Jeffrey Sprecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, sold $3.5 million in stock on February 26, a month after his wife, Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, received a closed-door briefing about the covid-19 threat. According to SEC filings, Sprecher sold $15.3 million more in stock on March 11, at the beginning of the crash that has seen trillions of dollars wiped from the financial markets. Both stock sales were of Intercontinental Exchange (known as ICE), the company that owns the NYSE, and of which Sprecher just happens to be CEO.

The revelations about Sprecher come from a new report by CBS News, which examined filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Loeffler’s own stock sales recently made headlines after it was revealed that she sold millions in stock the same day she received a closed-door January 26 briefing on the potential impact of the covid-19 pandemic. Loeffler denies having any knowledge of the sales done in her name.

What makes Sprecher’s stock sales a scandal? For one, they should have been reported as part of Loeffler’s financial disclosures, but were not. Senators have been required to give periodic financial disclosures since 2012 and those filings include any sales and purchases made by the politician’s spouse.

[…]

his wife had secret information about a global pandemic and both of them unloaded while she kept publicly saying everything was fine and dandy.

In fact, this was the video Loeffler posted to Twitter on March 10, the day before her husband unloaded $15.3 million worth of stock in his own company.

Sprecher and Loeffler are reportedly worth at least $500 million. Capitalism may be on its last legs during the covid-19 pandemic, but you can bet that millionaires and billionaires will do everything they can to keep it afloat. Even if a few million people have to die.

Source: New York Stock Exchange Chairman Sold Millions in Stock Before Crash

Senator Richard Burr is a real piece of work. In 2012 he was one of only three Senators to vote against the STOCK Act. This was a law put in place following a 60 Minutes expose about how Congress was getting filthy stinkin’ rich off of insider trading, since Congress was exempt from insider trading laws. The bill did pass — Burr’s vote against notwithstanding — and President Obama signed into law. Unfortunately, the next year, Congress passed (and Obama signed) an amendment that rolled the rules back for staffers, though it still does apply to elected officials themselves.

So, it’s quite interesting to see the news that Senator Burr just sold off a “significant percentage” of his stock holdings, according to a ProPublica article detailing the sale. A big chunk of that stock sale? In the hospitality industry that has been so hard hit. He had a big chunk of stock in Wyndam Hotels and Extended Stay America, but sold those off just before everything went bad. The timing is interesting:

Soon after he offered public assurances that the government was ready to battle the coronavirus, the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, sold off a significant percentage of his stocks, unloading between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 separate transactions.

As the head of the intelligence committee, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, has access to the government’s most highly classified information about threats to America’s security. His committee was receiving daily coronavirus briefings around this time, according to a Reuters story.

Now, you might say that there might be another reason why he sold stuff off, but it certainly appears that Burr knew full well what was coming. And that’s because in another news bombshell from just a few hours earlier, a recording was leaked of Burr telling a private luncheon gathering that things were going to be bad — all at the same time he was insisting that the US was totally prepared for COVID-19. A month after he sold all that stock, and a few weeks after he told the private luncheon that the coronavirus was “much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history” and compared it “to the 1918 pandemic” he publicly was claiming that we had everything under control:

“Luckily, we have a framework in place that has put us in a better position than any other country to respond to a public health threat, like the coronavirus.”

He also said the same thing just days before selling all that stock:

Thankfully, the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus, in large part due to the work of the Senate Health Committee, Congress, and the Trump Administration.

That op-ed also said:

The public health preparedness and response framework that Congress has put in place and that the Trump Administration is actively implementing today is helping to protect Americans. Over the years, this framework has been designed to be flexible and innovative so that we are not only ready to face the coronavirus today but new public health threats in the future.

And then he sold most of his stock earning somewhere between half a million and a million and a half dollars — most of which would have plunged in value if he’d kept it invested. And, the fact that such a large chunk was in the hospitality industry is telling: he would have likely realized were going to be hit hard by any form of lock down and the expected decline in travel due to the pandemic.

Hours after the Burr story broke, The Daily Beast highlighted how another Senator, the new Senator from Georgia, Kelly Loefler, sold off millions of dollars of stock the very day she was briefed about the COVID-19 threat. She literally tweeted that day:

And then she dumped tons of stock:

Loeffler assumed office on Jan. 6 after having been appointed to the seat vacated by retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson. Between then and Jan. 23 she did not report a single stock transaction from accounts owned by her individually or by her and her husband jointly.

Between Jan. 24 and Feb. 14, by contrast, Loeffler reported selling stock jointly owned with her husband worth between $1,275,000 and $3,100,000, according to transaction reports filed with Senate ethics officials.

For what it’s worth, it’s probably worth noting that Loeffler’s husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is the chairman and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange. The stock sales included a bunch of retailers: Ross Stores, TJX (owners of TJ Maxx, Marshalls and a bunch of similar brands), and Autozone. All of those are struggling — TJX just announced it’s closing all its stores for at least two weeks.

Like Burr, Loeffler toed the Trumpian line that the country was all set to handle this pandemic that (spoiler alert!) it’s still not ready to handle:

Some might argue that while she didn’t have any transactions in the weeks leading up to that coronavirus briefing, and then sold a bunch of stock, she did make two purchases of stock in that period. But those really don’t help her case:

One of Loeffler’s two purchases was stock worth between $100,000 and $250,000 in Citrix, a technology company that offers teleworking software…

Yes, sold a bunch of other stock, but purchased stock in a company that enables telework, just weeks before practically the whole country moved to telework. The other purchase? Oracle. While Oracle stock has declined along with most of the rest of the market, given how much Oracle pushes itself as a “cloud” provider, you could see someone thinking it might get a boost as well.

Given all, a little other spelunking through the newly released financial disclosures for stocks sales in this period from three other Senators as well: Ron Johnson, Dianne Feinstein, and Jim Inhofe. The details of those sales don’t look quite as suspicious as the other two, but still might raise some eyebrows. Inhofe sold a bunch of Paypal, Intuit, and Apple stock. Feinstein sold a bunch of Allogene Therapeutics stock, a biotech firm doing cancer research — so it’s not clear that that’s related to pandemic info. Johnson made a bundle: between $5 million and $25 million in selling all of his share of a plastic extrusion company, Pacur, but that’s a private family company that he ran before becoming a Senator (his brother now runs the firm), and the sale was made to a private equity firm, and shows no evidence of being connected in any way to the pandemic (indeed, the company does plastic extrusion for medical devices, and you can see why that might suddenly be in more demand these days).

In a just world, someone would be looking into the Burr and Loeffler sales as insider trading. I’m not convinced that we’re in that world right now, though. In the meantime, as many of us are isolated at home, we can rest safe, knowing that Senator Burr and Senator Loeffler socked away a bunch of money while the rest of us suffer. The only surprising thing I will note, is that Burr, at least, is now receiving heavy criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, and even Tucker Carlson — usually a trusty voice repeating Trumpian talking points, has called for Burr to resign.

Of course, it’s worth highlighting one more point: profiting off the coming disaster is horrible and disgusting and awful. But it’s much, much worse to have spent weeks or even months knowing what disaster was about to befall the country and lying to the public about it.

The potential insider trading is dreadful and possibly criminal, but what could elevate this to a historic scandal is the idea that senators may have known enough to be alarmed for themselves yet still projected rosy scenarios to the public AND failed to make sure we were ready. https://t.co/PeMktkEPFA

— David French (@DavidAFrench) March 20, 2020

Source: Two Senators Sold A Bunch Of Stock After Being Briefed About COVID-19; While Telling The World Things Were Going To Be Fine | Techdirt

NASA needs 215 more petabytes of storage by the year 2025, and expects Amazon Web Services to provide the bulk of that capacity. However, the space agency didn’t realize this would cost it plenty in cloud egress charges. As in, it will have to pay as scientists download its data.

That omission alone has left NASA’s cloud strategy pointing at the ground rather than at the heavens.

The data in question will come from NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) program, which collects information from the many missions that observe our planet. NASA makes those readings available through the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS).

To store all the data and run EOSDIS, NASA operates a dozen Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) that provide pleasing redundancy. But NASA is tired of managing all that infrastructure, so in 2019, it picked AWS to host it all, and started migrating its records to the Amazon cloud as part of a project dubbed Earthdata Cloud. The first cut-over from on-premises storage to the cloud was planned for Q1 2020, with more to follow. The agency expects to transfer data off-premises for years to come.

NASA also knows that a torrent of petabytes is on the way. Some 15 imminent missions, such as the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) and the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellites, are predicted to deliver more than 100 terabytes a day of data. We mention SWOT and NISAR because they’ll be the first missions to dump data directly into Earthdata Cloud.

The agency therefore projects that by 2025 it will have 247 petabytes to handle, rather more than the 32 it currently wrangles.

NASA thinks this is all a great idea: in its documentation for the migration, it said:

Researchers and commercial users of NASA Earth Science data will have increased opportunity to access and process large quantities of data quickly, allowing new types of research and analysis. Data that was previously geographically dispersed will now be accessible via the cloud, saving time and resources.

And it will – if NASA can afford to operate it.

And that’s a live question because a March audit report [PDF] from NASA’s Inspector General noticed EOSDIS hadn’t properly modeled what data egress charges would do to its cloudy plan.

“Specifically, the agency faces the possibility of substantial cost increases for data egress from the cloud,” the Inspector General’s Office wrote, explaining that today NASA doesn’t incur extra costs when users access data from its DAACs. “However, when end users download data from Earthdata Cloud, the agency, not the user, will be charged every time data is egressed.

“That means EDSIS wearing cloud egress costs. Ultimately, ESDIS will be responsible for both cloud costs, including egress charges, and the costs to operate the 12 DAACS.”

And to make matters worse, NASA “has not yet determined which data sets will transition to Earthdata Cloud nor has it developed cost models based on operational experience and metrics for usage and egress.

Scientific data may become less available to end users if NASA imposes limitations on the amount of data egress for cost control reasons

“As a result, current cost projections may be lower than what will actually be necessary to cover future expenses and cloud adoption may become more expensive and difficult to manage.”

There’s more. The watchdog concluded: “Collectively, this presents potential risks that scientific data may become less available to end users if NASA imposes limitations on the amount of data egress for cost control reasons.”

And to put a cherry on top, the report found the project’s organizers didn’t consult widely enough, didn’t follow NIST data integrity standards, and didn’t look for savings properly during internal reviews, in part because half of the review team worked on the project itself.

The result is three recommendations from the auditors:

1. Once NISAR and SWOT are operational and providing sufficient data, complete an independent analysis to determine the long-term financial sustainability of supporting the cloud migration and operation while also maintaining the current DAAC footprint.
2. Incorporate in appropriate agency guidance language specifying coordination with ESDIS and OCIO early in a mission’s life cycle during data management plan development.
3. Ensure all applicable information types are considered during DAAC categorization, that appropriate premises are used when determining impact levels, and that the appropriate categorization procedures are standardized.

At least NASA seems to have bagged a good deal from AWS: The Register used Amazon’s cloudy cost calculator to tot up the cost of storing 247PB in the cloud giant’s S3 service. The promised pay-as-you-go price for us on the street was a staggering $5,439,526.92 per month, not taking into account the free tier discount of 12 cents. The audit, meanwhile, suggests an increased cloud spend of around $30m a year by 2025, on top of NASA’s $65m-per-year deal with AWS.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to learn about and understand data egress costs. Which left The Register wondering how an agency capable of sending stuff into orbit or making marvelously long-lived Mars rovers could also make such a dumb mistake.

It turns out NASA makes plenty: your humble vulture found this story after looking into Tuesday’s audit of the agency’s development work on its mobile launchers – the colossal vehicles designed to assemble, transport, and launch SLS and Orion rockets and capsules.

That audit found the project “has greatly exceeded its cost and schedule targets in developing ML-1. As of January 2020, modification of ML-1 to accommodate the SLS has cost $693 million — $308 million more than the agency’s March 2014 budget estimate — and is running more than 3 years behind schedule.” ®

Source: NASA to launch 247 petabytes of data into AWS – but forgot about eye-watering cloudy egress costs before lift-off

Electric car company Tesla asked employees to show up to work on Wednesday despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, including at its sprawling Fremont, California, production facility, according to emails obtained by CNBC.

[…]

According to CNBC, in an email to workers on Wednesday, Tesla North America HR leader Valerie Workman wrote the company had received “conflicting guidance from different levels of government.” But she suggested that many Tesla jobs are “essential,” mirroring the language of the shelter-in-place order and ignoring a clear directive from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office that only “minimum basic operations” can continue.

“There are no changes in your normal assignment and you should continue to report to work if you are in an essential function: production, service, deliveries, testing and supporting groups as discussed with your manager,” Workman wrote. She added that Tesla workers would not be penalized for using paid time off if they do not feel well or are “reluctant to come to work.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, Tesla CEO Elon Musk—who is not a doctor or public health expert, but has fought claims of unsafe conditions at Tesla facilities for years—downplayed concerns about the virus in a Monday email to staff. Musk wrote “My frank opinion is that the harm from the coronavirus panic far exceeds that of the virus itself” and stated his belief that covid-19 cases “will not exceed 0.1% of the population.”

“I will personally be at work, but that’s just me,” Musk wrote. “I’d rather you were at home and not stressed, than at work and worried.”

Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alamedia sheriff, told CNBC that “Our directive was clear” and trying to prevent a slump in production does not constitute an essential service. Many other automakers including General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler have temporarily suspended U.S. car production on a rotating basis.

According to Bloomberg, an Alameda County spokesperson said that Tesla is preparing to reduce staffing at the facility by 75 percent, though the company didn’t reply to their request for comment.

Update: 3/18/2010 at 9:25 p.m. ET: Per the LA Times, Tesla said it had 2,500 workers on site on Wednesday, about 25 percent of the factory’s normal workforce.

Kelly told the Times that the county “had a good conversation with Tesla today. They understand our position. The county explained they cannot continue their business as usual. They have to go on a minimum operations basis.”

Kelly added that as of Wednesday “it sounds like they’re still making cars,” but that “Tesla is not going to decide what the law is.” If the company continues production despite the workforce reduction the Fremont Police Department may get involved, he added.

Source: Tesla Told Employees to Show Up for Work on Wednesday Despite Shelter-in-Place Order

Last month we reported about Tesla’s occasional practice of removing features like Autopilot and Ludicrous mode from used cars after they’d been purchased by people who bought the cars with those features enabled. While Tesla eventually restored the removed features to the subject of the original story, I’ve been in touch with a number of people with similar stories, and, perhaps even more importantly, with Tesla employees who have confirmed that often Tesla’s actions have been directly counter to the company’s own policies, at least as understood by Service Techs and help center workers.

It’s also worth mentioning that, while I have spoken with Tesla employees at call centers and seen correspondence from service techs about this issue, Tesla corporate has so far not responded to any of my inquiries, not from the previous story, and not from this one.

[…]

I called Tesla’s customer support line at its call center in Draper, Utah. I spoke with two different representatives, and asked each if a feature that was on and available on a used Tesla—I used Ludicrous Mode as an example for one and Autopilot as an example for the other—was a feature that would stay with the car, or if the feature would need to be re-purchased by the next owner.

Both representatives assured me that the features are connected to the car’s VIN, and remained with the car for “the life of the car.” I had them clarify that these features were not subscriptions and were more like installing features in any car, which they confirmed.

I wanted to hear from a Tesla Service Tech as well, right from a Tesla-owned dealership, and I was able to do so when another Tesla owner, Michele, reached out to tell me about issues she had with her purchased-new Model 3, and specifically getting her Autopilot system purchase registered with Tesla’s systems.

I asked her to email her local Tesla dealer (this one was in Santa Barbara) and find out exactly if those features she paid for could be sold with her car if she decided to sell it, and this was the response she got (emphasis mine):

Good Morning Michele,It looks like Tesla did a full-fleet audit of Autopilot which cause this on your vehicle since it was purchased through the service center and not online or the mobile app. Autopilot once purchased stays with the life of the vehicle.

So, we’ve got two very different stories coming from Tesla. On the one side we have what has been actually happening to buyers of used cars. On the other we have the responses I got from call center representatives and an official dealer service advisor are very clear that any feature that was ordered with the car, be it FSD or Autopilot or Ludicrous Mode, stays with that car, keyed to that car’s VIN, for the life of the car.

This fits with how cars have been bought and sold for over a century: the original buyer of the car picks a set of factory-installed options, and if those options are on the car at the time of sale, unless specifically addressed otherwise, those options are considered intergral parts of the car that is being sold.

That means that whatever price was agreed upon for the car is expected to include those options, and if the automaker decides to remove any of those features post-sale, that’s theft.

Again, this is in opposition to what we’ve seen in the examples sent to us directly and appearing in various forums online—Tesla has treated add-on features like FSD and Ludicrous mode as being non-transferable when the car is sold—such as in the cases mentioned here of Alec, Brad, and the used car dealer who bought a Model X for his father.

These both can’t be right. The way that makes the most sense and seems the most fair is to treat these features as any car features like air conditioning or heated seats have been treated. They’re part of the car. When you sell the car, they go with it. Period.

If Tesla does not want to employ this method, it needs to make that absolutely clear to potential buyers of used and new Teslas alike. If you’re buying a used Tesla, the features that need to be re-purchased should not be available on the car when it’s being sold, and if you’re buying a new Tesla, the customer has a right to know they cannot count on those expensive features being part of the car to maintain its resale value.

If Tesla wants to make Autopilot and Ludicrous mode a subscription-type service, then it needs to own up to it and accept its lumps for deciding to do something so craven and greedy. We don’t have to like it, but we’d have to accept it if they made it obvious this was how it worked.

As things are now, it’s confusion. Customers are told one thing very clearly and simply from service centers and help lines—features stay with the car for life—but some customers, without any clear pattern, are told the opposite, in what feels like a brazen attempt to extract thousands of dollars for the company from every Tesla sold used.

I’ve given Tesla plenty of chances to set the record straight here, and if it somehow decides to finally reach out, I’m happy to present its side here, and hopefully bring some clarity to this mess.

As it stands now, though, I’d encourage every Tesla potential buyer, new or used, to get everything clarified and in writing when it comes to your expensive options.

Source: Tesla’s Removal Of Features On Used Cars Appears To Be In Violation Of Its Own Rules

KPN and VodafoneZiggo do not have to open their networks to third parties. That is what the Board of Appeal for Business has decided today.

This means that providers without their own network cannot enforce access to those networks for the provision of services.

The ACM had stipulated that KPN and VodafoneZiggo should both open up their fixed networks to other providers. This was laid down in the wholesale fixed access market analysis decision. This regulation took into consideration on 1 October 2018.

KPN and VodafoneZiggo are very strong in this market and can use that position according to the regulator to raise prices, adjust conditions to their advantage or slow down investments.

However, the CBb considers that ACM has not (sufficiently) proven the existence of such a joint market power. This eliminates the basis for the regulation imposed on KPN and VodafoneZiggo and therefore the access obligations are also lost.

The ACM is ‘disappointed’ by the ruling and is now studying its consequences.

Source: Hoogste rechter vernietigt besluit ACM over openstellen netwerken KPN en VodafoneZiggo – Emerce