You'd never know from the front page of the Russian website iMGSRC that, within its depths, dozens of users are sharing photos of children in various states of undress.

The comments sections underneath those photo galleries are full of other users, all anonymized, weighing in with correspondingly disturbing remarks.

It's this website where US Army Staff Sgt. Richard Ciccarella is said to have uploaded topless pictures of a young female relative. Ciccarella pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to federal investigators about an email address for a Russian website; according to Assistant US Attorney Gregory Schiller, the photos didn't constitute child pornography.

Instead, he's being charged with making a false statement to a federal agent.

"The lie and the obstruction was to cover up an email address to cover up a much bigger investigation that was going on," Schiller said, according to a report in the Palm Beach Post.

Read more: A US Army soldier who worked at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort uploaded photos of an underage girl to a Russian website, prosecutors say

From August 2017 to March 2018, Ciccarella was assigned to the US Army communications detail at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. It was during this period that he is accused of uploading the photos of an underage girl, said to be his relative — one such photo showed an underage girl in underwear next to a Christmas tree, the Miami Herald reported, with the caption, "dirty comments [sic] welcome."

President Trump's Mar-a Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A closer look at the website reveals a much deeper issue: The site is rife with users sharing photos of children in various states of dress, often paired with explicit or suggestive sexual statements.

Like 4chan and 8chan, iMGSRC is an "image board" — an anonymized web forum that allows users to host photos and comment on them. As of September 28, it boasted 1,168,898 registered users. Many of those users upload relatively banal images, like animal and travel photos. Indeed, much of the front page of iMGSRC features photos of cute animals.

But, also like 4chan and 8chan, much of that content seemingly isn't being moderated: We found example after example of users sharing photos albums of children. Some of those photos feature children in their underwear or various states of undress. In every case, those photos were paired with sexual comments from the original uploaded and other users.

The FAQ of iMGSRC addresses the moderation question directly: "We can not be held responsible for what user post on site," it says, "But we do take care to keep host as clean as possible." It also specifically states, "ABSOLUTELY NO CHILD PORN, no child abusive pics and NO child abusive comments! Your account will be banned permanently."

Terms of service aside, it's clear from a brief look around the site that those rules are loose at best. Many of the photos are unlikely to be legally considered "pornography," similar to the ruling with Ciccarella, as the children aren't fully nude.

iMGSRC has gained a reputation in the criminal community for hosting such material. In 2014 a US District Court of Kansas ruling recognized that the site was frequently used to host and trade child pornography. The website has been used in other countries to identify uploaders of illicit pictures of minors as well.

Representatives from iMGSRC did not respond to a request for comment as of publishing.

If you want to introduce your kid to Alexa, but are creeped out by the idea of an Echo speaker in their bedroom you are the target demographic of Amazon's Echo Glow, one of the cheapest devices that the company unveiled at its September 25 launch event in Seattle.

It's a cute smart lamp that can change color and create some simple lighting effects.

Contrary to its name, the $29.99 Echo Glow isn't an Echo speaker. It's actually an Echo accessory, much like the Echo Buttons Amazon released in 2017. That means Alexa isn't built into the Glow; there's no speaker and no microphone. Pair the Glow with an Echo or other smart speaker, and you can use Alexa to control it.

I played around with the Echo Glow for a few minutes — here's what it was like.

As time progresses and the years go by, certain cars start to see a rise in value and become vintage, collectible items that can make great investments.

Unlike the average used car that will depreciate in value with time, these vehicles can appreciate as they get older. Reasons for this vary but often a major factor is supply and demand, with some cars being more desirable than others.

People remember cars and vehicles from their younger years in life and in later life they have the funds available to purchase them, creating a demand. If the supply of the vehicles is limited, then the vehicles start to spike in price as they are bought up, creating a scarcity in supply.

There are many cars that have the potential to increase in value, continue reading to see 11 hand-picked examples of these.

For all things supercars, car reviews and automobiles have a look at The Car Spotter website at www.thecarspotter.co.uk.

BROOKLYN, NY — Caroline Calloway had come to spill the tea.

Those were her words, not anyone else's.

Sitting onstage at the Bell House in Brooklyn Friday night, the Instagram influencer made her first major public appearance — and first public statements outside of media interviews — since her former friend and ghostwriter, Natalie Beach, wrote an essay in The Cut documenting their toxic friendship.

Beach's tell-all essay, which accused Calloway of being a manipulative friend, went massively viral earlier this month. Before that, Calloway drew controversy this past winter for holding $165 creativity workshops that were derided as scams.

Addressing a packed house Friday, Calloway disputed some central facts about Beach's telling of events and hurled a few new accusations at Beach.

For one, she said, Beach was paid her share of Calloway's advance on the deal for the book Beach was meant to help ghostwrite, and unlike Calloway, Beach never had to pay that amount back when the deal fell through (Beach didn't doesn't disclose specifics of how she was paid for the book deal, but wrote that she had difficulty getting Calloway to pay her for other work).

"Natalie not only got 35% of the advance up front, which was maybe a little less than $20,000," Calloway said. "She also got that advance with the legal agreement that if something fell through, I would have to pay back my part and hers. So she not only got that money, she got it forever."

Calloway also disputed Beach's characterization of her wealth. In her essay, Beach wrote about being awed by Calloway's wealth and privilege and contrasted it with her own "railroad apartment that was sinking into the Gowanus Canal."

But on Friday, Calloway said Beach had several family connections in media. Calloway said Beach's aunt is Lucy Kaylin, the editor-in-chief of Oprah Magazine, where Beach has been published multiple times (an article published by Beach's father in the New Haven Register appears to confirm this).

Calloway made these revelations at the Bell House during a live taping of Red Scare, a " dirtbag left"-adjacent podcast with a relatively small but cult-like fanbase of urban millennials. Its hosts, Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova, take a shock-jock approach to cultural commentary (the podcast's merch table Friday was selling "Red Scare" shirts designed to look like the ISIS flag decorated with raunchy women's silhouettes).

In many ways, the conversation between Nekrasova, Khachiyan, and Calloway felt like jarring culture shock. In contrast to Red Scare's edgy, irony-drenched schtick, Calloway's social media presence is entirely earnest.

As she sat on stage in an off-shoulder white crop top that could be plucked from an idyllic influencer's feed, Calloway repeatedly cut herself off and went on tangents. She seemed uneasy with the rowdy Red Scare audience, who regularly heckled her to "get to the point" as she teased "tea" about Beach.

Prodded by the hosts, Calloway opened up about her past Adderall addiction, which she said affected her interactions with Beach and all her other friends throughout her 20s. At one point, Calloway said, she was taking 90mg of Adderall per day, which she got from shady clinics throughout the city.

"If you want to get Adderall in New York you type 'Adderall' into Yelp and filter by worst star ratings first," Calloway said.

Despite the stark differences between the Red Scare hosts and Calloway — who apparently arranged the Bell House event after meeting each other for the first time Thursday night — they share strikingly similar careers: they have found a way to turn viral infamy into a lucrative business. Nekrasova and Khachiyan, who revel in sparking outrage among others on the left, rake in over $14,000 per month on Patreon.

Meanwhile, Calloway openly acknowledged that recent controversy has been profitable, hinting that she intends to sell the rights to her story to a studio. Beach is reportedly already doing the same thing — Calloway said on Friday that Beach has sold the rights to her essay to a studio adaptation headed up by Ryan Murphy for over $1 million, although it's not clear whether Calloway was joking.

"With everything that's happened since I was exposed as a scammer, I can't lie, it's been good for business," Calloway said. "Now I can sell my story for way more than my original book deal ever was."

Calloway revels in the spotlight she is able to whip up among her haters, supporters, and onlookers. Before the Bell House event began, I posted an offhand tweet about the fact that I would be covering it. Within an hour, Calloway — who doesn't appear to have a Twitter — had posted a screenshot of my tweet on her Instagram feed.

"Me after playing the media's obsession with me like a violin," she wrote. "Thanks in advance for the story that probably won't be flattering but I hope is flattering @businessinsider !!!!!"

The second season of DC Universe's "Titans" is surging and "Good Omens" has returned to the list, edging out YouTube's "Cobra Kai." "Stranger Things" is still on top almost three months after its third season debuted.

Every week, Parrot Analytics provides Business Insider with a list of the nine most in-demand TV shows on streaming services. The data is based on " demand expressions," Parrot Analytics' globally standardized TV demand measurement unit. Audience demand reflects the desire, engagement, and viewership weighted by importance, so a stream or download is a higher expression of demand than a "like" or comment on social media, for instance.

Below are this week's nine most popular original shows on Netflix and other streaming services:

Vaping, once thought to be a safe alternative to smoking, is facing increasing scrutiny over an increasingly visible health crisis: 530 total possible cases of vape-related lung illness, according to the CDC.

And it's not just cigarette smoking that has people turning to vaping — cannabis, too, is available in vape form. But, like so many black market items before it, the world of illegal weed vapes is tainted with the potential for dangerous additives that could hurt users.

A recent NBC News study documented exactly how real that potential danger is: Of the 15 black market cannabis vape carts NBC had tested, 13 came back positive for containing Vitamin E acetate — a solvent used to cut cannabis that, when it gets in your lungs, could trigger an immune response that causes pneumonia.

Even worse: Of the illegal carts NBC tested, all 15 tested positive for myclobutanil — a fungicide that, when burned, can turn into hydrogen cyanide.

Legal cannabis vape cartridges at a production facility.Facebook/selectstrains

It's not all bad news — NBC News also tested three cannabis vape cartridges from a legal dispensary in California, all from different manufacturers.

All three came back clean, with the testing facility having found "no heavy metals, pesticides, or residual solvents like Vitamin E."

But with no federal-level regulation for cannabis vape carts, and legality of cannabis so balkanized, it's difficult to regulate dangerous additives in vape carts. As the federal government struggles to regulate the quickly emerging market, it's offering a straightforward solution that should work for anyone: Reconsidering buying and using a black market vape cart.

"If you're thinking of purchasing one of these products off the street, out of the back of a car, out of a trunk, in an alley," Mitch Zeller, the director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, said recently, "or if you're going to go home and make modifications to the product yourself using something that you purchased from some third party or got from a friend, think twice."

Porsche officially launched its first all-electric vehicle, the Taycan. The car has been much-anticipated, and invariably has also been compared with Tesla's offerings. You've seen the headlines: "Tesla Killer" and so on.

The German automaker put together some early media drives in Norway, and so far the reviewers have been impressed if not staggered by the devout Porsche-ness of the Taycan.

But they've also done what they've had to do, which is bring up Tesla as the Taycan's precursor and chief competitor.

In The Wall Street Journal, the redoubtable Dan Neil enthused over the Taycan Turbo (there's also a faster and more expensive Turbo S, and no, the Taycan doesn't have turbocharged electric motors — that's just how Porsche ranks its vehicles within the brand's nomenclature). But Neil had to bring up the supercar-fast Tesla Model S P100D and label it the EV champ that the Taycan is taking on.

Read more: In the battle of the Tesla Model S and the Porsche Taycan, it's really no contest

Maybe this seems perfectly natural, if all you know of the automotive realm is Tesla and Toyota. Cars are cars. A-to-B machines. Most run on gas. Tesla's run on electrons. You're aware of this at least.

The King of Petrolandia

A Porsche 911. Porsche

But in the land of petrol, Porsche is a king — and arguably the finest car maker on the planet. The 911 sports car has been in production since the 1960s and is considered by many if not most to be the best go-fast ride that money can buy. Meanwhile, Porsche basically invented the luxury sport SUV market in the early 2000s with the stunningly good Cayenne. The Panamera sedan has its detractors, but there's no debating the cumulative impact of the Porsche portfolio: the profit margins are the envy of the industry.

Sports cars are irrational; just ask anybody who has ever owned a Ferrari. But Porsche captures hearts and minds. It might lack the overtly flamboyant fizz of a Lamborghini, but a Porsche is probably the car you'd choose if you had to drive for your life.

Enter Tesla, which has existed for about 15 years (Porsche has been around for 88). When Elon Musk's company started out, it was selling a single car, and not very many of them: the original Roadster, with volumes in three-digit territory. It was an undeniably cool car, but it was a curiosity.

Matters got more serious in 2012, when the clean-sheet-design Model S sedan arrived. But still, Tesla has been seriously manufacturing its own vehicles for about ten years. If you round up.

For comparison, cars such as the Ford Mustang (born in 1965) and the Chevy Corvette (born in 1953) have established Porsche-beating credibility in just their most recent iterations, when Ford and Chevy decided that they should be capable of challenging Europe's best.

See also: Apply here to attend IGNITION: Transportation, an event focused on the future of transportation, in San Francisco on October 22.

The car business isn't hard — it's impossible

Elon Musk with the new Tesla Roadster. Tesla

Ask anybody in the car business if the business is hard and they'll look at you as if you had a second head. It isn't hard. It's impossible. The destiny of aspiring car makers, almost uniformly, is to fail. See Tucker. See Fisker. Even relative legends struggle: Aston Martin has gone bankrupt seven times.

Tesla hasn't just not gone bankrupt (despite being close in 2008) — it's become Porsche's biggest rival for the future of driving, at least according to some.

I actually don't think Tesla and Porsche are rivals in any meaningful sense. But there's no avoiding the discourse. When the word "Taycan" is uttered these days, the world "Tesla" typically follows.

Remarkable.

Generally speaking, it's possible for niche players to steal mindshare from industry icons. Since 1992, Horacio Pagani has built his eponymous exotic nameplate into a brand that's talked about as a modern-day Ferrari or Lamborghini — and in the estimation of some pundits, builds more compelling cars. Likewise Sweden's Koenigsegg, founded in 1994.

But those guys make bonkers supercars that sell in minuscule quantities and cost lots and lots of money. Tesla, meanwhile, isn't simply aiming to top vehicles such as the $100,000-plus Taycan with the $100,000-plus Model S trims; it also wants to take on Porsche's parent, the VW Group, in the mass-market.

In that, success has been mixed. The relatively new Model 3 endured a fraught debut, but it did help the company to sell nearly 250,000 vehicles in 2018, a record. Tesla now dominates the EV market worldwide (don't get too excited — the worldwide EV market is tiny). Managing the situation is Tesla main concern. And that makes the reflexive Porsche comparos all the more remarkable. Because Porsche cares not one bit about the mass market. You settle for a Corolla. But you dream of a 911.

Or perhaps a Taycan.

That's Tesla. In 2009, a one-car company. In 2019, a worthy opponent for Porsche. Tesla has indeed come a long way, baby. And probably more than that.

Like many companies engaged in a highly competitive business, Tesla is not always an easy place to work. From long hours to the stress of working under CEO Elon Musk, a job at the electric-car maker can be demanding.

Nine former employees who worked at the company between 2008 and 2019 described their least favorite parts of their jobs. Each asked for anonymity due to a fear of reprisal from Tesla.

Here's what they said.

The photos in this story do not depict the former Tesla employees Business Insider interviewed.

Are you a current or former Tesla employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Many people travel through Silicon Valley, either for work or personal reasons. There are hotels and motels to stay in, of course, but there are also more unusual and adventurous options. Airbnb helps you find these options by letting you filter for "unusual stays," such as tree houses, yurts, or tiny houses.

Tiny houses have become popular as a way to live more sustainably and use fewer resources, and also as a way to live more cheaply and save money for other things like travel. Maybe you're thinking about living in a tiny house someday, or maybe you just want to test one out for a night or two. Either way, these 9 Silicon Valley homes are a cool way to experience the area, and tiny living.

Here are 9 tiny houses near Silicon Valley to check out on Airbnb.

The San Francisco Bay area is home to some of the richest people in the world, and therefore, some extravagant real estate.

This home combines iconic design elements with modern amenities. Located in the Berkeley Hills, it was designed by architect Daniel Liebermann and built in 1980.

Liebermann was a protege of celebrity architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and the home bears some of his trademarks. For example, the building was clearly inspired by Wright's concept of "organic architecture," meaning that it fits into the landscape and features natural elements that occur in the area, in this case, stone slate fireplaces and wood beams.

This style principle facilitates indoor/outdoor living, which this home has by way of sliding glass walls and cutouts for water features.

Sean Walsh with Compass has the listing.

Scroll through for more photos and details about this home.

Erik Fjellborg was flipping burgers at a McDonald's in Sweden when he saw the hassles a restaurant manager had to deal with managing schedules and shifts.

"Everytime someone wanted to book a shift or swap a shift, the manager had to go back to the back office with this huge telephone list and started to dial around for replacements, which could take hours," he told Business Insider.

Fjellborg was then a high school student with a passion for computers, and his McDonald's stint sparked an idea, software to help businesses manage a workplace better.

He was only 18 when he launched Quinyx in 2005. The startup offers AI-powered cloud software for scheduling, absence management and improving business operations, by analyzing all of its data. Quinyx has now raised $40 million from several venture capital investors, including Battery Ventures, Alfvén & Didrikson, and Zobito.

McDonald's Swedish subsidiary became one of its first customers, and Quinyx also has been embraced by the burger chain in other Nordic countries, Fjellborg said.

"McDonald's was a good starting point for the business," he said. "We still have them as a customer today, which is great."

Quinyx has not been embraced by McDonald's in the US where it based — but that could soon change, Fjellborg said. Last month, Quinyx, which now has 700 customers and 500,000 users mostly in Europe where it has a strong presence, launched its US operations, opening an office in Boston.

"We reached a certain scale in Europe, and it was a good time for us to make this move," he said.

Quinyx is competing in a growing market. The human capital management market is projected to grow from $16.4 billion to $17.9 billion this year, according to IDC.

Gartner's report on the vendors in the space cited Quinyx's focus on businesses in retail, hospitality, transportation, warehousing and health care. Its customers have between 1,000 and 10,000 employees, with its largest customer having more than 40,000.

Moving to the US was a logical next step for the company, Fjellborg said.

"We are setting up operations to take the market opportunity and grow in the most interesting and largest market in the world, he said. "We have an ambition to build a global company, so we have to be in the US market."

Here's the pitch deck Quinyx used to raise $40 million:

Jobs at tech companies are coveted

Career marketplace Hired asked 3,600 tech workers to share who which tech companies they want to work at the most for Hired's 2019 Brand Health Report.

Read more: The 10 most inspiring leaders in tech, according to thousands of tech workers

Here are the 30 tech companies that techies are most keen to work at:

Sea levels could rise more than 3 feet within 80 years. Most warm-water coral reefs are expected to die. The oceans are heating up twice as fast as they were in the early '90s.

These are just some of the worrisome findings detailed in a new report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Read More:Sea levels are projected to rise 3 feet within 80 years, according to a new UN report. Hundreds of millions of people could be displaced.

But two other new reports point out important ways the oceans can help us address the climate crisis.

That research suggests that ocean-based activities have the potential to reduce global carbon-dioxide emissions by nearly 11 billion tons — that's 21% of the reductions needed to keep the planet's temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (the target set in the Paris climate agreement).

The data comes from the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy (HLP) — a group of world leaders and scientists — as well as an accompanying paper in the journal Science.

"We outline a 'no-regrets to-do list' of ocean-based climate actions that could be set in motion today," the authors of the study wrote.

One of those actions has to do with our diet: Getting more protein from seafood and less from meat.

The case for eating more seafood

The ship Arctic Sunrise surrounded by ice floes in the ocean near Svalbard, Norway. Christian Aslund/Greenpeace

The IPCC assessment, compiled by more than 100 authors from 36 countries, focused on the state of the world's oceans and its cryosphere — the frozen parts of the planet. The findings revise projections for sea-level rise upwards: If Earth's temperature increases by more than 3 degrees Celsius, the authors found, water levels would be an average of 3 feet higher by the year 2100.

The report "paints a gloomy picture of the impacts of climate change on the ocean, ocean ecosystems and people, and an even more dismal portrayal of what is in store unless we get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions rapidly," Jane Lubchenco, a co-author of the Science study and an HLP advisor, said in a press release.

The solutions Lubchenco and her colleagues highlight fall into five broad categories: producing more ocean-based renewable energy, making the shipping and transport industries carbon-neutral, protecting and restoring ecosystems that sequester carbon dioxide, storing carbon under the seabed, and shifting diets to include more seafood.

"Earth's oceans are not simply a passive victim of climate change, but instead provide a previously unappreciated opportunity to provide solutions towards reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions," the HLP authors said in a press release.

Vendors sort fish and other seafood at a market in Bangkok, Thailand, March 31, 2016. Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

The reason to eat more seafood, according to the report, is that sources of protein from the ocean (like seafood, seaweed, and kelp) can have a substantially lower carbon footprint than meat from land animals. As two of the HLP members — Erna Solberg, the prime minister of Norway, and Tommy Remengesau Jr., the president of Palau — wrote in a CNN opinion piece, consuming more of those can both help make your diet more healthy and sustainable while easing emissions.

Approximately 3 billion people in the world already rely on wild-caught and farmed seafood as their primary source of protein, according to the World Wildlife Organization.

The fishing and aquaculture industries are not wholly carbon-neutral; however, cow, sheep, and poultry farming accounts for 18% of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, according to The Conversation. That's a larger chunk of emissions than those from ships, planes, trucks, and cars put together.

A study published last month calculated that if every American replaced all beef, chicken, and pork in their diet with a vegetarian option, that would save the equivalent of 280 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year. That's roughly the same as taking about 60 million cars off the road.

The potential of ocean-based renewable energy

Power-generating wind turbines at the Amrumbank West offshore wind farm near the island of Amrum, Germany September 4, 2015.Morris Mac Matzen/REUTERS

Even more impactful than dietary changes, however, is harnessing the power of the wind and waves via tidal-energy systems and offshore wind farms, the HLP group said.

Lubchenco and her colleagues say more investment is needed for research and development efforts to increase the number of floating offshore wind farms that could be built farther from shore. They also suggest that countries set clear targets for increasing the use of ocean-based renewable energy by the years 2030 and 2050.

Solberg and Remengesau Jr. told CNN that increasing ocean-based renewable energy could cut nearly 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year by 2050. That's the equivalent of taking over 1 billion cars off the road for a year.

"To win the fight against climate change, we need all hands on deck — on land and sea," they wrote.

The race to the bottom for trading commissions could soon go through the floor.

A former high-frequency trading executive is betting his newly launched investment platform can take on discount brokers and zero-commission stock trading apps like Robinhood by offering a twist on how fees are structured and disclosed to customers. That includes getting paid to trade.

Alan Grujic, who was previously the chief executive of Infinium Securities, a high-frequency trading firm in California, founded San Francisco-based startup All of Us last year with the intention of offering an investment platform with a transparent pricing model that shares some of its overall revenue from non-commission sources with customers. He says it will fully launch in January and has around 100 people on a waitlist to use its product.

"If you did a very large trade with us, you get several dollars back. So you'd literally get money into your account," he told Business Insider.

All of Us wants to base its revenue stream on a maximum 50-basis-point fee on client assets held on the platform. Grujic said under his pricing model he needs to reach $2 billion in assets to reach what he considers scale. He does see a path to that milestone within the first year — although he admits it is an aggressive goal. In an effort to drum up attention, he said the first 10,000 customers will have zero fees whatsoever for the first year.

Grujic said the new platform is targeting users with an average account size of roughly $50,000. He said that potential pool reflects both larger clients from Robinhood and smaller customers from E-Trade and TD Ameritrade.

Read more: The inside story of how Robinhood, a $6 billion investing app for millennials, blew a huge launch so badly that Congress got involved

Grujic, along with chief technology officer Iain Clarke, demoed the project at Finovate, a fintech industry conference in New York this week. He supplied the first $2 million in funding for All of Us, then raised an additional $1 million on a convertible note offering led by Apex Clearing, which offers clearing and custody services for many robos and online brokerages. The platform hopes to raise an additional $1 million before the end of 2019.

The competitive nature of the business was on full display this week. The discount brokerage firm Interactive Brokers said on Thursday it would roll out a commission-free US offering starting in October for US-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds. Interactive Brokers' announcement promptly sent shares of Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and E-Trade diving.

Charles Schwab offers clients opening an individual brokerage account 500 commission-free online stock and options trades within two years of signing up. TD Ameritrade offers 500 commission-free online stock, options, and exchange-traded fund trades when a new client deposits $3,000 or more.

And Business Insider reported that JPMorgan's You Invest retail trading platform housed on the Chase website and app has quietly started rolling out options trading to select customers. Options trading fees are $2.95, plus 75 cents per contract. Robinhood launched a zero-commission options trading product in 2017.

You Invest has offered users 100 free stock trades a year, which can also scale up based on account size and level of service they have with Chase.

Read more: JPMorgan is taking aim at apps like Robinhood by quietly rolling out options trading to select You Invest customers

Traditional discount brokers may earn a commission on trades they handle, although that is under pressure industry-wide with apps like Robinhood offering free trades. But brokers can also earn revenue from things like an interest spread on client cash accounts, lending client shares, and from channeling clients' orders through certain traders.

That income amounts to unquoted costs for the customer, Grujic said. And so instead, All of Us would set a maximum fee — 50 basis points — based on the size of a customer's portfolio that reflects all of those kinds of costs.

And All of Us will refund to customers anything that it takes in over that 50-basis-point benchmark. As an example, the fledgling firm says a member with a $100,000 account would generate a maximum of $500 annually for the company, inclusive of the various revenue streams.

"Those revenue streams are fine, but they're hard to understand," Grujic said. "The transaction isn't obvious. You don't pay that, so you don't know that is your revenue stream."

Alan Grujic is the chief executive of All of Us. All of Us

Read more: Meet the 8 key players leading the most innovative tech projects on Wall Street, from massive integrations to building new banks

In particular, selling customers' buy-and-sell orders to sophisticated high-frequency traders, a practice known as payment for order flow, has come into the spotlight. While the practice is completely legal and not uncommon in the space — E-Trade, Schwab and TD Ameritrade all do it — it is not something that is directly reflected in a commission price tag seen by the customer.

Robinhood, which charges no trading fees, in particular has drawn criticism for not fully explaining the practice to users. Payment for order flow was more than 40% of Robinhood's total revenue, Bloomberg has reported. Robinhood founder Vlad Tenev eventually addressed the topic directly via a blog post in October 2018, denying that the practice affects prices and saying Robinhood sells order flow to the firm that is most likely to give you the best execution quality.

Grujic said All of Us plans to reimburse a third of what it generates for selling its order flow directly back to customers, and potentially more later in the year as long as it covers its 50-basis-points fee.

"Everything is becoming free in trading because it actually is something that gets paid for by market-makers," Grujic said. "There is value to that order flow, and it's been monetized. The reason is it's coming down to zero is because there is actually money being made on it."

As firms have pushed to charge less, or nothing at all, they've been forced to lean more heavily on other revenue streams, or create new ones altogether.

"Forget about trying to explain it in detail. Let's post right on our platform how much we make in our customers in revenue," Grujic said.

Read more: 2 senior executives are now out at Charles Schwab as the discount broker prepares to cut 600 jobs

Discount brokers have been under even more pressure as US interest rates fall. Charles Schwab, which has also been making moves to expand advisory services and is set to close its acquisition of USAA next year, is cutting 600 jobs, and that comes on the heels of high-profile exec exits and restructuring first reported by Business Insider. Earlier this month, we reported some more exec departures in its retail arm as those job cuts take hold, as well as the exit of a prominent markets analyst.

TD Ameritrade and E-Trade have seen executive shakeups at the very top, with CEO departures announced within weeks of each other this summer.

Earlier this month, McDonald's concluded a review of its US marketing strategy by assigning lead creative duties to independent agency Wieden and Kennedy.

The move took many in the industry by surprise three years after the world's biggest fast-food brand consolidated work in its most important region with holding company giant Omnicom. But what did the move really mean for the market?

Was it yet another sign of weakness for the Big Six holding companies that control most of the world's ad spend? A strike against the industry narrative that places data over creative quality when determining the value of ad work? Or was McDonald's simply an outlier?

See what the winning agency had to say: Internal memo from McDonald's new ad agency reveals why the world's biggest fast-food chain bucked industry trends to reshape its marketing strategy

Wieden and Kennedy leadership told staff that the decision was a victory for traditional, back-to-basics storytelling. In the note, the agency's copresidents said incumbent We Are Unlimited "forgot the power of creativity (or arguably didn't have much to offer)" and all but dismissed the original pitch, which promised to place data "at the core of everything they did."

Read more about how Omnicom won the account three years ago: Internal documents reveal how ad-holding-company giant Omnicom won the $800 million McDonald's account and used its model to pitch other advertisers

Omnicom promoted its "agency of the future" model back in 2016 by hyping cross-agency integration and "embedded teams" from Google, Facebook, and Twitter along with its ability to turn insights gleaned from social media into promotional content. The holding company framed this approach as unique even though it was similar to offerings from other agencies.

The holding company will fold its once-dedicated division into parent company DDB: McDonald's demanded that Omnicom create an ad agency dedicated to its business. Now that unit will fold.

While the holding company retained the vast majority of its McDonald's business around the world, the loss was significant enough to spark a significant strategic shift. Sources confirmed to Business Insider that the dedicated agency We Are Unlimited, which was founded as a standalone business, will soon become part of parent company DDB.

Check out an insider's view of how the agency-client relationship broke down: McDonald's and its ad agency sparred over a bizarre campaign stunt involving an LP made entirely of bacon. The agency later lost the majority of the account.

Disagreements between agencies and their clients are a daily fact of life in the ad industry. But one particularly crazy instance for McDonald's and Omnicom involved a pitch for a record made entirely of bacon to promote the chain's new "bacon week" deal.

The move could signal a new approach to conflict management for big spenders: Advertisers have long avoided sharing agencies with competitors. McDonald's just abandoned that tradition, and other big brands could follow suit.

The most interesting aspect of the McDonald's shift, according to several industry analysts, is the fact that Wieden and Kennedy will now simultaneously work with rival KFC in a reversal of both chains' exclusivity politices. If this turns into a trend, it could be good news for brands and agencies alike.

For years, Wall Street has been trying to figure out which part of Alphabet's business — beyond Google Search ads — will emerge as its next big money maker.

There's the cloud computing division, gaining momentum, but still a distant third behind market leaders Microsoft and Amazon. And there's the Waymo self-driving car initiative, developing a robotaxi service that could change the way people travel.

But according to a recent note by RBC Capital analyst Mark Mahaney, the Alphabet asset with the most potential to become a revenue machine is Google Maps, the digital mapping product that has already become an essential part of more than one billion people's lives around the world.

Calling Maps one of the "greatest under/un-monetized" online platforms in the world, Mahaney recently flagged the app as his basis for boosting his price target for Alphabet's stock, projecting that Maps will deliver an additional $1.9 billion to $3.6 billion in revenue by 2021.

Although Google does not share its specific revenues from Maps today, Mahaney estimated that the navigation product — first released more than 14 years ago — would generate over $3.5 billion in revenue in 2019. The total revenue for Google's parent company, Alphabet, was over $130 billion in 2018.

The optimism about Google's trusty Maps product comes as newer initiatives face skepticism. Morgan Stanley slashed its estimated valuation of Alphabet's Waymo by 40% last week.

The investment firm said in a research note that it believed Alphabet's self-driving car business was now worth $105 billion, instead of $175 billion, because of Waymo'rs delays and complications launching a commercial business.

Google's 2 apps give it a massive mapping market share

Google Maps, on the other hand, doesn't have question marks surrounding its consumer viability. As Mahaney noted, navigation apps have become "something of a utility," with 77% of smartphone owners using them regularly, according to a study cited in the report.

That widespread usage is good news for Google, as the note also highlighted the company's massive, 80% market share of navigation apps today, which is split between Google Maps (representing 67% of the market, according to the report) and Waze (which represents 12%).

Between Google Maps and Waze, Google owns around 80% of the navigation app market share. RBC

As Google looks to prove that there's diversity in its revenue potential beyond traditional search ads, Mahaney's note should provide a bit of relief to Wall Street. Instead of having to wait years for some of the tech giant's long term bets to start paying off, Mahaney shows that the company can make incremental changes to existing properties — like Maps — and create major upside to its bottom line.

Ads are the major revenue driver for Maps, but there's still room for more.

Today, Maps primarily makes money by selling advertisements to businesses, even though Google has repeatedly said that it doesn't want those ads to distract from its navigation features. Having to toe that line between maximizing profits while maintaining its user experience has forced the Maps team to be creative with its ad formats.

For instance, when a user opens up Maps and sees reference points for nearby businesses, some of those reference points — known internally as "Promoted Pins" — are paid for by businesses themselves.

Google also offers "Local Search Ads" in Maps. Say, for instance, a user wants a haircut and types "barber" into the search bar on Maps. When they do so, a list of nearby barbershops will appear and sometimes, the top result will be a paid ad.

Ads are in Maps, but sometimes can go unnoticed by the user. RBC

Still, Google doesn't seem to be as aggressive as it could be with ads within Maps.

In a study carried out by RBS, the firm found that Local Search Ads on Maps appeared in 48% of searches on desktop, while only 21% of the time on mobile. And since most of Google Maps' usage comes from mobile (90% of total traffic happens on a smartphone, the study claims), Mahaney said the product, "has a long way to further monetization."

Specifically, Mahaney said that if Google increased its Maps ad loads on mobile to levels closer to its desktop product, the company would increase revenues by over $3 billion within the next two years.

Allowing small to medium-sized businesses to advertise on Maps could unlock major revenue.

Mahaney also said beyond increasing the sheer number of ads on mobile, he's been impressed with Google's efforts to expand and diversify its ad offerings.

At this year's Marketing Live event — the company's annual conference for advertisers — Google said it would be opening up Local Search Ads to small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), a segment that Mahaney said "constitutes the majority of advertisers on Google," but previously couldn't advertise on Maps. Google did not say when this option would be available to SMBs beyond that it would be happening "soon," but Mahaney said his team was already starting to see smaller businesses advertising on Maps while conducting their research.

Read more: The Pixel watch that never was: An inside look at how Google's smartwatch efforts beat Apple to the punch, but then broke down and never recovered

Beyond opening up to SMBs, Google also said at Marking Live it would roll out new ad products on Maps. One such product — which Mahaney's team dubbed the "Suggested Stop Ad" — asks users, like the name implies, if they'd like to add a stop along their route for a business that paid for the suggestion.

"Suggested stops will be based on proximity to the route and Google's typical user data-driven recommendations," Mahaney said. "Google's Waze has been experimenting with similar (and more intrusive) navigation-based ad formats since at least early 2018 and this ad format has clearly taken some inspiration from the strategic asset."

"Suggested stops" are a new ad option on Google Maps. RBC

Interestingly, Waze, which was acquired by Google in 2013 but kept as a separate app since then, has proven to extremely valuable to Google Maps, Mahaney said, especially when testing new ad formats.

With a smaller user base (90 million versus over one billion for Google Maps), Waze has the freedom to introduce new ad products on more of a whim. If they prove to be a success without distracting from the overall experience, those ad products can be moved over to the Maps mothership.

"In our view, Waze provides Google with a tool to test and iterate on monetizing Navigation without disrupting its much larger Google Maps asset," Mahaney said.

In what was more of a sidenote, Mahaney also touched on the alternative way that Google Maps makes money — allowing businesses to leverage its Maps service via the product's APIs.

Although only ad growth potential was considered in Mahaney's recent upgrade, the RBC director did allude to the growing importance of this particular revenue channel, especially for ridesharing companies. Uber, for instance, recently disclosed that it had paid Google over $50 million to integrate Maps into its apps for drivers and consumers, and Mahaney said he believes that number will only grow over the years.

"Though advertising revenue remains the primary near-term benefit of this asset, we believe the long-term importance of owning Navigation goes far beyond that," he said.

SEATTLE, Washington — Amazon is holding an event at its Seattle, Washington, headquarters on Wednesday where it's widely expected to unveil new devices across its Echo and Alexa lineup. The event comes as Amazon has come under increased scrutiny in recent months over consumer privacy and concerns that its size and influence may be giving it an unfair advantage in the market.

Amazon hasn't said much publicly about what the event will entail. But if it's anything like last year's keynote, we can expect to see a slew of new products with Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant built-in, from new Echo gadgets to household appliances. In September 2018, Amazon debuted a bevy of new Alexa-enabled products in an event that was flooded with hardware announcements ranging from a microwave that can respond to your voice commands to new Echo speakers and an Alexa-enabled wall clock. The company also announced additional Alexa features, like its Alexa Guard security service.

Read more: Amazon ousts Apple as millennials' favorite brand, despite the retail giant's tarnished reputation

Not only is Amazon expected to release an updated, high-end version of its popular Echo speaker, but it also may expand into new product categories entirely like wearable devices and home robots, according to Bloomberg. The company, for example, is preparing to debut a new set of Alexa-enabled earbuds that would rival Apple's AirPods, Bloomberg reports.

Doing so would give Amazon's digital assistant more of a mobile presence, an area in which Alexa falls behind competitors like Apple's Siri and the Google Assistant. While Alexa is available via a smartphone app, virtual assistants made by Apple and Google are baked directly into the operating system, making them more tightly integrated into the phone's software and providing easier access.

But Alexa does dominate the home: as of January 2019, Amazon accounted for 61.1% of the smart speaker market in the United States, according to a survey from Voicify and Voicebot.ai. However, Google is catching up quickly with 23.9% of the market, a notable increase from its 18.4% US market share in January 2018. 

Amazon is also reportedly working on a new wrist-worn device that could identify the wearer's emotional state as well as a roving Alexa robot that could follow you around the home, according to Bloomberg.

The announcements would come at a critical moment for Amazon. The company, as well as other large tech firms, has been closely watched by regulators over concerns that its size and influence makes it difficult for newcomers to compete in the market. In July, the Department of Justice announced it would launch a broad probe into top online platforms for search, ecommerce, and social media to determine whether such companies were stifling innovation. 

When it comes to Alexa, Amazon found itself caught in controversy after a report from Bloomberg revealed that human contractors had been listening to and annotating Alexa recordings. The company subsequently released new features that make it easier to delete such recordings from Alexa devices. 

We'll be updating our live blog below throughout the event, so follow along to learn about the news as it's announced. 

Following is a transcript of the video.

Apple just added a bunch of new useful features to the iPhone.

Like Dark Mode, spam-call blocking, and new gestures.

 To use them, first download iOS 13.

The best features that just came to the iPhone. 

Dark Mode

Go to Settings.

Scroll down to Display & Brightness.

Choose "Dark" under Appearance.

Your phone will switch to dark mode!

You can schedule it by tapping Automatic.

Make it come on at sunset...

Create a custom schedule...

Or just leave it enabled 24/7.

Like the iPhone X and XS...

You can add Dark Mode to the Control Center.

Go to Settings.

Scroll down to Control Center.

Customize Controls.

Tap the "+" next to Dark Mode.

It will now be in the Control Center.

Dark mode uses less battery on phones with OLED screens...

Like the iPhone X, XS and 11 Pro.

Block spam calls

Go to Settings.

Scroll down to Phone.

Enable "Silence Unknown Callers."

That's it!

Unknown callers will now be sent to voicemail.

They can hang up or leave a message.

If they hang up, you'll still get a "Missed Call" notification.

Finally, a way to ignore all those "free" flights you've won.

Voice Control

Go to Settings.

Scroll down to Accessibility.

Select Voice Control.

The iPhone will show you some of the commands you can use...

Like "Open Safari"...

Or "Tap Home."

You can use "Customize Commands" to disable or enable various commands.

Or make your own.

You can use it to take screenshots...

Raise or lower the volume...

Tap...swipe...pinch...zoom...

And even for dictation!

Extend battery life

Go to Settings.

Battery.

Battery Health.

Turn "Optimized Battery Charging" on.

The iPhone will now learn your daily charging routine.

And the phone won't charge past 80% until you need to use it.

Say goodbye to year-old phones dying after just a few hours of use!

Use PS4 and Xbox controllers

PS4 controllers: Hold down the PS and Share buttons until the light starts blinking.

Xbox controllers: Press the Xbox button.

Hold down the Connect button for three seconds.

Go to Settings on your iPhone.

Bluetooth.

Find the DualShock 4 or Xbox Wireless Controller in the list.

And tap to pair.

That's it!

Happy gaming!

New gestures

Go to Settings

Browse documents, pages, and conversations by dragging the scroll bar.

Select text by just tapping and swiping.

Triple- and quadruple-tap to select sentences and paragraphs.

Copy text by pinching up with three fingers.

Cut text by pinching up with three fingers two times.

Paste text by pinching down with three fingers.

Quickly select multiple emails, files, and folders by tapping with two fingers and dragging.

You can tap the cursor to pick it up and drag it to where you want it to be.

Swipe to the left with three fingers to undo.

And to the right with three fingers to redo.

That's it!

Soon they may be as easy to remember as pinch to zoom.

Redesigned Photos app

The Photos tab sorts your photos by year, month, day, or all.

Selecting a year will show highlights of each month.

Tapping those will bring you to more photo highlights from that day.

 Duplicate photos, screenshots, receipts, and other miscellaneous items are hidden from view.

Those can be found in the All Photos tab.

Which you can now pinch to zoom to scale up and down...

Making basic navigation and photo-finding even easier.

Significant events and holidays are highlighted in the Months tab...

With the app automatically sorting holidays, trips, and other significant events.

If you're wondering why the photos highlighted in years always change...

It's because it's showing photos taken on or around the same day in past years.

The For You tab will automatically organize memories from the past...

Suggest some edits...

And spotlight recent photos from your contacts.

Search has gotten smarter — you can use multiple words to filter searches.

And if you take multiple Live Photos within 1.5 seconds of each other...

They can be turned into videos.

Just select the photos...

Tap the share icon...

And select "Save as Video."

You can also export Live Photos as GIFs.

Adding multiple effects to a photo?

WeWork, the coworking company that recently delayed its IPO due to lack of investor interest and concerns about former CEO Adam Neumann, is now being criticized after five cleaners that worked in its No. 1 Poultry Office Central London location were terminated.

WeWork contracts out cleaning services to CCM Facilities Management for this office. According to a press release from the Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union (CAIWU), each of the five members of the cleaning staff was dismissed after a WeWork staffer intervened to request that they be removed from the premises. At least one of the dismissed workers was offered alternative positions by CCM, but then he was fired before he had the chance to actually accept the position, the press release said.

CAIWU, a union that represents over a thousand workers in London, mainly in the cleaning industry, has been posting about the dismissals at WeWork since August 20, when it wrote "It's a shame they picked on the wrong union — because we have no intention of holding back from publicizing their scandalous employment practices." By this point, one of the dismissed workers had been reinstated, but CAIWU claimed CCM was refusing to consider the other 4 cases. The CAIWU is also pushing CCM to officially recognize the union.

"The reasons offered by WeWork for the removal requests vary from a serious allegation of racism to a minor complaint about the cleaner having spoken out of turn to a WeWork manager," the union press release reads. It goes on to say that none of the allegations have witnesses or "compelling evidence."

Jonathan Castillo was a supervisor hired by CCM, where he had worked for almost two years before he was suspended, he told Business Insider in a phone interview. Based on his account, he worked in the WeWork along with two other cleaners, and each of them was responsible for cleaning one floor of the building. Part of Castillo's job as a supervisor included ordering supplies for himself and the other cleaners, including toilet paper for the restrooms. He said that he would bring the order requests to the community associate, who was employed directly by WeWork. Castillo says that the community associate made mistakes on orders, and was angry when Castillo corrected the orders. He told Business Insider that on March 6, his CCM manager told him that he was suspended over an allegation of racism, "something I've never said or done." Castillo denies the accusation, and believes that the WeWork community associate made the accusation to retaliate against him. 

Castillo said that he had a meeting with his union representative and CCM after his dismissal. At the meeting, it was determined that the accusation was lacking proof to back it up, and the allegation was dropped, he told Business Insider. However, he said that he was informed that WeWork didn't want him working at any of its London sites.

Castillo said that nearly three weeks after the original dismissal, on March 26, his manager contacted him again to offer him a job at another London WeWork at a lower hourly rate. Despite the lower pay, Castillo wanted to accept the job and asked for an offer in writing, which was confirmed through text screenshots viewed by Business Insider. Later that same day, he received a letter from CCM stating that he had declined the job alternative, although he had accepted over the phone, and asked for an offer in writing.

The union press release raised two issues with the workers' dismissals:

• "Under normal circumstances, a company cannot dismiss an employee without having
conducted a proper disciplinary process first. However, outsourcing clients routinely
insist on the inclusion of contractual terms with their suppliers reserving their right to
determine who is and is not allowed on their premises.

• Under such circumstances, the employer is obliged to make reasonable attempts to
find alternative work for the employee — CCM claims it has done so in some of these
cases, but workers were subsequently dismissed before being given a reasonable
opportunity to consider the offer or to consult with their trade union first."

In a statement to Business Insider, CCM pushed back on the union's characterization of the dismissals.

"Of the four individuals, [because one was rehired] two were offered alternative employment, which was declined in both cases," it said in a statement. "The two other cases resulted in dismissals, which were both upheld at appeal. To CCM Facilities Ltd knowledge, none of these individuals have filed Employment Tribunal cases for unfair dismissal or any other reasons."

WeWork declined to comment.

Other WeWork tenants took notice, like Adam McGibbon, who works in a different WeWork office about half a mile away. According to McGibbon, employees of Global Witness, which occupies the top floor of an East London WeWork, wrote and sent a letter to Adam Neumann on September 16 but did not receive a response. Neumann stepped down from his role as CEO on September 24.

The letter calls the cases for dismissal "dubious," and alleges that WeWork deprived the workers of proper investigations and disciplinary processes. The tenants called out WeWork, accusing it of not living up to its mission. "Your brand is being damaged by this dispute and it is making a mockery of your image as a compassionate company," they wrote in the letter to Neumann.

Global Witness' letter echoes the demands of the union. The tenants asked that:

Union members and supporters protested outside the No. 1 Poultry WeWork on Wednesday, September 18, and they have two more protests planned for the afternoon of September 25. 

On September 20, Apple reopened its newly designed Fifth Avenue store to the public.

Located across the street from Central Park, the new space is nearly twice the size of the original. Apple had the cube completely redesigned with new glass panels. The store will be open 24/7.

Hiding in plain sight inside the new store is an Easter egg that only die-hard Apple fans will notice. In the headphones and speakers section of the store, Apple arranged AirPods to look like music notes on a staff. On its own, it's a cute and clever display, but there's more: the notes make up the score from an ad from the original "Think Different" campaign.

Here's a closer look: 

The 1997 ad associated Apple with influential 20th centuries figures, from Albert Einstein to Martin Luther King Jr. Actor Richard Dreyfuss narrated, "Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers — the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently," as the commercial showed images of these people.

The ad ends with Dreyfuss saying "Think different," a slogan that continues to be associated with Apple. 

You can watch the ad right here: