Water, teas, and even kombucha strains made with CBD are popping up in grocery stores around the country.

Berkeley, California-based retailer Berkeley Bowl recently began selling a juice drink called Vybes which contains 15 milligrams of hemp-derived CBD as well as a type of kombucha called Cannabliss by GT that is made with CBD. Both drinks are advertised as having calming and soothing qualities, but any alleged health benefits have not yet been borne out by scientific research.

Regardless, another company in Denver called Phoenix Tears recently signed an agreement with MarketHub Retail Services, a distributor that works with 7-Eleven franchisees, to get its hemp-derived CBD products in up to 4,500 stores by the end of this year.

"This agreement confirms our belief that CBD's status as a mainstream wellness option has arrived," Phoenix Tears founder Janet Rosendahl-Sweeney said in a recent statement.

Screenshot

If you've ever wondered what the next phase of working remotely could be like, look no further than eXp Realty.

In most respects, eXp is your typical real estate brokerage company. It employs thousands of licensed agents to help clients buy and sell their homes. And business seems to be good: eXp's stock price has almost quadrupled since this time last year, giving it a market cap of over $610 million.

What sets it apart is that, rather than having agents stop by a physical office for meetings, presentations, or technical assistance, the company's 8,000 employees go to work on a virtual island. A small office in Bellingham, WA serves as its headquarters because of "a legal requirement," the company says, but the real work gets done in the digital realm.

The company says that maintaining a virtual office gives it some advantages.

"We found that we have an ability that's hard to find in the physical world," said CTO Scott Petronis, referring to the ease of internal communication.

Not only can employees report to work regardless of the weather, but there are no restrictions on how many employees the offices can support, no campus maintenance fees, and no geographical limits on recruiting talent.

"It's a great feeling to know that we can hire great talent regardless of where they are in the world," said Petronis.

I got to go on a tour of eXp's virtual offices, alongside Petronis and VP of Marketing Mitch Robinson. I sat at an introductory meeting, toured shared spaces, went to a beach, rode a speedboat, and got to meet some of eXp's employees, all without leaving my seat.

Here's what it's like to work out of a virtual campus:

Alex Jones from InfoWars.YouTube/screengrab

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

1. Facebook got caught up in a massive, contentious discussion about why it permits conspiracy InfoWars on its site. The company showcased its efforts to fight fake news on Wednesday, and defended its decision to allow a page that peddles 9/11 conspiracy theories.

2. The Department of Justice is appealing a judge's decision to allow a merger between AT&T and Time Warner. The government argued that the merger would hurt competition, limit choices and jack up prices for consumers to stream TV and movies.

3. Celebrities will see a big dip in their Twitter followers, thanks to new rules about 'locked' accounts. Twitter will stop counting locked accounts towards people's follower numbers, affecting 6% of all follows.

4. Facebook hinted that it will contest its first ever fine for the Cambridge Analytica scandal. European policy director Richard Allen said there was a 'debate' about whether the firm should pay a £500,000 fine for breaking UK data laws.

5. Apple launched a new set of Macbook Pros on Thursday. The updated computers have faster processors and most notably, a "quieter" keyboard.

6. Facebook closed a loophole that let third parties access the names of people who were in closed, private groups. CNBC reported that women in a group about breast cancer complained about the potential privacy violation after discovering the loophole.

7. Magic Leap's CEO said critics can't understand the multibillion-dollar startup's technology without trying it. He said 'You could never experience TV on the radio' after people were underwhelmed by Magic Leap's mixed reality technology.

8. Russian Twitter accounts posed as local US news sources during the presidential election, in an attempt to undermine Americans' trust in local media. NPR found 48 accounts run by Russia's Internet Research Agency with names such as @ElPasoTopNews.

9. The fifth season of hit game Fortnite has arrived with big updates. The new updates include several new locations on the island, a new vehicle, and even a new game mechanic.

10. The defunct gossip blog Gawker has a new owner. Bryan Goldberg, who founded Bustle and Bleacher Report, put in the winning $1.35 million bid for Gawker.com in an auction.

Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings.

One last thing: Business Insider wants your nominations for the coolest people in the British tech industry. Please get in touch if you know someone who should be included in our UK Tech 100.

Broadcom's surprise $18.9 billion acquisition of CA Technologies, announced Wednesday, has caused a chasm on Wall Street as investors and company analysts try to figure out whether or not the deal is a good thing.

Broadcom's share price sunk 14% Thursday following the announcement of the deal, a sign of investors' discomfort with the high pricetag and lack of clarity over what Broadcom, a semiconductor company, plans to do with what some see as an underperforming software company.

But not everyone is sour on the deal. While most analysts were surprised to hear of the acquisition, many think investors are missing the big idea behind Broadcom CEO Hock Tan's seemingly spontaneous purchase.

"While we do not think that anyone would have imagined this potential combination (definitely not us!), the deal does highlight the growing strategic importance of software to 'non-traditional' acquirers," Kirk Materne, an analyst with Evercore ISI, wrote Thursday.

Here's why analysts are keen on the deal, even if investors are not.

CEO Hock Tan has a record of successful acquisitions

Broadcom (AVGO) sunk 13.76% Thursday on news of its CA Technologies acquisition. Google

One explanation for why Broadcom's stock fell so much on Thursday is that investors didn't understand the strategy behind the acquisition. But analysts don't necessarily see the obscurity as a bad thing.

One reason is that Tan, in his 12 years as CEO at Broadcom and its predecessor Avago, has made several acquisitions that turned out well for the company. Basically, many analysts trust Tan's judgement.

"We think the Street is completely misunderstanding the CA Technology deal," Harsh V. Kumar, an analyst with PiperJaffray, said in a note Thursday. "In our opinion, the CA product set is an extension into some of the Broadcom's recent acquisitions (Brocade and LSI), ones that have worked well for the company."

Broadcom acquired Brocade in November 2017 for $5.5 billion. It bought LSI for $6.6 billion in December 2013.

UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri was less enthusiastic about the deal, and wrote that he finds "the strategic rationale here hard to see." But he agreed with Kumar that CA Technologies has similarities to the Brocade acquisition, in that is "ultimately a cash flow play" for Broadcom.

CA Technologies complements Broadcom's portfolio

CEO Michael P. Gregoire developed CA Technologies' solid grip on the mainframe software market.catechnologies via YouTubeWhile Broadcom's bread-and-butter semiconductor business has more obvious crossover with a company like Qualcomm, analysts see several areas where CA Technologies could boost Broadcom's profile — most notably in mainframe computers.

"Broadcom expects the acquisition will expand its position as a mission-critical technology provider," Credit Suisse analyst Brad Zelnick. "[Broadcom] can also realize synergies between its established enterprise customer base and CA's Enterprise Solutions business."

Kumar similarly noted that Broadcom's hardware products like switches and boxes are sold into data center and mainframe environments, where CA Technologies has a strong software presence, both areas "with very few alternatives."

While Zelnick describes CA Technologies as an example of "unloved, value-oriented software stocks," that could change post-acquisition.

John DiFucci at Jeffries thinks the company could see a boost to its financials once some of its corporate overhead is gone, and that CA's operating margins could grow by at least 10% once it's eliminated administrative and R&D costs.

In any case, there's money in enterprise software

Whether or not Broadcom and CA Technologies converge product portfolios, some analysts think the real gold of the deal is that Broadcom now has a substantial foot in software.

Enterprise software companies, like CA Technologies, are extremely fragmented so there are many other small companies looking to be acquired.

Some analysts think Broadcom could take on the role of a private equity firm, and raise the value of smaller software units before selling then off for a profit.

"On the surface, this is a head-scratcher. But software is a fragmented sector w/ more assets than can be consolidated," wrote Arcuri. "When viewed through a Private Equity lens though, we see a possibility that this could be the start of something bigger - perhaps a roll up of infrastructure software companies."

Materne highlighted AT&T's July 10 acquisition of the cybersecurity software company AlienVault as an example of unexpected software grabs from outside buyers.

DiFucci agreed that, if Broadcom did take a private equity approach and sell off CA Technologies down the road, it could see a pretty penny for its troubles.

"While it is difficult to see an exit strategy, the mainframe business can be milked for a very long time — providing a significant dividend to Broadcom — and the best of what is left might be able to be repackaged and sold as a rejuvenated new company via IPO or to another buyer," DiFucci wrote.

Earlier in July, the #PlaneBae saga went viral on social media, as one Rosey Blair documented on Twitter what she presented as a love connection between strangers — a man and a woman, sitting in front of her on an airplane.

Now, for the first time, the woman involved in the #PlaneBae saga breaks her silence, and says that being an unwitting part of this social media phenomenon has had serious consequences for her in the real world.

"I did not ask for and do not seek attention. #PlaneBae is not a romance - it is a digital-age cautionary tale about privacy, identity, ethics and consent," she says, in a statement provided to Business Insider by her lawyer on Thursday.

Business Insider has verified that she is the woman from the Twitter posts. We have not published her name out of respect for her desire for privacy. You can read her full statement at the end of this story.

The #PlaneBae himself, former pro soccer player Euan Holden, embraced his newfound celebrity, and even appeared on the Today Show. However, after Blair's Twitter posts went viral, the woman quickly went to ground, deleting her own social media accounts in an attempt to preserve her privacy.

Still, it didn't stop some internet users from finding and circulating her personal information, she says.

"Strangers publicly discussed my private life based on patently false information," she writes. "I have been doxxed, shamed, insulted and harassed. Voyeurs have come looking for me online and in the real world." ("Doxxing" is internet slang for when a person's private information is publicly released against their will.)

The #PlaneBae saga sparked a sizable backlash, as pundits and average users alike wondered if it was reasonable for to assume that you should expect to be filmed, photographed, and otherwise recorded at all times for the purposes of providing someone else with social media content.

Blair, for her part, ultimately decided to delete the original #PlaneBae posts earlier this week, and apologized for what she said she now sees as an invasion of the strangers' privacy.

"The last thing I want to do is remove agency and autonomy from another woman. I wish I could communicate the shame I feel in having done this, but I truly feel that at this point my feelings are irrelevant," Blair wrote in her apology.

Earlier on Thursday, Holden posted his own reflection on the #PlaneBae saga and the backlash, too, calling it an "incredibly humbling experience."

We've reached out to Holden and Blair for additional comment and will update if we hear back.

I am a young professional woman. On July 2, I took a commercial flight from New York to Dallas. Without my knowledge or consent, other passengers photographed me and recorded my conversation with a seatmate. They posted images and recordings to social media, and speculated unfairly about my private conduct.

Since then, my personal information has been widely distributed online. Strangers publicly discussed my private life based on patently false information. I have been doxxed, shamed, insulted and harassed. Voyeurs have come looking for me online and in the real world.

I did not ask for and do not seek attention. #PlaneBae is not a romance - it is a digital-age cautionary tale about privacy, identity, ethics and consent.

Please continue to respect my privacy, and my desire to remain anonymous.

Recruiting platform Greenhouse has raised $50 million to expand its recently launched feature that helps companies manage unconscious bias during the hiring process, the company announced on Thursday.

The series D round was led by Riverwood Capital, bringing the company's total funding to $110 million.

Greenhouse is a popular recruitment platform used by buzzed-about startups, such as Airbnb, Warby Parker, Pinterest, and Squarespace. Its new inclusion feature, launched in April, has been in the works for more than a year and was created in partnership with Paradigm, a consulting firm specializing in diversity and inclusion.

"So many companies are waking up to this problem and now they're asking 'now what?'" Greenhouse CEO Daniel Chait told Business Insider. "So that's why we think this is the right time to really be investing in this and taking on these challenges rather than just talking about it."

While there are plenty of other software solutions that aim to reduce bias in hiring, Chait says Greenhouse Inclusion is takes a more holistic approach. The program surfaces "nudges" or small reminders in real time that point out how users can act more fairly when they're writing job postings, making referrals, and conducting interviews. These reminders, the program hopes, will prompt long-term behavior changes.

"We want to solve this problem at the main point where it occurs, the behavior of employees," Chait said.

Greenhouse Inclusion also collects and organizes demographic data, so companies can easily access how many women and underrepresented minorities are employed at the company and where those hire are being recruited from.

The idea of creating features for diverse hiring came from Joelle Emerson, the founder of Paradigm. The consulting firm was brought on to help Greenhouse internally a little more than a year ago, and during the process Paradigm mentioned they already advise companies on how to use Greenhouse for better hiring practices.

Chait then asked Emerson if the company could make product improvements that would help what Paradigm was already doing. When Emerson said yes, the two started working together.

While Greenhouse hasn't released a full demographic report for the entire company — Chait tells Business Insider it will release a full diversity report later this year — the company did say that 40% of its executive team is women and across the entire company, employees from underrepresented minorities has increased 12%.

Apple is reaching into its cash pile to help spread solar energy and wind farms across China.

The iPhone maker has teamed up with 10 of its components suppliers to create a new $300 million fund that will invest in renewable sources of energy in China over the next four years.

The fund, called the China Clean Energy Fund, will be managed by DWS Group, Deutsche Bank's asset management arm.

The idea is that the fund can invest in new power generators so that the companies that make parts for Apple — its suppliers — have better access to renewable energy sources. In China, where many of Apple's suppliers are based, that means a lot of wind wind and solar.

Apple did not specify how much of the $300 million fund will come from its coffers and how much its 10 suppliers will contribute.

Apple is hoping the fund can help develop new renewable energy projects that don't currently exist. Apple said that the projects it invests in will total more than 1 gigawatt of renewable energy.

Part of the reason for the fund is to help smaller companies that do work for Apple find clean energy. While a big supplier may be able to negotiate renewable cost-effective renewable energy deals, a smaller manufacturer may have less leverage.

That's important as Apple said earlier this year that it wants its suppliers to run off of 100% clean energy. It announced in April that its own facilities were fully powered by renewable energy, including its headquarters, Apple Park, which has a 17-megawatt solar installation on its roof.

The Apple suppliers investing in the fund are:

Catcher Technology Compal Electronics Corning Incorporated Golden Arrow Jabil Luxshare-ICT Pegatron Solvay Sunway Communication Wistron

The PC business isn't dead yet.

But it sure doesn't look very good, and its prospects continue to look bleak.

Those seem to be the takeaways from Gartner's latest report on PC shipments, which it issued on Thursday. The report showed that for the first quarter in more than six years, the number of PCs shipped worldwide actually grew on annual basis.

It's certainly good news for the industry that shipments grew, but the results weren't exactly impressive. Overall shipments were 62.1 million, up just 1.4% from the same period last year. And while the top five PC makers all grew in the quarter, shipments from the rest of the market plunged 13% in the period.

Even with the growth, shipments in the quarter were still down by nearly a third from the third quarter of 2011, when PC shipments hit their peak at 91.8 million.

Consumers are trading PCs for smartphones

What's worse, the rebound — such as it was — is likely to be short-lived. Consumers continue to abandon PCs, choosing instead to use their smartphones for more and more tasks, Mikako Kitagawa, an analyst at the research firm, noted in the report.

"In the consumer space, the fundamental market structure, due to changes on PC user behavior, still remains, and continues to impact market growth," Kitagawa said.

Businesses are still buying PCs, and their purchases boosted overall sales in the quarter. But those purchases are being driven by companies belatedly upgrading to Windows 10, the latest version of Microsoft's PC operating system — and that's a temporary phenomenon, Kitagawa said.

"PC momentum will weaken in two years when the replacement peak for Windows 10 passes," she said.

As might be expected in a maturing, declining industry, the quarterly results demonstrated how the PC business continues to consolidate around a handful of players. Lonovo and Hewlett-Packard alone accounted for nearly 44% of all shipments in the second quarter, up from about 41% a year ago. Together, shipments from the top five PC makers comprised 74% of the total, up from 69% in the same period last year.

The same story is playing out in the US as it is globally

The story was much the same in the United States as it was for the world as a whole. US PC shipments grew in the second quarter to 14.5 million, but were up by only 1.7%. The result marked the first positive quarter for the industry in the US in nearly two years — but it was still millions of units below the market's peak.

Meanwhile, in the US, traditional PC shipments are facing another challenge — Chromebooks, which Gartner doesn't include in its shipment numbers. Shipments of computers based on Google's Chrome OS software grew 8% in the quarter.

"Strong Chromebook demand in the education market adversely affected PC growth," Kitagawa said.

So, while the PC industry proved it still has some life left in it, there are plenty of reason to think this is just a pause in its long-term decline.

Business Insider recently profiled 30 health-tech leaders under 40 who are trying to upend the healthcare system, from eliminating the hassle of going to a pharmacy to making healthcare easier to use and more affordable.

But amid discussion about all that's going to change, we asked them to take a step back and think about what's actually going to stay the same over the next decade. It's a question Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said he likes to ask himself when thinking about the future of the e-commerce giant.

The health-tech leaders we spoke with all agreed that the healthcare system as we know it isn't likely to go away entirely.

"All of us in some aspect of our lives are going to be patients and in some way may need to interact with the healthcare system," Dr. Veena Jones, a pediatric hospitalist at Sutter Health's Palo Alto Medical Foundation and medical director, told Business Insider.

That is, people will always need care and medication. And a fair amount of healthcare, the leaders said, will still involve humans. At the same time, healthcare frustrations such as high costs aren't likely to go anywhere.

Humans in healthcare

While technology is making healthcare cheaper and easier to use — from Alexa-like assistants for doctors to software that can warn doctors which patients are more likely to fall— health-tech leaders were adamant that the human element will continue to be integral to healthcare.

"Humans in healthcare should stay the same," Capsule co-founder and CEO Eric Kinariwala, said. "Humans are human, and having another human to interact with and explain what's going on and to help you navigate the complexities of the healthcare system when you're at your most vulnerable should stay the same. It's making that part even stronger."

When patients go to the hospital, that means they'll still see doctors and nurses. The difference might just be that those hospital-workers might be more empowered through technology.

"Doctors and nurses are going to continue to be an important part, and technology is only going to enhance," Tanvi Abbhi, co-founder of Veta Health, said.

But the fear of artificial intelligence putting doctors out of work, they said, is overblown.

"I think a lot of people are scared that physicians are going to be replaced by AI and by robots. I don't believe in that," Spring Health cofounder and CEO April Koh said. "I fundamentally believe that in the next 10 years, there will be specialists and clinicians doing their jobs very well. What is going to change dramatically is the amount of data that the clinicians use to make decisions."

Healthcare, the leaders said, is all about relationships between patients and the doctors and nurses who care for them.

"At the core of everything in healthcare is humanity," Dr. Alexi Nazem, the cofounder and CEO of Nomad Health, said. "There is a patient, a real person who is suffering and they need help, and there are other people who want to help them — doctors, nurses, [physician assistants]."

But that relationship' influenced by technology, might change.

"I think it's going to change in the way it's expressed," said Grant Verstandig, the chief digital officer of UnitedHealth. "But the value, the power, and the transformative effect of relationship is a core tenet."

Healthcare's biggest frustrations aren't going anywhere

At the same time, many healthcare leaders had their doubts that the cloud that hangs over the US healthcare system — the issue of high spending— will dissipate over the next 10 years.

"The cost of care is going to continue to rise," Marta Bralic, vice president of business development at Flatiron Health, said.

Other entrenched aspects of the healthcare system — such as the role of health insurers — won't be changing any time soon either, Michael Rea, founder and CEO of Rx Savings Solutions, said. "I don't think consumers can underwrite the risk associated with a catastrophic event," he said.

So too with frustrations around the way healthcare information is shared.

"I think it's going to be really hard to change some of the back-end bureaucratic systems. I don't see for instance a lot of the processes in the IT infrastructure changing," said Cornell engineering professor Andrea Ippolito, who spent time in her career working with Department of Veteran Affairs electronic medical record system. "What I do see changing is how we use the data changing to redesign to be more patient centric more doctor."

To be sure, the US healthcare system is a $3 trillion behemoth that's historically been slow to change. Concepts that have been much-discussed for a while, such as value-based care in which care is paid for based on patient outcomes, have taken a lot longer to materialize than expected. Even so, Manik Bhat, the CEO and founder of Healthify, said he expects it to stick around.

"I think something that will stay the same is this trend towards value-based care. I think it's much slower than people expected, but I think it's here to stay," he said.

Ad agencies are increasingly investing in technology and analytics to comb through reams of data and serve precise messages to specific groups of consumers.

But mostly that push has been about hitting the right people at the right time, and less about the art of making a great ad.

That may be changing.

AI may be able to make better ads by figuring out what colors and images people like

On Thursday, Omnicom Group, one of the world's biggest ad agency groups, unveiled Omni, a platform that allows for all its agencies globally to access data from third parties like The Trade Desk, Liveramp and Salesforce. The tool also includes tools for planning, buying and tracking media.

In an interview with Business Insider, Omnicom Digital CEO Jonathan Nelson said that he's particularly interested in how creatives will be able to use the tool. Omnicom's roster of creative shops includes BBDO, DDB and TBWA.

Artificial intelligence has been a buzzword in the advertising industry f or a few years but its uses have mostly been limited to media buying with souped-up programmatic algorithms that are able to set pricing and determine the best time to run a campaign.

The creative side of the industry has been notoriously slower to embrace the technology, partly due to fear that AI will replace roles like creative directors that come up with ideas for clients.

In one example, Omni can create "mood boards," said Nelson. A telecom advertiser, for example, will able to zero in on digital audiences of people who show characteristics of wanting to switch to a new service. Omni can also dive into what those people are specifically looking for in a new service—like the cost or features of a telecom package.

From there, artificial intelligence can surface 30 videos that an audience is interested in and pick apart the individual colors, words and images featured in the video. A video with a lot of blue in it can spark a creative agency's idea to create a campaign for the telecom brand, Nelson said.

"Each of these things starts to trigger ideas for the creatives," he said. "I'm really trying to figure out how to bridge the left and right brain."

TV advertisers can also finally figure out how many people are looking for their brand online

Omni also claims to have a feature that allows for brands to see how many people searched for a brand after viewing a commercial for the brand on TV.

Nelson was mum on details on how the integration works but said "you've never been able to do that before."

For brands that spend hefty amounts of money on TV ads, the feature could potentially open up troves of insights about the impact of TV ads on digital media.

TV-to-digital tracking is limited to inventory purchased via advanced TV like over-the-top platforms and addressable TV tactics that serve targeted ads from set-top boxes.

While advanced TV only makes up a sliver of total spend today, Nelson expects for the digital ad-buying options to become more mainstream in the coming years.

"We're going to get there," he said.

Apple made a really annoying change to the way you send photos to people in iOS 12.

Currently, in iOS 11, clicking the camera icon next to the Messages field lets you either take a picture, or select a photo from your Camera Roll, as you can see below:

Dave Smith/Business Insider

In iOS 12, clicking the camera icon only lets you take a picture. To get to your Camera Roll, you need to visit the App Store icon next to the Messages field, and then select the Photos icon.

It's an extra, unnecessary step for users.

The tweet below shows how sharing photos will work in iOS 12:

People who have already accessed the feature using a beta version of iOS 12 do not seem happy about the change:

The only plausible excuse for the move of the Camera Roll in iOS 12 is to encourage more users to visit the App Store for Messages, where you can buy and download features for your Messages like stickers, emoji, and special effects.

Since so many people use the Camera Roll when using the Messages app — I know I do — Apple probably figured that would be the best way to expose users to the App Store for Messages.

But moving the Camera Roll to the App Store, and adding that extra step, doesn't feel intuitive at all. One would think clicking the camera icon would bring up the camera-related functions.

Hopefully Apple rolls back this change by the time iOS 12 is released to the public later this year.

The battle for advertising agencies to get their hands on consumer data and use it in intriguing ways continues. On Thursday, ad giant Omnicom Group revealed Omni, a data platform that allows the company's shops — which include BBDO, OMD Worldwide and DDB — to access gobs of third-party data.

The tool allows any of its agencies to search for creative images, create audiences for ad targeting, buy media, and track campaign results. According to Jonathan Nelson, CEO of Omnicom Digital, the tool has been in the works for several years and was developed by Annalect, Omnicom's data marketing group.

"This is the first time that we've stitched it all together," he said. "Think of it as being audience-first [with] insights going out to two primary audiences — one is media and the other is creative."

About 100 third-party vendors that Omnicom works with are part of Omni, including Google, Neustar, The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, Adobe and Salesforce, he added.

Agencies are under increasing pressure to beef up their data capabilities and expertise as more advertisers demand results and face new competition from consultancies like Accenture Interactive and Deloitte. Last week, Interpublic Group announced plans to acquire Acxiom's data-marketing group for $2.3 billion in cash while Dentsu owns Merkle. And WPP assembled an initiative called mPlatform in 2016.

Unlike IPG's decision to go all-in on data through the acquisition of Acxiom, Omnicom's strategy is to build expertise in-house and set up deals with multiple vendors. Those relationships keep Omnicom a neutral player for agencies, according to Nelson.

"We don't make investments at all in our data providers — we think it de-risks our business," he said. "If a technology isn't working, we swap it out. There's no conflict there."

Up until now, Omnicom clients have either leaned on its Precision Marketing Group — the agency's digital and CRM arm — or Annalect to handle such work, Nelson said.

Omni is designed to be an "open architecture" that can supply many types of data that clients want to use. And with new privacy regulations like Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) going into place, Nelson said that third parties are responsible for supplying it with clean data.

"We're trying to understand what it is and how to comply," he said. "We try to figure out where the 'fuzzy' line ends and then back up a few steps."

Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz said that video can't properly capture his startup's much-hyped technology after a livestreamed demo drew mixed reviews.

Magic Leap is building a pair of smartglasses that merge computer graphics and games into the real world, and Wednesday's livestream showed off some of the first public footage captured through the device.

"For the creator/dev community: we use video to teach a feature or capability. Any video or 2d medium (photos) is completely inadequate to actually deliver the experience of a digital lightfield on ML1," he tweeted on Thursday.

He was likely referencing the mixed response to Thursday's livestream from journalists and some competitors in the augmented reality field. Thursday's livestream was geared for developers, who will need to build games and other content for the system before it's launched to the public, but the demos were eagerly watched by enthusiasts as well.

The full session is available on YouTube, but here's one of the demos, featuring a new rock character:

The reaction was mostly critical:

There were some defenders, though:

This is the context in which Abovitz issued a long tweetstorm in which he argued that the demo may be underwhelming because it's hard to experience Magic Leap without actually putting the headset on.

"You could never experience TV on the radio (but you could try and explain the theory of TV to those interested)" Abovitz tweeted. "Most people just got it once they first saw TV."

Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz. Asa Mathat for Vox Media He also said that the company has given over 10,000 live demos to future partners and customers. Magic Leap has had many celebrities come through its Miami-area headquarters to try the headset, Business Insider previously reported, including Beyonce. Most of those people signed an NDA before they were able to try it, though.

On Wednesday, Magic Leap announced an investment from AT&T and a partnership with the telecom giant, along with an update about the availability of its smart glasses, committing to ship its hardware to some developers this summer. A price tag and ship date have yet to be announced.

The startup has raised $2.3 billion in funding from investors, including Google, Alibaba, Singapore's Temasek Holdings, and Saudi Arabia's sovereign investment arm, valuing the company at over $6 billion. Business Insider parent company Axel Springer is an investor, too.

Here's the full tweetstorm:

Here's that tweetstorm in paragraph form, lightly edited:

"For the creator/dev community: we use video to teach a feature or capability. Any video or 2d medium (photos) is completely inadequate to actually deliver the experience of a digital lightfield on ML1. We spend our time and R and D tuning our Digital Lightfield Signal to the eye-brain system, not electronic camera sensors. We spend our time and R and D tuning our Digital Lightfield Signal to the eye-brain system, not electronic camera sensors.

Video capture can not differentiate between phone AR, VR, MR - the relevant differentiating information is lost. That said, a direct Digital Lightfield signal that allows your eye-brain system to do its thing, that is where all the magic happens. Reality has an amazing sense of presence and space - that is the result of incredibly complex interactions with the world's analog lightfield signal and your brain.Our work at Magic Leap has been to approximate that experience with a digital signal designed to fit into, and mimic, that interaction we all have daily.

An actual ML1 experience fundamentally needs you, does not function well without you, and was designed to unveil its technical magic with you and to you. Anyone who has already had an ML experience on a shipping grade unit already knows this. And hopefully anyone curious or interested will have the opportunity soon to try for themselves.

You could never experience TV on the radio (but you could try and explain the theory of TV to those interested). Most people just got it once they first saw TV. Same with Magic Leap."

Watch the entire Magic Leap demo for yourself below:

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"Fortnite: Battle Royale's" Season 5 is finally here, with a ton of new cosmetics, challenges, and even a new vehicle.

However, if you open up Fortnite right now, the first things you'll notice are the changes and additions to the game's map. The rifts have brought landmarks from entirely separate time periods, and even new biomes, to the island, and players are still uncovering all the latest additions.

Here are all the new points of interest and other changes to the island:

Grant Verstandig

Grant Verstandig, the chief digital officer of UnitedHealth Group and CEO of Rally Health, doesn't look like your typical buttoned-up, gray-haired healthcare executive. 

Verstandig, 29, is a former Brown University lacrosse player who dropped out of college following his sophomore year after blowing out his knee.  

After surgery, he asked his doctor when he might be able to play again. The doctor, Verstandig recalled, did a double take and told him, "Grant, you can’t walk for six months, let alone play again." While the surgery had gone well, Verstandig and his doctor had different ideas about what a successful result looked like. 

That experience with the healthcare system led him to leave Brown at age 21 and start Rally Health.

"To me, that sounded like industry ripe for disruption," Verstandig said. 

Based in Washington, DC, Rally has two businesses to it. The first is a product that focuses on engaging people when they're not in the doctor's office to keep them on the right track toward goals like weight loss, stress management, or better eating and sleeping habits. As an incentive for the work the members are putting in, Rally lowers their healthcare premiums.  Rally is about to cross $1 billion in member-earned incentives, Verstandig said in June. 

The second component, called Rally Care, works with insurance companies to help their members better use their benefits. Say someone needs a knee replacement. Through Rally Care, that person can figure out which doctors are in their network and how much the procedure might cost at different hospitals. 

In 2014, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth acquired a majority stake in Rally.

Three years later, Verstandig stepped into the newly created role of chief digital officer at UnitedHealth, a position he holds in addition to his responsibilities as chief executive of Rally.

Verstandig is now helping to build the digital tools UnitedHealth can use with its nearly 50 million members. That includes a big push to getting members onto UnitedHealth's mobile app to help them manage their healthcare benefits. 

"We're now just beginning to unleash the data," Verstandig said. Between the reach UnitedHealth has and the consumer experience he's built at Rally, Verstandig is optimistic about what can be accomplished.

"I think you can have an Amazon-like effect for consumers," he said.

The largest music labels are unhappy that Spotify isn't providing them with more access to an important part of the streaming music service, according to a report published Thursday by Deutsche Bank.

These curated playlists are put together by a combination of algorithm and hand-picked choices by Spotify employees, and represent an important way for users to find new music, especially from smaller artists. In late 2017, Vulture called Spotify's RapCaviar "the most influential playlist in music," reporting that its millions of listeners help turn unknown artists into mainstream successes.

According to Deutsche's report, the three top labels are unhappy that not enough of their music is being included in these lists. The bank cited as the source of the info an unnamed 25-year music industry veteran, who sat with the analysts and tried to help them understand Spotify's economic position.

"Algotorial playlists on Spotify have a lower share of major label content," the bank's analysts quoted their source. "As this grows in the listening mix the major labels stand to marginally lose share. Our featured speaker noted this as a major thorn in labels' sides."

Razor-thin margins

The US Justice Department is set to appeal the $85 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner, Bloomberg says, citing a court filing.

The deal, which has been nearly two years in the making, was approved by Judge Richard Leon just one month ago. It closed days later, but the Justice Department was given 60 days to appeal the ruling. And that is what it has done.

During the trial, the DOJ argued the vertical merger, a merger between two companies in the same industry but at different stages of the business, would reduce competition and hurt consumers by allowing the company to have greater control in negotiations with progammers. That could cause consumers to have to pay higher prices for content.

Judge Leon ruled, "Ultimately, I conclude that the Government has failed to meet its burden to establish that the proposed 'transaction is likely to lessen competition substantially." He did say that AT&T would have to temporarily opertate Time Warner's Turner networks separately from DirecTV.

A combination of the two companies was closely watched by an industry in the midst of consolidation. The vertical merger led to Comcast making a $65 billion bid for 21st Century Fox's assets. That bid was later topped by Disney, which offered $71.3 billion.

AT&T shares are down 1.5% in after-hours trading on Thursday.