Axios

The Atlantic comes across a new analysis that details how automation is going to impact jobs in industries such as food preparation and office support and breaks down which metropolitan areas will be most impacted. It's not the expected Rust Belt manufacturing cities, but growing places in the Sun Belt like Las Vegas, El Paso and Orlando.

Why this matters: The study shows the massive impact automation will have. "[A]lmost all large American metropolitan areas may lose more than 55 percent of their current jobs because of automation in the next two decades," the study's authors conclude, according to the Atlantic.

Tony Fadell, best known as one of the creators of the iPod and later co-founder and CEO of Nest, is joining the advisory council of Magna, a Canadian auto parts supplier and manufacturer, he told several media outlets.

What it means: Over the last few years, there's been an increasing interest in the next generation of vehicles, including a boom in development of self-driving technology. And with Silicon Valley now in the race along established automakers, companies like Magna are looking to bring in the needed expertise.

Fadell will be joined by former Ford CTO Paul Mascarenas, and MIT mechanical engineering professor Ian Hunter, along with three others. Fadell has shown a growing interest in automotive in the last couple of years, quietly helping found Actev Motors, a startup that built an electric go-kart.

What policy challenges are posed by the rise of virtual reality? Republican Rep. Darrell Issa offered one answer at a Wednesday event in honor of the launch of a congressional caucus devoted to VR and its ilk:

"So, why do we need this caucus? Because we're going to start asking the question of, 'Can somebody get their pilot's license with 75, 80, 90 percent of the time being a virtual reality?' Can we in fact create better doctors with a lot less time over a human being and a lot more time … [using] a simulator as we would call it today? Government's going to have to be creative in understanding that."

There's more: Panelists at the event highlighted issues as wide ranging as privacy and how to regulate commerce in virtual worlds.

Why it matters: Virtual and augmented reality has drawn billions of investment dollars in recent years.

Snapchat has faced some skepticism from advertisers, especially after Instagram blatantly copied one of its main features. But it might have a new convincing argument: Its valuable young users can't be reached elsewhere.

Snapchat faithful: During the fourth quarter of last year, 35% of Snapchat's daily users in the U.S. don't check Facebook on that day, 46% can't be found on Instagram, and 61% aren't watching YouTube on a given day, according to data from mobile analytics company App Annie published by Bloomberg. During that quarter, Snapchat had 60 million daily active users in the U.S. and Canada.

Why it matters: Snapchat has faced a lot of criticism for not having as many users as Facebook, but this third-party report adds to its argument that its users are nevertheless incredibly valuable and engaged.

Lawyers for Google's former self-driving car unit showed internal Uber emails Wednesday that it says bolster its case that former executive Anthony Levandowski was conspiring to steal trade secrets before he left Waymo.

Why this matters: The parties are in court Wednesday trying to convince a federal judge to halt Uber's work on self-driving cars. In arguing for an injunction, Waymo lawyers argued that Uber and Levandowski devised a plan to come up with a company for Uber to later buy. Uber did later purchase Otto, a self-driving truck company where Levandowski was a founder.

Long gone are the days of unpaid internships, at least at these 25 companies who are paying interns more than what the average American earns. Tech and finance interns in particular — including at Google, Bloomberg, BlackRock, and Facebook — earn more per month than the average American, according to data released by Glassdoor Tuesday.

Sprint said it added 42,000 monthly subscribers in the first quarter of 2017 and continued to cut costs to narrow its losses, which it says gives the company the luxury of being patient when evaluating potential merger partners.

The No. 4 national wireless carrier has struggled to compete against larger rivals, fueling speculation that it will seek to merge with No. 3 carrier T-Mobile now that the FCC's quiet period for M&A discussions has ended.

Apple hasn't given a figure for Apple Watch sales, but it did give a way to figure out a ballpark estimate. On a conference call with analysts, CEO Tim Cook said that if the Apple Watch, along with Beats and AirPods headphones, were a stand-alone business, they would have revenue roughly equal to that of a Fortune 500 company.

That means that the business is likely greater than $5 billion, since the No. 500 company on the most recent Fortune 500 list had revenue of $5.1 billion.

Cook also noted that Apple Watch sales last quarter were double those of a year earlier. As for how many Apple Watches that amounts to, Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin estimates Apple sold about 3.2 million last quarter.

Why it matters: That's the clearest look yet we've had at the size of the Apple Watch business.

Update: Later in the call, Cook said that the business would be "well into" the Fortune 500, suggesting the watch and headphone business could be even bigger than $5 billion.

Earlier: Apple posted quarterly earnings that topped expectations, but iPhone sales were less than expected.

Apple reported quarterly earnings that exceeded expectations, however its sales of 50.7 million iPhones was down slightly from last year and somewhat less than many analysts were expecting.

Overall, its quarterly revenue matched expectations, at $52.9 billion roughly matched what analysts were expecting. Net income topped $11 billion, or $2.10 per diluted share, ahead of expectations of around $2.01, according to Zacks.

Greater China was the geographic weak spot, with revenue down 14 percent from a year ago, with all other regions showing growth (and double-digit growth except for Japan).

Here are some other key stats for the quarter:

• Mac sales (units): 4.2 million
• iPad sales (units): 8.9 million
• Services revenue: $7.0 billion

For the current quarter, Apple said to expect revenue of between $43.5 billion and $45.5 billion and gross profit margins between 37.5 percent and 38.5 percent. Analysts had been targeting revenue of around $45 billion, according to Zacks.

The bottom line: Even though iPhone sales didn't meat the rosiest of projections, Apple had a pretty good quarter overall with other products and services revenue picking up the slack. However, it wasn't a blockbuster and shares traded slightly lower in initial after-hours trading after the report.

Facebook is grappling with potential bias against its female engineers' work, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal on two studies of the code submitted by female employees at the social network.

Last fall, an unnamed female engineer analyzed internal data and found that women received 35% more rejections of their code than men. This prompted Jay Parikh, Facebook's head of infrastructure, to conduct his own study, though he attributed the gaps to ranking and experience, not gender. Facebook told the Journal that the engineer's study used incomplete data.

What this means: Even assuming that Parikh's study and conclusion are more accurate, it's not good news for Facebook as it suggests that women aren't rising up the ranks at the same rate as men and that there aren't enough female senior engineers. And this isn't isolated to Facebook—women and underrepresented minorities across the tech industry still only make up a very small number of technical and senior roles at companies.

United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz testified in front of the House Transportation Committee during a hearing on airline customer service that was largely prompted by the forced removal of Dr. David Dao from a United flight last month, which Munoz called "a serious breach of public trust." Munoz promised repeatedly that the company would do better in the future:

• "If we break it, it is incumbent upon us to fix it."
• "We had a horrible failure three weeks ago. It is not who we are. It is not this company."
• "Our actions will speak indefinitely longer than our words. We will do better."

Microsoft used a New York event Tuesday to launch a new salvo in the battle over classroom computing. It debuted a more constrained version of Windows, known as Windows 10 S, that focuses on new-style Windows apps and aims to some of the fast boot-up and easy maintenance that have made Chromebooks so popular in schools.

Why it matters: The school market, while highly price competitive, has long been strategically important as it serves as the introduction to a new generation of computer users. Those who use a Mac or iPad may grow up with a lifelong Apple affinity, while Chromebooks teach students they can get most of what they need from the cloud. It's just as important to Microsoft for Windows to have a healthy future.

In many ways this tends to be one of Apple's least telling quarters. The new iPhones are still several months out and the old ones have been on the market for a while. Nonetheless, here's our cheat sheet for Apple, which reports earning after the close on Tuesday.

The numbers: Apple tends to exceed estimates. Here's what Wall Street is expecting, according to Zacks Investment Research.

• Per-share earnings: $2.01, unchanged from last year (Zacks)
• Revenue: $52.6 billion (Zacks)

What I'm looking for: The main thing I am looking for is "the one sentence." By that, I mean that one line Apple sometimes gives on a new area. "TV is a hobby," was an early example of this. I want to know what Apple has to say, for example, about cars.

Twitter announced over a dozen new live-streaming and original video content partnerships Monday, making it clear that their business strategy moving forward will be to expand ad-funded video content — the area where they saw the most revenue growth last quarter.

Why it matters: Until Monday, it seemed that Twitter was far behind the other social platforms in the race to win the $70 billion US TV ad market. Now, it's clear that Twitter could be giving them all, and particularly Snapchat, a run for their money.