One year ago today
RIAA lies about Pandora’s royalty rates: For example, the comparison to satellite streaming rates is pure spin — it compares the rate of sending a song to every person turned into that satellite station to a single person listening to a Pandora stream. It would be pretty surprising if Pandora’s per-listener rates weren’t a fraction of the rates paid by satellite radio for a whole audience.
Five years ago today
Financial shenanigans wiped out all productivity gains from digital technology: AAny productivity gains from the digital revolution have been more than wiped out by our corporate (as well as personal) addiction to debt. To understand this, it’s important to grasp the difference between return on equity (the classic Wall Street measurement) and return on assets…By masking their absolutely dismal performance in the last 40 years in ROA, by taking on more and more debt to juice ROE, both Wall Street and America’s corporate elite are engaged in a massive shell game, in which the average investor is the mark.
Ten years ago today
Iraq torture memo primer: A helpful timeline and overview of government memoranda related to the mistreatment and torture of wartime detainees.