Apple has operated almost tax-free in Ireland since 1980, welcomed by a government keen to bring jobs to what was then one of Europe’s poorest countries, former company executives and Irish officials have said.

That’s the opening to a Reuters story where they try to convince people they dug up this dirt on Apple. The only problem is that Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer are the ones that revealed this during the senate hearings earlier this week.

Reuters assholes.

These tips for taking wedding photos are hilarious.

Don’t get photobombed by death. LOL!

Cat bearding.

Beautiful work using something so mundane.

But there is a single, bright spark in the gloom. RadioShack now finds itself closely tied to one of the most disruptive and exciting new trends in the entire economy: the Maker movement, in which tens of thousands of hobbyists make supercool projects using robotics, microcontrollers, and 3-D printing.

In another life, I worked at Radio Shack as a teenager, because it was one of the few retail jobs a computer nerd could do without being completely bored out of his or her skull. Nothing would make me happier than to see Radio Shack reemerge as the go-to place for hobbyists building cool shit. I just doubt whether it’s enough to save the company the way it is.

What Harry McCracken says is what we’ve been saying on Angry Mac Bastards for years – there’s this absurd “Highlanderism” among pundits who think that mobile is going to play out just like the PC business did in the 90s. It’s not going to.

The Loop Magazine Issue 2 is now available for download from Apple’s Newsstand.

There’s a great line-up of writers in this issue including Joe King, the co-founder of Denver-based rock band The Fray, UI expert Matt Gemmell, iMore Editor-in-Chief Rene Ritchie, Peter Cohen, Stephen Hackett, and The Next Web’s Managing Editor Matthew Panzarino.

You can download The Loop Magazine from the App Store.

Jim and Dan talk about Tim Cook’s senate testimony and discuss the issues involved in owning a company in the US but manufacturing your products abroad. Later they delve into Google’s new 3D maps, a very young musician’s incredible rendition of Van Halen’s Eruption, the new Xbox one, and more.

Sponsored by Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off), Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME5 for 30% off), and Squarespace (use code DANSENTME5for 10% off).

OmniPresence is the best way to sync all of your documents across all of your devices. And it works on most web hosts, including OS X Server, which means you can store all of your data yourself.

The folks at The Omni Group are some of the best developers around.

Very impressive.

No big surprise there.

Jon Russell, The Next Web:

Red hot payments startup Square is invading Asia after it announced that its service has launched in Japan, which becomes its third market worldwide in addition to the US and Canada.

Japanese consumers are no strangers to mobile payments, so Square will probably see an easy adoption.

This looks like a promising app from Luc Vandal. You will also need to download and install an app on your Mac.

Grover Jackson is one of the pioneers of modern guitars. If I could go pick up any guitar today, it would be one made by Grover.

Longreads:

…what if you never got into sci-fi in the first place? Where would you start?

Since its inception, speculative fiction has worked as social commentary, satire, and a creative answer to the question “What if?” Here are my personal picks to get you started.

If you or anyone you know would like to get into SciFi, you won’t go too far wrong with this list.

I wonder what all those people that heckled Apple Maps will say when they see this.

I don’t think being the perfect device for stalkers is what Samsung was going for, but who knows.

While remodeling his newly purchased home in Elbow Lake, Minn., David Gonzalez noticed something unusual amid the old newspapers that had been used as wall insulation.

It was a copy of Action Comics No. 1 from 1938, the very first comic to feature the granddaddy of all superheroes, Superman.

I’m going to rip apart my house.

Excellent analysis by Anand Lal Shimpi, as usual.

Cody Brown writing on how the New York Times sent him a cease and desist for showing how to replicate “Snow Fall” and then demanded he not even mention their name on his site.

Just when you think we got rid of the RIM co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis comes back.

BlackBerry (BBRY) founder Mike Lazaridis said he’s confident that users of iPhones and other devices will embrace the company’s BlackBerry Messenger platform, which will be offered on rival phones later this year.

“BBM is by far the most compelling wireless experience and wireless social-networking environment,” Lazaridis, who stepped down as co-chief executive officer in early 2012, said yesterday at the Bloomberg Canada Economic Summit in Toronto.

GO AWAY!

Neil Hughes:

Despite growing competition from other tablets, Apple’s iPad still accounts for a whopping 89.28 percent of e-commerce website traffic, and also rakes in more money on a per-user basis than any other platform.

Where the hell are all these Samsung tablets I keep hearing about?

That is very impressive.

He is working on the marketing team under Apple’s global marketing chief Phil Schiller, according to sources.

Michael is one of the good guys. Congrats.

Om Malik:

HTC was the shining star during the early days of Android. Now it is reeling under the pressure of cheap Androids, a dominant Samsung and a management disarray. It’s a damn shame, as the new HTC One is actually a nice device.

I thought it would do better than it has.

Jon Hicks isn’t happy with Adobe’s decision.