Good morning and welcome to Thursday. According to current market valuations, Apple is worth the equivalent of ~11 Disneys.😳

No word yet on when the theme parks come out…

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.29 minutes to read.

"We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors."

–George Washington (1732-1799)

🇺🇦 President Biden is set to meet with other NATO leaders in Brussels today to discuss the situation in Ukraine. Western leaders are expected to unveil a new round of sanctions against Russia, along with new measures that tighten existing sanctions.

• Between 30,000 and 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, wounded, taken prisoner or are missing in Ukraine, according to a senior NATO official.
• Ukraine’s military said it has destroyed 97 Russian planes, 121 helicopters and 24 aerial drones since the war started.
• President Volodymyr Zelensky said roughly 100,000 Ukrainians are trapped in Mariupol with “no food, no water, no medicine” in the midst of constant Russian shelling.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s appointed climate envoy, Anatoly Chubais, resigned from his position and has left the country, a Kremlin spokesperson confirmed yesterday.
• NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance will agree to a “major increase” in troop presence on its eastern flank at a summit later today; since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, NATO has readied 140,000 troops in the region.
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken formally announced that the US gov’t believes Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine.

+The latest news: From the Left | From the Right

📊 Flash Poll: Would y’all prefer to keep receiving daily updates on the war in Ukraine and its impacts around the world?

Yes

No

Hacking group Lapsus$ said in its Telegram channel on Monday that it’d gained privileged access to some of Okta's proprietary data, a single sign-on provider with 15,000 customers, including Peloton, Sonos, T-Mobile and the FCC.

• Okta confirmed Tuesday that ~2.5% of its customers may have been affected in a January 2022 hack.

💻 The deets… Lapsus$ appeared three months ago, and seems to operate out of South America or possibly Portugal, per researchers at security firm Check Point. The group threatens to publicly release the data they access unless the victim pays a hefty ransom – and boy, have they been busy.

• Earlier this year, the group compromised the websites of Portuguese media conglomerate Impresa, tweeting the phrase "Lapsus$ is now the new president of Portugal" from one newspaper's Twitter accounts.
• Last month, the group leaked proprietary info about chipmaker Nvidia online – and then hit Samsung a couple of weeks ago.
• This brings us to Monday, when Lapsus$ posted a BitTorrent link to a file archive that allegedly contained the source code for Bing, Bing Maps and Cortana. Microsoft confirmed the hack in a blog post on Tuesday.

How the group managed to infiltrate these targets (👆) has never fully been clear to the public, but the Okta breach may help explain some of it.

🌐 Zoom out: Global ransomware attacks increased 105% last year, per cybersecurity firm SonicWall, with incidents affecting the world’s largest meat supplier (JBS) and America’s largest fuel pipeline (Colonial Pipeline).

💭 In a first-of-its-kind procedure, German scientists used a brain implant to allow a patient with complete paralysis to communicate via his thoughts, according to a study published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications.

• The participant in the study was a 36-year-old man with ALS (or Lou Gehrig's Disease) – a neurological disease that destroys the brain nerves that control movement.
• Eventually, patients with ALS lose all motor function and reach a completely “locked in” state.
• But with the help of an implantable device that reads his brain signals, the man suffering from locked-in syndrome was able to select letters and form sentences to communicate with his family and doctors.

🧠 Zoom out: The brain-computer interface market was valued at $1.4 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow 15+% each year through 2027, per business consulting firm Grand View Research.

• Yesterday, Snap announced the acquisition of NextMind, a neurotech startup that developed a headband letting the wearer control aspects of a computer – like unlocking an iPad screen or aiming a gun in a video game – with their thoughts.😳
• A Pew Research survey last week found 6 in 10 Americans would consider having a computer chip surgically implanted into their brains – like those developed by Elon Musk-led Neuralink – as long as they could turn it off.

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Global music revenues rose 18.5% to reach $25.9 billion last year, the highest level since accounting records began in the 1990s, per a new report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

🎧 By the numbers… On top of reaching record revenues, 2021 saw the music industry's fastest annual growth-rate in more than two decades.

• This growth was largely driven by streaming, which now has 523 million paid subscribers – up from 443 million in 2020. The category accounted for 65% of the industry's overall revenue.
• Sales of CDs increased for the first time this millennium, and vinyl revenues were up by 51%.
• The three top-selling artists (in order) were BTS, Taylor Swift and Adele.

📈 The big picture: The industry has now enjoyed seven consecutive years of growth, according to the IFPI.

+Dig deeper: How streaming payouts work, from our friends at Alternative Assets.

• ☝️ New Yorkers apparently aren’t in a hurry to hop back on the subway.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📉📈 US stocks fell across the board as the price of oil climbed 5.3% to reach $121.60 per barrel. (Dow: -1.3% | S&P: -1.2% | Nasdaq: -1.3%)
• 🏘️ The national median rent across the 50 largest metro areas set a new record in February, according to a report from Realtor.com ($1,792/month).
• 🛒 Walmart and its subsidiary Sam’s Club filed a lawsuit accusing rival BJ ‘s Wholesale Club of stealing its self-checkout technology.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎾 25-year-old Ashleigh Barty, the No. 1 women’s tennis player in the world, is retiring; she had won 25 of her last 26 matches and three of her last four events, including two Grand Slam titles.
• 🏈 The Kansas City Chiefs agreed to trade wide receiver Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins for five draft picks (a first, a second, two fourths, and a sixth); the Dolphins also signed Hill to a four-year, $120 million extension, making him the highest-paid WR in history.
• 👟 Adidas announced plans to create a name, image and likeness (NIL) program for up to 50,000 college athletes to become paid endorsers of the brand.
• 📺 YouTube is streaming free, ad-supported TV shows for the first time; users can now access more than 4,000 episodes from shows including Hell’s Kitchen, Andromeda, Heartland and more.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🙈 A British startup created a real-life “Invisibility Shield” that uses light-bending technology to hide the wearer in plain sight (think: the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter).
• 💉 Moderna plans to ask regulators in the US and EU to authorize two small-dose shots for youngsters under 6 in the coming weeks.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🏛️ Madeleine Albright, the first female Secretary of State, passed away at 84.
• 🇦🇫 The Taliban abruptly canceled classes for Afghan girls in seventh grade and above after previously promising to reopen women’s schools starting yesterday.
• 💵🏫 Florida became the 11th – and largest – state to mandate personal finance education in high schools.

💬 Quoted… “Now is the time for the Administration to sunset federal transportation travel restrictions… that are no longer aligned with the realities of the current epidemiological environment.”

• The heads of 10 major commercial and cargo airlines – including Delta, Southwest, American and UPS – signed a letter urging President Biden to lift Covid restrictions, including the federal airline mask mandate.

🔎 Stat of the Day: 15% of Google searches have never been Googled before. (Question: Does that make them “new-gles”?)

🤯 Did You Know?... More than half of fruits and veggies are lost along the supply chain (50% to 60%).

📖 Worth a Read: How a YouTube channel is transforming a remote village in Bangladesh → (Rest of World)

📊 Yesterday’s Flash Poll Results: 44% of y’all wouldn’t feel comfortable taking a ride in a self-driving car – while 27% would hop right in, and 29% would give-in to peer pressure.

Yes – “Almost all athletes do not win – athletic competition is about more than who gets the medal or trophy. All participants would benefit from the inclusion of all who want to compete."

No – “Hormone treatment or not, there are scientifically proven physiological differences in muscle mass and bone structure/density that can provide an unfair advantage. Trans people should be free to make choices regarding their bodies, but not at the expense of biological women.”

Unsure/Other – “Trans women should definitely have the right to compete in sports. Could they perhaps be included in women’s sports, but have their own record-holding categories?”

+Note on sample size: We received 7,331 responses.👏🥳 Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.

With gas prices soaring around the country, filling up a car can be an expensive burden. 

So a pair of gas station owners in Burnsville, NC, decided to pay it forward and surprise their customers by selling gas for just $2.25 per gallon until they ran out, which resulted in a line of customers wrapping around the block.

🙌 Called to be kind... When asked about the price drop and the store's obvious financial loss from the sale, the owners said that more than anything, they just wanted to help people.

🤔 Riddle me this: Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday or Sunday – and without citing specific dates (e.g., May 1st, May 2nd, May 3rd)?

🌕 True or false: Pluto is smaller than the moon.

❓ Trivia: How many different ways can you make change for a dollar?

A) 64

B) 151

C) 293

D) 422

keep scrolling for the answers

Check out our referral prizes you can get just for introducing people you know to this newsletter. 👇

Here’s your unique link to copy & send to anyone you think would like the DONUT:

Riddle: Yesterday, today and tomorrow; we’d also accept Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day

T/F: True

Trivia: C) 293 (including a one-dollar coin)