Things from my Google Reader; 2016 Part I

It’s been an exceptionally long-time since Our Man posted a “Things from my Google Reader”, so here’s a bumper edition.  Hopefully, the wait will not be so long in the future!

- The Spy Behind the Plane that Saved Britain 
In the skies over Britain in 1940 the Spitfire turned the tide against the Nazis, but only a handful of people knew that it owed its edge to secrets cribbed from Germany.  (Clive Irving, the Daily Beast)

- The FBI vs FIFA 
Football is the world’s game, and it wasn’t exactly a secret that FIFA, the governing body, was corrupt.  Yet, it took the Americans to get the sport to start to clean up its act – maybe we should start calling it ‘soccer’ out of gratitude!   Just kidding!  But here’s ESPN with the in-depth story about how the FBI brought down FIFA! (Shaun Assael & Brett Forrest, with Vivek Chaudhary, at ESPN)

- What the iPhone has done to cameras is completely insane 
 File this one under things you know, but are still stunning to see (especially in graphical form).  How badly do you think camera sales fell, following the iPhone’s introduction in 2007?  Roberto Ferdman looks into it, and it’s uglier than you thought (well, uglier than OM thought at least).  (Roberto Ferdman, Washington Post).

- Taxi, Uber and Lyft usage in NYC 
The TLC provides regular usage data, and Todd Schneider made life easier by collating it all and taking a look.  You know what to expect, but seeing it in graphical form always helps confirm things; Uber up, taxis down, Lyft still trying.   (Todd W. Schneider, at his eponymous blog)

- Will self-driving cars lead to grade-separated cities? 
What will real self-driving cars (think more the Google version than the fake Tesla version) mean for cities?  Well, the folks at MIT’s Sensable City Lab had a look at the future of traffic lights, and predict their days may be numbered.

BREXIT 
 It’s been the biggest thing in Our Man’s homeland since sliced bread, and though the world hasn’t (yet) ended it’s certainly been shaken up.  Rest assured, Our Man has lots of thoughts on Brexit and related things, but you’re likely to be saved from most of them (though Our Man probably won’t be able to resist writing one post, and no more, on the subject).   In the meantime, here are some of the few things Our Man has actually found worth reading on Brexit (and related things) in the aftermath.

- Calm Down: The Brexit Result is not a 21st-centurySarajevo 
For those worrying about Armageddon, hopefully reading this helps you back away from the ledge.  (David McWilliams, Irish Independent)

- Evolution not Revolution 
While newspapers & politicians want to talk about about immigration, the date indicates it was 'sovereignty' that drove the Leave vote.   Ideally, this should inform the British negotiations, and the Adam Smith Institute make the case for the EEA option.  (Adam Smith Institute)

- The 2.8million Non-voters who Delivered Brexit 
An interesting analysis of where the polling went wrong (spoiler alert: turnout models) and the large cohort of ‘new’ voters that it largely missed.  Ascertaining who they are isn’t the hard part, but what do they want and will they vote again is much harder?   Secretary Clinton better hope that Donald Trump isn’t as successful at finding them.  (Matt Singh, Bloomberg…though he’s normally found at the excellent Number Cruncher Politics) 

- Brexit: A disaster decades in the making 
You do not have to agree with the author’s viewpoint (that it’s a disaster) to appreciate that there’s some really good stuff in here about the long-term issues that led to the lack of trust/faith/etc in the establishment (and both major political parties). (Gary Younge, Guardian)

- How Remain Failed: the inside story of a doomed campaign
- How David Cameron blew it 
It wouldn’t be a political campaign, without the post-mortems…after all mistakes were made and there's more than enough blame to go around!  (Rafael Behr, Guardian and a number of folks at Politico.eu, respectively)