How safe do YOU feel flying in these planes, given that they can barely keep the electric on?

Cringely nails it.

Doesn’t a $7.75 Million fine seem like a drop in the bucket? I bet it is less than the money they made.

particularly since ….

Last year, Sprint and Verizon paid out a combined $158 million to settle similar billing practices.

Read All About It

Revolver - 50

The Web - 25 

and now Netscape … went public 21 years ago today.

I wonder what those tech brains are up to these days?

The news today is just formal confirmation that the TV guys really don’t want to give away their best stuff for free.

Or, more precisely, they’d prefer that you pay twice when you watch their stuff: Once with your credit card, via some kind of pay TV subscription, and again with your attention, when you watch the ads they sell.

“And last week’s news that Time Warner was buying a chunk of Hulu was another indicator that Hulu’s old model was toast, since Time Warner hated Hulu’s old model. So today’s news is just formal confirmation that the TV guys really don’t want to give away their best stuff for free. Or, more precisely, they’d prefer that you pay twice when you watch their stuff: Once with your credit card, via some kind of pay TV subscription, and again with your attention, when you watch the ads they sell.”

Read All About It.

Privacy by design: Only Apple could make 'differential privacy' sound cool.

TechCrunch Talks … and

what Apple recognizes more broadly is that consumer trust (fueled by privacy) is the killer app.

#VRM

Love it … via Gizmodo

Hadn’t realized that there was such visceral dislike of Keurig - but there you go - the power of the Internet!

Dumbing down. You read about it a lot. Just the other day, someone told me that a recruiter had mentioned to them that they should 'dumb down' their resume. 

"You use words that are too long and nobody understands what you are talking about."

How sad - particularly since it seems that  there might be a reason.

Of course, if language, vocabulary and and use thereof was one measure of how dumb you might be take note that Wikipedia reports that ....

It has been estimated that the vocabulary of English includes roughly 1 million words (although most linguists would take that estimate with a chunk of salt, and some have said they wouldn't be surprised if it is off the mark by a quarter-million); that tally includes the myriad names of chemicals and other scientific entities. Many of these are so peripheral to common English use that they do not or are not likely to appear even in an unabridged dictionary.
Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, together with its 1993 Addenda Section, includes some 470,000 entries. The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, reports that it includes a similar number.

Imagine the problem that we have when 

A Native-level fluency of a language is estimated to be between 20,000–40,000 words, with basic conversational fluency possibly requiring as little as 3,000 words.

i.e. if you use somewhere in the order of 5 to 10% of a language to communicate your written ideas - you are considered fluent.

If you think it's all free - then you don't know value.

There's this one, and this one and this one and this one and that is just me randomly searching on the good that London Taxis do - and have always done - for all kinds of people. If you track this stuff you know it.

Distressing then to see this headline :

Uber driver will see his son compete in Rio thanks to passenger

from CNN.

I mean it is a great story - but seriously Taxi DRIVERS are now the charity case - that is what Uber is doing to society.

And this is the REAL first web site .... Tim's (the other one) one :-)

The Tory-graph

Engadget

Patently Apple

Interesting that Revolver is as fresh as ever 50 years later - and yet 25 years later, Tim's site is a novelty!

Some interesting background to Revolver - now clocking in at 50 years old.

And as a bonus, Klaus Voorman on his cover - all for fifty quid!

Gorgeous … and unusual to see Wilson do a Tree track solo ….

It's extraordinary to think that Mercedes can get away with charging $249 to update the maps in their sat nav systems.

It's even more extraordinary to think that there are people out there that will spend that money - to do that thing.

My phone has better maps. Your phone has better maps. And they are free.

Read My Review Here

I know right? I am just as confused.

I just read this .... the headlines reads ....

Simply not credible: The extraordinary verdict against the body that hopes to run the internet
Independent review tears into ICANN board and staff

Hmm - I know nought about ICANN really. Of them - sure. 

I do know that they are the dudes I have to prove my existence to every now and then for the domains I own. Except - I never can, because for me their email alerts do not work. And then I write to them with a ticket. And they tell men to do what I just did. And after a few back and forths - they say  Ok - your fine - and lift their restriction. 

So yes. Definitely problematic.

.. available for the rest of us in September.

Upon its original vinyl release Transience reached #3 in the UK vinyl charts and made history by being the first release to chart solely on vinyl sales this century. 

The Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader of the Senate, senators like Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio, governors like Chris Christie and the now-trapped Mike Pence, figures from the past like Rudy Giuliani — every one of these people knows what is wrong with Donald Trump, and every one of them will be telling us as of November 9 that they were never really with him, they always saw what was wrong, how did this ever happen? But for now, every one one of them is saying, Vote for Trump!

Read All About It at the Atlantic.

People update the Operating System (OS) in their smartphone more often than they update their own brain.

Gerhard Gschwandtner (at last week's Sales2.0 Conference)

via Kurt Shaver

...He HAS to be referring to iPhone users - because over on android ....

90 percent of Android devices are running an outdated OS

... on second thoughts - maybe that is about right ...

I don't fit this particular edge case in any of the scenarios described - BUT - in case you are wondering why some of your stuff ain't synching - this might give a clue

Poised - but not the same as is actually ...

Uber Now Poised to Grab More of Southeast Asia