Richard Branson's Necker Island is an island paradise. 

The 74-acre Caribbean retreat has plenty of opportunities for fun.

The recently remodeled Great House has a 1,500-square-foot master suite with panorama ocean views. A zip line brings visitors down from the house to the white sand beach, where they can kitesurf or hang out on Branson's yacht, Necker Belle. 

Branson bought the island for $180,000 in the late 1970s.

He explained how the purchase came about in a Virgin blog post Tuesday.  

I had been madly trying to come up with a way to impress a girl I had fallen for, so I rang up the realtor, and expressed my interest. We were still in the early days of Virgin Records, and I by no means had the cash to buy an island. Luckily, the realtor didn’t know this and offered me an all expenses paid trip to see the Islands that weekend. I agreed to go on one condition – if I could bring a guest.

To my delight, the object of my affection agreed to join me on the trip. I fell in love twice that weekend – once as our helicopter (supplied by the realtor of course!) swooped over the turquoise water and white sandy beaches of Necker Island, and again when I saw the smile on the face of the beautiful girl who sat beside me on the journey. Together we strolled around the Island and dreamed up plans for turning it into a haven for musicians. 

Those dreams were quickly spoiled when the realtor quoted the ‘discounted’ asking price of $6 million. Smitten with the unspoilt paradise, and keen to impress my new love, I offered the highest amount I could afford: $100,000. As you can imagine, the realtor was less than impressed, and left us high and dry to find our own way back home.

 About a year later, Branson writes, he was informed that no one else had made an offer on the island. He agreed to pay $180,000 for the island under the condition that he would build a resort there. 

In addition to Necker Island, Virgin's luxury property portfolio now includes a lodge in the Swiss Alps, a safari camp in Kenya, and a kasbah in Morocco's Atlas Mountains. 

Branson married his island guest — current wife Joan Templeman Branson — in a ceremony on Necker in 1989, 11 years after their first trip there. 

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Burning Man, the annual festival that celebrates art, counterculture, and radical self-reliance, begins Sunday in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

The weeklong event has long drawn a wild crowd that eschews modern society and technology in favor of partying and constructing strange buildings in the middle of the desert. 

You won't find cell service or any other connection to the outside world anywhere in the seven-square-mile camp. 

But there's at least one way to communicate with your fellow burners should an emergency arise.

FireChat, an app developed by San Francisco-based Open Garden, creates a local network that makes it possible to instantly communicate with anyone, even without an internet connection.

"The question we try to answer is, 'what do you do if you really, really need to reach someone?'" Open Garden CMO Christophe Daligault told Business Insider. "We developed it for any situation where you might have unreliable internet access." 

FireChat works through what's called a "mesh network," which uses the WiFi or Bluetooth port on your smart phone to connect directly with another phone. As phones connect, they form a local network, or mesh. 

"People think that WiFi means internet access, but you can also use that transport layer to connect directly with one another," Daligault said.

The technology could conceivably be useful for chatting with friends on public transit while underground, during a flight, or while attending other big events with a high density of people and no internet access.

Launched in March 2014, FireChat saw its first big use case at last year's Burning Man, when thousands of burners encountered mud that made it difficult to access the playa. Daligault said that thousands quickly took to FireChat to communicate, helping their fellow burners to work around the mud. 

When the app first launched, you needed to be within 200 feet of another FireChat-enabled phone for the technology to work correctly. But this year, FireChat is partnering with Hub Culture to build a 30-foot pole that will expand the mesh network even further. 

Dubbed a "Signal Totem," the tower uses wind-generator power and routers, but it doesn't connect to the internet. 

They plan to build the totem near the center of the playa, near the Geek A Transformation Station. 

Daligault said that the totem is relatively cheap and easy to build, and he could see the design being replicated elsewhere. 

That could come in handy for situations like this year's stink bug infestation, which Burning Man organizers say has disappeared. 

Such an advanced technology is bound to get a reaction from some of the event's more radical attendees, many of whom use the week at Burning Man as an escape from the noise of the modern world. 

"Anything you put in front of burners will have a polarizing reaction, and some won't like it," Daligault said. "But others might be going with a bunch of friends or family, and we can see them needing a way to send a quick message to say that everyone is OK." 

Since it doesn't provide internet access, however, burners need to download the FireChat app before they leave for the playa, if they intend to use it to chat. The app is free to download on iOS and Android. 

SEE ALSO: The Burning Man site is infested with swarms of disgusting bugs

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NOW WATCH: Watch this beautiful time-lapse video of a hot air balloon festival

Silicon Valley tech companies are famous for showering their employees in perks, especially free food.

We've rounded up photos of some of the most delicious dishes here. 

While not all of the food found in these tech companies' cafeterias is free, most of it comes with a significant discount for employees. 

SEE ALSO: RANKED: The top 10 restaurants on tech campuses, where employees chow down for free

Google's free food is the stuff of legends. With close to 30 cafés at the company's Mountain View, California, headquarters, no Googler could ever really go hungry. Over at Charlie's Cafe, one Googler enjoys a spicy bacon grilled cheese sandwich with a tomato bisque.

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This crawfish boil looks amazing.

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As does this wrap you can get at Google's Masa Cafe.

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Spending the night at a hotel is supposed to be an indulgence: a home away from home with softer sheets and better beds.

However, that's not always the case.

Hotels come with their own sets of issues, and the annual Hotel Pet Peeves Survey by Frequent Business Traveler and FlyerTalk has ranked those annoyances.

The survey asked 1,969 frequent travelers — 94% of those surveyed were members of more than one hotel loyalty program, and 91.1% were members of more than one frequent flyer program — to rank their biggest hotel pet peeves.

Here are the top 10 things travelers hate most about staying in hotels.

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10. Insufficient or poor lighting

9. Uncomfortable pillows

8. Unexpected fees

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The average toothbrush has over 10 million bacteria — and E. coli is often one of them according to a recent study.

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Gunnar Garfors has traveled to every single country in the world— all 198 of them.

And he did it by the time he turned 37 years old, a pretty impressive accomplishment considering all the obscure countries he had to visit.

It's thanks to three very simple items that Garfors made it through these countries: a printed out itinerary, a small notepad, and a pen.

His itinerary included all the details of his trip, from the addresses of the hotels he was staying at to the official exchange rate for that country's currency.

Here's why Garfors never travels without these things.

1. Carrying around a piece of paper is safer than carrying around a laptop or iPad.

Garfors points out that if locals in poor countries notice a foreigner toting expensive gadgets such as a phone, iPad, or laptop, they're more likely to try and steal from that tourist. Plus, you might end up paying more for certain services.

"If I come to a poor country it can be a faraway place. Of course I have everything on my laptop or iPad, but if you show this to the taxi driver, this is probably twice his yearly wage and if he sees you have this expensive gear, he might overcharge you. Other people who see this, you're likely to be robbed by them because you're displaying really expensive gear to them," Garfors explains.

2. Some airports don't accept electronic tickets.

Garfors remembers an airport he encountered in India that does not allow people in unless they have a printed out ticket for their flight. Garfors was forced to return to the city, find an Internet cafe, and print his ticket. For that reason, he makes sure to print his tickets out as a part of his itinerary.

3. You might encounter people who don't speak English.

Garfors brings a small notepad with him in case he's trying to communicate with someone who doesn't speak his language (and Garfors doesn't speak theirs). That way, he can draw what he's trying to say.

"I did this in Iran, I had to draw my dinner in order to get served, and I'm a horrible drawer. I had chicken for me and a cow for my brother, and we actually got served what I managed to draw," Garfors says.

4. If you don't have a pen, you'll end up waiting to fill out forms.

According to Garfors, many of the countries he visited throughout his travels require visitors to fill out certain forms in order to enter the country. This process can be especially slow when you don't have a pen handy and need to wait to borrow someone else's.

"If you don't have a pen you're going to be the last one in the line to enter the country. You're going to have to wait two or three hours because everyone has their own pen and you have to borrow from the security guard or passport control officer," Garfors says.

SEE ALSO: This guy visited every country in the world before turning 40 — here are the highlights from his journey

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Earlier this week, Salesforce announced yet another multi-million donation to the San Francisco public school system, its home town.

The Salesforce Foundation, the company's philanthropic arm, is donating $6 million this time, bringing its total three-year gift to nearly $14 million. It has also adopted 20 schools and will send employees to volunteer in them for 10,000 collective hours this school year.

Billionaire Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been an outspoken advocate for philanthropy. He often chides the tech industry — and other tech billionaires — for not donating more. 

In an interview on Monday with Bloomberg's Emily Chang, he applauded the generosity of tech companies based in his home town of San Francisco and dissed the tech giants of Silicon Valley located 30 minutes to an hour's drive south of the city, which includes companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, Oracle, Intel, Yahoo.

Silicon Valley has an incredible history of stinginess. So we are fighting the tide there, I agree. But we’re seeing more generosity from San Francisco tech companies than we’ve ever seen from Silicon Valley-based tech companies. You just see that across the board, where the largest and and most important tech companies in San Francisco are giving more than ever before, it's unprecedented.

That comment refers in part to what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is doing for education reform. He and his wife pledged to give $120 million in grants to high-poverty schools in the Bay Area last year. 

Benioff likes such efforts but said that money alone isn't really going to help the schools.

We offer a full package. We’re not just about the money, because money alone isn’t going to solve anybody’s problems. It’s about the money, its about technology and it's about people.

So naturally, Benioff really isn't impressed with Apple's pledge this summer to provide disadvantaged schools nationwide with $100 million in iPads, Macbooks, and other products, along with professional development tools.

Apple's commitment was part of the bigger ConnectedED program, where a dozen tech companies vowed to donate hundreds of millions of tech to needy schools.

Apple's pledge wasn't the biggest in this program. Adobe, based in Silicon Valley in San Jose, is providing schools with more than $300 million worth of free software. And Autodesk, based in San Francisco, will make its 3D design program "Design the Future" available for free to every secondary school in the U.S., a gift it says is worth over $250 million.

Benioff believes Apple, in particular, should be doing much more. He said:

I think its great that Apple is going to give $100 million dollars to public schools, but I think Apple should be giving billions of dollars to public schools and I’ll tell you why. Because Apple has reaped a huge harvest from these public schools.

If you go through these public school classrooms, and you open up their closets, you’ll find old Apple IIs, you’re going to find old Macs, you’re going to find old iPads. I mean Apple has built a lot of its history on the K-12 market and it should be giving back in a MASSIVE way to the public schools. And I think $100 million is great, but I hope that’s just a start.

SEE ALSO: Stewart Butterfield's inspiration came when he was 'puking my guts out in a hotel in New York'

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A new apartment complex called Embassy Gardens is coming to London's southwest quarter of Nine Elms. The luxury complex features a floating pool suspended 10 stories high between the two buildings. 

Produced by Emma Fierberg. Video courtesy of Reuters.

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Over the weekend, a 12-year-old Taiwanese boy tripped and accidentally punched a fist-sized hole in an extremely valuable painting, Focus Taiwan reports.

According to exhibition director Sun Chi-hsuan, the 350-year-old Paolo Porpora oil painting titled "Flowers" is valued at $1.5 million.

It will now undergo restoration in Italy.

Italian artist Porpora, best known for his baroque-style depictions of fruit and flowers, painted the 78-inch-tall canvas in the 17th century.

Here's the painting:

And here's a close-up of the damage on the lower right side:

Fortunately, the work is insured and the boy's family will not be asked to assist in the restoration fees, Focus Taiwan reports.

As the Guardian notes, "The boy joins a short, cringing list of art fumblers. In 2006, a man tripped over his shoelace in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in the UK and smashed three 300-year-old Chinese vases. In 2010, a woman at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art fell into a Picasso, causing a 15 cm (6 inch) tear."

Last year, a man was sentenced to six years in prison after punching a hole through a $12.5 million Claude Monet painting in Dublin.

Here is the full video:

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Saturday will mark the 10th anniversary of one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

On August 29, 2005, Katrina made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane, devastating towns along its path, but particularly crippling New Orleans.

A decade later, the "Crescent City" has made some extraordinary comebacks, though some parts are still feeling the effects of a botched emergency response.

Here's what the city looks like now: a mix of new levees and abandoned houses along a retreating coastline.

CHECK OUT: A photographer returned to New Orleans a decade after Hurricane Katrina to see what's changed

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New Orleans sits at an average between 1-2 feet below sea level next to marsh wetlands like the one pictured here. When Katrina blew through, this put the city's water removal system to the test.

New Orleans is protected by a series of flood walls and levees — structures that have for centuries been able to keep the city from going underwater. But Katrina was too much for the under-maintained levees, and they quickly broke from the force of incoming water, destroying houses like this one in the city's Lower Ninth Ward.

At its worst, about 80% of New Orleans, seen here from an aerial view, was submerged in water that had breached the levees.

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Days after an apologetic interview with Vulture, Josh "The Fat Jewish" Ostrovsky (aka "The Fat Jew") is under fire again. 

But the shots aren't coming from Internet meme creators whose work has appeared uncredited on his wildly popular (and lucrative) Instagram account. 

This time, the heat is coming from someone who actually plays with fire, a respected test kitchen cook. 

Kenji López-Alt, the managing culinary director of the website Serious Eats, posted a message on Facebook yesterday, saying that himself and his publication had withdrawn from the New York City Wine & Food Festival's "Late-Night Ramen Party" (Oct. 17) because Ostrovsky had suddenly been added as its host. 

Since the post went up, four restaurants (Jin Ramen, Ivan Ramen, Yuji Ramen, Mu Ramen) and one artisan noodle maker (Sun Ramen) have reportedly backed out of the event.

In the Facebook statement, López-Alt says he found out that Ostrovsky would be hosting the event (which López-Alt and his team had been organizing for months) on the Internet.

Here's an excerpt from his Facebook post: 

"I opened up the event's official website and saw not the event we'd been planning, but The Fat Jew's ramen party. His face, his name, all listed above ours, despite the fact that we were neither consulted nor alerted to his involvement in the event.

The Fat Jew is the antithesis of everything I represent in the media world ... He is a plagiarist, a thief, a misogynist, and absolutely the wrong choice of co-host for a food event, or really any respectable event."

López-Alt went on to link to articles about Ostrovsky's "plagiarist" Instagram account, as well as a video showing his alleged sexual harassment of an intern. In his interview with Vulture, Ostrovky said that he's working to retroactively attribute all of his social media posts featuring memes or creative works that aren't his own. 

New York's Grub Street reports that more than half of the event's tickets ($150 each) had been sold prior to Ostrovsky's involvement. All net proceeds of the event benefit Food Bank For New York City and the No Kid Hungry campaign. 

Writes López-Alt, "I'm 100% certain [the event] will be sold out, thus the charities will still be receiving as much support as if we'd stayed or not."

Model and soon-to-be cookbook author Chrissy Teigen was the original host of the event, but she canceled for reasons unknown and Ostrovky took her place.

Business Insider contacted Ostrovsky, López-Alt, and the New York City Wine & Food Festival for a comment. We'll update this story if we hear from any of the parties involved. 

SEE ALSO: Notorious Instagrammer 'The Fat Jew' says he never stole jokes

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After Monday's stock market nosedive, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz decided to send a mass memo to his staff.  

In an email received by 190,000 retail employees, Schultz wrote, "Let's be very sensitive to the pressures our customers may be feeling."

The subject line of the message read, “Message from Howard: Leading Through Turbulent Times,” and also explained how the previous day's “market volatility” and recent "political uncertainty both at home and abroad” is sure to lead to increased anxiety for Starbucks customers. 

Here's an excerpt from the memo, which can be read in its entirety here.  

"Today’s financial market volatility, combined with great political uncertainty both at home and abroad, will undoubtedly have an effect on consumer confidence and perhaps even our customers’ attitudes and behavior. Our customers are likely to experience an increased level of anxiety and concern. Please recognize this and – as you always have – remember that our success is not an entitlement, but something we need to earn, every day. Let’s be very sensitive to the pressures our customers may be feeling, and do everything we can to individually and collectively exceed their expectations."

SEE ALSO: This guy figured out a way to get free Starbucks every day — and it's driving his barista crazy

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Republican pollster Frank Luntz discovered what makes Trumps supporters mad as hell.

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Traveling for long periods of time often means having to sacrifice style for practicality.

No more.

Libertad Apparel just unveiled its Perfect Travel Shirt on Kickstarter.

Whether you're sightseeing in Milan or in Singapore on business, this classic dress shirt is designed to withstand days of travel without wrinkling or smelling.

The shirt is made of a special lightweight Merino wool that's soft, wrinkle resistant, and odor resistant.

The material is supposedly more moisture-wicking than polyester, dries faster than cotton, and doesn't accumulate body odor. The Merino used for the Perfect Travel Shirt is made from a special breed of sheep that's said to reduce and manage moisture well, which is how it prevents body odor.

The shirt was tested in various climates for five consecutive days, and the travelers who wore it said that the shirt remained wrinkle- and odor-free the whole time. 

Mixing "upscale style with high performance," the cut and colors of the shirt were specifically designed to make them both office and and travel appropriate.

In other words, it can easily transition from business to pleasure, hot to cold and wet to dry, thus shrinking the contents of your carry-on drastically.

Libertad shirts start at $87 on Kickstarter.

SEE ALSO: 16 packing tips every business traveler should know

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NOW WATCH: 8 travel hacks even frequent fliers don't know

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is seeking respite from the grueling campaign trail in a lavish rental house in the Hamptons hamlet of Amagansett.

But her stay in the $50,000-per-week home isn't exactly a vacation.

Hillary is expected to visit four campaign fundraisers in her name while on Long Island, according to The East Hampton Star.

Bill Clinton was relaxing in the 7,500-square-foot house before Hillary arrived on August 21. Chelsea and her family, Marc Mezvinsky and daughter Charlotte, will also be staying at the house. 

Their time at the oceanside retreat will total two weeks and cost $100,000. Keep scrolling to take a look around this incredible property. 

SEE ALSO: Take a rare look at the mansions behind the Hamptons' famously high hedges

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The six-bedroom Amagansett, New York mansion was actually rented by the Clintons last year around this same time.

The house is owned by Andre and Lois Nasser — an art collector and real estate agent, respectively. According to Daily Mail, the Nassers are Republican party donors.

Source: Daily Mail

The house has a minimal, beach-chic aesthete, with water views and private beach access.

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Ashley Madison's massive security leak has spurred a number of lawsuits, including a proposed class action in Texas claiming the adultery site was warned of the impending breach but failed to alert customers.

The lawsuit filed by an unnamed Austin, Texas man, which seeks class action status, claims Ashley Madison failed to heed its own employees' warnings about the vulnerability of customers' data. It also could have stopped the breach but didn't, according to the lawsuit filed against Avid Life Media, which owns Ashley Madison.

That suit claims that an unnamed employee at Ashley Madison listed for the site "technical issues that could lead to a data breach occurring, as well the legal problems that may come with that." 

In an internal company document called “Areas of concern – customer data.docx," the lawsuit claims one employee noted that user data was exposed to phishing or SQL injection — two common methods used to steal user data. 

"Another employee worried about remote code execution — when an attacker can run code on a victims computer over the internet — and yet another employee pointed to employees being infected with malware, 'allowing hackers access to our user data,'" the suit noted. 

According to the lawsuit, Avid Life Media didn't abide by the security and payment processing industry's standards for holding user data.

In 2012, Ashley Madison's CTO, Raja Bhatia, admitted in an internal email that the site had security risks.

“There will be an eventual security crisis amongst one of your properties and the media will leap on it as they always do,” he reportedly wrote in an email, which was fittingly revealed as part of the hack.

The hacker or hackers — known only as The Impact Team — said they stole data from the website's servers after learning that their pay-to-delete function doesn't actually delete their data from the site.

In two data dumps totaling about 40 gigabytes of data, the hack has exposed the personal information of 32 million Ashley Madison users. More data dumps may be forthcoming, as The Impact Team says it has more information that it hasn't released yet.

We reached out to Ashley Madison and will update this post with any comment we receive.

SEE ALSO: After the devastating hack, these lawsuits are threatening to wipe Ashley Madison out altogether

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Thanks to new development projects and a workforce flooded with millennials who'd rather rent than buy, major US cities are seeing increases in rent prices. 

In its National Rent Report, residential real estate rental website Zumper analyzed one million active one-bedroom listings to find the most expensive cities in the country for renters.

Of the top 20 cities on the list, six are located in California.  

Keep scrolling to see which city ranks No. 1 on Zumper's list. 

SEE ALSO: The 15 most expensive houses for sale in America

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20. LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA: The average rent for a one-bedroom here is $1,120 a month.

19. MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA: The average rent for a one-bedroom here is $1,150 a month.

18. BALTIMORE, MARYLAND: The average rent for a one-bedroom here is $1,150 a month.

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The sprawling campus of the Rockland Psychiatric Center was once considered a picturesque escape for New York City's mentally ill. The facility opened in 1931 and performed a number of lobotomies and electroshock therapy sessions — both state-of-the-art treatments in the 1940s.

We explored the now-abandoned buildings that "represent in microcosm the history of the treatment of the mentally ill in this country" with "Abandoned NYC" photographer Will Ellis. Check out some of his photos of Rockland.

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This woman was born in Mexico and legally immigrated to the US. At a panel hosted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, she explained why she supports Donald Trump and his proposed wall.

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