Camping has already gotten a makeover to become Glamping. Now it's getting celebrity investors.

On Tuesday, Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter and Will Smith announced they were backing campsite booking startup Hipcamp. The startup had officially announced its $25 million Series B on July 24.

The two rappers-turned-entrepreneurs backed the buzzy startup, commonly referred to as the Airbnb for camping, through their respective venture capital funds Marcy Venture Partners and Dreamers Fund. The specific contribution amounts were not disclosed.

Read More: Stanford researchers found evidence that racial bias against venture-capital funds led by people of color increases the better the funds perform

Andreessen Horowitz led Hipcamp's July Series B that valued the company at $127 million, according to Pitchbook data. The startup has raised $41.6 million in venture funding since 2013.

Hipcamp's mission, according to a recent Forbes report, is to get more people outside, and offers its users a wide selection of camping, glamping, and RV options on private property, along with real-time availability and review data for federal lands like national parks. Forbes reported that the company is hoping to add listings for campgrounds at state parks in the future.

The investment from Carter and Smith comes as camping has skyrocketed in popularity with younger people looking to escape the deluge of technology in their everyday lives. But a myth persists that people of color, and specifically young black millennials, have avoided outdoor recreation.

"For a long time, being "outdoorsy" meant you fit a very specific mold," Hipcamp founder and CEO Alyssa Ravasio wrote in a blog post announcing the news. "Thankfully, that's changing."

WeWork would like potential investors to think of it as a tech firm.

But its numbers tell a different story. No matter if you look at WeWork's revenue and expenses, its assets, or just its cash flow, it looks far more like a real-estate company than a typical tech firm.

The distinction is more than just semantic. The company's valuation in the public markets will be in large part determined by how investors classify it. They tend to be willing to pay a much steeper premium for tech companies than for real-estate firms.

WeWork, or rather the We Company, its corporate parent, certainly pitched itself as a tech firm in the initial public offering paperwork that it released on Wednesday. The document mentions "technology" 93 times, many of them in connection with its business offerings or investments.

Read this: WeWork files for IPO, revealing spiraling losses of $1.6 billion

"We offer a space-as-a-service model that we operationalize by using a global-local playbook powered by technology," We Company said in the part of its IPO filing where it describes its business.

To date, its venture and other investors have bought that line, valuing WeWork like a tech company. With a $47 billion valuation in the private markets, it's worth more than 15 times its annualized sales for this year, a relatively steep valuation considering it has consistently posted losses.

But public investors may have a different take. That's because, as its IPO paperwork makes clear, it's not really in the technology business, no matter how many times it tries to wrap itself in that mantle.

Here's what its financial numbers show:

NetApp CEO George Kurian had reason to be upbeat on Wednesday when his company reported quarterly results that cheered Wall Street, sparking a late rally in the tech company's shares.

But while the report beat expectations, and Kurian could point to signs that the data-storage company was adapting to a changing enterprise market, he also warned of a hazy road ahead.

Major enterprises had grown more cautious on IT spending amid growing economic uncertainty, which has been aggravated by the US-China trade war.

"We have taken a variety of difficult scenarios into account," Kurian told Business Insider in an interview. "I don't want to predict the worst-case outcomes, but we have taken a variety of difficult outcomes into account."

A key concern is still the raging trade dispute between the US and China, which escalated recently when the Trump administration said it would impose a new round of tariffs on Chinese goods.

"Customers, especially large global enterprises, continue to be a bit cautious about making large capital investments, given the uncertainty about the trade and global economic outlook," he said. "The sooner there's clarity on what would be the potential resolution of the trade regime, as well as clarity in terms of the economic outlook, people can make spending decisions and move forward."

For the current quarter, NetApp said it expected adjusted income of 91 cents to 99 cents a share on revenue in the range of $1.33 billion to $1.48 billion. That's stronger than the average analyst expectation, which called for earnings per share of 90 cents on revenue of $1.35 billion.

But NetApp didn't have a very high bar to clear, given the lackluster expectations surrounding its business in the current climate.

NetApp makes networking equipment used for private data centers and the cloud. Its business is especially vulnerable to the bumps and jolts of enterprise-tech spending, which has been hurt by worries that the trade war could cause an economic downturn.

Despite the tweet diplomacy between Trump and Beijing over everything from tariffs to currency rates, Kurian doesn't expect the situation to be resolved in the coming months. "We don't expect normalization of the trade regime this calendar year and that is factored into our calculations," he said.

Kurian, whose identical twin brother, Thomas, is the CEO of Google Cloud, has been in the top job at NetApp since 2015.

NetApp's results were better than expected, and the company's stock rallied 4% to $46.50 in after-hours trading. The shares are still down more than 30% this year.

NetApp reported fiscal first-quarter income of $103 million, or 42 cents a share, compared with a profit of $283 million, or $1.05 a share for the year-ago quarter. Revenue fell to $1.24 billion from $1.47 billion. Adjusted income was 65 cents a share. Analysts expected NetApp to report earnings of 61 cents a share on revenue of $1.24 billion.

Got a tip about NetApp 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.

Shares of Cisco fell sharply on Wednesday after the tech giant posted a weaker-than-expected forecast as CEO Chuck Robbins pointed to growing market uncertainty and the impact of the US-China trade war.

"We definitely saw a significant impact on our business in China as it relates to what's going on with the trade war," he told analysts during Cisco's earnings call.

Cisco shares dropped about 8% to $46.60 in late trades as Wall Street reacted to the company's disappointing outlook.

Cisco reported a fiscal fourth quarter profit of $2.2 billion, or 51 cents a share, compared with a profit of $3.8 billion, or 81 cents a share, for the year-ago quarter. Revenue rose 5% to $13.4 billion. Adjusted income was 83 cents a share.

Analysts were expecting Cisco to report earnings of 82 cents a share on revenue of $13.39 billion. So profit was a slight beat and revenue was in line.

But the rub came when Cisco said it expected earnings of 80 to 82 cents a share for the current quarter. Analysts were expecting earnings of 83 cents a share.

One reason for the lower-the expected forecast is escalating trade tensions between the US and China after the Trump administration said it would impose more tariffs on Chinese products.

Robbins said Cisco's business in China is "a small part of our business ... but when it falls very dramatically, it can still have some impact," he said.

Cisco is a leading maker of networking equipment. Robbins said the company continued to see challenges in the service-provider market, which is the one area where it has traditionally struggled.

But he also pointed to signs of weak demand in the enterprise-tech market, the area where Cisco dominates, which other tech companies, such as NetApp, also cited recently.

"We did see in July an early indication of macro shifts that we didn't see in the prior quarter," Robbins said. "We're monitoring this and watching it."

Got a tip about Cisco 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.

The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is normally quiet, but in May it surprised astronomers with an unprecedented explosion of infrared light.

The closest supermassive black hole to Earth, called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, suddenly got 75 times brighter than normal along the near-infrared region of the light spectrum for two hours on May 13, a team of scientists has found.

According to a new paper they published on August 5 in arXiv, a Cornell University repository for scientific papers that are not yet peer reviewed, this was the brightest flash scientists had seen in 20 years of observing the black hole — and twice as bright as any previously recorded.

"The black hole was so bright I at first mistook it for the star S0-2, because I had never seen Sgr A* that bright," Tuan Do, an astronomer and lead author of the paper, told ScienceAlert. "I knew almost right away there was probably something interesting going on with the black hole."

The new findings "push the limits of the current statistical models," since those don't account for infrared flux levels this high, and suggest scientists' understanding of our galaxy's central black hole is not up-to-date, the team wrote in the paper.

The Milky Way's spiral centers around a supermassive black hole. Scientists think that every galaxy has one at its center. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Scientists think every galaxy has an especially dense "supermassive" black hole at its center. The proximity of Sgr A* makes it the easiest black hole for scientists to study. The team that discovered this unprecedented flare-up observed Sgr A* for four nights with an infrared camera at the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

They were hoping to test Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity by observing how the black hole warped a nearby star's light. They got what they came for, plus the unprecedented infrared flare.

Do tweeted a time lapse of the event on Saturday.

For three of the four nights of observation, the black hole was in "a clearly elevated state," Do's team wrote.

"We think that something unusual might be happening this year because the black hole seems to vary in brightness more, reaching brighter levels than we've ever seen in the past," Do told Vice.

But the researchers aren't sure what exactly is going on.

In black holes, matter gets packed into a tiny space, giving them extremely powerful gravity — Sgr A*, for example, has the mass of 4 million suns. The pull of a black hole is so strong that even light cannot escape, so researchers have to observe the infrared or X-ray light that radiates out from the black hole and interacts with nearby gas and stars.

The researchers think such an interaction could have caused this bright flash. Specifically, they said, an interaction with a nearby star that passed near Sgr A* in 2018 could have disturbed gas flows at the edge of the black hole's grasp.

They also pointed to a dust cloud that passed near Sgr A* in 2014 but didn't get dramatically torn apart the way astronomers thought it would. The brightness could be a "delayed reaction," they wrote.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory captured an unprecedented X-ray flare from Sagittarius A* in 2013. This event was 400 times brighter than the usual X-ray output from the black hole.NASA/CXC/Northwestern Univ/D.Haggard et al.

In 2013, scientists detected an equally mysterious X-ray flare-up from Sgr A*, which was 400 times brighter than its normal levels of X-ray radiation.

Scientists should continue monitoring Sgr A* to see if it's experiencing significant changes, Do's team wrote. More research could also be used to update models of the regular flux of the black hole's radiation levels.

"Many astronomers are observing Sgr A* this summer," Do told Vice. "I'm hoping we can get as much data as we can this year before the region of the sky with Sgr A* gets behind the sun and we won't be able to observe it again until next year."

WeWork just dropped the paperwork for its IPO.

That means, we now have a chance to take a closer look at the company's finances, including which investors own the largest stakes.

The We Company, as WeWork's corporate parent is known, has many more private investors than its new S-1 filing reveals and some of them have already cashed out and done well. Insiders have sold billions of dollars of We Co. stock in so-called secondary transactions — in which shareholders privately sell their stock directly to investors — according to Pitchbook, the database that tracks such records.

For instance, shareholders sold $1.3 billion to Softbank in August, 2017, in addition to the $1.7 billion Softbank spent on shares issued by the company. In January, Softbank bought another $1 billion of shares from existing shareholders, as well, Pitchbook says.

The company hasn't yet disclosed the price it plans to sell shares. So it's not possible to know (or even guess) how much each person's stake is worth at this time.

Still, in 2017, when WeWork raised $1.7 billion (and had raised $3.4 billion to date) which valued the company at $21 billion, investors bought in at $57.90 per share, according to Pitchbook.

So, just for the sheer fun of it, we calculated the value of all classes of shares at $58.

We'll learn the true value of each stake when the company prices its shares right before they begin to trade, and we'll update this article at that time.

SoftBank's $1 billion Vision Fund has invested $110 million into Energy Vault, a Swiss startup that has come up with an innovative way to store renewable energy to meet the ebb and flow of demand.

It's SoftBank's first investment into an energy-storage company and marks growing investor interest in the space as countries shift away from fossil fuels.

One of the thornier issues in the switch to renewable energy is that energy provided by the weather is, naturally, dependent on the weather.

A sunnier or gloomier day will dictate whether energy production goes up or down, potentially overloading the grid. That can lead to power cuts. And most power grids were built with fossil fuel rather than renewable sources in mind. The issue then is around capturing and storing any excess energy for days and months when consumer demand is higher.

Some firms are already working on short-term energy storage — it's why Tesla built a giant lithium-ion battery next to a wind farm in Australia. But, according to Robert Piconi, the CEO and cofounder of Energy Vault, batteries work only to smooth out short-term spikes in energy demand. You need other technologies to store renewable energy for months at a time, something that is likely to become more common.

"You want to store that in an efficient way, in a way that doesn't degrade," he told Business Insider. "Like in a chemical battery — if you're going to store it, that solution is going to degrade over time."

This stack of concrete bricks is Energy Vault's alternative to the giant battery:

Energy Vault stores surplus electricity through, essentially, a battery made of bricks. This is a rendered image. Energy Vault

The stack is made up of 35-metric-ton bricks, topped by an autonomous six-arm crane. As a solar or wind farm produces surplus energy, the crane's software directs it to pick up and stack the bricks to form a tower. Energy is stored in the elevation gain. As and when energy is needed, the crane's software returns to the bricks from the ground and turns the resulting kinetic energy into electricity.

The tower can be as big as needed, and Energy Vault says each plant has a capacity of between 10 and 35 megawatt-hours and power output of between 2 and 5 megawatts.

Here's a simulation of the tower in action:

The concept, according to Piconi, is similar to mainstream pumped hydro-storage solutions, which use a reservoir and dam system to store energy. With pumped hydro, however, "you have a dependency on that topography and if you build it, it hurts the environment."

"It hurts the wildlife and the local ecosystem," Piconi said. "So while that's the largest type of energy storage today, all the best locations have been built. And it's not mobile, you can't go build in other locations."

Ravi Manghani, the head of energy storage at the consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said Energy Vault's tower "has all the makings of good long-duration storage."

He said: "It's cheap, it's readily off-the-shelf for the most part, and it's going to last forever if you take care of it. It's not a lot of manufacturing investment to build those blocks, and then it can last decades, unlike some current technologies. Most of the battery storage would last about 10 or 20 years, but here we're talking about lasting double that."

Read more: How T-Series went from making cassette tapes to dethroning PewDiePie and becoming the biggest channel on YouTube

Energy Vault was founded in 2017 and launched in 2018, and has announced Tata Power, one of India's biggest energy providers, as a customer. It's building a 35 megawatt-hour tower in Milan for completion this year. It also has a partnership with the Mexican materials firm CEMEX.

According to Piconi, the money from SoftBank is part of the Japanese investor's efforts to back big global ideas, such as tackling climate change. "They're trying to invest in things that solve big world problems, climate change being, I think, one of the highest priority problems we have," he said. "It's no surprise SoftBank would be trying to find a solution in energy storage."

Manghani said SoftBank's backing signaled growing investor interest in energy storage. "It does speak volumes about which the direction of storage investment is going. We'll see many more investments in the coming months and years as this area gets more mature."

Amazon is making a big push to help third-party sellers donate their unsold products instead of trashing them.

The online retail giant is launching a new program called Fulfillment by Amazon Donations, where eligible excess and returned products from sellers will be donated to nonprofits and charities in the United States and United Kingdom.

The donation program will kick off in September, and the donation option will automatically apply to inventory that sellers choose to dispose of manually, says an email that an Amazon seller appears to have recently received. CNBC earlier reported the program's existence.

The launch comes after investigations from a French TV station and UK-based news outlet The Daily Mail found that Amazon destroys unsold items — even those that are worth hundreds of dollars. The French TV station, called M6, filmed a "destruction zone" where items are junked as part of a documentary.

Read more: Amazon sells a $37,000 tiny home that expands with the click of a remote — here's what it looks like inside

In the US Amazon will be working with Good360, which partners with retailers and consumer goods companies to distribute products to nonprofit organizations. Amazon's UK partners for the program include charities such as Newlife, Salvation Army, and Barnado's.

The program is the latest effort by the Seattle-based e-commerce behemoth to make its delivery methods and processes less wasteful. Earlier this year, the company set a goal to reach 50% of all Amazon shipments with net zero carbon by the year 2030, an initiative Amazon is calling "Shipment Zero." It also works with manufacturer to help them design more sustainable packaging to cut down on waste throughout the supply chain.

Over 500 Googlers are urging their company not to bid on a cloud-computing contract with the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in what's the latest in a series of employee protests at the Silicon Valley tech giant.

The CBP contract— which seeks to "acquire services from a Cloud Services Provider" — has stirred controversy amongst Google's rank-and-file due to the agency's recent handling of migrants at the US southern border, the petition released on Wednesday said.

"The winning cloud provider will be streamlining CBP's infrastructure and facilitating its human rights abuses," the petition read, in part. "We demand that Google publicly commit not to support CBP, ICE, or ORR with any infrastructure, funding, or engineering resources, directly or indirectly, until they stop engaging in human rights abuses."

The contract was first posted on July 10th and bids were due on August 1st.

A Google spokesperson declined to confirm with Business Insider whether or not the company bid on the cloud services contract.

From the list of "interested vendors" on the Federal Business Opportunities website, it is not immediately clear if Google is amongst the 21 vendors who applied. From the statement of work, it is also not immediately clear how much the contract could potentially be worth, though Google employees on Wednesday described it as "massive."

Read more: Google reportedly has a massive culture problem that's destroying it from the inside

In their petition, employees pointed to Google's AI Principles as reason for not working with the CBP, an agency they say is in "grave violation of international human rights law." Those AI principals were established last June when Google decided not to renew its contract with the Pentagon — known as Project Maven — after thousands of employees wrote a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai and demanded that the company "not be in the business of war."

Within the statement of work, the Department of Homeland Security notes that the CBP already uses Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and Google Cloud Platform for its "Enterprise Infrastructure." The contract, it appears, aims at consolidating the number of cloud providers for the CBP.

"The Government is pursuing a cloud strategy to increase access to cloud innovation and reduce the disadvantages associated with multiple cloud service providers/resellers," the statement of work reads.

Google has come under hot water as of late from lawmakers in Washington, and in particular, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, for not supporting projects with the US military — like its decision to not renew its AI contract with the Pentagon. Critics say while the Silicon Valley giant shuns the US military, it's simultaneously engaging in research efforts in China, which by law in that country require sharing information with the Chinese military.

Thiel said Google's actions are "seemingly treasonous," and called on the FBI and CIA to investigate. Recently, in early August, President Donald Trump said that Google was being watched "very closely."

Although it remains unclear whether Google has actually bid on the CBP contract, the petition from employees shows just how difficult it will be for the tech giant to pursue major government deals as it tries to ramp up its cloud computing division. Government contracts are an important revenue stream for cloud leaders, Amazon and Microsoft, and with employee backlash at even the prospect of a deal, it seems like attempts by Google to enter that arena could be thwarted internally.

Last week, the owner of the controversial online message board, 8chan, was "respectfully requested" to appear before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Now, he's being ordered to do so.

On Wednesday, 8chan owner Jim Watkins was sent a subpoena to appear before the House Committee on September 5 at 9:30 a.m. ET.

Watkins has been under scrutiny as of late, given 8chan's connection to the recent shooting in El Paso, Texas, which left over 20 people dead. The suspect, a 21-year-old man, is believed to have posted a manifesto on 8chan minutes before the attack advocating anti-immigrant and white supremacist beliefs.

The shooting was the third act of "deadly white supremacist extremist violence" in the past six months, the House Committee said on Wednesday. Hearing Watkins' testimony on the matter, they said, was "critical" to understanding what can be done to "counter the trend."

Little is known about Watkins, who lives in the Philippines raising pigs and running various websites, like 8chan. When the House Committee sent the original request for him to testify last week, for instance, it was not immediately clear whether they had his correct mailing address.

8chan's founder, Fredrick Brennan — who's no longer connected to the site and has become an outspoken critic — has recently called on Watkins to shut down the site he originally created.

"Do the world a favor and shut it off," he has said.

Bill Gates is the latest high-profile figure to be linked to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

According to a new report from CNBC published on Wednesday, the Microsoft cofounder met Epstein to "discuss ways to increase philanthropic spending" several years after Epstein was jailed over charges relating to underage prostitution.

The meeting took place in New York in 2013, according to CNBC, and is further evidence of how Epstein was able to make connections in elite society — even after he became a convicted sex offender.

Flight logs also show that Gates and Epstein flew from New York to Palm Beach, Florida, in March 2013, with no other passengers on the plane; CNBC reported that this flight took place after the pair met and was so Gates could go see his family.

In 2013, Gates was still the chairman of Microsoft, though he had stepped down as CEO in 2000.

In a statement, the Gates spokesperson Bridgitt Arnold told Business Insider: "Although Epstein pursued Bill Gates aggressively, any account of a business partnership or personal relationship between the two is categorically false."

A spokesperson previously told CNBC in a statement: "Epstein never provided tax, estate or services of any kind to Bill Gates."

CNBC also reported that Epstein told people he was an "informal advisor" to Gates, though Epstein is said to have played up his connections to appear important.

Epstein died earlier this month in what authorities have said was an apparent suicide after he was arrested on sex-trafficking charges.

Google's Cloud business revamped its sales team's compensation, ratcheting up the incentives — and the pressure — to maximize sales, as CEO Thomas Kurian ripped a page out of a playbook long favored at sales-driven software companies like Oracle and SAP.

The new compensation structure for employees in Google's sales organization looks a lot like the way legacy enterprise companies like SAP and Oracle pay their sales folks, with incentives designed to reward rainmakers and weed out underperformers. Employees received a letter to sign about the new compensation plan in June, and the change took effect on July 1, sources familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

Under the new system, salespeople will see their base salary reduced, while their potential quarterly bonus for hitting sales targets will increase.

The change comes as Google is aggressively moving to compete in the cloud business, a market dominated by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. Google has said it plans to triple its Cloud salesforce, already one of the company's biggest areas of head-count growth.

According to one of the sources, Kurian told Google Cloud employees that Google Cloud has a five-year window to become "at least the number 2 cloud."

The Google Cloud sales organization is under Robert Enslin, the president of global customer operations, who joined Google in April after eight years at SAP. It's probably no accident that the new compensation model looks very similar to the way salespeople are paid at SAP. The aggressive sales culture and focus on commissions are also a hallmark of Oracle, where Kurian previously worked.

Business Insider reached out to Google Cloud for comment on this information. Google Cloud declined comment.

The percentage change in compensation varied depending on the role. A source familiar with the matter estimates that the salary was reduced 10%, while the bonus was increased more than 10%.

Reception to the new compensation plan was fairly mixed, according to sources familiar with the matter. On one hand, if employees hit their quotas and receive their entire bonuses, their entire compensation will now be greater than it was before. But that means their regular paycheck is lighter — and they have to wait for the extra money because the bonus is paid out quarterly.

Others were concerned that Google Cloud's culture is becoming more like that of SAP or Oracle.

Google Cloud's leadership told employees the change was being made in order to align the company with the rest of the industry, according to a source familiar with the matter.

On last quarter's earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Google Cloud planned to triple it salesforce over the next few years. Google has already hired 2,000 salespeople, one person told us. Since Google Cloud is hiring more salespeople, the partner and marketing organizations saw budget cuts of 50 to 60% in February, a source said.

Read more: Google revealed that its cloud business is on run rate of more than $8 billion, and it plans to triple the size of its salesforce

Google Cloud is working to increase its cloud market share and catch up to Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, both of which have long relationships with cloud customers in the enterprise. Last month, Google announced that its cloud business' revenue would now amount to $8 billion if the current revenue rate was projected forward on an annualized basis.

Do you work at Google Cloud? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Telegram at @rosaliechan, or Twitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

At least three people have reported that their smart countertop ovens have turned on overnight without their knowledge, according to reports from The Spoon and The Verge.

June, the company behind the smart ovens that turned on unknowingly, said it plans to release a software update in the near future that will let owners disable the feature that lets them preheat the oven from their smartphone, which could remedy the issue. Errors related to the way the user's devices communicated with the oven were to blame for the accidental preheats, the company said.

In one scenario, an owner's oven turned on unknowingly at around 2:30 a.m. and broiled at 400 degrees, The Verge's report says. The owner only noticed hours later when he woke up.

Read more: Everything we know about the next Apple Watch, which could launch as soon as next month

Two other June owners are said to have posted about similar experiences in a private Facebook group for June oven owners.

One member wrote about an instance in which his oven turned on at 1:20 a.m. and baked at 425 degrees for more than four hours. Another use wrote that her phone woke her up at 6:30 a.m. with a push notification indicating that the oven had preheated to 400 degrees.

The June Oven is a countertop device that uses a combination of sensors and cameras to identify food and cook it accordingly. The first version was priced at nearly $1,500 when it was released in 2016, but the latest model starts at $700. The company was founded by former Path executive Matt Van Horn and ex-Apple engineer Nikhil Bhogal.

"Safety of our product is June's No. 1 priority, and the company took a number of precautions in the production of the June oven," a June spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider. "We have had ovens deployed in the market for four years now and have a large, passionate community. These instances are concerning for sure, but we have a team of engineers working to ensure user error can be avoided in the future. The best-case scenario is hearing from customers in real-time, like June does, to address any issues as they arise."

Van Horn also said the company takes "accidental preheating seriously" in a post in the June oven owners Facebook group, adding that the company is working on safeguards to prevent such instances from occurring in the future. In addition to disabling the remote preheat feature, the firm will also add a feature to its ovens that uses the device's sensors and cameras to detect when there isn't any food in the oven so that it can shut off the heating elements after a certain period of time.

It's not the first time a smart home gadget has malfunctioned and resulted in a situation that could potentially cause harm. Back in 2016, a glitch caused some Nest Learning Thermostats to turn off during the winter, as The New York Times reported, leaving some owners with very cold homes.

The cannabis-delivery startup Eaze is looking to raise another $50 million to $75 million just months after closing a $65 million funding round, according to two sources who have firsthand knowledge of the deal.

The sources said the San Francisco-based startup is looking to raise the round at a valuation of $350 million to $400 million. Eaze has made the rounds, pitching both mainstream venture-capital firms and cannabis-focused investors on the deal, the sources said.

A spokesperson for Eaze declined to comment.

Because Eaze is a tech platform — in the same vein as Uber — it is one of the few cannabis startups that has been able to attract top Sand Hill Road venture firms who are wary of investing directly in companies that sell or cultivate cannabis because it is illegal under US federal law.

Read more: A group of Wall Street veterans just raised $250 million to chase down deals in the red-hot cannabis sector. Its CEO explains how it got Credit Suisse on board.

Previous investors in Eaze include DCM Ventures and Jim Clark, a cofounder of Netscape.

Eaze runs an online marketplace where consumers in California can purchase cannabis products and have them delivered to their residences. The company recently announced an expansion to Portland, Oregon — its first foray outside California.

Eaze has somewhat scaled back its lofty goal of delivering $1 billion worth of cannabis. The company said in documents obtained by MarketWatch that it would sell about $412 million worth of cannabis products on its platform in 2020.

Cannabis-tech startups are finding fertile ground to raise VC money. Venture-capital firms have already poured close to $1.6 billion into cannabis startups this year — that's up from just $16 million in 2013.

Shayanne Gal/Business Insider

With about 300 hours of new video content uploaded to YouTube every minute, if you want your video to stand out, you need to perform at least some rudimentary editing.

If you don't own a video editing program, you can do some simple editing in YouTube's own video editor, called YouTube Studio. It's currently in beta, but offers a few simple video editing tools, like video trimming.

How to open the YouTube Studio video editor

1. Navigate to YouTube in a browser. For best results, you should use Google Chrome, since some features may not work properly in other browsers.

Visit YouTube Studio to start editing a video you've published to the site. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

2. Click your avatar at the top right of the screen and choose "YouTube Studio (Beta)."

3. Click "Videos" in the pane on the left of the screen. You should see a list of all your videos that you've published or drafted on YouTube.

4. Click the title of a video you want to edit.

5. Click "Editor" in the pane on the left of the screen.

After selecting a video, click "Editor" in the pane on the left. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

How to trim the start and end of a video

1. Open the video you want to edit in the YouTube Studio video editor.

2. Click "Trim" under the video preview.

3. Drag the blue bars on the left and right edge of the video timeline to set the start and endpoint of the video.

4. In the bar at the bottom of the screen, click "Preview" to see the change.

After dragging the bars to set the start and end point fort the video, click "Preview" to see the changes. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

5. You can continue to make additional changes — click "Edit Trim" to reenter the edit mode and then click "Preview" to make the additional change.

6. When you're done making changes to your video and want to save these edits to the published video, click "Save" at the top of the screen. Note that you can't save your changes to a video until you first click the Preview button at the bottom of the screen.

How to cut a section out of the middle of a video

1. Open the video you want to edit in the YouTube Studio video editor.

2. Click "Trim" or "Edit Trim" under the video preview.

3. Position the vertical bar in the timeline where you want the edit to begin.

4. Click "Split" in the bar at the bottom of the screen.

5. Click on the vertical bar and drag it across the timeline to the end of the cut. You should see a dark region that identifies where the video will be cut. You can fine-tune the split by dragging the two bars in the timeline.

You can use the Split feature to trim a section out of the middle of a video. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

6. Click "Preview" to implement the change.

7. When you are done making changes to your video and want to save these edits to the published video, click "Save" at the top of the screen.

How to blur a person or object in the video

You can also use the YouTube video editor to blur elements in the video like faces or license plates.

1. Open the video you want to edit in the YouTube Studio video editor.

2. Click "Add Blur" in the timeline. YouTube will open the old Video Manager, since this feature hasn't yet been implemented in YouTube Studio (Beta).

3. Click "Edit" beside "Blur Faces" or "Custom blurring." If you choose to blur faces, the app will automatically scan for faces and add blurring on its own. If you choose the custom option, you can draw boxes in the video to indicate where you want to blur, and YouTube will move the boxes around the screen to continue to cover the object even if it moves within the video.

You can selectively blur portions of your video to mask objects or provide some anonymity. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

4. When you're done, click "Save" and then click "Return to YouTube Studio."

YouTube discontinued more advanced video editing

Unfortunately, YouTube used to offer other video enhancements like the ability to rotate videos, edit the colors, tweak the lighting, and more, but these features have been discontinued.

If you need additional video capabilities, you may want to use a standalone video editor and upload the completed video YouTube. Some recommended options include HitFilm Express and VideoPad.

If you have a smartphone, chances are you're on Instagram.

Whether you love posting selfies or vacation snaps, or you're just there for the cute dog pics or the yummy recipes, the popular social media app likely has some form of entertainment for you to consume.

Most Instagram users also take advantage of the Instagram Stories feature, which allows you to post 15-second snippets of video or photos and add in fun things like gifs, emojis, and even music.

But how do you add music to your Instagram Stories?

It's a quick and easy process that you'll pick up in no time. Here's how to do it on your iPhone or Android.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone Xs (From $999.99 at Best Buy)

Google Pixel 3 (From $ at Best Buy)

How to put music on your Instagram Story

1. On your iPhone or Android's home screen, locate the Instagram icon and tap to open the app.

2. Swipe left from your feed's home screen to open the Stories feature.

3. Either take or select the photo or video you want to post to your Instagram Story.

4. In the menu bar along the top of your screen, tap the small square smiley icon, which looks like a Post-It being peeled away.

Tap the square smiley icon. Jennifer Still/Business Insider

5. Tap the Music option. Then, in the search box which appears, type in the song you want to include on your Instagram Story.

Select the Music option. Jennifer Still/Business Insider

6. Tap on the selected song when it appears on the list and drag the small bar at the bottom of the screen to the segment of the song you want on your Story.

Set up to 15 seconds of your song and choose from the text caption or album art options. Jennifer Still/Business Insider

7. Hit Done when finished, then post your Story as normal.

Pro-gamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins posted a video on Sunday admonishing streaming platform Twitch for using his now inactive channel to promote other streamers, including a porn account.

Ninja is best known for streaming "Fortnite," and left Twitch earlier this month to enter into an exclusive partnership with Mixer, Microsoft's new streaming service.

Read more: Ninja ditching Twitch for Microsoft's Mixer was a brilliant decision

In the video, Ninja said that the transition from Twitch to Mixer had been relatively painless. However, Ninja said he discovered Twitch had been using his inactive channel to advertise other streamers to the 14.5 million followers he amassed.

"They don't do this for anyone else who is offline by the way, just me," he said. Ninja specifically took issue with a porn account which he said was "number one being recommended" on his channel.

"I have no say in any of this stuff," he said, later adding: "For anyone who saw that, for anyone whose kids — or who just didn't obviously wanna see that — I apologise and I'm sorry."

You can watch his video here:

Twitch CEO Emmett Shear tweeted later that day that the platform has been "experimenting with showing recommended content," but added that the "lewd" account Ninja mentioned violated terms of service and was permanently suspended.

He added that the "recommended content" had been suspended on Ninja's channel pending an investigation into how the porn account ended up there. He apologized directly to Ninja. "It wasn't our intent, but it should not have happened. No excuses," he wrote.

Twitch was not immediately available for comment on Ninja's comments when contacted by Business Insider.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has admitted that she takes her children's phones away during battles to regulate their screen time.

Wojcicki, who runs a platform designed to keep people glued to content, said in a wide-ranging interview with The Guardian that it is important for her five kids to focus on the "present."

"People need to learn when it is a time [to be] focused in the conversation, and when it is OK to go and watch videos or do other activities on the internet," she said.

To this end, Wojcicki said taking their phones away can be effective. "I have times when I take away all my kids' phones, especially if we're on a family vacation because I want people to interact with each other," she said. "So, I take away their phones and say: 'We're all going to focus on being present today.'"

Read more: Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel and wife Miranda Kerr limit their seven-year-old child to 1.5 hours of screen time per week

In the past, Wojcicki has admitted that this is not always an easy task. Her five children age from four to late teens and she told the Belfast Telegraph in 2017: "We spend as much time as other parents taking their phones away from our kids, saying... 'No phones at the dinner table!'"

The YouTube CEO said, however, that she wants her kids to be responsible for how much time they spend on their phones and learn "self-control methods."

She explained: "TV was the same when I was growing up. I was taught that, sure, some TV is enjoyable, but it needs to be balanced with sports, school, homework, reading and other activities."

Asked how old children should be before they are given a phone, she said around 11 makes sense. "There are moments when it becomes important for them to have a phone," she added. "I think middle school is a reasonable point to start educating them about it, but also a lot of times you can take it away."

Wojcicki is not the only tech CEO to talk about how they monitor their kids' screen time. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said last year that he and his wife Miranda Kerr impose a limit of an hour and a half of screen time per week on their seven-year-old child.

I've tried just about every smartwatch and hybrid watch there is in my six-plus years as a tech product reviewer, and I always come back to Withings watches.

I've been a fan of the brand's hybrid watches since the first one came out in 2015. It was the first wearable I'd tested that I actually loved. Since then, the company has grown its range of wearables to include several great watches, including the Steel HR.

The Steel HR is truly innovative in the world of hybrid watches in that it incorporates a heart rate monitor and a small digital screen without compromising its analog design. The watch isn't bulky, it's comfortable to wear, and it blends in like a normal watch would.

It's the perfect hybrid watch for someone who wants an attractive timepiece that happens to be nearly as smart as a smartwatch, minus the bulk and futuristic look.

I've been wearing one every day for the past year, and I don't imagine I'll be replacing it with a different smartwatch or hybrid watch any time soon. It's my favorite wearable to date, and here's why.

Specs

Design

Withings

At first glance, the Steel HR looks like a normal analog watch. It has a classic round face with hash marks around the edges to mark the hours, two hands, and a button on the side. However, once you look at the watch face more closely, you can see a few extra features.

At 6 o'clock, there's a small round dial with its own tiny hand and hash-marks counting up to 100%. This is where you can see how close you are to achieving the fitness goals you set up in the companion smartphone app, Withings HealthMate (iOS and Android). There's also a small, round digital screen at 12 o'clock on the watch's face that turns on when you press the button on the side of the watch. You can see the date, time, your metrics, and any notifications you set up on this small screen. The screen, which uses a display technology called OLED, is what sets the Steel HR apart from most other hybrid watches and makes it closer to a true smartwatch.

My favorite thing about the Steel HR is its design: It's the only hybrid watch that looks like a traditional wristwatch but also has a small digital display on its face. It's the perfect mix of tech and style because it's not large, bulky, geeky, futuristic, or overly techy looking. In fact, no one will know that it's not a standard watch from a quick glance.

It has all the elegance of a wristwatch with most of the smarts of a smartwatch, thanks to the small display.

The Steel HR comes with a silicone strap, but you can choose to add another one if you'd like a leather or metal Milanese band, too. Withings has 12 different band colors in total: four are leather straps, seven are silicone straps, and one is a metal Milanese strap.

The bands use a pin mechanism to snap in and out of the watch casing. Changing straps requires patience and a delicate touch. I swapped the silicone strap mine came with for a nice blush leather one in less than 10 minutes.

When it comes to the watch casing, Withings gives you two color and size options: rose gold or silver in 36mm or 40mm sizes. The watch face color is either black or white. I personally prefer the black watch face because it hides the tiny round black OLED screen for a more subtle look. The white watch face is also quite nice, though, if you dislike dark color schemes.

The watch is also water-resistant up to 164 feet or 50 meters (5 ATM), so you can go swimming with it.

Fitness features

Malarie Gokey/Business Insider

Perhaps the biggest standout feature of the Steel HR is its heart rate monitor, which keeps track of your heart rate 24/7. While most hybrid watches offer basic step tracking, they don't have the ability to track your heart rate or fully track workouts. In that regard, the Steel HR is more like a full smartwatch or advanced fitness tracker.

The watch automatically recognizes and records certain exercises, including walking, running, and swimming. You can also select 30 more workout types, including everything from soccer and pilates to ping pong. I use it to track my runs and yoga sessions.

To start logging a workout, you just long-press the button, and the watch will start timing your workout and recording your continuous heart rate. Based on that information, the watch calculates how many calories you've burned. The Steel HR connects to the GPS on your phone to tell you the distance you've gone, the location of your workout, and the elevation at that location.

In the app, you can get a post-workout summary that shows you how long you were in light, moderate, intense, and peak heart rate zones. You can also view a map of your workout in the app.

In addition to the activity tracking, the Steel HR can also keep tabs on your sleep. The HealthMate app will give you a Sleep Score based on how much light and deep sleep you got. The Sleep Score is based on your overnight heart rate and any interruptions to your sleep. You can also set a silent alarm to buzz and wake you up. I've always found this much more peaceful than the blaring of an alarm clock.

Smartwatch powers

Malarie Gokey/Business Insider

You can get notifications from more than 100 apps on Steel HR, including exercise apps like Fitbit, Run Keeper, Runtastic, Lose It!, MyFitnessPal, and more, as well as messaging apps like WhatsApp, Slack, Facebook Messenger, and your phone's standard messaging app. Other apps like Uber, Facebook, Twitter, and more can send you notifications, too, if you want them to. However, the more notifications you get, the quicker your watch's battery life will disappear.

I personally prefer getting as few notifications as possible, so mine only sends me alerts for calls, texts, WhatsApp Messages, and Google Calendar Events. If I had Slack and Facebook Messenger notifications turned on, my watch would buzz continuously and its battery would die a rapid death. I would also be much more anxious.

When I get a notification, my watch buzzes, and it scrolls across the small OLED screen. I love being able to see either my calendar event's title or see who's calling or texting me at a glance, and I can even read the start of messages as they scroll by.

With other hybrid watches, you only get the buzz at your wrist, and there's no telling who's trying to contact you or what's happening, so you get driven to look at your phone much more often. With the Steel HR, you can glance at your wrist, see what's up and decide whether you need to break out your phone to see the full details. In that way, it's much more like a fully geeked-out smartwatch.

The screen is much smaller, of course, so it's less disruptive when you get a notification in public or in a dark space like a movie theater. The brightness auto-adjusts to your settings, too, so it's easily visible without being overbright. You can summon the screen anytime you want by pressing the button on the side of the watch. It'll show you the date and time automatically, and if you want to see other metrics like heart rate, steps, distance traveled, or calories burned, you simply keep pressing the button to cycle through them.

The bottom line

Withings

Withings Steel HR is a unique hybrid watch that straddles the line between a smartwatch like the Apple Watch and a hybrid watch like the ones from Fossil.

The Steel HR takes Withings watches to new heights technologically, thanks to its built-in heart rate monitor and small screen that can display metrics and notifications. It's a great choice for anyone who's always wanted the features of a smartwatch in the form of a traditional, analog watch.

Pros: Heart rate monitor, small digital display, buzzes with notifications, good activity and workout tracking, silent alarm, nice design, multiple color options and finishes

Cons: Pricey, leather bands cost extra

Buy the Withings Steel HR watch from Withings for $179.95