LONDON - Some universities on the east coast of the US have begun making small investments into cryptocurrency hedge funds, according to a lawyer in the industry.

John Lore, the founder of Capital Fund Law Group, told Business Insider: "We're seeing some academic institutions getting involved on a limited basis for strategic reasons.

"I can't say the names of [the academic institutions] because that's attorney-client but we have people mostly on the East Coast that have begun doing investments in this space on a fairly modest basis."

New York-based Capital Fund Law Group specialises in providing legal services to the hedge fund industry and has advised around 30 cryptocurrency hedge funds on setting up over the last year, according to Lore.

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Lore said that the majority of investment in these new funds comes from "high net worth individuals and, on a very limited basis, family offices."

"Yes there are investors but at this point, investors are putting in very small percentages of their net worth as we would expect and as I believe is appropriate," Lore said.

He said he doesn't expect to see institutional investors such as pension funds invest in crypto any time soon, due to regulatory uncertainty and the lack of a track record for many funds. One exception is university endowment funds, some of which have begun to invest in the space on a limited basis.

"We see academia as a tie between these somewhat young and enthusiastic fund managers and capital raising," Lore said.

Universities have been growing increasingly interested in cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology that underpins it. Blockchain is a shared, uneditable ledger of all transactions and is encoded with complex cryptography.

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One of the developers of ethereum helped set up blockchain facilities at the universities of Edinburgh and Tokyo, and Ripple this week announced a $50 million research fund for blockchain and cryptocurrency. Leading universities around the world are also introducing courses on the technology, including Cambridge and Oxford.

Apple CEO Tim Cook took some more not-so-veiled shots at Facebook in a nationally televised interview Monday evening.

Speaking to CNN, Cook said he generally favors corporate self-regulation instead of government-imposed regulations. But when it comes to online privacy, self-regulation clearly isn't working and the government may need to step in, he said.

"You have to ask yourself, so what form of regulation might be good," Cook said. He continued: "I think the privacy thing has gotten totally out of control."

Cook has repeatedly criticized Facebook in recent months over how much data it collects on consumers and what it does with that information. For example, when asked about how he would have handled the Cambridge Analytica scandal— in which the data on up to 87 million Facebook users was leaked to a data-analytics company linked to President Donald Trump — Cook said, "I wouldn't be in that situation."

Apple's launching new features that will limit the data Facebook can collect

His comments on CNN followed the opening of Apple's annual WWDC developer conference earlier in the day in San Jose.

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At the conference, company officials announced numerous new features for its devices that seemed intentionally designed to restrict the amount of data Facebook in particular can collect on Apple users and to help those users limit the amount of time they spend on their devices, especially with Facebook's apps.

Apple has repeatedly tried to distinguish itself from Facebook, Google, and the other tech giants by emphasizing its stated commitment to privacy. Unlike those companies, advertising is a small piece of Apple's business, and it generally doesn't collect as much detailed information on its users as they do.

Cook played up that angle again in the interview, painting as nefarious the data collection done by Facebook and other ad-based businesses.

"I think most people are not aware who's tracking them, how much they're being tracked, and the sort of the large amounts of detailed data that are out there about them," he said.

Facebook officials have fired back at Cook in recent months, arguing that the company's advertising business allows it to offer its service for free and its data collection helps it offer ads that are actually of interest to individual users.

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In the interview, Cook said that he had been testing out the new features Apple has designed to allow customers to monitor their phone usage, he found that he himself was using his phone more than he should.

Cook reiterated his support for DACA

In addition to taking shots at Facebook, Cook also reiterated his support for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. That program, which protected undocumented people who arrived in the US as children from being deported, was canceled by Trump in September. Cook and other tech leaders have been urging Congress to reinstate it.

"Congress needs to fix DACA, and fix DACA means allowing everyone to stay in this country and stop this ridiculous discussion that people brought here as kids shouldn't be allowed to stay here," he said.

Cook also weighed in on the incipient trade war that the Trump administration appears to be launching against China, the European Union, Mexico, and other countries. Despite the administration's announcement last week that it would now apply its previously announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the EU, Mexico, and Canada, Cook said he was "optimistic" a trade war could be averted.

"No one will win from that. It will be lose-lose," he said. "When the facts are so clear like that, I think both parties will see that and be able to work things out."

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Regardless of how those trade tensions end up, Cook said he didn't think the iPhone — by far Apple's most important product — won't be caught in the crossfire and prices won't rise on it as a result.

"I don't think the iPhone will get a tariff on it," he said.

When it comes to how much time he spends on his iPhone, even Apple CEO Tim Cook has a problem.

At its annual WWDC developer conference Monday, Apple announced new tools to help iPhone users monitor and limit the amount of time they spend on their devices. Cook said he'd been testing them out and was alarmed at what he found.

"I thought I was fairly disciplined about this, and I was wrong," Cook said. "When I began to get the data, I found I was spending a lot more time [on my device] than I should."

When asked, Cook declined to specify which apps were leading to his overuse.

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"I don't want give you all the apps, but just too much," he said.

Tech developers, children's advocates, politicians, and others have been increasingly raising alarms about devices and apps encouraging addiction-like behavior among their users. After shareholders filed a proposal earlier this year that would have urged Apple to do something to help iPhone users limit the time they spend on their devices, the company promised it would do just that.

In iOS 12, the upcoming version of the software that underlies the iPhone and the iPad, Apple is adding a collection of features that are designed to help people control how they use their devices. A feature called Screen Time will track how much time users are spending with particular apps. One called App Limits will let them preset the amount of time they can spend with each one. And when users turn on the Do Not Disturb feature in iOS 12, they will be able to configure it so it blocks all of their notifications until they turn it off.

In terms of measuring the success of the iPhone, "We've never been focused on usage as a key parameter," Cook said. He continued: "We're empowering people with the facts that will allow them to decide themselves how they want to cut back."

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The Nadella-led Microsoft has spent the past several years trying to improve its image and show the world that it's a kinder, gentler company; one more willing to play nicely with others. Now, with the fourth largest acquisition in Microsoft's 43-year history, Nadella's makeover will be put to the test as he tries to convince the GitHub community that they can trust Microsoft with such an important asset.

Indeed, some, like long-time coder Jacques Mattheij, are concerned that despite Nadella's public commitment to open source, Microsoft hasn't really changed its stripes and will use GitHub only to its own advantage.

"I'm sure you'll be able to tell I'm a cranky old guy by looking up the dates to some of these references, but 'new boss, same as the old boss' applies as far as I'm concerned. Yes, the new boss is a nicer guy but it's the same corporate entity," Mattheij wrote in a blog entry after news of the acquisition was first reported.

Others have more immediate concerns: Microsoft doesn't have the best track record when it comes to making the most of their acquisitions. The Nokia buy turned into a total fiasco, and many users believe Microsoft mismanaged Skype since its acquisition. Now, developers are concerned that Microsoft will interfere with all the things they like about GitHub.

"What I really love about this is that M$ [sic] realize the product's users are tightly wound to the brand's identity, and are hostile to M$'s. They know they're buying a 'lifestyle brand' and that they have to keep it hip and unencumbered by a corporate behemoth or it'll become worthless," writes user peterwwillis in a Hacker News comment.

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Yet another criticism is more abstract. GitHub hosts the source code for millions of pieces of software, from personal passion projects all the way up to Facebook-created app frontend development tools. Having a $781 billion company in ultimate control of all that software is making some uneasy.

"I think what bothers me about this announcement is that _anyone_ owns Github; that is, a tech giant with a lot of influence in the software world owning the largest repository of code in history. Something feels wrong about it. I'd be as uncomfortable with it if Google or Facebook or Apple owned it," writes Hacker News user dclowd9901.

Developers are doing something about it

In response to the acquisition, at least some developers are rushing to move from GitHub to its competitors. Venture-backed startup GitLab and $15 billion Aussie software giant Atlassian both released charts on Monday showing a surge of developers moving to their respective code-hosting services in the hours following word of the acquisition. SourceForge, too, says it saw a bump.

Indeed, GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij tells Business Insider that his company has seen 100,000 code repositories moved from GitHub since Bloomberg reported the imminent announcement of the deal on Sunday. In general, GitLab says that it's seen about 10 times as much upload activity than normal over the same span.

Sijbrandij says that for "a lot of people, this is a wake up call." While both companies are built on the open source Git technology — hence the similar names — GitLab offers a free open source version of its software, and GitHub does not. In that sense, Sijbrandij says that GitHub is a little hypocritical: It supports open source, but doesn't offer any back.

Those competitors aren't being shy about shading Microsoft over the deal, either. In particular, GitLab has gotten the Twitter hashtag #MovingtoGitLab going, encouraging users to tell their stories of ditching GitHub.

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"We compete with Microsoft across many products, and have been very successful with a unique bottoms-up business model. We invest heavily in R&D to build great products that customers choose to use instead of being forced to," Atlassian exec Jens Schumacher tells Business Insider.

Still, GitLab, at least, isn't writing GitHub off entirely. While Sijbrandij believes that GitLab offers developers a superior tool kit, he acknowledges that Microsoft is always a powerful competitor.

"For sure, we're not underestimating it," says Sijbrandij.

The good news for Microsoft

When Business Insider spoke with outgoing GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath earlier on Monday, he said that the success of the $26.2 billion LinkedIn acquisition, and the $2.5 billion buy of Minecraft creator Mojang, gave him optimism that Microsoft has gotten its act together with regards to big-ticket mergers.

The good news for Microsoft is that several people in Silicon Valley also share Wanstrath's outlook. There's no doubt that there are still many pessimists out there — but it's a sign of the times that Microsoft has its boosters, too.

"Since this decision involves our - and that also means Microsoft's - livelihood and the open-source ecosystem as a whole, I'm sure that Microsoft won't f--k this up, and it will remain the GitHub we all know and love," writes Resi Respati on the Practical Dev blog.

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"Hot take: What people do not account for is that the GitHub they love would of had to make changes to become profitable. You and the community were getting a very expensive service for free. That would not have continued forever. Microsoft is potentially the best outcome," writes popular InfoSec Twitter account SwiftOnSecurity.

And for Microsoft's part, there seems to be an understanding that there's an uphill battle to be fought to win over the hearts and minds of a significant portion of the community. In a very immediate sense, Microsoft is already willing to commit to never force GitHub users into using Microsoft technology.

"Skepticism is totally understandable, but we're on the right path," outgoing GitHub CEO and future Microsoft Technical Fellow Chris Wanstrath told Business Insider.

On April 20, Tyler Breisacher walked out of Google for the last time, ending his more than six-year relationship with the company. In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, he said that on that day he was a little emotional, but comforted by the fact that he was leaving for the right reasons.

Breisacher, a Google software developer who worked on Google's Github compiler, resigned in part to protest the company's involvement in Project Maven — the controversial collaboration between Google and the US Department of Defense. In March, word got out that Google had quietly supplied artificial intelligence technology to the Pentagon to help analyze drone video footage.

In April, more than 4,000 workers signed a petition demanding that Google's management cease work on Project Maven and promise to never again "build warfare technology." Soon after that, Gizmodo reported that a dozen or so Google employees had resigned in protest. Breisacher was among that group, he says.

The internal dissent and the negative press forced Google to backtrack, and the company reportedly told staff on Friday that it would not renew the Project Maven contract when it runs out next year.

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Does Breisacher feel he and the other protesters triumphed?

Breisacher says he won't uncork any champagne bottles until he sees the list of ethical principles Google is expected to publish this week which will lay out its policies towards AI work.

"I think this is the best outcome as far this contract is concerned," said Breisacher, 30, in his first on-the-record interview since quitting. "This is obviously a big deal and it's very encouraging but this only happened after months and months of people signing petitions and (internal debate) and people quitting."

And while many expect Google to forswear military work in the published AI principles, Breisacher worries that the company may leave itself some wiggle room that could lead to future instances of problematic AI projects.

Google is leaving billions of dollars on the table, but some Googlers feel betrayed

Reuters/Reuters StaffThe revelation about Google's involvement with Maven and the subsequent internal strife because of it has embarrassed the company. In addition, Google now appears to have taken itself out of the competition for cloud contracts offered by the Department of Defense -- worth tens of billions of dollars.

A Google spokesperson has not responded to repeated requests for comment, and the company's reasons for backtracking on Maven remain unclear. Certainly, the resignations of a dozen employees or the signatures of 4,000 workers on a petition is not going to impact the operations of the internet giant, which employs some 80,000 workers across the globe.

But it's hard to deny that the employees who opposed Google's involvement in Project Maven made their presence felt. In addition to the petition, and the resignations, it can't be overlooked that someone inside the company leaked internal documents and emails to the media that helped reveal the information about Google's military involvement to the public.

On Friday, Gizmodo reported that it had reviewed emails that showed Google had far greater ambitions to work with the US military and intelligence than managers had previously let on.

"The emails also show," wrote Gizmodo reporter Kate Conger, "that Google and its partners worked extensively to develop machine learning algorithms for the Pentagon with the goal of creating a sophisticated system that could surveil entire cities."

This is the kind of revelation that has some Google employees feeling betrayed, said Breisacher. In their eyes, Google once stood for a set of values that didn't include helping nations wage war.

Maven was the final straw

Project Maven is just another sign that reflects fundamental shifts in the thinking within Google's management, according to Breisacher. He said he had thought about leaving Google long before Maven came to light.

Google cofounder Larry Page Getty As a gay man, Breisacher became disheartened that Google decided to sponsor CPAC, a conservative conference that is also sponsored by the National Rifle Association and the Koch Institute and other groups that Breisacher believes are hostile to gays. Then last year, videos related to to LGBT issues were flagged as inappropriate on YouTube. The video-sharing service said it was an error but the issue didn't go away and Breisacher didn't think the company responded with the necessary urgency.

"When I started, Google had a reputation as a pro-gay, pro-trans company," said. "I guess I'm disillusioned. I know that Google is a "for profit company and you shouldn't expect it to do things purely for the good of the world. But in the past, we would expect leaders to listen to the employees and to think carefully about issues and not to cross certain lines...things have changed at Google."

Does he see any way for Google to save its soul?

Breisacher says maybe but that this question may not be the most relevant. He says what may be most important about Google's backtracking is that it shows employees have power.

"At Google, we had this 'Don't be evil,' that people believe we have to live up to," Breisacher said "I don't know if it's as easy to take a stand on issues at other companies but I hope the takeaway for employees at Microsoft or Amazon and the other companies is that they realize they have the power to collectively demand things... to change things."

On Monday, Microsoft officially announced it was buying GitHub, shortly after Business Insider had reported that the two companies were working on a deal.

Microsoft is paying a whopping $7.5 billion in an all-stock deal. GitHub was last valued at $2 billion and late last year said it was on track to do $200 million in revenue. So, by any standard, that's a hefty premium that Microsoft is paying for GitHub.

The questions is: how does Microsoft expect to earn its money back?

The obvious and jaded answer is that Microsoft wants to push all of those developers to run their software on Microsoft's cloud, Azure. In doing this, Microsoft will earn ongoing monthly fees from millions of GitHub developers that might have otherwise have decided to run their apps on the Amazon Web Services cloud, or on Google Cloud.

But, tempting as that might sound, Microsoft swears that it is not going to do this.

GitHub is an online service that hosts software code and allows lots of developers to work on it together as a team. It has free version, paid cloud versions and sells old fashioned software.

GitHub While GitHub has been generating revenue from the developer community, it has also "struggled with how to monetize platform," one insider told us.

GitHub did have a grand plan for becoming a multi-billion business, insiders told us. What if, instead of just hosting everyone's apps as they developed them, the apps could run on a GitHub cloud?

The top cloud providers are making billions of dollars a year.

On the other hand, the top providers also spend billions of dollars a year building out their data centers to host everyone's apps.

And that's why GitHub was out talking to Microsoft, Google and Amazon about selling itself, multiple people said. And that's also why it might seem logical for Microsoft to simply tell GitHub users that they must now hop onto Microsoft's cloud.

But, politically speaking, forcing them to do so would anger the developer community. They will pick the cloud and technologies that will work best for their own needs. If they aren't given a choice, they will simply leave GitHub for a competitor, like Atlassian's BitBucket, or the fast-growing upstart GitLab.

And GitHub's founder knows developers are wary.

"Skepticism is totally understandable, but we're on the right path," founder Chris Wanstrath told Business Insider's Matt Weinberger about the acquisition, and developer's fears.

So, if Microsoft is promising that GitHub will remain independent, what's the master plan? It is an app store for developer tools. Microsoft's own tools will be in the apps store. Other company's tools will be, too.

"Today, developers need to find and assemble services from many locations and pay for them separately," Microsoft told investors in a prepared presentation. "In the future, developers will be able to discover, adopt, consume and pay for everything they need in one place."

Controlling an app store that already has access to 29 million developers will not only help Microsoft sell its own developer tools, but could let Microsoft profit on other people's tools, too.

Microsoft isn't saying what kind of a fee it will charge for its app store, but let's just imagine that it will follow Apple's and Google's lead and take some percentage of every transaction.

That's not to say that Microsoft won't do all it can to convince GitHub users to ditch AWS or Google and use Azure. By owning GitHub, Microsoft can add all kinds of special features to try and make its own cloud work best for them. Ultimately, though, it would be the developer's choice, not Microsoft's.

When Apple's new Apple Watch software arrives this fall, one group of users will be left out of the update: those who shelled out for the $10,000 Apple Watch Edition.

Wirecutter's Andrew Cunningham first noticed the change.

Apple announced the new WatchOS5 software at the 2018 Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday. The update includes several exciting new features, like a smarter version of Siri, interactive notifications, and a new Walkie-Talkie style of communicating.

But Apple says the update will be compatible with Apple Watch Series 1 or later. That means Apple is no longer giving major software updates to its first generation Apple Watch — nicknamed the Apple Watch Series 0 — and the original Apple Watch Edition, an 18-karat gold version that started at $10,000 and cost as much as $17,000.

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Apple stopped selling the gold Apple Watch Edition a year after its 2015 debut. When Apple unveiled the Apple Watch Series 1 and Apple Watch Series 2 in 2016, the gold watch disappeared from Apple's online store entirely. These days, you may be able to find it on a secondary market like eBay.

Apple never disclosed how many gold Apple Watch Editions it sold, but sharp-eyed fans have spotted the watch on celebrities like Beyonce, Kanye West, Pharrell, Katy Perry, Drake, and Karl Lagerfeld.

Apple replaced the gold version with a ceramic Apple Watch Edition, which retails for the much more reasonable price of $1,299. That watch, along with Apple's array of other watches, will be compatible with WatchOS 5.

The 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition. Edgar Su/Reuters

While it was once categorized as "a hobby" by Apple, the Apple TV streaming box is selling better than ever.

Tim Cook announced Monday at Apple's annual conference for app developers, WWDC, that sales for Apple TV have increased by 50% since the company introduced a 4K-supported version of the streaming box last year.

While it doesn't include its own screen, the device connects to your TV and allows access to Apple's ecosystem of third-party apps and live TV, which can be viewed with the proper cable credentials. The company upgraded Apple TV in September to allow for 4K streaming of TV shows and movies.

Apple said on Monday that iTunes and Apple TV now feature "the largest collection of 4K HDR movies." The company also allows Apple TV users the ability to convert previously purchased TV shows and movies to 4K as a free upgrade.

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Apple also announced that Apple TV 4K will now pair its visuals with "room-filling" Dolby Atmos sound, making it "the only streaming player to be both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos certified."

Read more from Apple's WWDC 2018 conference:

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been sharply critical of Facebook of late for its widespread collection of data on consumers.

On Monday, Cook's company followed up his words with some pointed actions that are designed to limit some of that data collection by Facebook and other operators of online ad networks.

"Data companies are clever and relentless," Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, said at the company's WWDC developer conference in San Jose, explaining why Apple is offering some new features to allow users to control and protect their personal information.

Showing off one of those features, he said, "You can decide to keep your information private."

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One of the new features, which will be built into the next version of the company's Safari web browser, will block Facebook and other companies from using the "like" buttons and comment fields that often appear on pages around the web.

"It turns out these can be used to track you whether you click on them or not," Federighi said. "This year, we're shutting that down."

Safari will limit web sites' ability to create digital fingerprints

Another feature in Safari will limit the kinds of information that web site operators and data brokers can gather about users' computers. That information, which includes details about the computers consumers are using, the types of fonts they have on their devices, and the kinds of plug-ins they have installed in their browsers, can collectively be used as a kind of digital fingerprint to identify particular users, he said.

The next version of Apple's Safari browser will allow users alert users to the tracking Facebook and other companies do through "like" buttons and comment boxes and allow them to block it. Screenshot

Thanks to the steps Apple is taking to block Safari from leaking that data, "Your Mac will look like everyone else's Mac, and it will be dramatically more difficult for data companies to identify your device and track you," Federighi said.

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Apple is adding both of the new Safari features to the versions of the web browser that come with the Mac, the iPhone and the iPad. They'll come with iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, both of which are due out later this year.

The features follow a feature Apple built into Safari last year that limits the ability of data brokers to track Safari users' online movements across different sites as they surfed the web.

Apple users will have new tools to curtail their use of particular apps

The company is also taking steps to help users limit the amount of time they spend with particular apps and to fight back against the tactics Facebook and other companies use to repeatedly lure them back into their services. Among them: an upgraded version of its Do Not Disturb feature, more robust parental controls, a feature called Screen Time that will help users track the amount of time they're spending with particular apps, and another one called App Limits that will allow users to curtail the amount of time they're spending with certain apps.

In showing off the new App Limits feature for the iPhone, Apple used Facebook-owned Instagram as its example for an app that might be block for exceeding preset time limits. Apple In showing off Screen Time, the Facebook app was listed prominently at the top of the example list of apps that a hypothetical user spent the most time with. And in demonstrating App Limits, the app that got cut off was Instagram, which Facebook owns.

"Some apps demand more of our attention than we might even realize," Federighi said. "They beg us to use our phone when we really should be occupying ourselves with something else."

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Over the last year, Cook has repeatedly criticized Facebook for the amount of data it collects on its users and what it does with that information. Following Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the data on up to 87 million of the social network's users was improperly obtained by a Trump-linked consulting firm, he was asked what he would do if he were in Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's place. Cook's response: "I wouldn't be in that situation."

Apple has tried to distinguish itself from the other big tech giants, particularly Facebook and Google, by promoting its privacy and security practices. Unlike those and other tech giants, Apple isn't dependent on advertising, instead getting the nearly all of its revenue from sales of devices and related services.

The changes also come amid growing criticism of tech companies, including Apple, for designing devices and services that encourage what many have called a kind of addiction among their users. Apple had promised earlier this year to take steps to give users more control over their devices and apps.

Apple's next major update to its main computer operating system, MacOS, is coming this fall. The update is named Mojave, and it will cost nothing to upgrade.

Mojave brings a slew of changes to Apple computers, but the biggest change of all is something more subtle: Some apps from the iPhone/iPad (iOS) will work on MacOS. It's the latest example of Apple blurring the lines between its two main computer ecosystems — iOS and MacOS — and it starts with Voice Memos, Apple News, Stocks, and Home, all new apps coming to the Mac with Mojave.

Some iOS developers will be able to bring over their apps to MacOS, enabling for easier interoperability between the two versions.

Before introducing this major change, Apple senior VP of software engineer Craig Federighi explicitly pointed out that this shouldn't be misconstrued as the "merging" of iOS and MacOS.

"Are you merging iOS and MacOS?" he said. "I'd like to take a moment to briefly address this question."

Screenshot

"No, of course not. We love the Mac, and we love MacOS, because it's explicitly created for the unique characteristics of Mac hardware," Federighi said.

That said, starting in 2019, some iOS app developers will be able to move over their app to the MacOS platform using new tools created by Apple.

But that's not the only change coming in the next version of MacOS — here's a breakdown of everything Apple showcased, from "Dark Mode" to a major new privacy push:

Twitter closed up 3.41% Monday to settle at $3.7.90, its best level in three years.

Shares got off to a red-hot start in 2018, rallying more than 50% by the middle of March. That move was propelled by a fourth-quarter 2017 earnings report that boasted the company's first-ever net profit. That marked the fifth straight quarter of double-digit daily active user growth, which Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said "points to better engagement from its core user base." He concluded that the company is "on the road to recovery."

But, shares surrendered the bulk of those gains in the wake of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica data scandal. As investors sold Facebook shares amid concerns that new data regulation would hurt user growth and advertising prices, so too did they sell Twitter stock.

But share once again rebounded, due in large part to another strong earnings report. First-quarter earnings beat Wall Street expectations in almost every category, and the stock hasn't looked back since.

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Twitter is up 58% this year.

Radio advertising is going digital thanks to streaming-music services like Pandora and Spotify, and Google wants a piece of the small but growing space.

The tech giant has plugged its programmatic buying platform into Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Play Music, and TuneIn so that advertisers can buy audio ads directly from DoubleClick Bid Manager the same way they do for display and video ads. It says ad inventory from Pandora, which is building a version of a programmatic platform through the $145 million acquisition of AdsWizz, will also be added in the next couple of months.

Buzz around programmatic audio advertising has been slowly building up for a few years, but the market for digital audio advertising represents only a fraction of overall radio ad spending. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, $1.6 billion was spent on audio ads within the US last year. To compare, advertisers spent about $18.2 billion on radio ads in 2017.

Streaming audio is a tiny but potentially lucrative market

While the market is small, there's significant opportunity to crack into the space as more programming shifts to streaming, said Payam Shodjai, the director of product management at Google.

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"Radio advertising has existed for 95 years — it's a little bit different from how digital ads have been auctioned," he said.

In terms of targeting, programmatic audio ads can be targeted based on demographic and age but are "not as complicated or involved as programmatic in general," he said.

Part of the reason it has taken marketers so long to go in on programmatic audio is because radio buyers are hesitant about digital's shaky conversion metrics that track whether someone purchased a product after hearing an ad for it, said John Rosso, the president of market development at Triton Digital, a supply-side platform that helps broadcasters shift to streaming.

Instead, the programmatic audio industry leans on many of the same metrics used to track digital ads, such as completion rates, impressions, and time spent, as well as stats that measure whether someone pauses a song.

"Programmatic has always been conversion-driven whereas audio and traditional radio [measures] more upper-funnel and branding activities," Rosso said. Big brands that have run ads through Triton's programmatic audio marketplace include Ford, McDonald's and Walgreens.

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Another challenge: The inventory for audio ads is far smaller than for display ads that can appear in every nook and cranny of a website.

"Unlike display advertising, there's not an endless supply," Rosso said. "In audio, even though the business is growing, the publishers don't just add more units."

Google

Ad-tech firms are getting into the space

Meanwhile, the programmatic audio space is getting crowded for ad-tech firms that all want a bigger slice of advertisers' budgets. For example, Triton Digital works with 300 vendors — including The Trade Desk, AppNexus, and MediaMath — that essentially help marketers transact with streaming apps and services, Rosso said.

Then there's Pandora, which is building its programmatic pipes through the acquisition of AdsWizz. In addition to Pandora, AdsWizz also works with Spotify and Cox Media Group.

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The streaming app is beta testing programmatic buying through AdsWizz, The Trade Desk, and MediaMath and plans to integrate with Google to "leverage demand through DoubleClick Bid Manager," said Chris Record, the senior vice president of platform and partner operations at Pandora.

On top of the growth in voice-enabled devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, "there's a fairly constrained supply of quality video" inventory online, Record said.

"More and more audiences are in front of their connected TV or are in front of a connected speaker," he added. "It's going to be important for advertisers to tap into that growing audio inventory."

Investors may love Apple's plan to reduce its massive cash balance to $0, but what would Steve Jobs think?

Given how Jobs ran the company after he returned to it in the late 1990s, one might suppose that he would hate the plan. But one of his former close collaborators at Apple thinks Jobs would have eventually embraced it, or at least something like it, albeit likely belated and possibly begrudgingly. The fact that the company is overflowing with cash would have forced him to.

"I do think ultimately he would have come around to it," said Fred Anderson, who served as Apple's chief financial officer from 1996 to 2004, during most of which time Jobs was its CEO. "With the massive operating cash flows, I think he would have returned cash to shareholders."

On its face, Apple's plan to get down to $0 in net cash would seem contrary to the financial ethos Jobs helped instill in the company.

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When Jobs returned to Apple in the late 1990s, the computer maker was weeks away from running out of money, an experience that shaped Jobs' outlook for the rest of his term there. Over the next 14 years, under his leadership, the company paid off its debts and stockpiled cash.

Under Jobs, Apple cut unprofitable products from its lineup, emphasizing a handful of big money makers. It gained tight control over its inventory and logistical operations to the point where it needed little working capital. And it avoided major acquisitions. Collectively, the steps helped turn the company into a cash machine.

Jobs famously eschewed the idea of giving out some of Apple's mounting stockpile to shareholders. Even long after Apple had returned to firm financial ground and was generating cash by the boatload, he refused to reinstate a dividend, which the company had discontinued during its days of financial duress. And while Apple's board put in place a $500 million stock repurchase plan in 1999, the company under Jobs never bought back all the stock it was authorized to buy under the program.

Because of Apple's near-death experience, "Steve retained his conservative outlook and wanting to have a strong cash position," Anderson said.

Apple's a much different company than when Jobs returned to it

But the Apple of today is a fundamentally different company than when Jobs resumed control and nursed it back to health, Anderson said. The company isn't in any danger of dying. It's generating more than enough cash each quarter to fund the development of new products and to tide it through a possible downturn.

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In fact, when it comes to cash, the biggest problem Apple now faces isn't how to ensure it has enough set aside, but how to go about purging its surplus.

Under Jobs' successor, Tim Cook, Apple has been much less tight-fisted about its finances. In 2014, Apple made its first billion-dollar acquisition when it bought Beats. Over the last five years, it has more than tripled its research-and-development spending. It has nearly tripled its capital expenditures over the last six years.

What's more, unlike Jobs, Cook embraced the idea of giving some of Apple's cash to shareholders. Soon after he replaced Jobs, he restarted Apple's dividend program and then launched a succession of gigantic stock repurchase programs. Last year, for example, Apple spent a whopping $32.9 billion buying back stock and handed out another $12.8 billion in dividends.

To help fund those programs without having to repatriate and pay taxes on its overseas stockpile, Apple under Cook also took on massive amounts of debt. At the end of its most recent quarter, Apple had $101 billion in long-term debt, up from $0 when Jobs left the company.

Apple has become a 'cash-flow machine'

Even so, even with all this profligacy, Apple still has more cash than it seems to know what to do with. In its last fiscal year, for example, the company's net cash balance — the difference between its cash and marketable securities on the one hand and its debt on the other — actually increased by $6.5 billion, even in spite of all the money it invested or returned to shareholders.

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"Apple has all the money it needs for organic growth," Anderson said. "They're like a cash-flow machine."

And if a company has too much cash that its not profitably reinvesting, it can actually be a drag on its shares, because the stockpile depresses the company's return on equity.

Jobs eventually would have recognized the situation the company was in, Anderson said. To be sure, it would probably have taken a lot of education, and he likely wouldn't have come around as fast or as far as Cook did.

"I think he probably wouldn't have gone so far as zero net cash," Anderson said.

But Jobs would have seen the necessity of finding a way to dispense Apple's cash rather than hoarding it, Anderson said.

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"Given the magnitude of the build-up in cash, he would have come around," he said.

And for his part, Anderson, now a managing director at venture-capital firm NextEquity Partners, thinks Apple's plan to disperse cash to shareholders is a good one.

"My bottom line is it makes total sense to me," he said.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff may have an affinity for Hawaiian culture, but it's a Japanese phrase which holds the most weight when it comes to making big decisions at the $93 billion tech company.

That phrase is shoshin, Japanese for a "beginner's mind," and a tenet of Zen Buddhism. Shoshin refers to an attitude of open-mindedness and endless possibility which many people have when they first start a project or learn something new.

The idea is to never get stuck doing something one way just because it was done that way in the past.

In a call with investors Tuesday after its blockbuster quarterly earnings report, Benioff and chief product officer Bret Taylor both referenced the concept when asked whether Salesforce is committed to exclusively offering its software via the cloud.

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"We're not attached to any sort of religious dogma around the cloud," Benioff said. "We're going to do what's best for our customers and for our company."

When Salesforce was founded in 1999, it was one of the first companies to offer cloud-based software, and one of the first to fully embrace the notion of Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS. Under the SaaS model, a company doesn't need to run software on its own servers, instead accessing it via the internet.

Salesforce's run as a cloud-only company lasted until May when it acquired MuleSoft for $6.8 billion. With the deal, Salesforce got MuleSoft's on-premise offering — a version of its services that can be installed on a company's own servers. It's the exact opposite of the cloud model.

While MuleSoft will stay as is, and keep the on-premise offering, both Benioff and Taylor reassured investors that it's not a sign of things to come. Salesforce doesn't plan to move its legacy products to a hybrid-cloud model, which uses a combination of the public cloud and private servers, the executives said.

The executives highlighted the convenience that cloud brings for customers, especially at a company like Salesforce where the service is updated three times a year.

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But with shoshin front of mind, they stopped short of saying Salesforce is definitively a cloud-only company.

Salesforce is on the cloud, Taylor said, "because it means we can deliver innovation to our customers faster," but ultimately that could change if customers' needs evolve to require on-premise services.

"We'll continue to have that beginners mind," Taylor said.

Marc Benioff relies on these monks for guidance — here are their tips for holding better, more mindful meetings

The messaging app got some bad publicity last year, when it was reported that many alt-right; "incel," or male supremacist; and other hate groups were using it to meet, talk, and plan real-life gatherings, particularly ahead of the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last August. The app allows users to chat anonymously and privately, which helped attract the groups.

Discord's developers have since banned many of those hate groups. But identifying and ousting them can be like playing a game of whack-a-mole; even after they're banned, many come back in other places.

Still, in general, Discord is safe. No one can join a channel except by invitation, and users have to choose to join them. So no one can make you view or post content you're not interested in.

Discord also offers you the ability to block content that's unsuitable for work and to disconnect from servers at any time. You can easily mute or block individual users and prevent anyone you don't know from adding you as a friend.

Even so, such features won't necessarily prevent all harassment or bullying within particular text or voice channels.

For parents who are concerned about their teens using Discord to chat with friends, I recommend the same amount of caution you would have with social-media sites such as Twitter or Reddit. I suggest you read Discord's Community Guidelines and the Parent's Guide to Discord, written by one of the service's developers.

Apple may be getting back into the mobile advertising business.

The iPhone maker has held talks with Snap, Pinterest, and other companies about them joining an Apple-designed ad network, The Wall Street Journal reported. The network would place ads in the companies' apps, and Apple would share ad revenue with the companies, according to the report.

At least as it's being conceived, the effort would build off of the business Apple runs of selling promotional ads for apps in its App Store, The Journal reported. The new network would help developers promote their apps inside other apps. The apps would be displayed when users searched using certain keywords in Pinterest, say, or Snapchat, according to the report.

It's not clear whether or when Apple will launch the new ad network.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook has been highly critical of other tech companies, particularly Facebook, that have built their businesses around advertising, charging that they collect far too much information on their customers. But Apple is no stranger to the advertising game.

The company in 2010 launched the iAd network with the aim of placing ads in mobile apps. But the service got little traction, and Apple shut it down in 2016. That same year, the company launched its app promotion ads in the App Store.

However, Apple tends to collect and use less information about its users when targeting ads than do its rivals.