Original author: Julie Bort and Biz Carson

A bull's-eye touched down on the island of Dominica on Monday evening. As of Wednesday at 7 p.m. PT, that eye has re-emerged — this time between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

So far, Hurricane Maria's devastation has been severe. In Dominica, it tore roofs from homes; picked up and scattered trees like matches; and choked streets with floods. In Puerto Rico, it brought similar destruction and has left the island completely without power.

Even before the storm made landfall on Monday, meterologists saw something at the center of the storm that portended evil.

"Maria is developing the dreaded pinhole eye," the National Hurricane Center posted.

On Wednesday evening, that eye reappeared.

That tiny circle in the center of the storm can be a sign that a hurricane will wreak havoc. In general, the smaller the eye, the faster the hurricane will spin — and the faster the spin, the stronger the storm.

It all comes down to energy conservation, Ryan Maue, a research meteorologist and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, told Business Insider. Just as figure skaters appear to give themselves an extra boost of momentum by tucking in a leg or an arm, a hurricane with a tighter inner eye is likely to spin faster.

Hurricanes have three essential elements that can be traced from the inside out.

Business Insider / Mike Nudelman

At the center is the eye, an eerily peaceful region that's generally between 12 and 30 miles in diameter.

Circling the eye is what's known as the hurricane's eyewall, a ring of dense, towering vertical clouds that swirl around the eye. The heaviest rains and strongest winds are found inside the eyewall.

The outermost region is characterized by what is known as spiral rainbands, heavy showers that trace an inward spiral toward the storm's center.

At 6 p.m. ET on Monday, Maria's pinhole eye measured roughly 10 miles in diameter, according to The Associated Press. That suggested danger to the thousands of meteorologists watching it from around the world.

However, an eye with a 10-mile diameter is still more than four times as large as that of 2005's Hurricane Wilma, which set a record for the lowest central pressure of any hurricane, at peak strength. (The stronger a storm, the lower the central pressure.)

Maria's 160-mph winds still proved devastating for Dominica, and by the time they reached Puerto Rico, they'd ramped up to 175-mph.

By Wednesday, the storm had damaged "everything in its path," in Puerto Rico according to reports.

Maria is now headed toward the Dominican Republic, but Puerto Rico continues to experience "catastrophic" flooding from rainfall and storm surge as of Wednesday night, the NHC reported.

Hurricane warnings are in effect for the Dominican Republic, where conditions are "now deteriorating," according to the NHC, along with Puerto Rico, Culebra, Turks and Caicos, and the southeastern Bahamas.

Original author: Erin Brodwin

When it comes to requesting data on Twitter users, the US remains the leader among governments around the world. But other countries are quickly catching up.

According to the latest transparency report from Twitter, information requests by the US fell to 2,111 in the first half of this year. That was down 8% from the second half of 2016. Even with that drop, other countries still trail far behind, as we can tell from the chart from Statista, which is based on Twitter's data.

But if you'd looked at a chart of the data from the previous reporting period, the US would have had an even bigger lead. The number of information requests coming from Japan jumped 42% from the second half of 2016 to the first half of this year. India made 55% more requests in the most recent period, compared with the one immediately prior, and South Korea 63% more.

Just because a country makes a request doesn't mean Twitter hands over the information. In its report, Twitter said it pushes back against such requests whenever possible. Before handing over user data, it considers the nature of the crime, whether government followed the correct legal processes in making their requests, and the kind of information government are requesting. While the company granted the vast majority of requests coming from the United States so far this year, it denied all of the ones Turkey's made.

Mike Nudelman/Business Insider

 

 

 

 

 

 

Original author: Caroline Cakebread

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Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Sen. Mark Warner. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

There are likely "a lot more" fake Facebook accounts affiliated with Russia than what the company has so far disclosed, the vice chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, said on Wednesday.

Warner, who is helping lead the committee's investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election, told CNN's Jake Tapper that the 470 fake accounts Facebook identified as having ties to Russia "doesn't pass the smell test."

He pointed to Facebook's removal of 30,000 fake accounts ahead of France's presidential election earlier this year as evidence that there were likely more than only 470 fake accounts used by Russia during the US election last year.

“To me that just doesn’t pass the smell test in terms of that number of accounts affiliated with Russia," he said. "I think there’s a lot more.”

Facebook disclosed earlier this month that $100,000 worth of ads were purchased on its platform by Russian-affiliated accounts during the months surrounding the US presidential election. The revelation has prompted investigators to call on Facebook and Twitter to testify in a public hearing on Russia's use of social media to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Warner said that the number of "dummy" accounts affiliated with Russia was “more significant” than the purchased ads because the accounts were used to "drive" the sharing of fake news stories and even organize real-world rallies opposing Hillary Clinton. He had previously said that Facebook's disclosure of Russian ads was just the "tip of the iceberg."

“The level of sophistication of some of this effort on the social media side and the level of targeting really leaves me with a lot of questions and questions we’re going to want Facebook to answer in public," Warner said Wednesday.

While a date for the hearing hasn't been set, Warner told CNN that Twitter would brief his committee privately on its findings next week.

A Facebook spokesperson said the company continues "to cooperate with the relevant investigative authorities." Twitter didn't respond to a request for comment.

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Original author: Alex Heath

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos REUTERS/Rick Wilking

An investment bank's report that Amazon is tip-toeing around the pharmacy space sent Wall Street scrambling to understand CEO Jeff Bezos' next move.

Analysts at Leerink Partners wrote that Amazon may be in discussions with mid-sized pharmacy benefit managers "in an effort to get into various contract arrangements."

Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) act as the gatekeeper between whoever is paying for your drug (Medicare, your insurer etc.) and whoever is selling the drug to you.

They manage lists called formularies that determine which drugs you can and cannot have. The companies first popped up in the 1960s to help insurers handle mountains of paperwork. Now PBMs navigate the expensive, opaque system that is American healthcare. About 80% of the market is controlled by the biggest three PBMs, Express Scripts, CVS Health and UnitedHealth Group.

"Our specialists indicated that Amazon may be speaking with mid-sized PBMs now in an effort to get into the pharmacy services space," said the Leerink report. "It may take ~24 months to get licensed in 50 states, but our specialists believe that this is the direction Amazon is moving in."

If you had your druthers

Andrew Miller, Vice President of Operations at of Detroit-based PBM Meridian Rx, doesn't think that necessarily has to take that much time for Amazon to enter the space.

"If I were Amazon... I'd be looking to buy a small mail order facility. Amazon's strength is obviously the distribution so if you bought a small mail order licensed in 50 states it would be plug and play," he said. "I think they're looking for an adjudication system, and I think they're looking for a network of pharmacies."

In its report, Leerink seems to imply that Amazon is talking about partnering up with a PBM once it has a pharmacy business. That's because the pharmaceutical business requires more than just your regular logistics company. You need to know how to navigate the healthcare system.

Leerink highlighted that in its report, addressing concerns that Amazon's entrance into the field would hit distributors the hardest.

From the report [emphasis ours]:

Throughout the trip, investors were very persistent in asking about the impact of Amazon. CAH [Cardinal Health] highlighted that the biggest risk could be home delivery of medical products, but the issue here is that medical billing is very complicated.

If a member wants a product delivered to his or her home, and if they want that product covered by his or her insurance, then making sure that the claim is sent to the plan in a proper format is critical. It is unclear to us, as of now, how Amazon would manage through this challenge. 

A PBM could help with that. And maybe not just partnering with one. If you're Amazon not just buy a PBM and not have to deal with another party at all? If there's anything PBMs get knocked for, it's their lack of transparency. Critics accuse PBMs of having their hand in every part of the distribution chain — of taking rebates from drug companies in exchange for a good spot on formularies, for example.

So why would a giant like Amazon want to bother with all that?

Rumors and speculation

Miller told Business Insider that about 3 weeks ago he was contacted by a consultant doing research for an unnamed company with 270,000 employees in the retail space. The consultant said the company employed pharmacists.

"You get weird calls but usually you can figure out who they are pretty quick, this one I haven't been able to figure out." 

This is what the consultant talked to Miller about:

The retailer is looking into buying a small to mid-sized PBM. If the acquisition cost is under a certain price, the purchase wouldn't need board approval. If it's over a certain price, though, the purchase would need board approval. They also discussed the retailer partnering with a PBM.

"To my knowledge, they talked to seven to eight mid-level PBMs and the board was going to meet within the next month [as of 3 weeks ago] to decide its action," Miller said.

We asked Amazon if they were the ones poking around asking these questions, or if it employs pharmacists, and the company said that it simply doesn't respond to rumors and speculation. Amazon is also larger than the company described to Miller. 

So maybe it's not just Amazon poking around. There are a couple other possibilities. Whoever else it is, they want a piece.

Original author: Linette Lopez

Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and the world's richest man, is not usually one to look back. Indeed, his first and most famous book to date was titled "The Road Ahead." 

So it's no surprise that Gates had a philosophical answer when pressed at a Bloomberg event today on whether or not he regrets "control-alt-delete," the infamous two-handed keystroke for logging in to or restarting a Windows PC.

“You can’t go back and change the small things in your life without putting the other things at risk,” Gates said, according to a report in Quartz.

However, Gates does go on to admit that if he could change one thing without affecting linear time too harshly, he would have made it a single button. 

This isn't the first time Gates has made this point, either: Back in 2013, Gates said that he originally intended for "control-alt-delete" to be a single button, but IBM got in the way. Back around 1980, when the two companies were collaborating on the original IBM PC, Microsoft couldn't get IBM to spare a dedicated button on the keyboard.

This is something that IBM PC co-creator David Bradley once copped to, during a panel discussion at a media event. 

"I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous," Bradley said — leaving Gates, also sitting on the stage, looking somewhere between bemused and annoyed. 

You can watch that moment here:

For all the second-thoughts about it, control-alt-delete has stuck around: It's still in current versions of Windows 10, now used primarily to access the task manager or to switch logged-in users quickly.

Get the latest IBM stock price here.

Original author: Matt Weinberger

Apple's new Watch made lots of headlines on Wednesday — but for all the wrong reasons.

The latest version of the company's wrist-worn gadget — the Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE — was found to have an embarrassing glitch.

It turns out that the watch's LTE cellular connectivity, which is supposed to let users make phone calls directly from their wrists and has been touted by Apple as a key selling point, doesn't always work very well. 

Actually, it's a bug with the watch's Wi-Fi, but the end-result is the same: LTE doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Reviews of the device, which hits stores shelves on Friday, were merciless. Apple's stock fell as much as 3% at one point on Wednesday. 

Apple is working on a fix, which will be delivered in a future software release, an Apple spokesperson told Business Insider. 

But the issues with Apple's new watch don't stop at bad reviews, inconsistent wireless, or even a short battery life. (It can only manage an hour of talk time when using LTE.)

The problem with the Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE is that it's a sign that Apple has lost sight of the principle that led to its meteoric rise: Apple doesn't sell technology for technology's sake. It figures out what people want to do (even when people don't know it themselves) and provides technology to make it possible. 

"Part of the hardest thing about coming up with new products is to figure out a really cool set of technologies that you can implement it with and make it easy, but also figuring out something that people want to do," late Apple CEO Steve Jobs once said.  "We've all seen products that have come out that have been interesting but just fall on their face because not enough people want to do them." 

 

AppleHarvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen puts this same concept in a similar way he calls the "jobs to be done" theory. In an over-simplified nutshell, consumers don't buy technologies or products, they pick things that can complete specific jobs for them. 

And recently, at least one Wall Street analyst has suggested that Apple has lost its ability to find new jobs to be done. 

"[Apple chief design officer] Jony Ive's Industrial Design Group has shown a knack for identifying jobs even before consumers know of their need. The iPod's '1,000 songs in your pocket' was an example. Moreover, Apple's functional organization and metrics appear to align with the jobs to be done approach. Still, the company seems to be struggling to identify the jobs for Apple Watch and Apple Pay," UBS analyst Steven Milunovich wrote last year. 

Beyond beach bums

Apple/ScreenshotSo what's the Apple Watch Series 3 With LTE's job? 

Here's the marketing copy Apple wrote on its website:

Answer a call from your surfboard. Ask Siri to send a message. Stream your favorite songs on your run. And do it all while leaving your phone behind.

Are these really jobs that consumers are trying to fill? Hardcore surfers who want to answer pressing business calls in the ocean seems like a niche.

Siri can already send a message from an iPhone, and there isn't a ton of evidence that that's a popular feature on the phone, anyway. Having the ability to leave your phone at home is a big deal for runners but that's still a subset of the general population. 

Here's how Apple COO Jeff Williams introduced the new watch earlier this month:

Now you have the freedom to go anywhere with just your Apple Watch. This has been our vision from the very beginning and we believe built-in cellular make Series 3 the ultimate expression of Apple Watch. Now you can go for a run with just your watch and still be connected. You can leave your phone when you go to the beach or just run a quick errand. And it’s really nice to know you can be reached if needed while staying in the moment.

...

For Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, we developed a custom wireless chip, we call W2. There’s nothing else like it. It delivers up to 85% faster Wi-Fi while being 50% more power efficient for both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. And we’ve added a barometric altimeter. So now you get flights of stairs climbed and elevation gains after a workout. We’re also releasing an app for developers. This can be great for skiing and snowboarding acts. 

Of course, the biggest challenge of all was adding cellular. You see, our little watch is already packed, and you have to add antennas, radios, power amplifiers, a SIM card. And if you don’t do it right, it gets so big it looks like a house arrest bracelet and you’re not going to want to wear it.

Aside from this specific use case Apple keeps repeating that involves a beach bum who also needs to pick up important calls from the shore, the main sales pitch is focused on how impressive the device is technologically.

Apple

Selling the wrong thing

Sure, it's an achievement that Apple figured out how to make LTE wireless work on a such a small device, and managed to do it with same sized-battery as the previous, non-LTE model. But most people don't buy $400 gadgets because the cellular chip is so technically impressive.

One hour of "talk time" battery life may actually be a huge accomplishment given how power-hungry an LTE modem is. But for the average consumer, one hour of talk time sounds like a weakness, not a selling point.

The potential of the Apple Watch is easy to see. If it didn't have any battery issues, and it were slightly more powerful, it's easy to imagine it replacing a phone for some people. If and when it gets packed with more advanced sensors, it could become a critical tool that everyone needs to keep an informed eye on their health. And someday, if technology breaks the right way, you could leave your keys at home and use your watch as your universal ID to do everything from starting your car to unlocking the door at the office. 

But consumers don't buy the potential of a product, they buy a device to fill a specific job in their lives today. And adding LTE to the Apple Watch doesn't really solve any additional use cases, except maybe for a runner. Instead, it seems like Apple released this cellular watch because it was on a hardware roadmap from two years ago — "this has been our vision from the very beginning" — and because it could.

And that's ultimately a much bigger problem with the Apple Watch than some pre-release glitches. 

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Original author: Kif Leswing

A close-up of Apple's new app drawer in iMessage.AppleWhen you downloaded iOS 11, you may have noticed something new inside iMessage: a strip of app icons at the bottom of the screen. 

The icons, called an app drawer, include a brand-new GIFs button, quick access to the App Store, the ability to send songs via Apple Music, and more.

The new app drawer is Apple's way of building off the changes it made to iMessage in iOS 10. Back then, Apple introduced a special iMessage App Store and added drawing features. But iOS 11 takes things one step further — and it's going to make your life a lot easier. 

Here's how to use the new iMessage:

Original author: Avery Hartmans

Tom Blomfield, CEO, Monzo. Monzo

LONDON — Startup bank Monzo is doing away with one of its most popular features — unlimited free ATM withdrawals overseas.

The company, which offers a prepaid money card and is rolling out current accounts, is asking its customers to choose the best new charging option for ATM fees abroad, saying its existing policy has become simply too costly to continue.

Withdrawals from international holes-in-the-wall cost Monzo between 1-2% of each transaction. Costs have more than doubled in the last year from £6 to £16 per user, the company says.

"This seems to be a result of a combination of factors, including people using their Monzo cards more frequently, increased awareness of the free cash withdrawals we’ve offered, and people signing up specifically to use the Monzo card abroad," Tristan Thomas, Monzo's head of marketing and community, wrote in a blog post this week.

Anecdotally, this rings true. I have recommended Monzo to friends and family to use when traveling abroad thanks to its free ATM withdrawals and good rates. (I also included it in a roundup last year of fintech products that can help you save money when traveling.)

13% of users account for 85% of the ATM fee costs, Monzo says, suggesting that a small core of users have been using Monzo extensively abroad.

"We want to build a sustainable, viable business that is around for many years to come," Tristan says. "At the moment, the rising costs of foreign ATM withdrawals makes that difficult."

Spending on cards while abroad, online sales in foreign currencies, and UK ATM withdrawals will all still remain free, Monzo says. But it is asking users to what to do about the overseas ATM withdrawals, offering three options:

1% charge for ATM withdrawals in Europe, 2% charge for withdrawals Rest of World 1.5% charge for ATM withdrawals everywhere outside the UK £200 free allowance per month, 3% charge for withdrawals thereafter everywhere outside the UK

Monzo is inviting feedback from its customer base on its website here.

N26's cofounders, from left, Maximilian Tayenthal and Valentin Stalf. The startup bank shut some accounts last year over ATM fees. Number26

The company is not the first fintech to run into issues with ATM withdrawals. Last year German startup bank N26 shuttered some customer accounts, saying they were running up too great a cost in ATM fees. Travel money card Revolut also introduced fees for ATM withdrawals at the end of last year.

All are grappling with a core problem for many fintech startups — can they convert all their users into paying customers?

Businesses like Monzo and Revolut have caught the attention of investors and the press thanks to the rapid growth of their customer bases. Revolut didn't exist two years ago but already has over half a million users.

Many people have undoubtedly signed up for startups like these because of the low-cost or free services that they offer. Usually, the costs of these services are simply absorbed by the business.

These startups argue that, while giving things like ATM withdrawals costs them money, the cost of user acquisition is still lower than what traditional banks pay. If they can make money from a user through another service, overdrafts say, once they've hooked them with free withdrawals, the up front investment and economics make sense.

However, both Revolut and Monzo are loss making and the claim that they can ultimately make enough money from users to cover costs remains just a theory.

Early indications suggest it could be easier said than done. Travelex launched a card to rival Revolut last year, the SuperCard, which offered free spending abroad but a 2.99% fee on any ATM withdrawals. Clearly, the hope was that customers would get the card but end up doing an ATM withdrawal here and there, giving Travelex a bit of revenue.

Things have not gone to plan. Travelex shut down the SuperCard scheme in May, citing "much higher than anticipated" costs. It seems that it is easier to simply charge the customer the foreign exchange fees up front so that everyone's on the same page.

There are other examples of plans going awry. Monese, a banking app for migrants, found that when people reached their monthly free activity cap, rather than pay for services people just stopped using the app. It has since pivoted to a paid-for model, to ensure customers are willing to pay from the start.

Across fintech, we may well see the growing creep of up-front charges for services as many startups clock that giving away freebies is not quite the same as winning loyal customers.

Original author: Oscar Williams-Grut

The 2018 Nissan Leaf.NissanElectric cars are starting to have their moment. The Tesla Model 3 has begun deliveries, and its main rival, the Chevy Bolt, has been on the market since last October. The vehicles have base prices of $35,000 and about $37,000, respectively, but at the moment Tesla is only manufacturing a $44,000 Premium version.

Both cars are total newbies when compared to the Nissan Leaf, introduced in 2010 and the best-selling electric car of all time (300,000!). The Leaf originally had a range of under 100 miles on a single charge, but its base price was just $30,000 before federal tax credits, and it has gathered a bit of a cult following.

However, the design was never held in high esteem and with newer, longer-range EVs coming to market, Nissan had to update the Leaf. The car has been revamped for the 2018 model year, with 150 miles of range and improved styling (less Star Trek shuttlecraft, more contemporary five-door hatchback).

The Tesla Model 3.Timothy Artman/TeslaLike the Bolt, the Leaf aims for practicality over sex appeal. The Model 3, on the other hand, is a snazzy looking set of wheels. That said, the new Leaf was clearly influenced by Tesla's example. A decade ago, the idea was that hybrids and EVs should advertise their virtues with a sort of anti-design (see the Toyota Prius). The Leaf was very much in that vein.

Tesla reversed that paradigm. Which was not as difficult for Elon Musk's carmaker because Tesla went after the luxury market first, whereas Nissan aimed for a slice of the mass market that wanted to experiment with EVs.

We're had the opportunity to check out both the Model 3 and the new Leaf, up close and personal, although we haven't yet officially reviewed either vehicle.

That doesn't mean we can't make some aesthetic comparisons. How does sensible — and seasoned — stack up against sexy and futuristic?

Here's an annotated take:

Original author: Matthew DeBord and Skye Gould

In the three days since Apple took the wraps off the iPhone X, the forthcoming device's facial recognition capabilities have drawn a substantial amount of attention.

Apple fans have welcomed Face ID as the future and the preferred way to unlock an iPhone X. Some privacy advocates have pointed out that the concept seems a little dystopian.

But others, like Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, who chairs a Senate privacy committee, want answers about how it works.

While Apple provided few details about the facial recognition system during the announcement a few days ago, the company now says it plans to release more information about Face ID privacy and security before the device goes on sale on November 3.

Apple's senior vice president for software, Craig Federighi, said that Apple plans to release a security "white paper" on Face ID in an interview with TechCrunch on Friday. Apple often releases detailed, technical reports it calls white papers on critical security features. 

One of the common misconceptions about Face ID that Apple is keen to dispel is that Apple is building a database of faces with its new feature. "Face ID data never leaves the device, is encrypted and protected by the Secure Enclave," an Apple representative told Business Insider. 

Apple's iPhone X.Apple"We do not gather customer data when you enroll in Face ID, it stays on your device, we do not send it to the cloud for training data,” Federighi told TechCrunch. 

An Apple representative provided this statement in response to a question from about Franken's request for information:

Our teams have been developing the technologies behind Face ID for several years, and our users’ privacy has been a priority since the very beginning.

Face ID provides intuitive and secure authentication enabled by the TrueDepth camera system and the A11 Bionic chip, which uses advanced technologies to accurately map and match the geometry of a user's face. Face ID data never leaves the device, is encrypted and protected by the Secure Enclave.

We’ve tested Face ID on people from many countries, cultures, races and ethnicities, using over one billion images to train our neural networks and defend against spoofing.

We’re confident that our customers will love using the feature and find it an easy and natural way to unlock their iPhone X. We will offer more details on Face ID as we near the product’s availability.

A Franken representative did not immediately respond to a inquiry about whether Apple has replied to the senator. 

Visit Markets Insider for constantly updated market quotes for individual stocks, ETFs, indices, commodities and currencies traded around the world. Go Now!

Original author: Kif Leswing

Equifax's top information-security executives are leaving the credit-reporting company after a data breach that exposed the personal financial information of 143 million Americans.

The consumer-data firm's CIO, David Webb, and its chief security officer, Susan Mauldin, are "retiring" a week after Equifax announced the cyber attack that has been called one of the worst such data breaches in US history.

Webb will be replaced by Mark Rohrwasser, who joined the company last year, Equifax said in an emailed statement. Mauldin will be replaced by Russ Ayres. Both Rohrwasser and Ayers have previously worked in Equifax's IT division.

The hack occurred between mid-May and July, Equifax said when it first disclosed the break in last week.

The company said criminals had accessed details including names and social security numbers. Credit card numbers for about 209,000 people, and certain documents for another 182,000 were also accessed. Equifax has set up a website to help people figure out if they are among those whose information was compromised.

Markets InsiderThe company said there was no evidence of a breach into its core consumer or commercial credit reporting databases, and has since admitted that the source of the breach was a software flaw that could have been prevented.

Three Equifax executives sold nearly $2 million in company stock just days after the breach.

The company said the executives "had no knowledge" of the incident beforehand, according to an emailed statement from the credit-monitoring agency.

Some US lawmakers have called for an investigation of the breach, with Equifax's CEO expected to testify before Congress over the matter, and the company's shares have plunged in the days since it was disclosed.

The breach could be one of the biggest in the United States, Reuters reported. Last December, Yahoo said more than one billion user accounts were compromised in August 2013, while in 2014 eBay had urged 145 million users to change their passwords following a cyber attack.

Original author: Bryan Logan

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Larry Ellison, Mark Hurd, and Safra Catz saw their company's stock plunge 8% on Friday. Noah Berger/Reuters, Robert Galbraith/Reuters, and Justin Sullivan/Getty

Investors weren't happy with Oracle's latest earnings forecast and made their feelings known Friday. 

Oracle's stock fell as much as 8.2% in regular trading before closing at $48.74, down $4.05 or 7.7%. 

Investors were responding to the company's latest quarterly report, issued Thursday, in which it offered disappointing guidance for its cloud revenue and profits for its second fiscal quarter.

Oracle forecast its cloud revenue would increase between 39% and 43% in the quarter. That may be fast-paced, but it would represent a slowdown from the 51.4% pace at which its cloud revenue grew in its just-completed first quarter. 

Oracle has been struggling to catch up with Amazon and Microsoft in cloud services, and investors have been closely scrutinizing its efforts.

The company also predicted that its per-share earnings in the second quarter will be between $0.64 and $0.68. Prior to the report, analysts were predicting the company would earn $0.68 per share in the period.

The disappointing news from Oracle may be partly a result of expectations that had gotten too high. Things were looking good for the company in June when it reported its cloud revenue in its fourth quarter had grown 58%. That spurred analysts to boost their price targets for the company's stock to $54.84 per share. 

Friday's sell-off of Oracle's stock could affect more than just general shareholders. Last week, the company revealed an update to its executive compensation program that ties the pay of founder Larry Ellison and joint CEOs Safra Catz and Mark Hurd to the performance of its stock and its success in the cloud market.  

To meet their pay targets —$103.7 million each in 2022, or $20.74 million annually — the team must get Oracle's stock to an average price of $80 per share for at least 30 days before 2022 and hit $20 billion in total cloud revenues in one fiscal year. Oracle's total cloud revenues in 2017 were $4.57 billion.

Original author: Becky Peterson

The rise of Netflix and Hulu is largely responsible for the spread of the term "binge-watch." For most, that means dedicating an entire day or at least an evening to sitting down and watching multiple episodes of a TV show at once. According to YouGov, 58 percent of Americans have engaged in binge-watching, and of that number 72% say it's how they normally consume TV shows. 

So why has spending hours on end in front of a TV become a phenomenon? First of all, before online streaming services came around, it wasn't possible to watch multiple episodes at once until after a TV season was available to buy or rent in stores. Fans had to wait until the next cable airing of a show's season, and then sometimes an entire year before the next season debuted. As we can see in this chart from Statista, getting the whole story at once and not having the lag time between episodes are the main motivations for binge-watching. Interestingly, it also looks like Americans are just plain bored and using TV as a way to kill time. 

Mike Nudelman/Business Insider

Original author: Caroline Cakebread

Original author: Nathaniel Lee and Jessica Orwig

The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft undergoing thermal testing in 1996.NASA/JPL-CaltechAfter 13 years of orbiting Saturn and its moons, NASA's bus-size Cassini probe is now a puff of radioactive vapor in the planet's swirling clouds.

Space agency leaders knew this day would come since 2010, when they decided to empty Cassini's tanks to continue exploring Saturn as long as possible.

Without a means of controlling the probe, they reasoned, Cassini had to be destroyed. This would prevent it crashing into Saturn's icy moons Enceladus and Titan — which hide vast, salty, global oceans that may be habitable to alien life — since Cassini left Earth contaminated with small amounts of bacteria.

To honor the more than 453,000 photos Cassini took of Saturn, its rings, moons, and other objects, several NASA divisions worked together to select its 100 greatest visuals. Those have been turned into a 110-page ebook, titled "The Saturn System Through the Eyes of Cassini", which is free to download for iBooks, Kindles, and other ebook readers (and just as a PDF).

"While these images represent the tip of the iceberg — each telling a story about Saturn and its mysterious moons — our hope is that the mission will inspire future artists and explorers," NASA wrote in a press release. "The sheer beauty of these images is surpassed only by the science and discoveries they represent."

Jim Green, NASA's head of planetary science, wrote the forward to the collection of pictures.

"This book is the first chapter of what I predict will be the greatest story ever told: how humans reached for the stars and discovered life beyond Earth," Green said.

Here's a small collection of the best images and what they reveal.

Original author: Dave Mosher

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Original author: Kif Leswing

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Original author: Danielle Muoio

Equifax’s unprecedented data breach, which potentially exposed 143 million American’s personal information last week, has already cost the credit agency $9.75 billion in market value, and the stock could plunge even more, Morgan Stanley says.

In its updated bear case out Friday, the investment bank asks, "Where’s the floor?" and says Equifax’s stock could plunge as low as $50 a share, about one-third of where it was before the hack.

"The main risks that we see to EFX center around: 1) greater impairment to the Global Consumer Solutions segment (GCS), 2) potential bleed into other businesses and/or share shift, 3) increased regulation, and 4) higher-than-anticipated fines," writes analyst Jeffrey Goldstein.  "We note that many of these risks are difficult, if not impossible to quantify, but we give our best estimates."

Morgan Stanley maintains its equal-weight rating for the stock, and has dropped its base case price target to $127 from $140. 

Regulation is a key concern for investors, the bank says. Senator Elizabeth Warren said Friday she, along with 11 other Democratic senators, had launched an investigation into the breach.

"This could result in higher compliance costs at best, or nationalization of the credit bureau function at worst," Goldstein says. "We believe that the sharp price decline over the past few days is related to the steady drumbeat of legislative inquiries,and a lack of clarity on what this means for EFX's future business model. The ultra-bear case that we have heard is that the government could decide to takeover the function of the credit bureaus."

Shares of Equifax continued their losses Friday afternoon, trading down 5% at 2:15 p.m. ET. They have plunged more than 35% since the breach was announced. 

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Original author: Graham Rapier

We finally have an idea of how much Google has poured into self-driving cars.

Between 2009 and 2015, Google spent at least $1.1 billion to develop the tech powering its self-driving cars, IEEE Spectrum's Mark Harris first reported. The details were made public in a court filing that shows the August 24 deposition of Shawn Bananzadeh, a financial analyst at Waymo, the self-driving car company that was spun out of Google.

Bananzadeh was testifying as part of Waymo's lawsuit against Uber, which claims the ride-hailing company stole intellectual property and trade secrets to develop its own autonomous technology.

Bananzadeh said it costs at least $1.1 billion to develop three different trade secrets within that seven-year time period. That figure, however, is a low estimate because it does not factor in equity and other expenses, Bananzadeh said.

"As I mentioned earlier, there are — there are equity that's missing from this, as well as, like, intracompany expenses of the allocated expensive," he said.

Before it was Waymo, Google's self-driving-car research was an internal program dubbed Project Chauffeur. The secretive project was born in 2009, but it was kept under wraps, making it difficult to assess how much Google was spending to make its driverless utopian vision a reality.

Bananzadeh's testimony shows Google spent at least $1.1 billion on just tech development from the program's inception to 2015. 

Although $1.1 billion is nothing to sniff at, it seems relatively modest in an industry dominated by tech giants with deep pockets. Alphabet reportedly wants to invest $1 billion in ride-hailing startup Lyft, a sum that would equal its 7-year spending on tech development. 

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Original author: Danielle Muoio