Daily Pulse: SXSW Gets Pwned; Twitter Gets Pounded; No Friendly Skies for E-Cigs

Welcome to the Internet: SXSW organizers have put themselves between a rock and a hard place by canceling two Gamergate panels. Participants are pissed the panels were nixed — not because two female panelists complained of harassment threats, but because keeping them seemed to turn into too much of a hassle for SXSW. Now Buzzfeed and Vox Media are threatening not to cover the conference at all if, as Buzzfeed's brain trust puts it, SXSW "can't find a way to do what those other targets of harassment do every day — to carry on important conversations in the face of harassment." Fortunately, they note, "the conference is five months away." Plenty of time ...

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Apple beat on earnings and revenue, but fell short of Wall Street expectations for iPhone (and iPad) sales — read Jon Fortt about why that doesn't matter. Investors seemed to take it all in stride, but guidance on the earnings call was cautious, muting after-hours enthusiasm. 

But as you'll see from the next chart, Apple tends to surprise on the upside of even the highest expectations.

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Twitter over-delivered on earnings and revenue, but "soft revenue guidance" battered shares after hours. The company also underwhelmed on a key metric Wall Street watches (for better or worse): Monthly average users (MAUs) were 321.3 million, and analysts were expecting 332.4 million.

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Your Prescription is Ready: Walgreens Boots Alliance announced it would buy Rite Aid for $9 a share, a merger that would combine the nation's No. 1 and 3 drug store chains. The deal values Rite Aid at $17.2 billion — a 48% premium over the company's' Monday close.

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Don't Smoke'em if you Got'em: The Department of Transportation is "moving" to ban e-cigarettes from checked baggage after "25 incidents of explosions and fires," some of which were in checked bags. The new rule would also prohibit charging them during flights, for the same reason.

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The Aporkalypse (kudos to Quartz's Carrie Arnold for that): Not that we are condoning anything, but a UK nutrition researcher has put the WHO report on the cancer risk of eating red and processed meats into some perspective. Citing data long in the public domain, Ian Johnson notes that pack-a-day smokers have a 2,400% increased chance of developing lung cancer than non-smokers. The WHO asserts that eating 1.75 ounces of processed meat a day increases the risk of colorectal cancer by about 18%. “The effect of red meat is surprisingly weak, far weaker than the effects of tobacco,” Johnson said. As a vegan who quit smoking decades ago, I have no pork rind in this game.

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What you may have missed — and really should read:

• Facebook disrupted text messaging, Apple disrupted music players and Fujifilm disrupted... cosmetics? Here are the three questions they answered to get there.
• "For some of us, it became clear that having a C-level executive role at work imminently led to the feeling of earning a “C” in all other areas." This is a roadmap for getting that feeling out of your head. 
• If anyone's mastered work-life balance, it's Richard Branson. Now's your chance to ask him how he does it. He'll be answering your questions on LinkedIn.

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Cover Art: An indigenous man from the Bororo people fires an arrow during the bow-and-arrow competition at the first World Games for Indigenous Peoples in Palmas, Brazil, October 26, 2015. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

• Missed the last update? Then check out 'US Reaches Budget Deal, Apple and Twitter Report Earnings, REI Pays Employees to Take Black Friday Off'
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