Construction tech is one of three real-estate-tech trends that Bain Capital Ventures is watching in 2020, according to partner Merritt Hummer. She also included the increasing institutionalization of short-term rentals and the "internet of things" as some of the top real-estate-tech trends. Hummer doesn't think proptech as a whole is overvalued, but real-estate companies that "masquerade" as tech companies may see lower valuations in 2020. She said coworking, coliving, and short-term rentals would be hit the hardest by the shift. Read more BI Prime stories here.

One of the biggest trends of 2020 in real-estate technology will likely be the continued adoption of tech in one of the oldest industries.

Construction, which has trailed the economy in labor-productivity growth since the 1970s, has been attracting entrepreneurs and venture-capital dollars alike.

"It's the least automated industry there is," Merritt Hummer, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, told Business Insider.

Construction tech is one of three real-estate-tech trends that Bain Capital Ventures is watching in 2020, according to Hummer.

But some of the buzzier parts of real-estate tech in 2019 may have been overvalued, Hummer said. She highlighted coworking and short-term rentals as two verticals that could take a hit.

Last year saw large funding rounds for Knotel, Industrious, and WeWork, as well as a lot of venture-capital funding and buzz for the short-term rental startups Sonder, Lyric, and Domio.

Bain Capital Ventures, the venture arm of Bain Capital, has found success in many verticals, namely e-commerce and fintech. Hummer, who led recent investments in the mortgage company Ribbon and the "internet of things" and property-management company SmartRent, is leading its foray into proptech. 

While Bain is operating in a space with many specialist funds with strategic limited-partner bases consisting of the largest real-estate companies, Hummer said Bain has some clear advantages. 

"We just have more capital, so having a bigger fund enables us to support companies through their entire life cycle," Hummer said, pointing to their ability to lead early- and late-stage rounds. 

Two of three Bain Capital Ventures real-estate-tech investments, in Roofstock and Ribbon, point to another advantage: They can bring their fintech expertise to companies at the cross section of finance and real estate. 

2020 proptech trends

Most construction-tech companies doesn't overlap with Bain Capital Ventures' historical expertise, but the larger company's global scale means that it can easily consult with experts it has worked with on previous projects. 

Bain's view is that the best construction-tech investments are with companies that aren't trying to totally "overhaul" the existing ways that construction is done but are instead "shaving off cost and time." Construction is a highly fragmented industry, which means that it would be much harder for one company, by itself, to make an industry-changing impact. 

"They're not going to homebuilders and saying, 'We would completely transform the way you do business,'" Hummer said. "Others make that claim and may be successful in the long run, but it will likely take them longer." 

Hummer highlighted OpenSpace, a company that uses helmet-mounted cameras to create 3D renderings of worksites, and Mosaic, a construction company that has created its own project-management software, as two companies that use tech to make improvements on their existing workflow.

Some experts see construction tech as a way to make the cost of housing cheaper, and while Hummer said that affordability isn't Bain's focus, it may have an impact in some markets. 

"The supply and demand dynamic of each local market will dictate how much of the incremental profit can be retained by the builder," Hummer said. In hot markets, the savings may be absorbed by the builders or developers, while in markets with less demand, they could lower costs for renters or homeowners.

The fragmented nature of construction also means that regardless of market conditions, some builders may pass on the savings, while others will keep them.

Single-family rentals are historically similarly fragmented. Hummer named the institutionalization of single-family rentals as another proptech trend to watch. 

The direct effect is that single-family rentals will "become an investable asset class" for both retail and institutional investors. There are only a few nationally focused single-family public equities. Hummer sees this changing rapidly, with investors being able to choose between national and more localized investment strategies. 

Roofstock, a Bain portfolio company that just recently raised $50 million in funding, is a marketplace for single-family-rental investments that also connects investors with property managers, opening up investors to markets far from where they live or work. 

Companies that sell property-management tools will also benefit from this increased institutionalization. Large investors will work with them to manage their portfolios, while smaller investors that have historically been tech-adverse will begin to adopt more technology to compete. 

The third theme, one that Hummer said has been a theme for the past few years, is the internet of things.

"It's a very fast-moving category that looks different every year," Hummer said. 

SmartRent, another Bain Capital Ventures portfolio company, combines the internet of things with property management by providing a suite of hardware and software to multifamily residential owners. Tenants are given typical internet-of-things control over building access, lighting, and climate, while property managers are given building-management tools and data. 

The state of valuations in proptech and venture more broadly

WeWork's massive valuation slide and abandoned initial public offering and Uber's and Lyft's troubles in the public market were some of the biggest business stories of the year, prompting some experts to predict more crumbling valuations in 2020. Hummer has noticed the trend and thinks it will have varying effects on different verticals in the proptech universe. 

"We think of proptech as not just one area, but an amalgamation of many, many different business models," Hummer said. 

WeWork is considered by some to be a proptech company, and Hummer thinks that valuations may decrease in some of the areas that are closest to WeWork's business model, but not across the whole sector. 

"There's not going to be a single wave that influences valuations across the board," Hummer said. "Our view is that it should be a lot more nuanced."

Proptech that is more purely technological will be much less affected than tech-enabled models. 

"We do think that there has been a recognition that some real-estate businesses are masquerading as tech businesses," Hummer said. 

She said coworking, coliving, and short-term rentals would be hit the hardest by this shift.

Original author: Alex Nicoll

A machine that will investigate the forces that hold matter together finally has a home.

On Thursday, the US Department of Energy announced that the long-awaited Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a type of particle accelerator, will be constructed at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York. 

Scientists use particle colliders to study the origins of our universe and investigate the makeup of atoms. The design for the new machine calls for an underground ring that steers protons and electrons toward one another at nearly the speed of light. 

When the subatomic particles collide head-on, they melt into a hot soup — the same type of plasma that formed immediately after the Big Bang. For this reason, physicist Stephen Hawking once compared particle colliders to time machines. 

Brookhaven clenched the coveted role as the machine's home and designer, beating out the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia. Brookhaven is already home to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC; pronounced "Rick"): the only operating particle collider in the US. 

That underground ring stretches 2.4 miles. It's function is slightly different than the EIC; instead of smashing protons and electrons together, the RHIC hurtles beams of gold ions toward one another. Each ion makes around 80,000 loops around the ring per second, before colliding in a similar explosion of subatomic particles. 

A new giant particle collider

The Brookhaven National Laboratory. Brookhaven National Lab

The new Electron-Ion Collider will replace the RHIC at Brookhaven; the laboratory plans to permanently shutter the RHIC in 2024. The old machine took eight years and an estimated $617 million to build. The new one is expected cost between $1.6 billion and $2.6 billion, according to the Department of Energy, and be operational by 2030. 

To construct the EIC, Brookhaven won't start entirely from scratch — it plans to keep one of the rings from the RHIC. That ring will fire off protons, which will eventually collide with electrons from a new accelerator that has yet to be built. 

These collisions will give scientists more precise, 3D snapshots of the building blocks that form protons and electrons. Brookhaven compared the technology to "a CT scanner for atoms."

Scientists already know that protons are made up of even tinier particles called quarks, which are glued together by particles called gluons. The force that holds these quarks together is more than 100 times more powerful than the electromagnetic force that powers x-rays, radio waves, and visible light. It's the strongest and most mysterious force in nature.

Scientists hope the EIC scanner will give them a better understanding of how quarks and gluons are arranged and why they're bound so tightly. 

The mystery of protons' spin

Researchers are also hoping the machine can help them solve a decades-long riddle.

Protons spin in a similar way to how Earth rotates around the sun. The quarks inside the protons spin, too — but this motion only accounts for about a quarter of the total spin of the proton itself. Physicists have been trying to explain why for more than 30 years. 

The EIC could make it possible to control protons so that they're spinning at a similar angle when they collide — a feat that hasn't been accomplished before. Scientists hope this will shed more light on what's come to be known as the "spin crisis."

Unraveling these mysteries has practical applications outside the laboratory, too. Learning more about at atom's structure could help scientists figure out how to zap cancer cells, improve batteries and electronics, or power future technologies that haven't even been imagined yet. 

"Until we have the EIC, there are huge areas of nuclear physics that we are not going to make progress in," Donald Geesaman, the former chair of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, told the journal Nature. 

But the new particle collider is not a done deal yet. Congress still needs to approve the budget and the Department of Energy will have to sign off on the design and construction timeline. 

Original author: Aria Bendix

Microsoft wants to help industries like retail, manufacturing, banking and healthcare digitize and modernize their businesses using its technology. To do so, it's building industry-specific features on top of its existing products — like a new walkie talkie feature in Microsoft Teams, to make it easier for retail workers on the ground in stores, to communicate with each other and work more efficiently. Emma Williams, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Office Verticals, says that these features are part of a broader strategy that integrate across most of the company's cloud products.It's a notable gambit in the cloud wars: Getting retail workers, who don't necessarily sit in front of a computer all day, to use Teams is a way to broaden the app's audience. And all the data from Teams and elsewhere can be analyzed and used in other Microsoft products, driving adoption.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Industries like retail, manufacturing, banking and healthcare are not often thought of as quick to adopt new technologies, but Microsoft wants to change that. 

Take, for example, the walkie talkie feature in Microsoft Teams, the company's fast growing chat app. The new feature is meant to make it easier for retail workers, who are on the ground in stores, to communicate with each other and work more efficiently, Emma Williams, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Office Verticals, told Business Insider.

The feature is indicative of Microsoft's broader strategy here, Williams says: Take its existing products, and customize them to make them better and more useful in specific industries and markets. Other examples within Teams alone include the launch of a feature to automatically send daily assignments and tasks to retail employees, and controls that pause notifications when workers are off their shift.

"Where we're investing heavily, we're looking at each of these industries one by one, and developing a portfolio of critical products and experiences across our three clouds to target the needs of those industries," Williams told Business Insider.

(Three clouds refer to Microsoft Azure, its cloud computing division, Office 365, its cloud productivity software, and Microsoft Dynamics, its cloud software for financial planning and customer relationship management.)

The initiative is strategically important to Microsoft, which is widely considered to be lagging behind Amazon Web Services in the cloud wars.

By making apps like Teams available to a wider audience — namely, those like front-line retail workers who aren't at a computer all day — it can help push the app beyond the 20 million active users it claimed in November, and re-entrench its dominance over rival Slack. And, as Williams suggested to Business Insider, it all plays a role in a strategy that can push usage of its other cloud products, too.

Beyond Teams

However, to Williams' point, Microsoft's strategy here goes beyond just Teams. She says that it ties in with some of the work that Microsoft has been doing around Power Platform, which allows users to make simple apps with little or no coding required.

She says that's an ideal way to help retail workers be more productive — especially since the data that those apps generate can be plugged right back into Teams, where they work with their colleagues. It's better and more efficient than the apps that they've historically had to deal with, she said.

Microsoft Teams Walkie Talkie feature Microsoft

"You take all those ancient line of business applications that IT departments have created... by lighting up and re-doing critical new digitized workflows in Power Platform and integrating that with Microsoft Teams, you get the very best of Microsoft Teams being a hub for pulling through all the digital experiences you need," Williams said.

And to go even further, she said, the data generated by all of these tools — combined with more futuristic initiatives like the internet of things (IoT) — can be analyzed and tracked in tools like Microsoft's own Dynamics to understand and improve how customers, workers, and logistics providers do their job. 

The ultimate goal

The ultimate goal, here, is to "connect the first line and the information workers together on the same digitized platform for the first time." In other words, by offering tools to front-line workers as it's doing with Teams, the data flows into the same places as the business analysts working at a desk at headquarters.

In so doing, Williams says, Microsoft can make it easier for its customers to modernize their tech. Everybody is on the same identity system, just for starters, and it all takes advantages of Microsoft's investments in cybersecurity.

Microsoft

"It's no small feat for a company and for a CIO and an IT department to roll out a new digital identity to 85 percent of their workforce. And so we have to think very seriously indeed about the way we can do it and empower the companies to be successful in doing it in a way where we're giving them secure versions of tech," Williams said.

On the flip side, she said, those who don't keep up with the pace of technological change will be left behind, she suggested.

"Consumer expectations are changing around logistics, transportation, and shipping of their products. And so the world has to change. It can't just be that there's a retail store and then you have an online presence," Williams said. 

 

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Original author: Paayal Zaveri

White hat hackers legally hack into companies to help them find vulnerabilities and bugs, and organizations like Uber, Starbucks, Airbnb, Spotify, Atlassian, and even the Department of Defense are welcoming white hat hackers to help secure their systems.These hackers often are rewarded thousands of dollars through sites like HackerOne and Bugcrowd, or they may work inside a company on a "red team" by simulating attacks to help identify vulnerabilities.Here's what it's like to work as a white hat hacker, and how they got started in hacking.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

For white hat hacker Jesse Kinser cybersecurity is a lifestyle. In her day job, she helps protect her company's products as LifeOmic's product security director. When she goes home, after her child sleeps, that's when she starts hacking.

As a white hat hacker, she breaks into systems – not to steal information, but to find vulnerabilities and bugs. Outside of work, she hacks to help protect technology companies, retail stores, health care companies, insurance providers, and even government entities. She's hacked for companies like Starbucks, Uber, and Airbnb.

"Things are constantly changing, which keeps me engaged," Kinser told Business Insider. "All these companies are building cool new products and I get to be the first to break them."

Today, major organizations like Uber, Spotify, the Department of Defense, and Atlassian are increasingly using platforms like Bugcrowd and HackerOne, which welcome white hat hackers to break into those systems and reward them for finding bugs. 

In return for finding vulnerabilities, these hackers are paid with something called a "bug bounty," or a cash award for finding a bug. Kinser says she's made thousands from these payouts. Some white hat hackers have even become millionaires through bug bounties.

The rise in companies opening up their systems to white hat hackers heralds a major shift in attitudes towards security. Companies are becoming more involved in the security community and actively engaging hackers to find or report security vulnerabilities. 

It's in the best interest of these companies too. Otherwise, they could face data breaches, privacy violations, or major financial loss.

Perceptions about hackers are also changing, says HackerOne co-founder and CTO Alex Rice. For example, former presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke was a member of one of Texas's most high-profile hacking groups called the Cult of the Dead Cow, and few batted an eye at it. 

HackerOne CEO MÃ¥rten Mickos HackerOne

"I think one of the really interesting things about the perception the hacker community has is how quickly we jump to a stereotype about what people say when they imagine a hacker," Rice told Business Insider. "They imagine someone in their basement, usually a really antisocial individual, but when you look at the people who are participating in contributing value to the platform, the diversity of their backgrounds and the paths they took to hacking is really astonishing."

'Hacking and cybersecurity are a lifestyle'

Kinser has been hacking for 13 years now. In high school, she got her start in hacking when she programmed her watches to switch TVs on and off. In college, she started doing research on various security topics and eventually worked for the Department of Defense. She eventually ran the bug bounty program at Salesforce, and she started hacking there as well.

Jesse Kinser, director of product security at LifeOmic Jesse Kinser

Now, after work, Kinser will usually spend time with her family. When her child goes to sleep, she starts hacking. She says if she finds something good, she may stay up until 2 a.m. 

When Kinser is hacking a website, she starts by using it just as any person would, but with the motive of an attacker. She'll create an account and think about where sensitive data might live. For example, on a retail site, people can create accounts where they enter their credit card information. She'll try hacking those areas first. 

"It's a challenge," Kinser said. "I always said hacking and cybersecurity are a lifestyle. I'm pretty much all in all the time."

André Baptista, a 25-year-old professor at the University of Portugal, is also a white hat hacker who has made over $130,000 in bug bounties. He first got his start when he found a book in his father's cabinet about programming. He would later study computer science in college. 

André Baptista, information security professor at the University of Portugal HackerOne

However, he started hacking when he became involved in Capture the Flag (CTF), a hacking game in which players try to find vulnerabilities in simulated scenarios. He was the captain of his university's CTF team and qualified for a hacking event in Las Vegas, but after this, he says his "life changed completely." At the event, he didn't find any bugs. 

"I was a little disappointed with myself because I was good because I qualified in the first place, but I didn't know how to hunt for real world vulnerabilities because I was used to simulated scenarios," Baptista told Business Insider.

From then on, he resolved to learn to find actual bugs, and he started practicing everyday. About two or three years ago, he learned about HackerOne and realized he could use it to find actual vulnerabilities. And in February 2018, he found his first real bug.

"The payouts are really amazing as well," Baptista said. "My life has changed completely because of HackerOne."

Both Kinser and Baptista frequently travel to attend hacking events. Baptista says his job gives him lots of flexibility. After doing his master's degree, his university kept him on as a professor. He can teach classes, and every month, he can fly somewhere to attend a HackerOne event. 

Still, he says he sometimes feels pressure when other hackers find bugs at events, and he doesn't find any. Other times, it's the other way around. 

"I love to be in multiple places," Baptista said. "I love to do some hacking when I'm working at the university when I have some spare time between meetings and classes...When I go somewhere like London, Amsterdam  when I go there, I'm very inspired because I have no other distractions and I can hack and find some critical bugs."

The red team

White hat hacking also happens within some companies. Brianna Malcolmson leads Atlassian's Red Team, which looks at threats that could target Atlassian and then simulates them. The term red team started in a military context, when countries would run simulations of what the opposition could do. 

The team runs attacks on Atlassian, such as a phishing attack to get someone to install malware. Besides finding and gathering data about vulnerabilities, it educates the company about security, the kinds of risks it can face, and how each employee can get involved in improving security.

Atlassian also has a blue team, which practices and trains up on what happens if there's a security incident. The blue and red team have somewhat of a rivalry, Malcolmson says. While the red team has to work hard at not getting tripped up at the protections the blue team put in place, the blue team has to work at protecting the entire company.  

"Really in the last five years, the number of internal red teams have gone up a lot," Malcolmson told Business Insider. "Red teaming was a thing in the military since the 60s and 70s. It's expanded more recently into tech companies. Now there are more red teams at all the Silicon Valley tech companies than before."

Malcolmson says that even though the red team has an adversarial relationship with the blue team, it's actually quite friendly. 

"We see ourselves as serving the company and serving the needs of not only all Atlassian teams, but specifically of the blue team," Malcolmson said. "When we give our results, we always try to take it from a place of, we did some bad things but no blame is being assigned ...We want to keep it a learning experience."

'Essentially good guys who think like bad people'

Rice says that even as little as five years ago, hacking was synonymous with being a criminal. 

"The people who had these skills were largely pushed underground," Rice said. "The folks who did it did it out of a labor of love. It wasn't the most obvious way to create a living. It was really a smaller community that was overwhelmingly people who were there because they were passionate about making technology secure."

Casey Ellis, founder and CTO of Bugcrowd, says white hat hackers are "essentially good guys who think like bad people." Bugcrowd brings these hackers together to hunt for vulnerabilities.

Bugcrowd founder and CTO Casey Ellis Business Insider/Julie Bort

"This is a concept that the average lay person can understand," Ellis told Business Insider. "Try explaining firewall to grandma and she will possibly get it but more likely glaze over, whereas this idea of neighborhood watch for the internet, that's a pretty intuitive concept."

Now, security is a critical conversation for any company, as one mistake that companies can make is having developers work around the cloud to get their products to the market without thinking about security. 

"It's pretty crazy to think about how you would have hackers partner with enterprises but that's exactly what's happening today," Rice said. "We're able to be more transparent about it. We're able to teach people how to hack in an environment that's underground. We're able to compensate people for it fairly. We're embracing hacking as a necessary and critical step."

Although hackers may come from all walks of life, there's still a lack of diversity in the hacking community, as it's still predominantly men. According to a Bugcrowd report, only 4% of the global hacker community is female.

Kinser says it's sometimes discouraging when she goes to a hacking event and is the only woman, but it also motivates her to do outreach programs or work with HackerOne to invite more women. 

White hat hackers search for bugs at Bug Bash, an event held by Atlassian and Bugcrowd. The event had 35% female hackers in attendance. Bugcrowd

"Instead of getting super discouraged about being one woman being the only woman in a room of 50 men, I try to use that to reach out and encourage participation," Kinser said. "Even in my day-to-day job, it's mostly men."

How to start hacking

To get started in white hat hacking, Kinser suggests reading hacking reports and learning about how hackers break into a system. She also suggests learning to build applications yourself, which can teach where security holes may lie. 

"You don't have to be an expert, but if you're hacking a website, you need to know how a website works before you try to break it so you can understand how it works," Kinser says.

White hat hackers search for bugs at Bug Bash, an event held by Atlassian and Bugcrowd. Bugcrowd

Likewise, Baptista recommends learning to program and trying to build web and mobile apps. He also says people should start doing CTF's, where he got his start in white hat hacking.

For questions about hacking, there's a large community of white hat hackers online.  

"That's a key thing that's usually overlooked," Kinser said. "You think of people who sit and a corner and work by themselves. Sometimes it is that, but at the same time, we lean on each other too. That's what's so powerful about these hacking events. Reach out to people in the community and ask questions. Don't be shy to do that."

Her biggest piece of advice is, don't be intimidated.

"Everyone has to start somewhere and this can be a daunting industry so you just have to jump in," Kinser said. "Most importantly, learn from each other."

White hat hackers Dawn Isabel and Jesse Kinser won a prize for best bug at Bug Bash, a hacking event held by Atlassian and Bugcrowd. Bugcrowd

Original author: Rosalie Chan

Twitter is testing a way to let its users block all replies to their tweets, one of four options Twitter plans to give users who want to tailor who replies to their posts.The plans were laid out by Twitter at this year's CES tech conference in Las Vegas. Twitter's director of product, Suzanne Xie, reportedly said the company's aim with tailored replies is to "give authors a way to control the conversation space."Twitter also touched on other areas including the planned global expansion of 'Topics,' a feature that lets users stay on top of the latest tweets from across the site about topics that interest them.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Twitter is trying to crack down on its trolling problem.

The social media firm announced it's testing a way to let users block all replies to their tweets – one of four planned options aimed at letting the platform's users personalize who can reply to their tweets.

We first saw the news via TechCrunch.

The other three options are: Anyone can reply; only those who a user follows can reply; and only those tagged in the tweet can reply.

Twitter revealed the plans at the CES tech conference in Las Vegas, where the firm has been hosting a media forum led by Kayvon Beykpour, its vice president of product.

"The primary motivation is control," Beykpour reportedly said. "We want to build on the theme of authors [Twitter users] getting more control and we've thought… that there are many analogs of how people have communications in life."

Suzanne Xie, Twitter's director of product, echoed Beykpour's comments. She said: "We thought, well, what if we could actually put more control into the author's hands before the fact? Give them really a way to control the conversation space, as they're actually composing a tweet?"

The singer Lizzo announced she was quitting the platform earlier this month because it "has too many trolls." Apple

"The reason we're doing this is: if we think about what conversation means on Twitter, right now, public conversation on Twitter is you tweet something everyone in the world will see and everyone can reply, or you can have a very private conversation in a DM. So there's an entire spectrum of conversations that we don't see on Twitter yet."

Twitter has long been trying to boost what it calls "conversational health" on its platform or, in plain language, the amount of abuse and trolling by users.

Numerous celebrities have quit the platform over the years due to trolls, with the singer Lizzo the latest high-profile figure to bid Twitter goodbye on the grounds it "has too many trolls." Women and high-profile people of colour have particularly complained about harassment on Twitter.

According to TechCrunch, Twitter also touched upon plans to enhance a number of the platform's preexisting features, including the expansion of 'Topics.' First introduced in November, the Topics feature lets users keep abreast of latest tweets on specific themes, or topics, that interest them.

Original author: Charlie Wood

TikTok is developed by Beijing-based internet tech firm ByteDance. XanderSt/Shutterstock

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

"Serious" security flaws in TikTok could have let hackers add or delete videos, change privacy settings and steal personal data, it has emerged. After security firm Check Point informed TikTok's developer ByteDance of the vulnerabilities, they have now been fixed, BBC News reports.Amazon-owned Ring said it has fired four employees for abusing access to customers' video footage in the past four years. The video doorbell maker reported four instances where it fired employees for improperly accessing customers' videos in a letter sent to lawmakers Monday.Facebook and eBay are cracking down on the sale of fake online reviews after being warned by a UK regulator. The two firms have formally agreed "to better identify, investigate and respond to fake and misleading reviews" after the regulator stepped in.An uncritical Teen Vogue story about Facebook caused bewilderment about whether it's sponsored content before the entire article vanished. Teen Vogue published and then promptly deleted a story about Facebook's 2020 election efforts. No one has any idea what's going on.TikTok accounts posing as politicians like Trump and Bernie Sanders keep cropping up, and it's another symptom of the app's ongoing struggle to police itself. President Trump and presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders don't have official TikTok accounts, but that hasn't stopped some impersonators.A judge has reportedly ordered Google to surrender all of Jussie Smollett's email, photos, and location data from a full year. Prosecutors have reportedly been granted a year's worth of Smollett's personal data to investigate whether the actor faked a racist, homophobic attack in 2019.Buzzy new streaming service Quibi has been shown off at the CES tech conference. According to the Financial Times, stars signed on to make content for the Netflix rival include Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro, and Steven Soderbergh.Singer Grimes has posted a nude Instagram photo of her looking pregnant and comments about being "knocked up," leading to speculation that she and Tesla CEO Elon Musk are having a child. The meaning behind the photo is unclear, however: Grimes is known for trolling, and she has new music coming out in February, so the photo could simply be promotional. Emma Chamberlain, YouTuber and Gen Z influencer, says the term 'influencer' is "disgusting" in a cover story for Cosmopolitan. Chamberlain's quirky personality has turned her into someone teens follow online because they see her as someone relatable and just like them.Apple will pay 5 iPhone users for their best Night Mode photos. The five winners will be paid a licensing fee, and have their work featured on Apple.com and the company's stores. 

Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings. You can also subscribe to this newsletter here — just tick "10 Things in Tech You Need to Know."

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Original author: Charlie Wood

With Grubhub reportedly exploring a possible sale, SoftBank's strategy of picking winners may be paying off in the food delivery market.Grubhub warned in October of disappointing revenue growth and profits, as it faced growing competition from the likes of DoorDash and Uber Eats, both backed by SoftBank.Unlike its two big competitors, Grubhub has been profitable. But its CEO felt forced to duplicate some of the unprofitable practices of its rivals amid slowing growth.Unfortunately for SoftBank, both of its entrants in the market are not only losing money, and have plenty of money in the bank to sustain more losses in the future.Even without Grubhub, this means the industry may not become rational any time soon.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

SoftBank may finally be getting some vindication for its $100 billion Vision Fund — at least after a fashion.

Whether the tech conglomerate will profit from it, though, is still anyone's guess.

The vindication came in the form of a report Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal that food delivery service Grubhub is exploring a possible sale.

The news came in the wake of CEO Matt Maloney's announcement last fall that Grubhub needed to duplicate moves made by its chief rivals, DoorDash and Uber Eats. As a consequence of that, he warned, its revenue and profits would take a big hit.

SoftBank's strategy with the Vision Fund is to plow huge sums of money — a minimum of $100 million — into later-stage startups, in part to crown winners in particular markets and ward off competitors. It essentially uses money as a weapon, threatening potential rivals with a costly war of attrition.

Grubhub faces two money-losing SoftBank-backed companies

Unfortunately for Grubhub, it has the misfortune of facing two SoftBank-backed rivals.

Both DoorDash and Uber have been beneficiaries of the Vision Fund's largesse. And both have spent that money liberally on their food delivery operations. 

SoftBank's Vision Fund, the brainchild of CEO Masayoshi Son, has used money as a weapon in an attempt to anoint winners in particular markets. Alessandro Di Ciommo/NurPhoto via Getty Images

DoorDash was on track to lose $450 million last year, not including taxes, amortization and depreciation, on about $1 billion in sales, according to a report in The Information.

Meanwhile, on a similar basis, Uber's Eats business lost $911 million in the first nine months of last year on $1.8 billion in sales, according to the company's latest quarterly report.

By contrast, up until last year, Grubhub had been solidly — if not spectacularly — in the black. The company has been profitable at least since 2011, according to the financial statements it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2018, for example, it earned $78 million on $1 billion in sales.

Part of the reason for the difference was that, even though Grubhub, Uber Eats, and DoorDash were all in the same business, Grubhub had a fundamentally different model.

Since its founding in 2004, Grubhub has focused on teaming up with small and medium-sized restaurant businesses, typically ones that already had their own delivery drivers. Grubhub essentially acted as a marketplace, creating a central spot where consumers had a lot of choice, and helping its restaurant partners take online and app-based orders.

By contrast, DoorDash and Uber Eats have focused on offering food from restaurants that didn't have their own delivery service, in many cases without establishing a formal partnership with those companies. That required each to have its own stable of delivery drivers — with all the attendant costs involved in attracting and paying them.

Although Grubhub eventually started offering delivery services of its own for some restaurants, most of its business involved simply connecting consumers with restaurants, and charging a commission to the restaurants for each order. Unlike Uber and DoorDash, it intentionally wasn't trying to become a logistics company.

Grubhub is now facing direct competition from Uber and DoorDash

Grubhub was also able to succeed because it didn't face direct competition from the other players. It was generally focused on urban markets that had numerous restaurants that had delivery drivers.

DoorDash was largely focused on suburban eateries that had never offered delivery before. Uber also focused on restaurants that previously didn't offer a delivery service.

But Maloney believes the days of the three big services all thriving in their own niches is over, as he told Business Insider in an interview late last month.

Increasingly, there's overlap among the services in terms of where their offerings are available and the restaurants from which they deliver.

The result for Grubhub, as Maloney explained in his letter, is that its customers — especially its newer ones — were becoming less loyal and weren't ordering as frequently. In response, he laid out a plan for Grubhub to essentially duplicate its rivals' offerings.

It would add thousands of new restaurants to its service. Most would be ones with which it didn't have a relationship, meaning the company would need its own delivery drivers. And it would use incentives — discounts, essentially — to convince consumers to use its service rather than those of its rivals.

"The green fields are over," Maloney said in the interview with Business Insider last month. "You have three heavily capitalized firms at scale. It's going to be a street fight until something breaks."

Uber and DoorDash have plenty of money to continue the war

Assuming the Journal's report is correct — Maloney did not respond to an email seeking confirmation — it looks like Grubhub may be the one that broke first.

In the wake of Maloney's announcement in October that the company's new strategy would sink its sales and earnings, pressure has been mounting on him and Grubhub to explore a sale.

The day after his letter, Grubhub's shares fell 43%. Although they made back some of that, they still were down 17% from their pre-announcement level before the news Wednesday of a potential sale sent the shares skyrocketing.

Consolidation could be good for the remaining players. But it won't necessarily rationalize the industry right away.

Uber and DoorDash remain a long way from profitability. At the same time, they both have copious amounts of cash. At the end of September, Uber had $12.6 billion in the bank. DoorDash, meanwhile, has raised some $2 billion to date, with more than $1 billion of that coming just last year.

So, with or without Grubhub, the war of attrition could well continue, fueled in part by SoftBank cash.

The one consolation for SoftBank CEO and Vision Fund visionary Masayoshi Son? He has a good chance that one of his companies will be the eventual winner. Of course, one may also be a big loser.

Got a tip about Grubhub, DoorDash or SoftBank? 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

Zume, the SoftBank-backed robotic pizza startup valued at $1 billion, lost a third of its executive team on Wednesday. The startup also announced on Wednesday company-wide layoffs that affected 360 employees across three offices.The company now finds itself without a chief business officer, a chief financial officer, a chief technology officer, and a chief revenue officer as it pursues new business strategies in 2020.The departures are the most recent in a string of high-profile executive departures that have rocked Zume since June, including general counsel, former chief financial officers, and head of HR, among others.Sources have told Business Insider that some executives struggled to get along with Alex Garden, cofounder and CEO of Zume. Those that disagreed with Garden tended to have only a limited tenure at the company, sources said.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Zume, the SoftBank-backed robotic pizza startup valued at $1 billion, just lost a third of its executive team hours after announcing that 360 of its employees were being terminated, Business Insider has learned. 

Amid a broader strategy shift away from its famous pizza-making robots towards compostable packaging, Zume now finds itself without a chief business officer, a chief financial officer, a chief technology officer, and a chief revenue officer. According to its website, that leaves CEO and cofounder Alex Garden, Chief People Officer Mike McMahon, Executive Vice President of Packaging Annette Groenink, and managing director of India Vaibhav Goel to run the company, which was reportedly pursuing funding tied to a $4 billion valuation.

It is not clear which executives were terminated as part of the restructuring and which chose to leave voluntarily. No replacements have been announced as of Wednesday.

"Today's announcement included a wide reduction in staff including our executive team," a Zume spokeswoman told Business Insider.

R.P. Eddy joined Zume as the chief business officer in June 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile. Eddy was a long-time government employee, which icluded stints in the Clinton administration and at the United Nations. 

Meredith Whitney took over as chief financial officer for ousted Zume executive Kartik Ramachandran in April. Whitney was widely seen as an unusual choice to run the financial portion of the business, multiple sources told Business Insider, given she had not previously held an executive position at a public or private company. However, Whitney's background was a good fit for Garden, who sources said had a penchant of hiring under-qualified executives who held high-profile positions or worked for well-known companies. Whitney, for instance, is widely known as one of the financial analysts who predicted the mortgage lending crisis in 2008.

Chris Satchell had previously run operations at Nike and Comcast and held the chief technology officer position at Zume since April 2018. Satchell was not present in any office when layoffs were announced on Wednesday, even though his engineering division was one of the hardest hit, multiple sources told Business Insider. A Zume spokeswoman confirmed that Satchell was not on-site to announce the changes to affected employees.

Adrian Agostini only joined Zume in May as chief revenue officer and will be departing in "early 2020." An exact departure date is not known. Agostini was previously head of revenue at Uber, Amazon, and Oracle.

The departures are the most recent in a string of high-profile executive departures that have rocked Zume since June, including general counsel, former chief financial officers, and head of HR, among others. Sources have told Business Insider that some executives struggled to get along with Alex Garden, cofounder and CEO of Zume. Those that disagreed with Garden tended to have only a limited tenure at the company, sources said.

Do you work at Zume or another SoftBank-backed startup and want to share your story? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (331) 625-2555 using a nonwork phone, email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or Twitter DM at @megan_hernbroth.

Original author: Megan Hernbroth

Singer Grimes may have announced she's pregnant in a captionless Instagram post that showed her pregnant with a fetus photoshopped onto her stomach, prompting a flurry of commentary online. US presidential candidate Andrew Yang congratulated Grimes and her boyfriend Elon Musk in a tweet.Rapper Azealia Banks who publicly feuded with Musk last year told Business Insider's Kate Taylor that she was "tremendously proud" of Grimes and that the pair were "the first of their kind to do such a thing," when she saw the post.  Banks isn't alone in commenting on the couple's penchant for merging tech and art to bend expectations. After an initial flurry of speculation that the baby's father is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, spectators have rushed to crack alien jokes about the maybe-fetus. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In a fiery Instagram post with a fetus photoshopped onto her stomach, singer Grimes may have announced that she was pregnant. Or she could simply be teasing her new album "Miss Anthropocene," set to be released in February. 

But the post, in which Grimes appeared topless, has made waves on social media. People have speculated whether the pregnancy is real and whether Grimes was having the baby with her on-again off-again partner Elon Musk. Friends and feuders alike have congratulated the couple. And a number of people have found the news easy fodder to crack alien jokes. 

US presidential candidate Andrew Yang kept it simple, tagging Musk and Grimes in a congratulatory tweet. Musk has endorsed Yang before. 

 

Rapper Azealia Banks told Business Insider's Kate Taylor that she was "tremendously proud of C. Elon is extraordinary." Perhaps in reference to Grimes' ambiguous post, she added, "They are the first of their kind to do such a thing. The merging of Tech & Art pushed thru Pop Culture's lens."

Banks has a sometimes-rocky relationship with the couple, posting on Instagram once that "staying in Elon musks house has been like a real like episode of 'Get Out.'" A series of Instagram stories in August 2018 detailing Banks' weekend with the couple now provided fodder for commentators looking to crack jokes about the maybe-baby online. 

 

Still others opted to crack jokes about how alien any child of Grimes and Musk's would be. Musk, who is also the CEO of SpaceX, is a proponent of colonizing Mars: 

 

 

 

 

Original author: Bani Sapra

Impossible Foods, a leading manufacturer of plant-based meat, has not abandoned its pursuit of a potentially lucrative deal with McDonald's, CEO Patrick Brown told Business Insider in an interview Wednesday.

"We're very deliberate in how we approach customers but we would never blow off or disrespect a potential customer and any suggestion that we would do that is complete nonsense," Brown said. 

In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Brown said it would be "stupid" for Impossible Foods to be pursuing a customer as large as McDonald's, citing a need to further scale up its production first. Shares of the company's largest rival, Beyond Meat, soared following the comments.

However, a company spokesperson told Bloomberg later that day that the company had not stopped talks with the fast-food giant and that Brown's comments had been misinterpreted.

Brown reiterated that to Business Insider, saying that "anyone who is going to be in the meat businesses in the future selling to consumers is a target customer for us." He repeatedly and emphatically denied having no interest in doing business with McDonald's, at another point in the interview dismissing the notion as "complete bulls**t."

Brown also confirmed that Impossible Foods still needs to increase its production capacity. He said that the company learned a "hard lesson" after demand for its products spiked following last year's International Consumer Electronics Show, leaving it unable to keep up with orders.

"Part of that hard lesson is that we are obviously not going to commit to some very, very large scale until we have certainty about our ability to maintain supply," Brown said.

Original author: Lisa Eadicicco and Tyler Sonnemaker

Jefferies Financial Group took another hit from WeWork – this time a $69 million writedown to its stake in WeWork parent We Co – in the quarter ending November 30, the investment bank said in an earnings statement released on Wednesday. Previously, Jefferies slashed the estimated value of the stake by $146 million on August 31, more than two weeks before the shared-workspace group shelved its plans to go public.The bank had originally invested $9 million in the now-embattled office company. In October, Goldman Sachs said it took an $80 million hit from its investment. SoftBank, meanwhile, wrote down $4.6 billion from WeWork, it said in November earnings. For more stories about WeWork, click here.

Jefferies Financial Group again cut the value of its small WeWork stake, the investment bank said in an earnings release on Wednesday. 

Its merchant banking unit had invested $9 million in the company for a stake that it said was worth $269 million as of May 31.

In September, the bank said it had slashed the estimated value of the stake by $146 million on August 31, more than two weeks before WeWork shelved its plans to go public.

The September adjustment reflected a "significant discount due to uncertainty regarding the timing and pricing of We's IPO," CEO Rich Handler and President Brian Friedman said in the third-quarter earnings release. "As the facts at We become clearer, further adjustments may be made in future periods." 

The company did not comment on the latest writedown or offer any additional information in the statement on Wednesday reporting fourth-quarter earnings. 

WeWork's valuation plummeted from $47 billion a year ago to less than $5 billion in November. In September, intense scrutiny of its finances and leadership from investors and the media forced WeWork to remove cofounder Adam Neumann as CEO and scrap its IPO plans. 

In September, Jefferies said it had earned $31 million in cash from the $9 million investment in WeWork, and retained a 0.8% stake in the company. 

Other investors could follow Jefferies' lead with further disclosures about their own WeWork writedowns in coming earnings. In October, Goldman Sachs said it took an $80 million hit from its investment. SoftBank, meanwhile, wrote down $4.6 billion from WeWork, it said in November earnings. 

The Japanese investor is now trying to right WeWork after the company's tumultuous autumn.

The Japanese investor's chief operating officer, Marcelo Claure, took the helm of WeWork as chairman after founder Adam Neumann was ousted. Last month, the company overhauled its compensation plan, cut various non-core businesses, and launched a newspaper ad campaign to restore confidence in its shaken business. 

Jefferies reported $196 million in overall net income for the quarter ending November 30. 

Get in touch! Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (646) 768-1627 using a non-work phone, email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or Twitter DM at @MeghanEMorris. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Original author: Meghan Morris

Segway-Ninebot, the company behind a slew of motorized personal vehicles, recently debuted its newest product — a personal egg-shaped "transporting pod" called the S-Pod.The company showed off the S-Pod this week at the consumer tech show CES 2020, where I was able to try it out, even though it's not on sale yet to the public.I found it incredibly difficult to control my speed and steering while test driving the S-Pod, and I was nervous during my run that I would cause a collision.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Segway's personal "transporting pod" was shown off this week at CES 2020 for the first time since the company debuted the egg-shaped scooter as its newest product.

The S-Pod is essentially an electric wheelchair. It can hit speeds of up to 24 mph, and comes with a navigation pad to manually point the vehicle in the direction you want to go.

Although the vehicle is not available to the public, the S-Pod was unveiled this week at CES 2020, the year's biggest consumer tech show taking place in Las Vegas. I was able to test drive the S-Pod around a small track, where I was got a sense of how the vehicle's steering and acceleration works. 

Here's my experience testing at the Segway-Ninebot S-Pod, which is not yet up for sale to consumers:

Paige Leskin contributed to this story.

Original author: Mark Matousek

Influential comedy website CollegeHumor has lost its financial backing from its parent company IAC, CollegeHumor CCO Sam Reich tweeted on Wednesday. Reich bought it from IAC to avoid shuttering the company and will now manage the newly-formed CH Media.But the company has still gone through a massive restructuring, and more than 100 employees have lost their jobs in the process. IAC confirmed the acquisition in a statement to Business Insider, and said "Sam was the best choice to acquire CH Media and define its next chapter." Reich appealed to Twitter users to help him save the 20-year-old comedy website: "Long story short, I need your support now more than ever." Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Influential comedy website CollegeHumor has lost its financial backing from its parent company IAC, CollegeHumor's Chief Creative Officer Sam Reich tweeted Wednesday. More than 100 employees have lost their jobs amid the company's massive restructuring. 

But the company will avoid shuttering entirely. Reich has bought CollegeHumor and its other comedy and culture sites, and plans to keep the new CH Media afloat. 

IAC's sale may continue to herald drastic changes to CollegeHumor and its sister sites, Dorkly, Drawfee, and Dropout, in the future. Turning a profit will be a greater concern to the company than ever, Reich said on social media.

"Of course, I can't keep it going like you're used to. While we were on the way to becoming profitable, we were nonetheless losing money — and I myself have no money to be able to lose," Reich tweeted, hinting that "bold new creative directions" may be on the horizon for parts of the company. 

CollegeHumor isn't alone in its fight to turn a profit. A fast-changing media landscape has left video-streaming sites struggling to compete. To help keep the company afloat, Reich called for Twitter users to stay subscribed to Dropout, CH Media's streaming service for comedy videos from CollegeHumor. 

"I need your support now more than ever," he wrote, adding, "Independent comedy lives on -- just now more independent (gulp) than ever before."

 

IAC confirmed the sale in a statement to Business Insider.

"Sam was the best choice to acquire CH Media and define its next chapter. The decision places CH Media with an owner who is beloved by fans, passionate about the business and sees a future we believe in," an IAC spokesperson said.

The 20-year-old comedy website created over-the-top sketches and pranks, and helped launch the careers of innumerable internet stars. It was acquired by IAC in 2006. 

IAC has been looking to sell the company since October, Bloomberg reported. The media and internet company owns more than 150 brands and products, including dating site conglomerate the Match Group, video-sharing platform Vimeo and new site, The Daily Beast. IAC will continue to remain a minority shareholder in CH Media, the company confirmed Wednesday. 

Original author: Bani Sapra

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has found some lavish ways to spend his money — he spent $57 million on a Basquiat painting and has reserved every seat on SpaceX's first flight around the moon. Now, he has promised to give 1,000 of his Twitter followers 1 million yen ($9,000) each.

Maezawa, who made his fortune in fashion, announced Sunday that he will select the recipients at random from a group of followers who retweeted a post of his on January 1. 

He said he views the offer as a "serious social experiment" to see if free money can boost people's happiness.

The give-away, Maezawa added, is driven by a curiosity about universal basic income — a system that essentially pays someone simply for being alive. The concept has been touted by presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who has vowed to give $1,000 a month ($12,000 a year) to every adult US citizen over 18 if he gets elected. 

Maezawa said he will track the results of his experiment through regular surveys of the recipients.

The payments aren't exactly basic income 

Maezawa previously offered to distribute 100 million yen ($917,000) among 100 of his followers in 2019. According to Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, Maezawa coordinated with the winners via direct message on Twitter.

His latest offer came just two months after Maezawa sold his online fashion business, Zozo Inc, to SoftBank for $900 million.

But the money doesn't really qualify as a basic income, since the recipients get a one-time payment instead of a consistent stipend.  

"Basic means a regular minimum amount offering a sense of security," Toshihiro Nagahama, a senior economist at the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, told Reuters. "What Maezawa is offering is totally different."

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang speaks during the Democratic presidential primary debate at Loyola Marymount University on December 19, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Still, Maezawa's offer doesn't come with any strings attached or stipulate any eligibility requirements (winners don't have to earn below a certain income, for example). In that sense alone, the payments resemble a basic income more than certain government-backed welfare initiatives. 

An ongoing basic-income trial in the city of Stockton, California, by contrast, gives $500 per month to 125 residents, but recipients must reside in a neighborhood where the median household income is the same as or lower than the city's overall — $46,033 — in order to qualify for the program.

Andrew Yang's basic-income proposal, meanwhile, would replace some Americans' monthly stipends and existing welfare benefits. (Retirement benefits like Social Security would be preserved, though, and veterans and differently abled citizens would continue to receive their current benefits alongside a basic income.)

Other basic-income experiments, such as a trial conducted from January 2017 to December 2018 in Finland, have also required participants to forgo certain benefits in order to receive the money. In Finland's case, participants had to give up part of their standard conditional benefits — things like housing allowances and illness compensation — to receive payments of 560 euros ($640) per month. They also had to be unemployed.

By the end of the experiment, many of the participants remained jobless.

Can basic income improve happiness?

Though Finland's trial was widely considered a flop, it yielded some interesting results about the relationship between basic income and well-being.

On average, the participants reported that they were happier and healthier overall than other unemployed residents. It's worth noting, however, that the participants' response rate to a government survey was extremely low — around 25%, on average — which gives the experiment an unacceptable level of uncertainty, according to standards set by the US Department of Education.

But other basic income experiments have produced similar results. 

Juha Jaervinen, a participant in Finland's basic income experiment, rides on a rented bike in Germany in April 2018. Gregor Fischer/DPA/Getty Images

In the 1970s, Canada guaranteed a minimum annual income to families in the city of Winnipeg and rural Manitoba. Decades later, University of Manitoba professor Evelyn Forget analyzed the results and found that recipients made fewer doctor visits for mental-health issues and were less likely to be hospitalized for these issues compared to the control group, which didn't receive the minimum annual income. 

As to Maezawa's question about whether money can buy happiness more generally, a 2010 Gallup poll explored the subject through a daily survey of 1,000 US residents. The survey found that having a low income exacerbated emotional pain during negative life events like divorce or illness. Americans with high incomes, by contrast, tended to be more satisfied with their lives. 

The survey also found that money did lead to happiness — up to a certain point. Americans earning more than $75,000 did not report being happier than those who earned that amount. 

Some basic-income recipients report being less stressed

At the very least, many basic income trials show reductions in participants' stress about finances. 

"The funny thing about basic income is that it has to be one of the most tested welfare policies in history that hasn't in fact been implemented," Michael Stynes, CEO of the nonprofit Jain Family Institute, told Business Insider.

Stynes is currently working with the Brazilian city of Marica to study the effects of its new basic-income program, which gives $33 monthly stipends to about one-third of the city's residents (around 52,000 people). He hopes the program will encourage participants to join the labor market.

A woman uses her "Mumbuca" basic-income card at a pharmacy in Marica, Brazil. Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images

Critics of basic income argue that regular payments can reduce the incentive for people to find job. But the idea's proponents argue that workers who receive a stipend to cover basic needs are more inclined to pursue work that interests them, as opposed to a low-skill, menial job.

Stynes said he also expects participants in the Marica program to invest the money their homes and businesses over time.

Early results from Stockton's trial, meanwhile, have shown that participants are spending the majority their stipends on food and other basic necessities. 

The money is "allowing people to breathe again," Stockton's 29-year old mayor, Michael Tubbs, told Business Insider.

One participant in the program, Virginia (she declined to give her last name for privacy reasons), told Business Insider that the payments have eased her stress about buying everyday necessities. The 61-year-old recently used some of the money to make Christmas dinner for her family and members of her local Bible college. She's also using it to go visit her older sister, who is ill, in Oregon. 

"I appreciate the program a whole, whole, whole lot," Virginia said. "I'm going to see a loved one who I don't know how much longer I'm going to have. It was hard for me to do that before this money came."

Maezawa said his payments are meant to inspire more debate about basic income in Japan.

"I think what everyone wants is not money, but fulfilling dreams," he wrote on Twitter last year. 

Original author: Aria Bendix

Jump Bikes founder Ryan Rzepecki has departed the company more than 18 months after it was acquired by Uber. His departure, along with a handful of other founding employees, while amicable, marks a milestone in Uber's new mobility efforts. Uber continues to view bikes and scooters as a customer acquisition tool in order to continue to grow its total userbase. Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Founder Ryan Rzepecki and other members of the original Jump Bikes team, purchased by Uber in 2018, have departed the company.

At least three other members of the Jump team that joined Uber through the acquisition have also departed recently, including Justin Wiley, Jump's third employee and former head of business development.

Rzepecki confirmed his December exit to Business Insider, and an Uber representative said: "Ryan has helped make new mobility a core part of the Uber platform in over 30 cities around the world. We thank him for all his work and wish him best of luck in the future."

While the handful of exits come two months after a big reorganization at Uber, some of which affected Jump and its larger New Mobility unit, much of the original team is still in place more than a year and a half after the merger. These original employees still at Uber include Nick Foley, Jump's second employee, and general counsel Avra van der Zee.

New Mobility, which houses Uber's bike and scooter efforts, has raised prices and abandoned some cities in recent months as the ride-hailing giant fights tooth-and-nail to turn a profit.

Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi in November touted bikes and scooters as a "strong customer acquisition channel" on a conference call with investors, noting that unit economics continue to improve.

Do you work for Uber? Have a story to share? Get in touch with this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. For sensitive news tips, secure contact methods can be found here.

Original author: Graham Rapier

Original author: Christian de Looper

Grimes may have announced she's pregnant in an Instagram post. The singer posted a nude photo on Wednesday afternoon that appeared to show her pregnant with a fetus Photoshopped on her stomach. The post didn't include a caption, but in a comment on the post, Grimes appeared to imply that she is, in fact, pregnant.The meaning behind the photo is unclear, however: Grimes is known for trolling, and she has new music coming out in February. The photo could simply be promotional. However, people are already speculating that Grimes is pregnant with on-again, off-again boyfriend Elon Musk's baby.Representatives for Grimes and Musk weren't immediately available to comment. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Grimes may have just announced that she's pregnant.

The singer and producer, who is dating Tesla CEO Elon Musk, posted an unusual (and not safe for work) Instagram post on Wednesday afternoon that showed her naked with a fetus Photoshopped on her stomach. The post didn't include a caption, but in a comment on the post, Grimes appeared to imply that she is, in fact, pregnant. 

The original post stayed up for a few hours before it was apparently taken down, likely because it violated Instagram's standards on female nudity. Grimes reposted a censored version of the photo Wednesday evening. 

The meaning behind the photo is unclear. Grimes is known for trolling on social media, and given that the singer is planning to release a new album, "Miss Anthropocene," in February, this could be a reference to the new music or an album cover.

Grimes/Instagram

The couple have been dating on and off since 2018, when they made their relationship public by walking the red carpet at the annual Met Gala. Musk has five sons from a previous marriage. 

Representatives for Grimes and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Moments after the photo was posted, social media was ablaze with people speculating whether the pregnancy is real and whether Grimes and Musk are having a baby together:

 

 

Original author: Avery Hartmans

Happy New Year, and welcome back to Trending, the newsletter where we highlight BI Prime's biggest tech stories of the week. I'm Alexei Oreskovic, Business Insider's West Coast bureau chief and global tech editor.

I just returned from the snowy climes of Wyoming, land of jagged peaks, bison chili and phenomenal backcountry skiing. If you want to talk tech, or skiing, hit me up at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

And if this is your first time reading Trending, here's how you can get it in your inbox every week.

This week: Welcome to the '20s

The '20s are already off to a frenetic start, with a former auto CEO fleeing Japan stowed away in a box, a leaked internal Facebook memo about Trump, and, of course, more SoftBank drama. 

As Megan Hernbroth reported this week, Zume, the SoftBank-backed startup developing pizza-making robots and valued at $1 billion, is conducting big layoffs. Big is a relative term. And in this case, it might actually under represent the situation. As Megan reported, Zume had planned to cut up to 400 employees, which would represent an astounding 80% of its staff. On Wednesday Zume convened the troops and announced that the official number of jobs cut would be 360, but apparently noted that it was creating 100 new positions in its packaging unit.

SoftBank Group Chairman Masayoshi Son The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images

How a company reported to be seeking new funding at a $4 billion valuation just a few weeks ago is now in a position where it must take such extreme measures will no doubt be part of a fascinating history one day. But if you've been following Megan's reporting, it was clear that the signs of trouble at Zume had been mounting. 

Other big SoftBank portfolio companies have also had to make cuts, most notably WeWork and Uber. And media reports this week also flagged difficulties at GetAround, Oyo and Improbable, three other SoftBank bets.

For SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and his Japanese tech conglomerate, it's a humbling turn of events after a bold effort to conquer Silicon Valley. And with reports that SoftBank has reneged on some startup investments, SoftBank risks losing goodwill in the valley. 

There's a lot at stake for Son and SoftBank in 2020. Will Son double down, as he did with WeWork last year, and try to salvage his empire? Or will he take his cue from Carlos Ghosn and make a hasty getaway from Silicon Valley in the dead of night?

Read Megan's full story here:

SoftBank-backed robotic pizza startup Zume plans to lay off up to 400 employees — 80% of its staff— and won't renew its Seattle lease amid widespread restructuring to stop burning cash

The deal of the decade, or maybe, the century

A new year (and decade) is a natural time for prognostications, from the slightly probable to the wildly fanciful.

As Ashley Stewart reports, Wall Street's equity research departments are already as busy as beavers building hypothetical scenarios in the cloud-computing business. Just as Amazon's AWS cloud business could potentially be spun out from the retail giant, it's not unreasonable to consider Google, or Alphabet, spinning out its cloud computing business. 

Even more interesting though, is the possibility for Google Cloud to go shopping. Among the potential acquisition targets bandied about by analysts are Palo Alto Networks, Workday, and ServiceNow. But as Ashley reports, RBC floats an even more eye-popping deal: Salesforce. 

Robert Galbraith/ Reuters

Such a deal would be valued at $250 billion according to RBC, making it one of the biggest acquisitions ever. And Google would need to lever itself up with debt to make it happen. But, as Business Insider first reported, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian has set a goal of becoming the No.2 player in the cloud market within five years. And super-sizing with Salesforce would instantly accomplish that. 

Meanwhile, Paayal Zaveri has a nice look at what observers think is in store for Salesforce this year (and getting acquired by Google doesn't seem to be high on the list).

Read the full story here:

Google could acquire Salesforce and spin out its cloud business to catch up to Amazon and Microsoft, analyst predicts

Amazon, a decade of swole

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

You'll also want to check out Eugene Kim's fascinating look at Amazon's past decade as told through a series of charts. 

Just as Jeff Bezos's personal physique has noticeably bulked up to action-hero proportions in recent years, so has Amazon's business gone through an amazing transformation, beefing up existing guns and popping new muscles and veins where none previously existed. 

Consider: In 2010, Amazon's headcount was roughly 34,000 employees. Today, the company employs 750,000 full and part-time workers.

If you're in a business that competes with Amazon (and these days, who isn't), this is a must-read. 

Read the full story here:

25 charts that show Amazon's explosive growth over the past decade

Here are some other tech highlights:

How Apple's push to rule the smartphone industry has made Apple Store employees feel like robots

Tech legend John Chambers explains how his new startup Pensando will face off with Amazon in a 'David versus Goliath' cloud showdown

Challenge to recognise world's first AI inventor heads for High Court battle

Facebook abandoned a red-hot app after promising to keep it relevant, and it shows how far the social network goes to stay dominant

VCs predict that remote work, celebrity startup investors, and an exodus from Silicon Valley are the big tech trends to watch in 2020

And more big stories from across the BI newsroom:

Meet the 36 rising stars of Madison Avenue revolutionizing advertising

Publicis spent $30 million to build Marcel, an AI tool that was supposed to 'break the industry.' Instead, it's been hampered by confusion, ridicule, and delays

Mark Minervini crushed markets with a 33,554% return over 5 years. Here are the select books out of the 4,000 in his library he says most fueled his success.

Thanks for reading, and remember, if you like this newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues they can sign up here to receive it.

— Alexei

Original author: Alexei Oreskovic

Boomerangs are a popular way to share content on Instagram, both in stories and in permanent posts. 

A Boomerang is a burst of photos that plays back and forth to create a video that continuously replays on a loop. 

There are two ways to post a Boomerang to Instagram – users can post to Stories or to their Feed directly from the Boomerang app; or they can post to Stories using Instagram's built-in Boomerang function. Instagram does not have a built-in Boomerang function to post on the Feed.

Either way, it's easy to make a Boomerang on an iPhone. Here's how. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy)

How to make a Boomerang on an iPhone using the Boomerang app

1. Download and open the Boomerang app on your iPhone.

2. Press and hold the center button to record the Boomerang. The video will immediately play back. If you're happy with the quality, select the "Instagram" button at the bottom.

Select "Instagram" to share a Boomerang on Instagram. Stephanie Lin/Business Insider

3. Click whether you'd like to post to Stories or to your Feed.

4. The Instagram app will then open. Post the Boomerang as you would any other post, either to the Feed or Stories. You can add text, locations and tags to the post. 

How to make a Boomerang on iPhone using Instagram 

1. Open Instagram on your iPhone. 

2. Click on your profile picture to begin adding to stories. 

3. Select "Boomerang" at the bottom of the screen. 

Slide to "Boomerang" to start shooting one on Instagram. Stephanie Lin/Business Insider

4. Press on the center button to record your Boomerang, and then post as you would any other Instagram story.

 

Original author: Kelly Laffey

Amazon-owned Ring has fired four employees over the past year for abusing access to customers data, the company told lawmakers in a letter Monday, which was posted online by NBC reporter Cyrus Farivar.

Ring, which makes home security cameras, said it received four complaints regarding instances where employees accessed information that "exceeded what was necessary for their job functions." In each instance, Ring said it carried out investigations and, upon discovering that employees had violated company policies, terminated them.

The company's security and privacy practices have come under fire in recent months following a wave of cyberattacks and reports of lax internal policies around employees' access to customer data.

Following those reports, a group of Senators sent a letter to Amazon and Ring in November asking the companies to clarify their security and privacy practices. The companies responded in a letter sent Monday where they also disclosed data access abuse instances and subsequent terminations.

Original author: Tyler Sonnemaker