HBO is offering 'Watchmen' for free this weekend On Demand and through its streaming service.Based on the famous graphic novel of the same name, the show tackles timely topics of policing, race, and racism in America and is worth watching during a pivotal moment in the national conversation.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

If you love TV get ready to binge-watch, because HBO's nine-part 'Watchmen' series is free to stream and available On Demand starting Friday, June 19 through Sunday, June 21.

The show's free release comes at a pivotal moment in the US as protests and activism continue nationwide after the police killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died after a white officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.

'Watchmen,' which received critical acclaim, is based on the famous graphic novel and deals with timely topics such as police, race, and racism through nuanced storytelling. The beginning of the show is set in Tulsa, Oklahoma and depicts the 1921 massacre where a mob of white Americans killed black residents and destroyed Black-owned businesses in the Greenwood District.

"Set in an alternate history where masked vigilantes are treated as outlaws, Watchmen embraces the nostalgia of the original groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name while attempting to break new ground of its own," the show is described on HBO's website.

The free streaming is "an extension of the network's content offering highlighting Black experiences, voices and storytellers," HBO said in a statement.

You can access the free episode over at HBO, which also details TV listings, or watch a trailer for the series below.

 

Original author: Jessica Snouwaert

Companies are investing in AI-equipped cameras to help enforce social distancing measures as the economy begins to reopen.Tech firms like Amazon and Motorola Solutions have developed camera technology that uses AI to help employers tell whether employees are maintaining a safe social distance in the workplace.Experts also say the tech can be useful in retail by helping store managers see whether customers are abiding by social distancing guidelines.The tech may pose some challenges in practice, however, as it could raise privacy concerns and may be vulnerable to false positives. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

As businesses across the United States have gradually begun to reopen, a growing number of companies are investing in camera technology powered by artificial intelligence to help enforce social distancing measures when people may be standing too closely together.

"[If] I want to manage the distance between consumers standing in a line, a manager can't be in all places at once,"  Leslie Hand, vice president of retail insights for the International Data Corporation, told Business Insider. "Having a digital helper that's advising you when folks are perhaps in need of some advice is useful."

Businesses throughout the country have started operating again under restrictions, such as enforcing social distancing measures, requiring customers to wear masks, and reducing capacity. New York City, which was the epicenter of the virus' outbreak in the US, is set to enter Phase II of its reopening plan on Monday.

The White House's employer guidelines for all phases of reopening include developing policies informed by best practices, particularly social distancing. And some experts believe smart cameras can help retailers and other companies detect whether such protocols are being followed. 

"There's some technology coming out on the horizon that will be able to be incorporated into the nuts and bolts that you already have in your store," Barrie Scardina, head of Americas retail for commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, said to Business Insider.

Some companies have already begun experimenting with such technologies. Amazon said on June 16 that it developed a camera system that's being implemented in some warehouses to detect whether workers are following social distancing guidelines. The company's so-called "Distance Assistant" consists of a camera, a 50-inch monitor, and a local computing device, which uses depth sensors to calculate distances between employees. 

When a person walks by the camera, the monitor would show whether that person is standing six feet apart from nearby colleagues by overlaying a green or red circle around the person. Green would indicate the person is properly socially distanced, while red would suggest the people on camera may be too close together. Amazon is open-sourcing the technology so that other companies can implement it as well. 

Motorola Solutions also announced new analytics technology in May that enables its Avigilon security cameras to detect whether people are social distancing and wearing masks. The system uses AI to collect footage and statistical patterns that can be used to provide notifications to organizations about when guidelines around wearing face masks or honoring social distancing measures are being breached. 

Pepper Construction, a Chicago-based construction company, has also begun using software from a company called SmartVid.io to keep an eye on where workers may be grouping, as Reuters reported in late April.

Scardina offered some examples illustrating how smart cameras can help retailers enforce social distancing. Workers can use such technologies to see where customers are clustering so that they can make decisions about how to arrange furniture and fixtures within the store. If a table needs to be moved further away from another display because customers don't have space to stand six feet apart, AI camera technology can help retailers spot this.

As far as how widespread that technology will become in stores, Scardina says it will depend on factors such as a retailer's budget and the size of the shop. 

While more companies may be investing in either developing or implementing new camera technologies, there will inevitably be challenges that arise when putting them into practice, says Pieter J. den Hamer, senior director of artificial intelligence for Gartner Research.

Not only could implementing such tech raise privacy concerns, but there are also practical limitations. A camera may not know if two people standing close together belong to the same household, for example.

All 50 states have reopened at some capacity, putting an end to stay-at-home orders that had been in effect since March to curb the coronavirus' spread, and some states are now seeing a spike in cases. The New York Times recently reported that at least 14 states have experienced positive cases that have outpaced the average number of administered tests.

The coronavirus has killed at least 117,000 people in the US and infected more than 2.1 million as of June 18, according to the Times, and experts predict there will be a second wave. But President Trump has said the country won't be closing again. 

"It's a very, very complex debate full of dilemmas," den Hamer said. "Should we prioritize opening up the economy, or should we prioritize the protection of our privacy?"

Original author: Lisa Eadicicco

The COVID-19 pandemic forced hospitals and doctors' offices across the globe to transition to remote appointments. Now, some are planning to keep much of their medicine remote for the foreseeable future.One of those is Sentara Healthcare, an integrated health network that runs 12 hospitals in the eastern US. Many if not most of Sentara's appointments will be remote going forward, according to CISO Dan Bowden.The shift to telemedicine poses new challenges that stack with unprecedented cybersecurity threats facing hospitals right now.Bowden gave Business Insider a breakdown of how Sentara is navigating shifts in the market and planning for the future of remote healthcare.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The doctor will see you now — but it likely won't be in person.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare organizations to move much of their medicine online in recent months in an attempt to reduce the density of patients at hospitals and slow the spread of the coronavirus. Doctors have turned en masse to messaging services and videoconferencing apps to treat their patients.

Now, the shift to telemedicine could prove permanent. But cybersecurity experts warn that remote healthcare could pose unprecedented threats if not implemented carefully, and hospitals whose budgets have been stretched thin by COVID-19 and shutdowns are uniquely vulnerable to ransomware attacks.

Sentara Healthcare is one organization embracing the shift to telemedicine. In the past three months, the not-for-profit network — which runs 12 hospitals in North Carolina and Virginia and brings in roughly $7 billion annually — has undertaken the herculean task of transitioning much of its 30,000-person workforce to remote work.

Now, the majority of Sentara's appointments could remain remote for the foreseeable future, according to Sentara Chief Information Security Officer Dan Bowden.

"We're looking harder at the tools we provide," Bowden told Business Insider. "And there's a new conversation for security professionals in healthcare, which is, how do we respond to this?"

Sentara conducts telemedicine using its own in-house video call application, and Bowden said the company has implemented multi-factor authentication to verify the identities of patients new to the service. Meanwhile, it relies on a combination third-party security software from Tenable, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services to protect patients' data.

Bowden says another part of the response has involved educating Sentara's workforce — especially other executives — about the tactics hackers use to target healthcare providers. Cyberattacks against hospitals have been on the rise for years, typically involving ransomware: Hackers take down healthcare computer systems and threaten to destroy them unless hospitals pay a price.

But remote work also provides new inroads for hackers, who could target the home devices of employees or patients with phishing scams. Cybersecurity firm CynergisTek told Business Insider in April that it had already seen a spike in threat actors targeting medical institutions since the onset of COVID-19 shutdowns.

Bowden said it's crucial for hospitals and security providers to share best practices and insights regarding the threats they face in order to plan for potential attacks and build resilience.

"Yes, there are more threats now, but we also have better threat intel," Bowden said. "It's something going forward in healthcare that we're all going to need to learn to manage."

Original author: Aaron Holmes

Morgan Mercer is more self-aware than most. At least, that's how she describes herself at professional meetings with new customers and investors. But outside the boardroom, she's more likely to say she is "woke."

As a biracial woman and self-taught technologist, Mercer is not the average Silicon Valley founder and CEO. But she hopes that will change as diversity becomes a priority for the dominantly white and male industry. In fact, her company, Vantage Point, exists to help startups and tech companies better address sensitive but widespread issues like discrimination and harassment.

"We are in a space right now where we're having an awakening to how much we don't know or understand, but at the same time there are a lot of people saying they don't know what to do," Mercer told Business Insider. "I see a lot of companies and VCs publishing statements in support of Black Lives Matter or allocating money to causes, and I think it's all well intentioned, but we are in a space that people don't really know how to act."

Vantage Point offers anti-bias training sessions with an unusual component: Participants put on virtual reality headsets made by Facebook division Oculus, and "experience" interactions that require them to respond. The training sessions are entirely virtual, walking users through specific scenarios in which they choose among various actions. After the scenario is completed, the employee gets a call that provides direct feedback on each decision, and training groups meet to discuss where they could improve or how specific instances made them feel. That emotional element of the training is key to implementing real change moving forward, according to Mercer. 

"We spend so long explaining feelings in these trainings, but feelings are rooted in personal context," Mercer said. "When I say I'm scared and explain how a situation makes me feel scared, you can only relate to it in how you feel scared even if it's an entirely different sensation. We inherently have a different lens through which we are looking at the problem, and we just don't get it."

Mercer said that Vantage Point has raised $3.75 million since she started the company in 2017, and has worked with over a dozen companies in 11 different industries to provide immersive, on-site training. At first, Vantage Point focused on training programs to combat harassment in the workplace, but in an instance of fortuitous timing, the company had launched broad-based diversity, equity, and inclusion training programs earlier this year.

"I don't believe these problems exist in a vacuum because they're really all related," Mercer said. "For example, gaslighting is something we cover in the harassment training, and it maps back to the racism and bias training. None of these issues exist independently of one another."

Mercer's one-stop-shop approach breaks from the more traditional model of training that many tech companies have relied on over the past decade. Amid a broader push towards transparency, and the dismal results of company diversity reports, many tech giants and startups have hired outside vendors to hold day-long workshops covering the issues that most related to their workforces. Perhaps the most popular, and most vague, was the implicit bias training  designed to help managers, engineers, and recruiters understand and recognize where their biases are, so they can be aware of them and act accordingly.

But that siloed approach apparently isn't cutting it. Research suggests that implicit bias training only has a marginal impact on hiring efforts and diversity statistics. And with a nationwide reckoning with racism and inequality banging down Silicon Valley's door, Mercer thinks incremental solutions will finally get sidelined in favor of larger-scale fixes.

"It's okay to not know, and I think we've criminalized not knowing so people are so scared to admit what they don't know," Mercer said. "People are so scared to be called racist or privileged, but literally everyone who is not a Black person in America has privilege. We need to be willing to let go of that fear and have those hard conversations."

Original author: Megan Hernbroth

2020 Aston Martin Vantage. Matthew DeBord/Insider

I couldn't get enough of the V8 Vantage, and that was after sampling two variants of the new Porsche 911, the rival Mercedes-AMG GT R, and a Warwickshire stablemate, the DB11 equipped with same V8.

I've always fallen hard for Astons, however. OK, sure, there's some inbreeding with the brand as far as the now-extensive collaboration with Mercedes-AMG goes: engines, transmissions, infotainment. How can Aston remain Aston under such partnership pressure?

Ye of little faith! Astons continue to have that Aston thing, an Anglo-Saxon predisposition toward suave wildness. The Vantage is a British Corvette, minus the backwoods association. And although its received a heart transplant in the form oa German motor, the same V8 in the Mercedes-AMG GT R kind of overdoes it on the outrageous sonics while simultaneously not departing from a Teutonic enthusiasm for using brilliant engineering to keep all that oomph in check.

If you'll forgive the Bond cliché, the Aston shows you a beautiful suit, then punches you in the face, then adjust its cuffs and tie and restores its outward dignity after a burst of threat, just so you know.  

The way this played out over 300 or so miles was that I would settle into to a freeway cruise and listen to the thrum of the V8, periodically summoning the demon to pass a semi, and once I exited the highway and found some curvy Catskills roads, I'd sling the Vantage around a bit and enjoy it's seductive out-of-control-ness. Can't do that with a Porsche 911 4S! The telekinetic all-wheel-drive won't permit it!

The whole point of the Vantage is that it isn't composed in corners. But for all the unstable rudeness, the car's beauty remains. And that beauty is hypnotic. Ferraris manage this trick in an aggressive way, and Lamborghinis do it with over-the-topness. The outgoing Corvette C7 wasn't exactly beautiful, but it certainly looked like something. The Vantage is almost completely organized around seeking perfection of shape, form, and proportion. It induces a blissful trance.

OK, yes, as a DB9 enthusiast, I favor the Henrik Fisker-designed first generation of the Vantage, which arrived in 2005, but was briefly discontinued before the new car arrived in 2019. The nose is simply more refined, while the current Vantage is often knocked for its gaping maw of a grille. 

But these are nitpicky things. On a drive up to the Catskills from my suburban New Jersey residence, the Vantage performed majestically: a cool customers on the freeway, but a beast in curves and corners. At no point did the car make me feel anything other than utterly and completely alive.

Some brands just have a special thing. Ferrari has it. Lamborghini has it. Jaguar sort of has it. Porsche has it, but it's diversified across a variety of segments. Lotus used to have it. Corvette has it. 

When it comes to Aston, the thing is ever-present and undeniable. And the Mercedes-AMG collaboration hasn't dimmed it at all. The Aston-ness simply blasts through and takes control. What a glorious sensation this is to experience! A car that is, unapologetically, what it's meant to be. 

That's why the Vantage is the most memorable car I've driven in 2020.

Original author: Matthew DeBord

Apple is in a standoff with buzzy new subscription email service Hey on Tuesday over integrating in-app purchases into its iOS app and taking up to 30% commission on payments.The confrontation with Hey, which was created by Basecamp, erupted the same day the EU announced it would launch an antitrust investigation into this same levy that Apple imposes on app purchases.Spotify complained to the EU last year that it was anti-competitive of Apple to impose this tax while operating competing apps like Apple Music.Match Group, the dating app conglomerate which owns Tinder, also weighed in on Tuesday to criticize the tax.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple faces a sudden public backlash from developers large and small against the tax it imposes on some in-app purchases.

Although apps can be hosted on the App Store for free, Apple charges a 15-30% commission on certain purchases made in-app. If, for example, you buy a premium Spotify subscription through its iOS app, Apple takes a 30% cut. The same fee applies to other digital content purchases, such as virtual items or ebooks.

On Tuesday, a buzzy new subscription email service called Hey said Apple was trying to strong-arm it into integrating in-app purchases so it could get this commission, as first reported by Protocol.

Hey, which comes from Basecamp and costs $99 per year, launched on Monday. According to Protocol, the service doesn't let you subscribe or pay inside the iOS app.

Soon after launch, Hey tried to roll out an update fixing some bugs in its iOS app.

It then received an email from Apple rejecting the update. The email suggested Hey had broken the rules by not implementing Apple's in-app purchase system, which automatically takes the 15-30% cut. An Apple reviewer later said that the app may be removed completely if it didn't comply.

Apple's developer guidelines state that while apps can offer users access to services or content they've previously purchased, apps cannot "directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase." They also state that apps can't offer access to new, paid features within the app, they must offer in-app purchase.

Hey's executives had thought the rule didn't apply to them as the app is intended to allow people to sign in to something they are already subscribed to, as is the case with platforms like Netflix and Slack.

"There is no chance in bloody hell that we're going to pay Apple's ransom. I will burn this house down myself, before I let gangsters like that spin it for spoils. This is profoundly, perversely abusive and unfair," tweeted Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson.

According to Protocol, Apple enforced the rule because it's a consumer app rather than an enterprise app.

Heinemeier Hansson said the enforcement of the policy is inconsistent: "The Basecamp app has been in the App Store for YEARS offering access to a subscription bought elsewhere. The store is FULL of apps doing just that. Even other email apps!"

Stratechery analyst Ben Thompson said on Twitter following the news he has received multiple emails from developers saying they've had a similar experiences and suggested this was a recent re-interpretation of Apple's policy.

 

 

Getty Images

The standoff between Apple and Hey happened the same day the EU launched two antitrust investigations into Apple, one focusing on the 30%  App Store levy.

The EU probe was set in motion in 2019 when Spotify filed a complaint saying that levying the tax while also running a competing music streaming business (Apple Music) meant the Apple was giving its own service a leg-up by artificially inflating Spotify's prices. Spotify argued that in order to make up for the 15-30% fee it passed on to Apple, it had to put up the price of its own subscriptions.

An ebook company made the same complaint to the EU in March of this year. Although the European Commission did not name the company, the details match a report from the Financial Times that the complainant was Rakuten-owned Kobo. Kobo declined to comment when contacted by Business Insider.

Apple hit back, saying the EU is "advancing baseless complaints from a handful of companies who simply want a free ride, and don't want to play by the same rules as everyone else."

Another app developer heavyweight came out swinging against Apple on Tuesday.

Match Group, which owns a host of popular dating apps including Tinder, OKCupid, and Hinge, issued a statement criticizing the in-app purchase tax.

Tinder's owner has come after Apple. Reuters

"Apple is a partner, but also a dominant platform whose actions force the vast majority of consumers to pay more for third-party apps that Apple arbitrarily defines as 'digital services.' Apple squeezes industries like ebooks, music and video streaming, cloud storage, gaming and online dating for 30% of their revenue, which is all the more alarming when Apple then enters that space, as we've repeatedly seen," Match Group said in its statement.

"We're acutely aware of their power over us. They claim we're asking for a 'free ride' when the reality is, 'digital services' are the only category of apps that have to pay the App Store fees. The overwhelming majority of apps, including Internet behemoths that connect people (rideshare/gig apps), or monetize by selling advertising (social networks), have never been subject to Apple's payments systems and fees, and this is not right. We welcome the opportunity to discuss this with Apple and create an equitable distribution of fees across the entire App Store, as well as with interested parties in the EU and in the US," it added.

Apple was not immediately available to comment on Match Group's statement when contacted by Business Insider. 

Original author: Isobel Asher Hamilton

The death of George Floyd and subsequent demands for justice have forced individuals and organizations around the world to demonstrate their commitment to racial equality.Renay Richardson, founder of podcast production firm Broccoli, has spearheaded a campaign calling on major industry players to sign a new "Equality in Audio Pact". Spotify UK, Acast and BBC Radio are among those that have agreed to ban unpaid internships and avoid only using people of color on projects concerning race. In a media career spanning two decades, Richardson told Business Insider the audio industry was the one in which she most "felt like an outsider". Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Spotify, Acast and a host of other major players in the audio industry have signed a pledge promising to improve diversity within their ranks.

Renay Richardson, founder of podcasting startup Broccoli, launched the "Equality in Audio Pact" three weeks ago in the wake of the death of George Floyd, which has forced industries and individuals to reckon with their understanding of racism. 

The pledge calls on production companies to end unpaid internships, avoid exclusively placing employees on projects related to their ethnicity or sexual identity, publish race and gender pay gap data, stop taking part in panels that "do not represent" the locations where they take place, and "be transparent" about business partnerships. 

"If you put these things in place, take a snapshot of your workplace today and another one in 18 months," says Richardson. "I guarantee you'll see a difference." 

Richardson launched the campaign in collaboration alongside four other audio firms: We Are Unedited, Don't Skip, Falling Tree Productions, and Boom Shakalaka Productions. 

She previously produced "About Race", a podcast series written and hosted by Reni Eddo-Lodge, author of the bestselling "Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race".  

Speaking of the origins of the campaign, she said: "With everything that's happened around the world in the wake of George Floyd's death, we felt like this was a moment for us to demand real change in the audio industry. 

"Me and my friends have been talking about what it's like to be a person of color in the podcasting world. I've worked in the media for around 20 years, in film and TV and other stuff. I should be feeling more confident by now, but in this industry – and I tell everyone this – I've never felt so black in my life." 

After signing the pledge, Spotify's UK and Ireland Twitter account tweeted: "We fully support the amazing work being done by [Broccoli]. We have signed the #EqualityInAudio pact." 

Other big-name signatories include Acast, Bauer Media Group (the home of KISS, Magic, and Absolute), and BBC Radio. 

"For us, the most important thing was to try and make our demands actionable. Of course I'd like to end racism full stop, but that's not going to happen overnight.

"Hopefully this sets us on the right path." 

The full list of Equality in Audio Pact signatories can be found here. 

Original author: Martin Coulter

Apple CEO Tim Cook. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday.

The European Commission opened two simultaneous antitrust investigations into Apple on Tuesday. The probes will center on Apple Pay and the App Store's terms and conditions.Amazon announced it is putting AI cameras in some of its warehouses to see if workers are adhering to social distancing. When employees walk past the cameras, a monitor will use green and red circles to indicate whether workers are standing six feet apart.In a leaked document, Amazon employees shared stories of racism and gender discrimination while calling for a new leadership principle on "inclusion." Members of internal affinity groups and minority employee organizations at Amazon have been circulating a document titled "The case for a 15th leadership principle on inclusion" this month to rally support for the initiative, according to a copy of the document and an email seen by Business Insider.Research from Algorithm Watch suggests Instagram's algorithm systematically boosts seminude pictures. The German nonprofit found posts containing semi-naked women were 54% more likely to appear in the volunteers' news feeds than other photographs, while topless posts from men were 28% more likely to appear.European regulators set a July 20 deadline to decide whether they will allow Google's Fitbit deal to happen or else it will launch a four-month investigation. In order to clear the deadline, Google might have to offer some concessions around how it will handle Fitbit users' data.Human rights activists banned from Facebook say Mark Zuckerberg's "free speech" approach to Trump's posts rings hollow. Facebook said it's reviewing the activists' accounts, but that some may have broken its policies against "praise, support, or representation" for terrorist organizations.Boston Dynamics' lifelike Spot robot is now on sale for $75,000. Spot has already been used in hospitals, agriculture, and police work.Zynn, the TikTok clone accused of stealing content, was removed from both iOS and Android app stores. Zynn did not respond to a request for comment, but told other outlets that the app was removed from app stores over complaints of "plagiarism."AT&T is laying off 3,400 workers and shutting down at least 250 stores. The job cuts are part of the economic effect of the coronavirus pandemic and the carrier's efforts to focus on growth areas, AT&T said.San Francisco's District Attorney is suing DoorDash for classifying workers as contractors instead of employees despite the AB5 gig-worker law. The civil lawsuit is one of the latest examples of how California's AB5 law is upending tech companies' reliance on the gig economy.

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Original author: Isobel Asher Hamilton

Facebook will now allow users to turn off political ads, the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a USA Today op-ed published Tuesday."For those of you who've already made up your minds and just want the election to be over, we hear you — so we're also introducing the ability to turn off seeing political ads," Zuckerberg wrote. "We'll still remind you to vote."Facebook will begin implementing the feature for some users on Wednesday and make it available to all users over the next several weeks, a company spokesperson told CNBC.Users will be able to turn off ads about political, social, and electoral issues from political candidates, super PACs, and other organizations who have a the political disclaimer on them indicating that an ad is "paid for by" a certain entity, CNBC reported.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that the platform will allow its users to turn off political ads.

"Everyone wants to see politicians held accountable for what they say — and I know many people want us to moderate and remove more of their content," Zuckerberg wrote in a USA Today op-ed. "For those of you who've already made up your minds and just want the election to be over, we hear you — so we're also introducing the ability to turn off seeing political ads."

"We'll still remind you to vote," he added.

Facebook will begin implementing the feature for some users on Wednesday and make it available to all users over the next several weeks, a company spokesperson told CNBC.

Users will be able to turn off ads about political, social, and electoral issues from political candidates, super PACs, and other organizations who have a the political disclaimer on them indicating that an ad is "paid for by" a certain entity, CNBC reported.

Zuckerberg also announced in his op-ed that Facebook will take steps to boost voter registration, voter turnout, and marginalized voices ahead of the 2020 presidential election, and that the platform's aim is to help four million people register to vote.

To that end, he said Facebook will create a Voting Information Center with information about registration, early voting, and voting by mail. The center will also include details on how and when to vote, Zuckerberg said, adding that the company expects 160 million people in the US to see "authoritative information on Facebook about how to vote in the general election from July through November."

Zuckerberg also said Facebook will continue working to combat foreign interference on its platform by tracking and taking down "malicious accounts."

The company removed 3.3. billion fake accounts in 2018 and 5.4 billion last year as of November.

Zuckerberg's announcement comes as Facebook continues facing scrutiny over its decision to show political content to users even if that content contains misinformation or false claims.

The social media network has been under the microscope particularly in the last few weeks, after it refused to follow Twitter's lead in fact-checking President Donald Trump's misleading statements on its platform.

Shortly after Twitter fact-checked two of Trump's tweets spreading conspiracy theories about voting by mail, Zuckerberg criticized Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a Fox News interview.

"I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online," he said.

Dorsey hit back at Zuckerberg, tweeting: "We'll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make."

He added: "This does not make us an 'arbiter of truth.' Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions."

Zuckerberg appeared to allude to the recent strife over Trump's tweets in his op-ed, writing, "Everyone wants to see politicians held accountable for what they say — and I know many people want us to moderate and remove more of their content."

"We have rules against speech that will cause imminent physical harm or suppress voting, and no one is exempt from them," he wrote. "But accountability only works if we can see what those seeking our votes are saying, even if we viscerally dislike what they say."

Zuckerberg added that he believes the best way to hold politicians accountable is through voting.

"I believe we should trust voters to make judgments for themselves," he wrote. "That's why I think we should maintain as open a platform as possible, accompanied by ambitious efforts to boost voter participation."

Original author: Sonam Sheth

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a companywide email on Tuesday that he's canceling all of his meetings on Juneteenth, the day commemorating the end of slavery in the US.Bezos encouraged Amazon employees to do the same to take some time to "reflect, learn, and support each other," according to the email.Amazon is the latest high-profile company to instruct employees to take time off on Juneteenth.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wants employees to use June 19, the day known as Juneteenth commemorating the end of slavery in the US, as a day to "reflect, learn, and support each other," according to an internal email obtained by Business Insider.

In the email, Bezos said that he's canceling all of his meetings that day, after having spent a lot of time thinking about the recent events that sparked the current Black Lives Matter movement. Although he didn't call it an official day off for the company, he encouraged all employees to cancel their meetings on Friday too, adding the company is offering online learning opportunities about Juneteenth throughout the day.

Amazon's representative wasn't immediately available for comment. Recode's Jason Del Rey first tweeted about the email.

Amazon is the latest company to instruct employees to cancel all meetings on Juneteenth. Other high-profile companies like Microsoft, Google, and Nike have made similar arrangements for their employees.

The move follows growing calls for support of the Black Lives Movement internally at Amazon. An internal climate activist group encouraged employees to join the protests last week, while a group of employees are also taking steps to add "inclusion" to Amazon's famous leadership principles. Several Amazon executives addressed the issue in internal emails as well.

Here's the full email Bezos sent to employees:

Over the past few weeks, the [S-team] and I have spent a lot of time listening to customers and employees and thinking about how recent events in our country have laid bare the systemic racism and injustices that oppress Black individuals and communities.

This Friday, June 19, is Juneteenth, the oldest-known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S. I'm cancelling all of my meetings on Friday, and I encourage all of you to do the same if you can. We're providing a range of online learning opportunities for employees throughout the day.

Please take some time to reflect, learn, and support each other. Slavery ended a long time ago, but racism didn't.

Jeff

Original author: Eugene Kim

WhatsApp is adding payments in Brazil.It's part of Facebook's big plan to push into commerce and finance.Facebook bets that the efforts will benefit its advertising business — and will also generate income through transaction fees.It's also a way for Facebook to directly monetize WhatsApp, which it acquired for $19 billion in 2014.Do you work at WhatsApp? Contact this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or +1 650-636-6268. Anonymity offered.Click here to get BI Prime's weekly 'Trending' tech newsletter in your email inbox.

WhatsApp's big payments play is finally here.

On Monday, the Facebook-owned messaging app announced that it is adding payments tech to its service in Brazil, allowing its 120 million users in the country to send one another cash and for businesses to process purchases in the app.

It's a significant step in Facebook's vision to build out a fully fleshed commerce and finance setup across its family of apps — and to help recoup the tens of billions of dollars it has poured into WhatsApp over the years.

Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for a cool $19 billion. Since then, it has grown to become immensely popular, with more than 2 billion users around the world. But it has never been a runaway commercial success for Facebook, in the same way Instagram has been, which after being snapped up in 2012 for a then-eye-watering $1 billion ultimately became an advertising powerhouse that generated more than $20 billion in revenue in 2019, more than a quarter of Facebook's overall revenues for the year.

WhatsApp, meanwhile, remains immensely valuable to Facebook because of its popularity around the world — but it's not contributing to the bottom line in the same way. Attempts to add ads, Facebook's core business, to the app have been abortive. In early 2020, the news broke that the company was disbanding a team that was attempting to implement ads in WhatsApp. Facebook insists that ads are still coming, but not any time soon.

Payments is an ideal answer to this void.

WhatsApp is increasingly used by businesses and consumers to communicate, particularly in emerging markets like India, and the company has built out a suite of tools to help facilitate this. Businesses can build "catalogs" to show off their offerings, and are offered tools to help manage orders and facilitate customer service interactions.

Adding payments tech, which was first trialed in India, allows WhatsApp to own the entire transaction from start to finish — and make some money in the process. Peer-to-peer payments will be free for users, Facebook says, but it will take a cut of payments made to businesses, in the same way that a traditional payment processor would charge a shopkeeper to use its point-of-sale software.

Facebook's overall business remains ads-orientated, and it views payments as a way to boost that too. On a call with analysts after Facebook released its first-quarter financial results for 2020, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he expected increased commerce and payments functionality across its apps to make its ads business more successful. "[Businesses] basically buy ads inside Facebook or Instagram that send people to chat threads. And then as we build out all these tools around that — around making those threads more valuable, we think that those ads will only increase in value, which is the way we're currently thinking about that business," he said.

WhatsApp's payments functionality is powered by Facebook Pay, similar functionality that the company made for its main app. It's one of a suite of commerce-orientated tools that it has built in recent years — and accelerated work on amid the COVID-19 pandemic that forced businesses around the world to shutter their physical stores.

In May 2020 it announced Shops, a major new feature for Facebook and Instagram that allows businesses to create digital storefronts to list their products online, along with other tools to sell goods via livestreams and other new functionality. Financial services firm Deutsche Bank estimates that Shops could net Facebook an extra $30 billion in annual revenue, through a combination of transaction fees and increased ad spend by businesses attempting to capitalize on the functionality.

For now, WhatsApp is only offering payments tools in Brazil. But if it's a success, the rest of the world is sure to follow. "Payments on WhatsApp are beginning to roll out to people across Brazil beginning today and we look forward to bringing it to everyone as we go forward," the company wrote in a blog post.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), standard email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.

Original author: Rob Price

Oracle beat Wall Street's profit estimates, but fell short on revenue, which the company attributed to the impact of COVID-19."As the quarter progressed, we saw a drop off in deals, especially in industries, most affected by the pandemic," CEO Safra Catz told analysts on the company's earnings call. The stock slid about 4%. But chairman and founder Larry Ellison touted the tech giant's in the cloud, pointing to major customer wins against rival Amazon, including video conferencing platforms Zoom and 8X8."As people compare our cloud infrastructure to AWS and Azure and the rest, they're going to pick our cloud," Ellison told analysts on the earnings call. "Once they look, we win."Oracle reported a quarterly profit of $3.12 billion, or 99 cents a share, compared to a profit of $3.74 billion, or $1.07 cents a share for the year-earlier period. Revenue slipped 4% to $10.4 billion. Adjusted profit was $1.20 a share. Analysts were expecting a profit of $1.16 a share on revenue of $10.69 billion.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Oracle posted weaker-than-expected sales during its fourth quarter earnings as the tech giant saw "a drop off in deals" due to the coronavirus crisis.

While the tech giant exceeded Wall Street expectations on the bottom line, the stock still slipped about 4% after-hours. 

"As the quarter progressed, we saw a drop off in deals, especially in industries most affected by the pandemic," CEO Safra Catz told analysts on the company's earnings call. She cited the hospitality, retail, and transportation industries as some of the hardest hit, and said that some customers were forced to delay their payments.

Oracle reported a fiscal fourth quarter profit of $3.12 billion, or 99 cents a share, compared to a profit of $3.74 billion, or $1.07 cents a share for the year-earlier period. Adjusted profit was $1.20 a share. Revenue slipped from $11.14 billion for the year-earlier-period to $10.44 billion in Q4. Analysts were expecting a profit of $1.16 a share on revenue of $10.69 billion.

While Oracle's stock sank after-hours, it has rallied recently as the tech market has recovered. Revenue aside, Oracle also boasted about some notable customer wins in the cloud, where it competes with — and lags behind — market leaders Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Founder and chairman Larry Ellison used Tuesday's earnings call to highlight recent gains against its archrivals, including new deals with video conferencing platforms Zoom and 8X8.

"As people compare our cloud infrastructure to AWS and Azure and the rest, they're going to pick our cloud," Ellison told analysts on the earnings call. "Once they look, we win."

But Jefferies analyst Brent Thill was unimpressed with Oracle's report, telling clients in a note that the company's overall results — particularly a 22% year-over-year drop in license revenue — suggest it was actually losing share to Amazon and Microsoft.

Valoir analyst Rebecca Wettemann also downplayed the significance of Oracle's recent customer wins.

"Oracle can't depend on customers moving to the cloud in general to save it," she told Business Insider. "Companies are not making big cloud moves right now, but mostly small moves, which aren't enough to move the needle."

Got a tip about Oracle or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter @benpimentel or send him a secure message through Signal at (510) 731-8429. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

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Original author: Benjamin Pimentel

Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings secretly built a $20 million luxury training camp for teachers in Colorado.Hastings pledged to spend $100 million of his $4.8 billion fortune to reform public schools.Hastings, who has a long-standing interest in public education policy, is one of many billionaires to have poured millions into educational reform.But not all billionaire-backed programs to bolster public education have succeeded. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have both been behind costly education initiatives that have produced mixed results.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings is building a luxury retreat in Colorado, but it's not for his personal enjoyment.

The property will house a training facility for teachers as a part of Hastings' ongoing efforts to reform the United States' public school system, Vox's Theodore Schleifer reported. The camp, called the Retreat Land at Lone Rock, spans 2,100 acres in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and could open as soon as March 2021, per Vox.

A representative for Hastings at Netflix did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the training center.

When it opens, Lone Rock will host groups of 30 teachers from both public and charter schools, who will be able to attend four-day retreats filled with team-building exercises like sports and hiking, use its classroom space, and relax at its on-site spa. The massive $20 million development has been under construction for years, but not even frustrated local residents knew its purpose before Schleifer's report.

Hastings built a $4.8 billion fortune after founding Netflix in 1995. The billionaire has long been interested in reforming America's educational system, pledging to spend $100 million of his personal fortune on education in 2016, Business Insider reported at the time.

Before he was a billionaire, Hastings coauthored a 1998 initiative that made it easier to start charter schools in California, according to the Washington Post, and served on the California Board of Education for four years. 

Bill Gates spent $1 billion and seven years working on an initiative to improve test performance for students in low-income schools by closely monitoring teacher effectiveness — a similar strategy to Hastings' — but ultimately didn't improve test scores or drop-out rates in the long-term, a 2018 report by independent think-tank RAND revealed. In some cases, the program even "did more harm than good," Jay Greene, a professor of education at the University of Arkansas, wrote on Education Next.

Still, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tapped Gates to help him "reimagine" what New York's public schools will look like when they reopen in the fall after coronavirus closures. Cuomo provided few details of the partnership when he announced it at a press briefing in May, and the Gates Foundation told Business Insider in a statement that more details on the collaboration are forthcoming.

Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to Newark, New Jersey's failing public school system in 2010, but the cash infusion largely failed to improve student outcomes.

With Retreat Land at Lone Rock, Hastings could similarly become a major influence in public education, Schleifer reported.

"I had a bunch of money, and I didn't really want to buy yachts," Hastings told The Wall Street Journal in 2008. "I started looking at education, trying to figure out why our education is lagging when our technology is increasing at great rates and there's great innovation in so many other areas — health care, biotech, information technology, moviemaking. Why not education?"

Original author: Taylor Nicole Rogers

This week SpaceX posted two new jobs for "offshore operations engineers" in Brownsville, Texas.Elon Musk, who founded the aerospace company in 2002, all but confirmed in a tweet on Tuesday that the jobs are to help build "floating, superheavy-class spaceports" for its next-generation Starship vehicle.Ocean-platform launches as a concept is not new, as Musk first detailed SpaceX's in October 2017. A company called Sea Launch also demonstrated the idea in March 1999 with an orbital rocket launch.Safety is likely driving the work, since SpaceX's new launch system may carry about 9 million pounds of liquid fuel and would create sonic booms when its Super Heavy boosters or Starship spaceships land.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

It's no secret that SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, wants to launch and land its next-generation Starship rocket system over water.

One of the first detailed mentions of the plan emerged during an October 2017 talk Musk gave, in which he updated the world on SpaceX's plans to build cities on Mars and populate them with a million people or more.

During the presentation, Musk shared a video of Starship (then called the Big F---ing Rocket) rocketing passengers from an ocean platform near New York City, then landing them 39 minutes later on a similar floating spaceport near Shanghai. Musk called the high-speed transportation concept "Earth to Earth."

However, plans to actually build ocean launch platforms seemingly lacked teeth for years. That is, until this week: when the aerospace company posted two jobs for engineers who will help "design and build an operational offshore rocket launch facility."

Neither posting mentions "Starship," but both are located in Brownsville, Texas. The city sits about 30 minutes west of the state's southeastern tip, which is where SpaceX is building and testing Starship rocket prototypes (sometimes to explosive effect) amid a community of retiree-age homeowners called Boca Chica Village.

Business Insider first saw the job listings in a tweet by user "Cowboy" Dan Paasch, who lives in Forth Worth and follows SpaceX's activities. Musk later quoted a tweet by another user about the job postings.

"SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth," Musk tweeted on Tuesday.

Musk: Starship 'not subtle' when it launches or lands, necessitating a floating spaceport

A to-scale comparison of SpaceX's planned Starship and Super Heavy rocket with other launch systems. Samantha Lee/Business Insider

The concept of ocean-platform launches is not new. A company called Sea Launch, for example, first launched an orbital-class Zenit rocket from a platform in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in March 1999. (The company used to be managed by Boeing but is now owned by a Russian airline.)

Though SpaceX lacks operational experience launching rockets from ocean platforms, it has landed more than four dozen first-stage rocket boosters — the most expensive part of a launch system, given the numerous complex engines attached to their base — and landing them on drone ships. The boosters are then refurbished and reused, saving SpaceX millions of dollars per use and allowing the company to be price-competitive.

When a Twitter user brought up Sea Launch and its Zenit rocket, Musk responded: "Zenit is an order of magnitude smaller than Starship system & doesn't come back & land."

Now it seems SpaceX is ready to make the leap, with safety as a driving factor.

Homeowners who attended a private meeting with Musk in September 2019 told Business Insider that the entrepreneur described long-term plans to move away from land-based launchpads and instead use offshore platforms near Boca Chica Beach to fly Starship with less risk to the ground.

Starship is divided into two sections: the first-stage Super Heavy booster, which may stand about 22 stories tall, and the upper-stage rocket ship called Starship, which Musk said could ferry up to 100 people to Mars at a time (though presumably more in an Earth transportation design).

An illustration of SpaceX's planned 39-story-tall Starship rocket system launching from Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX/YouTube

A fully stacked Starship-Super Heavy vehicle could weigh more than 9 million pounds, mostly in fuel, and each section returning to Earth would create deafening sonic booms, perhaps three times per day per rocket, or 1,000 launches per year.

"We need to be far enough away so as not to bother heavily populated areas. The launch & landing are not subtle. But you could get within a few miles of the spaceport in a boat," Musk tweeted on Tuesday, adding that a jet-powered Incat ship may be suitable for land-to-platform transportation. 

A crash program to develop Starship in South Texas

An artist's concept of SpaceX's Starship spaceship on the surface of the moon. SpaceX

SpaceX is currently in the midst of a crash program to develop Starship into a safe and fully reusable launch system.

If it works as Musk envisions, the system could launch several times a day — unheard of in this history of spaceflight — and reduce the cost-per-pound to launch something to space by 1,000-fold or more.

To that end, Musk has told his staff to make Starship "the top SpaceX priority" and has enlisted about 1,000 staff to work on a production facility for the vehicle in Boca Chica — what the CEO sees as the key to making a viable, low-cost system. The company expects the vehicles to fail during tests at its private spaceport, and they often do, but Musk thinks SpaceX may be ready to fly to orbit by the 20th version or so.

SpaceX also recently won a NASA contract to develop Starship into a lunar-landing vehicle. The company also aims to fly Japanese fashion billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon in 2023, then fly the first people to Mars in 2024, Musk reconfirmed in a June 4 tweet.

Amid that work, SpaceX is hoping to get its high-speed Earth transportation system up and running. The ultimate goal with the scheme may be to replace grueling long-haul airplane flights — perhaps to the tune of 1 million to 15 million per day — Caryn Schenewerk, the senior legal counsel for SpaceX, said in January at the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) 23rd annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference.

"There will be many test flights before commercial passengers are carried," Musk tweeted on Tuesday. "First Earth to Earth test flights might be in 2 or 3 years."

Original author: Dave Mosher

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is suing food delivery platform DoorDash for misclassifying its workers as contractors instead of employees.The civil lawsuit is one of the latest examples of how California's AB5 law is upending tech companies' reliance on the gig economy.The law went into effect in January and requires companies to treat their gig workers as employees, an action that the lawsuit is calling for DoorDash to take.A DoorDash spokesperson told Business Insider in an email that "today's action seeks to disrupt the essential services Dashers provide."Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is suing food delivery platform DoorDash for "unlawful and unfair business practices."

According to the complaint, pulled by Mission Local reporter Joe Eskenazi who first reported the news, the company has continued to classify its delivery workers as independent contractors instead of employees in direct defiance of a California law passed to prevent companies from doing just that. 

The state's AB5 law went into effect in early January 2020 and strives not only to require companies to classify gig workers as employees but also to pay local, state, and federal taxes in accordance with that classification, as Eater SF notes. Boudin's civil lawsuit is asking for DoorDash to classify its delivery workers, known as "Dashers," as employees.

"Today's action seeks to disrupt the essential services Dashers provide, stripping hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, parents, retirees and other Californians of valuable work opportunities, depriving local restaurants of desperately needed revenue, and making it more difficult for consumers to receive prepared food, groceries, and other essentials safely and reliably," DoorDash Global Head of Public Policy Max Rettig said in an email to Business Insider. "We will fight to continue providing Dashers the flexible earning opportunities they say they want in these challenging times."

San Francisco tech companies — including Uber, Postmates, and Lyft — and their business models rely heavily on gig workers. By doing so they're able to avoid the higher costs that come with doling out wages and benefits typically reserved for full-time employees.

DoorDash — which filed to go public in late February — isn't the only firm that has aggressively pushed back on AB5. The company and others like Lyft, Uber, and Instacart have poured millions into a campaign supporting a California ballot measure designed to reverse the AB5 law.

Ride-hailing giant Uber and food delivery company Postmates had also filed a lawsuit in December 2019 arguing that the law was unconstitutional.

But the gig workers are also going to court. 

As Business Insider's Tyler Sonnemaker reported, drivers with Uber and Lyft in California filed claims against the companies in mid-April. The workers claimed they were owed at least $630 million in back wages as their employers continued to classify them as independent contractors, despite the passage of AB5.

Original author: Katie Canales

Artificial intelligence already plays a major role in determining whether you get a job, and companies are racing to implement more AI hiring tools despite major concerns about their fairness and accuracy. To show what that future could look like, a digital artist created an interactive job interview that simulates a world where AI is entirely in control of the hiring process.In "An Interview With Alex," an AI interviewer analyzes your face, voice, and answers to a series of bizarre puzzles and questions to determine if you'd get the job.Carrie Sijia Wang, the project's creator, told Business Insider that the goal was to highlight the dangers of letting AI completely take over without understanding how it works..Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

"How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?" is not a question most people expect to be asked in a job interview. 

But in a world where the hiring process relies on artificial intelligence, bizarre and socially inappropriate questions might not be off limits, at least according to one digital artist who wants to warn us about what the future could hold if we're not careful.

In a new online interactive experience, "An Interview With Alex," Chinese-born and New York City-based multimedia artist Carrie Sijia Wang lets people imagine that world by taking them through a job interview conducted entirely by an AI hiring manager.

Over the course of around 12 minutes, Alex analyzes your facial expressions, speech patterns, and answers to abstract puzzles and intrusive questions like the one above, which Wang told Business Insider are based on a famous study that tried to create intimacy between people by having them ask each other 36 personal questions.

Alex's goal: to determine if you're the right fit for the fictional "Open Mind" corporation, which it says ominously is "the largest, and soon to be only, general purpose company in the world."

Alex tells you that Open Mind values play, connection, openness, and positivity, and is looking for "mini gamers" to win small games that help the company in some opaque way — which you don't need to worry about because you're "fully protected from the consequences of your actions."

"It's kind of making fun of the corporate culture where the emphasis of surface level optimism is key," Wang told Business Insider.

The experience feels like something out of a "Black Mirror" episode, and Wang said she intended it to be that way in an attempt to highlight some of the dangers of relying on AI for things that may need a more human touch.

Wang said that, while the project started out as "speculative fiction" and the narrative may seem a bit far-fetched, she came to realize during her research that "the reality of hiring and employee management is already quite weird and absurd," citing examples like Uber drivers' complaints about being managed by an algorithm.

As AI takes over more aspects of the workplace, it also raises the issue of how — and for whom — these tools work.

"AI takes on the biases of its creators. And it often functions like a black box. As a result, human resources AI manifests as a tool of control and oppression in the workplace," Wang wrote in a blog post accompanying the project, which was funded by the Mozilla Foundation as part of its Creative Media Awards.

While advocates say AI is the key to rooting out human bias and ending discrimination in the hiring process, its critics warn that AI-driven hiring tools are just as biased as the humans who train them — and, in some cases, could actually promote employment discrimination.

Despite those concerns, employers are increasingly relying on AI-driven tools for recruitment and hiring. Amazon, Target, Hilton, Pepsi, and Ikea are just some of the companies who have tested or used algorithms to determine who to hire, and the list is growing, both across industries and from low-wage jobs to white-collar positions.

Assuming that trend doesn't reverse anytime soon, Wang said there needs to be more transparency and education around AI and machine learning because the technology can influence how people act without them knowing it.

"I know it's quite complex, but still I think people should be educated regarding how AI works and how it can easily be used as a tool of control against individuals," she said.

Wang said the next step for the project — pending in-person gatherings being allowed again — is an in-person exhibit with a group interview where participants compete against one another directly and discuss the experience afterward. 

Up to the challenge? Try Wang's AI job interview for yourself here.

An Interview with ALEX from on Vimeo.

Aaron Holmes contributed reporting to this story.

Original author: Tyler Sonnemaker

Nikola Motors is worth $23 billion despite zero sales or revenue. Founder and chairman Trevor Milton told CNBC that's because investors "don't care." Instead, they care about reducing emissions and the promise of Nikola's technology. While Tesla has its eyes on a battery powered semi-truck, Nikola is eyeing hydrogen fuel cells. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Nikola Motors, an electric truck maker that wants to eventually go after both Tesla and the freight market, is still months away from delivering its first products.

Unphased investors have nevertheless piled into the stock this month, sending the company's valuation soaring to well above $20 billion in just three months on public exchanges. CEO Trevor Milton says the new stockholders "don't care" and neither does he.

"They care more about the environmental impact of what you're doing," Milton told CNBC in an interview Monday evening. "'Oh, you're six months or eight months from revenue?' They don't care. They're like, 'you know what? You're changing the world. You're going to reduce emissions more than anyone else we're invested into you.'"

Nikola's most recent surge was fueled by the announcement that it will begin taking reservations on June 29 for its Badger truck, a full-size F-150 and Tesla Cybertruck.

But it's the semi truck — another segment Elon Musk has lofty plans for — where Nikola plans to really make money. However, there's one major powertrain difference: hydrogen.

"Nicola's main revenue stream is the semi-trucks," Milton said. "We can make about $750,000 or more in revenue per truck we sell, which is almost five times what our competitors make per truck.  That's because we actually include all the fuel with it that we own, and we manufacture the hydrogen fuel. That's the way we make all the money."

Hydrogen fuel cells have been an industry choice for heavy trucks, especially on off-highway uses where batteries can be quickly depleted. CNH Industrial, a maker of heavy-duty trucks and farm equipment with a similar stance on hydrogen versus pure batteries, previously invested $100 million in Nikola before exiting the stake during the reverse-public offering in March. 

That's where Milton thinks Nikola can get an edge on Tesla's charging network.

"It does take more energy to produce hydrogen than it does to charge a battery electric truck," Milton said, "but the advantage you get with hydrogen is building all your hydrogen stations on the interstate freeways, where you're able to source your energy directly and pay under 4 cents a kilowatt hour for energy."

In California, for example, Nikola charging could be as low as 30 cents per kilowatt hour, roughly in line with Tesla, and can help trucks work multiple shifts in a day with recharging. Orders are already backlogged to the tune of $10 billion with customers including Anheuser-Busch.

"If you look at cost comparison of a battery electric versus hydrogen battery would be cheaper if you were paying the same rate on energy, but you don't because the battery electric truck you're paying the utility for energy, the hydrogen, we actually control the energy through the, through the federal transmission lines so we can get energy really cheap," Milton said.

But despite all the optimism, there are plenty of people betting against Nikola and its soaring stock price. The company might be one of the top names on Robinhood, where investors are buying more shares of it than General Motors or Netflix, but it's also climbed to the sixth most shorted stock in the US, according to data from S3 Partners.

"I don't think they'll ever get a mass produced car," famed short-seller Andrew Left told Business Insider this week, dismissing the company as a "wannabe Tesla."

And with Tesla's "battery day" on the horizon for this month if plans hold, the race is on.

Original author: Graham Rapier

YouTube is rebranding FameBit, the influencer-marketing platform that it acquired in 2016, as YouTube BrandConnect.The in-house influencer-marketing service also has a new global head of business, Lori Sobel, who comes to BrandConnect after 16 years of working across various teams within Google. Unlike FameBit, which offered a self-service tool for creators and brands to connect for sponsored content deals, all YouTube BrandConnect deals will be initiated by the company's in-house team.Sobel told Business Insider that the company will be tapping into Google's pool of proprietary data to play matchmaker for brands and creators. Subscribe to Business Insider's influencer newsletter: Influencer Dashboard.

Four years after acquiring the influencer-marketing startup FameBit, YouTube is doubling down in its role as matchmaker for brands and creators and tapping into Google's vast pool of data to try and gain an edge.

The company recently announced that it's eliminating self-service deal-making from its in-house influencer-marketing tool, and as of today, the company is sunsetting the FameBit name and rebranding as YouTube BrandConnect.

The team has a new leader as well: Lori Sobel, who's taking charge of BrandConnect after spending 16 years working across a variety of teams at Google. 

"We've seen increased interest in influencer marketing over the last few years, and I anticipate that continuing to rise," Sobel told Business Insider. "Our team actually proactively matches creators with brands and provides that end-to-end campaign management and delivery. This was in contrast to our original self-service product which was a website that allowed creators to independently find brands to work with."

Lori Sobel is the new global head of business for YouTube BrandConnect. YouTube.

One of the main benefits of shifting away from a self-service model is having the ability to tap into Google's proprietary data to make more audience-based influencer-marketing deals rather than relying on a creator's content vertical, Sobel said.

"Instead of saying, 'Oh this is a beauty brand, they should only connect with beauty creators,' what we do is say, 'Okay this beauty brand is looking to reach this audience and then we come back with a list of more creators that they might not have even thought of that would be great for their brand," she said. 

YouTube acquired FameBit in 2016 with the hope that FameBit's "democratized marketplace" would allow creators "of all sizes to directly connect with brands," it said in a blog post at the time. The company has since discovered that creator-negotiated influencer deals are far less lucrative than campaigns set up by FameBit's in-house team. Sobel said that self-service deals represented less than 4% of total creator payouts on YouTube, and that its influencers earn on average 30 times more from full-service deals than self-service campaigns.

With the rollout of its full-service-only platform, BrandConnect, YouTube will act as a middle party for all negotiations between brands and creators, similar to an influencer-marketing agency model (though the company rejects the comparison). YouTube will continue to set a 25,000-subscriber minimum threshold for creators to participate in its branded content program.

The company said brands pay an upfront fee for each influencer campaign and in return YouTube guarantees a certain number of organic views. YouTube takes a percentage of the fee paid by the brand and creators who are part of the campaign get paid a pre-negotiated rate, which is also covered by the upfront fee.

"We're working with the brands to come up with what makes sense for them from a financial perspective, and then we're also working with the creators to do that as well," Sobel said. "We're not really an agency, I can't really get into all the details, but the goal is that we want to make it favorable for both sides, but everything we do is in-house."

The BrandConnect team's pitch is built around offering custom features (that it calls "shelfs") to make YouTube branded content more actionable, including a shopping carousel, an artificial-reality makeup try-on feature, and two new features that enable creators to feature apps and movie and TV shows they're discussing in their videos. Those features are exclusive to BrandConnect.

The company also offers a slate of measurement products for campaigns built on proprietary Google data to help brands identify increases in searches on Google.com and YouTube.com, purchase intent and brand recall shifts through surveys, and conversions, whether that's a website visit or product purchase.  

FameBit is not the only YouTube advertising program that's had a touch-up in recent weeks.

The company announced last month that its Google Preferred ad program is being overhauled and rebranded as YouTube Select with an eye to monetizing a wider swath of content on its platform. 

For more on the business of influencers, according to YouTube creators, check out these Business Insider Prime posts: 

How much money do YouTubers make a month? A minimalist influencer with 77,000 subscribers shares exactly what she earns and spends: The minimalist influencer Kyra Ann, who has 77,000 subscribers, shared how much money YouTube paid her in February.

8 YouTube stars explain which videos made them the most money, including one that earned $97,000: We spoke to eight creators with vastly different channels, and they shared the most amount of money YouTube paid them for a single video.

A YouTube creator explains why personal-finance videos can make much more money than many other types: Marko Zlatic runs a YouTube channel with 298,000 subscribers, and he posts videos about personal finance, stocks, and real-estate investing.

Original author: Dan Whateley

The theft of highly classified cyberweapons from the CIA in 2016 resulted from the agency's elite hacking unit's failure to secure its own systems from intruders, according to an internal report obtained by The Washington Post.The CIA discovered the breach when the radical pro-transparency group WikiLeaks published the information in a release dubbed "Vault 7." US officials say the breach was the largest unauthorized disclosure of classified information in CIA history.Security protocol within the hacking unit that developed the cyberweapons, housed within the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence, was "woefully lax," the report found.Moreover, the CIA may never have discovered the breach in the first place if WikiLeaks hadn't published the documents or if a hostile foreign power had gotten a hold of the information first, according to the report.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Central Intelligence Agency's elite hacking team "prioritized building cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems," according to an internal agency report prepared for then-CIA director Mike Pompeo and his deputy, Gina Haspel, who is now the agency's director.

The Washington Post first reported on the document, which said the hacking unit's failure to secure the CIA's systems resulted in the theft of highly classified cyberweapons in 2016.

In March 2017, US officials discovered the breach when the radical pro-transparency group WikiLeaks published troves of documents detailing the CIA's electronic surveillance and cyberwarfare capabilities. WikiLeaks dubbed the series of documents "Vault 7," and officials say it was the biggest unauthorized disclosure of classified information in the agency's history.

The internal report was introduced in criminal proceedings against former CIA employee Joshua Schulte, who was charged with swiping the hacking tools and handing them over to WikiLeaks.

The government brought in witnesses who prosecutors said showed, through forensic analysis, that Schulte's work computer accessed an old file that matched some of the documents WikiLeaks posted. 

Schulte's lawyers, meanwhile, pointed to the internal report as proof that the CIA's internal network was so insecure that any employee or contractor could have accessed the information Schulte is accused of stealing.

A New York jury failed to reach a verdict in the case in March after the jurors told Judge Paul Crotty that they were "extremely deadlocked" on many of the most serious charges, though he was convicted on two counts of contempt of court and making false statements to the FBI.

Crotty subsequently declared a mistrial, and prosecutors said they intended to try Schulte again later this year.

The report was compiled in October 2017 by the CIA's WikiLeaks Task Force, and it found that security protocol within the hacking unit that developed the cyberweapons, housed within the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence, was "woefully lax," according to the Post.

The outlet reported that the CIA may never have discovered the breach in the first place if WikiLeaks hadn't published the documents or if a hostile foreign power had gotten a hold of the information first.

"Had the data been stolen for the benefit of a state adversary and not published, we might still be unaware of the loss," the internal report said.

It also faulted the CIA for moving "too slowly" to implement safety measures "that we knew were necessary given successive breaches to other U.S. Government agencies." Moreover, most of the CIA's sensitive cyberweapons "were not compartmented, users shared systems administrator-level passwords, there were no effective removable media [thumb drive] controls, and historical data was available to users indefinitely," the report said.

The Center for Cyber Intelligence also did not monitor who used its network, so the task force could not determine the size of the breach. However, it determined that the employee who accessed the intelligence stole about 2.2 billion pages — or 34 terabytes — of information, the Post reported.

Original author: Sonam Sheth

An Enel X charger. Facebook/Enel X

Overall score: 78.5

Strategy: 84

Execution: 72.8

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"As of March 2020, the company has installed more than 60,000 charging points...The company's portfolio includes hardware for home, commercial markets, and retail charging service providers, and software tools for network management and connectivity, as well as an EV driver app...Enel X has multiple notable business developments within 2019. These include plans to develop national networks in Italy, Spain, and Romania, network development tenders in Russia, contracts to support electric bus deployments in South America, and a string of partnerships with US utilities to supply residential and commercial customers...Enel X is well positioned to tap emerging markets in Latin America, and, using its formidable expertise in demand response and VGI, expand market share in residential and fleet markets. From a portfolio perspective, Enel X is hitting all the major applications but lacks a 150 kW+ solution that is increasingly popular in public charging networks. To move into the lead position on the grid, Enel X would need to catch up with ChargePoint in sales."

Original author: Mark Matousek