Randy Rhoads was such an incredible guitarist. The guitar comes in at about 19 seconds.

My thanks to Marketcircle for sponsoring The Loop with Daylite this week.

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It’s the Digital Artist’s Dream Bundle: Corel Painter 2017, AfterShot 3, ParticleShop, & Over 10 Hours of Corel-Approved Training.

The bundle would cost $768 is bought separately, but it’s on for $248.

I found Stephen Hackett’s account, and notes, of his training to be interesting.

Online room renting service Airbnb Inc said on Thursday it had raised $1 billion in its latest round of funding, valuing the company at $31 billion.

Investors clearly believe the company will overcome all of the issues its having with cities putting restrictions on rentals.

Gary Marcus, a research scientist who joined Uber four months ago as director of its AI labs, is leaving the company, according to sources. Uber bought Marcus’ startup, Geometric Intelligence, in December, using its 15 employees to form a new artificial intelligence unit.

No word on where he’s going, but I wondered if he’s going to Didi with the others.

Imagine reading a woman’s story about being denied a team reward because she’s in the female minority, or a story about a sexual harassment complaint being dismissed by an HR manager, and thinking, “That sounds about right.” Or reading a follow-up story in The New York Times about inappropriate groping at work parties and saying to yourself, “That’s not surprising.”

We have to be better than this.

Respect.

Didi, China’s largest ride-hail player, is getting serious about self-driving cars. The company, which acquired Uber’s China assets in August 2016, today is opening an artificial intelligence lab right in the backyard of many of its self-driving competitors in Mountain View, Calif.

They poached some good people from their competitors too.

Lamborghini is open to an all-electric addition to its line-up of luxury sports cars, its chief executive said on Wednesday, evidence that German parent Volkswagen’s interest in producing zero-emission vehicles could extend to the very top end of its brands.

I think it’s safe to say that all manufacturers are working on electric models, especially those owned by Volkswagen.

Seriously, how could you not like this.

Amazon has abandoned its legal battle to protect its Alexa assistant with First Amendment rights — for now at least. The company filed a motion against a police search warrant in an Arkansas murder case earlier this month, but has now dropped the case after the defendant agreed to hand over the data contained on his Echo speaker to police.

Clearly, this will come up again.

Stephen Hackett put together some links celebrating the eMate’s birthday. I’ll be honest, I forgot all about this product.

Porsche may offer an all-electric version of its Macan compact SUV and could turn models such as the iconic 911 into hybrids, its sales chief said on Tuesday, amid a push by parent company Volkswagen to move on from dieselgate.

I understand this is where the industry is going, but there’s just something about the roar of a Porsche engine that gets my heart pumping.

A pair of $250,000 autonomous buses began driving around an empty San Francisco Bay Area parking lot on Monday, preparing to move onto a local public road in California’s first pilot program for a self-driving vehicle without steering wheel or human operator.

I’m not convinced the technology is ready yet, but okay.

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Whether you’re a sales team, real estate firm, or lawyer, Daylite can help you win more business and get more done.

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WWDC Scholarships reward talented students and STEM organization members with the opportunity to attend this year’s conference. Developers selected for a scholarship will receive a WWDC17 ticket and lodging free of charge.

Instructions for submitting your application are on Apple’s Web site.

The guitar, strings, amp, and even the picks all have a part to play in how comfortable you feel playing guitar. I’ve used these picks for over a decade now. They are strong enough to do pinch harmonics and I can get a good grip on them. I bet I have hundreds of them in my guitar room.

The Wood Works plug-in for UAD-2 and Apollo interfaces gives you exceptional studio microphone sound from any piezo-equipped acoustic guitar. Now you can easily track multi-dimensional acoustic tones in real time — even in situations that would challenge physical microphones.

Oh my, this looks incredible.

Like many people I’m using Apple’s Airport base stations (I’m running two of them) in my home to provide wireless coverage. Again, like many people covering all the areas that I need a signal has proven to be difficult, so I started looking for solutions—the one I’m considering strongly is Google Wifi. […]

Spotify this afternoon announced that it has hit a new milestone, reaching a total of 50 million paying subscribers. That’s up from 40 million in September, suggesting Spotify is growing at a rapid pace despite the surging popularity of Apple Music.

I wonder where all of these people are coming from. Are the Tidal and Pandora users or are they new users that have never used streaming services before? Clearly, there’s still a lot of growth in the streaming business.

Spotify is preparing to launch a lossless audio version of its streaming service, according to multiple sources. The offering, which is currently called Spotify Hi-Fi, will offer lossless CD-quality audio to users — similar to what Tidal offers in its Hi-Fi service.

I’m interested to see what the response will be to this service. Lossless isn’t something Apple ever seemed to be keen to offer users, but they may be forced into it if Spotify’s becomes popular.

The Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) team was debugging an issue causing the S3 billing system to progress more slowly than expected. At 9:37AM PST, an authorized S3 team member using an established playbook executed a command which was intended to remove a small number of servers for one of the S3 subsystems that is used by the S3 billing process. Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the command was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed than intended. The servers that were inadvertently removed supported two other S3 subsystems.

It’s good that Amazon got to the bottom of this and let all of its customers know exactly what happened.

A federal appeals court has thrown out a jury verdict that had originally required Apple Inc to pay $533 million to Smartflash LLC, a technology developer and licenser that claimed Apple’s iTunes software infringed its data storage patents.

Not only did they win the appeal, the judge said the patents should have been ruled invalid.

Uber Technologies Inc Chief Executive Travis Kalanick on Tuesday said it was time for him to “grow up” and get help after a video was published showing him getting into an argument with a driver for the ride service who complained about pay rates.

Uber has certainly been in the hot seat of late.

This is truly one of those Apple Pencil accessories you never knew you needed until you see it in action. No more hunting for lost lightning caps, that pesky charging cap stays put, even when plugged in. No more rolling away from you when you set it down or storage difficulties, the custom pen clip keeps your Apple Pencil in place on the table and in the pocket. And no more slippery fingers, the leather grip provides a sturdy tactile feel while letting you be as precise as you want.

I do love Pad & Quill’s products.

Try naming an iconic Canadian designer. You can’t? Here are three: Allan Fleming, who created the Canadian National Railway logo. Georges Huel, the guy behind the symbol for the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal. And Burton Kramer, whose work includes branding the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

I’m embarrassed to say, but I couldn’t have named three designers.

I attended Apple’s shareholder meeting in the company’s Cupertino, Calif. headquarters this morning as a member of the media. Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the meeting and received a standing ovation before giving a few brief remarks, including a look at next year’s meeting. […]

April 7-9, Ellefson Coffee Co., the boutique Coffee brand of Grammy-Winning Megadeth bassist David Ellefson will hold a GRAND OPENING for its first brick and mortar ELLEFSON COFFEE CO shop in David’s hometown of Jackson, MN. In addition to Ellefson himself, who will be in attendance, the event will be co-hosted by special guest comedian, and THAT METAL SHOW co-host, Don Jamieson.

I have to order some of this coffee. The blend names are amazing.

Today, we’re continuing our commitment to give you more options to diversify and expand your library of games with Xbox Game Pass, a new gaming subscription service coming later this spring. Xbox Game Pass gives you unlimited access to over 100 Xbox One and backward compatible Xbox 360 games – all for $9.99 per month.

I’m betting this will be popular.