Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi Johannes Eisele/Contributor/Getty The healthcare industry has been notoriously resistant to change, but its transformation at the hands of digitization has recently picked up pace. With that shift, nontraditional players are starting to see new openings to establish a presence in the lucrative industry. One area where these firms are stepping in is transportation.

Access to affordable and convenient transportation heavily impacts public health — transportation issues cost the US health system around $150 billion annually — so improving the process for patients has become more of a priority for the healthcare industry. Tech-facing mobility companies like Uber and Lyft have seen this as an opportunity to leverage their reach and advanced technical capabilities to help get patients to appointments and, in turn, tap into a multibillion-dollar nonemergency medical transport (NEMT) market.

However, the opportunity in healthcare transportation isn't limited to new mobility challengers. Legacy automakers should also consider entering the space as they continue their shift toward service-based business models in response to global declines in auto ownership. One company that's already doing this is Detroit-based Ford Motors, which introduced an on-demand NEMT service, dubbed GoRide, in 2018. GoRide provides patients with rides using its fleet of wheelchair-accessible vans.

But entering a space as complicated and heavily regulated as healthcare doesn't come without challenges. To take full advantage of the lucrative industry, transportation firms will have to navigate the complex regulatory landscape, make patient privacy a top priority, and meet a wide array of patient needs, such as having to travel with a wheelchair.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence discusses the forces that are opening opportunities for transportation companies in healthcare, the value that can be gained from entering the space, and what hurdles they must overcome to become go-to service providers. We look at interviews with executives at Lyft, Uber, and Ford to unpack their companies' services, identify best practices, and determine what opportunities may lie ahead.

The companies mentioned in this report are:Advocate Health Care,American Logistics Corporation, Blue Cross Blue Shield Institute, CareMore, Change Healthcare, Ford, General Motors, Lyft, MedStar Health, and Uber.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

In full, the report:

Interested in getting the full report? Here's how to get access:

Business Insider Intelligence Voice is making waves across industries, but the transformative power of the technology is now at a tipping point in healthcare. The opportunity for voice in healthcare is pegged to mount as the global health virtual assistant market is expected to reach $3.5 billion in 2025.

US healthcare providers' interest in voice tech is being catalyzed by recent technological breakthroughs growing the tech's potential to transform legacy operations.

Voice tech boasts five distinct advantages that heighten its disruption potential in healthcare and the tech is being optimized for the healthcare sphere, which is increasing the visibility of voice in health and opening the door for voice assistants to perform more sensitive and complex healthcare actions. There are also several pain points within healthcare that up the pressure on providers to tap into the voice opportunity.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence outlines the voice opportunity in healthcare and explores the drivers propelling voice adoption in the healthcare realm. We then examine three of the highest-value voice use cases in healthcare — clinical documentation, remote care, and clinical support — and provide examples of early moving health systems and health tech companies implementing voice in each application.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

In full, the report:

Want to learn more about the fast-moving world of digital health? Here's how to get access:

A day after SpaceX's final flight of Starhopper, a stubby prototype of an enormous planned launch system called Starship, company founder Elon Musk dropped a clue about his supersize plans for the future.

Musk tweeted on Wednesday that he'd present SpaceX's latest thinking about the Starship system on September 28. The date marks the 11th anniversary of the company reaching orbit for the first time with its Falcon 1 rocket.

Starhopper — SpaceX's first Mars Starship prototype — hovers over its launchpad during a test flight in Boca Chica, Texas, on August 27, 2019.Trevor Mahlmann/ReutersUntil then, most of what we know about Starship comes from Musk's latest presentation from September 2018. At that time, the vehicle was still called the "Big Falcon Rocket" and was supposed to be made out of carbon-fiber composites. SpaceX is now using stainless steel but appears to be keeping similar dimensions, based on several renderings posted by Musk (including one of a Starship spaceship on the moon's surface).

Read more: Elon Musk says SpaceX could land on the moon in 2 years. A NASA executive says 'we'll partner with them, and we'll get there faster' if the company can pull it off.

Those dimensions suggest the first operational version of Starship would be a vehicle about 30 feet (9 meters) wide and 387 feet (118 meters) tall. Yet Musk is already dreaming up an even bigger version of the system.

He revealed part of his grand plan on Wednesday when a Twitter user asked about a 39-foot-wide (12 meters) version of Starship. Musk replied that a "next-gen" version of Starship would probably be double that diameter: a width of 18 meters, or nearly 60 feet.

That's wider than an NBA basketball court. The footprint of such a rocket would also be 30% greater than the square footage of an average US home.

The following graphic shows about how big the first Starship system would be compared with its prototypes, such as Starhopper and Starship Mark 1. The Apollo-era Saturn V rocket and NASA's upcoming Space Launch System moon rocket are also included for scale.

A comparison of SpaceX and NASA rocket systems. Yutong Yuan/Samantha Lee/Business Insider

However, doing some basic math helps reveal the scale of what Musk is proposing to do with SpaceX in the far-flung future.

An illustration of SpaceX's Starship vehicle on the surface of Mars, with greenhouses and a nascent space colony in the distance.Elon Musk/SpaceX via Twitter

Simplifying the dimensions of the first-generation Starship into a cylinder (and ignoring its aerodynamic nose cone) gives a finished volume of about 7.5 million liters. The same calculation on the next-generation Starship — assuming its height also doubles, to about 775 feet (236 meters) — gives an approximate volume of 60 million liters.

So in effect, doubling the width and height leads to a launch vehicle about eight times as voluminous. Even if the next-generation Starship was just as tall as the first one, its increased girth would make it about four times bigger.

Boosting Starship' volume so much says little about how much payload or how many people a next-generation Starship could haul into orbit, or how deep into space such a gigantic spacecraft could go. But it's hard not to imagine the answers are "more, bigger, faster, and farther" since it could carry that much more fuel and make room for many more Raptor rocket engines.

Read more: SpaceX test-fired a giant rocket engine with 'insane power' for moon and Mars missions. The future of Elon Musk's company may ride on its unrivaled performance.

Certainly, a nose cone with basketball-court-width diameter is larger than that of any planned rocket's.

Such a size could accommodate space telescopes that astronomers may only dream of right now. For example, NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will fold up into a 15-foot-wide (4.57 meter) fairing of an Ariane 5 rocket around 2021. If a next-gen Starship is ever realized, it might fit six or more of the $10 billion space observatories inside its fairing.

However, Musk envisions building a city on Mars that will be self-sustaining by the 2050s (and eventually has pizza joints). If he hopes to see that mission accomplished before his time on Earth is done, though, SpaceX may need the biggest rocket its leader can dream up.

As part of SAP's leadership, Adaire Fox-Martin is in charge of the German business-software behemoth's global operations, covering more than 430,000 customers in 71 countries.

And in that role, she said, she's seen up close the fallout from the rising global market uncertainty, which has grown even murkier with the escalation of the US-China trade war.

"I will definitely tell you that, in some markets, particularly in China, the customers are in a wait-and-see mode," she told Business Insider. "I have been working with some customers there who are all literally unpacking their supply chain."

Unpacking a supply chain essentially means reorganizing the way the business procures materials it needs for its goods and services, including making sure they arrive in time. With the threat of tariffs looming, companies are reassessing their supply chains — even Google is said to be moving production of its Pixel phones from China to Vietnam, even as promised tariffs come closer to coming into effect.

The uncertainty is Fox-Martin's top worry these days. She plays a particularly key role at SAP, the top seller of software used by businesses to manage their operations. Fox-Martin has extensive international experience, having spent nearly two decades selling enterprise software in Asia.

Trade war is forcing businesses to move supply chains.

This was underscored recently on SAP's earnings call in July, when CEO Bill McDermott pointed to "minor headwinds in Asia due to trade uncertainties which did postpone some deals."

"We didn't get everything we wanted in Asia," he told analysts. "What you're seeing in this environment is there are a lot of companies that were manufacturing things in China that are actually moving supply chains and manufacturing facilities to alternative locations."

McDermott then turned to Fox-Martin for a broader view of the situation.

"The supply-chain impact was significant on our China business," she told analysts. "But we've got to remember we've been in Asia-Pacific Japan for 30 years now."

It's a history she's familiar with. Fox-Martin was a top enterprise-software executive in that part of the world for nearly two decades with two of the biggest players in that space: SAP and the German tech giant's archrival, Oracle.

Fox-Martin was a schoolteacher who stumbled upon a tech career.

Fox-Martin had embarked on a tech career by accident. Born and raised in a working class family in Ireland, Fox-Martin studied arts, English, and history at Trinity College in Dublin. Ireland was going through tough economic times when she graduated. "There were no jobs," she said.

She moved to England, where she found work as a schoolteacher. She was set to pursue that career when a friend told her that Oracle was looking to hire English teachers who could be retrained as training consultants for a new programming language.

She got the job and worked for Oracle for 18 years, mainly in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2008, she joined SAP, where she rose to become chief operating officer and then president of the company's Asia-Pacific operation. In 2017, she was named to the company's executive board. Fox-Martin is one of two women in SAP's top leadership.

"I've worked in almost every line of business in a software company, which has given me a huge depth of understanding of how all the pieces come together," she said.

She joined SAP's leadership at a time when the enterprise-software industry has been undergoing a major shift. SAP still dominates the enterprise-resource-planning software market, with 28.2% of the $28.6 billion market, according to IDC's 2018 data. Oracle was second with 19.3%.

SAP pivots to the cloud

But the rise of cloud computing has led to a dramatic change. Instead of paying license and maintenance fees for software installed in private data centers, businesses are accessing applications as web-based service. The trend has dramatically cut IT costs, allowing businesses, in many cases, to abandon on-premise data centers.

This has been a disruptive change for traditional software vendors, like SAP and Oracle, which now find themselves competing with software-as-a-service rivals, such as Salesforce and Workday.

"For sure, SAP is a company that is transforming," Fox-Martin said. "I think we're at the tail end of that process in terms of the transformation of our business to the cloud."

She said SAP is looking to triple its cloud revenue to $15 billion a year by 2023.

In the short term, her focus is on an increasingly precarious global economy.

US-China trade tensions escalated recently with a new round of tariffs, although President Trump on Thursday that the two nations were scheduled to hold discussions.

"We're living in a time of tremendous change and uncertainty," she said. "The macroeconomic environment right now is very unpredictable. From one day to the next, we're not really quite sure what's going to happen, what's going to change. You have to be able to pivot with your customers in order to address these changes."

Got a tip about SAP or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter@benpimentel. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Alphabet's chief legal officer David Drummond said he is "far from perfect," in a personal statement first reported by BuzzFeed News on Thursday, but declined to apologize for an extramarital relationship he had with a subordinate at Google.

Drummond, one of the highest paid executives at Google's parent company, acknowledged what he described as a "difficult break-up" ten years ago but said that he had a "very different view" of some of the claims made public on Wednesday by Jennifer Blakely — a former paralegal on Drummond's team.

In a remarkable blog post on Wednesday, Blakely said that Alphabet's chief legal exec fathered a son with her while he was married, abandoned her and abused her emotionally.

"The abuse of power didn't stop with being pushed out," she wrote, referring to leaving her job at Google. "Afterwards I was pushed down, lest I got in the way of the behavior that had become even more oppressive and entitled."

Google has refused to comment on the matter, which involves allegations about one of the highest paid and most powerful executives at the company. "We don't have a statement on this to share," a Google spokesperson said in an email to Business Insider. "We've seen that Mr. Drummond has issued a personal statement, see here," Google said.

The company, which has been rocked by allegations that it protects "elite men" who have engaged in sexual misconduct, in some cases giving them huge payouts, declined to make Drummond available for an interview.

In November, roughly 20,000 Google employees staged a walkout to protest the company's treatment of executives accused of misconduct and the lack of accountability at a company in which cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin control a majority of the voting power.

Drummond's statement on Thursday, which was tweeted out in-full by BuzzFeed News reporter Ryan Mac, calls into questions some of the claims raised by Blakely's recent account of their relationship.

"Her account raises many claims about us and other people, including our son and my former wife," Drummond said in the statement. "As you would expect, there are two sides to all of the conversations and details Jennifer recounts, and I take a very different view about what happened. I have discussed these claims directly with Jennifer, and I addressed the details of our relationship with our employer at the time."

According to Blakely's account from Wednesday, Drummond had multiple relationships with other colleagues at Google, including his "personal assistant" who Blakely claims moved into one of his homes.

Drummond took issue with the claim, insisting that besides Blakely, he has never "started" a relationship with anyone else at Google or Alphabet. "Any suggestion otherwise is simply untrue," he said.

Still, the specific phrasing that Drummond — a lawyer by training — used in stating that he never "started" a relationship with other Google staffers is likely to raise questions about his forthrightness on the matter.

"I know Jennifer feels wronged and understand that she wants to speak out about it," Drummond said, "but I won't be getting in a public back and forther about these personal matters."

Drummond joined Google in 2002 as head of corporate development, two years before the company's IPO. Over the following years he assumed increasing responsibility, overseeing the legal department and government relations, as Google grew into one of the world's most valuable companies and restructured into Alphabet.

Here is Drummond's full statement, as given to Buzzfeed:

It's not a secret that Jennifer and I had a difficult break-up 10 years ago. I am far from perfect and I regret my part in that.

Her account raises many claims about us and other people, including our son and my former wife. As you would expect there are two sides to all of the conversations and details Jennifer recounts, and I take a very different view about what happened. I have discussed these claims directly with Jennifer, and I addressed the details of our relationship with our employer at the time.

But I don want to address one claim that touches on professional matters. Other than Jennifer, I never started a relationship with anyone else who was working at Google or Alphabet. Any suggestion otherwise is simply untrue.

I know Jennifer feels wronged and understand that she wants to speak out about it. But I won't be getting in a public back and forther about these personal matters.

David Drummond

The Sony X900F series is a 65-inch smart TV with excellent picture quality. Right now, it's on sale at Best Buy for $300 off its original price.

According to reviews, the X900F delivers bright, accurate colors and deep blacks. It has decent image processing and motion resolution as well, meaning your games and action scenes will be free of blur.

The set is powered by Google's Android TV, which is one of the best smart-TV systems out there. You can access just about any streaming app you need, including Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Sling, and Google Play.

The X900F also supports Google Cast functionality, which is similar to Chromecast; you'll be able to "cast" videos and audio from your phone directly to your TV. Google Assistant is built into the remote, and you can link the TV to Alexa as well. With Alexa or the Google Assistant set up, you can control the TV with voice commands.

As a bonus, this TV even has a headphone jack on the back. If you're counting, that's one more headphone jack than Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.

If you're looking for a high-end TV at a discount, check out this deal ASAP. Best Buy is also running a Labor Day sale on a bunch of other tech products, and we've rounded up the 20 best deals here.

Get the Sony XBR-X900F for $1,299.99 at Best Buy (originally $1,599) [You save $300]

A fitness tracker like the Fitbit Charge 2 doesn't do you any good unless it's powered on and strapped to your wrist. To help with this, Fitbit saw fit to ensure the Charge 2 is always powered on, by making it essentially impossible to turn the device off.

There's no way to completely turn off a Fitbit Charge 2 except for letting its battery drain, a process which can take more than a week.

But if your Fitbit Charge 2 isn't working properly, maybe because it doesn't respond as you swipe or tap, won't record your data, or won't connect to your phone or computer, a restart can help solve most issues.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Fitbit Charge 2 (From $129.95 at Best Buy)

How to restart a Fitbit Charge 2

1. Connect the Fitbit Charge 2 to a power source using its charging cradle and a USB port.

2. Once the tracker vibrates, indicating it's connected, hold the button on the device's side for four seconds.

Press and hold the single button on the side of the Fitbit. Fitbit

3. When the Fitbit logo appears and the tracker vibrates, it has been successfully restarted, and should now work properly again.

If you let your Fitbit Charge 2's battery drain entirely, connect the tracker to its charger for at least two hours before you use it again, to ensure a completely charged up battery.

Labor Day is on its way, and a number of retailers have already announced some pretty stellar deals for the event.

Notably, Best Buy is running a massive sale for Labor Day that spans a huge range of products — so if you're in the market for a new tech product, it's worth checking out the deals below.

We've picked out our favorite deals from Best Buy's Labor Day sale, but if you're interested, you can check out the full sale right on the Best Buy website. Alternatively, check out our top picks below.

Samsung

Best Buy Labor Day TV deals

There are a ton of TV deals as part of Best Buy's Labor Day sale — spanning from the inexpensive and smaller TVs to the much higher-end OLED TVs. Here are the best TV deals as part of Best Buy's Labor Day sale.

Best Buy Labor Day laptop deals

In the market for a new laptop? There are some pretty great deals on computers too, so it's worth checking out the deals below. Here are the best laptop deals from Best Buy's Labor Day 2019 sale.

Best Buy Labor Day headphone deals

A great pair of headphones can make listening to music a whole lot more exciting. Best Buy has some great deals on headphones going — and here are the best of those deals.

Best Buy Labor Day smart home deals

Building up a smart home? There are plenty of deals on smart home devices and products too, so now is a great time to buy switches, cameras, and so on. Here are the best smart home deals from Best Buy's Labor Day sale.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Google used Burning Man to find a CEO because they were interested in finding a CEO who's familiar with group flow.

So one of the things that happens at Burning Man — and there's recent research out of Oxford that sort of backs this up — is that Burning Man alters consciousness in a very particular way and it drops people into a state of group flow.

So, flow is a peak-performance state. It's an individual performing at their peak. Group flow is simply a team performing at their peak, and everybody has some familiarity with this. If you've ever taken part in a great brainstorming session, where ideas are kind of bouncing everywhere — you're really reaching ripe, smart conclusions.

If you've seen a fourth-quarter comeback in football. If you saw what the Patriots did in the Super Bowl. That's group flow in action.

Google has relied very heavily since their inception on creating group-flow states. And when they were looking for a new CEO, they needed a way to screen for this, and it doesn't show up on most resumes.

They had a long history with Burning Man. From the very beginning, Larry and Sergey have been kind of rabid attendees. The center atrium at Google for years was decorated with pictures of Googlers at Burning Man, spinning fire, doing various things.

They had blown through and alienated like 50 different CEOs in the valley they tried to interview, and they found out that Eric Schmidt had actually been to Burning Man. So they bumped him to the top of their list, they took him to Burning Man to see how he would do. They wanted to know was he going to be able to let go of his ego, merge with the team, or was he going to stand in its way? And it turns out he passed the test, and the result is one of the most pivotal CEO hires in the modern era.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published on April 21, 2017.

A Jalopnik analysis of 14,756 ride fares from Uber and Lyft drivers suggests the ride-hailing apps are taking a bigger bite out of drivers' fares than they say.

The amount of money Uber and Lyft skim off drivers' fares is referred to as the "take rate," and it has been a point of contention in the past as drivers have protested over inadequate pay.

Jalopnik asked Uber and Lyft drivers to send in receipts both for one-off rides and longer records of multiple receipts over extended time periods. It found:

When Uber went public in May it reported its take rate for 2018 to be 21.7%, which has dropped to 19% as of the second quarter of 2019. Business Insider previously reported Lyft's 2018 take rate was 26%, although the company told Jalopnik it does not publicly share its take rates. The two companies also calculate the take rate slightly differently, with Uber factoring in tolls and surcharges.

Just looking at Uber's figures alone, the 35% take rate that Jalopnik discovered is more than 84% higher than what Uber claimed in an earnings call earlier this month. The 35% figure is close to the finding of a study last year by the Economic Policy Institute, which said that Uber skims around 33% off of its drivers' fares.

Read more: I'm a driver for Uber and Lyft — here are 10 things I wish I knew before starting the job

Both Uber and Lyft disputed Jalopnik's findings, saying the sample size was too small to be representative. Both declined to provide Jalopnik with statistically significant datasets.

Jalopnik admitted that 14,756 represents only a tiny fraction of the millions of Uber and Lyft trips made each day. An Uber spokesman said roughly 15 million Uber rides take place every day worldwide. Jalopnik also conceded there may have been selection bias for drivers unhappy with the cut being taken out of their fares.

Uber and Lyft were not immediately available for comment when contacted by Business Insider.

Google is losing its grip on the global smart speaker market.

According to a report from market research firm Canalys, Google fell to third place in the world's top smart speaker sellers during the second quarter of 2019. The ranking is based on the number of units shipped during this period.

Google shipped 4.3 million smart speaker devices in the three months to the end of June, which was down 19.8% on the same period last year, Canalys said.

It was overtaken by Chinese tech firm Baidu, which exclusively serves the Chinese market and grew by a whopping 3,700%, shipping 4.5 million units during this quarter versus 100,000 the year before. Baidu was second only to Amazon, which shipped 6.6 million Alexa devices and captures 25.4% of the global market share.

Canalys said that Baidu grew at a rapid rate thanks to "aggressive marketing" in China. It also benefited from being a "key driver of smart displays," it said, which accounted for 45% of the products it shipped in the quarter.

Canalys

Meanwhile, Google suffered from its Nest rebranding, the report said.

"Google's transition to the Nest branding while pivoting to smart displays proved to be a challenge, especially as it has begun rolling out its Nest Hub smart display globally," Canalys senior analyst Jason Low said in the report. "Google urgently requires a revamped non-display smart speaker portfolio to rekindle consumer interest as well as a robust marketing strategy to build its Nest branding outside of the US."

The Chinese market will become a more valuable audience for the US players to win as sales of smart speakers slow in their own country. According to Canalys, China doubled its quarterly shipment size to 12.6 million units last quarter, while the US saw shipments dropped 2.4%. Amazon and Google are now focused on driving sales elsewhere.

A Hong Kong tech company ended its participation in the government's new "smart lamppost" project installed in June after angry protesters starting cutting them down with electric saws.

TickTack Technology makes parts for the lampposts, which were put up in June and are meant to house security cameras and also beam 5G internet and WiFi to the surrounding areas.

However, activists in Hong Kong's protest movement have expressed fears that the lampposts are being using by the Chinese central government to spy on them and disrupt their activities.

Authorities on Hong Kong have denied this, but it hasn't stopped protesters pulling them down.

In response, TickTack said in a statement on Sunday that it would no longer be supplying its technology to the Hong Kong government.

Protesters attempt to cut a smart lamppost during an anti-government rally in Kowloon Bay district on August 24, 2019 in Hong Kong, China. Pro-democracy protesters have continued rallies on the streets of Hong Kong against a controversial extradition bill since 9 June as the city plunged into crisis after waves of demonstrations and several violent clashes. Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam apologized for introducing the bill and declared it "dead", however protesters have continued to draw large crowds with demands for Lam's resignation and completely withdraw the bill. Anthony Kwan/Getty Images

"We understand that disputes in society over the past few months led the public to be cautious and mistrustful towards some technology," the company said, according to Hong Kong Free Press.

The company said its employees and their family had been "personally threatened" over the lamppost project.

According to the company's website, TickTack parts are being use for the smart lampposts, as well as a Tree Management Project, which last year placed monitors on over 8,000 IoT sensors on trees across the city.

The company also states on its website that it currently has projects with Hong Kong's Lands Department, Transport Department, and bureaus linked to the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer.

According to the South China Morning Post, 50 smart lampposts were installed in June around Hong Kong in high-traffic areas like Kowloon Bay, Shing Kai Road in Kai Tak and Kwun Tong.

The speed, capacity, and reliability of 5G networks will transform life for consumers and businesses — so much so that it's been described as helping bring about "generational change" and even "the fourth industrial revolution."

But inevitably, with the promise of so much more data and billions of new internet-connected devices, comes the threat of hackers and others looking to profit from stolen information, and so with that the heightened challenge of improving cybersecurity.

The good news is that, from the outset, security is clearly a priority for those preparing to bring us all this new technology. John Marinho, the vice president of cybersecurity at wireless comms industry body CTIA, points out: "You now have a standard which provides security by design, privacy by design, from the very beginning."

When it comes to 5G's most effective new weapons against cybercrime, he says: "There's no silver bullet. It's a question of using all the tools in the tool chest, and these are among the most advanced tools the industry has now created."

Two significant tools are 5G's capability to tailor security updates for every single device, and also its ability to boost encryption between those devices.

An internet-connected Fridge from LG. LG

Currently, although security updates provide a robust defence across networks, 4G providers send the same types of updates to all devices, big or small, what Marinho calls "a model for one size fits all, tailored around smartphones" and he gives an example of the negative consequences.

"If I were to take the security models used on a smartphone and try to apply them to, say, a GPS dog collar, it wouldn't work, it wouldn't fit, it would risk consuming too much power and run down the battery."

By contrast, 5G providers will be better able to identify the different devices and so implement individual security functions tailored to each of them, from smartphones to kitchen appliances, sensors to factory floor equipment.

All of these devices have different priorities, and Marinho adds. "Whether it's data rates or latency that is critical, we can support the full spectrum of devices being used by the network, and ensure they all have the most suitable security possible," he says.

Boosting encryption similarly goes hand in hand with the increased reliability for mobile device users promised by 5G. As smartphone users move between networks, their unique information is stored as an International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI), contained in each phone's SIM card. It is the key to authenticating the device every time it is used, and thus contains highly personal data about each user, where they are and how they use the wireless network.

Read more: 5G is being used to perform remote surgery from thousands of miles away, and it could transform the healthcare industry

Now 5G networks will use a key embedded in the SIM card that encrypts that same IMSI before sending it to the network, meaning all that information is protected from cybercriminals - they won't be able to read the code in transit, nor unlock the decryption key.

Marinho explains: "It will become a challenge for them to even try to monitor the transmission or detect it in the same way we've seen those threats to 4G." He adds: "This is really driven by the notion of including privacy as part of the design in the same way as security."

Clearly, as well as all its promised benefits, 5G will introduce the capability to mitigate many of the threats we've seen in earlier network generations. Marino calls it "the most secure technology we have on the planet, built upon that of previous generations."

He reflects: "Networks continue to evolve. We saw it with 2G to 3G, and now on a larger scale with the introduction to 5G. There will be a point in time when people come to wonder, 'Why did we ever use wires to connect anything?'"

Update (8:16 p.m. ET): SpaceX aborted the test launch less than a second before ignition, then later scrubbed the attempt. The company says it will try again Tuesday.

Starhopper, we hardly knew ye.

SpaceX plans to launch the roughly 60-foot-tall (18 meters) vehicle, a stubby steel prototype of a planned Mars launch system called Starship, for the last time.

SpaceX flew Starhopper on its first untethered flight in July, but Elon Musk, the company's founder, says the vehicle's next launch will be its last. Its fate is to be cannibalized for parts and then become a test stand for Raptor rocket engines, about 40 of which are expected to power SpaceX's planned, roughly 400-foot-tall Starship system.

Read more: How SpaceX's new Starship launch system compares to NASA's towering moon rockets

Starhopper was originally expected to lift off at about 5 p.m. ET on Monday, or 4 p.m. local time, but the company delayed the launch several times, ultimately aborting its attempt with just 0.8 seconds left in the countdown. The company's founder, Elon Musk, said the issue seemed to be with devices that light up Starhopper's sole engine.

"Igniters need to be inspected. We will try again tomorrow same time," Musk tweeted on Monday following the scrub.

If and when liftoff finally does happen, Starhopper should soar up to 492 feet, or 150 meters, into the air, hover, and then land back on its pad in a cloud of smoke and dust in a matter of seconds.

Local authorities gave SpaceX permission to launch Starhopper between 3 p.m. and 1 a.m. ET on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. (When live broadcasts of the test launch resume, we'll include them in an update to this story.)

Police issued warnings to residents ahead of Starhopper's launch

SpaceX initially planned to launch Starhopper weeks ago, yet it ran into a snag with the Federal Aviation Administration. The US regulator apparently asked for more hazard analysis before granting its launch license, Musk tweeted on August 15.

A public-safety notice issued to residents of Boca Chica, Texas, on Saturday. Courtesy of Cheryl Stevens

That analysis was most likely performed because Boca Chica Village — a small community of about 20 people — sits within 1 1/2 to 2 miles of SpaceX's beachside launch pad.

Read more: Elon Musk's SpaceX is developing giant Mars rockets in a sleepy town in southern Texas. Here's what it's like to visit.

The police visited the neighborhood on Saturday night to hand out public-safety advisories to residents. The paper notices warned of a possible "overpressure event," i.e., a blast wave caused by a rapid explosion, from SpaceX's experimental launch that could blow out their windows in the event of a major malfunction.

This upset some residents, with one person telling Business Insider that they felt as if they now lived in a war zone.

The FAA says the likelihood of an explosion, however, especially one that'd cause injuries, is very low.

"To put this extremely remote chance in perspective, if SpaceX was to launch this same exact mission every day, we would statistically expect one serious injury or fatality at Boca Chica Village between 720 B.C. and today," an FAA representative told Business Insider on Monday.

The public health and safety notice comes about a month after SpaceX's most recent launch of Starhopper, on July 25. That flight inadvertently ignited a grass fire that burned through more than 100 acres of coastal wildlife refuge, thousands of acres of which surround the launch site and hamlet.

SpaceX has responded to the incident by putting together a better fire-prevention and response plan, according to Bryan Winton, the manager of the Lower Rio Grande Valley national wildlife refuge at the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

SpaceX is now coordinating more closely with local agencies on its launch plans and fire safety, has installed five new remote-control water cannons on its launchpad to douse flames (there used to be only one), is helping perform controlled burns, and more, Winton told Business Insider on Thursday.

Starhopper is one of many steps in SpaceX's quest to reach Mars

An illustration of SpaceX's coming Starship spaceship, left; and Super Heavy rocket booster, right; and an integrated Starship-Super Heavy launch system.© Kimi Talvitie

SpaceX is working toward launching a larger prototype, called Starship Mk1, that will use three Raptor rocket engines and be capable of launching from the Texas site, flying around Earth, and landing back there. The rocket company is also building a similar yet competing prototype in Florida called Starship Mk2.

Before SpaceX can launch either rudimentary rocket ship, or any full-scale Starships, the company needs sign-off from the FAA.

"Working on regulatory approval for both Boca Chica, Texas, and Cape Kennedy, Florida," Musk tweeted in March. "Will also be building Starship & Super Heavy simultaneously in both locations."

Those vehicles are all stepping stones to Starship, a roughly 18-story spaceship, and Super Heavy, a roughly 23-story booster.

The launch system is also being designed for full reusability, which may vastly reduce the cost of accessing space. Other versions could be built to deploy hundreds of satellites at a time or rocket paying passengers halfway around the world in about half an hour.

SpaceX fired up Starhopper for the first time in April. That test secured the rocket ship with giant bike-chain-like tethers on its legs, and the vehicle lifted just a few inches off the ground. Since then, the vehicle has soared about 60 feet, or 18 meters, off the ground, untethered.

A SpaceX representative previously told Business Insider in an email that such hop-and-hover flights were part of "a series of tests designed to push the limits of the vehicle as quickly as possible to learn all we can, as fast as we safely can."

Test launches are not guaranteed to happen, or even go well, though. "As with all development programs, the schedule can be quite dynamic and subject to change," the person said.

This story has been updated.

The Amazon rainforest has suffered from more than 10,000 new forest fires since August 15, a record pace that has sparked international concern and a state of emergency in Amazonas, Brazil's largest state. Experts fear that rapid destruction of the world's largest rainforest could bring consequences for the rest of the globe if left unchecked.

The crisis in the Amazon has led many people to donate funds toward rainforest protection efforts and share messages of support on social media. Some of the most popular images being shared in posts about the fires, however, are not actually photos of the current crisis.

This image of the Amazon shared by Cristiano Ronaldo was photographed in 2013 in southern Brazil away from the rainforest.

Ronaldo, Leonardo DiCaprio, and French President Emmanuel Macron are among those found to have shared misleading images in their posts about the fires, according to a report from Mother Jones. Several of the most popular images show forest fires in the Amazon from several years ago, while others were taken in different locations entirely.

Read more: Striking photos show the devastation wreaked by record-breaking fires in the Amazon rainforest

While there are plenty of genuine images of the fires that have devastated the Amazon in recent weeks, the mix-ups have given conspiracy theorists an opening to accuse influential people like Macron and DiCaprio of trying to spread panic using fake pictures. The photos contribute to a climate of misinformation surrounding the rainforest fires as world leaders and nonprofit organizations work to organize a response to a real crisis.

If you want to help protect the Amazon rainforest from forest fires, you can donate to charities like the Amazon Conservation Association, the Amazon Conservation Team, and Rainforest Trust. DiCaprio's environmental organization, Earth Alliance, on Sunday announced a $5 million emergency fund meant to help protect the Amazon.

The road to success hasn't been smooth for 25-year-old Boyan Slat, the founder of The Ocean Cleanup, which aims to rid the oceans of harmful plastic.

Slat, a Dutch innovator, came up with his concept for removing garbage from the ocean at age 16, and he's been refining the idea ever since.

His system is designed to collect plastic debris using the ocean's currents, though the technology remains largely unproven and has hit several snags. This month, however, the organization deployed an improved cleanup device that may have fixed some of its initial issues.

Read more: A massive plastic-cleanup device invented by a 25-year-old may finally be catching trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

If all goes according to plan, the device could eventually remove half the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a trash-filled vortex in the Pacific Ocean that is more than twice as large as Texas — within five years.

Take a look at a timeline of Slat's journey.

Elon Musk's company SpaceX is working on a multibillion-dollar rocket called the "Starship" that could one day take people to the moon, Mars, and launch thousands of satellites into orbit. Tech Insider Senior Correspondent Dave Mosher explains everything we know so far about the project.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Dave: This spring, SpaceX launched a squat, kind of ugly looking, but shiny little rocket, and it's called the Starhopper. And this is the very beginning, the first physical representation of the entire future of the company. This is the rocket that SpaceX is staking its future on.

The core reason that SpaceX is doing this is because of a dream that Elon Musk shared back in the early 2000s at the founding of SpaceX. He wanted to send a little plant to Mars and have it grow there to inspire people about space travel. He thinks we need to back up the human race to Mars, start a colony there, an Earth 2.0, and this Starship is key to all of that.

He wants to use it to transport 100 people and 150 tons of cargo to the red planet at a time, and he thinks by 2050, we can build a sustainable colony on Mars. So SpaceX is testing the concepts and the engines behind this Starship in south Texas, and they're starting to get this little tiny version of it called the Starhopper hopping off the ground to prove that the engines and the whole concept works.

Basically, the idea is will this thing blow up or not? And so far it hasn't blown up. We were down there for the very first hop of this vehicle, and it was one of the loudest things I've ever heard, but it did not blow up. And since then, SpaceX has done another hop, and they're gonna take these hops of this vehicle higher and higher to about 3 miles up. The engines that SpaceX is using are brand new. They're called Raptor engines. These things are enormous. They're about the size of a small delivery truck in which a controlled bomb goes off, basically.

After these hop tests are done and SpaceX proves that the system won't explode on a whim, they're gonna put these Raptor engines on an even bigger vehicle, which Musk has called the orbital version, and that's gonna go into orbit around Earth. And the key thing with that test is not only showing that it can get into orbit but that it can come back.

When a spacecraft comes back to Earth, it's entering the atmosphere at some point at 25 times the speed of sound. That plows through the atmosphere and builds up all this gas into superheated levels that can vaporize steel. So SpaceX needs to prove that this vehicle will not destroy itself when it comes back to Earth because if it does, then they can't safely launch people on it. That's what you need a shield for. You need to protect the vehicle from burning itself up when it either comes back to Earth or is entering the very thin atmosphere of Mars.

There are a few critiques of steel, and one of them is that it's just so heavy. It's dense. If you try to use too much of it, your spacecraft gets bogged down, and you can't launch as much payload into space. So you have to be really creative about how you build your spacecraft. SpaceX is getting around this problem by trying to go after a fuel-tank structure, the internal structure, these little ribs and slats and things to support the larger structure so that it doesn't fall in on itself. That way they can make the metal really thin but also take advantage of its cheapness and also strength.

This vehicle isn't using what SpaceX has typically used for its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets: That's RP-1. It's a form of kerosene. It's similar to the stuff that goes into jets. It smells like jet fuel. They also use liquid oxygen. The new Starship, and specifically the Starhopper, which just launched, is using liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Methane is important because SpaceX wants to be able to manufacture its fuel on another planet, and specifically Mars, and they can do that, in theory, with the thin atmosphere that Mars has. They can take the carbon dioxide, they can take water out of the ground, and they can take sunlight and use energy to combine those two and form methane on the surface of Mars, refuel Starship, and go back home to Earth.

The first things that SpaceX hopes to do with a full-scale, fully operational Starship is to show that it works. They want to get this thing into orbit, and then following that, they want to start sending the first missions to Mars. These would be robots, equipment to help scout out the surface and also set up a plant to generate methane and oxygen to fuel a future mission to come back to Earth. The first crude mission, though, is going to be with a Japanese artist and fashion billionaire called Yusaku Maezawa.

He is going to load up one of these Starships with a crew full of artists and maybe a couple astronauts just for safety and go around the moon to show that the system works. He's willing to put his life on the line for that, and Musk has even teased that he might go himself. Right now, SpaceX is targeting 2023 or thereabouts to launch this crude moon mission. But by 2024, the company wants to take advantage of a planetary alignment, which happens once every two years with Mars and Earth, to sort of close the gap between the planets and launch the first crude mission to Mars, land there, and put boots on the ground.

There's another really important use for this vehicle. They're gonna try to launch 12,000 satellites. That is twice as many as are currently in space right now, and I think three or four times as many as are currently operational, to build up a global network of satellite high-speed, low-latency internet, so many times faster than you could get today from a commercial provider. But to do that, they're gonna need to launch a ton of these Starlink satellites at once, and Starship could be the vehicle because it's so big and fully reusable to do that at low cost for SpaceX. We can't think of Starship just as a rocket to launch people to Mars.

It is going to be the future rocket for SpaceX and possibly the world. It'll launch the next generation of satellite internet. It could launch people to Mars, of course. It could also launch next-generation telescopes, and it could also launch NASA astronauts to the moon, as well as landing craft and any number of things that people want to get up that are big, and they want to do it cheaply.

If SpaceX can get government support, perhaps from NASA or the Department of Defense, to develop Starship, it's gonna go a long way into helping SpaceX get to the point where this system becomes a reality because right now they're relying on a Japanese billionaire and some of their own venture capital funding to fund this entire development project, which they estimate to be between $2 and $10 billion to complete. Some critics say, however, that $10 billion is even a low limit. It may cost as much as $20 billion to develop this system. So if SpaceX can get outside support, it can get government funding, it's gonna help make this thing a reality.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published on June 5, 2019.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said his company would be donating to help preserve the Amazon after fires have ravaged the region.

"It's devastating to see the fires and destruction ravaging the Amazon rainforest, one of the world's most important ecosystems," Cook tweeted on Monday. "Apple will be donating to help preserve its biodiversity and restore the Amazon's indispensable forest across Latin America."

Cook did not reveal any further details about the donation Apple planned to make.

Scientists have already recorded more than 74,000 fires in Brazil this year, nearly doubling the 40,000 fires recorded in all of 2018. It's also the highest number of fires recorded since researchers started keeping track in 2013.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro deployed 44,000 troops on Saturday to combat the blazes after he was criticized for the way he initially handled the situation. He previously downplayed concerns about the fires as "sensationalist."

The Amazon accounts for more than half of the planet's remaining rainforest, and it's often referred to as the "lungs of the planet." But deforestation has become an increasingly prominent problem over the past 40 years, according to the BBC.

Climate change is an important issue to Cook and Apple, and the CEO has been vocal about its impact in the past. Most recently, he broached the topic in his commencement speech at Tulane University in May. "I don't think we can talk about who we are as people and what we owe to one another without talking about climate change," he said during the ceremony.

He also personally called President Donald Trump hoping to persuade him not to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement back in 2017.

Beleaguered media measurement and and analytics giant Comscore is recalibrating itself again.

After announcing that it would reduce its headcount by 8% as part of a reorganization this past week, the company's executives is embarking on a new strategy, which it outlined in an exclusive interview with Business Insider.

The company, which has gone head-to-head with TV measurement company Nielsen to measure and analyze audiences across several platforms in recent years, is reorganizing its products around five product pillars, each with a general manager that will oversee the pillar's vision, P&L, go-to-market strategy, delivery, sales, and market intelligence. The turnaround plan was approved by the company's board on Aug. 16.

The pillars are cross-platform (which includes both linear and addressable TV), digital, custom, activation and movies. Whille the first four will fall under the purview of new chief product officer David Algranati, the latter will report to director and interim CEO Dale Fuller. The company also reinstated Chris Wilson, who departed under its former leadership, as chief commercial officer.

"What we're trying to do is turn the company around," Fuller told Business Insider. "The reorganization allows us to get everyone focused, hold people accountable, drive the bottom line, and really start seeing the results. By the end of this year, we will be cashflow positive for the first time in the company's recent history."

Comscore is racing toward cross-platform measurement

Comscore used to have a chief information officer, chief research officer, and chief product officer who collectively dictated strategy, but no clearly defined product leaders, which made it hard to decide where to invest and manage the P&L, Algranati said.

Now, the chief information and chief research officer roles have been done away with, and Algranati oversees everything from the panels to the engineering, analytics and operations teams. The aim of the streamlining and vertical structure is to create more visibility, accountability and control, minimize bureaucracy, and innovate faster, he said.

The shift away from standalone traditional digital services is designed to help Comscore serve the market's needs, especially in cross-platform measurement, which refers to measuring ad campaigns across various types of media such as digital, TV, and mobile.

This means that Comscore is doubling down on areas including addressable TV and OTT, advanced audiences for activation, and targeting and outcome-based buying. For example, Comscore recently started working with AT&T's Xandr to be the measurement provider for its addressable TV offering.

"The market wants us to be cross-platform, and in order for us to be successful in cross-platform, we had to bring our TV and digital divisions together and really have a singular cross-platform division," said Wilson. "It allows our staff to really get cross-trained and understand what the future is. We're skating to where the puck is going versus skating to where the puck is today. The intersection of those two is really where the opportunity lies going forward."

Comscore has been besieged by crises over the past few years

Comscore, which is regarded as the leader in digital measurement, has been trying to take on industry leader Nielsen in cross-platform measurement since its merger with Rentrak in 2015. With this reorg, Comscore's leadership is moving from its traditional focus on digital measurement to what it sees as its next big growth opportunity.

Comscore execs argue they have an edge over Nielsen in addressable TV. As Algranati sees it, as advertisers air some ads in some households and not in others, traditional television ratings services don't cut it anymore, Algranati said.

Business Insider asked Nielsen for comment but had not heard back at the time of publication.

But while the advertising industry has been rooting for the company's success, Comscore has been besieged by crises over the past few years.

The company has been rocked by an SEC investigation into its accounting practices, executive departures, and growing pressure to offer new ways of measuring media. Bryan Wiener and Sarah Hofstetter, its former CEO and president, resigned in March after less than a year in their roles, with former chief operating officer Kathy Bachmann and former chief product officer Dan Hess departing soon after. The company cut 10% of its workforce in May and another 8% this past week.

Read More: Media measurement giants are under fire, and they're betting on digital marketing talent to win over clients

It has lost a string of other executives recently, including former chief product officer Dan Hess, SVP Naresh Rekhi, as well as director of product Jeanette Resnikoff, SVP of TV and cross-platform products Kendall McMahon, and EVP Anthony Psacharopoulos, who departed as part of last week's layoffs. Among the departing were long-time executives from the Comscore side — leading to speculation of a Comscore-Rentrak power struggle. One source called the changes a "Rentrak takeover."

Despite the drama, the company has made some gains, such as the aforementioned Xandr deal and several local TV contracts with the likes of Nexstar Media Group, Gray Television and E.W. Scripps Co., which industry sources see as positive momentum. Jane Clarke, CEO of the ad industry trade group the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, or CIMM, said that Comscore had the right strategy to be the third-party validator of addressable currency.

"Addressable breaks linear TV measurement and C3 and C7 ratings don't work anymore," she said. "The fact that Comscore is used to dealing with set-top boxes and its data goes in their favor."

Ed Gaffney, managing partner, director of implementation research and marketplace analytics for the ad buying giant GroupM in the US, said he was glad Comscore was finally doing what the industry has been asking for years, but that it needed a full-time CEO in place as soon as possible. Fuller said that the search was ongoing.

"The troubles are kind of in the rearview mirror, but they really need a day-in and day-out CEO," said Gaffney. "The only pillar that is missing is that they need to think of cross-platform as beyond a combination of digital and linear video, and include print and audio as well."

Comscore, on its part, acknowledged that the path ahead would be tough, but dismissed reports of a power struggle.

"It's not Rentrak versus Comscore; the market and customers define what we become, and that's premium video, which has really been the driver," Wilson said.

"The only way we're going to remove that label or stink around the company is execution," said Fuller.