YouTube employees and on-lookers in San Bruno have been evacuated from the campus. Melia Robinson Business Insider

SAN FRANCISCO — A YouTube employee who fled the company's head office during a shooting on Tuesday had his Twitter account hacked to spread a hoax about the identity of the shooter.

In the wake of a mass shooting in America, it's become common for hoaxes and misinformation to spread on social media, and the incident at YouTube's office in San Bruno, California is no exception. Anonymous accounts repeatedly made false claims about the identity of the shooter — who has not yet been named — and blaming it on liberal political thinkers or prominent social media influencers, among other false claims.

Vadim Lavursik, a product manager at YouTube, was at the office at the time of the shooting. "Active shooter at YouTube HQ. Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers," he tweeted on Tuesday, before following up to confirm he was safely outside the building.

His account was hacked not long after, and sent the tweet "PLEASE HELP ME FIND MY FRIEND I LOST HIM IN THE SHOOTING" — linking to a photo of Daniel "Keemstar" Keem, a provocative YouTube video creator. Keem has been active on Twitter throughout the shooting, and has given no indication he was at the scene.

Lavurusik's account then followed up with another tweet: "my name is so gay honestly."

Both tweets were later deleted. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey soon responded to the hacking incident, saying "we're on it."

This is far from the only misinformation spreading about the shooting. Comedian Sam Hyde is frequently named by hoaxers as the shooter in the aftermath of shootings, and Twitter accounts quickly began spreading the claim that he was involved and sharing sometimes-photoshopped images.

False. Twitter

There is zero evidence of this, and police have said the suspected shooter, who has died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, was female.

San Bruno police later identified the suspected shooter as 39-year-old Nasim Najafi Aghdam of San Diego, California.

Twitter

Another hoax alleged that cultural critic and outspoken feminist Anita Sarkesian, a frequent target of online harassment and right-wing attacks, was the shooter. Again, there is no evidence of this — the police have not given the identity of the shooter.

One person is dead and several have been injured as a result of the shooting. The deceased is a woman with apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police have said.

In a statement, Twitter said: "We are also aware of attempts by some people to deceive others with misinformation around this tragedy. We are tracking this and are taking action on anything that violates our rules."

The two accounts listed above have since been deleted or removed.

FILE PHOTO - Traders work on the floor of the NYSE in New York Thomson Reuters

Coinbase, the cryptocurrency trading platform, has snagged another former New York Stock Exchange executive as it tries to lure more business from Wall Street.

Sandler's LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn

Christine Sandler, former global head of sales for NYSE Euronext, has joined Coinbase as its director of institutional sales, people familiar with the situation told Business Insider.

Sandler, who most recently worked at Barclays, where she was the head of equity electronic sales, reports to Adam White, the general manager of GDAX, Coinbase's institutional-grade exchange platform.

Coinbase, which first started offering services for institutional Wall Street firms in 2014 via its GDAX exchange, has recently been gunning for more institutional business in crypto. GDAX is at the core of that mission. But the firm has also announced the launch of Coinbase Custodian, a custodian product for the crypto space which the firm is trying to scale to be the "State Street of cryptocurrency."

As Business Insider previously reported, the service will provide institutional clients a method to store their cryptocurrency that offers the same level of security as custody banks such as State Street. It'll only be available to customers with at least $10 million in deposits.

It is also working on other products and services, including advanced order types and products tied to market data.

A key component of this expansion is hiring talent from the Wall Street world. Recently, the company hired Eric Scro from the New York Stock Exchange as its vice president of finance. Previously, he was head of finance at NYSE.

Customers at a CVS store and pharmacy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 4. Reuters

The short version of what happened to CVS in 2018 is this: The company got too greedy, and then it got caught.

In its greed, the company squeezed independent mom-and-pop pharmacies. The squeezing wasn't being done by the part of CVS you buy dental floss from or visit to pick up a prescription, though it's not unrelated. It's a behind-the-scenes business known as a pharmacy benefit manager, which manages payments between insurers and pharmacies and drug companies.

The mom-and-pop pharmacies say CVS' in-house pharmacy benefit manager, CVS Caremark, slashed reimbursements for medications sold to their patients on Medicaid. At the same time, they say, it was reimbursing CVS pharmacies at much better rates. With some of them on the verge of going out of business, these pharmacies have rallied lawmakers — both Democrats and Republicans — to put an end to this.

So now CVS faces a tide of resistance to the way it deals with smaller rivals. Already, Arkansas legislators have passed a law aimed at curbing this behavior. This is new regulation in a Republican-dominated state. That's how bad things looked to the lawmakers.

Ohio is forcing PBMs to disclose more about the way their pricing and contracts work. Mom-and-pop pharmacists in states like Texas and Kentucky are realizing they have a CVS problem on their hands too. Caremark manages payment for Medicaid-managed care plans in more than 20 states.

This is important because CVS is trying to cut a $68 billion deal to buy a health insurer, Aetna — a deal that would make it even more powerful and more able to obscure the whys and hows of pricing all through the healthcare system.

What's more, CVS isn't the only healthcare company trying to turn into a leviathan. Over the past few years the largest healthcare companies — including insurers, PBMs, hospitals, and drug companies — have been combining in what is known as vertical integration, or mergers between companies in the same industry whose businesses don't directly compete.

They say this is an effort to create efficiency in the healthcare system. What CVS has shown, though, is that this kind of integration can actually get companies drunk on pricing power, and create monopolistic monsters.

In Arkansas

To their credit, once legislators in Arkansas figured out what was happening to local pharmacies, they moved at blinding speed.

The state legislature nearly unanimously passed a bill designed to curb this behavior from PBMs on March 14.

The situation had gotten desperate, fast. The way mom-and-pop pharmacists tell it, CVS started bringing the pain at the beginning of 2018. Suddenly, reimbursement rates for Medicaid plummeted at the same time drug prices for Medicaid started rising. So in the beginning of February, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge started investigating the matter.

"The amount paid to the pharmacy was less than half of what was being charged to the plans," Scott Pace, of the Arkansas Pharmacists Association, told Business Insider.

Pharmacists in Arkansas, for example, say:

For a Fentanyl Patch 100, CVS pharmacies were reimbursed $400.65 while mom-and-pop pharmacies were reimbursed $75.74.

For Amoxicillin, CVS pharmacies were reimbursed $35.92 while mom-and-pop pharmacies were reimbursed $12.21.

For even something as simple as Ibuprofen, CVS pharmacies were reimbursed $5.86 while mom-and-pop pharmacies were reimbursed $1.39.

Sometimes, the pharmacists say, they weren't reimbursed enough to cover the cost of filling the prescription. These aren't the only ones, to be clear. Business Insider has seen a long list of alleged disparities like the ones above.

CVS, for its part, denies that it is squeezing the mom and pops. Business Insider sent the above examples to the company, and its spokeswoman Christine Cramer said they were patently wrong. However, she also said the pharmacists were "cherry-picking" reimbursements that look especially bad.

"The facts are that on an aggregate basis, we reimburse independent pharmacies at a higher rate than larger regional and national chains," she said.

"CVS Caremark considers local, independently owned pharmacies to be important partners in creating our pharmacy networks, and in fact, independent pharmacies account for nearly 40% of our network," she added. "Furthermore, we reimburse our participating network pharmacies, including the many independent pharmacies that are valued participants in our network, at competitive rates that balance the need to fairly compensate pharmacies while providing a cost-effective benefit for our clients."

This response did not jibe with what legislators, patients, and pharmacists were seeing on the ground, though.

Out of a $50 drug, for example, say $22 was paid to the mom and pop, the rest went to CVS — to its PBM. At the same time, patients looking at how much a drug cost their health plan in their explanation-of-benefits portal would show a price of, say, $100.

"The numbers were stark," Pace said.

Here's the letter pharmacists are getting, urging them to sell their businesses to CVS. Business Insider So until this was all figured out, people who bought medicines at their local pharmacies in Arkansas (and Ohio) didn't know that their neighbors were getting screwed. They also didn't know that, as their local pharmacists were getting squeezed, CVS was waiting in the wings, sending out letters offering to buy the very mom-and-pop shops it was forcing out of business.

One pharmacist, Rick Pennington of Lonoke, Arkansas, said that if it weren't for his business mailing a generic erectile-dysfunction pill to nine states, he'd be out of business.

"When you look at who's controlling the money and who has the leverage, it's the PBMs who have control," Pace told Business Insider. "These folks are trying to get more integrated into the healthcare system, and so far we've seen that means patients lose. Next, they'll buy a hospital and be an HMO. I think that's bad for patient choice."

He added: "It's not a free market because there is no transparency on pricing."

CVS, however, denies coordination between its PBM and its pharmacies.

"Our retail business has engaged in acquisition activity and outreach to other pharmacies since well before CVS and Caremark merged, and, in fact, the communications materials related to this activity has been relatively unchanged over the years," Cramer said. "Any retail acquisition activity is completely unrelated to, separated from, and not coordinated in any way with the PBM business' management of its pharmacy network."

In Ohio

The story for pharmacists in Ohio is a bit different. There, some have viewed CVS as problematic for years, but instead of seeing reimbursement rates plunge, legislators and pharmacists said they've been moving up and down like crazy since around 2015. By October or November of last year, gross annual margins for Medicaid payments to mom and pops were going below zero, and pharmacists were losing money on most drugs sold.

"Because those rates are set arbitrarily you're set up for a roller-coaster ride," Antonio Ciaccia of the Ohio Pharmacists Association said in a phone interview with Business Insider. "No one expects to get rich off Medicaid ... but if you sat down with a pharmacist that was willing to tell you, 'Here's what I was getting paid,' you could match it up with state-utilization data and see the spread and how significant the loss was... That's what kind of lit everything up in Ohio."

There was also the suspicion that Medicaid was being overcharged. One legislator, after being briefed on what was going on by Ohio's Medicaid agency, said simply, "We're getting hosed."

And of course, CVS sent those letters soliciting acquisitions. One came on November 9 of last year, a particularly bad time for the state's mom-and-pop pharmacists.

Suddenly, the number of people in Ohio government demanding answers, led by Ohio Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, started to multiply. They realized that the Ohio Department of Medicaid wasn't even asking for the right pricing data, and CVS had never considered giving it to them. Now, as rules change within the department, it'll have to.

Brad Miller, Rosenberger's press secretary, said this was something his boss had been looking into for years.

"In order to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars, you must have access to reliable and accurate data," he said. "Around the state, we are seeing the negative impact the current system is having on local, independent pharmacies, many of which have been forced to close in recent years. This, in turn, reduces patients' treatment options and access to care. Having access to this data will go a long way toward lowering prescription-drug costs for patients and employers, as well as help reduce the burden on Ohio taxpayers."

Ciaccia told Business Insider that the the three year CVS has been engaging in this behavior it has gained 68 pharmacies in the state. Competitor Walgreens, on the other hand, has only added 2 locations over the same period.

"We are done messing around in Ohio," he said. "This system is completely broken ... It is layered and layered with conflicts of interest. I don't care who the PBM is."

What a tailor can do!

Health Strategies Group PBMs have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves to make money not just from pharmacists, but also from insurers and drug companies — basically anyone involved in getting medicine to you.

Here are a few of their greatest hits:

We've been learning about this slowly. Three PBMs — CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and UnitedHealth Group — control about 70% of the US market, and they guard their secrets zealously. Recently, though, the news site Axios published a contract template for Express Scripts. No two contracts are alike, and Express Scripts grumbled that the one Axios published (which was rife with loopholes to make Express Scripts money at every turn) was old and irrelevant.

Yet the company demanded that DocumentCloud, where the contract was posted, immediately take it down, citing copyright infringement.

This "Oh it doesn't matter to our business — but 'DON'T TOUCH THAT!'" response is trending in PBM world.

For example, earlier this month the US Senate introduced the Patient Right to Know Drug Prices Act, which would ban the so-called gag clauses mentioned above, just like Arkansas lawmakers did.

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, the PBM lobby, responded to that by saying:

"We support the patient always paying the lowest cost at the pharmacy counter, whether it's the cash price or the copay. This is standard industry practice in both Medicaid and the commercial sector. We would oppose contracting that prohibits drugstores from sharing with patients the cash price they charge for each drug. These rates are set entirely at the discretion of each pharmacy and can vary significantly from drugstore to drugstore."

Sounds as if they're for it, right? Wrong. Here's the next sentence.

"Fortunately, to the degree this issue was ever rooted in more than anecdotal information, it has been addressed in the marketplace."

Rep. Earl "Buddy" Carter of Georgia. C-Span, screenshot So which is it, guys? Do you think transparency is important and support patient rights — or are you going to fight this bill?

It's a simple question. And it's easy to see the answer.

Rep. Buddy Carter, a Georgia Republican, introduced the Prescription Transparency Act to the US House of Representatives this month. It does basically the same thing as the Senate bill, and, as the only pharmacist in Congress, he knows he's facing a street fight from the PBM lobby.

"They spent $600,000 against me when I first ran for office three years ago to try to get me defeated, and over the past few years we've seen them ramp up their political activity," Carter told Business Insider. He's also noticed that legislators in Washington are finally waking up to the urgency of this situation. There have been hearings about drug pricing in both houses, and Scott Gottlieb, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, has come out swinging especially hard, saying that the PBMs sit at the top of a "rigged system."

"We've seen some companies that dropped the PBMs such as Caterpillar and they've been able to control drug prices," Carter said in a phone interview. "Right now the focus is on prescription drug pricing, and the most impact we can have on pricing is to have control on transparency from the PBMs."

If you believe that, you should also believe taking that control won't be easy. Once we do, though, it may change the way you look at what our healthcare is trying to become.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son with US President Donald Trump. Brendan McDermid/Reuters

When Business Insider recently asked one prominent European fund manager what he thought about SoftBank, he raised his eyebrows and said: "It's a spaceship."

The Japanese telecoms giant, and specifically its $100 billion (£71 billion) Vision Fund, has rewritten the rules of venture capital over the past 12 months, and investors and startups are still adjusting.

The Vision Fund is essentially a gigantic corporate venture fund that drops huge amounts of money into both well-established tech firms and promising startups. The amount of money it has at its disposal is unprecedented, and has shifted the dynamics of venture funding around the world.

SoftBank has taken an 17.5% stake in Uber, and dropped $502 million into Improbable, a UK gaming software firm. It's also active in Asia, with a stake in Indian Uber rival Ola.

According to a new report from tech consultancy Delta Partners, seen by Business Insider, SoftBank kickstarted a trend last year of funding mega-rounds — which benefited late-stage companies but put a serious squeeze on seed-stage financing.

In other words, it became a lot harder for early startups to raise funding.

Here's a chart — you can see the global number of deals in 2017 was down, with particular impact on the seed stage. That means early-stage startups found it tougher to raise venture funding.

Delta Partners

And here's another set of charts showing that growth-stage companies are getting a bigger piece of the funding pie:

Delta Partners

The data reflects real-world worries around early-stage funding.

Young startups are a naturally risky place to put your money — they're not making much revenue, and maybe haven't worked out whether there's even much demand for whatever they are building. Unsurprisingly, investors are averse to that risk, so it falls to specialist early-stage funds and individual angel investors to get these firms going.

One British seed investor told Business Insider this week that, with the UK's economy lagging, there's anecdotal evidence to suggest angels are putting their money somewhere other than startups. And the crash in early-stage funding clearly isn't just limited to the UK, as shown by Delta Partners' data and other reports.

SoftBank, and the rise of big corporate funds, points to a trend of more money going into dominant players, such as Uber and office-sharing company WeWork, who might "win" their entire market. They represent a safer bet — if anything in tech can be considered safe.

Delta Partners

Delta Partners predicted in its report that early stage funding will recover, and that Asia and Europe will have a role to play here. But it looks like the megafunds and their megarounds are here to stay.

Maximilian Teodorescu captured an image of Tiangong-1 passing in front of the sun.Courtesy of Maximilian Teodorescu

The bus-sized Chinese space station Tiangong-1, known as "Heavenly Palace," is whipping around our planet in the final hours before it burns into Earth's atmosphere. In the very near future, it will break up, with some of its debris likely falling to Earth.

In these final hours, Maximilian Teodorescu, a scientific researcher with the National Institute for Lasers and Plasma in Bucharest, Romania, was able to photograph Tiangong-1 as it made a transit passing in front of the sun.

In Teodorescu's photo above, you can see the space station's transit.

An illustration of China's Tiangong-1 modular space station orbiting Earth.Aerospace Corporation

This photo is likely one of the last times Tiangong-1 will be seen before its journey, which began when it was launched in 2011, comes to an end on or around Easter Sunday (April 1).

Teodorescu told Business Insider that he's been interested in astronomy for about two decades now. His interest starting with science fiction before he moved on to real-life space programs.

"It is fascinating still for me to know that humans are trying to get out of their perfect habitat down here on Earth and try to find other habitable worlds in our Solar System and beyond. It's perhaps the most important era of the Human Civilization," Teodorescu said in an email.

"And the still small steps we take, like the ISS and other space stations, are proof that this part of our evolution is occurring right now. And I must take advantage of this moment, and at least image these technical marvels, if not be a part of the programs. This is why I try to catch any close transit in front of the Moon or Sun whenever I can."

Follow the station's pass-by in the GIF below.

The Tiangong-1 modular space station is expected to fall to Earth in a fiery blaze.

But at the moment, it's just one of about 23,000 other human-made objects larger than a softball zooming around the planet.

China stopped using the two-room, 9.4-ton vessel, in June of 2013. The Chinese program lost touch with Tiangong-1 — its first space station — in March of 2016. The station is now losing forward speed, which means that gravity is pulling it towards Earth faster and faster, with the air around it too thin to slow it down.

But as it enters the atmosphere, the situation will change.

When the spacecraft falls into thicker air, the drag will begin to rip off solar panels, antennas, and other loosely attached pieces. Superheated plasma will heat the vessel to thousands of degrees, melting and disintegrating it.

Little will survive. Even though there are layers of protective material and substances like titanium on board, some parts, including potentially re-usable gear and hardware, are likely to survive re-entry.

It's possible there will be a 1,000 mile-footprint of debris, Bill Ailor, an aerospace engineer who specializes in atmospheric reentry, told Business Insider.

It's more likely than anything else that most debris will fall into the ocean, which covers 71% of Earth's surface. The chances of a piece hitting a person "is about 1 million times smaller than the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot," according to The Aerospace Corp., where Ailor works.

"It's not impossible, but since the beginning of the space age ... a woman who was brushed on the shoulder in Oklahoma is the only one we're aware of who's been touched by a piece of space debris," Ailor said.

Andrew "Boz" Bosworth Andrew Bosworth

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg denounced comments from one of his top executives on Thursday, following the publication of a 2016 internal memo in which the executive appeared to argue that the social network's growth objectives outweighed any harmful side-effects, including deaths, that could result from the use of the service.

The memo, written by Facebook VP Andrew "Boz" Bosworth and published by BuzzFeed on Thursday, was "one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly," Zuckerberg said in a statement provided to Business Insider.

"We've never believed the ends justified the means," Zuckerberg said. But Zuckerberg defended the memo's author, one of his most trusted confidants, calling Bosworth a "talented leader who says many provocative things."

The comments mark the latest efforts at damage control by Zuckerberg as the 2-billion member social network he founded comes under fire for a variety of problems including its role in spreading false news and the unauthorized use of its user data by a tech firm linked to the Trump 2016 presidential campaign.

Longtime exec Andrew "Boz" Bosworth (pictured left) and Mark Zuckerberg Facebook According to the BuzzFeed report, Bosworth wrote the internal memo entitled "The Ugly," as part of the company's efforts to come to terms with some of the unintended consequences of its extreme growth that were beginning to become clear at the time.

"So we connect more people," Bosworth wrote in the memo. "That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools."

"The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good," Bosworth continued.

Bosworth, who has been at Facebook since 2006, is known for being outspoken and has found himself at the center of controversy several times during the past year.

Following the publication of the memo on Thursday, Bosworth sought to distance himself from the remarks.

"I don't agree with the post today and I didn't agree with it even when I wrote it," Bosworth said in a statement he posted on his personal Twitter account.

"The purpose of this post, like many others I have written internally, was to bring to the surface issues I felt deserved more discussion with the broader company," the statement reads.

Read the full memo on BuzzFeed.

Tesla Model S P100D. Bryan Logan/Business Insider

Tesla has issued a worldwide recall related to the power steering systems in 123,000 of its electric Model S vehicles.

Five bolts holding the power steering motor in place can corrode and either come loose or break, possibly causing a loss of power steering, the company said in an emailed statement on Thursday. Manual steering would still work in such a case.

According to Tesla, the problem is infrequent and typically occurs in cold-weather regions where salt is used to clear snow and ice on the road. No accidents or injuries have been reported, Tesla said.

The voluntary recall is specific to Model S cars that were built before April 2016, but has so far affected only 0.02% of the Model S vehicles in the US that fall under the recall's guidelines, according to the automaker.

The recall adds to a tumultuous run for Tesla of late. Here's a portion of what's happened so far:

There's also the matter of Tesla's balance sheet which has been looking morbid ahead of the car company's first-quarter earnings report, which is expected in a matter of weeks.

Tesla is also set to update shareholders on Model 3 production, which got off to a crawling start last July, and hasn't yet touched the company's original target of 5,000 units per week. Tesla slashed that target by half in January, promising to crank out 2,500 per week by the end of March.

But it looks like Tesla is climbing to just over 1,000 Model 3 units per week, according to unofficial data from Bloomberg.

In fall 2017, Tesla said it could produce 1,500 Model 3s in September alone, and 20,000 of the cars per month by December that year.

The last major voluntary Model S recall occurred in 2015, when the company summoned the entire fleet over a single Model S vehicle that experienced a seat belt malfunction.

"In order to ensure your safety, Tesla will proactively retrofit a power steering component in all Model S vehicles built before April 2016. (No other Tesla vehicles are affected.) There have been no injuries or accidents due to this component, despite accumulating more than a billion miles of driving.

To be clear, this recall does not apply to any Model X or Model 3 vehicles, only to Model S vehicles built before April 2016.

We have observed excessive corrosion in the power steering bolts, though only in very cold climates, particularly those that frequently use calcium or magnesium road salts, rather than sodium chloride (table salt). Nonetheless, Tesla plans to replace all early Model S power steering bolts in all climates worldwide to account for the possibility that the vehicle may later be used in a highly corrosive environment.

If the bolts fail, the driver is still able to steer the car, but increased force is required due to loss or reduction of power assist. This primarily makes the car harder to drive at low speeds and for parallel parking, but does not materially affect control at high speed, where only small steering wheel force is needed.

Our records show that you own a Model S affected by this voluntary recall. At this time there is no immediate action you need to take and you may continue to drive your Model S. Tesla will contact you to schedule an appointment when parts are available in your region. The retrofit will typically take around an hour."

NYC Secure will be available for iPhone and Android users this summer.Brendan McDermid/Reuters

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio introduced a new mobile phone app that will help New Yorkers protect themselves online.

NYC Secure, which iPhone and Android users will be able to download this summer, will help people avoid unsafe WiFi networks and detect malicious content and apps on their devices.

"Now that our lives are more and more online, it's our job to make sure people's lives are safe online," de Blasio said at a news conference Thursday. "Our streets are already the safest of any big city in the country — now we're bringing that same commitment to protecting New Yorkers into cyberspace."

The app will:

While the idea for the app was conceived by officials at NYC Cyber Command (NYC3), a government agency overseeing the city's cyber defenses, the app itself was built by an outside partner.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the initiative will cost $5 million a year. Reuters/Brendan McDermid

Geoff Brown, the chief information security officer for NYC, stressed that the app will collect "zero personal data" from those who download it.

"Our intent is to have [the app] designed in a way that at the very code level, it is only doing the things that we prescribe for it to do and it is doing nothing else," Brown said during a briefing with reporters on Wednesday. "It will not be taking a list of all the apps and sending it to a third party, to us, or anyone else. It'll only be performing the functions that are necessary to guide the user away from threats."

While the initiative is being targeted to New Yorkers, the app will be available to anyone based in the US.

In addition to the app, city officials also unveiled a city-wide effort to add a new layer of protection to public WiFi hotspots so that people will be alerted whether a guest or public network is secure.

Brown said the city will deploy the initiative across all NYC government agencies' public WiFi networks by the end of the year. The city is working in partnership with Global Cyber Alliance, an international cybersecurity group that combats cybercrime.

The NYC Secure app and WiFi protection initiatives will cost the city $5 million annually, de Blasio said.

The announcement comes amid increasing cyberattacks aimed at virtually anything connected to the internet.

Just last week, a group of hackers breached government computer systems in Atlanta, a situation the city's mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, described as "a hostage situation."

The incident has raised concerns about how prepared government officials are when it comes to protecting critical infrastructures and people's personal information.

Brown said NYC Secure is an attempt to ease those concerns.

"We don't think necessarily cybersecurity solutions should only be the purview of people that either have an incredible amount of knowledge to protect themselves or an incredible amount of money to buy protection," he said.

Noah Berger/AP

A lot of people are not happy with Facebook right now. Add Scott Howe to the list.

Howe is the president and CEO of Acxiom, which collects consumer data from a wide variety of sources - data that has been employed by marketers for decades. It's also one of the companies that Facebook said it plans to stop working with for ad targeting.

Late Wednesday, Facebook announced plans to wind down a program that enabled advertisers to use data from third-party companies — ranging from Oracle to Acxiom — to target its users with specific ads.

Facebook has positioned that move as being aimed at better protecting consumer privacy in light of the ongoing fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which came to light when The New York Times and The Guardian reported that it had improperly obtained user data on as many as 50 million Facebook users.

Howe said that Facebook didn't give Acxiom a heads up regarding the decision. Beyond that slight, Howe believes that Facebook is using Acxiom and its other data partners as scapegoats to distract from its own problems.

"We are getting thrown under the bus," Howe told Business Insider. "This was a masterful political manipulation."

Howe is livid that Facebook has moved to push out data partners, even though the Cambridge Analytica controversy didn't directly have anything to do with them. "The trouble was in Facebook managing its own data," he said. "And this doesn't actually offer individuals any more protection."

Acxiom pulls data from a wide variety of sources, including public records, consumer surveys, retail records, and other vehicles to help brands tap into profiles of consumers. Howe's argument is that his company's sole focus is on protecting consumer data.

"So to blame us is hypocritical," he said. "Their statements are also so inconsistent. This is really about their walled garden. They are forcing advertisers to be reliant on Facebook reporting only. It helps them consolidate more power."

"That is awful for advertisers."

Facebook was not immediately available for comment.

Under Armour's fitness app has been hit with a data breach.Facebook/Under Armour

Under Armour's health- and fitness-tracking app, MyFitnessPal, has been hit with a data breach.

Under Armour says roughly 150 million MyFitnessPal users are affected by the breach, which it discovered earlier this week. It said on Thursday that an "unauthorized party" acquired data about these users late last month.

"Under Armour is working with leading data security firms to assist in its investigation, and also coordinating with law enforcement authorities," the company said in a statement. "The investigation indicates that the affected information included usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords — the majority with the hashing function called bcrypt used to secure passwords."

Under Armour said the hacker would not have been able to obtain users' payment details or information like Social Security numbers or driver's license numbers. The company has begun notifying users via messages in the app and emails.

Under Armour will require MyFitnessPal users to change their password and is "urging users to do so immediately." The company is also encouraging users to review their accounts for suspicious activity and be cautious of any unsolicited messages asking for personal information.

Under Armour acquired MyFitnessPal for $475 million in 2015.

The data breach comes as Under Armour has struggled to keep up with the competition.

Last year, Under Armour's North American sales declined 7% year over year, Macquarie said in a note in January. And earlier this month, the CEO of Dick's Sporting Goods described Under Armour as a brand with "significant weakness."

Meanwhile, analysts have expressed concern that Under Armour is selling its products at too many different types of stores without differentiating the goods offered.

The Maserati Levante Trofeo. Maserati

Maserati is adding even more fuel to the already red-hot SUV market with the new Levante Trofeo. The venerable Italian brand unveiled its latest SUV offering at the 2018 New York International Auto Show on Wednesday in a rowdy affair that shook the Javits Center show floor.

At the heart of the limited edition Levante Trofeo is a 590 horsepower, 3.8-liter, twin-turbocharged V8 made in Maranello, Italy by Ferrari.

In a statement, Maserati CEO Tim Kuniskis referred to the Ferrari engines as the "finest on earth."

The Levante Trofeo's Ferrari V8. Maserati According to Maserati, the Trofeo will be able to hit 60 mph in just 3.7 seconds and reach a top speed of more than 187 mph.

As a result, the Trofeo's performance capabilities falls in line with the some of the fastest SUVs in the world like the Lamborghini Urus, Porsche Cayenne Turbo S, Range Rover Sport SVR, and the Bentley Bentayga.

Ferrari engine aside, another piece of the Levante Trofeo story that's a bit out of the ordinary is the fact that it is a high-performance model designed exclusively for the US and Canada. After all, European and Japanese automakers have a history of saving their wildest creation as a special for their domestic markets.

Maserati In addition to the beefed up motor, the Levante Trofeo also receives several aesthetic changes including new 22-inch wheels, carbon fiber accents, and Trofeo branded interior trim.

The Trofeo will also be outfitted with a 1,280 watt, 17-speaker Bowers & Wilkins stereo system.

Maserati introduced the Levante in 2016 to strong reviews and sales figures. Regular production Levantes are powered by a pair of twin-turbocharged, 3.0-liter V6 engines producing 345 hp and 424 hp respectively.

Production of the Levante Trofeo is expected to begin this Summer at Maserati's plant in Turin, Italy.

Maserati has not announced pricing for the Levante Trofeo.

Laura Ingraham Alex Wong/Getty Images

Companies are facing increased pressure to drop their advertising with Laura Ingraham, a Fox News host who recently received backlash for mocking a Parkland shooting survivor.

Hulu is among the companies the survivor, student David Hogg, has called out on Twitter to pull their advertising with Ingraham. Many on Twitter have vowed to boycott Hulu and other companies if they don't sever ties with Ingraham.

Hulu did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider.

Actor and comedian Patton Oswalt joined in on Thursday, alluding that he would drop the service. "Do the right thing here," he said. "Guardians of the Galaxy" director James Gunn also threatened to drop his subscription, tweeting "Online bullying & shaming of teenagers should not be supported by Hulu."

Ingraham, host of Fox News show "The Ingraham Angle," mocked Hogg on Wednesday for being rejected by four colleges he applied to. "David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates.)" she tweeted.

As of Thursday, the tweet was still on her page.

But on Thursday, as several companies announced they would pull ads from Ingraham's program, Ingraham tweeted an apology, stating "On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland."

"For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David immediately after that horrific shooting and even noted how 'poised' he was given the tragedy," she continued.

Despite the apology, the calls for Hulu to pull their advertising with Ingraham continued throughout the day on Thursday on Twitter, with many saying they would cancel their subscription to the service.

Update: Thursday evening, Hulu posted a statement on Twitter saying that it would "like to confirm that we are no longer advertising on Laura Ingraham's show and are monitoring all of our ad placements carefully."

Brad Parscale. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, signaled Thursday that the president may escalate his battle with Amazon— and that it could be a theme for his reelection campaign.

"Do not forget to mention that @amazon has probably 10x the data on every American that @facebook does," Parscale tweeted Thursday, linking to an Axios article titled "Trump hates Amazon, not Facebook."

"All that data and own a political newspaper, The @washingtonpost. Hmm..." he said.

The president's disdain for the company resurfaced this week when Axios reported Wednesday that Trump is "obsessed" with the internet giant and eyeing legal means to target it, perhaps through a change in Amazon's tax status or utilizing antitrust legislation against the company. Meanwhile, the publication noted that Trump did not seem to care much about the headlines in recent weeks about the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data controversy.

Trump then tweeted about Amazon on Thursday.

"I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election," Trump tweeted. "Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!"

The president's anti-Amazon crusade has now gone on more more than a year.

Donald Trump. Getty Images/Pool Amazon does have a lot working in its favor as it faces headwinds from Trump. An August poll from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling found that 53% of Trump voters held a favorable view of Amazon, while just 20% held an unfavorable view of the company. Another 27% said they were not sure.

Among all respondents, 60% held favorable views of Amazon, while 13% viewed the company unfavorably and 26% were unsure.

Willem de Kooning, Untitled XII (1975 Courtesy of Art Basel Hong Kong

Every few months, the world's biggest art collectors — i.e. the world's mega-rich — meet at Art Basel to trade millions of dollars worth of paintings, sculptures, and installations.

This year's Hong Kong fair kicked off Tuesday with a sale of incredible magnitude: Microsoft co-founder and US-based billionaire Paul Allen sold Willem de Kooning's abstract painting Untitled XII, 1975 for $35 million to a private collector.

Allen is one of the most prominent and secretive art collectors in the world, with a collection worth $750 million by some estimates. His wide collection includes masters from Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns.

The de Kooning painting had been on consignment with Lévy Gorvy Gallery, a gallery with locations in New York and London. According to Artnet, the buyer had been in talks to buy the painting prior to the show, but decided within hours of the VIP preview that he or she would buy it.

Usually, Art Basel reports more information about the collector, such as the region he or she hails from, but no such information was provided for the de Kooning buyer.

The de Kooning work is an abstract painting completed in 1975, around the period when the abstract expressionist's most valued works have been created. The record sale for a de Kooning was $66.3 million for a 1977 Untitled XXV sold in 2016.

"I made those paintings, one after another, no trouble at all," de Kooning said of the period. Though the artist was in his 70s at the time, he was in love with a young woman.

Willem de Kooning, Untitled XII (1975 Courtesy Lévy Gorvy

De Kooning's Untitled XII, 1975 painting wasn't always worth $35 million. It was sold at auction in 1987 for $517,000. Allen purchased it in 2001 for an undisclosed price.

Art Basel is better known for its 48-year-old main event in Basel, Switzerland, which takes place in June, and for the outrageous parties associated with its US event in Miami, Florida. The Hong Kong event, while only in its fifth year, has matured as Asian collectors quickly become more important to the art market.

China is now the second largest marketplace for art after the US, according to an art market report cited by the South China Morning Post.

"I've only been here four years and I would never have thought that something would sell in that price range when I started my work here," Art Basel Hong Kong's director, Adeline Ooi, told ArtNet. "But here we are four years later. You know how time changes in Asia and everything is accelerated here."

Badoo CEO Andrey Andreev. Business Insider/Ed Maggio

Walk into the kitchens at Novikov in London at 11am and the wall of heat hits you as if you've stepped off a plane in a tropical country. It's the hour before lunch service begins, and large pots of water are simmering on industrial hobs, while staff are eating their own lunch before the chaos begins.

Andrey Andreev, however, wants to cook. He's in a borrowed chef jacket, and he's keen to show off his cooking skills. The chefs say the kitchen isn't ready yet, so we walk upstairs to where the restaurant has displayed a collection of freshly caught sea creatures.

Andreev taps some of the creatures, which causes them to alarmingly spring to life. It's a strange sight, watching this Russian dating app billionaire impatiently tapping on sea creatures while he waits for the kitchen to be cleaned.

Business Insider/Ed Maggio

Business Insider asks for a restaurant recommendation for an upcoming trip to Paris. Andreev suggests an expensive-sounding caviar restaurant.

Forbes hasn't estimated this writer's net worth at $1.5 billion (£1 billion), as it has done for Andreev, so I decide to give it a miss.

For many technology CEOs, food is often an afterthought, something to order from an app when they get home after a long day in the office.

But for Andreev, food is perhaps his biggest passion. In fact, it's so important to him that he visits some of the most expensive restaurants in London nearly every day, and has introduced his own recipes at many of them.

He doesn't like to spend over 30 minutes in a restaurant during lunchtime

Andrey Andreev doesn't eat in restaurants in the way that most people do. He doesn't arrive, read the menu, order some food and wine, and then relax. Instead, he prefers to call ahead so that his food is ready for the moment he walks in the door.

"The Robuchon restaurant, L'Atelier, is right next door to the office," Andreev said. "I used to come every day for lunch."

"Before I came I would call, I'd be like 'I'm five minutes [away],' so they already did some preparation. It's a gastronomic restaurant and you have a five, six, seven, eight-course menu. I ate so fast that one day I made the world record: 12 minutes. The ladies on reception were laughing about it: Faster than McDonald's!"

Business Insider/Ed Maggio

Andreev's regular weekday lunch is at a Michelin-starred restaurant, and he takes no longer than 30 minutes. "You spend 20 minutes, 30 minutes maximum," he said. "You get the best, the best, the best thing, and you're done."

That makes sense: Andreev runs a global dating app empire. There's the core app, Badoo, but it also owns a controlling stake in Bumble, and has revenue share deals with apps including Chappy and Blendr. So he doesn't have too much time for long working lunches.

But Andreev also likes to eat fast when he's socialising in the evenings.

"Even when I'm [with my] closest friends, and we come to any of the gastronomic places, I normally say 'sorry guys, we have 40 minutes.' They never do 40 minutes, they usually do one hour. With this one hour you can have basically the same type of things, just faster. Then you save time for something else."

Andreev likes to experiment with food — and has created custom dishes for Michelin-starred restaurants

Andreev may not spend much time actually eating in restaurants, but it's clearly his favourite hobby. He likes to experiment with the menus in Michelin-starred restaurants and introduce some of his own ideas.

The Michelin-starred L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Covent Garden charges £65 for a five-course lunch, and is the restaurant close to Badoo's office where Andreev used to eat daily. Andreev said that the restaurant's menu includes an onion soup that he created. He said that it came about when he was bored one weekend.

"I used to come to L'Atelier every day," Andreev said, "and Saturdays it's boring. Nothing to do. Office is closed, people do not work. I just started to spend a little bit more time [there]."

Andreev looking at his custom sushi. Business Insider/Ed Maggio

At Novikov, Andreev has designed a series of seafood dishes, including sushi with a reduced amount of rice. "I'm trying to be fit, I'm trying to avoid any carbs," Andreev said.

There's also the Bloody Andrey, his twist on the Bloody Mary cocktail. It has a cherry tomato juice base, and a tweaked mixture of spices. "I said 'OK, how about we change the base?'" Andreev said, "A few weeks later they said 'OK, let's call it Bloody Andrey because you just piss off everyone here by changing things.'"

Andreev changed so many things at Novikov that legendary chef Raymond Blanc once thought that it was his restaurant.

"Raymond Blanc was here in Novikov a couple of years ago," Andreev said. "I invited him here just to have a meal and I introduced him to Arkady Novikov, the guy who owns this place. And Raymond spent an hour and a half with me here at the table trying my gastronomic things."

"For the whole evening, he thought that this was my restaurant. I said to him, 'Raymond, it's not mine.' He said 'it looks like your restaurant.'"

We joined Andreev in the kitchens at Novikov in London

Business Insider/Ed Maggio

Once the kitchen downstairs at Novikov is clean, it's time for Andreev to cook some pasta and seafood. His chef jacket sits on top of his daily uniform of a white T-shirt and jeans. Chefs look on as Andreev takes command of a section of the kitchen and sets about cooking some clams.

Business Insider/Ed Maggio

Andreev adds white wine to the clams, and then moves on to cooking some scallops, squid, and prawns to add to the pasta that a chef is cooking next to him. He's keen to explain to Business Insider each part of the process, and shows us the ingredients as he adds them to the pan.

The tech CEO looks at home here, amongst the industrial ovens and trained chefs.

Eventually, it's time to plate up. The seafood doesn't take much cooking, and Andreev leads us up the stairs and out of the heat.

Andreev started cooking at an unusually early age

Where did this passion for food come from? Andreev said he started cooking at an unusually young age.

"I was five or six and it was a time when my parents left me alone at home," Andreev said. "My parents [were] busy somewhere and something happened. I'm staying alone and I understand that I need to eat and I don't know what to do. So I called the emergency services."

"I told the lady 'sorry, I'm staying alone. I don't know what to do.' Three ladies from emergency services assisted me [with] what to do and how to make things. They told me, 'OK, do you know how to make this? Do you know how to? Do you have porridge? Do you have this?' So I opened the fridge, I’m just walking around the kitchen."

Andreev cooked a simple meal using the help of the emergency services dispatchers, he said.

Another childhood food experience that has stayed with Andreev is visiting his grandmother and her vegetable garden. "When I was a kid, my parents in the summertime always sent me to a little country house, to my grandma, who like every single grandma, produced some vegetables in a little garden. So in Russia, typically it's all sorts of cucumbers and tomatoes and other vegetables."

Andreev now has his own vegetable garden in the garden of his London house, he said.

Business Insider asked Andreev whether he'd like to own his own restaurant. Interestingly, the tech CEO likens his experimentation with food to how he runs his company.

"I love to contribute, I don't really like to personally run things. I love to contribute where things are there and there's some part missing to contribute."

"It's the same with Badoo. When you have an amazing team of, let's say amazing designers, who are doing beautiful, beautiful, beautiful mockups. [The] guys always listen to my opinion if this is nice or not nice, if we can tweak something. I'm not a designer myself, but with my direction people do a great job. So with a restaurant, [it's the] same thing."

OK, I look a little frowny. But I'm happy inside! I think it was just the awful Northeast weather of the past month weighing on my soul. Don't blame the RAM 1500!

This pickup is an absolute joy to drive, mainly because unlike the Ford and Chevy trucks that sell ahead of it, the RAM has a far more compliant suspension. In the case of our 1500 Limited tester, a four-corner air suspension that makes the truck feel as if it's floating on a sea of power. The Fords and Chevys still have tough leaf-spring suspension, and some truck owners prefer that. RAM went to something more easygoing a while ago, and for some folks, it will be preferable.

I sure liked it. But it doesn't make the truck feel overly domesticated. There is a big old iron-block Hemi V8 under the hood, and when you stand on the accelerator, that motor roars to life. Accelerating from 0-30 mph in the 1500 is as much fun as savoring the 0-60mph run, which passes is about seven seconds.

Brawn notwithstanding, it truly is the level of refinement that the RAM 1500 brings to the segment that helps it stand out, even as Ford and Chevy/GMC sell more trucks. RAM has carved out far more than niche at number three and isn't dropping the ball when it comes to what its loyalist expect.

The RAM 1500 Limited Crew Cab 4x4 proves that a truck lover can have it all: power, styling, capability, and comfort. We're very much looking forward to the all-new 2019 version.

Webflow CEO Vlad Magdalin Webflow

Webflow is unusual among Silicon Valley startups. It's only taken in a meager $2.9 million of venture capital money and yet it's still managed to build a break-even company that's doing $10 million in annual revenue.

And Webflow CEO Vlad Magdalin says that the company is growing fast — so much so, that he anticipates that the company will finish out the year on a $20 million annualized run rate, twice what it is today. Webflow has grown to 750,000 users in the four years of its existence, including developers at NASA, Dell, and MTV.

The reason for the boom, says Magdalin: Webflow makes it easier for designers to meet today's demand for slick, shiny webpages. It has a simple visual interface, but under the hood, the websites that Webflow creates are fully compatible with universal web standards, including HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.

"What we're trying to do is take this concept of code and bring it to as many people as possible," says Magdalin.

Now, Webflow's next move is, perhaps, non-intuitive: It's unveiling a forthcoming tool for developers to set up online storefronts on the sites they design.

With this tool, Webflow handles the technology to power shopping carts and taking credit card payments; the designer can just focus on getting the look and feel of the store exactly right. It also brings Webflow into competition with $14 billion Canadian software company Shopify, which makes easy storefronts the core of its own business.

From Magdalin's perspective, it's all part of the mission. As software continues to eat the world, Magdalin sees tools like Webflow as a way to even the scales. A small business may not have the resources to hire whole teams of developers and designers. A tool like Webflow, however, means that a single designer can punch above their weight.

It's all part of a movement that Silicon Valley insiders have taken to calling "no-code:" The idea that professional developers shouldn't be the only ones with the tools to create software. Other examples include Airtable, an increasingly-popular spreadsheet app that also makes it easy to make custom, bespoke apps.

There will always be a place for skilled pros who can solve really hard problems, says Magdalin. But there's no reason why a solo web developer should need to enlist the help of a web developer. And when you do, you make it possible for even more software to be created.

Webflow is designed to be as easy as a consumer tool, but as robust as professional software. Webflow

"When you give normal people access to technology, entire businesses can be created," says Magdalin. "I can imagine a high school student creating a new site like Airbnb or Twitter on a no-code platform."

In the meantime, Magdalin says that Webflow has been moving upmarket. Whereas it originally targeted individual developers, it's been pivoting toward pitching at small teams of designers at ad agencies and other companies.

He says that it's the kind of move that Webflow wouldn't have been able to make if they had gone the traditional route of taking lots of investor money — he feels that venture capitalists would have pushed Webflow after the largest customers, or bust.

With this strategy, he acknowledges that growth will be a little slower than it might have been if they went after those big enterprises. Still, he says that it'll be a much steadier and less risky pace of growth, while also giving the team latitude to develop the product exactly as it sees fit. And the company is breaking even, reinvesting its profits in more research and development.

This approach is already bearing fruit, as happy customers spread positive word-of-mouth. He boasts that at one Webflow customer, one designer was able to do the work of three engineers, saving the employer money.

"That value difference is worth it to many businesses," says Magdalin.