Andrés Nieto Porras/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Right now, Earth is plowing through a cloud of tiny bits of comet dust, turning the rice-grain-size debris into what many call shooting stars.

Known as the Perseid meteor shower, this recurring astronomical event is easily the most watched — and beautiful — shower every year.

The Perseids in 2017 is from July 13 until August 26, and it will peak in the late evening and early morning on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, according to EarthSky.org.

Some websites have claimed that there will be more visible meteors per minute this year than at any other time in nearly a century, but experts say this is hogwash.

"This year, we are expecting enhanced rates of about 150 per hour or so, but the increased number will be cancelled out by the bright moon, the light of which will wash out the fainter Perseids," Bill Cooke, who leads NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, wrote in a blog post on Thursday. "A meteor every couple of minutes is good, and certainly worth going outside to look, but it is hardly the 'brightest shower in human history.'"

How to watch

This year's conditions will be challenging for two reasons.

First, there'll be a waning gibbous moon — the full moon will have just ended, but it will still be full and bright.

Second, the moon will rise in the evening and set near dawn. Normally the best time to watch for meteors is after the moon sets. TimeAndDate.com has a convenient moonrise and moonset tool to find out when that will happen in your location. In New York, for example, the moon will set at around 6:44 a.m. on Tuesday. In London, the moon will be visible most of the night.

Kartik Ramanathan on Flickr

Given this year's conditions, the best time to head outside is between midnight and dawn. The closer to dawn the better — though twilight begins to eat up the dark sky a couple of hours before the sun rises.

You won't need any telescopes or fancy equipment to see the meteors — just clear skies, your eyes, and a bit of patience. Find a dark, remote spot away from the light pollution of nearby towns and cities, make yourself comfortable, and set aside a good chunk of time to enjoy the show.

"Give yourself at least an hour of viewing time for watching any meteor shower," EarthSky.org advises. "Meteors tend to come in spurts that are interspersed by lulls. Also, it can take as long as 20 minutes for your eyes to adapt to the dark."

Perseid meteors are bright and fast, and they often leave persistent trains, or the bright streaks that linger in the sky. They are best seen from the Northern Hemisphere, and they travel at the mind-numbing speed of 132,000 mph — 500 times as fast as the fastest car in the world.

What causes a meteor shower?

When a comet swings too close to the sun, the sun's light boils its icy surface, releasing particles of ice and dust.

This debris coming off the comet forms a tail that points away from the sun. As Earth crosses the orbit of this comet, it passes through the tail.

An interactive animation by Ian Webster at meteorshowers.org illustrates how this works:

The gravity of our planet attracts the dust and ice that the comet leaves in its wake. When that debris is pulled into our atmosphere, it rubs up against air molecules, causing it to burn up and streak through the sky.

That process results in the glowing trails of light that we see as meteors, or "shooting stars."

The comet producing the meteors in the Perseids is Swift-Tuttle, a 16-mile-wide hunk of space rock that takes 133 years to orbit the sun. It's the largest object in our solar system that makes repeated close approaches to Earth.

The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, but if you trace their paths back, they all appear to come from the same point, called the radiant. That's because the meteors are all approaching us at the same angle.

Meteor showers are all named after their radiant. The radiant for the Perseids is the constellation Perseus, the Greek mythological hero.

Ali Sundermier wrote a previous version of this story.

Snapchat announced that its audience grew to 173 million daily users in Q2. That's a nice improvement from the 143 million users it had one year ago, but it was 2 million users shy of the level Wall Street expected.

Snapchat's stronghold continues to be in North America, as we can see in this chart from Statista. While Europe is also a big market for Snapchat, the company is not adding users as quickly in that region. Snapchat's growth in the rest of the world continues to lag, perhaps owing to the longrunning challenges it has had with the version of its app for Android — the more popular smartphone operating system outside the US. 

During Snap's Q2 conference call on Thursday, CEO Evan Spiegel said the company had made improvements with its Android app, but that certain issues required more significant structural changes that could drag into 2018.

 

 

Mike Nudelman/Business Insider

Get the latest Snap stock price here.

Dendi (far left) and OpenAI's Greg Brockman (right) talk it out ahead of the first match. Screenshot/YouTube

Computers have already beaten the world's best humans at classic games like chess and Go.

Now one has beaten one of the world's best players of the smash-hit video game "Dota 2."

Live on stage at The International, developer Valve's flagship $24 million tournament, a bot from Open AI defeated professional gamer Danylo "Dendi" Ishutin in a surprise, previously unannounced one-on-one exhibition matchup. The bot from OpenAI, the $1 billion artificial-intelligence research nonprofit cochaired by Tesla Motors CEO Musk and Y Combinator President Sam Altman, beat Dendi in the first match in about ten minutes; Dendi resigned from the second match, and declined to play a third.

Watch the match here:

 

"Please, stop bullying me," Dendi, who's estimated to have earned $735,449.40 in winnings in his career, said to the bot during the match.

Elon Musk himself took to Twitter to praise OpenAI for its achievement, saying its bot was the "first ever to defeat world's best players in competitive eSports."

In a video ahead of the matchup, OpenAI CTO Greg Brockman explained that the company's special bot was trained by playing a "thousand lifetimes" of matches against itself, with "coaching" from the company. Brockman also boasted that the bot had already bested several pro "Dota 2" players.

"Over the past week, our bot was undefeated against many top professionals including SumaiL (top 1v1 player in the world) and Arteezy (top overall player in the world)," wrote Brockman in a blog entry discussing the bot.

The idea of "self-playing" is key to the advances that OpenAI is pushing for, Brockman told Business Insider following the match. It's a useful way for an AI system to learn even the most complex tasks. It doesn't learn anything if it goes up against either a weaker player or a far stronger one. By playing itself, it always has a worthy opponent, he said. 

"You kind of see this AI go from total randomness" into the game-winning system we saw here, Brockman said.

You can watch OpenAI's introductory video here:

Artificial intelligence companies have a history of using video games to test their technology: Google's DeepMind has tackled "StarCraft 2," while a Microsoft AI team recently claimed to attain the high score in Ms. Pac-Man.

OpenAI isn't just walking away after its victory. The organization hopes to have its bot ready to play in a proper five-on-five match next year.

"'Dota' is not solved," Brockman told Business Insider. 

Still, he expects OpenAI will explore using the same bot to play other games. The same "self-playing" principles it uses can be applied almost anywhere, he said. And OpenAI is excited to see what it can learn under a variety of circumstances.

"At OpenAI, we're not just about publishing a paper," Brockman said. "It's really about building working systems and doing something that would have been impossible before."

1776 cofounder Donna Harris 1776

Donna Harris is cofounder of 1776, a global startup incubator and seed fund headquartered in Washington, D.C. She can be reached via Twitter @dharrisindc.

In the aftermath of “the Google memo” I had to read Eric Weinstein’s tweet multiple times to be sure I’d read it correctly….

https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/894773217272905728

Like Eric, I too am a venture capitalist and a techie. Long ago, I started my career as a Systems Engineer. I’ve worked for big companies like Oracle and run several startups of my own. Some failed; some soared and produced nice exits. I’ve raised tens of millions of dollars, run a VC fund and run incubators around the world.

You could say that, over my 25 successful years in tech, I’ve been around the block a few times. And, I can tell you, most of those blocks were littered with rampant sexism, mansplaining, unconscious bias and some downright ugly discrimination.

Yet I didn’t complain to HR.

I didn’t complain to HR when the president of [our unit in] Korea took me to a brothel and bought me a prostitute. Or when that same president sent his managing director to my hotel room in the middle of the night to threaten me if I did complain. Or when he withheld my plane ticket (back in the days when you needed old fashioned paper to board a plane) so I was, in essence, hostage in a foreign country.

I didn’t complain to HR when the male sales reps I worked alongside took their clients to strip clubs. Or when my boss joined them. Or when they all came to work hung over the next day and recounted their adventures loudly for all to hear.

I didn’t complain to HR when coworker after coworker assumed traveling for business gave him a free pass to come on to me. Or when they commented on my cleavage.

I didn’t complain to HR when I was pursued by one of my investors doggedly trying to get me to sleep with him. Or when my other investors told me they invested because I reminded them of their daughters.

I didn’t complain to HR when I was asked to step out of a photo so my male CO-founder and CO-CEO could be featured in a cover story solo. Or when I was repeatedly mistaken for his assistant when copied on emails.

I didn’t complain to HR when my boss took my idea for a new business line and handed it to his buddy to run, telling me the business would “do better if led by a man with gray hair.”

I didn’t complain to HR the 8,000 times I was interrupted, mansplained, dismissed, ignored, or not invited. Or when I was told I was too bossy or called intimidating. Or all the times I was told to stop talking so much about diversity problems or sexism in tech.

I didn’t complain to HR because, like nearly every woman on the planet, I was doing was I was taught my whole life to do. Be nice.

Have you ever been too nice and ended up in a situation that could have been avoided if you just would've been an a--h-le?

My neighbor, Amy, shared this quote a few weeks ago, and my response was “So. Much. This.” I spent much of my career being nice. Making others feel comfortable. Not rustling any feathers. Because, God forbid, my confidence, dignity, power, and assertiveness might be labeled as bitchiness.

So, Eric, as I reflected on your tweet, I just want to say thanks…

Thanks for helping me reflect on all the times I didn’t complain to HR. It reminded me of all the times I was too nice, when I should have been an asshole and called out the bad behavior behavior around me. It solidified for me that, despite the passing of 25 years (!!!!!), not much has changed — the bros’ of the Valley, tech, and venture are not going lead the way to changing a very sexist system.

Thanks for reminding me that, despite the continuous stream of disgusting frat boy behavior all around me, I managed to succeed in ways most men only dream of. Which reminded me of all the evidence that shows women actually get higher returns on capital when they do get venture capital. Which re-motivated me to find ways to help women succeed. So we can make voices like yours irrelevant.

Or, as my mom used to say “kill them with kindness.”

she is kind but strong, and that is where so many mistake her. they interpret her kindness for weakness and force her to show her strength.

I know I’m not alone in having these sorts of stories. Share yours and encourage others to do the same, with the hashtag #didntcomplaintoHR.

Reuters/ Steve Marcus

Dan Loeb’s Third Point hedge fund, which manages roughly $17.5 billion in assets, has sold its entire stake in Snap Inc., according to regulatory filings released late Friday.

Third Point had originally purchased 2.25 million shares of Snapchat's parent company during the first quarter of 2017, filings show.

Despite Snap's steep losses, leaving the company's shares down 30% since its IPO in March, Third Point managed to earn a 4.6% return on its Offshore Fund, bringing its total returns for the year to 10.7%, Reuters reported.

In addition to Snap, Third Point also sold its shares of Salesforce and Qualcomm. Salesforce stock is up roughly 29% since the beginning of the year, while Qualcomm is relatively flat for the same period.

Snap stock closed at $11.75 Friday in New York, after taking a major hit on Thursday after a disappointing earnings statement in which the company announced an adjusted loss of $0.16 a share.

Markets Insider

REUTERS/Phil McCarten

Daniel Loeb's hedge fund, Third Point, took a large stake in Alibaba in the second quarter, according to SEC filings.

The fund bought 4.5 million shares of the Chinese e-commerce giant which are worth about $634.1 million. Loeb also bought a large $654.7 million stake in BlackRock in the period. 

Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba, came to the US in June and told Detroit business owners that his e-commerce platform could be a way for small, US businesses to access the large Chinese market. The company is also offering Chinese customers easier access to the global economy with a partnership with Marriott. The strategy seems to be popular with investors, as Alibaba is up 70.99% this year and popped after the Marriott deal. 

The SEC filings represent second quarter holdings by Third Point, so the firm's positions could have changed since the end of the quarter. The firm's largest holdings disclosed in the filing were in Baxter International and Dow Chemical. BlackRock, a position the firm took in the second quarter, is the third largest holding.

Markets Insider

The Game Getty Images/David Livingston

The Game, a hip-hop artist, is promoting a tech company that says it is going to use blockchain technology to revolutionize the weed industry.

Tech company Paragon is set to release information about itself and its planned initial coin offering, a red-hot cryptocurrency-based fundraising method, on August 15, according to a video tweeted by The Game on Thursday.

Standing alongside Paragon CEO, Jessica Versteeg, a former model and Miss Iowa 2014, the rapper said the firm was preparing to "revolutionize cannabis and the world." Here's a tweet of the video:

Initial coin offerings are a new funding vehicle using blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin. The market for so-called ICOs is exploding, with over $1.86 billion raised via the method since the beginning of the year, according to data from Autonomous NEXT, a financial technology analytics provider. The massive growth of the ICO market has many people in the space thinking it's a bubble with many firms using the method as a way to raise vasts amount of money without offering an actual product. 

To raise money through an ICO, a company issues a new digital currency that can either be spent within its ecosystem, a bit like Disneyland dollars, or used to power part of the business, like the fuel you put in your car.

Jessica VerSteeg with Larry King. Twitter

At this point, it isn't exactly clear to the public what Paragon will do, but Versteeg will hold a Facebook Live Q&A next week to give folks "a behind the scenes look at Paragon and how [they're] disrupting the cryptocurrency space."

Paragon's website has no additional information aside from a mailing list sign-up form and links to their social media sites. 

Justin Bailey, CEO of Fig and noted ICO enthusiast, told Business Insider that Paragon is likely keeping things under-wraps to build momentum behind what is likely, in his view, a viable business. 

"There is typically a lot of promotion behind ICOs," Bailey said."It's important to balance hype and promotion with the proper disclosure to investors."

ICOs have raised about $1.8 billion this year. Autonomous NEXT

This isn't the first time a celebrity has helped market an initial coin offering. Boxing champ Floyd Mayweather Jr. took to Instagram last month to promote an ICO for Stox.com, a blockchain startup. It ended up raising $33 million worth of Ethereum, according to a press representative for the firm. 

To be sure, the rapid growth of initial coin offerings has worried some Wall Streeters. 

Business Insider reached out to Schwark Satyavolu, a general partner at Trinity Ventures, a venture capital firm, to get his impression of Paragon and their plans to launch an ICO.  

"It made me smile," he said. "The lack of information and visibility is quite minimal and stereotypical of these ICOs."

He thinks an ICO is practically the only way a company could raise money with such limited information. 

"Fundamentally, it is because you have investors who feel like they are missing out on the next bitcoin," Satyavolu said. "That's getting people to jump in."

Satyavolu thinks the ICO market could be a bubble akin to the mortgage bubble that ushered in the 2008 financial crisis.

"If investments continue at the current rate, this could become the next mortgage crisis with people – including institutional investors – losing hundreds of millions of dollars when (not if) many of these companies go out of business," Satyavolu said. 

To be sure, Satyavolu doesn't think ICOs are all scams. As an investor, he is skeptical of ICOs.

"These companies running ICOs  could have the best intentions, but they might also have no idea what they're doing," he said. "And in many cases, you just don't have the proper information to make an informed decision."

As for Paragon, Versteeg told Business Insider that the firm is addressing "real problems in the cannabis industry" and that all the necessary information will be out for folks to examine next week.

"This isn't another Potcoin," she said referring to an other weed-focused cryptocurrency. "People will be pleasantly surprised with what we are doing."

Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

A group of Uber shareholders is calling for venture-capital firm Benchmark Capital to be removed from Uber's board. 

According to Axios' Dan Primack, Shervin Pishevar of Sherpa Capital, Ron Burkle of Yucaipa Companies, and Adam Leber of Maverick sent a petition Friday morning to other Uber investors and Uber's board of directors calling for Benchmark to step aside.

The petition also asks that Benchmark divest enough of its shares so it no longer has board appointment rights, according to Axios.

The request comes one day after Benchmark filed a lawsuit against former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick over allegations of fraud. Benchmark claimed in its suit that it would never have approved a 2016 expansion of Uber's board that allowed Kalanick to fill a board seat had it been aware of the controversy surrounding Kalanick and of Uber's cultural problems. The suit accuses the former CEO of mismanagement and packing the board with supporters.

The investors' email, which was obtained by Axios, requests Benchmark remove itself from the board in order to allow Uber to "realize its full potential by allowing the necessary work to be done in the Board Room rather than Courtroom." 

While the investors say they agree there are issues within Uber, they call Benchmark's tactics "ethically dubious and, critically, value-destructive rather than value enhancing."

Josh Mohrer, the former general manager of Uber's New York City office who left Uber in May, tweeted about his distate for Benchmark's actions after the investor email was published Friday: 

Later on Friday, five of Uber's directors decried the infighting in a statement given to the New York Times.

The board "is disappointed that a disagreement between shareholders has resulted in litigation," directors Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Ryan Graves, Ariana Huffington, Wan Ling Martello and David Trujillo said in the statement. "The Board has urged both sides to resolve the matter cooperatively and quickly, and the Board is taking steps to facilitate the process."

In the meantime, the directors added, the board is focusing on trying to find a new CEO. It already has "several outstanding candidates," they said.  

 

You can read the full email from the shareholders to Benchmark over at Axios. 

Snap Inc. has confirmed the price tags for its acquisitions of Zenly and Placed.

The Snapchat maker paid $213 million in cash for Zenly in May and $135 million for Placed in July, according to documents filed with the SEC on Friday.

TechCrunch reported that Snap had bought France-based Zenly for at least $250 million shortly after the debut of Snap Maps, but Snap hadn't officially confirmed the acquisition or price tag until now. Zenly built a similar app to Snap Maps that let people see where their friends were on a map.

Snap confirmed that it bought Seattle-based Placed in early June, but never confirmed reports that it paid over $200 million for the ad tech startup. It turns out that Snap paid just $135 million in cash for Placed, which helps advertisers track real-world purchases and store visits.

Snap separately disclosed that Placed’s employee equity plan includes 550,038 shares worth roughly $6.6 million in stock options based on Snap’s current share price.

Snap also spent $62 million on acquiring "a component of a business from a social advertising software company" in June and "all outstanding shares of a company that operates a cloud hosted platform for building content online" in March. A company representative declined to name the two mystery buys.

That brings Snap's grand total of cash spent on acquisitions in 2017 to $224 million, up from only $51 million in 2016. The company still has plenty of available cash to continue its shopping spree with roughly $3 billion in available assets as of June 30.

Get the latest Snap stock price here.

Thomson Reuters

Cryptocurrencies are blisteringly hot right now. Bitcoin just crossed the $3,500 mark for the first time and is up 493.38% over the last year.

The meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies has been a boost to several chip makers. Nvidia and AMD are the two largest manufacturers producing graphics processing units that cryptocurrency users take advantage of to speed up the network.

GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia have been sold out in many places as demand for the cards has skyrocketed with the value of bitcoin.

Even though the currencies have provided a boost to both companies, the CEOs running Nvidia and AMD have very different views of how to approach the "miners" hungry for their technology.

On Nvidia's latest earnings call, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang responded to a question about the company's plan to address cryptocurrencies by saying they are "here to stay."

"The market need for it is going to grow, and over time it will become quite large. It is very clear that new currencies will come to market, and it's very clear that the GPU is just fantastic at cryptography," Huang said. "Our strategy is to stay very, very close to the market. We understand its dynamics really well."

Nvidia has released several GPUs dedicated to cryptocurrency mining recently. The chips are optimized for lower power consumption and faster processing speeds for the type of math specific to mining.

This runs contrary to AMD's strategy. AMD's CEO, Lisa Su, said bitcoin and its competing currencies won't be a "long-term growth driver" for the company.

"Relative to cryptocurrency, we have seen some elevated demand," Su said. "But it's important to say we didn't have cryptocurrency in our forecast, and we're not looking at it as a long-term growth driver. But we'll certainly continue to watch the developments around the blockchain technologies as they go forward."

Since Su's comments on July 25, bitcoin saw a surprise "fork" of its software, introducing a new version of the cryptocurrency called bitcoin cash alongside the original bitcoin. The price of a bitcoin is up 38.44%, or about $1,000, to $3556.16 since the split. Gains are even higher if you consider the additional value all users of bitcoin were able to receive from bitcoin cash as a result of the split.

Su says AMD's plans don't extend beyond refilling supply channels to make up for added demand. The company will continue to focus on its core PC gaming market.

AMD is up 7.29% this year, and Nvidia is up 51.69%. 

Markets Insider

Apple's forthcoming tenth anniversary iPhone will reportedly have a face scanner, and the company wants to make it work so that the user doesn't have to look directly at it, according to a report from iHelp BR (which we saw via AppleInsider).

Face-scanning technologies have been around for some time now, but even advanced devices (like Samsung's Galaxy S8) require that users hold the device in front of their eyes, which can be impractical most of the time.

Developers have continued to dig inside the leaked code of the HomePod speaker's software, which contained information about the "iPhone 8," and found references to things such as "AXRestingPearlUnlock" and "com.accessibility.resting.pearl.unlock" (Apparently, "PearlID" is the technology's code name).

Developers found various "Pearl"-related references in iOS' code.iHelp BR

The new iPhone will reportedly ditch Touch ID, Apple's signature fingerprint scanner, so the company obviously wants its replacement to be as accurate as possible, and these new lines of code suggest that the device's face scanner may be able to securely identify its owner no matter where they are looking.

Other code strings developer found include "APPS_USING_PEARL" as well as "PEARL_AUTOLOCK"; the former suggests that some apps may become only accessible through face detection, while "Pearl Autolock" may simply refer to a feature that keeps unrecognised users out.

The price of Bitcoin is hovering at a record high on Monday, following a surge over the weekend.

Bitcoin is up 0.96% against the dollar to $3,260.80 at 10.07 a.m. BST (5.07 a.m. ET). It follows a rally for the cryptocurrency on Saturday that saw it break through $3,200 per coin for the first time ever. It reached an all-time high of $3,344 per coin over the weekend.Markets Insider

Meanwhile, the price of Bitcoin Cash, the rival cryptocurrency that was split-off from Bitcoin at the start of the month, has been diving. The price is recovering on Monday, up 28% to $271.71, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

Mati Greenspan, an analyst at trading platform eToro, says Bitcoin Crash's dip and Bitcoin's rally are likely related.

Greenspan writes in an email on Monday morning: "All that money that seemingly came out of thin air to pump up the value of Bitcash is now being fed right into Bitcoin. Bitcash has fallen from its peak of $12 Billion all the way down below $4 Billion this morning.

"Bitcash sought to replace the original form of digital money but the miners never embraced it. As it was seen by many as something for nothing, many users are now dumping." (You can read more about why Bitcoin Cash was split out of Bitcoin here.)

Here's how Bitcoin has performed over the last year, showing we're firmly in record territory:Markets Insider

Looking to spruce up your lounge?

An Apple TV top box starts at $149 (£139).

A PlayStation 4 is currently $269 (£227).

A smart TV will set you back hundreds.

Forget all of them — Google sells a gadget for just $35 (£30) that will transform how you watch TV.

It certainly did for me.

A Deliveroo Editions cluster. Business Insider/James Cook

London startup Deliveroo is toying with the idea of putting games consoles into huts that it provides for some of its food delivery couriers.

The rider huts can be found in car parks and on industrial estates where Deliveroo has launched its pop-up restaurant parks, known as Deliveroo Editions.

Deliveroo Editions include six or seven portable kitchens and they allow restaurants to split up their in-house dining and delivery services.

Rohan Pradhan, head of Deliveroo Editions, told Business Insider at the company's office launch that Deliveroo is considering kitting out the rider huts with gaming equipment so that riders can have some fun while they're waiting for jobs.

Deliveroo has raised approximately $474 million (£358 million) from investors so a few games consoles for riders are unlikely to put too much of a financial strain on the company.

Pradhan did not specify what kind of gaming equipment Deliveroo could provide to riders but it could be PlayStations, Xboxes, or Nintendos.

Deliveroo and other food delivery companies like UberEats have faced criticism from riders and trade unions since they launched over pay and how they choose to classify their couriers. Providing riders with games consoles could be interpreted as a sign that Deliveroo is keen to get riders on side.

"Deliveroo Editions is the biggest development in the market since Deliveroo first launched," said Pradhan in a follow up statement provided by Deliveroo. "Editions is a relatively new focus for the business and one we will continue to innovate in, striving to provide the best service for customers, restaurants and of course our riders."

A Deliveroo spokesperson added that putting computer games in the huts is "just an idea for now" before going on to say "as Editions grows, I'm sure we will see further developments around this."

youngthousands/Flickr (CC)

LONDON — Companies that expose their customers information in data breaches could face far harsher penalties — including fines of up to 4% of their global annual turnover.

On Monday, the British government announced plans to strengthen UK data protection law with the a new Data Protection Bill.

Among the plans laid out in the bill is to give the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) regulator the power to fine companies up to £17 million, or 4% of global turnover, in the "most serious data breaches."

It's a significant increase — the maximum fine that the ICO can currently levy is for £500,000.

It's likely that these powers would be used in major breaches like the 2015 hack of British telecoms firm TalkTalk that saw more than 150,000 customers' data compromised. Hackers were able to gain access using a rudimentary attack that has been known about for more than 15 years, and in its aftermath a parliamentary report called for businesses breached in similar ways to face "significant fines."

The Data Protection Bill will also make it easier for people to withdraw consent for the use of their personal data, and expand the definition of "personal data" so that it includes DNA, internet cookies, and IP addresses, among other changes.

In a statement, secretary for digital Matt Hancock said: "Our measures are designed to support businesses in their use of data, and give consumers the confidence that their data is protected and those who misuse it will be held to account.

"The new Data Protection Bill will give us one of the most robust, yet dynamic, set of data laws in the world. It will give people more control over their data, require more consent for its use, and prepare Britain for Brexit. We have some of the best data science in the world and this new law will help it to thrive."

Attendees pose with the Faraday Future FF91 at the company's new manufacturing site in Hanford, CA. Faraday Future

Faraday Future, the electric-car startup that is developing a 1,000-horsepower, self-driving SUV, has signed a lease on what it says will be its future assembly plant.

The site, a one-million square-foot building located about 40 miles south of Fresno, California, in the city of Hanford, was one of several sites Faraday had been scouting after it pulled the plug on its original proposed manufacturing project in North Las Vegas, Nevada last month.

“We know there is a lot of work and risks ahead," said CFO Stefan Krause, who was recently appointed as COO of the company. He said the new site "represents a major step forward" for Faraday after a year of executive departures, lawsuits from suppliers, and an impending cash drought.

"Investors invest in people, and our employees continue to be Faraday Future’s strongest asset," Krause said.

Business Insider first reported that Faraday was close to signing the deal on its new facility.

The Hanford site, nicknamed the "Sequoia Plant" for its proximity to Sequoia National Park, is not quite ready for primetime, Faraday representatives said. A contingent of employees traveled to the site on Saturday for a day-long clean-up effort. Some employees — including Faraday's new chief technology officer and BMW veteran, Ulrich Kranz, could be seen painting inside the facility as the company's inaugural vehicle, the FF91, sat parked nearby.

A rendering of Faraday Future's new Central California manufacturing facility. Faraday Future

Faraday's vice president of global manufacturing, Dag Reckhorn, said the new factory represents their commitment to getting the FF91 on the road by late 2018.

The challenges for Faraday remain steep. Krause is courting multiple investors in search of at least $1 billion in new funding. Some of those investors, Krause told Business Insider in an interview last month, have indicated their readiness to move forward with Faraday if it secured a factory.

The company recently put up its Los Angeles-area headquarters as collateral to secure a $14 million loan from Innovatus Capital, and more money will be needed to finish vehicle development and get its new California site up and running.