Dave Burns has been covering stock car racing from pit road for seventeen years, including spending the past twelve covering NASCAR's premiere Sprint Cup Series. These days he's a Pit Reporter for ESPN, covering Nationwide and Sprint Cup practices, qualifying, and races, all over the course of a single weekend -- every weekend -- for months at a time

Chronic Dev Team today announced the release of Absinthe 2.0, which offers users the ability to jailbreak numerous iOS devices running iOS 5.1.1, including the third-generation iPad, without having to tether the device to a computer for booting. The jailbreaking process allows users to load third-party software and hacks not authorized by Apple onto their devices.

The North Carolina Utilities Commission today officially approved (PDF) Apple's proposal to construct a 4.8-megawatt fuel cell electric generating facility near its data center in Maiden, North Carolina. The Commission previously approved a plan by Apple to build the first of two 20 megawatt solar farms around its data center. The Public Staff presented this matter to the Commission at its Regular Staff Conference on May 21, 2012

In line with today's claims of taller iPhone prototypes with 3.95-inch displays, one of our sources has provided us with images of what are claimed to be new next-generation iOS device parts being carried by a supplier. The most significant of these parts is a claimed front panel from the next-generation iPod touch, with the supplier claiming that the display would be taller than the current model and that the opening in the front panel measures 4.1 inches diagonally.

Following last month's announcement that Apple and Samsung had agreed to high-level talks involving the two companies' CEOs in an attempt to resolve ongoing patent litigation, Reuters provides a preview of the session set to begin today in San Francisco. The talks, which will be mediated by a federal judge, are scheduled to take place over the next two days

Russian forensics firm ElcomSoft earlier this week announced that it has discovered a way to easily access iCloud backups of iOS devices, incorporating the functionality into its Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker software. While the Apple ID and password must be known in order to access the iCloud data, once that information has been obtained the software makes it easy for investigators to download full iCloud backups and then follow incremental backups in near real-time to track a device's use without the knowledge of the user. ElcomSoft researchers analyzed the communication protocol connecting iPhone users with Apple iCloud, and were able to emulate the correct commands in order to retrieve the content of iOS users’ iCloud storage.

Bloomberg reports that Steve Jobs was intimately involved in the design work for the next-generation iPhone scheduled for release later this year, reiterating claims that the device will be a substantial change from previous designs in part because of a larger display. Apple, based in Cupertino, California, has placed orders from suppliers in Asia for screens that are bigger than the 3.5- inch size now on the smartphone, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had worked closely on the redesigned phone before his death in October, one person said

Apple today pushed out another update to its OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion developer preview program, moving to build 12A206j. The update comes on top of build 12A193i, which was released on May 1

Bloomberg confirms a report from earlier today that Apple is preparing to release thinner MacBook Pro models with Retina displays.

Part leaks from the next-generation iPhone are beginning to ramp up, with component vendor SW-BOX.com having recently added a new headphone jack/earpiece/Wi-Fi cable part claimed to be from the device ( via Cydia Blog ). The new part joins a claimed micro-SIM tray that surfaced on the site several weeks ago and home buttons that appeared on several sites late last month.