Amazon has plans to escalate its movie output to compete with Netflix, and wants to bypass theaters to release more movies straight to streaming.

Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke told The Hollywood Reporter that the tech giant plans to release 30 movies a year, at least 20 of which could head straight to Amazon Prime. It's teaming up with actress Nicole Kidman and "Get Out" and "BlacKkKlansman" producer Jason Blum to kickstart the initiative. Netflix is expected to release 55 original movies this year, according to The New York Times.

Salke said that Kidman's movies would be released during the summer on Saturdays to create "some bingeability." Netflix, meanwhile, generally releases movies on Fridays.

READ MORE: Netflix's Marvel TV universe is dead, and it's unlikely the shows will be saved by Disney

"I'm working with Nicole Kidman on this slate of sexy, date-night movies that no one's making anymore, like 'No Way Out' or 'Cruel Intentions,'" Salke told THR. "Those kind of, 'I need to stay home and just drink wine with my girlfriend, or my boyfriend, husband, and watch this.' This is really Nicole's thing. When I met with her my second week in the job, we made the first-look deal out of this lunch. She was like, 'Where are the hot, sexy movies?' We had a meeting of the minds on it, and I'm like, 'Let's just get those movies directly, where we could release over the summer.' Every Saturday night, one of those comes out, and then you create some bingeability and a marketing story behind it."

The strategy pits Amazon directly against Netflix, which has grown an impressive library of "date night" movies. It dubbed this past summer the "Summer of Love" after it released a series of romantic comedies including "The Kissing Booth," "To All the Boys I've Loved Before," "Sierra Burgess Is A Loser," and "Set It Up."

Blum also struck an exclusive deal with Amazon in November to make a thriller series that will include eight movies for the company's streaming service.

"[Producer] Will Packer just called me, and he was like, 'I have a small horror movie," Salke told THR. "It could fit into your direct-to-service Blum thing.' Send it over. Great, I want it to see it, because we can feed those lanes. And then the YA space is gonna be the other one. There could be 20 direct-to-service movies managed within a given year also at least."

Part of what has set Amazon apart from Netflix in recent years is the studio's commitment to theatrical releases, such as for this year's three-time Oscar nominee, "Cold War." Salke said that Amazon will still allow a "wider release strategy" where it makes sense, but that the studio will be more flexible with the window.

Amazon bought five movies at the Sundance Film Festival this year, including Mindy Kaling's "Late Night" for a record $13 million. Amazon spent at least $46 million total at the festival.

British lawmakers have accused Facebook of behaving like "digital gangsters", abusing its dominant power in social networks, and behaving "ahead of and beyond the law."

The comments come in a devastating report on fake news by British Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, made up of cross-party UK politicians and led by Conservative MP Damian Collins.

Facebook deliberately flouted privacy and competition laws and should be subject to new regulation, the committee wrote.

Lawmakers accused Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of showing "contempt" for UK Parliament, and a larger gathering of international parliaments after he refused to give evidence three times.

The report is the culmination of a sprawling, 18-month parliamentary investigation into disinformation and fake news online, which heard from 73 witnesses and received 170 written submissions.

It examined Facebook's role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal and its overall privacy practices. The report also touched on possible Russian interference in the Brexit referendum.

Collins said: "Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised 'dark adverts' from unidentifiable sources, delivered through the major social media platforms we use every day. Much of this is directed from agencies working in foreign countries, including Russia.

"The big tech companies are failing in the duty of care they owe to their users to act against harmful content, and to respect their data privacy rights."

The committee claimed that Facebook had deliberately "sought to frustrate" its work, putting up executives who were poorly briefed on areas such as election interference.

The report calls for major changes to the way the UK regulates its elections and technology, including:

The UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright will head to the US this week to meet with the heads of major tech firms, including Zuckerberg, to talk about harmful content online.

Facebook denied it had breached competition and privacy laws, and said it hadn't found evidence of foreign interference in the Brexit referendum.

In a statement, Facebook's public policy manager Karim Palant said the company shares the concerns of the committee and said it is taking steps to improve its processes. He said:

"We share the Committee's concerns about false news and election integrity and are pleased to have made a significant contribution to their investigation over the past 18 months, answering more than 700 questions and with four of our most senior executives giving evidence.

"We are open to meaningful regulation and support the committee's recommendation for electoral law reform. But we're not waiting. We have already made substantial changes so that every political ad on Facebook has to be authorised, state who is paying for it and then is stored in a searchable archive for 7 years. No other channel for political advertising is as transparent and offers the tools that we do.

"We also support effective privacy legislation that holds companies to high standards in their use of data and transparency for users.

"While we still have more to do, we are not the same company we were a year ago. We have tripled the size of the team working to detect and protect users from bad content to 30,000 people and invested heavily in machine learning, artificial intelligence and computer vision technology to help prevent this type of abuse."

Divvy is one of the many Silicon Valley startups working to change the way people buy homes. For Divvy, it's specifically interested in providing alternative financing options for potential home buyers who don't qualify for traditional mortgages.

It does so by purchasing homes outright and allowing customers to pay it back in a series of monthly payments — 25% of that payment goes toward building equity and 75% goes toward paying "rent."

"The customers do feel like they're owning a home and they are building up equity within in it," Divvy CEO Adena Hefets told Business Insider in an interview last November. "The difference is that we're doing it in a more manageable way."

Top venture capitalists have bought into Divvy's methodology as well.

Last October, Divvy raised a $30 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Caffeinated Capital, DFJ, and Affirm CEO, Max Levchin.

Hefets told us that in its first year, Divvy helped buy homes for over 100 customers, but that the company has much higher hopes. Divvy's official mission, she says, is getting 100,000 families their first homes.

"That's what we're trying to do in the next, no more than five years. We want 100,000 homes," Hefets said. "We want that to be the first home that a family can buy and we want it to be the stepping stone that allows people to transition from renting to eventually owning their own homes."

Here's the investor deck that helped Divvy sell its mission to VCs and raise a $30 million Series A (sensitive numbers have been redacted):

Venture capital funds focused on startups in the rapidly growing cannabis industry are raising boatloads of capital, and Altitude Investment Management is no exception.

The New York City-based firm is looking to raise over $100 million for its second cannabis fund, according to people familiar with the matter.

Altitude's second fund is set to be a substantial increase over its first. The firm's first fund closed at $30 million last year and is deployed across 16 companies in the cannabis sector, including BDS Analytics, a data firm, and Front Range Biosciences, a biotech startup.

Read more: The top 12 venture-capital firms making deals in the booming cannabis industry that's set to skyrocket to $75 billion

The fund's partners include John Brecker and Michael Goldberg, who both worked at the $2.7 billion Longacre Fund Management, Roderick Stephen, who founded Longacre's UK group and worked at Citadel Investment Group, and Jon Trauben, a commercial real estate veteran who did stints at Barclays and Credit Suisse.

'They're not being dreamed up in garages anymore'

Trauben told Business Insider in an interview that Altitude's much larger Fund II represents a shift in how the cannabis industry is maturing, with incumbent companies "boxing out" new startups that rise to challenge them — and needing capital to fuel that growth.

"The set of companies that will win the industry already exist," said Trauben. "They're not being dreamed up in garages anymore."

While Altitude won't rule out investing in public companies, the focus will be on growth-stage startups. The prevailing question, then, for Altitude's second fund will be picking out which companies will "pull ahead."

"We're in the second half of the startup ecosystem," said Trauben. "There's still room for new ideas and new companies, but it's not like it was two or three years ago."

In terms of what parts of the industry Altitude is looking at most closely, Trauben said the firm takes a "pretty broad view" of cannabis, but he's particularly bullish on consumer brands, and the exit opportunities those brands present canny investors.

He pointed to Green Thumb Industries recent acquisition of Beboe, an upscale marijuana brand. "I think 2019 would really be the year of the brands for cannabis space," said Trauben.

Read more: Biotech, CBD drinks, and a hot vape company: Here's where all the top marijuana VCs are looking to write checks this year

Another area of interest: agricultural technology. Trauben said there's a number of startups working on developing cannabinoids — the active compounds in the cannabis plant — through cellular hosts like yeast and algae.

As big consumer packaged goods corporations race to formulate beverages and other products containing CBD and THC, two of the most popular cannabis ingredients, this technology could potentially become "very disruptive," said Trauben.

'The true commodity in this industry right now is information'

Unlike some other cannabis funds, Trauben says Altitude won't shy away from investing directly in "plant-touching" companies, though marijuana is federally illegal in the US.

That's part of what most cannabis-specific funds say gives them an edge over more traditional venture capital and private equity firms, like Lerer Hippeau and Greycroft, who are slowly getting more comfortable investing in the space.

In Trauben's view, funds like Altitude that are used to dealing with the complexities of operating in an industry that's growing so rapidly while being federally illegal represent the best chances of "getting it right."

"The true commodity in this industry right now is information," said Trauben. "If you're not seeing that information flow — the networks and the relationships you've built — you just don't have the right data."

Investors in other, more mature sectors, like tech or real estate, have decades of data and historical precedent at their fingertips when evaluating deals.

"I think when you move from that environment to this environment, you realize what's missing and to build that knowledge flow doesn't happen overnight," said Trauben. "It takes a concerted effort."

Altitude joins a number of other cannabis-specific firms who are raising new funds this year, including Tuatara Capital, Poseidon Asset Management, and 7thirty, among others.

Facebook at one point demonstrated "informal interest" in buying Intermedia Labs, the company responsible for the game-show app HQ Trivia, The Wall Street Journal reports.

But Facebook's interest reportedly waned after Recode published an article describing allegations of inappropriate behavior by Intermedia Labs co-founder Colin Kroll during his time working for Twitter. Kroll died of a drug overdose in 2018.

Facebook and Intermedia Labs did not immediately respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

Read more: HQ Trivia and Vine cofounder Colin Kroll was a talented but tough boss who had a history of clashes with staff

The Recode article, published in December 2017, said many venture capitalists did not want to invest in Intermedia Labs due to concerns about Kroll's behavior at Twitter. (Kroll co-founded the now-defunct six-second video app Vine, which was acquired by Twitter in 2012.) Recode reported that Kroll had been fired from Twitter due to his poor management skills and had developed a reputation at the company for acting in a "creepy" manner toward women. An internal investigation at Twitter determined that he was not guilty of sexual harassment, but had "created a hostile work environment," according to The Wall Street Journal.

HQ Trivia raised a $15 million round led by Peter Thiel's Founder's Fund that it announced in March 2018. It was reported that at the time, the company's valuation exceeded $100 million.

Since that time, when the company was at it's most prominent, its star has seemingly faded. As Recode reported in a November 2018 piece, HQ Trivia held the spot for the second highest number of monthly downloads in February 2018. By November, it had sunk to number 253.

In 2018, Facebook rolled out features that allow publishers to create game shows that stream on Facebook Live.

Fox's big-budget "Alita: Battle Angel" had no trouble topping the domestic box office over Presidents' Day weekend, with the movie taking in an estimated $27 million from Friday to Sunday and over $41 million from its opening on Thursday to Presidents' Day on Monday. But the movie will need a big run globally to make a profit.

The James Cameron-produced/Robert Rodriguez-directed big-screen adaptation of "Battle Angel Alita," derived from the famous manga series created by Yukito Kishiro, has been a project in the works since around 2000 when Cameron began penning the script. But with the success of 2009's "Avatar," Cameron stepped aside and enlisted Rodriguez to take the project to the finish line. Budgeted at $170 million, Fox needs an "Avatar"-like success to make a profit. But at the moment that's going to be a tough hill to climb.

With only a 59% score on Rotten Tomatoes, there wasn't much good word of mouth coming from Film Twitter leading up to this weekend, and Fox didn't seem that confident in the movie's prospects domestically as it only played on 3,700 screens ("The Lego Movie 2," currently in its second week in theaters, showed on more screens). To find financial success, the movie needs to bring in the coin overseas. In Japan, the movie is playing in previews, and in China it starts screening on Monday.

Read more: OSCARS ON LIFE SUPPORT: Academy insiders describe the problems plaguing Hollywood's biggest night, and how it could rebound

The good news for "Alita," back here in the US, is it has two weeks before getting hit with any major competition, as Disney's "Captain Marvel" doesn't open until March 8. So if word of mouth builds thanks to this strong weekend, the movie has some time to up its box office gross.

Meanwhile, the other big new releases (both playing since Valentine's Day) had modest success. Warner Bros.' comedy "Isn't It Romantic" brought in $20.4 million while Universal's horror "Happy Death Day 2U" grossed $13.5 million over the last five days.

Average demand expressions: 26,406,892

Description: "TITANS follows young heroes from across the DC Universe as they come of age and find belonging in a gritty take on the classic Teen Titans franchise. Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, a special young girl possessed by a strange darkness, get embroiled in a conspiracy that could bring Hell on Earth. Joining them along the way are the hot-headed Starfire and lovable Beast Boy. Together they become a surrogate family and team of heroes."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score (Season 1): 82%

What critics said: "Titans is worth checking out because it's trying in earnest to be something you don't quite expect and, in a world that's being increasingly dominated by cookie cutter, live-action comic book adaptations, it stands out." - Charles Pulliam-Moore, io9

Season 1 premiered on DC Universe October 12.

The Nissan Leaf is the world's best-selling electric vehicle and has set the stage for a new generation of affordable electric vehicles that could reshape the auto industry.

The Leaf debuted in 2010, beating the Chevrolet Bolt EV to the market by five years. But until this year, the Bolt had a significant advantage in range — 238 miles compared to 151 miles for the 2018 Leaf. Nissan will release a new version of the vehicle, the Leaf e+, in the US in the spring of this year. It will have up to 226 miles of range, according to the automaker, but I tested the 2018 version over a weekend in December before Nissan announced the Leaf e+.

Read more: I drove a $44,000 Chevy Bolt for a weekend and saw just how far electric cars have come — but I also discovered a huge problem

I live in an apartment in New York City that doesn't have a parking garage, which meant I couldn't charge the Leaf overnight and likely had a different experience with the vehicle than the average Leaf owner. But during my time with the Leaf, I came to understand how important it is for an electric vehicle to have at least 200 miles of range.

Here's what it was like to drive the 2018 Leaf for a weekend:

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here. Current subscribers can read the report here.

Business Insider Intelligence 5G is very nearly here, and these lightning-fast networks will change how telecommunications shapes business and offer new and transformative possibilities in the IoT space.

As 5G networks become a reality in 2019 and 2020, the new standard will further increase the appeal of cellular solutions in the areas where it's available. And, as 5G-supported hardware rolls out, companies can use the network to support their IoT business.

But the excitement around 5G doesn't mean it should be selected above all other options whenever available. In fact, in some cases, it's not even the best among cellular solutions. Companies that use IoT devices and providers of IoT-based services and solutions need to be discerning in their determinations of where 5G will help and where it won't.

In The 5G and The IoT Report, Business Insider Intelligence will examine how the introduction of 5G is poised to transform portions of the IoT ecosystem. First, we look at the 5G standard broadly, identifying its strengths and weaknesses in comparison with existing standards, as well as laying out the timeline for rollout and expectations within the wireless industry. Next, we look at the new practices that 5G will enable in the IoT, focusing specifically on the capacity for high-bandwidth remote analytics, as well as the ability to use remote processing centers for mission-critical services. Finally, we examine areas where 5G will leave gaps and how companies will need to cope with the standards' early limitations.

The companies mentioned in this report are: AT&T, Ericsson, FairCom, InterDigital, Motorola, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Quectel, Sierra Wireless, Telstra, Verizon, and ZTE.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

Apple's latest iPhone software update has a pleasant surprise for those who despise digging through the Settings menu to cancel their app subscriptions.

The update, which was released on Feb. 7 to fix a security flaw with Apple's FaceTime video chatting service, also makes it possible to manage app subscriptions directly from the App Store. This might include subscriptions to magazines, or to music or video streaming services.

Just open the App Store, tap your profile icon in the upper right corner of the screen, and you'll notice an option that says "Manage Subscriptions." After selecting this option, you'll see a list of each app you subscribe to.

From here, you can tap each app to see additional details about the subscription, and change its status. The feature was first spotted by MacStories editor-in-chief Federico Viticci.

It's a notable addition considering the other method of cancelling app subscriptions from your iPhone is way more laborious — it involves launching the Settings menu, navigating to the iTunes & App Store section, tapping your Apple ID, pressing View Apple ID, possibly verifying your Apple ID, and tapping the Subscriptions button.

It's a small change, but one that reflects Apple's goal of improving the App Store experience. In 2017, the company overhauled its App Store to with the goal of making it easier to discover new apps. The change is believed to have worked, as data from Sensor Tower suggested that app discovery through browsing rather than searching in the App Store increased to 15 percent following the launch compared to 10 percent prior to the redesign.

"No one really knew how much it would take off," BioWare lead producer Mike Gamble told Business Insider in a phone interview last week.

"It's taken off in a big way, which is great! We're still all part of the EA Studios culture, so when one of our teams does really well on something we all applaud it."

Gamble was talking about "Apex Legends," the huge new game from EA's Respawn Entertainment. Since its surprise announcement and launch on February 4, more than 25 million players have competed to be champion. It's a bonafide hit across Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC — in fact, "Apex Legends" is growing even more quickly than "Fortnite."

It's safe to say no one could've expected this kind of response, even in the wake of the "Fortnite" phenomenon.

But what does the massive, sudden success of "Apex Legends" mean for "Anthem," the other huge blockbuster from EA that's on the verge of launch? With "Apex" sucking up all the air in the room, how will "Anthem" compete?

With just days until launch, that's still unclear.

From the outside, it looks like EA just accidentally overshadowed its own blockbuster game launch. EA/BioWare

They are different, but not that different

"Anthem" doesn't officially launch until February 22. When it does launch, it will cost $60 for the least-expensive version. But it's already available to play ... kind of.

If you're a paying member of EA's PC-based service, EA Origin Access Premier, you can download and play the full game starting on February 15. If you're a paying member of EA's Xbox One-based service, EA Access, you can download and play the first 10 hours of the game starting on February 15. There's a whole chart.

"Apex Legends," on the other hand, does not require a chart to decipher when you're allowed to play it. You can download it right now, for free, on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and/or PC. And you probably should, because it's really good.

Also, "Anthem" has jet packs. There are no jet packs in "Apex Legends." Not yet, anyway. EA/BioWare

Admittedly, "Anthem" and "Apex Legends" are somewhat different games.

"Anthem" is a so-called "loot and shoot" game, along the lines of "Destiny" and "The Division." It's played entirely online, in a shared open world with other actual players.

"Apex Legends," however, is a Battle Royale-style game — a first-person shooter with squads and classes. The last squad alive in any given round wins.

That said: Both are shooters. Both are online-only. Both are available only on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. They are different, but also not that different.

Gamble sees the distinction between the two games a little differently.

"With 'Apex Legends' being primarily a player-versus-player (PvP) game, obviously free-to-play and Battle Royale, that serves a certain niche," he said.

"The fact that we are a co-operative game (PvE) and we are a long-term service game, with a full story, characters, and that whole kit and caboodle ... you can start to see how the people who are going to want to invest a lot of time in 'Anthem' and the people who want to invest a lot of time in 'Apex' ... the overlap starts to get less and less when you look at the kind of games that they are."

"Apex Legends" players can buy in-game currency with real money, which can then be used in the game for various cosmetic items. EA/Respawn Entertainment

It isn't just about money

During our conversation, Gamble also pointed out that, since "Apex Legends" is free and "Anthem" is not, players don't have to make a binary purchasing decision.

"It's not like people have to make a decision between $60 'Anthem' and $60 'Apex.' They just have to get 'Anthem' and then they can download 'Apex,'" he said.

Though the distinction isn't wrong, it may be missing a crucial point: The choice isn't simply about money, but also time, personal preference, and a variety of other factors.

As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has pointed out in the past, Netflix's biggest competition isn't Amazon or YouTube or Hulu or HBO — it's other activities, like sleep, or playing video games.

In the same way, players may simply opt to play "Apex Legends" instead of "Anthem." That potential lack of early enthusiasm could be a death sentence for a game like "Anthem" that depends on an active, large playerbase.

And, if the distinction between them is solely about price, it's pretty easy to choose the free game over the $60 one.

"Anthem" runs a serious risk of being overshadowed by the massive popularity of "Apex Legends," which would be quite a thing given that both games are published by the same company. With just a few days until the launch of "Anthem," we'll find out shortly.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has talked a lot about making sure that users' time on his social network is "time well spent."

After a year of headlines blasting Facebook for negatively affecting everything from mental health to memories, Zuckerberg was responding — and, he said, showing responsibility— to growing public concerns about the age of social media.

But as Facebook revealed in a tiny but telling change to its latest quarterly report, the company also appreciates the very real threat these concerns pose to its business.

"Any number of factors could potentially negatively affect user retention, growth, and engagement," Facebook explains in the section of its 10K report devoted to risks related to its business. If, for example:

— "there are decreases in user sentiment due to questions about the quality or usefulness of our products or our user data practices, or concerns related to privacy and sharing, safety, security, well-being, or other factors;"

We bolded "well-being" to highlight the two words because they were not included in the same boilerplate sentence in the report released three months earlier. Go ahead, check for yourself.

Sure, regulatory filings to the SEC are kitchen-sink exercises, with every potential risk a corporate attorney can dream up explicitly spelled out. The company isn't saying it expects any of these risks to actually occur in the near future; it just wants to be able to say it warned you they might occur in case you ever decided it might be a good idea to sue the company.

That said, Facebook never thought its impact on people's well-being was a notable risk before. To the contrary, the company couldn't stop bragging about its altruistic "social mission."

Remember Zuckerberg's letter to shareholders in its IPO prospectus. Here's an excerpt, with emphasis his:

"We hope to strengthen how people relate to each other.

Even if our mission sounds big, it starts small — with the relationship between two people.

Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society. Relationships are how we discover new ideas, understand our world and ultimately derive long-term happiness."

It's been seven years since Zuckerberg wrote those words, and 15 years since the social network was created. A lot has changed in that time. But sometimes two small words buried in a dense regulatory filing say how much has changed better than anything.

Apple's upcoming streaming video service won't do much to boost the company's flagging financial fortunes, even if it's wildly successful.

That's the assessment of Tim O'Shea, an analyst who covers the iPhone maker for Jefferies. In a research report late Thursday, O'Shea estimated that if Apple's video service had 250 million subscribers in 2023, it still would account for only about 5% of the company's revenue that year — and wouldn't make up for its declining smartphone sales. By point of reference, after offering streaming video for 12 years, Netflix has 139 million subscribers.

"It's going take a long time for this type of service to really move the needle," O'Shea told Business Insider.

To figure out the potential of the video service, which Apple widely expected to launch next month, O'Shea estimated that Apple would charge customers $15 a month for the offering and would take a 30% cut of the revenue, giving the rest to video production partners.

If the service was extremely successful and hit 250 million subscribers, it would yield $13.5 billion in revenue for Apple. That's nothing to sneeze at. After all, Netflix's total sales last year were $15.8 billion.

But in the context of Apple, such a figure would be just a drop in the bucket. In fiscal 2018, the company posted revenue of $265 billion. Although O'Shea and other analysts expect Apple's sales to drop sharply this year before slowly recovering in coming ones, $13.5 billion would still represent only a small fraction of the company's revenue.

Apple could have a tough time in the video business

Apple has shown with its Apple Music service that it can grow such offerings relatively quickly by tying them closely to iOS, the software underlying the iPhone, O'Shea said. Apple Music now has 50 million paid subscribers and reached that total much quicker than market leader Spotify, he said.

But it's likely that Apple will have a tougher time in video, O'Shea said. The iPhone maker is just one of numerous companies that have or will launch streaming video services in the near future. And it's unclear how many services consumers will sign up for.

Apple's spending a fraction of what Netflix is spending on original shows and movies, meaning that at least at first it will likely be far more dependent than the streaming video giant on third-party content. But the company's plans to take a 30% cut on revenue may not sit well with many Hollywood studios and networks, he said.

"It's hard see how those economics fly," O'Shea said.

Even before the launch of Apple's video service, Netflix has been trying to avoid having to pay the similar commission Apple charges app store developers for subscriptions that come in through their iPhone apps. Netflix instead has been encouraging customers to sign up for its service via its web site.

Apple could find it hard to sign up customers to its own video service if too many production companies balk at offering shows and movies through it. Already Netflix has balked at being a part of Apple's service and HBO has yet to commit to it, CNBC reported.

"There are only a handful of players that make content that matter," O'Shea said. "If you lose one or two of them, it makes your service much less attractive."

The decline of the iPhone business is really hurting Apple

But even if Apple overcomes such obstacles, it faces an even bigger problem — the iPhone. Apple's smartphone sales accounted for $167 billion in sales last year, and the iPhone may be the single biggest product business of any company ever, O'Shea said.

Because it's so huge, even a small percentage drop in its sales can more than wipe out big gains in other parts of Apple's business. And that's exactly what O'Shea and other analysts are expecting to happen this year after Apple saw a 15% drop in iPhone revenue in its first fiscal quarter. For his part, O'Shea expects Apple smartphone sales to fall to $135 billion this year, a drop of more than $30 billion.

Read this: One of Apple's best-known analysts says an all-time low iPhone upgrade rate is going to cause more pain than investors realize

O'Shea is optimistic about Apple's services offerings in general. In addition to Apple Music and the upcoming streaming video business, the company's services include its app store business, the licensing revenue it gets for making Google the default search engine on the iPhone, and its iCloud storage offerings.

The services business "is big, real, and growing," he said. "It's going to be big over time."

But right now, the deterioration in the iPhone business is overwhelming everything else.

"These iPhone declines are by far the dominant trend," O'Shea said, continuing, "Services at this point are not big enough to offset that pressure."

The New York Times has been on a subscription growth tear, hitting 4.3 million print and digital subscriptions by the end of 2018. Based on those results, it's looking to increase the price this year and set a goal of exceeding 10 million subscriptions by 2025.

Read more: Vox Media is asking people to help cover the high cost of making videos with a $4.99-a-month membership program

With all the widespread layoffs in media lately, the question looms of how online news can be financially viable. It's tempting to think that the success of the Times means success for the other publishers that are turning to paywalls to complement their advertising business, like Condé Nast, New York Media, and The Atlantic.

But a rising Times doesn't necessarily lift all boats. While the strong news cycle drives reader interest and willingness to pay for news, there's a finite number of subscriptions people will pay for. Only 8% of people in the US pay for an ongoing news subscription, according to the Reuters Institute's 2017 report, Paying for News.

The institute's 2019 report, "Journalism, Media, Technology Trends and Predictions 2019," warns that there may be pushback from consumers as they encounter more paywalls on sites.

The Times has a number of things going for it that other publications don't. Advertising as well as subscription growth enabled it to add 120 journalists last year for a total of 1,600, the biggest in Times history, EVP and COO Meredith Levien said. She said the paper would add more journalists this year, without committing to a number. When it comes to the breadth of reporting in the Times, she said, "I'm not sure we have a peer."

"As we get better at the product, we're also making it more valuable," Levien told Business Insider. "I don't think there are a lot of places in news where you can say that."

Meanwhile, many other publishers have been laying off rather than adding journalists.

The Times also can afford to spend a lot to improve on and grow its products, which helps sell subscriptions. It's planning to make improvements to its app. It recently rolled out a Cooking subscription product and is planning to introduce more subscription-based puzzles, a parenting product, and other utility-based products. One third of new subscriptions are coming from crossword puzzles and Cooking.

The Times also has a big marketing budget it can use to attract subscribers and market its brand. It spent $48.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, up from $32.6 million in the year-ago period.

It's especially hard for general news publications to differentiate themselves enough to attract subscriptions, but The Times' journalistic distinction and ongoing improvements have helped it win subscribers.

The paper was promoting a $1-per-week special, half off the regular price, for six months. But Levien said people readily pay full price after the introductory period ends, though she wouldn't say the retention rate. Asked about the impact of competitors cutting their prices, she said the Times is fundamentally different and "worth paying more for."

"We've had a number of people come in at 50% off who we had to step up to full price, and that went really well," she said. "We're getting better at how we onboard you and interact with you in the first 90 days. We're still not as good as the best subscription companies out there, but we're a lot better than we were, and that gives us confidence we should be able to retain at whatever offer we get people in at."

In fact, the Times is also thinking more about how to get at high-end subscribers, after testing discounts with price-sensitive people in mind.

"We're putting lot of thought into how to get at the high end of the demand curve," she said. "We'll test higher prices. We'll put out more product. We keep putting more value in the paper."

Amazon is clamoring for ad budgets from big brands to prove that its platform is more than an e-commerce machine, but agencies say that the company's pitch for video dollars has a few snags.

Last fall, Amazon quietly rolled out video ads in mobile search results in its iPhone app. The ad format is called "video in search" and lets brands buy ads against broad keyword searches like "paper towels," "mascara" and "dog food." The ads show up below the fold in mobile search results.

In the past week, General Mills-owned Blue Buffalo Pet Products, Procter & Gamble's Tide, CoverGirl, Brawny and online cosmetic brand Elizabeth Mott have run such video ads. The ads match Amazon's lucrative targeting data with short product videos that appear in search results when shoppers are looking for specific products.

Amazon's growing ad business is primarily known as a direct-response vehicle, but it's been less successful helping marketers increase brand awareness. Amazon's mobile video ads could appeal to brands that do a lot of video advertising.

Amazon is testing the ad format in a small beta program where brands can only buy them directly through an Amazon sales representative. But several sources said Amazon plans to make the format available through its self-serve ad platform this quarter. Three sources said Amazon simultaneously plans to roll out ads in its Android app, which would double the amount of ad inventory sold and open price bidding to advertisers.

But agencies say the video ads have been a tough sell for performance and brand-oriented marketers because it's unclear which group Amazon is targeting.

"You've got this middle of the road, really fascinating ad format, but it becomes difficult to bucket as an upper-funnel video tactic or a performance search tactic," said Emily Anthony, senior director of media services at Merkle. "It's in this weird middle ground between their search product and managed service, which typically [includes] higher impact ad formats and more awareness-based media."

Read more: Big brands like Verizon and Toyota are backing Amazon's Freedive as the e-commerce giant pushes deeper into OTT advertising

"It's not something that we have clients clamoring for," Nich Weinheimer, VP of e-commerce at Kenshoo, a third-party marketing tech platform that helps marketers plan and buy digital ads, said of the search-based video ads. "To Amazon's credit, they're trying to figure out if there's space for video in the low-funnel shopping experience. For most marketers that leverage Amazon, it's very transactional, it's all about sell-through. Amazon's trying to make strides to develop that consideration phase of their site and engage with a brand more broadly."

Some performance marketers are having sticker shock

Agencies struggle with Amazon's search-based video format for other reasons.

The format uses exact-match targeting, a search marketing tactic where ads are targeted to run against broad terms like "toothpaste" or "dog food," but search advertisers like to use more specific keywords like "whitening toothpaste" or target competitors' names.

"It's a low-volume play at the moment because the keywords are defined by Amazon, and the budget overall is determined by Amazon," said David Hutchinson, national director of paid platform merchandising at iProspect.

There's evidence that's starting to change. A quick search on Amazon's mobile app shows that Georgia-Pacific's Brawny, for example, is targeting its competitors and running ads alongside searches for "Bounty paper towels" and "Sparkle paper towels" in addition to its own query of "Brawny paper towels" and the more generic "paper towels" query.

Merkle's Anthony added that the below-the-fold placement can make ads buried in search results. To compare, Amazon has text-based search ads that appear at the top of search results.

Price is another concern. The campaigns require advertisers to spend a minimum of $35,000 to $50,000, depending on the demand of the keyword, which agencies said is too expensive for most search advertisers, especially because there aren't any case studies or results to prove that the ads perform. Anthony said the price would need to drop to $10,000 for her clients to get on board.

Amazon has its own definition of a view

Rina Yashayeva, VP of marketplace strategy at Amazon-focused ad agency Stella Rising, said the agency began pitching a beauty brand on Amazon's video ads last week and hinted that Amazon may be willing to budge on price.

"I think there's an opportunity to work with the Amazon advertising team if you commit to something early on to negotiate a smaller budget if you can test it for a shorter period of time," she said.

Sources also said that they'd like to see the ad format sold through Amazon's self-service platform so they could bid on ads as they can with Amazon search ads.

Another issue is the pricing approach. Search advertisers typically buy ads on a cost-per-impression, or CPM, basis. However, video advertisers typically buy ads on cost-per-view (or CPV) basis. Amazon's video ads are priced at 5 cents per view, according to one source, and a view counts as two seconds, starting when a video begins autoplaying on the screen as a user scrolls. Videos can be up to 90 seconds long, though most advertisers seem to run ads that are less than 15 seconds long.

Amazon's definition of a view differs from that of Facebook, which primarily counts a view as three seconds; and YouTube, which has long counted a view as 30 seconds but recently began counting views as 10 seconds for some ads.

Amazon's autoplay video feature "has been a bit of bone of contention," said iProspect's Hutchinson. "It doesn't quite seem like the industry norm."

Amazon is notorious for withholding data with advertisers, and agencies said the data Amazon gives them from the direct-sold video ad campaigns doesn't match the data Amazon supplies through its self-serve platform, making it hard to compare the performance of video campaigns to existing search campaigns.

"The two big pushbacks have been: 'We don't have the right kind of creative or we're not comfortable with the attribution that you're getting back,'" said iProspect's Hutchinson. "Amazon builds and reports on the campaign behind the scenes."

The format often requires brands to come up with new creative

Figuring out the right creative approach is another challenge. The creative needs to be promotional and quickly show images of products within the first few seconds, according to best practices Amazon published on its website. Agencies have found the sweet spot with video length to be under 10 seconds.

IProspect found eight seconds to be ideal, but Hutchinson said that brands don't have such assets readily available, so making them adds to the production cost.

For a fashion client, iProspect tested a video ad in Amazon search results and found that the creative was too long at more than 10 seconds to get people to click through on it.

"There wasn't the attribution to see the sales so it was one that couldn't sustain a second test until we got creative specifically designed for the product shots," he said. "To get that creative briefed in, something would have had to be scarified and there's far more established channels and places for that creative to go."

The challenges with video reflect advertisers' larger frustrations getting a handle on Amazon's ad business. Amazon has integrated its advertising teams into a single brand, but agencies say it's still difficult to navigate the company's ad products, which sit in different divisions.

"You have two traditionally separate groups that are trying to handshake with this product," said Kenshoo's Weinheimer.

AI research nonprofit OpenAI has created a system that can generate fake text from a single line — and it's not open-sourcing the code for fear of misuse.

OpenAI was cofounded by tech mogul Elon Musk, and its sponsors include Silicon Valley heavy-hitters such as Peter Thiel and Amazon Web Services.

Last year it gained the praise of Bill Gates after it built a team of five neural networks capable of beating human players in the computer game "Dota 2."

Read more: Bill Gates hails "huge milestone" for AI as bots work in a team to destroy humans at video game "Dota 2"

Now the company has created a system, named GPT2, capable of imitating and generating text based on only a sentence.

The Guardian's Alex Hern got to play with the system, and tried typing in a single Guardian headline about Brexit. From that headline alone, GPT2 was able to generate quotes from UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as well as a fictional spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May.

"The PM has made it absolutely clear her intention is to leave the EU as quickly as is possible and that will be under her negotiating mandate as confirmed in the Queen's speech last week," the fictional spokesman said.

You can watch Hern's experiment with the text-generating tool here:

Hern also tried feeding the system the first line of George Orwell's 1984: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." From that, GPT2 spun the following snippet of prose:

"I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science."

OpenAI's research director Dario Amodei told Hern that the models used to make GPT2 were enormous, and it was trained by reading through roughly 10 million articles, which were selected by crawling through Reddit. If an article had more than three upvotes, it was selected.

While GPT2 is potentially groundbreaking, OpenAI is not ready to share it with the world just yet. Its head of policy told the Guardian that GPT2 needs to be tinkered with for a while to find out whether it could be used for mischief.

"If you can't anticipate all the abilities of a model, you have to prod it to see what it can do. There are many more people than us who are better at thinking what it can do maliciously," he said.

As an example, OpenAI showed how the system could be used to generate limitless bad or good reviews. The internet is already awash with spam, and product reviews are often gamed — whether by people promoting their own products or rivals seeking to sabotage them.

Read more: Facebook employees were caught writing 5-star reviews for its Portal device on Amazon, and now they must take them down

OpenAI told the Guardian that the goal was to show people technology what could become commonplace in a year or two.

AT&T is in the midst of an ambitious project called Airship, which could have sweeping implications for the $350 billion telecom equipment industry.

Late last week, AT&T signed an "8-figure," three-year deal with a company called Mirantis. According to Mirantis, the company will help AT&T build out and manage the infrastructure it needs for its 5G network.

Airship means that if you want to build a cloud, specialized hardware and software from vendors like VMware, Cisco, Juniper and Huawei are unnecessary, Mirantis cofounder and CMO Boris Renski tells us.

AT&T's Airship, which is open source software, will run in the telecom's giant's own data centers, running the software needed for core 5G functions like routing phone calls, or streaming and processing video, says Renski.

And a lot of telco companies are watching to see how it turns out.

"AT&T is the biggest, baddest, oldest telco out there," says Renski. "For this refresh cycle, for the first time in telco history, they are choosing to not buy new [proprietary] boxes but, instead, use tech open sourced by Google to refresh their network for their 5G cycle. This will set the precedent in the industry."

AT&T hopes that precedent extends far beyond telecommunications, Amy Wheelus, VP of Network Cloud & Infrastructure told Business Insider in an emailed statement.

There's been "a lot of interest in Airship ... and not just from telcos," she said. AT&T expects other industries to use Airship for their own giant data center projects, too, from manufacturers to health care companies.

VMware is out

Airship is championed by AT&T, but the company doesn't actually own or maintain it. It is run by the OpenStack Foundation, an industry group that's also the keeper of several open source projects. AT&T is a member of the OpenStack Foundation, as are IBM and Comcast, among others.

Airship was launched last spring, spearheaded by AT&T, Intel and SK Telecom. But interest has been so high that Wheelus says it's "on track" to "graduate" by next spring, meaning it will leave the OpenStack Foundation and come under the control of its own organization.

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger Yuya Shino/Reuters Airship is stitching together several open source software technologies to make it easier for companies build, run and scale giant cloud computing projects, at the size of companies like AT&T.

Mirantis, AT&T and those involved with Airship will be making OpenStack, a data center operating system, work with another hugely popular, open source cloud technology called Kubernetes.

Kubernetes (sometimes known as "K8S") is a software container management system. Software containers are a hugely popular technology for cloud apps that ensure the app works well no matter which cloud it lives on — whether it's Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or anybody else's. An increasing number of programmers use Kubernetes to manage all of their containers.

AT&T looked at offerings from VMware for this project and nixed the idea, AT&T's Ryan Van Wyk, a cloud engineer executive, told Mitch Wagner of telecom news site Light Reading.

"There really isn't much of an alternative," Van Wyk told Light Reading. "Your alternative is VMware. We've done the assessments, and VMware doesn't check boxes we need."

Containers in general, and Kubernetes in particular, are generally considered an alternative to VMware's flagship technology, known as virtualization. In recognition of the shifting tide, VMware in late 2018 bought a startup called Heptio. Heptio was founded by two of the three folks who created Kubernetes during their time at Google. This means that VMware also offers its own commercial Kubernetes product.

But because Google has made Kubernetes a a free and open source software project, Airship doesn't need to buy a commercial Kubernetes product or service. It can make Kubernetes work with OpenStack, another open source project, without paying software license fees to anyone. That removes a major barrier to entry.

There are other losers

Because AT&T is using open source software as it upgrades its infrastructure to handle 5G, Airship will be able to run on lower-cost, commercially-available off-the-shelf hardware, known in industry speak as COTS.

Huawei Technologies CEO Ren ZhengfeiDmitry LovetskySo where AT&T might typically spend big on new hardware to manage this change, it can save a ton by using more readily-available, cheaper products. That bodes poorly for the legacy data center hardware providers.

"Historically these [upgrade] cycles are an opportunity for the likes of Huawei, Cisco, Juniper etc. to sign big contracts and sell their big pre-integrated hardware boxes," Mirantis's Renski says.

And this isn't the only high-profile attempt in the teleco industry to move toward less expensive hardware on free, open source software.

SK Telecom has also been involved in the Telecom Infra Project, originally spearheaded by Facebook, which is also creating open source telecom software and hardware. AT&T isn't a member of TIP, although it is involved in the other Facebook-spawned hardware organization — the Open Compute Project, which is creating open source hardware for data centers.

And Wheelus tells us that that AT&T has embraced open source projects and has no plans to go back.

Open source, which allows all of the software's users to build what they want and need together, helps AT&T "move away from the proprietary solutions that existed previously from specific vendors," she said. "This allows us to keep costs low and move fast adopting cutting edge capabilities very quickly. Overall AT&T has committed over 10 million lines of code to open source communities - and no signs of slowing down."

Google could be the big winner

So, if the traditional vendors are the being put on notice by upstart open source telecom projects like Airship and TIP, who is rubbing their hands in glee?

The answer: Google, at least when it comes to Airship.

"The biggest winner is Google because they are the fathers of Kubernetes," says Renski.

Amy Wheelus, AT&T VP of Network Cloud & InfrastructureYouTube/TelecomTVKubernetes was first developed by Google to be used internally on Google's own massive data centers and apps. Google has since released it as open source, making it freely available to anyone. It's since become so popular, all the major clouds have been forced to support it.

But because it was created by Google, Google's cloud is still considered the best for Kubernetes-dependent apps. In fact, Google engineers are still the ones that contribute the most code to Kubernetes, according to tracking site Stackalytics.

To be sure, Google and its cloud are not directly involved in AT&T's 5G project. AT&Ts use of Airship will run in AT&T's own data centers, not on any cloud.

But as startups and existing vendors race to create 5G apps for telecom providers and users alike, they will host them in the cloud, more likely as not. And because Kubernetes is still a keystone accomplishment for Google, they could be more likely to turn to Google Cloud, over competitors like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

The telecos are also the big winners, who believe they'll be building the tech they need to make 5G a reality, while reducing costs.

"It has the potential to greatly change the way we think about deploying and managing software in the future," AT&T's Wheelus said.