Elastic— the search technology company powering matches with drivers on Uber and significant others on Tinder — went public on Friday, and roared out of the gate.

The Mountain View, California based company priced its IPO at $36 per share, giving it a market cap of $2.5 billion. Not long after the opening bell, its stock shot up over 90% to about $70 per share — and maintained that momentum through the close, ending its first day as a public company up 94.4% to $70 per share, valuing the company at just shy of $4.9 billion.

With Google dominating consumer search, Elastic, founded in 2012, focused on selling search technology to large-scale business customers like eBay, Barclays, IBM, and Microsoft. Sprint uses it's "Elasticsearch" product for "ingesting, searching, and analyzing" more than 3 billion records and 50 terabytes of data per day, the company said in its S-1 filing.

Elastic's last 12-month revenue (ending in April) was $149.4 million, up 87% from the year prior. The company lost $49 million on that revenue, compared to $47 million in losses the year prior.

At the end of July 2018, Elastic had an accumulated debt of $236 million.

YouTube TV gave a long-awaited gift to it customers this week: It let them skip ads.

YouTube's subscription TV service rolled out new DVR capabilities that let users pause, rewind and fast-forward their favorite shows, including fast-forwarding past commercials.

That sounds like a no-brainer, but the fact that Google-owned YouTube has only now introduced the ad-skipping feature on its TV service highlights the ongoing turf war between the traditional TV networks and the new breed of digital streaming services.

And what's really interesting about the new DVR capabilities on YouTube TV is the one name that's missing. Look closely at the list of networks supporting the new DVR functions and you'll see NBC Universal, Disney, Turner, AMC and Fox.

Three letters that you won't see are CBS.

YouTube declined to comment on why the new DVR features don't support CBS, and CBS did not return a request for comment.

Fighting the last war

In fact, CBS's absence is likely one of the legacies of Les Moonves, CBS' former CEO who resigned last month after numerous women claimed he sexually harassed or assaulted them (Moonves has denied the allegations).

Les MoonvesDrew Angerer/Getty Images

Moonves had a nearly unparalleled run of success at CBS. The network typically finished at the top of the ratings. And Moonves' response to the rise of Internet distribution and the disruption that it brought was to fight it.

He argued TV couldn't survive if commercials were removed and he stubbornly defended them. When CBS and the other top broadcasters brought a copyright suit against Aereo, Moonves was one of the most vocal critics of the service.

"If the government wants to give them permission to steal our signal," Moonves told Reuters in 2014, "then we will come up with some other way to get them our content and still get paid for it."

Aereo relied on tiny TV antennas to capture shows from over the free airwaves and then distributed the content via the web. Aereo prevailed in the courts until the case went to the Supreme Court of the United States, where it ruled 6-3 in favor of the TV networks. Aereo shut down soon after.

An absurd distinction

But prevailing in the courtroom is not the same as prevailing in the marketplace, and CBS is now the lone holdout clinging to the old ways.

Most TV broadcasters and cable-show providers now understand that TV viewers would generally much prefer not to sit through 30-second commercials. And most content owners are looking for ways to adapt.

At the heart of the YouTube TV update is a distinction that consumers don't care about and shouldn't have to think about.

It comes down to a difference between two versions of the same program: An "on-demand" version, which includes specially-inserted ads that cannot be skipped, and a DVR recording of the original show as it was aired live, which means users can fast-forward everything, including the ads.

For a long time, subscribers were prevented from accessing DVR versions on YouTube TV if a video-on-demand version of the show was available. This meant the content guys were bucking the wishes of their fans.

The other TV networks have had a change of heart and have cut deals with YouTube to give consumers DVR. In an era where viewers have so many choices —not just between TV shows but with videogames, Facebook, the web — that makes sense.

We don't know what kind of financial terms YouTube offered to in order to get the networks to agree to the new licensing terms. There are billions of dollars of ad revenue at stake and as CBS shows, the chess match between the old guard and the new is still very much unresolved.

Reuters

Apple shares dropped Friday afternoon after CNBC reported the hedge fund billionaire David Einhorn told clients  in an investor letter that he sold the stock amid concerns of an escalating trade war between the US and China.

"We ultimately sold because our differentiated thesis from 2011 has become consensus," Einhorn, the founder and president of Greenlight Capital wrote in his third-quarter letter to investors, obtained by CNBC. "We are somewhat worried about Chinese retaliation against America's trade policies."

After selling 77% of its stake last quarter, Greenlight sold the remaining stake on August 31 for $228 worth $40 million, CNBC reported.

Apple shares was down as much as 3.2% following the news before paring their losses.

The announcement comes one day after Bloomberg reported Chinese spies implanted tiny chips in some of the company's server motherboards that ended up being sold to firms including Amazon and Apple. The goal was reportedly to use the microchips to gain access to sensitive corporate data and other secrets through advanced hacking.

Apple issued an unequivocal denial to the Bloomberg report. In a statement released Thursday afternoon, Apple said the company had never found any "malicious chips" or vulnerabilities in "any server" and denied having any contact with the "FBI or any other agency about such an incident" — directly contradicting several key claims in the report.

Apple shares were up 29% this year.

Markets Insider

Boeing, the 102-year-old titan of the aerospace industry, is in a heated competition with SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, for billions of dollars in NASA contracts.

As Boeing is seeking to secure that taxpayer funding — and the prestige of launching astronauts into space — the company might be secretly placing an opinion article that criticizes SpaceX in newspapers around the US.

Both companies are trying to show NASA they can safely launch the agency's astronauts to and from the International Space Station as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, a roughly $8 billion competition the agency launched to spur private companies to build safe, cost-effective, American-made spaceships.

Through that program, SpaceX won a $2.6 billion contract to develop its Crew Dragon space capsule, and Boeing has received $4.8 billion for its CST-100 Starliner space capsule. SpaceX hopes to launch its first Crew Dragon capsule with astronauts in early 2019, and Boeing expects to test-launch its first astronauts after mid-2019.

A test of SpaceX's Dragon V2 capsule thrusters.SpaceX/Flickr (public domain)

If these initial missions are successful, NASA is prepared to award potentially billions of dollars more in space-taxi contracts through the mid-2020s. (Each crewed flight is most likely worth several hundred million dollars.)

To that end, as Ars Technica's Eric Berger reported on Thursday, some evidence suggests that a PR firm in Washington that counts Boeing as a client may be attempting to negatively sway public opinion about SpaceX via a critical op-ed article that began to appear in newspapers around the country in July.

Business Insider has found a link between Boeing and the article's author.

The negative SpaceX op-ed article

The reason that so much NASA funding is at stake for Boeing and SpaceX is that the space agency hasn't been able to transport its own astronauts to the ISS since July 2011, when its space shuttle fleet retired. According to some estimates, each shuttle launch cost the space agency roughly $1.5 billion, accounting for development costs.

For now, increasingly expensive Russian rocket ships are the only way to get astronauts into space. That's why the Commercial Crew Program was created: to spur the creation of American-made spaceships, create competition in the industry, and, ideally, drive down launch costs.

NASA astronauts have been working closely with both Boeing and SpaceX as they develop new methods of space travel. The first NASA astronauts who will fly the companies' spaceships were named on August 3.

Nine astronauts will fly the first four crewed missions inside SpaceX and Boeing's new spaceships for NASA, called Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner, respectively.NASA via AP

But just before the announcement, on July 22, an opinion article by an aerospace-industry veteran named Richard Hagar ran in The Washington Times, a right-leaning publication.

The op-ed article paints Musk as inexperienced and castigates "special interests in Washington" for eschewing the development of commercial safety standards. It also argues that SpaceX's plans to fuel its Falcon 9 rockets while astronauts are already loaded into the ship on top — a practice called "load and go" — is unsafe.

A short bio of Hagar that accompanies the op-ed article describes him as someone who "worked on every Apollo mission for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center as a spacecraft operator on the launch team."

That much is true. But an important aspect of Hagar's professional identity is also this: He formerly worked for an aerospace company called North American Aviation. That company later became Rockwell International, which was bought by Boeing in the 1990s. So Hagar said Boeing now pays his pension.

"I'm a Boeing retiree, technically," Hagar told Business Insider, though we were unable to independently verify that his pension checks come from Boeing. "I worked at the Cape [Canaveral], and I keep in contact with Boeing people down there."

Hagar said he never submitted the op-ed article to The Washington Times. He said he shared his written opinion with only one person, a Boeing employee, whom he repeatedly declined to identify.

"I don't want to start anything," Hagar said. "I'm not interested in that."

Shortly after Hagar gave his op-ed article to Boeing, he said, it appeared in The Washington Times.

He said he gave Boeing "permission to publish it wherever."

"I knew it would be in different publications, but not how many," he said.

The op-ed article has since appeared in at least eight more publications, including in the Albuquerque Journal on August 31, the Houston Chronicle on September 17 (and its partner the San Francisco Chronicle through an automated system), and the Austin American-Statesman on September 26. Members of the USA Today network also ran the opinion article.

"It's surprising — it's been going around the country," Hagar said. "I'm not out to try to get published everywhere. I have an opinion on it, and I was asked about it."

Boeing did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment about Hagar's op-ed article. (We'll update this story if we receive a statement.)

In an emailed statement from NASA, the agency said: "NASA is focused on returning human spaceflight to the US with the goal of achieving safe and reliable access to and from the International Space Station. We expect and believe our commercial partners are focused on that goal as well."

What's the deal with 'load and go'?

SpaceX fuels its Falcon 9 rockets with cryogenic or super-cold propellants just before launch. That approach comes with several cost-saving, mission-enabling advantages.

Waiting to fuel up keeps the rockets' high-grade kerosene fuel, called RP-1, very cold and very dense, allowing SpaceX to put more of it into a rocket, achieve greater performance, and launch bigger payloads deeper into space. The technique also helps SpaceX reserve fuel to reignite the rocket's boosters, land them back on Earth, and make them available to be reused.

In his opinion article, Hagar argued that the "load and go" approach couldn't be trusted. The longer astronauts are waiting with fuel around, the thinking goes, the greater the likelihood of a deadly accident. As evidence, Hagar points to SpaceX's launchpad explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket in September 2016.

An explosion at the launch site of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in September 2016. Launch Report/Handout via REUTERS

"Congress and the administration should overturn these shortsighted restrictions on commercial spaceflight safety standards," Hagar said in the op-ed article, "and NASA must ensure that before they put an astronaut on a commercial spacecraft that it lives up to the strict standards we have learned over the last 60 years of spaceflight."

However, after nearly two years of work by SpaceX and an exhaustive review by NASA, the space agency announced on August 17 that SpaceX's load-and-go fueling method "presents the least risk" to astronauts. NASA approved the practice, pending some final tests.

But even after that, Hagar's op-ed article kept appearing in newspapers.

He said he never personally pitched the piece to any outlet. Several outlets that ran the op-ed article did not respond to questions about who pitched it, but The Washington Times told Business Insider it "was pitched by Kelly Ramesar ... on behalf of Richard Hagar."

Kelly Ramesar is the name of a communications associate at a public-relations firm in Washington, DC, called Law Media Group, according to the firm's website. LMG names Boeing as a client on its site.

Ars Technica reported that two other people who are listed as communications associates at LMG — Casey Murray and Joshua Bak-Brevik — also successfully pitched Hagar's piece to at least four news outlets.

Given Hagar's insistence that he gave his writing to only a single Boeing employee, it seems someone from that company might have passed it to LMG, though this remains unknown.

Julian Epstein, the CEO of Law Media Group, did not immediately return Business Insider's calls or email.

Why Hagar says he wrote the piece

Neither Boeing nor any other entity paid Hagar for his writing, he said, though he's fine with that.

"I'm 82 years old. Why would I do anything different than that?" he said. "I have no money in this. It's an opinion I have on that process."

Hagar said he had been thinking about the risks of load-and-go for years and discussed his concerns with a small group of retirees who used to work on the space program.

"I'm a Boeing supporter," he said. "But that doesn't have any effect on my opinion of the load-and-go process."

But changing the perception of SpaceX could influence NASA and lawmakers who control the agency's purse strings. And Hagar did acknowledge that he wrote his article after a conversation with a current Boeing employee (not a retiree in his group).

"I was talking to one of the Boeing people one time, and he asked me what I thought of the load-and-go process," Hagar said. "I said, 'Let me sit down and look at it in more detail.'" He said that's how the op-ed article came about.

A Falcon 9 rocket launching toward space using cryogenically cooled fuel.SpaceX/Flickr (public domain)

SpaceX, for its part, has designed safety mechanisms to protect astronauts if something were to go wrong with the load-and-go procedure. An automated escape system in its Crew Dragon capsule would, in theory, blast astronauts away from an exploding rocket if there were a fueling mishap.

"I think that issue has been somewhat overblown," Musk said during a call with reporters on May 11.

"We certainly could load the propellants and then have the astronauts board Dragon," he continued, adding: "But I don't think it's going to be necessary any more than passengers on an aircraft need to wait until the aircraft is full of fuel before boarding."

Despite his criticism of load-and-go fueling, Hagar said the strategy was not a deal-breaker — just not the approach he believes SpaceX should begin with to launch its first astronauts. He said it could create pressure to avoid calling off a launch, since doing so may incur extra expenses.

"If that process evolves to load-and-go, that's great. But to start out with that? It's a process that can be awful critical. It has to go perfectly," Hagar said. "We lost Apollo 1, and we lost Challenger, and we lost Columbia, and a lot of that's all based on cost. With commercial companies, I hope they have deep pockets."

Are you a current or former aerospace-industry employee with a story to share? Send Dave Mosher This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or get in touch through one of the secure options listed here.

The used car market can be difficult to navigate. Sometimes, it's tough to tell if a seller is unloading a car because it's time for an upgrade, or because there's something wrong with it.

J.D. Power helps consumers get a sense of which cars are most likely to retain their value with its annual vehicle dependability study, which measures how much customers like their cars over time. This year's survey, which was released in February, collected feedback from 38,896 respondents who had owned a 2015 model-year vehicle for three years and determined the most reliable cars in 19 categories. The resulting data was used to determine the number of problems experienced per 100 vehicles. The lower the score, the more reliable the car is.

Toyota won six categories, the most of any automaker, while General Motors came in second by winning five categories.

These are the winners in each of the 19 categories.

Some 1,300 people have signed a Change.org petition asking Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff to turn Salesforce Tower, the software company's San Francisco skyscraper headquarters, into the Eye of Sauron on Halloween night. But Benioff has already splashed cold water on the idea.

For non-Lord of the Rings buffs, Sauron is the main antagonist in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings." The Eye of Sauron appeared to instill fear and let it be known that Sauron was watching — something that would be appropriately spooky for the occassion.

The petition's description is simple: "San Francisco = Mordor. Salesforce Tower = Eye Of Sauron." The petiton, created by one Red Rainey, seems to have resonated with people: It took only 15 hours to garner those 1,300-plus signatures, and it's still rising.

"Come on Mark [sic], have a sense of humor, this would be awesome!!!" one supporter wrote.

Salesforce Tower, looking out over the San Francisco Bay.Cushman & Wakefield

The recently opened, 61-story Salesforce Tower sports 11,000 LED lights atop its exterior, illuminating the top six floors with videos programmed by artist Jim Campbell and his team. At night, the light show can be seen from 20 miles away.

The bad news: Benioff told Curbed SF that Boston Properties, not Salesforce, actually controls what goes on the tower. Boston Properties owns the tower, with Salesforce as the primary resident. And he says that if the tower's display were going to commemorate Halloween at all, it would be with a "signal for Batkid" — a reference to Miles Scott, the young cancer survivor who "saved" San Francisco in a huge Make-A-Wish production in 2013.

"I would prefer for it to become a signal for Batkid to return as our city needs a lot of love right now," Benioff told Curbed SF.

As for the likelihood that Boston Properties would give in and allow the Eye of Sauron to shine: In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle before his installation went live in May, Campbell said his art would never contain advertisements or do holiday-themed display.

"I'm not going to do a bulletin board, ever," he said. "I'm not going to do red-and-green Christmas lights."

He did not, it should be noted, explicitly say that the Eye of Sauron is off the table.

Another thing to note: This would only be the latest connection between Sauron and the world of tech.

Palantir, the secretive data-mining startup cofounded by Peter Thiel, got its name from a magical artifact used by Sauron to communicate with his evil forces and spy on their enemies. Palmer Luckey, the cofounder of Facebook's Oculus VR unit, also appears to be a "Lord of the Rings" fan — his border security startup, Anduril, is named after hero Aragorn's enchanted sword.

Representatives for the Salesforce did not immediately return a request for comment.

With more than 71 million members recorded in their demographic, millennials are certainly a generation to be reckoned with. With their growing influence and increased ability to determine consumer trends, millennials are becoming of more interest to automakers as they seek to determine which car models will hold the most appeal.

Enter QuoteWizard.com, the digital insurance comparison platform that focuses on auto, home, renter's, health and life insurance. Founded in 2006, QuoteWizard has had over 50 million customers fill out insurance forms over 12 years, according to a company spokesperson.

To get an accurate ranking of the top cars driven by millennials, QuoteWizard took insurance data from over two million customers between the ages of 22 and 37 who compared auto insurance data on their website over the last 12 months. They then looked at the types of cars these consumers drove to get their total numbers, ranking them one through 10 based on quantity.

According to a spokesperson, the data collected by QuoteWizard is proprietary and from a self-reported insurance form that is free to be used as stated in the agreement.

As for the results, the list is rather interesting as it contains only one SUV and one pickup truck, two models that dominate the domestic market right now. Eight of the 10 cars listed or either sedans or compact cars, data which suggests that while most consumers are moving away from the family sedan, that particular car still holds an appeal for the millennial generation

Let's take a look at the top-10 cars driven by millennials below.

Tim Cook has stressed that Apple does not bend the way it does business in China — and it could be seen as a subtle swipe at Google.

Cook did not mention Google in an interview with Vice on Tuesday, but said Apple protects user data in China in exactly the same as anywhere else in the world.

The Apple CEO said his view of privacy as a human right applied to how the company does business in China. "Encryption for us is the same in every country in the world," he said.

"We don't design encryption for the US and do it differently everywhere else, it's the same. And so to send a message in China, it's encrypted. I can't produce the content, I can't produce it in the United States either. If you lock your phone in China I can't open it," added Cook.

Cook said that while Apple complied with laws that mean the data of Chinese citizens have to be stored in China, that data is under lock and key. "We worked with a Chinese company to provide iCloud, but the keys [...] are ours," he said.

Cook added that the fact data is stored in China doesn't make it easier for the Chinese government to access it. "I wouldn't get caught up in 'where's the location of it,' I mean we have servers located in many different countries in the world. They're not easier to get data from being in one country versus the next."

"The key question is how does the encryption process work, and who owns the keys — if anyone. In most cases for us, you and the receiver [of a message] own the keys."

The comments are in contrast to Google, which is reportedly preparing to launch a search engine in China that could be used as "spying tools" by Chinese officials.

In September, The Intercept obtained an internal memo that said Google's custom-built Chinese search engine would require users to log in, and would harvest data about their location and search history with a Chinese partner that would have "unilateral access" to the data.

While Cook did not mention Google or Dragonfly in his interview, setting a marker for user privacy in China sent a message, especially given the harsh words he had for data collectors earlier in the interview.

"The narrative that some companies will try to get you to believe is 'I've got to take all of your data to make my service better.' Well, don't believe that. Whoever's telling you that - it's a bunch of bonk," said Cook, although he did not elaborate on who these companies might be.

Apple's decision to ban the conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones had everything to do with its longstanding belief that it should offer users curated services and nothing to do with either politics or acting in coordination with other tech companies, CEO Tim Cook said on Tuesday.

In an interview with Vice News Tonight, Cook declined to get into the specific reason why Apple decided in August to remove Jones' podcasts from its Podcast app and, a month later, his Infowars app from its app store. But he said the decision came out of the company's practice of reviewing, selecting, and editing the kinds of apps and other material available through its stores and apps.

"What users want from us and what we've always provided them is a curated platform," Cook said.

Apple CEO Tim Cook denied the decision to remove Jones had anything to do with politics. Richard Drew/AP He denied that the decision had anything to do with Apple's political biases.

Because Apple and other tech giants are based in left-leaning Silicon Valley, conservatives have charged that the companies are prejudiced against them.

In the wake of Jones' ouster, President Donald Trump and other conservative politicians have called for government regulators to scrutinize tech companies for not acting as neutral services.

Despite Apple's ban of Jones, its users can still find material and apps found on its services that come from all over the political spectrum, Cook said.

"We don't take a political stand," he said. "We're not leaning one way or the other."

Cook also refuted the notion that Apple was working in coordination with other tech companies when it decided to ban Jones.

Right after the iPhone maker removed most of Jones' podcasts from its app, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube also removed his material from their services. But neither he nor, as far as he knows, has anyone else at Apple talked with any of those other companies about Jones, he said.

"​We make our decisions independently and I think that's important," Cook said.

In addition to a blizzard of new Surface hardware, Microsoft also announced at an event on Tuesday that it has started to roll out the next big update to Windows 10.

The October 2018 update, as it's called, has one big, headlining feature: A new app, called Your Phone, that lets you read your Android phone's text messages and view your Android phone's photos from your Windows 10 PC. And it works over WiFi, so you don't need to have your phone plugged into your computer to make it happen. The big caveat: Your phone needs to be running Android 7.0 or up.

If you have an iPhone, you lose some of the benefits of the Your Phone app. For iPhone users, the only supported feature at the moment is the ability to send a webpage link from your PC to your phone. Still handy, but less so.

But wait, there's more: Microsoft also used its event to tease another forthcoming new feature. At some point, you'll be able to mirror your Android phone to your PC's desktop, so you can use any app without leaving your keyboard.

Microsoft Windows Timeline can tell you what you were working on, when. Now, it's coming to Android phones. Microsoft

And finally, Android users are getting one more superpower with the new Windows update, beyond the Your Phone app.

Earlier this year, Microsoft unveiled Timeline, a Windows 10 feature that kept track of which files and webpages you were accessing, and when, so you could figuratively trace your digital steps and find what you were looking for. Now, Android users can install the Microsoft Launcher app, and access that same Timeline, so you can find the website or Office 365 file you wanted. Microsoft says that it's coming to iPhone at some point soon, as well.

Oh, one more thing. This isn't strictly related to the phone stuff, but the new update also adds a so-called Cloud Clipboard that lets you copy text or images from one PC, and paste it on another. Plus, it keeps a history across devices of everything you've copied. It's a little thing, but probably useful to many.

Microsoft is playing nice with Android and iPhone

The texting features are very similar to one of the best parts of the Apple ecosystem: If you own a Mac and an iPhone, your texts flow freely between them — you can start a conversation on your laptop and finish it on your phone, or vice versa. A feature called AirDrop, too, makes it easy to share photos and other files between all Apple devices.

Google has tried to close that particular gap with the recent introduction of an Android messages app for the web browser. However, what Microsoft is offering Android users is something built right into the operating system, so you can click and drag photos straight from your phone into an editing or social media app.

All in all, it's a reflection of Microsoft's recognition that, without a viable phone platform of its own, it needs to integrate tightly with the iPhones and Androids of today to stay relevant. While it's clear that there's a lot of work left to do, this is a promising first step.

How to get the new Windows 10 update

Generally speaking, if you have automatic updates installed, the Windows 10 October 2018 update will start going out in waves on October 9th. If you're dying to have it now, though, you can go into your PC's settings and have it check for updates, per the instructions from Microsoft here.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is reiterating his call for new government regulations to protect consumer privacy from tech companies.

The amount of information about individual users stored online and on their phones is enormous, Cook said in an interview with Vice News Tonight on Tuesday. The tech industry hasn't done a good job of respecting and protecting that data, he said.

"I'm not a pro-regulation kind of person, I believe in the free market deeply," Cook said. But, he added, "when the free market doesn't produce a result that's great for society, you have to ask yourself: what do we need to do? And I think some level of government regulation is important to come out of that."

Despite advocating for new regulations, Cook, who has repeatedly advocated new privacy rules this year, expressed doubt whether Congress is as up to speed on technology as it would need to be to craft beneficial legislation in the area. The technology "literacy" of legislators and their staffs is "a challenge," he said.

"There is a need to work with Congress and the staff to make sure that we do our jobs of helping them kind of come up to speed on ... on what's possible," he said.

Consumer advocates, policy makers, and tech industry figures have been increasingly discussing the need for new privacy regulations, particularly in the wake of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal this spring. In that incident, some 87 million customer records were leaked to a data analysis firm linked to President Donald Trump. More recently, Facebook acknowledged that at least 50 million accounts were compromised thanks to a security hole.

Apple and Cook have repeatedly tried to distinguish the company from its Big Tech peers such as Facebook and Google. Unlike those companies, Apple's business isn't built around advertising revenue or collecting scads of data on its users to target them with ads. Apple actually tries to limit the amount of information it collects on users, Cook said.

"The way we go into product design, we challenge ourselves to collect as little as possible," he said. He continued: "You are not our product."

Some in the industry have asserted that Apple's restraint in data collection will ultimately hurt the company's ability to compete with its rivals, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Those technologies tend to improve as they get access to more data. An intelligent assistant, for example, could potentially offer more useful suggestions about what restaurant a user might like if it had more information about what restaurants they've liked in the past.

But Cook disputed the notion that Apple itself needs to collect more data on users to improve it services, suggesting instead that users' devices could collect it instead — without sharing it with the company.

"The narrative that some companies will try to get you to believe is 'I've got to take all of your data to make my service better.' Well, don't believe that," he said. "Whoever's telling you that - it's a bunch of bonk. We try to keep as much of your information on that device as possible because we want that device to know, because you count on the device to be smart for you."

Some consumer advocates have raised the concern that while Apple may respect user privacy now, things could change under Cook's successors. Users' iPhones collect plenty of data and the company at some point in the future could choose to start collecting it for itself.

But Cook disputed that notion too, saying it would go against Apple's culture.

"I think the next person [who runs Apple], I don't want to commit them, but I can't imagine it. It's not in my imagination that somebody would just say 'oh, time to change,'" he said. I don't see it."

The Surface Pro 6 was the headliner.

This is the latest iteration of Microsoft's flagship line of laptop/tablet hybrids.

In terms of design, it's not much different from the current-generation Surface Pro, currently on store shelves. The Surface Pro 6 does, however, sport a modern quad-core Intel processor, which Microsoft says makes it 1.5 times faster than its predecessor.

In terms of aesthetics, you can get the Surface Pro 6 in a new, sleek matte black finish — though that option only comes with certain higher-end models, which will run you more than the $899 starting price.

In our hands-on time with the Surface Pro 6, we found that Microsoft didn't mess much with its own winning formula. However, it's worth noting the somewhat puzzling absence of a USB-C port, which the tech-savvy might find disappointing.

Oh, and the matte black finish looks extremely good in real life.

Facebook says it can't find any evidence that the hackers who compromised 50 million users' accounts on the social network also used stolen "keys" to break into victims' accounts on other apps and services.

Last week, the Silicon Valley tech firm revealed it had been targeted in a massive hack that saw an as-yet-unidentified attacker, or attackers, gain access to tens of millions of users' accounts by exploiting vulnerabilities in its software.

It subsequently acknowledged that this attack also meant that, in theory, the hacker could have stolen "access tokens" to get into users' accounts on other apps that use the Facebook Login service, including Tinder, Airbnb, Spotify, and more.

In a statement published on Tuesday, Facebook exec Guy Rosen said the company hasn't found any evidence this has actually happened. It will be a partial relief to the victims of the attack, as well as the companies that rely on Facebook Login and faced having to conduct their own investigations.

But Facebook's update provides no more information on who is behind their attack, what their motivation was, and what user data they took. "We're sorry that this attack happened — and we'll continue to update people as we find out more," Rosen wrote.

The news of the hack comes as Facebook attempts to recover from a string of bruising scandals, from Cambridge Analytica to the spread of Russian misinformation and propaganda on its platform. Facebook now faces multiple investigations over the breach, including from multiple US Congressional committees and the Irish privacy watchdog.

A year ago, Amazon debuted a new way to pick up items within minutes of ordering them, calling it Instant Pickup.

Customers could order items like snacks, drinks, and basic essentials from the Amazon app and use a barcode to access their purchase at designated Pickup locations. An Amazon employee would fill an Instant Pickup locker within minutes of the order being placed.

However, Amazon has pulled the plug on the service, a company spokesperson has confirmed to Business Insider. The company did not specify when the service ended.

The service was designed for impulse, need-it-now purchases. It used Amazon Pickup locations that were already in operation for traditional pickups. When the service was announced in August 2017, it was available at five Pickup locations, including college campuses, and announced plans to expand to more.

Instant Pickup made the Pickup locations more like a store than just a receiving center. It was like a large vending machine with a staff of one.

The cancellation of the rollout is a rare step back for the retailer, which has been going full-steam ahead on opening physical locations. It continues to open Amazon Books stores and pop-up locations, and it recently opened a new store concept called Amazon 4-star. It's possible that Instant Pickup was just an experiment that did not turn out the way Amazon hoped it would.

Instead of Instant Pickup, Amazon is focusing on its Pickup locations, which allow customers to pick up and drop off items to be returned. The centers also offer free, same-day pickup on some locations for Prime members, but that's the fastest Amazon is offering now that Instant Pickup has been rolled back.

When Business Insider tested the Pickup location, we found it easy and simple to use, but limited in functionality.

In just a few weeks, 70 new emoji will arrive on your iPhone.

The new emoji include everything from redheads — like those pictured above — to a bagel, a lacrosse stick, a lobster, and more.

This is a good thing, right?

Wrong.

Hey, I'll be honest: I'm a huge fan of emoji, and I probably overuse them when texting with friends and family. Plus, as someone who is occasionally called a redhead, I'm thrilled that I and my ginger ilk will be better represented in emoji form. I'm even optimistic that having a bagel emoji will probably change my life.

But the fact of the matter is, we just can't handle this annual influx of new emojis anymore — at some point, enough is enough. It's become far too difficult to ever find the emoji you're looking for at the exact moment you need it. If Apple insists on including dozens of new emoji each year with its latest software update, it needs to add an emoji search function to the iPhone, or just stop adding new emoji altogether.

Don't believe me? OK, fine: say it's your friend's birthday, and you're hoping to send her a festive text message to help celebrate her special day. You'd like to include a balloon emoji. The only problem is, where the heck is the balloon emoji, anyway? Is it under the smiley faces? Hidden away in the tab with the little car and the little building? Suddenly, you're left scrolling through every single character before giving up in frustration.

It's just too much.

(By the way, the balloon emoji is underneath the present emoji inside the tab that looks like a light bulb — obviously!)

2,823 emoji

For the past several years, we've gotten dozens upon dozens of new emoji annually. The Unicode Consortium — the governing body responsible for approving new emoji designs — typically approves the new characters for all platforms sometime around February, then they roll out on various devices and services over the course of the next several months.

Apple usually adds new emoji to iPhones via a software update sometime in October. This year, they will arrive as part of iOS 12.1, which will land sometime in the next few weeks.

A sampling of the new emoji coming to phones this fall. Emojipedia

This year's update will include 70 new emoji, and 157 new characters total, which includes gender and skin tone variations. Last year, we got 56 unique characters, and a whopping 239 total emoji.

All of that would be well and good, except our phones are now absolutely clogged with tiny characters and symbols, half of which are obscure and rarely, if ever, used. Seriously — have you ever used the paperclip emoji?

On top of that, each symbol that represents a person — or fictional creature, like a mermaid — has variations for gender and skin tone. This is a great thing! The more often people can feel represented, in ways big and small, the better.

Sometimes, though, the emoji powers-that-be take it a little too far:

The current total number of emoji, including skin tone and gender variations, is 2,823 — that's way too many if you ask me.

Just make a search button (please!)

If we're going to keep getting new emoji each year — and all signs point to yes — I have one request: please, please make it easier to find them on your iPhone.

Yes, this is an iPhone-specific problem — Twitter has a search function for emoji; Google has an emoji search function across its phones and keyboards. Even Apple's iMessage on your Mac lets you search for a specific character.

Here's how predictive emoji works on iPhones right now. Apple

And Slack, the popular work chat app, does you one better: typing in ":" followed by what you're looking for will bring up a bevy of emoji to choose from. Type ":car," and it'll bring up a selection of car emoji to choose from, for instance.

Apple has tried to add a way to make finding the right emoji easier in the past, but it's not fool-proof and, to be honest, I rarely find myself using it. It's called predictive emoji: if you type in a word in iMessage — say, for instance, "train" — then tap on the keyboard button, the word will highlight orange. Tapping on that word will bring up emoji suggestions where applicable.

While it works, that isn't the most seamless way to do it — a good old search button would work just fine.

So while I may be a self-professed emoji fiend, I don't want any new symbols making it harder to find my favorite characters, like the hug emoji, the slice of pizza, or the dark red heart. Give me a search button, or give me no new emoji at all. …

AP/Scott Sady

When announcing plans to raise minimum wage to $15 an hour for all of Amazon's employees in the US, chief executive Jeff Bezos portrayed the move as a sort of moral reckoning.

"We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead," he said Tuesday, referring to months of backlash over how Amazon treats its workers. "We’re excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us."

But political pressure aside, economists say Amazon was probably going to have to raise its wages anyway. In order to stay competitive in a tight labor market, they say, companies across the US will have to make similar moves.

"It is a big deal in that it says a lot about the current political climate and where the labor market is headed," said Josh Wright, chief economist at iCIMS Inc., a recruiting software company. "But it is more symbolic than it is significant." 

With historically low unemployment levels and a humming economy, labor shortages in the US look poised to extend past the holiday shopping season. Put simply, companies need to offer more to attract workers when labor conditions are tight.

Martha Gimbel, director of economic research for the job site Indeed, said the move is just an example of what is expected in the current labor market, and expects other companies would have made similar moves on their own.

"This is not just an Amazon phenomenon," Gimbel said. "When something is harder to find, you're going to have to pay for it."

The policy likely won't show up in national wage data anytime soon. It would increase average hourly earnings in the US by 1.2 cents, Moody's economist Adam Ozimek estimates, as affected workers make up less than a quarter percentage point of total payroll employment. For comparison, that figure tends to rise about 10 cents on average each month. 

"This reflects an underlying trend in wage growth anyway so some of the wage hikes were going to happen even without this policy," Ozimek said. "I think it's more reflective of a tight labor market than it is likely to generate a tight labor market."

Still, others see the action as more than a symptom. Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at the career site Glassdoor, predicts the company will put "immediate" pressure on wage growth. In the retail and e-commerce sectors, pillars of Amazon's workforce, he expects payrolls to rise faster than the national average. 

"The writing is on the wall," he said. "If the largest retailer in the US is taking a stand like this, it puts other companies at a competitive disadvantage." 

And with labor shortages across the economy, changes in retail and e-commerce could spread to the rest of the economy as it pulls workers from other sectors. 

"Policies and public stances like this do matter," Chamberlain said. "Amazon is such a big fish in the pool that it can have far-reaching consequences."

Apple has its AirPods, Google built the Pixel Buds, and now Microsoft has its Surface Headphones.

The $350 over-the-ear Surface Headphones, available later this holiday season, were announced at a Microsoft event in New York City on Tuesday. They'll feature active and passive noise cancelation, bluetooth and wired connections, fast charging, and Cortana support.

Users can ask Microsoft's Cortana voice assistant to pause, play, or change songs, as well as utilize Cortana's non-audio functionalities like reminders and Bing searches. The headphones will also notice when they're taken off someone's head, and will pause songs or mute calls accordingly while the headset is removed.

The idea, it seems, is to offer a pair of high-end headphones that complement Microsoft's high-end Surface hardware. Indeed, on Tuesday, Microsoft announced a trio of new Surface computers: the Surface Pro 6, the Surface Laptop 2, and the Surface Studio 2.

Here are the key specs for the Surface Headphones: