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Clippy has become an unlikely protest symbol against Big Tech. The trend started when YouTuber Louis Rossmann posted a video earlier this month titled Change your profile picture to clippy. Im serious. His followers answered the call and now across YouTube, X, and other platforms, profile photos are turning into the iconic Microsoft Office Assistant as a silent protest against tech companies encroachment into daily life. The consumer rights activist, whose content focuses on electronic repair and right-to-repair topics, hopes to rally consumers against practices like data harvesting for AI training, selling user information to data brokers, planned obsolescence, censorship, and ransomware. I didn’t label it a protest because Im not asking people to boycott a specific product or company. Im not telling you to stop shopping at Target or throw iPhones away, thats not the point, he tells Fast Company. This is one small element in a broader long-term movement for consumer rights and ownership I’ve been trying to build with my audience for over 11 years. Now the movement has found its mascot. From Office 98 to 2004, Clippy, Microsofts googly-eyed paperclip, was infamous for popping up with offers of help while you were trying to get on with work. Annoying as he might have been, Clippy could always be dismissed or switched off altogether. Thats the point. If you told Clippy that you were having a bad day, he wasn’t going to use that information to try and figure out which advertiser to sell you to, nor was he trying to steal your personal data or get you to purchase other Microsoft products. He had no ulterior motives, Rossmann explained in the now viral video. Clippy just wanted to help. The video has since racked up more than 3.2 million views, much to Rossmanns surprise. This was a throwaway video, something I recorded talking about what was on my mind that day, he tells Fast Company. I am very happy that the consumer rights database, that our nonprofit has been focused on building, has been exploding with edits and new stories over the past week and a half. People aren’t just changing their profile photos, they’re actually doing the grunt work. The growing number of those joining the movement is a clear message to tech companies that consumers see what they are doing and arent happy about it. Clippy would never add AI overview to every single search result, wrote one user in the comments section. Clippy would never take your data for AI learning, wrote another. Clippy would never read my menstrual data from my period tracking app so it can sell my attention to advertisers, wrote a third. But changing your profile picture to Clippy is just the first step in a wider shift Rossmann hopes to bring about. Its a signal that tells others ‘Im not okay with this, and youre not alone if you feel the same,'” he says. “The goal is to get people who would otherwise be apathetic thinking ‘there’s no point in pushing back because nobody cares’ to think twice about that defeatist mindset. As one Clippy avatar wrote in the comments: It looks like youre trying to take back your freedom. Would you like help?
Category:
E-Commerce
Imagine you have an iPod mini, preferably metallic pink. You toggle to the song Milkshake by Kelis, there in black pixelated font. You plug in your wired headphones, and without any notifications to distract you, you click play. About twenty years before a little espresso fueled an addictively candy-coated cultural renaissance of feminine braggadocio, Kelis brought the boys to the yard in super low-rise jeans. (Bossy.) Now, Gap is bringing both back. The casual clothing brand is today relaunching its early 2000s long and lean denim style, which was first available between 2001 and 2010, for $89.95. This time around, the style comes in ten new washes and a few smart design updates for better wearability, along with a campaign featuring girl group Katseye performing Milkshake. Brace yourself, the long and lean is low-rise. And Gap’s not stopping there: it’s also releasing existing denim fits like its super baggy and 90’s straight in low-rise versions as well. If mass market American brand Gap is going all in on low-rise this fall, thats a major signal the cut is back in full force. Another marker of Y2K’s comeback Low-rise denim has been making its comeback for a little while now, especially by fashions early adopters. Search interest in low rise jeans officially surpassed high rise jeans over a year ago, in May 2024, and this month search interest in the navel-baring style has reached an all-time high, according to Google Trends August report. Other clothing thats searched at an all-time high this August? Polo shirt, babydoll top, and baby tee. Holy Abercrombie! Vintage hollister and hollister 2000s, referring to the olfactory-forward mall brand, were also top search terms, and considering the broader, rolling return of Y2K styles and brands over the past few years (camis, trucker hats, bedazzled sweatsuits and jeans, rimless sunglasses, etc.,) it was only a matter of time between corresponding denim styles returned to consumer shopping carts. Gaps own internal data proved out increasingly positive consumer sentiment for low rise jeans. The design team clocked low rises return to street stylea place they often look to for emerging trendsover the past couple of years and put feelers out with their customer. But they were too early. Until now. Weve been kind of waiting for this moment, says senior vice president and general manager of Gap Specialty Noelle Rogers. We tested a few times on low rise and it wasnt until the last nine, ten months that the customer was ready. Then they scaled. “We always say, ‘we’re trend but not too trend,” adds Pattinson. “But there is this new customer that is very trend aware. Gen Z is so into everything.” And so Gap’s contemporary low rise portfolio makes a play for the large, existing customer base who used to buy the style, as well as Gen Z first-timers. Putting a style online early, even if its customer isn’t ready, allows the company to move fast once a trend goes big. Now that low rise is taking off broadly, Gap is ensuring that millennialsthose in their teens or 20s the first time this trend came aroundwill be comfortable wearing the midriff-challenging design again. Gap is making design changes to the waistband and pant legs that make low rise more approachable. “From the 2000s, it was all about this one fit,” says Pattinson. “Now, you have this big story which is low rise, but many fits within that, because we need that inclusivity and diversity. That’s the big, big difference of where we were in the 2000s. It’s a change. Still the same voice, but just speaking to it differently.” The company ran a smaller batch of the long and lean style online last fall to test how itd perform, and based off of a high volume of sales from that period, decided to go all in, increasing the styles production and range to meet projected customer demand. There’s a real appetite for this new proportion, says Gap senior vice president and global head of design Jane Pattinson. When I met with her, she paired her Gap barrel jeans with a strappy Celine heeled sandal. Sky high and high rise and mid-rise are still important; its just something new. [Photo: Gap] Get low The Long and Lean style was a huge part of early 2000s Gap, worn by celebrities like Salma Hayek, Alanis Morissette, and Sarah Jessica Parker, and is a main character of many of its campaigns from the period, along with the Gap tag, for every generation. In the Gap archives, near racks of vintage colorblocked windbreakers, corduroy caps, and a pull of vintage long and lean denim, Pattinson explains that while the archive is a treasure trove of inspiration, for now, this generations long and lean (and low-rise denim overall) is not the 2.5 zipper lowrise of yesteryear. Indeed, the long and lean hits about an inch below the navel, closer to a midrise style than Christina Aguilera-at-the-2001-VMA-awards or Keira-Knightley-and-Jamie-Dornan-paparazzi-shots underwear baring, below the hipbone jeans. Its definitely low rise but its not super low, says Pattinson. Thats key. The waistband also has a contoured shape that does away with the bucket back design flaw common to lower-rise pants of the early 2000s. Pattinson and he team also hiked up the back a bit and lowered the front for what she describes as a more relevant and flattering fit. They also added 1%-6% stretch for comfort, depending on the wash, and 1/4″ longer inseam. They tested the jeans on fit models of multiple sizes. Pointing to the wider waistbands, hemlines, washes and tints of the archival denim, she notes that theres more and more we can add. The silhouette of the pant leg is a slim boot cut that Pattinson describes as a cross between a flare and a boot. Its not nearly as common as the wide leg jeans that are everywhere today, but Pattinson says shes seen it all over Gen Zers, which is indicative of its comeback. Were positioned to bridge this generation gap, says Rogers. Now that were obsessed with it, we see it everywhere says Pattinson, who adds that shes seen it worn in a very polished way with a tank a ballet flat. The “long and lean” is the company’s hero low-rise style, but for those who arent quite ready for a full 2000s redux, the company is now also offering a broad range of pant styles with a low-rise waist, like baggy, loose, and straight. “It’s nice to have a hero and then the range, since range of fits has been what’s really been driving the business,” says Rogers. “Which is choice. One day you want to wear long and lean and then one day you want to wear loose.” Customers don’t have to choose. They can buy both.
Category:
E-Commerce
Law school can be notoriously competitive, with post-graduation job opportunities heavily dependent on grade point average. GPAs are determined primarily by final exams, which are graded on a strict curve.To give students a fair chance, professors often provide detailed syllabi, comprehensive course outlines, and practice exams with sample questionsusually based on hypothetical legal scenariosalong with essay responses students can use to prepare.To make those materials even more valuable, a startup called Cubby has developed an AI-powered study tool, Cubby Law, that can generate an essentially unlimited number of practice exam questions. It can also evaluate student responses according to what the system believes a particular professor is likely to expect.“We try to help the student understand exactly how the professor is going to be writing these different fact patterns based on the content that they’ve specifically learned, and what he’s looking for, and how he’s grading them,” says Cubby cofounder and CEO Truman Sacks.[Image: Courtesy of Cubby]Cubby piloted an early version of the software with about 100 paying law students in the spring semester. According to Sacks, it boosted their average GPA between 0.25 and 0.55 points. The AI was trained on thousands of law school practice examsmany freely available on university websitesand further refined its performance based on the class-specific materials students uploaded.A new version, launching August 25, introduces additional features. These include a calendar automatically populated from students syllabi, showing them exactly what to read for each course on specific days. Cubby Law can also create relevant quizzes throughout the semestera feature Sacks likens to Khan Academy and Duolingoso students can study consistently, not just before finals.“You can see if you’re able to effectively apply and understand the knowledge as you’re going through the semester, instead of just waiting toward the very end, trying to learn everything at once and cramming,” Sacks says.[Animation: Cubby]The software now also includes a library of briefs on thousands of legal cases commonly taught in law school. The AI can tailor these case briefs to a particular class, ensuring students focus on the precedents most relevant to their studies.Priced at $30 per month, Cubby Laws law school-specific training gives it an advantage over general-purpose AI programs like ChatGPT, Sacks argues. Liam Willis, a rising second-year law student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who participated in Cubbys pilot, agrees.Before discovering Cubby, Willis had tried using ChatGPT as a “study buddy,” uploading materials and asking it to generate questions. But ChatGPT often fell shortproducing weaker questions and offering overly enthusiastic praise rather than critical feedback. Cubbys AI, by contrast, delivered detailed critiques.The tool, he says, not only helped him learn the law but also taught him how to answer exam questions effectivelyincluding which points to emphasize. That guidance boosted his GPA by more than half a point.“It helped me figure out how to answer the exam question, as opposed to just knowing the answer to the exam question,” he says.Even before the new features, students were seeing benefits beyond exam prep. Mia Bartschi, entering her second year at the University of Californias law school in San Francisco, says the AI helped her pinpoint where she needed more practice.“It has the ability to check your answer against your outline, and it was able to flag areas that I needed to practice more,” she says. The result: her GPA rose by 0.2 points.Cubby Law grew out of an earlier product, also called Cubby, which was designed as a general-purpose research tool for analyzing and summarizing documents and videos. The idea was to act like a digital cubby hole where users could drop all sorts of materials. But when the team noticed law students were using it primarily as a study aid, they decided to focus on that market.As part of its launch, Cubby plans to host in-person pop-up events with food and live demos at law schools in New York City, where Sacks is based. The companywhich has a team of about seven and has raised $2.75 million in fundingmay expand into additional areas of study in the future, including bar exam preparation. That could allow aspiring lawyers to continue using the technology even after graduation.
Category:
E-Commerce
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