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Significant Digits For Tuesday, July 3, 2018

You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.


3 tons of supplies

On Monday, the International Space Station got a package. Specifically, it got three tons of supplies delivered by a SpaceX cargo ship, including blueberries, ice cream bars and the so-called “world’s strongest coffee.” Funny, that’s exactly what I bought at the bodega this morning. [Space.com]


25 hours a week

Under a new set of laws, children in low-income immigrant neighborhoods in Denmark, which the government there calls “ghettos,” will be mandatorily separated from their families for “at least 25 hours a week” for instruction in “Danish values.” These, apparently, include Christmas, Easter and the Danish language. Families that don’t comply could have their welfare payments cut off. [The New York Times]


$300 million endorsement deal

Roger Federer is at Wimbledon doing his grass tennis thing, but something is a little different: no swoosh. His deal with Nike expired and he’s signed with the Japanese clothing company Uniqlo in a 10-year deal worth [rubs eyes] $300 million. I, too, occasionally sport Uniqlo but it actually sets me back about $3 per pair of socks. [BBC]


$2.7 billion space station

Elsewhere in space news, NASA is taking bids from private companies to build a space station that will orbit the moon. A former NASA scientist told the Daily Beast that the station would be “a kind of extraterrestrial P.R. stunt” meant to send a message and potentially forestall China in a race back to the moon. [Daily Beast]


$4 billion in revenue

The iOS App Store turns 10 years old this month. According to data from App Annie — and surprising no one who has ever ridden the subway or, like, looked at anyone else’s phone — Candy Crush Saga is the most downloaded game of all time. But it was eclipsed in the revenue department by Clash of Clans, which apparently has earned over [rubs eyes once more] $4 billion. Netflix tops the non-game app list with $1 billion in iOS revenue. [VentureBeat]


$4.8 billion in tax breaks

A site in Wisconsin will be home to a flat-panel display factory for Foxconn, the Taiwanese company best known for making Apple’s iPhones in China. President Trump even attended the groundbreaking and “took all the credit.” But the deal for the factory could cost the state up to a whopping $4.8 billion in tax breaks. It’s the most ever given to a foreign firm. [The Guardian]


If you see a significant digit in the wild, please send it to @ollie.

Oliver Roeder was a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied game theory and political competition.

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