Numlock News: December 12, 2019 • The Irishman, Häagen-Dazs, Bitcoin

Dec 12, 2019

By Walt Hickey

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Bitcoin

Five people were charged in a bust of what prosecutors described as a $722 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme, alleging that BitClub Network was an elaborate scam that promised large returns from investment in mining bitcoin. The U.S. attorney for New Jersey is prosecuting the case as several victims and transactions were located in the Garden State, despite the alleged fraud’s global footprint. The accused network is said to have used the fairly boring mathematics of a rudimentary Ponzi scheme alongside a bit of the bleeding-edge world of sophisticated cryptocurrency creation, with one video promising club members they could turn a $3,599 investment into a $250,000 return.

Michael Levenson, The New York Times

Phoenix

The University of Phoenix is paying the price for a 2012-14 advertising campaign that the FTC argued was deceptive, touting partnerships with the likes of Adobe, Microsoft, AT&T, Hitachi, Avis and Twitter where there were none. The for-profit college and its parent company, Apollo Education Group, will cancel $141 million in student debt owed directly to the university and will pay $50 million in cash to help consumers who had been misled by the advertisements and to settle the dispute. After all, we all know the only way to actually get a job at Twitter is to open a meanspirited and unsolicited direct message and find a Golden Ticket inviting you and four other winners to tour the magical sewage treatment plant where Twitter is made.

The Associated Press

Paperwork

Bureaucracy saves lives: a new working paper published by three U.S. Treasury economists details an accidental experiment about how healthcare coverage actually relates to outcomes. For years, politicians and economists have debated whether health coverage — and by extension, policies like the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of health coverage and individual mandate — actually saves lives. Three years ago, 3.9 million Americans got a letter from the IRS detailing that they had paid a fine for not having health insurance and directing them towards ways to enroll. The administration had planned to send letters to all 4.5 million people who had to pay the tax fine, but there wasn’t sufficient budget and 600,000 uninsured people were left out of the mailer randomly. The accidental randomized controlled trial about being mildly nudged by the taxman to get some health insurance was a research opportunity, and found that gaining coverage was linked to a 12 percent decline in mortality over the two years, and for every 1,648 Americans aged 45 to 64 who got a letter, one fewer death occurred compared to those who hadn’t received one. The mailing was estimated to have saved 700 lives.

Sarah Kliff, The New York Times

Streams

Netflix forecasts that in the first 28 days of its release about 40 million account holders will watch their film The Irishman at least 70 percent of the way through. In its first week of release on the platform, 26.4 million Netflix households watched at least 70 percent of the film, according to the company. I have to say, call me old-fashioned but I still prefer box office as a measure of success rather than this over-calibrated “70 percent watched” metric. The film tells the too-good-to-check story of the life of a mob enforcer as labor unions and organized crime intersect in a deadly fashion. Or, in case you’re one of the people who only watched exactly 70 percent of The Irishman, it’s a movie about America’s favorite labor leader, the electric and healthy Jimmy Hoffa, and his friendship with his loyal pal Frank, a dedicated family man who may be a bit of a rapscallion, but is definitely not plagued by regrets, no sir.

Todd Spangler, Variety

Ice Cream

Nestlé is spinning off its American ice cream business, taking a cue from the legions of people who have dealt with a minor setback by going to town on some Häagen-Dazs. Nestlé will part with that brand as well as Dreyer’s and Drumstick amid declining market share and a struggle to compete despite doing $1.8 billion worth of sales last year. Nestlé’s ice cream portfolio — an inherently funny concept — saw its U.S. market share drop from 19.3 percent in 2010 to 15 percent last year, playing second banana split to Unilever’s roster of Magnum, Ben & Jerry’s and Talenti, which grew from 17.9 percent of the market in 2010 to 20.9 percent last year.

Saabira Chaudhuri, The Wall Street Journal

Ransom

As schools become increasingly dependent on computers and tech to teach kids and remain in operation, they’re also increasingly vulnerable to hackers, and those who would seize control of computing systems for ransom or just hack into databases with personal information of students or their families. In 2018, the K12 Cybersecurity Resource Center reported that U.S. schools reported 122 incidents, with consequences that included the theft of millions of dollars, identity theft and altered records. That’s also believed to be an understatement, given that many incidents are not reported publicly.

Rachel Cohen, Democracy Journal

Satellites

Space, once the final frontier, is now basically a bit of a dump at least in low Earth orbit. Since Sputnik in 1957, there have been some 5,000 new spacecraft added to orbit, and as many of those satellites go dark or become inoperable the risks of collisions are rising. The U.S. Air Force already tracks 20,000 bits of debris and other space junk orbiting Earth, and insurers now say the risk of a collision for satellites has increased from 1 in 1 million to 1 in 10,000 over the past 20 years. The military is now testing a new radar system in the Pacific that will be able to track 200,000 objects in orbit.

Thomas Pfeiffer, Bloomberg

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