Linked List: April 30, 2013

Tuesday, 30 April 2013

The McDonald’s Theory of Bad Ideas 

Jon Bell:

I use a trick with co-workers when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s.

Does Anyone Know Why Google Bought Motorola? 

Nope.

What Happens When Game Pirates Play a Game Development Simulator and Then Go Bankrupt Because of Piracy? 

Hilarious and sad at the same time. (Via Jeff Atwood.)

Steven Soderbergh: The State of Cinema 

Whole thing is great:

Speaking of meetings, the meetings have gotten pretty weird. There are fewer and fewer executives who are in the business because they love movies. There are fewer and fewer executives that know movies. So it can become a very strange situation. I mean, I know how to drive a car, but I wouldn’t presume to sit in a meeting with an engineer and tell him how to build one, and that’s kind of what you feel like when you’re in these meetings. You’ve got people who don’t know movies and don’t watch movies for pleasure deciding what movie you’re going to be allowed to make. That’s one reason studio movies aren’t better than they are, and that’s one reason that cinema, as I’m defining it, is shrinking.

Still on Offense, Never Defense 

Stephen Kenwright:

When I was asked about inviting people to Path as I installed the app I said no, and without entering much in the way of personal information Path decided to text my entire phone book for me the day after I uninstalled it from my Android.

From The Verge:

Kenwright fell victim to user error, representatives from Path said, and the messages are a feature, not a bug.

Headline of the Day: ‘Samsung’s Mediocre S4 Reviews Are Bad News for Apple’ 

Not making this up. That’s the actual headline.

BlackBerry CEO Questions Future of Tablets 

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins, in an interview with Bloomberg:

“In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” Heins said in an interview yesterday at the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles. “Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

Serious question: Five years is a long time in tech, but does anyone else in the world think the above is true?

Mike Beasley Watched ‘iSteve’ So You Wouldn’t Have To 

Mike Beasley:

Funny or Die (and everyone involved) should be ashamed of this garbage. There are two ways you can go with a film like this. You can either stick to the facts, or you can make something funny and exaggerated. This is just exaggerated. There is nothing funny here. This movie is not worth the nearly eighty minutes that you will hopefully decide not to spend watching it.