Who better understands freedom of the press? An Apple supplier, or Chinese state police?

A Reuters reporter tried to photograph, from the street, a Foxconn plant that was rumored to be manufacturing parts for Apple products. Foxconn guards chased him, stopped the taxi he tried to escape in, and tried to drag him into the factory while beating him.

Who saved the reporter? Chinese police, who had to remind Foxconn guards that it is legal to take pictures from a public street.

In China, a Reuters reporter found out the hard way how seriously some Apple suppliers take security.

Tipped by a worker outside the Longhua complex that a nearby Foxconn plant was manufacturing parts for Apple too, our correspondent hopped in a taxi for a visit to the facility in Guanlan, which makes products for a range of companies.

As he stood on the public road taking photos of the front gate and security checkpoint, a guard shouted. The reporter continued snapping photos before jumping into a waiting taxi. The guard blocked the vehicle and ordered the driver to stop, threatening to strip him of his taxi license.

The correspondent got out and insisted he was within his rights as he was on the main road. The guard grabbed his arm. A second guard ran over, and with a crowd of Foxconn workers watching, they tried dragging him into the factory.

The reporter asked to be let go. When that didn’t happen, he jerked himself free and started walking off. The older guard kicked him in the leg, while the second threatened to hit him again if he moved. A few minutes later, a Foxconn security car came along but the reporter refused to board it. He called the police instead.

After the authorities arrived and mediated, the guards apologized and the matter was settled. The reporter left without filing a complaint, though the police gave him the option of doing so.

“You’re free to do what you want,” the policeman explained, “But this is Foxconn and they have a special status here. Please understand.”

The rest of the article is quite interesting and asserts that Apple’s obsession with secrecy permeates into its supply chain, causing each supplier to be extremely stringent with their employees and goods.

Last year, a Foxconn employee in China jumped to his death, reportedly after being interrogated by his employer on suspicion of sneaking out an iPhone prototype. The blame can’t be placed all on Apple, as this Reuters article from July 2009 points out: Chinese counterfeiters, and lack of enforcement of intellectual property laws, makes the theft of product a bit more damaging to the bottom line.

As for whether secrecy itself makes an Apple product more desirable…I’ve known about the iPad for a month, with all of its shortcomings. I’m still thinking about getting one. The problem is the product iterations; I waited for the new iPod model because I assumed it had a camera. If it leaked out that the new iPod touch was a minor increment, I would’ve gotten my Canon S90 point-and-shoot a lot earlier…

  

Throwback Pepsi – Made with Real Sugar

Have been avoiding pop for the last few weeks, but this caught my eye at my local halal cart. Apparently, Pepsi wanted to give anti-high-fructose-corn fans some real sugar. Somewhere, an Iowa farmer is crying.

Don’t think I could tell the difference in a blind taste test. The “throwback” Pepsi (and Mountain Dew) will be available until June 13.

  

Fox Takes Us Right Into to the Future of Idiocracy: “World Record Kick to the Groin”

Even though Mike Judge wasn’t happy with the end result, I always thought we owed Fox a little credit for allowing “Idiocracy” his biting, dystopian satire into the theaters. It can’t be easy to market a movie that insults the most valued demographic (young males) and potential advertisers (Starbucks, Carl Jr’s, Costco, Gatorade, etc).

But I guess Idiocracy was just a test-run of future FOX programming. Behold: “World Record Kick to the Groin:”

I didn’t like Idiocracy that much on the first viewing, but it’s a movie better appreciated on repeat viewings. Probably because by the time you’ve watched it again, society seems to have slowly edged a little bit closer to Mike Judge’s vision. Well, Fox Sports pretty much said, screw it, let’s just go all in.

More analysis from Gawker’s Maureen O’ Connor.

(I’m definitely not too cultured for this kind of explanatory TV. MythBusters needs to do their own version)

  

Chatroulette’s creator is a 17-year-old altruist

I had seen screenshots of Chatroulette on Reddit threads, but didn’t know what it referred to until this New York Times Bits Blog post, where they track down the once-anonymous creator. It’s basically a service that allows anyone in the world to find a random person to video chat with. Not surprisingly, it’s been trolled by a number of penis shots…which is a stark contrast to the niceness of the creator, a Russian 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy.

Ternovskly, who says he’s been programming since age 11, created the site because he and his friends got tired of just chatting with each other. Despite a massive surge in popularity, Ternovskly has only allowed four simple text ads along the bottom, which pays the bandwidth bill (a max throughput of 7GBs a second).

I think it’s cool that such a simple concept can be useful for so many people. Although some people are using the site in not very nice ways – I am really against it. Others do really unbelievable things I could never think of. They make up songs about strangers and sing to them, draw them, listen to music, broadcast them their own music. Two groups of teenagers can party together. That’s just great in my opinion. I am glad that I made this project and it is a pleasure for me to work on it.

He’s apparently too young to be corrupted by the profit-motive (how long will that last?). That a 17-year-old could so wisely execute what should’ve been an obvious idea is both inspiring and a little humbling to us 20+ year olds. Then again, those Russians do have a knack for invention at an early age; Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47, was 21 when he started on his first sub-machine gun design. Chatroulette is pretty much an AK-47 of a Internet service…cheap, bare-bones, beautiful in execution, and prone to terrible, terrible misuse.

And speaking of age…I always felt smug being young enough to “get” MySpace and Facebook while the thirty-year-olds and older were all perplexed by it. I think Chatroulette is the Internet trend that makes me feel like the old man out.

Read the rest of his interview here.
Some NSFW screencaps here.

  

The Terror Trials, Torture, and Starbucks

The New Yorker has put up the entirety of Jane Meyer’s “The Trial” on its site. It is a decent overview of how ideals clash with pragmatism and politics and recaps a lot of the military tribunal and detention debate so far, including this nugget from the Washington Post, reported a year and one day ago today:

Bush Administration officials, too, had recognized Mohammed’s abuse as an impediment to prosecution. After [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed arrived at Guantánamo, a team of F.B.I. and military interrogators tried to elicit from him and his co-defendants the same confessions that the C.I.A. had obtained about the 9/11 plot, but by using only legal means of interrogation. (According to the Washington Post, he was enticed with Starbucks coffee.) By 2008, the Bush Administration believed that this so-called Clean Team had compiled sufficient evidence to charge Mohammed and the others with capital murder.

Starbucks coffee as effective as waterboarding? I wonder why Starbucks Corp. couldn’t fit this into their national advertising somehow? (The original WaPo article reads: “were given food whenever they were hungry as well as Starbucks coffee at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba”)

Jokes aside (my favorite is in the comments section of this NYT Lede followup: “Maybe they made Khalid pay for the Starbucks. That could be seen as harsh treatment.”), Meyer’s article is a good primer in how convoluted the issue of the terror trials are: the Starbucks+gentle treatment was part of a plan to re-gather the same evidence (via the “Clean Team”) that the CIA allegedly gained through abusive interrogations so that KSM could be tried in civilian court, which, Meyer asserts, is the only way to get other countries to see KSM’s trial as legitimate and to have them finally accept released Gitmo detainees.

Read the rest of “The Trial”

  

Jewelry Design 101 (Intro to Jewelry Fabrication) at the Fashion Institute of Technology

This is what you have to buy for the Introduction to Jewelry Fabrication class at FIT. (Kit from Allcraft Jewelry Supply)

Click to embiggen picture of my tools

Quantity Item Descriptim Unit Price Extension
1.00 XX X BRASS BARS 3.95 3.95
1.00 FILE-6-2 SET 6 ECONCMY NEEDLE FILES 2 7.00 7.00
1.00 PCX X 1/2 ROUND ECONOMY FILE 7.00 7.00
1.00 WET&DRY SET SAND PAPER 220,,400,600 3.00 3.00
1.00 523-1826 COPPER SHEET 6X6X18~ 6.50 6.50
1.00 525-1826 BRASS SHEET 6X6X18GA 6.50 6.50
0.50 529-1826 NICKEL SILVER SHEET 6X6X18GA 9.75 4.88
1.00 002-0102 SAWFRAME 4 13.00 13.00
2.00 003-1008 JEWELERS SAWBLADES:#O 1.95 3.90
1.00 004-0884 TWIST DRILLS:SET OF 6 6.00 6.00
1.00 XX X CENTER PUNCH 1.60 1.60
1.00 54.210 ABESTOS FREE PAD 6X6X1/2 7.50 7.50
1.00 SOLDER PIC SOLDER PIC 3.95 3.95
1.00 54.44 PASTE FLUX-DANDIX 1-1/2 OZ 4.95 4.95
1.00 SOLDER-SET OF 3 SET OF 3 SILVER SOLDER:E,M.H 8.95 8.95
1.00 ~X X POLISHING KIT 3.50 3.50
1.00 CHUCK CHUCK KEY 3.95 3.95
2.00 060-0209 MANDRELS: #9 1.20 2.40
1.00 060-0202 MANDRELS:#2 0.95 0.95

Subtotal 99.48
Sales Tax 8.83
Freight 0.00
TOTAL ORDER AMOUNT 108.31

  

A good way for Google Buzz to recruit the dumbest users on Facebook

My colleague Jeff pointed out this ReadWriteWeb article on how Facebook wants to be the web’s main login service. It apparently jumped to the top of Google’s search results…which means trouble for the kind of people who Google “Yahoo”, in order to find yahoo.com.

Incidentally…these are the kind of people who are too dumb to tell the difference between a blog article about Facebook and a Facebook redesign. As evidenced by these hilariously confused comments:

I am going to delete my account (IF I CAN EVER LOG IN) as this SUCKS BIG TIME ! If this does not get back to NORMAL you are going to lose a lot of folks who hate this and as you can see from all the comments they think it sucks too !!! facebook was great for connecting with old friends …now, NOT SO MUCH. SO HOW DO I LOG IN ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Laraine T Posted by: Laraine T. Author Profile Page | February 10, 2010 12:12 PM

If Google is looking for a not-totally-evil-but-still-really-mean way to lure Facebook users over to Buzz…its algorithm could place an article about Facebook on buzz.google.com at the top of the search results for “Facebook login.” But then you’d only lure the most clueless from Facebook…and if Facebook login is an obstacle for them…Buzz is going to have them punch their monitors out.

ReadWriteWeb helpfully put up this notice for wayward Google users:

  

Google Buzz == Gwitterbook

Well, my first impression of Google Buzz is that it’s a convenient way to FriendFeed my stuff to Google contacts. But I’m surprised at how poor of an interface it released with…I can’t recall the last major online service where I’ve been so confused on how to perform as simple a task as finding the settings panel. For example, last night I stumbled upon the option to set my Buzz to be “Public” or “Private”…and it took me awhile to remember how I got there this morning. The shortest path that I’ve found is to click on my own name in Google Buzz, then find the “profile link”, which takes me to another intermediary page where I have to divine that the link “Add more info to profile” will take me to a few basic privacy settings.

How about a simple “Privacy settings” link that Facebook wisely added at least a year ago? Why didn’t Google learn such an obvious feature from the leader?

This confusion is pretty inexcusable given that I’ve been on GMail for at least four years…this interface should be at least halfway intuitive. Even worse, there’s little to assure me how specific and granular these settings are. Facebook deserves to be criticized for its privacy missteps, but it’s done a fine job in giving us a huge amount of flexibility in designating what is viewable to whom.

With Buzz, I know there’s some kind of change between a “Private” and “Public” Google profile…but does setting it Private also make it so that random people can’t follow my Buzz? Or just that my profile information (city, date of birth, mugshot, etc) is hidden? Maybe Buzz wanted to go for the “Apple” approach in arrogantly deciding what’s best for the user in order to have the most clutter-free interface. But I think privacy concerns trump having a lowest-common-denominator interface.

Especially since Google is already in the limelight for owning too much of our personal information. Now they’ll have a database of every status update you made, and if it was from your phone, where you were.

Google’s sloppy approach has already made for some awful PR: WARNING: Google Buzz has a huge privacy flaw, says Silicon Alley, referring to how Buzz automatically sets you up to follow your most-contacted people.

I wouldn’t call that a huge privacy flaw…99% of people would be OK with following the people they message the most. But for journalists who may be using GMail for contacting anonymous sources…that’s a horrible default setting. Actually, I think the problem is that by default, this list of followers is publicly available…unless you go into the settings and find the appropriate checkbox. Now how do you get to the privacy settings again?…