Working in an office these days is an exercise in personal temperature control.

One minute, you're sweating it out after your commute on public transit, or even just the walk into your office. The next minute, you're shivering in the arctic temperatures dictated by the thermostat.

That struggle is what inspired the team at Embr Labs to create the Embr Wave, a "personal thermostat" you wear on your wrist.

The Embr Wave works by heating or cooling on its own, depending on your needs. The idea is that, with the press of a button, you can feel more comfortable in your environment — in fact, Embr Labs says after three minutes of using the device, you can feel up to five degrees warmer or cooler.

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"Temperature is as much subjective as it is objective," Sam Shames, CEO of Embr Labs, told Business Insider. "Heating a building is like setting the temperature of a shower for hundreds of people."

It all comes down to skin temperature. When you're feeling cold, your core body temperature doesn't actually change, but your skin temperature does, Shames said. Putting something warm against your skin will provide some relief and make you feel more comfortable in your environment.

Sweatshirts in the summer

The idea behind the Embr Wave originated in a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013. Shames — along with his cofounders, Matthew Smith and David Cohen-Tanugi — were so cold while working in the lab, they were bundled up in sweatshirts in the middle of the summer.

Embr Labs

They came up with the idea for Embr Wave and submitted to the Intel Make it Wearable competition that October. From there, their story blew up.

"We started getting emails from people all over the world who said that temperature was the biggest problem in their lives," Shames said.

By 2017, Embr Labs had launched a successful Kickstarter campaign, raising $630,000 — more than six times its $100,000 goal. The company also attracted investors like Intel and Bose.

The Embr Wave officially went on sale in March, and it doesn't come cheap — it costs a whopping $300, nearly as much as an Apple Watch Series 3.

Aiding the 'thermally underserved'

The Embr Wave is intended for a group of people Shames refers to as the "thermally underserved population" — people who are frequently uncomfortable in their indoor surroundings, either because it's too hot or too cold.

I happen to be part of that population — I'm almost always way too hot — so I tried out the Embr Wave for a few days to see if it made a difference.

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One of the best features of the Embr Wave is that the temperature sensation comes in waves. When you first put it on, just press the thin light bar on the front of the device, then press and hold on either the left or right side of the button — left for cold, warm for hot.

From there, you'll feel a warming or cooling sensation intermittently for either five minutes or three minutes respectively. If you're not satisfied by the end of a session, just knock on the front of the device and it will restart. The only downside of that design is that if you accidentally set the temperature too hot or too cold, you have to wait for it to be done and try again.

While the device is heating or cooling, you'll see the light bar glow in waves. Here's the Embr Wave in action:

Shames recommends that you take the Embr Wave on and off as you need it. You don't have to wear it like a standard wearable — instead, just strap it on when you feel uncomfortable.

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This is a good thing, too, because the device is decidedly ... huge. It's nice looking, thanks to its metal mesh band and almost complete lack of buttons, but it certainly isn't subtle. In fact, I often felt like I was wearing a house arrest monitor on my wrist.

Looks don't really matter, though, because the Embr Wave actually works. I tested it everywhere I could — at my apartment, on the subway, in the office, while walking from the subway to the office, etc. — and truly felt a difference in how comfortable I was.

The Embr Wave certainly isn't a cure-all. In one situation where I was actively sweating on a too-hot subway car, it could only help me so much. But most of the time, it provided me with a pleasant cooling sensation that saved me from feeling warm and irritable. Of course, the same feeling could probably be achieved by running your wrists under cold water, but the Embr Wave can be hidden under a shirt sleeve and worn while you continue to work or sit in a meeting.

So, do you really need a $300 wearable with only one function? Probably not. But if you're among the thermally underserved, you might want one.

Draper Esprit, the listed backer of fintech startups Revolut and TransferWise, has entered Germany by investing in local player Earlybird Venture Capital.

Draper has committed €18 million ($21 million/£16 million) to Earlybird's sixth fund, and promised another €68 million (£60 million) over the next four years. Earlybird's fund is £154 million at first close, and the partnership will make Draper a 50% backer. Draper has also issued a small number of shares to Earlybird.

The deal is not an acquisition by Draper, but a partnership where the two firms will share knowledge and dealflow. Earlybird has offices in Berlin, Munich, and Istanbul.

Earlybird cofounder Hendrik Brandis said: "Earlybird has significant backing from mostly institutional private investors, and Draper Esprit has managed to very successfully access public capital markets, funds which we can co‐invest alongside. We believe this creates a very strong partnership."

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It's an unusual move for an unusual venture capital firm.

One big advantage for Draper is that it becomes a shareholder in the 13 portfolio startups Earlybird has already invested in with its sixth fund.

Draper chief executive Simon Cook pointed specifically to cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift, headed up by early bitcoin evangelist and entrepreneur Erik Voorhees. ShapeShift becomes Draper's second crypto holding after its investment in French crypto wallet startup Ledger, at a time when European venture capital firms are increasingly trying experimenting in crypto startups.

The deal also means Draper gets exposure to interesting German startups without having to open an office there.

Cook told Business Insider. "We've known the Earlybird team for years... they have built a strong platform in Germany... they were also similarly starting to look to invest outside their home market."

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Draper may become the 100% backer for Earlybird's next fund but that's several years away, Cook added.

With the Earlybird partnership, Draper now has €1.3 billion at its disposal. The wider ambition, said Cook, is to become a household name in European investment, just as venture capital firms such as Sequoia are in the US.

"Our entire strategy is that Europe is going through the same spurt that Silicon Valley went through in the 1990s, when [VC firms] Sequoia and DFJ raised funds of about $150 million then... scaled up and got to a billion-plus and continued to be household names," he said. "The top 20 [US] funds get 50% of the capital. We believe Europe is going through the same thing, it's all about those firms that can scale up to be a billion-plus."

That might mean further regional partnerships like the Earlybird deal or even acquisitions down the line, though Cook said there were no immediate plans. In the UK, Draper acquired seed investor Seedcamp's first two funds and backed early-stage investor Episode 1.

"We've always been an acquisitive group," said Cook. "We bought Seedcamp, now there's Earlybird, and we entered France by ourselves. Our ambition is to build the biggest venture capital fund in Europe and be operational across all regions. We will always look at different opportunities. We're a very creative group."

Google was hauled over the coals this week for reportedly giving hundreds of app makers access to millions of inboxes belonging to Gmail users.

The Wall Street Journal reported that users who signed up for "email-based services" like "shopping price comparisons," and "automated travel-itinerary planners" were most at risk of having their private messages read.

In response to the story, Google published a blog on Tuesday detailing how third-party developers have to go through an involved review process before they are given access to Gmail.

Suzanne Frey, Google Cloud's director of security, trust, and privacy, also said that Gmail's 1.4 billion users hold the keys to their own data and can control permissions.

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In the same piece, Frey was at pains to point out that Google itself does not read user emails.

Gmail automatically processes emails to filter out spam and phishing messages, which Frey said had "caused some to speculate mistakenly that Google 'reads' your emails."

"To be absolutely clear: No one at Google reads your Gmail," she added, before immediately listing the times Google does allow itself to have a peek at your inbox.

Frey said it is limited to "very specific cases." These include when users give Google permission to access their messages, and when the company needs to investigate a security issue, such as a bug or "abuse."

She did not offer more detail than this, however, meaning it's not clear whether Google has the power to probe Gmail problems without notifying a user. Business Insider contacted Google for comment.

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Frey concluded: "The work of privacy and security is never done, and we're always looking for ways to better protect our users."

VMware investors are rallying.

VMware stock popped 9% over the weekend following reports that Dell would not pursue a reverse merger with the company.Markets Insider

Shares for VMware, a cloud computing and virtualization company, are up 9% from the closing price Friday on news that its privately-owned parent company Dell won't pursue a so-called "reverse merger," which would have taken Dell public but could've decimated VMware's value for shareholders.

Morgan Stanley, one of Wall Street's toughest critics of the deal, raised its outlook on VMware on Tuesday in a note titled "Independence Day Comes Early."

"With the bear case threat of a reverse merger with Dell effectively shelved, investor focus turns to fundamentals - and recent fundamentals have been strong," Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss wrote.

Morgan Stanley raised its price target for VMware from $150 to $175, citing high billings growth in the first quarter, and sustained earnings per share.

Dell, which owns 81% of VMware, plans to take itself public through the buyout of a VMware tracking stock, DVMT.

As part of the deal, VMware's board of directors announced an $11 billion special dividend to its shareholders, worth around $27 per share. Dell will use the cash it gets from the dividend to finance the tracking stock deal.

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While VMware's 2019 revenue won't be impacted, the company did lower its guidance on earnings per share.

The company expects to see $5.99 in adjusted earnings per share for fiscal year 2019, down from the $6.14 anticipated before the dividend was announced.

The company also lowered its guidance on free cash flow to $3.32 billion, down $50 million from its earlier guidance of $3.27 billion for fiscal year 2019.

Netflix is already big in the United States, but it soon could become an international blockbuster.

That's the take of John Blackledge, a financial analyst who covers the company for Cowen. The streaming media giant has had great success in producing its own original shows for the US market, such as "Stranger Things" and "Orange is the New Black." But Netflix is increasingly focusing on producing videos that are targeted at its customers in other countries, such as the show "Dark" in Germany and "3%" in Brazil.

That focus should allow the company to attract even more international subscribers and bring in even more international revenue than Blackledge, a longtime Netflix bull, was previously expecting.

Netflix's focus on international content " is driving near-term [subscription] growth and longer-term sets up the company to be a leading content producer in many of the largest [international] markets," Blackledge said in a report issued Tuesday.

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His reassessment of the company's international prospects prompted him to up his price target on Netflix to $430 a share from $375.

Netflix has been expanding overseas for years. Although its international operations lost money for years, there are signs that the move is finally starting to pay off. The company's number of international streaming customers topped its number of US ones last year and its overseas business now accounts for nearly as much of its revenue as its US one.

For his part, Blackledge expects things will only get better from here. Within five years, Blackledge expects Netflix's international division to have more than twice as many subscribers as its US service and to bring in 74% more revenue.

That's an even more bullish view than Blackledge previously held. He now expects Netflix to have about 4 million more international subscribers in 2023 than in his earlier forecast, and he expects the international business to bring in about $350 million more in annual revenue.

Those differences add up. Just based on his more optimistic expectations for Netflix's international business, he expects the company's earnings in 2028 to be $2 a share more than he previously forecast. That prompted him to raise his price target.

Mark Zuckerberg. Screenshot via MSQRD

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

1. Facebook is facing increasing pressure from federal authorities as a result of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The US Department of Justice's investigation is now looking at Facebook itself, and the SEC and FTC have also joined the inquiry.

2. An engineer who was at the centre of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo now appears to be involved with a new autonomous truck startup called Kache.ai. According to TechCrunch, Anthony Levandowski is tied to the secretive Kache.ai despite not being listed in any of the company's business filings.

3. Ride-hailing company Lyft is officially moving beyond cars and getting into the bike-sharing business. The company is acquiring Motivate, the company behind New York Citi Bikes and San Francisco's Ford GoBikes.

4. Hundreds of app makers have access to millions of inboxes belonging to Gmail users, according to The Wall Street Journal. Gmail users who signed up for email-based services like shopping price comparisons and automated travel-itinerary planners are most at risk of having their private messages read.

5. Tesla has hit the important goal of producing 5,000 Model 3s per week. Tesla has struggled to ramp up production for the Model 3 since it was launched in July 2017, twice missing deadlines for its goal of producing 5,000 per week.

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6. Facebook had to warn 800,000 users that it accidentally unblocked people they had already blocked on the social network. The bug meant that the supposedly-blocked users could view the profiles of people who had blocked them, and send them messages — which isn't supposed to happen after you block them.

7. Some Samsung smartphone users reported that their devices randomly sent photos to their contacts without their knowledge and without any record. The issues appear to be exclusive to the most recent Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus, and it's unclear whether other models are affected.

8. Facebook is close to acquiring a London-based start-up called Bloomsbury AI to help it combat fake news, according to TechCrunch. Bloomsbury AI specialises in natural language processing technology, and has developed an AI called "Cape," which can read text documents and answer questions about their contents.

9. MoviePass has filed paperwork to raise up to $1.2 billion to stay afloat. The money will help keep the cinema subscription business going, but will also help fund some acquisitions.

10. Facebook is shutting down an anonymous app for teens it bought less than a year ago. The app, called tbh, was aimed at American high school and college students, and described itself as "the only anonymous app with positive vibes.

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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.

After months of boardroom battles, publicly hinted about in SEC filings and news articles, VMware Pat Gelsinger has won the war with his boss Michael Dell.

Dell's enormous tech company, Dell Technologies, will not be gobbling up VMware outright in a reverse merger. It has instead entered into a less-intrusive deal that accomplishes much of the same goal.

Dell Technologies will swap shares of itself for the publicly traded "tracking" shares of VMware, owned by a wholly owned subsidiary of Dell. Dell is essentially buying this subsidiary.

Those tracking shares were created as part of Dell's massive, complicated $65 billion buyout of EMC, originally issued to EMC shareholders, as a way to reduce the amount of money Dell needed to borrow to pay for EMC. It gave EMC shareholders something of value besides more cash to represent their stake of VMware.

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VMware is a publicly traded company with about 80% of its shares owned by EMC following Dell's buyout. So Dell Technologies controlled that 80% after buying EMC, with about half of that equity publicly traded through the tracking stock.

The tracking stock was publicly trading. By swapping shares of Dell Technologies, formerly a private company, for the tracking shares, Dell will become a public company again.

This deal is mostly a big win for VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger as it essentially maintains the status quo of VMware's ownership.

Dell still controls most of VMware, but the 20% of VMware that is public will remain public and VMware will continue to be an independent company.

Dell had previously been talking about a "reverse merger" with VMware, in which Dell would have essentially sold itself to the smaller company. This too, would have made Dell public again, but VMware would not have been independent anymore, and its shareholders would be responsible for the roughly $50 billion of debt Dell still has on its books.

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In practice, it would have been a fully-owned unit of Dell under CEO Michael Dell.

Dell wanted VMware for a number of reasons, including to get his hands on VMware's cash and help him pay off Dell's debt more quickly.

Avoiding a near death sentence

Being closely aligned with VMware has been good for Dell. Dell and VMware have been making their products work well together, which lets them compete better with joint rivals like Nutanix.

But operating independently is also extremely important for VMware's survival. VMware's flagship software for servers needs to be able to work well on all sorts of hardware, even hardware sold by Dell's rivals like Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

So there was a lot of backlash to the reverse merger idea from the VMware crowd, with Wall Street analysts panning the idea, and VMware shareholders openly revolting against the idea.

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This deal allows Gelsinger to sidesteps that potential death sentence to VMware's future. It also means he won't be demoted, a situation that may have pushed him into the arms of his former employer, Intel, who is looking for a new CEO.

That nuance wasn't lost on Michael Dell. People have been talking about Gelsinger as Intel's next CEO so much that when Gelsinger publicly tweeted he wasn't interested in the job, that tweet was immediately noticed by his boss, Michael Dell.

The big caveat

But there's a big caveat to this win: VMware is footing the bill for it.

Stockholders of the tracking stock can opt to tender their shares for $109 in cash, a 29% premium over Friday's closing price, if they don't want the 1.3665 shares of Dell Technologies in exchange. Dell has capped the budget it will pay for these stocks at $9 billion.

That money is coming from VMware, with a special massive dividend of $11 billion paid to all of its shareholders, using up its stash of cash.

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Before Dell bought EMC, its former CEO Joe Tuchi and one of its board members promised that Dell wouldn't raid VMware's cash. That promise obviously didn't last, although VMware also emphasized that this is to be a one-time deal.

Still, it was an artful escape by Gelsinger and his board.

And Gelsinger's official comment hints as much (emphasis ours): "We remain laser focused on our strategy to deliver innovative software that drives customer success as a strategic and growing independent entity," he said.

As the US population ages at a rapid rate, a new target demographic is emerging: those aging into the hands of Medicare.

For months, it's seemed like Walmart and Amazon could be entering into a war in order to capture this new and growing market of patients over 65 who are eligible for Medicare. Squaring up for battle, Amazon's recent purchase of digital-pharmacy startup PillPack could put it a step ahead, according to a note released Monday by analysts at Morgan Stanley.

In November, those same analysts wrote, "We note too that the older demographic still under-indexes toward Prime membership...which speaks to the opportunity for Pharma to help Amazon further penetrate the ~80 million 55+ population in the United States."

Morgan Stanley's research shows Amazon Prime has the lowest penetration in the demographic of customers over 55. The average American over the age of 65 has around 37 prescriptions per year, the report estimated. The acquisition of PillPack, which works with Medicare plans, could tackle this market and add to Amazon's Prime subscribers. The more members, the more profit. This move could further Amazon's attack on the over-the-counter pharmacy space.

Morgan Stanley

Compared to the traditional model of retail pharmacy, companies like PillPack, which incorporate more technology into their services, have market share of less than 1%. That's mainly because they are relatively new and it takes a while to generate a customer base.

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While physical pharmacies and digital pharmacies are almost equal in sales productivity, digital pharmacies tend to have lower operating costs and require less monetary investment. This means that digital pharmacies are easier and smoother to run.

Amazon — along with its recent purchase of Whole Foods, which doesn't have a pharmacy yet - could shift toward a combined approach to pharmacy that incorporates elements of both the traditional model of retail pharmacy and aspects of the hybrid model.

Investing in healthcare expands Amazon's core US retail total available market in terms of both revenue and gross profit. And with prescription drug spending, Amazon is adding even more revenue and profit.

Atlantic Media's six-year-old business news web outlet Quartz has a new home in Japan. Uzabase—a Japanese business intelligence and media firm—has agreed to purchase the publication for between $75 million and $110 million in cash and stock, depending on the site's performance for the remainder of 2018.

Quartz counts 215 staffers total, including 100 journalists that cover the global economy. It's particularly known for creating native ad formats and branded content designed for mobile.

Similar to other digital publishers like BuzzFeed and Vice that initially made their fortunes in custom advertising and have since reportedly missed revenue goals, Quartz has struggled to increase its annual revenue from advertising, according to a presentation from Uzabase explaining the sale. The firm's materials about the acquisition shows that Quartz made $30 million in 2016, dipping to $27.6 million in 2017. Quartz's revenue is expected to hit between $35 million and $38 million this year, per Uzabase.

"We'll quickly be developing paid products for the loyal audience Quartz has accrued over the past six years," wrote Quartz co-presidents Kevin Delaney and Jay Lauf in a memo sent to Quartz staff this morning. "While high-quality advertising will continue to represent the lion's share of Quartz's revenue in the coming years, we expect that the biggest source of growth in Quartz's next chapter will come from reader revenue."

Uzabase

In another memo distributed today, Atlantic Media chairman and owner David Bradley said that conversations about a deal started in March and were finalized this weekend. "I've known for some time that, eventually, I would write to tell you that I am selling Quartz," he wrote. "But, I would have guessed that day to be distant, say, in years not moments."

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Atlantic Media will continue to provide corporate support Quartz for at least a year and Quartz will keep its name and staff.

Uzabase wants to take on Facebook and Twitter for news domination

The Quartz team will begin running the U.S. version of NewsPicks, Uzabase's news curation app that pulls in content from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Politico and more through partnerships.

After amassing four million users and 70,000 subscribers in Japan, Uzabase rolled out a U.S. version of NewsPicks in November with the goal of shaking up how people consume news content on Facebook and Twitter. The app also has high-profile 'ProPicker' users like Thrive Global's CEO Arianna Huffington and former PepsiCo exec Brad Jakeman that help NewsPicker's editors choose the best stories to highlight in the app.

In six months, the U.S. version of NewsPicks has 150,000 downloads, meaning that it has grown faster than its Japanese counterpart.

Uzabase

"There's no place that satisfies the entire user experience," Ian Myers, CEO of NewsPicks USA, told Business Insider. For example, readers may first find articles on Flipboard or Google and then share it on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, he said. Instead, the idea behind NewsPicks is to be a go-to hub for all parts of news consumption.

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"We aggregate the content and the community leaves their commentary," said Myers.

NewsPicks also wants to make original content—and make money from it

The Japanese version of NewsPicks includes a subscription option for $15 a month to unlock original content. Myers said that the U.S. version of the app wants to replicate the same model, with the help of Quartz.

The U.S. version of NewsPicks is currently free and does not run advertisements but will be "creating high-quality branded content" going forward, Myers said.

Myers said that the team has not decided how much to charge for premium content within the U.S. app, but the Uzabase presentation materials show that the goal is to price content for "hyper-premium users" at $50 a month in addition to the lower $15 subscription level.

Uzabase

In terms of the type of original content that NewsPicks is looking for, the company is interested in "really long-form, in-depth content [like] open examinations of big companies, the life of entrepreneurs," Myers said. "Some of it tcould come close to a novella." The Japanese version of the app has a few such articles each week, Myers said.

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While details are scant, NewsPicks' U.S. team also plans to lean on Quartz's product and design teams that are known for building slick mobile products. "We expect to bring Quartz's mobile prowess to our content so it's more enjoyable," Myers said.

A lot can change in less than a year.

In October 2017, Facebook announced it was acquiring "tbh," an anonymous app aimed at teens that had been riding high at the top of the App Store charts for weeks.

Now, a little over eight months later, Facebook is closing the app permanently due to "low usage."

The social network announced it was shutting down tbh on Monday, alongside two other apps — fitness app "Moves," which it acquired in 2014, and "Hello," an app it launched in 2015 "to combine information from Facebook with contact information on [your] phone."

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"We regularly review our apps to assess which ones people value most. Sometimes this means closing an app and its accompanying APIs," the company said in a blog post about the closures.

"We know some people are still using these apps and will be disappointed — and we'd like to take this opportunity to thank them for their support. But we need to prioritize our work so we don't spread ourselves too thin. And it's only by trial and error that we'll create great social experiences for people."

Tbh, an acronym for "to be honest," was aimed at American high school and college students, and described itself as "the only anonymous app with positive vibes. It let users create quizzes their friends could vote on, and you can see how it worked in practice here.

"Tbh and Facebook share a common goal of building community and enabling people to share in ways that bring us closer together," a Facebook spokesperson said at the time of the acquisition. "With Facebook's resources tbh can continue to expand and build positive experiences."

It's not clear whether the apps' closures will lead to any layoffs, and a Facebook spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

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The closures come at a time when Facebook is clearing house. Reeling from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the company has restricted third-party developers' access to its platform, and also on Monday announced it was deprecating more APIs used by developers.

Facebook says it will delete all the data from the three apps within 90 days.

A post published to Medium on Thursday stirred a lot of debate about Google's ability — or, perhaps, inability — to provide adequate customer service to customers using its Google Cloud platform.

The situation has been resolved, and support people from Google's cloud have already responded, but not before some serious questions were raised about how Google Cloud does business.

The post was written by an anonymous administrator of a system that monitors "hundreds of wind turbines and scores of solar plants," it said. The admin wrote about receiving an email from Google on Thursday that said the company's website and other services were blocked because of "suspicious activity."

"All my systems have been turned off," wrote the anonymous administrator. "Everything is off. The machine has pulled the plug with no warning. The site is down, app engine, databases are unreachable, multiple Firebases say I've been downgraded and therefore exceeded limits."

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Then came the real scare. The admin says they got a message saying that if the account owner didn't correct the violation by filling out the Account Verification Form and supply identification within three days, Google may decide to permanently close the account. That indicated to him and many of the people reading the Medium post that Google was willing to totally destroy an app critical to the business with only three days of notice.

"I hope (the Google Cloud Platform) team is listening and changes things for the better," the admin wrote. "Until then I'm never building any project on GCP."

Google did not respond to requests for comment and Business Insider could not verify the authenticity of the Medium post. Nonetheless, the problems described in the post are not unprecedented: In 2016, there was a similar case with a company named DocGraph.

Google needs more human service reps

In this case, everything appears to have worked out. The admin returned the filled-in form and the operation was back up in 20 minutes. A note was later added to the Medium post that said the Google Cloud support team had written and "assured us these incidents will not repeat."

But before the situation was resolved, the panicked admin had tried to reach Google customer service reps but couldn't raise anyone by phone or by chat.

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And his post asked an important question: What would have happened if the person with the information Google required was away or otherwise out of touch for three days? Would Google have automatically followed through with its threat and shut the site down permanently?

The incident struck a chord with many developers, generating over 1,200 comments on message boards like Reddit and Hacker News about the quality of Google's cloud versus Amazon's. What many people seemed to agree on is that GCP needs to rely less on automated systems and provide more human support.

The lack of living, breathing customer-service help has long been a knock across many of Google's gadgets and services.

"This post is not about the quality of Google Cloud products," the admin wrote. "They are excellent, on par with AWS. This is about the no-warnings-given, abrupt way they pull the plug on your entire systems if they (or the machines) believe something is wrong. This is the second time this has happened to us."

In 2016, Fred Trotter, CEO of a healthcare startup called DocGraph, found himself in a similar situation. Trotter discovered that Google blocked access to the data he stored in the cloud after claiming one of his servers was involved in unspecified "intrusion attempts against a third-party."

Trotter tried to get information but again, his attempts to locate a human at Google Cloud were unsuccessful. Turns out the server in question had been hacked and was indeed used to launch attacks. And just like the recent case, Google then moved quickly to get Trotter's service working again. Steve Jennings/Getty

Google self sabotaging itself

Google is trying to take on Amazon in the burgeoning cloud computing market. If successful, this is a huge growth area for Google. In 2015, Google's Urs Hölzle even predicted that Google may one day make more revenue on cloud than on ads.

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As it stands, Amazon's AWS is the clear leader, with Microsoft's Azure in second place, but Google has high hopes for the division. That's why the board hired Diane Greene to run its cloud business, buying out her still-in-stealth startup $380 million in 2016 to nab her and adding her to its board of directors.

Greene, who made her name as a cofounder of VMware, has a strong reputation in the enterprise IT world and has already done a lot to bring Google the kind of human support it needs to win corporate customers.

Often in the past, she has claimed that Google is cutting into Amazon's lead and possesses the better technology.

But technology aside, by not offering customer-service reps for emergencies for all levels of developers, or by using automated systems that fail to adequately address a problem, Google sabotages its efforts to overtake Amazon.

Interestingly enough, the author of the original Medium post writes that a Google Cloud engineer added in a private message that "there is a large group of folk (within Google Cloud Platform) interested in making things better, not just for you but for all GCP."

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That would seem to confirm there's a problem.

On Twitter, Gartner analyst Lydia Leong put a fine point on the matter in response to this incident:

"GCP is for businesses. There is no excuse for this kind of thing. Not a 'cloud' problem. AWS and Azure don't do this," Leong wrote.

A majority Americans believe in UFOs and just under half think extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth, according to a 2015 poll of about 1,000 adults in the US.

Though people in the US can barely pass a basic science quiz created by the government, it's tempting to climb aboard the extraterrestrial train: There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the visible universe, hundreds of billions of stars per galaxy, and untold numbers of planets around each star. It's easy to imagine that alien life, perhaps an intelligent kind, is out there somewhere.

But scientists aren't sure one way or the other.

Their go-to expression for this alluring possibility — and deep-seated doubt — is the Drake equation.

The Drake equation. Jenny Cheng/Business Insider

Astrophysicist Frank Drake drew up the famous formula on a chalkboard in 1961. This was at the dawn of a worldwide search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and his thinking continues to influence the use of astronomical observatories to this day.

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The equation is more of an argument wrapped in seven variables. Multiplied together, these variables yield a calculation of the possibility that humanity might someday hear from an intelligent civilization.

"Although there is no unique solution to this equation, it is a generally accepted tool used by the scientific community to examine these factors," the SETI Institute says of the Drake equation.

What the seven variables are and what they mean

The first letter of the Drake equation, on the far left, is its solution, "N." It represents the number of intelligent alien races within the Milky Way that could be broadcasting signals detectable to Earth.

Frank Drake and his famous equation, which is a way to estimate the likelihood of intelligent alien life existing in the Milky Way galaxy.SETI Institute

As you move right in the equation, the variables grow increasingly difficult to estimate.

The SETI Institute defines the seven variables in this way:

R* = The rate of formation of stars that are suitable for the development of intelligent life.

f p = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.

n e = The number of planets per solar system that have an environment suitable for life.

f l = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.

f i = The fraction of life-bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.

f c = The fraction of intelligent civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

Scientists have a good handle on the first two variables, R* and f p, and are increasingly certain about the third, n e.

However, the other variables farther to the right all deal with the bold hypothetical of life actually existing elsewhere in the universe. This is something we have no definitive proof of — not even for a bacterium.

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As a result, all solutions to the Drake equation are enormously uncertain.

Are we alone in the Milky Way — or the universe?

NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)

Scientists' uncertainty about intelligent alien life is illustrated by their extraordinary variety of solutions to the Drake equation.

In a draft study posted online in June, three researchers at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute looked at all the studies they could find that touched on Drake equation variables. Then they crunched some numbers.

The researchers found that about two thirds of studies guess that some 100 advanced alien civilizations might exist in the Milky Way galaxy.

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However, the highest estimates come in at 100 million civilizations per galaxy, and the lowest guesses are as low three civilizations per 10,000 Milky-Way-like galaxies. That is a 100-billion-fold difference in predicted abundances of intelligent, communicating beings.

"It is common to see carefully estimated astrophysical numbers multiplied by these ad hoc guesses," the authors wrote. "It has been noted that the final results seem to depend heavily on the pessimism or optimism of the authors."

In hopes of better lessening that uncertainty, the Oxford researchers — Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler, and Toby Ord— reformulated each Drake equation variable as a range of uncertainties. Their work produced a bell-curve-like distribution of results. And they were bleak.

The average probability (toward the middle of the curve) that we're alone in the Milky Way came to about 52%, with a 38% average chance that we're alone in the entire observable universe.

Even the most optimistic, better-than-average values were depressing: The authors calculated that there's a 41% chance we're alone in the galaxy and a 32% chance we're alone in the visible universe.

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"We find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe," they said.

So the next time you gaze at the stars and wonder if aliens are out there waiting to be found, flip a coin. That may be our best representation of the chances we're alone — and perhaps all the more reason to seed the cosmos with human life.

The months of speculation on Michael Dell's intentions towards VMware is over. Instead of Dell gobbling up VMware in a so-called reverse merger, VMware will be allowed to continue as an independent company.

Instead, Dell and VMware are doing something else. They are essentially getting rid of an awkward tracking stock for VMware, a financial vehicle Dell created to help it pay for its massive buyout of EMC. When Dell bought EMC, it inherited majority control over VMware.

With this new deal, Dell is offering owners of those tracking shares a choice of $109 cash or 1.35 Class C shares in Dell Technologies. That means that Dell will become a public company once again, in what the company says is a form of IPO.

This move comes with an interesting additional cost for Michael Dell: While Dell was privately held, he had job security for life, more or less. Now, after this move, he loses the ability to veto his own removal.

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Michael Dell is the owner of most of the company's outstanding Class A shares, while his private equity partners, Silver Lake Partners, own most of the outstanding Class B shares, Dell Technologies said in a regulatory filing.

Dell's Class A shares come with some special privileges, including control of three board seats and a special provision that gave them the exclusive power to veto any attempt to remove the CEO or to strip the CEO of the chairman title.

In other words, the only person who could fire Dell or remove him as chairman, was Dell himself.

But that provision rested on two stipulations. One was that Dell had to be alive and well. The second was that Dell Technologies could not have done an IPO.

The problem for Dell is that the merger deal that turns Dell into a public company definitely qualifies as an IPO, according to the new charter Dell signed as part of this agreement.

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Therefore, once the deal is complete, Dell's Class A shareholders no longer have veto power if the company's board of directors wants to fire Michael Dell as CEO. Since Michael Dell is the largest Class A shareholder, that means he can no longer block his own hypothetical termination.

On top of that, his shares will no longer give him sole control the three board seats. All shareholders will collectively get to vote on the entire slate of directors, the charter says.

So has Dell completely put his head on the chopping block? Not really.

Those Class A shares still come with 10 votes per shares, as do Silver Lake's Class B shares. The company says that Dell owns 49% of the company's stock and has 66% of the total voting power.

So Michael Dell is still basically impossible to remove as CEO, even if he's no longer got a statement in the company's charter that gives him the right to veto his own removal.

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When asked for comment, a Dell spokesperson pointed to Michael Dell's public letter in which he said, "This transaction will have little impact ... as a public company, we will keep the same strategic focus on long-term growth that has helped us strengthen, reshape and grow our business."

A small number of people that own Samsung smartphones have reported that their devices randomly sent photos from their gallery to their contacts without their knowledge, according to several reports on Samsung's forums and Reddit that were first discovered by Gizmodo.

A Reddit user reported their Samsung phone sent their entire photo gallery to their girlfriend. Another reported that their device sent photos to their wife.

Specifically, the photos were sent over Samsung's stock text messaging app. Notably, there's also no record that the photos were sent from an affected users' phone, according to the Reddit user.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider

So far, some of the affected users have pointed fingers to a recent T-Mobile update that including advanced texting features, like read receipts and an indicator that shows when the contact you're messaging is typing. However, T-Mobile told Gizmodo that it's not a T-Mobile issue.

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The affected devices appear to be exclusive to the most recent Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus, and it's unclear whether other models are affected.

Samsung commented to Business Insider, saying: "We are aware of the reports regarding this matter and our technical teams are looking into it. Concerned customers are encouraged to contact us directly at 1-800-SAMSUNG."

This is clearly problematic. A Reddit user expressed their concern by saying "This sounds like a nightmare for me as I have lots and lots of clients in my phone. It would be very bad if they had access to my gallery."

One temporary solution is to use a different messaging app, like Google's own Android Messages app that comes standard on the Google Pixel 2 smartphones.

As the battle for artificial intelligence talent heats up in Silicon Valley, word on the street is that larger tech companies are using enormous pay packages to sway candidates away from less well-healed startups.

Oracle offered at least one candidate a $6 million package made up of salary and equity incentives to convince them to join the company, a source told Business Insider.

That candidate had other job offers but went with Oracle because of the higher pay, the source said.

We don't know this unnamed expert's job title at Oracle, or how many years of experience they brought into the job. From the size of that pay package, however, it seems safe to say that their skill set made them a big catch for Oracle.

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Oracle, which has a market cap of $182 billion, has deeper pockets than most. Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, Oracle's co-CEOs, each have annual pay packages worth around $41 million, according to company filings.

But it's not the only tech giant offering seven-figure packages to top talent.

In October, the New York Times reported that the typical salary for PhD-trained AI talent is around $300,000 to $500,000 in salary and equity, but that some well-known people in the field make double-digit millions — albeit with a four to five year vesting schedule on their stock offerings. With so few experts in the field, and so many companies trying to gain a competitive edge in AI, it's up to companies like Oracle to get competitive.

Oracle declined to comment.

Although it may have seemed that Anthony Levandowski was done with the self-driving car business after being fired by Uber in the middle of a trade secrets dispute, it appears he might not be finished yet.

TechCrunch has discovered that Levandowski is tied to a new self-driving truck company, named Kache.ai, that will focus on commercial trucking. There isn't much information available about the company, and its website currently only features a picture of a lake with the company name imposed over it. Before, the website contained a picture of a commercial truck on a highway with the caption "Kache.ai — The Future of Intelligent Driving."

Kache is staying quiet and didn't respond to TechCrunch about the story — and it's stayed under the radar since being registered as a corporation seven months ago. Levandowski isn't listed anywhere in the corporate filings, but an address that belongs to his father and stepmother is listed in documents filed by Kache to the state. As TechCrunch reports, Levandowski's stepmother, Suzanna Musick, was the CEO of a company he founded called 510 Systems.

Before the website was scrubbed clean, it contained the following paragraph, explaining that Kache is hiring:

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"We're developing the solution for the next level of on-the-road self-driving trucks," the website read. "Our development philosophy is based on a fast moving, very aggressive agile team approach and we're seeking both software and hardware engineers that thrive in such an environment."

Little else is known about Kache at this time, but TechCrunch said multiple sources in the autonomous car industry have confirmed that Levandowski is tied to the company.

Levandowski was previously at the center of more than a year-long scandal, after Waymo accused him in 2017 of stealing trade secrets and bringing them to Uber. He had worked for Waymo, Google's former self-driving car project, for nearly 10 years before forming a startup, Otto, that was acquired by Uber. In a lawsuit, Waymo said Levandowski stole more than 9 gigabytes of information from them, which included more than 14,000 files related to the self-driving car project, just before he left the company to found Otto.

Levandowski was fired from Uber, and Uber paid a settlement and agreed not to use any of the information that he had taken from the Waymo project.

Levandowski also popped up in the news in the middle of the scandal, when he said he was founding a new church centered around worshipping AI called "Way of the Future," which he thinks will soon become god-like and smarter than humans, he said.