Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana_Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Mark Hurd delivers a keynote address during the 2013 Oracle Open World conference on September 23, 2013 in San Francisco, California. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Monday.

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd died aged 62 on Friday. Oracle employees and other tech workers took to Twitter to mourn the CEO and express their condolences to his friends and family over the weekend.Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren slammed Mark Zuckerberg for his remarks on free speech and said Facebook is spreading lies that could impact the 2020 election. Biden's campaign accused Zuckerberg of "feigned concern" for free speech while Warren said that Facebook is accepting millions of dollars for ads with misinformation. Google said it will roll out a new option for its Pixel 4 that would require users to have open eyes to use its face unlock feature. In a statement to The Verge, Google said that this software update will be rolled out "in the coming months." Facebook said it would consider using stablecoins based on national currencies for its controversial cryptocurrency, according to a Reuters report. Libra chief David Marcus said in a panel on Sunday that he cares most about "the mission" and that "there are a number ways to go about this," adding that Libra needed to "demonstrate a lot of agility," according to Reuters.JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon dinged Facebook's cryptocurrency Libra, saying it will never happen. Dimon said that Libra is a "neat idea that'll never happen."Facebook removed more than a dozen closed groups promoting unlicensed medicines after a Business Insider investigation. Facebook deleted at least 14 groups where unlicensed and potentially dangerous medicines were promoted and sold, after Business Insider flagged them to the site.A Republican senator gave Libra its first voice of support in Congress after its rocky start with regulators and partners. South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds came out as Libra's first major supporter in Congress on Thursday praising the company's "entrepreneurial spirit."Apple will reportedly launch new AirPods as early as this month. Apple may release a new pair of more expensive, high-end AirPods with noise-reduction and a new design as early as this month, according to a new report from Chinese news outlet United DailyA leaked video reveals Adam Neumann told staff earlier this year that his family had 100% control of WeWork and that even in 300 years his descendants would be in control. He said his five young children would "stay the moral compass of the company" and that even in 300 years his descendants could control WeWork, even if they weren't CEO.The UK government is considering using facial recognition tech to age-block porn viewers. A junior minister in the UK government has said it is considering using facial recognition to verify porn watchers, even though plans for a so-called "porn block" were ostensibly scrapped on Wednesday.

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Original author: Mary Hanbury

Microsoft and SAP announced a new partnership that would make it easier for the German software maker's customers to move to Microsoft Azure, the tech giant's cloud platform.The move highlights Microsoft's push to forge alliances with rivals in the enterprise software market as it competes with Amazon in the cloud.For SAP, the partnership creates new opportunities to offer its cloud software applications to existing and new customers.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Microsoft and SAP just unveiled a new partnership that would make it easier for the German software maker's customers to move to the US tech giant's cloud platform.

The move highlights Microsoft's push to strengthen its position against Amazon in the cloud, by forging alliances with rivals in the enterprise software market, including arch-nemesis Oracle.  For SAP, the partnership promises to boost the company's ability to maintain and strengthen its relationship with its more than 400,000 customers, many of whom are looking to access applications in the public cloud.

In fact, many of them were clearly drawn to Azure, Microsoft's platform, said SAP's new co-CEO Jennifer Morgan. Morgan, who has been president of SAP's cloud business, and Christian Klein, SAP's former chief operating officer, were named co-CEOs two weeks ago after longtime Chief Exec Bill McDermott announced he was stepping down.

Morgan said many of SAP's largest customers "were very clear with us that they had already chosen to move their largest workloads to Azure, or had plans to do that."

"A lot of times with companies today, everything is about either I win or you win," she told Business Insider of the decision to work with Microsoft, a longtime rival. "It's not a zero sum game anymore."

But it's a potentially big win for Microsoft, which is now "SAP's preferred cloud," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an emailed statement to Business Insider.

"Our unique and extensive partnership with SAP will help organizations accelerate their journeys to the cloud," Nadella said. "With Azure as SAP's preferred cloud, we will make it faster and easier for customers to migrate to Azure, unlocking new business opportunities and innovation."

The new partnership would make it easier for SAP customers who use the company's applications on private data centers or on its private cloud platform to migrate seamlessly to the Microsoft public platform where they would be able to access SAP's cloud-based tools. 

The Microsoft-SAP announcement follows a series of earlier agreements, including a 2017 partnership aimed at making it easier for customers use one another's applications and platforms.

Versus Amazon

The partnership could make Microsoft more competitive against Amazon, the dominant player in the cloud, the fast-growing trend which lets businesses to set up networks on web-based platforms, making it possible for them to scale down or abandon private data centers. This trend has disrupted the traditional enterprise software market where SAP, Microsoft and Oracle are competitors.

Microsoft has also been stressing a so-called hybrid approach to the cloud for businesses that want to make the move but still hope to maintain huge chunks of its data and applications in private data centers. Given its bigger footprint in the enterprise market, where products like Windows are ubiquitous, Microsoft is widely seen as having an edge over Amazon in this trend.

Microsoft is clearly also using alliances to gain an edge over Amazon. In June, the Redmond, Washington-based company unveiled a new partnership with Oracle, which is making it own bid to be a stronger player in the main cloud infrastructure arena. Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft's worldwide commercial business, said its partnership with SAP is deeper and more comprehensive.

"We're not stepping forward and reselling Oracle," Althoff told Business Insider, noting that the Oracle arrangement is focused more on making it easier for businesses to run their networks on both platforms. "Oracle business applications don't run natively on Azure. With SAP, we're very far along in having optimized native capabilities" of SAP software available to customers.

'Strong move by Microsoft'

Analyst Ian Campbell, CEO of Nucleus Research, said the move made sense for Microsoft as it looks to strengthen its cloud business. 

"Strong move by Microsoft since it's clear the future of Azure is in supporting all solutions, not just those from Redmond," he told Business Insider. "Azure needs to grow and supporting all comers is key. The Microsoft Apps folks need to compete, and they are doing a great job, so there's no need to hamper Azure's growth by shunning Microsoft competitors."

SAP is not a major player in the public cloud platform business, but the Microsoft alliance underscores its own cloud strategy which focuses heavily on expanding the reach of its cloud applications, especially within its huge customer base. Morgan said its a strategy that recognizes the desire of many customers to work with a variety of vendors and platforms.

"Just like Judson is going to have customers who run Oracle, we've got customers who maybe running on AWS or GCP," Morgan said, referring to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, the other major cloud platform.

Got a tip about Microsoft, SAP  or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter @benpimentel. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Original author: Benjamin Pimentel

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd died on October 18, 2019, after taking a leave of absence for health reasons in September. Earlier this year, Business Insider had a chance to sit down with him for an episode of our podcast, "This Is Success." We used the opportunity to discuss his career, with a focus on how his time at Oracle was marked by transformation during a time of upheaval in the IT industry. The following is a story about why he felt it was important to create a culture of mentorship at the company, and was originally published on April 16.

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd spent the first 25 years of his career at the IT company NCR Corporation, rising from a low-level manager to chief executive officer. As he told us for an episode of Business Insider's podcast "This Is Success," "it was just an unspoken value in the company that if you could sit around and brag about all the great people you developed in the company who are now in senior positions, this was a merit badge. This was something you wore on your sleeve."

It's a value he says has faded with time. Companies were less willing to invest in employees in order to maximize short-term gains, and as he saw it, this affected the way managers viewed the significance of talent development.

When he joined Oracle in 2011 as president, he quickly developed a plan that would transform the software company in response to an approaching industry-wide shift to the cloud (which allowed the company's products to be distributed online rather than through hardware). The shift was difficult then (and is still difficult now), but for it to succeed, Hurd decided that he needed to not only bring back the mentorship culture he learned in.

As he explained:

"You would come out of college, and you would go to work at a company, and you would actually get trained by the company. You'd have trainers, enablers, people that would help you, teach you about how to sell, how to listen, how to communicate — all sorts of great skills that frankly I still use today. Training was looked at as an investment, not as an expense, and what happened over the years is that training again became viewed as an expense as opposed to an investment.

"And what began happening was all of this mercenary hiring. You'd go to work for this company, and then you'd go to another company, another company, another company, and it was a bit like all the companies putting their bad salespeople in the middle of the table and we'd just swap bad salespeople, with a strategy that your bad salesperson would be great once they came to our place."

He developed the "Class Of" program, which took new college graduates and paired them with a manager. At this time, Oracle salespeople were still adapting to Hurd's changes to the products they sold and the ways in which they sold them, and many weren't happy that they now had the responsibility of training new hires.

Read more: Take an exclusive tour of Oracle's new live-in campus in Austin, where college grads live, work and party together

The first few years of Hurd's transformation of the company faced pushback from some veteran employees and analysts, but there was a general shift in tone when processes began to click. For Hurd, Oracle is still focused on refining these processes to take Oracle into a new era.

Last year, Oracle completed a "Class Of" campus in Austin for new recruits, with a full capacity for 10,000 trainees. He's happy with the progress he's made in reviving an approach he considers so vital to his own career.

"There was no stock option for it — it was just a source of pride and a belief this was the way things were to get done," he said. "We needed that inside of our company as well. And we still work on it today."

You can listen to the full "This Is Success" episode below, or on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

Original author: Richard Feloni

YouTube's version of a royal wedding took place this year between Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau, who together have more than 25 million subscribers to their channels.

Paul, 22, is one-half of the Paul brothers, two of the most recognizable and controversial YouTube stars. Jake Paul garnered online fame before even graduating high school, and found early notoriety as a star on Disney Channel. 

Since then, Paul has gained millions of followers across social media who watch his outlandish pranks and vlogs featuring his squad of creators, called Team 10, who live together in a Los Angeles mansion. Forbes estimated in 2017 that he was worth $11.5 million. However, his career has also been marked by a string of controversies.

Here's everything you need to know about YouTube star Jake Paul:

Original author: Paige Leskin

Original author: Maureen Kelly

Most people think their SAT scores don't matter after college, but most people aren't Jeff Bezos.

The billionaire Amazon founder would ask every job candidate how they scored on the standardized test before submitting them to a Socratic-style interrogation in the early days of Amazon, The Atlantic's Franklin Foer reported in a profile of the CEO published in the magazine's November issue. Bezos, according to The Atlantic, believed that candidates' SAT scores were a reflection of their intelligence.

But SAT scores were not the only technique Bezos relied on to measure a candidate's intelligence. Bezos also asked open-ended questions in the Socratic style, such as "Why are manhole covers round?" to measure how logical candidates were, The Atlantic reported. 

The fifth employee that Bezos hired, Nicolas Lovejoy, told Wired's Chip Bayers in 1999 that the CEO was "very, very picky" with who he hired. "One of his mottos was that every time we hired someone, he or she should raise the bar for the next hire, so that the overall talent pool was always improving," Lovejoy told Wired.

Bezos also questioned the other interviewers about their impressions of the candidate and made charts of candidates' resumes on a whiteboard, Lovejoy told Wired.

Bezos founded Amazon as an online bookstore from his garage on July 4, 1994 after quitting his Wall Street job and moving to Seattle, Washington. Bezos now has a net worth of $117 billion, Business Insider previously reported.

Read more: Jeff Bezos just sold about $1.8 billion worth of stock. Here's how the world's richest person makes and spends his billions.

Amazon did not return Business Insider's request for comment on whether select job candidates are still asked for their SAT scores.

Bezos isn't the only tech founder to prize intelligence in potential recruits. Bill Gates also screened potential Microsoft recruits for their intellect, but the IQ test was his preferred metric, Business Insider's Shana Lebowitz previously reported.

"The key for us, number one, has always been hiring very smart people," Bill Gates once said in an interview. "There is no way of getting around that in terms of IQ, you've got to be very elitist in picking the people who deserve to write software."

Intelligence is far from the only trait CEOs look for, though. Hyatt CEO and President Mark Hoplamazian, for one, looks for employees who align their jobs with their own sense of purpose. And as Business Insider's Callum Burroughs reported in August, Flywire CEO Mike Massaro assesses potential hires to see how well they fit with the rest of the team.

Bezos also screened candidates for high levels of personal accountability, Inc. reported in 2017. This was often done with behavioral questions, where candidates were asked to explain how they would handle a specific situation or how they have handled a similar situation in the past.

Original author: Taylor Nicole Rogers

Google's new Pixel 4 comes with an upgraded camera with two lenses, new motion sensing technology, and a smoother screen.But the upgrade is probably only worth it if you're upgrading from a Pixel 2 or older.The new features and specs in the Pixel 4 will be much more noticeable if you're upgrading from an older phone like the Pixel 2, and the Pixel 3 and 3a phones are still just fine, even by comparison. But Pixel 2 lacks many of the modern camera features found on the Pixel 3 and Pixel 4.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

After a deluge of leaks, Google finally took the wraps off its new Pixel 4 smartphone earlier this week, which starts at $800 and begins shipping on October 24.

During the Pixel 4's unveil, Google brought out famous portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz to discuss what it was like to use the new device's camera, hoping to prove that the camera system on its new device is more than capable of handling professional-grade work. It also flaunted the Pixel 4's new radar-powered motion sensing technology, which can detect your presence and recognize your gestures.

But despite these advancements, you should probably only splurge on the Pixel 4 if you're upgrading from a Pixel 2 or older. Unless the Pixel 4's gesture recognition is a must have for you — which allows you to perform tasks like skipping to the next track on your music playlist with just a wave — the differences between the Pixel 3 and Pixel 4 likely don't warrant an upgrade.

Read more: The most exciting new update in Google's new Pixel phone is a feature that has flopped in the past

That's because there are a lot of similarities between the Pixel 3 and 4: both phones have a large, vibrant OLED display that squeeze about the same number of pixels per inch on screen and support HDR. Both have high quality cameras loaded with features powered by the software and hardware, and both include Google's Titan M security chip, which is said to offer enterprise-grade protection — a feature that the Pixel 2 lacks. 

The biggest difference between the Pixel 3 and 4, other than Motion Sense, is its camera. The Pixel 4 now has two cameras instead of one — the 12.2-megapixel wide-angle lens that Pixel 3 owners should be familiar with and a new 16-megapixel telephoto lens for better zooming. The Pixel 4 also comes with a few new photography features, such as the ability to capture photos of a starry night sky, manually adjust the exposure and shadows when framing shots, and see what photos will look like in HDR Plus mode before pressing the shutter button. 

Other changes coming with the Pixel 4 are designed to make your phone feel a bit faster and more efficient. The new screen now has a 90Hz refresh rate, which should make navigating the device's user interface and scrolling feel smoother and snappier. The Pixel 4 also has 2GB of additional RAM then the Pixel 3 (6GB vs. 4GB), and runs on a slightly newer processor compared to the Pixel 3.

Taken together, all of these features will probably make Google's latest phone feel faster.

But the changes will seem much more meaningful if you're upgrading from an older device like the Pixel 2, which runs on a Qualcomm processor that's now two generations old and lacks many of Google's modern camera features.

The Pixel 2 doesn't support Top Shot, for example, which saves frames before and after the shutter button is pressed and chooses the best one. It doesn't have Super Res Zoom either, which as its name implies preserves more detail when you pinch-to-zoom in digitally. The Pixel 3, however, has nearly all of the same camera features as the Pixel 4.

Plus, the Pixel 2's screen is also noticeably smaller than that of the Pixel 4. The Pixel 2 has a 5-inch display, while the 4 has a much roomier 5.7-inch screen. The difference between the Pixel 3's screen and the Pixel 4's is much less noticeable — the Pixel 3 has a 5.5-inch screen, only 0.2 inches smaller. The screen on Google's aging Pixel 2 also doesn't support HDR, unlike the Pixel 3 and 4.

All told, if you're investing around $800 in a smartphone, it's worth holding on to it for at least two years. But if you purchased the Pixel 2 at launch, you're probably due for an upgrade and will find the Pixel 4 to be far superior. 

Original author: Lisa Eadicicco

Disney's "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil," came in first place at the domestic box office with an estimated $36 million.That's below industry projections and the opening weekend for the original, which was released in 2014.Warner Bros.' "Joker" stays strong, coming in second place with $29.2 million.Sony's "Zombieland: Double Tap" came in third with $26.7 million.

After Warner Bros.' dominance the last two weeks thanks to "Joker," Disney has stepped up to take the top spot at the domestic box office this weekend with "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil." However, this villain didn't do close to the same business the evil clown did.

"Mistress of Evil," which is a sequel to 2014's "Maleficent," in which Angelia Jolie reprises her role of the legendary Disney villain from "Sleeping Beauty," took in an estimated $36 million. 

That's below the $40 million projection the industry had for the movie's opening.And it's under the $69.4 million the original title earned in 2014.

Read more: Why Kevin Smith put a "Dogma" character in his new movie even though Harvey Weinstein still owns the rights

That's not great for a movie with a reported budget of $185 million, however, if the first movie was any indication, "Mistress of Evil" will earn the bulk of its box office overseas. "Maleficent" brought in over $500 million in foreign tickets.

"Mistress of Evil" also had some competition. WB's "Joker" is staying strong in week three, coming in second place with $29.2 million. Made for around $60 million, the twisted drama now has a worldwide total of over $737 million.

Sony's "Zombieland: Double Tap," the sequel to 2009's "Zombieland," came in third place with $26.7 million. Though it took ten years to make a sequel, Sony made it for only $23.6 million, and that modest spending will likely lead to the studio breaking even or perhaps making a profit on the zombie comedy by the end of its run.

 

Original author: Jason Guerrasio

Once Oracle and the tech industry finishes mourning the untimely death of Mark Hurd, the database giant has some big decisions to make.For the last several years, Oracle has successfully run under a triumvirate, with CEO Safra Catz running finance, cofounder and CTO Larry Ellison running engineering/product, and CEO Hurd running Oracle's enormous sales and marketing machine.Catz is more than qualified to run the company by herself. The question is: does she want to?Larry Ellison has previously said that he would provide Oracle's board with a list of five internal candidates who could step up and take Hurd's place, and even tossed out some names.But while there are plenty of executives who helped Hurd run pieces of his job, no one person has all the qualifications, an insider tells us.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

While the IT industry is mourning the death of CEO Mark Hurd at age 62, the sad truth is that, as a global company, Oracle must quickly push on. What will it do without Hurd, who was playing a crucial role at the company at a pivotal time?

First things first: Safra Catz has to decide if she wants to continue on as sole CEO.

Now read: Larry Ellison's email to employees honored the memory of 'brilliant and beloved' Oracle CEO Mark Hurd

Catz is only 57, and has been on Oracle's board of directors since 2001. She's the financial genius at Oracle — the one who finds a way to profitably execute founder and CTO Larry Ellison's vision, whether that's a multi-billion hostile takeover or dozens of pricey new data centers. For that reason, she's been called "the enforcer." 

For decades she has historically led finance, M&A, human resources and legal at Oracle, with Hurd in charge of the massive sales and marketing apparatus.

As one of Oracle's long-time execs who helped orchestrate its dominance in the tech world, she is perhaps more intimately knowledgeable of all of Oracle's moving parts than anyone except Ellison himself. While she's perfectly capable of running Oracle with Ellison, as they did for years before Hurd arrived, it's not clear if she wants to.

She's previously said she loved the three-headed executive setup that's been in place since Hurd joined the company as co-president in 2010.

For instance, back in 2015, she told reporters at a rare press conference: "As co-CEO, we have so much fun. Whenever I'm away, I miss our crowd, Larry and Mark. I was so excited to see Mark one day, I gave him a big hug."

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd, who passed away at age 62 in October. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Hurd was the operations guy, running sales, customer and technical support, business development, marketing, and —known as a cost-cutter — he kept watch over business unit revenue, a source tells us.

Ellison is the visionary, overseeing engineering and product development and is still the buck-stops-here decision maker.

But Catz has always been fiercely private and has avoided the spotlight. The downside to being sole CEO is the increased visibility it brings. Hurd was the one to appear on the business shows, to do the press interviews, to speak on stage, or to schmooze large gatherings of customers.

And this is a critical time for the company as it makes the leap from traditional IT hardware/software vendor into cloud computing. If it fails, Oracle will find itself a relic at best, or at worst, a goner like EMC or Digital Equipment Corp.

Last month, after Hurd took medical leave, Ellison said that he was sending the board of directors a list of five internal candidates who could be named CEO with her if Hurd could not resume his duties.

It won't be Ellison

At the time, Ellison said that he himself was not interested in the CEO job again. 

Oracle chairman, CTO Larry Ellison Business Insider/Julie Bort He named two possibilities for that short list: Steve Miranda, executive vice president of Oracle Applications product development, who's been with the company since 1992; and Don Johnson, vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and product development.

Read more: Larry Ellison is giving Oracle's board 5 internal candidates to be considered as the next CEO

But one person familiar with these executives told Business Insider that their backgrounds are more technical, and that they specialize in R&D and engineering. Hurd's job was on the sales and marketing side.

Dave Donatelli might have the chops for the role, a former employee tells us. He's been running Oracle's all-important cloud business, including product marketing and business development, reporting to Hurd, Prior to that, Donatelli was at HP, a general manager responsible for HP's enormous enterprise equipment business. But he really spent most of his career at EMC, before going to HP.

Donatelli was, at one time, rumored to be on the short list for CEO of HP after Hurd resigned that job. But he's never been a CEO, much less of an organization as large and complex as Oracle which makes everything from computer chips to open source software.

A former Oracle employee also points out that Judy Sim, who has been leading Oracle's marketing and PR for a long time, could also help Catz or another chief exec lighten the load — but her background doesn't include the more complicated areas of Hurd's purview, like developing sales compensation plans and incentives.

Happier investors

Whether or not they're tapped to become CEO, having those executives around means that Catz could very well have the support she needs to go solo, should she be willing to handle the increased visibility.

And if Catz decides to go it alone, Oracle's investors may be happy about it.

Shareholders have grumbled for years over how much Oracle pays its top heavy executive suite, with a long history of voting "no" on the annual advisory vote on CEO pay. Oracle was also named the No. 2 on the list of companies with the most overpaid CEOs by governance watchdog group As You Sow. 

But one thing's for certain: Oracle needs to decide and let the world know, or it will face endless questions from employees, investors and customers about its leadership plans.

Original author: Julie Bort

Qantas just completed the first-ever nonstop flight between New York and Sydney, Australia, designated "Project Sunrise," and Business Insider was on board.The flight — which lasted 19 hours and 16 minutes and covered almost 10,000 miles — was a research flight, as Qantas staff and scientists studied how to help passengers and crew stay adequately comfortable and rested on an ultra-long-haul flight. Researchers closely monitored pilots and flight attendants, and tested a new cabin service flow meant to help minimize jetlag.It was a fascinating and enlightening experience, and left me feeling great for a morning in Sydney. Read on to see what it was like to be on board this first test flight.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

I've just spent a day in the air.

No, not just a day traveling, heading to airports, dealing with buses and terminals, and making connections. But nearly a full day in a pressured metal tube alternating between roughly 34,000 and 42,000 feet above the Earth — most of that above the Pacific Ocean.

The Australian airline Qantas ran a test flight for its "Project Sunrise" initiative — a program to launch regular commercial service from Sydney to New York and Sydney to London.

The flights, at about 9,900 and 10,500 nautical miles, respectively, represent the farthest — and currently the longest, in terms of time — nonstop flights today. While a nonstop flight from London to Sydney has been achieved once, 30 years ago, it hardly counts — it was flown with a completely empty 747 that had no seats, and it barely had enough fuel to make it. The New York-Sydney route has never been done without a stop in Los Angeles.

When it landed, the flight, designated QF7879, became the longest commercial flight in the world, surpassing Singapore Airlines' regular commercial service between Singapore and New York, although next month's test of the London-Sydney flight will surpass this one.

Airplanes and airlines are more technically advanced now than ever before, with better fuel-efficiency, longer ranges, and computer-aided logistical planning. But as some flights get longer, the question is whether passengers and flight crews can tolerate more hours in the air without a layover to break things up.

Qantas used this flight – and plans to do the same for the London route – to conduct research into how pilots, cabin crews, and passengers cope with the long flight time. In particular, data gathered from monitoring of the pilots and flight attendants will be used to help Qantas make a case to Australian aviation regulators that it's safe to have crew work in shifts for potentially 20 hours or more.

The airline also tested a redesigned cabin service, meant to help passengers minimize the effects of jetlag as they cross 15 time zones, and reduce the magnitude with which an ultra-long-haul flight can exacerbate those symptoms. Cabin lighting, meal services, and food options were tailored to help passengers and crew either feel more awake, or be more attuned to nighttime.

This flight also doubled as a delivery of a new Boeing 787-9, from Boeing's Seattle plant. There were only 40 passengers and 10 crew, including four on-duty pilots. Passengers included several Qantas frequent flyers participating in the research study, off-duty Qantas employees, researchers, and media, including this reporter.

The flight with a full load of passengers and cargo is not currently possible – the heavier load would reduce the plane's fuel range.

Two planes in development from Airbus and Boeing would be capable of flying these routes. Qantas has said that it will decide by the end of 2019 which one it will use and that it expects to start commercial service as early as 2023, Alan Joyce, Qantas' CEO, said. The airline had previously hoped to launch service by 2022.

Due to the low passenger load, each person was allocated a business-class seat that could convert into a bed. Passengers were also encouraged to spend some time in the coach cabin in order to balance the plane.

Although the flight would obviously be a different experience in coach with a full plane, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce discussed several options to make an ultra-long-haul flight in coach more comfortable.

Regardless, the nearly 20-hour trek in business class, with the redesigned cabin service, was a notably different experience compared to other long-haul flights I've flown in premium cabins, including first and business class.

Aside from that, it was truly a unique experience. After all, it's not every flight that you see an airline CEO doing calisthenics in his pajamas.

While it is Business Insider's policy not to accept free travel, we were not able to pay for the New York-to-Sydney trip because it was classified as a "ferry flight," for which US Department of Transportation regulations prevent the airline from accepting any money for fares. Business Insider did pay for the return flight with the airline.

From takeoff to landing, plus before and after, read on to see what the 19-hour and 16-minute flight was like.

Original author: David Slotnick

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon dinged Facebook's cryptocurrency Libra, saying it was a "neat idea" that won't happen.Facebook announced the currency in June, with the idea that people all over the world could use it to pay for services online. But regulators and prospective partners are suspicious, fearing that the currency could be used for criminal purposes and that it jeopardizes financial stability.Dimon didn't elaborate, but he's previously expressed skepticism about digital currencies, once describing bitcoin as a fraud.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Facebook's uphill struggle with its cryptocurrency Libra just got a little steeper, after the CEO of one of the world's biggest banks said the currency "will never happen."

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon dinged the currency at a conference by the Institute of International Finance in Washington, saying: "It was a neat idea that'll never happen."

We saw the news of Dimon's remarks via Bloomberg.

Dimon didn't elaborate much further, but added: "We already have stablecoins, so they're not the first to do that."

A stablecoin is a digital currency pegged to an existing currency, like the dollar. Libra is intended to be pegged to a basket of currencies including the dollar, the euro, and the yen.

Dimon's remarks come after a rough two weeks for Facebook's Libra.

Read more: Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency plan just got formalized, but a quarter of its backers have now dropped out

The firm announced Libra in June, along with a coalition of 28 initial backers who would help govern the currency and get it off the ground, expected to be the end of 2020.

Through October, a quarter of those backers dropped out, including Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, and PayPal, leaving Facebook with no major payment partners. The remaining 21 partners, including Spotify, Uber, and Lyft, confirmed their commitment to the currency in mid-October.

But politicians and regulators remain suspicious. The G7 group of wealthy nations said this month that stablecoins shouldn't be permitted to launch until they properly address all the financial risks. The worry is that new currencies might be funnelled into funding terrorist or criminal activity. And France has said that it will block Libra from operating in Europe.

A Libra executive also recently suggested that the currency won't be ready to launch by the end of 2020, as originally planned.

Facebook's Libra chief David Marcus has scrambled both to defend the currency, and to emphasise that it will be overseen by all its partners and not just Facebook.

Dimon has long been a cryptocurrency skeptic. He famously described bitcoin as "a fraud", though he then said he regretted making those comments. He later said he believes in the technology that underpins bitcoin, the blockchain, and JPMorgan in February became the first US bank to launch its own cryptocurrency.

You can watch Dimon's remarks in CNBC's YouTube video of the conference below from 34'32:

 

Original author: Shona Ghosh

As phones become more expensive, trading in older models is one way for consumers to afford to buy new editions.But trading in old devices can be risky if any data is left behind.Russ Ernst, an executive at data sanitization company Blannco, called this a "ticking time bomb," and he has advice for avoiding disaster.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Consumers need more awareness about protecting their data.

That's according to Russ Ernst, executive vice president of products and technology at Blannco, a company that specializes in data sanitization, or cleaning up sensitive information left on devices so that it can't be accessed by the next user.   

"It's a ticking time bomb," Ernst said about the phone trade-in industry in an interview with Business Insider. "I'm surprised we don't see more write-ups and articles. Eventually, someone's device will end up in the wrong hands."

Read more: Colleges and universities are tracking potential applicants when they visit their websites, including how much time they spend on financial aid pages

Smartphones contain texts, emails, bank accounts, and other sensitive information we might not even think about, like GPS data. According to Ernst, performing a factory reset on your phone is only one part of a three-step process you should be doing to protect your data if you trade in a phone, or sell any device.

He says that a factory reset removes pointers to files containing this data, but not the data itself.

"Anyone can use free, open-source tools to interrogate devices and find files that no longer have pointers associated with them," Ernst said.

Not all phones are equally vulnerable, and issues differ depending on manufacturer, operating system, and carrier. 

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Ernst says that wiping the phone should be a three-step process:

1. Erase your data

2. Validate that the data was erased

3. Get a report on the erasure.

According to Ernst, consumers need to interrogate the services they use to trade in their phones. Ernst advises people trading in their phones to ask the company that they're working with if it's following that protocol. Consumers should ask "How can I trust that my phone is truly sanitized?" and "Are you validating that there's no data left?"

He predicts that there will be an influx of people looking to trade in their phones as 5G becomes widely adopted, because phones will be more expensive and people will need to sell their old phones to afford the latest models.

However, Ernst also notes that people are reluctant to trust third-party sellers with their phones, which contain so much personal data. Recognized brands like Apple will likely see an influx of trade-ins because they already have customers who trust them, he said. 

Original author: Mary Meisenzahl

Peloton launched its high-tech home fitness bike in 2012. The setup enables users to stream live classes, making it possible to get a boutique studio workout from anywhere. It has since rolled out a treadmill and an app with a range of workouts you can do without the high-tech equipment.In a relatively short period of time, the brand has grown to have a cult following of fans who say that the single most important reason Peloton has become so popular — and the reason they are motivated to work out most days — is the community that surrounds it.Peloton customers share life experiences and personal stories in Peloton's giant Facebook group, which has nearly 200,000 members.Many of these customers say that this community spirit and culture of sharing comes from the instructors who instill a positive attitude in the workouts. Meet some of Peloton's biggest fans below.Sign up for Business Insider's retail newsletter, The Drive-Thru, to get more stories like this in your inbox every Friday.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Stephanie Andreozzi describes herself as an introvert. She doesn't like making small talk with strangers and shies away from social gatherings, preferring to spend time on her own. Yet, last August she found herself driving to a party at the home of a woman whom she had never met, just to spend time with a group of complete strangers.

She remembers her boyfriend turning to her in the car and saying, "Are you out of your mind? I can't believe you're doing this."

But, she was adamant they'd have a good time.

"These are fun people," she says she told him.

The party, at a house in central Pennsylvania, was for people who shared a love for what she describes as "the bike that goes nowhere," or the Peloton. And, thankfully, it lived up to expectations.

Andreozzi said that she's noticed some big changes in her life since buying the $2,000 bike, and they aren't only physical.

"It is creating different relationships that I didn't have in my life before I had the bike," Andreozzi said in a phone conversation with Business Insider.

She added in an email that since attending that party, she's invited another rider to lunch, connected with people in her hometown and at the hospital where she works who also have Peloton bikes, and plans to travel with a coworker to the New York studio in November for her 100th ride.

"I'm definitely more outgoing than before Peloton," she said.

Andreozzi isn't alone here. Fellow users of Peloton's high-tech fitness machines — the bike and treadmill, and now its app — say that since joining the "Peloton community," they've struck up relationships they hadn't expected to, attended parties that they otherwise wouldn't have, and shared personal stories online with people they hardly know. 

They interact via Peloton's giant Facebook group, which has nearly 200,000 members and counting, and the countless subgroups — Pelo-Foodies, Peloton Sober Squad, Working Moms of Peloton, and Pelowinos, to name a few — that have splintered off from the central group. Peloton said it has 1.4 million members in total, a number that includes anyone who has a Peloton account

The Official Peloton's Member Page on Facebook is designed to be a space for users to connect and "stay up to date on Peloton announcements and features," it writes in the "about" section of the group. But the community spirit runs deeper than this, as members are increasingly using this space to share more intimate details about their life: the death of a family member, the birth of a child, and mental health issues are all recent examples.

Peloton bike owners and app users who spoke to Business Insider said that the open and supportive community that has sprung up around the Peloton brand is one of the main reasons, if not the main reason, why so many of them are motivated to work out every day.

'The Apple of fitness'

Peloton launched in 2012 with a $2,000 high-tech fitness bike that enabled users to stream live and on-demand classes from anywhere. The bike quickly became one of the buzziest workouts around, as it had solved one of the biggest downsides of working out at home: having to work out alone and not having the encouragement of a group to keep you motivated.

In 2018, Peloton added a new piece of equipment to its offering. The new $4,000 treadmill enabled customers to have the same streaming experience via a giant screen attached to the front. Then it rolled out an app that costs $19.49 a month and grants access to workouts that can be done on standard gym equipment.

The company has grown a fan base in a relatively short period of time and has been referred to as "the Apple of fitness." It went public last month, raising more than $1 billion and reaching a valuation of around $8.2 billion. In its S-1 filing, the company revealed that it had more than doubled its sales to $719 million in the year ending June 30. However, operating losses spiraled in the same period, which may have spooked investors as its stock dropped 11% on its first day of trading.

Read more: Peloton, the buzzy exercise-bike startup that's been dubbed the 'Apple of fitness' has filed for an IPO. Here's how it compares to SoulCycle.

The buzz around Peloton is something that even the company's CEO, John Foley, has said he wasn't expecting. But even more so, he wasn't expecting to see this community emerge.

"When I started Peloton with my cofounders, I saw clear as day what it was going to look like and how it was going to work — the technology, the hardware, the software, the business model," he told Business Insider in an interview at the CES tech industry trade show back in January 2018. "I saw everything except the community. The community has blown me away."

'It's the community that makes you go back every day'

Amanda Segal said she has lost 65 pounds since she bought her Peloton bike in April 2018, and she is approaching her 300th ride.

50-year-old Segal, a mother of three, said she has spent most of her adult life struggling with her weight but was never fully able to fully commit to a workout routine before she bought the bike. 

"I am obsessed with this whole organization," she told Business Insider.

When she bought the bike, her husband was highly skeptical.

"It's just another piece of gym equipment that we'll never use, we're going to use it as a clothes rack, and it's going to be a waste of money," he told her.

Segal shares her dramatic body transformation on Facebook. Courtesy of Amanda Segal

But the reason Peloton has become a big and possibly permanent fixture in her life, and not another fitness fad, is because of the community, she said.

"The last thing I wanted to do was get on the bike in the morning," she told Business Insider in a phone conversation, explaining that she'd been up late watching a baseball game the night before so wasn't feeling motivated for a workout. But the thrill of knowing that her Peloton friends would be online at the same time kept her going.

"There is this constant feeling that you're being supported by others," she said.

And it's the same on Peloton's social media channels.

When she shared a photo on the Facebook group documenting her dramatic six-month weight loss, she received nearly 6,000 likes.

When she had a Peloton-themed cake made for her 50th birthday, 5,000 people liked the photo. One person asked if they could copy her idea and have it made for their wedding day.

"That, to me, was inspiring. I was like, 'I've got to keep doing this,'" she said.

Segal had a special Peloton cake made for her 50th birthday. Courtesy of Amanda Segal

53-year-old Scottsdale, Arizona, resident Sue Dunne has had a similar experience.

She describes the bike as the vehicle and the community as what drives the spirit behind the whole company.

"It's what makes you go back every day," she told Business Insider.

'I quit seeing my therapist because I was getting whatever I needed through my bike'

This September, Dunne traveled to Portland, Oregon, to be with her mother, who had had a stroke and was in the hospital. 

She called Peloton in Portland and explained that she'd spent the whole day in the hospital and asked where she could ride a Peloton bike in a local gym (Peloton's commercial bikes can be ridden in certain hotels and fitness centers) so that she could keep up with a 60-day biking challenge that she was doing with a friend.

"They said: 'just come back to our showroom.' They were so amazing ... they let me ride every day for a week," she said. "It helped me get through a super stressful time."

She believes that the company culture trickles down to the community; other riders experience it in the classes with their instructors, she said.

Sue Dunne at the Peloton showroom in Portland. Courtesy of Sue Dunne

"It starts with them," 41-year-old Libby Smith, a mother of two, told Business Insider, referring to the instructors."There is a sense of gratitude I feel from all of them and I feel like they instill that in the community as well."

Smith remembers the trainer in a recent class saying: "Feel good, look good, be good to each other," and encouraging riders to virtually high-five a neighbor through what's called the Peloton Leaderboard, which tracks riders' performance.

"That's why people are so hooked to their bike because they get that daily dose on every single workout. I feel like I'm in the room with them, and I feel good after I have pressed play," she said.

Segal said she's even quit seeing her therapist since she got the bike because it's had such a positive impact on her mental health.

"I was getting whatever I need through my bike, through the instructors, through the support. I am not a religious person, but they give you that sense of being a believer," she said.

Convenience is king

It's been just over six weeks since Johanna Humphrey signed up for Peloton, and she's worked out every day since.

Rather than shelling out $2,000 for the bike or $4,000 for the treadmill, she's found a cheaper way to get in on the action by buying a non-Peloton bike and working out using the brand's app, which costs under $20 a month.

Read more: Here's what it's like to exercise with Peloton's app, which has everything from at-home strength workouts to guided office meditations

She views the bike as an unnecessary expense.

"It's 100% about the classes," she said in a phone conversation with Business Insider.

The main downside is that because the bike isn't paired to the class, she's unable to log her resistance or compare her performance against other riders'. But, she feels that that's balanced against the money she saves.

Humphrey isn't turned on by the community side of Peloton quite like her co-riders. For her, it's all about the standard of the instructors and the convenience of having access to studio-level classes from your living room.

"I like it because I am slightly overweight and I never liked going to spin classes because I always felt like I was surrounded by a bunch of super skinny, in-shape people.

"There's something nice to the online privacy aspect of it; I am just doing it in my basement so it doesn't matter if I am sweating to death and I look like hell, I don't have to perform for anybody," she said.

The convenience of the workout is what industry experts say puts boutique fitness concepts in such a vulnerable position, especially when combined with the community element.

"It's a hassle to get into classes, it's expensive, you have to find parking, you have to drive to the studio, you don't know if you were going to get a bike," Segal said of indoor cycling studio SoulCycle, a favorite workout of her adult daughter. "That is exactly why this concept is so ingenious because you can avoid all of those things."

Still, when she does want to get her boutique studio fix, she makes the four-hour trip to New York from Maryland to ride with Peloton instructors in the studio.

She's making plans to do just that in November as she celebrates her major 300-ride milestone.

If you're a Peloton user with a story to share please contact this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Original author: Mary Hanbury