World News
People have been rioting in Tunis, Tunisia after weeks of unrest following the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, who killed himself after police seized his fruit stand. Bouazizi’s story became a rallying point for the people who were outraged about unemployment and government corruption. Tunisian President Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali declared a state of emergency and threatened that rioters would be shot. Yesterday, Ben Ali — who had been in power since 1987 — fled the country. Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi has taken over as interim president, promising he would restore stability and respect the constitution.
Meanwhile, Americans interested in the implosion of a government yesterday had to look elsewhere than the U.S. mainstream media. People flocked to Twitter, looking at the hashtags related to the riots, such as #Tunisia and #sidibouzid (the province where the protests started). Pretty soon people were tweeting about what their local “world” news stations were reporting during the riots. Here are some of the things our news channels deemed more important than a country in upheaval and a 24 year long presidency violently coming to an early end: Martha Stewart split her lip open, IBM’s Watson supercomputer won a game of Jeopardy, and two men in Texas were arrested for drunk driving a horse and a mule. Actually, I need to know more about that last one. A horse and a mule you say?
Business News
After successfully raising nearly a billion dollars, social buying website Groupon is preparing to make an initial public offering of stock. Their $950 million fund-raising effort brought in a record-breaking amount of venture capital, greatly surpassing the previous record holder ($500 million raised by Pixar in 1995). The New York Times’ Dealbook is estimating that Groupon could IPO this spring at a valuation of $15 billion or more. That would be surprising considering just one month ago Google tried to buy Groupon for $6 billion, and the company was valued at only $1.3 billion in April of last year. Hey, anybody want to buy some fancy tulip bulbs from the Netherlands? I’ll give you a 50% discount (taxes and shipping not included, product may cause irrational exuberance).
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- Talking ’bout Tunisian revolution. (TheGuardian, CNN, picture gallery at BoingBoing)
- People search for Tunisia updates on Twitter. (TechCrunch)
- Two men in Texas were arrested for drunk driving a horse and a mule. (AOLNews)
- Groupon rumored to IPO this spring (Dealbook)
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- Today is Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary. Congratulations, guy who’s now staring at me in my nightmares. (Engadget)
- Police raided a house looking for a drug lab due to the presence of a heater in the garage. What they found was two pet guinea pigs and a frightened homeowner. I’m siding with the police. Everybody knows guinea pigs are total crackheads. (BBC)
- A cancer researcher’s laptop was stolen, and she had not backed up any the data. Some of the research data — which may hold a cure prostate cancer — will take up to two years to replicate while some of the data can not be retrieved. She has offered a reward of $1000 for the laptop’s return. Only $1000? Yeah, that sounds right; it’s not like this laptop might be holding a cure for cance– oh. (CNET)
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- What happened with the Internet in 2010? There was a 7% rise in the number of web domains and a 14% rise in the number of internet users. The average user in the U.S. watched 186 online videos per month. (RoyalPingdom)
- According to this infographic on Groupon’s meteoric rise, Groupon reached $1 billion in value after only 16 months in business. The only website to reach a billion dollar valuation sooner was YouTube, which reached the same milestone after only 12 months and several filmed testicular injuries. (Mashable)
- A study found that 50% of all email messages are misinterpreted by the receiver, while the sender assumes their tone will be interpreted correctly 80% of the time. I’m not sure how this figures into the Uproxx policy to include pictures of pets in costumes in 100% of all outgoing mail. (SAI)
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