A Google intern built the AI behind these shockingly good fake images

A new algorithm called BigGAN creates detailed photos from scratch, representing a leap forward for AI. But it may come at a steep price. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Amazon's Alexa could be hacked by hidden commands in music

Researchers were able to attack a common speech recognition system using voice commands hidden in other audio recordings. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Wood skyscraper rises in Norway

A new video shows progress on Mjøstårnet, a project that aims to become the tallest timber building in the world. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Tim Berners-Lee tells us his radical new plan to upend the Web

With an ambitious decentralized platform, the father of the web hopes it’s game on for corporate tech giants like Facebook and Google. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Tim Berners-Lee Launches Solid- Open Source Project and a Related Startup Inrupt

With an ambitious decentralized platform, the father of the web hopes it’s game on for corporate tech giants like Facebook and Google. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Johnathan Goodwin can get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental (2007)

Johnathan Goodwin can get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental, cut emissions by 80%, and double the horsepower. Does the car business have the guts to follow him? | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Facebook could be breaking EU law by using shadow data for ads

Phone numbers uploaded by users for security purposes or from others’ contact lists could be used to target ads, in a possible violation of EU privacy law. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Mailchimp’s ‘weird’ new branding

While other software giants are simplifying their branding, Mailchimp is keeping it quirky. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Segway is back, and it’s coming for your last shred of dignity

Two words: Hoverboard. Skates. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Google Intern to Head of Google Maps – Interview with Jen Fitzpatrick

Jen Fitzpatrick started out in Google’s first class of interns in 1999. She now runs one of the company’s most important businesses. And along the way, she saw–and shaped–a lot of history. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Inside the epic debate on rethinking our 50-year-old Outer Space Treaty

This week, the UN begins a conference to start the long-overdue discussion on updating the 1967 Outer Space Treaty for a cosmos that has gotten a lot more complicated. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

DeepMind’s AI will learn inside Unity’s video game worlds

Unity’s AI boss Danny Lange explains how the Google sibling will use reinforcement learning and virtual worlds to “evolve” smarter algorithms. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Google’s Eric Schmidt accidentally discovers labor unions

The Google executive tweeted that he wanted to find a “unicorn for the middle class.” People reminded him one already exists. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

A history of the oxo good grips peeler

Smart Design’s Davin Stowell shares the origin story of the OXO Swivel, one of the great icons of 20th-century industrial design. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Google Chrome’s latest feature? A nasty dark pattern

Yet another reason to switch to Firefox. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

This reusable beer bottle could change the way America drinks

Oregon’s ambitious project to bring the reusable bottle back is stirring interest across the country–and, in this case, a monopoly could be a good thing. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Microsoft wants to use HoloLens, AI to fix videoconferencing

Microsoft let me sit in on the rehearsal for its futuristic “meetings of the future” demo in Orlando. Here’s what I learned. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Deepfakes for good: Why researchers are using AI to fake health data

To get enough good data to train disease-hunting AI—and without violating patient privacy—scientists are turning to the AI techniques behind deepfakes. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

“Myst” at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies

In 1993, the atmospheric CD-ROM game became a beloved megahit–but not everybody was happy with its influence on the game industry. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Fast wireless alternatives to the big ISPs can’t grow fast enough

Wireless ISPs like Common Networks and Starry could save you from Comcast and AT&T–but not anytime soon. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

How to design an anti-open office

Work & Co’s new Portland, Oregon, office is proof that not all open plan offices are miserable hellholes. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Real estate co. figures out a simple way to offer the homeless a house and a job

It’s now started a nonprofit to help spread its simple solution: hire people who’ve lost their jobs and homes to be property managers–and have them live for cheap on-site. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

How to solve complex problems by not focusing on them

The Zeigarnik effect can do something stunning when we scatter our attention and let our mind wander. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Facebook's new home gadget might have a creepy camera

Unlike smart screens from Google and Amazon, Facebook’s device will ID users and follow them around the room. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

We can’t have smart guns but we could get smart vapes

The FDA says it may accelerate review of e-cig features like geofencing and biometrics that would make the devices hard for kids to vape. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Not too long ago, personal assistants like Alexa were pretty much confined to smart speakers. That’s changing fast. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Apple tight-lipped on removal of Freedom and other content-blocking apps

Changes in policies have affected ad blockers, antivirus apps, and an anti-distraction tool, but Apple hasn’t spoken publicly about which apps are permitted. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Pegasus, which can hack a smartphone with a text message, is spreading globally

Citizen Lab found traces of the “lawful intercept” software in the U.S., Canada, and 43 other countries. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

It's Never Too Late for Your Career to Peak – Best Work Whenever

Researchers discover that you can do the best work of your professional life at any moment. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

As CEO pay raises, When will tech worker wages start growing again?

Wages increased by just 2.1%. Adjusted for inflation, that’s essentially flat. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Why humans love robots

Humans’ fascination with robots follows a long tradition of connecting emotionally to inanimate objects. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

A Harvard Study Finds a Better Way to Design Bike Lanes

More trees, please. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Forget the new iPhones, Apple's best product is now privacy

Under Tim Cook’s leadership, Apple saw just how critical an issue user privacy would become. Now it’s at least as important a feature as shiny industrial design or a nice camera. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Ikea is quickly shifting to a zero-emissions delivery fleet

The furniture company would like you to walk or bike to its stores and then have your furniture delivered by a clean Ikea vehicle. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Memo to the Silicon Valley boys’ club: Arlan Hamilton has no time for your BS

With her venture firm, Backstage Capital, and a new $36 million fund for black female founders, Arlan Hamilton is changing entrepreneurship in the U.S. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Uber has a new brand again

Less than three years after rebranding, Uber has a new logo and typeface called Uber Move that’s designed to evoke safety and accessibility–not masculine bravado. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

The hunt for red tide relies upon AI and retirees

Microscope-equipped iPods and a NASA-funded app allow volunteers to assist in warning beachgoers, tourists, and researchers of harmful algae blooms. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

How Google is breaking EU privacy law, according to a new complaint

A new legal complaint argues that personal data is being dispersed across wide networks of ad providers in violation of Europe’s privacy regulation. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

The new Apple Watch 4 face is a design crime

Now with extra cognitive load! | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Why we’re building a social network supported by people, not advertisers

The designers behind Are.na explain the thinking that led to their nascent social platform, winner of the 2018 Innovation By Design General Excellence award. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Google is discontinuing Inbox

Four years ago, Google took a fresh look at email. With Gmail looking more and more like Inbox, it’s declaring “mission accomplished.” | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

AI is their paintbrush, but the artwork is no less human

In “Gradient Descent,” now on view at Nature Morte gallery in New Delhi, artists become one with machines—and the results are stunning. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

UPS doubles down on its shift to electric vehicles

Through its multiple partnerships with EV startups, the company is precipitating a sustainable transformation in the delivery industry. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Watch this sonic inventor jam with a band of homemade robots

Moritz Simon Geist sees his “Sonic Robots” not simply as an end in themselves, but a way to make new music and change how listeners engage with it. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

A rising threat to the internet: water

Undersea internet cables are sensitive at the coastlines, and as our study found, cables for New York and New Jersey are particularly at risk. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

This little robot swims through pipes and finds out if they’re leaking

Lighthouse, U.S. winner of the James Dyson Award, looks like a badminton birdie and detects the suction of water leaving pipes–which is a lot of water that we could put to better use. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Whole Foods workers, painting a grim future under Amazon, want to unionize

Whole Foods employees are not happy with the new working conditions under Amazon. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago

Scientists urge a surge of cash and paper to protect U.S. elections

A sweeping report, the product of two years of work by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, says paper ballots are essential. | Continue reading


@fastcompany.com | 6 years ago