On the Gizmodo iPhone leak:

“Hi, this is Steve. I really want my phone back.”

He wasn’t demanding. He was asking. And he was charming and he was funny. I was half-naked, just getting back from surfing, but I managed to keep my shit together.

The single best remembrance piece I’ve read on Jobs.

From the BUILD conference. Very in-depth, with lots of information on how the revamped Start menu and overall Metro UI work.

But even in this early state, Windows 8 is unambiguously a first-class tablet operating system.

Update: you can read the press release from the Build Windows event on Microsoft’s website.

An absolutely astounding piece about how Valve hires and operates; written by a designer who has worked on Steam.

Their recruiting is equally enigmatic. Colleagues of mine far more talented than I mentioned how they had sent in resumes, but never heard back … Internal documents include long target lists, where Valve employees add names of the best and brightest innovators in the industry, and if/when they will be available.

A macaque is a genus of monkeys, and apparently, a certain black macaque in Indonesia can take self-portraits using a digital camera.

He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn’t worked that out yet. I wish I could have stayed longer as he probably would have taken a full family album.

A fantastic article by Giant Bomb’s Patrick Klepek. The follow-up article is also well worth a read as it includes comments from others suffering from Asperger’s.

We all play games for different reasons. Maybe it’s escapism for one person, exploration of a new medium for another. For Jake, it’s something else. It realizes a need. Throughout our conversation, Jake dropped the term “in real life” many times, underscoring the personal disconnect he feels between his ability to interact socially in a virtual environment through games and “in real life.”

Some interesting technical details and statistics.

Only 8.8% of music playback comes from Spotify’s servers. The rest comes from the peer-to-peer network (35.8%) or your local cache (55.4%).