SAP announced on Sunday that it plans to acquire IPO-bound startup Qualtrics for $8 billion cash.

Qualtrics was on the verge of its IPO — it was even on its roadshow with potential investors this past week. It had expected to raise about $495 million in its IPO and at the midpoint of its $18-to-$21 price range, it would have been valued at $4.8 billion.

And the roadshow was going well, said Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith in a press conference with SAP CEO Bill McDermott on Sunday. All signs pointed to a very successful first day of trading and beyond, because Qualtrics had been cash-flow positive for most of its history even amid its rapid growth, and it was reporting a net profit, said Smith. It had earned $289.9 million in revenue in 2017, up 52% from its $190 million in revenue in 2016 and reported a net income of $2.5 million, up from $12 million in losses in 2016.

Qualtrics founder CEO Ryan Smith Qualtrics "Our IPO was going extremely well," Smith said on the call. "We were the only show on the road last week and it was going as well as any IPO of ... a cash positive high-growth company."

"We chose to be here," Smith said of the acquisition.

SAP Bill McDermott doubled down on the idea, saying, "Ryan is being modest. I happen to know this was going to be the most successful IPO of 2018. He's oversubscribed."

All of that helps to explain why SAP is paying quite a premium for Qualtrics, which was valued at $2.5 billion at the time of its last private fundraising.

The two said on the phone that SAP had been in talks with Qualtrics for "a few months," with Smith claiming that McDermott "really chased it down."

With Qualtrics, McDermott is buying growth in the oh-so-important cloud software market. SAP is best known for its financial software, known to the industry as enterprise resource planning (ERP). It is the world's largest supplier of ERP software, competing with the likes of Oracle.

But SAP is also going head-to-head with just about every other big cloud software player as well, including market and sales software. Qualtrics complements SAP's flagship offerings, the same way that LinkedIn complements Microsoft's customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.

Qualtrics is itself the leader in online market research software. And it has been repositioning itself into a new market that Smith has dubbed "experience management." By that, he means helping companies get a complete world of their perception and performance, as seen by customers, employees, partners, and anyone else whose opinion matters for your business.

McDermott says of the Qualtrics deal that "this is the No. 1 most transformative thing I've ever been involved in."

He explained the premium price tag in a more practical matter, too. "This is less of a multiple than others in the industry have done, but it's the largest as far as the growth that we could realize from it. We'd have to do a whole lot of tuck-ins to do what we have one in one move here."

He is, perhaps, referring to the surprise huge acquisition in the enterprise software world of IBM's blockbuster planned purchase of Red Hat for $34 billion. Pound-for-pound, it definitely seems that SAP is paying less than IBM did to achieve growth of its own.

SAP, the German database giant, has announced an $8 billion all-cash deal to acquire Utah-based Qualtrics, a startup last privately valued at $2.5 billion.

Notably, Qualtrics was scheduled to hold its IPO this week — an offering that could have valued the company at more than $5 billion right out of the gate, according to the company's most recent filings. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2019.

Qualtrics specializes in what it calls experience management, or XM, providing tools to help companies gather feedback and optimize their products.

After the close of the deal, Qualtrics will maintain its existing headquarters in Seattle, Washington, and Provo, Utah. Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith will continue in his role, as well.

Qualtrics is something of an anomaly in the world of high-flying tech startups: Founded in 2002 by Smith and his father — a professor of marketing at Brigham Young University — the company didn't accept any venture funding until it had been in business for a decade. Qualtrics had raised $400 million in total venture capital funding from investors including Accel and Sequoia Capital.

Over the years, the younger Smith has earned a reputation for an eccentric brand of generosity. At one point, Qualtrics paid to sponsor the Utah Jazz, its local NBA team, and had them wear a patch promoting its "5 for the Fight" cancer research charity. At another point, the company loaned a customer a Tesla Model X.

This deal comes shortly after IBM announced its intent to purchase open source software provider Red Hat for $34 billion. Microsoft, too, just closed its $7.5 billion acquisition of code sharing service GitHub, making this a banner year for M&A action in the business-to-business tech sector.

In July 2017, Wall Street analyst Brian Wieser made headlines with a controversial call: Sell Facebook's stock.

The Silicon Valley tech giant was riding high, with its share price at around $166 and steadily climbing. But Wieser believed the stock was really only worth $140 a share and he urged investors to sell.

In subsequent months, Facebook's stock kept climbing, ultimately hitting all-time highs of more than $210 a share. But it has since plummeted — battered by successive scandals and profit warnings, and it now hovers at just $140.46, a whisker away from the analyst's target.

And Wieser, meanwhile, has set his sights even lower — with a new price target of $131.

As Facebook prepares to report its third quarter financial results on Tuesday, Business Insider caught up with Wieser over the phone to talk about why he has long bucked the consensus view on Facebook, how he views company leadership, and what's next for the company after its chain of scandals.

Even today, he remains a rare dissenting voice on Facebook's prospects. Of the roughly 50 financial analysts that cover Facebook, Wieser is one of only three who do not recommend buying or holding the stock.

"They've got problems that are clearly illustrative of a company who has been putting people in place who don't know what they're doing," he bluntly said.

Wieser's argument is simple: There's not much room left to grow

Wieser is based in Portland, Oregon, and is famous in advertising circles for his ability to hold forth, rapidly and at length. Ad Age once described him as "the most-quoted man in advertising."

He got his start at Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank, back in the pre-financial crash days, before joining Magna Global in 2003 as its global director of forecasting — an experience he describes as "[spending] eight years doing what could be considered to be an extended PhD on global advertising." He then had a brief stint at Simulmedia — before joining Pivotal Research Group, covering all things advertising for the last seven years.

The key part of Wieser's anti-Facebook thesis is simple: The advertising industry is finite, and there's not much room left to grow. That's not to say Facebook's business is fatally flawed, by any means — but that investors' expectations of continual, runaway growth aren't in line with what's actually possible.

"The global advertising economy is only so big," he said. "The emergence of digital advertising has not changed the trajectory of the global advertising market, and to have a view that Facebook and Google could continue their growth beyond a certain level is to presuppose you can change the overall industry trajectory."

He added: "The math is really simple, that unless you believe that Facebook is going to crush Google, and Google is going to evaporate, Facebook only has so much growth."

And that's before you get into all of Facebook's other woes.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO and chairman. Reuters

Facebook's scandals aren't helping matters

Facebook, it's safe to say, has not had a good year. The company has lurched from one scandal to another. One moment it acknowledges that Cambridge Analytica misappropriated more than 80 million users data; the next, the company's core app is accused of fueling genocide in Myanmar.

To Wieser, this is all evidence that something is deeply wrong at the company — and that's bad for business.

"It's pretty obviously systemic to the outside observer ... there's been a dozen other things, a taxonomy of mismanagement. It's very clear that the company badly managed ... they can grow even if it's badly managed, but it introduces a ton of extra risk, and the cost to clean up those problems is greater than investors appreciate."

The analyst pointed to a ProPublica investigation that found Facebook's advertising tool allowed ad-sellers to exclude users based on race, in apparent violation of federal law. (The Department of Housing and Urban Development is now taking legal action against Facebook.)

"How do you have a product manager responsible for a vertical who's not aware of the relevant laws?" Wieser asked. "In what other industry does that emerge? It just goes on and on, where they've got problems that are clearly illustrative of a company who's been putting people in place who don't know what they're doing — or at least they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing in a mature, responsible company."

He was equally scathing about Facebook's failure to manage how developers handled user data — which led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. "The partner apps development issue, where they didn't know where the data was going, is not that far removed, in some ways, from an administration knowing where incarcerated children are if they've been separated at the border."

"You're kinda supposed to keep track of this stuff! Again, whose responsible for it? ... Maybe it is possible that [COO Sheryl] Sandberg and [CEO Mark] Zuckerberg were failed by their minions, but when it happens so often it's hard not to pin the blame at the top."

A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment.

Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg Drew Angerer/Getty Images

'Some kind of change seems inevitable'

Wieser defers to his rivals when asked why his sentiment is so contrarian, saying he never speaks to other analysts about his work: "I can only tell you, it's like I'm the only person who's been studying gravity and now I'm going to explain why apples fall to earth, and everyone else is going to assume, 'no, they go up the other way!' You'd have to ask them why they think that."

And what does he think lies ahead for Facebook in the next two years? "There's going to be continuing headline miss, I think there's continuing deceleration of revenue growth, I think costs may be higher than most expect ... they're still the number two after Google by far."

But, he said, the fall-out from Facebook's struggles may extend even further. "I think the consequences of mismanagement will play out in some form ... I do think the board of directors will have encouraged, if not imposed, some kind of changes. Whether that's Zuckerberg not chairman and CEO, whether that's a new CEO, whether Sandberg is sidelined in some way, some kind of change seems inevitable. I don't know what that will be specifically though."

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There are two types of people who should buy a Home Hub: those who have a maxed-out smart home, and those who don't yet own a single smart-home device.

My reasoning with the former category is that the idea of the Home Hub is to take the hardest thing about setting up and maintaining a smart home — the countless individual apps you need to control everything — and put it in one easy-to-use location. Being able to watch a live feed from your security camera, or tapping the screen to control the lights, would be a game-changer.

On the other end of the spectrum are people embarking on their first smart-home product, or their first device with a smart assistant. The Home Hub is great for that too, because it acts as a jumping-off point: You can start with the hub, then add other devices as you go. And if you learn how to use a smart speaker on the Home Hub, adding a Google Home Mini or Home Max down the line will be that much easier.

I fall somewhere in the middle, and because of that, the Home Hub felt like a bit of an extravagance. I felt as if I were able to use only 50% of its capacity and that a lot of its potential use cases were wasted on me.

But I can't deny that the Home Hub made me happy on a daily basis, thanks to the Google Photos ambient mode, the on-screen weather, calendar, and traffic, and the additional nifty features, like the auto-dimming display. I even noticed that when I had a reservation at an Italian restaurant, Google Assistant adopted an Italian accent to tell me the details.

For all that, $150 doesn't seem like too big a price to pay.

Note: All the photos in this review were shot with the Google Pixel 3.

From Intel to Google, sexual-misconduct scandals have unseated powerful executives in the past year and caused a lot of pain to many people.

Such scandals can be particularly problematic in the mergers-and-acquisitions space, where buyers take on risks financially and in reputation — sometimes without having all the information before signing the deal.

Executives are often seen as an asset to a company, so if one gets pushed out for misconduct, that devalues the acquisition. Past misconduct and potential future misbehavior open the new owner up to risks of legal action and expensive payouts.

Read more: Almost 17,000 Googlers walked out to protest of sexual misconduct at the company

Despite this, legal protections for buyers seem to be rare.

Less than one-third of executives surveyed by the business law firm Dykema said they had been involved in a deal with a so-called Weinstein misconduct clause.

Dykema described a Weinstein misconduct clause — named for the Hollywood film producer whose alleged misconduct was reported widely last year — as legally binding assurances for a company's leaders that effectively certify for the buyer that they haven't been accused of sexual harassment or misconduct.

Only 28% of the 203 US-based senior executives surveyed said they had been involved in an M&A deal where a misconduct clause was proposed, "suggesting that the #MeToo movement may not have yet reached middle-market M&A to a substantial degree," the report said.

Of the respondents who said they had participated in deals with such a clause, about nine out of 10 said they had a "knowledge qualifier," holding the sellers liable only if they didn't disclose misconduct known to the company.

Whether these clauses will grow in popularity remains to be seen, but it is clear that sexual misconduct will continue to be a factor in corporate M&A.

On Thursday, Business Insider reported on allegations of sexual assault against the former CEO of Apttus, who left the company just two months before the private-equity firm Thoma Bravo acquired a majority stake in the startup.

Roku's investors may not have been pleased with the company's third-quarter earnings report, but CEO Anthony Wood insists that everything's going just fine.

The streaming media device maker's results beat Wall Street's expectations on the top and bottom lines. But investors found the results disappointing nonetheless, sending Roku's stock down 12% in after-hours exchanges Wednesday.

Potentially feeding shareholder worries: Roku projected that its bottom line in the holiday quarter won't be as robust as analysts were hoping, and it revealed that the growth rate of its platform business, which includes its fast-growing advertising sales, slowed considerably in the third quarter.

"We had a great quarter," CEO Anthony Wood insisted in an interview with Business Insider. He continued: "We're very happy with how things are going."

Investors weren't, though. In recent after-hours trading, Roku's shares were down $7.45, or 12.66%, to $51.41. Earlier in the session, they were off as much as 13%.

Wood had much to crow about

From one vantage point, he and his colleagues had plenty of reason to be pleased with results. Roku posted $173.4 million in sales in the period, up 39% from the third quarter last year and above Wall Street's forecast of $170.4 million in revenue.

For the period, the company posted a loss of $9.5 million, or 9 cents a share. In the same period a year earlier, it lost $46.2 million, or $8.79 a share, although that figure was swelled by a one-time stock-related charge. Regardless, its results in the third quarter bested analysts estimates; they were expecting a loss of 12 cents a share.

And the core parts of Roku's business continued to post healthy growth. The company now has 23.8 million active customer accounts, which was up 43% from the year-ago quarter and up 8% from the second quarter this year. Its platform revenue, which includes advertising sales and the money it makes from licensing its software to television makers, grew 74% from last year's third quarter, and its revenue from video ads grew by more than 100%.

"Our ad business is firing on all cylinders," Wood said.

But looked at another way, the company gave investors and analysts reason for concern. Take its outlook. The company expects its bottom line in the fourth quarter to be anywhere from a loss of $4 million to a profit of $3 million on sales ranging from $255 million to $265 million. That forecast implies a bottom line ranging from a loss of about 4 cents a share to a profit of about 3 cents a share.

Analysts had forecast better results, at least on the bottom line. Prior to the report, they had projected that Roku would earn 5 cents a share in the holiday quarter on sales of $258.9 million.

But Roku's growth rates are slowing

Meanwhile, even the company's standout results for the third quarter included some data points that likely raised eyebrows. While impressive, the company's platform growth rate slowed markedly in the quarter and has been on a consistent downward trend. In the second quarter, that segment grew at a 96% annual rate. In the three prior quarters, it grew by more than 100%.

Similarly, the growth in the company's number of active accounts also slowed down, although not as dramatically. The 43% growth accounts was the slowest pace since Roku became a public company last year.

Meanwhile, its costs jumped significantly in the period. Its operating expenses were up 57% to 90.7 million, far outpacing its revenue growth.

Roku faces growing competition from Amazon, which not only sells rival streaming media boxes but also reportedly has an ad-supported streaming video channel in the works that would rival the Roku Channel. Like Roku, Amazon has started to license the operating system that underlies its media boxes to smart TV makers, signing a deal this summer with Best Buy to have it included on Best Buy's Insignia television line.

Read this: Amazon's got its eyes set on yet another market — and one high-flying upstart should be worried

The company also potentially faces new rivals such as Comcast, which has its own streaming media box in the works for its broadband customers, according to CNBC.

Wood sees advertisers as a bigger challenge than Amazon

But Wood said the bigger challenge for Roku is convincing advertisers to spend their dollars with it. The portion of advertisers' video ad budgets that's going to Roku trails the amount of time that consumers are spending on its platform, he said.

"That's a way bigger issue than our competition," he said.

And Wood isn't worried about Amazon's deal with Best Buy. That's an exclusive relationship; those TVs can't be sold outside of Best Buy, he said. By contrast, smart TVs running Roku's operating system can be sold anywhere. On top of that, the company expect Best Buy itself to carry more Roku TVs this holiday season than it did a year ago.

"Our smart TV business is going great," he said. "We're super-happy with that program."

Roku's shares closed regular trading on Wednesday up $3.24, or 5.8%, $58.86.

Now read:

Fox News reportedly made the "conscious decision" to refrain from tweeting following a protest that erupted on Fox News host Tucker Carlson's doorstep on Wednesday night.

Around a dozen protesters aligned with the self-described anti-fascist group "Smash Racism DC" showed up at Carlson's home in Washington, DC, nearly two hours before the opinion-show host's 8 p.m. program on Fox News. While some of the demonstrators chanted slogans on the street in front of Carlson's home, at least one showed up at his doorstep.

Carlson, who was at work at the time, claimed that his wife was home when a protester allegedly threw "himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door," according to The Washington Post. Police reportedly confirmed that members of the group also spray-painted an anarchy symbol on the driveway, and left signs on vehicles.

A source at Fox News explained that the protests at Carlson's home, which Carlson described as "a threat," was the reason the company has refrained from tweeting for more than 24 hours as of Friday, according to a Mediaite report.

Regis Duvignau/Reuters

Another Fox News source cited by a Tribune Media content manager Scott Gustin reportedly said the decision not to tweet came from "the highest level" of the company.

The hiatus is said to be a protest of Twitter's response to complaints that users were posting Carlson's home address online.

Twitter's technical support function is believed to have advised the news organization to submit a ticket request and did not delete tweets containing Carlson's address, Gustin said.

Facebook, which Fox News continues to publish stories from, reportedly responded promptly after being alerted.

It is unclear when Fox News will begin tweeting again, but Gustin's source reportedly explained that the company will continue its self-imposed exile until Twitter apologizes and removes the offending tweets.

Twitter and other social media companies have been criticized for not acting more decisively in regulating user content. Critics have alleged that unregulated content from fringe political groups and users promotes fake news, hate speech, or other harmful messages.

Fox News representatives declined to comment to Business Insider on the record. Twitter did not respond to numerous requests for comment as of Friday night.

Read more: Twitter dropped the hammer on Alex Jones and permanently kicked him off its service

Videos of the demonstration at Carlson's home were uploaded on the group's Twitter account but were later deleted.

"Racist scumbag, leave town," the protesters chanted in the video.

"We want you to know, we know where you sleep at night," a protestors said on a loudspeaker. "Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!"

Journalists and media personalities from other networks have widely condemned the protest.

Fox News

"Fighting Tucker Carlson's ideas is an American right," comedian Stephen Colbert tweeted on Thursday. "Targeting his home and terrorizing his family is an act of monstrous cowardice. Obviously don't do this, but also, take no pleasure in it happening. Feeding monsters just makes more monsters."

Fox News' CEO Suzanne Scott and president Jay Wallace reportedly issued a joint statement denouncing the protest.

"The incident that took place at Tucker's home last night was reprehensible," the two executives said. "The violent threats and intimidation tactics toward him and his family are completely unacceptable. We as a nation have become far too intolerant of different points of view."

"Recent events across our country clearly highlight the need for a more civil, respectful, and inclusive national conversation," they added. "Those of us in the media and in politics bear a special obligation to all Americans, to find common ground."

The same group confronted Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and his wife at a DC restaurant in October, amid the fallout from Justice Brett Kavanaugh's contentious confirmation hearings.

Carlson did not appear for his nightly program on Friday. Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade stood in for him instead.

"For every masked lunatic in front of my house, there have been a hundred people, some of whom I don't agree with politically, calling or sending texts of support and kindness," Carlson said to Kilmeade during a phone interview.

"And it's just a reminder of what a really nice country it is."

On Friday, Apple announced that two of its products — the iPhone X and the 13-inch MacBook Pro (non Touch Bar) — have known hardware issues. Bloomberg first reported on these issues after being posted on Apple's support pages on Friday.

Apple said that on some iPhone X devices, display screens are experiencing touch issues. Those issues include:

The company said users with eligible iPhone X devices can have their display modules replaced for free at one of its retail stores or an Apple Authorized Service Provider.

According to the Bloomberg report, iPhone X users had been complaining about touch issues online for months. Also, interestingly, the iPhone X was on the market for less than one year after being discontinued in September following the release of the iPhone XS and iPhone XR.

A similar touchscreen issue crept up in 2016 with the iPhone 6 Plus. To repair the problem back then, however, Apple charged it's customers $149.

Read more:Apple just announced it will fix iPhones with Touch Disease for $149

Apple also confirmed that its 13-inch MacBook Pro (non Touch Bar) sold between June 2017 and June 2018 might have an issue that causes data loss or drive failure.

The company said affected laptops could be serviced at one of its retail locations or an Apple Authorized Service Provider for free as well. To know if your MacBook Pro needs to be serviced, you'll need to enter your device's serial number on Apple's support page.

Apple did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

After San Franciscans voted "yes" on the hotly debated homelessness measure called "Prop C," Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson announced that his company will commit $1 million to support homelessness programs.

Leading up to the election, the cloud communications company did not take a position on Proposition C. However, other tech giants in the city were especially vocal -- notably Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff who advocated for Prop C, and Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, who spoke out against it.

"As we thought about it, there were so much attack, so much personal attacks," Lawson told Business Insider. "To me, the biggest positive outcome [of Prop C] is kicking action on homelessness to the top of the leaders of the city's mind. Obviously we see the problem but there wasn't a lot of action on it."

Lawson announced Twilio's commitment Thursday night at an event where he was honored as one of San Francisco Business Times' Most Admired CEOs. Earlier in the week, Lawson watched Twilio's stock soar 35% after delivering blockbuster quarterly financial results.

On Tuesday night, Prop C won 60 percent among San Francisco voters. But the measure is likely to face legal challenges in the coming months, so Lawson says he wants to make help contribute to the cause right now.

"Let's get it done," Lawson said. "Our thinking is how can we start funding initiatives that get the process for Prop C started? If there's a challenge before funds can be deployed, why don't we start now?"

Twilio didn't take a position on Prop C ahead of the election because it didn't "feel like our voice would add anything." But now that it's passed and with legal challenges likely to come, business leaders can work on tackling this problem now, Lawson says.

Right now, there's a legal dispute in the city on a measure to raise taxes on commercial rents to pay for child care services and early education, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. A coalition of commercial property owners sued the city in August, saying that a simple majority vote is not enough to pass this measure and it violates state law — instead, it should be a two-thirds majority, they said.

This could also potentially affect Prop C, so the city won't spend the money until this legal dispute is resolved. The massive flow of cash from this measure — $300 million a year — for homelessness programs may sit on reserve for years.

Read more:Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on his Twitter beef with Jack Dorsey: You're either 'for the homeless' or 'you're for yourself'

Lawson hopes to get other business leaders on board.

"After this election, we've come together to say we're going to address the homelessness crisis," Lawson told Business Insider. "As I was thinking about it, this issue tore apart our cities in a lot of ways. This was a difficult proposition. It's time to come together."

Although the company hasn't decided exactly where the donation will go, Twilio.org, Twilio's social impact arm, is currently evaluating options and will provide updates in the following weeks.

"We've seen several organizations in San Francisco fighting homelessness," Erin Reilly, VP of Social Impact at Twilio, told Business Insider. "We are looking at how we can support with technology, funding, and time and help folks who live in the city. Now is the time we're coming together to fight homelessness."

Below is Lawson's Tweet about Twilio's commitment.

Facebook has cloned another popular social app. And it's called Lasso.

The world's largest social network is essentially re-creating its own version of TikTok, the 15-second video app that's become increasingly popular in the US. In September, TikTok was the most downloaded social app in the US.

Read more: A viral video app you've probably never heard of had more downloads in September than Facebook, YouTube, or Snapchat

Facebook's Lasso functions almost exactly the same as TikTok. Videos are capped at 15 seconds, and users can add their favorite tunes to play in the background. Facebook told Business Insider that users will be able to choose from millions of songs in its licensed catalog.

New videos are seemingly endless — just swipe up for more content to be served your way. As The Atlantic's Tayor Lorenz pointed out on Twitter, it appears that Facebook seeded content on Lasso with videos that were already on TikTok.

Reports of Lasso's creation were leaked by TechCrunch two weeks ago.

"It's basically TikTok/Musically," a source told TechCrunch in the report. "It's full-screen, built for teens, fun and funny and focused on creation."

The rollout of Lasso on Friday was quiet, with no official statement from the company on its website. When asked about the new release by Business Insider, a Facebook spokesperson said: "We're excited about the potential here, and we'll be gathering feedback from people and creators."

Though Facebook seems to be playing it cool with the Lasso release, the company knows what's at stake. TikTok's fun layout and interactions have attracted the attention of a young demographic and as of June, the company said it had 500 million users worldwide.

Facebook is no stranger to cloning an app to kick out an incumbent.

Instagram Stories notoriously copied the ephemeral nature of Snapchat, and by June of this year, it had twice as many users (400 million). Interestingly, Facebook had launched its original Snapchat killer — a standalone app called Slingshot— in June of 2014. By December 2015, however, Slingshot was no longer available in the App Store.

With the release of Lasso, the short-form video space is heating up. Just yesterday, Vine founder, Dom Hofmann, announced that his new 6.5-second looping video platform, byte, will launch in spring 2019.

The Camp Fire in northern California has spread so fast that five people were killed in their cars as flames overtook the vehicles. The blaze destroyed the entire town of Paradise, California, and has burned 70,000 acres in less than two days. As of Friday morning, it was just 5% contained.

In the southern part of the state, meanwhile, areas of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties have been ordered to evacuate as flames from two fires threaten homes in Malibu, parts of Topanga, and Thousand Oaks (the same city where a gunman killed 12 people on Wednesday).

A firefighter battles the Woolsey Fire in Malibu, California, Friday, November 9, 2018. AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu

The blazes add to the immense tally of destruction in what was already a record-breaking year of fires in California. In July and August, the Mendocino Complex Fire burned nearly 460,000 acres, making it the state's biggest wildfire ever.

According to an analysis from the nonprofit Climate Nexus, all of these large blazes are part of an unmistakable trend: 12 of the 15 biggest fires in California's history have occurred since the year 2000.

Shayanne Gal/Business Insider

Between 1930 and 1999, there were only six fires that burned over 100,000 acres in California, according to Climate Nexus.

The chart above ranks fires by acres burned, but when comparing the costs of wildfires, California's October 2017 fires rank at the top. Those blazes scorched grapevines across the state's wine country and triggered over $9 billion in losses.

Larger blazes also mean an increase in fire-related expenditures. Climate Nexus calculated that in the 2017 fiscal year (which ended in October), California's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spent a total of $505 million fighting fires. Twenty years ago, in 1997, the state spent only $47 million.

Because of rising temperatures and more drought, the average wildfire season now lasts at least 2 1/2 months longer than it did in the early 1970s. The amount of land that has burned in the western US since 1984 is double what would have been expected without the effects of climate change.

Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown called the wildfires a "new normal" for California.

"This could be something that happens every year or every few years," Brown said, per the Los Angeles Times.

The Carr Fire leveled homes in Redding, California, on July 28, 2018. AP Photo/Noah Berger

Indeed, California's 2018 Climate Change Assessment report estimates that the average area burned in wildfires will increase 77% by 2100 in a business-as-usual scenario (as in, if nothing is done to dramatically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions).

Although wildfires in the states used to be considered a seasonal risk — due to the state's rain-less summer and fall and strong Santa Anna winds — that is no longer the case.

"Fire season is now year-round," Los Angeles County's official website says.

Amazon is facing a surge of customer complaints over delayed deliveries.

"Why is @amazonprimenow all of a sudden taking 10 days?" Michelle Hennessy tweeted on Friday. "I pay for the subscription for guaranteed 2 days. This sucks..."

Another person tweeted Friday: "Is it me or is @amazon Prime starting to slip in this whole 2 day delivery guarantee?"

Amazon tweeted that the delays could be tied to severe weather that hit one of its sortation centers in Baltimore a week ago. A tornado in the area caused a 50-foot wall in the 4-year-old building to collapse, killing two workers.

"Severe weather caused damage to a sortation center on Friday evening," the company tweeted in response to several customer complaints. "Deliveries associated with this facility are experiencing delays. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to quickly resolve this issue!"

The company has also been clarifying its two-day shipping promise in response to unhappy customers.

Many customers believe Prime's two-day shipping promise means they will get their delivery in two days from the time of ordering.

But the two-day window doesn't begin until the package is handed to the shipping carrier, Amazon says.

This is a commonly misunderstood tenet of Amazon Prime's two-day shipping offer.

"Prime Two-Day Shipping refers to the transit time, in business days, once the item has shipped," the company tweeted Friday to several customers.

Crystal City, Virginia, has emerged as one of the top contenders for the site of Amazon's so-called HQ2 headquarters — and now that Amazon is competing for a $10 billion cloud contract with the Department of Defense, it's a "well-timed move," analysts say.

The contract, called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, is a 10-year deal that will be awarded to a single company to move the Pentagon's data onto a cloud. Bids for this massive contract closed in October, but now that bids are being reviewed, investors in Microsoft and Amazon should pay attention, say analysts at financial firm Wedbush Securities.

"Let's just put it this way. I don't think the timing of Amazon moving its headquarters near DC is coincidental," Daniel Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, told Business Insider.

It's really a two-horse race for the contract, and while Amazon has been seen as the frontrunner, Microsoft has put in significant effort in the past year to narrow the race. And the implications go beyond the deal itself — it could completely transform the cloud industry, especially if Microsoft wins. An award is expected in April 2019.

This is the biggest government cloud deal ever, but winning JEDI has a domino effect. Whoever wins this contract will be well-positioned to win future government contracts — analysts reckon that there's $20 billion in cloud spending up for grabs from the government.

Plus, there's a stamp of credibility — it would be hard for enterprise customers to turn down a cloud company that was selected by the federal government itself.

"Many investors have underappreciated the ripple effect of whoever gets JEDI," Ives said. "Whoever gets JEDI, it's not just about the $10 billion over the last decade. There would not be a better mark of credibility than to get this deal. Investors are trying to understand, is it just an Amazon, or does Microsoft have a shot to win JEDI from the grips of [Amazon CEO Jeff] Bezos?"

That could be why Amazon is considering moving its headquarters to Virginia, analysts say. With a base of operations near Washington, DC, Amazon could boost its presence in federal circles.

Microsoft has an office in Washington, DC, as well, but if Amazon builds HQ2 in Crystal City, its massive campus with 25,000 employees would easily dwarf Microsoft.

"As Amazon looks to have their employees in the shadow of the Pentagon, JEDI is a big component of how they will build out their presence within the beltway," Ives said. "To have a headquarters in and around the beltway shows that Amazon is significantly focused on their federal presence."

Read more: As bidding closes, Amazon's cloud is the favorite to win a $10 billion defense deal. Here's why everybody else is so mad about it

Still, Microsoft has invested significant amounts of money, time and effort into its government cloud, certifications, and security for classified documents. If Microsoft wins, it would be a "crowning achievement" for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

"It would have a significant ripple effect for cloud," Ives said. "With DOD going to cloud with Microsoft, it's hard to argue with that sales pitch."

Jeff Bezos. AP

And politics could be a small factor, too. It's no secret that President Donald Trump and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos aren't on the best terms, so in addition to investment in its Azure government cloud, this is where Microsoft could swoop in.

And unlike the hesitation from Google to work with the military, Microsoft is all in, saying it will sell artificial-intelligence technologies to the Pentagon.

"It's no secret about Trump and Bezos. I don't expect them to be going on vacation together," Ives said. "For Bezos and Amazon to own the cloud at DOD as the sole victor, within the beltway, there's a lot of views that would not like to see Amazon as the sole winner. There's definitely a complex political environment."

Either way, cloud investors should keep an eye on the JEDI deal.

"For any investor in the cloud space, it should be on their radar," Ives said. "It's the ripple effect it could have on the cloud landscape."

Following is a transcript of the video.

This is not your typical football helmet. VICIS ZERO1 looks like a standard helmet on the outside. But when it hits something, it reacts much differently. Its innovative design is protecting football players' heads. Here's how it works.

When hit, hard-shelled helmets stay rigid. When ZERO1 is hit, it morphs its shape. This allows it to absorb more force from a blow. The secret?

Lots of separate columns of padding inside the helmet. When pressure is applied, they deform and absorb the pressure. Multiple layers work together to slow impact forces. This keeps the head protected from multiple forces. The ZERO1 has a softer outer shell than a normal helmet. This slows impact forces before they reach the head and brain. ZERO1 also offers a wider field of view than traditional helmets.

The ZERO1 ranked first in the NFL/NFLPA 2017 helmet laboratory performance testing. The goal of the test was to "determine which helmet reduced head impact severity." The outer shell takes a collision like a car bumper. The helmet costs $950.

The ZERO1 was worn by over 60 NFL players in 2017. Including Russell Wilson, Alex Smith, Doug Baldwin, Golden Tate, and Lamar Miller. ZERO1 was also worn by players on over 20 NCAA programs in 2017. Teams included Alabama, Georgia, Florida State, and Texas A&M. Notre Dame has announced it will give its entire roster a ZERO1 helmet in the upcoming season. Time will tell if more players adopt the ZERO1.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published on February 5, 2018.

Ring video doorbells give homeowners peace of mind about who's at their door, whether they're at home or not.

Until November 12, you can save some money on one of the company's best models — get $60 off the Ring Video Doorbell 2 at Best Buy and Amazon, and get a free 2nd-generation Echo Dot too, all for $140.

The Ring Video Doorbell 2 is still the best smart doorbell the company makes, in our opinion, mainly because it doesn't have to be hard-wired into your home in order to work properly. It can be hard-wired, to be sure, but it also has a battery pack and works with the Ring Chime so you can use it wirelessly. That's a godsend for people who rent or are unable to hard wire a doorbell on their property.

Apart from the great wireless option, the Ring Video Doorbell 2 boasts a 1080p camera with two-way audio, so you can talk to people at your door even if you're not home. The camera also has motion tracking, and you can set motion zones so that it doesn't send notifications every time someone walks past your house.

There are a few downsides to the Ring doorbell, of course. Like many of the other smart doorbells in our buying guide to the best doorbells, there's no free video storage, so you have to pay to access it. Plus, the unit is a little bulky.

Still, in general, most reviewers argue that it's among the best smart doorbells out there.

Buy the Ring Video Doorbell 2 for $60 off at Amazon or Best Buy. Also get a free Echo Dot.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published on July 24, 2017.

A Utah-based hacker who targeted several of the big gaming networks, including PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, temporarily knocking them offline and boasting about it, is facing a 10-year jail sentence.

Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks intentionally flood the target's servers with more traffic than they can handle, preventing access for regular users and possibly forcing the service offline.

Netflix wants to keep its powerhouse directors happy going into Oscar season, but one of the first theatrical runs for its original movies with a big name helmer has hit a snag.

Alamo Drafthouse, one of the most prominent independently owned movie chains in the US, will not be showing Netflix's Oscar contender, "Roma," a source close to negotiations between the chain and streaming giant told Business Insider. A source close to Netflix confirmed that Alamo Drafthouse had passed on the movie.

At the end of October, Netflix began to dramatically change course on how it released Oscar-contending movies. Reports surfaced that for the first time Netflix would stop its "day-and-date" model — in which the movie premieres in theaters and on Netflix the same day — and give exclusive theatrical runs of around 1-3 weeks for not just Alfonso Cuarón's "Roma," but two other of its anticipated movies, the Coen brothers' "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs," and Susanne Bier's "Bird Box" starring Sandra Bullock.

Alamo Drafthouse was one of the reported chains in the mix to show "Roma." But Netflix's terms on how the movie would be released, and how often, led to the popular chain passing on the anticipated title, according to the source.

While "Buster Scruggs" and "Bird Box" are reportedly getting around one-week runs at select theaters before they are available to stream on Netflix, the company wants to pull out all the stops for "Roma," which out of the three has the best chance to win Oscars in the major categories, including best picture.

Along with around a 3-4 week run for the movie, Netflix is specifically looking for theaters that can show the movie with Dolby Atmos sound or in 70mm.

As even four weeks is shorter than the traditional 90-day window that the major chains like AMC, Regal, and Cinemark want movies to be shown in theaters, Netflix knows it cannot go to them. That leaves the streaming giant to depend on the mid-level chains and independently owned arthouses.

Alamo Drafthouse and Netflix had been in discussions for weeks about showing "Roma," specifically at the chain's Brooklyn, New York location, which could show the movie in 70mm. It's one of the only theaters in the city that can pull that off.

Sarah Jacobs Netflix was stringent on its terms, according to the source, which included that "Roma" have a full four-week run with all the screenings show in 70mm. The company also planned to four-wall the theaters, meaning Netflix would be renting the theater from Drafthouse. (It plans to do this at all the locations where the movies will be played.) This is an unconventional move in the industry, where typically the movie theater splits the box office with the distributor.

Though Drafthouse was willing to show "Roma" at its Brooklyn location, it does not four-wall. Also, the 70mm projector at the location is in its biggest auditorium, meaning that for four weeks the movie would take up its prime space, with Drafthouse unable to schedule in any other titles. That's a tough ask in a time of year when every weekend a new big movie is about to hit theaters.

"Just way too many restrictions and guidelines," the source told Business Insider.

"Roma" will now be screened in New York at Manhattan's IFC Center beginning November 21, IFC confirmed to Business Insider. That theater does not have capabilities to show the movie in 70mm.

Alamo Drafthouse is not the only theater, outside of the majors, to pass on the Netflix offer. Business Insider has reached out to multiple arthouses that said they eventually passed on showing "Roma" due to the terms of Netflix. These include some that would have gotten the movie following its exclusive theatrical run, after the movie began streaming on Netflix December 14.

"Terms are not too high, but higher than it should be for a movie that's streaming at the same time," one theater owner told Business Insider.

Other theaters told Business Insider they would love to show the movie but don't have a venue that can accommodate Netflix's terms.

"It's complicated by Netflix's insistence that theaters have Dolby Atmos, an extremely expensive sound system that very few theaters can afford," another theater owner said.