupid, and Bumble have plenty of experience dealing with harassment and hate speech (indeed, Bumble itself was born out of a desire to make dating apps less hostile to women). Most of these apps already have strict policies against violent or hateful language. So it didn’t come as much of a surprise when the gun-wielding white supremacist featured in Vice’s gripping mini-documentary about Charlottesville was banned for life from OKCupid last week. Earlier this year, Tinder banned a user for disparaging a woman with racist and misogynist epithets.

Bumble seemed to take things one step further when it announced a partnership with the Anti-Defamation League designed to “ban all forms of hate” on the dating app. Through a combination of human moderators and algorithms, Bumble says it will flag profiles (and presumably messages) containing known hate symbols and words associated with racism and hate.

The ADL’s database of hate symbols is publicly available, but the glossary of hateful words that Bumble says it will use to flag offensive content is not public. This is notable because while the ADL does extensive work combating bigotry and monitoring hate groups, the organization is also heavily involved in political advocacy in defense of Israeli policy.

For Malcolm, that presents a problem. “There are other groups that you could go to that don’t have that political agenda that would be a far better partner,” he says. “It seems reckless to hand that power over to an organization like that.” The ADL did not respond to a request for comment.

The ADL has been accused in the past of working to silence and delegitimize political opponents like the philosopher Noam Chomsky and the late historian Tony Judt, both harsh critics of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians (and both Jewish). The group has also been accused of blurring the line between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, with critics of Israeli policy and advocates of Palestinian sovereignty–most recently Black Lives Matter activists and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters–having to defend themselves against claims of engaging in hate speech.

When asked what terms are included in its ADL-inspired glossary of hate words, Bumble declined to specify, citing the iterative, ever-changing nature of this list. When asked specifically about whether any terms related to Palestinian rights or related activism were included on the list, Bumble declined to comment.

If the ADL’s position on the Middle East carries over into Bumble’s hate speech policy, could that result in free speech being quashed? The odds of this happening are unknown, since Bumble–like the rest of the companies we talked to–declined to go into specifics about how its policies are defined and enforced.

So What Should Be Done?

While the EFF has concerns about the swiftness and blunt nature of the past several days’ speech-policing, Malcolm admits there’s no easy answer.

Certainly, some kind of universal tech-industry guidelines of the sort Malcolm alluded to earlier could help, but even then there’s no guarantee that such principles would be adopted by everyone. In general, he says, it might be best for companies to “leave content decisions alone” until compelled to by a court. But such a hands-off approach likely wouldn’t sit well with many users of these same services, who are anxious about the volatile political climate and don’t want to feel threatened while browsing a playlist or dating pool.

As a society, we’ve shifted some of the responsibility for defining and policing unsavory speech from courts and media organizations that are beholden to the First Amendment to technology companies. And while most people seem comfortable erring on the side of stomping out hate speech and removing avowed racists from social platforms, organizations like the EFF task themselves with asking the bigger, sometimes more discomfiting questions like, what precedent are we setting?

“Maybe it’ll have an impact on Nazis using the internet, but what other impacts is it going to have?” Malcolm says. “Rarely do we find that censoring the internet is a good solution for any kind of problem.”

Uber just released some glossy growth metrics, but it still has no CEO

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Uber’s rides and revenue are up, up, up, according to new metrics reported by Axios. Bookings were up 17% from last quarter and the ride-hail company’s net loss shrunk 14% year-over-year. Here are the numbers:

Gross bookings: $8.7 billion
Adjusted net revenue: $1.75 billion
Adjusted net loss $645 million

If these metrics seem rosy, they are, especially for a company that’s seen more eye-roll-worthy drama than a Coen brothers film lately. This is the benefit of being a privately held company: You have the option of releasing numbers you want, when and if you want. No doubt Uber, with its vacant CEO post and fractured board, is keen to “stamp out anything that is a remnant of the past,” as its chief human resources officer told me in June.

Maybe Don’t “Pivot To Video” Unless You Want To Pivot To Food Video

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Despite the fervent call for all media companies to double down on video, what news organizations expect from the medium may not jibe with what people are actually watching.

For instance, a new report from social analytics company BuzzSumo analyzed 100 million Facebook videos to see what worked the best, and the results weren’t terribly surprising. One big takeaway: The kind of content people prefer to view on Facebook is more on the–how do you say–consumable side: food videos were far and away the most interacted with videos on the site. Coming in 2nd and 3rd were “fashion & beauty” and “animals (pets)” respectively. 

Again, this shouldn’t be that surprising! People like to watch easy things—I personally LOVE food videos; the more basic the better!—even if I’m still a proud grown-up and professional journalist.

This should, however, be a warning to the Facebook-first media companies that are trying to bend to the whims of the platform. Namely, ones like Mic and Vocativ which have laid off staff as they “pivot to video.” The idea is that more people–and therefore, more advertisers–are interacting with video content on Facebook compared to other posts, and if only they could nail video, they could crack a central quandary for media companies trying to earn money or at least stay alive. 

This is true! (Maybe.) But these numbers show that most video subjects (with the exception of things like a shocking look at a racist, violent rally) just don’t do as well as an easy-to-watch how-to on crème brûlée. 

“It’s not just how to make the recipe, how to chop the onion,” Ashley McCollum, GM of BuzzFeed’s Tasty channel, said at last year’s Fast Company Innovation Festival. “It gives you a reason to reach out to your friend. It allows you to connect with another person.” Indeed: McCollum showed one video from the wildly popular two-year-old channel—quick recipes for four kinds of sliders—that at the time had racked up 147 million views and 4 million shares.

But remember: the moment Facebook changes it algorithm to favor the next trend in media for online content, all this video work could be for naught. And another reminder to editors and publishers considering what people on Facebook actually like to gorge on: just as we’ve been warned that delicious-looking things aren’t always the healthiest, food content is still not the same thing as news.

Unless, of course, we’re talking about food news. And I suppose, FastCoFood does have a nice ring to it.

You can read the full BuzzSumo report here.

Read moreHere’s Why Newspapers Are Banding Together To Fight Google And Facebook

The Amazon-Whole Foods merger just cleared a big hurdle

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The feds are shrugging their shoulders over Amazon’s proposed $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market. The Federal Trade Commission said today it has no plans to stand in the Seattle behemoth’s way, as the merger poses no apparent violation of federal antitrust laws.

Here’s the statement from Bruce Hoffman, acting director of the FTC’s competition bureau:

“The FTC conducted an investigation of this proposed acquisition to determine whether it substantially lessened competition under Section 7 of the Clayton Act, or constituted an unfair method of competition under Section 5 of the FTC Act. Based on our investigation we have decided not to pursue this matter further. Of course, the FTC always has the ability to investigate anticompetitive conduct should such action be warranted.”

The investigation didn’t take very long. Reuters reported only a month ago that regulators at the FTC were investigating the proposed transaction over worries that it would hurt competition in the grocery market. Some lawmakers, including Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, have expressed concern that the merger could negatively impact access to grocery stores in poor neighborhoods where healthy choices are already harder to come by.

This trailer confirms “American Horror Story” has more to do with the election than a Trump mask

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There had been rumors circulating for a while that the new season of American Horror Story, an anthology that resets every year, would have something to do with the 2016 election. Earlier this week, the creators revealed the opening credits for the new season online, and, lo and behold, a Trump mask figured prominently in the proceedings. But a Trump mask could mean anything, right? Perhaps it was some kind of dodge. Well, now that an official trailer for the season has dropped, the matter is resolved. The new season will definitely take place around the time of last year’s election and its aftermath, in Michigan. In the opening moments of the trailer, we see series regulars Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters having opposite reactions to the election results, which break down along gender lines, but are equal in intensity. Everything afterward is a hodgepodge of spooky imagery viewers will have to interpret themselves.

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