🐤 Sharing is caring

🏦 Markets: Wall Street ended the day Tuesday on a mixed note, but things began with quite some excitement. A technical issue shortly after the opening bell prevented multiple stocks from being available for trade, causing some of the stock prices to temporarily plummet.

It didn’t take too long for the problem to be resolved — and the rest of the day was relatively uneventful.

The S&P 500 ticked up a paltry 0.1% while both the Nasdaq and Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about 0.3% during the day.

🥇 Lucky Number 83: There are few athletes who have been able to dominate their sport the way that U.S. skier Mikaela Shiffrin has during her career. During a World Cup race this week, she scored a victory in the giant slalom event that put her at the top of the list of women skiers with a staggering 83 wins. Now she is just three victories short of tying the overall record held by Ingemar Stenmark. When Shiffrin matched fellow American Lindsey Vonn’s record earlier this year, she was clearly emotional. Upon becoming the all-time female leader, however, she didn’t shed any tears. “In the end of it, it’s like there’s too much excitement to feel,” she said. “I don’t know if that makes sense. So it’s something you can’t explain. So I just try to breathe a bit and enjoy it.”

🐶 Kevin to the rescue: After New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge broke the single-season American League home run record last year, there was a lot of speculation that he would not return to the game in pinstripes for the 2023 season. As he revealed in a recent interview, however, it was a teammate’s pet that ultimately convinced him to sign another contract with the Yankees. First baseman Anthony Rizzo also signed a new contract with the franchise and reportedly enlisted his dog, Kevin, to help convince Judge to do the same. Kevin and Judge’s dog, Penny, had already established a connection — and Judge said that Rizzo used photos of the two dogs playing together to help make a compelling case for sticking with the Yankees. “He went for my heart,” Judge said of Rizzo.

🎟️ A ticket to Congress: What started out as a dispute between Taylor Swift fans and the online ticket sales giant Live Nation ultimately led to a congressional hearing this week on Capitol Hill. At the heart of the matter was whether the company’s merger with Ticketmaster more than a decade ago created an unfair monopoly. Many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed serious concerns about the way the huge corporation that resulted from the merger has gone on to dominate the industry. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) spoke for many of his colleagues in expressing outrage over the way Ticketmaster keeps a tight grip on the way people are allowed to sell their own tickets on the platform, telling Live Nation President Joe Berchtold: “You leverage market power in one market to get market power in another.” Other lawmakers questioned why the company has not been able to prevent “bot” accounts from buying up all the tickets to particular shows. The Department of Justice is now looking into the company and new regulations could be announced regarding how it is permitted to conduct business in the future.

🎥 And the nominees are: The 95th Academy Awards nominee list came out this week and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” led the pack with a whopping 11 nods. Two films — “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” — were right behind it with nine nominations each. All three were nominated for Best Picture, along with seven other movies: “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Elvis,” “The Fabelmans,” “Tár,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Triangle of Sadness,” and “Women Talking.” Click here for a full list of nominees in all categories. Winners will be announced at the ceremony, which will be held on March 12 this year.

It looks like Netflix made a New Year’s resolution it’s determined to keep.

Although there have been plenty of rumors about such a plan in recent years, 2023 seems to be the year that the streaming platform will really crack down on the number of users who share an account password across multiple residences.

Why now?

From a business standpoint, it makes sense that Netflix wants as many paying subscribers as possible. After all, if two households are sharing the same account, the company is only bringing in half as much revenue as it could if both were paying for the service.

In the past, however, Netflix has turned a blind eye to the practice of sharing passwords — or even tacitly endorsed the practice. In 2017, the company infamously tweeted: “Love is sharing a password.”

After the number of Netflix subscribers dropped for the first time in the company’s history last year, however, it realized that the time had come to make sure as many viewers were paying for the service as possible.

How the plan will take shape

It might not surprise you to learn that Netflix can already determine where people are logging into specific accounts. So the company knows if you’re one of the many people either sharing your account or borrowing someone else’s.

For now, Netflix isn’t expected to start banning people from doing so — but those who do will pay more. The company has been testing a program that increases the monthly subscription cost for accounts that have viewers in different households. That plan has apparently worked in places like Peru, Chile, and Costa Rica, and is expected to be rolled out elsewhere around the world soon.

Other tools are expected to follow that will allow flexibility among subscribers while maximizing the company’s profits.

If you’re like me, you’ve benefited from the remote work revolution. Being able to log in from home and cut out the hassle of a busy commute has given millions of employees some freedom that they didn’t have when they were tied to an office.

At the same time, however, the current work environment has been ripe for scammers who promise big money for work-from-home jobs that don’t actually exist.

Why do the scammers do it?

As with virtually any other online scam, the primary motivation for those who create listings for fake jobs lies in collecting personal information about prospective victims. This can include passwords, Social Security numbers, or even banking data.

Of course, when people are looking for a job, they might let their guard down a bit and fall for something that they would recognize as suspicious if it came in a spam email or some other format.

For that reason, it pays to be as cautious as possible.

A few important steps to take

In order to reduce the chances of falling for a fraudster’s scheme, one executive at the job search platform Adzuna recommends beginning with one common adage in mind.

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” Paul Lewis said. “Work from home for a salary beyond your wildest dreams? Highly unlikely.”

Keeping these tips in mind will help you navigate with confidence:

• Use trusted platforms, but always be skeptical. Reports indicate nearly one in three job listings on Indeed might be fraudulent.
• Reach out with any questions or concerns. If a job poster won’t address those issues to your satisfaction, that’s a big red flag.
• Don’t blindly agree to give out your information. There’s no reason to reveal any sensitive data early on in the job-seeking process.

I recently wrote about the health hazards presented by so-called “forever chemicals” found in many of the freshwater fish caught in the United States. But many of these same contaminants can be found in the water we drink, potentially leading to serious negative consequences.

What caused the problem?

Prior to the mid-20th century, these chemicals — commonly referred to as PFAS — did not even exist. When they were developed, however, manufacturers gravitated toward their ability to repel water and oil, which made them useful in a number of products including nonstick pans, textiles, and food packaging.

Little did they know (or perhaps care) at the time, these chemicals can easily seep into the food and water supply and they are virtually impossible to eradicate.

Fortunately, one group of Australian researchers at the University of Queensland believe they have developed a way to remove forever chemicals from water.

A high-tech solution

According to studies, the use of a specialized solution known as a magnetic fluorinated polymer sorbent is capable of surrounding and magnetizing PFAS. From there, it’s practically as simple as using a magnet to remove nearly all of the chemicals from contaminated water.

Early research suggests that the process can remove more than 95% of the molecules in general and more than 99% of an especially dangerous type of PFAS.

Removing the contaminants only takes about 30 seconds and the solution can be used multiple times.

As Dr. Cheng Zhang said of his team’s research: “Our method shows it is possible to remove more of these chemicals in a way that is faster, cheaper, cleaner, and very simple.”

He went on to tout the fact that the process does not rely on electricity, which means “it can be used in remote and off-grid communities.”