Bruno Sokic @bsokic
Enterprise Product Manager at @goabstract. Previously at @ShowingTime, @blogads, @nextglass (now @untappd). Also schemed @raceryapp, @pllqt & @twiangulate.
Recent quotes:
Florida governor bans officials from using phrase 'climate change'
Believing that climate change isn't real is a bit like believing that you don't need a parachute to skydive; charming, but ultimately lethal. Let's just hope that Rick Scott is afraid of heights after reports have emerged that Florida's governor banned state officials from talking about the environment. According to the Miami Herald, the republican issued an unwritten ban on phrases like "climate change and "global warming" since he took office in 2011. Apparently his reasoning was that he didn't want employees to discuss anything that was "not a true fact," forgetting about those special truths that only empirical science can discover.Banksy's illustrated response to Charlie Hebdo attack isn't by Banksy. But it is striking - People - News - The Independent
Now Norway Has the World's Prettiest Passport Too
Nokia makes an iPad
Smart people listen to Radiohead and dumb people listen to Beyoncé, according to study | Consequence of Sound
Alan Eustace Jumps From Stratosphere, Breaking Felix Baumgartner’s World Record - NYTimes.com
All the planets in the Solar System fit between the Earth and the Moon
The World Is What It Is Today Because of These Six Innovations | Innovation | Smithsonian
Thomas Edison invented the phonograph to send audio letters, and Alexander Graham Bell intended for people to use the telephone to listen to live orchestra music. What does this say about innovation and unintended consequences?Apple to Unveil Wearable Device on September 9 Alongside iPhone 6
Apple has plans to unveil its upcoming wearable device in September, alongside the iPhone 6, reports Re/code. The site previously suggested Apple had planned to debut the device at an October event, but now says that Apple's plans have changed.More Evidence of NFC Support for Both iPhone 6 Models
Last week, Chinese repair firm GeekBar shared a claimed schematic for the iPhone 6 showing what was claimed to be the pinning diagram for the device's rumored near field communications (NFC) chip. The part addressed on the schematic, PN65V, was thought to be a version of NXP's PN65 NFC package currently used in several Android devices.Premium Channel 'Showtime Anytime' Comes to Apple TV - Mac Rumors
In addition to the return of the iTunes Festival channel for Apple TV today ahead of September's concert series in London, Apple has also added a new Showtime Anytime channel to its set-top box.Apple in Talks With Insurance Companies Over HealthKit Partnership
Under the Affordable Care Act, the new national health-care law, companies can spend as much as 30 percent of annual insurance premiums on rewards for healthy behavior. Technology companies are taking note. Apple Inc., which has new health-tracking software called HealthKit that will be released this year and is said to be developing its own wearable device, has talked with UnitedHealth, the biggest U.S. insurer, and Humana, about its health initiatives, executives at the insurance providers said.
We're one step closer to being able to legally unlock smartphones again, as the United States House of Representatives today passed legislation that legalizes cell phone unlocking, unanimously voting in favor of the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act.
The Act was approved by the Senate last week, which means the final step is presidential approval. Obama has long supported making cell phone unlocking legal again, and today pledged to sign the bill into law.
Today marked the first day of Apple's public beta testing program for OS X Yosemite, letting thousands of non-developers download the software for the first time. With so many new users, new issues and bugs in the beta are coming to light and being catalogued in our Yosemite forum.
Looking around at the newly minted billionaires behind the enjoyable but wholly unnecessary Facebook and WhatsApp, Uber and Nest, the brightest minds of a generation, the high test-scorers and mathematically inclined, have taken the knowledge acquired at our most august institutions and applied themselves to solving increasingly minor First World problems.
When Facebook bought WhatsApp, some were worried that the messenger would go back on its promise not to collect swathes of personal data in the style of its new owner. Luckily for you, the FTC has other plans, and will only give its blessing to the $19 billion deal if both companies swear to respect WhatsApp's original user agreement. In a letter to the pair, FTC consumer protection chief Jessica L. Rich has said that if WhatsApp pulls a privacy bait-and-switch , then Zuckerberg and co. will be in breach of section five of the FTC act, with harsh penalties to follow.
We’re blind. It doesn’t matter what any individual person thinks about something new. Everything must be tested. It’s feature echolocation: we throw out an idea, and when the data comes back we look at the numbers. Whatever goes up, that’s what we do. We are slaves to the numbers. We don’t operate around innovation. We only optimize. We do what goes up.
In many areas of life, the law of averages applies – most things are statistically distributed in a pattern that looks like a bell. This pattern is called the "normal distribution". Take human height. Most people are of average height and there are relatively small number of very tall and very short people. But very few – if any – online phenomena follow a normal distribution. Instead they follow what statisticians call a power law distribution, which is why a very small number of the billions of websites in the world attract the overwhelming bulk of the traffic while the long tail of other websites has very little.