There's an astonishing amount of life out there that we still know almost nothing about.

But if we're not careful, most of those creatures could be lost before we get a chance to get to learn how they're uniquely adapted for life on Earth. Every year, approximately 18,000 new species are named and classified. But we believe about 20,000 species go extinct annually.

Highlighting the need to preserve biodiversity is the motivation behind the annual "Top 10 New Species for 2018" list, which is put together by the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF).

Since 2008, ESF has selected 10 newly discovered and named species that demonstrate how large, small, beautiful, and bizarre the unknown life out there really is. The list is released every May 23 in recognition of the birthday of Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who developed the modern system of taxonomy that we still use to classify animals down to their genus and species.

The newest list includes a tree that can stretch more than 130 feet into the sky and a single-celled creature that was discovered in an aquarium and doesn't fit neatly into any known group of similar organisms. A beetle that disguises itself as part of an ant and an extinct marsupial lion that used to roam Australia are also featured.

"So many of these species — if we don't find them, name them and describe them now — will be lost forever. And yet they can teach us so much about the intricacies of ecosystems and the details of evolutionary history," ESF president Quentin Wheeler said in a news release. "Each of them has found a way to survive against the odds of changing competition, climate and environmental conditions. So each can teach us something really worth knowing as we face an uncertain environmental future ourselves."

There are the ESF's top 10 new species for 2018.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk criticized the media in a series of Twitter posts he wrote on Wednesday.

Musk began by linking to an Electrek article that featured a note written by Baird analyst Ben Kallo that said "increasingly immaterial reports [about Tesla] have dominated news cycles."

"The holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them," Musk wrote.

Musk's tweet received a reply from Verge reporter Andrew J. Hawkins, who called Musk a "media-baiting Trump figure."

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"Musk continues his slow transformation into a media-baiting Trump figure screaming irrationally about fake news. Hope it works out for you dude!" Hawkins wrote.

"Thought you'd say that," Musk replied. "Anytime anyone criticizes the media, the media shrieks 'You're just like Trump!' Why do you think he got elected in the first place? Because no ones believes you any more. You lost your credibility a long time ago."

In another tweet, Musk wrote that the problem with the media was that journalists were under pressure to draw attention to their stories and bring their publications advertising dollars.

"Tricky situation, as Tesla doesn't advertise, but fossil fuel companies & gas/diesel car companies are among world's biggest advertisers," Musk wrote.

Musk also wrote that he would start a website that would evaluate "the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication." Musk said he'd consider naming the website "Pravda," a name shared by the former official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

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In Tesla's 2017 annual report, the company said media coverage was one of the primary factors that drove sales for its vehicles.

"Historically, we have been able to generate significant media coverage of our company and our vehicles, and we believe we will continue to do so," the report reads. "To date, for vehicle sales, media coverage and word of mouth have been the primary drivers of our sales leads and have helped us achieve sales without traditional advertising and at relatively low marketing costs."

Tesla has faced a number of challenges in recent months, including missed production goals, questions about the company's financial health, and concerns about working conditions at the Fremont, California, factory where the company makes its cars.

Musk has been outspoken about the criticism that Tesla has received, and the media's reporting on it. During the company's first-quarter earnings call in early May, Musk expressed frustration about the media attention that Autopilot — Tesla's semiautonomous driver-assistance feature — has received after fatal accidents involving the system.

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"It's really incredibly irresponsible of any journalists with integrity to write an article that would lead people to believe that autonomy is less safe. Because people might actually turn it off, and then die," he said.

The chief executive of a crypto tech company born out of a reverse takeover of a fitness clothing firm is out, according to a company filing.

Michael Poutre, the former chief executive of The Crypto Company, resigned from the firm on May 14. He was replaced by former president James Gilbert.

The Crypto Company made headlines during the crypto boom at the end of 2017, which saw bitcoin soar close to $20,000 a coin and The Crypto Company's stock appreciate by as much as 1,600%. On paper, Poutre - who owned a fifth of the firm's shares - became a multi-billionaire at the peak, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. He was worth $3.9 billion, The Journal reported.

Bitcoin is now trading at around $7,600 a coin.

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Shares in the Crypto Company, which trade in OTC markets, were up 111% on Wednesday afternoon. Shares exchanged hands at around $42.50, down from an all-time high above $640 a share.

The Crypto Company, which was developing technologies relating to crypto market structure, was born out of a reverse takeover of Croe Inc. Croe, a fitness clothing company, was developing a new type of sports bra.

"Our strategy is to invest in the capital markets infrastructure for crypto," Poutre told Business Insider in an interview in December.

The company then announced it was planning on splitting its stock in ten, as Business Insider first reported. Regulators denied that request, according to a filing.

"On March 1, 2018, we received a letter from FINRA rejecting the Stock Split on the basis of deficiency and in the interest of the protection of investors, the public interest and to maintain fair and orderly markets," the filing said.

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A former stock broker, Poutre was suspended by FINRA for two years in 2010.

It's getting harder and harder to find a cheap and cheerful new car these days. Even though cars are getting better by the day, they're also getting more expensive. In fact, average transaction price of a new car has gone up 3.3% over the past year. But fear not, the folks at Kelley Blue Book have come up with a list of 10 cool cars that can be had for less than $20,000.

According to KBB, affordable cars can be cool for a variety of reasons ranging from styling to technology to driving dynamics.

Honda and Hyundai led the way with two cars each on the list. KBB praised the Honda Civic for its cool tech and overall excellent packaging. The company's fit received earned plaudits for its versatility and driving dynamics.

KBB's staff loved the Hyundai Elantra's wide array of stand features and its likable styling while the brand's Kona crossover modern styling and advanced safety features drew praise. The Soul crossover from Hyundai's sister brand, Kia, won acclaim for its bold looks and SUV-like versatility.

Chevrolet's subcompact Sonic is one of only tw0 models from an American brand on the list. It also proved to be the list's most affordable car with a starting price of just $15,295. The other is the American to make the cut is the Jeep Renegade. The only European model on the list, the Volkswagen Golf, is also the most expensive with an MSRP of $20,910. However, entry into the list is based on KBB's fair purchase price data which indicates the Golf is available for less than $20,000.

Subaru's Impreza made the list with its sharp looks, great tech features, and refinement. And finally, there's the Mazda 3. It's the top-ranked car on the list. In fact, this is the 15th time the Mazda 3 has made it onto the KBB list.

"Widely regarded as the best-looking and most fun-to-drive vehicle in its segment, the Mazda3 is the all-time champion of our budget-minded coolest cars list," the publication wrote.

Here's a closer look at all 10 of KBB's coolest cars for under $20,000:

Markets Insider

Bitcoin cash sank more than 12% Wednesday, falling below $1,000 for the first time since April.

The fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap is now trading near $997 per token, even after its recent fork which increased its block size fourfold.

"The Bitcoin Cash network has been displaying some erratic behaviour over the past few weeks, which has contributed to the downwards pressure on prices," Iqbal Gandham, managing director for eToro, a British crypto firm, told Business Insider in an email. "Despite a recent surge, it’s now moving towards the head and shoulders pattern we’ve seen since last year."

Last week, bitcoin cash upgraded its software with a patch known as Bitcoin ABC, which increased the size of transaction blocks on the network from 8mb to 32mb. The upgrade also removed the Segwit protocol, short for segregated witness, a process by which the number of transactions in a block can be increased by moving certain signature data from transactions to the end of the block. 

Bitcoin cash has been accused of misleading investors by piggy-backing off the bitcoin name. While the new cryptocurrency includes the history of the original bitcoin's transactions up until the split, since the fork, the two currencies are unrelated except for their shared history and name.

Vocal bitcoin cash supporter Roger Ver, who owns bitcoin.com via an LLC registered at a Marriott resort on St. Kitts, and refers to the original bitcoin as "bitcoin core," has appeared on numerous internet talk shows, including the conspiracy-theory site InfoWars, to promote the coin.

"For over a year Bitcoin cash has been fighting the battle to become the 'default' bitcoin, a battle which traditionalists are not keen to lose," Gandham said. "This lack of clarity, has repeatedly called into question the authenticity of Bitcoin cash, and until that is resolved the direction of price movement will always carry an air of uncertainty.”

On Monday, OnePlus hosted a small event at a pop-up store in New York where people lined up around the block to get a chance to buy the new OnePlus 6 smartphone.

Those at the head of the line started lining up around 6:30 a.m., more than 12 hours before the store opened its doors. Others took days off work and traveled from New Jersey and Long Island to stand in line. There were even some tourists from Italy.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider

One of the only other phones that sees massive lines of eager buyers is a new Apple iPhone.

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Few Android phones have garnered as much hype as the OnePlus 6. More than 15,000 people were lining up for the phone in 26 cities across 11 countries, according to a tweet from OnePlus.

And yet it's not a massively popular device. In New York, I'll see many more Samsung and Apple phones than OnePlus devices. Pedestrians walking by the line who asked me what it was for had no idea what OnePlus was.

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While it might not be a popular device, the $530 OnePlus 6 is a fantastic smartphone that easily contends with the $1,000 iPhone X. It doesn't have features like wireless charging or an official water-resistance rating like the iPhone X, but OnePlus fans waiting in line made it clear that they don't really care about those kinds of things — most were lured by the OnePlus 6's comparatively low price tag and supreme performance.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider

Some people in line even owned the Samsung Galaxy S9, which is barely two months old and has almost every feature under the sun. They were willing to switch to the OnePlus 6, a phone with fewer features.

Why?

"Stock Android" was the most common answer, referring to the clean, simple version of Android you'd usually find on OnePlus devices and on Google's Pixel 2. Samsung's version of Android is altered, and the company's redesigns can result in slower performance, at least compared with phones that run stock Android.

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Unfortunately, you won't find OnePlus phones at your carrier's store to try — you'll need to head over to the OnePlus website if you're interested in buying it. But you can take my glowing coverage of the OnePlus 6 and the massive lines that OnePlus loyalists form as an indication that it is, indeed, a great smartphone. Just note that it's not available on Verizon.

Despite their huge rivalry, Amazon typically buys lots of ads on Google. But lately something fishy's been going on.

Last month, ad agency Merkle, which handles $900 million in annual US search spend for advertisers, noticed that Amazon suddenly stopped buying advertisements in Google Shopping results, a coveted section at the top of the page where brands battle to outbid each other on queries such as "office supplies" and "home decor."

Google's ad auction prioritizes and places images of products that users can click on to buy products. Thus, Amazon often competes against retailers like Target and Walmart to be featured most prominently. According to Merkle's estimates, Amazon spent $50 million on product listing ads (PLAs) in 2017.

So when links for the e-commerce juggernaut that is Amazon abruptly disappeared, Merkle wondered whether Amazon was beefing up its own copycat version of Google's ad format to compete for search budgets.

"It's hard to guess at why Amazon changed course," wrote Andy Taylor, associate director of research at Merkle, in a blog post. "The wide breadth of its product offering, competitive pricing and ever expanding group of Prime members make it a formidable competitor."

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

Then last Wednesday, Merkle reported that Amazon's ads were suddenly back for a handful of product queries.

Regardless of the reason for Amazon's switch off and on, media buyers see Amazon as a threat to the duopoly of Google and Facebook that controls the bulk of digital advertising spend. "They are coming, and they are coming big time," former WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell told attendees just this week at the Digital Media Summit in New York.

Business Insider caught up with Taylor at Merkle to discuss the Amazon hype, and why the company still has a long way to go to compete against Facebook and Google.

Lauren Johnson: What happened? Did Amazon pull the ad spend themselves or was Google involved, too?

Andy Taylor: I think this is an Amazon-driven decision to pause their ads. It's hard to say why—it could have been an incremental test, which a lot of advertisers go through from time to time to get a sense for how many orders they would be getting otherwise. That gives you a better sense on how valuable the ads are to your business. It's possible they were doing something like that.

Andy Taylor is associate director of research at Merkle. Merkle

Johnson: And now they're back to running ads?

Taylor: We only just started noticing them [Wednesday] morning pop up in shopping results—it seems like they're present for a number of different products at this point. It's too early for us to quantify it because our competitive insight reports that we download from Google AdWords takes a couple of days to populate with data.

We've seen them pop up for office supply queries. If you navigate to Google Shopping and start doing different searches and start filtering for Amazon.com, you can see a number of home goods-related products.

We had been seeing them decline in how prevalent they were in shopping results even at the end of the first quarter. Their impression share started to fall so it will be interesting to see if they'll [get] back to the end of first-quarter level or if they've completely reversed it and have the same presence that they had prior to that, which was strong.

Johnson: How significantly was Amazon promoted within Google shopping ads before you noticed the drop-off in the first quarter?

Taylor: Against home-goods advertisers, they were showing up for as many as 40% to 45% of impressions for relevant auctions. In mid-2017, we started seeing them spill over into related categories like office-supply advertisers and novelty gifts.

Johnson: How aggressive is Amazon developing its own version of product listing ads for marketers to buy?

Taylor: We've seen meaningful growth for our advertisers on Amazon. In the first quarter, Amazon spend increased 96% year-over-year, and that's just on sponsored product ads, which are most similar to Google shopping listings. Amazon also has another ad product called headline search ads, which are carousel banner ads that are shown at the very top of Amazon—those increased 90% year-over-year in ad spend during Q1.

Pricing is what's driven a lot of the growth over the past year. It's gotten a lot more competitive. Certainly we see Amazon putting some effort into driving up that ad spend. At this point their platform is still pretty early going so there are a lot of things that they could add to help advertisers spend even more: Geographic targeting isn't currently available on Amazon, which is available through Google AdWords. But in terms of early-adopter growth, it's been very strong so far.

Johnson: What does Amazon offer targeting wise?

Taylor: Honestly, with search products it's pretty limited. One advantage that it has on Google is that these ads are keyword-targeted. On Google, you're using product bids where you bid for a particular product and Google decides which queries that product is relevant to. With Amazon, you can specify that a product be shown for a specific keyword.

But at this time, we don't have any device-bidding controls or any way to incorporate remarketing with or target different geographies with different products and keywords [on Amazon]. All of that stuff is available on Google but not on Amazon.

Johnson: What's the biggest misconception about Amazon from an advertising perspective?

Taylor: It might boil down to the targeting options. Because Amazon has so much information about the users that are searching on their website, the natural assumption would be that the targeting options would be very granular and tightly tied to the identities of these users. But really that's just not the case in terms of the targeting options that are available.

Microsoft has acquired an artificial intelligence startup, Semantic Machines, to bolster its efforts in "conversational AI" and potentially make its Cortana virtual assistant better at understanding natural language enquiries.

Microsoft didn't disclose how much it paid for Semantic Machines, but said it would open a new AI research centre in Semantic Machines' hometown of Berkeley.

Semantic Machines is made up of a number if AI veterans, and gives Microsoft access to some formidable talent. Larry Gillick is Semantic's chief technology officer and a former chief speech scientist for Apple's Siri. Microsoft also namechecked UC Berkeley professor Dan Klein and Stanford University professor Percy Liang.

Several Semantic staffers also worked at Nuance, the voice recognition company once powered Siri. Semantic's chief executive, Dan Roth, was cofounder of Voice Signal Technologies, which was acquired by Nuance in 2007.

Microsoft explained that most AI doesn't really understand much human communication, something that anyone who's put anything more than the simplest question to Siri will already know. "Most of today's bots and intelligent assistants respond to simple commands and queries, such as giving a weather report, playing a song or sharing a reminder, but aren't able to understand meaning or carry on conversations," Microsoft wrote in a company blog announcing the acquisition.

Semantic Machines' team and technology might fix that, by helping digital assistants like Cortana have a "natural dialogue."

"We call this 'conversational AI,'" Microsoft added.

Microsoft has been experimenting for some time in this space. Aside from Cortana, the company has dabbled in chatbots, though not always with great success. Its Chinese chatbot Xiaoice has millions of loyal followers who talk to it. But earlier chatbot experiments, such as Tay and Zo, spouted racist and anti-Microsoft messaging and had to be shut down.

A striking league table has shown that Facebook and YouTube are the worst offenders when it comes to exposing children to some of the darkest and most adult themes on the internet.

Britain's highest-profile children's charity, the NSPCC, produced the league table after gathering reviews from more than 4,000 parents and young people. It features the "riskiest sites" when it comes to content involving suicide, violence, bullying, sex, and other adult themes.

You can see the table below. Facebook and YouTube posed a "high" risk to kids across all the categories examined, with a one in four chance of young people encountering adult content. They were therefore slapped with a red warning light. Business Insider has contacted both companies for comment.

NSPCC

Game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" was ranked as being just as bad as Facebook and YouTube, while at the other end of the table were Tumblr and social media app Yellow. Another interesting result showed that Instagram, usually lauded as a positive place, was rated high for bullying and sexual content.

A 16-year-old girl told the NSPCC: "When you're watching a video of something like a makeup artist, a video can be at the side of something completely different that could be sexual/hurtful or anything else. It's easy to get yourself into a bad video." A 13-year-old Facebook user added: "I don't like that just random people can send you a friend request."

The NSPCC and other charities wrote to the British government with its findings and marked Facebook and YouTube out for particular criticism. John Carr, secretary of the UK Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet Safety, said:

"Facebook and YouTube still do not provide any meaningful information on the volume of reports relating to children, and the outcomes of such reports. These are woeful examples of the transparency that we can expect if we continue with self-regulation.

"The effect of this lack of transparency is that social networks are not being held to account for the measures they take to protect children, nor are they held to account for whether these measures are effective."

British Culture Secretary Matt Hancock.Parliamentlive.tv

The findings were published a day after the British government announced that it would introduce laws to rein in social media companies over the next two years. Culture Secretary Matt Hancock said he wants to fine the likes of Facebook and Snapchat for allowing children under the age of 13 to sign up for accounts.

Hancock told the BBC's "The Andrew Marr Show" on Sunday that the government invited 14 companies to discuss better protections for children, and only four showed up. According to a green paper published by the government, those who did turn up appear to include Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

"The fact that only four turned up gave me a big impetus to drive this legislation through," Hancock said. "Until now there's been this argument: Work with the companies, do it on a voluntary basis, you'll do more that way because the lawyers won't be involved."

A Chinese high school is using facial recognition technology to monitor and analyze students' behaviour.

The technology scans classrooms at Hangzhou No. 11 High School every 30 seconds and records students' facial expressions, categorizing them into happy, angry, fearful, confused or upset. The system also records student actions such as writing, reading, raising a hand, and sleeping at a desk.

The "intelligent classroom behavior management system," according to Global Times, also records students' attendance immediately, and students' faces are used to pay for canteen lunches and borrow items from the library.

The school's vice principal said students' privacy is protected because the technology doesn't save actual images from the classroom and stores data on a local server rather than the cloud.

Last year Chinese company Qihoo 360 shut down hundreds of its surveillance livestreaming channels after an uptick in privacy concerns. The channels streamed camera footage from several public locations including swimming pools, restaurants, and classrooms — the latter protected only by a password.

But security systems are rising in popularity after an increase in violence and questionable practices at Chinese kindergartens. In Beijing, all kindergartens are now required to have surveillance systems, some of which are even connected to local police monitoring systems.

The use of facial-recognition technology is soaring in China, where it is being used to increase efficiency and improve policing. Cameras are used to catch jaywalkers, find fugitives, track people's regular hangouts, and even predict crime before it happens.

But China isn't the only country introducing surveillance in schools. Earlier this year, India's capital territory Delhi said it would implement surveillance cameras at all governments schools, allowing parents to stream classroom footage in real time.

The mobile-ad company Kargo closed out 2015 crossing the $100 million revenue threshold. A few years later, the company decided to blow everything up.

Kargo made its name building an ad network that sold a variety of custom mobile banners for publishers such as CNN, but over the past six months it's deliberately ripped up its business model. Instead of selling ads on a deal-by-deal basis, it has raced to morph into a software-driven ad platform.

That's meant turning over a significant portion of staff — less than 15%, according to CEO Harry Kargman — to replace traditional ad-sales executives and operators with engineering and data-oriented talent.

Indeed, Kargo has essentially endured what many digital publishers have gone through: It's had to ditch old-fashioned people-centric ad selling for building technology that allows marketers to plug in and buy ads as needed.

"We had a great high-end business, and in 2017 the market basically flipped on us in a six-month period," Kargman told Business Insider.

Kargman said he'd braced for programmatic advertising to affect his company for a few years. But given its mobile-ad focus, where ads and data and targeting don't operate mechanically the same way they do in the desktop world, things moved slower than expected.

Then things changed fast last year, and Kargo had to go through this reinvention in a truncated period, he said.

"We've been ready and waiting for this day," Kargman said. "Because there is this massive transformation taking place [in digital media]." Then mobile-ad-buying tech suddenly caught up. "It slammed us."

Kargman said Kargo's ad revenue was still 90% directly sold a year ago. Today, it's 50-50, programmatic versus direct, thanks to the company building its own custom supply-side platform, or SSP.

Among the brands that have been tapping into the Kargo SSP are Target, Microsoft, Verizon, Discover, and Unilever.

"After testing the approach, we've been able to scale our investment over the past few years due to strong results," Luis Di Como, senior vice president of global media at Unilever, said.

Last year, Kargo saw a just over double-digit decrease in its traditional ad-network business, while its automated ad demand tripled, despite having to work through a "whole host of plumbing problems."

Kargo has been pivoting its business while trying to move past legal headaches

Looming over Kargo's business shift has been an ugly lawsuit. A former Kargo sales executive was awarded $40 million last year after alleging that she faced wage discrimination at the company.

Kargo executives have contended that the employee in questions had faced performance issues.

Kargman lamented that the lawsuit happened, but said the company was not in the wrong and that the recent layoffs had nothing to do with the payout.

"Any time that you're in a lawsuit it is tough," he said. "It's sad, and we're glad it's behind us. We legally don't believe we did anything wrong. But I personally take responsibility."

Kargman said that in hindsight he wished the situation could have been handled without human resources and lawyers. "We could have had better bedside manners."

Becoming an engineering company

Even though Kargo has had to let go of staff — and reduce its footprint in Europe, thanks to GDPR, according to The Drum— the company has 15 jobs open, mostly in the data and analytics realm, Kargman said. The company is closing in on 250 staffers, including 70 in its engineering and product team, up from 30 a few years ago.

"We had to change up the constitution of the people here," he said. That has included hiring Edric Chan, who just joined Kargo as its head of programmatic, after a similar role at the ad-tech firm The Trade Desk.

"We just had our largest-ever fourth quarter last year," said Kargman, adding that Kargo's revenue is now significantly north of $100 million. "This move says that we're committed to figuring out to best serve our customers, and how to scale this business. Edric can actually take it and run with it."

Earth seems drenched with water from mountaintop to ocean bottom.

But our home planet is a desert compared to some places the solar system, both in terms of its total water volume and the amount of liquid on Earth relative to its size.

Consider Jupiter's ice-encrusted moon Europa, which is smaller than Earth's moon. Scientists recently used 20-year-old Voyager data to find even more evidence that Europa has twice as much water as our planet. Even tiny Pluto may have an ocean nearly as large as Earth's.

Steve Vance, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has kept a close eye on research about ocean worlds over the years. He has rounded up estimates of ice thickness and ocean depth throughout the solar system to calculate roughly how much water may exist.

The graphic below uses Vance's data and other sources to show the probable volume of liquid water on nine known ocean worlds, including Earth:

Earth dwarfs other ocean worlds in the solar system, but several Europa, Pluto, and others have bigger oceans of liquid water. Jenny Cheng/Business Insider

Amounts of water are shown in zettaliters (ZL), a unit that's equal to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters or 1 billion cubic kilometers. Earth harbors about 1.335 ZL of water, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In order of how much liquid water each world is estimated to have (from least to most), the ranking is: Enceladus, Triton, Dione, Pluto, Earth, Europa, Callisto, Titan, and Ganymede.

Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter, is the wettest world in the solar system for another big reason: A staggering 69% of its total volume may be liquid water, which is more than any other on the list.

Mimas, a moon of Saturn, and Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system, might also have oceans. But scientists aren't yet sure how big each one might be, if they exist at all. More space missions are required to find out.

NASA is currently planning a mission to Europa to map the icy moon in unprecedented detail. The Europa Clipper is expected to launch between 2022 and 2025. The probe will hopefully give us a better estimate of the size of Europa's ocean, and repeatedly "taste and sniff" water plumes spraying from its surface.

The European Space Agency is planning a similar mission called the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, which may launch in 2022 and reach Jupiter in 2030. That mission calls for two flybys of Europa and an 8-month orbit of Ganymede.

One of these robots could discover the first signs of alien life hundreds of millions of miles from Earth.

Prime is Amazon's crown jewel.

The membership is one of the most important parts of the company's offerings, and Amazon takes great care to keep it competitive.

Prime customers are Amazon's most frequent and valuable customers. CEO Jeff Bezos recently revealed that there are now more than 100 million people around the world paying for the service.

Prime members got some bad news when Amazon announced in April that it would raise the annual price of membership by $20 a year, from $99 to $119. Amazon previously announced it would increase the price of monthly Prime memberships from $10.99 to $12.99.

There has been some speculation that the higher price of Prime might make some reconsider paying for another year of membership, but most experts don't think a drop in subscriptions would actually happen based on how many people have reported having positive experiences with the service.

While many might associate Prime solely with its two-day-shipping guarantee, it also entails other benefits like video and music streaming, and there are some items that are available only to Prime members, which creates value.

Just last week Prime members were given another perk: big discounts at Whole Foods to be rolled out at stores this summer. Amazon keeps adding perks just when customers might quit over rising prices.

The value of Prime has risen steadily as Amazon has added more benefits to the program over the years. A recent JP Morgan analysis estimated that the service is actually worth $785 a year when everything it offers is counted together. That's six and a half times the actual cost of an annual Prime subscription, even with the price increase. It's also an increase of about 12% from what JP Morgan estimated Prime to be worth last year, when its analysts said membership was worth $700 a year.

"Prime delivers such massive scale and features that we believe it would be very difficult for any company to replicate and compete against, and Amazon continues to expand and add more value to Prime by adding new benefits and growing existing offerings," the analysts wrote.

That means that even if a customer does not take advantage of everything Prime membership has to offer, there's still the perception that they're getting a good value for their money.

"People are sensitive to losses, and price increases count as losses psychologically," Ryan Hamilton, a professor of marketing at Emory University, told the Washington Post. "The broader perspective, though, is that people tend to be willing to pay for what they perceive as value."

As Amazon adds services, it wants to make sure that when customers take a second look at whether they're really getting value for their money after the price increase, they're satisfied with their membership and will renew another year.

New products and services are one way Amazon does this, but it must take care that its current service standards don't slip in the meantime. Business Insider has spoken to and heard from many customers who claim that Prime shipping standards have slipped. It may all be a misunderstanding, however.

David Leitch may only have two feature films under his belt, but he's quickly becoming one of the most sought-after directors of action movies working today.

With the release of the highly anticipated "Deadpool 2," coming Friday, Leitch has proven with movie number three that he's not scared of the big stage — as it's destined to dethrone box-office champ "Avengers: Infinity War" and score a huge box-office opening weekend.

But he's not ready to sit back and take in his good fortune. He's gearing up for his next movie.

Leitch has signed on to direct the first spin-off of Universal's popular "Fast and the Furious" franchise, "Hobbs and Shaw," which will put the spotlight on Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Luke Hobbs and Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw.

David Leitch (R) on the set of "Deadpool 2." 20th Century Fox Both have been in multiple movies in the "Fast" franchise, but the two characters shined as an unlikely tandem in "The Fate of the Furious," and now they are getting their own movie.

"Dwayne and Jason's chemistry in that movie were some of my favorite stuff out of it," Leitch told Business Insider while doing press for "Deadpool 2" on Tuesday. "So to be able to spin something off and make it my own imprint in that universe, that's exciting."

Cameras don't begin running until September, but Leitch said there's a working draft of the script and is excited about the process right now of crafting the story — especially with the screenwriter the movie brought on.

"Chris Morgan is the writer and one of the producers. He's written a majority of the ['Fast and Furious'] movies," Letich said. "So we're having fun with that process right now."

Recently Johnson posted a picture on Instagram of him with Leitch and Statham, and wrote in the caption: "Been wanting to work with David for years now. Very talented and knows how to create and shoot bad ass, cool and FUN characters."

When asked if working with someone as social-media savvy as Johnson would take some getting used to, Leitch said the experience of working with Ryan Reynolds on "Deadpool 2" was a good primer.

"I think when you look at how Ryan and Dwayne handle social media and use it as a promotion of their art, they're both really great at it," Leitch said, who admitted that Reynolds' intimate involvement in the marketing strategy of "Deadpool 2" was something he'd never experienced on a movie before. "So there are a lot of lessons learned from Ryan in this experience that hopefully I can take that on to the experience I'm going to have with Dwayne and Jason."

"Hobbs and Shaw" is slated for release in July 2019.

Thanks to wife Serena Williams, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian scored an invite to the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at England's St. George's Chapel on Saturday.

"In London for my wife's friend's wedding," Ohanian shared to Twitter on Saturday.

So casual.

Celebrities, including Oprah, Amal and George Clooney, Elton John, David and Victoria Beckham, and many of Markle's "Suits" costars descended on Windsor Castle for the royal nuptials.

Ohanian, who is best known as one of the cofounders of Reddit, where he is still executive chairman, was the only tech industry A-lister spotted at the wedding event of the year.

His public profile has risen significantly since marrying tennis great Williams in 2017. The unlikely couple welcomed a baby girl, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., in September.

Ohanian had fun on Saturday sharing behind-the-scenes photos from the royal wedding.

Amazon is rumoured to be getting into the robot business.

The online retail giant is quietly developing consumer robots that can help customers around the home, with a potential launch date of 2019, Bloomberg reported.

According to one former senior executive at both Facebook and Google, the news is evidence of how Amazon is a "silent assassin" — and that the retailer could one day even give Facebook a run for its money.

Richard Wooldridge is a seasoned tech executive, working as the chief operating officer (COO) at two of the highest-regarded hardware labs in tech: Facebook's secretive Building 8, and Google's famed ATAP (Advanced Technologies and Products) skunkworks.

He recently joined Israeli AI drone startup Airobotics as its new COO, and in an interview with Business Insider, he explained why he's incredibly bullish on Amazon.

Amazon is the 'silent assassin'

"Whenever I've done new innovation both at Google and Facebook, it's looking, for me, at the gap in the market and what pain point you're trying to fix [...] is there market research that say that's needed, or [...] are you disrupting a market that consumers really haven't though about," Wooldridge said.

This, he said, is what Amazon has excelled at. "Five years ago people laughed at Alexa," Amazon's AI-powered smart speaker, but it now dominates the burgeoning market.

"I think for me, people underestimate what they can be [...] Amazon is that silent assassin that keeps creating solutions."

When it comes to the robot project, the success or failure will depend on how transformative it will be to people's lives, and how autonomously it will be able to run, the exec said.

"If this requires a lot of manhandling by the consumer this is just too much work for us," said Wooldridge. However, the rumours point to success of Amazon's broader strategy.

The Amazon Echo Show: a potential first step in a move by Amazon into the social-networking space. Amazon

Amazon could threaten Facebook one day

Amazon has always played a different game than many of its fellow tech giants. It has been unusually unconcerned with turning a profit. As CNBC reported on Friday, Apple made significantly greater profits in just three months ($48 billion) than Amazon has in its entire lifespan ($9.6 billion).

"If you look at where Amazon's evolved from [...] they have more in-roads to people's homes than anybody today [...] people trust, for some reason, the Amazon brand, because they deliver them parcels, buy groceries," Wooldridge said. "They have access to human behaviour just by the way people are shopping, buying products, using products, using their platform, their marketplace," Wooldridge said.

Amazon isn't scandal-free: It has been repeatedly criticized over its working conditions, with Business Insider reporting that employees urinated in bottles because they were concerned they'd be punished if they took breaks. But the company has managed to avoid any major privacy or security concerns like those Facebook has faced in recent months — putting them in a good position as they push further into consumers' lives.

There are already signs that this is an area of interest for Amazon: The Amazon Echo now lets you voice-call other Echo-owners, and the screen-equipped Amazon Echo Show lets users make video calls.

"If they ever get through all their Prime, their network a social aspect, I think Facebook's at risk, because I think they do become the one-stop shop," the exec said. "And there's no privacy issue."

Later he added: "I think if they ever get a social platform, then [...] they have a fully rounded solution. Because I think Apple's never really pursued that path, and [...] Google Plus really didn't get to that path. But if they've got a social platform where they can interact and you can share meaningful stories with your colleagues and friends, you can purchase from the same site, you've got the Alexa platform you can communicate their video video platform, and there's that trust there, I think that'd take them to a different level."

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If you've never played a "Smash Bros." game, think of it as a fighting-game version of "Mario Kart." Nintendo's large cast of famous faces — from Mario to Donkey Kong, Pikachu to Princess Peach — take each other down in a simplified fighting format. They each have their own set of moves and traits that map to that character — Pikachu shoots lightning, Mario throws fireballs, Link wields the Master Sword, etc.

Rather than taking players on one at a time, "Smash Bros." distinguishes itself by throwing anywhere from two to eight players into a match at any given time. It's a chaotic, silly, surprisingly deep fighting-game series with a serious following.

And in 2018, it's apparently coming back: The series is headed to the Nintendo Switch in 2018. So far, we can spot Link, Bowser, Pit, Pikachu, Kirby, the two Inklings from "Splatoon," and Mario — and it looks like Link is represented in his "Breath of the Wild" form. But is this an entirely new game? What we don't know about "Smash Bros." far outweighs what we do — but Nintendo says it's coming this year, so we'll assuredly learn more soon!

Release Date: 2018

Platforms: Nintendo Switch