The heir-apparent to the Samsung Group, Jay Y. Lee, has apologized for his role in a succession plot that resulted in a bribery conviction, and for executives caught sabotaging attempts to organize labor at the company. Lee, the only son of the incapacitated Chairman Lee Kun-hee and grandson of founder Lee Byung-chull, also pledged that he would not pass control of the Korean dynasty to his children.

Until today, two things were thought to be true about Samsung’s royal family: it doesn’t apologize unless things explode, and company control is a birthright of the Lees. The break in tradition could be an historic moment for the chaebol that got its start as a small grocery store in the 1930s, before rising to become a major international...

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• Design studio Plastique Fantastique has developed a protective personal space for doctors.
• It has positive air pressure to keep the person inside safe from droplets containing a virus.
• Doctors would see and treat patients from the transparent area of the space.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

While many healthcare professionals are dealing with a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) to fight the coronavirus, design studio Plastique Fantastique has a slightly different solution: a personal protective space for doctors and healthcare workers.

Though larger and more expensive than typical PPE, the plastic protective space could be used over and over again. It consists of an airlock, a positive pressure chamber, and care room where the doctor can see and treat patients. Dozens of US doctors have died from the coronavirus, and lack of proper PPE makes it harder for them to protect themselves against the virus.

Here's how it works. 

SEE ALSO: Shipping containers converted into portable isolated ICU wards are being used in Italy for coronavirus patients — see inside

The personal protective space is plastic, and can be blown up when needed.

The air lock area keeps the air pressure inside the bubble at the right level to prevent infection. Doctors go through this area with proper disinfection before entering or leaving the bubble.

The air lock separates the protective space from the outside.

This works because the interior of the bubble has constant overpressure airflow, so no droplets can come in from sick patients, and air only flows from the space to the outside.

Clean air is supplied by a ventilator outside.

The person in the area with positive air pressure is protected from viruses on the outside.

Inside is the care unit, the transparent plastic room where doctors can stay protected while seeing patients. The unit is 13 feet by 26 feet, and multiple care units can be attached.

The surface of the care room has arm glove attachments, allowing the doctor to interact with the patient without contact. Doctors can also speak with patients, and examine their appearance for signs of illness.

Units also have a small area for healthcare providers to relax and take breaks.

Inside, doctors would have all the equipment and materials needed for patient care.

This diagram shows one possible configuration of the personal protective spaces, with airlocks, relaxation areas, and multiple care units where doctors can see many patients.

The units could be deployed in a doctor's office or hospital, or in a testing site for antibodies, for example.

Most new cars sold today include a bevy of sensors such as cameras and radar to help power modern conveniences like automatic emergency braking and lane-keeping assist. Very few automakers, however, sell cars with the high-powered laser sensor known as LIDAR, and for good reason: most LIDAR are ridiculously expensive, with the leading suppliers pricing theirs at around $75,000. But now, Volvo says it has found a LIDAR maker that can produce the sensors cheap enough to justify installing them on its consumer vehicles — which it says will allow these cars to drive themselves.

In 2018, Volvo made a “strategic investment” in a little-known Florida-based LIDAR company called Luminar to use the startup’s high-resolution long-range sensor to...

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• The coronavirus pandemic has forced millions of workers out of office spaces and into their homes, but 54% of workers polled in a new survey say they would prefer to continue working remotely full time.
• IBM conducted a survey among 25,000 people to gauge how perspectives about work, transportation, and leisure changed since the outbreak of the coronavirus.
• Working from home could make workers happier and save employees and employers money.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus pandemic has created global shifts in the way people work, shop, and socialize. While not every change created during the quarantined lifestyle of the pandemic will stick, many employees hope that working from home will.

A survey conducted by IBM found that 54% of employees would prefer to primarily work remotely.

Millions of workers have transitioned their job operations to work remotely in the wake of the coronavirus, and as these workers settle into their home-based routines, many are finding they want to continue working from home after the pandemic, as it lends itself to flexibility and productivity.

IBM polled more than 25,000 US adults during April to figure out how COVID-19 has altered their perspectives on a range of topics including working from home.

Of those surveyed, 75% said they would like to continue to work from home in at least a partial capacity, while 40% of respondents said they feel strongly that their employer should give employees the choice to opt-in to remote work.

Working from home is not only popular but other studies have shown that those who work from home full-time reported being happy in their job 22% more than their counterparts who spent no time working from home. 

Working remotely is also an attractive option because it can help employees save on housing. When workers don't have to report to an office, they have more flexibility to work from home in more rural or suburban settings.

But the shift to remote work might not only benefit employees but employers as well. Instead of leasing huge offices at high-dollar prices, employers could save money by renting smaller spaces — especially since experts predict offices will transition from a place where workers go to every day, to more of a central meeting spot for important meetings and collaborative work.

Some companies have already decided to make permanent shifts to working remotely or partially remote, such as Nationwide Insurance.

The change in working preferences goes hand in hand with IBM's other finding, which found that people are more likely to use their own vehicles for transportation and intend to rely on less public transportation, rideshares, and taxi services.

Nearly 20% of respondents who regularly used public transportation such as trains, buses, or subways said they no longer would, and another 28% said they will likely use public transportation less often.

Rideshare and taxi services saw a similar drop, while 17% of people responded that they plan to use their own vehicle more and 1 in 4 people said they would use their personal vehicle as their exclusive mode of transportation moving forward as a result of COVID-19.

SEE ALSO: Grocery stores like Kroger and Giant Eagle are beginning to limit meat purchases at some locations

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NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

NASA is working with Tom Cruise to film the first movie shot in space, according to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. The details of the project aren’t clear, but Bridenstine says the film will take place aboard the International Space Station.

Bridenstine didn’t say how Cruise will be participating in the adventure, but a NASA spokesperson confirmed to CNN that Cruise will launch to space and stay on board the ISS. Cruise is well-known for performing increasingly impressive stunts in his recent films, including clutching the side of an Airbus A400 as it takes off in 2015’s Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation. It’s hard to think of a more difficult stunt to pull than making a feature film in space.

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:Slack’s mobile apps have always valiantly tried to replicate the desktop and web experience with a single home screen and a reliance on swipe-based navigation and cumbersome menus. But a new update the company is rolling out on its Android beta channel is introducing a “simpler, more organized” Slack with major visual and user interface changes.

The update’s biggest new feature is the navigation bar at the bottom that now lets you easily jump to various sections of the app without having to swipe, tap a tiny icon, or scan a menu of sometimes hard-to-read text.

The bar includes a home screen for laying out all of your channels, and from there, you can swipe right to access other workspaces or left to go back to the last channel you...

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Contact Phobia – The growing fear of human touch and our shift towards a contactless world

Over the past couple weeks we’ve been beat over the head with phrases like social distancing, wash your hands, shelter at home, wear your mask, and disinfect everything. These messages have left us with an overarching fear of touching…. virtually anything.

In fact, my wife now has a set routine for every delivery, grocery store pickup, or any outside surface we come into contact with – she disinfects everything. We have unleashed our “inner germ-a-phobe” and the value of the human touch has sunk to less than zero. Touching things is bad, and our new “contact phobia” will manifest itself in unusual ways.

Much of this will play out in the way we send and receive packages in the future.

In 2015, I was asked to keynote the Annual Turkish Postal Symposium in Antalya, Turkey, an event focused on the future of the postal industry, where thought leaders from around the world gathered to discuss next-generation postal systems.

I focused my talk around a central question – “How long will it be before we can mail a package and have it travel to a city on the other side of the world without ever being touched by human hands?”

The example I used was a package traveling from Istanbul to San Francisco, arriving without human contact.

While it seemed like more of a science fiction vision of the future at the time, it has become all too real today.

Thinking through the path of automation, and especially now, I find this to be a logical transition in the future. Once we set a package into motion, it will essentially guide itself to its final destination by way of a completely automated global distribution network.

The changing psychology of human nature

The threat of contagion has twisted our psychological responses to ordinary interactions, leading us to behave in unexpected ways.

Rarely has the threat of disease occupied so much of our thinking.

For weeks, almost every newspaper has posted front-page stories about the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, every radio and TV show has back-to-back coverage on the growing number of cases and death toll. And depending on whom you follow on social media, frightening statistics coupled with gallows humor becomes the topic of every conversation.

This constant bombardment by the media has resulted in heightened levels of anxiety, massively influencing our own mental health. But it goes far deeper than that.

It’s leaving psychological imprints so deep that many of us have become “super judgy,” critical of anyone who doesn’t subscribe to our own personal rules of compliance. As we search for ways to survive, we become more tribalistic and less accepting of any foibles or proclivities.

Our moral judgment has moved to the extremes as we become harsher in our social attitudes, and more traditionalist when considering issues such as immigration, sexual freedom, and equality. These daily reminders of disease do indeed sway our political leanings.

Ten Scary Trends being created by “Contact Phobia”

Recent studies have shown that when we fear a virus or pandemic, we tend to be more critical of others. This comes into play when we hear an employee badmouthing his or her company, or when we see someone disrespect an authoritative figure such as a boss or judge.

Naturally, incidents like these have nothing to do with the spread of the disease, but by dissing conventional thinking, people give off signals that they’re willing to break other more relevant rules that are needed to keep the disease at bay.

Our fear of illness is also physiologically expensive. These changing attitudes that stem from our fear of the human touch, will cause a number of ominous and risky shifts in global behavior.

Keep in mind, any number of changing variables can alter these trends, but based on our current temperaments, these become a logical direction for our future.

1. Shrinking world view

A growing concern of contagions will lead us to ‘gain control’ and become more conformist and less accepting of attitudes outside the norm. Our ethical judgements become more rigid and our political, religious, and sexual attitudes more conservative.

2. Protectionism

Our behavioral immune system operates on a ‘better safe than sorry’ logic, altering our moral decision-making and political opinions on issues that have nothing to do with the current threat.

3. De-globalization

The post-pandemic world will be marked by tighter restrictions on the movement of goods, services, capital, labor, technology, data, and information.

4. Growing anti-immigration sentiments

Besides making us more critical of the people within our own social groups, the threat of disease is also leading us to be more distrustful of strangers.

5. Fear of trying something new

Those who worry about illness tend to prefer “conventional” or “traditional” individuals, and less likely to feel an affinity towards “creative” or “artistic” people.

6. Longer-term personal relationships

In a recent study, a reminder to wash hands led participants to be more judgmental of unconventional mannerisms and sexual behaviors. By extension, adventuresome lifestyles are out and marriage will suddenly be back in vogue.

7. Longer-term business relationships

In general, we become more conformist and respectful of convention when we feel the threat of a disease, and less likely to do business with someone we don’t know.

8. Democracy backlash

Government becomes the new whipping boy. Economic weakness, mass unemployment, and rising inequality will lead to blaming foreigners, openness, and elected officials for the crisis. Blue-collar workers and broader segments of the middle class will become more susceptible to populist rhetoric, particularly proposals to restrict migration and trade.

9. Growing risk of deflation

As the recession deepens, a lower demand for goods will mean unused machines, factories, and over capacity. Mass unemployment will drive a price collapse in commodities such as oil and industrial metals, making deflationary debt a strong likelihood, increasing the risk of insolvency.

10. Demographic time bomb

With much more public spending being allocated to health systems, a universal health care approach becomes a necessity, not a luxury. But since most developed countries are having fewer kids and increased lifespans, funding these programs will make the rapidly accumulating debts from today’s unfunded health-care and social-security systems appear even more ominous.

Mailing a package in 2030

It’s hard to imagine so many things being affected by the human touch, but that’s exactly what’s happening. And the leading barometer of change will be the way we send and receive deliveries.

So what will it be like to mail a letter or package ten years from now?

As I envision the process, the person sending an item will simply place it outside their front door, and take a photo of it with a special shipping app on their phone. This will start the process, detailing the package size, dimensions, and GPS coordinates, and the sender will add particulars such as destination, level of urgency and weight category (i.e. under 10 lbs). Within minutes, a robotic pickup service will arrive, retrieve the package, and load it onto a drone delivery vehicle.

While the sender will know the approximate price when they put it into the app, they will get exact pricing once the package is picked up, along with tracking details, and exact time of delivery.

Since packages come in a variety of shapes and sizes, it’s reasonable to assume limits on the size and the weight, both on the high end as well as the low end. As example, a package the size of a grain of salt or as light as a helium balloon will need to be in a larger package. On the larger end of the spectrum, mailing items like furniture, exercise equipment, or motorcycles will require a different kind of delivery service altogether.

In addition to size and weight issues will be a series of legal requirements for shipping restricted items like alcohol, pharmaceuticals, cannabis, live animals, biohazard materials, or products with special handling requirements like fragile glass, frozen food, or sensitive instruments. Establishing limits, rules, and standards will be part of the overarching strategy needed to develop this emerging global system.

ANYmal is a delivery bot designed to work with virtually every kind of pickup and delivery!

Package pickup

Today’s delivery systems place a heavy emphasis on using a standardized shipping label for every package, however the label itself could be produced by the delivery service and coded onto the package once it’s been picked up. In some cases, it may be beneficial to work with specialty sensor labels to track the condition of sensitive contents in real time.

Retrieving a package from someone’s front door presents a huge number of engineering challenges.

First, the robot will have to travel to and from where the package is. Obstacles could include stairs, trees, broken sidewalks, no sidewalk, dogs, cats, squirrels, snakes, rain, hail, snow, children, rocks, and mud to name just a few.

The package could be square, round, triangle, rectangle, or an odd shape that is hard to describe, but it shouldn’t matter. Once picked up, every package will be rewrapped in an ultra-thin shipping material that is waterproof and virus-proof.

Robotic retrieval bots will be trained to compensate for fences, gates, security guards, locked doors, motion detectors, nosey neighbors, piles of leaves, or overgrown lawns.

Naturally, timing will be an issue. Food deliveries will demand immediate attention, but for everything else, a package left outside for 2 minutes will generally be fine, but one left exposed to the elements for 30-60 minutes could have any number of things go wrong. For this reason, the relatively simple task of retrieving a package can be riddled with complexity.

Bots that pickup from a home are not the same as ones that take packages across country borders!

The missing pieces

Naturally there are many missing pieces to the fully automated global system that will eventually be created.

1. Smart Deliver Boxes

A huge opportunity awaiting the first person to create a globally accepted, robo-dockable mailbox and universally protective package-wrap.

2. Universal Mailing Labels

Labels will monitor both the package’s location and the condition of its content.

3. Robotic Customs Agents

There will always be a need to inspect and monitor package contents to prevent the distribution of illegal items.

4. Trained Human Operators

As a system designed “by humans for humans,” there will still need to be a number of skilled human operators to monitor operations and step in whenever something goes wrong.

The list above is intended to highlight a few opportunities, but admittedly glosses over many of the details and intricacies involved in developing a complete global system. Over time the need for boxes and packaging will decline and disappear altogether as super smart systems know how to deal with every object on an individual basis.

Are we heading towards a touchless world? Does that scare you?

Final Thoughts

In a recent webinar on the future of the airline industry, one corporate exec said they were trying to create a touchless experience from the curb to the gate.

While it’s hard to imagine a touchless airport experience, it’s equally as hard imagining going to touchless grocery stores, touchless fitness centers, touchless dentists, touchless chiropractors, touchless nursing homes, and touchless daycare centers.

Arising from the middle of all this contact phobia will be a growing number of counter-activists thumbing their nose at touchless-advocates, demanding the right to return to a human-centered existence.

After all, researchers have demonstrated countless times that the human touch contains several health benefits for our physiological and psychological well being.

Hugging induces oxytocin, the “bonding hormone,” that’s renowned for reducing stress, lowering cortisol levels and increasing our sense of trust and security. According to researchers at the University of North Carolina, women who receive more hugs from their partners have lower heart rates, blood pressure, and higher levels of oxytocin.

The human touch in all its forms, hugging, hand holding, cuddling, and simply caressing a forehead, has been shown to be super beneficial, health-wise, physically and emotionally.

Ironically, the same kind of human touch that may have triggered the coronavirus in the first place, may be exactly what gives us back enough control of our lives to end it.

If you have additional thoughts, ideas, or comments, please feel free to add to the conversation.

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Billy Mitchell, who rose to fame hunting high-scores in classic video games, is suing internet game scoreboard Twin Galaxies over its decision to strip him of his records and ban him from its leaderboards, according to court documents seen by Ars Technica. Mitchell is arguing that Twin Galaxies’ statement was libelous, and implied that he was a cheater. A court hearing is currently scheduled for July 6th.

Twin Galaxies announced its decision to strip Mitchell of his records back in April 2018 after its investigation revealed that he had not achieved his Donkey Kong high scores on original arcade hardware. While some in the community have accused Mitchell of using the arcade emulation software MAME, Twin Galaxies said it didn’t have...

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In the latest instance of unrest at the company, several thousand Amazon workers walked off the job Friday. The occasion was International Workers’ Day, also known as May Day, and the Amazonians joined workers at Instacart, FedEx, Target, and Walmart demanding better conditions for work that the government has deemed essential, and their own employers have frequently called heroic.

The protests to date have drawn attention to widespread outbreaks of COVID-19 in Amazon warehouses, the lack of protective equipment for warehouse personnel, and the low pay and draconian sick-leave policies that workers in fulfillment centers have endured for years. And they’ve been effective in at least two ways. One, Amazon increased pay and expanded sick...

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We've long discussed how the Pai FCC's net neutrality repeal was plagued with millions of fraudulent comments, many of which were submitted by a bot pulling names from a hacked database of some kind. Millions of ordinary folks (myself included) had their identities used to support Pai's unpopular plan, as did several Senators. The Trump FCC stonewalled both law enforcement and journalist inquiries into who was behind the comments, and why the FCC didn't lift a finger to either stop them or to help identify those responsible.

Numerous journalists like Jason Prechtel have submitted FOIA requests for more data (server logs, IP addresses, API data, anything) that might indicate who was behind the fraudulent comments, who may have bankrolled them, and what the Pai FCC knew about it. Thanks to that effort, early last year, Gizmodo's Dell Cameron worked with Prechtel to link some of the fake comments to Trump associates and some DC lobbying shops like CQ Roll Call. Then late last year, Buzzfeed's Kevin Collier and Jeremy-Singer Vine showed how, unsurprisingly, the broadband industry funded at least some of the fraudulent efforts.

Meanwhile two reporters for the New York Times, Nicholas Confessore and Gabriel Dance, sued the FCC under the Freedom of Information Act after the agency refused to reveal logs that could show the IP addresses used to submit the mass comments. Last week, a Manhattan federal judge hand over copies of the logs to both Confessore and Dance:

"The FCC attempted to quash the paper’s request but failed to persuade District Judge Lorna Schofield, who wrote that, despite the privacy concerns raised by the agency, releasing the logs may help clarify whether fraudulent activity interfered with the comment period, as well as whether the agency’s decision-making process is “vulnerable to corruption."

Keep in mind this sort of thing wasn't a one off; numerous regulatory agencies have been plagued by similar efforts for years. Generating bogus support for shitty government policy is now just an additional service many law, lobbying, and PR firms offer corporations and clients as an added service. But much like astroturfing -- which often extends to real world protests -- it's such an obscure concept to most people it never warrants a second thought. But it's ethically grotesque all the same, especially given it pollutes some of the only opportunities the public has to comment on harmful government policies.

At this point there's enough evidence to reasonably conclude that the broadband industry and GOP hired a bunch of K Street firms to "stuff the ballot box," and the FCC -- likely knowing the broadband industry's involvement -- took steps to try and help cover it up. This lawsuit is likely to reveal even more data to help bolster that conclusion. The question now is whether the courts (or anybody else) will actually care, and whether anybody's going to do anything about it.

The pandemic is putting front-line workers in the spotlight, as vendors compete to provide tech tools that can boost their efficiency.

• VMware Chief Operating Officer Sanjay Poonen said the alliances it forged with cloud giants like Amazon, Microsoft and Google have transformed the company into an "indispensable bridge" 
• VMware's virtualization technology has become a critical tool in the cloud as businesses set up networks on multiple platforms and in their own data centers.
• "If you look at the last two to three years, we're the only company where the six public cloud infrastructure leaders have all embraced VMware," Poonen told Business Insider. "Nobody else has that position of being the indispensable bridge  from the private cloud to the public cloud." 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

The earnings reports from several tech giants — Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Google — are in and they underscore a key trend: the cloud is hot.

VMware chief operating officer Sanjay Poonen who has been keeping track of the reports says that he noted another common theme in these cloud giants' success. 

"They've all embraced us," he told Business Insider last week. "Some percentage of those companies' revenue growth will come from VMware helping customers."

How did all the big cloud companies become VMware allies?

The Dell Technologies subsidiary blazed the trail for virtualization, a technology that enables businesses to access disparate computer systems as one network. Virtualization has become even more critical in the cloud because it allows businesses to set up networks on web-based platforms and lets them scale down — or even abandon — private data centers. A new trend called "hybrid cloud," where businesses use multiple cloud platforms as well as in-house data centers, has made VMware even more popular, since its software makes it possible to manage data and applications across platforms. As a result, all the major cloud players (including China-based Alibaba) have sought out an alliance with VMware.

"If you look at the last two to three years, we're the only company the six public cloud infrastructure leaders have all embraced," Poonen said. "Nobody else has that position of being the indispensable bridge from the private cloud to the public cloud. We view Amazon, [Microsoft] Azure, Google as our friends. We've worked really hard the last three years to build pristine partnerships with all of them."

Some of VMware's friendships have even raised eyebrows. The most prominent example is Oracle: The two companies had long been rivals, with Oracle refusing to support VMware's software for years, until it announced an unexpected new alliance late last year. VMware chief information officer Bask Iyer told the Business Insider at the time that he was "very pleasantly surprised" by Oracle's decision to form a partnership.

The COVID-19 crisis has led to a faster acceleration of the cloud, as businesses scramble to adapt to the sudden pivot to remote work. VMware is well-positioned to benefit thanks to the alliances it forged in the last few years, according to Poonen: "The notion of VMware being at the center of the cloud for the enterprise is only going to get more and more pronounced." 

Got a tip about VMware or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at bpimentel@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @benpimentel or send him a secure message through Signal at (510) 731-8429. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

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SEE ALSO: Meet the 10 VMware power players helping turn the legacy tech company into a major powerhouse in the cloud computing wars

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NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak

Tim Bray, a well known senior engineer and Vice President at Amazon has “quit in dismay” because Amazon has been “firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19.” In an open letter on his website, Bray, who has worked at the company for nearly six years, called the company “chickenshit” for firing and disparaging employees who have organized protests. He also said the firings are "designed to create a climate of fear."

Amazon’s strategy throughout the coronavirus crisis has been to fire dissenters and disparage them both in the press and behind closed doors. There have been dozens of confirmed coronavirus cases at warehouses around the country, and workers have repeatedly said the company isn’t doing enough to protect them. Last week, Amazon ended a program that allowed workers to take unlimited unpaid time off if they fear getting sick from the coronavirus. Last Friday, Amazon workers together with Target, FedEx, Instacart, and Whole Foods workers, went on strike to protest their working conditions.

In statements to Motherboard, Amazon has said its own protesting workers are “spreading misinformation and making false claims about Amazon,” and that it “objects to the irresponsible actions of labor groups.” Last month, Amazon fired Chris Smalls, an Amazon worker in New York City. In a meeting, Amazon executives said that they believe Smalls is not “smart or articulate,” and that publicly they would focus on “laying out the case for why the organizer’s conduct was immoral, unacceptable, and arguably illegal,” according to leaked notes from that meeting obtained by VICE News.

In his resignation letter, Bray said that “firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.”

Bray is the highest-level (now former) Amazon employee to speak out about the company’s workplace culture and treatment of its workers. He has been well-known in the software engineering world for decades.

Last year, he was the highest-ranking employee to sign an open letter promoting a shareholders’ resolution calling for climate action at the company, which continues to work with fossil fuel companies. A total of 8,702 employees signed that letter. Bray has previously been arrested for protesting the Trans-Mountain Pipeline in Canada.

After Amazon fired two employees who helped organize a climate walkout around the time of that letter, Bray said he “snapped.”

“VPs shouldn’t go publicly rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book,” he wrote. He said that he decided to quit in solidarity with those who have been fired. “Remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on the actions I despised. So I resigned.”

“The victims weren’t abstract entities but real people; here are some of their names: Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, and Chris Smalls,” he added.

Amazon declined to comment on Bray's letter.

Update: This post has been updated to note that Amazon declined to comment on Bray's letter.

• Commerce-enabling giant Shopify is launching a new point-of-sale (PoS) system catered to retailers' newfound needs to connect online and in-store commerce.
• Shopify powers online and in-store brands like Allbirds, Bombas, and Rebecca Minkoff.
• Even as stay-at-home orders lift and non-essential businesses reopen, consumers will still look for ways to buy online, pick up in-store.
• Shopify's new PoS is designed to link multiple sales channels as retailers look to drive sales at their physical locations and online.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

As retailers look toward recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, commerce-enabling tech giant Shopify is rolling out new technology to help retailers connect their businesses online and in-store. 

Shopify has long been known for powering the online stores for brands like Allbirds, Bombas, and Rebecca Minkoff.

It's now launching a new point-of-sale (PoS), or sales terminal, that offers the ability to link physical retail and e-commerce, as merchants enter an increasingly omnichannel market where shoppers expect a seamless link between the in-store and online experience.

When it was founded in 2004, Shopify primarily targeted e-commerce businesses. It launched its first in-store product about six years ago.

And while in-person shopping is largely on hold amid stay-at-home orders and the closure of non-essential businesses, retailers will still look to use their real-estate footprints.

"As our merchants have grown and as commerce has become increasingly omnichannel, Shopify has been very committed to enabling our merchants to sell across all channels," said Ian Black, head of retail at Shopify. "Clearly in-person is one of those most important channels," Black said. 

Shopify has over 1 million merchants on its platform and reported $1.6 billion in revenue in 2019. It also recently launched a new app called Shop which allows users to browse and purchase products from any of its merchants.

Powering the shift to online sales

The closure of non-essential businesses has strained physical, or "offline," retailers, many of whom have switched to online sales.

"With retail stores shutting down, there's been a huge shift of formerly offline merchants looking for ways to shift their sales online and shift their businesses online," said Black. 

Almost all of the conversations Shopify is having right now with prospective clients are with retailers who had plans to open an online store one day, or had decided it wasn't for them at all, but now see it as the only way to adapt and survive, Black said.

Heinz UK, a 150-year-old brand known for its ketchup and baked beans, just launched its first direct-to-consumer online store with Shopify in seven days, Black said. 

With it's new PoS system, Shopify is offering merchants the ability to quickly onboard online, but ensure that their e-commerce businesses can be integrated with retailers' physical stores.

Consumers will seek out the ability to buy online, pick up in-store

While shifting online is a way for many retailers to stay afloat during the shutdown, e-commerce will still be a key way that consumers shop after stay-at-home orders are lifted. 

It's unlikely that consumers will rush back to stores and malls immediately. Many in the industry instead expect a slow transition back to in-person shopping, with a proliferation of the buy online, pick up in-store model.

Buy online, pick up in-store (or 'BOPIS' in industry lingo) isn't new. Large retailers like Walmart and Whole Foods, who have the physical and tech infrastructure to manage online and in-store sales and inventories, have already rolled out the service.

But for many retailers, onboarding the necessary tech to manage a click and collect service is a massive undertaking. Trader Joe's, for one, said it would rather focus its investments on employees rather than online grocery services, Business Insider has reported.

To be sure, many non-essential retailers will still be looking for ways to connect e-commerce with an in-store experience, and make best use of their real estate footprints. 

The new Shopify PoS aims to enable brick-and-mortar retailers to continue to use their stores, as BOPIS fulfillment centers and as shopping destinations.

"That's a big part of why we're launching now, because we know that retailers need the tools and the technology to reach customers outside of their stores while still keeping their retail stores as an important part of their business," said Black.

In addition to BOPIS tech, Shopify's new PoS also features inventory and staff management functions, as well as customer data and insights tracking, all of which will be more important when stores reopen.

The new PoS will have what Shopify calls a smart grid, where retailers can customize what's on the sale terminal front screen. Customer loyalty programs, for example, can be integrated.

"As they meet a customer and enter the customer's information, their loyalty information, their shopping history, all those things are dynamically surfaced so that in a retail store environment, the store staff can also give a personalized shopping experience," said Black.

"Those are nice-to-have features right now," said Black. "Today what's important for the retailer is that ability to run a unified business and be able to shift their sales online."

Physical retail could become more of a marketing investment 

The trend from in-store to online has also been at play in the opposite direction, where direct-to-consumer retailers that start online ultimately open storefronts as another way to drive sales.

"One of the trends that we saw, even before COVID, was this idea of retailers using their store locations more as a marketing tool rather than necessarily a stand-alone enterprise," said Black.

For direct-to-consumer brands, acquiring new customers online is notoriously costly given the amount of advertising required.

"We see brands like Allbirds and many direct-to-consumer brands, who are finding it increasingly expensive to acquire new customers and grow online, have turned to opening stores," said Black.

In addition to Allbirds, direct-to-consumer brands like Everlane, Glossier, and Warby Parker have all opened brick-and-mortar stores well after they built a customer base online.

"We see this continuing in the future world, as likely real estate prices will come down and the retailers that survive the current challenges will be those who are innovative and have been finding ways to shift sales between channels," said Black.

SEE ALSO: Retail will need to be reinvented after the pandemic. PayPal cofounder Max Levchin lays out the future of brick-and-mortar, and the 'software fight' that will go on behind the scenes

SEE ALSO: Buy now, pay later startups are surging. But Affirm CEO Max Levin says the industry will see a shakeout as the pandemic hits borrowers.

SEE ALSO: 4 top VCs explain why Stripe, Square, and Finix are going to be big winners in a post-COVID-19 world

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NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

Microsoft is confirming today that it’s planning to refocus Windows 10X on single-screen devices. “The world is a very different place than it was last October when we shared our vision for a new category of dual-screen Windows devices,” explains Panos Panay, Microsoft’s Windows and devices chief. “With Windows 10X, we designed for flexibility, and that flexibility has enabled us to pivot our focus toward single-screen Windows 10X devices that leverage the power of the cloud to help our customers work, learn and play in new ways.”

Microsoft isn’t saying exactly when single-screen devices like laptops will support Windows 10X, nor when dual-screen devices will launch with the OS. However, Windows 10X will launch on single-screen devices...

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• A group led by a Seattle-based venture capital firm put together a guide to returning employees to offices during the pandemic, using tips from companies like Microsoft and Amazon.
• The guide included step-by-step tips for planning the return and preparing the office and employees.
• It also included resources like where to buy personal protective equipment for employees without cutting into medical worker supplies.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Microsoft has a team of 55 people managing the company's pandemic response and eventual return to campus, Katie Drucker, head of business development for Seattle Venture Capital firm Madrona Venture Group, told Business Insider.

Smaller companies don't have the same resources, so a group led by Seattle-based venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group compiled a guide to help them by surveying large employers like Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, and Costco.

The result is a "toolkit for reopening the office and getting back to work" and it includes a step-by-step guide for planning your company's return to the office. It includes specific resources such as where to buy personal protective equipment for employees without depleting supplies for medical workers.

"Truly, when the rubber hits the road, what do you have to do if you're not a company like Microsoft?" Drucker said. "We literally have everything in front of you that you need."

It's unclear when businesses that have moved their employees to remote work will return to offices. Microsoft, for example, has asked employees to stay home indefinitely and Amazon recently extended its work-from-home guidance for corporate until October. As the back-to-work guide notes, it's unlikely that companies will be able to return to offices without implementing significant new employee safety measures to deter the spread of COVID-19 until a vaccine is available.

Here are some of the tips included in guide:

Planning the return

• Create a response team– which could include company executives, representatives from legal, HR, and facilities teams, landlords, and contractors — who can meet daily to set policies and plan for the reopening.
• Employers should seek key data sources such as the CDC and WHO and defer to the most restrictive guidance.
• Classify essential and non-essential workers by role or geography, and find out if any employees are in high-risk categories. Decide what percentage of employees should return to work, and at what intervals. 
• Working from home, when feasible, is always the best option.

Preparing the workspace

• Employers should consider providing personal protective equipment to all on-site employees, which could include re-useable masks, hand sanitizer and antiseptic hand wipes, infrared thermometers and gloves.
• In the office, employers should limit or close communal areas, such as shutting down food service areas and gyms, and start "robust cleaning procedures."
• Employers should restrict group sizes to less than five or 10 people and eliminate or limit visitors. Consider restricting travel, and self-quarantine employees who travel to higher risk areas for 14 days after return. Consider tracking meeting times, dates and attendees and storing the information for 28 days.
• Help employees with physical distancing through measures such as floor marking, physical barriers such as plexiglass for IT teams, and remove extra seats. "Consider having employees use an app or bracelet that indicates when they have been closer than 6 feet," the report suggests. 

Preparing the employees

• Provide training on topics like how to spot and self-report COVID-19 symptoms, how to take care of personal protective equipment, and physical distancing. Trainings can happen through live-webinars, video series, or one-on-one meetings.
• Consider anonymous surveys to allow employees to offer honest feedback on if they are ready to go back to a physical work environment, and continue surveying employees once they've returned. Provide at least weekly COVID response team updates.
• Communicate processes and expectations for returning to work, such as changes to work flexibility or benefit policies and workplace guidelines. 

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NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

• Roger Stone, a longtime friend and former top adviser to Donald Trump, ran a sprawling network of fake Facebook accounts starting in 2016, according to newly unsealed FBI search warrants.
• The search warrants, published in response to a joint petition from five news outlets, also show that Stone communicated with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange as early as 2017.
• A source identified as Stone's "right-hand man" told the FBI that Stone used the fake Facebook accounts to circulate WikiLeaks stories and, later, to defend himself against charges of Russian collusion.
• Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison for lying to Congress and witness intimidation, but was never charged with aiding Russia in its attempt to influence the 2016 election.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Roger Stone bought hundreds of fake Facebook pages in 2016, which he used to circulate news articles that would damage his political rivals and, later, to defend himself against charges of Russian collusion, according to newly unsealed FBI records.

The FBI unsealed over 30 search warrants into Stone' s communications this week in response to a joint petition from The New York Times, CNN, the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and Politico. Stone was under investigation as part of a federal probe into Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 election.

Stone, a longtime friend and former top adviser to President Donald Trump, was never found guilty of colluding with Russia but was sentenced to 40 months in prison for lying to Congress and witness intimidation during the probe. He recently said he's "praying" that Trump will pardon him before he begins serving his prison sentence.

According to the FBI records, a source who described himself as a former "right hand man" to Stone told law enforcement that in 2016, Stone told him to buy hundreds of fake Facebook accounts, including both new and existing accounts, with instructions to make them seem like real accounts.

In the years that followed, the accounts bought dozens of ads on Facebook to promote stories including Wikileaks' publication of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. Later, as Stone himself became a focus of the federal Russia probe, the fake Facebook accounts bought ads defending Stone.

Ads bought by the Facebook pages had titles including "Stone Rebuts Charge of Russian Collusion" and "I am not in touch with Russians..." according to excerpts published in the FBI warrants.

Stone did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment. He said in a statement to Politico that the unsealed FBI warrants "prove no crimes."

"I have no trepidation about their release as they confirm there was no illegal activity and certainly no Russian collusion by me during the 2016 election. There is, to this day, no evidence that I had or knew about the source or content of the WikiLeaks disclosures prior to their public release," Stone said in the statement.

Stone's use of Facebook pages violates the social media's policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior. A Facebook spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SEE ALSO: Fake text messages claiming the US military would enforce a country-wide lockdown went viral last month. They were spread by Chinese agents, according to a new report.

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NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak

• ServiceNow shares are up sharply after the cloud giant posted stronger-than-expected results.
• CEO Bill McDermott said the cloud platform is playing a critical role for businesses who were forced to pivot sharply to remote work due to the COVID-19 crisis.
• "It's very interesting to see that the customer relationships without the heavy travel and the plane rides can be just as effective in a virtual world," he told Business Insider.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

ServiceNow just posted a blowout quarter that underscored the potential growth cloud software makers could see in the era of remote work.

ServiceNow's stock rallied 7% on Thursday after reporting results that beat Wall Street estimates, affirming the view that cloud companies are poised to do well despite the disruption caused by COVID-19.

In fact, CEO Bill McDermott said the cloud platform, which offers tools to automate a business' workflow and operations, became even more relevant to businesses forced to make the sudden pivot to remote work.

"The big surprise, if there was any, was that this business could seamlessly serve our customers at an even higher level of productivity than we did before," he told Business Insider.

McDermott said that, despite the jarring transition to remote work, many businesses have actually managed to operate productively and with great success.

"It's very interesting to see that the customer relationships without the heavy travel and the plane rides can be just as effective in a virtual world," he said.

ServiceNow posted a first-quarter profit of $48.2 million, or 24 cents a share, compared with a loss of $1.6 million, on a penny a share. Revenue jumped 33% to $1.05 billion. Adjusted profit was $1.05 a share.

Analysts were expecting a profit of 96 cents a share on revenue of $1.02 billion.

The company said it closed 37 transactions worth more than $1 million in annual contracts in the quarter, up 48% from the year-ago period.

UBS analyst Jennifer Swanson Lowe told clients in a note that the demand ServiceNow saw showed "that businesses will still invest in technology projects seen as core to their long-term success"

Cloud software makers, such as ServiceNow and Salesforce, had been expected to fare better because they offer web-based services that businesses could access anywhere, including from home, unlike rivals with products that need to be installed and maintained in physical offices.

"Despite investor concerns around a slowdown in March due to COVID-19 and a deeper cut to guidance, ServiceNow delivered," Macquarie analyst Sarah Hindlian-Bowler told clients in a note.

Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Wise also said in a note that ServiceNow "is proving more resilient than we anticipated, highlighting the power and flexibility of the ServiceNow platform."

Got a tip about ServiceNow or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at bpimentel@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @benpimentel or send him a secure message through Signal at (510) 731-8429. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Claim your 20% discount on an annual subscription to BI Prime by clicking here.

SEE ALSO: 'Work is never going back to what it once was:' Veteran tech CEO Bill McDermott says the coronavirus crisis is turbocharging the rise of the digital workplace

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NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

Emergence Capital, Horizons Ventures, Maven Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Zoom are proud to announce the 10 finalists of the Zoom App Marketplace Competition. These finalists submitted ideas that our judges selected as the most promising offerings built on the Zoom platform to deliver happiness to Zoom users for a chance to win $2 million in funding.

We had hundreds of submissions spanning industries, use cases, and business models. The 10 finalists demonstrate the potential to bring innovation and utility to Zoom customers, while also having a sustainable business model that leverages the Zoom ecosystem. One will be chosen as the winner of the Marketplace Competition and receive:

• 10 Zoom Pro licenses for three years
• Zoom Rooms subscription for three years
• DTEN D7 55-inch interactive whiteboard
• Priority Zoom developer support
• Access to customer validation and feedback from experts at Zoom
• Potential funding up to $2 million

All 10 finalists will receive a Logitech Pro Personal Video Collaboration Kit, which includes a Logitech Zone Wireless headset and Brio 4K webcam from our prize sponsor Logitech. 

Only one can emerge victorious! The finalists will come together to deliver their final pitches live to a panel of judges from Zoom and the sponsoring venture capital firms May 8th during “Whale Watch: Zoom App Marketplace Competition Finale.” You can register to save your spot for the live event May 8th and follow along as the judges search for the next whale-sized idea.

Here are the 10 finalists and a synopsis of their pitches:

Ambition

Ambition’s Zoom app will incorporate video and the Zoom platform into every sales 1:1 or feedback session to supercharge sales coaching with context, nuance, and actionable intelligence. Not only are we able to provide better conversations to workers wherever they are, we’re able to leverage the Zoom platform to surface best practices and ensure program compliance across the entire sales organization.

Bloom

Bloom is a marketplace that connects kids to subject-matter experts in live webinar classes over Zoom. Experts can easily monetize their expertise by offering their classes to thousands, and students can discover and learn about unique topics directly from the best.

Discuss.io

Discuss is a customer experience platform that makes user interviews easy. Our proposed integration automatically recruits and schedules targeted consumers from your app or our global consumer panel to participate in a Zoom meeting. Bookmarks and discussion guides make it easy to take notes. Recordings are transcribed to be keyword searchable for easy clipping and sharing of playlists.

Docket 

Docket for Professional Services will take the power of Docket and a deep integration with Zoom to provide a platform specifically made for client engagement meetings. Combining advanced meeting templates, workflows, and integrations with AI-enhanced reporting and feedback, to up-level the client meeting process and drive higher customer satisfaction in every engagement.

Friday

Instead of gluing together calendar reminders, documents, and email, Friday breaks down the barriers to communicating on a regular basis, which improves transparency and helps distributed teams know what’s going on at work. Our customizable workflow builder allows teams and organizations to automate daily standups, status and exec updates, and any other communication directly in Zoom Chat.

iScribeHealth

iScribeHealth is a mobile platform that greatly reduces physician burnout. Combined with Zoom’s secure video technology, iScribe offers a simple way for healthcare providers to conduct and document virtual visits helping to restore the doctor-patient relationship.

Pledgeling

Pledgeling donations embedded in Zoom meetings enable the sales meeting, the birthday party, the church service, the office Zoom bingo session, and the millions of other Zoom meetings to have more connection and impact than ever before. Together, we turn Zoom meetings into an opportunity for social impact, strengthening businesses, uplifting communities, and delivering happiness.

Session

Session gives you everything you need to turn your passion and expertise into a bookings-based business delivered through Zoom. Create a professional listing in minutes, and we’ll help take care of the rest — from marketing and getting booked, to accepting payments to notifying clients of scheduled times and Zoom details.

Social27

Social27, trusted by the Fortune 500, delivers scalable virtual events with Zoom-powered sessions, attendee-to-attendee networking, and highly interactive virtual expos. Additionally, a Spotify-style recommendations engine ensures a personalized and sticky attendee experience.

Tiled

Tiled is the next generation of presentations. We allow non-technical users to create rich, immersive interactive experiences, without code. The Zoom plus Tiled integration enables better conversations, cuts down on bandwidth usage for Zoom users, allows for better video/audio consumption, and creates more immersive experiences for all participants in a Zoom meeting.

Good luck to all the finalists! Check out the Zoom App Marketplace Competition webpage for additional details and to register to view the “Whale Watch” finale!

The post Announcing the Zoom App Marketplace Competition Finalists appeared first on Zoom Blog.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield thinks Microsoft Teams isn’t a competitor to Slack. Questioned on the ongoing battle between Slack and Microsoft Teams for the enterprise space, Butterfield once again challenged Microsoft’s approach to bundling Teams with Office.

“What we’ve seen over the past couple of months is that Teams is not a competitor to Slack,” said Butterfield in an interview with CNBC this week. “When they [Microsoft] talk about the product, they never mention the fundamentals that Slack does, and it’s been 3+ years at this point that they’ve been bundling it, giving it away for free, and talking about us.”

Slack’s CEO might claim Microsoft Teams isn’t a competitor, but it says the opposite in its SEC filings. “Our primary...

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If you’ve been working from home for the past few weeks, you’ve probably had to join more than a few video conference calls. Or perhaps you’ve been using video chat apps to keep in touch with friends and family while social distancing. Either way, you’ve probably noticed that the webcam on your laptop is, well, crap. It leads to blurry, pixelated video calls, and unflattering viewing angles.

There are a few ways to address this problem. You could buy a proper webcam, but good luck finding one of those in stock. You could repurpose an old smartphone and use that as a webcam, if you happen to have one lying around. Either of those might be slightly better than your laptop’s webcam.

But if you really want to step up your video call game,...

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It's Friday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is making a ton of reckless tweets, and the sun is out, so now seems like a good time to blog. I've got an argument for why Musk tweeting that Tesla's stock price is too high—theoretically an insane thing for a CEO to do, especially given that he's already been barred by the SEC from tweeting about Tesla stock without permission—is the least ludicrous thing he's tweeted today. It involves Bitcoin, because honestly we all died in 2012 and reality is now a Möbius strip of punishment.

After Musk's tweet, Tesla stock immediately fell by over 10 percent.

Two things first: One, Musk equating life-saving social distancing measures to fascism is ridiculous and irresponsible. Two, take for granted that Tesla investors, especially of the more casual Robinhood stock-picker variety, along with Tesla stans are losing it over Elon's tweet today. I would be too, if I'd overindexed on one stock that the CEO just tanked in the middle of an unhinged online fever dream. These are folks who believe in Musk not because of the original and beautiful Tesla dream of saving the planet, but because Tesla stock has a growth arc similar to Bitcoin.

Seriously, take a look:

Price of Bitcoin. Image: Coindesk

Tesla's stock price

I got the Bitcoin tracker from Coindesk, which does not go far enough back to track Bitcoin's price when it was under $100 in the early days, but these graphs have four notable, similar features: an early peak (for Bitcoin, this unfortunately starts where the graph shown starts, as Bitcoin hit its first major price peak as it got lots of attention in 2013 and 2014), a long trough, and later two peaks roughly 5-10x in size, followed by a shorter trough.

(This is where I'll just make the blanket note that Tesla is obviously a real company that makes real products that real people buy, and has done so for a long time; this fact, combined with the fact that its production numbers and earnings reports more directly affect its viability as a company than Bitcoin is seemingly affected by anything it itself does, has meant both that its stock price is more rooted in reality than Bitcoin's, and that its current boom cycle has been compressed into a very weird year of good corporate news, a global economic disaster, and erratic tweets. So while they're very disparate topics in a strictly economic sense, I'm not here to talk about The Economy, but instead trying to suss out Musk's need to post something seemingly so counterproductive.)

Tesla and Bitcoin aren't comparable in really any way other than one crucial thing related to their price: Tesla's stock value and Bitcoin's own value have both been dramatically influenced, not merely by the "market price" of the value they create, but by the psychology of both being assets that are highly recognizable, easily acquired, and (crucially) seemingly "obscure" enough that if you are in the know, you can get rich. More on that in a second. But to support this argument, take the fact that car company CEOs have perennially confused why Tesla is worth so much when it makes comparatively so few cars (isn't the market rational), and for Bitcoin, just take the fact that its price has never been rationally pegged to its utility as a currency alternative.

Instead, the prices of both are susceptible to the same hype cycle, based around four events in the lifecycle of a much-hyped, obscure tech investment that appeals to a certain type of investor looking for 10x gains.

First, the most important part is that each has clear “early adopter bubbles” that built fervent, rabid fanbases focused on the fact that they made a ton of money extremely quickly. Both of these bubbles then popped because there wasn’t actually enough fundamental utility/market success for either entity to sustain that initial bubble. Things settled down, but this initial bubble does two crucial things: First, it gives a proven narrative of an asset's ability to grow in value quickly, regardless of if that's rational or repeatable. Second, it creates a large fanbase of investors who have the stories to tell of their huge gains and every incentive to keep that narrative alive. Crucially, in the long term, these first bubbles look tiny now but they were huge growth at the time. That fact is all one needs to keep proselytizing.

That initial bubble is driven by people who genuinely are savvy investors in one way or another. They knew about something hot before other people did, and were enough in the scene to understand what they were buying. They're not going to be hurting too bad when the stock/Bitcoin prices correct themselves, which is why we have a long trough to follow.

Sure, everyone got excited there for a minute, but let's be real: both Bitcoin and Tesla weren't ready to sustain that level of expectation. So you've got a few years of growth for the company/cryptocurrency that irons out a ton of fundamentals; Bitcoin got easier to use, Tesla started making and selling a whole lot of nice cars. They were, for sake of me being concise here, succeeding at their functional goal in ways they weren't during their first bubble.

This is a good thing, so why wouldn't this success drive their prices higher? Well, lack of attention is one thing; negative attention and skepticism following a burst bubble is another. But most likely this is actually when both were priced correctly. You see some slow, steady growth commensurate with the successes of both entities, which is what you'd expect since the fundamental output of each requires them to grow more linearly than the pure exponential-growth tech entities they were viewed as by investors in their first bubble.

As both Tesla and Bitcoin improved their fundamentals, they both had savvy, highly-vocal fanbases of investors who a) had prior wins in the first bubble to prove their bonafides and b) every reason to point at each success and say "see, trust us, this thing is gonna go to the moon again."

(It's notable that both Bitcoin and Tesla have huge, very vocal fanbases built around subreddits, forums, and blogs focused largely on their investments' success. Every company has a fanbase somewhere, but Ford forum posters aren't talking over and over about when their investments are going to pay off. They're talking about Mustangs.)

I would not be surprised that in a moment of clarity, he decided to tank the stock because high prices and high expectations from stans were setting him up for more long term scrutiny than him being in trouble with the SEC short term

Eventually, all of that success-as-a-useful-product growth and here-comes-another-boom talk sustains a significantly bigger growth, driven by the fact that a) there is the fervent fanbase from the first explosion, b) years of those people pointing to “just trust us, it’s ready to blow!“, and c) the price-accelerating psychological effect of hitting new price peaks after years of dormant growth. No one wants to miss out on a sure bet, especially in the hallowed 10x world of highly-publicized tech investments, so this next peak is HUGE, helping sustain the myth.

This peak is unsustainable too, but unlike that very first bubble long ago, this peak is built on a foundation of stress. It's not propped up by a bunch of investors who understand a good roughly well enough to take a flyer on it, like every early Bitcoin person did, but on the mere idea that a stock has to go up, because everyone is talking about it! I mean, really, I have absolutely no idea what's actually going on in Tesla factories. Are they doing a good job or not? Who knows! Big-time institutional investors would, but I have no idea. Ultimately though, that's irrelevant, because I'm not buying a potential fast-growth stock like Tesla based on whether the price is based in reality, I'm buying it based on whether I think I can get rich as shit really quickly! And for that, investors only need the IDEA that it can go up, and buy-in from other bandwagon investors who are also buying in.

You know the story by now: everything comes crashing back to Earth, but rather than the initial small, fervent, obsessive fanbase, now you have a whole bunch of NEW folks who saw the potential to get 10x as rich in half the time in a significantly more mature market (which is impossible), and so they all lose their goddamn shit through the next trough, and all this attention (and smart narrative building by Tesla) accelerates into a second peak.

In the case of Bitcoin, the price stabilized somewhere around half its peaks as a bunch of people lost their money and exited, and others held on figuring they could afford to wait for more growth. And all along the original grifters got paid, but the folks who lost by buying too late on the first and second peaks lost their minds (and wallets). In the end, the Bitcoin system has been so perennially bogged down by boom and bust cycles, with many power players moving in and out over the years, that it's moved into a world a whole lot different than its original promise.

Musk is fully steeped in the VC-to-forum-poster hype cycle outlined above, so I have to believe he knows that eventually valuations can get so high—not based on actual product success but on the psychology of wannabe exponential growth investors—that shareholder demands end up steering the company more than he’d like, especially since he takes obsessive control over the company's image, operations, and stock price.

So I would not be surprised that in a moment of clarity, he decided to tank the stock because high prices and high expectations from stans were setting him up for more long term scrutiny than him being in trouble with the SEC short term. And maybe then the Tesla price stabilizes again with lower expectations as he continues to try to build a profitable car company in the midst of a global economic collapse, which is hard enough without a bunch of Bless You Stonks God reply guys and r/WallStreetBets bros battering your mentions for months by begging you to save them from economic ruin by doubling their Tesla investment in the next three weeks.

Hey, it worked for Bitcoin, more or less, but instead of a master plan by one guy it collapsed because Bitcoin people are insufferable con artists.

• Wall Street employees have been more stressed than usual while working from home, which could lead to compliance breaches as frustrations continue to rise.
• Behavox, a New York startup that uses artificial intelligence to suss out rogue activity among employees, has seen a 10 to 20% uptick in negative sentiment among customers that use its platform. 
• Nabeel Ebrahim, the chief revenue officer of Behavox, told Business Insider that an increase in red flags for conduct is typically a leading indicator of future misbehavior.
• Family responsibilities, unrelenting bosses, and working in a less professional environment has led to employees using inappropriate language and criticizing coworkers more often, Ebrahim said. 
• Click her for more BI Prime stories.

Shaky internet connections, demanding bosses, and close quarters with in-laws have Wall Street employees stressed about their work-from-home situations, and one expert believes it's a sign bad behavior could be afoot.

Some have pitched the opportunity to work remotely as a silver lining of the coronavirus pandemic. Employees at financial firms known for long, grueling workdays get a chance to spend more time with their family while working from the comfort of their own homes.

However, one startup that helps companies monitor employee conversations has seen workers show signs of increasing stress and negativity about their situations.

Behavox, a New York startup that uses artificial intelligence to suss out rogue activity among employees, has seen a 10 to 20% uptick in negative sentiments — from explicit language to complaints about coworkers — from customers using the platform since work-from-home orders were put in place.

Nabeel Ebrahim, the chief revenue officer of Behavox, told Business Insider that an increase in red flags for conduct is typically a leading indicator of misbehavior.

"When there's an uptick in inappropriate language or stressful sentiment or negative sentiment, it means things aren't going according to plan," he said. "And typically you then start seeing some of these compliance breaches following."

Ebrahim said Behavox, which received a $100 million investment in February from SoftBank's Vision Fund 2, categorizes the increases into three main camps.

First is the stress around dealing with family while working from home. Whether it's children, spouses, or the difficulty of working in a space that likely has more noise and distractions than a typical office, employees can be found voicing frustration.

Mothers-in-law, in particular, were the subject of many complaints, Ebrahim said.

"As you can imagine, for people with kids, all of a sudden having your kids at home and home schooling them was a real shift in the way a lot of people have been living their lives," he added. "People just complaining about their family situations."

Next, Ebrahim said complaints about supervisors were also on the rise. Much of it stemmed from people who were upset their managers didn't seem to understand their job was proving more difficult under the circumstances. There was a clear misalignment, he added, between reality and what managers were expecting.

A big part of the issue, Ebrahim said, was employees feeling their businesses' continuity plans weren't up to snuff, leaving them without the proper equipment to do their job. That was coupled with some managers unwilling to relax quotas thanks to predictions about the economy making a V-shaped recovery.

The internal gossip and complaints aren't completely alarming. However, Ebrahim said the real issue was employees voicing their anger to friends or acquaintances at other companies.

"When I start seeing it between someone internal to someone external, that's when I know that we've got a problem on our hands," he said. "If I'm sending it to someone external, there's nothing stopping them from giving it to someone else and saying, 'Oh, this is the situation at XYZ company.'"

Finally, Ebrahim said working from home has also led to a relaxation from some employees about the language they use, which has led to an increase in instances of sexist and misogynistic comments.

While Wall Street has taken steps to diversify its ranks, Ebrahim said that as a result of their new surroundings, some employees have felt comfortable reverting to "bro language."

Further complicating the matter has been the market downturn. Had people been working from home during a bull market, they might have been more likely to enjoy themselves and complain less. 

"The fact my profit margins got wiped out, my taking got wiped out — they start thinking, 'Are we going to make the commission we thought we were going to make this year?'" Ebrahim said. "When you start seeing that negative sentiment creeping in, then you start seeing people trying to cut corners."

To be sure, Ebrahim said Behavox has yet to see an uptick in malicious behavior. In recent weeks, there have been a handful of compliance breaches at some customers, but they've all been identified as genuine mistakes, as opposed to the employee taking part in unscrupulous behavior. 

Still, Ebrahim said there was a "100%" chance we will see a rise in compliance issues that bad actors intended.

"A market like this is also ripe for opportunity," he added. "You're definitely going to be seeing a lot more of the creativity and the malicious intent as things continue to get tighter and tighter."

SEE ALSO: SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 pumped $100 million into Behavox — and the startup's CEO says that's twice what he was looking for

DON'T MISS: Inside a 38,000-person remote work rollout at Goldman Sachs: sleepless nights, assembly lines, and an Amazon-like hub on a Manhattan trading floor

UP NEXT: Toddler meltdowns and spilled milk. Here's how Wall Street's high-flying — now grounded — bankers are working from home.

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Consumer Reports has analyzed the privacy policies of Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex and discovered that they may be collecting more data than you realize.

To be clear: Consumer Reports isn’t saying that these apps are unsafe to use (and indeed, a separate Mozilla report found that nearly every major video conferencing app meets basic security standards). But by agreeing to the privacy policies of these services, you are giving companies like Google and Microsoft access to plenty of personal data. According to the report, all three companies reserve the right to collect information from your calls, including how long a call lasts, who’s participating in the call, and the IP addresses of everyone taking part.

As the world has...

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• Amazon Web Services surpassed $10 billion in net sales for the first time ever this past quarter.
• AWS generated $10.2 billion in net sales, up 33% from last year — although that figure slightly missed Wall Street analyst revenue expectations of $10.29 billion.
• This quarter also saw AWS's biggest revenue growth slowdown since the company started disclosing its cloud revenue.
• That slowdown may be because of competitive pressure from rivals like Microsoft or Google Cloud. It could also just be because of the law of large numbers, with AWS' growing revenue base making that much harder to demonstrate large growth percentages every quarter. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon's cloud business topped $10 billion in net sales for the first time this part quarter, the company announced when it filed its quarterly earnings on Thursday.

Amazon Web Services, the retailer's market-leading cloud platform, generated $10.2 billion in net sales this quarter, up 33% from this time last year. The same period of last year, AWS generated $7.7 billion in net sales. It was up slightly from last quarter, when AWS recorded revenue of $9.95 billion. 

That said, the figure missed Wall Street analyst expectations of $10.29 billion in quarterly revenue for AWS. 

Furthermore, the results show the cloud unit's weakest year-over-year revenue growth since Amazon started disclosing AWS revenue in 2015. 

That could be a sign of growing competition from rivals like Microsoft and Google Cloud, as well as international players like Alibaba. Or it may be a simple result of the law of large numbers, as AWS' ever-growing revenue base makes it that much harder to show the kinds of year-over-year growth it enjoyed when it was smaller. 

Ultimately, AWS remains one of Amazon's strongest units, accounting for 77% of Amazon's total operating profit for the quarter. Last year, AWS generated $35 billion in revenue for the company. 

Overall, Amazon shares dropped 6% after hours after it missed Wall Street analysts' earnings expectations, although it reported a beat on revenue. Amazon's retail side has been facing demand surges, but also supply chain slowdowns.

Analysts have said they expect AWS to be able to weather and even thrive during the pandemic as increased remote work leads to more customers moving onto the cloud. While AWS may face higher strain on its infrastructure, it frequently tests its network of data centers for peak traffic.

While AWS has more name recognition as the largest cloud on the market, it can't match rivals like Microsoft and Google Cloud when it comes to offering collaboration and productivity suites like Office 365 and G Suite, respectively, which are in higher demand during the coronavirus pandemic.

Still, AWS easily outsizes its competitors in terms of revenue. Google Cloud is on track to generate about $10 billion in revenue for the entire year. Microsoft's commercial cloud business, which includes its cloud Azure and Office 365, reached $13.3 billion in sales for the quarter, although Microsoft does not break out specific numbers for Azure. 

Do you work at AWS? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at rmchan@businessinsider.com, Signal at 646.376.6106, Telegram at @rosaliechan, or Twitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request.

SEE ALSO: The cloud is one of Google's 'bright spots' as its advertising slows, say analysts. Here's why they think the pandemic could be an 'accelerant'

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With theme parks and movie theaters closed and major sports events canceled, there were few parts of Comcast’s business that didn’t feel the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic in the first quarter of 2020. And company executives said on Thursday that they don’t expect to see a whole lot of improvement for the second quarter.

Comcast posted revenue of $26.6 billion for the first quarter, a 0.9 percent decline year over year, and net income of $2.1 billion, a 40 percent drop from the year-ago quarter.

Basically, there was less for viewers to watch, and that meant less programming for Comcast to run ads against. The Q1 results reflect “audience ratings declines and reduced advertiser spending resulting from the postponement of sports...

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Microsoft today announced a slew of updates to various parts of its Microsoft 365 ecosystem. A lot of these aren’t all that exciting (though that obviously depends on your level of enthusiasm for products like Microsoft Endpoint Manager), but the overall thrust behind this update is to make life easier for the IT admins that help provision and manage corporate Windows — and Mac — machines, something that’s even more important right now, given how many companies are trying to quickly adapt to this new work-from-home environment.

For them, the highlight of today’s set of announcements is surely an update to Windows Virtual Desktop, Microsoft’s service for giving employees access to a virtualized desktop environment on Azure and that allows IT departments to host multiple Windows 10 sessions on the same hardware. The company is launching a completely new management experience for this service that makes getting started significantly easier for admins.

Ahead of today’s announcement, Brad Anderson, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Microsoft 365, told me that it took a considerable amount of Azure expertise to get started with this service. With this update, you still need to know a bit about Azure, but the overall process of getting started is now significantly easier. And that, Anderson noted, is now more important than ever.

“Some organizations are telling me that they’re using on-prem [Virtual Desktop Infrastructure]. They had to go do work to basically free up capacity. In some cases, that means doing away with disaster recovery for some of their services in order to get the capacity,” Anderson said. “In some cases, I hear leaders say it’s going to take until the middle or the end of May to get the additional capacity to spin up the VDI sessions that are needed. In today’s world, that’s just unacceptable. Given what the cloud can do, people need to have the ability to spin up and spin down on demand. And that’s the unique thing that a Windows Virtual Desktop does relative to traditional VDI.”

Anderson also believes that remote work will remain much more common once things go back to normal — whenever that happens and whatever that will look like. “I think the usage of virtualization where you are virtualizing running an app in a data center in the cloud and then virtualizing it down will grow. This will introduce a secular trend and growth of cloud-based VDI,” he said.

In addition to making the management experience easier, Microsoft is now also making it possible to use Microsoft Teams for video meetings in these virtual desktop environments, using a feature called ‘A/V redirection’ that allows users to connect their local audio and video hardware and virtual machines with low latency. It’ll take another month or so for this feature to roll out, though.

Also new is the ability to keep service metadata about Windows Virtual Desktop usage within a certain Azure region for compliance and regulatory reasons.

For those of you interested in Microsoft Endpoint Manager, the big news here is better support for macOS-based machines. Using the new Intune MDM agent for macOS, admins can use the same tool for managing repetitive tasks on Windows 10 and macOS.

Productivity Score — a product only an enterprise manager would love — is also getting an update. You can now see how people in an organization are reading, authoring and collaborating around content in OneDrive and SharePoint, for example. And if they aren’t, you can write a memo and tell them they should collaborate more.

There are also new dashboards here for looking at how employees work across devices and how they communicate. It’s worth noting that this is aggregate data and not another way for corporate to look at what individual employees are doing.

The one feature here that does actually seem really useful, especially given the current situation, is a new Network Connectivity category that helps IT to figure out where there are networking challenges.

• Zoom quietly revised a blog entry to clarify that it has 300 million daily meeting participants — not 300 million daily active users (DAU), as it said at the time the blog was first published. Zoom says the change was made to correct an "oversight" in the blog's original wording.
• However, by the time the edit was noticed, many media outlets — including Business Insider — reported the 300 million daily active user figure. Zoom stock spiked soon after the blog entry was first published.
• The distinction, according to a Zoom spokesperson: A single person attending five Zoom meetings in a day counts as five meeting participants, while DAU measures unique, individual users.
• The episode calls attention to a time, earlier in April, when Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said that the company had 200 million daily meeting participants — a figure that was inaccurately reported in outlets including Business Insider as the company claiming 200 million DAU. 
• Zoom declined to comment on why it didn't issue corrections on previous media coverage of its user figures.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On April 22nd, Zoom published a blog entry claiming that daily usage of its videoconferencing app "surpasses 300M Daily Users" and "that more than 300 million people around the world are using Zoom during this challenging time."

That figure was reported in a number of press outlets, including Bloomberg and Business Insider, and Zoom's stock surged soon after the blog post went out.

However, at some point since it was first published, the blog was edited — as first noticed by The Verge — to say that the company had "300 million daily meeting participants." That's a related, but different, measure to the more standard daily active user (DAU) metric. You can read an cached copy of the original post here.

"We are humbled and proud to help over 300 million daily meeting participants stay connected during this pandemic," a Zoom spokesperson told Business Insider. "In a blog post on April 22, we unintentionally referred to these participants as 'users' and 'people.' When we realized this error, we adjusted the wording to 'participants.' This was a genuine oversight on our part."

A Zoom spokesperson explained to Business Insider that the "daily meeting participant" measure allows for a single user to attend multiple meetings a day. Taking five Zoom calls per day would count a user as five meeting participants. A DAU is calculated as an individual user logging into the app. 

Notably, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan used language reflecting the "meeting participants" language in a webcast earlier on the same day the blog post went up.

The distinction is important because it gives more clarity on how much Zoom's user base has actually grown as its profile is raised amid the remote work boom sparked by the pandemic  — and calls attention to similar kinds of confusion in previous media coverage of Zoom and its user numbers.

On April 1st, chief executive Yuan published a blog post noting that amid the pandemic, Zoom saw a massive spike in usage up to "more than 200 million daily meeting participants, both free and paid." Several technology news outlets including Reuters, CNBC, and Business Insider inaccurately reported the figure as Zoom claiming to have 200 million daily active users, rather than meeting participants.

Asked why Zoom never corrected the record, the company had no ready explanation.

A tougher comparison

Zoom's skyrocketing user numbers have only served to spotlight the company's rapid ascent amid the coronavirus pandemic. The company went from a niche enterprise videoconferencing tool, to a vital tool for personal and professional socialization at a time when people are staying at home to stem the spread of COVID-19.

However, a focus on meeting participants, rather than DAUs, makes it harder to gauge how the company is doing against rivals like Microsoft and Slack, both of whom have similarly benefitted from the remote work surge. 

On Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Wall Street analysts that its Microsoft Teams chat app has 75 million daily active users, and that the app had seen 200 million meeting participants in a single day earlier this month. While Microsoft's app isn't seeing quite as many daily meeting participants as Zoom at this point, it's impossible to know if Teams has more or fewer individual users than its rival. 

Zoom has faced a myriad of privacy and security issues as its usage grew, including the phenomenon of "Zoombombing," where hackers or trolls join calls uninvited and share indecent material. This has prompted Zoom to make fixes to its security settings like making virtual waiting rooms and passwords on by default for free users. On April 1 it enacted a 90-day feature freeze to focus on improving the privacy and security of its tool. 

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pzaveri@businessinsider.com or Signal at 925-364-4258. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

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