Code/red: Apple Gets Sent Home From School in LA

Apple’s massive deal to sell iPads to the Los Angeles Unified School District has been suspended amid calls for an investigation into the relationship that birthed it. Following a Monday report in the LA Times describing the company’s close ties with LA schools superintendent John Deasy and his deputy, Deasy abruptly halted the school system’s $1 billion effort to outfit all its students with iPads. “Moving forward, we will no longer utilize our current contract with Apple Inc.,” Deasy said in a memo to the LA Board of Education. “Not only will this decision enable us to take advantage of an ever-changing marketplace and technology advances, it will also give us time to take into account concerns raised surrounding the [project].” Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Mark Cuban once said, “Only a moron would buy YouTube,” intimating that Google was exactly that for spending $1.65 billion to purchase the popular video site. That was back in 2006, and popular wisdom at the time was that the search giant had overpaid. Today, YouTube is the behemoth in a rapidly escalating battle to control and deliver content to our digital devices. Yesterday, Amazon paid more than $1 billion for Twitch, a website that specializes in live videos of people playing games. Google’s acquisition of YouTube not a decade ago wasn’t just prescient, it was a strategic masterstroke.

John Dilly, HighSpeedInternet.com: “We gathered the 2013 average ACT scores for each state from act.org and compared them with the 2013 Internet speed data from Akamai that was highlighted in a recent Broadview article. We found a correlation of .57. Given that a 0 is no correlation and a 1 is perfect correlation, this strong correlation of .57 shows that students from states with faster Internet speeds have higher ACT scores on average.”

Netflix doubled its number of Emmy nominations this year, but failed to snag a win from any of them during Monday night’s 66th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards. No wins for “House of Cards” and nothing for “Orange Is the New Black,” either. A tough break for the self-proclaimed “world’s leading Internet television provider,” which took home three Emmy awards last year and was clearly expecting some sort of recognition this year as well. In the end, Netflix’s biggest Emmys moment ended up being a commercial featuring Ricky Gervais.

Monica Langley, the Wall Street Journal: “[Steve Ballmer] retired in February amid calls for faster change, leaving [him] — still Microsoft’s largest individual shareholder and a board member — without a clear path after 34 years at a company he called ‘my fourth kid.’ In an atypical glum mood, Mr. Ballmer retreated to his home overlooking Lake Washington and watched 100 episodes of ‘The Good Wife’ in two weeks.”

Gabriel Sherman, New York Magazine: “Apple was rumored to be readying a ‘genius device’ that would save the magazine business, and McDonell partnered with design firm the Wonderfactory to develop a prototype of Sports Illustrated’s tablet magazine. The exercise generated media buzz when McDonell debuted a three-minute video demonstration online. But according to sources, Steve Jobs was upset that the company had released the prototype before he had had a chance to reveal the iPad — and a tablet edition of Time — to the world. ‘I think it’s stupid. Really stupid,’ Jobs told Time Inc. executives during a meeting in New York in 2010 when asked about the prototype.”

AP: “The fight started when the male passenger, seated in a middle seat of Row 12, used the Knee Defender to stop the woman in front of him from reclining while he was on his laptop, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity.”

Jon Hendren, Medium: “If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I love DevOps and that I’m perhaps the most perfect and important thought leader on the subject. … When people ask for my business card I simply write ‘DevOps’ on something and give it to them.”

The Taser Photoshoot: Portraits of People’s Faces When Hit With a Stun Gun and I Can’t Sell This Car — It’s Too Hot. Plus, It’s the Popemobile.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.