Busted has updated their website with a mailing list sign up and a video that just flashes “Fri 9th September” over and over again.
Busted Tease This Friday
The Front Bottoms Release Demo Sessions
The Front Bottoms released a bunch of demos for stream on their website.
Buzzfeed: Why Apple Killed the Headphone Jack
John Paczkowski, writing at Buzzfeed about Apple killing the headphone jack:
“It was holding us back from a number of things we wanted to put into the iPhone,” Riccio says. “It was fighting for space with camera technologies and processors and battery life. And frankly, when there’s a better, modern solution available, it’s crazy to keep it around.”
It’s hard to imagine Apple’s hardware design team hamstrung by a diminutive legacy port. But when you’re dealing with a computing device with extraordinarily tight dimensional tolerances, there are bound to be challenges. Riccio spends a good 15 minutes explaining them. I’ll try to do it in two.
Like it or hate it — the decision making process really is interesting.
Vanity Fair Cover Story on Bruce Springsteen
David Kamp, with the cover story on Bruce Springsteen for Vanity Fair:
What might better serve the good of the Republic is the planned release, sometime next year, of Springsteen’s first album of entirely new songs since Wrecking Ball. (His last studio album, 2014’s High Hopes, consisted of covers, new recordings of older songs, and orphaned songs from sessions for his preceding albums.) The new album, as yet untitled, has been finished for more than a year but has sat on the shelf while Springsteen has busied himself with the tour and the book.
That makes at least two really good articles in this issue — the other being from Nick Bilton on Theranos.
What to Expect at Tomorrow’s Apple Event
Apple will be, presumably, debuting new iPhones tomorrow at their annual September event. Jason Snell, at Six Colors, has a good run down on what to expect, and what to look for:
Is there an additional wireless audio story? There have been rumors swirling around for a while that part of the headphone-jack removal would be a new set of Apple-branded wireless headphones, dubbed EarPods. Whether or not that rumor is true, I’m curious how Apple promotes wireless audio. Does it highlight Beats? Does it unveil new Apple-branded headphones? Does it use an alternative technology to Bluetooth?
The Apple thread in our forums is always a fun place to talk about the announcements when they drop. So, if you’re watching tomorrow morning at 10:00am (PDT), come join in while we complain about our headphone jack-less future.
Procrastinate! Music Traitors Detail Third Quarter
Procrastinate! Music Traitors have sent out their third quarter “information report” detailing what they’ve got coming up for the next few months. No, there’s not news about the new Brand New album or next single.
Brian Fallon Talks with Upset Magazine
Ali Shutler interviewed Brian Fallon for Upset Magazine:
“My goal used to be Bruce Springsteen’s career, being that famous and playing arenas. I don’t care about writing for that now. I’m just writing for me and having a good time. Now my goal is I just want to live a long time and I want to be like Wilco. I don’t know if Wilco’s ever had a top 40 hit, but they play to a lot of people and they do whatever they want. They change and they develop, I love that band’s career so God bless Jeff Tweedy.”
One of Our Users Is Looking for a Kidney Donor
One of the users on our site, emt0853, recently made a post in our forums about looking for a kidney donor, and I just wanted to take a moment to give the story a little boost:
My journey began in 2007 and I had high hopes that this journey would be a short one. I received the most selfless gift I could imagine, developed a random blood clot happens in LESS than .01% of patients and it didn’t work out. Since then, I’ve had a million ups and downs it seems. Other family illness, personal illness, marriage, and school. I’m finally at the point that I can try again to take the steps to get back to a normal life and get away from dialysis.
During a consultation with Dr. Mikel Prieto, a nephrologist with the Kidney Transplant Program at Mayo Clinic, the suggestion was made to use social media to help my cause of finding a live kidney donor. He believes that I will do much better with a live donor instead of a cadaver donor. (Though not impossible, the wait would be much longer) Since I am younger, he believes this is my best option. Things have changed in the last 7 years, live donor kidneys can last upwards of 30 years.
If you have a few seconds, please read the post. Thank you.
Barbra Streisand Earns 11th No. 1 Album
Barbra Streisand debuts at number one on the charts this week with the release of Encore (that’s a good name). Florida Georgia Line is at number two, and Britney Spears is at three.
Her newest leader extends her record for the most No. 1 albums among women, and ties her with Bruce Springsteen for the third-most among all acts. The only artists with more No. 1s are The Beatles, with a record 19 chart-toppers, and Jay Z, with 13.
The Berenst#in Bears Problem
Somehow I missed this when it was going around the internet last year, so in case I wasn’t the only one, enjoy being weirded out:
A couple months ago, someone left an innocuous comment on my post 4 Weird “Clues” that Parallel Universes Exist. The comment was this:
“You need to look up the Berenst#in Bears problem.”
My response at first was probably what yours is now: The what? But after a quick Google search, I realized what this person was talking about. The Berenstein Bears.
Now, if you don’t know about The Berenstein Bears, they were a series of children’s books, and eventually a cartoon, created by Stan and Jan Berenstein. They focused on a family of bears, and did the usual educational children’s book/tv series thing. Simple enough. I remember them, vaguely, and I believe I owned a book or two when I was a kid. It’s been a while.
So what’s the problem?
They’re not The Berenstein Bears. They’ve never been The Berenstein Bears.
I would have bet my life on it being “Berenstein.”
Samsung Recalls Galaxy Note 7
Ina Fried, writing for Recode, on Samsung’s recall of the Galaxy Note 7:
Samsung said Friday that it will replace all of the Galaxy Note 7 “phablets” it has sold amid reports that some batteries on the phones have exploded.
In what could be the biggest smartphone recall ever, Samsung said it will replace all devices in the coming weeks. The company said it has confirmed an issue with the battery cells used in the phone and has halted sales globally.
Ouch.
43 Million Passwords Hacked in Last.fm Breach
John Mannes, writing at TechCrunch:
The number of passwords and the severity of the hack were not uncovered until today. The passwords were stored using unsalted MD5 hashing. Rather than storing passwords in plaintext, nearly every site that stores critical user information utilizes some form of hashing. Hashing is a method for encrypting data, but some methods are far superior to others.
These are some really bad password practices and if you have an account at Last.fm, you should go change your password. Also, LeakedSource is a good resource to see if your information has shown up in any of these information database dumps over the past few years. You can search by your email address.
Paramore to Feature on ‘Purpose Hotel’ Soundtrack
Paramore, Imogen Heap, and Dave Barnes will all be part of the ‘Purpose Hotel’ soundtrack. Rolling Stone reports:
Cowart has a Kickstarter campaign underway now for the Purpose Hotel, which he hopes to begin in Nashville and then expand globally. It will be a place where absolutely everything inside benefits a worthy cause: The high-speed internet fee will go to an initiative fighting human trafficking; the furniture creation will provide jobs for people in need; the soaps and shampoos will be made by women who’ve survived violence, addiction and other devastating hardships. The list goes on and on. Each room in the Purpose Hotel will also sponsor a child’s education, with a plaque on each door telling that child’s story.
‘Ordinary World’ Staring Billie Joe Due Out in October
Deadline reports that the upcoming film staring Billie Joe of Green Day, now titled Ordinary World, will be released on October 14th:
The Green Day frontman plays Perry, an aging former punk rocker who’s now a married father of two. He leads a sedate life in Queens until his brother (Chris Messina) gives him money to throw a huge 40th birthday rockstar bash in a fancy Manhattan hotel — a chance to get it out of his system. But Perry’s puck past clashes with his middle-age reality. Judy Greer, Selma Blair, Dallas Roberts, Fred Armisen, Brian Baumgartner and Kevin Corrigan also star in the pic from writer-director Lee Kirk.
Ryan Adams Aiming for Fall Release
Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Ryan Adams will be releasing a new 11 song album on November 4th.
This fall, the singer-songwriter, 41, will return with his 16th studio album, he tells EW, and he had an embarrassment of material to choose from. So how many songs did he have written? “Quite literally 80,” he says. “Probably more!”
He’s distilled those down into a dozen or so tracks for the LP, due out Nov. 4, and he credits legendary producer Don Was (Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt) for some much-needed studio guidance. “I didn’t know if I knew what I was doing,” he says. “So when you’re in a situation like that, you gotta get Gandalf—you gotta call Don Was!”