Jason Snell:

In any event, I don’t recommend that podcasters use SoundCloud. There are better options, including Libsyn and Podbean, that do the job much better than the podcasting features that are grafted onto SoundCloud.

That’s just awful. I use Libsyn for The Dalrymple Report and have never had a problem.

Below are some of the webspam insights we gathered in 2015, including trends we’ve seen, what we’re doing to fight spam and protect against those trends, and how we’re working with you to make the web better.

Some interesting information in here.

“Our goal has always been to try to create objects as beautiful as they are functional,” Ive told a group of assembled journalists. Ive is one of the Apple-sponsored fundraiser’s four hosts, along with Vogue’s Anna Wintour, pop megastar Taylor Swift, and actor Idris Elba.

This is why Apple designs are so good—beauty and function take equal parts in their products.

A Brazilian judge ordered wireless phone carriers to block access to Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp for 72 hours throughout Latin America’s largest country starting Monday afternoon, the second such incident against the popular messaging application in five months.

The decision by the judge in the northeastern state of Sergipe applies to the five main wireless operators in Brazil. The reason for the order is not known due to legal secrecy in an ongoing case in the Sergipe state court.

We have sponsorships available in May on The Loop. If you want to get your product or service in front of the fine readers of The Loop, get in touch and let’s work it out.

Innovative solution, but it must freak you out when you’re driving.

I haven’t tried this yet, but it sure sounds cool.

A well done new support site from Apple for its products.

Today I Found Out:

Gary Gygax (pronounced GHEE-Gax) was an insurance underwriter living in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in the late 1960s. He made his living calculating the probabilities that an individual seeking to buy insurance would become sick or disabled or die, and he used these estimates to set the premiums and payouts on the policies he reviewed. Every policy was like a roll of the dice: If Gygax calculated correctly, the individual received sufficient coverage at a fair price, and the insurance company had a good shot at earning a fair profit. If he was incorrect, either the individual or the insurance company would lose.

In Gygax’s free time, he loved to roll dice of a different sort: He played war games in his home with fellow members of a club called the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association.

Many of us have a soft spot for Dungeons and Dragons, even if we don’t play it anymore and I always like reading stories about how it came to be. FYI, I was a 200lbs Dwarven Fighter-Thief with a drinking problem and a hatred of any humans over 6ft tall. Caused all kinds of problems. I still have my D&D dice.

“The next claim we hear is that we underpay compared to subscription services such as Spotify. But that argument confuses two different services: music subscriptions that cost £10 a month versus ad-supported music videos. It’s like comparing what a black cab driver earns from fares to what they earn showing ads in their taxi.”

This is a very interesting battle.

Some of these are very clever, indeed.

Rovi Corp, a provider of digital television guides, said on Friday it would buy video recorder pioneer TiVo Inc in a $1.1 billion deal that brings together two video software players with deep patent portfolios.

I could never figure out why TiVo, a company that everyone seems to love, could never do better in the market.

iMore:

The iPhone dominates Apple’s product sales and its balance sheet. And like a star exerting gravitational influence over its planets, many aspects of Apple’s business are perturbed by the existence of the iPhone.

When Apple reports its results, the iPhone stands center stage. When iPhone sales slip, as they did last quarter, the entire company is questioned. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the rest of Apple’s business, most notably the Mac and the iPad.

Remove the iPhone and iron out the seasonality, and what you see is a remarkably stable, successful business.

As some of we lonely voices in the wilderness keep trying to point out, Apple is a remarkably successful company even without huge iPhone sales numbers (and keep in mind, last quarter’s iPhone numbers, while lower than what Wall St wanted, are still on par with Apple’s most successful ones) and in particular when you keep in mind where Apple has come from. It really brings to the fore the fact that Apple Inc is completely different from AAPL.

But Icahn, who owned 45.8 million Apple shares at the end of last year, said China’s economic slowdown and worries about how China could become more prohibitive in doing business triggered his decision to exit his position entirely.

“We no longer have a position in Apple. Tim Cook did a great job. I called him this morning to tell him that and he was a little sorry, obviously. But I told him it’s a great company,” Icahn said. “In Apple today as opposed to six months or a year ago, in this one, there’s no need for activism because I think they have a great management. But you worry a little bit, maybe more than a little, about China’s attitude.”

Probably the best news Apple has had in a while.

Ten years ago, we launched Google Translate. Our goal was to break language barriers and to make the world more accessible. Since then we’ve grown from supporting two languages to 103, and from hundreds of users to hundreds of millions. And just like anyone’s first 10 years, we’ve learned to see and understand, talk, listen, have a conversation, write, and lean on friends for help.

I think we’ve all used Google Translate over the years.

“We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of a young and talented coworker. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies go out to his family and friends, including the many people he worked with here at Apple.”

I can definitely relate.

My wife and I have a Windows laptop in our kitchen. First we were asked politely if we were interested in upgrading to Windows 10. Then we were reminded repeatedly. And, ultimately, we woke up one morning to see our machine taking matters into its own hands, whistling silently, while it upgraded us to what it knew we really needed.

Lauren Goode, writing (and filming) for The Verge, walks you through the differences between Siri and Alexa, Alexa being the voice of the Amazon ecosystem, most notably found on the Amazon Echo.

Watch the video below to get a sense of Alexa in action. Nice side-by-side effect there, Lauren.

David Pierce, writing for Wired:

It’s a beautifully designed two-pound, half-inch-thick slab of aluminum. The 12-inch, 2304×1440 screen feels small, even compared to a 13-inch laptop, but the panel is spectacular. The trackpad is of course wonderful, even if Force Touch is pointless and you’ll instantly forget it even exists. The keyboard … well, the keyboard takes some getting used to. It’s shallow and light, almost like typing on a touchscreen. But you get used to it, and it’s a usable full-sized keyboard. The speaker gets impressively loud, though it does rumble through the chassis. The low-res webcam sucks. Generally, the MacBook is a laptop. It’s not a crazy convertible hybrid fold-y thing. It’s a laptop.

And:

A few things have changed, though. You’ll only see one: the new don’t-call-it-pink rose gold color. Personally, I love it. The smooth, matte finish is clean, quiet, and somehow calming. You might hate it. (Lots of people at WIRED hate it.) No worries. You can also get it in gold, silver, and space gray. Pick your favorite.

And:

My typical workflow is masochistic: 30 tabs open in two windows, one of which I forget about. I also keep Slack, and TweetDeck, and Evernote, and maybe Word running. Last year’s MacBook faltered under the load, but this one does just fine. It’s still too slow to play anything more intensive than Badland (and it could barely handle Badland) or open Photoshop in a reasonable amount of time. But that doesn’t matter to me, and it doesn’t matter to most people.

The review makes me want one, but it also makes me long for an update to the retina MacBook Pro.

Two videos, taken by truck drivers as they make their way around the campus.

Time Magazine:

Photography company Getty Images is accusing Google of scraping images from third party websites and encouraging piracy, adding a new wrinkle to the Mountain View, Calif.’s ongoing legal battles in Europe.

In its complaint to the European Union’s antitrust commission, Getty says Google Images, which displays full-screen slideshows of high-resolution copyrighted images, has hurt the stock agency’s licensing business as well as content creators worldwide. Google first introduced the feature in Jan. 2013. Previously, the search engine only displayed tiny thumbnails of images.

And:

Getty argues that since image consumption is immediate, “there is little impetus to view the image on the original source site” once it’s seen in high resolution on Google. By making these images available to download, Google has “also promoted piracy, resulting in widespread copyright infringement, turning users into accidental pirates,” Getty claims.

On this date in 2003, Steve Jobs rolled out the iTunes Music Store. This is a good take on how it evolved over the years.

Economic Times:

A government panel has recommended exempting Apple from mandatory local sourcing norms, a move which would pave the way for Apple to open single-brand retail stores in the country.

To qualify for this exemption, a company’s product line must qualify as cutting edge technology. In order for a foreign company to own a business in India, they must seek permission if their stake is higher than 49%. This is in addition to the local sourcing exemption for products.

There are currently no Apple Stores in India, so this is an important step.