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Did Herman Cain’s 999 Plan come from SimCity? →

Long before Cain was running for president and getting attention for his 999 plan, the residents of SimCity 4 — which was released in 2003 — were living under a system where the default tax rate was 9 percent for commercial taxes, 9 percent for industrial taxes and 9 percent for residential taxes. (That is, of course, if you didn’t use the cheat codes to get unlimited money and avoid taxes altogether.)

Pokémon, SimCity… Where will this end?

/via

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Twitter can now censor tweets in certain countries →

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

Money wins. Sadly.

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Tim Cook responds to New York Times’ article on worker conditions →

Team,

As a company and as individuals, we are defined by our values. Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple’s values today, and I’d like to address this with you directly. We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It’s not who we are.

Baby steps are real steps too.

Can’t wait to see where Apple takes this. They were criticized heavily for the materials used in their computers, and now they’ve significantly upped their focus on environmental efforts.

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“Right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.” →

“You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards,” said a current Apple executive.

“And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”

How about you started focusing as much on improving labor practices that you do on bringing great design to people?

That war chest Apple is sitting on would do well by being spent on building their own factories that adhere to the high standards they demand from their workers in Cupertino.

I know the world is complex, but I don’t see how Apple couldn’t tackle the problems that are outlined in this article by thinking different about the way products are built.

That could be Tim Cook’s most significant contribution as the new CEO to the way Apple works.

(On a side note, it’s articles like these that make New York Times the only newspaper I have ever paid real, hard money for subscribing to.)

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