Why do we celebrate Labor Day?
Labor Day was promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, who organized the first parade in New York City. After the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago on May 4, 1886, U.S. President Grover Cleveland feared that commemorating Labor Day on May 1 could become an opportunity to commemorate the affair. Therefore, in 1887, the United States holiday was established in September to support the Labor Day that the Knights favored.
When you really look into history at the origins of major holidays and other traditions, you usually find something terrible.
Bragi’s Dash, the wireless earbuds of our dreams, aren’t up and running yet
They were originally funded by nearly 16,000 Kickstarter backers to the tune of $3.4 million, but have since missed successive shipment dates, with their promised arrival pushed back from November of last year to sometime this August. And, they’ve been delayed again.
Kickstarter is a way for you to pre-order stuff that doesn’t actually exist yet. Unfortunately, much of the stuff that you spend money on either won’t ever ship, or will ship way after the deadline. In some cases, other similar products might even hit the market first.
Before you back a Kickstarter project you should make sure that it’s really a legitimate company — some large or established companies, like Pebble, will use Kickstarter as a pre-order platform for something that they are definitely going to launch. Many of these good companies are backed by VC money and are only using the platform to get their order count right.
It’s just one of those things you really need to be careful about. Don’t throw your money away.
Premium Android hits the wall: the Q2 2015 smartphone scorecard
The TL:DR: high-end Android OEMs had a terrible second quarter. The smartphone business generally grew less quickly than for a couple of years as China stagnated overall. But not for Apple; by contrast, it grew strongly. Samsung’s Galaxy S6 did not impress the punters. LG’s G4 sold less well than apparently the company hoped. Sony had a torrid time. HTC then redefined torrid. Premium Android has a real, immediate problem.
The Android phone makers are trying to mimic Apple by not allowing storage upgrades or removable batteries in the hopes that customers will pay a lot of money for more internal storage. In doing so they are removing the only real advantage they have over Apple. And since on the high end the premium Android phones cost the same as an iPhone, the only selling point they have left is that they aren’t Apple.
And then there is the flood of Android security holes we keep learning about…
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Previous Thoughts You Might Have Missed:
- Tuesday: Microsoft is Trying Really Hard to Shoot Themselves in the Foot
- Monday: The Best Upgrade for Your Surface Pro 3 is the SP4 Keyboard
- Saturday: First Impressions of the Apple TV: Lots of Entering Passwords Using the Remote
- Friday: Soon, Windows 10 Will Be Automatically Pushed Through Windows Update
- Monday: The Emperor Has No Clothes and Nobody Cares