The Mac is transgenerational

As if we Mac users needed any proof. But it is always nice to see people from the savviest, coolest and most avant-garde strata of society.

Warum Zeitungen sterben werden

Wer seine täglichen News nicht von den Fucktards der FAZ, SZ und sonstigen Schmierheinis bezieht hat die Stories gelesen über Zygna auf Techcrunch. Dabei ist völlig egal ob jemand an Tech interessiert ist, denn die NYT bringt wieder eimal ein gutes Beispiel weswegen man die etablierten Papiere nicht braucht und wenn sie weg sind, sie auch nicht mehr vermissen wird. Genau das, was in dem Post behandelt wird, passiert in der deutschen Schleimerpresse jeden Tag:

Die Zygna/FB/NYT Story hier

The fucktards of Bild.de block iPhone access

Ha ha, what an intellectual loss. Just one question assholes at Bild: who wants to read your fecal output?? And pay for your crap…?

GM to Merkel: „Get out of the car, bitch!“

The Opel saga gets ever more embarrassing for German chancelloress Anjie Merkel from the former GDR, a failed state. She got bitch-slapped by GM for trying to sell something she (Germany) does not own. Her pre-election ramshackle deal with Magna is yet another display of her inaptitude. German politicians are lived. Forget their ramblings against the locusts, it is now „the ugly face of turbo-capitalism“ as a certain Mr. Rüttgers put it.

It remains to be seen how many factories will be closed and how many workers laid off. Can it be a coincidence that this developed as the chancelloress was in Washington DC?!! And remember that the Economist called the Magna deal a stink.

Afghanistan finally recognizes Europe

Vintage Daniel Hannan:

The President of Euristan, Hamid Shah Barroso, claimed victory in the battle to ratify the Lisbon Treaty after his last rival, Abdullah Klaus, withdrew. Despite widespread concerns about the integrity of the process, the international community has recognised the new constitutional settlement.

“All the votes are counted, and we can see that Lisbon has been endorsed in every province,” President Barroso told cheering members of the Loya Jirga in Strasbourg. “France, Ireland and the Netherlands have registered huge majorities in favour. In Britain, too, there is overwhelming support”.

The government of Afghanistan, which had voiced concern about corruption under Barroso, reluctantly recognised that the Lisbon Treaty would now take effect. An Afghan election observer remarked: “We are alarmed about the lack of democracy in Euristan. In many ways, representative government there is going backwards. But we have to work with the regime we’ve got”.

Facebook games scams

You play FarmVille on FaceFuck? No?, perhaps you are using another app that pulls down your private data? No? But millions of idiots are doing this: joining a network, playing absolutely dumb games, leaving their front door open 24/7/365. I am pretty sure many of these people have anti-virus sw on their computer and run behind a firewall, yet they undress themselves beyond the nude on FB. They put private photos on the net that clearly show where they live and next they tell people they will be in Asia for some weeks. Great for thieves and easy. But this is about the games …

Here is a good article about these scams and some insight into the typical FB user:

I finally came to this realization: People on Facebook won’t pay for anything. They don’t have credit cards, they don’t want credit cards, and they are not interested in shopping. But you can trick them into doing one of three things:

• Download a toolbar: It could be spyware (such as Zango) or something more legitimate, such as Webfetti or Zwinkys.
• Give up their email address: You’ve won a “free” camera or perhaps you’ve been selected as a tester for a new Macbook Pro (which you get to keep at the end of the test). Just tell us where you want us to ship it.
• Give up their phone number: You took the IQ Quiz, so give us your phone number and we’ll tell you your score. Never mind that you’ll get billed $20 a month or perhaps be tricked into inviting 10 other friends to beat your score.

This thing will get bigger publicity and ultimately law inforcement will step in. Meanwhile ..

Weak enforcement: Paul Jeffries, who enforced (or didn’t enforce, depending on your view) the platform rules, wanted to allow a laissez-faire economy, stepping in only when the violations were so egregious that his call center was getting flooded with complaints. He called me into a meeting and told me that my ads were costing him more in customer service than any revenue I was possibly generating. That pre-supposed that he knew what we were generating – in the high 5 figures a day. And most of that was profit, since we paid out only a fraction of what we earned. Remember that we had to beat only what Google AdSense generated.

There was no way that Facebook – and definitely not the Federal Trade Commission—could keep up with the “innovation” happening. Witness the virtual currency scam, where users complete the offers mentioned above to earn points in a game. It doesn’t take a genius to know that the quality of such leads is garbage – these users are filling out forms just to get the points.

They sign up for Netflix, a platinum credit card, get an auto insurance quote, whatever. The industry term for type of traffic is called “incentivized”. The underlying advertiser is paying for these leads much like they would if they were coming from paid search. They may be told they’re getting incent traffic—or maybe not. Or maybe the ad network, the middleman between the advertiser (company paying for traffic) and publisher (source of traffic) is mixing PPC, email, and incent (also called social) traffic to hit certain quality thresholds.

Weak end reads

1. Proof of the world’s energy insanity: scraping tar sands

2. Creative destruction: Fisker is going to build electric cars at  a former Pontiac plant. Schumpeter would love this.

K1 Hedge Fund: nothing suspicious here

Dubai Capital saniert zuerst Dorf Puff

Nun wollte man endlich zeichnen, 28% Prozent Rendite gibts im Immobilien-Investment selten, auch wenn es ösi-bayrisch heissgerechnet war, und nun das:

Kann es sein, das die auf der Homepage genannte Abzocker…, eh Ansprechsperson, Lukas Rachensperger, gerade noch den Feinschliff an einen Dorf-Puff legt, um sich dann gen Dubai zu schwingen? Dies zu lesen könnte nicht schaden.

Johnny Ive of Apple