Gary Cohn, Donald Trump's former chief economic advisor and the president and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs during the 2007-8 financial crisis, has some harsh words for Facebook and other social media companies.

The social network, Bloomberg reports Cohn said at an event on Saturday, is even less of a responsible citizen than the big banks were prior to the financial crisis.

"In '08 Facebook was one of those companies that was a big platform to criticize banks, they were very out front of criticizing banks for not being responsible citizens," the banker said.

"I think banks were more responsible citizens in '08 than some of the social media companies are today. And it affects everyone in the world. The banks have never had that much pull."

Facebook has been reeling these past few months, trying to recover from a chain of scandals — from political firm Cambridge Analytica's misappropriation of tens of millions of users' data, to the social network's role in the spread of disinformation and scandals. (Cohn's remarks were reportedly focused on election influence and fake news.)

The company is now trying to emphasise that it has turned a corner. CEO Mark Zuckerberg now holds the line that Facebook "takes a broader view of our responsibilities" than it has in the past, and it has made a number of changes to its features and products. But not everyone is convinced.

The remarks by Cohn, who was at the helm of Goldman Sachs between 2006 and 2017 and advisor to Trump between 2017 and 2018, illustrate that some people treading the corridors of power are viewing Facebook's public pledges to change with skepticism.

But it's worth noting that given his old job, Cohn might not be considered the most impartial judge of whether or not the banks were "responsible citizens" prior to the crash.

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

A growing number of Californians are leaving the Golden State behind in search of cheaper living in Washington and Oregon — and locals aren't very happy about it.

A recent story from SF Gate highlighted how some Bay Area expats who relocated to Seattle, Portland, and Boise, Idaho, are experiencing unwelcoming gestures from locals.

"Bay Area expats we talked to say they've faced a range of backlash, from harmless jokes to threats of violence. One couple who transplanted to Portland in 2017 found their car and home spray-painted with messages like 'Go back to California,'" wrote SF Gate reporter Alix Martichoux.

A June survey from the Bay Area Council advocacy group found that 46% of residents say they plan to move away soon, up from 40% last year and 35% in 2016, reported Business Insider's Leanna Garfield. Home prices are a huge factor.

Nearly 60% of Bay Area tech workers surveyed from companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Salesforce said they cannot afford to purchase a house there, reported Business Insider's Melia Robinson. That's not to say they're leaving their jobs — more and more companies are increasingly offering remote work options.

Seattle and Portland are the top two destinations for Bay Area transplants, according to data from LinkedIn.

"If you think of all these cities and just think, literally, 'What is the closest substitute to the Bay Area at a slightly lower cost?' Seattle tops the list," Guy Berger, an economist who works at LinkedIn, previously told Robinson.

Read more: The San Francisco housing market is so dire that people are leaving in droves — here's where they're headed

Some California transplants told SF Gate that locals are seemingly threatened by a "Californiacation" of the Pacific Northwest. Many claim California expats are bringing more traffic (and thus more air pollution) and driving up home prices, among other things.

A Boise native who lived in the Bay Area for 10 years recently moved back to Idaho and said locals yelled "They're coming! They're gonna buy it!" at her while she was viewing an "overpriced open house," reported SF Gate.

"We were in our car and we still have our California plates. They're happy to be more aggressive when you have California plates. We really need to get rid of these plates," she told SF Gate.

A 25-year-old Bay Area native who relocated to Vancouver, Washington, last year told SF Gate that while the people are "very nice and won't say anything directly to our faces," her and her husband have seen "F— California" and "California sucks" graffiti around town.

Though it may seem a bad trade-off to some, home prices in Seattle and Portland are a steal compared to the Bay Area, where the median home price has cracked $1 million and it's officially a better long-term deal to rent than become a homeowner.

A man who left Los Angeles, another overpriced California city, for Portland 40 years ago told SF Gate he's observed the impact of new residents to the city and it's eroding the character of the area: "Portland is becoming all I didn't like about LA."

Google is rolling out the latest version of its Android operating system — Android 9.0, officially codenamed "Pie" — on Monday, but only a few of the headlining features that Google announced back at Google I/O are included in the update.

The version of Android Pie that's rolling out on Monday includes Google's personalization features, powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Those features include Adaptive Battery , which uses AI to learn which apps you use at what time of the day, and prioritizes battery towards those apps.

There's also Adaptive Brightness, which learns how you adjust your brightness settings in different lighting situations and automatically changes the display's brightness. YouTube/Google

You'll also find App Actions in there, which predicts what you'll want to do based on what you're doing on your phone at any given time. If you're getting ready to commute, App Actions will suggest navigation with Google Maps, or perhaps that you start an audiobook.

There are new swiping gestures in Android Pie, essentially introducing a whole new way to use Android phones, that are also included in Monday's rollout. It's only an option, and you can turn it off if you prefer the old fashioned way of navigating around your Android phone.

What's not included in Monday's Android Pie rollout

In a strange twist, the version of Android Pie that's rolling out on Monday won't include some of the " Digital Wellbeing " features that Google announced at Google I/O, including a new Dashboard feature that Google says "helps you understand how you're spending time on your device."

A feature called App Timer , which lets you set a time limit on specific apps, is also coming out later this fall.

Google

And Wind Down is coming in the fall, too. It'll switch on the Night Light mode that limits your screen's blue light, fade the screen to grayscale (a sort of black and white), and even turn on Do Not Disturb mode before bedtime. Do Not Disturb is also getting smarter, which will mute visual interruptions on your screen in addition to sounds and vibrations.

Most of you probably won't get the update today...unless you have these three phones

Google's latest Android update is only rolling out to the company's own Pixel smartphones — that is, the original Pixel phone, as well as the newer Pixel 2. Those with the Essential Phone are also getting the Android Pie update, according to Essential , which could make it the first non-Google smartphone that gets an Android update on day one of the rollout.

It should be noted that both the Pixel 2 and the Essential Phone, while sporting solid, modern hardware, are also relatively smaller players in the market for Android devices.

Those with Android phones by companies like Samsung, LG, HTC, and pretty much any company that's not Google or Essential aren't getting the update on Monday. It's unclear when those users will get the update. If the past is anything to go by, it'll be months before non-Google smartphone users get the Android Pie update, if at all.

Google did say that devices that participated in the Android Beta program — including Sony, Xiami, HMD Global (Nokia), Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus — will receive the update this fall.

Still, on day one, Android 9.0 won't have some of its most-hyped features, and it may not come to your phone or most others for months. It's a little bit of a weird situation.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Despite headline-making plans to open a bitcoin trading desk earlier this year, Goldman Sachs still isn’t sold on the virtual currency.

In a midyear economic-outlook report, the bank’s investment strategy group says the price of bitcoin is likely to decline even further than the 45% it has in the first seven months of 2018.

"Our view that cryptocurrencies would not retain value in their current incarnation remains intact and, in fact, has been borne out much sooner than we expected," the team lead by chief investment officer Sharmin Mossavar-Rahamani said.

"We expect further declines in the future given our view that these cryptocurrencies do not fulfill any of the three traditional roles of a currency: they are neither a medium of exchange, nor a unit of measurement, nor a store of value."

Cryptocurrencies — and  especially the blockchain technology that underpins their distributed nature — have been heralded as disruptors to the global financial system, theoretically allowing for more efficient databases, quicker transactions, and more transparent operations. For now, at least, Goldman maintains they won’t have much of an impact on any other asset class.

"Importantly, we continue to believe that such declines will not negatively impact the performance of broader financial assets, because cryptocurrencies represent just 0.3% of world GDP as of mid-2018," the report said. "In fact, we believe that they garner far more traditional media and social media attention than is warranted."

In May, Goldman touted its plans for a bitcoin trading operation. Two of the planned executives for the unit sat down with the New York Times to discuss how the bank plans to get regulatory approval and calculate risks inherent to the nascent space. For now, at least, Goldman's bitcoin operations will be limited to institutional investors.

You can read the full mid-year investment outlook here.

Markets Insider

Even though the iPhone was introduced over 11 years ago, there are still some issues with the hardware and software that keep it from being the best it can be. Default apps, proprietary cables, and fast charging are just a few of the problems the iPhone still has. Senior tech reporter Antonio Villas-Boas breaks down a few areas where the iPhone could improve. Following is a transcript of the video.

Antonio: It's been 11 years since the very first iPhone has launched and the iPhone has improved tremendously over that time. However, there are a few things that still bother me, that just sort of don't really make sense.

The cables. Let's start with the cables. The new iPhones come with Lightning charging cables. Now, the weird thing is, only the iPhone and iPad use the Lightning cable. It doesn't work with anything else. Whereas, for example, a USB-C cable, that works with a lot of things. And the other weird thing is, the USB cable doesn't plug into the new MacBook Pros. I have an iPhone and out of the box, I cannot plug it into the new MacBook Pros. To me, this is absolutely nuts. It's mind-boggling.

Okay, this is an old one by now. The iPhones do not have a headphone jack. To be fair, not all of the Android phones have headphone jacks. Looking at you, Google, and your Pixel 2s. Say you've got wired headphones, what do you do? Well, you use the dongle, right? Okay, so, dongle. You lose a dongle, you gotta buy the dongle again. Say you wanted to charge your phone, while also listening to music. Also, not possible right? Unless you've got Bluetooth headphones, but if you have wired headphones, you can't charge your iPhone and listen to music at the same time. You've gotta buy another type of dongle, some sort of adapter. And that's just not a great experience, right?

Let's talk about fast charging. Finally, wow! It came with the iPhone, finally. The thing is, though, if you want fast charging with the iPhone, you gotta go out and buy more stuff. You gotta buy a whole new cable, at the very least. And then, you gotta buy a special kind of brick. Extra cost, extra things, more wires, more cables. Meanwhile, the cheapest of cheap Android smartphones come with some kind of fast charging. The Moto G6 for example, $250 smartphone. It comes included with a fast charging brick. Now, it's not really consumer friendly when you offer a feature but it also involves buying lots of other things for using that feature.

Let's move on to iOS for a little bit and I want to talk about default apps and your choice, basically. What kind of choice you have as an iOS user. Let's take email for example. So, you click the email link and it takes you to Mail, even though you have Gmail and that's your preferred email app. Well, when someone sends you, say, a link to a website, and you tap it, your iPhone will take you to Safari, even if you prefer using Chrome. I feel like I should be able to set whatever app I like for emails or anything.

Something that a lot of Apple people complain about with Android phones is it comes with all this bloatware, all the bloatware, all the apps, and too many apps, and all that stuff. And to a certain extent, that's true on certain phones, absolutely. But, hey, you know what, actually the iPhone has a bunch of apps too, that you can consider bloatware. The Watch app, TV app is there, the Home app - what if you don't have a smart home? I mean there's a lot of bloatware here, right? This is bloatware. Keynote, you know, when are you gonna do a presentation on your phone?

Android is just more efficient with the way you use it. It's just smarter, it's just like a better design. Say I wanna go into the Bluetooth settings, change something, switch to a new device, pair with a new device, I have to go into the Settings app. I've gotta find Bluetooth here, and finally, eventually get to Bluetooth. But with Android, you know, it's a quick swipe down and hard tap on the Bluetooth icon and you're there. It's not hard, I'm not saying this is like some crazy, terribly designed user interface. It's just harder than Android.

There's no such thing as a perfect device. At the end of the day, it just depends on what kind of user you are. But, if you want a little bit more control, if you like to customize more, Android is probably for you. But, if you're perfectly happy on your iPhone then, hey, stick with iPhone.

Or, can I move?

Facebook has been in talks with banks about accessing users' financial data and integrating it into its platform, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal on Monday .

The report has sparked immediate outrage from critics and privacy activists, who fear the Silicon Valley tech firm is attempting to gobble up ever-more information, mere months after an unprecedented crisis over how it handled user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

But Wall Street has taken a very different view, and Facebook's stock popped more than 3% on the news, with investors seemingly viewing it as another money-making opportunity for the company.

According to The Wall Street Journal's report, Facebook wants to get "detailed financial information" about users from American banks, and has talked to JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and US Bancorp. The same report says that the banks are largely reticent to share that data given data privacy concerns.

Facebook is reportedly considering showing users their bank balance or potential fraud alerts, as well as encouraging people to use its Messenger app more, if the partnerships ultimately go ahead.

Facebook did not immediately respond to request for comment from Business Insider. However, speaking to TechCrunch after the Wall Street Journal's report was published, a Facebook spokesperson said the company wasn't asking for "financial transaction data," but rather looking to improve Messenger with banking notifications, and that it was strictly opt-in.

The report comes as Facebook attempts to bounce back from a chain of scandals that has shaken the public's faith in the tech company, especially the fallout from the revelation that political research firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained Facebook data from as many as 87 million users. The social network also faces broader concerns around misinformation and fake news.

The news has sparked a backlash from critics worried about the extent of Facebook's power and potential repercussions.

Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute and an outspoken critic of Facebook and the power of the tech giants, said the news was further evidence of how "concentrated tech power is moving us towards a dystopian social credit scoring system."

Sociologist Beth Popp Berman said she was surprised that there isn't more widespread outrage over Facebook's business practices. "It continues to amaze me that the general reaction to pervasive, dystopian surveillance is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" she tweeted, using an emoticon that conveys shrugging or apathy.

And Matt Ford, a reporter at the New Republic, simply joked: "What couldn't go wrong?"

Google, like many tech companies, has a habit of imposing its design language wherever it goes. Amazon does this, too, which is why its Prime Video app also looks and behaves the same on the Apple TV as it does on the PlayStation 4 and elsewhere.

Often times, having the same design language across multiple platforms is a good user experience. If you know how to use an app on just one device, you'll know how to use it on anywhere.

The problem is, not all devices are built the same. Some computers, like iPhones and Android phones, rely on touch controls; other computers, like PCs, rely on keyboard and mouse inputs; other computers, like streaming devices, rely on voice controls for the best experience.

When it comes to the YouTube app on Apple TV, it's about time Google and YouTube embraced the Apple TV for what it is: an atypical streaming device with some nifty features that make life easier for users, like inertial scrolling and voice control.

Google and YouTube employ some of the best software engineers in the world, and they've done an excellent job at making Material Design consistent; now it just needs to be flexible.

In Silicon Valley, buying a home is out of reach even for the region's tech workers.

Blind , an app that lets (mostly tech) workers chat anonymously about the workplace, asked employees from 13 Bay Area tech companies if they can afford buying a home . A 59% majority said they cannot afford to purchase a house in the Bay Area.

At least 100 employees at each of the 13 companies — including Apple, Facebook, Google, Salesforce, Cisco, eBay, Intuit, Airbnb, Uber, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Intel, and Oracle — participated in the survey, with a total of 2,326 responses, according to Blind.

Tech is still the single biggest economic engine of the Bay Area, but the region is becoming increasingly unaffordable and unlivable for the software engineers and product managers who fill its coffers.

MoviePass has a new mission: "Reenergize the occasional moviegoer."

That's how the company's CEO Mitch Lowe described it to Business Insider on Monday after announcing that his company was keeping the price at $9.95 a month (and nixing surge pricing and ticket verification), but capping subscribers at three movies a month , beginning August 15.

The app gained millions of new subscribers beginning in August 2017 when it changed its monthly subscription price to $10 a month (to see one movie per day). But what MoviePass didn't realize was a small core group of its users would really take their viewing to the upper limits of the service, Lowe said.

15% of MoviePass subscribers see a lot of movies

A major reason MoviePass has been burning through an estimated $45 million a month is that it has to pay movie theaters the full ticket price for most of the millions of tickets its subscribers order.

"A small amount of our subscribers, that 15% that would go to four or more [per month], go to a lot of movies. A lot!" Lowe said. "It's almost half of our cost of goods, like 40% of our cost of goods are used by that 15%."

These subscribers went to everything from the biggest movies of the year like "Black Panther" and "Avengers: Infinity War" to hit indies like "Hereditary" and the documentary "Three Identical Strangers." Lowe said, initially the thought was that putting a surge price on the popular films would slow things down, however people were paying it.

MoviePass bought over 1.15 million tickets this summer to "Avengers: Infinity War." Marvel

Then MoviePass got more dramatic and announced the monthly plan would go up to $14.95 and the big Hollywood releases would no longer be available on the app. But that didn't work either.

"The e-ticketing theaters, which haven't been affected in this whole thing, have gone up almost 75% over the last couple of weeks," Lowe said. These e-ticketing theaters give MoviePass a discount in exchange for promotion in the app.

So to attract just the casual MoviePass users — who spend $40 to $50 a year at the movies — which Lowe said represent 85% of its subscribers, the monthly plan will stay at the attractive $9.95 monthly offer. (If you want to go to the movies more than three times a month, MoviePass will offer discounts of $2 to $5 a ticket if you book through the MoviePass app.)

Lowe said he was confident that would decrease the burn substantially and get Wall Street back on board.

"I have had billion-dollar VCs tell me, 'If you would only put a cap on your costs we would invest and be right behind you,'" Lowe said. "I never did it because my investors kept telling me, 'We're behind you, we know it's going to take a lot of time,' and then suddenly they stopped saying that."

The stock of MoviePass' parent company, Helios and Matheson (HMNY), plunged to 7 cents last Friday, an all-time low . This came after the company did a 1-for-250 reverse stock split to pull it out of danger of getting delisted from the Nasdaq starting mid-December. It didn't work. (The stock was trading around 8 cents on Monday).

Building new inroads with movie theaters and studios

With the pivot to focus on the occasional moviegoer, Lowe admitted it would be more of a challenge to get to his goal of 5 million subscribers by the end of the year. But it may be more important to build better relationships within the industry than focus on subscription numbers.

For some time, MoviePass has tried to make bulk price movie-ticket deals with theaters so it didn't have to pay full ticket price on the millions its subscribers order on the app. Lowe said the progress has been happening "really slowly" to get exhibitors on board. So Lowe said MoviePass now has a new plan.

"We've learned that going to the exhibitors and looking for a discount is not the right approach, because that discount comes out of the studio share and then we expect the studios to pay us to promote the film and it's like double dipping, so we have changed our model," Lowe said. "We are just about to roll out to exhibitors that we'll continue to pay full price, but we want to negotiate with them a fair marketing fee."

MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe. MoviePass

So MoviePass wants to get a better marketing fee from exhibitors and studios on their movies it highlights on its app, social media, and other platforms. MoviePass boasts that it's responsible for 6% of the 2018 box office (which is up 8% from last year ) and believes with the inroads it has made on the marketing side with movie theaters and studios, that it can land a good deal, versus discounted tickets. (According to Helios and Matheson's most recent quarterly report, marketing and promotion made up $1.4 million of MoviePass' revenue in the first three months of 2018).

"I went in with a pay-for-performance approach to both the exhibitors and the studios, and I found it didn't work within the system and it caused all kinds of challenges," Lowe said. "So we think we now have a way to do this that fits in with how business is done."

Despite all the challenges MoviePass has faced, Lowe said he was optimistic, adding that new services like bring-a-friend, which allows MoviePass subscribers to pay for a non-subscriber ticket, and an option to order a ticket to a non-2D movie (like IMAX or Real 3D), would be available in the next month.

"We've got a couple of tricks up our sleeve," Lowe said.

At both Google and Facebook, job candidates may have to go through five or more interviews before getting a job offer. At Amazon, however, potential employees may only have to do one or two interviews.

Amazon

One or two interviews — 61%

Three or four interviews — 11%

Five or more interviews — 28%

Apple

One or two interviews — 53%

Three or four interviews — 30%

Five or more interviews — 17%

Facebook

One or two interviews — 40%

Three or four interviews — 36%

Five or more interviews — 24%

Google

One or two interviews — 34%

Three or four interviews — 27%

Five or more interviews — 39%

Microsoft

One or two interviews — 49%

Three or four interviews — 19%

Five or more interviews — 32%

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here .

Business Insider Intelligence

The healthcare industry is undergoing a profound transformation. Costs are skyrocketing, consumer demand for more accessible care is growing rapidly, and healthcare companies are unable to keep up.

Health organizations are increasingly turning to tech companies to facilitate this transformation in care delivery and lower health expenditures. The potential for tech-led digital health initiatives to help healthcare providers and insurers deliver safer, more efficient, and cost-effective care is significant. For healthcare organizations of all types, the collection, analyses, and application of patient data can minimize avoidable service use, improve health outcomes, and promote patient independence, which can assuage swelling costs.

For their part, the "Big Four" tech companies — Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft — see an opportunity to tap into the lucrative health market. These same players are accelerating their efforts to reshape healthcare by developing and collaborating on new tools for consumers, medical professionals, and insurers.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence explores the key strengths and offerings the Big Four will bring to the healthcare industry, as well as their approaches into the market. We'll then explore how these services and solutions are creating opportunities for health systems and insurers. Finally, the report will outline the barriers that are inhibiting the adoption and usage of the Big Four tech companies' offerings and how these barriers can be circumvented.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

Academics at Imperial Tech Foresight (ITF), an offshoot of Imperial College London, have been working to bring to life nebulous and intangible technological advances in a way you've never seen before.

They have created a table of disruptive tech, taking inspiration from the periodic table of chemical elements. It contains 100 innovations, ranging from the benign and everyday, to the mind-blowing and potentially terrifying.

To give you an example, cryptocurrencies (identified as Cr) are now part of our modern life, while battlefield robots (Br) sounds like something straight out of "Iron Man."

Each element is colour-coded and slotted into a space across two axis: The Y-axis ranks the potential for disruption from high to low, while the X-axis determines how soon it will become a reality. Here's how it breaks down:

Finally, the elements have numbers, which relate to an example of the tech in action provided by ITF. They are also grouped into themes — the initials at the bottom right of each box. These themes include extreme automation and human augmentation.

The table was created by Richard Watson and Anna Cupani after reading a dry list of emerging technologies on Wikipedia. They spoke to experts to shape the table and produced a number of drafts using Post-it notes for each element before agreeing on a final version.

Maria Jeansson, who worked on the project, said it was designed as a visual conversation starter. "Some corporate organisations have used it in workshops highlighting things that they should be thinking about," she told Business Insider. "For some, they see things and say, 'We didn't imagine that would impact us.'"

The Democratic National Committee warned candidates running in the November midterms not to use devices manufactured by the Chinese electronics firms ZTE and Huawei, "even if the price is low or free," according to a CNN report published on Friday.

The DNC was reportedly considering purchasing ZTE phones for its staffers when it issued its warning, a senior Democratic source told CNN.

"It's very important that party and campaign workers not use ZTE or Huawei devices, even if the price is low or free," chief security officer Bob Lord reportedly wrote.

Lord also warned staffers not to use the Chinese-produced devices "anywhere within your staff - for personal or work-related use."

The warning comes amid government scrutiny of consumer devices manufactured by Chinese firms. Lawmakers like Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, have criticized and pushed for economic penalties against ZTE and Huawei for their "extensive ties with the Chinese Communist Party," and their "track record of doing business with rogue regimes like North Korea and Iran."

REUTERS/Sergio Perez

"In a country full of bad actors when it comes to hurting American jobs and threatening our national security, Huawei and ZTE are two of the absolute worst offenders," a group of bipartisan lawmakers said in a statement to block the US government from buying or leasing telecommunications equipment from the companies.

US intelligence agencies have also remained wary of the companies for possible cybersecurity risks. Agencies like the FBI, CIA, and NSA have expressed concern that companies like Huawei, which was founded by a former engineer in the Chinese People's Liberation Army, could be covert fronts for the Chinese government.

"It provides the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information," FBI Director Christopher Wray said to a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in February. "And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage."

Following the intelligence hearing, ZTE fought back against the claims and downplayed any security concerns.

"As a publicly traded company, we are committed to adhering to all applicable laws and regulations of the United States, work with carriers to pass strict testing protocols, and adhere to the highest business standards," a ZTE spokesperson said at the time.

The US imposed a supplier ban against ZTE in April, after it was caught violating US sanctions and was found to have shipped US technology to Iran and North Korea. While the ban was in effect and the fate of ZTE's US subsidiary was uncertain, the company is believed to have spent $1.4 million to lobby Washington through parties and donations, according to a New York Times report published on Wednesday.

The ban was lifted in July, after the company paid $1 billion as part of a settlement agreement.

Facebook is trying to get into the dating game — and we've just had our first proper glimpse at how it might look.

The company is now testing its "Facebook Dating" feature internally. App researcher and reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong dug up the signup screen for the new feature, and shared screenshots on Twitter on Friday . We've republished her screenshots here, with permission.

The screenshots provide a new insight into how Facebook is planning to dip its toe into the world of dating, as well as the precautions it is taking to prevent abuse among its workforce. Jane Manchun Wong/Twitter

Users attempting to sign up are first greeted with a message titled "For Facebook Employees."

This product is for US Facebook employees who have opted-in to dogfooding Facebook's new dating product," the message reads. ("Dogfooding" is a tech industry term for testing products internally on a company's own employees.)

It adds: "This is not meant for dating your coworkers."

Facebook then asks employees to only use "dummy" data that will be deleted before the official launch, and signs off with a warning alluding to the toxic culture that can surround much of online dating: "As a reminder, Facebook policies such as harassment and code of conduct apply to all dogfooding activities."

Would-be users can then decide their privacy settings: Your Facebook friends won't be able to see your dating profile, and users can decide whether or not they want to allow anyone with mutual friends to see it. In other words, your Facebook profile and your dating profile should be as separate as you'd like them to be (emphasis on "should").

Jane Manchun Wong/Twitter

After that there are two questions on gender and sexual preferences, "What's your gender?" (options include Woman, Trans Woman, Man, Trans Man, and Non-binary) and "Who are you interested in seeing? ("Women, Trans Women, Men, Trans Men, or Non-binary people.")

Jane Manchun Wong/Twitter

The colour-scheme of the feature is distinct from the rest of Facebook. Instead of the traditional blue, it uses a soft, rosy red, with purple illustrations — perhaps an attempt to clearly differentiate it from the social network. Of course, this is just a test, and that could change before the official launch.

Jane Manchun Wong/Twitter

Another discovery made by Wong is that Facebook is apparently testing a dating feature called "Conversation Starters," which will help break the ice with your matches.

Facebook announced the dating feature at its F8 conference earlier this year, which came in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The company has come under considerable fire over its handling of user data and privacy issues, and it will need to walk a fine line as it launches Facebook Dating to avoid the inevitable privacy concerns.

In clearly separating users' dating profiles from their existing friend circles, the company appears to be trying to get ahead of the issue. It'll need to prove itself out to top Tinder, currently the most popular dating app going.

"This is going to be for building real, long-term relationships — not just for hookups," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said when it was announced . "We have designed this with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning. Your friends aren't going to see your profile, and you're only going to be suggested to people who are not your friends."

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the company is currently "testing Facebook Dating internally (as we regularly do with new features)," but said they "don't have anything more to share right now."

Samsung just accidentally leaked details about the Galaxy Note 9, less than a week before it's set to unveil the new phone.

On Friday, SamMobile spotted an intro video that had been uploaded to YouTube by Samsung New Zealand. The video reveals the design of the upcoming Galaxy Note 9 smartphone, along with a few details about the phone's internals. The video has since been removed, but you can still find versions of it on YouTube.

The video seems to confirm that the blue version of the Galaxy Note 9 will come with a yellow S Pen, a feature that leaker Ice Universe tweeted out last month (the phone will also come in black, brown, and purple , according to Ice Universe).

The video also tell us that not only is Samsung planning a 512 GB Galaxy Note 9, but the phone will also support a 512 GB microSD card. That means the Galaxy Note 9 will get up to 1 terabyte of total storage.

Samsung will officially unveil the new device at its Unpacked Event on August 9 in New York City, but until then, you can watch the full intro video below:

The market for public offerings in the tech sector popped in the first half of this year and could get even better in the second half and on into next year.

But you'll likely have to wait have to wait until next year for the biggest of the so-called unicorns — the private tech companies valued at $1 billion or more, a group that includes Uber, WeWork, and AirBnB — to hit the market.

That's the word from some of the investment bankers who cater to the tech industry and work with companies that are preparing to go public. Investors are eager for new offerings from high-growth firms, while at the same time many companies are itching to go public after many years of being private, they say.

"The tech sector's going to be busy," said Brad Miller, global head of equity syndicate at UBS. He continued: "We're pretty bullish on the sector going forward."

2018 has already been a good year for tech IPOs

It's already been a good market for tech IPOs. In the first half of the year, 24 tech companies went public, according PwC. That's already more than the number that debuted in all of 2016, and is 11 more than the number that went public in the first half of last year.

Jenny Cheng/BI Graphics

And the market valuation of the companies that have hit the public markets in the first half of this year — $8.7 billion — is up 77% from the same period last year, according to PwC. That figure doesn't include Spotify, which went public in a non-traditional way . Had its $26.5 billion valuation at its market debut been included, the total value of IPOs in the first half would have been seven times greater than in the same period last year.

Jenny Cheng/BI Graphics

Among the companies that have debuted this year are Domo , DocuSign, and Dropbox.

After the tech IPO market ended last year on a strong note, industry insiders were expecting the momentum to carry into this year.

"The first half of the year hasn't disappointed," said John Chirico, co-head of capital markets origination for the Americas at Citi.

Investors are hungry for growth

What's helping drive the market is hunger on the part of investors for the ability to invest in fast-growing firms. On average, tech companies see a significant rise in their stock in the 30 days following their IPOs, the tech bankers say. That kind of immediate return can help boost the portfolios of institutional investors.

So they're demanding more such companies, because they're not getting that kind of quick-paced growth elsewhere. And investors are more than willing, for now, to trade revenue growth for profits.

Investors are being "compensated for taking risks in new companies," said Chirico. So, he continued, they're "asking to see more private companies."

Part of what's helping to drive the market — and increase valuations for new tech firms — is that investors feel like they have a better grasp on the risks faced by the companies that have gone public lately, Chirico said. Earlier this decade, as smartphones were coming to the fore, there was much more uncertainty about many of the companies that were going public, he said. It wasn't clear how many people would eventually use mobile devices or what kinds of things they would do with them. It also wasn't clear whether companies that had established themselves on the web, like Facebook, would be able to make the transition to mobile devices.

By contrast, many of the tech companies that are going public now are going after established markets, Chirico said. The question is no longer whether there's a market for their products, but how much of the market they can gobble up and how effectively the established companies in the sector will respond.

"These business models are well-understood execution risks," he said. "Investors love that. They can assess that."

Many tech companies are eager to go public

But the market is also being driven by the eagerness of tech companies to go public, the bankers say. There's plenty of private capital still floating around, and at least some of the prospective companies are generating cash, so many don't necessarily need to hit the public markets to grow or stay float.

However, the stock market has been on a long bull run, one that will end sooner or later. There's the sense among some of them that they should go out while the public window is still open, Miller said. After being private for years, there's also the feeling among those companies that it's time to hit the public markets, he said. Such a move could help those companies' employees realize the value of their stock options and help the companies themselves make acquisitions using their shares.

"It's just the next phase for some of these companies," Miller said.

But don't expect to see the most prominent of the still-private companies hit the market just yet. Those companies still have access to private capital and don't have any urgency to go public. But several of those companies are reportedly preparing for it.

That could set up 2019 to be a big year for IPOs.

"It feels like there's lot of activity that we're likely to see in the second half of this year, going into next year," Chirico said.

NASA astronaut and Commercial Crew member Sunita Williams in March 2018.NASA/Kim Shiflett

After nearly a decade of effort, SpaceX and Boeing are preparing to launch the first NASA astronauts on commercial spaceships.

On Friday, NASA announced the first nine astronauts who will risk their lives on the first crewed missions of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2019.

The goal of NASA's Commercial Crew program, as it's called, is to taxi astronauts to and from the $150-billion International Space Station (ISS). Accomplishing that would close an increasingly expensive gap in the US' space-travel capabilities.

In 2015, NASA selected astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams and three other " space pioneers " to test then fly the new spaceships.

Williams is slated to fly aboard Boeing's second test flight to the ISS.

"Five years ago, this would have been like, 'No way, what are we doing asking commercial providers to be able to do this?'" Williams told Business Insider in June. "Now it feels like a natural progression for space travel."

Williams has flown inside three spaceships, served as commander of the International Space Station, lived in orbit for 322 days, and piloted 30 different types of aircraft for the Navy.

This extensive resume has come in handy over the past three years, as Williams has worked closely with Boeing and SpaceX. She and her colleagues have poked and prodded spacecraft mock-ups, tried on new spacesuits, fiddled with control panels, tested out simulators, and provided frank and sometimes critical feedback.

Here's why NASA needs Boeing and SpaceX, what Williams thinks of their new ships and suits, and how she's preparing to blast off into the uncharted territory of a new space race .

This story was updated with new information. It was originally published on June 24, 2018.

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here .

Business Insider Intelligence

The healthcare industry is undergoing a profound transformation. Costs are skyrocketing, consumer demand for more accessible care is growing rapidly, and healthcare companies are unable to keep up.

Health organizations are increasingly turning to tech companies to facilitate this transformation in care delivery and lower health expenditures. The potential for tech-led digital health initiatives to help healthcare providers and insurers deliver safer, more efficient, and cost-effective care is significant. For healthcare organizations of all types, the collection, analyses, and application of patient data can minimize avoidable service use, improve health outcomes, and promote patient independence, which can assuage swelling costs.

For their part, the "Big Four" tech companies — Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft — see an opportunity to tap into the lucrative health market. These same players are accelerating their efforts to reshape healthcare by developing and collaborating on new tools for consumers, medical professionals, and insurers.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence explores the key strengths and offerings the Big Four will bring to the healthcare industry, as well as their approaches into the market. We'll then explore how these services and solutions are creating opportunities for health systems and insurers. Finally, the report will outline the barriers that are inhibiting the adoption and usage of the Big Four tech companies' offerings and how these barriers can be circumvented.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report: