Self-driving-car engineer Anthony Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a federal judge in San Francisco Tuesday afternoon, after pleading guilty to one count of trade secret theft in May.The once-celebrated engineer was at the center of Waymo's legal fight with Uber.Levandowski was a founding member of Google's "Project Chauffeur," which eventually became Waymo.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

After pleading guilty to trade secret theft, Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer at the center of a massive legal fight between Waymo and Uber, was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a federal judge Tuesday afternoon.

He also agreed to pay Google $756,499 in restitution, to compensate the company for helping the government prosecute the case. Levandowski will not begin his prison sentence until the COVID-19 pandemic has entirely passed, and will also be charged a fine of $95,000.

Levandowski, 40, was indicted on 33 criminal counts of trade secret theft and attempted trade secret theft in August 2019.

The Department of Justice alleged he had left Google with troves of confidential technical documents with the intent to use them for his personal gain. Those same charges were at the heart of Waymo's 2017 lawsuit against Uber, which did not name Levandowski as a defendant.

The engineer left Google's team — which he had helped found in 2009 — in January 2016 to found a trucking-focused startup called Otto. The Google effort, meanwhile, took on the name Waymo in December 2016, when it became a standalone company under the Alphabet umbrella. A few months after Otto was founded, Uber acquired the small outfit for a reported $680 million and put Levandowski in charge of its entire self-driving effort. 

Waymo alleged that the ride-hailing giant set up the deal with Levandowski so it could use Google IP to accelerate its self-driving research, which then-CEO Travis Kalanick believed was key to Uber's long-term survival. After a year of legal wrangling, the case went to trial in February 2018, only to be settled within a week. By then, Kalanick had fired Levandowski, who declined to testify in the case, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Levandowski soon founded another self-driving truck startup, Pronto, but resigned his post as CEO when the DOJ indicted him. He initially declared himself innocent and promised to fight the charges, which could have landed him in prison for decades. In March, he accepted a deal in which he pled guilty to one of the 33 counts, involving a weekly report that tracked the Google team's progress, detailed technical challenges, and included notes on how the team had solved various problems in the past.

As part of his plea, the engineer acknowledged that that document counted as a trade secret, and that he had intended to use it for personal gain. He also admitted to downloading about 14,000 files from a Google server and moving them onto his personal computer. "I'm happy to put this behind me," he told Wired at the time. 

In his hearing, Levandowski's attorneys asked that he serve 12 months in home confinement at his house in Marin County, California, citing respiratory problems (he's suffered two bouts of pneumonia in recent years) and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Levandowski also proposed he do community service involving talking to engineering students about lessons from his case. 

"Mr Levandowski can solve big problems," Judge William Alsup — who also tried the Waymo v. Uber case — said. "I respect that. I want you to know that." But, Alsup said, "This was not a small crime...This was the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen." He cited the importance of deterring others from committing such crimes. "I want them to think, 'I could end up in federal prison.'"

Alsup also instructed Levandowski that, after serving his sentence, he must give a speech to a total of 200 people, titled "Why I Went to Federal Prison." 

Original author: Alex Davies

Social media platforms have enacted bans on disinformation related to COVID-19 and other issues, but researchers say that banning content after it's already gone viral can do more harm than good.  For example, the platforms recently banned a viral video of doctors urging COVID-19 treatment with hydroxychloroquine, which federal agencies have called ineffective and dangerous. That ban prompted news coverage and charges by conspiracy theorists that the video contained truth being suppressed by authorities. Social media platforms say they are addressing disinformation as quickly as they can.  Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Disinformation campaigns can rocket to virality by capitalizing on the very bans that social media companies have enacted to address them, researchers and analysts say. 

A key case in point is the "America's Frontline Doctors" video posted on July 27 in which a white-coated group urged treatment of COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine, which federal agencies have called ineffective and potentially dangerous. The video went viral after President Trump tweeted it, and the platforms removed it that day. But posts about it spiked July 28, the day after Twitter banned it, researchers say. Why? Viral posts about a video that was suddenly unavailable piqued interest even more, they say. 

The social media companies' bans are "stopping viral disinformation at a very high rate of engagement — once they have already been established," says Annie Klomhaus, cofounder and chief operating officer of the Austin internet and social media research firm Yonder. By cutting off the content after it's already gained so much steam, the bans end up putting the disinformation in a media spotlight. In the case of the "Frontline Doctors" video and the controversial drug, its proponents can then claim the ban is part of a suppression campaign connected to the government, furthering their conspiracy theory. 

In the case of the video, it spread through a formula that's proven incredibly effective for disseminating other messages (or disinformation), too. The groups pass around videos and other disinformation in private groups, which Facebook doesn't closely monitor. Once the content has momentum, users post it to Twitter and seek to engage large influential accounts that share the same ideology. At that point, it is difficult for social media companies to take any action that doesn't exacerbate the issue, in part because of intense coverage by traditional media, which will write up both the fact that disinformation has gone viral and its removal.

"The companies are in a really hard place," Klomhaus says. "They're trying to do the right thing,  but addressing something that is already viral is a really hard problem." 

Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, who has authored recent widely-cited research on social media disinformation, agrees. 

"By the time platforms even notice the existence of such a video, it's often gone viral, and millions of people have seen it, possibly being misled on important issues such as the effectiveness of supposed medical cures," he said. "What's more, the very act of taking down such content can feed into conspiracy theories that the material is being suppressed by malign interests."

Twitter has said its moderators take action swiftly when disinformation is discovered. In the case of the "Frontline Doctors" video, a Twitter spokesperson says, "Tweets with the video were in violation of our COVID-19 misinformation policy. We are taking action in line with our policy."

A Facebook spokesperson said, "It took us several hours to enforce against the video and we're doing a review to understand why this took longer than it should have." The company said it has removed more than 7 million pieces of content on Facebook and Instagram for violating its policy against sharing COVID-19 misinformation.

Some familiar social media influencers helped to make the "Frontline Doctors" video go viral. The video picked up momentum in private Facebook groups, then made the jump to Twitter, where the right-wing youth group Turning Point USA amplified it. (That group has opposed masks and social distancing despite its cofounder's death from COVID-19.) 

The far-right blog Breitbart News picked the story up, as did several programs on a favorite news source of the president, Fox News. The video reached millions when it was tweeted by President Trump and his son, Don Jr. This led to bans by Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Those bans were widely covered by news agencies, and the disinformation campaign reached its peak of 120,000 social media posts about the drug the day after Twitter banned the video. In the week before, there were 18,000 posts about the drug, according to researchers at Yonder. 

Records on the Politwoops website show President Trump deleted tweets promoting a disinformation video. Politwoops/Propublica

This may have been exactly what the groups promoting the video wanted. One of the main promoters of the video appears to confirm that view. 

A doctor thrust into the spotlight by the video, Stella Immanuel, posted on Twitter that her religious ministry – which says some health issues are caused by people having sex dreams about "demons" – benefited from the TV coverage brought about by the social media ban. 

"CNN, MSNBC etc are doing free commercials on our deliverance ministry," she said in a tweet on July 28, the day after Twitter banned the video. 

Immanuel did not respond to several requests for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When asked about his sharing of the video last week, President Trump said, "[Immanuel] said that she's had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients, and I thought her voice was an important voice, but I know nothing about her."

The group is backed by Tea Party Patriots, a conservative group that has supported protests against lockdown measures.  The New York Times reported that the group posted the video to its YouTube channel on July 27 before it went viral. 

Klomhaus of Yonder notes that a similar hydroxychloroquine disinformation campaign followed this path in April, and more disinformation campaigns are likely to exploit this process, especially as the pursuit of a coronavirus cure continues, along with the upcoming election.

"As a vaccine comes closer to coming out, this narrative will probably continue," Klomhaus said. "If it follows the previous pattern of recurring in a few months, that would put this kind of viral politicalization of the virus squarely right in front of the election." 

For example, there are many many conspiracy theories about Microsoft founder Bill Gates and COVID-19 that have no basis in fact that are spreading in similar ways on social media, Klomhaus says. 

Barrett of NYU says social media platforms must address the holes in their techniques for addressing disinformation, because there's no way the problem is going away in the leadup to November's election. 

"Unfortunately, the platforms have no choice but to improve their technical and human content moderation methods and press ahead with removing content that is dangerous to users," he said. "The platforms cannot just throw up their hands and say the problem has no solution."

Original author: Jeff Elder

Hi and welcome to Insider Advertising, weekly edition. I'm Lucia Moses, deputy editor. To get this in your inbox daily, go here.

This week: Microsoft's play for TikTok, Netflix's new secret weapon, and takeaways of the Facebook ad boycott.

Original author: Lucia Moses

A explosion at a port rocked the Lebanese capital city of Beirut on Tuesday, killing at least dozens of people.As videos of the explosion spread across social media sites, some users claimed an atomic bomb caused the disaster due to the appearance of a mushroom cloud.The Lebanese prime minister says the blast came from a stockpile of ammonium nitrate in a warehouse.Nuclear weapons experts say the detonation was definitely not triggered by an atomic bomb.Atomic explosions are characterized by a blinding flash of light, a pulse of searing heat, and radioactive fallout, none of which were detected.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When an enormous explosion created a mushroom cloud over Beirut, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands more, online commentators and conspiracy theorists quickly jumped to a frightening claim: A nuclear bomb had gone off in Lebanon's capital city. But as state officials say, and contrary to those fast-spreading rumors, the explosion was almost certainly not caused by a nuclear weapon.

Even before Lebanese officials said the explosion was caused by a large stockpile of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse at the port, according to The Guardian, experts who study nuclear weapons quickly and unequivocally rejected the idea that Beirut had been hit with a nuclear bomb.

Key to those rejections are the videos that Beirut residents managed to record video of the huge detonation.

People trained cameras on the Beirut port at the time of the blast because a worrisome cloud of smoke rose beforehand. Some of those videos show small flashes of light and reports (or sounds) that are distinctive to fireworks. Moments later, the huge explosion — which came with a visible blast wave and mushroom-like cloud of smoke — rocked the area, destroying nearby buildings and shattering distant windows.

In a tweet that accumulated thousands of likes and reshares before it was deleted, one user wrote: "Good Lord. Lebanese media says it was a fireworks factory. Nope. That's a mushroom cloud. That's atomic."

Vipin Narang, who studies nuclear proliferation and strategy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, immediately spiked the claim. "I study nuclear weapons. It is not," Narang tweeted on Tuesday.

Martin Pfeiffer, a PhD candidate at the University of New Mexico who researchers the human history of nuclear weapons, also rejected assertions on social media that a "nuke" caused the blast. "Obviously not a nuke," Pfeiffer tweeted, saying later: "That's a fire setting off explosives or chemicals." 

Pfeiffer indicated that the explosion lacked two hallmarks of a nuclear detonation: a "blinding white flash" and a thermal pulse, or surge of heat, which would otherwise start fires all over the area and severely burn people's skin.

The explosion did trigger a powerful blast wave that apparently shattered windows across Beirut, and it was briefly visible as an expanding, shell-like cloud — something often seen in historic footage of nuclear detonations. But Pfeiffer noted such blast-wave clouds, known to weapons researchers as a "Wilson Cloud," are made when humid air gets compressed and causes the water in it to condense. In other words: They aren't unique to nuclear bombs.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation reshared on Twitter by Narang suggests the blast was equivalent to around 240 tons of TNT, or about 10 times as large as the US military's "mother of all bombs" or MOAB is capable of unleashing. By contrast, the "Little Boy" bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was about 1,000 times as powerful.

As a counterpoint to suggestions the Beirut explosion was caused by a nuclear weapon, Pfeiffer offered a video showing the detonation of a rocket-propelled "Davy Crockett" nuclear weapon, which exploded with a force equivalent to about 20 tons of TNT.

The Davy Crockett was one-tenth as strong as the Beirut explosion, but had a distinctive flash that's missing from Tuesday's blast. No reports suggest there was any radioactive fallout after the Beirut blast, which would have been quickly detected.

It's not crazy to wonder if a large blast in a populous city might be an act of nuclear terrorism, of course. In fact, it's one of 15 disaster scenarios that the US government has simulated and planned for (to the point it created scripts for local authorities to use after such an attack).

But in this case, Beirut's tragedy was not in any way nuclear.

Original author: Dave Mosher

On Tuesday, Uber announced that corporate employees will have their voluntary work from home policy extended through June 2021. Corporate employees will also be given a $500 stipend for a home office setup. Uber is joining a growing list of companies that have extended their work-from-home polices into 2021.The company has still not issued a uniform policy for drivers during this time.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On Tuesday, Uber announced that corporate employees will be allowed to voluntarily work from home through June 2021. 

"As a company built on flexible working, we want to provide our team with flexibility, choice and longer term clarity so they can plan ahead," the company said in a statement to Business Insider.

In order to accommodate this change, Uber will be offering a $500 stipend to help employees with their home office setups. 

If local offices open before June 2021, employees will have the option returning to the office if they feel comfortable. Uber said that whatever decision employees make will not factor into performance reviews.

While the company said it will be reevaluating the policy for a possible extension in the spring of 2021, the policy itself will not be shortened.

For drivers, Uber is offering financial assistance guides and a website for drivers to find other forms of employment if they are unable to make the same amount of money as they were in March before the coronavirus pandemic curbed the demand for ride sharing. The company has not announced any stipend for drivers at this time.

Uber is joining a long list of companies that have extended their work-from-home policies into 2021. Facebook and Google have also announced similar policies.

Original author: Barbara Smith

In an interview with The Verge this week, Sen. Ron Wyden, a key voice in Congress on internet policy issues, accused President Donald Trump of "working the refs, bullying the tech companies, and forcing Twitter and other platforms to print his lies."

In a surprising move Monday evening, the Trump administration withdrew its nomination of Michael O'Rielly, a Republican, to serve another term as one of the five commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission.

Wyden called the administration's reversal a "disaster" and warned that pushing nominees to the FCC — an independent agency — who only swear loyalty to the president could cause the agency to lose "any sense of independence," according to The Verge.

"One nomination after another is brought up, and the litmus test is: will the nominee do exactly what the president of the United States wants to do on any given issue at any particular moment?" Wyden told The Verge.

The Trump administration pulled O'Rielly's nomination just days after he expressed concerns about the FCC regulating how social media companies moderate content on their platforms, which Trump's controversial executive order seeks to do by empowering regulators to curb the companeies' legal protections.

"The First Amendment protects us from limits on speech imposed by the government — not private actors — and we should all reject demands, in the name of the First Amendment, for private actors to curate or publish speech in a certain way," O'Rielly said during a virtual event hosted by The Media Institute.

"Like it or not, the First Amendment's protections apply to corporate entities, especially when they engage in editorial decision making," he said.

Trump issued the executive order — which specifically named Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube — in May after Twitter fact-checked his tweets falsely claiming that mail-in ballots lead to voter fraud, alleging that the platforms are biased against him and conservative viewpoints.

The order directs federal regulators, including the FCC, to review, and ultimately curtail, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives social media companies broad legal authority to moderate speech on their platforms.

Legal and tech policy experts said the order was legally dubious and wouldn't hold up in court. (It is already facing one such legal challenge).

"The First Amendment protects Twitter from Trump. It does not protect Trump from Twitter," Ashkhen Kazaryan, the director of civil liberties at the libertarian think tank TechFreedom told Business Insider's Sonam Sheth and Ashley Gold.

Wyden, one of the co-authors of Section 230 — which is widely credited with enabling the growth of today's internet platforms — also slammed Trump's order.

"This is a deeply flawed idea. Beyond the fact that this is a colossal Constitutional mess, I don't think even Donald Trump believes he's going to be able to get away with this," Wyden told The Verge.

Trump isn't alone in his dislike of Section 230, however. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have ramped up their criticisms of Section 230 in recent months, but for very different reasons.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has also called for Section 230 to be revoked, citing platforms' reluctance to enforce their policies against misinformation and hate speech, arguing the current law disincentivizes them from taking action because they're not held liable for content published by users.

Republicans, in particular Sen. Josh Hawley, have pushed to get rid of Section 230 protections in an effort to combat what they claim is anti-conservative bias by social media companies. Lawsuits alleging such bias have been largely rejected by courts, also on the grounds that the First Amendment doesn't apply to private companies.

Original author: Tyler Sonnemaker

Disney's parks and products business missed out $3.5 billion in operating income during the third quarter, as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered its theme parks around the world. Disney's theme parks, including its flagship Walt Disney World location, are reopening in phases. But Wall Street analysts have said the business still faces a long recovery.Analysts at Goldman Sachs, while optimistic about the long-term recovery of Disney's parks, projected in July a downside scenario in which Disney's parks business doesn't fully recover until 2023 because of social-distancing constraints.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

This post was originally published on July 16, and has been updated to reflect Disney's third quarter earnings.

Disney's parks and products division missed out on billions in potential operating income last quarter as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered its theme parks around the world. 

The media giant said on Thursday that the segment took a $3.5 billion hit to operating income during its third quarter, ending in June, as revenue fell 85% year over year. The parks segment, which posted a $2 billion operating loss, was the hardest hit business within the company, according to the company.

Disney's US and Disneyland Paris locations were closed for the full quarter, while its parks in Asia were closed for part of the period.

Disney is reopening, in phases, many of its parks including its flagship, Florida-based location, Walt Disney World.

But Wall Street analysts have said the business still faces a long recovery.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs, UBS, and Wells Fargo estimated that Disney's park business, which had been its most stable business until the pandemic, could weigh on the company's financials through its next fiscal year, or until a vaccine for the coronavirus is publicly available. The parks aren't yet reopening to full capacity, as part of the company's safety precautions.

"Until the time at which there is significantly improved testing and/or a widely available vaccine, it's tough for us to imagine long lines for Rise of the Resistance, no matter how much folks might want to go to WDW deep down," Wells Fargo analysts wrote in April.

During the second quarter, Disney also missed out on $1 billion in operating income due to park closures. Disney World, Disney's largest park by attendance, was closed for about two weeks during that period.

Goldman Sachs analysts wrote on July 13 that they're assuming attendance and revenues at Disney's parks, resorts, cruises, and experiences won't fully recover until fiscal year 2022 as a base case, or 2023 at worst. However, the analysts said they expect to update their models based on the latest earnings report. 

"When Disney reopened its Shanghai park in May, the company operated well below the 30% capacity constraint imposed by the government and ramped up to 30% over the following weeks," the analysts wrote. "While operating at these levels may reduce operating losses in both Disney and Comcast's parks divisions, it may not lead to a significant positive contribution to operating profit either."

Goldman Sachs' downside scenario for Disney estimates 30% less revenue from Disney's parks and experiences in 2021 than the firm's $15.75 billion projection, and 20% less revenue in 2022 than its $22.8 billion projection.

During Disney's 2019 fiscal year that ended in September, the parks and experiences division posted $26.2 billion in revenue, more than any other segment. The division brought in $13.9 billion in revenue during the first nine months of fiscal 2020, 30% less than during prior year.

As of now:

Walt Disney World is openDisney's Shanghai and Tokyo theme parks are openDisneyland Paris is openHong Kong Disneyland, which reopened on June 18, was forced to close again, after a surge in cases led the local government to bring back social-distancing measuresDisneyland in California is still closed due to state restrictions

Disney World is by far Disney's largest theme park by attendance. It recorded 58.8 million visitors in 2019, 80% more than its next most-visited park, the Themed Entertainment Association estimated. Disney took the rare step of shutting Disney World's gates on March 15, as the coronavirus pandemic first gripped the US.

The Goldman Sachs analysts said they're confident Disney's parks business will eventually recover, with a little help from the broader Disney machine, including its new streaming service, Disney Plus.

"We believe Disney's track record of material outperformance in Parks and Film will persist as the economy recovers from the COVID pandemic, and that synergies between these segments and Disney+ are underappreciated by investors," the note said. "For example, we anticipate that over time marketing costs for tent-pole movie franchises such as Marvel and Star Wars films and for its parks and resorts could trend down as some of this spend could be supplemented or replaced by interconnected Disney+ series."

Evidence from UBS also suggests that a subset of parkgoers are eager to get back to Disney World, pandemic or not. 

The firm surveyed 2,000 adults in June, and found that about 30% of respondents had to either cancel or postpone planned visits to a Disney park due to the pandemic. Of those respondents, 48% planned to return within the first six months of reopening, while 12% had no plans to return in the first 18 months.

Social distancing was the most common reason given among those who didn't plan to return to Disney parks right away.

"We believe this provides a good sign for demand once parks are able to open," the UBS analysts wrote in a June 25 note, which also said "a vaccine is key not only for demand but capacity limits."

Original author: Ashley Rodriguez

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Microsoft's Xbox One X and Xbox One S. Microsoft The Xbox One X is still the most powerful video game console on the market, and Microsoft has confirmed that Xbox One games will be playable on its upcoming Xbox Series X as well.Low cost subscription services, like Xbox Live and Xbox Game Pass, also bring tons of value and affordable games to the Xbox One.Below, we've compiled the best deals on Xbox consoles, games, accessories, and subscriptions.Right now, "Rage 2" is on sale for $10.99, which is $49 off its regular price.

Microsoft debuted its first Xbox console less than 20 years ago, but the brand has blossomed into one of the titans of the video game industry. Its current flagship console, the Xbox One, has shipped more than 50 million units worldwide and dedicated fans are eagerly awaiting the launch of the next Xbox console, the Xbox Series X, later this fall.

For now, the Xbox One X is the most powerful video game console on the market, out performing the PlayStation 4 Pro and Nintendo Switch. The Xbox One S is a strong console as well, boasting 4K resolution playback, HDR support, and a host of media center features that make it an ideal centerpiece for your home entertainment setup.

Microsoft has worked to create a robust ecosystem for Xbox fans, which will include letting them play Xbox One games on the upcoming Series X. Services, like Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass, also bring extra value to the console, offering thousands of games to players for a low price.

We've collected the best deals on Xbox One consoles, games, subscriptions, and accessories below. These should come in handy whether you're an Xbox veteran looking forward to the Series X, or looking to pick up your very first video game console.

Prices and links are current as of 8/4/2020. Added new Xbox One video game deals. Removed deals that are no longer active. Updated by Kevin Webb.

Original author: Kevin Webb

Apple announced in June that it will start making its own chips for future Mac computers, enabling its laptops and desktops to run iPhone and iPad apps.But that will pose a challenge for Apple's iOS developers, who are used to creating apps centered on touch-based interactions and smaller screen sizes, developers say.Apple isn't the first to tackle the challenge of creating an app ecosystem that works seamlessly across mobile and desktop — Microsoft has made attempts at this as well.Overall, app developers will have to do a lot more than simply recompile their apps for Apple's Mac software, developers say.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple dropped a bombshell announcement at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June: It would begin making its own chips for future Mac computers, moving away from its longtime chip partner Intel. The move was expected, as reports from Bloomberg had previously detailed, but it was still the most significant news to come out one of Apple's biggest events of the year.

Apple spent the latter portion of its keynote detailing the benefits that such a shift would yield for both the customers using Apple's products and the developers creating apps for them. Andreas Wendker, Apple's vice president of tools and frameworks engineering, showed how iPhone apps like the Calm meditation app and the game "Monument Valley 2" would run seamlessly on the Mac since both platforms would now run on the same architecture.

But there's a big question that will largely be left up to developers to answer: Why would anyone want to use touch-based iPhone apps on a Mac computer to begin with?

Apple has always maintained that apps should be designed and tailored for a specific platform rather than simply replicated across devices. That approach was a key driver behind the success of the iPad and Apple Watch, as apps for those platforms are much more than just retooled iPhone apps.

That's likely to be the biggest challenge for developers looking to bring their iPhone apps to the Mac once new computers powered by Apple's chips launch, developers say.

"I think developers are going to require essentially a whole new kind of a learning experience, figuring out what works on the Macintosh," James Cuda, cofounder and CEO of Savage Interactive, the company behind the popular sketching and drawing app Procreate, said to Business Insider.

'They just don't have that experience'

Apple CEO Tim Cook discussing Apple silicon at WWDC Apple

App makers looking to bring their programs to the Mac will likely have to rethink how their apps will work since they'll have to be compatible with mice and keyboards rather than touch screens.

"These are people who have had their careers as mobile developers for over a decade now," Eric Puidokas, president of the weight loss app Lose It!, told Business Insider. "And they just don't have that experience."

Yaron Inger, the chief technology officer at Lightricks, the firm behind the photo editing app Facetune, cited the app's touch-centric tools for editing portraits as a big driver behind its appeal. For Mac devices that lack a touch screen, Lightricks will have to find other ways to make an app like Facetune stand out.

Another question is whether it's worth it for app developers to invest in redesigning their apps for the desktop. Some companies, particularly game developers and publishers, might prefer to prioritize iOS development because of the iPhone's scale and reach, says Thor Fridriksson, CEO of Teatime Games, which makes the mobile trivia game called Trivia Royale.

"The developer has to kind of decide whether it makes sense to use the resources to make a better experience on the mobile app and try to access the billions of users that are in the mobile market, or if it's worth its while to try and create an experience on the Mac," Fridriksson said to Business Insider. "And I think it's just going to be different from game to game."

Succeeding where Microsoft has struggled

A demo of Windows 8 from 2012 Ellis Hamburger, Business Insider

Apple has already been laying the groundwork for this type of switch by making tools available for developers to port their existing iPad apps to the Mac through its Catalyst program. The company also began requiring developers to shift all their apps to 64-bit architecture rather than 32-bit as far back as 2017. 

Even so, creating programs that are just as useful, enjoyable, and intuitive on the Mac as they are on the iPhone may not be so simple for mobile app makers. Developers have struggled with the tools available as part of Apple's Catalyst program, Bloomberg reported in October, as some app makers told the publication they encountered user interface issues with scrolling, the keyboard, and other features.  

Microsoft, with its ill-fated Windows 8 operating system from 2012, had also tried to create software that could work universally across all types of computers, whether they were touch-based or relied on the mouse and keyboard. What it ended up with, however, was a less user-friendly interface that didn't excel as a mobile or desktop operating system.

Of course, Microsoft's approach was much different than Apple's. Unlike Windows 8, macOS is still a completely separate operating system designed for laptops and desktops, while Apple's iPhones and iPads are powered by its iOS and iPadOS software.

And Apple's history in creating its own chips for other products like the iPhone and offering programs like Catalyst for developers could give it an advantage.

"Partly just historical and structural, Apple is better prepared for this than Microsoft and Windows are," Frank Gillett, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, previously said to Business Insider.

The advantages of bringing iPhone apps to the Mac

Apple's iPhone 11 lineup Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

Despite the obstacles that might lie ahead, developers are confident that the shift to Apple silicon will ultimately mean more choice and flexibility for both app creators and Apple device owners.

It'll be beneficial for developers who are interested in expanding to the desktop but may not have the resources to build a full macOS app. Companies that prefer pointing users to their app rather than their website may also find the ability to port iPhone apps over to macOS useful. 

Puidokas considers Lose It! to be one of those companies.

"I could see this starting to supplant web apps," Puidokas said. "For a company like Lose It! — where we have our website and our iPad app — I would prefer people use the iPad app."

Plus, some app makers are looking forward to performance gains that may come from using Apple's own chips over Intel's. Sharad Shankar, cofounder and CEO of Andor Communications, which offers a photo-editing and retouching app called LightX, said the shift to Apple silicon will be helpful for apps that heavily rely on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

For an app like LightX, this would likely mean a boost in performance when processing edits.

"Doing high-resolution image processing becomes quite easy," Shankar said to Business Insider. "Understanding your portraits becomes quite easy, and segmenting your image becomes quite easy."

All told, the introduction of Apple's own silicon for the Mac should make it easier than ever for app makers to bring their mobile programs to MacBooks and iMacs. But developers will still have to make sure they're doing more than simply porting their apps over to the Mac.

"I don't think it's going to be as easy as just compiling their iOS app for Macintosh," Cuda said. "I think that to really make a beautiful product, something that customers really enjoy, I think there's going to have to be a lot of time spent on the interface and on the user experience to really embrace what a Macintosh is."

Original author: Lisa Eadicicco

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley just completed a test flight of SpaceX's new Crew Dragon spaceship.The Crew Dragon survived a fiery plunge through Earth's atmosphere, deployed its parachutes, and landed in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday — a process that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called his "biggest concern" for the mission.Watch the reentry and landing of the world's first crewed commercial spaceship in the video below.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SpaceX and NASA just accomplished a historic feat: the first-ever crewed commercial spaceflight mission.

After a high-risk, fiery plunge through Earth's atmosphere, the Crew Dragon spaceship successfully deployed four parachutes to land in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, of the coast of Pensacola, Florida.

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley launched aboard the SpaceX-designed Crew Dragon two months prior, on May 30. The capsule then docked to the International Space Station, where it remained while Behnken and Hurley conducted experiments and spacewalks aboard the orbiting laboratory.

The mission, called Demo-2, was a test to show that SpaceX is capable of taking astronauts to and from Earth's orbit.

The launch went according to plan, but Sunday's landing was the mission's defining moment.

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken (left) and Doug Hurley inside SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft onboard the a recovery ship shortly after having splashing in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola, Florida, on August 2, 2020. Bill Ingalls/NASA

From space, the Crew Dragon had to plunge through Earth's atmosphere, its heat shield deflecting and absorbing the energy of superheated plasma and enduring temperatures up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The shield successfully protected the hardware and astronauts as they fell at 25 times the speed of sound.

Then came two parachute deployments. The first, at about 18,000 feet, slowed Crew Dragon's plummet from 350 mph to 119 mph. Then at about 6,000 feet, more parachutes deployed to carry the capsule gently into the ocean.

"I'm not very religious, but I prayed for this one," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said during a NASA TV broadcast after the landing.

SpaceX filmed the capsule as it descended to Earth. The resulting video, below, condenses the 12-minute reentry and landing process into 1 minute and 11 seconds.

 

Demo-2 was the culmination of roughly $3.1 billion in funding that SpaceX got from NASA through the agency's Commercial Crew Program — an effort to resurrect the human-spaceflight capability that NASA lost after it retired its space shuttles in 2011.

The successful demonstration flight tees up six round-trips on Crew Dragon that NASA has contracted to fly its astronauts to and from the space station.

Ahead of the astronauts' May launch, Musk told Aviation Week's Irene Klotz that the mission's final stages were his biggest concern.

That's because of the Crew Dragon's asymmetric design, which is necessary for the emergency escape system that can jettison the capsule away from a failing rocket. Musk was concerned that the asymmetry could have caused the capsule to rotate too much, leading it to "catch the plasma in the super Draco escape thruster pods," he told Klotz. But the process went smoothly.

An artist's rendering of the Crew Dragon capsule reentering Earth's atmosphere. SpaceX

The parachutes were also cause for concern. During a briefing before the launch, Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance, was asked what kept him up at night in regard to the Demo-2 mission. He pointed to the chutes, since their packing can't be tested until they're deployed.

But after the landing, officials and astronauts remarked on how uneventful the astronaut's return flight was (except for a few surprises on the ground, such as civilian boats pulling up to the space capsule).

A recovery boat approaches the Crew Dragon capsule in the Gulf of Mexico, August 2, 2020. Screenshot; NASA Live TV

"It did not seem like this was the first NASA SpaceX mission with astronauts on board," Michael Hopkins, a NASA astronaut who's slated to fly on SpaceX's next mission, Crew-1, said. "It seemed to go extremely smoothly."

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and CEO, said even SpaceX leadership was a bit taken aback.

"I think we're surprised — minorly surprised, but obviously incredibly pleased — that this went as smoothly as it did," she said.

Original author: Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Sen. Ron Wyden said he will introduce a new privacy bill that would ban government agencies from buying people's personal information from data brokers to skirt standard court orders. The proposed legislation would "be very specific about making sure that you just don't have this backdoor to throw in the Fourth Amendment in the trash can," Wyden told The Verge in an interview.The bill, named "The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale," is expected to roll out in the coming weeks.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said he is rolling out a new piece of legislation in the next few weeks that would ban government agencies, such as law enforcement, from purchasing people's data and obtaining their personal information.

In an interview with The Verge, Wyden outlined his plans for the bill, named "The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale," which would prevent governments from skirting the standard court orders and buying from data brokers.

"I don't think Americans' Constitutional rights ought to vanish when the government uses a credit card instead of a court order," Wyden told the outlet. "I mean, surveillance, folks, is surveillance. And what I want to do is close this loophole."

Wyden also notes that, as a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he's privy to more intel on "shady data brokers" selling American user data and said what the general public is informed of is the "tip of the iceberg." The bill is slated to roll out in the next few weeks, per the report.

The proposed legislation comes after Sen. Wyden introduced the "Mind Your Own Business Act" in October 2019. The act was designed to keep tech executives in check by threatening up to 20 years of jail time if they are caught lying to the Federal Trade Commission about privacy violations.

Wyden is a coauthor of Section 230, the provision made to a 1996 internet law that shields tech companies with an online presence, like Twitter and Facebook, from being regulated as third-party content publishers, meaning they are not liable for the content that users post on their platforms.

In his interview with The Verge, Wyden also said President Trump's handling of the Federal Communications Commission is a "disaster" following his renomination block of Republican FCC Commissioner Michael O'Reilly, who did not share the president's opposition to Section 230 as well as a strong desire to crack down on the platforms offered by tech companies.

"I shudder to think of a day in which the Fairness Doctrine could be reincarnated for the Internet, especially at the ironic behest of so-called free speech 'defenders,'" O'Reilly said last week according to a Deadline report.

Read Wyden's interview with The Verge here.

Original author: Katie Canales

I got a note from someone who recently saw my Techstars mental health video. He said that could relate to how I describe depression as the “absence of joy.” He went on to write me a long, thoughtful, and brave note about his experience with depression.

One thing stood out to me was a statement near the end:

“I can’t convince myself to “speak to someone” because it feels wrong if I am paying them. It doesn’t feel whole.“

I responded with a long note that follows:

When I was in my mid-20s, I had my first major depressive episode (it lasted over two years – very deep clinical depression.) I was functional at work, but that was it. Zero anything else …

I resisted therapy for about a year. I was ashamed of many things, including how I felt. I didn’t think someone would be able to help me. Early on, my dad, who is a retired endocrinologist, said to me, “Just shake it off” which was profoundly unhelpful, but just reinforced my shame.

Finally, my PhD advisor said something like, “Brad, there is no downside to trying therapy. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But if it does, it’ll make a big difference. It did for me. Give it a one year commitment. Here’s the name and phone number of my long-term therapist.”

It still took me a while to call. I did, and committed to a year.

It changed my life. I ended therapy in my late 20s, but started again (with a new therapist) at 47 when I had another major depressive episode.

The way I think about it is that I “go to planet Brad for 50 minutes a week.” (I now go every other week). My therapist gets to hang out with me on planet Brad. Sometimes he guides me into a new part of the planet that I haven’t yet explored. Sometimes we get out shovels and dig holes in the ground to look for buried treasure. Sometimes we sit on a rock together and just stare into the distance. And lots of other things that you would do with a guide on a planet as you explore around.

About a year ago, I had a massive depression for a short time (less than a week) that in hindsight was induced by ambien. I rarely take ambien, but was on a multi-week international trip, had a bad cold, and was having trouble sleeping. About 10 days into the trip I feel off an emotion cliff into one of the deepest holes I’d ever experienced. Fortunately, I was safe and with my wife Amy, and after about three days realized it might be the ambien after randomly surfing around on the web looking at depression+travel and other stuff like that. 48 hours I was fine. 

Three days of complete absence of joy was awful. But I knew I could call my therapist in an emergency if I needed to. I was a few days away from going home and had a session right after I got home, so just knowing he was there helped a lot.

Therapy isn’t “the only answer”, but – like my PhD suggested many years ago, there’s no downside to trying.

Original author: Brad Feld

Original author: Maureen Kelly

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Amy and I, through our Anchor Point Foundation, underwrote a new video series on PBS 12 called From Moment to Movement.

From the trailer:

Tensions around race relations have been simmering for centuries in the U.S. Now they’re now at a boiling point. Meanwhile, President Trump’s administration is treating Black Lives Matters protestors like domestic terrorists. Millions of Americans, especially Black Americans, continue to rally to make their voices heard. From Moment to Movement” aims to give a platform to African American voices and dismantle systemic racism. 

The host, Tamara Banks, reached out to me shortly after George Floyd was murdered. She showed me a few of the pilot episodes, including an interview with Brandon Carter and an interview with Amy E. Brown. After watching them, I thought they were great and important and agreed to underwrite the whole series.

Two a week will be dropping on the PBS 12 website for the next few weeks. They are currently in production to be broadcast on TV as well.

Tamara – thank you for doing this and putting it out there.

Original author: Brad Feld

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana_Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: jyotsna popuri