You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
6 percent
Twitter is already gloating about the most recent stupid change to its UI, a switch from stars representing a “favorite” to hearts representing a “like.” Never before have I been pushed into an introspective period regarding my commitment issues by a user interface swap from a technology company, but that’s where we stood a week ago. Anyway, apparently people are using the button 6 percent more in the first week, but let’s see how this awful idea plays out in the long run. [BuzzFeed]
22 percent
Percentage of offices that provide free snacks and beverages, Nate. A 2011 study from Staples found that snack runs accumulated to 2.4 billion hours of lost productivity annually in the United States, Nate. [Bloomberg]
58 percent
Percentage of Americans who believe in the existence of a hell. Given this new data, we can conclude that at least 42 percent of Americans have never driven down that stretch of Interstate 95 between Washington and Fredericksburg. [Pew Research Center]
106 indictments
A grand jury handed down 106 indictments related to a biker brawl and shooting at a bar in Waco, Texas, in May. [WFAA]
200,000 emails
Comcast reset the passwords of 200,000 compromised customer email accounts after hackers obtained the passwords and offered them for sale. To add insult to injury, the act of clicking through and resetting the passwords, while ever so small, probably counted against the draconian data caps that Comcast has imposed on its customers. [CNET]
500,000
Approximate number of New York state residents who participate in daily fantasy sports, according to DraftKings. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Tuesday ordered DraftKings and FanDuel to stop accepting bets in the state because their games constituted illegal gambling. This makes me furious, but only because I bet a bunch of money that it would be U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara who would lay down the cease-and-desist on daily fantasy in New York, not Schneiderman, in my Daily Fantasy Consumer Advocacy league. [The New York Times]
$2 million
Joel Hodgson, the creator of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” announced a $2 million Kickstarter on Tuesday to revive the show. By 5 p.m. Tuesday the fundraiser had more than $500,000 in pledges, and by 8 a.m. today the Kickstarter was already past $900,000. [NPR]
$21 million
Estimated price that Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James paid for a home in the Los Angeles area recently. On the one hand, James has been involved in Hollywood with movies such as “Trainwreck,” but on the other, Cleveland fans have every right to get skittish when James buys real estate in other cities with decent basketball teams. [Variety]
$1.5 billion
Value of fine wine stored in an old mine outside of Bath, England. Humidity is kept at 80 percent, and the natural temperature is 55 degrees; the casks are stored for auction houses, investors and collectors. [Bloomberg]
$15 billion
Estimated global sales of soup this year, down from a peak of $16.2 billion in 2012. The shrinking market has led soup manufacturer Campbell’s to do some serious re-evaluation of its recipes, for instance planning to cut the ingredients in its chicken soup to 20 from 30. [The New York Times]
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