Month: July 2015

Index funds may be conspiring against the very same investors who fund them | Quartz – interesting analysis, surely this would also be the issue with ‘shareholder value’ in general?

Oracle’s cloud sales – Business Insider – short term numbers for long term losses

Shanghai Street View: Wealth Explosion – high street wealth management products, explains a lot

Exclusive: Amazon planning drive-up grocery stores with first coming to Sunnyvale — sources – Silicon Valley Business Journal – it feels like a retrogressive move to me. I think of drive-thrus as being representative of 20th century America. The drive-in cinema, the drive-thru/drive-in fast food restaurant a la McDonalds or American Graffiti

What Really Killed Homejoy? It Couldn’t Hold On To Its Customers | Forbes – which sounds very dot com in its nature

Apple Watch to Be Sold at Best Buy – Digits – WSJ – interesting how this fits with their luxury positioning

Nike, Apple agree to $2.4M settlement in suit over false FuelBand claims, Apple to pay nothing – I guess tis scuppers Nike’s wearable ambitions and possibly Fuel being part of a wearable eco-system

If what you say is useful, people will pass it on | SiliconAngle – if they see it at the right time…

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Update on the Autocomplete API | Google Webmaster Central Blog – basically it was a drain on resources that didn’t provide Google with useful data

Firefox is getting audio indicators to show noisy tabs, and will let you mute them | VentureBeat | Dev | by Emil Protalinski – brilliant for them auto playing videos in my RSS feeds

Here’s What’s Next for the Future of Amphibious Warfare | VICE News – reminds me of the aircraft carrier sprawl in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash

Flickr Bringing Back Pro: Pay to Get Badge, Analytics, and No Ads – interesting moves and some UI tweaks

Q. and A.: Ma Xue on Why China Has Embraced Korean TV – The New York Times – interesting hypothesis that the Chinese government stepped in to prevent overinflation of foreign entertainment licence prices

The Financial Times deal is part of a more global stance for Nikkei—and for Japan | Quartz – nice article that puts the Nikkei deal into a broader perspective

Things that made my day this week:

Some Australian developers have made an immersive game around hacking that will be distributed on Steam when released.

Hacknet tells the tale of Bit, a hacker responsible for creating the most invasive security system on the planet. When he is murdered, his failsafe kicks in, sending instructions to a lone user who can help unravel the mystery and ensure that Hacknet-OS doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Using a wide array of terminal commands and specific hacking protocols, Hacknet teaches the player how to complete a series of core missions but does not hold their hand. The world is open to explore and features multiple branching pathways and secrets to discover. Players will need to be vigilant when covering their tracks, and careless decisions may come back to haunt them.

More on Hacknet OS.

Toyota’s advert to stop smartphone distraction in Sweden was really clever

Ipsum lorem is so last year, instead try Samuel L. Ipsum

The Chicago Business did a fantastic interactive story of the rise and fall of Motorola, you can find it here.

Yolk – interesting solar charger design, could be interesting to reinvent the organiser