many robots

Gizmodo resident writer Jesus Diaz makes the single worst blog post I've seen about technology probably ever:
Apple Gestapo: How Apple Hunts Down Leaks [Apple]
Here's some highlights:

No, Tom never lived in Nazi Germany, nor in East Germany with the Stasi, nor in the Soviet Union with the NKVD, nor in Communist China and their secret police. He lives in the United States. For sure, he has never been scared of losing his life nor the ones he loves, like thousands of millions in those countries. But he knows how it feels to be watched, to always be considered guilty of crimes against another kind of state. He knew how it felt to have no privacy whatsoever when he was working right here, in a little Californian town called Cupertino, in a legendary place located in One Infinite Loop.

As Tom was describing all this, my mind was getting back to all I've read about Steve Jobs and Apple, back when he was El Capitán of the brave group of free pirates who created the Macintosh. The Mac was a secret project too, but there was no secret police making sure there were no leaks. After a hard day of work, all the Mac team sometimes played on the beaches of California, careless and happy, confident that this new revolutionary computer would change the world, one desktop at a time. All of them shared information, there were no seeeecrets, and that's why they came up with an 'insanely great' computer, as Steve Jobs himself used to refer to it.

And while I understand that secrecy is paramount to success in today's extremely competitive market—hello, dear marketdrones—now I look at this story on the Worldwide Loyalty Team, and it makes me realize how much Apple has changed. From a hippie happy company, to a company that does KGB-style lockdowns and Gestapo interrogations that end in suicides.

This is like everything wrong with "new media" boiled down into a single sensationalist golden turd of click-whoring. He actually accuses them of murder.

Labels: media, stupid

Labels: media, stupid

From Paul Krugman's blog:
Here’s what John McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."

What could possibly go wrong, right? Healthcare companies are too big to fail and it's all that pesky regulation that's been holding them back!

Labels: politics, stupid

I wrote this for the forums, but I figured I'd post it here too since it's probably the single longest thing I've written in months...

Since it's far more likely you'll work for one or more startups before starting your own I'll explain in plain terms what it means when you agree to a lower salary and stupid hours in exchange for theoretical future money.

Options have a vesting schedule typically of 2-5 years. The most common one is a 4-year schedule where you get 25% vested after 12 months and then vest monthly from then on. There's also frequently clauses that accelerate your vesting in the event of a buyout or other "liquidity event". This means that you'll probably quit or be let go before being fully vested so adjust accordingly.

The number of shares is irrelevant until you know the total number of outstanding shares. If a recruiter tells you they'll "have to look into it" that typically means that there's a lot.

Taxes are a bitch, especially when you get into AMT territory.

Keep in mind that your stock is worth nothing until you can actually sell it. There's rare exceptions like Facebook founders but you're not going to work at the next Facebook.

So let's say the next hot microvlogging site wants to give you a job. They offer you 5000 shares! sounds rad, right? Work hard, get in nerf wars at the office, make "fuck you money!"

So let's do some math:

You get 5000 shares for $0.10 each but there's 10 million outstanding. That means you "own" 0.05% of the company. But hey, maybe Google will buy you guys for a billion dollars! That means you'll still get half a million dollars aka "fudge you money".

Google wasn't interested. But Microsoft is very bound and determined to throw their money in a hole so they start sniffing around. Everyone goes into crunch time to spit-shine everything and sign some deals. The douchey sales guy has nothing but awesome graphs to show at the all-hands, all the arrows are going up. This is "the push". Something's going to go down this year though but you've got an acceleration clause so if you make it to 12 months you get 50%. That's $250k, aka "Most of a studio condo in Palo Alto money".

Microsoft has decided that scent-based interfaces are the next big thing and decide to pass. The CEO is increasingly manic and has a habit of cruising around the office at 9pm to see who's a "team player". Fortunately Yahoo's new board is looking to inject some excitement into the brand. That new release coming soon will be what pushes them over the edge. You're sleeping under to office pool table. The sales aren't quite meeting projections but they are OK, you just need a little more runway to make it happen. The company gets $5 million in series B which means a 40% dilution. That's still $150k, aka "Porsche 911 [but maybe not a GT3] money".

Success! Yahoo took the bait but they negotiated down to $500 million. The VCs, already $20 million deep decide to go for it. The CEO, VP of sales and the CEO's assistant have a coke orgy with each other in the office bathroom. Suspiciously cheap bottles of champagne are popped, people who you didn't know worked there are at some parties. You've still got $75k coming which is "A BMW and that trip around the world you always wanted to take money".

You get $75k in Yahoo stock. Party time! Oh wait, Carl Icahn posts a drunken rant on his blog and the stock drops 20% before your exercise date. We're down to $60k or "A Lexus and a timeshare in Cabo money".

OK, time to sell! Whoops! Short-term capital gains tax is a bitch. After taxes and accountants you're left with almost $40k or "fully loaded Honda Accord and a Pioneer Kuro money".

And all you had to give up was a year of your social life, the 25 pounds you gained from raiding the office snack cabinet and 4 months of weekends. And you've got some "tin handcuffs" of a retention bonus that keeps you working at Yahoo until you get laid off when MS finally picks up the pieces at a fire sale 2 years later.

Labels: jobs, stupid, tech

Critical business reporting from America's financial paper of record:

Along the way, legions of retail grads have spent countless hours neatly folding T-shirts and jeans and stacking them on tables and shelves. Now, their peculiar idea of perfection is straining marriages and leading to bizarre behavior ranging from buying clothes based on an item's foldability to straightening up sloppy displays while shopping.

Next week: People who used to work cash registers less likely to be mouthy jackesses when shopping

Labels: media, stupid

I have no words...

Political activists planning protest rallies at the upcoming Democratic Convention in Denver have their stomachs in knots over a rumor about a crowd control weapon - known as the “crap cannon” - that might be unleashed against them.

Is this what we've become? Is it? I'm not just trying to post "Fox News more like Faux News LOL!" here, these idiots are supposed to be the Fourth Estate. Our shield against tyranny.

My brain just broke.

update: Wisdom from Awful Forums poster mofolotopo:

actually it would be really fun to just go there with some huge speakers and play a really low note to see how many of them shit themselves because of the placebo effect

Labels: media, seriously the dumbest thing I've ever seen, stupid

Here's why I try to avoid contact with CNN, the following was featured in their "Screening Room" as their top 10 kung fu films.

1. Enter the Dragon - This is a decent start, it's not my favorite kung fu movie but it's a great flick and had a huge impact on the movie industry.
   
2. Ong-bak - First of all there's no kung fu in this movie. The fight direction is a blast and in a world of CGI it's refreshing to see someone take on the old "no wires, no stuntmen" Jackie Chan challenge but there's little in this that hasn't been done better elsewhere.
   
3. Wong Fei Hung (Once Upon a Time in China) - I guess the author of this article decided he needed a Tsui Hark movie and decided to just pick the one he'd heard of the most.
   
4. Kill Bill 1 & 2 - I think there's about 9 minutes of total martial arts between both movies, nearly all of it supplied by Gordon Liu who doesn't have a single movie he starred in on this list.
   
5. Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) - This isn't even the best wire-fu movie of the last 5 years but I guess lots of people saw it so that makes it worthy of this list.
   
6. The Karate Kid - Again, no kung fu in this. Weak martial arts but decent acting and 80s camp value win the day for this one.
   
7. Ging chaat goo si (Police Story) - Jackie Chan has been in almost 100 movies and at least half of them are honest-to-god kung fu movies. Police Story is not. I love Police Story but to have that be the only Jackie Chan movie on this list is almost criminal.
   
8. Shogun Assassin - I'm beginning to wonder if this guy [who isn't credited by name] knows the difference between China, Japan and Thailand. This film is a blast but it's not a kung fu movie.
   
9. Siu lam juk kau (Shaolin Soccer) - They could have at least picked Kung Fu Hustle for this one since it's, ya know, mostly a kung fu movie.
   
10. The Matrix - None of the "new" fighting effects/direction in this movie hadn't been done by Yuen Woo Ping in another movie. Again, there's under 10 minutes of martial arts total in this.

Zero Shaw Bros. movies. No movies starring Gordon Liu. No movies starring Donnie Yen. No Sammo Hung at all. The only Jackie Chan movie is Police Story. Here's my 10-minute list of 10 movies better than almost everything on this list:

1. Shaolin Master Killer
2. Drunken Master II
3. Five Deadly Venoms
4. Fist of Legend
5. Iron Monkey
6. Pedicab Driver
7. 8 Diagram Pole Fighter
8. Wing Chun
9. Chinese Super Ninjas
10. Fearless

Note to CNN's editors: typing "kung fu movie" into Google doesn't count as writing.

Labels: martial arts, media, movies, stupid

The Tallahassee Democrat brings word of a grave threat to our patriotic ability to display camouflage yellow-ribboned testicles on our collective tow hitches:

The Florida Senate on Thursday passed an amendment to impose a $60 fine on Truck Nutz, one brand name for the novelty item on vehicle trailer hitches that resemble the dangling southern end of a northbound bull.

Is there anything quainter than the phrase "the dangling southern end of a northbound bull"? There's more gold here:

Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville, said he had a set on one of his vehicles, which he described as "all pimped out." They are no more than "an expression of truckliness," he said, although he'd acceded to his wife's request to take them off.

"An expression of truckliness" should be engraved in stone somewhere for future archaeologists to discover and puzzle over the meaning of. Maybe it's my latte-sipping, public television watching elitist upbringing or something but I really do find this fascinating.

Found on Wonkette

Labels: nutz, politics, stupid

You've probably heard of truck nuts by now, if not actually seen them in the wild. What I'd like to share with you today is a bold new innovation by truck nuts pioneers YourNutz.com. I'll let the picture and marketing material speak for themselves


I'll leave my personal thoughts on the truck nuts phenomenon to Achewood for now.

Labels: internet, nutz, stupid

My current dream is to start a class action lawsuit for Fox's misleading use of the word "News" in the name of their TV channel. They'd probably just go all "FNC" though like the Colonel did.*

Bonus "typo" from a little while back:




*KFC has returned to its roots of spelling out its name.

Labels: media, stupid

Like many "knowledge workers" in the world I am chained to the Microsoft Outlook at work for my email and calendaring purposes. My own personal thoughts on email as a collaboration tool aside [that's for another day and perhaps its own startup] there's somethings about it that drive me absolutely batty. Today's annoyance:

Notification of unread items

There's so many things wrong with this that it's not even funny. In Outlook the following things count as "Unread Mail":

• Deleted mail you haven't "read", including ones that you use the pop-up notifications to resolve


• auto-saved drafts of mail messages that are still being composed

This is only what appears as the number of unread messages in Outlook's folder list. As far as deleted items go, I can almost understand where they were coming from with this one. A user might have accidentally "missed" the item they were trying to delete or got a little too aggressive with the Delete key.*

The "Unread Mail" folder itself

Being used to Apple Mail and Thunderbird this one spooks me out a lot. The items that appear in the Unread Mail view are never updated until you manually refresh by viewing something else. Mail and Thunderbird both do this with things that you read and leave in your inbox but not with filed or deleted mail. So in Outlook if you read a message and delete it it stays in your unread folder. If you read a message and file it in another folder it stays in your unread messages folder. It's like they want you to navigate around the product or something.

In something that I can't tell if it's ironic or not if you have an empty mailbox selected and mail comes into it it will mark it as read because it autoselects it. This can be solved by turning off "mark as read after X time" function but I don't know how you could live without that [set to 0 seconds]. I certainly can't.


*Another annoyance is Microsoft's hatred of the backspace key being used to delete anything that's not text and instead having it actually navigate away from what you're looking at.

Labels: design, stupid, tech