Brian Gongol
A lousy week for Apple
Steve Jobs takes a medical leave of absence as CEO of Apple because his health is still in trouble, and the stock drops about 3% in value. He's probably worth a whole lot more to the company than that.
Spain wants Google to wipe results from its databases
Google has links to newspaper articles from Spain. Some of those articles are being challenged by people who say their privacy was violated by those articles. Since they apparently can't get the newspapers to take the articles down, they're going after Google instead. It clearly raises simultaneous and competing questions about the right to privacy (who doesn't treasure that?), the right to freedom of the press (an imperative for a functioning democracy), and the right "to be forgotten" (libel and slander laws are there to keep people from losing their ability to earn an income by having their reputations unfairly besmirched, but what about when real mistakes are now digitally documented in perpetuity?). Moreover, it raises the very important issue (not altogether irrelevant in light of the Wikileaks situation) about who is responsible for content that may be troubling: The source, or the people who publish (or re-publish) it?
If you want to buy a share of Facebook, better move offshore
After goofing on the way they announced the investment opportunity, Goldman Sachs has decided that the only way to keep American regulators happy is to offer the "private placement" to people who live outside the US. It's not even an intentional part of the great asset selloff (in which Americans, loaded with debt and facing a huge retirement-related liability as the Baby Boomers start retiring), and yet it's happening anyway.
Candidates line up for one of the toughest jobs on the planet
The prime minister (taoiseach) of Ireland has announced that he's stepping down as leader of his party, but he wants to stay in charge of the country until a general election in March. Others are lining up inside and outside of his party to get his job -- which is a hugely challenging one. The country has a load of debt it needs to clean up.
50 years of Japanese concept cars
Some look pretty impressive -- others, total disasters. Not as though a similar collection of American or German concept cars would look much better or worse, in the aggregate.
