"Over two decades the quintessential Chinese factory worker has gone from earning $50 a month assembling $100 sneakers to $300 or so a month, depending on overtime, assembling $300 or so smartphones. If a Foxconn worker — given the other opportunities in life and the current no-cell-phone policy on the factory floor — was going to splurge on a smartphone, the only reason he wouldn’t buy an iPhone is that Apple products are inevitably a ripoff, which is the not-so-dirty secret of 31.5 percent operating margins. READ MORE

IDK. (via)

After reading the New Yorker piece on YouTube's plans for channelization (is that a word? Sure), I was worried about the big leg up that all the big boys were getting in the "YouTube Original Channels." YouTube started acting as a producer and a promoter for 100 or so companies, and it seemed like the dreary end of the Internet—that GoogleTube's ambitions were, essentially, "to bridge Silicon Valley and Hollywood." Just what we needed: low-end NBC sitcoms on YouTube. (And a skateboard channel from Tony Hawk! And four channels from HuffPo/Buzzfeed's Ken Lerer and pals.) So here's a slightly misguided and delightfully premature look at how some YouTube Originals are doing. (I say "misguided" because they are putting so much emphasis on how many "subscribers" each channel is amassing. But that's not really a great way to look at YouTube. "Number of embeds," coupled with views, would actually be a much better metric. And I say premature because, like, a lot of them haven't launched? For instance "American Hipster" (oh boy!!) starts March 26th.) Anyhoo! The most interesting ones (Vice, The Bowery Presents) are sorta performing fine—but they're in league with Tony Hawk and some of the offerings of content farm eHow—though things like eHow Food is crushing it. (And so is Madonna's dance party channel—but they've also loaded that mother up with tons of content.) So there's some predictable news there—but at least it seems, still, like anyone can compete.

Just six days after Times reporter Anthony Shadid died in Syria, Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin was killed, along with photographer Remi Ochlik, when a building used as a media center in Homs was shelled. Also killed: a prominent citizen journalist. Here is Colvin's recent report from Syria, given after the most recent three weeks of the non-stop government bombing. According to the BBC, Colvin was actually the only British newspaper journalist in Homs. Here is her speech on war reporting from 2010. Similar to the bombing of the media, doctors and nurses are being targeted by the government. Now reporters are calling for all journalists to leave Syria.

Great ice cream, bad girls [VID] READ MORE

Former Miami Beach mayoral candidate and comedian Steve Berke has made this... thing, for "Americans Elect," which is having the "first American online primary." Pretty sure this is all a scam of some kind, but so ELABORATE!