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// HAPPENING TODAY
- The puny humans at the United Nations will hold their first-ever symposium on lethal autonomous weapons systems.
- Take-Two Interactive reports earnings.
- Tesla hosts the World Energy Innovation Forum.
Question Now Is Whether GoPro Will BASE Jump Off Nasdaq or NYSE
Here comes the GoPro IPO. After registering for a “secret” initial public offering under the 2012 JOBS Act, the action camera company is finally ready to take the plunge. Sources familiar with GoPro’s plans tell Code/red the company’s S-1 is imminent and should be out this week or next. J.P. Morgan, Barclays and Citigroup are still expected to lead the offering.
Well, $80 Million After All the $1,000-Per-Day Consultants
“One. Hundred. Million. Dollars.”
So Google, About That Picture of Me Passed Out Next to the Beer Bong and the Sheep …
“A disappointing ruling for search engines and online publishers in general.” That’s Google’s take on a new ruling by the European Court of Justice that says search engine operators are responsible for removing links to outdated personal information if requested. Google has been fighting against this so-called right to be forgotten, arguing that it does not control the information it links to and that amending its search results in such a way is a sort of censorship. But the EU’s highest court disagreed. In its view, search companies are responsible for personal data they link to in their results. Bad news for Google and other search-engine operators, which are now obligated to field complaints from reputation-obsessed users about content they didn’t create.
Don’t Be Evil, Be Terrifying
Axel Springer SE CEO Mathias Döpfner to Google Chairman Eric Schmidt: “We are afraid of Google. I must state this very clearly and frankly, because few of my colleagues dare do so publicly. And as the biggest among the small, perhaps it is also up to us to be the first to speak out in this debate. You wrote it yourself in your book: ‘We believe that modern technology platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple, are even more powerful than most people realize (…), and what gives them power is their ability to grow — specifically, their speed to scale. Almost nothing, short of a biological virus, can scale as quickly, efficiently or aggressively as these technology platforms and this makes the people who build, control, and use them powerful too.'”
Wait — Dinosaurs and Sharecroppers Wandered the Earth at the Same Time?
Musician and “The Problem With Music” author Steve Albini: “Anybody complaining about the new paradigm has simply refused to take advantage of it, and for a street-level musician the change in the industry has been fantastic. Whenever I see some industry dinosaur pining for the old days of the sharecropper system the big labels operated on I feel about the same way I did watching the ‘Quincy’ episode about punk rock. Bitching about how different things are now betrays a profound and malignant kind of stupid.”
New Bipolar Disorder Seen in Office for iPad Fanbois
Six weeks after debuting in Apple’s App Store, Microsoft’s Office for iPad has been downloaded more than 27 million times. That’s more than double the number Microsoft quoted on April 3, after just a week of availability. Impressive. That said, these numbers refer to free downloads. Microsoft hasn’t yet disclosed how many Office 365 subscriptions have originated with iPad owners.
RIP, H.R. Giger
Christa Mrgan: “Sad to hear H.R. Giger passed. His work with Ridley Scott truly captured the wonder and beauty of pregnancy.”
When It Comes to Relationships, Always Listen to Ma
Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma: “The relationship between investors and entrepreneurs is like a couple’s; nobody can say who is taking advantage of the other. Also, it is common for them to quarrel and break up because they have different opinions over how to raise and educate their child.”
Beats Music a Grower, Not a Shower
That Beats Music royalty statement making the rounds this morning sure is interesting, but it’s not the most accurate reflection of Beats Music subscriptions. While the streaming service may well have had just under 111,000 users at the end of March, it’s got significantly more than that now. As my colleague Peter Kafka reported last week, Beats’ current subscriber count tops out at around 200,000 users, thanks to a free-trial deal with AT&T. That’s a bigger number, though it’s obviously still nowhere near where Beats or its soon-to-be acquirer Apple would like it, though presumably the latter could do an awful lot to boost it.
Google Glass Markup Slightly Less Immense Than Reported
Looks like estimates that put the component costs of Google Glass at $80 were as
“absolutely wrong” as Google claimed them to be. According to a new teardown by market research firm IHS, the $1,500 wearable actually costs $152.47 to make — $132.47 in parts and another $20 to slap them together. Evidently that remaining $1,347.53 is the cost of convincing customers they won’t become social pariahs.
Um, Wells Fargo Did Know About Our LendingClub Holding, Right?
The second quarter is shaping up to be a good one for venture capital fundraising. Silicon Valley VC outfit Norwest Venture Partners just closed its newest fund at $1.2 billion with a single limited partner — Wells Fargo. Norwest, which pocketed some healthy gains from last year’s IPOs of security company FireEye and digital coupon clearinghouse RetailMeNot, is looking forward to more returns this year from its investments in LendingClub and Mobile Iron.
What’s Dothraki for “I Fart in Your General Direction“?
Game of Thrones linguist David Peterson: “There’s a scene where the Meereenese rider is challenging Daenerys’ champion. He’s shouting and Missandei is translating — but she’s not translating what he’s saying. He’s actually saying a Low Valyrian translation of the French guy’s insults in ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail.’ That was [creator] Dan Weiss’s idea and it was so hilarious that I had to do it. [Fans] know that something’s going on. Right after that episode aired, I was getting tweets like, “Is he saying a ‘your momma’ joke?” Close … but no, he’s actually starting out with, ‘Your mother is a hamster.'”
Off Topic
“Frozen” as a horror film and “Star Wars” as a Tarantino movie.
Thanks for reading. Got a tip or a comment? Reach me at John@recode.net, @johnpaczkowski. Subscribe to the Code/red newsletter here.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
