Original author: Christian de Looper

Amazon partner Pinnacle Logistics is laying off more than 1,600 workers based at Baltimore-Washington International airport, Business Insider has learned.Pinnacle Logistics provides ground services at some of Amazon's air-operation sites across the US.Amazon has offered jobs to Pinnacle's hourly workers, an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A company that services Amazon's Prime Air fleet is laying off more than 1,600 workers in Maryland as Amazon shifts more jobs in-house, Business Insider has learned. 

Texas-based Pinnacle Logistics plans to lay off 1,609 workers based at Baltimore-Washington International airport, the company said in a notice filed on Wednesday with the state of Maryland. The layoffs will take effect in mid-April, according to the notice. 

Pinnacle Logistics is executing the layoffs as Amazon opens a new $36 million 200,000-square-foot hub for its Prime Air operations in Baltimore.

Amazon has offered jobs to Pinnacle's hourly workers, an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider.

"Amazon has been an active member of the Baltimore area business community for several years, and we are excited to grow our direct employee base in the area to now include our Baltimore Regional Air Hub," the spokesperson said. "The hourly Pinnacle Logistics employees have been offered roles as an Amazon associate at their current location."

A Pinnacle Logistics representative declined to comment on the layoffs when reached by phone on Thursday.

Pinnacle Logistics provides ground services for Amazon's Prime Air fleet, such as the loading and unloading of cargo. 

Within the past several months, several other logistics providers that work with Amazon have also announced layoffs.

Letter Ride, Inpax, Urban Mobility Now, and Sheard-Loman Transport announced upward of 2,000 layoffs in October. All four companies deliver Amazon packages to customers' homes.

Original author: Hayley Peterson

You can turn off your location on an Android device so that no apps or services can track your whereabouts. Your Android phone's location services help you find places nearby, can help friends find you, and can help you find your phone if you ever lose it, but it's also easy to turn off the feature should you want to.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Feeling hungry for a burger, in the mood for a beer, or in need of the nearest location that sells diapers? There's no need to stay peckish, thirsty, or dealing with that potty-related emergency when your Android phone can quickly help you find a nearby diner, bar, or supermarket. And how can it do that? Why, thanks to its location tracking abilities, of course.

Your phone always knows where you are, and it shares your location with all sorts of apps that can help you find stores, restaurants, track your run or bike ride, help give you driving directions, and so much more.

On the other hand, for myriad reasons, you may at times wish to roam about without being monitored. In those cases, just turn location tracking off and move about in anonymity. 

Here's how to turn off location tracking on your Android device.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $899.99 at Best Buy)

How to turn off location tracking on an Android device

1. Open the Settings app on your Android and look for either the "Connections" tab or, depending on your phone, the "Privacy" tab.

2. Tap "Location" and toggle the switch to off.

Toggle off the "Location" tag to prevent location tracking entirely. Steven John/Business Insider

3. You can also tap "Emergency Location Service" and "Google Location Sharing" to switch off location-tracking features there as well.

You can go to Google settings directly from the Settings app and turn off certain location trackers there. Steven John/Business Insider

 

Original author: Steven John

Facebook will reportedly retreat from its efforts to include advertisements in WhatsApp's messaging service, the Wall Street Journal's Jeff Horowitz and Kirsten Grind reported on Thursday.The decision to disband a team dedicated to implementing ads on WhatsApp is a surprising turnaround in Facebook's efforts to monetize one of its most popular services. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that WhatsApp was currently prioritizing building features for businesses and pushing its payment services in other countries. Ads will remain a long-term opportunity for the company, the spokesperson said.The move comes more than a year after WhatsApp co-founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum left the company, after clashing with Facebook executives over the effort to monetize the app. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Facebook is shelving plans to include advertisements in its WhatsApp messaging service, according to a new report. 

The company recently disbanded a team that explored the best ways of integrating ads onto WhatsApp, the Wall Street Journal's Jeff Horowitz and Kirsten Grind reported on Thursday.

The move is a surprising about face in Facebook's efforts to monetize its various products, particularly one of its most popular services. Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $22 billion in 2014, and has since been searching for ways to monetize the company's 1.5 billion userbase. 

Facebook had previously said that WhatsApp would begin placing ads in the Status section of the app, beginning in 2020. The advertisement giant even teased what the new WhatsApp ads would look like at a Facebook Marketing Summit. 

But now, WhatsApp will focus on building features that let businesses communicate with customers in the app, as well as providing payments services to other countries, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider. Ads will remain a long-term opportunity but will not be subject to a specific timeline, the spokesperson said.

The tech giant's decision to shelve its WhatsApp ads plans comes more than 18 months after WhatsApp cofounders Brian Acton and Jan Koum left the company, along with a slew of other company executives. The two cofounders had been vocal about their opposition to advertisements long before Facebook had expressed an interest in buying the app, calling ads "the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought," in a 2012 blog post.

Facebook's push to bring ads to the app had caused its co-founders to clash with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. In a later interview with Forbes, Acton revealed that he had resigned from the company in protest of its efforts to sell ads on WhatsApp. 

Original author: Bani Sapra

Slack is showing promising growth prospects in industries like retail, media, healthcare and financial services this year, argue analysts at equity research firm William Blair and Co. These prospects suggest that the competition from Microsoft's rival Teams chat app may not be as as significant as originally thought.One big reason why is Slack's specialized security and compliance features which could help it make inroads into healthcare and financial services companies.Other analysts have argued that Microsoft's dominance in enterprise will make it hard for Slack to add customers beyond its core small business customer base. Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Slack is showing promising growth prospects this year, which may suggest the threat from Microsoft's rival Teams chat app may not be as significant as originally thought, say analysts at equity research firm William Blair and Co. 

Key to Slack's future growth is being able to gain customers in markets other than tech, and it's showing success in markets like retail and media and making progress in industries with strict regulations like financial services and healthcare, writes Bhavan Suri, an analyst at William Blair, in a research note following a visit to Slack's headquarters. 

He points out that Slack's ability to offer specialized security and compliance features is helping it appeal to potential customers in healthcare and financial services where there are strict rules around how employees communicate and deal with sensitive information. 

"Slack's advanced functionality in security and compliance (such as its Enterprise Key Management technology) is resulting in more strategic conversations with these customers. While the company is still in the land phase in these regulated industries, there is potential to go wall-to-wall here in the future," Suri said. 

Shares of Slack have fallen by roughly 40% since the company became publicly listed in June. 

Given that, Suri also said the looming threat from Microsoft Teams may be less worrisome than some think. Teams users have been migrated from an older product called Skype for Business and it is bundled into Office 365. Teams now has 20 million daily active users as of November, as opposed to Slack's 12 million daily active users. 

Suri said the fact that users typically didn't choose to start using Teams, in the same way users started using Slack, means those users could still convert to Slack. 

"This lack of purchase intent, combined with lower user engagement once implemented, leads us to believe there is relatively less stickiness with Teams and a higher chance of conversion to Slack," he said. "Instead, there is still a possibility that many of the 20 million daily active users (DAUs) on Microsoft Teams can become Slack customers at some point in the future."

Slack has responded to Teams rapid user growth by highlighting figures that show how much more engaged users are on their platform. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield has also criticized the user growth as not organic and called Microsoft an "unsportsmanlike" competitor. 

Other analysts have argued that given Microsoft's dominance in the enterprise space, Slack will struggle to grow beyond its core small business customer baseto larger enterprise customers. 

Suri notes that Slack is investing heavily in sales and marketing as a way to move beyond its typical freemium model that worked for tech companies. 

"With investment in lead gen and increased market education, the company is aiming to accelerate the pace of customer adds as there is still plenty of opportunity to grow the customer base," he said. "As long as Slack continues to execute on its growth strategy over the next few quarters and delivers fundamentally sound results, we think the overhang will gradually lift."

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Signal at 925-364-4258. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Original author: Paayal Zaveri

Amazon's investment in one-day shipping is likely going to result in higher long-term profits, despite the initial costs to build it out, Morgan Stanley wrote in a note Thursday.In the note, Morgan Stanley raised Amazon's operating profit estimates for 2021 and its price target to $2,200 per share.The note is the latest in a string of bullish analyst notes about Amazon's one-day shipping initiative. Click here to read more BI Prime stories.

Amazon is spending billions of dollars in making one-day shipping the default for its Prime members. Morgan Stanley is convinced the investment will pay off in a big way.

In a note published Thursday, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote that while investors will be disappointed by the near-term hit on profits, Amazon's investment in faster shipping is expected to deliver "materially higher than expected profitability in 2021 and beyond," as it leads to more frequent and a wider group of shoppers on its site.

The note said that it is raising Amazon's operating profit estimate by 8%, or $2 billion, for 2021, and its price target by $100 to $2,200 per share — adding that "this build phase too shall pass" for Amazon.

"We see one-day shipping deepening Amazon's moats, leading to larger share gains/profits," the note said.

The note is the latest in a string of analyst forecasts that are bullish about Amazon's investment in one-day shipping. Since Amazon announced plans to spend over $3 billion on shortening delivery time last year, a number of Wall Street analysts wrote favorable notes predicting the investment would result in higher growth and more frequent shoppers for the e-commerce site. Amazon disclosed in its most recent earnings report that people bought more products on its site after rolling out one-day shipping.

Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley also estimates that roughly 60% of all products on Amazon will become eligible for one-day shipping in 2020, up from the current level of 40%. That will lead to more products sold on its site, and a 15% growth rate in the number of products sold worldwide through the end of 2020, the note said.

More importantly, Morgan Stanley said it would cost less for Amazon to roll out one-day shipping to its overseas marketplaces than it did in the US. That's because international markets already have a lot of the delivery infrastructure built out to make one-day shipping available, unlike in the US where it's relatively new, it said.

"The logistics networks are more in place [in international markets] for one-day which is important as it speaks to how the incremental international one-day investment is likely to be materially smaller than in the US," the note said.

Original author: Eugene Kim

Amazon is opening an 8,041-square-foot store in Washington, D.C., the Washington Business Journal reports.Amazon has revealed few details about the store, except that it's expected to sell produce, alcohol, and prepared meals.The size of the store is intriguing. It's expected to be about four times bigger than most Amazon Go stores, and roughly one third the size of a small Whole Foods store. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon is opening a mysterious store about one mile from CEO Jeff Bezos' $23 million home in Washington, D.C.

A site plan indicates that the store will sell produce, alcohol, and prepared meals, such as breakfast wraps, waffles, burritos, and rice bowls, Mike Neibauer reports in the Washington Business Journal.

The site plan also includes an area to park shopping carts and a "speed lane" for people to enter the store with a swipe, according to the report. 

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the company's plans for the store.

Jeff Bezos' home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider

The site could be a future Amazon Go, which is the company's chain of cashierless convenience stores.

But according to the Washington Business Journal, the store is expected to occupy 8,041 square feet.

That's at least four times the size of most Amazon Go stores and much smaller than Whole Foods stores, which are typically 25,000 to 50,000 square feet. It's also significantly smaller than the new chain of grocery stores that Amazon has been developing, which will reportedly occupy about 20,000 to 40,000 square feet. 

The mystery store will be built at 1701 14th Street NW, which is about one mile from the Kalorama neighborhood where Bezos bought a home in 2016 for $23 million. 

Sign up for Business Insider's retail newsletter, The Drive-Thru.

Original author: Hayley Peterson

You can find your downloads on your Android device in your My Files app (called File Manager on some phones), which you can find in the device's App Drawer. Unlike iPhone, app downloads are not stored on the home screen of your Android device, and can be found with an upward swipe on the home screen. Within My Files or File Manager, you can access your downloads, images, videos, audio files, and various cloud services, such as Google Drive or OneDrive.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

With all of the amazing features available on Android, like a high definition camera, apps for everything, lighting fast processing power, and so on, there is one thing that can be less than convenient: the difficulty of finding downloaded files.

It's almost as if your smartphone's downloads disappear just as soon as the transfer of data has been completed.

In fact, unless you know where to look, on some phones that's effectively what happens. So let's tell you where to look for downloads on your Android phone. It's a little place called the app drawer.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $899.99 at Best Buy)

How to find downloads on your Android device 

1. Open the Android app drawer by swiping up from the bottom of the screen.

2. Look for the My Files (or File Manager) icon and tap it. If you don't see it, instead tap the Samsung icon with many smaller icons inside it — My Files will be among them.

On some Android devices, the app will be called File Manager instead of My Files. Steven John/Business Insider

3. Inside the My Files app, tap "Downloads."

For files downloaded via Chrome, you can access them by tapping the three dots at the top-right corner of the Chrome browser. Steven John/Business Insider

You should now be able to see all of your downloads.

 

Original author: Steven John

Monitors with FreeSync allow AMD gamers to play with zero screen tearing, input lag, and frame stuttering.The ASUS VG279Q monitor's IPS panel — combined with its fast 1ms, 144Hz performance — makes it the best FreeSync monitor you can buy for gaming.

Have you ever played a computer game and the buildings, characters, and practically everything in the world seems to rip apart? It's not a bug and definitely isn't a visual enhancement. It's most often a symptom of screen tearing.

Screen tearing occurs when the frame rate of the content — counted in frames per second, or "fps" — doesn't perfectly match the refresh rate of the monitor — measured in Hertz, or "Hz". To compensate, frames of in-game graphics sit your graphics card's memory until there's room in its frame buffer to deliver them to your monitor.

The monitor is constantly refreshing its display contents to get those buffered frames in, and the imperfections in the loading and flushing of those frames create an ugly tearing effect that can ruin a movie or your gaming experience. It can also create a frame stutter that makes your game appear jittery or choppy.

The old trick to fixing this issue was enabling virtual sync. It's a technology that's usually effective at reducing the effects of screen tear, but many swear it off due to the input lag it can cause. This is especially damning for esports gamers who need every advantage possible.

That's where FreeSync comes in. FreeSync is the name of the variable refresh rate technology backed primarily by AMD. The monitor works directly with the graphics processor (GPU) to sync frames perfectly, so you completely eliminate the symptoms without the added input lag.

Unfortunately, not all monitors support this technology, and you need an AMD GPU to take advantage of it. Nvidia support for the open standard is building, but G-Sync is what you want if you're in that camp. If you need help finding a monitor to step your game up, look no further. We've uncovered some of the best monitors with FreeSync no matter your budget, need, or style.

Original author: Quentyn Kennemer

More than 70 years ago, a group of chemicals known as PFAS promised to make people's lives easier and more efficient. The category of chemicals — whose full name is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — was developed in the 1940s to resist heat, grease, stains, and water. That made them ideal coatings for food packaging, paper plates, and cookware. 

They were also used as firefighting foam for military training exercises and emergency responses starting in the 1970s.

But since then, scientists have uncovered links between PFAS and cancer, liver damage, thyroid disease, and developmental issues.

Today, the chemicals are in the bloodstreams of 99% of Americans, The Intercept reported. They've been found at more than 700 sites across 49 US states, according to EWG.

PFAS can linger in water and air for thousands of years, so consuming or inhaling them means they could stay in the body for life — hence their nickname, "forever chemicals."

But a group of researchers at Clarkson University in New York is developing a way to destroy PFAS in water. Together with the US Air Force, the team is using machines called plasma reactors to sever the chemicals' carbon-fluorine bonds — the same bonds that make them virtually indestructible in the environment. 

The technology applies only to PFAS in groundwater. (The researchers are working on a separate project to remove PFAS from soil.) But it could eventually be cheaper than the current water-filtration process.

Scientists are splitting PFAS molecules apart

The Air Force began using a new firefighting foam that doesn't contain PFAS in July 2018, but it still has to contend with the legacy of the old one. The chemicals have gotten into the groundwater at numerous Air Force bases across the US, forcing the military to spend more than $2.2 billion to clean up PFAS-contaminated sites, according to a report on the Environmental Protection Agency's website. 

That's why the Air Force is looking for a cheaper way to clean contaminated water.

The Enhanced Contact Plasma Reactor at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Clarkson University

To test their technology, the Clarkson researchers built a 20-foot-long mobile trailer that holds two plasma reactors. For two weeks in September, they pumped PFAS-contaminated groundwater from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio into the reactors.

Argon gas at the bottom of the reactors carries the PFAS molecules to the surface. The researchers then use high-voltage electrodes to generate plasma, an ionized gas made of free-roaming electrons and positive ions. 

The plasma zaps the water's surface, where it spreads across like fire, hitting the PFAS molecules and splitting them apart. Once the carbon and fluorine molecules have been separated, the PFAS compound is effectively destroyed. 

Clarkson doctoral candidate Chase Nau-Hix adjusts the settings on the plasma reactor. Clarkson University

Selma Mededovic, the principal researcher overseeing the project, said treating a single gallon of water this way takes one minute.

That's far slower than one of the standard methods for removing PFAS: adding carbon to contaminated water. With that approach, the chemicals stick to carbon, allowing clean water to be filtered out. Hundreds of gallons of water per minute can be treated this way, but Mededovic said the spent carbon needed to be incinerated afterward.

That incineration process costs about $3 to $4 per gallon of contaminated water, she said. Her plasma method, by contrast, is at least 40% cheaper (though the estimate does not include the cost of the reactors).

Mededovic said she would have a better sense of how much the reactors cost once the first commercial prototype is built. She expects it to be operational by the end of this year.  

In the meantime, her team is ramping up the technology to treat 15 gallons of contaminated water per minute. Eventually, they hope to treat about 200 gallons per minute.  

"We are working on scaling up our process to be competitive to carbon," Mededovic said. 

The EPA doesn't have a legal limit for PFAS in water

The Clarkson team's plasma reactor reduces PFAS concentrations in water well below the EPA's general limit for drinking-water contaminants: 70 parts per trillion.

But environmental groups have expressed concern that the limit is too high when it comes to PFAS. (The nonprofit Environmental Working Group endorses a limit of one part per trillion). 

The EPA pledged to develop national drinking-water regulations for PFAS by the end of 2019, but the deadline came and went.

On Friday, the US House of Representatives passed a group of measures that would require the EPA to set that guideline. The measures would also label PFAS as "hazardous substances," which would allow the EPA to require industrial manufacturers to clean them up. 

The Trump administration has threatened to veto the measures, however, calling them "problematic and unreasonable" and a "litigation risk."

But Mededovic said even scientific innovations like hers weren't enough without regulations.

"Elevated levels of PFAS have been found in many public and private water sources, and we need to regulate these compounds," she said. "Companies need to be accountable for what they're producing and releasing."

Original author: Aria Bendix

You can share your location between an iPhone and Android device by using Google Maps' "Share your location" feature.Google Maps lets you send your exact location in a text message, which can be sent between iPhones and Android devices with no issue.When you share your location, you can choose how long you'd like the location link to be active.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The lack of compatibility between iPhones and Android phones can often be annoying. And if you want to share your location across devices, you might think it's too complex — but there's a quick way to do it. 

Fortunately, Google Maps allows you to bridge the divide from iPhone to Android. All you have to do is share your location by sending a link through text message. 

Here's how to do it. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $899.99 at Best Buy)

How to share location between an iPhone and Android phone

1. Download Google Maps from the App Store if you don't have the app downloaded on your iPhone already.

2. Open Google Maps, and enable location services by selecting "Allow While Using App" if you're prompted. 

Allow Google Maps to access your location while using the app. Emma Witman/Business Insider

3. Tap the blue arrow in the bottom right corner to see your current location in the app.

Press the arrow to see your location in Google Maps. Emma Witman/Business Insider

4. Tap your blue location dot to pull up more options. 

5. Select "Share your location."

6. You can choose a period of time to share your location, or "Until you turn this off." For the purposes of sharing your location easily with a contact, choose a period of time. 

Select how long you'd like someone to see your location. Emma Witman/Business Insider

7. Tap the Message icon and type in your Android contact to share your location with them. 

Share your location through a text message to an Android phone. Emma Witman/Business Insider

8. Hit send as is, or modify the message. Just be sure to leave the Google Maps custom-created link intact. 

You can also share your location from an Android phone to an iPhone, as the steps within the Android Google Maps app are the same. You'll also send a link via text message. 

The process for sharing your location from an Android to an iPhone user is essentially the same. Emma Witman/Business Insider

Original author: Emma Witman

Online mattress company Casper, which filed for an initial public offering last week, could find it hard to complete its IPO, business experts told Business Insider.Wall Street has soured on unicorns, or startups valued at $1 billion or more, that lose money.Casper is losing money, thanks to high marketing, administrative, and return costs.But the company's valuation could also hinder its IPO; comparable public companies that are actually profitable are valued far less on a price-to-sales basis."They all want to pitch themselves as tech companies," Synovus' Dan Morgan said. "To me, this isn't a tech company. I hate to tell you, you're just an online marketer that sells mattresses."Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Wall Street may not end up being a friendly place for Casper.

There's a good chance that the company's bid to go public will meet with a chilly reception from public investors, business experts told Business Insider. WeWork's aborted initial public offering and the poor performance of many of the high-profile startups that completed their offerings last year could dampen demand for shares in yet-another money losing and arguably overvalued young company, they said.

"I would refer to Casper's IPO as 'Casper's possible IPO,'" said Robert Hendershott, an associate finance professor at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business. "If WeWork is any sign, it's going to be very hard for them to go public."

Casper filed for a public offering last week. Its IPO document revealed that it lost $65 million in the first nine months of last year, or about 20 cents for every dollar of revenue. Huge marketing and administrative costs have weighed on its results.

Wall Street has shied away from money-losing unicorns

So too have product returns. Like many of its competitors, Casper offers a generous return policy; customers can send back mattresses up to 100 days after receiving them. And consumers have taken advantage of that. Refunds, returns, and discounts cost the company $80 million in the first three quarters of last year.

Unfortunately for the company, Wall Street hasn't had much of an appetite lately for money-losing unicorns, or startups with a valuation of $1 billion or more — a level Casper reached with a funding round in February. Uber, Lyft, and Slack shares are all trading well below the prices at which they debuted last year. Pinterest and Peloton are barely above their IPO prices.

"I think that gravity is back," said Rob Siegel, a lecturer in management at Stanford Graduate School of Business, adding that companies both public and private are being forced to focus on their unit economics rather than on growth at all costs. "This is going to be a tough market to go public in."

Investors got burned so much last year by companies that were bleeding cash, that they almost certainly will be less aggressive about investing in such companies this year, Hendershott said.

"I think that we are going to see a lot fewer money-losing IPOs in 2020 than we did in 2019," he said.

Casper's valuation looks pricey compared to its peers

Part of what could hinder Casper's public offering — in addition to its losses — is its valuation. The company hasn't given an estimate of what it expects to be worth in its public offering, but private investors valued it at $1.1 billion last year. That would give it a price-to-sales ratio of about 2.7, based on its trailing-twelve-months revenue.

When compared with some of last year's IPOs, that doesn't seem super-excessive, said Dan Morgan, a senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust and a longtime tech investor. When Uber debuted last year, it had a price-to-sales ratio of around seven to eight. Lyft's ratio at the time of its IPO was 11. And Slack's was a whopping 50.

But those aren't necessarily the best companies to which to compare Casper. The company after all is basically a mattress manufacturer. As such, its peer group includes Tempur Sealy, Sleep Number, and Purple Innovation. Collectively, those companies are valued at about 0.8 times their sales — or about one third Casper's corresponding valuation. What's more, unlike Casper, all three are profitable.

Purple may be the best company to stack up against Casper. It had similar sales in the first nine months of last year — $304 million for it, compared with $312 million for Casper. But its revenue grew at more than twice Casper's rate in that time period —47% compared with 20%. Unlike Casper, it turned a year-earlier loss into a modest profit of $126,000.

From those numbers, you might think that Purple would be worth a lot more than Casper. But you'd be wrong. Purple's market capitalization stands at $607 million, or about half that of Casper's last private valuation.

"I think it will be interesting to test this billion-dollar valuation point for this particular category," said David Hsu, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "It's not a great IPO market, obviously."

Casper isn't really a tech company

Another factor that could weigh on Casper is that investor sentiment has completely reversed on startups like it that aspire to be considered as tech companies but really operate in other industries. WeWork was the pre-eminent example of that phenomenon, Hendershott said. 

A year ago, SoftBank valued WeWork at $47 billion, and in its IPO documents, the company tried to play up its technology bona fides. But Wall Street investors saw through the ruse, recognized its as a real-estate company that was bleeding lots of money, and scoffed at the idea of paying a tech-like premium for its shares. The company ultimately pulled its offering, even after reportedly being willing to consider a valuation of as little as $10 billion. When SoftBank bailed out WeWork this fall — weeks before it was expected to run out of cash — it valued it at less than $8 billion.

Casper appears to be following in WeWork's footsteps, at least in terms of trying to present itself as a tech company. Its IPO paperwork mentions the words "technology," "technologies," and "technological" 121 times combined. That's more than even WeWork did.

In the document, Casper touted its "cutting-edge technology," bragged about its "large digital product and technology engineering teams," and talked about how its growth will be driven by "new technologies."

"We believe that technology will increasingly play a role in the continuous optimization of a sleep environment," the company said in the IPO paperwork. 

But the business experts weren't buying it — and they suspect Wall Street won't either.

"They all want to pitch themselves as tech companies," Synovus' Morgan said. "To me, this isn't a tech company. I hate to tell you, you're just an online marketer that sells mattresses."

Got a tip about Casper or another startup? 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 @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Original author: Troy Wolverton

Nintendo is building a theme park at Universal Studios in Osaka, Japan which it claims will be a "life-sized, living video game.""Super Nintendo World" will give visitors wrist bands and a smartphone app which will allow them to compete against other visitors and collect gold coins — although it's not entirely clear how.After the Osaka park is opened Universal plans to open three more "Super Nintendo Worlds" in California, Florida, and Singapore.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Nintendo is building a cross between a video-game and a theme park at Universal Studios in Osaka, Japan.

During a press briefing on Tuesday, Universal Studios Japan and Nintendo teased its new "Super Nintendo World" theme park, due to open ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Chief creative officer of Universal Creative Thierry Coup described the attraction as a "life-size, living video game."

Visitors to the park will get an electronic wristband called a "power-up band," which will apparently allow them to collect coins and compete with other visitors in tandem with an app on their phone. It's possible augmented reality will form part of the experience.

Bloomberg reporter Kurumi Mori was at the briefing and shared a picture of the wrist bands.

Bloomberg reports that the attraction has been developed with the help of legendary Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, and it will feature familiar locations from the Mario universe like the Mushroom Kingdom, Peach's Castle, and Bowser's Fortress.

Universal has previously confirmed there will be a Mario Kart ride in the park, and according to Bloomberg visitors will also be given a mission to retrieve a golden mushroom from Bowser Jr.

Once Osaka's Super Nintendo World has opened further parks are planned in Hollywood, Orlando Florida, and Singapore, although no opening dates have been tied to these projects.

Original author: Isobel Asher Hamilton

Visa is set to pay $5.3 billion for Plaid, the buzzy startup that links fintechs with their customers' bank accounts.On a call announcing the news Monday, Al Kelly, Visa's chairman and CEO, acknowledged some financial firms "would prefer Plaid operate differently in some cases."He went on to say, "We intend to address those concerns."Earlier this month, JPMorgan Chase announced fintechs would need to access customer accounts via tokens as opposed to using their passwords, as first reported by the Financial Times, requiring startups like Yodlee and Plaid to adjust how they operate. Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Visa is set to acquire one of the hottest fintechs on Wall Street, but the hardest work might still be ahead of it.

On Monday the payments giant announced it plans to buy Plaid for $5.3 billion. The startup serves as the connective glue between financial apps like Robinhood and Credit Karma and customers' bank accounts. Through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs) the San Francisco-based fintech links the two sides, allowing financial data to flow between them.

Over 11,000 bank and financial services companies and more than 2,600 fintech developers use Plaid. The startup touches one in four people with a US bank account.

However, while speaking on a webcast announcing the deal, Visa chairman and CEO Al Kelly acknowledged the potential for the need to make changes to Plaid as a result of issues raised by some market participants. 

"We know there are financial institutions who would prefer Plaid operate differently in some cases, and we intend to address those concerns while not diminishing the value for developers, leveraging our global experience balancing a two-sided network," Kelly said.

Kelly did not elaborate on where Visa would potentially look to make changes. Visa declined to comment.

"Plaid has worked with thousands of banks to enable that freedom both securely and safely," said Sima Gandhi, head of business development and strategy for Plaid, via email. "Joining Visa will allow us to utilize their long history of working with financial institutions to deliver even stronger bank integrations that connect consumers with the apps they rely on across many more markets."

Earlier this year Plaid was among a group of fintechs that came into the spotlight regarding data security. JPMorgan Chase recently announced limitations around the data fintechs could use when interacting with customers' bank accounts, as first reported by the Financial Times. Instead, the bank would issue tokens, which it felt was more secure. 

At the time, Yodlee, a competitor of Plaid, agreed to use the tokens for all transactions with Chase. Plaid had also come to an agreement with the bank. 

Gordon Smith, co-president of JPMorgan Chase and CEO of consumer and community banking, was quoted supporting Visa's acquisition of Plaid in the release announcing the news Monday, while again stressing the importance of data security. 

"We believe Visa's acquisition of Plaid is an important development in giving consumers more security and control over how their financial data is used," Smith said. "Protecting customer data and helping them share that information safely has long been a top priority for Chase. We look forward to partnering with Visa to continue building a great experience for our shared customers."

Kelly's comments highlight the challenges that sometimes arise when looking to integrate a startup into an established player — particularly in the fast-changing and increasingly overlapping world of payments and e-commerce. 

In November, PayPal announced plans to buy rewards platform Honey for $4 billion, making it the largest acquisition in the company's history. 

But a month later Amazon, which does not directly accept PayPal for purchases, began issuing warnings on its site to customers to deactivate the browser extension, labeling it a "security risk" that collects and analyzed customer data. A Honey spokeswoman told Wired that Honey has never been a security risk. 

Original author: Dan DeFrancesco

On Tuesday, SADA Systems announced that Nutanix CIO Wendy Pfeiffer is joining its board of directors.SADA Systems specializes in helping customers move to and use Google Cloud services — making it a key ally, as the company looks for any advantage in its push against Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.Pfeiffer says Google Cloud has historically struggled with winning over enterprise customers, but she sees "tremendous opportunity" in joining the board of SADA Systems because Google Cloud is going through major changes and building out its partner network.Currently, Google Cloud's competitors Amazon Web Services and Microsoft have large, established partner networks to help sell their technology to customers.Click here to read more BI Prime stories.

Google Cloud is working to catch up with its cloud rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, and a major part of that push is building out its partner network.

Amid that backdrop, Nutanix CIO Wendy Pfeiffer tells Business Insider that she saw a "tremendous opportunity" in her new role on the board of directors of SADA Systems, once recognized by Google Cloud itself as global partner of the year. 

Now, Pfeiffer says she hopes to provide guidance and support to help SADA Systems scale, even as Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian redoubles his efforts to grow the search giant into a true challenger to Amazon Web Services, far and away the dominant cloud platform. To do so, Kurian has identified a strategy in appealing to the largest customers — a push that Pfeiffer believes SADA can help with.

"It's pretty well known that [Google Cloud Platform] has undergone significant management change," Pfeiffer told Business Insider. "There's tremendous interest and focus on taking market share in the enterprise."

As the CIO of Nutanix, Pfeiffer is in charge of the teams that help customers with running the company's cloud storage technology on clouds like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as their own private data centers. Pfeiffer says she hopes to bring that cross-cloud perspective to SADA Systems.

Pfeiffer says that as Google Cloud invests in its products, SADA Systems is also investing in building expertise and skills in Google Cloud products. In the past, she says, Google Cloud has struggled with obtaining enterprise customers at the same scale AWS and Microsoft have.

While Pfeiffer won't be working directly with Google Cloud, she says partnerships such as that with SADA Systems will help it gain traction, because larger customers prefer to work with trusted consultants rather than the tech companies directly.

"There's a thing about how enterprise IT operates at scale that hasn't been well understood by GCP," Pfeiffer said. "It's so exciting to be part of this growth and additional opportunity that I'm seeing with SADA Systems."

The 'most obvious performance path forward' for Google Cloud

Right now, Google Cloud competes with Microsoft, which has decades worth of partnerships to draw on, and Amazon Web Services has used its top spot in the cloud market to quickly grow its partner network. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told employees that it has a five-year window to become "at least the number 2 cloud."

For both Microsoft and AWS, partners are a big part of their business. In the past two years, Microsoft generated $9.5 billion in annual contracted partner revenue and claims that 95% of its commercial revenue flows through partners. 

Meanwhile, AWS's seven-year-old partner network has also found success by helping partners help customers take advantage of its cutting-edge new technologies. 

Now, Pfeiffer says, Google Cloud is starting to gain some traction in the enterprise as it goes after larger customers. Partners give Google Cloud a path to customers beyond just its salesforce, which Kurian plans to triple in the next few years.

Since Kurian became Google Cloud's CEO about a year ago, the company has made several leadership hires to build its partner network, including sales president Robert Enslin and North American president Kirsten Kliphouse. 

"GCP leadership is eager to invest in any mechanisms to help them to gain traction in the enterprise traditionally, and currently channel partners are the conduit through which enterprise IT consumes technology," Pfeiffer said. "The most obvious performance path forward for GCP to pursue their goals of enterprise relevance is through healthy, well-instrumented channel partners."

The 'voice of the enterprise customer'

Pfeiffer says that while the technology of Google Cloud itself stands out, when it comes to selling to partners and customers, it needs to "be more like the others." One way that Google Cloud is doing that is by inviting partners to Google Accelerate, its annual internal sales conference, for the first time.

"The fact that Google is doing this is significant," Pfeiffer said. "I think it's necessary if enterprise IT is going to have the ability to consume GCP into our environment and into our budget...Now this feels like a company that is investing in channel partners."

Pfeiffer says she believes the most powerful thing she can do as an adviser to SADA Systems is to bring the "voice of the enterprise customer" into the boardroom. 

"I can provide that expertise that information about how IT consumes and secures and so forth," Pfeiffer said. "SADA has a wealth of knowledge in that regard...I believe it is the highest value that I can bring to SADA."

Tony Safoian, president and CEO of SADA Systems SADA Systems

Likewise, SADA Systems CEO and president Tony Safoian says that Pfeiffer can educate its leadership team in how enterprises buy and how they select partners. 

"How do we have to behave to appeal to more of the enterprise CIOs?" Safoian told Business Insider. "It's not just on technologies they're choosing but partners they're having on the journey."

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Original author: Rosalie Chan

British entrepreneur Jack Underwood founded Circuit in 2016 but has opted against traditional VC funding to-date to grow his business.
Circuit is an app for delivery drivers that lets them plan out their delivery routes in a more efficient way.The company saw $3 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2019, according to Underwood, but has only raised cash sparingly from angel investors and incubator Techstars. Underwood claims that it's important to retain control of his startup and its objectives, demonstrating that VC investment may not be the be all and end all for tech companies.  Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Investment in the form of venture capital is the lifeblood of many startups, but one British startup says it isn't the only path to growth.

Circuit, an app which helps delivery drivers map out their routes more efficiently, claims to have recorded $3 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2019 despite not having any traditional VC investment. Its 26-year-old founder, Jack Underwood, says the company is growing as fast as some venture-backed businesses by learning to be capital efficient.

The company works on a subscription model, offering individuals a free trial before charging them from $20 per month. ARR is one metric commonly used by software subscription startups to indicate growth and that they can win and retain paying customers.

"We've been growing at a staggering pace with more than a million deliveries a week last year," Underwood told Business Insider in an interview. "The issue with raising money from VCs is that you dilute control of your business and you know from that moment there is a death date for your company."

Research from UK-based startup SeedLegals estimates that British founders give away between 10-20% of their business in equity at seed stage. Underwood wanted to take a different route. 

"I thought, 'If we can grow as aggressively as a venture-backed company without venture funding' then we should do that. It's good to go against the grain," he added. The dilemma over equity has been pertinent for Circuit. The startup was approached by startup incubator Techstars for investment and accepted the standard $20,000 investment and expertise in exchange for 6% of the business. But Underwood balked at losing another 4% for $100,000 more. 

"There's no pressure for us to take on more money. We are using our working capital effectively and managing our ad spend carefully," Underwood said. "The key is being capital efficient." 

To that end, Circuit's six full-time employees work remotely with the company's cofounder based in Belgium while Underwood resides in the UK with other staff as far flung as Australia and Brazil. Unsurprisingly, the company's route optimization app peaked in demand around Christmas and ended 2019 with three times the revenue of the previous year. 

Delivery companies often pay a subscription fee to Circuit due to a lack of better in-house alternative for their drivers with some 15,000 drivers using the platform the $20 starting price currently. Underwood posted his story on Twitter at the end of 2019 and said that he received a lot of positive responses from investors about his stance on funding. Still, he added, he expects to turn to fundraising at some point in the future.

Original author: Callum Burroughs

Amazon filed a lawsuit on Monday to block Microsoft from starting work on the $10 billion Pentagon Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract.Microsoft won the contract in October, but Amazon claims it was unfairly excluded from winning the JEDI contract due to political interference from President Trump. Trump has been critical of Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos.
The retail giant already filed a lawsuit challenging the Pentagon's decision process in October, and this new lawsuit if successful would prevent Microsoft from starting work until the first suit is resolved.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon is taking legal action to stop Microsoft from starting work on a $10 billion Pentagon contract Amazon claims it was unfairly blocked from winning.

Microsoft was awarded the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract in October last year, which involves moving the Department of Defense's data over onto the cloud.

Previously Amazon had been tipped as the frontrunner to win the contract, and the company maintains that it lost out due to interference from President Trump, who has a longstanding animosity towards Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos whom he gleefully dubbed "Jeff Bozo" when news of Bezos' divorce broke last year.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Monday attributed the company's win to its so-called "hybrid cloud," a.k.a. mixing pure cloud computing with on-site computing.

Amazon filed its first legal complaint disputing the decision in November, claiming it had been the victim of "clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias."

This new legal challenge, filed in a federal court on Monday, is designed to block Microsoft from performing any substantial work on JEDI until Amazon's first lawsuit is resolved.

Microsoft will move to dismiss the case, according to Bloomberg.

The judge has been asked by the companies to rule on Amazon's newest filing by February 11. Neither Amazon nor Microsoft were immediately available for comment when contacted by Business Insider.

Original author: Isobel Asher Hamilton

Plaid cofounders Zach Perret and William Hockey Plaid

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

Visa is set to buy Plaid, the buzzy fintech that powers apps like Betterment and Venmo, for $5.3 billion. Visa CEO and chairman Al Kelly said in a statement that the deal "will position Visa to deliver even more value for developers, financial institutions and consumers."Jeffrey Epstein set Elon Musk's brother up with a girlfriend in effort to get close to the Tesla founder, sources said. Multi-millionaire sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein introduced Kimbal Musk, Elon's brother, to a woman in his entourage, two sources tell Business Insider.Apple is offering 'no substantive assistance' to the FBI in unlocking two iPhones related to a mass shooting, according to the US Attorney General. Attorney General William Barr told reporters that the tech giant had declined requests to unlock the smartphones after a shooting last month at a Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida.US intelligence officials have challenged UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's claim that the country can mitigate the risks of adopting Huawei's 5G network. A dossier presented to the UK government said it would be "nothing short of madness" to adopt the Chinese tech giant's technology in the country's 5G network. Thousands of angry Indians are planning to disrupt a visit from Jeff Bezos by staging mass protests over Amazon's disruption of retail. Members of the a leading Indian small business group, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), say they will mobilize between 100,000 and 500,000 people to protest against the Amazon CEO when he visits this week.Russian hackers allegedly hacked the Ukrainian energy company at the center of the Trump impeachment. The hacks began in early November when news of President Trump's dealings with Ukraine and Burisma, the company which Hunter Biden was a board member of, were at the top of the news agenda. Indian authorities have ordered an investigation into Amazon and Walmart's Flipkart over alleged violations of competition law. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered a probe into whether the US companies offered "preferred sellers" which hurt other businesses, in another blow to e-commerce giants in the country. SoftBank and pizza tech startup Zume had a letter of intent in December for a funding deal that never happened, and it left the startup stranded. The startup ended up having no choice but to cut hundreds of jobs and give up on robots this month as a result.Nintendo is planning to open a life-sized video game at Universal Studios Japan this summer. Super Nintendo World is slated to open in Osaka and will let users collect coins and battle bosses in real life through their smartphones. Star Wars actor Mark Hamill has deleted his Facebook account over political ads. The actor said that the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg "values profit over truthfulness" in a tweet. 

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Original author: Callum Burroughs

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is due to visit India this week to meet government officials and hold a huge Amazon event.But many retailers in India who are being disrupted by Amazon want to make their displeasure felt.A large Indian lobby group for retailers says it is rallying as many as 500,000 people to protest.Visit Business Insiders home page for more stories.

Thousands — potentially hundreds of thousands — of Indian small-business people are planning to give Jeff Bezos an unpleasant welcome on an impending visit to the country.

Members of the a leading Indian small business group, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), say they will mobilize between 100,000 and 500,000 people to protest against the Amazon CEO.

Praveen Khandelwal, CAIT's secretary general, described his protest plans to Reuters and Bloomberg, saying that he expects people to demonstrate in as many as 300 cities around India.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on a 2014 visit to Bangalore, India. Reuters

The demonstrations are planned to hit on Wednesday, the same day Bezos is expected to attend a stadium-sized summit for small businesses being staged by Amazon in the capital, New Dehli.

CAIT members object to Amazon's efforts to expand into the Indian retail sector, which is dominated outside of cities by small players.

They say Amazon, worth close to $1 trillion, is using its economic muscle to offer deep discounts that smaller members cannot compete with.

Taking a nationalist tone, CAIT National Secretary Sumit Agarwal said on Twitter that his group "will fight this battle against foreign economic terrorists & invaders till the very end."

Agarwal also posted protest imagery marked "Jeff Bezos Go Back!" It showed Bezos' face being crossed out, next to a backdrop of protesters.

According to India's CNBC-TV18 news network, citing unnamed sources who know the itinerary, Bezos is due to arrive in India on Wednesday, January 15.

The network says he will attend Smbhav, a summit run by Amazon for small businesspeople.

The event, at New Dehli's JLN sports stadium, features speakers including Amazon's top Indian executives as well as senior figures from firms like Google, Visa, HSBC, and Unilever.

Bezos is not listed as a speaker, but both CNBC-TV18 and Bloomberg reported that he would attend.

He is also said to be seeking a meeting with Narendra Modi, India's Prime Minister, and to make an appearance at a celebrity event for Amazon's Prime Video service.

Original author: Kieran Corcoran

Attorney General William Barr reignited a feud between Apple and the US government over its refusal to let officials access encrypted data on iPhones.He said Apple wasn't doing enough to help the FBI access two phones used by Mohammed Alshamrani, the Saudi officer who opened fire in December on a naval base in Pensacola, Florida.Barr said the FBI needed encrypted information from Alshamrani's iPhones to properly investigate the shooting, which officials on Monday declared was an act of terrorism.Apple said it had helped as much as it could but would never code a "backdoor" to allow law enforcement access to users' encrypted information.The argument is effectively a replay of a 2015 struggle between Apple and the Obama administration, which wanted to access a cellphone after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.Apple has said such backdoors would make all users' phones vulnerable to bad actors.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The fight for privacy between Apple and the White House was reignited this week when Attorney General William Barr publicly accused Apple of not doing enough to help the FBI access a mass shooter's cellphones.

Barr told reporters on Monday that Apple had given "no substantive assistance" to the investigation into the December 6 shooting at a naval base in Pensacola, Florida.

Mohammed Alshamrani, a visiting officer in the Saudi air force, killed three people and wounded others before he was shot dead by authorities.

Barr on Monday declared the shooting an "act of terrorism" and said Alshamrani was motivated by jihadist ideology.

He said the FBI asked Apple last week to help unlock two iPhones used by the shooter. Apple has refused the request, however, citing a long-standing view that breaking encryption on a single phone would compromise all users' privacy.

The dispute is a close parallel to a standoff between Apple and the Obama administration in 2015 in the wake of a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

An epochal clash over the limits of privacy

A protester with an iPhone that says "No Entry" outside the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in New York City in 2016. Bryan Thomas/Getty Images

The San Bernardino shooting took place at a social-services agency and left 16 people dead, including the two shooters.

At the time, the FBI asked Apple to unlock the iPhone used by gunman Syed Rizwan Farook. The agency said it couldn't access the phone's contents because it had a passcode and asked Apple to build a "backdoor" iOS operating system that could bypass iPhone security features.

A federal judge in California publicly ordered Apple to assist the FBI, but Apple refused, saying the measure would "threaten the security of our customers" and had "implications far beyond the legal case at hand."

The company's refusal set the stage for a clash between the tech world and law enforcement over user privacy.

The FBI sued Apple for defying the court order, prompting protests around the country in support of Apple.

The clash ended inconclusively, however, when the FBI dismissed its suit because it had found a way to unlock the iPhone without help from Apple.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees the FBI, later said publicly that the government paid $900,000 to an undisclosed party to unlock the phone.

But Melanie Newman, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, told The New York Times in 2016 that the battle over access to digital data was not over.

"It remains a priority for the government to ensure that law enforcement can obtain crucial digital information to protect national security and public safety, either with cooperation from relevant parties, or through the court system when cooperation fails," she said.

The stage set for the battle to repeat

Naval Air Station Pensacola seen after the December 6 shooting. Getty Images/Josh Brasted

It's unclear what will happen in the Pensacola case. Apple has disputed Barr's assertion that it hasn't helped, saying it has given authorities gigabytes of data like iCloud backups and payment information.

It says it won't, however, do anything about encryption.

"We have always maintained there is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys," it said in a statement. "Backdoors can also be exploited by those who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers.

"Today, law enforcement has access to more data than ever before in history, so Americans do not have to choose between weakening encryption and solving investigations. We feel strongly encryption is vital to protecting our country and our users' data."

The American Civil Liberties Union rallied behind Apple, saying that breaking its policy for the US government could enable bad actors elsewhere.

"There is simply no way for Apple, or any other company, to provide the FBI access to encrypted communications without also providing it to authoritarian foreign governments and weakening our defenses against criminals and hackers," Jennifer Granick, an ACLU spokeswoman on cybersecurity issues, said in an emailed statement to Business Insider.

Still, it appears the FBI will not back down easily this time. According to The New York Times, officials said the FBI approached Apple only after asking other government agencies, foreign governments, and third-party technology vendors for help.

"We don't want to get into a world where we have to spend months and even years exhausting efforts when lives are in the balance," Barr said on Monday.

"We should be able to get in when we have a warrant that establishes that criminal activity is underway."

Original author: Rosie Perper