Some quick links as I empty tab inventory at the end of the day:

• The new primetime is all the time: 4.5-million video streams were served during Monday's U.S. Open playoff (USA Today)
• We're going from 100 embedded devices per person to 1,000 embedded devices per person by 2015 (EETimes)
• Will drilling ANWR make a difference? It depends on what you mean by "make" and "difference" (Econbrowser)
• Chinese iron consumption and correspondingly high iron prices are driving Indian manhole thefts (Times of India)
• Deep water drillings rigs are crazy-scarce, with them renting out at $600k a day versus $150k just a few year ago (IHT)
• Trading desks are embracing video game technology to speed up analytics (WS&T)

There is a feeling of Götterdämmerung around Yahoo of late. It's been intensifying this week with an accelerated pace of executive departures, rumors of a board overhaul and similar rumors of Jerry Yang's imminent shift out of the CEO spot.

Not personalize the impersonal, but it is tragic stuff. It didn't have to be this way.

This "I quit" letter by my friend Stewart Butterfield is making the rounds. Stewart., the co-founder of Flickr, is -- how shall I say? -- smart, unusual and a tireless ironist. With that context in mind, his letter to Brad Garlinghouse at Yahoo telling him that he was leaving is really just par for the course. Nevertheless, it is the most drily amusing "I quit!" letter I have seen.

Dear Brad.

As you know, tin is in my blood. For generations my family has worked this most useful of metals. When I joined Yahoo! back in '21, it was a sheet-tin concern of great momentum, growth and innovation. I knew it was the place for me.

Over the decades as the company grew and expanded, first into dyes and punches, into copper, corrugated steel, synthesized rubber, piping, milling equipment, engines, instruments, weaponry, and so on. I still felt at home, because tin was the core of the business.

After the war, ....

Read the whole thing.