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Let me make this crystal clear, every App purchase you make on Google Play gives the developer your name, suburb and email address with no indication that this information is actually being transferred.

Tesla Motors’ CEO has gone on the offensive following a damning review of its new Model S sedan in the New York Times, and says the reviewer is lying.

Jim and Dan discuss recent Apple news.

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Dave Caolo:

Imagine that Apple isn’t specifically designing a watch, but the next step in its portable devices. Something that does much of what iOS devices do today, only in a novel way, and is smaller than current devices.

Some great thoughts.

CNET:

The magic of physics can turn the mundane into something marvelous. Mark French, a mechanical engineering professor at Purdue University, designed a supersonic air-powered ping-pong ball cannon.

A ping-pong ball reportedly blasts out of the special cannon at speeds equivalent to Mach 1.23 — nearly as fast as an F-16 fighter jet. As evidenced in the video below, the high-speed ball can put a clean hole through a plywood paddle, a VHS tape, and other objects.

How to make science cool – destroy stuff!

Cult of Mac put together some of Jefferies analyst Peter Misek’s predictions over the past couple of years. How does this man still have a job?

TreeHugger:

The recent death of John E Karlin of Bell Labs, the father of the push-button phone and other innovations, has sparked a lot of reminiscing about land line phones. According to the New York Times, Karlin was also “the most hated man in America” for killing the named exchanges (like Butterfield 8). However the story of how our phone numbers got to be the way they are is a much longer and more interesting one.

Fascinating story of the history of phone numbers.

Ten tips from Techhive on how to get the best battery life out of your mobile devices.

Co.Exist:

San Francisco’s Bay Bridge is the dollar store version of the famed Golden Gate Bridge. Before the Bay Bridge closes down this summer for final touches on the new, safer eastern span, the bridge is getting gussied up by artist Leo Villareal, who is individually programming 25,000 white LED lights to generate an endless series of sparkling patterns across the structure.

“Bay Lights”…will be the world’s largest light sculpture upon its completion in March.

The utilitarian Bay Bridge is the ugly stepchild of San Francisco bridges, always coming up short in comparison to the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge. Hopefully this project isn’t just putting lipstick on a pig.

First Alicia Keys is named creative director of BlackBerry, now Justin Timberlake is the creative director for Bud Lite Platinum.

I’d be pissed if I was a real creative director.

Eric Slivka posted the transcript on MacRumors. Definitely worth reading.

While not a main talking point of the interview, [Samsung Executive Vice President David] Eun told All Things D’s Kara Swisher that he saw the seemingly endless legal struggle as “a loss” for innovation in the fast-moving tech industry.

Translation:

We are very upset that Apple is focused on the lawsuits and not releasing more amazing products that we can blatantly steal.

USAToday:

PepsiCo on Monday announced it is rolling out “a new way to do mornings” with Kickstart, a fruit-flavored Mountain Dew beverage.

“Our consumers told us they are looking for an alternative to traditional morning beverages – one that tastes great, includes real fruit juice and has just the right amount of kick to help them start their days,” said Greg Lyons, Mountain Dew’s vice president of marketing.

Kickstart has far less caffeine than energy drinks — 92 milligrams for a 16-ounce can. By comparison, a 16-ounce cup of Starbucks coffee has 330 milligrams of caffeine.

Does anyone really want a “morning beverage” that tastes like “Mountain Dew and fruit juice” that has even less caffeine than their coffee?

Gadling:

Chinese New Year is the one time of year when everyone returns to their home villages to see family members and it’s been called the largest annual human migration in the world.

Some Chinese who can’t get train or plane tickets find creative ways to get home for the holiday. China Daily reports that one adventurous soul took a scenic route home, using “48 buses, a ferry, a free ride and his own feet to carry him 660km to his home town.”

You think traveling around the US is hard at Thanksgiving? It’s a cakewalk compared to the insanity in China this time of year.

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Why do I think this will backfire.

Nicely done.

Note that you have to opt-in and change the settings yourself. I’ve been enjoying ADN.

Laughing Squid:

In the Brazilian town of Santo Antônio da Platina, spiders known as Anelosimus eximius were shot by Erick Reis as they showered the sky. Marta Fischer, a local biologist, is quoted at G1 as saying (translated), “…They are usually in trees during the day and in the late afternoon and early evening construct a sort of sheet webs, each makes his and then they come together. The goal is to capture insects.” She also says this phenomenon is normal.

Normal? NORMAL!? There’s nothing “normal” about thousands of spiders just hanging around in the evening sky!

io9:

Like so many couples, the husband and wife in Timothy Reckart’s Oscar-nominated animated short Head Over Heels have drifted apart, not just emotionally, but gravitationally as well. They roam their flying house, one living on the ceiling, one living on the floor, each barely acknowledging the other’s existence. Then, one day, the husband tries to reconnect with his ceiling-dwelling wife, setting in motion a chain of events that radically alter their existence.

Have some tissues handy. Your eyes are going to leak.

Esquire:

Beer is made by way of science. So it makes sense that a beer’s vessel should be constructed through science, too. And it makes perfect sense that the top craft pale-ale seller in the nation Sierra Nevada, and cultish extreme-beer fiends Dogfish Head — two companies that have gone to great lengths to make science improve their brews — collaborated with German glassmakers Spiegelau to engineer a glass specifically for the drinking of IPAs.

Serious beer drinkers know the shape and style of glass you drink your beer from can affect the taste of the beer itself.

I’d like to thank Bare Bones Software for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week with BBEdit, an app that I’ve been using since 1994.

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DudeFoods:

What if I were to make a grilled cheese sandwich that used this cheese in place of bread? A grilled cheese sandwich that was 100% cheese!

I like cheese more than any mouse but even I think this “sandwich” is a heart attack starter kit.

The University of Queensland:

The first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Professor Thomas Parnell, began an experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties. The experiment demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar once used for waterproofing boats. At room temperature pitch feels solid – even brittle – and can easily be shattered with a blow from a hammer. It’s quite amazing then, to see that pitch at room temperature is actually fluid!

You’ve heard the term “slower than molasses”? Apparently, pitch is even slower. (thanks to @JennS79 for the link)

Rian van der Merwe:

[Dieter] Rams didn’t say that good design disappears completely. “As little design as possible” is not about making things invisible, it’s about “not burdening products with non-essentials”. It’s about making the right choices about what should be there, and what shouldn’t.

Great article.