I suppose I agree with Will Wilkinson about the importance of “an ethos of initiative, hard work, and individual responsibility” though I have no real idea why he thinks most progressives are against such an ethos. It strikes me that cultivating such an ethos is sort of integral to making a progressive agenda work. I think back sometimes to the time when I stumbled into a Stockholm Metro station and got the person working the booth to explain what I needed to do to use the city’s bikeshare system. This wasn’t really her job, and the conversation wasn’t in her native language, and obviously no practical harm would have come to her if she’d blown me off but I take it that she took pride in working for Stockholm Metro and had a self-conception as someone who’s a helpful public servant. Any effective public agency from the United States Marine Corps on down is built in pretty profound ways on an ethos of duty and hard work in an even more profound way than things in the for-profit business sector. People who believe in public sector work and public services must believe in the idea of a strong work-ethic.

But if I look at America today, what I see undermining any meaningful notion of work ethic is a kind of run-amok ethic of moneymaking. The old Calvinist idea about money, as I understood it, was that hard work, discipline, and prudence were moral virtues. They were also things that are more likely than not to lead to personal prosperity. So prosperity shouldn’t be stigmatized as ignoble, it should be rather seen as something likely to flow from virtuous behavior. But this equation assumes that morally speaking what matters is the hard work, the discipline, and the prudence. Cutting corners, lying, cheating, or stealing to make a quick buck doesn’t fit the bill. Earning a multi-million dollar salary to deliver below-average performance as the CEO of a firm and then take a multi-million dollar golden parachute when you get sacked doesn’t fit the bill. Spending your days and nights dreaming up smart regulatory arbitrage schemes doesn’t fit the bill. In terms of what it says about your personal virtue, if you’re going to earn your keep identifying and exploiting previously unknown loopholes in the legal framework, you may as well just go out and break the law.

There’s no particular honor and dignity in owning the copyright to Mickey Mouse or Batman, and then spending money lobbying congress for retroactive copyright extensions. A businessman who takes the ideas of initiative, hard work, and individual responsibility seriously would forget all about that nonsense. But the idea is aloft that business executives actually have a moral obligation to spend their days finding ways to engage in profit-maximizing rent-seeking and loophole exploiting. This kind of “you should make as much money as possible through any legal means necessary” spirit is toxic to the kind of ethos that’s made the various forms of modern industrial capitalism successful. Whether or not a person who gets in a car wreck gets free surgery (as in Canada) or merely surgery implicitly subsidized through the tax code (as in the USA) is neither here nor there. A well-designed welfare state is an excellent thing to have, but to have a culture that valorizes hard work you need to actually valorize hard work not just money-making.

Chrome/Firefox (Greasemonkey): If you're not a fan of the Google+ integration in Google Reader or you simply wish you could still use the old sharing system, ReaderSharer is an extension that restores those functions. More »

With an Amazon Prime membership, Kindle owners can now borrow certain e-books for free as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. Read this blog post by David Carnoy on E-book readers.

I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode On September 19th, I said goodbye to my trusty MacBook Pro and started developing exclusively on an iPad + Linode 512. This is the surprising story of a month...

You can tweak the rules to keep it interesting, but that copy of Monopoly sitting in your closet is always going to be Monopoly. The GameChanger, however, incorporates swappable skins and an iPad running accompanying apps so every game night it can be something completely different. More »

(Click for larger image)
This one was at least partly influenced by the "We Are the 99 Percent" Tumblr (h/t to my colleague Matt Bors), where #Occupy movement supporters of all ages are posting photos of themselves holding hand-written notes explaining their circumstances, many of which are dire. Read enough of them, and twin themes emerge of crushing student loans amd medical bills. It's an almost embarrassing display of how miserably the richest country in the world deals with its citizens' education and health care. (And yes, I realize that Baby 7B is most likely being born in a so-called developing country, under different but no less-challenging circumstances, but I took some artistic license.)

One meme that really gets my goat these days is the idea that college kids shouldering massive student loans must have partied their way through school, or were too lazy to work to pay their tuition. Have these critics not noticed what a college degree costs now? Do they really think you can pay for higher education on a library book shelver's income? (That was my college job.)  Sometimes I think these self-satisfied blowhards must have spent the last decade partying, or were simply too lazy to do the work of following basic economic trends.
 

What's the scariest thing about presentations? Getting the perfect angle. You know, the point on stage where you can wave at your slides without blocking the projector bulb or your audience's view. Thankfully, Haruki Maeda from Meiji University is gonna show your text and graphics who's the boss. He's knocked up presentation software that can sense where you stand and orders the text into the visible space around you. Transitions are handled with gestures and you can even pinch-to-zoom live on stage. If you'd guessed there was some Kinect magic at the heart of it, well, thanks for reading the title. The modest Mr. Maeda says all it took was some C#, the Kinect SDK and an Excel spreadsheet to get this beauty working. You don't even need to do that if you're curious yourself -- just go and watch the video we've got after the break.Continue reading Kinect hack makes presentation slides work around you (video)
Kinect hack makes presentation slides work around you (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The New York Times has published Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs. Simpson delivered her eulogy during his memorial service on October 16 at the Memorial Church of Stanford University. In her remarks, she recalls her experience of his final days and hours, including his last words to his family.

Simpson's eulogy is both powerful and heartbreaking, and I won't cheapen it by clipping bits to include here. Go read the full piece at the New York Times. I'd argue that you'll learn just as much about what kind of person Steve Jobs was in his sister's moving eulogy as you will by reading Walter Isaacson's sprawling biography of him.

One recommendation: before you read Simpson's eulogy, grab a handkerchief. Unless you're carved out of wood, you're probably going to need it.
Mona Simpson's moving eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Here’s one to file under “completely unexpected” — remember HP’s long-dead TouchPad? Well, apparently it’s got some life it in yet, as Best Buy will be allowing their customers to purchase a 32GB model for $149 so long as they buy an HP computer at the same time.

The deal starts on November 1, and I suspect Best Buy and HP will be hyping it like crazy next week. This whole thing begs a far bigger question though: where the hell are these things coming from?

It’s been a few months since the TouchPad Fire Sale of 2011, so shouldn’t supply channels have dried up already? Even HP’s own employees had to go through the wringer to get their hands on one, and now they’re back in circulation? As it turns out, these leftover TouchPads may be the result of a last minute production run meant to clear supply channels out of end-of-life components. Estimates put the number of TouchPads ready to sell at between 100,000 and 200,000, but it’s unknown whether or not Best Buy will be getting all of them.

I get that it’s probably part of some pre-holiday promotion to drive computer sales, but the whole thing just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I can’t really blame HP and Best Buy for trying to make a few bucks off of a loss leader like the TouchPad, but it seems unfair considering some early bargain-hunters had their orders abruptly cancelled.

For those of you thinking of jumping on the deal and returning the computer later, be warned that your mileage may vary. While I’m sure some stores won’t have any problem tweaking your transaction, others are likely to shut you down as soon as you walk up to customer service.

Nicely done recap for those of us who attended (and didn’t attend) Darkness Day 2011. At one point, Surly’s Omar Ansari says he thought there were about 3,500 people there. Enjoy. Oh, and a reminder… Surly Darkness Imperial Stout begins […]

(Click for larger image)

It's no secret that we're pretty darn excited about the new Muppets movie coming out this Thanksgiving. I mean, it's the Muppets. And the latest trailer is aces. More »

Some people have a legitimate reason to feel depressed, but not me. I just woke up one day feeling sad and helpless for absolutely no reason.

It's disappointing to feel sad for no reason. Sadness can be almost pleasantly indulgent when you have a way to justify it - you can listen to sad music and imagine yourself as the protagonist in a dramatic movie. You can gaze out the window while you're crying and think "This is so sad. I can't even believe how sad this whole situation is. I bet even a reenactment of my sadness could bring an entire theater audience to tears."

But my sadness didn't have a purpose.  Listening to sad music and imagining that my life was a movie just made me feel kind of weird because I couldn't really get behind the idea of a movie where the character is sad for no reason.

Essentially, I was being robbed of my right to feel self pity, which is the only redeeming part of sadness.

And for a little bit, that was a good enough reason to pity myself.

Standing around feeling sorry for myself was momentarily exhilarating, but I grew tired of it quickly. "That will do," I thought. "I've had my fun, let's move on to something else now." But the sadness didn't go away.

I tried to force myself to not be sad.

But trying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back.  A fundamental component of the plan is missing and it isn't going to work. 

When I couldn't will myself to not be sad, I became frustrated and angry. In a final, desperate attempt to regain power over myself, I turned to shame as a sort of motivational tool.

 

But, since I was depressed, this tactic was less inspirational and more just a way to oppress myself with hatred.

Which made me more sad. 

Which then made me more frustrated and abusive.

And that made me even more sad, and so on and so forth until the only way to adequately express my sadness was to crawl very slowly across the floor.

The self-loathing and shame had ceased to be even slightly productive, but it was too late to go back at that point, so I just kept going. I followed myself around like a bully, narrating my thoughts and actions with a constant stream of abuse.

I spent months shut in my house, surfing the internet on top of a pile of my own dirty laundry which I set on the couch for "just a second" because I experienced a sudden moment of apathy on my way to the washer and couldn't continue. And then, two weeks later, I still hadn't completed that journey. But who cares - it wasn't like I had been showering regularly and sitting on a pile of clothes isn't necessarily uncomfortable. But even if it was, I couldn't feel anything through the self hatred anyway, so it didn't matter. JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE.

Slowly, my feelings started to shrivel up. The few that managed to survive the constant beatings staggered around like wounded baby deer, just biding their time until they could die and join all the other carcasses strewn across the wasteland of my soul.

I couldn't even muster up the enthusiasm to hate myself anymore.

I just drifted around, completely unsure of what I was feeling or whether I could actually feel anything at all.

If my life was a movie, the turning point of my depression would have been inspirational and meaningful. It would have involved wisdom-filled epiphanies about discovering my true self and I would conquer my demons and go on to live out the rest of my life in happiness.

Instead, my turning point mostly hinged upon the fact that I had rented some movies and then I didn't return them for too long.

The late fees had reached the point where the injustice of paying any more than I already owed outweighed my apathy. I considered just keeping the movies and never going to the video store again, but then I remembered that I still wanted to re-watch Jumanji.

I put on some clothes, put the movies in my backpack and biked to the video store. It was the slowest, most resentful bike ride ever.

And when I arrived, I found out that they didn't even have Jumanji in.

Just as I was debating whether I should settle on a movie that wasn't Jumanji or go home and stare in abject silence, I noticed a woman looking at me weirdly from a couple rows over.

She was probably looking at me that way because I looked really, really depressed and I was dressed like an eskimo vagrant.

Normally, I would have felt an instant, crushing sense of self-consciousness, but instead, I felt nothing.

I've always wanted to not give a fuck. While crying helplessly into my pillow for no good reason, I would often fantasize that maybe someday I could be one of those stoic badasses whose emotions are mostly comprised of rock music and not being afraid of things. And finally - finally - after a lifetime of feelings and anxiety and more feelings, I didn't have any feelings left. I had spent my last feeling being disappointed that I couldn't rent Jumanji.

I felt invincible.

And thus began a tiny rebellion.

Then I swooped out of there like the Batman and biked home in a blaze of defiant glory.

And that's how my depression got so horrible that it actually broke through to the other side and became a sort of fear-proof exoskeleton.

House Republicans took the government to the brink of shutdown last spring by demanding across-the-board budget cuts to many vital programs. Instead of focusing on job creation, as Americans wanted them to, the GOP turned its attention to slashing funds for programs that funded assistance for women and children, local law enforcement, the social safety net, environmental protections, and many other programs they deemed as either too expensive or unnecessary. Worse, when challenged on why they hadn’t made the effort to tackle high unemployment, Republicans insisted that their slash-and-burn budget cuts were meant to create jobs.

Not all of those cuts made it through, but the GOP succeeded in passing massive spending reductions as part of a continuing resolution that kept the government operating. According to a new report from the Center for American Progress’ Scott Lilly, those cuts didn’t result in the job creating boon Republicans insisted would follow. Instead, it has done just the opposite, as those cuts will result in the destruction of roughly 370,000 jobs.

Lilly’s report focuses on three major areas where Republicans insisted on spending cuts: funding for local law enforcement, environmental cleanup of sites where nuclear weapons were disabled and destroyed, and investments into construction, repair, and maintenance of government buildings. Cuts to just those three areas will result in the loss of 90,000 jobs, the report found — 60,000 from direct cuts, and 30,000 additional jobs lost from the secondary impacts of job losses in each community.

And according to Lilly, those three areas weren’t among the worst budget cuts forced through by the Republican House:

“Similar stories could be told about many other budget cuts made in this bill—cuts that resulted in further job losses,” said Scott Lilly, author of the report and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. “All of the various 250 program reductions in the fiscal year 2011 Continuing Resolution probably eliminated more than 370,000 American jobs. The three areas selected for discussion in this paper are in my judgment neither the worst cuts made by the committee from a policy standpoint nor the best. But without a doubt they demonstrate the consequences of slashing government spending in a weak economy.”

According to the report, the $2.5 billion cut to local law enforcement funding could have prevented 36,000 police layoffs nationwide, and similar cuts made to grant programs could have prevented the loss of other state and local government jobs. Crunched by the recession and budget cuts, state and local governments shed more than 200,000 jobs in 2010 alone. Republicans not only cut such funding this spring but have now opposed the American Jobs Act — which included grants to state and local governments for the hiring of teachers, police officers, and firefighters.

Finding a balance between buying the things you want and maintaining financial responsibility is pretty tough, but Grndctrl is a web app that seeks to simplify your current situation and provide you with the information you want to know. All you do is enter basic info about your earnings and expenses and you'll be provided with helpful statistics including how soon you can buy that new gadget you've been pining for. More »

Our guest blogger is Seth Hanlon, director of fiscal reform for the Doing What Works project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett would pay barely any taxes under Perry's 'flat tax.'

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry released a tax plan this week that he and many media reports called a “20 percent flat tax.” But Perry’s new alternative tax scheme is hardly “flat.”

Leaving aside the fact that it is layered on top of the existing tax code, it establishes not one but two different tax rates: 20 percent for wages, and zero percent for investment income. Because capital gains and dividends would be sheltered from taxes under Perry’s plan, some of the wealthiest Americans would wind up paying nowhere near 20 percent overall.

In fact, billionaire Warren Buffett, who has lamented the fact that he currently pays only 11 percent of his adjusted gross income in federal income taxes, would pay as little as 0.2 percent under Perry’s plan.

Perry’s campaign has helpfully released a sample of the tax form that wealthy people would use under his plan. We’ve taken the liberty of filling out this form for four high-income Americans whose tax information is public: Buffett, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, and Perry himself. By computing their tax bill using Perry’s sample tax form and the income reported on their most recent actual tax returns, we can calculate just how big a tax cut Perry is proposing to give them.

Here are the results [CLICK ON THE FORMS FOR A LARGER IMAGE]:

BUFFETT: Since the legendary investor receives most of his income from capital gains and dividends, Perry’s plan wipes out most of his already-low tax bill. Buffett reported $62,855,038 in income on last year’s tax return while receiving only $600,000 in compensation from Berkshire Hathaway and the Washington Post Co. (where he is a director). If, aside from that $600,000, all of his other income is from capital gains and dividends, Buffett’s effective federal income tax rate under the Perry plan would be a microscopic 0.2 percent. Buffett’s tax bill would be slashed from the $6.9 million he actually paid in 2010 to $120,000. (Even if Buffett had two-thirds of his income in the form of capital gains and dividends, the average for the richest 400 people in the country, he’d get a $2.7 million tax cut and pay a 6.8 percent effective rate.)

CHENEY: Former Vice President and Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney fares almost as well under Perry’s tax plan. Cheney reported $3.1 million in income on his 2007 tax return (the most recent available), including $2.1 million in dividends and capital gains. Since he’d only pay Perry’s 20 percent tax on his other income, his tax bill would be reduced by about two-thirds — a $387,000 cut. Cheney’s effective rate, which was 19.1 percent in 2007, would be 6.4 percent under Perry’s plan. Of course, this is probably fine with Cheney, since he believes that deficits don’t matter.

OBAMA: Even though President Obama has said that “people like me don’t need another tax cut,” Perry’s plan would give him a big one. The Obamas reported relatively little investment income on their most recent tax return. Still, they would get a $60,000 tax cut from Perry’s plan because they paid more than 20 percent on their other income ($1.8 million from the President’s salary, book sales, and other items). President Obama has proposed the polar opposite of Perry’s plan by suggesting the “Buffett rule,” which would ensure that millionaires can’t pay lower taxes than middle-class families.

PERRY: Perry himself would receive a tax cut of $6,310, based on the income reported on his most recent tax return. That would drop his effective rate from 18.6 percent to 15.8 percent. (If Perry has another large capital gain like he did from selling land in 2007, he’d benefit even more. Had his tax plan been in effect that year, the Perrys would have saved more than $150,000 in taxes on $1.1 million of income and paid a minuscule 3.8 percent effective rate.)

The bottom line: It’s pretty clear from crunching some numbers on his proposed tax form that Perry is not proposing a 20 percent flat tax (nor would a flat tax be a good idea in any event). Far from flat, Perry is proposing an upside-down tax that delivers more tax cuts for the wealthy on top of the ones they’ve already received in recent years — exploding the deficit and shifting a greater share of the tax burden onto the middle class.

Halloween can be frightening for credit cards too thanks to Valve and the Steam Halloween Sale.

Quote:





Halloween is almost here, and we know a lot of you are pretty scared. Normally, our advice would be to try to keep it together and just ride this thing out. But this year, we have a better idea: let Steam be your safe harbor from the terror that will probably be haunting your, say, house, for instance.

With that in mind, from now through October 31st, we're offering discounts on a bunch of great games. Oh, these discounts will be shocking. Though they won't be scary in any meaningful way. Let these insane - but deliberately, rationally insane - deals be the one good, pure thing you cling to throughout the dark days ahead. Not sold? What if we told you that for every game you buy, we promise to try to kill a monster. Like maybe a skeleton. In fact, that's our Steam Halloween pledge to you: Sensible savings and we are going to murder a skeleton.

[Video Link] Here's the book trailer for the new novelization of the game Settlers of Catan. The 620-page novel was written by Rebecca Gable and is published by Amazon. I just started reading an advance copy (got sidetracked by the Jobs biography) but have enjoyed the small amount I've read so far!

The year is 850. In the seas of northern Europe, the small coastal village of Elasund falls prey to marauding neighbors. Their food stores pillaged, women and children stolen, livestock destroyed, the villagers are left to barely survive the harsh winter — and contemplate a drastic solution to their recurring hardships: leaving the only village they have ever known. Foster brothers Candamir and Osmund lead their people on an epic quest to a mythic island home, but without knowledge of exactly where the island is, they must trust the gods to deliver them safely. Lost at sea and set adrift, an extraordinarily violent storm washes them ashore the island famed in pagan lore: Catan. They quickly set about building a new society but old grudges, animosities, and social orders lead to fraternal strife. As the ideals of Candamir’s Christian slave spread throughout the village and conflict with pagan law, the two belief systems clash. When both Osmund and Candamir fall in love with Siglind, the mysterious queen of the Cold Islands, things come to a head.

Based on the wildly popular board game of the same name designed by Klaus Teuber, Rebecca Gable’s The Settlers of Catan is a must-read adventure rich in detail and rippling with intensity.

Read an excerpt

Buy The Settlers of Catan on Amazon.com

There have been six smartphone distribution updates since Android was released: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread and most recently, Ice Cream Sandwich. One man, Michael DeGusta, decided to map out every release and every Android smartphone launched in the United States before July 2010. He then compared the revision updates to the iPhone. The results are a bit surprising, even if you’re aware the Android market is fragmented. For example, DeGusta discovered that 7 of the 18 smartphones in his chart never ran a current version of Android. 12 of the devices only ran a current version of Android for a “matter of weeks or less” before a new distribution was released. Here are several other compelling facts discovered by DeGusta:

10 of 18 were at least two major versions behind well within their two year contract period.
11 of 18 stopped getting any support updates less than a year after release.
13 of 18 stopped getting any support updates before they even stopped selling the device or very shortly thereafter.
15 of 18 don’t run Gingerbread, which shipped in December 2010.
In a few weeks, when Ice Cream Sandwich comes out, every device on here will be another major version behind.
At least 16 of 18 will almost certainly never get Ice Cream Sandwich.
“It only gets worse for people who bought their phone late in its sales period.”

As a result of the fragmentation, DeGusta argues that consumers get “screwed,” developers are constrained and security risks increase when support updates aren’t applied to earlier devices. Read on for a link to DeGusta’s research and a full infographic.

[Via TechCrunch]

Read

In the 1950's, America's middle class received the lions share of income gains.
The 99 Percent Movement was born out of the fact that the country has grown incredibly unequal and millions of Americans are struggling to get by. The richest 1 percent of the country now owns more than 40 percent of the wealth and takes home nearly a quarter of national income.

The common retort to this by the defenders of the economic status quo is that these disparities are a natural result of capitalism, and that those who complain about them are fundamentally against markets. Indeed, when the protests on Wall Street began, much of the media instantly referred to demonstrators as “anti-capitalist.”

But the truth is that the American economy wasn’t always structured in a way that so generously rewarded the one percent while giving the 99 percent less and less. Following the Second World War, widespread unionization, higher and fairer tax rates on the wealthiest Americans, and New Deal policies helped craft an economy with widespread prosperity. In fact, if you look at income growth in period between 1947 and 1949, it was approximately equal across the board. Meanwhile, income gains between 1980 and 2007 went overwhelmingly to the richest Americans. The following chart, assembled by Connect The Dots USA using data from the Congressional Budget Office and United for a Fair Economy, demonstrates this:



A great deal of this decline of the middle class can be explained by the decline of unionization. As CAP’s David Madland and Nick Bunker demonstrate in the following graph, the middle class’s share of national income sharply declined along with union membership from 1967 to 2007 as the 1 percent’s income skyrocketed:



As the 99 Percent Movement continues to battle for the nation’s middle class, it is important for it to remind those it seeks to persuade that they aren’t protesting for something that has never existed. America’s middle class once held a much larger share of the national income, and was the envy of the world. There is no reason why progressive policies cannot create such a middle class again. It is not, as Margaret Thatcher once said, that “there is no alternative.”

Siri is incredibly handy for finding places to eat and sending text messages, but wouldn’t it be great if it could update your Facebook status or post to your Twitter feed for you? As it turns out, it—or is it she?—can, thanks to these clever workarounds. Since both Facebook and Twitter offer SMS integration, all you need to do is setup the service and then add the correct number to your contacts list under “Facebook”…

Over the summer, we got word that a couple of unnamed ex-Apple engineers were getting ready to unveil an unnamed product, under the guise of an unnamed startup. As it turns out, that startup was Nest Labs, and those Apple alums were none other than Tony Fadell, longtime SVP of Apple's iPod division, and lead engineer Matt Rogers. And yes, the product they had to share makes fine use of a click wheel.

But if you thought they'd be cooking up a next-gen music player, you'd be wrong. Instead, the pair have been designing a thermostat, of all things, dubbed the Nest. In addition to being the most stylish model ever to grace a dining room wall, it promises the kind of intelligence we've come to expect in other household appliances -- just not thermostats, per se. It'll go on sale next month for $249 in places like Best Buy, but we managed to snag an early sneak peek. Find some photos below and when you're done, join us past the break where we'll explain how it works.
Gallery: Nest Learning Thermostat
Gallery: Nest Learning Thermostat hands-on
Continue reading iPod fathers unveil their next project, the Nest Learning Thermostat (hands-on)
iPod fathers unveil their next project, the Nest Learning Thermostat (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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I may not be the biggest Martin Scorcese fan, but I love Brain Selznick, and I’m very much looking forward to this. If you haven’t yet, read the extraordinary 526 page picture book-novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, while waiting for this film’s Thanksgiving release.
Read the full article

Steve Forbes

After telling former pizza magnate Herman Cain — proponent of the 999 tax plan — that he’d be glad to “bump plans with you, brother,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is set to release his own flat tax plan tomorrow. While many details of the plan are still unknown, it is expected to take similar form to the flat tax pushed by Steve Forbes, CEO of Forbes Media, when he ran for president in 1996. Forbes officially endorsed Perry today and helped draft Perry’s version of the flat tax.

The flat tax proposal will likely fall short of generating the same amount of government revenue as the current tax structure, as most all flat tax plans do. What it will do, however, is provide a huge windfall to wealthy individuals like Forbes, whose net worth is already about $430 million. In fact, Citizens for Tax Justice analyzed the plan Forbes’ proposed in 1995 and found that it would give him a total tax break worth $1.9 billion over 30 years:

Taking Forbes up on his suggestion, Citizens for Tax Justice, a non-partisan research group, has updated its earlier analysis of Forbes’s personal tax savings from his proposed 17% flat tax. CTJ’s new, more “dynamic” analysis looks not only at Forbes’s current annual savings from his flat tax, but also at his long-term tax savings. Over the long term, CTJ estimates that Forbes’s tax savings from his flat tax would total approximately $1.9 billion.

At the time of CTJ’s analysis, Forbes earned about $1.6 million annually, and his flat tax plan would have cut his annual tax liability by more than half. But the bulk of Forbes’ savings would have come from investments., as the Forbes plan exempted interest, dividends, and capital gains from taxation. Meanwhile, the 17 percent flat tax Forbes proposed would have blown a $200 billion hole in the federal budget, and its benefits wouldn’t have been shared by low- and middle-income Americans — two-thirds of its proposed tax reductions would have gone to those earning more than $200,000 a year. In order to avoid adding to the deficit, the Forbes plan would have had to include a massive tax hike on the poor.

Perry’s plan won’t come out until tomorrow, but if it is similar to the Forbes plan, the implications are clear: it will be yet another Republican plan that requires poor and middle-class Americans to shoulder the cost of a humongous tax cut for the rich.

Since the beginning of October, I've had a constant companion -- a Fitbit Ultra fitness tracker. It's been tracking my activity (or lack thereof), my sleep, and the number of flights of stairs that I go up and down. But until earlier this week, I had to visit the Fitbit website to enter in other information such as what I was eating, how many glasses of water I've had to drink, etc... Now Fitbit has released an iPhone app to give Fitbit owners a way to track or enter fitness and nutrition data on the go.

To use the app, you need to have a US$99 Fitbit or Fitbit Ultra registered with the Fitbit service. Unfortunately, the app does not let your iPhone or iPod touch communicate directly with the Fitbit -- for that, you still need to be within 30 feet of the charge/sync dock to have the device transfer information. It would be nice if Fitbit would figure out a way to get the device to communicate directly with the iPhone so traveling users don't have to lug around a laptop and the little dock in order to transfer the fitness info.

What I like about the iPhone app is that I'm much more likely to track my food and water intake when I have the app at my fingertips rather than needing to grab a computer to enter the info. You can also see how many steps you've taken, how many calories have been burned so far today, how many calories you can ingest for the rest of the day, and how much water you've had to drink. It's also nice to see a history of your weight, although I prefer using WeightBot ($1.99) for that.

Gallery: Fitbit App for iPhone

This first go at a Fitbit app is quite well done, and it's a must for all Fitbit owners. Be sure to check out the gallery to get an idea of how the app works.
Fitbit releases iPhone app for fitness tracking on the go originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Delia Creates made this awesome kids' Frankenstein's monster hat for her son, Owen. She started with an off the peg Frankenstein suit and then modded for great excellence.

(via Craftzine)

Hey Frankie! [deliacreates.blogspot.com]

Sean Cummings:

People will not adopt a technical solution that serves to
replace a manual task, if that solution is less efficient than
the manual task it replaces. How could we think that QR codes
for marketing would work any better than CueCat? Did we not learn
the first time?

QR codes are built for machines, not humans. And they’re ugly.

Update: Mikey-san nails it:

Robot barf looks like QR codes.

 ★ 

An entirely original metal album remixing classic video game songs has been created by band Vomitron, entitled "No NES For The Wicked". More »

A graph by the wonderful illustrator Chris Piascik.

TPM's Brian Beutler takes on the Republicans' favorite lie of the moment, that 47 percent of Americans (the rabble-rousing class warriors, apparently) don't pay any taxes. Here's how much of a lie that is.

Click here to view full size.

While 47 percent of recession-era American households don't pay federal income taxes, they pay plenty elsewhere, and more to the point, have picked up a larger and larger share of the nation's tax burden over the last half century.

Over the 58 years preceding the Lesser Depression, the share of federal revenues that came from individual income taxes has remained fairly stable, fluctuating between 40 and 50 percent, and peaking just before George W. Bush slashed rates in 2001.
The rest has come from corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, and various other taxes. To a surprising extent, the story of the last six decades is one of a shrinking burden on big business, and a growing burden on workers—the bulk of the "47 percent". Since 1950, regressive payroll taxes have grown to comprise over one-third of federal revenues—they used to comprise about one-tenth. For corporate income taxes, it's just the opposite—what used to provide the Treasury over a quarter of its revenue now provides just over 10 percent.

Payroll taxes, which were expanded in 1965 to include Medicare financing, keep on growing, while corporate taxes keep on shrinking. The numbers reflected in the chart are pre-recession, but the trend is unmistakable and unchanged. And those payroll taxes, excise taxes, and other taxes that the 47 percent do pay make up a good chunk of federal revenue.

Click here to view full size.

It's that sliver at the bottom, corporate income tax, that exposes the big lie of Republicans. Their "job creators" are not carrying their fair share of the burden, any way you slice it.

I'm not sure I have any comment for this, other than to say how pleased I am that puns work just as well in math.

Via Vincent Knight

I spent most of my time when learning to skateboard primarily on my face, not understanding the first thing about proper technique. Know Skateboarding Street Fundamentals provides everything a beginner skater needs to know to bust tricks like Tony Hawk. More »

So the numbers are in from the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution and they contain a rude awakening for Herman Cain and his supporters: Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan would raise taxes on 83.8 percent of American taxpayers, most of the middle- and lower-income families and individuals. But while it would represent a new burden on most Americans, it would also be a massive tax cut for the super-rich.

According to the Tax Policy Center's analysis, the average taxpayer in every income group below $200,000 would be faced with a substantial tax hike:

As you can see, if you take into account total income earned, the tax hike is truly massive on the lower end of the scale: taxpayers earning between $100,000 and $200,000 would on average see an additional 1 percent to 2 percent of their income go to taxes, but below $10,000 it would be at least 11 percent and possibly much more.
But if you earn more than $200,000, Cain's plan could be a windfall, especially if you earn more than $1 million per year:

Maybe once Republicans realize what Cain's plan would really mean, he'll become less popular. But shouldn't they have asked themselves these sorts of questions before picking him as their frontrunner?

Well folks, the wait is over. Sony has announced that the PlayStation Vita will be hitting shelves February 22nd at retailers in the US, Canada, Latin America and Europe. In addition to all your favorite gaming titles and a pocket filled with 512MB of RAM, you'll be able to chat it up with your fellow assassins cross-game or via Facebook, Foursquare, Skype and Twitter. If that's not enough, the 5-inch OLED display, dual analog sticks, dual cameras, and front and rear touch panel should be enough get you amped for a Call of Duty campaign on the handheld device. Keep in mind: this bad boy will sport 3G from AT&T for $299 or you can snag the WiFi-only model for $249. If you're looking for more details, hit that source link below.PlayStation Vita is coming February 22nd, start saving now originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink Joystiq  |  PlayStation Blog  | Email this | Comments

Want to make this Lego DeLorean BTTF set a reality? Lego is finally crowdsourcing designs with its new Cuusoo platform; it's basically a Lego Kickstarter. Here are our favorite Lego dreams—let's help bring 'em to life. More »

One thing that happens when a longshot candidate skyrockets in the polls is his policy proposals start getting more scrutiny. The Tax Policy Center, for example, has a new analysis out of the distributive consequences of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan. The Tax Policy Center models 9-9-9 as catchy new slogan for a de facto national consumption tax*, and consequently constitutes a tax increase on most Americans but a tax cut for high income people who engage in a lot of savings and investment. I converted their table into two charts:

As you can see, you actually need two charts to illustrate this properly because the magnitude of the tax change for the highest income segments is very large. But basically you’re talking about a nice tax cut for the $200k-$500k crowd and a really big tax cut for people who earn more than that, plus mid-sized tax hikes for everyone else.

* I should note that CAP’s tax guy doesn’t like the way TPC models this, since their analysis really only works in the infinite horizon. The short-term distributional consequences would be even more regressive.

Ryan Heise, summarizing his four months using Android:

Another short winded point, as I’ve gone over this before.
Android’s stock browser, Browser, is trash compared to Mobile
Safari. It is slow (often to the point of being unusable),
renders sites poorly all too often, and is generally a bad
experience. And I’m letting the atrociousness of the Droid
family of fonts slide.

He’s got a nice comparison video, illustrating his point. His whole write-up matches my own experience with the Nexus S, really.

 ★ 

In its latest effort to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that parents just completely skip the whole idea of putting any sort of crib bumper -- regardless of thickness -- in their kids' cribs.

In 2005, believing that pillow-like crib bumpers were a suffocation risk, the AAP initially recommended that if you were going to put a bumper in the crib, it should be "thin, firm, well secured." But the group says that studies in the years since have shown that those bumpers are still putting children at risk.

"We concluded that if there's no reason for them to be in the crib, it's better to just have them out of there, particularly in light of the deaths that have been reported, that have been associated with the bumper pads," said Rachel Moon, MD, chairperson of the AAP SIDS task force and lead author of the new guidelines.

No more crib bumpers, says American Academy of Pediatrics [MSNBC]

Foursquare's new passive alerting feature makes the app stickier, CEO says.

After the hot mess that was the Droid Bionic Saga (Delay! Delay! Delay! Screw it, release garbage.), I didn’t think I could ever like another Motorola device again. Guess I was wrong.

I just spent a bit of time with the just announced Droid RAZR, and, at least at first glance, it is… surprisingly great. Dive in for my first impressions, won’t you?

The First Impressions:

The Samsung-made Super AMOLED screen is, as we’ve grown used to with Samsung’s most recent displays, amazing. The blacks are deep, the color contrast vivid. It’s still not quite as high res as Apple’s retina display, but the difference is a hard one to notice
The overall device aesthetic is… interesting. Not quite my tastes (perhaps because I’m so used to round corners, while the RAZR is intentionally angled), but not at all off putting.
No lag. None whatsoever. Of course, we’re talking about a brand new device here with little bogging it down, and Android as a whole is considerably less laggy than it was a year ago — but try as I might, I couldn’t get any of the transitions or animations to stutter.
New to the Droid RAZR is a feature Motorola calls “Smart Actions”, which allows you to automate certain events based on triggers like location (based on WiFi networks or geofences) and time. Arrive at work? It can change your ringtone away from “Sexy and I Know It” and your wallpaper to someone who is wearing clothes. Back at home? It’ll put things back to your personal tastes, flip off Bluetooth, slow down the processor (to save battery), and up the ringer volume in case the handset slips into the couch. There are third party apps that do similar things, but Motorola’s offering is surprisingly intuitive and seemingly well built.
Slim. Incredibly slim. Even with the chunk of ugly at the top (where the radio/camera are stored), this thing is razor (HAH!) thin.
Though I wasn’t able to get sample shots of the device, I did use the camera. The shutter lag was minimal, and the time between photos was trivial.
My favorite part of the entire device? Oddly, the back. So many manufacturers (I’m looking at you, Samsung), have come to focus all of their efforts on the front of the device. What about the part the world sees while I’m actually using the phone as.. you know, a phone? The Droid RAZR’s back surface is almost entirely Kevlar, which feels remarkably nice in the hand. It’s the texture of soft-touch paint, without the added thickness.
The battery isn’t swappable — which is sort of weird, for an Android device. They sacrificed that option to make the device slimmer.

That’s all for now — but feel free to ask any questions down in the comments below. We’ll try to get our hands on a production device to give this thing a proper review in the coming weeks.

We’ve got a nice demo video or two coming up soon — sadly, the WiFi here appears to be carrier pigeon-based. Check back soon! Update: Now with video!






Crunchbase





MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS, INC.






Company:
Motorola Solutions, Inc.


Website:
motorolasolutions.com


Launch Date:
October 18, 2011



Motorola Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: MSI) is a data communications and telecommunications equipment provider that succeeded Motorola Inc. following the spin-off of the mobile phones division into Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. in 2011. The company is headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.

Motorola Solutions is composed of the Enterprise Mobility Solutions division of the former Motorola, Inc. Motorola Solutions also previously had a Networks division, which it sold to Nokia Siemens Networks in a transaction that was completed on April...






Learn more

Matthew Bishop, the New York Bureau Chief of the Economist, one of the world’s leading pro-capitalism business magazines, is currently visiting Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in Zuccotti Park. He just tweeted that he finds OWS to be a “remarkably civilized and democratic affair” and that the Founding Fathers “would be proud”:

LEGO is a toy as old as time. The iPhone is a toy that every kid wants. If you combine them together, you have 'Life of George'. It's a LEGO game with companion iPhone app that every man, woman and child would want to play. More »

How many dead Latinos does a Herman Cain punchline need? (Jim Young/Reuters)

Only Republicans think it's funny to make jokes about killing people. At a campaign spot in Tennessee, Herman Cain recounted a conversation he had on the radio with a caller opposed to his immigration policies.
We'll have a real fence, 20 feet high with barbed wire, electrified, with a sign on the other side that says, "It can kill you." What do you mean insensitive? What is insensitive is when they come to the United States across our border and kill our citizens and kill our border patrol people.
Ah yes, the mythical killer busboys, landscapers and nannies, rampaging throughout the land murdering people after picking their crops.

Of course, the pizza guy now says this was a "joke", though I don't recall anyone laughing. In fact, at that campaign spot, people cheered the idea of killing brown people trying to cross the border. So as a joke, it kind of sucked.

But Republicans have rallied around their flavor of the moment, nodding furiously at the notion that yes, this is funny, and tsk tsk, those liberals are humorless for not laughing at it. Except it's not just liberals. Today, the Texas director of Somos Republicans, the nation's largest organization of misguided Latinos, quit his party.

Today, we find the Republican Party has strayed from its roots and its founding principals so far that they can no longer be seen. We saw this yesterday, in the glare of broad daylight, when a leading presidential candidate, Herman Cain, not once, but twice, advocated for the murder of innocent people and that was met with cheers!Somos Republicans, America’s largest organization of conservative Hispanics, was alone in its criticism of this loud mouth hateful bigot. He says he was “joking.” Nobody here is laughing! The fact the GOP allows and applauds such outrageous thoughts is beyond reprehensible.
To us, the idea of allegedly “Pro-Life” people shouting for the un-Constitutional use of deadly force is unbelievable. Then, too, we shouldn’t be surprised since Republican leaders have been advocating for the nullification of the American Constitution in states like Arizona, Georgia and now Alabama. When did Republicans, once synonymous with “conservative,” become so liberal as to attack their very own Bill of Rights in the 4th and 14th Amendments?!

Where is Republican leadership?  Where has the guiding principal of “Morality” gone?!  If the Republican Party cannot or will not rebuke this hateful bigot and others like him who wear the mantle of “Republican” then perhaps the time has come for a rebuke of the Party itself!

Ronald Reagan left the Democrat Party saying they had left him. Perhaps, I shall do the same because the Republican Party has become radical and unreasonable. President Reagan must be tumbling in his grave!

This guy is just now figuring all this out? But really, what other choice does the GOP have? It can no longer divide people based on race, as Rick "Niggerhead" Perry found out. It's much harder to divide people based on sexual orientation, as Michele Bachmann and her very butch husband Marcus found out.

So what's left? It is a party that can only function on divisiveness and hate. Strip that away, and all you have left is Wall Street, and those guys aren't very popular right now.

Ever thought you'd see Roger Ebert endorsing a "pirated" movie found on The Pirate Bay? Keith alerts us to an Ebert tweet, in which he states, that he's "opposed to piracy," but still links to a fan edit of Psycho, noting that it "proves a point." You see, Ebert has said for a while that he thinks Hitchcock screwed up the ending of Psycho:

For thoughtful viewers, however, an equal surprise is still waiting. That is the mystery of why Hitchcock marred the ending of a masterpiece with a sequence that is grotesquely out of place. After the murders have been solved, there is an inexplicable scene during which a long-winded psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) lectures the assembled survivors on the causes of Norman's psychopathic behavior. This is an anticlimax taken almost to the point of parody.

If I were bold enough to reedit Hitchcock's film, I would include only the doctor's first explanation of Norman's dual personality: "Norman Bates no longer exists. He only half existed to begin with. And now, the other half has taken over, probably for all time." Then I would cut out everything else the psychiatrist says, and cut to the shots of Norman wrapped in the blanket while his mother's voice speaks ("It's sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son..."). Those edits, I submit, would have made "Psycho" very nearly perfect. I have never encountered a single convincing defense of the psychiatric blather; Truffaut tactfully avoids it in his famous interview.

While Ebert wasn't actually so bold, in this day and age, anyone can edit a movie (not necessarily legally), and someone took up Ebert's challenge, and made exactly that fan edit and put it up on The Pirate Bay, leading to Ebert's tweet.

Of course, in this day and age, with Twitter potentially suspending accounts of users who link to websites that link to content that might sorta kinda be deemed infringing, he should be careful. And, of course, let's not forget that the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division these days seems to believe that a mere link to infringing content could be enough to file criminal charges.

And yet... most of us with any sense of perspective knows that this is crazy. No one is "harmed" by allowing someone to take Ebert's suggestion and create a fan edit of the movie. It's not likely that anyone is going to download and watch that and decide they don't need to watch the real version. If anything, it may make people interested in comparing. And, realistically speaking, the only people likely to watch the fan edit are those who were already fans of the original. So what harm has it done?Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

A decade after the anthrax attacks killed five people and sent 17 to the hospital, and a year after the FBI officially closed the case, it's once again rearing its ugly head. More »

Foursquare might be the kind of locational social networking, but is it breaking up couples? Probably not! Find My Friends, on the other hand, allegedly pinpointed one man's unfaithful spouse, caught in her sordid Google Maps lie. Here's the future! More »

Apple is offering “special limited time” pricing on refurbished first-generation iPad units. The refurbished iPad page of the company’s online store shows several models in stock, including 64GB Wi-Fi units for $399, 32GB Wi-Fi + 3G units for the same price, and 64GB Wi-Fi + 3G units for $499, a substantial savings off the original $829 price. All of Apple’s refurbished iPads come with a new battery and outer shell, all manuals…

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s push for increasing taxes on the very wealthiest Americans — who, due to the preferential tax treatment of investment income, often pay lower taxes than those in the middle-class — led to the creation of the Obama administration’s “Buffett rule.” The rule is aimed at ensuring that millionaires can’t use special treatment in the tax code to drive their tax rates down below that of their employees.

Republicans have met the Buffett rule with universal derision, calling it “class warfare.” “If it’s not class warfare, it’s highway robbery,” said 2012 GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain. “Pick my pockets, because that’s what he’s doing!” As it turns out, Cain’s much-touted 999 tax plan would basically do the opposite of the Buffett rule, driving Buffett’s already low tax rate down to new depths:

If the “9-9-9″ tax plan promoted by Herman Cain, a leading Republican presidential candidate, had been the law of the land last year, Warren Buffett would very likely have paid no income taxes, according to an analysis prepared for Yahoo News and The Lookout by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. At most, Buffett would have paid taxes on just 1 percent of his income.

As Yahoo’s Zachary Roth wrote, “if Buffett thinks he’s getting off easy under the current tax system, he should try life under Cain’s plan. Then he’d really be complaining.” Under 999, Buffett’s taxable income would come to $4.9 million of the $62 million he earned last year. After accounting for charitable deductions — which is one of the few tax preferences Cain says he would preserve — “Buffett would have paid no income taxes at all last year under the plan.”

However, low- and middle-income Americans would pay much more under the 999 plan than they do currently. They will be hammered by Cain’s nine percent sales tax (which Buffett would also pay, though at nowhere near the effective rate of poor Americans, who spend almost all of their income in a given year), while also paying a nine percent income tax.

Cain finally admitted this weekend that “there are some” people who will pay more in taxes under his 999 plan. However, he has yet to fess up to the fact that his plan entails a humongous tax cut for the very wealthiest Americans.

Police in Abu Dhabi and Dubai said the number of reported traffic accidents plunged during Research In Motion’s recent three-day BlackBerry outage. According to The National, accidents fell 20% in Dubai and 40% in Abu Dhabi. Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim from the Dubai Police department said his force saw the largest decrease among young drivers and men. “The accidents that occur from the use of these devices range between minor and moderate ones, but at times they are deadly,” Tamim explained. “Absolutely nothing has happened in the past week in terms of killings on the road and we’re really glad about that,” Brigadier General Al Harethi, from Abu Dhabi’s police department said. “People are slowly starting to realize the dangers of using their phone while driving. The roads became much safer when BlackBerry stopped working.” According to The National, there is typically a fatal accident in Abu Dhabi every two days and an accident every three minutes in Dubai.

Read

Our growing appetite for high-def video is putting a serious strain on operator networks, and the result is an enemy we all love to hate: bandwidth caps. So bearing that in mind, it’s good news to hear there’s continued progress on the development of a new video compression standard, the High Efficiency Video Coding specification, or H.265. According to Multichannel News, an initial draft of the new spec should be ready in February, with a completed standard due in January 2013.

The H.265 codec is expected to decrease the bandwidth needed to deliver video by 25% to 50%. The bandwidth savings come at a cost of increased processing complexity, but the benefits, particularly for mobile operators, make the cost worthwhile. GigaOM reported not long ago that data delivery will stop being profitable for mobile carriers in about a year and a half. Without increases in efficiency, you can bet your bottom dollar that carriers will raise data rates as a counter-measure. On the other hand, with a combination of network improvements and compression advances, perhaps we can stave off that outcome and continue to enjoy our mobile streaming services.

New video compression techniques will also be put to the test with the advent of Ultra High-Definition Television. UHDTV is said to increase the number of pixels crammed into a video picture by 400% to 1,600%. The ITU settled on an agreement for the basic tech specs in a UHDTV standard with an announcement last week.

[Above: Surly Darkness bottled, pic courtesy of @surlybrewer] (Brooklyn Center, MN) – Look at what is being bottled today…Surly Darkness! If you haven’t seen the full Darkness Day event details yet, then head over to the Facebook event page. For […]

OOF. NYCC defeated.

Tomorrow, UPENN!.

For those awaiting an unlocked iPhone 4S, it seems that Apple is already selling them at retail stores as simply "Off Contract" devices. "Off Contract" devices are sold at full retail price and don't lock you into a contract with AT&T. The prices for these models are $649, $749 and $849 for the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB iPhone 4S models.

The finding was noted by 9to5Mac and had also been discussed in the MacRumors forums where multiple users noticed that iTunes informed them of the "Congratulations your iPhone has been unlocked" message from iTunes:

I really have no idea. Part of me thinks it was some kind of glitch. The only thing I can think of is that a paid full price and didn't extend my contract. I ordered through Apple too. I wish there was a way I could confirm it, but I don't have any T Mobile or foreign sims laying around lol - BFW122083The same thing appeared on mine when I did a restore... I am wondering if it came like this from the factory because I paid the full $849.99 for a 64 GB because my AT&T contract was not eligible for an upgrade...- mjcxpThe common thread was that they were purchased as off contract devices. Developer @stroughtonsmith has since verified this by purchasing one himself.

Meanwhile, it seems Sprint iPhone 4Ss are also come GSM unlocked according to @gruber who was able to successfully use a Canadian SIM card in his Sprint iPhone 4S. However, Sprint has promised to lock them at a later date.

Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• Apple Caused iPhone 4S Activation Issues?
• EA and Gameloft Games On Sale for iPhone 4S Launch
• Steve Jobs Tribute Haircut At Fifth Avenue iPhone Launch
• Siri on Android vs. iPhone
• iPhone 4S Drop Test (Spoiler: It Breaks)

Designer Brendan Ravenhill recently released this piece, which he dubs “the last dustbin you will ever need”. The custom trash can has a balanced lid that transforms into a dust pan, complete with brush. His site goes into the details of the type of metal and bristles that are used, but all I know is this is a killer design. It’s on sale for a limited time.

And you’re just dying to see how it’s made with an annoying percussion overdub, aren’t you?


Via: Brendan Ravenhill

Apple improved the antenna design in the iPhone 4S in an attempt to kill the notorious Death Grip problem in the old iPhone 4. Did it work? Yes. OH YES. There is no death grip in the iPhone 4S. More »

Google Buzz, the company's much maligned foray into social networking that was about as popular as genital herpes, is dying. Oh, you thought it was already dead? Not yet. But that's probably why Google is killing it. More »

Nathan Drake, protagonist of the Uncharted series, tends to have bad luck with moving vehicles. One of the more memorable sequences from Uncharted 2 involved Drake climbing up a train hanging over the edge of a cliff, and we've already seen a sequence from the third entry in the series in which he's forced to fight bad guys on a cruise ship being rocked by waves. Recently we had the chance to play a bit of the single-player campaign and we had to deal with yet another vehicle sequence: falling out of a cargo plane mid-flight.

As with many scenes in the Uncharted series, this particular one started off as a somewhat clichéd action movie sequence. There's a plane about to take off and you need to catch it. This involves first finding an alternate route through the numerous guards and around the closing gate to get to the runway. Simple enough. But of course a plane that's moments away from taking off is quite a bit faster than a man running alongside of it, so it takes a friend in a jeep arriving at just the right time to ensure you're able to grab hold of the landing gear and sneak aboard.

And then things start to get rough. After being spotted crawling through the ventilation, you get into a fight that results in much of the cargo aboard spilling out the back, yet still tethered to the plane itself. This creates a situation not unlike the train scene in Uncharted 2. You have to climb along the cargo, which is currently fluttering in mid-air behind an airplane, to get back to safety. In this case, safety means a cargo hold full of armed bad guys.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception


What follows is a tense sequence as you have to not only successfully win a firefight in which you're seriously outnumbered, but also avoid all of the debris that's sliding around the now out-of-control plane. At some point the inside even catches on fire. The result, of course, is that the plane ultimately crashes, resulting in the image depicted on the game's cover.

The section we played only lasted a few minutes and felt largely the same as previous installments in the franchise, with combat and movement feeling as fluid as ever. But that's really the strength of the series: taking something familiar and making it exciting. This type of scene has been done many times before in action films, but it somehow feels fresh here. You know what's ultimately going to happen but it's those moments in between—when the plane catches fire, or a gate suddenly closes—that make the game so gripping.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is coming to the PlayStation 3 on November 1.



Read the comments on this post

Jawbone's fitness-obsessed wristband appears to be closing in on the retail finish line. The Up pairs with what appears to be an iOS app, (no news on whether an Android version is in the pipeline), and will pile on the guilt about your disgustingly sedentary lifestyle. You can have the luxury of feeling like a weight loss reality show contestant by scheduling "get up and move" reminders when you've succumbed to watching back-to-back mediocre sitcoms with a Doritos family bag chaser. There's also a sleep tracker and a challenge tab to plot your amazing weight loss journey (or descent to an early demise) against friends and family. It'll monitor what you eat, and even tell you which foods "help you feel your best." (We think it's cake.) No word on price or arrival date just yet, so you'll just have to put up with Autom until we hear more.

[Thanks, Luke]

Jawbone's Up wristband warms up at AT&T store, wants you faster, stronger originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink   |  AT&T  | Email this | Comments

This is perfectly even mix of completely adorable and completely frightening. Adorable, because, well, it's a baby being cute and infantile. Frightening because her mushy baby brain's already been transformed by an iPad. More »

Disney has just released a teaser a parody an actual trailer for The Muppets, which comes Thanksgiving weekend! And let us be the first to tell you, those Mooppets look like bad news. Watch the trailer above!
Stubby the Rocket is the mascot of Tor.com and has a “Kermit arms” button but has never pressed it before.
Read the full article

Last week, House Republicans released their draft version of the 2012 budget for labor, health and human services, and education, which, if enacted, would slash job training programs, gut key worker protections, and eliminate Pell Grants for 1 million students. The Center for American Progress’ Donna Cooper and Melissa Boteach put together showing that while the budget bill cuts these vital programs, House Republicans insist on protecting special interest tax breaks for oil companies and the wealthy:

Want to own a real piece of Warcraft history? Ever wanted to own your entire server? Starting Oct. 17, Blizzard will be auctioning off the actual server blades of yesteryear to benefit the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. WoW has gone through a lot of technical changes over the years, and the old server blades are just that -- old. What better way than to celebrate the early years of the game than to give the proceeds to such an important cause?

The auctions will last from Oct. 17 through Nov. 14, with each realm's original server blade going on sale. What's a server blade, you ask? Each server, with its own processing power and all that jazz, lives in a rack with other servers at the big server enclosure. Each auctioned server will have a little plaque attached with the server's name, its dates of operation, and signatures from the team. This is really, really cool. If I had the cash to pony up for Frostwolf, my original server, I would. That thing broke so many times in the early days that I'd want to pop it open and see all the horrible, nightmarish things lurking inside.

Check out the auction information page for which servers will be auctioned off on which days.

Filed under: Blizzard, News items
Blizzard auctioning off old servers for charity originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Spotted: Gossip Girl, a deliciously fun but terrible show, and a bunch of other CW shows like 90210 (the new one), Nikita, Supernatural, etc. all available for streaming on Netflix come October 15th. I do not mind this. [PR Newswire] More »

President Obama’s “Buffett Rule” is aimed at ensuring that wealthy Americans pay their fair share in taxes. As it stands today, a wealthy individual can take advantage of preferential tax treatment of investment income and various tax loopholes to drastically lower his or her tax rate and effectively pay lower taxes than middle-class families. To prove the point behind his namesake, billionaire Warren Buffett revealed to Republicans yesterday that he made more than $62 million last year while only paying a 17 percent tax rate.

It is not surprising that Republicans like GOP candidate Mitt Romney who slam the Buffett Rule as “class warfare” simultaneously benefit from the same sort of preferential treatment. In fact, a new report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service finds that 25 percent of the nation’s millionaires have a lower effective tax rate than 10.4 million middle-class Americans:

About 25 percent of millionaires in the U.S. pay federal taxes at lower effective rates than a significant portion of middle-income taxpayers, according to a legislative analysis.

Preferential treatment of investment income and the reduced impact of payroll taxes on high earners lets about 94,500 millionaires pay taxes at a lower rate than 10.4 million “moderate-income taxpayers,” representing about 10 percent of those making less than $100,000 a year, according to the report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service dated Oct. 7.

In direct conflict with a favorite Republican talking point, the report also found that very few business owners are millionaires and “played down the impact of higher tax rates on job creation.” “The small share of taxpayers with small-business income in the millionaire category suggests that tax reform policies designed to ensure adherence to the Buffett Rule will affect few small businesses,” it said. This bolsters the claims from economists and business owners alike that higher tax rates on the rich make “zero difference” in hiring.

Numerous polls continually show that Americans support raising the tax rate on millionaires. But rather than raise the rates on those who should pay their fair share, Republicans respond with even more tax increases on the middle class. “Class warfare,” indeed.

Extreme exercise programs like P90X, CrossFit, and Insanity will without a doubt kick you into the best shape of your life in a very short amount of time—but only if you stick with their crazy-for-most routines. The majority of people (trainers I've spoken with say something like 9 out of 10) give up on these workouts because they're really intense and require an hour almost every day to do them. More »

Apple's massive software launch yesterday to debut iOS 5 and iCloud resulted in a number of issues for some users, with iOS installation errors being a primary source of frustration as Apple's servers were overwhelmed by demand for the new operating system.

In fact, as Cult of Mac and The Next Web summarize, traffic to Apple was so high that broader Internet infrastructure was even experiencing difficulties under the load. In particular, one Internet exchange point in London saw its traffic jump by 50% as iOS 5 became available.The traffic at the LONAP (LONAP is a London Neutral Internet Exchange Point where Internet and content providers exchange traffic) increased from a normal peak of around 18Gb/s to around 28Gb/s.The iCloud portion of yesterday's launch has also seen some hiccups, with a number of users reporting difficulties getting the service up and running and/or converting from MobileMe to iCloud. Apple issued a status update yesterday evening indicating that it was limiting the rate of conversions in the face of high demand, encouraging customers experiencing difficulties to try again at a later time.Due to high demand, we are temporarily limiting the number of users moving from MobileMe to iCloud. Please try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience.And while many of the high traffic issues have settled down by today, users are now reporting that iCloud mail is down for the moment, although Apple has yet to issue a status update addressing the situation.

Brief downtime and minor issues are not particularly surprising given the popularity of Apple's services and the crush of demand at rollout, but customers who remember the difficult rollout of MobileMe several years ago are undoubtedly hoping that Apple can iron out the wrinkles more quickly this time around.

Update: Apple has issued a status update acknowledging the problems with iCloud mail.Some users are experiencing intermittent authentication errors when trying to use mail. Normal service will be restored ASAP. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• Apple Not Offering Apple ID Merging
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Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain’s 999 plan — which would scrap the current tax code in favor of a nine percent personal income tax, nine percent corporate income tax, and nine percent sales tax (on everything, including food) — was the undeniable star of the GOP’s primary debate this week, with the number nine warranting 85 mentions during the course of the evening. As we’ve been reporting, the plan would entail a huge tax increase on the poor while slashing taxes on the rich.

Cain, when faced with analyses showing how much his plan would wallop the low-income Americans, dismisses them, calling them “erroneous.” But as it turns out, Cain isn’t particularly well-versed in the nuances of his plan. Asked how his proposed corporate income tax would apply to products built in other countries and designed and sold in the U.S., Cain replied “I have no idea“:

Mr. Cain made it clear Wednesday his plan remained a work in progress. Visiting Concord, N.H., he added several new wrinkles. He would preserve the deduction for charitable donations, making the flat income tax not so flat; he would exempt any used goods, including previously owned homes and cars, from the national sales tax; and he would allow businesses to deduct new equipment purchases from their 9% corporate income tax, as long as the goods were U.S.-made.

Asked how that would apply to a computer designed domestically but containing Malaysian components and assembled in China, he replied, “I have no idea.”

Even the Cain campaign’s own economist said the 999 plan “wouldn’t be the one I picked” to run with. Remember, the plan was crafted by a Koch-affiliated financial adviser from a Wells Fargo branch in Ohio, not an actual economist.

As ABC reported today, a long list of economists “say Cain’s plan would be a tax hike for the lower middle class and a tax windfall for the wealthy.” Conservative economist Bruce Bartlett wrote that, “at a minimum, the Cain plan is a distributional monstrosity.” Cain would surely dispute these assertions, but how seriously can his protests be taken if he freely admits he has “no idea” how the plan would even function?

Warren Buffett replied this week to a Republican request that he reveal his tax returns. Rep.

Not only is Siri shaping up to actually be as good as its hype, but it turns out the Apple and Siri engineers have tucked some excellent easter eggs inside -- so many, in fact, someone has already started a Tumblr to catalog them all.

Right now everything is copied from Josh Topolsky's post over at ...

The HP Touchpad just jumped up a few notches on the tablet scale now that the first public release of CyanogenMod is available for download. More »

This just isn't fair. Wall Street bankers are making less today than they were in 2007!
Bankers’ salaries vs. everyone else’s

I’m not generally one to predict the death of things. I’ve rarely been known to herald a shiny new Device X as a “Device Y Killer!”, and I’m a firm believer that Facebook is doing a perfectly good job of being “the new Facebook”. Pundits love to make these crazy claims because they’re easily forgotten and rarely does anyone call them out for being wrong after a few years have passed.

With that said: October 12th, 2011. Mark it down, and come back and yell at me in a few years if I’m wrong. Today is the day SMS begins to die.

It begins with today’s launch of iOS 5.

Or, really, it begins with iMessage.

Back in June, MG wrote that Apple had “finally stuck a dagger into SMS” with the announcement of iMessage. Today, they’re pulling that dagger out… and sitting back and laughing as the wound bleeds out.

You! Heading for the comments! Wait a second. (A crazy request, really, given that it’s 5 line breaks deep into this post. I probably should’ve put it right in the headline.)

To be clear, iMessage alone won’t kill SMS. It’ll just start the avalanche.

Today, many millions of people (and millions more, come Friday) are being shown something better. Besides updating to iOS 5, they don’t have to do anything to make it work. They don’t have to manually install an app; hell, they don’t even need to use anything they’re not already using.

This isn’t BlackBerry Messenger. There are no PINs to share. iMessage just knows when the person you’re texting can receive iMessages, and handles everything for you.

This isn’t Google Voice, with its free texting. There is no new app to install and use, or new service to sign up for.

This is many, many, many millions of devices, suddenly switching to a new protocol with little interaction from the user. This is millions of iPhones, suddenly sending a fraction of the SMS messages they sent before. The carriers are terrified, and rightly so.

Yes, iMessage only works from iOS device to iOS device — but that doesn’t matter. This is just the beginning of the end.

Next, iMessage support will come to iChat in OS X. Users will be chatting across platforms — again, with no new apps to install, and no new services to sign up for.

Next, Google will respond with their own, completely integrated Android-to-Android alternative. They already have such a thing to some extent with Google Talk — it’s just lacking things like photo messaging, read/delivery receipts, and the most important part: the seamless, almost entirely automatic integration. Don’t expect it to stay that way.

At a certain point, probably 2-3 years down the road, these proprietary services will be in no way unique. Any surviving platforms will likely have their own SMS alternative, and the concept will reach a point of entropy where they’re no longer directly beneficial to device sales. In fact, that they are not cross-compatible will be seen as a detriment to the concept as a whole — and at that point, the major players will begin working together on a cross-platform (but still carrier independent and agnostic) standard.

Users will grow accustomed to these service’s fancier tricks — the aforementioned read/delivery receipts, the typing status indicators, and the whole, you know, being free part. Users will see texting people via the old SMS system as antiquated; being SMS-only will be like being in a different area code in the mid 90′s. You’ll still get texts — your friends just won’t be happy about it.

SMS won’t go away completely, just as e-mail hasn’t entirely killed snail mail — it’ll just be a sad shell of its former self. It’ll hold strong for a few years longer in certain countries outside of the US, until a standard is set and the new protocol is embraced in feature phones. Companies will still harass you via SMS. You’ll still be able to vote for your favorite American Idol via SMS. But SMS, as we’ve known and loathed for far too long, as a ubiquitous and integrated part of our world’s communication, as an unjustifiable cash cow for the carriers, is dying. Good riddance.






Crunchbase





APPLE






Company:
Apple


Website:
apple.com


Launch Date:
January 4, 1976


IPO:

October 13, 1980, NASDAQ:AAPL



Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007.

Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod (offered with...






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Sprint and Verizon Wireless will both offer iPhone 4S handsets that will be GSM-unlocked, a new report states. Macworld on Tuesday confirmed that iPhone 4S units sold by Sprint will be GSM-unlocked out of the box, while handsets sold by Verizon Wireless will come locked, but a user can call Verizon asking for an “international unlock” and the carrier will oblige provided the user’s account has been in good standing for 60 days. Customers who plan to roam internationally or use an unlocked iPhone 4S in the U.S. should note that the handset requires a micro-SIM rather than a standard SIM card.

UPDATE: A Sprint spokesperson told Ars Technica that it will not, in fact, be selling GSM-unlocked iPhones.

Read

This is the easiest product review I’ve ever written. The iPhone 4S is exactly what Apple says it is: just like the iPhone 4, but noticeably faster, with a significantly improved camera, and an impressive new voice-driven feature called Siri.

Siri

Siri feels like old-school Apple. Newton-esque, at least in spirit. Sculley-era Apple was obsessed with this sort of thing — natural language processing, the computer as “digital assistant”. New models of human-computer interaction. AI that works naturally. Even the startups from former Apple employees of that era worked on this sort of thing — remember General Magic?

It’s also sort of the antithesis of everything prior in iOS. iOS is explicit and visual. Everything you can do in iOS is something you can see and touch on screen. The limits are visible and obvious. Siri, on the other hand, feels limitless. It’s fuzzy, and fuzzy on purpose. There’s no way to tell what will work and what won’t. You must explore. I found it extremely fun to explore Siri — primarily because so many of the things I tried actually worked. It’s a completely different interface for interacting with your iPhone. You’re not driving or commanding the existing iPhone interface with commands. There is no syntax to memorize. You’re just, well, talking to your iPhone.

I tried the same things Scott Forstall demoed on stage. They all worked, as promised. On a whim, I asked Siri, with no other context, “When is my next haircut?” Siri answered with my appointment scheduled for later this month. I asked, “When was my last haircut?”, and it found that appointment from a month ago. I told Siri, “Play something by the Rolling Stones” and it played a random Stones song (“Gimme Shelter”, from Let It Bleed). I interrupted and said, “Play ‘Some Girls” by the Rolling Stones”, and Siri played just that song.

I was out running errands today, walking through the city. I remembered, a mile away from home, that a screw had fallen out of my wife’s favorite eyeglasses over the weekend, and that she was waiting for me to fix them. Walking down a city street, I said, “Remind me to fix Amy’s glasses when I get home.”1 Half an hour later, within a few doors of our house, the reminder went off.

Me: “Set an alarm for 9 AM.”

Siri: “It’s set for 9 AM.”

Me: “Change that to 10 AM.”

Siri: “I changed your alarm to 10 AM tomorrow.”

Me: “Cancel that alarm.”

Siri: “I deleted your 10 AM alarm.”

Me: “Thank you, Siri.”

Siri: “Your wish is my command.”

In a sense, Siri is like a second interface to iOS. The first interface is the app interface. Launch, tap, drag, slide. The Siri interface is a different world. As stated above, this new interface is in many ways the opposite of the regular one — open-ended and implicit instead of narrowly defined and explicit. I don’t mean to imply that Siri doesn’t fit in or feel right at home — it does. But Siri is indicative of an AI-focused ambition that Apple hasn’t shown since before Steve Jobs returned to the company. Prior to Siri, iOS struck me as being designed to make it easy for us to do things. Siri is designed to do things for us.

But there are parallels between Siri and the regular iPhone interface, too. The original iPhone launched in 2007 with a limited feature set and no third-party apps. 2011’s Siri is largely based on the same feature set: messages, email, phone calls, calendars, alarms, web search. But with the original iPhone, it was always obvious how Apple could allow third-party developers into the party: by allowing third-party apps. Apps are a nice clean, obvious concept. The iOS interface is fundamentally only two levels deep: the first level is the home screen, listing all available apps. The second level is when you tap an app to use it. Hit the home button to go back to the home screen. That’s it. File system sandboxing and background processing restrictions make it easy to keep apps from interfering with each other or with the system as a whole.

People are going to start clamoring for third-party Siri integration as soon as they see Siri in action. But I’m not sure what form that integration could take. Best I can think is that apps could hook up to (as yet utterly hypothetical) Siri APIs much in the same way that Mac apps can supply system-wide Services menu items. But how would they keep from stomping on one another? If Siri supported third-party apps and you said, “Schedule lunch tomorrow at noon,” what would Siri do if you have multiple Siri-enabled calendar apps installed? This is similar to the dilemma Mac OS X faces when you open a document with a file extension that multiple installed apps register support for.

Perhaps Siri is too centralized to allow for third-party integration? Where by third-party integration, I mean “any app in the App Store” integration. Siri does support two third-party services right now: Yelp and Wolfram Alpha. But it was Apple that added those two, and Apple that determines when to use them. They’re data services, not software.2 With the regular iOS interface, the central hub is very thin: a home screen of app icons. It wasn’t necessarily obvious from the get-go that Apple would allow third-party apps, but it was obvious how they could: just add those new icons to the home screen. It’s not so obvious how you could add new commands to Siri without potentially stomping on existing ones.

Here’s an example. Wolfram Alpha has terrific stock-price information and comparison features. I link to them frequently for stock info from Daring Fireball. So I tried asking Siri, “What was Apple’s stock price 10 years ago?” But once Siri groks that you’re asking about a stock price, it queries the built-in Stocks app for data, and the Stocks app doesn’t have historical data that goes back that far. “What did Apple’s stock price close at today?” works, but asking for historical data does not. But Wolfram Alpha has that data. And in fact, you can get it through Siri, by asking something like “Search Wolfram Alpha for Apple’s stock price ten years ago.” But there’s no way to tell Siri to prefer Wolfram Alpha for stock market information by default.

Even if Siri is never opened up to App Store apps, though, there’s clearly a sense when you use it that Apple is only just getting started with this.

The best sign I can think of regarding Siri’s practical utility: after a week of using this test iPhone 4S, yesterday, while using my regular iPhone 4, without thinking I held down the home button to create a new reminder for myself, and when the old Voice Control interface appeared, my mind went blank for a few seconds while I pondered what went wrong. I missed Siri already.

I wouldn’t say I can’t live without Siri. But I can say that I don’t want to.

Speech-to-Text

Alongside Siri, the digital assistant, is the straight-up speech-to-text dictation feature now available system-wide. This was my favorite feature of Android when I tested a Nexus S early this year. It’s now one of my favorite features of the iPhone 4S. I composed numerous tweets, text messages, and email replies this week using it. It’s not flawless but it is excellent. It works just as well while walking on a city street as it does while I’m sitting alone in my office. It even worked remarkably well in a crowded, busy bar.

Worth noting that you can say punctuation, like “comma”, “period”, and “question mark”. So if you say, “Try saying quote open the pod bay doors unquote”, Siri should properly interpret that as:

Try saying “open the pod bay doors”

Why Is Siri Limited to the iPhone 4S?

The cynical answer, of course, would be that Apple is withholding it from other iOS devices in order to spur additional upgrades to the iPhone 4S.

A non-cynical answer would be that Siri depends on certain hardware in the iPhone 4S that doesn’t exist on any other iOS device. But what, exactly? The iPad 2 has the same CPU (A5) and same amount of RAM (512 MB), but no Siri, no text dictation. No one at Apple has an answer for this other than to say that Siri was developed alongside and specifically for just one device: the iPhone 4S. And as good as Siri is, I get the impression that Apple is far from satisfied with where it stands today. The Newton was killed by that “egg freckles” stuff — it never recovered from the public perception that its handwriting recognition wasn’t good enough. If Siri is any less accurate on older iOS devices than it is on the 4S, Apple isn’t going to allow it.

Don’t forget that there’s a server/cloud-based backend that is required for Siri to function. I can’t help but suspect there’s some truth to this tweet from Mark Crump, speculating that Apple might be limiting Siri to the 4S simply to restrict the server load while the service is “beta”. There could be 100 million iOS 5 users by the end of this weekend; there will only be 1 or 2 million iPhone 4S users.

Camera

The most-hated sight in all of Mac OS X: the rainbow “wait” cursor, a.k.a. the spinning pizza of death. Waiting sucks.

iOS doesn’t have any cursors, let alone the spinning pizza, but it does have an equivalent: the closed iris splash screen of the Camera app. You want to snap a picture, but instead, you see the iris, and… you wait.

The most profound difference between the 4S and 4 cameras has nothing to do with image quality. It’s that you don’t have to wait nearly as long. That closed iris comes up for a moment and then it’s gone, and you’re ready to shoot. And after you shoot, the camera is ready to snap additional photos almost instantly. The difference is huge, and it’s especially nice in conjunction with iOS 5’s new lock screen shortcut to jump right into the Camera app.

I spoke to some friends familiar with the development of iOS 5 and[…]

I’ve been thinking more about how I review a design – both my own and someone else’s. So over the past couple days I’ve been writing down every question I’ve been asking when I look at a design-in-progress. Some of these I say out loud, some just go through my head, some are in person, others are posted to Basecamp or Campfire.

These are in no particular order, and I don’t ask all of them every time.


What does it say?
What does it mean?
Is what it says and what it means the same thing?
Do we want that?
Why do we need to say that here?
If you stopped reading here, what’s the message?
What’s the take away after 8 seconds?
How does this make you feel?
What’s down below?
How else can we say this?
What’s memorable about this?
What’s that for?
Who needs to know that?
Who needs to see that?
How does that change behavior?
What’s the payoff?
What does someone know now that they didn’t know before?
How does that work?
Why is that worth a click?
Is that worth scrolling?
What’s the simpler version of this?
Are we assuming too much?
Why that order?
Why would this make them choose that?
What does a more polished version of this look like?
Why would someone leave at this point?
What’s missing?
Why are we saying this twice?
Is it worth pulling attention away from that?
Does that make it clearer?
What’s the obvious next step?
How would someone know that?
Would it matter if someone missed that?
Does that make it easier or harder?
Would this be better as a sentence or a picture?
Where’s the verb?
Why is that there?
What matters here?
What would happen if we got rid of that?
Why isn’t that clear?
Why is this better?
How can we make this more obvious?
What happens when this expands?
If we got rid of this, does that still work?
Is it obvious what happens next?
What just happened?
Where’s the idea?
What problem is that solving?
How does this change someone’s mind?
What makes this a must have?

A Darwinian, evolutionary perspective helps us understand why young children put up such a fuss about bedtime. Every parent should realize that their child is not just testing their will. The child, for good reasons, is experiencing fear, maybe even terror.
Primary Topic: 


Child Development


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AnandTech has seemingly done the impossible and provided preliminary benchmarks for the iPhone 4S and the A5 SoC that is daintily ensconced within. If the numbers are accurate, the iPhone 4S will sport the same processor as the iPad 2 — the same dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU and SGX 543MP2 GPU — but clocked at 800MHz, rather than 1GHz. As a result, the iPhone 4S is about 20% slower than the iPad 2 — but it smokes the Galaxy S II, the Droid Bionic, and every other phone under the sun.
The most direct (and shocking) comparison is against last year’s iPhone 4, which (spec-wise) has started to show its age: the iPhone 4S really is twice as fast as its predecessor on CPU-intensive tasks like JavaScript execution, and Apple wasn’t lying when it said the iPhone 4S GPU was seven times as fast; the SGX 543MP2 from PowerVR is a monster, and it makes you wonder why other SoC makers don’t use it. The A5 at 800MHz also seems to be twice as fast as the Samsung Galaxy S II’s 1.2GHz Exynos 4210 (with Mali-400 GPU), and between two and four times as fast as the Droid Bionic with the 1GHz OMAP 4430 SoC and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 with a 1GHz Tegra 2 SoC. We don’t have a complete set of benchmarks, though — and the imminent release of Ice Cream Sandwich and the Nexus Prime should certainly be taken into account.

With the iPhone 4S out of the way, Anand’s tables reveal an interesting and unreported tidbit: iOS 5 (due out tomorrow) seems to significantly increase performance over iOS 4.3. The jump is so sizable that the iPhone 3Gs is almost as fast as the iPhone 4. This looks like it is mainly down to a new version of Safari in iOS 5, which no doubt improves JavaScript performance and rendering speed, but iOS 5 performance is generally improved across the board. With iOS 5, you could even say that iPhone 4 to 4S is a bigger leap than the 3GS to 4 — redesign excluded, of course.

So there you have it: tomorrow, when iOS 5 and iPhone 4S are released, Apple will regain the performance crown, retain the design mantle, and even provide a healthy dollop of love for the tens of millions using the iPhone 3GS. It also makes you wonder just how powerful the iPhone 5 will be, too, if it is powered by Apple’s quad-core A6 processor, which is due to make its debut next year with the iPad 3.
Read more at AnandTech (benchmarks are from GLBenchmark Database, Geekbench Database, and Macrumors)