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Huawei rotating chairman Guo Ping has hit back at the US government’s stricter export controls intended to stop the Chinese tech giant from obtaining essential chips, following reports that its biggest supplier has already cut it off. “We still haven’t figured it out,” Guo said on stage at Huawei’s annual analyst summit. “The US government still persists in attacking Huawei, but what will that bring to the world?”

“In its relentless pursuit to tighten its stranglehold on our company, the US government has decided to proceed and completely ignore the concerns of many companies and industry associations,” Huawei adds in an official statement. “This decision was arbitrary and pernicious, and threatens to undermine the entire industry...

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Microsoft has admitted it was wrong about open source, after the company battled it and Linux for years at the height of its desktop domination. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously branded Linux “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches” back in 2001.

Microsoft president Brad Smith now believes the company was wrong about open source. “Microsoft was on the wrong side of history when open source exploded at the beginning of the century, and I can say that about me personally,” said Smith in a recent MIT event. Smith has been at Microsoft for more than 25 years and was one of the company’s senior lawyers during its battles with open-source software.

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All across the country, people are finding ways to adapt to our new stay-at-home normal, and for some, that means adopting a furry friend. Shelters in the US have reported an increase in adoptions since the start of the pandemic, some of which have had to create waitlists or pause applications until they can rescue more animals. Petfinder.com, which works with shelters and rescue organizations throughout the country, saw adoption inquiries jump 122 percent between March 15th and April 15th.

It’s led to a unique set of issues that many shelters haven’t faced before: juggling increased applications for pet adoptions and foster homes while having to adjust to their new circumstances.

Many rescue organizations have had to close their...

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Hello!

The coronavirus has affected everything, from how we work and take care of one another, to how we shop, pay, and entertain ourselves.

To understand how the pandemic is transforming business, we recently asked 200 CEOs from a variety of industries in the US and beyond a three-part question:

How will the way you operate change because of the coronavirus? How will your industry change? And how will the world change?

You can read responses from the CEOs of companies like Walmart, AB InBev, Duke Energy, ViacomCBS, Sanofi, Zoom, PayPal, and more.

WHAT'S NEXT: 200 CEOs look into the future of business

I want to highlight three themes that appeared in many of the answer we received.

The future of work

Chief executives say the pandemic has pointed the way toward a near future of flexible work, a more relaxed work-life balance, and more inclusive cultures, Allana Akhtar reported. 

"It's difficult to draw many positives from a crisis that has had such a significant human cost and that has created such dire economic circumstances for so many families," Lee Olesky, CEO of the financial-services company Tradeweb, told Business Insider. "I hope we'll use it as an opportunity to ask some tough questions: Do we need to adjust the work-life balance? How can we make sure the most vulnerable are better protected? Are we really getting healthcare right?"

From her story:

Aaron Levie, CEO of the cloud-content-management company Box, said the company would "absolutely" shift to a more "dynamic, real-time" work style, defined by working from home and flexible work hours. Todd McKinnon, the CEO of the software company Okta, said the future of work would likely enable employees to work anywhere without sacrificing benefits like healthcare and volunteer opportunities.

You can read the full story here:

Your job is never going to be the same again

The changing shape of the office

Alex Nicoll reported that because remote work will become more common than ever, fewer people will head to the office. 

"We used to joke about meetings that could have been emails, but now we'll wonder why we can't just do them in our pajamas with our pets on video conference," Nancy Dubuc, Vice Media Group CEO, told Business Insider. "There's a balance of course because some work is actually more productive and better done in person, but it will never need to be 5 days a week, all day every day again."

As Alex reports, when companies begin to shift their business models to accommodate remote work, the office will change. They may cut back on individual workspaces and increase investment in collaborative spaces, turning the office into a cultural and training hub.

"This (more remote work) means adapting some of the office structure to help this way of working succeed, with even more video facilities and more flexible group spaces for brainstorming sessions," Luke Ellis, CEO of investment manager Man Group, told Business Insider. 

You can read the full story here:

The office as we knew it is dead

The end of business travel

Madeline Stone reported that many executives are reevaluating business travel amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

"I think we're seeing that you can do a lot [via] video conferencing, and that's going to have a big impact on how often people travel for work," Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told Business Insider. "Business travel isn't going to go away, but I think it's going to look very different in the future."

From her story:

"It may be the case that we can do less travel, but we can get more done, that we're more thoughtful about what the live meetings need to be," said Doug Ingram, CEO of Sarepta Therapeutics, a medical research company based in Massachusetts. 

You can read the full story here:

Business trips could become a thing of the past as the pandemic pushes CEOs to ask themselves what warrants a flight and what could've been a Zoom call

I'd love to hear from you. Do you agree? How will the way you operate change because of the coronavirus? How will your industry change? Let me know.

Below are headlines on some of the stories you might have missed from the past week. Stay safe, everyone. 

-- Matt

Power brokers of distressed credit: Meet 11 Wall Street stars trading busted bonds, bankruptcy claims, and other fire-sale securities

The finances of America's universities have long been a time bomb — and if schools can't prove the real worth of their hefty price tags, they might just implode

Google employees say the company culture that made it famous has almost entirely vanished, as it continues to be less transparent and more 'corporate'

Amazon has an elite group of execs who are guiding the company through the coronavirus chaos. Here are the 23 members of Jeff Bezos' 'S-team.'

Leaked email reveals that Glossier has continued to pay its retail employees through the shutdown, but hints at threat of layoffs at the end of May

Top PR firm Weber Shandwick started furloughs and layoffs as clients like Royal Caribbean and AB InBev cut spending — read the CEO's internal memo

After failed acquisition attempts, deep layoffs and executive pay cuts, newsletter company TheSkimm hangs in the balance

Leaked memo shows United is trying to convince some workers to quit ahead of layoffs, and it's offering up to 5 years of free flights as an incentive

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• Two major ongoing antitrust investigations into Google's business could be about to bring lawsuits against the company, as per a new report.
• Both the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general have been investigating the company's search, ad, and Android business for several months.
• The Justice Department could bring a lawsuit against Google as soon as this summer, with the second to follow in the fall.
• A third, separate committee investigating Google's possible anti-monopoly practices is also planning to wrap up its investigation in the spring.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Google might soon be hit by two antitrust lawsuits from major ongoing investigations, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal.

The Department of Justice and a group of state attorneys general are both preparing to file lawsuits against the company, as per sources speaking to the Journal, though the specifics of these lawsuits are unknown.

The Justice Department, which has been investigating Google since mid-2019, could bring a lawsuit against Google as early as this summer, the Journal reported.

Meanwhile, a separate investigation by a group of state attorneys general, led by Texas AG Ken Paxton, might also file a case in the fall, according to the Journal's sources. 

"We continue to engage with the ongoing investigations led by the Department of Justice and Attorney General Paxton, and we don't have any updates or comments on speculation. Our focus is firmly on providing services that help consumers, support thousands of businesses, and enable increased choice and competition," a Google spokesperson told Business Insider.

It would mark a major development in the ongoing antitrust probes into Google's business. Both the Justice Department and the state attorneys general coalition have been investigating various parts of Google's business including advertising, search, and Android.

The Justice Department has also investigated how Google might have used its search business to stifle competition, however the Journal says that any legal theories for the DoJ's case against Google are yet unknown. 

Both investigations have also been collaborating on their approaches, but have remained separate despite speculation earlier this year that they could combine their efforts. The Journal points out that it's possible the investigations could file a joint complaint, or that separate states could file individually.

What's clear is that investigators have not let the pandemic put the brakes on the antitrust train. "We do not anticipate that this health event will affect our ability to pursue the investigation as planned," a spokesperson for Paxton told Business Insider this week. 

The probing also doesn't stop with these two investigations. Since last spring, a bipartisan group of lawmakers have been conducting a sweeping antitrust review into possible anti-competitive practices among the four major tech giants, which includes Google.

This week, Rep. David Cicilline, chairman of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, told Business Insider that it plans to wrap up its investigation later in the spring, and hopes to act on their findings soon after.

SEE ALSO: Astro Teller, Alphabet's 'captain' of moon-shot ideas, reflected on a decade of ambitious projects in a virtual commencement speech: 'What bothers me is that X shouldn't be the only moon-shot division'

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No final decision has been reached by the Justice Department or a coalition of states, but sources tell The Wall Street Journal charges of anti-competitive advertising and search practices are likely coming as early as this summer

• Amazon has started to phase out policies brought in to help its warehouse staff deal with working during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Last month it ended a policy of unlimited unpaid time off, and this week it announced it will end its $2 per hour wage increase from June.
• Two warehouse employees told Business Insider the company had handed out t-shirts to staff as a thank-you.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon is handing out branded merchandise to say thanks to warehouse workers during the coronavirus pandemic, even as it phases out policies intended to help.

Two Amazon employees told Business Insider the company has distributed "thank-you" t-shirts to its warehouse workers (or "fulfillment associates").

One worker based in Indiana shared a picture of the shirt they received, the front reads "Thanks to you" and on the back: "Together, we'll deliver."

The workers said the t-shirts were distributed last week, when they were placed in a room and workers had to go in to pick the size they wanted.

The token comes as Amazon announced it would be cutting the $2 per hour wage hike it brought in for staff in mid-March as hazard pay for coming in during the pandemic.

The workers BI spoke to aren't particularly happy about the trade-off. "With states opening up and over 21 cases at our warehouse so far and at least one death at the Indianapolis warehouse, it's a slap in the face," one said.

Another employee based in Texas said similar t-shirts had been given out at their warehouse — although they did not receive one because they do not work on the warehouse floor.

"All I can say was that it felt like they are trying to change the narrative that is reflected in the news, as it looks negatively upon the company. While I hate to sound ungrateful for anything, putting a big 'Thank you' on the shirt was a clear indication they wanted to sway our thoughts. It just didn't feel sincere," they said.

At the end of April Amazon also ended the offer of unlimited unpaid time off (UPT), a policy first brought in to help warehouse employees handle the pressures of working during the pandemic. Normally, workers are permitted 20 hours of unpaid time off per quarter.

Amazon has had to move quickly to keep up with a sudden spike in demand caused by customers stuck at home, while also introducing policies to protect its frontline workers.

It went on a huge 175,000 worker hiring spree and brought in increased cleaning and social-distancing — although multiple workers have told Business Insider in practice it's impossible to socially distance inside the warehouse and cleaning supplies are often missing.

Now the retail giant seems to have got a more steady hand on its supply chain, and it is removing its coronavirus worker policies like increased pay and unlimited UPT to match. Workers Business Insider spoke to said it was too soon to reverse the policies, as the risk of coronavirus is far from over.

One worker told Business Insider the decision was particularly galling given there has been an uptick of cases in their facility in Maryland.

"Amazon is an economic juggernaut with the world's wealthiest CEO at the helm, surely such a titan can afford to pay his employees a mere two dollars extra," they said.

Since the beginning of 2020, CEO Jeff  Bezos' net worth has increased by $29 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

At least seven Amazon warehouse workers are now confirmed to have died with coronavirus across the US.

Numerous worker protests have cropped up, and the company appears to have cracked down on internal communications.

The company has also terminated some employees involved in public protest, including warehouse worker Christian Smalls whose case became a cause celèbre after a leaked memo showed a meeting of Amazon executives at which CEO Jeff Bezos was present discussed how best to handle the media fallout from his firing.

Amazon asserts it has not fired anyone for worker dissent, and that Smalls and others were terminated for violating company policies.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Many tech startups collapse during economic downturns, but that's also when the companies built to last emerge.
• "Almost all the great high tech companies in each generation, companies like Cisco, Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, were the ones that broke away during an economic crisis," Silicon Valley legend John Chambers told Business Insider.
• Predicting the next Cisco, Salesforce or Google is tough, but Chambers and other veteran venture capitalists pointed to 15 startups they believe are poised to come out stronger from the COVID-19 crisis.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

While startups that were burning through VC cash without meaningful revenue may crash and burn because of an economic downturn, some tech startups will come out the other side stronger, more nimble, and wiser.

The COVID-19 crisis has already forced some startups to cut jobs and benefits as they reel from a sudden slump that many fear is leading to a recession.

Silicon Valley legend John Chambers believes up to 45% of US startups aren't going to make it. But Chambers, formerly the CEO of Cisco and now a venture capital investor,  also notes that it is also during bad times when strong and even great companies emerge.

"Almost all the great high tech companies in each generation — companies like Cisco, Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft, Google — were the ones that broke away during an economic crisis," he told Business Insider. "[A downturn] limits your competitor's ability to access the money. It also limits the number of companies that come at you: You're able to break away and gain market share at a much faster pace."

Another venture capital investor, president of Dell Technologies Capital Scott Darling, agreed that some startups are already "benefiting pretty substantially from this environment," particularly because of the sudden pivot to remote work. 

While he'd rather not try to predict "the next Google" because "trying to guess the next trillion dollar company is probably not going to be a successful exercise," he, Chambers, and others weighed in one which companies from their portfolios that they thought would likely be more successful than their peers.

Here are 15 tech startups that Darling, Chambers, and two other VCs plucked from their portfolios that they expect to come out of the COVID-19 crisis stronger than before:

SEE ALSO: Meet the 10 Oracle execs backing CEO Safra Catz and founder Larry Ellison in the tech giant's cloud offensive against Amazon, Microsoft, and Google

Noodle.ai

Funding: $72 million

Top Investors:  Dell Technologies Capital, TPG Growth

Recommended by: Scott Darling, Dell Technologies Capital (investor)

What it does: Noodle.ai offers AI-as-a-service to help businesses improve their operations, particularly their supply chains. For example, as the pandemic caused disruptions in the economy, the San Francisco-based startup's tech allowed its clients to quickly handle supply chain issues. 

"Supply chains were gyrating all over the place and having a machine learning algorithm that can help people manage supply chains, manage queues, and that sort of thing is really critical," Dell's Darling told Business Insider.

 

Nantero

Funding: $127 million

Top Investors: Dell Technologies Capital, Globespan Capital Partners

Recommended by: Scott Darling, Dell Technologies Capital (investor)

What it does: Nantero uses carbon nanotubes as an alternative to typical semiconductor chips to store and deliver memory faster and with greater reliability. 

"[Nantero] will fundamentally alter the industry," Dell's Darling said. "It will change the entire dynamics of what memory hierarchies look like and how memory is used."

As the continued expansion of the cloud and the rise of data-intensive technologies like artificial intelligence increase the need for better storage, the Woburn, Massachusetts tech company will benefit, he believes. 

 

 

 

Uniphore

Funding: $67 million 

Top Investors: JC2 Ventures, March Capital Partners

Recommended by: John Chambers, JC2 Partners (investor)

What it does: Uniphore uses voice AI to help businesses improve customer calls and relations. Founded in India in 2008, the startup moved its headquarters to Silicon Valley late last year.

"We have now truly hit an inflection point," CEO Umesh Sachdev told Business Insider at the time. "We're growing faster and faster each year. When that's happening, you just know you hit a rising tide. You are at the right place at the right time."

Like other startups, Uniphore is adjusting to the COVID-19 downturn. But John Chambers, who has become a mentor to Sachdev, has been impressed with his leadership even during the downturn. He expects Uniphore to emerge from the crisis as a major player in AI, thanks to its "very good strategy" and ability to execute.

Monday.com

Funding: $234.1 million

Top Investors: Sapphire Ventures, Insight Partners

Recommended by: Jai Das, Sapphire Ventures (investor)

What it does: The shift to remote work is leading to a growing need for tools that make it easier for teams to collaborate.

Sapphire Ventures President Jai Das said collaboration startups such as Monday.com are poised to gain traction because of that trend.

"You can't really just have hallway conversations anymore," he said, which makes online collaboration platforms even more valuable for businesses adapting to the new normal of remote work.

 

 

Pensando

Funding: $278 million

Top Investors:  Lightspeed Ventures, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Recommended by: John Chambers (cofounder) 

What it does: Pensando, which came out of stealth mode late last year, is taking aim at what cofounder Chambers says will be the next big trend in the cloud: edge computing. That's the technology that gives cloud-connected devices the ability to access on-board computing power to perform tasks faster.

This is becoming critical in markets like like manufacturing or autonomous driving, where there's not always time to wait for a response from a cloud server.

Chambers, who is Pensando's chairman, sees Pensando is well-positioned to catch that wave: "There's opportunity for a new leader in this area," he said.

The startup is led by four executives and engineers who worked on Chambers at Cisco: Mario Mazzola, Luca Cafiero, Prem Jain, and Soni Jiandani.

Graphcore

Funding: $460 million

Top Investors: Sequoia, Dell Technologies Capital

Recommended by: Scott Darling, Dell Technologies Capital (investor)

What it does: The rise of AI has led to a greater need for processors that can handle the massive computing requirements of data-hungry systems. 

While tech giants like Intel and Nvidia are scrambling to meet that need, a crop of AI chip startups has popped up too, including Graphcore.  

"They may fundamentally redefine what the silicon looks like for machine learning," Darling said.

 

Moveworks

Funding: $105 million

Top Investors: Sapphire Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, ICONIQ Capital

Recommended by: Jai Das, Sapphire Ventures (investor)

What it does:  Moveworks is another hot AI startup that was growing rapidly before the COVID-19 crisis hit. The Mountain View, California-based company helps businesses automate their tech support.

Sapphire's Das expects Moveworks to continue doing well in the crisis as businesses adapt to the needs of a remote workforce, especially network glitches and problems. 

"People are working from home, and the number of IT tickets has gone through the roof," he said. Moveworks' technology "automatically understands the message, interprets it, and actually goes in and fixes that problem for you."

 

ASAPP

Funding: $260 million

Top Investors: JC2 Partners, March Capital Partners, Telstra Ventures, John Doerr

Recommended by: John Chambers, JC2 Ventures (investor)

What it does:  ASAPP is another startup that uses AI to help businesses improve customer relations, including through call center operations.

"It's in the right sweet spot of a very hot technology with major new business models," Chambers said. It's notable, he adds, that the company is attracting talent: The company has 55 PhDs in artificial intelligence and machine learning, including many recent MIT grads, Chambers said.

 

 

Guru

Funding: $71 million

Top Investors: Accel, Thrive Capital

Recommended by: Ben Fletcher, Accel (investor)

What it does: Guru is a collaboration and knowledge management software that makes it easier to access information, documents, and other files that may be stored in different programs and platforms. 

The Philadelphia startup is poised to gain more traction in the world of remote work, Accel partner Ben Fletcher said. 

"When you're in an office environment, you can go and tap the senior person on the shoulder and say, 'Hey, how do I do this? or 'Where do I find this?'" he told Business Insider.

Not right now. 

"[Guru has] enabled all of that to happen within Slack — or within the environments where you work — and will pop up that information," he said. 

 

Hopin

Funding: $6 million

Top Investor: Accel

Recommended by: Ben Fletcher, Accel (investor)

What it does: As the coronavirus crisis has forced many companies to move their events online, tools to make virtual get-togethers more engaging are in more demand than ever. 

Hopin, a London-based online events platform, launched last year because of the rising popularity of webinars and other large scale online events. 

Their timing now feels prescient, and Hopin is poised for growth because of the global pivot to remote work, Accel's Fletcher said. 

"They had a great vision: There was a lot going on online with the shift to webinars," he said. "But now they're taking it a step further as companies are looking to accelerate their online and digital presence."

 

Xometry

Funding: $118 million

Top Investors: Dell Technologies Capital, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Highland Capital Partners

Recommended by: Scott Darling, Dell Technologies Capital (investor)

What it does: Xometry is a 3D printing and manufacturing company that helps small manufacturers connect with customers more easily than they ever could before.

Dell's Darling used the example of a scientist needing replace a broken part in their laboratory equipment to show its value: "I can just literally go on to the Xometry website and have a part shipped to me with a very quick turnaround," he said.

The Maryland-based company has played a key role in manufacturing some of the supplies needed in the fight against COVID-19, he added, by producing "some of the critical things that are in short supply like ventilators, masks and face shields."

 

 

 

Process Street

Funding: $15.2 million

Top Investors: Accel, Blackbird Ventures, New Ground Ventures

Recommended by: Ben Fletcher, Accel (investor)

What it does: Process Street is a workflow management platform that helps customers set up specific business operations, including HR processes and project collaboration.

Accel's Fletcherr said the startup's technology is ideal for businesses looking to make their employees more productive or streamline their workflows.

Founded in 2014, Process Street has a main office in San Francisco but has always been a mostly-remote organization, even before the outbreak. 

"They've definitely been able to make this transition very seamlessly," Fletcher said.

Ada

Funding: $60.6 million

Top Investors: Accel, First Mark

Recommended by: Ben Fletcher, Accel (investor)

What it does: Toronto-based Ada is an AI-powered chatbot platform for customer support that automates the process of signing up new customers and providing customer support.

Accel's Fletcher cites the company's leadership, growing client list (which includes Zoom), and a growing need to automate customer service as reasons why Ada will come out of the crisis stronger. 

"All those things are leading to them to just accelerate through what's happening here," Fletcher said.

 

Webflow

Funding:  $74.9 million

Top Investor: Accel

Recommended by: Ben Fletcher, Accel (investor)

What it does: Webflow is a website creation and development platform that makes it easier (and cheaper) for businesses to set up and manager their sites.

The company's technology is based on the "no code" principle which seeks to make software development more accessible to people with no formal computer programming skills.

"When you give normal people access to technology, entire businesses can be created," CEO and cofounder Sergie Magdalin told Business Insider in a 2018 interview. "I can imagine a high school student creating a new site like Airbnb or Twitter on a no-code platform."

Fletcher of Accel said the company is trying to "democratize" front-end development.

 

Headspin

Funding: $80 million

Top Investors: Dell Technologies Capital, ICONIQ Capital

Recommended by: Scott Darling, Dell Technologies Capital (investor)

What it does: Headpin is a cloud platform that makes it easier for businesses and developers to test and track the performance of their mobile apps.

Headspin's technology has become even more valuable in the era of remote work, Dell's Darling said. 

"Trying to understand how the networks are performing at the end-user level is critical," he said. "And with everything changing, it's really hard to manage, so they have done very well."

 

• Coronavirus is prompting some tech workers to consider leaving the Bay Area.
• They're betting that permanent work-from-home policies will become more and more popular — lessening the troubled region's allure.
• Some realtors in other smaller cities across the Western US say they've seen an uptick in interest from Bay Area residents looking to decamp.
• And regional organisations and preparing to launch programs to attract remote workers to their states.

Coronavirus has some tech workers reconsidering their commitment to the San Francisco Bay Area.

The region's high cost of living, traffic, and housing crisis have long been pain points for professionals in the technology industry headquartered there — but now offices closures and work-from-home policies are prompting a renewed questioning of whether it's still worth it.

With companies like Twitter announcing that it will allow employees to work remotely even after pandemic lockdowns lift for good, some industry-watchers are predicting the city will rapidly lose its luster as workers decamp for more appealing locales.

In conversations with Business Insider, realtors in smaller cities say they're seeing increased interest from potential Bay Area buyers, regional development groups are scrambling to put out the welcome mats for remote workers, and investors are said to be looking to capitalize on the trend.

Balaji Srinivasan, a Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur, predicted on Twitter that the lockdown and new work-from-home policies are removing some of the few incentives left for people to stay in the Bay Area. "The office isn't used, the industry is going remote. So SF is just pure repulsion. And people will fly away," he wrote. 

The prohibitive cost of living in the Bay Area and lack of housing stock has already forced many — particularly younger generations — to consider relocating in recent years, said Skylar Olsen, senior principal economist at real estate listing firm Zillow. If permanent work-from-home policies become more and more prevalent post-lockdown, that may well accelerate the trend.

The multimillion-dollar question is whether that will translate into workers moving out to the suburbs, or going further afield.

Even if they can work remotely, workers are still likely to favour metropolitan areas with access to creature comforts over more far-flung locales: think a condo in downtown Bozeman, Montana rather than a cabin in the depths of Kootenai National Forest. "Our value we place on amenity-rich, walkable neighborhoods is still really high," she said, and that's unlikely to change after the lockdown lifts.

Real estate listing site Realtor.com said they saw a surge in people Bay Area looking for listings elsewhere as lockdowns came into affect. "The Bay Area's balance of within-metro and outbound home searches tipped substantially toward outbound starting in mid-March," spokesperson Cody Horvat said. "The share of traffic from the Bay Area looking outside of the area jumped up 3.4 percent in April compared to the same period last year, marking the largest jump in outbound traffic share so far in 2020."

That surge has since subsided, and the areas that saw the most interest from Bay Area users were Los Angeles and Riverside in California, Las Vegas, Houston and Chicago.

It's hard to quantify any potential lockdown-influenced increase in sales this early, with deals typically taking a month or more to close. But Tony Levison, a realtor in picturesque Bend, Oregon, said he's seen an uptick recently in interest from Bay Area buyers. 

"It's a direct flight to most of the major cities on the West Coast ... you can get anywhere pretty fast, and you don't have ot deal with the city lifestyle any more. Lots of outdoor activities, smaller town, and for a lot of people in the major cities, it's a lot more affordable, too."

In Bozeman, Montana, Noel Seeburg, a realtor with Bozeman Real Estate Group, also said he's seen some increased interest — in particular from investors looking to buy up properties to rent to workers who might be relocate. 

In Nevada — home to beautiful Lake Tahoe and bustling Reno — the government-backed Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada (EDAWN) is actively developing a new program in response to coronavirus to try and attract new remote workers to the state, Mike Kazmierski, the organization's CEO said, to be rolled out after the lockdowns lift.

"There's no need for that workforce, regardless of the lockdown, to be stuck with high prices, traffic, all those other issues ... associated with California, when they can do the exact same job 30 minutes away from a ski slope."

That said, there's at least one group predictably confident that the Bay Area won't lose its allure any time soon: San Francisco realtors.

Mariana Pappalardo, a realtor with Sotheby's, said she's seen some uptick in interest in people looking to get out of the city (one client is "more motivated than ever to get out of here and move to Tahoe") but predicted that work from home won't become the norm.

"Eventually, people are going to want to see people in the office," she said. "I think this trend of working remotely is going to be popular for a year, tops, and then the shareholders are gonna want to see some faces."

Plus, she added, San Francisco's incredibly dense network of talent will long continue to be a major draw.

"We have such a strong population ... nine out of ten of my clients have a PhD, where else do you get that? Those people are going to move to Montana and be bored out of their minds."

How is COVID-19 affecting your work? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (robaeprice@protonmail.com), standard email (rprice@businessinsider.com), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.

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“The brain is really bad at saying ‘we don’t know.’ ”

Nzugu Kitenge and Souphaphone Phetsomphou wait for vehicles to drive up to CityTestSF this week in San Francisco. | Santiago Mejia/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Live in Silicon Valley long enough and someone will tell you that the party is over. As far as I can tell, this phenomenon dates back to at least 1874. As Peter Hartlaub recounted last year in the San Francisco Chronicle, upon the occasion of a writer for the Washington Post announcing that San Francisco had broken her heart, that was the first time a citizen had lamented the region’s vanished glory days. (The reason for the citizen’s heartbreak: the construction of the Palace Hotel, which he viewed as too tall and a blight on the skyline at 120 feet.)

San Francisco and its surrounding tech hub have continued to die ever since, most spectacularly during the dot-com crash, but certainly well before then, too. (Here, via Andreessen...

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Most people know that buying a refurbished tech product will save you money compared to buying it new. It also gives a device a second life instead of sending it off to be recycled. Even though demand isn’t as high for gadgets as it was during the height of the pandemic, buying refurbished is sometimes a clever workaround for finding new or tough-to-find products at a lower price. If you’re gifting tech for the holidays (and perhaps you want to avoid the Black Friday and Cyber Monday rush), it’s not a bad idea to see what kinds of stuff you can find refurbished across the web.

Those are all good things — yet “refurbished” is still a loaded word for a lot of people. New means new, a product that nobody else has used. On the other hand,...

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The groundbreaking GPUs designed to accelerate machine learning training and inference will be available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instances by the end of summer.

• The Senate is expected to vote Wednesday to renew the 2001 PATRIOT Act, and Mitch McConnell is pushing an amendment to the law that would expand the FBI's surveillance powers.
• An amendment proposed by McConnell would, for the first time ever, let the FBI collect records on Americans' web browsing and search histories without a warrant.
• Another amendment drafted by McConnell would give the attorney general more oversight of FBI investigations into political operatives, like the recent FBI investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged ties to foreign countries.
• A bipartisan group of senators including Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, proposed a measure to block the FBI from accessing people's web browsing history without a warrant, but it failed by one vote on Wednesday.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing forward with an amendment that would let the FBI collect records on Americans' web browsing and search histories without a warrant this week.

McConnell proposed the amendment as part of the renewal of the 2001 PATRIOT Act, The Daily Beast first reported. The Senate is expected to vote on the measure as soon as Wednesday.

The McConnell amendment would let Department of Justice officials — overseen by Attorney General Bill Barr — look through anyone's browsing history without the pre-approval of a judge if they deem the browsing history is relevant to an investigation. It blocks the FBI from accessing the "content" of people's web browsing history, but would let the FBI access records detailing which sites and which search terms people entered.

The proposal has drawn backlash from a bipartisan group of senators, as well as from both liberal and conservative civil liberties groups including the ACLU and Americans for Prosperity.

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Republican Sen. Steve Daines jointly proposed an amendment that would require the FBI to obtain a warrant before accessing people's web browsing history — but their amendment failed by just one vote Wednesday, bringing McConnell's proposal one step closer to becoming law.

"When you talk about web browsing and searches, you're talking about some of the most sensitive, most personal, and most private details of Americans' lives. Every thought that can come into people's heads can be revealed in an internet search or a visit to a website," Wyden said in a statement to Business Insider.

McConnell's press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a joint op-ed, ACLU counsel Neema Singh Guliani and Americans for Prosperity decried McConnell's proposal as "warrantless secret spying" and "unjust."

As it weighs the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, the Senate is also considering amendments that would give the attorney general more oversight of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, which handles investigations into political candidates.

The Senate is expected to vote on the amendments Wednesday or Thursday.

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Twitter told employees earlier this week that, so long as their position allows for it, they have the option to permanently shift to remote work.

The company said it would let employees choose whether to return to corporate offices, which will reopen once the pandemic has diminished to a safe level. Most Twitter offices won't reopen until at least September, and even then, any reopenings would be staggered. Twitter also canceled business travel through September, along with all in-person company events through 2020. 

Twitter's decision adds to a trend of corporations embracing work-from-home accommodations that extend beyond the pandemic. Earlier this month, Nationwide Insurance permanently adopted a hybrid remote work policy, in which employees across five corporate offices will transition to remote work, allowing the company to shed approximately 2 million square feet of office space.

"The notion of putting 7,000 people in a building may be a thing of the past," Jes Staley, chief executive of Barclays told The New York Times. JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley executives also indicated that remote work could become a permanent fixture for at least some of their employees. According to a mid-April GetAbstract survey of US employees who are currently working from home, 20% of respondents said their company has discussed permanently accommodating a flexible policy on remote work.

Only 12% of respondents said being sequestered at home has made them want to spend more time in an office environment. And companies looking to cut costs amid the economic downturn may hesitate to commit to leasing office space, if remote work policies could allow them to avoid having to do so.

During the pandemic, companies have absorbed considerable up-front costs associated with transitioning temporarily to remote work, but a permanent shift will require them to adopt additional technology. Here are three tech segments we think will continue to grow in response to the shift: 

• Virtual conferencing: While Microsoft, Google, and Zoom are engaged in a fierce battle over the enterprise video conferencing market, there are still opportunities for growth in other segments like VR. HTC and Spatial, for instance, offer immersive, VR-based meeting environments. And LinkedIn this week launched LinkedIn Virtual Events, an enterprise-focused livestreaming platform intended to host enterprise conferences.  
• Cloud-based productivity suites: Microsoft and Google together dominate the broader ecosystem with Office 365 and G Suite, respectively. But as in virtual conferencing, there are still opportunities for companies that cater more to specific needs — cloud-based sales software or creativity suites, for instance — to accelerate growth during the transition. 
• Secure networking solutions: Mobile hotspots and VPNs can help make transitioning to remote work more streamlined, feasible, and secure. The process of adopting remote work technologies has been hasty in many cases, presenting opportunities for canny hackers. Thirty-one percent of employees who transitioned to remote work during the pandemic felt working from home was less secure than working in the office, according to a Metova survey conducted in April. And it seems they're not wrong: By mid-April, the daily number of cyberattacks reported to the FBI had increased by up to 400% since the onset of the pandemic, according to a report from April reported by The Hill.

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Just weeks after announcing a deal to acquire 5G specialist Affirmed Networks, Microsoft is making another acquisition to strengthen its cloud-based telecoms offering. It’s acquiring Metaswitch Networks, a U.K.-based provider of cloud-based communications products used by carriers and network providers (customers include the likes of BT in the U.K., Sprint and virtual network consortium RINA.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed in today’s announcement. Metaswitch’s investors included the PE firms Northgate and WRV, Francisco Partners and Sequoia, but it’s unclear how much it had raised nor its last valuation. (The company has been around since 1981.)

The deal speaks to a growing focus from tech companies leveraging cloud architectures and the adoption of new networking technologies — specifically 5G — to capitalise on a bigger role in becoming service providers both to carriers and to those who would like to build carrier-like services (potentially bypassing telcos in the process), through the offering of virtualised products delivered from its cloud.

It comes just one day after Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce and streaming services giant, announced that it would be acquiring Innoeye, another specialist in cloud-based communications services. Others like Amazon have also been building up their offerings in AWS serving the same market.

Microsoft describes the Metaswitch portfolio of cloud-native services — which include 5G data, voice and unified communications (contact center) products — as “complementary” to Affirmed.

“Microsoft intends to leverage the talent and technology of these two organizations, extending the Azure platform to both deploy and grow these capabilities at scale in a way that is secure, efficient and creates a sustainable ecosystem,” the company said. 

The migration to 5G represents a window of opportunity to companies that provide services to carriers. The latter have long been saddled with expensive, ageing equipment and now have the potential to replace some or all of that with software-based services, delivered via the cloud, that can be more easily updated and modified with market demand. That is the hope, at least. The reality may be that many carriers sweat out their assets and upgrade in small increments, as operational expenditure still represents a big investment and cost.

Microsoft is all too aware of that reality and also of the prospect of appearing like a threat, not a saviour.

“We will continue to support hybrid and multi-cloud models to create a more diverse telecom ecosystem and spur faster innovation, an expanded set of unique offerings and greater opportunities for differentiation,” it notes. “We will continue to partner with existing suppliers, emerging innovators and network equipment partners to share roadmaps and explore expanded opportunities to work together, including in the areas of radio access networks (RAN), next-generation core, virtualized services, orchestration and operations support system/business support system (OSS/BSS) modernization. A future that is interoperable has never been more important to ensure the success of customers and partners.”

Indeed, Microsoft’s been providing services to, and selling its own IT through, carriers for years before this. These latest acquisitions, however, represent a growing focus on what role it can play in that enterprise vertical in the years to come.

‘A lot of the things that allow us to deal with the crisis run on top of AWS,’ Jassy tells the AWS Virtual Summit 2020. Customer service and meetings may never be the same.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

There’s a lot of discussion going on right now about what will be forever changed by the pandemic. Over at Amazon, though, the company is promising that things are going back to normal.

For one, the company said on Tuesday that delivery times — which have understandably stretched from days to weeks amid the huge logistical challenges posed by COVID-19 — were about to get shorter. Here’s Spencer Soper in Bloomberg:

The company on Sunday lifted restrictions on the amount of inventory its suppliers can send to Amazon warehouses and is shortening delivery times — which had stretched for weeks for some products since the outbreak began — back to days. The shares rose 2.1% to $2,406 at 10:42 a.m. on Wednesday. [...]

“We removed quantity...

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Everyone is reconsidering their transportation mode right now. Automobiles don’t have to win.

'The Ampere server could either be eight GPUs working together for training, or it could be 56 GPUs made for inference,' Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says of the chipmaker's game changing A100 GPU. 'The economics, the value proposition is really off the charts.'

Why do these companies make gadgets?

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• Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, says she has 'hard evidence' that Russia was behind an 'outrageous' hacking attack which accessed her emails.
• She confirmed a report from a German magazine which said that Russian authorities were behind the 2015 cyber-attack which paralysed the IT systems of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament.
• 'Every day I try to build a better relationship with Russia and on the other hand there is such hard evidence that Russian forces are doing this,' Merkel said.
• German authorities have identified the alleged main culprit in the 2015 cyber-attack on the Bundestag as Dimitri Badin, a Russian operative, Der Spiegel reported.

• Badin has also been accused of beinggett behind hacking attacks on the US Democratic Party, the world doping agency, a Swiss chemical weapons laboratory, and others.

• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she has "hard evidence" that Russia was behind an "outrageous" hacking attack which accessed her emails and paralysed the IT systems of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament.

She was asked on Wednesday about a report in Der Spiegel, a German magazine, which said that the GRU, Russia's military intelligence wing, was behind a hacking attack on the Bundestag in 2015 which accessed emails from her constituency office.

"I can honestly say that it pains me," she said in parliament, according to AFP news agency. "Every day I try to build a better relationship with Russia and on the other hand there is such hard evidence that Russian forces are doing this."

According to Der Spiegel, German authorities have identified the alleged main culprit in the 2015 cyber-attack on the Bundestag as Dimitri Badin, a GRU operative.

He is accused of stealing 16 gigabytes of data, including all emails from Merkel's parliamentary office between 2012 and 2015.

Badin is also reportedly part of the team behind hacking attacks on the Democratic Party in the 2016 US presidential election, the world doping agency, a chemical weapons laboratory in Switzerland, and others.

Both the FBI and Germany's Federal Court of Justice are seeking his arrest.

The German government has consistently stressed the importance of trying to improve relations with Russia even as it continues to be linked to hacking attacks and extrajudicial killings across Europe.

Ties between Russia and Germany have become particularly strained since the murder of a former Chechen commander in a Berlin park. German prosecutors have said there is evidence that the killing was carried out by Russian or Chechen state agents.

Merkel described such acts as "more than uncomfortable" and indicated that she would consider imposing new sanctions on Russia, AFP reported.

Merkel said: "It, of course, disrupts cooperation of trust and you know that in connection with the murder ... we applied sanctions, in this case, expulsions [of Russian diplomats]."

"We now have the task of finding the wanted suspect, but of course we always reserve the right to take measures -- also against Russia, to be clear."

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Bicyclists on the Rue de Rivoli as Parisians emerge from lockdown. | Photo by Stephane Cardinale / Corbis via Getty Images

Returning to a car-dominated city after the pandemic lockdown is ‘out of the question’

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As noted yesterday, Congress this week is considering a new bill (the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act of 2020) that would not only renew already widely abused and heavily criticized FISA (Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act) powers, but extend the law to include warrantless access to American browsing and search data, a longstanding goal of the "there's no such thing as too much domestic surveillance" set. Given the well documented problems with the existing system, there's a large bipartisan coalition that believes this is, well, idiotic.

Enter Senators Ron Wyden and Steve Daines, who introduced one of three amendments today aimed at making a fleeting effort to rein in FISA authority and abuse. Their amendment would have required a warrant before law enforcement and government could peruse your browsing and search data, which seems like a good idea in normal times, but even more so in the Bill Barr era. Wyden had this to say today about the threat posed by the expansion:

"Back in 2001 when Congress passed the Patriot Act, Americans were rightly concerned about the government collecting their library borrowing records without a warrant. What we're talking about here today, looking at web history browsing history, it is thousands of times more invasive of privacy."

Despite significant support for the Wyden/Daines amendment, it failed with a vote of 59-37, just missing the 60 vote threshold needed to pass. You can find a total roll call here.

Ironically, many of the same GOP Senators you'll routinely see going on at length about the perils of the "deep state" voted to give said deep state more power than ever. 10 Democratic Senators quick to lament Trump's abuse of government institutions (like Tim Kaine) similarly somehow voted to give him more capability to do so. Four other Senators didn't vote on the Wyden/Daines amendment, including Bernie Sanders (who hasn't yet explained his absence) and Senator Patty Murray, whose staffers say she would have voted for it if she had, you know, bothered to vote for it:

Wyden, unsurprisingly, was politely unimpressed by his Senate colleagues:

This is, as they say, why we can't have nice things.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

President Donald Trump has extended his executive order banning US companies from working with or buying telecommunications equipment from companies deemed a national security risk until May 2021, via Reuters.

While the ban doesn’t explicitly call out specific companies, it’s been used to virtually shut down US operations with Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE, which can no longer sell products in the US or work with companies like Google or ARM for critical software and licenses.

The White House issued its original executive order almost a year ago, barring US companies from doing business with Huawei due to national security concerns about the Chinese firm supplying equipment for network infrastructure (particularly as the US...

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On Tuesday Cisco issued a clarification regarding its Webex privacy policy. 

While job cuts hit the IT sector, companies will often eliminate sales or retail jobs instead of technical roles, according to CompTIA's Tim Herbert. 

GIF: Shane Wighton / YouTube

Robotics and AI are supposed to make people’s lives better, so why don’t they help me suck less at sport? Engineer and YouTuber Shane Wighton has tackled this incredibly pressing issue with one of the cleverest mechanical creations I’ve seen on the internet: a basketball hoop that ensures that you never miss a shot.

You can get the gist of how the thing works from the GIF below. Sensors track the trajectory of each shot and motors attached to the backboard adjust its angle to deflect the ball into the hoop. But Wighton’s video (from his channel Stuff Made Here) goes into some fascinating detail, explaining both the underlying technology and the design process.

GIF: Shane Wighton / YouTube

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