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Opt out of FEMA presidential alerts? You can’t, and here’s why that’s legal

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been telling us for a while now that it plans to conduct a national test of the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), specifically the “Presidential Alerts” that are part of the established WEA system.

Despite the fact that we’ve been warned multiple times about the test, many cell-phone users will likely be startled today at 2:18 p.m. ET when the testing begins, as millions of cell phones will receive a text message with an ominous header reading “Presidential Alert.” According to FEMA, the body of the text will let people know that it’s only a test and no action is needed.

Unlike President Donald Trump’s tweets, there is no way to opt out of presidential alerts, as they’re part of an emergency system meant to warn Americans about national emergencies. That means if your wireless service is provided by one of the more than 100 carriers that participate in the WEA system—and most cell phones are WEA enabled—you just have to sit back and let it be.

So is this legal? In a word, yes. The WEA system was established a decade ago and became operational in 2012. It includes the following types of alerts:

  • Extreme weather, and other threatening emergencies in your area
  • Amber alerts
  • Presidential Alerts during a national emergency

You can opt out of the weather alerts or the Amber Alerts by going into your phone’s settings (I did this a few years ago when one woke me up in the middle of the night), but the Presidential Alerts are mandatory. Think of them as the DEFCON 1 of phone alerts. They’re meant for only the most dire of emergencies, and were passed into law along with the 2006 WARN act.

Still, today marks the first nationwide test of the Presidential Alerts, and not everyone thinks it’s the best use of government resources—especially when you consider that our current president seems to have no trouble getting messages out on his own.

But how you feel about national alerts may have a lot to do with how you feel about whoever happens to occupy the White House. Back in 2013, a number of far-right bloggers, including Alex Jones, were up in arms over reports that then President Barack Obama was “loading iPhones with emergency alerts” that you couldn’t opt out of. It took a segment by MSNBC to remind them that the WARN act was passed during the Bush era.


KLM Airlines finally came up with a good reason to download its app

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A lot of airlines try to convince users to download their apps with the promise of easy e-ticketing and, well, that’s pretty much it. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ app is different, though, because it has an incredibly handy feature that will actually make you want to use it.

The company has a new augmented reality feature that lets travelers figure out whether their carry-on bags will fit in KLM’s overhead bins just by pointing their phones at their luggage. The app uses a virtual KLM suitcase that travelers can use to measure against their own bags, thereby allowing them to see whether they will have to pony up and check their bag, or simply waltz off the plane without stopping at baggage claim.

KLM is making good use of Apple’s AR technology. Not only did it design this virtual suitcase-measuring feature for iOS users, but it used Apple’s tech to create a 360-degree display of a Dreamliner aircraft, which is also available in the KLM App. Before your next trip to Amsterdam, download the KLM app and make sure you don’t end up being that one chump who tries to shove an oversized bag into the overhead bin.

Say these 3 things when you don’t want to do something

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I don’t want to.

How many times have you wanted to say those four words in your professional life? I’m willing to bet the number is pretty high.

Maybe you were looking for a way out of a networking event that your friend was begging you to attend. Perhaps you just really didn’t feel like meeting that acquaintance for coffee so she could “pick your brain.” Or, maybe you wished you could scream this in your boss’s face when you were tasked with a project that filled you with dread.

There’s no shortage of instances that are ripe for the use of this rejection. But, there’s something about saying you don’t want to do something that seems like a whiny and immature excuse.

Surely, there has to be a better way to get yourself out of something that you’d rather not do.

Good news: There is. Try one of these three statements that sound way more professional–even if your insides are only yelling, “Wahhh, I don’t wanna!”

1. “I don’t have the time”

The majority of the instances when I find myself trying to sneak out of yet another commitment, my reasoning is simple: It’s because my schedule is already far too packed.

You know what? Being busy or booked is a perfectly justifiable reason for passing on something, so don’t be afraid to use it.

If you want to cushion the blow a little more, preface this statement with an, “I’d love to, but…” You might rather watch paint dry than do what that person is requesting, but they certainly don’t need to know that.

2. “Maybe next time”

This one works especially well for social obligations–like being invited out to a happy hour or a lunch date with a networking contact.

By referencing a “next time,” you’re politely shutting down that person’s request without brutally closing the door entirely.

Is it a little dishonest or passive aggressive–particularly if you never actually intend to do what’s being asked of you? Maybe. But, if your singular, current focus is staying far away from that event, this will get the job done.

3. “No, thank you”

Sometimes keeping it simple really is the way to go, and I love this straightforward suggestion from Quora user and professor at Southern Virginia University, Orson Scott Card.

If and when you don’t want to do something, reply with a simple, “No, thank you.”

“If you explain, the person proposing the activity can argue, seek another day to do it, protest that you are mistaken in your reason for not doing the proposed activity,” says Card in his Quora response, “Eventually, you have to lie, get angry, be offensive, or give in.”

By repeating only this gracious rejection, you aren’t giving them any wiggle room to argue with you. They’ll have to accept the fact that you’re turning them down–or run the risk of looking rude if they continue to push when you’ve made it clear that you’re not interested.

There are plenty of things that you don’t want to do in your professional life (and, sorry, but sometimes you have no choice but to actually do them).

But, in those moments when you need an excuse better than, “Nah, I don’t want to!” rely on these three statements instead. You’ll pass on prospective obligations with just the right amount of politeness and professionalism.


This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission. 

More from The Muse:

Travel-booking app Hopper just got a lot of money to spend on AI

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Hopper, everyone’s favorite travel-booking and price-predicting app, just got a whole bunch of new money to play with. The company said today that it has secured $100 million in Series D financing led by OMERS Ventures, including new investment from existing investors and newcomer Citi Ventures, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $184 million.

The company says it will use the money to hire new employees and help take its all-mobile flight-booking services global, and to expand its use of artificial intelligence in the travel-wooing process.

Currently, 25% of Hopper’s bookings are the result of AI making well-timed suggestions of trips, meaning users are booking trips they didn’t explicitly search for but the app knew to suggest. (For instance, if you search for Amsterdam, but there’s a bargain on tickets to New Amsterdam, or even somewhere allegedly real, like Copenhagen, the app might suggest it.) The AI is already so good at its job that Hopper says the conversion rates on AI-based recommendation notifications are 2.6 times higher than ones for which the users explicitly searched.

Now that it has a whole bunch of cash to play with, Hopper is hoping to expand on its use of machine learning and AI to tell people where they want to go on vacation before they even know. Hopefully, this tech will help remind people to actually use their vacation days, too.

Watch the social-good ad campaigns that just took home big awards for impact

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In April, the European parliament changed an antiquated law that outlawed farmers from growing 97% of the world’s seed varieties because they weren’t listed in the an official catalog of species authorized for commercial sale or cultivation. That movement was spearheaded by Carrefour, a major grocer, which set up a “black supermarket” display inside its stores to highlight all the flavors and biodiversity that was being missed. As a result, participating grocery stores sold a reported 70 tons of produce, while 85,000 people signed a petition to change the rules.

A few months earlier, the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau, which sees eight times the local population visit annually as tourists, unveiled the “Palau Pledge,” or vow that gets stamped on passports for all visitors to sign before being allowed to enter the country. The promise to “tread lightly, act kindly, and explore mindfully” will reach an estimated 2 million people over the next 10 years.

Both campaigns are aimed at making real social and environmental change. The agencies behind them–Host/Havas for the Palau Legacy Project, and Marcel for Carrefour–took home the top honors from D&AD, a British charity that promotes excellence in design and advertising  at its 2018 D&AD Impact Awards last night. “The kind of projects we wish to honor are business ideas, campaigns, and designs that obey this philosophy of doing well by doing good,” says Tim Lindsay, CEO of D&AD. “In other words, they may very well be commercial projects–although not all of them are–but they seek to make the world a better place in doing business.”

All told, D&AD awarded 76 awards to various ad agencies, design studios, startups, and social entrepreneurs that generated campaigns or concepts aimed at harnessing business as a force for greater good. Entrants submitted across 12 categories loosely aligned with the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals. Judges included IBM’s global chief creative officer William Seabrook, and Warby Parker’s CEO Neil Blumenthal. You can view all of the winners in each category here.

In the case of the Carrefour campaign, it involved a commitment from the stores to not just reportedly sell 600 different varieties of produce, but also to support the growers behind that. As the video below shows, the company offered a five-year commitment to buy from farmers willing to violate the current laws, at the risk of heavy fines.

As for Palau, the pledge was backed up by lots of additional messaging through a related web campaign, an in-flight film that passengers see on the arriving flight, and lots of signage discouraging polluting and harming wildlife–with real penalties attached:

Among other honors, D&AD also awarded a new $20,000 award for work that seems both immediately promising and ready to scale. The recipients were DDB Mudra Group and Prerana Anti-Trafficking, a nonprofit that works to help sex workers in India escape. Their effort, called Project Free Period and commissioned by Johnson & Johnson’s Stayfree line of feminine hygiene products, involves offering three-day vocational training sessions to those women during the only time they have off–the days when they have their periods.

Google admits chatbots were a bad idea

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Google Assistant is getting an overhaul on smartphones, and it’s discarding one of 2016’s biggest tech fads in the process.

When Google Assistant arrived a couple of years ago, chatbots were all the rage in products like Facebook Messenger and Microsoft’s Skype. Simulating a back-and-forth conversation was supposed to be more efficient than poking around in traditional apps, and chatbot proponents hyped this model as the future of software design. Google Assistant itself debuted as a feature within Google’s Allo messaging app, so you could exchange text messages with the search giant just like you would with a friend.

[Photo: courtesy of Google]
Google has since soured on this approach and has “paused” development on Allo. The new version of Google Assistant–available now on Android, and coming to the iPhone in a few weeks–emphasizes visual response cards that you can interact with, and that stay on the screen even as you ask follow-up questions. Meanwhile, the actual transcript has moved from the bottom to the top of the screen, so in most cases you’ll only see the most recent topic of conversation. The overall experience is less like texting and more like, well, using an app.

“When we built the Assistant, you can clearly see inspiration from Allo in what we did, in this chatty back-and-forth model where you’re talking with an intelligent assistant,” says Chris Perry, the Google product manager who leads Assistant on Android. “And we found that was somewhat restrictive of a model for us. It ended up constraining us in a number of different ways.”

[Image: courtesy of Google]

“Everyone’s kind of trying to figure out how you should do things”

One major problem with the chatbot approach was that it was too linear, says Ye-Jeong Kim, Google’s user experience manager for Search and Assistant. You might get a visual card when asking about the weather, but if you asked a follow-up about wind chill or a future forecast, the resulting chat transcript would push the original weather card off the screen. This can be disorienting, so now Google will simply update the original card with new information as you ask for it.

“If you think about visual–unlike spoken or written conversation–visual doesn’t have to be so ephemeral,” Kim says. “It’s lingering, and helping to aid a conversation.”

Besides, not every Google Assistant device is conducive to dialog bubbles. When Assistant arrived in 2016, Google was mainly pushing it through Allo and on its new Google Home smart speaker. Now, Google Assistant is available in cars through Android Auto, on kitchen counters with devices like the Lenovo Smart Display, and on televisions through Chromecast and Android TV. A chat-like interface doesn’t make as much sense on those devices.

Even on smartphones, users are doing more than just talking to their virtual assistants. Perry says that about half of interactions with Assistant’s smartphone app still involve touching the screen. By redesigning Assistant with more visuals, Google is setting it up to be more consistent across all devices and situations.

“We wanted to build a framework that can actually expand and be more fluidly adaptive to the various contexts you’re in,” Kim says.

San Francisco search [Photo: courtesy of Google]
That’s not to say the conversational elements are going away completely. Google Assistant’s responses will still include text at the top of the screen, and will still suggest follow-ups at the bottom. By swiping downward, you can still scroll through previous queries. But overall, the hope is that you won’t be generating lengthy transcripts with each conversation.

“It’s not this back, forth, back, forth, back, forth,” Perry says. “It’s an immersive experience inside the canvas itself.”

Despite the new system, Perry still acknowledges that Google–and anyone else working on voice assistants–still has a lot of work left to do. Embracing and abandoning the chatbot model is a sign that no one’s quite cracked the code to putting virtual assistants on screens.

“It feels a lot like 2009 for me,” Perry says, “where we’re building apps, we have this new platform, and everyone’s kind of trying to figure out how you should do things.”

[Image: courtesy of Google]

Looping in app makers

Even with Assistant’s new design, Google stresses that it’s not trying to replace apps. Don’t expect Google Assistant to show you recent posts from Twitter, or provide its own miniature version of Instagram’s camera. For those sorts of uses, you might as well just go directly to the app. (Google Assistant can, however, open those apps for you.)

Weather [Photo: courtesy of Google]
Still, it’s likely that the lines between Assistant and standalone apps will blur over time. Perry points to flights as an example. To book a flight today, you might open the app for an airline such as United or an aggregator such as Expedia. But in the future, you might ask Google Assistant for flights to a certain place on a certain date, and it might provide you with its own interface for browsing all the options. At that point, is a standalone app really necessary?

“You look at all the different interactions that you have with your phone, there’s a lot of them that can be made easier,” Perry says.

The big challenge will be getting outside developers on board with the idea. Google is laying the groundwork by letting third-party developers add their own visual responses on phones, so a company like Starbucks can try to upsell you on food items (with pictures!) after you’ve placed a pickup order. Google Assistant’s interface would then act as a mediator of sorts, whisking users around to different third-party skills or apps based on what they’re trying to accomplish.

[Photo: courtesy of Google]
But while Google has a strong incentive to funnel more smartphone usage through Assistant–more interactions mean more fodder for the company’s search and advertising machine–it’s easier for developers to stick with the apps they already have. The same could be said for users, who’ve spent the last decade getting comfortable with apps as the primary way to interact with smartphones.

Home [Photo: courtesy of Google]
Ye-Jeong Kim is hoping the redesign will start to change people’s attitudes. If Google Assistant can become a little more helpful now, users may trust it down the road as it gets better at handling more complex tasks.

“I want users to be able to build a mental model of this relationship with Assistant,” she says, “so they can actually ask it harder things than just ‘Turn on the lights,’ ‘Set the alarm,’ or ‘What’s the weather?'”

Survey: 80% of women support California’s board diversity law

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When Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 826, California became the first state in the nation to require that all public companies have at least one woman on their board of directors. The change must come by the end of 2019, but it can’t come soon enough, according to a new survey from theBoardlist and Qualtrics. They spoke to 285 business leaders and board members around the country and found that the overwhelming majority of them believe that corporations were not doing enough to add more women to their board of directors on their own.

The reasons given for supporting the bill boiled down to either money or fairness. Per the survey:

  • 42% supported the bill because diverse companies are more profitable.
  • 38% supported the bill because women have proven they are equal and should be given positions they deserve.
  • 12% believe quotas are the only way to ensure diversity.

Men aren’t onboard with forced diversity. While nearly 80% of women surveyed supported SB 826, only 40% of men did. The bill also did not have bipartisan support among respondents—fewer than 50% of Republicans surveyed supported the bill, while nearly 85% of surveyed Democrats did.

That said, the main reason people didn’t support the bill (37%) wasn’t because they disagreed with the premise, but because it seemed like government overreach. Overall, though, 98% of people outside of California who support this bill hope that a similar bill is passed in their own states. Better start writing your state representatives!

Wu-Tang Clan go to space for Impossible Foods and White Castle

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On September 7, legendary music producer RZA posted a mysterious video to his Instagram feed that suggested the founding member of Wu-Tang Clan had uploaded his consciousness to some sort of B-movie computer in order to take life questions from the general public. He even posted a phone number, 1-833-4-Slider.

Now it’s been revealed as a teaser for a new four-part, short video series for White Castle starring Wu-Tang vets Ghostface Killah, GZA, and RZA.

Directed by Sam Spiegel and created by the burger chain’s in-house marketing team, “Wu-Tang In Space Eating Impossible Sliders” is like a Thunderbirds-inspired, weed-induced fever dream, but also an ad for the fast-feeder’s introduction of Impossible Foods’ plant-based burger to its menu. Dressed in Wu-Tang-styled, Star Trek-like uniforms, Ghostface and GZA answer questions left on RZA’s voicemail since that first Instagram post.

“It’s kind of crazy on Earth right now,” says Ghostface. “So we came to space to get some perspective and acquire some knowledge.”

Questions for the duo range from, “What is my dog thinking?” to, “Where do ideas come from?” It’s completely ridiculous but not without its charm. That, and it goes light on the burger branding, save for a momentary interlude in which Ghostface and GZA enjoy a tray of White Castle goodies while watching a couple of aliens fight on a moon. (Just go with it.)

To the question,”How can I further ascend my consciousness?” GZA lays it out simply: “Read more. Study more. Learn more. And continue to ask questions.” Ghostface adds, “Listen to more Wu.”

Answer received, enlightenment achieved.


Bars and restaurants are too damn loud. Can SoundPrint cut through the noise?

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Like many New York City singles, Gregory Scott was working way too hard to hear his dates. The city’s abnormally loud bars and restaurants make connecting with a stranger all the more difficult, and in Scott’s case, he had to work double time, because he suffers from hearing loss.

So a few years ago, Scott began googling “quiet spots” and scrolling through review sites in search of tranquil establishments. He went so far as to measure sound levels of venues and keep track of those that met his standards. Then he started sending the list to friends who shared the same frustrations. Word of his project spread, and soon enough, more New Yorkers wanted in.

“I kept getting more and more requests for such lists,” Scott tells Fast Company. “So I created a crowdsourcing tool so that we can all help each other find quieter venues while alerting us to the noisy ones.”

In April, Scott launched SoundPrint, a free app that serves as both a decibel reader and crowdsourced noise reviewer. (A beta version was first released in 2017.) It’s meant to warn you before you venture to a place that’s too loud—either due to music, crowds, or just poor acoustic design. Users can search for quieter restaurants and even filter by peak hours, at which point noise levels increase. It’s been aptly nicknamed “the Yelp for noise.”

The startup also features “Curated Quiet Lists” in cities that hit a critical number of submissions. There are currently eight live editions, with about a half dozen more slated by year’s end.

Basically, consider it the ultimate time saver for the next time you have an important meeting, family gathering, or a date with someone you’d prefer to hear.

Though officially less than a year old, SoundPrint already released a study of over 2,200 New York City restaurants and bars. The app measured selected venues for a minimum of three times during peak days and hours, and found interesting results surrounding food trends and location.

For example, Mexican, Latin, American, and Korean restaurants tend to be the loudest, while Indian, Chinese, and Japanese restaurants tend to be the quietest.

Looking for the safest-to-hear neighborhood? SoundPrint found that as one proceeds from uptown to downtown New York, venues become increasingly louder, so that by the time you reach the Village or the Lower East Side, “your ears may begin ringing,” warns Scott.

“On average, both restaurants (78 dBA) and bars (81 dBA) are too loud for conversation,” says Scott. “That’s not surprising for bars, considering people expect those places to be bustling. But for restaurants, which 30 to 40 years ago were mainly places to not only enjoy good food but also talk with and hear your companion, that’s quite a change.”

Noise is more than just a nuisance or a waste of a perfectly cute Tinder match. It can induce hearing loss, tinnitus, even stress. (Not to mention, straining one’s neck to extend one’s ear.) The public, however, rarely thinks of this public health issue. With noisy environments having been normalized over the last few decades, patrons may not have a clear understanding of what healthy decibel levels sound like anymore.

“Next time you’re in a noisy place and exit a very noisy restaurant or bar, pay attention to your body,” says Scott. “You’ll notice it often relaxes when you leave. It’s escaping the auditory (and stressful) assault on your body.”

Moving forward, the beloved app plans to expand to other devices beyond the iPhone and perhaps venture outside of the bar and restaurant category. In the coming year, SoundPrint wants to take on all areas of public life: fitness centers, movie theaters, stadiums, etc. With luck, one day soon you’ll be able to hear your date just about anywhere.

“You’d be surprised by the number of noise complaints these latter venues generate,” says Scott. “Loud noise is more commonplace than people think.”

Read Mark Judge’s “Wasted” gen X book, courtesy of the Internet Archive

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Copies of Mark Judge’s out-of-print memoir, Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk, are listed on Amazon for $150 and more, but the book by Brett Kavanaugh’s high school friend is now available on the Internet Archive.

Mark Judge’sWasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk

The book, which includes a mention of someone named “Bart O’Kavanaugh” vomiting, appears to have been uploaded Wednesday, according to a date stamp in the filename. The Internet Archive didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The book is available for online browsing and searching and in a variety of downloadable formats, including searchable PDF.

If you’re not interested in reading the book cover to cover, you can check out a summary published by The Intercept last month, when the book was still described as “extremely hard to find.”

Judge, who Christine Blasey Ford has said was present in the room when Kavanaugh allegedly sexually assaulted her at a high school party, has reportedly spoken to the FBI as part of its probe into allegations against the Supreme Court nominee.

Other writings by Judge are also available online, including a blog post denouncing college fraternities, another complaining that Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake don’t drop literary references the way Sting and Morrissey did in their 1980s heyday, and a review of the retro pulp novel series Hard Case Crime, in which Judge praises the books’ old-fashioned approach to gender:

Of course, a man must be able to read a woman’s signals, and it’s a good thing that feminism is teaching young men that no means no and yes means yes. But there’s also that ambiguous middle ground, where the woman seems interested and indicates, whether verbally or not, that the man needs to prove himself to her. And if that man is any kind of man, he’ll allow himself to feel the awesome power, the wonderful beauty, of uncontrollable male passion.

This robotic bear warns pedestrians about how much smog they’re inhaling

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On a recent Wednesday in London, a robotic teddy bear was temporarily perched on a streetlight next to Brixton Road, one of the most polluted streets in the city. When air pollution levels reached a certain limit–the point at which the government recommends that anyone with a lung or heart problem should reduce exercise outdoors–the bear raised its paw to its mouth and coughed.

“We discovered the alarming statistic that more people die every year from breathing in toxic air than from car accidents,” says James Crosby, a creative at the advertising agency McCann London, the team behind the project. More than 200 people are killed each year in accidents on the city’s streets, but more than 9,000 die prematurely from illnesses related to London’s air pollution. The bear, surrounded by flowers, forms a temporary memorial that the team is installing at local pollution hotspots. The fact that it is animatronic helps make people walking by pay attention.

“The problem with pollution is that you can’t see it, so we wanted to bring it to life in a really visual and arresting way . . . it’s not every day you see a robotic teddy bear on the street,” says Crosby.

The bear, called Toxic Toby, was 3D printed, and animatronics make it possible for it to turn its head from side to side and cough. Air quality data from BreezoMeter, a company that monitors hyperlocal pollution in real time, triggers each cough. As the bear coughs, it also tweets at local politicians urging them to take action to reduce pollution.

Crosby, who suffers from asthma himself, bikes to work on Brixton Road each day. “Just standing by the road for a few minutes, you can taste the pollution in the back of your throat,” he says. “Also, the area is home to many primary schools, and children are most at risk from breathing pollution, as their lungs are still developing.”

The team is using BreezoMeter’s data to identify the most polluted locations in London and move the bear from place to place. It also plans to leave the city. “We’re planning on taking Toxic Toby on a U.K. tour, and then on to different countries around the world to spread our message that breathing clean air should be a human right,” Crosby says.

Priyanka Chopra and Bumble want to give Indian women a dating app they’ll actually use

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Bumble, the women-first social networking app, is making its debut in India later this year, with actress and philanthropist Priyanka Chopra on board as an investor and adviser.

“She’s a partner, and she’s going to help us empower not only the women of India—she will be a global force,” Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said at Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women Summit on Wednesday. “Women globally want to be empowered. They need to feel safe, and they need to connect.”

This is Chopra’s second investment in the tech space, the first being in a coding school. Wolfe Herd and Chopra started their collaboration last fall, when Bumble launched its alternative to LinkedIn, Bumble Bizz. “That really kicked off this journey into India for us,” Wolfe Herd said. Over the last nine months, as Bumble has worked on the launch, Chopra has reportedly been“deeply involved” in strategy and marketing campaigns.

Dating apps are a harder sell for women in India, due to cultural stigma and the sheer amount of male attention women on dating apps tend to get. (On Tinder, for example, men reportedly “far outnumber women” in India.) Bumble’s women-first approach could help attract women to the app—and Chopra’s endorsement doesn’t hurt. That’s why Bumble will include features to help address safety concerns. For example, it will allow women to use just their first initial in their profile instead of their full names. “Social networks at large have not won the hearts of Indian women because they don’t feel safe,” she said.

As for the timing of this announcement—which happens to dovetail with Tinder’s decision to roll out its own Bumble-esque feature in India—Wolfe Herd says it’s simply coincidence, and that this is a natural extension of Bumble’s mission. “We’re charting our own course,” she told Fortune. “We have been building this brand women-first, empowering accountability and kindness and connections for four years now. We were preaching a lot of the narrative that so many people are now trying to understand how to work into their business post-#MeToo.”

Seventh Generation’s new detergent can wash as many loads, but weighs 75% less

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A typical 100-ounce bottle of laundry detergent is filled mostly with water. As people increasingly buy detergent online, the cleaning product company Seventh Generation saw an opportunity: How much could it shrink the standard bottle to avoid the wasted energy of shipping water thousands of miles?

A new detergent, which the company designed for Amazon and is launching today, cuts the amount of water in half, reduces plastic by 60%, and slims the overall weight by 75%, making it more efficient to ship. Regular detergent, the company says, ships with at least five pounds of unneeded material and water. The new detergent can wash as many loads as a regular bottle, but comes in 23.1 ounces instead of 100.

“We live in a world right now with a massive amount of unnecessary waste,” says Joey Bergstein, Seventh Generation CEO. “All around us, we see pictures of branded plastic flowing into waterways, overflowing in landfills. We think really deeply as a business about how do we actually find systemic solutions.”

[Photo: Seventh Generation]
Concentrated laundry detergent, with less water, isn’t new, and Seventh Generation already sells most of its detergent in 40-ounce bottles rather than 100-ounce bottles. But shrinking to an ultra-concentrated formula was more difficult; the team had to find the right formulation that still worked as well as a bigger bottle. “Getting that right interaction at the right time is a really big thing,” says Bergstein. The package itself is also made from post-consumer recycled plastic; the designers had to ensure that the detergent interacted with the plastic correctly. The whole process took two years.

The bottle also has a new cap designed to dispense only the amount of detergent someone actually needs for a load of laundry. “Most people fill their caps from their laundry jugs right up to the brim, which is about twice as much laundry detergent is you actually need for a load,” he says. “The industry loves it, but it’s not so good for the consumer. It’s not so good for our waterways.”

The small size is easier to sell online than in a retail store, the company says–online, it’s easier to tell the story that the tiny bottle can wash 66 loads than it would be on a store shelf. The lightweight bottle also has advantages for online sales, since a large, heavy bottle sent on its own is more likely to leak during shipment. But the company ultimately believes that the small bottles should be sold in retail stores as well. Laundry pods aren’t particularly popular with consumers, Bergstein says, and the industry needs to offer a more sustainable liquid option. Some related options already exist; Method, for example, sells an ultra-concentrated 30-ounce bottle that can do 75 loads. If every company shifted away from 100-ounce bottles, trimming out each bottle’s five pounds of extra weight, the industry could stop shipping more than 400 million pounds of extra material each year.

“You have to ask yourself the question, if you could sell a pound and a half bottle instead of a seven-pound bottle of laundry detergent, why would you ever want to sell a seven-pound bottle?” says Bergstein. “It’s infinitely doable and it’s absolutely the way that the industry needs to move. I think it’ll take some time for people to understand that value and it’s hard for a small company to do that only on their own. I think it’s a huge imperative for the industry to make a move to really concentrate these products and stop shipping water all over the country.”

Amazon’s wage hike could be a “let them eat cake” solution

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Yesterday, Amazon announced a big and heartening change. The company–including its recently acquired Whole Foods—is raising its minimum wage to $15 per hour. The change will begin on November 1 of this year, and will impact hundreds of thousands of employees. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to me that all employees making more than $15/hour will receive a $1/hour increase as well. Though many may be applauding the company for this move, we may want to hold off to see exactly how this change plays out.

Amazon has faced considerable external pressure by pro-labor advocates who say the wildly successful company should better provide for its lower-wage workers. Politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont have introduced legislation aimed directly at Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos, with the intention of forcing the company to improve conditions. Workers at Whole Foods, worried about their future under Amazon, want to unionize, and Amazon has responded by distributing materials to managers, asking them to be on the lookout for telltale signs of organizing.

Amazon is known for rarely responding to criticism, thus this minimum wage hike should absolutely be considered a victory. Even Bezos himself thanked Sanders for the push:

But labor experts say it remains to be seen how this change will play out for workers. Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, is cautious. “Any time a company raises wages for workers,” he tells me, “I’m happy about it,” adding that Amazon is “better positioned than other companies to push an increase.”

But, there is a caveat: One thing Amazon has been working very hard to do is to reduce its reliance on human labor. Both in its warehouses and at Whole Foods, the company has been investing in technology to better automate its processes. While some may see these advances as an inevitability, they also present future opportunities to reduce human costs.

What this means is that even though the wage is going up, it’s likely that Amazon will figure out how to cut costs elsewhere, even at the expense of human labor. “You don’t want elasticity on hours,” says Perrone, “you don’t want elasticity on scheduling.”

Which is to say, there’s no guarantee that hours won’t go down even if wages go up. “I don’t want to be a cynic, but I would wait and see over the next six months what this really looks like,” he says. “There’s no guarantee their hours are going to stay the same.”

And, indeed, only a few hours after I spoke with Perrone this morning, news broke that Amazon will no longer offer bonuses or stock awards to the workers receiving the wage bump. Workers have even been quoted in multiple outlets saying they will likely earn less as a result of these changes, something Amazon disputes.

Reached for comment, Amazon provided the following statement:

“The significant increase in hourly cash wages more than compensates for the phase out of incentive pay and RSUs. We can confirm that all hourly Operations and Customer Service employees will see an increase in their total compensation as a result of this announcement. In addition, because it’s no longer incentive-based, the compensation will be more immediate and predictable.”

But as Perrone put it to me, agreeing to a $15/hour wage hike provides no real guarantees for Amazon workers and their livelihood. What’s more, he says he believes the decision was likely a way for Amazon to try and fight against any further effort by workers to organize. By agreeing to a hike, the company probably hopes the organizing efforts will be quelled–at least for the time being.

So what should Amazon workers do? Perrone recommends that the employees push hard for even better workplace conditions, codifying them so that they are able to live comfortably as Amazon employees. “I do think they ought to go a little bit further,” he says. This includes guaranteed hours and scheduling better–or at least consistent–benefits, etc. The workers should “try to get these commitments in writing.”

Ultimately, this is an example of a company responding to criticism, yet not fully grasping it. It’s clear that Amazon is feeling the pressure from both organizing workers and politicians like Sanders. But its critics shouldn’t stop until real change comes to the company.

Toyota and SoftBank are teaming up to develop self-driving car services

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The two Japanese giants have announced that they are forming a joint venture to develop mobility services for self-driving cars, reports Reuters. The partnership will be called MONET, short for mobility network, and it will be backed by $17.5 million in capital to begin with. Technologies that MONET will work on include meal deliveries by self-driving cars, self-driving hospital shuttles, and self-driving vehicles that offer onboard medical examinations. MONET is expected to begin rolling out its self-driving car services by the second half of the 2020s.


These 3D-printed body parts let surgeons practice on a model before they open you up

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Inside a room at the North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, a new miniature factory filled with 3D printers sits ready to automatically print out models of a patient’s heart or bones on demand–whenever a surgeon in a larger network of 23 hospitals in the state wants to better prepare for surgery.

“The use of 3D printing in medicine allows us to pull the patients’ anatomy off of a computer screen and put it into the physician’s hands,” says Todd Goldstein, director of the 3D Design and Innovation Center at Northwell Health, the hospital network. “This type of technology is a game changer for all parties involved, as it allows for physicians to better visualize the pathology, allows for patients to truly see what treatment is needed, and allows for more precise, patient-specific treatments across almost all specialties.”

With a 3D model, a surgeon can look at a specific tumor or deformity, for example, and plan exactly how a surgery should proceed before cutting a patient open. That can make an operation safer and also make it shorter; less time on the operating table also means that patients can recover more quickly afterward.

A decade ago, the only options for 3D printers were expensive–hundreds of thousands of dollars–and typically used only for the most complex surgeries, with the printing often outsourced in a process that could make it slow for a doctor to get a model in hand. More recently, as desktop 3D printers have become more common, they’ve been used more often in hospitals. Formlabs, the company that created the new 3D-printing system Northwell now uses, began supplying smaller printers to the hospital network in 2016. But the new system, which combines 10 smaller printers with robotics so the process can happen automatically with less involvement from medical staff, can help the hospitals scale up the use of 3D printing.

[Photo: Northwell Health]

The system, called the Form Cell, takes data from CT and MRI scans and translates them into a replica of a specific body part, which can be used both prior to and during a surgery. “We’re talking about hours saved before a surgery, and even hours in the OR,” says Gaurav Manchanda, director of healthcare at Formlabs. One 2017 study of children’s surgeries found that surgeries were as much as 45 minutes shorter with the use of the models. A study using Northwell data, not yet published, found that using models in complex cases reduced the length of surgeries by about 10%.

[Photo: Northwell Health]
For patients, spending less time on the operating table leads to better outcomes; Manchanda says that the doctors using the equipment are finding that infection rates and readmission rates are lower. It’s also better for hospitals, who can see more patients and save costs for each avoided minute in the operating room. If Northwell uses models in 10-15% of its cases, it could save an estimated $1,750,000 a year.

Some surgeons are also beginning to use the models to help patients prepare for a surgery. In one recent case, Northwell doctors used a 3D-printed model for a seven-year-old boy who had a tumor in his palate and nasal cavity. Using the model, doctors were able to meet with the boy and his parents and explain differences in treatments that would have been difficult to understand without a visual aid. “The use of 3D printing helped bridge that gap so that the family could see how each surgery was different while weighing the pros and cons related to both functional and cosmetic outcomes against the risk for disease recurrence,” says Neha Patel, a pediatric otolaryngologist who worked on the case.

The models can’t be used in the most urgent cases, since printing a single model can take several hours. Some doctors are also slow to begin using the technology. “There are sensitivities to convincing very senior experienced surgeons to either change their way of thinking or welcoming an additional tool to conduct a procedure that they’ve done for decades, potentially,” says Manchanda. But it’s likely that it will become increasingly common. Over beta tests this summer, the new system at North Shore University Hospital was used hundreds of times.

“We’re at a tipping point where hospital-based manufacturing and large-scale 3D printing in healthcare is becoming more commonplace and [we] anticipate this to be the new standard of care in the coming years,” says Dávid Lakatos, chief product officer at Formlabs.

“Curing” death: Inside the conference dedicated to reversing human aging

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In a darkened San Diego conference hall, the disco lights pulse as Mike Posner’s club hit “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” blares. At the doors, a dozen greeters high-five the parade of 1,000 streaming into the space. On a stage in the front,  a 20-foot-tall canvas of two mysterious eyes interlaced in an infinity symbol stare out— like an LSD version of Gatsby’s iconic Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. Inside the eyes are two hourglasses.

But this not a millennial rave: Most of the crowd is well over 60, dressed in their casual best—men in belted chino shorts and tucked-in polo shirts, others in dinner jackets; the women with Hermès scarfs and at least a few with breast implants and lip fillers. Every so often, someone rolls by in a motorized wheelchair.

They are here for the third annual RAADfest, the largest gathering of researchers, scientists, technologists, and consumers of cutting-edge ways to stop—and potentially reverse—aging.

Organized by the Coalition for Radical Life Extension, the three-day RAAD (Revolution Against Aging and Death) convention is a semi-science fair for medical professionals who fall outside the norm of mainstream medicine. Dr. Bill Andrews, a leader in the groundbreaking science of telomere biology and one of the speakers, says it’s “where biotech meets Woodstock.” Here, aging is referred to as an unnecessary evil—and a preventable enemy.

[Photo: courtesy of RAADFest]
An exhibit floor is set up with 70 booths hawking products, services, and “true age”physiology testing. Clinics offer umbilical cord stem cell therapies; dietary supplement companies tease increased energy; gadgets, gizmos, and hyperbaric oxygen chambers promise freedom from pain. There’s even onsite stem cell IV infusions starting at $1,150 a pop.

On opening night, 30 men and women from ages 40 to 70 take the stage in workout gear. Europe’s “The Final Countdown” roars as they begin bootcamp push-ups and jumping jacks before stripping down—the women to sports bras and men shirtless.

As they flex, a British voice declares: “The revolution is over. We have brought ourselves to a future free of aging and death.”

The crowd hollers and claps wildly. Some whistle, while others shake their head as if to signal, This is wild, ain’t it? For a moment, I contemplate whether I’m trapped in the sequel to Get Out.

The aspirations are high, with some here deadly serious about pushing back death. When the 82-year-old cofounder of the physical immortality group People Unlimited takes the stage to welcome everyone, she declares the mission at hand.

“We’ve come together with real purpose in mind, and that’s outliving death,” says the woman, who goes simply by the name Bernadeane. “I’m radical about everything that has do with staying alive. I’m radical against aging and death.”

With a hint of emotion, she adds, “I don’t think we deserve it. We should live abundantly—forever.”

Heaven on earth

James Strole and Bernadeane are the cofounders of People Unlimited—a social group for life-extension enthusiasts—as well as co-directors of the Coalition for Radical Life Extension, which produces RAADfest. They are the face of this nonconventional movement, its Jay-Z and Beyoncé.

The couple have been together for four decades. He dons fashionable Italian loafers and slim-cut suits, and she rocks leopard-print leggings, high heels, and a platinum bob. They look like they’re on vacation in Cannes.

James Strole and Bernadeane [Photo: courtesy of RAADFest]
Bernadeane coauthored the book Just Getting Started: Fifty Years of Living Forever, and Strole—an ardent “anti-death activist”—also published works and tours extensively, spreading his immortality gospel. Strole says he started contemplating the rules of the universe at age 11 when his grandmother died, and his mom told him she was now in heaven.

“I said: ‘Why do we have to die to go to heaven? Why can’t we have heaven on earth?'” Strole recounts. “I had that [curiosity] in me all my life.”

Strole eventually fell into the family’s real estate investment firm but funneled his earnings toward a “cure” for aging, he says. At most, 125 years is the biological barrier for humanity, he believes. The Social Security Administration, meanwhile, puts American life expectancy at 84.3 years old. To expand beyond the norm, scientific innovation would be crucial, which is how RAADfest was born in 2016.

“We’re not doctors or scientists,” concedes Strole. “We’re visionaries and activists . . . We’re good at galvanizing people, creating collaboration.”

The conference focuses less on the founder’s ultimate mission—immortality—and more on the incremental wins against aging. Panels, talks, and presentations center on longevity, the latest in age reversal studies, or just how to feel and age better. Speakers are the likes of Google director of engineering and futurist Ray Kurzweil, as well as prominent stem-cell therapy and biotech founders. There’s also Suzanne Somers, who hawks her own wellness line.

Attendees pay $597 to get in, and $1,195 to get VIP access to the talent. For many, that’s the attraction of RAADfest—access to those who might save their lives. That bodes well for researchers and clinics who need patients willing to pay to participate in experimental trials. In this private sector, costly trials depend on wealthy senior citizens who understand they can’t take their money to the grave.

As one elderly attendee told me: At this point, what do I have to lose?

Ray Kurzweil [Photo: courtesy of RAADFest]
One might assume that big pharma or the Mayo Clinic would lead longevity research, but seeing as that most findings point to therapies—and not patented drugs—there’s little incentive for companies to invest significant funding. It’s often why smaller, more cutting-edge labs take on the task. For that, they need patient-funded studies.

So, a few RAADfest presentations end with requests for research donations or what essentially feel like advertisements for clinics. “Clean outpatient rooms,” reads the last slide for a presenter who also owns a stem-cell therapy clinic.

Potential patients, much like audience members, have the means to pay for these experimental therapies. (Many indirectly hint to being multi-millionaires.) Eventually, claim longevity activists, as widespread tech advances, funded research will allow the masses to partake in such revolutionary science. Call it trickle-down biohacking economics.

Earlier this year, Life Extension Foundation cofounder and RAADfest speaker Bill Faloon made headlines for advertising a pay-to-play clinical trial that offered the elderly blood infusions from young donors. The fountain of youth trial, which showed promising results in mice, cost $285,000 to participate in. Young donors, however, were compensated just $750.

Not that participating in RAADfest comes entirely risk free: One physician here told me that doctors and scientists gamble with their reputation by coming to such a radical event. But there’s often no other way to progress beyond experimenting on mice.

While Strole hasn’t personally vetted all the therapies on display (“People are different and respond to different things,” he explains), he vouches that all are legal, though some are available only outside the U.S.

At RAADfest, “[People] have an alternative choice,” stresses Strole. “That’s the key.”

Outpacing death

Humanity may be far from cracking the immortality code, but there has been progress. Think of 1776, when the average life expectancy was just 35 years. By 1900, that number grew to 47.3 years. Soon after 2000, it inched past 77, reports the National Center for Health Statistics.

Our nation’s interest in staying healthier longer started with dietary supplements several decades ago and more recently morphed into organic foods and the wellness craze. Researchers confirm that Americans age 65 or older increased tenfold in the last century, with the elderly living substantially longer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adds that fewer die today from major diseases compared to just 40 years ago.

“What we’re looking at is evidence that for the first time in human history, there’s a population-wide delayed effect of aging,” Bill Faloon tells a packed auditorium hall. He notes that the Food and Drug Administration recently cleared the Mayo Clinic to accelerate production of stem cells for clinical trials through automation. “We are winning the war against aging. [We] haven’t won it yet, but we’re winning it—battle by battle.”

There is certainly talk of immortality within these halls. At an expo booth for the Church of Perpetual Life, a nondenominational church for trans-humanists, officiator Neal VanDeRee says many of his congregants identify as atheists. In lieu of putting trust in God or a Bible, he explains, “We have faith in humanity.”

“We want to live on this planet and make it a better place for the next 1,000 years, if possible,” says VanDeRee.

So, is it all possible? Futurist Ray Kurzweil speaks of the escape velocity philosophy, which touts that, with scientific advancement, your body rejuvenates faster than its disintegrates. That way, you will always just be escaping death’s claws. To get to that point though, he says, stick around to 2050, when he believes science will take a quantum leap. Basically, live long enough to live forever.

Many of these immortalists, as they call themselves, have a counter-argument for any ethical alarm you might ring. Religious? God made us in his image, and if he’s immortal, then we should follow suit. Environmental? By the time they “overcome” death, society will have miraculously figured out how to house and feed all of humanity. But the most compelling argument seems to be that of self-determination: Who are you, they say, to claim yourself my executioner? Who gets to decide when I die?

For the majority of RAADfest members, living forever is not really in the cards and not the driving force of their attendance. They simply want to live better during their final chapter. They do not, as they’ve seen other family members, want to succumb to dementia or be confined to hospice care. Currently, 45% of people over the age of 85 today are frail, often suffering physical dysfunction and decreased mobility, reports theJournal of the American Geriatrics Society. 

This population has experienced what mainstream medicine has to offer, namely 15 minutes in a doctor’s office and one too many prescriptions. The folks at RAADfest want another way.

“One of the things that scares all of the people that come here is we don’t want to age, and our brain doesn’t work,” says Stella Kalfas, 62. “We want to feel healthy. We want to go to the end without falling apart.”

Kalfas, who serves as president and CEO of the Mental Health Association of Greater Chicago, finds the conference empowering. She, like many of those she’s interacted with here, refuses to wait until she’s in her 80s to combat preventable illness and decay.

“It gives you hope,” she says. “And that’s really the big thing. It gives people hope that they’re not going to end up like their loved one.”

Not that she accepts everything at face value: She listens, does her homework, then follows up with questions: What was the sample size? Was it peer-reviewed? What were the complications?

Kalfas concedes that friends often look at her like she has “two heads” when she explains her interest in RAADfest. The bewilderment isn’t surprising; old people have been stereotyped a certain way—frail, meek, and willingly ready to march to a rumored afterlife. They’re not supposed to fight nature.

“We’re told that that’s the way we should be. We should die and allow the new to come in,” says Kalfas.

Trisha Campbell, 74, of San Antonio, Texas, says that at her first RAADfest, she assumed most attendees were people who were simply afraid to die. Now at her third conference, she admits she misjudged. These are envelope pushers learning how to help themselves, taking matters into their own hands. And they’re willing to think outside the box.

Campbell, an Army veteran, is looking for quality years, not necessarily more of them. She wants full physical and mental capability and thinks RAADfest is her best chance of finding out what’s out there.

“I believe this is the frontier of research,” says Campbell. “This is where it’s going.”

The extended frontier

Age-defying science has already seeped into mainstream circles. The National Institutes of Health reports that new drugs extend the healthy lifespan of mice. Calico, the secretive Google-backed research company, secured $1.5 billion to study age-related science. The American Heart Association is looking into Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), the anti-aging coenzyme touted in longevity circles for years.

Some of these developments are coming to the market: Young blood transfusions specialist Ambrosia Medical plans to open its first clinic in New York City at the end of the year. You can also buy NAD+ in supplement format.

But for all the recent advancements, RAADfest presenters still speak with an urgency: It isn’t happening fast enough. Faloon points to Unity, a biotech company at the forefront of eliminating senescent cells, which are basically “zombie cells” related to dementia and age-related cognitive decline. The research has been centered on mice, though the first human trial is now under way. It, like many revolutionary therapies, will likely spend years attempting FDA approval.

“We don’t have time to wait,” Faloon implores the audience, to applause. “We’re all running out of time.”

[Photo: courtesy of RAADFest]
Faloon, who authored the book Pharmocracy II: How Corrupt Deals and Misguided Medical Regulations Are Bankrupting America—and What to Do About It,  implores the audience—specifically deep-pocketed individuals—to fund his research. He needs $10 million, he says. For those not yet ready to invest, he offers a simpler request: Call your representatives, write your Congress representative.

“The government isn’t fighting us as they used to,” he says, referencing the battle for stem-cell therapy. “We can’t let them stop us again.”

This past RAADfest was the largest one yet, with more than 30 different countries represented, leading organizers to contemplate going international. Strole plans to grow his network, an army if you will, who will keep funding studies and pressuring political leaders to take this sector more seriously.

His coalition compares itself to former forward-thinking groups that questioned the status quo—women’s equality, minority rights, even Vietnam War protesters—only to be widely accepted decades later. By the year 2050, people aged over 65 years will grow to an estimated 2 billion. This is a growing movement, and it only intends to grow stronger. There are now year-round events, retreats, and gatherings.

“We’ve got to escape this old way of being,” stresses Strole. “There’s nothing more ethical than moving to save lives.”

Cadillac beats Tesla in Consumer Reports’ first semi-autonomous rankings

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Cadillac’s Super Cruise automated driving system (ADS) bested Tesla’s Autopilot ADS in Consumer Reports‘ first-ever rankings of automated driving systems, the publication announced. While Tesla’s Autopilot bested Cadillac’s Super Cruise in ease of use and performance, Consumer Reports says one of the main reasons Cadillac’s Super Cruise came out on top was because of its safety features:

The top-rated Super Cruise by Cadillac tries to ensure that drivers stay focused by training a small camera on their eyes that assesses whether they’re watching the road. If the system determines that a driver isn’t paying enough attention, the driver gets red warning lights on the steering wheel, audible alerts, and/or a vibrating seat before the system starts to slow the car down.

The publication also looked at Nissan’s ProPilot Assist and Volvo’s Pilot Assist ADS systems compared to Cadillac’s and Tesla’s, but each performed worse than those. A full list of how the four ADS systems ranked is below.

  1. Cadillac’s Super Cruise
  2. Tesla’s Autopilot
  3. Nissan’s ProPilot Assist
  4. Volvo’s Pilot Assist

Bloomberg: China inserted chips in Amazon and Apple hardware to spy

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A Bloomberg BusinessWeek report out today says the Chinese government implanted tiny microchips into the servers used by Apple and Amazon to spy on U.S. companies. The chips were allegedly inserted into the servers used by Apple and Amazon during the manufacturing process by a Chinese company called Super Micro, which assembled the servers.

Bloomberg, citing multiple sources, said the infiltration was first discovered in 2015 and confirmed by independent investigators before a full investigation was launched my multiple U.S. government agencies. In total, Bloomberg says, the hack allowed the Chinese government to spy on almost 30 American companies.

Amazon, Apple, and Super Micro have all issued statements disputing Bloomberg‘s reports. Apple said:

We are deeply disappointed that in their dealings with us, Bloomberg‘s reporters have not been open to the possibility that they or their sources might be wrong or misinformed. Our best guess is that they are confusing their story with a previously reported 2016 incident in which we discovered an infected driver on a single Super Micro server in one of our labs. That one-time event was determined to be accidental and not a targeted attack against Apple.

And Amazon:

It’s untrue that AWS knew about a supply chain compromise, an issue with malicious chips, or hardware modifications when acquiring Elemental. It’s also untrue that AWS knew about servers containing malicious chips or modifications in data centers based in China, or that AWS worked with the FBI to investigate or provide data about malicious hardware.

We’ve re-reviewed our records relating to the Elemental acquisition for any issues related to SuperMicro, including re-examining a third-party security audit that we conducted in 2015 as part of our due diligence prior to the acquisition. We’ve found no evidence to support claims of malicious chips or hardware modifications.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also chimed in:

We hope parties make less gratuitous accusations and suspicions but conduct more constructive talk and collaboration so that we can work together in building a peaceful, safe, open, cooperative, and orderly cyberspace.

It has long been suspected that China does indeed carry out espionage by inserting spy tools into hardware made in the Chinese supply chain, but public evidence of such activities is scarce.

Birchbox just gave the Walgreens beauty aisle a 21st-century makeover

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Shopping for skincare products at the drugstore isn’t what you might call an enjoyable experience. But for busy women, it’s sometimes the best alternative out there. There are many times when I’ve made a quick stop at Walgreens to pick up milk and ibuprofen, and decided I might as well get some face scrub while I’m there. But listen, ladies: The beauty aisle at Walgreens is about to get a makeover, thanks to Birchbox.

Today, the two companies announce that they’re joining forces. Birchbox, best known for its monthly beauty subscription boxes, will be taking over a big chunk of the floor space at 11 flagship Walgreens locations over the next few months. In December, the first six stores will open in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, and then in early 2019, five more stores will open in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Miami. As part of this partnership, Walgreens will be making an undisclosed investment in Birchbox. Earlier this year, one of Birchbox’s existing investors, Viking Global, acquired a majority stake in the company by investing $15 million more into the brand.

Translating the subscription box into a physical store

These new retail spaces–which range from 400 to 1,000 square feet–will look like mini Birchbox stores. Birchbox will curate full-sized skincare, makeup, and hair products from more than 40 brands. These are brands that Birchbox has incorporated into its subscription boxes in the past and has identified as customer favorites. The Birchbox-branded parts of the store will be beautifully designed with warm lighting, pops of color thanks to interesting wall paper, framed Birchboxes as artwork, and powder-room-inspired makeup stations.

Cofounder and CEO of Birchbox, Katia Beauchamp [Photo: courtesy of Birchbox]
All of this could help Walgreens’ stand out in people’s minds as a beauty destination. Since 2016, the drugstore company has been investing more heavily in beauty, by bringing in new brands like NYX and No7, introducing a beauty loyalty program, and introducing 3500 beauty consultants into select stores. “We’ve been working on elevating and differentiating our beauty experience,” Lauren Brindley, group vice president of beauty and personal care at Walgreens. “We’re trying to give our customers a reason to shop beauty more often.”

This partnership is a big step for Birchbox, a relatively small company that has only recently become profitable. “Walgreens is already a very large beauty retailer, reaching basically the entire population through its tens of thousands of stores,” says Katia Beauchamp, cofounder and CEO of Birchbox. “It’s sometimes hard to wrap my brain around this as someone who started a company serving a subset of the market.”

Beauchamp cofounded Birchbox with Hayley Barna in 2010 with the goal of making the process of discovering and sampling beauty products more fun in the age of the internet. Customers could sign up to receive a $10 box of sample products in a fun, colorful package, delivered to their door every month. The brand says it has 2.5 million active subscribers. While Birchbox is continuing to focus on its subscription box business, it will also be translating its core premise–making beauty discovery fun–into a physical store experience with this Walgreens partnership. There will be Birchbox-trained beauty consultants on hand to help guide the customer through the space and introduce them to new products. And there will even be a Birchbox-specific cash register, so the entire experience will feel separate from just going for a drugstore run.

As Birchbox develops the retail experience at its Walgreens locations, it will incorporate insights gleaned from its own Soho, New York, location, which opened in 2014. In 2015, the company talked about ambitious plans to roll out more across the country, but these plans were put on hold in 2016, as the company laid off employees and focused on becoming profitable.

[Photo: courtesy of Birchbox]

Women who are not beauty-obsessed

Since Birchbox launched, many other beauty subscription boxes entered the market, including Ipsy and Play! by Sephora. But Beauchamp believes that these competitors differ from Birchbox because they cater to customers who are obsessed with beauty and love trying out new products all the time. The Birchbox customer, on the other hand, is the more casual consumer of beauty products.

Beauchamp says Birchbox meets the needs of women who want to look good and enjoy taking care of themselves, but do not keep up with the latest makeup trends or miracle beauty treatments. This consumer often finds products that work for her skin, then buys them again and again. It’s not that this woman isn’t interested in trying out new products: She simply doesn’t have time to watch a million YouTube videos by beauty influencers or try dozens of lipsticks at Sephora.

But ultimately, Beauchamp believes that the casual beauty consumer represents that lion’s share of the market. When Birchbox commissioned a study about the beauty market from research firm Penn Schoen Berland, it found that 70% of the population falls into this category. And this makes sense when you think about how most women–moms, working professionals, CEOs–don’t have time to explore the hundreds of new beauty products that hit the market every month.

[Photo: courtesy of Birchbox]
In many ways, given the woman Birchbox is trying to reach, this partnership with Walgreens makes sense. With these in-store experiences, Birchbox is meeting women where they already are, catching them when they are browsing the shelves for everyday products like toothpaste and tissues. Birchbox has designed these Walgreens stores to be comfortable and not intimidating. Rather than overwhelming customers with thousands of products– the way retail giants Sephora and Ulta do in their stores–Birchbox will offer a curated selection of products from just 40 brands.

“I think a big part of our realization at Birchbox–and this really resonated with the Walgreens team–was that there is a huge opportunity to serve the masses by allowing them to stay passive, but give them the same kind of pleasurable experience of someone who is beauty-obsessed,” Beauchamp says.

Unlike many of the existing brands within Walgreens beauty aisles, the products within the Birchbox section will be from higher-end brands that are a mix of up-and-coming brands and cult favorites. At launch, brands on the shelves will include RMS Beauty, Huxley, Avene, Wander Beauty, and Birchbox’s in-house brand, Arrow.

Rather than organizing products by brand, Birchbox will organize them according to function. This makes sense because the casual beauty consumer may not have heard of a new beauty brand. Instead, she is probably looking to solve a specific problem: She might be looking for an anti-aging serum or a particular shade of red lipstick. “This is how the internet works,” says Beauchamp. “When you know you want blush, you search for blush at a particular online store, and all the blushes are there. This is how our customer wants to shop for beauty.”

In keeping with Birchbox’s expertise in sampling, customers will also be able to build their own Birchboxes by selecting from jars of product samples. There will be feature tables where customers can check out new brands and products.”We continue to find over and over again that the little beauty sample is just really delightful,” she says. “The price point is so acceptable to everybody, and the samples kind of look like candy when they’re all sitting next to each other.”

[Photo: courtesy of Birchbox]

First 11 stores–then thousands?

For right now, Beauchamp and the Birchbox team are focused on designing these pilot stores and helping to launch them over the next months. Walgreens and Birchbox will be carefully observing how customers interact with the space and purchase product. But the Walgreens investment in Birchbox suggests that this is a long-term partnership, with the possibility of expanding this concept throughout Walgreens’s network of thousands of stores across the country.

And of course, this will expose Birchbox to a much wider audience of consumers, particularly those who are older or in parts of the country where they may not have heard of the beauty startup. “I think this is a great opportunity to see if we can grow Birchbox’s brand awareness through this partnership,” Walgreens’ Brindley says. “I think women who aren’t familiar with the brand will still enjoy the experience.”

But Beauchamp emphasizes that no matter how many Walgreens experiences Birchbox opens, it will remain singularly focused on the casual beauty consumer. “You deserve the experience of shopping for beauty to be really delightful, whether you’re beauty-obsessed or just a casual consumer,” says Beauchamp. “Just because you’re practical doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to have joy.”

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