Apple's iPad is largely considered to be the best tablet out there, thanks largely to the fact that iPads have a great design, easy-to-use software, and are relatively powerful. That said, there are multiple iPad models out there — so if you're in the market for an iPad, then it's not necessarily as easy as just buying an iPad.

The standard iPad and the iPad Air are two of the more popular iPad models, but they do have a few key differences. Which one is right for your needs? We put the iPad and the iPad Air to the test to find out.

Specs

The standard iPad and the iPad Air may offer a similar design, but there are some major differences under the hood. Here are the specs for the iPad and the iPad Air.

Alyssa Powell/Business Insider

As you can see, there are a few key areas in which the iPad and the iPad Air have slightly different specs. For starters, the standard iPad is powered by Apple's A10 Fusion chip, which is an older processor from 2016. By comparison, the iPad Air has Apple's latest A12 Bionic chip, which is the flagship chip for 2018. As such, it's quite a bit more powerful.

Of course, that said, the A10 Fusion chip is still more than capable of handling most tasks, so for most people, the standard iPad will still be more than powerful enough. For those that need that extra horsepower, however, the iPad Air may be a better choice. It is also more future-proof, so it will last longer.

There's also the difference in storage. While the base model of the iPad comes with 32GB of storage, the base model of the iPad Air has 64GB — and it can be upgraded to 256GB, which is double the upgraded storage for the iPad. Again, most people will be perfectly fine with less storage, especially if you've gotten used to using cloud storage and streaming services.

Other spec differences are decidedly less important. While the iPad Air has a 7-megapixel front-facing camera, the standard iPad's front-facing camera is 1.2 megapixels, which will still do the job perfectly well. Apart from that, both devices have a Lightning port, and both have a Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

Design

Apple

When it comes to the design of the iPad and iPad Air, you'll find that they look very similar. They both feature that "classic" iPad design, with a Touch ID Home Button under the display and a Lightning port at the bottom. Both devices are available in three color options, including Silver, Space Gray, and Gold.

Perhaps the biggest difference in design is the size of the screen. The standard iPad has a screen size of 9.7 inches, while the iPad Air steps things up to 10.5 inches. It's not a huge difference, but if screen size is important to you, then perhaps the extra 0.8 inches is worth considering.

The pixel resolution is pretty similar between the two devices, but not exactly the same. The iPad Air has a resolution of 2,224 x 1,668 pixels, while the standard iPad's display sits in at 2,048 x 1,536 pixels. Considering the fact that the iPad Air has a larger screen, the pixel density is exactly the same, coming in at 264 pixels-per-inch.

Apart from that, there are only minor differences. Because the iPad Air has a larger screen, the body of the device is also bigger. The iPad Air is also a little thinner: While the standard iPad comes in at 0.29 inches thick, the iPad Air sits in at 0.24 inches.

In use

Both the standard iPad and the iPad Air offer very similar user experiences. That's because of the fact that they both run Apple's iOS, soon to be renamed as iPadOS for the iPad. They're both super easy to use, and they integrate perfectly with the rest of your Apple products, so you'll be able to sync things like podcasts, photos, and more.

Both the iPad and the iPad Air work with a wide range of accessories, including the Apple Pencil. In other words, if you're an artist or graphic designer, you'll be able to use Apple's much-loved stylus with both devices.

Apart from that, the overall experience will be very similar between the iPad Air and the standard iPad— unless you start using the device for high-performance gaming and video editing, in which case, the iPad Air may run a little more smoothly.

The bottom line

Alyssa Powell/Business Insider

The iPad Air is clearly a better device here, in almost every way. It's more powerful, has a bigger screen, and is thinner, too. But it's also more expensive with a starting price of $499.

Considering the difference in price, we still think the standard $329 iPad is the best device for most people. It's still very reliable and able to handle pretty much anything most people need it to do, including running apps, browsing social media, and streaming video.

For those who need a little extra power, or who have the cash to spare, the iPad Air is a worthy upgrade that will likely make for a device that will last a little longer and run a little smoother.

Buy the iPad Air from $499.99 at Best Buy

Buy the iPad from $329.99 at Best Buy and Walmart

On August 1, 1955, a prototype of the U-2 spy plane sprinted down a runway at Groom Lake in Nevada, and its massive wings quickly lifted it into the sky.

That wasn't exactly how it was supposed to go. It was meant to be a high-speed taxi test, but the prototype's highly efficient wings pulled it into the air unexpectedly. The plane's first official flight happened three days later.

Lockheed Martin footage captured the moment the venerable Dragon Lady started its 64-year career.

The U-2 was developed in secrecy by Lockheed in the early 1950s to meet the US government's need to surveil the Soviet Union and other areas from a height enemy aircraft and anti-aircraft systems couldn't reach.

Renowned engineer Kelly Johnson led the project at Lockheed's advanced development lab, Skunk Works.

"Johnson's take was all right, I need to get as high as I can to overfly enemy defenses, and how do I do that? Well I put big wings on there; big wings means higher. I cut weight; cutting weight means higher, and then let me just strap a big engine on there, and that's it," U-2 pilot Maj. Matt "Top" Nauman said at an Air Force event in New York City in May.

One thing Johnson ditched was wing-mounted landing gear. On takeoff, temporary wheels called "pogos" fall away from the wings.

Master Sgt. Justin Pierce, 9th Maintenance Squadron superintendent, preforms preflight checks on a U-2 at Beale Air Force Base in California, April 16, 2018. US Air Force/Senior Airman Tristan D. Viglianco

"So [Johnson] basically took a glider with parts and pieces from other Lockheed aircraft and strapped an engine to it and delivered it before the anticipated delivery date and under budget," Nauman said.

The plane Johnson and Lockheed produced was well suited for flight — as the Groom Lake test showed, it didn't take much to get it off the ground.

"The pilot was out there taxing around, and [during] a high-speed taxi — we're talking about 30ish miles an hour — the plane actually lifted off on its own, completely unexpected," Nauman said.

"And they thought, 'OK, hang on, let's go back and make sure we're approaching this test phase the right way.' And they found the thing just wants to get off the ground."

A U-2 on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS America. US Navy

Throughout its career, the U-2 has been reengineered and redesigned.

The plane that took off at Groom Lake was a U-2A. The next version was the U-2C, which had a new engine; a U-2C on display at the National Air and Space Museum flew the first operational mission over the Soviet Union on July 4, 1956.

The U-2G and U-2H, outfitted for carrier operations, came in the early 1960s. The U-2R, which was 40% larger than the original and had wing pods to carry more sensors and fuel, arrived in 1967.

The last U-2R arrived in 1989, and most of the planes in use now were built in the mid-1980s.

Since 1994 the US has spent $1.7 billion to modernize the U-2's airframe and sensors. After the GE F118-101 engine was added in the late 1990s, all U-2s were re-designated as U-2S, the current variant.

US Air Force Maj. Sean Gallagher greets his ground support crew before a U-2 mission, at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia, November 24, 2010. US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Eric Harris

The Air Force now has about 30 single-seat U-2 for missions and four of the two-seat TU-2 trainers. Those planes have a variety of pilot-friendly features, but one aspect remains a challenge.

"It's extremely difficult to land," Nauman said.

"You could YouTube videos of bad U-2 landings all day and see interview sorties that look a little bit sketchy," he said, referring to a part of the pilot-interview process where candidates have to fly the U-2, adding that the landings were done safely.

Despite its grace in flight, getting to earth is an ungainly process that takes a team effort.

Another qualified U-2 pilot in a high-performance chase car — Mustangs, Camaros, Pontiacs, and even a Tesla— meets the aircraft as it lands.

A U-2 pilot drives a chase car behind U-2 during a low-flight touch and go at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, March 15, 2019. US Air Force/Senior Airman Gracie I. Lee

"As the airplane's coming in over the runway, this vehicle's chasing behind it with a radio, and [the driver is] actually talking the pilot down a little bit, just to help him out ... 'Hey, raise your left wing, raise your right wing, you're about 10 feet, you're about 8 feet, you're about 2 feet, hold it there at 2 feet,'" U-2 pilot Maj. Travis "Lefty" Patterson, said at the same event.

As the plane "approaches a stall and it's able to land, you have that experienced set of eyes in the car watching the airplane, because all [the pilot] can see is right off the front," Patterson said.

The absence of wing landing gear means once it slows enough, the plane leans to one side and a wingtip comes to rest on the ground.

"The lifespan of the U-2, the airframe, [is beyond] 2040 to 2050 ... because we spend so little time in a high-stress regime," Patterson added. "Once it gets to altitude it's smooth and quiet and it's very, very nice on the airplane. The only tough part is the landing."

Carmakers are increasingly looking towards new ways to move people around, including tapping into the rising trends of e-bikes and e-scooters.

Audi announced on Monday the development of its e-tron Scooters, almost a year after announcing its fully electric e-tron SUV. Other carmakers, like BMW and Ford, have already been exploring the electric personal micro-mobility market through collaborating with established players.

It's no surprise carmakers are looking towards the booming e-mobility market. E-scooter company Bird reached a $2 billion valuation in under a year of operation in 2018, according to Inc. Similarly, one of Bird's largest competitors, Lime, has a $2.4 billion valuation, the company announced in February.

Read more: These are 12 of the most innovative transportation products on Indiegogo right now, from hover shoes to AI-powered motorcycle helmets

Ridesharing companies such as Uber have also been exploring the space. Their e-bike share subsidiary, Jump, has already launched in several cities, including Providence, Rhode Island and Sacramento, California. Lyft also has a stake in the electric bike ridesharing community, although the San Francisco program was recently halted after two bikes caught on fire.

Whether it's electric scooters or bikes, here are all the car companies making moves into creating electric micro-mobility products.

The people we've come to associate with the most successful technology companies were once relatively unknown names with big dreams. So if they could do it all over again, would they do it any differently?

The answer to this commonly-asked interview question tells us what we want to learn from the people who have, in our eyes, "made it." And leaders in the tech industry are successful because they created something — or saw potential in something — in a way that no one else did. The advice they would give their younger selves, then, is often informative and motivational.

Digital advertising company AdView compiled quotes from across the internet to create these inspirational posters for a series called "What Would You Tell Your Teenage Self?" We found our favorites and pulled a few others from various interviews over the years from the leaders and executives at companies like Apple, Facebook, Intel, Pandora, Airbnb, and more.

Here's the advice these 16 leaders in the tech industry told interviewers they would tell their younger selves:

Increasingly, companies that built their business around free software are facing competitive pressure from Amazon.

These companies, like MongoDB, Redis Labs, Confluent, and Elastic, have built their business around open source software -- or software that's free for anyone to use and modify. They give the basic software away for free and make their money by either offering extra enterprise features and/or offering support and services to paying customers.

Giving their software away for free helps them with development. Their community of users create new features and fix bugs.

But cloud providers like Amazon and Alibaba often take those free versions and sell them as a cloud service, competing directly with the software vendors. The big cloud players are also often accused of not contributing much back to the free software versions, not sharing their tweaks and upgrades with the whole community.

While this is completely legal, competing with Amazon is a hard position for smaller, open source software companies. In response, some of them added restrictions to how their software can be used, basically forbidding users of the free versions to sell the software as a service.

This year, three companies went the opposite direction, announcing they would make their software more open. The Seattle-based automation software startup Chef announced in April that it would make all of its software completely available as open source.

Likewise, Cloudera, who's stock has cratered this summer, announced in July that it will move all its software under open source licenses by February 2020. The database startup YugaByte made a similar announcement that month saying it would make its database completely available as open source.

As IBM just closed its $34 billion deal to acquire Red Hat, open source licensing lawyer Heather Meeker says that it's possible that companies saw how successful Red Hat was and are taking steps to become more like it.

Read more:Meet the programmer-turned-drummer-turned-lawyer who's helping open source startups stand their ground against Amazon's cloud amid a 'clash of ideologies'

"I think it's part of a natural pendulum swing a little bit back and forth," Meeker told Business Insider. "We saw people going to limited licenses, and we're now seeing more people swinging back to open source model."

"Become ubiquitous first"

Now that their software is under open source licenses, Chef, Cloudera, and YugaByte found alternative ways to make money. Chef will package up its software for subscribing customers and provide them with customer service, support, and software updates.

Cloudera's products require a subscription agreement to access compiled Cloudera software, and the company will focus on providing support, consulting, training, and updates to subscribing customers. As for YugaByte, it packages up its database for paying customers into a version that's easy to run on the cloud. It will also provide maintenance, monitoring, and customer support.

Generally, if a company wants to go completely open source, its business will rely on support and services -- like Red Hat. Currently, many companies follow an "open core" model, which means its core project is free and open source, but it develops paid enterprise features that are not freely shared.

Although Cloudera and YugaByte both took steps to make their software more open, they still essentially follow an open core model, says Joseph Jacks, founder of OSS Capital.

"Most of these changes and behaviors and shifts around licensing innovation have been very company specific," Jacks told Business Insider.

With companies taking steps to become more open, Eric Anderson, principal at Scale Venture Partners, says that these companies may be responding to a trend from last year, when companies were adding more restrictions to their software -- like Redis Labs, MongoDB, Confluent, and Cockroach Labs.

Anderson also said that becoming more open can help younger companies like YugaByte.

"They need to become ubiquitous first," Anderson said. "It's in their favor to be very open and attempt to reach ubiquity among developers. Once a project reaches ubiquity like Elastic, it's fairly straightforward to monetize, even if it's historically been very open."

Still, whether it's out of survival or greed, adding restrictions to how software can be used goes against the ethos of open source, says Karthik Ranganathan, founder and CTO of YugaByte.

"We have already seen a lot of database companies change their licenses, but if you boil down to the gist of it, they ended up making their databases less open," Karthik Ranganathan, founder and CTO of YugaByte, told Business Insider. "The database is less open and less community friendly than before."

Ranganathan acknowledges that YugaByte faces the possibility of Amazon selling its software, but in the long run, keeping it open source is better, and customers who want the latest features will go to the original company that created the software, he believes.

"It is not possible to do a 100% value capture on open source," Ranganathan said. "That's what makes open source so awesome for the end customer. Competition gives the end user the best experience."

"It's out in the open"

Since April, Chef has been transitioning its software to become more open. Corey Scobie, senior vice president of product and engineering at Chef, says that one of the great things about the change is that employees no longer have to discuss whether a feature should be proprietary or open source.

"We don't have a big debate about whether that's monetizable or not monetizable," Scobie told Business Insider. "We're building our product development process around the fact that our product development is in open source."

Chef CEO Barry Crist even said that Gap came back as a customer after Chef announced its move to being completely open source. He says that Gap cited that change as a reason for becoming a customer again. Although it's still too early to tell, Chef CMO Brian Goldfarb says that so far, Chef has surpassed its goals for the number of customers it's gained.

"I've heard from many customers that they have a preference in working with companies who follow an open source software development model," Scobie said.

Read more:$360 million IT automation startup Chef is 'bucking' a 'distinct trend' in open source software with a big bet on making all of its products totally free

Scobie says that back when Chef first started, all its engineers worked on the open source project. Now, they're back to doing all open source development again, which means all their code will be out in the public. For some engineers at Chef who were working on the proprietary product before, this was a big change.

"What we've done is brought it back full circle is now every engineer is an open source," Scobie said. "It hasn't changed their job or their function but how they think about how they do software engineering. Now the software engineering they do, it's out in the open."

"People still feel the threat"

Deepak Jeevankumar, managing director of Dell Technologies Capital, predicts that more companies will become more open and less restrictive this year. This allows their software to spread faster -- not only can more people access the software, there's also access to developers around the world who are willing to contribute to the software.

He says last year, when companies were adding restrictions to their software, it was an "exception to the norm."

"Overall more software is becoming more and more open because of democratized access, but there may be blips here and there," Jeevankumar told Business Insider. "It's like a stock market. Overall the stock market goes up, but there are ups and downs. I would think similarly of open source licenses to become more and more open and more and more free, but there will be more blips."

But Meeker believes the reverse is true. She still sees more companies following the open core model, which gives them options to add restrictions to their software to prevent freeriding from cloud vendors. She also says that companies that entirely rely on services for their income often don't scale as well -- Red Hat is one of the exceptions. She predicts that startups will continue experimenting with their business models.

"I think open core will continue to be the most popular," Meeker said. "It's an easier model to execute on from a business perspective. If you're going more towards full-on open source, you're going to have to be more creative in how to make money."

Anderson and Jacks agree, saying they believe the open core model, which was controversial a decade ago — criticized as being not true open source — has now become the standard. They think it will stay that way, despite the current wave of full-open source companies this year.

"People still feel the threat from the cloud providers," Anderson said.

Electing to not eat meat is a sure-fire way to reduce your impact on the environment.

The problem is that often, the diet that meets our nutritional needs isn't ideal for the planet.

"You could eat nothing but yellow corn — a crop that's grown in abundance, with reduced environmental impacts —but it would be catastrophic for your body to subsist on starch alone," environmental researcher Gidon Eshel told Business Insider.

But in a study published today in Scientific Reports, Eshel and his team report that it's possible to satisfy our nutritional needs without eating meat — and help the environment at the same time.

Read More:Our food system accounts for a whopping 37% of greenhouse-gas emissions, a UN report found. But it could also offer a solution to the climate crisis.

The researchers calculated that if every American replaced all beef, chicken, and pork in their diet with a vegetarian option, that would save the equivalent of 280 billion kilograms (280 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide every year. That's roughly the total that the entire state of Ohio emits. Or, put another way, it'd be the same as taking about 60 million cars off the road.

The benefits of going meatless

The livestock industry has an enormous carbon hoof-print. According to The Conversation, cow, sheep, and poultry farming accounts for 18% of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. That's a larger chunk of emissions than those from ships, planes, trucks, and cars put together.

Livestock farming also degrades land and water and contributes to deforestation — 30% of land worldwide is currently used either for livestock farming or to grow grain to feed that livestock.

Wikimedia Commons

So Eshel's team modeled what would happen if all Americans stopped eating meat (beef, poultry, and pork) and replaced it with plants that conferred the same nutrients in the same daily doses. Their results suggest that shift would reduce the amount of land needed to grow crops by 35% to 50% and eliminate the need for pastures.

By the numbers, replacing meat with plant alternatives would save approximately 29 million hectares (72 million acres) of crop land, 3 billion kilograms (6.6 billion pounds) of nitrogen fertilizer, and the equivalent of 280 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year in the US.

Food-related water use in this situation, however, would rise by 15%.

These benefits arise because crop farming requires less land and less fertilizer (and because crops don't emit methane, another potent greenhouse gas, the way cows do when they burp and fart).

Producing meat substitutes for a meatless diet emits about 80% less carbon than producing meat, Eshel said.

"The carbon-emissions cost is 3.5 kilograms per American per day for producing all the meat they need that day, and only about 0.6 kilograms for producing the meat's replacement," he added.

The plant-based diets that Eshel's team used in their model mostly consisted of soy, green peppers, squash, buckwheat, and asparagus. These crops were picked because they were at least as nutritious, if not more beneficial, than the meats they replaced in terms of their contributions to people's protein, vitamin, and fatty-acid needs.

A soybean field in Hardin County, Ohio.Nyttend/Wikimedia Commons

The study authors reported that buckwheat and tofu, for example, could deliver one-third of the total protein in a meatless diet. Producing those foods would require only 12% of the nitrogen fertilizer and water and less than 22% of the cropland that would be needed to produce the meats they replaced.

Shutterstock

In 2019, meat substitutes (particularly patties that look, smell, and ooze juice like beef burgers) soared in popularity. The alternative-meat market is set to reach $6.3 billion in revenue by 2023.

Read More: Most of the meat we eat won't come from animals by the year 2040, according to a report

Impossible Foods, a leading producer of plant-based "meat-like" patties, has launched its Impossible Burger 2.0 in more than 7,000 restaurants worldwide. The product will be sold in all Burger King locations across the US (not to mention your local grocery store) by September.

Beyond Meat, another meat-free burger company, saw similar success: The company netted $40.2 million during its first quarter as a public company (between January and April), a 215% jump from the same period in 2018.

Global consultancy firm AT Kearney projects that by 2040, 60% of the "meat" products humans consume will either be plant-based replacements or lab-grown meats.

Eshel said studies like his are important in "reassuring the open-minded skeptics" that switching from meat- to meatless-diets won't leave you lacking in nutrition.

Otherwise, the most noticeable discrepancies between the two phones come down to their screen sizes and their cameras.

Samsung's Galaxy Note phones have always been known for their giant screens, and that holds true again in 2019 with the latest model. Samsung's Note 10 has a 6.3-inch display, while Apple's iPhone XS has a smaller 5.8-inch screen.

But while the Note 10 may be bigger, the iPhone has a higher-resolution screen. Apple's iPhone XS has a resolution of 2436 x 1125 with 458 pixels per inch, while the Note 10's screen has a 2280 x 1080 resolution with 401 pixels per inch.

The Galaxy Note 10 also has an extra camera compared to the iPhone XS. Whereas the iPhone XS has a 12-megapixel wide angle camera and a second 12-megapixel telephoto camera, the Galaxy Note 10 has three cameras — just like its Galaxy S10 cousin.

That third 16-megapixel ultra wide camera makes it possible to capture images with a much broader field of view than usual. The Note 10 also has a 12-megapixel wide angle lens and a 12-megapixel lens for zooming.

Th front-facing selfie camera on the Note 10 is of a higher resolution than the iPhone XS' as well ( 10 megapixels versus 7 megapixels).

Samsung's smartphone also has a larger battery to power that bigger screen. The Note 10 has a 3,500 mAh battery, while the iPhone XS' battery capacity is 2,659 mAh, according to iFixit. The size of the battery alone doesn't determine how long it can last on a charge, however. There are a lot of factors that contribute to battery life, such as the apps you're running and the way your phone's settings may be configured.

While both phones support wireless charging, the Note has an extra feature called Wireless Power Share, which makes it possible to charge other devices or accessories by resting them on the back of the Note 10. It's yet another feature the Note 10 inherited from the Galaxy S10, which Samsung unveiled in February.

The iPhone offers more flexible storage options, however, with 64 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB choices, while the Note 10 only comes in a 256 GB variant.

The iPhone XS starts at $1,000, while the Note begins at $950.

Fans are anticipating the return of Netflix's controversial series "13 Reasons Why" ahead of its third season this month. And Amazon's hit superhero series "The Boys" is climbing.

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

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

Founded in 1996, F5 Networks was named after the most powerful storm category in "Twister," the disaster film which came out the same year.

The movie's about people who loved to chase tornadoes, which was what the F5 founders were essentially doing then, riding the wave of the newly-unleashed World Wide Web by selling data center appliances to help businesses manage their Internet traffic. Nowadays, it's a publicly-traded company valued at some $8 billion.

F5 still helps businesses manage their networks today, though it's wrestling with a changing market: the appetite for hardware is fast diminishing, as enterprises increasingly outsource their IT infrastructure to the cloud — and those that remain on their own servers are often using software to get more efficient use from their existing gear.

That's the evolving market that Francois Locoh-Donou, who took over as F5 CEO two years ago, is navigating. An important part of his role is leading a global workforce of about 5,100 through the rapid market changes. It's a tough job, and Locoh-Donou likes to talk about the importance of listening to his people on the ground to make sure "their voices, their ideas get turned very quickly into action."

"If you create an environment where these voices are suppressed, you will fail," he told Business Insider.

That may sound like the kind of executive-speak one might overhear at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where Locoh-Donou got his MBA. With Locoh-Donou, however, it is rooted in something deeper, in another kind of storm that he went through personally.

Growing up under a dictatorship

His notions about leadership were formed in the west African nation of Togo, where Locoh-Donou spent his youth living under a dictatorship.

"In a dictatorship, there is rule by fear and rule by force," he said. "It doesn't matter who has the best idea. It matters who has the strongest stick or gun or authority. Everything in Togo was like that … I grew up with the absurdity of ruling by force, and by authority, with the stupid things that happen when the only thing that matters is I have a gun and you don't, and therefore you will do this."

Locoh-Donou lived in Togo in the 70s and early 80s when the country was ruled by Gnassingbe Eyadema. "He basically owned the country," Locoh-Donou said. He ran the country with an iron hand, backed by a powerful military that was loyal to him, and any form of opposition or dissent was repressed "very seriously," he said. A 1993 Amnesty International report pointed to human rights violations by Togo's security forces, "including extrajudicial execution, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention without charge or trial of suspected government opponents."

People lived in fear, distrusting even friends, Locoh-Donou said. "You knew there were certain things you could not say. Even between friends, there's always this worry, this lack of trust. You can come to my dinner table, but I wouldn't say anything to you because I'd be afraid who you might repeat it to," he said.

In public, the dictator was glorified, and people would sing songs about how great he was, he said.

"You feel like you're living in a fake world," Locoh-Donou said.

'A very strong aversion to leaders who rule by formal authority'

Memories of life under dictatorship still have a strong influence on Locoh-Donou. They come back, he says, when he encounters organizations where people "feel that they just have to flatter the leader" or in "an environment where it is not okay to challenge the leader."

"In tech companies, the best ideas have to win, not the best titles, not the hierarchy, so I have a very strong aversion to leaders who rule by formal authority," he said.

Having more open-minded, engaged leaders, who do not say, "do this because I said so" is also good for business, he said. "If you as a leader are not capable of explaining to your team that this is the strategic rationale for why you need to do this, because you don't have enough industry context or knowledge of our business, or knowledge of the customers, and you just say 'I want 'yes' people around me — then for me you are not a leader. You are a task master."

Such a leadership style also stifles creativity within a company, he said: "Great leaps happen in organizations when the voices of the people who know are empowered to create the next idea," he said.

François Locoh-Donou meeting with the at Cajou Espoir, a cashew nut processing factory he co-founded in Togo. in Togo. Family of François Locoh-Donou

Little tolerance for rule by force

Growing up under authoritarian rule "has affected me in a way that I have very little tolerance for when I see people rule that way," Locoh-Donou said. "I just have this allergy toward ruling by force because of what I have experienced."

This point is critical as F5 goes through a difficult transition from a hardware-centric company to one increasingly focused on software. F5 helps companies monitor their applications and other software, making sure they are secure and working properly.

But the company is trying to grow at a time when more businesses are embracing the cloud, setting up and running their networks on web-based platforms, and abandoning on-premise data centers which dramatically cuts their IT costs. For F5, this means the steady decline of its hardware business, and the growth of revenue from software.

"The challenge for us is how to manage and navigate that transition as our hardware continues to slow and our software accelerates," Locoh-Donou said. "You want to make sure the software accelerates faster than the hardware."

F5 hopes to do that with Nginx, the cloud based applications services company which had been F5's rival, and which the company bought in March for $670 million. Nginx is one of the startups that power the Internet, its web server software one of the most widely used in the world.

In a note to clients, Oppenheimer analyst George Iwanyc affirmed that there's "value behind the Nginx acquisition," but pointed to "trade-offs in faster than expected hardware sales declines," adding that the "transition could continue to add volatility to near-term results."

Locoh-Donou himself knows about difficult transitions. He was 14 when his parents divorced and his mother, who is French, announced that he and his two siblings were moving to France. He refused to leave Togo. "I was crying for many nights in a row," he said. "There were all these things that I knew I was going to lose."

These included his cousins and close friends, and the passion he embraced as a teenager: chickens. He owned 50 of them in their backyard and had big plans for them: "I thought I was going to take over the world with my chicken farm."

Leaving Togo

Eventually, he agreed to move to France on two conditions: that his mother would let him breed chickens in their new home, and that he would be allowed to play soccer professionally with the prestigious Paris St Germain. His mother agreed.

Locoh-Donou laughed as he recalled what happened next. He didn't get to resume his chicken breeding in their new home in a Paris suburb, although his mother bought him two mandarin birds. She also signed him up with a local soccer club, and told him: "You go play there and when you're good enough, the Paris St. Germain [soccer team] will find you.'"

"They never found me," Locoh-Donou said.

But he found a way to return to and stay connected with his homeland. In fact, Locoh-Donou returns regularly to Togo where he co-founded Cajou Espoir, a cashew nut processing factory. While he never made it as a professional soccer player, he's had a long, impressive career in tech at a time when big changes were taking place. Locoh-Donou worked 15 years for the networking giant Ciena, before he was tapped to lead F5.

His dream of a chicken farm with global reach has long been forgotten. But Locoh-Donou has high hopes for F5 even as the 23-year old company rides yet another storm.

"Every company that has a history of being in data centers with hardware is going through that transition," he said of F5's push toward a software-focused future. But "we have a very strong opportunity in front of us. The number of applications is exploding. So the companies that provide the tools to make apps work and secure are going to to be a lot more valuable in the future."

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Uber just reported yet another quarter of growth.

Despite some massive, one-time charges related to its IPO, Uber continued to grow its "gross bookings" segment, a closely watched measure that accounts for receipts from taxi rides and Uber Eats orders.

Wall Street remains bullish on the company, with an average price target of about $51 — about 27% higher than Friday's close — but there's plenty to worry about, too.

Here are the biggest concerns on analysts' minds following the company's less-than-stellar second-quarter earnings report:

To teens, the most popular figures on social media platforms like TikTok are well beyond mega-celebrity status in their eyes.

These TikTok stars claim millions of followers — many who are of Gen Z age themselves — and found fame by creating short video clips lip-syncing to soundbites, showing off viral dances, and crafting comedy skits that get shared thousands of times.

The hottest accounts on the two-year-old TikTok don't have nearly as many followers as the top channels on the more-established YouTube (where T-Series has blown past 100 million subscribers). However, TikTok has now been downloaded more than 1.2 billion times, and can be credited as the launchpad for many of the memes criss-crossing the internet, including Lil Nas X's chart-smashing hit "Old Town Road."

At one point, a pair of German twins named Lisa and Lena had the most popular account on TikTok, with 32.3 million followers, but they deleted their account at the end of this March to "break new ground." So far no other account has topped their lead, although creators are prolifically producing content and quickly gaining ground.

Note that this list consists of independent creators who got their starts as influencers on TikTok or its predecessor, Musical.ly. The rankings exclude accounts run by companies, and those from users who got famous first through other means — like former Vine stars Cameron Dallas and Zach King, and JoJo Siwa of "Dance Moms" fame.

Read more: Inside the rise of TikTok, the video-sharing app with 1 billion downloads that's owned by a massive Chinese internet company

These are the 26 biggest stars on TikTok, all of whom have amassed more than 10 million followers:

Apple has officially launched its much ballyhooed credit-card, in collaboration with Goldman Sachs. Within a few years the card could reap as much as $1 billion in annual profit for the tech giant, with little downside risk.

That's according to estimates that Wall Street research shop Alliance Bernstein put out in May, which analyzed the potential profit prospects of Apple Card and other new business lines against plateauing sales of the iPhone and slowed growth from existing services like iTunes, iCloud, and Apple Care.

Apple Card doesn't represent the largest revenue opportunity of services Apple has planned — that distinction goes to the advertising and TV programs, according to Bernstein — but the card could wind up being some of the easiest cash Apple ends up pocketing.

Here's how the math breaks down.

The revenue split

There are several ways the fee-free card will make money— primarily via swipe fees and interest payments from customers who carry a balance — and if Apple's co-brand partnership is in line with industry standards, the iPhone maker will take a percentage of the revenues.

Typically, this figure is in the 5% to 10% range, but as Bernstein pointed out, Apple is a premium brand and Goldman is a newcomer to the credit-card business, so the terms were likely sweeter for the tech company. Apple was also more intimately involved the technology behind the card, which integrates with the iPhone and Apple Wallet.

That notion is further reinforced by the fact that there were several bidders for the Apple Card partnership, and that Citigroup backed out after advanced negotiations over fears the card's consumer-friendly, anti-fee framework would make it a money loser, according to a report from CNBC.

"The split is likely more in favor of Apple given its relative negotiating leverage over Goldman Sachs," Bernstein wrote in the research report.

But how much revenue can the card generate? Bernstein notes that the two largest rewards cards today, the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Amex Platinum, each likely earn in excess of $4 billion in annual revenue.

The analysts thought it is plausible for the Apple Card to match this over time, though they're aware that doing so for a brand-new card "is obviously a high hurdle."

Millions of iPhone users and unmatched brand cachet give Apple an edge

What the Apple Card has going for it, Bernstein noted, is seamless integration via the iPhone and thus a massive cache of easy-to-reach customers, as well as "brand cachet" among those customers that "is obviously unmatched."

Bernstein has estimated there will be roughly 935 million installed iPhones in circulation worldwide by the end of 2019.

Much of that user base is outside the US — only 42% of Apple's revenues came from the Americas region in 2018, according to financial filings — and the credit card will only be available in the US to start with. But the US alone still represents vast and wealthy group of customers.

Moreover, the instant cash-back feature along with a competitive 2% cash-back rate for digital purchases should make it popular with low- to middle-income customers.

If adoption is strong, the card could make Apple as much as $1 billion annually within the next three to five years, but Bernstein said "hundreds of millions" is a more likely scenario.

'This revenue should be almost pure profit to Apple.'

Even if Apple takes 20% of the revenues — double the high end of the traditional co-brand range — that's $800 million a year if the card matches the success of the Sapphire Reserve and the Amex Platinum.

By comparison, Amazon's co-brand credit cards likely earn the firm $500 million to $1 billion annually, Bernstein estimated.

But the kicker for Apple is this revenue stream comes with with very little work or risk going forward.

Goldman Sachs is essentially paying Apple for access and marketing to its lucrative customer base. The bank will do all the work of operating the credit-card — assessing and managing credit exposure, dealing with angry or confused customers, and collecting bills from delinquent cardholders.

"This revenue should be almost pure profit to Apple, as Goldman Sachs bears all of the operational and credit risk for the program," Bernstein wrote in the note.

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California slammed Walmart for its decision to limit advertisements for video games following two shootings at its stores in recent weeks.

"Dear [Walmart], remember how: Mario Kart caused people to drive faster? Pac-Man caused folks to eat more? Fortnite radicalized a white supremacist to shoot Hispanics at your store," Lieu tweeted on Friday afternoon.

"You disrespect the victims of mass shootings by making up stupid s---," Lieu added. "Stop blaming video games."

The tweet follows the release of an internal memo in which the company ordered its employees to immediately "remove signing and displays reference violence" in all of its departments.

The company specifically ordered employees to "turn off or unplug any video game display consoles that show a demo of violent games," and "cancel any events promoting combat style or third-person shooter games."

Asked for comment about the congressman's tweet, a senior director for Walmart's communications team directed INSIDER to a recent statement by Dan Bartlett, the company's executive vice president for corporate affairs.

"Don't be confused by us asking our teams to be sensitive about violent images on the sales floor right after innocent people were murdered at our store," Bartlett said on Twitter. "We're not suggesting this is the answer to gun violence."

Walmart has been under intense scrutiny following two shootings at store locations. Two workers were killed in Southaven, Mississippi on July 30 by a "disgruntled employee." A police officer was injured in the incident.

A separate shooter opened fire in a Walmart at El Paso, Texas, on August 3, killing 22 people before being arrested.

"We've taken this action out of respect for the incidents of the past week, and this action does not reflect a long-term change in our video game assortment," Walmart spokeswoman Tara House previously told INSIDER.

Republican lawmakers and commentators, including President Donald Trump, have widely suggested mental health and video games were to blame for mass shootings. Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California blamed "video games that dehumanize individuals," while Trump targeted the "glorification of violence in our society."

"This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace," Trump said in prepared remarks on Monday.

Critics of the suggestion have pointed to numerous statistics that show an inverse correlation between video games and violent behavior or gun deaths.

Walmart, which sells firearms at certain locations, has been urged by gun control activists to cease the practice. Thomas Marshall, an employee for the company's e-commerce division, called on his colleagues to go on strike to pressure the company.

"In light of recent events, and in response to corporate's inaction, we are organizing a 'sick out' general strike to protest Walmart's profit from the sale of guns," Marshall said in an email.

Walmart is one of the world's largest firearm dealers, according to CNN. The company stopped selling assault-style rifles in 2015.

Coworking space startup WeWork could unveil its IPO filing as soon as next week, according to a Bloomberg report Friday.

The company, which is part of The We Company, confidentially filed to go public in April and was valued at $47 billion in its most recent private funding round in January. The S-1 filing in question would give us our best look yet at the high-profile startup's business yet.

According to its most recent financial report in July, WeWork still isn't profitable, but it's growing fast, with its losses and revenues both doubling in 2018 to $1.9 billion and $1.8 billion, respectively, from the year prior.

WeWork has been sharing select financial information with the public since it began issuing bonds in 2018, but the filing will be the most comprehensive look at its finances yet. According to the Bloomberg report, WeWork is planning to raise more than $3.5 billion in its IPO, which, if it comes to fruition, would make it the second largest IPO in the United States this year.

The company has raised $10 billion in venture funding and debt funding since cofounder and CEO Adam Neumann started the company in 2011. The IPO would allow its roster of prominent investors, including SoftBank, to cash out their shares.

Read More: WeWork cofounder and CEO Adam Neumann reportedly sold shares he owned in the company and took loans worth $700 million

The company's financials have come under scrutiny in the run-up to its public debut as it struggles to turn large real estate investments into a profitable business model. Neumann himself came under fire in July for cashing out a portion of his stake in WeWork and taking loans worth $700 million in total, an uncommon move ahead of such a highly-anticipated IPO.

WeWork declined to comment.

Facebook is looking for a handful of top-drawer publishers to launch a dedicated news section that it would pay them to participate in, and it's taking a page from Apple News by planning to do a mix of curation and personalization, according to people familiar with the proposal.

Apple has compared itself favorably with Facebook with its news aggregation app that is guided by an editorial team, enabling it to avoid the fake news problem that's plagued Facebook. Apple also recently added a subscription component to the app that shares revenue with publishers.

One publisher said Facebook reps repeatedly referenced Apple in discussing its own planned news tab.

Read more: Joe Marchese has been saying for years that advertising is broken. Now he's creating a new holding company, Attention Capital, to fix it. Facebook is looking to do deals with publishers in the coming weeks as it prepares to launch a test version of the news section in the fourth quarter. The terms of the proposed deals contrast sharply with short-lived past initiatives by Facebook to compensate publishers for sharing their stories on the platform.

According to The Wall Street Journal and our sources, Facebook reps told news executives they would pay as much as $3 million a year for three years to license headlines and previews of their articles. Publishers were told they could have their articles displayed in the tab or have readers click through to their sites, which would let the publisher monetize those visits directly.

Fees are expected to vary by publisher size

Sources briefed by Facebook believed the licensing fee would be commensurate with the news outlet's story volume and some could get less than $1 million. One publisher was quoted $1 million, for example.

The three-year term detail is significant given how Facebook has compensated publishers in the past. It funded shows for its Watch video section a year ago, but Campbell Brown, Facebook's head of news partnerships, repeatedly used the words "test" and "experiment" when describing the news shows, and most of the publishers that got money only got it for a year.

One publisher whose show was canceled, Mic, shut down, blaming Facebook for its demise.

Back in 2016, Facebook paid $50 million to a number of publishers to make live video, but that money faded after a year.

The payments will only help a few publishers

Facebook is expected to launch with a small handful of publishers as it has in the past with news initiatives. It launched Facebook Instant Articles in 2015, one of its first significant news publisher efforts, with nine outlets. As it's done with new news initiatives in the past, it's pitching the news tab to prestige publishers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, and New York magazine, according to our sources and the Journal.

That means many publishers won't make the cut, which raises questions about how much the initiative will help the struggling news industry.

Facebook will also have to convince some publishers that the news tab will get a sizable audience, given news isn't the primary reason most people use Facebook, and that Facebook will stay committed to the tab, since news isn't core to Facebook's ad business.

Looking to set up a smart home? The Home Depot is offering a bundle that will help get you started. If you by a Nest Hello Video Doorbell for $229, you'll also get a free Google Nest Hub (normally $129).

The Nest Hello is one of the best video doorbells you can buy. You can view its live feed from your phone, computer, or smart display, and you'll get a notification when someone's at your door. It has some advanced capabilities as well, including an optional facial-recognition feature that lets you know who's at the door if it's someone you know.

The Google Nest Hub (formerly the Google Home Hub) is a Google Assistant-powered smart display with some nifty features. It sports a decent LCD screen that can display videos, photos, recipes, directions, and other visual elements. Plus, you can use it to control Google-compatible smart home devices and can view the live feed from your Nest Hello on its screen.

If you're trying to start up a smart home, or you're an enthusiast who doesn't yet have these devices, you won't want to miss this deal.

It's important to note that when you add the Nest Hello to your cart, Home Depot doesn't add the Nest Hub automatically. Instead, you'll need to add each product independently. The website will deduct the Nest Hub's $129 price at checkout.

Get a free Google Nest Hub with the purchase of a Nest Hello Video Doorbell from The Home Depot [You save $129]

Marshall has a long and storied history in the audio industry. Originally known for its incredible guitar amplifiers, in recent years, the company has started selling consumer products with a ton of success.

Notably, Marshall now offers a range of awesome wireless speakers, like the Kilburn. For a limited time, you can get the Marshall Kilburn for an even better price than usual thanks to a sale on Amazon and Walmart.

Normally, the speaker costs $300, but it's being discounted by $116 at Amazon, bringing the price down to a super affordable $184. At Walmart, you'll get a $111 discount and pay $189.

The Marshall Kilburn has a relatively unique design, at least in the world of consumer wireless speakers. It's designed to look like a guitar amplifier and has that classic Marshall logo on the front, along with controls on the top for power and pairing via Bluetooth. You can even tweak the speaker's bass and treble by twisting the knobs on the top. That way, you can tune the speaker to your sound preferences.

The speaker is able to get pretty loud, and it has a battery that will give you 20 hours of playback on a charge. That makes it great for taking on the road or listening around the house. In case you don't want to listen to music via Bluetooth, there's even a 3.5mm aux input for a wired connection.

The deal is available from both Amazon and Walmart, but, if you get it on Amazon, you'll save an extra $5. However, you may have to wait longer for it to ship from Amazon, as it was out of stock at the time of writing. You can still order it and get the sale price, though.

Although the Walmart price isn't quite as low, it's also a great deal and it should ship sooner, so if you prefer buying through Walmart, it's still worth it.

Get the Marshall Kilburn portable Bluetooth speaker from Amazon, $184 (originally $299.99) [You save $115.99]

Get the Marshall Kilburn portable Bluetooth speaker from Walmart, $189 (originally $299.99) [You save $110.99]

President Donald Trump is planning an executive order that could have huge ramifications for how tech companies moderate online content.

According to a report from CNN on Friday, the White House is drafting an order that would give the Federal Communications Commission responsibility for overseeing how tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest keep their services clear of unwanted content.

It comes amid the American right-wing backlash against big tech, which has repeatedly been accused — without proof — of censoring conservative voices and being politically biased.

At the heart of the issue is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In short, this law means tech companies can't be blamed for content users post on their platforms. According to CNN, the White House is planning to narrow the immunity tech companies get "if they remove or suppress content without notifying the user who posted the material, or if the decision is proven to be evidence of anticompetitive, unfair or deceptive practices."

Meanwhile, if the executive order ultimately goes ahead, the Federal Trade Commission will be tasked with opening a "public complaint docket" to receive allegations of anti-conservative bias from the public, and will "work with the FCC to develop a report investigating how tech companies curate their platforms and whether they do so in neutral ways," CNN reported.

The full text of the draft executive order has not yet been made public and could be changed before being formally introduced — or not introduced at all.

But it highlights how Section 230 is becoming an increasingly hot-button issue politically, with potentially huge ramifications for how tech companies moderate themselves. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, a frequent tech critic, has introduced a bill that would end Section 230 protections for a company if its conduct wasn't considered "neutral" politically — despite the fact that the original regulation was never intended as a way to ensure political neutrality.

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The Samsung Galaxy Note 10 lineup is now available for preorder. You can reserve your Galaxy Note 10, Galaxy Note 10 Plus, or Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G from Samsung's site, Microsoft, and Best Buy, as well as every major US carrier.

While you should take a look at your carrier's deals, your best bet is likely to preorder your device from Samsung directly. If you're upgrading from an older phone, Samsung is offering up to $600 in credit toward your purchase of a new Note 10.

The trade-in deal applies to a wide range of phones, including almost all Samsung, Apple, and Google Pixel devices from the past few years. However, if you're trading in a much older phone, you may get around $200 of trade-in value.

If you preorder from Samsung's site before August 22, you'll also get a $100 Samsung credit for the Note 10 and a $150 for the Note 10 Plus or Note 10 Plus 5G. Plus, you'll get a free 6-month subscription to Spotify Premium.

Preorder from Samsung

Carrier prices and deals for the Galaxy Note 10

You can also preorder the unlocked versions of the Note 10 and Note 10 Plus from the Microsoft store and Best Buy. Microsoft offers the same coupon and Spotify free trial as Samsung does.

Best Buy sells the phone unlocked or through AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon. You can access each carrier's deals if you buy the phone at Best Buy. The store also offers up to $600 in Best Buy gift cards for trade-ins, and all recent iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, and Google Pixel models are eligible.

If you order at Best Buy, you can also get Samsung's coupon and Spotify trial, as well as a $100 discount if you activate your unlocked phone at the time of preorder.

In the US, you can buy both phones in Aura White, Aura Black, and Aura Glow (iridescent). The Note 10 Plus also comes in Aura Blue.

We spent some time with the Note 10 and Note 10 Plus at Samsung's launch event. Keep reading to find out why they're better than Samsung's previous phones, and why they're worth buying — if you can stomach the price.

Uber lost a whopping $5.2 billion in the second quarter of 2019, the company revealed on Thursday, its deepest quarterly loss ever, thanks to an expensive initial public offering earlier this year.

It's a tremendous amount of money for any company, though a major chunk was thanks to one-off expenses, and the spending is set to decline in coming periods, the company said. Still, investors weren't happy with the results, and the stock plunged as much as 8% when markets opened Friday morning.

"The big picture is we want to be there any way you want to get around your city, and I think we're well on a path to do so in a profitable way," CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told analysts on a conference call following the results.

Most Wall Street analysts viewed the quarter as in line with what they expected, even as certain line items might have disappointed. Some even suggested the big sell-off was a buy-the-dip opportunity.

"We see Uber shares as one of the best long-term stories in the Internet and would take advantage of the weakness to add to positions," Lloyd Walmsley, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, told clients. "We think a continued improvement in unit economics and better visibility into the path to profitability could draw more investors to do the work, and given compelling potential upside in a bull case, near term and long term, we would not wait to get involved."

Here are the costs that led to Uber's massive loss in the second quarter: