Thanks to a strong push to the finish line, the 2019 box office ended up with an impressive take, according to Comscore. 

The third-party media and analytics company reported on Friday that the global box office ended up with a $42.5 billion total, an all-time high. The international (non-US) box office also had an all-time best, bringing in $31.1 billion.

This was thanks to the big earners of the year like Disney titles "Avengers: Endgame," "The Lion King," and "Frozen 2," along with Sony's "Spider-Man: Far From Home" and Warner Bros.' "Joker."

The North American box office also turned out to have a big year, finishing with a $11.4 billion take, the second-biggest year ever and the fifth-straight year it has surpassed the $11 billion mark. 

A big help to the North American total was the performance by December releases like "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker," "Jumanji: The Next Level," and award-season titles overperforming like Sony's "Little Women" and A24's "Uncut Gems." It led to the deficit from 2018's record-breaking take of $11.8 billion going from 11% at the end of April to just 4% for the full year. 

The totals proved the strength of the 2019 slate for the entire year, but going forward there could be cause for concern. 

With no "Avengers" or "Star Wars" titles coming out in 2020, this year is lacking the number of event pictures compared to the last two years. 

Upcoming movies like "No Time To Die," "Wonder Woman 1984," "Black Widow," and "Top Gun: Maverick" will try to pick up the slack.

The great thing about a driver rating system is that it should, in theory, keep people honest and accountable. Bad drivers should receive bad ratings, and good drivers should receive good ratings.

When it is not used properly or is abused, the whole rating system might as well go into the trash can.

Passengers deserve rides in clean, safe, well-maintained vehicles driven by great, friendly drivers at safe speeds. That is my goal for every ride, and it should be the goal of every driver.

More than 3 million Uber trips take place in the US every day, and the company said in a safety report that 99.9% of rides end without any reports of safety-related incidents. But I have heard absolute horror stories from both friends and passengers in that 0.1%, and I've even experienced bad rides as a passenger myself.

A couple of years ago, I was in an Uber ride where the driver was driving with the phone navigation in her lap. She did not have a dash mount for her phone. She was literally looking down for half of the ride, as she was clearly in an area she did not know. She was driving erratically, I did not feel safe, and I was slamming the invisible brake the whole ride.

When we were about a minute away from our destination, she was coming up to a red light, except she was looking down at her phone and still accelerating, with no signs of slowing down. I yelled "Look out!" and she slammed on her brakes so hard that the tires squealed and we were inches from crashing into the back of the car ahead of us. My heart was pounding. We did not leave her a good review.

Multiple passengers have told me they have had drivers who were texting one-handed while driving. A friend told me a guy picked him up from the airport and his speed never dipped below 90 mph on the highway. One guy told me his driver was cursing nonstop about the traffic and had extreme road rage. A woman once told me a male driver picked her up late at night and kept making comments about how beautiful she was and asking if anyone was home as he was dropping her off at her house.

One woman told me an absolutely horrifying story. She said that years ago, one driver said he was asked by Uber to conduct a survey after the ride for a $25 Uber gift card, if she would just write down her name and phone number on this sheet. She wrote down her information. She said that a few days later this guy found all her social-media accounts and a slew of other personal information and was texting her nonstop about how beautiful she was and how they should be together. She ended up blocking the guy everywhere she could to get rid of him.

I asked all these people: Did you give that driver a one-star review? Did you report them to Uber or Lyft? Almost all of them said no and had some reason: They didn't feel like it, it would have taken too much time, they didn't want to get the driver fired because they probably needed the money.

The girl who wrote her number on the paper for that "survey"? She never reported her driver to Uber. He could still be out there, and you know he has probably done that creepy survey trick on others. (Just for the record, Uber or Lyft will never ask drivers to conduct surveys; never give your personal information to any driver, no matter how convincing they may seem.)

Bad drivers need to be one-starred and reported. If you do not feel safe, report your driver. If your driver is doing something that is violating safety laws or community guidelines, report them! If you do not report them, they could be out there driving another passenger unsafely or hitting on someone else inappropriately. That bad driver is also taking away rides and money from thousands of other great drivers who drive safely and respect you, and they also give the brand a bad image.

The reviewing concept also goes both ways. If you leave a negative review or report a driver, Uber or Lyft may follow up with you and even refund your ride or offer you a free ride in the future as a gesture of goodwill.

Give your bad drivers bad ratings and get them off the platform. Rate good drivers honestly to keep them on the platform. We all want good drivers to drive us, so use the rating system properly!

Credit Karma, long known for its free credit scores, launched as something of a marketing firm, connecting its users with credit cards and loans and getting paid by the banks that offered those products.

But today, it's one of Silicon Valley's hottest fintechs, with a $4 billion valuation and 100 million members. And it's grown fast. The 13-year-old company added 75 million users in the last five years alone and says it counts 1 in 2 millennials as users.

Reports from the Wall Street Journal and CNBC have pegged Credit Karma as a 2020 IPO candidate, though its CEO has said he sees listing as a means, not an end, and is more focused on launching new products than going public soon. Credit Karma has indicated it is profitable according to past media reports. 

As Credit Karma looks to do more than free credit scores, it's also eyeing the next cohort of spenders — Gen Z.

When it launched a high-yield savings account last year (it's first financial product), it leaned on celebrity partners and influencers to get the word out to millennials and Gen Z.

At a press event in New York last November, Credit Karma and celebrity partner Jameela Jamil hosted journalists and influencers to talk financial wellness. Business Insider attended the event, which featured quippy personal finance-themed activities like a "nail your finances" manicure table, a "feng shui your wallet" organization station, and a tarot card reader to look into your financial future.

Jamil, an actor and activist, told her own story of going broke at 30 years old before booking a role on NBC's The Good Place, and spoke to the importance of managing your finances at any age.

We talked to Credit Karma's CEO Ken Lin and CMO Greg Lull about how the startup became a fintech, and the high stakes for making personal finance relevant for twenty-somethings.

Credit Karma raised $175 million in Series D funding from Tiger Global Management, Valinor Management, and Susquehanna Growth Equity in June 2015, and has since completed two rounds of debt financing and secondary sales.

Many are seeing a higher bar for IPOs in the near term, particularly for fast-growing tech companies. Across the board, thanks to high-profile, money-losing names like Uber and Lyft that have plunged in public trading, there's been increased scrutiny looking for sustainable growth. 

And as we've reported, other buzzy fintechs like neobanks have based their business model in part on referrals of their own — Chime, for instance, earns a portion of its revenue from referring customers to other fintechs like SoftBank-backed renters insurance startup Lemonade and fellow DST Global portfolio company Root Insurance.

Reaching Gen Z

It's a battle of Witchers and Mandalorians, as Disney Plus' "Star Wars" series, "The Mandalorian," reclaims its title as the most in-demand original streaming series in the US from Netflix's hit fantasy series, "The Witcher."

However, "The Witcher" is still the most in-demand series globally. 

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.

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

The buzzy online mattress startup Casper filed to go public on Friday, submitting paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange. 

The company's filings revealed that while its net revenue grew to $357.9 million in 2018 from $250.9 million in 2017, net losses increased $92.1 million in 2018 from $73.4 million in 2017.

Casper spent nearly half a billion dollars on marketing from 2016 to 2019

You probably have heard of the so-called internet of things (IoT). It refers to the network of everyday objects that are plugged into the internet. Think: phones, refrigerators, cars, even lightbulbs.

Talks of IoT often conjure up fears of Black Mirror-esque dystopian realities. If the things you use every day are connected and communicating with each other, it's easy to see how privacy and security become top concerns. IoT devices can collect data including location, spending habits, and health information.

It's that rich trove of data and always-watching connectivity that has caught the attention of one of the world's biggest payments players, as well as venture investors and startups. 

And as IoT continues to mature, experts and industry leaders are exploring applications through something we all do every day — buy stuff. They're eyeing not only your wallet, but your car as the next opportunity to roll out IoT payments.

We talked with payments experts to learn what's possible when it comes to smart devices paying bills, and what some of the big hurdles to adoption will be.

Card network giant Visa has been investing in IoT payments for the past couple of years, Bisi Boyle, vice president of IoT at Visa, told Business Insider. 

Boyle heads up efforts around connected payments and is leading Visa's charge to make sure the card network's rails are connected on the IoT. And for 2020, she's focused on rolling out invisible payments in cars.

"We saw the opportunity because of this explosion of connected devices that make up the internet of things that people use every day now" said Boyle. Cars are first on the list, she said.

The four use cases Visa is exploring with cars are fuel, parking, food, and tolls. Cars, Boyle said, will likely be the first place consumers will see IoT payments — and she predicts that capability could arrive as soon as next year.

"The idea is you're just living your life and all these payment experiences happen," said Boyle. 

Take parking, for example. IoT enabled cars will be able to find open street parking and pay the meter, all without the driver needing to pull out their phone or wallet.

Visa is betting that fuel and parking use cases will surface in the 12 to 18 month range, said Boyle. And the card company has already partnered with car companies like Honda to start rolling out the tech.

Paying for parking and gas are just the beginning, though. Boyle sees drive-thru and curbside food pickup as the next step for the tech within three years. 

Tolls are another area with potential, but Boyle thinks adoption will take closer to the three years. The idea is to bring the toll payments into the cars using IoT, as opposed to the existing electronic toll providers like New York's E-ZPass and California's FasTrak.

"You have to work with different governments and municipalities, so that's why that one takes a little bit longer," Boyle said.

And while these payments may be "invisible," Boyle does not see a world where machines are initiating payments without the involvement of the owner themselves.

To be sure, IoT payments will eliminate the need to take out a wallet, but users will still need to authorize payments made by machines. 

"I don't mind it paying for me, but I want it to ask me first, and I want it to know that it's me," said Boyle.

"You have to design the payment experience in a way that people feel that they can trust it," she added.

Cars paying for their own gas

Like Visa, Citi Ventures' co-head of venture investing, Ramneek Gupta, is betting on cars to drive the first wave of IoT payments.

"It is a little bit nascent today — but I think there will be a lot more value creation there from the startup ecosystem—is the emergence of non-human or machine-originated payments," Gupta told Business Insider in November.

As everyday devices like cars and phones get smarter, Gupta thinks IoT payments are inevitable. "It's the natural next step," he said.

Gupta expects these machine-initiated payments to surface in the next two to three years. Citi Ventures backed an India-based startup called CarIQ, which is already exploring payments initiated from vehicles without needing a credit card.

The startup raised $5 million in a Series A in June, and in August, automotive manufacturer Varroc acquired a 74% stake.

The end is near for financial advisers, according to financial advisers. 

That's the sentiment from some advisers surveyed as part of a recent report on the impact of technology on their roles. 

Research and consultancy Greenwich Associates surveyed more than 2,500 advisers on the state of their occupation in five years — and the majority of the group's outlook was pretty bleak, with 43% believing fewer financial advisers will exist in the future.

Of that group who see a decline in the cards, 43% said robo-advisers would be the leading factor in the decline of the occupation, closely followed by "less interest in becoming a financial adviser."

Meanwhile, the technology is actually helping advisers' business, according to their customers. A survey of 312 US investors found that 37% trust their adviser more because of the increased use of fintech as part of the adviser relationship. 

"Put another way, financial advisers expect technology to take their jobs, but clients expect technology to make their financial advisers better," said Brad Tingley, a market structure and technology analyst at Greenwich Associates, in the report. "The reality is somewhere in between." 

The results from the survey echo some findings from a recent CFA Institute poll.

More than half — 54% — of wealth managers, financial advisers, and planners, said they expected their roles to "substantially" change over the next five to 10 years, with 4% believing the job will cease to exist entirely in that time. 

Financial advisers have no love lost for robos, which spent the better part of the past decade growing in size thanks to their low fees and digital-first experiences. In a November survey of financial advisers by Greenwich Associates, 71% labeled robo-advisers and automated investing as over-hyped.  To be sure, pure-play robos still make up just a tiny fraction of overall global wealth assets, and some experts say the space could be overdue for consolidation.  

Still, despite their distaste for the up-and-coming tech, legacy players have been forced to consider how to use it. 

Business Insider first reported in November that storied asset and wealth manager Neuberger Berman was overhauling its client- and adviser-facing digital offerings in a firm-wide upgrade by the end of 2020.

In December, we surveyed executives across the wealth management spectrum to understand the skills human advisers would need to stay ahead of the curve in the future, and which technology would become ubiquitous in a decade. Many said artificial intelligence aiding advisers' decision-making for clients would only grow in popularity.

And while some advisers have come around to adopting new technology, most haven't been keen to share those capabilities with clients. Greenwich's latest report indicates just 29% of advisers make clients aware of all the tech tools available to them.

Meanwhile talent in the business — comprised of players like traditional wirehouses, independent registered investment advisers, and retail banks — is aging, and firms are trying to combat the industry's realities.

The average US financial adviser is 52 years old, according to research provider Cerulli Associates, and those under 35 comprise just 9% of the total workforce.

And over the next decade, some 37% of advisers overseeing about 39% of industry assets are expected to retire. The majority of those retirements are expected to come from wirehouses and independent broker-dealers.

UBS, the world's largest wealth manager by client assets, said last month that it would bring back its wealth planning analyst role, a position more junior to full-fledged financial advisers.

Rival wealth manager Morgan Stanley has been turning to a group of junior wealth staffers to assist advisers in getting up to speed with new capabilities; it's one way to create a pipeline of younger employees to full-fledged adviser roles.

And we first reported last year that Merrill Lynch raised trainee financial advisers' starting salaries by $10,000 as it looked to attract fresh talent and maintain a competitive edge. 

Read more: Robo-advisers like Wealthfront and Betterment are in a tricky spot — here's why one fintech banker thinks buyers and public investors will be hard to win over

Read more: WEALTH MANAGEMENT 2030: Read the full responses to our survey about wealth management and the financial adviser of the future

Ally Financial's online bank is one of the oldest digital banks in the US. But it's not a neobank.

It may be branchless, but Ally has a banking charter, so it's regulated like any other retail bank. Most neobanks don't have bank charters, instead partnering with banks like Bancorp or GreenDot, which provide the core banking processing and FDIC insurance.

Ten-year-old Ally Bank is nevertheless part of the cohort of digital-only banks that includes startups like Chime — which are attracting VC backing and gaining users and deposits.

Ally is leaning on adding new products for growth, as startup neobanks lure customers with high-yield savings accounts and banking giants build out their own digital capabilities — and how exactly it goes about doing that is a critical question.

"We believe that there is a structural tailwind behind digital banking," Dinesh Chopra, chief strategy and corporate development officer at Ally Financial, told Business Insider.

"Digital banking overall is only 8% of the market," he said. Legacy players like Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citi account for most of the country's consumer deposits.

Chopra heads up Ally's corporate strategy team, which includes oversight of mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnerships with fintechs, and Ally's venture capital arm.

He's responsible for Ally's strategic roadmap, deciding when to build new products and when to partner with or acquire fintechs. Prior to joining Ally in 2017, Chopra was head of strategy for Citigroup's retail bank as well as its mortgage and payments businesses.

As of the first quarter last year, Ally was the 15th largest bank in the US in terms of total assets, according to the Federal Reserve. 

Chopra said consumers want more than high-yield savings — they want to borrow, save, invest, and protect their money.

"We're trying to get into other verticals like wealth management," said Chopra. "I think to have a sustainable banking practice, you have to have a more holistic value proposition than just one product."

Deciding when to build, partner, or buy

A bank can expand its product lineup in a few ways. It can build in-house, buy a company that has already built that product, or partner with a fintech.

"We as a company wrestle with that decision on a day-to-day basis," Chopra said. 

Building new products in-house can be expensive and delay time to market, meaning partnerships are often a more attractive option. 

"We don't believe we have to do everything ourselves," said Chopra. "The world is moving towards growth through partnerships."

In April, Ally announced it had teamed up with mortgage startup Better.com on digital home lending. Ally's venture arm also invested in Better's Series C fundraising round.

Through its partnership with Better.com, Ally is able to offer fully digital mortgages on its website and app, meaning customers can apply, receive, and pay down a mortgage online.

"It is completely end-to-end digital. You can get your mortgage application done in less than five minutes on a mobile phone," said Chopra.

Ally had a mortgage business prior to its Better.com partnership called Ally Home, which launched in 2016. To apply for a mortgage, customers would have to fill out a form on Ally's website, then wait for a phone call from a company representative to complete the application.

Making sure you have an exit strategy

Ally considers a few things when looking externally for a partner or possible acquisition, Chopra said. For one, it looks for a partner that has created a compelling product. 

"We have a very high bar for what we share with our customers," said Chopra. "We are trying to look for something that is differentiated and disruptive."

Then, Chopra has to decide if the money makes sense by looking at a potential partner's business plan and revenue-share agreement. 

"We might find a candidate that has something we want and it makes sense to partner with them because the time to market can be quicker, but the economics may not work out," he said.

Chopra also considers the risks of depending on a partnership to support a growing product. 

"We also look at what our exit strategy is. Because when you enter into a partnership, you always have to plan for the worst," Chopra said.

While signing a partnership is one way to grow, Ally has also bought its way to new tech through strategic acquisitions.

In 2016, Ally acquired online broker TradeKing, which was rebranded as Ally Invest. And in October this year, it jumped into healthcare financing when it acquired point-of-sale lender Health Credit Services.

Ally's venture arm can feed its M&A pipeline

M&A and partnerships are closely tied to Ally's venture strategy. 

Ally has invested in Greenlight, a startup that offers debit cards for kids and teens, as well as Modal, a digital sales platform for car dealerships that billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel also backed.

"We make small investments in early stage companies with the primary purpose of getting a tap into the market," said Chopra. 

And when the venture business is looking for a new investment, it also considers how that investment could play into Ally's future.

"We look at companies which could be in the pipeline where we could either partner or acquire them in future," said Chopra. "It's not like a traditional VC firm where we are trying to make a 100x return on two or three investments. It's more strategic."

The Ally we know today traces its roots back to 1919 as General Motors Acceptance Company (GMAC), the captive finance arm of GM, handling the car manufacturer's auto lending business.

Before the Ally rebrand, GMAC offered more than auto loans. It also had a subprime mortgage arm, ResCap, and a direct banking channel called GMAC bank. The global financial crisis hit GMAC hard as delinquencies on mortgages and auto loans rose.

In 2008, the company received a $17.2 billion bailout from the US government, which it wouldn't exit until 2014.

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, GMAC rebranded as Ally Financial in 2010. ResCap filed for bankruptcy, and Ally started to distance itself from GM.

If you're an executive facing a legal crisis and have anywhere between $1,000 to $2,000 an hour to spend, you might consider turning to John Hueston.

He's the lawyer who Peter Thiel's data analytics company, Palantir, turned to when it found itself getting nowhere in a trade secret lawsuit. He represented Elon Musk when the SEC claimed he violated the terms of a settlement over his infamous "funding secured" tweets. And he's defending Bill McGlashan, the former TPG exec charged in the college admissions scandal. 

We reviewed court records and talked to a dozen insiders including friends, colleagues, and competitors, to learn how the one-time prosecutor who grilled former Enron Chairman Ken Lay in one of the biggest corporate fraud trials in history has turned into a fixer for the rich and powerful.

His website for the law firm Hueston Hennigan has a scrolling testimonials section featuring one-time clients including actor Alec Baldwin and execs from corporations like T-Mobile, BlackBerry, and Waste Management. And if the firm's docket and 2020 schedule is any indication, it stands to add a few more.

"He can effectively present to any audience, whether it's a board or a jury or the Supreme Court," said Wayne Gross, a lawyer who has worked closely with Hueston, as far back as the 2000s when they were both prosecutors, as well as in recent years, while working in private practice. 

Other colleagues pointed to a mix of boldness and media savvy, with an energy that's led him to climb mountains and ride his bike cross-country while carrying his laptop and cell phone to stay in touch with clients. 

"He has a rare combination of being willing to do any work it takes to know the case as well as anyone else, but also be nimble and find a path that others haven't thought of," said Robb Adkins, a white collar defense partner at Winston & Strawn, who is also a longtime friend. 

Palantir fires Boies Schiller, hires Hueston

That reputation led Hueston to Palantir, the Peter Thiel-funded data company which had grown frustrated with delays in a trade-secrets case. At some point in 2019, it fired lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner — the firm founded by famed trial attorney David Boies — and brought Hueston in to supercharge the case. 

Palantir, founded in 2003, sells software and analytics tools to US government agencies. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was reported to have used Palantir as part of a immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump.

The secretive company was last valued at $20 billion, and there's been much speculation about when it might finally pursue an initial public offering. 

One of the biggest legal issues currently facing the company is a longstanding dispute with an early investor, Marc Abramowitz, who had a falling out in 2015 with CEO Alexander Karp.

Abramowitz says Palantir blocked him from selling $60 million of shares and is investigating possible fraud at the company, while Palantir says Abramowitz stole trade secrets and used them to set up a competing business.

After three years in court, including back-and-forth deliberations about the nature of trade secrets Abramowitz is alleged to have misappropriated, there has been no discovery conducted against Abramowitz, even as a June 2020 trial looms ahead. 

In late December, Hueston filed a motion in California court pursuing discovery against Abramowitz, and referenced a new claim he added under RICO — a racketeering law often cited by prosecutors when going after organized crime, and a more aggressive accusation than trade secret misappropriation.

Boies Schiller did not respond to requests for comment about Hueston's involvement. Neither did attorneys at Skadden who are representing Abramowitz. 

Hueston advises Elon Musk 

In February, Hueston represented Elon Musk when the billionaire entrepreneur got into hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission for tweeting what the securities regulator said was fraudulent information about Tesla's business.

Musk had already entered into a settlement with the SEC for tweeting the words "funding secured" in August 2018, which suggested to many observers that he could take Tesla private at $420 a share. The SEC called those tweets misleading, and a go-private deal never happened. 

As part of the SEC settlement, Musk forfeited his role as chair of the Tesla board for three years, paid $20 million, and agreed to have his tweeting monitored by lawyers.

Then, months later, another tweet — this time, inaccurate sales projections which he later corrected — provoked the SEC to file another legal action against Musk, claiming he was in violation of the settlement.

That's when Hueston was called in to iron things out. He argued that Musk had been perfectly cooperative with the SEC, despite his view that the Twitter restrictions raised First Amendment concerns. And, he said, that the SEC's action "smacks of retaliation and censorship" after Musk was critical of the agency in a CBS interview. 

After some jockeying in court, the matter was resolved with Musk's CEO position intact at Tesla and he and Hueston appeared outside the courtroom steps in the Southern District of New York, fielding questions from reporters. 

Hueston picks up McGlashan as a client

It was around the same time that former TPG executive Bill McGlashan, who was charged by U.S. prosecutors of paying to falsify his son's record in an attempt to get him into the University of Southern California, was on the phone with Hueston about his own legal problems.

In the McGlashan case, Hueston interviewed as many as four parents for possible representation after a sweeping March indictment netted 33 accused of paying a consultant to create fake profiles and exam scores for their children to gain entry into top universities. 

People familiar with the process said that Hueston went with Hollywood private-equity mogul McGlashan, at least in part, because he was willing to fight the charges rather than cop to a plea agreement with prosecutors to make the matter go away. 

Later in the year, Hueston attacked the prosecutors charging McGlashan, peppering them with discovery requests and asking for any documents that could show he had been unaware of the fraudulent scheme orchestrated by the consultant he paid, Rick Singer. 

From Enron prosecutor to a friend to big business 

Hueston has always been known as aggressive. He made his name in 2006 when he received public recognition for his role as the attack-dog prosecutor grilling former Enron chairman and CEO Ken Lay in one of the biggest corporate fraud trials ever. 

Hueston had been called in from Southern California to Houston to work as one member of a special Justice Department task force investigating the events that led up to Enron's collapse in 2001.

He proved himself to be dogged in mounting a case against Lay, while others investigated onetime CEO and COO Jeffrey Skilling, as well as other executives. By the end of it, both Lay and Skilling were convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges, and Hueston's work was covered in lengthy profiles. 

Afterward, Hueston joined the law firm of Irell & Manella, where he switched sides and, instead of holding corporations to account for wrongdoing, decided to make bank — earning millions defending corporations and wealthy people in both criminal prosecutions and civil business disputes.

Split identity

At times, Hueston has wrestled with whether he has wanted to continue on as a defense lawyer, according to people who know him. 

In 2014, while working at Irell, he applied for the role of U.S. Attorney of the Central District of California, the most populous district in America. It involved an extensive, weeks-long application process, including reference checks, a list of cases and judges he appeared before, as well as names of opposing counsel. 

"Making the decision to apply, I think, really was driven by a continuing desire to be a pubic servant," said Brian Hennigan, Hueston's law partner. 

He was interviewed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who would make the recommendation as to who would be the next U.S. Attorney for the Central District, appointed by then President Obama. They went with an internal hire instead: Eileen Decker, who served from 2015 to 2017. 

Shortly after, he launched Hueston Hennigan, where he set out to handle high-stakes cases that are also in the public interest. 

Both plaintiffs and defense

Since starting the firm, he's taken on both plaintiffs and defense-side cases, and some at discounted rates.

That includes representing Navajo Nation, an American Indian territory which has sued the EPA and other parties they say are responsible for a 2015 gold mine waste spill in Colorado. 

The cases that don't fall into that "low bono" category, however, are often not pretty. 

At one point, he represented Corinthian Colleges, the onetime for-profit college chain that was investigated by attorneys general for fraud, including fake job placement statistics, over-promising a flowery future to prospective students and then charging high prices for tuition and racking up student debt.

Both then-California attorney general Kamala Harris and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau accused the school chain of financial improprieties.  

The school chain filed for bankruptcy and Harris won a $1.1 billion judgment against the defunct company in 2016, yet, thanks to Hueston's involvement, none of its executives were criminally charged. All penalties remained financial.

I've been covering Tesla since 2007, and it's hard to believe that it was just a year ago that CEO Elon Musk dispatched his now-infamous $420 and "funding secured" tweet — and push to take the company private.

That decision wound up costing Tesla and Musk $40 million in an SEC settlement, plus Musk's chairmanship of the company. 

But Tesla actually had bigger problems to deal with. Both 2018 and 2019 were tough, as the company struggled through production of the Model 3 sedan and worked feverishly to get a new factory up and running in China.

Somehow, it all came together in late 2019, just as Tesla revealed an absolutely bonkers vehicle, the long-awaited Cybertruck pickup.

Tesla's stock rallied and rallied and then some. By the end of the year, $420 was in the rearview mirror; by January 2020, a $500 share price was in sight.

Here's how it all happened:

Hearst Magazines editorial employees who work at some of the best-known titles including Cosmopolitan and Esquire recently formed a union, joining a throng of other media workers.

Business Insider talked to 10 current and former Hearst employees of varying seniority and tenure about the union's rise and management's response.

While some of their demands are common to media unions, such as editorial standards and diversity programs, employees said they also were frustrated by the way raises and promotions were handled and not having say in recent big change in their jobs:

Young said the company was navigating industry change better than most, but he also acknowledged that change was hard.

Read the rest of the story here: How Hearst's effort to modernize its antiquated magazine business stressed out employees and led them to unionize

One of the biggest trends of 2020 in real-estate technology will likely be the continued adoption of tech in one of the oldest industries.

Construction, which has trailed the economy in labor-productivity growth since the 1970s, has been attracting entrepreneurs and venture-capital dollars alike.

"It's the least automated industry there is," Merritt Hummer, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, told Business Insider.

Construction tech is one of three real-estate-tech trends that Bain Capital Ventures is watching in 2020, according to Hummer.

But some of the buzzier parts of real-estate tech in 2019 may have been overvalued, Hummer said. She highlighted coworking and short-term rentals as two verticals that could take a hit.

Last year saw large funding rounds for Knotel, Industrious, and WeWork, as well as a lot of venture-capital funding and buzz for the short-term rental startups Sonder, Lyric, and Domio.

Bain Capital Ventures, the venture arm of Bain Capital, has found success in many verticals, namely e-commerce and fintech. Hummer, who led recent investments in the mortgage company Ribbon and the "internet of things" and property-management company SmartRent, is leading its foray into proptech. 

While Bain is operating in a space with many specialist funds with strategic limited-partner bases consisting of the largest real-estate companies, Hummer said Bain has some clear advantages. 

"We just have more capital, so having a bigger fund enables us to support companies through their entire life cycle," Hummer said, pointing to their ability to lead early- and late-stage rounds. 

Two of three Bain Capital Ventures real-estate-tech investments, in Roofstock and Ribbon, point to another advantage: They can bring their fintech expertise to companies at the cross section of finance and real estate. 

2020 proptech trends

Most construction-tech companies doesn't overlap with Bain Capital Ventures' historical expertise, but the larger company's global scale means that it can easily consult with experts it has worked with on previous projects. 

Bain's view is that the best construction-tech investments are with companies that aren't trying to totally "overhaul" the existing ways that construction is done but are instead "shaving off cost and time." Construction is a highly fragmented industry, which means that it would be much harder for one company, by itself, to make an industry-changing impact. 

"They're not going to homebuilders and saying, 'We would completely transform the way you do business,'" Hummer said. "Others make that claim and may be successful in the long run, but it will likely take them longer." 

Hummer highlighted OpenSpace, a company that uses helmet-mounted cameras to create 3D renderings of worksites, and Mosaic, a construction company that has created its own project-management software, as two companies that use tech to make improvements on their existing workflow.

Some experts see construction tech as a way to make the cost of housing cheaper, and while Hummer said that affordability isn't Bain's focus, it may have an impact in some markets. 

"The supply and demand dynamic of each local market will dictate how much of the incremental profit can be retained by the builder," Hummer said. In hot markets, the savings may be absorbed by the builders or developers, while in markets with less demand, they could lower costs for renters or homeowners.

The fragmented nature of construction also means that regardless of market conditions, some builders may pass on the savings, while others will keep them.

Single-family rentals are historically similarly fragmented. Hummer named the institutionalization of single-family rentals as another proptech trend to watch. 

The direct effect is that single-family rentals will "become an investable asset class" for both retail and institutional investors. There are only a few nationally focused single-family public equities. Hummer sees this changing rapidly, with investors being able to choose between national and more localized investment strategies. 

Roofstock, a Bain portfolio company that just recently raised $50 million in funding, is a marketplace for single-family-rental investments that also connects investors with property managers, opening up investors to markets far from where they live or work. 

Companies that sell property-management tools will also benefit from this increased institutionalization. Large investors will work with them to manage their portfolios, while smaller investors that have historically been tech-adverse will begin to adopt more technology to compete. 

The third theme, one that Hummer said has been a theme for the past few years, is the internet of things.

"It's a very fast-moving category that looks different every year," Hummer said. 

SmartRent, another Bain Capital Ventures portfolio company, combines the internet of things with property management by providing a suite of hardware and software to multifamily residential owners. Tenants are given typical internet-of-things control over building access, lighting, and climate, while property managers are given building-management tools and data. 

The state of valuations in proptech and venture more broadly

WeWork's massive valuation slide and abandoned initial public offering and Uber's and Lyft's troubles in the public market were some of the biggest business stories of the year, prompting some experts to predict more crumbling valuations in 2020. Hummer has noticed the trend and thinks it will have varying effects on different verticals in the proptech universe. 

"We think of proptech as not just one area, but an amalgamation of many, many different business models," Hummer said. 

WeWork is considered by some to be a proptech company, and Hummer thinks that valuations may decrease in some of the areas that are closest to WeWork's business model, but not across the whole sector. 

"There's not going to be a single wave that influences valuations across the board," Hummer said. "Our view is that it should be a lot more nuanced."

Proptech that is more purely technological will be much less affected than tech-enabled models. 

"We do think that there has been a recognition that some real-estate businesses are masquerading as tech businesses," Hummer said. 

She said coworking, coliving, and short-term rentals would be hit the hardest by this shift.

A machine that will investigate the forces that hold matter together finally has a home.

On Thursday, the US Department of Energy announced that the long-awaited Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a type of particle accelerator, will be constructed at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York. 

Scientists use particle colliders to study the origins of our universe and investigate the makeup of atoms. The design for the new machine calls for an underground ring that steers protons and electrons toward one another at nearly the speed of light. 

When the subatomic particles collide head-on, they melt into a hot soup — the same type of plasma that formed immediately after the Big Bang. For this reason, physicist Stephen Hawking once compared particle colliders to time machines. 

Brookhaven clenched the coveted role as the machine's home and designer, beating out the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia. Brookhaven is already home to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC; pronounced "Rick"): the only operating particle collider in the US. 

That underground ring stretches 2.4 miles. It's function is slightly different than the EIC; instead of smashing protons and electrons together, the RHIC hurtles beams of gold ions toward one another. Each ion makes around 80,000 loops around the ring per second, before colliding in a similar explosion of subatomic particles. 

A new giant particle collider

The new Electron-Ion Collider will replace the RHIC at Brookhaven; the laboratory plans to permanently shutter the RHIC in 2024. The old machine took eight years and an estimated $617 million to build. The new one is expected cost between $1.6 billion and $2.6 billion, according to the Department of Energy, and be operational by 2030. 

To construct the EIC, Brookhaven won't start entirely from scratch — it plans to keep one of the rings from the RHIC. That ring will fire off protons, which will eventually collide with electrons from a new accelerator that has yet to be built. 

These collisions will give scientists more precise, 3D snapshots of the building blocks that form protons and electrons. Brookhaven compared the technology to "a CT scanner for atoms."

Scientists already know that protons are made up of even tinier particles called quarks, which are glued together by particles called gluons. The force that holds these quarks together is more than 100 times more powerful than the electromagnetic force that powers x-rays, radio waves, and visible light. It's the strongest and most mysterious force in nature.

Scientists hope the EIC scanner will give them a better understanding of how quarks and gluons are arranged and why they're bound so tightly. 

The mystery of protons' spin

Researchers are also hoping the machine can help them solve a decades-long riddle.

Protons spin in a similar way to how Earth rotates around the sun. The quarks inside the protons spin, too — but this motion only accounts for about a quarter of the total spin of the proton itself. Physicists have been trying to explain why for more than 30 years. 

The EIC could make it possible to control protons so that they're spinning at a similar angle when they collide — a feat that hasn't been accomplished before. Scientists hope this will shed more light on what's come to be known as the "spin crisis."

Unraveling these mysteries has practical applications outside the laboratory, too. Learning more about at atom's structure could help scientists figure out how to zap cancer cells, improve batteries and electronics, or power future technologies that haven't even been imagined yet. 

"Until we have the EIC, there are huge areas of nuclear physics that we are not going to make progress in," Donald Geesaman, the former chair of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, told the journal Nature. 

But the new particle collider is not a done deal yet. Congress still needs to approve the budget and the Department of Energy will have to sign off on the design and construction timeline. 

Industries like retail, manufacturing, banking and healthcare are not often thought of as quick to adopt new technologies, but Microsoft wants to change that. 

Take, for example, the walkie talkie feature in Microsoft Teams, the company's fast growing chat app. The new feature is meant to make it easier for retail workers, who are on the ground in stores, to communicate with each other and work more efficiently, Emma Williams, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Office Verticals, told Business Insider.

The feature is indicative of Microsoft's broader strategy here, Williams says: Take its existing products, and customize them to make them better and more useful in specific industries and markets. Other examples within Teams alone include the launch of a feature to automatically send daily assignments and tasks to retail employees, and controls that pause notifications when workers are off their shift.

"Where we're investing heavily, we're looking at each of these industries one by one, and developing a portfolio of critical products and experiences across our three clouds to target the needs of those industries," Williams told Business Insider.

(Three clouds refer to Microsoft Azure, its cloud computing division, Office 365, its cloud productivity software, and Microsoft Dynamics, its cloud software for financial planning and customer relationship management.)

The initiative is strategically important to Microsoft, which is widely considered to be lagging behind Amazon Web Services in the cloud wars.

By making apps like Teams available to a wider audience — namely, those like front-line retail workers who aren't at a computer all day — it can help push the app beyond the 20 million active users it claimed in November, and re-entrench its dominance over rival Slack. And, as Williams suggested to Business Insider, it all plays a role in a strategy that can push usage of its other cloud products, too.

Beyond Teams

However, to Williams' point, Microsoft's strategy here goes beyond just Teams. She says that it ties in with some of the work that Microsoft has been doing around Power Platform, which allows users to make simple apps with little or no coding required.

She says that's an ideal way to help retail workers be more productive — especially since the data that those apps generate can be plugged right back into Teams, where they work with their colleagues. It's better and more efficient than the apps that they've historically had to deal with, she said.

"You take all those ancient line of business applications that IT departments have created... by lighting up and re-doing critical new digitized workflows in Power Platform and integrating that with Microsoft Teams, you get the very best of Microsoft Teams being a hub for pulling through all the digital experiences you need," Williams said.

And to go even further, she said, the data generated by all of these tools — combined with more futuristic initiatives like the internet of things (IoT) — can be analyzed and tracked in tools like Microsoft's own Dynamics to understand and improve how customers, workers, and logistics providers do their job. 

The ultimate goal

The ultimate goal, here, is to "connect the first line and the information workers together on the same digitized platform for the first time." In other words, by offering tools to front-line workers as it's doing with Teams, the data flows into the same places as the business analysts working at a desk at headquarters.

In so doing, Williams says, Microsoft can make it easier for its customers to modernize their tech. Everybody is on the same identity system, just for starters, and it all takes advantages of Microsoft's investments in cybersecurity.

"It's no small feat for a company and for a CIO and an IT department to roll out a new digital identity to 85 percent of their workforce. And so we have to think very seriously indeed about the way we can do it and empower the companies to be successful in doing it in a way where we're giving them secure versions of tech," Williams said.

On the flip side, she said, those who don't keep up with the pace of technological change will be left behind, she suggested.

"Consumer expectations are changing around logistics, transportation, and shipping of their products. And so the world has to change. It can't just be that there's a retail store and then you have an online presence," Williams said. 

 

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For white hat hacker Jesse Kinser cybersecurity is a lifestyle. In her day job, she helps protect her company's products as LifeOmic's product security director. When she goes home, after her child sleeps, that's when she starts hacking.

As a white hat hacker, she breaks into systems – not to steal information, but to find vulnerabilities and bugs. Outside of work, she hacks to help protect technology companies, retail stores, health care companies, insurance providers, and even government entities. She's hacked for companies like Starbucks, Uber, and Airbnb.

"Things are constantly changing, which keeps me engaged," Kinser told Business Insider. "All these companies are building cool new products and I get to be the first to break them."

Today, major organizations like Uber, Spotify, the Department of Defense, and Atlassian are increasingly using platforms like Bugcrowd and HackerOne, which welcome white hat hackers to break into those systems and reward them for finding bugs. 

In return for finding vulnerabilities, these hackers are paid with something called a "bug bounty," or a cash award for finding a bug. Kinser says she's made thousands from these payouts. Some white hat hackers have even become millionaires through bug bounties.

The rise in companies opening up their systems to white hat hackers heralds a major shift in attitudes towards security. Companies are becoming more involved in the security community and actively engaging hackers to find or report security vulnerabilities. 

It's in the best interest of these companies too. Otherwise, they could face data breaches, privacy violations, or major financial loss.

Perceptions about hackers are also changing, says HackerOne co-founder and CTO Alex Rice. For example, former presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke was a member of one of Texas's most high-profile hacking groups called the Cult of the Dead Cow, and few batted an eye at it. 

"I think one of the really interesting things about the perception the hacker community has is how quickly we jump to a stereotype about what people say when they imagine a hacker," Rice told Business Insider. "They imagine someone in their basement, usually a really antisocial individual, but when you look at the people who are participating in contributing value to the platform, the diversity of their backgrounds and the paths they took to hacking is really astonishing."

'Hacking and cybersecurity are a lifestyle'

Kinser has been hacking for 13 years now. In high school, she got her start in hacking when she programmed her watches to switch TVs on and off. In college, she started doing research on various security topics and eventually worked for the Department of Defense. She eventually ran the bug bounty program at Salesforce, and she started hacking there as well.

Now, after work, Kinser will usually spend time with her family. When her child goes to sleep, she starts hacking. She says if she finds something good, she may stay up until 2 a.m. 

When Kinser is hacking a website, she starts by using it just as any person would, but with the motive of an attacker. She'll create an account and think about where sensitive data might live. For example, on a retail site, people can create accounts where they enter their credit card information. She'll try hacking those areas first. 

"It's a challenge," Kinser said. "I always said hacking and cybersecurity are a lifestyle. I'm pretty much all in all the time."

André Baptista, a 25-year-old professor at the University of Portugal, is also a white hat hacker who has made over $130,000 in bug bounties. He first got his start when he found a book in his father's cabinet about programming. He would later study computer science in college. 

However, he started hacking when he became involved in Capture the Flag (CTF), a hacking game in which players try to find vulnerabilities in simulated scenarios. He was the captain of his university's CTF team and qualified for a hacking event in Las Vegas, but after this, he says his "life changed completely." At the event, he didn't find any bugs. 

"I was a little disappointed with myself because I was good because I qualified in the first place, but I didn't know how to hunt for real world vulnerabilities because I was used to simulated scenarios," Baptista told Business Insider.

From then on, he resolved to learn to find actual bugs, and he started practicing everyday. About two or three years ago, he learned about HackerOne and realized he could use it to find actual vulnerabilities. And in February 2018, he found his first real bug.

"The payouts are really amazing as well," Baptista said. "My life has changed completely because of HackerOne."

Both Kinser and Baptista frequently travel to attend hacking events. Baptista says his job gives him lots of flexibility. After doing his master's degree, his university kept him on as a professor. He can teach classes, and every month, he can fly somewhere to attend a HackerOne event. 

Still, he says he sometimes feels pressure when other hackers find bugs at events, and he doesn't find any. Other times, it's the other way around. 

"I love to be in multiple places," Baptista said. "I love to do some hacking when I'm working at the university when I have some spare time between meetings and classes...When I go somewhere like London, Amsterdam  when I go there, I'm very inspired because I have no other distractions and I can hack and find some critical bugs."

The red team

White hat hacking also happens within some companies. Brianna Malcolmson leads Atlassian's Red Team, which looks at threats that could target Atlassian and then simulates them. The term red team started in a military context, when countries would run simulations of what the opposition could do. 

The team runs attacks on Atlassian, such as a phishing attack to get someone to install malware. Besides finding and gathering data about vulnerabilities, it educates the company about security, the kinds of risks it can face, and how each employee can get involved in improving security.

Atlassian also has a blue team, which practices and trains up on what happens if there's a security incident. The blue and red team have somewhat of a rivalry, Malcolmson says. While the red team has to work hard at not getting tripped up at the protections the blue team put in place, the blue team has to work at protecting the entire company.  

"Really in the last five years, the number of internal red teams have gone up a lot," Malcolmson told Business Insider. "Red teaming was a thing in the military since the 60s and 70s. It's expanded more recently into tech companies. Now there are more red teams at all the Silicon Valley tech companies than before."

Malcolmson says that even though the red team has an adversarial relationship with the blue team, it's actually quite friendly. 

"We see ourselves as serving the company and serving the needs of not only all Atlassian teams, but specifically of the blue team," Malcolmson said. "When we give our results, we always try to take it from a place of, we did some bad things but no blame is being assigned ...We want to keep it a learning experience."

'Essentially good guys who think like bad people'

Rice says that even as little as five years ago, hacking was synonymous with being a criminal. 

"The people who had these skills were largely pushed underground," Rice said. "The folks who did it did it out of a labor of love. It wasn't the most obvious way to create a living. It was really a smaller community that was overwhelmingly people who were there because they were passionate about making technology secure."

Casey Ellis, founder and CTO of Bugcrowd, says white hat hackers are "essentially good guys who think like bad people." Bugcrowd brings these hackers together to hunt for vulnerabilities.

"This is a concept that the average lay person can understand," Ellis told Business Insider. "Try explaining firewall to grandma and she will possibly get it but more likely glaze over, whereas this idea of neighborhood watch for the internet, that's a pretty intuitive concept."

Now, security is a critical conversation for any company, as one mistake that companies can make is having developers work around the cloud to get their products to the market without thinking about security. 

"It's pretty crazy to think about how you would have hackers partner with enterprises but that's exactly what's happening today," Rice said. "We're able to be more transparent about it. We're able to teach people how to hack in an environment that's underground. We're able to compensate people for it fairly. We're embracing hacking as a necessary and critical step."

Although hackers may come from all walks of life, there's still a lack of diversity in the hacking community, as it's still predominantly men. According to a Bugcrowd report, only 4% of the global hacker community is female.

Kinser says it's sometimes discouraging when she goes to a hacking event and is the only woman, but it also motivates her to do outreach programs or work with HackerOne to invite more women. 

"Instead of getting super discouraged about being one woman being the only woman in a room of 50 men, I try to use that to reach out and encourage participation," Kinser said. "Even in my day-to-day job, it's mostly men."

How to start hacking

To get started in white hat hacking, Kinser suggests reading hacking reports and learning about how hackers break into a system. She also suggests learning to build applications yourself, which can teach where security holes may lie. 

"You don't have to be an expert, but if you're hacking a website, you need to know how a website works before you try to break it so you can understand how it works," Kinser says.

Likewise, Baptista recommends learning to program and trying to build web and mobile apps. He also says people should start doing CTF's, where he got his start in white hat hacking.

For questions about hacking, there's a large community of white hat hackers online.  

"That's a key thing that's usually overlooked," Kinser said. "You think of people who sit and a corner and work by themselves. Sometimes it is that, but at the same time, we lean on each other too. That's what's so powerful about these hacking events. Reach out to people in the community and ask questions. Don't be shy to do that."

Her biggest piece of advice is, don't be intimidated.

"Everyone has to start somewhere and this can be a daunting industry so you just have to jump in," Kinser said. "Most importantly, learn from each other."

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