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.

Wikipedia is an incredible resource. The problem is, many people treat it as gospel.

The open-access nature has “raised concern” among doctors about its reliability, as it is the sixth most popular site on the internet, the US authors of the research, published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association with the guide of joint pain treatment croydon, said.

Up to 70% of physicians and medical students use the tool, they say.

If Wikipedia was regularly vetted for mistakes, or had editing limited to trusted experts in specific fields, this might not be a problem.

They printed off the articles on 25 April 2012 to analyse, and discovered that 90% of the entries made statements that contradicted latest medical research.

To be fair, this doesn’t mean that 90% of the information is wrong. It means that there are a lot of errors mixed in with the good info. And let’s not forget that even the professionals get it wrong sometimes.

Point is, recognize that before you have a full-blown panic attack over something you read in Wikipedia, you might want to check with your doctor first.

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg kicked off the annual Code Conference by interviewing Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. I found the interview both fascinating and revealing. Fascinating because of the tidbits that Swisher and Mossberg crowbarred out of Nadella, and revealing in that I really didn’t get a sense of vision from Nadella. To me, he had a great opportunity to lay out his grand vision for his company, to pontificate a bit, but instead, he looked clenched, close-mouthed, and a bit uncomfortable. See the video below for the highlights.

I also enjoyed this article about Gwyneth Paltrow’s speech at Code.

Her topic — which she had talked about with Re/code earlier, as well — was the “objectification and dehumanization” of anonymous Internet comments. Or, she said, how it feels to be “a person in the culture that people want to harm.”

“We can momentarily anesthetize ourselves by focusing on someone else’s life, get a nice hot shot of schadenfreude and keep going, but how does this serve us?”

Yesterday, we posted about the wave of Find My iPhone ransom hacks reported in Australia. From the post:

There is conjecture that the hackers have access to some recently stolen eBay passwords and that the victims have the same password on both eBay and for their Apple ID. Regardless of whether this is true or not, this is a pointed example of why you should not reuse passwords.

This morning, Apple made a statement that lent some credence to the password reuse theory:

Apple takes security very seriously and iCloud was not compromised during this incident. Impacted users should change their Apple ID password as soon as possible and avoid using the same user name and password for multiple services. Any users who need additional help can contact AppleCare or visit their local Apple Retail Store.

Also, the ransom attack affected customers in New Zealand, Canada and the US, as well as in Australia.

AMC, perhaps best known for shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and The Walking Dead, has a new show about to hit the small screen. Halt and Catch Fire is a very loose adaptation of the founding of Compaq Computer, the first company to truly reverse engineer the IBM PC.

The pilot is available online and premieres this weekend.

But this post is really about the true story of a daring group of Texas Instruments employees who decided to take on IBM, at the time a hulking corporate behemoth that was as big a player as there was in the fledgling tech universe, with the hottest product as well.

Follow the link and you can listen to the story, told by Brian McCullough on the excellent Internet History Podcast, or read through the narrative, if that’s more your thing. An exciting tale, well told.

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.

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.

The Financial Times reported [paywall] that Apple will push for Jetsons style home automation in next week’s WWDC reveal. Whether or not there is any truth to this conjecture, the home automation/internet of things space is maturing rapidly.

One in five adult American internet users already has a device at home that connects the physical environment to the internet, according to a Forrester Research report (paywall) out last week. As many as two-thirds would install such a device if it helps cut energy bills (think Nest, the internet-connected thermostat recently acquired by Google) or improve security (like the Dropcam cameras that provide a live video feed from your home to your phone). And according to the grandly named State of the Smart Home (pdf, p.9) survey published recently by iControl Networks—a company that provides connected-home services to broadband providers—fully 40% of respondents think they will be able to send text messages to their home appliances within a couple of years.

Good read. Especially if Apple does have some home automation up its sleeves.

Used to be you could ask for a refund on an iOS or Mac app and still get updates for that app. This policy has changed. Sounds logical to me.

Sydney Morning Herald:

One iPhone user, a Fairfax Media employee in Sydney, said she was awoken at 4am on Tuesday to a loud “lost phone” message that said “Oleg Pliss” had hacked her phone. She was instructed to send $50 to a PayPal account to have it unlocked.

There is conjecture that the hackers have access to some recently stolen eBay passwords and that the victims have the same password on both eBay and for their Apple ID. Regardless of whether this is true or not, this is a pointed example of why you should not reuse passwords.

“It’s quite possible this is occurring by exploiting password reuse,” Mr Hunt said. “Regardless of how difficult someone believes a password is to guess, if it’s been compromised in another service and exposed in an unencrypted fashion, then it puts every other service where it has been reused at risk. Of course it also suggests that two-factor authentication was likely not used as the password alone wouldn’t have granted the attacker access to the iCloud account.”

Two-factor authentication is critical. If you have not set it up, here’s the place to start. [Via MacRumors]

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.

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.

My favorite part of this story is a callout from an interview the Wall Street Journal did a week or two ago:

WSJ: So you wouldn’t move the Clippers to Seattle?

Ballmer: If I get interested in the Clippers, it would be for Los Angeles. I don’t work anymore, so I have more geographic flexibility than I did a year, year-and-a half ago. Moving them anywhere else would be value destructive.

Like a nagging, loose tooth, I can’t seem to stop paying attention to Steve Ballmer.

What’s your verse? How do you use Apple devices to improve your life, tell your story?

In the latest update to this campaign, Apple adds two pages to their “your verse” site, one focused on classical composer Esa-Pekka Salonen and the second on traveling writer Chérie King.

Fascinating stories, beautifully told. [Via 9to5mac]

Forbes:

Corporate M&A decisions are increasingly being driven by offshore tax policy. It’s hard to argue the business logic of using offshore income to acquire foreign companies versus bringing the money back into the U.S. for a domestic acquisition.

Following the rough tax math of a foreign acquisition, Apple’s $3.2 billion bid would really be more like $2 billion if the transaction could take place in Ireland. Considering the fact that Apple currently has approximately $54 billion in cash parked offshore, the benefits of doing a foreign acquisition over repatriating that cash back into the U.S. become even more apparent.

Interesting conjecture.

I find these hotels breathtaking. Most are embedded in some form of nature. There’s Switzerland’s Äscher Cliff hotel embedded in the side of a mountain, or the Hotel Kakslauttanen built under the ice in Finland.

Words don’t do these hotels justice. Fantastic pictures.

Have you ever visited any of these?

With that last post as a bit of a palate cleanser, consider this more of a main course.

And no, you don’t necessarily need to be a programmer to appreciate it. Delightful read.

This essay has been making its way around the net like wildfire the past few days. An interesting rant of the “we’re doomed” variety.

Here’s just one tiny bit:

Recently an anonymous hacker wrote a script that took over embedded Linux devices. These owned computers scanned the whole rest of the internet and created a survey that told us more than we’d ever known about the shape of the internet. The little hacked boxes reported their data back (a full 10 TBs) and quietly deactivated the hack. It was a sweet and useful example of someone who hacked the planet to shit. If that malware had actually been malicious, we would have been so fucked.

A good read for a Sunday.

At first blush, this might seem an unnecessary complication. In order to play Osmo games, you sit your iPad in a stand in portrait mode, then place a clip over the iPad camera that contains a small mirror. A tangram puzzle appears on the screen, and you slide blocks on the table in front of the iPad to complete the puzzle.

No big deal, right?

But there’s something more to this than simply reflecting puzzle pieces onto the screen. There’s a real interaction between the actions in the physical world and a model’s representation in the virtual world. Kinda, sorta, an augmented reality, but done very simply, cleanly, just perfect for a series of kids games.

The video below is a marketing piece, for sure, but it does a good job of getting the point across. I’m excited by the possibilities.

Bloomberg:

Apple, which on May 2 won $120 million of the $2.2 billion it sought, identified nine devices it wants barred in a May 23 filing with U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California.

Winning a ban may prove difficult for Apple because Koh, who also presided over the companies’ first U.S. trial in 2012, twice rejected the iPhone-maker’s request in that case, legal experts have said. This time around the jury also concluded that Apple infringed one of Samsung’s patents, though the Galaxy-maker hasn’t yet requested a ban of Apple products.

Apple’s bid “seems like a hard sell, given that it failed to achieve an injunction in the last trial with significant design patent infringement and similar feature patent infringement,” said Michael Risch, a law professor at Villanova University.

The chess match continues.

According to the industry on May 22, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics recently asked ingot and wafer makers to submit samples in an effort to adopt the sapphire cover glass. They reviewed it last year as well, but they were reluctant to use it because of high prices, but as global competitors recently announced plans to release new products with sapphire glass, they began to reconsider it in a hurry.

Sound familiar? It should.

Apple began to operate the sapphire glass manufacturing and processing plant in Arizona, US earlier than scheduled. It is known that Apple will apply the sapphire glass to the 10 million new products scheduled to be released in the second half.

Interesting to watch the costs rise as more manufacturers move to what is, essentially, a limited availability commodity.

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.

Ever wanted to book your favorite band for a party and wondered what it would cost? Follow the link and wonder no more.

[Via Variety]