Don’t Forgive Path, the Creepy Company that Misled Us Once Already

Don’t Forgive Path, the Creepy Company that Misled Us Once Already:

Morin has been receiving backslaps on Twitter today from other industry insiders. Never mind that he only really apologized “if you were uncomfortable” and said Path would “continue to be transparent,” when Path’s prior lack of transparency is precisely the issue here.

No, what seems to count in Silicon Valley is that Morin has mastered the one-two step of breaking the rules to get ahead, claiming to be sorry when caught, and then charging ahead, often right back into another ethically shady area of behavior. It’s a move right out of Mark Zuckerberg’s playbook, or Airbnb’s, or Zynga’s.

Two-faced behavior like this is turning the tech business into an ethical cesspool. Or as Winer put it more than a year ago, “the tech industry is a virus.” If you’re comfortable in your affliction, by all means believe Morin and leave Path installed on your phone. If you’ve finally had enough, trash the thing. If protecting your privacy isn’t worth deleting the latest mobile check-in whatever, then it’s not worth much.

[And a big yuck in the general direction of unethical people, especially those who mask their unethical behavior with a veneer of apologia.]

Translucent, pliable material lights up your home and adds privacy, too

Lovell Residence modern kitchen

Translucent, pliable material lights up your home and adds privacy, too:

In the 1970s a new building material gained traction in the marketplace. This material had all of the advantages of a skylight while being superior to skylights in energy efficiency and structure. It’s no wonder that many architects started specifying Kalwall where the only option had been a glass or plastic product.

Kalwall, which was actually developed in the ’50s, is a fiberglass-reinforced translucent sandwich panel. Though initially used for commercial and institutional buildings, Kalwall has become increasing popular for homes. This is especially true for an entire, luminous ceiling or where light is desired but privacy must be maintained.

[I’ve loved this stuff for years. Little known outside of architectural circles, builders are shy to use it. Shame really. I could so do this to my kitchen… Modern kitchen design by San Francisco architect Quezada Architecture]

Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining

Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone:

Since 2008, the rest of America has suffered a severe economic correction. Ordinary people everywhere long ago had to learn to cope with the equivalent of a lower bonus season. When the crash hit, regular people could not make up the difference through bailouts or zero-interest loans from the Fed or leveraged-up synthetic derivative schemes. They just had to deal with the fact that the economy sucked – and they adjusted.

This ought to have been true also on Wall Street, but in a curious development that is somehow not addressed in Sherman’s piece, the financial services industry somehow managed to maintain its extravagant lifestyle standards in the middle of a historic global economic crash that, incidentally, they themselves caused.

After suffering one truly bad year – 2008, in which the securities industry collectively lost over $42 billion – Wall Street immediately rebounded to post record revenues in 2009, despite the fact that the economy at large did nothing of the sort. The numbers were so huge on Wall Street compared to the rest of the world that Goldman slashed its 4th-quarter bonuses, just so that the final bonus/comp number ($16.2 billion, down from what would have been $21 billion) didn’t look so garish to the rest of broke America.

What Sherman now argues is that Dodd-Frank has so completely hindered Wall Street’s ability to magically invent profits through borrowing and gambling that, unlike those wonderful days in 2009, its fortunes are now reduced to rising and falling – heaven forbid – along with the rest of the economy. Things are so bad, his interview subjects argue, that one is now more likely to make big money going into an actual business that makes an actual product:

“If you’re a smart Ph.D. from MIT, you’d never go to Wall Street now,” says a hedge-fund executive. “You’d go to Silicon Valley. There’s at least a prospect for a huge gain. You’d have the potential to be the next Mark Zuckerberg.”

[Oh dear. You can’t make this stuff up…]

How America became a nation of freelancers

How America became a nation of freelancers:

According to the Labor Department, employers often misclassify independent contractors as employees, locking misclassified freelancers out of benefits like tax write-offs for health insurance that they’re already paying for, all by themselves. For freelancers, it’s much, much harder to qualify for a loan, refinance their mortgage or, if they’re underwater on their homes, to find relief from loan modification programs.

I know a woman who was told, off the record, that the company that was considering hiring her would only do so on a contract basis – they didn’t want to take on the expense of hiring her because of her considerable medical bills. (She didn’t get the job.) Another associate thought he’d hit pay dirt with a high-paying, full-time salaried position at a big-name software company. But then, suddenly – right as he was ready to sign the paperwork – they rescinded their offer. Instead, they told him that they could only offer him a contract position on a project-by-project basis.

If this is how our economy is now organized, then we need safety nets for independent workers. And we need to start by acknowledging, as a nation, that while it’s all very good to talk about job creation, for many of us, a regular 9-to-5 gig is no longer a reality. Work has changed; the American worker is changing. Old-school labor paradigms no longer fit.

[ Where’s the thinking about this, rather than trying to recreate old style manufacturing jobs? And while we’re on the topic, small is the new big. Individuals manufacturing custom stuff is alive and kicking, and should become much more commonplace. As it once was. Things were lost in the rush to the assembly line.]

Dr.Brendan | The iphone Doc

Dr.Brendan | The iphone Doc:

During the short visit at our apartment, I learned that Dr.Brendan since has moved his business out of his living-room and opened two stores. And not only that, he has a whole army employees and they now also fix Macs. I was thrilled to hear that as my 2.5 year old iMac at work was giving me a hard time. Tony, a Dr.Brendan employee, came to promptly pick it up the next day and conveniently brought it back a few days later, fixed. Pick-up and drop-off? Yes, please!

Dr.Brendan and his team not only fix iPhones but now also repair pretty much any Apple device, do data recovery, help you set up your network and much more.

I can’t praise Brendan and his team enough. Go check out his site. And if you live either in the East Village or Park Slope, drop by their shop. And no worries, if you don’t live in NYC, you can ship your patient to Dr.Brendan.

[Cool story.]

Source: swissmiss

Honeywell sues Nest for patent infringement

Honeywell sues Nest for patent infringement:

Honeywell makes crappy, ugly thermostats. They’re the market leader, but they’ve been sitting on their asses, not doing much. So thermostat innovation and design has been pretty stagnant for years.

Nest’s is by far the most innovative thermostat we’ve seen for a long time, but it looks like they’re going to have a lot of problems with these Honeywell patents, which will probably impair (or, at worst, prevent) them from pushing this stagnant industry forward.

Remind me again how the patent system promotes innovation.

∞ Permalink

[Yeah, what he said. And shame on Honeywell…]

Source: Marco.org

Next Phase of Commercials

Next Phase of Commercials:

I predict that in a few years from now we’ll start to see 4.5-minute length commercial shorts that come after the extended-play version. Or maybe even “directors’ cut” versions. These outright unabashed commercials will run as long as a pop hit tune, and in format resemble a music video. We’ll see YouTube-ish channels that will charge you to watch them. I make this forecast based on the fact that this prime attention-niche is just one adjacent-possible step away.

[I rate this a very likely.]

Source: The Technium

Decoration is best, except when it isn’t

Decoration is best, except when it isn’t:

Decoration and module extension are both viable ways to compose objects in Ruby. Which to use is not a simple black-or-white choice; it depends on the purpose of the composition.

For applications where you want to adorn an object with some extra functionality, or modify how it presents itself, a decorator is probably the best bet. Decorators are great for creating Presenters, where we just want to change an object’s “face” in a specific context.

On the other hand, when building up a composite object at runtime object out of individual “aspects” or “facets”, module extension may make more sense. Judicious use of module extension can lead to a kind of “emergent behavior” which is hard to replicate with decoration or delegation.