The Atlantic:
Recently I watched the four-episode original BBC House of Cards series from 1990. It’s on Netflix too, and, seriously, if you are interested in either politics or satire, this is not to be missed.
As a Canadian, I usually love the British originals of American shows better but the comparisons between both of these very good adaptations of the book is interesting.
Phys.org:
Ten questions about physical and biological science were on the quiz, and the average score—6.5 correct—was barely a passing grade.Just 74 percent of respondents knew that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
One in three respondents said science should get more funding from the government.
Apparently, so should science education.
Bored Panda
There are many biological theories behind why women live longer than men, but we’re sure that behavior like that in these pictures isn’t helping.
There’s an amazing amount of The Stupid going on here.
These games have hidden unused pieces of text, never intended to be seen during gameplay, because developers have voices too. These include things like programmer shout-outs, messages aimed at hackers trawling through the game data, and the furious ranting of overworked, underpaid coders doing crunch-time.
This is a pretty good list. 423 games. How many of these do you remember?
Ben Thompson nailed this one.
It’s Valentine’s Day so, why not? Not safe for work because of language but completely safe for facts. The “diamond ring is a scam” story is a fascinating one.
The analyst’s comments about docking stations etc. are asinine and Rene Ritchie agrees. The future of computing is going to be about us, and not as much about the device we carry. The device to make this all work could be as small as a pin, but more powerful than anything on the market today.
Evil.
$2.2 billion solar project appears to be killing birds that fly near it.
You have to love smart people.
iMore has a lot of great how-tos on its site. I didn’t expect this one, but Allyson Kazmucha wrote up a piece if you want some help.
This is such a great story on what can happen if your phone number shows up on the news just after Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone.
There are some amazing photos here.
There is no reason Apple should move an inch. Samsung are thieves.
In case you were interested in using it.
A symbolic moment, this: in Q4 2013 the number of computers* sold by Apple was larger than the number of Windows PC sold globally. If you add Windows Phone to the mix they’re more or less exactly equal.
Microsoft spent so much time laughing at Apple. Not any more.
The Loop Magazine Issue 21:
In this issue Seamus Bellamy interviews The Pogues Spider Stacy; Philip Michaels looks at the advantages of watching movies and sports at home; Kirk McElhearn wonders about an iPod pro; Darren Murph looks at how the skies have changed since in the introduction of Wi-Fi; and Chris Domico talks about console gaming and the iPhone.
A free preview is available for every article in the app.
More people should listen to Jason Fried. It’s okay to recommend people talk to someone else when they ask for advice.
MSN Autos:
There are really only a few important features in a car: brakes, drivetrain, seats, steering, suspension and wheels.Still, there’s no better way to personalize your vehicle than to order up a few options, so let’s take a look at some of the most outrageous factory-installed options ever devised.
After I posted about the “11 features you no longer see in cars“, I got a tweet from @Jenns79 about this story. Some of these factory options, especially the idea of a record player in the car, are insane.
Microsoft Corp’s Windows 8 system has racked up more than 200 million license sales since its launch 15 months ago, according to Tami Reller, its head of marketing, lagging Windows 7 which sold 240 million within its first year.
I’m not surprised.
BuzzFeed:
Canada has a heart of gold. And also just a lot of gold.
The best story has to be #2.
Unfortunate.
Mental Floss:
If you fondly remember being surrounded by two or three tons of solid Detroit steel with a whip antenna on the front from which you could tie a raccoon tail or adorn with an orange Union 76 ball, and enough leg room that you didn’t suffer from phlebitis on long road trips, then you might also miss a few of these.
I’m not old enough to remember tail fins or suicide doors but I certainly remember vent windows and the floor mounted dimmer switch!
Don’t listen to Google’s bullshit about being open. Creepy as fuck, yes; Open, not so much.
Om Malik:
If it is allowed to gobble up its number two rival, Time Warner Cable, Philadelphia-based Comcast will become the largest broadband provider in the United States, and perhaps the largest outside China. The two companies together will control about half of what is called triple-play services — video, voice and internet — in the U.S. The two companies together would have about 33 million broadband connections that brought in about $18 billion in broadband revenue during 2013.
The numbers are almost too much to comprehend.
IDC collectively referred to iOS and Android as accounting for 93.8 percent of all smartphone shipments in 2013, describing the two platforms as pursuing opposite strategies without referencing the fact that Apple earns the majority of the world’s handset profits. “Android relied on its long list of OEM partners, a broad and deep collection of devices, and price points that appealed to nearly every market segment,” wrote IDC’s Research Manager Ramon Llamas, without providing any context on how that strategy resulted in lost profits for the majority of manufacturers who use Android, including Google’s own Motorola subsidiary. “Apple’s iOS, on the other hand,” Llamas continued, “relied on nearly the opposite approach: a limited selection of Apple-only devices, whose prices trended higher than most. Despite these differences, both platforms found a warm reception to their respective user experiences and selection of mobile applications.”
This report and comments from IDC just stink. The iPhone took over 87% of the handset profits worldwide.
Will Connors for the WSJ:
Samsung recently won an order for roughly 7,000 smartphones from the U.S. Army and is close to an order for several thousand devices from the U.S. National Security Agency, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Surely they’re aware of all the malware on Android, right?
Bruce Lee often told students that if they already thought they “knew” everything, they should leave his class.
“If your cup is full, you cannot fill it. So first, empty your cup.”
Things like this can apply in so many circumstances. People that “know” everything are a pain.
I really like Ben Bajarin’s analysis.
TechCrunch:
Former Daily Show correspondent John Oliver returned to host this year’s Crunchies, the tech industry awards show co-hosted by Gigaom, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch. And he didn’t pull any punches.
Absolutely not safe for work but funny nonetheless.