Amazon Web Services had a head start in 2006 when it offered software developers something they couldn't refuse: access to virtually unlimited computing power in Amazon's data centers.

And that's how Amazon's cloud got started. It quickly picked up popularity among developers and large companies as well. When Microsoft eventually decided it need to get into the cloud business, it played to its strengths and sold its service to its longstanding enterprise customers.

But that balance of power is now set to change, at least if Microsoft has its way.

Microsoft has begun an all-out charm offensive to woo the software developers that have traditionally flocked to Amazon's AWS.

Through a combination of new products, high-priced acquisitions and public displays of affection for developer principles, Microsoft hopes to convince the creators of the next generation of apps and services that its cloud is the right foundation to build on.

It's still early in the process, and there's no guarantee that Microsoft will succeed. But embracing the developer community and incorporating open source projects — or, projects that any developer can use, download and modify for free —will benefit Microsoft in the long term, analysts say.

"Microsoft is working really hard at making a big tent for where all developers can contribute and take advantage of the tools that we had," Jean Atelsek, analyst at 451 Research, told Business Insider.

The GitHub acquisition

Microsoft's most high-profile effort to go after developers was its $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub last October, bringing in not only the popular open source code hosting site under its fold, but also an entire community of more than 30 million developers.

When Microsoft and GitHub first announced this, there was some consternation among developers, as they worried that GitHub will become more closed off and leave developers stuck with only Microsoft technologies.

Previously, Atelsek says, Microsoft had a reputation for taking over a piece of software, adopting it to its platform, and essentially killing it. But with GitHub, the opposite has happened.

Since GitHub's acquisition, it has launched unlimited private code hosting — something developers long asked for. And on Friday it launched the first major new product since the acquisition, GitHub Package Registry, to help developers manage software packages.

Read more: GitHub just launched its first big new product since Microsoft bought it for $7.5 billion, and it's a crucial service for developers

"Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub does not seem to be pushing developers away," Raimo Lenschow, managing director at Barclays, wrote in a note. "Microsoft is taking baby steps to cross-promote Azure without pushing its user base away, which makes sense to us."

"The new open mentality"

Microsoft has also made a host of other announcements to curry favor with developers.

Previously, Microsoft announced it would build its browser Edge to support Google's open source web engine Chromium. For many developers, this was good news — it makes it easier for them to develop sites that are compatible with multiple browsers, rather than having to create separate versions.

"It's a really good example of the new open mentality that Microsoft has," said Ed Anderson, an analyst at industry research firm Gartner. "Microsoft will benefit from using Chromium. They'll get the developer base. At the same time, [developers will] be able to contribute back to Microsoft innovations. I think it's kind of a win-win for everybody."

Microsoft also made a major announcement with the open source operating system Linux that's popular with developers. The full Linux kernel will now be shipped with Windows 10. This lets Windows 10 users run a full-on version of Linux on their Windows desktops. It's another sign of Microsoft's strategy in cozying up to developers.

Read more: Microsoft is building the full Linux kernel into Windows 10 as a way to pry developers away from their Apple MacBooks

Finally, Lenschow said that when it comes to Microsoft's products, "AI is being injected into everything."

For example, Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, or its widely used code editor, has become the top open source project on GitHub. And at the Build conference, Microsoft launched enhancements to make programming even easier, such as an artificial intelligence feature that suggests code alternatives to build applications more efficiently, based on data from GitHub's top projects.

"To us, this is a positive change, as AI shifts from a talking point to something in practice. Microsoft enables the use of AI technology by making it easier for developers to adopt it through toolkits," Lenschow wrote.

Taking on Amazon

With all these announcements, this shows Microsoft embracing open source as a central part of its strategy — a turnaround from the past, when Microsoft waged a war on Linux.

The biggest takeaway, Lenschow writes, is that Microsoft has undergone a cultural change that focuses on developers.

"We got the sense from talking to developers that Azure no longer lacks the capabilities other public cloud platforms have and is increasingly viewed as developer friendly," Lenschow wrote.

Welcoming more developers is a crucial first step to take on Amazon. Besides that, analysts say Microsoft should continue doing what it does best: capitalizing on its relationships with enterprise customers.

"I think Microsoft just needs to keep executing the way they are," Sanjeev Mohan, an analyst at Gartner, told Business Insider. "The customers need to feel that they are being listened to and they can trust a partner, and Microsoft is demonstrating that."

JPMorgan is turning to one of Silicon Valley's hottest startups for help with its cloud strategy.

The bank has started working with cloud-based data warehouse Snowflake as part of its developing public cloud strategy, according to a source familiar with the matter.

JPMorgan's motivation for teaming up with the $3.5 billion startup stems from Snowflake's potential to help the bank manage large data sets across multiple public cloud platforms, according to the source.

As Wall Street grows more comfortable using the public cloud, many firms are considering how to split work across the three main providers, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. While most banks would prefer to be cloud agnostic — maintaining the ability to seamlessly move between clouds — doing so is no easy task.

The biggest hurdle for most firms are applications or tools that require significant amounts of data, a common occurrence in finance. In such cases, a firm is forced to pick one provider, or else face steep costs to maintain data on all the public clouds it hopes to use.

Read more: Wall Street is finally willing to go to Amazon's, Google's, or Microsoft's cloud, but nobody can agree on the best way to do it: 'If you pick a favorite and you're wrong, you're fired'

Snowflake alleviates that issue, allowing a firm to replicate data kept on AWS over to Azure or vice versa. Firms only pay fees when they start running applications or tools on either of the clouds. This gives firms the flexibility to move work between multiple clouds while still keeping operating costs low.

A JPMorgan spokeswoman declined to comment.

"Snowflake recognizes the business value for financial services organizations in having a common platform and a consistent experience across multiple clouds," a Snowflake spokeswoman said. "Users with a multi-cloud strategy that includes Azure and AWS, now have a common, cloud-built data warehouse platform and experience with Snowflake."

To be clear, Snowflake is not the only cloud-related database the bank is working with, the source said. But as one of the biggest banks on Wall Street, nabbing JPMorgan's business is a big win for Snowflake.

See more: Famous exec Bob Muglia is out as CEO of $3.5 billion Snowflake, just weeks after saying an IPO isn't imminent

Snowflake has risen to prominence in recent years as cloud adoption has exploded across various industries. The company has raised $923 million from the likes of Sequoia, Red Point, Sutter Hill, and Capital One Growth Ventures, among others.

More recently, Snowflake has been in the news following the departure of former CEO Bob Muglia. A former top executive at Microsoft who was famously fired by Steve Ballmer twice, Muglia joined Snowflake when the company was only a 30-person team and had yet to make any sales.

JPMorgan's decision to work with Snowflake was made prior to Muglia's departure.

Muglia was replaced by Frank Slootman, who has a history of taking companies public, leading some to speculate he'll do the same for Snowflake.

Slootman hasn't wasted time in his new role, replacing two senior executives with former colleagues he worked with while at cloud-computing company ServiceNow.

Getty/Spencer Platt

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi addressed his company's abysmal initial public offering in an email to employees on Monday.

The chief executive sought to reassure employees that while Uber's IPO did not yield the first-day results the company had hoped for, they should keep in mind that several high-profile technology companies sputtered in their debuts only to surge in later years.

He pointed to Facebook and Amazon.

"Remember that the Facebook and Amazon post-IPO trading was incredibly difficult for those companies,"  Khosrowshahi wrote in the email to employees that was posted on Twitter by New York Times reporter Mike Isaac. "And look at how they have delivered since."

When asked about the email, an Uber representative pointed Markets Insider to Isaac's tweet.

Read more: 'Our stock did not trade as well as we had hoped': Read the reassuring email Uber's CEO sent employees following its disastrous IPO

Uber shares plunged 12.4% Monday, to close at $36.43, after sinking nearly 8% on Friday. The second ride-hailing company to hit the US market priced its IPO at $45 a share on Thursday and saw a $42 debut on Friday morning.

To put its dismal showing another way, Uber's first day of trading turned out the largest one-day dollar loss of a US-listed IPO, according to analysis from Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida who has long specialized in IPO market research.

Consider that performance against Amazon and Facebook, which debuted in May 1997 and May 2012, respectively.

In split-adjusted terms, Amazon opened at $2.44 a share and tumbled to $1.96 by the close its first day of trading. The stock moved sideways until July 1 of that year, taking nearly two months to finally reclaim its opening price. (Amazon debuted on the Nasdaq at $16 a share). 

Facebook's debut was more fraught. The social network in 2012 saw the biggest first-month drop of any large US IPO in history, according to Dealogic. The shares plunged 21% and failed to recapture their opening price for about 16 months.

Since the close of trading on their respective IPO days, Facebook has gained 377% and Amazon is up 93,542%.

Khosrowshahi's plea to employees was not unlike advice from analysts and money managers who urge investors not to consider companies' early stock-market movements as indicative of the long-term story.

"There are many versions of our future that are highly profitable and valuable, and there are of course some that are less so," Khosrowshahi wrote. "During times of negative market sentiment, the pessimistic voices get louder, and the optimistic voices pull back."

He added: "Obviously our stock did not trade as well as we had hoped post-IPO."

Khosrowshahi is leading the company through its debut at a difficult moment for the stock market.

Global markets have fallen under pressure in recent weeks amid the ongoing trade war between the US and China. Stocks fell on Monday after China said it would hike tariffs on US goods in a retaliatory measure. US markets remain near all-time highs despite the recent volatility.

Now read more Uber coverage from Markets Insider and Business Insider:

Stalled out: Why the rush of IPOs from big, unprofitable companies like Uber and Lyft could throw the entire market off track

Uber is tanking after logging the biggest first-day dollar loss in US IPO history

Meet Austin Geidt, the Uber exec whose life is the stuff of Silicon Valley legend, who joined the company as an intern in 2010, got sober at age 20, and just rang the company's IPO bell

Markets Insider

One of America's most famous science communicator is pissed off, and the kiddie gloves are off.

Bill Nye is best known for his 1990s public television program, "Bill Nye the Science Guy," but he has since made many appearances in films and television shows, served as a science adviser for the Obama administration, and recently hosted a Netflix documentary series called "Bill Nye Saves the World."

On Sunday, Nye joined the talk-show host John Oliver on "Last Week Tonight" to offer up a fiery public service announcement. In the segment, Oliver was discussing the Green New Deal, a proposed set of regulations and initiatives that hopes to make the US carbon-neutral in 10 years and create jobs in the process. The concept has been championed by many Democrats, notably Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Oliver said it has catalyzed a debate about climate legislation across the country (even though Green New Deal legislation has stagnated in Congress).

Oliver added, however, that we're far from out of the woods when it comes to curbing carbon emissions. Then he invited Nye to share his thoughts on the matter — and Nye got real.

Wearing his familiar lab coat, bow tie, and safety glasses, Nye stood behind a table. In front of him sat a globe, a bucket of sand, a flame-retardant blanket, and a fire extinguisher.

"I've got an experiment for you — safety glasses on," he said. "By the end of this century, if emissions keep rising, the average temperature on Earth could go up another 4 to 8 degrees. What I'm saying is the planet's on f---ing fire."

Then Nye pulled a blowtorch from under the table and set the globe alight.

"There are a lot of things we could do to put it out. Are any of them free?" Nye asked, pointing to the three objects on the table that could extinguish the flames.

"No, of course not — nothing's free, you idiots. Grow the f--- up," he said. "You're not children anymore. I didn't mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were 12, but you're adults now and this is an actual crisis. Got it? Safety glasses off motherf---ers."

Here's the clip:

Here are some of the real and scary numbers behind Nye's tirade:

The scientist has good reason to be angry.

You can watch the full segment from "Last Week Tonight" below.

When Microsoft reported its earnings last quarter, it said its cloud business grew 73%.

Microsoft is locked in competition with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud for a larger slice of the cloud market. While AWS has the bulk of the market share, Microsoft's Azure cloud has seen major growth in recent years as well, taking advantage of its longstanding history with enterprise customers.

Microsoft has ramped up its artificial intelligence abilities. And it's been a longtime supporter of hybrid cloud technology, which allows customers to run their workloads on both remote cloud servers and in their own data centers — Google and AWS are just starting to introduce similar products.

Read more: $30 billion Paychex explains why it's betting on Microsoft's cloud, which it says 'far exceeded' its rivals

Microsoft also has an advantage in winning over retail customers, who may see Amazon as a looming competitor. And lately, Microsoft has been wrestling with AWS over a $10 billion cloud contract with the Pentagon that could change the balance of power in the cloud business.

Business Insider spoke with numerous Microsoft customers at its annual Microsoft Build developer conference in Seattle last week. These developers and executives have used tools from Microsoft's cloud, and in many cases, from Amazon's AWS as well.

If you're trying to get an on-the-ground snapshot of the current state of affairs in the cloud wars, these are the people you want to talk to.

Here's what they have to say about the differences between the two cloud rivals, and about how Microsoft's effort to vanquish Amazon in this massive market is coming along:

YouTube is making a renewed push for six-second ads, even as marketers cool on the format.

To counter consumers' slipping attention spans, YouTube, Snap, and TV networks started pushing six-second ads a couple years ago. On Monday, Google-owned YouTube rolled out a tool called Bumper Machine that uses machine learning to cut videos into six-second clips that marketers can run as unskippable ads in videos. YouTube said the tool analyzes videos up to 90 seconds long for features such as products, logos, human faces, and contrast.

In a blog post, YouTube acknowledged that creating six-second ads can be a challenge for advertisers.

"Since introducing six-second bumper ads in 2016 as a way to help you reach more mobile viewers, we've found that they punch far above their weight when it comes to effectiveness," Vishal Sharma, the vice president of product management at YouTube, wrote. "But producing a six-second video requires additional time and resources that not every team has."

New research from analytics firm MediaRadar confirms that advertisers are challenged by the format.

In the first quarter of 2019, according to MediaRadar:

"We're seeing that longer ads are coming back," Todd Krizelman, CEO and cofounder of MediaRadar, said. "It's hard to sell stuff in six seconds, no matter how cool or innovative the brand."

YouTube declined to comment on MediaRadar's research.

Creative agencies struggle with shorter ads

Agencies don't have the resources to make multiple ad formats for specific platforms.

Jennifer Kohl, the senior vice president and executive director of integrated media at VMLY&R, said that six-second ads should not have a full story arc or be cut down versions of longer ads.

"Marketers need to look at the six-second creative as a micro-message — they are snapshot messages that are discrete enough to stand alone, but can be used together to tell a larger story," she said. "The simpler the message, the better."

Gary Stein, the head of media of Eleven, added that six-second ads often feel rushed and aren't designed with specific creativity.

"The mistake that everyone made was that they were counting down versus counting up," he said. "Google is very good at machine learning and artificial intelligence — that might be a way of solving a problem."

TV is also having a hard time with 6-second ads

TV networks like Fox, NBC, and ABC have experimented with six-second ads over the past couple years to cut down on advertising time within programs and give marketers more flexibility with TV.

VMLY&R's Kohl said that while networks have been pushing for more six-second ads, particularly in live sports programs, the ad format isn't catching on.

"The favorites continue to be 15 seconds and 30 seconds, with long form playing a specific role as well," she said.

According to MediaRadar, nearly no advertisers ran six-second TV ads during the first quarter.

As YouTube and other digital platforms angle for more TV dollars from advertisers, advertisers are less worried about grabbing consumers' attention instantly and are putting longer ads online, Krizelman said.

"Online is looking more and more like television, and there's a lot of reasons why television works," he said. "Increasingly, the two are marching towards some middle ground."

Uber's unimpressive initial public offering shouldn't have surprised anyone.

Lyft's share price had already tanked following its debut on the public markets, and Uber underpriced its offering so that it could offer some kind of IPO "pop" and avoid Lyft's fate — and even that wasn't enough to dupe investors.

Beyond the bummer IPO, Uber's once majestic mega-unicorn valuation had already been questioned, notably by an early 2018 investment by SoftBank that knocked 30% off Uber's then theoretical market capitalization of almost $70 billion.

Throw in the company's plentiful personal problems and a US-China trade war, and you have a troubled lead-up to ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange last week.

The markets are now taking the stuffing out of Uber, the first stage of a more rational assessment of the company's actual business.

But, even with all the initial Wall Street hating and shares down 12% out of the box, Uber is still valued at more than $70 billion — nearly $20 billion more than General Motors.

Read more: Uber wanted to be a monopoly — but it may have to settle for the next best thing

For Uber, the short-term path is clear. The company must continue to grow revenue at the expense of profits, which have thus far been nonexistent and aren't likely to materialize anytime soon.

The top line is tasty: Uber brought in more than $11 billion in 2018, but converting that ocean of cash into a positive bottom line is going to be elusive.

In the short term, Uber doesn't have many choices

Cut prices! Robert Galbraith/Reuters

To a degree, Uber is a victim of its own success: It dominates the ride-hailing market, but it isn't a monopoly. When I talked to Evan Rawley, a Columbia Business School professor, about this in 2017, he suggested that Uber would control 70% of the market while pesky Lyft would capture about 30%. That's a lopsided duopoly, but it means that because of its scale, Uber's only path to maintaining its market share is lower pricing.

This is a good deal for consumers because they'll pay less for Uber's ride-hailing service. (Lyft will have to decide if it follows Uber in lowering prices or if it's willing to give up share in hope of profits. And if its stock tanks enough, there might be a future in which Uber buys Lyft outright. The two have had acquisition talks before.)

But what about Uber raising prices? Wouldn't that mitigate investor concerns?

Uber could sacrifice some market share, but that would be shortsighted. We essentially have the Amazon model here: CEO Jeff Bezos convinced investors that profits were pointless if they undermined the grander goal of market dominance. That ideology has guided Amazon for decades as it has delivered the best possible prices to consumers (we can debate the ethics of that strategy, but there's no question that pricing is where Amazon has won).

The 'platform' theory of Uber's future

An Uber Eats rider cycles through central London. Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Khosrowshahi has also indicated that Uber might pursue new lines of business — or if self-driving cars can eliminate drivers, an obvious major cost, turbocharge the current core business ($1 billion in pre-IPO new investment flowed into that part of the company in April).

Then there's the "platform" concept: Uber could provide a variety of new services to its 91 million active users, and any or all of them could be profitable.

"There are many versions of our future that are highly profitable and valuable, and there are of course some that are less so," Khosrowshahi wrote in a leaked email to Uber employees.

Uber Eats and the logistics and shipping operation are examples. And there's the mountain of location data that Uber collects; I've talked to a lot of folks in the transportation business about how big data is where the real money will be.

Uber could also turn itself into an advertiser on wheels, not just empowering brands with the vast amounts of data it collects but also potentially giving them screen time while a passenger is bored in the back seat.

Of course, the risk that no new business pans out is real. If you have high hopes, you can buy the stock now. But unless you're prepared to hold it for a long time — like an Amazon-grade time frame — you're liable to have your tolerance for frustration tested.

Khosrowshahi? Or Kalanick?

The wrong CEO, pre-IPO. But now? Josiah Kamau/BuzzFoto via Getty Images

Ironically, as much as Khosrowshahi may have been the right guy to lead Uber through its crisis and prepare the ground for an IPO free of controversy, he might not be the best executive to oversee a money-losing campaign of brutal price-cutting, and he might also be uncomfortable selling new lines of business to investors mainly to increase revenue to pay for the aforementioned price-cutting.

Travis Kalanick was better equipped to ride the monster that Uber was, still is, and needs to be if it's going to remain dominant until it can replace cars that need drivers with cars that don't (worry not, by the way, if Uber can't develop its own autonomous tech — Waymo will be happy to sell it to Uber, in exchange for access to millions of customers and their data).

But Kalanick isn't coming back. He wasn't even allowed by his board to ring the opening bell. So Khosrowshahi will need to figure out how to channel the more ruthless business side of his predecessor's nature if he's to stay at the helm.

Can he do it? Maybe, if he realizes that what Uber needs now is aggressive leadership rather than benign stewardship.

Sure, the company looks huge, but smartphone-enabled ride-hailing is still a new business, and nobody knows how to make it profitable at scale.

Wall Street might be grousing, but Uber is too big to vanish. It isn't so big, however, that it can't be chipped down if it fails to make the most of its advantage — that very largeness.

Uber is a monster. Now it just needs to act like it.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Narrator: If you're watching this video, there's a good chance your data has been hacked, leaked, or stolen. Over a billion users were affected by data breaches in 2018, and it seems like there are reports of new hacks every week. Can you even use the internet without your information eventually leaking? What's going on with your data?

We trust companies with a lot of our data. Unfortunately, we don't always know how the data's being used or if it's protected. Third parties accessing your information without your permission is never good. But there are actually a bunch of ways your information can be exposed. Large data breaches can leak data from multiple companies, often containing information of millions of users. In 2018, a leak called Collection #1 was released on the file-hosting site Mega. Collection #1 contained millions of passwords and emails all collected from previous data breaches. But sometimes the attacks are more specific.

Hackers often target individual companies to gain access to their user data. The largest hack so far was the Yahoo hack. In 2013, 3 billion user accounts were compromised. The breach included user phone numbers, birth dates, and even security questions and answers. Even though that breach happened in 2013, users didn't know the full scale until three years later. More recently, T-Mobile was targeted by hackers who stole the data of 2 million users. These types of hacks are all too common nowadays. But it gets worse.

Third parties can have access to your data even if there was no hack. When you sign into an app or a game with Facebook, you're sharing some of your data, and it's hard to know how the data you share is being used or who has access to it. In 2015, the app This Is Your Digital Life shared user data with third parties like Cambridge Analytica. Facebook gave the app access to user-profile data and information on subjects each user was interested in. Users of the app had no idea this data was being used, and in April, Business Insider reported that Facebook had unintentionally uploaded 1.5 million email contacts without user permission. Facebook has even been criticized for using phone numbers used to verify passwords to instead target ads, taking something that was supposed to be used for security and using it to improve ad tracking.

Sometimes there isn't even malicious intent, just negligence. In 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that a bug in Google Plus could have exposed the data of hundreds of thousands of users. Google claims no user data was misused, but they failed to disclose this issue for months.

OK, so this type of thing happens a lot, and your data is probably out there. But how does this actually affect you? At best, it doesn't. If your email address is leaked, for example, there isn't much that hackers can do without having other information. But it gets worse when more private information is exposed. If passwords and emails are leaked, you're at risk of having your account stolen or accessed by someone else. And depending on where the data came from and how often it was used, it could mean someone now has access to your email login, online bank accounts, or other very sensitive data. The worst-case scenario can include things like credit-card fraud and identity theft. These breaches have serious impacts beyond bad PR for a company, and they're actually getting worse.

The number and size of data breaches has skyrocketed in the last decade. According to research from Norton Lifelock, more than a billion adults have been the victim of a cyber crime. OK, so at this point, you're probably a little freaked out and are wondering what you can do to protect your data.

1. Find out if your data has been leaked

First, check if your data has been leaked. The website Have I Been Pwned has a database of information that has been exposed. You can input your info like an email address or old passwords to see if that data has been leaked.

2. Change your passwords

If it has, change those passwords right away.

3. Vary your passwords

Speaking of passwords, using the same password for everything is a horrible idea. If one account is compromised, all of your accounts will be at risk.

4. Use a password manager

Instead, use a password manager, like LastPass or 1Password. A password manager securely stores your passwords and can help you generate unique ones that are hard to crack with brute-force hacking.

5. Set up two-factor authentication

Additionally, setting up two-factor authentication for your accounts can prevent someone who has that password from accessing that account. If you're feeling overly vulnerable or paranoid, you can even purchase a device like YubiKey to add even more security to your accounts. Even something as simple as keeping your apps and computer up-to-date can help prevent malicious attacks.

6. Turn off ad tracking

Next, turn off ad tracking when available. We give a lot of information to online advertisers without even knowing it, but some services give users the option to limit what is being shared.

7. Switch your browser

If you wanna go even further, you can use a browser like Firefox Focus, which acts as always-on incognito mode, enabling a private-browsing session that shares and retains less data than traditional browsers.

8. Get a paid VPN

Finally, using a paid VPN can hide your internet traffic and IP address from third parties. A VPN can also protect your data when you're using public WiFi. It will encrypt your data, making it much more difficult for anyone to steal it from an open network.

9. Monitor your credit

If you think sensitive data has leaked, that could allow for fraud or identity theft. Be sure to contact your credit-card company and credit-reporting bureaus. You can also monitor your credit yourself via sites like Credit Sesame, which will alert you if there are any inquiries into your credit.

This is a lot, I know. Being on the internet means we're always sharing some kind of data. You can't stop a company from getting hacked, but you can limit how much information you share.

Wall Street analysts who gathered Monday for Slack's investor day presentation were promised continued hypergrowth and a total market opportunity worth $28 billion for the office communication company.

Slack is set to IPO in the upcoming weeks through a direct listing, a unique public offering process where the company doesn't raise any money or sell any shares, though other shareholders like investors and employees can sell their own stakes in the company.

How Slack is valued in its IPO will be determined down the road. Slack's last private round valued the company at $7.1 billion, though the company disclosed in its filing that its most recent private transactions have valued the company upwards of $13.7 billion.

"This has the potential to be one of the most important software categories," Slack Chief Financial Officer Allen Shim told analysts during the presentation, where he spoke alongside CEO Stewart Butterfield and Slack's newly hired chief product officer, Tamar Yehoshua, as well as other top executives.

Slack also shared new financial guidance for its first quarter of fiscal 2020, which the company will officially report on June 10.

In a company filing, Slack said it expects revenue between $133.8 million and $134.8 million, up 66% at the midpoint from its $80.9 million in revenue in the same period last year.

Slack said it also expects to see losses from operations between $38.4 million and $39.4 million, up from $26.3 million in losses during th same period last year.

Here are the slides Slack showed Wall Street.

Apple's revamped TV app provides one key benefit that you won't be able to get when subscribing to HBO separately: the ability to watch HBO content offline, including "Game of Thrones."

The company launched the new version of its Apple TV app on Monday after announcing it in March alongside its Apple TV Plus original content service. The new app supports the ability to download content for offline viewing, a feature that other services like Netflix have long offered.

But HBO's mobile offerings, HBO Go and HBO Now, do not allow subscribers to download shows and movies, according to the network's frequently askedquestions pages. In a release announcing the launch, Apple called its app "the first and only place" where HBO subscribers would be able to download shows like "Game of Thrones."

Read more: How to optimize your TV for 'Game of Thrones' so you don't miss any details of the huge final season

AT&T's DirecTV app allows you to download shows recorded on your DVR to your mobile device, but the company's website also says that some on demand content is not available for download. Amazon Prime similarly only allows users to download some HBO programming.

Other than the ability to subscribe to channels like HBO and Starz and download content for offline viewing, Apple's revamped TV app brings a new design with deeper customization and a new tab for Kids content. The app is available for iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV on Monday through a software update, and is also rolling out to certain Samsung Smart TVs. Come fall, it will be available for Apple's Mac operating system as well.

British car-shopping website AutoTrader named Tesla the most-loved auto brand for 2019, using feedback from a survey of over 60,000 car owners. Alfa Romeo and Land Rover finished as the runners-up.

Respondents highlighted the tech features — including the semi-autonomous Autopilot system, over-the-air updates, and touchscreens — and electric propulsion systems in their Tesla vehicles, as well as the community formed by electric-vehicle owners.

Read more: Panasonic's CEO said the company may not make enough batteries for Tesla next year

"Our research shows that pioneering technology and the feel-good factor of electric motoring certainly play their part in Tesla owners' enthusiasm about their cars, but there's more to it than that," AutoTrader road-test editor Ivan Aistrop said in a statement. "Tesla has managed to make electric motoring cool, and that's a trick that not many other electric car manufacturers have managed to pull off so far."

Aistrop added, "what owning a Tesla says about you seem to be as important to owners as the car itself, and for a company trying to build brand loyalty and desirability, that's a masterstroke."

A Tesla Model S. Bryan Logan/Business Insider Tesla received a similar award from Consumer Reports, which in February named it the most satisfying auto brand for the third consecutive year, though Tesla ranked 19th among 33 brands in the publication's overall ranking of auto brands for 2019. (The former only included owner feedback, while the latter also included tests conducted by Consumer Reports.)

Tesla's Model S sedan, first released in 2012, won AutoTrader's 2019 award for the best green car. Respondents highlighted the vehicle's power, acceleration, and cost efficiency.

Have you worked for Tesla? Do you have a story to share? Contact this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Reuters/Andrew Kelly

Uber shares plunged by nearly 11% Monday after Friday's initial public offering cost investors billions.

The ride-hailing giant, which went public on Friday, closed at $37.10 a share in its second day of trading. Uber went public six weeks after its rival Lyft did the same, posted a 7.6% loss in its stock market debut, wiping out $655 million worth of investor wealth.

When the dust settled, it was the biggest first-day dollar loss in US IPO history, according to an analysis from Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida.

Before Uber's loss, the largest first-day dollar decline came during the dot-com bubble of two decades ago. Genuity, an internet company spun out of Verizon, lost $277 million on its first day.

Investors were watching Uber's debut on the New York Stock Exchange closely after it priced at $45 a share, giving it a market capitalization of $75.5 billion. That was well below the $120 billion valuation that was floated in October.

Longer-term, investors are keen to see whether Uber will suffer the same fate as its smaller competitor Lyft, whose shares have been in a free fall since debuting in late March. They're trading down 33% from Lyft's IPO price of $72.

Read more: Lyft is tanking as Uber gets ready to make its stock-market debut

Uber's IPO came at a turbulent moment for financial markets, as an escalation in the US-China trade war has fueled a fresh wave of volatility that rocked markets last week and weighed on sentiment Monday morning. The uncertainty around US-China trade relations took a toll Friday.

"While it might be easy to call out 'market conditions' for these failings, the unvarnished truth is that these declines represent a fundamental disconnect between public and private valuations," Nicholas Colas, a cofounder of DataTrek Research, wrote in a note to clients on Monday about Uber and Lyft's poor performances.

While the market doesn't necessarily "care" about newly public companies turning a profit, Colas said, it does want to see operating cash flow, of which Uber and Lyft are "dramatically short."

Lyft shares fell by nearly 7% Monday, hitting a post-IPO low of $47.18.

Read more Uber coverage from Markets Insider and Business Insider:

Uber is going public at an initial market cap of $75.5 billion. Here's how that stacks up.

Meet Austin Geidt, the Uber exec whose life is the stuff of Silicon Valley legend, who joined the company as an intern in 2010, got sober at age 20, and just rang the company's IPO bell

Stalled out: Why the rush of IPOs from big, unprofitable companies like Uber and Lyft could throw the entire market off track

Markets Insider

Laura Buckman/Reuters

Lyft on Monday continued its rocky run as a public company, with shares plunging to a new low.

The stock fell by as much as 6.5%, to close at $47.78, as the broader stock market came under intense pressure and rival Uber made its public debut the session prior.

With Monday's decline, Lyft shares are now down 34% — or about $12.5 billion in market value — since their initial public offering in late March. Its first month on the stock market was the second-worst for a large US-listed IPO on record, according to a Dealogic analysis. Only Facebook's 2012 debut was worse. 

A few things are weighing on Lyft.

The broader market is in the midst of a particularly volatile period as the US and China have escalated their long-standing trade war, creating an inopportune environment for any newly public company.

The trade spat between the world's two biggest economies is latest phase was taken to new heights on Monday after China said it would raise tariffs on thousands of American products.

While major US markets are still within striking distance of their all-time highs, they've tumbled 3% over the past week.

Read more: Stocks are plunging after China retaliates with duties on $60 billion of US goods

At the same time, Lyft is one of many money-losing IPOs to hit the market this year, logging billions of dollars of losses in the last year.

While it's hardly unique for a young technology company to lose money while chasing growth, analysts have still pointed to Lyft's uncertain path to profitability as a reason for caution. Lyft recorded a $1.1 billion loss in its first quarterly report as a public company, released last week. 

Meanwhile, Uber has been a major factor in evaluating Lyft's performance. Analysts are concerned about Uber's dominance in the global ride-hailing market and its sheer size as a competitive threat.

While the bears are laser-focused on Lyft's number-two position in the ride-hailing market and its eye-popping losses, the bulls are trying to craft a long-term narrative.

"Long term, we still see shared transportation as a market with a long runway for secular growth, potentially more rational industry competitive dynamics as maturity approaches & broader positive impacts on society," Eric Sheridan, an analyst at UBS, wrote in a note to clients.

Read related coverage from Markets Insider and Business Insider:

Uber is tanking after logging the biggest first-day dollar loss in US IPO history

Stalled out: Why the rush of IPOs from big, unprofitable companies like Uber and Lyft could throw the entire market off track

3 reasons why Uber had such a 'weird' and terrible IPO, according to a portfolio manager who wouldn't buy the stock

Markets Insider

With so many Apple devices floating around, it can be difficult to keep track of which tablet, computer, or phone is the most recent. That's especially true of the iPad family, where there are not only plenty of different models, but also plenty of different generations.

But fear not — if you're wondering which of the many iPads is the newest out there, we've got an answer for you. Be warned though, it's a long one.

There are four different models of the iPad currently available: the iPad Mini, the iPad, the iPad Air, and the iPad Pro. Among the four of them, there are three different generations, and we may soon be getting yet another set of updates.

Keep reading to find out which iPad is newest:

The Amazon Echo was first released back in 2014, and it kicked off a whole new category in tech — the smart speaker. Now in its second generation, the Amazon Echo boasts good sound quality, a nice design, Amazon's digital assistant Alexa, and access to thousands of Alexa Skills that can control smart home devices, order food, and more.

But unlike in 2014, the Amazon Echo isn't without competition. Google now has its own line of smart speakers, which were recently rebranded under the Nest name of smart home products, but the original one the search giant launched was the Google Home.

The Google Home features the Google Assistant, a smart voice assistant that can control your smart home gadgets, tap into all of Google's services like Maps, and search the web for information you might be interested in.

But which smart speaker is better — the Google Home, or the Amazon Echo? We put the two speakers head to head to find out. We've used both speakers for years, so these comparisons come from real-world experience and testing.

Specs and dimensions

* Note that the original Google Home and Amazon Echo prices are listed in the image below, but they were both on sale at the time of publishing (Google Home $99.99 and Amazon Echo $64.99).

Alyssa Powell/Business Insider

Design

The Amazon Echo and Google Home may both be cylindrical smart speakers, but they have their own unique design elements that set them apart. For example, the Amazon Echo features a fabric covering around the entirety of the device, and it's available in a few different colors, most of which are different shades of gray.

It's also available with a wooden exterior, which may or may not look good depending on the overall style of your home. On the top of the Amazon Echo, you'll find volume controls, a mute button for the microphone, and a power button. The ring around the top lights up when you summon the voice assistant by saying, "Alexa."

Guillermo Garszon/Business Insider

The Amazon Echo may look good, but that doesn't mean that the Google Home is ugly. The speaker isn't quite as evenly cylindrical as the Echo with its slanted touch-sensitive top for quick controls.

The top can also show information like the volume level and whether or not the Assistant is listening. If you see red, yellow, blue, and green lights dancing, Google Assistant has heard you say, "Hey Google" or "OK Google" and is ready to answer. There is a mute button on the back, so you can turn the Assistant off so it won't respond to you.

The speaker comes with a gray base, but you can get it in a few different colors, including a nice coral or copper. You can even buy third-party bases, which is a nice touch. It's only the base that you can change, however, so you'll be stuck with the white top no matter what.

Both the Google Home and Amazon Echo look good in their own way — though I personally think the Echo looks a little nicer.

Set-up process

Guillermo Garszon/Business Insider

Setting up both the Amazon Echo and the Google Home is simple, though the process is slightly different for each.

If you're using the Google Home, you'll plug the speaker in, download the Google Home app, and the device should automatically pop up in the app. Simply follow the on-screen instructions to connect the speaker to your Wi-Fi network, and you should be good to go.

To set up the Amazon Echo, you'll plug the device in, then download the Alexa app. Then hit the '+' symbol in the app, and follow the on-screen instructions to get the device connected to your Wi-Fi network.

Both the Google Home and the Amazon Alexa are simple to set up, which is nice to see, so there's no clear winner here. You'll also connect smart home devices to the speakers in these apps so you can control devices with your voice (more on that later).

Sound quality

Guillermo Garszon/Business Insider

For many, the sound quality of the speaker might be the most important feature, and it's important to note that they both sound pretty good for smaller consumer-level speakers, though neither will likely impress audiophiles.

The Google Home has a decent sound quality, with an emphasis on the low-end. The Google Home can't get quite as loud as the Amazon Echo, but it still can get loud enough for the vast majority of users. The high-end on the speaker is certainly present, with a slight dip in the mid-range, though there's not a huge amount of detail compared to other more audio-focused smart speakers, like the Sonos One.

The Amazon Echo offers a slightly more full-bodied sound compared to the Google Home, so if you like balance, then it might be better suited to your audio tastes. The bass response isn't quite as heavy as it is on the Google Home, which might be important for some.

Both the Google Home and the Amazon Echo sound good in their own way, though I personally prefer the more balanced sound of the Amazon Echo.

Smart features

Guillermo Garszon/Business Insider

Both the Google Home and the Amazon Echo offer their own smart features, largely through their digital assistants — Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, respectively.

Google Assistant has fast become the smartest digital assistant out there, thanks to the fact that it leverages Google's knowledge graph and artificial intelligence for voice recognition and to find what you need, when you need it. Generally speaking, Google Assistant seems a little better at recognizing what you're looking for, even if you don't specifically say it. You can also connect Google Assistant to a range of third-party services to make it even smarter than it already is.

Of course, you can connect Alexa to third-party services, too, and Alexa may even have the edge on Google when it comes to smart home connectivity, though both can connect to all major smart home devices.

Ultimately, the better smart assistant really just depends on the rest of your digital life. If you own an Android phone, then it's probably better to stick with Google Assistant. If you don't, then Alexa will do the job perfectly well for your needs. Google is also slightly better with accents and languages, so if you live in a multi-lingual household, Google might be your winner.

The bottom line

Alyssa Powell/Business Insider

So which is better: Google Home or the Amazon Echo? Well, it depends. If you're an Android user that has other Google products, then it will benefit you to stick to the Google ecosystem, as your Google products will work together very well. The Google Home is also currently discounted from $129 to $99, making it a better deal than before.

If, however, you don't have an Android phone, then you may be better off with an Amazon Echo, which now supports Apple Music, and sounds a little better, too. It also works with more smart home devices, looks nicer to our eyes, and often goes on sale for less than its original $99.99 price.

Buy the Amazon Echo smart speaker on Amazon for $64.99 to $84.99 (originally $99.99)

Buy the Google Home smart speaker at Best Buy for $99.99 (originally $129)

The much-anticipated Uber initial public offering managed to break a record, but not one that investors would've hoped for.

The stock closed down 6.7% on its opening day to $41.70, down from the $45 a share the company priced at on Thursday night ahead of the IPO that had valued the company at $75.5 billion.

In total, the discount off the IPO price meant that investors who got in at that price saw a cumulative loss of $655 million. By the end of day Friday, Uber had a market cap of $69.7 billion, far below the $120 billion valuation figure bankers had suggested in 2018.

Read more: 3 reasons why Uber had such a 'weird' and terrible IPO, according to a portfolio manager who wouldn't buy the stock

That made it the biggest first-day dollar loss of a US IPO, Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business told Business Insider. Ritter's figures accounted for IPOs from 1975 on.

Percentage-wise, other IPOs have suffered far worse opening day closes. Ritter said on a percentage basis, Uber's first day ranks as the 99th worst open for IPOs raising more than $100 million. It's the combination of the drop and the size of the IPO in the first place that makes it the biggest first-day dollar loss.

Prior to Friday, the largest first-day dollar loss of a US IPO was in 2000 when Genuity, an internet company spun out of Verizon, went public. On its first day, Wall Street Journal reporter Rolfe Winkler noted, Genuity had lost $233 million. That makes Uber's first-day dollar losses almost three times as much.

Read more: Sure, Uber didn't leave any money on the table, but its IPO was nothing to celebrate and it could haunt the company and its execs for years to come

Uber's IPO came during a particularly turbulent week as tensions elevated between the US and China. The timing may have cost the company billions.

Alexei Oreskovic contributed reporting.

The strike Wednesday by Uber and Lyft drivers should serve as a warning to the companies and particularly to their investors.

That's not because the labor action likely harmed Uber or Lyft's business that day in any significant way. Instead, the strike is important because it points to the fundamental flaw in their businesses.

The two companies have built their services around paying their drivers pitifully low wages. That fact was at the center of Wednesday's strike; drivers are indicating through that action and through other means that they aren't going to continue put up with the poor pay.

But it's not at all clear whether Uber or Lyft can afford to give them a raise. The two companies are burning through cash hand over fist — in spite of giving drivers such poor compensation. And they're likely to come under increasing pressure to staunch those losses, even as drivers demand a raise.

How they can solve that conundrum is anyone's guess. I think there's a good chance they simply can't, and both drivers and investors are going to lose out as a result.

Uber and Lyft drivers earn poverty wages

Drivers cited several reason for going on strike, safety concerns and a lack of transparency over how the companies calculate their compensation and the factors they weigh when deciding whether to remove drivers from their services. But the overriding issue behind the driver action was anger over low and falling compensation.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will lead his company to its initial public offering this week. Carlo Allegri/Reuters It's not hard to understand why. The average Uber driver makes just $11.77 an hour after deducting the company's fees and the driver's vehicle expenses, the Economic Policy Institute estimated in a study last year that focused just on the biggest ride-hailing company. But as low as that wage is — it's below the poverty line for a family of four— it's actually overstating their real earnings.

Because Uber doesn't classify drivers as employees, the drivers are considered to be self-employed. That means that in addition to the part of the payroll tax that all employees — self-employed or not — pay, they also have to pay the part that employers normally cover. It also means that they don't get health or retirement benefits from Uber, so they have to pay for those out of their own pockets. If you take into account those costs — the employer side of the payroll tax and the cost of modest health and retirement benefits, the average Uber driver made just $9.21 an hour, the EPI found. That's below the poverty wage for a family of three.

Wednesday strike followed one in March by drivers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. And there are other signs of increasing driver discontent.

The average Uber driver only works for the company for three months, the EPI study found, meaning that few see it as a sustainable long-term job. And as the economy has improved, attrition among Uber and Lyft drivers and other so-called gig-economy workers has spiked, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. In some cases, attrition levels may be hitting an astounding 500% a year, the Journal reported, citing the chief operating officer of a job placement firm that works closely with such companies.

The companies could have a tough time offering raises

Uber, Lyft, and their cohorts could likely staunch such attrition and driver discontent by giving drivers and other gig workers a raise. But the ride-hailing companies could find that difficult to do, even if they were inclined to do it. Despite the minuscule compensation they give their drivers, neither company has been able to generate consistent profits, much less become self-sustaining.

Last year, Uber burned through $2.1 billion in cash from its operations and and its investments in property and equipment. Lyft, meanwhile, consumed nearly $350 million from its operations and such capital investments.

Read this: Uber is telling the world it's just like Amazon: Here's why the similarities are only skin-deep

Such red ink hasn't been much of a problem to date, because both companies were private and their venture investors were willing to subsidize their losses in the hope of having a big payoff when the companies went public.

But as of Friday, neither company will be protected and succored by private investors anymore. Lyft held its initial public offering in March, and Uber made its public market debut on Friday. Unlike venture investors, public shareholders tend to be far less tolerant of ongoing losses; they won't subsidize them ad infinitum. So both companies are sure to come under increasing pressure to stem the red ink.

It's hard to see how they can do that and pay drivers more, unless they raise prices on consumers. But the intense competition between the two companies — and the continued existence of alternatives such as traditional taxis and public transit — makes it difficult for either to hike prices significantly.

New York shows how wage and price hikes can hurt

New York is a case in point. The city put in place new rules at the end of last year that require Uber and Lyft to pay drivers a minimum wage of $17.22 an hour after expenses. In response, both companies hiked their prices. But they both reportedly offset those hikes with generous customer discounts.

The end result was that both companies' business in the city suffered. In the document Uber filed in advance of its IPO, it warned that the new regulations, including the wage hike, "had a negative impact on our financial performance in New York City in the first quarter of 2019 and may have a similar adverse impact in the future."

In a blog post, Lyft said that the regulations had a "negative impact on driver earnings," which almost certainly meant that they affected its business as well. The company essentially ran a test on two separate days in which it didn't offer customer discounts to offset its price hikes and found that the prices customers paid rose 24% and the number of rides fell 26%.

In other words, the companies' services aren't nearly as competitive or attractive to consumers if the companies have to pay their drivers fair wages.

Both companies are hoping robo-taxis will save them

Lyft customers will soon be able to get rides in self-driving Waymo vehicles in suburban Phoenix. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)= Both companies have indicated they believe the long-term solution to the problem is to move to driverless vehicles. If they had robo-taxis instead of human driven ones, they wouldn't have to worry at all about driver compensation. Lyft took a step in this direction this week when it announced a deal with Waymo whereby its customers will be able to order a ride in one of the latter's self-driving vehicles in suburban Phoenix.

But the idea of fully replacing human Uber and Lyft drivers with self-driving cars may be a distant dream.

I've spoken with numerous investors lately who focus narrowly on the self-driving car space. It's in their interest to promote the market and for their investments to pay off sooner rather than later. Their general assessment is that the technology is not mature enough to be used outside of suburban, or fixed, environments right now. Vehicles capable of autonomously and safely navigating the dense urban environments where Uber and Lyft have gotten the most traction are still years — and maybe decades — away.

So I'm not sure how Uber or Lyft solves this conundrum. What I do know is it's not going away. And if the strike Wednesday is any indication, the problem may get much worse before Uber or Lyft solves it.

Got a tip about Uber, Lyft, or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Depop is a social marketplace and app where users can buy and sell an array of items.

It's been described as a mix between eBay and Instagram, and because of the ease at which you can set up shop, list new items, and engage with your community, it's achieved explosive success with the younger generation. Since launching in 2011, it has grown to have over 13 million customers in 147 countries; 90% of these users are under the age of 26.

Rachel Swidenbank, vice president of marketplace at Depop, told Business Insider that some sellers can pull in as much as $300,000 a year on the app and have been able to buy houses and cars before they've even reached college age.

Read more: How to make money selling clothes on Depop

Few sci-fi movies are as revered as Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner," a film that put cyberpunk and sci-fi noir on the big screen for the first time.

The movie goes big on audacious predictions for the year 2019, including snakes on the verge of extinction, fully humanlike androids, ceaseless rain in LA, and space colonies.

But the movie got a few things right, too. The pyramid-shaped LA skyline implies that the city's skyscrapers are no longer legally required to have helipads on the roof — something that changed for real in LA in 2014 — and the film also predicted the rise (no pun intended) of flying cars. An essential part of the "Blade Runner" universe is the Spinner, a flying car we see darting about the city.

Flying cars have been part of our "promised future" since the 1950s. And engineers have tried. Oh, how they've tried. Among the many attempts at flying cars, there has been the 1947 ConvAirCar Model 118, little more than an auto with wings, and 1990's Sky Commuter from Boeing. And inventor Paul Moller spent his life developing various versions of his Sky Car, a reliable fixture in the back pages of pop science magazine for decades.

And while we don't have flying cars quite yet, they're definitely, at long last, coming. A number of companies are readying what are essentially "passenger drones" — electric powered, self-flying, vertical takeoff and landing vehicles that look like oversized drones.

And they can ferry passengers without the need for a pilot. Boeing, AirBus, and Chinese company eHang are all developing oversized drone flying taxi services, and some are just a couple of years (in theory) from operation, and Uber has already announced the first five cities that may start flying.

Whether you're looking to refresh your memory ahead of season 3 premiere of "The Handmaid's Tale" on June 5, or you're just looking to finally watch the show everyone is talking about, you're going to need to spend some time in front of your computer.

You won't find the hit series on CBS, NBC, or any of the traditional networks. This popular show is most readily accessible on the streaming platform Hulu. So if you have plans to keep up with the latest trials and tribulations of Gilead, here's what you'll need to do.

1. Head over to Hulu

While you could buy one-off episodes from a number of other platforms (like Amazon Prime or YouTube), the easiest way to actually stream the series is on Hulu.

2. Sign up for your free trial

Once you're on the Hulu website, select "Start Your Free Trial." You'll receive one month free to try the service. If you select the most popular basic plan, you'll be charged a monthly subscription fee starting at $5.99 after the trial ends.

3. Select your plan

You'll select your plan during your trial period, but once that first month has lapsed, you could always choose to upgrade or downgrade. For $5.99 a month, you'll be able to stream Hulu shows and movies with ads; for $11.99 a month, you'll rid yourself of ads; for $44.99 a month, you'll get both Hulu and live TV.

4. Find "The Handmaid's Tale"

Both seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on Hulu, so once you've signed up for your trial or your subscription, you're ready to start watching! Come June 5, you'll also be able to start streaming season 3, which you won't be able to do anywhere else.

5. Alternatively, watch one-off episodes

If you don't want to pay a monthly fee, you could instead buy individual episodes of "The Handmaid's Tale" or the entire season from Amazon or iTunes. We wouldn't recommend this option, though — not only is it much more expensive, but it also won't grant you immediate access to season 3 when it comes out.