On Tuesday at Business Insider's IGNITION conference, Salesforce President and Chief People Officer Cindy Robbins shared the story of how the cloud software company became committed to equal pay for its employees. It's a story that she first brought to the public's attention on 60 minutes earlier this year.

Robbins said it started around 2014, when CEO Marc Benioff held his quarterly meeting with 60 to 70 top executives at Salesforce — and realized there were hardly any women in the room. Benioff knew there were strong female leaders within the company, and decided that moving forward. at least 30% of attendees to that meeting would be women.

"He gave us a seat at the table," Robbins remembers. "Our job was to stay invited to those meetings — which we did."

Read more: Match Group's CEO audited the company's payroll to make sure she was paying women equally and was surprised at the results

Robbins rose the ranks at Salesforce and became the head of human relations — or officially, Chief People Officer. Soon after the promotion she starting thinking: "Why isn't easier for women to elevate at Salesforce?"

Here's the story of how Salesforce became a company committed to equal pay, as shared at Business Insider's IGNITION conference:

Last week, developer Niantic teased that Pokémon Go players will soon be able to battle their fellow Pokémon trainers — a feature that's been in hot demand since the game first launched in the summer of 2016.

On Tuesday, Niantic announced its first feature, including the key detail that trainers will take teams of three Pokémon into battle with them.

It's not immediately clear when, exactly, this feature will start rolling out, though Niantic says that it's slated for launch before the end of the year. In the past, it's rarely taken Niantic long after the announcement to begin the rollout of new features, though it often brings the new features to high-level players first, before fully rolling out the changes.

What is clear is that the addition of player-versus-player (PvP) battles is slated to completely change the game. And I mean that literally: Among many other things, the trainer battle update will add the ability for your Pokémon to learn a third attack, beyond the two that they already know. The game's battle system itself is getting tweaked slightly, such that you're rewarded for tapping rhythmically to charge up certain attacks in combat.

Much of it builds on the game's new social features, which were introduced a few months ago alongside the also-much-requested Pokémon trading feature. While you can battle strangers, there are a few advantages to fighting your friends.

Here's how Pokémon Go trainer battles will work:

Goldman Sachs is investing $20 million into GitLab, just months after the software startup announced a mega Series D funding round at a $1.1 billion valuation.

Goldman's add-on investment brings GitLab's total Series D funding up to $110 million. The round was led by Iconiq Capital, Mark Zuckerberg's personal money-management firm. Alphabet's GV, which led GitLab's last funding round in 2017, also participated.

"I think this investment is really special because it's [Goldman's] actual engineering team that said, 'We want to invest in this,'" GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij told Business Insider. "They were so happy as a customer that they were like, yes, this is the future."

Sijbrandij said the funding would be used to ensure GitLab is "best in class" in each of the product categories it competes in — its rivals include Microsoft subsidiary GitHub and Atlassian's Bitbucket. To achieve its goals, Sijbrandij said, GitLab will double its headcount over the next year, after already doubling its staff in 2018.

Read more: Investors used to balk at startups for software developers — but after Microsoft bought GitHub for $7.5 billion, they're all in

The funding came out of Goldman's Principal Strategic Investments group, a division that focuses on investing the bank's money into technology companies that are strategically useful for the banking industry.

When it first launched, in the late 1990s, the group focused on market infrastructure and trading technologies, though the unit has since expanded to include areas like fintech, security, and enterprise investments, among others.

One of the most recent of its prolific tech investments is Symphony, a secure instant-messaging system built for financial institutions that was designed to challenge the dominance of the Bloomberg Terminal.

Like its competitor GitHub, which sold to Microsoft for $7.5 billion in June, GitLab is a software-developer platform built around an open-source technology called Git. It allows large groups of programmers to all work on the same piece of software without getting in one another's way, and it's an important part of how software gets made today.

Goldman started using GitLab internally in early 2018. What started out as tool used on small projects quickly got pushed out to the bank's entire engineering organization.

Now the two companies enjoy a close relationship: Goldman advises GitLab on how to shape its tools for the compliance needs of financial institutions, and GitLab builds Goldman new tools to suit its needs.

"They will be very active in guiding us on how to make a better product that is as compliant as possible and that helps with governance and best practices," Sijbranij said.

The two teams have already worked together on new tools, such as a security feature that requires multiple administrators to approve code before it's deployed. They have also worked on security protocols that actively scan code for flaws as it is written.

While many of these tools have already existed out in the world in some form or another, Sijbranij said, GitLab streamlines them all into one integrated platform.

"That's the problem we're solving — we're not inventing anything that hasn't been done before, but making sure all of those 30 tools are in one interface," Sijbrandij said.

The next big trend in startups is … no code.

That's what Ed Sim, founder and managing partner of Boldstart Ventures, says. Boldstart often writes the first check to seed enterprise startups. In fact, Boldstart was the first investor to invest in Greenplum, which became part of Pivotal Software.

The job gives Sim a window into the latest industry trends, and he pointed to a recent "low code, no code" theme in which startups build programs and apps with little to no code.

There's also massive potential in cloud and security, Sim says. Enterprises are still in the early stages of moving their workloads to clouds, which means that there are tons of opportunities for cloud startups to dive into. And with constant attacks and vulnerabilities in software, security startups can help strike the balance between security and how fast developers can build a product.

Here are three early trends that Sim is seeing.

Low code, no code

Startups in this space make developing easier for users.. For example, Manifold ties together the best cloud services into one space for users to easily search, and RapidAPI also organizes API's on one site.

"At the end of the day, it's all about the developer," Sim told Business Insider. "You're going to win opportunities in the enterprise. Any startup leveraging that developer first trend is exciting."

What's more, these startups make it easier for people to build applications, often without writing code. Twilio, which had a $1.2 billion IPO in 2016, was one of the seminal companies in the sector. And a growing number of startups are making waves in the space, including Airtable, which allows users to build databases by entering data onto a spreadsheet-like interface and using drag and drop.

Another such company is Dark, currently a five person startup co-founded by Paul Biggar, one of the co-founders of the developer tool CircleCI. Dark promises that it can help people build applications in just an afternoon.

"It's getting easier and easier for regular people to code," Sim said.

"Security is going to get absolutely hot."

"Security is going to get absolutely hot," Sim said. "Every time you think about security, you think about tradeoff in speed versus security."

Observability startups are increasingly becoming key, Sim says. Observability is similar to monitoring, but they also help with alerting and analytics on how well a system works. Essentially, these startups monitor a system's performance to make sure everything is working.

For example, a startup called Snyk, which Boldstart seeded, automates the process of finding and fixing vulnerabilities in open source software.

AP Photo/Connie Zhou

"Not only are [developers] writing code and assembling code, but they're also putting it into production," Sim said. "Now there's all these vulnerabilities built in. Why not make developers security aware? That's going to become a really big thing next year."

Another security trend Sim sees is chaos engineering, which means that engineers purposely break things in order to test for vulnerabilities and outages, before they happen. This was spearheaded by Netflix developers in 2010 when they created Chaos Monkey, but more startups like Gremlin have joined the space.

Chaos engineering is similar to vaccinations, instead of injecting a virus or bacteria into your body to prevent diseases, engineers inject attacks into a system.

"Companies like Gremlin are out there talking about how you pull the plug on the database or server," Sim said. "Is the system going to bounce back? Is it resilient? It's like injecting problems before it breaks."

Going serverless

Serverless is starting to become the norm for enterprises, with Amazon Web Services developing serverless databases like Timestream and Aurora. Applications are run on the cloud instead, and companies can focus on building their application, rather than managing infrastructure.

Read more: Wall Street says Amazon and VMware are teaming up to take down Microsoft in the cloud wars

"All you have to worry about is building your application or back end service," Sim said. "It automatically scales. It gives you even more agility. That's the promise of serverless technology."

As a result, there are now rising opportunities for startups to build tools to help enterprises support serverless applications, or applications built without servers and on the cloud instead. One startup that Boldstart seeded, IOpipe, which does monitoring for serverless applications.

The former head of Britain's domestic intelligence agency GCHQ has said Facebook poses a threat to democracy unless it is "controlled and regulated."

In an interview with the BBC's "Today" programme, Robert Hannigan said Facebook's primary goal was to squeeze every drop of profit from its users' data.

He said: "This isn't a kind of fluffy charity providing free services. It's is a very hard-headed international business and these big tech companies are essentially the world's biggest global advertisers, that's where they make their billions.

Read more: Internal emails show Mark Zuckerberg saying what's good for the world is not necessarily what's good for Facebook

"So in return for the service that you find useful they take your data... and squeeze every drop of profit out of it."

He added that Facebook was "potentially" a threat to democracy if "it isn't controlled and regulated."

"But these big companies, particularly where there are monopolies, can't frankly reform themselves. It will have to come from outside," he said.

Former GCHQ boss Robert Hannigan with the Queen. Reuters

Hannigan was head of GCHQ until January 2017. He has since been critical about Silicon Valley firms and their approach to tackling extremism on their networks.

The idea that Facebook is a threat to democracy is an emerging, troubling narrative for the social network, which generally tries to portray itself as a force for good and downplays its role as a powerful media platform.

Politicians have woken up to the concept that Facebook, with its population of more than 2 billion users, may be as powerful as governments, and that false information spread on its platform has the potential to sway elections or bring disaster. The UN said earlier this year that fake news spread on Facebook had a "determining role" in fuelling hatred against the persecuted Rohingya minority in Myanmar.

Molly Scott Cato, a European politician who helped fellow lawmakers grill Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a Brussels hearing in May, told Business Insider at the time: "He's totally out of his depth — he talks about setting Facebook up in college with this homey story and I'm, like, 'Christ, this guy has the fate of European democracy in his hands and he doesn't know what to do.'"

Hannigan's criticism was prompted by the release of a cache of internal Facebook documents by UK Parliament on Wednesday, which appeared to show the internal deliberations of Facebook around the value of user data, discussions about violating their privacy on Android, and squashing competitors. The documents are part of a legal case against Facebook brought by developer Six4Three in the US.

But Facebook said the documents are misleading without context. A spokesman said on Wednesday: "As we've said many times, the documents Six4Three gathered for their baseless case are only part of the story and are presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context."

You can read more about the cache of Facebook documents here.

Amazon was the subject of a "South Park" roasting on Wednesday, which portrayed CEO Jeff Bezos as a giant-brained, telepathic supervillain.

The episode, titled "Unfulfilled" after Amazon's fulfilment centers (the name it gives its warehouses), satirised reports of Amazon's working conditions, as Butters' father works inside a warehouse.

At one point a montage showed him working to "Sixteen Tonnes," a song about working in a coal mine made famous by Tennesee Ernie Ford in the 1950s.

Bezos appears as a supervillain with an enormous head who communicates telepathically. He intimidates the mayor, threatening repercussions after the town's Amazon workers go on strike.

Amazon's working conditions have been called into question by numerous reports, and on Wednesday 24 warehouse workers in New Jersey were hospitalised when an automated machine punctured a 9-ounce can of bear spray.

Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Popular and controversial YouTuber Logan Paul has joined the ranks of vloggers claiming that the video site is censoring content.

Paul appeared to buy into a theory put forward on Wednesday by fellow YouTuber Daniel "Keemstar" Keem, who suggested that YouTube was deliberately downranking videos tagged "Logan Paul."

Keemstar, who runs a gossipy, YouTube-focused news channel called DramaAlert, claimed that he posted a video featuring the words "Logan Paul" in the title and tags, and that it received fewer views than normal. The video, he claimed, did better once Paul's name was removed.

Paul wrote in reply: "i hate to say this & i mean i REALLY hate to say this but i think these are facts, pls love me again @YouTube."

Here's the exchange on Twitter:

YouTube said the site doesn't downrank videos based on specific creators or words.

And there are reasons to take Keemstar's claims with a pinch of salt.

He has proven to be an unreliable source in the past. In 2016, he falsely accused an elderly online gamer of being a paedophile. Despite a retraction from Keemstar, the elderly gamer received death threats and online harassment thanks to the false accusation.

Read more: KSI and Logan Paul probably generated up to $11 million with their YouTube boxing match

And YouTube rarely, if ever, "censors" individuals' channels without publicly flagging it. The company openly disclosed that it was terminating conspiracy channel InfoWars, for example.

And while YouTube has punished Logan Paul in the past due to his controversial content, it has been open in explaining why.

Paul made headlines at the beginning of this year for posting a video of himself wandering through a so-called "suicide forest" in Japan and stumbling across a dead body.

YouTube dropped him from its preferred ads programme, which gives advertisers access to the top YouTube channels, and delayed the release of his Originals film on the video site. It switched ads back on in February. The site also temporarily suspended Paul because of his continued "pattern of behaviour" in his videos, such as tasering dead rats, and published its decision on Twitter.

None of the above actually got him booted from the site, and Paul's Originals film — a sci-fi movie — appeared on his channel in October this year.

Meanwhile, Forbes has just ranked Logan Paul 10th on its annual list of the wealthiest YouTubers, pegging his 2018 earnings at $14.8 million, mostly thanks to merchandise purchases from fans. It was an increase on his earnings of $12.5 million in 2017.

Chinese media has launched a stinging attack on the US following the arrest of Huawei's CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada on Saturday.

Meng was arrested on December 1 and faces extradition to the US. On the same day, President Trump sat down with President Xi Jinping in Argentina to discuss the countries' ongoing trade war. White House officials told Reuters Trump did not know about the extradition request.

An editorial in the state-run China Daily said the arrest was part of an effort by the US to stifle Huawei's growth, saying it was "undoubtedly true and proven is the US is trying to do whatever it can to contain Huawei's expansion in the world simply because the company is the point man for China's competitive technology companies."

Global Times, also state-run, said Washington is "resorting to a despicable rogue's approach as it cannot stop Huawei's 5G advance in the market."

"With the arrest, the US is sending signals to the international community that it is targeting Huawei," The Gobal Times added.

Read more: Britain's spy chief joined the US in sounding the alarm on the Chinese company that sells more phones than Apple

The US has led the charge against Huawei, reaching out to allies to convince them that its technology poses a national security threat. Australia and New Zealand have rejected bids from Huawei to set up its 5G networks in their countries on these grounds.

On Wednesday, Japan also announced that it will ban government purchases of Huawei and ZTE's equipment.

The Chinese government demanded Meng's release on Thursday, claiming she was arrested without an explanation of the charge in potential violation of her human rights. According to reports from The Globe and Mail and South China Morning Post, Meng was arrested on suspicion of violating trade sanctions on Iran.

Huawei said in a statement:

"Recently, our corporate CFO, Ms. Meng Wanzhou, was provisionally detained by the Canadian Authorities on behalf of the United States of America, which seeks the extradition of Ms. Meng Wanzhou to face unspecified charges in the Eastern District of New York, when she was transferring flights in Canada.

"The company has been provided very little information regarding the charges and is not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng. The company believes the Canadian and US legal systems will ultimately reach a just conclusion.

"Huawei complies with all applicable laws and regulations where it operates, including applicable export control and sanction laws and regulations of the UN, US and EU. "

On Wednesday, identity management software company Okta reported earnings, blowing away Wall Street expectations. The next day saw Okta's stock spike as high as 14% in intraday trading, bringing its market cap up to just shy of $7 billion.

By the end of the day, the stock closed at $66.95, up over 10% from the opening bell, and more than twice what Okta was trading at this time last year.

It's perhaps no surprise, as Okta reported a strong quarter with a 58% year-over-year revenue growth and 55% growth in customers. Okta generated revenue of $105.6 million, handily beating Wall Steet expectations of $96.8 million. Okta also reported an adjust loss of 4 cents per share, much narrower than analyst expectations of a loss of 11 cents per share.

For a software as a service company, these results are "spectacular," says Alex Henderson, senior analyst at Needham & Company, because a lot of time and effort goes into selling subscriptions to new customers.

"To grow a SaaS model at a 58 percent clip — it's extremely difficult to do that," Henderson told Business Insider.

Going forward, analysts believe Okta has the potential to compete with Microsoft's identity management business. Like Microsoft, Okta makes selling to large customers the cornerstone of its business. However, Okta sees its advantage as the fact that it works equally well with cloud services from all vendors, not just Microsoft's.

"We're independent and neutral," Frederic Kerrest, COO and co-founder of Okta, told Business Insider on Thursday. "We're the only ones driving that message in the market. They want the flexibility to use [Amazon Web Services] and [Microsoft Azure] and [Google Cloud Platform]. They want to be using all sorts of different market technologies."

Some also believe that Okta has an advantage from the fact that Microsoft has a spotty reputation in terms of cybersecurity, thanks largely to a long history of bugs and vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system and other products. Today, under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has invested heavily in turning things around, but the perception still lingers.

"Microsoft is somewhat tainted from the security industry's environment," Henderson said. "I know [Microsoft CEO Satya] Nadella wants to fix that but I don't see him getting there anytime soon."

Henderson suggests that Okta can use this dynamic to its advantage, and be perceived as a more trusted security company.

Read more:I followed the CEO of $6 billion Okta around and learned the secrets of a tech conference that landed President Obama as a speaker

Okta's strong earnings and stock growth is a also sign that security is moving to protect users in the cloud, rather than the traditional model of locking servers down from otuside attack. In fact, a security business focused on defending a data center from attacks is becoming a "bankrupt concept," Henderson says.

"The center of gravity in security is moving," Henderson said. "It used to be the center of gravity of security is inside the data center. It's increasingly moving out to the cloud."

Okta also just announced that it added Albertsons, one of America's largest grocery retailers, under its belt as a customer. Kerrest believes that the potential market for Okta is big, and there's a lot of upside still to be found.

"It's the early days of the company," Kerrest said. "We're very excited. We're growing very fast. We feel that by far the best times are ahead."

The Boring Company's test tunnel near Los Angeles will open slightly behind schedule, but CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday that the launch would involve more than just a hole in the ground.

"Boring Company product launch on Dec 18. More than a tunnel opening. Will include modded but fully road legal autonomous transport cars & ground to tunnel car elevators," Musk tweeted.

In October, Musk tweeted that the Boring Company's first tunnel would be ready to use on December 10, but he did not mention that the transport cars and "ground to car" elevators would be revealed as well. It's unclear if the tunnel and the cars will be available for public usage, or if this will merely be a demonstration.

The tunnel revealed at the December 18th event will cover about 2 miles beginning near SpaceX headquarters in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne. The company is also working on plans for a tunnel near Dodger Stadium, called the Dugout Loop, that would transport fans from nearby subways, directly to the stadium.

The company faced one of its first major setbacks this November after local groups sued the city of Los Angeles for exempting a Boring Company tunnel project from environmental regulations. The Boring Company subsequently agreed to withdraw its plans for that project, which would have consisted of a second 2-mile-long stretch, this time under western Los Angeles.

Read more: This picture of hellish LA traffic shows why we need a transportation revolution

For a company that "started out as a joke," Musk's tweet on Thursday makes his dream of a Los Angeles traffic-buster all the more likely to become a reality.

Apple will likely post its first annual decline in smartphone revenue in three years in its current fiscal year, and it can blame the drop on it its new iPhone XR model.

The company's iPhone revenue is set to fall about 2% in its 2019 fiscal year from the year before, said UBS financial analyst Timothy Arcuri in a new report. Apple's fiscal years end in September.

The expected decline is due to a global drop-off in demand and tepid consumer interest in the XR, he said, warning that Apple's actual iPhone sales could be even worse than he's now forecasting.

"We have reduced expectations for iPhone XR and continue to see downside risk on a rolling basis to our forecast," Arcuri said.

As part of his report, he reduced his price target on Apple's stock to $210 a share, but maintained his buy rating on it. In late afternoon trading, the company's shares were down $3.52, or 2%, to $173.17.

The decline in iPhone revenue will come as a result of a 7% drop in the number of iPhones that Apple sells, Arcuri said. An expected 5% increase in the average price Apple fetches for each phone will only partly offset the drop in unit sales, he added.

Apple is reportedly seeing weak demand for the iPhone XR

Apple has seen a decline in its annual iPhone revenue only once since it launched the first model in 2007. In its 2016 fiscal year, its smartphone revenue fell 12%. But that decline came after its iPhone revenue had surged 52% in its fiscal 2015.

The new iPhone XR comes in a range of colors. Apple Arcuri based his forecast in part on new survey data from UBS and from 451 Research. Both surveys indicated slackening demand for smartphones in general and for the latest iPhone models, particularly the XR.

Recent reports have indicated that sales of the XR have been disappointing. Apple cut orders of the new phone by a third in late October before slashing orders again a few weeks later, according to the Wall Street Journal. Foxconn, which is Apple's leading manufacturing partner, has warned of a disappointing year ahead. Meanwhile, Apple has ramped up its marketing on its new iPhones and has been touting the XR at $300 below its retail price, albeit with a trade-in of another, older iPhone.

Read this:Apple fans are betting the booming 'services' business will take the sting out of an iPhone slowdown — here's why they might get a painful surprise

Apple ordered about 78 million units of the newest iPhones — the XR, the XS, and the XS Max — in the second half of this calendar year, Arcuri estimated. Of those about 43% are XR models, he said.

Unfortunately for Apple, that allocation is way out of whack with actual demand. Among consumers who say they plan to buy one of the latest iPhones in the next 12 months, just 20% said they plan to buy and XR, according to UBS's survey data.

Even though Apple has cut its orders, "XR supply remains too high," Arcuri said.

But the company faces other headwinds

But other factors are likely also weighing on Apple's sales. The company's reputation has declined by several measures, according to UBS's data. Compared with a year ago, a smaller portion of consumers that Apple's products provide value for their money, are unique, or are "high quality." Similarly, smaller percentages of customers say that Apple is a "brand I trust" or is a "brand I'm committed to."

Additionally, consumers seem unimpressed with some of the features Apple has added to the latest iPhones. Far less than 50% of those surveyed said they considered Apple's Face ID facial recognition system, augmented reality, or artificial intelligence either very or somewhat important, according to UBS. Instead, consumers rate "core" features including battery life, price, and network quality to be the most important features they look for in new phones, according to the survey.

Relatively few customers are excited about Apple's Face ID facial-recognition system. Apple/YouTube "Consumer focus on core features suggest less interest in new features, limiting upgrades," Arcuri said. "The consumer mind-set is changing to upgrading phones when they need it."

And Apple is facing other, broader obstacles. Fewer consumers around the world are planning on upgrading their phones in the next year, UBS's survey indicates. Just 41% of global consumers say they plan to get a new smartphone in the next 12 months. That's the lowest percentage UBS has ever found in a fourth quarter, and is down from 46% who said last year they planned to upgrade their phones in the succeeding 12-month period.

In many countries around the world, consumers are holding on to their phones longer and expect to replace them less frequently, UBS's survey found. Globally, the average consumer's smartphone is 1.6 years old, up 6% from a year ago, Arcuri said. On average, US consumers plan to replace their phones every 2.2 years, up from just 2 years last year, he said.

"Apple is not immune to the smartphone market maturing," he said. He continued: The "longer replacement cycle reduces upgrade frequency."

Google is denying claims that it failed to alert temporary and contract workers about an active shooter that attacked YouTube's San Bruno, California headquarters in April, disputing allegations that the company rushed to protect its full-time employees but left its lower-paid contractors in danger.

A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that contract workers were sent security updates about the situation with or in parallel to full-time employees. The spokesperson said in some cases email updates might have come from the TVCs' employer directly.

Google's comments are in response to an open letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, published Wednesday by a group claiming to represent the 20,000 temporary workers and contractors, or TVCs, at Google and YouTube. Among the many grievances listed in the letter was the allegation that, as a shooter went on a rampage on YouTube's campus that left one dead and four wounded, "the company sent real-time security updates to full-time employees only, leaving TVCs defenseless in the line of fire."

The conflicting accounts of the traumatic afternoon reveal the sharp fault line within Silicon Valley's workforce, where high-paid techies enjoy the perks of a barista in the office and unlimited vacation policies, while the blue collar workers who drive the shuttles and prepare the food complain of being treated like second-class citizens.

The shooter, a disgruntled YouTube creator, entered one of the company's parking garages and into an open courtyard where employees were eating lunch on the afternon of April 3rd. Armed with a Smith & Wesson 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun, she proceeded to fire "multiple" shots, causing panic and sending people to barricade themselves inside of nearby meeting rooms.

Read more: This timeline shows exactly how the YouTube shooting unfolded

One current TVC that Business Insider spoke to said she was working at Google's Sunnyvale campus at the time of the shooting and first found out about it on social media about two hours after the incident occurred.

"I was like, 'What! This can't be true,'" she remembered. "Then I started surfing the web, and that's how I found out."

The contract worker quickly emailed her boss (a full-time employee at Google), who confirmed the shooting had indeed happened. Her boss then sent an email to the entire team, letting them know they could go home for that day if they didn't feel comfortable at work. However, she maintains that there was "no corporate-wide communication from any public relations person" immediately alerting her of the shooting.

"That is a big fat lie!" she said, when told of Google's claim that it spread the word to all employees.

Another point of contention is the town hall meeting that took place the next day in response to the shooting. In their letter, the TVCs claim they were "excluded from a town hall discussion the following day."

However, a Google spokesperson told us that in-lieu of the shooting, TVCs were invited to that week's town hall meeting, which is typically reserved for full-time employees only. The spokesperson also said that therapy animals were provided to meeting attendees.

"I never received any communication about that [meeting]," the current TVC told us. She did contend that she was based in Sunnyvale at the time, and that it is possible San Bruno TVCs were invited.

The inequity of access to information is just one of the demands the TVCs demanded on Wednesday. When a shooter is on the loose, a lack of information can be the matter of life and death. As one former TVC told Business Insider, though, it typically that means temporary workers can't access Google Groups that are essential to their work or even book meetings room.

Still, such limitations create inequities in the workplace.

"In a country where democracy was developed, I don't think it's quite fair," the former TVC told us. "I will never work again as a temp."

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

Saturday, 12 pm. The light burns. Your head throbs. And you have no recollection of how you got back home. Don't worry, you're not alone. More than half of college students experience blackouts, according to several studies. And let's be clear. Blacking out doesn't mean passing out. You were probably awake and aware the entire night. So then, where did all those memories go?

Let's rewind to Friday night. Normally, whenever you have an experience — like a conversation — a part of your brain called the prefrontal lobe stores that information in short-term memory. Then, another part of your brain called the hippocampus weaves those experiences together so they can be stored away as long-term memories. So the next day you remember "the party" as a whole instead of "smell of sweat," "house music," "Jen was there."

But here's the key part: storing these episodes in long-term memory requires special neurotransmitters. But your liquor shots prevent the neurotransmitters from working properly. So, instead of remembering the party, all you have is an incomplete or even empty file.

And the amount of alcohol in your system at the time influences how much you remember. Let's say you're a 73 kg adult man. And you've done eight shots in one hour. Your blood alcohol content is probably around 0.2% by this point — more than twice the legal limit for driving a car. And your brain may still be able to store some memories. So you end up with "islands" of memories separated by missing sections. That's called a fragmentary blackout, aka a "greyout" or "brownout". But if you keep pounding those shots, it gets worse. Within the next half hour, you pound back another four shots. Now your blood alcohol content hits around 0.3%, and your hippocampus goes dark. And full amnesia sets in. This is called an en bloc blackout. And once you wake up, that entire night could be blank. Push your BAC much higher than that and…you might die.

And yet...your friends might not even realize you're in the middle of a blackout, since the alcohol didn't "delete" your long-term memories already safe in storage before the night began. So you can still carry on conversations and behave more or less like a typical person. To an extent. Blackouts aside, alcohol can still interfere with other regions of your brain including those responsible for reasoning and decision-making.

So during blackouts, people have crashed cars gotten into fights and committed — or been the victims of — sexual assaults. They just might not remember it.

That being said, not everyone gets blackouts. Your sex, body weight, and family history all play a roll. So that could explain why your friends recall the entire night despite downing just as much tequila. But it won't save them from a wicked hangover the next morning.

Authorities in Canada have arrested the chief financial officer of the Chinese company Huawei, reportedly on suspicion of violating US trade sanctions on Iran.

For Americans, Huawei may not be a familiar name. But the tech giant is actually the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, behind only Samsung, after recently pulling ahead of Apple.

This incident threatens to have major implications on the relationship between the US and China, which has already ordered Canada to "immediately release" Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

Here's what you need to know about Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, and how this arrest could escalate the US trade war with China.

Tesla has $920 million worth of debt coming due in March, and it's reportedly chosen to pay holders of the convertible notes in an unusual fashion.

Bloomberg News' Dana Hull and Molly Smith reported Thursday that the company informed holders of the notes last week that, if they elect to convert the notes, they will be paid in a 50-50 mix of equity and cash.

The bonds have a conversion price of $359.88 per share. If Tesla's share price is below that amount by the due date of March 1, 2019, the notes must be paid by the company in cash to the holders. If the stock price is above, notes are generally converted into equity shares.

Tesla's stock closed at $363 on Thursday, roughly 0.8% above the conversion price of the bonds. The move to pay in a mix of cash and equity could be a signal that CEO Elon Musk and other executives believe the stock price will remain above the bond's convert price, and that the company can continue to turn a profit as it did in the third quarter of this year.

A company spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While the March tranche is the most immediately due, it's not the largest of Tesla's outstanding debt. Some $1.3 billion and $977 million of convertible coupons are due in 2021 and 2022, respectively, and $1.8 billion of traditional bonds due in 2025 are currently outstanding, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Shares of Tesla rose about 0.9% in after-hours trading Thursday, and are up about 12.8% since the beginning of the year.

Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's attorney and former mayor of New York City, suggested his Twitter account was compromised after his account unintentionally tweeted a link to an anti-Trump website.

"Twitter allowed someone to invade my text with a disgusting anti-President message," Giuliani said on Twitter.

Giuliani appeared to be referring to a previous tweet sent on Friday about special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing Russia probe. The investigation reached a milestone on Tuesday after Mueller filed a memo recommending no prison time for former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

In his tweet, the president's attorney railed against Mueller for the timing of the special counsel's legal moves, two of which were issued while Trump was traveling abroad.

Giuliani referenced Trump's trip to the G-20 summit in Argentina last week, which followed former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleading guilty; and Trump's Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July, which came days after 12 Russian military officials were indicted for hacking Democratic Party operatives' computers.

"Mueller filed an indictment just as the President left for G-20.In July he indicted the Russian who will never come here just before he left for Helsinki.Either could have been done earlier or later. Out of control!Supervision please?" Giuliani tweeted earlier on Tuesday.

Giuliani appears to have neglected to include an additional space at the end of his sentences, causing his tweet to link to the website "G-20.In," a website with a domain from India.

The website itself shows a terse message:

Screenshot via g-20.in

Read more: 'Covfefe': Trump lit up Twitter with one misspelled word — and then made a joke about it

Giuliani suggested without evidence that Twitter may have been involved in linking his tweet to the apparent anti-Trump website.

"The same thing-period no space-occurred later and it didn't happen," Giuliani said in his tweet. "Don't tell me they are not committed cardcarrying [sic] anti-Trumpers. Time Magazine also may fit that description. FAIRNESS PLEASE."

The tweet has since received around 16,000 retweets and 43,000 "likes," making it one of the most-circulated messages on his account.

Giuliani has also made several gaffes on Twitter in recent days. On Friday, he tweeted "Kimim ° has f," prompting the Twitterverse to speculate on what he intended to type.

In recent weeks, the social media platform banned numerous political operatives, including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and far-right provocateur Laura Loomer. Twitter's decision sparked backlash from both sides of the political aisle, worrying some who fear that the company will be taking a more active role in censoring its content.