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Some data isn’t better than no data when that data is impossible to interpret. In fact, it’s worse.

Bill Gates in 2019 when things were simpler. | Photo by Mike Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times

Bill Gates is now the favorite target for coronavirus misinformation according to data compiled by the New York Times and Zignal Labs, a company that analyzes media sources. Conspiracy theories conflating Gates with the virus were mentioned 1.2 million times on TV and social media from February to April, 33 percent more often than the 2nd most popular conspiracy theory linking 5G with COVID-19, according to Zignal Labs, peaking at 18,000 mentions a day in April.

Hoaxes directed at the Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist, are all over YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. The New York Times found 16,000 posts on Facebook this year that were liked and commented on nearly 900,000 times. The 10 most popular Youtube videos spreading...

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• Uber has withdrawn its financial guidance for 2020 – covering metrics like gross bookings, adjusted net revenue, and adjusted EBITDA.
• In a press release on its website, Uber said the guidance it published on February 6 no longer applied, as the "uncertainty" caused by COVID-19 made its results "impossible" to predict.
• The ride-hailing giant also warned that the value of some of its minority investments could be reduced by up to $2.2 billion in Q1 of 2020, as a result of worldwide coronavirus lockdowns.
• On Wednesday, driver advocacy group Rideshare Drivers United said that more than 2,500 Uber and Lyft drivers in California have filed wage claims against the companies since February.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Uber has withdrawn its 2020 financial guidance, as uncertainty induced by the COVID-19 outbreak continues.

The ride-hailing giant had issued guidance for 2020 covering metrics like gross bookings, adjusted net revenue, and adjusted EBITDA – because of the "uncertainty" caused by COVID-19.

In a statement published on its website Thursday, Uber said the guidance it published on February 6 no longer applied, as the coronavirus made its results "impossible" to predict.

The company had previously forecast gross bookings of between $75 billion and $80 billion, adjusted net revenue $16 billion to $17 billion, and an adjusted EBITDA loss of between $1.45 billion and $1.25 billion. 

It didn't provide updated guidance for the year.

The ride-hailing giant also warned that the value of some of its minority investments could be reduced by up to $2.2 billion in the first quarter of 2020, impacted by coronavirus lockdowns around the world.

"Given that much of the world is currently on some form of coronavirus lockdown, we expect to record an impairment charge against the carrying value of some of our minority equity investments," read Thursday's statement.

"We believe these investments will be reduced by an estimated range of $1.9 to $2.2 billion during the three months ended March 31, 2020, due to the impact of the pandemic on the estimated value of these entities.

The statement comes at a turbulent time for Uber on other fronts.

On Wednesday, driver advocacy group Rideshare Drivers United said that more than 2,500 Uber and Lyft drivers in California have filed wage claims against the companies since February, claiming they're owed at least $630 million in back wages as a result of California's recently-introduced gig-worker law.

This law is aimed at forcing gig-economy-dependent firms like Uber to recognize their staff as employees and not independent contractors, with the 2,500 drivers claiming that Uber and Lyft illegally misclassified them as independent contractors.

Uber failed in an attempt to temporarily block the gig-worker law in February.

SEE ALSO: Driving and walking are among the safest ways to travel during a pandemic. Here's how other modes of transportation rank.

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• The UK has a fight on its hands to launch its official coronavirus-tracing app in the coming weeks, thanks to limits set by Apple and Google on how such apps work.
• The government has already announced the app and it is thought to be in advanced stages of development.
• But a new system announced by Apple and Google means that the app may not be able to track people's phones as closely as UK officials would like.
• The NHS is in discussions with the two tech giants over its app, sources said, which is expected to launch in the coming weeks.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The UK has a fight on its hands to launch its much-vaunted contact-tracing app, which would monitor people diagnosed with or reporting COVID-19 symptoms and alert those they had been in contact with.

The experimental digital arm of the NHS — NHSX — has been developing a tracing app for some weeks, but was blindsided by a joint announcement last week by Apple and Google on a contact-tracing system that sets limits on how invasive such apps can be on iPhones or Android devices.

Now there's a conflict between the political win of getting the app out on time, and actually ensuring it works properly.

Apple and Google are not building an app themselves, but released a set of privacy-focused APIs in May on which governments and public health agencies like the NHS can base their own contact-tracing apps.

A key advantage of the system is that approved contact-tracing apps will be able to run in the background. Contact-tracing apps mostly rely on Bluetooth scanning, which normally isn't permitted to run in the background on iOS. For example, Singapore's Bluetooth-based TraceTogether app reportedly requires the user to leave their phone unlocked to work properly — a privacy risk and a battery drain. Adopting the Apple and Google system means approved apps would work properly even when a phone is locked, making it more likely people would actually download them.

But in order to access this better functionality, governments and public health authorities must ensure their apps meet the tech giants' privacy standards. The idea here is to ensure governments don't push out highly invasive apps that track people's movements through location data, or build up centralized databases of people's medical information.

According to people familiar with the matter, the NHSX app may not meet Apple and Google's privacy restrictions but has already been announced by the government and is at an advanced stage of development. These people said NHSX is in discussions with Apple currently.

Although the NHSX app is not expected to be especially invasive, sources suggested that NHSX's view of the ideal balance between specificity of tracing and privacy differs from that of Apple and Google. The cybersecurity arm of the UK's spy agency GCHQ, the NCSC, is also thought to be advising on the app.

Ross Anderson, a University of Cambridge professor who advised on the app's security and development, told BI that UK authorities want "fine-grained" contact tracing. The logic here is that it would enable the UK's epidemiologists to take more effective action in response to COVID-19.

Now it isn't clear that the app meets Apple and Google's standards, and whether it would work properly, particularly on the iPhone.

Anderson told Business Insider: "The NHSX people [have] this delightful choice between an app that won't work... or an app that will run on the platform but won't enable them to do the epidemiology they want."

Jon Crowcroft, Marconi professor of Communications Systems at the University of Cambridge, raised similar questions.

"Apple and Google's policies on all COVID-19 related apps was that if they came from a government health agency, subject to normal other checks, they'd be okayed," he told Business Insider, saying that it wasn't clear if the NHSX app might be blocked.

Ultimately, practicality may win out over politics. The obvious solution would be to rebuild the app on Apple and Google's APIs.

Another source said: "Everyone expects the [Department of Health] to rewrite their app to use the API, and claim victory."

NHSX and Apple did not return a request for comment.

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Even after lockdown is over, our lives will not look like what they used to.

• On Thursday morning, Verizon announced its intent to acquire videoconferencing company BlueJeans in a deal said to be valued at about $500 million.
• BlueJeans cofounder Krish Ramakrishnan, executive chairman, said his company had been exploring a merger with Verizon when the coronavirus crisis hit. That convinced the two companies to work faster on the merger.
• "Imagine a transaction of this nature just done on video when everybody is working from home," Ramakrishnan told Business Insider. "Even the due diligence was done from home. Never happened. We got it done last night at 12:10 AM."
• Verizon's acquisition of BlueJeans combines a major telecommunications network with one of the most widely-used video conferencing platforms — even as it faces competition from Microsoft, Cisco, and upstarts like Zoom.
• Ramakrishan predicts a consolidation in the videoconferencing space as the sudden pivot to a remote workforce highlights the importance of the technology.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

On Thursday, Verizon announced its intent to acquire BlueJeans Network, a videoconferencing company first founded in 2009.

BlueJeans cofounder and Executive Chairman Krish Ramakrishnan said the startup had been exploring a possible sale to Verizon for months. 

The coronavirus crisis forced the two companies to work faster on a merger, which they completed the way corporate deals are now done in the age of COVID-19. 

"Imagine a transaction of this nature just done on video when everybody is working from home," Ramakrishnan told Business Insider. "Even the due diligence was done from home. Never happened. We got it done last night at 12:10 AM."

The merger, which Ramakrishnan said was worth under $500 million, underscores the heightened importance of videoconferencing platforms given the sudden rise of the remote workforce. In its lifespan, BlueJeans had raised some $175 million from investors including New Enterprise Associates, Accel, and even baseball legend Derek Jeter. 

BlueJeans will become a division of Verizon. Ramakrishnan said he will continue with his current role, which is focused on product innovation and strategy. There will be no layoffs at BlueJeans, he said: "That is the promise."

The rise of videoconferencing

BlueJeans competes with other fast-growing platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Hangouts which have seen a spike in user traffic after the pandemic forced millions of employees worldwide to work from home.

"We had, I kid you not, 300% increase in video traffic and usage in just three months," Ramakrishnan said.

So why sell now?

"It's a tough decision," he said. "You always want to continue by yourself, to take it to the next level, and build and build and build."

But it also became clear that being part of Verizon would give BlueJeans access to a "huge sales team" and cutting edge 5G and edge computing technologies. Ramakrishnan said merger discussions had been going on for some months when the pandemic hit.

"I was afraid the talks would break down because of the shutdown," he said.

Industry consolidation 

But the opposite happened, he said. The talks "accelerated because of the use case of everybody working from home."

"Until now, work from home was a convenience that people thought was  okay for certain people," he said. "What this pandemic has taught is lots of people can actually work from home. It's going to be the new norm."

Video conferencing clearly will become a more widely used technology which Ramakrishnan said will lead to a big shift in the industry, exemplified by the Verizon-BlueJeans merger.

"Definitely, there's going to be consolidation," he said. "There's going to be consolidation on the video platform and maybe adjacent telephony platforms because everything is about collaboration. And I think it's going to happen because of this work from home phenomenon."

Why BlueJeans?

For Ramakrishnan, the Verizon merger marks the end of the journey of a startup he launched 11 years ago, when video conferencing was still an unfamiliar tool for many people.

He wanted to change that, and even the name he picked for the startup underscored his goal of coming up with a product that would be "easy to use, easy to approach, and something very familiar for everybody."

"I came up with 'BlueJeans,'" he said. "It's casual. And you can actually go in style if you wear a jacket. It fits the enterprise, as well as work from home. You just need a clean shirt or something. So it applies to all situations. And universally, the most loved fabric is denim. Everybody likes blue jeans."

Got a tip about Verizon, BlueJeans 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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Apple is introducing a new feature in most modern MacBooks called “Battery health management.” It’s going to be available today for developers and will roll into the future macOS Catalina 10.15.5 update.

On by default, the new feature is intended to extend the overall lifespan of your laptop battery by reducing the rate of chemical aging. It does so by not charging the battery all the way up to the maximum in certain cases. Fully charging a battery puts a strain on it that can more rapidly reduce its longevity over time. Some phones now avoid charging all the way to 100 percent until just before you wake up for this reason.

What that means for your laptop is that in certain cases, seeing 100 percent battery life in your menu bar may...

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It's now the Don't-Buy-Everything Store.

Photo by Brent Rose for The Verge

GoPro is laying off more than 20 percent of its workforce, over 200 employees, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has announced. The move is part of an attempt to reduce operating expenses by $100 million the year, on top of another $250 million in non-headcount related expense reductions planned for 2021. GoPro added that its founder and CEO, Nicholas Woodman, will not be paid a salary for the remainder of the year, and that the company will shift more towards a direct-to-consumer sales model going forward.

The restructuring comes as GoPro has started to recover after its ill-fated move into the drone market. Released in late 2016 after several delays, the GoPro Karma was a basic drone that failed to impress, and GoPro...

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• Apple's $400 iPhone SE, announced on Wednesday,  looks like the iPhone 8 but is powered by the same chip as the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro.
• The iPhone SE is meant to serve as a low-cost alternative to Apple's pricier smartphones that offers similar processing power and features as its flagship offerings.
• The iPhone SE may not feel new since it has so much in common with the more than two-year-old iPhone 8.
• But at a time when consumers can't visit stores to learn about new devices and try them out in person, a familiar upgrade may be the ideal option.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

While Apple's iPhone launches are usually synonymous with new technologies and features, it might be safe to call the iPhone SE anything but new. 

It's powered by the same processor inside the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro, wrapped in a design that's more than two years old. And yes, that means it has a home button with a fingerprint sensor — a nearly obsolete characteristic now that newer models have gained facial recognition and edge-to-edge displays.

Yet the iPhone SE's familiar design — and its significantly lower price of $400 compared to other models —could be its biggest asset.

Launching a new iPhone may be the least important initiative for Apple right now as it, along with other tech giants, devotes resources toward COVID-19 relief efforts.

But at a time when shoppers can't venture out to stores to try new phones and learn about their features in person, a device that feels similar to the one they currently own could be exactly what some shoppers are seeking right now. 

The iPhone SE, which Apple announced on Wednesday, is a new version of the phone of the same name that launched in 2016.

While that version from four years ago was designed to look like the iPhone 5S but perform like the iPhone 6S — Apple's newest model at the time — the 2020 iPhone SE resembles the iPhone 8 but should offer the power of the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro. It's being positioned as a more affordable iPhone option that still offers the performance and overall experience of Apple's iPhone 11 family.

Apple Stores, which are known for their attention to customer service and free workshops for better understanding Apple products, have been closed indefinitely since mid-March. Shortly after Apple made that decision, nonessential businesses in the US  began closing across the country in an effort to keep the coronavirus pandemic under control.

That means anyone looking to purchase a new iPhone would likely have to do so online or through Apple's app, eliminating the opportunity to see the device and ask questions about it in person before buying. 

The tech giant has recently began asking retail employees to work from home in tech support and sales roles to assist customers with device purchases and troubleshooting issues. 

Apple's more modern home button-less iPhones aren't necessarily complicated; the software is still generally the same. But those upgrading from a legacy model that have never laid their hands on the iPhone X or later may encounter a learning curve, as some reviewers initially pointed out when the X phone launched in 2017. Since there's no home button, for example, you must swipe up from the bottom of the screen on Apple's newer phones to navigate back to the home screen. 

Apple doesn't provide data on which of its iPhone models are most popular. But there is data to suggest that older models like the iPhone 6S and iPhone 7 may still be widely used around the globe.

DeviceAtlas, a company that provides mobile device usage analytics for developers and advertisers, published a study in September 2019 suggesting that the iPhone 7 was the most widely used iPhone in all but seven of the 36 countries included it its data set. The iPhone 6S came in second place. 

Similarly, a report from analytics firm Mixpanel found that the iPhone 7 was the most popular iPhone model as of August 2018, followed by the iPhone 6S.

Buying a new smartphone in the middle of a global pandemic may not be a top concern for many people right now. But as the world adjusts to isolated life indoors, the simple truth is that we're probably relying on devices like smartphones, tablets, and computers to communicate more than ever right now. And for those in need of a replacement, a relatively cheap iPhone that already feels familiar may be the most appealing option.

SEE ALSO: Apple just announced a brand-new $400 iPhone that looks almost exactly like the iPhone 8. Here are the biggest differences between them.

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

• Envoy, a startup best known for its visitor sign-in software, held a company-wide meeting on Tuesday to announce that it would be cutting 30% of its workforce, Business Insider has learned. 
• "We're taking necessary steps to position Envoy to weather the unprecedented challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic," a statement from Envoy CEO Larry Gadea read. "As part of a responsible expense reduction plan, we're reducing the size of our workforce and temporarily lowering cash compensation for remaining staff, including our executive team."
• The cuts appear to have taken place on the heels of a hiring push, as several of the employees who posted on LinkedIn noted that they'd only joined the startup this year, amid a new product rollout.  
• But as the coronavirus outbreak has pushed companies to retreat from their offices, a forced work-from-home era has presented an existential crisis to the startup that aimed to revolutionize the workplace. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Envoy, a startup best known for its visitor sign-in software, held a company-wide meeting on Tuesday to announce that it would be cutting 30% of its workforce, Business Insider has learned. 

Laid off employees told Business Insider that the cuts occurred across all teams, and that the sales, workplace management and marketing teams were hit hardest. Several of the laid-off employees had only just joined the startup this year, per LinkedIn. 

One employee said that the notice given was abrupt: Envoy employees received an email informing them of the mandatory meeting just 15 minutes in advance, and individual calls telling them whether they were let go followed almost immediately after the meeting. LinkedIn posts from other laid-off employees corroborate that account. 

A spokesperson for Envoy confirmed the news, and noted that 30% of the workforce was either laid-off or furloughed. Before the layoffs, the company said it had 195 employees, putting the number of workers affected by the 30% staff reduction at about 58.

"We're taking necessary steps to position Envoy to weather the unprecedented challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic," Envoy CEO Larry Gadea said in a written statement. "As part of a responsible expense reduction plan, we're reducing the size of our workforce and temporarily lowering cash compensation for remaining staff, including our executive team."

Envoy said it was providing employees with severance, extended health care and outplacement services. 

A rough time to revolutionize the workplace

The 7-year-old company's footprint is ubiquitous in Silicon Valley tech office spaces. It started off by selling guest registration software in 2013, allowing visitors to sign into new spaces, agree to terms and conditions, and print photo badges. Without much marketing, Envoy has signed up thousands of companies, including Airbnb, Slack, and Asana.

In the years following, the company continued its push to revolutionize how tech office spaces operated. Just this February, it launched a new platform to help it expand beyond the core business of managing office visitors and deliveries, and allow startup employees to use their phones to book rooms and schedule meetings from their phones. 

But as the coronavirus outbreak has pushed companies to retreat from their offices, the forced work-from-home era has presented an existential crisis to the startup that had aimed to revolutionize the central workplace. 

Envoy CEO Larry Gadea, a former systems engineer at Twitter and Google, pointed toward that in his statement, writing that the coronavirus pandemic had disrupted workplaces around the globe. But he noted that fresh opportunities also lie in helping customers navigate new challenges, like safety and compliance, that have intensified in the work from home era. 

"The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic disruption to workplaces around the globe," Gadea's statement read. "We remain committed to our mission of challenging the status quo of the workplace as we actively work on ways to help customers navigate the 'new normal.' In a recession environment, automation around safety, security and compliance will be especially important, and keeping the user experience at the center will be critical to making this new world something people will accept."

The company last raised $43 million back in October 2018, and is valued at $263 million, per Pitchbook. Its investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman.

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• Former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the US fleet is facing an "acute problem" with the coronavirus pandemic and suggested it needed to make drastic measures.
• "People do not have any way to social distance on any Navy ship, but particularly a carrier," Mabus said. "You've got almost 5,000 people here. And they literally are on top of each other."
• "I think what they need to do is bring every ship in," Maybus said. "... Offload most of the crew ... leave a very skeletal force on board, sanitize the ship, quarantine people for two weeks, make sure nobody's got COVID."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the US fleet is facing an "acute problem" with the coronavirus pandemic and that it needs to make drastic measures to combat the disease.

In a "Pod Save The World" podcast released on Wednesday, Mabus pointed out why Navy sailors and Marines were particularly susceptible to the disease. News of the podcast was first reported on by the Navy Times.

"People do not have any way to social distance on any Navy ship, but particularly a carrier," Mabus said. "You've got almost 5,000 people here. And they literally are on top of each other."

Mabus said it was "distressing that it doesn't look like they have a plan" implemented after the political scandal that roiled aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt earlier this month.

As of Wednesday, 615 sailors aboard the ship tested positive. The majority of its crew members have been evacuated to in hotels in Guam, where the ship is in port.

The ship's commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, was relieved of command on April 2 after he emailed a letter to his colleagues about the urgent situation aboard his ship. The letter was eventually leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, which published its contents. Crozier was fired for what the then-acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly described as circumventing the chain of command.

Modly later resigned on April 7, after he visited the USS Theodore Roosevelt and delivered a profanity-laced speech about the situation on the ship.

According to Mabus, Capt. Crozier's instincts were correct.

"I think what they need to do is bring every ship in," Mabus said. "Offload, like the captain said, offload most of the crew ... a little bit in a rolling fashion ... leave a very skeletal force on board, sanitize the ship, quarantine people for two weeks, make sure nobody's got COVID."

"And then once they go back on that ship, whether it's in port or it's going to sea, they don't get off the ship until this crisis is mitigated," Mabus added.

Mabus admitted that the unorthodox approach of calling in every ship in the service was not ideal, but added it was necessary given the spread of the disease.

"It's going to be hard because they may be inport in Norfolk or in San Diego, and once they go back on the ship and the ship is COVID-free, they're not going to get off to see their families," Mabus said. "But if we don't do that, I think you're going to see the situation that played out on the [USS Theodore Roosevelt] play out over and over again — not just on those big ships, but virtually every ship that we have in the Navy."

Mabus' comments come as the Defense Department reported over 5,000 coronavirus cases. Over 2,800 of the personnel are US service members, 85 of which are hospitalized as of Wednesday. One Navy sailor has died after contracting the coronavirus.

Mabus served as the Navy secretary from 2009 to 2017 and also served in the Navy as a surface warfare officer in the 1970s.

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• Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled an initiative intended to promote biodiversity, including plans to build a "planetary computer" and protect more land than it uses by 2025.
• Microsoft started working on the effort before the coronavirus caused a widespread public health and economic crisis – and is pressing on with those plans despite it.
• Microsoft President Brad Smith said it's an example of what companies everywhere are having to do during the crisis: Balance the immediate problems with the long-term needs of their business.
• "We'll look back at this period of time and we will remember both the public health dangers and economic hardship, but also the extraordinary degree to which businesses have been able to sustain their operations," Smith told Business Insider.
• Click here to read more BI Prime stories.

While much of the world focused on the global public health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus, Microsoft unveiled a new sustainability initiative to help promote biodiversity.

Microsoft President Brad Smith acknowledges that environmental preservation efforts may not be at the forefront of most people's minds during the crisis, but he said companies shouldn't have to chose between managing the short-term challenges of COVID-19 and longer-term goals.

Microsoft is moving forward with its sustainability initiatives because the need will remain beyond COVID-19, Smith said, and carrying on with the plan is an example of what companies everywhere are having to do during this unprecedented time.

"We'll look back at this period of time and we will remember both the public health dangers and economic hardship, but also the extraordinary degree to which businesses have been able to sustain their operations," Smith told Business Insider.

Companies around the world, he said, are rising to the challenges of COVID-19 while at the time working to sustain their business operations. Microsoft is still prioritizing work to fight COVID-19, Smith said, but "there will come a point when that fight will be won" – and Microsoft and other companies need to keep their eyes on the pressing threats that will remain after the crisis.

"We cannot hit the pause button in our work to protect and save the planet," Smith said. "That's a guiding principle for everything that we're doing as a company in the year 2020."

Microsoft on Wednesday pledged to protect more than land than it uses by 2025 — and unveiled an ambitious new plan to build what it calls a "planetary computer," designed to help scientists and environmentalists tackle the toughest problems in saving the planet. 

These plans, announced on Wednesday, are part of a broader sustainability effort and follows Microsoft's announcement in January to become carbon negative by 2030 — meaning that it will remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it emits.

"Beyond the current COVID-19 crisis, these issues will remain with just as much importance as they have today, if not more," Smith said.

Are you a Microsoft employee? Contact this reporter via email at astewart@businessinsider.com, message her on Twitter @ashannstew, or send her a secure message through Signal at 425-344-8242.

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Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

We got both the announcement and the embargo lift for OnePlus’ new top-tier smartphones yesterday. Here’s my review of the OnePlus 8 Pro and here is Jon Porter’s review of the OnePlus 8 — both with video.

These phones are interesting for slightly different — but related — reasons. OnePlus has always positioned itself as a scrappy insurgent nipping at the heels of bigger, more established companies. That’s code for Samsung, if it wasn’t clear. But every time, OnePlus’ value proposition was that it wasn’t charging you for stuff you didn’t care about so it could give you the best of stuff you did care about: speed and screen quality, mostly.

Which meant that OnePlus never really challenged Samsung directly, not really. The Galaxy and Note...

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Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

We got both the announcement and the embargo lift for OnePlus’ new top-tier smartphones yesterday. Here’s my review of the OnePlus 8 Pro and here is Jon Porter’s review of the OnePlus 8 — both with video.

These phones are interesting for slightly different — but related — reasons. OnePlus has always positioned itself as a scrappy insurgent nipping at the heels of bigger, more established companies. That’s code for Samsung, if it wasn’t clear. But every time, OnePlus’ value proposition was that it wasn’t charging you for stuff you didn’t care about so it could give you the best of stuff you did care about: speed and screen quality, mostly.

Which meant that OnePlus never really challenged Samsung directly, not really. The Galaxy and Note...

Continue reading…

If you recall, the biggest downside of the $26 billion Sprint T-Mobile merger was the fact that the deal would dramatically reduce overall competition in the U.S. wireless space. Data from around the globe clearly shows that the elimination of one of just four major competitors results in layoffs and higher prices due to less competition. It's not debatable. Given U.S. consumers already pay some of the highest prices for mobile data in the developed world, most objective experts recommended that the deal be blocked.

It wasn't. Instead, the Trump FCC rubber stamped the deal before even seeing impact studies. And the DOJ not only ignored the recommendations of its staff, but DOJ "antitrust" boss Makan Delrahim personally helped guide the deal's approval process via personal phone and email accounts. Both agencies, and the vocal chorus of telecom-linked industry allies, all behaved as if all of this was perfectly legitimate and not grotesquely corrupt.

At the heart of the DOJ's approval was a flimsy proposal that involved giving Dish Network some T-Mobile spectrum in the hopes that, over even years, they'd be able to build out a replacement fourth carrier. As we noted at the time there was very little chance this plan was ever going to work.

One, Dish (and CEO Charlie Ergen) have a long history of empty promises in wireless. He'd been accused (including by T-Mobile previously) of simply hoarding valuable spectrum and stringing along feckless, captured regulators for years with an eye on cashing out once the spectrum's value had appreciated. Two, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are all heavily incentivized to make sure this proposal never got off the ground. Three, the current FCC has yet to stand up to industry on a single issue of substance, would never engage in the kind of nannying required to usher Dish's plan from pipe dream to major network.

But with the pandemic, it's not even clear we're going to get to that part of the program. Reports now indicate that the pandemic and quarantine may have scuttled Dish's plans for financing and deployment, even if Ergen hadn't been bluffing. The complaints are largely coming from unsourced Wall Street insiders, but they're certainly right that funding the T-Mobile merger's deus ex machina just got notably more complicated:

"Ergen, the billionaire chairman of satellite-TV company Dish Network, needs to raise about $10 billion to build a 5G network that covers 70 percent of the US population by June 2023, fulfilling his part of a regulatory agreement that allowed Sprint to be acquired by T-Mobile on April 1.

But with the coronavirus wreaking havoc on the economy and drying up lending, Wall Street is predicting Ergen will fall behind — fast.

“I think whatever rosy projections Charlie had are now very questionable,” said a source who expected to be part Dish’s lending group. “There is no financing to build a telecom network."

Some analysts still seem to think Ergen could pull it off. But again, they're the same analysts who ignored red flags about Ergen's history, and all of the greasy corruption required to bring this merger to fruition in the first place:

"Two months of severe market uncertainty doesn’t really alter my view of a company to execute on a three-year plan,” Lightshed Partners Analyst Walt Piecyk told The Post, saying it is too soon to question if Ergen will meet the deadline.

But even just a few months of delay could put Dish in a worse spot financially as it‘s already the clear laggard among the four wireless networks, making for a riskier loan profile, sources said."

COVID-19 certainly does make financing and building a major wireless network difficult. But if Ergen was bluffing all along, the crisis will provide wonderful cover for Ergen to back out of a deal. That said, even if the network somehow does get built and become a major wireless replacement for Sprint, analysis suggests the end network would result in around 100 million fewer people in range of service than if we'd left Sprint intact. And that's in an ideal, non-pandemic world.

Most objective experts knew this merger was a turd, and the Dish effort was doomed to failure with the slightest disruption likely throwing a wrench in the works. But we rubber stamped the deal anyway. And by nearly every metric, history will remember the entire saga as little more than greedy imbecile theater while consumers and employees share the brunt of the inevitable fallout.

• Abbott Laboratories is rolling out a new test that can tell whether people have had the novel coronavirus, starting this week. 
• The test detects antibodies that your body creates to fight off the virus.
• Abbott is among the biggest healthcare companies to enter the US market for antibody tests so far, and the company is gearing up to produce millions of tests.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Abbott Laboratories is rolling out a new test that can tell whether people have had the novel coronavirus.

The test detects antibodies that your body creates to fight off the virus, and Abbott said it'll be able to ship almost 1 million of the tests this week, according to a company announcement.

They'll be shipped to laboratories across the country and used with Abbott equipment many of them already possess, according to the company. The machines can run 100-200 tests per hour. 

Abbott said it plans to be able to produce 4 million tests in April and 20 million in June. The kits find antibodies in coronavirus-positive people 100% of the time, and find no antibodies in coronavirus-negative people 99% of the time, according to a study conducted by the company. The metrics are called sensitivity and specificity, respectively.

Abbott is among the biggest healthcare companies to produce antibody tests so far, according to data compiled by the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins. With the ability to make up to 20 million tests by the summer, Abbott could bring some relief to a market crowded with unverified kits and international manufacturers with less ability to scale. 

Read more: Tests that can tell if you're immune to the coronavirus are on the way. Here are the companies racing to bring them to the US healthcare system.

Detecting virus 'months and possibly years' after exposure

Antibody tests, otherwise known as serology tests, find antibodies in the blood designed to fight off infection. People can produce them after coming into contact with the coronavirus, even if they never develop symptoms.

Other types of diagnostics on the market look for current infections, typically by collecting samples from the airways, and looking for signs of the coronavirus. Abbott, for instance, has a test that can tell in about 15 minutes whether someone is currently infected with the coronavirus.

Experts say antibody tests are key for letting people out of their homes again, returning quarantined healthcare workers to the front lines, and measuring large swaths of the population for potential immunity. The tests could help government officials figure out when it makes sense to ease lockdowns. 

Abbott's tests will look for the IgG antibody, a protein produced in the body's secondary immune response. It lasts for "months and possibly years" after a person's been exposed, according to the company. 

Additional testing that identifies the IgM antibody, which is produced immediately after exposure, is underway, Abbott said in a statement.

CDC and NIH are working on antibody testing efforts

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed its own antibody tests and intends to deploy them for larger surveys in the coming weeks, said Scott Pauley, a press officer, in a statement to Business Insider.

Its community transmission studies, which began last month, will soon include the blood tests in more areas with high numbers of people with diagnosed infections, he said. The CDC declined to offer more details about who would be tested and in what quantity. 

The National Institutes of Health is enrolling up to 10,000 people in its own antibody study, designed to figure out how many people have really been exposed to the coronavirus. Several academic medical centers are launching immunity studies that mostly pertain to healthcare workers. State health departments including those in New York and California are looking into serology programs as well. 

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NOW WATCH: How the Navy's largest hospital ship can help with the coronavirus

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google may be developing its own processor that could power the company’s Pixel phones as early as next year, while later versions of the processor could be used in Google’s Chromebooks, according to a report by Axios. Apple has long used its own processors in many of its devices, and it seems Google could be looking to do something similar for its own hardware.

The chip, apparently codenamed “Whitechapel,” may be an eight-core ARM processor built using Samsung’s 5-nanometer process, according to Axios. The processor could be optimized to run Google’s machine learning technology and may have a portion of the chip designated to improve Google Assistant’s performance, according the report.

G...

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By Robin Gareiss
The silver lining of the COVID-19 quarantine orders might be a crash course in the appreciation of working remotely – though unplanned, business leaders can’t help but notice the value of this new normal.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple and Google have announced a hugely ambitious — and potentially controversial —contact tracing system designed to help users prevent spreading the novel coronavirus by figuring out who has had contact with infected patients.

While details on the system are still slim — given how early in development the project is, not even Apple and Google have figured everything out here yet — we do know a few things, including that the companies are planning to use Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) radio technology as the core of the system.

As the name suggests, Bluetooth LE is a low-powered alternative to standard Bluetooth technology, with a focus on shorter bursts of connectivity that use less power than a traditional, constantly...

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Microsoft is providing IT admins with an extra six months of support for some older versions of Windows. The software giant has been working with businesses impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and delay the end of support dates that mostly impact Windows 10 versions.

“Microsoft has been deeply engaged with customers around the world who are impacted by the current public health situation,” says a Microsoft statement. “As a member of the global community, we want to contribute to reducing the stress our customers face right now.”

Microsoft was planning to end support of Windows 10, version 1709 (Enterprise, Education, IoT Enterprise) today, but this has now been extended...

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For years politicians have paid empty lip service about the "digital divide," or the essential lack of broadband access and affordability. Yet for decades the problem just kept getting kicked down the road. Why? Because U.S. regulators and lawmakers lacked the courage to tackle the biggest problem: a lack of broadband competition due to monopolization of the market. Nor were they willing to stand up to the politically powerful companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon which fight tooth and nail against any meaningful disruption of this broken status quo.

As a result, Americans have paid some of the highest prices in the world for broadband service that's not only spottily available, but routinely ranks as mediocre across a wide variety of metrics. From telecom linked think tankers and hired economists to consultants and lobbyists, there's an entire secondary industry dedicated to pretending this problem is either overblown, or doesn't exist at all.

Needless to say, it shouldn't have taken a pandemic to expose the superficiality of such claims, or the fact that US telecom issues deserved more attention. With millions of Americans hunkered down at home, a brighter light than ever is being shined on the fact that 42 million Americans lack access to any broadband whatsoever (twice what the FCC claims). Millions more can't afford service because we've allowed an essential utility to be monopolized.

Anybody claiming that any of this is a surprise should be rightfully laughed at:

"...we can’t claim to have been caught off guard by this pandemic. We have long had the data to show that millions of households with children ages 6 to 17 don’t have home internet service. Even before this crisis,90% of high school teachers were assigning online homework, despite the fact that almost one in five teens reported lacking the internet access to complete it. This “homework gap” also reflects—and further entrenches—our country’s stark racial inequities; a Pew study found that 13% of white students were sometimes unable to complete homework due to internet access, compared to 17% of Hispanic students and 25% of black students surveyed."

If you genuinely don't give a shit about that fact you should own it, instead of trying to dress up apathy and a singular focus on ISP revenues and stock performance as a sophisticated tech policy ethos.

For decades bipartisan U.S. policy circles have talked endlessly about the digital divide, but delivered little more than empty, political show ponies. For just as long, policy circles were caught up in the debate over whether broadband was a luxury or an essential utility. The U.S. government has long refused to seriously consider broadband the latter, because it would erode the revenues of entrenched campaign finance giants like AT&T and Comcast. Now the check is coming due, and it's all but guaranteed that the folks that should be forced to own their intentional myopia... probably won't:

"These statistics are appalling. Since 1994, we’ve had the technology to deliver the internet to every household in America, but we’ve never mustered the will to make it so. Almost three decades later, we’ve learned two important lessons: one, having the internet at home is not a luxury, but a necessity for modern life; and two, market forces will never close this gap. Now is the time to change this reality, for good, by eliminating every barrier facing communities who want to take action to ensure that broadband is in every home."

We've thrown endless billions at U.S. telecom giants for a rotating crop of fiber networks that were, time and time again, never delivered. Not that we'd ever do one, but I'd wager any audit of U.S. telecom subsidization would find we should have collectively been able to deploy fiber to every home in America several times over based on what American taxpayers have shelled out for so far.

There's long been a chasm between telecom policy and reality, and its never been more stark. Ajit Pai, for example, has spent three years insisting that "curing the digital divide" was his top priority. Yet time after time his policies have made the pricing and availability problem worse, whether it's pretending there is no competition or price problem (you'll rarely hear him acknowledge either), gutting FCC authority, refusing to police outright ISP billing fraud, or eliminating consumer billing fraud protections.

Crappy U.S. broadband is caused by two things: corrupt, feckless governments and a lack of meaningful competition among entrenched monopolies. Either you give a shit about fixing these problems or you don't. Either way, it's a problem that shouldn't have taken a global pandemic to finally take seriously.

• Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist Bill Gates believes that most of society will return to some sense of normalcy in the near future, but one thing is unlikely to go back to the way it was: Work travel.
• "There are a few things, like business trips, that I doubt will ever go back," Gates said in a new interview with LinkedIn's This is Working.
• "There will still be business trips," he said, "But you know, less."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

With much of society shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic, the big question on everyone's mind remains: When will things go back to normal?

The answer isn't straightforward and, in some cases, can be hard to swallow.

"We can open up in certain ways hopefully in the United State by early June if things go well," Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist Bill Gates said in a new interview with LinkedIn's This is Working. "But it won't be where you're doing large public gatherings or even filling up a restaurant."

Gates has said previously that he expects students to return to school this fall.

Gates has repeatedly warned against a full return to normality until a vaccine is available for the general population. 

"It'll be semi-normal until that vaccine is out there in billions of doses," he said. And a vaccine is still, at least, 18 months away. "Until you've got that vaccine widely used, life will still not be back to normal." 

There are some things, he said, that are unlikely to ever return to normal. 

"There are a few things, like business trips, that I doubt will ever go back," he said. It's simply a measure of necessity and risk, according to Gates.

"In the case of high school, I think the social activity — making friends, hanging out — that you get by being there physically, that's totally irreplaceable," he said. 

But business trips? Not so much. "There will still be business trips. But you know, less."

SEE ALSO: Bill Gates says the world is entering 'uncharted territory' because it wasn't prepared for a pandemic like COVID-19

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NOW WATCH: Pathologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

Image: Asus

Asus has officially launched its ZenBook Duo, a portable laptop with two screens. The device will MSRP for $1,499. The product is listed on Amazon, but it’s currently out of stock; Asus says you should be able to buy it soon.

The ZenBook Duo is essentially a smaller, specced-down version of last year’s 15.6-inch ZenBook Pro Duo, which was 6.4 pounds and sold for a whopping $2,499. This duo has a 14-inch FHD touchscreen as its primary panel as well as a smaller 12.6-inch panel built into the top of the keyboard deck.

You can probably imagine the intended use cases; you can message your friends on one screen while watching a movie on the other or keep Slack open on the bottom display while you work on the top. And it should make for some...

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• Over the last few months, Zoom has had to adjust to a huge surge in new users and address a plethora of security and privacy issues on its platform. 
• Zoom CEO Eric Yuan told Business Insider that his focus remains the same as when this crisis started: Doing the right thing and helping those affected by the crisis.
• Yuan said he sees this as opportunity to make his company "better and stronger." 
• Zoom has had to increase its cloud server capacity, which it did with help from Amazon Web Services and Oracle, which both proactively gave Zoom a discount.
• He's also focused on improving Zoom's privacy and security to make sure that non-business users understand the product and feel secure using it.
• To keep employees aligned with his mission, he's told them that now is not the time to think about sales and marketing. 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Video conferencing company Zoom has had a busy few months.

As the coronavirus crisis has trapped people indoors, it's seen an incredible surge in popularity, swelling from 10 million daily active users in December to 200 million in March. Meanwhile, it's faced numerous privacy and security issues, including accusations that it exposed user data. 

Through it all, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has been front-and-center. 

Over the past few weeks, Yuan has apologized for the issues in blog posts and interviews. He admitted that the platform was built for business users with company IT departments, not virtual classrooms or social gatherings, while also outlining a 90-day plan for the company to address concerns and fix its problems.  

He admits that the process has been rough, but tells Business Insider that through the worst days, he's kept himself motivated by focusing on the future. 

"Every morning I told myself: all the short term pain will be over," he said. He's trying to fix Zoom's failures, without getting caught up in them, and feels confident that the company will emerge from this maelstrom "better and stronger" than ever before. 

And throughout it all, he tries to stay laser-focused on making Zoom as helpful as possible to those affected by the crisis. 

"I want to make sure I do the right thing for society," he said. 

So far, that's meant lifting the 40 minute limit on its free product for users in China, giving away the enterprise version to K-12 schools in over 20 countries, and acting as fast as possible to patch privacy issues when they arise.  

Here's how Zoom managed to support it's surge in new users and how it sees its future evolving, according to Yuan: 

Other tech companies lending a hand 

In order to support its huge boom in users, Zoom had to add more cloud computing power — and fast. In a filing in March, Zoom said it expected the cost of running its business to increase as the company needed to add more cloud infrastructure.

Yuan says that its existing partners, Amazon Web Services and Oracle, helped it get extra space without breaking the bank. Both companies gave Zoom a discount on the extra servers it needed, without Zoom even asking. 

"It is very costly, so both of them proactively gave us a very good discount," Yuan said. "This shows their corporate social responsibility."

He said that Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, and Safra Catz and Larry Ellison of Oracle told him that they would support Zoom "because you are supporting the economy." 

Yuan declined to share how much Zoom spent to expand its cloud capacity and said he wasn't yet sure how much more the company would need to add.

Right now he's not worrying about eventually monetizing its giant rush of free users or thinking about how new use cases like happy hours, yoga classes, and virtual classrooms could change Zoom's business. There are enough things to think about just to keep the service up and running, to help those working from home maintain the economy. 

Making sure non-business users understand the product 

While he said he's honestly not sure whether Zoom will remain in the consumer software business after this crisis is over, Yuan said the company does want to make sure that regular users have the right security and privacy settings to feel comfortable using his product right now. 

To address that, Yuan committed last week to stop any new feature development on Zoom until it could improve the security of its platform. Over the next 90 days, the company would focus on educating users, including through weekly webinars about privacy and security updates. He hosted the first one this week.

To keep employees aligned with his mission, he's told them that now is not the time to think about sales and marketing. 

"I told our employees several times, 'Let's focus on the end user, let's focus on committing to society, and focus on the crisis and doing the right thing, showing our corporate social responsibility,'" he said. "Don't focus on marketing and sales."

Those companies that do during a crisis like this have a "horrible culture," he added. 

Though he didn't name competitors, his comments came in response to a question about whether Zoom's rivals were using the current moment to boost their own businesses. Microsoft, Cisco, and Google have recently tried to capitalize on Zoom's security failings.

Despite those issues, Yuan says that it's large corporate customers have remained loyal to the Zoom brand. 

"Enterprise customers have been working together with us for a long time, they trust us, and we just keep everything open and transparent," he said. "They know we are doing the right thing, our intention is good."

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.

SEE ALSO: Zoom CEO Eric Yuan says any competitor using this moment to 'attack others' has a 'horrible culture,' as Cisco and Microsoft step up their rivalry

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• Zoom recently admitted that some video calls via its app were "mistakenly" routed through China, even for users outside the country.
• Now Zoom has announced an update coming April 18, that will give paid users control over which data center regions their meetings will be routed through. 
• As for those who don't pay for Zoom, the company says that "data of free users outside of China will never be routed through China."
• Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has said that the mistake was made because the company was scrambling to keep pace with its heightened demand, and didn't follow its usual "best practices" in enforcing its policies around how calls get routed.
• In an interview with Business Insider on Friday, before the update was announced, Yuan said the company wants to prevent this type of mistake from ever happening again.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Zoom recently admitted that some users "mistakenly" had their calls routed through data centers in China, even if they were outside the country, sparking privacy and security concerns. While the company quickly issued a fix, it added to the privacy and security issues that have plagued the video conferencing company in recent weeks. 

Starting April 18, paid Zoom users will be able to have control over which data centers are used to route their calls, while free users outside of China will never have their calls routed through the country, the company said in a blog post on Monday. 

When the issue became known a little over a week ago, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said the problem stemmed from how it quickly added server capacity to support its huge influx of new users. It had 200 million daily active users, free and paid, at the end of March — a huge leap from the 10 million it had at the end of December, as more people rely on Zoom to stay in touch during the coronavirus crisis.

Yuan said Zoom first added servers in China, where the outbreak began. Zoom lifted the 40 minute time limit on Zoom's free product for users in China. "In that process, we failed to fully implement our usual geo-fencing best practices. As a result, it is possible certain meetings were allowed to connect to systems in China, where they should not have been able to connect," Yuan said in a blog post on April 3. 

With the update, users will know which region their meeting data is routed through. Free users won't be able to choose to switch locations; they will by default be assigned to the region they're based in. Paid users can opt in or out of regions, except their default region. Zoom's data centers are grouped by these regions: the United States, Canada, Europe, India, Australia, China, Latin America, and Japan/Hong Kong.   

"For the majority of our free users, this is the United States. Data of free users outside of China will never be routed through China," Zoom explained.  

In an interview with Business Insider on Friday, before the update was announced, CEO Eric Yuan said the important thing here is that Zoom has all the data about who participates in calls and where those calls are routed. Even so, the company wants to prevent this type of mistake from ever happening again, he said.

"It's very rare, random. We also have all the data, so which meeting, which participants...so we take a big step back, we already remove those servers but also want to make sure what we can do to make sure this kind of thing never, never, ever happen again," Yuan told Business Insider on Friday. 

Those servers Yuan referred to are "HTTPS tunneling servers in China" which Zoom removed on April 3 "to prevent any inadvertent connection through China," the blog post said. 

Yuan will elaborate on this data routing update in his weekly webinar on Wednesday, which is part of his 90-day commitment to fixing the privacy and security of Zoom's platform before it ships new features or significant updates.

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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• Morgan Stanley just released a comprehensive timeline of how the novel coronavirus outbreak will play out.
• It starts with US cases peaking in the next couple days and ends with the coronavirus fading at the end of March 2021, as a vaccine become broadly available.
• Outbreaks will look dramatically different from state to state, according to the report. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The road to normality after the novel coronavirus is long and complex. Not only is the US awaiting vaccines, immunity tests, and stabilization in the healthcare system — it also has a second wave of coronavirus outbreaks to worry about.

That's according to research published by Morgan Stanley that combines state models of the outbreak into one master forecast.

The model shows that on a national level, cases will peaking in the next few days, declining into the summer. Morgan Stanley foresees a second wave of infections that reaches its apex in the winter, before fading at the end of March 2021, as a vaccine become broadly available.

The first wave of people, likely those who've had the virus and recovered, could go back to work in June. The second group would follow in mid-summer, according to Morgan Stanley. 

That's less optimistic than recent estimates from President Donald Trump's administration, whose coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said the US could see "rolling reentry" back into society as soon as next month. 

Morgan Stanley has repeatedly increased its forecast for the number of coronavirus cases in the US, citing lackluster quarantine initiatives. Researchers at the bank now expect 1.4 million cases, up from 200,000 a month ago.

The graphic below provides a timeline of how Morgan Stanley thinks the pandemic will play out in the US.

It's a long haul

In the spring, coronavirus treatments and ramped-up testing capacity help create a dramatic reduction in transmission of the virus, according to the firm. By the time the US can test 1 million people per day, new cases decline by more than 70 percent. 

Today, the US can run about 140,000 diagnostic tests daily, totaling 2.8 million as of Sunday, according to the Covid-19 Tracking Project, which is maintained by journalists and researchers. Soon to join the lineup, however, are serology tests that detect prior exposure to the virus, and might be able to tell people if they have some immunity to it.

Morgan Stanley wrote that the US should see widely available serology testing later in the summer, a projection in line with drugmakers' goals. 

Around the same time, hospitals should recover from handling a surge of coronavirus patients and have more ventilators on hand. Public health departments should also be better staffed, the report says.

 

By the end of August, new cases plummet. In September, schools reopen and a vaccine is potentially made available for healthcare workers. 

But a second outbreak of infections picks up in November, aided by cold weather and a slingshot effect between the coasts and the middle of the country after the latter's delayed encounter with the pandemic. 

As a result, new cases shoot back up to more than 15,000 per day on the Morgan Stanley timeline, declining over four months until a vaccine becomes widely available in March, the researchers wrote. 

The virus is heading for the middle of the country

While certain conclusions can be drawn from national projections, outbreaks will look dramatically different from state to state, according to the report.

Current coronavirus epicenters New York and New Jersey top the charts in projected cases at 500,000 and 140,000, respectively. Other states range from a mere 2,000 up to 80,000 infections, the authors wrote. 

States' fates depend on geography and on how seriously government officials take social distancing, according to Morgan Stanley.

Those with lax quarantine measures in place are much more likely to have longer outbreaks with delayed peaks, the researchers said.

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Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

Google is replacing some Android apps for Chromebooks with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). A PWA is essentially a webpage that looks and feels like a traditional app.

This will certainly be good news for many Chromebook owners. In some cases, PWAs are faster and more functional than their Android counterparts. PWAs also take up less storage and require less juice to run.

It’s also no secret that some Android apps on Chrome OS are terrible. Google has struggled for years to optimize Android apps to work on tablet-sized screens. And while the viable selection has certainly improved since the Pixelbook days, there are still a number of programs notorious for not playing nice. Even though PWAs have been available for a while, it’s likely that...

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• Ford said that it expects to lose $600 million in the first quarter, as the COVID-19 pandemic damages its sales amid a near-total shutdown of North American and European manufacturing operations.
• Last month, Ford tapped credit lines to bolster its cash position and suspended its dividend.
• CFO Tim Stone said the carmaker has sufficient balance-sheet strength to make it through the end of Q3.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On Monday, Ford said that it expects to post a loss of around $600 million when it reports first-quarter earnings at the end of April.

The company said in a statement that revenue would also decline, to approximately $34 billion for the quarter. For the fourth quarter of 2019, Ford brought in $39.7 billion. In Q1 of 2019, revenue came in just over $40 billion.

The carmaker, which was in the middle of an $11 billion restructuring prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, didn't estimate it losses on a per-share basis.

In trading on Monday, Ford shares declined over 5%, to $5. Year-to-date, the stock is down 45%.

According to CFO Tim Stone, "Ford's first-quarter vehicle wholesales were down 21 percent from a year ago, largely as a result of lower production and demand related to the coronavirus."

Last month, the company tapped several lines of credit to bolster the cash position on its balance sheet, and also suspended its dividend.

With close to $30 billion on hand, Stone said the company believes it has "sufficient cash today to get us through at least the end of the third quarter with no incremental vehicle production and wholesales or financing actions."

All of Ford's North American and European manufacturing operations are currently shut down, with no firm date set for a restart.

However, Ford said, "The company is considering a scenario for a phased restart of its manufacturing plants, supply network and other dependent functions beginning in the second quarter, with enhanced safety standards in place to protect workers."

It added, "Any decisions on resumptions will be made in cooperation with local unions, suppliers, dealers and other stakeholders."

Stone said that Ford is "opportunistically assess[ing] all funding options to further strengthen our balance sheet and increase liquidity to optimize our financial flexibility" and "identifying additional operating actions to enhance our cash position."

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