Code/red: Please Tell Me That $10 Billion Valuation Is Ephemeral, Too

// HAPPENING TODAY

• “Airplane,” “Easy Rider” and “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” are leaving Netflix.
• IAC, RealNetworks and Yelp all report earnings.
• The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property holds a hearing on The America Invents Act.

Snapchat Founder’s Smug Smirk Now Permanent

Looks like Snapchat’s decision to spurn a nearly $3 billion all-cash acquisition offer from Facebook last year may not have been as reckless a move as it once seemed. Sources say the frat-house-born ephemeral messaging service is talking to investors about a new $1 billion round of financing that would value it at $10 billion. Among the companies considering participating in the round, yet-to-list Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Bloomberg was first to the news. But $10 billion for an app for sending photo messages that disappear? That seems like stupid money. But after Facebook shelled out a staggering $16 billion for WhatsApp, hardly surprising.

Well, at Least He Didn’t Say “Peak Tablet”

Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly: “Tablets boomed and now are crashing. The volume has really gone down in the last several months. … Once you have a tablet of a certain generation, it’s not clear that you have to move on to the next generation.”

Sprint/T-Mobile Watchers Getting Really Tired of On-Hold Music

Remember when Sprint was going to make a formal bid for T-Mobile in June or July? Well, now that June has come and gone and July is hours away from following suit, the timeline for the merger of the nation’s third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers is getting another adjustment. Sources familiar with negotiations between the two companies tell Reuters not to expect a proposal until September. Why? Bullet-proofing the controversial deal to withstand regulatory scrutiny takes time, particularly when your bankers and M&A advisers are improving their spray tans on summer holiday.

It’s Not Over Until the Fat Lady Takes Off Her Google Glass

Eric Sylvers, the Wall Street Journal: “In what is being touted as a first, the opera house in Cagliari, the capital of the Italian island of Sardinia, will have some of its singers and musicians wear Google Glass Wednesday night when they perform Puccini’s ‘Turandot.'”

Ford Kicks BlackBerry to the Curb

BlackBerry has lost another big corporate client. Ford Motors is switching to iPhone in a massive deployment that will see some 9,300 employees transitioned to the Apple handset over the next three years. Ugly news for BlackBerry and its CEO John Chen, who insists he’s not too worried about the recent enterprise alliance between Apple and IBM.

And Believe Me, I Know All About Boneheaded Decisions …

RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser: “Facebook is making a bad user experience and business decision. Users should be encouraged to try new apps, not forced to. Sheryl Sandberg, you and Mark run a great company that I have huge respect for, but removing an important feature from your main FB app is a boneheaded decision.”

Beat Egg Whites With Drone Propeller Blades Until Stiff Peaks Form

Martha Stewart: “It is hard to imagine André Le Nôtre laying out the exquisite landscape designs for Vaux-le-Vicomte, and later the magnificent Château de Versailles, with … no drone to show him the complexities of the terrain.”

Farting in BuzzFeed’s General Direction

Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten, July 29: “I contend you cannot steal something of no intrinsic value; say, a fart. Someone who steals a fart is a weird, disreputable person, perhaps, and even someone deserving of firing, perhaps, but not a thief. This is Mr. Benny Johnson.”

Mat Honan, July 26: Trying to take BuzzFeed guy’s plagiarism seriously but the posts in question … It’s like he stole someone else’s signature fart.

Enjoy Your EXTRA BIG ASS FRIES!

Matt Novak, Paleofuture: “‘Idiocracy’ is the new cultural touchstone for discussing America’s cultural and educational decline. … Do a quick search, and you’ll see people are referencing the film in some capacity about 5-10 times an hour on social media. ‘I hate that “Idiocracy” is basically a documentary,’ writes one distraught tweeter.”

Is That a BlackBerry Passport in Your Pocket, Or … Oh, It Is

Roger Cheng, CNET: “The BlackBerry Passport did fit in my jeans pocket, but it barely fit and made for an unsightly bulge.”

… And Then I Wrote This Ferociously Self-Indulgent Essay!

T.C. Sottek, The Verge: “Facebook is dead. I killed it. … I spread its body parts out, and buried them deep. … I killed Facebook before it had a chance to kill me. Then I drank good beer, petted an outdoor cat named Gator, chased some chickens around, and watched my one-year-old cousin stuff cake into his mouth on his first birthday.”

Truthfully, Yahoo Investors Should Just Be Worried. Period.

Ironfire Capital founder Eric Jackson: “Yahoo investors are — and should be — worried about what Marissa Mayer will do with the Alibaba cash when it arrives following the September IPO.”

Tom Perkins? Is That You?

Wealthy Person Incapable of Opening Email Attachments: Special community for people who have earned a lot of money or been born into a wealthy family needs a blog ghostwriter. … We are looking for 3 posts per week and each post pays $30. If you’re interested, please send a brief cover letter with some suggested topics so we can see that you really can come up with specific topics which touch the hearts of people from affluent families. … It should all be pasted into the body of the email. We can’t open attachments.”

Amelia Bedelia Lights One Up (Unabridged)

EJ Dickson, The Daily Dot: “How did a joke we made up about Amelia Bedelia while we were stoned get repeated all over the Internet for more than five years, by blogs and reporters and elementary school students and even the author of Amelia Bedelia himself? Did Evan and I inadvertently start a giant Wikipedia hoax about an obscure children’s book author?”

Off Topic

A hypnotic GoPro hubcap cam and “Game of Thrones”: Season 4 Bloopers.

Thanks for reading. Send tips, comments and life-sized giant squid plush toys to John@recode.net, @johnpaczkowski. Subscribe to the Code/red newsletter here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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