Some great behind-the-scenes insight behind the last year of Netflix.

It's interesting that 2 years ago, everybody absolutely had to have a Netflix subscription. Now, with rival services like Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime catching up to their instant watch selection, Netflix isn't as crucial anymore.

Jonathan Friedland, the new vice president of global corporate communications who had joined Netflix just a few months earlier, asked whether customers on tight incomes might object to the price hike, according to people at Hastings' meeting. Hastings argued that Netflix was a great bargain. He said he knew that some customers would complain but that the number would be small and the anger would quickly fade.

Hastings was wrong. The price hike and the later, aborted attempt to spin off the company's DVD operations enraged Netflix customers. The company lost 800,000 subscribers, its stock price dropped 77 percent in four months, and management's reputation was battered. Hastings went from Fortune magazine's Businessperson of the Year to the target of Saturday Night Live satire.

About a year and a half ago, on a trip to California with the boys of Koo Koo Kanga Roo, the duo and their manager were discussing podcasts.

Of course, I knew what a podcast was[1. And not just because I make one.]. I just really didn't understand the appeal of audio podcasts. I figured it was like talk radio: only old fogeys who don't like music listen to them.

But reluctantly, I downloaded a few episodes of The Nerdist and from there, the Music app on my iPhone was being used less and less compared to Instacast.

If you don't like talk radio but you enjoy getting into hour-long discussions on very nerdy topics like the intricacies of various calendar apps, the real cost of traveling to Mars and why the LIBOR scandal could get ugly quickly, then you are only fooling yourself: you actually like podcasts, but just don't know it yet.

In an attempt to make it easier for others to get into podcasts, here are a few of my favorite podcasts and why you would like them.

Build and Analyze Software Development, Self-Employment, Coffee, Babies A show for iOS developers hosted by Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper and Tumblr, and Dan Benjamin, the creator of 5by5. Dan and Marco frame most of their discussions through the lens of Instapaper and 5by5, which is incredibly helpful for other developers or entrepreneurs in general. Show Website

StarTalk Radio Astrophysics Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, an astrophysicist and incredibly well-spoken man, teams up with guests to talk about everything related to the universe. Typically, the show features a co-host comedian, like Chuck Nice or Eugene Mirman, and a slew of experts in whatever field is being discussed, like astronaut Mike Massimino. Show Website

The Talk Show Apple, Technology The Talk Show, in its current iteration, features John Gruber of Daring Fireball with a different guest each episode. After a rough transition from its previous iteration (hosted by John and Dan Benjamin), the show is really starting to hit its stride. If you're a fan of Daring Fireball, there's no reason not to be listening to this show every week. Show Website

Planet Money Finance I've never really been interested in finance and how money works, but this show does a great job of presenting drab topics in a highly-engaging format. The episodes are quite easy to digest as well, most being around 15 minutes. Show Website

Running From the Law Endurance Sports, Small Business Law Combining two things that seemingly don't go together, Running From the Law splits their shows in half, giving equal footing to both of their main topics. The show is hosted by Erika Hall, co-founder of Mule Design Studio, and Gabe Levine, business lawyer. Show Website

Home Work Working from Home, Entrepreneur A relatively new show, Aaron Mahnke and Dave Caolo talk about the joys and agonies of being self-employed. The show goes beyond simply suggesting how to be more productive from home; they also discuss topics such as staying fit at home, staying educated in your field and communicating with the "real" world. Show Website

Freakonomics Radio Economics, Finance Hosted by the authors of the book, Freakonomics Radio picks up from where the book left off, where the authors use economics to show that what we consider "common sense" is sometimes anything but. Show Website

You Look Nice Today General Tomfoolery YLNT is the epitome of the general perception of the early days of podcasting: three guys sitting around microphones late at night, drinking and making stuff up. The difference? They actually do it well. Very well. Show Website

If you have any suggestions for me of shows to check out (especially any shows about video production), please drop me a line.

The photos that the special effects company posted to Facebook are just adorable.

The great part about this article isn't just the old guys spiting the "man"; the great part is the amount of detail going into these recordings:

"You just don't go in and say, 'Hey guys, let's record it,' and it's done in three minutes," [frontman Joe] Elliott notes. "We had to study those songs, I mean down to the umpteenth degree of detail, and make complete forgeries of them."

This was when I was roughly 4, and yet I very vividly remember the buzz surrounding the 1992 Dream Team. This article is a great biography of the team and offers a ton of insider stories. According to the article, the Dream Team (consisting of the greats of that era, including Jordan, Bird, Barkley, Malone, Ewing, etc.) faced off for the first time together against a bunch of college players (consisting of future stars like Penny Hardaway and Chris Webber). In that game, the college guys upset the greats in the 4th quarter. A few days later, they had a rematch:

Charles Barkley: We sent them a little message.

Chris Webber: We didn't score a point. Not one point. Not a point on a free throw, not a point in the game. We were the perfect wake-up call for them, and they were the perfect reality check for us.

Like Omar Sharif materializing out of the shimmering desert as a man on a camel in “Lawrence of Arabia,” the elusive boson has been coming slowly into view since last winter, as the first signals of its existence grew until they practically jumped off the chart.

This is major, major news. If you don't know what the Higgs boson is, this article gives a great summary of what it is and the history of its discovery.

I don't think I'd ever have the chutzpah[1. Perhaps not the right word choice for a story about the Hezbollah...] to do this. A great piece by Mitchell Prothero.

We figured they’d cheat; they were Hezbollah, after all. But none of us—a team of four Western journalists—thought we’d be dodging military-grade flash bangs when we initiated this “friendly” paintball match.

The battle takes place underground in a grungy, bunker-like basement underneath a Beirut strip mall. When the grenades go off it’s like being caught out in a ferocious thunderstorm: blinding flashes of hot white light, blasts of sound that reverberate deep inside my ears.

As my eyesight returns and readjusts to the dim arena light, I poke out from my position behind a low cinder-block wall. Two large men in green jumpsuits are bearing down on me. I have them right in my sights, but they seem unfazed—even as I open fire from close range, peppering each with several clear, obvious hits. I expect them to freeze, maybe even acknowledge that this softie American journalist handily overcame their flash-bang trickery and knocked them out of the game. Perhaps they’ll even smile and pat me on the back as they walk off the playing field in a display of good sportsmanship (after cheating, of course).

Instead, they shoot me three times, point-blank, right in the groin.

An American man, with no legs, has reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro by walking to the top on his hands.

Inspirational.

MP3s are so natural to the Internet now that it’s almost hard to imagine a time before high-quality compressed music. But there was such a time—and even after "MP3" entered the mainstream, organizing, ripping, and playing back one's music collection remained a clunky and frustrating experience.

Enter Winamp, the skin-able, customizable MP3 player that "really whips the llama's ass." In the late 1990s, every music geek had a copy; llama-whipping had gone global, and the big-money acquisition offers quickly followed. AOL famously acquired the company in June 1999 for $80-$100 million—and Winamp almost immediately lost its innovative edge.

Winamp's 15-year anniversary is now upon us, with little fanfare. It’s almost as if the Internet has forgotten about the upstart with the odd slogan that looked at one time like it would be the company to revolutionize digital music. It certainly had the opportunity.

Who among us didn't use WinAMP before we all had iPods? I remember carefully editing my ID3 tags, crafting playlists for my Cybiko and, of course, building my own skins.¹ This is a must-read article by Cyrus Farivar at Ars Technica for three reasons. First, it's a happy tale of an entrepreneur building something for themselves, really sweating the details to make it perfect and becoming a huge success for it. Second, it's a sad tale of how Nullsoft's decline correlated with that of AOL.² Third, and most importantly, the story ends with a reminder of just how powerful the international markets can be. Any developer building something that's intended for the mass market needs to be building support for other languages and cultures into their apps.

I'm currently on a lifetime abstention from McDonalds, but even I must admit my stomach growled a little bit after watching them craft that burger. My favorite part is ever-so-slight injection of ketchup and mustard into the front of the burger.