CAR ‘CRASHES’, NOT ‘ACCIDENTS’

DaringFireball:

I’ve been meaning to link to this for a while: there’s a growing campaign to replace the phrase “car accident” with “car crash”:

Planes don’t have accidents. They crash. Cranes don’t have accidents. They collapse. And as a society, we expect answers and solutions.

Traffic crashes are fixable problems, caused by dangerous streets and unsafe drivers. They are not accidents. Let’s stop using the word “accident” today.

I’m a firm believer that language matters, and I think it’s true that calling them accidents helps paint car crashes as things that can’t be avoided. Crashes sounds like a problem that needs to be solved.

For The Nerds - AnandTech: iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus Preliminary Benchmarks

DF:

anandtechDOTcom : iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus: Preliminary Results

Here’s how utterly dominant Apple’s position is in mobile semiconductor design: not only are the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus the two top scorers in web browser benchmarking, but in third place sits the year-old iPhone 5S.

Also worth noting: the iPhone 6 is seemingly on par with the 6 Plus performance-wise.

Stupidity As a Feature?

Two distincts response to Vox’s “ How Politics Makes Us Stupid ” by Ezra Klein

From DaringFireball's frontman:


This is one reason why I went to Build last week — I don’t want to fall into this trap. I want to find the best in design and technology, no matter the platform.

He highlighted these paragraphs:

“
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Kahan calls this theory Identity-Protective Cognition: “As a way of avoiding dissonance and estrangement from valued groups, individuals subconsciously resist factual information that threatens their defining values.” Elsewhere, he puts it even more pithily: “What we believe about the facts,” he writes, “tells us who we are.” And the most important psychological imperative most of us have in a given day is protecting our idea of who we are, and our relationships with the people we trust and love.

Kahan’s research tells us we can’t trust our own reason. How do we reason our way out of that?

…

"

Paul Krugman observes socioPolitical instances in Asymmetric Stupidity:

“
… What Ezra does is cite research showing that people understand the world in ways that suit their tribal identities: in controlled experiments both conservatives and liberals systematically misread facts in a way that confirms their biases. And more information doesn’t help: people screen out or discount facts that don’t fit their worldview. Politics, as he says, makes us stupid.

But here’s the thing: the lived experience is that this effect is not, in fact, symmetric between liberals and conservatives. Yes, liberals are sometimes subject to bouts of wishful thinking. But can anyone point to a liberal equivalent of conservative denial of climate change, or …

"

How politics makes us stupid by Ezra Klein

Shrill From Major Gruber @ Daring Fireball & Some Amicable Punches From The BeardLord @ The Loop + More || iPhone 5C & 5S Review

DaringFireball’s “CAN’T INNOVATE, MY ASS”, INDEED

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So what has Apple delivered with the iPhone 5S?

With the A7 they’ve doubled CPU performance in exactly one year, at no apparent cost to battery life. They’ve potentially obviated the need for standalone motion trackers like Fitbits and Nike Fuelbands. And they’ve started a transition to platform-wide 64-bit computing years ahead of their competition.

With Touch ID they’ve eliminated the need to enter a passcode to unlock your phone and a (one hopes) complex password to download apps and media from the iTunes Store. Mere conveniences, yes, but very nice ones indeed. They’ve also potentially set the stage for numerous future conveniences. Imagine Touch ID integrated with the upcoming iCloud Keychains.

With the camera they’ve created a simple, intuitive interface for taking bursts of fast action or won’t-stay-still kids and pets. It’s a wonderful hardware feat to put a 10 fps still camera in a remarkably thin mobile phone (a phone with no inelegant bulge to accommodate more distance between lens and sensor, at that). But the real innovation — there’s that word — is software, right there on the device itself, that makes it easy to select only the shots from those bursts that you really want to keep, and to throw away the rest.

This is what innovation, real innovation, looks like. It’s like the Thomas Edison quote, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Innovation is missed by most people because it is so often incremental.

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From The BeardLord @ loopInsightDOTcom:

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There are a couple of reasons a company makes changes to its products. One is to improve it, making it better for its users; the other is to give people the perception of change in hopes of selling something shiny and new, when it really isn’t.

I’m all for new features, but if they don’t actually help me get things done more efficiently, then you have to ask, “what’s the point?” I ask myself that question quite a bit when I’m looking at any new product, including the new iPhones.

I must say, I’m quite happy with the answers I’ve come up with.

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appleInsiderDOTcom’s ( Review RoundUp From Various Tech Sites ) iPhone 5s with iOS 7 best smartphone available!

- Shocking!

Stupid Things People Write about Apple

How Idiotic People Can Be When It Comes To Innovation by iHKDesign in response to CNN‘s Steve Kovach piece - How Samsung is out-innovating Apple:

… It is one of the most idiotic things I have ever read on the Internet, and I have read every single article by Dan Lyons! I don’t even know where to start.
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via DF:

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The utter simplicity of the iOS home screen is Apple’s innovation. It’s the simplest, most obvious “system” ever designed. It is a false and foolish but widespread misconception that “innovation” goes only in the direction of additional complexity.