News you need to know
Investigation unveils poor conditions in Apple factories, Tim Cook is 'deeply offended' by allegations
A BBC investigation showed poor conditions in a Pegatron factory that Apple uses, with workers falling asleep on the job from the amount of overtime they are required to perform.
Tim Cook said he is disappointed by the allegations and that it couldn't be "further from the truth" as Apple works hard in China for equality and is transparent about progress.
Sony hackers made a terrorist threat on movie theaters showing "The Interview"
Earlier this week, Sony's hackers made a terrorist threat against theaters showing "The Interview." Sony caved into pressure from theaters and canceled the movie entirely.
Now the US government has named North Korea as the attacker but Obama is "disappointed" that the studio bowed to threats and cancelled the film. Snapchat was also caught up in the leaks this week.
Facebook now automatically improves your photos
Because robots are better at telling if your photos are bad than you are, I guess. You can disable it per-photo or entirely in the settings.
Must reads
The pilots of Instagram: beautiful views from the cockpit, violating rules of the air
It turns out that pilots are just like you or I and when they see a beautiful view, they pull out their iPhone and take a picture of it... except they do it while they're flying planes full of people. Now that they've been caught, they're getting super annoyed that someone wrote about it.
What I learned about pricing while being stuck in traffic
Some great advice on why you should always offer three levels of pricing, no matter if you're a startup trying to figure out how to price your product or a freelancer trying to sell your services. The secret is upselling.
The state of consumer technology at the end of 2014
Here's a great, deep look at the state of consumer tech as this year comes to a close. Will it move into wearables next, or something bigger?
NASA’s $349 million monument to its drift
It's sad that NASA's funding has been cut to the point we might not go to Mars anytime soon, but did you know it spent $349 million to build a testing platform that will never be used and they knew it wouldn't be almost from the beginning?
5 life lessons from 5 years of traveling the world
Some great insights in this piece on how traveling the world can give you more perspective, make your more comfortable in yourself and more.
Trending Products
Bebo is back, but this time it's a crazy messenger app
Bebo, the popular social network that fell apart after being purchased by AOL, is back but not how you might expect. It's now a crazy, hashtag-filled messenger app that does far more than you'd expect. It's a pretty fun new take on messaging; worth checking out.
Other newsletters I've been enjoying
As the year comes to a close, I wanted to quickly recommend some other newsletters I've been enjoying lately: Jon Russell's Tech in Asia, Atomic Product Design Weekly, Benedict Evans' week in mobile, Product Hunt's daily top startups (sign up to PH to get them) and Nuzzel App's daily news roundup from Twitter.
Missed anything cool? Let me know!
Sponsors
If you know (or own) a cool business that wants to reach a bunch of great readers and may be interested in financially backing this newsletter in 2015, get in touch with me on hi@owened.co.nz. I'd love to talk about what we could do together!
