Over time, some cars lose more value than others for reasons that don't necessarily have to do with their quality. For example, the year an auto company releases an updated version of a vehicle, prior versions of that vehicle lose value, even if the average consumer might be satisfied with them. This presents opportunities for used car buyers to find deals on cars they may think are undervalued.

The automotive data and research site iSeeCars.com has compiled a list of the 10 cars that experience the highest amount of depreciation over a five-year period. (The site also looked at which models experience the lowest amount of depreciation.) To create the list, the site examined over 4.3 million sales of vehicles from model year 2013 to determine which models lost the highest amount of value five years after they were first sold.

Luxury sedans took six of the 10 spots on the list, including three vehicles from BMW, the most of any automaker. General Motors and Daimler each had two.

"Luxury vehicles depreciate at a higher rate because they are often leased, which leads to a surplus of three-year-old off-lease versions of these vehicles that lowers the demand for the older models," iSeeCars CEO Phong Ly said in a release accompanying the study.

The top two spots are occupied by electric vehicles, which Ly said resulted from government tax credits, the fast pace of technological change in the EV market, range anxiety, and the limited charging infrastructure available to the public.

These are the ten cars that experience the largest amount of depreciation over five years.

Facebook announced Friday that 30 million users were affected by a massive hack it first disclosed two weeks ago.

Reactions across the internet have been extremely negative.

Some can't believe that just this week, Facebook launched its in-home hardware product — Portal—which comes equipped with a camera and microphone.

The #deletefacebook hashtag has been a trend since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March, but for some, Friday's news was the last straw.

Others are pointing to the fact that Messenger Kids, its chat app for children, was called out for not being affected in the hack, raising questions about why we should put kids at risk of being on Facebook at all.

Some are just looking for an apology.

And with a hack this bad, some are calling for Zuckerberg to finally be fired over its long string of scandals — though given that Zuckerberg has a majority voting stake in the company, that's extremely unlikely.

Greg Sandoval/Business Insider

Snap shares rallied as much as 8.5% Friday after receiving an upgrade at Pivotal Research, who said the company is an "attractive candidate to go private" if its management is unable to reverse its current usage trends.

"Our take is that it is not too late for management to find ways to reverse recent usage trends and generally improve monetization regardless of those usage trends," Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser said in a note sent out to clients on Friday.

Brian Amerige, the Facebook engineer who sparked a firestorm at Facebook with his criticism of what he called a "political monoculture" that is "intolerant" of conservatism, is leaving the company.

In a lengthy, 1,026-word internal memo to fellow Facebook employees, Amerige, the engineering manager of product accessibility, explained his decision to leave, decrying the company's political "monoculture" and PR strategy of "appeasement," while professing his love for Facebook's "mission."

In a year during which the internet industry has been rocked by problems ranging from privacy scandals to the spread of misinformation, and as the politically fractured state of society has spread into even the most profitable tech companies, Amerige's farewell letter encapsulates the frustrations and challenges that Facebook is contending with.

While it criticises Facebook's "culture" and leadership, it also discusses less politicised issues Facebook is facing, from the decline in sharing in Facebook's main app to team structure.

"My departure isn't because I think these issues are intractable. These problems can be solved — just not by me, nor anymore, at least," Amerige wrote. "I care too deeply about our role in supporting free expression and intellectual diversity to even whole-heartedly attempt the product stuff anymore, and that's how I know it's time to go."

I'm leaving Facebook

I'm sad to say that Friday, October 12th will be my last day at Facebook.

This was a difficult decision to make because I love so much about this company, our mission, and our leaders. But I've been thinking about this for almost a year and though a certain leak delayed me a bit, I know it's time for me to move on.

There's a lot to say about why, and this post certainly won't cover it all. Unlike many others who've been here for a while, I"m not leaving because "it's time for something new." I believe that it takes a long time to o good work, and novelty isn't my kind of thing: change is good when it's change for the better. I've changed teams once in my 6.5 years at Facebook.

Why

I'm leaving because I'm burnt out on Facebook, our strategy and our culture.

Strategically, we've taken a stance on how to balance offensive and hateful speech with free expression. We've accepted the inevitability of government regulation. And we've refused to defend ourselves in the press. Our policy strategy is pragmatism — not clear, implementable long-term principles — and our PR strategy is appeasement — not morally earned pride and self defense.

Culturally, it's difficult to have meaningful conversations about any of this because we're a political monoculture, and these are political issues. And while we've made some progress in FB'ers for Political Diversity (which is approaching 750 members now), and while I'm pleased to say that senior company leadership does take this seriously (as you will hopefully soon see), we have a very long way to go.

To that end, while I remain as in love as ever with our mission and my colleague's nearly-always good intentions, I disagree too strongly with we're we're heading on these issues to watch what happens next. These issues hang over my head each morning, and I don't want to spend all of my time fighting about them.

Our product is also at a crossroads (and has been for years) as sharing in the Facebook app continues to dwindle. The pivot to Stories will hopefully help, but I'm disappointed by how reactive our future appears to be. Ultimately, I've spent the bulk of my time at Facebook trying to build a stronger product culture. From tech leading Paper, to starting and leading the team that built our UI foundation (FIG, now FDS), I wanted Facebook to be a place where people with great product sense, focus, intuition and a little obsessiveness about quality were attracted, belonged, and were rewarded. I think we made progress, but the headwinds have been and continue to be strong, and it shows in our future-looking product strategy and the relative rarity of strong product thinkers at Facebook.

My departure isn't because I think these issues are intractable. These problems can be solved — just not by me, nor anymore, at least. I care too deeply about our role in supporting free expression and intellectual diversity to even whole-heartedly attempt the product stuff anymore, and that's how I know it's time to go.

Be Proud

Still, this company gets so much right, and you all have a lot to be proud of. The density of talent at Facebook has always been one of my favorite parts of working here, and there are simply too many incredibly people I've had the pleasure of getting to know and building something with for me to list. My teams have always felt like family to me, and I"m going to miss them terribly.

Beyond the people, I would be remiss if I didn't emphasize two aspects of our culture that are especially good: our scrappiness, and how we think about individual contributor roles.

Be Scrappy. I've always understood "move fast" to really mean "be scrappy," and what a pleasure it's been to watch how +28,000 employees haven't substantially changed that. I don't think "move fast" applies to product direction, design standards, or engineering quality. It's about process. As the company continues to grow, you will increasingly find that most people in any given room are new and don't necessarily know that it's ok to say "sorry, I don't understand any of what you just said" or that they're supposed to ask "Do we really need to wait for the monthly review?" These kinds of questions are our secret weapon against becoming a bureaucracy where innovative people don't want to work. So keep asking "why?" about everything related to how we work.

Roles and Responsibility. The way we think about team roles is better than anywhere else I've seen. We let ICs truly lead, we incentivize transitions to and from management for the right reasons, and we let teams figure out who does what with deference to strengths instead of functional titles. We could still do better (particularly around how senior ICs integrate with director+ level decisions), but this way of thinking is the industry leading and has made Facebook a very special place for me, as something of a hybrid between engineering, product and design.

What's Next

My professional purpose has always been to "amplify human capability and raise standards," and while I'm proud to say I've done a little of both at Facebook, I"m excited to focus more intensely on this going forward. I'm starting a company with a good friend of mine, Alex Epstein, at the intersection of applied philosophy (epistemology, specifically) and technology.

I don't know if leaving Facebook affords me one parting word of advice, but I have one for you anyway: I want to encourage you all to believe in yourselves more. In the value your products create for the world. In your own product sense and instinct when they contradict the data (which we're often too confident in). In your ability to create something people love. And in your perspective when no one else agrees…especially when you're afraid to share it. The truth does not emerge from averages, but your ability to reason lets you glimpse it — stand by it, defend it, and be proud of it. Everything else will take care of itself.

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Everyone's talking about artificial intelligence - but big US investment funds aren't yet keen to try it out, according to a new study.

About 71% of US-based firms are not currently testing or considering how AI and advanced analytics can be applied to their investments, said a Fidelity survey of over 900 institutional investors published on Thursday. However, a similar percentage of US investors agreed that AI and technological advances will augment humans' traditional investment roles by 2025.

The results show that even though artificial intelligence is touted for its potential to transform the workplace, many big US firms are slow to embrace the technology in their day-to-day.

Complacency with the status-quo could be one reason, said Jeff Mitchell, chief investment officer of Fidelity's institutional asset management arm.

"What people are saying is in the Americas, they still haven't found a way to understand how it'll come into the process, but they're confident it will be part of the enhancement of what we deliver going forward," he said.

Mitchell noted a gap between investors' internal use of AI and their high expectations for AI's promises. Globally, 69% of funds expect to use AI for asset allocation in the future, while nearly the same number plan to use it for performance and risk evaluations, the Fidelity research said.

Mitchell added that he was "shocked" by how US investors lag their international counterparts. While more than three-quarters of domestic investors aren't considering AI use, only one-third of institutions globally are not.

Fidelity counts itself among the asset managers embracing AI. The firm is using the technology to simply its investment processes and communications, he said.

Others include AB, which built an artificial-intelligence-powered virtual assistant for fixed-income trading and other responsibilities at the $500 billion money manager. The bot, which launched in early 2018, runs on Symphony. The financial workflow application also hosts a program called APOLLO.ai, which uses AI to sift through data sources to show custom content and analytics.

For the past seven years, 24-year-old Laura Deming has been in the Bay Area on the hunt for scientists and entrepreneurs working to keep us living healthier and longer.

Deming's Longevity Fund manages $37 million, and to date the investments she's made have since gone on to raise a combined $500 million. One of her investments, Unity Biotechnology, went public in 2018 and entered human trials in June.

On Wednesday, her first class of companies out of the Age1 accelerator is graduating. The six companies include one focused on hibernation and how humans could tap into animals' "superpowers" and a spin-out from a regenerative medicine lab that's focused on reversing arthritis. Others, like Spring Discovery are aiming to speed up the process of discovering new aging therapies.

The field of aging research is wide, and there's any number of ways to tackle both the causes and effects of getting old.

So when looking for investments, Deming told Business Insider that there's one key criterion she's interested in: Who's working on aging research that's possible to do today, thanks to a new technology or scientific breakthrough that wouldn't have been possible a year ago?

For example, gene therapy, one-time treatments that are designed to modify diseases, still seemed like a far-off future about a decade ago. Now, there's an FDA-approved gene therapy available to treat a hereditary form of blindness.

"That opens a whole new world of different ways to go after aging-related diseases," Deming said.

That's played out in one of the Age1 accelerator companies, Fauna Bio. Fauna is looking at animals that hibernate — bears, even hamsters — looking at their genomes to determine what aspects of the animals' biology allows them to lower their body temperatures and sleep for months at a time and still be able to hit the ground running the day they wake up. If the same could be mimicked in humans — possibly from medication that already exists — that could be useful in emergency situations, like a heart attack, to preserve the body until the patient gets to the hospital.

Much further down the line, harnessing hibernation could be a way to help us in space travel, preserving astronauts while they travel to space on their way to, say, Mars.

The ability to sequence the genomes of animals quicker and at a lower cost has only been possible in the past few years as the price of sequencing has dropped dramatically.

It could be key in helping people heal after heart attacks, and maybe even travel through space so they come out the other end healthy.

"We should expect to find the most exciting things and the most novel things, in that subsection," Deming said.

Brian Amerige, the Facebook engineer who sparked a firestorm at Facebook with his criticism of what he called a "political monoculture" that is "intolerant" of conservatism, is leaving the company.

In an internal message to fellow employees on Wednesday, Amerige wrote: "These problems can be solved — just not by me, not any more, at least. I care too deeply about our role in supporting free expression and intellectual diversity to even whole-heartedly attempt the product stuff anymore, and that's how I know it's time to go."

In the message, seen by Business Insider, he said he is starting a company with his friend "at the intersection of applied philosophy epistemology, specifically) and technology."

Silicon Valley, the heart of the American tech industry, is largely liberal, and has been fraught with allegations of bias in Trump's America.

In July 2017, Google found itself at the center of a political firestorm after engineer James Damore wrote an internal post decrying what he characterised as "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber," in which he attacked the company's diversity efforts. (Amerige has been described as "Facebook's aspiring James Damore.") Some conservatives also allege that social media firms are deliberately silencing and censoring nonliberal voices on their platforms.

'A political monoculture that's intolerant of different views'

In August 2018, Amerige, who identifies politically as objectivist, wrote an internal memo decrying what he described as the Silicon Valley's company's "intolerant" culture. "We are a political monoculture that's intolerant of different views ... we claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology," we wrote.

His writing subsequently sparked an internal group, "FB'ers for Political Diversity," where hundreds of conservative employees protested the company's practices. Posters promoting the group and attacking the "outrage mob" appeared around campus, and debates among employees have broken out across Facebook Workplace over the company's approach to politics.

There have also previously been some incidents in which Facebook employees have refused to work with or talk to certain colleagues because of their political beliefs, an employee previously told Business Insider.

Amerige's last day will be on Friday, he wrote in his message. "I've been thinking about this for almost a year, and though a certain leak delayed me a bit, I know it's time for me to move on," he wrote. "I'm not leaving because 'it's time for something new.'"

'Our PR strategy is appeasement — not morally earned pride and self-defence'

He wrote: "I'm leaving because I'm burnt out on Facebook, our strategy, our culture, and our product.

"Strategically, we've taken a stance on how to balance offensive and hateful speech with free expression. We've accepted the inevitability of government regulation. And we've refused to defend ourselves in the press. Our policy strategy is pragmatism — not clear, implementable long-term principles — and our PR strategy is appeasement — not morally earned pride and self-defense."

He added: "While I remain as in love as ever with our mission and my colleague's nearly-always good intentions, I disagree too strongly with where we're heading on these issues to watch what happens next. These issues hang over my head each morning, and I don't want to spend all of my time fighting about them."

A Facebook spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

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., WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Y ou can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Elon Musk has denied a report that James Murdoch is the top choice to be the next chairman of Tesla.

On Wednesday, The Financial Times reported that the 21st Century Fox CEO and son of Rupert Murdoch would take the role being vacated by the electric vehicle entrepreneur following a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

But Musk shot back on Twitter, tweeting "this is incorrect" in response to their headline. It's unclear whether he meant it was incorrect that Murdoch was the "lead candidate" as The FT reported, or that it was incorrect that Murdoch was in consideration at all. The CEO did not immediately respond to a request for clarification via Twitter.

Musk agreed to step down as chairman of Tesla's board for three years as part of a settlement with the SEC, which brought charges against Musk in late August for his now-infamous "funding secured" tweet, though he will remain CEO. Musk was also fined $20 million and Tesla must appoint two more independent board members as part of the settlement. He was given 45 days to step down as chairman.

There had already been speculation that Murdoch, who has served on Tesla's board as a nonexecutive director since last year, was the leading contender for the chairman position. But Murdoch has also faced blowback from shareholders in the past, with critics citing his lack of relevant experience. And as an incumbent director on Tesla's much-maligned board, Murdoch would likely face criticism for his role on a board viewed by many being far too cozy with Musk.

Earlier this year, the proxy advisor Glass Lewis and the pension fund CtW Investment Group pushed for shareholders not to reelect Murdoch to the board. CtW also asked for shareholders to vote against reelecting Antonio Gracias, a private-equity investor, and Kimbal Musk, Musk's cousin.

Others who have been floated as possible chairman candidates include Al Gore, Warren Buffett, and Alan Mulally.

The stock market took a big bite out of the FAANGs on Wednesday.

Collectively, the Big Five tech firms — Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google — lost $172 billion in value over the span of a few hours on Wednesday, amid a broad slump in the market. That's about the same amount as Toyota's entire market capitalization — and it's equivalent to the dollar value of the entire gross domestic product of Algeria. In terms of value lost, Amazon was the big loser of the group. Its shares fell 6% on Wednesday, vaporizing $56 billion of its market capitalization. Apple was next; it lost nearly $51 billion on a 4.6% fall — an amount $6 billion greater than the entire value of General Motors.

But Netflix was the biggest loser on a percentage basis. It's shares declined by 8%, shedding about $13 billion in the process.

Facebook, which has had its share of troubles recently, fell 4% and lost $15.7 billion in market value. And Google's 4.6% slide left its market cap $36.7 billion lighter.

The decline came amid a big selloff in the market. The S&P 500 fell 3.3%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 3.2%, and and the tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 4.1%. The Dow's drop was its largest since February, while the Nasdaq's was its biggest in more than two years.

In just the last week (i.e., since October 3), the FAANG stocks have lost $303.7 billion in market valuation.

Wednesday's selloff appeared to be sparked by concerns about global growth and conflicts over trade.

Tesla drafted new confidentiality agreements after the contents of internal emails from CEO Elon Musk to employees were included in 2016 articles by Bloomberg and CNN, Bloomberg reports.

According to the publication, Tesla legal vice president Jonathan Chang testified on Wednesday in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearing that the automaker's general counsel told him to write new confidentiality agreement for employees in order to "have them renew their vows."

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

The ongoing NLRB hearing concerns allegations from a regional director of the agency that Tesla's confidentiality policy violates its workers' rights, and that it has retaliated against employees who support a union and interfered with their efforts to advocate for a union.

Tesla has denied all of those claims, Bloomberg reports.

Chang reportedly said leaks of internal information to the media can result in customers holding off on purchases to wait for new features, disrupt the company's ability to announce new features, and create "significant SEC concerns" about the release of company information. But, Chang reportedly said, Tesla is rarely able to determine which employees are responsible for the leaks.

Tesla filed a lawsuit against former employee Martin Tripp in June, alleging that he hacked confidential company information and gave it to parties outside the company. Tripp filed a countersuit in August denying Tesla's allegations and accusing the company of defamation. Tripp later published on Twitter photos that he claimed supported the allegations he has made.

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People really love their virtual assistants — so much so, in fact, that over a million people asked Amazon Alexa to marry them in 2017 alone, the retailer confirmed to Business Insider.

And that's not even including customers who might have proposed to their Google Assistant, or Apple Siri, or Microsoft Cortana. It seems that more than a handful of the estimated 600 million people who regularly use virtual assistants were inspired by the romance between Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansen in "Her."

Unfortunately, Alexa has rejected all those curious consumers faced rejection. Asking Alexa to marry you gets a response along the lines of: "We're at pretty different places in our lives. Literally. I mean, you're on Earth and I'm in the cloud." You can see for yourself in in social media posts and screenshots and videos.

In popping the question, users might be trying to elicit a funny response, or maybe they're looking for a way to relieve their boredom. But voice assistants have been able to integrate themselves into people's everyday lives, such that people will have private conversations with them. An Atlantic columnist wrote Wednesday that she had confided in her Google Assistant about being lonely — something she hadn't even told her husband.

"Why would we turn to computers for solace? Machines give us a way to reveal shameful feelings without feeling shame," author Judith Shulevitz wrote. "With their eerie ability to elicit confessions, they could acquire a remarkable power over our emotional lives."

So while these marriage proposals are likely in jest, they may be telling of consumers' increasing acceptance of their voice assistants as friends, companions, and therapists. A top rated review of the Amazon Echo reads like a love letter to Alexa as the "nearly perfect spouse."

This intimacy that voice assistants create isn't accidental, however. As Shulevitz wrote, Google and Amazon have personality teams devoted to ensuring the AI system can "speak like a person, but it should never pretend to be one." Google has had to toe this line with its new AI software called Duplex, which is eerily realistic in mimicking the "ums" and "ahhs" we use in everyday speech.

So maybe before you think about popping the question to your smart speaker, you can remind yourself of all the times it's failed you by showing porn to your kids, recording your private conversations, or just randomly giving a creepy laugh.

A senior executive who works for Google's parent company and a former US secretary of energy have dropped out of a Saudi Arabia tech and business advisory board following international outcry over the disappearance and alleged murder of a dissident Saudi journalist.

On Tuesday, the Saudi news outlet Argaam reported that Neom — a $500 billion megacity project being built by the country — had formed a new advisory board.

Members mentioned in the announcement included famed tech industry investor Marc Andreessen; Dan Doctoroff, CEO of Google parent company Alphabet's urban planning unit Sidewalk Labs; Travis Kalanick, ex-CEO of Uber; former European Commission vice president Neelie Kroes; ex-Dow Chemical Company CEO Andrew Liveris, and Silicon Valley investor Sam Altman.

But following inquiries from journalists, members have started distancing themselves from the project.

First was Apple's chief design officer Jony Ive: The initial list published by Argaam said that he was a member, but Apple subsequently said his inclusion was a mistake and that he should never have been on the list in the first place. (Argaam and Neom did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.)

Then on Wednesday, Ernest Moriz, the former US secretary of energy, said he was "suspending" his involvement until more is known about Khashoggi's disappearance.

"Six months ago, I was invited to join an international advisory board for development of NEOM, a smart city of the future being built from the ground up in northwestern Saudi Arabia. In particular, I have been asked to offer guidance on achieving zero net greenhouse gas emissions. Success with this vision will have global implications for a low carbon future," he said in a statement provided to Business Insider by a spokesperson.

"Given current events, I am suspending my participation on the NEOM board. Going forward, my engagement with the advisory board will depend on learning all the facts about Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance over the coming days and weeks."

Also on Wednesday, Sidewalk Labs' Doctoroff retreated. In a statement, spokesperson Dan Levitan said "Dan Doctoroff's inclusion on that list is incorrect. He is not a member of the NEOM advisory board." Levitan did not respond to further questions as to whether Doctoroff had ever agreed to be part of the board. (Doctoroff's walkback was also reported by The Logic.)

Even after those departures, 16 members remain on the board, though its future looks uncertain. The other members either did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment about their involvement, or were not reachable for comment.

The new tech advisory board's announcement came as much of the news on Saudi Arabia was focused on the fate of Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government who disappeared after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey last week. The New York Times and several other news organizations report that Khashoggi was murdered by a team of 15 Saudi agents inside the consulate. A report in the Guardian on Tuesday said that Turkish authorities are focused on a black van seen leaving the consulate that they believe was carrying Khashoggi's body.

We just got another glimpse at how much trouble the traditional pay TV business is in because of Netflix and online streaming.

The portion of US consumers who don't subscribe to any kind of traditional pay TV service is now nearly one in three, according to a new survey from Cowen Equity Research. Among all consumers, basic cable is now a distant second to Netflix when it comes to the service they say they use most often to watch video content on their televisions. And among Millennials, basic cable is no. 3, topped by not just Netflix, but YouTube too.

Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven in "Stranger Things," one of Netflix's hit original series. Netflix The survey "once again highlights the importance of Netflix in the home, particularly among Millennials," Cowen analyst John Blackledge said in the research report that contained the survey data. Netflix's well-publicized push to invest in original, high-quality shows and movies, he continued, "likely ensures [it] the top spot in the living room over time."

Some 19% of consumers are cord cutters — those who formerly had a cable or satellite subscription but have dropped it — according to Cowen's report, which surveyed 2,500 people total. Another 12% are so-called "cord nevers," people who have never signed up for a traditional pay TV service.

That data roughly corresponds with recent research from Leichtman Research Group. At the end of the second quarter, some 91.3 million US households — about 72% — had some kind of multi-channel pay TV service. That was down from 88% of US households in 2010.

Basic cable used to be the dominant form of TV watching. But no more. It's been displaced by Netflix.

Some 27.4% of consumers say that the video service they watch most often on their television is that of the streaming giant, according to Cowen's survey. Just 20.2% of consumers said basic cable is their most frequently viewed video service. Another 17.5% of consumers said broadcast TV was their most frequent choice.

Cowen Equity Research Things were even worse for traditional TV providers among younger consumers. Among consumers aged 18 to 34, streaming services ranked first, second, and fourth in terms of the video services they most frequently watched on their televisions.

A whopping 39.6% in that age group said they were most likely to tune in Netflix on their television than any other video service. In second place was YouTube, the top choice among 16.9%. In fourth place was Hulu, with 8.3%.

Basic cable came in third, the top choice among just 12.4% of those in that age group. Broadcast television was a distant fifth, with 7.1% support.

Cowen Equity Research Even if all the cord cutters and cord nevers are excluded, things don't look particularly good for traditional TV service providers. Although basic cable took the top spot among these consumers in terms of the video services they watch most often, it's lead was tiny. It was the top choice among just 26% of these consumers; Netflix, by contrast, was the most frequently viewed service among 24.9% of them.

Cowen Equity Research As part of the report, Blackledge reiterated his "outperform" rating and $400 price target on Netflix's stock. That target was pushed slightly further away with Wednesday's broad market selloff. Netflix shares finished Wednesday's regular session down $29.82, or 8.4%, at $325.89.

Imperva's stock soared nearly 30% on Wednesday — despite a major market sell off— following its announcement that the private equity firm Thoma Bravo has agreed to acquire the company for $55.75 a share, a 28% premium on its closing price Tuesday.

The deal values Imperva at around $2.1 billion.

Imperva, a cybersecurity software company, has 45 days to "go-shop," which means its board could opt to sell to a higher bidder, if one comes to the table. Barring another offer, Thoma Bravo's acquisition will close in late 2018 or early 2019.

Thoma Bravo is a major private equity player in the software space, and has doubled down on the cybersecurity space more recently.

Its portfolio includes Barracuda Networks, which was acquired in February for $1.6 billion, as well as Centrify, Digicert, LogRhythm and McAfee. It's also invested in SailPoint, which is publicly traded.

At $2.1 billion, Thoma Bravo will acquire Imperva at a revenue multiple of 4.6x — which is relatively low for the software space, where many companies trade at double digit revenue multiples.

But at least one analyst is skeptical that Imperva will see a better offer.

"Imperva's take-out valuation remains a discount to our security coverage, but we see it unlikely that a superior proposal will emerge in the 45-day 'go-shop'," wrote Joel Fishbein, an analyst with BTIG.

"While not at nosebleed Duo Security takeout levels," Fishbein wrote, "we believe investors should be pleased with Imperva's takeout valuation of $2.1 billion," referencing Cisco's acquisition of Duo Security for $2.35 billion in August, at a 15x revenue multiple.

And this won't be the last of the cybersecurity acquisitions, Fishbein said.

"We expect vendor lists to continue to consolidate as [chief information security officers] move spend from less effective providers to best-in-breeds," he wrote. "Many security providers will need to act quickly and get creative to stay competitive in such an environment."

The carnage in the chip stocks continued for a fifth straight day Wednesday, making it one of the hardest hit sectors during the recent sell-off.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index tumbled 4.4%, running its loss to 9.5% over its five-day losing streak. 

Since the beginning of October, AMD shares have tanked more than 18% and rival Nvidia has lost 15%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index has slumped 7%. Meanwhile, Intel has outperformed, down just 3%, boosted by the possibility it may begin to speed up the production of its 10-nanometer processors faster than expected.

The heavy selling in the space comes as investor have begun to book some of the huge profits they have made this year. Even after the October selling, AMD is up 127% and Nvidia has gained 22%.

The semiconductor industry has been under pressure for the past few days as demand in the PC market has caught the chipmakers by surprise. Analysts have predicted more pressure in the near future with the sector entering into a "cyclical downturn."

According to Bloomberg News, Morgan Stanley, Raymond James, Deutsche Bank cut his earnings estimates for the eight chip stocks last week. "We are cutting estimates across much of the space, " Raymond James analyst Chris Caso said on CNBC.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Amit Daryanani cut his target price for Intel to $55 from $57, predicting that its chip shortage will impact fourth-quarter earnings. He reduced his estimates for Intel's fourth-quarter earnings to $1.08 per share compared to Wall Street's estimates of $1.09. 

And Barclays lowered its Intel rating to "underweight" from "equal weight" and reduced its price target to $38 from $53 after forecasting a similar dip in earnings. Intel shares have slumped 12% over the past three months as investors have priced in the shortage.

With Intel expected to produce fewer chips, the shortage has benefitted both AMD and Nvidia when their revenue from the crypto business has declined. 

Hurricane Michael, the most powerful storm the US has seen in nearly 50 years, is moving through the Florida Panhandle, ripping apart homes and sending walls of water rushing inland.

The storm made landfall northwest of Mexico Beach around noon on Wednesday, with an eye so clear and wide it could easily be seen from space.

That strong, well-developed core makes for a very powerful, windy storm on land. Journalist Kirsten Fiscus was less than 25 miles away in Panama City when Michael's eye landed, and said she could smell the pine from snapped tree branches.

Richard Fausset of the New York Times was in the area too and said the winds were so intense, it felt like a California earthquake.

Outside, the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore narrowly missed getting slammed by a flying piece of wood.

Part of the reason Hurricane Michael became so strong and developed so quickly is that the waters of the Gulf of Mexico are much warmer right now than what's normal for October.

Up the coast in Pensacola, the water temperature is 82 degrees Fahrenheit — 8 degrees higher than normal for this time of year. Warmer water acts as fuel for a hurricane, helping it develop into a more destructive, windier storm.

Michael was forecast to bring storm surge up to 14 feet in some areas. Josh Benson, a news anchor at local station WFLA in Tampa Bay, shared a video taken by Tessa Talarico in Mexico Beach, Florida that showed the extreme flooding.

In Panama City Beach, a building that was still under construction didn't stand a chance against Michael. It quickly buckled under the pressure of the storm.

The hurricane also ripped the roofs off homes.

"Where homes were, they are not." ABC's Chief Meteorologist Ginger Zee said in a video posted on Twitter. "It's really wild to see."

Benson of WFLA also posted this clip of the storm's winds picking up a porta potty and sending it flying across a parking lot:

Michael is making its way northeast towards Georgia and the Carolinas at about 14 mph. It's expected to gradually weaken over land. By Friday, it should be a post-tropical cyclone, according to the National Weather Service.

You can track the hurricane's progress using Google Crisis Map or check out live updates from this National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration camera in space.

NOAA

Square Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar is leaving the $32 billion payments company to take a new role leading neighborhood social network Nextdoor as CEO.

Friar, who first joined Square in 2012, led the company through its initial public offering in 2015. She'll stay at the company through December.

"These past six years at Square have been an incredible journey," Friar said in a statement. "It is rare to work at a company that aligns such a meaningful purpose with unbounded market opportunity."

Wall Street seems to have taken notice of Friar's departure, as stock in Square dipped over 9% in after-hours trading at the time of publication.

Jack Dorsey, CEO of both Square and Twitter, didn't take Friar's departure lightly, either.

In a memo shared with staff on Wednesday and posted on Twitter, Dorsey said he was "unrealistically expecting to be working with Sarah well into our late 90s (swapping the standup tables for rocking chairs," but he added that becoming a CEO was a lifelong ambition for Friar.

"My happiness that she's finally fulfilling that outweighs my sadness of her departing," he wrote in the memo.

It's been four months since GDPR was rolled out, but the European consumer privacy law is still keeping marketers up at night.

GDPR, or the General Data Protection Regulation, went into effect in May and requires any company that does business with EU citizens to get consent from people to use their data, and make it very clear and easy to opt out of data collection.

"GDPR is my nightmare," said Nicole Cosby, SVP of media tech standards and partnerships for Publicis Media Exchange at an Advertising Week Panel last week. "... Easily one of my biggest nightmares."

While marketers were scrambling to ensure that they were compliant with the regulations in the weeks and months leading up to May 25, now they are anxiously waiting to see that they did indeed get things right, Cosby explained.

"As we evolve [from] the burden of trying to understand the compliance and regulation, and getting our ducks in a row contractually across it... now comes the worry and wait," she said. "Who is going to be the first to violate, who is going to be the first to end up with that headline that there has been a violation."

Brands only have so much control of how GDPR impacts them

On the platform side of course, the first probe has already hit. Ireland's data regulator has launched an investigation into Facebook over the recent data breach that allowed unauthorized access to 50 million accounts, with the company facing the possibility of up to $1.6 billion in fines.

But no advertiser wants to end up in a similar position. Advertisers that collect first-party data themselves realize that they often operate as the 'controller' (as defined by the GDPR rules), given they own the data that's being utilized by their agencies or ad tech firms to target ads.

But they regularly rely on a roster of other players — directly or indirectly — who are processing that data on their behalf.

That leaves brands worried that they'll be on the hook for violations made by these partners, even if it isn't their fault. They are realizing that they can't just pass all the risks of data management to their partners, and making the necessary moves to actively police their partners.

"GDPR just made us put extra focus and rigor on understanding each part of that ecosystem and really pushing and pulling," said David Szahun, VP of global media at American Express. "We've always taken a perspective that unless someone knowingly understands that they're offering up their data — if it's a surprise and a shock in a bad way —that's not something that we want to do."

Given the uncertainty, and high stakes, all the big players —brands, agencies, publishers, ad tech companies — say they are actively trying to work together.

Publicis, for instance, is engaging with competing agencies on getting GDPR right, said Cosby.

"GDPR was a bit of a wakeup call, not just from the regulation standpoint, but [in that] it's caused all actors in the chain really to take a deeper look at their transactions.... everybody [needed] to take an inward look because everybody is liable now, to an extent."

Another thing that marketers, and more broadly the industry, now seem to have reached a consensus on is that consumers need a lot more education.

"There is a real value exchange [in using data to better serve customers], but until you're clear, until you're transparent... it's a hurdle," said Meredith Verdone, Bank of America's chief marketing officer.

"We should turn it into an opportunity and part of the core strategy to help engage in a more meaningful way... but it's going to require better communication and education."

Facebook is promising to be more accountable

Even Facebook is echoing that talk, with its VP of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson acknowledging that it had a long way to go at consumer education.

Vice President, Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook Carolyn Everson (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Fortune)

"Consumers don't fully understand how online advertising works and that's not their fault — that's us and the entire industry," she told Business Insider.

"When you have transparency and controls in place, the vast majority of people want relevant advertising."

While data protections in the US are far less comprehensive than GDPR, the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Facebook's most recent hack as well as California's privacy law has reopened the conversation around privacy regulations.

Ultimately, this sharpened focus may lead to a far broader legislation, said Joshua Lowcock, the brand safety chief at UM.

"I was having a discussion with one of the UK regulators, and one of their comments to me was there's still bad content on the internet... they want to apply pressure all the way down the chain," he said.

"Somewhere the ecosystem failed and someone made a decision to put that [an ad] out there. The person that made the decision to allow ads running part of it has to be held accountable."