The Big Three Wireless Carriers slapped with $140 million in fines for selling location data

They were caught selling, without permission, the constant location data of you, me, everyone in the USA with a mobile phone to aggregators who then sold it on to more people, again, without our permission.

From the article: "The FCC’s findings against AT&T, for example, show that AT&T sold customer location data directly or indirectly to at least 88 third-party entities. The FCC found Verizon sold access to customer location data (indirectly or directly) to 67 third-party entities. Location data for Sprint customers found its way to 86 third-party entities, and to 75 third-parties in the case of T-Mobile customers." Note that the discovery and scope of the investigation was before and during the T-Mobile/Sprint merger.

SO. Let's break this down. Krebs provides a link to the FCC web site that lists the formal announcement of the fines. In which, it includes the specific breakdown per carrier. In this case, Verizon, my carrier, was fined almost $47 million dollars US.

I asked Microsoft's Bing AI Co-Pilot to do a little math for me.

In 2023, Verizon Wireless reported net profit of $76.7 billion dollars US. I wanted to know how long it would take, in seconds, for Verizon to make that much money. Now, this is net profit. Here's Bing's response:

... it would take Verizon Wireless approximately 18,879 seconds (or about 5 hours and 14 minutes) to earn $46 million from their annual revenue of $76.7 billion

Five and a quarter hours. That's 1/32nd of a WEEK. An utterly insignificant rounding error.

The percentage of the fine versus 2023 gross profit? 0.058% One-seventeenth of ONE PERCENT of their profit. There's a reason why it's called gross profit.

Oh, and just how much was their gross profit? $79.087 billion USD. So it cost them $3 billion in people, equipment, trucks, tower rentals, FCC airwave licenses, etc. to generate $76bUSD in net profit. I should take a look at their stock ticker over the last few years, I expect it ain't going down.

I'm in the wrong line of work.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/04/fcc-fines-major-u-s-wireless-carriers-for-selling-customer-location-data/

Elon guts three critical divisions at Tesla

To say this makes no sense overstates the obvious.

He fired the director of new car development. And everyone in that division.

He fired the director of the Supercharger network. And everyone in that division.

And remember how he's been saying that Tesla's big new thing was going to be the robotaxi? He just eliminated the entire public policy team. Funny thing: when you're dealing with the federal government, one thing that's very useful is a public policy team.

Two cars in their four car (plus the Cyber alleged Truck) are in desperate need of refreshes. And there's no longer a new car development group. Demand for the Supercharger network is going to grow like gangbusters as most every car maker in North America is adopting their plug standard. And now that division is gone?! It had the potential to be hugely profitable!

Unless he has a really extraordinarily amazing rabbit to pull out of his hat to reveal some master scheme to offset these division axings, somehow I don't think his massive pay package is going to get passed at that upcoming shareholder meeting. In fact, I'd be REALLY seriously looking at shorting Tesla stock.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/04/tesla-to-lay-off-everyone-working-on-superchargers-new-vehicles/

Accused felon in NYC trial found in contempt of court, fined $9,000, threatened with jail

The prosecution cited at least ten instances of the defendant violating a gag order on social media, the judge fined the defendant for nine, each $1,000. The defendant was also ordered to remove all nine posts from social media. The judge in the case said that if violations are repeated, that "incarceratory punishment" could be imposed.

The judge also stated that he would like to charge more for the fines due to the defendant's sizeable wealth, however, this was the statutory maximum allowed.

Some think that he may be angling for this. The defendant's niece, Mary, a licensed psychotherapist, thinks this could be quite the major blow as he would be left without cosmetic products or a smart phone, the concept of someone like the defendant left in jail to confront his personal demons for a few days could potentially be quite damaging to him.

On the plus side, the defendant was told that the trial is moving at a sufficient pace and making good enough progress that the defendant would be allowed time off to go to his son's high school graduation.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/judge-holds-trump-contempt-violating-gag-order-hush-money-trial-rcna149101