On July 25th 2016, Verizon announced that it is buying internet pioneer, Yahoo, for $4.83 billion in cash. The deal will allow Verizon to join Yahoo with AOL (America On Line), which it purchased in 2015 for $4.4 billion. As part of the deal Verizon will also gain access to Yahoo's search, news, finance, sports, video, and email brands, as well as the storage site Flickr and the Tumblr social network.
Yahoo was founded in 1994 by two Stanford graduates, Jerry Yang and David Filo who called the site, Jerry & David's Guide To The World Wide Web. They quickly changed the name to Yahoo and by 1996, the Yahoo brand was being publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It rode the dot com bubble and manage to trade as high as $500 a share. At one point, Yahoo's search engine was the third most popular.
The sale of Yahoo to Verizon will not include Yahoo's cash. Nor will it include its shares in Alibaba Group holdings, Yahoo Japan, Yahoo's convertible notes, or its non core patents. Those Yahoo assets will be brought together as a new publicly traded company under a new name. The sale of Yahoo to Verizon must still be approved by federal regulators, but both companies feel confident that the sale will close some time in early 2017.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Apple Proposes New Streaming Royalty Rate
On July 15th 2016, Apple submitted a proposal for a fixed royalty rate to the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board. Apple's stated intention for the proposal is to simplify the way that music streaming companies pay songwriters and publishers. Under the new proposal, all streaming services would have to pay 9.1 cents per 100 streams.
Music streamers with "free tiers" such as Spotify and YouTube will be most noticeably affected. These ad supported services don't bring in as money as the subscription services, and therefore have a much smaller revenue payout. Apple, however, says that it's proposed royalty rate structure would only make accounting simpler and more transparent.
The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board is a panel of three judges, whose job is to set the terms and rates for statutory licenses. The Board is still in the process of determining the statutory rates to be paid to songwriters and publishers for downloads and streams for the period from 2018 to 2022. Until they rule, Apple's proposal will remain just that. However, the era of the "free tier" may be coming to a close.
Music streamers with "free tiers" such as Spotify and YouTube will be most noticeably affected. These ad supported services don't bring in as money as the subscription services, and therefore have a much smaller revenue payout. Apple, however, says that it's proposed royalty rate structure would only make accounting simpler and more transparent.
The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board is a panel of three judges, whose job is to set the terms and rates for statutory licenses. The Board is still in the process of determining the statutory rates to be paid to songwriters and publishers for downloads and streams for the period from 2018 to 2022. Until they rule, Apple's proposal will remain just that. However, the era of the "free tier" may be coming to a close.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Carbon Dioxide Can Now Be Turned Into Stone
On June 10th 2016, it was announced in the journal Science that scientists have found a way to successfully turn carbon dioxide emissions into stone. Researchers in Iceland say that they have advanced the carbon capture and sequestration process to the next level. The process is called Carbfix, which was developed in 2012, and is now being used to store carbon dioxide underground.
The breakthrough, which was made at Iceland's Hellisheidi Power Plant just outside of Reykjavik, was the discovery that carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide could be mixed with water and then injected into volcanic basalt rock. Doing this causes a series of chemical reactions to take place that turns the basalt into a whitish, chalky mineral called calcite. This process, known as carbonation was believed to take many years.
However, in 2012, the researchers injected 250 tons of carbon dioxide mixed with hydrogen sulfide into basalt rock that was 1,500 feet down. After two years, 95% of the injected carbon dioxide beneath the plant had turned into stone. Martin Stute, a hydrologist at Lamont-Dorhety Earth Observatory at Columbia University and co-author of the study said, "This means we can pump down a lot of CO2 and store it in a very safe way over a short period of time.
The breakthrough, which was made at Iceland's Hellisheidi Power Plant just outside of Reykjavik, was the discovery that carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide could be mixed with water and then injected into volcanic basalt rock. Doing this causes a series of chemical reactions to take place that turns the basalt into a whitish, chalky mineral called calcite. This process, known as carbonation was believed to take many years.
However, in 2012, the researchers injected 250 tons of carbon dioxide mixed with hydrogen sulfide into basalt rock that was 1,500 feet down. After two years, 95% of the injected carbon dioxide beneath the plant had turned into stone. Martin Stute, a hydrologist at Lamont-Dorhety Earth Observatory at Columbia University and co-author of the study said, "This means we can pump down a lot of CO2 and store it in a very safe way over a short period of time.
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Juno Spacraft Now Orbits Jupiter
On July 4th 2016, NASA announced that its Juno spacecraft had been successfully inserted into orbit around the planet Jupiter. The mission's success came at 11:53 pm (EDT), after a nearly five year, 1.7 billion mile journey. Juno is expected to orbit the gas giant for twenty months or 37 orbits. It will become the first of NASA's spacecraft to assume a polar orbit and will fly at an altitude of 31,000 miles.
The main objective of Juno's mission is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. While in orbit, Juno will investigate the possibility of a sold Jovian planetary core. Other mission goals include mapping Jupiter's electromagnetic fields, measuring the amount of water and ammonia within the atmosphere, and a closer inspection of the planets auroras. The mission is also to gain an understanding of how giant planets like Jupiter are formed.
Juno is the second spacecraft designed under NASA's New Frontiers Program. The first was the New Horizons probe which flew by Pluto in 2015. Juno was launched in august of 2011. After its twenty month mission is over, the spacecraft will be deliberately flown into Jupiter's atmosphere where it will be destroyed by the planet's extreme temperatures and pressure. This will serve to protect the moons of Jupiter from any possible earthly contamination.
The main objective of Juno's mission is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. While in orbit, Juno will investigate the possibility of a sold Jovian planetary core. Other mission goals include mapping Jupiter's electromagnetic fields, measuring the amount of water and ammonia within the atmosphere, and a closer inspection of the planets auroras. The mission is also to gain an understanding of how giant planets like Jupiter are formed.
Juno is the second spacecraft designed under NASA's New Frontiers Program. The first was the New Horizons probe which flew by Pluto in 2015. Juno was launched in august of 2011. After its twenty month mission is over, the spacecraft will be deliberately flown into Jupiter's atmosphere where it will be destroyed by the planet's extreme temperatures and pressure. This will serve to protect the moons of Jupiter from any possible earthly contamination.
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