waderoush writes "On top of all the other features that it has crammed into iTunes, Apple this week added Ping, a Facebook-like social network for music discovery. It's all part of the company's plan to dominate the world of consumer media, but Xconomy argues that this time, Apple may have gone a bridge too far. iTunes, nearing its tenth birthday, started out merely as a program for ripping CDs, and has grown increasingly creaky and impenetrable as Apple has added more and more cruft, the article argues. The company won't have a stable base for its new media empire until it rebuilds iTunes from scratch — perhaps along the lines suggested by its other new product this week, the revamped Apple TV." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By now, most iTunes users have already downloaded and installed iTunes 10. We've already given you the low-down on the biggest addition to the new version of iTunes—the Ping social network—but we also wanted to give our impressions on two "improvements" promised in the release notes: look-and-feel and performance. While we agree that iTunes is "faster and more responsive," we're not sold on the revised user interface.

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Yep, today's the day Hurricaine Earl is supposed to hit NYC (or Eastern Long Island, rather). But DON'T WORRY! The MTA has a gameplan! Perhaps you might recall the day in August, 2007 it basically just rained v. fucking hard, and the subway system was pretty much just shut down due to flooding? Yep...good times all around. So, the crack team of visionaries over at MTA headquarters are busily planning and plotting about how to make sure that shit doesn't happen again. I think the chances of them actually avoiding another day long shit-show (if in fact it does get all hurricaine'd up around here) are about as good as Lindsay Lohan avoiding any future arrests for the rest of her life. But whatevs...snaps for trying. And sidenote: am I really supposed to be afraid of a fucking hurricaine named Earl? I'm picturing some dude sitting out in a broken lawn chair in front of his double wide with his 4 front teeth missing. I think the hurricaine naming people need to get with the Blackberry naming people and have them help come up with some goddammned ideas that strike fear in the hearts of the general population: Hurricaine Brutus! Hurricaine Remington! That's the sort of shit that would make me go out and buy 900 bottles of water and 178 batteries. Anyway. Hope we don't all die today!

A group of French scientists have come up with a new physics equation to help explain how Brazilian soccer star Roberto Carlos scored his "impossible" kick in 1998.

AP - A California court has refused to order Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown to appeal a ruling that overturned the state's gay marriage ban.

Well, as promised, here’s a handy video of the Samsung Galaxy Tab in action. Apologies if it’s gets a little hairy at times—juggling two cameras while trying to navigate a GUI touchscreen isn’t exactly the easiest trick to pull off.

Did Steve Jobs pull Facebook support for Ping, Apple's new music-focused social networking service, at the last second? Ping launched yesterday without support for Facebook, the world's most popular social networking service. More »

Windows only: If you keep a copy of Chrome's bleeding-edge Canary build on hand, you can check out Chrome's optional Side Tabs feature right now. Update Canary, activate a "Labs" feature, and you're a right-click away from vertical tabs. More »

Windows only: If you keep a copy of Chrome's bleeding-edge Canary build on hand, you can check out Chrome's optional Side Tabs feature right now. Update Canary, activate a "Labs" feature, and you're a right-click away from vertical tabs. More »

The new iTunes social network Ping will let you connect directly with your favorite artists, but Apple's promotional image for the new feature conveniently omits a string of Tweets from Lady Gaga's timeline in which she protests anti-gay marriage legislation Proposition 8.

It's a little thing, but given the controversies Apple has faced around app store censorship, and the direct-to-audience promise of both Twitter (and presumably Ping), it certainly seems notable. Apparently the company wanted to have its cake and eat it too when it came to one of the world's most famous, and outspoken, musical artists.
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Full coverage of today's Apple news.Surely we'll get the real deal on Ping itself, right? Lady Gaga with all her sex, politics and sensationalism - in addition to her musical thoughts? Dear Gaga, please don't break the new iTunes. It has retina display!

Thanks to the always observant Kevin Marks for pointing this out on Twitter. Discuss

Microsoft's releasing Windows Phone 7 to manufacturing today—in other words, it's done. Final. Complete. Microsoft managed to add a few new bits before shrink-wrapping it, too. More »

An anonymous reader writes "The US press has been pushing for a (much needed) federal shield law, that would allow reporters to protect their sources. It's been something of a political struggle for a few years now, and things were getting close when Wikileaks suddenly got a bunch of attention for leaking all those Afghan war documents. Suddenly, the politicians involved started working on an amendment that would specifically carve out an exception for Wikileaks so that it would not be covered by such a shield law. And, now, The First Amendment Center is condemning the newspaper industry for throwing Wikileaks under the bus, as many in the industry are supporting this new amendment, and saying that Wikileaks doesn't deserve source protection because 'it's not journalism.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sanermind writes "Sensing Senators don't have the stomach to try and pass a stand-alone bill in broad daylight that would give the President the power to shut down the Internet in a national emergency, the Senate is considering attaching the Internet Kill Switch bill as a rider to other legislation that would have bi-partisan support." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook is in what’s called a recruiting sweet spot right now. Out of control growth in users and revenue and a nearly certain IPO run in the near future. That’s when employee growth expands at the greatest rate for a company as it grows from hundreds to thousands and then tens of thousands of employees. And with low priced private stock as currency, companies in that position can generally get anyone they want. Yahoo of course does more than its fair share of feeding the beast, but they’re everyone’s favorite recruiting pool right now. But plenty of Googler’s are heading to Facebook, too – LinkedIn is tracking 118 of them to date. For some Googlers, it’s paying off just to go get an offer from Facebook and then tell their employer – a counter offer is almost sure to come, and it may be stratospheric. One recent Googler, we’ve confirmed, was recently offered a counter offer he couldn’t refuse (except he did). He was offered a 15% raise on his $150,000 mid level developer salary, quadruple the stock benefits and…wait for it…a $500,000 cash bonus to stay for a year. He took the Facebook offer anyway. Sources close to Google tell us that about 80% of people stay when they’re offered a counter to a Facebook offer. But some still leave. Part of that may be that Facebook is quietly telling people, never in writing, that there’s no reason their stock won’t hit $100 billion in total valuation over the next couple of years. No guarantees, yadda yadda, but hey if you get 1/10 of 1%, that’s $100 million in stock. Now it’s a party. Google isn’t making these kind of counter offers to everyone, but it’s not a one off, either. It seems to me that every Google engineer at least should be taking a personal day to go collect a Facebook offer. Even if it’s just to get a counter offer from their current employer. Art: Audrey Fukuman CrunchBase InformationFacebookGoogleInformation provided by CrunchBase