And now for something completely different.
Is it too late to bring back the rich iOS icons? :-(
(Source: iheartapple2)
Searched for the documentary “Lost Kingdoms of South America” on Netflix. First hit? House of Cards… Come on Netflix, if your show is good, you don’t have to cheat on search results to get us to watch it. Sleazy move, obviously… and dumb: I’ve already seen every episode and you know it.
As part of the PII project, some 700,000 people were discovered languishing in prison without charges [in India].
from Quartz. Ouch!…
I tend to think of computers as a bit of a personal luxury item, but I guess not…
Apparently, having an online second life at places other than Second Life is almost as easy. All you need is a couple hours and $68…
Time Machine feature could be very useful while planning trips in advance. Unfortunately, it expects nothing but “overcast” for Pacific Northwest next winter. I guess it takes the average of all the rainy days and cloudy ones from the historical record, and it comes up with “overcast”. :)
We’re extremely excited to announce the launch of Forecast, a new global weather service.
I have started following Quartz for political and business news. Its articles have broader international coverage than the typical news websites in the US, they utilize more original commentary than the usual partisan talking points and tend to bring in numerical analysis very effectively to support their arguments. The quality is pretty good for most articles, but a few miss the boat completely. One such article recently was about the demand for gold in India. The author through a series of articles have been arguing that the main driver of demand in India is the large number of poor Indians without access to savings accounts. She even provides this plot as supporting evidence. Yet, the plot actually argues against her hypothesis.
According to the plot, the volume of gold imports, in tonnes, have gone up more than five times since 2000, while the gold price has more than doubled. The demand has accelerated further as the gold price has gone up rapidly in recent years. Without any evidence that the savings of the unbanked in India has increased by more than ten times in just over a decade, this plot clearly points to speculation, the bet on gold prices increasing even further, rather than lack of alternatives for the poor to park their savings in.
There may indeed be merit to increasing the reach of banking sector in India, but advocating a position by misreporting evidence only hurts the credibility of a publication. You may have heard the story about Steve Jobs telling Nike’s then CEO Phil Knight that he’s got many good products in Nike stores, as well as some crappy items and advising him to get rid of the crappy ones. Well, I think the advice is quite applicable here, too.
My new plastic slippers come with a warning sign and safety tips for riding escalators & moving walkways, none of it specific to people wearing slippers. Which personal injury lawyer do I have to thank for this?
Apparently, the smugglers are trying to avoid the 9.6% custom duty on garlic. It is interesting that they deem the risks of smuggling worth the fairly small percentage of payment. Nevertheless, here is the funny tidbit:
Murugasan Natarajan, and his assistant Lakshmi Suresh, were convicted of dodging 2.5m euros (£2m) in import duty. They had told officials the garlic was fresh ginger, which is untaxed.
I guess none of the customs officers cooked at home. :)
