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Consumer rights groups say the Federal Trade Commission should investigate itself for false advertising after the agency backtracked on cash payouts.

As part of its $575 million settlement with Equifax, the FTC initially stated victims of the historic hack would get either 10 years of free credit reporting, or a $125 cash payout if they already had such services. But it didn’t take long for the FTC to backtrack on its promise of modest cash compensation, claiming it found the public interest in free money “unexpected.”

Now consumer group Demand Progress says the agency should investigate itself for incompetence, empty promises, and for violating the FTC Act. The FTC Act prohibits unfair and deceptive advertising “in any medium,” but the FTC has long been criticized for turning a blind eye to blatant examples of misleading marketing across numerous sectors.

As Motherboard noted last week, the $31 million the FTC set aside for the payouts was hugely inadequate, covering just 240,000 of the 147 million victims of the hack and leak. Privacy and legal experts say the agency’s woeful underestimation was a bait and switch.

In turn, Demand Progress has launched a new petition urging its members to reach out to the “failed trade commission” and demand the agency investigate its own screw up.

“We demand the Federal Trade Commission and its Office of Inspector General launch an immediate investigation into the Federal Trade Commission's false and deceptive advertising surrounding its settlement with Equifax,” the petition states.

“In addition to a full investigation, we demand the FTC issue an immediate cease and desist to itself and prohibit itself from making future deceptive statements,” Demand Progress Executive Director David Segal said in a statement provided to Motherboard.

Both the Equifax and Facebook settlements made headlines for the “record” fines being levied against both companies. But such framing isn’t particularly relevant when the banking, tech, and telecom industries are not only making record profits off of the collection and sale of private user data, but have repeatedly failed to keep that data private and secure.

“Our main focus was the credit monitoring product, largely provided by a third party vendor, as the primary source of relief for affected consumers because it was viewed as the best source of future protection from identity theft,” the FTC told Motherboard in a statement.

But experts say that credit monitoring is largely useless. Many consumers have already received free monitoring in the wake of countless other privacy breaches. Consumers may also fail to see value in services by an industry that has already proven incapable of protecting user data, or signing up for services replete with fine print eroding your legal rights.

Of the $575 million settlement, $175 million went to the 48 states involved in the settlement. Another $100 million was doled out as civil penalty to the The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The remaining $300 million is intended to pay for consumers that can prove direct financial harm (such as identity theft) as a result of the historic hack.

And while users can still fill out a form and receive cash compensation up to $20,000 if they can prove the hack resulted in clear monetary harm, the rest of the 147 million impacted consumers are out of luck. The most compelling part of the settlement was the $125 worth of compensation the FTC initially promised, then backtracked from.

The FTC has refused to answer questions as to why it only set aside $31 million for the $125 payouts, or whether this failure reflects clear shortcomings in the settlement itself.

“The data breach affected 147 million people. There is no reasonable explanation for advertising a cash payout of $125 with those numbers,” Demand Progress said.

• Cathay Pacific confirmed to Business Insider on Tuesday that it uses cameras in airport lounges and on planes for passenger and crew protection.
• The Hong Kong-based airline does not have cameras in its seat-back entertainment screens, it said. 
• On Monday, ongoing protests in the financial center disrupted hundreds of Cathay Flights.

Cathay Pacific has revealed it uses cameras to monitor passengers both in the airport and on flights.

The Hong Kong-based airline, consistently ranked one of the best in the world, confirmed to Business Insider on Tuesday that it uses CCTV camera footage in airport lounges and plane cabins to protect customers and staff. CNN and The Independent first reported the news.

Read more: Ongoing protests in Hong Kong and a general aviation strike are escalating travel nightmares as hundreds of flights are cancelled

"In line with standard practice and to protect our customers and frontline staff, there are CCTV cameras installed in our airport lounges and onboard aircraft (one camera, positioned near the cockpit door) for security purposes," an airline representative said in an email.

The representative said that, like many other airlines have stated publicly in recent months, its seat-back in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems do not have cameras.

"Our inflight entertainment systems do not have any cameras, microphones or sensors to monitor passengers, nor have they in the past," the airline said.

Earlier this year, viral photos of cameras in seat-back screens caused an uproar on social media. Many airlines, including American and Singapore, confirmed they have never used the cameras, which are sometimes included by default from the devices' manufacturer as a potential seat-to-seat video chatting option. 

At the time, Panasonic and Thales, two of the devices' leading manufacturers, told Business Insider:

While the company does include cameras as part of its inflight entertainment (IFE) systems, at no time have these cameras been activated or used in any manner by either Panasonic Avionics or its customers. The cameras have simply been included to support potential future applications like seat-to-seat video conferencing.

Panasonic Avionics will never activate any feature or functionality within an IFE system without explicit direction from an airline customer. 

More airlines news:

• Here's how airlines are fighting against the 6.7 million tons of cabin waste passengers produce every year
• American Airlines annual profit to take $400 million hit thanks to the grounded Boeing 737 Max
• Southwest Airlines just posted a small quarterly profit despite taking a big hit from the grounded Boeing 737 Max

SEE ALSO: All the airlines that have grounded the Boeing 737 Max plane around the world

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Inside Roborace: the Formula One for self-driving cars

• August 6, is the 74th anniversary of the use of the first atomic bomb, dropped by the US on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
• 5-ton nuclear bomb, named "Little Boy," fell for 44.4 seconds before detonating, ultimately killing 140,000 people and destroying 90% of the city.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m. local time, the world entered the atomic age.

The Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress bomber, dropped the most powerful weapon then known to man over Hiroshima.

The southern Japanese city was "an important army depot and port of embarkation," but its location and population also appealed to US officials who wanted to showcase their new weapon's destructive power.

Tuesday is the 74th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, ordered by President Harry Truman in the final days of the war.

In 2016, just a few months before the 71st anniversary, then-President Barack Obama became the first sitting president to visit the city — a trip to, in his words, "ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past."

President Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, was critical of Obama's remarks.

The 5-ton nuclear bomb, named "Little Boy," emerged from the Einstein-inspired Manhattan Project. The Enola Gay released it some 30,000 feet above the city, and the bomb fell for 44.4 seconds before detonating in a blast that would ultimately kill 140,000 people and destroy 90% of the city.

Three days later, the US dropped another bomb farther south, on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. That blast killed about 40,000 people instantly — thousands more would die of radiation poisoning.

Japan announced its surrender to Allied forces on August 15. On September 2, Japanese leaders signed the formal instrument of surrender aboard the USS Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay, formally ending World War II.

Amanda Macias composed an earlier version of this post

SEE ALSO: What it was like in the room when Nazi Germany finally surrendered to end World War II in Europe

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NOW WATCH: President Obama calls for the end of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima

• On Tuesday morning, President Trump went after Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a series of tweets.  
• Trump said Pichai "was in the Oval Office" following the 2016 election "working very hard to explain how much he liked me, what a great job the Administration is doing, that Google was not involved with China's military," he said.
• The outburst from Trump was seemingly spurred by a segment on Fox Business' "Lou Dobbs Tonight," which featured a former Google engineer named Kevin Cernekee accusing Google of being anti-Trump.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Trump went after Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday morning in a series of tweets.

Trump said Pichai visited the White House's Oval Office at some point after the 2016 elecction and spent his time there, "working very hard to explain how much he liked me, what a great job the Administration is doing, that Google was not involved with China's military, that they didn't help Crooked Hillary over me in the 2016 Election, and that they are NOT planning to illegally subvert the 2020 Election despite all that has been said to the contrary."

Pichai and other tech leaders have repeatedly visited the White House since Trump was elected in 2016.

It wasn't immediately clear which meeting with Pichai to which Trump was referring, and White House press representatives didn't clarify as of publishing. Pichai's most recent meeting with Trump was in March, where the two men discussed relations with China and "political fairness."

Trump's outburst at Pichai was seemingly in response to a segment on Fox Business' "Lou Dobbs Tonight," which featured former Google engineer Kevin Cernekee.

Cernekee, who was fired from Google in 2018, said in an interview with "Fox & Friends" that Google is biased against Trump and is intentionally altering the way its service works. That interview was replayed in a segment on "Lou Dobbs Tonight," which Trump embedded in a tweet that read, "Check out what @Google is up to for the 2020 election!"

In the interview, Cernekee says that Google intends to, "use all the power and all the resources that they have to control the flow of information to the public and make sure that Trump loses in 2020."

Google has repeatedly denied as much, and Google representatives have testified in front of Congress that the allegations are unfounded. Google representatives didn't respond to a request for comment as of publishing.

SEE ALSO: The bizarre life of 8chan owner Jim Watkins, the middle-age veteran who decamped to the Philippines and runs a pig farm

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NOW WATCH: All the ways Amazon is taking over your house

President Trump again took aim at Google in a series of tweets on Tuesday morning, claiming there was an anti-conservative bias at the search giant while also suggesting there was a conspiracy at the company to “illegally subvert the 2020 election,” ideas the company has repeatedly denied.

Trump said in the tweets that he had met with CEO Sundar Pichai and discussed recent news about the company, including its work in China. Trump wrote that “it all sounded good” before he learned of a former Google engineer who recently claimed there was a bias against conservatives at the company.

The former employee, Kevin Cernekee, was the subject of a Wall Street Journal profile last week, and has appeared on...

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When police partner with Ring, Amazon’s home surveillance camera company, they get access to the “Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal,” an interactive map that allows officers to request footage directly from camera owners. Police don’t need a warrant to request this footage, but they do need permission from camera owners.

Emails and documents obtained by Motherboard reveal that people aren’t always willing to provide police with their Ring camera footage. However, Ring works with law enforcement and gives them advice on how to persuade people to give them footage.

Emails obtained from police department in Maywood, NJ—and emails from the police department of Bloomfield, NJ, which were also posted by Wired—show that Ring coaches police on how to obtain footage. The company provides cops with templates for requesting footage, which they do not need a court warrant to do. Ring suggests cops post often on Neighbors, Ring’s free “neighborhood watch” app, where Ring camera owners have the option of sharing their camera footage.

"I have noticed you have been posting alerts and receiving feedback from the community,” a Ring representative told Bloomfield police. “You are doing a great job interacting with them and that will be critical in increasing the opt-in rate.”

“The more users you have, the more useful the information you can collect,” the representative added.

“Seems like you wasted no time sending out your video Request out to Ring Users which is awesome!!” a Ring “Partner Success Associate” told Maywood police.

As reported by GovTech on Friday, police can request Ring camera footage directly from Amazon, even if a Ring customer denies to provide police with the footage. It's a workaround that allows police to essentially "subpoena" anything captured on Ring cameras.

Chris Gilliard, a professor of English at Macomb Community College who studies digital redlining and discriminatory practices enabled by data mining, said in a phone call that Amazon is essentially coaching police on 1) how to do their jobs, and 2) how to promote Ring products.

“Not coincidentally, those things overlapped quite a bit,” Gilliard said. “That’s really disturbing.”

Ring, in essence, recommends that police create a feedback loop in which they depend on Ring. According to Ring, police should:

1. Post on their department's Twitter and Facebook pages to encourage Neighbors downloads.
2. Use Neighbors downloads as “credits” to get free Ring cameras.
3. Increase the amount of video surveillance in their communities.
4. Use the Law Enforcement Neighborhoods Portal to request surveillance footage.

Motherboard previously reported that at least 200 law enforcement agencies have partnered with Ring. Gizmodo reported that the number of partnerships is at least 225.

"Ring offers Neighbors app trainings and best practices for posting and engaging with app users for all law enforcement agencies utilizing the portal tool," A Ring spokesperson told Motherboard in an email. "We also provide templates and educational materials for police departments to utilize at their discretion to help them keep their communities informed about their efforts on Neighbors. Ring requests to look at press releases and any messaging prior to distribution to ensure our company and our products and services are accurately represented."

A Ring representative emailed three Bloomfield police officers on May 1 asking whether they needed help using the Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal.

“Keep up the great job commenting and posting!” the representative said.

On May 31, the Bloomfield Detective Bureau Commander asked how the police department can encourage more people to submit Ring camera footage.

“I have been requesting videos but have not been getting any responses,” the detective wrote. “The only video that we have received is from a person that we directly spoke to and asked him to send it to us. [Is] there anything that we can blast out to encourage Ring owners to share the videos when requested?”

The Ring representative said that the cities with the best “opt in rate” for sharing Ring footage with police are active on social media.

“The agencies with the best opt in rate are the ones that are actively sharing on social media, having community outreach speak at meetings and spread via word of mouth,” the representative said.

Image: Emails from the Bloomfield, NJ police department obtained by Motherboard. Email addresses redacted by Motherboard.

A Ring Partner Success Associate told an officer from the Maywood Police Department something similar in April, according to emails obtained by Motherboard. The Ring employee advised them to pair all video requests through the Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal with a public post on the Neighbors app.

A Neighbors post, the Ring employee said, will contextualize video requests and reach people who may not have Ring cameras, but have information relevant to law enforcement.

The Ring Partner Success Associate also provided Maywood Police with a sample Neighbors post.

Image: Emails from the Bloomfield, NJ police department obtained by Motherboard. Email addresses and phone numbers redacted by Motherboard.

However, posting on social media isn’t just a way for law enforcement to get information for investigations. According to Ring, it’s also a way for police to drive Neighbors downloads in their communities. A Ring “Best Practices” guide obtained by Motherboard from the Addison, IL police department explicitly says as much on a page titled “Driving Neighbors App Downloads.”

“Grow your audience to create a bigger impact when posting Portal Alerts,” the document says. “Social Media is the most effective way to drive Neighbors App downloads.”

Image: Ring “Best Practices” document obtained by Motherboard from Addison, IL.

Although Neighbors is a free app, its posts are dominated by video footage captured by Ring cameras. The app is a de facto advertisement for Ring security cameras: it shows users what and who they should be scared of, and it suggests that Ring cameras are the solution to this fear. Neighbors has hired “news editors” to pull 911 call data into the app for real-time, unconfirmed crime alerts, as reported by Gizmodo. As Motherboard reported earlier this year, the app also has a major problem with racial profiling.

Fight for the Future recently called for cities around the country to stop partnering with Ring. The digital rights activist group claims that Ring is creating a dragnet surveillance program in the private sphere, without proper regulatory oversight.

“Some of the advice he gave I think are things that community activists would recommend—that police need to build relationships in communities to be more effective,” Gilliard told Motherboard. “The idea that it should be mediated through Amazon and through social media—it brings with it all the problems that we know with social media.”

“It’s blurring of the line between consumer and citizen,” Gilliard added. “That’s not in the best interest of citizens, because it means that you will only get your rights as much as you use a particular service.”

All of the documents that informed this article are now public and viewable on Document Cloud.

After two recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, President Trump said his administration would ask social media companies to develop tools that could detect potential mass shooters.

While delivering a speech on the recent violence, Trump said “we must do a better job of identifying and acting on early warning signs,” and he suggested social media companies could develop new ways of catching “red flags.”

“I am directing the Department of Justice to work in partnership with local state and federal agencies, as well as social media companies, to develop tools that can detect mass shooters before they strike,” Trump said in the speech.

While the president did not specify what...

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Huawei made 221.6 billion yuan ($32.2 billion) in revenue in the April-June quarter, a 23 percent increase over the previous quarter despite the escalation of the US-China trade war cutting off its business with American companies. Net profit margin was 8.7 percent on 401.3 billion yuan ($58.3 billion) of revenue for the first six months of 2019.

Huawei sold 118 million smartphones in the first half of the year — 59 million in each quarter — representing a 24 percent year-on-year increase. Huawei’s consumer business reached 220.8 billion yuan ($32.1 billion) in revenue for the same period, making up 55 percent of the company’s total sales.

“Revenue grew fast up through May,” chairman Liang Hua said in a s...

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• Productivity tools startups Monday.com announced its $150 million Series D on Tuesday.
• The round, which was led by Sapphire Ventures, valued the unprofitable company at $1.9 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.
• The funding comes during a fever-pitch of excitement around workplace productivity tools, with video conferencing company Zoom and chat app Slack outperforming expectations in recent public debuts.
• The funds will help the company achieve aggressive growth targets while they evaluate potentially going public, Monday.com cofounders Eran Zinman and Roy Mann told Business Insider.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Turns out a case of the Mondays can be worth more than $1 billion.

Monday.com, a workplace productivity startup, announced on Tuesday that it closed $150 million in Series D funding led by Sapphire Ventures. A source with knowledge of the deal said the round valued the 7-year-old startup at $1.9 billion.

"Every round nowadays is competitive," Sapphire Ventures CEO and managing director Nino Marakovic told Business Insider. "It was a premium valuation for a premium company and that's what happens nowadays."

Even with newly minted unicorn status, Monday.com has yet to achieve profitability, according to cofounder and CEO Roy Mann.

"We are not aiming at profitability, we are aiming at growth," Mann told Business Insider. "I will say that we are one of the most cash flow efficient companies out there. We are very mindful about how we spend money and that is a comfort for investors."

Read More: Andreessen Horowitz partner Scott Kupor explains the valuable lesson that today's startups can learn from the dot-com bubble: Be careful about selling to other startups

Monday.com offers its users a wide range of automation and integration tools, similar to products like Zapier and Notion. But Mann and cofounder and CTO Eran Zinman took a page out of Slack's sales strategy by targeting employees as users instead of selling to a company's IT team after experiencing the challenges of managing quickly growing teams during their own stints at separate startups.

"Most of the tools we use in our personal lives are slick and cool because it's consumer stuff," Mann said. "When you come to business software, they are clunky, slow, have a lot of clicks and are not appealing. Essentially, the UI, ease of use, and empowerment of the user comes second all the time because it's sold to the business."

Monday.com's biggest selling point, according to Zinman, is in the flexibility it gives users to create their own tools and processes as an organization scales from tens of employees to over a hundred.

"When we were first building Monday.com, we spoke with a lot of managers to get a sense of how they manage the team and tools they would use, and it seemed like everyone had a secret Excel file that they used," Zinman said. "Excel is not meant to be used for management, but the fact that you can customize it to make it make sense to you is very powerful, so that's how we built the company."

The funding comes during a fever-pitch of excitement around workplace productivity tools, with video conferencing company Zoom and chat app Slack outperforming expectations in recent public debuts. Mann and Zinman told Business Insider that, although they now have the funds to explore new product offerings and markets, they are keeping one eye on the public markets.

"Looking at the growth ahead of us, it made a lot of sense to do another round right now," Zinman told Business Insider. "Another option is to potentially go public, which we have no concrete plans to do so right now, but the opportunity is so huge and that's definitely an option whenever we feel the time is right. This round gives us the flexibility to do that."

According to Mann, Monday.com has customers in over 200 industries from plane manufacturers to construction crews and hospitality teams. The 265-person team is split between Tel Aviv and New York, with plans to expand either in the United States or Europe and double headcount over the next year, Mann said. 

SEE ALSO: 25 rising stars in venture capital who control millions of dollars in Silicon Valley and decide which startups will blow up

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NOW WATCH: Here's why phone companies like Verizon and AT&T charge more for extra data

Google security researchers have discovered a total of six vulnerabilities in Apple’s iOS software, one of which the iPhone manufacturer has yet to successfully patch. ZDNet reports that the flaws were discovered by two Google Project Zero researchers, Natalie Silvanovich and Samuel Groß, and five of them were patched with last week’s iOS 12.4 update, which contained several security fixes.

All of the vulnerabilities discovered by the researchers are “interactionless,” meaning they can be run without any interaction from a user, and they exploit a vulnerability in the iMessage client. Four of them (including the as-yet-unpatched vulnerability) rely on an attacker sending a message containing malicious code to an unpatched phone and can...

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AT&T has issued a press release letting you know the following facts: the company intends to “pilot an all-new connected TV experience with no satellite needed” called AT&T TV. It’s going to be a TV streaming service, basically, but it will only be piloted “in select markets.”

But AT&T already offers a TV streaming service called DirecTV Now, which will now be called AT&T TV Now, which is different from the upcoming AT&T TV. But don’t worry because when you log in to the forthcoming AT&T TV app, it will figure out whether you have AT&T TV Now or just AT&T TV. CordCutters reports that AT&T is trialing AT&T TV as a service that includes “a separate piece of hardware that will use the same credentials as AT&T TV Now.”

Got all that? You...

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Microsoft today announced that it has acquired BlueTalon, a data privacy and governance service that helps enterprises set policies for how their employees can access their data. The service then enforces those policies across most popular data environments and provides tools for auditing policies and access, too.

Neither Microsoft nor BlueTalon disclosed the financial details of the transaction. Ahead of today’s acquisition, BlueTalon had raised about $27.4 million, according to Crunchbase. Investors include Bloomberg Beta, Maverick Ventures, Signia Venture Partners and Stanford’s StartX fund.

“The IP and talent acquired through BlueTalon brings a unique expertise at the apex of big data, security and governance,” writes Rohan Kumar, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Azure Data. “This acquisition will enhance our ability to empower enterprises across industries to digitally transform while ensuring right use of data with centralized data governance at scale through Azure.”

Unsurprisingly, the BlueTalon team will become part of the Azure Data Governance group, where the team will work on enhancing Microsoft’s capabilities around data privacy and governance. Microsoft already offers access and governance control tools for Azure, of course. As virtually all businesses become more data-centric, though, the need for centralized access controls that work across systems is only going to increase and new data privacy laws aren’t making this process easier.

“As we began exploring partnership opportunities with various hyperscale cloud providers to better serve our customers, Microsoft deeply impressed us,” BlueTalon CEO Eric Tilenius, who has clearly read his share of “our incredible journey” blog posts, explains in today’s announcement. “The Azure Data team was uniquely thoughtful and visionary when it came to data governance. We found them to be the perfect fit for us in both mission and culture. So when Microsoft asked us to join forces, we jumped at the opportunity.”

• Apple will launch three iPhone models with 5G support in 2020, according to an updated note from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo cited by MacRumors.
• Kuo, a reputable Apple-watcher, had originally said two of the three upcoming iPhones would support 5G, but said Apple would now add the capability to all the new devices.
• According to Kuo, Apple also has greater resources for developing 5G on iPhone after buying Intel's modem business in a $1 billion deal.
• It'll also make Apple more competitive against cheap Chinese Android phones with 5G capabilities.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple is expected to launch three new iPhones with 5G support in 2020, according to an updated note from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, cited by MacRumors.

Apple was originally expected to release two 5G-supported iPhones next year. A third, smaller phone was not expected to have 5G support.

But Kuo, who is frequently accurate in his Apple predictions, revised his outlook. All three iPhones will have 5G, according to MacRumors, so Apple can better compete with cheap Android devices that have the capability. It could also boost uptake of augmented reality applications.

Read more: Apple has a generational succession problem, and Jony Ive's departure is the tip of the iceberg

The firm now has better capacity to develop 5G technology after buying the bulk of Intel's modem business in a $1 billion deal.

Kuo expects the new phones to support superfast mmWave 5G, as well as the slightly slower sub-6GHz 5G.

5G support is expected to be the biggest upgrade for the new iPhones, which will likely feature chips from both Qualcomm and Samsung. The new phones may integrate Touch ID into the screen for the first time, and feature an updated 3D camera.

You can read what's expected for the 2020 iPhone lineup in our roundup here.

SEE ALSO: Apple is reportedly in talks to buy Intel's smartphone-modem chip business for $1 billion

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How Area 51 became the center of alien conspiracy theories

• This is an excerpt from a story delivered exclusively to Business Insider Intelligence Connectivity & Tech subscribers.
• To receive the full story plus other insights each morning, click here.

• Google's more affordable Pixel 3a series was a major driver of device sales. With the launch of the Pixel 3a series, overall Pixel unit sales more than doubled year-over-year (YoY) during Q2 2019, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during the company's earnings call. Google released the Pixel 3a in May as a lower-priced alternative to the Pixel 3; it starts at $399, compared with the $799 Pixel 3 and $899 Pixel 3 XL. 
• Apple's iPhone XR became the dominant iPhone model in the US. During its fiscal Q3 2019 (ended June 29), the iPhone XR accounted for nearly half (48%) of US iPhone sales, per CIRP. That's the highest share for an individual model since the iPhone 6 in 2015, which shared top billing with the iPhone 6 Plus and only had two older-generation alternatives. Apple launched the iPhone XR as the "budget" model within its latest iPhone lineup; it has a $749 price point, compared with the $999 iPhone XS and $1,099 iPhone XS Max. 

Google's and Apple's fine-tuned strategies to offer lower-priced versions of their flagship models is paying off because it comes at an opportune time. 

• The global smartphone market is in a weak spot. The global smartphone market contracted for the first time in 2018, largely a result of sales declines in developed markets where Apple and Google smartphones proliferate. By offering lower-priced versions of their flagship devices, the companies are better able to attract the more price-sensitive consumers in emerging markets, which is important as they present growth markets for device sales amid the slump in developed markets.
• The average selling price (ASP) of Google's and Apple's flagship smartphones is on an upward swing. The starting price point for Google's Pixel 3 was 23% higher than the $649 price of the Pixel 2 at launch. Meanwhile, Apple's iPhone ASP grew 28% YoY to $793 in its fiscal Q4 2018 (ended September 30) from $618. However, both companies' premium phones mostly lack new, generation-specific features, meaning users are less incentivized to ditch their old device for the next generation of devices without distinct features, especially given the steeper price tags. But because the more affordable versions of Apple's and Google's flagships preserve many of the same features associated with their higher-priced cousins, it's likely helping the companies drive adoption among users who desire more advanced features but value affordability.

Interested in getting the full story? Here are two ways to get access: 

1. Subscribe to a Premium pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to the Connectivity & Tech briefing, plus more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now
2. Current subscribers can read the full briefing here.

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Wireless carriers are coming under increasing fire for failing to protect their users from SIM hijacking. The practice involves posing as a wireless customer, then fooling a wireless carrier to port the victim's cell phone number right out from underneath them, letting the attacker then pose as the customer to potentially devastating effect. Back in February, a man sued T-Mobile for failing to protect his account after a hacker pretending to be him, ported out his phone number, then managed to use his identity to steal thousands of dollars worth of cryptocoins.

T-Mobile customers aren't the only users who've experienced this problem. US entrepreneur and cryptocurrency investor Michael Terpin sued AT&T last summer (pdf) for the same thing: somebody ran a SIM hijacking scam on AT&T, then stole his identity and, in turn, stole $23.8 million in cryptocurrency. And while AT&T tried hard to have the case dismissed, a Los Angeles federal judge last week issued a mixed ruling that nixed AT&T's request to dismiss the case, but demanded that Terpin do a better job highlighting how AT&T is directly responsible:

"Wright agreed with AT&T that Terpin had not adequately explained how the hack of his account led to the theft of his cryptocurrency or why AT&T should bear responsibility. As a result, he dismissed claims that relied on Terpin's claimed $24 million loss. However, Wright dismissed the claims with "leave to amend," meaning that Terpin has 21 days to file a new version of his lawsuit that more fully explains how the cryptocurrency was stolen and why AT&T should be held responsible."

AT&T, as you might expect, has argued in court and in public that it's not liable for, well, anything. Ever.

Carriers frequently aren't keen on talking about the problem, in part because their employees keep getting busted for helping the scammers. And keep in mind AT&T keeps having these kinds of problems. Repeatedly. In just the last few years AT&T has been: fined $18.6 million for helping rip off programs for the hearing impaired; fined $10.4 million for ripping off a program for low-income families; and fined $105 million for helping "crammers" by intentionally making such bogus charges more difficult to see on customer bills.

In short this isn't a company with a great track record when it comes to ethical behavior or protecting its subscribers from scams. Terpin, for his part, has been given an additional three weeks to beef up his case before it proceeds:

"I am grateful that Judge Wright is allowing my case to proceed," Terpin said. "We must hold AT&T accountable. If AT&T demonstrated the same zeal to totally revamp its porous security system as it does to suppress the damning evidence of its callous indifference to its customers, we would not be in court."

Update: It’s baaaaaack. Back to work, erm, slackers. Official word, per Slack:

We’re pleased to report that we have the all clear, and all functionality is now restored. Thanks so much for bearing with us in the meantime.

Are your co-workers ignoring you? Welcome to my world! In your case, however, that is probably because Slack is currently down (as of about 11AM EST). According to its status page, some workspaces are experiencing issues with messages sending and loading.

Slack outage notice

The outage follows a number of recent issues for the popular workplace chat service, include a big one that hit in late-June. Interestingly, the company just issued a major update to its underlying infrastructure. The refresh didn’t include any cosmetic changes to the service, but instead presented a large-scale push away from jQuery and other older technologies to a newer stack.

Update: Things appear to be on the upswing now. Here’s what’s been going on, per Slack:

Customers may be running into trouble accessing their Slack workspaces completely. We’re actively looking into this and apologize for the interruption to your day.

Some workspaces might be experiencing issues with messages sending, and slow performance across the board. Our team is on the case and we’ll report back once we have an update to share.

• Slack suffered from a partial outage for about an hour on Monday morning.
• Slack initially reported issues at 10:54 a.m. ET and functionality was restored by 11:54 a.m.
• The popular software is used to manage thousands of workplaces around the world.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Monday was just a bit harder for thousands of workspaces that rely on Slack: The collaborative software platform reported issues for certain workspaces at 10:54 ET on July 29, and more than 2,000 users reported issues with Slack via Downdetector between 10:50 and 11:15 a.m.

Slack confirmed the outage on its System Status page. The outage lasted for approximately an hour an Slack reported that functionality had been fully restored at 11:54 a.m.

Employees around the globe, including hundreds at Business Insider, rely on Slack to communicate, organize tasks, and share information. Downdetector's live outage map showed a concentration of reports in the United States, but users in Japan and Europe also reported problems.

Read more: Slack, the newly-public chat app worth about $20 billion, has a hidden meaning behind its name

Slack celebrated a $23 billion IPO in June, making many of the company's top executives and investors billionaires.

SEE ALSO: Here's who's getting rich now that Slack is a public company worth over $20 billion

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NOW WATCH: Here's why phone companies like Verizon and AT&T charge more for extra data

T-Mobile CEO John Legere took something of a victory lap this afternoon, using a call with investors to trash talk his rivals’ 5G plans now that T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint has federal approval. Legere called Verizon “dead in the water without a strategy” and said AT&T has been “lying” and “confusing” customers about its deployment.

Legere laid out a coherent and entertaining (and if you’re his competitors, insulting) vision of the current state of 5G strategies while on the call. Of course, it’s all premised on the idea that T-Mobile, once combined with Sprint, has the one true vision for 5G, which is more than debatable. But his explanation isn’t necessarily wrong, either.

People have said that we trash mmWave as an alternative for...

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President Trump said in a tweet this morning that his administration will not allow Apple to avoid tariffs on Mac Pro parts, after the company requested exemptions earlier this month.

As part of an ongoing trade battle with China, the Trump administration has proposed stiff tariffs on imports from China. The list of proposed goods includes electronics, potentially hitting Apple with tariff increases as high as 25 percent.

Earlier this month, Apple filed requests with the Office of the US Trade Representative, asking for some parts to be excluded from the planned tariffs. While the filings did not explicitly mention the Mac Pro, Bloomberg reported last week that the descriptions in the filings matched up with parts for the desktop...

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A lot of what we know about climate change comes from intricate mathematical models. But what if those models are wrong, and it's much worse than we thought?

According to a new study, scientists have been estimating the impact of a critical aspect of glacier melt all wrong, and in fact it's 100 times worse than previously believed. This finding has implications for our understanding of sea level rise as a result of climate change, which threatens to flood islands and coastal cities and displace millions of people.

In a paper published in Science on Thursday, researchers from the University of Oregon took a look at how the LeConte Glacier in Alaska was melting underwater. Rather than rely on models to estimate the rate of underwater melt—when warm ocean water causes the underside of a glacier to melt—they took direct measurements. According to their findings, the underwater melt rate of the glacier was 100 times faster than the models predicted.

Melting underwater 100 times faster doesn’t mean that the glaciers are retreating overall at the same rate, however. For these Alaskan glaciers, losing mass is a combination of surface melting, icebergs breaking off, and underwater melting. However, co-author Rebecca Jackson said, underwater melting accelerates the process of glacial melting, a process that scientists are only beginning to understand and quantify.

“The real importance of the underwater melting is that it’s the spark that accelerates the retreat, it creates a feedback loop,” Jackson said. “The melting itself is not the glacial retreat, it gets the whole thing to flow faster.”

Because we didn’t fully understand it, this feedback loop hasn’t been readily factored into our projections of sea level rise caused by melting glaciers.

According to the study, scientists have been going about estimating underwater melt for tidewater glaciers, which flow into the ocean, all wrong. Tidewater glaciers interact with the ocean differently than other sea ice. Many of the models we use to determine glacial melting are based on horizontal ice shelves and then adapted to tidewater glaciers, which have a much more vertical boundary with the sea. With a better understanding of the physics of tidewater glaciers specifically, Jackson said she hopes that we can build better models.

The researchers used some clever approaches to measuring glacier melt, including autonomous kayaks equipped with jet engines. They also used multibeam sonar to scan the glacier underwater in August 2016 and May 2017, evaluating the exact shape of the ice-ocean interface.

“Sonar is usually what we use to scan the sea floor or look at the shape of that,” Jackson said. “We turned it sideways and pointed it at the glacier.”

Observing glaciers directly is notoriously tricky. The most important region to test is within a half-mile of the glacier, but large chunks of ice breaking off make it pretty dangerous. To overcome this barrier, the researchers combined sonar to observe the underwater melting with radar for the above-water melting.

“We’re trying to get at the physics,” Jackson said. “When we know that better, we can combine it with our understanding of the trends of climate change.”

The Department of Justice has approved T-Mobile’s controversial $26 billion merger with Sprint. And while the agency proposed a number of remedies it says will mitigate the competition and job-eroding impact of the deal, experts say the fixes will do nothing of the sort.

From the beginning, the biggest issue with T-Mobile’s planned $26 billion merger with Sprint was the fact that it would reduce the number of major U.S. carriers from four to three. Historically, (say in Canada or Ireland) such consolidation results in two things: much higher prices, and a significant culling of jobs as redundant positions are eliminated.

As a result, AT&T’s attempt to buy T-Mobile in 2011 was blocked by regulators. A 2014 merger attempt by T-Mobile and Sprint was blocked for the same reason. But after T-Mobile engaged in a full court lobbying press (including ramping up patronage of the President’s DC hotels), the company is now hopeful that the third time’s the charm.

The DOJ says it will impose requirements offsetting the competitive harm of the deal. More specifically, the DOJ says that T-Mobile and Sprint will need to offload Sprint’s Boost Mobile and some spectrum to Dish Network, who’ll then attempt to build a new, viable fourth competitor from these scraps to offset the elimination of Sprint from the market.

“Today’s settlement will provide Dish with the assets and transitional services required to become a facilities-based mobile network operator that can provide a full range of mobile wireless services nationwide,” DOJ Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim said of the deal.

But experts consulted by Motherboard say the proposal isn’t likely to work, and the end result of the merger will still very likely be higher prices and worse service for all.

For one thing, Dish has been promising to build a wireless network for the better part of the last decade with little to show for it. The company has routinely been accused of “spectrum squatting,” or buying spectrum it doesn’t use in a bid to turn around and sell it later when it’s more valuable. Even T-Mobile made this complaint when Dish initially criticized the merger.

Much of the spectrum Dish has acquired comes with conditions requiring that it build out a wireless network within certain time constraints. But there’s been little real penalty in instances where the company has ignored those requirements and deadlines, experts say.

“They already have more spectrum than they know what to do with,” Wall Street telecom analyst Craig Moffett told Motherboard. “If the government wants Dish to build a network, they could start by simply enforcing the buildout requirements to which Dish is already subject.”

Gigi Sohn, a former FCC lawyer and telecom expert, said the merger should have been blocked outright, and was extremely skeptical of the DOJ’s proposed fix for the controversial deal.

“It certainly won’t lead to a viable fourth competitor any time soon, if ever,” Sohn told Motherboard in an email.

Sohn suggested that the government’s proposal was largely theatrical in nature. Boost Mobile only currently has just 8.8 million subscribers, a far cry from the 158 million and 156 million subscribers of AT&T and Verizon, respectively. Building a viable fourth competitor requires far more than just a small prepaid company and some spectrum, Sohn argued.

“A new mobile wireless entrant that starts with zero postpaid subscribers and that must rely on its much bigger rival, the new T-Mobile, just to operate is not a competitor,” Sohn said. “It's a mobile Frankenstein.”

For Dish to evolve into a major wireless player will require some very hands on support from an Ajit Pai FCC that has been little more than a rubber stamp for industry. Yet Pai will now be tasked with not only punishing Dish if it misses deployment deadlines, but preventing AT&T and Verizon (who benefit from reduced competition) from undermining the effort at every turn.

The Rural Wireless Association, a group representing smaller mobile carriers, was equally unimpressed by the DOJ’s proposal.

"The conditions imposed on New T-Mobile by the consent decree are drastically insufficient to protect against the clear harms this market-consolidating merger would bring," the RWA said, adding that the deal would ultimately prove to be a “disaster for American consumers."

Consumer groups like Public Knowledge also blasted the proposal, noting that historically, mobile carriers cobbled together out of bits don’t tend to survive in a market dominated by industry giants like AT&T and Verizon. The group noted that a far simpler solution would be to block the deal outright, forcing Sprint to find a suitor outside of the merger process.

“Sprint is a significantly stronger competitor today than a new fourth competitor could be for the foreseeable future,” the groups said. The struggles that Dish and other would-be new entrants have consistently faced underscore that even with the best of intentions and a full commitment to deploy and compete, nothing is certain. Consumers will face considerable harm if the marketplace does not develop as the DOJ envisions.”

While the DOJ and FCC have now signed off on the merger, the deal still faces some major obstacles. Most notably, a coalition of nearly a dozen states have sued to stop the deal, saying it will inevitably harm consumers. The opening arguments in that case begin in October.

“The state AGs who sued to block the merger shouldn’t be fooled by this weak attempt to maintain competition in the mobile wireless market,” Sohn said.

• The Justice Department just approved T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint, removing a major hurdle in uniting the two telecom giants.
• A merged company would create a strong rival to AT&T and Verizon, position it to speed up building 5G wireless, and help Dish become a major wireless player.
• Here are the potential winners and losers of the deal.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

The Justice Department has approved T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint, removing a major hurdle in combining the No. 3 and No. 4 wireless companies together.

The approval came after the two companies agreed to sell off parts of their businesses to pay-TV operator Dish, which would create a fourth major wireless player.

Read more: Here's what to expect in 5G from the 'Big 4' carriers as Verizon, AT&T, and others battle for dominance

Here are the potential winners and losers from the deal.

Winners

T-Mobile and Sprint

The obvious big winners of the merger would be T-Mobile and Sprint themselves. Sprint has been laden with debt and losing subscribers, while T-Mobile has been gaining but still substantially lags AT&T and Verizon in subscribers. 

A combined company would also be set up to upgrade T-Mobile's and Sprint's networks for 5G wireless technology.

"The companies have really complementary 5G spectrum bands," said eMarketer Principal Analyst Yoram Wurmser. "Both have some millimeter band, while Sprint has a lot midband and T-Mobile has a lot of low band, which should give them a big advantage as they build out their 5G networks. Without the merger, the companies independently would have a hard time keeping up long-term with AT&T and Verizon."

The merger could impact America's standing in the race for 5G leadership and boost the economy, as 5G represents a quantum leap forward in terms of technology and the potential to spur growth, Alex Gellman, CEO and cofounder of Vertical Bridge, a wireless infrastructure operator, has argued.

Dish Network

Dish Network will become a bigger wireless company to compete with T-Mobile and Sprint, according to conditions both companies agreed on, and could emerge as the fourth wireless competitor. 

It will also be able to rent T-Mobile's network for seven years while it builds its own. Dish has wanted to become a wireless provider for about a decade, spending billions on airwaves that it has been storing for years, according to CNBC. Dish is buying prepaid cellphone brands such as Boost and Virgin Mobile and some spectrum, or airwaves for wireless service, from the two companies, according to the AP. 

Some telecommunications analysts, including Craig Moffett at MoffettNathanson and Jonathan Chaplin at New Street Research, have questioned if a merger that strengthens Dish as a disruptive fourth wireless player is even worth it from T-Mobile's perspective. Dish could end up a far more formidable competitor than Sprint.

To that end, Deutsche Telekom — the company that will control the combined entity — has argued for limitations on Dish's ability to sell a percentage of its wireless business to a strategic investor, such as Amazon, Google, or a cable operator such as Comcast or Charter.

"If Dish enters the market with a large amount of capacity and no meaningful subscriber base of [average revenue per user] to defend, they would have every incentive in the world to be a disruptive discounter," Moffett wrote in a note to clients late last week. "One need not believe in a follow-on Dish deal with Amazon, Google or a cable operator to see this as bad for the market, and indeed, worse than the 'no deal' scenario for T-Mobile."

Losers

AT&T and Verizon

Big losers will be Verizon and AT&T, which will face another competitor of roughly equal size but with a superior position in 5G, Wurmser said. 

Media companies

T-Mobile spent $1.1 billion in advertising in the US in 2018 while Sprint spent $626,000, according to Kantar, and some of that spending could go away for ad-driven media companies when the market shrinks from four big players to three.

"You probably would see a reduction in advertising spend in a major way," said Brian Wieser, global president of business intelligence at GroupM.

Some telcos (Verizon, AT&T) have gotten into the ad business, and a merged T-Mobile/Sprint could be positioned to follow suit, but those other wireless carriers have learned that because of privacy concerns, there's limited opportunity in applying their data to advertising, Wieser said.

Consumers

There are mixed views here. EMarketer's Wurmser said less competition is never good for consumers since it usually leads to higher prices. "At the same time, the merged company's strong 5G position would probably also force the other two companies to invest even more quickly in developing 5G networks," he said.

But attorneys general from 13 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit to block the deal. They say the promised benefits, such as better networks in rural areas and faster service overall, cannot be verified, while eliminating a major wireless company will immediately harm consumers by reducing competition and driving up prices for cell phone service.

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NOW WATCH: Burger King's CMO explains why the biggest risk in marketing is not taking one

Google has already confirmed that a Pixelbook 2 is on the way, and the hardware end of things might already be largely complete: a new FCC filing is very likely Google’s next laptop. The filing is confidential for 180 days, which is plenty of time to keep things secret until the company’s standard October hardware event.

But there are several factors that point to the Pixelbook. For one, the filing comes from Quanta, which manufactured the original Pixelbook. (Foxconn handles Pixel phones.) Second, the FCC label is written in the same font that’s appeared on Google’s other Pixel devices.

The one point of confusion, as noted by 9to5Google and Android Police, is the FCC ID (HFSG021A), which follows more closely to Pixel smartphones...

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• Facebook made $16.6 billion in revenue during the first quarter, equivalent to a 28% jump versus a year ago, but its quarterly and yearly growth rates are slowing.
• During its second-quarter earnings call, CFO David Wehner warned investors about three privacy concerns that will lead to "more pronounced" decreases through next year.
• Ad revenue is slower in Europe than North America and Asia-Pacific, though Wehner said that the impact from Europe's GDPR law is winding down.
• Facebook is betting on Stories as its next breakout ad format, but it's not pulling in as much revenue as feed ads.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Facebook was hit with $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission on the same day that it reported financial results for the second quarter that topped Wall Street's expectations.

But buried in Facebook's earnings report were hints that Facebook's hockey-stick growth is slowing down: Regulation and privacy will impact its business, and Stories ads aren't as lucrative as Facebook would like.

Facebook's ad revenue is growing, but not as fast as it has in the past. Facebook made $16.6 billion during the second-quarter, representing a 28% year-over-year increase. To compare, Facebook's ad revenue during the second quarter of 2018 grew 42% year-over-year.

Facebook's quarterly revenue growth has also slowed down over the past year. Facebook's fourth-quarter ad revenue increased 38% year-over-year, while first-quarter revenue of this year grew 26% year-over-year.

Ad spending typically spikes for platforms and publishers during the fourth quarter and is smallest during the first quarter, but Facebook's numbers suggest that ad revenue is slowing overall.

Read more: Ad experts break down what sweeping privacy changes could mean for Facebook's $55 billion advertising business

Three factors are impacting Facebook's revenue

During Facebook's earning call, CFO David Wehner warned investors that there will be "more pronounced" decreases in the fourth quarter and 2020.

He pointed out three areas of privacy that will impact Facebook's revenue: Privacy regulation like Europe's GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Bill that will roll out next year; Apple and Google's stronger privacy focus; and a bigger increase on privacy by Facebook itself.

Multiple analysts asked Wehner to provide more details on GDPR's impact on Facebook's revenue. Under Europe's GDPR that rolled out last year, marketers are required to collect a consumer's permission before they can use their data for marketing and ad targeting. Wehner said that Facebook's advertising growth is smaller in Europe than North America and Asia-Pacific.

"Overall, we did see Europe have a reacceleration of growth in Q2 versus Q1. Part of that is lapping the GDPR implementation," he said.

Facebook continues to push advertisers to Stories

For the past couple of years, Facebook has been shifting its focus from ads in its feeds to Stories as the feeds get more crowded and pricey.

The average price of ads in both places declined 4% in the quarter while ad impressions increased 33%, with Stories driving the impression growth, Wehner said.

The Stories format is not contributing as much revenue as feed ads, and it continues to be some of Facebook's cheapest ad inventory, COO Sheryl Sandberg said.

Facebook has more than 7 million total advertisers, and 3 million of them use Stories.

To get more advertisers using Stories, Facebook execs talk about a tool called automatic placements that take feed ads and repurpose them for other parts of Facebook's ecosystem.

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NOW WATCH: Burger King's CMO explains why the biggest risk in marketing is not taking one

Microsoft is once again tweaking its Xbox One dashboard design and removing the Cortana digital assistant. The software maker has started experimenting with what it describes as a more “streamlined user interface” for the home section of the Xbox One dashboard. This is the area you immediately see when you power on an Xbox One console. The new design includes quicker access to Xbox Game Pass titles, Microsoft’s Mixer service, Xbox Community feature, and the Microsoft Store.

“We’ve heard your feedback and have continued to iterate on Home to get you into your gaming experiences faster and keeping more of your content front and center,” explains Bradley Rossetti, Microsoft’s Xbox Insider chief. “With this new experimental Home design, the...

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Facebook’s business continues to grow, largely unimpeded by the various privacy settlements, corporate scandals, and regulatory concerns over its handling of user data and other reckless practices. Yet the company announced today, as part of its second quarter earnings announcement, that the Federal Trade Commission is now officially investigating Facebook for potential violations of US antitrust law.

“The online technology industry and our company have received increased regulatory scrutiny in the past quarter. In June 2019, we were informed by the FTC that it had opened an antitrust investigation of our company,” reads the company’s earnings release. “In addition, in July 2019, the Department of Justice announced that it will begin an...

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This afternoon, the House of Representatives approved an anti-robocalling measure, dialing up the heat that Congress has been pressing on telecoms and the Federal Communications Commission due to the onslaught of harmful calls over the past few years.

The Energy and Commerce Committee approved the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act unanimously last week and sent it to the floor, preparing it for today’s 429-3 vote. If it becomes law, the bill would make it easier for the government to impose tougher penalties on illegal robocallers and fraudsters and demand that carriers deploy call authentication tech like SHAKEN/STIR at a faster pace.

“The rising tide of unlawful, unwanted robocalls started as a nuisance but now threatens the way consumers...

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• Tesla is opening stores at a quickening pace following its decision to keep some locations open earlier this year. 
• In March, the company shocked employees by announcing it would shutter most of its showrooms.
• The company's second-quarter earnings fell short of Wall Street's expectations, sending its shares lower by as much as 10%. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tesla opened 25 new stores and service center locations in the second quarter of 2019, the company said in its earnings release Wednesday.

The number is especially large given this is the first quarter since the company announced plans to shutter most of its stores, before reversing course.

Read more: 'It feels like a morgue': Tesla employees say morale has fallen drastically as stores close and workers are let go

New locations include a showroom in London's posh Westfield shopping center; Warwick, Rhode Island; and an upgraded showroom in Santa Monica near its current store location there, among others.

The total number of store and service locations now stands at 402, up from 346 a year ago.

"As our fleet continues to grow, our service and Supercharger capacity continues to expand," the company said in a letter to shareholders. "In Q2, we added 101 vehicles to our Mobile Service fleet and opened 25 new store and service locations. While our customer fleet size has doubled in the past 12 months, our service losses remained stable year-on-year and service wait times have improved considerably."

In an email to employees at the time of the reversed plans for retail locations, Elon Musk said stores with high traffic and sales would be prioritized. 

"This is analogous to seeds on barren ground," Musk said in the email. "There is no reasonable way to justify keeping such stores open."

Shares of Tesla fell more than 10% in after-hours trading following the earnings release, which fell short of Wall Street estimates. You can read the full story here. 

Are you a Tesla employee? Have a news tip to share? Get in touch with this reporter at grapier@businessinsider.com. Secure contact methods are available here.

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NOW WATCH: 5 things wrong with Apple's lightning cable

• A contract programmer who pleaded guilty to a federal crime last summer has been sentenced and fined. 
• He admitted to planting a "logic bomb" in a system that caused glitches in the system he built for his client every few years — forcing his employer to be dependent on him to fix it. 
• His logic bomb was apparently discovered when the program glitched while he was on vacation, and he had to give employees the password so they could fix it.
• He has now been sentenced to six months of prison, two years of supervised release, and a fine of $7,500. The offense carried a maximum of 10 years in jail and up to a $250,000 fine.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

We've heard of programmers who have secretly automated their jobs, but here's a darker tale of a contract programmer who tried, and for a long time succeeded, in secretly forcing his employer to be dependent on him. Last summer, when the programmer pleaded guilty, he faced up to 10 years in prison, as well as a fine of up to $250,000. 

On Monday he was sentenced to six months in prison, two years of supervised release and a $7,500 fine, the US Attorney of the Western District of Pennsylvania said in a press release.

David Tinley, 62, pleaded guilty in federal court to a charge of intentional damage to a protected computer, the US Attorney said in July.

Tinley had been hired by a US unit of Siemens, the German-based tech conglomerate, to create custom automated spreadsheets. The company used these spreadsheets to manage orders for electrical equipment. 

Tinley planted "logic bombs" in the spreadsheets, the government alleged. Logic bombs are bits of malicious code that disrupt the program when specific conditions are met, like a specific time on a specific date. 

Read more: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told a cute joke about what it's really like to work with Bill Gates

In this case, the logic bombs were timed to go off every few years, the government alleged, causing the spreadsheet to experience glitches like error messages and size changes to on-screen buttons, according to a report from Law360.

When the program glitched, the company would bring Tinley back in to fix it. He fixed the system by pushing back the date the spreadsheets would stop working again, the government said.

He was caught in 2016 when he was away on vacation and Siemens had to put an urgent order through the system, which had begun glitching, according to the Law360 report. The circumstance reportedly forced Tinley to share his password with employees, a password that protected the system's code — revealing the logic bomb. 

Tinley's lawyers said he never made any money by being hired to go in and fix the spreadsheets, arguing that his motivation was to protect his proprietary work, according to Law360. Even so, prosecutors argued that the situation met the $5,000 in damages needed to label it a felony because Siemens spent about $42,000 on an investigation into the damages he may have caused, Law360 reported.

Tinley's plea included an agreement to pay restitution and forfeit two laptops, according to Law360. That was in addition to his sentencing of imprisonment.

It's not unusual for programmers found guilty of planting logic bombs to go to jail.

In 2008, a system administrator was sentenced to 30 months over his failed logic bomb at his employer Medco after it was spun off of Merck and he feared being laid off, The Register reported at the time. The system administrator pleaded guilty to planting the bomb, which was designed to delete a bunch of data after he left the company. Flaws in the way it was coded kept it from going off on time, and he was caught after he tried to fix it, prosecutors alleged.

In 2018, an Atlanta judge sentenced a database programmer to two years in prison after he pleaded guilty to planting a logic bomb in the US Army's payroll databases, ZDNet reported. He planted the bomb after his employer lost the contract to continue managing those databases. This bomb did go off, deleting data that prevented US Army reservists from being paid and deployed on time. The army spent $2.6 million to investigate and repair their systems. They did restore all the data, and the man was ordered to pay $1.5 million in restitution and received jail time.

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NOW WATCH: A 45-year-long study discovered trends in successful hyper-intelligent children

Last July, Google announced its Contact Center AI product for helping businesses get more value out of their contact centers. Contact Center AI uses a mix of Google’s machine learning-powered tools to help build virtual agents and help human agents as they do their job. Today, the company is launching several updates to this product that will, among other things, bring improved speech recognition features to the product.

As Google notes, its automated speech recognition service gets to very high accuracy rates, even on the kind of noisy phone lines that many customers use to complain about their latest unplanned online purchase. To improve these numbers, Google is now launching a feature called “Auto Speech Adaptation in Dialogflow,” (with Dialogflow being Google’s tool for building conversational experiences). With this, the speech recognition tools are able to take into account the context of the conversation and hence improve their accuracy by about 40%, according to Google.

In addition, Google is launching a new phone model for understanding short utterances, which is now about 15% more accurate for U.S. English, as well as a number of other updates that improve transcription accuracy, make the training process easier and allow for endless audio streaming to the Cloud Speech-to-Text API, which previously had a five-minute limit.

If you want to, you also can now natively download MP3s of the audio (and then burn them to CDs, I guess).