Archivists attempting to preserve internet history say that Verizon is undermining their efforts to archive Yahoo Groups ahead of the service’s looming shutdown on December 14.

Verizon bought Yahoo back in 2017 as part of it’s ongoing effort to rebrand itself as a modern online advertising juggernaut. Many of the acquired properties, like Tumblr, have since been offloaded for a tiny fraction of their previous valuation. Others are simply being shuttered.

Back in October, Verizon announced it would be shutting down Yahoo Groups, a community discussion forum that has existed for the better part of 20 years.

Enter activists at the Archive Group, who have been trying to archive the collected history of the platform before this Saturday’s impending shutdown. In a blog post, volunteers working on the project say Verizon has undermined their efforts at every turn.

“Yahoo banned all the email addresses that the Archive Team volunteers had been using to join Yahoo Groups in order to download data,” the group says. “Verizon has also made it impossible for the Archive Team to continue using semi-automated scripts to join Yahoo Groups—which means each group must be re-joined one by one, an impossible task.”

The archivists says Yahoo also killed the last third party tool (PG Offline) that users of the service have been using to access their messages, photos and files.

Jason Scott, co-founder of the Archive Team, told Motherboard Verizon is simply jettisoning an unwanted property, oblivious to any deeper impact the move may have on actual users or internet history.

“What they are doing is burning 20 years of history and archives maintained by communities with a non-functioning system for backing them up,” he said. “They made no real preparations for users to pull the information out because companies like Yahoo! were never designed to allow information to leave their walled gardens.”

Verizon did not respond to a request for comment.

The fracas is just the latest for a telecom giant that acquired both AOL and Yahoo in the hopes of transforming itself from a curmudgeonly old telco into a sexy new online ad empire. But from the collapse of its Go90 streaming service to the Tumblr porn controversy, Verizon’s efforts to position itself as a serious ad challenger to Google and Facebook haven’t gone well.

Verizon similarly banned archivist IP ranges as they attempted to preserve Tumblr history in the wake of the telco’s controversial porn ban. The company’s repeated tone deafness has fostered a reputation as a bumbling—if not malicious—telecom giant wandering well out of its depth.

“This is 20 years of communities, discussion and artifacts from millions of groups, all representing learned information, legal and historical references, and naturally, the conversations of tens of millions of users,” Scott said. “Some of it is likely worthless and some of it is likely precious. It is all being treated like trash.”

Cory Doctorow, whose website Boing Boing first reported Verizon’s latest gaffe, told Motherboard there’s no legal justification for Verizon’s moves, since Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects Verizon for liability for content posted by Yahoo Groups users.

“The entire post-Verizon acquisition of Yahoo has been a string of ghastly errors and missteps and so possibly the explanation is just ‘the curse of bigness’—that the supposed efficiencies of vertical monopolies are myths, and the reason that these vertical monopolies are so profitable is because they're monopolies, not because they're efficient,” Doctorow said.

The Archive Team says they’re facing a loss of nearly 80 percent of the data they’ve collected so far, and are looking for volunteers to aid them in recovery and archival before the Verizon hammer comes down.

Both Doctorow and Scott say Verizon’s incompetence and apathy comes with a very real cost for tracking and preserving human history, both online and off.

“Yahoo Groups was one of the original platforms for communication and coordination among affinity groups—political, medical, regional, interest-based, and so on,” Doctorow said. “These groups contain vital historical records of key moments in our shared past—what firefighters were saying after 9-11; or even how white nationalist sentiment incubated within online groups that went from the fringes to the White House.”

“Mass deletion of this record is really a purging of some of the irreplaceable documents of our century,” he added.

This holiday season, the popularity of online shopping collides with upheaval in cardboard recycling. China’s 2017 decision to turn away America’s trash has left the recycling industry reeling as it figures out what to do with all the packaging online shoppers leave behind.

Some municipal recycling programs have closed. Even the ones that haven’t still have headaches: specifically, filthy recyclables. All of that leads to more cardboard in landfills.

The rise in curbside cardboard waste coming from packaging is “the Amazon effect,” says David Biderman, the executive director of the Solid Waste Association of North America, an industry group. It peaks around the holidays — particularly as online shopping has only...

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Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular overstated their 4G coverage in rural communities across the country, a Federal Communications Commission investigation determined on Wednesday. Despite the Commission’s findings, it will not punish the carriers in any way.

Throughout its investigation, the FCC staff ran speed and coverage tests in rural areas across the country to determine whether consumers were receiving sufficient download speeds. According to the FCC’s report, “only 62.3 percent of staff drive tests” met those thresholds. US Cellular achieved it only 45 percent of the time, while T-Mobile and Verizon met the standard at around 60 percent of the time. The FCC staff was unable to receive any 4G signal in 38 percent of US Cellular’s...

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• Hatebase, a Toronto-based artificial intelligence startup, has built a service that alerts companies and organizations when their users post offensive content.
• The startup is building a database that includes hateful words and phrases from more than 95 languages that are used in more than 180 countries. 
• Its technology is used by the world's four biggest social networks, including TikTok; those companies and others face growing pressure to get hate speech under control.
  
• Hatebase began as an initiative of the Sentinel Project, a Canadian nonprofit that uses technology to assist vulnerable communities that are potential targets of violence and genocide.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Hate and lies can spread so rapidly on the web nowadays that companies, especially social networks, are eagerly looking for help in getting a handle on the problem.

To date, many have tasked human moderators with the job of keeping an eye out for slurs, racist attacks, fake news, and other harmful content. But the work is excruciating, mind-numbing, and often soul-killing, sparking controversy for traumatizing those who are exposed to so much disgusting material. 

"It's just a horrible, horrible job" for people who digest "the worst of the worst of social networks 12 hours a day," said Timothy Quinn, co-founder and chief technology officer of Hatebase, which offers a technology-based alternative to human content moderation.

"You want to get away from that," he told Business Insider. "You want to automate as much as possible."

That's what Quinn's Toronto-based startup is trying to do with its artificial intelligence-powered service. Numerous businesses and organizations, including TikTok and the world's largest social networks, use Hatebase's service to flag offensive content on their sites.

A database of hate words in different languages

Hatebase has built a database of hateful words, phrases, and expressions it's collected from more than 95 languages that are used in more than 180 countries. Clients are able to use the database to set up their own customized systems for flagging offensive content.

A network of volunteers and contractors keeps the database, which now includes more than 3,600 terms from around the world, up-to-date. As of December, Hatebase's service has sent more than 1 million alerts to its clients about the use of such words. A recent entry flagged the term "redneck" after it was used somewhere in the US, while another cited the use of "preto," Portuguese for "dark-skinned person," in Brazil.

Identifying hate speech can be a complex and tricky process, Quinn said.

"It's extremely hard to put boundaries around hate speech because everyone defines it a little bit differently," he said. "There's that blurry line between where hate speech ends and where ... insults and trash talking begin. These are all very thorny issues."

A broad definition of hate speech

For its purposes, Hatebase came up with a definition of hate speech that is broad and practical, Quinn said. As the company explains on its website, its database includes any term "that can be used to marginalize generally in a negative way or externalize a different population based on nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, disability."

"Anything that fits into that bucket we are going to broadly call hate speech," Quinn said.

Since many words and expressions can have different meanings in different countries or contexts, Hatebase's database includes terms that some people might not consider offensive. Quinn cited "paddy wagon," a term that was once considered a slur against the Irish, who were sometimes derisively called Paddies and were often portrayed as criminals in the 1800s.

"Now I would never be personally insulted if somebody referred to a vehicle as a paddy wagon," Quinn, who is of Irish descent, said. "But it is externalizing a population and associating a given ethnicity with criminal behavior."

That's why "paddy wagon" is part of the Hatebase lexicon, although the company also classifies it as "extremely low" in terms of its sensitiveness, Quinn said. 

Hatebase's clients can tweak its service for their needs. They can add words or phrases to the database and adjust the service's rules to be more in tune with where they are based or the cultural sensitivities of their audience.

The startup's database itself is a work-in-progress and continues to evolve. That's because languages, including hate speech, are constantly changing, Quinn said. New slang words are always being invented and the meanings of particular terms often change over time.

Hate speech is not just a PR problem

In fact, some hate groups have actually started to intentionally obfuscate their messages in a way that only their members and sympathizers understand, he said.

"White supremacists have become masters of this in how they post content using code words using certain kinds of punctuation," Quinn said.

Increasingly, for many businesses, including social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, policing hate speech is no longer just about good public relations. Failing to do so can now have serious implications for such companies, as Facebook found out when it was hit with a $2.3 million fine for violating hate speech laws in Germany.

"If you're a big social network, you're concerned about people posting material on your site that is potentially alienating," Quinn said. But, he added, "increasingly there are stiff fines now for online ecosystems that allow hate speech to flourish on their site."

Hatebase is bootstrapped rather than venture-funded. It has a paid staff of about 12 who are assisted by dozens of volunteers. It's also profitable, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue, Quinn said.

One Hatebase client is Fiksal, a Utah-based startup that developed an app that helps individuals and organizations communicate more effectively and in ways that avoid conflict. Hatebase's system helped Fiksal better understand cultural differences, particularly in the meanings of particular words and phrases, Fiksal CEO Krista Andersen told Business Insider.

"They're really a stellar company with a big vision and clearly passionate about helping people understand how damaging hate language is," Andersen said.

Hatebase started as a part of nonprofit anti-hate group

Launched in 2012, Hatebase began as part of a campaign to prevent hate speech from spinning out of control. It was created by the Sentinel Project, a Canadian nonprofit that's working to assist vulnerable communities that are potential targets of violence and genocide. 

Two years ago, the Sentinel Project team used technology, including a heat map, to monitor false reports that a gang was about to attack some slum communities in Kenya.

"We were able to tailor our response to those communities; calming people who contacted us worried about their safety, diffusing the potential for vigilante mobs to form, and directing concerned individuals away from higher risk areas, such as where protests were forming," said Drew Boyd, a member of Hatebase's leadership team and the operations director of the Sentinel Project, told Business Insider.     

Christopher Tuckwood, another member of Hatebase's leadership team, pointed to the company's Kenya experience as an example of how its service can play a critical role in neutralizing the potential impact of hate speech.

"We envision hate speech data being used as a warning indicator alongside other types of data — misinformation, violence rates, economic changes — which give an overall picture of the risk of instability and conflict in a given place, including severe cases like genocide and mass atrocities," he said.

Got a tip about Hatebase 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.

SEE ALSO: A Wall Street analyst says Oracle's business will take a hit from the cloud trend 'even in optimistic scenarios'

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NOW WATCH: 9 items to avoid buying at Costco

AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast executives aren’t going to like Bernie Sanders’ new broadband plan.

The wide ranging proposal, released Friday morning, would all but demolish big telecom’s stranglehold over the broadband and media sectors, unwinding decades of unrelenting consolidation, imposing hard new limits on how much broadband providers can charge for service, while opening the door to significantly broader availability of community broadband.

The proposal pulls no punches when it comes to the U.S.’ broadband woes.

“Telecom and cable monopolies exploit their dominant market power to gouge consumers and lobby government at all levels to keep out competition,” the proposal notes.

“Just four companies control nearly two-thirds of the entire market,” it continues. “Prices are as much as 25 percent higher than they would be in a competitive broadband market. Large ISP monopolies report inaccurate or overstated coverage information, obscure their prices, and often don’t deliver promised speeds.”

Tech policy conversations in 2019 have focused predominantly on breaking up “big tech” giants like Facebook. And while that may be justified, such myopia has let folks forget about the threat posed by “big telecom.” Sanders’ broadband proposal reverses that trend sharply.

The plan would restore the FCC’s authority and net neutrality rules stripped away by the Ajit Pai FCC, subjecting ISPs to far greater oversight. It also proposes banning ISPs from imposing arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees, which critics have long said are little more than punitive price hikes on captive customers.

But Sanders’ plan also spends a lot of time advocating for community broadband. First by proposing $150 billion in new funding to aid the growing roster of towns and cities that have begun building their own networks after years of industry neglect. Secondly by eliminating the 19 protectionist state laws big ISP lobbyists have used to try and crush those efforts.

“Municipalities across the country running their own internet services have proved they can deliver high-quality service at a fraction of the price of established monopolies,” the proposal states.

“Bernie believes it’s time to stop relying on profit-focused corporations to get to universal broadband,” it adds, noting his administration would “provide the necessary funding for states, cities, and co-ops to build out their own broadband networks, and ensure all households are connected by the end of his first term.”

Sanders’ proposal also takes aim at the telecom sector’s habit of jacking up your broadband and cable TV bill via a roster of obnoxious, sneaky fees. Such fees routinely allow your ISP or cableco to advertise one rate, then sock you with far higher costs when the bill comes due. It’s a practice DC lawmakers have ignored for nearly a generation.

Sanders also targets the telecom and media industry’s relentless thirst for consolidation, most recently exemplified by the controversial T-Mobile Sprint merger. Historically, mergers like AT&T’s 2018 acquisition of Time Warner and Comcast’s 2011 merger with NBC Universal have one consistent outcome: higher rates for both consumers and competitors.

The Sanders plan promises to reverse that trend by undoing past megadeals, and blocking “vertically integrated” mergers between telecom monopolies and media giants.

“We will break these monopolies up and closely regulate them to ensure they are providing consumers with acceptable service, and eliminate hidden fees, surprise bills, and other consumer-gouging practices,” the proposal pledges.

The Sanders proposal also tackles telecom’s bad behavior on the privacy front by restoring the FCC’s 2016 privacy rules, which were demolished by Congress in 2017 after extensive lobbying by the telecom sector. That in turn directly contributed to the lack of accountability for the wireless carrier location data scandals revealed by Motherboard earlier this year.

The plan also takes aim at the FCC’s recent failure to protect consumers in the wake of devastating hurricanes like Irma and Maria, proposing far more robust telecom infrastructure capable of weathering the climate catastrophes to come.

“With our $150 billion investment in resilient, affordable, publicly owned broadband infrastructure, we willI ensure that communities stay connected during natural disasters,” the plan said. “This communications infrastructure will ensure first responders and communities are ready to deal with the worst climate emergencies.”

Promises are of course one thing. Following through on them is another. Pushing the lion’s share of these proposals through Congress will be all but impossible without a dramatic shake up, given AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast’s lobbying stranglehold over both houses, and, quite frequently, both political parties.

Still, the Sanders’ team broadband plan is nightmare fuel for telecom giants, who for the better part of three decades have been allowed to rip off American consumers with relative impunity.

More than 18 months after the scandal first broke, the Federal Trade Commission has officially ruled that Cambridge Analytica deceived consumers through its data-gathering practices.

In July, the FTC accused the consulting company, as well as CEO Alexander Nix and app developer Aleksandr Kogan, of collecting data on tens of millions of Facebook users through a personality-testing app. The news, first revealed in 2018, upended Facebook and led to a congressional appearance by Mark Zuckerberg. The FTC previously settled the case with Nix and Kogan, and today voted unanimously to formally call the company’s practices deceptive.

In some ways, the vote was largely symbolic. Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy shortly...

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• Silicon Valley startups are offering no-shoes office policies, allowing employees to spend the workday in house slippers, socks, or barefoot.
• It's the latest trend that embodies the region's famous pared-down office culture.
• Here's what it's like in the shoeless offices of Silicon Valley.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The tech world has become inextricably linked to a very specific work uniform: hoodie, t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.

That informality has permeated the office environment as well, with startups in Silicon Valley garnering a reputation for embracing out-of-the-norm office perks to compete for the best and brightest of the region's stock of tech talent. They've famously included free lunches, in-house nap rooms, free fitness classes and massages, and dog-friendly offices. 

But now some of those perks have come to include strutting around the office in house slippers or socks, or for some, bare feet.

Why? A simple reason: The CEOs grew up in households with no-shoe policies.

The offices of Gusto and Notion, both enterprise software startups, are a far cry from the American offices of old, where strict dress codes were enforced and meandering through the office in jeans, let alone barefoot, could have sent you packing.

But if shoeless workspaces are going to become a reality, it might as well be in tech country. After all, Silicon Valley was the epicenter of the business-casual dress movement in the 1990s. Since then, as Business Insider's Aine Cain writes, much of the corporate world — outside of finance and law — has taken on a results-oriented mindset. Employers don't care what you look like when you're working, as long as you're producing results.

And more than that, it's become a way for employers to lure freshly graduated tech workers — they're more likely to join you if they don't have to shed their hoodie for a suit jacket or swap their couch for a stiff desk chair.

As for the barefooted-ness, is it a health code violation? Turns out it's not, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

"We are not aware of any health code violations in San Francisco for workers to be barefoot in a commercial space," a spokesperson told Business Insider in an email.

So march on, shoeless techies. March on.

Here's what it's like in the shoeless offices of Silicon Valley.

SEE ALSO: Inside dating app Tinder's new San Francisco office, where teams are devoted to studying Gen Z and employees are served tasty local lunches through Caviar

Shoe cubbies were once thought to be confined to the preschool classroom.

Nowadays, you'll find them in the Gusto office in San Francisco, where employees store their shoes while they navigate the workday barefoot or in socks.

Office culture is markedly lax in the West Coast tech hub, and there are a lot of reasons why.

Some have called the region the birthplace of the business casual movement of the late 1980s and 1990s.

Source: Business Insider

Eventually, it evolved into the inescapable t-shirt-and-sneaker combination we know today. You've seen the look embodied on the CEOs leading the region's tech giants.

The Valley's schtick has always been "discarding norms and celebrating rule-breaking," as The Atlantic reports.

Source: The Atlantic

And over time, that hallmark has bled into the work environment as well.

Tech companies famously began instituting office perks like free lunch, nap rooms, and dog-friendly offices.

Gusto and Notion are two startups in the past few years that have offered similar out-of-the-box office practices to workers.

Gusto CEO Joshua Reeves told Business Insider's Melia Russell in 2018 that he grew up in a shoeless household.

Source: Business Insider

And then when Reeves and a few other techies launched the company in 2011, it was out of a house in Palo Alto.

They all took their shoes off before ascending into the upstairs bedroom-turned-office.

Source: Business Insider and Entrepreneur

When Gusto moved into a more stable office, the tradition stuck.

The company's employees sprawl out on living room furniture — as well as at desks — sporting slippers or socks. Some are barefoot in the Gusto office.

Over at Notion, CEO Ivan Zhao had the same reasoning for implementing a no-shoes policy.

Zhao told Business Insider that he grew up in a shoeless household as well.

And in lieu of a designated shoe cubby, Notion's office is even more pared-down — employees merely kick them off on the floor near the front door.

Employees saunter around in slippers and socks ...

... and foot cushions are placed beneath their desks.

Both companies said their offices are outfitted with radiant heated floors to help keep their shoeless workers' feet toasty.

The shoeless practice is an example of startups crafting their own unique company culture.

Source: LinkedIn

There's a high turnover rate at tech companies, and singling your company out in one way or another can help not only recruit, but retain, techies.

Source: LinkedIn

On the other hand, some perks that companies offer, like beer on tap and yoga rooms, have been seen as "golden handcuffs" that persuade workers to stay at the office later and work overtime.

Source: Forbes and Quartz

Some critics have painted them as more harmful than beneficial to workers as it reinforces the Valley's "work hard/play hard" startup culture.

Source: Quartz and The New York Times

In response, some tech companies are changing the way they implement startup culture for the better.

Source: Forbes and Business Insider

And some made sure they embraced a healthy culture from the beginning. For Gusto, the company has managed to avoid the fratty company culture often associated with Silicon Valley startups, as Business Insider's Melia Russell writes.

Source: Business Insider

Fortune magazine has named Gusto one of the 100 best workplaces for millennials.

Source: Fortune

The distinction is likely for a number of factors, but no doubt the cozy office environment and practices are among them.

The company has also earned rave reviews by employees on Glassdoor, with some crediting the company for its "ridiculously generous benefits."

Source: Business Insider

Eight years in and the company's growth is notable too. Gusto crossed over into the unicorn club in 2015, and now has a post-money valuation of $3.8 billion.

Source: Crunchbase and Fortune

And Notion — besides attracting so much buzz in Silicon Valley's VC scene that investors were literally knocking on the door — has a tight-knit workforce in San Francisco's Mission District.

Source: Business Insider

So maybe they're onto something with bringing the coziness of home into work.

• President Donald Trump reportedly uses unsecured phones for White House business, rather than encrypted phone services intended for top government officials, according to a recent Washington Post report.
• Business Insider spoke to cybersecurity experts about how hackers can gain access to phone conversations on unsecured devices.
• Unsecured phones are an easy target for hackers, according to the experts, who said they are "so easy to hack it's scary."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump made Hillary Clinton's use of private email servers a hallmark of his campaign, but the president himself regularly conducts phone calls using unsecured devices, according to a new report from The Washington Post.

Call records released as part of the impeachment inquiry into Trump show that he and his top advisors routinely used unsecured phones for White House business, a fact that several unnamed administration officials confirmed to the Post. Top government officials typically use encrypted phone services to protect calls or texts from being intercepted by hackers.

To put that revelation in context, Business Insider spoke to cybersecurity experts about the risks associated with unsecured phones.

Alex Heid, chief technology officer of Security Scorecard, said that unencrypted phone services are exceptionally easy to hack.

"In some cases, it's as simple as walking into a cell phone tower, plugging in a laptop, and downloading everything," Alex Heid said. "It's generally so easy to hack its scary."

Kiersten Todt, managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute and a former cybersecurity advisor to the Obama Administration, said that gaining access to unsecured phone activity is well within the capabilities of sophisticated hackers.

"With enough time and focus, which we know that many malicious actors have, it's certainly doable," Todt said.

Here's a breakdown of how hackers can gain access to unsecured phone activity and how encryption can protect against hacks, according to experts.

SEE ALSO: Hackers have become so sophisticated that nearly 4 billion records have been stolen from people in the last decade alone. Here are the 10 biggest data breaches of the 2010s.

Encrypted phones have been the standard for top-ranking government officials dating back to World War II, when extensive technology was employed to protect against wiretapping.

Phone encryption became much less expensive with the advent of the internet. Most encrypted phone lines now use software called "voice over internet protocol" to shield against spying.

However, most standard phone services, including calls and texts, are "basically wide open," according to Heid: "It's unencrypted data stream that's broadcast over the airways."

"Hackers are constantly hacking telecom carriers," according to Heid. "In some cases, it's as simple as walking into a cell phone tower, plugging in a laptop, and downloading everything."

There are now a range of smartphone apps that provide encrypted calls and messaging services, including Signal, Wickr, and WhatsApp. The latter is used intermittently by White House officials, according to The Washington Post.

The primary reason that people opt to use unsecured rather than encrypted phone services is because of convenience. "There's always that trade-off between encryption and ease of use," Heid said.

There have been several instances of targeted phone hacking in the past year alone. One tactic, known as SIM swapping, involves fraudulently convincing a mobile carrier to transfer control of a phone number to a hacker's device.

Read more about SIM swapping here.

"Mobile security is something that the government is still struggling to prioritize," Todt said. "Given the use of smartphones across business and government use, we've got to figure it out."

Nowadays, we can connect from anywhere in the world, check emails after dinner, and answer calls from our bosses on weekends away. We’ve never been more available, which naturally can become both a blessing and a curse. Add into the mix the fact that now one in five businesses are adopting remote working practices (according to the Wundamail State of Remote Work 2019). In the remote working culture, there are facts business owners need to know.

The workplace culture is changing. You may be a manager working with remote teams or if you’re interested in working remotely yourself.

Here are some discoveries to consider before you take the plunge. About the survey: 2500 remote workers surveyed were represented. Included were regions across the UK, ethnic background, socio-economic status, gender, and inclusion of both high-income and low-income bracket workers.

The respondents in the Wundamail list worked for teams of three or more, across a range of blue-chip enterprises, large companies, and micro-businesses. They surveyed a nationally representative sample to gauge the benefits and challenges facing remote British workers today.

74% of remote workers state that they believe they’re more productive remotely than they would be in an office environment. 

Being more productive is a finding that might come as a shock to a lot of office-based managers. Whenever we think of remote workers, it seems to conjure up images of people slumped on the sofa catching up on Netflix. Some see an image of sitting in paradise, trying not to spill cocktails over their laptop.

The reality is very different, with remote workers often working from home offices, co-working spaces, or local coffee shops. The productivity could stem from the lack of distractions that comes with working alone. Even in a coffee shop, interactions are limited, leaving the worker to get on with the task at hand.

60% of remote workers feel their contributions are valued highly within their team.

71% of those asked had received all forms of praise and recognition via communication technology. Another misconception is that remote workers are isolated, disengaged, or cut off from company culture. Indicated in much research is that many of these prevailing notions are unfounded, mainly when companies prioritize good quality online communication.

Managers with a remote team will want to ensure that their communication is up to the challenge. When company culture is shared and embedded early on, it means that any employee can embody your business’s vision and get behind it. Most managers and business owners wish to achieve a great culture, and your remote team can be part of your business culture.

42% felt they lacked support daily — compared to their regular office counterparts.

Without proper support from managers, it can be difficult for remote workers to feel like they’re part of the team. Often a remote team doesn’t feel their work is being appreciated. Let’s face it — a remote team gets sick of hearing about all the fabulous stuff those “in office peeps” do. Look back through your office messaging system.

By setting up regular, easy-to-use communication channels with your remote team, you offer the opportunity for them to reach out for support if they need it. Even if they don’t utilize the support, it’s beneficial for them to know that it’s always an option.

With the growing communication and team management tech now available, there’s no reason for remote workers to feel less supported than their office counterparts.

61% admitted they did not feel “part of the team” to the same extent as regular office workers.

Whether or not remote workers feel like “part of the team” or not comes down to company culture. When you work remotely, it can be easy to feel like a freelancer rather than a team member. It’s essential to morale and overall productivity and quality of work that all employees to feel like they’re all working towards a common goal.

Remote workers might not be able to get involved in office events, but in the bigger picture, such as goal setting, adding in your remote team achievements are as important as the in-office team. It’s a matter of great communication and organizational skills — two things that any good manager or business owner should have in spades.

55% reported that their manager or “does not fully understand what I do each day.”

Over half of remote workers don’t believe that their manager understands their role in a day-to-day capacity. Let that sink in for a moment. As a manager, you should be able to guide your employees through their daily tasks. If you don’t understand what they’re doing or how they work, how can you hope to achieve this?

Once again, it comes down to a lack of consistent communication between remote team members and their managers. The knowledge barrier can be simply rectified by organizing regular update sessions via digital communication channels.

Using face-to-face communication helps your remote worker share their progress on different projects. The whole in-office team should be able to see and converse with the remote team monthly. As a manager, you can ask questions and learn more about their process. You’ll know what your team members do on a day-to-day basis, allowing you to lead them more efficiently going forward.

34% of respondents admitted that they had “previously taken advantage of the lack of supervision” remote working offers, and 66% admitted that they “had been tempted to push the boundaries” in the past. 

Having a remote employee take advantage may be the biggest fear of business owners and managers alike. They are oh so scared that they’re being taken for fools by remote workers. While a third of those asked admitted taking advantage of the lack of supervision — almost twice as many resist the temptation to do so.

Some feel they can get away with more when the boss isn’t around. The same stats exist for office-based workersas for remote workers. If the manager is up in their office, are you always working on what you’re supposed to be? Do you have social media in another tab, or keeping one eye on the latest scores?

Most workers reported that taking advantage only happened when they were first remote workers.

If this is a concern, then embedding the progress update process will help to ease your mind. If an employee knows they’re going to be asked what they’ve been up to that day, they’re less likely to take advantage. Most workers reported that taking advantage only happened when they were first remote workers and that it didn’t happen once they got used to their routines.

74% of respondents reported that “communication technology improves my overall productivity.”

A reassuring statistic for managers and business owners looking to switch to a more remote workforce is that the productivity raises. Communication technology is the primary way in which managers and remote workers stay in touch. Having these tools at hand improves productivity and is hugely beneficial.

Having communications channels that both the manager and the remote worker can rely on is vital. Often, office-based communication can go off on tangents, leading to a less productive working environment. With remote working and communication technology, this is not the case.

15% reported, “I find communication technology distracting or disruptive.” A further 14% said they “find communication technology stressful.”

Even though 74% of respondents found that communication technology does indeed improve their overall productivity, some do still find it a struggle. Many of the respondents identified with more than one option, suggesting that remote workers find communication technology simultaneously productive, but also distracting or stressful.

Communication should be limited to once a day or in emergencies, via a forum, or by employing a communication tool that can be muted. There’s nothing worse than notifications pinging when you’re really trying to focus.

With so many remote workers, it’s time to adapt and prepare for the upcoming cultural shift. Having these insights are key in ensuring that you can make informed decisions and offer the most efficient and successful remote working experience to your employees.

The post Remote Working Culture: The Facts Business Owners Need to Know appeared first on ReadWrite.

The tech world has gone a long time since a day like Tuesday, where the industry’s tectonic plates shifted in a fashion sudden and dramatic enough to send newsrooms into momentary turmoil. Being sent into momentary turmoil is half the fun of being a reporter, of course, and so I didn’t even mind when I had to throw out a half-written column about political ads (that hoary old topic again?!) in favor of a send-off for Google’s departing co-founders.

Now that we’ve had a day to consider the implications, it seems striking that there are only two real lines of thinking emerging.

The first is: remind us who Sundar Pichai is, and also can he possibly resolve the many challenges in front of him?

The second is: why does Alphabet exist again?

Continue reading…

As part of a dark web drug case the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) obtained a search warrant compelling cloud-based note taking app Evernote to provide a user's data, according to court records.

The warrant highlights how as users increasingly move aspects of their lives to various pieces of software, from ridesharing to note taking apps, that information is often stored remotely on a company's servers and is available to third parties.

"One flashdrive provided by Evernote consisting of 18 data folders in Evernote proprietary software," the executed search warrant from July 2018, listing what data Evernote provided, reads.

Evernote is a note taking app, which allows users to sync images, videos, and texts between their computers and phones via Evernote's servers.

"Take notes anywhere. Find information faster. Share ideas with anyone. Meeting notes, web pages, projects, to-do lists—with Evernote as your note taking app, nothing falls through the cracks," Evernote's website reads.

Do you know about any other unusual requests for data? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

The warrant was written during an investigation into Stephan Caamano, a dark web drug dealer who sold fake Xanax. Earlier this year Caamano pleaded guilty to seven counts, including trafficking in a counterfeit drug, distribution of a controlled substance, and money laundering, according to court records.

"In general, electronic data sent to an Evernote subscriber is stored in the subscriber's account information or Evernote forums on Evernote servers until the subscriber deletes the electronic data," the search warrant application, signed by DEA Special Agent Todd M. Emery, reads. "If the subscriber does not delete the data, the data can remain on Evernote Corporation servers indefinitely. Even if the subscriber deletes the data, it may continue to be available on Evernote's servers for a certain period of time." The DEA also sent Evernote a preservation request on May 29 2018, which asks the company to keep a copy of all related data from that date onwards.

Evernote provided multiple folders of data, according to the executed search warrant. These folders included "Stephan's Notebook" with 61 documents, "expat plan" with 2, and "depressiion [sic]" with 6.

Evernote did not respond to a request for comment.

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• The FBI has issued a warning to smart TV buyers highlighting the risks associated with such devices.
• Smart TVs, which connect to the internet to offer online apps and services, can be exploited by hackers.
• The devices also pose surveillance risks, according to the FBI warning.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

If you own a smart TV — or recently purchased one for the holidays — it's time to acquaint yourself with the risks associated with the devices, according to a new warning issued by the FBI.

Smart TVs connect to the internet, allowing users to access online apps, much like streaming services. And because they're internet-enabled, they can make users vulnerable to surveillance and attacks from bad actors, according to the FBI warning.

"Beyond the risk that your TV manufacturer and app developers may be listening and watching you, that television can also be a gateway for hackers to come into your home," Beth Anne Steele, an agent in FBI's Portland bureau, wrote in the warning.

"A bad cyber actor may not be able to access your locked-down computer directly, but it is possible that your unsecured TV can give him or her an easy way in the backdoor through your router," she added.

Hackers have also proven that it's possible to take control of smart devices in people's homes. An investigation by Consumer Reports last year found that Samsung and Roku smart TVs are vulnerable to hacking.

"In a worst-case scenario, they can turn on your bedroom TV's camera and microphone and silently cyberstalk you," Steele wrote.

Here are the steps that the FBI recommends all smart TV owners take to protect their privacy:

SEE ALSO: Hackers have reportedly figured out how to reactivate people's canceled Netflix accounts and start charging them again for monthly subscriptions

1. Do some research on what model smart TV you own and its features. The FBI recommends doing an internet search with your model number, along with the words "microphone," "camera," and "privacy."

2. Check your smart TV's settings and see if it's possible to turn off any data collection on the device. Also, change your password.

3. Some, but not all, smart TVs have microphones and cameras, which the FBI suggests shutting off in your device's settings. If it's not possible to turn off the camera, put a strip of opaque tape over the TV's camera lens.

4. Check whether the TV manufacturer has issued any security patches for the device, and if so, make sure they're installed.

5. Read the manufacturer's privacy policy and make sure you understand what data is being collected, and what the company does with it.

6. The FBI has asked anyone who believes they're a victim of cyber fraud to report it to their Internet Crime Complaint Center.

The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center can be found online here.

• Slack's third-quarter results were better than Wall Street expected, but analysts and investors are worried about its growth rate and competition from Microsoft's rival Teams product.
• Many analysts think Slack's new shared-channels feature could help with both problems, serving as a key way to distinguish the company's service from Teams and to encourage customers of its free offering to start subscribing to its paid one.
• Slack officially launched the new feature, which allows companies to create joint chat rooms with their partners to communicate and do business together, during the third quarter.
• Some 26,000 paid customers were using the shared-channels feature at the end of the quarter, up from 20,000 at the end of the second quarter, when it was still in beta testing.
• While many analysts are excited about the feature's potential, others aren't convinced it will give Slack enough of a boost to shake off the threat from Teams. 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Wall Street may not have been wowed by Slack's latest financial results, but many analysts are excited about the potential of one of the latest features of its service.

The company's new shared channels offering, which allows companies to set up joint chat rooms with their business partners, could help boost Slack's disappointing growth, analysts said.

"We continue to view Shared Channels as a meaningful differentiator and greater adoption likely drives greater stickiness," Rishi Jaluria, an analyst with D.A. Davidson, said in a research note on Thursday. 

Slack introduced its shared-channels feature earlier this year as a beta-test product, then, during the third quarter, launched it officially. The company said that by the end of the quarter, 26,000 paying customers were using the feature, up from 20,000 at the end of the prior period. 

On an earnings call with investors Wednesday, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield touted the shared-channels feature as the "most important innovation in the category since Slack first launched." Some 80 percent of the company's customers that pay it more than $100,000 a year now use the feature, he said. Slack has 821 paying customers that spend that much with it annually.

"Shared channels are unique to Slack. No competitor has brought anything similar to market," Butterfield said. "Not surprisingly, this has started to have an impact in the field." 

Wall Street is bullish on Slack's shared-channels feature

Analysts are buying Butterfield's message. Many see shared channels as a way for Slack to distinguish its service from its main competitor, Microsoft Teams, and as a way to prompt users of its free service to become paying customers.  

"Ultimately, we think Shared Channels can go a long way in increasing the viral nature of Slack and in driving stickier customers," William Blair analyst Arjun Bhatia said in his own research note Thursday. 

Morgan Stanley's Keith Weiss agreed with that assessment.

"Shared channels should help to spark new use cases, increase engagement, and build a network effort around Slack," he said in a research note, also issued Thursday.

Additionally, the new feature could boost the total potential market for Slack's services, said William Power, an analyst at Baird Equity Research. Slack has previously estimated the size of that potential market at about $28 billion.

"We expect the Shared Channel opportunity to expand that further," Power said in a research note. "Anyone who uses email and/or other collaboration tools is a potential customer."

Some analysts are worried about Microsoft Teams

But some analysts aren't so bullish. Instead, they're concerned the shared-channels feature won't give Slack enough of a boost to shake off the threat from Teams. 

Microsoft has been touting its huge leap over Slack in terms of customers. Last month, Microsoft said Teams had 20 million daily active users. By contrast, Slack said in October it has 12 million daily active users.

The software behemoth bundles Teams in with its Office 365 productivity suite for business customers, which analysts have said gives it a major advantage over Slack. But on Slack's earnings call, Butterfield dismissed Team's rapid growth, saying Microsoft is simply forcing customers to move to it from older products. 

Among some analysts, though, worries linger. Team's growth shouldn't be underestimated and could slow Slack's attempts to attract more enterprise customers, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a research note.

"We believe the company will have significant difficulty further penetrating the enterprise given the significant competitive offering from Microsoft's TEAM product," Ives said, adding that the pressure from Microsoft "could slow [Slack's] growth going forward quicker than the Street is anticipating."

While Slack reported strong third-quarter results and the new feature represents a promising opportunity, Oppenheimer's Ittai Kidron said in a note that now is not the time to buy Slack's stock.

We "would wait for a more attractive entry point, especially considering investor sensitivity to competitive exposure to Microsoft," Kidron said. 

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pzaveri@businessinsider.com or Signal at 925-364-4258. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

SEE ALSO: Slack CEO disses Microsoft Teams hypergrowth, saying users of dead Microsoft products are being 'force-migrated'

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NOW WATCH: Why it's so hard for planes to land on water

The lack of a native audio recording app built into Google’s lean Android software has always brought a chuckle from people who use iOS. Google finally introduced the Google Recorder app with the Pixel 4, and it has now brought that app to a few older Pixel phones (via Android Police). If you own a Pixel 2, Pixel 3, or Pixel 3A, you can navigate to the Google Play Store and download the official Recorder app right now.

Frankly, there are a lot of recording apps to choose from in the Google Play Store, and if you’re just looking to record audio, many of them will suit. What sets Google’s Recorder app apart is its ability to automatically transcribe voices (English only, for now), even without an internet connection. Google also claims...

Continue reading…

• Microsoft has released a new service within its Microsoft 365 set of business applications to help customers manage and access the information they need to do their work.
• The new service is called "Project Cortex" and it's similar to a search engine, except it can surface information in real-time within any Microsoft application. It also helps companies manage and sort all the data shared between people in a company through Microsoft 365 – such as files, conversations, meeting recordings and video.
• For example, if two employees are discussing a project within Microsoft Teams chat app, Project Cortex can detect what they're talking about and surface relevant information such as who's working on the project and related files.
• Project Cortex is what's called a knowledge management system, basically a means for creating, sharing, and managing knowledge or information within an organization. There's a big opportunity in the knowledge management space, analysts say, because no company has quite figured it out yet.
• Microsoft has a lead over Slack and Google's competing G Suite set of cloud collaboration tools, but analysts say Microsoft needs to "step up its game" on artificial intelligence – and cracking the knowledge management space with a service like Project Cortex could help the company ward off challengers.
• Click here to read more BI Prime stories

Microsoft has a new service to help customers manage and access the information they need to do their work – and experts say it could give it an edge when it comes to competition with Slack and Google.

The new service is called "Project Cortex" and it's intended to help companies share knowledge between employees. It's similar to a search engine, except it can surface information in real-time within any Microsoft application. 

Project Cortex is the first new service within the company's bundle of subscription business applications called Microsoft 365 since it released the Microsoft Teams chat app in 2017.

Microsoft has a lead over Slack and Google's competing G Suite set of cloud collaboration tools, but analysts say Microsoft needs to "step up its game" on artificial intelligence – and cracking the knowledge management space with a service like Project Cortex could help the company ward off challengers.

"Microsoft intends to maintain its dominant position in the collaboration and productivity space with new capabilities that keep it ahead of the competition," Raul Castanon-Martinez, a senior analyst at 451 Research who specializes in workforce collaboration, told Business Insider. "The overall strategy for Microsoft is to embed context and intelligence into their applications."

How it works

Project Cortex collects all the data shared between people in a company through Microsoft 365 – such as files, conversations, meeting recordings and video – plus information from third-party sources and categorizes that content using machine learning into topics such as customers, products, projects, and policies. 

Project Cortex then takes all of the information associated with a particular topic and creates what Microsoft calls "topic cards" – basically everything an employee would need to know about the topic, such as a list of experts, resources and information about it. Those topic cards appear automatically when a user is working within a Microsoft application such as Word, Outlook, SharePoint, or Microsoft Teams.

For example, if two employees are discussing a project within Microsoft Teams, Project Cortex could detect the topic and bring up a topic card with a list of everyone who is working on it and any related documents.

Project Cortex goes beyond a search engine because it not only points users to particular topics but helps identify those topics and find relationships between them – and, importantly, it can surface all of that information in real-time in any Microsoft application.

Helping users share information across different applications solves a pervasive problem in workforce productivity and collaboration, Castanon-Martinez said.

"Employees need more applications to get their work done but the growing number of apps leads to inefficiencies," Castanon-Martinez said. "This presents an opportunity for vendors like Microsoft to provide assistive technology that can support how employees interact with applications and handle information."

Why it matters

Project Cortex is what's called a knowledge management system, basically a means for creating, sharing, and managing knowledge or information within an organization. There's a big opportunity for companies in knowledge management because no one has quite figured it out yet, Futurum Research principal analyst Daniel Newman said.

"Right now, there isn't a company crushing it," Newman said.

The service already makes Microsoft 365 a "more complete solution" than competitors like Slack and list-making application Trello, Newman said. There's also no reason why Project Cortex couldn't ultimately make its way onto Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform, Newman said, helping the company compete with cloud market-leading Amazon Web Services.

Microsoft still has a lead in workforce productivity and collaboration, but competition is intensifying. Microsoft recently said Teams has reached 20 million daily active users, compared to Slack's 12 million daily active users, but Slack has said its users are more engaged. Google's G Suite lags in terms of users, but Castanon-Martinez, the 451 Research analyst, said it's "rapidly gaining ground."

"Google has built differentiation based on its key strengths with cloud-native capabilities and AI, so it's important for Microsoft to step up its AI game," he  said.

Microsoft also faces competition from Box and Dropbox, which Castanon-Martinez said have gained "significant market traction" as they've evolved past their initial positioning as cloud storage providers to "increasingly becoming a central point for business workflows and collaboration." The same, he said, can be said for Slack.

Mastering knowledge management could help Microsoft maintain its lead in the space.

"By becoming the [knowledge management] tool of choice, Microsoft can elevate its positioning as a productivity and collaboration tool," he said.

Got a tip? 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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NOW WATCH: A podiatrist explains heel spurs, the medical condition Trump said earned him a medical deferment from Vietnam

• Retailers like Nordstrom and Amazon have started selling "carrying straps" for AirPods, likely looking to capitalize on the mounting anxiety among some Apple consumers that they will lose one of the precarious earbuds.
• The straps began attracting attention thanks to a viral meme that began circulating on Monday mocking Nordstrom's $60 "AirPod Carrying Straps," originally featured in a Cosmopolitan gift guide in November. 
• Sign up for Business Insider's retail newsletter, The Drive-Thru.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

While the primary draw of Apple AirPods is ostensibly their lightweight, wireless functionality, retailers are hoping consumers are just anxious enough about losing them that they'll shell out $60 for an AirPod "carrying strap."

Anxiety over misplaced AirPods has been on the rise since the product was first unveiled in 2016. The ease at which a single bud can go missing has become the source of chronic stress dreams and mounting detritus on subway tracks. (I myself have personally lost one or both of my AirPods several times in the less than six months I've owned them — and that doesn't count the time the charging case was run over by a Lyft.)

"I actually felt free," one AirPod user told The Wall Street Journal after one of his AirPods fell onto the runway while boarding a flight. "I'm back to holding the phone to my ear, which seems primitive. But, hey, it works."

In response, some retailers are looking to capitalize on the fear of losing a singular AirPod, which as a set retails for either $159 for the regular model or $250 for the recently released AirPod Pro. On Monday afternoon, a viral post mocking a carrying strap on the Nordstrom website began making the rounds on popular Instagram meme accounts like @FuckJerry.

"Ladies and gentleman, we have officially come full circle," @FuckJerry wrote on a post that currently has more than 200,000 likes. 

Others took to Twitter to scoff at the strap. A Business Insider colleague wrote on Slack that the strap looks like "Croakies, but for AirPods."  

The image in the meme originates from a Cosmopolitan holiday gift guide for men published in November, which recommends the strap to ensure "he'll never lose a single AirPod again." Nordstrom was not immediately available to respond to Business Insider's request to comment. 

In addition to Nordstrom, Amazon also sells a variety of "AirPod accessories" designed to prevent the loss of a single AirPod, as do several other specialty retailers like Dhouea and Ace Select, which were featured in an April post on iGeekBlog. 

SEE ALSO: I have a big problem with Apple's new AirPods Pro: They're putting my other headphones to shame

DON'T MISS: Malls may be dying, but the retail Santa business is still thriving, and some retirees are becoming stars

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NOW WATCH: At its peak, Forever 21 made $4.4 billion in revenue. Here's what led to the brand's downfall and bankruptcy.

Just as Qualcomm was starting to highlight its 5G plans for the coming years, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg hit the stage at AWS re:Invent to discuss the carrier’s team up with the cloud computing giant.

As part of Verizon’s (TechCrunch’s parent company, disclosure, disclosure, disclosure) upcoming focus on 5G edge computing, the carrier will be the first to use the newly announced AWS Wavelength. The platform is designed to let developers build super-low-latency apps for 5G devices.

Currently, it’s being piloted in Chicago with a handful of high-profile partners, including the NFL and Bethesda, the game developer behind Fallout and Elder Scrolls. No details yet on those specific applications (though remote gaming and live streaming seem like the obvious ones), but potential future uses include things like smart cars, IoT devices, AR/VR — you know, the sorts of things people cite when discussing 5G’s life beyond the smartphone.

“AWS Wavelength provides the same AWS environment — APIs, management console and tools — that they’re using today at the edge of the 5G network,” AWS CEO Andy Jassy said onstage. Starting with Verizon’s 5G network locations in the U.S., customers will be able to deploy the latency-sensitive portions of an application at the edge to provide single-digit millisecond latency to mobile and connected devices.”

As Verizon’s CEO joined Vestberg onstage, CNO Nicki Palmer joined Qualcomm in Hawaii to discuss the carrier’s mmwave approach to the next-gen wireless. The technology has raised some questions around its coverage area. Verizon has addressed this to some degree with partnerships with third-parties like Boingo.

The company plans to have coverage in 30 U.S. cities by end of year. That number is currently at 18.

Just six of Silicon Valley's largest corporations skipped out on more than $100 billion in taxes this decade, according to a new report by Fair Tax Mark, a UK tax transparency organization.

Over the period of 2010 to 2019, Fair Tax Mark analyzed the global tax conduct of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Alphabet, and Microsoft (which it calls “the Silicon Six”) as the tech firms funneled revenues and profits through tax havens, shell companies, and nations with low tax rates.

The $100 billion in taxes is a global estimate made by the organization.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon was the worst tax dodger (its founder, Jeff Bezos, is the richest person alive). Over the decade, Amazon revenues hit $960 billion and its net profits $26.8 billion, but its income tax bill was only $3.4 billion. Amazon’s “headline tax rate” or the rate it was supposed to pay was 35 percent, but Fair Tax Mark's report pegged the effective tax rate as 12.7 percent. All of this is made even richer by the fact that just a few months ago, Amazon was levying its own tax on French businesses after getting hit with a new tax.

Fair Tax Mark’s report warns that Amazon is "growing its market domination across the globe on the back of revenues that are largely untaxed," giving it the power to undercut competitors and encourage more widespread tax avoidance. Amazon’s ill-gotten means have created a seemingly unstoppable machine that not only dodges taxes but turns around and demands the government spend money on it in the form of public incentives or social programs for its poorly paid workers.

Following close behind was Facebook, with a 10.2 percent effective tax rate—the lowest among the companies studied. Overseas, its foreign tax rates were even lower at just 5 percent of foreign profits. Third was Google (now a subsidiary of Alphabet), with an effective tax rate of 15.8 percent and a foreign tax rate of 7.1 percent. Netflix was harder to calculate and rank, but it came in fourth with an effective tax rate of 15.8 percent.

Apple has pitched itself as “the world's largest taxpayer”—but that’s not saying much given how universal tax avoidance is among corporations, but especially the Silicon Six. On revenue exceeding $1.8 trillion and profits of $548.7 billion, Apple paid $93.8 billion or 17.1 percent. Its foreign rate was even lower, $3.9 billion on $44.3 billion of foreign profits, or 8.9 percent.

Microsoft came in dead last with the "least aggressive approach" of the Six, but again that is not saying much. On revenue of $882.5 billion and profits of $278.5 billion, Microsoft paid $46.9 billion or 16.8 percent.

Looking over these numbers, it’s hard to understand why tax rates on these companies and their billionaire founders and investors shouldn’t be higher. All we have to show for this aggressive tax avoidance is a political system dominated by billionaires and whitewashed by their pathetic gestures of charity to solve social and political problems they created or exacerbated in pursuit of ungodly fortunes.

Nearly $15 trillion are being held in shell companies, shielded from taxes. Imagine what sort of world we could have if the Silicon Six were not simply deadbeat tax dodgers—provided it wasn’t spent on immoral and illegal wars like the $6.4 trillion already used that way. Now think about the cities we have or the world we will likely have because of a single-minded pursuit of profit and ask if the absurdly low tax rates are worth it.

Microsoft is turning its Outlook.com and Outlook for the Web mail services into Progressive Web Apps (PWA). This allows any Outlook user to install the web app into Windows, macOS, Chrome OS, and other platforms that natively support PWAs. It’s a useful alternative to the cluttered Outlook Windows desktop app or the Windows Mail client that ships as part of Windows 10.

PWAs, by their nature, are essentially still websites, but they include better caching, notification features, and background functionality to make them appear more like traditional apps. Microsoft has been slowly adopting PWAs for Windows apps since last year, and Outlook is a sign that we may see similar apps for the company’s other Office products like Word and Excel.

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Every smart business leader is looking for ways to do more with less. Efficiency is the Holy Grail of corporate objectives. Every business — even the largest and most established companies — faces resource constraints. Human capital, equipment, and other assets cost money. If they aren’t contributing to revenue growth, you’ll have a hard time staying ahead of your competition. Here are three areas of your business that need tech now.

Not surprisingly, modern business leaders are increasingly turning to technology to give them an advantage. That might mean replacing traditional accounting processes with QuickBooks or relying on a CRM like Salesforce to streamline business development. Businesses around the world will have spent roughly $4 trillion on IT by the time this year is over, as more companies migrate to the cloud and strengthen their network security.

If you’re a leader wondering how technology can make you more efficient and improve your business processes, look to these areas:

1. Recordkeeping.

Modern technology virtually eliminates the need for paper recordkeeping. Digital storage solutions make records more accessible; encryption simultaneously keeps them more secure. The time employees would otherwise spend searching for documents and processing paperwork can be put to use in more impactful ways. Moreover, digital transformation can help you significantly cut down on the inevitable errors of human beings handling the paperwork.

Integrating technology into your workflows will be easier in the future if you digitize your existing records system now. A digital document management system can serve as a central electronic filing cabinet. It can then be integrated with new tools to streamline other processes and eliminate bottlenecks down the road. Depending on your company’s size, digitizing could be a significant investment. However, the payoff will be worth it.

2. Internal Communication.

Effective communication is crucial to any collaborative effort. Unless you’re a company of one, you’ll want to ensure your teams have the tools needed for managing projects and communicating seamlessly. “While most people will tell you to go with the latest, most cutting-edge tools available, it’s important to evaluate your audience and consider what will be most convenient and acceptable to them,” explains Twain Taylor, a technology analyst. “Banks, for example, have quite specific mandates in terms of compliance and regulations and would not want their employees discussing accounts on WeChat or sharing information on Slack.”

There’s a plethora of (similar) workplace messaging apps and communication tools available. Don’t overwhelm your employees with too many options; this will create the same inefficiencies and bottlenecks you’re trying to eliminate. Instead, find one platform that meets your needs. Work with your team members to ensure they’re comfortable using it.

3. Quality Assurance.

Human beings are fallible. After a long day on the job or a sleepless night, mistakes are almost inevitable. In fields like healthcare, reducing errors is vital. In fact, one study revealed that preventable medical mistakes are the third-leading cause of death in the U.S., underscoring just how pervasive workplace mistakes really are. Fortunately, technology can help you minimize opportunities for human error in your processes.

Automation is one way to reduce opportunities for error while speeding up processes. “An automated work order system makes it easy to stick to work order management best practices and maximizes employee productivity by eliminating the flow of paper documents or the need to manually update spreadsheets,” explains Jeff Emrich, CEO, and co-founder of BlueFolder Software, a field service, and work order software solutions company. Automation can expedite approval, billing, invoicing, communication, and much more. In addition, AI can reduce the frequency of product defects. For instance, auto manufacturers can use the Industrial Internet of Things sensors to gather data from cars coming off the assembly line and use AI to pinpoint potential issues. This allows them to find defects before cars are on the road.

It’s probably fair to say that we’re in the midst of a technological arms race — and it doesn’t look to be slowing anytime soon. If your business is seeking to improve operations and make processes more efficient, integrate technologies in these areas. The long-term payoff will justify any short-term pain.

The post 3 Areas of Your Business that Need Tech Now appeared first on ReadWrite.

• People's social-media feeds have been filled with posts that juxtapose a photo of a person in 2009 and one of them in 2019. Earlier this year, this was termed the "10-year challenge."
• Environmental activists have used the trend to draw attention to how much Earth has changed in the past 10 years, posting side-by-side images of our planet's recent transformation.
• This year was the fourth-warmest year on record, last year was the hottest ever for the world's oceans (which are also warming faster than we thought), and recent research revealed that Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets are melting at unprecedented rates.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

As this decade comes to a close, social media users are flocking to Instagram and Facebook to post revealing side-by-side photographs and memes of their current and younger selves, labeled with the tag #2009vs2019. Earlier this year, a similar trend had emerged under the label the "10-year-challenge," in which people juxtaposed pictures of themselves from 2009 and 2019.

Some environmentalists seized on the opportunity to highlight Earth's own "10-year challenge."

Not only did 2018 turn out to be the oceans' warmest year on record, but scientists realized that oceans are also heating up 40% faster than they'd previously thought. What's more, recent research found that the Greenland ice sheet is thawing nearly six times as fast as it did in the 1980s and Antarctica is on the threshold of an irreversible melt.

Sites like Reddit and Instagram exploded with posts calling for greater public awareness about the effects of climate change. While the original challenge is meant to provide a visual representation of the way someone has matured or changed, the climate-change versions convey a more serious message: This is the 10-year challenge we need to focus on. 

Many of the 10-year comparison photos show melting glaciers, one of the most visually dramatic effects of a warming planet.

Melting glaciers mean the North Pole and the South Pole are slowly getting makeovers (and not the good kind). In a worst-case scenario, called a "pulse," warmer water could cause the glaciers holding back Antarctica's and Greenland's ice sheets to collapse. That would send massive quantities of ice into the oceans, potentially leading to rapid sea-level rise around the world.

If a pulse were to happen, the sea level in South Florida could increase by 10 to 30 feet by 2100. But because water, like most things, expands when it warms, sea-level rise is inevitable even if the ice sheets don't melt — the oceans absorb 93% of the extra heat that greenhouse gases trap in the atmosphere.

It's one thing to talk about these threats in the abstract. But it's a different ball game when we see visual evidence.

SEE ALSO: Before-and-after pictures show how climate change is destroying the Earth

The top photo shows the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland now, while the bottom shows how much more ice there was in 2009.

Glaciologists think that half of Switzerland's small glaciers — and the streams they feed — will be gone within the next 25 years, according to Reuters.

Though many glaciers have shrunk dramatically in the past decade, photos that show their changes over a longer period are even more striking.

This pair of images shows the retreat of Alaska's Pedersen Glacier from 1917 to 2005.

You can swipe back and forth between these photos of Alaska's Muir Glacier to see how much of it has melted over the past 120 or so years.

Different glacial systems, when they melt, may affect some coastal cities more severely than others, according to NASA research.

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Scientists even made an interactive tool that shows how more than 290 cities might be affected by certain glaciers melting.

Of course, the effects of climate change aren't limited to glaciers.

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Coral reefs and the ecosystems they support are dying.

Higher ocean temperatures and acidification cause corals to expel the algae living in their tissues and turn white, in what's known as coral bleaching. Swipe back and forth here to see it for yourself.

Rivers and lakes are also shrinking as growing populations demand more water. Pesticide and fertilizer runoff from farmland can also pollute what little is left.

Forests in South America and Central Africa are also shrinking because of logging and deforestation.

Politicians and celebrities chimed in about the environmental 10-year challenge, too. Mesut Özil, who plays for Arsenal in the UK's Premier League and played for the German World Cup team in 2018, has also embraced the message.

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The only #10YearChallenge we should care about 🙏🏼🌍 #M1Ö pic.twitter.com/S8hU7gNgZJ

In a January Instagram post, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey wrote, "If we want to pass on a sustainable healthy world to the next generation, we need to have started yesterday."

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Like Booker, many people pointed out that humanity may have only one more 10-year challenge's worth of time to act on climate change before it'll be too late to meet the world's goals.

• Facebook executive Joel Kaplan allegedly "helped quarterback" Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court, according to a new book from Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.
• While Kaplan's ties to Kavanaugh were already known, Marcus claimed he played a substantial role in rallying support for Kavanaugh's nomination.
• After Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony accusing Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her, Kaplan allegedly consulted with the judge and his advisors on his remarks denying the incident.
• At the time, Kaplan's appearance at the contentious confirmation hearings drew sharp criticism among Facebook employees.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Joel Kaplan, Facebook's vice president of global public policy, played a key role in pushing for the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, according to reporting in a new book "Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover," by Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.

Kaplan's ties to Kavanaugh were already widely known, but Marcus' book sheds new light on the role he played in lobbying for Kavanaugh's nomination as well as rallying support for the judge during the confirmation hearing process.

The night before former Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his resignation, Kaplan called "influential conservative lawyers" to gauge their support for a possible Kavanaugh nomination.

Kavanaugh's nomination became hotly contested after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford alleged in testimony to Congress that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted at a party while they were high school-aged.

According to Marcus' reporting highlighted in The Daily Beast, Kaplan "stopped in briefly" to talk with Kavanaugh and his small team of advisers as they prepared remarks for Kavanaugh to deliver denying the allegations.

Kaplan had also sat in on Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings, which angered some Facebook employees who felt the appearance was inappropriate. In response, Facebook held a town hall to apologize to employees, saying Kaplan had mishandled the incident.

SEE ALSO: Facebook built a facial-recognition app that let employees identify people by pointing a phone at them

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• These massive companies made millions — in some cases, billions — in profits in 2018, but didn't pay a dime in federal income taxes.
• Tax cuts passed by the Trump administration in 2017 have made it much easier for the big corporations like Amazon, IBM, and Netflix avoid paying income taxes.
• Most of the companies on this list earned tax rebates larger than their income tax, effectively seeing a negative tax rate.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In theory, the US imposes a 21% tax rate on corporations. In reality, the amount major corporations are paying is far lower.

Amazon, for example, earned over $10 billion in income in 2018. But by taking advantage of tax credits, the company zeroed out its income taxes and earned a rebate of $129 million, according to tax filings published by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It has become much easier for massive corporations to avoid paying federal income tax in recent years. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, one of the most significant legislative achievements by Republicans and President Donald Trump since his election, opens new windows for tax rebates for major corporations.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit think tank, analyzed SEC filings of Fortune 500 companies and identified 60 major corporations that didn't pay any federal income taxes in 2018. Of those, 11 do business in the tech or transportation industries.

"These tax loopholes allow many profitable corporations to avoid paying a single dime in taxes, but it should also be noted that many other profitable corporations are also using these special breaks to pay far less than the 21 percent statutory federal income tax rate," Matthew Gardner, a lead author of the ITEP report, wrote.

Here are 11 massive tech and transportation companies that didn't pay any federal income taxes last year — negative tax rates indicate that companies got more money back in rebates than they had to pay in taxes.

SEE ALSO: Senators are demanding answers from Amazon about its Ring camera network, saying it could threaten national security

Activision Blizzard

2018 US income: $447 million

Federal income tax after rebates: -$228 million

Effective federal income tax rate: -51%

In a statement to Business Insider, a spokesperson for Activision Blizzard emphasized that the company paid other taxes beyond the federal income tax, including state taxes, ultimately spending millions of dollars total on taxes.

"We did not receive a tax refund in the U.S. for 2018," the spokesperson said.

Amazon

2018 US income: $10.8 billion

Federal tax after rebates: -$129 million

Effective tax rate: -1%

An Amazon spokesperson noted that Amazon paid billions in taxes other than the federal income taxes, including state and local taxes, and added that Amazon has brought its total US workforce to more than 250,000.

"Amazon pays all the taxes we are required to pay in the US and every country where we operate, including paying $2.6 billion in corporate tax and reporting $3.4 billion in tax expense over the last three years," the spokesperson said. "Corporate tax is based on profits, not revenues, and our profits remain modest given retail is a highly competitive, low-margin business and our continued heavy investment."

Delta Airlines

2018 US income: $5 billion

Federal tax after rebates: -$187 million

Effective tax rate: -4%

A spokesperson for Delta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

General Motors

2018 US income: $4.32 billion

Federal tax after rebates: -$104 million

Effective tax rate: -2%

A spokesperson for GM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Goodyear

2018 US income: $440 million

Federal tax after rebates: -$15 million

Effective tax rate: -3%

A spokesperson for Goodyear did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

IBM

2018 US income: $500 million

Federal tax after rebates: -$342 million

Effective tax rate: -68%

A spokesperson for IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

JetBlue

2018 US income: $219 million

Federal tax after rebates: -$60 million

Effective tax rate: -27%

A spokesperson for JetBlue did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Netflix

2018 US income: $856 million

Federal tax after rebates: -$22 million

Effective tax rate: -3%

A spokesperson for Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pitney Bowes

2018 US income: $125 million

Federal tax after rebates: -$50 million

Effective tax rate: -40%

In a statement to Business Insider, a spokesperson for Pitney Bowes emphasized that, while its federal income tax was zeroed out by rebates, the company still paid other taxes totaling approximately $127 million in 2016, $53 million in in 2017, and $26 million in 2018. The spokesperson added that the company's taxes lowered following the sale of its production mail business last year.

Salesforce

2018 US income: $800 million

Federal tax after rebates: Not immediately available.*

*In its report, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy notes that some companies' vague language in their 10-K annual financial filings makes it difficult to calculate the exact size of their rebates. ITEP notes that Salesforce disclosed $132 million in "tax credits," but doesn't go into more detail.

A spokesperson for Salesforce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tech Data

2018 US income: $210 million

Federal tax after rebates: -$10 million

Effective tax rate: -5%

A spokesperson for Tech Data did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• The 2019 Los Angeles auto show is putting electric vehicles on display in big numbers this year.
• Hidden within the new vehicles themselves are some exciting new features that are moving the industry forward in ways once unimagined.
• Read on to see the 10 coolest features we're finding on the show floor this year.
• Sign up for Business Insider's transportation newsletter, Shifting Gears, to get more stories like this in your inbox.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The 2019 Los Angeles auto show is in full swing, with a bevy of new electrified models and concepts headlining the show. But hidden within the new vehicles themselves were a host of gee-whiz features you might have missed. With that in mind, here's a rundown of the ten coolest features on the show floor of the 2019 LA show.

David Undercoffler is the editor-in-chief of Autolist and a freelance contributor for Business Insider.

SEE ALSO: Here are all the cool cars, SUVs, and concepts we're looking forward to seeing at the 2019 LA auto show

1.) Side-view cameras on Audi e-tron Sportback

We'll start with the bad news: this feature won't be on US models since technically side-view camera systems like this (in place of mirrors) aren't allowed under US Department of Transportation rules. Until those outdated rules are changed, we'll miss out on this slick setup.

It uses small cameras mounted in place of side-view mirrors and projects an image onto small OLED screens mounted on the inside of the front doors. Even cooler? Drivers can use their fingers to reposition the display on the screen, and the cameras have three default settings: highway, parking, and tight turning. 

How side-view cameras work

It uses small cameras mounted in place of side-view mirrors and projects an image onto small OLED screens mounted on the inside of the front doors. Even cooler? Drivers can use their fingers to reposition the display on the screen, and the cameras have three default settings: highway, parking, and tight turning.

2.) VW ID. Space Vizzion AppleSkin seats

More than a few buyers of electric vehicles have complained that the eco-cred of the car is hampered by the fact that it uses leather on its seats and various interior trim pieces. Thus, a vegan interior movement is starting to gain traction.

VW's solution on the all-electric Space Vizzion concept wagon (previewing a production model due in the US in 2022)? Something called AppleSkin seats. They use a byproduct of apple juice to create a material that feels like leather but uses no animal skins whatsoever.

3.) Land Rover Defender Adventure Pack

Land Rover's long-awaited Defender SUV offers an array of option packages aimed at helping owners enjoy the great outdoors via their shiny Land Rover.

The coolest is the Adventure Pack, which comes with things like an integrated air compressor, a side-mounted waterproof exterior bin for extra gear, and a portable rinse system to clean off muddy gear or sandy toes. While Land Rover doesn't mention the cleaning of pets ala Aston's DBX Pet Pack, we bet Fido wouldn't mind a rinse in this system either.

4.) Aston Martin DBX Pet Pack

Aston Martin is out with its first-ever crossover SUV, the 542-horsepower DBX. In addition to a bevy of your traditional ultra-luxe features, the DBX also offers the Pet Pack.

What the Aston Martin pet pack includes

This feature includes a partitioned space in the cargo area for your four-legged friends, plus a bumper protector to avoid scratches, and a portable pet washer to keep Fido clear -- or more importantly -- the leather inside the $200,000 DBX clean.

5.) Hyundai Vision T headlights and grille

Hyundai used the LA show to unveil the Vision T Plug-in Hybrid concept, a preview of what the next-generation Tucson compact crossover will probably look like. Our favorite part? The integrated grille and headlight design.

When the vehicle is turned off, the dark chrome of the grille and headlights look like a single unit made up of many geometric pieces. Turn the headlights on, however, and the pieces of the grille hiding the headlights suddenly illuminate. It's a trick that could actually make it to production, given a similar trick on the all-new Hyundai Sonata.

6.) Ford Mustang Mach-E phone-as-key

This feature has been seen on other models, but it's still cool. The Mach-E will allow owners to use their Bluetooth-connected smartphone to unlock the EV, start it, and drive it, all without using a traditional key or removing their phone from their pocket or purse.

Add in wireless CarPlay and Android Auto, and you have full access to the Mach-E and smartphone connectivity without ever needing to actually touch your phone.

7.) Ford Mach-E frunk as cooler

Most EV's have a frunk -- a front trunk that allows users to store cargo in the space that is typically taken up by the gas engine at the front of the car. Ford's Mach-E takes this one step further, adding a drainage plug at the bottom of it, and giving it cooler-like functionality. Not in the mood to tailgate? This Ford's frunk can also hold a suitcase.

8.) Headlights on BMW M8 First Edition

To celebrate the launch of BMW's new M8 Gran Coupe — a four-door, 617-horsepower sports coupe — the brand is offered a limited-edition version called the First Edition, of which just 400 copies will be made.

In addition to a slick green paint job, brushed gold/bronze exterior accents, and other trim upgrades, this model also comes with trick adaptive LED headlights that will glow in a cool yellow beam, reminiscent of the  yellow fog lights popular in the 1980s and 1990s on European cars and generally illegal on US roads.

9.) Paint on Audi's RS6 Avant

Audi has finally heeded enthusiasts' calls and is bringing the fire-breathing RS6 Avant (that's station wagon in Audi parlance) to the US market for the first time. This model packs a twin-turbo V8 engine that makes 592 horsepower and will do 0-62 mph in 3.6 seconds.

Making the package even sweeter is the color of the model that they had on the floor of this year's LA auto show. Audi calls it Sebring Black, and it will be available on the RS6 Avant when it hits the U.S. market in 2020.

10.) Monoblock Wheels on the Mercedes-Benz GLS AMG 63

The surprise wasn't that Mercedes-AMG used the 2019 LA auto show to debut the new 2021 GLS AMG 63, a 603-horsepower, twin-turbo V8, three-row behemoth of an SUV.

The surprise was the ultra-cool 23-inch Monoblock rims that will be available on this model. The rims harken back to the monoblock rims that AMG used on earlier models in the 1980s and 1990s, and they add conspicuous presence to the already imposing GLS.

• HP rejected Xerox's $33.5 billion bid ahead of a Monday deadline to accept a merger or face a hostile takeover bid, setting up the possibility of a proxy war between the two tech companies.
• Xerox had offered to buy HP for $22 a share. HP rejected that offer last week, prompting Xerox CEO John Visentin to write back with an ultimatum.
• HP called Xerox's bid opportunistic, stressing the Xerox's deal didn't make sense. "It is clear in your aggressive words and actions that Xerox is intent on forcing a potential combination on opportunistic terms and without providing adequate information," HP CEO Enrique Lores and the company's chairman, Chip Bergh, said in a letter to Visentin.
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It looks as if HP and Xerox may be going to proxy war.

HP on Sunday again rejected Xerox's $33.5 billion bid for the tech giant, ahead of a Monday deadline to take the offer or face a hostile bid.

Xerox had offered to buy HP for $22 a share last week, which HP rejected. That prompted Xerox to send a follow-up letter giving HP until Monday to either agree to formal merger talks or it "will take its compelling case" directly to HP shareholders.

HP hit back by calling Xerox's proposal "opportunistic," stressing that the merger simply didn't make sense.

"It is clear in your aggressive words and actions that Xerox is intent on forcing a potential combination on opportunistic terms and without providing adequate information," HP CEO Enrique Lores and the company's chairman, Chip Bergh, said in a letter to Xerox CEO John Visentin.

HP reiterated its concerns Xerox's ability to pull off such a transaction, given the state of the printing-services giant's business.

"There continues to be uncertainty regarding Xerox's ability to raise the cash portion of the proposed consideration and concerns regarding the prudence of the resulting outsized debt burden on the value of the combined company's stock even if the financing were obtained," Lores and Bergh wrote.

They also noted that Xerox had "missed consensus revenue estimates in four of the last five quarters" and that the company's revenue had dropped to $9.2 billion from $10.2 billion since June 2018.

"When we were in private discussions with you in August and September, we repeatedly raised our questions; you failed to address them and instead walked away, choosing to pursue a hostile approach rather than continue down a more productive path," the HP executives said.

Got a tip about HP, Xerox 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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Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has officially launched the Contract for the Web, a set of principles designed to “fix” the internet and prevent us from sliding into a “digital dystopia,” The Guardian reports. The contract lists nine core principles for governments, companies, and individuals to adhere to, including responsibilities to provide affordable, reliable internet access and to respect civil discourse and human dignity.

At launch, the initiative has received the backing of over 150 organizations, including tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, DuckDuckGo, and Facebook, and nonprofit groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Guardian initially reported that Amazon and Twitter were absent from...

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• Elon Musk's commercial space firm SpaceX has a project called Starlink whose aim is to launch up to 42,000 satellites into orbit to provide global high-speed internet.
• There are only 120 Starlink satellites currently in orbit, but they have already started to become a problem for astronomical observatories, leaving bright streaks across their images and obscuring the stars.
• Astronomers already warned the bright satellites could majorly jeopardize astronomical research.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Elon Musk's plan to station thousands of satellites above the Earth is already starting to annoy astronomers.

Starlink is the project launched by Elon Musk's space exploration company SpaceX which aims to put up to 42,000 satellites in orbit with the aim of bringing high-speed internet to even the most remote corners of the globe.

Though only 120 of the satellites are up and running, they're already wreaking havoc with astronomical research.

The brightness of the satellites mean that when they cross a piece of sky being watched by a telescope, they leave bright streaks that obscure stars and other celestial objects.

Last week astronomer Clarae Martínez-Vázquez of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile tweeted that 19 Starlink satellites crossed the sky and disrupted the work of the observatory because they were so bright they affected its exposure. "Rather depressing... This is not cool," she added.

Dr Dave Clements of Imperial College London told Business Insider that SpaceX is applying a typically Silicon Valley approach to Starlink, rushing it through without fully thinking through the consequences.

"I'm very concerned about the impact of SpaceX's Starlink constellation on all aspects of astronomy," he said.

"Move fast and break things might be workable when you're breaking a competitor's business model or the outdated assumptions of an industry, but in this case Musk is breaking the night sky for personal profit. That is unacceptable, and is not something you can fix when you're out of beta. The launches should stop until a solution is agreed with astronomers, professional and amateur."

Clements added that the Starlink satellites also interfere with radio astronomy.

"They transmit in bands used by radio astronomers, especially at high frequencies. While these bands are used by other transmitters on the ground, we cope with that by having radio silent preserves around the telescopes. This won't work when the Sky is full of bright satellite transmitters so Musk might be ruining several kinds of astronomy at once," he said.

Researchers working on a new state-of-the-art observatory due to open next year told the Guardian that private satellites launched by SpaceX, Amazon, and other private firms threaten to jeopardise their work.

Astronomers at the yet-to-open Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) ran simulations which suggested the vast majority of images taken by the telescope could be ruined by bright private satellites passing by.

The disruption caused by Starlink has not come as a surprise to the scientific community.

When SpaceX launched its last batch of 60 satellites earlier this month James Lowenthal, Professor of Astronomy at Smith College told the New York Times the project could majorly complicate astronomical research. "It potentially threatens the science of astronomy itself," he said.

SpaceX was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Business Insider.

Do you work at SpaceX? Contact this reporter via email at ihamilton@businessinsider.com or iahamilton@protonmail.com. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

SEE ALSO: This new NASA app lets you see what it would be like aboard a manned mission on the SpaceX Crew Dragon

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AT&T will permit Telefónica to use its last-mile networking equipment in Mexico for at least eight years, according to Reuters. The deal is extensive, with AT&T agreeing to provide access to 3G, 4G, and any future network technologies across Mexico.

Network traffic between the two carriers will remain separate under the arrangement, which closed for an undisclosed sum. Telefónica Mexico CEO Camilo Aya said the company would maintain control of its operations and the ability to enter agreements with other network operators. In total, Telefónica expects the deal will generate €230 million ($254 million) in annual savings after a three-year transitional period, according to Reuters. 

As of late, AT&T seems focused on monetizing network assets outside of the US, even when it comes at the cost of long-term positioning in a region. In Mexico, both AT&T and Telefónica have struggled to gain a foothold against América Móvil, which services almost two-thirds of network connections in the market, per Reuters.

AT&T spent over $4 billion to establish a presence in Mexico through carrier acquisitions in 2014 and 2015. Yet, as of 2018, it had only amassed 11% of Mexican wireless customers, and failed to mount a significant challenge to America Movil, according to The Wall Street Journal. Now, instead of fighting for market dominance, AT&T is looking to leverage its existing infrastructure assets in Mexico to build some revenue via Telefónica.

This less ambitious strategy is even more apparent in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, where AT&T agreed to sell its entire operations to Liberty Latin America for $1.95 billion. In that case, AT&T was willing to relinquish its entire regional market share to cash out. 

These moves are part of AT&T's three-year plan to reduce debt by selling off non-core assets. AT&T held over $160 billion in debt earlier in 2019, resulting in large part from its costly acquisitions of DirectTV and Time Warner. But these acquisitions have produced tepid results, precipitating what AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson called its "three-year capital allocation framework."

Under this framework, Stephenson said AT&T routinely identifies and sells off assets that do not contribute to core strategy. The concessions in Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and now Mexico contribute to what AT&T estimates will be $14 billion in monetization of non-core assets in 2019.

The company expects the activity to continue in coming years, with $5 to $10 billion of similar assets to be monetized in 2020. For shrewd rivals, AT&T's debt crisis presents a major opportunity to scoop up strategic assets, just as we have seen with Liberty Latin America and now Telefónica.

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• Last week, actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen gave a speech at the Anti-Defamation League about hate speech and anti-Semitism on social media. 
• He called big tech and social media "the greatest propaganda machine in history."
• Facebook responded by saying that hate speech is banned on the platform.
• Reporters and critics on Twitter pointed out the gap between Facebook's policy, and how it is actually implemented.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Facebook has responded to actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's assertions that the platform is a home for hate speech and misinformation, but critics are pointing out ways the social media giant fails to uphold its own policies.

Last week, Cohen spoke at the Anti-Defamation League about hate speech and political lies on social media, and he specifically called out Facebook, along with Twitter and Google, who he says "care more about boosting their share price than about protecting democracy."

Cohen accused big tech companies of practicing "ideological imperialism," in which a few billionaires can determine what information we see without accountability to voters or a government.

In response, Facebook said that Cohen misrepresented its policies. "Hate speech is actually banned on our platform. We ban people who advocate for violence and we remove anyone who praises or supports it," Facebook said. 

But critics have pointed out ways that Facebook has fallen short of its own policy. In a Twitter thread, CNN reporter Donie O'Sullivan pointed out several examples of Facebook failing to curb harassment and hate speech. 

Although Facebook announced bans on extremist groups as of March after the Christchurch, New Zealand, attacker went on Facebook Live, white supremacist groups are still active on the platform. O'Sullivan posted examples of these extremist groups still operating on Facebook.

The thread began with "Exhibit A" of Facebook not executing its stated policies, and made it all the way through "Exhibit P." Other examples included sexual harassment on the platform, posts that incited political violence in Myanmar, a gun permit scam, and more.

New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac built on the points in the original thread, explaining that Facebook's policies don't match up with the reality of the platform.

Facebook did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

In recent months, Facebook has struggled with moderating speech, specifically around political ads. Facebook stated that it will exempt political ads from normal fact-checking processes, which has been widely criticized, including by presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has doubled-down on defending the policy, which he says promotes the "marketplace of ideas" as people can see what politicians are saying for themselves. This stance has been highly controversial, and Facebook employees even sent Zuckerberg a letter asking him to rethink the company's position. Despite backlash, Facebook appears to be sticking with this policy heading towards the 2020 presidential election.

SEE ALSO: Sacha Baron Cohen just called out the 'Silicon Six,' a group of American billionaires that he says 'care more about boosting their share price than protecting democracy'

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• James Barnes, a former Facebook employee who was key to implementing Donald Trump's online advertising campaign, is now working to prevent the president's reelection, according to The Wall Street Journal.
• The Journal's Deepa Seetharaman detailed Barnes' involvement with the Republican party and how his discontent with Facebook's political advertising practices ultimately led to his departure this spring. 
• Facebook has signaled that it would make changes to its advertising tools amid criticism that the social media giant lets politicians lie in ads. 
• Twitter announced last month that it would ban most forms of political advertising.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A former Facebook employee who was instrumental in shaping President Donald Trump's online advertising campaign in 2016 is now working to avert his reelection.

In a Saturday feature, The Wall Street Journal's Deepa Seetharaman detailed how James Barnes became jaded by Facebook's work with the Republican party and Trump's political rhetoric. The story was based on three weeks of interviews with Barnes and sheds more light on Facebook's role in the 2016 election.

The social media giant has been implicated in revelations that Russian operatives tried to influence the election outcome by buying ads on the platform. Unlike Twitter, Facebook has not banned most forms of political advertising despite criticism that it gives politicians a huge platform to spread misinformation.

According to the WSJ, Barnes joined Facebook's political ad sales team in 2013 from a digital consulting firm that worked on Sen. John McCain's presidential campaigns. He became the go-to person for the Trump campaign as part of a team that worked exclusively with Republicans.

His work involved helping the campaign steer fundraising ads to the screens of people who 'liked' Trump's Facebook's posts, the Journal reported.

Barnes' tools became invaluable to the Trump campaign, which lacked much of the traditional fundraising apparatus including donor databases that an established career politician would have possessed, according to the WSJ.

A few days after Trump's election upset in 2016, Gary Coby, his campaign's digital director, reportedly sent out the following now-deleted tweet: "Aggressive learning agenda; multivariate testing w/FB helped us quickly learn path to max $$$ and message. @jameslbarnes of FB was a MVP."

Although the Trump campaign relished Barnes' work, he and other colleagues grew increasingly uncomfortable with Facebook's political dealings and its involvement with the then-presidential candidate.

Earlier this year, Barnes departed Facebook He is now working at a progressive nonprofit called Acronym to prevent Trump from getting reelected. 

In a Facebook post this summer, he reportedly wrote that "Make America Great Again" was about "activating the deepest, darkest, soul of white nationalism."

Facebook remains important to Trump's political career. On Wednesday, the official Twitter account for Team Trump slammed Facebook, saying the company wanted to remove "tools that help us reach more great Americans & lift voices the media & big tech choose to ignore." A top Facebook advertising exec Carolyn Everson had said the company was considering options for changing its political ad targeting mechanisms, adding that nothing was off the table. 

Facebook has not yet given a timetable or details on the changes it might make to its advertising tools. 

Read the full story on The Wall Street Journal. 

SEE ALSO: Trump's 2020 campaign is attacking Facebook over fears it might change how its ad targeting works

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