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SpaceX is about to do the unthinkable.

On Sunday morning, the company plans to launch a doomed Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a brand-new spaceship for NASA, called Crew Dragon, perched on top.

The 230-foot-tall vehicle is expected to heave itself off the ground between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. ET, but then suddenly shut down its engines about 84 seconds into flight. At that point, the Falcon 9 will be traveling nearly twice the speed of sound some 13 miles above Earth's surface. 

What comes next for the rocket will be catastrophic. Within seconds of cutting its engines, aerodynamic forces will throttle the uncontrolled, tube-shaped body and rip it to pieces. Inside, huge tanks full of liquid oxygen and RP-1 kerosene propellant will rip open — so a large explosion and fireball is almost a given.

But if all goes according to plan, the Crew Dragon will escape to safety moments after the failure begins. 

Such a scenario is one of an astronaut's worst nightmares, but NASA is excited to get on with the flight. That's because the spectacle is part of a highly orchestrated, human-free, and strenuous test of the Crew Dragon's launch escape or abort system. 

If the empty spaceship flies away to safety and splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean, as planned, SpaceX will be a penultimate step closer to launching astronauts — its first-ever human passengers — who are part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

"We are purposely failing a launch vehicle to make sure that our abort system on the spacecraft that we'll be flying for our crews works," Kathy Lueders, the manager of the agency's program, said during a televised press briefing on Friday. "This is a very important test."

'Way past ready for this to happen'

More than the safety of SpaceX's launch system for astronauts is riding on the in-flight abort test. In fact, NASA's ability to launch astronauts from American soil at all partly depends on it.

In July 2011, NASA retired its space shuttle fleet without a new American ship to get astronauts to and from orbit from the International Space Station — a $150 billion, football field-size laboratory that orbits Earth. Since that time, the agency has had no practical choice but to buy tickets aboard Russia's Soyuz spacecraft for astronauts, to the tune of about $80 million per seat today.

The first crewed flights of NASA's commercial program were supposed to start taking off around 2015. But neither SpaceX nor Boeing, which is also part of the agency's program, have not yet completed rigorous mandatory testing required to launch astronauts.

"Most of us are just way past ready for this to happen. It has taken a lot longer than anybody thought," Wayne Hale, an aerospace engineering consultant and retired NASA space shuttle program manager, told Business Insider. "This year we really need to do it. It really needs to be done."

Saturday's test is the next-to-last step toward that goal, which is why it's so crucial that everything go right.

"The number-one most important thing is we launch them safely," Benji Reed, SpaceX's director of crew mission management, said during NASA's briefing at Kennedy Space Center on Friday.

Hale said that "everybody hopes at this stage that success is the outcome." But he added that in-flight abort tests are not only rare — only a handful of them have been done since the Apollo moon program in the 1960s — but also "a very difficult situation" where "many things can go wrong."

SpaceX has had trouble with its parachutes, for example, though Hale noted that tweaking and testing has apparently resolved those difficulties. Meanwhile, Boeing also saw a parachute deployment hiccup with its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft due to an incorrect rigging. A clock error on the Starliner also caused Boeing's first uncrewed launch of the vehicle toward the space station to veer wildly off-course.

A rocket mission designed to fail — then to fall

Benji said the Crew Dragon is pre-programmed to detach itself from the Falcon 9 rocket "at the right point in time" if anything goes wrong.

"We're looking for anything that's off-nominal," he told Business Insider.

In the case of Sunday's test, the rocket will shut down while the vehicle is moving through extreme, though not maximum, forces in the atmosphere — what Lueders described as "a stressing test" for the entire system, and one that SpaceX ultimately chose over less trying and expensive ones.

"Getting this test behind us is a huge milestone," she said. (The launch was originally scheduled for Saturday, but NASA and SpaceX delayed it due to worsening weather conditions.)

Shortly after detaching from the rocket on Saturday, Reed said Crew Dragon should fire its SuperDraco escape engines for about 10 seconds. That should be enough to put many miles between the doomed rocket and the spaceship.

"We expect there to be some sort of ignition, and probably a fireball of some kind. Whether I would call it an explosion that you would see from the ground? I don't know," Reed said of the rocket. "We'll have to see what actually happens."

As the rocket breaks up, Crew Dragon will coast to an altitude of about 25 miles, shed its aerodynamic "trunk" (which serves as dead weight), and begin to fall toward Earth, according to a SpaceX animation on YouTube (below). The plummeting capsule will then use clusters of small rocket engines, called reaction-control thrusters, to right itself at high speed. The goal is to keep the gumdrop-shaped base facing down — and its parachute pods pointed up.

About 4 minutes and 30 seconds after launch, two small drogue shoots will pop out of the capsule's top to stabilize its fall. Four enormous main parachutes will deploy about a minute later and dramatically slow down the vehicle. A little while later — about nine minutes total into the mission — the Crew Dragon is supposed to splash down about 20 miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, where SpaceX recovery crews on boats should be ready and waiting to recover it.

SpaceX and NASA will then review all of the data they collect from the safety test and see if it matches their predictive computer models. That process could take months, and smaller tests may be required afterward.

Assuming the abort test is a success, SpaceX will be poised to fly its first-ever humans — NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley — on a demonstration mission called Demo-2. (In March 2019, the company launched an uncrewed Crew Dragon to the space station and back on a mission called Demo-1.)

"The main objective of this test is to show that we can carry the astronauts safely away from the rocket in case anything's going wrong," Reed said.

This story has been updated with new information. It was originally published on January 17, 2019.

SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship is launching again this weekend — likely the capsule's final uncrewed flight before it carries its first astronauts later this year. 

On Sunday morning, the aerospace company plans to conduct a crucial safety demonstration called an in-flight abort test. The goal: demonstrate to NASA that the spacecraft's escape mechanisms that can whisk astronauts away from a failing rocket or other emergency arises during their ascent. NASA requires this demonstration before it will allow SpaceX to fly its astronauts into space.

The mission is now slated to lift off at 9 a.m. ET on Sunday, January 19 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. However, SpaceX has until 2 p.m. ET today to wait for the best conditions for launch.

The flight was originally scheduled for Saturday but delayed due to weather.

You can watch the action in real time via the YouTube video player below.

A major milestone for SpaceX and NASA

The goal of the Crew Dragon spaceship is to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

NASA hasn't been able to transport astronauts on its own spaceships since July 2011, when its space shuttle completed its final flight. Since then, the agency has relied exclusively on Russia to ferry its astronauts to and from orbit in Soyuz spacecraft. To develop new American-made spacecraft, NASA launched the Commercial Crew program: a competition between private companies for billions of dollars' worth of government contracts. Of about a dozen entrants, only SpaceX and Boeing passed NASA's muster.

On Saturday, the Crew Dragon will sit atop one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets. After 84 seconds, engineers will intentionally cut the rocket's engines. By that point, it will be traveling so fast (nearly twice the speed of sound) that aerodynamic forces will rip the rocket to pieces. The fuel tanks should rupture, and an explosion will ensue. 

Before that catastrophe, though Crew Dragon is supposed to detach and escape by firing its own engines. If all goes well, the spaceship will get far enough away to stay safe, then deploy built-in parachutes and splash down about 20 miles away from Cape Canaveral in the Atlantic Ocean.

"We tried to design a way to save B1046, but not possible," Elon Musk wrote on Twitter, referring to the reusable first-stage rocket booster. He added that it would be "destroyed by dragon fire."

SpaceX's recovery ship, called GO Searcher, will be stationed nearby to retrieve it.

Crew Dragon has been in development since 2012. In March 2019, SpaceX launched it into orbit for the first time, carrying a dummy and a plush toy. Crew Dragon autonomously docked with the space station then later returned safely to Earth.

However, the following month, a Crew Dragon capsule exploded during a ground test — a different NASA safety check on its escape system. The company said the problem was due to an improper valve design, which cause leakage and a catastrophic blast.

The company has worked with NASA to investigate the issue, correct it, and re-perform the test late last year, which was successful.

"We are doing everything we can to make it not happen again," Kathy Lueders, the manager of the agency's program, said during a televised press briefing on Friday.

If the test needs to be postponed again, there is additional launch window set aside on Monday.

If all goes smoothly on Saturday, SpaceX's first crewed launch is expected later this year, with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley at the helm.

NASA and SpaceX will provide joint live coverage — watch below

This story has been updated with new information. It was originally published on January 17.

Samsung has topped a US patent list compiled by data journalism company Sqoop, one metric to indicate its intellectual property dominance.

Sqoop measured companies on three metrics: number of utility patents applied for; number of utility patent applications granted; and number of design patents received, as recorded by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Korean tech giant Samsung was top of all three lists, with US tech giant IBM ranked in second place for number of utility patent applications granted and number of utility patents applied for.

The study's methodology combined subsidiary firms under their parent firm, treating them as single entities.

In 2019, Samsung was granted 9,413 utility patents; made 8,668 utility patent applications; and received 605 design patents, while IBM was granted 9,190 utility patents and made 8,292 utility patent applications.

Speaking to Business Insider about the study's findings, Sqoop's founder and CEO, Bill Hankes, said: "I think it's very interesting when you look at IBM and Samsung in particular, [to see] how many more patents they have in their portfolios on an annual basis than, say, LG, Canon, Microsoft and the rest.

"When you look at it on a weekly basis, it's staggering how many patents [Samsung and IBM] applying for and that they're granted," Hankes continued. "It speaks to the value that they place on their patent portfolios.

"If you take a look at the increase in patent applications, in particular, as well as [the number of] design patents [they received], it suggests these companies – not just Samsung and IBM, but other technology and automotive companies – are investing even greater amounts of resources in shoring up their portfolios."

Meanwhile, none of the so-called big four companies – Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon – ranked especially highly.

On the list for number of design patents received, only Apple made the top ten, placing in fourth; while on the list for number of utility patents granted, only Google/Alphabet made the top ten, placing in ninth. None of the big four made the top ten for number of utility patent applications made.

Asked about the relatively low rankings of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, Hankes said people should remember IBM's and Samsung's status as older tech giants. Samsung was founded before the outbreak of World War Two, while IBM is over a century old. Accordingly, he said, the big four would ramp up their inventiveness over time.

Hankes said: "When you think of IBM, it doesn't have the sex appeal that companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon have, and yet, its value by the patent portfolio would suggest its got very high value. [Samsung and IBM] are also hardware companies, and they're much older companies.

"Facebook, in particular, has moved up steadily over the past few years; Amazon has as well. I think you'll see more investment in patents from these companies moving forward."

Following is a transcript of the video. 

Ever look at the beverage cart on a plane and see it piled high with tomato juice? It's not a common juice, like orange or apple. So why are so many people drinking it in flight? Put simply? Your taste changes while you're in the air. And there's a biological reason for that.

If you grab a bite before your flight, you probably have an idea of what it will taste like. But once you're in the air, your sense of taste isn't the same as it is on the ground. A lot of factors on the plane are all coming together to suppress your sense of smell, which makes up a large portion of our sense of taste.

Think back to the last time you had a cold. Remember how you couldn't taste anything because your nose was clogged up? When you have a weakened sense of smell, your perception of taste is reduced. So your in-flight nose is similar to your nose when you have a cold, but hopefully with less phlegm.

Let's start with the cabin, which is extremely dry. Drier-than-some-deserts dry. The dry cabin dries out your nasal passages, which means your taste buds become less perceptive. But that's not the only part of the cabin suppressing your sense of taste. The low cabin pressure actually decreases the levels of oxygen in your blood, which means your olfactory receptors, the part of your nervous system that responds to smells, become less sensitive, which actually weakens your sense of smell.

But it's not just the environment inside the cabin that's affecting your senses. The noise coming from the engine isn't helping either. A 2010 study tested people's sense of taste both inside and outside a simulated plane cabin. The researchers found sensitivity to sweet and salty food was reduced by 30% while in the cabin.

And that weakened sense of taste can cause a lot of problems for airline caterers, who have to modify every recipe to account for it. To top it off, not every flavor is affected equally. Some ingredients, like curry and lemongrass, actually become more intense in the sky, while cinnamon, ginger, and garlic tend to maintain their taste. Some airlines will use naturally intense flavors, like certain fruit and vegetable oils and concentrates, which helps to lessen the amount of extra salt a recipe might need.

So, what does tomato juice have to do with all of this? Well, tomato juice tends to have a savory flavor referred to as umami. It's one of the five categories of taste, along with sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. A 2015 study found that, with umami, the taste phenomenon is actually reversed. Umami is actually enhanced in the air.

So the next time you're on a flight, give the tomato juice a try. And don't get too upset if your meal doesn't taste as good as you hoped. The chefs are just trying to accommodate for something you didn't know was happening right underneath your nose.

(Photo by David Becker/Getty Images)

Netflix's "The Witcher" and Disney Plus' "The Mandalorian" are engaged in a streaming battle. "The Witcher" topped "The Mandalorian" as the most in-demand streaming series in the US this week, trading places from last week.

Every week, Parrot Analytics provides Business Insider with a list of the nine most in-demand TV shows on streaming services in the US. The data is based on "demand expressions," Parrot Analytics' globally standardized TV-demand measurement unit. Audience demand reflects the desire, engagement, and viewership weighted by importance, so a stream or a download is a higher expression of demand than a "like" or a comment on social media, for instance.

The new addition to the list this week is Disney Plus' "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series."

Below are this week's nine most popular original shows on Netflix and other streaming services:

Data science consultant Cathy O'Neil helps companies audit their algorithms for a living. And when it comes to how algorithms and artificial intelligence can enable bias in the job hiring process, she said the biggest issue isn't even with the employers themselves.

A new Illinois law that aims to help job seekers understand how AI tools are used to evaluate them in video interviews recently resurfaced the debate over AI's role in recruiting. But O'Neil believes the law tries to tackle bias too late in the process.

"The problem actually lies before the application comes in. The problem lies in the pipeline to match job seekers with jobs," said O'Neil, founder and CEO of O'Neil Risk Consulting & Algorithmic Auditing.

That pipeline starts with sites like LinkedIn, Monster.com, Facebook, and ZipRecruiter, where algorithms can play a significant role in determining which candidates see which job postings, filtering out those deemed unqualified.

"[Algorithms] are intended to discriminate, they're trying to discriminate between someone who's going to be good at this job versus someone who's not going to be good at this job," O'Neil said, adding that "the question is whether it's legal or illegal discrimination."

O'Neil has written extensively about the role algorithms play in fueling inequality both in her book, Weapons of Math Destruction, and on her blog mathbabe.org. In an interview with Business Insider, she talked about how bias shows up in the hiring process and what employers — as well as platforms like LinkedIn — should do to weed it out.

AI hiring tools are far from perfect

Federal laws, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of categories like race, religion, gender, national origin, disability status, genetic information, and other categories.

While algorithms may speed up the process of narrowing the pool of job candidates, they're often not great at finding the most qualified ones, and instead end up disproportionately filtering out people in those exact categories.

"I actually don't think that most hiring algorithms are that meaningful," O'Neil said, arguing that in many cases, they're no better than "random number generators" at identifying qualified candidates.

In 2018, Amazon shut down a tool it had built to automate its hiring using artificial intelligence because it was biased against women. Researchers have also shown how AI tools that analyze video interviews are often biased against people with disabilities.

But it's not just employers who have run into issues with biased AI hiring tools, it's also a problem for the companies that help them find candidates.

A study in 2019 found that ads placed on Facebook for jobs with taxi companies — even when targeted at a broad audience — were seen by an audience that was 75% Black. And an investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times found that Facebook allowed employers to exclude users explicitly by age.

Bad data in, bad data out

There are several reasons why algorithms can end up discriminating against certain groups. One is the problem of "bad data in, bad data out."

Programmers "train" an algorithm by showing it a massive set of historical data. In the case of a job site, they show it information about past candidates, telling it to look for patterns among people who ultimately got jobs, which it then uses to identify potential candidates with those same qualities. That can lead to problems, however, if the dataset is already skewed.

"If they're trained on historical data, which they all are, then they're going to be as racist and as sexist and as classist as human society is," O'Neil said.

That's exactly what happened in Amazon's case. Since men had predominantly applied (and gotten) jobs in the past, the tool determined that men were preferable and penalized women's résumés as a result.

Big data means biased noise

A second issue gets at why O'Neil believes biased job sites are particularly problematic: they factor in information that may have no bearing on a candidate's ability to do a job, rather than focusing only on relevant details.

Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, and Monster.com use a wide range of demographic information to train their algorithms. Those algorithms then help determine which job ads are shown to which candidates as well as which candidates appear in recruiters' search results.

Companies collect as much data as possible because they think it will give them "a larger picture of the person," O'Neil said, "but what it's really doing is picking up all kinds of distracting and biased information."

Even if that information isn't explicitly about a candidate's race or gender, it can still lead to racist or sexist results.

How companies — and job sites — can reduce bias

Some job sites have tried to combat this problem by not collecting or considering information that could introduce bias into their algorithm.

ZipRecruiter told Business Insider in a statement that its algorithms aren't allowed to take into account "explicit markers (e.g., age, race, gender, etc.) or implicit markers (e.g., surname, specific residential address, etc.) of status within any protected class." ZipRecruiter also prevents those models from differentiating between gender in titles or job postings.

LinkedIn, in a similar statement, said "we proactively detect potentially discriminatory language and review/block these jobs from being posted." It also requires advertisers placing job ads to "certify that they will not use the ad to discriminate on the basis of gender or other protected characteristics."

O'Neil said those steps don't necessarily address the issue, however.

"It's not going to be convincing for you to say 'well, we don't collect that information, so we're colorblind,'" she said. "There is no way to get rid of proxies — everything is a proxy for race because race affects everything in our country."

Instead of companies trying to make AI hiring tools "colorblind" by blocking explicitly or implicitly biased data points, O'Neil said they need to be more intentional about the information they do consider when filtering out job applicants.

"We should be defining what it means to be qualified and then ignoring other things," she said.

One example she cited is the use of "blind auditions" by major orchestras, where they reduced gender bias by having auditioners play from behind a curtain. In deciding that "being qualified" really meant "sounding good," they were able to structure the hiring process so it highlighted candidates' qualifications. Just as importantly, they made it blind to other factors, like appearance, surname, or hometown.

"This is something that none of these AI hiring algorithms do," O'Neil said.

But her ultimate concern isn't even how these tools are designed, though that's still important. O'Neil's main point is that companies be more transparent about how they do things and what the end result is. That means continually testing their algorithms to see which candidates end up seeing jobs, and then correcting for any undesired bias.

LinkedIn should be "forced to prove that what they're doing isn't exacerbating inequality,' O'Neil said.

LinkedIn has taken small steps in this direction, telling Business Insider "we ensure our Recruiter search delivers balanced gender representation, and we offer gender insights in reporting, so employers can understand dynamics in their Jobs and Sourcing funnels." The company also prohibits advertisers from targeting job ads by age.

Gender and age are just two of the many dimensions along which people face discrimination, however. And while LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter both said they don't tolerate discrimination on their platforms against any protected class, neither provided information about how they test the results of their algorithms to make sure that's actually the case.

Facebook and Monster.com did not immediately respond to questions about bias and the use of algorithms on their platforms.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that when it comes to how we use our smartphones and other gadgets, things are way out of whack. In his view, these devices are more often used for consumption — watching videos, or scrolling through Facebook or Twitter — than for production, or getting things done.

For Nadella, that's a challenge, opportunity, and responsibility all at the same time.

"It's new habits that we will have to instigate in changing that balance. And I'm not, again, saying one thing is bad, one thing is good, but we feel that as a company, we need to think about that balance," Nadella said at a press event on Monday.

Microsoft's fast-growing workplace chat app, Teams, is big piece of Microsoft's play to address this. Nadella said he sees an opportunity for Teams to act as a bridge between the consumer-focused world of social media, and the idea to actually get things done.

Teams is a major priority for Microsoft: This weekend, Microsoft will debut a big new ad campaign that aims to sell the app on "the powers of teams." This marketing push comes just months after Microsoft shared that Teams crossed the milestone of  20 million daily active users — more than its chief Silicon Valley rival, Slack, which had 12 million at last count.

Nadella said while he doesn't think Teams will take on the huge thriving social networks already in place, like Facebook, Twitter, or Microsoft's own LinkedIn, there is room for some kind of app specifically designed to help people connect to each other to get work done.

"What is perhaps not there, is that...intimate circle," Nadella said. "How do I collaborate, communicate, form relationships with that? And so that's another dimension that we would want to think deeply about and continue to." 

Nadella drew a comparison between Teams and Skype, the Microsoft-owned video calling app, because they both focus on one-to-one conversations, or chats between smaller groups of people.

"Skype originally has always been the most intimate social network. People you Skyped with are people with whom you really had a real connection," Nadella said, echoing Microsoft's previous comments on the role of Skype in its lineup of products.

Microsoft has argued along similar lines before: When Microsoft Teams first launched in 2017, the company said that it was for the "inner loop" of people you work with every day, while Yammer — the Facebook-like news feed for the workplace that Microsoft acquired in 2012 — is for the "outer loop" of people you work with outside your own team. 

At the same time, Microsoft's competition isn't going to let the company take this market without a fight.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield has criticized Teams, saying its growth is not organic and that Microsoft uses "unsportsmanlike" tactics to compete in the workplace productivity space. Slack also highlights figures that suggest users are highly-engaged with its app, implying that customers actually enjoy using it.

On a final note, Microsoft clearly has social networks on the brain: At the same event where Nadella made his comments, Nat Friedman, the CEO of GitHub, described the Microsoft-owned code sharing site as "the most valuable social network that's ever been built," thanks to its popularity with programmers.

Nicholas Carlson contributed reporting to this story.

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WeWork is focused on inking deals with big companies, betting that working with Fortune 500 businesses like IBM and BlackRock will provide more stability and value than small startups and freelancers. 

But the embattled office company came in under target for adding desks with big businesses last year, according to data obtained by Business Insider. 

"While we fell short in Q4, you never gave up," one executive wrote to employees in communications reviewed by Business Insider.

Because the company has not released its fourth-quarter financials to bondholders – last year's numbers came in late March – it's not yet possible to get a full accounting of WeWork's bottom line. But the leaked numbers, along with third-party data, provide key indicators of the company's economic picture.

The following figures come from the North American enterprise team, which focuses on leases with companies with over 500 employees. They are unaudited.

Committed revenue is an important metric that WeWork tracks in quarterly reports to bondholders. In its third-quarter presentation reviewed by Business Insider, the company had a total of $4.3 billion in committed revenue backlog in the third quarter. 

"WeWork signed fewer new leases in the fourth quarter of 2019 as we put in place our go-forward strategy that's focused on profitable growth," a spokeswoman for WeWork said in a statement. She declined to comment on the numbers leaked to Business Insider. 

WeWork added a total of 253,000 new desks through the third quarter of 2019, compared with 140,000 over the same time period in 2018, per investor documents reviewed by Business Insider. The company did not break out how many of those desks were for enterprise customers.

Overall, enterprise made up 43% of WeWork's third-quarter memberships – up from 34% a year ago. 

Overall, the company lost $1.3 billion in the third quarter, compared with $500 million in the third quarter of 2018, according to its third-quarter financials reviewed by Business Insider.

In the spring, Artie Minson, who is now one of WeWork's co-CEOs, told Business Insider that WeWork was "really just getting started" with enterprise clients.

"From an employer standpoint, WeWork is a better experience for their employees and meaningfully cheaper on a per-employee basis" than traditional office space, Minson, then WeWork's copresident and chief financial officer, said. "The CEOs like us and the CFOs like us."

WeWork, in turn, likes those clients back. Big businesses sign average commitments of 23 months, compared with 14 months for non-enterprise clients, per an October WeWork investor presentation. 

Money-losing deals with Sprint and Bank of America

Some of WeWork's enterprise deals were done at a loss last year, according to the person familiar with the deals, including Sprint and Bank of America. A representative for Sprint declined to comment, and a representative for Bank of America did not respond to a request for comment.

Bank of America was one of the nine banks working on WeWork's initial public offering, which was ultimately shelved. WeWork signed deals with a number of those banks for office renovations or memberships, including UBS and Citi. It's common for companies set to go public to do business with IPO advisers, including banks and law firms.  

Adam Neumann, who was ousted as CEO in September, often pushed for deals to be done regardless of the economics, said multiple people who worked closely with him. 

WeWork chairman Marcelo Claure, who SoftBank installed in September to right the company, was the CEO of SoftBank-owned Sprint until May 2018. SoftBank is WeWork's largest investor.

In November, Claure brought in Publicis, the ad agency holding company, to WeWork, and tapped Publicis chairman Maurice Levy as interim chief marketing officer. Publicis was the ad agency for Sprint during Claure's tenure. 

Leases show fourth-quarter slowdown

Another fourth-quarter metric indicates a future slowdown in WeWork's activity. Per real estate company CBRE, WeWork signed just four new US leases with landlords in the fourth quarter. Those leases represented a 93% drop from an average of 2.54 million square feet leased over the previous four quarters. Real estate data is notoriously opaque; data from another major real estate company, JLL, says that WeWork had no new leases in the fourth quarter. 

As WeWork inks fewer deals with landlords, the company will have less space to then sublease in the future. 

All flexible office companies surveyed by CBRE saw a slowdown in the fourth quarter, but WeWork had the most significant change.

Knotel leased 80% less space in the fourth quarter than its one-year average, per CBRE. On Friday, the company laid off 7% of its staff in a restructuring first reported by The Real Deal.  

"Knotel has grown from two employees in one city to 500+ people in 17 cities over the past four years to become the leading global flexible workspace platform, and our business will continue to evolve and change to best meet the needs of our customers," a Knotel representative said in a statement to Business Insider. 

CBRE called the industry slowdown "expected" after WeWork decided to slow its rapid expansion.

On Friday, Business Insider published 58 pages of correspondence between the SEC and WeWork about the coworking company's IPO filing and questions or concerns the agency had about the document. 

Have a WeWork tip? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (646) 768-1627 using a non-work phone, email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or Twitter DM at @MeghanEMorris. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

At the risk of invoking a cliché, I'll point out that Tesla isn't a company whose stock trades on fundamentals, but rather on a story.

Think about that. At a simple level, the fundamentals are facts, while the story is an illusion — a suspension of disbelief. When I was in my 20s, I spent a lot of time on story, before I dropped out of a doctorate program in literature at NYU. Stories have plots, subplots, plot twists, complicated characters who do complicated things. Stories can turn on a dime: in the space of a page, comedy becomes tragedy. As an author, you want to take readers on a ride.

For years now, story has dominated the debate around Tesla. And some large-scale characters, ranging from CEO Elon Musk to big-name hedge-funders like Jim Chanos and David Einhorn, have populated the tale. Even the minor characters have been interesting, and the plotlines and plot twists have been endless.

But the truth is that this story — something of an epic, really — filled a vacuum. Established automakers such as Ford and General Motors, have less lively stories because their actual businesses are so ... busy. The fundamentals — the business facts — produce millions of vehicles every year.

Tesla has only recently joined that club: 2019's total sales were about 367,000, a notable move up from 2018's roughly 250,000. But just a couple of years back, the company barely sold 50,000.

Story trumped fundamentals — but that's all changed in a hurry

The sprawling, obsessively detailed, constantly argued over Tesla story happened only because there wasn't enough production or sales to stop it. If Tesla had built a competent franchise dealer network in the US (or joined with an existing mega-dealer) rather than trying to sell vehicles direct to customers, and if Tesla had hired a seasoned contract manufacturer to build some vehicles and meet demands sooner, the story would have petered out in 2017 or 2018.

Didn't go that way, and thus we got an insane episode of Musk tweeting his way into an SEC investigation and eventual settlement, a pitched battle between the #TSLA fanboy and the #TSLAQ bankruptcy crowds, and a preoccupation with Tesla's inner-workings that resembled Cold War Kremlinology.

But look what's happened since Tesla's output of actual cars has picked up: the stock has been on a tear, blasting through $300 per share, $400 per share, and (remarkably) $500 per share in a matter of months. Tesla's market cap, at $90 billion, is nearly equal to GM's and Ford's combined.

This isn't a rally story. Tesla completely dominates the electric vehicle market and can now look forward to potential competitors having to spend, spend, and spend some more if they want to duke it out for market share. This is going to be painful because the traditional automakers won't have to break a sweat to build EVs, but they'll be forced to expend millions if not billions of dollars convincing consumers to buy them. 

Tesla, meanwhile, isn't spending anything, and hasn't. That doesn't constitute a first-move advantage so much as an only-mover leg up. Electric cars were stupid risky in the past, but Tesla gobbled up that risk. Now, the reward.

Busting through three resistance levels on the stock in three months is mind-blowing. And there isn't necessarily anything on the horizon to slow Tesla down. It reports fourth-quarter and full-year 2019 earnings in late January, and they're expected to be positive. If Tesla meets or beats, look out above. The 100% return of the past three months could look like a tame precursor, as Tesla's substantial short interest is decisively flushed out of the action.

Tesla has challenges, but the old story is over

Tesla has some looming challenges. The biggest is that as it sells more Model 3 vehicles — and soon, Model Y SUVs — at lower price points to less well-heeled buyers, it's going to be highly stressed on the service front. Like any relatively new automaker, Tesla's vehicles lack ironclad reliability, so the company compensates consumers with a great warranty. 

But without dealerships, Tesla doesn't have a solid built-in servicing model. Poor service means often means that owners who aren't living with fleets of vehicles at home fail to buy again from a manufacturer. Up to this juncture, Tesla has been selling to patient early adopters who probably own two or three cars; now that it's moving toward single-vehicle households, it could endure some pain.

That's merely the cost of doing business, however. With shares above $500, Tesla can now effortlessly make good on its convertible debt obligations and, should it want to, raise additional capital to bolster its balance sheet. I think that would be smart, and if Tesla goes for it in 2020, the approximately $5 billion that the company has in cash could swell to $10 billion, and Tesla could start to deleverage.

This leaves Tesla's naysayers, so previously dependent on a story, with not much to use to push the stock around. The facts are the facts, the fundamentals are the fundamentals, and if you think the market for EVs could grow in the US, Europe, and China, then Tesla stock looks cheap in a world were EVs now make up just 2% of global sales.

I'll use the analogy of a predicted snowstorm to depict the naysayers' plight. The weather report is uncertain: we could get a few inches, but we could also get a blizzard. The discussion is speculative: What would we do in the worst case, assuming that it probably won't happen? 

But then, the blizzard comes. And you have no choice but to surrender and dig yourself out.

Developers, hold on to your wallets. 

For programmers, developers, and software engineers of all sorts, it's increasingly unnecessary to live in a tech hub like San Francisco or Seattle — which is good news, as the cost of living in each city only continues to skyrocket.

So why pay the median $4,128 in monthly rent for a two-bedroom San Francisco apartment when you could build your career in a city that isn't among the most expensive? 

A new research report from coding bootcamp Coding Dojo ranked American cities by weighing their cost of living versus the number of open job postings for entry-level and mid-career developers within a 25-mile radius.

Coding Dojo says it assigned a composite score to cities based on the number of open developer postings on job site Indeed, and its cost of living using the median rent of a two-bedroom apartment, as calculated by cost comparison site NerdWallet.

Here are the ten cheapest American cities with the most opportunity for developers:

Adam Diaz first started listening to iHeartRadio when he was in the hospital recovering from a back injury that resulted in his medical retirement from the US Coast Guard.

Seven years later, he was hired as a part-time board operator at one of the company's local radio stations in the Delaware area, where he went on to work as an executive producer for country music show "Nashville's Next with Benny."

Diaz said he loved his industry, his company, and his job.

But when iHeartMedia announced this week that it would reorganize to keep up with the modernization of audio, he became one of many local radio workers laid off at the largest radio network in the US.

AllAccess, a radio industry news site, published lists of employees who were laid off, and their count shows more than 100 were let go. Business Insider spoke with 12 laid-off employees, some of whom reported hearing that thousands could be laid off. 

IHeartMedia has 12,500 employees in all, and the company said in a statement to Business Insider the number of layoffs was "relatively small" but wouldn't give an exact figure.

But whatever the exact number, a handful of former employees said the loss of on-air hosts and program directors around the country was already noticeable in local markets.

"I hope the best for the company's and radio's future, but I'm afraid this move will prove damaging to the emotion that makes radio successful, to the culture and soul of the industry," Diaz said.

IHeartMedia insiders were surprised by the layoffs, although some said a recent managerial meeting was an omen

Some former employees who worked at iHeartMedia for decades — since the days when the company was known as Clear Channel — said morale has been declining for several years as traditional radio struggled to maintain audiences who are turning to streaming and podcasting. 

Still, despite red flags, former employees who spoke with Business Insider soon after being laid off described being blindsided by this latest blow to the radio industry.

Looking back, some said they should have expected a reduction in force last week, when iHeartMedia called a meeting in New York City for high-level managers.

"We knew something bad was going to come of it, but we didn't know what," said one former program director who spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity because his severance package had not been finalized.

Then, on the morning of Jan. 14, CEO Bob Pittman sent a company-wide email referencing restructuring, and the company publicly announced layoffs. Minutes later, hosts, program directors, executive producers, board operators, and other local staffers around the country felt their phones buzz with calls from their managers.

Managers tasked with conveying the news of the layoffs were given scripts to read, several former employees said, and without specific reasoning as to why they were being let go, many employees caught up in the reduction were left wondering why they were out of a job.

Billy D'Ettorre, a producer of the "Brother Wease" morning show on WAIO in Rochester, New York, said he felt as if his more than 10 years of work at iHeartMedia were all for nothing when he lost his job.

"It caught me totally off guard," D'Ettorre said. "I was literally talking to one of my coworkers about how we were going to handle an upcoming vacation day I had … when our program director came and said, 'Billy, I need to see you.'"

IHeartMedia recently emerged from bankruptcy

In 2018, iHeartMedia filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after a leveraged buyout in 2008 left it with over $20 billion in debt for the next decade.

Less than a year ago, the company completed a separate restructuring process that reduced its debt from $16.1 billion to $5.75 billion and split it from Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings.

Considering the remaining debt, a few former employees speculated that the most recent round of layoffs was an attempt to save money.

But even well-performing markets with beloved hosts were not spared, some former employees said.

IHeartMedia said the new structure would allow the company to "take advantage of the significant investments it has made in technology and artificial intelligence and its unique scale and leadership position in the audio marketplace."

In a statement, the company said the job cuts were determined by "location" and "function," but wouldn't elaborate.

As iHeartMedia turns to tech to power programming, localized radio content falls by the wayside

IHeartMedia already relies on some centralized programming, or generalized broadcast content meant to be played across multiple stations, but this recent round of layoffs is indicative of a further push into centralizing programming.

As examples, company insiders described how one disc jockey can curate playlists for dozens of local stations, and one morning show host can record content from one city to be broadcast around the whole state. AI technology can even customize playlists for specific communities.

"We are now using our considerable investments in technology to modernize our operations and infrastructure, further setting us apart from traditional media companies," Pittman said in a statement.

As part of the restructuring, iHeartMedia said it would group its markets into three categories based on common needs and characteristics: The region, metro, and community divisions.

The company's largest markets that encompass hundreds of cities, like New York City and Los Angeles, make up the region division. The metro division is comprised of slightly smaller markets that still reach multiple communities, and the community division includes small markets grouped by geographic location and cultural similarities.

"We will continue to serve every local community in which we operate, just as we always have," the company said in a statement.

But it may serve them in a different way. A former program director said that over the past year he's seen national teams of DJs working out of one city to curate playlists for multiple stations, but that he expected that sort of content, as well as syndication, to become even more common in 2020.

"I think a lot of centrally programmed stations will come out of this," the program director said. "You're going to see local stations with one or two disc jockeys now have none."

But while centralized programming reduced the need for DJs and hosts, those who lost their jobs said many listeners quickly noticed the change.

"The response to my being let go has been overwhelming," said D'Ettorre, who announced his departure on Facebook. "It's stunning. I've gotten hundreds, maybe thousands of responses."

Facebook is backing off on plans to stick ads inside WhatsApp — raising questions about its vision for monetizing the messaging app.

The Menlo Park, California-based social networking giant acquired WhatsApp for a cool $22 billion in 2014, and the expectation has long been that it would — eventually — load it up with ads to monetize its millions-strong userbase.

But industry watchers that were hoping that day would soon materialise are out of luck: On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook has paused its plans to add ads to WhatsApp. It has disbanded the team working on a team exploring the app's potential for ads, it reported, and "the team's work was then deleted from WhatsApp's code."

Facebook insists that it is still committed to adding ads to WhatsApp over the long term, and the full circumstances of the team's shuttering aren't yet known. But the news makes clear that WhatsApp's path to profitability won't be as simple as some had hoped.

Instagram stands as the prime example of Facebook's success with acquisition, acquired for a not-insubstantial $1 billion in 2012, it is now worth more than a hundred times that: An estimate in 2018 pegged it as worth $100 billion, and its value seems certain to have increased since then.

Instagram's advertising business is thriving, helping power Facebook's continued growth in profits, revenues, and users, and has been hailed as "arguably the best acquisition in the history of tech." Its ad business is functionally similar to the core Facebook app's — ad buyers pay to target users with ads that appear in their feeds, and later, in the ephemeral Stories feature too — and was viewed as a business template for how Facebook could spin up wildly profitable advertising units in other services it builds or acquires.

WhatsApp's future will now evolve differently. A company spokesperson told Business Insider that it is now focusing on building other features that allow businesses to interact with ordinary users, like catalogs that can show what a business has for sale. They said it does still plan to eventually add ads to Status, WhatsApp's version of stories posts that delete after 24 hours, but didn't offer any kind of timeframe for doing so.

The messaging app may still make money off this business-feature approach, either by charging for access to certain features or via developing its ecommerce tools that might allow it to take a cut of purchases and payments made through the platform. (Ecommerce and payments may ultimately bring in billions of dollars a year in new revenue for Facebook.)

Bank of America analysts previously predicted in December 2019 that advertising — along with payments and transactions — on WhatsApp and Messenger could add $12 billion in annual revenue over the next three to five years, working to offset the cost of maintaining the messaging apps for Facebook and start generating profits. Facebook's decision raises question marks over such estimates.

WhatsApp remains an incredibly strong product, with more than 1.5 billion monthly active users (as of 2018). But Facebook's strategic shift indicates that turning it from a popular app into another cash cow won't be as simple as turning an ad spigot to replicate Instagram's success.

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