Last night, President Obama claimed—again—that Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Problem is, that probably isn’t true. Greg Mankiw explained why that is—nearly five years ago:

Another piece of the puzzle is that Mr. Buffett’s tax burden is larger than it first appears, because he is a major shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway.

When the C.B.O. studies the tax burden, it includes all federal taxes, including individual income taxes, payroll taxes and corporate income taxes. In its analysis, payroll taxes are borne by workers, and corporate taxes by the owners of capital. For the richest 1 percent of the population, 9.3 percentage points of their 31.1 percent tax rate comes from the taxes that corporations have paid on their behalf. The corporate tax would undoubtedly loom large if the C.B.O. were to calculate Mr. Buffett’s effective tax rate.

Ross Douthat on the president’s State of the Union address:

The more serious peril, though, has to do with policy rather than politics. A campaign narrative premised on more places this administration on a collision course not just with the Republican Party, but with budgetary arithmetic itself.

Thanks to MindNode for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed.

MindNode is an elegant, easy-to-use mind mapping tool for Mac and iOS. Whether you’re brainstorming for your next project, organizing your life, or planning your vacation, MindNode lets you collect, structure, and expand your ideas. And thanks to built-in Dropbox and WiFi sharing, even your biggest ideas can go anywhere your iPhone does.

MindNode is easy mind mapping for your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Try out Mindnode Pro and MindNode touch today!

Tom Goldstein says that the Supreme Court’s United States v. Jones ruling did not mean a warrant is required to track individuals with GPS:

Here is the upshot. Five Justices join the holding of the “majority” opinion (per Scalia) that by attaching and monitoring a GPS device the police conduct a “search”; four Justices (those in the Alito concurrence) reject that view. Five Justices join or express their agreement with the portion of the “Alito” opinion concluding that the long-term monitoring of a GPS device violates a reasonable expectation of privacy; four Justices (those in the majority, minus Sotomayor) leave that question open.

That alignment of Justices importantly leaves two questions unanswered. First, does the “search” caused by installing a GPS device require a warrant? The answer may be no, given that no member of the Court squarely concludes it does and four members of the Court (those who join the Alito concurrence) do not believe it constitutes a search at all.

Second, assuming no warrant is required for installation, is a warrant required for short-term monitoring of the GPS device? Again, the answer may be no, as the majority conspicuously avoids addressing this issue and four members of the Court (again, those who join the Alito concurrence) squarely say that the answer is “no” (Alito op. at 13). Justice Sotomayor alone says that this scenario “will require particular attention.”

(Via .)

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that tracking someone’s vehicle using GPS is a search under the Fourth Amendment, and thus requires a warrant. Antonin Scalia wrote:

“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search’ ” under the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, Scalia wrote.

That it took the Supreme Court to decide that placing a GPS tracking device on someone’s car—for a month—should require a warrant is a statement to just how bad a state we are in.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on a similar (and more egregious case) in 2010, where the DEA not only tracked a person’s car without a warrant, but trespassed on his property to place it on his car. They ruled in favor of the government.

Thorstein Heins, RIM’s new CEO:

“At the time, the company was growing but still acting as a startup,” said Heins. “But startup processes don’t scale. Every company goes through that phase. I had the opportunity to learn about RIM here. I don’t think that there is a drastic change needed. We are evolving our tactics and processes. I don’t feel that I was held back in any way to do what I needed to do.”

I see that re-arranging the deck chairs is a popular pastime at RIM.

Evi is a new app for iPhone and Android that’s similar to Siri, except it can do more. Evi can answer questions about how to make a certain dish, who was president during a certain time period, and other kinds of questions that Siri would kick you off to a web search for.

If you don’t have an iPhone 4S but want Siri-like functionality, you’ll want to check it out.

Seth Godin on how to become untrusted as a writer by using your influence as currency with others:

The problem occurs when the trading of favors become mercenary, when alert individuals start manipulating the system for personal gain. Suddenly, every favor is suspect, measured and not at all generous. Suddenly all the likes and links and blurbs become nothing but currency, not the honest appraisals of people we can trust. It means that bystanders have trouble telling the difference between honest approval and the mere mutual shilling of traded favors.

This kind of writing is only valuable insofar as it’s honest. That’s the most important part. Without it, it’s worthless.

David Wineman:

Apple is trying to establish a rule that whatever I create with this application, if I sell it, I have to give them a cut. And iBooks Author is free, so this arrangement sounds pretty reasonable.

Watts Martin responds:

So Apple’s “audacity” is that they’ve created a snazzy creation tool that, from all appearances, only works with their viewers. Wineman is correct in that it’s the license, not the technology, that prevents you from taking a .ibooks file and selling it somewhere other than Apple’s store. But you don’t have much reason to sell something this thing creates outside Apple’s store, ’cause it ain’t gonna be creating those snazzy multimedia books for your Kindle Fire.

The new version of xScope is out, and if you’re a designer of any kind, you’ll want to get it. I did.

Brad Plumer has a great overview of SOPA and PIPA and why they’re so dangerous. Here’s one reason:

The bills allow sites to be taken down without legal oversight. As Public Knowledge has pointed out, one little-noticed provision in both PIPA and SOPA would grant Internet service providers broad immunity if they voluntarily block perfectly innocent users or Web sites from the Internet. Copyright holders like the movie and record industries could draw up sweeping lists of sites they didn’t like (even sites that should be protected under fair use) and pressure Internet service providers to take action. As long as the providers could claim they were acting “in good faith,” those sites and users could be blocked without any oversight by the courts — all because Hollywood was feeling a bit vindictive.

Big thanks to the guys at Literature and Latte for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed. Scrivener is one of those Mac applications that feels very Mac-like to me—the geeky, made precisely for this kind of user because we are that user, kind of application. When I first became a Mac user in 2005, that’s what struck me most about it: the people making software for it did so because they really love the Mac, have some functionality they want to build for themselves in particular, and they want to do so in a way that honors what the Mac is all about. That’s still what I love about the Mac, and it’s something completely unique to it.

Scrivener is exactly that kind of application. If you’re a writer, or write decently long papers for school, take a look at Scrivener. They’ve built an application that’s for writers.

Writing a book or research paper is about more than hammering away at the keys until it’s done. Research, shuffling index cards to find that elusive structure – most software is only fired up after much of the hard work is completed.

Enter Scrivener, a content-generation tool that lets you compose and structure long and difficult documents based on material from multiple sources. Adopted by novelists, screenwriters, journalists, lawyers and academics alike, the program allows users to split the editor and view documents, PDF files, multimedia and other research materials next to each other. A virtual corkboard and outliner help with structuring or providing an overview of the draft. Collate, read and edit related text without affecting its place in the whole using Scrivener’s Collections feature. Close out the world in Full Screen mode. And when you’re finished, export to e-readers or the most popular word processing programs for submission.

Available for Mac OS X and Windows at Literature and Latte.

Dustin Curtis:

As they were hyper-focused on improving and slowly evolving their products, they lost sight of their market as it went through a massive revolution. It doesn’t matter how good you are at evolutionary iteration; no amount of evolution will make up for a revolution.

I don’t think it’s that simple in this case. While Kodak moved slower than other companies on digital cameras, they didn’t move that slow—they introduced their line of point-and-shoot digital cameras in 2001, and became the top-selling brand of digital cameras in the U.S. in 2005.

The problem was that as the camera business shifted from film to digital cameras, it lost what made it a profitable business—film. Companies could sell their cameras at attractive prices and then make a lot of money on higher-margin film. But there is no film for digital cameras, and digital cameras became a commodities business, which meant very low profit margins. Consumer digital cameras simply aren’t a very good business.

But wait! Kodak could have out-innovated their competition, made dramatically better digital cameras, and then charge higher margins. That only works, though, if the other option isn’t already good enough—which digital cameras very quickly became. For most people, the difference between eight and five megapixels or a much better lens were negligible, because all they wanted was an affordable camera that took decent photos.

Kodak’s real problem was not that they didn’t move quickly enough or innovate enough in digital cameras. Their problem was that they were in the digital cameras business, which had little future.

(Via Marcelo Somers.)

Susan Cain on the “rise of the new groupthink”:

To harness the energy that fuels both these drives, we need to move beyond the New Groupthink and embrace a more nuanced approach to creativity and learning. Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach children to work with others, but also to work on their own for sustained periods of time. And we must recognize that introverts like Steve Wozniak need extra quiet and privacy to do their best work.

She points out that American businesses, classrooms and religious organizations are moving toward open, “collaborative” set-ups, where individuals work in public areas exposed to everyone else, and students work almost entirely in groups. She argues that not only is this ineffective in increasing productivity and creativity, but it’s worse than the much-derided cubicle set-up.

Being exposed to your co-workers and their different ideas certainly is a good thing for creativity, but that doesn’t mean locking everyone up in public is a good idea. In this case, because a little is good doesn’t mean a lot is even better. Cain links introvert personalities to creativity, and argues that introverts need solitude to produce great work, but we all need it. Everyone needs their own space, where they know they’re alone and can focus on what they need to without interruption, a place they can always go to when they need it.

Cain’s suggestion—for private spaces along with public spaces—is precisely right. When Pixar built their new building, they gave ample room for each person to have their own space, that they controlled and could do what they wanted with. But Steve Jobs also insisted that the building be designed in such a way that people have no choice but to bump into each other:

“The philosophy behind this design is that it’s good to put the most important function at the heart of the building,” Catmull said. “Well, what’s our most important function? It’s the interaction of our employees. That’s why Steve put a big empty space there. He wanted to create an open area for people to always be talking to each other.”

Jobs realized, however, that it wasn’t enough to simply create a space: he needed to make people go there. As he saw it, the main challenge for Pixar was getting its different cultures to work together, forcing the computer geeks and cartoonists to collaborate. (John Lasseter, the chief creative officer at Pixar, describes the equation this way: “Technology inspires art, and art challenges the technology.”) In typical fashion, Jobs saw this as a design problem. He began with the mailboxes, which he shifted to the atrium. Then he moved the meeting rooms to the center of the building, followed by the cafeteria and the coffee bar and the gift shop. But that still wasn’t enough; Jobs insisted that the architects locate the only set of bathrooms in the atrium. (He was later forced to compromise on this detail.)

In a 2008 conversation, Brad Bird, the director of “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille,” said, “The atrium initially might seem like a waste of space…. But Steve realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen.”

That’s the ideal, where people have their own space, but naturally run into different people they would otherwise never talk to.

(Via Tyler Cowen.)

Ford intends on using web services to make their cars more efficient:

McGee believes the computing power available on the Internet will allow cars to become smarter. Last spring, at the annual Google I/O conference in San Francisco, McGee announced a deal to use the search giant’s prediction algorithms—online software that analyzes large data sets to spot trends. Ford’s idea is to send data from your car to Google’s data centers, which would then predict where you are headed every time you key the ignition. Google might predict, say, that there’s a 59.24 percent chance you’re headed over to Bob’s house. A hybrid car might use a map of low-emission zones to determine when to switch to battery power as you drive. Or the algorithm could pick a fuel-efficient path with few hills, no rain, and the least traffic.

“Fuel optimization depends on the topography, traffic patterns, and how a customer drives their car,” says McGee. “The cloud will allow us to use these three data points that historically were not aligned in real time.”

This is all talk, of course, but it’s a very good idea. One of the biggest jumps we can make this century in innovation and efficiency is capturing all of the data we never have before, and use it to make better decisions. When we drive a particular place, we all have a route we feel to be the most efficient way to get there. While it might really be the most efficient, we don’t have a good way to verify it. We base that mostly on our own intuition, rather than actual data.

Individually, these changes might not mean much to us. A few seconds, a small fraction of a gallon less gas (or of battery capacity), and a bit less emissions. But in the aggregate, those small amounts add up.

There’s bigger gains to be had, too, if we move toward autonomous cars. Imagine fleets of autonomous cars-for-rent that, when you request one in an app, it shows up to your house in minutes, ready to take you wherever you need to go. If that becomes reality, and it’s affordable, there’s little need for families to own multiple cars, because most of their needs can be handled by a rented car. That reduces the number of cars on the road, which means less emissions, less congestion, and more open parking spaces.

(Via Rebecca Rosen.)