A new set of iPhone predictions is out from TrendForce, a market research firm focusing on computer components like DRAM and NAND Flash.

TrendForce believes Apple is preparing three new iPhone models for a launch this year, matching previous rumors and predictions.

The iPhones could come in three sizes, according to the report: One with a 5.8-inch screen, one with a 6.1-inch screen, and one with a 6.5-inch screen.

The least-expensive and most common iPhone is likely to be the device with the 6.1-inch screen, TrendForce predicts, because it uses a less expensive LCD screen. The other two devices will probably use OLED displays, like the current iPhone X, which have better color and blacks, and Trendforce expects them to have 4GB of RAM.

The report also suggests that the two premium devices could support Apple Pencil, a stylus that can currently be used with the iPad Pro.

All three phones will have Face ID, Apple's 3D camera for unlocking the phone using facial recognition, which enables the screen to stretch across the entire front of the device, except for a "notch" on the top.

Here's how TrendForce sees the prices shaking out:

5.8-inch iPhone: $899-$949

6.1-inch iPhone: $699-$749

6.5-inch iPhone: $999

Apple has launched new iPhones in September for the past six years. "All three models are expected to be shipped in September and October as previously scheduled," TrendForce wrote in the report.

TrendForce's predictions are in line with other reports about the upcoming iPhone. The remaining open question is what Apple decides to call its lineup of devices.

The Volvo XC40 is the newest addition to the Swedish automaker's SUV lineup and it joins a growing segment of compact sport-utility vehicles and crossovers currently dominating the market.

Now eight years into its relaunch as a luxury brand under the Chinese automotive conglomerate, Geely Holding Group, Volvo has launched seven new models, three of which are SUVs: the XC90, XC60, and now the XC40.

The 40 is built on Volvo's proprietary small-car skeleton, denoted as the Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) platform which was co-developed with Geely.

As automobiles go, being the smallest and least expensive model in a lineup usually means you'll have to make some compromises — the evidence of which might manifest itself in lower-quality materials and fewer options than the pricier models.

That is not the case here. The XC40 feels nearly every bit as premium as a compact luxury four-wheeler should.

From the moment you pull open its hefty doors, plant yourself into the sculpted, leather and Alcantara-wrapped driver's seat, and grip the thick-rimmed steering wheel with the stoic chrome-plated Volvo badge planted dead-center, you realize you're about to pilot a very capable, exceptionally well-built machine.

At the same time, it's also quaint. And comfortable.

Unlike its larger siblings, the XC40 has no plug-in hybrid variant yet. It can only be had with one of two versions of the company's four-cylinder, turbocharged, gas-powered engines — available with 187-horsepower, or a more energetic 248-horsepower variant. An all-electric version is currently in development.

Volvo recently loaned us a fully loaded XC40 R-Design for a weeklong drive in Los Angeles. These are our impressions:

Since I started traveling in my early 20s, I've visited 30+ countries. While traveling that much might have been prohibitively expensive in decades past, Airbnb, the popular home-rental service, has made traveling affordable.

Listings on the platform are generally a fraction of the cost of hotels, while providing a lot more space and something like a local's perspective.

For a long time, it's been a great deal. But over the last couple of years, I've noticed a change that may turn me off the platform forever. It all comes down to pillows.

I know what you may be thinking: pillows? He's complaining about pillows? Let me explain.

When I first began using Airbnb in 2011 — about three years after the company launched — most of the listings on the site were someone's actual apartment. Either you were renting the spare bedroom in the apartment or your host was staying somewhere else for the days you were there.

It was a communal vibe where you felt like a real exchange was taking place: You were helping them offset their rent, and they told you their favorite restaurants and bars in the neighborhood.

But somewhere over the last few years, the dynamic shifted. Now, in my experience, you are almost always renting from a host who manages Airbnb listings for a living or for a lucrative side-hustle.

Usually, they own — or rent, depending on how strict a city's laws are — multiple properties and use all of them for Airbnb. In effect, they are operating a makeshift inn spread out across the city.

While Airbnb hasn't released official statistics, a 2017 report from CBRE Hotels' Americas Research found that the company's growth in the US is being driven by hosts renting out multiple units or entire homes. The report found that revenue from hosts with multiple listings was the fastest growing on the platform, and 64% of hosts in the US were renting out an entire home.

As the report was issued for the American Hotel & Lodging Association, take it with a grain of salt, but I've also seen the shift toward professional hosts in my personal experience.

Just in the last 6 months, I've stayed at 14 Airbnbs, from Athens to Seoul. And what I've seen doesn't bode well.

Airbnbs are losing their charm

Last year, Airbnb began "nudging," in the words of one host, its hosts to standardize the Airbnb experience.

Now the company is encouraging use of its "Instant Book" feature, establishing standards of cleanliness, and recommending that hosts carry "essential amenities" like toilet paper, towels, soap, clean linens, and at least one pillow per guest.

And, earlier this year, the company even announced that it was adding hotels to the platform.

Airbnb is stuck between the standardization it needs to grow and the home-sharing ideal that made it what it is.Airbnb

Those two shifts — Airbnb pushing standardization and hosts becoming more professional — has changed Airbnb from its idealistic home-sharing roots to a booking site for cheaper, ad-hoc hotels, inns, and bed and breakfasts.

That change is necessary in a lot of ways. People are using Airbnb for work travel now, myself included, and more casual users expect a level of standardization.

My issue with the professionalization of Airbnb is from a user's perspective. As more and more of the properties listed on Airbnb come from professional hosts (people operating the property solely as an Airbnb location or operating multiple locations at once), the properties begin to resemble each other.

It is a business after all.

You can see the hallmarks of such properties: cheap furniture, spartan decorations, a few wall prints, a kitchen with the barebones necessities. Of course, the professional, light-filled photos on the listing always make the apartment look dreamy.

But in the process, you lose much of Airbnb's charm — from staying in a local's home, getting to browse their bookshelves — and its function — like access to a kitchen stocked with spices or getting to use their fancy Argan Oil shampoo.

About those pillows

And the truth is, for me, all of that would be fine … if wasn't for the pillows.

Let me put it to you this way: Most people don't buy crappy pillows for themselves. They're critical to a decent night of sleep. So if you stay in an Airbnb that is someone's actual home, you can be pretty sure you'll have decent pillows to sleep on.

Not the case with the professional Airbnb properties.

I've been doing a lot of traveling this year, and slept on a lot of bad pillows at Airbnbs.Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider

The property being the professional Airbnb hosts' primary business, they try to outfit the property as cheaply and efficiently as possible. That generally means you are getting cheap bedding and cheap pillows, some that might be better described as a few pieces of stuffing shoved into a cloth. It doesn't make for a good night of sleep.

While traveling for Business Insider over the last six months, I used Airbnb a lot in the beginning. In many ways, it's my ideal way to travel.

But as Airbnb property after Airbnb property that I rented had crappy pillows, I was increasingly turned off. Waking up night after night exhausted from a bad night of sleep is no fun.

Recently, I began booking boutique hotels or bed and breakfasts, many of which are around the same price-point as Airbnb nowadays because they know they have to compete.

And at least with a hotel or bed and breakfast, I can be pretty sure they will have good pillows.

In some ways, the pillows are a metaphor for where Airbnb is at right now as a platform: stuck between the professionalization and standardization it needs to grow, while trying to hold onto the home-sharing ideal that made it what it is.

Pushing the platform one way or the other will likely solve the issue. But until they do, I'll be using it less and less.

Google this week acknowledged that it quietly tracks its users' locations, even if those people turn off their Location History — a clarification that came in the wake of an Associated Press investigation.

It's a major violation of users' trust.

And yet, nothing is going to happen as a result of this episode.

It's happened before

Google has a history of bending the rules:

Ultimately, Google came out of all of these incidents just fine. It paid some money here and there, and sat in a few courtrooms, but nothing really happened to the company's bottom line. People continued using Google's services.

Other companies have done it too

Remember Cambridge Analytica?

Five months ago in March, a 28-year-old named Christopher Wylie blew the whistle on his employer, the data-analytics company, Cambridge Analytica, at which he served as a director of research.

It was later revealed that Cambridge Analytica had collected the data of over 87 million Facebook users in an attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump.

One month later, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was summoned in front of Congress to answer questions related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal over a two-day span.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, takes a drink of water while testifying before a joint hearing of the Commerce and Judiciary Committees on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 10, 2018, about the use of Facebook data to target American voters in the 2016 election.AP Photo/Andrew HarnikMany users felt like their trust was violated. A hashtag movement called "#DeleteFacebook" was born.

And yet, nothing has really changed at Facebook since that scandal, which similarly involved the improper collection of user data, and the violation of users' trust.

Facebook seems to be doing just fine. During its Q2 earnings report in late July, Facebook reported over $13 billion in revenue — a 42% jump year-over-year — and an 11% increase in both daily and monthly active users.

In short, Facebook is not going anywhere. And neither is Google.

Too big — and too good — to fail

Just like Facebook has no equal among the hundreds of other social networks out there, the same goes for Google and competing search engines.

According to StatCounter, Google has a whopping 90% share of the global search engine market.

The next biggest search engine in the world is Microsoft's Bing, which has a paltry 3% market share.

In other words, a cataclysmic event would have to occur for people to switch search engines. Or, another search engine would have to come along and completely unseat Google.

But that's probably not going to happen.

Uladzik Kryhin/Shutterstock For almost 20 years now, Google dominated the search engine game. Its other services have become similarly prevalent: Gmail, and Google Docs, have all become integral parts of people's personal and work lives. Of course, there are similar mail and productivity services out there, but using Google is far more convenient, since most people use more than one Google product, and having all of your applications talk to each other and share information is mighty convenient.

This isn't meant to cry foul: Google is one of the top software makers in the world, but it has earned that status by constantly improving and iterating on its products, and even itself, over the past two decades. But one does wonder what event, if any, could possibly make people quit a service as big and convenient and powerful as Google once and for all.

The fact is: That probably won't happen. People likely won't quit Google's services, unless there's some major degradation of quality. But Google, as a leader in Silicon Valley, should strive to do better for its customers. Intentional or not, misleading customers about location data is a bad thing. Google failed its customers: It let users think they had more control when they did, and they only corrected their language about location data after a third-party investigation. But there was no public acknowledgement of an error, and no mea culpa.

Google owes its users a true apology. Quietly updating an online help page isn't good enough.

Some big changes are coming to the US stock market.

On September 28, S&P Dow Jones Indices and GICS will create a new sector for tech, media, and telecoms companies, and it's a change that will affect many of the the biggest and most popular stocks on the market.

Here's what you need to know.

What is happening?

S&P and MSCI are ditching the existing Telecoms sector and creating a new Communications Services sector. This new sector will include companies that provide platforms for communication, of course, and those that operate various kinds of media.

It will also fold in companies in the Consumer Discretionary Sector that are currently classified in the Media and Internet & Direct Marketing Retail sub-industries, and some companies in the existing Information Technology sector.

Communications Services will be the largest sector of the S&P 500 with about a 10% weighting, according to Wells Fargo.

Here's a detailed map of all the changes:

Morgan Stanley

Why does it matter?

Apple is currently housed in the Technology sector, and in the Communications Equipment industry. These categories are determined by the Global Industry Classification Standard, or GICS, which is maintained by MSCI and S&P.

These boxes make sense for Apple, considering that the world's most valuable company still makes most of its money by selling iPhones. But over time, these categories have become more fluid for other tech companies. Is Verizon, with its recently acquired media arm Oath, really just a telecoms company? Is Facebook, now one of the world's largest distributors of news, a social network or a media company or both?

The new sector aims to address these questions.

The GICS is keeping up with how much evolution has taken place in tech. Facebook didn't even exist at the height of the tech bubble in 1999, the same year that MSCI and S&P first implemented the GICS.

And so, the GICS reclassification is a reminder of sorts to markets about what these companies really do, and it aims to reflect where companies earn most of their revenues from.

"The lines among media, communications, and content are blurred," David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said. "It is time to acknowledge this convergence and the overlapping services these companies provide."

The most recent precedent for this kind of GICS reclassification also provides insight into why the 'right' sector grouping matters.

In September 2016, S&P and MSCI removed real estate companies and some real estate investment trusts (REITS) from Financials to create a new sector.

Real Estate, from its breakout as a sector through August 15, 2018, returned almost nothing — 0.5% — versus a 39% rally for Financials. This performance gap suggests investors focused on very different fundamentals for these once-unified sectors.

Which stocks are going to be affected?

The change is going to affect some of the biggest and most popular tech companies, including Facebook and Alphabet. Both will move from the old tech sector to the new communication services group. Also, their sub-industry will change from one called internet software & services to interactive media & services.

Netflix, another one of the so-called FANG stocks, is also getting reshuffled. It's going from the consumer discretionary sector, where it lives with companies like McDonald's and Ralph Lauren, to the new communication group. Disney and 21st Century Fox are making the same industry move.

"DVD rentals" is not the only thing that comes to mind when Netflix is mentioned these days. Big spending on original content and licenses is a key part of its business. So Netflix's sub-industry will change from Internet & Direct Marketing Retail to the more appropriate Movies & Entertainment category.

MSCI plans to release a final list of all the stocks affected before flipping the switches on September 28.

What does this mean for the stock market?

Exchange-traded funds designed to track specific industries will be affected.

Vanguard, the $5.1 trillion investor that essentially invented the equity index fund, announced in March that it was temporarily creating custom benchmarks for the Vanguard Consumer Discretionary Index Fund, the Vanguard Information Technology Index Fund, and the Vanguard Telecommunication Services Index Fund.

"These changes don't require any action from investors," Vanguard said in a statement, indicating that it's doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

BlackRock is overhauling its iShares Global Telecom ETF to become the iShares Global Comm Services ETF, and changing the kinds of companies it tracks accordingly.

"Longer-term, the 'less sexy' & somewhat 'forgotten' Telco names may gain mindshare & potentially garner more portfolio-manager interest/dollars as reclassification stirs a re-acquaintance," Chris Harvey, the head of US equity and quant strategy at Wells Fargo, said.

But unlike the Real Estate reclassification, most investors are no strangers to a good number companies being reshuffled, such as FANG stocks.

Wells Fargo estimates that the reclassification will affect about 10% of the S&P 500, and so investors need not do much on the drawing board. Some stocks are getting moved around, but their weights on the index are not, so the reshuffle itself may not be a big market mover.

See also:

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says that an "excruciating" year has taken a toll and that he sometimes has had to take Ambien, a prescription drug that assists in inducing sleep.

"It is often a choice of no sleep or Ambien," Musk said in a New York Times report published Thursday night.

Musk described an intense 120-hour work week as both chairman and chief executive of Tesla, a company that has been hit with challenging press coverage in recent weeks. During his interview with The Times, Musk reportedly grew emotional as he described his turbulent year.

"This past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career," Musk said. "It was excruciating."

"There were times when I didn't leave the factory for three or four days — days when I didn't go outside," Musk added. "This has really come at the expense of seeing my kids. And seeing friends."

In addition to his dual roles with Tesla, Elon Musk is the CEO and lead designer at SpaceX. AP Photo/Francois Mori)

In June, he said he spent the entire day — his 47th birthday — at work. He flew to Catalonia for his brother's wedding two days later, flying from his factory and arriving just two hours before the ceremony, according to The Times.

Additionally, Musk says he has not taken a break from work for more than a week since he contracted malaria in 2001.

"All night — no friends, nothing," Musk said to The Times.

"It's not been great, actually," Musk said. "I've had friends come by who are really concerned."

Musk has been criticized for his occasional outbursts on social media — which include likening a British cave diver who took part in rescue efforts to a pedophile — and some of Tesla's board members have reportedly taken notice.

According to two people familiar with the board, some members were concerned about his Ambien intake, according to The Times. Some of the members also suggested that the drug may not be effective, and instead, played a part in his social media flares.

Musk later apologized for his comments and said his "words were spoken in anger" after a dispute with the cave diver.

"I thought the worst of it was over — I thought it was," Musk said. "The worst is over from a Tesla operational standpoint ... But from a personal pain standpoint, the worst is yet to come."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the past year has been "the most difficult and painful year of my career," in a revealing New York Times interview published Thursday night.

Musk admitted that he has been charging full speed ahead in all directions — with the production of his electric-car company's first mass-market vehicle, the Tesla Model 3, and with the many business and personal obligations he says have begun to affect his health. "It's not been great, actually. I've had friends come by who are really concerned," Musk told The Times.

Normally known for his brash and unorthodox leadership style, Musk was, at points, penitent and self-reflective, acknowledging the headaches some of his more recent public behavior have caused for his company, its board members, and its shareholders.

The most recent headache came from Musk's now-infamous declarations about taking Tesla private. It all started with a tweet on August 7, and now, fewer than two weeks later, a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry is underway, some members of Tesla's board of directors have lawyered up, and several shareholder lawsuits have been filed.

The matter stems in part from an assertion Musk made on Twitter — that he had "funding secured" for a privatization deal, and stating the price at which shareholders could unload their shares: $420 each, a roughly 20% premium over Tesla's current stock price at the time.

All of this has prompted questions about what motivated Musk to forgo the proper channels in favor of hashing out sensitive financial strategy on social media.

Since then, Musk has offered follow-up explanations for the way he handled things, including an admission that he had seen his remarks as a good-faith effort to be transparent with his company's stakeholders. His claim that funding for a go-private deal was "secured," Musk said, was prompted by his belief that Saudi investors were on board to fund a deal.

The consequences have been swift and fierce, and members of Tesla's board of directors are now reportedly seeking protection.

The events of the past week are the result of a slowly brewing anxiety in the Tesla CEO. In recent months, he has lashed out wildly on social media — at investment analysts, critics, and journalists who published stories about Tesla that he didn't like.

Musk, in his interview with The Times, pointed again to the challenges surrounding his heavy workload and lack of sleep. "It is often a choice of no sleep or Ambien," Musk said.

According unnamed sources cited by the newspaper, some Tesla board members have expressed concern about this, because the sleep medication sometimes leads to "late-night Twitter sessions," rather than sleep, the source said.

That issue has reportedly prompted internal efforts to find a second-in-command for Musk, though the chief executive says he is unaware of any such plan.

In a statement to The Times that Tesla attributed to the board of directors, the company criticized what it called "false and irresponsible rumors" about the board's discussions.

"We would like to make clear that Elon's commitment and dedication to Tesla is obvious," the statement read.

It continued:

"Over the past 15 years, Elon's leadership of the Tesla team has caused Tesla to grow from a small start-up to having hundreds of thousands of cars on the road that customers love, employing tens of thousands of people around the world, and creating significant shareholder value in the process."

On Thursday, in a meeting with employees, Google's leadership addressed reports from earlier this month that the company had built a censored search engine in order to once again operate in China, according to Twitter posts from multiple reporters.

Kate Conger, a New York Times reporter posted to Twitter what she said were comments made during the meeting by Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin, one of the company's cofounders.

"If we were to do our mission well, we are to think seriously about how to do more in China," Pichai told employees, according to The Times. "That said, we are not close to launching a search product in China."

Brin denied having knowledge of the program until after news leaked and an ensuing controversy erupted, or as Brin called it "this kerfuffle."

A Google spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

The reports that Google wanted to reintroduce search inside China is a reversal from the position the company took in 2010, when managers pulled out of the country instead of capitulating to the government's demands to filter out websites and information that China's leaders found objectionable.

Two sources who were privy to what occurred in Thursday's meeting told Business Insider that Pichai only briefly addressed — and not in any detailed way — the big question on the minds of many at the company: Why is Google considering a return to China? The CEO described the moves being made by the company in that country as "exploratory."

When the news of a censored search engine first became public, some Google employees were critical of management's decision. And earlier on Thursday, a letter began to circulate among staff that called on the company's leaders to create an "ethics review structure" to ensure transparency on issues involving ethics.

Some of the tension that has lingered at the company since an earlier controversy regarding Google's work with the military, appeared evident at Thursday's meeting.

The discussions became tense when Google's leaders discovered that someone attending the meeting or listening in remotely was supplying live information to Conger. Brin said he would not continue discussing China because of the leaks, according to the sources who spoke to Business Insider.

The sources said that this was the moment when the image of Conger's tweets were displayed on a large screen in the room with Pichai and Brin. One Google employee who had stood to ask a question suddenly addressed whoever was leaking.

"F--k you," he said. He then demanded that the person leave.

The sources said that's when the meeting essentially wrapped up with many questions about Google's relationship to China still unanswered.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Thursday reportedly attempted to discredit a former security employee who alleges that the car maker spied on employees and kept quiet about drug-trafficking at its battery factory.

Karl Hansen made the allegations in a whistleblower tip he submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month. Hansen's lawyers made the allegations public in a press statement released Thursday.

Tesla and Musk have not responded to multiple requests from Business Insider for comment about Hansen's claims. But in a direct message Gizmodo says it received from Musk, the CEO reportedly attacked Hansen and dismissed his allegations, but didn't explicitly deny them.

"This guy is super [nuts]," Musk reportedly told Gizmodo, using the emoji for a peanut.

The statement from Hansen's lawyers accuses Musk of personally authorizing Tesla's security team to install equipment that would allow the company to eavesdrop on employees' cell-phone communications. According to the statement, the security team then used it to spy on employees, including Martin Tripp, another Tesla whistleblower.

Hansen also alleges that the security team and Tesla failed to disclose to shareholders and law-enforcement officials a $37 million theft of materials from the company's Gigafactory battery production facility, and allegations that a drug-trafficking ring linked to a Mexican cartel existed inside that facility.

In his direct message to Gizmodo, Musk suggested that those charges were contradictory and ludicrous.

"He is simultaneously saying that our security sucks (it's not great, but I'm pretty sure we aren't a branch of the Sinaloa cartel like he claims) and that we have amazing spying ability," he said, according to Gizmodo. "Those can't both be true."

Tesla's security team includes employees who formerly worked for a notorious security group at Uber that allegedly spied on rivals, according to the statement from Hansen's attorneys. Among those former Uber security employees now at Tesla is Nick Gicinto, who is now the electric-car company's head of security, according to the statement.

Without saying whether Gicinto or his former colleagues at Uber now work at Tesla, Musk defended Gicinto to Gizmodo. The outlet should read the suit Gicinto and his colleagues filed against the former Uber employee who made the allegations about the security team spying on the app-based taxi company's competitors, Musk said.

"Nick Jacinto (sic) was thrown under the bus by Uber for the sins of others," he reportedly said, adding: "He has shown high integrity in my dealings with him."

On Wednesday, Tesla factory workers putting together the Model 3 on the GA3 line were allowed to go home early from the Fremont, California plant, leaving at 2:30 p.m. PT, instead of the usual 6 p.m., three Tesla employees told Business Insider. The employees spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs.

Workers on GA3, which is Tesla's main assembly line for the Model 3, were also sent home early on the night shifts that started on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, an employee said. At the time of publishing on Thursday, normal operations had resumed.

Typically, a worker told Business Insider, a shift is only sent home early because it met its goals for a period of time or because there is a problem that is making it impossible to assemble more vehicles. For example, one of the two lines on GA3 might be sent home if there is a problem that has prevented the progression of assembling vehicles for hours.

In this case, both lines were sent home, with the entire GA3 line leaving early. According to a factory worker, the reason was not because the company had hit its production goals for the day.

(If you have a story about Elon Musk or Tesla you want to share, reach out to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

In fact, the worker said the company missed internal targets. The employee said the target is to produce 300 cars per shift (there are two 12-hour shifts per day), but on Wednesday the line produced 211 vehicles during the day shift.

Tesla declined to comment on whether GA3 workers were sent home early and about internal targets.

The number of cars completed per shift is displayed on a screen for line workers at the factory. Not meeting the required numbers is a common problem in recent weeks, the factory worker, who has been at Tesla for a little under a year, said.

According to this worker, his 12-hour shift is supposed to push 300 cars through the line, as part of Tesla's aim to get 5,000 Model 3 cars assembled per week. However, his shift has only reached this goal roughly three or four times in the last three weeks, he said.

"The days we even hit 300, we celebrate it in the morning," he said, adding that there have been very few celebrations recently.

Elon Musk at a SpaceX competition for Hyperloop pods in August 2017.Mike Blake/Reuters

According to the worker, each station at the plant (such as body wiring, pedal assembly, and airbag installation) is supposed to take roughly two minutes on average. However, internal information shared with Business Insider showed that on Wednesday, nearly every station was running over time, blocking the progression of cars down the line.

In early July, Elon Musk reportedly sent a company-wide email celebrating the Fremont factory hitting the 5,000-cars-per-week milestone.

"What's more, with the widespread productivity gains throughout Tesla and the new production lines spooling up, we are on track to reach 6K/week for Model 3 next month," Musk said in the email, viewed by Bloomberg. "I think we just became a real car company...."

However, the factory worker said "that hype email saying 'let's reach 6k' was laughed at.'"

"We barely could get to 5,000," he said.

Tesla, though, has managed to reach goals despite shifts coming up short of expectations in the past, with unconventional solutions such as creating new assembly lines.

In June, Musk revealed the company had built a new line for Model 3 production, dubbed GA4, in a giant tent outside the Fremont factory.

Reuters also reported in late June that shifts were failing to meet the 300-car-per-shift goal, making it unlikely the factory would meet the 5,000-per-week mark. Three days later, Reuters reported that the factory hit the 5,000 car milestone.

Additional reporting by Linette Lopez and Mark Matousek.

Last week, a jury in San Francisco ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages to a school groundskeeper who developed cancer after years of using Roundup, the company's popular herbicide. On the heels of the trial outcome, The Environmental Working Group published a scary-sounding report that found traces of the chemical in dozens of everyday foods, from cereals like Cheerios and Quaker Oats to granola bars.

One important thing the report left out: The active ingredient in Roundup — a chemical called glyphosate — likely does not cause cancer in the very low levels at which it is present.

The science linking glyphosate to cancer is limited at best. In fact, the majority of published research on glyphosate and cancer reveals low or zero risk. Here's what you need to know about the chemical in cereal.

The dose makes the poison

Dozens of everyday items, from water (yes, water!) to chocolate can kill you — provided you have enough of them.wavebreakmedia/ShutterstockBefore developing cancer, the plaintiff in the recent trial had used Roundup regularly in his job as a groundskeeper at a California public school. For neglecting to alert Johnson (and the rest of the public) about the potential links between glyphosate-containing Roundup and cancer, the jury ordered Monsanto to pay Johnson $289 million.

But as for whether glyphosate could actually have been the sole or even primary cause of an individual's cancer, the research leans heavily toward "no."

That's because the dose makes the poison.

Eat or drink too much of nearly anything, and you can die. That applies to everything from apple seeds (which contain the deadly poison arsenic) to chocolate (which packs the toxic chemical theobromide) to water (if you drink roughly 6 litres of water at once, you can develop hyponatremia, a deadly condition in which an excess of water causes your cells to puff up like balloons).

The scare over a potential link between glyphosate and cancer appears to have begun with a now widely-criticized statement put out by a World Health Organization group known as the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015.

That year, the IARC put glyphosate — Roundup's active ingredient — in a cancer-risk category one level below widely-recognized harmful activities like smoking. But several researchers have said the IARC's determination was bogus because there is no evidence that glyphosate causes cancer. In fact, a lengthy review found that the IARC had edited out portions of the documents they used to review glyphosate to make the chemical look far more harmful than its own research had concluded.

Several recent rigorous scientific studies have added to the notion that glyphosate — at least in the amounts we consume — poses little harm and is unlikely to cause cancer.

Just last year, a review of studies looking at the ties between glyphosate and cancer concluded that in the low amounts of that people are actually exposed to, glyphosate "do[es] not represent a public concern."

So, should you be worried about breakfast cereal?

Melia Robinson/Business Insider

The cereal report — which focused on children, not adults — found levels of glyphosate higher than what it determined to be safe for 43 of the 45 cereals it tested. Bu the math fails to line up with other published figures on glyphosate safety levels.

In its report, any cereal with a glyphosate level of more than 160 ppb, or parts per billion, was marked as "unsafe." The Environmental Protection Agency's legal limit on glyphosate in food for adults is 5 parts per million, or 5,000 parts per billion— meaning that the cereal report's figures were 31 times more stringent than what the EPA considers safe.

Given that children are smaller than adults, toxicologists generally develop slightly more strict figures for them.

But instead of drawing from the EPA's glyphosate numbers, the cereal report authors looked to California standards — which are notoriously tough and recently led to the controversial decision of the state slapping cancer warning labels on coffee.

In California, where glyphosate is still listed in a registry of "chemicals known to cause cancer," the levels of glyphosate considered "safe" to ingest are 60 times more stringent than EPA regulations. Using that figure as a baseline, the cereal report authors then added "an additional 10-fold margin of safety" to arrive at their glyphosate safety threshold, determining that ingesting 0.01 milligrams of glyphosate every day would give you a one-in-a-million risk of developing cancer over the course of your lifetime.

Given all that, it's not surprising that so many cereals got flagged as in the red for having glyphosate levels higher than what the cereal report authors determined to be safe.

"Our products are safe and without question they meet regulatory safety levels. The EPA has researched this issue and has set rules that we follow," a spokesperson with General Mills, the company behind Cheerios and Lucky Charms, said in a statement supplied to Fast Company.

"Glyphosate is commonly used by farmers across the industry who apply it pre-harvest. Once the oats are transported to us, we put them through our rigorous process that thoroughly cleanses them. Any levels of glyphosate that may remain are significantly below any regulatory limits and well within compliance of the safety standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as safe for human consumption," said a Quaker spokesperson.

New research could change the controversial classification of glyphosate

The IARC's 2015 statement on glyphosate and cancer is not final.

Based on new studies (typically in mice), glyphosate could go from its current status — where some people see it as a potential cancer risk — to being recognized as having a low risk for harm.

Several studies of glyphosate and cancer are ongoing, and more are coming out each year. Just last year, a review of studies looking at the ties between glyphosate and cancer concluded that in the low amounts that people are actually exposed to, glyphosate "do[es] not represent a public concern."

It's also possible that new evidence could come out strongly against glyphosate and suggest that it's incredibly harmful. New evidence dramatically changed the public perception of another popular product which was initially labeled cancerous — a zero-calorie sweetener called saccharin, which is sold under the brand name Sweet' N Low.

In the 1980s, any product containing the sweetener was required to carry a warning label saying that it was "determined to cause cancer." But the science was flawed: the rats that had been used in the studies were especially prone to bladder cancer, and the findings did not apply to people. So in 2016, the sweetener was removed from a list of cancer-causing ingredients.

Glyphosate's status ultimately remains to be seen.

For years, dieters have had to deal with a lot of conflicting advice on how to eat.

First, fat was the bad guy. Then it was considered ideal to avoid sugar and go low-carb.

Lately, dieters trying the trendy ketogenic diet have discovered that if they replace carbs with fat, they can trick their bodies into a natural starvation mode and lose weight, while still enjoying bacon and slurping heavy cream.

But a new, long-term study published Thursday in The Lancet suggests there may be a winning formula for the amount of carbohydrates to eat every day. It relies on some very unsexy, old advice: everything in moderation.

Lead researcher Sara Seidelmann, a cardiologist and nutrition researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, told Business Insider that her results suggested a diet "rich in plant based whole foods such as vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts is associated with healthy aging."

That usually means about half of the calories you eat in a day should come from carbohydrates.

A Goldilocks rule for carbs

For the study, Seidelmann looked at the diets of more than 15,400 adults in the US and another 432,000 people in more than 20 countries around the world. She and her team of researchers analyzed that information in relation to how long the study participants lived.

They found that people who ate a moderate amount of carbohydrates — around half of their daily calories — tended to live the longest.

Conversely, people who derived more than 70% of their energy from carbs or got less than 40% of their daily calories from carbohydrates were more likely to die than people who ate something in between.

It's a kind of Goldilocks finding: we should eat not too many carbs, not too few, but just the right amount.

On one end of the spectrum are people who suffer health consequences from eating too many carbs, like in some lower-income countries where people tend to rely on white rice for sustenance without much else on their plate.

On the other end are people who consume to few carbs. Surprisingly, the group at highest risk of death in the US study were those who didn't eat carbs, since those people tended to replace carb-heavy foods with animal fats and proteins: "beef, pork, lamb, chicken, and cheese," as Seidelmann put it.

"Clearly, filling your plate with those things increased mortality," she said.

In fact, the researchers concluded that a 50-year-old who eats within the 50-55% carbs margin could expect to live for another 33.1 years, while someone the same age who gets just 30% of their calories from carbs would be expected to live roughly 29.1 more years.

The important part is getting as many whole, healthful foods onto your plate as possible

There is a way to do a low-carb diet and age well: people who ate small amounts of carbohydrates but more plant-based proteins like veggies, beans, and nuts were found to be less likely to die and tended to live to a ripe old age.

This might be because eating large amounts of animal fat and protein but few fresh plant-based foods can increase inflammation in the body.

"Try to make choices that fill your plate with plants," Seidelmann said.

She agrees there's a short-term link between low-carb diets and weight loss, but cautions that diets like keto and Atkins might not be great long-term strategies.

"There's absolutely nothing more important for our health than what we eat each and every day," she said. "I really would like individuals to realize the power that they have over their own health," she said.

"Several" employees in Tesla's security department — including the company's head of security — were previously a part of a similar team at Uber that allegedly stole data from rivals, hacked into their computer systems, and recorded their private conversations, according to a former employee of the electric-vehicle company who filed a whistleblower tip earlier this month with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

At Tesla, those employees were part of a group that spied on employees' personal cell-phone communications and hid from shareholders a theft of raw materials and a drug trafficking ring at the company's battery factory in Nevada, Karl Hansen, a former member of Tesla's security team, alleged in the tip, according to a statement put out Thursday by his lawyer.

"The security personnel accused of engaging in these tactics at Uber were hired by Tesla this year despite the revelation of a purported investigation by the US Attorney's Office in San Francisco ... [into] the actions related to the Uber security team," Meissner Associates, the law firm representing Hansen, said in the statement.

CNBC first reported Hansen's allegations about the former Uber team now working for Tesla.

While at Tesla, Hansen investigated the links between company employees at its so-called Gigafactory battery production facility and Mexican drug cartel, according to the statement from his attorney. He reported his findings in June to his three supervisors, which included two former Uber employees, one of whom was Nick Gicinto, Tesla's new head of security who reported directly to CEO Elon Musk, according to the statement.

Hansen alleged that Tesla failed to inform the US Drug Enforcement Agency of his findings and didn't fire the employees linked to the cartel. He also alleged Musk and the security team didn't disclose to the company's board directors and shareholders how it handled the drug trafficking investigation.

At Uber, Gicinto was in charge of the app-based taxi company's Strategic Services Group, according to a letter submitted in December by a former Uber employee in the company's legal dispute with Waymo, Google's self-driving car spinoff. Gicinto staffed the Strategic Services Group with CIA-trained case officers and used them to spy on competitors, according to that letter.

Hansen was fired by Tesla in July, according to the statement from his lawyer. He's the second whistleblower to come forward in the last two months, following Martin Tripp. Hansen alleged that the Tesla security team spied specifically on Tripp, including, potentially, after he left the company.

Google faces yet another showdown with employees following news reports earlier this month that the company wants to offer a search engine in China — one that would censor information in accordance with governmental requirements.

A letter is circulating among Google's staff that calls for the creation of an "ethics review structure," which would make ethical assessments of the company's projects. Representatives chosen by the staff and "ombudspeople" would take part in those assessments, according to the letter.

A source close to the situation said more than 1,400 employees have so far signed the letter, the existence of which was first reported by The New York Times. Google did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

You can read the full letter below.

According to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Business Insider, such a structure would provide enough transparency to enable individual workers to determine whether projects they contribute to are in line with their ethical standards. The letter also demands that rank-and-file workers be part of the review structure.

"We urgently need more transparency, a seat at the table, and a commitment to clear and open processes," the workers wrote in the letter. "Google employees need to know what we're building."

The letter also calls for a "Code Yellow" at Google — internal lingo for a serious situation that bears immediate attention.

A lot has happened to get Google to this point.

Google's management hasn't addressed the censored search engine yet

The news that Google was building a censored search engine, as part of an effort --codenamed Project Dragonfly-- to once again operate in China, first broke in The Intercept on August 1. Google pulled its search engine from China in 2010 after refusing to filter out web sites and information that the Chinese government found objectionable.

This kind of censorship is widely regarded as a human rights violation. When Google cofounder Sergey Brin explained the reasoning for the move said management objected to the "forces of totalitarianism," in China.

The unanswered question now is why Google believes that the time has come to return to the country.

Some Google employees would like to hear Brin and cofounder Larry Page explain, but management has said nothing. It has not gone unnoticed by employees that Google's leaders have yet to address the censored search-engine reports internally, two weeks after the news first came out. This contrasts with the much more immediate internal response when news leaked that Google was providing artificial intelligence tools to the military.

Last year, word began to spread inside Google that the company had helped the Pentagon analyze drove video-footage using AI. In that case, Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene took to the company's internal communications tools within 24 hours of the leak to inform staff what was going on and the company's position.

In that case, more than 4,000 Google employees signed a letter addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai that demanded Google never make AI-enhanced weapons. Pichai responded by releasing a set of principles designed to govern the company's future decisions on AI. The principles included never creating AI weapons or using AI to harm.

On Thursday, Google spokespeople suggested that the lack of response from Google's leaders was due to summer vacations, but that stance doesn't appear to have convinced the workers who signed the letter.

"To make ethical choices, Googlers need to know what we're building," said the letter. "Right now we don't."

Below is a transcription of the letter. Some of the names were removed and identifying information was removed.

To make ethical choices, Googlers need to know what we're building. Right now we don't. So we, the undersigned, are calling for a Code Yellow on Ethics & Transparency at Google.

Our industry has entered a new era of ethical responsibility: the choices we make matter on a global scale. Yet most of us only learned about project Dragonfly through news reports early August. Dragonfly is reported to be an effort to provide Search and personalized mobile news to China, in compliance with Chinese government censorship and surveillance requirements. Eight years ago, as Google pulled censored web search out of China, Sergey Brin explained the decision, saying: "in some aspects of [government] policy, particularly with respect to censorship, with respect to surveillance of dissidents, I see some earmarks of totalitarianism." Dragonfly and Google's return to China raise urgent moral and ethical issues, the substance of which we are discussing elsewhere.

Here, we address an underlying structural problem: currently we do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment. That the decision to build Dragonfly was made in secret, and progressed even with the AI Principles in place makes clear that the Principles alone are not enough. We urgently need more transparency, a seat at the table, and a commitment to clear and open processes: Google employees need to know what we're building.

In the face of these significant issues, we, the undersigned are calling for a Code Yellow addressing Ethics and Transparency, asking leadership to work with employees to implement concrete transparency and oversight processes, including the following:

1. An ethics review structure that included rank and file employee representatives;

2. The appointment of ombudspeople, with meaningful employee input into their selection:

3. A clear plan for transparency sufficient to enable Googlers an individual ethical choice about what they work on; and

4. the publication of "ethical test cases"; an ethical assessment of Dragonfly, Maven, and Airgap GCP with respect to the AI Principles; and regular, official internally visible communications and assessments regarding any new areas of substantial ethical concern.

Signed,

The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly investigating whether Tesla CEO Elon Musk was attempting to hurt the company's short-sellers when he tweeted about taking the company private, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The agency is reportedly asking Tesla's board of directors what Musk told them before he tweeted that he had secured the funding to convert Tesla into a private company, were the proposal to pass a shareholder vote.

Tesla and the SEC declined Business Insider's requests for comment.

Fox Business and The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the SEC had sent subpoenas to Tesla concerning the company's plans to explore going private and Musk's statements about the process.

The Fox Business reporter Charles Gasparino said on Twitter that sources suggested the agency was moving into a formal investigation of Tesla. Gasparino also said SEC officials had concerns about how the agency's investigation could affect Tesla's ability to go private.

On August 7, Musk expressed his desire to take Tesla private in a now-controversial tweet.

"Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured," Musk said via Twitter.

Some were confused in the hours and days following the tweet, since Musk did not initially disclose who might provide the funding he mentioned.

Musk said in a statement on Monday that he used the phrase "funding secured" because he believed there was "no question" Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund would provide funding for a deal to convert Tesla into a private company. He made the announcement via Twitter, he said, because he wanted all Tesla investors to know about the possibility of Tesla going private at the same time.

But Musk didn't mention any legally binding agreements that were in place at the time he sent the "funding secured" tweet, and he also said he was in discussions with other investors, which suggested some sources of funding may not have been settled before the tweet was sent.

Musk said all relevant parties would be able to review a proposal before a decision was made about going private. He said a proposal would not be presented, however, until discussions with potential investors were finished.

The Saudi sovereign wealth fund first met with Musk early last year about taking Tesla private, Musk said, adding that they'd met multiple times. After the fund purchased about 5% of Tesla's shares, it requested another meeting with Musk, which Musk said took place July 31. Musk said that during this meeting the fund's managing director "strongly expressed his support" to contribute funding to take Tesla private.

Musk notified Tesla's board of directors of his desire to take Tesla private on August 2, he said. But The New York Times reported on Monday that Musk's "funding secured" tweet surprised the board, which it said had not approved the tweet. According to The Times, Musk told an informal adviser he sent the tweet because he had difficulty keeping information to himself and was frustrated with the company's critics.

The Times later reported that some board members had hired lawyers to protect themselves from the potential legal fallout of Musk's statements and urged Musk to stop using Twitter. Three lawsuits have been filed against Tesla and Musk alleging securities fraud.

On Tuesday, Tesla said its board of directors had formed a special committee to consider any forthcoming go-private proposals.

Tesla has been public since 2010, but Musk has previously said he would like to take Tesla private.

"I wish we could be private with Tesla," Musk said in an interview with Rolling Stone published in November. "It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company."

Last week, Musk said taking the company private was "the best path forward." He said the pressures of being a public company created distractions and promoted short-term thinking that may not produce the best decisions in the long term.

Musk has also said on multiple occasions that Tesla would become profitable by the end of this year and would not need to raise additional funds, despite its increased cash-burn rate in recent quarters.

At the end of June, Tesla said it achieved its goal of making 5,000 Model 3 sedans in one week. Musk previously said that the company would hit that number by the end of 2017 and that sustaining such a production rate was critical for Tesla to become profitable.

Read The Wall Street Journal's full story here.

Have a Tesla news tip? Contact this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Shares of Nvidia fell 6% in after-hours trading Thursday following a guidance cut from the chipmaker despite posting second-quarter earnings that topped Wall Street's expectations.

Here are the key figures:

Earnings: $1.94 per share where analysts had expected $1.85.

Revenue: $3.12 billion where analysts had expected $3.11 billion.

"Growth across every platform – AI, Gaming, Professional Visualization, self-driving cars – drove another great quarter," Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, said in a press release.

"Fueling our growth is the widening gap between demand for computing across every industry and the limits reached by traditional computing. Developers are jumping on the GPU-accelerated computing model that we pioneered for the boost they need." 

The company also announced plans to return $1.25 billion to shareholders in fiscal year 2019, starting with a $0.15 dividend per share on September 21 to all shareholders on record as of August 30. 

For the third quarter, Nvidia forecasted its revenue to be within 2% of $3.25 billion where the Street had expected $3.34 billion.

Shares of Nvidia closed down 0.35% Thursday after falling as much as 1.5% in regular trading ahead of the report.

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