Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 🇨🇳 A look at the Chinese government’s hacking strategies
• 🚫📱 Many AT&T customers got a taste of the apocalypse yesterday
• 🌕 A historic Moon landing just occurred

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 4.70-minute read.

P.S. First time reading? Subscribe here for free.

"Correct what you can. Learn from what you can't."

–Toni Morrison (1931-2019)

There’s a saying that a college degree is “just a piece of paper” – and for many Americans, that statement hits close to home.

About half of recent US college graduates work in jobs where their degrees aren’t needed, according to a new study tracking the career paths of 10+ million graduates who entered the job market over the past decade.

The research, from the Strada Education Foundation and Burning Glass Institute, found 52% of four-year college graduates were in non-college-level jobs one year after graduation, and 45% were similarly underemployed a decade later.

The college roadmap to El Dorado

Per the data, what a person studies in college is the No. 1 factor in determining their odds of getting on a college-level career track – more so than race, gender, or specific choice of university.

• Five years after graduating college, ~75% of US students who majored in a health profession, engineering, or a math-intensive business program (finance, accounting) were working at jobs where their degree is needed.
• On the flip side, ~40% of students who majored in public safety/security, humanities and cultural studies, or a non-math-intensive business program (management, marketing, HR) were using their degree at their job.

Internships were also crucial to landing a college-level career track. Across all degree programs, the underemployment rate for graduates without at least one internship was consistently 15%-20% higher than graduates with an internship during college.

💥 The impact: Americans in college-level jobs earn nearly 90% more in their 20s, on average, than people with a high-school diploma as their highest level of education, per US Census Bureau data. By comparison, underemployed college graduates earn an average of 25% more than high-school graduates who didn’t complete college.

📊 Flash poll: To all our readers in the workforce who are college graduates – do you work in a job where your degree is needed?

• Yes
• No

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🇷🇺 The family of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is pressuring Moscow over his death. Navalny’s mother released a video yesterday saying Russian officials had shown her son’s body in a morgue, though they wouldn’t release it to her. She also said authorities demanded Navalny be buried in secret – but she refused. At roughly the same time the video was released, Navalny’s wife and daughter met with President Biden in San Francisco, during which they discussed US sanctions against Russia over Navalny’s death (set to be announced today).

🇭🇳 Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) went on trial in the US for drug trafficking. The former president was once seen by the US as an ally in fighting the drug trade – but in 2022, JOH was arrested on drug trafficking charges and extradited to the US shortly after leaving office. Prosecutors say JOH accepted ~$2.6 million from El Chapo and other cartel bosses over two decades, in exchange for safe passage of at least 500 tons of cocaine into America through Honduras. The Manhattan trial of JOH, who denies all charges, is expected to last 2-3 weeks.

🇨🇳 Chinese government hacking strategies were revealed in a leaked cache of documents. The files revealed various hacking tools used by Chinese state agents to uncover the identities of social media users outside China, break into email accounts, and hide the online activity of overseas government agents. A couple examples: devices disguised as power strips and batteries that can compromise Wi-Fi networks. Separately, panda diplomacy is back – China announced plans to send two giant pandas to the San Diego Zoo this year, reversing a recent trend of Beijing reclaiming nearly all pandas loaned to US zoos as relations soured between the two nations.

For a few hours yesterday morning, tens of thousands of AT&T customers across the US experienced a total cellular blackout that disrupted calls, texts, and emergency services, and also provided at least some taste of the confusion that would accompany an apocalyptic alien invasion.

• A spike in outages began around 4:00 am ET and peaked at around 8:30 am ET, according to Downdetector. AT&T said the issue was likely caused by a process error, not a cyberattack.

How do cell networks function?... In essence, cell phones are radios. When you speak into a phone on a call, your voice is converted into a signal that’s transmitted via radio wave to a nearby cell tower. The cell tower then relays the radio wave back to the person you’re speaking to, converting it first to a signal and then back to sound again.

• 4G and 5G wireless networks (aka cellular WiFi/internet) work the same as above👆, except with data instead of your voice. Each network iteration (ex: 3G → 4G → 5G) has allowed for a greater quantity of data to be transferred at quicker speeds – meaning TikTok would’ve been tough to pull off in the 3G-era.

Beyoncé’s gone country, America’s gone wireless. As of late 2022, an estimated 73% of adults and 82% of children lived in homes with only wireless phone services. But landline owners may get the last laugh. Many AT&T phones affected by yesterday's outage were still able to dial 911 by piggybacking off other carrier’s networks, however, in the case of a total cellular blackout, landline owners would be the only ones still be able to make emergency 911 calls.

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💬 Quoted… “We can confirm, without a doubt, that our equipment is on the surface of the Moon."

• Yesterday afternoon, for the first time in history, a private company successfully landed a spacecraft on the Moon. The unmanned robotic lunar lander, made by US-based firm Intuitive Machines, marks the first American craft to land on the Moon since the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. Intuitive Machines’ craft, called Odysseus, was carrying a payload of six NASA instruments, a part for a future Moon telescope, and a sculpture by American artist Jeff Koons.

♟️ Stat of the Day: Some eight-year-olds can read at a middle-school level. Others can fill out multiplication tables at mind-boggling speeds. But none have ever reached the heights of eight-year-olds Leonid Ivanovic from Serbia and Ashwath Kaushik from Singapore, both of whom last week became the youngest chess players ever to defeat a grandmaster in a classic tournament game – first Ivanovic, then Kaushik, who’s four months younger.

🤔 Did You Know?... The top 25% of TikTok users produce 98% of all public videos found on the platform, per a new Pew Research Center report.

📰 Worth a Read: Goldman Sachs’s Chief Economist Has Nailed Big Calls. Here’s His Next One → (WSJ)

• ☝️ The American Meteor Society received hundreds of reports of a fireball in the night sky across 11 states in the Great Lakes, Northeast, and mid-Atlantic regions on Wednesday evening. (🎶FIREball, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh.)

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with StatsPanda

• RECORDS ON RECORDS: 💰 US markets rose across the board (S&P: +2.1%; Dow: +1.2%; Nasdaq: +3.0%); the S&P and Dow both closed at a record high. | 🇯🇵 Japan's Nikkei Stock Average surpassed a record high that was set in 1989. | 📈 Nvidia's market cap increased by $273 billion yesterday, a record amount.
• 📝 Reddit officially filed to go public; the social media platform is reportedly seeking an valuation of at least $5 billion; it was last valued at $10 billion in a private 2021 fundraise.
• 🚗 Carvana, the used-car retailer, reported its first-ever annual profit.

*From our partners: 📊🐼 Learn about the world with easy understandable and digestible content… StatsPanda has graphics featured in Digg, Business Insider, and by YouTuber MrBeast. They provide simple, accurate, and trustworthy data visualizations. Subscribe free to StatsPanda.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏈🎮 EA Sports’ new CFB video game, “EA Sports College Football 25,” began allowing players to opt in yesterday; student-athletes will receive a minimum of $600 plus a copy of the game for allowing their name, image, and likeness to be used.
• 🎤 Former talk show host Wendy Williams has been diagnosed with a form of dementia as well as aphasia, her representatives announced.
• ✍️ Substack now has more than 3 million customers subscribed to paid newsletters on its platform, up from 2 million last year and 1 million in 2022. | 🚫 Vice Media will stop publishing content on its flagship website and plans to cut hundreds of jobs following a failed effort to sell the company.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Spoak

• 🚨🌑 A Texas county issued a local state of emergency in anticipation of a significant surge in visitors due to an upcoming total solar eclipse, which will cross North America on April 8.
• 🧠🖱️ Neuralink’s first human patient, who had a chip implanted in their brain a few weeks ago, made a full recovery and can now control a computer mouse using only their thoughts, CEO Elon Musk said; no pictures or videos have been released yet.
• ☀️🌎 A pair of powerful solar flares hit Earth late Wednesday and early Thursday, causing radio blackouts over the US West Coast; experts say the flares likely don’t have anything to do with yesterday’s AT&T service outage.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• ✈️ The IRS is auditing corporate private jet usage to see whether some executives illegally write off their personal use as a tax expense. | 🚫🧾 Tax evasion by US millionaires and billionaires who either don’t file taxes or under-report their income amounts to over $150 billion/year, per IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel.
• 🎓 Yale is the latest elite university to drop its test-optional pandemic policy and start requiring ACT or SAT scores from all applicants, joining Dartmouth, MIT, and Georgetown. (Background)
• ⚖️ Alabama officials are seeking the state Supreme Court’s permission to carry out a second prisoner execution using a controversial nitrogen gas method. (Background)

CLICKBAIT

• 🇮🇹🏘️ These Americans bought abandoned homes in Italy for as little as $1: Was it worth it?

Bill Hassinger and Joanne Blakkan were high school sweethearts who were once sent to the principal’s office for smooching on the bus. 

While the duo parted ways after school, they always kept each other in the back of their minds. Each went on to marry other people and have children, but at 90 and 92 respectively, they are now both widowed. That hasn't stopped them from finding a second chance at love. 

❤️ A happy ending... Bill and Joanne reconnected online before their school's 73rd reunion. They've been inseparable ever since. 

• “Believe it or not, we’re in love at our age,” Joanna, 92, told People. “I want his hugs and kisses and he feels the same way. It’s just like when we were teenagers.”

Our weekly news quiz is live. How well did you pay attention this week? Let’s find out.

Below are three lists of ingredients. All you have to do is give us the completed dish they make.

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Flour
• Brown sugar
• Sea salt
• Butter
• Cornmeal
• Sugar
• Vanilla extract
• Eggs
• Buttermilk
• Raspberries

✌️ Recipe #2:

• Eggs
• Olive oil
• Bell peppers
• Scallion
• Roma tomatoes
• Baby spinach
• Sea salt
• Black pepper
• Yellow plantains
• Rosemary
• Red chile flakes

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Chicken
• Apple cider vinegar
• Soy sauce
• Black peppercorns
• Bay leaves
• Garlic
• Salt
• Vegetable oil
• Rice

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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☝️ Recipe #1: Raspberry chess pie bars

✌️ Recipe #2: Plantain frittata

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Chicken adobo