links for 2009-05-20

"Nearly 10,000 cases of swine flu have been confirmed in 40 countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. The WHO said 79 people are known to have died from the new virus." Crazy.

"Facebook declined the term sheet based on the requirement of a board of directors seat, says our source, and not the valuation. This has been a touchy subject in the past as well. Founder Mark Zuckerberg has three common stock board seats – one empty, one he holds and one held by Marc Andreessen. There are two preferred stock board seats, held by Peter Thiel of Clarium Capital and Founders Fund and Jim Breyer of Accel Partners. Zuckerberg seems to be quite serious about retaining control over the board of directors. Investors David Sze of Greylock Partners and Paul Madera of Meritech Capital Partners have non voting observer seats." Interesting.

OH sexism how you make the world go around.

"Spain's National Court has sentenced a general to three years in jail for the misidentification of 30 bodies after a plane crash in which 62 soldiers died. The court found he and two medics had rushed the identification process and wilfully falsified official documents. "

"According to a study by the US government accountability office (GAO), mismanagement and a lack of investment means that some of the crucial GPS satellites could begin to fail as early as next year." Uh that's not good.

Hubble has been repaired and released to fly anew.

"At first glance, the sweeping credit card legislation that passed the Senate on Tuesday looks like a huge victory for consumers. The bill, after all, contains relief from penalty fees and certain interest rate spikes." New rules, graphic in the article lists them pretty quickly.

"Cracking down on medical industry payments to doctors, the Vermont legislature has passed a law requiring drug and device makers to publicly disclose all money given to physicians and other health care providers, naming names and listing dollar amounts. The law, scheduled to take effect on July 1, is believed to be the most stringent state effort to regulate the marketing of medical products to doctors. It would also ban nearly all industry gifts, including meals, to doctors, nurses, medical staff, pharmacists, health plan administrators and health care facilities."

"The World Health Organization has urged pharmaceutical companies to reserve part of their swine flu vaccines for poor countries."

"So one of the nation’s top public health officials is now a fierce proponent of a soda tax. Meanwhile, other Obama advisers and some Senate staff members have been talking about such a tax — which wouldn’t apply to diet soda or real juice — as a way to help pay for expanded health insurance." It wouldn't surprise me.

"A new study by a Cornell University professor of 1,004 union organizing drives has found that employers threatened to close plants in 57 percent of the campaigns and threatened to cut wages and benefits in 47 percent. The study, to be released Wednesday, also found that employers fired pro-union workers in 34 percent of the campaigns. And it asserted that management’s antiunion tactics had helped pushed down the unionization rate to 12.4 percent, from 22 percent three decades ago." That's some powerful union busting on management's side.

"Even so, the scale of the government investment and control — especially by the auto task force now vetting plans at Chrysler and General Motors — points to an approach that has been shunned by the United States more than other developed nations. In the United States, industrial policy has long been viewed with suspicion by many policy makers and economists, who consider it government meddling in the private sector and a violation of free-market principles. "

"After so much bad news, it scarcely seems possible. But having regained a financial footing as well as a bit of their old swagger, major banks are racing to pay back billions of taxpayer dollars. Many insist they will do so by year-end. Few in Washington or on Wall Street expected such a quick reversal. Many said they believed banks would rely on the government for years. Banks, the thinking went, would need help coping with bad subprime mortgages and other troublesome assets that led to the financial crisis."

"Bank of America Corp <BAC.N> raised $13.47 billion through a share sale, marking a major step toward meeting the U.S. government's requirements for capital-raising following the recent "stress testing" of the bank." The money including selling stakes in other banks.

Ouch.

"Top executives from the German automakers Volkswagen and Porsche threw themselves behind plans for a merger Tuesday after days of confusion about whether a deal would proceed."

"With a week remaining before the expiration of a tender offer to its bondholders, General Motors said Tuesday that it did not expect to reach an agreement with the United Automobile Workers and others before bondholders decide." I can't say I'm surprised.

"The Securities and Exchange Commission will propose new rules on Wednesday that would make it possible for a company’s shareholders to elect a limited number of independent directors, commission officials said. If adopted, the proposal would open the door to the most significant change in decades to the role played by investors in governing publicly traded companies."

"At least 153 of the newly-elected MPs in India have criminal cases pending against them, according to a study by civil society groups." Kidding me?

When has Apple ever differentiated the market by splitting it amongst the software?

Loic quoting Larry Page: "I have always thought we needed to index the web every second to allow real time search. At first, my team laughed and did not believe me. With Twitter, now they know they have to do it. Not everybody needs sub-second indexing but people are getting pretty excited about realtime."

Because Google does that translation thingy.

"Pakistan has denied that it is expanding its nuclear arsenal after the US said that it has unearthed new evidence that it has done so." More fun today.

"A new Palestinian government based in the West Bank has been sworn-in, dominated by the Fatah faction of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. It is headed by the independent politician Salam Fayyad. There are no members of the rival Hamas movement. Hamas, which won Palestinian elections three years ago and controls Gaza, says the new government is illegal." Oh boy.

Yeah pretty much.

"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hopes to eventually take his company public but said it won't be for a few years, and stressed that the world's largest online social network is in no immediate need of capital." Interesting, is Zuckerberg lying, denying, truthful or something else?

"Threadless just announced their Twitter Tees on Threadless program. What a great idea. Submit or nominate tweets, community votes, best make it onto shirts. From the two shirts they sent me in advance, I can see only one trick they are missing: the author of the tweet is on the label rather than on the shirt." Indeed the shirts need the author.

Threadless does shirts by Twitter.

"In public debates about emerging intellectual property issues that relate to software, the Linux Foundation and Microsoft are often on opposing sides. Both seem to agree, however, that a new set of guidelines authored by the American Law Institute (ALI) for interpreting software contract law is deeply flawed." Yeah it's a crappy guideline.

"Sprint just announced that the Pre will cost $199.99 after $100 mail-rebate and 2-year contract and will launch on June 6th as rumored this morning."

"The source told iPhone fan blog Apple iPhone Apps that the new iPhone will launch July 17. Many of the provided specifications corroborate with past rumors that the device will introduce a digital compass and a video recorder, among other features." I can get behind this rumor.

"After lamenting for years that high streaming-royalty rates would shut down online radio service Pandora, founder Tim Westergren indicates that those dark days are behind the company." Kick a for Pandora, they are a great service.

"Shareholders, angered by lofty executive pay in a time of dwindling earnings, turned their wrath on Royal Dutch Shell on Tuesday, voting against compensation packages for senior management." It's a non-binding vote, but something for Shell and other companies to consider moving forward.

"The head of Israel's security service has said there is no security reason for continuing construction of Israel's barrier through the West Bank. Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told a parliamentary committee that Israel had enough capabilities to prevent attacks from the Palestinian territory. " That's great news, hopefully should make for a more stable region, settle some disputes and move the peace process forward.

"Johannes Caspar, the data protection regulator for the German city-state of Hamburg, where Google has its German headquarters, said officials would be forced to pursue unspecified sanctions if he did not receive written guarantees from Google agreeing to changes before 10 a.m. local time Wednesday." 2 of the 12 points Germany want's clarification/action on have not been published.

"On Tuesday, the company reported a 17 percent drop in profit, to $1.7 billion, or 70 cents a share, down from a profit of $2.1 billion, or 80 cents a share, in the same period last year. Excluding standard charges, Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, Calif., earned 88 cents a share for the period ended April 30. That matched the expectation of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters, who expected H.P. to earn 86 cents, excluding charges, on revenue of $27.4 billion. The analysts’ estimate, however, did not include a 2-cent charge tied to a chip technology dispute that the company lost with Cornell University, which the company is appealing. Excluding that charge, Hewlett-Packard beat expectations." So not great but not bad.

"2379 of the Alexa top 10.000 sites uses gzip compression. All 10k combined the b/w saved is 352MB – 245MB = 107MB (only html content)." Cool.