Journal

“Such a great thought from the beginning was to reject sameness,” Marsha Meredith, Aesop’s creative director, says.

Each one of Aesop’s meticulously designed shops is purpose-built to stop you in your tracks, but how the Australian skincare brand accomplishes that is different every time. Hundreds of Paris Review quarterlies are suspended from the ceiling of its storefront in Chelsea; shoppers traipse over emerald-green tile in the Covent Garden, London, location and the Saint-Honoré outpost in Paris boasts shelves that disappear into the jigsaw of wood planks cladding the walls.

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Experian, a vendor T-Mobile used for credit checks, was hacked in a data breach that leaked the records of about 15 million people.

Hackers have targeted Experian, the credit agency that reviews T-Mobile’s credit applications, potentially compromising the personal information of 15 million people. While the data breach did not directly impact T-Mobile’s servers, anyone who applied for a credit check between September 2013 and September 16, 2015 could have had their records stolen, T-Mobile said Thursday.

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Tumblr is allowing users to adjust their privacy settings, so that their posts only show up within the confines of the blogging platform.

Tumblr is now giving users the option of hiding their blogs from the web, only making them viewable through Tumblr’s homepage or apps. The Yahoo-owned microblogging service introduced the new functionality on Wednesday; if users opt to shield their blog, the site will show a 404 error anytime it is accessed via URL.

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Military contractors are now required to report when they’ve been hacked.

Effective today, the Defense Department is requiring that large contractors notify them when certain cyberattacks occur. Previously, large military contractors were not required to notify the government of intrusions.

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In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T claimed that Sprint and T-Mobile are not abiding by disability regulations.

The fight over using smartphones to make Wi-Fi-enabled telephone calls just entered the unexpected area of disability rights. AT&T has accused rival carriers T-Mobile and Sprint of violating rules set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which require wireless services to accommodate users with speech and hearing disabilities. Unlike AT&T, both T-Mobile and Sprint allow users to make calls on iPhones over Wi-Fi.

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Figuratively, not literally. They channeled the famous pop artist’s style as part of a memorable campaign for a Middle East department store.

Although the last time we heard from them, they were naked and covered in cockroaches, Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh of Sagmeister & Walsh aren’t always rolling around in squalor. In fact, their latest campaign for Middle East department store Aizone is about as far from grimy as you can get: to promote the store’s items, they’ve taken fun and frantic pop art sensibilities and brought it to 3-D life.

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These areas either have the noisiest neighbors or the nosiest neighbors, depending on how you look at it.

Noise might seem like merely a nuisance, but it’s also a health risk: according to the World Health Organization, noise pollution can lead to cardiovascular diseases, sleep disturbance, and stress. Last year, NoiseTube gave Smartphone users a way to measure and map noise levels so they could help city officials monitor it. Now, the real estate site Trulia has come up with its own way of visualizing noise pollution: using the crime data on noise complaints.

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The cult classic, Stella, aired 10 years ago. Here, the creators reflect on how it became what it was—and what it might’ve been.

In the early aughts, comedians Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain toiled on a project that was unloved by many upon initial release, but gradually cultivated a feverish following. This trio was so ahead of its time, however, that the above description applies not only to the film, Wet Hot American Summer, recently revived by Netflix, but also the Comedy Central classic, Stella.

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How to Get Away with Murder creator Pete Nowalk reveals the invaluable lessons he’s learned from working closely with Shonda Rhimes.

Pete Nowalk, the creator of the soapy ABC drama How to Get Away with Murder, knows a thing or two about working for Shonda Rhimes, the über producer behind some of the biggest shows on television. His started out as a writer on Private Practice, spent six years on Grey’s Anatomy, and then co-executive produced Scandal. Then, in 2014, he wrote his own show (which Rhimes produces), How to Get Away with Murder, about Annalise Keating, a cunning professor and criminal defense attorney who becomes embroiled in a murder case involving her husband. The show recently made history when its star—Viola Davis, who plays Keating—became the first African-American actress to win a best acting Emmy in the drama category.

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Nest made thermostats and smoke alarms sexy. Can it do the same for door locks and other mundane appliances?

Nest, the Google-owned company that builds products for the connected home, has turned appliances even as mundane as thermostats and smoke alarms into beloved, sought-after Christmas gifts. Could it help do the same for other staples of the home: lightbulbs and door locks, air conditioners and coffee makers, ovens and refrigerators?

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