An anonymous reader writes: Charles Schwab is suing one of its former customers after the retail brokerage allegedly sent more than $1.2 million to an account of the Louisiana woman and then could not get the money back. Schwab meant to send $82.56 to Kelyn Spadoni's Fidelity Brokerage Services account in February, but a computer glitch caused it to erroneously transfer more than $1.2 million, according to the lawsuit. Schwab tried to get the money back, but repeated calls and texts to Spadoni, who lives in a suburb of New Orleans, were not returned, the brokerage said in the lawsuit. "We are fully cooperating with authorities in an effort to resolve this issue," Schwab said in a statement on Tuesday. Fidelity declined comment. After receiving the money in her account, Spadoni transferred a quarter of the money to another account, after which she bought a house and a car using the funds, Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office spokesman Captain Jason Rivarde said in an interview on Tuesday. "Obviously you are not planning to give the money back if you spent it," he said. When Spadoni signed up with Schwab in January, the agreement she signed included a section that said any overpayment of funds must be returned, said the lawsuit, filed March 30.

Google Earth has partnered with NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, and Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab to bring users time-lapse images of the planet's surface -- 24 million satellite photos taken over 37 years. Together they offer photographic evidence of a planet changing faster than at any time in millennia. Shorelines creep in. Cities blossom. Trees fall. Water reservoirs shrink. Glaciers melt and fracture. From a report: "We can objectively see global warming with our own eyes," said Rebecca Moore, director of Google Earth. "We hope that this can ground everyone in an objective, common understanding of what's actually happening on the planet, and inspire action." Timelapse, the name of the new Google Earth feature, is the largest video on the planet, according to a statement from the company, requiring 2 million hours to process in cloud computers, and the equivalent of 530,000 high-resolution videos. The tool stitches together nearly 50 years of imagery from the U.S.'s Landsat program, which is run by NASA and the USGS. When combined with images from complementary European Sentinel-2 satellites, Landsat provides the equivalent of complete coverage of the Earth's surface every two days. Google Earth is expected to update Timelapse about once a year.

Dell has announced the long-expected spinoff of VMware, the computing virtualization company it has majority-owned since it bought then-owner EMC Corp. in 2016. From a report: The computing giant said it will spin off its 81% equity ownership in VMware, creating two standalone companies when the move is completed in the fourth quarter of this year. That timing depends on conditions such as a favorable Internal Revenue Service opinion that the transaction qualifies for tax-free status for Dell shareholders. The idea is to simplify the companies' capital structures, since arguably investors have valued both companies' stocks lower than they might have because of the uncertainties related to the complex capital structures. Dell's shares rose about 9% in after-hours trading, while VMware's shares rose about 1.6% in late trading. Under the spinoff, which Dell had signaled last year, VMware will distribute a cash dividend of about $11.5 billion to $12 billion to shareholders, which of course include publicly held Dell itself. Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Dell, along with financial partner Silver Lake Partners, own 60% of Dell shares. Dell will get $9.3 billion to $9.7 billion of that dividend, which the company said will help it get more investment-grade ratings and enable it to pay down debt it has gradually been reducing since buying EMC.