At a market cap of $182 billion, and a position as a pillar of Silicon Valley, it can be hard to believe that the tech giant Oracle struggled financially in its early years. But Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison wants today's startup founders to know that even the successful companies like his went through severe rough patches.

Ellison hosts a cocktail reception to mentor startup founders each year. Last week, he hosted the founders of 22 startups at his San Francisco home — and eWeek was in attendance to report on the advice he gave.

"We were about a week away from not being able to make payroll," Ellison told the crowd of his early days at Oracle, as eWeek reports. At the time, Oracle had to wait about three months between the time it officially made an agreement with its first database client, and when it finally got the check. That client, incidentally, was the CIA.

While Ellison and other engineers at Oracle were building its first databases, Oracle was still short on money. It had to make extra money through consulting and technology development for other Silicon Valley companies. Oracle is known as the inventor of the modern database, but originally, consulting paid the bills. As the consulting business made money, Ellison was able to task more people to building that first database.

The lesson, Ellison said, is to balance doing whatever it takes to pay the bills with whatever it is that you actually want to do.

Fast forwarding to today: After over 40 years, Oracle still remains a major player in the Silicon Valley today, competing in the cloud space with Amazon, Microsoft, Google and more. The key to Oracle's continued relevance, Ellison told the founders in attendance, was not to stay stuck in old ways.

"The old solution to customers' problems may no longer be the best solution. When you see that, it's an opportunity—or a threat," Ellison said, according to eWeek. "It's our job as founders and developers to constantly change our companies based on technology available today that wasn't available yesterday."

In recent years, Oracle has been focusing on its autonomous, AI-powered database, and last week, Ellison announced the Oracle Generation 2 Cloud at the OpenWorld conference.

Read the full eWeek report here>>

There's new reason not to trust the "paid for by" disclaimer on the political ads you see on Facebook.

Facebook approved 100 fake political ad disclaimers that claimed to be paid for by every US senator, submitted by Vice News as part of an experiment. The social network began using the "paid for by" disclaimer in May, as a way to boost transparency in political advertising ahead of November's general election.

Notably, with this experiment, Vice News didn't actually get approval for fake ads. Instead — and this is an important distinction— it got approval to say that any political ads that it ran were "paid for by" Senator Mitch McConnell or any of his 99 colleagues in the Senate.

Facebook told Business Insider that the process for submitting ads and submitting ad disclosures are separate, and Vice only submitted fake ad disclosures. The approved disclosures would have allowed Vice to attach a "paid for by" message to any advertisements that it might have placed, should that ad pass muster and get approval.

To submit a political ad disclosure on Facebook, the social network requires a photo ID, the name of your company, and the last four digits of your social security number, all of which Vice says that it provided.

In general, the "paid for" feature seems vulnerable to bad-faith actors, and this isn't the first time phony ads or disclosures have made it under Facebook's radar. Just a few days earlier, Vice reported that Facebook had approved ads that claimed to be paid for by Vice President Mike Pence, and another by "ISIS," also placed by the news site However, an ad submitted under Hillary Clinton's name was rejected, Vice reports.

Notably, Facebook was quick to reject a fake disclosure "paid for" by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Vice reports.

Facebook told Vice that none of these fake ads and disclosures should have been approved by the system, and that it's working on several initiatives to combat misinformation and phony political ads.

Rob Leathern, Facebook's director of roduct management, shared the following statement with Business Insider:

"When it comes to political and issue advertising on our platform, we believe people on Facebook should know who is behind the ads they're seeing. It's why we've placed more than one million ads in a publicly, searchable Ad Archive. We know we can't do this alone and by housing these ads for up to seven years, people, regulators, third-parties and watchdog groups can hold these groups more accountable. This is also one piece of our broader efforts to bring greater transparency to ads related to politics on FB - an advertiser must also confirm their identity and location in the US before placing these ads."

Read the full Vice News report here>>

Facebook's revenue came in lighter than expected during the third quarter, but Wall Street breathed a big sigh of relief that users in the US did not flee the social network in droves after a string of scandals.

Facebook's daily users in the US — its most valuable market — flatlined at 185 million during the three months ended September 30, the same level as at the end of Q2.

Not long ago such a lack of growth would have been considered a big cause for concern among Facebook investors. But in a sign of how low the expectations have become, investors celebrated the fact a feared user exodus did not materialize.

Facebook's share price see-sawed wildly in extended trading on Tuesday, dipping as much as 6% and climing around 5%. As of writing, it sits around 3.6% up from its Tuesday close.

On a conference call with analysts, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked broadly about Facebook's strategy, positioning its current challenges as part of a generational shift akin to its shift from desktop to mobile years earlier. This time around, Facebook is shifting from "Feeds"-based products to "Stories" — ephemeral photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours.

"All of the trends we've seen suggest that in the not-too-distant future, people will be sharing more into Stories than they will into Feeds," Zuckerberg said. "It's one of the situations where the community growth we're seeing is outpacing the progress we've made so fr with developing the ads for that space."

Facebook's stock fluctuations on October 30, 2018, as it announced its Q3 2018 financial results. Yahoo Finance

The company, once loved by Wall Street for consistently outperforming, turned in a Q3 report that had a few blemishes.

Revenue grew 33% year-over-year to $13.7 billion, but fell short of the average analyst expectation of $13.8 billion. The company says foreign exchange headwinds totalled $159 million — more than enough to cover the amount Facebook missed revenue expectations by.

Facebook's operating profit margin fell to its lowest level in six quarters, at 42%. At this time last year, its operating margin was 50%.

Although earnings per share comfortably beat Street estimates — $1.76 versus $1.47 expected — Facebook noted that it benefitted from a lower than expected tax rate. The stock initially dropped more than 5% after Facebook published the results, before rebounding, and as of writing it hovers at around 1.5% in the green.

Here are the key number via Bloomberg:

Facebook's daily active user numbers for the past nine quarters, broken down by geography. Facebook

Daily Active Users in the US and Canada have now flatlined isnce Q1 2018 at 185 million — but that may come as a relief to investors that the company is not actively shedding users as a result of its tumultuous few months. Facebook is continuing to battle crises and repututional damage from multiple scandals, including Cambridge Analytica and the hack of 30 million users' sensitive data.

The US and European markets are the most important to Facebook's current business, since it can generate more ad revenue from the relatively affluent users in those regions. As the chart below shows, Facebook's average revenue per user in the US and Canada region in Q3 was more than 10 times higher than its average revenue per user in the Asia Pacific region.

Facebook

Most analysts remain optimistic on Facebook, despite its recent travails. Prior to market close, there was a consensus price target of $203.26, according to Bloomberg — up significantly from Tuesday's share price of around $146. The stock's all-time high is around $210.

"We expect Facebook's revenue growth to remain robust, supported by multiple growth drivers," Wedbush analysts wrote in a research note on Friday, ahead of Facebook's Q3 earnings. "The company's unmatched scale and ease of use when it comes to its advertising platform suggest that Facebook will continue to represent a core part of digital advertiser budgets."

The company's stock dropped 20% on its Q2 2018 earnings in July, when it failed to meet analysts expectations and warned that revenue growth rates were going to drop.

Business Insider is covering Facebook's Q3 2018 earnings live. Refresh this page or click here for the latest updates.

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.

The electric vehicle startup Faraday Future is close to running out of money as it forces some workers to take unpaid leave, The Verge reports.

According to the publication, the automaker has halted some operations at its headquarters in Gardena, California, and factory in Hanford, California. Faraday Future CEO Jia Yueting reportedly said in an email to employees that workers who started on or after May 1 of this year will be placed on unpaid leave until the automaker receives new funding. Full-time employees who started before May 1 can continue working on a reduced salary of $50,000 per year and hourly employees who have been working for over six months can choose to remain at Faraday Future for minimum wage, Yueting reportedly said.

A Faraday Future representative confirmed to Business Insider that employees who joined after May 1 must take an unpaid leave of absence, while those who started before May 1 can continue working "at a reduced level of compensation," though the representative did not specify by how much compensation will be reduced. The representative added that the amount of time these changes are in place will depend on a "funding plan that is being vigorously pursued," and said the automaker anticipates the furlough will last through the end of this year.

"This was an extremely tough decision to make, and we recognize the emotional stress and financial strain this puts on people's personal lives. We are grateful to all of the hundreds of employees who are willing to stay and continue to work on the FF 91 core project, as well as those who will be on a temporary furlough," the representative said.

The representative attributed Faraday Future's financial troubles to its dispute with investor Evergrande Health Industry Group, which the automaker says has prevented it from seeking outside funding. The representative added that an arbitrator ruled last week that Faraday Future can now pursue funding from other sources.

Nick Sampson, one of the automaker's founders, reportedly resigned on Tuesday, saying Faraday Future is "effectively insolvent" in an email to employees.

"The company is effectively insolvent in both its financial and personnel assets, it will at best will [sic] limp along for the foreseeable future. I feel that my role in Faraday Future is no long [sic] a path that I can follow, so I will leave the company, effective immediately," Sampson reportedly wrote.

The Faraday Future representative confirmed Sampson's departure.

A Faraday Future representative told Business Insider last week, following a report from The Verge, that it would reduce the wages of hourly and salaried employees by 20% while laying off an undisclosed number of workers. The representative added that Yueting would lower his salary to $1 as some members of the automaker's leadership team decreased their salaries by more than 20%.

Faraday Future was founded in 2014 and has struggled to build its planned FF91 electric SUV amid financial concerns. Faraday Future has faced lawsuits and liens from suppliers who claim they have not been paid, and the first pre-production version of the FF91 caught fire hours after it was shown to employees and their families, according to The Verge.

Yueting, who is also the founder and chairman of the Chinese tech company LeEco, last year had $182 million in assets frozen by the Chinese government because of unfulfilled loan payments.

You can read Faraday Future's full statement below:

We can confirm the recent departures of Peter Savagian, SVP, Global Product and Technology and Nick Sampson, SVP, Product Strategy - we wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.

As you may know, recent actions taken by Evergrande is causing FF to experience extraordinary financial hardship. The investor has intervened in the Company's capital planning and is preventing FF from utilizing our assets, which requires FF to take some very difficult yet necessary actions.

FF received a favorable ruling in its arbitration against Evergrande last week and may now seek funding from other sources, which FF is actively pursuing, although this process will take some time.

During this interim period, FF is requiring certain employees to take an unpaid leave of absence (furlough) for the months of November and December and is offering other employees the option of taking the furlough for the same period of time. Employees who joined FF after May 1 must take a furlough. For those employees who started with FF before May 1, they may continue to work their regular schedule at a reduced level of compensation. All employees will continue to receive healthcare benefits if they previously received benefits from FF.

This was an extremely tough decision to make, and we recognize the emotional stress and financial strain this puts on people's personal lives. We are grateful to all of the hundreds of employees who are willing to stay and continue to work on the FF 91 core project, as well as those who will be on a temporary furlough. In addition, we take our relationship with our suppliers seriously, and we hope to receive support and understanding from our global partners as FF overcomes our difficulties.

FF anticipates the furlough to last through the end of December 2018. However, the actual length of this furlough depends on the funding plan that is being vigorously pursued. We continue to push forward to find additional funding from investors globally as we strive to retain our people and our suppliers.

We take pride in our close-knit community, and we are mindful of the impact these changes will have on our employees and their families. FF was born to disrupt and we are committed to making progress towards our goals, and continuing the necessary investments in our people, our products, technology, and business to develop an industry-leading connected mobility ecosystem without compromising our core values.

Liu Qiangdong, the co-founder and CEO of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, saw his ranking on Forbes' list of China's richest people plummet this week.

Liu, 45, fell from the 16th to 30th place on Forbes' China Rich List, which published this week.

His net worth fell by 34% to $6.2 billion, the magazine said in its analysis.

Shares in his company, JD.com, fell by 25% in the end of August, Forbes said, when Liu was arrested in Minnesota over a rape allegation.

He was briefly detained in Minneapolis, where he was attending a business management course at the University of Minnesota, and was released without charge and given no bail requirement.

Liu's mugshot when he was arrested and detained in Minneapolis this August. Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office via AP

Police completed an investigation into the case for about three weeks and handed it over to prosecutors, Hennepin County's police and attorney's offices separately told Business Insider last week. Prosecutors there did not give a timeline for when they will make a decision on whether or not to charge Liu.

So far, he has not been charged with any crime.

Liu faces a first-degree felony if he is charged with the crime. If charged and convicted he could be sentenced to a maximum of 30 years in prison.

JD.com has strongly denied the allegation against Liu, saying that he was falsely accused, and threatening to "take the necessary legal action against false reporting or rumors."

Jill Brisbois, one of his attorneys, told Chinese media late last month that her team doesn't think prosecutors will bring charges. JD.com jumped 5% shortly after Brisbois' remarks were published.

The University of Minnesota, where Liu attended a business management course this year. Ken Wolter/Shutterstock

Liu's arrest likely came as a blow to his reputation. Liu fostered a reputation of being a workaholic and a family man, Reuters reported, citing the billionaire as saying he often works 16-hour days and was proud of his family.

He said this January, according to Reuters: "For my parents I want to be a good son, for my wife a good husband and for my daughter I want to be a good father. I hope that one day when I retire that my workers will all be able to say: 'He was a good guy.'"

Liu celebrating in New York City after JD.com's Nasdaq IPO in May 2014. Andrew Burton/Getty Images

Several other factors are also likely at play in Liu's descent on the rich list.

Chinese stocks have fallen dramatically this year, and the ongoing trade war between China and the US has led to multiple tit-for-tat tariffs and caused sales in both countries to collapse.

JD.com also lost half its value since its peak in January, Forbes said.

Jack Ma, the eccentric CEO of Alibaba, regained his title as the richest man in China with a net worth of $34.6 billion.

Elon Musk may have settled a suit filed against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission, but he's still tilting at federal regulators.

In a long series of tweets on Friday, Tesla's CEO called an investigation into the company by the US Justice Department "total bs" and said that the tweet he posted that led to the SEC charges against him was "worth" the $20 million fine had had to pay to settle them.

He also poked fun at the SEC's mandate as part of his settlement to get him to be more responsible with his tweets.

In response to a tweet from another user suggesting that he had turned over a new leaf, that he was acting the part of running a company that had finally matured, Musk tweeted: "Clearly, you're not reading my twitter."

Musk's tweets have gotten him in trouble before

Musk's tweets in August related to potentially taking Tesla private got him and the company in trouble with the SEC.

In his posts, he stated that he had "funding secured" to take the company private. The SEC later charged that statement and other related ones were false, and that Musk knew they were at the time.

After initially rejecting a settlement offer — and seeing the SEC file civil charges against him — Musk settled the suit. As part of the settlement, Tesla had to pay a $20 million fine to the SEC and agreed to put in place new guidelines to oversee Musk's social media use.

If his tweetstorm was any indication, Musk wasn't the slightest bit chagrined by the settlement, which also will require him to step down as Tesla's CEO.

As part of a back-and-forth on the site with other users about the merits of Twitter and how relatively few followers "like" good tweets, one user asked him what the ratio of likes was for his "funding secured tweet." Musk's two-word response: "Worth it."

Elon Musk/Twitter

Musk said the Justice Department investigation is 'total bs'

But Musk didn't stop there. That evening, The Wall Street Journal published a report saying that the Justice Department is ramping up its investigation into Tesla over whether Musk and the company misled investors over production issues related to its new Model 3 vehicle.

Musk had said as early as February of last year — months before Tesla started making the Model 3 — that the company planned to be manufacturing 5,000 of the vehicles a week by the fourth quarter of 2017, comments he echoed that July. In reality, the company didn't hit that 5,000 vehicle a week target for the first time until the end of June this year.

Commenting on the Journal's article Friday night, Fox Business Network correspondent Charles Gasparino tweeted that proving that Musk and Tesla misled investors would be "really difficult."

"Exactly," Musk responded to Gasparino. "This is total bs."

Musk even seemed to invite a dig through documents via a Freedom of Information Act request in an effort to prove his case.

"The FOIA on this will be solid gold," he tweeted. "Can't wait."

But that wasn't all. Earlier, another Twitter user charged that the substance and timing of the Journal's article was "purely meant to distort [Tesla's] stock and harm investors" and questioned why the SEC wasn't looking into it.

"Good question," Musk responded.

At the end of his tweetstorm, Musk announced he would be "signing off Twitter for a few days."

Now read:

This Halloween, the creepiest event to attend might be a mass online social experiment hosted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

MIT is famous for churning out some of the world's top engineers, programmers, and scientists. But the university's Media Laboratory is increasingly known for launching experimental projects in October that are designed to make us squirm.

In 2016, researchers at the MIT Media Lab created the artificial-intelligence program Nightmare Machine, which converted normal photos into into macabre images. (The results were predictably creepy.) Then in 2017, a researcher made AI software called "Shelley" that learned how to write its own horror stories. (These were also creepy.)

This year, members of MIT Media Lab are taking their desire to freak us out to the next level with a project called "BeeMe."

BeeMe is described in a press release as a "massive immersive social game" that aims to "shed a new light on human potential in the new digital era." But it also sounds like a choose-your-own-adventure episode of the show "Black Mirror."

"Halloween night at 11 p.m. ET, an actor will give up their free will and let internet users control their every action," Niccolò Pescetelli, who studies collective intelligence at MIT Media Lab, told Business Insider in an email about BeeMe.

Pescetelli added: "The event will follow the story of an evil AI by the name of Zookd, who has accidentally been released online. Internet users will have to coordinate at scale and collectively help the actor (also a character in the story) to defeat Zookd. If they fail, the consequences could be disastrous."

How MIT will let you control a person

A screenshot from the website for "BeeMe," an MIT Media Lab social experiment. BeeMe/MIT Media Lab

The project's slogan is: "See what I see. Hear what I hear. Control my actions. Take my will. Be me."

The full scope of gameplay is not yet public. However, Pescetelli, BeeMe's social media accounts, and promotional materials reveal a few key details.

The person being controlled will be a trained actor, not anyone randomly selected. Who that actor will be and where they will be located won't be disclosed, Pescetelli said. He said he expects the game to last about two hours, but added "it will be the audience who ultimately decides" how long the game will go on.

There will be limits to what crowd-generated commands can make the actor do.

"Anything that violates the law or puts the actor, their privacy, or their image in danger is strictly forbidden," Pescetelli said. "Anything else is allowed. We are very curious about what [is] going to happen."

A scene from the trailer for "BeeMe," an MIT Media Lab social experiment.BeeMee/MIT Media Lab

Participants will control the actor through a web browser, in two ways.

One is by writing in and submitting custom commands, such as "make coffee," "open the door," "run away," and so on. The second way is by voting up or down on those commands, similar to the system used by Reddit. Once a command is voted to the top, the actor will presumably do that very thing.

This is the origin of the word "bee" in the project's name: Internet users will have to act collectively as a "hive" to progress through the game.

BeeMe's Twitter account shared an eerie teaser video of the game on October 15.

"Many people have played an augmented reality game, but BeeMe is reality augmented," Pescetelli said in a press release. "In BeeMe an agent gives up their free will to save humanity — or perhaps to know whether humanity can be saved at all. This brave individual will agree to let the Internet pilot their every action."

The whole event will be broadcast live at beeme.online.

"In theory there is no limit to the number of users that the platform can support, but we will know for sure only on Halloween," Pescetelli said.

Why the researchers created BeeMe

A screenshot from the website for "BeeMe," an MIT Media Lab social experiment. BeeMe/MIT Media Lab

The BeeMe project is made by eight people, will cost less than $10,000, and quietly went public in May 2018, when it joined Twitter as @beeme_mit. The tweets posted by the account capture some of its thinking and evolution.

One tweet quotes philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who famously wrote in 1964 that "the medium is the message" — meaning that any new way to communicate influences what we say, how we say it, and ultimately what we think. McLuhan, who lived until 1980, is described by his estate as "the father of communications and media studies and prophet of the information age."

The account also references other visionaries, including analytical psychologist Carl Jung, social scientist Émile Durkheim, and biologist Charles Darwin.

"[In] the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed," BeeMe tweeted in August, quoting a famous saying of Darwin's (and likely as a tip on how to win the game).

Another tweet highlights a shocking act of performance art called "Come Caress Me," created in 2010 by Amir Mobed. In the installation, Mobed stands before a huge target with a metal bucket on his hed, and volunteers are led into the room to shoot him with a pellet gun. (Many do, not seeming to understand the ammunition is real.)

These and other BeeMe posts seem to reflect what the experiment strives to be on Halloween: Something that is on its surface fun, but reveals some hidden truths about ourselves and our digital society.

In a release sent to Business Insider, the project described itself this way: "BeeMe is a dystopian game that promises to alter the face of digital interactions, by breaking the Internet's fourth wall and bringing it back to reality. BeeMe wants to reopen a serious — yet playful — conversation about privacy, ethics, entertainment, and social interactions."

Whatever the game ends up teaching those who play or watch it, we'll find out on Halloween if humanity can pull together to save itself — or fail in dramatic disarray.

This story has been updated with new information.

Fans of Netflix's Marvel shows were left disappointed and puzzled when the streaming giant abruptly canceled "Iron Fist" and then "Luke Cage" this month.

But interest in the shows had been flagging, and their fate could mean trouble for Netflix's other main Marvel shows, "Daredevil" and "Jessica Jones."

Data provided to Business Insider by consumer-insights company Crimson Hexagon shows that social-media buzz for all four shows has dropped dramatically over time.

Since Netflix doesn't release viewership numbers, social-media data is one of the best alternatives to finding out whether these shows have legs to stand on.

The chart below shows that when the first season of "Luke Cage" premiered in September 2016, there were over 300,000 Twitter and Instagram posts regarding it. That number took a huge dive when the second season was released this June, with less than 50,000 posts.

Crimson Hexagon

The same can be said for "Iron Fist." The critically panned series improved slightly in its second season, but social-media reaction was still sparse compared to its first season. When the first season debuted last year, it inspired almost 120,000 posts on Twitter and Instagram. The second season peaked at less than 20,000.

Crimson Hexagon

The good news for "Daredevil" and "Jessica Jones" is that the results aren't as dramatic as for "Luke Cage" and "Iron Fist." The bad news is that there is a noticeable pattern in that interest has wavered after the shows' first seasons.

There were nearly 300,000 posts on Twitter and Instagram for the first season of "Jessica Jones." That was cut in half when the second season was released this year.

Crimson Hexagon

"Daredevil," the longest-running Netflix Marvel show so far at three seasons, has seen a drop in social-media buzz over time, but less so than the other shows. The first season in 2015 saw nearly 275,000 posts, while season two saw a little over 200,000. That's not a huge drop, and the recently released third season inspired around 75,000 posts halfway through October, meaning that number could increase by month's end.

If any of the shows was safe, it would probably be "Daredevil" based on this data, but the pattern still holds.

Crimson Hexagon

Crimson Hexagon also found that sentiment for the four shows has been mostly positive, the highest being for "Daredevil" at 79% and the lowest being for "Iron Fist" at 53%. But it's apparent that buzz around the shows has decreased.

There could be plenty of reasons for why Netflix canceled "Luke Cage" and "Iron Fist."

The Hollywood Reporter reported that "Luke Cage" was canceled due to creative differences. And as Disney, which owns Marvel, prepares to enter the streaming war with its own Netflix competitor next year, it could be changing its strategy in regards to Netflix's Marvel series.

Disney is set to terminate a contract with Netflix at the end of the year, and while it has said that it has no plans to move the shows from Netflix, the competitive landscape of the streaming business could force its hand.

But this data also suggests that audiences just haven't been as interested in the shows as Netflix may have liked, and later seasons didn't generate the excitement of their first seasons.

There is only one season for the other shows, "The Defenders" and "The Punisher," so we couldn't compare data. The second season of "The Punisher" wrapped filming this summer. Only time will tell its fate, and that of "Daredevil" and "Jessica Jones."

If you own an iPhone 6 or later and have issues with your phone's battery life, now's the time to visit an Apple Store and get your battery replaced.

Last December, Apple acknowledged something that iPhone owners had suspected for some time: It had been quietly "throttling," or lowering, the performance of older iPhones.

It said the goal was to preserve battery life on those older phones and prevent them from shutting down unexpectedly, but customers felt as if Apple communicated this message too late, as many had come to believe that iPhones purposefully got slower to compel people to upgrade to newer models.

After a good deal of consumer outrage, Apple addressed iPhone battery and performance in an open letter to customers later that month.

The most important part of Apple's informational letter was an offer toward the end: Apple said it would reduce the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement to $29 from $79 "for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, available worldwide through December 2018."

And so if you own an iPhone 6, an iPhone 6s, an iPhone 7, or any other phones made after that and are experiencing battery issues — maybe it's draining faster than it used to — head to an Apple Store before December 31.

A small anecdote: My fiancée owns an iPhone 6s and had been experiencing battery issues for months. She'd constantly need to recharge her phone at work and at home, and she felt as if it hadn't always been this bad. So a couple of months ago, we visited an Apple Store, where an employee measured her phone's battery life and found the degradation to be at about 83%.

Apple says it will offer to replace batteries when battery degradation reaches 80%, but the employee gave my fiancée the option to replace it right then and there for $29. So we did that and walked around the mall for a few hours while we waited.

It was worth the wait — since that visit, she's noticed improvement in her phone's battery life and no longer needs to charge it throughout the day.

So if you're experiencing anything similar, go visit an Apple Store or mail your device before December 31 and pay the $30 to get your battery replaced. You'll be paying more if you choose to wait.

Battle royale video games have quickly become the most popular sub-genre of first-person shooters, fueled by the popularity of "Fortnite: Battle Royale" and "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds." When first unveiling their games at E3 2018, the creators of both "Battlefield V" and "Call of Duty" announced that the newest games in their respective series would feature their own battle royale modes, in an apparent effort to cash in on the trend.

"Call of Duty: Black Ops 4" came out on October 12 and its battle royale mode, Blackout, has been the game's most celebrated feature, with longtime fans and competitive gamers alike commending the game's polished take on the genre. Now the developers of "Battlefield V" have revealed that their battle royale mode, Firestorm, won't be ready when the game launches on November 20th. Instead, Firestorm will arrive in March 2019 as a part of the game's ongoing content release schedule.

In an October 24 blog post, "Battlefield V" developer EA DICE detailed what will be included in the game on launch day, and how new content and improvements will be added in the following months. DICE plans to roll out the World War II shooter's content in three phases using the game's live service, Tides of War. Each new chapter in the Tides of War service will add new maps, modes, and improvements to the game.

"Battlefield V" will guide players through the stages of World War II with Tides of War. "Battlefield V"/EA DICE

The first chapter is called Overture and will begin with the game's release. Players will be able to play the game's single-player campaign, battle on eight different multiplayer maps, and explore the game's wide array of weapons and vehicles for the first time. Chapter 2, named Lightning Strikes, will arrive in January 2019, incorporating cooperative multiplayer missions and the classic squad conquest mode. Finally, the third Chapter, Trial by Fire, will introduce the Firestorm battle royale mode and a new Greece map in March 2019.

DICE has promised that Firestorm will be a unique battle royale experience. Like some of the game's other multiplayer modes, Firestorm is limited to 64 players with four-person squads, but the map will be the largest in any "Battlefield" game thus far. Firestorm will also include the destructible environments and vehicles that define the series. Beyond fighting other players to survive, teams will also be able to clear specific objectives on the Firestorm map to access more valuable equipment during the match.

While Firestorm is one of the most anticipated additions to "Battlefield V," the game looks to have a healthy amount of content for players to dive into on release. With a roadmap of updates spanning into Spring 2019, early adopters will also have a clear idea of what's on the horizon.

"Battlefield V" will arrive on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 on November 20th. Players who subscribe to EA Origin Access Premier will be able to play the full game on November 9th, while EA Access and Origin Access players will be able to try the game with their play first trial. Those who pre-order the deluxe edition will gain early access to the game on November 15th.

There's a vision of the future in Silicon Valley that one day, highly advanced glasses will be able to provide useful information inside their lenses.

Instead of looking at your phone, these glasses will be able to display useful information like notifications, directions, and reminders as a heads-up display.

Google took a stab at these kind of smartglasses back in 2013 with Google Glass but faced a difficult reception among consumers. Now an Amazon-backed startup out of Waterloo, Canada is releasing its version of smart glasses using modern technologies.

The new glasses are made by North, which used to be known as Thalmic Labs. North has raised $140 million in funding from investors including Amazon Alexa Fund, Fidelity Investments, and First Round Capital, according to the company.

They've used that money to make a pair of smartglasses, called Focals, that focus more on style and user experience than technology.

The company wants to make clear that Focals aren't a full augmented reality headset, like Magic Leap One or Microsoft Hololens. Instead, they like to call them glasses that people can wear every day.

"We're not focused on unicorns jumping over rainbows or monsters coming out of the wall," Thalmic Labs CEO Stephen Lake told Business Insider. "It's about having a product that's going to be useful for you throughout the day all day."

"Throughout the day, it's wearable, it's comfortable, and give valuable bits of information that make sense at the time," he continued.