How the Coronavirus has Altered the Course of Human History

A couple days ago I was contacted by Anastasia Levchenko. Chief Correspondent for the Sputnik News Agency based in Italy.  She asked if I could answer a series of interview questions about the changing state of the world as a result of the coronavirus.

She specifically asked me to give a futurist perspective on the issues.

Never before in history have we seen the dashboard of life having so many knobs twisted, levers pulled, buttons pressed, and dials tweaked than we had in the first few months of 2020.

For this reason every macro trend we can identify will have countless micro trends associated with it. Every convincing scenario we sketch out will have countless nuanced versions that have similar rings of truth.

Throughout everything, technology will progress, our challenges will still be there, and every problem will still have an opportunity to solve it.

Every lifetime is still amazingly short so it will be up to us to make the most of the years we have to work with.

1. In your opinion, how will the coronavirus emergency that the whole world is experiencing change the concept of leadership?

Every day another 26,000 people die of cancer. Why isn’t that making headlines?

The reason I’m asking this is because good leadership is about perspective and priorities.

Statistics show that every year 730,000 people die of Malaria, 887,000 from Hepatitis B, 1.1 million for Tuberculosis, and 9.6 million from cancer. So how should our leaders be setting their priorities today?

We’ve just hit a giant reset button on all of humanity, but it’s largely being driven by our current state of fear and panic. It’s inconceivable to think that leaders won’t be severely criticized for bad decisions after things die down.

That said, I’m not sure it’s even possible to make good decisions in our present situation.

We’ve gone from “ignorance is bliss” to an era where “we know we have a problem but we don’t know what to do about it.”

Ratchet forward a few more years and we reach a time where we “know we have a problem AND we’ll know how to fix it!”

In spite of all our advances, we still only know enough to be dangerous.

Future leadership will be far more data driven with exponentially more data points to determine both perspectives and priorities.

A great crisis is where great leaders are born!

The recent wave of layoffs and unpaid vacations will force companies and factories to be more efficient when it is all over. Many business operations are seeing much more efficient operations during the crisis and now realize they can get by with far fewer employees and as a result cut back.

At the same time, many are using this time to launch new products, new businesses, and new services. Anyone who had been waiting for the right time to launch their “side hustle” understands that now is the right time.

The need for safety is giving rise to a whole new set of protocols!

2. How will it change the defense systems of various countries? Will states prioritize more preparedness for biological weapons use and preparedness for pandemics?

The age of heavy guns and hardware is ending, and bio, cyber, and mind wars are just beginning. The concept of imminent risk and menacing danger is being reframed around non-intuitive, non-visible, and non-obvious threats.

Most countries will amp up their AI detection networks designed around making invisible threats visible. Every border crossing, international terminal, and port of entry will have growing levels of sensor, video, and audio detection with an explosion of drone fleets and swarms to add coverage.

Border walls will become simultaneously visual and physical, audibly acoustic, digitally obvious, aromatically distinct, and tactically discernible. The goal will be that no germ, virus, bacteria, fungi, or protozoa will have the power to cross undetected.

At the same time, with Europe taking the lead on the “right to be forgotten,” we’ll soon see a number of similar type causes, driven by tech innovation, like the “right to be digitally invisible,” the “right to be physically invisible,” and the “right to be totally undetectable.”

Anyone crossing a border should expect the equivalent of a full cavity search, done imperceptibly, for the most part, with remote scanners, swarmbots, and AI networks.

The job of being a spy just got exponentially more sophisticated.

Working at home has never been so isolating and liberating at the same time!

3. Talking about work culture and management culture – how will they be impacted by Covid-19? Will more and more people opt for working remotely, feeling more secure this way? Will it become a new normal?

This is such a unique period in history because the normal s-curve adoption rates in many areas of tech have been replaced with a straight vertical line. Anyone who can possibly work from home has been forced to learn all the tools and apps necessary to become functional in that type of environment.

Workers have had to learn on-demand food delivery apps like Uber Eats, GrubHub, Caviar, and Doordash; grocery delivery apps like Instacart, Peapod, and AmazonFresh; and supply delivery apps like Dolly, Amazon, UPS, and Postmates.

Dark stores, dark supermarkets, and ghost restaurants are quickly replacing traditional retailers with non-customer-facing distribution centers. A ghost restaurant is a food service business that serves customers exclusively through delivery of online orders. Many are being designed to facilitate a “click-and-collect” service for those wanting to drive up and take home the orders themselves.

The work-from-home culture requires a unique set of tools like fiber to the home, WiFi, and VPNs for security. It requires state-of-the-art hardware, computer, mouse, large display, camera, microphone, and keyboard. Workers need to be proficient in messaging tools like Slack, Teams, Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat. They also need to be well-versed in video conferencing tools like Zoom, Skype, Hangouts, and BlueJeans.

Ironically, most traditional colleges are not teaching the necessary skills for online tools and apps. Most home-based workers will need a solid understanding of collaborative tools such as Google Suite, Office 365, Office, and Quip; project management and workflow tools like Airtable, Trello, Jira, and Clubhouse; and file storage apps like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and iCloud. 

However, there is much more involved in having people work-from-home than tools, apps, and hardware. Workers need to be motivated self-starters, with good time-management skills, who feel comfortable in the isolation of their own homes. Managers need to manage differently. And homes will need the dedicated space conducive to home-based businesses. For example, young kids at home make it difficult to focus and conduct a Zoom call.

In general, we should expect to see a sharp increase in work-from-home operations, but at the same time, we’ll also see a sharp increase in demand for coworking spaces that fulfill our need for social contact in a collaborative workspace environment.

4. What about our daily routines and lifestyles – when the pandemic is over, how are they going to change in general? Are we going to travel less and feel more insecure in the globalized world? Which consequences may it bring?

For people all over the planet, the COVID-19 crisis is a deeply personal experience.

Some are watching every newscast waiting for the next update. Others are scrambling to reengineer their own career path to take advantage of emerging opportunities. Many are living in a state of fear, not knowing where their next meal will come from or who will take care of their children.

Every newscast is building on the fear and panic, driving many into a state of depression, anger, and hopelessness. Savvy politicians are trying to reposition their agenda to take advantage of it. No one is being left unscathed.

This is a pandemic that will never end. It will leave deep scars on both the social and business fabric of society. For many industries, like those working in travel and vacation businesses, the recovery will take years, maybe decades.

The entire world is now much more aware of itself than ever in the past. The crisis becomes the common thread we all share, and we feel comfortable sharing our own personal experiences with online acquaintances on the other side of the world.

For most of us, if we’re not in survival mode, we’re keeping a close eye on how close we’re getting to it. We’re constantly looking for signs of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel, and random acts of kindness to give us the inspiration to move forward.

Many older workers, still clinging to the social moorings of their past will decide to permanently retire.

Ten Trends

While there are many scenarios we can envision for how the coming years will unfold, and how this brief moment in time will permanently alter the course of history, here are a few trend lines that make sense to me.

1. This will go down in the history books as the most expensive crisis in all history. Every country is having to engineer a bailout package to save their businesses and put food on the table for the average worker. Over the coming month, inflation will raise its ugly head as the infusion of new capital begins to create a whole new set of problems.
2. Governments will vow to be more digital, more prepared, and more crisis-ready. At the same time, they will attempt to take back much of the power and control they’ve lost to multinational corporations. They will also vow to never let a single disease shut down the world ever again.
3. COVID-19 has been both a unifying force and a divider of worlds. Even as people are becoming more open and conversant with our remotest regions of the planet, wealthy people are becoming more entrenched and determined to protect their assets.
4. The healthcare industry should be prepared for some radical overhauls. They were neither prepared nor capable of managing the myriad of problems that arose. The healthcare system has been a failure for victims of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, meningitis, malaria, and a variety of other diseases. We have now reached the breaking point. While the individual healthcare workers have performed extraordinarily well, it has pointed out some deep-seated flaws in healthcare systems all over the world. Both governments and its citizens will demand more.
5. Every movie, television show, book, game, comic book, and research study produced before COVID-19 will suddenly feel dated.
6. The airline industry will soon be transformed from the cattle car experience of hauling large numbers of people in cramped spaces around the world to something a bit more humane. It will take a long time to rebuild the industry to the traffic levels of the pre-2020 glory years.
7. Our great study-at-home experiment will change education forever. Virtually every parent and child in the world has gotten a taste of what homeschooling is all about, and many will not want to go back to the same government-run schools. This, combined with emerging technology that will make education far more hyper-individualized, and we suddenly have the “perfect storm” for education to be transformed
8. Dealing with a common enemy is a great unifying force. It’s much harder for people from another country, race, religion, or culture to be viewed as a threat when you’ve both endured the trying times of a global crisis.
9. Cocooning is about to become a new social norm. There’s something very therapeutic about being able to hit the “pause button” on all the stresses of daily life and cuddle up in your own cocoon.
10. The unintended consequences will be huge. In much the same way a magician uses sleight-of-hand movements to distract us from what’s really going on, we will see countless books written on being blindsided by the unintended consequences resulting from the fixes, patches, and corrections engineered by our politicians.

What other things are we not prepared for?

Final Thoughts

To paraphrase a famous quote, COVID-19 is a paradox, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Just when we think we understand the new rules of the game, they shift, grow bigger, or simply disappear.

Many times people refrain from major changes in their lives because they are afraid, and don’t think they can deal with it well. But in times of crisis, like now, when we have no choice, we suddenly do things we were afraid of in the past and realize that it is not that bad.

Despite all our progress and technological advancements, we are still very vulnerable. This time it was a pandemic, but next time it may be a massive solar flare, a giant EMP blast, an asteroid hitting the earth, or an unexplainable cooling of the core.

We all live in countries with aging systems, standards, and processes. Businesses with borderless economies are being taxed through a system that very much cares about borders.

Electric cars are wiping out money coming from gas tax. Cities that are heavily dependent on sales tax from car sales will soon have massive budget problems.

If technology progresses the way I’ve predicted, we are on the verge of an explosive transformation. Buckle your seatbelts, it’s going to be a rough ride!

As always, please take a few moments to consider the implications of these changes and let me know your thoughts.

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The post How the Coronavirus has Altered the Course of Human History appeared first on Futurist Speaker.

For all the debate over whether the best coffee comes from a Chemex or a French press or an AeroPress, sometimes you just want to turn on a machine and let it do all the work. We asked 14 coffee experts — baristas, roasters, food-industry professionals, and just plain coffee snobs — what coffee makers out there will give you a good, simple at-home brew without all the fuss. Below are their eight favorite machines for people who think the best part of waking up is having a gadget make their cup.

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The device comes in Mercury Gray, or the bolder Fiesta Red that looks bright orange in some settings. It’s the first Chromebook to sport a 13.3-inch 4K OLED display. It also has a more powerful processor than most Chromebooks, an Intel 10th-generation chip. It includes 8GB of RAM (LPDDR3) and a 256GB SSD as well.

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• A third of investors pulled out of UK seed funding rounds in March as the threat of a recession driven by the coronavirus pandemic looms. 
• UK chancellor Rishi Sunak has been accused of leading startups "to the slaughterhouse" amid calls for the government to help save thousands of UK startups from collapse. 
• Anthony Rose, CEO of SeedLegals, said the reality is "some companies are just less investible now". 
• Seed funding has dropped 22% around the world since January, according to data from investment analysis firm CB Insights. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Jittery investors are fleeing from risky early-stage startups thanks to alarm over the coronavirus pandemic, new data shows.

Almost a third of investors pulled out of UK seed funding deals in the past month, amid fears the pandemic could trigger a global recession. 

SeedLegals, the London-based firm specializing in legal advice for smaller startups, said the number of venture capitalists (VCs) participating in early-stage funding rounds for startups dropped by 28% in March. 

It comes as Rishi Sunak, the British chancellor, stood accused of leading startups "to the slaughterhouse" by some, after investments made through the UK government's founder-friendly investment scheme tanked by 70%. 

SeedLegals, which claims to oversee around 10% of early-stage investment rounds in the UK, said that although fewer VCs were now taking part in such rounds, the overall number of deals being closed had risen 19% since January, as backers and founders try to settle their accounts ahead of the new tax year in April. 

Speaking to Business Insider, Anthony Rose, the cofounder and CEO of SeedLegals, said: "The world has changed." 

He added: "Broadly speaking, there are two key things happening at the moment: First, some investors – angels and other firms – are getting cold feet. They feel uncertain about the future, and they are doing their best to keep their own house in order. 

"Second – and the sad reality of it is – some companies are just less investible today than they were a few weeks ago." 

According to data from CB Insights, seed funding has dropped 22% globally since January, as investors come to terms with this new reality. 

Business Insider previously reported how the threat of a global recession has intensified negotiations between founders and investors in recent weeks. 

One founder, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity, said discussions around renewed valuations had been "ridiculous".

They added: "It's like they're trying to f--- us." 

British investors, including Lastminute.com cofounder Brent Hoberman, have called on the government to rescue early-stage companies with a dedicated fund. Hoberman, Capital Enterprise, and other funders have pitched a $350 million "runway fund" that would be part private, part government-funded.

"This came from the fact that there are lots of very good startups across the UK, but when the music stops, the music stops," Hoberman told Business Insider earlier in March. "There are perfectly good companies going to private individuals or early-stage funds that won't get funded."

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Zoom takes its users’ privacy extremely seriously. We would like to share a change that we have made regarding the use of Facebook’s SDK.  

We originally implemented the “Login with Facebook” feature using the Facebook SDK for iOS (Software Development Kit) in order to provide our users with another convenient way to access our platform. However, we were made aware on Wednesday, March 25, 2020, that the Facebook SDK was collecting device information unnecessary for us to provide our services. The information collected by the Facebook SDK did not include information and activities related to meetings such as attendees, names, notes, etc., but rather included information about devices such as the mobile OS type and version, the device time zone, device OS, device model and carrier, screen size, processor cores, and disk space. 

Our customers’ privacy is incredibly important to us, and therefore we decided to remove the Facebook SDK in our iOS client and have reconfigured the feature so that users will still be able to log in with Facebook via their browser. Users will need to update to the latest version of our application that’s already available at 2:30 p.m. Pacific time on Friday, March 27, 2020, in order for these changes to take hold, and we strongly encourage them to do so. 

Example information sent by the SDK on installation and application open and close:

• Application Bundle Identifier
• Application Instance ID
• Application Version
• Device Carrier
• iOS Advertiser ID
• iOS Device CPU Cores
• iOS Device Disk Space Available
• iOS Device Disk Space Remaining
• iOS Device Display Dimensions
• iOS Device Model
• iOS Language
• iOS Timezone
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• IP Address

We would like to thank Joseph Cox from Motherboard for bringing this to our attention here. 

We sincerely apologize for the concern this has caused, and remain firmly committed to the protection of our users’ privacy. We are reviewing our process and protocols for implementing these features in the future to ensure this does not happen again.

The post Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client appeared first on Zoom Blog.

Microsoft is seeing a massive increase in demand for its cloud services during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. “We have seen a 775 percent increase of our cloud services in regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders,” explains a Microsoft Azure blog post. This increase in demand includes Windows Virtual Desktop usage growing more than three times, and record numbers across Microsoft Teams, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Live, and Mixer.

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• Edward Snowden said in an interview on Monday that increased surveillance amid the coronavirus outbreak could lead to long-lasting erosion of civil liberties.
• Specifically, he theorized that states might demand access to people's health data — such as their heart rate — from wearables.
• Countries have been rapidly ramping up their surveillance of citizens to study and curb the spread of the virus, ranging from mapping anonymized phone location data to highly invasive powers, like allowing the security services to track people's phones without a warrant.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Edward Snowden, the man who exposed the breadth of NSA spying, has warned that an uptick in surveillance amid the coronavirus crisis could lead to long-lasting effects on civil liberties.

During a video-conference interview for the Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival, Snowden said that, theoretically, new powers introduced by states to combat the coronavirus outbreak could remain in place after the crisis has subsided.

Fear of the virus and its spread could mean governments "send an order to every fitness tracker that can get something like pulse or heart rate" and demand access to that data, Snowden said.

"Five years later the coronavirus is gone, this data's still available to them — they start looking for new things," Snowden said. "They already know what you're looking at on the internet, they already know where your phone is moving, now they know what your heart rate is. What happens when they start to intermix these and apply artificial intelligence to them?" Snowden added.

While no reports have surfaced so far of states demanding access to health data from wearables like the Apple Watch, many countries are fast introducing new methods of surveillance to better understand and curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Numerous European countries including Italy, the UK, and Germany have struck up deals with telecoms companies to use anonymous, aggregated data to create virtual heat maps of people's movements. 

Israel granted its spy services emergency powers to hack citizens' phones without a warrant, South Korea has been sending out text alerts to warn people when they may have been in contact with a coronavirus patient including personal details like age and gender. Singapore is using a smartphone app to monitor the spread of the coronavirus by tracking people who may have been exposed.

In Poland citizens under quarantine have to download a government app that mandates they respond to periodic requests for selfies, and Taiwan has introduced an "electronic fence" system which alerts the police if quarantined patients move outside their house.

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"It's hard to say an otherwise normal CEO thing like 'the macroenvironment is creating significant tailwinds for the business,'" said CEO Stewart Butterfield.

Slack is working on integrating Microsoft Teams calling features into its chat app. The integration would allow users of both rival services to call each other, bridging an important gap between the communications apps. “We’re working on Teams integrations for calling feature,” said Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield on an analyst call, reports CNBC.

Slack hasn’t revealed exactly how the calling integration will work, but the company previously made its apps easier to use with Microsoft’s Office 365 apps last year. This included Outlook calendar and mail integration into Slack along with access to OneDrive documents. Slack created these apps using Microsoft’s publicly available APIs and without any close collaboration between both companies.

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• The UK government has defended using video-call service Zoom among senior government officials – including Boris Johnson – due to 'unprecedented circumstances' caused by the coronavirus. 
• On Monday, the firm's stock price climbed 22%. The firm is worth about $37 billion.
• But cybersecurity experts have raised questions around Zoom's security and data privacy policies, with reports that the Ministry of Defence has banned staff from using it. 
• Boris Johnson used Zoom on Tuesday to hold his first remote Cabinet meeting, the private weekly meeting of the government's most senior ministers.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

The British government has defended the use of Zoom among senior officials, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, citing the "unprecedented circumstances" presented by the coronavirus pandemic. 

The video-call firm's stock price has shot up in recent days and it is currently valued at around $38.5 billion. The company has reported a spike in usage, as thousands of workers around the world work from home and use the service to talk to colleagues during lockdowns.

But cybersecurity and data privacy experts have raised concerns about Zoom's policies, citing recently discovered vulnerabilities and questionable in-app features.

Experts have queried how user data could be passed on to third parties such as Google, as well as an "employee tracker" feature that could allow a host to monitor whether an employee is paying attention.

The prime minister hosted his first "virtual Cabinet" meeting with senior government officials via Zoom on Tuesday. But that was just days after the Ministry of Defence reportedly banned staff from using it. 

According to the Press Association, the MoD told staff to avoid communicating via Zoom while it investigated the programme's "security implications", reminding them to be "cautious about cyber resilience".  

One source told PA: "It is astounding that thousands of MoD staff have been banned from using Zoom only to find a sensitive government meeting like that of the Prime Minister's Cabinet is being conducted over it." 

According to a senior government source, however, who spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity, there are apparently "no plans to pause or review" the MoD's use of Zoom for official business. 

Zoom previously told Business Insider that issues highlighted by security researchers at Check Point, specifically a flaw that would allow hackers to join meetings, had been resolved before they were made public. The firm added that it had updated numerous features such as Meeting ID Validation and a Device Blocker meant to "limit the effectiveness of malicious tools."

The firm added that its in-app "employee tracker", which has been the source of some controversy, had been turned off by default.

Asked about the UK prime minister's use of Zoom, a government spokesman said: "In the current unprecedented circumstances, the need for effective channels of communication are vital. 

"National Cyber Security Centre guidance shows there is no security reason for Zoom not to be used for conversations below a certain classification."  

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• Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield posted a detailed account on Twitter of what the last two weeks have been like for the company as the coronavirus pandemic has upended business.
• Butterfield discussed the challenges of predicting how his company will perform in the future as the coronavirus has made operations unpredictable.
• He also posted charts illustrating how the volume of newly created teams on Slack began to increase over the last two weeks.
• Many tech workers, venture capitalists, and others praised Stewart for his insight and transparency in the replies.
• But others questioned what Slack is doing to help those in need at this time. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus pandemic has upended the way businesses operate across the United States and around the world, resulting in unprecedented layoffs in the US and forcing companies to quickly shift to remote work arrangements.

For Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, who operates one of the most widely used office communication platforms, that has resulted in an unpredictable and surreal last couple of weeks.

The CEO shared a detailed account on Twitter of what the last two weeks have been like at Slack now that companies are relying on its tools more than ever before. That's all while Slack had to prepare for its third earnings report as a public company and brace for a scenario in which some of its clients may be run out of business.

In his Twitter thread, Butterfield discussed the challenges of predicting how a company will perform as the spreading coronavirus has made work unpredictable for many companies. Butterfield also posted charts showing how the volume of newly created teams on Slack began to surge after March 12, the day it reported earnings, compared against the beginning of the year.

Slack's stock dropped by more than 20% after-hours on March 12 after it reported its fourth quarter earnings results. Although quarterly revenue beat expectations, the company issued lower than expected guidance and showed signs of slow growth.

"We want to be 'reasonable' and 'prudent' and earn the trust of analysts and investors over time by being honest and straightforward," he wrote in one tweet. "But we literally have no idea what is going to happen and neither does anyone else, really.  The error bars on any prediction will be miles wide."

"We want to guide to something we know we can achieve, and that means factoring in the downside scenarios more heavily," he added in another tweet. "And that's what we did." 

Earnings day felt "surreal" for Butterfield, as companies across the country and the world — including Slack — are far from conducting business as usual.

"When the possibility of millions of deaths is slowly starting to sink in, it's hard to say an otherwise normal CEO thing like 'the macro environment is creating significant tailwinds for the business' and it felt completely impossible to extrapolate out from this present moment," Butterfield wrote in one tweet. 

Stewart's thread earned praise from some founders, venture capitalists, and tech workers for his insight and transparency.

But a few replies were more critical, with some questioning whether Slack was planning to offer free services or hire those who have been impacted by layoffs.

The Slack CEO also described how the team was "energized" and "moving fast" on earnings day noting that the team had to step up its internal communications to reassure staff as anxiety and uncertainty stemming from the coronavirus increased. 

"We will look back at this time and realize how much it defined our belief in what we can accomplish as a team," Butterfield wrote in an internal message to staff, which he shared in the Twitter thread. "Stay focused. Stay awake. Everything we're doing matters."

Join the conversation about this story »

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Most people are currently relying on videoconferencing to keep in touch with work colleagues, family, and friends — and if they’re facing financial difficulties, free is best. While Zoom seems currently to be the most popular videoconferencing app, there are several applications out there that will allow people to meet online for free.

We’ve listed here a few of the best known videoconferencing apps, along with a couple of popular text chat apps that include videoconferencing features. It’s worth noting that while most of these already have free versions, some are offering access to additional features for all those who are currently working from home or who want to check up on friends and relatives online.

There are a number of apps we...

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On March 17, Morgan Sykes got laid off from her job at a bike shop in the East Village, joining hundreds of thousands of other New Yorkers who have seen their jobs disappear due to coronavirus prevention measures. As a former bike courier, she figured she could help people by delivering food or medicine now that many New Yorkers can’t leave their homes. She sent out a tweet asking anyone if anyone needed help. The tweet got almost 10,000 retweets.

As the tweet spread, Sykes got hooked up with a group called Corona Courier, a group started by the librarian Liz Baldwin after the New York Public Library announced it would close at least through the end of the month.

Three days after Sykes’s tweet, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order forcing all non-essential services to close. Auto repair shops would be essential businesses, but bike shops would not.

This didn’t scan with Sykes. “Bikes are mechanical devices,” she said. “It’s not if you’re going to catch a flat, it’s when. It’s essential for us to be delivering these supplies that our bikes are functioning.”

To illustrate the point, Sykes told me about some of her recent courier trips. She grocery shopped for two people in Ridgewood, picked up prescriptions for a person who “could hardly speak over the phone” because their voice was so shot. She got fresh vegetables and a thermometer for someone in Crown Heights who just got back from Spain and was in self-quarantine. After she hung up with me, she was off to pick up medical supplies for an immuno-compromised child and his family.

Bike shops have long been pillars of their communities, especially in places with rich cycling cultures like New York City. It is one of the few local retail businesses left where customers are routinely on a first-name basis with the staff. But the coronavirus crisis has given urgency to the question of just how “essential” bike shops really are, since the designation determines if they can stay open during a statewide lockdown.

When California issued a shelter-in-place order, it too omitted bike shops as essential businesses. But mayors and county officials in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas corrected that oversight by designating bike shops as essential within their local jurisdictions. The same happened in New York, where Mayor BIll de Blasio eventually designated bike shops as essential, just hours before the lockdown took effect.

But that doesn’t mean bike shop owners have nothing to worry about. Now, they have to strike a seemingly impossible balance between public health concerns, keeping deliveries moving and other essential workers commuting, protecting their staff, and staying financially afloat.

“If I did everything just to maximize the dollar, I’d stay open and my bank account would be fine. But I have to do what’s for the greater good.”

“It’s been extraordinarily crazy,” said Shawn Wolf, who co-owns the bike shops King Kog and Sun & Air in Williamsburg with his wife. “This time of year, we always see a rise in foot traffic in the store, but the last week has just been panic as opposed to excitement.” He added that “it’s not always the best feeling when making sales to people who are just in panic mode and trying to buy a bike because they don’t have a better option, rather than buying a bike because that’s what they want to do and they’re excited about the activity.”

The situation has also put added stress on Wolf and his staff. Wolf’s shops have been running on a “skeleton crew” because some people have chosen not to come into work due to health concerns. Some of those who have come in have worked more than a week straight and counting. The majority of his customers these days are delivery workers, but they’re also offering free or low-cost service for people recently laid off.

Wolf and his crew are hardly alone in feeling the stress of how best to balance civic responsibility, health, and their business’s survival. Charlie McCorkell has been the owner of Bicycle Habitat, which has two stores in Brooklyn and one in Manhattan, for 43 years. He and his store managers decided to close their shops this week “to hit the pause button” so they can think about how to weigh the relative risks of operating a business when the city is supposed to be shut down with the benefit of keeping bikes moving.

When I spoke to McCorkell, he sounded like he was in a moral quandary. Does he stay open to keep cyclists moving? Or does he close, because the risk to his 27 staff members—and to himself; he’s 70 years old—is too great? He floated the hypothetical of how he would feel if, in a few weeks, he found out someone on his staff got coronavirus from the store. “What’s my responsibility, our corporate responsibility, to the staff?”

McCorkell doesn’t know what he’s going to do, but he was also clear that every bike shop owner has to make his or her own call. To his mind, there’s no obvious right or wrong answer. “If I did everything just to maximize the dollar, I’d stay open and my bank account would be fine,” he said. “But I have to do what’s for the greater good.” Now, he just has to figure out what that is.

For her part, Sykes doesn’t know if she’ll be going back to work at her shop, because when I talked to her on Monday the situation was changing “day to day.” But she added her old boss had been handling the situation well, all things considered. “They are on the front lines as well with grocery store workers and postal workers. Bike mechanics are heroes right now.”

• Google will be moving its summer internship to an online-only format in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
• Interns will instead take part in virtual replications of the company's usual summer internship events.
• The move comes as Google manages its vast and sprawling workforce in response to COVID-19.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Google has one of the most coveted summer internships in tech, but this year's interns will be swapping the "Noogler" hats for webcams as the entire program goes virtual, Business Insider has learned.

The company will be shifting its summer internship program to an entirely online experience, a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Candidates will be able to attend everything remotely, with many of the usual session replaced with digital versions. Google's leadership team plans to host virtual versions of its traditional "brown bag lunches," and interns will be able to attend various networking events online.

All of the usual internship programs will also move forward in the online format, though it means 2020's interns won't get to make use of the games rooms, free food, or Mountain View's campus bikes. They will still be compensated, however.

Confirming the changes in a statement, a Google spokesperson said: "As the COVID-19 outbreak develops, we are doing everything we can to keep our Google community safe and informed. With new public health advice, travel restrictions, and shelter-in-place orders being implemented across the globe, we've made the decision to make our summer internship program virtual."

Google hosts thousands of interns each summer, and the company will be contacting successful candidates to detail the logistics of the virtual program, a spokesperson said.

Getting a Google internship is no easy task. To land a spot on its UX program, for example, candidates must pass several rounds of interviews, a portfolio review, and a design challenge.

Some companies, such as Yelp, have canceled their summer internship programs due to the coronavirus pandemic. Many applicants to the Google program, including those had already received a written offer, were concerned that the company might also end up pulling the plug.

Meanwhile, Google's recruitment process has moved entirely online as it continues to bring on new employees, with new starters receiving their company laptops in the mail. 

This week, Business Insider reported that Google will extend the contracts of temp workers whose jobs were set to end during the coronavirus pandemic.

SEE ALSO: Google recommends all North America employees work from home over coronavirus fears

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• Microsoft is left as the only US company worth more than $1 trillion after the coronavirus hammers the economy.
• Apple, Amazon, and Google parent firm Alphabet have all had their market capitalizations fall to below the $1 trillion mark in the recent stock market rout.
• Trump has publicly mulled pulling back on public health measures that could contain the coronavirus to help restore the economy.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Microsoft is now the only company in the US with a market capitalization of more than a trillion dollars, after stocks continued to dive in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

At the close of markets on March 23, Microsoft's shares were worth a total of $1.034 trillion according to Nasdaq's official listing. Microsoft became the third US company to pass a market cap of $1 trillion in April 2019.

Apple, Amazon, and Google parent firm Alphabet all had market capitalizations in excess of $1 trillion as recently as last month, but the economy-wide wipeout has cost them that symbolic position.

As of close of market on Monday, here are their market capitalizations:

• Apple: $981.726 billion
• Amazon: $947.249 billion
• Alphabet: $725.39 billion

The plummeting stock market has prompted Congress to propose a massive stimulus for the US economy.

However, a bill to enact the measures stalled in the US Senate after Democratic senators declined to vote for it, arguing that it did too little to help ordinary people.

On March 23, Trump publicly mulled pulling back on public health measures to contain the coronavirus in order to support the stock market.

Stocks rallied in Europe and Asia on Tuesday morning after the Federal Reserve unveiled new measures to protect the economy, though they were tempered by the Senate actions. This means US stocks seem poised for a positive open.

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The security of a video conference call extends beyond keeping bad actors from crashing it.

One significant challenge posed by digital transformation is the need for organizations to leverage existing technology investments, which often hold business and technical intellectual property built up over many years. The combination of integration and application programming interface ("API") is a powerful tool in making the connection between an enterprise's existing and future technology investments.

• Poland on Friday released an app which requires people in quarantine for COVID-19 to periodically send selfies of themselves on request to prove they're sticking to their quarantine.
• If users don't respond to a request for a selfie within 20 minutes police will be alerted.
• The Polish government is reportedly automatically making accounts for suspected quarantine patients.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Polish government has introduced a new app that will require coronavirus patients to take selfies to prove they're quarantining properly.

Per France 24, the "Home Quarantine" app is intended for people quarantining for 14 days after returning from abroad.

People who've downloaded the app register a selfie with the app, then periodically receive requests for geo-located selfies. If they fail to comply, the police will be alerted.

"People in quarantine have a choice: either receive unexpected visits from the police, or download this app," a spokesman for Poland's Digital Ministry told the AFP. If a user fails to respond to a request within 20 minutes police will be notified.

France 24 reported that police in Poland fined someone for breaking quarantine 500 zloty ($116) on Friday.

British journalist Jakub Krupa tweeted that accounts are being automatically created for suspected quarantine patients.

Krupa tweeted that the purpose of the app isn't solely to punish people breaking quarantine, saying it also "helps to connect with the social services or request help with urgent supplies."

According to Poland's Digital Ministry the app is available to download on Google Play and the App Store.

Although demanding selfies is unique, Poland is not the only country to introduce unusual and invasive measures using people's phones to contain and control the spread of the coronavirus.

Singapore has asked citizens to download an app which uses Bluetooth to track whether they've been near anyone diagnosed with the virus, and Taiwan has introduced "electronic fences" which alert police if suspected patients leave their homes.

SEE ALSO: 10 countries are now tracking phone data as the coronavirus pandemic heralds a massive increase in surveillance

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There's a good chance we're in the middle of a massive tide-turning when it comes to surveillance technology. The global pandemic we're currently in leaves the doors open for governments and private companies to track individuals and whole communities like never before.

One of less sinister ways people could be surveilled without realizing it is in their own homes, on Zoom, with the application's attention-tracking features.

According to the company's website, when the feature is turned on, meeting hosts can tell if participants have navigated away from the active Zoom window for more than 30 seconds. However, one small benefit of using Zoom instead of meeting in a conference rooms is that it's now easier than ever to pretend you're paying attention at a meeting.

Teens attending school lectures from home were the first to start swerving this feature: videos on TikTok show them setting up camera stands in front of their laptops with images of themselves sitting at their desks:

On Twitter, people are finding ways to use the Zoom Rooms custom background feature to slap an image of themselves in their frames. You can record a short, looping video as your background, or take a photo of yourself looking particularly attentive, depending on the level of believability you're going for. Zoom says it isn't using any kind of video or audio analysis to track attention, so this is mostly for your human coworkers and boss' sake. With one of these images on your background, you're free to leave your seat and go make a sandwich while your boss thinks you're still there paying attention:

Matt, whose video testing the Zoom background feature went viral through his wife Kate's tweet above, told me that he's used Zoom before for work but is using it a lot more these days. Since the coronavirus pandemic, he used it to have a "virtual happy hour" with some friends across the country, he said.

"The virtual background feature came to my attention because I love clicking around inside of new programs and seeing what's there; additionally, some younger colleagues were using the feature in a meeting the other day (mostly to hide messy rooms, apparently), and I thought it would be fun to play around with it even more," Matt said. "My wife suggested I make one where I randomly pop my head in from just off screen, and then I tried the video you watched [on Twitter]."

While he doesn't condone using it to skip out on meetings, Matt does think it's an entertaining way to turn otherwise painfully dull video conferences into something more fun, "for people who aren't trying to get out of meetings so much as just feeling sort of lonely in isolation."

Creating a custom Zoom background requires a subscription to Zoom Rooms, which would set you back $500 for a year's subscription. But if your boss paid up for a corporate Zoom subscription, you might have access to Rooms already.

A lot of people are finding out how many of their meeting really should have been emails. Now that we're all doing meetings virtually, you may never have to sit through a boring presentation again—you can just loop a video and go do literally anything else with your time.

• The recreational-vehicle maker Winnebago said on Monday that it would suspend most production in the US.
• The Iowa-based company said that it would maintain pay and benefits for workers.
• Winnebago also said it would retain production flexibility to support the fight to contain the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On Monday, recreational-vehicle manufacturer Winnebago Industries announced that it would shut down US production until April 12 as the coronavirus pandemic intensifies.

The Iowa-based company said in a statement that it would be "temporarily suspending most production activities at the Company's Winnebago, Grand Design RV, Newmar, and Chris-Craft facilities."

It added, "This action is in response to the national spread of the coronavirus, the national emergency associated with the virus, and unforeseeable change in business circumstances that have accompanied it."

Winnebago said that it would maintain base pay and benefit for employees during the shutdown.

"As this global situation continues to rapidly evolve, our top priority is the health and well-being of our employees, business partners, customers and communities," CEO  Michael Happe said.

"We are also seeing demand for our products shift dramatically as the nation takes appropriate action to curb the spread of the coronavirus. This decision is not an easy one, but we are confident it is in the best interests of all our stakeholders."

Anticipating that the country might need RVs to support the fight against the pandemic, the company said that it would "remain flexible with operations that can provide products related to the support of mobile health care, command centers and other logistical needs that local, state and Federal resources may require during this crisis."

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• As coronavirus spreads, companies are increasingly being forced to work from home — and some are using online conference tools to try to prevent a dip in productivity.
• Some are turning to tools like Sneek, a group video conference software that's always on by default.
• Sneek features a "wall of faces" of employees at a company, automatically taking a photo of employees through their webcam every one to five minutes.
• "Sneek was never designed to spy on anyone," cofounder Del Currie told Business Insider. "We'd be the worst spy company ever considering we named our app 'Sneek.'"
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Working from home can make it feel like managers have less direct supervision over workers. But an always-on video-conference tool changes that by automatically snapping webcam pictures of employees every few minutes.

Companies across the world have been forced to abandon offices in favor of working from home in recent weeks to try to slow the spread of coronavirus, which has sickened more than 39,000 people in the US alone.

In order to keep productivity high while working remotely, some companies are turning to tools like Sneek. The software features a "wall of faces" for each office, which stays on throughout the workday and features constantly-updating photos of workers taken through their laptop camera every one to five minutes.

Sneek's user base has rapidly expanded in recent weeks as companies transition en masse to work-from home — signups have increased tenfold in in the past few weeks, cofounder Del Currie told Business Insider. It has over 10,000 users and boasts clients including American Express, Lego, Fred Perry, and GoFish digital.

The software's interface lets people set their webcam to automatically photograph them every one or five minutes, depending on how frequently they want their image to update (or how frequently their boss requires it).

If a coworker clicks on their face, Sneek's default settings will instantly connect the two workers in a live video call, even if the recipient hasn't clicked "accept." However, people can also configure their settings to only accept calls manually — and only take webcam photos manually — if their employer allows it.

Currie told Business Insider that, while some may be put off by the software's interface, it's meant to build a connected office dynamic.

"Sneek was never designed to spy on anyone, we'd be the worst spy company ever considering we named our app 'Sneek,'" Currie said. "We know lots of people will find it an invasion of privacy, we 100% get that, and it's not the solution for those folks, but there's also lots of teams out there who are good friends and want to stay connected when they're working together."

After Sneek's interface was reported by The Information's Priya Anand last week, some were turned off by the workplace surveillance tool. David Heinemeier Hansson, CTO and cofounder of the development firm Basecamp, tweeted that the idea "makes my skin crawl."

Currie acknowledged that the company "did indeed get some Twitter fame last week" after The Information story was published. Sneek was inspired in part by a book on remote work that Hansson co-authored, Currie said, but now the company has received messages from Hansson's followers "abusing our staff and calling us pieces of s—."

The purpose of Sneek isn't surveillance, Currie said, but office culture.

"We've worked from home for 10+ years and one of the biggest things that starts to creep in is that sense of isolation, it does really affect people's mental health," he said. "Just having that ability to look up and see your teammates there can make all the difference."

SEE ALSO: Clicking this link lets you see what Google thinks it knows about you based on your search history — and some of its predictions are eerily accurate

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• Cisco is committing $225 million in cash and other forms of support to fight COVID-19, the coronavirus disease.
• The tech giant is providing $210 million worth of access to technologies, such as the Webex video conferencing system, to help governments and other organizations respond faster to the crisis.
• Cisco is also allocating cash for health, education and other initiatives.
• "Business must step up and provide interim assistance in all of these cases and the government must move much more quickly than they are," CEO Chuck Robbins told Business Insider.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said Sunday that the tech giant is committing $225 million to fight COVID-19, the coronavirus disease, as it continues to spread.

"Business must step up and provide interim assistance in all of these cases and the government must move much more quickly than they are," he told Business Insider via email. "This is not the time for partisan politics."

Earlier on Sunday, the US Senate failed to agree on a coronavirus relief stimulus package valued at some $1.6 trillion, sending stock futures plunging.

Cisco plans to offer $210 million worth of products, including access to its WebEx web conferencing and its networking gear to help governments with virtual response operations. 

The company is also allocating cash to fund health care, education and other programs, and for grants and matching funds for nonprofit initiatives.

Cisco is one of the major providers of networking gear and software used to run private data centers and the cloud. The $225 million commitment represents roughly 8% of Cisco's net income in its last fiscal quarter. 

Robbins said it became clear that the crisis was going to be a significant issue for Cisco when the company required employees to work from home. The magnitude of the pandemic became clear when "the widespread outbreak began in the US."

"I don't think any of us understood just how much this was going to impact all of us," Robbins said. "Early on, we had healthy debates about whether we were overreacting or not – for the right reasons.  However, looking back, our decisions were not an overreaction at all. We all have a role to play in helping ourselves, our families and our customers."

The impact of the crisis clearly will have an impact beyond Silicon and the tech industry, he said.

"My biggest worry is what will happen to the most vulnerable in our society," Robbins said.  "The homeless as well as those who cannot afford a minor financial shock are my biggest concerns."

Got a tip about Cisco 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's new iPad Pro will support a key feature the iPad has been missing: mouse and trackpad compatibility.
• This addition is another sign that Apple is turning the iPad Pro into a real laptop alternative, much like Microsoft's Surface tablet.
• Apple has added many features to the iPad over the years that have made it better at multitasking, but mouse support was the one missing piece it needed to serve as a viable productivity device.
• It's an acknowledgement that Microsoft was on the right track when it introduced the original Microsoft Surface in 2012, a tablet that commercialized the concept of using a tablet as a laptop alternative. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple may insist that the iPad Pro isn't a laptop replacement, but this high-end tablet is closer than ever to becoming one, as evidenced by the new model announced this week.

If anything, the launch serves as another indication that Microsoft was on to something when it launched its Surface tablet-laptop hybrid in 2012, which is now nearly 8 years old and popularized the concept of regularly using a keyboard and mouse with a tablet.

The 2020 iPad Pro, which Apple just announced on Wednesday, features a Lidar sensor to give more realistic augmented reality experiences, a more powerful processor, and, most importantly, support for mice and trackpads. The new keyboard Apple is launching for the iPad Pro also allows you to adjust the tablet's angle, making it easier to use in your lap or on a tabletop, another feature that makes the Pro more capable for productivity.

Although mouse and touchpad support isn't exclusive to the Pro — it will be coming to other models as well through a software update — it represents the missing piece of the puzzle the iPad Pro needed to serve as a viable work device. Apple has made a slew of updates to the iPad in recent years by introducing features that let you open apps in split-screen view, or in a smaller column on screen, and a new home screen that makes it easier to see more information at once. 

But when it comes to fully replacing your laptop, the lack of mouse and touchpad support has been a major disadvantage compared to Microsoft's Surface Pro  lineup. There are certain tasks that are just much easier to accomplish using a mouse cursor rather than your finger — like managing spreadsheets, for example — and desktop operating systems have always been better suited for such workloads.

What remains to be seen is how well Apple's trackpad support actually works. Apple has taken a decidedly different approach to bringing cursor support to its tablet compared to Microsoft. While Windows-based tablets like the Surface run the same version of Windows 10 found on laptops and desktops, Apple's iPads run the company's mobile iPadOS software. 

That means the way the mouse and cursor work will be a bit different as well. Based on Apple's ads, it looks like the cursor will change its shape to fit the icon it's hovering over. We'll have to wait and see whether Apple has improved on the mouse and cursor experience in a way that will actually best — or at least match — operating systems like Windows and macOS that have been designed for such interactions from the start. 

Apple may not ever outright call the iPad Pro a laptop replacement — after all, it loves to position the iPad Pro as a non-computer in its marketing materials. But by adding mouse support to the iPad, Apple seems to finally be acknowledging that people at the very least want to use their tablet like a laptop, a point that Microsoft has understood for nearly a decade.  

SEE ALSO: I've only been using Apple's new MacBook Air for a day, but it feels like it could be the best Apple laptop for most people

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Starting today, Best Buy is limiting its US stores to “contactless” curbside service, allowing only employees into its stores, according to a statement from the company. Orders placed on the Best Buy website or via its app will be delivered to customers’ cars outside its stores by employees.

The curbside system includes returns and exchanges, and in an email to customers, Best Buy says “if, for any reason, you didn’t order the product in advance and the product is in stock in the store, one of our employees will be more than happy to go get it in the store and sell it to you while you remain in your car.” Best Buy has suspended its in-home installations and repair services, as well as its product trade-in and recycling services.

“We are...

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AT&T’s networks have seen a surge of usage since companies around the United States have asked employees to work from home and schools have moved online following the COVID-19 outbreak.

CEO Randall Stephenson told CNN’s Brian Stelter on today’s Reliable Sources that “mobile volumes are up 40 percent,” and “Wi-Fi calling volumes are up 100 percent.” Stephenson added the network infrastructures are “performing quite well,” but noted the company is seeing some stress as more people work from home.

AT&T itself currently has approximately 90,000 employees working from home, according to Stephenson. Stephenson added that considering how many people are working from home, and how this will change the future of work once the crisis is over,...

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• Cisco and F5 Networks, which make networking gear and software, have seen their shares take a hit in the coronavirus-driven market downturn.
• But the two tech companies are getting a lift from the sudden shift to a remote workforce amid the crisis, according to a Wall Street analyst.
• Businesses are "fully focused on getting workers set up to work remotely," and Cisco and F5 are "best positioned" to take advantage of this trend because of their huge customer bases, Morgan Stanley analyst Meta Marshall told analysts in a note. 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Cisco and F5 Networks have seen their stocks tumble as the coronavirus crisis sparked fears of another recession. But a Wall Street analyst said the two tech companies, which provide enterprise tech equipment to businesses, are getting a lift from a consequence of the pandemic: the sudden rise of a remote workforce.

Businesses, including major corporations, are "fully focused on getting workers set up to work remotely," a trend in which Cisco and F5 are "best positioned" given their huge customer bases, Morgan Stanley analyst Meta Marshall told analysts in a note. 

Cisco, which is based in San Jose, is the leading provider of networking hardware and software, including security, used for private data centers and cloud platforms. Seattle-based F5 makes equipment and software used to monitor business networks, to make sure they are working properly and securely.

These products are key to setting up remote access for employees which has become a critical need for many businesses. Despite the downturn, companies in the financial services industry "have spared no expense on incremental purchases to get a workforce set up for remote working."

On the other hand, demand for networking systems in key markets has taken a hit. One example is the government sector. Marshall said government budgets are "beginning to dry up," especially as the federal government has focused its resources to fighting COVID-19.

F5 shares have shed about 25%, while Cisco's stock has dropped about 23% in the past month.

Got a tip about Cisco, F5 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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Google has completely canceled Google I/O 2020, its biggest event of the year, due to the ongoing spread of the novel coronavirus. The company announced on March 3rd that it canceled the physical I/O event, but now the whole thing is off.

“Out of concern for the health and safety of our developers, employees, and local communities — and in line with recent ‘shelter in place’ orders by the local Bay Area counties — we sadly will not be holding I/O in any capacity this year,” Google said in a statement on the I/O website. “Right now, the most important thing all of us can do is focus our attention on helping people with the new challenges we all face. Please know that we remain committed to finding other ways to share platform updates with...

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