Say “cheese!” NASA has unveiled a global selfie, a stunning mosaic of the planet Earth seen from outer space that was stitched together from tens of thousands of self-portraits taken by people from around the world.
The Earth images were created with more than 36,000 selfies that were submitted to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory this year on Earth Day, by people from 131 nations or regions. In the mosaic, self-portraits with blue backgrounds illustrate oceans, those with white backgrounds illustrate clouds, and photos with brown backgrounds illustrate continents. (See also: “All By My Selfie: National Geographic Photographers Muse on the Word of the Year.”)
See for yourself—folks who want to take a closer look at the result can zoom into the 3.2 gigapixel Global Selfie:
It’s a question many tech observers have been asking since theFinancial Timesreported Thursday that the Silicon Valley behemoth is “closing in” on a $3.2 billion acquisition of the “high quality” headphones maker founded by music producer Jimmy Iovine and hip-hop artist Dr. Dre.
The FT suggested that Apple might be interested in Beats in order to recharge its “cool” factor at a time when streaming music services like Spotify, Pandora and Rdio have become increasingly popular with young people.
Apple’s iTunes service long dominated digital music sales, but the company never quite figured out how to present a streaming music product. Apple’s flagship music brand iTunes has been criticizedover its user interface — so it makes sense that the company would be eager for outside help.
At $3.2 billion, the Beats deal would be more than three times larger than any acquisition in Apple’s history.
Apple can definitely afford the transaction — it’s sitting on more than $150 billion in cash and investments — but the company has traditionally preferred to build from within. Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs was fiercely proud of that fact. Unlike other tech giants, Apple has never made an acquisition larger than $1 billion.
Until now, perhaps.
Bolt-on acquisitions are in vogue in the tech world these days: Recent examples include Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp andOculus (not to mention Instagram), as well as Google’s purchase ofNest and Waze, and Yahoo’s Tumblr buyout.
Dr. Dre, a musician and producer who co-founded the seminal Compton, Calif.-based hip-hop group NWA, has said that he was inspired to create Beats by the poor sound quality in many headphones. He teamed up with legendary producer Jimmy Iovine, a veteran music industry executive, to launch a brand that has proved remarkably popular.
“I knew people were going to dig it, but I didn’t know it was going to be this big,” Dre told TIME in a recent interview. “I didn’t know it was going to be at this magnitude. I know that people really care about the way their music sounds. So did I know it was going to work? Yeah, but I had no idea it was going to be this massive.”
For Apple, the streaming music service that Beats recently launched may be the most attractive part of the deal. Apple revolutionized digital music with the iPod and iTunes, but the company has yet to find a new formula to challenge Spotify, the streaming music darling of the moment.
“This is a reactive move — at best,” writes veteran tech journalist Om Malik. “Steve Jobs’ Apple would have pushed to make something better, but even he struggled to come to terms with the Internet and Internet thinking. That hasn’t changed.” (TIME’s Harry McCracken also poses some good questions about the deal.)
Subscription services are growing faster than any other area of the music industry. Music subscription revenue increased by 50% to $1.1 billion in 2013, according to a report by IFPI, the global music industry association, cited by my colleague Eliana Dockterman. Downloads fell 2% last year, in the first annual decline since Apple launched the iTunes store in 2003.
Spotify is valued at more than $4 billion, and the Swedish company is among the most high profile candidates likely to go public over the next few years. A Spotify IPO would likely blast the company’s market value into the stratosphere, so it would make sense for Apple to make a run at the company now.
But why has Apple been unable to develop a credible streaming music service internally? After all, the company has a multitude of talented software and hardware engineers.
Three reasons.
First, Apple was late to the streaming music game, perhaps because its iTunes franchise was built around buying individual music tracks. Simply put, the iTunes business model is not about streaming music.
Second, Apple’s specialty is hardware and software design, not media. The company has run into trouble in its negotiations with big media companies.
Third, Apple CEO Tim Cook is an operational wizard — and a genius at managing Apple’s supply chain and inventory — but he’s not a product visionary like Jobs.
Cook failed to anticipate that music streaming would become the new industry business model. As a result, Apple simply wasn’t set up to launch a successful streaming service of its own. And it’s not because Apple didn’t have the resources or Los Angeles connections to secure the necessary rights. It’s because the company failed to anticipate a major consumer entertainment trend.
“The age of digital downloads is basically over,” Aram Sinnreich, a media professor at Rutgers University who studies the intersection of technology and music, told Bloomberg. So now, Apple reportedly wants to buy Beats for $3.2 billion.
This situation raises a now-familiar question: What’s up with innovation inside Apple? The company makes the best consumer hardware and software in the world, but it hasn’t launched a new product category since the iPad launch in 2010. Incremental improvements to the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac computer line have been impressive, but what’s next?
One possible explanation for Apple’s interest in Beats might be the booming “wearable computing” space. After all, Beats’ signature product is the high-bass headphone unit. If Apple can incorporate the Beats product into its wearable computing system — think Internet connected headphones — then the deal could pose a threat to Google, Facebook, and other companies that are forging ahead on smart glasses and watches.
If completed, the deal would be Apple's largest-ever acquisition
Apple is said to be looking to bolster its streaming music business with a possible acquisition of Beats Electronics. Why would Apple want to buy the company?
The reported $3.2 billion price tag would be Apple’s largest single acquisition to date. From the iconic Beats headphones to streaming music, the buyout makes a lot of sense: the era of digital downloads is coming to an end and Apple is still without its own truly successful streaming music service.
If completed, the deal would be Apple CEO Tim Cook’s boldest move yet to place his own signature on the tech giant, more than two years after the death of co-founder Steve Jobs.
If completed, the deal would be Apple's largest-ever acquisition
Apple is said to be looking to bolster its streaming music business with a possible acquisition of Beats Electronics. Why would Apple want to buy the company?
The reported $3.2 billion price tag would be Apple’s largest single acquis
Beats founders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine will be Apple's newest employees
Apple announced Wednesday it will buy headphones and music streaming company Beats Electronics, co-founded by Dr. Dre, for $3 billion. Wednesday’s announcement confirmed rumors about the deal which had been circulating for weeks.
“Music is such an important part of all of our lives and holds a special place within our hearts at Apple,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement. “That’s why we have kept investing in music and are bringing together these extraordinary teams so we can continue to create the most innovative music products and services in the world.”
Apple is purchasing Beats for $2.6 billion in cash plus another $400 million in equity, marking the company’s biggest-ever acquisition. The tech giant expects to complete the deal by Q4 of this year, pending regulatory approval.
Beats was founded in 2008 by the rapper and producer Dr. Dre and the producer and mogul Jimmy Iovine. The company primarily sells high-end headphones and speakers, as well as audio software and subscriptions to a music-streaming service.
Iovine and Dr. Dre will stay on at the firm working within Apple’s electronics and music-streaming divisions. Their titles will simply be “Jimmy and Dre,” Iovine told The Wall Street Journal.
“I’ve always known in my heart that Beats belonged with Apple,” said Iovine, a longtime friend of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. “The idea when we started the company was inspired by Apple’s unmatched ability to marry culture and technology. Apple’s deep commitment to music fans, artists, songwriters and the music industry is something special.”
‘America Must Always Lead,’ Obama Tells West Point Graduates
WEST POINT, N.Y. — President Obama on Wednesday tried to regain his statesman’s mantle, telling graduating cadets here that the nation they were being commissioned to serve would still lead the world and would not stumble into military misadventures overseas.
Speaking under leaden, chilly skies, Mr. Obama delivered the commencement address at the United States Military Academy.
“America must always lead on the world stage,” he said. “But U.S. military action cannot be the only – or even primary – component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.”
Under pressure from critics who say the United States has been rudderless amid a cascade of crises, the president said that those who “suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away – are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics.”
A day after announcing that the last American soldier would leave Afghanistan at the end of 2016, the president told this latest class of Army officers that the United States faced a new, more diffuse threat in an arc of militancy stretching from the Middle East to the African Sahel.
President Obama pledged $5 billion for a network of partnerships to help train countries in the Middle East and Africa to carry out operations against extremists.
CreditGabriella Demczuk/The New York Times
Mr. Obama singled out Syria, which he said had become a dangerous haven for terrorists, some linked to Al Qaeda. While pledging to strengthen American support for the opposition, he did not discuss expanding the C.I.A.'s covert training program for the rebels by bringing in the military, which is being debated inside the administration.
Wednesday’s speech at West Point offered President Obama an opportunity to offer a broad view of how he wants to steer American foreign policy in his last years in office, as well as a chance to rebut his critics. But with much of his presidency taking place against a turbulent international backdrop, it was just one of many occasions Mr. Obama felt the need to explain his foreign policy views.
Speech
Date
Summary
On the Afghanistan troop surge
Dec. 1, 2009
President Obama, after an intense debate, announced he would send an additional 30,000 troops to turn the tide in Afghanistan. But he coupled it with a pledge to begin pulling out troops 18 months later, to help speed the transition to Afghan security forces. Full Text »
On intervening in Libya
March 28, 2011
Mr. Obama explained his decision to back NATO airstrikes on the Libyan regime, which were intended to avert slaughter in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. He laid out a set of criteria for intervention in cases where American national security interests are not directly at stake. Full Text »
On the Arab Spring and the Middle East
May 19, 2011
With popular uprisings convulsing the Arab world, Mr. Obama sketched out the American response, including his decision to withdraw support for a longtime ally, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. And he offered a formula for reviving peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Full Text »
On counterterrorism at National Defense University
May 23, 2013
Saying it was time to take the United States off a war footing dating to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the president offered a vision of counterterrorism policy focused on new threats in the Middle East and Africa. He defended the use of drones but set conditions for their use.Full Text »
The president did announce a counterterrorism partnership, funded with up to $5 billion, to help train countries in the Middle East and Africa to carry out operations against extremists.
“Today’s principal threat no longer comes from a centralized Al Qaeda leadership,” Mr. Obama said. “Instead, it comes from decentralized Al Qaeda affiliates and extremists, many with agendas focused in the countries where they operate.”
Mr. Obama’s speech, which was weeks in the drafting, was a wide-ranging rebuttal to critics who say he has yielded American leadership in a world tossed by storms, from Syria’s civil war to Russia’s incursions in Ukraine.
The president said the United States planned to leave 9,800 troops in Afghanistan after 2014 and complete the withdrawal of all combat troops by the end of 2016.
CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
But it was also meant to reject arguments that the United States should retreat from its post-World War II centrality in global affairs. Mr. Obama instead called for a middle course between isolationism and overreach, citing the international coalition he had mobilized to counter Russia’s aggression in Ukraine as an example of how to use American muscle without putting its soldiers at risk.
West Point, with its 1,064 cadets in dress uniforms, offered a grand backdrop for Mr. Obama to present his foreign policy blueprint. But his theme was very different than in 2009, when he came here to announce that the United States would send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama sought to present Afghanistan as a mission all but completed and described a world filled with threats that require a more targeted American response.
Mr. Obama has been deeply frustrated by the criticism of his foreign policy, which during his first term was generally perceived as his strong suit. He has lashed out at critics, whom he accuses of reflexively calling for military action as the remedy for every crisis.
On a trip to Asia last month, Mr. Obama described his foreign policy credo with a baseball analogy: “You hit singles, you hit doubles; every once in a while we may be able to hit a home run.” But, he added, the overriding objective is to avoid an error on the order of the Iraq war.
President Obama discussed climate change in his speech at West Point, saying he intends “to make sure America is out front in putting together a global framework to preserve our planet.”
In private conversations, the president has used a saltier variation of the phrase, “don’t do stupid stuff” – brushing aside as reckless those who say the United States should consider enforcing a no-fly zone in Syria or supplying arms to Ukrainian troops.
In the speech, Mr. Obama described an array of priorities, ranging from the Iran nuclear negotiations to a new global climate change accord, which he said would occupy his final two-and-a-half years in office.
He also spoke of the need for the United States to look eastward to Asia, promoting his long efforts to negotiate a trans-Pacific trade agreement and pledging to defend American allies in the region in their territorial disputes with China in the South and East China Seas.
He said the United States had successfully isolated President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
“In Ukraine, Russia’s recent actions recall the days when Soviet tanks rolled into Eastern Europe,” the president said. “But this isn’t the Cold War. Our ability to shape world opinion helped isolate Russia right away.”
The gunman who killed at least three people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels on Saturday has yet to be identified, but investigators have released images of the attacker, captured on security cameras before, during and after the shooting.
The three video clips were posted online Sunday by Belgium’s federal police, along with two still images and an appeal to the public for help in identifying the man behind what officials have called a suspected anti-Semitic attack.
A surveillance camera inside the entrance to the museum recorded black-and-white video of the man taking a rifle out of a shoulder bag, firing repeatedly through a doorway and quickly retreating. The authorities identified the gun as a Kalashnikov. The time between the suspect’s entrance and exit from the museum appears to have been less than 30 seconds.
SEOUL, South Korea — A fire broke out at a hospital annex in southwesternSouth Korea early Wednesday, killing 21 people and injuring seven others and further rattling a country still traumatized by a recent ferry disaster.
The police said that 20 of the dead were elderly patients, many of whom had been hospitalized for dementia or stroke complications. A female nurse on night duty was also killed.
The fire started in the second floor of a two-story annex to Hyosarang Hospital in Jangseong, in southwestern South Korea.
The annex was housing 34 long-term patients, most of them in their 70s and 80s, when the fire broke out. South Korean television footage showed firefighters performing CPR on patients they had rescued.
Six patients were seriously hurt, raising fears that the death toll could rise.
The national news agency Yonhap reported that some of the patients killed were found with their hands tied to their beds. It also said that the windows of the second-floor rooms had been barred to prevent patients with dementia from falling out.
A police officer in Jangseong said that he could not immediately confirm the news report, but that the victims appeared to have all suffocated on toxic gas from the fire.
The officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his office’s policy, said that many of the patients could not move on their own.
Lee Hyong-seok, the head of the hospital, knelt and bowed before cameras on Wednesday, apologizing for the accident. He said he was checking the report that some of the patients had been tied to their beds.
South Koreans have been on edge since a ferry with many high school students on board sank off southwestern South Korea on April 16, leaving more than 300 people dead or missing.
On Monday, seven people were killed after a fire swept through a five-story bus terminal in Goyang, just northwest of Seoul.
The string of accidents has eroded confidence in the country’s public safety measures.
Escalating their assault on Internet access, the judicial authorities in Iran have sentenced eight Facebook users to prison terms as long as 20 years and have ordered Mark Zuckerberg, the multibillionaire American founder of Facebook, to testify in a lawsuit that contends the company’s social media applications violate privacy, Iranian news sites reported on Tuesday.
Facebook has long been restricted in Iran, viewed as a vehicle for subversive political messaging, and the court order to Mr. Zuckerberg is unenforceable. But the developments strongly suggested that the conservative ideologues who control the courts and the police in Iran were intensifying their challenge to President Hassan Rouhani, a comparatively moderate cleric who called for greater Internet freedom for Iranians in a speech less than two weeks ago.
In another possible sign of Mr. Rouhani’s political vulnerability for his position on the Internet, Iranian rights groups pointed to evidence that the imprisoned director of “Happy in Tehran,” an illicit Iranian rendition of the Pharrell Williams dance video, had been linked to Mr. Rouhani’s 2013 presidential campaign.
The director, Sassan Soleimani, along with three men and three women who danced in the video, were arrested this month on unspecified morality charges in a crackdown that elicited enormous sympathy for them abroad and a veiled message of support from Mr. Rouhani, who suggested on his official Twitter account that Iranians should not be punished for expressing happiness.
The dancers were freed on bail after three days, but Mr. Soleimani, a filmmaker and animator, remains incarcerated. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group, reported that Mr. Soleimani’s family members had expected him to be released Saturday on bail from a prison in Karaj, northwest of Tehran, but were told instead to come back in a week “for a visit.”
An Iranian magazine, Ideal Life, reported last year that Mr. Soleimani had taken photographs for Mr. Rouhani’s election campaign last year, and Mr. Rouhani’s official campaign color, purple, had been Mr. Soleimani’s suggestion.
People close to Mr. Rouhani’s inner circle, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they did not know Mr. Soleimani.
In a separate case, Kaleme, an opposition website based abroad, reported on Tuesday that a judge in a Tehran revolutionary court had convicted eight Facebook users of numerous offenses, including propaganda against the state, insulting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, blasphemy and spreading falsehoods. All were arrested by the cybercrime unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards last year, the website reported, and received unusually tough sentences, ranging from seven to 20 years.
Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said the convictions and punishments reflected “a serious challenge to Rouhani and his stated policy of opening up the Internet.”
The Iranian Students’ News Agency reported that a judge had summoned Mr. Zuckerberg to appear in court to answer complaints that Facebook’s Instagram and WhatsApp applications violate privacy rights. A spokeswoman for Facebook, Jodi Seth, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Mr. Zuckerberg would honor the summons. The United States and Iran have no diplomatic relations or mechanisms for extraditions.
Iranian news agencies reported last week that Instagram, a photo-sharing site used by one of the “Happy in Tehran” defendants to publicize their arrest and prosecution, had been banned. But there has been no indication since then that the prohibition has been enforced.
