Drawing the Line

… I fully appreciate that there is a systemic sexism problem in the technology industry, and that allowing such behavior to go without being criticized encourages that to continue. But at the same time, this case produced what seemed like an orgy of outrage that at times felt like the beginnings of an angry mob — if only because of the speed and aggressiveness of the response.

Mathew Ingram, from a post entitled “Public shaming and free speech: Why the rush to attack Pax Dickinson makes me nervous”

Here’s the Dumbest Apple Story You Will Read Today

Alas, it is not made up.

Technical Sweetness

I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik

There’s an Appellate Court for That

Employees … are required to wait in line and be searched for … merchandise taken without permission and/or other contraband. […] A large number of Specialists and Managers leave for lunch at the same time and/or end their shift at the same time. This creates lengthy lines and backups.

— From a complaint filed in San Francisco federal court by two former Apple Store employees on behalf of thousands of others, seeking unspecified damages for unpaid time spent waiting in line each shift to have their bags searched by managers

QOTD: A Paint Job Instead of an Overhaul From Yahoo

Mayer’s much-hyped relaunch of the home page seems a lot like adding a new coat of paint and some racing stripes to your old Chevy. It may make you feel better, but it’s not going to go any faster.

Mathew Ingram, GigaOM

Five Years In

With 20/20 hindsight, the Nextel merger was a mistake. The synergies, if you will, that we had hoped for and planned for didn’t materialize.

— Sprint’s Dan Hesse to GigaOM’s Kevin Fitchard, on his fifth anniversary as CEO

Self-Cleaning Oven

“we’re living in a golden age where the internet is kind of self-cleaning oven” and the truth eventually comes out says @carr2n

Mathew Ingram, quoting from a David Carr lecture via Twitter

News Byte

Zynga Loses Cloud Tech Expert Allan Leinwand to ServiceNow

Zynga’s CTO of Infrastructure Allan Leinwand has left the social games company, reports GigaOm, which says the executive has assumed a similar role at ServiceNow. Leinwand was a key executive helping to shift the company from Amazon’s cloud services to its own infrastructure. Leinwand follows a string of other departures as the company’s stock continues to trade near all-time lows.

Rafat Ali 2.0: Meet Skift, the Travel Industry’s Version of PaidContent

What do you do after you build and sell a pioneering digital media start-up? Take two years off, and start building another media star-tup.

An Attack on WikiLeaks Is an Implicit Attack on Media

You don’t have to embrace Julian Assange as a kindred spirit to believe that what he did in publishing those cables falls under the protection of the First Amendment.

— Former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, in an email to GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram in response to a post by Ingram entitled “First they came for WikiLeaks, then the New York Times”

The “B” Word

Is GigaOM Buying paidContent?

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