HQ Trivia has had a rough 2019. The live-game-show startup has struggled to recover from the loss of cofounder and CEO Colin Kroll, who died unexpectedly in December.

In April, about half of HQ Trivia's 35 employees signed a letter asking the company's board to remove cofounder Rus Yusupov as CEO, the second time the request was made. The longtime host Scott "Quiz Daddy" Rogowsky also left HQ Trivia in April.

Now, Tech Crunch has reported that HQ Trivia laid off about 20% of its staff, leaving the company with less than 30 employees. Business Insider has reached out to HQ Trivia in an attempt to confirm the layoffs.

Meanwhile, monthly downloads of the HQ Trivia app dropped by nearly 92% in June compared with 2018, based on data from the analyst group Sensor Tower.

Read more: Mistrust, secret memos, and boardroom drama — inside the chaos at HQ Trivia after its young cofounder's sudden death

HQ Trivia is now gearing up to test a new subscription-based business model. A tweet from the HQ Words spinoff app said the company would introduce a new monthly subscription for HQ Words in July, which will let subscribers compete for cash prizes each day.

All of HQ Trivia's games have been available for free since the app launched in August 2017. The app offers three different games, HQ Trivia, HQ Sports, and HQ Words. HQ Trivia has a minimum prize of $2,500, but prize pools have reached up to $300,000 for a single game. Winnings are typically shared between multiple users, which significantly decreases the amount of money each winner receives.

Season four of HQ Trivia launched in May, promising users more prize money and more ways to win. The new season also introduced a new lineup of hosts, with Matt Richards replacing Rogowsky as the main HQ Trivia host, Anna Roisman taking over as host of HQ Words, and Lauren Gambino as host of HQ Sports. Sharon Carpenter is also on the team as a fill-in host.

Last year, the publicly-traded $5.87 billion software company Elastic did some $271 million in revenue, largely thanks to the sale of the premium versions of the popular Elasticsearch open source search engine.

That software, originally created by Elastic CEO and co-founder Shay Banon, is used by companies like Uber and Tinder to search and analyze their data. While the core software is open source, meaning free to use and modify,, Elastic charges for premium features that make Elasticsearch more useful to larger customers.

However, Elastic has long labored under the shadow of Amazon: In 2015, well before Elastic went public, Amazon Web Services took Elasticsearch, packaged it up, and sold it as a service to its customers — something totally legal for it to do, under the standard terms of open source.

Now, it seems, Elasticsearch is a big business for Amazon. The Information reported this week that last year AWS generated $100 million in sales from its top 100 customers for its Amazon Elasticsearch Service. As the report notes, given the popularity of Elasticsearch, and the fact that AWS has over a million customers beyond just that top 100, it's very possible that Amazon makes as much in total from Elasticsearch as Elastic itself does.

Also of note is that the Information further reports that in 2017, Amazon Elastisearch Service revenues from those same top 100 customers are $45 million, meaning it more than doubled year-over-year. Elastic's annual revenues grew some 70% over the same period, suggesting that Amazon's Elasticsearch business could be growing faster than Elastic's.

This news only comes a few months after Amazon partnered with Expedia and Netflix on a project called Open Distro for Elasticsearch, which takes the original Elastisearch software and wraps it up in more open source code — including some features that Elastic normally charges customers for — and makes it all available for free.

Elastic declined to comment specifically on the Amazon revenue figures reported by the Information. But Shay Banon, the Elastic CEO, tells Business Insider that this news does not change how Elastic runs its business, and he says he's still seeing "great adoption" of Elasticsearch.

"We do know our products are one of the most popular open source products out there, and since folding everything into a single holistic distribution, we are seeing a similar level of adoption of it," Banon said.

When Amazon announced its own Open Distro of Elasticsearch, some this as a major blow to Elastic, while others said this is a sign of AWS embracing open source. Banon himself took Amazon to task in a blog post accusing the cloud giant of misusing Elastic's brand, purposely co-opting its technology, and masking its actions "with fake altruism or benevolence."

Read more: A CEO is calling out Amazon Web Services for encroaching on his company's turf — and some experts are supporting Amazon

Now, though, Banon says that Elastic has seen minimal fallout from the introduction of the project.

"We also haven't seen any impact on our distributions since the launch of Open Distro," Banon said.

Banon said that Elastic is satisfied with its current business model, and he also said that Elastic has significantly increased its investment into its proprietary features for monitoring, maps, and security management — features that will be exclusive to Elastic's own version of the software.

"We are happy with our current efforts," Banon said. "We have believed since inception that in order to build a successful business our company needs to have a set of proprietary IP on top of the open source, and we are making significant investments in it."

Business Insider has reached out to AWS for comment.

Apple Maps has long played second fiddle to Google Maps, but the company is trying to change that in a big way with iOS 13.

The new software update will bring a variety of new features to Apple Maps when it launches later this year, such as a redesigned map that includes much more detail than the current one, the ability to build collections of favorite places, and a new Street View-like perspective.

Read more: Apple's new iPhone update could solve one of the biggest annoyances about video chatting

Apple Maps is just one of the several iPhone apps getting an upgrade with iOS 13. The company is also overhauling its Reminders app and implementing new features into its Photos app, among others.

Here's a look at some of the best features coming to Apple Maps this fall based on my experience using the recently launched public beta.

"Apex Legends/Electronic Arts

Electronic Art's Fortnite competitor just received a much-anticipated update that has left investors unimpressed. 

Apex Legends, a free-to-play Battle Royale-style game that garnered more than 50 million players in its first month across Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, introduced its second season on Tuesday with changes to its map, characters, and weapons. 

But EA shares fell by as much as 5.6% on Friday, the most in five months, after the update failed to ease concerns over "Apex Legends'" potential to compete with Fortnite, a Battle Royale game from Epic Games with close to 250 million users worldwide. EA was the worst-performing stock on the S&P 500 on Friday. 

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According to Bloomberg, a video also surfaced on Reddit identifying a flaw in the newly released character that can reveal the exact location of the player when using a new perimeter security ability. 

Games like Fortnite and Apex Legends are free to play but make money by selling additional in-game items like character and weapon skins. Users can also pay $10 for the Apex Legends Season Two Battle Pass which includes special items, skins, and a new character named Wattson. 

The second-season update was hotly anticipated by gamers and analysts alike. Bank of Montreal analyst Gerrick L. Johnson increased his price target for EA from $116 to $130 on July 2 based on positive reviews of previews for the season-two update. 

EA is up as much as 16.5% so far this year. 

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The more levels of security you have on your Mac, the safer your files will be. This is particularly true if you allow multiple people to use your computer. For your most sensitive files, it's a good idea to create a password-protected folder, for an extra layer of protection.

If you right-click on a folder, password protection isn't one of the menu options. But you can easily create a protected folder on your Mac with these steps.

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How to password protect a folder on Mac

Turn your folder into a .dmg file to protect sensitive files

To create a password-protected folder on your Mac, follow these steps to turn your folder into a disc image file (.dmg).

1. If you haven't done so already, create the folder you want to encrypt and add your sensitive files to it.

2. Open the Applications folder on your Mac.

3. Open the Utilities folder.

4. Open the Disk Utility app.

Open the "Disk Utility" app. Laura McCamy/Business Insider

5. From the menu at the top of your screen, to the right of the Apple icon, choose File.

6. From the File menu, choose New Image.

7. From the New Image menu, choose Image from Folder.

Choose "Image From Folder" to begin the process. Laura McCamy/Business Insider

8. From the folder window that opens, choose the file you want to add a password to and click Choose. You can rename the file once you choose it, if you want.

9. In the window that has popped up, there are menus for Encryption and Image Format. You'll need to change both of these from the default choices.

10. Click the menu next to Encryption and choose "128-bit AES encryption (recommended)." If you want a higher level of security, choose "256-bit AES encryption (more secure, but slower)."

There are two options for creating passwords. Laura McCamy/Business Insider

11. Once you have chosen your encryption level, a window will pop up that asks you to set your password. Click the key icon to the right of the password to see how secure your password is. In this popup, you can also choose to have a password created for you.

12. Enter the password twice and click Choose to set your password. Make sure you remember or make a note of your password. Otherwise, you won't have access to your files either.

Enter and verify your password. Laura McCamy/Business Insider

13. Click the menu next to Image Format and choose "read/write."

14. Click Save. It will take a few moments for the app to create a disk image of your folder. Click Done to exit.

15. Your original folder still lives on your Mac, unencrypted. Once you are sure you can access the disk image and the files in it, delete your original folder.

How to use a password protected folder

Your password-protected folder will appear in your Finder window as a .dmg file. Double click to open it. You will be prompted to enter your password when you open the file.

The disk image of your folder will appear under Locations on the left side of your Finder window after you open it with your password.

Click on the folder name in the Locations menu to view the files in it. You can drag files into the .dmg folder the way you would a regular folder. You can also save new files into this folder.

Once you enter your password, the disk image remains open and in the Locations menu until you eject it. Right click on the folder and choose "Eject [folder name]" to close your folder. It will disappear from the Locations menu.

You can eject your folder to close it, or keep it in the sidebar. Laura McCamy/Business Insider

Dynatrace, which helps businesses track the performance of their software applications, filed to go public on Friday.

Dynatrace is looking to raise $300 million in an initial public offering underwritten led by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Citi, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company said it plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "DT."

Dynatrace, which was founded in 2005, offers software that detect and diagnose issues in business applications. Dynatrace is one of the leading players in this market, where it competes with Cisco and Broadcom, according to analyst group Gartner.

Dynatrace posted revenue of $431 million in its 2019 fiscal year which ended March 31, up 8% from the previous year, according to the filing. The company reported a net loss of $116 million in FY 19, compared to a profit of $9 million the previous year.

Last month, Dynatrace, which is led by CEO, John Van Siclen, was named the company with the best leadership team in the US, based on a survey by Comparably, a website that monitors workplace culture and compensation.

Got a tip about Dynatrace 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.

Bolt by bolt, wheel by wheel, and scientific instrument by scientific instrument, NASA's next big mission to Mars is coming together inside a sterile room in California.

Now, thanks to a camera installed in that room, you can watch engineers assemble the car-size, 2,314-pound (1,050-kilogram) rover.

The vehicle is named Mars 2020, since it's scheduled to launch toward the red planet in July of next year. The rover should land in an expansive impact crater called Jezero, where liquid water once flowed, about seven months after departing Earth.

Mars 2020 will use a suite of high-tech tools to scout for signs of ancient alien microbes. The robot will have a laser blaster to analyze interesting rocks from afar, for example, and a helicopter to survey its surroundings for promising places to explore.

To show progress on its roughly $2.1 billion investment, NASA installed a webcam with "a live, bird's-eye view" of the rover "as it takes shape at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California," the agency said in an email.

"You can watch engineers and technicians assemble and test the rover before it embarks next year on one of the most technologically challenging interplanetary missions ever designed," NASA added.

This artist's rendition depicts NASA's Mars 2020 rover studying its surroundings. NASA Once it's completed, Mars 2020 — which grade-school students will soon rename— will also have a machine designed to generate oxygen from the thin Martian air (which could prove to be a boon for future crewed missions to Mars). Perhaps most important, a drill will help it probe into soil and rock, collect samples, and stash them in canisters.

"A future mission could potentially return these samples to Earth," NASA says on its website about the rover. "That would help scientists study the samples in laboratories with special room-sized equipment that would be too large to take to Mars."

The video feed of the rover's construction, which you can watch below, has run nearly 24 hours a day since mid-June. NASA hosts live web chats about the build Monday through Thursday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. ET. (If there's a test drive or other special activity, the agency hosts an extra web chat.)

So far, the footage has shown workers attach the rover's wheels, robotic arm, and head-like mast to its chassis.

Engineers most recently installed what's called the " SuperCam" on the mast — the laser-equipped device can blast interesting targets and analyze their chemistry from about 20 feet away.

Just before Mars 2020's launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, NASA will also work with the Department of Energy to install a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG.

Read more: The 15 most incredible plutonium-powered space missions of all time

The RTG is the part of the rover that generates energy. The device will be fueled by a rare, human-made nuclear material called plutonium-238, and it converts a portion of the heat released by the decaying plutonium into electricity. Though NASA expects Mars 2020 to last about one year on the planet's surface, RTGs can power spacecraft for decades.

NASA will attempt to land its Mars 2020 nuclear-powered rover in Jezero Crater, where the space agency will collect its first Martian soil samples for a future rocket launch to Earth.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL

Mars 2020 is a more advanced and ambitious follow-up mission to its near-twin, the Curiosity rover.

The new rover is slated to arrive in Jezero Crater and begin its mission on February 21, 2021. But like Curiosity and other spacecraft before it, Mars 2020 must first survive the trip the Martian surface — including a harrowing final descent that engineers sometimes call the " seven minutes of terror."

Data breaches are on the rise for all kinds of businesses, including retailers.

At least 12 consumer companies reported data breaches in the last year. Many of them were caused by flaws in payment systems either online or in stores.

A report published by cybersecurity firm Shape Security showed that 80-90% of the people who log in to a retailer's e-commerce site are hackers using stolen data. This is the highest percentage of any sector examined in the report.

These data breaches are a real danger for both companies and customers, as they can damage the trust shoppers have in brands.

According to a study by KPMG, 19% of consumers said they would completely stop shopping at a retailer after a breach, and 33% said they would take a break from shopping there for an extended period.

Here are the consumer and retail companies that have suffered a data breach since January 2018:

Teen-aimed media company Brat launched in 2017 to capitalize on young audiences' migration to YouTube by making high-quality, original shows.

Now it's starting to generate ad revenue, having grown to to 3.2 million YouTube subscribers and logging 30 million monthly YouTube views in May.

Read more: Clevver's Joslyn Davis and Lily Marston talk about launching a new YouTube media startup after the implosion of Defy

Armed with $42.5 million in funding from A. Capital, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Anchorage Capital and Advancit Capital, among others, Brat spent its first year and a half building shows including "Chicken Girls," "Zoe Valentine" and "Total Eclipse," all set in a fictional town, "Attaway."

Now, cofounder Rob Fishman is borrowing from the playbook he had at his last company, Niche, which worked with video creators to develop custom ads for brands. Fishman sold Niche to Twitter for around $50 million.

In May, Brat started building its first sales operation, hiring Twitter vet Terra Sollman; Jen Wolosoff, a BuzzFeed alum; Lauren Gorman, from Snap; Lauren Diener from Twitter; and Ryan Lee, from Salesforce.

Brat created ads for Universal Pictures' "Happy Death Day 2U," a PG-13 horror movie; and Mars Wrigley Confectionery's Extra Refreshers gum. For Extra Refreshers, Brat created three 60-second advertisements with actors from Brat's shows. The campaign also included in-episode commercials, Instagram TV commercials, and a sponsorship of the premier of Brat vampire show "Red Ruby."

Fishman said 70 percent watched through the entire 60-second Extra Refreshers ad that ran at the beginning of "Chicken Girls," whose episodes run around 20 minutes.

"We run pre-roll in front of our videos all the time, but this custom spot we made for Extra that we aired was the first time hundreds of our fans commented on it," Fishman said. "It's so much more effective when you see the stars you know, in the shows you know, speaking out about a campaign, rather than an interrupted advertisement that doesn't really connect to the content whatsoever."

Brat casts popular talent for its scripted, teen-focused shows. With 62 full-time employees, Brat functions like a traditional television network, working with talent agencies to cast stars from a diverse set of platforms.

"Part of our strategy has been to cast extremely popular talent for this generation," Fishman said. "It's a very symbiotic relationship. As much as we are gaining exposure to their audiences of all the different talent who work with us, they are getting the opportunity to play a character or headline a show."

Lead actors in Brat's shows include teen TV stars Anna Cathcart, who started in Netflix's "To All the Boys I've Loved Before," Mackenzie Ziegler, from "Dance Moms," who recently appeared on "Dancing with the Stars Jr," and Francesca Capaldi, from Disney's "Dog with a Blog" and "The Peanuts Movie."

Its biggest hit, "Chicken Girls," about a group of friends navigating life, love and high school, stars Annie LaBlanc, who got her start on her family's vlog channel Bratayley, which has 7 million YouTube subscribers.

The show is in its fourth season and often gets more than 10 million views per episode.

Brat's pitch to actors is that the company lets them get involved creatively and in multiple ways. Its actors produce original songs and music videos on YouTube, work with the company on articles that run on Brat.com, and advise on campaigns.

"Once that talent comes into our ecosystem, playing a role is probably the most important thing that they do, but from there, they might be in one of our hosted vertical shows on Instagram TV," Fishman said.

One of its stars, Emily Skinner, appeared on Disney's "Andi Mack" and now is in Brat's "Crown Lake" and "Total Eclipse."

"I think it's helped my career because I have gotten to play so many different characters," Skinner told Business Insider. "Brat lets us have more say in our characters. They let us go in and help with the creative process, which is really awesome, because with most networks you have no say in that."

Brat also makes money from branded merchandise sold through Amazon, and licensing through Spotify and Apple from their in-house music production, but sees most of its revenue coming from direct ad sales.

It still has to compete for views and brand attention with the likes of much bigger AwesomenessTV with 7 million YouTube subscribers and Nickelodeon, with 6 million subscribers, not to mention scores of individual YouTubers' channels, however.

Fishman conceded the competition is stiff. "We are going up against people like Nickelodeon and Disney who have decades of history and IP to sell. We on the other hand had to create all of that from scratch."

Ola, a ride-hailing firm based in India, said Thursday that's its received a license to operate in London, one of the world's largest markets for app-based taxi companies.

The company is targeting a launch this September in the British capital city, a company spokesperson told Business Insider:

London is one of the world's most iconic cities and hosts a progressive mobility environment. We couldn't be more excited to bring Ola to London in the time ahead! We are looking forward to building world-class mobility offerings for London, by collaborating with drivers, riders, the government and local authorities. Londoners will hear more from us closer to our launch in the city, as we get ready to serve them.

Ola's been targeting London, where traditional taxi cab drivers are still angry as ever at the ride-hailing industry's effect on their business, since at least 2018. News of its license comes as Uber attempts to shore up its lead in many international markets where it has struggled.

In 2017, London officials revoked Uber's license to operate in the city because of instances where the company acted like it was 'above the law,' as a judge put it at the time. The company won back its right to operate in June 2018, but the court has an option to revisit that after a 15-month conditional period.

Ola, meanwhile, is already operating in many cities throughout the UK, with a total of 110 cities total across four countries. The company has racked up a valuation of more than $5 billion, according to PitchBook data, with backers including Softbank (also an Uber investor), Hyundai, Kia, and more.

The fact that it's so easy for a fledgling company to begin providing app-based taxi rides is a risk for Uber, according to Wall Street analysts.

"We view barriers to entry as fairly low for major technology providers and auto manufacturers, posing the biggest threat for existing ridesharing providers," CFRA analyst Angelo Zino said in a recent note to clients. "Ridesharing companies will need to increasingly compete with certain non-ridesharing transportation-asa-service network companies and taxi companies as well as traditional automotive manufacturers, such as BMW and Tesla, which have entered or plan to enter market."

Other ride-hailing competitors in London include Gett, ViaVan, Addison Lee, and a handful of others.

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for WIRED25

When Amazon first listed shares on a public exchange in 1997, a crisp $20 bill would've bought a share in the company. 

Today, that same share is worth nearly $2,000. 

Amazon was founded 25 years ago Friday, although it didn't go public until a few years after its inception. Still, early investors in the company would have a fortune today if they held on to shares over the past 2 1/2 decades.

The anniversary comes during a banner year for new initial public offerings as companies such as Lyft, Uber, and Chewy have all rushed to the public market, many hoping to disrupt a major industry the way Amazon has. In addition, investor interest in IPOs has been piqued by companies like Beyond Meat, whose shares have gone up by as much as 700% since it first listed in May. Although Amazon has had astronomical growth and, in 2018, became the second company to hit a market capitalization of $1 trillion, Apple was the first, it had a long and sometimes bumpy road to success. 

The tech company's stock made its public debut at $18, and early investors might've been disappointed by its performance for the first decade of its life on the public market. Shares struggled to make meaningful gains through the early 2000s as the dot-com bubble burst. But that fate began to turn in 2008 and 2009, when momentum in the stock started to pick up and send it on an upward trajectory. That momentum increased even more in 2014 — in the past five years, the stock has soared more than 460% to $1,938 from about $340 per share. 

Today, Amazon has something of a cult following, where it garners more attention than other competitors. Usually that type of following is because of a charismatic CEO like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, Rory Carron, the head analyst at MyWallStreet, an investing app, told Markets Insider. 

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Leadership is important in assessing the success or failure of a young company. It's important to look at senior leadership, the plan they present for future growth, and their ability to execute that plan, John Jacobs, the executive director of the Georgetown Center for Financial Markets and Policy and the former chief marketing officer of Nasdaq, told Markets Insider. 

But leaders aside, the most successful investors are the ones who can pick investment vehicles to go along with sustained trends, Carron said. For example, Amazon was an early player in e-commerce, a trend that now dominates many industries from retail and beyond. 

Where investing in IPOs can be difficult is when investors get swept up in something that's popular only for the short term. 

"People aren't very good at separating fads from sustainable trends," Carron said. For example, when "Pokémon Go," the artificial-intelligence driven mobile game, was popular, investors piled money into shares of Nintendo, Carron said. What those investors didn't realize right away was that Nintendo had only a small hand in the game and the game would have little impact on Nintendo's performance as a company, Carron said. 

Generally, Carron advises that investors make sure they do their research before investing in any company, but especially IPOs. There's usually a bit of a frenzy around IPOs because when a company becomes public, it's the first time the majority of investors get to look at it, Carron said. 

"That's always going to create excitement in the markets," Carron said. What Carron suggests is that investors look to buy into companies where they understand both the consumer value and the financial basics — how the company makes money, what its potential growth opportunities are, and what the competitive landscape looks like. 

Ultimately, investors need to be confident that the new company they're investing in is going to grow at a faster rate than expected, or it's going to unlock potential that people don't understand. 

"That's when you understand a business and can be comfortable holding it for the long term," Carron said. 

Shares of Amazon are trading up roughly 29% year to date. 

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The RealReal could be valued at $1.6 billion when it starts trading on Friday. Here's what you need to know about the used luxury goods startup's IPO.