• Hurricane Michael, a Category 4 storm, is heading toward Florida's Gulf Coast, where it's expected to make landfall Wednesday.
• I used to live in Florida and have a few Category 4 hurricane experiences under my belt that left me with a few lessons learned along the way.
• Here's what you should know when it comes to protecting your money during a hurricane.

Hurricane Michael is heading toward Florida's Gulf Coast, where it's expected to make landfall Wednesday. It's currently a Category 4, which the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale defines as a storm with winds running 130 to 156 miles per hour.

As someone who grew up in hurricane territory — otherwise known as Florida — I can tell you this much: A Cat 4 hurricane is nothing to take lightly, especially when it's heading for an area that isn't usually faced with storms of that force. 

I've been through two Category 4 storms myself. The first, Hurricane Charley in 2004, was a beast with winds of 145 mph— and the eye passed right through where I was taking shelter.

The second, Hurricane Irma in 2017, was hard to avoid and I was forced to evacuate; after much debated prediction about which side of Florida it would land on, it hit the west side of Florida. I was taking shelter on the east coast, but the hurricane was so monstrous that I still experienced the effects from the right-front side of the storm, where the strongest winds are.

As a hurricane veteran, I've picked up a thing or two on how to prepare for and deal with the aftermath of a hurricane, particularly when it comes to the most important and vulnerable aspects — your finances.

Here, seven things you should know about financially preparing for Hurricane Michael.

SEE ALSO: Hurricane Michael just got more dangerous — here are the states in its path

Manage bills and paychecks in advance

First things first, set up automatic payments for your bills and direct deposits for your checks if you don't have them already — there could be mail delays or you may not have Internet access to pay online.

You don't want to become "seriously delinquent" if you fall behind on your mortgage payment in the hurricane's aftermath, although some companies and financial institutions may extend grace periods or defer payments considering the circumstances.

You'll need cash

In addition to having an emergency fund, you'll also want backup cash in small bills — when the power is out, there will be no other way to pay for supplies or gas (if there's any available), and you won't have access to an ATM for withdrawals. 

There's no rule of thumb on how much money you'll need; it's up to your discretion. But after my first hurricane, my neighborhood was without power for nearly three weeks — it's better to overestimate.

Don't safeguard important documents in the dishwasher

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the trick floating around the Internet about storing your valuables and documents in the dishwasher during a hurricane isn't one you should heed. If flooding occurs, a dishwasher won't keep things dry.

You should have photocopies or electronic copies of your personal, home and property, estate, medical, and financial documents stored on a flash drive or on a cloud. Think things like Social Security card, stock and bond certificates, home deeds, passport, and estate planning paperwork.

But if you're down to the chase and don't have time, you should put all documents and cash in tightly sealed Ziploc bags to be placed in a grab-and-go lock box. If you've evacuated or are taking shelter away from your home, you may not be able to get back for days — and you'll need these things on your person.

• Former first daughter Barbara Bush rushed to get married after her grandmother and namesake died in April.
• She said her husband had the opportunity to meet her grandmother while she was alive.
• Her grandfather, former president George H.W. Bush, was present at the wedding Sunday.

Barbara Bush got married Sunday, and she said she felt rushed to make it happen after her grandmother and namesake, former first lady Barbara Bush, died in April.

"That’s the one thing about waiting,"she told People. "You can have this great career and this great life. But, of course, the older you get, you lose people that you love."

Bush said her husband, the screenwriter Craig Coyne, didn't meet her grandmother while she was alive. When he proposed to her on August 25, during a family gathering at her grandparents' home in Maine, she wanted to get married quickly instead of spending a long time planning the wedding.

"Craig didn’t get to meet my grandmother. I thought there would be plenty of time for that to happen," she said. "We knew we wanted to be married — we’d already made that decision — so we didn’t need months of an engagement."

Bush's grandfather, 94-year-old former president George H.W. Bush, was in attendance. In April of this year, the former president was hospitalized with a blood infection and believed to be close to death. Then in May, he was hospitalized after experiencing fatigue and low blood pressure. He has since recovered.

"We just thought, let’s try to do [the wedding] soon — a small wedding with just our family and my grandfather, here," she told People.

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Every US region has its own special words and phrases, and the Northeast is no different.

An object that already has a name can become unique to an area through language — in New England, grocery carts are "carriages," water fountains are "bubblers," and soft-serve ice cream is a "creemee."

Check out this list of 14 things you probably won't hear people say anywhere but the Northeast.

"Jimmies" are synonymous with sprinkles.

In the Philadelphia-Boston area, people don't dare call these ice cream toppers "sprinkles."

According to legend, the name "jimmies" came from the Brooklyn company Just Born, who in the 1930s claimed to have invented the treat and named them after the factory worker who operated the "jimmy" machine, Jimmy Bartholomew.

The nickname still sparks debate, as the Northeast is divided between two types of people: those who call only chocolate sprinkles "jimmies," and those who consider chocolate and multi-colored ones "jimmies."

Thirsty? Take a sip from the "bubbler."

Bubbler is a slang term for a water fountain, or drinking fountain, and it's only used in the Boston-Providence areas. 

A linguistics survey conducted by North Carolina State University shows that the majority of America prefers "water fountain," and only about 18.3% of the country says "bubbler."

Strangely, the slang has trickled into Wisconsin — but "bubbler" (or "bubblah," as some say) is forever native to the Northeast. 

If you need to make a quick turn, just "bang a 'uey!"

If you miss your turn while driving, the answer is simple in New England — "bang a 'uey!" 

"'Uey," of course, refers to a U-turn. And "bang" has to do with the quickness of it — banging on the steering wheel and changing direction. Mark Wahlberg, a Boston native, describes it as "turning around." 

It's a pretty big deal to earn the first perfect score of the season on "Dancing with the Stars."Depending on the number of judges, it could be a 30 or 40, but what we do know for sure is that it's quite impressive.

Here are all of the stars who were the first on their season to earn a perfect score. 

Kelly Monaco impressed judges in season one.

The season's eventual winner Kelly Monaco, and her partner Alec Mazzo, finally captured that elusive perfect score during their finale freestyle to JLo's "Let's Get Loud."

The judges thought Stacy Keibler did a phenomenal samba in season two.

Week five was very good to former wrestler Stacy Keibler and her pro partner Tony Dovolani after they delivered a flawless samba. However, it was not enough to topple Drew Lachey who went on to win with Cheryl Burke.

Mario Lopez earned the first perfect score in season three.

"Saved by the Bell" star and "Extra" host Mario Lopez broke through with the first perfect score of season three after a scintillating tango with his partner, Karina Smirnoff.

• Stocks fell Wednesday as Wall Street sweats over global growth prospects and a bond selloff.
• The 2-year yield hit its highest level since 2008.
• Trade-sensitive industrial stocks also fell as tensions between Washington and Beijing persisted.

Stocks fell Wednesday as concerns about global economic growth and ongoing trade tensions continued to hang over Wall Street and after the bond market resumed a sell-off that started last week.

The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled more than 300 points, or 1.14%, to 26,128.80. Technology companies were among the losers, with the Nasdaq Composite dropping 1.64%, or 126 points, to  7,611.38. On the S&P 500, down 0.87%, the tech sector also saw the steepest losses. 

Elsewhere, shares of Sears plummeted more than 35% after reports the cash-strapped retailer could file for bankruptcy protection as soon as this week. 

US government bonds resumed a selloff after rising to multi-year highs last week, with the 2-year yield rising to 2.906%, its highest level since June 2008. With a humming US economy, the Federal Reserve is expected to continue hiking interest rates. The central bank has increased rates three times this year and eight times since the financial crisis.

On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund downgraded its outlook for the world economy. Citing concerns about trade and emerging markets, the international lender lowered its global growth forecast for this year and next in a report. 

An ongoing conflict between Washington and Beijing weighed on large-cap industrial stocks, including Boeing (-2.5%) and Caterpillar (-1.6%). When asked by a reporter Tuesday if he was ready to place additional tariffs on Chinese goods, Trump replied: "Sure, absolutely." 

And a look at the upcoming economic calendar: 

• Monthly inflation numbers are out in the US. 
• Earnings season kicks off with reports from JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.
• The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank hold an annual gathering in Indonesia.

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Morgan Stanley’s 2019 forecast for tech stocks has an ominous resemblance to the dotcom-bubble era

SEE ALSO: Mexico's state-owned oil giant just announced a major discovery that could transform the country's struggling industry

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• Founders often need to know how to raisecapital to grow and achieve their company goals. 
• Jeff Raider, who co-founded Harry's and Warby Parker, has learned a number of things during the fundraising processes for these two companies, which combined have raised more than $700 million.
• His advice is to first ask yourself, "Should I raise capital?"
• From there, he outlines the entire process for raising money for a startup, from determining how much you need and finding investors, to what kind of capital you should raise.

I have the privilege of meeting with amazing founders who inspire me with their vision to build companies that truly transform their markets and make people's lives better. Many of these founders require capital to grow and achieve their potential. Thus, I'm often asked about how to raise capital, and how to get the best outcome when raising money.

The world of fundraising can feel opaque, but it shouldn't have to.

In the spirit of transparency, I want to share some of the things that I've learned over the course of past fundraising processes.

Before wading into this topic, I want to acknowledge that I've been really lucky. I've co-founded two companies: Harry's and Warby Parker. Together, these companies have raised more than $700 million from major institutional investors.

Before I founded these companies, I worked in private equity investing, so I started out with a solid understanding of the investment process, and I had relationships with people in the investment world. My co-founders and I also had great guidance — from amazing co-founders, teammates, board members, and lawyers — and lots of luck along the way, so I try not to take any of that for granted.

With that said, and with the caveats that this reflects my own experience — and others may have different, but equally valid perspectives — I hope some of this advice can be helpful to anyone looking to raise capital.

So let's dive in.

There's a question I don't think entrepreneurs ask themselves enough: 'Should I raise money?'

People have often congratulated me and my co-founders after a big round of funding. But raising money isn't a badge of honor. While it's validating to have someone in our vision enough to invest in the company, outside capital is just fuel for a business to grow until it can exist in a self-sustaining way.

It's a means to an end, not an end unto itself.

My co-founders and I have taken big swings at Harry's and Warby Parker. We've opened more than 75 Warby Parker retail stores and have grown to over 1,000 people in only a few years. At Harry's, we bought a 90+ year old, 420-person German razor blade factory, even though we're just a 30-person startup in New York. And we've done all of this in highly competitive markets. As a result, we've felt it prudent to raise outside capital to enable us to grow quickly.

But raising lots of money isn't necessarily right for every company. You may not feel pressure to grow as quickly or compete in the same ways we did (and that could be a good thing), and you may not need to raise outside capital.

Additionally, raising money doesn't come without cost.

The math speaks for itself: If you own 10% of a $100 million company, it's the same as owning 100% of a $10 million company, and sometimes the latter can be much easier to achieve.

Raising money also comes with high expectations from your investors about your business performance.

At Harry's, we raised money at a $750 million valuation as a three-year-old company. That valuation was predicated on our ability to continue to grow quickly; it came with substantial expectations from investors that we would hit aggressive growth targets. Such expectations can be good — they drive our team to achieve at the highest levels — but they also add pressure to the already pressure-packed situation of building a company.

Investors also expect that we'll pay them back — meaning that at some point, we need to sell our companies, take them public, or find another large investor to get our initial investors' liquidity.

So for all of those reasons, the first question I encourage founders to ask when thinking about raising capital is a basic one: "Should I raise outside capital?"

How do you get money?

How you approach the process can have a meaningful impact on the future of your business, and your role in it. The choices you make will dictate who surrounds you, your control as a founder, and financial outcomes in both positive and negative scenarios.

Take the time to prepare

Before even thinking about valuation, terms, or reaching out to potential investors, I suggest spending time refining an airtight narrative and business plan.

A good business plan answers four key questions:

1. What is your fundamental reason for being? What is the unmet need your business addresses?
2. What's the market environment today? How big is the opportunity to solve this problem, and why haven't others done it yet?
3. How is your business going to deliver against the consumer need in a differential way? What's your operating plan to get there?
4. And what does all of the above imply financially? How do the economics of your business work? How much capital do you need for the next stage of the business?

For me, the most important part of a business plan is the first section that defines your reason for being. Everything flows from there. At Warby Parker we expressed our reason for being in one line: "Glasses shouldn't cost as much as an iPhone."

As you're laying out your plan, be pithy! Our business plans have been 25 to 30 slides at most. There's always time to share more after.

Determine how much money you need, and how you want to raise it

Your financial model should help you determine how much outside capital you need. From there, imagine scenarios where things don't go exactly as planned (because they never do) and what those scenarios mean for how much money you'll actually need.

For example, ask yourself questions like: What happens if Gillette threatens to sue Harry's? (Which they did) Or, what if our business grows twice as quickly as we had forecasted? (Which also happened). Given the unpredictability at Harry's (and at many early stage companies), we needed to be prepared for any scenario related to cash burn.

This estimation is both an art and a science. I've personally never been able to determine, with surgical precision, the exact amount of money it takes to run a business in a variety of different upside and downside scenarios. And as a result, I've always thought it prudent to raise a little extra capital (and take a little more dilution) in order to ensure we have some cushion against our projections.

Once you've determined how much capital you need, there are three common approaches I've seen entrepreneurs take in the seed stage:

1. Friends and family:

Go to your friends and family who love you and believe in you, and ask them to invest in your company to the extent they're financially able.

We started this way at Warby Parker. We were lucky to have four founders and a broader group of people around us who were able to invest in our idea.

This approach works nicely because it gives the people closest to you the chance to benefit from your success in the company. The conversations are usually easier because these people already know you well and they believe in you. With that said, unless you have very wealthy friends and family, this approach has limits in terms of how much capital you can raise.

2. Professional investors:

These can be angels or venture funds — either way, they are people who invest professionally and are likely invested in lots of companies like yours.

The benefit to speaking with these folks is they know the investing process well, and can commit material amounts of capital to your business. They also work with lots of companies and have perspectives and experiences that can be helpful.

That said, it can be harder to approach these investors cold, and you have to really convince them of the return on investment your business will provide.

3. A mix of the two:

Many people raise a round with both professional investors and friends and family.

What's best for you depends on how much capital you think you need. If you just need a little capital to get started, friends and family can be a good way to go. If you want more capital, or lots of advice and engagement, then it may make sense to pursue professional investors.

What form of capital should you raise? Note vs. priced round

Convertible note:

A convertible note is an instrument that typically converts to equity in the next funding round. These notes usually pay interest during the time that they are outstanding, and some have a "cap," which means that there is a max valuation at which they convert to equity.

For example, a company may issue a convertible note at 15% discount to their next round of funding with a $10 million cap. In this case, if the company raises money at a $10 million valuation in the next round, the note would convert to equity at an $8.5 million valuation (15% discount). Yet, if the company raised money at a $15 million valuation, the "cap" would kick in and the note would convert to equity at a $10 million valuation.

Convertible notes are commonly used in the early stages of companies when people aren't ready to put a hard valuation on the company, and they tend to be more popular with smaller friends and family raises. They can often be quicker and easier to complete because valuation is off the table.

They provide companies the limited capital they need to hit early milestones, at which point they then can go out and raise money at a valuation that's exciting to them.

Priced round:

The other option companies commonly choose is to raise a "priced round." That means raising money in equity at a specific valuation.

In this instance, the founders believe their vision and track record can command an attractive valuation. They also are more likely to want to raise substantial amounts of capital at a valuation they are comfortable with and have the capital last for a while.

There's no right or wrong answer as to type of funding you should choose. We initially bootstrapped Warby Parker, and at first only invested our own capital (meaning our life savings). Then, after we launched the business and sold out of glasses, we realized we needed more (but had no more life savings), so we turned to our friends and family and raised money from them through a convertible note.

At Harry's, we had to buy a million razor blades to lock a contract with our German factory. We signed the contract, but didn't have the money to buy the blades — this part is not recommended — so we came back to New York and raised a priced round in order to have capital to get started.

Thus, the type of capital you raise depends on the state of the company, what milestones you want to hit before raising more capital, how much money you need, and what valuation you think you can command.

How do you navigate the investment process?

Find a lead investor

The fundraising process can quickly spin out of control and become complicated to manage.

In order to streamline, and make the job as simple as possible, we've always found it helpful to find a single investor to lead each of the rounds — although this is still not easy. A lead investor is a person or firm who will commit a substantial amount of the capital in a round, and with whom you can negotiate a core set of terms.

The benefit to this approach is that you only have to negotiate once. After you have a lead investor and a core set of terms negotiated, you and the investor sign a "term sheet" codifying those terms. Chris Dixon, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, wrote a post that thoughtfully lays out the common terms included in a term sheet.

Then, you can take that term sheet to other investors and get them to join the round on the same terms as the lead investor. Your lead investor can help you there, too, by introducing you to their own network and serving as a partner throughout the fundraising process.

For example, at Harry's, Thrive Capital led our seed round. After the Thrive team committed to investing, we sat down, talked about the early needs of the company, and put together a list of potential investors who could be helpful, instead of spending a lot of time and effort fostering our own independent relationships with potential new investors. Thrive then helped to introduce us to those investors and supported us by explaining to them why Thrive was excited about Harry's.

Find the right investors

It's important try to figure out who the "right" investors are for you.

Investors can add a tremendous amount of strategic value beyond just the capital they provide — and different investors add value in different ways. Some have material domain expertise, some are exceptionally well-connected and can make helpful introductions to partners and prospective employees, and others have relevant experience in building businesses at your stage.

When thinking about who might be a good investor, I often try to identify who has invested in analogous companies. Then, if possible, I ask other founders about their experiences with those investors.

Once you've figured out who you want to invest, you have to actually get to those people

This step can be hard. Most people with great business ideas don't have a Rolodex of potential investors at their fingertips (and we certainly didn't either at Warby Parker).

This is where entrepreneurial hustle comes in.

I've found the people who make the best introductions for me are people who know me well. It's always easier to make connections through someone who already knows you. For example, when I was preparing to raise money for Harry's, I first went to my Warby Parker co-founders. They knew great investors — and more importantly they knew me well. Because of this, the investors they introduced me to were receptive and took their recommendation seriously.

Think broadly about who you know personally — professors, colleagues, bosses, friends — they could have a connection to investors or firms that might be useful. But if you're drawing a blank, think about who you can get to know — other founders, VCs, people in the tech community, corporate venture funds — who might be able to help connect you. In some cases, pitch competitions, incubators, or grant programs that can open doors and give you initial exposure.

If you're having an introductory conversation with a person you don't yet know, I would approach it with a lot of curiosity and self-awareness. In my experience, the first discussion is probably not the right moment to go in guns blazing with a hard pitch.

Investors are also out there looking for you, too. So, expand your network, get people to know and like you, meet with and learn from interesting folks, do people favors, and try to network yourself into the right investors in an organic and authentic way.

No one said this part was easy — it's really hard.

How do you best negotiate?

Once you have identified a potential lead investor who is excited about your business (congrats, in a lot of ways that was the hard part) — you can think about the terms of a deal.

There are three things you should keep in mind:

1. Valuation and dilution: How much the company is worth?
   
   
2. How much control of the company founders retain: Control over the board, voting rights and governance of the company.
   
   
3. Structure, and what happens in a downside scenario: Investors can invest in different securities that enable them to get their money or earn a return, before founders and employees are eligible to get proceeds themselves.

Although it's counter to the way people often talk about fundraising in the news, I've always been focused more on optimizing structure and control than on valuation.

You might know the valuation of a company, or how much it's "worth." But do you know whether it's capitalized through common or preferred stock, and what special terms preferred investors have? Do you know the composition of the Board and the voting rights of the founders? These things also matter.

I believe that you don't always want to take the highest price valuation. Sure, big sticker prices are good for the ego, they can attract top talent, and they are often good for company morale. But if you're optimizing solely for valuation and trying to push for the highest possible number, you may sacrifice other terms, or you may not get the right investor, or you could increase pressure on future rounds to raise capital at even higher valuations.

Clearly this is all conceptual, and when it comes to specifics I'd suggest hiring a great lawyer who's been through lots and lots of transactions like this and can give you good advice.

In summary…

Raising money is always hard, emotionally draining, and time consuming, but it doesn't have to be a mystery. I hope this helps other entrepreneurs to have a more informed perspective on the fundraising process, to make good decisions for themselves and their companies, and to get the capital they need and grow their businesses and achieve their entrepreneurial vision.

Good luck.

As co-founder of both Harry's and Warby Parker, Jeff Raider aims to build companies and brands that positively impact people's everyday lives, and the world more broadly. Harry's ambition is to create exceptional shaving and personal care products that better meet the needs of modern men. Prior to Harry's, Jeff co-founded Warby Parker, the transformative lifestyle brand that offers designer eyewear at a revolutionary price while leading the way for socially-conscious businesses. Today, Jeff serves as the CEO of Harry's Labs. He is also on the Board of Directors at Warby Parker.

SEE ALSO: I'm a founder who has raised $77 million over the last 10 years — here's my best advice on how to raise startup money, even when lots of people reject you

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• Buying a home is one of the biggest purchases most people will make.
• There are many things millennials must consider when buying a home, like speaking with a mortgage broker rather than relying on real estate websites, finding an inspector, and sticking to a budget.
• After a year and a half of searching, my partner and I finally bought a house, though there are a number of things I wish we had known before starting the process.

I've always thought buying a house was a milestone I would reach by 30. I'd own that perfect, stately colonial on a beautiful tree-lined street in a nice suburban town.

I'm turning 30 this year, and the search for my perfect home has been complicated beyond measure, with the foremost obstacle being affordability. It turns out I'm not alone among people of my generation — according to CNBC, a growing number of millennials are struggling to save any money at all, nevermind enough for a down payment.

And it doesn't help that, as of 2018, US home prices are the least affordable since 2008, according to Attom Data Solutions.

I live in New Jersey, and looking for a home in a town with a good school district that's within a reasonable commuting distance to New York City is a tall order at any budget. According to the 2019 Best School Districts in New Jersey list from Niche, only a handful of towns within a 30-40 mile radius of NYC rank in the top 25 school districts. When you cross reference that list with the average sales price of homes in the area, affordability plummets.

After a year and a half of searching through half a dozen New Jersey towns, my husband and I are finally ready to close on our first home.

As a millennial, here's what I learned about buying a house that I wish I knew when I started the process.

SEE ALSO: 10 things people deal with in the city that people in the suburbs don't understand

1. Review your finances and talk with a mortgage broker before you start hunting

With websites like Zillow just a click away, it's easy to start shopping for a house immediately. But it can be helpful to get realistic by reviewing your finances and your credit score and talking with a mortgage broker first to see what you can actually afford with your income and lifestyle.

I became self-employed about a year before my husband and I started looking for a house, but our lender required that I have two years of self-employment before we could use my income for our mortgage. This meant we would be reliant on a single income to look for a home, which didn’t allow us to afford the towns we were looking to purchase in.

Our broker's advice at this point was invaluable, and while we could have purchased something, we decided to wait until we had a better story to tell through our finances. The numbers are the numbers, and we appreciated the candid conversations and wouldn't have known to wait had we not had a reputable mortgage broker to talk with.

2. Check your credit score

When you want to buy a home, your credit score is more important than ever. Sites like Credit Karma offer lets you see where you stand for free.

This way, you'll know if there's anything wild on your credit report, like a fraudulent credit card or outstanding utility bills from an old apartment, that you weren't aware of. These are things you should address before moving forward in your search.

3. Go to as many open houses as possible

We saw nearly a hundred homes, both with and without our agent. Every weekend, we would drive out of the city and hop from one open house to another.

Zillow is a great resource for finding potential homes, but until you see a house in person, you may not know if it's the right fit. For instance, a number of homes we viewed were seemingly perfect online but completely disappointing in person.

Lastly, you never know what you'll fall in love with — our new home was one of those open houses that we ended up visiting but perhaps wouldn’t have gone to see with our agent because it was priced outside of our budget.

It was only after visiting and talking with the agent that we were compelled to make an offer we were comfortable with. We wouldn’t have wanted to waste our agent's time, but were totally fine doing the legwork on our own.

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• Political book sales have jumped 57% this year, according to data from bookseller Barnes & Noble.
• State-specific data show that customers are divided along party lines on whether they prefer critical or favorable books on President Donald Trump.
• With only five exceptions, customers' tastes aligned with their states' votes in the 2016 presidential election.
• "Fear: Trump in the White House" was Barnes & Noble's fastest-selling title in over three years, selling more than one copy per second on its release day. 

Political book sales reached record highs in 2018, but customers are sharply divided on their preferences.

According to data released by bookseller Barnes & Noble, 2018 has seen a 57% jump in political book sales from the previous year.

The bookseller listed high-profile tell-alls including author Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury," and former FBI Director James Comey's "A Higher Loyalty" as its second- and third-best selling books, both of which are bombshell accounts of a chaotic administration.

Barnes & Noble said in the release that its top title, journalist Bob Woodward's "Fear: Trump in the White House," sold more than one copy per second on its release day, making it the company's fastest-selling book in over three years.

Though sales surged overall, state-specific data showed customer preference varies along party lines, with some exceptions. Generally, Trump-won states preferred books that were favorable to Trump, while states that went blue in 2016 preferred books that were critical of the president.

However, a map from Barnes & Noble shows that customers in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin flipped their book tastes away from their votes in the 2016 election.

The map of customer preferences is overwhelmingly similar to a map showing the 2016 Electoral College results, with the exceptions of Colorado, Nevada, and New Hampshire (all states that former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won) leaning toward flattering books and Trump-won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania now favoring books that are critical of Trump.

The data also found that customers in Florida, North Carolina, and Texas were the most likely to buy books supporting Trump, while critical books dominated in California, New York, and Massachusetts.

Throughout the year, the White House hit back at the most explosive allegations leveled in books that topped nonfiction bestseller lists. However, there is still a steady stream of upcoming titles landing before the end of the year from former campaign aides, administration members, and porn star Stormy Daniels. 

SEE ALSO: 15 books that have been written about the Trump White House

DON'T MISS: Stormy Daniels says she regrets 'body shaming' Trump by comparing his anatomy to 'the mushroom character in Mario Kart'

Join the conversation about this story »

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This is a preview of the Internet of Things (2018) research report from Business Insider Intelligence. To learn more about the IoT ecosystem, tech trends and industry forecasts, click here.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming how companies and consumers go about their days around the world. The technology that underlies this whole segment is evolving quickly, whether it’s the rapid rise of the Amazon Echo and voice assistants upending the consumer space, or growth of AI-powered analytics platforms for the enterprise market.

And Business Insider Intelligence is keeping its finger on the pulse of this ongoing revolution by conducting our second annual Global IoT Executive Survey, which provides us with critical insights on new developments within the IoT and explains how top-level perspectives are changing year-to-year. Our survey includes more than 400 responses from key executives around the world, including C-suite and director-level respondents.

Through this exclusive study and in-depth research into the field, Business Insider Intelligence details the components that make up the IoT ecosystem. We size the IoT market and use exclusive data to identify key trends in device installations and investment. And we profile the enterprise and consumer IoT segments individually, drilling down into the drivers and characteristics that are shaping each market.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• We project that there will be more than 55 billion IoT devices by 2025, up from about 9 billion in 2017.
• We forecast that there will be nearly $15 trillion in aggregate IoT investment between 2017 and 2025, with survey data showing that companies' plans to invest in IoT solutions are accelerating.
• The report highlights the opinions and experiences of IoT decision-makers on topics that include: drivers for adoption; major challenges and pain points; deployment and maturity of IoT implementations; investment in and utilization of devices; the decision-making process; and forward- looking plans.

In full, the report:

• Provides a primer on the basics of the IoT ecosystem.
• Offers forecasts for the IoT moving forward, and highlights areas of interest in the coming years.
• Looks at who is and is not adopting the IoT, and why.
• Highlights drivers and challenges facing companies that are implementing IoT solutions.

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• Sens. Marco Rubio and Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to Supermicro, the motherboard supplier named in a recent bombshell Bloomberg report on Chinese infiltration.
• Rubio and Blumenthal requested the company send information regarding microchips allegedly placed onto equipment by Chinese government officials that was then sold to tech giants like Apple and Amazon as well as government contractors.
• While Apple and Amazon have both strongly denied the report, Rubio and Blumenthal felt the importance of the issue demanded further investigation by Capitol Hill.
• Read the full letter below.

A bipartisan pair of senators requested more answers from Supermicro, the motherboard producer that an explosive report said sold equipment to major US tech companies that had been infiltrated by the Chinese government.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal sent a letter Tuesday to Supermicro's CEO, Charles Liang, asking for more information following a Bloomberg story that reported the company sold motherboards to Apple, Amazon, and the US government that contained microchips implanted by Chinese spies.

In turn, Bloomberg reported, these microchips could have given the Chinese government backdoor access to data on servers where the motherboards were installed.

"If this news report is accurate, the potential infiltration of Chinese backdoors could provide a foothold for adversaries and competitors to engage in commercial espionage and launch destructive cyber attacks," Rubio and Blumenthal wrote.

The pair added: "As Members of Congress, we are alarmed by any potential threats to national security and have a responsibility to ensure our nation’s sensitive networks are kept safe. We write to request information from Supermicro on these reported attempts to subvert its computer products to spy on the United States."

Both Apple and Amazon strongly denied the report, which Rubio and Blumenthal acknowledged. But they said the issues raised in the report were too important to simply accept the companies' statements.

"In The Information’s February 2017 article, Mr. Leng disclosed that 'thousands of customers' were using the same hardware. These customers deserve answers immediately," the letter said. "While large tech firms may have the financial resources and expertise to mitigate sophisticated cyber security threats or completely remove affected hardware, most companies do not. Nor do they have the information to act."

Bloomberg also reported Tuesday that a "major US telecom" also discovered compromised Supermicro equipment in August.

The letter from the senators follows concern from both sides of the aisle about the Bloomberg report. Rep. Adam Schiff, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Business Insider on Thursday that the Bloomberg report was another example of China's long-standing attempts to infiltrate the information structures of the US.

"The report that China sought to infiltrate the computer chip supply chain, if true, is deeply disturbing and the latest example of the lengths that Beijing will go to in order to steal America's official and commercial secrets," Schiff said in a statement.

Here's the full letter from Rubio and Blumenthal:

Dear Mr. Liang,

On October 4, 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published stunning allegations of sophisticated cyber espionage operations by the Chinese government purported to involve the tampering of computer hardware manufactured and distributed by Supermicro. If this news report is accurate, the potential infiltration of Chinese backdoors could provide a foothold for adversaries and competitors to engage in commercial espionage and launch destructive cyber attacks. As Members of Congress, we are alarmed by any potential threats to national security and have a responsibility to ensure our nation’s sensitive networks are kept safe. We write to request information from Supermicro on these reported attempts to subvert its computer products to spy on the United States.

Bloomberg reported that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army engaged in a sophisticated operation to insert malicious surveillance and data manipulation components onto server motherboards. Chinese intelligence agents reportedly deceived, bribed, and coerced Supermicro’s third-party manufacturers and subcontractors to alter motherboard designs. These added components—while appearing to be innocuous, common chips to an observer—would have been complex backdoors, and could quietly provide the Chinese government the ability to exfiltrate confidential data and bypass security controls on the nation’s most sensitive systems.

According to Bloomberg’s report, the infected servers were found in almost 30 companies, including important financial institutions, government contractors, and technology companies. Moreover, the operation was reportedly not found until Apple and Amazon detected abnormal network traffic and undocumented hardware components in audits of their networks and systems. WhenThe Information reported in February 2017 on Apple’s decision to end its contract with your company, Supermicro’s senior vice-president of technology, Tau Leng, told the publication that malicious firmware from an outside manufacturer was found and committed to an independent investigation.

We note that Supermicro, Apple, and Amazon have issued strong denials regarding the Bloomberg report. However, the nature of the claims raised alarms that must be comprehensively addressed. In The Information’s February 2017 article, Mr. Leng disclosed that “thousands of customers” were using the same hardware. These customers deserve answers immediately. While large tech firms may have the financial resources and expertise to mitigate sophisticated cyber security threats or completely remove affected hardware, most companies do not. Nor do they have the information to act.

We are alarmed about the dangers posed by backdoors, and take any claimed threat to the nation’s networks and supply chain seriously. These new allegations require thorough answers and urgent investigation for customers, law enforcement, and Congress. We ask that you provide responses to following questions by October 17, 2018:

1.)    When did Supermicro first become aware of reports regarding malicious hardware components and firmware in its computers and hardware? Has Supermicro ever found tampering of components or firmware that targeted its products?

2.)    Has Supermicro conducted an investigation of its chain of suppliers to identify any possible modifications or security issues with its products? If it has found tampering, has it severed ties with those suppliers?

3.)    If Supermicro has found or otherwise become aware of unaccounted-for modification on hardware or firmware, has it taken steps to remove the tampered product from the supply chain? 

4.)    When The Information reported in February 2017 that Apple had found compromised firmware, did Supermicro conduct any investigation into the potential infiltration of its supply chain as Mr. Leng had committed to do so? If so, what were the results of this investigation?

5.)    Has Supermicro cooperated with law enforcement in the United States to address such reports? If tampering is found, will you provide a list of potentially affected customers to U.S. authorities and provide information to customers?

6.)    Has Supermicro enacted screening measures or audits to assess its supply chain and detect and mitigate any such attempts to tamper with products?

7.)    If tampering is found, does Supermicro assess that such tampering could be mitigated based on firmware updates, software patches, configuration changes, or operating system defenses?

8.)    Has the Chinese government ever requested access to Supermicro’s confidential security information or sought to restrict information regarding the security of Supermicro’s products? 

Thank you for your attention to these important issues. We look forward to your response.

SEE ALSO: Lawmakers say that China's reported use of a microchip to target tech giants like Amazon and Apple shows the 'lengths that Beijing will go to in order to steal' America's secrets

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NOW WATCH: Inside the Trump 'MAGA' hat factory

• "First Man" screenwriter Josh Singer is known for making "based on true story" movies — "Spotlight,""The Post"— that really do recount what happened, without too many Hollywood embellishments.
• Singer told Business Insider what the challenges were of giving Neil Armstrong's story the same treatment.

When Hollywood needs a true story to be told on the big screen, it often turns to one guy to write the script: Josh Singer. 

And we don’t mean a movie “based on a true story.” We mean a real true story. And there is a difference.


For as long as there have been movies, the term “true story” has been used very loosely in Hollywood. To help move forward a plot or build more drama in a story, directors and screenwriters often embellish real events, or include moments that never happened. 


Jim Garrison’s memorable closing remarks in the trial scene in Oliver Stone’s “JFK?” Never happened.
 Iranians chasing a plane down the runway at the end of “Argo?” Never happened.


It’s extremely hard to not heighten true life stories a tad, because let’s face it, we want movies to be more exciting than real life. But Singer has found a way to tell gripping true stories for the screen without adding in tons of untrue elements. 


What’s his secret? It all comes down to the story and lots of research.

Starting with “Spotlight” in 2015 — which earned a best picture Oscar, and got Singer an original screenplay Oscar with director/cowriter Tom McCarthy — Singer has given audiences a glimpse of some of the most historic events and fascinating people in American history, with an accuracy to the account that even dazzles the people who were actually there. 

“Spotlight” set the stage, as the movie’s look inside the investigative journalist unit at The Boston Globe that uncovered child sex abuse by Boston Roman Catholic priests has been viewed as a modern-day “All the President’s Men.” And that might have been why Singer was then pegged to write last year's “The Post” (along with Liz Hannah), which looks inside The Washington Post as it publishes The Pentagon Papers. Now Singer takes us to the moon with “First Man” (opening in theaters on Friday). 

The movie, which is director Damien Chazelle's follow-up to 6-Oscar-winner “La La Land,” gives an intimate look at the events that led to astronaut Neil Armstrong becoming the first man to ever set foot on the moon thanks to the successful Apollo 11 flight.

Starring Ryan Gosling as Armstrong, Chazelle doesn’t go the route of “The Right Stuff” or “Apollo 13” in making the thrills of space travel the main focus (though there definitely is that). Instead, the focus is Armstrong himself, and how the deaths of some close to him leading up to Apollo 11 — particularly his daughter Karen, who died at age 2 — was a major burden he carried throughout the historic flight. 


“I was just knocked out by how much we don't know about Neil Armstrong," Singer told Business Insider. "The story of his daughter, I never knew that."

As Singer read through James R. Hansen's official biography of Armstrong, "First Man: the Life of Neil A. Armstrong," which the movie is based on, he couldn't get over how much loss Armstrong suffered in the years leading up to the Apollo 11 launch. Following Armstrong's daughter's passing in 1962 (from pneumonia, which was caused by her weakened state from a malignant tumor in her brain stem), Armstrong lost two close friends in the span of a year. Astronaut Elliot See died in a plane crash in 1966 and Armstrong's neighbor, Ed White, died in the Apollo 1 fire. Then Armstrong almost died manning Gemini 8.

With that, Singer and Chazelle had found their story for "First Man." It would be the emotional journey of a man who set out to do extraordinary things, and how much he was already dealing with. Then the challenge came of telling that personal story from the point of view of someone who gives little emotion.

"With a guy like Neil, who is so internal, how do you get under that?" Singer wondered. "How do you get inside what that feels like? It was a real challenge."

Singer would not have to shoulder the entire challenge alone. Chazelle planned to give the movie powerful imagery of space travel to coincide with Armstrong's internal struggle, including incredible visuals of the moon landing shot on Imax cameras. Then there's Gosling as Armstrong, who had already built a style of acting where he could give an emotional performance without saying much at all.

But Singer was still tasked with building a script that would be the road map for everyone to follow. And he admitted that at a few points during writing he fell in the trap of embellishing real-life moments, and paid the price for doing so.

He recalled the scene when Armstrong gets a phone call about the Apollo 1 fire, which killed all the astronauts on board, including his good friend Ed White.

"Literally Damien and I talked about mimicking what was done in 'Goodfellas' where De Niro slams the phone handle on the receiver after getting word that Joe Pesci's character was killed," Singer said.

He wrote the scene with Armstrong showing De Niro-like emotion over the news of his friend's death. He then gave it to the author of the Armstrong biography, James Hansen, to read.

"He said, 'Neil would never have done that!'" Singer recalled. "So we wound up having this moment where you see Neil go dead in the eyes and you look down and he's literally broken the glass he was holding and he's bleeding. It's like you see how hard he's trying to contain himself in that moment. And with that Jim said, 'Okay, maybe I could buy that.'"

Throughout the four years of researching and writing the script, Singer had to do a balancing act of making "First Man" a thrilling story but also true to those who knew Armstrong. He spent months with people involved at NASA at the time of the space race, former astronauts, and spoke to the Armstrong family.

"I just felt a huge responsibility to get it right," he said.

But he and Chazelle also wanted to show just how hard it was to get to the moon.

"The myth is that these were superheroes that got there easily," Singer said. "The truth is this is actually very hard and they were ordinary men and women who sacrificed a ton to get there."

Singer said that was one of the big things that upset him most about the controversy around the movie about not having a scene where the American flag is planted on the Moon. That specific shot is not needed, Singer said, because the entire movie is a look at patriotic sacrifice.

"To be perfectly honest, I can understand why people who haven't seen the film are questioning why that isn't there, but if you see the film you understand why," he said. "The film is so deeply patriotic to begin with it's not necessary. We also don't have the call to Nixon. We're trying to get under the myth."

And those who know the history of American space travel and Armstrong's story believe "First Man" has done just that.

Singer recalled the reaction of one well-known space expert, Robert Pearlman, after seeing the movie.

"When he saw Neil crying after his daughter's death he said he realized he was going to have to totally rethink everything he knew about Neil Armstrong," Singer said.

Singer said the best feeling about doing these "based on a true story" scripts is that the attention to detail is so refined that even those close to the material get something out of it.

"To get to that level of detail and get it right, that to me is the ultimate," Singer said. "It can function as more than a movie, it becomes a contribution to how we think about something. Whether it's the Catholic Church or journalism or how we think about space."

SEE ALSO: 3 great TV shows to watch on Netflix this week, including a new season of "Big Mouth"

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NOW WATCH: A top movie actor reveals how he learns different accents

Michael Jordan made less than $100 million as the NBA's greatest player of all time but is now a member of Forbes' list of billionaires with an estimated net worth of $1.65 billion.

Since Jordan retired 15 years ago, he has built the most successful and lucrative career we've ever seen from a former athlete.

From sprawling houses to custom planes to his own golf course, he's clearly enjoying life after hoops.

Jordan still makes more money than LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, or any other active player.

He reportedly makes $100 million a year from Nike royalties alone. LeBron is estimated to make less than $90 million a year, including salary and endorsements.

Read more: Michael Jordan still makes $100 million a year off his sneaker deal

Source: Forbes

That's way more than he made in salary while he played. He earned $93.8 million TOTAL in NBA salary, and $63.3 million of that came in his final two seasons with the Chicago Bulls.

Source: Spotrac and Basketball-Reference

• Since launching the Longevity Fund seven years ago, Laura Deming has had a one-track mind.
• Her focus: finding investments in aging research, particularly in areas where what's happening today wasn't possible a few years ago. "We should expect to find the most exciting things and the most novel things in that subsection," Deming said.
• On Wednesday, her first class of companies out of the Age1 accelerator is graduating. The six companies include one focused on hibernation and how humans could tap into animals' "superpowers" as well as a spin-out from a regenerative medicine lab that's focused on reversing arthritis.

For the past seven years, 24-year-old Laura Deming has been in the Bay Area on the hunt for scientists and entrepreneurs working to keep us living healthier and longer.

Deming's Longevity Fund manages $37 million, and to date the investments she's made have since gone on to raise a combined $500 million. One of her investments, Unity Biotechnology, went public in 2018 and entered human trials in June. 

On Wednesday, her first class of companies out of the Age1 accelerator is graduating. The six companies include one focused on hibernation and how humans could tap into animals' "superpowers" and a spin-out from a regenerative medicine lab that's focused on reversing arthritis. Others, like Spring Discovery are aiming to speed up the process of discovering new aging therapies.

The field of aging research is wide, and there's any number of ways to tackle both the causes and effects of getting old.

So when looking for investments, Deming told Business Insider that there's one key criterion she's interested in: Who's working on aging research that's possible to do today, thanks to a new technology or scientific breakthrough that wouldn't have been possible a year ago?

For example, gene therapy, one-time treatments that are designed to modify diseases, still seemed like a far-off future about a decade ago. Now, there's an FDA-approved gene therapy available to treat a hereditary form of blindness.

"That opens a whole new world of different ways to go after aging-related diseases," Deming said.

That's played out in one of the Age1 accelerator companies, Fauna Bio. Fauna is looking at animals that hibernate — bears, even hamsters — looking at their genomes to determine what aspects of the animals' biology allows them to lower their body temperatures and sleep for months at a time and still be able to hit the ground running the day they wake up. If the same could be mimicked in humans — possibly from medication that already exists — that could be useful in emergency situations, like a heart attack, to preserve the body until the patient gets to the hospital.

Much further down the line, harnessing hibernation could be a way to help us in space travel, preserving astronauts while they travel to space on their way to, say, Mars.

The ability to sequence the genomes of animals quicker and at a lower cost has only been possible in the past few years as the price of sequencing has dropped dramatically.

It could be key in helping people heal after heart attacks, and maybe even travel through space so they come out the other end healthy.

"We should expect to find the most exciting things and the most novel things, in that subsection," Deming said.

See also:

• 'It changes the game': The head of health and life sciences at Intel breaks down how 5G will affect healthcare
• A new way to tackle aging could have the potential to upend a $20 billion market
• A scientist who studies aging reveals how restricting calories might offer protection against age-related diseases

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Beware one huge mistake investors often make when the economy is at a crossroads, says Charles Schwab’s investment chief

• 27% percent of potential first-time cannabis consumers said they'd try marijuana in place of beer, according to a survey from consulting firm A.T. Kearney.
• Some 54% of US and Canadian survey respondents said they'd try marijuana products when it becomes legal.
• Beermakers don't seem to be worried. 

A surprising number of potential first-time marijuana users would use the drug in place of an evening beer.

That's according to consulting firm A.T. Kearney, which on Wednesday published a report looking at consumer attitudes around the increasingly mainstream cannabis industry.

Some 27% percent of survey respondents in Canada and the US said they'd try a marijuana product in place of beer — a potentially worrying sign for beverage makers.

And in a promising sign for the cannabis industry, 54% of US and Canadian survey respondents said they'd try marijuana products — by either smoking, vaporizing, eating, or using it in skincare or cosmetic products — when it becomes legal. Canada is set to be the first G7 country to legalize marijuana at the federal level. 

Beer giants don't seem worried, though they are certainly bullish on capturing some of the rapidly-expanding marijuana market.

"We see no evidence whatsoever, especially in the United States, in the legal states, of alcohol cannibalization," Rob Sands, the CEO of Constellation Brands — the beermaker behind popular brands like Corona and Modelo — said on a recent call with investors.

Some data has shown, however, that in states with legal marijuana, binge drinking rates have declined. 

Constellation, the third-largest beer company in the US, paid $4 billion in August for a 38% stake of Canopy Growth, the largest publicly traded marijuana grower, to develop marijuana-infused beverages and other products. It's the largest corporate investment in a marijuana cultivator to date.

"We're not playing defense, we're playing offense," Sands said on the call. "The whole market is going to be explosive."

Constellation isn't the only beermaker to pour money into legal marijuana in recent months.

Lagunitas, Heineken's popular California-based brand, has developed a hoppy, THC-infused sparkling water. Molson Coors recently entered a joint venture with Hexo, a publicly-traded cultivator, to produce marijuana-infused beer for the Canadian market, among other deals.

Other big retail companies, like Walmart, have signaled they are exploring the market for CBD, or cannabidiol, products. CBD is a non-psychoactive component of marijuana that's linked to a range of health benefits but can't get you high.

In an encouraging sign for retailers and other consumer packaged goods companies eyeing the cannabis industry, A.T. Kearney found that 54% of survey respondents wouldn't change their perception of the brands if they released a cannabis product.

"The survey clearly demonstrates the viability of the market for cannabis across multiple consumer segments — CPGs and retailers focused on health and wellness, snacking, functional food and beverage, and beverage [and] alcohol need to have a perspective on how they will approach the cannabis opportunity," Randy Burt, a partner in A.T. Kearney's consumer and retail practice, said in a statement. 

Overall, consumers are most likely to try cannabis in packaged food products, according to A.T. Kearney. 

Read more of our cannabis industry coverage:

• Hedge fund legend Leon Cooperman is investing in the marijuana industry — and it's another sign the sector is heating up
• Famous short seller Andrew Left is creating a cannabis fund. He explains why the market's not in a bubble, but does need to 'chill out'
• 'The new avocado toast': A former Coca-Cola and AB InBev executive reveals why every food and beverage boardroom needs to be talking about cannabis
• Some of the hottest companies in the booming cannabis sector are going on hiring sprees — and it shows how competition among the biggest players is ramping up
• The rising stars of marijuana's investment scene that everyone from Wall Street to Silicon Valley should know

SEE ALSO: CEO of the beverage giant behind Corona: Cannabis is one of the 'most significant' growth opportunities of the next decade

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NOW WATCH: 3 compelling reasons why we haven't found aliens yet

• While artificial intelligence is all the rage, few big US funds are testing it out, according to a new report from Fidelity. 
• Investors have high hopes for how AI can augment, not replace, investment activities. 
• Investors' complacency could be part of the problem, said one asset management executive.

Everyone's talking about artificial intelligence – but big US investment funds aren't yet keen to try it out, according to a new study. 

About 71% of US-based firms are not currently testing or considering how AI and advanced analytics can be applied to their investments, said a Fidelity survey of over 900 institutional investors published on Thursday. However, a similar percentage of US investors agreed that AI and technological advances will augment humans’ traditional investment roles by 2025.

The results show that even though artificial intelligence is touted for its potential to transform the workplace, many big US firms are slow to embrace the technology in their day-to-day. 

Complacency with the status-quo could be one reason, said Jeff Mitchell, chief investment officer of Fidelity’s institutional asset management arm. 

“What people are saying is in the Americas, they still haven’t found a way to understand how it’ll come into the process, but they’re confident it will be part of the enhancement of what we deliver going forward," he said. 

Mitchell noted a gap between investors’ internal use of AI and their high expectations for AI’s promises. Globally, 69% of funds expect to use AI for asset allocation in the future, while nearly the same number plan to use it for performance and risk evaluations, the Fidelity research said. 

Mitchell added that he was “shocked” by how US investors lag their international counterparts. While more than three-quarters of domestic investors aren’t considering AI use, only one-third of institutions globally are not.

Fidelity counts itself among the asset managers embracing AI. The firm is using the technology to simply its investment processes and communications, he said. 

Others include AB, which built an artificial-intelligence-powered virtual assistant for fixed-income trading and other responsibilities at the $500 billion money manager. The bot, which launched in early 2018, runs on Symphony. The financial workflow application also hosts a program called APOLLO.ai, which uses AI to sift through data sources to show custom content and analytics.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Ray Dalio says the economy looks like 1937 and a downturn is coming in about two years

• Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman may have been involved in a plot to lure journalist and prominent Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi from his home in Virginia to Saudi Arabia, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday night, citing US intelligence intercepts.
• Additionally, the intercepted intelligence raises questions about whether the Trump administration was obligated to warn Khashoggi that he may have been in danger.
• Khashoggi, a former adviser to senior officials in the Saudi government who had been living in the US, entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to secure official documents. He has not been seen since, leading to speculation he could have been kidnapped or killed inside the consulate.
• The crown prince last Wednesday told Bloomberg News that Turkish authorities were welcome to search the consulate. "We have nothing to hide," he said.

New reports published on Wednesday indicate that the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman may have been involved in a plot to lure journalist and prominent Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi from Virginia back to Saudi Arabia.

Khashoggi, a former adviser to senior officials in the Saudi government who had been living in the US, entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to secure official documents. The 59-year-old has not been seen since, leading to speculation that he could have been kidnapped or killed inside the consulate.

Turkish officials have accused the Saudis of killing Khashoggi and withholding evidence that could provide clues about his disappearance. Surveillance footage recorded on October 2 outside the consulate in Istanbul appears to show Khashoggi walking into the building. There is no known footage of him leaving the consulate.

The crown prince last Wednesday told Bloomberg that Turkish authorities were welcome to search the consulate. "We have nothing to hide," he reportedly said.

The New York Times cited an unnamed senior official who said Turkish authorities believe Khashoggi was killed on orders from the "highest levels" of the royal court.

A former US official told The Washington Post that the operation may have involved sending a 15-person squad on two private aircrafts that entered and departed from Turkey at different times. The alleged operation resembled a "rendition," typically used to remove someone from one country and bring them to another for interrogation.

Months earlier, Khashoggi had received numerous phone calls from senior Saudi officials close to Prince Mohammed who offered him protection and other benefits if he returned to Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi told friends that he was wary of the offers, and believed the Saudi government could not be trusted to keep him safe, The Post reported.

The Saudi ambassador to the US on Sunday told The Washington Post it would be "impossible" for consulate employees to kill Khashoggi "and we wouldn't know about it."

Should the Trump administration have warned Khashoggi if he was in danger?

US intelligence officials are obligated to warn people — American citizens or otherwise — if they discover a threat to a person's life or safety, according to the US Intelligence Community Directive 191, also known as "Duty to Warn."

Khashoggi was a US resident, adding to speculation that the US may have failed to adequately respond to potential threats against Khashoggi. That question gained additional significance in light of the close relationship between White House adviser Jared Kushner, who is President Donald Trump's son-in-law, and Mohammed bin Salman.

The prince has reportedly bragged about having Kushner "in his pocket."

According to The Post, it was unclear to officials with knowledge of the intel if Saudi agents had discussed harming Khashoggi as part of efforts to lure him back to Saudi Arabia.

“Capturing him, which could have been interpreted as arresting him, would not have triggered a duty-to-warn obligation,” a former official told the newspaper. “If something in the reported intercept indicated that violence was planned, then, yes, he should have been warned.”

SEE ALSO: A Saudi Arabian journalist is missing and Turkey believes he was killed by his own government

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NOW WATCH: What marijuana looks like under the microscope

• The Facebook engineer who wrote a memo decrying what he called the company's "intolerant" liberal culture has quit.
• Brian Amerige sparked a firestorm at Facebook when he attacked the company's "political monoculture."
• In a memo to his colleagues, he said he "disagree[s] too strongly with where we're heading on these issues to watch what happens next."
• Business Insider has obtained Amerige's memo, and is republishing it in full below.

Brian Amerige, the Facebook engineer who sparked a firestorm at Facebook with his criticism of what he called a "political monoculture" that is "intolerant" of conservatism, is leaving the company.

In a lengthy, 1,026-word internal memo to fellow Facebook employees, Amerige, the engineering manager of product accessibility, explained his decision to leave, decrying the company's political "monoculture" and PR strategy of "appeasement," while professing his love for Facebook's "mission."

In a year during which the internet industry has been rocked by problems ranging from privacy scandals to the spread of misinformation, and as the politically fractured state of society has spread into even the most profitable tech companies, Amerige's farewell letter encapsulates the frustrations and challenges that Facebook is contending with. 

While it criticises Facebook's "culture" and leadership, it also discusses less politicised issues Facebook is facing, from the decline in sharing in Facebook's main app to team structure.

"My departure isn’t because I think these issues are intractable. These problems can be solved — just not by me, nor anymore, at least," Amerige wrote. "I care too deeply about our role in supporting free expression and intellectual diversity to even whole-heartedly attempt the product stuff anymore, and that’s how I know it’s time to go."

Business Insider has obtained Brian Amerige's memo and has republished it, in full, below (emphasis his):

I’m leaving Facebook

I’m sad to say that Friday, October 12th will be my last day at Facebook.

This was a difficult decision to make because I love so much about this company, our mission, and our leaders. But I’ve been thinking about this for almost a  year and though a certain leak delayed me a bit, I know it’s time for me to move on.

There’s a lot to say about why, and this post certainly won’t cover it all. Unlike many others who’ve been here for a while, I”m not leaving because “it’s time for something new.” I believe that it takes a long time to o good work, and novelty isn’t my kind of thing: change is good when it’s change for the better. I’ve changed teams once in my 6.5 years at Facebook.

Why

I’m leaving because I’m burnt out on Facebook, our strategy and our culture.

Strategically, we’ve taken a stance on how to balance offensive and hateful speech with free expression. We’ve accepted the inevitability of government regulation. And we’ve refused to defend ourselves in the press. Our policy strategy is pragmatism — not clear, implementable long-term principles — and our PR strategy is appeasement — not morally earned pride and self defense.

Culturally, it’s difficult to have meaningful conversations about any of this because we’re a political monoculture, and these are political issues. And while we’ve made some progress in FB’ers for Political Diversity (which is approaching 750 members now), and while I’m pleased to say that senior company leadership does take this seriously (as you will hopefully soon see), we have a very long way to go.

To that end, while I remain as in love as ever with our mission and my colleague’s nearly-always good intentions, I disagree too strongly with we’re we’re heading on these issues to watch what happens next. These issues hang over my head each morning, and I don’t want to spend all of my time fighting about them.

Our product is also at a crossroads (and has been for years) as sharing in the Facebook app continues to dwindle. The pivot to Stories will hopefully help, but I’m disappointed by how reactive our future appears to be. Ultimately, I’ve spent the bulk of my time at Facebook trying to build a stronger product culture. From tech leading Paper, to starting and leading the team that built our UI foundation (FIG, now FDS), I wanted Facebook to be a place where people with great product sense, focus, intuition and a little obsessiveness about quality were attracted, belonged, and were rewarded. I think we made progress, but the headwinds have been and continue to be strong, and it shows in our future-looking product strategy and the relative rarity of strong product thinkers at Facebook.

My departure isn’t because I think these issues are intractable. These problems can be solved — just not by me, nor anymore, at least. I care too deeply about our role in supporting free expression and intellectual diversity to even whole-heartedly attempt the product stuff anymore, and that’s how I know it’s time to go.

Be Proud

Still, this company gets so much right, and you all have a lot to be proud of. The density of talent at Facebook has always been one of my favorite parts of working here, and there are simply too many incredibly people I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know and building something with for me to list. My teams have always felt like family to me, and I”m going to miss them terribly.

Beyond the people, I would be remiss if I didn’t emphasize two aspects of our culture that are especially good: our scrappiness, and how we think about individual contributor roles.

Be Scrappy. I’ve always understood “move fast” to really mean “be scrappy,” and what a pleasure it’s been to watch how +28,000 employees haven’t substantially changed that. I don’t think “move fast” applies to product direction, design standards, or engineering quality. It’s about process. As the company continues to grow, you will increasingly find that most people in any given room are new and don’t necessarily know that it’s ok to say “sorry, I don’t understand any of what you just said” or that they’re supposed to ask “Do we really need to wait for the monthly review?” These kinds of questions are our secret weapon against becoming a bureaucracy where innovative people don’t want to work. So keep asking “why?” about everything related to how we work.

Roles and Responsibility. The way we think about team roles is better than anywhere else I’ve seen. We let ICs truly lead, we incentivize transitions to and from management for the right reasons, and we let teams figure out who does what with deference to strengths instead of functional titles. We could still do better (particularly around how senior ICs integrate with director+ level decisions), but this way of thinking is the industry leading and has made Facebook a very special place for me, as something of a hybrid between engineering, product and design.

What’s Next

My professional purpose has always been to “amplify human capability and raise standards,” and while I’m proud to say I’ve done a little of both at Facebook, I”m excited to focus more intensely on this going forward. I’m starting a company with a good friend of mine, Alex Epstein, at the intersection of applied philosophy (epistemology, specifically) and technology.

I don’t know if leaving Facebook affords me one parting word of advice, but I have one for you anyway: I want to encourage you all to believe in yourselves more. In the value your products create for the world. In your own product sense and instinct when they contradict the data (which we’re often too confident in). In your ability to create something people love. And in your perspective when no one else agrees…especially when you’re afraid to share it. The truth does not emerge from averages, but your ability to reason lets you glimpse it — stand by it, defend it, and be proud of it. Everything else will take care of itself.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at rprice@businessinsider.com, WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

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• Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe reportedly had a tense standoff after Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel for the Russia investigation.
• The two men reportedly urged each other to recuse themselves from the Russia probe.
• During one exchange, Rosenstein is said to have pointed to a picture of McCabe wearing a political campaign T-shirt supporting his wife's run for Virginia state Senate.
• McCabe in turn criticized Rosenstein and pointed to a memo he wrote for President Donald Trump, in which he criticized FBI Director James Comey and added justification for Trump's firing of Comey.

A rift between deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe ran deep after Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel over the Russia investigation, according to a Washington Post report published Wednesday.

After Mueller was appointed in May 2017, McCabe was summoned for a meeting that included the special counsel and Rosenstein, current and former officials said to The Post. During this tense meeting, Rosenstein and McCabe reportedly cited several reasons why the other ought to recuse himself from the Russia probe.

Some of the details of the meeting are disputed, but one person familiar with the situation said Rosenstein referenced a picture of McCabe wearing a T-shirt supporting his wife's campaign for the Virginia state Senate race in 2015. Critics, namely President Donald Trump, have railed against the McCabe's and alleged that their ties to the Democratic Party tainted the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails.

McCabe brought documents from FBI ethics officials that claimed he followed ethics rules, according to two people cited in The Post.

But another person denied that the dispute was over a T-shirt and claimed that McCabe's statements following the controversial firing of FBI director James Comey were scrutinized by officials.

After Comey was abruptly fired, McCabe wrote a motivational memo to staffers and urged them to "hang in there."

"As men and women of the FBI, we are at our best when times are tough," McCabe wrote in January. "Please stay focused on the mission, keep doing great work, be good to each other and we will get through this together."

"We all miss him," McCabe added, referring to Comey, "and I know that he misses us."

As Rosenstein argued his case, McCabe reportedly pulled out the deputy attorney general's memo that Trump used to justify his firing of Comey. Legal experts have argued that this memo, which criticized Comey's handling of the Clinton investigation, was the catalyst for Comey's firing.

"Andy was angry," a person familiar with the events said to The Post.

McCabe was fired in March, one day before his retirement date, after an internal investigation on unauthorized media disclosures surrounding the FBI's probe of Clinton's emails. Rosenstein is currently the acting attorney general for Mueller's investigation, despite rumors that Trump has been weighing the possibility of replacing him.

"Well, we're going to see what happens," Trump said to Fox News host Shannon Bream on Wednesday night. "Everybody's working together."

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Hello! Here's what's happening on Thursday.

1. Hurricane Michael weakened to a Category 1 storm leaving at least one dead and hundreds of thousands without power. It made landfall in Floridaas the strongest hurricane to hit the US in nearly 50 yearsand the third-strongest ever.

2. A new poll finds the UK public increasingly want a soft Brexit. Supporters of this form of Brexit say it is the best way of preserving the contested Irish border and ensuring frictionless trade with Europe.

3. China allows for massive re-education camps for Muslim minorities after denying the camps exist. Regional authorities in China revised a local law to encourage the existence of "re-education centers" for its persecuted Uighur ethnic minority.

4. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google lost a collective $172 billion in value. The stock market decline on Wednesday hit the biggest tech stocks particularly hard.

5. Report indicates the Saudi Crown Prince ordered operation to lure missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi into Saudi Arabia. Intercepted intelligence points to his hand in the plot. 

6. Elon Musk denied a report that James Murdoch has been tapped as the next chairman of Tesla. Musk has been forced to vacate the role as part of a settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that is also seeing him pay a $20 million fine over his abortive effort to take Tesla private.

7. A strong earthquake rocked Indonesia's popular island of Bali. The country is still reeling from a devastating magnitude-7.5 earthquake and subsequent tsunami on the island of Sulawesi, which killed nearly 2,000 people and displaced thousands.

8. A Google linked executive and a former US politician have dropped out of a project to build a $500 billion Saudi megacity. Members of the project's advisory board are distancing themselves from the organization after the reported murder of a dissident Saudi journalist.

9. US President Donald Trump suggested the world's climate may actually be "fabulous" despite an ominous UN report warning of looming disaster. Trump has previously called climate change a "hoax," despite widespread acknowledgment from the scientific community. 

10. A man accused of plotting to put a Barbie doll bomb on a flight from Sydney has been sentenced to death in Iraq. The brothers of the man pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges in Australia in May.

And finally...

Early videos of Hurricane Michael reveal the scale of the storm's destruction in the Florida Panhandle

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• Hurricane Michael weakened to a tropical storm early Thursday morning as it moved across central Georgia with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph.
• Hours earlier, it made landfall in Florida as the strongest hurricane to hit the US in nearly 50 years and the third-strongest ever.
• Officials reported at least two storm-related fatalities. A man in Greensboro, Florida, was killed when a tree fell on his house, a spokesperson for the Gadsden County sheriff said. An 11-year-old child was killed in Seminole County, Georgia, while the storm moved through the state Wednesday night, a local emergency services official said.
• Hundreds of thousands of electricity customers were without power as of 6 p.m. ET Wednesday night. According to the US Energy Information Administration.

Hurricane Michael weakened to a tropical storm early Thursday morning while churning across central Georgia with maximum sustained winds of about 60 mph. Hours earlier, it made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane near Mexico Beach, Florida.

Storm flooding leveled off along the Gulf Coast as of 2 a.m. ET, the National Hurricane Center said. Tropical storm conditions were being felt in parts of central and southeastern Georgia.

The storm is expected to fan out over portions of eastern Georgia and the southernmost portion of South Carolina later Thursday morning.

Officials reported at least one storm-related fatality, a man in Greensboro, Florida, was killed when a tree fell on top of his home, a spokesperson for the Gadsden County sheriff said. An 11-year-old child was killed in Seminole County, Georgia, while the storm moved through the state Wednesday night, WTOC reported citing the Emergency Management Agency director Travis Brooks.

Hundreds of thousands of electricity customers were without power as of 6 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday night. The US Energy Information Administration said about 388,000 customers in Florida, 46,000 customers in Georgia, and 45,000 customers in Alabama were in the dark as the storm moved inland.

Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama issued a state-wide state of emergency on Monday"in anticipation of wide-spread power outages, wind damage, and debris produced by high winds and heavy rain associated with Hurricane Michael."

Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia issued an emergency declaration for 92 counties in the southern part of that state. "The emergency declaration is effective for seven days and makes all state resources available to local governments and entities within the impacted area of the hurricane," his office said.

Michael is likely to dump heavy rain over Florida, Alabama, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Some of those areas are still working to recover from Hurricane Florence.

A National Weather Service map shows when winds are likely to arrive in various states:

Forecasters said storm-force winds are possible in areas of southeast Virginia, northeast North Carolina and the Delmarva Peninsula when Michael moves off the mid-Atlantic coast late Thursday or early Friday.

The storm had picked up steam as it sped across the Gulf of Mexico toward the Florida Panhandle. When its eye hit Florida's Gulf Coast on Wednesday afternoon, the storm had sustained winds of 155 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center, putting it just shy of a Category 5 hurricane.

Michael's minimum central pressure — a key measure of hurricane strength — was measured at 919 millibars when it made landfall. That makes Michael the third-strongest hurricane to ever hit the US and the strongest in nearly 50 years.

Central pressure is the measure of how much the atmosphere in the middle of a storm weighs. Lower central pressure indicates a stronger storm. Michael's measurement indicates it's more intense than Hurricane Andrew, which hit Florida in 1992 with a pressure of 922 millibars, and Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005 when it hit with a pressure of 920 millibars.

Normal air pressure is about 1,010 millibars; when central pressure is significantly lower than that, things become more turbulent, with more air movement and wind kicking up.

Though wind speed is the basis for hurricane categories, central pressure is actually a better measure of damage that a hurricane will cause, a study published last year in the journal Nature Communications found.

Michael was a monster storm by wind speed around the time it made landfall. It had sustained winds of 155 mph, meaning it wasn't from a Category 5 storm — a Category 4 hurricane has sustained winds of up to 156 mph, and Category 5 is 157 mph and above.

There has been only one storm with higher sustained wind speeds this far north in the Gulf of Mexico: Hurricane Camille in 1969.

As the Tallahassee office of the National Weather Service said on Twitter earlier Wednesday: "If you're not sheltered in place now, you need to be!"

READ MORE: All of our coverage of Hurricane Michael

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NOW WATCH: Most hurricanes that hit the US come from the same exact spot in the world