The only way to publish apps onto the iPhone and iPad is through Apple's App Store.

And if Apple decides an app you've submitted for publishing violates its publishing requirements, your app won't be available on the Apple App Store. 

Such is the case with a trio of apps from some of tech's heaviest hitters: Microsoft, Facebook, and Google all have major gaming apps that Apple refuses to publish. Microsoft's Game Pass, Google's Stadia, and Facebook's Gaming app all face roadblocks to publishing on the App Store.

The reason? Those companies won't submit each individual game to Apple for review.

"The App Store was created to be a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great business opportunity for all developers," an Apple spokesperson told Business Insider this week. "Before they go on our store, all apps are reviewed against the same set of guidelines that are intended to protect customers and provide a fair and level playing field to developers."

Because each company isn't submitting each game, Apple is blocking the apps that enable access to those games.

"Our customers enjoy great apps and games from millions of developers, and gaming services can absolutely launch on the App Store as long as they follow the same set of guidelines applicable to all developers, including submitting games individually for review, and appearing in charts and search," the statement from Apple said. "In addition to the App Store, developers can choose to reach all iPhone and iPad users over the web through Safari and other browsers on the App Store."

Given that Apple allows services like Netflix and Spotify without reviewing every piece of content, why not allow a similar service for gaming?

The difference boils down to the medium, according to Apple: Games are interactive, unlike music and film, and there are consumer expectations baked into the App Store related to gaming.

Those expectations extend to game content, but also to searchability, in-app payment through Apple's built-in services, and App Store charts, according to Apple.

In order to get published on Apple's App Store, Facebook outright removed games from its Facebook Gaming app.

Google removed the core component of its app — the Google Stadia app on iOS doesn't stream video games to your phone, which is what the service exists to do.

And, for the time being, when Microsoft's Game Pass game streaming service launches on September 15, it will only be available on Android smartphones and tablets.

"Unfortunately, we do not have a path to bring our vision of cloud gaming with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to gamers on iOS via the Apple App Store," a Microsoft spokesperson said on Thursday. "Apple stands alone as the only general purpose platform to deny consumers from cloud gaming and game subscription services like Xbox Game Pass. And it consistently treats gaming apps differently, applying more lenient rules to non-gaming apps even when they include interactive content."

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg had similarly harsh words.

"Unfortunately, we had to remove gameplay functionality entirely in order to get Apple's approval on the standalone Facebook Gaming app — meaning iOS users have an inferior experience to those using Android," Sandberg said in a statement shared with Business Insider on Friday. "We're staying focused on building communities for the more than 380 million people who play games on Facebook every month — whether Apple allows it in a standalone app or not."

And in a thread on Twitter, the Facebook Gaming account went further. 

"After months of submissions and repeated rejections by Apple, we've had to remove instant games entirely from the standalone app," a tweet thread from the account said on Friday. "We can afford to spend ~6 months grinding thru Apple reviews, but many others can't. And while we could have tried additional appeals, we didn't want to hold back from launching the version for livestreamers and fans."

Google Stadia representatives didn't respond to a request for comment.

What happens next is anyone's guess, but without support for iPhones and iPads, ambitious services like Xbox Game Pass and Google Stadia will assuredly struggle. iPhone users account for nearly half the US market share of smartphone users, according to Statista, and iPad is even more dominant in the tablet market.

One thing is certain: Given how critical Xbox Game Pass is to Microsoft's future with the Xbox brand, we've assuredly not heard the end of this.

Got a tip? Contact Business Insider senior correspondent Ben Gilbert via email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), or Twitter DM (@realbengilbert). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by email only, please.

In the world of car audio, there's a clear first tier, and near its top sits Acura's ELS Studio 3D system. It's so good that we named it Business Insider's Car Audio System of the Year in 2018.

"The ELS Studio 3D sounds incredibly real," I wrote.

"It doesn't sound like you're listening to a raw studio mix. But it creates a rich analog impression for music coming from digital sources. It's the kind of audio system that musicians appreciate because it can max out a mix, showcasing the skills of the players and singers as well as the engineers. More than any other car-audio system, it proves music is a team sport."

Now, in partnership with Panasonic, Acura has updated the system. The carmaker was kind enough to swing by my house with an all-new, 2021 TLX sedan and let me spend about half an hour in the vehicle with a pre-loaded thumb drive and an iPhone, to sample some sounds and CRANK IT UP!

Actually, I'm not KIDDING! I did crank it up — elevated volume without distortion is one of the things that the ELS Studio 3D system does exceptionally well.

First off, what about the new Acura TLX?

The TLX is new for its second-generation, and about to go on sale. I didn't drive the car, but I'm certainly looking forward to it. There will be two available engines, a 2.0-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder, making 272 horsepower; and an all-new 3.0-liter turbocharged V6, making 355 horsepower. Both motors will be mated to a new 10-speed automatic transmission.

For those who dig driving and dig sport sedans, there will be an A-Spec trim level on offer, as well as a Type S high-performance variant.

OK, back to the music!

Let's start with the subwoofers

Subwoofers are tricky: sometimes, all they do is serve up bass, bass, and more bass. Thump-thump-thump! That isn't what the ELS Studio 3D system is all about, however. This setup is aiming for dynamic balance. 

So a new pair of trunk-mounted subwoofers provide a solution to the problem of too much bottom end.

The "13-cm, high-excursion speakers are corner-mounted at opposing 13.50 [degree] angles," Panasonic said in a statement. "This unique, innovative design dramatically reduces or eliminates extraneous rattles and vibrations, and ensures mechanical rigidity with accurate playback."

That's rather technical. The upshot is that you can crank any kind of music, but especially bass-heavy productions, and retain the 3D soundscape without feeling like there's a gorilla trying to escape from the trunk. Panasonic called the units "Twin Telford" subwoofers, in honor Thomas Telford, a Scottish civil engineer who lived from the middle of the 18 th to the middle of the 19th century and designed many roads and bridges.

A powerful system

I usually test high-end car audio systems using a combination of inputs from my own music library, Tidal's high-fidelity streaming service, Bluetooth, USB inputs, and SiriusXM (if available) and FM radio. If there's a CD player, so much the better. I used to plug into AUX ports, too, but the consensus these days is that USB is just as good.

With the ELS Studio 3D system, I used a thumb drive provided by Acura; it has a range of musical styles pre-loaded, including tunes from Steely Dan's greatest hits, considered by some audiophiles to be some of the best music ever recorded. The system magnificently enhanced "Gaucho," the Dan's 1980 release that was among the most intensively and obsessively recorded of the group's entire career.

I also accessed my own files, including "London Calling" by the Clash, an intense song that demands a lot of an audio system's true dynamic range (it starts out with a fierce midrange guitar riff, but then gives way to some serious bass). The ELS system handled it with aplomb.

Spectacular range

Classical, jazz, and contemporary pop were also effortlessly piped into the system's 710-watt amplifier, before being distributed to 16 channels and 17 speakers (two subwoofers, remember!). That's a full-blown setup; a 13-speaker, 550-watt alternative is also available, called "ELS Studio." The 3D, by the way, comes from four, roof-mounted speakers that Panasonic says can create a sound image that's suspended the middle of the TLX's cabin.

I even cued up the MC5's "Kick out the Jams," from the famous live record of the same name, released in 1969.

The album is a pretty ragged, intense, proto-punk anthem, and in my view, a stern test of whether a great audio system can reproduce the crude, exhilarating energy of a rock show. Let's just say I felt like I was in Detroit's Grande Ballroom, over 50 years ago, rather than in the driver's seat of a luxury sport sedan.

As with the system I evaluated in 2016, the new configuration was tuned by eight-time Grammy-winning producer and engineer Elliot Scheiner, who has worked with some of the biggest names in music, including the Eagles, Eric Clapton, Steely Dan (see above), and the Foo Fighters. Acura, Panasonic, and Scheiner have been working together since 2004.

The ELS Studio 3D system is, astonishingly, still going to be standard on the higher trims of the new TLX (those cars will cost a bit more, of course, than the base model, which should price mid-$30,000 range). It was worth it when it took home our top car-audio prize in 2018 — and it's now better than ever.

After more than 30 years building out IT systems at Ernst and Young, Compuware, and BP, Satya Kolachina was ready for a change. He had recently been thrust into a job that required travel during the work week, more management than coding, and less growth, so he quit his job in 2012 — "a mid-age crisis," he called it — and spent the next four years bouncing between contract positions while looking for another full-time position in enterprise IT. 

"For years, I struggled very badly doing contract jobs — I didn't get a full-time job," he said. "So then I realized, okay, now time has come that I have to make another change."

Kolachina decided that he would dedicate himself to completing a slew of tech certifications. As the technology industry has crept into sectors like education, insurance, and finance, large companies and small startups alike are increasingly looking for an ever-evolving spate of tech skills. Companies started offering certifications to help developers understand their products inside and out, and prove to a potential employer that they had the right skills for a given position.

Some of the most sought-after certifications today are in cloud technology, according to technology skills company Global Knowledge Training, and that's where Kolachina decided to dive in.

"In technology field, we have to adapt to new changes," he said. 

He had been introduced to cloud technology when he was a solutions architect at BP, but didn't have the in-depth knowledge needed to become a full-time cloud architect. So, in 2017, he decided to focus on building skills for Amazon's cloud platform AWS. Over the course of few years he racked up six AWS certifications in security, DevOps, and solutions architecture, and ultimately landed a cloud architect job at an insurance company.

Kolachina spent $1,800 in certification costs for what amounted to a 40% higher salary than he was making in his old gig, because the AWS skills he learned were in high demand. 

"Previous technology experience is not valued unless it's in new technology," he said. "I'm maintaining my value from my past experience by applying it to this new technology."

Certifications have become crucial for software engineers at all levels: They allow developers to learn new skills and pivot industries without having to go back to school, and they also make IT more accessible to people who don't have a four-year degree. Plus, recruiters who aren't technically competent use them as a benchmark when interviewing developers. 

As valuable as they are now, IT certifications were historically looked down upon by the IT world. It took two decades after Kolachina moved to the US from India until sentiment changed in 2013 when AWS launched its own set, according to Vivek Ravisankar, CEO of technical hiring platform HackerRank. 

Previously, people in the IT field believed that certifications only proved that those that took them could problem-solve in specific niches and didn't necessarily have a larger understanding of software principles or the skills that would make them a successful employee. That all changed with AWS.

"The way that AWS certification happens is through real world problem solving. It's no longer just, 'Hey, here is just a bunch of multiple choice questions,'" Ravisankar said. "And now you actually see Google Cloud doing it, Microsoft Azure doing it."

Google launched the Google Cloud Certified program in 2016 and Microsoft Azure launched its Azure Fundamentals certification 2018. Now, these three platforms that weren't taught in schools nor shared as certification suites ten years ago can offer some of the highest paying jobs in the world.

"Technology keeps changing very, very rapidly," Ravisankar said. "What is more important is, are you able to learn a new technology that actually comes through, which it will inevitably?"

Kolachina is now a senior information security engineer at Wells Fargo, where he develops cloud security controls against data breaches. He still renews his AWS certifications to stay current and plans on adding the AWS Certified Networking Specialty to his list.

He has no regrets about his decision to dive into AWS certifications: 

"I would tell you very confidently, cloud is the future."

Read more: Meet the 54 most valuable enterprise tech startups, worth as much as $216 billion collectively

Bill Gates believes one of the biggest roadblocks to effective COVID-19 testing in the US is "stupidity," he said in an interview with WIRED published Friday.

Specifically, Gates said most US tests are "completely garbage" because it takes so long to return results. Coronavirus tests across the US regularly take more than a week to return results, frustrating public health authorities who rely on timely testing data.

"Well, that's just stupidity," Gates said when asked about the delays in testing results. "The majority of all US tests are completely garbage, wasted."

The Microsoft founder-turned-philanthropist said he thinks there's a simple solution: Medical providers should only receive payment for tests if they return results within 48 hours.

"If you don't care how late the date is and you reimburse at the same level, of course they're going to take every customer. Because they are making ridiculous money," Gates said. "You have to have the reimbursement system pay a little bit extra for 24 hours, pay the normal fee for 48 hours, and pay nothing [if it isn't done by then]. And they will fix it overnight."

For years, Gates had warned that the US was unprepared for a massive pandemic. Since the onset of COVID-19, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has heavily funded testing and vaccine research.

Gates himself has also become the target of conspiracy theories stemming from his high-profile advocacy for a more robust response to the virus, including a false theory that Gates plans to inject people with microchips under the pretense of administering vaccines.

In Friday's WIRED interview, Gates acknowledged that conspiracy theories spread like wildfire on social media and suggested that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg should do more to combat misinformation on Facebook.

"I like Mark, I think he's got very good values, but he and I do disagree on the trade-offs involved there," Gates said. "We give literally tens of billions for vaccines to save lives, then people turn around saying, 'No, we're trying to make money and we're trying to end lives.' That's kind of a wild inversion of what our values are and what our track record is."

Gates also weighed in on the potential Microsoft acquisition of TikTok's US and international operations, calling President Trump's interference in the deal "pretty bizarre."

Read Bill Gates' full WIRED interview here.

A startup that makes highly realistic on-screen human personas – including a digital twin of a famous Swiss banker – has created a platform where anyone can create a digital human and talk to it for free.  

The new site is an example of the growing affordability of conversational artificial intelligence and digital humans – a way to make interacting with software a little more personal.

UneeQ has been working on digital humans – the hyper-realistic on-screen robots that look and act like humans – since 2010. The firm has worked with BMW, Vodaphone, and top banks in New Zealand to set up the digital humans as customer service helpers, giving a persona to the chatbots that have previously often been simply a box to type into. 

UneeQ has raised $11 million in venture capital, and boasts an artificial intelligence heavyweight — Salesforce's former head of AI, Richard Soucher — as an investor. A $5 million bridge round is coming soon, Tomsett says, and a Series B round is expected next year. The company has small offices in New Zealand, Austin, and San Francisco. 

"This is a giant leap forward in conversational AI," says Danny Tomsett, founder and CEO of UneeQ. The company's digital human creator website "eliminates a complex, multimillion-dollar barrier-to-entry," he says, and compares it to the way Squarespace has helped companies to easily build websites. 

The conversational AI market brought in $4 billion last year, according to Adroit Market Research, and is expected to grow 30% annually until 2025. 

'Judgment actually comes in hand-in-hand with human conversation'

The point of having a digital human that can answer customer questions is "to create a human connection and better online experience," Tomsett tells Business Insider. 

Some might say a highly realistic persona is still not a human, but Tomsett says digital humans actually have some advantages over the real McCoys. "Judgment actually comes hand-in-hand with human conversation, and with virtual humans we see a distinct advantage there." 

In one case, Swiss investment bank UBS built a UneeQ digital human double of its chief economist, Daniel Kalt, that meets with clients. "He's a well-known individual in Switzerland and so they wanted to recreate him and make him available for anyone for financial advice so we recreated him," says Tomsett.

UneeQ Creator, the startup's new website, allows anyone to create a persona based on UneeQ's stock of nine diverse young men and women digital humans. The free trial allows anyone to bring one of the personas to life and have a conversation with it. 

Companies that are impressed with the demo can connect the persona to their existing chatbot to integrate their natural language processing software. UneeQ says its platform integrates with major cloud platforms including Amazon Web Services Lex, Microsoft Bot Framework, IBM Watson Assistant, and others. 

The free demo digital humans and $900-a-month versions are "off the rack" pre-made personas UneeQ sells, but more expensive versions are customizable. 

In what the company says is a good example of the potential for the technology, legendary New Zealand rugby player Sir John Kirwan has used a UneeQ persona in a program to help people discuss depression. 

"For many people struggling with their mental health, going to see a specialist comes with fear of the unknown, anxiety or is difficult due to a lack of finances," Kirwan said in a previous interview about the UneeQ platform.  

UneeQ isn't the only one chasing this idea: In May, Japanese tech giant NTT announced new labs in Silicon Valley where it will build hyper-realistic digital twins of people for medical research. Those digital humans will be exact digital replicas of people for research purposes.  

A brief conversation with a UneeQ digital human

NASA's latest car-size Mars rover, Perseverance, rocketed off Earth last week, kicking off a seven-month voyage through deep space to Mars.

The robot is designed to spend three years exploring the red planet's surface, hunting for signatures of ancient alien microbes, stashing Martian soil samples for future return to Earth, deploying the first-ever interplanetary helicopter, and paving the way for human explorers with a variety of experiments.

However, a device called a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or MMRTG, could power Perseverance for more than 14 years thanks to a unique nuclear material called plutonium-238, or Pu-238. The material has powered NASA spacecraft for decades, including some for close to half a century.

The space agency used to have just only 37 lbs of Pu-238 left to put inside a spacecraft — enough for another two or three spacecraft.

But NASA and the US Energy Department have resurrected Pu-238 production capabilities, helping provide enough material for Perseverance and future missions.

To tide you over until the Perseverance reaches Mars and begins its alien hunt, here are the 16 greatest Pu-238-powered US space programs of the past and present — plus more that have yet to launch.

In 2018, Apple launched a series of Siri Shortcuts, one of which allowed users to record police interactions and then text a designated contact when they are pulled over with the footage.

The app, dubbed Police, has seen an uptick in use as the nation has erupted in widespread protests against police brutality, law enforcement's abuse of power, and systemic racism following the police killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd. Holding law enforcement more accountable has become a centerpiece of the national discussion, and technology could play a major role in it.

That mission has driven a 17-year-old New Jersey high school student to create an app that not only more easily records your interaction with police when you are pulled over but is equipped to instantly share the footage on social media platforms, including Instagram and WhatsApp.

Aaditya Agrawal, a student at Livingston High School in New Jersey, told Business Insider he's been working on the app, dubbed PulledOver, for a while. But he has focused more heavily on its development over the past few months in light of the renewed sense of urgency surrounding law enforcement's treatment of Black Americans.

And he also has a personal motivation in seeing the app come to fruition — Agrawal said a friend of his, who is Black, recently was pulled over seemingly without cause.

"You see it in the news all the time, but when it happens to one of your close friends — and he tells you how it felt for that to happen to him — then you understand the significance," Agrawal said.

Here's how it works: You can download PulledOver in the Google Play Store, and you don't have to sign in or create an account to use the app. Simply add an emergency contact, and that's it.

"The last thing you want to be worrying about is how an app works when you get pulled over," he said.

If you get pulled over, you launch the app, which will take you to your phone's native camera app. Press record, then when you're done, you'll be automatically taken back to the PulledOver app and given the option to notify your emergency contact, or share it to social media.

You can also share the footage with others who use the PulledOver app, a feature that Agrawal said he hasn't seen yet.

"It's almost like a community where you can share videos — you can see how other people are being treated," he said.

Agrawal said another intended purpose for the app is to elevate the "many good police officers as well."

"If you share good police officers and you celebrate them, hopefully, it will inspire others to become better as well," Agrawal said.

The app officially launched on June 20, about a month after Floyd was killed.

Agrawal said the app currently has 350 installs, and he has yet to do any paid marketing for it yet, instead opting for word-of-mouth through friends and family. The app is currently only available for Android smartphones in the Google Play Store, but Agrawal said he'll have hopefully successfully translated it into iOS language by the end of the year.

He's also currently working with major organizations involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, like Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) and Campaign Zero, to build an app specifically for their communities.

But Agrawal said he's hesitant for the service to be labeled as merely a piece of software.

"I'm not really going for the app market," he said. "It's more like a tool for people who can use something like this when they need it the most."

Paul Morigi / Stringer / Getty Images

Warren Buffett's best-performing stock over the past three months isn't Apple or Amazon, even though shares of both tech titans surged to all-time highs this week.

Instead, the star holding of the famed investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO since early May is Restoration Hardware, a high-end furniture retailer. Buffett's second-best performer is StoneCo, a Brazilian digital-payments company.

Apple stock has climbed about 52% over the past three months, while Amazon has gained 37%.

Meanwhile, Restoration Hardware shares have rocketed up 106%, and StoneCo has surged 81%. Another standout in Buffett's portfolio is the package-delivery company United Parcel Service, which has soared about 58% in the period, according to Gurufocus.

Read more: JPMorgan says buy these 19 'diamond in the rough' stocks that have plunged from yearly highs, but are spring-loaded for huge gains ahead

True, Apple's and Amazon's size means the rally in their stocks over the past three months has added more than $1 trillion to their combined market capitalization.

Meanwhile, Restoration Hardware and StoneCo have added less than $10 billion in total to theirs.

Moreover, Buffett owned about 245 million Apple shares at the last count. Those are now worth close to $112 billion, making the iPhone maker by far the most valuable holding in his stock portfolio.

As a result, any movement in Apple stock matters much more to Berkshire's overall value than a change in the price of its Restoration Hardware or StoneCo shares. The same is true for Amazon, assuming Berkshire still holds a $1.7 billion stake in the e-commerce giant.

Read more: A Wall Street investment chief warns new stock-market highs could be setting up a 'historic trap' for investors — one that also appeared just before the dot-com crash

Still, it's surprising that for all the hype around Apple and Amazon, they are far from Buffett's best-performing holdings on a percentage basis in recent months.

Berkshire first invested in Restoration Hardware in the third quarter of 2019, buying about 1.1 million shares. It boosted that stake to more than 1.7 million shares in the following quarter, or nearly 9% of the total shares outstanding.

With the coronavirus pandemic confining millions of Americans to their homes earlier this year, so-called stay-at-home stocks such as furniture retailers and home-improvement chains have seen their shares soar.

Buffett's company took a position in StoneCo in the fourth quarter of 2018. It bought about 14.2 million shares that it hasn't touched since, giving it a roughly 5% stake.

Assuming Buffett hasn't adjusted those holdings, they are worth about $695 million and $516 million.

Read more: 100 deals and $1 million in profit a year: Here's how Mike Simmons made a simple change to his real-estate investing strategy that took him from small-time house flipper to full-fledged mogul

Here's a chart showing the four stocks' recent performance, indexed to May 1:

Markets Insider

Four of the world's most powerful tech CEOs appeared virtually before Congress late last month to defend against accusations they had grown too powerful.

Only 24 hours later, as all four companies announced Wall Street-beating earnings, these executives were singing a very different song to their investors.

Amazon blew past expectations for a record quarter, while Facebook proved neither a pandemic nor an ad boycott could hurt it.

And Apple is nearing a $2 trillion market cap at the time of writing.

But while stocks were soaring, some of the biggest revelations gleamed from the hundreds of emails and internal documents released by Congress were only just coming to light. Within those pages was a far more insightful look at how these giants often acquired smaller companies to consolidate power.

And in the days that followed, it's felt like business as usual.

Facebook rolled out its TikTok clone for Instagram, Reels, only a week after Mark Zuckerberg was questioned about the company's copycat strategies. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said during the House hearing that the company's tactics of cloning and acquiring made it "hard for new companies to flourish."

Unlike its less successful Lasso feature, Reels arrives as the fate of TikTok hangs in the balance, which could play to Facebook's favor.

Apple hasn't escaped the headlines either, after Tim Cook met Congress amid concerns that the App Store operated in a way that was anticompetitive.

This week, Facebook publicly attacked Apple's App Store policies after finally launching its Facebook Gaming app, but only after removing the ability for users to actually play games (they can still watch games via streaming).

Microsoft, meanwhile, slammed Apple for prohibiting its cloud gaming service on Apple's iOS platform.

Google finds itself facing the most immediate danger from antitrust action, with the Justice Department said to be preparing a case for later this summer, and this week its attempt to acquire Fitbit looked less certain as the EU launched a full-scale investigation. 

But that certainly didn't stop the company from staking a $450 million investment in security-monitoring provider ADT to boost its smart home business.

Antitrust regulators may have put some fear into big tech last week, but after the past few days, you'd be forgiven for not thinking so.

As the coronavirus continues its spread, unabated, in many parts of the US, it's becoming increasingly apparent that a return to "normal" is still far in the future. That's true for American office workers, many of whom have been working from their homes since March.

But when workers are able to return to work en masse, whether that's this winter or a year from now, the office probably won't look as they left it. 

Corporations nationwide are considering how to reopen spaces, from new ventilation systems systems to socially distanced elevators and closed-off kitchens. But the biggest change might be to the space as a whole. 

Experts predict that the wide-open office, popularized by tech industry titans like Google and Facebook, will become a thing of the past. The fad, already becoming passé, has become almost dangerous in the face of the virus — employees often sit packed in large, open rooms, with desks placed close enough to reach out and touch your coworker. 

But don't mourn the death of that open-office floor plan just yet: though it was once heralded as the key to employee collaboration and productivity, it was never all that great for workers anyway. 

The rise of the open office

Beginning in the early aughts, American tech workers began leaving cubicles behind in favor of an open-floor-plan office space. 

It all started with Google, which revealed its new headquarters, the Googleplex, in 2005. Based in Mountain View, California, it was — and still is — unlike any office in America. It had a bowling alley! And sleep pods! And even sand volleyball courts! 

The Googleplex, with its open design and flexible spaces, was heralded as the future. 

"The attitude was: We're inventing a new world, why do we need the old world?" Clive Wilkinson, the architect who designed the Googleplex, told Fast Company last year.  

Soon, companies started coming to Wilkinson and saying they wanted to by like Google, he told Fast Company. Not long after, Facebook followed suit, opening what it says is the biggest open-floor-plan office in the world: approximately 2,800 employees working in "one giant room," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said when it opened in 2015. 

"We saw a big pendulum shift where everyone came out of private offices and big cubicles into the open office, and that was an epic fail, because one size does not fit all. The open office has gotten a really bad rap as a result of doing it really badly," Melissa Hanley, CEO of the design firm Blitz, which counts Microsoft and Instacart among its clients, told Business Insider.

At the time, the idea was that if you broke down physical barriers between workers, it would break down metaphorical ones as well. Employees would be able to easily collaborate on projects and would be enticed to engage in a free-flow of ideas with their next-door neighbor. The company's CEO, once ensconced in a glass corner office, would now sit right out on the floor next to their employees, a person of the people. 

But that's not exactly what happened. 

Instead, employees put on headphones to shut out the noise that came along with wide-open spaces. They reported feeling stressed, anxious, and less likely to collaborate with those around them. In fact, a Harvard Business Review study from last year found that when a company switched to an open office, face-to-face interactions actually decreased by 70% — employees just communicated electronically instead. 

And that wasn't the only problem. A prescient 2018 piece by Vice's Mark Hay argued that open offices are vectors for disease, with employees who work in them taking more sick days than those who work in enclosed offices. 

"In the workplace, it only follows that if you're working in close proximity and handling objects and interacting closely with each other, it's a very easy route of transmission for germs, viruses, bacteria," Melissa Perry, a public-health researcher at George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health, told Business Insider earlier this year.

Socializing productivity

But beyond the prevalence of germs, there's another downside of the open office, at least for employees. 

"The open-plan office has always been in some ways in the interest of the company rather than the worker, because it socializes productivity," Melissa Gregg, Intel's chief technologist for user experience, recently told The New York Times. "It forces workers to watch each other's work, and it creates very few spaces of privacy for individual workers." 

Mentally, there's a pressure that comes with open offices. Workers don't want to look like they're not working hard, or like they're ducking out early. As Jeff Pochepan argued in Inc Magazine in 2018, this means that workers may work longer hours or feel undue pressure to be "on" and engaged 100% of the time, since everyone can see them. 

"I definitely think there's a concept within agile workplaces about accountability and thinking that you set something out that you're going to do and then you have to report back, did you do it," Hanley said. "I do think that the visual access to each other is probably feeding into that." 

Tracy Brower, a sociologist and principal in the Applied Research + Consulting Group at furniture manufacturer Steelcase, likened open offices to manufacturing, where workers generally kept an even, steady pace until a "rate-buster" came in — someone who worked harder and faster, thereby pushing the whole group too much.

"There's hustle culture where, I may not actually be more productive, but by goodness, I'm going to stay later than my boss, no matter what," Brower told Business Insider. "I think we can get caught up in working for the sake of working and being busy for the sake of being busy." 

'The kick it needed to get it out the door'

In the short term, the office is already changing. Companies are considering density like never before, spacing out workstations, limiting large groups in conference rooms and elevators, and placing partitions in between desks, almost like the cubicles of yore. 

But these cosmetic alterations are likely to be the precursor to a bigger change. Even though a full return to the office still appears to be a long way off, experts agree that when we do return — perhaps in summer 2021, as Google and Facebook expect — we should expect some permanent changes. 

"Open floor plans are most definitely going to disappear," Rhiannon Staples, chief marketing officer at human resources management company Hibob, told Business Insider. "I feel like it was already on its way out and this was the kick it needed to get it out the door."

But Brower said she doesn't think the open office is 100% dead — it's just going to feel different than it did in early 2020. 

"The pendulum has really swung toward open, open, open, and lots of density," Brower said. "I think what has now happened is we're starting to swing that pendulum way to the other side — more barriers, more boundaries, less density."

While that mentality is critical for the safety of employees in the near future, Brower said she doesn't expect things to stay that way. 

"I think what we will end up seeing is that pendulum landing somewhere a little bit close to the middle," Brower said. "This is actually our opportunity to reimagine, reinvent, use the coronavirus almost as an accelerator to get to places that are maybe even better than it would have been." 

When I last tested the Q7, I found it to be utterly and completely compelling.

"Audi has really done a fine job of pleasing everyone with its premium SUV lineup," I wrote. "The luxury is there, the comfort is there, the roominess and versatility are there, the power and handling are there, the infotainment and ergonomics are there, and then there's an intangible Audi thing, which has always made these SUVs winners in the suburbs of New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles."

Nothing has changed since 2016, except that Audi has sold tens of thousands more Q7s to happy customers. The 2020 iteration is in no way a letdown. The big difference between the pre-refreshed Q7 I tested four years ago and this newbie is the turbocharged V6, which replaces a supercharged six. All things being equal, I favor supers to turbos for larger displacement vehicles, so missed some of the old Q7's surging power. But the turbo six is punchier, and there's more torque. So, improvements.

As far as I could tell, the 0-60 mph time is about the same, a scooch under six seconds — pretty fast for a vehicle this large. The Q7's handling is also superb. I'd say it's nearly car-like, except that Audi's cars handled with dazzling verve. So I'll qualify and say that for a 5,000-pound ute, the Q7 manages some magic. In my testing, I alternated between the Comfort and Dynamic drive modes, and while Dynamic adds oomph to the throttle and tightens up the steering, Comfort is plenty sporty. This is a great benefit of all Audis — they feel spirited even when they aren't supposed to.

I didn't tow anything with the Q7, but the rating is fantastic at almost 8,000 pounds. Unfortunately, my week of testing didn't coincide with a family trip, so I couldn't sample the real-world capacity and comfort of this SUV. But it should be excellent for most owners, for both mundane weekday/weekend errand duty and shopping, as well as summer road trips.

The bottom line here is that Audi updated with Q7 without altering much beyond the drivetrain, which is arguably now better. That means this three-row, seven-passenger hauler remains among the top tier of luxury utes.

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Bernie Sanders showed Friday he isn't afraid to call out hypocrisy — particularly when it comes from someone like Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Musk on Friday tweeted out a meme critical of Sanders and his brand of socialism. The tweet was in response to an article about a bill Sanders introduced Thursday that would place a 60% tax on the wealth gained by billionaires such as Musk during the coronavirus pandemic. The meme, dubbed the "Official Bernie Sanders drinking game!" showed a picture of Sanders along with the text: "Every time the Bernster mentions a free government program, chug somebody else's beer."

Sanders, who's no neophyte when it comes to defending his leftist views and programs, wasn't about to back down from such criticism. In a tweeted response, he called out Musk for benefiting to the tune of billions of dollars from government subsidies and linked to an article from The Los Angeles Times that detailed the assistance Musk and his companies have received.

"Every time Elon Musk pokes fun at government assistance for the 99%, remember that he would be worth nothing without $4.9 billion in corporate welfare," Sanders wrote. "Oh, Elon just l-o-v-e-s corporate socialism for himself, rugged capitalism for everyone else."

 

According to The Los Angeles Times article, Musk and his companies — Tesla, SolarCity, which is now owned by Tesla, and SpaceX — had received an estimated $4.9 billion in government support through May 2015. That assistance came in a variety of forms, including grants, tax breaks, subsidies for construction, environmental credits, and discounted loans.

The amount of that assistance has only gone up since then. For example, Tesla garnered $428 million from selling regulatory credits in its most recent quarter. The company receives those credits from California for selling electric cars and sells them to other automakers who don't sell enough to meet the state's requirements.

Sanders' bill was cosponsored by senators Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY. The bill would tax any wealth gained by any of the 467 billionaires in the US between March 18 and January 1 of next year and use the amount raised from the tax to pay for the out-of-pocket health expenses of every American for a year.

The co-sponsors estimated that those billionaires had seen their wealth increase by $731.8 billion between March 18 and Aug. 5. Musk, according to a fact sheet from them, had seen his own wealth go from $24.6 billion to $70.5 billion. He would face a tax bill of $27.5 billion under the measure

Much of the wealth gains cited by the bill's sponsors are a result of soaring prices. In order to pay such tax bills, the billionaires would almost certainly have to sell large numbers of shares which could undermine their companies' stock prices — and their wealth.

Got a tip about Tesla, tech — or Bernie Sanders? Contact Troy Wolverton via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

OneNote, an organizational platform in Microsoft's Office Suite, offers an elegant solution to organizing your personal and professional notes.

The program's default setting on PCs and Macs is to save your work as you type automatically, and it's one powerful way OneNote helps keep your life in order. If, however, your OneNote application is no longer saving as you go, you can re-enable the program's automatic sync function to ensure things are continuously saved.

It's important to note that you can't enable or disable the auto-sync feature on OneNote for Macs, unlike PCs. So if you're using the note-taking app on a Mac, trust that your work will always autosave. 

Here's how PC users can enable auto-saving in a few easy steps. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Acer Chromebook 15 (From $179.99 at Walmart)

Microsoft Office (From $149.99 at Best Buy)

Windows 10 (From $139.99 at Best Buy)

How to autosave on OneNote using the sync feature on PC

1. Launch the OneNote app for Windows.

2. Click "File" in the top left corner of your open OneNote window.

3. Select "View Sync Status."