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// HAPPENING TODAY
- October.
- Oracle OpenWorld continues.
- Walrus are massing in Alaska.
- The 106th anniversary of the introduction of Ford’s Model T.
- Ebola.
Please Make This the New SpaceX Slogan. Please!
There’s a strong argument to be made for multiplanetary colonization, and who better than Elon Musk to make it? It’s premise: Screw Earth. In a new interview with Aeon magazine, the Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder says his plan to create a healthy civilization on Mars is only the first step in a more ambitious effort to colonize the known universe. “Fuck Earth! Who cares about Earth?” Musk said. “If we can establish a Mars colony, we can almost certainly colonize the whole solar system, because we’ll have created a strong economic forcing function for the improvement of space travel. We’ll go to the moons of Jupiter, at least some of the outer ones for sure, and probably Titan on Saturn, and the asteroids. Once we have that forcing function, and an Earth-to-Mars economy, we’ll cover the whole solar system.”
“K-Chit” Is Tlingit for “Oh My God, I Just Spent $10,000 on a Smartwatch”
Apple SVP of Design Jony Ive on the Apple Watch clasp: “But listen as it closes. It makes this fantastic k-chit.”
SAP: Scrumpdillyishus
Oracle has a long and storied history of talking smack about its rivals. Reassuring to see that hasn’t changed given the recent shifts in leadership over there. To wit, Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz’s recent comments about SAP’s $8.3 billion purchase of Concur, which rank right up there in the pantheon of barbs with Larry Ellison’s “The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago” remark. “Concur is only a tiny module and SAP spent all their money on it,” Catz told Bloomberg. “I literally went down to my car and thought, ‘oh my God, SAP bought Concur — maybe tomorrow they’ll buy Dairy Queen.’ It was the best thing that happened to me on the day I was named CEO of Oracle.”
Internally Referred to as “iPad Kardashian,” of Course
Apple plans to give the forthcoming successor to the iPad Air the Midas touch. Sources familiar with the company’s plans tell Bloomberg the device will be available in gold, silver and space gray when it debuts this month.
Welcome to Jack Ma’s Great Wall Adventure Club, Jerry Yang
Parmy Olsen, Forbes: “While Yahoo Japan began gaining millions of customers, [Yahoo co-founder] Jerry Yang took his first trip to China in 1997. A junior staffer in the economic ministry was assigned to take Yang on a tour of the Great Wall of China. His name was Jack Ma.”
Right, Because What’s Important Here Is the Sanctity of the Moviegoing Experience
How predictable. The nation’s largest theater chains — Regal and AMC — are already boycotting the Netflix/Weinstein Company plan to debut the sequel to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” on Netflix and in Imax theaters on the same day. And with such predictable petulance. Said Regal spokesman Russ Nunley, “While a home video release may be simultaneously performing in certain Imax locations, at Regal we will not participate in an experiment where you can see the same product on screens varying from three stories tall to three inches wide on a smartphone. We believe the choice for truly enjoying a magnificent movie is clear.”
2013 April Fool’s Joke Actually Next Version of Windows
Infoworld, April Fools Day, 2013: “If you’ve been looking forward to Windows 9, the OS that will fix what Windows 8 got wrong, you’re in for a surprise: There will be no Windows 9. Instead, Microsoft announced it will proceed directly to Windows 10.”
Well, $69.6 Million in Vested Stock Options Will Do That to You
Don Melton, former director of Internet technologies at Apple: “When you hear the so-called apocryphal stories about Tim Cook coming to work in the wee hours and staying late, it’s not just some PR person telling you stories to make you think that Apple executives work really hard like that. They really do that. I mean, these people are nuts. They’re just, they are there all the time.”
Germany Orders Google to Adopt Entirely New Business Model
Johannes Caspar, Hamburg’s data protection commissioner: “The issue is up to Google now. The company must treat the data of its millions of users in a way that respects their privacy.”
Great Idea, Uber. They Can Grade Papers at the Stoplights.
According to the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teacher union, the U.S. average public school teacher salary for 2012-13 was $56,103. That prices teachers out of home ownership in major metropolitan areas like San Francisco, New York, LA, Washington, Boston and Seattle. Unless they moonlight as an Uber driver, which is evidently becoming a thing — as ferociously awful as that sounds. “Every day teachers are asked to do more with less, constantly faced with new challenges and limited resources,” the ride-hailing service explains in a blog post. “Uber opens the door for more possibilities and delivers a meaningful impact to the communities we serve. … Teachers are among the most dedicated, passionate and hardworking professionals — a few of the qualities that make the best Uber partner drivers.” (Thanks, @nekaro.)
A Studded Leather Apple Watch Option? I’ll Ask Jony.
Jess Cartner-Morley, The Guardian: “Forty-five minutes before the Chanel show was due to start, Karl Lagerfeld himself arrived at the Apple Watch preview, and sat down with Anna Wintour to try on a watch and be talked through the functionality by Ive and Newson. If that’s not Apple flexing some powerful fashion muscle, I don’t know what is.”
Off Topic
Irish People Taste American Snacks and Improv Everywhere’s MP3 Experiment Eleven.
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
