Today’s a big day for Google and its smartphone subsidiary Motorola. 

They finally took the wraps off the Moto X, a new smartphone that the tech press has been losing its lunch over all summer.

All the hype wasn’t entirely unjustified. I’ve been using the Moto X for a few hours now, and it seems like a pretty good phone. Instead of throwing in as many extra software add-ons as possible (ahem, Samsung), Motorola kept things simple by using a nearly clean version of Android devoid of any gimmicky features. 

And the few features it did add are actually pretty useful. You can launch the camera app by twisting the device, making it easy to quickly grab a shot before you miss any action. You can perform Siri-like voice commands without even touching the phone. It knows when you take it out of your pocket and displays a quick “peek” at your incoming notifications and messages. 

Unfortunately, no one will buy it.

Why?

Well, we’ve been through this before. Here’s a quick history lesson for you:

In January, BlackBerry released a new top-tier phone called the BlackBerry Z10. That phone had a lot of hype and a lot of good reviews. Sales were pretty bad.

In March, HTC released a top-tier phone called the HTC One. That phone had a lot of hype and a lot of good reviews. HTC reportedly sold a few million worldwide, but the company is still in big trouble.

Nokia has sold millions of its Lumia-branded Windows Phones phones, mostly by attacking the low-end of the smartphone market. It sold 7 million and change last quarter, but the company is still scrambling for a hit.

Meanwhile, the high-end of the smartphone market appears to be completely saturated with iPhones and Samsung’s Galaxy phones, which makes it nearly impossible for a $ 200 device like the Moto X to stand out in that category, even if it is a really good phone. Don’t forget, Samsung and Apple are the only two companies making any real profit in mobile.

Following my briefings with Motorola execs and my time with the device today, I see nothing here that will cause people to make the switch. That doesn’t make the Moto X a bad device. It’s not. But it does make it the latest example of a saturated smartphone market where too many voices are trying to shout above the noise of Samsung and Apple.

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Marissa Mayer’s plan to rebuild Yahoo to its former glory doesn’t begin and end with acqu-hires. The CEO is also hiring dozens of PhDs to restore the company’s research unit, Bloomberg’s Douglas MacMillan and Brad Stone report.

She’s hired 30 PhDs so far this year, with plans to hire another 20, Mayer said.

The research group is led by Chief Scientist Ron Brachman, who joined Yahoo in 2005. He’s a former director for DARPA, the government agency that created the Internet and, he says, his work on artificial intelligence was the foundation for the Apple iPhone’s Siri.

The group, known as Yahoo! Labs, was set up in 2005 with a mission “nothing short of inventing the future of the Internet,”

Under Mayer’s predecessor, Scott Thompson, funding for the group was cut and the group’s leader, Prabhakar Raghavan, left in 2012 to become vice president of engineering at Google.

“The lab is still here — it’s been reduced in size,” Mayer told MacMillan and Stone. She wants to reverse that so she’s investing “heavily to build it back up,” she said.

While the group’s projects aren’t as spectacular as some of Google’s (Google is working on things like self-driving cars, Google Glass, WiFi balloons in outer space), Yahoo! Labs is working on some cool things, too.

These include:

• , which discovers trends in online conversations.
• where crowds of people can predict things related to sporting events.
• , which lets you research items in a store with your smartphone by scanning barcodes.

With 50 new PhD-level computer scientists on staff, the quantity, and quality, of Yahoo! Labs projects should grow.

SEE ALSO: Enterprise More: Features Jobs Skills Tech The Best Skills To List On A Tech Resume, Ranked By Salary Value In Dollars

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General Alexander, head of the National Security Agency, recently took the stage at the Black Hat security conference to reiterate that what the NSA is up to is legal, efficacious and, frankly, hardly controversial.

Given Glenn Greenwald’s deep and broad leaks concerning the general’s activities, the NSA had a skeptical audience to convert to its side. For a dive into TechCrunch’s first take on his speech, head here. For notes by those critical of his remarks, this is your jam.

It’s worth noting that on the same day as this speech, Greenwald and Edward Snowden broke the news of XKeyscore, which gives NSA analysts the ability to pull up the full content of email and other messages without a warrant.

Here are the slides in question, and here’s his take on the current privacy scandal:

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Here’s a sad statistic that Bill Gates shared when speaking at Microsoft a couple of weeks ago. 7 million children die every year. Still, that’s a huge improvement from 2000, when 12 million children died every year.

“The majority of that reduction is new vaccines,” he said. “Over the next 15 years, with the world working together, we should be able to get that number below 3 million.”

That’s a startling fantastic number compared to the year he was born, in 1955.  Back then 20 million children a year died, he said.

Glass half empty or half full?

Here’s the whole conversation, given at Microsoft last month during the company’s Microsoft Research Faculty Summit.

SEE ALSO: The History Of The Tablet, An Idea Steve Jobs Stole And Turned Into A Game-Changer

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The New York Times Company did the world of journalism a big favor today.

The company finally disclosed the exact revenues of its digital business.

The numbers were impressive. And they made clear that no one ever needs to fret about the future of journalism again.

Specifically, the New York Times reported that the revenue of its digital business is now about $ 360 million a year.

That’s composed of about $ 200 million of advertising revenue, which is basically flat, and another $ 150 million of digital subscription revenue, which is growing nicely.

Assuming the digital subscription revenue continues to grow as the company rolls out new subscription products, which it will start to do next April, the New York Times Company should soon have a $ 400 million digital business.

Why does that mean we never have to worry about the future of journalism again?

Because a $ 400 million digital business is a healthy business, one that will support a large,  talented newsroom.

Even if the New York Times’ print paper, which still generates most of the company’s overall revenue of about $ 2 billion a year, were to shut down tomorrow, the company would still be able to fund for an excellent newsroom.

Specifically…

If one assumes that a digital news business should produce at least a bit of profit–say, a 15%-20% operating profit margin–the economics of the New York Times’ digital business could look like this:

REVENUE: $ 400 million
NEWSROOM EXPENSES: $ 130 million (33% of revenue)
TECH, SALES, and MANAGEMENT EXPENSES: $ 200 million (50% of revenue)

OPERATING PROFIT: $ 70 million 

$ 400 million of revenue and $ 70 million of operating profit… that’s a nice business!

And, importantly, it’s a nice business that can comfortably fund $ 130 million in annual newsgathering and production expenses.

A $ 130 million annual newsroom budget could produce a hell of a lot of super high-quality digital journalism. It could support many international news bureaus, for example. And extensive national and political coverage. And war coverage. And deep investigative reporting. And video. And photography.

Specifically, a $ 130 million annual newsroom budget could fund a newsroom of ~850 writers, editors, producers, videographers, and photographers who make an average of $ 150,000 a year all-in (salary, bonus, benefits, office, and T&E costs).

850 journalists!

That’s a wonderful future.

And the New York Times digital news business, of course, will be only one of many successful digital news businesses around the world.

So the future of journalism is very bright indeed.

But wait. What’s that? You’re pointing out that the New York Times currently has a newsroom of 1,100 journalists?

Yes, that’s true! The New York Times’s digital news business will not support a newsroom the size of the New York Times’ current newsroom. As the New York Times’ print edition continues to shrink, therefore (and it’s shrinking at an alarming rate), the New York Times will have to continue trimming the size of its current newsroom.

But we knew that already. We have known for years that the New York Times digital business would not support the economic infrastructure of its shrinking print business. (SEE: “Digital Journalism Secrets Revealed!“)

If you work for the New York Times print edition, and you’re worried about your future, this realization is obviously unsettling (the print ship is sinking, and there aren’t enough digital lifeboats).

But the future of the New York Times print edition is a very different thing than the future of journalism, or, for that matter, the future of the New York Times.

The future of the New York Times print edition–and some of the current New York Times newsroom budget–looks dim.

But the future of journalism looks excellent.

Even today, before the New York Times has even finished rolling out its digital subscription products, the New York Times could support a digital newsroom of about 850 top-notch journalists.

So, rest assured, folks. The digital future will include boatloads of superb journalism. We never need to worry about that again.

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