Dan is joined by Jim Dalrymple and Merlin Mann. They talk about intense heat, hotels, writing, the evolution of the link blog, advertising online, guitars, and more.

Jim and Dan discuss Blackberry 10, Apple’s profit falling, 3 Monkey Amps, and Pro Co RAT2 Distortion Pedal.

Sponsored by Squarespace (use code DANSENTME1 for 10% off), Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME1 for 30% off), and Shopify.

Matt Burns, TechCrunch:

The $999 11-inch MacBook Air is Apple’s low-end device. Like the Surface RT, it offers just enough power to get by and nothing more. I wouldn’t recommend the base Air model for anyone that wants to venture outside of iPhoto or the web browser. It’s not a work machine; the $999 MacBook Air is a Facebook machine.

It’s just as pathetically easy to goad the rest of the tech press into publishing utter bullshit. This isn’t unique to games journalism at all.

How many do you remember?

In 2003, the agency’s investment arm, DARPA, tapped the non-profit research institute SRI International to lead a five-year, 500-person effort to build a virtual assistant, one the government hoped might yield software to help military commanders with both information overload and office chores. Although it wasn’t the project’s mission, this helper, the Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes, or CALO, would ultimately provide the inspiration and model for Siri.

Lots of stuff you might not know about Siri’s origins in this Huffington Post piece.

How bad does your operating system suck when people have to pay this much just to get rid of it?

Agreed.

Michael Homnick compares WordPress, Blogger, Jux, Tumblr and Posterous Spaces.

This summer, on June 1-2, 2013, citizens in cities across the Nation will join together to improve their communities and governments as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking.

Civic Hacking Day is an opportunity for software developers, technologists, and entrepreneurs to unleash their can-do American spirit by collaboratively harnessing publicly-released data and code to create innovative solutions for problems that affect Americans.

That’s a pretty cool idea. Hopefully something good will come of it.

hitting cities like Hershey, Pennsylvania; Chicago; Milwaukee; Boston; Vancouver; Salt Lake City; and Denver. The band will also return to Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Halifax, Nova Scotia, for the first time in decades.

Halifax? Hey Jim!

Pixelmator is a great image editing app and all that I use on my Mac.

It’s a Mid-Side stereo microphone for iOS devices.

Capo can now import songs from apps like Dropbox. Great app.

Jeff Sonderman, Poynter:

The [National Labor Relations Board] is standing up for the rights of workers to discuss wages and working conditions. The legal term is “concerted activity” — when workers take action to collectively discuss their employment terms — and the board says that’s just as protected on social media as it is in the company break room.

What’s not protected, as far as the National Labor Relations Board is concerned, is acting like an idiot. A few shining examples are included in the Poynter piece.

Brendan Sinclair, Gamesindustry.biz:

“We are in the peak of [violence in entertainment],” [consumer safety advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph] Nader said. “Television program violence? Unbelievable. Video game violence? Unprecedented.” He added, “I’m not saying he wants to censor this, I think he should sensitize people that they should protect their children family by family from these kinds of electronic child molesters.”

Sorry to see Nader adopting a ridiculous Jack Thompson-level of rhetoric on this issue.

iOS continues to lead as the top selling smartphone platform sold in the U.S, with 51.2% of market sales for the 12 week period ending December 23rd, 2012, according to data released today by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

Interesting to note that Android “remained stable” year over year, with Windows a very distant third.

The same company also says iPhone is big in Japan, taking two-thirds of the smartphone market.

Peter Zigich is back with more ideas for what a new Mac Pro might look like (we posted some previous work of his last September). I don’t think his ARM processor theory holds water – at least for a while – but I like the idea of a something as powerful as a Mac Pro in a less unwieldy box.

Jony Ive is a designer, he’s not an administrator. This guy is a grade A moron. Even he says, “It’s unclear whether Ive has the skills to manage Apple.”

The similarity in our names make me even angrier. Forbes is a complete fucking joke with shit like this.

Summarized: Wall Street investors are nervous about Apple because of its push into new markets, its complex supply chain and its coverage by analysts who consistently have their heads up their asses.

Dawson College ought to be ashamed of themselves. They’re punishing a guy who did exactly the right thing. He’s already gotten job and scholarship offers, and the school looks like a bunch of bumbling idiots.

Good for Andrew Kim for making an opportunity for himself. Hopefully his talents won’t be wasted at Microsoft.

More mobile competition is good.

Julianne Pepitone for CNN Money:

“These are not minor — these are aggressive changes,” said Anuj Nayar, PayPal’s senior director of communications. “This is a fundamental shift in our business operations.”

Chris Breen at Macworld offers some helpful advice for parents looking to limit their kids’ iOS device use, including configuring your AirPort router to limit network access specifically to those devices during certain hours.

While his instructions are specific to AirPort devices, you can do the same with other routers as well – my Comcast cable modem’s web interface does the same thing.

Marcus Wohlsen, Wired:

Does anyone know what news Qualcomm announced at CES this year? What products it unveiled? No? But you do know that the chipmaker put Big Bird onstage. And Steve Ballmer.

Wohlsen counts Qualcomm’s keynote address at CES as one of the worst ever. Apple made the list, too. Check it out and let us know if you agree.