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I loved reading this story by Kara Swisher profiling Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber. It takes guts and a lot of belief in your company to do what Kalanick did to get Uber off the ground.

This is an absolutely fascinating, and scary, story.

BFD Oblivion is an expansion for FXpansion’s BFD3, BFD Eco and BFD2 designed to provide ready-to-use heavy rock and metal drum sounds.

Sold! I like BFD.

io9:

A dropped penny won’t kill you, alcohol doesn’t keep you warm, and swallowed gum doesn’t take seven years to digest. These are just three of the more than fifty rumors debunked in this compendious collection of common myths and misconceptions.

We’ve all heard many of these. We might even believe some of them are not myths. But, according to these guys, they all are. I knew most of them weren’t true but got caught by the one about bananas.

A.V. Club:

H.R. Giger, the Swiss surrealist sculptor and painter who died earlier this year, is the subject of the new documentary Dark Star: H.R. Giger’s World. While the film is not available in the U.S. yet, a trailer is now online. The reclusive Giger was best known for his Academy Award-winning design contributions to the Alien franchise. This new documentary shares the last years of the artist’s life, and reveals how deeply he resided within his own dark artistic visions.

I’ve never enjoyed being creeped out more than when I see Giger’s wonderfully macabre art. I’d love to see this movie.

Much respect Sesame Street.

“Dollar for dollar, the Sound Blaster ROAR produces the best sound of any portable Bluetooth speaker I’ve heard.”

– Tom’s Guide

The compact Sound Blaster Roar boasts of two 1.5-inch high-frequency drivers, a dedicated 2.5-inch subwoofer, and a pair of side-firing passive radiators. Now, all these drivers will only sound as good as the music you play through them, and the Roar supports aptX and AAC over Bluetooth for high-quality audio streaming.

All this, while adding other features like NFC support, a USB port for charging, an integrated MP3 player through its microSD card slot that also allows you to record calls taken with the built-in speakerphone.

The Red Dot Design Award-winning Roar has received consistent 5-star reviews on Amazon since its launch. Now available at $149.99 via Creative.com and Amazon.com.

A very thoughtful post from Om Malik. I found myself nodding my head on more than one occasion while reading it.

The Roosevelts:

Using 80GB worth of photos captured by astronauts aboard the International Space Station between 2011 and 2014, timelapse filmmaker Guillaume Juin created this awe-inspiring video of the Earth entitled “Astronaut.” And thanks to the incredible cameras aboard the ISS, this footage rivals the best visual effects that Hollywood has to offer.

Mind blowing. Watch on the biggest screen you possibly can.

NPR:

America’s master clock is one of the most accurate clocks on the planet: an atomic clock that uses oscillations in the element cesium to count out 0.0000000000000001 second at a time. If the clock had been started 300 million years ago, before the age of dinosaurs began, it would still be keeping time — down to the second.

Try that with your fancy-schmancy Apple Watch.

TorrentFreak:

It may sound absurd, but taking a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night and sharing that online may be copyright infringement. The stance is confirmed by the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, who note the following on their website.

“Daytime views from the Eiffel Tower are rights-free. However, its various illuminations are subject to author’s rights as well as brand rights. Usage of these images is subject to prior request from the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel.”

A weird and little known quirk of copyright law. So, you can take and sell daytime shots of the Eiffel Tower to places like stock photography sites but not of the night time shots because the evening light show on the tower (which is quite lovely) is copyrighted.

Many thanks to Pixelmator for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed. Pixelmator for iPad is a powerful image editor that gives you everything you need to create, edit, and enhance your images. It lets you work seamlessly between Mac and iPad and even work effortlessly with Photoshop images. Packed with powerful creative tools and engineered to harness the full iOS and 64-bit architecture power, Pixelmator for iPad is a real image editor right at your fingertips.

I really like Unread on my iPhone. It’s all about gestures and swiping to navigate the app, which is a nice way to do an RSS reader. There’s an iPad version too—I bought both.

Quartz:

Language barriers in globalization are hardly a new issue. So why the sudden drive for polyglotism? It’s simple: As mobile operators and web giants try to expand their markets by bringing more people online, we have reached a tipping point where the imbalance of content on the internet has become too stark to avoid.

A lot of new changes for one of my favorite apps.

Gigaom:

Since GT Advanced Technologies declared bankruptcy in early October, the vast majority of documents detailing its deal with Apple to supply sapphire crystal have been under seal.

On Tuesday, Judge Henry Boroff issued an order unsealing an statement signed by GTAT CEO Daniel Squiller as well as its attached documents, which include details on the reasons GTAT filed for bankruptcy and its business relationship with Apple, its largest creditor. On Friday, the Squiller statement entered the public record.

There’s never been any doubt that Apple plays hard ball with its suppliers. I’ve spoken to many companies who have to deal with the company and the stories all have one thing in common – you don’t negotiate with Apple. They dictate the terms to you.

Jackie Gleason did a remarkable job playing Buford T Justice. I laughed out loud watching these quotes.

Talk about telling stories—CW McCall did it with this classic song. I can sing all of the lyrics of “Convoy,” including the CB parts.

I needed a good laugh today and this did it. We all hate spammers, so I have no sympathy for this guy.

Superior Drummer and EZDrummer are two of the best products on the market for people that want production-level drums in their songs. And Toontrack loves Metal!

Jim Croce is one of the great storytellers of our time. This is one of my favorites.

The Daily Dot:

If you were previously in denial that the Christmas season had already begun, the arrival of the annual Christmas ad from British retailer John Lewis is sure to dispel that belief.

They had me at “penguin”.

Macworld:

With the news that Microsoft is making all of its mobile Office apps free—the iPad and upcoming Android tablet versions—you knew there had to be some caveats.

I’m glad I don’t have to use Office any more but for those of you who do, my sympathies and this article will help you figure out this news.

EW:

Set in the high-stakes world of a live sports news program, the Aaron Sorkin-scribed dramedy followed the behind-the-scenes exploits of fictional “Sports Night” coanchors Casey (Peter Krause) and Dan (Josh Charles), their brilliant producer Dana (Felicity Huffman), harried associate producer Natalie (Sabrina Lloyd), gruff executive Isaac (Robert Guillaume), and whip-smart researcher Jeremy (Josh Malina).

Such a shame this show wasn’t a hit. While set in a sports world, it wasn’t specifically about sports but about the workplace and relationships much like Sorkin’s other shows. It also had amazing actors and Sorkin’s typical great writing.

Yahoo! News:

It’s mission accomplished for little green army men.

The molded plastic must-haves for generations of pretend soldiers were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame on Thursday, along with the 1980s stumper Rubik’s Cube, and soap bubbles.

Hard to argue with these choices. I loved my little green army men as a kid and still enjoy popping bubble wrap (although, I wouldn’t call it a “toy”). And even though I hated the Rubik’s Cube (I was never smart enough to solve it), it is undoubtedly a classic toy.

I have one of the older Satellite units and love it. I use it all the time, along with Universal Audio’s plug-ins when I record music.

Jim and Shawn talk Tim Cook, Surface Tablets as iPad stands, Dave Grohl and indie music

Sponsored by lynda.com (Start learning something new by visiting lynda.com/thebeard and get a FREE 7-day trial where you can access all of their 2,400+ courses).

Earlier today we posted news of new malware targeted at users in China. An Apple spokesperson sent this statement to me: […]

This struck me as a good list to bookmark. Enjoy.

Open Culture:

I still remember the thrill I felt when I happened upon a set of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories at an antique store. For a mere ten dollars, I acquired handsomely bound, suitably patina-of-age-bearing editions of each and every one of the sleuth of 221B Baker Street’s adventures that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote.

These days, especially given the recent ruling (just re-affirmed by the Supreme Court) that Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories “are no longer covered by United States copyright law and can be freely used by creators without paying any licensing fee to the Conan Doyle estate,” you can download the complete Sherlock Holmes canon in a variety of ebook formats, from PDF to ePub to ASCII to MOBI for Kindle.

At age 11, I received the complete works as a Christmas present from my grandmother. I devoured the stories before New Years and read them over and over again for years. I’m downloading this as we speak.