The NBA Finals are taking place this week between the Toronto Raptors and Golden State Warriors, but the antics of a courtside venture capitalist are taking center stage instead.

Mark Stevens, an investor in tech startups, was seen on video shoving Raptors player Kyle Lowry, who dove into the stands to chase an errant ball during Game 3 on Wednesday. Not only was Stevens kicked out of the arena, but the NBA also fined him $500,000 and barred him from attending any basketball games for a year.

Stevens, who owns a minority stake in the Golden State Warriors, won't be allowed to be present at the arena to see whether his team can beat the Raptors in the finals.

Stevens did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the incident.

Here's what you need to know about Mark Stevens, the billionaire VC whose investment portfolio includes Google, PayPal, and LinkedIn:

Apple's new version of Maps certainly brings welcome changes, but many of the updates are features that Google Maps has long offered.

Google added Street View imagery to Google Maps more than 10 years ago back in 2007. It's been gathering Street View data for more than a decade, and it's evident when you consider the sheer breadth of coverage Street View offers.

Google Street View is available in most areas in the United States, many parts of Europe, Australia, and South America, India, Japan, and some parts of Russia as well as other regions. Apple says its Look Around feature is based on the new base map it created, which it expects to roll out to the entire US by the end of 2019 and in select additional markets next year. That means Look Around may only be available in the US until further notice.

Apple's new Collections feature might also sound familiar to those who frequently use Google Maps. That's because the search giant launched the ability for users to compile lists of places and share them with friends back in 2017. The option to share your estimated time of arrival with a designated contact, another new feature coming in the next version of Apple Maps, is also already available in Google Maps.

With its next Maps update, Apple is realizing that people like to use navigation apps for much more than just fetching directions. Google Maps has evolved into a Yelp-like tool for discovery and exploration in recent years, as evidenced by the redesigned Explore tab it announced last year that puts nearby events and activities front and center in addition to points of interest.

The ability to create your own lists of favorite places and easily share them will certainly make Apple Maps more useful as a trip-planning app. But even so, Google Maps still offers richer data about points of interest, such as how long the wait typically is at a restaurant at certain times of day. Apple Maps displays helpful details too, such as whether or not a place accepts reservations, but alongside Google Maps it still feels a little bare-bones.

Ola Sendecka got into coding through an unusual route — art history. Back when she was a teenager in Poland, she was getting ready to decide what to study at university. Art was a passion but the employment opportunities were limited.

Instead, her teacher mooted a different kind of art that was coming increasingly into demand — computer graphics. "I was completely undecided and that spoke to me a lot," Sendecka tells Business Insider. There were no courses geared specifically for CGI, so she enrolled in computer programming.

She soon fell in love with coding. "I found art and science in one, I found everything in programming," she says.

Fast forward to 2019 and Sendecka is almost 33, she's set up her own international charity teaching girls how to code, landed a job at one of London's hottest fintech companies, and runs her own YouTube channel where thousands of subscribers watch her tutorials.

The inception of Django Girls

As a female coder starting out in tech 10 years ago, Sendecka always felt she stood out. Going to conferences, she would be bombarded with awkward questions. "I had people either asking if I'm there with a boyfriend… or if I'm just helping to organise the event," she recalls.

As her career progressed, she became involved in creating a web framework for the Python coding language called Django, which simplifies the code.

Read more: Meet the coding prodigy who has Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on her side in the fight to boost women in tech

Along with a friend — who also happened to be named Ola — Sendecka started to get sick of being the only woman in the room. Both of them sharing a name proved to be a confusing factor. "For a very long time some people thought there is only one Ola," she says.

So the two Olas decided to set up a workshop for beginners, inviting women to come and have a go at coding in Python. It was such a smash hit people started asking them to take it international. With full-time jobs, neither Ola could afford to fly their workshop out, so in 2014 they put all their educational materials up for grabs online. "We open-sourced everything we knew, our educational materials, how to organise the event itself," she says.

Now, Django Girls operates in over 90 countries and commands a host of just over 1,900 volunteers.

Coding is for Girls

After teaching the Django workshops herself, Ola realised she loved teaching coding almost as much as coding itself, and found an outlet to give her lessons an even bigger audience — YouTube.

In 2015, she started her own channel, Coding is for Girls, although she explains men are very welcome to watch. "So many people have a problem with just the name," she says, adding that's she's had complaints from watchers who say they can't recommend the channel to their male friends. But her thinking behind the branding was more aimed at inviting women into the community, rather than trying to freeze men out.

"I noticed with Django Girls if you do something that is aimed at women, they are more likely come, otherwise the assumption is they are not welcome," Sendecka adds. "It's open for everyone and you don't need to be a woman to use the materials."

Coding is for Girls has just shy of 9,500 subscribers, which is pretty small fry by YouTuber standards, but Ola is far from a full-time YouTuber. Just a few months ago, she got a job as a backend engineer at Monzo, a red-hot UK digital banking startup with more than a million users and a $2 billion valuation.

Constant sexism and rape threats

Even after a decade in the field and a sparkling CV, Sendecka still runs into casual sexism on a regular basis. "It's constant, people keep doing this all the time," she says. Sendecka recalled an incident a few years ago in which she organised a hackathon and an attendee asked her if she was there "for social reasons."

"It's really frustrating, especially when you start to have a couple of years of experience. When you are starting you're very like 'I'm not sure I should be here, I know nothing' so you accept more. But the longer you are in the industry, [it's] always assumed that you are there by accident, not because you are interested in a topic, and you constantly feel like you don't fit in," she says.

It's not just tech bros who are the problem. Sendecka has had to deal with anonymous internet users commenting on her looks, questioning her credentials, and in some cases even threatening rape.

Ola Sendecka on her YouTube channel. Ola Sendecka/YouTube

"I know that this is just random people and they shouldn't affect how I feel, but they do," she says. "It's not something I want to deal with on a daily basis and I just start to ignore comments under my YouTube videos, which is a bummer because there's a lot of people who ask really good questions."

Sendecka doesn't consider herself a particularly vocal advocate for change in the tech community, as she doesn't often speak out against what she feels is broken for fear of backlash.

She's seen friends push for more equality, but in doing so, have essentially taken on a whole new unpaid job. "It takes a lot of time and emotional labor and a lot of people just can't keep up and it's really sad to see people burn out over and over again."

Nonetheless, Sendecka feels the programming community at least is moving in the right direction. "For me starting Django Girls was a massive change," she says. "More and more women started to join this community. Now when I go to the meet-ups that are Django-related or Python-related or to a conference, there are a lot of people who went through Django Girls, and this is so much nicer to see."

Facebook's shareholder revolt should provoke a period of "deep soul searching" for the company.

That's according to the tiny activist investor who has led the charge in the war on billionaire Mark Zuckerberg's enormous power over Facebook, the company he founded in 2004.

At Facebook's annual shareholder meeting last month, Trillium Asset Management put forward a proposal to oust Zuckerberg as chairman and replace him with an independent executive. Trillium controls Facebook shares worth around $9 million.

The proposal was backed by 68% of independent investors (up from 51% who voted in favor of an almost identical proposal in 2017), but ultimately defeated because of Zuckerberg's stranglehold on voting power.

There was also lower than usual support for lead independent director Susan Desmond-Hellmann, according to Trillium. She was reelected by 67% of outside investors, compared with 76% last year.

Jonas Kron, Trillium's senior vice president, told Business Insider the votes "provided a clear articulation of the deep concern among mainstream investors," which should provoke a period of "deep soul searching for the Facebook board."

He called on new board members — Jeff Zients, the CEO of investment firm Cranemere, and former American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault — to take particular note of investor unrest.

Read more: Facebook investors open new front in war on Mark Zuckerberg: Now they want an independent investigation into his 'outsized' power

"These are highly respected, well qualified, accomplished individuals. They are in a position to look at the votes and speak up as advocates for independent shareholders," Kron said.

Facebook has been quiet on the issue over the past two weeks, and did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Earlier this week, a spokesman referred us to the firm's proxy statement, in which it said that hiring a chairman above Zuckerberg could create more problems than it solves.

"We do not believe that requiring the Chair to be independent will provide appreciably better direction and performance, and instead could cause inefficiency in board and management function and relations," Facebook said in the filing.

Meanwhile, in private correspondence with agitated shareholders, Facebook has pointed to governance changes made last year, when it beefed up the power of its audit committee, which is now chaired by Zients, giving it the power review the firm's services, privacy, and cybersecurity.

Kron said investors have every intention of capitalizing on their momentum, and plan on continuing to press the issue. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who controls about $785 million worth of Facebook stock, went public this week with a call for Facebook to order an independent review of its governance structure, while it's likely there will be another proposal to oust Zuckerberg at next year's shareholder meeting.

"We're not hitting the breaks on this," Kron said. "Concentration of power is so misguided. It doesn't matter who the person is, it inevitably leads to bad decisions."

When you picture a C-suite executive at work, making decisions and thrashing out strategy, where do you picture them? In all likelihood, it's in an office.

Yet for Douglas Merrill, Google's former chief information officer and the CEO of finance software startup ZestFinance, his most productive meetings take place in less orthodox spaces — and he thinks it's the thing that marks him out from other tech leaders.

"I often find that many of my best one-on-one meetings take place in the gym," he tells Business Insider.

"I work on a treadmill desk; I work out pretty much every day. I exercise relatively constantly. That's not because I'm trying to be younger than I am, but because I find being in the gym clarifies my mind a little bit."

Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO during Merrill's tenure. Richard Brian/Reuters

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google during Merrill's tenure, is known to favor meetings in which people comment as selectively as possible so colleagues can be sure what they're saying is important. But Merrill's gym-based meetings, by their very nature, tend to be more interpersonal.

Read more: Elon Musk emailed Tesla employees tips on how to be more productive — these are his 7 suggestions

"My chief of staff and I do cardio kickboxing and sparring together, so we just meet while we're doing that," he explains. "My chief operating officer and I also do cardio together, so we often meet. It's sort of organically worked out that we're talking about work, and that's cool.

"I usually try not to force someone to show up at the gym [for a meeting]. It's usually a little more organic than that. Obviously, we're sensitive about what we talk about, but it's just grown into a useful place where nobody's getting distracted by anything."

In addition to his gym-based meetings, Merrill adheres to what he calls a "really rote" reading schedule to keep his mind sharp when not in the office.

"I'll read a math book, followed by a history book, followed by some young adult vampire book," he says of his routine, which he has stuck to for around a decade.

"Usually it'll take me about a week to read the math book, and a week to read the history book; and a day to read the fantasy novel, and I just rotate between them, because I find that each one sort of structures my mind a little bit.

"Getting math is really important around here, I find history compelling, and the young adult book just represents the fact that, every now and then, my brain just wants to switch off for a bit."

Merrill adds that his reading habits aren't as unusual as you might think.

"I used to think I was unusual in doing that, but I've talked to a bunch of CEOs at major banks, and some variant of that [reading routine] is pretty common, which I thought was interesting."

NASA rolled out a new, multi-part plan on Friday that'd dramatically open the doors of International Space Station (ISS) to commercial companies, facilities, and even private astronauts.

NASA already permits some commercial activity on the ISS, but the agency said it's looking to boost its offerings to companies so that "innovation and ingenuity can accelerate a thriving commercial economy in low-Earth orbit." It's even seeing this new push as a way to fully commercialize and even replace the space station, making budgetary room for renewed lunar exploration with people.

One big change in NASA's five-part vision is to enable "private astronauts to conduct approved commercial and marketing activities on the space station."

NASA now says it will allow private astronauts — two per year — to stay up to 30 days each on the space station. The conditions: They have to get there via a commercial US spacecraft, such as SpaceX's or Boeing's upcoming vehicles, and pay $35,000 per day to cover for NASA's life support, communications, and other expenses (like $50 per gigabyte of data).

Richard Garriott, an English-American entrepreneur who paid $30 million for a two-week stay on the ISS in 2008, called the move a "seismic shift" in US space policy.

Garriott is one of seven private astronauts who have visited the ISS, and only because Russia was willing to take them. A decade ago, he said, NASA aggressively resisted their presence on the government-run facility. But the agency couldn't prevent private citizens' stays on the ISS due to international agreements and conventions.

"The deck was stacked very much against commercial activity on the space station," Garriott told Business Insider. "Almost all of us who flew privately literally had NASA either try to talk us out of it or try to ban us at one stage or another."

Garriott believes the commercialization of space will help accelerate research required to send astronauts into deep space on extended missions, while also improving the amenities on the ISS.

"The food is not phenomenal and the personal hygiene facilities are substantially lacking," he said — two areas he believes commercial innovation could improve.

An illustration of SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle, a spaceship designed to fly NASA astronauts, docking with the International Space Station.SpaceX

NASA's new approach might help the agency solve several longstanding problems with its roughly $100 billion investment in the sky.

One issue is that NASA has been asked by the Trump administration to return humans to the moon in the 2020s and establish a permanent base there — but the government has yet to grant the agency enough money to achieve that herculean task. Meanwhile, NASA continues to pay about $3-$4 billion a year to maintain and operate its space station.

"Each year the station remains in orbit, NASA allocates roughly half of its total human space flight budget to ISS operations — an expenditure that limits the agency's ability to fund development of systems needed to visit the moon and other destinations beyond low-Earth orbit," Paul K. Martin, NASA's Inspector General, said in May 2018.

NASA considered pursuing a full commercialization of the space station in the mid 2020s — in other words, simply handing the ISS over to companies — but the agency didn't sense enough demand to make that happen. By opening up the ISS to some more commercial activity but covering most operating expenses, the agency may instead be able to justify its ongoing expenditures for the ISS and work toward getting the added budget it needs to reach the moon.

But another key part of NASA's new plan is to open up a port on the ISS for a commercial module, laboratory, or other facility. The agency plans to release a call for proposals for that initiative next week. The ultimate goal, it seems, is to slowly transition the ISS over to the commercial sector and even foster the development of entirely new private space stations.

These new goals mean NASA would not de-orbit the space station in 2025, as has been discussed, and instead keep it operational for longer, possibly through 2030.

If you're a space-industry employee or insider with information to share, send Dave Mosher This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or consider using more secure options listed here.

The Toyota Land Cruiser is one of the few SUVs that can genuinely perform double-duty as a semi-luxury suburb-mobile and a serious offroading chariot. You have to look at Land Rovers and Range Rovers, as well as some Jeeps and Mercedes, to achieve a similar package — and even then, the Land Cruiser is arguably the best combination of capability and comfort.

I mean, the Land Cruiser can go from dropping kids off at school to surviving a war zone. It's a very special vehicle.

Obviously, I could complain about the age of the platform. But Toyota is a conservative company and isn't going to mess with products that don't need to be messed with. The Land Cruiser's heyday for US sales was the 1990s, when there weren't that many large SUVs in the landscape. Nowadays, Toyota sells about a thousand a year, and they aren't cheap. So the company makes what I'm guessing is a nice profit margin with essentially zero new investment.

The Land Cruiser doesn't suffer, either. It literally gets the job done, no matter what. Even the infotainment system is acceptable (in the equivalent Lexus, the LX 570, it isn't). The main challenge with the vehicle is its physical size. It's a driveway filler, and if you don't have a huge garage, the fit could be tight. But if you're in the market for a full-size SUV, you've already come to grips with this.

In terms of a comparison, I tend to think of the Land Cruiser as being both more robust and more high-end than the Chevy Suburban, and about on par with the GMC Yukon Denali. The Land Cruiser is considerably more expensive than the Suburban, and as far as distinctions go, you're paying for the Toyota's reputation. On a day-to-day basis, the Chevy is competitive.

I wasn't able to test the Land Cruiser on anything other than paved roads. But to be honest, this SUV doesn't need testing. It's the best big offroader you can find that isn't specifically outfitted for the backcountry.

For normal-life operations, this Toyota shouldn't disappoint. Perhaps the key consideration is cost of ownership. It's fun to have a powerful V8 under the hood, but the pain at the gas pump could get to you after a while. I don't think anyone necessarily needs the Land Cruiser, as they might have a few decades ago, before crossovers were an option.

But if you want a large SUV that can tow plenty, haul anything you could think of, and that's nicely accessorized with some premium touches, the Land Cruiser is a fine choice. And if the apocalypse hits, you'll be covered.