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Yinka is a founding member of UK Black Tech and a director at Calla Success Systems. 

I feel the way many black people feel today – and have felt many times before, with the harrowing and traumatic deaths of so many posthumously famous black men and women in the US and the UK.

It's enraging and it's exhausting – but I reserve both my rage and energy for action, as that is the only way to make a difference.

The reaction to a police officer – a public servant appointed to protect and serve the public, treating anyone the way George Floyd was treated should be the same for all: one rooted in decency and basic humanity.

The murder and abuse of power should be a source of outrage for everyone, not just the "black community".

I don't think this will be a turning point in the way black communities are treated, because we've been here before.

Black men have been vilified, abused, killed, and murdered by the police before. Those killings have been documented and publicized before, those killings have sparked riots before – and we've had many long conversations about race before.

Hundreds of books and thousands of articles have been written, FAQs typed up, Lunch-and-Learns attended. Brands and politicians like to say: "We're listening."

My skepticism makes me ask: "How is this different?" All these things happened before, and it's happened again. So the event itself won't bring the change, but the follow-up actions will.

There is still such a stark level of ignorance about what racism is – and how it looks on a daily basis – that people will deny others' lived experiences.

Instead, people try to look like they are learning and changing, when in reality, it's worthless. This virtue signalling is almost mandatory to save face and ensure they look like they're on the right side of the debate.

Many of these organizations hide their own toxic cultures, in which staff are terrorized through both covert and daily acts of racism, often dismissed as banter, or rejected when it's reported through the official channels.

What happens next will ultimately determine what changes, and that comes from some harsh truths being understood on all sides. No "white saviors" are needed here: No collective group of people would knowingly dismantle a system designed to favor them.

We need partners to work across society, and that's not the job of a few tweets and black squares, it's a much tougher job than many are prepared to take on. Change itself will not come from outside of our community – but from within.

Because the fact is that racism happens every day. It happens when young black boys are called 'youths' or described as being in 'gangs' when they are standing outside their school in their uniform talking to their friends.

It happens when black people are paid 60p for every £1 paid to white counterparts. It happens when black professionals are constantly called upon to talk about diversity instead of their area of career expertise or study, often when their white counterparts have already been paid in full.

I've experienced it innumerable times. It's been overt, it's been covert, It's been called out, it's been ignored. It's been fought, and I've won and lost. I have one life to live, and I am focused on doing the best for me and my family – and impacting upon what I can control, and no more. 

But the change in this situation begins with the realization that co-ordinated and systemic changes will only come from black economic empowerment, at all levels.

And, most importantly – to quote Bob Marley – wth the emancipation from mental slavery.

Education is critical: The truth about Empire, about white supremacy, and about the history of black peoples, so they can know they are descendants of greatness, not just slavery and trauma.

They need to be taught how the levers of power work, and the importance of economic and financial empowerment. Only through education will change come, and the inequalities that underpin these situations begin to be addressed.

It is up to us to make the changes we want to see.

I'm optimistic that change will come, at least in my slice of the world, because I know it starts with me, and I'm committed to doing my part.

LinkedIn's new CEO apologized to employees after the company allowed a meeting to address protests across the United States over police brutality and systemic racism prompted by the death of George Floyd to be taken over by "appalling," anonymous employee comments.

"We are not and will not be a company or platform where racism or hateful speech is allowed," he said.

Ryan Roslansky replaced Jeff Weiner as LinkedIn's CEO on Monday. On Wednesday, LinkedIn held a town hall meeting to discuss racial inequality and biases. During the meeting, first reported by the Daily Beast, staffers criticised the protests and LinkedIn's efforts to diversity its workforce by posting anonymous messages into the event's chat window.

"As a non-minority, all this talk makes me feel like I am supposed to feel guilty of my skin color. I feel like I should let someone less qualified fill my position," one anonymous staffer commented, per the Daily Beast. "I believe giving any racial group privilege over others in a zero sum game would not get any support by others. Any thoughts on hurting others while giving privileges with the rosy name called diversity?" another reportedly said.

Other LinkedIn staffers were outraged, according to the Daily Beast, and called the comments "disturbing and racist."

Roslansky said in his LinkedIn post that the comments evaded notice during the event because "those of us in presenter mode weren't able to track the comments in real time." The company will not allow anonymous comments at such events in the future, he said.

LinkedIn released a report last year showing just 3.5 percent of its workforce was Black, compared to 47.5 percent white, 40.3 percent Asian, and 5.9 percent Latino. Just 1 percent of the company's leadership was Black at the time. Rosanna Durruthy, LinkedIn's vice president of global diversity, inclusion, and belonging, at the time said hiring a diverse workforce was the company's No. 1 "talent priority."

"Many of you shared the hardest part was realizing that this company we love and hold to such a high standard still has a lot of work to do to educate ourselves and our colleagues on how to create a culture that is truly anti-racist," Roslansky said. "We will do that work."

LinkedIn declined to comment beyond the contents of Roslansky's post.

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As Apple employees gradually begin returning to the office, they'll have the option to receive COVID-19 nasal swab tests when they show up for work, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.

The company will also require that employees have their temperature checked upon arrival, wear masks, and limit their numbers in confined places like elevators, according to Bloomberg. Apple will also make modifications to its headquarters in Cupertino, California, like keeping break-room kitchens closed and reconfiguring open-office floor plans.

Apple, which was one of the first major tech companies to halt employee travel and close retail stores as the coronavirus began to spread outside of China earlier this year, has also been one of the first to start bringing employees back into the office.

In mid-May, Bloomberg reported that Apple began a phased return-to-work approach, initially allowing some hardware and software engineers to resume working out of its headquarters several days per week.

Apple, with a focus on building hardware and a secretive culture that has reportedly made it difficult for employees to work remotely, has taken a starkly different approach than rivals like Google and Facebook, which are allowing their employees to work remote until the end of 2020 (or even indefinitely if they choose, in Facebook's case).

Other companies that are charting more aggressive timelines, including Amazon, have also started building up capacity to test employees. CEO Jeff Bezos told shareholders in April that the company is aiming to test all employees, and Business Insider reported in May that the company has begun a pilot program for warehouse workers.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story. 

After being crushed by the coronavirus crisis, the short-term rental market is bouncing back. But that's not necessarily good news for market leader Airbnb.

Much of the pick-up in activity is coming from vacation destinations within driving distances of major cities, Scott Shatford, CEO of AirDNA, an industry research firm, told Business Insider. Those kinds of areas have long been a stronghold of VRBO, Airbnb's chief rival, he said. By contrast, Airbnb's stronghold is in cities, which are not seeing nearly as much of an uptick in reservations, he said.

"It's just in the nature of who's booking travel," said Shatford. "I think VRBO, through this summer," he continued, "will perform better than Airbnb."

With states and countries lifting their coronavirus-related restrictions, people around the world are beginning to travel more and plan for future vacations.

AirDNA reported last week that consumers worldwide made 2.1 million short-term rental bookings the week of May 18, which was up 127% from the nadir when the coronavirus crisis was raging at its worst. Some countries, including the United States, have even started to see booking reach levels that exceed what they were prior to the onset of the pandemic.

But the rebound is uneven. Bookings are skyrocketing in places such as Big Bear Lake, outside of Los Angeles; South Padre Island, Texas; and North Carolina's Carolina Beach. In each of those destinations, reservations were up more than 1,000% from the low point in April.

Big cities are seeing only a limited rebound

By contrast, big cities are seeing much more modest increases in bookings. New York was up only 40% from the April bottom. And San Francisco was up by less than 50%. And that was before widespread protests erupted im cities across the country, often resulting in government-imposed curfews.

The week of April 5, New York City saw 2,812 short-term rental bookings, according to AirDNA. That was more than three times the numbers seen in Gulf Shores, Alabama, that week, and more than five times that in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. But the week of May 18, both of those picturesque places saw at least 800 more bookings than the Big Apple did.

People who are going to those vacation destinations are typically older and looking for bigger places to rent, such as four-bedroom houses, Shatford said. Those kinds of spaces are right in VRBO's wheelhouse, but not in Airbnb's, he said.

"VRBO's always been this traditional leisure market," Shatford said. He continued: "That's where they started and that's where they still have ... dominance, in terms of that supply. And obviously, that supply has done better. That's what people are choosing."

Airbnb has already taken a big hit to its business. Company CEO Brian Chesky said last month he expects revenue to be down more than 50% from last year due to the pandemic. In response to its troubles, the company cut 25% of its workforce, laid off most of its contractors, and has slashed other expenses. It has also raised $2 billion in debt since the crisis began.

Airbnb's prospects are likely brighter in the longer term, Shatford said.

Airbnb will likely benefit from being guest-friendly

During and in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, people have been leaving big cities for health or safety reasons. There are indications that housing demand is falling in places like New York and San Francisco.

While people may again resume traveling to such cities, they're likely to want to stay on the fringes of those places, outside of their dense urban cores, Shatford said. It's in such places where hotels can be hard to come by that short-term rental accommodations of flourished, he said.

Meanwhile, the differing ways Airbnb and VRBO handled cancellations during the coronavirus crisis is likely to benefit the former, Shatford said. Both companies allow the property managers who use their services to set their own cancellation terms. But during the pandemic, Airbnb has allowed many travelers to cancel their bookings and get a full refund, regardless of what the host's policies would have provided. VRBO, by contrast, has stuck by its hosts, many of whom have refused to offer full refunds.

Some hosts have threatened to abandon Airbnb because it overrode their cancellation policies. But that same move likely earned the company the loyalty of travelers, Shatford said.

"I'm still am of this belief ... that guest loyalty will win this in the long run," he said.

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Andreessen Horowitz partner Naithan Jones took to Twitter to address a series of criticisms that have cropped up against the elite venture capital firm's new nonprofit 'Talent x Opportunity' fund, which was announced on Wednesday. 

"I want to clear up some misconceptions about TxO," Jones began, in the first of a 13-tweet-long thread. "A lot of the things being spread are only half truths with the blanks filled in the most cynical way possible. They are becoming accepted myths which could damper donations." 

The TxO fund's announcement made waves on Wednesday, as some entrepreneurs and VCs responded to the announcement with applause. Others criticized the fund's nonprofit structure, and the fact that it was kicking off with just $2.2 million in partner donations, an amount that pales in comparison to Andreessen Horowitz's total $12 billion in assets under management. 

Jones, who first began by responding to individual Twitter criticisms, told critics that he was responsible for the fund's donor advisory structure, and defended it as a way for "everyone from the community to be investors and entrepreneurs." He also said the structure would allow the nonprofit Tide, which will manage the fund, to hold Andreessen Horowitz accountable for the criteria around which it could invest in founders. 

"In this case we can decentralize the control of both the incentives and the oversight of money portion of this," Jones said. 

The fund's nonprofit status has been controversial, especially as it plays into the fund's relatively small starting size of $2.2 million — less than many of the firm's investments in individual startups like Clubhouse.

In a podcast on Thursday, Backstage Capital founder Arlan Hamilton addressed both SoftBank's $100 million fund and Andreessen Horowitz's nonprofit fund, noting that they were off to a good start but both firms — as well as a number of other firms in the industry — had the resources to do more.

"You owe black funders an apology. The billions and billions and billions of dollars under management that goes to other white men for over 75 years. You owe us an apology," Hamilton said. "I will not apologize for being offended and insulted by these people who have gotten and taken everything by way of economics from black and brown bodies, and then give us crumbs for a headline." 

Jones didn't directly address that critique in his thread, but noted that the fund's starting amount — all "generously awarded" donations from the fund's partners — had grown. A commitment from Ben and Felicia Horowitz to match donations of up to $5 million had allowed the fund to multiply in size, Jones said. 

To critics who noted that dedicating a separate fund for underserved founders was one way to give rejected founders "a side door" rather than opening up regular access to Silicon Valley's circles, Jones said that they were wrong. 

"This is not a program to lower the bar for who gets a check from us or a side door after rejection from the front door. ...It's a training program and fund for those talented people we would NEVER see without this program in the first place." he tweeted.

Founders provided with the firm's 10 month training program and Andreessen Horowitz's network would then be able to deliver "the same returns as the people from elite schools," Jones added, stressing, "THIS IS NOT A CHARITY."

Amazon Web Services and Slack announced on Thursday a partnership to use Amazon infrastructure for Slack tools including audio, video, and screensharing. As part of the deal, Amazon will start rolling out Slack to its employees, and Slack for the first time publicly proclaimed AWS as its "preferred cloud provider."

Securities filings reveal Slack upped its commitment to AWS to $425 million from $250 million. The company's annual committment to AWS increased to $75 million from $50 million and will increase by $5 million every year until 2025.

"We're both the innovators and leaders of our respective areas coming together," Slack's business development chief Brad Armstrong told Business Insider, adding that the partnership "illustrates the fallacy of the argument that only an integrated solution can come from a monolithic vendor that's providing all things. We are the best at what we do."

AWS and Slack said the partnership is not targeted at competing with any company in particular, but Armstrong's comments appear to refer to what's often said to be an advantage of Microsoft's chat and collaboration app Teams — which integrates tightly with Office 365, Microsoft's suite of ubiquitous business apps.

Microsoft recently said Teams has reached 75 million daily active users, up from 44 million in mid-March.

The partnership also comes after Zoom teamed up with Oracle to support a surge in users during the pandemic, although AWS CEO Andy Jassy during a recent virtual speech made sure to clarify "the vast majority of Zoom's cloud infrastructure runs on AWS and it will for foreseeable future."

Slack and AWS have worked together for years, but Armstrong said this is the first time Slack has made a public statement to "reveal we are designating AWS as our cloud provider."

Slack has relied on its own technology to power voice and video calls from within its app, but by its own admission falls short of the standards in teleconferencing set by apps like Microsoft Teams or Zoom.

Amazon has its own, lesser-known online meeting, videoconferencing, and chat app called Chime. As part of the deal, Slack will use the software development kit from Chime to power its audio, video, and screensharing capabilities in Slack calls. 

Analysts have also suggested that Amazon could turn to acquisitions to bolster its efforts in the collaboration space — and have named Slack as one of its most likely targets, should it go that route.

While Chime doesn't appear to be as widely used as Slack or Teams, the partnership shows interest in Chime as a developer service. Market share information isn't available for Chime, but as one analyst recently told Business Insider: "I cannot recall attending a Chime meeting that wasn't related to or hosted by Amazon."

Eron Kelly, general manager of AWS compute infrastructure and applications, told Business Insider that Chime will still be available to end users, but that Amazon has in the past six months seen a lot of interest in Chime's software development kit.

"Customers are really interested in taking advantage of the scale, reach, reliability that the AWS platform can provide, not only for compute, storage, and database services, but also for video and voice services," Kelly said. "We are seeing people want to have collaborative experiences like voice and video in the context of the work they are doing."

Amazon will start rolling out Slack to its employees. Kelly said, "We are now making it available as part of this partnership and we will be able to roll it out across the company but it's early stages."

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As protests against racism and police violence spread throughout the US, interest in TV shows that focus on race, such as Netflix's "When They See Us" and "Dear White People," has increased.

Every week, data company Parrot Analytics provides Business Insider with the top streaming originals that have seen the biggest week-over-week increase in audience demand in the US. Parrot Analytics measures demand expressions, its global TV measurement standard that reflects the desires, engagement, and viewership of a series, weighted by importance.

This week measured the increase in demand from the week of May 20 to 26 to the week of May 27 to June 2. These aren't necessarily the most popular titles in the US, but they are the ones gaining the most momentum among audiences.

HBO Max, which launched last week, has three shows on the list: the animated "Looney Tunes Cartoons," the third season of "Search Party," and "Legendary."

Below are the top 8 streaming original TV shows on the rise this week:

Against the backdrop of protests against racism and police brutality erupting across the country, Andreessen Horowitz has announced that it is launching a new nonprofit fund to invest in founders from underserved backgrounds. 

The Talent x Opportunity fund, which has already raised $2.2 million in donations from firm partners, plans to invest seed money into businesses selling both tech and non-tech products. Investment returns will all go back into the fund, to feed the next generation of startups, according to a blog post published by the firm. 

"We are looking for entrepreneurs who did not have access to the fast track in life but who have great potential. Their products can be non-tech or tech; they should be from underserved communities (all backgrounds welcome); and ideally, their business will have an interesting model, niche market, and/or a little traction to indicate the promise and potential," the firm said. 

Silicon Valley's venture capital industry has long been criticized for its approach to increasing diversity in both its investments and its workforce. Standard practices like scouting startups from a known network of elite institutions (an Ivy League education, or experience at a big tech firm like Apple or Google) have made it difficult for some startup founders to get an audience with Silicon Valley's blue-chip firms.

The new fund aims to crush those barriers for founders struggling to be seen. It's being spearheaded by Naithan Jones, a firm partner who broke into Silicon Valley's elite circles as a British-born Kansas-raised startup founder. Jones has previously written about how he got a foothold in venture capital as an "outsider" with no college degree, and stressed the need to recruit others from unique backgrounds. 

In addition to seed capital provided by the firm, Andreessen Horowitz said that it hoped to provide founders with the blue-chip firm's vast network, and give them the chance to get further funding like "an accelerator for the unseen."

The firm has said that it is not only open to outside donations to the fund, but that founding partner Ben Horowitz and his wife Felicia will devote $5 million to matching donations. The fund will also accept donations issued in cryptocurrency, Jones added in a tweet. 

The recent calls for racial justice in the country have put the spotlight on venture firms announcing commitments to growing diversity or announcing new initiatives. On the same day as Andreessen Horowitz's announcement, Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank announced that it was launching a new $100 million fund to invest in companies led by black Americans and people of color.

Although SoftBank's fund is significantly larger than the Talent x Opportunity fund, Andreessen Horowitz also has other ongoing efforts to increase diversity within tech. The firm's Cultural Leadership fund, launched two years ago, sets out to increase diversity in tech by donating all its management fees and carried interest into non-profits dedicated to increasing diversity in technology. 

The Silicon Valley blue-chip firm's broader focus on drawing out founders from non-traditional backgrounds may also make it different from some of its peers' efforts. Jones has sent out a call for word about "founders of young companies you likely would not see in Silicon Valley" and asked people to sign up on a Google form. 

"Our firm culture is based on the idea that words by themselves are empty," the firm wrote, perhaps in a veiled reference to recent criticism that the firm had not immediately issued a statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

"We're venture capitalists, not activists," the firm added in the post. "We support the amazing work that people are doing to fix policing specifically... but our direct contribution will be doing what we do best: To help entrepreneurs be better entrepreneurs, so they can build great businesses that in turn create jobs and value for others."

Facebook has started to apply labels to state-run media outlets — news publishers it deems "wholly or partially under the editorial control of their government" — the company said in a blog post Thursday. 

"We believe people should know if the news they read is coming from a publication that may be under the influence of a government," the company said, "because they combine the influence of a media organization with the strategic backing of a state."

Facebook originally announced its plans to identify state-run media back in October 2019, but offered more details about its policy Thursday.

The company it had officially begun the process of adding the labels, which will start appearing this week in its "Ad Library Page view, on Pages, and in the Page Transparency section" for all users and on News Feed posts for US users. 

Facebook's criteria for determining whether a media outlet is state-run will include: the outlet's mission statement, whether its owners or leaders are government officials or appointees, its editorial guidelines, information about the outlet's staff, funding sources, accountability mechanisms, and country-specific factors like press freedom.

Publishers are allowed to appeal Facebook's decision, but the company said they'll need to point to laws, internal processes, or external assessments from a credible, independent organization that demonstrate their editorial independence.

Facebook also said Thursday that, starting later this summer, state-run media outlets will be blocked from running ads in the US.

While such publishers rarely advertise in the US, the company said the decision was made "out of an abundance of caution to provide an extra layer of protection against various types of foreign influence in the public debate ahead of the November 2020 election in the US."

Facebook has faced pushback for its policy around political ads, which bans profanity but exempts them from its third-party fact-checking program, and the company has long been criticized for its role in allowing misinformation to spread ahead of the 2016 election. 

In January, Facebook announced a tool that reduced the level of precision with which advertisers can target users, and also put the burden on users to tell the company if they want to see fewer political ads. More recently, Facebook has become embroiled in controversy after its decision not to take any action against posts by President Trump that spread false information about voting by mail and warned of "shooting" protesters.

The credit- and loan-management startup Credit Sesame laid off nearly 14% of its workforce on Wednesday as some fintech startups begin to stumble amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

The Mountain View, California, company confirmed that it cut 22 out of 160 employees in a statement to Business Insider. It also said that restrictions from credit suppliers amid the pandemic had squeezed its credit business, which allows customers to monitor credit scores.

"Due to restrictions by our credit suppliers as a result of COVID-19 and the effect it has had on our credit business, we made the decision to say goodbye to 22 of our 160 employees," a statement from Credit Sesame said. "This was an incredibly difficult decision for us, but one that was necessary to continue to serve our customers long term." 

Credit Sesame is a long-standing startup in the personal-finance space, competing alongside incumbents like Credit Karma and NerdWallet. It launched in 2010 with the goal of improving the financial health of its customers by helping them compare loans and keep track of credit scores. The company also issues recommendations for refinancing home mortgages. In addition, it launched a digital banking service in March that's focused on allowing customers to improve credit scores. 

The company has so far raised $135.4 million and counts Menlo Ventures and Capital One Ventures among its investors. Before the coronavirus pandemic hit the US, the startup said it planned to go public this year, TechCrunch reported.