Linked List: March 17, 2014

Monday, 17 March 2014

Wall Street’s Valuation of Yahoo’s Core Business ★

Matthew Klein, writing for Bloomberg View:

Alibaba is valued at about $153 billion, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. Yahoo itself is worth about $39 billion as of this writing and this includes its ownership of about 24 percent of Alibaba. If you subtract that out you are left with a company that’s worth just a little more than $2 billion — less than AOL Inc., Groupon Inc., or Zynga Inc.

Yahoo also has a 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, a publicly traded company now valued at about $32.3 billion. Subtract out Yahoo’s stake and this means that investors seem to value Yahoo’s own business at less than nothing — not what you would expect from a profitable enterprise.

I’d say this is more damning of Wall Street than Yahoo.

Dorian Nakamoto ‘Unconditionally Denies’ Involvement With Bitcoin ★

Michael Hiltzik, reporting for the LA Times:

It’s still possible, very marginally, that Newsweek is correct in fingering Dorian S. Nakamoto as the mysterious inventor of bitcoin. But it’s hard to imagine a more thorough and detailed denial than the one the 64-year-old Temple City man issued late Sunday through a Los Angeles lawyer.

Either he’s lying, or Newsweek screwed up big-time.

The United States and United Kingdom Join Reporters Without Borders’ ‘Enemies of the Internet’ Index ★

Shameful.

Why ‘Veronica Mars’ Embraced UltraViolet and Angered Fans ★

Moisés Chiullan, writing for TechHive:

The experience of signing up for UltraViolet is completely unlike signing up for an AppleID or Amazon account.

First, you have to sign up for an UltraViolet account at UVVU.com, a logical, easy-to-remember (not really) acronym for a service that legally can’t live on an individual studio or recognized brand’s website.

Second, you need to sign up for an UltraViolet-backed service like Flixster, formerly owned by Fox and now owned by Veronica Mars distributor Warner Bros. When forced to use UltraViolet, I prefer Vudu, even though it’s owned by Walmart. Other options include CinemaNow (Best Buy) and Target Ticket (Target).

And possibly third, you may find that the service that you chose is “already linked to an UltraViolet account.” You may have signed up in the past and forgot about it, back when the service in question was owned by a different company or went by another name or identity. (Flixster, for example, snagged its first big wave of users as a Facebook app.) Or you might have tried to redeem a digital copy of a disc from a studio that doesn’t give you the option of redeeming via iTunes or Amazon.

What a mess. This turd of a system has no chance of long-term success with a process like this.

Christina Warren, on Twitter:

This whole Veronica Mars redemption BS really is a reminder that as much as I love the idea of UltraViolet, it has an awful implementation.

Ideas are nearly worthless; implementations mean everything.

‘It’s Time for Us to Start Making the News a Little Nerdier’ ★

Nate Silver’s ambitious re-imagined and vastly expanded FiveThirtyEight has launched.

‘We Used to Finger Each Other’ ★

Special guest star Brent Simmons joins yours truly on this week’s episode of The Talk Show to discuss: the past and future of Apple programming languages; how to make coffee and popcorn (albeit not together); whether links should be underlined on web pages; and Brent’s new podcast (co-hosted by Chris Parrish), The Record.

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