By Jordan Valinsky 5/17 9:00am

Linkages

Mr. Cook (Photo: News.au)

Booting Up: Foxconn Employees Still Have it Pretty Terrible

Apple CEO Tim Cook is preparing for his upcoming Congress appearance about corporate tax code by promising a “dramatic simplification” of the ancient laws. [Washington Post]

It’s been a year since Facebook’s IPO. So let’s celebrate it with a ~one year later~ reflection piece. [WSJ]

Remember when you’re complaining about your long work week, it’s way worse for Foxconn employees. [NYT]

It sounds like the Facebook designers behind News Feed’s redesign were having the chillest of times on the project. They brought in lamps to create a “nice living room” and stared at posters on the wall to keep them motivated. [Taxi]

Ugh, we have some disturbing news: A website that bills itself as “Kickstarter for gigs” has launched in London. [BBC]

By Jordan Valinsky 4/15 8:56am

Linkages

Charlie Ergen? (Photo: NBC)

Booting Up: Dish Network’s Chairman Thinks He’s Jerry Seinfeld

Dish Network announced today that it has submitted a $25.5 billion bid for Sprint Nextel in an effort to circumvent an offer from Japanese telecom company SoftBank. Charlie Ergen, the chairman of Dish, related the company’s purchasing strategy to the plot of Seinfeld: “You initially didn’t know exactly where things were going, but it seemed to all come together in the end.” [New York Times]

Facebook Home has only been out for three days, but that’s totally enough time to call it a failure. Out of 4,000 reviews, roughly 47 percent of users gave it a 1-star rating. [Daily Dot]

Foxconn is adding 10,000 new employees to its ranks as it prepares for the launch of the next Ping Home iPhone. [CNet]

Cornell’s planned high-tech campus on Roosevelt Island is still years away, but some of the classes are getting started in a nondescript, third-floor loft in Chelsea. [New York Times]

Baidu, a.k.a “Chinese Google,” has opened an artificial intelligence lab in Silicon Valley to look for top talent to join the growing company. [ZDNet]

By Kelly Faircloth 3/27 3:51pm

Planet GOOG

Only models look this good in Glass. (Photo: Google)

Looks Like Google Glass Will Be Assembled on American Soil

Hey America, don’t say Google never did anything for you: Looks like Google Glass will be made right here in the good old U. S. of A. That’s according to the Financial Times says, citing sources “familiar with the company’s plans.”

The president’s speechwriters have likely already popped this news into the Google Doc where they spitball ideas for the next State of the Union. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 10/16/12 8:15am

Linkages

We're hungry. (Photo: Screencap)

Booting Up: Foursquare Wants to Recommend Some Coffee Shops

Foxconn has confirmed that underage “interns” as young as 14 worked for brief periods at its Chinese factories. Bring this up the next time an underemployed millennial theater major carps about, oh, anything. [Bloomberg News]

Marissa Mayer has poached another Googler: Henrique de Castro will be Yahoo’s COO. But it’s costing the underdog a pretty penny to get him: All told, he’ll get something like $60 million (part of it in stock). [Wall Street Journal]

Badges? What badges? Foursquare, in its pursuit of being a player in the search and recommendations business, has redesigned its desktop home page so that anyone, not merely registered users, can use the service like they would Yelp. [GigaOm]

Meet your new favorite Tumblr, Fairy Tales for Twentysomethings: “the emperor bought a new fedora but all his friends thought he looked really stupid in it.” It’s like Once Upon a Time, except not one long commercial for the Disney Vault. [Tumblr]

By Kelly Faircloth 9/25/12 8:17am

Linkages

Future Twitterer? (Photo: flickr.com/whatcounts)

Booting Up: Media Mogul Board Member Edition

Twitter is reportedly hunting in Hollywood for new board members, with an eye to installing a “media player.” A leading contender: former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin. [AllThingsD]

Eric Schmidt, on iOS 6 mapageddon: “We think it would have been better if they had kept ours. But what do I know?” [Reuters]

Production has resumed at the Foxconn factory temporarily closed down due to a riot. [Washington Post]

There’s now an app that’ll afford you the chance to look at pictures of Albert Einstein’s brain. However, the $9.99 price point suggests the creators don’t think much of your brains. [AP]

If you’re going to send a sext, make sure you’ve got the right number–unlike this elderly man. [CNN]

By Myles Tanzer 9/24/12 10:40am

Funtimes at Foxconn

Mr. Cook at a factory in Zhengzhou (cnn.com via Apple)

Foxconn Shuts Down Factory After Workers Riot

Foxconn decided to close down one of its factories in central China this morning after a riot took place in the factory compound late Sunday night, according to the New York Times. The plant in the city of Taiyuan employs about 79,000 workers and the brawl involved 2,000 of those employees. Reuters spoke to a Taiyuan plant worker who said that the factory is one of the plants assembles and makes parts for Apple’s iPhone 5.

No workers died in the riots, but three were put in critical care. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 7/06/12 8:32am

BEEEZOS!

Now is the part where I throw my head back and laugh. (Photo: flickr.com/oreilly)

Next Step in Amazon’s Path to World Domination Said to be a Smartphone

Do we detect a little extra joy in Jeff Bezos’s supervillain laugh lately? Well, a spot of plotting does warm the heart, and it sounds like he’s cooking up something big. Judging from a Bloomberg report this morning, it’s looking like that Amazon smartphone may very well be more than mere rumor.

Anyone from Microsoft might just want to go ahead and leave the room; coming on the heels of that Vanity Fair article, this’ll just upset you.

Bloomberg cites two people “with knowledge of the matter,” who claim an Amazon smartphone designed to compete with iPhone and Android is on its way. According to one of those sources, the company is already working with Foxconn on the device. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 6/14/12 1:56pm

Apple in Your Eye

Foxconn Worker Commits Suicide Months After Agreement with Apple to Improve Conditions

In a statement released by Foxconn today, the company acknowledged the first suicide since the supplier brokered an agreement with Apple in March to improve “sweatshop-like” conditions. The worker in question was a 23-year-old male who jumped from his apartment yesterday outside a Foxconn plant in Chengdu, reports Reuters. He joined the company last Read More

By Jessica Roy 3/26/12 4:02pm

After After the Fact

Mr. Daisey

Mike Daisey Finally Gives the Apology The Media Has Been Waiting For

After a swath of deflection attempts and half-apologies, notorious truth-exaggerator and Apple opponent Mike Daisey has finally issued the genuine apology we’ve all been waiting for.

In an entry posted to his blog yesterday, Mr. Daisey apologized to everyone who ever paid him a modicum of attention, including his audience, theater coworkers, journalists and human rights advocates, for exaggerating the negative details of Apple’s Chinese factory conditions on “This American Life.” Read More