At a recent policy review meeting at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, California, the company's chief exec, Susan Wojcicki, weighed-in on a certain set of "challenge" videos that had become wildly popular on the platform, according to a New York Times report last week.

The videos — which make up a phenomenon called the "Condom Challenge" — show a water-filled contraceptive falling onto a person's head in slow motion. Nothing is particularly raunchy about the videos (besides knowing that condoms are being used), and they are, admittedly, fascinating to watch.

The act, however, could potentially be harmful.

But just how harmful was up for debate in the meeting described by The Times and in the complicated world of content moderation, that distinction makes all the difference.

One employee, according to The Times, considered the videos to be "dangerous" — which, if no minors are involved, would allow them to stay on YouTube per the company's policy for challenge and prank specific content.

Wojcicki disagreed, however, and considered them to be "ultrahazardous," — a classification that would force all condom challenge videos to be taken down from the site.

"There's no reason we want people putting any kind of plastic over their head," Wojcicki said in the meeting, according to The Times.

The back-and-forth between YouTube's chief exec and the unnamed staffer highlights just how seemingly arbitrary these distinctions — which can mean all the difference between whether a video stays or goes — seem to be. And while these internal debates may be the most critical part of YouTube's business for it to get right, its ability to produce clear and repeatable results at the company's massive scale may ultimately be its toughest battle yet.

Read more: YouTube's algorithm is under fire for boosting a sexist conspiracy theory about black-hole researcher Katie Bouman

The Times report did describe an internal structure YouTube created to handle controversial cases. According to The Times, an "incident commander" is assigned to each case and oversees the company's response. Alongside senior executives, these incident commanders will hold "content reviews" to decide on whether a video, or group of common videos, should remain.

But can a structure like this — that requires the coordination of senior executives — be applied to every escalation that YouTube faces?

The Times reporter who wrote the original piece, Daisuke Wakabayashi, tweeted last Wednesday that from what he observed during his time in San Bruno, the YouTube's head exec was more likely to handle content questions with a "scalpel" than a "chainsaw" — meaning Wojcicki prefers moving slow to be more precise, rather than dealing with a tough problem in one fell swoop.

"If we're here just being reactive and making arbitrary decisions, it's no longer a fair and just platform for everyone," Wojcicki told The Times reporter. "We want to do it in a way that is carefully thought out and systematic and nuanced so that we understand what are the changes that we're making."

But can YouTube seriously be "systematic and nuanced" in every problematic scenario it faces? How — across the seemingly endless amount of content uploaded onto the platform each day — can that scale?

As Marc S. Pritchard, brand officer of Procter & Gamble, put it in The Times report, YouTube has moved well beyond Wocicski's description of the platform, growing from a small city to a metropolis. Instead, he told Wojcicki, "You grew into a galaxy [and] that has implications beyond anything you would have ever known."

Ultimately, condom challenge videos — the ones that didn't include minors in them — remained.

When asked why YouTube made the decision, a company spokesperson referred Business Insider to its company policy on challenges and pranks.

Apparently, at some point along the way, Wojcicki decided that the videos were merely "dangerous."

Read the full New York Times story on Wojcicki here.

Do you work at Google or Youtube? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (209) 730-3387 using a non-work phone, email atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Telegram at nickbastone, or Twitter DM at@nickbastone.

The phrase "mass extinction" typically conjures images of the asteroid crash that led to the twilight of the dinosaurs.

Upon impact, that 6-mile-wide space rock caused a tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean, along with earthquakes and landslides up and down what is now the Americas. A heat pulse baked the Earth, and the Tyrannosaurus rex and its compatriots died out, along with 75% of the planet's species.

Although it may not be obvious, another devastating mass extinction event is taking place today — the sixth of its kind in Earth's history. The trend is hitting global fauna on multiple fronts, as hotter oceans, deforestation, and climate change drive animal populations to extinction in unprecedented numbers.

The United Nations is set to release an 1,800-page assessment of scientific literature on the state of nature on May 6, 2019. Early news of the report from AFP reveals that up to 1 million species will be threatened with extinction within decades, mostly due to human actions.

"The pace of loss is already tens to hundreds of times higher than it has been, on average, over the last 10 million years," according to the report.

Read more: Insects are dying off at record rates — an ominous sign we're in the middle of a 6th mass extinction

Similarly, a 2017 study found that animal species around the world are experiencing a "biological annihilation" and that our current "mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume."

Here are 16 signs that the planet is in the midst of a sixth mass extinction, and why human activity is primarily to blame.

Directors Anthony and Joe Russo have pulled off a rare feat in today's franchise-heavy Hollywood. The brothers didn't just make a stellar movie to close a franchise (or "phase," as it pertains to the Marvel Cinematic Universe), but made a better movie than the penultimate entry.

"Avengers: Infinity War," also directed by the Russos, is great because it gives the movie that follows incredible stakes. I mean, the villain turns some of the biggest stars in the franchise into dust. Can't wait to see the next movie!

But in the past, that formula has often led to audience anticipation the creatives can't live up to. Look at "Return of the Jedi" after "Empire Strikes Back," "The Godfather Part III" after "Part II," or any "Terminator" movie after "Judgment Day." And even if the closing movie has good qualities, you often say to yourself, "Yeah, but the one before, that was great!"

And that's what's so amazing about "Avengers: Endgame" (in theaters Friday): It fulfills everything that was set up in "Infinity War."

One of the biggest surprises about "Endgame" is its tone. Coming off the seriousness of "Infinity War," you would think the movie would be a harsh revenge tale, as the existing Avengers try to avenge not only the friends they lost, but also half the population wiped out by Thanos. But in fact, there's a lightheartedness that flows through the movie and never feels out of place. That is a big help since "Endgame" is three hours long.

Disney And that fun factor comes from how the Avengers think they can win: through time travel.

I'm not going to give a lot away about the movie, but as you've probably seen Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) in the trailers, you know he's returned from the quantum realm — which is where we saw him last in "Ant-Man and the Wasp" — which means you know from that movie the time-travel angle is out there.

It's hard to not have fun with a time-travel plot. That includes figuring out how the time travel works as well as putting a spin on it that makes fun of classic time-travel movies. (Sorry, in the MCU time travel doesn't work like "Back to the Future.") Add a heist aspect — again, not going to get into details — and you have gold.

But that doesn't means there isn't drama. Getting back at Thanos has led some of the Avengers to take things pretty hard in their own ways. How it has affected Thor (Chris Hemsworth) leads to some of the funniest moments in the movie. But what Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has gone through is quite dark.

Read more: "Avengers: Endgame" is poised to shatter the opening-weekend box-office record

What's hugely satisfying about "Endgame" is there is closure. Nothing is open ended. Outside of laying the groundwork for how some of the characters will move forward after phase one of the MCU, the movie answers all questions.

And you don't get cheated on the action either. The movie has one of the most fulfilling, all-out battle sequences that I've seen in a long time.

Now, a few tips as you prepare to go see the movie:

Twitter executives met with President Donald Trump on Tuesday to discuss the health of conversation on the platform ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump shared a picture on Twitter of the meeting that showed CEO Jack Dorsey and a number of other Twitter executives in the Oval Office.

During the meeting, Trump and Twitter execs discussed the social platform's "commitment to protecting the health of the public conversation ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections," a Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider.

In an internal email circulated among Twitter employees that was leaked to Motherboard, Dorsey said he believed such conversation with Trump "bridges gaps and drives towards solutions."

"I have met with every world leader who has extended an invitation to me, and I believe the discussions have been productive, and the outcomes meaningful," Dorsey wrote in the email. "Some of you will be very supportive of our meeting [with] the president, and some of you might feel we shouldn't take this meeting at all. In the end, I believe it's important to meet heads of state in order to listen, share our principles and our ideas."

Read more: Trump blasts Twitter as 'very discriminatory,' says the social-media company removes his followers

The Tuesday meeting with Twitter executives came hours after Trump took to his personal Twitter account to blast the social-media platform for what he called "very discriminatory" behavior against him, which he said included lowering his follower count. He also said Twitter was playing "political games" and that he'd heard "big complaints from many people."

Trump has a history of leveling accusations of political bias at big tech companies, such as Facebook and Google. However, he's called out Twitter in particular. In November, Trump tweeted that the social-media platform was removing followers of his Twitter account.

But big names have seen their follower counts decrease in the past as Twitter clamps down on bots and inactive accounts. In July 2018, for example, Twitter removed inactive accounts that may have been taken over by bots, and Dorsey himself lost 200,000 followers.

Twitter is often criticized by both liberals and conservatives. Some critics say that the social-media company hasn't done enough to monitor Trump's presence on the platform. Some have criticized Twitter for letting Trump stay on the platform even after his actions and tweets have appeared to violate Twitter's rules.

However, Twitter has said that blocking a "world leader" such as Trump from the platform would "hide important information people should be able to see and debate."

During Tuesday's meeting, Trump and Twitter executives also discussed "efforts underway to respond to the opioid crisis," the Twitter spokesperson said.

A new post on Twitter's blog details the platform's efforts to "help prevent drug misuse, curb illegal online drug sales, and promote public health information." This includes reviving an awareness campaign on Twitter in partnership with the US government to encourage people to bring their leftover prescription-drug bottles to designated drop-off locations to prevent drug misuse.

A test of the emergency escape system for SpaceX's new spacecraft designed to carry NASA astronauts into orbit went awry on Saturday, and an unverified video making the rounds on Twitter claims to show just how bad the anomaly was.

On Saturday afternoon, SpaceX attempted a static-fire test of the emergency abort system on its new Crew Dragon space capsule, which is intended for use by NASA's Commercial Crew program to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Saturday's test, however, did not go as planned. According to a statement from SpaceX:

"Earlier today, SpaceX conducted a series of engine tests on a Crew Dragon test vehicle on our test stand at Landing Zone 1 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The initial tests completed successfully but the final test resulted in an anomaly on the test stand.

Ensuring that our systems meet rigorous safety standards and detecting anomalies like this prior to flight are the main reasons why we test. Our teams are investigating and working closely with our NASA partners."

According to Spaceflight Now, the test "sent a reddish-orange plume into the sky visible for miles around," suggesting a fairly serious malfunction of the engine systems.

On Sunday, an unverified video circulated on Twitter claiming to show the results of that test. The video appears to show a large explosion in the capsule several seconds in:

When asked about the video, SpaceX simply pointed to the statement about Saturday's test.

Eric Berger, a senior space editor at Ars Technica, said on Twitter that he understood that the video was legitimate.

When asked if any additional information about the video had been released, he said: "No there has not. But I understand the video is legitimate and it's consistent with accounts I've heard."

Saturday's test followed a successful test flight of an uncrewed Crew Dragon capsule in early March. The vehicle, carrying a human-sized dummy nicknamed "Ripley" and a plush globe-shaped toy that quickly sold out back on Earth, successfully docked with the International Space Station, and safely splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean after its six-day mission, marking a significant milestone in the development of new American human-rated spacecraft.

This post will be updated with any further information on the test from SpaceX.

Being on your phone at work, once the sign of a bad employee, is now the norm.

Text messages are "making deep inroads" in workplaces across America, says Wall Street Journal reporter Te-Ping Chen. Yet messaging your boss can lead to accidental texts like "Love you" or "pumpkinbear."

"While email helps silo work communications, the text inbox is a more blended affair, where notes from friends and family jostle with communiqués from bosses and co-workers," Chen writes.

Besides awkward text exchanges, there are other miscues many employees can make as smartphones become more commonplace at work. For instance, overusing your phone or constantly getting bombarded with notifications can lead to decreased productivity.

"Productivity is often at its apex during a flow state," when a person is fully immersed in an activity, NYC-based psychotherapist Jordana Jacobs told Business Insider.

According to Jacobs, while phones are great for the technology they provide, they also feed into our natural distracted state. Cell phones take us out of the flow state, "which is so fundamental to productivity," she said. "Essentially, we are consistently interrupting our own thought process," she said. To put it simply, our phones "take us away from 'the now,'" she added.

Read more: 15 ways to be more productive and manage your time better, according to career experts

It's probably not plausible for you to get rid of your phone at work completely, but you can still take steps to keep it from getting in the way of your goals.

The first step to being more productive is identifying all the ways our phones keep us from staying focused. Jacobs and Jonathan Alpert, psychotherapist and author of "Be Fearless: Change Your Life in 28 Days," broke down the phone habits that are ruining our productivity:

This article was originally written by Audrey Noble.

The cast of "Mortal Kombat 11" has mostly been revealed; there are only a few characters left unannounced. Confirmed characters include Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, Liu Kang, Jax, Shao Khan, Kano, Erron Black, Cassie Cage, Baraka, Jade, Geras, Kabal, Raiden, Skarlet, Kung Lao, Noob Saibot, and Kotal Khan.

NetherRealm Studios will continue to add to the roster with six downloadable characters during the year. Players can pre-order the season pass to access all six, or purchase them individually.

The first downloadable character will be Shang Tsung, the soul-stealing boss of the original "Mortal Kombat."

Sam Morrison likes to create thought-provoking art.

In high school, he made silk-screen shirts and decks of cards with secret compartments inside. But over the past several years, most of his projects were digital — that is, until he had the idea last year to make physical flip-flops out of President Donald Trump's tweets.

"Take a scroll through Donald Trump's 40,000 tweets, and you're sure to catch some contradicting opinions," Morrison told Business Insider over email. "I wanted to highlight this hypocrisy."

Morrison had a full-time job in the advertising industry at the time, but he got to work on producing his flip-flops. He sourced his own materials and printed and packaged every flip-flop by hand.

After a series of bombings at churches and hotels early Easter Sunday left over 200 dead across Sri Lanka, the country's government has blocked access to social media sites including Facebook and Instagram, according to Sri Lanka's government news site.

According to that report, Sri Lanka's Presidential Secretariat made the decision "as false news reports were spreading through social media."

A tweet from Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe condemning the attacks cautioned residents of the country to "avoid propagating unverified reports and speculation," and a tweet from Sri Lanka's Red Cross debunked social media rumors that their building had been attacked.

Read more: World leaders including Pope Francis, Donald Trump, and Barack Obama offered their support after Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka claimed hundreds of lives

The New York Times reports that, although there is no known specific connection between Sunday's bombings and social media, there have been several incidents in recent years of ethnic violence and social unrest in Sri Lanka stirred up in part by viral misinformation spread on social media and messaging networks like Facebook and WhatsApp.

In March 2018, Sri Lanka temporarily banned access to social media across much of the country amid a wave of violence between the Buddhist and Muslim communities. In that instance, Mano Ganesan, Minister of National Coexistence Dialogue and Official Languages, said that the government was trying to halt "all communal hate speech posts via social media."

An in-depth article at The New York Times explores the ways social media can fan the flames of ethnic and religious tension, sometimes leading to violence. The article describes how a video of a misunderstanding in a Muslim-owned restuarant in which the owner was falsely accused of putting sterilization-causing medication in a customer's food went viral on Facebook, setting off a wave of anti-Muslim violence across the country.

So many awesome movies and TV shows have premiered recently — "Game of Thrones," "Avengers," "Us" — and with everybody and their dog wanting to talk all about them, it's become harder than ever to avoid spoilers.

Sometimes, it seems like all you can do is shun Twitter altogether, until you get the chance to watch what everyone's chatting about.

Luckily, Twitter gives us a solution: muting.

On Twitter, you can choose specific keywords and phrases that you don't want to see in a tweet. Say, for instance, you're worried about being spoiled on "Game of Thrones" — just hop into your settings, mute a few phrases like "Game of Thrones," "#GameOfThrones," or even names like "Daenerys," and "Bran."

In the blink of an eye, any tweet containing those words will disappear from your timeline and notifications. You can still access the tweets if someone gives you the direct link, but they won't show up otherwise.

Ready to block some spoilers? Here's how to mute keywords and phrases on both desktop and the Twitter mobile app.

How to mute keywords on Twitter via desktop

1. While logged into Twitter, click your icon in the top right corner to open a menu. It should be in between the search bar and the "Tweet" button.

Click on your icon. William Antonelli/Business Insider

2. In this menu, click "Settings and privacy."

Click the "Settings and privacy" tab. William Antonelli/Business Insider

3. This will bring you to your account settings page. In the list on the left side of the page, click "Muted words."

The tab for muted words will be in the side menu. William Antonelli/Business Insider

4. The first time you open this page, a small pop-up will appear explaining that "When you mute words, you won't see them in your notifications or timeline." You can click the "Learn more" link to read more about muting, or click "Got It" to start muting keywords on your own.

5. Click "Add."

Click "Add." William Antonelli/Business Insider

6. In the menu that pops up, type the words or phrases you want to mute in the text box offered. You'll also be asked to choose where you want the words to be muted, and for how long. By default, Twitter sets it so you'll never see tweets containing the words on your timeline, and you'll never receive notifications containing the words from people you don't follow.

You can type anything into the box to mute it. William Antonelli/Business Insider

7. Once you've typed in the phrase you want to mute, click "Add," and it will be immediately muted. Repeat this process for every word or phrase you'd like to mute. You'll see a list on the page of all the words you've muted — click the pencil icon to edit them, or the red speaker with a line through it to stop muting them.

You can edit or delete your mutes at any time. William Antonelli/Business Insider

Tweets containing the words or phrases you've blocked won't appear where you've muted them, for as long as you've muted them.

How to mute keywords on the Twitter mobile app

Muting keywords on the Twitter app is a similar process, but involves tapping through a few more screens.

1. Tap your icon in the top left corner of the screen.

Tap your icon. William Antonelli/Business Insider

2. In the side menu that opens, tap "Settings and privacy."

Go into your "Settings and privacy" menu. William Antonelli/Business Insider

3. This is the first of a few menus we'll have to get through. Tap "Content preferences."

There are a few more menus on the Twitter app. William Antonelli/Business Insider

4. Tap "Muted."

5. Tap "Muted words."

6. This will bring you to a page similar to the one on desktop that lists all your currently muted words and phrases. Tap "Add" at the bottom of the screen to mute another word or phrase.

This page will show everything you have muted. William Antonelli/Business Insider

7. Type the word or phrase you'd like to mute into the box at the top of the screen. The rest of the page is filled with options for changing how long you want the mute to last, and where it should apply.

Tap "Learn More" to be taken to a page with info on muting. William Antonelli/Business Insider

8. Tap "Save," and your new mute will take effect.

Tap on the muted words to edit their mute settings. William Antonelli/Business Insider

Average demand expressions: 30,111,573

Description: "DOOM PATROL reimagines one of DC's most beloved groups of Super Heroes: Robotman aka Cliff Steele (BRENDAN FRASER), Negative Man aka Larry Trainor (MATT BOMER), Elasti-Woman aka Rita Farr (APRIL BOWLBY) and Crazy Jane (DIANE GUERRERO), led by modern-day mad scientist Niles Caulder aka The Chief (TIMOTHY DALTON). Each member of the Doom Patrol suffered a horrible accident that gave them superhuman abilities, but also left them scarred and disfigured. Traumatized and downtrodden, the team found their purpose through The Chief, coming together to investigate the weirdest phenomena in existence. Following the mysterious disappearance of The Chief these reluctant heroes will find themselves in a place they never expected to be, called to action by none other than Cyborg (JOIVAN WADE), who comes to them with a mission hard to refuse. Part support group, part Super Hero team, the Doom Patrol is a band of superpowered freaks who fight for a world that wants nothing to do with them."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score (Season 1): 94%

What critics said: "With a super strange team like the Doom Patrol, it's different to retell any extent of a character's rise to their superhero occupation, and the risk paid off within the first episode." — Chelsea Jackson, Culturess

Season 2 premiered on DC Universe February 15.

With $15.7 billion in equity funding in its pocket, the San Francisco, California-based ride-hailing company Uber has raised more money than any other tech startup in the country. But California isn't the only state in the union harboring highly-funded tech startups.

Upserve CEO Sheryl Hoskins runs the most highly-funded startup in Rhode Island. Upserve

In this graphic, research firm CB Insights identified the most highly-funded companies in each of the 50 states, plus Washington, D.C. Some of those companies include Florida's Magic Leap, an augmented reality company that's disclosed $2.4 billion in funding, Illinois' Avant, a financial technology company that's raised $655 million, and Georgia's Kabbage, an online lending platform that has raised $490 million.

The list also includes ten different unicorns — companies valued over $1 billion — from Washington, D.C.'s Vox Media to Utah's InsideSales.com.

While hge amounts of equity funding can be found across the country, three of the states didn't have any companies that fit CB Insight's full criteria, which required that companies have raised at least $1 million in equity funding since January 2014. Those states are Alaska, Mississippi, and Wyoming.

Alaska's Resource Data, for instance, has raised $1.59 million in equity funding, but it's raised the sum through multiple small angel rounds.

Read more: These are the most valuable startups in each state

Hello!

The cloud computing wars are heating up.

Thomas Kurian, the new CEO of Google Cloud who came from rival Oracle, already seems to be having an impact, with Googlers and startup execs telling Rosalie Chan that he's making headway three months in to the job.

"Until now, they were losing the war," Solo.io CEO and founder Idit Levine told Chan. "The way Google is playing, they're saying, this is the community company. They're branding themselves better and going multi-cloud."

He's pushing hard to make Kubernetes, one of Google's most popular cloud technologies, even more important to developers. Aparna Sinha, group product manager of Kubernetes and Cloud Services Platform, told Chan that Kubernetes needs to become "ubiquitous."

And the company just made a big hire, bringing in a former SAP executive to try and win bigger customers.

Meanwhile, over at Amazon Web Services, the Aurora database product continues to grow at a rapid rate. Julie Bort talked to Debanjan Saha, the general manager who built and manages Aurora, who said it "feels great" to be taking on Oracle head-to-head in the database market.

Elsewhere, Microsoft just took an important step to take on Amazon for a crucial winner-take-all $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract with the Pentagon. Amazon was once considered a shoo-in to win the JEDI contract but after a lot of protests by the tech industry, Microsoft now has a real shot.

Meanwhile, IBM is preparing to close its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat, but Wall Street has "real question marks" after its "mediocre" quarter.

Lastly, Business Insider just week published a list of the 100 people transforming business. You'll find interviews with many of those on the list — including NYSE president Stacey Cunningham, Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block, and Burger King CMO Fernando Machado — below.

What would you like this email to include? What have we missed? You can reach me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

—Matt

Quote of the week

"I think this is going to untap the market." — Jonathan Sherman, a partner at the law firm Cassels Brock who worked on Canopy Growth's $3.4 billion purchase of the US marijuana cultivator Acreage Holdings, on the potential for more deals in the marijuana space.

In conversation

Samsung is surely feeling the heat for the issues that some reviewers were having with their Galaxy Fold review units, but I'm not surprised at all that the Galaxy Fold is facing issues — it's a first-generation product from a company that's at the bleeding edge of smartphone design, and I'd argue expectations are a little too high.

It would have been great if the device was flawless. But it shouldn't be surprising that there are issues with the very first smartphone that people can buy that comes with a completely new, unproven design with many more moving parts than a traditional smartphone.

Read more: Samsung's Galaxy Fold is an ambitious but flawed first attempt at what could be the future of smartphones

It's easy to understand why expectations are high. Samsung is marketing the Galaxy Fold the same way its other proven phones are being marketed. And the Galaxy Fold costs just under $2,000, so anyone would expect reliability at that price.

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

But the Galaxy Fold is nothing like Samsung's long-proven Galaxy S line of smartphones. It's the first generation of something new, which means anyone who buys it now can be classified as an "early adopter."

It's too easy to forget the unwritten rules of early adoption, or that a first-generation device comes with a ton of risks. By nature, early adopters should hope for the best and expect the worst. After all, Samsung isn't going to plaster warnings all over the Galaxy Fold's packaging saying, "For early adopters who accept the risk of early adopting only. Buy at your own risk."

The best way to sell a first-generation device is to ensure that it's reliable. As far as we know, Samsung believed the Galaxy Fold was ready to go. The company said it tested the Galaxy Fold's display durability enough to claim that it'll last up to 200,000 folds and unfolds. There's even a great video showing Galaxy Folds undergoing stress testing:

I don't predict reviewers to recommend anyone buy the Galaxy Fold, not because of the display issues, but because it's a first-generation device.

Popular tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee has already declared that he wouldn't recommend it to most people, even though he thinks the concept is great. The Galaxy Fold costs $2,000 — $1,000 more than most premium smartphones — and I'd be extremely surprised if Samsung "got it right" the first time.

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

Even if the Galaxy Fold was flawless and received rave reviews, there is no doubt in my mind that early adopters who accept the risks are the only people who should even think about buying the Galaxy Fold.

There's just so much more to come in following generations of foldable smartphones, like better designs, more durable displays, more reasonable price tags, and perhaps an entirely different take on how foldable smartphones should actually fold. No smartphone maker has figured that out yet — Huawei and Motorola, for example, are working on their own foldable smartphones with totally different designs.

Critics are right to point out the flaws in the Galaxy Fold. But we should also be rooting for smartphone makers who are endeavoring into foldable smartphones, and not judging those companies or foldable smartphones based on the very first model that people can buy.

New research from Georgetown University has codified what many Uber drivers have felt for years: it's hard to get ahead when your boss is an algorithm.

Researchers published their study on Thursday, after more than two-years of interviewing 40 drivers in the Washington D.C. area. The results aren't meant to be representative of the thousands of "partners," as Uber calls them, working on the platform worldwide.

Rather, "the data collected and reviewed here is evidence of the structures of work that Uber drivers navigate and the kinds of worker challenges that many face in one of the most visible platform workplaces," the authors said. The anecdotes also corroborate stories told to Business Insider from multiple drivers across the country in recent months.

Among the litany of frustrations with Uber — both with the company and app — expressed by drivers in interviews was one glaring problem: half of the drivers interviewed take home so little per month, less than $2,000 per month, that they fall below the government's definition of poverty.

"Since it has been operating in Washington, D.C., Uber has reduced its base rate for drivers several times, added a rider safety fee (and then increased it, calling it a booking fee), and raised the commission it takes from new drivers," the study said. "These changes, which are built into the heart of the Uber platform, seem to have a point: to keep Uber drivers on the road and in the dark. "

To its credit, Uber does have options available for drivers when the unexpected, like a flat tire or car crash happens, but even those can sometimes cause more harm than good. The researchers compared the practices to coal mining company's "company towns" of centuries past. Here's one anecdote, emphasis ours:

One 48-year old driver, Joan, got caught up in Uber's debt trap after she hit a pothole and damaged her car's suspension system. She spent nearly all the money she had to get the car fixed. Then, when efforts to repair the vehicle failed, she spent more to lease a car from Uber.While the Uber Xchange program offered lower credit barriers than traditional lenders, the payments which Uber automatically deducted from drivers' paychecks, were high. It resembled a company town. Joan paid $138, more than the national lease average of $100 per week. Before she worked for Uber, Joan would collect giveaway items from Craigslist and re-sell them on eBay or at flea markets. Her regular income of roughly $35,000 as a school bus driver covered her mortgage but not groceries for herself and her son. Joan started driving for Uber a couple nights after work, making for 16-hour days. But within a year Joan quit Uber and returned the car. Even after driving six to seven days per week, she found herself behind on bills.

Uber took issue with many of the studies findings, pointing to the company's "180 days of change" program, which it launched in June 2017 to combat its damaged reputation in the wake of sexism allegations and the departure of founder Travis Kalanick.

"Uber has changed a lot since this research was started. Driver-partners are the heart of our service - and Uber would not be what it is today without them," a company spokesperson said in an email. " Building on what we've already introduced, like in-app tipping, a redesigned driver app, Instant Pay, and new rewards programs like Uber Pro, we'll continue to improve the experience for and with drivers, every day."

There's also a distinct lack of community felt by Uber drivers, the study found.

"75% of the drivers in this study said that they had never had a drink or meal with anyone else who had ever driven for Uber," the study said. "The lack of physical space in which workers met or congregated creates a material barrier to collective identities and deeply shapes the geography of labor and possibilities for collective bargaining in the platform workplace."

That's driven many drivers to online forums like uberpeople.net, where drivers discuss everything from pay, to best practices and more. Often, online forums are the only place drivers can interface with others to compare their interactions with the company.

Uber has fought hard to keep drivers classified as independent contractors rather than full-fledged employees, which it would be required to provide with benefits. The company warned in its IPO filing this month that it could seriously damage its business if drivers were considered employees instead of contractors.

"Our conclusion is straightforward," the researchers said. "The patterns identified in this study raise questions about the extent to which working conditions in the ride-hailing industry conform to contemporary labor standards."

You can read the full study here.

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The online mattress company Casper made waves when it launched in 2014 — mostly for the completely new buying experience it offered.

Instead of having to visit a mattress store in-person and negotiate with aggressive salespeople, those in the market for a new bed could simply order one on Casper's website and have it shipped (in a compact cardboard box) right to their front doorsteps.

However, as Casper's co-founder and Chief Product Officer Jeff Chapin told Business Insider in a recent interview, the mattress world caught on quickly to the experience the startup was offering, and many copied its playbook.

"Now there's like 50 companies that sell one mattress online," Chapin said. "The landscape changed. We have to adapt to that and find a new value proposition. We think it's about getting people better sleep."

A focus on better sleep has broadened the possibilities for Casper, beyond selling the one, standard mattress it offered when it first launched. Today, Casper's sleep-centric product line runs the gamut from bedside lights to duvets to multiple mattresses for an array of preferences.

"It's all about — how do you meet the needs of more people?" Chapin said. "We do think there's this big unmet need around sleep, it's just finding what's our unique take on everything."

Read more:I slept on Casper's new adjustable bed frame with a built-in massage function — here's what it was like

Casper's ability to expand its product offering beyond mattresses will become increasingly important as the company prepares to go public, which it announced in March it had begun preparing for. To date, Casper has raised over $330 million and was most recently valued at $1.1 billion.

More products also mean a lot more product testing — especially for a company that's as much a high-tech startup as it is a mattress company. Chapin told us that for every product that eventually makes it to market, many don't, but that the tinkering and experimenting in its lab is "all about figuring out what is a sleep company and what isn't."

New York has long been one of the marquee events in the annual auto show calendar. It's also the first major US show to take place after the annual super fest that is the Geneva Motor Show.

But don't you worry. There's still plenty of automotive hotness to go around.

For over 115 years, the New York Auto Show has been one of the largest car exhibitions in the US, and a place for automakers to see and be seen.

The Koreans led the way this year with a pair of futuristic concept cars in the form of the Kia Habaniro and Genesis Mint.

Read more: 18 hot cars we can't wait to see at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show

While there are fewer fanciful concept cars to be seen, New York remains a hotbed for new production models ranging from family sedans and compact SUVs to luxury cars and supercars.

Brands that made a splash include Cadillac, Lincoln, Kia, Genesis, Ford, Audi, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Acura, Hyundai, Subaru, Toyota, and Volkswagen.

Several major brands, including BMW and Volvo, were conspicuously absent from the show floor.

The 2019 New York International Auto Show will be open to the public until April 28 at the Javits Center in New York City.

Here's a quick rundown of some of the coolest and most important cars at this year's show:

A new OnePlus device is expected to be announced soon. It might be worth waiting a little while to see what OnePlus comes out with before buying the OnePlus 6T.

The OnePlus 6T doesn't come with a lot of the features that other phones in this list have, like wireless charging, official water resistance ratings, dedicated zoom or ultra-wide angle lenses, or an ultra-sharp 1440p display. And yet, it earns the top spot on this list.

That's because it does the things it does so well, like looking good, taking photos, running Android and apps, charging quickly, and lasting a long time on a single battery charge. And it does all those things for a base price tag of $550 compared to the $750+ price tags of smartphones above.

I never missed any of the extra features from other, more expensive top smartphones while using the OnePlus 6T. If I were to buy a new smartphone, this would be the one for its excellent design, performance, and value.

The OnePlus 6T is also the first OnePlus phone to be sold by a US carrier — T-Mobile — and it's also the first OnePlus phone to be compatible with Verizon's network.

Price: $550 for 6 GB RAM 128 GB model

Price at T-Mobile: $580 for 8 GB RAM 128 GB model

Check out the OnePlus 6T review »

It is about to become much more difficult to watch porn online if you're in the UK.

From July 15, porn sites will need to check that their British viewers are over 18, thanks to the UK government's decision to implement a "porn block."

The argument is that it's too easy for children to watch porn online and it's affecting their sexual and mental health — so now anyone who wants to watch porn on the internet will have to prove that they're old enough.

There is backlash from critics who say that the ban amounts to censorship, and ultimately that a ban won't have the desired effect. The UK is pressing ahead anyway.

The law makes it incumbent on the porn providers to put in place a "robust" age-verification system, or else face having their sites blacked out in the UK.

Read more: Porn is being age-blocked across all of the UK in July. Here's why people think it's a terrible idea.

And how will the ban work in practice? The police won't be knocking on people's houses to snoop through their internet histories.

The government has been woolly on the detail, but it has placed the burden of verifying people's ages on porn site operators. The system will be policed by the the British Board of Film Classification, an organisation that has historically decided what films are suitable for particular age groups. It isn't clear how the BBFC will detect sites that don't implement an age-verification system.

Now porn sites must come up with a way of verifying people's ages.

Various solutions have been proposed by multiple companies, but many involve uploading a form of ID, such as a driving license or a credit card.

One solution has a particularly analogue feel to it.

Its official name is the Portes Card, although it has been popularly dubbed the "porn pass." The idea is that people will be able to go to a shop where the person behind the till will check their ID, and then provide them with a pass which can then be uploaded via an app to give them access to pornographic content without handing over any personal data.

Business Insider spoke to Serge Acker, CEO of the company behind Portes, to discover a bit more about how this will work in reality.

Portes' musical roots

OCL, the tech startup which created the Portes Card, was not originally geared around letting over-18s watch porn.

Its focus was on the music industry and how to get more money for artists whose work is being used on apps like TikTok and Snapchat. When Acker came onboard, the company was focused on micro-licensing for music.

"TikTok, Snapchat, all those companies have grown on the ability for their users to create user-generated content, that very often requires the use of third-party content — music typically. And none of that music is really paid for."

TikTok started life as a lip-syncing app. Getty

The music industry itself leant a helping hand in setting up OCL. Indie record label Beggars Group provided the startup with roughly $100,000 in seed money.

OCL's microlicensing business is still active, but following the UK government's announcement in 2017 that it would be bringing in the porn block, the company expanded its operations to age-verification. It named this arm of the company Portes.

"When the UK government brought in the Digital Economy Act, we thought it was an interesting problem to solve because at the time the only game in town in terms of age-verification relied on identity," said Acker.

What will the "porn pass" look like?

The Portes Card won't be a plastic card. Instead it's more of a printable voucher, which works in tandem with Portes' bespoke app.

Portes sent Business Insider an image of a prototype.

A prototype of the 'porn voucher' OCL

The process of buying a pass will be a little like paying for your gas bill or mobile top ups at the newsagents.

Portes has partnered with two payment companies,PayPoint and ePay, which are collectively installed in around 90,000 retailers. That includes newsagents and major supermarkets such as Tescos — although it is not certain yet which outlets will choose to make the pass available in their shops.

Anyone wanting the pass will need to download the Portes app first. This features a barcode, which the retailer will scan. They will then ask for proof of your age and payment. For use on a single device, the pass will cost £4.99 ($6.50), and £8.99 ($11.80) across multiple devices. Once you've paid, you will have a printed voucher with a 16-digit code.

That code can then be entered via the Portes app. For use on a laptop or desktop, the user visits the porn site of their choice where they can hit a "Portes" logo, then enter the code, and wait for verification from the app.

Read more: Snapchat admits its age verification safeguards are effectively useless

To prevent under-18s from simply obtaining a code from an older person— a sibling for example — Acker says parents will be able to install the app on their kids' devices and then activate a "lock" it so that any code entered on that device is immediately burned.

The biggest online porn company in the world has partnered with Portes

Portes has also partnered with AgeID, an age-verification company owned by MindGeek, the conglomerate which owns PornHub, YouPorn, and RedTube.

AgeID itself will offer a few options to users apart from Portes, including verifying their age via SMS, credit card, passport, or driving licence.

As the subsidiary of an umbrella company with a dominant market position in online porn, AgeID has drawn a lot of ire from privacy activists claiming it shouldn't be trusted with reems of personal data. Portes saw this as an opportunity.

Pornhub, a popular pornography site, is one of the most visited websites in the US. Shutterstock

"AgeID at the time and still now is seen as the 800-pound gorilla, that... because it is the emanation of a porn company it's hard to trust that they will do the right thing," OCL's Acker said. "Whatever you do can never be enough to misspell people's mistrust [namely] the minute you create an account, that creates a point of weakness."

He said Portes' pitch gave AgeID the "perfect solution" for giving an option for accessing a website without having to create an account. "For them it's an additional opportunity to prove to people that they're not in this game to collect data," he added.

Acker said that Portes' deal with AgeID is not exclusive, so it will be able to partner with other, smaller sites.

Most people still don't know there's a porn ban coming

The UK porn block will kick in on July 15, more than a year later than it was supposed to — it was originally slated for April 2018.

Acker says Portes' tech is ready to go, but notifying people about the block will be another challenge entirely. A YouGov poll from March 2019 showed 75% of Brits weren't aware that the porn block was on the way.

He said that Portes is engaging in a fair amount of online marketing ahead of time. "We're trying to be as guerilla as we can, being a startup," he said. He also said that ideally MindGeek will flash up some information on its various sites warning people ahead of time.

"Obviously Mindgeek control their user experience, but I think we both recognise the need to get people ready and not be caught out," he said.