A self-declared space nation that wants to operate a fully-functioning society in space has started laying out its vision for establishing an off-world colony. 

The Space Kingdom of Asgardia is a genuine project to set up a nation entirely in space, with hundreds of thousands of members paying "residency'" fees and a parliament that is in the process of forming the foundations for its society.

Asgardia's goal is to transport thousands of people to an enormous space station by 2043, beyond Earth's jurisdictions, to "build a new democratic society."

Ambitiously, the space nation is looking to the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to get them there. Both billionaires have also set up commercial space firms.

The project, founded by billionaire Russian scientist and politician Igor Ashurbeyli, is currently chaired by former British politician Lembit Opik.

"The obvious candidates are SpaceX and Blue Origin," Opik told Business Insider, citing Musk and Bezos' respective ventures in interstellar travel. "They're the best game in town in terms of space launches. Their rockets are the taxis that can take us where we want to go." 

But can the dream of Asgardia ever become a reality? In an interview with Business Insider, Opik showed a passion for statecraft, detailing every facet of his space-based society, including an overview in foreign policy, banking regulation, business opportunities, and the creation of a new digital currency called "Solar."

Although Asgardia is currently registered as a non-profit organization in Vienna, Austria, Opik sees opportunities ahead for trade. Starting small, there is already an online shop selling mugs, badges and T-shirts "for the discerning Asgardian", but Opik insists there will be much more to come for his "fully-functioning capitalist economy."

"First, there will be the businesses operating within Asgardia itself, and we've already got a small list of candidates there, who could provide us with goods and services, such as ballpoint pens designed to be used in space, specific types of insurance for space-dwellers – whatever," he said.

"Then of course, there will be businesses who want to sell us things, like Mr Musk or Mr Bezos... If you've got a big rocket and can take us into space, we might buy it off you," he added.

Asgardia was founded by Ashurbeyli in 2016 — or "Year 0" in the Asgardian calendar – and it now boasts an elected body of 150 members from all over the world, after online elections last year. Its incumbent Prime Minister is Ana Diaz, a lawyer from Venezuela, and its chief justice is Zhao Yun, a fellow lawyer from Hong Kong. Opik was voted in last year as head of parliament.

Ashurbeyli is understood to have invested around $12 million of his own money into the project to date, while another $2 million has been paid in by members of the public.

At present, Asgardia has three tiers of members: "followers", "residents", and "citizens."

According to Opik, more than a million followers have already signed up for free worldwide, while another 300,000 are paying an annual €100 ($110) residency fee. This weekend, he and his colleagues in the Asgardian parliament will debate how much to charge for citizenship (i.e. those eligible to live on Asgardia when it is launched).

"We are planning for the long-term," he said. "So we've got to make sure we get everything absolutely right." 

Opik added that he doesn't plan to permanently reside in Asgardia himself, should it come into being, though he would visit.

"I'd rather be a day-tripper than a homesteader," he said. "My job is to help the settlement of space but probably not settle there myself."

In 2017, the kingdom sent its first satellite into Earth's orbit, making it, in its own words, "the first nation to have all of its territory in space".

The tiny satellite, Asgardia-1, is currently floating around Earth and about the size of a loaf of bread. It contains a 512GB hard drive loaded with "the nation's constitutions, national symbols, and the personally-selected data of the Asgardian citizenship". 

Under the rules of the United Nations, Asgardia could technically qualify for recognition as a state, as more than 100,000 people look set to apply for citizenship. But it's unlikely it will be acknowledged as a sovereign nation any time soon. 

Business Insider previously contacted the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) to clarify whether current space law would permit the existence of a nation or territory in space. They directed us to the text of five UN treaties that govern activities in space. 

Article II of the first and most important part of that legal framework, called the Outer Space Treaty, prohibits "national appropriation" of anything in outer space "by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". 

But Opik remains optimistic despite the opposition, telling us the project has "taken up so much of [his] life". Once established, he insists Asgardia will take a neutral stance on all Earthly matters. "We will not interfere in Earthly matters, and we hope they would not interfere in ours... We want what any sovereign nation wants: recognition."

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, declined to comment.

Elon Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency on Friday following a cybersecurity attack on state government servers.

The state of Louisiana activated its cybersecurity response team following a ransomware attack on government servers on Monday, but the state did not lose any data nor pay any ransom, according to a press release. The attack prompted an outage of "many state websites and emails" on Monday "due to the state taking extreme emergency protective measures, including shutting down server traffic, to neutralize the attack."

"These protective actions likely saved the state from data loss and weeks of service outages," the press release said.

The declaration will allow several agencies — specifically the Office of Motor Vehicles, Department of Transportation and Development and the Department of Revenue — "to take actions, including waiving fees and fines, to assist members of the public," according to the release.

"We appreciate the patience of the public as our team of experts has worked around the clock to restore online services related to this cybersecurity issue," Edwards said in a statement. "We know that some people may have missed filing deadlines or incurred fees because of the outage, which the emergency declaration allows us to correct so that the members of the public are not penalized unnecessarily."

The attempted ransomware attack is being investigated by state police and federal agencies.

SAN FRANCISCO — Hundreds of Google workers gathered in the courtyard of the company's office here on Friday to protest its decision to place two employees on administrative leave.

The two employees at the center of the dispute — Rebecca Rivers and Laurence Berland — spoke at the rally, accusing the internet giant of targeting them for being outspoken critics of some of the company's recent work. Google is systematically stifling its former culture of openness, they charged.

"Even though Rebecca and I are experiencing the full force of Google's retaliation, this is not really about me. It's not about Rebecca. It's about us, all of us, and the open culture we built and treasure together," Berland said. "If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone, and that culture is lost forever."

Supporters carried signs saying things such as "Shame on Google!" and chanted, "bring them back!"

The rally highlighted the growing divide between Google's employees and management. Over the past 18 months, the company's workers have protested its decision to quietly develop artificial-intelligence technology for the US military and to build a censored search engine for China. Tens of thousands also walked out last fall in protest over the company's handling of sexual misconduct complaints.

Demonstrators at the rally expressed concern over a number of Google's more recent policies, including its decision to hold fewer company-wide meetings and to roll out an internal tool that can detect when employees schedule meetings with large numbers of employees. Protesters linked these measures to the company's reported hiring of IRI Consultants, an anti-union consulting firm. That move was yet another sign that the company is trying to quash employee activism, they said.

Berland and Rivers said Google placed them on leave for allegedly violating its policies — Berland for allegedly tracking other employees' calendar meetings and Rivers for allegedly accessing and sharing sensitive documents. They both denied knowingly breaking any rules.

"Literally zero of the documents I accessed were leaked to the press," Rivers said.

Google didn't have any hidden motives for placing Rivers and Berland on leave, a company representative said. The search giant has "clear guidelines about appropriate conduct at work," the representative said, adding that there were "a number of concerns raised" about Rivers and Berland's conduct.

The company's hiring of IRI Consultants is unrelated to any recent policy changes, the representative said.

"We engage dozens of outside firms to provide us with their advice on a wide range of topics," the representative said.  "To suggest this particular firm had anything whatsoever to do with the recent calendar extension — or any internal policies whatsoever — is absolutely false."

Joel Kaplan, Facebook's vice president of global public policy, played a key role in pushing for the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, according to reporting in a new book "Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover," by Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.

Kaplan's ties to Kavanaugh were already widely known, but Marcus' book sheds new light on the role he played in lobbying for Kavanaugh's nomination as well as rallying support for the judge during the confirmation hearing process.

The night before former Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his resignation, Kaplan called "influential conservative lawyers" to gauge their support for a possible Kavanaugh nomination.

Kavanaugh's nomination became hotly contested after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford alleged in testimony to Congress that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted at a party while they were high school-aged.

According to Marcus' reporting highlighted in The Daily Beast, Kaplan "stopped in briefly" to talk with Kavanaugh and his small team of advisers as they prepared remarks for Kavanaugh to deliver denying the allegations.

Kaplan had also sat in on Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings, which angered some Facebook employees who felt the appearance was inappropriate. In response, Facebook held a town hall to apologize to employees, saying Kaplan had mishandled the incident.

Democracy.com has an unlikely new owner — the billionaire businessman Mark Cuban.

Cuban, who is known for his role as an investor on the show "Shark Tank," bought the domain on Friday in an auction for an undisclosed price, The New York Times reported.

The minimum bid set for the auction was $300,000, and Cuban paid a sum higher than the minimum bid, according to The Times.

The businessman made the purchase on a whim "to make sure someone didn't do something crazy with it," Cuban told The Times.

"Someone sent me a cold email," Cuban said. "I gave them a price I would be willing to pay. They said yes."

Talmage Cooley, the site's previous owner, used it as "a start-up social platform where politicians and civic groups could connect with supporters," The Times reported. Once the platform ran out of money earlier this year, Cooley orchestrated the auction, which was managed by Heritage Auctions.

Cooley told The Times that he emailed Cuban about the auction days before it was set to close, and the billionaire investor made an offer a few minutes later.

"I just made it super succinct and talked about the importance of this name being used for good," Cooley told The Times. "I'm glad that somebody in the US bought it, as opposed to a Russian counter-democracy organization."

This isn't the first time Cuban has had a hand in the political realm. In 2016, he endorsed the former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and he even floated the idea of running in the 2020 race as an independent, but his family shut the idea down.

Amazon Web Services is reportedly cracking down on letting its partners even mention that cloud computing services from other providers exist.

At its New York conference in July, Amazon reportedly blocked partners with booths from mentioning its competitors like Microsoft and Google Cloud, the New York Post's Nicolas Vega reported.

Partners at that conference who did mention competitors were asked to remove those names or cover them up with tape, The Post's Vega reported.

Likewise, AWS released a branding guide that said AWS would not approve terms like "multi-cloud," "cross cloud," "any cloud," "every cloud," "or any other language that implies designing or supporting more than one cloud provider," CRN's Brendan Foye reported. These phrases suggest that customers can use other clouds in addition to that of Amazon's.

It's unclear if AWS has imposed similar rules at any of its other conferences. AWS did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

While AWS is still considered the number one cloud, its rivals Microsoft and Google Cloud are working to gain a slice of that market. Just October, Microsoft scored a major upset over AWS when it won the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon. Earlier this month, AWS filed a protest over Microsoft's victory.

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As WeWork commences its layoffs this week, some WeWork employees are concerned that their time with the company has hurt their careers.

Some are worried about the impact of their association with WeWork, employees told Business Insider. This comes after the company's initial-public-offering ambitions imploded under a barrage of headlines about the hard-partying tequila-drinking culture created by founder and ousted CEO Adam Neumann — along with questions over its corporate governance, business model, and self-dealing in the executive suite.

But, Business Insider previously reported, while Neumann was living large, employees under him were working long, hard hours.

One current WeWork manager, who just celebrated his four-year anniversary at the company, addressed this concern head-on when he offered to help those who were cut in the layoffs.

"Don't think for a second that the tumultuous headlines you've seen translate beyond the c-suite. There are a ton of driven, creative, entrepreneurial, resilient friends hitting the job market," Jesse Ganes, the director of architecture, product development, and management, wrote in a LinkedIn post on Thursday. Ganes declined to give further comment.

Many WeWork employees have been looking for new jobs for months, ever since the company started warning them that big layoffs were coming. Those layoffs began in earnest this week, with the company saying that it has plans to cut 2,400 people. WeWork is also transferring about 1,000 janitorial and facilities-management staff off its payroll to roles with a contractor.

One person who worked for WeWork in New York on special programs told Business Insider that getting a new job offer wasn't hard but that the offers were for salaries smaller than at the WeWork job.

"Everyone knows where we are, so the lowball offers are coming strong. It's like a drip campaign; everyone knows that everyone applying who works at WeWork can be lowballed," this person said.

A survey of WeWork employees on Blind conducted for Business Insider found that others share these sentiments. Blind is the anonymous chat app for employees that validates work email addresses but does not reveal the person behind the username.

In a survey of 230 respondents, 38% said they worried that negative perception toward the company would hurt their career. This also means that 62% were not concerned. About half the people who responded said they feared that layoffs would affect them.

Likewise, 132 people responded to a poll asking them if working at WeWork would negatively affect their compensation from their next employer. Sixty-eight percent of respondents were actively looking for a new job, and 30% said they were, in fact, worried about lowball offers.

Interestingly, that worry was more intense for folks with nontech roles, 34% versus the 26% for those who had tech roles. Demand remains high for skilled programmers and IT professionals. Equally interestingly, 81% of the people with tech roles said they were actively seeking a new job.

WeWork did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The world is changing. Gone are the days when a cable subscription was necessary to watch all the latest and greatest TV shows. These days, the best TV shows are coming out on streaming platforms like Disney Plus, ESPN+, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video. Of course, the best way to take advantage of services like Netflix is by streaming shows straight to your TV.

There are plenty of streaming devices out there to help you connect the latest and greatest video streaming services to your TV, and they're not all created equal. Before buying, you'll want to consider a few different things.

For starters, you'll want to think about whether you want a fully-fledged streaming box, which comes complete with its own operating system and allows you to download and install apps. The alternative is a device like the Google Chromecast, which basically streams content from your phone or computer (called casting); instead of installing Netflix on the TV-connected device, you'll install it on your phone or computer and then stream from your phone, which is plugged into your TV's HDMI port.

Next up you'll want to keep in mind the specs of your TV. Not all streaming sticks and boxes are able to handle 4K content, so if you have a 4K TV, you'll want to get one that can stream 4K videos; the reverse is also true, as a non-4K TV won't be able to display 4K content. Last but not least, it might be worth considering the ecosystem you're most plugged into. For example, Android users might be able to get more use from an Android TV device, while those using an iPhone and Mac might prefer the Apple TV.

We've done the research and testing to find the best streaming sticks and boxes to turn your dumb TV into a smart one that can access videos from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, and more. 

Note: Nearly all of these products require access to the internet over Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Products that support casting require a smartphone or tablet.

Updated on 11/22/2019 by Lisa Sabatini: Updated prices, links, and formatting. Replaced outdated model of Roku Ultra.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled Tesla's first passenger pickup truck, the Cybertruck, on Thursday night in a dramatic showing that included flames, a "cybergirl," and a failed test.

The jam-packed unveiling included the traditional presentation of the truck's specifications but in a glamorized and semifailed manner. To prove the strength of its "ultra-hard" stainless steel body, Musk asked Tesla's lead designer, Franz von Holzhausen, to take a sledgehammer to the side of the truck.

And to show off the strength of the "armored glass," a metal ball was dropped onto an isolated panel at an elevated height without a shatter or a break. However, when the metal ball was thrown at the window of the example Cybertruck, the glass broke.

Despite this, the Cybertruck was unveiled to many crowd cheers and photos, and with specs that surpassed those of its competitors, such as Bollinger Motors' fully electric all-wheel-drive B2 Pickup Truck. Production is expected to begin in 2021.

Keep scrolling to see more of the Cybertruck unveiling antics:

 

 

Honey's acquisition gives new meaning to the term "sweet deal."

Honey, a startup that makes a browser extension for online shopping, just sold to PayPal for $4 billion. It is the payments company's largest-ever acquisition, and the purchase means an exorbitant payout for Honey's investors. Founded in 2012 by George Ruan and Ryan Hudson, the startup had raised $47 million in venture capital from several lesser-known firms, including Mucker Capital, Ludlow Ventures, Wonder Ventures, and Bam Ventures.

When a user is online shopping, Honey scours the web for available coupons and surfaces the best ones in a browser extension. It makes money by taking a commission on every transaction that its coupons help close. Honey works with roughly 30,000 merchants around the world and counts 17 million people among its monthly active users. In 2018, Honey closed $100 million in revenue.

Investors said Honey was profitable and not in the middle of a fundraise when PayPal came to the team with an all-cash offer. PayPal was eager to do more than online checkout. A Honey integration could help its merchants get in front of target customers with highly relevant and personalized coupons.

At the same time, Honey was looking to get into payments, William Hsu, a venture capitalist and early investor in Honey, said. But it would take years to build a credit-card product and partner with a bank. A partnership with PayPal gives them "everything in a box," Hsu said.

Investors describe the deal as a win-win.

"Honey was considering the most strategic way to get to the next major milestone and chapter of growth for the company and fundraising was one option they considered," Richard Jun, a cofounder and managing director of Bam Ventures, said in an email. "When PayPal reached out it seemed like a mutually beneficial fit to build a more robust shopping experience for merchants and consumers."

Bam put $150,000 into Honey's seed round. Its investment is worth 300 times that after the acquisition, Jun said, which comes out to $45 million.

Honey did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The first time one of Honey's founders pitched Hsu on the idea in 2012, he said no. The deal was too expensive, Hsu said, whose seed-stage firm Mucker Capital was founded only a year before.

Honey's founders continued to work with a skeleton team on an investment of their own money, unable to convince investors to put money into a desktop-browser extension as consumer interest moved to mobile. Hudson eventually ran out of money and took a day job as a product manager at an adtech company to pay the bills, he told Business Insider in 2017.

Still, people flocked to Honey. The app collected hundreds of thousands of users, who often heard about Honey from someone else. The founders returned to Hsu's office about two years later after Honey's graduation from a startup accelerator in Los Angeles, Plug and Play. Hsu leaped at the opportunity to invest.

In 2014, Honey raised a seed round of $1.8 million from Mucker Capital, Bam Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, SXE Ventures, and an angel investor. Hsu's firm wrote a check for $120,000, which was then more than 10% of the fund.

"It was the biggest check we'd ever written," Hsu said over the phone. "I guess in some ways we were smart, and in some ways we were lucky."

Industry trends told investors not to put money into a desktop product. They did anyway. Jonathon Triest, the founder and managing partner of Ludlow Ventures, said his Detroit investment firm bets on "exceptional founders that make us want to quit VC and go work for them instead."

Honey's founders gave them that feeling in their first meeting.

Investors said Honey would continue to operate as an independent subsidiary, with Ruan and Hudson at the helm.

On Thursday, PayPal had a call with investors to announce the deal. Daniel Schulman, the chief executive of PayPal, said the company looked at other market players but was sold on Honey's product and impressive growth.

"This acquisition has the potential to be transformative for us," Schulman said.

One of the oldest names in adtech is shutting down. After cutting its head count and facing allegations of unpaid bills, the adtech firm IgnitionOne plans to close, according to a note shareholders received this week from CEO Will Margiloff that was viewed by Business Insider.

On November 20, Margiloff told IgnitionOne's shareholders in an email that the company's assets were sold in two separate transactions for a mixture of cash and stock that finalized on November 19. IgnitionOne has given an independent trustee its remaining assets and plans to "ultimately dissolve the entity," according to the note.

Margiloff told investors in the note that they would likely not receive any money from IgnitionOne.

"We worked to the end to find a way to achieve a positive return for all of our equity investors," he wrote. 

Margiloff wrote that IgnitionOne spent most of this year looking for a buyer. He said that while the company had its best year in terms of percentage growth, revenue, and EBITDA, it was unable to renew a line of credit from existing lenders.

Separately, an audit of IgnitionOne last year by BDO LLP said the company was in the process of negotiating a trade-receivables-backed line of credit.

The news brings to an end one of the oldest adtech companies, which was once billed as a "one-stop shop" to help marketers with their digital-ad spending. The 15-year-old IgnitionOne was among a handful of adtech firms that pitched advertisers on its expertise of Google, Facebook, and programmatic advertising early on. It raised $85.2 million since 2013, according to Crunchbase.

In 2010, the ad-holding company Dentsu acquired IgnitionOne through its acquisition of Innovation Interactive to beef up its US presence. IgnitionOne was later spun out of Dentsu Aegis.

In his note, Margiloff cited broader changes in media and advertising that led to the company's struggles to get profitable.

"There are lots of reasons why, but foremost is the fact that the grounds have shifted in the digital market and we couldn't get to safer ground in time," he wrote.

In a short email to Business Insider on November 22, Margiloff acknowledged the shareholder letter but didn't elaborate.

"As you read, in this difficult situation, our efforts were and continue to be focused on creditors, clients, employees and partners," he said.

In January, IgnitionOne hired the investment firm Progress Partners to help it find a buyer. In October, Progress Partners filed a civil complaint in Massachusetts District Court alleging that IgnitionOne owes more than $590,000 in damages plus attorney's fees, interest, and other costs.

In addition, Business Insider previously reported that IgnitionOne owes money to at least two adtech companies.

The two transactions Margiloff mentioned in the note relate to Zeta Global and Publicis Media, according to sources with direct knowledge.

Zeta Global will take over IgnitionOne's software business, including 65 US employees, a Zeta Global spokesperson said. The deal expands on a previous agreement that IgnitionOne has with Zeta Global. In September, Zeta Global signed a deal to push the ad spend that IgnitionOne manages through Zeta Global's demand-side platform. As part of the September deal, Zeta Global acquired about 15 IgnitionOne employees.

Additionally, about 10 IgnitionOne employees are joining Publicis Media, which has been a key agency client, to work on the agency's programmatic business, according to a source close to the deal.

Read the full letter sent to IgnitionOne shareholders on November 20 below.

Do you work at IgnitionOne or know something interesting about the company? Email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or contact me on Confide or Signal at 720-261-0417.

Dear Investor,

We have some very important news to share that impacts the future of IgnitionOne. IgnitionOne assets have been sold in two separate transactions for a mixture of cash and private stock. I am confident that this is the best strategic action for our clients, employees, partners and stakeholders to which our Board of Directors owes duties. Attached please find a notice required by Delaware law.

When we all put our cash and efforts behind this company, expectations were high. Today, we met a bunch of them but not the one that mattered the most. A return on investment. There are lots of reasons why, but foremost is the fact that the grounds have shifted in the digital market and we couldn't get to safer ground in time.

While the business had turned the corner this year and had the best year to date for % growth, revenue and EBITDA, our liquidity was severely hampered by our inability to renew our line of credit from existing lenders. The underlying cause of this was client concentration and that we operate in an industry where we are required to pay for inventory from suppliers long before our customers remit payment to the Company.

We have worked very hard for the past few years to reduce our costs and raise needed capital, including selling non-core parts of our business, paying down critical vendors, finding operational efficiencies and, reducing the size of our team. We have done this with full disclosure and consent of our Board of Directors and lenders with the intent to bring more profitability to the business.

Entering 2019, we could see where the market was heading and spent the majority of the year trying to find a partner to help refinance the business, merge or a buy the Company. We had several viable transactions in process for pieces of the business which would have helped the business continue. Unfortunately, we could not bring any of the buyers across the finish line. This led us to where we are today, which requires us to satisfy our obligations to our secured lenders first and then others based on an order of legal and contractual priority.

To maintain the remaining value of our assets, we assigned our assets to an independent trustee. Following this assignment, the assets of the Company were sold in the aforementioned two simultaneous transactions that were executed on 11.19.19.

It is frustrating knowing that this great opportunity never translated to the value we all expected. I can assure you that my team and I (all of whom are sizable cash investors in the business) did all we could to find a positive outcome. We worked to the end to find a way to achieve a positive return for all of our equity investors.  Unfortunately, at this point, I would say that there is a low probability that our equity shareholders (including employee shareholders) will receive any proceeds.

At some point in the future, once all remaining obligations are addressed by the Trustee, we will ultimately dissolve the entity and you will receive final paperwork. Like you, I am deeply disappointed and sorry for having to deliver this news.

WeWork's Friday all-hands meeting focused on the road ahead, and its chairman named four men who will help steer the company's stabilization efforts.

Marcelo Claure, who's also SoftBank's chief operating officer, explained the changes at Friday's meeting.

He also addressed criticisms about leadership's lack of diversity: Of the 13 people at the top of the company, only one — chief legal officer Jen Berrent — is a woman. Claure said the company would focus on diversity in the future and add women to the executive team and its all-male board of directors. 

WeWork has been criticized for having a male-dominated, party-centric culture, with employees taking cues from the ousted founder Adam Neumann. Multiple women and people of color told Business Insider in a September feature that they felt WeWork's professed culture of inclusivity didn't seem to include them.

Claure and other top executives have repeatedly said that they're breaking with WeWork's past under Neumann. 

WeWork's additions to the executive team also illustrate how SoftBank is increasingly taking a direct role with leadership at some of its troubled investments. Earlier this month, the Japanese investor stepped in at automotive-leasing company Fair, ousting its chief executive and chief financial officer, who was the CEO's brother, Business Insider previously reported.

At Fair, SoftBank put the operating partner Adam Hieber in the interim CEO role and named an outside executive, also a man, as chief financial officer. 

Below the trio are 12 direct reports, two of which — chief financial officer and head of real estate — are still to be determined. 

These are the new roles:

Chief transformation officer: Mike Bucy, who's tasked with making sure WeWork executes its six pillars. He comes from SoftBank, which he joined in 2018 after he was a partner at McKinsey. At the consultancy, he worked in North Carolina and Australia, according to his LinkedIn profile.

A profile on McKinsey's website highlights that Bucy "specializes in private and public sector turnarounds, often serving in interim executive roles." He has also been a real-estate investor for nearly 15 years in the southeast.

Interim chief marketing and communications officer: Maurice Levy, who's the chairman of the holding company Publicis Group, which owns multiple ad agencies. Levy briefly addressed staff on Friday, wearing, like Claure, all black, according to an image viewed by Business Insider.

Levy became CEO of Publicis when he was 45 and stepped down in 2017, Business Insider previously reported. Publicis handled global ad buying for Sprint during Levy's CEO tenure; Claure was previously the CEO of Sprint. Publicis lost the Sprint business in 2017, the same year Levy stepped down as CEO. 

During his time at Publicis, Levy played a role in building Publicis into one of the leading ad-agency conglomerates. His last big move as CEO was the introduction of the "Power of One" strategy to get rid of silos in the group and the acquisition of agency SapientNitro.

Chief product and experience officer: Ralf Wenzel, who is a managing partner at SoftBank and has "proven CEO-caliber leadership," according to Claure. Wenzel spoke with employees while wearing a black WeWork "do what you love" shirt, according to an image viewed by Business Insider.

Wenzel joined SoftBank in October as CEO of its Latin American tech hub, Reuters reported. Previously, Wenzel was an entrepreneur and investor. He founded the Berlin-based Foodpanda, a 40-country food-delivery company, and Skrill, a European electronic-wallet company. 

Chief people officer: Matt Jahansouz was promoted internally to the role. He joined WeWork in February after nearly nine years in human-resources roles at Goldman Sachs, according to his LinkedIn profile. He started at the bank as a vice president of talent management and ended as a managing director and global head of recruiting. 

Before Goldman, Jahansouz spent nearly a dozen years at Deloitte doing human-capital consulting. 

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Tesla's Cybertruck unveiling on Thursday night in Hawthorne, California, began on a slightly absurd note.

A mesh of lasers crossed the stage, and a hologram of a woman in a blond wig appeared.

"In the future, there will be no straws, I promise," she said.

Spectators quickly began to speculate that the "hologram girl" was none other than Grimes, the alt-pop singer and girlfriend of Tesla CEO Elon Musk whose real name is Claire Boucher.

 

Spokespeople for Grimes and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Here's what people are saying about Grimes' apparent cameo during the Tesla event.

Facebook once built an internal facial-recognition app that allowed employees to identify people by pointing their phone cameras at them.

The app, which was developed by Facebook employees between 2015 and 2016 and tested internally, relied on information from the social network's vast collection of user-uploaded photos and facial-recognition data to identify people in real life within seconds, sources told Business Insider.

It was shown off at an internal all-hands meeting in 2015, one source said, and was presented as an "example of future innovations" that Facebooks' technology and data could enable.

A second source said that in 2016 a beta version of the app was made available for download to Facebook employees that used a smartphone camera to identify anyone for whom the social network had enough data — regardless of whether or not they were a Facebook employee. It was subsequently restricted to identify only people recognized as Facebook friends of the app user (still regardless of whether or not they were an employee), and they used the app on their friends only after that change was made, they said.

A Facebook spokesperson denied that the app could ever identify strangers who didn't work at Facebook, saying that it was able to recognize only the faces of Facebook employees and of Facebook friends of the user who had enabled the social network's facial-recognition system on their accounts.

The app was clearly in its early stages and had a basic camera interface, a source said. When pointed at someone, it would take about three to five seconds to recognize them, and then displayed their Facebook name and profile picture.

For years, Facebook has used facial-recognition technology to identify the subjects of photos uploaded to its core social network and recommend "tagging" them — but the version available to consumers has been applied only to photos and never for real-time real-world face recognition. In September, Facebook said it would change to make facial recognition an opt-in feature, rather than assuming by default that users consent to having their faces scanned.

The existence of the experimental app, which has not been previously reported, highlights Facebook's willingness to experiment with technologies with major societal implications. And it raises questions about the $564 billion company's historic approach to privacy and consent, and its handling of users' data.

A Facebook spokesperson said the company routinely builds experimental apps internally, and that the facial-recognition app has since been discontinued.

"As a way to learn about new technologies, our teams regularly build apps to use internally. The apps described here were only available to Facebook employees, and could only recognize employees and their friends who had face recognition enabled," said the Facebook spokesperson in a prepared statement.

The experimental app was developed at a time when Facebook was under pressure from then rapidly growing rival Snapchat and its comparatively advanced face-tracking technology and filters. A former Facebook employee who worked at the company at the time and was not aware of the beta app speculated that it might have been an experiment by Facebook to better understand the area, in a bid to tackle Snapchat's "looming threat."

Facebook has suffered through more than two years of scandals, from the spread of misinformation and propaganda on its platform in the 2016 US election to issues with its handling of user data. Earlier this year, the company was hit with a $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission after the political-research firm Cambridge Analytica misappropriated more than 80 million users' data as a result of lax controls by Facebook.

Facial recognition has also been a thorny issue for the company. In 2012, Facebook stopped using facial recognition in the European Union over privacy-regulatory issues, before bringing in back in 2018 with stricter controls. The company is facing a lawsuit over allegations that it didn't acquire consent from users in Illinois before using their biometric data, which could cost it up to $35 billion if it loses, Ars Technica reported.

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Named for the wily bandit who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, Robinhood is making the move into the home of its literary namesake.

The $7.6 billion "fee-free" stock trading app is launching in the UK, after being approved by the UK's financial regulator. The startup, which has raised a whopping $862 million in venture capital backing, has undeniably changed the landscape for equities trading mostly by attracting elusive millennials to its platform.

UK users can now sign up for early access to Robinhood's platform which will likely launch officially in the first three months of 2020.

When live, customers will have access to more than 3,500 US and global stocks alongside investment news and advice with a minimum deposit of £1. Customers can also pay a monthly fee of $5 for the company's premium service, Robinhood Gold, which gives customers extras like additional research into companies.

Its biggest competitors, the incumbents, have responded since then. Major brokerages Charles Schwab and Fidelity have announced that customers will no longer pay fees to trade US stocks but the UK landscape is markedly different. 

"We have experience entering a highly regulated and competitive space from our growth in the US," Robinhood co-CEO and cofounder Vlad Tenev said in an interview with Business Insider. "We don't feel like this market is well served at this point so we're excited to open our first international office here."

Public equity investment, and investment generally, in the UK is underwhelming. For many, a Hargreaves Lansdown or AJ Bell ISA might include a tracker fund or a long-term pension holding but retail investing is not yet widespread like it is in the US. 

Robinhood will be hoping to change that. The UK has added some 2.2 million new retail investors since 2013 while the size of the UK investment market doubled to $500 billion assets under administration (AUA) between 2013-2017, according to the UK's financial regulator, the FCA.

But that's still a fraction of the numbers in the US, where around half of households own stocks. 

To that effect, challenger bank Revolut started offering stock trading through its app this year while bona-fide competitor Freetrade has a ready-made alternative for UK investors and recently raised a Series A round. Other platforms like eToro will also be gearing up to prove that they are better products as another US giant crosses the Atlantic. 

Revolut shares the same lead investor as Robinhood, Twitter-backer DST Global, adding some spice to their battle. Index Ventures also backs both startups. 

Robinhood made waves in the US but doesn't have first-mover advantage in the UK

When Robinhood launched in the US it was a phenomenon. Everyday investors had to pay fees ranging from $5-10 per trade when the cost to the broker was minuscule by comparison. Thanks to its no-fee promise, Robinhood had half a million people on a waiting list before it even launched and now boasts user numbers as high as six million at last count. 

But Robinhood won't have first-mover advantage in the UK. Rival Freetrade is gaining traction after large crowdfunding campaigns, while Revolut boasts millions of UK and international users. 

"The launch of our commission-free trading service aligns with our overall strategy to build and one-stop shop that can handle your entire financial life," Andre Mohamed, head of trading and wealth at Revolut, told Business Insider. "By rolling this feature out to our customers, we've expanded the retail investing market and democratised access to an area which has been notoriously expensive, complicated and inaccessible for many people." Revolut claims to have 100,000 users on its trading platform since it launched the service. 

But Robinhood is bullish on the prospect of disrupting another market. 

"We have been focused on researching the customer in the UK," Robinhood's UK president Wander Rutgers told Business Insider in an interview. "There is a culture of saving so it's still early on in terms of getting people to invest money but we hope to change that culture. There are other services but it's very early competition and the majority of market is not investing yet."

In the time since Robinhood announced its plans to enter the UK, competitors have bulked up their offerings in an attempt to head off the approaching behemoth. Freetrade claims to have 70,000 users since it closed its waitlist six months ago and is set to launch products in Europe next year. 

"We focus on building the best possible product, and we've seen explosive demand," said Adam Dodds, CEO at Freetrade when contacted by Business Insider. "Our mission is to get everyone investing, through building a zero-commission investment app with trust at its core."

While close to 50% of UK consumers would consider investing in stocks, only one in five have actually done so, per Finder data. This suggests there's a substantial gap in the market, and Robinhood's success in the US bodes well for its ability to draw in UK users, too.

"Our success has come from word of mouth praise from users and we hope that people in the UK will share us with their friends and family," Tenev said. "Our long term plan is to expand into more international markets and we feel confident that if we can crack the UK then we can replicate that elsewhere."

Robinhood has had warnings from international regulators

Like many fast-growth startups, Robinhood sought to disrupt a highly regulated industry with the "move fast and break things" playbook, only to learn that the rules are there for a reason and that breaking them has consequences.

The company was previously warned by regulators about the checking and savings accounts that it planned to offer. It was deemed that Robinhood's foray into banking services might not meet regulatory scrutiny but pressed ahead anyway. The company has faced criticism and rebuke for the rollout of its current account in the US as reported by Business Insider.

Recently, the company was under fire for so-called "unlimited leverage" which allowed some premium users to trade up to $1 million with just a $4,000 deposit, something the company has looked to stop, albeit belatedly.

"When we discovered abusive activity we restricted customer accounts and over the ensuing few days put in a permanent fix. Any time there is tech and software it's hard to make it perfect but we want to make it better," Robinhood's Tenev added.

Since approval by UK regulators in August, Robinhood UK has continued to build out its team in Europe from its office in London. Tenev commented that while Nottingham, home of Robinhood's fictional namesake, may have been a more fitting location it didn't meet the final cut for the company's UK operations. 

Facebook has quietly launched an image-editing app called Whale, intended to generate memes that can be easily edited and shared across different social and messaging apps.

It's only available for the iPhone in Canada, but it seems to be a clear attempt to keep ahold of the teen and Gen Z market, which Facebook is in danger of losing to hit video app TikTok.

We first saw the news of Whale via The Information.

Whale is only available on iPhone and in Canada, but we managed to download the app and give it a whirl.

Here's how it works:

$15 billion data storage company NetApp and Google Cloud just announced an expanded partnership to help customers take advantage of a wave in cloud computing that all the major players are trying to ride.

Intriguingly, NetApp CEO George Kurian and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian are twin brothers, although the partnership dates back to 2017, when Diane Greene was still Google Cloud's chief exec.

The partnership hinges on the notion of the hybrid cloud, which allows customers to run their data and applications across both their private data centers and public cloud platforms like Google's. Microsoft has long established hybrid as a key part of its cloud strategy, though Google and Amazon have both pushed into the space.

NetApp, for its part, has long made hybrid cloud part of its strategy: Its data storage software can run anywhere and everywhere, across servers and the cloud. This newly-expanded partnership with Google takes it a step further though, as NetApp announces on Wednesday NetApp HCI for Google Cloud Anthos.

This new product makes NetApp's services work with Anthos — Google's hybrid cloud product that launched in April and allows customers to use multiple clouds, including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. Anthos has been core to Google Cloud's newly-refined hybrid cloud strategy.

"We're big fans of Anthos," Anthony Lye, senior vice president and general manager at NetApp, told Business Insider. "We've already been working with the Anthos team on Google Cloud to make sure it's available to Anthos developers as they build and deploy stateful applications."

In addition, NetApp announced NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud, which allows customers to use NetApp's file service with Google Cloud, as well as Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Google Cloud, which allows customers to manage data across a hybrid cloud.

Lye says that NetApp first met with Greene, then the Google Cloud CEO, two years ago, with a plan to provide enterprise-grade file storage management. 

"We discussed the opportunity that was in front of us to bring an enterprise-based file service into Google Cloud," Lye said. "We sat around and sort of engineered and defined a road map that I don't think anyone has ever done at Google."

Then, and today, Google Cloud was seen as technologically advanced, but somewhat lacking in features that could appeal to the needs of larger customers. NetApp saw an opportunity: If Google Cloud customers needed NetApp's kind of file system management, then it could be a win-win.

"We respect the wishes of our customers. There's a lot of customers that want Google Cloud," Lye said. "It would be crazy for us not to bring our services there...I think Google speaks for itself. It's a phenomenal platform and loved by many customers."

This partnership also stands to help both companies attract customers who are deeply invested in other major IT software vendors. For example, many SAP customers are also big NetApp users, says Kevin Ichhpurani, corporate vice president of global ecosystem and business development at Google Cloud, meaning it can help them transition from their own data centers into the cloud.

"There's a deep engineering collaboration between the two companies to deliver these solutions," Ichhpurani told Business Insider.

In the future, Lye says to expect more to come from NetApp and Google Cloud's partnership.

"I don't think we decided to work to this date, shake hands, and call it a day," Lye said. "The teams now have a number of innovative projects. We plan to release more and more capabilities together over the coming months and years."

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