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Motorola announced on Friday it will close its Fort Worth, Texas manufacturing plant by the end of the year. The factory opened in September 2013.

Damn, things are bad are Moto.

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Vox:

Over the last few months, the cost of coffee has risen dramatically. Since January, the average price of coffee futures on commodity markets has increased by more than 50 percent.

It’s taken a while for this to be reflected in the retail price of coffee, because roasters generally have a few months’ stock of beans on hand. But we’re finally beginning to see slight increases in retail prices of coffee too.

So what are the causes of this recent price increase?

Oh, this is going to suck.

. Liveleak:

It’s amazing how these motorists don’t even notice the cyclist. There were a number of near misses but in the end they got him.

Car drivers, please keep a eye out for those of us who ride on two wheels and give us a break. Thanks to Dan Frakes on Twitter for the link.

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S.B.LattinDesign:

If your kitchen drawers are anything like ours, you never have the right measuring implement for the recipe you’re tackling. Keep this chart on hand, and the next time you find yourself asking “How many…” you’ll know just what to do.

While most of the world has gone metric, there are still a lot (at least here in North America) of measurements that are “Old School”. This would make a handy poster to hang in your kitchen to help with various unit conversions.

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The Verge:

Milan-based coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring has teamed up with Mini’s design team to build a truly spectacular one-off, electric-powered concept roadster that somehow manages to meld the classic British design with sleek Italian looks.

The so-called Mini Touring Superleggera Vision will almost certainly never see the roads in this form, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fall in love with the design.

I’ve always been a fan of Mini Coopers (even if I’d never buy one) but this one? I’d love be able to buy. Sadly, it’s a one-off. Make sure you watch the very cool video too.

Sad, but like Mike said, it was in that awkward stage where you have to be willing to devote more time and resources to it or shut it down.

One of the best RSS readers ever.

What Beats brings to Apple are guys with very rare skills. People like this aren’t born every day. They’re very rare. They really get music deeply. So we get an infusion in Apple of some great talent.

We get a subscription music service that we believe is the first subscription service that really got it right. They had the insight early on to know how important human curation is. That technology by itself wasn’t enough — that it was the marriage of the two that would really be great and produce a feeling in people that we want to produce. They’ve also built an incredible premium headphone business that’s been tuned by experts and critical ears. We’re fans of that. It’s a reasonable-size business that’s fast-growing.

But mostly, backing up — it’s because we always are future-focused. So it’s not what Apple and Beats are doing today. It’s what we believe pairing the two together can produce for the future.

Talent, music service, and the future.

From AppleInsider:

With Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference coming up next week, pundits are speculating on hardware the company may introduce in its first major media gathering of the year. One well-informed analyst believes the stars of the show will be a cheaper iMac and maybe an 8GB iPhone 5s.

Apple’s history in music began with selling Macs to musicians. That remains important to us today, but we also bring music to hundreds of millions of customers with iTunes, which is at the forefront of the digital music revolution. Music holds a special place in our hearts at Apple, and we know that we can make an even bigger contribution to something that is so important to our society. That’s why we have kept investing in music and why we’re bringing together these extraordinary teams — so we can continue to create the most innovative music products and services in the world.

“The whole idea of MacTech Conference is to allow members of the Apple community to meet and exchange ideas,” says Edward Marczak, Conference Chair and Executive Editor of MacTech Magazine. “This will be spurred on by presentations from some of the best and well-known experts in the community.”

This is the conference’s 5th year.

Apple on Wednesday said it agreed to acquire Beats Music and Beats Electronics for $3 billion. As part of the acquisition, Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will join Apple. […]

Amazon is pathetic in this respect. The company always comes out with statements about how many Kindles they sold, but provide nothing to back it up. The press is partly responsible for letting them get away with it, but you can’t claim that news coverage is unfair if you’re not willing to comment.

Kirk McElhearn walks through the various steps of optimizing the position of your computer speakers. Much of this was new to me, good stuff to know for anyone with any kind of speakers, whether they be for a computer, TV, or for your home recording studio.

Maybe it’s just me, but I always like seeing what new blogging tools are available. Like a lot of things in technology, sometimes it’s the fresh faces that do things right.

Take a listen to the samples and you’ll see how important microphone choice and placement is to your sound.

Led Zeppelin have released a new video for a previously-unheard version of their classic 1969 single ‘Whole Lotta Love’ – watch it above.

We’ve become aware of some unauthorized access to our systems and internal company data and we wanted to let you know the steps we’re taking in response. As soon as we were aware of this issue we immediately launched an investigation. Information security and data protection are of great importance to us at Spotify and that is why I’m posting today.

Our evidence shows that only one Spotify user’s data has been accessed and this did not include any password, financial or payment information. We have contacted this one individual. Based on our findings, we are not aware of any increased risk to users as a result of this incident.

Interestingly, it’s only Android users that will have to take any steps here. No action is required for iOS or Windows Phone users.

Now this is great news. I’ll be there, but having the video available for everyone is great.

The new version of PCalc for iOS now shares the same core calculator code as PCalc 4 on OS X. There are a lot of updated features in this release.

Pixelmator 3.2 Sandstone features an all-new Repair Tool. Redeveloped from the inside-out, the new Repair Tool is built on breakthrough technologies that enable the removal of unwanted objects or image imperfections with an unsurpassed level of quality and precision. The new version also brings 16-bits per channel support to the Mac. With 16-bits per channel support, you have more color data to work with and greatly reduce the risk of color banding. In addition, with Lock Layers you can simply lock certain layers to protect their content from any further changes so that you can freely edit the rest of your composition.

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Wirecutter:

Readers often want to know: Why don’t they ever seem to get our recommendation? In general, it’s a price vs. performance issue, and often they don’t measure up to their competition. But there are a lot of specific reasons, too. So, to better address the frequently asked questions of Beats by Dre, we thought we’d talk you through each model, what you might be looking for when you first consider it, and then why we’d put our hard-earned cash somewhere else.

Some great advice here about the various alternatives if you don’t want to buy Beats.

Brett Howse from AnandTech takes you on an enlightening tour of the backup process/options. Reading this is like reading one of the camera reviews on DPReview.com. A lot of detail, can’t help but learn as you read.

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Wired:

On Sunday, Formula One fans will plunk themselves in front of their TVs to watch the Monaco Grand Prix. If you’re not planning on doing the same, you should be.

The Monaco Grand Prix is the greatest race in all of motorsport. It has everything: yachts, champagne, supermodels, royalty, parties, not to mention one of the world’s most historic racetracks that’s built to generate exciting moments.

Here’s why you should be watching when the green flag drops on Sunday at 7:30 AM EST.

I will respectfully disagree with my friend, Jordan Golson of Wired, when he says Monaco is the “greatest” race but it is fun to watch – especially as a companion race to Sunday’s Indianapolis 500.

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Vox:

If you live in the United States or Canada and stay up late enough tonight, you might see something pretty cool: a brand-new, relatively big meteor shower.

Starting at around 2 a.m. EDT, the Earth will pass through a stream of rocks and dust emitted by a recently-discovered comet. This debris won’t pose any danger — because it will burn up as it enters our atmosphere — but it’s projected to produce somewhere between 100 and 400 meteors per hour.

For those of you lucky enough to be in an area where you can see this, I’d encourage you to grab a blanket, get outside to some place dark and enjoy the show.

. Nik Fletcher:

The 10 hours in a metal tube between London and San Francisco provide for some great thinking space. The flights to and from WWDC last year as every year offered plenty of time to take stock of where things are, what could be, and on the way back what it all means. With all the focus on iOS 7’s new aesthetic, understandably the “iOS 7-only” mantra was top of everyone’s minds. But as I sat in sessions eagerly watching talks about all the new technologies on iOS, something bigger struck me. Something that’s taken almost a full year to fully analyse.

A long but interesting read from the point of view of a guy who really knows what he’s talking about.

A very extensive list from The Wirecutter.

My thanks to Mighty Deals for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. If you’re looking for a little logo inspiration, this Mighty Deal has your name on it! The ultimate Logo Mockup & Design Kit includes 70 retro logo templates, as well as 50+ photo-realistic logo mockups. These high-quality vector files, from Cruizine Design, are fully customizable and a snap to use. In no time at all, you can change up the color, size, shape or details and have yourself a professional logo, banner, sign or promotional piece for your latest project! And speaking of promotions, act now and you can save more than 75% off the regular price!

One of the best things I’ve ever done is move all of my writing to Markdown. If you don’t know it yet, learn. It’s quite easy to grasp.

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