Link roundup

1. Interesting article on the history of China's Bayi Rockets, the military-sponsored basketball team that got into the big fight with Georgetown. Once dominant, the team couldn't adapt to changing rules:

From its outset, the CBA had allowed teams to import two foreign players, including retreads from the NBA, as a way to expose Chinese players to better competition. The exception was Bayi, which remained all-Chinese. It would have been embarrassing for the army team to import foreign mercenaries. Yet as better foreigners began arriving, Bayi began to struggle, which was more embarrassing. The league tried to give it special protection: Any team playing Bayi had to limit the playing time for foreign stars.

2. I enjoyed Brian Lam's ridiculous article about Steve Jobs. Its subtitle is "Regrets of An Asshole", but he: (1) timed the publishing of the article to benefit from Jobs's death; (2) goes to great pains to brag that Steve Jobs thought he was really talented; and (3) blames much of the iPhone 4 fiasco on coworkers, especially the people still at Gawker media ("I probably should have quit right after the first story was published for several different reasons. I didn't know how to say that without throwing my team under the bus, so I didn't.").

3. And speaking of articles on Steve Jobs, here's Robin Hanson discussing Jobs and signaling.