Fast company - tech

5 free must-have apps for your return to the office

It was fun while it lasted, but companies all over the place are starting to summon their employees back to the office. If you’re a bit rusty when it comes to in-office life, that’s understandable. But there are some tools you can leverage in order to make the transition less jarring. Here are some of the most helpful freebies. Sleep Cycle If you find yourself in the unenviable position of having to, you know, be somewhere on time in the morning, you’ll appreciate this

Scientists are blasting out Earth’s location with the hope of reaching aliens

If a person is lost in the wilderness, they have two options. They can search for civilization, or they could make themselves easy to spot by building a fire or writing HELP in big letters. For scientists interested in the question of whether intelligent aliens exist, the options are much the same. For over 70 years, astronomers have been scanning for radio or optical signals from other civilizations in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, called SETI. Most scientists are confident

Healthcare workers continue to burn out. Can technology help?

Healthcare workers are in crisis: Some 35% of surveyed nurse leaders—usually a clinical specialist who oversees other leaders and registered nurses—say low morale and burnout is their biggest challenge, according to a March 2021 study by the American Association for Nursing Leadership. A stunning 16% reported that they are not emotionally healthy. The COVID-19 pandemic has put our healthcare workers under enormous strain, exacerbating burnout and staffing shortages that predate the

Why Tinder’s background check is a major backfire

It’s a pattern we’ve seen too many times: Real-world violence migrates online, and after protracted denial, platforms that profit from abuse now promise to save us. Their “solutions” are convenient–and conveniently profitable–but only make matters worse. The latest example in the news is particularly wrenching: Tinder’s flailing efforts to address the all-too-real threat of intimate partner violence with unproven, error-prone background checks. Bu

New CNN show spotlights cultural discourse beyond tourism’s beaten path

This Sunday at 10 p.m., CNN will premiere the new travel docu-series Nomad With Carlton McCoy. Produced by Christopher Collins and Lydia Tenaglia, the team behind the network’s much-loved Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, the new six-episode culinary travel show follows McCoy, the president and CEO of Heitz Cellar and a celebrated trailblazer in the wine world, through the banlieues of Paris, the South Korean countryside, Washington, DC, Ghana, Toronto, and the Mississippi Delta on a journ

3 ways to avoid complacency after you’ve built a successful business

Building a successful business is hard. Many sleepless nights, 80-plus hour work weeks, and family time lost. But you’ve done it. Your business is growing and thriving. As someone who has spent the better part of two decades growing a business, there is one very important lesson I’ve learned about success: Complacency is your worst enemy. Success is rewarding. But you can’t rest on your laurels. One might think, “Why fix what isn’t broken?” Obviously, so

Sorry, Elon haters: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

Since we’re all fretting over the future of Twitter, thanks to Elon Musk, it’s once again time to check in on Mastodon. The Twitter-like social network, which launched in 2016, aims to cure Twitter’s ills through the magic of decentralization. Instead of operating as one social network, Mastodon relies on a web of interconnected, open-source servers, called “instances,” with the owners of each instance setting their own moderation policies. Some instances even

TikTok isn’t a social media platform, according to TikTok

“The audiences that love and build and create and connect with TikTok, they say they check Facebook, and they check Instagram and they check Twitter and they check Snap and they check things. But they don’t check TikTok. They tell us they watch TikTok.” That’s how Khartoon Weiss, the head of global agency and accounts at TikTok, described the app in her keynote at the Gathering marketing conference last week—as an entertainment platform, not a social network. I

Three easy ways to save on your Netflix subscription

Here’s a fun activity: Look back in your email and see if you can find your first Netflix bill. Mine was $8 a month. This was a little over 10 years ago, mind you—when the service streamed a hodgepodge of existing stuff and hadn’t yet gone all-in on original offerings. But it was a lot more affordable than my most recent bill of $20. Yes, the Netflix plans keep on getting more expensive. Some price-conscious people are canceling it, which has become a big problem for Netflix

This Is What Elon Musk Did the Day He Bought Twitter. It’s an Amazing Lesson in Productivity

Monday was just another day at the office for Elon Musk. Well, almost. Sure, there was the deal he closed to purchase Twitter for $44 billion cash. But before that, the world’s richest man met with Indonesia’s minister for investment at the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin to discuss battery supply chain. And later that evening, at 10 p.m., Musk met with engineers–where he spent more than an hour working on rocket engine “valve leak solutions” at the SpaceX Starbase


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