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Meanwhile in the USA.... RIP Opportunity. NASA’s Mars rover hasn’t returned any calls, and now its mission has been declared over after 15 years.

Google (+0.09%) is spending $13 billion on data centers and offices across the U.S. throughout 2019.

Apple will reportedly reveal its news subscription and streaming video services at a potentially star-studded March 25 event. Looking forward to receiving our invite in the mail.

The former lawyer “responsible for Apple’s compliance with securities laws” has been charged by the SEC for...insider trading. Ex-Apple exec Gene Levoff was accused of exploiting his position at Apple (-0.42%) to trade stocks ahead of earnings, per CNBC. Translation: He’s accused of breaking the very rules he enforced. Sounds juicy...more details, please. According to the SEC, he traded using insider knowledge on at least three occasions in 2015 and 2016 and had a history of insider trading before that. One sampling from 2015: Levoff allegedly caught wind that Apple would miss its Q3 iPhone sales estimates that year. Then... “Between July 17 and the public release of Apple’s quarterly earnings information on July 21, Levoff sold approximately $10 million of Apple stock,” avoiding about $345,000 in losses. Levoff got the boot from Apple in 2018, but it’s still a bad look for a company that’s been roughed up by the press this week for its upcoming news subscription service and an app that allows Saudi men to track women.

El Chapo, CEO The trial is over, and Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera faces life in prison. Now, we can take stock of just how astonishing the business operation—which prosecutors say netted him $14 billion in drug profits—really was. The WSJ has the story, and we have the highlights. HR: “The cartel established a payroll for corrupt officials who escorted drug shipments and tipped off cartel members about law-enforcement operations. The salaries for corrupt officials exceeded $1 million a month, one witness testified.” Accounting: “The cartel used debit cards that could be loaded up with as much as $9,900 per card. Unlike cash, which is made of linen that can absorb drug residue and attract drug-sniffing dogs, debit cards can be easily cleaned." Logistics: “Workers installed train spurs inside warehouses in cities such as Chicago and New York, where they could park the trains and sledgehammer the drugs out of the metal walls without arousing law-enforcement suspicion.” Bottom line: El Chapo’s empire “rivaled governments and multinational companies in its power and sophistication.”

It’s a remarkable sight, but it’s also somewhat scary. As camera technology reaches incredible milestones like this, it raises the question of when (not if) it will be used for mass surveillance. How long will it be before just walking out your front door means being observed by a camera from miles away? The likely answer is “sooner than we’d like.”

It’s reportedly faced backlash from publishers over proposed financial terms for a news subscription service—namely, that Apple (+0.86%) wants to keep about half the revenue, per the WSJ. Let’s run through the details. Apple’s prospective service would let users read an unlimited amount of content from participating publishers for a monthly fee. It wants half of that subscription fee for itself... ...while the rest would get split among publishers based on how long users engage with their content. But Apple could be jostled into dealmaking mode. This news subscription service is a part of its strategy to diversify revenue in the face of weakening iPhone sales (which fell 15% in Q4). Apple’s looking to increase its paid subscriptions across devices to 500 million by 2020 from today’s 360 million. As for the publishers, striking a deal means tapping into millions of sophisticated news junkies—and the prospect of expanding their own subscription bases.

@The Librarian Sorry it took me so long to provide this.... I agree it is a nice feature. I was recently notified by Google that this site is now on it's preferred mobile search index which should help us get seen even more. This is going to be an extremely friendly place for SEO traffic with the latest changes including super fast loading speeds and even less of a bounce rate as our users are more engaged with even better content due to the club features focus. Let me know if I can be of any more assistance.

I should also mention that all of this has been done without spending a dime on advertising.

it's been awhile since our last update.... and more good stuff to come soon..... We will be have some serious SEO improvements ... AND faster loading.... So in the last couple years we have grown about 33% more members. and about 50% per year growth on total posts.... I wonder what the next couple years portend?

That song is so catchy.... I can't get the tune out of my head now... 😉

I guess they don't see the irony.

The Finnish government released the results of a two-year basic income trialon Friday: It didn’t make recipients more likely to work, as many of the program’s supporters had hoped. But here’s the thing: The trial did make people happier...and that’s in a country already rated the world’s happiest by the UN last year. Basically, if you're not actively laughing you're assumed to have just lost your house in an asteroid collision. The basic income experiment was part of Finland’s search for alternatives to its social security model. Roughly 2,000 unemployed Finns were chosen randomly to receive regular monthly paychecks from the government—which didn’t slash those payouts even if recipients found work. Other governments were watching. If basic income could encourage the unemployed to take low-paying jobs without fear of losing benefits, states could hypothetically slash welfare costs. The takeaway? “Seems to have been minor on the grounds of the first trial year,” Finland’s minister of health and social affairs said. If you’re reading, Finnish government, we’ll gladly volunteer as tribute for the next study. You know...for science.

Note to self.... only buy top shelf liquor when traveling.... ;-)

100,000,000 degrees Celsius. So... hotter than your average stove. 😉

I didn't even think of that @James Thomas Rook Jr. Thanks for keeping these stories real.....

Notice how the conversation is changing two years later...

ok... let's add to the list.

Facebook (+0.57%) has acquired “visual shopping”/artificial intelligence startup GrokStyle to pad its own AI roster.

There’s risky rebranding, and then there’s the pot-stirring AT&T’s doing. Rival Sprint decided to take matters to a higher power...and that higher power is the federal court system. Sprint (0.00%) has sued AT&T (+0.34%), alleging it deceived consumers into thinking they were using a next-generation 5G wireless network...which hasn’t yet been widely deployed. We’ll explain. AT&T customers in 400+ markets have seen a “5G E” indicator on their mobile devices, right next to that battery icon hanging on to 7% for dear life. But users are still on a 4G network…mostly because smartphones on Android and iOS aren’t yet equipped to support 5G. AT&T is just calling it 5G Evolution, Sprint claims, to gain an unfair advantage. AT&T will tell you the 5G E network is a necessary stepping stone to get to “ultimate 5G.” What’s one more G? Well, 5G can offer data speeds up to 100x faster than 4G networks. And every wireless carrier is battling for the first-mover advantage—if your engineers are running behind schedule, send in the legal team. Morning Brew

You know about the ongoing power struggle between Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaidó and sitting (though widely unrecognized) President Nicolás Maduro... We also told you about the sanctions the U.S. placed on Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA oil giant, aimed at cutting off $11 billion in exports from Maduro’s camp this year. And now... Venezuela’s oil industry has gone to pieces Crude production is at a seven-decade low, and exports are at a 10-month low. That’s rough news for a country that ranked among the world’s top five oil exporters as recently as the late 90s. Talent is leaving. Per the AP, “From the tar sands of northern Canada to the deserts of Kuwait, Venezuelan roughnecks now live in more than 90 oil-producing countries.” And it’s been happening for a while. At least 30,000 oil workers have fled since the early 2000s, when then-President Hugo Chávez fired tons of them for going on strike and knocking output. But the most recent sanctions on PDVSA paired with political chaos have exacerbated the oil industry’s issues. Now, there’s “desperation and chaos” at PDVSA Bloomberg reported employees are working round the clock to find new markets to sell its crude, even contacting ex-employees to ask for trader info. Last year, Venezuela loaded a vessel a day to U.S. refiners. Since sanctions hit Jan. 28, only one (1) vessel has been loaded. Bottom line: Oil’s been the backbone of Venezuela’s economy, so sanctioning PDVSA represents a calculated move by the U.S. to cut off funds from Maduro’s government. But if the country’s top brass isn’t swayed by the effects of the sanctions, those very sanctions could send the country even further into disaster. via Morning Brew

@James Thomas Rook Jr. I think you nailed it a couple month ago...... I read this headline today.... Sears (+32.46%) Chairman Eddie Lampert won approval from a bankruptcy judge to buy out the struggling retailer for $5.2 billion. Liquidation averted.

Just as your Medium manifesto was “gaining steam” with 21 claps, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stopped all your momentum with a very personal postaccusing AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, of extortion and blackmail. The backstory: Bezos and his wife MacKenzie recently announced plans for a high-profile divorce. The National Enquirer then published articles describing a relationship between Bezos and former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez. There were...juicy texts involved. Let’s walk through this next part step-by-step As described in Bezos’s blog post... He “engaged investigators” to determine the source of the leaks and the motivation behind the Enquirer’s actions. AMI’s Chief Content Officer sent an email saying that he obtained intimate photos of both Bezos and Sanchez (we’ll stop there...this is a PG newsletter after all). An offer was made: AMI wouldn’t release the photos if Bezos said publicly the leaks weren’t politically motivated. Bezos refused, published this blog, and here we are. Key Bezos quote: "Any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a back seat because there’s a much more important matter involved here. If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?" If your head is spinning...we’ve got good news There’s more. Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, which has largely been critical of the Trump administration. David Pecker, the chairman and CEO of AMI, has a cozy relationship with the president, who himself has lashed out at Bezos once or five times. That perhaps helps explain the talk of “political” motivations. We can find no better bottom line than the NYT: “Mr. Bezos’ online post details a stunning and bizarre clash between the world’s richest man and the nation’s biggest tabloid publisher.” “In it, all of the country’s obsessions of recent years appear to have collided, from the personal lives of billionaires and sensational tabloid headlines to Mr. Trump’s fight with the media.” Via Morning Brew

I'm sure Costco is thrilled to learn that it's new push involved cheating minimum wage workers by it's new "partner":