Ask anyone around you and they'll most likely say they have an Amazon Prime membership. At less than $10 a month, it offers many convenient benefits, making it a great investment for its price.

A regular Amazon Prime membership is $119 a year. Students not only get 50% off Prime memberships ($6.49/month), but also enjoy exclusive discounts. They can get a free six-month Prime trial here. Meanwhile, Prime is also discounted ($5.99/month) for qualifying customers with an EBT or Medicaid card.

100 million subscribers worldwide evidently think it's worth it, but if you're still on the fence about buying a membership, we've rounded up its many benefits below.

You might even already have Prime but aren't using it to its full advantage, in which case this list will be a nice refresher for all the benefits you should know about.

You can experience all the benefits with a free 30-day trial of Prime to see if it's worth it for you.

Remember, if you want to shop on Amazon Prime Day 2019 on July 15-16, you need to be a Prime member. This year, it will be live for 48 hours, starting at 12 a.m. PT on July 15 and ending at 11:59 p.m. PT on July 16. Find all our Prime Day 2019 coverage here, or head to our master list of the best Prime Day 2019 deals directly.

Get a free 30-day Prime trial

Some standout benefits to an Amazon Prime membership include:

Below are the 31 Amazon Prime benefits you should know about.

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Louisiana residents are preparing for their first hurricane of 2019.

Currently, Tropical Storm Barry is 70 miles from Morgan, Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center expects it to make landfall as a Category 1 hurricane around 7 a.m. local time on Saturday.

That's because Barry is gaining strength as it approaches the coast; the storm's maximum sustained wind speeds are hovering around 65 mph, but speeds over 73 mph would upgrade Barry to hurricane status. If that happens as predicted, this would be only the third time in 168 years that a hurricane hits the Gulf region in July.

Read More: Tropical Storm Barry could hit Louisiana as the year's first hurricane tomorrow. New Orleans' river levees will be put to the test.

According to Barry's current course, it could make landfall near Marsh Island, about 100 miles west of New Orleans in Vermilion Bay, Accuweather.com reported.

Tropical Storm Barry is expected to make landfall early Saturday morning on the central Louisiana coast. National Hurricane Center

As of 2 p.m. ET on Friday, a hurricane warning is in effect for the stretch of coast from Grand Isle to Intracoastal City. A storm-surge warning is in effect from Intracoastal City to Shell Beach and Lake Pontchartrain (these areas include New Orleans).

According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Barry is expected to weaken back into a tropical storm as it moves over Louisiana on Saturday (with winds between 39 and 73 mph). As the storm continues north through Louisiana on Sunday morning, it will be downgraded further to a tropical depression (which means wind speeds would fall below 39 mph).

The weather pattern is slated to reach Arkansas 24 hours later, then Missouri after that, followed by Indiana.

David Fox makes a call from his business on Poydras Street in New Orleans after flooding in New Orleans, July 10, 2019. Matthew Hinton/AP

Currently New Orleans mayor Latoya Cantrell has advised residents to shelter in place. Cantrell told reporters at a news conference on Thursday that the city only mandates evacuations for major hurricanes — Category 3 or higher — according to Accuweather.com.

So New Orleans and other coastal Louisiana residents are preparing for days of heavy rainfall. The NHC has forecast up to 20 inches of rain across Louisiana over the coming days, which threatens to overflow New Orleans' already-strained Mississippi river levees.

The extreme rainfall, coupled with overflowing rivers and potential storm surges, will threaten urban areas with life-threatening flooding.

On Thursday, during what was supposed to be an ordinary keynote address by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels to a crowd of tech workers in New York, protests interrupted.

Protesters repeatedly interrupted the talk, taking issue over the family separation policy at the southern border of the US executed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Amazon Web Services' dealings with the agency.

On Friday, the fallout continued when Vogels tweeted a powerful response.

"I let trolls be trolls. But to yesterday's group who feel that because of my name I (and thus Amazon) must be the next incarnation of WII Nazi atrocities: I am Dutch. My parents sent to forced labor in Germany and were fortunate to return where many were not. Do your research," he tweeted.

Vogel appears to be commenting on the fact that the Tech Workers Coalition New York, one of the groups responsible for the protest, has been comparing the detention centers on the US southern border, where migrant children taken from their parents are kept by authorities, to Nazi concentration camps.

The Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940 and shipped thousands of the country's Jews and political prisoners to forced labor concentration camps. World War II ended in 1945 making Vogels a baby boomer. He was born in 1958, according to Wikipedia.

Read: Microsoft bows to the backlash and will not start charging its sales partners to use its software

Recently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sparked a fierce public debate over the description of these facilities as "concentration camps," after she used the term to describe the detention centers.

The Tech Coalition New York has been using similar language. On Thursday, during the protests that interupted Vogel's keynote, it tweeted: "Technology will always be used by the powerful to further their own ends. As workers, we must band together and say no - we will not repeat the horrors of the past. We will not build concentration camps. We will not build the deportation machine. We will not separate families."

It also tweeted: "As was pointed out by a speaker in the protests outside, we can't forget that IBM played a crucial role in providing advanced technology to help murder thousands of jews [sic] and others during the Holocaust, and actually profited from the genocide."

The protests were organized by several groups including Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, who demonstrated outside the event. Some of the protesters were shouting out Vogels' name during their disruption, calling on him to stop Amazon's association with ICE. Hundreds of others were outside disrupting traffic.

Read more: Protesters repeatedly disrupted a top Amazon executive's presentation at a tech conference

The protesters take issue with Amazon's association with Palantir, which has acknowledged it works with the Homeland Security Investigations unit of ICE, and which reportedly uses AWS cloud services. Amazon has also met with ICE officials to pitch sales of its facial recognition tech and other AWS services, as revealed by emails between Amazon and various government officials obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundations.

Amazon employees are ramping up their protests internally, too. A group of them have sent a second letter this week demanding the company take a stand against ICE and cease its dealings with Palantir. Employees had sent a similar letter a year ago, specifically demanding that the company stop providing its Rekognition facial recognition software to law enforcement.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, a spokesperson told the Washington Post that companies and government organizations should use technology "responsibly and lawfully" and said it is working with lawmakers on regulations for AI tech.

Amazon also has not yet posted a replay of the much-interrupted keynote speech online. However some reports said that during the livestream, the video had filtered out the protesters' voices.

After some 6,000 people signed an internet petition in a matter of days, angrily demanding that Microsoft not take away a valuable perk — resellers' rights to use Microsoft software — Microsoft has bowed to the pressure and reversed course.

On Friday, the day before its annual partners conference, where thousands of partners will descend on Las Vegas to learn how they can make money by helping the tech giant sell its wares, Microsoft canceled the policy.

The company had been planning on doing away with the perk that was included to those that pay an annual subscription to be part of its official sales channel. As of July 1, 2020, the tech titan was going to stop allowing its partners to use Microsoft software internally to run their own business for free as part of their subscription.

"In announcing these changes it's clear Microsoft is going to war with its partners," the petition reads, in part. The author of the petition calculated that even a small partner with 15 people that uses Microsoft's Dynamics to manage its customer interactions would suddenly be on the hook to pay Microsoft $2,400 a month. Under the old system, these partners got free software as part of their annual subscriptions. Those subscriptions ranged from $475 a year for small partners to $4,730 a year for its gold-level partners.

Microsoft had for decades allowed business partners to use its software internally, and even provided them with technical support, because it made business sense. They wanted partners to know and customize the Microsoft software they sold, just like they would do for Microsoft customers. In the tech world, this is called eating your own dog food.

But in light of the uproar, Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft's corporate vice president of One Commercial Partner, announced in a blog on Friday that Microsoft is simply canceling the policy. Partners will not be required to pay for their software use — nor will they be pushed into obtaining specialized new certifications to help Microsoft sell its cloud.

"We listened to you, and we have acted," she wrote. "Our decision to rescind these changes required a thorough review, and a key determining factor was the connection and trust we have with you, our partners — a valuable asset we do not take for granted."

A cynical analysis of Microsoft's attempt to charge its sales partners would go like this: Microsoft started viewing the tens of thousands of companies that sell its wares as an untapped source of revenue, rather than as an extension of the company.

And Schuster said about as much in an interview with Business Insider.

"We have essentially let them run their environment on Microsoft for free. Now, just like every other customer, they'll have to pay for the services that they use," she told Business Insider's Rosalie Chan.

Read more: Microsoft's reseller chief explains why it's angering some of its partners by taking away a key perk: 'We can't afford to run every single partner's organization for free anymore'

The move was a bit more complicated than that. Microsoft also wants its partners to stop using on-premise software and use its cloud instead, as part of a broader push at the company toward cloud services like Azure or the Office 365 suite.

And Schuster said that if it were to offer free cloud services, the way it offers free software, this creates an ongoing expense for the tech giant because Microsoft has to pay for the servers, storage, and data center.

"We can't afford to run every single partner's organization for free anymore, because it's not free," she said.

Schuster characterized uproar over the new policy like this: "You have to start paying for something we've been giving for free for a long time. It's like when your kids turn 20, and you tell them they have to pay rent."

But given the backlash, which was threatening to overshadow Microsoft's upcoming announcements at its partner conference next week, Microsoft was wise to rethink the policy.

As for how the about-face will influence Microsoft's bottom line, think of this: if Microsoft can afford to offer 5 gigabytes of cloud storage to millions of consumers in the world for free, and 100 gigabytes of storage for just $2 a month, it seems likely that the company won't be bankrupt by continuing a perk as part of their annual reseller subscription, just as it has for decades.

Are you a Microsoft insider with insight to share? We want to hear it. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. DM on Twitter @Julie188 or contact via Signal.

Big retail sales are no longer limited to a thinly veiled partnership with major US holidays. In fact, many retailers have created their own "holidays;" Nordstrom has its popular Anniversary Sale. Nike has Air Max Day. And of course, the online behemoth Amazon has Prime Day.

What is Amazon Prime Day?

Introduced in 2015 in part to celebrate Amazon's 20th anniversary, the first Amazon Prime Day was a one-day-only retail holiday that sought to overtake Black Friday as the sales event of the year. This year, Prime Day will be a 48-hour sale event held on July 15-16. It'll feature major deals on Amazon devices, as well as over 1 million other deals sitewide — with all prices exclusive to Prime members.

The inaugural Amazon Prime Day received some criticism from shoppers who weren't happy with the quality and quantity of deals offered, but Amazon has stepped up its game in both realms since, and to great success. Last year's Prime Day was the biggest shopping day in company history until it was surpassed by Cyber Monday shortly after, a familiar pattern of record-breaking that it has experienced in years prior.

Shop Prime Day Deals

The fact that Amazon's seemingly unshakable site crashed mere minutes after launching Prime Day last year suggests similarly record-breaking numbers this year (though fingers crossed shoppers won't be met with the same error pages of apologetic puppies). The traffic is bolstered by prices that are their lowest ever, besting even Black Friday on popular items like tech, beauty, home and kitchen, and virtually every other category under the sun.

Prime Day has also been made available in more countries outside the US every year. Two years ago, it was extended to Canada, the UK, Spain, Mexico, Japan, Italy, India, Germany, France, China, Belgium, and Austria, and last year to Australia, Singapore, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. This year, it's available to shoppers in the United Arab Emirates. The number of Prime subscribers surpassed 100 million people across the globe last year.

If you plan on shopping on Amazon Prime Day 2019 this year, we'll be compiling the best deals here.

When is Prime Day? What deals do we expect to see?

Prime Day this year will be a 48-hour event, starting at midnight PT on Monday, July 15 and ending at 11:59 p.m. PT on Tuesday, July 16.

Amazon Prime Day as we know it is a global shopping event where Prime members can shop hundreds of thousands of deals sitewide, with new deals starting as often as every five minutes. This year will feature more than 1 million deals worldwide.

Some of the best Prime Day deals have already begun. You can save $100 on the Fire TV Recast (usually $229.99), try four months of Amazon Music Unlimited for only $0.99 (save $31), and try three months of Kindle Unlimited for free (save $30).

Shop Fire TV Devices on Amazon

Last year, Amazon Prime Day began at 3 p.m. ET on Monday, July 16, and ran for 36 hours through Tuesday, July 17. It featured thousands of dollars of discounts on a range of products, from cult-favorites like the Instant Pot DUO60 ($40+ off) and Roomba robot vacuum ($120 off) to innovative products from small businesses.

In the US, best sellers were the Instant Pot, 23andMe DNA Test, and somewhat surprisingly, LifeStraw personal water filters. Business Insider readers in particular took advantage of $1 to $5 Kindle Unlimited, Audible, and Amazon Music Unlimited memberships; noise-cancelling headphones from Sony, Bose, and Sennheiser; and a variety of Amazon devices.

Read more: The best Amazon Prime Day 2019 deals Prime members can get starting today

It's not surprising our readers loved Amazon devices. Historically, Amazon Prime Day is the best time of the year to buy one.

In the past, the company has offered double the deals on Amazon devices and the biggest deals yet on Alexa-enabled products like the Echo smart speakers, the Fire TV, and Fire tablets.

Shop Amazon Echo Devices

All of these Amazon devices will be on sale this Prime Day. They include some of Amazon's newest Alexa-enabled products, introduced last September, like the 2nd generation Echo Plus speaker and the Echo Input speaker accessory. Amazon's official press release promises that members will find the biggest Prime Day deals ever on Alexa-enabled devices.

Outside of physical device deals, expect deals on Amazon services and memberships like entertainment (Kindle Unlimited, Amazon Music Unlimited, Prime Video, Audible, etc.) and grocery shopping (Amazon Fresh, Amazon Pantry, Whole Foods, etc.).

It sounds counterintuitive, but Amazon Prime Day is also a great time to shop everywhere except Amazon.

Plenty of other online retailers throw competing sales around Prime Day. If you'd rather hop over to Amazon for tech and Nordstrom for skin-care and beauty steals, you're in luck, because they'll both be courting you come mid-July.

Target, Walmart, eBay, and Macy's are all holding directly competing summer sales to rival the deals of Prime Day.

However, Amazon's perks like fast shipping remain, making Prime Day more often than not the winner in a competition of price and convenience.

If you still have lingering questions, read our guide to the most frequently asked questions about the day.

The most obvious tidbit is that you should sign up for a free 30-day Amazon Prime trial if you're not already a member so you can take advantage of the deals.

Get a free 30-day Prime trial

If you plan on shopping this year, we'll have you covered from nearly every point of entry, having combed through thousands of deals to cherry-pick the ones you won't want to miss.

Check back at our Prime Day 2019 landing page (or bookmark it) for easy access to the best deals as they pop up on Amazon Prime Day 2019 and to learn about any updates as July 15 approaches. For a refresher on the types of deals you'll be able to shop, see our lists of what to buy on Prime Day and popular deals from last year's Prime Day event.

Though Amazon's annual sales extravaganza, Prime Day, isn't until July 15, you can already start shopping some Prime Day deals today.

Every day leading up to Prime Day 2019, Prime members enjoy exclusive promotions and deals on Amazon products and services.

To shop these early deals and all Prime Day 2019 deals, you must be a Prime member. Sign up for a free 30-day trial here to get in on the Prime Day savings and try the many other benefits of a membership.

The following leaked Amazon Prime Day 2019 deals are available to Prime members only, now through Prime Day.

Products:

Services:

The best early Amazon device deal is on the Fire TV Recast, a live viewing and recording box that works with a Fire TV device and TV antenna to bring you local channels at home and on the go. We reviewed the Fire TV Recast and found it was easy to set up and integrated seamlessly with our Amazon accounts and Fire TV. If you like watching local, live TV but don't want to be saddled with yet another subscription, it's an excellent one-time purchase to get your live TV fix — and only $130 through Prime Day.

Shop Fire TV Devices on Amazon

The best early Amazon Prime Day deal is on the Fire TV Recast. Amazon

These early Prime Day deals are a nice warm-up for the real event on July 15 and 16.

Make sure you're fully prepared by learning how to make the most of Prime Day 2019, looking at what deals were most popular (and are likely to be featured again) last year, and finalizing your Lightning Deal-grabbing strategy.

Read all our Amazon Prime Day 2019 coverage here as the big day approaches, and bookmark our list of the best deals of Prime Day 2019 here.

Shop Prime Day Deals

SpaceX is about to perform its most ambitious test-launch yet of a shiny Mars rocket prototype in south Texas.

Workers have descended upon the developing coastal launch site over the past 8 months to build and prepare the stout, three-legged prototype for testing. It's built out of stainless steel, has the shape of a badminton shuttlecock, and is equipped with one of SpaceX's next-generation Raptor rocket engines.

Elon Musk, the rocket company's founder, named the roughly six-story-tall rocket ship "Starhopper" because it's not built to fly into space but rather to "hop" to altitudes no higher than about 3 miles.

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

Starhopper is a prototype for a much more powerful and roughly 400-foot-tall launch system known as Starship: a vehicle that Musk and his company envisions taking dozens of people to the moon or Mars, deploying hundreds of satellites at a time, or rocketing people around Earth in a matter of minutes.

SpaceX fired up Starhopper for the first time on April. That test secured the rocket ship with giant, bike-chain-like tethers on its legs, and the vehicle lifted the ship no more than a few inches off the ground. Subsequent tests lifted it up farther, but not by much.

Next week's test will launch it completely untethered.

"Raptor engine mounted on Starhopper. Aiming for hover test Tues," Musk tweeted on Friday.

Engineers hope to take the vehicle up to about 65 feet (20 meters) — about one full Starhopper height. Musk also says Starhopper will move sideways, and then try to land back on its launchpad.

A SpaceX spokesperson told Business Insider in an email that the hop-and-hover test is "one in a series of tests designed to push the limits of the vehicle as quickly as possible to learn all we can, as fast as we safely can."

When a Twitter user asked Musk if there would be live-streaming video of the launch attempt, Musk said " Sure."

Road closure notices issued by Cameron County, Texas, suggest SpaceX will try to launch Starhopper between 2-8 p.m. CT (3-9 p.m. ET) on Tuesday, July 16.

A launch at that moment is anything but guaranteed, though.

"As with all development programs, the schedule can be quite dynamic and subject to change," the spokesperson said.

What to expect with SpaceX's first 'hover' test for Starhopper

Before attempting a full hop-and-hover launch, SpaceX needs to put the Starhopper and its new engine through a series of tests.

The company will likely flow liquid oxygen through the new Raptor engine over the weekend to check its plumbing and hardware. If this initial test succeeds, the company may attempt what's called a static fire test on Monday.

The static fire test would add methane to the flowing oxygen, ignite both fuels, and burn the Raptor engine for a matter of seconds to show it's functioning normally. (Methane makes up most natural gas on Earth, and it's a fuel Musk hopes to manufacture on Mars with a planned space colony.)

The static fire test may resemble SpaceX's brief launch of Starhopper on April 6, which briefly lifted it off the ground:

If there are any delays leading up to those and other critical pre-launch tests, SpaceX will almost certainly delay its planned Starhopper hover. And if engineers discover any problems during the tests, SpaceX may scrub its current plans, make necessary fixes, and try again at a later date.

Musk had hoped to pull off Starhopper's hop-and-hover launch attempt several weeks ago, but he said a previous Raptor engine had a mechanical failure and vibration issues. The newest Raptor engine, called "serial number 6" or SN6, has apparently resolved those snags.

"Hopper almost ready to hover," Musk tweeted on July 7, showing a photo of a new Raptor engine test-fire at the company's rocket-testing plant in central Texas.

The village inside SpaceX's Mars spaceport

Maria and Ray Pointer's yard offers a window into SpaceX's efforts to develop a Mars launch system called Starship. This photo shows the Starhopper prototype on January 10, 2019.Maria Pointer (bocachicaMaria)

SpaceX's launch site for the Starhopper is located near Boca Chica Beach in south Texas. State and Cameron County politicians, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), gave the company final approval to develop the area in 2014.

However, Boca Chica Village — a hamlet where about 20 people live — now finds itself in the middle of SpaceX's expanding industrial site and future spaceport.

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

The easternmost edge of the village is located about 1.5 miles from SpaceX's beachside launch pad. Initial plans called for launching Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets (about one a month), but Musk said in early 2018 that SpaceX had abandoned those plans.

Starhopper began to appear in late 2018, and Musk confirmed its existence with a series of photos. The prototype initially had a nosecone, but powerful Texas winds blew it off and damaged it. That's why the vehicle looks stubby and unfinished today.

Local authorities block the only road out to the launch site, called Highway 4, during tests to keep a 1.5-mile safety perimeter.

An overview of the Boca Chica area in south Texas circa 2017. Google Earth

Starhopper is just the beginning of Starship's development program.

The company is now building a V-shaped wind block in its operations yard, say sources familiar with the matter, where it's also constructing a "Mark 1" (Mk1) Starship prototype. Musk says that vehicle is designed to reach orbit and — as part of what he described as a friendly competition — workers are also building a near-identical Starship prototype near Cape Canaveral, Florida, where the company operates two other launch pads.

"Mk1 Starship hopefully 20 km [12.4 miles] up in a few months," Musk said.

SpaceX's current government license, which the Federal Communications Commission granted in February 2019, only permits the company to launch experimental vehicles to an altitude of 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) for flights lasting up to six minutes.

Musk tweeted in March that SpaceX is "working on regulatory approval" for orbital flights of Starship prototypes from both Texas and Florida.

The company plans to launch the prototypes into orbit around Earth before the end of 2020. Then, in 2023, Musk hopes to use a full-scale Starship to launch a Japanese billionaire and his hand-picked crew of artists on a voyage around the moon.

SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell reportedly said that the company hopes to send its first uncrewed payloads to Mars by 2024. Following that, perhaps in 2026, SpaceX may try to put boots on the red planet.

"It could very well be that the first person that departs for another planet could depart from this location," Musk said during the Boca Chica launch site's groundbreaking in September 2014.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has encouraged US suppliers to seek approval to resume selling equipment to blacklisted Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The US has raised concerns in recent months that Huawei technology could pose a national security risk and may be used as a backdoor for Chinese government espionage.

Tensions between Huawei and the Trump administration heightened in May after the US Department of Commerce added Huawei to a trade blacklist, which prevents the company from buying parts and components from American companies without US government approval. The move could have a dramatic effect on Huawei's operations, as the company relies heavily on US parts.

Treasury Department spokeswoman Monica Crowley, however, denied that Mnuchin urged US companies to resume business with Huawei, which would sidestep the national security decision made by the Commerce Department in adding the tech company to its trade blacklist.

"Secretary Mnuchin speaks with CEOs in the private sector on a regular basis," Crowley told the Journal. "At no point has the Secretary 'urged' any company to take any action with regard to Huawei."

The placement of Huawei on the US trade blacklist has led to many major US tech companies and suppliers— including Google— to stop providing critical software to the company.

The United States' toughened stance on Huawei took place as trade war negotiations between the US and China reached a deadlock in May, with both countries announcing increasing tariffs on a wide array of imports.

Last month, Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan and agreed to hold off on additional tariffs on Chinese goods and discussed the clampdown on Huawei.

"US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei ... there's no great, national emergency problem," Trump told reporters after his meeting.

Mnuchin's reported actions follow remarks made by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Tuesday, in which he said the US would issue licenses to US companies looking to sell to Huawei as long as it does not pose a threat to national security, though the Chinese company will remain on the trade blacklist.

Bourbon Street is halfway under water today.

A weather system over the Gulf of Mexico dumped six to nine inches of rain on New Orleans by Wednesday evening, forcing the National Weather Service (NWS) to declare a "flash flood emergency" as waters rose.

The ongoing thunderstorms are expected to worsen over the coming days, possibly developing into a tropical storm or even a Category 1 hurricane (which would be named Barry) that will likely head toward land by the weekend.

This could be only the third time in the last 168 years (since researchers started keeping track) that a hurricane hits Louisiana in July, meteorologist Eric Holthaus wrote in the New Republic. Typically, August and September are peak hurricane season in the Gulf.

The potential storm poses a significant threat to the city of New Orleans, since the Mississippi River, which snakes by the city, has been continuously flooding the surrounding land since January. Currently, the water sits at a height of 16 feet.

New Orleans has levees in place to keep the river from flooding its banks and swamping nearby neighborhoods. But those levees are only 20 feet high in some places. By Friday afternoon, the river is forecast to crest at a near-record height of 19 or 20 feet. If that happens, it'd be the highest level the Mississippi has reached in New Orleans since at least 1950, according to the NWS.

Frank Conforto Jr. drives a University Medical Center truck with the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in the background on Glavez Street in New Orleans after flooding from a storm, July 10, 2019. Matthew Hinton/AP

As of 5 p.m. ET Wednesday, the NWS had issued a storm surge watch for the area of the Louisiana coast between the mouth of the Pearl River and Intracoastal City. (That stretch includes New Orleans.)

A hurricane watch is also in effect for the area from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Cameron, Louisiana.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency in anticipation the impending weather front, which could dump as much as 20 inches (approximately 76 centimeters) of rain in the state over the coming days, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The biggest test of Mississippi River levees since 1927

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina — one of the deadliest storms in US history — killed over 1,800 people when storm surge levees along canals in New Orleans failed.

The Mississippi River levees, which were built in 1927, stayed intact during that storm. But this week might prove to be their biggest test ever. Gov. Edwards warned that there could be "a considerable amount of overtopping" of levees in Plaquemines Parish, a suburban district southeast of New Orleans.

"Right now 19 feet is the official forecast, and we can manage that," David Ramirez, the chief of water management for the Army Corps of Engineers' New Orleans District, told Slate.

But Ramirez added that his team is closely monitoring the lowest points of the levees.

David Fox makes a call from his business on Poydras Street in New Orleans after flooding in New Orleans, July 10, 2019. Matthew Hinton/AP

"The levees protect the city up to 20 feet, but 19 is close and doesn't include waves splashing up and so on. It's too close for comfort for us. And that surge could be more or could be less," he said. "If things change and it gets higher, at some point, there's only so much we can do."

We're likely to see more frequent and wetter hurricanes

This past year was the hottest on record for Earth's oceans and the fourth warmest for the planet.

As ocean temperatures continue to increase, we'll likely see more coastal flooding because of sea-level rise (since water, like most things, expands when heated) and more severe hurricanes. That's because hurricanes' wind speed is influenced by the temperature of the water below. A 1-degree Fahrenheit rise in ocean temperature can increase a storm's wind speed by 15 to 20 miles per hour, according to Yale Climate Connections.

Read More: The oceans are the hottest they've been since we started measuring — which means we should prepare for more disastrous flooding and storms

Currently, water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are at near-record levels, Holthaus wrote.

Frank Conforto Jr. walks in the parking lot of the University Medical Center with the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in the background on Glavez Street in New Orleans after flooding from a storm, July 10, 2019. Matthew Hinton/AP

What's more, as the planet keeps warming, Earth's atmosphere will be able to hold more moisture. That increases the likelihood of intense rainfall in already wet areas, according to Holthaus.

The troubled poop-testing startup uBiome has paused running its last remaining test, after laying off crucial laboratory personnel on Wednesday.

uBiome temporarily stopped processing samples for its Explorer test because the startup no longer has a lab director after cutting half its workforce, according to an internal Slack message seen by Business Insider. Explorer costs $89, and is available without a prescription from a doctor.

"Due to the fact that we now lack a Laboratory Director, we have ceased processing of Explorer samples until we have a replacement," the Slack message seen by Business Insider reads. It was sent by Josh Raynes, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as a clinical laboratory scientist at uBiome. Raynes declined to comment when contacted by Business Insider.

Curtis Solsvig, uBiome's interim CEO, confirmed the temporary halt to Business Insider. "We have decided to pause processing of new Explorer samples until a new lab director is in place," he said in an emailed statement.

uBiome had already stopped selling and processing its clinical tests, which require a doctor's order, after an FBI raid on the company in April. Earlier on Wednesday, a person familiar with uBiome's plans told Business Insider that the startup was planning to keep its labs open. The company is still selling the Explorer test.

In all, uBiome cut 114 of the 229 people it employed on Wednesday. uBiome's chief operating officer, Nathaniel Walton, was let go, as was Susan Zneimer, one of the company's lab directors.

uBiome raised $105 million from investors on the promise of revealing new insights about individuals' health from the bacteria in their body, known as the microbiome. The FBI raided the startup in April, as part of an investigation into uBiome's billing practices, The Wall Street Journal reported. uBiome's founders and top leaders departed in June, and replacements were brought in from the consulting firm Goldin Associates.

Read more: uBiome convinced Silicon Valley that testing poop was worth $600 million. Then the FBI came knocking. Here's the inside story.

Starting on July 1, 2020, Microsoft is making some big changes to its partnership program — changes that have already caused an uproar among its reseller partners.

Partners will no longer be able to use Microsoft software internally in their own businesses for free as part of their annual subscription to the partner program.

"We have essentially let them run their environment on Microsoft for free. Now, just like every other customer, they'll have to pay for the services that they use," Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president and One Commercial Partner channel chief at Microsoft, told Business Insider.

These partners build their businesses by reselling Microsoft products to large customers, providing customer support and developing their own add-ons and extensions to provide bespoke solutions for business ses. This partner program is a significant part of Microsoft's business, with 95% of the company's total commercial revenue flowing through those resellers, developers, and systems integrators.

Beyond the software issue, Microsoft in August will end its dedicated customer support for partners using its traditional, boxed-software products. Toby Richards, general manager at Microsoft, said that only 1% of partners use this support, and it will continue to offer the same perk for partners who use cloud services like Microsoft Office 365.

The change comes as Microsoft itself continues to shift its focus away from traditional software, and towards subscription-based cloud services like Office 365, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Dynamics 365.

"We are a cloud company," Richards said at a Microsoft press event. "We felt that investment for that 1% could be better served for adding more enablement and better go-to-market services."

'An opportunity cost'

Schuster says that it doesn't cost Microsoft much of anything to provide software to its partners, given that it can be sent via the internet or mailed on a CD and that's the end of it.

"When we gave a partner a license, the only thing it cost us was kind of an opportunity cost. Would they have bought something?" Schuster said.

However, Schuster points out that it does cost Microsoft money to provide cloud services, since they require the use of the company's servers to function.

"If the partner really uses a lot, then it costs even more and if they add more employees because they're successful, then it's an even higher cost," Schuster said. "It's not a bad problem to have that you have partners who want to use your stuff and have partners grow. But you don't want to feel, 'that's an X number of dollars I have to pay out.'"

These changes don't stop partners from using Microsoft products for purposes of making a sale, doing trainings, or setting up demonstrations. They just can't use them internally at their own businesses for free. Instead, Microsoft partners will pay for the cloud services they are using per month.

"It's a different kind of bill for them as well," Schuster said. "When we go through that, every partner that I've talked to in this last week has really understood...We can't afford to run every single partner's organization for free anymore, because it's not free."

Richards says that Microsoft would rather invest in programs and resources that support business growth for partners, including those that will help them find more customers or work more closely with the company.

"The role of my team is to take customer and partner feedback as well as work with our product teams to determine not only what are the core requirements we need but also how we think about the various businesses and services we offer to help our partners grow," Richards said.

Schuster also said that Microsoft will look into creating special offers for partners.

'Wait a minute, I have to pay for this'

Schuster notes that not everyone has reacted favorably to these changes. At the time of writing, over 3,300 people have signed an online petition urging Microsoft to reverse course and provide the software again — up from 1,800 people on Tuesday.

Read more: Microsoft has caused an uproar among its partners by canceling one of their favorite perks: software for their own use

"As I would have expected, it's, 'wait a minute, I have to pay for this. I'm not sure if I have the budget,'" Schuster said on the backlash. "Where we are turning our attention is how to help them land more customers. All it takes is three wins, five wins for a partner, and they've made enough profitability to pay."

Schuster said that Microsoft is giving partners as much notice as it can, so they have about a year to figure this out.

"You have to start paying for something we've been giving for free for a long time," Schuster said. "It's like when your kids turn 20, and you tell them they have to pay rent. We have all our teams on standby working with partners to come up with the best licensing solution for the organization."

Amazon has a lot of devices. From Echo Dots to Echo Spots and Kindles to Fire Tablets, Amazon has a whole repertoire of practical and fun tech gadgets. So, when Prime Day rolls around, it's only natural that Amazon drops prices on its own products.

Last year, one of the most outstanding deals we came across was on the Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote. While the Fire TV Stick is usually priced at $39.99, Amazon Prime members saved $20 and snagged it for just $19.99, the lowest price the device had ever seen. We expect to see a similar deal this year.

If you're not familiar with it, the Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote is a media streaming stick that lets you watch videos from your favorite streaming sites, like Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video, on any TV. All you have to do is plug the Fire TV Stick into your TV's HDMI port to give even an old TV the smart TV treatment. Amazon's streaming stick also is integrated with Alexa, so you can use voice commands to pause, play, and turn on your favorite shows. If you use Amazon Music, you can even use the Fire TV Stick to stream the service's millions of songs. If you don't use Amazon Music, now's a great time to give it a try. As an early Prime Day deal, you can sign up for four months of Amazon Music Unlimited (a service that usually costs $7.99 a month for Prime members) for $1.

It may not be Prime Day just yet, but there's already a great Fire TV Stick promotion you can get right now.

For $39.99, you can get a Fire TV Stick plus two months of HBO. Considering that the Fire TV Stick regularly costs $39.99, you're pretty much getting two months of HBO for free. If you don't have cable, buying HBO a la carte will run you $14.99 a month, so these are some serious savings.

There are a few streaming stick options out there, but the Fire TV Stick is one of our favorites. Our tech reporter tested the Fire TV Stick against the popular Roku Streaming Stick. Ultimately, he found the Fire TV Stick to be a better value, as it comes with more features, but is still relatively inexpensive.

We think the Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote will be on sale again for Prime Day 2019, considering it was one of the most popular deals last year. We're also thinking that the Fire TV Stick 4K, which is the upgraded version that offers ultra HD viewing, has a good chance of being discounted.

If you're looking to upgrade your TV for less, keep an eye on the price of the Fire TV Stick. And remember, you need a Prime membership to get Prime Day savings. If you're not a Prime member already, you can sign up for a 30-day trial now.

Check back as Amazon Prime Day 2019 approaches to learn more about all the possible Fire TV deals.

The Cavalier Maverick is a portable speaker with Alexa onboard, plus, it has a super stylish exterior, its own charging base, and a carrying case.

Whether you're looking for an Alexa-enabled speaker to use at home or one that can travel, the Cavalier Maverick delivers on both fronts — and unlike most speakers, this is one that you'll want to show off, thanks to its visually appealing design.

Its hipster vibe is just present enough that you may be convinced to do away with your record player to save a little space, but subtle enough to go with any room's style if hipster isn't your thing. It comes in two different color schemes: black and silver, and indigo and tan, which allows it to mesh well with any space.

I was able to test the Maverick for myself and immediately appreciated the craftsmanship. Genuine wood, distressed leather, metal, and custom knit fabric come together to form a speaker that lives up to the promise of "looking as good as it sounds."

Once I downloaded the Cavalier app, I had the Maverick set up and connected to our Wi-Fi in less than 10 minutes. If you want to take advantage of the Alexa-enabled voice control feature, you'll also need to download the Amazon Alexa app. Both apps are nicely laid out and easy to use.

The Maverick can easily be controlled via the Cavalier app, voice commands issued to Alexa, or with the smart button located on top of the speaker.

My favorite way to control the speaker was with Alexa, and as an Amazon Prime user, I could play songs right from my library. It's also compatible with Pandora, Spotify, and iHeart Radio, in case you don't use Prime Music. Thanks to the Spotify Connect integration, you can also control your music directly through the Spotify app if you so choose.

The Alexa-enabled voice control also came in handy when I wanted to know what the weather was, wanted to set a reminder, or wanted the latest news updates. This speaker is a great alternative to the Amazon Echo if you're looking for something a little more stylish and that can travel with you throughout your home.

I was equally as impressed with the sound quality as I was with the design aesthetics. The sound is crisp and clear and easily filled our large living room. If you're a fan of bass-heavy music, you may find the bass a little lacking, but I personally had no issues with the sound. If you're looking for an even more robust or whole-home sound experience, multiple Maverick speakers can be linked together, but the single speaker served our needs just fine.

As a Bluetooth speaker, the Maverick is also built to travel and comes with a sturdy carrying case for protection when you're on the go. The battery life is decent, with up to nine hours of playing time.

The Maverick is definitely on the expensive side, but in my opinion, extras like the charging base, the carrying case, and the Alexa integration make this a worthwhile investment if you're looking for a speaker that's both extremely functional and pleasing to look at.

Amazon reviewers love the superb sound quality, how easy it is to use, and the fantastic craftsmanship. — Kylie Joyner

Pros: Aesthetically pleasing design, crafted with high-quality materials, clear and crisp sound quality, portable, features Alexa integration with voice control, comes with charging base and carrying case

Cons: Expensive, bass is lacking a bit

Silicon Valley giants and media moguls alike are flocking to Idaho for Allen & Co.'s annual conference at Sun Valley Resort.

The " summer camp for billionaires" began Tuesday, and execs from Facebook, Disney, and PayPal are already in attendance. Historically, the conference has been a Petri dish for major mergers and acquisitions, including Jeff Bezos' purchase of the Washington Post and Comcast's acquisition of majority stake in NBCUniversal. One potential merger to watch unfold against the verdant backdrop of the resort this year could be CBS and Viacom.

Check out who's who arriving at the 2019 conference.

While Prime Day last year was a 36-hour event, Prime Day 2019 will be a 48-hour event.

Prime members will be able to start shopping more than 1 million deals sitewide at 12 a.m. PT on July 15 and ending at 11:59 p.m. PT on July 16— but you can expect that at least some of the deals will continue on through the days following.

In the week leading up to Prime Day, Amazon has also traditionally released a handful of early promotions and deals. These early Prime Day deals usually revolve around Amazon devices such as Kindle e-readers and Amazon services such as Prime Pantry.

Stay tuned as July 15 approaches to learn about more early Prime Day deals. And with the event less than a week away, consider opening a credit card with price protection in case an item sells out or all the discounted products have been claimed.

You'll also want to make sure you have the date marked in your calendar because Target is holding a directly competing summer sale at the same time, and it doesn't require a membership to shop.

Now that you know the date of Prime Day 2019, there are a few things you can do to prepare:

Waste not, want not.

We make so many purchases that we don't always realize what we are buying — and how we could be saving money. If we take a step back and think about all of our additional costs, we could cut a few out of our lives.

These 24 products can often be a huge waste of money:

Matthew Michaels contributed to the original version of this article.

Heads up to anyone who loves to read or plans to spend the bulk of their summer weekends splayed out on a beach flicking through the latest thriller — Prime Day 2019 is coming up July 15-16 and is bound to have some deals to appeal to your bookworm-ish heart and savings-driven brain.

This year, Prime Day will be live for 48 hours, starting at 12 a.m. PT on July 15 and ending at 11:59 p.m. PT on July 16. Because the yearly sales event is hosted by Amazon, it tends to favor Amazon devices and services, and that includes everything Kindle.

Kindle is Amazon's collection of tablet-like ebook readers. It's also an app that lets you read ebooks from your phone or any other type of tablet. Supplementing the devices and app is Kindle Unlimited, a monthly membership that gives you unlimited access to more books than you can count.

A pre-released Prime Day deal lets you enjoy three whole months of Kindle Unlimited for free. It's one of the best deals of Prime Day, saving you $30 over the course of a few months on a huge library of books.

Through July 14, you can also receive $5 in eBook credit when you spend $20 on eBooks.

Amazon is still sitting on most of its Prime Day 2019 deals ( though we have guessed at a few of the best deals this year), so consider bookmarking this page so you can check back closer to July 15-16 to see how you can save on each Kindle device and service this summer.

To see what it's like to read with a Kindle, you can first read our guide to using a Kindle, which includes expert tips and tricks. Then make sure you're prepared for Prime Day with this checklist.

Below, learn more about all of Amazon's Kindle devices and services that could be on sale.

Want to stay updated on everything Prime Day 2019? Bookmark this page and our master guide to the best deals of Prime Day.

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced yet another enormous partnership for its cloud business.

It signed a deal with ServiceNow that will stitch its cloud software more tightly into Microsoft's services.

ServiceNow is known for self-help tech-support software. But the company's latest spiel is what it calls "digital workflows," where companies can automate just about any repetitive task, from employee onboarding to end-of-month reports.

Integrating ServiceNow with Office 365 and Dynamics — Microsoft's competitor to Salesforce — could create a lot of interesting new cloud services for their joint customers.

More importantly, ServiceNow said it would be moving its entire tech stack onto Microsoft's cloud, Azure, in addition to continuing to run its own data centers.

Terms of that part of the deal were not announced, but ServiceNow spent over $10 million last quarter on its data center between buying new equipment ($8.5 million) and expansion costs ($2.9 million), it said in its earnings statement.

A string of surprising partnerships

This deal follows another brilliant new partnership between Microsoft and Oracle, where the database giant will make its new cloud database work well with Microsoft's cloud Azure.

It's an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend scenario, where Microsoft and Oracle are teaming up to take on Amazon Web Services. The idea is that Oracle's database customers can use Oracle's cloud for their database and Azure for their other needs, one of Oracle's CEOs, Mark Hurd, explained last month to Wall Street analysts.

Read more: Top execs at longtime rivals Microsoft and Oracle explain why they just came out of nowhere with a new cloud partnership: 'This is the start of a beautiful friendship'

Mark Hurd. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

ServiceNow also follows in the footsteps of Microsoft's similar partnership with Adobe announced last year.

Similarly, Microsoft has an agreement with SAP — although SAP is partnering with multiple cloud providers to host its software, including Google and Alibaba, rather than building its own cloud.

To a lesser extent, Microsoft's new and surprising partnership with VMware falls into a similar bucket.

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger made it clear that this partnership with Microsoft is considered second fiddle to its partnership with Amazon Web Services. But, all the same, VMware software can now be used on Microsoft's cloud Azure with VMware's formal consent.

(Notably, Microsoft was already working on doing this without VMware's okay.)

'Unprecedented' opportunity from Windows 7

But perhaps the biggest looming opportunity of all for Microsoft's cloud centers around Microsoft's old Windows operating system, Windows 7.

Reuters Formal support for Windows 7 ends in less than six months, on January 14, 2020. And companies are still using a lot of Windows 7 PCs.

Windows 10 just overtook Windows 7 in popularity in January. Today, roughly 38% of the PCs on the internet are still using Windows 7, according to NetMarketShare, a site that tracks such stats.

Roughly 40 million PCs will have to upgrade, the Intel executive Jason Kimrey told CRN.

Kimrey called the opportunity "unprecedented" in terms of the PCs and devices, consulting, software, and other services the Microsoft ecosystem will be in a position to sell to so many customers.

Whenever a Microsoft customer upgrades operating systems, salespeople have a chance to sell them more wares. In this case, Microsoft is preparing to push a bundle known as Microsoft 365, ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reported.

Microsoft 365 is a suite that includes Windows 10, Office 365, and a smorgasbord of other enterprise cloud software, including videoconferencing, Teams (Microsoft's Slack competitor), security, and analytics.

Foley reported that Microsoft has been, all year long, reorganizing various sales teams, particularly in its commercial sales business, to focus less on software and piecemeal cloud apps, and more on cloud, particularly Microsoft 365.

Ironically, this push toward the cloud could also be good for a few of Microsoft's old-fashioned back-office software offerings as well.

Companies may use this time to upgrade to a new Microsoft database, new Microsoft software development tools, and new Windows Server licenses. Windows Server may be running their custom and homegrown Windows apps.

The longtime Microsoft bull Keith Weiss of Morgan Stanley believes that Microsoft's back-office software could become a dark horse driving growth in the months to come.

That's because Microsoft is selling a new kind of license called Azure Hybrid Benefits, which lets Windows Server and database customers use these products on Azure at discounted rates.

Microsoft's chairman explains the post-Windows world

Microsoft is the only old-school enterprise software company to have successfully crossed the chasm and become a cloud powerhouse. And Microsoft Chairman John Thompson told Business Insider that it used its old-school on-premises software as its springboard.

Justin Sullivan/Getty

He said Microsoft's cloud success was "clearly attributable" to CEO Satya Nadella, who understands "that while Windows was a very powerful platform for the company for many, many years, it clearly has evolved. And that it's not just about cloud, it's about what services you offer in the cloud."

He added, "in Microsoft's case, one of the important leverage points that Satya and the team were able to take advantage of was their on-prem presence as they migrated customers to the cloud."

This final push of the Windows 7 holdouts represents another opportunity to use that playbook.

Gearing up its partners

We're seeing other evidence of how Microsoft is mobilizing to bring more of its customers onto more of its cloud with the news announced ahead of Microsoft's next big events, happening next week in Las Vegas.

Nadella.MicrosoftMicrosoft is hosting its Ignite conference for its worldwide partners and simultaneously holding its annual internal sales conference that kicks off its new fiscal year, which began in July.

We previously reported that Microsoft is telling partners that they will soon no longer get free Microsoft software to run their own businesses and that it wants them to specialize in more areas of the cloud.

The idea of allowing partners to use Microsoft software made total sense in yesteryear. Those who sell, support, and write custom apps for Microsoft software should use it themselves.

But as Microsoft downgrades the importance of software and elevates the importance of cloud, it no longer sees the benefit of giving its software away to its qualified partners.

They should be moving to the cloud — and most of them won't get to do that unlimited, for free, either, Business Insider has learned — just like it wants customers to stop buying three-year software licenses and start buying never-ending software subscriptions.