(slightly) unkommon

1. Unlocking Phones Is Illegal Again

I’m not sure that this was ever a concern of mine, but this is an example of the US government just not getting the tech industry. I feel slightly ignorant since the decision to make unlocking phones illegal today happened in October, but one thing is clear: Jailbreakers beware.

via FlipBoard for iOS

2. Mean Girls Is Amanda Seyfriend’s Best Work, So Says Amanda Seyfried

Yesterday I basically raved about Amanda Seyfried, and she’s already in the news again; this time for telling IndieWire the film that she considers her best work.

I’ve just worked a long time. I’ve gotten a lot of cool opportunities here and there and I’ve made some good choices with the help of my amazing team…. I still look back at ‘Mean Girls’ as my best work.

I guess that I need to watch Mean Girls again.

via FlipBoard for iOS

3. Django Unchained Tied To Pulp Fiction

Now this is cool. Apparently Quentin Tarantino links his films together in little, pretty unnoticeable ways. Christopher Walken’s character in Pulp Fiction is a descendant to a gang member named in Django Unchained. It’s very interesting, and of course something that Tarantino would do.

via FlipBoard for iOS

4. Miley Cyrus Eats Pizza, Gets Sick

Honestly I’m slightly biased because I have a strong distaste for “Hannah Montana”; Miley Cyrus’s use of my name led to me being teased a lot by my friends. Some people outright called me “Hannah”, others who knew my nickname “Tanner” called me “Tannah Montana”, and it’s been very irritating.

So as far as I’m concerned, Cyrus getting sick from eating pizza is definitely news. Normally I don’t like to hear that people get sick, but in this case it’s awesome.

via @cambio on Twitter

5. Steve Wozniak Hates The Steve Jobs Movie (So Far)

Any Apple fan could have told you that the trailer for jOBS looks to be inaccurate, but no one has more authority than Steve Wozniak himself. So what does Wozniak have to say?

“Admin”, Studio Briefing:

in two emails to the Gizmodo tech site, has pronounced it “Totally wrong.” In fact, he said, he was “embarrassed” by the entire clip. What actually happened in real life, he said, is that he had been “inspired by the values of the Homebrew Computer Club” to build an affordable computer. “Steve J. wasn’t around and didn’t attend the club,” he pointed out. “Steve came from selling surplus parts at HalTed [and] always saw a way to make a quick buck off my designs.” As for how he himself was portrayed in the film by Josh Gad: “I never looked like a professional. We were both kids. Our relationship was so different than what was portrayed. … I never wore a tie back then. I wore blue jeans and the same style blue button-up shirt every day of my life.”

Not surprising at all. Tap or click here (YouTube link) to watch the clip in question.

via IMDb

6. Android Redefines Feature Phones

Preston de Guise, unsane.info:

Android is going into two entirely different markets when it comes to mobile phones. There’s the area everyone focuses on – smartphones. That’s where people get confused over number of phones sold vs web usage coming from the phones. Then there’s the other market – the market where the cheaper Android phones are going head to head against the feature phones.

And this is why Android’s market share means next to nothing. Android is a smartphone OS, but that doesn’t mean the phones it powers are deserving of the title.

I’d wager that if you were to remove the people who only use their Android phone to make phone calls and txt friends, the iPhone would have a higher share if the smartphone market than Android phones. But that’s just my guess.

7. Rumor: The Next iPad (5th Gen) To Look Like iPad mini

I use both a 5th gen iPad and an iPad mini; in fact at this moment I’m using the two side-by-side. It’s honestly disgusting how much better the iPad mini looks. It’s solid. It’s beautiful. It f***ing glistens in the light.

Apple should be ashamed that the iPad mini — which costs $170 less than the 5th gen iPad — looks so much better in comparison. If the 5th gen iPad doesn’t take design cues from the iPad mini, it will be a tragedy.

This rumor had better come to fruition.

via FlipBoard for iOS

8. Men Commit More Research Fraud Than Women

Now this is interesting albeit maybe unsurprising. Apparently, of researchers who commit fraud of one sort or another, 2/3 are men.

I say that this is “maybe unsurprising” because, while I don’t know the numbers, I’m guessing that male researchers outweigh female researchers. If A) there are more male researchers than female researchers, and B) we assume that each gender is equally ethical, then C) females would likely commit an equal amount of fraud as males.

Of course I have no proof of my above guess, so take it as the speculation that it is.

via @dougcoulson on Twitter

9. Apple Terminates Relationship With Chinese Manufacturer Because Of Underage Labor

Apple fired Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics — one of its suppliers — for employing underage kids. Good for Apple.

I’m surprised that the headline of the original article doesn’t read “Apple Responsible For Layoffs In China”.

via FlipBoard for iOS

10. Paying For Articles

Despite me writing basically for free, I’ve long held the belief that writers deserve to be paid for their work. This stuff isn’t easy; it’s a job, paid or otherwise. My mom classifies blogging for yourself as an internship, which is a good way to think about it. I’m not getting paid but I am gaining experience and learning something new every day.

But even internships are considered “work”, and internships do lead to paying gigs in the future. Or so they should.

Some of my favorite blogs are written by writers who go unpaid. These are people who pour their heart out into onto the web sometimes every single day, putting in an hour or two or three, and receive nothing in return except satisfaction. Last I checked, satisfaction alone doesn’t pay a single bill, which is kind of unfortunate.

Some writers have a large enough audience where they can plaster ads on their site and make at least a little bit of money in ad revenue. That’s all fine and well, however the problem that I see is that our readers become a product that we’re selling to advertisers, which isn’t cool. If I’m going to earn money, I should be selling my articles, not selling you.

Unfortunately that isn’t reality, and sometime in the near term (1-2 years) ads will go up on unkommon.net, at least until I’m comfortable asking you to pay for my articles. I’m hoping that I never lose sight of my goal which is to make money in an honest fashion.

To remind me of my goal I do outright pay for some of my news, The Magazine and Matter. Those two publications are very good, and the reason they are very good is that they have to be worth paying for. With ad-based compensation, we only need to be good enough to drive traffic. If we’re asking you to pay us, our work better be outright fantastic otherwise you’ll go elsewhere.

If you’re a regular reader, and you spend four minutes on my blog every day of the week (in the future when I write more) on average, that’s two hours of entertainment that I’m giving you each month. The cost of a two hour movie in theaters is $10. Now, the cost of movies is overpriced, so if we’re comparing just time of entertainment, this blog probably deserves $4 each month from each daily reader.

Obviously I’m not good enough to ask $4 each month from anybody yet, but when I am good enough, that’s probably going to be what I ask to read articles here. Just a multi-year heads up. ;-) In the interim you should pay for other articles that are worth paying for; don’t be intimidated, trust me, those articles will usually be better than anything ad-based. Because they have to be.