Journal

Turn a crank for a whole hour, and out pops 8 bucks in pennies. It’s actually a much better bargain than most low-wage gigs.

Blake Fall-Conroy’s Minimum Wage Machine “allows anybody to work for minimum wage,” and represents the grinding futility of those jobs that pay it. The hand-cranked machine pops out a penny every 4.5 seconds. If you turn it for an hour, you’ll earn yourself $8, which was New York State’s minimum wage until December 30, 2014 (it was raised by $0.75 per hour since the machine was built).

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“The creative cabins are a hint to the Minnesota lifestyle,” says 3M’s chief design officer.

3M is the poster child for successfully forging a culture of innovation, but what about nurturing a culture of design? Well, the brand’s Minnesota HQ is about to overhaul one of its buildings to house a new design center.

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The “Michelangelo of custom lettering” gets earthy with her latest impossibly intricate design.

Designer Marian Bantjes has been collecting soil and sand from her travels for over six years. After traveling to locations as far-flung South Africa, Argentina, and the Phillippines—usually for design conferences—Bantjes returns to her home in Canada with a jar full of the place. Now she’s putting her collection to good use in an impossibly intricate poster for the Alliance Graphique International (AGI).

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An endangered species is worthy of our care, not fear.

Ever since the publication of Little Red Riding Hood—and even long before—wolves have gotten a bad rap in pop culture (with the possible exception of wolf-themed indie band names). A new art campaign seeks to rebrand the Big Bad Wolf as a misunderstood hero, in an attempt to help build support for an endangered species that doesn’t get a lot of love.

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Students audition for music schools on the other side of the world with cloud-connected pianos that record and re-create how they played.

Getting into a top music school like UCLA (where John Williams studied) or Boston College (where conductor Robert J. Ambrose studied) requires more than a demo tape. Tiny nuances distinguish the very top musicians from the merely great ones, and judges really need to hear and see an audition in person to tell the difference.

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The global corporation creates a film to raise awareness of deforestation ahead of UN Conference on Climate Change.

At the end of November, leaders from more than 190 countries will gather in Paris for the latest United Nations Conference on Climate Change to discuss a potential new agreement on climate action.

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Former Bill Clinton advisor Chris Lehane is Airbnb’s new head of global policy and public affairs.

Airbnb announced on Thursday that it had hired Chris Lehane, a former advisor to President Clinton, as its new head of global policy and public affairs.

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The perfect gift for that person in your life who wants to take their privacy protection offline, too. But is it just window dressing?

Has the encroachment of facial-recognition software made you a little uneasy? Are you concerned that cameras are tracking your every movement in public? Are you not ready to commit to makeup-based camouflage? Well, the National Institute of Informatics (NII) of Japan is rolling out a first-of-its-kind commercial product next year that might be for you.

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The e-commerce company is also cutting back on other projects from Lab126, its hardware research and development division.

Amazon has sent packing “dozens” of engineers who worked on its ill-fated Fire phone, according to the Wall Street Journal. The e-commerce giant is also making other changes to Lab126, its consumer electronics R&D division, including putting the brakes on some of its more lofty hardware objectives.

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The image-sharing service now lets you go wide—or tall—for photos and videos that don’t fit into its iconic square frame.

In its own way, it’s been as defining a restriction as Twitter’s 140-character limit. Instagram photos (and videos) come in one format: square. It forces the service’s photographers into choosing thoughtful compositions, and provides an aesthetic link to the square snapshots that folks once took with Instamatics and Polaroids.

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