Patty McCord, former chief talent officer at Netflix, gives her take on recruiting, motivating, and building great teams in "Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility."

McCord, who worked at Netflix from 1998 to 2012, stands against the old style of corporate HR, which she sees as a waste of time. Instead, she "advocates for radical honesty in the workplace, saying good-bye to employees who don't fit the company's emerging needs, and motivating with challenging work, not promises, perks, and bonus plans," according to the book description.

Levie isn't the only person in Silicon Valley to take notice. McCord has gotten a lot of buzz since the book came out in early 2018. Arianna Huffington and Laurene Powell Jobs both endorsed McCord's book, as did Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

Read our interview with Patty McCord here.

For wild animals, it's all about survival right from their birth. And some of them have to take extreme measures in order to increase their chances just to see the next day. Following is a transcript of the video.

Human babies are kind of pathetic. We can't run from predators, feed ourselves, or even lift up our own heads. But not all newborns are totally helpless. After all, it's a treacherous world out there, and some babies must go to extremes to survive.

Take barnacle geese. They lay their eggs 120 meters up the side of the cliff, away from predators. That's the same height as a 36-story building. But there's no food for the chicks to eat up there. So when they're a few days old, still incapable of flight, they leap off the cliff. Thousands are injured or killed on impact. But the lightest, fluffiest chicks survive by floating down and landing on their soft stomachs.

Baby marine iguanas also have it rough. They don't have to leap off a cliff, they just have to outrun swarms of hungry snakes. Mothers lay their eggs in underground burrows for protection, but they don't stick around after laying the eggs. By the time the babies hatch up to four months later, the Galapagos racer snakes have gathered for a feast. So the hatchlings have two options: stay put and starve or make a run for it. The snakes are attracted to movement, so the second the iguanas take off, snakes give chase, and only the quickest survive.

While iguana hatchlings must be fleet of foot, greater guinea pigs are speedy in a different way. Pups can have babies of their own, just one month after birth. That's like humans giving birth at 11 months old. And unlike other rodents, the pups are born with furry coats, open eyes, and can walk on their first day. They're pretty much just mini-adults. Disturbing, right?

Just wait till you hear about braconid wasps. Their babies are extreme predators from the moment they hatch. Adults hijack a caterpillar and lay over 100 eggs underneath its skin. Once hatched, the larvae feed on the caterpillar's internal organs, and once it's on the brink of death, the larvae chew their way out, spin cocoons, and emerge as fully formed adults. Ready to have deadly babies of their own.

Speaking of which, sand tiger sharks eat their own siblings before they're even born. You see, mom has many suitors, and they all fertilize her eggs at different times. So the eggs that are fertilized early on develop sooner in the womb before the rest, and once they're big enough, they eat their less developed siblings. And you thought you had annoying siblings.

The Ocean Agency/XL Catlin Seaview Survey/Richard Vevers

Corals might look like curious oddities — the strange organisms are animals but have the appearance of plants out of a science-fiction universe.

But these animals are essential to the health of the ocean as we know it.

Because of that, corals are far more important to people than many realize. Yet they're dying rapidly: According to some estimates, 50% of the world's coral has died in the past 30 years. Reefs are being wiped out by pollution from cities and farms and destroyed by fishing practices. Most importantly, as the world's temperature rises, oceans are absorbing vast amounts of heat and carbon dioxide. That means they're becoming warmer and more acidic faster than corals can adapt.

This could have serious consequences. A recent study outlined 31 of the essential services that marine ecosystems provide to people. These range from the obvious — like seafood and areas for tourism — to benefits that are far less straightforward but essential: at least 50% of the oxygen we breathe comes from a healthy ocean.

Reefs cover less than 1% of the ocean floor, yet 25% of fish species spend some part of their life cycles in them, making corals absolutely essential to ocean health. Estimates of the overall economic value of reefs suggest they contribute between $30 billion and more than $375 billion to the world economy annually, though some scientists say those figures are far too low.

So there are pressing reasons to save the world's coral. In the long term, that will require we limit climate change so ocean temperatures and acidity stop spiking. But researchers have also devised ways to try to help dead reefs bounce back more quickly.

Biologists have designed ways to grow corals, either in labs or in special underwater farms, at rates far faster than they naturally grow in the wild. In some cases, they've identified corals that are particularly resilient to warm or acidic water and focused on nurturing those. Then scientists take those newly grown corals and replant them on natural reefs to try to bring them back.

Here's how it works.

Near the end of July, I spent a weekend driving a $44,000 Chevrolet Bolt EV Premier. It was my first experience driving an electric vehicle in real-world conditions for more than an hour, and by the end of the weekend, I understood the hype around the Bolt.

Released in late 2016, the Bolt was the first non-luxury electric vehicle with a range of over 200 miles per charge, beating Tesla's Model 3 to market by seven months (though Tesla has yet to deliver the $35,000 base version of the vehicle). Car reviewers praised the Bolt, with Business Insider's Matthew DeBord calling it a "masterpiece" and Motor Trend naming it the best car of 2017.

The Bolt's motor was quiet

The Bolt's range is a major advantage, and it had a number of other features I liked, including its handling, ride quality, regenerative braking system, and raised seating position. But my two favorites were the lack of noise it produced and its lane-keep-assist feature.

Electric motors are much quieter than gas-powered engines, and the Bolt's lack of engine noise made a small but noticeable difference that became more significant over around eight hours of driving. I noticed that I felt a little more relaxed driving the Bolt than I often do when driving gas-powered cars, which I partly attributed to the quieter motor.

The lack of noise did have a small downside: Sometimes it took me a few seconds to realize how fast I was driving since I didn't have the usual sonic cues to indicate how quickly the Bolt was accelerating. But that spoke well to the Bolt's ability to minimize wind and tire noise.

Lane-keep-assist made me aware of a bad habit

The Bolt I drove came with subtle but effective driver assistance features: front and rear cameras, as well as systems that alerted me when I came too close to a car in front of me, when a car was in either of my blind spots, when pedestrians were walking behind me, and when I was drifting too far to one side in my lane.

My favorite was the lane-keep-assist feature, which consists of a small icon on the instrument panel that changes its color from green to orange when the car isn't centered in its lane. I quickly learned that I tended to drive too close to the inside of a lane on the highway. In eight years of driving, I had never been made aware of that tendency. I realized that my caution about keeping a safe distance from the outer edge of a lane had led me to overcompensate and likely bother other drivers. After using lane-keep-assist, I understood how even small advancements in automotive technology can ease drivers' concerns and promote better driving habits.

The Airbus A350-1000 entered service with Qatar Airways in February. It is the latest in a new generation of the fuel-efficient, carbon-composite, wide-body airliners to launch in recent years.

With four-engine jumbo jets like the Boeing 747 and the Airbus A380 quickly losing favor with airlines, smaller, more efficient twin-engine widebodies have taken their place as the industry's workhorse long-haul jets. In fact, Virgin Atlantic is expected to replace its 747-400s with a fleet of A350-1000s over the next few years.

Thus far, the Boeing 777 is the most successful of the twin-engine wide-bodies with 1,988 sold since its debut in 1994. Launched in 2002, the Boeing 777-300ER is, by far, the most popular version of the twin-jet and accounts for about 42% of the plane's sales total.

Airbus has 890 orders for the A350; 168 of which are for the Dash 1000.

Until the A350-1000's arrival, Airbus didn't really have a true rival for the 777-300ER. The A330-300 had the size, but not quite the range while the quad-engine A340-600 had the range and the capacity, but was far less efficient.

In fact, Qatar is actually operating the A350-1000 alongside its existing fleet of 777-300ERs.

"The A350-1000 is performing very well in our fleet," Qatar Airways Group CEO Akbar Al Baker said to a roundtable of reporters at the 2018 Farnborough International Airshow in July. "Actually, it's performing better than what we envisaged."

According to Airbus, the A350 is capable of delivering 25% better fuel efficiency and a 25% unit costs compared to previous generation aircraft like the 777.

"Yes, they are right," Al Baker said regarding Airbus's efficiency claims. "And this is why Boeing has launched the 777X to compete against the fuel efficiency of the Airbus A350-1000."

Qatar Airways also has orders in place for 60 of Boeing next-generation 777X airliners that are expected to enter service in 2020.

The Doha, Qatar-based airline was also the launch customer of the smaller A350-900 back in 2014.

At the Farnborough Air Show, Airbus brought along an A350-1000 prototype for flight demonstrations while Qatar Airways showed off one of its Dash 1000s for guests and journalists.

Here's a closer look at the new Airbus A350-1000:

Of course Apple is working on new products in its $5 billion headquarters and research labs.

The company wouldn't be as successful as it is if Apple CEO Tim Cook and his executive team weren't constantly planning for three and five years into the future and asking themselves what computers could look like.

It seems like the company has decided it will launch a pair of smartglasses that can impose digital information onto the real world through its advanced lenses.

The latest brick in this mound of evidence? Apple recently acquired a small Colorado based company, Akonia Holographics. Reuters has the scoop.

The company wasn't very well known, and although no price was announced, it was a small purchase, unlikely to be listed in regulatory filings.

But the transaction still reveals that Apple is working on some kind of head-mounted gadget. Just look at the company's website:

Akonia Holographics

That's not the only place where the company says it's focused on augmented reality glasses.

Akonia Holographics

Under products, the company talks about making lenses for smart glasses:

Akonia Holographics

Apple usually buys companies for talent and the technology it's working on — and it seems like this company was focused on new developments in one of the elements of smart glasses that isn't in smartphones: the lenses.

Not surprising

Current smartglasses, like Magic Leap One, are bulky and have issues with display, battery life, and software. Magic Leap The fact that Apple is working on smartglasses shouldn't be surprising to any investors. Apple CEO Tim Cook laid out Apple's playbook for the technology way back in 2016, before the company ever released any augmented reality software.

"I do think that a significant portion of the population of developed countries, and eventually all countries, will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day, it will become that much a part of you, a lot of us live on our smartphones, the iPhone, I hope, is very important for everyone, so AR will become really big," he said in 2016.

Apple has bought a ton of other augmented reality companies, including one last year that worked on eye-tracking, another core technology for glasses.

And for the past two years, Apple has been highlighting augmented reality apps on the iPhone using ARKit, its software for placing digital objects in the real world.

The fact that Apple is working on glasses has been reported by Bloomberg, and the company has an R&D team of hundreds working on prototypes and technologies that the glasses could eventually use.

This all is known. It's also public that rivals like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are working on their own augmented reality technology. Buzzy billion dollar startup Magic Leap just started shipping its own glasses.

But what's still unknown about Apple's AR glasses is far more interesting.

Will it replace the iPhone?

Not a real picture of Apple CEO Tim Cook. AP / Matthew Sumner for Getty Images What form the glasses will take is still unknown. Bloomberg previously reported that they would be an assistant device to the iPhone, similar to how the Apple Watch needs an iPhone now.

But then, what does Apple see as the core features? Is it going to be a lightweight device intended for notifications, or is it going to have more of a gaming and graphics focus, like the recently released Magic Leap One?

Is Apple going to focus on weight, or power, or utility?

One analyst believes that Apple sees augmented reality as its next big user interface, like how the iPhone introduced advanced touchscreens. Therefore, Apple might not need a so-called "killer app" — it's the whole experience.

"We predict that AR is the next-generation revolutionary UI; we therefore think that AR does not need any killer applications given it is a killer application already," Kuo wrote in the note.

While lots of companies can research new technologies, assemble parts in an attractive fashion, and bring a product to market, Apple is known for its design sense. Other companies are less likely to focus on breakthrough interfaces. For example, Oculus cofounder Palmer Luckey expressed disappointment with Magic Leap One's interface.

"I hope Magic Leap does cool stuff in the future, but the current UI is basically an Android Wear watch menu that floats in front of you," Luckey wrote.

"It is some of the worst parts of phone UI slammed into some of the most gimmicky parts of VR UI, and I hope developers create better stuff in the near future," he continued.

Apple seems likely to avoid these problems. It's been hiring user interface designers, with job listings that strongly suggest that some talented people inside of Apple are trying to figure out how to interact with the world through glasses or a phone. And it already has a library of over 3,000 AR apps for its iPhone.

As with the iPhone and other Apple products, if the Cupertino-based giant comes up with a better way of doing something in augmented reality, you can expect the rest of the industry to follow and come up with their own versions.

So while all the puzzle pieces are coming together and pointing to Apple building its own pair of glasses, it's how they end up working that will matter the most. We'll know how it's shaking out soon — some people have guessed that Apple could launch something as soon as 2020.

It's been more than two years since the UK voted to leave the European Union in June 2016.

The outcome horrified a large proportion of the UK's community of entrepreneurs, investors, and executives, many of whom have thrived thanks to strong links with Europe.

For investors, one of the most serious post-Brexit threats was the potential loss of a major backer, the European Investment Fund (EIF).

A chunk of the money that is invested into startups via venture capital comes from government institutions, as well as entities such as insurance firms and pension funds. In Europe, a large slug of venture funding — around 10%— comes from the EIF, which is ultimately controlled by the European Investment Bank.

The EIF is what is known as a "cornerstone" investor, meaning it will commit to providing a substantial chunk of a new fund. During the long and arduous process of raising a new fund, the EIF's involvement can act as a catalyst to persuade smaller investors to buy in.

Fund managers' worst fears came to pass when they discovered the EIF had quietly hit pause on investing in British funds after the 2016 vote.

The Treasury responded to the threat, promising an additional £400 million to the EIF's UK equivalent, the British Business Bank. It took a year to happen, but theoretically, it would mean funds struggling to raise cash would be able to "close", or complete. Except for one new fund.

Singular Ventures was a new UK-headquartered fund aiming to take European startups to the US

Ali Mitchell. EQT Ventures

In late 2015, Alastair Mitchell was letting go of the reins at his enterprise software startup Huddle. A British entrepreneur who had moved to San Francisco to take Huddle international, Mitchell decided to hand the CEO role to a veteran executive, and was thinking about his options.

He felt he had another startup in him, but also felt he could offer advice to European startups trying to expand into the US, just as Huddle had.

"Could I combine the two and start my own fund? That's how Singular Ventures was born," Mitchell told Business Insider in an interview.

Enter Ben Tompkins, a venture capitalist at Eden Ventures who had invested in Huddle's seed round. "I was Ali's first investor," Tompkins said. "He had great experience of being an entrepreneur and CEO, and had gone to the US.

"I had experience of being a banker and an investor. We came together and said let's combine forces... [let's] try and raise a fund to focus on early-stage European software companies. I would be in London, and Ali would be in San Francisco."

Ben Tompkins. Draper Esprit

Michael Stephanblome, an investor at Eight Roads, is also listed as a one-time partner in the fund in British financial filings.

Tompkins characterised Singular Ventures as being the third fund for Eden Ventures but with some young blood on board. To that end, the fund was rebranded and the trio approached many of Eden's backers, and the European Investment Fund.

"We knew founders wanted it, we knew the market needed it, and we knew Europe as an overall market was starting to produce some amazing startups," Mitchell said. "All was looking good pre-Brexit."

Unfortunately, they were pitching the EIF just as the organisation hit pause on UK funds. There was a double killer in that, at the time, no one actually understood what was happening in the immediate aftermath of the referendum. The EIF appeared to be giving mixed messages to investors, fund managers told Business Insider at the time.

It wasn't just technology either. Energy, manufacturing, and car companies all warned that uncertainty was bad for investment and business.

According to Mitchell, the EIF wasn't the only investor with doubts. "None of the funds were sure — it could have been the EIF, or local funds, or commercial and pension funds. No one was sure," he said.

Tompkins added: "You had some investors interested in a UK-only structure, some in a European structure, but frankly we couldn't pull it off where we could find investors [interested] in a pan-European fund based out of London."

The uncertainty, the pair said, meant they couldn't continue to raise funds.

"We were determined to ride it out and believed in our thesis," said Mitchell. "But no one [was] in a position to do anything for 18 months. That was tragic. And although it will come good, two years is a long time in startup land."

Several funds struggled to finalise their funds after Brexit

Reshma Sohoni, cofounder of Seedcamp, which successfully closed a new fund after the Brexit vote. Seedcamp

Neither Tompkins or Mitchell were willing to criticise the EIF, saying that as a mostly state-funded organisation it was natural to be cautious. "They were in a difficult place of trying to please all people all the time," Mitchell said. "I would characterise [post-Brexit funding] as a political football."

Business Insider has contacted the EIF for comment. At the time, the organisation claimed it wasn't pulling out of the UK but that it did need to carry out more due diligence on British investments.

Singular wasn't the only venture capital outfit affected, although it appears to be the only one actually driven out of business. Sources told Business Insider last year that early-stage firms Dawn Capital, Episode 1, Seedcamp, Hoxton Ventures, and Crane Ventures were all impacted by the EIF's decision to pause. Dawn, Episode 1, and Seedcamp did eventually successfully close their funds.

Mitchell calculated that it has taken about 18 months for the UK to get its act together, in terms of filling the EIF gap. The British Business Bank is starting to invest in some venture capital funds but, Tompkins said, it's not yet "up to full speed."

Brexit will have a long-term impact on talent

Both Mitchell and Tompkins remain in venture capital and are optimistic.

Mitchell joined EQT Ventures, a pan-European fund mostly staffed up by former entrepreneurs. Like Mitchell's original vision, EQT helps European firms launch in the US, and vice versa. "It is everything that I as a founder believe has been missing in the investor and startup community," he said.

But, like many others in the industry, Mitchell remains hugely disappointed by the outcome of the vote and believes it will dim some of London's shine as a startup and talent hub.

"All constituents in the business community are... saying 'This is crazy, we have to move back to a previous situation where talent and money can move freely,'" he said. "It's to no one's benefit to move to an insular, closed market."

Tompkins, meanwhile, joined another venture capital firm, Draper Esprit, as a partner. Ultimately, Tomkins thinks the EIF's reduced influence over British venture capital might encourage new models for venture capital. Draper Esprit, for example, raised money by going public in 2016, and reported a profit after tax of £65.3 million in the year to 31 March.

"[Draper] had had the uncertainty as well, but they found a way forward which was to take the company public and use that as a way to make money," Tompkins said. "Two years ago, people would have said that's a brave thing to do."

Ultimately, Tomkins said he has no regrets. "Life's too short to cry over Brexit."

Cboe is telling its trading firm clients that it is getting close to launching a market for ether futures, but that might actually be a bad thing for the cryptocurrency, one expert says.

Tom Lee, the notorious bitcoin bull who has a $25,000 price target for the coin, told Business Insider that ether futures could hurt ether and actually benefit its larger rival, bitcoin.

That's because the launch of ether futures would provide an easy way for ether bears to bet against the coin.

Futures, which give investors a way to bet on the future price of an asset, helped propel bitcoin to all-time highs at the end of December. But after they came online, the price of bitcoin tanked and it's down more than 70% since hitting an all-time high at the end of 2017. Ether futures could have a similar impact on the crypto's price, according to Lee.

On the flip side, Lee said ether futures could benefit bitcoin because they'll provide crypto bears with another way to express their view on the overall market, alleviating pressure on bitcoin shorts.

"Since December of this year, if one was bearish on any aspect of crypto but did not want to own the underlying, they could short btc," Lee said. "They can now short eth, means the net short on btc in futures would fall."

Cboe would be basing its futures on Gemini's underlying market, people familiar with the situation said. Cboe also based its bitcoin futures on the New York-based crypto exchange run by the Winklevoss twins.

The futures and options exchange is waiting on the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to get comfortable with the product before its official launch, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

We visited British Airways Technical Block A, which is home to 16 flight simulators making it the biggest flight simulator facility in the UK.

British Airways Captain Claire Bunton taught us how to fly the Airbus A380, which is the biggest commercial airplane in the world. We learned how to take off, fly, and land the giant aircraft.

BA pilots spend around 50 hours inside the simulator as part of their training, but we only spent one hour inside.

See how we did with just one hour of training.

Produced and filmed by David Ibekwe. Additional Camera by Charlie Floyd. Special Thanks to Britsih Airways.

Theo Wargo/Getty

Citron Research — a short-selling firm with a history of wiping out stock prices and run by Andrew Left — has a new target: cannabis stocks.

In a report published Thursday, the firm says Cronos, one of the most valuable publicly traded marijuana companies, is worth roughly one-third of its current price: $3.50 per share.

"Citron would like to inform investors of caution on the ongoing and real green rush," the firm said.

"Although the hype is big and the prohibition after 100 years is real, it is critical to understand that in the Canadian landscape, there are over 100 licensed producers and there will ultimately be more losers than winners."

Specifically, Citron cites a lack of disclosures from the firm — which trades only in Canada, unlike some of its US-listed competitors — about major events. First, Citron criticized Cronos' lack of specifics in terms of its provincial supply agreements, and notes all other suppliers, including competitor Canopy Growth, have specified the amounts they've been tapped to supply.

"Cronos management appears to have been deceiving the investing public by purposely not disclosing the size of its distribution agreements with provinces – unlike every other major cannabis player," Citron wrote.

"Our sources have informed us that it’s because the agreements are so small they could never justify the premium investors are paying for the stock."

Citron also says a major recall in May of Cronos' product in Germany wasn't disclosed to investors.

Cronos has been a popular investment among traders on Robinhood, who tend to skew younger than on traditional brokerages. The stock currently has more than 96,000 holders on the app, Robinhood's website shows, up from just 60,000 less than a month ago. 

Cannabis stocks, including those of Cronos and its competitors, have seen an impressive run-up following investments by the beverage makers Constellation Brands and Lagunitas, but Citron says reports suggesting Britain's Diageo was interested in the space have already compelled investors to price a new deal in to Cronos' stock.

"Yeah right, Diageo would ever do a deal with a company who has a history of contamination and has proven that they cannot even produce a small amount of commercial product," Citron wrote. "This is a NON EVENT. Citron feels stupid even discussing this, but it had to get mentioned."

Reached by email, a Cronos Group spokesperson declined to comment on the Citron report, but said "our securities offerings have been underwritten by reputable banks and our respected advisors have done all the necessary due diligence under both US and Canadian securities law."

Shares of Cronos fell as much as 10% in trading Thursday follow Citron's report, but were still up 57% since their March debut.

Citron and its founder Andrew Left have previously come out with reports against Snap, Inogen, Wayfair, Netflix, and others. Left is perhaps best known for his damning October 2015 report that accused Valeant Pharmaceuticals of being a "pharmaceutical Enron," in which he helped bring up questions regarding the firm's accounting and relationship with the specialty pharmacy Philidor.  

Read Citron's full report on Cronos here. 

Markets Insider

Until a few years ago, brands had to shell out anywhere between $500,000 to $750,000 for an augmented reality lens on Snapchat.

Now, they can pay teenagers to make them for a fraction of the price.

That's because instead of having to directly work with Snapchat — or getting their agencies to design AR lenses—brands such as Warner Bros Records, Deezer and Plato, have started enlisting teens to create these animated, computer-generated visuals.

When gaming app Plato was looking to engage a young audience around its game Werewolf, for example, it tapped influencer platform Fanbytes' Snapchat influencer network, and found 17 year-old Jocelle and 19 year-old Ken (the pair declined to provide their last names). The duo then created two AR lenses for the brand, which were further amplified across 25 other channels on Snapchat.

The lenses ended up getting over 2.3 million views and 3.1 million views respectively, even becoming the top trending community lenses on Snapchat when they were released. And the whole process, from development to distribution, cost Plato merely $50,000.

"It was not only cheaper, but it actually helped us reach the audience we wanted to reach... [that is] young millennials and Gen Z," Joe Wagner, director of growth and community at Plato. "There is nowhere else that we can do that."

Lens Studio has made it possible for anyone to create an AR lens

Fanbytes It was not always possible for just about anybody to create an AR lens on Snapchat, until the platform rolled out Lens Studio, a design app that provides users with templates and guides for getting started on AR. The tool essentially opened up a market for anyone to create lenses.

From Snapchat's perspective, Lens Studio makes both AR creation and distribution easier, positively impacting the engagement with lenses. More than a third of Snapchat's daily audience, for instance, plays with lenses each day, spending over 3 minutes each on average per day.

But from the creator point-of-view, it not only allows them to test their creative muscles, but also easily get their work out there. Creators can submit their lenses to Snap after creating them, and then nearly seamlessly start sharing them with anyone on Snapchat, thanks to Snapcodes and deeplinks — no matter the device they are on.

Since Snapchat launched Lens Studio in December 2017, creators have submitted over 100,000 unique lenses, according to the company, which have been viewed by Snapchat users over 3.5 billion times. One such creator is Lucille Thomas, a 17 year-old from London, who started dabbling in lenses earlier this year.

"For me, personally, starting to create lenses was a very natural progression," she told Business Insider. "I was already very active on Snapchat and knew Photoshop as well."

Snapchat, itself, is continuing to invest in its lens community. It works closely with a few dozen creators it calls "Official Lens Creators," comprising artists, designers, developers and students who create lenses, providing them tools and guidance to foster learning and development. The group is also promoted through its website and workshops, and may also receive early access to new Lens Studio templates and capabilities.

And companies like Fanbytes have started to capitalize on the trend

The one downside, however, is that while creators can easily create and distribute lenses, there is no way for them to officially monetize them — not yet at least. And that's where companies like Fanbytes have started to come in as middlemen.

While the company initially started off helping brands such as Go Pro and Adidas run branded collaborations with social influencers on YouTube, Instagram and Vine (RIP), it has shifted its attention to Snapchat in recent years. Fanbytes owns and partners with a network of over 120 channels and 1,000 influencers, overseeing the creation, distribution and analytics for such partnerships, including AR lenses.

Fanbytes has looked to tap into Snap trends early, hoping for a payoff. For example @makeuptutorials, which it bought from a 13 year-old that used to get 10,000 views and and now is seeing 110,000 views per snap. The strategy to boost content is by creating a relay chain of Snapchat handles of sort, with different channels giving shout outs to others and their content.

"We are the ones that manage these kids, looking over everything from ideation and the creative process to distribution," said Tim Armoo, one of Fanbytes' co-founders. "You can think of us like the modern-day agency."

The company promises brands a guaranteed number of views on their campaigns, charging them on a cost-per-view basis. Plato, for example, shelled out $50,000 for both the creation and distribution of its AR lenses. The creators typically get anywhere between $2,000 to 5,000 for actually building the AR lenses because it's a relatively technical skill, far higher than what teens on Instagram make, according to The Atlantic.

For brands, partnering with teens is cheaper and more organic

Fanbytes Snapchat has been pioneering augmented reality advertising, and advertisers can typically buy lenses in three ways.

They can use Snap's self-serve tools to bid on Snap ads to run regular ads, where users can "Swipe Up to Try" AR lenses for $100 per day. Or they can pay for an audience-targeted lens for upwards of $40,000 with an agreed upon CPM.

Or they can buy lenses nationally, across the US, which run into hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the anticipated impressions that day.

But at the end of the day, these branded lenses are still ads, argues Armoo — a fact that is not lost on the highly coveted teen and 18-to-24 year-old segment of the app. Forcing them to watch ads or overly branding the lenses on the carousel only turns them off further, to the detriment of the advertisers.

"The main reason brands come to us is that they don't want to randomly show up in people's Stories or carousels, they want to be more organic, and these teens help them do that," he said. "Plus, most bands still don't know how create lenses easily themselves, and also don't know how to make these go viral."

"A lot of the lenses brands sponsor aren't organic and are unapologetically branded... I don't want my face to turn into a Coke can," agreed creator Lucille Thomas. "This way, we can create lenses we actually want to use as well and make them organic, but it's still got a brand element."

Of course, brands willing to to go down this route sacrifice the amplified reach that Snapchat's self-serve ad tools offer as well as other direct-response results, such as using using an AR lens to get users to immediately download an app or make a purchase.

But depending on the brand goals, going with a native strategy can still work, said Nick Cicero, CEO and founder of Delmondo, a social video analytics and audience insights software platform.

"Not only can they [teens] deliver reach and authenticity when done properly, often times they know how the native tools will be perceived best to their large audiences."

If you ask presidential candidate Andrew Yang to talk about the future, he'll start with with truck drivers.

The 43-year-old entrepreneur-turned-politician is a ball of statistics on the pending driverless car revolution. Autonomous vehicles are already on the road today, poised to rise across private and commercial sectors. This will see personal convenience soar to new heights, but will lay carnage to the contemporary trucking industry in the process.

"The average truck driver is a 49-year-old male with a high school education and one year of college. There are 3.5 million of them in America; it's the most common job in 29 states." Yang said. "If you project what happens in the next five to ten years, it's going to be disastrous for these communities." He cited "another 5 million Americans" who work in the truck stops, motels, and diners that serve the truckers and their vehicles. What happens to the local economies when those trucks stop coming, he asks — and what happens to their politics?

Yang's pre-politics career in business cuts across education, healthcare software, mobile technology, and nonprofit fundraising. President Barack Obama named him a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship in 2015 — indeed, Yang presents a sharp ideological contrast to the current US president.

"Donald Trump gives entrepreneurs a bad name because he's a marketing charlatan, not a business organization builder," he said. "I believe that I have a lot of the qualities Trump pretended to have."As President of the United States, Yang wants to flex his business sense to bring about a program called the Freedom Dividend, a basic income program to help dampen automation's impact on human life and work.

He's given a lot of thought to our unknown future as a suite of emergent technologies spin into high gear. He suggests that the rise of AI will force us to reexamine what we mean by the word "work," what we value as a society, and how we want our economy to function. He acknowledges that it could be a massive problem, but "it could also be a massive opportunity."

Yang is campaigning right now for your 2020 presidential vote. A lightly edited transcript of our interview with him follows.

BUSINESS INSIDER: Isn't it too soon to be running for President?

ANDREW YANG: It isn't too soon! I'm not even the first one to declare. One person declared before me, a congressman from Maryland named John Delaney. There are no formal regulations on timing, it's more tradition than anything. I think that right now we are going through the greatest technological and economic shift in human history, and our political leadership is completely out to lunch on it. The only requirements to run are the Constitutional requirements — to be a natural born citizen, 35 years or older — and I'm running to win.

Trump won in 2016 because we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — the swing states that he needed to carry in order to win. We're about to do the same thing again, this time to people who work in retail, trucking, transportation, call centers, fast food, and throughout the economy. Artificial intelligence is going to do more and more of what humans presently do. Most of our political class won't even acknowledge that this is the central challenge of this era, and it's about to ramp up.

BI: You're seeking the Democratic nomination. What does your platform look like?

AY: The core of my campaign is the Freedom Dividend, in which every American adult between the ages of 18 and 64 would receive $1,000 per month. You can't fight job automation the same way you fight climate change, by asking people to sacrifice or be more vigilant about the resources they consume. We have to go the other direction and spread the bounty of automation and new technology as broadly and quickly as possible. Capitalism functions much better when people have money to spend, and right now 59% of Americans can't afford an unexpected $500 expense.

The Roosevelt Institute found that a basic income of $1,000 a month would grow the economy by $2.5 trillion per year and create 4.5 million new jobs. We'd be rolling out the Freedom Dividend within my first year as President, because that's what I'd be elected to do.

BI: Universal basic income has been a hip idea for a while, but it seems like it never goes anywhere in America. Where does the resistance come from?

AY: The United States has had a basic income program for the past 36 years. Alaska's petroleum dividend passed the House of Representatives in 1971 under Nixon, and it gives each resident of the state between $1,000 and $2,000 a year for life. It's improved children's nutrition, created jobs, lowered income inequality, and remains wildly popular in a deep red state. It was sold by a Republican governor as a way to keep money out of the hands of government and in the hands of the people. Anyone who thinks this isn't possible just isn't paying attention to our history.

The fundamental resistance is born of a misplaced sense of scarcity. It's easy to say, "Hey, we can't afford that. The money has to come from somewhere, and it would bankrupt the economy." But this is nonsense on its face. Our economy is now $19 trillion per year, up $4 trillion in the last 10 years alone. We can easily afford a dividend of $1,000 per American adult between the ages of 18-64. There are four mechanisms to pay for it in my plan, and one of them is a new value added tax for companies that benefit the most from automation. This is necessary because income taxes are terrible at generating revenue from AI, software, and machines. The beneficiaries tend to be large global tech companies that are great at reducing their tax bill.

BI: Are you the first presidential candidate to accept cryptocurrency donations? Would you bring any formal cryptocurrency regulation to the United States?

YA: I believe I'm the first candidate to accept crypto donations. We looked into the regulations and as long as we gather all the identifying information for each contribution, then it's perfectly fine. Political campaigns can accept contributions of any type as long as you record the value. We could accept a donation of ham sandwiches, for example.

Under my administration, we'd have a coherent set of rules for cryptocurrency, because it's a bit of the Wild West right now. I'm pessimistic that this administration is going to grapple with the problem meaningfully, but there's a lot of experimentation going on. Lack of coherent regulation isn't curbing people from experimenting and innovating with the blockchain and finding new implementations for it.

BI: What do you think about a national cryptocurrency?

YA: I think a national cryptocurrency could be a phenomenal idea that makes a lot of sense, but first we need to create more meaningful touchpoints in the economy for people to participate. Part of my campaign is that we need a new "social currency," backed by the federal government and worth real money. This currency maps to various positive social behaviors that we want to encourage more of, things like taking care of the elderly, nurturing children, volunteering in a community, or improving the environment. The idea is based on something called "timebanking" that's been in effect in a couple hundred communities around the US for a number of years. We need a way to recognize and reinforce helpful behavior. This would most likely look like a smartphone app.BI: Generally speaking, what can people do to prepare for your vision of the future?

YA: Our conception of work needs to become much broader. Let's say my wife is at home right now with our two young boys, which she is. The market values that at zero and does not see that as a job. If she were hired to take care of someone else's kids, then that would be a job. Right now we base our notion of "work" on the market: you get paid for jobs, but not for non-jobs. The problem here is that the market is going to value human labor less and less.

Those previously mentioned 3.5 million truck drivers haven't changed as humans. They didn't suddenly forget how to drive a truck. It's just that now the truck drives itself, and the drivers are going to watch their labor value go from $45,000 a year to near zero.

Apple disclosed on Friday that "a very small percentage" of iPhone 8 smartphones have a "manufacturing defect" that can freeze the screen, make the device restart unexpectedly, or even cause it to not turn on.

If you own an iPhone 8, you can check whether or not you're affected by putting your phone's serial number into a web form at Apple's website. The good news is that Apple will repair any affected iPhone 8 for free, by replacing its logic board.

"Affected units were sold between September 2017 and March 2018 in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Macau, New Zealand, and the U.S.," writes Apple. Given that the iPhone 8 was only introduced in September 2017, that means that it could affect any early adopter. It appears that this was the first time these problems were disclosed.

If your phone needs a repair, you have a few options. You can take your phone in to any authorized Apple repair center, an Apple retail store, or mail it in. In all cases, Apple says, it'll get mailed away to one of the company's main repair facilities to get fixed up.

The free repair offer comes with a few caveats: If your screen is cracked or there's any other kind of damage, you'll have to get that fixed, first. If Apple does that fix itself, it'll charge you for that repair, even beyond the free logic board replacement.

The iPhone 8, introduced in late 2017, could be the last model without a notch. On September 12th, Apple is expected to release a trio of new iPhones that embrace the edge-to-edge design of the iPhone X, the current highest-end model.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for further information.

An Apple autonomous vehicle got rear-ended last week, marking the first time one of its secretive self-driving cars was involved in an accident.

In a form filed with the Department of Motor Vehicles on August 24th, viewed by Business Insider on August 31, Apple revealed that one of its test vehicles was rear-ended while preparing to merge onto the freeway in Sunnyvale, California, about 3.5 miles away from Apple's Cupertino headquarters.

The car was in autonomous mode and driving less than 1 mile per hour while "waiting for a safe gap to complete the merge" when a 2016 Nissan Leaf hit it from behind, according to the filing. The Nissan was apparently going 15 miles per hour, according to the form. Both cars were damaged, but nobody got hurt.

As of May, Apple had 55 autonomous vehicles on the road in California— more than any other company besides Cruise, GM's autonomous vehicle arm, which had 104 cars at the time.

The accident was a first for Apple's autonomous car unit, and relatively minor compared to accidents that have occured with some of the company's competitors. Apple hasn't publicly discussed its plans for these self-driving cars, and most of what we know about them come from official filings with the DMV.

Uber shut down its self-driving car program in Arizona after one of its vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian there in March. Also in March, a Tesla Model X crashed into a barrier while in the semi-autonmous autopilot mode. The driver of the vehicle was killed in the collision.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Left to right: Maksim Mikhailov and his team: Daniil Nechaev, Igor Lositsky and Gleb Zagarskikh, as they accept the gold medal at the 2017 World Robot Olympiad. ITMO University

After hearing a radio program describe the labor-intensive work of forest pathologists — basically, tree doctors — Maksim Mikhailov had an idea: what if a robot helped collect their data?

Mikhailov is a 16-year-old student at ITMO University, the renowned science and technology institution in St. Petersburg, Russia. As a member of the school's Youth Robotics Lab, he was perfectly positioned to bring his idea to life. With a full team working on the the project, the robot won the gold medal at last year's World Robot Olympiad; it can record tree locations within a forest, identify their species, measure the widths of their trunks, and even identify if a tree is healthy or not.

Its name is Forester, and most of its job is to explore forests and hit trees with its mallet. It's a robotic adaptation of a technique that human tree experts often use, called "sounding," to help their appraisal of a tree's health.

"The robot hits a tree and its microphone records the sound," Mikhailov explained. "Since sick trees have cavities or low wood density in their trunk, they make a sound with a lower overall frequency than that of a healthy tree." The robot makes use of an algorithm that analyzes the recorded sound to determine if it came from a healthy tree.

A closer look at the Forrester robot. ITMO University

Forester also takes a photograph of the tree and feeds the image to a neural network, identifying 12 different species of trees with accuracy better than 90 percent.

This student invention is "a great idea," says Lee Dean, lead arborist at Cornell University, simultaneously cautioning that "trees are living, dynamic systems." He identifies the robot as a tool for the human arborist, not an automated solution that will render their work useless. "Tree risk assessment is qualifiable, not quantifiable. This can give indicators about a tree's health, but can't make the diagnosis."

This jibes with Mikhailov's own perception of his team's creation. "While the robot can collect data about the trees, it cannot analyze that data to decide what needs to be done in order to preserve forests," he said. That task falls to the human experts, whose jobs are perhaps made simpler by a data-collecting robot.

An arborist's work appears to be safe from automation — at least, for now.

How seriously do you take your ice?

Almost exactly three years ago, a pitch for a specialized ice maker raised $2.7 million on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. Before we can understand what motivated more than 6,000 individual backers to throw that kind of money at an ice machine, we need to examine the specialized nugget ice that it makes.

Rather than simply freeze water into a shape, nugget ice makers like the Opal scrape flakes away from the inside of a chilled stainless steel cylinder and extrude it through a round hole.

The end result is a bunch of chewable ice "nuggets" that give this ice its name.

Opal This method of ice manufacture dates back to 1981, an innovation by Scotsman Ice Systems that "changed the history of ice forever." You'll recognize it in drinks everywhere, from upscale cocktail bars to fast food drive-in chain Sonic. To hear the aesthetes talk about it, this is no ordinary frozen water. Common praise for the ice includes mention of its chewability and its seeming ability to chill beverages more quickly than conventional ice and absorb their flavor in the process.

And let's not forget that it keeps your drink cold at the same time.

Life was previously difficult for the nugget ice devotee. Manufacturers in this niche cater almost exclusively to the food service industry, so options were limited if you wanted nugget ice at home: you could invest in a pricey, industrial-scale contraption, or hoard the ice from businesses that serve it. And lots of people did.

"It turns out that nugget ice lovers often got their ice from fast food restaurants and travel stations," said Larry Portaro, director of the FirstBuild team that designed the Opal and brought it to market. Hardly a backyard homebrew invention, this machine is the brainchild of a GE Appliances engineer who submitted his idea to FirstBuild, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company.

"With the Opal nugget ice maker, there was enough in-person and online support for the idea that FirstBuild went to market using Indiegogo," he said.

Nugget ice has a posse, basically, and the Opal is the domestic breakthrough these people were waiting for. With a clean, stainless steel look and a $549 price tag, it squeezes the functionality of expensive restaurant hardware into a countertop appliance for the home. It has a footprint of 10.5 inches by 15.5 inches, measuring 17.25 inches tall.

It's extremely simple to use: fill the basin with water, plug in the machine, and press the power button. You'll see the first bits of ice in about 20 minutes, and it can fill its bucket with three pounds of ice in approximately three hours.

One bucket is enough to fill several large drinking glasses with precious nugget ice, and I have filled many. The more I used and enjoyed Opal-manufactured ice, the more I was inclined to store it and have it on hand 24/7. I ultimately turned off the icemaker in my freezer, keeping my nugget ice reserves there instead.

Opal

This leads me to the only problem I encountered with the device: if you store your freshly made nugget ice in a conventional freezer, it will harden together into a block. In other words, the Opal makes ice that is slightly damp — no problem if it's going straight into a drink, but a speedbump if you want store it for use the next day.

An ice chipper solves this problem immediately.

If you are lit up by the prospect of "at-home nugget ice machine," then the Opal is your manna raining from heaven. It works exactly as marketed and I have no negative feedback, save for my experience with the ice sticking together in my home freezer.

The price will be contentious, however. The only question of substance is: are you willing to shell out $549 for it? If not, you may be rewarded by a "wait and see" approach — the Opal has been on sale in the past for a low as $400 — but these are still price points that will have some people happy to continue taking their nugget ice from Sonic.