Bloomberg reporters have been keeping tabs on Wall Street using their company’s financial terminals, the New York Post reports. Bloomberg terminals, which cost $20,000 a year or more to lease, are a fixture in the banking world. But according to the Post, Goldman Sachs executives recently discovered that reporters could track when investors were logging into the terminals, as well as what they were doing — from looking at a wire story to using the messaging tool. In one case, a reporter apparently asked a Goldman Sachs executive whether a partner had left the bank, mentioning that he hadn’t been logging into his terminal.

As if their anti-Apple bullshit wasn’t enough. The entire organization is apparently a colossal seething pile of douchebags.

Sebastian Anthony, ExtremeTech:

The United Space Alliance, which manages the computers aboard the International Space Station in association with NASA, has announced that the Windows XP computers aboard the ISS have been switched to Linux. “We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable.”

If they wanted reliability, why didn’t they switch to OS X instead?

NECKBEARDS! IN! SPAAAAAAACE!

Erica Ogg, GigaOM:

It’s almost gospel in the mobile tech media and among mobile enthusiasts that Apple reports the actual number of iPads, iPhones (and Macs and iPods) it sells directly to consumers during each quarter in its earnings reports. Those numbers are often used disparagingly against other mobile companies when third-party market research firms like IDC report shipment estimates. Still, it’s difficult to get a totally accurate picture of the market; we’ve struggled with it here along with everyone else.

Good interpretation here, and worth really understanding: When Apple says it’s sold something, that may not mean what you think it means. The secret here is not only direct sales to the consumer, but also channel inventory. Click through for details.

Michelle Fay Cortez, Bloomberg:

If a person falls asleep with the iPad2 on the chest, the magnets in the cover can “accidentally turn off” the heart device, said Chien, a high school freshman in Stockton, California, whose father is a doctor. “I definitely think people should be aware. That’s why I’m presenting the study.”

Defibrillators, as a safety precaution, are designed to be turned off by magnets. The iPad2 uses 30 magnets to hold the iPad2’s cover in place, Chien said. While the iPad2 magnets aren’t powerful enough to cause problems when a person is holding the tablet out in front of the chest, it can be risky to rest it against the body, she found.

Gee, maybe that’s why the leading maker of defibrillators tells patients NOT TO STICK MAGNETS ON THEIR CHEST. The same manufacturer, by the way, “said its testing hasn’t found any risks from iPad technology when used according to the manufacturer’s instructions.”

I wonder what bizarre anti-Apple bullshit Bloomberg will come up with next. Anyone wanna take any bets?

io9:

The human palate is arguably the weakest of the five traditional senses. This begs an important question regarding wine tasting: is it bullshit, or is it complete and utter bullshit?

There are no two ways about it: the bullshit is strong with wine. Wine tasting. Wine rating. Wine reviews. Wine descriptions. They’re all related. And they’re all egregious offenders, from a bullshit standpoint.

Just like many of us suspected.

Alexa Ray Correia, Polygon:

Massively multiplayer online title World of Warcraft lost approximately 1.3 million subscribers over three months, Activision Blizzard announced today in an earnings report.

Blizzard’s keeping a stiff upper lip, calling WoW still “the number one subscription-based MMORPG in the world,” but admits that player attrition is going to continue. It also says it’s going to continue to dedicate resources to it, releasing more content and making it easier for lapsed players to return to the fold.

Sarah Silbert, Engadget:

Aio Wireless, a prepaid subsidiary of AT&T, is launching with a nationwide “unlimited” voice and data service.

The service kicks off in Houston, Orlando and Tampa, with a nationwide rollout expected later this year.

Philip Elmer-Dewitt, quoting Pegatron CEO Jason Cheng:

“After the meeting, one reporter from Bloomberg approached me, trying to dig out detail numbers about some specific product. I clearly refused to comment on specific products, nor customers, even though he continued with other questions. I did say those words that he quotes me in the article “more on demand, while price has been stable”…, “almost every item is moving in a negative direction”…; “Not just tablets, also e-books and games consoles”. But I did not say anything associated with any specific products.

It’s pretty clear that Tim Culpan at Bloomberg went into the conference with an agenda and was going to write a damning article about Apple by hook or by crook. What a fucking douchebag.

Sex, Cigars & Booze Lifestyle Magazine:

A new poll finds that Americans are twice as willing to go without sex for a week than a smartphone.

“Our poll shows that the tech revolution has changed our culture to the point that too many Americans seem to derive more pleasure and satisfaction from their smart phones and text lives than from their relationships and sex lives,” said Ron Sachs, President and CEO of Sachs Media Group.

If you choose a smartphone over sex, you’re doing sex wrong.

Jim and Dan talk about CocoaConf Alt, the status of Apple Displays and Macs at WWDC, spider bites, laptop bags, Spock vs. Spock, 100 million copies of Windows 8, and Megadeth.

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

That’s terrible.

If you’re interested in mixing, you need this book.

Gene Steinberg:

Microsoft earns most of its keep selling software licenses to OEMs, who bundle Windows with a new PC, any PC. So, yes, I suppose it’s possible that Microsoft has booked 100 million sales into its ledgers. But that doesn’t mean that 100 million copies of Windows 8, or anything close to that number, are in the hands of end users. It may also be true that there are tens of millions of unsold PCs in the channel. But that doesn’t matter to Microsoft, since a sale is a sale even if nobody is actually using the product.

That puts a whole different spin on things.

As for the anticipated iPhone sales figures — they aren’t disappointing as the company announced the sale of approximately 500,000 units to new and existing customers to date.

T-Mobile only started selling the iPhone 5 in April, so it’s quite a nice bump for them.

No company wants to be compared to New Coke. Ever.

Way before movies like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings inspired the imagination of film lovers everywhere, audiences were enraptured by the sword-wielding skeletons of Jason and the Argonauts, the great ape of Mighty Joe Young and the dinosaurs opposite Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.

The man responsible for all those and much more, Hollywood special-effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen, died Tuesday in London at the age of 92. His family announced his death via The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation Facebook page.

Ray Harryhausen’s movies were some of my childhood favorites, from Jason and the Argonauts to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and, of course, the original Clash of the Titans. He was the master of stop-motion photography.

This is a very interesting looking app. I just downloaded it.

Dave Addey wrote a great piece about the state of app pricing and what can be done about it. Definitely worth a read.

My favorite audio plug-ins have been updated. This is a big release that includes multi-unit Cascading of two Apollo units or two Apollo 16 units. The release also includes three new plug-ins: Ocean Way Studios, Sonnox Oxford Inflator and the SPL TwinTube Processor.

Wow!

While we are not planning further feature development for Fireworks, we will continue to sell Fireworks CS6 as well as make it available as part of the Creative Cloud. We will provide security updates as necessary and may provide bug fixes. We plan to update Fireworks to support the next major releases of both Mac OS X and Windows.

I think the only service anyone cared about was Google Reader.