Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos is leaving the social network to take an adjunct professorship role at Stanford University, reports the New York Times .

News of Stamos' departure comes a day after Facebook disclosed a coordinated political misinformation campaign on its platform —a disclosure in which Stamos played a key role, briefing the media on the situation in a conference call.

In March, the New York Times reported that Stamos was planning to leave in August . That report came in the midst of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which as many as 87 million Facebook users had their information improperly obtained by an outside firm.

It was reported at the time that he was clashing with other Facebook executives with how to fight targeted misinformation campaigns, especially those funded by hostile actors like Russia.

Stamos announced his move in a Facebook post on Wednesday , saying that while he was proud of the work he did at Facebook during the past three years, "the time has come for me to move on."

He also said "it is critical that we as an industry live up to our collective responsibility to consider the impact of what we build, and I look forward to continued collaboration and partnership with the security and safety teams at Facebook."

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said in a statement that Stamos played "an important role in how we approach security challenges and helped us build relationships with partners so we can better address the threats we face."

In an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday , Stamos said that in his new role at Stanford he plans to continue digging in to ways to better fight misinformation and hoaxes as part of a research team.

"Obviously, it has been a difficult three years. I'd like to take the things I've learned and apply them more broadly," Stamos told the Times.

Citing its policy on 'hate content,' Spotify has confirmed that it removed several podcast episodes of 'The Alex Jones Show,' Recode reports .

Spotify didn't specify which episodes were removed from the platform, or what specifically violated its policy, but the moves comes just nearly a week after Jones, a conspiracy theorist and host of InfoWars, received a 30-day suspension from Facebook — and several of his videos were removed from Facebook and YouTube .

The vast majority of Jones' podcast episodes are still available on Spotify, however.

After some Spotify users discovered that Jones' show was available on Spotify, they took to Twitter this week to demand that Spotify remove his show from their streaming platform. Spotify has also recently been under fire for its handling of the promotion of content from alleged abusers — it temporarily removed music by XXXTentacion, a now-deceased rapper charged with battering a pregnant woman, and R Kelly, an R&B singer accused of statutory rape, from prominent playlists — only to reverse the decision weeks after announcing it.

Jones is known for promoting conspiracy theories, like his insistence that the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, and that child actors were used — a claim that has resulted in defamation claims against Jones from the affected families.

Reddit, the popular discussion and forum website, said on Wednesday that hackers managed to break into its computer systems and gain access to private messages, email addresses and other personal information belonging to some of its early users.

The hackers obtained access to a database that contained personal information of Reddit users who joined the service between 2005, when the site was created, and 2007.

The cyber attack occurred between June 14 and June 18, when hackers "compromised a few of our employees' accounts with our cloud and source code hosting providers," Reddit said, and its website administrators realized the hack occurred on June 19.

Reddit is one of the world's most popular websites, comprised of thousands of smaller "subreddit" communities for a variety of interests. However, Reddit often finds itself under scrutiny for all the wrong reasons, as its more toxic subreddits regularly engage in racist, misogynistic, and other kinds of bad behavior.

Specifically, that data includes usernames , "salted hashed passwords, email addresses, and all content (mostly public, but also private messages)." The salted hashed passwords means the passwords that were compromised aren't the passwords that users actually use.

The hack doesn't involve data from users who signed up after 2007. However, to be sure, it's best to change your Reddit password and activate two-factor authentication.

For those who signed up between 2005 and 2007, Reddit will make you reset your password. And if you use your Reddit password on other sites and accounts, Reddit suggests you change those passwords, too.

Reddit's statement of the incident is in full below:

TL;DR: A hacker broke into a few of Reddit's systems and managed to access some user data, including some current email addresses and a 2007 database backup containing old salted and hashed passwords. Since then we've been conducting a painstaking investigation to figure out just what was accessed, and to improve our systems and processes to prevent this from happening again.

What happened?

On June 19, we learned that between June 14 and June 18, an attacker compromised a few of our employees' accounts with our cloud and source code hosting providers. Already having our primary access points for code and infrastructure behind strong authentication requiring two factor authentication (2FA), we learned that SMS-based authentication is not nearly as secure as we would hope, and the main attack was via SMS intercept. We point this out to encourage everyone here to move to token-based 2FA.

Although this was a serious attack, the attacker did not gain write access to Reddit systems; they gained read-only access to some systems that contained backup data, source code and other logs. They were not able to alter Reddit information, and we have taken steps since the event to further lock down and rotate all production secrets and API keys, and to enhance our logging and monitoring systems.

Now that we've concluded our investigation sufficiently to understand the impact, we want to share what we know, how it may impact you, and what we've done to protect us and you from this kind of attack in the future.

What information was involved?

Since June 19, we've been working with cloud and source code hosting providers to get the best possible understanding of what data the attacker accessed. We want you to know about two key areas of user data that was accessed:

All Reddit data from 2007 and before including account credentials and email addresses

What was accessed: A complete copy of an old database backup containing very early Reddit user data -- from the site's launch in 2005 through May 2007. In Reddit's first years it had many fewer features, so the most significant data contained in this backup are account credentials (username + salted hashed passwords), email addresses, and all content (mostly public, but also private messages) from way back then.

How to tell if your information was included: We are sending a message to affected users and resetting passwords on accounts where the credentials might still be valid. If you signed up for Reddit after 2007, you're clear here. Check your PMs and/or email inbox: we will be notifying you soon if you've been affected.

Email digests sent by Reddit in June 2018

What was accessed: Logs containing the email digests we sent between June 3 and June 17, 2018. The logs contain the digest emails themselves -- they look like this. The digests connect a username to the associated email address and contain suggested posts from select popular and safe-for-work subreddits you subscribe to.

How to tell if your information was included: If you don't have an email address associated with your account or your "email digests" user preference was unchecked during that period, you're not affected. Otherwise, search your email inbox for emails from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. between June 3-17, 2018.

As the attacker had read access to our storage systems, other data was accessed such as Reddit source code, internal logs, configuration files and other employee workspace files, but these two areas are the most significant categories of user data.

What is Reddit doing about it?

Some highlights. We:

Reported the issue to law enforcement and are cooperating with their investigation.

Are messaging user accounts if there's a chance the credentials taken reflect the account's current password.

Took measures to guarantee that additional points of privileged access to Reddit's systems are more secure (e.g., enhanced logging, more encryption and requiring token-based 2FA to gain entry since we suspect weaknesses inherent to SMS-based 2FA to be the root cause of this incident.)

What can you do?

First, check whether your data was included in either of the categories called out above by following the instructions there.

If your account credentials were affected and there's a chance the credentials relate to the password you're currently using on Reddit, we'll make you reset your Reddit account password. Whether or not Reddit prompts you to change your password, think about whether you still use the password you used on Reddit 11 years ago on any other sites today.

If your email address was affected, think about whether there's anything on your Reddit account that you wouldn't want associated back to that address. You can find instructions on how to remove information from your account on this help page.

And, as in all things, a strong unique password and enabling 2FA (which we only provide via an authenticator app, not SMS) is recommended for all users, and be alert for potential phishing or scams.

Markets Insider

Shares of Tesla rose as much as 3.8% in after-hours trading Wednesday following the electric car maker's second-quarter earnings report that showed a greater loss than what Wall Street had expected, on better-than-anticipated revenues.

Here are the key numbers:

Earnings: -$3.06 per share (-$2.90 expected)

Revenue: $4.0 billion ($3.97 expected)

Cash burn — a key metric for Tesla as it seeks to become profitable this year — was $739.5 million, down slightly from $745.3 million last quarter.

"It’s fair to say that no production ramp of any other product has been as closely watched and debated as that of Model 3. We are proud of our team for producing roughly 7,000 Model 3, Model S and Model X vehicles during the last week of June," Elon Musk, Tesla's founder and chief executive, said in a letter to shareholders.

"We also want to thank all of our reservation holders who have waited patiently and who have been supportive of our mission. While we faced multiple obstacles during this ramp, our team worked hard to find solutions, and in the end, it was all worth it."

The company maintains that if it can keep up this production rate of 7,000 vehicles per week (or 350,000 per year) it can become profitable this year, as previously forecast. 

A conference call is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. ET. Last quarter, Musk made headlines by interrupting and ignoring several questions from Wall Street analysts whom he said represented sell-side investment theses. 

Tesla gained 1.1% in trading Wednesday and down 5.8% since the beginning of 2018 before the earnings release. 

Markets Insider

Tesla on Wednesday reported a wider second-quarter loss than analysts had expected but said it expects to be profitable later this year as it ramps up production of its Model 3 sedan.

The company reported an adjusted loss per share of $3.06 (-$2.90 expected), while revenue topped estimates at $4 billion ($3.97 billion forecast).

The results were highly anticipated, following an eventful quarter for the electric-car and solar-panel maker.

Tesla recently pushed back the delivery timelines for new orders of two of three versions of its Model 3 sedan. Investors and analysts have been interested in any updates on the pace of production of the mass-market cars, as well as whether Tesla may need to raise additional capital even after CEO Elon Musk said otherwise.

Tesla said it hit a weekly production rate of 5,000 Model 3s "multiple times" in July and aimed to increase that to 10,000 "as fast as we can." The electric-car maker said it expected to produce 50,000 to 55,000 Model 3s in the third quarter.

Tesla reported a negative free cash flow of $739 million, smaller than analysts had forecast and less than the $1.05 billion burn in Q1.

"Going forward, we believe Tesla can achieve sustained quarterly profits, absent a severe force majeure or economic downturn, while continuing to grow at a rapid pace," the company said.

Tesla's stock fell 3% immediately after the release before rebounding to gain as much as 3.6%. It has fallen 3% this year through the market close on Wednesday.

The tips you think of for a job interview — confidence, energy, positivity — carry over here.

"You have to sell yourself, just like it's a job interview," Clare Moore, a content marketing manager at HR company MHR, previously told Business Insider .

Fran Hauser, media executive, startup investor, and author of the new book " The Myth of the Nice Girl ," wrote for Business Insider that you need to maintain strong eye contact, have good posture, and avoid filler words like "um."

Keep energy high and be positive, showing that you love your job and you're passionate.

"The delivery of your message matters," Hauser wrote . "If you sound like you're not sure about whether you deserve a raise, it may raise doubts for the person across the table. It will also tip them off that it's easy for them to say no."

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

With its News Feed nearly saturated and advertising growth rates slowing down, Facebook knows that it must look elsewhere to maximize profits.

That place increasingly appears to be Stories — the section that houses ephemeral photos and videos for 24 hours before they disappear.

While Stories are already hot on its sister platform Instagram , the format is yet to take off on Facebook itself. So it won't be an easy sell.

But the company is clearly making it a priority moving forward.

Not only did founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg call Stories "a big part of the future of sharing" on the company's earnings call on Wednesday, Facebook has also been pushing the format to advertisers, according to 10 media buyers whom Business Insider spoke to.

"It seems as though Facebook is looking to replicate the success of Instagram stories by applying it to Facebook," said Brendan Gahan, founder at Epic Signal.

Every Facebook presentation starts with a slide on Stories

Facebook Stories launched in 2017, and the company just began testing ads on it in the US, Brazil and Mexico in May 2018. As a select few advertisers experiment with ads on Facebook Stories, its sales executives have been preparing for a much wider rollout.

In fact, Stories have been heavily emphasized at meetings and creative brainstorm sessions over the past few months, several media buyers said, encouraging them to test the format out. Facebook is even sharing tips and tricks with advertisers on how to crack the format, they said, like how Stories content should be modeled on memes, said one executive.

"In the last couple of creative workshops we've had with them, every presentation has started with a slide on Stories," said one media buyer.

Facebook wants to replicate Instagram Stories ads everywhere

It helps that marketers have tasted success with Instagram Stories ads. Online retailer Overstock, for example, saw an 18% increase in return on ad spend and a 20% decrease in cost per acquisition when it ran video ads in Instagram Stories with a shop now button, as COO Sheryl Sandberg pointed out in the call.

"Within the past few months it's come up a lot more, with the theme being about Stories not just on Facebook, but also how it'll play out in places like Messenger and WhatsApp,"said Noah Mallin, head of experience, content and sponsorship at Wavemaker.

The company is even providing free trials for Facebook Stories ads, said one buyer, handing over "several thousand dollars" in free media for Stories to incentivize buyers to test the feature.

"I haven't heard of specific metrics yet, but the general consensus is that it will be more of an awareness driving tool than something that will be used to drive conversion," the buyer said.

Facebook wants to take Stories beyond Instagram, but it's not going to be easy

Since Instagram rolled it Stories in 2016 (largely copying the format from Snapchat), the product has attracted 400 million daily users. Several brands have run successful campaigns in the format.

So naturally, Facebook sees an opportunity to replicate this success on its core app. But it's not going to be easy feat.

In comparison to Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories has just about 150 million daily active users as of May. And on the brand side, the ads currently being tested on Facebook Stories have no click-through or call-to-action, even though Facebook has plans to add that as well as additional metrics in the coming months.

"Facebook Stories is currently crickets," said Ryan Kovach, paid social specialist at Social Outlier. "It typically takes a while between when a format is rolled out to when it gains critical mass."

Plus, Stories aren't really as lucrative as ads on Facebook and Instagram's feeds, as the Wall Street Journal reported. Ads in Stories generate about $1 per daily user compared with $9 from ads in users' Instagram feeds and $27 for ads in the Facebook feed, according to Wells Fargo analysts.

Facebook is working around that by making it easier for both brands and users to post on Stories. Users, who are already habitually posting to Instagram Stories, can share the same clips on Facebook Stories with the click of a button.

Advertisers on the other hand, can either directly port their clips over from Instagram Stories or reformat them from their News Feed ads. And Facebook also has plans to add direct-response features as well as additional metrics to Facebook Stories in the coming months, according to a company rep.

All of this should contribute to Facebook Stories ultimately gaining momentum, buyers said.

"Facebook's core feed is eroding and users are veering toward the Stories format," said Jon Morganstern, vp of paid media at VaynerMedia. "As soon as they have succeeded in getting enough daily users and time spent, they will swiftly monetize it."

Facebook's terrible week was topped off by a spectacular roasting by John Oliver on Sunday night, after the comedian ripped into its cratering stock price, fake news problem, and its "bulls**t apology ads."

In a brief segment during his HBO show "Last Week Tonight", Oliver gleefully pointed to Facebook's $120 billion valuation drop and pointed out this was bigger than the entire global cheese market. "Facebook's stock dropped by the concept of cheese," he said.

Oliver said "public opinion has clearly never been lower" when it comes to Facebook and the company has become a "surveillance system disguised as a high school reunion."

Oliver capped off his segment with a parody of Facebook's "Here Together" TV ad , which has been ubiquitous since April after news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke.

The parody version of the ad mimics the original visually, with a piano track and soft voiceover narrative playing over seemingly heart-warming pictures and videos on Facebook.

But where the original ad plays up the value of friendship and connecting people, Oliver's parody relentlessly points out how much money Facebook makes off people's data, constant surveillance, and outrage.

"You came here for the friends... We came here for your data and the data of everyone you've ever come into contact with," the voiceover says. "Your data enabled us to make a f**k ton of money from corporations, app developers, and political campaigns. Then, we discovered your uncle had ties to the Klan and, guess what, we realised we could make a f**k ton of money off that s**t too."

The voice points out there are no social networks to rival Facebook and concludes: "Facebook. We own who you are."

You can watch the full parody ad from "Last Week Tonight" here:

Amazon is a $178 billion disruptor in the retail sector. Its sheer scale has marked it out as a target for US President Donald Trump, who reportedly obsesses over the company's impact on the US Postal Office, the amount of tax it pays, and the potential harm it is causing other retailers.

"Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt - many jobs being lost!" Trump tweeted in August last year.

But don't expect Amazon to start worrying about its impact anytime soon.

In an interview with The Sunday Times , Russell Grandinetti, Amazon's senior vice president of international consumer, said his job is to focus on growth — and it's for others to figure out how to deal with the ripples Amazon creates in the marketplace.

"Companies have often invented technologies that have then required us to figure out how to reinvest the productivity improvements in new jobs and new ways," he said. "That's an important societal thing to do, an important governmental thing to do. I don't think it's our job to do anything but try to be really good at what we do."

The Sunday Times said investors will "cheer" his relentless focus on revenue, but critics will worry "he is turning a blind eye to the disruption Amazon causes."

Grandinetti did, however, address concerns that Amazon is destroying jobs, by pointing to those it creates. He said: "We create lots of jobs not only in the company — 100,000 in the US last year alone, 5,000 in Britain — but also in the suppliers we serve."

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said a number of times that the company is ready for a debate about regulation.

"If you look at the big tech companies, they have gotten large enough that they are going to be inspected. It's not personal," he said at an event in Germany in April.

The Amazon CEO said policing the power of online companies is "one of the great questions of our age" because as the internet has reached a level of maturity over the past decade "we haven't learned as a civilization, as a human species, how to operate it yet."

Being successful in the digital age doesn't just require knowing the latest buzzwords; it means identifying the transformational trends - and where they're heading - before they ever heat up.

BI Intelligence Take the Internet of Things (IoT), for example, which now receives not only daily tech news coverage with each new device launch, but also hefty investments from global organizations ushering in worldwide adoption. By 2023, consumers, companies, and governments will install more than 40 billion IoT devices globally. And it's not just the ones you hear about all the time, like smart speakers and connected cars.

To successfully navigate this changing landscape, individuals and organizations must understand the full extent and functionality of the "Things" included in this network, the key drivers of each market segment, and how it all relates to the work they do every day.

Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has forecasted the start of the IoT's global proliferation in The IoT Forecast Book 2018 — and the next five years will be transformational for consumers, enterprises, and governments.

Want to Learn More?

People, companies, and organizations all over the world are racing to adopt the latest IoT solutions and prevent growing pains amidst a technological transformation. The IoT Forecast Book 2018 from Business Insider Intelligence is a detailed three-part slide deck outlining the most important trends impacting consumer, enterprise, and government IoT — and the key drivers propelling each segment forward.

Representing thousands of hours of exhaustive research, our multipart forecast books are considered must-reads by thousands of highly successful business professionals. These informative slide decks are packed with charts and statistics outlining the most influential trends on the leading edge of your industry. Keep them for reference or drop the most valuable data into your own presentations to share with your teams.

Whether you're newly interested in a topic or you already consider yourself a subject matter expert, The IoT Forecast Book 2018 can provide you with the actionable insights you need to make better decisions.

Most of us spend a majority of our waking hours at work, so it's only natural that we want to enjoy our time in the office as much as we can. And perks help with that — a lot.

According to career site Glassdoor , more than half (57%) of all workers say perks and benefits are among the top things they consider when deciding whether to accept a job, and almost 80% of employees say they would prefer new benefits over a pay raise.

That's why some employers are raising the bar and going beyond standard vacation days, health insurance benefits, and 401k matching to attract top talent.

Companies like Airbnb and Google offer unique and surprising perks like travel stipends and death benefits, Glassdoor reports , while Facebook and Netflix have upped the ante for companies wanting to support new parents.

"Benefits and perks matter because they're an added piece of the total compensation puzzle," Scott Dobroski, Glassdoor's career trends analyst, told Business Insider. "Job seekers should understand what benefits and perks an employer may be offering, and do their research ahead of time to find companies that offer benefits that matter most to them."

Employees rated some of their favorite employee benefits on Glassdoor. The following perks are not only unique, but they also received a rating of at least 4.0 out of 5.0 on Glassdoor.

Repeatedly responding to suggestions with a pessimistic or contrary attitude can be construed as being uncooperative, Randall said. Phrases like "That won't work," "That sounds too hard," or, "I wouldn't know how to start," should be avoided.

Similarly, complaining too much puts you in a bad light.

"While there may be times when everyone feels the desire to complain about the boss, a coworker, or a task, voicing it will only make you look unprofessional," Randall said. "It's even worse if you complain every day, all day, from the moment you walk into work. Before long, people will go out of their way to avoid you."

"There's nothing as energy-draining as having to deal with a pessimistic coworker," Rosemary Haefner, the former chief human resources officer for CareerBuilder , told Business Insider. "Things do go wrong, but even when they do, focus your energy towards what you've learned from a bad situation."

She pointed to a recent CareerBuilder survey , which shows that a majority of employers — 62% — say they are less likely to promote employees who have a negative or pessimistic attitude.

Dear Reader,

We know it's frustrating when a job posting doesn't include the name of the person in charge of the hiring process.

We also know that's not an excuse to slap any salutation on your cover letter and send your application off.

According to Amanda Augustine, career advice expert for TopResume , you should always do some research to figure out who exactly the person reading your letter will be.

You can even play it safe by writing at the beginning of your cover letter: "I noticed you're working in [whatever department] at [whatever company]," so you show that based on your research, it looks like they're involved in the hiring process.

In the case that you absolutely, positively can't find a person's name, Augustine said certain ways of addressing your cover letter are more off-putting than others.

For example, "Dear Hiring Manager" and "Dear Recruiter" aren't great openings, but they're the best of many bad options.

Here's the full list of cover-letter openings, ranked in reverse order of egregiousness.

Sincerely, Business Insider staff

P.S. This advice doesn't apply in the case of an anonymous job posting, when a company is deliberately keeping their name and the names of their employees confidential.

"Fortnite: Battle Royale," the free video game mode that took the world by storm last Fall, is a billion dollar business. That's according to a new report by SuperData, which estimates that the game has generated more than $1 billion in revenue across all platforms.

For some perspective, this means that Fortnite has now made more money than several of last year's highest worldwide-grossing blockbuster films, including "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," Marvel Studios' "Spider-Man: Homecoming," and "Wonder Woman;" and more than double the gross worldwide earnings of the latest Star Wars flick, "Solo."

The report points out that the revenue comes entirely from in-game purchases, which — in Fortnite's case — offer no competitive advantage to the game. In the game, an entirely optional $10 Battle Pass allows players to earn and collect in-game currency called V-bucks, which they can spend on costumes, accessories and dance moves for their playable character. But if you don't want to play the game enough to unlock these perks, you can also purchase more V-bucks with real bucks, at a rate of 1,000 V-bucks for $9.99.

The most expensive character outfits — called "skins" in the gaming world — go for 2,000 V-bucks, or $20.

Fortnite was not the first game to bring the battle royale genre the to the masses. Games like DayZ, H1Z1, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds popularized the "Hunger Games"-style formula, in which a hundred players are dropped onto a shrinking play area, and must scavenge for weapons and supplies in an effort to be the last man standing.

At launch, the game was available for PC and PlayStation 4. Today, it can be played for free on PCs, any gaming console, and on mobile iOS devices.

Fortnite: Battle Royale was first introduced as a free-to-play, early access mode of the original "Fortnite" title, a $60 zombie survival game that creators at Epic Games had been developing for more than five years.

The "Battle Royale" mode has now become vastly more popular than the original game — so much so that it is widely referred to with the full game's shorter title — thanks in large part to attention from celebrities and a large group of prominent video game streamers, like Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, who play the game on live streaming platforms like Twitch or YouTube Gaming for millions of fans to watch.

Fortnite has, in turn, helped Blevins, a former professional esports athlete, become a celebrity in his own right, complete with multi-million-dollar sponsorships, official merchandise, and an invitation to the 2018 ESPY Awards.

Since Fortnite has skyrocketed the battle royale genre to worldwide popularity, several other video game series have sought to emulate their success, and they're right to do so. SuperData predicts that games which feature a battle royale mode will earn 12 percent of all gaming revenue in 2018. Most notably, the upcoming installment of "Call of Duty: Black Ops" will feature the franchise's first take on battle royale.

The data shows that Fortnite saw its largest spike in players early this year, and at the time, many speculated that the free game was simply experiencing a fleeting moment of hype that would quickly dissipate.

Today, ten months after its launch in 2017, Fortnite is still the most-streamed and most-watched game on Twitch, an this impressive benchmark has placed the game among the most popular video games of all time, and signals that Fortnite is going to continue to be very profitable for a very long time.

Apple's Siri correctly answered more questions that Amazon's Alexa or Microsoft Cortana in a recent test done by analyst Gene Munster's investment firm Loup Ventures.

However, the digital assistant with the best record in the test was Google Assistant, which answered 86% of 800 questions correctly.

Here are the Loup Ventures' findings:

Loup Ventures

In general, the Loup Ventures team found that all of the assistants are getting better over time. It's also worth noting that all four digital assistants now understand the vast majority of people's questions — it's just an issue of having the right answer.

"Both the voice recognition and natural language processing of digital assistants across the board has improved to the point where, within reason, they will understand everything you say to them," the analysts wrote.

The Loup Ventures investors and analysts also noted that what gives the assistants the most trouble is proper nouns, like the name of a town or restaurant.

The tests were conducted on smartphones. Both Cortana and Amazon Alexa were tested through their apps on an iPhone, Siri was tested on an iPhone too, and Google's assistant was tested on a Pixel XL.

The bottom line from the study is that the assistants are improving quickly, especially Google's and Apple's, which improved their percentage of correct answers by 11 percentage points and 13 percentage points, respectively.

You can check out the rest of the details from the study over at Loup Ventures .

Christine Tsai has a lot of experience working with startups, and that has given her some pretty good insights into what makes entrepreneurs successful.

Tsai is the cofounder of 500 Startups, the famed Silicon Valley venture firm and startup accelerator. Since last August, she's also been its CEO, following the departure of Dave McClure, her fellow cofounder who left amid accusations of sexual harassment — accusations she has declined to discuss in much detail.

Launched in 2010, 500 Startups has helped incubate hundreds of companies and invested in more than 2,000 total, including Twilio, which went public in 2016. In that time, Tsai has gotten a close-up look at lots of startup founders and seen what works and what doesn't, as well as what it's like to be an entrepreneur.

Successful founders, she told Business Insider in an interview this week, tend to have two key traits: They're coachable, and they move fast.

Listening is one of the keys to success

Among the startup teams Tsai, right, has worked with is one from Bombfell, an online clothing retailer. 500 Startups Tsai said people have this image of the successful entrepreneur as someone like the former Apple CEO Steve Jobs — the "don't listen to anybody, I'm always right" type of founder.

But those types of founders usually aren't successful, she said.

"I feel like those people who are like that, they succeeded despite being that way, not because they were that way," she said.

That doesn't mean successful entrepreneurs need to be ultra-congenial or acquiesce to every suggestion, Tsai said. But they do need to be open to suggestions.

"They do listen," she said. "They do take the feedback from customers, from employees, from investors."

Moving fast is also crucial

Successful startup founders also move quickly, Tsai said, whether it's launching new products or putting new strategies in place — or learning from mistakes.

500 Startups meets frequently with the founders of companies in its portfolio to check in about how their companies are doing and how things like fundraising are going, she said.

"It's always a bad sign if they say they're going to do something and then a week later, two weeks later, they still haven't done it," she said.

Successful entrepreneurs have to be careful not to be rash or reckless, she said. But they also have to avoid stalling and overthinking things.

"It's a very fine balance, of course," Tsai said.

But founders who succeed have a very acute understanding that they have to move as quickly as possible.

"You have a very limited runway either in terms of time or cash," she said.

It's important to be clear-eyed about the task ahead

Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson in 2016 at the New York Stock Exchange on his company's first day of trading. Twilio is one of the most prominent companies to have been backed by 500 Startups. Reuters/Brendan McDermid Tsai also offered some advice for prospective entrepreneurs: understand what you're getting into.

TV shows and news reports tend to romanticize the life of startup founders, particularly the super-successful ones. But founding and running a startup is usually anything but glamorous, she said.

Most startups fail. Many entrepreneurs are trading a stable, high-paying job for an uncertain, lonely, and stressful existence.

And the payoff — if there is any — usually comes only after years and years of hard work.

"It's really sucky ... It's really hard," she said. "I definitely do warn [entrepreneurs] about that."

Sony and Microsoft offer nearly identical services, which serve as a means of accessing online multiplayer gaming as well as offering "free" games (as long as you remain a paying subscriber).

In Sony's case, the service is PlayStation Network; in Microsoft's case, it's Xbox Live. They cost about the same amount of money ($60 a year) and offer access to online gaming on their respective platforms. Both dole out a handful of free games to paying subscribers every month, yours to play as long as you continue to subscribe.

PlayStation Network and Xbox Live are industry-standard services at this point. What makes each console stand out in the services department is its Netflix-like gaming services: PlayStation Now and Xbox Game Pass.

With PlayStation Now, users can stream more than 650 playable PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4 games on a PlayStation 4 or a PC. The games are running elsewhere — you just start playing. It costs $20 a month, or $100 a year.

With Game Pass, users can download and play more than 100 original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games on the Xbox One. It costs $10 a month. Better yet: Any games Microsoft publishes show up on Game Pass at launch, including the next major "Halo" and "Forza" games. It's one of the best deals available in gaming for this alone.

Xbox Game Pass is a strong argument for owning an Xbox One and offers a glimpse into the future of video game consoles. Instead of dropping $60 a game, for $10 a month you have access to a massive library that includes new, major games. That's huge .

Dave Munichiello has a word of advice to hungry entrepreneurs: be real.

In his five years as general partner at GV, formerly Google Ventures, Munichiello has taken a lot of meetings with founders hoping that the firm will invest a few million dollars to give their startup legs.

The best founders, he told Business Insider, are open and vulnerable about their work, and empathetic to other people's points of view. The worst are, well, the opposite.

"Sometimes when entrepreneurs come in and pitch us, they can appear bulletproof," Munichiello told Business Insider. "They can say, 'I'm the smartest person in this space. I've never made a mistake. And we're gonna be huge and you're about to miss out on this big opportunity.'"

"It feels egotistical — it feels out of touch. And as somebody who's seen all of the challenges of startup world, and all of the risks and that every day is either a huge high or a huge low, it just doesn't feel real," he said, adding that it's a bad sign if a founder walks out of the room and Munichiello feels like he doesn't have a sense of who they are.

Once upon a time, Munichiello was on the other side of the table. After five years in the military, he joined the robotics company Kiva Systems as a senior director and worked there through its $775 million acquisition by Amazon. He packed up soon after the change of ownership and took his Harvard MBA to GV in 2013.

Since then, Munichiello has invested and advised a cohort of enterprise tech companies with a focus on technical startups in the data and developer space, including GitLab and Lattice.

Outside of that specialty, Munichiello already saw a big exit on Jet.com, which Walmart acquired for $3.3 billion in 2016. He also invested in Slack, which is now valued at $5 billion.

Munichiello isn't looking at much code. GV has a team of infrastructure engineers and data scientists — and according to Axios, something called The Machine — to help with due diligence.

Instead, what he's most concerned with is the people and personalities behind the founding teams.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield left a good impression when pitching investors. Now his startup is worth $5 billion. Cindy Ord/Stringer One founder who passed the litmus test with flying colors was Stewart Butterfield, founder and CEO of Slack. GV invested in Slack in 2014 as part of a $120 million round which valued the company at $1.12 billion.

"Stewart's conversation with me wasn't about all of the reasons why Slack was awesome," Munichiello said. "It was, 'Here's how I think about the business. And you may think about it in a different way.' And 'Here are the metrics that I use to measure the business. How do you think about the business?'"

At that time, Slack didn't have a lot of revenue, which was a big issue for investors. But when Butterfield addressed their concerns, Munichiello said, he didn't try to convince them that it didn't matter. Instead, he acknowledged that it was a weak spot and committed to fixing it.

Munichiello said that he especially appreciates when investors treat their startup as a set of hypotheses which a round of funding will give them the chance to experiment with.

"The reason we're investing isn't some arbitrage where we think we can make a lot of money based on something we know that nobody else knows," he said. "The reason we're investing is because we're also curious about those tests and we want to see what the results of those tests are."

"Sometimes we invest in a company and those tests all come back negative and our hypotheses were wrong. But really good entrepreneurs are able to see that ahead of time and have that conversation in a vulnerable way," he added.

In the tech world, IBM senior vice president Bridget van Kralingen is known for creating and leading IBM's blockchain business. Because of van Kralingen, IBM is considered a leader in all things crypto among the major tech companies.

But long before she became one of IBM CEO Ginni Rometty's top leaders and was credited with helping Rometty execute IBM's massive, multi-year turnaround , van Kralingen was an industrial psychologist and researcher back in her home country of South Africa.

In a fun interview with The Wall Street Journal , van Kralingen offered a few interesting nuggets of advice about being a manager. The Journal asked her, based on her background as a psychologist, "what's the one thing every boss should know about human behavior?"

Her answer: People "love affirmation."

In other words, employees want to know when they're doing things right. Seems simple enough, but research shows that this concept almost can't be overstated in the workplace. "Employees overwhelmingly choose receiving words of affirmation as the primary way they like to be shown appreciation in the workplace," writes psychologist Dr. Paul White, based on research from 100,000 employees. White has published several books on workplace motivation.

In the WSJ interview, van Kralingen also offered another, related bit of managerial advice. The best way to run a meeting is to "start with the goals and objectives and to make sure that everyone knows that they are interdependent to get those goals and objectives met."

Here's the whole interview.