I hate people that keep inviting me to play games on Facebook. STOP IT! This may be the best article on the Internet.

Amazon, under fire in much of the literary community for energetically discouraging customers from buying books from the publisher Hachette, has abruptly escalated the battle.

The retailer began refusing orders late Thursday for coming Hachette books, including J.K. Rowling’s new novel. The paperback edition of Brad Stone’s “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — is suddenly listed as “unavailable.”

You can see the photo captions by hovering.

[Via Michael Mulvey]

Who fucking knew there was such a thing.

You Could Be in Star Wars: Episode VII

Fantastic.

Om Malik:

It is irrational and it is crazy, but I am indeed that “guy” who lately has been fighting for the mayorship with that “girl” for the mayorship of that “coffee shop.” It is one of the primary reasons why I keep Foursquare app on the first screen of my iPhone.

I never understood this.

I enjoyed this. Easy-to-read and he gets to the point.

Algoriddim on Thursday released a new version of djay for iPhone and iPad. Like previous releases, djay has a number of cool features, but the one that stood out to me was Spotify integration. […]

“We recently fixed a server-side iMessage bug which was causing an issue for some users, and we have an additional bug fix in a future software update,” Apple told Re/code in a statement. “For users still experiencing an issue, please contact AppleCare.”

An annoying bug for a few people, but it was fixed.

Yet in its simple, two-trick-pony earphone gadget, LG seems to have delivered on the promise of its product packaging. No, the HeartRate Earphones don’t run apps, or tell the time, or respond to voice commands. But they play music and monitor your heart rate—ostensibly with a high degree of accuracy. And that’s all they need to do.

Sometimes doing one thing, and doing it well, is all it takes.

Apple’s environmental initiatives VP, Lisa Jackson, discusses the challenges the tech giant faced when trying to be green.

“Nest is being run independently from the rest of Google, with a separate management team, brand and culture,” he said in an emailed statement. “For example, Nest has a paid-for business model, while Google has generally had an ads-supported business model. We have nothing against ads — after all Nest does lots of advertising. We just don’t think ads are right for the Nest user experience.”

I really like Nest CEO Tony Fadell. It’s not him I don’t trust, it’s the Google bosses.

While Samsung sold the most handsets, Apple remained the top vendor of U.S. smartphones, claiming 37 percent of smartphones sold outside of the variety of Android and Windows Mobile licensees that Counterpoint analyzed.

Apple accounted for the largest share of smartphones for three of the top four U.S. mobile carriers: 52 percent at AT&T, 51 percent at Verizon Wireless, and 36 percent at Sprint, while taking the second place spot behind Samsung on the more value-oriented T-Mobile/Metro PCS with 24 percent.

The Beard Bash is back for 2014, bigger and better than ever. This year we’re partnering with AltConf to bring the first AltBeard Bash to be held June 3, 2014 from 7-11 at the Children’s Creativity Museum at Moscone, 221 4th St, San Francisco.

The latest version of Facebook for iOS and Android automatically recognizes the song you’re listening to or TV show you’re watching and adds it to your status. The Shazam-like feature is called “audio recognition,” and starts listening as soon as you start typing a new status.

I wonder what this will do to Shazam. Facebook has a lot of users that will use the new feature by default.

EBay Inc. operator of the online-auction site, asked users to change their passwords after a cyber-attack exposed a database with login information and data such as birthdays and phone numbers.

There’s no evidence of unauthorized activity resulting from the breach, EBay said today in a statement. While credit-card numbers are stored separately and encrypted, it’s still best to change passwords, the company said.

Go change them now.

Ben’s been a friend of mine for a long time. I still don’t get the product though.

Those who expressed concern about Google’s acquisition of Nest may have have been right: the company has told the Securities and Exchange Commission that it may choose to serve ads on “refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities.”

You are the product with this creepy company.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and Executive Vice President Stephen Elop decided that the product in development wasn’t different enough from rivals and probably wouldn’t be a hit, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans weren’t public. Engineers had been working on the device and had planned to unveil it as early as today at an event in New York, two of the people said.

I can’t imagine how bad it would be using apps on a mini version of the Surface. It was probably a smart idea to kill that.

Very interesting article from Benedict Evans.

Samsung lost an appeal in the Netherlands over its infringement of Apple’s bounce-back patent, resulting in a broad injunction against selling accused devices and all other infringing devices that Samsung has introduced or will introduce.

This is what should happen to stealing scumbags. What’s wrong with the U.S.?

Nile Rodgers has a lot of hits under his belt.

Looking at the Surface Pro 3, you have to say that it is better than previous versions of the tablet. However, no one wanted the previous tablet and I don’t see anything that’s changed in the new version to change that. Microsoft put the Surface Pro 3 up against the MacBook Air, but it’s hardware partners aren’t that stupid—they know Microsoft is going after them too.

Apple updated iWork for iCloud on Tuesday that adds a number of new features including:

I hate to be a “Downer Dave” here, but this still does tell me what I can do with it. It doesn’t reach out to me.

Samsung said that Apple were “jihadist” and that this was “Apple’s Vietnam.” Samsung is fucking crazy.

Jim and Dan return to have a deep analysis of beats, music subscription technology, music discovery, a list of people Jim will destroy, Apple settling with Samsung and Google, iMessages SMS issues, and more.

In a joint filing late Monday, the two companies blamed each other for the failure of the talks initiated on May 5 by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division.

Good. Sue those copying scumbags into the ground.

I’m going to need to think about this one for a bit. I use services from both companies, but I’m not sure how they fit together.