Japan's recently appointed cybersecurity and Olympics minister has told parliament he has never used a computer in his life, though it's his job to oversee cybersecurity for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Yoshitaka Sakurada, is the deputy chief of Japan's vaunted cybersecurity strategy office and is also the minister in charge of the Olympic Games that Tokyo will host in 2020.

Depite these responsibilities, Sakurada has admitted that he has never used a computer, and is more or less baffled by the very idea of a USB drive and what it might do, according to a report the Guardian published on Wednesday.

It all began last month.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promoted Sakurada, 68, to the joint posts in October, despite his left-field selection having never held a Cabinet position before during his 18 years in Japan's Diet or parliament.

It was in the Diet, on Wednesday however, Sakurada came clean and admitted he is not a big computer person.

According to local media, the newly appointed minister made the admission at a parliamentary committee meeting when an opposition politician asked Sakurada a fairly routine are-you-computer-literate question.

His response catches in a nutshell concerns that some Japanese lawmakers are growing desperately out of touch in a rapidly aging nation.

"I've been independent since I was 25 and have always directed my staff and secretaries to do that kind of thing," Sakurada replied.

"I've never used a computer."

Sakurada was answering questions from Masato Imai, an independent Lower House lawmaker.

When pursued by the concerned lawmaker about how a man lacking computer skills could be in charge of cybersecurity, Sakurada said he was confident there would be no problems.

"It's shocking to me that someone who hasn't even touched computers is responsible for dealing with cybersecurity policies," Imai said.

He also appeared confused by the question when asked about whether USB drives were in use at Japanese nuclear facilities.

Sakurada also said "he doesn't know the details" when a member of the Democratic Party for the People, asked him about what measures he had in place against cyberattacks on Japan's nuclear power plants.

The countdown may already be on for Sakurada in his official role.

According to the Japan Times this is not the first time Sakurada has been in hot water.

At a Lower House Budget Committee meeting Sakurada stumbled and obfuscated when answering simple questions about his organizing committee's three policy pillars for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and also the games' budget.

The debate was punctuated with lengthy interruptions as the luckless minister turned to and relied almost entirely on his aides to answer the basic questions.

Sakurada apologized for his performance and the indignity to the Diet four days later.

He may not have gotten the email.

A Lion Air official told CNN Wednesday, that Boeing's manual for its 737 MAX 8 model, the near-new passenger jet that crashed 13 minutes after take-off from Jakarta last month Java Sea last month, had nothing in it at all about a critical feature that could trigger the plane to dive.

Lion Air's operational director Zwingli Silalahi, said the manual failed to alert pilots that the jet's stall-prevention system could, in certain near-stall situations, trigger an automated response, that included lowering the airplane's nose.

"We don't have that in the manual of the Boeing 737 MAX 8," Zwingli said Wednesday.

"That's why we don't have the special training for that specific situation."

Air crash investigators are trying to determine if an external sensor sent exactly this kind of erroneous data that could have triggered the stall-prevention system.

Lion Air's allegations appear to support comments made by the Allied Pilots Association (APA) that allege Boeing withheld information about the danger of the Max 8's new features.

Lion Air Flight JT610 fell into waters off Jakarta on October 29, killing all 189 on board.

Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued directives last week telling flight crews about the system, which is designed to provide extra protection against pilots losing control.

Boeing's has since said that its safety bulletin was only meant to reinforce existing procedures.

Subsequently many aviators, unions, and flight-training departments began to realize that none of the documentation including pilot's manuals for the Max 8 included an explanation of the system, according to the APA.

Indonesian investigators said on Monday that more training was surely required for Boeing 737 MAX pilots after realizing the in-flight situation now thought to have faced the crew of JT610 was not a part of Boeing's flight manual.

Read more: The Indonesian Lion Air flight JT 610 aircraft that crashed into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff with at least 188 on board was brand new and delivered to Lion Air just 2 months ago

Boeing

It's all up in the air

US pilots were also not aware of potential risks, two US pilot unions told Reuters.

"We don't like that we weren't notified," Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told Bloomberg on Tuesday.

Both Lion Air and the APA have now rejected Boeing's claim about merely reinforcing existing procedures, describing the bulletin as "enlightening" and in no way "reaffirming."

"They (Boeing) didn't provide us all the info we rely on when we fly an aircraft," Captain Dennis Tajer, an APA spokesman told CNN.

According to Zwingli, Boeing's bulletin did not call for any special Max 8 pilot training.

"We didn't receive any information from Boeing or from regulator about that additional training for our pilots," Zwingli said.

Zwingli said that if the result of the ongoing investigation -- conducted by Indonesia's National Transportation Commission, the US National Transportation Safety Board, and Boeing -- found that additional training was necessary, Lion Air pilots would undertake it.

Boeing has said it will not "discuss specifics of an ongoing investigation."

Although the company did tell CNN that it had "provided two updates for our operators around the world that re-emphasize existing procedures for these situations."

On Tuesday, the APA said while there were no immediate safety concerns about the MAX 8 planes, "the fact that this hasn't been told to pilots before calls into question what other info should we know about this aircraft."

"What seems to have happened here is that a new version or a modified anti-stall capacity was added which pushes the nose down automatically, CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest. said.

"If it's true, it is beyond comprehension that Boeing did not tell the airline and pilots about this."

The FAA's directive that advised pilots about how to respond to similar problems impacts 246 Boeing 737 Max aircraft worldwide.

There are some 45 of these passenger jets run by US carriers.

Read more: The US government has ordered airlines to instruct pilots flying Boeing's 737 MAX on how to handle the potentially deadly flaw that may have caused the Lion Air crash

The angle of attack

Last week, investigators including Indonesia's National Transportation Commission, the US National Transportation Safety Board, and Boeing said the angle-of-attack or AOA sensor that helps determine if a plane will stall or dive had been replaced the day before the incident, but problems remained.

The AOA sensor on the Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 was replaced after a flight from North Sulawesi to Bali, on October 28. During a later flight to Jakarta that same day, pilots reported further AOA problems.

The AOA sensor was replaced by a Lion Air technician in Bali before the plane departed for Jakarta on its penultimate flight.

In the end, Lion Air's almost-new Boeing 737 Max 8 jet encountered difficulties on all of its final four flights, the head of Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, the KNKT, Soerjanto Tjahjono said.

Lost and lost

Rescue workers with a part of the plane's wreckage that shows Lion Air's logo. REUTERS/Stringer

Meanwhile authorities have still failed to get their hands on JT610's cockpit voice recorder (CVR), which may very well be hidden under the muddy seafloor off Jakarta.

It is hoped the CVR could reveal what went down in the cockpit in the final moments of the flight.

Investigators already have the flight data recorder (FDR), which was found resting on the seafloor, on November 1.

The earliest analysis suggests there were problems with the airspeed indicator on the past three flights before the crash.

The KNKT has indicated it will continue the search for the still-missing cockpit voice recorder (CVR), the second black box of the aircraft, with the help of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) divers.

It is thought this second device, which may yield up the final moments inside the cockpit of flight JT610, could be buried deep within the mud of the Java Sea floor.

Basarnas divers have already recovered the other black box, the flight data recorder (FDR).

After almost two weeks in the waters off Jakarta, Basarnas finally called off the search for difficult search for victims over the weekend.

Basarnas had extended the search mission twice since the plane dove into the sea last month.

The Jakarta Post reports that Basarnas eventually recovered as many as 196 bags containing human remains.

The victims' families participated in a mass prayer on board two Navy ships in the Java Sea last Tuesday.

As of Friday, there were 79 victims formally identified in total.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had some advice this summer for one of his Democratic colleagues who had become one of Facebook's most prominent critics in Congress: Back off.

The Senate minority leader in July told Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) to tone down his criticism of the company and said he shouldn't be trying to hurt the company, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Instead, Schumer advised Warner to try to find ways collaborate with it, according to The Times.

Schumer kept Facebook's lobbyists informed about his efforts to shield the company, The Times reported. The minority leader's intervention came on the heels of the company's Cambridge Analytica scandal and amid a growing anti-Facebook movement.

Representatives for Senator Warner's office declined to comment.

Warner has helped lead the investigation in Congress into Russian-linked and other efforts to spread propaganda through the site to disrupt American elections. In the process, he's become a vocal critic of the company and a strong advocate for regulating it. Last year, he introduced legislation that would have forced Facebook to identify the people or groups who bought political ads on its site.

Read this:Facebook reportedly had its Republican-linked PR firm try to blame George Soros for the anti-Facebook movement

Schumer has significant ties to Facebook. During the 2016 election period, he raised $38,900 from Facebook employees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That was more than any other senator or congressperson raised from Facebook employees during that cycle.

Additionally, Schumer's daughter works for Facebook as a marketing manager, according to her LinkedIn page.

News about Schumer's efforts to protect Facebook come as different wings of the Democratic Party are battling over its ties to corporations in general and to the tech sector in particular.

For example, Amazon's announcement Tuesday that it will open major offices in New York and Virginia triggered harsh criticism by numerous left-leaning Democrats, including newly elected New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, over the financial handouts to the company approved by establishment Democratic officials such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Schumer has drawn criticism from the left for his longstanding and close ties to Wall Street. Despite that, he was he was reelected Wednesday as the Democrats' leader in the Senate hours before The Times published its report.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg repeatedly pushed to downplay disclosures of the effects of Russian propaganda on the social network, according to the New York Times in a bombshell report.

The report looked at at how Facebook's executive team reacted to the company's chain of scandals, including the fallout from the spread of Russian misinformation on the platform, to the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's appearances in Congress.

A thread runs through the roughly 6,000-word investigation: Sandberg's aggressive defense of the company reportedly involved repeated attempts to avoid implicating Russia for its role in spreading misinformation on Facebook.

In one incident in 2017, in the aftermath of Russian meddling during the US presidential election, the COO reportedly argued that Facebook shouldn't single out Russia in a public paper it planned to published looking at "information operations" on the platform — agreeing with Facebook's Washington DC-based policy boss Joel Kaplan that "if Facebook implicated Russia further ... Republicans would accuse the company of siding with Democrats."

Later that year, she asked then-security boss Alex Stamos to make a blog post about Russian interference on Facebook "less specific." Stamos departed the company in August.

Sandberg and Stamos had clashed before. Back in 2016, Stamos assigned a team to investigate what the Russians had been up to on Facebook. It's a decision that reportedly angered Sandberg: "Looking into the Russian activity without approval, she said, had left the company exposed legally," the NYT reported.

And in 2017, Sandberg reported fumed at the security exec (reportedly shouting "you threw us under the bus!") after he told Facebook's board of directors that the company had not yet stamped out Russian interference on the platform. Stamos' report reportedly resulted in Zuckerberg and Sandberg getting grilled by the board.

The revelations shed new light on exactly how senior leadership was involved in trying to protect the company's image as it lurched from crisis to crisis. But it's still having an impact: According to another report published Wednesday, Facebook employee morale has dropped dramatically in recent months.

In a previous statement about the report, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told Business Insider: "This has been a tough time at Facebook and our entire management team has been focused on tackling the issues we face. While these are hard problems we are working hard to ensure that people find our products useful and that we protect our community from bad actors." He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sandberg's actions.

Read the full New York Times story here.

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California is on fire.

The Northern California Camp Fire has killed at least 48 people and destroyed more than 7,600 homes and 260 businesses as of Wednesday morning, making it the deadliest and most destructive fire in state history. The Woolsey Fire near Malibu, California has claimed two lives, forced 275,000 people to evacuate, and destroyed the homes of celebrities including Gerard Butler, Miley Cyrus, and Neil Young.

Read more: The death toll from California's fires has risen to 50, with thousands of homes destroyed in Malibu and Northern California

With so much destruction, so close to home — the Camp Fire burns around 150 miles from San Francisco, filling the city with smoke — the tech community has responded. Some have even offered up their homes over Twitter.

Venture capitalists, like Redpoint Ventures' Ryan Sarver (formerly Director of Platform at Twitter) and ENIAC Ventures' Nihal Mehta, have offered homes that they own in the area to those displaced by the fire.

Airbnb has opened up doors at scale

Airbnb has been able to do something similar at a much larger scale.

The company's Open Homes Program, which was created back in 2012 to assist with relief from Hurricane Sandy, allows hosts to offer up their homes to those displaced by the fires.

Airbnb told Business Insider that so far over 2,000 hosts on its platform have offered their homes to evacuees of the Camp Fire and Woolsey's Fires. To date, nearly 1,000 evacuees and relief workers have been housed.

Kellie Bentz, Airbnb's Head of Global Disaster Response and Relief, told us over the phone on Wednesday: "It's always terrible, but also good for us when it's close to home because it allows us to get a lot closer to the situation. In this case, we've been able to do that pretty quickly."

This week, the company improved its mobile sign up process for evacuees and is planning on opening up a hotline by Thursday for those in need of shelter.

"We're just trying to make it as easy as possible to book," Bentz explained.

Bentz said she helped one woman book a home on Tuesday who needed to flee her Southern California home with her friend and three dogs.

"They were literally on the side of the road," Benz explains. "The hard part about wildfires is, we call them 'no notice events.' Typically, it's so fast moving. It's hard to be as prepared as a hurricane where at least you have a few hours to pack up. With [the wildfires], people literally just got what they could and ran out."

Facebook, Google, Apple have also responded

Facebook is helping as well.

The Menlo Park-based company committed to matching up to $500,000 in donations made on Facebook to American Red Cross' California wildfire relief efforts. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed with Business Insider that the match was met as of Tuesday, and in total, including the company's matching contribution, the Facebook community has raised more than $1.7 million for the American Red Cross.

Also, through Facebook Fundraisers — which the company announced on Wednesday had helped raise over $1 billion— users have been able to set up campaigns to help those who have lost their homes and valuables.

One user, whose brother and 97-year-old grandma both lost their homes in Paradise, California, has helped her family raise over $11,500 over Facebook. Another, who lives in Southern California, has helped raise over $7,500 to provide extra supplies, like water bottles and snacks, for firefighters and victims.

The Google-owned mapping service Waze, is doing its part in helping where it can. Waze tweeted last week that it is working "around-the-clock" to make sure maps were updated with road closures, as well as shelter information.

Apple has also announced, via a tweet from CEO Tim Cook, that it would be donating to fire relief efforts.

A married Arizona couple will be responsible for paying $12.23 million dollars to Nintendo of America after being accused of copyright infringement in federal court.

In July, Nintendo filed a complaint against Jacob Mathias and Mathias Designs LLC in the U.S. District Court of Arizona, accusing the two of operating the websites LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co, both of which distributed unauthorized downloads of Nintendo video games and software.

According to court documents obtained by TorrentFreak, Jacob's wife, Cristian Mathias, was later named and added to the complaint following the original lawsuit' filing.

Though the site was taken offline shortly after the complaint was filed, LoveROMS was one of the most popular emulation websites on the internet, bringing in 17 million visitors a month, according to the court documents cited by TorrentFreak. The site offered unofficial downloads for hundreds of retro video games from Nintendo and other publishers, along with emulation software to make the games playable on a computer.

According to the report, Nintendo's original complaint suggested that Mathias Designs should be responsible for paying $150,000 per Nintendo game hosted on the site, and $2,000,000 for each violated trademark. This would have been the maximum awarded damages allowed by law, and with LoveROMs hosting hundreds of Nintendo games, the damages could've mounted to more than $100 million.

Read more:The hacker who targeted Xbox Live and PlayStation Network is facing 10 years in jail for knocking the gaming networks offline

Instead of arguing their case in court, the court documents cited by TorrentFreak say the couple acknowledged running the sites and entered into settlement talks with Nintendo. They ultimately agreed to the final judgement of $12,230,000 issued on November 9th, according to the report.

Nintendo's legal action against LoveROMs has led other emulation sites to reconsider their practices, with some choosing to go offline preemptively following the complaint. As Nintendo and other gaming companies work to monetize their back catalogs with new digital versions of classic titles, unofficial software downloads will continue to be a threat to their business model.

As Facebook faced a string of crises, it sought to tie its critics to George Soros, the billionaire at the center of many fringe right-wing conspiracy theories.

This summer, with anti-Facebook sentiment growing in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and other fiascos, the social media company had a public relations firm it had hired attempt to pin the blame on Soros for the growing Freedom from Facebook movement, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. At Facebook's behest, Definers Public Affairs distributed to reporters a research report that accused Soros of quietly backing anti-Facebook groups and urged them to dig into the alleged financial connections between those groups and the businessman, The Times reported.

Facebook had its public relations group try to link George Soros to a movement against the company. Sean Gallup/Getty Definers, a Republican-linked firm, specializes in opposition research and in bringing tactics most commonly associated with political campaigns — such as negative ads — to efforts on behalf of business clients. Its anti-Soros effort was part of a broader endeavor to shore up Facebook's image and tear down the company's critics, according to The Times report.

Soros, an 88-year-old Hungarian-born Jew who survived the Holocaust, has long funded liberal and pro-Democracy causes. He's also long been a bête noire of conservatives and has frequently been a central figure in far-right conspiracy theories, many of them with anti-semitic overtones.

Read this: Mark Zuckerberg made his executives use Android phones after Tim Cook slammed Facebook's approach to privacy

Most recently, a crackpot theory accused him of funding the caravan of refugees that has been slowly heading from Central America to the US's southern border. He was also among the prominent critics of Donald Trump who were sent pipe bombs, allegedly by Cesar Sayoc. Sayoc was reportedly obsessed with Soros.

Read the full New York Times report here.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg once asked senior executives whether Donald Trump had broken any of the social network's rules, according to a bombshell report from The New York Times— a move that could have resulted in Facebook banning the then-presidential candidate.

In 2015, Trump called for Muslims to be banned from entering the United States, making a Facebook post to that effect. In response, Zuckerberg — a vocal advocate of immigration reform, who the Times reports was "appalled" by Trump's remarks — reportedly asked top executives if the Facebook post had violated its terms of service.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, DC policy head Joel Kaplan, and then-head of communications Elliott Schrage —three very senior executives at the firm — then scrambled to investigate the matter, according to the report. Sandberg sat in on the video calls to discuss, reports the Times, but did not often speak. Zuckerberg reportedly did not appear at these meetings.

Kaplan warned that banning Trump, then a candidate for the highest office in the land, could be seen as a violation of free speech, and that it could also be cause for a conservative backlash.

The trio ultimately determined that Trump's remarks didn't break Facebook's rules, says the report, and his account remained active.

"We were trying to make a decision based on all the legal and technical evidence before us," Schrage, who left Facebook this summer, told the Times.

The incident highlights how Facebook executives were uncomfortable with how Trump used Facebook to amplify his often-controversial messaging — a concern shared by some others in Silicon Valley. There have been repeated calls over the last few years for Twitter, Trump's social network of choice, to ban the president over alleged rule violations. But CEO Jack Dorsey has refused, arguing that the president's tweets have inherent "newsworthiness."

The detail was disclosed in an exhaustive report from The New York Times, which details how Facebook executives attempted to deflect criticism as the company's scandals mounted over the last few year.

In a statement, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told Business Insider: "This has been a tough time at Facebook and our entire management team has been focused on tackling the issues we face. While these are hard problems we are working hard to ensure that people find our products useful and that we protect our community from bad actors."

Do you work at Facebook? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Uber has released its in-house financials for the third quarter. The numbers show widening losses and slowing growth for the ride-hailing giant as it races towards an IPO as soon as next year.

Here are the important numbers:

While revenue is still climbing steadily, the increase is much smaller than its 63% year-over-year jump in the second quarter, according to the Wall Street Journal. Cash and cash equivalents are also growing, sitting at a staggeringly high $4.8 billion.

"We had another strong quarter for a business of our size and global scope," CFO Nelson Chair said in a press release. "As we look ahead to an IPO and beyond, we are investing in future growth across our platform, including in food, freight, electric bikes and scooters, and high-potential markets in India and the Middle East where we continue to solidify our leadership position."

Uber Eats accounted for $2.1 billion of overall gross bookings, and is growing at more than 150% annually, according to Tech Crunch. It's the first time Uber has broken out specific data points for the service, which is also now included in Uber for Business, allowing employees to expense meals in addition to rides.

As it eyes an IPO as early as next year, the company is looking to trim its losses and increase recurring and diverse revenue streams, both of which Wall Street will be looking for. It's even reportedly considered selling off a minority stake in its cash-intensive Advanced Technologies Group, which handles things like self-driving cars, to help with cash burn.

Uber is racing towards an IPO as soon as next year, with reported valuations as high as $120 billion. Lyft, its much smaller but still closest competitor, is also aiming to go public, with a valuation near $20 billion. Lyft has already signed on Credit Suisse to assist in the book-running for its listing, with others reported to also be on board.

There's still no word on when exactly the company may file its registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but investors will likely be clamoring at the gate when Uber heads to Wall Street. In October, Uber sold $2 billion worth of high-yield bonds in an oversold auction that had more demand than could be fulfilled.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Narrator: What if instead of your mom's Ford Focus, your driver's test was parallel parking this? Parallel parking is just one part of the two-week training that New York City firefighters go through. The end result? They get certified to drive 42-foot-long fire trucks. The training includes lectures, written tests, a virtual driving simulator, and, just as you might expect, an obstacle course.

From the first day, firefighters are behind the wheel, but they aren't ready to drive on city streets yet. They practice just like you might in Driver's Ed, at a parking lot. The first challenge is pretty straightforward. Drive in a straight line between two lines of cones. Then, back up the way you came. After that, it gets trickier. Weave in and out of cones without knocking any of them over and then, do that backwards.

Mike Jackson: One of the specific things we work on on the EVOC course is when we're maneuvering through the barrels, is we're lining up, let's say, our rear wheel tire. When that rear wheel tire is lined up against one of the barrels, then we can make our turn and we will not hit that barrel. So even though it seems a little simplistic maybe, but it represents, it could be a car out there. It could be the corner we're trying to get into.

Narrator: Once they've gotten that down next up is parallel parking. Which, after the backwards cone weaving, doesn't look too bad. In fact, they use a similar technique to backing through the obstacle course. They line up the back tire with the car they're trying to park behind. After drivers master the parking lot, it's time to hit the streets. Well, sort of. They practice driving on Randall's Island, located right in between Manhattan and Brooklyn. That's where the Fire Department Training Academy is. In some ways, learning to drive a fire truck is like learning to drive any large vehicle but with one major difference.

Jackson: A big difference between driving our fire trucks as opposed to driving a large vehicle like a bus or a sanitation truck, is that we're responding to emergencies. There's an added stress on the time to get there and everyone handles that differently. We try to prepare the students to be ready for those emergencies.

Narrator: But you can't do a test run in the middle of the city. So instead, one way firefighters prepare for this is by practicing in a simulator. Trainers can program the simulator to mimic different hazards. They can increase the number of cars on the road, make them drive fast or slow, and add things like roadblocks and pedestrians. But not every firefighter learns to chase down fires in the same truck. In fact, from the very start firefighters are divided into companies: the engine company and the ladder company. And this determines which type of truck each firefighter will drive.

Turns out, the term fire truck isn't a catchall. There are two main types of fire trucks in New York City. The fire truck is the one with a ladder on it and a fire engine is the one used to pump water. Fire truck. Fire engine. The ladder truck is 42 feet long and the engine truck is 30 feet long. So maneuvering either one down narrow city streets requires careful driving skills. But a driver's job doesn't end when they arrive at the fire. Once there, the driver of the engine leads the charge for getting water onto the fire. The driver attaches the hose to the fire hydrant to fill the pump in the truck and then, does calculations to make sure there's enough pressure in the hose line to spray out a strong stream of water. At the same time, the driver of a ladder truck raises and positions the ladder or bucket to reach high stories of the building. And if anyone is trapped in the front of the building, they help get those people out.

So you might be wondering what happens if a firefighter doesn't pass the final driver's test.

Jackson: We've had that in the past, where students have not shown a proficient skill in driving the vehicles. You'll still go back to your firehouse and be, there's many other positions you can do, so sometimes they can come back. They train a little more at the firehouse and they come back, and then they're a little more proficient or they've gotten better where they pass with no problem.

Narrator: So, next time you see a fire truck barreling towards you, just do what you can to get out of the way. The person behind the wheel of the 42-foot-long 40-ton truck will appreciate it.

Earlier this spring, Apple CEO Tim Cook criticized Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a very public manner related to its privacy scandals and the Cambridge Analytica affair.

Zuckerberg called Cook's criticism "extremely glib," and he was apparently seething behind closed doors. He was mad enough to tell his executives to use Android phones instead of Apple's iPhones, according to a massive new report from The New York Times.

"Mr. Cook's criticisms infuriated Mr. Zuckerberg, who later ordered his management team to use only Android phones, since the operating system has far more users than Apple's," states the report.

The zing earlier this year that might have upset Zuckerberg came during an interview on MSNBC.

Recode's Kara Swisher asked Cook a question about the Cambridge Analytica incident, in which private Facebook user data was stolen from 50 million users. She asked if the Apple CEO was in Zuckerberg's place, "what would you do?"

He answered: "What would do? I wouldn't be in this situation."

In the same interview and in subsequent speeches, Cook called for privacy regulation that would impact businesses like Facebook that make significantly more of their money from ads than Apple, which makes money from hardware sales.

But Cook and Zuckerberg have traded barbs for years. Cook said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2014 that "when an online service is free, you're not the customer. You're the product."

This apparently got under Zuckerberg's skin even back then, with a journalist from Time noticing the tension in a profile of the Facebook founder:

"But before that happens Zuckerberg also notes — and it was the only time I saw him display irritation — that Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote something similar in September in a statement spelling out Apple's privacy policy: 'When an online service is free, you're not the customer. You're the product.' The shot was probably meant for Google, but Facebook was definitely in the blast radius. 'A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers,' Zuckerberg says. 'I think it's the most ridiculous concept. What, you think because you're paying Apple that you're somehow in alignment with them? If you were in alignment with them, then they'd make their products a lot cheaper!'"

Years later, it appears Zuckerberg still isn't "in alignment" with Apple if he's making his management team eschew a specific brand of phone.

The full New York Times story is a great read for anyone who's interested in Facebook and misinformation.

On paper, the "God of War" reboot is very similar to the original series: It's a third-person action-adventure game that is focused on stylish combat.

But in reality, there are some huge changes right off the bat. For one, Kratos now has a son he's taking care of (seen above). His name is Atreus (uh-tray-us), and he's with you for the entire journey.

And the journey, rather than a tale of revenge, is one of grief: Kratos' wife (and Atreus' mother) has died, and her last request was to have her ashes released at the tallest peak in the land. It's a subtle refocus that, unbelievably, turns Kratos into a complex, interesting character for the first time.

How he handles grieving while teaching his son valuable lessons — all while dealing with the tremendous psychological baggage from his previous life as a Greek god — is what elevates "God of War" from an impressive, gorgeous action game to a memorable, meaningful game.

Some of the biggest darlings of the tech industry have joined Tesla recently in piling on cheap debt to fuel booming growth plans, relying on their size and brand-name appeal to secure funding typically deemed too risky for lesser-known peers with better credit.

WeWork, rated B, (otherwise known as junk) issued a $702 million bond in April. Uber issued a $2 billion junk bond deal last month, despite rapid cash burn and growing competition. And while Tesla's precarious debt situation is nothing new, it's in a similar boat to the others. Tesla is giving some investors jitters because it has $1.6 billion of maturities looming over the next 12 months.

Investors are favoring companies' potential over their underlying financial health, in part because they're benefitting from the "halo effect" of their sexy, big-name brands, says Christian Hoffmann, a portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management.

It's a marked shift in the industry. Demand is growing, for now. But it's a risky scenario.

Unicorns don't belong

"In general, unicorns don't belong in high yield," said John McClain, a portfolio manager at Diamond Hill, a US investment firm that manages fixed-income funds. "Putting financial leverage on companies with high levels of operating leverage, minimal tangible assets, and/or the ability to generate cash flow is irresponsible."

Leverage refers to the amount of debt a company has amassed over its earnings. Having high leverage means a company has more debt than assets available to pay off debts at a given time.

On the whole, investors tend to steer clear of companies that are highly leveraged or have far from robust credit metrics, says Christian Hoffmann, a portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management.

Take WeWork: The company received $4.4 billion in investment from a major SoftBank fund last year but runs an "asset light" model because it leases most of its office space. Despite plenty of hype, the company posts loss after loss, and according to Moody's, is unlikely to turn a profit anytime soon.

In August, Moody's took the unusual step of withdrawing a B3 rating on the New York-based company, citing a lack of information. For bond holders, the company's limited assets make it a riskier proposition in repayment terms if things go south.

Chasing yield is getting tougher

Tesla's high leverage and cash burning activities have given some investors cause for concern because the company will eventually need some way of paying it off, and it's not clear it will be that easy. The company took its first foray into the junk bond market in August 2017 with a $1.8 billion issue.

WeWork declined to comment for this story. Uber and Tesla didn't respond to requests for comment.

Bond investors chasing yield haven't had a lot of choice lately. But they have found a home in this part of the market. With high return comes more risk, though. A set of poor earnings could lead to declining confidence from lenders and greater scrutiny of the market. Throw in a US recession, and things could get very, very bad.

These companies and other unicorns tend to be "highly reliant on capital markets and have very pressing debt issues," McClain said.

And then there's Uber's. Its $2 billion bond deal last month was compared to deals by WeWork and Tesla, because of the company's rapid cash burn as competition heats up with rival ride hailer Lyft. Uber lost an eye-watering $4.5 billion in 2017. The company was able to issue its bonds via a private placement, allowing it to bypass the Securities and Exchange Commission's reporting requirements.

So-called "leveraged loans" have garnered a lot of negative attention lately, with former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and the Bank of England among those sounding the alarm on their potential risk. But the $1.6 trillion market is hot nonetheless: Responding to strong demand, Uber also raised a $1.5 billion leveraged loan directly from investors in March, a higher amount than the company had originally planned.

Leveraged loans differ from high-yield bonds in that they are secured, meaning creditors are paid before bondholders. Volumes have spiked in recent years with covenants protecting lenders from defaults deteriorating over this period, making the loans more akin to bonds.

McClain said that the high-yield market has been lucrative to tech stocks because financing has tended to be cheaper and more effective than selling more stock.

The message is clear: If you're a big-name tech company with even bigger ambitions, investors are lining up to lend to you.

Facebook has denied firing one of its former senior executives, Palmer Luckey, for his conservative views.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Luckey's departure came after The Daily Beast reported he donated $10,000 to an anti-Hillary Clinton group, and after longtime support of Donald Trump during the presidential campaign in 2016.

According to the Journal, citing leaked emails, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg even pressured Luckey to switch his support from Trump to Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. As the newspaper tells it, Luckey was put on leave after his donation and then fired in March 2017. He reportedly negotiated a $100 million payout after hiring an employment lawyer to argue Facebook had broken California law.

Read more: Facebook won't force employees to settle sexual harassment claims privately thanks to the Google walkout protests

Luckey believes that he was fired from Facebook due to his political views, the newspaper reported. Trump is largely unpopular in Silicon Valley, where most tech employees support liberal candidates, according to the non-profit Open Secrets.

But Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth, who now oversees the Oculus division, issued a strong statement denying that Luckey had been fired for his political leanings.

He wrote: "Any claims that his departure was do to his conservative beliefs are false."

When asked whether he thought Luckey himself may have been the source of the Journal's story, Bosworth wrote: "I honestly have no idea who their sources are, just that what was shared was not the truth and that the information provided appears to have been carefully selected to lead the reporters to one specific, and erroneous, conclusion."

Facebook likewise denied Luckey had been fired for supporting Trump. A spokeswoman told the Journal: "We can say unequivocally that Palmer's departure was not due to his political views. We're grateful for Palmer's contributions to Oculus, and we're glad he continues to actively support the VR industry."

And sources speaking to the Journal suggested the fact that Luckey hid his donation to a group which posted memes maligning Hillary Clinton, and his stepping back from Oculus were factors in his departure.

Luckey did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, but told the Wall Street Journal: "I believe the team that remains at Oculus is still the best in the VR industry, and I am rooting for them to succeed."

The Journal's story comes as conservative figures in California, such as Peter Thiel, argue that tech firms are dominated by liberals at executive and employee level and that different views are stifled. Google's firing of James Damore, who wrote a controversial memo about the firm's diversity practices, was seen as a watershed moment. Brian Amerige, a former Facebook engineer, likewise quit the firm and claimed an "intolerant" culture.

Facebook is putting an end to required arbitration in cases of sexual harassment, allowing employees to pursue claims in court.

Facebook announced the policy change in an internal message to staff on Friday. It also changed its policy on office relationships — now executives at a director level or higher must disclose if they are dating somebody at the company.

The change came a day after Google changed its policy to end required arbitration, which was a demand made when 20,000 Google staff walked away from their desks to protest sexual harassment at the company.

The Google protest followed a New York Times report which revealed high-level executives were credibly accused of sexual misconduct and had been allowed to leave the company with huge exit packages.

Read more: Here's the memo Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent to employees on the changes to Google's sexual-harassment policy after the walkout

The organisers behind the Google protest hailed Facebook's decision on Twitter:

Required arbitration forces employees to settle disputes privately, precluding them from taking suits to court. The process has been criticised as being weighted against employees, and making it harder for people to band together in class actions. Facebook's move means its employees now have a choice between going to an arbitrator or making their claims public in court.

Other Silicon Valley companies have got rid of required arbitration in the past, including Uber in May and Microsoft in December 2017.

"There's no question that we're at a pivotal moment," Facebook's vice president of people Lori Goler told the Wall Street Journal.

"This is a time when we can be part of taking the next step," she added, and confirmed that while Facebook staff haven't staged protests like their counterparts at Google, sexual harassment has been a growing topic of discussion at the company.

Business Insider contacted Facebook for comment.

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

The principle is true across all markets, but investors in stocks would be wise to apply it to the large technology companies that have raked in huge returns during the historic bull run.

Companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Netflix earned their own acronym (FAANG) because of the outsized contribution their sector has made to investor returns during the more than nine-year rally. Their leadership was showcased prominently last year as the S&P 500 maintained a record streak of daily gains without a 5% drop.

But disappointing news from the past two earnings seasons has challenged their leadership status, from Facebook's miss on active users in Q2 to Apple's soft guidance for the all-important holiday quarter.

Now, as markets settle down after a tumultuous October, investors who've taken profits on tech stocks should look to invest them elsewhere, according to Alicia Levine, the chief market strategist at BNY Mellon Investment Management, which oversees $1.9 trillion in assets.

"I just don't see large-cap tech regaining its former leadership role, and it's sort of a trap now," Levine told Business Insider.

Levine is further advising investors to curb their enthusiasm about marketwide gains heading into the new year. 2019, she says, is going to be a more typical year, in which expectations for earnings growth peak early and decline in the following months. While she's bullish on market returns for the next six to nine months, Levine warns that painful losses may also lie ahead for investors.

She recommends healthcare stocks, including health maintenance organizations, or HMOs, which provide insurance for a fixed monthly fee.

This pick was informed by the widely expected outcome of the midterm elections: Democrats recaptured the House, and Republicans maintained their Senate majority. The implication of this result is that a repeal of the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — or big cuts to Medicaid are unlikely.

On Tuesday, voters in Idaho and Nebraska opted to expand access to their Medicaid programs for more low-income earners, in line with similar decisions taken by 34 other states and Washington, DC, under the Affordable Care Act. Pharmaceutical stocks will benefit as Obamacare becomes more institutionalized, Levine said.

The sector, along with biotech, has been battered in recent months. Their selloffs should limit their downside if lawmakers ramp up efforts to regulate drug pricing, Levine said.

These sector rotations that Levine recommends could be daunting for people who have profited from the boom of tech companies during this bull market. They include investors in the several growth mutual funds that own these stocks and the cohorts of workers who buy on autopilot through their retirement plans.

"People don't know what they own," Levine said. "And when the selling starts, it's indiscriminate."

These popular tech stocks have recently been plagued by data and privacy scandals, from Cambridge Analytica's use of Facebook to the Google+ data breach. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have taken notice, and they pose another risk to the sector's unbridled growth.

"There's a sense that winter is coming, that there will be regulation, and there's an appetite both on the right and the left for this," Levine said. "You could see this being something that both a Democratic House and the administration would have an interest in."