In 2010, Patrick and John Collison, brothers from rural Ireland, began to debug this process. Their company, Stripe Inc., built software that businesses could plug into websites and apps to instantly connect with credit card and banking systems and receive payments. The product was a hit with Silicon Valley startups. Businesses such as Lyft, Facebook, DoorDash, and thousands that aspired to be like them turned Stripe into the financial backbone of their operations.

This is a great read. They have done exceptionally well in a cut-throat business.

There’s a lot of excitement these days about the new APFS filesystem coming from Apple. I’m certainly excited about it; some of the promised features sound great. However, I’m going to make a bold suggestion: Don’t convert your production startup disk to APFS this Fall. Wait for the new filesystem to get some more mileage before making the switch. HFS+ is still a supported configuration for High Sierra, and sticking with the tried-and-true filesystem may save a lot of headaches and wasted time.

Mike is the founder of Bombich Software, the makers of Carbon Copy Cloner, so he knows a lot about file systems.

At BlackPods, we’ve developed a proprietary coating system specifically for Apple’s AirPods. Our three-phase finishing procedure utilizes the latest in solvent-based painting technology to yield a luxurious finish that exceeds U.S. Military specifications. Every pair of customized AirPods we produce is hand-finished by a team of skilled artisans. Whether you purchase them through us or send yours in, each pair of AirPods is subjected to a rigorous visual and quality inspection.

BlackPods sells their AirPods in two colors: BlackPods Classic (high-gloss black), and BlackPods Stealth (matte black). BlackPods Classic are available for $279, and BlackPods Stealth are available for $299. Both finishes include free domestic shipping. BlackPods also allows its customers to mail in their own AirPods for customization– $99 for high-gloss black and $119 for matte black.

Use promo code THELOOP at checkout for $20 off anything in our store.

The battle between Benchmark Capital and Travis Kalanick just went nuclear, with the venture capital firm suing the former Uber CEO for fraud, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty. The complaint was filed earlier today in Delaware Chancery Court.

Oh boy.

Blue Apron posted mixed results for the quarter, but I think the CEO has the right outlook as he deals with pressure from Amazon:

But CEO Matthew Salzberg told CNBC that the grocery market is far from a “winner-take-all” battle between grocers, Blue Apron and Amazon.

“We admire Amazon as a company, and we take them seriously, big or small,” Salzberg said. “That being said, we are competing in a competitive and large market. … We think about ourselves very differently, I think, than Amazon thinks about themselves.”

That’s exactly right and a good way to look at the market. It’s easy to assume that he’s saying that because the quarter wasn’t great, but it is true.

Then, just as I was about to leave the dictionary’s Web site, I noticed something new: next to the earliest known year that a word appears in print—for “alembicated,” 1786—Merriam-Webster now offers a link to a list of all the other words that were first used in the same year. The feature is called Time Traveler…

That is so great.

Walt Disney Co. is ending its film distribution agreement with Netflix for new releases in one of the boldest moves a traditional studio has taken against the leading digital platform.

The Burbank company instead will launch a new Disney-branded direct-to-consumer streaming service in 2019. The decision represents a major shift in strategy for Disney, which for years has worked with Netflix to distribute its content — including hit films and original television shows.

No, Disney, I don’t want another streaming service. I get the company has a lot of hits, but damn, the number of streaming services is getting ridiculous.

Glen Campbell, the indelible voice behind 21 Top 40 hits including “Rhinestone Cowboy,” “Wichita Lineman” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” died Tuesday. He was 81. A rep for Universal Music Group, Campbell’s record label, confirmed the singer’s death to Rolling Stone. During a career that spanned six decades, Campbell sold over 45 million records. In 1968, one of his biggest years, he outsold the Beatles.

So sad. Much respect, Glen.

Julian Assange has offered a job to the employee that Google fired for writing the memo on gender differences.

James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote the note, confirmed his dismissal in an email, saying that he had been fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” He said he’s “currently exploring all possible legal remedies.”

I think he’ll have a really difficult time finding another job in Silicon Valley.

After decades of selling products—and knowing exactly what people are buying, and when they are buying it—Amazon has started cutting out the middle-man by selling self-produced items. Through its AmazonBasics house brand, it sells all sorts of small items, from iPhone chargers, to batteries, power strips—even foam rollers, backpacks and washcloths. It’s the sort of stuff that you might not be too brand loyal over—who really minds whether it’s a Duracell or a Panasonic battery? Amazon sees that a product is selling well, and may decide to work with manufacturers to make the product itself—it’s a tactic that is already worrying vendors, and can’t bode well for partnerships in the long run. But those are the obvious instances. Now, Amazon is selling products across a wide array of categories, using a host of brands that do not exist outside the confines of amazon.com and do not make it clear that they are Amazon-made products.

This is a common business practice and it’s smart too. I remember one oil company in Canada that would look at what it spent the most money on each year and then either buy the company or do it themselves. Each year, more money stayed within the confines of the main company.

Co-creator and co-executive producer Ben Winston and series executive producer and co-showrunner Eric Pankowski spoke with Billboard about the series that’s set to launch on Apple Music. They called it “A Celebration of the Joy of Music.” I get that.

I was a bit worried about the future of this show, but I’m looking forward to seeing these episodes. At least Apple finally stopped pimping Pharrell, so we won’t have to deal with him.

Female characters appear in superhero comics less often than males — but when they are included, how are they depicted?

I thought there would be a lot of people that would like to read this.

[Via Khoi]

I use Apple Music every single day, so I see all of the good and bad parts of the service. I also get to see the significant improvements Apple has made over time, and while there is still work to be done, the service is getting much better. […]

Apple says to “tag #ShotoniPhone to take part.” This has been a great campaign for Apple and being on Instagram will only make it more widespread.

From Revolver:

It all started as a joke. The Sword guitarist Kyle Shutt was smoking weed and talking with his bandmates about how absurd it is that every group that plays slow riffs or evokes feelings of dread get labeled “doom,” even if they sound nothing like pioneers of the genre: Black Sabbath, Pentagram Saint Vitus, Cathedral.

“Man, what if we did a heavy metal Pink Floyd cover band, called it Doom Side of the Moon, and did doom versions of Floyd songs!” he quipped.

Great idea and it turned out really good. You can listen to the album on Apple Music.

Thanks to last week’s inadvertent release of an unredacted build of HomePod’s version of iOS, we know some things that we didn’t know before. One of those things is that the new edge-to-edge iPhone is codenamed D22, and that the OS explicitly supports an iPhone display with hardware resolution of 2436 × 1125 pixels.

I love these resolution articles that Gruber does.

I do like The Rock. These are are kind of fun.

67 new emojis have been listed as “draft candidates” for inclusion in the 2018 emoji set, including softball, mango, salt shaker, and a variation of the much-loved pile of poo emoji.

I’ll admit, I laughed.

[Via MacRumors]

Amber Rudd (The UK Home Secretary) has said “real people” do not want secure end-to-end encryption on messaging services.

In response, Renate Samson Chief Executive of Big Brother Watch said:

“Suggesting that people don’t really want security from their online services is frankly insulting, what of those in society who are in dangerous or vulnerable situations, let alone those of us who simply want to protect our communications from breach, hack or cybercrime,” she said.

She’s making an argument that fits her agenda. I don’t believe for a minute that people want less security on anything, especially these days.

Costly cyber attacks are having a bigger impact on corporate earnings and are becoming a fact of life for companies as Oreo cookie maker Mondelez, drug maker Merck and others said that a destructive “worm” attack in the last week of the second quarter disrupted operations.

It’s not just the immediate fallout of an attack that hits companies, it’s the earnings too.

iMore has once again put together a transcript of today’s Apple earnings conference call with analysts. If you don’t get a chance to listen to the call, it’s always worthwhile to read Tim’s comments.

Apple on Tuesday posted quarterly revenue of $45 billion, which is up from the $42.4 billion reported in the year-ago quarter. […]

Now you can gain even more valuable feedback by inviting up to 10,000 users to beta test your apps before you release them on the App Store.

That’s great.

Ben Bajarin:

The key behavior usages between both assistants is not a surprise since Google is, and will always be, better than Siri at searching the web. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s data and they will do that better than anyone. Therefore their AI agent will always be the best at search. The challenge we have today with consumer sentiment around Siri is with its weakness for general Internet search. If consumers do this regularly and want to use a voice assistant for searching and general information queries, Siri is not going to beat Google. Apple’s challenge is to help consumers understand the jobs where Siri is best.

I agree with Ben with everything in this article. My problem is that I tried to use Siri to schedule appointments and do some of the life duties that it’s supposedly so good at. The problem is, it didn’t work that well, and when something doesn’t work well, I stop using it. That’s what happened with Siri for me.

The new Siri could be the most amazing assistant at managing my life that AI has ever seen, but I’ve lost so much confidence in using it, that I may never find out. Instead of fighting with Siri to get something done, I’ll just manually add an appointment or reminder myself.

My most used Siri command these days is: “Set a timer for 5 minutes.”

Siri does that really well.

“As most of you have probably heard by now, there has been a cyber incident directed at the company which has resulted in some stolen proprietary information, including some of our programming,” HBO Chairman Richard Plepler wrote in a message … Continued

I haven’t had a chance to use these amps, but it looks really nice. Fender has some of the most iconic amps ever made, so if you’re looking for a way to try out some digital models, you should take a look at these.

Some of these episodes look pretty good.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled late on Friday that iPhone 4 and 4S users can pursue nationwide class action claims that Apple intentionally “broke” FaceTime to save money from routing calls through servers owned by Akamai Technologies Inc.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Times change, technology moves forward.

A steeper-than-expected drop in quarterly profit rattled some Amazon.com investors, but Wall Street analysts remained largely bullish about the company’s aggressive spending plans.

This remains one of the most amazing trends in the tech industry. No matter what happens to Amazon, analysts stay bullish. Any other company would be trying to explain that everything is okay, but Amazon gets a free pass every quarter.