Researchers have analyzed President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's 2020 campaign apps. Of the two apps, Trump's hoovers up far more of its users' data.

Jacob Gursky and Samuel Woolley of the University of Texas' Propaganda Research Team analyzed both apps and wrote about their findings in the MIT Tech Review.

According to Gursky and Woolley, Trump's app launched in mid-April and has garnered 780,000 downloads. Broadly speaking the app allows users to engage with the Trump campaign, enabling people to sign up to volunteer, get tickets for events, and livestream the president's rallies. 

It also has a "social" and "news" tab which provides a curated feed of tweets and articles, some of which don't cite their source and don't have bylines saying who wrote them. Headlines include "Top 8 Moments from Joe Biden's Embarrassingly Disastrous, Epically Boring Livestream" and "Media Continue to Spread Debunked Theory About Tear Gas." 

Biden's app meanwhile, called Team Joe, is more specifically geared towards getting users to campaign for Biden to their contacts. "The Team Joe app is an organizing tool that allows you to text your friends in support of Joe and get updates from the campaign," the app's description reads on the Play Store. "We'll let you know which of your friends and family members we're hoping to talk to. You can then text them directly to share campaign updates, ask questions, and gather their thoughts on the 2020 race on behalf of our campaign!"

The key difference between the two apps identified by the researchers is this: Trump's app has a much longer list of permission requests than Biden's. "It wants to read your contacts and know your precise and approximate location (GPS and network based). It requests the ability to read your phone status and identity (a vague permission that sometimes gives access to unique device numbers), pair with Bluetooth devices (such as geolocation beacons), and perhaps read, write, or delete from SD cards in the device," the researchers write.

Gursky and Woolley make a particular point of the app's requests for Bluetooth permissions. Increasingly Bluetooth is being used to target people with advertising based on a specific location. A technology called Bluetooth beacons can be stationed somewhere and used to target people who walk past them. Beacons have been used near churches to target congregations with political advertising, and even inside yard signs.

Not only can beacons be used to target people who walk past, they can be used to build up profiles which can then be sold on to third parties. "[Apps] are plugged into different marketplaces, so if you open up Facebook or Google Maps or Candy Crush, even though you didn't explicitly do anything — if you have location access enabled on those apps, that app will record your location at the instance you opened that app, and then that information can be sold to a third party," an unnamed political consultant told the researchers.

One of Gursky and Woolley's team also found the app was built on an older version of Android's operating system which has fewer privacy protections. In May it was announced that a company called Phunware, a campaign advert targeting company known for using location data, would be providing software to update the app.

Sergey Brin, Google cofounder and world's eighth-richest person, has a secret disaster-response team according to a report by The Daily Beast.

The Daily Beast's investigation found Brin was the sole donor to a disaster charity called Global Support and Development (GSD). The Beast identified Brin as the company's sole donor through a California court filing.

The company, almost half of whose staff are ex-military, arrives at disaster areas on a superyacht called "Dragonfly" to clear debris and use high-tech solutions to assist victims. GSD is headed up by Grant Dawson, an ex-naval lieutenant who was one of Brin's personal security detail for years.

The idea for GSD was apparently sparked in 2015 when the yacht's captain was sailing past Vanuatu, which had just been hit by Cyclone Pam. The captain contacted Brin to ask if anything could be done to help, and Brin in turn got in touch with Dawson.   

Dawson said in a speech in 2019 about GSD: "So I grabbed a number of Air Force para-rescue guys I'd been affiliated with from the security world, and a couple of corpsmen out of the [Navy] Seal teams [...] We raided every Home Depot and pharmacy we could find and on about 18 hours' notice, we launched."

The Daily Beast reports GSD now has 20 full-time staff plus about 100 contractors working for it.

The Daily Beast reports that, like at Google, GSD's employees enjoy perks including strawberry ice cream and fresh laundry aboard the superyacht while working in disaster areas. As well as military-trained staff the charity has access to sophisticated technology including drones and sonar mapping.

Since 2015 GSD has assisted during several disasters including hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic activity. Now the company says it is helping during the coronavirus pandemic by helping set up testing in California. 

"GSD provided operational support to stand up the first two drive-through test centers in California and planning and logistic support for other test centers as they opened across the state," GSD says on its website. "Our paramedics and support staff also partnered with the Hayward, California Fire Department to perform more than 8,000 swab tests at their drive-through test site and local eldercare facilities," it adds.

Rob Reich, co-director of Stanford University's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, told The Daily Beast that disaster relief is good work, but it shouldn't be secretive. "There should be an expectation of transparency, to understand how his charity interacts with existing efforts at disaster relief, and so we citizens can examine whether it's consistent with what democratic institutions want to accomplish," said Reich.

GSD did not respond on the record to The Daily Beast, which was unsuccessful in trying to contact Brin personally. GSD was not immediately able to respond to Business Insider.

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Despite the generous offering of American muscle cars available to buyers today, there's only one considered to be America's sports car. That car is the Chevrolet Corvette.

The Corvette is currently in its eighth generation — and for the first time in its 67-year history, it finally has the setup that makes it competitive with the likes of the European supercars. 

See, for the first seven generations, the Corvette stuck with a very traditional, front-engine layout, meaning its engine was located in front of the driver. Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with a front-engine setup, but it's also a setup that very pedestrian cars like Toyota Camry also have. 

In racing and with supercars, a mid-engine layout is generally much more preferred. A mid-engine layout is when the engine is located behind the driver and between the car's front and rear axles. Generally, mid-engine cars offer improved balance and handling because the heaviest part of the car — its engine — isn't located on only one end. 

For decades, talk of a mid-engine Corvette flitted about the automotive industry. Years went by and nothing concrete ever came of it. The "mid-engine Corvette" sort of became an automotive tall tale. 

Those rumors were finally laid to rest with the eight-generation Corvette, also known as the "C8" generation: the mid-engine Corvette, actualized. America's sports car had finally grown up and was ready to take on the global performance segment.

How did we get here? Why does the C8 matter? Dear reader, keep scrolling to find out.

Hello everyone! Welcome to this weekly roundup of Business Insider stories from executive editor Matt Turner. Please subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Sunday.

Hello!

I want to start by highlighting two stories focused on toxic work environments at Pinterest and CrossFit. 

Julie Bort and Taylor Nicole Rogers spoke to 11 former Pinterest employees who said that despite the company's upbeat product, it was a toxic and difficult place to work. From their story: 

Multiple Black people who had worked on Pinterest's ad sales team say they were fired or "pushed out" of the company with no real explanation.

Other employees say they were publicly yelled at by managers or dealt with such severe "head games" from managers that they grew stressed and were later hospitalized. 

Some employees described CEO Ben Silbermann as a kind person focused on the product and who either didn't know or didn't care how workers were treated.

You can read the story in full here:

Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'

For their story on CrossFit, Katie Warren and Gabby Landsverk spoke to more than 30 former HQ employees, and current and former affiliate gym owners and CrossFit athletes. From their story:

Insiders claim the culture of the workplace demeaned women, operated off retribution, and was ruled by a fear of getting on Glassman's bad side.

You can read that story in full here:

A 'frat party' workplace, a tweet that led to the CEO's resignation, and a culture that demeans women: Insiders say this is the reality of working for the cult-following gym CrossFit

Those two stories follow earlier reporting on a toxic culture at companies like Bon Appétit and Reformation. Meanwhile, employees at companies ranging from Adidas to Red Bull are expressing concern about their employer's response to the Black Lives Matter movement, protesting systemic racism, and demanding change. For example:

As Weng Cheong and Caroline Hroncich report, US companies spend $8 billion annually on diversity and inclusion initiatives, yet research shows that they're actually more segregated now than they were 40 years ago. From their story:

Experts told Business Insider that a major reason D&I efforts are ineffective is that companies continue to invest in one-off trainings, instead of complementing them with company-wide diversity initiatives.

To dismantle systemic racism in the office, employers need to promote people of color internally, listen to stories about discrimination, and collect workforce data, among many other things.

Read their story in full here:

'Diversity' and 'inclusion' are the emptiest words in corporate America. Here's what we really need to dismantle systemic racism in the office.

100 days that changed Microsoft

"On March 6, Microsoft employees began inexplicably returning to the company's Redmond, Washington headquarters, just 48 hours after the company enacted a remote work policy in response to the coronavirus."

So starts a story from Ashley Stewart, Jeff Elder, and Patrick Coffee on how CEO Satya Nadella led $1.4 trillion tech giant Microsoft through the coronavirus pandemic. From their story:

"Why are they coming back?" Microsoft chief information security officer Brett Arsenault wondered with concern at the time, as related to Business Insider in a recent interview. "What's going on?"

The employees had left their work computers at their desks as usual — after all, they didn't know when they left that it was the last time they would be at the office for many months. But Microsoft couldn't condone letting them back into their offices, which to this day are deemed unsafe.

The company needed to act fast.

You can read the story in full here:

100 days that changed Microsoft: How Satya Nadella led the $1.4 trillion tech giant through the coronavirus pandemic

If the wildly popular dog filter hasn't given you enough puppy-related content on Snapchat, you'll soon be able to use the app to identify the breeds of dogs you encounter offline.

Snap has debuted new partners for Scan, its feature that lets users gather more information on real-life objects just by pointing the app's camera at them. Now, Snapchat users will be able to use the feature to identify breeds of dogs, species of plants and trees, and nutritional facts about packaged food.

Snapchat has long invested in AR, including object recognition technology. The Information reported back in 2017 that Snapchat was working on a way to scan objects in the real world. Since then, the Snap Camera's scanning ability has grown, ranging from the silly to the handy.

Users can access dancing figures and animations when they point their phone at a flat surface or a piece of pizza, and also harness the technology for more useful tasks — like identifying a song playing using Shazam, recognizing real-life items to buy on Amazon, and even solving math equations on homework.

Snapchat's Scan objection-recognition feature debuted in 2019 at Snap's Partner Summit, the invite-only event the company launched just last year to compete with annual developer conferences from tech giants like Facebook, Apple, and Google. This year's Snap Partner Summit — which took place on June 11 — was forced to go virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Snap says the additions to Scan — including Dog Scanner, PlantSnap, and Nutrition Scanner, and various brand experiences — will be made available to users later this year. 

At the Partner Summit, Snap also unveiled a new "action bar" for navigating Snapchat, additions to its slate of original content and games, and in-conversation Minis for friends to coordinate and plan activities together..

The Tesla Model S debuted in 2012, making it the longest-running vehicle in the all-electric automaker's lineup. The luxury sedan has received just two significant design and mechanical updates in eight years (a revamped nose and an all-wheel-drive variant), but over that same period, the car has been incessantly tweaked.

Most recently, the Model S's range was boosted to 402 miles, in the "Long Range Plus" configuration, which sells for about $75,000 new. This platform, when it was first rolled out in 2012, delivered just 208 miles per charge for the less expensive, smaller-batteried version, and 265 miles for the larger option.

The improvement is, in a word, staggering. The Model S of 2020 is basically the same vehicle as what we first saw in 2012, built on the same assembly line in California. Over time, it's acquired supercar-beating performance,  added more premium elements to its interior, and acquired semi-autonomous driving technology. The range has gradually ticked up.

Pricing has remained relatively stable, and high, raising the question of whether an "aging" platform is still worth the steep sticker. The timeless design and the steady march of improvement provides an answer.

The issue, then, is that as I've noted before, we take the Model S and its brilliance for granted. The Model 3 captured far more attention when it launched several years ago, and the Model X SUV is much flashier, tech-wise. But the Model S, now with yet more range, remains probably the best Tesla money can buy.

Here's why:

Design studio Grimshaw and manufacturers Concrete Valley collaborated on their design for Modular Water Dwellings. The structures are essentially floating homes, designed to withstand the upcoming effects of climate change and use energy more sustainably.

The floating homes will be made on an assembly line, creating a modular final product from several standardized pieces. This is an approach taken by many tiny home companies to make construction more affordable, and allow customers to customize their homes based on available pieces.

Concrete Valley's manufacturing facility sits on a waterway in the Netherlands, which will allow for the homes to be assembled at the factory and transported to their destinations, ready to move into. Grimshaw told Business Insider that this also reduces the total energy used in construction because no on-site assembly is required.

The designers cited affordability and sustainability as reasons for making this design, which they say would offer "affordable housing, free of the constraints of land-based construction and resilient to the mounting threat of flooding from rising sea-levels."

According to a UN report from last year, sea levels could rise as much as three feet within 80 years, which would displaces hundreds of millions of people. 

Designers use the water under the dwelling as part of temperature regulation, using it to heat and cool. The upper level also has solar panels to collect energy during the day, and harvest rainwater for an off-the-grid possibility. Heat exchangers also create a communal energy supply for a group of dwellings, with the potential for almost zero net energy use.

 

The rest of the design also contributes to low energy use. Each level is well insulated, with lower levels that naturally stay cool due to shade and the concrete pontoons. 

Designers believe that the aspects of the home that make it so unique, like its location on the water, and the potential community of other water dwellings, can contribute to the health and wellbeing of residents. People living in the homes would be close to nature, with beautiful views and access to water. They also promote the idea of communal water activities, like fishing or parasailing, or even using the pontoons to create shared communal spaces like floating gardens and terraces.

For now, the Modular Water Dwellings are still in the development stage as Grimshaw and Concrete Valley continue to create prototypes, though they say that they plan to bring them to the market once they're satisfied with the quality and affordability.

Over his two decades-plus in the tech industry, Michael Brown, now a senior software development engineer at Microsoft, frequently found himself as the only Black engineer on whichever team he was on.

That makes it extra-grating when he runs into industry-standard terms — "master" and "slave," as two common examples — that are as problematic as they are common. He first ran into them early in his career, working on an IT hardware project, but they can be found in wide use today.

These outdated terms often constitute microaggressions, or subtle incidents of discrimination, against Black developers by using the language of slavery, Brown says.

"The simple fact is that Black people are very underrepresented in technology," Brown told Business Insider. "What a lot of them fall back on is that it's a pipeline. The problem is starting in the college level, where you'll see very few Black people. Of course, you get the microaggressions that makes us feel unwelcome and that we don't belong to begin with."

Besides, he says, they're also technically used wrong in many instances: In his early-career hardware experience, the "master" device was actually a client to the "slaves," not the other way around. In more modern usage, "master" is used to refer to the main version of a software project; advocates say that "primary," "trunk," or "main" might be more accurate.

Now, amid the national conversation around systemic racism following the police killing of George Floyd, the tech industry is taking action to remove "master," "slave," and other terms like "blacklist" from common usage. Another example is "whitehat hackers," who hack to help companies find bugs, and "blackhat hackers," who hack for malicious purposes. These terms can reinforce biases, advocates say.

Already, the Microsoft-owned GitHub has announced that it's working to drop those terms, and other software projects like Google's Chromium browser engine and Android operating system have made similar moves.

Advocates say that while it's only a small step, and doesn't do much to address the wide gaps in diversity across Silicon Valley, it's still an important trend that signals to Black developers that there's room for them in the industry.

"I think it's important in general to create an environment that's inclusive that doesn't detract people from feeling comfortable at work and feel like they're just as valuable as others," Sebastien Roy, director of systems platform development at Delphix, told Business Insider. Roy also organized a Juneteenth hackathon to add more inclusive terms to Delphix's products.

GitHub and other projects are updating their language

GitHub, the Microsoft-owned code-sharing site, is one of the most prominent voices in the effort to drop the "master" terminology. Now, GitHub is working to change its default branch name from "master," making it easy for users to choose their own default branch name for new projects, and releasing guidance and tools for users who want to rename it.

Other projects are making similar moves.

Google's Android operating system and Chromium browser engine projects are moving away from terms like "blacklist" and "whitelist" in favor of the terms "blocklist" and "allowlist," 9to5Google's Kyle Bradshaw first reported. This change was first suggested by a Chromium contributor from Microsoft last year, the Register's Tim Anderson reported — not surprising, as Microsoft is using Chromium to power its own Edge browser.

OpenZFS, an open source storage project, has changed the terms "slaves" to "dependents." The Go programming language, which was created by Google, and Red Hat's OpenShift, its version of the Kubernetes cloud computing project, have also made similar changes.

Matthew Ahrens, creator of the OpenZFS project, was the one who submitted the change to remove references to "slaves" in the storage software. He told Business Insider that it first came to his attention after his coworkers at Delphix organized their Juneteenth hackathon.

That made Ahrens wonder if there was any similar terminology in OpenZFS, to which he still frequently contributes. He was surprised to find that it contained several references to "slaves." 

"I think using these terms, it's hurtful. It reminds people of really negative human interactions," Ahrens said. He later added: "It doesn't feel right to use a heavy term in a flippant way."

Terms like 'master' and 'slave' have been around for decades, but the tech industry is starting to make changes

This terminology has long existed both in hardware and in software — a computer handbook from 1969 refers to the terms "master" and "slave." The conversation over those terms, too, goes back decades, with complaints circulating since at least the '90s, as Ars Technica notes. 

In fact, back in 2003, Los Angeles officials asked manufacturers, suppliers and contractors to stop using the terms "master" and "slave" on computer equipment. Some engineers also spoke out against these terms at the time. More recently, in 2018, the Internet Engineering Task Force also published a memo specifically on this topic to identify "oppressive terminology" in tech and suggest alternatives. 

Several other projects, too, have already replaced master/slave terminology. For example, the Drupal and Django web application frameworks started using "primary" and "replica" in 2014.

The popular programming language Python has also been making these changes over the past few years.

Python core developer Mariatta Wijaya recalls that in 2017, developers wanted to introduce a feature for a GitHub bot that checks if users have signed a contributor license agreement. Wijaya made a conscious decision that she didn't want to use the terms "whitelist" for users who have already signed one and "blacklist" for users who have not. Instead, she broke it down into "trusted users" and otherwise. 

Not long after, in September 2018, Python replaced the terms "slaves" with "workers," "helpers," or "child," and "master" with "parent." 

"I think it's important because I know there are people who are offended because of historical reasons," Wijaya said. "Maybe it triggers trauma within them. Even though we don't share the same experience, it's important to empathize with them and understand who we are excluding by keeping the terminology like the master and slave terminology."

Making these changes can create a ripple effect through the industry, Wijaya says, as new open source projects may look to popular ones as a model. And maybe it can set an example for members of the open source community to be mindful of their language elsewhere, too.

"I think maintainers have the responsibility to set up a good example and use more inclusive language, not just in master/slave terminologies, but when they address the audience as well," Wijaya said.

Developers often didn't speak up because they 'adopt this shell' to protect themselves

The terms in question are decades old, as are the arguments over them. But widespread change has been slow to come to the industry because developers may not feel comfortable speaking up, Brown, the Microsoft developer, says. Instead, he says, Black people in tech "adopt this shell," trying not to engage with the subject for fear of being excluded.

"We act like things don't bother us because we don't want to be rocking the boat," Brown said. "When we get into the field, and they say, 'here's a master slave device,' we're not very likely to bring it up because we know how that creates an aura that 'oh, he's a troublemaker.'"

For example, Adama Robotics CEO Dauda Barry, who is Black, says that when he first came across the terms "master" and "slave" in software while he was still in university, he wrote off his own discomfort, telling himself that he was just being sensitive. But amid the recent conversations on the topic on Twitter, he realized that he wasn't alone in disliking the terms. 

"When I came across it the first time, I raised my eyebrow and just brushed it off quickly," Barry told Business Insider. "[Changing these terms] makes the tech ecosystem more inclusive. There are many ways to make a place inclusive. We want to make sure more developers of color will feel comfortable working in tech and can be their true selves."

In addition, the open source community often fosters so-called "benevolent dictators," project creators and maintainers who have the final say on all decisions — and who don't always see inclusion as a priority, if they care about it at all. 

"This results in a very homogeneous group of people being able to contribute or ask these bigger questions," product designer Chris Messina, famed as the inventor of the social media hashtag, said. "The language you use affects the people who are able to participate."

A newfound sense of urgency to make the change

Even if this isn't a new debate, the movement has a newfound sense of urgency amid the national conversation on systemic racism, says independent product designer and regular open source contributor Tatiana Mac.

In the past, people who suggested a change to the language would get ignored or sidelined, Mac said. And when some projects do make a change, Mac says, some elements of the community the software revolt — on Twitter, and within the community itself — saying that they shouldn't be expected to make changes to their software for what they see as a political purpose. Changing the terminology is sometimes seen as a matter of "political correctness."

For instance, when Python replaced its terminology in 2018, Wijaya says that some maintainers ended up getting harassed over the matter. Those kinds of incidents have a chilling effect on future efforts to make change, Wijaya suggests.

"That is something that we've done and something that we care about," Wijaya said. "We also know that it is controversial. Some of our maintainers are just burned out from that incident. They did not have the mental capacity to continue with such discussions. The change was made, but it had the cost of open source maintainers having to deal with mental harassment."

Mac says that tech can't see itself as distanced from the conversation on race, however — even as Microsoft, Salesforce, and Amazon pledge solidarity with the Black community, critics say that their work with law enforcement could undermine their stances. Given the intertwining of the two, Mac says, it's important that software represents the values of the people who make it. 

"I think it's important that we evolve our technology to fit our ethical stances," Mac said. "There are so many people in tech who love to hide behind this concept that tech is apolitical."

Read more: Tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce are taking a stand against systemic racism, but their work with law enforcement could contradict their stances

In fact, it shouldn't even be a debate, Brown says. He likens the discussion to people fighting to keep Confederate monuments standing. 

"You have millions of people in America who have trauma associated with that terminology, and you want to say that doesn't matter," Brown said. "You want to say, keep that technically inaccurate term and argue in upholding this rather than saying, this might cause problems for people. Let's take 30 seconds to change it out."

Advocates say these new terms are more inclusive and accurate

Terms like "master," "slave," "blacklist," and "whitelist" are not only hurtful, but unclear and often inaccurate, advocates say. Meanwhile, updated terms like "main," "primary," "allowlist," and "blocklist" more clearly reflect their actual meaning.

"All these other microaggressions, that's one more microaggression," Brown said. "It's not that hard to make the change. It's not even a technically accurate term, and you're defending it."

In software, developers have seen many other ways that language can be exclusive. For example, software projects often come with documentation to explain how to properly set up and run the code. Oftentimes, it will refer to engineers with "he" or "him" pronouns, excluding female or nonbinary developers.

"I see that a lot in documentation," Emily Kager, mobile Android engineer at Mozilla, told Business Insider. "It's a subtle thing. People feel less welcome in that they're not writing about you. We should make language as gender inclusive as possible."

Another example is the term "sanity check," a term that refers to when developers review code. This language can exclude people with mental illness or disabilities, Mac, the product designer, said. 

For this reason, Mac started a dictionary project for the tech industry called Self-Defined, which identifies problematic language, explains its impacts, and suggests alternatives that can be used.

"Language has a lot of power," Mac said. "It's embedded so passively in everything that we view. These conversations should happen more frequently."

While the tech industry still has a long way to go when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion, these small changes would make the tech ecosystem more inclusive, earn the trust of more diverse community members, and help Black developers feel more comfortable, advocates say.

"Why are you not changing it? It's 30 seconds," Brown said. "It won't break anything. It will make your project more welcoming."

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There are tiny houses, and then there are micro-units that make a standard tiny home look like a mansion.

Ecocapsule announced Space, an off-grid micro-unit with the "attractive design of a giant egg," as the company describes it, earlier in June.

Ecocapsule is headquartered in Bratislava, Slovakia. In 2018 it released the original Ecocapsule, a tiny home powered by solar and wind power. 

In May, it announced an even tinier companion unit, the 68-square-foot Space, which also comes at a lower price point than the original, starting at $56,000.

"Based upon demand of our customers we've made Space affordable for broader customers scale, and more comfortable to use," Design Director and CEO Tomáš Žáček said.

Space is also more accessible to a broader range of customers because it can be connected to the energy grid if needed. Like the original, Space has removable solar panels that can be used for off-grid moves. 

The exterior is made of insulated fiberglass over steel, and color can be customized. 

Inside, Space is intentionally minimalist and can be adapted to different uses. The basic version includes just the laminate floor and a plywood cabinet wall, and the buyer can choose the finish. Despite the small size, it can sleep two people, and additional furniture is available from Ecocapsule for an added cost.

Depending on how the customer chooses to fill the space, it could be used for nearly anything. Ecocapsule suggests a home office, guest room, or additional space for a cottage or houseboat. It could even be the "daughter" of the original Ecocapsule for fans of the design who need more room. 

The company also suggests that it could be used for business travel or resorts as a lower contact option compared to traditional hotels. 

The petite 15 feet by seven feet micro-unit is only eight feet tall and weighs nearly 3,000 pounds, less than an average new car. 

It has solar panels and batteries, which can also be charged externally. That energy goes towards LED lights inside the unit, and the smart home system and sensors that come standard. Smart features can be controlled through a phone app, and there's also the option to add data coverage for the unit itself. Other add-ons include AC and heating, which might be necessary depending on where Space ends up.

Two years after launching the original Ecocapsule, they're located in countries all over the world. Maybe the Space Ecocapsule will follow. 

Google, like the rest of Silicon Valley, is currently reckoning with the little progress it has made over the years to improve diversity and inclusion within the company.

Year after year, Google's diversity reports have shown very little improvement to the number of people from underrepresented groups it hires and retains. And year after year, the company has promised to do better.

According to the company's latest diversity report, Black employees comprise just 3.7% of Google's workforce, up from 3.3% the year before.

Now, the company is making some concrete promises to change things. In a memo from CEO Sundar Pichai published this week, Google set out a series of commitments to improve its efforts in racial equity.

The changes include doing away with the company's peer-based badge checking, new anti-racism programs for employees, and pledging $175 million to support Black businesses.

Google also promised to increase underrepresented leadership by 30% by 2025. "Our goal is a 30% increase in the proportion of Black+, Hispanic/Latinx+ and Native American+ leaders we have in the U.S. and technical women leaders globally," a spokesperson told Business Insider.

That 30% might sound like a big jump, but the math makes it unambitious. 

According to its 2020 diversity report, just 2.6% of Google's leadership is Black, 3.7% is Latinx, and 0.5% is Native American.

A 30% increase would boost that total of underrepresented groups from 6.8% to 8.8%. Or, if you take just the Black employees in leadership roles, it would boost the number of Black leaders from 2.6% to 3.4% by 2025. While each percentage point represents thousands of jobs, according to Google, that's still not a big improvement overall.

As Daniel Zhao, a data scientist at Glassdoor pointed out in a tweet, Google would need to increase the number of Black employees in leadership roles by more than 400% to reach parity with Black population of the US, estimated to be 13.4% by the most recent census data.

Pichai said Google will work to boost its leadership diversity by advertising senior leadership roles both externally and internally, and increase investment in Google officers outside of Mountain View such as London, Washington DC, and Atlanta.

Many of the other changes Google is proposing feel more encouraging than what we've seen in the past. For example, the company said it will introduce a new "multi-series" training program for employees which "explores systemic racism and racial consciousness." NBC recently reported that Google had been scaling back its inclusion and diversity training programs since 2018.

Pichai also said Google would convene a task force "to develop concrete recommendations and proposals for accountability across all of the areas that affect the Black+ Googler experience, from recruiting and hiring, to performance management, to career progression and retention."

Those changes are good and should be celebrated, but when it comes to its commitment to boosting diversity numbers within the company, it's a shame Google couldn't be a little more ambitious.

(Photo by Steven Damron used under Creative Commons).

Image Credits: Klaud Vedfelt (opens in a new window) / Getty Images (Image has been modified)

Image Credits: PipeCandy

Nextdoor, the online local networking platform for neighbors, announced it is ending its "Forward to Police" feature after it has long been criticized for facilitating racial profiling.

The feature was introduced in 2016 to allow users to directly share their posts with local police. It was one of several crime-monitoring tools on the site that have raised concerns about the ease with which users can trigger a police response based on unexamined suspicions as described by outlets like Bloomberg's CityLab and The Atlantic.

A statement posted on the company's site late Thursday said the decision came about "as part of our anti-racism work and our efforts to make Nextdoor a place where all neighbors feel welcome," and was ultimately cut because of its low engagement with users and law enforcement.

"After speaking with members and public agency partners, it is clear that the Forward to Police feature does not meet the needs of our members and only a small percentage of law enforcement agencies chose to use the tool," the company's post read.

Bloomberg's CityLab reported that the company is keeping other features that facilitate communication with law enforcement, including one that allows direct messages. The features are a small look at the site's extensive relationship with law enforcement agencies continues that has raised concerns with privacy experts.

In recent years, the platform has attempted to confront racially charged interactions from users, even using data-centric approaches and artificial intelligence to cut down on insensitive or profiling posts, but critical reports have persisted as the neighborhood forum has faced the questions of moderation and monitoring common to social networking.

The site, which was founded in 2011, not only connects neighbors but also provides a reliable link for local government, police, and fire departments to keep their ears to the ground in communities, cofounder Prakash Janakiraman previously told Business Insider.

As coronavirus spread across the US and more Americans found themselves stuck at home, the site's "engagement picked up at the end of February and then skyrocketed from March," Janakiraman told Business Insider, and "usage is up 80% in most neighborhoods."

Despite the climbing popularity, the most recent challenge for the platform came in the wake of protests across the US over racism and police brutality, when reports floated that community moderators were removing posts from local boards that mentioned Black Lives Matter despite the company's official statement of support for the movement.

Nextdoor's CEO Sarah Friar said in a June 11 blog post that "systemic racism in our nation will not be solved overnight," but the company was addressing racism in its corporate culture and on its site by emphasizing diversity in hiring, strengthening community moderation, and drawing "a firm line against racist behavior" on its forums.

 

Welcome to Wall Street Insider, where we take you behind the scenes of the finance team's biggest scoops and deep dives from the past week. 

If you aren't yet a subscriber to Wall Street Insider, you can sign up here.

It was a busy week for hedge fund news, with the finance team landing scoops on an upcoming launch, a fund that's giving outside investors their money back, and one that's winding down entirely. 

A new hedge fund run by a one-time minor league baseball player is set to spin off from billionaire Leon Cooperman's Omega Advisors, Bradley Saacks reported. New launches have been few and far between during the global coronavirus pandemic, though, as meetings with potential investors turned into video calls and business travel was cancelled.

Bradley and Alex Morrell learned that billionaire Philippe Laffont's Coatue Management is returning all outside capital in its $350 million quant fund. The fund, started roughly a year ago, had pulled back its exposure from the markets significantly in March and April. Coatue will continue trading the strategy with internal money, though, and hopes to eventually reopen it to outside investors.

And Bradley, Dan DeFrancesco, and Meghan Morris reported that a $2.5 billion Tiger Cub emailed vendors on Tuesday evening to give notice that it has started winding down business operations and liquidating portfolios.

Read the full story here:

Keep reading to see the advice that value investors are giving each other after getting steamrolled by rising markets; a deep dive into the sports empire of Apollo Global Management cofounder Josh Harris; and a look at why live commerce could soon explode in the US. 

Have a great weekend, 

Meredith 

Advice for value-investing enthusiasts 

Value investors, who seemed poised to take control during the initial market crash from the pandemic, have since been steamrolled by rising markets. For value-seekers, it's been emblematic of a decade of futility. 

Rebecca Ungarino and Bradley Saacks attended a two-day virtual conference hosted by the New York chapter of the CFA Institute (the event is named after Ben Graham, the father of value investing.) Speakers flagged their picks in the quickly changing markets, and implored listeners to stick with the philosophy.

Read the full story here: 

Influencers and home shopping

Live-streamed commerce has taken off in China on platforms like Alibaba's Taobao Live and Douyin, China's version of TikTok. Influencers are driving sales of everything from cosmetics to tech products — think home shopping TV networks, but with check-outs embedded in the platforms and payment details stored there. 

"It's entertainment plus shopping," Connie Chan, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, told Shannen Balogh. And it could soon arrive in the US.

Read the full story here: 

Apollo cofounder Josh Harris' sports empire 

As the economic slowdown brought about by COVID-19 forces investors to tighten the purse strings, it's never been more important for founders to get their pitches just right. 

In March, almost one-third of investors pulled out of UK seed funding deals amid fears that the pandemic was about to trigger a global recession. 

SeedLegals, a London firm that specializes in legal advice for smaller startups, told Business Insider the number of venture capitalists participating in early-stage funding rounds for startups dropped by 28% in March.

Those who do find themselves successfully pitching to investors currently have to do so over Zoom rather than in person, making a strong pitch deck an even more crucial accompaniment.

We asked Anthony Rose, SeedLegals cofounder and CEO, for his expert advice on putting together the perfect pitch deck. 

Fellow founders Albert Liu, CEO of Alibaba-backed facial recognition firm Kneron, and James Dean, CEO of Tencent-backed AI firm Sensat, chipped in with some words of wisdom too. 

Read their words of wisdom below: