You know that part in every slasher movie when the audience thinks the killer is dead, but he somehow revives himself for a final try? That’s kind of how some technologies work.

Take QR codes. Just a few years ago, Quick Response codes were an industry laughing stock. The humor came from the fact that it was often easier to type in a URL than to line up your smartphone camera to read those little black and white matrix barcodes. Plus, there was the challenge of trying to make them work in ads and marketing materials without being a distraction.

After most of us had written off QR codes, Snapchat gave them a boost of cool by launching QR-based Snapcodes, which make it easier for people to follow you on Snapchat. Lo and behold, at Advertising Week earlier this month, it felt like 2011 again as everyone was rocking QR codes. Amazon, Google, and Instagram have all contracted QR Fever. QR codes are showing up everywhere from the meat aisle of the supermarket to the stock exchange. And this is good news to users: They’re easier to read now, and rather than inevitably leading to another brand promotion, they often provide helpful information such as where your food comes from.

The reappearance of QR made me realize that too many of us are like the medieval mortician in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: eager to jump to conclusions about a technology’s mortality. Beware, there’s a good chance that a technology pronounced dead isn’t. It often takes tech a while to find its niche, but when it does, it’s suddenly useful and ubiquitous.

Technology’s unpredictable path

The conventional wisdom is that we adopt technologies at a much faster rate than ever before. It took 30 years for electricity to reach 10% of the market, for instance, but smartphones achieved 40% penetration in 10 years.

Not every technology has the significance of electricity and smartphones. Many kick around for years. Tablets, for instance, have existed in one form or another since the early 1990s. The Apple Newton launched in 1993, but is perhaps most famous for being the butt of jokes in the Doonesbury comic strip. Microsoft introduced its Tablet PC in 2001 to an indifferent public. It wasn’t until Apple reintroduced the tablet, this time as the iPad in 2010, that it finally took off.

Similarly, while everyone predicted in the early 2000s that we’d soon be watching smart TVs, that never happened. Instead, most of us jury-rigged our dumb TVs with devices such as Roku and Apple TV to become internet-ready. Despite years of rumors, Apple hasn’t created an “iTV” as intuitive as an iPhone.

Years ago, sociologist Everett Rogers introduced a five-part model that mapped out the adoption of innovations. The path runs from innovators to early adopters, then the early majority to the late majority and, finally, laggards. More recently, industry watchers observed that early adopters and early majority latch on quickly, but at that point, things either take off or they don’t. Often they don’t, and the graph looks like a shark’s fin with a huge spike up front and then a sharp falloff.

While that may be true of so-called “Big Bang Disruptors” such as Microsoft Kinect, I’ve noticed that faddish tech such as Bluetooth, RFID, and QR codes wallow in what Gartner calls the “trough of disillusionment” for years, eventually to reemerge when someone finds an application that can capture users’ attention.

The year of Zombie Tech

It looks like 2018 will amount to a banner year for Zombie Tech. Bluetooth is so kludgy that some people don’t bother pairing their phones with rental cars because it’s too much trouble (side note: that’s actually a good move). But Tommy Hilfiger is experimenting with Bluetooth-tagged clothing and retailers are giving Bluetooth beacons another go to compete with Amazon Go. Even RFID, a been-there-done-that technology, has resurfaced as retailers attempt to keep better track of what’s on their shelves. It’s a boon to retailers that realize to fight back against Amazon, they need to make navigating their stores easier and keep better track of their inventory.

Alas, some initially head-turning technologies are still stuck in the trough of despair. Despite all the hype and support from Apple and Google, few people are using their phones to buy anything except Starbucks coffee. In the U.S., less than 1% of purchases occur via mobile phones. Google Glass and other head-mounted technologies appear to be in limbo until further notice, too.

In his book The Change Function, Pip Coburn posited that for a technology to be successful, it has to confront a “user crisis,” but in a way in which the pain of adopting the new technology makes up for the crisis.

For QR codes, the crisis was small–users merely had to type a few letters and symbols into a browser to reach a website. The solution didn’t make up for the crisis because QR code readers weren’t readily available, and having to download one added to the pain. Snapchat including a QR reader into its app simplifies the process and offers a useful and fun application for the codes.

That’s why it’s a bad idea to write off any dismissed technology. Chances are, even if its introduction was disappointing, someone will find a unique way to resurrect a technology that others were eager to write off.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Google Glass comes back in some iteration in the 2020s, or if someone figures out a way to pay with your phone that improves on the seconds-long process of pulling out your credit card. Getting a sense of which technologies are waning and which are coming back requires a close read on the market–and strong communication with your agency partner.

No matter how ridiculous they may seem when originally introduced, Zombie Technologies have a way of reanimating themselves. Except for Second Life. That one’s not coming back.

Angela Johnson is president of the agency McGarryBowen New York.

Muji just made autonomous vehicles slightly more chic. The minimalist Japanese company has teamed up with Finnish autonomous driving company Sensible 4 to create the Gacha shuttle bus, an autonomous vehicle that it claims is the first in the world designed to function in all weather conditions.

For the collaboration, Muji gave the shuttle bus and user experience its sleek design aesthetic, while Sensible 4 provided the autonomous driving technology, including navigation and obstacle detection that can function in heavy rain, fog, and snow–all of which are common in Finland’s long winters. To put its all-weather vehicles through its paces, Sensible 4 headed to arctic Lapland for tests, knowing that autonomous vehicles probably won’t be commercially viable until they can work anywhere, in any weather.

“We are developing these vehicles so that they can become part of [the] daily transportation service chain,” says Harri Santamala, CEO of Sensible 4. “Autonomous vehicles can’t become mainstream until their technology has been insured to work in all climates.”

The vehicle will hit the streets of Helsinki in March 2019 (let’s all plan a trip to Helsinki!) and will then start shuttling passengers around three Finnish cities in real-life traffic, presumably with planned stops at the country’s new Muji store, scheduled to open in Helsinki in November 2019. If tests go as planned, the companies are working to develop an entire Gacha fleet, which they are hoping to roll out in 2020 with the hope of being in mainstream use by 2021.

People love to complain about meetings. They’re often pointless, and attendees feel like there is always more important work they can do in its place. 71% of senior managers believe that meetings are unproductive and inefficient, according to a survey from Harvard Business Review. Another study from the University of Nebraska at Omaha found that Americans waste $37 billion a year attending meetings.

But maybe part of the problem isn’t the meetings themselves, but the physical environment and the social norms we’ve constructed around them. For instance, most conference rooms today are anchored by a long table and rolling chairs for a dozen people. This setup doesn’t exactly invite people to get comfortable and creative. It signals the expectation to comply and follow along. The words and phrases we use to describe meetings also imply sedentary behavior and passivity. “I’d like to sit down with you and talk about this.” “We’re going to sit here until we figure out a solution.” “Grab a seat and let’s get started.”

So if you’ve experimented with every agenda format imaginable and your meetings are still unproductive, consider rethinking your physical meeting space and layout. Here are some ideas that you might want to try.

1. Ditch the standard table-and-chairs setup

Apple CEO Tim Cook said on the David Rubenstein show that 100% of employees would receive standing desks to help promote a healthier lifestyle. This policy is a significant first step, but this thinking needs to extend beyond the cubicle farm and into the conference room environment. Integrating choice and movement into every office space will help people see their options differently and break the long-ingrained habit of sitting. Research supports this. A 2014 study shows that meetings where participants stood up generated a greater sense of excitement about the work than meetings where participants sat down.

2. Don’t stick to one location

When you use same space for every team gathering, you’ll notice that everyone tends to get into “default” meeting mode. Think about it like doing the same workout day in and day out. You might see progress at the beginning, but at some point, you plateau. Now, there are some meetings where being on autopilot isn’t necessarily a bad thing (like a routine update meeting), but when you need your team to solve hard problems, debate complex issues, or develop a fast, thoughtful solution to a client emergency, you need people to think outside the box and get off autopilot. I’d encourage that you either move your meetings elsewhere or establish a “war room” that carries the vibe of action and planning. Going outside might also help your team cultivate new ideas and perspective. When you need to have sensitive conversations, consider going offsite. You’ll be more likely to have an honest dialogue.

3. Cut meetings in half (and then in half again)

Many of you probably think of the day in 30- or 60-minute blocks. As a result, you overestimate how much time you need to achieve the meeting objectives. Challenge the “hour-long” meeting. For status meetings or check-ins, block just 15 minutes to run through the highlights (and encourage people to stand). For more strategic meetings, start by stating the top two or three objectives and use a whiteboard to capture progress. Schedule for no more than 45 minutes for this meeting, and leave a 15-minute buffer for colleagues to make it to their next meeting on time.

4. Encourage colleagues to get up and move around

Research shows that 10 minutes is all it takes to increase mental focus, and another study found 71% of employees reported feeling more focused when they reduce their sitting time by one hour. Encourage your people to get up and move during meetings, whether it’s a long brainstorm or a recap of last quarter’s results. For instance, here at Ergotron, we augment our existing conference room setup with height adjustable furniture, and it’s “normal” in our office for a person to sit or stand at any given point during a meeting.

Take your meeting on the go with a walking meeting, or gather your team together for a quick standing huddle to run through priorities for the week. When they walk away from their desks, employees are forced to leave their technology (and distraction) behind, and they’ll be in a better state to focus on the discussion at hand.

5. Make sure that you implement those changes yourself

Ultimately, employees won’t feel empowered to change their behavior in a meeting if their boss isn’t practicing what they preach. To reap the benefits, you need to lead by example. If you’re in the position to do so, create company policies that support an active workday, like a scheduled movement break during long meetings. When you walk into a meeting, remain on your feet. When you’re running a meeting, explicitly tell people that they should be free to stand up and move (and acknowledge those that do at the end).

Meetings are an inevitable aspect of teamwork. To move a project forward, you need to communicate regularly and work through problems together. But there is no need to make everyone miserable by sticking to a physical layout that doesn’t work. By breaking away from that, you might find that your meetings can be efficient and productive after all.

David Denham is the VP of global marketing at Ergotron. 

Predicting the future of work isn’t just about guessing how AI and automation will change (or eliminate) jobs. It’s looking at how people will get their work done. And according to the latest survey by Upwork and Freelancers Union, it’s going to look at lot like freelancing.

The survey of over 6,000 working adults revealed that more than one in three (35%) Americans freelanced this year. The freelance workforce grew from 53 million to 56.7 million, or 7%, in the past 5 years. Meanwhile, the U.S. workforce only grew 2% (from 103 million to 105.3 million) during that time.

Not only have the ranks of freelancers grown more rapidly than the traditional workforce, but so have the average weekly hours spent freelancing. That number shot up to more than 1 billion hours this year from 998 million in 2015. And they’re happy to do it. A little over half (51%) of all freelancers say no amount of money would get them to take a traditional job.

Freelancers continue to build skills more than the traditional workforce. Nearly three quarters (70%) of freelancers trained to gain more skills vs. 49% of full-time non-freelancers. Only 79% said their college education was useful to the work they do now.

Finally, freelancers are saying they’re more politically active–and 72% are willing to cross party lines to vote for candidates who support affordable and accessible healthcare, higher pay, and retirement for these workers.

Upwork CEO Stephane Kasriel wrote more extensively about the study in an article for Fast Companyhere.

If half of the adults in America picked up this article, they’d struggle to fully comprehend it. About one in seven couldn’t read it at all.

Now, imagine how tough it would be for these men and women to obtain a decent job.

A lack of transportation and affordable childcare are typically cited as the biggest barriers for low-income workers to get ahead. But there’s another fundamental factor that is easily overlooked: A huge part of the America labor force is illiterate.

“When you talk about adult literacy, it sounds like you’re referring to a few folks who fell through the cracks, but that’s not the case at all,” says Jessica Rothenberg-Aalami, the founder and CEO of Cell-Ed, a for-profit social enterprise that is making promising strides in combating the problem with a mobile learning platform targeted at low-skill workers. “It’s a hidden epidemic.”

Formally launched four years ago, Cell-Ed has had early success because it has taken great pains to design its product the right way: through rounds and rounds of testing and iterating, with the daily constraints of its cash- and time-strapped users always kept firmly in mind.

“This isn’t about the tech being glitzy,” says Kyle Athayde, state outreach coordinator at New York’s Office for New Americans, which has made Cell-Ed available to more than 1,500 immigrants over the past three years. “It’s about providing the things that people really need. They’ve made the technology human.”

Accessing Cell-Ed simply requires a phone that can text (although app- and internet-based versions are also available, as is a call-in-only option). Once plugged in, a learner is guided through a series of modules on a chosen topic, such as literacy or numeracy. Each module is made up of dozens of micro-lessons, which are delivered through a combination of audio, video, still images, and written content.

The need for both language and literacy

The vast majority of users, who are foreign-born, tap Cell-Ed to learn not only English as a second language but a full suite of basics: reading and writing (even in their native tongue), math, and soft skills. “Many of them have not gone past sixth grade in their home countries,” notes Laura Gonzalez-Murphy, director of immigration policy and research at New York’s Department of State.

Lessons last no longer than three minutes–perfect for someone to digest during a break at work or while waiting to pick up the kids from school. Meantime, Cell-Ed coaches are available around the clock to support a learner via messaging or a phone call.

“You see people burning through it because they love it,” Athayde says.

Luis Dominguez is among them. He arrived in the United States three years ago from Honduras and has been using Cell-Ed for about an hour a day over the past six months to learn to speak and write in English.

“I understand more,” says Dominguez, who lives on Long Island and is a painter for a construction company. “If I need something, I can ask for it.” He says that because his communication has improved, his boss increasingly trusts him to do a good job. Dominguez’s pay recently went up to $12 an hour from $9, and he’s being asked to work more–gains that he credits directly to Cell-Ed.

Cell-Ed, which last summer received a $1.5 million infusion from four impact-investing funds, charges nonprofits and government agencies an annual license fee of $50 per user (including the live coaching), with high-volume discounts that can cut the price in half. Corporate customers pay more–but still less than $10 a month. Individual learners pay nothing.

An expected explosion in growth

In all, Cell-Ed will serve about 30,000 people this year. By next year, however, it expects to have more than 1 million users–an explosion in growth that Rothenberg-Aalami attributes, in large part, to dozens of client organizations that are poised to start using the system at scale.

For the past few months, six Four Seasons hotels around the country have been piloting Cell-Ed with 100 Spanish-speaking housekeepers, who’ve been using the platform to learn English as well as a specially designed curriculum that reinforces the company’s culture, brand, and service standards.

Now, though, he is convinced that many of the Cell-Ed users have a real chance to become housekeeping coordinators or supervisors–jobs that would have been totally unthinkable before.

“It has enabled them to speak with guests comfortably,” Teague says. “There is a change in their confidence level. They have a different sense of energy.”

What’s happening with the Four Seasons staff is not unusual. A 2014 study issued by the Center for Global Development–one of several scholarly assessments that have validated Cell-Ed’s approach–found that it raised reading levels by the equivalent of two to four years in only four months. And those advances, in turn, were “correlated with an increase in students’ self-esteem by the end of the program.”

A window into poverty

In many ways, it’s since she was a little girl that Rothenberg-Aalami has been considering how those who are less fortunate can lift themselves up if they’re given the means.

In 1976, when she was four years old, Rothenberg-Aalami’s free-spirited parents sold their house in the heart of Silicon Valley and bought an old school bus, which was painted mint green and equipped with enough bunk beds for her and her four siblings. Their father was a Stanford-educated architect. But he had difficulty holding down a job, and as he bounced from place to place in search of his next work assignment over the next seven years, the bus rolled up and down the West Coast. It even made it as far as Alaska.

Their migratory existence also meant that Rothenberg-Aalami attended a dozen or so different schools as she grew up–and the inequality between them left a deep impression, as well. In a rich district, there would be state-of-the-art facilities, ski teams, arts programs, and more. In a poor district, the students didn’t even have textbooks.

“It always felt rigged by birthplace,” Rothenberg-Aalami says. “It always felt unfair.”

She went on to earn her doctorate in economic development at the University of Oregon, and during the next dozen years ran companies that undertook a string of technology-driven research and commercial projects focused on creating more opportunity for those around the globe who’d been left behind.

“That’s really been her life’s passion–helping those who are hardest to reach,” says Jeff Bruner, Rothenberg-Aalami’s twin brother, who after a career at Hewlett-Packard and Intel joined Cell-Ed as its technology director.

Despite the magnitude of the adult literacy crisis, most of those needing to make up lost ground are pushed toward traditional classroom settings–even though many of these people can’t possibly follow through because of cost or work schedules or other obstacles.

Beyond that, “there just aren’t a ton of products out there,” says Kelly Tyler, who runs the Office of Education and Literacy at the Los Angeles Public Library.

That’s why she is so thankful to have found Cell-Ed and another program called Learning Upgrade, which helps people absorb English and math through songs, video, games, and rewards. Both are finalists for the $7 million Adult Literacy XPrize, which has sought out solutions that are measurable, easy to use, and engaging.

When it comes to Cell-Ed, Sandra Portillo would certainly confirm that it’s engaging. The Los Angeles resident has been using Cell-Ed for about a month through the local branch of her library. Already, she’s hooked.

“It is an excellent tool for me,” says Portillo, a single mother of two who works as a nanny and hopes that her dedication will eventually lead to a better job. “If I learn a word a day, I will have 365 words.”

Her greatest challenge so far, she says, is in writing. But she seems determined to stick with it, to be “constant in my studying.” After all, even more than teaching Portillo to write all of those words, Cell-Ed is giving her a shot at writing something much bigger: her future.

Millennials have a serious voting problem.

Even though their group (anyone born between 1981 and 1996) represents the largest bloc of eligible voters, they just don’t show up at the polls. According to Pew Research Center, only 51% of millennials voted in the 2016 presidential election, compared to Gen X (63%), baby boomers (69%), and the silent generation (70%).

In an effort to spark some excitement around this year’s midterm elections, creative studio Gold Front has created The Museum of Voting, “a one-day-only, insanely Instagrammable pop-up experience,” i.e., just your local polling station.

Gold Front aims to reframe the voting experience by highlighting all the millennial-friendly aspects of it, which, apparently are just selfies and stickers.

To be honest, the trope of the vain and self-absorbed millennial is stale. There are some rather cringey moments in the campaign’s video, like one millennial assuring another millennial that he can DJ at the polling station. Yes, millennials are an important part of the electorate. And yes, they should definitely exercise their civic duty more often. But The Museum of Voting is low-key insulting. What the campaign does get right is calling out voter suppression and the importance of sharing your own voting experience on social which a) really could inspire your friends to vote; and b) may be illegal so please check your state’s rules on the matter.

But Gold Front isn’t completely off the mark. New York Magazine recently published a roundup of quotes from 12 young adults who are iffy on voting in the midterms. Some of their reasons highlight problems that should definitely be addressed, like the opaqueness of certain voting processes or candidates being out of touch (while others say, “I just didn’t have the time and energy”), speak directly to the millennial demographic The Museum of Voting is targeting.

That group of millennials who are too tired or don’t know how a post office works certainly need a jolt to get them to the polls. But it’s unclear whether mildly mocking them is the way to go about it.

When Halloween falls on a Friday or Saturday night, it is obviously time to party. (Unless carrying out social interactions with people dressed like Bob’s Burgers characters is your own personal nightmare, that is.)

When the most spooktacular day of the year falls on a Wednesday, however, as it does this year, the far more sensible option for job-holding adults is to forego the fiesta and maybe watch a horror movie.

But which one?!

In the age of infinite content, it’s hard to choose something to watch in any genre, but horror is particularly fraught. As much as the overall quality of horror movies has risen in recent years in tandem with a newfound prestige, much of horror production remains a schlock factory. The fact that so many fun entries in the genre get deathly low scores on Rotten Tomatoes renders the review aggregator even more useless than usual. Fret not, though, Fast Company readers, as I have put together a guide for finding your perfect Halloween movie.

Have a look below for 13 options, broken out into categories scarily consistent with the themes of our coverage.

Technology

Pulse is a Japanese horror movie from 2001 wherein the internet has become a breeding ground for malevolent spirits. I think we can all agree that no film of the past 17 years was more prescient.

Cell is a recent Stephen King adaptation starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson (who previously teamed up for another King adaptation, 1408. The newer movie begins when an electronic signal broadcast across global mobile networks turns every single person with a working cell phone into a zombie. It’s a horror movie cautionary tale that goes a long way to make the same case as every essay you’ve ever read about the magic of unplugging.

Office politics

Newly disgraced director James Gunn wrote 2017’s The Belko Experiment in between Guardians of the Galaxy movies. It’s a nasty piece of work about what happens one day when an entire office becomes mysteriously and abruptly locked down and a voice announces that two employees must be murdered or else four will be killed at random. What follows is an ever-heightening glimpse at just how cutthroat office culture can be.

The brilliance of the 2000 film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s notoriously toxic American Psycho is that the scenes in which colleagues compare business cards (scenes invented for the film) are every bit as tense as the murder scenes in this famous cultural commentary on late-’80s capitalism.

Social Media

Much like the recent John Cho thriller, Searching, Unfriended unfolds entirely on a computer screen. However, only Unfriended features the ghost of a young woman who killed herself after going viral in an unflattering way, haunting her former friends on social media. A standalone sequel from earlier this year, Unfriended: Dark Web, removes the supernatural element from the first film but equally emphasizes the perils of leaving too deep a digital footprint.

Research and development

The Fly is David Cronenberg’s viscerally disturbing ode to why it is never a good idea to field-test a new product before it is ready.

Work-life balance

An immediately pre-Matrix Keanu Reeves stars in The Devil’s Advocate as the titular assistant to Al Pacino’s Beelzebub. Reeves plays a Southern lawyer with an undefeated track record who moves to New York to join Pacino’s literally unholy law firm. Ultimately, the scary hours Reeves keeps to retain his undefeated status comes at the expense of wife Charlize Theron’s well-being. None of us need to work for the devil himself to find ourselves in a similar position.

Natalie Portman won an Oscar for her role in Black Swan, a ballerina set to play the dainty White Swan in a production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake by the ridiculously prestigious New York City Ballet company. She would rather play the role of Black Swan, however, and the outsize pressure she puts on herself to win the part from a dancer played by Mila Kunis should be familiar to anyone who has ever felt competitive at work. (Hopefully not this competitive, though.)

The gig economy

Unlike many other found footage horror films, Creep’s premise completely justifies the use of the trope. Director and co-creator Patrick Brice plays a videographer who responds to an ad placed by the film’s other co-creator Mark Duplass, totally magnetic in the role. Brice’s character is ostensibly there to make a video for Duplass’s unborn son, but his true purpose there should terrify anyone who spends each day looking for new clients to service.

Women in STEM

In Morgan, Kate Mara works for a genetic-engineering company that’s created an artificial being named Morgan with nanotechnology-infused synthetic DNA. When Mara goes to investigate the titular character’s supposed stability, what follows is a perhaps slightly dramatized metaphor for the battle all women in STEM face to achieve equal pay and respect.

Human resources

The Temp, featuring Lara Flynn Boyle as the murderously ambitious titular character, demonstrates just how hard it can be to find and retain top talent.

Audience engagement

Finally, there’s Misery, Rob Reiner’s Oscar-winning Stephen King adaptation, a cautionary tale about what happens when you turn your back on power users.

The path forward in quantum computing is unclear, but for big governments and a range of companies, the destination isn’t: quantum advantage, or quantum supremacy, the point at which a quantum computer can outperform a classical computer at a particular task.

The global race is on. At latest count, the California company Rigetti is in the lead, as it aims to build a 128-qubit computer within a year.

Qubits, or quantum bits, are exponentially more powerful than the bits of classical computing. A bit is either “0” or “1.” But a qubit—based on the spin of an electron for instance—can be both states at the same time. One of quantum’s quirks is it effectively allows a system to compute problems with a vast multitude of different outcomes. The problems include everything from encryption-breaking and taxi routing to neuromorphic computing and molecule modeling. Some industries could experience “exponential speedups,” according to a recent commentary in Science.

But it’s early days. Even IBM, a pioneer of quantum information theory, already appears to be weary of the “hype.” Of course, it’s eager to commercialize the technology, too: Like Rigetti and D-Wave, it recently opened up its cloud-based resources to startups worldwide.

The company thinks it’s found a solution. It recently revealed its tiniest quantum chip yet–it’s so small that it can sit comfortably on a pencil eraser. The chip is powered by qubits that are each more than a thousand times smaller than a single strand of hair. In a typical superconducting quantum computer, qubits live in small loops of superconducting wire cooled to very low temperatures. Intel’s transistor-free chip relies on a more manageable, readily available, and quintessentially traditional component: silicon. Some researchers say the retro element that inspired an industry (and a metaphor, a competitive housing market, and a television show) might be key for the next phase of quantum computing.

“I am very optimistic about the status of silicon spin qubits,” says Jason Petta, a professor of physics at Princeton University. He recently authored a paper published in Nature that describes how his team successfully carried information about an electron’s spin—that is, its state—across a computing chip.

Petta’s team showed how to effectively schlep the data using light. By applying a microwave field, they were able to exchange a quantum of energy between an atom (an electron) and light (a microwave frequency photo). The result was a simple yet programmable system: the quantum control of a single electron, with the potential to send information to another qubit as much as a centimeter away.

For this work, silicon is key. It has the unique capacity to house special electron spin-orbit interactions that can be manipulated using only electricity. These interactions typically last longer in silicon than in other materials, but they can be difficult to control.

To combat the pesky problem of interference—including from the nuclei of the device itself—Petta and his colleagues used an array of double quantum dots. (Double dots work better than single dots because the electrons swap their spin states back and forth, which keeps the carefully choreographed exchange of information moving smoothly.

The new research demonstrates the potential for a silicon quantum chip that could scale up, Petta says. That could give other quantum computing researchers a run for their money.

“Single qubit gates”—the machine’s basic quantum circuits—”are at a level that is comparable to superconducting qubits, our most direct solid state competitor,” Petta says.

“That would be truly easier” than using superconducting qubits, Clarke says, “although it’s yet to be proven.”

He adds that silicon qubits have the potential to operate at “ever so slightly higher temperatures” than superconducting qubits. “What that means is you could probably put integrated circuits closer to the qubit plane. These will basically bring control electronics closer,” he says. Besides helping the devices scale even faster, silicon quibits could accelerate the miniaturization of machines that typically require their own rooms.

The device described in Petta’s paper runs on only two qubits, and Petta says scaling up will take a long time. His lab is now measuring a four qubit device.

“We have a working design for nine qubits that will keep us busy for a few years. Scaling beyond tens of qubits involves a significant amount of engineering,” he says.

Intel has partnered with another team conducting quantum-computing-through-silicon research: the Vandersypen lab at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. It has committed $50 million over 10 years for the project. The company fabricates the chips near its headquarters in Oregon, and ships them to Delft to be characterized in quantum research.

The lab’s recent paper in Nature describes how silicon can be formed into a processor that crunches quantum algorithms. They created a programmable computer made from two quantum dots: a “two-qubit quantum processor in a silicon device.” One algorithm they executed, called Grover’s search, is known for its potential to dig up information in a database faster than traditional computers.

Toward life-changing numbers of qubits

The quantum computer of the future will be more than just a quantum processor, in the same way that today’s computer is more than just a microprocessor. The production depends on many moving parts, from the control electronics to the architecture.

Significant technical challenges remain unsolved. The questions are so complex that they don’t seem to stop: Can you get two qubits to talk to each other with a high enough (that is, requisite) fidelity? Can you get them to entangle? Once you have two qubits entangled, can you get the next pair entangled? And the next pair? And the next?

“Each qubit has its own personality today,” Clarke says. Even a device with 90% fidelity isn’t good enough to pass muster for a large-scale rollout. Yet research groups are inching closer. This year, a team reported fidelities over 60% using natural silicon, and another group recently pushed the two-qubit gate fidelity very close to 95% using isotopically enriched silicon.

“It is clear there is more work to do to achieve greater than 99% fidelity, but the increasing trend is encouraging,” Petta says. “We know which problems require our immediate attention to improve the two-qubit gate fidelity.”

Another fundamental limitation is the state of fast control electronics: They’re just not fast enough for spin qubits yet.

“These qubits don’t stick around very long,” Clarke says. Their coherence times are too short to work in a large-scale system. Though researchers have proposed algorithms that can put a qubit on life support—that is, extend its lifetime—they haven’t been proven yet.

Another key limitation, Petta emphasizes, is “material, material, material.” Spin qubits require exceptionally clean silicon, in terms of chemical purity and isotopic enrichment.

“To date, the U.S. hasn’t supported a significant materials-related program for spin qubits. I would like to see a significant effort on materials for spin-based quantum computing soon,” he says.

Washington has been showing more interest in quantum computing in general. The Department of Energy recently announced it is devoting $218 million for 85 quantum research projects across the country, and the National Science Foundation is earmarking $31 million in funding for quantum research. Petta’s own research into spin qubits has been funded in part by the Dept. of Defense, which is eager to beat Chinese government labs in the quantum race.

A bill moving through Congress could bring more welcome funds, and the National Quantum Initiative Act has already been approved by the House. If passed by the Senate, the act would provide $1.3 billion—with a “b”—over the next 10 years to support R&D in quantum computing.

Meanwhile, Rigetti is offering a $1 million prize to a team that can build an app on its 128-qubit system that demonstrates real-world quantum advantage. Generally, it’s thought that quantum computers need to compute using at least 50 qubits to begin outpacing the work of classical computers.

Still, estimating is a tricky problem. The number of qubits necessary to achieve quantum advantage for a particular computing task largely depends on the task, says Clarke. At Intel, he’s used protein-folding as an example goal to advocate for quantum computing internally, but believes that other applications will take much longer.

“I think that cryptography is sufficiently complex, so that the first- or second-generation quantum computer isn’t likely to have an impact,” he says. “It’s going to be a million qubits before a quantum computer is going to change your life or mine. And we’re a long ways away from that.”

On the heels of its splashy IPO, Utah-based Pluralsight added two high-profile female executives to its board.

The ed-tech startup, which was named one of Fast Company‘s Most Innovative Companies in 2017, added Leah Johnson, founder and CEO of LCJ Solutions, a communications consulting practice, and Bonita Stewart, vice president of global partnerships at Google.

These appointments buck the current trend of female representation on boards at public companies. The tech sector ranks dead last, with female CEOs at only 2.4% of the companies and an average board representation of 16.1%. Currently, only 20.1% of boards globally have at least three women, which is the “critical mass” of women needed to lead to better financial performance, according to research.

The happier and healthier future promised by CRISPR-Cas9, the gene-snipping technology that has been heralded as a potential way to treat cancer and other genetic diseases, may take a little longer to achieve. Researchers in Germany found that 96% of the people in their study had a pre-existing immunity to CRISPR.

For the new study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Medicine, researchers took blood samples from 48 healthy volunteers and exposed them to Cas9, the DNA-cutting enzyme derived from Streptococcus pyogenes, which is one of the most commonly used in CRISPR research. As Xconomy first reported, the researchers found that 96% of the people were immune to Cas9, and 85% had antibodies against it.

While being immune to CRISPR sounds bad, CRISPR’s gene editing is typically built on the use of the bacterial protein Cas9. Scientists get the Cas9 from either Staphylococcus aureus, which is either harmless or the cause of staph infections, or from Streptococcus pyogenes, which causes strep throat and can lead to so-called flesh-eating bacteria if it spreads to other parts of the body. So it’s good that your body is immune, even it makes CRISPR’s seeming miracle slightly harder to achieve. For now, scientists are developing work-arounds for those of us with an immunity to CRISPR proteins, including potentially using other enzymes to cut and paste DNA.

This isn’t the first time that scientists have warned about this issue. Back in January, Stanford researchers posted a paper, before it was peer reviewed, noting that the human immune system may be the wrench in the CRISPR works. The research caused the price of CRISPR stocks to tumble, just like when another study was released showing that the DNA editing technique could result in unintended genomic consequences.

As scientists work toward human testing, for now, let’s stick to chocolate.

A six-month pilot program will see an automated border agent question travelers on non-EU borders in Hungary, Latvia, and Greece, Gizmodo reports.

The system will ask travelers security questions, such as questions about what’s in their luggage, while scanning their faces for “micro-gestures” that can indicate if they’re lying. The bot will be calibrated based on people’s ethnicity, language, and gender.

It’s part of an EU-funded experimental system called iBorderCtrl. A test of an earlier system by some of the same researchers saw a roughly 76% accuracy rate at detecting people who lied or told the truth at experimenter request, though the team thinks they can get the accuracy up to closer to 85%.

To start out, the system won’t unilaterally block anyone from entering the EU, though it may send some people off to human agents for further assessment. The test comes as countries around the world are increasingly deploying biometrics at airports and border crossings, raising concerns about accuracy and privacy.

Baseball is America’s pastime. It’s part of our identity and our culture. Americans love the sport, and the national camaraderie the comes with it, while rooting for their favorite team. That’s why I was proud to pitch for the 2018 National League Central Division Champion Milwaukee Brewers this year. I saw how my city of Milwaukee came together to cheer us on towards our goal of the World Series. And while we lost our bid for the series, there’s a bigger test ahead for us. It requires that we come together, just like we do with sports, to address the very real threats from climate change.

These threats are impacting every community, including mine. In playing for the Milwaukee Brewers, I represent a city with a strong heritage in the beer industry. But get this, climate change is now going to impact beer as well. Recently, a new study noted that drought, heatwaves, and extreme weather associated with climate change will drastically reduce crop yields of barley, a key ingredient in beer. This is going to double the price of beer for consumers and have a huge impact on my city’s beer industry. But this isn’t the only climate change impact that Milwaukee and Wisconsin are facing. Flooding is on the rise throughout our entire state due to torrential rains, threatening our neighborhoods and infrastructure.

These threats are becoming more frequent and formidable for all of America, not just Milwaukee. Earlier this month, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that we’ve got only 12 years to avert total climate catastrophe. And each week, it seems, new scientific and economic reports highlight the growing threats to industries and regions from climate change. Amidst these dire reports, communities around the country continue to bear the brunt of climate change in the form of hurricanes, storm surges, wild fires, and flooding.

That’s why we can’t keep kicking the climate action can down the road. We need to come together to acknowledge climate change and work together to take real action. While we know that the earth’s climate is always in flux, we also know that the excessive use of fossil fuels is making the climate change at a faster and faster rate that harms our way of life and negatively impacts our health, our economy, and our security. Reducing our overall energy use, making everything more energy efficient, and transitioning to renewable energy, then, are necessary steps for us to take.

The low-hanging fruit on this front would be to first get electric and gas utilities to work together, with our states and local communities, to transition to lower-carbon power. That’s a no-brainer. And then let’s electrify everything, from our buildings to our cars, so they can be powered by renewable energy.

While doing that, let’s invest in our cities and towns so they’re better prepared to respond to the health, economic, and security risks from floods, storms, and heat waves. They’re getting hit hard now and need our help. But it’s not just cities that need support. Let’s make sure our farmers and ranchers are equipped with the most sustainable practices, so they can continue to feed the world in ways that are less water, pesticide, and carbon intensive.

Lastly, let’s make sure we’re wisely using our increasingly threatened natural resources. We depend on natural resources for everything. Our entire economy runs on natural capital. So we can’t be quite so careless anymore in how we treat our forests, for example, or even our food supply. Our forests are the lungs that allow us to breathe by absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, and indiscriminate deforestation is just making the planet hotter, drier, and less inhabitable. Protecting and restoring this asset, then, should be our number-one priority.

We can do this, but the clock is ticking loudly. We have to act fast as 12 years comes quickly. Just 12 years ago, as an example the St. Louis Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers were playing in the World Series. Both cities now face serious climate impacts–as do the animals their mascots represent.

If we want our favorite American pastime to persevere far into the future, we’ve got to change the game and fast. And since Americans love a good competition, this should be an easy challenge and easy test of our tenacity and teamwork. So, let’s do this. Working together we can win together. And I want us to win.

Brent Suter is a starting pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Every day, it seems, we’re confronted by reminders that we’re living through times of unprecedented conflict, division, and threat to our future in the U.S., and on this planet. Just last week, leaders on the political left were mailed bomb-laden packages, and a man killed 11 people, including a Holocaust survivor, during services at a synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27. Underpinning these horrific shocks are more pervasive worries: We’re still not making progress on climate change, and with the midterm elections less than a week away, the country continues to feel fractured.

The most productive way to channel the anxiety that circulates around everything that’s happening: Voting on November 6. But people are, in all honesty, probably doing a fair bit of stress eating to cope, too. In an effort to tie this fairly universal coping mechanism back to political effort, Ben & Jerry’s has released, as of October 30, a new flavor intended to motivate people to take action.

To address issues of racial inequity, Ben & Jerry’s partnered with Color of Change, a nonprofit that uses both political and social organizing to break down barriers that unjustly bar black people from opportunities. The Women’s March organization, after hosting the historic demonstrations the day after Trump’s inauguration, continues to advocate for women’s rights and mobilize women to create political change. Ben & Jerry’s is also supporting Neta, a fast-growing independent media platform covering the Texas-Mexico border and highlighting the experiences of residents of the region, as well as people attempting to pass through, and Honor the Earth, an indigenous community-led organization advocating for clean energy and environmental protection.

Taking a political stance is not new to Ben & Jerry’s, CEO Matthew McCarthy says. “It’s very consistent with things we’ve been doing for decades now. Fighting to support social justice and marginalized people everywhere has been part of the company’s DNA of what we do.” In 2009, for instance, the company rebranded its Chubby Hubby flavor as Hubby Hubby to support same-sex marriage, and in 2016, it launched EmpowerMint to support voting rights.

In a first for the company, Ben & Jerry’s partnered with the prominent Oakland-based artist and activist Favianna Rodriguez, who has created art for various movements around immigration, women’s rights, and the environment, to design the graphics for the campaign and pints.

While many brands and companies are still hesitant to engage in political topics at all, Ben & Jerry’s is quite the opposite. But through this new flavor, McCarthy says, the company is making a statement that while they want their opinion to be known, they want to emphasize the organizations that are doing the work on the ground to resist the Trump administration’s policies. Ben & Jerry’s, and the new flavor, are a means of directing people to those organizations.

“The heart of this campaign is support,” McCarthy says. “It’s about pushing forward the issues that we care about, and supporting the organizations and leaders that are doing that.”

The mystery of what caused Lion Air flight 610 to crash into the Java Sea on Monday is still unfolding, but Boeing investors seem to have shaken off concerns that the tragedy signals broader issues for the aerospace giant.

Shares of Boeing have almost completely rebounded after dropping nearly 7% shortly after the news broke. The stock price hit a high of $363.40 today, which is about where it was before the crash.

Lion Air’s brand-new Boeing 737 MAX 8 went down just 13 minutes after it took off from Jakarta, and the pilots had reportedly requested clearance to return to the airport, although they did not mention any kind of emergency, per CNN. However, flight data and eyewitnesses reported that the same aircraft was behaving erratically on an earlier flight.

In a statement, the company offered its “heartfelt sympathies” to the victims and their loved ones, and said it was providing technical assistance at the direction of government authorities investigating the incident. All 189 people on board the plane are presumed to have perished.

According to the New York Times, Indonesian investigators have zeroed in on the location of the flight’s black boxes, so there’s a good chance we’ll have more information soon.

Hims, the direct-to-consumer brand dedicated to boosting men’s self-esteem by way of penis pills, hygiene products, and hair loss gummies, now has an ambitious new venture: Hers.

Nearly a year since its launch, the startup is expanding its easy-to-access telemedicine offerings. The sister site will similarly focus on affordable, FDA-approved, medical-grade products for all age groups, from teens to menopausal women.

The line includes prescription and over-the-counter sexual wellness products like birth control and Addyi, the only FDA-approved medication for hypoactive sexual desire disorder. There are also beauty and skincare items, including those combatting hair loss, acne, and melasma.

Related:Can Hims become Goop for men?

“[With Hers], they’re bypassing waiting in line at pharmacies,” says founder and CEO Andrew Dudum. “They’re bypassing scheduling appointments and paying copays. They’re bypassing awkward conversations with their doctor.”

Telemedicine explodes

The telemedicine sector has witnessed a flush of investment in the last two years as Silicon Valley and the medical industry attempt to address two trends: an aging population looking for alternative care, and younger generations accustomed to efficient, cost-effective solutions. For patients in remote areas or with mobility limitations, telehealth can be a welcome option.

According to a report from Transparency Market Research, the global telehealth market is expected to reach $19.5 billion by 2025, growing at a rate of 13% from 2017 to 2025. In 2016, it was valued at $6 billion.

Hims raised $97 million so far for its multi-generational holistic approach to men’s wellness. Among its cloud pharmacy competitors are brands like Roman, which raised $88 million in funding, and retail stalwarts such as CVS.

Hims found success with its cheeky, not-so-subtle sexual health branding and affordable price points achieved by manufacturing its own products. It uses FDA-approved active ingredients once patented by and exclusively available to big pharmaceutical companies at up to 80% off what the big guys were charging.

From Hims to Hers

It was last fall, during the initial launch weeks, that Dudum’s executive team realized their sales model could just as easily benefit women. The founder says the women at his company asked: Wait, why are we just focusing on one gender?

“[Women] are exceptionally educated about the options and they’ve done the research,” says Dudum. “They might not know everything, but they have a pretty good idea of the questions they want to ask and options that exist. The problem is that the system is not in their control. They’re constantly burdened with unnecessary steps that men, frankly, are not [subjected to].”

Women are tired of doctors failing to take their concerns seriously, or having to take time off work to visit the doctor, which often involve expensive co-pays. Some resent the hassle of going in person to talk to a specialist about acne, when they could have just sent high-resolution images of their skin. Others wonder why they need a checkup every few months for something as simple as a birth control refill.

“The existing system gets in their way of getting the medicine that they know they need,” says Dudum. “Hers is focused on issues we know women care about and getting them true access to medicine in the easiest way possible.”

Related:Telemedicine startup Roman just raised $88 million to help you quit smoking

For example, 50% of women report some degree of hair loss, which is a common post-pregnancy concern. A Hers survey found 70% of women are worried about losing their hair, though “it’s not something women talk about,” says Dudum. Hers offers solutions in varying degrees: A DHT shampoo ($27 for a 6.8-ounce bottle) to combat overly shedding hair, minoxidil ($15 for a 2-ounce bottle) for thinning hair, and supplements ($16 for 60 vitamins) that claim to strengthen follicles from within.

The team spent the better part of the last year building a telemedicine platform in the 25 states where they operate. Depending on the state, consumers will have access to live licensed physicians–general practitioners, dermatologists, and ob gyns. Care will encompass a mix of texts, phone calls, photos, and video chats for medical consultations. Those doctors then work with a network of pharmacies across the country to get medicine fulfilled and sent out the very same day.

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someone in our comments coined the term #cocktus and we are v grateful tysm

A post shared by hims (@hims) on Jan 14, 2018 at 1:55pm PST

On the branding side, Hers worked to differentiate itself from Hims with a more sophisticated, grown-up aesthetic. Hims might have caught men’s eyes with its phallic cacti and millennial pink backgrounds, but Hers is going for something a little less stylized.

“Hers is Hims’ more refined, older badass sister,” brand lead Hilary Coles tells Fast Company.

The campaign was entirely staffed by women–from the copywriter to the director behind the camera. The models, meanwhile, are all over the age of 30. The images were shot on film to portray a grainier, more realistic representation of women.

“With Hims, it was more breaking through stigmatized issues through humor,” says Coles. “With women, it was about earning their trust.”

Betting on big

As Fast Company previously reported, telehealth is quickly being adopted by both the consumer and the medical professional. According to a recent medical survey by Kantar Media, 2 out of 5 physicians participate in telemedicine, or plan to within the next year. For those who don’t, 80% feel that a percentage of their patients could be successfully diagnosed or treated via telemedicine.

But there are still hurdles to overcome, namely, that telemedicine is still considered “less than” traditional checkups. A recent survey found that nearly half of consumers would feel less comfortable during a telehealth visit versus an in-person diagnosis, while two-thirds weren’t even sure telemedicine was covered by their insurer.

“In the beginning, we did hundreds of orders a day,” recalls Dudum. “Now we have thousands of men coming to us a day seeking medical treatment across a dozen different SKUs [stock keeping units].”

Dudum anticipates the same reaction with women and prepared an infrastructure that can accommodate high volume. While it may seem like women already have plenty of options on the market, he says women report a different story: It’s hard to get everything they want shipped to their house without sacrificing hours.

“Hers is trying to empower them to make purchases in their own time, in their own hands, based on their own education, and with the help of the platform and physicians who are guiding them toward the right safe options . . . but hopefully taking out a lot of the [hassle] that’s involved.”

Plug your devices into a new smart outlet for a week, and it will use AI to find patterns in your energy consumption–and then suggests a schedule for your gadgets to help you save energy.

The outlet, which also graphs energy use in real time and helps you find the most energy-sucking appliances and gadgets in your home, is the first to use artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“The key for us here is to make the whole thing as easy as possible,” says Hasty Granbery, founder and CEO of Currant, the startup making the new Currant Smart Outlet. “If you trying to persuade somebody to do something that’s good for the environment but requires a lot of effort on their part, they’ll tend to do it for a while and then they’ll kind of fall off in doing it.”

Four years ago, Granbery started tracking his own electricity use–armed with a low-tech electricity meter and a spreadsheet–after getting an electric bill that said that he was using more power than his neighbors. He started discovering which devices used vampire energy, like a toaster oven that used almost three watts of power while on standby. “We were spending more money on it not toasting things than toasting stuff,” he says.

The DIY analysis helped his family cut their electric bills, but it was hard to keep up. The new device is designed to make the process simpler. If the outlet is in his kitchen, for example, it scan automatically turn off the toaster oven at night or during the day when the family is at work.

Unlike some other energy monitor that uses a sensor on a fuse box and then tries to identify all of the devices in the home by their electronic signatures, one Currant Smart Outlet can only track the two devices that are plugged in. But Granbery argues that devices that work at the meter level can’t detect appliances that pull a low amount of power over long periods, so the outlet is more accurate. The outlet can also be moved from room to room to identify the biggest power users and what to change. (It’s also possible to buy multiple smart outlets to cover the whole house, though at $59.99 a pop, that would be pricey.)

Some changes the app identifies may be simple–a fridge, for example, will waste energy if the back and bottom aren’t vacuumed regularly. “An average refrigerator becomes about 40% less efficient over five years if you don’t vacuum it,” says Granbery. “It’s exactly the kind of insidious problem that we want to tackle that because it’s just a small change every month. You don’t notice it in your overall electric bill.”

Small changes, including turning off always-on devices, do matter. Each year, electronics and appliances in the U.S. use around $19 billion worth of electricity, or the output of 50 power plants when consumers aren’t actively using them, according to a 2015 study. “The goal here is that this is a small step in a much larger strategy of tackling world energy usage,” he says. “It’s a tiny lever and it’s a sort of a humble thing, but it can have a massive effect.”

A year ago, Royal Dutch Shell, now the largest oil company in the world, acquired NewMotion, a company with thousands of electric car charging points throughout Europe. A month later, Shell started installing fast chargers at some of its largest gas stations. In late October, the company started installing ultrafast chargers that can fully charge the newest electric cars in 10 minutes.

It’s one small piece of a company in transition as it grapples with how to address climate change. “If you want to be a long-term relevant company that is on the right side of history, you have to be involved in this discussion, because it’s the most important discussion of our time,” CEO Ben van Beurden tells Fast Company.

By 2035, Shell plans to cut its carbon footprint 25%, and 50% by 2050–including the emissions not only from its own operations but from customers using its products. The cuts are in line with the company’s “Sky scenario,” a vision released earlier this year that considers what it might take for the world to meet the first goal of the Paris climate agreement, to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius.

“If we know that in order to stay well within 2 degrees C, these are things that will need to happen in the energy system and in different countries, we can sort of size up the challenge and understand how difficult it may become, and value the opportunities as well,” van Beurden says.

The company’s carbon footprint reduction goals are hugely ambitious. At the same time–like other corporations that have made similar commitments under the Science-Based Target Initiative–aiming to keep warming below 2 degrees isn’t ambitious enough. Scientists now say more is needed to prevent the worst impacts of climate change: A recent landmark climate report from the UN explains how critical it is to aim to limit emissions to 1.5 degrees–and suggests that to do that we need to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. In Shell’s Sky scenario, the world wouldn’t reach net zero emissions until 2070.

“2050, in our mind, is simply too fast for that to happen, given what we know about the energy system, given what we know about the policy changes that we see coming, the mind-set of governments, and the technologies available now,” says David Hone, the chief climate change advisor for the company. “So that gives you 2070, and we think that that’s technically possible.”

If massive reforestation–planting forests in an area the size of Brazil–is added to the scenario, it would be possible to reach net zero emissions by 2060, Hone says. The world would warm more than 1.5 degrees, but then return to that level by the end of the century. But overshooting the goal, even temporarily, would be risky; there’s a bigger chance of triggering irreversible impacts, including going past a tipping point for melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.

Still, given our current trajectory, even keeping global warming below 2 degrees would itself be an enormous achievement for society (and something that another recent report said that has almost “zero chance” of happening). In Shell’s Sky scenario, the company says it thinks that it would be impossible to buy an internal combustion engine anywhere in the world. That decade, they predict that renewable energy would overtake fossil fuels as the primary source of energy. Global deforestation would end. An enormous number of plants with systems to capture carbon–around 10,000 by 2070–would capture emissions. Global warming, according to an independent analysis of the scenario from MIT researchers, would stop around 1.75 degrees Celsius.

Hone argues that the crucial step will be to set a global price on carbon; without it, he says, adding carbon capture technology to power plants isn’t economically feasible. (Shell does already have carbon capture tech on some plants in Canada, where carbon pricing exists now.) The recent UN report suggests that emissions need to peak in 2020. Hone says that widespread carbon pricing isn’t likely until at least a decade later. With that economic lever in place, emissions could begin to drop and the large-scale energy transition could occur quickly over the subsequent decades–but not quickly enough to reach net zero by 2050.

“From a science perspective, the ideal situation is emissions fall rapidly immediately, but Sky has built into it thinking the necessary industrial and political and policy steps that need to be taken to get emissions to fall sharply,” says Hone. “We believe the minimum time that would take is 10 years.”

Shell envisions that oil demand won’t peak until 2025, and natural gas demand won’t peak until the mid-2030s. It expects that demand for oil products–from petrochemicals used in plastic to jet fuel–will continue to grow in the near future, even as some other markets, like fuel for passenger cars, begin to shift to electricity. The company is growing its portfolio of natural gas, which has a lower carbon footprint than oil; it also plans to expand further into the electricity market and invest in more renewables as the transition continues.

Over the last 12 months, the company has invested in companies including GI Energy, which designs solar microgrids and other sustainable energy solutions, Sonnen, which makes home batteries to store solar power and creates “virtual power plants” for neighborhoods,” Solar Now, which provides off-grid solar in Uganda and Kenya, and others.

In December, it acquired First Energy, a digital power company in the U.K. that owns no power plants or transmission lines. In January, it invested in Husk Power, a company that makes mini-grids that run on solar, biomass, and batteries for rural India and Africa. In May, it invested in Axiom Energy, a company that makes thermal energy storage. In August, it invested in Ample, a Silicon Valley startup still in stealth that makes a robotic electric car charging system. Each year, the company expects to spend $1 billion to $2 billion growing its “New Energies” business–though this is still a tiny fraction of the company overall. Oil and gas still remain very much the core.

Critics and climate activists suggest that Shell shouldn’t wait for a price on carbon or other potential future policies–like bans on gas and diesel cars, to move more quickly. “In the last 30 or 40 years since climate change science has been pretty well established, companies that have continued to rely heavily on fossil fuels–and profit at very high levels, like Shell and Exxon and others–have an obligation to bear significant costs now to contribute to addressing the climate change problem,” says Brian Berkey, assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Adding carbon capture technology would cut into the company’s profits without a price on carbon, but Berkey argues that they have a responsibility to do it anyway. “My own view is that to whatever extent companies do have obligations to shareholders to pursue profit, these obligations are constrained by more general moral requirements not to engage in practices that involve contributing to serious harm to society more broadly,” he says. He makes the analogy to someone running a business out of their house, who can’t use profit as an excuse if their business pollutes their neighbor’s yard.

Documents leaked earlier this year show that Shell’s own researchers were studying climate change, and aware of the likely impacts, as long ago as the 1980s. In 1998, Shell researchers published an internal memo envisioning a Hurricane Sandy-like storm on the East Coast in the 2000s that would spark climate action. “They should have been retooling their own business model for a carbon-constrained world based on what they knew about the harmful effects of the products that they produce and sell,” says Kathryn Mulvey, accountability campaign director for the Climate & Energy Program at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. “That certainly was within their enormous technical and financial capacity.”

Instead, she says, Shell, along with other fossil fuel companies, was a member of trade groups that worked to sow public doubt about climate science. The American Petroleum Institute, for example, wrote an internal strategy memo in 1998 with a roadmap of how to spread doubt. While Shell supported efforts for cap-and-trade legislation in the U.S. in 2009, dedicated resources to supporting California’s emissions trading scheme, continues to ask Congress to support economy-wide, market-based carbon pricing, and told the Trump administration not to weaken fuel efficiency standards, it is still a member of API and other organizations with dubious records on climate communication. The Western States Petroleum Association, another group Shell belongs to, is currently lobbying against carbon pricing in the state of Washington. Shell didn’t donate to that campaign, but argues that Washington’s specific policy is flawed, and didn’t endorse it, either. (Other oil companies have also sent conflicting messages; Exxon, which recently pledged $1 million to a campaign for a carbon tax, gave around $36 million over the past 20 years to spread disinformation, Mulvey’s group has calculated.)

It’s unlikely that Shell will choose to voluntarily adopt a competitive disadvantage to cut emissions faster than it already plans to as some form of moral penance for its past emissions. But as the company considers the current science, it could choose to spend more time thinking about how to meet a 1.5-degree target beyond relying on planting trees.

“We don’t want to ignore the value of Shell’s work,” says Amanda Levin, a policy analyst for the climate and clean energy program at the nonprofit NRDC. “Just an oil company even admitting that climate change is a large problem, and that they need to address these emissions, is a huge change in thinking. We welcome Shell’s input and thoughts about how to achieve the emission reductions that we need. That being said, they need to also start rethinking the way that they fit into a 1.5-degree world.” The company, she argues, could have gone further with energy efficiency in the Sky scenario.

NRDC is also revisiting one of its own scenarios that had considered how the U.S. could get on track to stay below 2 degrees of warming, and will now target the more ambitious 1.5 degrees instead. Most companies that have considered “science-based targets” so far have looked at a 2-degree target, but a few leaders, like British Telecom, are now committed to achieving 1.5 degrees.

Shell may continue to argue that getting to net zero by 2050 isn’t feasible. The most critical question is: What would it actually take for Shell, and the rest of the world, to achieve as much as is technically possible to limit climate change? Much stronger political pressure for a widespread price on carbon and other ambitious climate policies, as the company says, would help–and if that could happen far faster than the company expects, we might get on track. “Our goal is aligned with where society needs to go, but it is a goal that will be dependent on how society makes the journey as well,” says Hone. “If the world has carbon pricing, in every country and every place where Shell’s operating, you’ll see that overall picture change quite rapidly.”

Strong policy–from carbon taxes to fuel efficiency standards and bans on gas cars–is important not only for Shell, but to push other corporations that aren’t changing as quickly. But even before that policy is in place, consumer pressure could also help; at the moment, for example, there’s no special label on “zero carbon” plastic made using carbon capture tech, because there’s no demand for it. Investors can support alternatives, such as plastic that can be made from food waste or fuel made from carbon sucked from the atmosphere, to help them scale up more quickly. Mass change in consumer behavior–like driving less–would help. Shareholder pressure could also continue to push Shell farther.

Investors are already looking to the company as a leader in the industry. “We’re starting to see larger and larger institutional investors simply moving out of this segment,” says Danielle Fugure, president and chief counsel of the nonprofit As You Sow. As shareholders have pressured companies to make clear plans for climate change, those that don’t make those plans are likely to be left behind. “If you’re an investor, I think you’re going to want to look to those companies that are best positioned to survive in a new energy economy.”

Like some other European companies in the industry–such as Statoil, which changed its name to Equinor as it moves to become an “energy company” rather than an oil company, or Spain-based Repsol, which has stopped investing in new oil and gas–Shell is planning for large-scale changes and is far ahead of its American counterparts.

It’s not clear yet if all other oil companies will step up to match Shell’s ambition, or if Shell will speed up its climate action enough to prevent, for example, the nearly total loss of coral reefs. What is clear is that the oil and gas industry is responsible for around half of global emissions. Without the industry’s taking (or being forced to take) ambitious action, the civilizational project to tackle climate change can’t succeed.

Life keeps getting more stressful, and every day brings new headlines that are more disturbing than the last. To help you cope in these troubled times, psychologists recommend that we invest in some self-care. But if you’re looking for a quick midday massage to get you through the day, there aren’t many good options.

You could shell out $150 for an hour-long massage at the Four Seasons or the Ritz-Carlton, but those are best enjoyed when you have extra time afterwards to luxuriate in a bathrobe while sipping a cup of mint tea. Then there’s the large corporate chains, Massage Envy or Massage Heights, where you can get a $70 massage, but leave your relaxing session only to find yourself stuck at the cash register waiting to pay with all the other customers who just got out at the same time as you. (Also, Massage Envy just got slapped with a lawsuit by women claiming therapists assaulted them.) Then there are small, cheap mom-and-pop massage parlors that will give you a massage for $50 or less, but you never quite know what you’ll get or whether your therapist is licensed.

The team behind Drybar want to give you a better alternative. It’s called Squeeze, and it will be closely modeled on Drybar, with the first location set to open in early 2019 in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Studio City. Squeeze’s mission is simple and encapsulated in its tagline, “A way better massage experience.”

This experience will begin with the salon itself that will be designed by the same architect as Drybar, and feature a fun, colorful decor. But price-wise, Squeeze will be in the middle of the market. Massages will cost between $39 and $129, depending on the length of the session, which will run between 20 and 80 minutes. (For the 20-minute massage, you can choose what part of your body to focus on, from your shoulders to your legs.) Extras like deep tissue massage, heat therapy, or aromatherapy are included with no additional charge.

And importantly, Drybar cofounders (and siblings) Alli Webb and Michael Laudau say that all the logistics–from the booking to the payment–will be managed from an app. “For the past year, we’ve been building technology that allows you to do everything on your app, the way you would with Postmates or Uber,” Landau explains. “The best part is, you walk out, then pay and tip at your convenience.”

Brittany Driscoll, the former VP or marketing at Drybar, will serve as Squeeze’s founder and CEO. Squeeze will be an entirely separate company from Drybar, which launched in 2010 and generated an estimated $100 million last year. Landau and Alli Webb are providing an undisclosed amount of seed funding for the venture. Additional funding will come from John Heffner, Drybar’s current CEO, and Josh Heitler, the architect who designed both Drybar and Squeeze’s physical spaces. Cameron Webb (Alli’s husband) will serve as creative director to both Drybar and Squeeze, developing the brand identity for both. “It’s definitely 100% a separate entity,” says Landau. “But we’re blending all of our partners at Drybar to help launch it.”

Driscoll tells Fast Company that the Squeeze team isn’t setting out to completely reinvent the massage, but rather to improve it by cutting out the main pain points. She’s looking to differentiate Squeeze from other options on the market with its tech-savvy approach to booking, and its emphasis on personalization. “You’ll be able to set all your preferences online, from the pressure you want, to whether you want oil or lotion, to what music, lighting, and temperature you prefer,” Driscoll says. “We’re eliminating the awkward in-person exchanges. Then you literally float out after your massage and top, rate, and review your therapist at your leisure. ”

And Landau, who served as the head of brand marketing at Yahoo before cofounding Drybar, believes that the brand experience at Squeeze will be a key to its success. The Squeeze interiors will be designed by Josh Heitler, the architect who designed the iconic Drybar salons. Drybar locations are designed to look like a bar, complete with marble countertops, chandeliers made out of yellow hairdryers, and mirrors behind the chairs, so customers can swivel around for a big reveal after their hair has been styled. “Our parents literally almost fainted when we told them how much it was costing to build the first Drybar,” says Landau. “But what Alli and I knew was that you had to create an atmosphere that people would love to be in.”

They’re taking the same approach with Squeeze. In the initial renderings of Squeeze’s physical store, Heitler appears to be creating a calm vibe, with birch paneled walls, gray tones, and teal green accents. The massage rooms look like little cabins with sliding doors, and customers will be able to change the color of the lights to suit their personal taste.

Squeeze’s brand aesthetic was developed by Cameron Webb, Alli Webb’s husband, who also designed Drybar’s branding. Squeeze’s logo is a teal green circle that has a broad smile on it. And the entire brand will have a fun, playful spirit. Drybar leaned heavily into the “bar” theme with gift cards that came in the shape of coasters, and hair products were named after alcoholic beverages like Triple Sec and Blonde Ale. Webb says we can expect similar plays on words at Squeeze. (Think: “Who do you knead?” when selecting your massage therapist.) “There’s so much kitschiness around the name Squeeze,” she says. “There’s so many fun little puns we’re excited to use. We think it encompasses the same kind of sophisticated whimsy that worked so well for Drybar.”

The first Squeeze location in Studio City is currently under construction, but if the concept does well, Driscoll hopes to open up more locations at a quick pace, starting with New York and Dallas. Drybar now has 108 locations around the country, which are a mix of licensed stores and stores that are owned by the company. Landau hopes to expand Squeeze by, in his words, “aggressively franchising.” “One of the things we learned from Drybar is that while we like to own salons ourselves because they make a lot of money, when we have a franchise operator that has sunk their own blood, sweat, and tears into the store, and they know the local market, it runs better and more efficiently,” Landau says. “And you can grow faster. We do plan to scale pretty rapidly.”

For Landau and Ali Webb, who founded Drybar eight years ago, the success of their first brand has come as a bit of a surprise. Webb, who trained as a hair stylist, came up with the idea after she realized she could make money by going to the houses of moms in Los Angeles and blow drying their hair in their living rooms while their babies were napping. In 2010, Landau, Alli and her husband pooled their money and talents to open the very first Drybar location, which was designed to be a small salon where Alli herself could do blowouts. Eight years later, its a $100 million business with more than 3,000 stylists.

Now, the family wants to ride this wave of success by entering a new market, which might even be more lucrative than the blowout market, because it will cater to both men and women. “Full disclosure: We didn’t plan on any of this,” Landau says. “We planned for it to be Alli’s one little shop in Brentwood. We had no idea where it would take us.”

The Google walkout has already begun. Employees are taking a stand against the company, in light of recent reports that Google learned about multiple sexual misconduct allegations against Android founder Andy Rubin, and allowed him to resign with a $90 million exit package–essentially sweeping the whole incident under the rug. It turned out the company has paid millions of dollars to departing male executives in similar situations.

With that as a catalyst, Google workers want the company to know that they deserve a safe and equitable workplace. Already workers are walking out in protest. A Twitter account published a picture of what seems to be employees in Singapore this morning gathering together after walking out of the office.

First #GoogleWalkout photo coming straight from our office in Singapore where it’s 11/1 just after 12p! pic.twitter.com/Ctv3xLE0aH

— Google Walkout For Real Change (@GoogleWalkout) November 1, 2018

As the morning rolls on, expect more pictures like this.

The New York Timeswrites that more than 1,500 employees are expected to walk out today. “Google’s famous for its culture. But in reality we’re not even meeting the basics of respect, justice, and fairness for every single person here,” said Claire Stephenson, a Google product manager to the Times.

According to an Instagram post from the account GoogleWalkout, the protesting employees have the following demands:

1. An end to forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination.
2. A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity.
3. A publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report.
4. A clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously.
5. Elevate the chief diversity officer to answer directly to the CEO and make recommendations directly to the board of directors. In addition, appoint an employee representative to the board.

I reached out to the company for comment and will update this post if I hear back. I’ll also be adding any news about the walkouts as they progress.

The father of the web has told Reuters that the internet’s biggest tech giants, Facebook and Google, may have to be broken up because of their dominance–if other challengers don’t rise up to offer true competition, or if users don’t start abandoning the services. In the interview, Berners-Lee said:

“What naturally happens is you end up with one company dominating the field so through history there is no alternative to really coming in and breaking things up. There is a danger of concentration.”

He added:

“Before breaking them up, we should see whether they are not just disrupted by a small player beating them out of the market, but by the market shifting, by the interest going somewhere else.”

And Berners-Lee also revealed that scandals like Facebook-Cambridge Analytica were the tipping point for many people, including himself, of the optimistic view they once held about the power of the internet as a force for good:

“I am disappointed with the current state of the web. We have lost the feeling of individual empowerment and to a certain extent also I think the optimism has cracked.”

He also said social media is a tool to propagate hate:

“If you put a drop of love into Twitter it seems to decay, but if you put in a drop of hatred you feel it actually propagates much more strongly. And you wonder: ‘Well is that because of the way that Twitter as a medium has been built?'”

As for Berners-Lee, he does see a solution to the current internet that is dominated by just a few tech giants. As he told Fast Company, he has radical new plans to upend the World Wide Web.