Ford’s new noise-canceling kennel is a dream for millions of dogs who get startled by loud noises like storms, doorbells, and New Year’s Eve fireworks. (It’s also a dream for humans who prefer to sleep in complete silence, like me.)

Ford’s engineers and designers in the U.K. developed the dog house to help these sound-sensitive dogs, which account for an estimated 45% of all dogs in the country. It’s a common problem everywhere in the world, though: Dogs hear sound differently than humans, and many get easily startled by loud noises–it can lead to severe anxiety and, in the worst of cases, dogs who escape their homes and run away in terror. It’s no coincidence that July 5th is the busiest shelter day of the year in the United States, as lost dogs who bolted during thunderous fireworks shows are brought into shelters.

So, why did Ford’s design team turn to this particular problem? The house uses the same active noise-canceling technology that the car company uses in its Edge SUV–the same as the one you can find in some Bose or Sony headphones. The kennel has microphones that capture the exterior sound as it enters the habitable space. A digital processor analyzes these sound waves, creating opposing signals that are played through the built-in speakers inside the dog house. These inverted signals interact with the exterior sound, effectively canceling it. The result is not absolute silence, but something that comes pretty close. Inside, a dog can’t hear doorbells ringing, fireworks exploding, or thunder clapping. The angular, minimalist design is also beautiful–I’d love to buy a human-sized version and sleep for a month.

Unfortunately, it’s a one-of-a-kind product, not available for purchase “for now,” Ford says in its press release. Ford, please. This may have started out as a marketing stunt, but it’s screaming for a global Kickstarter.

Events across the U.S. and worldwide prove that 2018 was filled with object lessons in leadership.

We witnessed trailblazing legislators, executives, and even groups of young people push boundaries as they fought to advance social justice and give voice to the underrepresented. And as in other years, we also witnessed many leaders struggle amid controversy.

As always, a few leaders broke free from the pack on the merits of their accomplishments this year. Among them:

The best leaders of 2018

Sometimes it can feel like nothing but bad news day after day. It can be easy to overlook all the hopeful moments when brave people stood up for what they believed in,  stood up for others, or defied the odds to step into uncharted territory. This year held a lot of such moments. Here are some of the most inspiring leaders that emerged in 2018.

Breaking barriers

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The 28-year-old community organizer from the Bronx pulled off a heroic win against the incumbent Congressman Joe Crowley (D-NY). To accomplish this, despite the massive lack of campaign funding (Ocasio-Cortez raised $200,000 compared to Crowley’s $3 million), the member of the Democratic Socialists spent time pounding the pavement (as evidenced by a photo she took of the holes worn through her sneakers) to discuss her progressive platform, which includes calling to abolish ICE, criminal justice reform, a federal jobs guarantee, and Medicare for all. And let’s not forget how much criticism she’s deflected from all sides, with temerity and grace, and well-timed doses of humor.

Fourteen women, people of color, and LGBT candidates also had historic wins during the midterm elections. Here are just a few who broke political barriers across the country: Rashida Harbi Tlaib is a Palestinian-American politician and attorney who became the first Muslim congresswoman. She’s planning to upend a decades-long practice to lead a congressional delegation to Israel by taking them to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Colorado’s Jared Polis became the nation’s first openly gay governor. New Mexico’s Deb Haaland of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe is the first Native American woman to represent her state as a U.S. representative. Republican Kristi Noem is South Dakota’s first female governor. Letitia James is the first woman elected to be the New York attorney general and the first African-American woman to be elected to any statewide office in New York.

CEO Beth Ford became the first openly gay female CEO of a Fortune 500 company when she took the helm of Land O’Lakes this past August. Under her leadership, Land O’Lakes ran its “All Together Better” campaign to celebrate female farmers ahead of Women’s Equality Day on August 26. The song, “She-I-O” and its accompanying video featured female farmers in the Land O’Lakes’s cooperative. The company also partnered with hunger relief organization Feeding America to donate $1 for every like, share, or comment on the video or music track across social media, SoundCloud, and iTunes, up to $100,000.

Inclusion advocates

After two African-American men were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks after they were racially profiled by a white manager, the coffee giant’s CEO Kevin Johnson responded to the public’s outrage, calling the incident “reprehensible” and closing all 8,000 locations in order to give employees bias training. Some employees and customers were skeptical that a training marathon would be enough to sustainably change workers’ implicit biases. The award-winning documentarian Stanley Nelson, who created an eight-minute video called Access to Public Spaces in America for the training, was also skeptical. However, he did say, “They got a conversation going, and maybe that’s the best they can do. It won’t change the world, but if it got anybody thinking, ‘Wow, there are these different lives that we each are leading,’ then that’s something.”

Gucci’s CEO Marco Bizzarri took a stand to get the employees of the luxury brand to be more inclusive. This was a challenging task, because the fashion industry has deep racist and elitist roots, and also because the company employs around 13,000, and about 60,000 work indirectly with the brand. Gucci recently partnered with Dapper Dan, an African-American tailor from New York, to bring more black voices into fashion. But Bizzarri said earlier this year that he needs to reiterate this message constantly. “If people enter our shop, they enter our house, and we need to be hosts to them. Changing people’s mentalities and behavior, that is the most difficult thing to do. The approach should be welcoming and smiling in a genuine way that is not forced, because this is the way to be inclusive in the end.”

Champions for women and underrepresented minorities

In January, the nation watched as 156 young women and girls, including gymnastics stars and members of the 2012 Olympics team, shared their heart-wrenching stories of sexual abuse from former Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Judge Rosemarie Aquilina made history when she opened the courtroom to any victim of Nassar’s to share their story. But the historic trial wouldn’t have taken place if it wasn’t for the extraordinary bravery of lawyer and former gymnast Rachael Denhollander–the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual assault, and to file the initial lawsuit. Aquilina sentenced Nassar to 40 to 175 years in prison. Earlier this month, Sports Illustrated awarded Denhollander their Inspiration of the Year award.

Kalpana Kotagal joined forces with Stacy Smith from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, and Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni of Pearl Street Films, who had been working for a few years around the idea of an inclusion rider. The rider had a moment in the spotlight when Frances McDormand added those words to the end of her acceptance speech at the 90th annual Academy Awards this year. It focuses on one person’s star power to negotiate for more diverse and inclusive hiring, both in the cast and on the crew of a production.

After some 20,000 Google employees walked out of work to demand that the company create real change in dealing with workers’ rights issues such as sexual harassment and gender and racial discrimination, one of its engineers took bolder action. Liz Fong-Jonesstarted a strike fund (giving $100,00 of her own money) in anticipation of a much longer walkout following reports that a group of Google managers pushed through a project to build a censored search engine for China by ignoring the company’s usually rigorous privacy review process.

Taking a stand for a cause

This year wasn’t the first time Patagonia has taken a stand, but it was a significant move. Environmental activism has seen the outdoor retailer create 1% for the Planet initiative, giving a percentage of profits to grassroots environmental organizations, in addition to encouraging political action by becoming one of the first commercial brands to publicly endorse political candidates (and giving employees election day off). Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario is pledging to give back $10 million in tax cuts to grassroots environmental organizations. “Based on last year’s irresponsible tax cut, Patagonia will owe less in taxes this year. We are responding by putting $10 million back into the planet because our home needs it more than we do.”

Levi’s partnered with Patagonia on the “Time to Vote” campaign, which saw more than 200 companies follow suit by giving employees time off to cast their ballots. Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh also took the company’s stand on gun control one step further with the Safer Tomorrow Fund, which would put $1 million toward nonprofits and youth activists. Levi’s also partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety to bring together other business leaders against gun violence.

TOMS shoe company, known for its one-for-one giving model, has never taken a political stance. That changed in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California, when TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie said the company would donate $5 million to nonprofits working to end gun violence (including Everytown for Gun Safety, Faith in Action, March for Our Lives, and Moms Demand Action). Mycoskie also pledged to use the company’s platform and social network to call on lawmakers to pass universal background checks, and permanently alter its giving model to prioritize issue-based efforts of this magnitude going forward.

Christine Blasey Ford came into the spotlight when she accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Despite receiving death threats and still fearing for her safety, Blasey Ford bravely (and with unimaginable poise and calm) testified in front of the nation in excruciating detail. Even though her testimony ultimately didn’t keep Brett Kavanaugh from being nominated to the Supreme Court, her bravery in performing her civic duty hopefully inspired generations of other women to speak up.

The worst leaders of 2018

Tipping the scales toward leadership that illustrated what not to do, these high-profile individuals missed opportunities to provide thoughtful vision and strategy to their companies.

A self-professed “impulsive” leader, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk has drawn criticism and ire from staff, investors, and the public. In a year when the electric car manufacturer Tesla has come under scrutiny for its factory conditions, treatment of employees, and nearing bankruptcy to meet production demands, Musk has responded by calling investors names and tweeting snappish retorts. Another arm of the Musk empire, SolarCity, is being sued by former employees.

Facebook has been at the center of several media firestorms this year. We’ve witnessed CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggest that people can deny the Holocaust in good faith, get cozy with the Trump campaign, and refuse to remove toxic content. His appearance at the U.S. congressional hearings this summer may have provided a momentary boost to Facebook’s stock, however, a snapshot of his preparatory notes revealed that the chief of the social network he created may be idealizing its power for good while keeping an eye on the revenue prize (that would be seriously curtailed if government regulations were enforced). Among the notes: “Break Up FB? U.S. tech companies key asset for America; break up strengthens Chinese companies.”

COO Sheryl Sandberg is having her own moment of public scrutiny. Sandberg was slow to respond to suggestions that Russia has manipulated Facebook. And the New York Timesreported that she asked Facebook’s communications staff to research George Soros’s financial interests after his high-profile attacks on tech companies.

While we see plenty of CEOs use their position to advance social causes, others say they have values, but continued to accept Saudi investments and not speak out after the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

CEOs Rao Mulpuri of View Inc. and Alex Garden of Zume Inc., both startups, have recently accepted a combined $1.5 billion in funding from SoftBank’s Vision Fund. The fund is backed by a $45 billion investment from the Saudi Arabian government. In response to critics, Softbank simply cited that it has a responsibility to the Saudi people for the investment.

Another CEO of Silicon Valley-based company, Michael Marks of Katerra Inc., just agreed to a tentative deal to build housing in Saudi Arabia. Adam Neumann, the CEO of WeWork, is reportedly in continued talks with SoftBank about investing $15 billion to $20 billion, to acquire a majority stake of the company.

Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has also been silent on the matter. A statement from a Washington Post spokesperson to Fast Company said simply, “Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan and Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt are the two speaking on behalf of the company at this time.” We do know that Bezos was among a number of tech executives who met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman when he visited the United States in March, and that Amazon has reportedly been in talks to open data centers in Saudi Arabia, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

This isn’t the only questionable leadership move (or lack thereof) from Bezos. Although the company did set its minimum wage at $15 per hour for all employees, workers at the recently acquired Whole Foods want to unionize, which Amazon is staunchly trying to discourage. Workers in Europe went on strike on Black Friday to demand better working conditions and wages, and to protest Amazon’s refusal to negotiate. It should also be noted that he is accepting tax breaks and other subsidies for siting its two new headquarters that will cost New York City and Arlington, Virginia, in excess of $4.6 billion. That makes it the fourth costliest mega-deal in U.S. history.

In the wake of a damning New Yorker magazine report in which six women reported CBS chairman Les Moonves of sexual assault, lawyers from CBS spoke to 11 of his 17 accusers. Their report verified that he “engaged in multiple acts of serious non-consensual sexual misconduct in and outside of the workplace, both before and after he came to CBS in 1995,” the New York Times wrote. Which is bad enough, but Moonves was still lobbying to get a $120 million severance package.

A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that dozens of employees of Wynn Resorts were sexually harassed and assaulted over decades by founder and CEO Steve Wynn. He denied the allegations, but was removed from his position as CEO. Adding insult to injury, Wynn accused his ex-wife of encouraging the victims to come forward to better position herself in their revised divorce settlement.

WPP CEO Martin Sorrellresigned as CEO of WPP, the world’s largest advertising agency holding company, after an internal company investigation into his personal conduct that included misusing the firm’s assets.

Mic.com cofounders Chris Altchek and Jake Horowitz fell for the failed strategy of pivoting to video, courtesy of Facebook’s high-dollar promise that creating native content would boost ad revenue. Mic (like others) began to lay off editorial staff in the name of bulking up video content. Now that the strategy is clearly not working, the company let go the majority of the remaining staff, and sold its remaining assets to Bustle.

Good and bad leaders of 2018

Of course, some leaders straddled a fine line between good deeds and decisions that put their staff, customers, and constituents in a bad position. Here are two notable examples from the past year.

Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff supported a proposed business tax to fund housing and homeless programs in San Francisco where, notably, Jack Dorsey of taxpayer-funded Twitter has not. Benioff also publicly condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s child separation policy. However, his proposed $250,000 donation to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), which was part of a $1 million pledge to help families affected by the policy, was declined by the organization. That’s because even though 650 Salesforce employees asked that Benioff reassess the company’s contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, he declined to do so, but made the pledge instead.

This past June, under CEO Mary Barra‘s leadership, General Motors lodged a complaint to the Commerce Department stating that further tariffs on imported auto parts and materials could result in higher car prices and, ultimately, a smaller GM. Several weeks ago, Barra oversaw the automaker’s plans to cut production at several factories and cut more than 14,000 salaried employees (about 15% of its workforce). The move drew rebukes from Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (a plant is located in Ontario), and the United Auto Workers (UAW). The union vowed to use“every legal, contractual, and collective bargaining avenue” to fight the changes.

Hakuna matata is a Swahili phrase that roughly means, “No problem,” but Disney’s trademark of the phrase is definitely a problem.

Over 52,000 people have signed a petition accusing Disney of “colonialism and robbery” for its trademark on a phrase that’s used across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the phrase became a global phenomenon thanks to Timon and Pumbaa in the 1994 film The Lion King, as the Guardian notes, Disney was hardly the first to popularize the phrase. That particular accolade goes to the Kenyan band Them Mushrooms and their 1982 song “Jambo Bwana” (“Hello, Mister”), which featured the phrase hakuna matata–and went platinum.

That fact didn’t stop Disney from being granted U.S. trademark protection in 2003 for the use of hakuna matata on clothing or footwear. While Kenyans and other Africans can sell their own hakuna matata clothing in Africa, they can’t sell clothing with the Swahili phrase in the U.S., thanks to Disney’s trademarks.

Disney plans to release a live action remake of The Lion King next year.

Shelton Mpala, who created the petition, accused the company of appropriation. “Disney can’t be allowed to trademark something that it didn’t invent,” he wrote. The petition has so far been signed by more than 52,000 people. As the Guardian notes, the controversy has sparked efforts to encourage African governments to do more to protect their culture from Western pilfering. (See this article in Business Daily Africa.)

We’ve reached out to Disney for comment and will update if we hear back.

This isn’t the first time that Disney has been accused of cultural insensitivity. While it has been making efforts to improve (see, for instance, Moana and Coco), it tends to fall short when it comes to trademarks. For instance, the company actually tried to trademark the phrase Dia de los Muertos (aka the Mexican Day of the Dead festival) for merchandising purposes, only dropping the attempts when it was called out.

In our hyper-connected working world, more and more people are experiencing burnout. As a coach and psychologist, these cases leave me genuinely concerned, given that recent research showed that more than 9 of 10 workers are stressed at work (almost one-third of them to unsustainably high levels). Employee burnout has also hit “epidemic” levels.

Burnout, left unchecked, leads to poor performance, resentment, and even physical ailments. The process of burnout is painful and insidious. I can attest to this from firsthand experience and from leaders who have turned to me for coaching when they’re experiencing burnout.

Research demonstrates that the presence of high job demands and inadequate resources are the main sources of burnout. There are, however, psychological strategies that individuals can use to minimize it (and its unfavorable effects). Follow the four-step process below:

Step 1: Recognize when you’re burning out

Burnout can be a tricky problem to distinguish. After all, the corporate world rewards those who work long hours, and many don’t want to admit that it’s unsustainable to do so. Even though burnout can be a critical problem in the workplace, sadly, not everybody agrees that it’s a problem that they need to take seriously.

Psychologist Christina Maslach has found that burnout consists of 3 components:

1) Exhaustion: This represents the immense emotional, physical, and/or cognitive fatigue that compromises the ability to work effectively. You don’t feel replenished after a good night’s sleep and time off, because the deficit is too large.

2) Cynicism: Also referred to as depersonalization, this manifests in lower levels of engagement. You may begin to feel detached, negative, or annoyed by work and coworkers.

3) Inefficacy: This occurs due to a lack of productivity and feelings of incompetence. You feel you can’t keep up or won’t be successful.

Although there’s a correlation between the components, research shows that individuals have distinct burnout profiles. You might find that you experience exhaustion more than cynicism, or that the feeling of inefficacy takes over more than anything else.

Step 2: Practice effective energy management

Once you recognize the symptoms, you need to conduct an energy audit. For a week, track your time and make a note of what you’re doing, who you’re with, and how you feel. Rate them on a scale from 0 (completely drained) to 10 (energized). Make a note of how valuable the activity is, and don’t forget to audit your time away from work.

Your audit can help guide new actions so that you can invest more time in encounters that energize and fill you and cut back on the areas that drain you. To be clear, this isn’t about avoiding stress. According to peak performance research, effective energy management consists of stress and recovery. Stress–in small doses–actually stimulates growth. The real culprit is chronic stress without recovery. The main objective here is to address and replenish your diminishing energetic resources. 

Step 3: Reset your thoughts

When one is headed down a path toward burnout, chronic stress can take a toll on your brain and thought patterns. Neuroscientists have discovered that chronic stress triggers long-term changes in the brain structure, which may leave you more prone to anxiety and mood disorders. This is why it’s important to train your mind to re-establish healthy neural pathways. By doing so, you’ll slowly “rewire” your brain so that you can consciously make daily choices that will improve your quality of life. 

When you experience strong emotions, you might feel like it controls your behavior. But when you make efforts to observe your thinking, you can be intentional and choose not to react, but respond. A simple way to start practicing this is by separating your thoughts from yourself. Remember, you are not your thoughts. This separation empowers you to pause and decide if you want to believe this thought or not. Next, put your thought on trial by asking yourself, “what this the factual evidence for and against this thought?” You’ll start to notice other patterns of unproductive thoughts, and realize you’re in control of those too.

A coach can be a big help in this step because they bring an objective view and a new perspective. Our thoughts are incredibly powerful. When you train your mind to see things more clearly, you can reduce reactivity and you’ll be more likely to act in your own best interests.

Step 4: Record your behaviors

In this step, identify a list of non-negotiable behaviors that make you feel like you’re thriving, then record how you’re doing against them. Researchers agree that burnout doesn’t occur from one big event–but is the result of a prolonged stress that erodes thriving behaviors over time.

When you record how you feel on a consistent basis, you’ll be able to “catch” the subtle precursors to burnout far in advance. This means that you’re able to course-correct early and often. Over time, you’ll become more aware of subtle behavior changes and what it takes to maintain positive behaviors. For example, you might track a key thriving behavior as “exercising at least five days per week.” If you notice that you’re only making it to the gym twice a week, you know that you’re on the verge of burnout and it’s time to get your self-care plan back on track.

Burnout is a natural consequence of a hyper-connected world, but it doesn’t have to take over your life. Follow this four-step process to gain new skills and awareness, and also to exemplify a healthy model for your team and others around you.

Dr. Jacinta M. Jiménez is a Stanford University trained and licensed Doctor of Clinical Psychology and a Board Certified Coach. She currently serves as Head of Coaching for BetterUp.

On Tuesday, when county officials appointed Democrats Rochelle Thuy Nguyen and Beatrice “Bea” Angela Duran to fill two seats in the Nevada state legislature, they made history. The state is now the first in the U.S. to have a female majority in the legislature, the AP reports. The appointments mean that women now make up 50.8% of the 63 seats in the Legislature (nine of 21 seats in the state Senate and 23 of 42 seats in the Assembly).

No state has previously had a female-majority or even a 50% female legislature, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, which tracks women’s political representation. They note that throughout American history only three legislative chambers (as in either the House or the Senate) have ever had a majority of women. Only the Colorado House, New Hampshire Senate, and the Nevada Assembly.

If men are threatened by this change in power rankings, they can feel free to move to the other 49 states or build a time machine and go back to Monday when men still controlled every lawmaking body in the entire country.

The Nevada state legislature will be 50.8% women in 2019.

The Nevada Assembly, its lower house, will also be majority-women in 2019. Only three state legislative *chambers* have ever crossed the 50% mark:

New Hampshire Senate, 2009-2010

NV Assembly, 2019

Colorado House, 2019 https://t.co/bZjrSRxE6c

— CAWP (@CAWP_RU) December 18, 2018

It was probably the first construction project unveiling to sport a Monty Python-style watchtower with a knight hurling insults in a bad French accent, marshmallow roasting by flamethrower, and a live snail.

As hundreds of natty VIP guests and media packed onto a steep ramp and tunnel platform, a car heading toward them slowed to a stop, and a flannel-clad Elon Musk emerged to cheers and high-fives.

“Thank you for coming to this hole in the ground!” he shouted.

“I’ve lived in L.A. for 16 years and the traffic has varied between horrible and absolutely excruciating,” Musk told reporters earlier in the day after rides in the tunnel. “I don’t see anything on the horizon that solves it. This is one solution–not to the exclusion of other things—but it’s a path to finally alleviating traffic congestion in cities. This is an early station—a prototype. We’re still figuring things out. But I think it’s a solution that would actually work.”

Capable of traveling safely at over 150mph. At that speed, it will feel like teleporting within a city.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2018

The 1.14-mile illuminated test tunnel cost $10 million of the $40 million the privately funded company has spent thus far, with Musk contributing an undisclosed amount of his own money. It runs 40 feet beneath 120th Street in Hawthorne, next to Musk’s SpaceX headquarters. (“I wanted to be able to see it from my desk and know if we’re making progress,” he said.)

Tesla cars, outfitted with extendable tracking wheels, enter and exit via a ramp or a car elevator. Once in the tunnel, the tracking wheels emerge from underneath the car and lock into a guideway that keeps the car wheels on cement platforms. The test tunnel can handle cars traveling up to an envisioned 150 miles per hour.

At the unveiling, guests took rides, occasionally bumpy ones, from the entrance to the end about a mile away—at a paltry 50 miles per hour. Musk assured a finished tunnel would be completely smooth—and offer Wi-Fi and cell-phone reception. “We just ran out of time” for the event, he said.

“Converting the car into a train with tracking wheels was a profound breakthrough,” he added. “This way, you can drive on the road, and when it gets in the tunnel, the wheels deploy. Previously, electric skates would carry the car, which was much more complex. Deployable wheels would add $200 or $300 to the average car. It doesn’t have to be a Tesla. It can be any car. But it would need to be autonomous, so it could accelerate and break fast.

Once operational, loop tunnels would be compatible with and pave the way for an eventual hyperloop network—an ultra-high-speed system that transports passengers longer distances at 600-plus mph via autonomous electric pods or cars in a vacuum shell.

With entrance and exit station lifts as small as two parking spots, the system accommodates more stations than a subway, getting passengers closer to ultimate destinations.

“It’s more like an underground highway,” Musk added. “It’s only when you want to get off the loop system that you slow down.”

Reimagining tunnel digging

Musk opted for a tunneling solution to traffic mitigation, because of the infinite amount of underground real estate, and the lack of surface noise or disruption. The challenge was finding a way around the slow speed and cost of conventional drilling, which Musk estimates at $1 billion a mile. So he set about redesigning the process.

The company was able to cut tunneling costs by reducing the tunnel diameter from the single-lane standard of 28 feet to 14, switching from diesel to electricity, and increasing the tunnel boring speed through more power, continuous drilling, and automation.

The company mascot—Gary the Snail, named after the Sponge Bob Square Pants character—is a cheeky nod to the slowness of conventional tunnel drilling, which Musk says moves 14 times slower than the speed of a snail.

Musk, unfortunately, is less adept at snail sitting than drilling. “This is Gary No. 6,” he said, pointing to a pineapple-shaped terrarium containing a garden snail. “Apparently snails don’t live that long.”

Proposed projects

Although Musk cites five to 20 inquiries a week from cities, there are a few frontrunners. Chicago has enlisted The Boring Company to build the Chicago Express Loop that will run travelers from downtown’s Block 37 to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in 12 minutes, compared to the Blue Line’s 45-minute journey. Other proposals in various stages include a 35-mile Washington, D.C., to Baltimore hyperloop, Las Vegas loop, and citywide Los Angeles loop network, including an operational proof of concept Dugout Loop connecting Red Line Metro station neighborhoods to Dodger Stadium.

“Chicago will probably be out first, depending on regulatory approvals, which are outside of our control,” said Musk. “The D.C.-to-Baltimore hyperloop is in the early stages of building. We’ve had interest from cities around the world. Either we’re building to operate it, which is what Chicago is asking us to do, or we’re happy to build one and hand it over to the city or state. We’re being selective about what tunnels to do next. We’re looking at the highest value in the least amount of time.”

By the time Los Angeles hosts the Olympics in 2028, he said, “Hopefully the whole network [here] will be running. The regulations are extreme and the paperwork is enormous. You have to address oil, gas, methane, zone, earthquakes. It’s the tunnel equivalent of Broadway—if you can dig it here, you can dig it anywhere.”

We’ve all heard the famous proverb “alone you can go fast, together you can go far.” Yet, so often, we find ourselves feeling competitive when confronted with someone doing the same work as us, or when seeking our boss’s attention for a promotion. A competitive mind-set locks you into feeling distrustful of others, secretive, and closed off.

Fear that there isn’t enough success to go around, or fear that someone else’s success means we are doing worse, forces us into a place of competition rather than opening the doors to collaboration. Business coach Cait Scudder says this competitive mind-set can hold you back from achieving the success that you desire.

If you’re fearful to share your opinion because you’re worried someone else will steal your idea, for example, you may never allow that idea to flourish. Similarly, being fearful of collaborating with someone else for fear that elevating their name will mean your name will become irrelevant, means you could miss out on an opportunity to grow your potential. “When you choose to see others as a threat and competition, you rob yourself of the possibility of a mutually beneficial relationship,” says Scudder.

If you struggle with being collaborative, try these four tips to get over your competitive fears.

List the Benefits

This is a simple task that helps your brain to see the benefit of a collaborative mind-set. Make a list of all the benefits that come from staying open and collaborative (such as building a mutually beneficial relationship, sharing resources, growing your network) and all the benefits of staying closed. Ask yourself which side makes you feel more connected and empowered and which side makes you feel fearful and limited. “It’s powerful to see these answers written out,” says Scudder.

Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Doing everything yourself isn’t an effective long-term strategy. “You’re going to depend on colleagues to pull their weight and team members to handle their areas of expertise,” says Scudder.

Identify your strengths and the strengths of others. “By getting clear on what you excel in, where you need support, and the areas that another person excels in and needs support, it becomes easy to identify potential collaborations that would be of mutual benefit,” says Scudder.

Initiate Connection

Scudder argues our fear of collaboration comes from the feeling of being “in or out.” Often individuals who are trapped in a competitive mind-set don’t feel that they are part of the “in crowd.” Feeling left out breeds emotions of distrust. Separating yourself from the pack allows these emotions to intensify, forcing you to be trapped in a competitive mind-set.

By reaching out to others by email or social media platforms and attending networking events, you can begin to create a feeling of belonging and to feel more connected with others–and therefore more comfortable with the idea of collaborating.

Remember Your Mission

“One of the biggest reasons we slip back into competition is because we’re growing disconnected from our deeper values,” says Scudder. “When you reconnect with your why–the reason you started this business or joined this company in the first place–choosing to fight the smaller battles becomes easy to see for what it really is–irrelevant and distracting from your greater purpose.”

Aligning your decisions to participate, to share, and to collaborate with your core vision and values can help you to cultivate a collaborative mind-set. When faced with an individual you may view as a competitor, ask whether they share your values? Then ask what good could be achieved by joining forces and combining your strengths. Always going back to your mission ensures that the collaboration is in line with your core beliefs and values.

We are a long way from the golden age of air travel where well-dressed men and women in travel suits would breeze up to the plane two minutes before takeoff and drink cocktails out of real glasses all the way to California.

To rub that fact in our faces before the holiday travel season, Genfare, a company that offers fare solutions to transit agencies, conducted a survey of 2,000 Americans who fly at least twice per year to determine the worst offenses when it comes to flying.

According to the survey, 64% said it’s okay to take their shoes off on a plane, which is somehow fine if they slip them back on before using the bathroom. Things really fall apart, though, over this statistic: 20% of you monsters out there thinks it’s perfectly okay to take your socks off on a plane. It’s not. No one wants to be sitting next to someone while they lift their knee up to their face to peel their socks off in the confined space of an airline seat. Plus, when the socks come off, odor is sure to waft, and 26% of those surveyed said that the inescapable scent of body odor was the biggest plane travel annoyance.

The No. 1 spot, though, was saved for something universally agreed upon as completely aggravating: seat kicking. Among those surveyed, 54% said that was the most annoying thing (probably because they forgot about the barefoot traveler spreading their toe jam all over the shared floor space). The next biggest aggravation was being trapped on a plane with a crying child (27%), which went hand in hand with inattentive parents (21%).

Here’s the full list of air travel annoyances, ranked:

1. Getting seat kicked: 54%
2. Crying baby/child: 27%
3. Body odor: 26%
4. Talkative passneger: 23%
5. Inattentive parents: 21%
6. Drunk passenger: 18%
7. Seat pulled back or leaned on: 17%
8. Snoring: 15%
9. Rushing to get off plane: 15%
10. Reclining seat: 15%
11. Putting feet up: 13%
12. Smelly food: 11%
13. Man-spreading: 7%
14. Passenger removing shoes or socks: 6%
15. Bright screens on phones: 3%
16. Non-service dogs: 2%
17. Dressing sloppy: 1%

Luckily, survey respondents had plenty of remedies to combat No. 4 on the list—talkative passengers. In fact, 3% of those surveyed just ignore them. Most people, though, exited those uninvited conversations by putting on headphones (37%) or looking at their phones (13%), while my personal heroes were the 0.5% who called the flight attendant to make the passenger stop talking to them.

Facebook is dragging a few major tech companies into a public shame spiral in the wake of a new New York Times report. The report alleged that Facebook gave several tech companies, including Microsoft, Amazon, and Netflix, more access to users’ personal data than it ever disclosed to the public (despite claiming for years that it never sold user data). That access included giving Spotify and Netflix “the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages,” according to the Times.

Now the official Netflix Twitter account is trying to set the record straight, by responding to the New York Times‘ tweet of the story. In a rather glib response, it tweeted: “Netflix never asked for, or accessed, anyone’s private messages. We’re not the type to slide into your DMs.”

Netflix never asked for, or accessed, anyone's private messages. We're not the type to slide into your DMs.

— Netflix US (@netflix) December 19, 2018

While Netflix was clearly trying for a sort of “how do you do, fellow kids” response, it was pretty tone deaf considering it is being implicated in connection with a fairly egregious privacy invasion against users. Understandably, Twitter users weren’t impressed with the blasé tweet.

maybe a jokey joke isn’t the best way to respond when your company is a part of a serious accusation.

— donovan copeland (@cxcope) December 19, 2018

Some Netflix employees had the capability to do so and probably did without management knowing about it. And something this serious should not be some sly joke about sliding into people’s DMs. Our fundamental human right to privacy is not a laughing matter.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) December 19, 2018

Facebook: come over

Netflix: can’t I’m busy

Facebook: I’ll give you full access

Netflix: pic.twitter.com/eXgX0706BW

— Lobes (@Lobes) December 19, 2018

A Netflix spokesperson sent over a more official statement, which explains that its collaboration with Facebook was short-lived:

“Over the years we have tried various ways to make Netflix more social. One example of this was a feature we launched in 2014 that enabled members to recommend TV shows and movies to their Facebook friends via Messenger or Netflix. It was never that popular so we shut the feature down in 2015. At no time did we access people’s private messages on Facebook or ask for the ability to do so.”

Now it’s just up to users to decide if they believe it.

It’s even worse than you think. One of the biggest revelations in Monday’s bombshell reports on Russia’s social media propaganda campaign was that Instagram played a much bigger role than previously known—resulting in 187 million engagements versus 76.5 million engagements on Facebook—at a scale far larger than parent company Facebook has acknowledged. And though the Russian Instagram accounts have since been deleted, they actually have had a greater impact than the new batch of Facebook data suggests: A search of Instagram reveals that at least hundreds of Internet Research Agency (IRA)-linked posts are still alive across the platform through legitimate U.S.-owned Instagram accounts, where they have racked up thousands of likes.

Sen. Mark Warner, the Democrat Vice Chair of the Senate committee that commissioned the reports, told Fast Company that the lingering posts were a sign that more investigation is needed. “This is exactly why we thought it was important to release this information to the public—so that we can continue to identify what’s out there, and uncover additional IRA accounts that are still operational,” he said.

While most of the news coverage focused on influence campaigns on Facebook, Instagram was “perhaps the most effective platform” for the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency in its efforts to sow discord and promote President Donald Trump’s campaign, and remains “a key battleground,” noted one of the new reports, by cybersecurity company New Knowledge, Columbia University, and software research and development firm Canfield Research.

“On Instagram, IRA activities did not cease after the 2016 election but became substantially more vigorous” among a broader ecosystem of misinformation, according to the other report, compiled by Oxford University’s Center for Computational Propaganda and the network analysis company Graphika.

Still, the New Knowledge researchers write, the popular photo-sharing app was used at a scale that Facebook executives “appeared to have avoided mentioning in congressional testimony.” Even now, they say, data that could help measure the campaigns’ impact remains out of reach to the public.

Facebook’s slow acknowledgment

The company first disclosed the presence of IRA-linked Instagram accounts in early October 2017, shortly after I asked a Facebook spokesperson about a swath of suspicious and defunct Instagram accounts. The accounts had been suspended earlier that year, but I had found their remnants—as well as surviving “regrams” by legitimate users—scattered across the web on meme archival sites. Jonathan Albright, director at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism and a coauthor of the New Knowledge report, had first pointed me to bits and pieces of data he had excavated using a briefly-open loophole in Facebook’s CrowdTangle tool.

Albright was struck by the as-yet-unacknowledged scale of the Instagram campaign, as well as the potential impact of the platform. “For sowing division and finding wedge issues, Instagram is an ideal visual meme broadcast factory,” he said.

That afternoon, the company updated a blog post with a single mention of Instagram: “Of the more than 3,000 ads that we have shared with Congress, 5% appeared on Instagram. About $6,700 was spent on these ads,” out of a total of around $100,000.

But this brief mention vastly understated the true size of the Instagram campaign, and spending on ads hardly represented the scope of the Russian effort. The ad engagements “were a minor factor in a much broader, organically driven influence operation,” said the New Knowledge report. Still, the researchers note, the $100,000 figure “has stuck among people who remain skeptical of the IRA operation’s significance.” (A U.S. Justice Department indictment this year estimated that by September 2016, the IRA had a monthly budget of more than $1.25 million to carry out its campaigns.)

The Russians’ preferred platform

With access to extensive amounts of data provided by Facebook, the researchers paint a fuller picture of Instagram’s role: Beginning in 2015, accounts created by the IRA spread 116,205 Instagram posts, almost double the number of Facebook posts they created, 61,483. The Instagram posts resulted in 187 million engagements (including 4 million comments) across 20 million users, versus 76.5 million engagements on Facebook across 126 million people.

By comparison, on Twitter, where IRA activities in the US first began in 2013, 1.4 million people engaged with its tweets, leading to nearly 73 million engagements.

On Instagram, the New Knowledge researchers note, some of the IRA’s accounts garnered sizable followings. Roughly 40% of its accounts achieved over 10,000 followers—what marketers call “micro-influencers,” with 12 accounts racking up over 100,000 followers—with “influencer” status. The Instagram account @blackstagram_, aimed at black voters, was perhaps the IRA’s most successful account, regularly getting upwards of 10,000 likes on its posts by 2017.

Still, Facebook has still not released data about how users engaged with Instagram: The data the researchers were given did not include any comments, details about videos, or the view duration for posts. And Facebook didn’t provide the researchers with the sort of data it offers advertisers: “They didn’t include any conversion pathway data to elucidate how individuals came to follow the accounts, eliminating another key path to gauge impact.”

Instagram may have been more engaging a platform than Facebook, the researchers posit—echoing the sentiment of many millennials—and more conducive to influence campaigns. “Additionally, it is worth investigating whether Instagram users were substantially more likely to engage with the content to better understand how this material influenced and is likely to influence in the future,” they write.

Sowing division and suppressing votes

Ahead of election day, Instagram was used to push out thousands of messages, many of which were intended to sow division across the political spectrum and suppress the black vote. (Many of the posts have been collected in online archives.) In some cases, the memes sought to misdirect black voters, for instance by pushing vote-by-text messages, or urged them to vote for a third-party candidate or stay home altogether.

Similar “voter discouragement” tactics have been ascribed to the Trump campaign, which, with the help of disgraced data firm Cambridge Analytica, used an unprecedented amount of Facebook ads to target voters in swing states like Florida. Facebook has said that it has seen no evidence of coordinated activity between the IRA-backed efforts and the Trump campaign.

Black voters were especially singled out, according to the new reports. “The most prolific IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,” the New Knowledge researchers write. The IRA’s “degree of integration into authentic black community media was not replicated in the otherwise right-leaning or otherwise left-leaning content.”

Instagram propaganda ramped up after the election

As the Facebook platform faced more scrutiny after the election, the IRA leaned harder on Instagram. There was a 238% spike in Instagram activity in the six-month period following the election, according to the Oxford-Graphika report.

Among liberals, the IRA pushed an array of messages on Instagram that attacked the Electoral College and pushed back against early calls for impeachment. Among Trump supporters, the group pushed the false claim that the president would have won the popular vote if it weren’t for massive voter fraud by undocumented immigrants.

Russian memes are still alive and spreading

While the known IRA Instagram accounts have been purged, along with their associates on other platforms, many copies of their original posts remain.

For instance, as Fast Companypreviously reported last year, a number of incendiary Instagram posts from IRA accounts were reposted by a number of popular American conservative political accounts, where they racked up tens of thousands of likes and where they continue to spread.

One of many memes originally spread by the IRA account @secured_borders and still available elsewhere on Instagram rails against sanctuary cities and “illegal aliens” with talk of justice for the politicians who support the idea.

The surviving posts illustrate the lasting impact of the IRA information war, and suggest that Facebook’s estimates of users who have seen Russian memes remain low, according to the New Knowledge researchers. While Facebook said more than 20 million people likely saw messages spread by the IRA on Instagram, it is “possible that the 20 million is not accounting for impact from regrams, which may be difficult to track because Instagram does not have a native sharing feature,” the researchers wrote.

Facebook acknowledges that its takedowns of IRA actors in 2017 did not extend to removing posts from authentic, real people. When the company removes accounts or Pages for coordinated inauthentic behavior, it acts based on the behavior of the accounts, not the content, a spokesperson said. Since much of the IRA’s memes had been assembled or recycled from other sources, it can also be challenging for platforms to distinguish between a piece of propaganda and an “authentic” piece of content.

What’s next: Critical data–and defenses–remain missing

The researchers want more data. “Further investigation of subscription and engagement pathways is needed,” the researchers say, “and only the platforms currently have that data. Understanding the reactions of targeted Americans, and attempting to gauge the impact that the repeated exposure to this propaganda had, is also a key area for ongoing investigation.”

There should be more information sharing between government and social networks, a recommendation P.W. Singer also made when we spoke last month. “The United States government has departments with decades of experience managing foreign propaganda and espionage,” write the New Knowledge researchers. “But because these influence operations are happening on private social platforms, there has been minimal information sharing. Robust collaboration between government agencies, platforms, and private companies is key to combatting this threat.”

The U.S.’s dedication to freedom of speech and rules of engagement, however, makes it hard to fight propaganda by authoritarian governments. “It is precisely our commitment to democratic principles that puts us at an asymmetric disadvantage against an adversary who enthusiastically engages in censorship, manipulation, and suppression internally,” the report said.

Related: War is memes. “Don’t be a victim like the Americans”

Despite efforts by the social media companies and governments, the threat of information warfare on our social networks is only evolving, the researchers write. “We’ll see increased human-exploitation tradecraft and narrative laundering. We should certainly expect to see recruitment, manipulation, and influence attempts targeting the 2020 election, including the inauthentic amplification of otherwise legitimate American narratives, as well as a focus on smaller/secondary platforms and peer-to-peer messaging services.”

Lawmakers, who have already released reports on election security and the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference, are expected to unveil their own reports on social media interference and whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) told The Hill last week that he is “fairly confident” the probe will wrap up in the spring. If the new data–and the apparent lack of data–is any indication, there’s a lot more to uncover.

It’s been a tough couple of years for George Zavela. The 77-year-old Houston resident and Vietnam veteran was laid off twice, and has had to depend on Social Security. On top of that, he had back surgery earlier this year. Now on the mend, his doctor wants him in regular physical therapy, but Zavela doesn’t have a car and even if he did, he couldn’t drive himself. He’s in no condition to get to public transportation, either.

“So I did some looking on the internet for senior citizen transportation help,” Zavela says. That led him to the United Way, a large nonprofit network with local offices that help connect people with resources like health services and education. When he called the 211 hotline, the representative, Tonya, told him that through a new partnership with Lyft, they’d be able to send him a car to drive him to and from his PT appointments, free of charge. So far, Zavela’s used Lyft through the United Way around five times, and he says its been very helpful for his recovery.

When Veronica Juarez, Lyft’s VP for social enterprise, and Larissa Rydin, the United Way’s VP of strategic partnerships and innovation, first met in 2017, this was the type of outcome they envisioned if they collaborated. “Lyft has this superpower of transportation, and we, through our 211 hotline, have the superpower of being able to identify people in need of transportation,” Rydin says. This past June, Lyft and Untied Way launched the pilot program that people like Zavela have used in 12 cities, including Houston, Cleveland, and Denver. So far, United Way has dispatched nearly 13,000 Lyft rides through the partnership, Juarez says.

Next year, Lyft and United Way plan to reach 25 metros in total. At the same time, Lyft is also building out partnerships with many other nonprofits, like the American Cancer Society, Be the Match Foundation, and Sister Friends, Detroit–a nonprofit that helps pregnant women and new mothers access health services and financial support–that have unmet transportation needs. Lyft drivers earn the same on rides delivered for nonprofit partners, though the company does not disclose how much money it brings in from its nonprofit partnerships.

Transportation–whether it be to a job interview, a doctors’ appointment, or another essential service–is one of the main requests United Way fields through its 211 hotline. While the nonprofit’s local offices have small budgets to provide transit for people, they don’t always have reliable outlets for the money. In some cases, 211 dispatchers can deploy a shared van to collect people. Or they can offer people discounted public transit passes. But in many cities, bus and light-rail systems don’t run frequently enough, or close enough to where people need them. In many cases, Rydin says, the United Way was simply not able to help people calling in for transport-related aid. In 2017, an average of 25% of the requests for transport made through 211 were not filled. In cities like Denver and Cleveland, that unmet need was even greater.

The Lyft partnership, though, has helped. In Denver, unmet requests decreased from 35% to 7%, and in Cleveland, they dropped from 37% to 11%. The way it works is fairly simple. A couple of years ago, Lyft rolled out Concierge, which is a dashboard that enables organizations to hail and pay for rides for people. Some medical institutions, like Denver Health, use it to get patients to and from important appointments. Because institutions take care of all the ride scheduling and payment on the platform, passengers don’t need to download the app–they’re just sent a text message or given a call telling them where to go to be picked up. United Way has found this to be helpful in assisting people who don’t have smartphones.

When United Way launched the partnership with Lyft, they wanted to focus on three use cases that would capture some of the more vulnerable populations in cities: people traveling to and from non-emergency medical appointments, people going to and from job interviews, and people accessing veterans services. The most pressing need, they found, was for medical transport. Around 42% of Lyft rides dispatched through 211 so far have been to and from doctors’ appointments.

The need for more robust medical transport with no cost to passengers is also evident in Lyft’s other nonprofit partnerships. With the American Cancer Society, for instance, Lyft has provided over 10,000 rides. People in treatment, Juarez says, are often not able to drive themselves, and their immune systems are often compromised, making public transportation risky. For them, free, on-demand rides fill a real need.

It’s also proven helpful for people trying to get back into the workforce after homelessness or unemployment. That’s another area where Lyft has seen a lot of interest from partner organizations. Without income, even taking public transit to a job interview can be financially challenging for people, Juarez says. Lyft recently launched a partnership with Detroit Employment Solutions Corporation, an agency that gets low-income people to and from jobs and interviews. Along with its work with United Way, Lyft wants to make the early stages of getting a job less stressful for people.

While all of Lyft’s partnerships with nonprofits have been developing over the past year or so, it was only recently that Juarez was appointed to head them up and develop a team to manage them. As the company moves into 2019, it plans to scale up their existing partnerships, and establish more with smaller, more localized nonprofits in places where Lyft has a presence.

What: A Home Alone remake disguised as a Google Assistant ad.

Who: Google, Arts & Letters Creative Co.

Why we care: Nostalgia? During the holidays? Tis the season that practically runs on the stuff. Which is why it’s no surprise that Google Trends data shows search interest in Home Alone happens every year around this time. (Last December, it spiked 1,900%.) The company with that data taps into it here, showing how 38-year-old Kevin can now use Google Assistant to survive the holidays in solo mode.

Brands know throwbacks give us all the warm n’ fuzzies, and not so surprisingly this isn’t the first time a brand has remade a classic flick in its image. Remember when Steve from Stranger Thingsdid his best Ferris Bueller impression for Domino’s last year?

Check out Google’s behind-the-scenes video below for more about its elaborate foray into festive pop culture.

Tiny homes have been considered a possible solution for homelessness for years. Designers have floated concepts for tiny dwellings for the homeless that perch on building walls. Portland, Oregon, has even launched a program to encourage homeowners to install a tiny house in their backyard, which a homeless family could rent out for five years.

In the Bay Area, where homelessness rates have hovered at crisis level for years, a partnership between the San Jose City Council, the nonprofit HomeFirst, and Habitat for Humanity East Bay/Silicon Valley leans on tiny homes as a solution, or at least a temporary one. On December 18, the Council approved the development of two communities of tiny homes to shelter the homeless as they transition into more permanent housing, which the city has been trying to construct to meet demand. The communities will both be open by next summer. In San Jose and the surrounding Santa Clara County, over 7,000 people are homeless, and 75% of them do not have access to a shelter.

The two tiny home communities, which will contain 40 cabins each, along with communal space and showers, are meant as an alternative to the tent communities that spring up when a city fails to provide adequate shelter. Because they often take root in public spaces, tent communities are often then forced to move by law enforcement. Advocates argue that crackdowns do nothing to alleviate the issue of homelessness in a city, and more crucially, they make life even more difficult for people already experiencing homelessness. In San Jose, the nonprofit Hope Village helped a tent community near the airport receive a short-term lease for their lot after they voiced concerns about being removed.

While tiny home communities, like the ones planned in San Jose, offer unsheltered people more stability, they’re not a perfect solution. CBS reports that other cities, like Oakland, have introduced villages of Tuff Sheds–durable, modular tiny homes–to house the homeless. But people living there have said that the rules and police surveillance at the sites have set them on edge. In San Jose, the communities will have 24/7 surveillance for at least the first year the homes are occupied; it’s not clear what criteria would need to be met to indicate that such tight security is not necessary. On top of police presence, representatives from HomeFirst, which will manage the communities, will be there to offer assistance.

The San Jose City Council is hopeful that the tiny home communities will provide a more stable stepping stone to permanent housing than tent encampments. In addition to the private cabins, the communities will have shared computer rooms, which people can use to apply for jobs and access other resources, as well as communal kitchens and laundry facilities. James Stagi, San Jose’s homeless response manager, told the Mercury News that he hopes people will be able to move from the cabins into permanent housing in as little as three to six months. That, of course, will be contingent on the city continuing to build and manage affordable housing that’s truly accessible to people in need.

The Washington, D.C., attorney general sued Facebook Wednesday in a local court, saying the company failed to protect user data and “exposed nearly half of all District residents’ data to manipulation for political purposes during the 2016 election.”

That violated the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act, according to a statement from Attorney General Karl A. Racine.

“Facebook failed to protect the privacy of its users and deceived them about who had access to their data and how it was used,” he said in the statement. “Facebook put users at risk of manipulation by allowing companies like Cambridge Analytica and other third-party applications to collect personal data without users’ permission. Today’s lawsuit is about making Facebook live up to its promise to protect its users’ privacy.”

Facebook said in a statement Wednesday that it’s reviewing the lawsuit.

“We’re reviewing the complaint and look forward to continuing our discussions with attorneys general in DC and elsewhere,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

Among the ways Facebook allegedly violated the law:

• Deception: The company allegedly misled users by telling them it would protect their privacy and require third-party app developers to do the same. In reality, the complaint alleges, Facebook let Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research gather data from users who didn’t use its apps and then sell it to Cambridge Analytica, the controversial political firm.
• Negligence: The company also didn’t properly monitor or audit third-party apps, according to the attorney general, failing to check whether Kogan’s app adhered to Facebook policies on user data.
• Confusion: Facebook’s privacy and app settings were “confusing and ambiguous,” making them hard for consumers to configure, according to the lawsuit. “Instead of allowing users to control access to their information on third-party apps directly from its main privacy settings page, Facebook required users to go to a different part of its platform for third-party app privacy settings,” according to the AG’s office. “This made it harder for consumers to realize that apps could be harvesting their data.”
• Delay: Facebook took more than two years to let users know about Cambridge Analytica’s activities. “The company conducted a cursory investigation and confirmed that the data had been improperly harvested from users and then sold to Cambridge Analytica,” according to the attorney general’s office. “However, Facebook did not inform users affected by the breach until 2018.”
• Carelessness: Facebook allegedly didn’t make sure Cambridge Analytica deleted the user data it gathered, taking the political firm at its word the data was scrubbed from its systems.

At first glance, Slindir is the type of tech invention that inspires knee-jerk guffaws and eye rolls: a Tindr for fit, healthy, “active” people who place a premium on cycling and CrossFit. “Active is our DNA, feeling good is our purpose,” reads the app tagline. It essentially feels like the end culmination of a privileged wellness culture gone too far: proof that toned, beautiful people in their pricey athleisure wear only want to date similarly beautiful people.

Everyone else? You’re basically unlovable.

The problematic name, which is more or less is a play on the word “slender,” hits the point home that this app benefits the svelte. As writer Rosemary Donahue pointed out in a recent Allure op-ed, Slindir “perpetuates the already rampant issue of fatphobia off the bat and is triggering and offensive to plus-size people, folks with body image issues, and people with eating disorders.”

In an interview on The Love Doctor Is In podcast, Slindir founder Andrea Miller explained the philosophy behind her company, noting that a common lifestyle was the best marker of a relationship’s success. The more niche a dating app, the better and faster it helps members find what they’re looking for.

“[Being active] affects your vacation, it’s going to affect the restaurants you eat at, it’s going to affect [you],” said Miller, later adding, “It really has nothing to do with how you look, it’s how it makes you feel.”

A quick scroll through potential candidates displays a stream of buff men claiming a love of hiking, paddling, and running. Quite a few boast of a love for intermittent fasting (obviously) or triathlons. Some simply “want someone to go to the dog park with.”

View this post on Instagram

Find someone who shares your passion and Do it together ????????

A post shared by Slindir ????‍♂️????‍♀️ (@slindirapp) on Dec 17, 2018 at 8:47am PST

The app repeatedly suggests that its network is best suited for fit folks (“sweaty is sexy” reads a line in a welcome email), but nowhere does it state that it is exclusively for thin or toned individuals There is no fat-bashing or blatant elitism. Slindir promotes a healthy lifestyle, not a weight requirement. There is a difference.

The flaws are in how it markets what a healthy lifestyle looks and feels like. Active is not restricted to running or sailing or Lululemon models; it can mean a lot of different things that aren’t associated with a sports activity or number on a scale. Just ask a single mom who runs after her 2-year-old, or New Yorkers who are forced to walk everywhere. They likely consider themselves “active,” and could just as well find compatibility with a person who participates in Tough Mudder.

View this post on Instagram

The REAL question ????????

A post shared by Slindir ????‍♂️????‍♀️ (@slindirapp) on Dec 13, 2018 at 8:50am PST

But that’s not who Slindir is targeting: The service has instead zeroed in on (predominantly white) fitness enthusiasts, the kind who refer to the gym as “church.” These are affluent millennials who in fact treat working out and hiking Runyon Canyon as if those were almost religious activities, and in that sense, having their own network makes sense. We have dating apps for everyone from Mormons to gun lovers, so why should this be any different?

Slindir holds that “lifestyle is a deal breaker,” while Miller describes fitness as “a lifetime commitment.” This is the kind of ethos we’re dealing with here. This is more than just a hobby; for these people, it’s very much a way of life.

(We reached out to Slindir for comment and will update if we hear back.)

If people are so obsessed with fitness that they only want to date someone similarly obsessed with fitness, then I say great—let them have their own app. Maybe they won’t crowd up our other apps. Let them force their own kind into romantic 7 a.m. weekend runs.

Now, who wants to join my Netflix-binge-on-a-couch dating app?

Until recently, it’s been hard to say how many solar systems have been installed in the U.S.–if you buy panels to put on your roof, each state tracks that information differently. There’s no official central database. But a new machine learning program developed by Stanford University researchers uses AI to count solar panels in satellite images. In a new study, the team found that the number of solar systems that exist is far higher than previous estimates.

The program, called DeepSolar, combed through more than 1 billion satellite images and found 1.47 million rooftop solar systems or larger solar plants in 48 states. That’s more than the 1 million systems in the Open PV database, an open-source project that uses voluntary reporting. It’s more than twice as much as the 0.67 million counted by Google’s Project Sunroof, another project that uses AI and satellite data (though because its methods aren’t published, it’s hard to know what accounts for the difference).

Knowing how many solar panels exist–and where they are–can help renewable power run smoothly and grow faster. “Utilities and system operators can figure out where there’s more solar power being produced, in which neighborhoods, and adjust their operations and planning,” says Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, and one of the authors of a new study about the project. “For example, a utility can decide to invest in storage after looking at this data.”

To create DeepSolar, the researchers gave it 370,000 satellite images that humans had labeled as having or not having solar panels, and the program trained itself to find features like color or size that meant a panel was in the picture. After time, it learned to correctly find solar panels 93% of the time. Running through the full database of more than a billion images–100-by-100-foot sections of most of the continental U.S.–took the program a month. With other existing technologies, the same analysis would have taken years.

“Processing this number of tiles requires not just an algorithm that is accurate in detecting whether the systems are present, but also that it’s fast,” says Rajagopal. “So that was the first challenge we needed to overcome.” Now that the system works, the team plans to begin using it in other countries, and expand it to some rural parts of the U.S. that weren’t included in the first study. It also plans to continue running it each year, creating an up-to-date database open to the public. “Our idea of making the data public is to encourage everyone to get involved and take another leap forward in understanding solar,” he says.

In 2018, the platforms have the power. Which means if you aren’t Apple, Google, or Facebook, you answer to them. That’s true for advertisers, for publishers, and even for our democracy. And it can make for a pretty bleak outlook on our future. But this year, one company struck back–and won–in what I’ve come to categorize as the most important, overlooked business story of the year.

When Epic, makers of the mega-successful game Fortnite, brought their game to the 2 billion Android phones in the world, it made a bold decision to circumvent Google Play (that’s Google’s app store, to my iOS friends in the house). Instead, Epic publicized a workaround hiding in Android, then put their game on a website, and told people to download it there.

And by golly, it worked.

It was a big gamble. The way app stores work to date is, Apple or Google hosts (and hopefully promotes!) your app, and for every sale, they get 30¢ on the dollar. That counts for both the app itself and any in-app purchases. Apple had already collected an estimated $54 million for the iOS release of Fortnite.

There’s no avoiding this Apple tax as a developer on iOS. And almost every significant Android app pays the equivalent tax to Google. However, Google has built a feature in your phone’s settings that allows you to install software without the oversight or quality control of the Play Store. It’s both risky to activate, and a pain. Through its install process, Fortnite asks that you grant deep permissions on your phone to allow installation outside of Google Play. Android counters with all sorts of (fair!) warning screens. Once you open these floodgates, malware has more channels to set up shop on your device with impunity, until you close them.

Those hurdles didn’t stop Fortnite’s voracious fanbase, though. Within three weeks, the game had 15 million downloads on Android. Google seemed passive-aggressively sore about all the lost revenue: Within a week of the game’s release, its researchers disclosed a flaw in Fortnite that could allow the phone to download and run malicious software without a user knowing. Epic quickly patched the app. But if fans cared about the error, they didn’t show it.

Epic does not break out its active player counts on platforms like Android, and declined to share specifics for this article. But Fortnite does have more than 200 million players across systems. Epic tells me that players are very likely to play the game across multiple platforms.

By blithely ignoring Google Play, Epic beat Google at its own game. Well, I guess it was Epic’s game. But you get the idea.

So why do I bring this story up now, almost five months after Epic announced its strategy?

I believe most of us, for as loudly as we drunkenly promise to quit Facebook–first thing tomorrow–or ditch that iPhone for some dumbphone, intrinsically feel that protest is futile in the era of mega monopolies. Searcher. News provider. Photo filterer. Social keeper-upper. Messenger. Hardware maker. Retail seller. I’ve just described the business plan of the top few most valuable U.S. (technology) companies. They’ve become unbeatable through their sprawling platforms, ever a feature away from dominating your entire life. Want to quit Amazon? Ha. Have fun trading your two-day shipping for Sundays at Walmart. It sucks, trust me. And let’s face it. You quit Facebook, you join Instagram. You quit Google, you join Apple. Your business quits Amazon’s cloud services, it signs up for Microsoft’s cloud services. Your best option is to ping-pong from one conglomerate to the next.

In this bleak arena of late capitalism, Epic showed up as a surprising challenger. It’s not a new company. It’s not some hot startup that’s disrupting everything. It’s a 27-year-old software studio that develops and licenses a bunch of the foundational technology inside modern games, and, along the way, occasionally creates its own hit franchises, such as Unreal Tournament and Gears of War.

But with a single hit game–granted, a single mega-hit game that can be played on almost any device, that’s making Hollywood scared, that’s projected to take a sizable chunk of $20 billion in Battle Royale revenue in 2019–Epic proved media can be more viral than its medium. It proved that a digital product can still break free of its container.

It proved that the platform holders make a business of other people’s ideas, but you know what? Those ideas can be so big that they conquer the platform.

And so perhaps it’s ironic that two of Epic’s final announcements for the year was that it was launching a game distribution service of its own and sharing its cross-platform game SDK with other developers. The platform breaker is now the platform holder. And having assumed that role, it’s already making money off other people’s creative content: Epic is facing litigation from several black artists who have accused the game of reselling their dances without compensation. This is the sort of vital criticism we need launched against platforms all the time, because by nature, those who hold the keys to the kingdom need to be ethical rulers. Because one day, we may all be downloading our apps from Fortnite. Or whatever comes after it.

Just when you thought there weren’t any more apps worth downloading, along comes 2018 with plenty of fresh ideas. Some of these apps first appeared this year, while others are significant upgrades. Either way, they’ll all help you make better use of your phone, tablet, or computer.

Boost your productivity

Gmail gets with the times
Sweeping product redesigns are always polarizing, but the new Gmail, the first overhaul in five years, weathered the storm by packing in loads of new features. Now you can manage emails and view attachments with one click from the inbox, and there’s a universal “snooze” function that works across desktop and mobile. You can also send self-destructing or password-protected emails in “Confidential Mode,” and can have Google do the hard work of writing your actual emails with Smart Reply. The only downer? Inbox, the beloved Gmail alternative where Google experimented on many of those new features, will shut down by the end of March. [iOS, Android, web]

Unlocking iOS’s potential
Eighteen months after acquiring the iPhone/iPad automation app Workflow, Apple launched a beefed-up version called Shortcuts, which lets you set up multi-step routines to get things done faster. The best way to get started is to activate some ready-made Shortcuts, such as the YouTube video downloader and instant collage creator, but digging into the app on your own can be even more rewarding. [iOS]

The master planner
If you’ve ever wished for one app to handle all your to-do lists, planning boards, and notes, Notion might be just what you need. Notion’s neatest trick is how it lets you view the same data in different ways. You can create a checklist with due dates, then use a calendar view to glance at all your upcoming deadlines. Or write detailed project notes in Markdown, then drop them into a Kanban board to track their progress. Notion first launched in 2016, but got a major overhaul and Android support this year. It’s free for basic personal use, and has several subscription tiers for individuals and teams. [iOS, Android, desktop]

Transcription without the busywork
Next time you need to transcribe a meeting, give Otter a try. The app uses speech recognition to create transcripts automatically, even identifying multiple speakers and picking out keywords. Those transcriptions are then stored online so you can access them from anywhere. Otter is free for up to 10 hours of recordings per month, and then costs $10 per month or $80 per year. [iOS, Android, web]

Protect your privacy

The educational browser
While DuckDuckGo is best-known for its anti-tracking search engine, its mobile web browser and desktop browser extension is even more useful. For every website you visit, DuckDuckGo provides a letter grade based on the site’s tracker use, encryption practices, and privacy policies. Over time it will even name and shame the top tracking network offenders. Of course, it also blocks trackers by default and lets you erase your browsing history with just a couple taps. You can’t set Google as the default search engine, but that’s by design. [iOS, Android, Chrome]

Anti-snooping made simple
Thanks to the U.S. Congress, internet users’ online activity is now fair game for tracking and monetization by internet providers. One way to fight back is with Cloudflare 1.1.1.1, a free app that sets you up with Cloudflare’s encrypted DNS resolver. DNS is sort of like the internet’s phone book, connecting common website addresses (such as google.com) to the numerical IP addresses that those websites actually use. Cloudflare’s DNS service prevents internet providers from easily collecting info about your web activity, and the free app takes all the hassle out of setting this up. [iOS, Android]

Password protection
While any decent password manager will help break your worst login habits (like using the same password everywhere), 1Password now goes a step further. A new feature called Watchtower monitors for stolen passwords, calls out your weakest and most reused passwords, and even lists sites where you can activate two-factor authentication. Watchtower is part of 1Password 7, which also includes a fresh design, rich notes, Mac app integration, and safer storage of its encryption key in the Secure Enclave of Macs with Touch ID. [Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, Chrome OS]

Find stuff faster

Transportation for the carless: Google Maps is great for getting directions with a single mode of travel, but what if you want to mix and match? Cowlines is designed specifically for folks who don’t have their own car, and combines public transit, ride shares, bike shares, and walking to find the fastest and cheapest routes. It’s currently available in 62 North American cities. [iOS]

DNA tests for music
For the last six years, WhoSampled has allowed music fans to trace samples and cover songs back to the original artists. A major app update this year added Shazam-like music recognition, so you can grab that sample data when you’re out at the bar. The app is free on Android and $4 on iOS, and the recognition feature costs $10 per year. [iOS, Android]

Who’s got the game?
While plenty of streaming video search engines already exist (one example, Reelgood, made our list last year), B/R Live searches specifically for sports. For any upcoming game, you can see where to watch it on TV, through streaming services, on the radio, and even at nearby bars. It even covers niche streaming services such as ESPN+, and occasionally offers some sporting events for free. [iOS, Android]

Discover a new favorite utility or two

Virtual tape measure
Even if it can’t match the accuracy of a ruler, Apple’s Measure app is great for sizing up boxes, furniture, and other flat surfaces in a pinch. Just use your iPhone or iPad camera to find an object, hit the + button while pointing at the edges, and let Apple’s augmented reality tech handle the measurements. [iOS]

Text from your laptop
Cross-device messaging is finally a standard Android feature with Android Messages for the Web. Head to messages.android.com on a computer or tablet, then scan the QR code in Android’s Messages app (found behind the menu button, under “Messages for web”). Now you can dish out texts on a real keyboard without having to install any third-party apps. [web]

Fast photo transfers
It’s still an “experimental” app, but Microsoft’s Photos Companion app is already a fast and easy way to send pictures to your PC over Wi-Fi. Just follow the instructions under “How do I use this app,” then use the Import button in the Windows 10 Photos app to start grabbing images from your camera roll. It beats waiting for your cloud storage service to finish syncing. [iOS, Android]

Get creative

Mobile editing studio
Who says an iPad can’t replace your laptop? For video editing, at least, LumaFusion might be all you need, offering multi-track support, dozens of effects, and pro tools such as anchoring and slip editing. A pair of meaty updates this year brought even more features, including network storage drive support and a huge library of royalty-free media. The $20 asking price is on the high end for an iOS app, but it beats paying hundreds for Final Cut. [iOS]

Because the world needs more podcasts
After a foray into short-form audio didn’t pan out, Anchor pivoted this year to become a simple podcast creation app. You can start recording by holding the phone up to your ear, and invite other folks to participate remotely. Once you’ve recorded some segments, you can shuffle them around, edit individual audio files, and publish the finished work to major podcasting platforms. You can even opt into sponsorships and start getting paid—assuming anyone wants to hear what you have to say. [iOS, Android]

On-the-go artistry
Procreate has long been an essential tool for iPad artists. This year, its developers completely rewrote its iPhone counterpart, Procreate Pocket. Version 2.0 has a new interface that keeps menu bars to a minimum, and it achieves near feature parity with the iPad edition with 136 brushes and the same drawing engine. It can also export time-lapse videos of your creations, and—since iPhones don’t support Apple’s Pencil—uses 3D Touch for pressure-sensitive sketching. [iOS]

A camera with depth
Nothing beats the convenience of Apple’s built-in iOS camera, but Obscura 2 is great for those times when you want more control. Manual focus and exposure control are just a tap away, and a scrollable menu lets you quickly switch image formats, adjust white balance, and access a leveling tool, among other options. Several shortcut buttons are customizable as well, and the app comes with 19 filters. For all that, $5 doesn’t seem like a lot to ask. [iOS]

Relax a little

Game changer
It feels like ages since Fortnite landed on the iPhone, even though it was just nine months ago. It isn’t just an addictive game, but a social experience that’s always evolving with new features and special events. And by allowing virtually anyone to see what the fuss is about, developer Epic Games turned an already-popular PC and console game into a worldwide phenomenon. Meanwhile, Epic continues to use Fortnite to uproot industry norms: It distributed the Android version directly, thereby denying Google a revenue cut; goaded Sony into embracing cross-platform play; and is now trying to take on Valve’s Steam with a new PC game store. [iOS, Android, desktop]

Social media’s silly side
Feeling burned out by the heaviness of Facebook and Twitter? TikTok is a welcome relief, with short-form videos that are a mix of dumb humor, cringe-inducing karaoke, and occasional raw talent. Best of all, you can start watching without having to sign into anything. TikTok has technically been around since 2016, but took off this year as its parent company, ByteDance, bought and absorbed a popular similar app called Musical.ly. As of July, TikTok—known as Douyin in its home market of China—had more than 500 million monthly active users. [iOS, Android]

That’s one way to play Solitaire
It’s not exactly new, but you can now install a self-contained version of Windows 95 on modern Windows, Mac, or Linux computers. That lets you write something in Wordpad, install a free trial of AOL, or just play the good version of Solitaire from before Microsoft ruined it with ads. It’s the best nostalgia hit you’ll get this year. [desktop]

Podcasts, radio-style
If you’ve been sleeping through the podcast craze, figuring out where to start can be tough. Scout FM does the legwork for you, picking podcasts automatically based on whatever interests you flag during setup. Once a podcast starts playing, you can mark it as a favorite, bookmark it for later listening, or swipe through to other suggestions. You can also use Scout’s Alexa skill to pick up where you left off. [iOS, Android]

Upgrade yourself

Step your game up
One of the neater uses of Apple’s ARKit framework, HomeCourt is a virtual basketball trainer that watches you shoot hoops through the iPhone or iPad camera. Beyond just detecting makes and misses, the app breaks down stats such as release angle and jump height, then provides advice on how to improve. HomeCourt is free to try, but you’ll need a subscription (starting at $5 per month) to track more than 300 shots per month. [iOS]

Coding made fun
While plenty of apps will teach you to code, Grasshopper frames its lessons as a series of puzzles to solve, making it a bit more enjoyable and less intimidating than your average lesson. You can either start with some coding fundamentals, or dive right into JavaScript, one of the most popular ways to build interactive websites. This is one of several projects to arise from Area 120, Google’s two-year-old, in-house incubator. [iOS, Android]

Software-enhanced friendship
Relationship management software is already essential in the business world, but Ryze takes that idea and applies it to your personal life. For any contact, you can set up periodic reminders to get in touch, and attach notes to help you remember past conversations. It even takes a page from Snapchat and creates “streaks” for all the times you’ve successfully stayed in touch. Several apps with this kind of functionality have launched this year, but Ryze is the most fleshed out. [iOS]

Spend wisely
Finance management app Qapital became a subscription service this year, and also began to act more like a bank, FDIC insurance and all. Customers can now get a debit card, set aside a portion of paychecks for expenses, and even invest some savings into a stock portfolio. Plans range from $3 per month to $12 per month, depending on which features you want. That might be a small price to pay, with Qapital claiming to save users $1,500 per year on average. [iOS, Android]

When that midnight craving hits, you’re not reaching for baby carrots or a handful of almonds. You’re more than likely grabbing the good stuff: Cocoa Puffs, Oreos, or that seductive pint of Häagen-Dazs chocolate chip cookie dough.

A recent survey found that more than half of Americans consider ice cream an evening snack, with an additional quarter classifying it a late-night indulgence. Ice cream was named the second most popular night snack choice, according to research firm Mintel.

The truth is, all that fat and sugar right before bed is actually disruptive to catching those zzzs. But since some traditions are not to be messed with, what if we could tweak that frozen wonder to make it a little bit less taxing on one’s body?

That’s the premise of functional food startup Nightfood’s line of what it calls “sleep-friendly” ice cream. Launching in February, the brand says its confections will complement the human sleep cycle.

The $4.99 pints, the company says, have a balance of fiber, protein, and (less) sugar, which its scientific advisors (sleep experts Michael Breus and Michael Grandner along with nutritionist and sleep therapist Lauren Broch) helped formulate. Ingredients include a protein that’s relatively low in lactose, as well as minerals, amino acids, and enzymes they say aid sleep and reduce acid reflux.

Nightfood comes in eight tried-and-true flavors like chocolate, vanilla, chocolate chip cookie dough, and decaf coffee, all tailored to promote better rest. The Cherry Eclipse flavor, for example, relies on a specific type of cherry that’s naturally highest in melatonin. The chocolate chunks, meanwhile, are made from Chocamine, a cocoa-based ingredient that tastes just like the real thing but without the caffeine kick.

“We looked at everything through the prism of sleep,” founder Sean Folkson tells Fast Company.“It’s not about, like, dropping an Ambien or some sleep aid into the product; it’s about making ice cream in a way that’s less disruptive.”

A functional solution?

Nearly two decades ago, Folkson read Body for Life by Bill Phillips, and was sold on the author’s diet plan: six small meals a day in lieu of three big ones.

The plan worked well for Folkson, save for one area: He couldn’t fall asleep like he used to because his last, late-night mini meal upset his stomach. The entrepreneur assumed there would be some sort of sleep-friendly nutrition bar since there were bars for everything, from pregnancy to exercise, but there wasn’t.

Sleep deprivation was also increasingly being labeled a public health epidemic—more than a third of us do not enough get enough, reports the CDC. And nutrition was partly to blame.

“It was that time that I really got the idea,” reflects Folkson, who was then president of Specialty Equipment Direct, a wholesale construction device distributor. In 2010, Nightfood launched with those nutrition bars ($23.99 for a 12-pack) he was looking for.

Now, Folkson thinks the $50 billion nighttime snack market—and the larger $300 billion global functional food sector—is ready for his soporific frozen treats. (Functional refers to foods that possess a positive effect on health beyond basic nutrition.) With Nightfood, says Folkson, “we’re allowing people to stay within their format and switch out to something that tastes great.”

In an informal Nightfood poll of 300 consumers, 80% said they consume ice cream between dinner and bedtime. According to market research company IRI Worldwide, 44% of snack consumption occurs at night, representing over $1 billion spent weekly on nighttime snacks.

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Perfect for that night time binge ???????? #netflixandchill #nightfood #nightnight

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Folkson is quick to point out that his brand isn’t necessarily advocating late-night sugary snacks; rather, if it’s already happening, might as well make it more agreeable to the digestive system.

“I don’t think there’s anybody that thinks, ‘Oh, this is exactly what a sleep expert or nutrition expert would tell me to do,” Folkson says. “There’s that understanding of, well, maybe that’s not the best.”

When niche goes mainstream

Bedtime ice cream is undoubtedly intriguing, but are consumers willing to ditch their premium brands for it? Folkson thinks yes: “There’s nobody out there that wouldn’t want to feel like they got an extra 10 or 15 minutes of sleep,” he says. He compares his product to when Vicks launched NyQuil: Why not opt for a product that also suits your sleep schedule?

Related: Imagine a better future of food now

But not all people suffer drawbacks from late-night snacking rituals. I tried out Nightfood, along with my Ben & Jerry’s for six late nights. Nightfood was as tasty as its competitor, if perhaps a bit less creamy, but neither had any discernible effect on my sleep. Granted, I have a relatively strong tummy, but I am one of the consumers that would need to see a definitive change in sleep patterns to justify a brand swap.

Nightfood could have taken their goal—better sleep—one step further and added melatonin or CBD, but that would put in an entirely different category altogether.

“You would niche yourself out because now you’re putting stuff in—then people are going to feel like they’re making a [bigger] decision,” explains Folkson.

However, if the functional food market continues at its pace, Nightfood might land with a growing audience that increasingly prefers vitamin- or wellness-enriched products. It joins hundreds of companies looking to satiate wellness-obsessed consumers. There are now energy waffles, “healthy wine,” probiotic cereal, among other new products.

And the wild success of better-for-you, lower-calorie Halo Top ice cream, notes Folkson, demonstrates consumers’ desire for more guilt-free food offerings and willingness to switch brands. (Halo Top boasts $342.2 million in annual sales.)

There’s no doubt the American public now looks for healthier snack ingredients. Mintel reports that the $40 billion conventional snacking market declined 2% annually over the past three years, while “health and wellness” snacking grew 6% annually.

“Consumers are willing to switch if they feel there’s something better out there,” says Folkson. Nightfood recently ran Facebook ads reaching 40,0000 of the platform’s users. The clickthrough rate topped 10%. The high number, reflects Folkson, proves that night-friendly treats “is a pretty compelling concept for some people.”

A sleep-friendly empire

Nightfood will be available for purchase online, but the company is also focusing on getting it into grocery store freezers. It says it has already secured a contract with one of the “largest supermarket chains in the country”—but would not say which one.

As for marketing, Folkson looks to social media savvy brands like RXBAR and, of course, Halo Top. Nightfood has an ambitious influencer network heavily reliant on athletes: NFL stars Tyler Eifert of the Bengals and Jarvis “Juice” Landry of the Browns, Chicago Bulls’ Bobby Portis, and professional golfers Rocco Mediate and Angela Stanford, among others.

More Nightfood ice-cream flavors as well as novelty products (much like a Klondike bar) are already in the works. But that’s just stage one of what Nightfood plans to build.

According to its internal research, the most popular late snacks are cookies, ice cream, chips, and candy, in that order. Down the line, it plans to reimagine all of them, perhaps even pursue another tried-and-true midnight staple–cereal and milk.

As Folkson holds, sleep-friendly will transform into a whole product movement, much like we saw with low-carb and gluten-free.

“It’s not about insomniacs. It’s not about people that perceive that they have an acute problem,” says Folkson. “It’s about all the people out there that just kind of wish they could sleep a little bit better.”

Standing near a glacial stream in Iceland, you’ll see a reflection of the sky in the mirror-like water, interrupted by a few patches of black volcanic sand. But from the perspective of a drone hovering above the stream and looking straight down, the tangled, complex pattern of the landscape looks almost unrecognizable.

Even in places like Venice, where 20 million people visit each year, the aerial view of a nearby lagoon looks unfamiliar. “Ordinary things, shown from the new angle, in the new light, and in the new composition, provide huge stopping power, and make people rethink their habitual statements,” he says. Radisics is a National Geographic contributor with a long career, but only began taking aerial photos, with the help of a drone, in the last year.

Radisics believes that the photos can make people more aware of the challenges faced by the world’s freshwater supply. “I am not a guy who wants to fight by demonstrations on the streets,” he says. “I believe in the power of aesthetics.” He wants the landscapes, which look like abstract paintings, to inspire people, not scare them.

The project was exhibited in October at the GDT-European Nature Photography Festival, and more exhibits will follow. Radisics also plans to begin traveling outside of Europe, including India and parts of Africa, to continue taking aerial photos of water. The “water crisis is present everywhere,” he says.