SMBC

Back on April 21, after is his UFC loss to Nate Diaz, Conor McGregor posted this on Facebook:

I am just trying to do my job and fight here.

I am paid to fight. I am not yet paid to promote.

I have become lost in the game of promotion and forgot about the art of fighting.

There comes a time when you need to stop handing out flyers and get back to the damn shop.

50 world tours, 200 press conferences, 1 million interviews, 2 million photo shoots, and at the end of it all I’m left looking down the barrel of a lens, staring defeat in the face, thinking of nothing but my incorrect fight preparation. And the many distractions that led to this.

Nothing else was going through my mind.

A guy like Conor McGregor doesn’t come around often. Not only is he an amazing fighter who’s proven himself in the ring, but he’s a personality who’s infusing the UFC with some serious energy and fun. He’s just awesome to watch in- and outside the ring.

But they say you see a person’s true colors not when things are going great, but when they’re bad and it’s here where we get to see a man acknowledging his mistakes and doing what is necessary to fix them.

I love the show Conor’s been putting on since he joined the UFC, but I agree with him that he needs to re-focus on what got him there: his fighting skills.

McLaren needs a 20-year-old Compaq laptop to maintain its F1 supercar:

McLaren’s F1 supercar is special in more ways than one. Even now it’s still the world’s fastest production car with a naturally aspirated engine, and McLaren only built 106 F1s in total. Jalopnik visited McLaren recently, and discovered another special aspect to the F1: a 20-year-old laptop. McLaren is still servicing the existing 100 F1s with a Compaq laptop from the early ‘90s.

“The reason we need those specific Compaq laptops is that they run a bespoke CA card which is installed into them,” explains a McLaren spokesperson to Jalopnik. “The CA card is an interface between the laptop software (which is DOS-based) and the car.” If you’ve never heard of a CA card, then Jalopnik commenter Mike Herbst helpfully explains it’s a Conditional Access card. Modern PCs use smart cards or USB keys with special access codes to access sensitive systems, and the CA card was used as custom hardware as part of an integrated system for security and copy protection.

Sure, software from 20 years ago is slower and less sophisticated than what we have right now, but there’s many instances where older technologies are more robust and less prone to crashes. Of course, you need 20-year-old hardware to run the 20-year-old software.

This doesn’t mean McLaren shouldn’t upgrade their systems (they should), but there’s a method to their madness.

Good morning, Internet world. I thought I’d start the day off with a family-friendly post.

China bans ‘erotic’ banana-eating live streams:

Chinese live-streaming services have banned people filming themselves eating bananas in a “seductive” fashion.

New regulations mean that live-streaming sites must monitor all their output round-the-clock to ensure nothing untoward is going on, keeping an eye out for any “erotic” banana-eating, according to New Express Daily. It’s not just fruit that’s on their radar though – the paper adds that wearing stockings and suspenders while hosting a live stream is now also forbidden.

This story is from the BBC’s ‘News From Elsewhere’ section.

What a name for a category.

Went I saw this story, I couldn’t help but think about a classic George Carlin bit (YouTube) from his standup special, Doin’ It Again (1990):

As long as I’m being a complete pig up here, let me ask you guys a question.

Let me ask one question of the men. Are you ever able to watch a woman eating a banana and NOT think about a blowjob?

I can’t do it. And I know why: I’m a sick, evil fuck! I admit that!

I can’t do it! Eating a banana, eating a pickle, licking on an ice cream cone. I’m thinking to myself “LOOK AT THE TOUNGE ON HER! WOW!”

So ladies, be careful when you’re standing out in front of that Häagen-Dazs. ‘Cause God damn it, we’re watching. And God damn it, we’re thinking!

C’mon, China. Reconsider.

via Twitter

For the last four years the creators of Siri have been working on a next generation AI called Viv:

The major difference between Siri and Viv is that the latter is a far more open platform. One of the biggest frustrations with Siri is that it has only a small number of tasks it can complete. For the vast multitude of requests or queries, Siri will default to a generic web search. Viv’s approach is much closer to Amazon’s Alexa or Facebook’s Messenger bots, offering the ability to connect with third party merchants and vendors so that it can execute on requests to purchase good or book reservations. The company’s tagline — intelligence becomes a utility — nicely sums up its goal of powering the conversational AI inside a multitude of gadgets and digital services.

Sounds awesome. I wonder if Apple will just buy Viv like they did Siri or if they’re going to be take Siri to the next level on their own.

There were negative reviews of Amazon’s Alexa when it came out but more and more I’m hearing positive experiences with it (from Apple nerds too).

Update: Here’s a video of Viv in action from TechCrunch Disrupt

Apple launched a new page breaking down the diversity across the company:

This kind of reporting and transparency is great, but as CEO Tim Cook admits in his message, there’s a lot more work to be done.

Let’s take a look at the executive board, for instance:

Not many brown people up there. Wait! There’s a black woman VP of HR. Yay!

So yeah, I would agree with Cook. There’s a lot more work to be done.

From The New York Times:

Ms. Nash received a full-face transplant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital two years later. She got a new forehead, nasal structure, nose, lips, nerves, facial skin and facial muscles. Her sight never returned. Doctors also performed a double hand transplant but both hands “failed to thrive” and were removed, the hospital said.

With Ms. Nash’s body beginning to reject her face, Dr. Pomahac said she would be removed from the research study.

Knowing that your body is rejecting your new face must be a hell of a morale booster. What a sad story.

Pitchfork: Radiohead Erase Internet Presence:

Radiohead’s internet presence is disappearing. As Reddit users noted, their website slowly decreased in opacity until it went entirely blank. It appears that tweets and Facebook posts from their accounts have been steadily disappearing. Update (5/1, 2:00 p.m. ET): There are no longer any tweets or Facebook posts on the band’s accounts. Their profile pictures and cover photos have gone completely blank, as well. This comes one day after fans of the band received mysterious flyers with the words “Sing a song of sixpence that goes/Burn the Witch/We know where you live.” It’s unclear what it is, but something seems to be happening. Update (5/1, 2:28 p.m. ET): Now, it appears Thom Yorke has deleted his tweets. Update (5/1, 3:18 p.m. ET): Their Google+ page has now gone blank. Update (5/2, 6:40 p.m. ET): Jonny Greenwood has now made his Twitter images white.

Love it. It must feel great to clean the slate.

Oh, Radiohead coordinated this internet disappearance with their new video.

*If you didn’t know, the this post title is a track from Radiohead’s Kid A

Microsoft is celebrating a milestone:

As we near the one year anniversary of the availability of Windows 10, we’re excited to share that Windows 10 is now running on 300 million active devices around the world.

It’s too bad hardly any of those devices are the ones people carry around in their pockets.

From Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is planning sweeping changes to its year-old music streaming service after the first iteration of the product was met with tepid reviews and several executives brought in to revive the company’s music strategy departed.

Hey Apple, fuck Apple Music. How about fixing iTunes?

Oh, also fix the Music app on iOS.

So do I

Ina Fried at Re/Code on Intel missing the mobile boat:

After missing the early days of the smartphone revolution, Intel spent in excess of $10 billion over the last three years in an effort to get a foothold in mobile devices.

Now, having gained little ground in phones and with the tablet market shrinking, Intel is essentially throwing in the towel. The company quietly confirmed last week that it has axed several chips from its roadmap, including all of the smartphone processors in its current plans.

It’s a stunning admission of failure that saw the company throw good money after bad in its bid to make up for lost ground.

Intel is right there with their old buddy Microsoft on the sidelines of the mobile devices game.

This week Mike talks about the human tendency to harp on the negative, pattern recognition, loss aversion, the new basic economy class for flights, how great it is to fly Virgin America, and digging deep to find great culture.

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