By The Numbers

Secret sauce, public sale

Tony Wagner Feb 3, 2015
$258 million

How much Google Ventures initially invested in Uber in August 2013. It’s put more money into the “e-hailing” service since then and a Goggle exec sits on Uber’s board, but the companies could soon go from friends to bitter enemies, if they haven’t already. Bloomberg dropped the bomb late Monday that Google is prepping its own ride service, likely connected to its self-driving cars. It would be a blow and a huge threat to Uber, which is investing in its own self-driving cars.

$10 billion

How much the college bookstore industry is worth  and now Amazon wants a piece of that marketThe online retailer will establish an on-campus distribution system at three universities to deliver textbook orders within one day. It will also offer deliveries of other goods in one day for students who purchase a Prime plan  — Amazon’s customer-loyalty program  discounted to $49. Prime includes access to its video-streaming service.

92

The number of measles cases recorded statewide in California as of Monday night, nearly a third in Orange County alone. The outbreak has been largely attributed to the anti-vaccination movement that’s gained momentum in the past several years and threatened to become a partisan issue Monday. A new episode of Retro Report explores how debunked autism research, celebrity and unclear reporting by the media have helped push down vaccination rates in parts of the U.S.

6

At least that many court cases in the past two months have had to wrestle with the use of emoji in texts, Facebook posts or other online chatter being admitted as evidence. We pointed out one already, and the Marshall Project has outlined several more. They also created a nifty tool that pairs a random movie line with a random emoji to show how the context changes.

1949

The year Edsac, the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator and one of the U.K.’s earliest computers, first ran calculations. A piece of that computer was recently discovered in the U.S., according to the BBC.

25 milliliters

The size of a tube of McDonald’s Big Mac secret sauce, now on sale in Australia until supplies run out. 

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