Yahoo admits this blog is 75% air

Well, kind of.

The tech world reeled when Yahoo announced in May that it would buy Tumblr, the weblogs platform favored by those tech-savvy young ‘uns, for a total of $1.1 billion.

Five intriguing tidbits about the deal came out in Yahoo’s quarterly financial documents, which landed last night.

Most eye-popping: Yahoo bought Tumblr for $990 million (the remainder of the billion-plus total goes to founder David Karp and other Tumblr employees), and an incredible $751 million of that value was attributed to “goodwill.”

Goodwill is an accounting term for the worth of an intangible asset blahblahblah, and in this case it means brand value. So 75% of Tumblr’s value lies in its cool factor. (More details in our main CNNMoney story here.)

It’s no secret that Yahoo could use an injection of cool. Plus, Tumblr captures users in two fields — social and mobile — that Yahoo is looking to grow.

But Tumblr might even be the luckier one in this deal, as the 10-Q docs revealed the site was running out of money. Tumblr had less than $17 million in cash on hand when Yahoo bought it.

Stripping out its goodwill value, Tumblr had only $353 million in other assets, as well as liabilities of almost $114 million.

Founder Karp — who will get $81 million in stock-based comp and cash as long as he stays at Yahoo for four years — said in the past that advertising “turns our stomachs.” But Tumblr began to soften on that point recently.

And anyway, being bought for a billion dollars usually forces one to change one’s mind on such things.

Indeed, even as Mayer assured Tumblr users that the site will maintain its independence, she also promised analysts back in May that Yahoo will “monetize” Tumblr. After all, these cat gifs were expensive! -Julianne

Immersion: A do-it-yourself privacy invasion/metadata visualization

MIT’s Media Lab just launched a fascinating tool for exploring email metadata: Immersion. Give it your Gmail account and it will map out the network of your personal connections.

The Boston Globe has a feature explaining the project’s genesis and how it works. It’s both fascinating and creepy to see how your emails can be used to map out your personal network and the various players’ interconnections. I charted out my inbox (below) — then used the app’s “log out & delete” feature to purge Immersion’s record of it. I assume the NSA has its own backup. -Stacy

Google’s gay marriage easter egg

Check out what happens if you type “gay marriage” into Google today … 

Ridiculously Long Men's Room Lines at Tech Conferences: A Photo Essay →

Awesome.

 Silkroad you should be ashamed, you should have been the first to sell a baby using bitcoins. 

— Reddit commenter, in response to our story about the world’s first bitcoin-bought baby

What those PRISM PowerPoint slides should have looked like

Like famed information design guru Edward Tufte, designers everywhere are recoiling in horror from the NSA’s PRISM PowerPoint horrors. Here’s designer Victoria Nece’s take on what they should have looked like. -Stacy

Tech company & telecom reactions to PRISM

Here’s the running list of comment the key players have given CNN on PRISM.

And here’s our explainer on the current state of speculation: How PRISM worked — 3 theories

Microsoft (also Skype): “We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it.”

Yahoo: ”Yahoo! takes users’ privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network.”

Facebook: “We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.”

Mark Zuckerberg has a longer post about the “outrageous press reports.” 

Apple:  “We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.”

Google (also YouTube): "Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data."

Google has a blog post here: “What the …?”

AOL: ”We do not have any knowledge of the Prism program. We do not disclose user information to government agencies without a court order, subpoena or formal legal process, nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers.” (posted on AOL’s blog)

PalTalk: "We have not heard of PRISM. Paltalk exercises extreme care to protect and secure users’ data, only responding to court orders as required to by law. Paltalk does not provide any government agency with direct access to its servers."

Is it possible the intercepts are happening at the telecom level and the tech companies themselves really didn’t know? Here’s what the nation’s biggest ISPs had to say when we asked for their comments on PRISM involvement.

Verizon: “We have no comment.” 

AT&T: “We have no comment.”

Time Warner Cable: “We are not familiar with the NSA’s PRISM program.”

Comcast: “Comcast learned of the PRISM program in media reports.  We only respond to government requests for customer information pursuant to legal process and have not received any court orders or subpoenas related to PRISM.”

And to deal with one conspiracy theory that popped up this morning about Palantir, a government contractor deeply involved in spooky stuff: they say their Prism system is unrelated to NSA’s. Here’s the statement they gave CNN:

Palintir: “Palantir’s Prism platform is completely unrelated to any US government program of the same name. Prism is Palantir’s name for a data integration technology used in the Palantir Metropolis platform (formerly branded as Palantir Finance).  This software has been licensed to banks and hedge funds for quantitative analysis and research. You can read more about Palantir Metropolis on our website https://docs.palantir.com/metropolisdev/prism-overview.html and explore the platform here:  https://joyride.pfinance.com/welcome/”

A fun Bitcoin statistic

17.6 petaflops: Computing power of Titan, the world’s top supercomputer 

162 petaflops: Combined computing power of all 500 of the world’s most powerful supercomputers

1,085 petaflops: Current computing power of the computers linked together in Bitcoin’s network

(Yes I know petaflops aren’t really a good measure of Bitcoin hashpower and that the new custom ASIC miners can’t do floating-point calculations and so technically run at 0 flops. It’s a thought experiment. Play along. -Stacy)