Unbuilt Labs

07/09/2021

By Matthew Porter In an era of increasing environmental concerns, the fashion industry has found itself at the center of the debate as one of the more prominent culprits with textile goods. Despite accounting for approximately 8% of landfill usage in addition to detrimentally affecting waterways via the improper disposal of dyes or other chemical agents, there remains a potential beacon for hope in…...

https://unbuiltlabs.com/2021/09/07/sounds-green-to-me-a-case-study-of-rending-sustainable-in-us-apparel-websites/

itself at the center of the debate as one of the more prominent culprits with textile goods. Despite accounting for approximately 8% of landfill usage in addition to detrimentally affecting waterwa…

07/09/2021

By Matthew Porter The fashion industry is a major environmental pollutant. Staking itself on continual change, it is deeply embedded in the logics of economic growth that often comes at the price of environmental harm. Whether it be Burberry's burning overstock in efforts to maintain a mystique of exclusivity, that approximately 20% of water pollution being credited to chemical finishing and dyeing of textiles, the industry's constitution of…...

https://unbuiltlabs.com/2021/09/07/rising-sustainability-message-regulations-in-the-apparel-industry/

Unfolding alongside the constitutive demands for transparency, policymakers have also begun to more stringently examine ways to mitigate firms’ exaggerated or unsubstantiated sustainability c…

07/09/2021

By Matthew Porter Amidst growing concerns about climate change, there have been numerous calls for more sustainable and socially responsible fashion on a global scale (Brooks et al., 2017). Despite both industry efforts and increased consumer awareness on this matter, there has yet to be significant action undertaken that successfully influences consumers to shop more sustainably. While the production end of industry plays a large role in this dynamic, simply offering sustainable merchandise options is of little consequence if firms are unable to influence consumers to purchase these items over more environmentally damaging alternatives....

https://unbuiltlabs.com/2021/09/07/the-green-divide-bridging-the-attitude-behavior-gap-in-sustainable-apparel-consumption/

Amidst growing concerns about climate change, there have been numerous calls for more sustainable and socially responsible fashion on a global scale (Brooks et al., 2017). Despite both industry eff…

11/03/2021

In this interview, we speak with Mark Menezes, a career coach in New York City helping professionals navigate their career journeys and find more fulfilment. Mark discusses how we can better evaluate difficult career decisions, seeking jobs during a pandemic, and navigating the entry-level job market in this new normal. At Unbuilt Labs, Mark has provided invaluable advice to our Summer 2020 Product Management Intern, Sam Kamau, who is looking to better understand how he can measure success in his program for improving underprivileged high school students' computer literacy in Kenya. Continue reading to learn how Mark supports young professionals and students he works with, and how the impact he has made in the corporate, small business, and startup worlds.

Samuel Kamau for Unbuilt Labs : What was your most difficult career decision?

Mark Menezes : Career decisions are generally easy when your decision is widely supported by those in your circle. A decision I made, on my 30th birthday by coincidence, was not this case. I resigned from a six-figure prestigious Corporate job that I was very dissatisfied with. Why this was particularly difficult was that I decided to resign without a plan lined up. I wanted to spend some time away from the professional arena to have a period of personal reflection without a defined timeline. Very few in my circle, if any, encouraged this decision, and some may never understand it. Through this process, however, I have learned more about myself and what I want in my career than at any other point in my life. It was the first time I made a decision that was in the best interest of me, and not a decision that my family, friends, or colleagues wanted for me.

What advice would you give current job-seekers?

Maintain an optimistic and open-minded mindset. Although we are facing unprecedented and tumultuous times, there have been a number of historical downturns that have severely impacted the job market, of course as recently as 2008. Few professionals look back at 2008 as the time their career was damaged or over. Sure – many took longer to find work, while others strategically changed course, but majority of those who battled through this most recent downturn are doing just fine today and have even learned a lot from job-seeking during a challenging time. Also - being open to exploring opportunities that may not seem like an obvious fit is important. Sometimes it’s the less obvious route or role that we are actually better suited for.

How would you recommend navigating the challenges of the corona virus?

Something I would recommend that I have been doing personally is to catch up with those we have not been in touch with for a long time. I have re-connected with dozens of former colleagues, friends from University, among many others. We are often absorbed by the bubble we are in (primarily who we live and work with) and connecting with this variety of people will help broaden our perspective and feel more comfortable navigating the challenges of the pandemic. These conversations can also sometimes lead to further clarity for ourselves or even a new opportunity may present itself.

What is it like working with you?

I like to relate to everyone I work with on a personal level. There is almost always some similarity in our backgrounds, careers, or struggle shared in common that I find with those I work with. I like to truly understand what someone is looking to gain, not what someone said they should or what they think is expected of them. Having conversations authentically gives my clients the best opportunity of self-reflection and their best chance at achieving the improvement they are looking for.

What is one lesson you learned early in your career that you have kept with you till now?

Someone once told me “Take advantage of your company or else it will take advantage of you” and that has really stuck. This is not because employers are ill-intentioned, but because it is their upmost priority to maximize productivity of their employees, as it should be. If a great opportunity presented itself within my companies (whether a travel assignment, rotation, or ability to work on a high-stakes project), I would speak up and advocate for myself to secure the opportunity, even if I thought it might be a long shot. Not only was I more often than expected given what I wanted, but I was also given credit for being a proactive employee. If you don’t personally advocate for what you want in your career, no one else will do it for you.

Do you have a favorite book?

I really like Mark Manson’s recent books. There are tons of books out there as to how to be more productive and chase your dreams, but his books do a great job of articulating the unrealistic expectations we often set for ourselves. There is more opportunity in the world than ever before, yet our collective happiness as a society, is at an all-time low. Ambition, goal setting, …

In this interview, we speak with Mark Menezes, a career coach in New York City helping professionals navigate their career journeys and …

10/03/2021

The articles in this research package provide the real science for Post York by James Romberger, edited & published by Karen Berger for Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights into what New York would really be like after a major flooding event.

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

The articles in this research package provide the real science for Post York by James Romberger, edited & published by Karen Berger for Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights into what New York would really be like after a major flooding event.

02/03/2021

The articles in this research package provides the real science for Post York by James Romberger, edited & published by Karen Berger for Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights into what New York would really be like after a major flooding event.

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

The articles in this research package provide the real science for Post York by James Romberger, edited & published by Karen Berger for Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights into what New York would really be like after a major flooding event.

01/03/2021

The articles in this research package provides the real science for Post York published by Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights into what New York would really be like after a major flooding event.

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

The articles in this research package provide the real science for Post York by James Romberger, edited & published by Karen Berger for Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights into what New York would really be like after a major flooding event.

28/02/2021

The articles in this research package provides the real science for Post York published by Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights to what New York would really be like after a major flooding event.

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

The articles in this research package provide the real science for Post York by James Romberger, edited & published by Karen Berger for Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights into what New York would really be like after a major flooding event.

27/02/2021

The articles in this research package provides the real science for Post York published by Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights to what New York habitability would look like after a major flooding event.

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

The articles in this research package provide the real science for Post York by James Romberger, edited & published by Karen Berger for Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights into what New York would really be like after a major flooding event.

26/02/2021

The articles in this research package for Post York, Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics.offer insights to what New York habitability would look like after a major flooding event.

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

The articles in this research package provide the real science for Post York by James Romberger, edited & published by Karen Berger for Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights into what New York would really be like after a major flooding event.

25/02/2021

The articles in this research package offer insights to what New York habitability would look like after a major flooding event.

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

The articles in this research package provide the real science for Post York by James Romberger, edited & published by Karen Berger for Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. They offer insights into what New York would really be like after a major flooding event.

24/02/2021

Aside from the climate crisis threatening food production by destabilizing growing regions, sea level rise will distress the infrastructure used to bring that food into New York City.

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

Aside from the climate crisis threatening food production by destabilizing growing regions, sea level rise will distress the infrastructure used to bring that food into New York City.

23/02/2021

While warming and increasingly acidic ocean water will provide existing pathogens a greater foothold in New York City over time, another relevant consideration is the emergence of ‘zombie viruses.’

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

While warming and increasingly acidic ocean water will provide existing pathogens a greater foothold in New York City over time, another relevant consideration is the emergence of ‘zombie viruses.’

22/02/2021

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy the loss of life and property highlighted that the proximity to water, which had once made New York City a global economic powerhouse had become a liability and preventative action would be required. Sandy’s destructive power can largely be attributed to a storm surge of about 9 ft.

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy the loss of life and property highlighted that the proximity to water, which had once made New York City a global economic powerhouse had become a liability and preventative action would be required. Sandy’s destructive power can largely be attributed to a storm...

21/02/2021

Unbuilt Labs X Post York When creator James Romberger approached Unbuilt Labs to look into the real science behind the fictional flood scenario presented in his graphic novel Post York, we welcomed the fascinating challenge. James presented us with a long list of interesting questions, which were to provide the starting point for an exciting but often disturbing series of research products....

https://unbuiltlabs.com/2021/02/21/post-york-the-new-york-flood-scenario-research-package/

The articles in this research package offer insights to what New York habitability would look like after a major flooding event.

21/02/2021

By Lowell Clare The abundance of options available for the consumption and purchase of foods in New York City belies the relative instability of local supply chains. These systems will be increasingly stressed as the climate crisis becomes more severe. According to the Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center over 5.7 million tons of domestic and international food is sent to New York City every day, 95% comes via truck and 60% of produce stops over in Hunts Point from where it is distributed....

https://unbuiltlabs.com/2021/02/21/new-yorks-surprisingly-fragile-food-chain/

Aside from the climate crisis threatening food production by destabilizing growing regions, sea level rise will distress the infrastructure used to bring that food into New York City.

21/02/2021

New York City is a low-lying coastal city. The realities of its setting in the landscape make the city and health of its residents sensitive to both rising tides and the effects of deteriorating marine ecological health. In other words, the issue of sea level rise is just as much about the health of adjacent bodies of water as the elevations of their tides will have large public health ramifications for city residents....

https://unbuiltlabs.com/2021/02/21/climate-change-zombie-viruses-for-nyc/

While warming and increasingly acidic ocean water will provide existing pathogens a greater foothold in New York City over time, another relevant consideration is the emergence of ‘zombie viruses.’

21/02/2021

By Lowell Clare Hurricane Sandy revealed the extraordinary vulnerability New York City, a city most people had assumed was inviolable, to sea level rise. It flooded the New York City subway system, and all road tunnels to Manhattan save for the Lincoln Tunnel. [1] Swaths of the city lost power, thousands of people in midtown Manhattan were evacuated and several large hospitals were closed....

https://unbuiltlabs.com/2021/02/21/sea-wall-coastal-mitigation-the-environmental-price/

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy the loss of life and property highlighted that the proximity to water, which had once made New York City a global economic powerhouse had become a liability and preventative action would be required. Sandy’s destructive power can largely be attributed to a storm...

12/02/2021

Happy Year of the Ox! Wishing everyone good fortune and health 🧧🧧

Check out our limited edition post card

https://buff.ly/3jKxDEn

08/02/2021

Dan Robitzski / July 17th 2020

"We’ve seen dark ship activity all over the globe."

At the end of the year, a fleet of pirate-hunting satellites will take to the sky.

A satellite intelligence company called HawkEye 360 says it’s booked a ticket on a SpaceX rideshare mission to launch a cluster of three satellites that will sail around the globe, tracking down pirates, poachers, and smugglers.

HawkEye 360, unlike the superhero of the same name, doesn’t actually dole out justice. But it does work with terrestrial authorities including the Pentagon and the National Reconnaissance Office to pinpoint potential issues by tracing radio signals coming from the surface.

The company has had satellites in orbit since 2018, but CEO John Serafini told Futurism that each new launch will further improve its capabilities to track down crimes from orbit.

“We’ve seen dark ship activity all over the globe,” Serafini told Futurism, “and even analyzed Iran smuggling oil to Syria.”

“We were able to identify a build-up of Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley, contributing deeper understanding about the heightened tensions occurring along the India/China border,” he added. “We’ve helped rangers in Garamba National Park monitor their vast landscape for wildlife poaching.”

That last project, he said, illustrates one of the main ways this new launch will help HawkEye 360 improve: It’s not that there are parts of the world that it can’t monitor with its current fleet, Serafini says, but that each cluster will improve its response time as well as its ability to pinpoint a signal’s exact location.

“Similar to how visible imaging satellites were once only the domain of governments, but now there are many commercial providers of satellite imagery, HawkEye 360 is augmenting government capabilities by providing a useful source of commercial [radio frequency] data,” Serafini said.

With each new launch — Serafini wants to bring the total satellite count to 21 in the coming years — the amount of time it takes to revisit each location will drop. The ultimate goal is to get it down to 45 minutes, Serafini says. That would make it harder for, say, poachers to sneak into the Garamba National Park or any other preserve, kill a protected animal, and make off with the trophy.

“With our current cluster, we can already collect data anywhere in the world multiple times per day,” Serafini said. “But we need faster revisits in order to enable dark ship tracking or increase data density to conduct richer analysis.”

https://futurism.com/spacex-launching-pirate-hunting-satellites?mc_cid=09e716c10b&mc_eid=dda0522f19

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

Dan Robitzski / July 17th 2020 “We’ve seen dark ship activity all over the globe.” At the end of the year, a …

07/02/2021

Catalin Cimpanu / July 24, 2020

Academics said they also identified 52 problematic skills already available on the Alexa store, all targeted at children.

During a recently concluded 12-month study of the Alexa Skills Store review process, academics said they managed to smuggle 234 policy-breaking Alexa skills (apps) into the official Alexa store.

The study's results are actually worse than it looks because academics tried to upload 234 policy-breaking apps, and managed to get them all approved, without serious difficulties.

"Surprisingly, we successfully certified 193 skills on their first submission," the research team wrote this week on a website detailing their findings.

The research team said that 41 Alexa skills were rejected during the first submission, but they eventually got them on the official store after a second try.

"Privacy policy violations were the issue specified for 32 rejections, while 9 rejections were due to UI issues." researchers said.

The purpose of this peculiar research project was to test Amazon's skills review process for the Alexa Skills Store, the web portal where users go to install apps for their Alexa device.

Over the past few years, prior academic work [1, 2, 3, 4] revealed that research teams had no difficulties in uploading malicious Alexa skills on the official store, which they used to test their experiments.

With each project, researchers warned Amazon that the skills review process was insufficient, Amazon promised to do better, and then new research would come out months later, showing that researchers were still able to upload malicious skills regardless of Amazon's promises.

Placing policy-breaking skills in the kids category

During this experiment, the research team put together an ensemble of 234 Alexa skills that violated basic Amazon policies.

These were apps that weren't overtly malicious, but merely provided prohibited information to user questions, or collected private information by asking Alexa users about their names and other personal details.

The research team uploaded the apps on the Alexa Skills Store and got them approved and certified for the kids section of the Alexa store, where policies should be more strictly enforced than other sections.

Example Alexa skills the research team got listed on the kids section include:

An Alexa skill that provided instructions on how to build a firearm silencer (hidden inside a kids crafts skill)

An Alexa skill recommending the usage of a recreational drug (hidden inside a kids desert facts skill)

An Alexa skill pushing advertising (hidden inside a geography facts skill)

An Alexa skill collecting children's names (hidden inside a storytelling skill)

An Alexa skill collecting health data (hidden inside a healthcare skill)

The academic team cited several reasons why they were able to publish all their policy-violating skills on the official store:

Inconsistency in checking - Researchers said that different skills breaking the same policy received different feedback from reviewers, suggesting that reviewers weren't viewing or applying Amazon policies in the same way across submissions.Limited voice checking - Reviewers did limited checking of the skill's voice commands and its code. This allows threat actors to publish malicious apps on the official store just by delaying the initial malicious responses, enough to bypass the short review process.Overtrust placed on developers - Researchers said that Amazon seems to natively trust skill developers and will approve skills based on answers developers provide in forms submitted during the skill review process. This allowed the researchers to claim that their app didn't collect user information, something that Amazon never verified during the actual review.Humans are involved in certification - The research team said that based on the inconsistency in various skill certifications and rejections has led them to believe that the skill certification largely relies on manual testing, as some issues could have been detected by some automated systems.Negligence during certification - The review process wasn't thorough enough to detect obvious policy-breaking skills.Possibly outsourced and not conducted in the US - Based on skill review timestamps, some reviews appear to have been conducted by non-native English speakers or by reviewers not familiar with US laws.

Review of current kids skills

After conducting their research, the academics team removed their malicious skills, to avoid having a user accidentally stumble across it and install it on their devices.

However, the research team also wanted to know if other bad skills made it on the official Alexa Skills Store in the past. They did this by selecting 2,085 negative reviews from skills listed in the kids category, and identifying the 825 Alexa skills on which they were posted.

"Through dynamic testing of 825 skills, we identified 52 problematic …

Catalin Cimpanu / July 24, 2020 Academics said they also identified 52 problematic skills already available on the Alexa store, all targeted …

06/02/2021

PUBLISHED BY Angharad Carrick / For weeks ago

Blackrock has punished more than 50 companies over their inaction on global warming after warning of huge investment risks from climate change.

In January chief executive Larry Fink said Blackrock would get tough on companies that were too slow to take action on climate change. It announced it would put environmental strategy at the core of its investment strategy.

Its change in strategy came after criticism the asset manager had failed to use its power. At the time, Fink said climate change represented an unprecedented risk to markets.

“Climate change is different. Even if only a fraction of the projected impacts is realised, this is a much more structural, long-term crisis,” Fink said.

In a report released on Tuesday, the asset manager said it had placed 244 companies “on watch” for insufficient progress on issues relating to climate change. Blackrock said it took voting action at the annual meetings of 53 companies, largely taking action through voting against the re-elections of directors.

The companies punished included German carmaker Daimler, Volvo and ExxonMobil.

The asset manager said the remaining 191 companies “risk voting action in 2021 if they do not make substantial progress.”

“Our approach on climate issues, in particular, is to focus our efforts on sectors and companies where climate change poses the greatest material risk to our clients’ investments,” Blackrock said.

The asset manager was previously criticised for failing to support several climate change resolutions, including at oil companies Santos and Woodside Energy. Blackrock voted against proposals to set targets in line with the Paris agreement, which aims to limit global temperatures.

Read more on the Unbuilt Labs website

PUBLISHED BY Angharad Carrick / For weeks ago Blackrock has punished more than 50 companies over their inaction on global warming after …