Not just start-ups. Every big company, every nonprofit, every government organization, and most people too

— Bob Sutton (@work_matters) March 16, 2020

The CDC finally issued guidance to Use of Cloth Face Coverings to Help Slow the Spread of COVID-19. If you go out in public, please wear a “Cloth Face Covering.”

I’m using every ounce of energy that I have to avoid talking about the politics of any of this. Rather, I’m focusing on actionable things with clear reasoning for them.

Before I explain why this is so important, here are two websites that clarify the types of face coverings I’m talking about. Specifically, these are homemade (or DIY) cloth face coverings.

CDC: Use of Cloth Face Coverings to Help Slow the Spread of COVID-19

Colorado Mask Project: Provide all Coloradans with DIY masks to help slow the spread of COVID-19.

You do not need an N95 mask. You do not need a surgical mask. You do not need a mask you buy in the store. You just need a cloth face covering that you can make yourself at home.

There has been endless discussion about the efficacy of masks in general, and more specifically for “the public.” There are plenty of recent credible discussions about this from sources like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Would everyone wearing face masks help us slow the pandemic?). Feel free to wade through all that stuff, but here’s the punch line.

The Main Benefit: If you are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic, you can spread the virus to healthy people. This means that even if you don’t have symptoms, you are sick and can spread the virus to others. When you are wearing a mask, it helps prevent you from spreading the virus to others. The virus spreads through droplets coming from your mouth and nose. If your mouth and nose are covered, the cloth mask catches the droplets when you sneeze, cough, breathe, and talk.

Secondary Benefit: We touch our faces thousands of times a day. The virus lives on surfaces for a long time (possibly up to 72 hours) and in the air for an indeterminate amount of time. We are constantly touching things the virus settles on. Then, when we touch our face (especially our eyes, nose, or mouth), we infect ourselves. A mask lowers the propensity for us to touch our own face (it’s an interesting psychological phenomenon).

Tertiary (and unclear) Benefit: A debate rages on about whether a cloth mask acts as an effective physical barrier to breathing in the virus. If it does, with any level of efficacy, this is merely a bonus to the first two benefits.

I think the best paragraph from the Science article Would everyone wearing face masks help us slow the pandemic? is:

But the greatest benefit of masking the masses, Cowling and others argue, likely comes not from shielding the mouths of the healthy but from covering the mouths of people already infected. People who feel ill aren’t supposed to go out at all, but initial evidence suggests people without symptoms may also transmit the coronavirus without knowing they’re infected. Data from contact-tracing efforts—in which researchers monitor the health of people who recently interacted with someone confirmed to have an infection—suggest nearly half of SARS-CoV-2 transmissions occur before the infected person shows symptoms. And some seem to contract and clear the virus without ever feeling sick. 

Right now, you have no way to know if you are infected when you aren’t showing symptoms, and given that it’s springtime in the US many people will have allergies so it’s even harder to tell who is sick. Given the completely inadequate testing activities right now in the US, along with lack of contact tracing apps, effective isolation for people who are sick, and the overall challenge of getting everyone to actually stay at home, by wearing a mask in public, you are protecting other people from you in case you are infected.

Finally, please do not buy or use medical-grade masks. There is still a huge shortage of these in the health care system and it’s expected that the shortage will continue. You’ll hear phrases like “surgical masks” and “N95 masks.” You do not need to wear one of these – they are needed for our front line medical workers.

Instead, make your own mask. And wear it whenever you leave your house.

Jesse Levin is CEO of Brightfield, a New York-based workforce analytics company, and his biggest fear is the rise of a "herd mentality" where startup leaders try to navigate the crisis based on a singe playbook.

He's particularly critical of the so-called "Black Swan" letter that Sequoia Capital published about a month ago as the coronavirus crisis was unfolding.

In the letter, Sequoia warned that "in downturns, revenue and cash levels always fall faster than expenses" and that, in terms of  headcount, "this might be a time to evaluate critically whether you can do more with less and raise productivity.

Levin lamented that the Sequoia letter "became gospel immediately and resulted in deep cuts across the same companies that they had encouraged to over-raise and overspend."

For startup founders and CEOs, now is the time to "reset your ambition to target a great return with more reasonable risk," Levin said. 

In a downturn that is in many ways more severe and unpredictable than past crises, Levin said startup CEOs should encourage their team leaders to be comfortable with uncertainty instead of intimidated by the blurry path ahead of them

"Ensure your leaders are comfortable with imposter syndrome," he said, referring to the psychological pattern of doubting one's ideas and abilities. "The pandemic recession has some attributes that are similar to past cycles, and many that are not.  Thus, your leaders must exhibit confidence and clarity even when they don't know what's next."

Another tip: focus on customers, accommodate their needs, even if doesn't boost your bottom line in the short-term.

"Customers and prospects do remember who invested in them at the bottom of a cycle and, in my experience, do find ways to balance the karma scales when the market comes back, Levin said.

 

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.

Wall Street had to quickly adapt to a new work-from-home reality, and firms are already thinking about how the coronavirus will transform the way they work in the long run — Tradeweb's CEO called the shift to remote work a "fundamental game changer" when it comes to business and personnel impact.

Banks have been forced to rewrite continuity plans, including testing and deploying remote-working capabilities to their vast trading ranks. Dakin Campbell and Alex Morrell talked to more than a dozen insiders about the exact steps firms have taken to replicate trading floors at home.  

Read the full story here:

And as Casey Sullivan reports, top law firms are seeing a "great reset" that could reshape office needs and how they use tech to interact with clients. That's not to say everyone is looking to redefine business as usual — Dan DeFrancesco talked with NYSE's COO about how the exchange is thinking about its iconic trading floor.

Wishing everyone a healthy and safe weekend. As always, my line is open at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

-Meredith 

'Hope for the best, but plan for the worst'

The coronavirus outbreak has changed not only where people work from, but how they work and what tools they use.

Already, apps like Zoom and Slack have seen huge increases in usage in the past few weeks, as users grab onto ways to stay connected in their work and personal lives while social distancing.

The urgent need for better work tools could catapult some enterprise startups into the pantheon of unicorn startups, as their users multiply and venture capital investors jump to fund them.

We wanted to find the startups that are already transforming the future of work, defining the new ways in which people are doing their everyday jobs. We reached out to a select group of venture capitalists with enterprise bets in their portfolios and asked them to name the startups that are positioned to have very good years.

When we spoke to each investor, we set some ground rules for participation: 

Their nominations cover all aspects of work, from processes like recruiting and onboarding to products such as video conferencing, chatbots, and email.

Here are the 30 startups they named, listed in alphabetical order:

Just a week after 32 US attorneys general told Amazon to fix price gouging on its site, Amazon acknowledged in a letter to sellers that its system may be difficult to understand. But sellers now say Amazon is overcompensating and pushing too hard, leading to a surge in unfair product and seller suspensions.

In a note sent to sellers on Wednesday, obtained by Business Insider, Amazon said its policy over what products or sellers get suspended for excessive price increases could lead to a "confusion" because it looks into a number of different factors. Amazon's system, which is mostly automated, has been kicking off groups of sellers and products from its marketplace lately for profiteering on items like hand sanitizers and face masks during the coronavirus pandemic.

"We recognize there may be some confusion as to what may trigger offer removal or account suspension for price gouging under this policy," Amazon said in the note.

Amazon said that it's difficult to set a one-size fits all policy because states have varying rules over price-gouging. For example, some states have a 10% ceiling on price increases during a national emergency, while others may have more vague guidelines, like banning unconscionably "excessive" price increases without a fixed cap, it said.

"Our systems attempt to account for these variations in state law while recognizing that the costs of many goods are increasing due to the worldwide effects of the COVID-19 pandemic," Amazon said in the note.

Amazon's response to sellers shows the difficulty in cleaning up its marketplace of bad actors that try to take advantage of consumers in need of essential items during the pandemic. As demand for online shopping has increased amid COVID-19, some sellers have set unreasonably high price increases on not just essentials but also everyday grocery products, like rice and milk.

Amazon has always had a "zero tolerance" policy against sellers who exploit "an emergency by charging excessively high prices on products and shipping." To combat the surge in price gouging, Amazon recently said that it had suspended over 3,900 US sellers for violating its fair pricing policy and removed over half a million products due to coronavirus-based price gouging. 

Amazon's representative told Business Insider in an email that the note was meant to provide "even more detailed guidance" on price gouging, as laws vary by state. Sellers who feel they were unfairly suspended should reach out to Amazon directly for a separate investigation, the spokesperson said.

"Amazon has always prohibited price gouging," the spokesperson said. "Our objective is to protect customers from clearly egregious price increases."

Price gouging is just one of the many challenges facing Amazon as the coronavirus pandemic continues to put a deeper strain across its business. The slowing supply chain has delayed shipments of some products by a month, while warehouse workers have staged walkouts demanding better safety measures at their facilities. Meanwhile, Amazon executives have come under fire following Thursday's report by Vice that showed them engaged in an internal discussion to smear a fired warehouse employee who led one of the strikes last week.

The note to sellers is Amazon's first response to sellers following last week's letter signed by US attorneys general in 32 states, including Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and California, that demanded Amazon and other retailers like Walmart come up with stronger protective measures to prevent price gouging. In the letter, the attorneys general urged for better policies and restrictions, and a new "fair pricing" portal where consumers can directly report price gouging incidents.

But some sellers say Amazon has now become too aggressive in enforcing its anti-price gouging policies, often unfairly suspending sellers and products that haven't engaged in any price manipulating activities.

Ed Rosenberg, who runs an online seller group called ASGTG, told Business Insider that there's been significant increases lately in sellers who got suspended, including those who haven't raised prices all year. He said Amazon seems to be struggling to find the right balance in enforcing its price gouging policy, given the complex nature around it.

"Amazon seems to have gone to the other extreme blocking items and suspending accounts that are not close to price gouging," Rosenberg said. "They need to find a middle ground."

For sellers, it's difficult to keep track of every state's different price gouging rules. For example, California and New York prohibits 10% price increases in national emergencies, while Pennsylvania and Kansas have a price cap of 20% and 25%, respectively. Texas, meanwhile, doesn't have a hard cap.

Amazon's vague guidelines are also a challenge, sellers say. In the note, Amazon told sellers to refer to Amazon's Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy before setting their own prices. But that page doesn't offer specific price guidelines, simply saying sellers shouldn't "mislead" consumers or set prices that are "significantly higher" than recent prices offered on or off Amazon.

One seller, who wanted to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution, said it's unclear how to calculate the past average sales price that serves as a baseline for determining price gouging. Another seller said that there's inconsistency across Amazon's different marketplaces, as a product banned in Italy was still being sold on its Spanish marketplace.

"The problem is defining price gouging. At the state and Amazon level, there is no clear definition for e-commerce sellers," this seller said.

Chances are pretty good that at some point today you will stare into a screen at other people who are staring into screens. You will talk and listen and laugh and sneakily peer into each other's homes. And that odd activity will be an important way in which you interact with the world in the age of COVID-19. 

Videoconferencing is a central part of the hermit economy, and right now Zoom is its star – and its villain. And that is all of our faults, experts suggest.

Like Facebook more than a decade before, Zoom's popularity blew past its privacy issues, which seem to pop up like late coworkers on a mandatory video call, and they just keep on coming. 

Zoom is pulling the world together in this dark hour, while at the same time unleashing egregious security issues. And, as with Facebook, the onus is on you and your company and your group and your kid's school to investigate its privacy and security settings and protect yourselves.

It's as easy to blame Zoom as it was to blame Facebook, but the company made a valid point this week when its CEO wrote: "We did not design the product with the foresight that, in a matter of weeks, every person in the world would suddenly be working, studying, and socializing from home." 

Mark Ostrowski of Check Point, an Israeli security firm that identified Zoom vulnerabilities in January, gives the firm credit for speedily addressing issues. "We often look at these tools and complain about privacy and security, but they're free. You almost have to assume some of these things. You have to take security and privacy under our own responsibility." 

Which is to say: Security experts say that Zoom has serious issues that need addressing, and rivals like Cisco and Microsoft are quick to point out the ways that their more-mature technology protects users.

But many of those same experts also give Zoom credit for the gravity and speed of the company's response to those issues, and argue that users could be doing more to protect themselves, too. And even the most hard-boiled security experts note that if Zoom had not been focused on easy adoption without a lot of configuration, it might not have filled the immediate need for connection that neither it nor the world anticipated.

Zoom rides the zeitgeist

Zoom, a 2,000-person Silicon Valley company founded in 2011, has seen its stock nearly double this year while the Nasdaq market where it trades has tumbled more than 20%. Zoom calls were up 600% in March and the data they generated was up 1,200%, according to the cloud security firm Wandera. Zoom's iOS app is No. 1 for business, and No. 1 overall in downloads rated by the service App Annie. CEO Eric Yuan won hearts and minds by giving schools use of the videoconferencing platform. There has literally been a lovefest around the company: Insider recently reported that a London sex club hosted a "virtual orgy" on the platform with "a lot of nakedness and lingerie on display and people challenging each other to do certain things." 

It hasn't all been peace and love, though. This week the FBI warned the world about "Zoombombing," in which intruders with swastika tattoos were dropping into school web conferences, and screaming profanities and teacher's privacy information.  

Research from the University of Toronto cited a UK Cabinet meeting being held on Zoom, complete with meeting ID number and ministers' faces onscreen (not to mention virus-stricken Prime Minister Boris Johnson). This highly-classified use of the platform was even more questionable in light of the report's other findings that much of Zoom's development and some of its user data is run through China. 

The New York Times found that Zoom's software automatically sent meeting participants' names and email addresses to a company system it used to match them with their LinkedIn profiles.

And a class action case with citations from the events of this week was filed on behalf of users whose information was given to Facebook via yet another Zoom privacy opening. 

And that's not to mention the fact that the company has been lambasted for allegations that it made misleading marketing claims around the encryption of video calls on the service.

What Zoom says

It would be tempting to envy Zoom's popularity, but it clearly has brought challenges.

"Our platform was built primarily for enterprise customers – large institutions with full IT support," CEO Yuan wrote on the Zoom blog this week. "We now have a much broader set of users who are utilizing our product in a myriad of unexpected ways, presenting us with challenges we did not anticipate when the platform was conceived." 

The company noted it has deleted the tool exposed by The New York Times that accessed meeting participants' LinkedIn data, and froze new features so engineering can focus on security issues. 

On Friday evening, the company also announced new anti-Zoombombing measures coming on April 5th, including new default settings to enable both passwords and the "waiting room" feature that allows hosts to vet conference participants. 

"During the COVID-19 pandemic, we are working around-the-clock to ensure that hospitals, universities, schools, and other organizations across the world can stay connected and operational," the company said in a statement. "We are proud of the role we are playing during this challenging time and committed to providing users with the tools they need."

What the competition says

Cisco, makers of WebEx, an older and arguably more secure platform, was not shy about weighing in on its popular rival. "We are different. Security is not an afterthought. It's part of our culture," says Abhay Kulkarni, Cisco's general manager of WebEx Meetings. Cisco bought WebEx in 2007, but the company has been around since 1995 – a paleozoic era for web conferencing. (One of its early engineers was Zoom's CEO, Eric Yuan.) Kulkarni says WebEx meetings require a password, can be locked, and are harder to share online. 

Microsoft, makers of the web conferencing tools in its Teams coworking tools, says its video conferencing "is built with Microsoft security, identity and compliance technologies" including identity protection via multi-factor authentication; data-loss prevention, which prevents sensitive content from being accidentally shared; access controls; and the antivirus tools in its built-in  Microsoft Threat Protection. Microsoft is also providing some free access to its coworking tools during the virus crisis. 

Google declined to comment on the security of its Hangouts web conferencing app, but technical specs show its meetings are encrypted, that invitations cannot be shared except by a host organization, and that meeting codes are long, difficult to crack, and not available in advance of the meeting. 

Wickr, a high-security, software-as-a-service alternative to Zoom with end-to-end encryption, says its web conferencing is different because all data is only available at the end points involved in the individual conversations – not via a central server that could get hacked. Founded in 2012, Wickr has around 50 employees and is a privately held company that doesn't reveal financial records. Crunchbase reports it has raised $73 million in venture capital. 

"Is Zoom bringing the world together, or unleashing security threats? Both," says Joel Wallenstrom, CEO of Wickr. "I'm watching my kids' high school getting onto Zoom fast. People are using this to weather the storm. I think Zoom is doing a great job, but it's disingenuous to say they can serve large security needs."

What cybersecurity researchers say

In January, the Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point showed how hackers could eavesdrop into Zoom calls by generating and guessing random numbers allocated to Zoom conference URLs. Zoom fixed the security breach and addressed other issues.

"We followed the proper process of disclosure in January," says Ostrowski, its evangelist. "We went to them, Zoom fixed it, and then we released our research. Some of the people publishing right now about unfixed research flaws in Zoom are kind of piling on. I'm very impressed with how Zoom responded to this with an open dialogue and with the fixes they released very quickly." 

Zoom's viral popularity brought a rush of hacking and scrutiny to a platform never intended to host Cabinet meetings, or even board meetings without IT oversight. 

Patrick Wardle, a cybersecurity researcher who has presented findings at large security conferences such as BlackHat, DefCon, and RSA, recently published a blog post ("The 'S' in Zoom Stands For Security") detailing several vulnerabilities he found in Zoom, including flaws that could give hackers the ability to taken control of the microphone and camera on a Mac – or the entire computer.

"For better or worse, businesses generally value features and usability vs. security and privacy," Wardle says. "And Zoom both prioritized and shone in the former."

For finance and tech firms, spring recruiting will look a bit different this year.

As the coronavirus pandemic has universities shutting down and recruiters working under shelter in place conditions, companies that are looking to hire have to rethink their traditional methods of finding talent.

HireVue, a Utah-based startup that private-equity giant The Carlyle Group owns a majority stake in, offers employers the ability to evaluate candidates and conduct interviews online. And as more Americans are staying home to prevent the spread of the virus, industries in need of workers are using HireVue to recruit from afar.

"Customers are trying to virtualize every part of the hiring process," said Kevin Parker, chairman and CEO of HireVue.

And HireVue offers more than just video interviewing. It also has AI-driven candidate evaluation tools, which can help hiring managers review candidates more efficiently.

HireVue is used by companies like Goldman Sachs, Hilton, and Intel to conduct both pre-recorded and live interviews, all online.

Carlyle offers portfolio companies a way to hire through the crisis

With new deals paused because of economic turmoil, a near-term challenge for private-equity firms is helping out with operations at their own businesses. PE firms have been busy communicating with their existing portfolio companies about how to maneuver the fluid situation, Business Insider has reported. 

Carlyle bought a majority stake in HireVue last October. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Carlyle currently controls HireVue's board. Prior to Carlyle's investment last October, HireVue had raised $93 million in VC cash from investors including Sequoia Capital and TCV.

During the pandemic, HireVue is offering its platform for free to fellow Carlyle Group portfolio companies.

HireVue's platform will come in handy for Carlyle's finance and business services companies, like NetMotion, TCW Group, and Veritas Holdings. Now's the time when they're typically doing undergraduate and MBA recruiting, but for now, they're not unable to conduct spring interviews on campuses.

"Clearly no one's on campus, so it's really hard to do campus recruiting right now. But campus recruiting has been an area where HireVue has a lot of great customers," Ashley Evans, principal in the technology, media, and telecom group at Carlyle and member of the HireVue board.

In 2016, Goldman Sachs announced it would no longer travel to college campuses to conduct interviews. Instead, all first-round interviews for undergraduates are now conducted via HireVue's pre-recorded video platform.

"There's been a very measurable transition from that in-person experience on campus to more of a virtual experience," said Parker.

Goldman Sachs said that by using HireVue, the firm is able to interview a broader range of candidates outside of its typical Ivy League recruiting network.

And Parker thinks that online interviews will continue to catch on.

"I think the vast majority of campus recruiting for corporate America will transition to a video-based solution," said Parker.

In addition to its video platform, HireVue offers AI-driven assessment tools for recruiters and hiring managers to evaluate candidates. The startup, which facilitated 4.5 million interviews last year alone, also uses its own store of data to suggest effective interview questions.

"It's not enough just having a video connection to someone. You need intelligence and you need structured interviews," said Anderson. "You need ways to help recruiters and employers and interviewers deal with the scale of demand for jobs."

HireVue is currently free for hospitals, and it's supporting thousands of interviews daily

While the coronavirus pandemic has left a record number of Americans jobless, some industries, like healthcare and grocery stores, are rushing to hire.

Hospitals will also be offered HireVue's platform at no cost during the pandemic. 

"With as many people that are going to be looking for work as are right now, it was an easy decision for us," said Parker. 

The platform supports over 1 million interviews on a quarterly basis, and now, it's seeing those numbers climb.

"The business has the ability to deploy quickly and scale quickly," said Evans.

Grocery stores, the company said, are interviewing 15,000 candidates a day, using both live and pre-recorded interviews, for jobs like stocking shelves. And telecom providers whose call centers have been shut down due to the pandemic are hiring to re-insource things like customer service, and they're using HireVue to conduct interviews.

While candidates are typically given a few days to complete their interviews, HireVue has seen a 40% increase in the number of candidates sending in their videos the same day an employer offers an interview.

Remote interviews enable companies to hire during a lockdown

As unemployment rises due to coronavirus-related layoffs and business closures, more people are looking for jobs online.

While there's no shortage of candidates for jobs in hospitals, call centers, and grocery stores, companies may struggle to assess workers' transferable skills, said Matt Anderson, chief digital officer of Carlyle.

"Hourly workers make up the vast majority of the jobs in the country, and many don't have resumes," said Anderson. 

And this issue is made more acute in the current environment where hospitality and restaurant workers are largely out of work. They're turning to places like grocery stores to find new jobs, and while the skills can be transferable, it can be hard for hiring managers to sift through individual applications. 

"Suddenly you have grocers and healthcare systems that need people to come and do different work," said Anderson. "But a lot of the skills and abilities and underlying ways that we work can be extended into those types of applications."

HireVue's AI-driven platform can help companies scan candidates' skills and evaluate their potential, even without an exact match in prior experience.

Online recruiting will continue to grow as it enables job mobility

"As the familiarity with tools like this increases, I think the willingness to adopt them will go up," said Evans. 

But a shift in our norms takes time, and HireVue needs to make sure that companies understand the benefits of moving recruiting online.

"A big underpinning of our investment thesis was to break apart some of those preconceived notions that exist at employers and have people acknowledge that this is actually a great, more fair, more efficient way to acquire talent," said Evans.

Efficiency is a big selling point of HireVue, as recruiters can spend less time in transit and more time evaluating candidates online. What's more, recruiting online can also broaden a company's talent pool and increase mobility for workers.

"Even before the crisis, I think there was a belief that any worker could go and apply for any job and that just really wasn't true," said Anderson.

"Labor mobility and wage mobility, those were concepts that we talked about but they weren't really a reality," Anderson said.

For many, finding a new job requires not only dedicated time for the job search but possibly time off from their current jobs to sit interviews.

With HireVue's pre-recorded video platform, candidates get the flexibility to record their interviews at any time.

"Virtual interviewing is going to play a key role and I think it will probably play a key role from this point forward," said Anderson.

A baseless conspiracy theory linking the novel coronavirus to 5G broadband technology is spreading across the UK, has apparently caused physical damage this week.

A 70-foot cellphone mast in Birmingham, England, went up in flames this week and is reportedly being blamed on people who allegedly believe in the bogus rumor, The Guardian reported.

EE, the network operator, told the newspaper that it is still investigating the fire but that it "looks likely at this time" to be the work of arsonists.

"To deliberately take away mobile connectivity at a time when people need it more than ever to stay connected to each other, is a reckless, harmful and dangerous thing to do," the company said, according to The Guardian.

Another fire was found by a 5G phone tower near Liverpool, England, late Friday night, the Liverpool Echo reported.

The cause of the fire is not clear, but hours earlier, Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson had condemned the "bizarre" conspiracy theories that 5G was a plot to spread the coronavirus, according to the Liverpool Echo.

 

Anderson had said: "I'm amazed that there are people out there who saying things like this — that COVID-19 is somehow linked to 5G. It's bizarre."

Elsewhere in England, telecommunications engineers are reportedly facing verbal abuse and threats of violence from people who believe in the spurious theory.

According to the MailOnline, an unidentified woman approached two workers laying cable in a London street, and blamed them for killing families.

"We're all going to be in hospital on breathing apparatus. It's because of this wire here," she said, according to the news site.

"How do you feel? Do you have children? Do you have parents? How do you feel? When they turn that switch on, you can say 'bye bye mama,'' she reportedly said. "Are you content to continue doing that job? Are you paid enough to kill her?"

The engineers were employed by Community Fibre and do not use 5G technology, according to the company.

Full Fact, the UK's independent fact-checking nonprofit, has already debunked the myth that there is any link between the 5G network in Wuhan, where the coronavirus broke out, and the disease.

"The main implication of the claim — that 5G can impact immune systems — is totally unfounded. There is no evidence linking the new coronavirus to 5G," Full Fact said.

Nonetheless, the rumors have spread rapidly on social media. According to The Guardian, Facebook has already removed one group where users were being encouraged to send in footage of them destroying mobile phone apparatus.

An online petition claiming that it was dangerous to live close to a 5G mast because it would enhance the chance of COVID-19 infection was shared by Amanda Holden, a judge on "Britain's Got Talent," according to The Guardian. The post was later taken down.

Dana is engrossed in the music piping through her Bluetooth headphones on her commute to work — a grocery-store worker, her job is considered essential — when a man sits down behind her on the bus.

She doesn't notice that he's come within 6 feet, and she doesn't hear him cough into his elbow.

But days later, a free app on Dana's smartphone alerts her to news she'd been dreading since installing it: She was likely exposed to someone with COVID-19.

Dana got the alert because the man on the bus saw a doctor, tested positive, and was given a special code to type into the same free app. Once he did, his phone uploaded a list of encrypted codes to a central server — strings of letters and numbers that anonymously represent every close interaction he's had with other app users over the past 21 days. The server then notified all the users that generated those codes of possible exposure, including Dana.

This is the future envisioned by a team of more than 130 European scientists and technologists. On Wednesday, after three weeks of near-continuous volunteer work, the group unveiled a framework (and a nonprofit organization) to support the scheme, called the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing project, or PEPP-PT.

The project scientists believe their initiative can get people back to work with minimized risk by using smartphone-to-smartphone wireless signals to detect who has been exposed to someone with COVID-19 and alert them. PEPP-PT relies on Bluetooth low energy, or BLE — a common mobile wireless technology — to perform what epidemiologists call "contact tracing." The process involves figuring out who came into contact with a sick person, then instructing those people to quarantine themselves.

"We all live in a global world, or we used to live in a global world, and we need to get back there if we don't want to break our livelihood completely," Hans-Christian Boos, an artificial-intelligence and computer-science researcher who helped organize the effort, told Business Insider.

PEPP-PT's teams focused on building an anonymous, easy-to-implement, internationally scalable, and essentially free phone-based approach that would not sacrifice privacy in the same way as other tracing initiatives used in countries like China, Israel, Singapore, and South Korea.

"We said, 'We need to do something, but we can't do it the way that China has done it.' Because if we did, we would at the same time just throw away freedom," Boos said.

Why anonymous digital contact tracing may help fight the pandemic

The global aircraft industry is essentially a duopoly — a decades-long transatlantic rivalry between the US' Boeing and France's Airbus which, as trends change or one is hit by hardship, have continually overtaken each other to temporarily reign as the biggest in the world.

And over those decades, it has been certain philosophies in design and management that have kept the two distinct. The fundamental difference comes down to how those philosophies cause pilots to fly those planes.

Over history, Boeing was known for embracing pilot control over fully automated systems, while Airbus, its French-headquartered, but pan-European rival, pioneered such technology. Both viewed their strategy as fundamental to safety, ending up with similar safety records as a result.

But now, a new automated system that helped bring down two of Boeing's 737 Max planes, and pilots' claims that the company didn't tell them about that system, have caused the biggest crisis in the manufacturer's history. It hemorrhaging cash and trying to appease angry airlines and lawmakers, who could use the crashes to change the rules of aviation forever.

When an automated system failed, killing 346 people on two planes, pilots questioned Boeing's philosophy.

When the first Boeing 737 Max plane crashed in Indonesia in October 2018, killing all 189 people on board, pilots were concerned.

They saw news reports and preliminary information from the investigation that noted that a new automated system in the Max planes had misfired, leaving the pilots on board panicked and unable to regain control of the plane.

In the US, pilots from the Allied Pilots Association, the union that represents American Airlines pilots, turned their anger to Boeing executives, saying they had no idea the automated system was on the planes they were flying.

One pilot said: "I would think that there would be a priority of putting explanations of things that could kill you."

The purpose of the technology — called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS — was, of course, not to kill pilots.

The system was actually designed to help keep the 737 Max level in the air and prevent the plane's nose from pointing upwards risking engine stalls. It was installed because the 737 Max featured newer, heavier engines than previous 737 models, which had the potential to cause the issue.

Boeing then offered assurances that a second crash would not happen, audio from that meeting showed, and said that it had not wanted to "overload the crews with information that's unnecessary" about the plane.

But then, five months later, a second 737 Max plane crashed in Ethiopia, killing the 157 people onboard

Separate investigations into both crashes found that MCAS malfunctions meant the pilots simply could not control the plane, with the final report into the Lion Air crash finding the pilots tried more than 20 times to stop the plane's nose pointing down before it crashed into the sea at 450 mph (724.2 kph).

The findings brought representatives for pilots and cabin crew to Congress, where they told lawmakers that Boeing not giving pilots enough information about the MCAS system was the company's "final fatal mistake."

Such hearings prompted flight crews to say they didn't want to fly on the plane anymore, even when it returns to the sky after its updates are approved by global aviation regulators.

The irony is that Boeing's philosophy was to put the pilot in control

In addition to the wider questions about automation in the industry that the MCAS has raised, a cruel irony has emerged in the aftermath of the crashes: Boeing was known as the planemaker that shunned very powerful automated systems, and trusted the skill of pilots.

Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California who studies the role humans play in aviation safety, described the companies as traditionally having "two design philosophies."

"The level of control they give to the pilot and transparency — they're totally different. That's why I was unpleasantly surprised when the Max crashes happened. I thought Boeing even violated its own kudos and design philosophy."

And Christine Negroni, an air-safety specialist and the author of "The Crash Detectives," a book about aviation disasters, said "the great irony is that it was Boeing who held back and had this idea that 'We feel the human in control is the best way to go about it. That's our philosophy.'"

Boeing has embraced automation for years, but the MCAS system appears to have been a fundamental break in its philosophy

To suggest that Boeing has not embraced automation would be deeply misleading. The company uses it across its fleet, and has done so for decades. The two plane makers have similar safety records, and aviation has only become safer since new technology has been introduced.

But experts say the key difference is this idea of pilot communication, as well as how had long wanted pilots to ultimately be in control.

Now, they say, MCAS appears to have totally overthrown that commitment.

Alan Diehl, a former investigator with both the US's National Transportation Safety Board and FAA, told Business Insider: "I think why the pilots were understandably so upset with Boeing because, historically, Boeing insisted that they would keep the pilots in the loop."

Pilots and aviation industry experts describe the fundamental difference between Boeing and Airbus as being one about pilot control.

"Boeing always wanted to keep the pilots more in the loop," Diehl said.

"I think so many of the pilots felt they were betrayed by Boeing when they found out about the MCAS because they didn't know really what the function was, or how it worked, and most importantly how to shut it off, or when to shut it off."

Indeed, with the Max, Boeing maintains that pilots were able to override the automatic actions and disable MCAS with manual switches. But pilots say they were unaware of the system itself, never mind how to disable it.

Diehl noted that "automation has crept in to Boeing products" over time. He described MCAS as "a new level of, I don't want to say dis-information, but lack of information. "

"It was almost a total information blackout," he said. 

Chris Clearfield, founder of risk management consulting firm System Logic, a licensed pilot, and co-author of "Meltdown," a book about handling catastrophes, noted that "both Airbus and Boeing planes have an incredible amount of automation."

"Both are really fundamentally highly automated aircraft. I think the difference is that Boeing's design philosophy has always been that the pilots have direct access to the flight controls. Airbus has always put a lot of filtering between that."

Mark Goodrich, an aviation lawyer and former aeronautical engineer and test pilot who focuses on automation, said that Boeing and Airbus' philosophies had been coming together long before MCAS.

"The philosophies were dramatically different. But they're not dramatically different anymore. And they have come together. Boeing took a very traditional approach for a long time," he said.

In comparison, Airbus is known for being all-in with automation

Airbus' A320 plane, unveiled in the 1980s, was the first plane to have two highly influential pieces of technology — called fly-by-wire and flight envelope protection — still used to automate parts of flight.

Fly-by-wire — a system that allows pilots to input plane commands into a computer instead of a using mechanical levers or dials — and flight envelope protection, which stops pilots from pushing the plane beyond certain control limits, have now become more or less standard in the industry.

But Michel Guerard, Airbus' vice president for product safety, told Business Insider that when Airbus introduced them "you had people who didn't like it."

"There was an argument about this in the early days," he said.

But now versions of fly-by-wire and flight envelope protection can be found on Boeing planes, and Guerard said that most planes now, including from Boeing and Airbus, "pretty much look the same in terms of automation. "

What people think about when it comes to the difference between Airbus and Boeing, then, comes from those early approaches, Guerard said.

"The story about our philosophy being different from Boeing," he said, "comes from the days when we had the A320, which was the first fly-by-wire and flight envelope protected aircraft."

But even as Boeing embraced some automated systems, it is still holding back more than Airbus.

Fly-by-wire on Boeing planes still has physical levers and gives feedback to the pilot that feel like older, manual controls.

And when it comes to flight envelope protection, for example, Boeing can pilots can "push the envelope" — bringing the plane beyond those limits with a lot of effort.

Guerard describes the envelope system as born from the idea that there a range of controls and actions that are safe to do during a flight, and a range of controls and actions that are not.

Pilots have control within those limits, but cannot totally override the plane's authority to go beyond them, because there is apparently no safe reason for them to do so: "The crew is not permitted to crash the aircraft, basically."

Both approaches have fans and detractors in the industry, and both have been credited for both saving lives and contributing to accidents.

John Lauber, the former Chief Product Safety Officer at Airbus, told Business Insider that much criticism of automated technology in planes is "nonsense," and that Airbus data shows that "each succeeding generation of aircraft is safer than its predecessors" as a result of it.

But, he said, automation poses its own challenges for safety if not designed and implemented properly, or if pilots are not properly trained. "But the safety record clearly shows that properly done cockpit automation significantly enhances the safety of aircraft operations," he said.

The 737 Max crisis has allowed Airbus to regain the title of the world's biggest planemaker. But the boost to Airbus has been minimal thanks to the nature of nature of the industry, where planes are ordered years in advance.

Boeing is fixing the Max, but whatever it does now could prove its philosophy has changed for good.

Boeing has spent months working on updates to the MCAS system, so it will take information from more than one plane sensor and can only activate once during flight. Boeing also reversed its position after long arguing that simulator training was not necessary for pilots.

The updates mean giving pilots more control, changing MCAS so it "will never provide more input than the pilot can counteract using the control column alone." Boeing says it will make it one of the safest-ever plane.

Boeing is also reflecting more widely on the very way it builds planes, establishing a committee to review its design and development of planes, including reexamining how the company designs cockpits and expects pilots to interact with controls.

Peter Pedraza, a Boeing spokesman, said it has resulted in "immediate action" to strengthen safety.

But the fallout from the Max crashes may ultimately be overshadowed by a new crisis for Boeing, as countries around the world lock down their borders and demand for travel plunges due to the coronavirus, threatening the world's airlines and potentially causing them to cancel orders or stop placing new ones.

The virus, combined with its existing Max problems, has already pushed Boeing to offer voluntary layoffs to employees and note that it is in "uncharted waters."

Boeing could also take this moment as a basis to turn to automation more than ever before.

In November, when he was still the company's chairman, Dave Calhoun, Boeing's new CEO, said: "We are going to have to ultimately almost — almost — make these planes fly on their own."

 

If you're hoping to forget your COVID-19 fears and get swept up in the niche drama of big cat captivity in the United States, there's no better quarantine activity than watching Netflix's newest docuseries "Tiger Cat: Murder, Mayhem and Madness."

The hit documentary chronicles the escalating conflict between big cat breeders who own private zoos and animal rights activists — a conflict that culminates in an alleged murder-for-hire plot. Ultimately, though, the appeal of "Tiger King" comes from the chaotic energy of its bizarre and compelling cast. 

Accordingly, the #TigerKing hashtag has dominated Twitter since the documentary premiered and celebrities are already angling to score roles in a potential movie remake. 

You don't have to experience the magic and chaos of "Tiger King" by yourself. Netflix Party, an increasingly popular feature from the streaming service, allows users to download a Google Chrome browser extension that facilitates group-watching. After downloading the extension, you are free to invite friends to watch content simultaneously — and everyone can share their thoughts in a virtual chat. 

For those who have already binged the series, Netflix's endless catalog of docuseries has other options, from "Making a Murderer" to "The Staircase." 

If the real-life drama of tiger breeding and captivity isn't your preferred genre of entertainment, you can peruse the streaming service's selection of sci-fi movies, from "The Matrix" to "The Lobster," or you can check out some of the more popular tear-jerkers for a change of pace. 

 

 

Employees at an Amazon warehouse outside Washington, DC, were told Thursday that a person infected with the novel coronavirus was inside the building on March 31, a source told Business Insider. 

The company has confirmed the incident. "We are supporting the individual, who is recovering," Amazon spokesperson Timothy Carter told Business Insider.

In a recorded phone call on April 2, the online retailer informed workers at its fulfillment center in Springfield, Virginia, just outside the nation's capital, that someone who had been in the building earlier in the week had subsequently been diagnosed with COVID-19. 

A person who received the message said that they felt conditions inside the warehouse were conducive to the spread of the virus.

"I feared for my safety," the source told Business Insider, requesting anonymity. "So many people [were] not being good about complying with physical distancing."

The Virginia location was not the only Amazon facility to report a positive test of COVID-19 on Thursday. Earlier in the day, the company informed employees at a warehouse in Jeffersonville, Indiana, that someone last in the building on March 26 was later found to have been infected.

The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday evening that Amazon had, in the last 24 hours, confirmed four additional infections at warehouses in Southern California.

Amazon has declined to reveal just how many facilities, in total, have reported positive test results among workers. However, there have been reports of COVID-19 cases at no less than 30 company facilities nationwide.

While Amazon has implemented a number of measures to promote health and safety during the pandemic, Business Insider reported Wednesday that managers at the Indiana location appeared to be failing to heed the stated policy of requiring employees to remain at least six feet apart.

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A wave of startup layoffs prompted by the coronavirus pandemic appears to have hit almost every sector — travel companies like TripActions, child-care startup Wonderschool and electric scooter startup Bird have all been forced to lay off workers in recent weeks.

Venture-backed startups are grappling with a new economic reality brought by the coronavirus pandemic — plans to raise funding are dissolving rapidly as the threat of a recession grows. Already, funding for private companies has fallen by 12% according to CB Insights and it seems likely to dry up further.  There are also reports from founders saying investors are using the COVID-19 pandemic to renege on deals, Business Insider previously reported.

So as startups begin to draft emergency plans to conserve cash this week, job cuts across the ecosystem have ramped up further, even as the coronavirus outbreak prompts historic layoff activity across the entire US economy. 

Business Insider is tracking the layoffs and what's happening at each company. The numbers are based on our own reporting as well as media reports elsewhere. 

Zoom is taking steps to make its app more secure, after facing backlash from users about the privacy and security settings of its product. 

Starting April 5, Zoom will require passwords if a user tries to enter a meeting using just the meeting ID instead of the meeting invite link. It will also make virtual waiting rooms on by default, so the meeting host had to manually allow others to join the meeting. These two changes will apply to free users and people who have personally upgraded their account to the first level of a paid plan. 

"We're always striving to deliver our users a secure virtual meeting environment. Effective April 5, we are enabling passwords and ​virtual waiting rooms by default ​for our Free Basic and Single Pro users. We strongly encourage all users to implement passwords for all of their meetings," Zoom said in a statement.

This comes after so-called "Zoombombing" incidents, where hackers or trolls will enter random Zoom calls to share indecent messages or other spam, became a frequent occurrence. Zoombombing affected online classes, corporate gatherings, and even virtual Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

In an email sent to users on Friday the company said: "we've chosen to enable passwords on your meetings and turn on Waiting Rooms by default as additional security enhancements to protect your privacy." It also said previously scheduled meetings will have passwords enabled as well.

The company also explained how to find meeting passwords. "For meetings scheduled moving forward, the meeting password can be found in the invitation. For instant meetings, the password will be displayed in the Zoom client. The password can also be found in the meeting join URL," the email to users said. 

The new security enhancements come after Zoom CEO Eric Yuan apologized for the many privacy and security issues users found with the app and said the company will take steps to address it. One of those steps is stopping the implementation of any new features so the company can focus on solving existing privacy and security concerns.

The rise of Zoombombing prompted the FBI to warn users about the problem earlier this week, and the New York Attorney General to send a letter to Zoom asking what new security measures the company has put in place, if any, to protect user privacy amid its huge surge in usage.

The problem stems from the fact that anyone can join any open Zoom call if they find the meeting ID. Hackers have come up with tools to create giant lists of random meeting IDs, giving them a wide set of calls to crash in on, without knowing what they're walking into. 

The only ways to prevent it are to put a password on the meeting, or to use a virtual waiting room so the host can vet those who are joining. 

Yuan has said that its privacy struggles are rooted in the fact that it was originally intended for businesses, not consumers. But with shelter-in-place and social distancing mandates across the globe to help stop the spread of coronavirus, Zoom's user base has grown exponentially — 200 million daily free and paying users in March, up from 10 million at the end of December.

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As Apple begins asking some retail employees to work from home while stores remain closed, the company is offering workers reimbursements for purchasing work-from-home equipment and a new digital resource for managing stress, according to three current employees. 

Taken together, the benefits signal that Apple is continuing to invest in its brick-and-mortar workforce as retail chains across the country are suffering and resorting to furloughs and layoffs to cut costs amidst the coronavirus pandemic. 

Apple is offering a $100 reimbursement for retail staff who need to purchase equipment like an office chair or desk, the people said. Apple may also offer reimbursements for those who need to upgrade their internet plan.

The tech giant also added a new wellness tool for retail employees in recent weeks through Sanvello, a digital service for managing stress and anxiety. It's the latest mental wellness perk for Apple workers, as the company had already been offering access to the meditation app Ten Percent Happier.

Apple did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the additional resources for workers. 

Apple said on March 13 that it would temporarily close all retail stores outside of Greater China to protect employees and customers as the coronavirus pandemic spread. That was just before states across the country began issuing policies to close nonessential businesses.  

Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a memo published on March 13 that all hourly employees will continue to receive normal pay, and Apple also recently said it intends to continue paying contract workers as well, as The Wall Street Journal reported. 

It recently began asking retail staff to work from home to help manage the influx of customers seeking assistance with their devices, as Bloomberg first reported. 

The move comes as the coronavirus pandemic has sent ripples through the retail, travel, and restaurant industries and has shaken the global economy as 90% of Americans are under orders to stay at home. Hundreds of thousands of retail workers are being furloughed or laid off at major chains like Macy's, JCPenny, the Gap, and others. Companies hit hard by the pandemic, like Amtrak, La-Z-Boy, and Mattress Firm are cutting 401(k) contributions to save cash, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A record number of 6.64 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the week that ended on Saturday, coming after the figure spiked to an unprecedented 3.28 million the previous week.

Apple has not yet said when it plans to reopen its retail stores, but a report from Bloomberg suggests stores will remain closed until May. 

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