Elliott Management, the massive investment firm led by Paul Singer, is seeking the removal of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

Singer's firm has taken a substantial stake in Twitter and has nominated four directors to its board, Bloomberg reported.

CNBC also reported the news, saying that part of the reason Singer wants Dorsey out is his attention being split between running both Twitter and financial technology company Square as CEO of both firms — and because of Dorsey's stated plans to move to Africa this year.

Twitter's stock jumped more than 7% in after-hours trading on Friday.

Twitter and Elliott Management both declined to comment.

Amazon has changed its hiring process for some positions, switching from on-site interviews to video calls, a spokesperson told Business Insider on Friday.

Gizmodo first reported earlier in the day that an Amazon recruiter had sent an email to a candidate saying: "we are not to bring any candidates onsite in person for interviews due to coronavirus concerns."

Amazon maintained that it is not canceling all in-person interviews, but instead that it is moving to video interviews by default for some job types.

The change comes as companies are taking increasingly aggressive steps to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease, COVID-19. Earlier in the day, Amazon confirmed to Business Insider that it had instructed all 798,000 of its employees to "defer non-essential travel."

That's in addition to the company's existing restrictions on employee travel to and from China, which have been in effect since January. Amazon also has indicated that its supply chain could be impacted, emailing sellers earlier this week to ask if they anticipated inventory issues.

Pope Francis wants to see facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and other powerful new technologies follow a doctrine of ethical and moral principles. 

In a joint document made public on Friday, the pope, along with IBM and Microsoft, laid out a vision that outlined principles for the emerging technologies and called for new regulations, Reuters first reported.

The Vatican's "Rome Call for AI Ethics" said that AI tools should be built "with a focus not on technology, but rather for the good of humanity and of the environment" and consider the "needs of those who are most vulnerable."

The "algor-ethics" outlined in the document included transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality, reliability, security, and privacy, alluding to debates that have emerged around topics like algorithmic bias and data privacy.

Along those lines, it called for new regulations around "advanced technologies that have a higher risk of impacting human rights, such as facial recognition." Facial-recognition technology in particular has sparked concerns in recent years, thanks to research showing its problems with racial bias and the lack of transparency from companies that develop it.

The document, which was endorsed by Microsoft and IBM, is not the first time Francis has weighed in on ethical issues surrounding technology. At a Vatican conference in September, the pontiff warned that technological progress, if not kept in check, could lead society to "an unfortunate regression to a form of barbarism."

Others, both within and outside the tech community, have rolled out plans to address the side effects of AI. In January, the Trump administration unveiled a binding set of rules that federal agencies must follow when designing AI policies, while the European Union announced its own nonbinding principles in April.

Various people and organizations within the tech industry have spoken out about regulating AI, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, as well as AI ethics groups like AI Now and OpenAI.

The annual Game Developers Conference, scheduled to take place in San Francisco from March 16 to 20, is "postponed" until "later in the summer" due to concerns related to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease, or COVID-19, the event's organizers said in a press release.

"After close consultation with our partners in the game development industry and community around the world, we've made the difficult decision to postpone the Game Developers Conference this March," the release said. It did not give an exact date for when the event will now be held.

GDC's postponement comes amid a string of announcements from major exhibitors pulling out: Facebook, Sony's PlayStation group, Microsoft's Xbox group, Unity, Electronic Arts, and "Fortnite" developer Epic Games all announced they would skip this year's show to safeguard their employees from the COVID-19.

Many of the exhibitors who planned to attend have promised to make their GDC programming available online, including Microsoft, Facebook, and Unity.

Earlier this month Facebook cancelled its own Global Marketing Summit, which was scheduled to take place at the Moscone Center a week before GDC, from March 9 to 12. San Francisco has announced a state of emergency due to the coronavirus outbreak, though no cases of infection have been reported in the city. One patient from a cruise ship was transported to a San Francisco hospital on Feb. 20.

COVID-19, the coronavirus disease, originated in China, where more than 78,000 people have been infected, according to the World Health Organization. Nearly 3,000 more cases have been reported in 40 countries around the world, including 53 cases of infection in the United States. The WHO reports that 2,762 people have died due to COVID-19 infection as of February 26, most of them in China.

OneSignal raises $7M for its free push notification tools

Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

Facebook is trying to replicate the success it found adding Stories to Instagram by bringing the feature to the forefront of another one of its apps: Messenger.

A redesign to Messenger, an offshoot of Facebook's direct messaging function, has already started rolling out to users, TechCrunch reported Friday. Screenshots of the redesigned app — provided by social media manager Jeff Higgins to Business Insider — show that one of the most significant changes is the added emphasis on Facebook Stories, the feature where friends can share 24-hour photo and video highlights.

Messenger will soon have a more slimmed-down look with a minimalist aesthetic. Gone is the Discover tab, which currently houses the hundreds of thousands of automated chatbots that Facebook users can message to ask questions to businesses, play games, and even shop from brands. Instead of Stories appearing as small video previews atop the list of online Facebook friends, Stories get their own tab in the new Messenger app.

Facebook is likely betting that giving Stories more real estate will have a similar effect in Messenger that it has had in Instagram. Stories has been a runaway success for Instagram since it launched in August 2016. As of this January, Instagram Stories had 500 million daily users.

While Stories has been a boon to Facebook and its family of apps, the company can't take credit for the idea. Instagram borrowed the format and idea from Snapchat, but found much more success with the feature: Two years after introducing Stories, Instagram had twice as many people as Snapchat that were using Stories daily.

The makeover of Messenger's look seems to be Facebook's reaction to changing attitudes and desires among users. Facebook is emphasizing the features users love, while hiding away those that don't. Facebook bet big that chatbots would be the communication choice of the future when it launched them in Messenger in 2016. However, these bots ended up being hard to use and confusing for users.

Facebook did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. A Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch that the Messenger redesign is rolling out to users "in the next week."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested that Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II, the costly stealth jet considered to be pinnacle of US military aviation, "would have no chance" if pitted against a drone that is remotely piloted by a human.

At the US Air Force's Air Warfare Symposium in Florida, Musk said there should be a competitor to the F-35 program, according to a tweet by Lee Hudson, the Pentagon editor at Aviation Week.

Musk responded in his own tweet, saying that the "competitor should be a drone fighter plane that's remote controlled by a human, but with its maneuvers augmented by autonomy."

"The F-35 would have no chance against it," he added.

The F-35, variants of which are used by the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, has had its critics since its inception. Lawmakers have scrutinized it over multiple delays in production and its price tag, which at $406.5 billion, makes it the costliest weapons program in US history.

The Defense Department in October announced a $34 billion contract that includes delivery of 478 F-35s, according to CNBC.

Problems with the F-35 surfaced soon after it joined the fleet. Over 800 flaws riddled the software, according to a recent report by the Defense Department's director of operational test and evaluation, which also said the 25 mm cannon on the Air Force's F-35A, the most common variant, displayed an "unacceptable" level of accuracy.

The F-35 was also unable to meet a branchwide goal set by the previous defense secretary, James Mattis, in 2019. Mattis wanted 80% of F-35s and other stealth aircraft to be "mission-capable" 80% of the time.

The Air Force conference at which Musk made his comments included senior US military officials and pilots.

Speaking with Space and Missile Systems Center Commander Lt. Gen. John Thompson, Musk said autonomous drone warfare "is where it's at" and "where the future will be," according to Defense News.

"It's not that I want the future to be this. That's just what the future will be," Musk added. "The fighter jet era has passed. Yeah, the fighter jet era has passed. It's drones." 

Stocks have plummeted for a seventh straight day amid growing panic about the novel coronavirus.

The drop isn't expected to have a lasting effect on average investors, whose portfolios are expected to recover as stocks bounce back with time. Some billionaires, however, might not be so lucky.

The world's 500 richest people saw $139 billion wiped off their collective net worths on Monday alone, Bloomberg reported. Markets across the globe have continued to fall since then. The S&P 500 is down 10% from where it was when the week began, The New York Times reported. 

Falling markets knocked $1.8 billion off the net worth of former Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, the richest person in China, in the past week, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Chinese citizens may be shouldering the brunt of the public health crisis, but the economic fallout has not been as contained. No one lost more money than French billionaire and LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault in Monday's market drop, Bloomberg reported. Arnault lost $4.8 billion on Monday and another $1.5 billion on Tuesday, then regained $900 million on Wednesday, before losing an additional $2.7 billion on Thursday, leaving him with a net worth of $46.2 billion, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows. Business Insider's Mary Hanbury previously reported that the coronavirus could reduce the sale of luxury goods by as much as $43 billion this year due to reduced spending in China.

Jeff Bezos shouldered the second-largest drop on Monday, losing a total of $10 billion in the past week, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Over 83,000 people have been infected by the novel coronavirus and over 2,800 have died, Business Insider reported. While there are now confirmed cases on every continent except Antarctica, the vast majority are in China. Researchers believe the virus originated in bats and may have jumped from animals to people at a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Billionaires fared worse than ordinary 401k millionaires during the stock market meltdown at the end of 2018, Business Insider reported. Billionaires across the globe lost 7% of their collective net worth in 2018 due to market instability at the end of that year, Wealth-X found in its 2019 Billionaire Census. It was the first time in seven years that high net worth individuals saw their fortunes shrink, according to French technology consulting firm Capgemini.

In its 2019 World Wealth Report, Capgemini found that individuals with net worths between $1 million and $5 million lost less than those with net worths over $30 million and billionaires during that market rout.

"It's the risk versus reward scenario," Capgemini's Deputy Head of the Global Financial Services Market Intelligence Strategic Analysis Group Chirag Thakral told Business Insider in July. "Where in a good market [billionaires] are the ones leading the growth, in a bad market, they're the ones who are affected the most."

Although USB-C cables and connectors are becoming the standard for charging and data transfer, Micro USB is still prevalent. In fact, devices still rely on it — everything from budget phones and tablets to Bluetooth headphones and speakers — and it will be some time before they're completely extinct.

The best part is that Micro USB cables are now much less expensive, even high-end options. Our top pick, the Anker PowerLine Micro USB cable, is now less than half its original price tag on Amazon, and it's a durable cable from a well-known brand that we trust.

We've also rounded up the best super-long cable, the most durable, and a nifty retractable option that stretches from 2 to 33 inches.

Micro USB cables are affordable, but you should still opt for well-known brands to avoid any problems (like potentially frying a connected device) and ensure some longevity.

Prices and links are current as of 02/28/2020. Replaced Fuse Chicken Titan Travel with Fuse Chicken Titan as our durable option. We are currently researching and testing products for the best universal and best multi-pack categories. Updated by Steven Cohen.

One of the biggest problems in the sneaker resale market may now be more manageable. 

Earlier this month, product authentication technology provider Entrupy released its Legit Check Tech (LCT) solution, a device that uses artificial intelligence to determine whether a sneaker is counterfeit or not — and it only takes about a minute to use.

Fake pairs of popular Nike and Adidas sneakers are rampant in the resale sector. Authorities recently busted a counterfeiting operation that shipped $470 million worth of fake Nikes to the US.

"You have a sense of betrayal when you buy something and you're scammed off of it," Entrupy cofounder and CEO Vidyuth Srinivasan told Business Insider. "And I think that's really what we're trying to address."

Resale marketplaces and consignment shops like StockX and Urban Necessities use trained human authentication specialists to verify sneakers in-house. But for independent resellers that don't use middleman marketplaces to sell their goods, the threat of counterfeit sneakers is a serious problem that can be detrimental to business.

Counterfeit sneakers are pervasive on websites like eBay that lack authentication specialists, and at trade shows like Sneaker Con. For the most part, it's up to resellers and buyers to determine whether a pair is authentic or not.

For Entrupy, which already provides an authentication solution for luxury handbags, the plan is to sell the new sneaker authentication devices to retailers and high-level resellers. Instead of replacing humans, the goal is to equip authentication specialists with the technology to diminish any possible errors in the verification process. According to Srinivasan, the device is designed to help save high-volume resellers time and money while instilling their business with credibility.

"Nothing has slipped through our system, and we've tested hundreds of fakes of multiple different qualities," Srinivasan said.

Entrupy has not released details on the price of each device, but a representative said that the company will likely use a pricing model that corresponds with each seller's monthly transaction volume.

Though perhaps not the intended purpose, the device will likely enable independent resellers to grow their business without the help of a middleman authentication specialist. 

"Maybe with this, everyone can create their own marketplace," Srinivasan said.

Here's how the device works to catch counterfeit shoes in a matter of seconds:

A San Francisco tourism industry association released a letter this week to people registered for the now-postponed  Game Developers Conference that sought to allay coronavirus fears while using partial and selective quotes from city officials.

The quotes used by the San Francisco Travel Association appeared to play down the city's assessment of the risks, while organizers of the conference — the largest annual event for video game developers — have failed to mention San Francisco's recently declared state of emergency in the updates posted online about the conference and the coronavirus.

The travel association responded Friday that "We quoted sources directly and did not in any way misrepresent the facts." 

The situation underscores the fluid and quickly evolving nature of the coronavirus epidemic and the efforts by businesses and industry groups to respond to a health crisis that threatens to wipe out millions or more in lost business. The GDC gaming conference is one of several large upcoming tech events in San Francisco, and comes after the cybersecurity-focused RSA conference saw several large companies drop out due to coronavirus fears.

Large companies including Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts, Facebook, and Amazon dropped out of the GDC conference, which was scheduled to take place from March 16 to 20.  On Friday, conference organizers announced that it was "postponed" until "later in the summer."

In a letter dated February 25, San Francisco Travel Association CEO Joe D'Alessandro told registered attendees of the GDC show that "We want you to know that, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, 'There are zero confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in San Francisco, and the risk to the general public is low'." 

The health department website that D'Alessandro's letter links to said:

"Although there are zero confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in San Francisco residents, and the risk to the general public is currently low, the global picture is changing rapidly and we need to step-up preparedness." (Italics added.)

The quote D'Alessandro used was published in gaming blogs this week and his letter was linked to by The Washington Post. 

D'Alessandro said the health department updated their online statement since the letter was sent, and that the agency's website still says there is no recommendation to cancel social gatherings at this time. He noted that his letter linked to the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Public Health and the Department of Homeland Security. "If our intent were to obfuscate or sugar-coat this situation, would we have been so forthcoming with this information?" he asked. 

Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco's director of health, said this week that "This is a global outbreak that is entering a new phase, and we must be prepared." He added, "This is not business as usual."

The health department told Business Insider on Friday morning that its current statement about the city's virus situation is: "Although there are still zero confirmed cases in San Francisco residents, we are stepping up our preparedness in case that changes. The global picture is changing rapidly, and we are taking the necessary steps to protect San Franciscans from harm."

Patients are being treated at University of California, San Francisco Hospital after being taken from a Japanese cruise ship and then to Travis Air Force Base. A whistleblower complaint from a federal healthcare employee says evacuations at the air base were done unsafely. Northern California reported its second case of community transmission of the coronavirus in two days on Friday.

The coronavirus death toll surpassed 2,900, with more than 85,000 infected.

The same day that D'Alessandro's letter was published, San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the city due to the coronavirus, which the travel ssociation's letter noted. Breed and the department of health stressed that the emergency declaration is to help the city prepare in case the virus situation there worsens.

But the city's emergency declaration, albeit a proactive measure, was not included on a web page published by the GDC conference organizers designed to "keep the GDC community appraised of the latest updates" and "new information." The web page links to a February 4 letter from the health department stating that it is "not recommending the cancellation of public events at this time." 

GDC did not respond to a request for comment on its posted virus updates. 

Breed's office said Friday that "There have not yet been any cases of novel coronavirus originating in San Francisco and the City continues to encourage people to attend events and conferences, while taking steps to reduce the likelihood of getting sick by washing hands with soap and water, covering coughs and sneezes, and staying home in case of illness."

D'Alessandro's tourism group reports San Francisco convention attendees spend an average of $567 per day. 

Amazon told all 798,000 of its employees on Friday to avoid "non-essential travel" domestically and internationally because of concerns about COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to Business Insider.

Earlier on Friday, The New York Times reported that employees on Amazon's worldwide operations team, which oversees much of the company's technology and logistics globally, received a separate email from the senior vice president in charge of the team, Dave Clark, telling them not to plan any meetings requiring travel until at least April, when the company hoped to have a better sense of the outbreak's impact.

The spokesperson confirmed that the guidance on avoiding nonessential travel was sent to all employees, including those on the worldwide operations team.

Amazon had already announced restrictions on travel to and from China in January, telling workers who had been to the region to work from home for two weeks upon returning and seek medical attention if they showed symptoms, in-line with guidance from companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

However, as the outbreak has worsened — killing nearly 2,900 people and infecting at least 83,000, with most cases and deaths in China — companies have been forced to take additional measures to protect workers. Facebook's annual developer conference and the largest smartphone conference were both recently canceled because of the coronavirus. On Friday, a Google employee in the company's Zurich office tested positive for the coronavirus.

Companies' operations are also beginning to feel the impact. Amazon has been frantically stockpiling products made in China as concerns grow about how its supply chain could be affected and trying to prevent sellers from jacking up prices for highly sought-after supplies like face masks.

Who ever said you can't have fun at work? And if there's anything that can make your work more fun to read, it's a perfectly chosen emoji.

Used well, an emoji can convey a message more quickly than even the finest words, lighten the mood during a tense period, or just be for fun, no drama needed.

Here's how to add emojis to your Slack messages, using both the desktop app for Mac or PC and the mobile app for iPhone and Android devices.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

MacBook Pro (From $1,299.99 at Best Buy)

Lenovo IdeaPad 130 (From $299.99 at Best Buy)

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $899.99 at Best Buy)

How to add emoji on Slack 

The method for adding emojis to your text is very simple.

If you're using Slack on your Mac or PC:

1. Open the channel or direct messaging thread that you want to send a message in.

2. At the bottom-right of the chat box, click the smiley face icon.

3. This will open a menu filled with emojis. Click any from the list that you want to add it.

4. As you scroll through the emojis, you'll note that each one has a name. You alternatively can add emojis to your text by typing the name of any emoji, bracketed by colons. In other words, ? would become :smile: and so on.

While gaming may not seem like the natural birthplace for a construction-technology startup, that was the genesis of Fieldwire, which sells software for construction teams. 

Founders Yves Frinault and Javed Singha met at video game production company Ubisoft before they decided to use their experience in gaming to build digital tools for construction workers.

With proptech funding booming and experts predicting that housing prices will continue to rise in the 2020s, a new slew of construction technology — or contech, for short — startups like Fieldwire have emerged that are aiming to make building cheaper, easier, and safer.

While the sector hasn't received nearly as much attention as fintech or its cousin, proptech, it has received at least $27 billion in funding since 2008, according to McKinsey Partner Jose Luis Blanco. 

Fieldwire raised $33.5 million in funding last September led by Menlo Ventures and others, according to a press release. At the time, it had raised $40.4 million to date.

At Ubisoft, Frinault and Singha worked together to restructure part of the company. Frinault, a product manager, said that his time at Ubisoft was his first entrepreneurial experience. 

"Running a game team inside a company is very similar to running a company," Frinault said, highlighting the challenge of recruiting the best internal talent and keeping a budget as some of the overlaps. 

While they met in gaming, Frinault had an MS in construction engineering management from Stanford University, inspired by his family's history of purchasing and remodeling residential real estate. As Frinault and Singha kept talking, they realized that they wanted to make technology for construction workers in the field.

"We wanted to replicate tools that are available to us in gaming to the construction space," Frinault said.  

They used some of the principles of the gaming industry to inform their design. 

"We were putting a product together that we can deliver directly to them, and that they can work on immediately without any training," Singha said, explaining that the need for rapid adoption in the field made a simple user interface and design extremely important. If they can't convince the workers in the field to use their product, it would be impossible for the product to grow. 

Another asset was their shared experience working on social games at Ubisoft, where they had to make sure that the games worked for both mobile and desktop users. They wanted Fieldwire to be totally functional in the field, and that experience designing cross-platform was invaluable. 

Singha said that his biggest challenge was making sure that he understood enough about their potential users, construction workers on the ground, to design a product that was actually useful to them.

"It was a rough crash course for me personally," Singha said. "I had to learn a whole new lingo." 

A Google employee has tested positive for the coronavirus, and the company is further restricting its employee travel as concerns around the outbreak grow.

On Friday, the California-based search giant emailed its employees to inform them that an employee who had been in the Zurich office has tested positive for the virus, which causes the disease COVID-19, a source familiar with the matter told Business Insider. That employee was not symptomatic while in the office.

Google is preventing employees from traveling to Iran, as well as two Italian regions where the virus is spreading, Lombardy and Veneto. From March 2, the company will also ban travel to South Korea and Japan.

The identity and condition of the Google employee who tested positive for the coronavirus is not known.

In a statement, a Google spokesperson said: "We can confirm that one employee from our Zurich office has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. They were in the Zurich office for a limited time, before they had any symptoms. We have taken — and will continue to take — all necessary precautionary measures, following the advice of public health officials, as we prioritize everyone's health and safety."

Since the coronavirus outbreak began in December, nearly 83,000 people have been infected, and more than 2,800 have died.

Google is continuing to prohibit travel to China unless employees are returning home, and all international travel over the next 90 days will require review.

CNN reporter Kerry Flynn also reported on Friday that Google was canceling its Google News Initiative Summit in the Bay Area, a conference geared toward the media industry.

This story is developing ...

This new venture fund has more than $180 million to invest in interactive entertainment startups