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// HAPPENING TODAY
- Lots of net neutrality vote bloviating.
- Adobe Creative Cloud is back up after a massive day-long outage.
- TrueCar is coming to terms with the fact that its IPO shares sold at $9 each, well below the $12-$14 range it had forecast.
- Apple kremlinologists are wondering what Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant was doing on the company’s campus yesterday.
Bitcoin Foundation Resignation Drive a Roaring Success
The Bitcoin Foundation’s annual meeting is shaping up to be a real fiasco. The Seattle-based non-profit — which claims to “standardize, protect and promote the use of Bitcoin cryptographic money for the benefit of users worldwide” — saw some 10 of its members quit ahead of the gathering. The reason: The foundation’s lousy governance track record, although the troubled past of its latest director, Disney “First Kid” and bitcoin entrepreneur Brock Pierce, seems to have played a big role as well. “The foundation members need to emulate very high moral values and ethics in business and in personal dealings, especially as it involves money,” foundation member Patrick Alexander said in a post to the organization’s forums. “So far, the track record of prominent Bitcoin Foundation members has been abysmal. I no longer want to be associated with these people.”
Correction: An earlier version of this item incorrectly described The Bitcoin Foundation as a regulatory group.
What We’re In Is More of a … Gas-Filled Spherical Pocket
Cisco CEO John Chambers: “I wouldn’t say we’re in a bubble.”
We Do?
Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell: “You trust and rely on us to deliver beautiful, personalized products that make your daily habits inspiring and entertaining.”
Rumor Is Apple’s Developing a Blood Pressure App for Septuagenarian Stockholder Activists
Maybe Carl Icahn really is Apple’s No. 1 fanboi. After assuring CEO Tim Cook last year that there was “nothing short-term” about his intentions with regard to the company, the gadfly investor has raised his “no brainer” investment in it once again. According to a new regulatory filing, Icahn amassed another 2.8 million shares of Apple in the first quarter of 2014. Through Icahn Enterprises, he now holds 7.54 million shares, worth about $4.05 billion as of Thursday’s close.
Point/Counterpoint: Our Marketing Spend Is Out of Control vs. Let’s Name an Airport Terminal After Our Smartphone
Samsung Senior Vice President Kim Hyunjoon, January 2014: “We will try to raise the efficiency of our marketing spend and lower our overall mobile marketing budget to revenue this year compared with last year.”
Samsung, May 2014: “Samsung is set to dominate the world’s busiest terminal by rebranding Heathrow Terminal 5 as ‘Terminal Samsung Galaxy S5.’ The activity, in conjunction with JCDecaux Airport, is set to raise awareness of Samsung’s flagship mobile and is the first time Heathrow has permitted a brand takeover of Terminal 5.”
Amazon Honors San Francisco With Gigantic Orange Eyesore
What’s Amazon hiding in that monstrous orange locker it dumped near the Ferry Building in San Francisco? I was hoping for a series of identical and infinitely regressing smaller ugly orange lockers — or a second dumpster overflowing with garbage. But Business Insider says the thing is stuffed with a new Nissan Rogue and a bunch of other prizes.
No, “Silicon Valley Career, Sacramento Lifestyle” Is Not a Joke
Wade Roush, Xconomy: “If you’re a Northern California city and you want to build your own distinct entrepreneurial culture, what do you do about the reality that Silicon Valley is just a short drive away? Do you treat it as a resource, or a threat, or both?”
Forget I Said That, Sarah Slocum
Ivy Ross, the first official head of Google Glass: “With your help, I look forward to answering the seemingly simple, but truly audacious, questions Glass poses: Can technology be something that frees us up and keeps us in the moment, rather than taking us out of it? Can it help us look up and out at the world around us, and the people who share it with us?”
The Least He Could Have Done Was Call It MarchioriRank
Daniele Lepido, Bloomberg: “It was 17 years ago that [Massimo Marchiori] showed the world his Internet search engine. Sitting in the audience at an Internet conference in Santa Clara, California, when Marchiori unveiled the breakthrough, was a student, four years younger than the speaker, who listened with rapt attention. That guy was Larry Page.”
Loeb’s Vision of Yahoo’s Potential Even Clearer Now
Remember when Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said this: “Daniel Loeb had the vision to see Yahoo for its immense potential — the potential to return to greatness as a company and the potential to deliver significant shareholder value.” No? Neither does Loeb. His hedge fund, Third Point, sold all eight million of its shares of Yahoo in the first quarter of this year, according to a new regulatory filing.
But if Zombies Had Annexed Crimea, We Would Have Been Ready
Gordon Lubold, Foreign Policy: “Navy Capt. Pamela Kunze, a spokeswoman for Strategic Command, acknowledged the document exists on a ‘secure Internet site’ but took pains to explain that the zombie survival guide is only a creative endeavor for training purposes. ‘The document is identified as a training tool used in an in-house training exercise where students learn about the basic concepts of military plans and order development through a fictional training scenario,’ she wrote in an email. ‘This document is not a U.S. Strategic Command plan.'”
I Call Fake …
Panic Inc.: “Here are those pics you wanted of the new iPad proto remember don’t share these with anyone.”
Off Topic
Pornburger and the best fully automatic Wolverine claws ever.
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.
