There was a time when buying secondhand goods was a slightly shady affair, one that would take you into a dark, ugly consignment shop or deep into the underbelly of eBay. But not anymore. That was made clear today when the luxury retailer Farfetch acquired the sneaker resale brand Stadium Goods for an undisclosed amount that will be paid in the form of cash and Farfetch shares.

Three-year-old Stadium Goods, which is now valued at $250 million, got the attention of sneakerheads with the sleek brand experience it offers customers on the website and in its New York store. The brand uses photography and video to tell stories about products. “Our goal was always to cut out some of the noise in the secondary market,” says Stadium Goods co-founder John McPheters. “It was to give customers a luxury experience.”

Related: The future of fashion is made-to-order, according to Farfetch CEO José Neves

Stadium holds all of its inventory, paying the seller only when the item is purchased. Now all of these products will be available on the Farfetch platform. That said, the brand will continue to operate independently. It plans to invest in growth both here in the United States as well as in other markets, like China, where both streetwear and luxury resale are gathering steam. “We want to take advantage of the relationship we have built with customers over the last three years,” McPheters says.

Farfetch has acquired several luxury goods companies over the last few years, from the London store Browns to a Chinese digital marketing agency called Curiosity China. It went public in September 2018, and is on track to generate $1 billion in revenue this year. Jose Neves, Farfetch’s founder and CEO, says the company is not investing in one specific segment of the luxury market, but wants to keep its finger on the many ways the luxury industry is evolving. “We saw how quickly Stadium Goods was growing, and we couldn’t ignore it,” Neves says.

H&M is getting in on the gender neutral trend with a new collection slated for early next year. On Wednesday, the fast fashion retailer announced it partnered with Swedish label Eytys for a line targeting younger consumers.

Starting January 24, buyers can access the collection both in stores and online. It will include genderless shoes, clothing, and accessories for adults and kids alike in line with the Stockholm-based brand’s aesthetic. In a press statement, H&M says Eytys is known for their “no-fuss” and “streamlined yet chunky-soled shoes, unisex approach, and perfectly designed wardrobe staples.”

More specifically, that translates to sneakers, shoes, and boots in leather, suede, and cotton canvas along with a range of clothing in cotton twill, faux patent leather, nylon, and raw denim. The clothing garments will feature boxy silhouettes that can suit male and female bodies.

As for color, don’t expect anything too pink or brightly colored. H&M says the palette will consist of bottle green, school bus yellow, beige khaki, dark indigo, black, and white. The color scheme is meant to be “effortlessly” mixed and matched.

Blurred gender lines have emerged beyond the independent designer space in the last two years. H&M is one of many big brands that have embraced the growing trend. Zara released its own ungendered collections in 2016, while Moda Operandi debuted its first unisex streetwear collection. Asos’s past neutral collection did so well that it’s now expanding the offering.  (More recently, singer Celine Dion declared her kids clothing gender-neutral).

That many of these collections are geared toward younger audiences makes sense: A survey by trend forecasting agency J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group found that more than a third of Gen Z strongly agreed that gender did not define a person as much as it used to.

“With this collaboration, we hope to introduce the H&M customer to our design philosophy of robust and fuss-free design where function triumphs embellishment and style spans genders,” Max Schiller, creative director at Eytys, said in the statement. “The collection is all about proportions–creating a distinct unisex silhouette by playing around with loose silhouettes and chunky architectural footwear. It’s the Eytys idea of a ‘generic’ look, one that is meant to elevate integrity, attitude, and confidence. “

Deantee James spent around a year looking for a job before finding his current position as a baker in Richmond, California. “I was putting in applications and nothing was coming through,” he says. James has a criminal record, which makes it more difficult to find work; one study found that black men with a record only got called back for an interview 5% of the time. But Rubicon Bakers, where James now works, was deliberately designed to give people a second chance.

The bakery first launched as a job training program for a nonprofit more than 25 years ago, aimed at helping people with histories of addiction, homelessness, or incarceration find work. Now it’s a quickly growing business, with products in more than 2,500 stores. Over the last year, the number of employees nearly doubled.

CEO Andrew Stoloff learned about the bakery a decade ago at a time when it was struggling financially. Stoloff, a successful restaurateur, gave some advice, and when the nonprofit decided to sell the bakery, helped them try to find a buyer–but no one wanted it.

He decided to convert it into a for-profit. “Through the year that I had reviewed the financials and had spent some time at the bakery, I saw some opportunities to really turn the business around and make it a more nimble kind of business,” he says. “I think that would have been much harder to do as a nonprofit.” He trimmed costs in ingredients and other supplies, but promised not to cut jobs. And the bakery’s business began to grow.

Unlike some other businesses–like a startup grilled cheese restaurant that only hires employees with a criminal record–Rubicon Bakers is open to anyone, not only those with a difficult past. (It also conducts interviews, unlike a similar bakery on the East Coast that employees people with more complicated job histories by simply hiring anyone who applies.) Rubicon works with nonprofit partners to connect with potential employees who are struggling to find jobs elsewhere. It also offers more flexibility than a typical employer might when someone has to unexpectedly miss work.

The company also offers employees no-interest loans. “At the end of our block there’s a check cashing store, and when we first bought the bakery, I would see people walk down the street, go to the check cashing store, take out a $150 loan, and then struggle over the next two or three or four months paying back multiples of that,” says Stoloff. Someone might pay the check cashing store $300 or $400 on the original loan of $150. “It kind of made my stomach churn to see people being taken advantage of in that way.” The loans Rubicon offers are typically small, but meaningful for employees who start at minimum wage. In Richmond, this will be $15 a hour starting in January; over time, employees can progress to higher-paid managerial roles. Since the business launched, the company has given out roughly $500,000 in loans. The payback rate is high, Stoloff says, despite employees’ poor credit scores.

Stoloff argues that more companies should take a similar approach to hiring. “Strictly looking at it from a business perspective, it makes sense,” he says. “I didn’t understand this going into this, but throughout the years I’ve seen it over and over again that by taking in an employee who needs that second chance and who has found it very difficult to find employment, we wind up with a very grateful employee. Not only that, but an employee who is focused on the job for a very different set of reasons: Of course they’re working like everybody else because they need a paycheck, but they’re also working to prove to themselves, to prove to their family and friends, that they can turn their life around and take advantage of that second chance. So we get employees who are much more directed and dedicated, and we find that they stick around longer.”

Most employees start with no experience, and Rubicon Bakers invests heavily in training. “It’s very expensive for us to lose an employee,” he says. “But our retention is much, much higher than it is in our industry as a whole. So we’re a huge beneficiary of providing that second chance.”

A devastating story is making its way around Twitter, telling the tale of an indifferent algorithm that got everything right except the sad finale.

Washington Post video editor Gillian Brockell sent out a plea to Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, and Experian, begging them to improve their algorithms. In the tweet, she explains that when she was pregnant, she shared her joy on social media. She used Instagram hashtags like #babybump, wrote baby shower thank-you notes on Facebook, and Googled “babysafe crib paint” and maternity clothes. She was served up ads that matched her new interests.

But then she started Googling other things like “baby not moving” and posting on Facebook about being heartbroken that her child was stillborn. Her friends weighed in with teardrop emojis. The algorithms that populate the internet were clever enough to figure out she was pregnant, but not clever enough to figure out when she was not. They kept serving her ads that compounded her heartache, Brockell writes. When she clicked, “I don’t want to see this ad” to give herself some respite, she says the algorithm decided she had given birth—and so it gave her new, more painful ads. That led her to Twitter to plead with the companies to do better.

Brockell writes: “If you’re smart enough to realize that I’m pregnant, that I’ve given birth, then surely you’re smart enough to realize that my baby died and can advertise accordingly, or maybe just maybe, not at all.”

An open letter to @Facebook, @Twitter, @Instagram and @Experian regarding algorithms and my son's birth: pic.twitter.com/o8SuLMuLNv

— Gillian Brockell (@gbrockell) December 11, 2018

Reached for comment, Facebook pointed to a tweet from its VP of ads, Rob Goldman, who apologized to Brockell and said Facebook has settings that allow users to block ads about painful topics, although he conceded the feature “needs improvement.”

Google and Twitter have not yet responded to a request for comment.

Facebook has attempted to filter out some of the more painful memories from its “On This Day” feature—which resurfaces images and posts from your Facebook past. But how its algorithm decides what to show is a complete mystery. In the past, it has chosen to highlight dead pets, a burning apartment, a father’s ashes, and other jarringly sad images. (Web developer Eric Meyer’s post, Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty, sums it up well.) While Facebook users can filter out specific dates, people, and memorialized accounts from their memories, users are still very much at the mercy of algorithms, especially when it comes to ads—no matter how heartless and indifferent they may be.

In a contentious New York City Council hearing into Amazon’s plans to build part of its so-called HQ2 in Long Island City, Queens, Amazon VP of Public Policy Brian Huseman drew boos over the company’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We think the government should have the best available technology,” Huseman said, referring to the company’s Rekognition software, which is used to recognize images of faces and other objects.

Amazon has faced criticism for its work with ICE as deportations have risen in recent years. It has also faced concerns from civil libertarians and members of Congress for marketing the software to police agencies.

Amazon testifies that they believe ICE should have “the best available technology” as they provide facial recognition software to facilitate deportations. We are a city of immigrants. This is shameful. #NoAmazonNYC@MaketheRoadNY@nychange@caaav@MPower_Changepic.twitter.com/5nvwODjyoK

— ALIGN (@ALIGNny) December 12, 2018

Amazon toldThe Daily Beast in October it had discussed with ICE the possibility of the agency using Rekognition, although ICE said at the time it didn’t have a contract with Amazon. Amazon declined to comment further on its current relationship with ICE.

The company secured incentives from New York state and city governments for plans to open the new offices in Long Island City, Queens, but it has since seen some pushback from city politicians and residents concerned about gentrification, transit congestion, and the fact that the process largely took place behind closed doors. Amazon has said it will bring about 25,000 jobs to the city.

Amazon workers at a warehouse in New York City’s Staten Island have also recently reportedly announced plans to form a union, citing issues with hours, pay and working conditions. The company has said it respects “employees’ right to choose to join or not join a labor union,” but prefers an existing “open-door policy” where workers can bring concerns to management.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce delayed a hearing on the minimum wage after a Republican witness, Professor Joseph Sabia of San Diego State University, was reported to have penned a 2002 satirical blog post about junk food taxes that included a rant about the supposed dangers of gay sex.

Sabia, who opposed a tax on junk food, argued that it made equal sense to target gay sex and nightclubs for taxation and regulation, citing the danger from HIV.

“Homosexual activity has been responsible for devastating health outcomes–deadly HIV, hepatitis B, and various other sexually transmitted diseases,” he wrote. “When two random men get together and choose to have sex, there is not an insignificant risk of infection and death. And if these infected men then go on to have sex with women, then you have women–and possibly children–who will be stricken with AIDS.”

Sabia made it clear in the blog post, apparently written while he was a grad student at Cornell University and captured by the Internet Archive, that he actually opposed taxes on both junk food and gay activities. But critics, including Democrats on the committee, quickly denounced the post as homophobic.

Another Sabia post from the same era repeatedly compared college women to prostitutes.

“Today’s college girl looks to Ally McBeal, the trollops of Sex in the City, and the floozies on Friends to set their moral compasses,” he wrote. “The sad truth is that college girls are so desperate to find love that they are willing to degrade themselves to get it. But true love can only be understood in the context of the Word of God. Any other notion of ‘love’ is secular and, by definition, limited and finite.”

The economics professor was scheduled to speak about the potential consequences to workers and small businesses of raising the federal minimum wage. Republicans generally oppose Democratic proposals to boost the wage to $15 per hour. Sabia has cowritten papers on the minimum wage, including a recent study finding that “raising the tipped minimum cash wage is a poorly targeted policy to deliver income to poor restaurant workers”; one suggesting a New York wage boost “reduced employment”; and a paper finding minimum wages don’t appear to increase alcohol-related teen driver fatalities.

Sabia didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from Fast Company.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year–and I’m not talking about the holidays. I’m talking about your annual performance review at your company.

The performance review is one of the most important tools of communication an employer has at her disposal. This annual, biannual, or even quarterly review of an employee allows employer and employee to speak directly. However, despite what you may think, an annual review is not just about the employee’s performance. It is about everybody’s performance.

Let’s reframe how we think about reviews–and how to make sure you get what you want out of your next one.

There is no reason to fret over your upcoming performance review. Instead of worrying about what feedback management might have, think instead of what you want. Make a few lists.

• What have you achieved over the past 12 months?
• What would you like to achieve over the next 12?
• In what ways (if any) has management been lacking?
• What resources do you require to be successful?

What is a performance review?

The performance review is a rare opportunity for an employee to have dedicated time in which to communicate wins, losses, struggles, ideas, wants, needs, and hopes for her future at the company. The best part? All of these things are communicated directly to your management, often face to face. So what do you want over the next year?

• Do you want a raise?
• Do you need more support in your department?
• Are you unhappy with management?
• Do you want to change your role?

We’ll walk you through a few common scenarios so that you get what you need out of your next annual review. The No. 1 rule of a performance review? Come prepared.

How do I get a raise in my performance review?

Let’s be real here. Most employees are going into a performance review hoping to see some zeros added to their annual salary. Before asking for a raise in a performance review, ask yourself if it’s the right time.

When asking for a raise, you can’t really just ask. Instead, make a case for why you absolutely deserve a raise.

Create a script to ask for your raise (we made one for you). Communicate to your manager all of your successes over the past year. Make sure your boss knows exactly what you bring to the team, the new skills you have acquired, what praise you have received over the past year, and your detailed plans for future success.

Don’t go in asking for an arbitrary raise. Don’t complain about your bills, your rent, or your (very real) student loans. These are reasons you may need a raise, but they are not the same reasons as to why you deserve a raise.

How do I get a promotion in my performance review?

Maybe you’re not necessarily looking for a raise, per se, but a promotion via title change. While the two typically go hand in hand, asking for a title change has nuanced differences. So, when you want that Specialist title changed to a Manager role, be prepared to explain why.

A great way to start some research for this discussion is by looking at job descriptions. If you have a coordinator title, but you feel like your role is that of a manager, communicate that. Show your duties alongside a standard job description for the title you want. Are you already doing all the work of a manager or a director without the title? If so, present the evidence to your boss. If your desired title requires more work or development of a certain skill set, present plans to strengthen and hone these skills. By showing your manager a side-by-side job title comparison, you are presenting a pretty irrefutable case for your title promotion.

You don’t have to avoid asking for more money because you’re nervous about it. If you’re asking for a promotion because you are already outperforming in your current position, you must also ask for a raise. No questions asked. Do it.

How do I switch my role in my performance review?

Maybe you’re happy with your salary and happy at your current company. The culture is great, the commute is short, and the upper management is awesome. That’s great news.

Maybe you’re looking to transition roles–and not necessarily in an upward motion. Let’s say you are in an administrative position, but you have recently started taking on responsibilities of a social media manager. Maybe you want to transition into the marketing department full time. A performance review is a perfect time to have discussions like this.

Again, lay out your achievements over the past year, specifically highlighting your “newer” skill set. Provide a plan for a transition period in which you could train a replacement and slowly hand off your administrative duties. When planning a department transition, the stronger case and more work you present, the more likely it is that you will get interdepartmental approval. Hiring new employees is a costly pain for any business. By making both your transition and the onboarding of a new employee seamless, you’re more likely to have your role request approved.

How do I get more support in my department?

If you’re overworked and understaffed, I hope you have communicated this to management before your performance review.

If you have reported this unsatisfactory work environment to no response, well, that is frustrating. If you haven’t brought your intense workload to management yet, what are you waiting for?

Either way, when asking for more departmental resources, it’s important to come prepared to present the why. Like we outlined earlier, it would be advantageous to come prepared to ask management to either create or fill a dedicated role that your team is struggling to maintain. If you work on a large number of long-term projects with no real owner, maybe your team needs a project manager. If your team is struggling to produce quality, product-based content, maybe it’s time to hire a content writer.

Determine the areas in which you are departing your real role entirely. Are these extra responsibilities taking away from the core function of your role? If the answer is yes, present the ways in which your primary focus is being compromised.

How do I report unsatisfactory management?

Ugh, the worst. This has the potential to be one of the more awkward elements to attack in a performance review. Assuming you are speaking with or in the presence of management, these can be sensitive subjects.

Depending on your complaints, you will want to manage it in different ways. When it’s mismanagement or micro-management, your review might be a good time to offer constructive criticisms. Offer your frustrations in a constructive manner. If your boss tends to micromanage, offer instead a weekly meeting where you can update her on the progress of certain projects. If your manager is never in the office, a weekly meeting could also be a good way for her to check in and be aware of the happenings in the office.

Whatever your complaint may be, make sure it is as constructive as possible and offer solutions where you can. Problem solving is a highly valued soft skill, and this is a great arena in which to showcase it.

When it’s something more serious like harassment or potentially illegal behaviors, you will want to approach human resources or corporate, if available. If you are in a smaller workplace or a company without an HR department, consider reporting harassment or misconduct to the EEOC.

In conclusion

I’d be remiss if I ended this article here.

It can be difficult to ask for what you deserve at work. As women, we tend to downplay our amazing achievements and keep trudging on, while men ask for what they want (seemingly) at every turn.

I’ll leave you with this tip. Always be aware of what you contribute to your workplace. An annual performance review is a good time to talk about achievements, changes, and kinks in the workplace. However, you should always feel empowered to ask for what you have earned, no matter what time of year it may be. Go out and get it.

This article originally appeared on Career Contessa and is reprinted with permission.

In 2008, developers around the world built a grand total of four “supertall” skyscrapers, a term that refers to buildings that shoot 1,000 feet or more into the air. Fast forward 10 years later, and that number has more than quadrupled. In 2018, developers built more tall buildings than any other year in history–a grand total of 18.

Looking at projections, 2019 could break both the records for total skyscrapers and supertall skyscrapers built in a single year–but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Those jobs aren’t done yet. And more importantly, as CTBUH notes, the current skyscraper boom might not last forever. Even the skyscrapers built outside of China are often being funded by Chinese banks and developers. If tariffs are passed on steel, or if China chooses to continue a more conservative path toward foreign investment, we may very well have a looming shortfall on tall buildings.

Your boyfriend, your dad, and your sister all want one of Everlane’s famous $100 cashmere sweaters for Christmas. Sure, that’s a great price for high-grade cashmere. But getting one for everyone on your list gets expensive.

Rather than burning a hole in your pocket, Everlane is giving customers access to an interest-free loan through a service called AfterPay. You pay a quarter of your bill up front, then pay the rest in four installments over six weeks. If you miss a payment, you have to pay a flat fee of $8. If you fail to pay off your loan by the due date, you will be subject to arbitration and you waive your right to bring a class action, and a lot of other scary things described in all caps in AfterPay’s small print.

Everlane is pitching AfterPay as a helpful–perhaps even altrustic–service, since it charges no interest. “Holiday shopping can take a toll on the budget,” reads the copy in a recent Everlane email. “So we’re offering you an easier way to pay.”

Sure, it’s a better deal than using a service like Affirm, which charges 20% interest, and is popular with luxury fashion retailers like Birdies, TheRealReal, and Tradesy. And it’s about on par with Quadpay, which charges no interest to spread payments out across four weeks, and is used by brands like Koio, Senreve, Greats, and Ugg.

But Everlane is now part of a broader trend of fashion labels encouraging consumers to spend more money than they can comfortably afford right now. Our only word of advice: Be sure to pay back your bill before it’s due; otherwise, you could be dragged into arbitration in Delaware, where you may end up drowning in legal fees. Alternatively, here’s an idea: Maybe just spend a little less?

An Everlane spokesperson declined to comment.

As a founder or CEO, you’ll face a lot of pressure to have all the answers. Your team looks to you for inspiration, and they also expect you to have a clear vision of where the company is going.

But you won’t always generate your best ideas alone. Sometimes, your team members might think of initiatives that you would have never come up with.

For this reason, strategy meetings and brainstorming sessions are a great way to spark new ideas. But you can’t rely on an archaic model when you hold these kinds of meetings, so think about following these steps so that your session will be a success.

Set the date today

Some people might say that you need to have an ideal work culture to have innovation, and you can’t manifest creativity when you have stress and fear.

But innovation tends to come through when there is tension. When you face a challenging situation, you might be forced to look for solutions in unexpected places. Don’t wait until you have the “perfect” environment. Have this meeting as you continue to make improvements on that front.

Consider the scale of impact

When you’re truly trying to innovate, you have to take a bird’s eye view. Who do you want to reach? How many lives do you want to touch? 100? 1,000? 1 million? 1 billion? You’ll need to design a different approach, depending on who you want to reach.

Choose your attendees carefully

You may be tempted to invite your creative team or only the most “brilliant” employees in the company. But great ideas come from different perspectives, outlook, thinking, and experiences. Make sure you have a good mix of attendees from all levels of the organization, and cap the numbers at 25.

Be clear about why you’re holding the meeting

When you do make the invitation, begin with the end in mind. Be sure to acknowledge any storm clouds–such as tension, stress, and downturns. You also need to tell your attendees why you’re having this meeting, whether it’s overcoming a specific challenge or coming up with ways to increase revenue.

I suggest that you shouldn’t tell them to prepare, but that they should expect to come to the meeting with an open mind and step outside their comfort zone during the session.

Choose the facilitator

Make sure that you choose the person who will run the meeting. The facilitator shouldn’t generate any ideas, but instead, they will be in charge of encouraging participation and enforcing the rules of engagement (more on that below).

You need someone who is well respected, diplomatic, and doesn’t play favorites. When necessary, they need to be able to direct people away from tangents. If there is no one inside your company that meets these criteria, consider hiring an external facilitator.

Establish rules of engagement

At the beginning of the meeting, remind people of the objective of the meeting. I also recommend that you set one rule. Tell everyone that they’re not allowed to figure out why something cannot be done, but instead how it can be done.

Stay optimistic

As the leader of the company, your job is to be an optimist. If anyone in the room objects to a goal or thinks that it is crazy, then find a way to get them to admit that if they could achieve the goal, would they want to?

Bob Proctor, in his book, You Were Born to Be Rich, spoke of a meeting where participants came up with breakthrough ideas to raise $3 million in three days for a town that was devastated by a natural disaster. During the meeting, if anyone said that something couldn’t be done, everyone in the meeting was given permission to yell out “Next!” and they would immediately shift to the next idea.

They reasoned that ideas are like the cars on a train, and they kept saying “Next” to negative ideas until a positive one came. He writes, “It was important for those present to openly admit that [the fundraising] was something that they wanted to do,” rather than judge whether it was something they should, or could do.

Be comfortable with silence

Sometimes, no one will speak up with an idea. Be comfortable with that. Silence creates tension for people, and that’s a good thing.

Eventually, someone will break the silence and blurt out an idea that they were afraid was bad or stupid. Often those ideas can be the best. At the very least, it can set the bar low enough so everyone feels comfortable to share their seemingly crazy ideas too. Remember, you probably won’t get fully formed ideas from these meetings, and you shouldn’t expect to.

Accept that innovation is a messy process

When you innovate, you’re doing things in a whole new way. Things will often feel messy, out of control, or like everything is all up in the air. Just remember, any great innovation requires you to step outside the old way of doing things and take a leap into the unknown.

At the end of the day, you have to be willing to take risks to be successful in business, and this means trying something, regardless of the outcome. Yes, that might mean coming face to face with failure. But know that every failure brings valuable lessons. The only way to innovate is to try something new, over and over again.

Christie Turley is a sought-after expert, speaker, and consultant who has sparked innovation in thousands of businesses and sold over $1 billion in products and services.

Last April, Sega said it would release a miniature Genesis (or Mega Drive, as it’s known outside the U.S.) to celebrate the console’s 30th anniversary this year and capitalize on the classic console craze. Those plans have been delayed until 2019, however, so for now the company is partnering with Amazon to release some games on Fire TV devices instead.

The Sega Classics bundle costs $15 and includes 25 games. It’s a respectable selection, with Sonic the Hedgehog (1, 2, and CD), the Streets of Rage trilogy, and the Golden Axe trilogy among the bigger hits. There are also some inspired picks such as Decap Attack (starring a mummy that can smack foes with his disembodied head) and the acclaimed run-and-gun Gunstar Heroes. While playing, you can even switch background images, change aspect ratios, and choose from several visual effects such as the scanlines of older tube TVs.

Purists might want to wait for the actual Genesis mini, though. On a Fire TV Stick 4K with review code provided by Sega, I found the controls to be noticeably laggier than other devices emulating the same games, to the point that certain twitchy action games were nearly impossible to play. And with the Sonic series, Sega only offers “remasters,” which have some different menus and gameplay mechanics than the source material. Besides, playing Genesis games with a modern game controller or Fire TV remote just doesn’t feel the same as using a classic-style controller. At least in terms of rereleases, Nintendos do what Segas don’t.

Since last year, Google has been using WaveNet AI technology from its Alphabet sibling DeepMind to make the Google Assistant’s spoken voice sound a little more human and a little less croaky and robotic. Earlier this year, it started adding additional voice options based on this tech.

And now it’s incorporating British and Australian voice options–both female for now–based on WaveNet’s synthesis. You can choose either of them without switching the Assistant out of its U.S. English setting–which lets it understand you, if that’s the sort of accent you got. Following the Assistant’s convention of naming its voices after colors, the new options are known as British Racing Green and Sydney Harbour Blue.

It seems like the time in between rebooting Spider-Man keeps getting shorter and shorter. There were five years between Tobey Maguire’s final swing and Andrew Garfield’s first; then only three between when Garfield doffed his suit and Tom Holland put his on; and now here’s the shockingly well-reviewed, animated Into the Spider-Verse just a year and a half later. (Although Holland’s Spider-Man is still in the mix too. It’s complicated.)

Elsewhere in Marvel, though, things are moving at a comparative snail’s pace. And no, not a supersnail.

As Variety reports, the initial deal between Marvel and Netflix for their first four shows—Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist–had some kind of non-saturation clause preventing those characters from appearing in any non-Netflix shows or movies for a full two years after cancellation.

What that means is that despite the impending arrival of Marvel parent company Disney’s premium channel, Disney +, expected in 2019, there is zero chance we’ll be seeing a new Defenders series until late-Fall 2020 at the absolute earliest. (Jessica Jones and The Punisher are still scheduled for at least one more season each, though.) Considering that the acting talent on those canceled shows will have likely moved on to other regular gigs by then, we probably may never see those actors romp and stomp around Hell’s Kitchen again.

But with our endless appetite for all things superhero, however, we’ll likely be seeing a fresh Daredevil in the future if current Daredevil Charlie Cox is unavailable.

Instacart and Whole Foods are breaking up. Though the separation has long been anticipated, it marks something of a tipping point for the six-year-old grocery delivery platform, which is entering its adolescence and now has to prove itself as a sustainable business.

Starting today, Instacart will begin untethering from Whole Foods, which was acquired by Amazon last year. Whole Foods and Instacart signed a five-year contract in 2016. The company declined to disclose the specifics of the agreement it struck with Amazon as part of the contract dissolution. The delivery company has 1,415 in-store shoppers who work at 76 Whole Foods locations. During Phase One of this process, Instacart will wind down operations for 243 workers in less than a dozen Whole Foods stores. The company declined to specify locations. Instacart expects to place 75% of the workers affected by the change at new positions within the company.

A spokesperson for Instacart says the company will try to place workers at other nearby grocery locations in addition to a transfer bonus. The company is also offering a severance to workers who don’t want to take new roles. It’s a three-month separation package based on the maximum monthly pay a person earned in 2018. Those who have worked for the company at least three years stand to get additional compensation: two weeks for every year worked.

The news comes as Instacart, once considered the grocery industry answer to Amazon’s incredible shipping machine, is facing backlash from its contractors. The company recently changed the way it pays workers, resulting in various boycotts and petitions calling for change. These growing pains come as Instacart, worth $7.6 billion, is considering the whens and wheres of a public exit.

Last year, when Amazon acquired Whole Foods, the grocery industry collectively seized. It was the ultimate industry power move: wholesome groceries that could be delivered with speed and–likely–Amazon’s bargain prices. Instacart, a delivery service for groceries, saw its opportunity and struck. In the year since Amazon’s tie-up with Whole Foods was announced, Instacart has grown. Roughly a year ago the company had 160 grocer partners; now it has 300. And big names, too: Kroger, Sprouts, Aldi, and Sam’s Club. It’s also started expanding beyond the U.S. through contracts with Walmart Canada and Loblaw.

While Instacart has provided a ready solution for grocers wanting to combat Amazon in the more immediate term, many are still considering their options. In addition to Whole Foods, Instacart also parted ways with Target earlier this year, which acquired competitor Shipt in 2017. Walmart, which is working with Instacart in Canada, launched its own U.S. crowdsourced delivery network called Spark and plans to open it up to 40% of the country by year’s end.

But Instacart is pushing to expand its product offering to help its grocers directly compete with Amazon. For instance, this year Instacart began offering pickup services for customers who don’t want or need delivery, which is free for its subscription members. The company will need to continue to press its services forward as grocers consider whether partnerships, acquisitions, or homegrown efforts will provide the best path forward in this new digital era.

In September, the Houston Chronicle issued some damning findings about the way the Texas prison system treats inmates who lack teeth. Rather than equipping them with dentures, prison officers tell inmates to either gum their cafeteria food, or ask for it to be pureed together in a blender. Only should an inmate become underweight due to being unable to chew would dentures be considered a medical necessity. The state prison system gave out only 71 sets of substitute teeth to a population of over 149,000 inmates in 2016.

Shortly after the investigation came out, the Texas prison system began to reform its ways. As of October, inmates could access a dedicated denture clinic, located at a central point in the system, where they could meet with a prosthodontics specialist hired specifically to fit inmates in need with teeth.

By the spring, though, the system will take it a step further and begin offering 3D-printed dentures, becoming, as Chronicle reports, the first corrections agency in the country to do so. Printing dentures, rather than using the traditional mold system, could speed up delivery time from months to weeks. At the various state prisons, trained technicians can use a wand to scan inmates’ mouths, then send the images off to be printed into dentures that could be delivered to inmates for as little as $50. The initial equipment, of course, will be expensive to purchase–as much as $100,000–but will enable the system to more cost-effectively deliver dentures to more people over time. According to the University of Texas Medical Branch, which is working with the prison system on the new denture program, they’ll be able to process 10 denture orders per day.

In Texas, the new program is certainly a welcome development, but one that’s emerged out of years of dire need and neglect across the prison system. Up until 2003, inmates used to produce dentures onsite in prisons through a vocational program. With the program over, Texas only gave out 71 sets of dentures in 2016. California, with the second largest prison system after Texas, equipped inmates with 4,818 dentures that same year.

While the promise of personal 3D printing has failed to so far come to pass, across the medical profession, the technology is growing. It’s used to produce custom prosthetics for people in need, and more recently, researchers are experimenting with 3D-printing skin to cover wounds, and even working organs, like hearts, from patients’ cells. But people in the medical profession are surprised to see it roll out in a prison system. “It’s unusual for any state entity to be that far ahead of the curve in technology–that’s what really makes me scratch my head,” Jay Shulman, adjunct dentistry professor at Texas A&M, told the Chronicle. “If this were an academic institution, I could see it. But a prison?”

As the technology for dentures is still rather new, Shulman cautions that the 3D printed teeth may require some adjustments for inmates to ensure comfort and efficacy and that will have to be managed through in-person care. Given the Texas prison’s system poor track record with delivering that kind of personal care, this could present a further opportunity for reform, or signal another way in which the system could fail inmates.

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo made a little bit of history today. On its mission to take six tourists at a time to space, the airplane-like ship, dubbed VSS Unity, took off on Thursday morning from California’s Mojave air and space port with four NASA research payloads and a mannequin named Annie on board.

Lovely shot of takeoff! WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo take to the skies pic.twitter.com/JFcSDVB9jR

— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) December 13, 2018

SpaceShipTwo was hauled to an altitude of about 45,000 feet by the WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane and then detached. Test pilots Mark Stucky and Rick Sturckow fired up its rocket motor and catapulted the plane some 50 miles above Earth. When it crossed the 50-mile mark around 11:15 a.m. ET, it became the first human-piloted U.S. commercial flight to leave the atmosphere since 2011.

SpaceShipTwo, welcome to space.

— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) December 13, 2018

As the test flights continue and Virgin Galactic gets closer to bringing space tourists on board, the waiting list for its flights grows. So far, more than 600 people have ponied up some $250,000 for a 90-minute flight on one of Virgin’s suborbital missions, including Justin Bieber and Citibike enthusiast Leonardo DiCaprio.

As for whether or not the SpaceShipTwo actually went to “space,” well, not to sound like Bill Clinton on the witness stand, but it depends on how you define “space.” The Karman line is the internationally recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, but Virgin’s plane doesn’t go quite that high. Instead, Virgin’s pilots are aiming to hit 50 miles up, which meets NASA’s definition of the edge of space. Either way, it’s one step closer to two of the most magical words in the English language: space tourism. No word if Virgin CEO Richard Branson attached a sign to the ship saying, “Kiss my thrusters, Bezos and Musk!”

SpaceShipTwo returns from space ???? ???? pic.twitter.com/UscFxNMF6J

— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) December 13, 2018

In an ironic twist that was actually predictable, YouTube’s 2018 rewind has become the most disliked video on the platform.

Once a title held by Justin Bieber’s clip for “Baby,” YouTube’s annual look back at the year’s breakout moments and top creators now has more than 10 million dislikes.

So what happened?

Aside from the fact that the rewinds have become less of a fun mashup and more of a frenetically edited car crash, YouTuber Marques Brownlee offered this concise summary: There’s a fundamental disconnect between how creators and audiences see YouTube Rewind versus how YouTube sees YouTube Rewind.

Brownlee, who was featured in this year’s recap, thoughtfully breaks down why everyone is hating on the video. His main point boils down to his belief that YouTube started thinking about YouTube Rewind as the perfect (and highly sanitized) showcase for advertisers.

“YouTube Rewind turned into this, like, ‘Hey, check out all these advertiser-friendly things to spend your money on, all these super clean creators and these late-night show hosts and all these things that you want your ads next to,” Brownlee says in his video. “So, YouTube rewind in a way just turned into a giant ad for YouTube.”

Check out Brownlee’s video below:

For the past 45 years, Patagonia has been a business at the cutting edge of environmental activism, sustainable supply chains, and advocacy for public lands and the outdoors. Its mission has long been “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

In just the last few years alone, the company has expanded its used clothing program, amped up its investment in sustainable startups, launched an activist hub to connect its customer base directly with grassroots environmental organizations, and taken the Trump administration to court over its public lands policy. And just last month, CEO Rose Marcario announced it was giving back $10 million in tax cuts to grassroots environmental organizations.

But for Yvon Chouinard, that’s not enough. So this week, the 80-year-old company founder and Marcario informed employees that the company’s mission statement has changed to something more direct, urgent, and crystal clear: “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.”

In an exclusive interview with Fast Company, Chouinard says the shift in mission may sound trivial–obviously those ubiquitous fleeces aren’t going anywhere–but it’s actually fundamental to almost every aspect of the company. The key is in its expression of urgency, to signal to everyone inside the company and out, that this isn’t just about climate change, it’s a climate crisis.

While months in the works, Patagonia’s announcement comes as major scientific reports have detailed the consequences of unchecked climate change. The Fourth National Climate Assessment by the White House released just a few weeks ago outlined the potential societal and economic impact, which includes annual losses in some economic sectors projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century.

Chouinard is blunt in his own assessment of the level of urgency. “This is Pearl Harbor. The whole country, and whole world, has to mobilize to do this,” he says. “It’s triage. I remember when I was a kid during World War II, we didn’t have any meat to eat. There was no beef, there was no sugar, people had to grow their own gardens. The whole country mobilized. That’s what has to happen now. So I didn’t think we were taking climate change seriously enough. We were supporting too many causes that were working on symptoms and not actual causes and solutions.”

The new mission statement impacts every single job in the company. About six months ago, Chouinard gave the HR department some new marching orders. “Whenever we have a job opening, all things being equal, hire the person who’s committed to saving the planet no matter what the job is,” he says. “And that’s made a huge difference in the people coming into the company.”

It’s also influencing who Patagonia works with as brand ambassadors–being a great surfer is cool, for example, but they also have to be committed to being strong and vocal environmental advocates–and the grassroots activist organizations it funds. “We give out about 900 grants a year to different activist organizations,” says Chouinard. “We’ve given money to an organization that repairs people’s bicycles. Well, they’re not going to get any money any more.”

To figure out the best way the company could have the most effective impact, Chouinard and Marcario had to ask themselves questions like, what are Patagonia’s resources? Where does the company have influence? And what should it be putting money into? They came up with three key answers: agriculture, politics, and protected lands.

Right now the company is working with about 100 small farmers who grow cotton regeneratively in India, which is being expanded to 450 next year. They control the pests with traps, they weed and gather the cotton by hand. “That’s what you have to do, replace all the chemicals with knowledge and labor,” says Chouinard.

And they can also sell the cover crops planted to help protect the cotton, “So they get another 10% from us for growing regeneratively, they can sell their cover crops, and they’re happy,” Chouinard says. “We’re going to be making regeneratively grown cotton stand-up shorts, not only employing people, but from a crop that actually captures carbon. That’s a win-win for everybody.”

In politics, ahead of the 2018 midterm election, Patagonia became one of the first consumer brands ever to make the endorsement of specific candidates part of its brand marketing. It posted endorsements of Nevada Democratic candidate Jacky Rosen in Nevada and incumbent Montana Senator Jon Tester on its website, across its social channels, and in customer emails. Chouinard says to expect the company to speak up more loudly and often.

“Jon Tester barely won in Montana. I’ve had people in Montana tell me he probably wouldn’t have done it if we hadn’t helped,” he says. “That makes me feel pretty good! We have this political power, a few million customers who are really behind what we’re doing. So why not use it to do some good?”

For protected lands, it goes beyond advocating and fighting for public lands, as the company has been doing for Bears Ears in Utah. Smaller, more strategic investments of money and time have the potential for significant impact. Last May, Chouinard talked to Kristine Tompkins, president of Tompkins Conservation, about an idea for creating a new park at the very tip of South America. “I’ve been there and it’s a wild, wild place,” Chouinard says. “There’s no roads, no trails, just a lot of swampland that captures a tremendous amount of carbon. So I thought it’d be a perfect place for a protected parkland.”

Patagonia gave Tompkins Conservation $185,000 to get on it. And they did, working with the governments of Chile and Argentina. After an Argentina government votes tomorrow, the hopeful result is two new national parks, covering up to 25 million acres. “It’s not like we had to buy up a ton of land and force our way in. It’s strategic investment that has really paid off,” says Chouinard. “This whole thing will be done by Christmas. Can you believe it?”

So, just how much time did you spend binge-watching shows on Hulu this year? The streaming company is happy to tell you—and either confirm or debunk your fears about just how much of your life was sucked up by the second season of The Handmaid’s Tale. 

Today, Hulu posted its year-end viewing results on its blog, without, of course, offering any data relating to actual ratings and numbers of viewers. The biggest takeaway is that despite all the money the company is pouring into original series–it spent over $2.5 billion on overall content this year–what resonated with Hulu watchers in 2018 were the oldies but goodies that Hulu licenses from studios and networks (see: Law & Order, ER, Grey’s Anatomy). The company says that the premiere episode of season 2 of Handmaid‘s was the most watched episode of the year on the service, across all original and acquired shows. But considering the lackluster reception to the season, that doesn’t bode well for Hulu’s binge-watching stats—not that we’ll know what those numbers are. This is a streaming company, after all! 

Perhaps the most surprising nugget is that Hulu’s most popular movies of the year were Baywatch, Transformers: The Last Knight, and . . . I, Tonya. Last year’s awards contender about figure skater Tonya Harding made just $53 million at the global box office and is an edgy, indie-spirited film in every way. Certainly, it wouldn’t share a sizable crossover audience with fans of Michael Bay. And yet! 

Here are the rest of the results:

1. Hulu’s 20 million-plus subscribers streamed more than 26 million hours per day in 2018. 

2. Most watched episode across all original and licensed shows: Season 2 premiere of The Handmaid’s Tale. 

3. Most popular hospital shows: ER, Grey’s Anatomy, and Good Doctor. More than 60% of Hulu’s viewers watched the three shows combined, representing more than 100 million hours of TV.

4. Most watched day of the year: September 23, thanks to the PGA Tour and Sunday Night Football.  

5. Most watched adult animated shows: Family Guy, South Park, and Bob’s Burgers

6. Most watched kids animated show: Teen Titans Go!

7. Most watched legal show: Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2018, 258 million episodes of the show were streamed. 

8. Most watched news show on Hulu Live: NBC’s TODAY show. Viewers watched more than 6 million hours of the program. 

9. Most watched movies: Baywatch, Transformers: The Last Knight, and I, Tonya. Together the films generated 27 million streams. 

10. Most watched shows between 8 p.m. and midnight: Bob’s Burgers, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Law and Order: SVU.

11. Most binged show (defined as a show that was watched for more than five hours on any given day): This Is Us, which accounted for more than 2 million binge sessions. 

12. Most watched sports teams on Hulu Live: Washington Capitals (NHL), New England Patriots (NFL), Georgia Bulldogs (NCAA Football), Cleveland Cavaliers (NBA), and Boston Red Sox (MLB).

Each year, automation service Zapier publishes lists of the top business apps, as judged by the volume of automations (or “zaps”) performed by its customers. These rankings include some names you’d expect to see, such as G Suite, Slack, and Mailchimp. But the lists of fastest-growing apps are full of lesser-known brands, which—if they continue to grow apace—could be tomorrow’s big guns.

The top apps overall:

1. G Suite
2. Slack (up five spots)
3. Facebook Business (down one spot)
4. Mailchimp (-1)
5. Twitter (+1)
6. Trello (-2)
7. Typeform (-2)
8. HubSpot (new to list)
9. ActiveCampaign (new to list)
10. Asana (-2)

Fastest growing new apps:

1. Discord
2. Squarespace
3. Netlify
4. Leadpages
5. Things
6. PandaDoc
7. Klaviyo
8. WebinarJam
9. ClickUp
10. Proposify

Fastest growing existing apps:

1. ManyChat
2. Front
3. Dubsado
4. Gitlab
5. Facebook Offline Conversions
6. Bitly
7. Bonjoro
8. WPforms
9. Mailshake
10. Zoho Forms