CBS News:

During his eight years as pope, Benedict XVI carried out thousands of official duties, but only once did he travel outside Rome to bestow the Vatican’s highest honor on a church, transforming it into a basilica — a sacred place forever.

I watched this last night and it’s a fascinating look at one of the world’s most beautiful and intricate buildings – and even after 130 years, it’s still not finished construction.

“We’re assuming that we are owed by Apple or Google the right to get our content in front of an audience. Well that’s not the case,” he said. “Apple and Google’s mission is to make the customer experience the best it can be, and to make sure that they can find games that they love. It doesn’t mean they have to make your game the one that the player finds.”

Sure, the App Store would suck if developers didn’t create products for it, but Clark makes a very good point: It’s not Apple’s (or Google’s) job to promote your product – that’s your job.

Think your graduation was cool? Maybe it was. Maybe it was totally gnarly. But, I’ll tell you what, I’m pretty damn sure Sailor Moon didn’t roll in and a red Pikmin didn’t stroll up on stage. Oh, and there probably wasn’t a large Wii Remote, nor was there a large Xperia phone. Call it a hunch.

The graduates also dressed up in costumes from their favorite video games, manga (comic books) and anime (animation). It’s like a college graduation and anime convention rolled into one! Make sure to check out the pics after the link.

Claiming SimCity fixed, by removing the server queues, random crashes, lost cities, server drops, and the artificial restrictions placed on the game just to make it run, is like claiming a broken leg fixed because you’ve mended the crutches. The game, by its very design, is hideously broken, and like Diablo III before it, it has only served to scream a complete disregard for sense and a massive disregard for customers. So what we mustn’t do now is say, “Well, teething problems.”

These aren’t teething problems. These are continuous deep-running flaws designed to cripple the game for you as a player, simply to serve some nebulous notion of protecting the game against piracy.

I certainly understand and sympathize with game developers and publishers who don’t want people to rip them off. But there’s a delicate balance between a system that prevents people from stealing a game and one that punishes legitimate users unnecessarily, and right now, SimCity seems weighted towards abusing legitimate customers.

In such hoaxes, anonymous users set up accounts with names that sound like prominent market players, issue negative commentary, and spark massive declines. The selling that follows shows how the rapid spread of information on social media can make for volatile trading, and is a warning to investors who trade on news before fully verifying the source.

Pump and dump schemes aren’t the only sort of problem afflicting social media. Fortune’s Philip Elmer Dewitt has reported about his suspicions regarding hedge fund manager Doug Kass. According to Dewitt, Kass’ tweet repeating a rumor about an Apple stock split (which didn’t happen) led to a jump in the company’s stock valuation.

Barley looks really cool with its inline editing and philosophy of having no backend admin section or plug-ins. It’s not available yet, but it will be interesting to see how it does when released.

Mozilla’s Firefox browser will have no place on Apple devices so long as Apple continues its unfriendly attitude toward third-party browsers, Jay Sullivan, vice president of product at Mozilla, said today.

Wow, I’m sure a lot of people are really disappointed.

Rosenblatt queried the audience to find out how many people were iOS users, and a majority of hands went up. By contrast, when he asked how many of them were suffering, just a few hands surfaced.

Never mind.

I was a guest on this week’s Tech Night Owl podcast with Gene Steinberg. John Martellaro from The Mac Observer was on too (different segment, though, we didn’t talk together).

Topics covered included what I think of rumors that Apple’s building an iWatch, the interesting case of Apple’s falling stock prices and more.

Using a ripped game ROM from a 2010 release of Donkey Kong, Mike started doing a midnight hackathon to complete this gift of fatherly love for his daughter. Mike took the pains taking time of redrawing the 8-bit Mario sprite frames and swapped the palettes in the ROM. And with in less time than it takes to get an Amazon Prime package ordered on a monday Mike had his “Girls Can Save The Day Too!” edition of Donkey Kong.

Really cool. Here’s the YouTube video Mika made showing off his efforts.

[Editor’s note: This article originally identified the princess in Donkey Kong as Peach – the princess in later Mario adventures, instead of Pauline.]

Google’s high-tech augmented reality “Project Glass” spectacles are still in development, and not available for purchase. But Seattle’s 5 Point Cafe is getting ahead of the game — and fueling a debate over privacy — by banning the devices from the bar in advance.

Maybe it says something about the wretched hives of scum and villany where I like to drink, but I’m no stranger to bars that have “no camera” policies, so this doesn’t surprise me in the least.

Musk, co-founder of Tesla and PayPal, recently said that Broder’s review cost Tesla $100 million.

During his SXSW talk, Musk called Broder’s review a “low-grade ethics violation” that “was not in good faith.” He added, “I don’t have a problem with critical reviews. I have a problem with false reviews.”

That’s a lot of money.

A new patent application published by the US Patent Office this week shows that Microsoft’s delusional engineers think that they’ve actually invented Pinch and Zoom as if Apple’s technology never existed.

Morons.

Apple also accused Samsung in a second lawsuit of violating a separate batch of patents, including the rights to search technology that is part of the iPhone Siri voice feature. That case is scheduled for trial in March 2014.

That’s what happens when you steal.

Thanks to MacUpdate for sponsoring The Loop this week with their Spring Bundle.

For only $49.99 you get all this:

1. Parallels Desktop 8 – $79.99 – The best way to run Windows on your Mac.
2. DEVONthink Pro 2 – $79.95 – A powerful information organizer.
3. Prizmo 2 – $49.95 – Scan/OCR any document or photo.
4. MotionComposer 1.6 – $149.00 – Create professional HTML5 and Flash Web animations.
5. 1000 OpenTypeFonts Collection – $99.00 – Complete with commercial-use and WebFont licenses.
6. iStat Menus 4 – $16.00 – Monitor your Mac from the menubar; a power user’s dream.
7. PhotoStyler 6 – $29.99 – Add dazzling effects and personalize your photos.
8. DiskAid 6 – $29.90 – A must-have utility for iPhone, iPad, or iPod owners.
9. Intego Mac Internet Security 2013 (3-Pack) – $74.98 – The #1 malware solution, rebuilt for 2013.
10. MacUpdate Desktop (6 months) – $10.00 – The best way to keep all your apps up-to-date.

Don’t delay, this offer won’t last long!

Netflix just used the quiet Friday afternoon to announce that it is effectively ending its public developer program. Netflix will stop issuing API keys immediately and will not accept new API affiliates.

Until now third-party developers have been able to integrate data from Netflix into their own apps. But Netflix is closing that door. The good news is that API keys that have already been issued and used will still work, so if you’re using an app that’s dependent on Netflix connectivity, it should still work.

Jun Dong-soo, president of Samsung’s memory chip division:

“The global PC industry is steadily shrinking despite the launch of Windows 8,” Jun said. “I think the Windows 8 system is no better than the previous Windows Vista platform.”

And, as if that wasn’t enough:

“[Microsoft’s] rollout of its Windows Surface tablet is seeing lackluster demand,” he said. “Meanwhile, previous vigorous pitches by Intel and MS for thinner ultra-books simply failed and I believe that’s mostly because of the less-competitive Windows platform.”

But the Surface makes you dance.

I, personally, wouldn’t buy anything refurbished from Apple or from their Ebay store. I’ve seen refurbished stuff. So called “blemishes” and “normal wear” can mean scarred screens and body cracks. No thanks.

Not on refurbed gear sold by Apple. I’ve worked very happily for the last two years on a refurbed MacBook Air I bought from Apple and I’ve been delighted with it. It was as good as new when it arrived, has worked flawlessly, and eligible for AppleCare (and covered by Apple’s standard factory warranty). Only difference is that I didn’t pay even close to the regular retail price.

I’ve gone with the refurb section on the Apple Store, but if Apple’s moved to eBay too, I say go for it.

Unless you need to configure a machine to order and have very specific requirements or need to buy a machine when it first comes out, buying new is for suckers.

Here is a brilliant piece written by Daniel Eran Dilger in February 2013 that shows how pathetic the mainstream media is when reporting on Apple. Bloomberg even goes so far as to contradict its own reporting.

Dilger tears them apart.

That revelation appears in an article entitled “Toilet Hygiene in the Classical Era,” by French anthropologist and forensic medicine researcher Philippe Charlier and his colleagues. Their report examines tidying techniques used way back—and the resultant medical issues.

Almost three years after Google released its WebM video encoding technology as a “free” and open alternative to the existing H.264 backed by Apple and others, it has admitted its position was wrong and that it would pay to license the patents WebM infringes.

Google got away with stealing Java code, so I guess it thought why not steal some video codecs too.

Motorola staffers were informed by the company via email this week that “while we’re very optimistic about the new products in our pipeline, we still face challenges.” The company email added that “our costs are too high, we’re operating in markets where we’re not competitive and we’re losing money.” The layoffs will affect workers in the U.S., China and India.

Ouch. That means about 1,200 employees are getting laid off.

Producer and engineer Bobby Owsinski gives his list of the 10 most significant amps. Like he said, we all have our favorites that might not be on the list.

The freemium or free to play (F2P) business model is still new and in an immature state. There are some early adopters that have used exploits or tricks to squeeze money from their players, while others created what we call a “pay-to-win” experience where you’re almost guaranteed to win if you pay money. While these tactics may have generated a lot of revenue for these developers, as the market, business model and player expectations mature, these tactics will become less and less accepted by players. They probably won’t go away all together, but it’s better to get ahead of the curve and start designing and executing smarter games today. Here are examples of 5 of these tactics:

There are a lot more than five ways to screw up the free to play model, but these are five big ones. The one that particularly galls me is “Design a free to play Player vs Player (PvP) game to be pay-to-win.” That drives me absolutely bonkers.

Hard to believe I know. John Moltz said everything I would have said.

Love it!

I can’t even imagine using an 8-string guitar.

Apple devices are still reigning above the clouds, following the tablet trend with the iPad being the device of choice. Among all mobile devices being used to connect through Gogo, 84 percent carry Apple’s iOS operating system while 16 percent carry the Android operating system. If you look only at the smartphones our customers are using, the iPhone makes up 73 percent and all Android devices make up 26 percent, with Blackberry and Windows based devices each making up less than 1 percent of devices being used in air.

Maybe Android users are too busy getting rid of all the Malware on their devices.

Good tip, I had no idea you could do that.