For Reitano, the CEO of the New York-based men's health startup Roman, the focus of his company is very personal. Knowing a patient has erectile dysfunction can help doctors better check for other health concerns such as diabetes or heart disease. It's something Reitano refers to as a "check-engine light." In Reitano's case, erectile dysfunction signaled a heart condition.

It's personal too for Reitano's two cofounders, Schutz and Rahmanian, who watched their wives go though doctor's visits upon doctor's visits throughout pregnancy. When it came to their own health, it wasn't something they spent much time thinking about.

The three met while Reitano and Rahmanian were working at Prehype, a venture development firm that works with corporations to create startups. Schutz had been working for Bark & Co., the company behind Barkbox, which happened to be in the same building. The three put their heads together and realized that their experiences with men's healthcare could be turned into a startup.

Roman, which launched in November with $3 million in funding, has both a telemedicine practice and a pharmacy to distribute medications specifically for erectile dysfunction, such as Viagra and Cialis. The company hopes to expand beyond erectile dysfunction to treating other health conditions the "check-engine light" alerts Roman users to.

"One thing we're excited to do is apply best practices from e-commerce into healthcare," Schutz said.

Reuters / Brendan McDermid

Twitter has been a tear this year — with shares soaring 82% to hit their highest price in over three years — and Goldman Sachs says the gains may not be done yet.

The bank on Thursday raised its target price for the social-media stock to $55 from $40 — a full 25% above where shares were trading — saying Twitter is doing better on its turnaround than the rest of Wall Street gives it credit for.

"We continue to believe that consensus expectations underestimate Twitter’s ability to 1) drive incremental engagement through new features and information quality initiatives, 2) better monetize engagement as advertisers leverage newer targeting and measurement functionality, and 3) show significant operating expense leverage as incremental revenue flows to the bottom-line," Heath Terry, the bank's tech analyst, told clients in a note.

Twitter has had a choppy week, as reports of its upcoming purge of spam and inactive accounts worried investors that its closely-watched active users metrics could be be impacted. Earlier this week, the Washington Post quoted an anonymous company source who said the account deletions could affect the user metric when it reports earnings on Friday, July 27. Twitter's CFO publicly rebuked those claims.

"This is nothing new and is part of our ongoing work to improve the health of the public conversation on Twitter," Ian Plunkett, a company spokesperson, told Business Insider. "We have not and do not include spam accounts that we have identified in the active user numbers that we report to shareholders."

Goldman agrees with Twitter's assessment, saying its own research verifies what the company claims.

"While concerns around the impact the company’s information quality initiatives could have on reported user metrics have weighed on the stock in recent days, our advertiser checks and 3rd party traffic data suggest the impact of these ongoing efforts on user and advertiser engagement will be net positive," the bank said.

Even as Twitter becomes more expensive relative to its earnings — it is trading at 22 times its estimated 2019 EBITDA, compared with about 16 for its peers in the tech sector — Goldman says the increasing revenue and profit from its turnaround outweigh the risk of a stretched valuation.

"We believe the significant upside potential to those estimates, and additional option value in Twitter as a platform more than justify that premium multiple," Terry wrote.

Shares of Twitter rose 2% in trading Thursday, and were up 132% in the past year. 

Markets Insider

On Thursday, Chinese officials shut down an online gambling ring that had accumulated $1.5 billion in bets made on World Cup matches using cryptocurrencies like ethereum, bitcoin, and litecoin.

In a statement first reported by the South China Morning Post, police from China's southern Guangdong province said that they had detained six people who they suspect to be behind the gambling ring.

The gambling ring's website, which could only be accessed by using untraceable search engines, had attracted some 300,000 participants in just eight short months, the Post reports.

In a statement, Chinese officials said that the gambling ring was a pyramid scheme where recruiters could profit off of other members.

"[T]he bookmaker analyzes the gambler betting, manipulates the odds according to the bet ratio, and allows a small number of people to win," the statement reads, according to Google Translate.

The gambling ring is thought to be one of the very first crypocurrency crimes involving a major sporting event to ever occur.

While the sight from the International Space Station is a beautiful one, jumping off of it won't be. It will be a deadly journey for any astronaut who jumps off the ISS to reach Earth's surface. Following is the transcript of the video.

Most skydivers jump off a plane flying 3.8 km above the ground. But imagine jumping off something even higher, like the International Space Station.

Unless you have a supersuit like Tony Stark, it's not gonna end well. But let's pretend Iron Man lends you one.

Ok, ready? 3 … 2 … 1 … Jump! Wait … what?

That's right, you wouldn't fall straight down. In fact, it'll take you at least 2.5 years before you reach the surface. So what's going on?

Height isn't the main reason your fall takes so long. In fact, if you fell like a normal skydiver, it would only take about 2 hours.

But the thing is, you don't fall straight down. You fall into orbit. The reason is speed. You see, the ISS might be called a station, but it's hardly stationary. It's actually moving 12 times faster than a jet fighter.

If you shot anything at that speed on Earth, by the time it was about to hit the ground, it would miss! In the same way, the ISS isn't floating in space, it's falling towards Earth and missing!

And when you jump off the ISS, you're initially moving at that same speed. So you end up in orbit, too — at least for a while.

Now, even though it's so high up, the ISS is pushing through a very thin atmosphere. And that friction slows it down. So the station fires engines to maintain speed and keep from crashing into the Earth.

But sadly your supersuit doesn't come with engines strapped to your feet. This has two consequences:

First, it means you can't maneuver and have to hope that any of those 13,000 chunks of space debris don't impale you. Second, without rockets to maintain your speed, you'll slow down and spiral toward Earth.

But it won't be quick. The Chinese space station Tiangong 1, for example, about 2 years to fall out of orbit. On the ISS, you're higher up, so you'll take roughly 2.5 years. But once you strike the atmosphere, your long wait is over. And it's go time.

As you re-enter, you have one goal: slow down. You're traveling at hypersonic speeds. So, if you deployed a parachute now, it'll shred to pieces.

And that's not the only problem. Falling through the atmosphere at such break-neck speeds generates a lot of pressure on your suit — at least 8Gs of force — that's 8 times the gravity you feel at sea level.

And if you're falling feet first, that'll push the blood away from your brain and toward your feet. So you'll probably pass out unless you're one of those fighter pilots who train to withstand up to 5Gs.

Now, if you don't pass out, you may worry about the freezing temperatures up here. But, it turns out, your suit's more likely to melt than freeze. You know how you can warm your hands by rubbing them together?

Now imagine your supersuit rubbing against air molecules in the atmosphere at least 6 times the speed of sound. You'll heat up to about 1,650 ºC — hot enough to melt iron!

In fact, the heat is so intense, it strips electrons from their atoms forming a pink plasma around you that will ultimately destroy suit.

If that's not enough of a problem, the drag will rip off your limbs. But thankfully, Tony Stark has your back, and somehow, your supersuit holds with you intact.

At 41 km up you've now reached the world record for highest skydive. In 2014, Alan Eustace wore a pressurized space suit as he rode a balloon up to this height. He broke the sound barrier on his way down before deploying his parachute and landed about 15 minutes after the drop.

But you'll be falling much faster than Eustace — about 3 times the speed of sound. So, in reality, you're not going to slow down enough to safely deploy your chute. That's where Iron Man can help us one last time. By 1 km up you've reached the territory of ordinary skydivers who don't need fancy suits to survive.

And at this point, your parachute can do its thing. And it's finally time to land softly.

Whew, what a ride! What sort of daring feat would you want us to try next? Let us know in the comments below. And thanks for watching.

A special thanks to Shawn R Brueshaber at Western Michigan University and Kunio Sayanagi at Hampton University for their help with this video.

Water, teas, and even kombucha strains made with CBD are popping up in grocery stores around the country.

Berkeley, California-based retailer Berkeley Bowl recently began selling a juice drink called Vybes which contains 15 milligrams of hemp-derived CBD as well as a type of kombucha called Cannabliss by GT that is made with CBD. Both drinks are advertised as having calming and soothing qualities, but any alleged health benefits have not yet been borne out by scientific research.

Regardless, another company in Denver called Phoenix Tears recently signed an agreement with MarketHub Retail Services, a distributor that works with 7-Eleven franchisees, to get its hemp-derived CBD products in up to 4,500 stores by the end of this year.

"This agreement confirms our belief that CBD's status as a mainstream wellness option has arrived," Phoenix Tears founder Janet Rosendahl-Sweeney said in a recent statement.

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If you've ever wondered what the next phase of working remotely could be like, look no further than eXp Realty.

In most respects, eXp is your typical real estate brokerage company. It employs thousands of licensed agents to help clients buy and sell their homes. And business seems to be good: eXp's stock price has almost quadrupled since this time last year, giving it a market cap of over $610 million.

What sets it apart is that, rather than having agents stop by a physical office for meetings, presentations, or technical assistance, the company's 8,000 employees go to work on a virtual island. A small office in Bellingham, WA serves as its headquarters because of "a legal requirement," the company says, but the real work gets done in the digital realm.

The company says that maintaining a virtual office gives it some advantages.

"We found that we have an ability that's hard to find in the physical world," said CTO Scott Petronis, referring to the ease of internal communication.

Not only can employees report to work regardless of the weather, but there are no restrictions on how many employees the offices can support, no campus maintenance fees, and no geographical limits on recruiting talent.

"It's a great feeling to know that we can hire great talent regardless of where they are in the world," said Petronis.

I got to go on a tour of eXp's virtual offices, alongside Petronis and VP of Marketing Mitch Robinson. I sat at an introductory meeting, toured shared spaces, went to a beach, rode a speedboat, and got to meet some of eXp's employees, all without leaving my seat.

Here's what it's like to work out of a virtual campus:

A few weeks ago I read Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. It helped consolidate some thinking on my part and I sent a few copies out to friends who I knew would have thoughtful and interesting responses. One that came back is very worth reading as it has a healthy critique as well as some personal reflections. The note from my friend after reading Lanier’s book follows.

He makes a reasonable case (obviously with a lot of room to dispute individual points) that social media is “bad” in general and a source of concern. Some of it is old hat but the way he puts it together is certainly helpful. It seems like it would be good if a lot of people read it.

I had two major concerns with it structurally. First, he positions the book as making arguments as to why *the reader* should delete his or her accounts. But as is common these days, it conflates reasons that are self-interested with reasons that might justify a “boycott.” Many of the arguments are not about how the use of social media affects the reader directly as an individual, but rather its systemic effects. Even the economic argument doesn’t work individually – even if I’m a gig economy person, it does not hurt my prospects to use social media, it’s that the BUMMER business model exists at all that causes the problem. It’s all the rage of course to talk about boycotting anything that has any secondary effects we don’t like, but it rarely works, especially as we realize everything affects everything else, which is why people in Boulder who are concerned about CO2 still drive up to the mountains constantly just for fun. So I thought this really weakened the argument that he does not separate the two things. It’s really Three Arguments why you should delete your social media accounts and Seven Arguments why you should Boycott them.

The second concern is that he conflates Google with social media. Last I checked, no one uses Google Plus. Yes, Google has an advertising and manipulation-oriented business model, but it’s extremely different from Facebook and Twitter. I find the ads Google gives me generally useful, and I don’t see Google making me more of an asshole than I already am. It certainly does not make me sad. Yes, search does have the effect of causing SEO and content-poaching and all that stuff, so this distinction connects to my first point. I think the book would have been better if he had made a more clear compare/contrast with Facebook. I do worry that he is a Microsoft employee and he has a Google-is-the-enemy bias. I’d be very open to hearing how Google is bad for me because I have thought about this and I don’t see it (other than the same things that happen when I pass a billboard on the highway or whatever). I also like Chrome Mobile’s news feed – it’s very much tuned to things I find interesting (cosmology, AI, poetry, etc.) in a way that a news site like the NY Times, which thinks that POLITICS is what is important (just like the MSM) – he talks about religion but does not connect the dots that the MSM have elevated politics-is-the-most-important-thing into a form of religion.

From a personal perspective, in the past year, I went through a couple of transformations regarding Facebook (I don’t use Twitter and never really have). The first was after the election I realized I had gotten caught up in the politics-is-important cycle and was posting frequently on it. At some point, I realized I had been sucked in, and mostly stopped posting on current politics. That took a month or two. Then I had a run-in with a particular individual on something controversial I had posted, and it made me realize I too had been sucked into making controversy and drama there. My approach now is only to post things I think my friends will find funny (NOT political satire) or that offer an update on my life. Yes, I mostly post positive things, but generally not competitively. Instead of commenting I just Like posts, or just read them and move on. I mostly ignore the politics or I just smirk at how absorbed and overconfident everyone is. I probably waste a little more time on Facebook than I would like, but I do find that scrolling through stupid dog and cat and political posts and all that sometimes leads me to a post I am really glad I saw. So, noise to signal is high but really what isn’t?

Also published on Medium.