Fast Company

Spotify’s newest personalized playlist uses the logic of Discover Weekly to handpick tracks from new releases.

Spotify’s newest personalized playlist uses the logic of Discover Weekly to handpick tracks from new releases.

Like it or not, the Internet is the new record store. As brick-and-mortar landmarks like New York’s Other Music and Rebel Rebel shutter their doors, we’re left to roam cavernous, digital aisles with seemingly unlimited selections. Sure, we’re guided by algorithms, hip curators, and our own friends, but it still feels overwhelming, especially with new releases pouring out every week. Who can keep up?

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Required reading for anyone who writes email and wants to up their subject-line game to make sure the recipient reads it.

Required reading for anyone who writes email and wants to up their subject-line game to make sure the recipient reads it.

Even though many of us complain that our inboxes are too full, email is still one of the most popular ways to communicate. The average person sends and receives 123 emails each day, and that number is expected to grow over the next three years, according to the technology market-research firm Radicati.

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Copyright law doesn’t protect ideas, which might explain why Instagram is happily giving Snapchat credit for coming up with Stories.

Copyright law doesn’t protect ideas, which might explain why Instagram is happily giving Snapchat credit for coming up with Stories.

In the social media space, drawing inspiration from other apps is par for the course. Twitter, which boasted a real-time feed for years, recently took a page from the Facebook playbook and introduced an algorithmic feed. Instagram and Facebook both use hashtags, which were first used by Twitter. Two years ago, Facebook tried to capitalize on the popularity of Snapchat by launching the Slingshot app—which was actually Facebook’s second attempt to shamelessly copy Snapchat.

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Flexible working options are becoming the norm in a lot of industries where you’d expect them to, and a few that you wouldn’t.

Flexible working options are becoming the norm in a lot of industries where you’d expect them to, and a few that you wouldn’t.

More people are working from home now than ever before, but some companies have been better at providing flexible working opportunities than others, and they may not be the ones you typically associate with pajamas and home-brewed coffee.

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For decades, scientists have been studying the role of nature and nurture in producing Olympic athletes.

For decades, scientists have been studying the role of nature and nurture in producing Olympic athletes.

Gymnast Simone Biles’s signature move: Two backflips in the air, with straight legs, and a blind landing after an extra little half-twist.

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New software allows PC users to transform their machines into a 360-degree virtual world with lots of promising possibilities.

New software allows PC users to transform their machines into a 360-degree virtual world with lots of promising possibilities.

When you think of virtual reality, chances are something entertainment-oriented pops into your mind, like watching a movie or playing a video game. But there’s a company that wants to bring VR to a place you might not expect it: your office.

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Digital pen use has evolved from cheap interface navigator to professional application enabler, but still has a few convenience gaps.

Digital pen use has evolved from cheap interface navigator to professional application enabler, but still has a few convenience gaps.

Many of the latest trends in computing interaction have been ripped straight from the pages of science fiction. Our devices are offering voice-driven conversations with agents that ask follow-ups and gestures that allow us to manipulate mixed-reality objects without having to touch a surface. However, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 and the release of Windows 10 Anniversary Edition have again brought to the fore an input method that has little association with Captain Kirk or Minority Report hero John Anderton—the pen.

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You don’t have to hit up tons of networking events outside your office in order to build relationships and learn new things.

You don’t have to hit up tons of networking events outside your office in order to build relationships and learn new things.

When I was younger, I watched a lot of television that made me think my career would be nothing but a competition against my future colleagues. We’d all fight for pay raises, promotions, and the right to be considered the apple of our boss’s eye.

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The best speakers don’t have a canned formula for kicking off their talks, but they do understand these five principles.

The best speakers don’t have a canned formula for kicking off their talks, but they do understand these five principles.

Looking for the “Call me Ishmael” of your next presentation? Or just scouring past TED Talks for inspiration? You may not need to. The most powerful public speakers don’t start off each of their talks with a straightforward formula—that’s what keeps them so dynamic. Instead, there are a few key principles to keep in mind for building an opening that will catch and hold your audience’s attention. Here are five of them.

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Amid the glitz and glitter of Las Vegas, the Pentagon’s secretive research arm held a competition setting bots against each other.

Amid the glitz and glitter of Las Vegas, the Pentagon’s secretive research arm held a competition setting bots against each other.

In a massive conference room at a hacker conference inside a hotel with a giant Eiffel Tower on top, celebrity astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi is taking on an unusual gig: hosting a real-time cybersecurity contest where automated bots compete instead of humans. The room is packed with thousands of onlookers because DARPA—the Pentagon’s highly secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—wants private industry to develop autonomous cybersecurity tools to do things humans can’t or won’t. At the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge, millions of dollars in prize money is being given away to contestants who range from wonky university researchers to employees of some of the world’s biggest defense contractors.

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