Fast Company

Testive’s tech and coaching model focus on getting students to do what they’d rather put off.

While college entrance exams are now optional for some schools, and the status of the tests has flagged amid discussions of bias and limited predictive value, the SAT and ACT are still important elements of the college admissions process. The belief that it’s in college-bound kids’ best interest to get the highest score they can has resulted in a multibillion-dollar test-prep industry that more than doubled in size between 1998 and 2012. When the SAT changes in January 2016 (it’s going back to two sections and 1,600 points, among other revisions), there’s sure to be extra demand to be on top of the new test.

Read Full Story

Undergoing a medical procedure to prevent sweating during exercise might sound ridiculous—but it’s not all about the hair.

Jeannel Astarita has long, thick hair that gets frizzy when she sweats. It takes her 40 minutes to blow dry it and another 20 minutes to curl it, and she’ll go to great lengths to avoid this routine. That used to mean skipping workouts after work and weekend bike rides with her husband.

Read Full Story

Be suspicious of the menu design, and other tips from restaurant industry insiders.

When you make decisions at a restaurant, you’re exercising your own free will: True or false?

Read Full Story

The company’s hiring goals are not exactly ambitious when compared against its existing diversity numbers.

Last month, Pinterest came forward with its proposed plan to increase diversity in 2016. Twitter matched Pinterest’s effort on Friday, when it announced its own goals to increase the number of women and underrepresented minorities at the company.

Read Full Story

Space travel, virtual reality, and drones are all fertile territory for investors.

A new report says space travel startups have raised a staggering $1.9 billion since 2014. Venture capital database CB Insights released the report, titled “Future of Frontier Tech,” which also says that drone startups have raised $285 million since 2014 and virtual/augmented reality companies $1 billion.

Read Full Story

The White House and the Department of Defense are working with the private sector to build flexible, wearable electronics.

The Obama administration and the Pentagon are giving the wearables industry a big push. On Friday, defense secretary Ash Carter will announce that the Department of Defense is investing $75 million in a “flexible hybrid electronics” innovation center in Silicon Valley; in addition to the Pentagon’s contribution, the new institute will receive more than $90 million in funding from academia, corporate interests, and local governments for a total of about $171 million.

Read Full Story

The former Beats Music CEO was instrumental in developing Apple’s Beats 1 radio station and nudging the company to take on Spotify.

Ian Rogers, a key music executive at Apple, has resigned from the company, the Financial Times reports. The former Beats Music CEO was instrumental in developing Apple Music’s Beats 1 radio station and helping the company move into the Spotify-dominated streaming music market.

Read Full Story

Itineraries, maps, time-killers, and more. 

The only thing worse than traveling is traveling all…day…long. Between the layovers, the delays, the endless lines, it’s a wonder we don’t see more modern-day meltdowns.

Read Full Story

Charles Pétillon’s Heartbeat looks like a giant cumulonimbus cloud hovering above visitors’ heads at London’s Covent Garden.

Paris-based artist Charles Pétillon has a reputation for filling abandoned spaces with ethereal balloon formations. For his first installation in a public space and his largest undertaking to date, Heartbeat, he injects London’s lively and historic Covent Garden with 100,000 hovering white balloons.

Read Full Story

Campaign, a Bay Area startup, yanks buying furniture into the 21st century.

Brad Sewell—formerly a design and manufacturing engineer at Apple—thinks we’re buying furniture all wrong. The problems, as Sewell told Co.Design, lie in high shipping costs, lengthy shipping time, and crappy materials that won’t hold up over the years. His company Campaign, which launched this week, seeks to upend the way we think about our furniture.

Read Full Story