Hasta La Gadget!

Notice your Netflix has had a hell of a time streaming in good quality lately? That’s because the companies that carry its traffic can’t seem to agree who’s supposed to shoulder the cost of passing it along, Ars Technica reports.

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Is President Obama already watching the next episode of True Detective? Does he already know how Homeland ends? What about Sons of Anarchy? An interesting but entirely speculative article published in the L.A. Times suggests that, yes, the leader of the free world has early access to episodes of popular TV shows that mere voting mortals like you and I cannot yet see.

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The origin of the television set was heavily shrouded in both spiritualism and the occult, writes author Stefan Andriopoulos in his new book Ghostly Apparitions. In fact, as its very name implies, the television was first conceived as a technical device for seeing at a distance: like the telephone (speaking at a distance) and telescope (viewing at a distance), the television was intended as an almost magical box through which we could watch distant events unfold, a kind of technological crystal ball.

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A report from Business Insider earlier today claimed that Barnes & Noble had eliminated its Nook hardware engineering staff in its entirety. Barnes & Noble has confirmed to TechCrunch that there were “job eliminations across the organization,” but stressed that they have not in fact eliminated their hardware division as first reported.

Nook spokesperson Mary Ellen Keating provided the following statement from the company to explain the current situation and recent organizational changes:

We’ve been very clear about our focus on rationalizing the NOOK business and positioning it for future success and value creation.  As we’ve aligned NOOK’s cost structure with business realities, staffing levels in certain areas of our organization have changed, leading to some job eliminations.  We’re not going to comment specifically on those eliminations.  We believe we have a strong management team in place at NOOK, having recruited significant new talent.  The new NOOK management team is focused on managing the business efficiently so that it becomes financially strong while at the same time aggressively moving to drive revenue growth.

The Nook business hasn’t been doing well for a long time, and the unit’s revenue dropped 32.3 percent year-over-year last fiscal quarter. There have been multiple rumors about B&N considering buyers for the Nook business, but so far, it seems to remain committed to the division despite its declining fortunes.

Sony seems to be intent on extricating itself from the e-book market, where few companies have seemed to be able to weaken the Amazon stranglehold. It recently announced it was shutting down its e-book market in the U.S. and Canada, and moving existing users to Kobo. Nook remains in the game for now, but players are dropping like flies, so who knows how much longer that will remain true.

Action camera company GoPro has filed the initial documents for its initial public offering, according to a press release from the company this morning and confirmed by GoPro to TechCrunch. The announcement is brief, revealing only that the San Mateo company intends to go public as soon as the Securities and Exchange Commission completes its review process of the IPO submission draft filed today, February 7.

GoPro only just appointed a new Chief Financial Officer February 4, bringing former Qualcomm Atheros SVP Jack Lazar on board to occupy the spot. Lazar has occupied high-ranking financial roles at a number of companies both public and private over the years, and began his career as an auditor at Price Waterhouse. At Atheros, he helped the company IPO back in 2004, a year into his tenure. In hindsight, it seems likely Lazar was brought on to help prepare for this transition.

The camera maker was originally planning an IPO back in 2012 before its $200 million private investment round, but CEO Nicholas Woodman confirmed to TechCrunch back in September that one was still in the works. When the company raised its $200 million round from strategic partner Foxconn, it was valued at around $2.25 billion.

In an interview at Disrupt SF 2013, Woodman discussed the challenges of fundraising for a hardware startup, and the benefits of bootstrapping even at a time when crowdfunding platforms are prevalent. The founder talked about how he started with $64K of his own startup capital, followed shortly from $100K put in by his father, and how that afforded him the ability to start with a clear and singular vision.

GoPro has seen its sales numbers for its action camera products and accessories double ever year, according to the company. It made over $500 million in gross revenue on the strength of 2.3 million cameras sold in 2012, and racked up over $100 million in sales last January, and Woodman hinted that the company might exceed $1 billion in revenue for all of 2013 in a Bloomberg TV interview last October.

.@GoPro CEO Nicholas Woodman hints at $1b in revenue this yr & shows me the new Hero 3+ bloom.bg/GzLTvh—
Emily Chang (@emilychangtv) October 01, 2013