Code/red: When Are We Doubling Down on Secrecy Again, Apple?

// HAPPENING TODAY

• Some sort of event in Cupertino.
• Google reports earnings after market close.

Gee, I Wonder if Apple’s New iPads Will Be the Best iPads Ever

“We’re going to double down on secrecy on products.” said Apple CEO Tim Cook onstage at our D10 conference in 2012. But it might be time to reinforce that thought with a stern memo to the troops. Apple will unveil its next generation iPads any minute now, but thanks to an embarrassing pre-event gaffe, you’ve probably already seen them. On Wednesday, Apple accidentally published its iOS 8.1 iPad user guide to iBooks. Included within it, illustrations of the forthcoming iPad mini 3 and the iPad Air 2. With new Touch ID-enabled home buttons, thinner chassis and updated innards that include the same A8X chip as in the new iPhone 6 — or a version of it — the devices are hardly significant upgrades over their respective predecessors. Though they are certain to be the best iPads Apple’s ever made, because that’s what the company says of its new iPads every year.

Guess That Makes It a Tablephone?

Google’s newest Nexus smartphone, the Nexus 6, is just one inch smaller than the company’s Nexus 7 tablet.

Nexus Q + Tortilla Press = Nexus Player?

Outlier theory: Google’s new Nexus Player is made from unsold, flattened Nexus Q inventory.

Spelunkers Locate Netflix Share Price

Netflix third-quarter subscriber numbers were well below expectations, and boy, is the company ever paying for it. Shares in Netflix, which fell by more than 25 percent in after-hours trading Wednesday, slipped further into the mud on Thursday as investors who were expecting the company to say it had ended the quarter with 3.69 million streaming subscribers came to terms with the idea of the company ending it with 3.02 million. In other news, Netflix also said Wednesday that every episode of “Friends” will be available on its service beginning January 1 — so there’s (cough) that …

Bad Idea: Spending Too Much Time Reading Bad Ideas

Roisen Kiberd, Motherboard, on Zoklet’s Bad Ideas forum: “An unruly update to Abbie Hoffman’s ’70s counterculture bible ‘Steal This Book,’ Bad Ideas lends a devilish new dimension to life, as though its users have found a way to game reality. Until you step back and realize you’re reading a board called Bad Ideas. ‘You are a future inmate,’ writes one deadpan commenter, and they might very well be correct.”

Payments Company CEO Would Like to Charge This Pallet of Pepto to His Apple Pay Account

Mark Andreessen on Apple Pay: “Apple’s showing up to the party and saying we’re going to now be in the center of payments has caused kind of like a collective heart attack. And there are payments companies that are aligned with that and Apple, like “yeah we’ve figured it out,” and then there are payments companies that aren’t that are basically having a stroke in real time and trying really hard to figure out what the implications of Apple Pay are.”

Tell Me Again How Airbnb Is All About Raising Up the Micro-Entrepreneur?

Airbnb likes to claim it’s empowering individuals to become micro-entrepreneurs, but that’s not quite the case in New York City. According to a new report from the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, commercial operators, not entrepreneurial residents, supply more than a third of the Airbnb rentals in the city. And they reap more than a third of total revenue, with some operating buildings as what Schneiderman describes as “de facto hotels.” Indeed, six percent of NYC’s Airbnb hosts collected about 37 percent of the revenue — or $168 million — during the period surveyed. More problematic: Nearly three-quarters of the Airbnb listings in New York City violate zoning and other laws.

God, That Looks Just Like Me Flying United

Tim Nudd, Ad Week: “Virgin America today breaks a curious new online campaign from ad agency Eleven in San Francisco. And the centerpiece is a strange, Warholian Web film depicting — in real time — the experience on a typical rival carrier during a five-hour-and-45-minute flight from Newark to San Francisco.”

Outlier Theory: Apple Watch Delayed to Increase Dope-as-F—ness Kilowattage

Will.i.am on his new Puls smartwatch: “I almost forgot, it also has 4 kW of DAF. That’s ‘dope-as-f—ness.'”

If by “Amazing” You Mean “Dystopian,” Then Sure

Wired Staff Writer Mat Honan: “Kind of amazing that we live in an age where a musician holds a major press conference to announce the release of his new wrist computer.”

This Calls for the Wechsler Scary Smart Intelligence Scale

Stephen Hsu, Nautilus: “The genetic study of cognitive ability suggests that there exist today variations in human DNA which, if combined in an ideal fashion, could lead to individuals with intelligence that is qualitatively higher than has ever existed on Earth: Crudely speaking, IQs of order 1,000, if the scale were to continue to have meaning.”

Beats Co-Founder Obviously Pleased With $3 Billion Windfall

Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine on Apple CEO Tim Cook: “Tim bought Beats. Obviously I think he’s really smart.”

Netflix: Welcome, HBO. Seriously.

Netflix has long posited HBO as a long-term rival. Indeed, last year the company’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, said, “The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” So what does Netflix think about HBO’s new plan to offer an a la carte streaming service? Apparently, it’s overjoyed. “The competition will drive us both to be better,” the company said. “It was inevitable and sensible that they would eventually offer their service as a standalone application. Many people will subscribe to both Netflix and HBO since we have different shows, so we think it is likely we both prosper as consumers move to Internet TV.”

Come Quick, I Think There’s Something Wrong With Sergey!

Azeen Gorayashi, the Guardian: “The man had been using [Google Glass] for around 18 hours a day — removing it only to sleep and wash — and complained of feeling irritable and argumentative without the device. In the two months since he bought the device, he had also begun experiencing his dreams as if viewed through the device’s small grey window.”

The Onion, FTW

The Onion on Facebook’s company-paid egg-freezing initiative: “As part of their efforts to accommodate women who wish to delay parenthood, Facebook officials announced Wednesday that the company will offer financial assistance for female employees to freeze their newborn children.”

Off Topic

The Walking Dead (Drunk) and T.J. Miller’s Local News Appearances.

Thanks for reading. Send tips, comments, Off Topics and Ostrich Pillow Minis to John@recode.net, @johnpaczkowski. Subscribe to the Code/red newsletter here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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