So now, friends, to today’s Startup 101 class. The subject is decency and the thesis is painfully simple:

Dont Be An Asshole.

This is truly not a deep philosophical argument about individual freedom, nor is it about what a company can legally do given their terms of licensure. It’s about doing the right thing.

Uber is the alternative to cabs that’s popping up in cities all over the place. I tried them for the first time last month when I was in San Francisco for WWDC – a city that’s notoriously hard to get a cab in that isn’t either driven by a complete fucking idiot who doesn’t know where he’s going, smells like shit, piss, puke or the ass of an incense merchant, or has a credit card machine that’s mysteriously not working that day.

I have to say, I was really impressed. The service is prompt, the app works great, the cars are clean and the drivers are polite.

But the first time they try to gouge me on price? My response would be, “Fuck you right in the neck.”

This officially makes NHL 14 the MOST AWESOME NHL CONSOLE GAME EVER.

A team of researchers at the University of Southampton have demonstrated a way to record and retrieve as much as 360 terabytes of digital data onto a single disk of quartz glass in a way that can withstand temperatures of up to 1000 C and should keep the data stable and readable for up to a million years.

Will Connors for WSJ:

As part of its restructuring, the company is planning to cut more jobs across middle management in the sales and support divisions, say people familiar with the matter, on top of the 5,000 layoffs last fiscal year.

Part of the latest cuts included Richard Piasentin, the company’s vice president for sales in the U.S., who was fired last month, these people said.

At some point there will be no more fat to cut from the company. I doubt it’s the sales teams fault—it sounds more like people just don’t want the product.

Adam Engst takes a look at the Apple’s ebook trial and answers some of the questions everyone has asked over the past few months.

Because of slower-than-expected sales, Verizon now must double its iPhone sales of last year. If it falls short, the company could be on the hook for as much as $14 billion, Moffett Research said in a report released this week.

That’s an incredible amount of money to pay because you didn’t sell as many iPhones as expected. However, I don’t know of any other carrier in the world that hasn’t met sales expectations.

BGR had some time with the new Nokia Lumia.

Google Latitude will be retired on August 9th, 2013. Products being retired include Google Latitude in Google Maps for Android, Latitude for iPhone, the Latitude API, the public badge, the iGoogle Gadget, and the Latitude website at maps.google.com/latitude.

If you could have shown me the web in 1983, or even 1993, I would have cheerfully traded an infinite number of computer magazines for the chance to read an endless, endlessly diverse quantity of information about tech products, updated not once a month but all day, every day, for free.

I would have too. But I would have thought twice if I realized just how much shit would be posted too.

Yeah, magazines are old tech and they’re on the way out. But journalism is still very much an industry in transition. I’m not sure that we’ve replaced what was there with something that is, on the whole, better.

Sascha Segan:

So you see the self-serving nature of this study: Adeven is trying to boost its business by making app developers worry they won’t make any money without Adeven. In the meantime, the company promotes a half-blind idea of what Apple’s App Store is. That’s why I’m not actually linking to the study here.

When are the mainstream media going to get off their asses and realize that the “research” from these companies are designed to help those companies sell their products. Nothing else. The BBC, CNBC and the others are just assholes for falling for this type of marketing.

Alex Vollmer is an incredible guitarist and he put out the first in a series of lessons on how to play some of the greatest guitar solos ever written. The first is for Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.”

I haven’t had a chance to try this one out yet, but I really like the Pod family of products. This is on the high-end of the product spectrum, so it’ll most likely be a hot item.

I’ve seen the new version in action and it’s really good.

I always start with the drums—kick, snare and move my way through the kit.

Great article if you’re looking at responsive design and images.

A federal court in New York has come down hard on Apple in a closely watched case over ebook pricing. In a ruling issued Tuesday morning, US District Judge Denise Cote ruled that the company “brilliantly” organized a conspiracy to raise prices and thwart competition.

In a 160-page ruling, Cote points to phone calls, emails and the words of Apple founder Steve Jobs to conclude that the company orchestrated an illegal “scheme” in which five major publishers changed their pricing practices. The court said that the prime target of the conspiracy was Amazon, whose Kindle tablet competes with Apple’s iPad, and whose pricing practices infuriated publishers.

“We no longer see a need to pursue our case,” Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said. “With more than 900,000 apps and 50 billion downloads, customers know where they can purchase their favorite apps.”

James Stratford bought a Blu-ray movie and was met with advertisements when he put it in the machine. He brings up a good point—we pay for the damn movie, don’t advertise to us or at least let us skip it.

Rene Ritchie:

It’s not pixels painted so much anymore as particles placed, and not areas touched so much as directly manipulated.

Rene’s right in saying that there’s a lot going on with iOS 7 beyond the design. The way the operating system interacts with things around it is amazing.

BlackBerry has been asking for patience for years now.

More great releases from Universal Audio. This is why I love this company.

Apollo Flex Routing

Universal Audio’s latest UAD Software v7.1 provides some extremely useable enhancements to the Apollo Audio Interface. Key among them is Flex Routing, which enhances your workflow with new features such as headphone bus routing, selectable pre/post Aux sends, and the ability to freely route any console input to hardware outputs.

Millennia NSEQ-2 EQ Plug-In

Revered for its startling realism and transparent musicality, the Millennia NSEQ-2 has quickly become a go-to parametric EQ for many of the world’s leading studios and mastering houses. Its unique Twin Topology design and pure Class A transformerless circuitry offers a less-is-more approach to the audio chain, yielding a powerful, sonically neutral, analog EQ that brims with spectacular clarity.

Pultec Passive EQ Plug-In Collection

Building on a decade of the world’s most intensive modeling research, UA has recreated the famed Pultec EQ experience – one that’s nearly indistinguishable from the original analog hardware.

Every shortcut you ever wanted.

Slash is such a great guitarist.

I have to agree with Philip Elmer-Dewitt here; where are all the articles claiming Samsung is doomed? That’s what would happen if it was Apple.

When Google hands over e-mail records to the government, it includes basic envelope information, or metadata, that reveals the names and e-mail addresses of senders and recipients in your account. The feds can then mine that information for patterns that might be useful in a law-enforcement investigation.

There is no such thing as privacy on the Internet.

Paul Lewis takes a look at antialiasing, what it means for developers and how it looks to users.

MoneyWell is personal finance software that increases your wealth while reducing your debt using the tried-and-true envelope-budgeting method.

I love this new site. It takes some of the stupidest articles from the media and makes fun of them.

This is great. A list of all The Beatles songs and strange little things that happen on each of them.