CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida. — Under the cover of night and the glow of nine car-size rocket engines, a new era for US spaceflight has lifted off from Kennedy Space Center.

At 2:49 a.m. ET on Saturday, SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk, rocketed its Crew Dragon spaceship into orbit for the first time.

The maiden flight of Crew Dragon marks the first time ever that a commercial spaceship designed for humans has left Earth. More importantly, it's the first time in eight years that any American spaceship made for people has been launched into orbit.

The seven-person space capsule is intended for NASA astronauts, but no people are flying on board right now. Instead, the roughly six-day-long demonstration mission, called Demo-1, is bringing 400 lbs of cargo and a female crash-test dummy named "Ripley" to the International Space Station (ISS).

However, the stakes couldn't be higher: Ever since NASA retired its fleet of space shuttles in July 2011, the US has relied on Russian rockets and ships to taxi astronauts to and from the ISS.

William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, has called Demo-1 "an absolutely critical first step" toward "eventually returning crewed launch capability back here to the US."

Read more: NASA named these 9 astronauts to fly SpaceX and Boeing's spaceships for the first time

Crew Dragon rode into space atop a roughly 23-story-tall Falcon 9 rocket. The vehicle launched Launch Complex 39A — a historic site from which Apollo astronauts launched to the moon and space shuttles sent up major sections of the ISS.

Next, Crew Dragon must successfully dock with the football-field-size orbiting laboratory, drop off its cargo, then return its artificial passenger back to Earth over the next week. If that all goes well, SpaceX could launch its first flesh-and-blood crew members — NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley — as soon as July.

Why NASA needs SpaceX's spaceship to work

In preparation for the inaugural launch of its Crew Dragon spaceship, SpaceX put a crash-test dummy in one of the vehicle's seats. The mannequin is named "Ripley," named after the lead character in the sci-fi movies "Alien."Elon Musk/SpaceX via Twitter

Demo-1 is part of a larger, roughly $8 billion effort called the Commercial Crew Program Program that aims to spur two companies — SpaceX and Boeing — to build commercial vehicles that can fly astronauts. NASA has given SpaceX and Boeing cash, expertise in human spaceflight, and the honor of restoring American pride.

Both companies have faced years of delays in building and testing the spacecraft due to funding, engineering challenges, and safety concerns. But SpaceX was the first to receive a "go" from NASA, following almost a decade of work with the agency.

"Demo-1 is a flight test, it absolutely is, although we view it also as a real mission, a very critical mission," Kirk Shireman, who manages the space station program at NASA's Johnson Space Center, said during a briefing before the launch. "The ISS still has three people on board, and so this vehicle coming up to the ISS for the first time — it has to work."

SpaceX is no stranger to space-station deliveries, however. The rocket company got its start with NASA in 2010 by developing an uncrewed Dragon cargo spaceship, which has now successfully flown to the ISS 16 times. Dragon's success was part of the reason NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.6 billion contract in 2014 to develop and certify its Crew Dragon capsule.

Once it's astronaut-ready, the plan is for SpaceX to launch six operational missions to the space station.

"This is a critically important event in American history," Jim Bridenstine, NASA's administrator, told reporters on Friday. He was standing before Behnken, Hurley, and other astronauts slated to fly on Crew Dragon. "We're on the precipice of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil again for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011."

Demo-1 has just begun

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

The Crew Dragon spaceship that launched today is now making its way to the space station.

Kathryn Lueders, the manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said the flight is "an invaluable exercise to learn, in the space environment, how these systems will be working" before any attempts to launch people.

Read more: Here's what Crew Dragon must do to prove it's safe to fly astronauts

Crew Dragon's avionics systems and on-board thrusters will attempt to navigate the spaceship to the ISS by around 3:30 a.m. ET Sunday. Once it arrives, a few hours of flying around the space station and docking with it will start. By 8:30 a.m. ET, the astronauts who are currently on board the space station hope to open Crew Dragon's hatch.

The astronauts will unload the 400 lbs of cargo and say goodbye to Ripley the mannequin, then close the hatch on Thursday. Crew Dragon will then undock itself from the space station starting around 2 a.m. ET on Friday and begins its journey home.

The biggest moment in the mission will arrive around 7:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, when Crew Dragon will fire its engines to slow down enough to fall back to Earth, then try to land in the Atlantic Ocean.

Throughout all these steps, SpaceX and NASA will be listening and logging critical information about the flight.

"We've done tons of water-landing testing, parachute testing — all of these individual pieces. But actually having a reentry with Ripley in the seat, in the position is critical," Lueders said. "We've instrumented the crap out of this vehicle."

That data collection will help engineers model the spacecraft's real-world behavior in detail, revealing any potential issues that need to be fixed.

"I guarantee everything will not work exactly right, and that's cool, that's exactly what we want to do," Gerstenmaier said before the launch. "We want to maximize our learning so we can get this stuff ready, so when we put crew on, we're ready to go do a real crew mission."

If the mission somehow fails, it's unlikely to mean the end of SpaceX's work in the Commercial Crew program.

"It's a first flight of a system that is designed for one of the most complex things we do, which is carrying humans safely into space," John Logsdon, a spaceflight historian at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, told Business Insider. "The chances of everything going perfectly the first try are not anywhere near 100%."

US lobbying against Chinese firm Huawei, one of the biggest phone makers and telecommunications kit providers in the world, hit a new level this week during the phone industry's big annual conference.

Around 100,000 technology vendors, carriers, and device makers head to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona every year both to strike deals and to showcase emerging technologies. This year, the conversation was dominated almost exclusively by 5G, as carriers look to introduce next-generation, superfast mobile networks.

The conference was heavily sponsored by Huawei, as the firm made its big pitch about its 5G capabilities.

But looming in the background were the months of negative press about whether Huawei's equipment might a backdoor that would allow the Chinese government to spy on people.

The firm's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, is awaiting Canada's decision on whether to extradite her to the US, after alleged sanctions violations. And the company was also indicted by the US for alleged theft of trade secrets.

Rotating chairman Guo Ping took to the stage on Tuesday morning to talk up Huawei's 5G business to a cavernous auditorium filled with telecoms executives and journalists.

His speech took an unexpected turn about halfway through, when he fired a shot at the US government, turning claims that Huawei spies on behalf of China back on America.

Huawei's rotating chairman, Guo Ping, told an audience at MWC 2019 that the company didn't spy on its customers. Shona Ghosh/Business Insider

"PRISM, PRISM on the wall, who is the most trustworthy of them all?" Guo said onstage, in reference to the PRISM surveillance system used by America's intelligence agency. "Huawei has a strong track record in security in three decades. Three billion people around the world. The US security accusations of our 5G has no evidence, nothing."

Behind him, a slide appeared in his presentation with the statement: "Huawei has not and will never plant backdoors." There was even some muted laughter from the audience.

Elsewhere around the conference centre, Huawei's logo adorned lanyards of thousands of attendees, while ads for its Mate X foldable phone greeted visitors as they entered the building.

Visitors walk next to Huawei's booth at the Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona. RAFAEL MARCHANTE/Reuters

Just five hours after Guo's swipe, US government officials held a small press conference to make their position on Huawei clear. Up until that point, there had been no visible sign of the US government delegation, which had quietly turned up to Mobile World Congress to lobby its European allies not to use Huawei's equipment in their networks.

Reading from a printed statement, with no microphone or slides, top US cyber official Robert Strayer said: "The United States is asking other governments and the private sector to consider the threat posed by Huawei and other Chinese information technology companies."

Read more: Huawei said it built a folding phone similar to Samsung's Galaxy Fold — but killed it because it was so bad

When pressed by reporters, Strayer refused to say whether the US had proof that Huawei might have built backdoors into its telecommunications equipment.

And asked if the US might simply be worried about leaning too heavily on a foreign tech company, Strayer said: "Really I think the question is this: Do you want to have a system that is potentially compromised by the Chinese government or would you rather go with a more secure alternative?"

The US will be hoping that Strayer's comments, and its behind-the-scenes lobbying, will land more effectively with its allies than Huawei's attack on the big stage at MWC.

Former FBI official: The US is worried about China's rising military and economic power

Chinese President Xi Jinping. Reuters

Security experts with ties to the US government said America's lobbying efforts are about more than just protecting the West's nascent 5G networks from potential Chinese spies.

Joseph Campbell, a director in the global investigations and compliance practice at Navigant Consulting and formerly assistant director of criminal investigations at the FBI, says the Huawei fight is a proxy for bigger US fears about China's ambition.

"We don't know as private citizens all the intelligence information the US and its allies have gathered relative to China and Huawei," Campbell told Business Insider during a phone interview. "But... there's no doubt China is a significant threat for the United States, they are committed to becoming a lead economic and military power in the world."

"Data is power," he added. "Eventually Huawei could be in the position where it could interfere with data traffic, sharing usage, or even engaging in proactive activity to extract that information and use it for their own benefit."

Ang Cui, CEO of security firm Red Balloon, added that whoever dominated 5G would potentially have access to billions of additional connected devices expected to be enabled by the faster network. According to Ericsson, there will be a total of 29 billion connected devices by 2022.

"Whoever gets to dominate 5G infrastructure will become the owner of the next generation of the world's telecoms infrastructure," he said. "If you look back 30 years, [the US Defense Department] funded... what became the internet. US companies provided a lot of the technology and infrastructure."

Cui added: "The internet turned out not to be perfect, but the world doesn't suspect that the US runs a pervasive surveillance mechanism."

Still, Huawei did play on fears that the US does carry out wide-ranging surveillance with its reference to the PRISM system, and the newly introduced Cloud Act, which would force Amazon, Microsoft, and other tech providers to hand over data.

Campbell, the former FBI staffer, said it came down to differences in the legal approach by the two countries.

Actually obtaining data under a law like the Cloud Act, he said, involves many layers of authorisation and back-and-forth between the FBI, the Attorney General, and a further judicial process.

And such laws in the US are intended to help criminal investigations and national security investigations, Campbell said. He added that China's approach to data-gathering was more self-serving.

"Their usage of laws is much more towards benefiting the state in general and the ability to drive its own economic and military capabilities," he said.

Huawei's business is much bigger in Europe, the Middle East, and African than it is in the US

It would be a major victory if the US does manage to persuade more European governments to ban Huawei, simply because its business in EMEA is so much bigger than in the US.

The Americas account for only a small portion of Huawei's business, according to its most recently available financial report from 2017. Just 6.5% of its $90 billion in revenue came from the Americas that year, while Europe accounted for more than a quarter. Its strongest-performing division was its carrier business — the arm that would be providing 5G equipment to telecommunications providers.

Here's how much revenue Huawei makes across its different businesses, and what percentage comes from different regions. The figures are in Chinese yuan:

Huawei makes most of its money from its carrier business, and it doesn't hugely rely on the US market.Huawei

One problem for US lobbying efforts is that Huawei is already deeply embedded in European telecoms networks, and is already helping to test 5G networks in the UK.

"They are a trusted vendor, a trusted provider," one senior UK telecoms executive involved in 5G testing told Business Insider at Mobile World Congress. The person added that operators would come to their own decisions about Huawei, but would listen to advice issued by UK intelligence.

Detecting whether there are vulnerabilities in a piece of equipment or the software that runs on it is difficult, Cui said. "If someone puts in a backdoor, they're going to hide it. So this is not going to be on a spec sheet, it's not going to be an obvious thing they give access to."

He likened a backdoor to the hidden blocks in a Super Mario game which remain invisible to the player.

"You jump, you don't see anything, but something happens," Cui said. "It's a cheat in the system that no one knows about, and that changes the entire security system. It could be in the hardware or the firmware, and perhaps not even a full bug, but a small vulnerability somewhere in the code that only you know about."

UK intelligence is due to publish a report on Huawei in the coming weeks, and early indications suggest that the authorities will conclude they can mitigate the risk from using the Chinese firm's kit.

For the US though, the risk is just too high.

"Certainly Germany, the UK, have independent abilities to assess the threat posed by Huawei, and determine if they can put in the right mitigations," said former FBI exec Campbell. "Obviously the US doesn't feel mitigation techniques would be effective... they would prefer to eliminate that threat."

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — After years of delays, SpaceX and NASA are closing in on the first experimental launch of a commercial spaceship designed to fly astronauts into orbit.

The demonstration mission, called Demo-1, is scheduled to launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on Saturday at 2:49 a.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center here in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

You can watch the rocket lift off live via NASA TV using the player embedded at the end of this post.

The goal of the launch is to show that Crew Dragon, or Dragon V2— a new spaceship that Elon Musk's spaceflight company designed for NASA — is safe to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

The experimental spaceship will go to the ISS, but it won't have any people on board this time. Instead, it will ferry a female crash-test dummy named "Ripley" in a spacesuit, along with some cargo, to the the $150 billion orbiting laboratory. If this test proves successful, SpaceX may launch its first astronauts as soon as July.

"Demo-1 is a flight test, it absolutely is, although we view it also as a real mission, a very critical mission," Kirk Shireman, who manages the space station program at NASA's Johnson Space Center, said during a press briefing. "The ISS still has three people on board, and so this vehicle coming up to the ISS for the first time has to work. It has to work."

Read more: SpaceX plans to rocket a sleek new spaceship for NASA astronauts into orbit. Here's what Crew Dragon must do to prove it's safe to fly people.

Demo-1 is part of a roughly $8 billion effort by NASA called the Commercial Crew Program, which aims to restore NASA's ability to launch astronauts on its own ships. The agency has not had a way to do that since it retired the last space shuttle in July 2011. (US astronauts currently fly to and from the ISS on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.)

Saturday's event would mark the first launch of an American-made spaceship for astronauts since then, among other milestones.

"This is a critically important event in American history," Jim Bridenstine, NASA's administrator, told reporters on Friday while standing before four astronauts slated to fly on Crew Dragon. "We're on the precipice of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil again for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011."

An illustration of SpaceX's Crew Dragon space capsule for NASA astronauts launching toward space on a Falcon 9 rocket.SpaceX

NASA TV plans to broadcast live video and commentary of the Falcon 9 rocket launch starting at 2 a.m. ET tomorrow (March 2). You can watch it using the embedded player below.

Although SpaceX typically hosts its own launch webcasts, this time the livestream will be a joint production with NASA, featuring remarkable views from inside the Crew Dragon.

"There will be video cameras and there will be nice views, and it will give you a perspective that you would have if you were inside," Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president for build and flight reliability, said on Thursday.

On Friday morning, the US Air Force released a forecast predicting a 20% chance of delay due to weather. Cloud cover that's too thick to launch a rocket within NASA's margins of safety could lead the agency to scrub the morning launch. However, the weather here at the Cape is currently calm, with cloudless skies and a crystal-clear view of the stars.

Should weather or some other issue delay launch, the backup launch date is Tuesday, March 2. The forecast for Tuesday is markedly worse, with the USAF weather report says there could be a 40% chance of delay then, due to thick clouds and a chance of rain.

You can watch live launch coverage here. We've also posted a second-by-second list of stages for the launch below this player so you can follow along.

Here's a list of all of the stages of the launch that you can expect to see, according to NASA, with all times being approximate and relative to 2:49 a.m. ET:

COUNTDOWN Min/Sec — Events

LAUNCH, LANDING AND DRAGON DEPLOYMENT Min/Sec — Events

This story has been updated with new information.

YouTube TV now has more than 1 million subscribers, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The streaming media giant has never officially reported its subscriber numbers. The new figure from Bloomberg is the first update on the service's subscribers since last July, when The Information reported YouTube TV had nearly 800,000 paying users.

News of the service reaching the 1-million-subscriber milepost comes just a few weeks after the Super Bowl, which likely boosted its numbers. Popular sporting events such as the Super Bowl and the World Series tend to lure in new users, many of whom take advantage of YouTube TV's 30-day free trial, Christian Oestlien, who helped launched the live TV streaming service in 2017, told Business Insider last month. Many decide to stick around after that, though, he said.

"Sports helps bring people in and then programming [such as 'The Big Bang Theory,' 'The Voice,' and other shows] is stuff that people still care about and love to watch every day," said Oestlien, a director of product management at YouTube.

Following an expansion into new markets in January, YouTube TV is now available to 98% of people living in the US. The cable alternative costs $40 per month and comes with access to broadcast networks ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC and to popular cable networks, including TNT, TBS, CNN, and ESPN.

YouTube TV isn't the only online pay TV alternative to have topped 1 milion subscribers. Hulu's live streaming service, which also launched in 2017, has attracted more than 2 million paying users, Bloomberg reported.

Read more: Hulu and YouTube are on track to win the battle for streaming live TV, and it's terrible news for AT&T

Even if YouTube TV trails Hulu, it stands out from YouTube's other paid offerings for doing as well as it has. The Google-owned company, which has long dominated the ad-supported streaming video market, has repeatedly flailed at trying to create successful paid services.

In November, the company appeared to sign the death warrant for YouTube Premium, its short-lived attempt to create a kind of subscription-based competitor to Netflix and Amazon Prime. YouTube announced then that starting next year, consumers would be able to watch the original shows it developed for the service for free with advertisements instead of having to pay a subscription to view them.

YouTube Premium is a rebranded version of YouTube Red, an earlier subscription offering from the company, but with a confusing grab bag of services. The offering, which costs $11.99 per month, includes everything from the company's Spotify-like streaming music service to an ad-free video service for kids.

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Microsoft stopped making the Microsoft Band fitness tracker back in 2016, but it still worked for anybody who bought one — like a Fitbit or Apple Watch, the Microsoft Band used an app to help users track their health.

On May 22, though, that all changes because Microsoft will turn off the Microsoft Band's online services, as well as the Microsoft Health Dashboard, and remove the apps for download across iPhone, Android, and Windows.

To make it up to users, Microsoft is offering a partial refund for anybody who bought the original Microsoft Band, released in 2014, or the Band 2 from 2015.

For owners of the original device, Microsoft will pay out $80, and Band 2 owners will get $175. The only stipulation is that you have to have synced a Band to the app between December 1st, 2018, and March 1st, 2019, meaning it'll be limited to only active users. If your device is under warranty, however, you'll get the refund no matter what.

There's a full FAQ page for Microsoft Band owners here, including details on how to export your health data to other services. The news was first reported by The Verge.

It appears that the Microsoft Band will still have some use, even without those backend services: You can use one to track your heartbeat, count steps, set an alarm, or do anything else that doesn't need an internet connection. However, Microsoft said, if you reset a Band, it will be impossible to set it up again.

The Microsoft Band was a little ahead of its time: While it was primarily a fitness-focused device, it came with some smartwatch-style features, including the Cortana voice assistant and the ability to pay for Starbucks with a displayed barcode. However, it got extremely lukewarm reviews, with users complaining that it was clunky and inaccurate.

The Microsoft Band 2 added more apps and brought a revamped design — but it was released after the Apple Watch, which stole much of its thunder. Plans for a third-generation device were scrapped, and the entire Microsoft Band line was discontinued in 2016.

Still, this misfire aside, the Microsoft Band was part of Microsoft's renewed assault on the hardware market, presaged by the surprising success of 2014's Surface Pro 3. The overall quality of the Surface line shows that Microsoft's hardware lineup still has a lot of promise — just, perhaps, not on the wrist.

Boutique fitness brand Orangetheory Fitness has amassed a cult following on the back of its high-intensity, boot-camp-style workouts. This year, it is set to partner with another cult brand.

Kevin Keith, Orangetheory's chief brand officer, teased an upcoming partnership with Apple at the Association of National Advertisers' Brand Masters conference on Friday.

"We are actually rolling out, later this year, some new partnerships that rhyme with 'Snapple,' I can tell you this," he said.

For those unfamiliar with Orangetheory, the key part is to get your heart rate past its maximum threshold (an effort of 85 or above on a scale of 1 to 100) for 12 to 20 minutes during the 60-minute class, which the brand calls the "orange zone."

Read more: I'm addicted to a boot camp-style workout that's taking over America — here's what it's like

The tech-savvy brand has already rolled out a slew of tech integrations that let its customers track their progress, such as a heart monitor that tracks what they do outside of the studio. An integration with Apple would only take its tech efforts to the next level.

When asked to elaborate on the partnership by Business Insider, Keith declined to say more. But he hinted that the partnership was most likely an app for the Apple Watch.

"It's kind of a secret, but the worst kept secret," he said. "A third of our members have Apple watches. Now, we're going to go legit, and we're also really elevate the experience."

“Over the past nine years, WeWork has grown into one of the largest global physical networks thanks to the hard work and dedication of our team,” the company said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “WeWork recently conducted a standard annual performance review process. Our global workforce is now more than 10,000 strong, and we remain committed to continuing to grow and scale in 2019, including hiring an additional 6,000 employees.”

WeWork has raised more than $8 billion in venture capital funding since it emerged to disrupt office sharing. The business is backed significantly by the SoftBank Vision Fund, which invested $2 billion in WeWork as recently as January.

All day long, we're inundated by interruptions and alerts from our devices. Smartphones buzz to wake us up, emails stream into our inboxes, notifications from coworkers and far away friends bubble up on our screens, and "assistants" chime in with their own soulless voices.

Such interruptions seem logical to our minds: we want technology to help with our busy lives, ensuring we don't miss important appointments and communications.

But our bodies have a different view: These constant alerts jolt our stress hormones into action, igniting our fight or flight response; our heartbeats quicken, our breathing tightens, our sweat glands burst open, and our muscles contract. That response is intended to help us outrun danger, not answer a call or text from a colleague.

We are simply not built to live like this.

Our apps are taking advantage of our hard-wired needs for security and social interaction and researchers are starting to see how terrible this is for us. A full 89% of college students now report feeling "phantom" phone vibrations, imagining their phone is summoning them to attention when it hasn't actually buzzed.

Another 86% of Americans say they check their email and social media accounts "constantly," and that it's really stressing them out.

Garry Knight/Flickr (CC)

Endocrinologist Robert Lustig tells Business Insider that notifications from our phones are training our brains to be in a near constant state of stress and fear by establishing a stress-fear memory pathway. And such a state means that the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brains that normally deals with some of our highest-order cognitive functioning, goes completely haywire, and basically shuts down.

"You end up doing stupid things," Lustig says. "And those stupid things tend to get you in trouble."

Your brain can only do one thing at a time

Scientists have known for years what people often won't admit to themselves: humans can't really multi-task. This is true for almost all of us: about 97.5% of the population. The other 2.5% have freakish abilities; scientists call them "super taskers," because they can actually successfully do more than one thing at once. They can drive while talking on the phone, without compromising their ability to gab or shift gears.

AP/Rafiq Maqboo

But since only about 1 in 50 people are super taskers, the rest of us mere mortals are really only focusing on just one thing at a time. That means every time we pause to answer a new notification or get an alert from a different app on our phone, we're being interrupted, and with that interruption we pay a price: something called a "switch cost."

Sometimes the switch from one task to another costs us only a few tenths of a second, but in a day of flip-flopping between ideas, conversations, and transactions on a phone or computer, our switch costs can really add up, and make us more error-prone, too. Psychologist David Meyer who's studied this effect estimates that shifting between tasks can use up as much as 40% of our otherwise productive brain time.

Every time we switch tasks, we're also shooting ourselves up with a dose of the stress hormone cortisol, Lustig says. The switching puts our thoughtful, reasoning prefrontal cortex to sleep, and kicks up dopamine, a brain chemical that plays a key role in pursuing reward and motivation.

In other words, the stress that we build up by trying to do many things at once when we really can't is making us sick, and causing us to crave even more interruptions, spiking dopamine, which perpetuates the cycle.

More phone time, lazier brain

Our brains can only process so much information at a time, about 60 bits per second.

The more tasks we have to do, the more we have to choose how we want to use our precious brain power. So its understandable that we might want to pass some of our extra workload to our phones or digital assistants.

But there is some evidence that delegating thinking tasks to our devices could not only be making our brains sicker, but lazier too.

Researchers have found smarter, more analytical thinkers are less active on their smartphone search engines than other people. That doesn't mean that using your phone for searching causes you to be "dumber," it could just be that these smarties are searching less because they know more. But the link between less analytical thinking and more smartphone scrolling is there.

We also know that reading up on new information on your phone can be a terrible way to learn. Researchers have shown that people who take in complex information from a book, instead of on a screen, develop deeper comprehension, and engage in more conceptual thinking, too.

Recent research on dozens of smartphone users in Switzerland also suggests that staring at our screens could be making both our brains and our fingers more jittery.

Last year, psychologists and computer scientists found an unusual and potentially troubling connection: the more tapping, clicking and social media posting and scrolling people do, the "noisier" their brain signals become. That finding took the researchers by surprise. Usually, when we do something more often, we get better, faster and more efficient at the task.

But the researchers think there's something different going on when we engage in social media: the combination of socializing and using our smartphones could be putting a huge tax on our brains.

Social behavior, "may require more resources at the same time," study author Arko Ghosh said, from our brains to our fingers. And that's scary stuff.

Flickr/André-Pierre du Plessis

Should being on your phone in public be taboo?

Despite these troubling findings, scientists aren't saying that enjoying your favorite apps is automatically destructive. But we do know that certain types of usage seem especially damaging.

Checking Facebook has been proven to make young adults depressed. Researchers who've studied college students' emotional well-being find a direct link: the more often people check Facebook, the more miserable they are. But the incessant, misery-inducing phone checking doesn't just stop there. Games like Fortnite or apps like Twitter can be addictive, in the sense that they will leave your brain craving another hit.

Getty Images/Spencer Platt Addictive apps are built to give your brain rewards, a spike of pleasure when someone likes your photo or comments on your post. Like gambling, they do it on an unpredictable schedule. That's called a "variable ratio schedule" and its something the human brain goes crazy for.

This technique isn't just used by social media, it's all over the internet. Airline fares that drop at the click of a mouse. Overstocked sofas that are there one minute and gone the next. Facebook notifications that change based on where our friends are and what they're talking about. We've gotta have it all, we've gotta have more, and we've gotta have it now. We're scratching addictive itches all over our screens.

Lustig says that even these kinds of apps aren't inherently evil. They only become a problem when they are given free rein to interrupt us, tugging at our brains' desire for tempting treats, tricking our brains into always wanting more.

"I'm not anti technology per se," he counters. "I'm anti variable-reward technology. Because that's designed very specifically to make you keep looking."

Lustig says he wants to change this by drawing boundaries around socially acceptable smartphone use. If we can make a smartphone "addiction" taboo (like smoking inside buildings, for example), people will at least have to sanction their phone time off to delegated places and times, giving their brains a break.

"My hope is that we will come to a point where you can't pull your cell phone out in public," Lustig says.

This story was originally published on March 10, 2018 as part of Business Insider's "Your Brain on Apps" series.

Two top AT&T executives are leaving the company, and insiders say it's a harbinger of cultural changes and widespread layoffs at the company now that it has a court go-ahead to move forward with its $85 billion purchase of Time Warner.

HBO CEO Richard Pepler and Turner president David Levy are leaving in what are among the biggest changes at AT&T since the phone giant moved to acquire the media giant. With nearly 60 years combined experience at their respective companies, Pepler and Levy were closely associated with making, respectively, HBO a premier entertainment business and Turner an innovative cable company.

Their departures followed a Wall Street Journal report earlier in the week that AT&T was in talks to hire former NBC exec Bob Greenblatt to oversee a combined HBO and Turner.

That news, coupled with the departures of Pepler and Levy, has heightened staff concerns about how the Dallas-based phone company would put its stamp on its newly acquired New York-centric media and entertainment properties, now WarnerMedia, according to insiders.

There also was frustration about hearing the news through the press and not AT&T itself. One person described the atmosphere at Turner as being "like a funeral."

"The first thing they did was fire the two heads of the business that we most worried about," another insider said. "That doesn't bode well on Pepler's side for the creative culture and on Levy's side for the ad culture."

Read more: David Levy steps down as president of Turner amid broader shakeup at AT&T's WarnerMedia

The potential combination of HBO and Turner speaks to how John Stankey, an AT&T long-timer who was put in charge of WarnerMedia last June, plans to run the company, another insider said.

Historically, Time Warner operated its units like AOL and Time Inc. separately from each other, which made it easier to spin them off if and when the time came.

But in this case, combining HBO and Turner would enable AT&T to unify the way it sells video to consumers. WarnerMedia is working on a direct-to-consumer streaming service that will have HBO at its core combined with other WarnerMedia content.

'We're going to see really big reductions'

The idea of a mashup of both companies also has some buzzing that layoffs are ahead.

"I've heard they are talking 30% cuts," said a person with close ties to the company. "We're going to see really big reductions — I'm hearing it will be across the board. The places it will probably hit hardest is where the return will be the biggest. The number of people making over $750,000 [at Turner] — in a phone company, there aren't."

WarnerMedia hasn't responded to a request for comment.

Beyond cuts, there are questions about how the HBO and Turner cultures themselves will mesh.

"HBO is slow-growth, versus Turner, where you've got to sell ads every day," that person said. "Some people describe HBO as a mushroom farm. You go around Turner, and you've got people bouncing off the walls."

"Turner has been known as being incredibly innovative, willing to take risks," a media buyer said. "Is there going to be any more of a conservative approach, given AT&T heads are coming in and will Turner continue to embrace a trailblazing spirit?"

One area of the company that seems to be safe is CNN, where Jeff Zucker remains as head and AT&T executives have made indirect comments that it's status quo. "We've been reassured over and over that WarnerMedia doesn't have any desire or intention to shake things up at CNN," an insider at the news network said.

A combined HBO and Turner could be a way to pool information about how people consume all their content and combined with AT&T's distribution pipes, there could be big benefits to marketers, said Amanda Richman, US CEO of the agency Wavemaker.

Agencies have questions

The shakeup has agencies wondering what the strategy is, especially with TV about to enter its crucial TV selling season in a couple of months.

"We're about to enter the upfront, and David was key to setting that strategy," said Lyle Schwartz, head of investment for GroupM. "Do they have a plan for someone stepping up. Is it going to be status quo or signal a change in their approach to the marketplace. It might have a significant impact on what I recommend to clients. I hope to see some clarity of vision.

"Turmoil always happens with things are left open too long. We're in the beginning of March and in 60 days is the upfront. That's a period of time you don't want this change."

Following is a transcript of the video.

We've sent a lot of unusual things to space, guitars, AI robots, even a golden record, but none of that compares to what Elon Musk sent up at the start of 2018. His very own $100,000 cherry red, convertible Tesla Roadster. With the top down and a dummy at the wheel listening to David Bowie, strapped to the most powerful, operational rocket in the world, no less, The Falcon Heavy.

Since its launch a year ago, it's probably safe to say the Roadster has traveled farther than any other car in history. In fact, it's estimated to be about equal to driving every single road in the world 22 times. So the question is, where exactly is it?

Right now, the Roadster is traveling through space at thousands of kilometers per hour, faster than most fighter jets, but unlike a jet, the Roadster isn't burning any fuel because it doesn't have to. When SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launched on February 6, 2018, it gave the sports car an initial boost in speed, sort of like a slingshot that's been powering it through space ever since. And by November, that boost got it all the way to Mars. But Mars is just the first stop of many.

The Roadster is currently on an elliptical path around the sun, taking it past Venus and Mercury too. It completes one full orbit about every 557 days, and is scheduled to finish its first orbit before the end of 2019. Now if nothing unexpected happens, like a miniature asteroid strike that could pummel the car to pieces, researchers predict that the Roadster will orbit the sun for the next few million years.

Sadly, it's too small and too far away to see in the night sky, even with the aid of a telescope. But eventually, it will make its way back to earth. A team at the University of Toronto projected the Roadster's orbit decades into the future. They discovered that in the year 2091, it will likely pass close enough to earth that we'll be able to see it through a powerful telescope like the Panstar's telescope in Hawaii. But if you don't want to wait that long, you can easily track the Roadster online.

Fans like Ben Pearson use NASA data to project the car's location through space. For now, the convertible will continue its long drive around our inner solar system. And perhaps if humans make it to Mars like Musk hopes, we might even see the Roadster on our way there.

Since 2017, Tesla has officially been selling two sedans, the Model S and the Model 3. Both are fully electric, but with the arrival of the base, $35,000 Model 3, there's now a wide price difference between the cheapest Tesla four-door and the most expensive Model S, which can cost over $100,000, depending on the configuration.

What, you might wonder, do you get for your money with each car?

Glad you asked. I've provided a simple breakdown. The bottom line is that you currently have more options with the Model 3, but the Model S is more premium and serves up better performance — if you pay extra for it. Otherwise, although the cars are in different segments, they have a lot in common.

Read on to learn more:

CUPERTINO, California — Apple welcomes employees with "all" political viewpoints, CEO Tim Cook said Friday, adding that employees that felt ostracized because of their political views should talk to him.

Cook's comments came in response to a question at the company's annual shareholder meeting at its headquarters here. The questioner said she had a friend who worked at the company who doesn't "share the left-wing view" and suggested that the friend felt uncomfortable or even hated because of her views. She asked Cook how he would advise her friend.

One of Apple's most deeply held values is its openness to people of all different sorts, Cook said. It's open to people of different ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, and political beliefs, he said.

"I would encourage them to come talk to me if they have an issue," Cook told the questioner. Adding that the person could also speak with Deirdre O'Brien, Apple's human resources head, he continued, "I would really encourage them to say something."

Silicon Valley companies have drawn increasing fire recently for their progressive political stances, the liberal affiliations of many of their workers, and for allegedly discriminating against conservative employees and points of view. The criticism has particularly hit Facebook and Google, but Apple hasn't been immune to it.

Prior to the question about the conservative worker, Apple shareholders voted on a proposal that would have urged the company to disclose to shareholders the "ideology" of each of its director nominees. In his statement advocating the proposal, Justin Danhof, an attorney at the National Center for Public Policy Research, which submitted it, made clear that it was an effort to ensure that conservative political viewpoints were represented on Apple's board.

"When the company takes overtly political, legal, and policy positions, it would benefit to have voices from both sides of the aisle in the room," Danhof said. "At this company, the consideration of conservative viewpoints appears to be discouraged if not altogether forbidden."

The proposal sparked a lengthy debate among investors about the wisdom of the proposal, the company's frequently progressive policy stances, and its openness to conservative people and points of view. Although supporters of the proposal were well represented in the audience, investors as a whole overwhelmingly voted against it. According to a preliminary tally released by Apple, the measure secured just 1.7% of shareholder votes.

In his comments later, Cook argued against the notion that Apple should query potential employees or anyone affiliated with the company about their political beliefs. As a gay man from the South, he learned not to ask people their thoughts on homosexuality, because if he had done that, "you don't have a lot of friends," he said.

"I don't check people at the door as to who they are and what they believe," he said. "I care about skills and capabilities and contributions."

Apple focuses on promoting certain policies, not on partisan politics, Cook said. It supports pro-environment and pro-immigration policies. It back diversity and privacy. But it also believes in capitalism, he said.

Like most of the top Silicon Valley tech companies however, Apple has a lot of room for improvement when it comes to workforce diversity. Cook said that more than half of the company's new hires last year were women or underrepresented minorities, but he did not say what portion of those were hired to work in Apple's retail stores, which is where a disproportionate number of its women and minority employees work.

To promote its favored policies, Apple works with people from both political parties in the US. Sometimes the policies it favors are supported by one party, sometimes its the other. Sometimes it find common ground for its preferred policies on both sides of the aisle; sometimes both sides are opposed, he said.

"We don't really look at the politics of it," he said. "We think about the policy of it."

What's more, he said, Apple doesn't have a corporate political action committee and doesn't donate to political campaigns.

David Levy is stepping down as president of Turner as part of a wider shakeup in leadership at AT&T's WarnerMedia. The news leaked yesterday and Levy announced it in a memo to staff today, saying he was "ready for a professional change."

"I have spent a considerable amount of time during the past few months discussing the future landscape and vision of the company with John Stankey and the senior leadership team," Levy wrote in the memo, which was laden with references to his long tenure there and the old days. "After much consideration and more than 32 years at Turner, the past six years as the President of this great company, I have decided the time is right to leave my role."

No replacement for Turner was immediately announced. Turner PR sent an email to some top execs saying Stankey, an AT&T vet who was put in charge of WarnerMedia, which Turner belongs to, would share more information next week.

At Turner, Levy's oversight includes TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and Turner Classic Movies. He's most closely associated with handling the company's sports rights deals. He's also credited with nurturing the growth of Bleacher Report, the social media company focused on sport and culture that Turner bought in 2012. Under him, Turner's been focused on making content available more broadly on digital platforms, an example being Bleacher Report's attention-getting Tiger vs. Phil golf match.

As well as being admired internally, Levy was connected in the live sports world, which has been less vulnerable than other content to the shift of viewership to digital. His exit has raised questions internally about who will fill that void and what will come next.

"Dave was a big, bold presence and a public face," one insider said. "Who replaces him in sports, where he's beloved?"

To another, the removal of the top longtime exec at Turner sets the stage for larger changes afoot. Speculation is that AT&T wants to combine HBO and Turner and put former NBC exec Bob Greenblatt in charge of all of it. "It says to me, Turner is going to undergo a significant restructure," the second insider said.

Read more: The president of media giant Turner says content is still king, but television needs to evolve

Levy is leaving the company as another prominent exec, Richard Plepler, steps down as chairman and CEO of sibling unit HBO.

Here's Levy's full memo below:

Hello everyone,

I have some news to share regarding an important career decision. When you spend nearly your entire professional career at one company, a decision like this does not come easy. I have spent a considerable amount of time during the past few months discussing the future landscape and vision of the company with John Stankey and the senior leadership team. After much consideration and more than 32 years at Turner, the past six years as the President of this great company, I have decided the time is right to leave my role.

I am ready for a professional change. It is hard to believe but I joined Turner back in 1986 and I have spent more than half my life at this great company (ok, contemplate that for a moment). Time moves quickly when you are having fun and doing work you truly enjoy!

It's not easy to summarize everything in one note to truly express my gratitude and appreciation. There are too many great memories and experiences.

I walked into Turner when I was just 24 and took a role as an Account Executive. It was an exciting time to be part of an organization led by Ted Turner - one of the true pioneers and visionaries. I still can recall when Ted would come into our New York City offices and look to join us on a sales call. We would jump on a subway - no UBER or LYFT at that time - and the other riders would turn in amazement seeing Ted riding alongside them. And once we arrived at the client's office no one was better at selling the vision of Turner and the burgeoning cable industry than him. He truly was the greatest closer!!

It was that maverick spirit Ted instilled during the early years of our company that motivated me to move forward and start the first sports sales team in 1990.

I've had the good fortune to work on so many different aspects of our business that took me around the world. Each stop along the way was filled with new challenges and an opportunity to learn something different. As each of you continue to manage your own careers, I encourage you to never stop challenging yourself to do more and always be willing to learn something new.

With the support of so many talented people, we have continually innovated and achieved success in entertainment, kids, sports, sales and distribution. Together we launched businesses around the globe; produced entertaining original programming throughout our portfolio; developed new, transformational, partnerships with the NCAA for 'March Madness' and MLB post season; expanded our relationship with the NBA to include a joint partnership managing the league's digital portfolio; developed new distribution models for innovative consumer driven content across multiple platforms and, at the same time, continued to grow our relationships with our traditional distribution partners; we took initial steps in the direct-to-consumer space by launching new entertainment, kids and sports platforms; acquired new properties such as Bleacher Report and iStream Planet that will be key foundational business units moving forward; continued to transform and evolve in ad sales - from positioning our networks as "broadcast replacement" to showcasing the Turner Upfront during the "broadcast" week in May. Today, we are a leader in audience based and addressable advertising.

That's just a small sampling of the amazing work and I feel a great sense of pride in what we have accomplished together. I also want to acknowledge and thank my terrific leadership team for their many talents and vision they've continually displayed overseeing some of the best brands in media.

As I reflect on my Turner career, I have been very fortunate to work here, surrounded by so many gifted people. Along the way, I have made some lasting friendships with so many of you. To me, what makes Turner special are the people, past and present, who have shaped our culture. It's what sets this company apart.

The next few months will be filled with many new 'firsts' and experiences. I am confident that you all will show that true maverick spirit this company was founded on to march forward and continue the standard of excellence we have built and enjoyed.

It's been an amazing journey to work with all of you. We've shared great times together, endured more than our fair share of challenges and continually set a high-standard for results, creativity and innovation. Thank you for the role you have played in our successes. It's truly been a rewarding and humbling experience to work alongside you.

Turner has been a significant part of my life and I will watch from the sidelines as this company continues to produce more amazing moments.

My heartfelt thanks to everyone.

Regards,

David

Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods in 2017 sent shock waves through the grocery industry and hammered the stocks of traditional grocers.

Eighteen months later, Whole Foods stores don't look much different.

Prices were a little cheaper for a period of time, then rose again. The stores started offering some new services like curbside pickup and delivery, but grocers like Walmart and Kroger were already far ahead of Amazon in rolling out those options.

For a while, it seemed that initial speculation around Amazon's impact on the grocery industry was overblown.

But that could all soon change.

Amazon is reportedly planning to launch a new grocery-store chain, and it sounds like it could become the game-changing threat that analysts expected when the e-commerce giant bought Whole Foods.

The new stores will be smaller and cheaper than Whole Foods, and carry a broader assortment of products than the organic grocery chain, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter. They will also focus on convenience and curbside pick-up, the report said.

This is bad news for traditional grocers such as Walmart, Kroger, and Aldi.

Grocery is a low-margin business, and any added pricing pressure from a new Amazon chain could eat into profits.

"Amazon clearly has significant opportunity in the middle of the market, which a new concept could serve well," KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Edward Yruma wrote in a note to clients on Friday. "This also gives Amazon the opportunity to use some subset of the technology employed in Amazon Go in a larger footprint box."

But Amazon would still have a lot of catching up to do to steal market share from major grocers. Walmart has more than 4,000 stores in the US, and about half currently offer curbside grocery pickup. Kroger has more then 2,700 stores and Aldi has more than 1,800 stores.

That said, Amazon has been known to move rapidly. In the span of just a few years, the company built a massive delivery network with the capacity to compete with carriers like FedEx and UPS.

"Since Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods, grocery retailers have waited to see if Amazon would launch its own branded stores - and that day is finally arriving," Sylvain Perrier, CEO and president of the grocery ecommerce platform Mercatus, said in a statement via email. "Amazon grocery stores will certainly use their expansive shopper data to merge the in-store and online grocery experience and given that Amazon has a way of making certain strategies the industry standard, grocers will be in trouble if they do not heavily invest in their digital practices and find effective ways to complement the in-store and digital experiences."

I participated in a one hour Crowdcast yesterday with Techstars and 43 North about How to Build a Successful Startup Ecosystem in your City. Some of the thoughts from my upcoming book The Startup Community Way are in the hour, along with a bunch of things Techstars is doing around this initiative.

If you are in a city somewhere in the world working on developing your Startup Community and are interested in learning about the new Techstars Startup Ecosystem Development product, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..