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Do We Need Rules To Make Sure We Don’t Pollute Mars?

The cost of sterilizing spacecraft for Mars is just too damn high, researchers say. And then there is the issue of how bad we are at it anyway.

At NASA, there is an entire office dedicated to preventing any living Earth creatures (think bacteria, not people) from inadvertently landing on other planets. But two astrobiologists argue in the latest Nature Geoscience that the Office of Planetary Protection–which functions sort of like the EPA of space–should give up trying to fully sterilize spacecraft for Mars. If transfers of life to Mars are even possible, Alberto Fairén and Dirk Schulze-Makuch write, it’s probably already happened.

“If Earth life cannot thrive on Mars, we don’t need any special cleaning protocol for our spacecraft,” Fairén wrote Co.Exist in an email. “And if Earth life actually can survive on Mars, it most likely already does, after 4 billion years of meteoritic transport and four decades of spacecraft investigations not always following sterilization procedures.”

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via Fast Company http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682448/do-we-need-rules-to-make-sure-we-dont-pollute-mars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29

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A Typeface Designed To Thwart NSA Surveillance

Worried about spying eyes? Here’s a typeface created specifically to fool the government’s prying computers.

Long before Edward Snowden leaked the Prism documents, Sang Mun served two years of mandatory service for the the Korean military, gathering intelligence under the NSA. He didn’t choose to publish any classified documents, but he’s encouraging a counter-surveillance revolution in his own way: by designing ZXX a typeface that thwarts prying eyes.

“Sometimes these ideas about privacy can feel large and abstract to the average person,” Mun tells Co.Design. “ZXX might bridge the disconnect between the supercomputers at Fort Meade and someone’s Microsoft Word at home.”

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via Fast Company http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672908/a-typeface-designed-to-thwart-nsa-surveillance?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29

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Trust Twitter For News? Yeah Right.

A new report on the consumption of Digital News from the Reuter’s Institute of Journalism, just announced at the Gen News Summit in Paris, reveals that while more of us than ever get our news via social media, we don’t trust social networks themselves as a source of news.

The first news of the death of Soprano’s actor James Gandolfini may have reached you via Twitter, but you probably went to the New York Times or, dare we say, Fast Company to read about it. The Reuters Institute for Journalism’s latest report on Digital news reveals that while most people now discover news via social media, they don’t trust social media itself as a news source and want their news verified by traditional news brands like broadcasters and newspapers.

Many of the results from the Reuters Institute for Journalism’s latest report on Digital news–the doubling of the consumption of news on tablets in the last 10 months or the fact that 33 percent of readers track news on two devices–seem rather obvious. A more surprising finding was that the death of the traditional news brand has been greatly exaggerated. Reuters surveyed 11,000 people of all ages in 8 countries, including over 2,000 in the U.S.

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via Fast Company http://www.fastcolabs.com/3008881/tracking/trust-twitter-for-news-yeah-right

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5 Ideas Apple Stole From Google, Twitter, and Microsoft

If iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks look a bit familiar, well, there are at least five good reasons for that. Apple lifted them from other innovators, then made them slightly better.

Apple’s WWDC keynote was largely about catching up. Fix iCloud. Release a subscription music service. And ditch all the skeuomorphism that was making them look hokey next to their contemporaries.

For those who’ve been following the minutiae of interface design, you’ll see that many of their ideas, from OS X Maverick to iOS7 are actually old, or at the very least familiar. You can’t look at Apple’s latest software without seeing the influence of Windows 8, Android, and yes, even Chromebooks. But as Steve Jobs once famously paraphrased (and the tech press has mentioned way too often), “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Here’s some of what Apple stole in their latest software updates and, in many cases, made better:

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via Fast Company http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672799/5-ideas-apple-stole-from-google-twitter-and-microsoft?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29

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The Insane Growth Of China And India’s Megacities Mapped Through Satellite Imagery

These charts–made with the information from weather satellites scanning the ground–show how wide and how tall cities around the world have grown. What’s happening to the size of cities in Asia will blow your mind.

Faced with the incomprehensible scale of worldwide mega-urbanization, observers have alternately fallen back on sheer numbers or city comparisons to drive home the speed at which cities in the developing world are growing. For example, New York University’s Shlomo “Solly” Angel projects the world’s urban population will double in 40 years, while urban land cover — including everything from skyscrapers to slums — will triple in size during that span. Grasping to put such numbers into context, the McKinsey Global Institute estimates China will build the equivalent of New York every other year for 20 years, while India needs to add the equivalent of a Chicago to its building stock annually.

The mind reels, but such comparisons tell us little about the truth on the ground — is the urban future of India more likely to look like Chicago or Dharavi (Mumbai’s famous slum) or something else completely? A satellite designed to measure ocean winds offers us a clue.

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via Fast Company http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682111/the-insane-growth-of-china-and-indias-megacities-mapped-through-satellite-imagery?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29

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How Google Wins Over Users By Giving Them Less

User research may indicate that consumers want more choices. Google doesn’t listen–and has rated highest among any other brand out there.

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity by Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkorn.

“Focusing is about saying no. You’ve got to say no, no, no. The result of that focus is going to be some really great products where the total is much greater than the sum of the parts.” –Steve Jobs

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via Fast Company http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672594/how-google-wins-over-users-by-giving-them-less?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29

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Does Google Glass Have A Branding Problem? Marketing Experts Map Steps To Mainstream Success

Still in its test phase, Google Glass may be dorked to death before it gets the opportunity to take off. Here, marketing players from a range of agencies provide their assessment of Glass’s chances and some suggestions for paving the way to mainstream success.

Google’s much-hyped wearable computer, Google Glass, has been touted by the tech elite as one of the leaps forward of recent times, but those same elites may hobble mainstream adoption of the device.

While privacy concerns have blossomed (the device may be on its way to being banned at a number of locations), it may comfort those worried that we are all about to become spies for Google that the early adopters of Google Glass are helping to give it an image problem it might not recover from.

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via Fast Company http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682956/does-google-glass-have-a-branding-problem-marketing-experts-map-steps-to-mainstream-success?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29

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This Is What Facebook’s Green Roof Will Look Like

The company is building a giant addition to their headquarters, and a giant park to go along with it. That park just happens to be on the roof.

Like so many tech companies flush with cash, Facebook is expanding its headquarters in grand fashion–in this case, to a second campus that connects to the main one in Menlo Park, California. Architect Frank Gehry is designing the building (Warning: That PDF takes a long time to load), which Facebook describes as “a large, one room building that somewhat resembles a warehouse.” But we’re not so much interested in the interior of this particular building than what’s on top of it: a giant green roof that spans most of the 433,555 square foot structure.

It’s less a green roof than an entire park. It will include oak trees, a walking trail, furniture to lounge on–and like Google’s planned green roof, it will have kiosks and cafes, according to Greenbiz.

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via Fast Company http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681876/this-is-what-facebooks-green-roof-will-look-like?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29

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A Font For Supporters Of Marriage Equality

After the Human Rights Campaign’s coup on Facebook, a team of designers sets to expand the message of marriage equality with a full typeface.

It was just an equals sign. But during recent legislative procedures around the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), that little icon repainted Facebook as a bright red rallying cry for civil rights. For the Human Rights Campaign, it was a social coup. Now, two designers want to double down on the idea. Equality Sans, by Caprice Yu and Steve Peck, is a free-to-use typeface to show your support for marriage equality.

“With Equality Sans, the message is in the medium,” the team writes. “An act as ubiquitous as typing on your computer can have a deeper meaning.”

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via Fast Company http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672387/a-font-for-supporters-of-marriage-equality?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29

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Mind The (Income) Gap: See New Yorkers’ Wealth Broken Down By Subway Stop

The New Yorker illustrates economic inequality with a data-packed subway map.

Income inequality has been one of the defining problems of the modern era and a central issue in political discourse over several elections. And if some New Yorkers think that this issue, like obesity, is more pressing in the “real” America, a new infographic offers a clear view of the gap between the richest and poorest.

A New Yorker infographic created by designer and illustrator Larry Buchanan uses a simple mechanism to depict income disparity across the five boroughs of New York–the MTA subway system. Click on any NY subway line to see an instant, graphic picture of the income levels at each stop on each line and the giant swings from, say, Tribeca to Marcy Ave in Brooklyn.

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via Fast Company http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682801/mind-the-income-gap-see-new-yorkers-wealth-broken-down-by-subway-stop?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29