Rob Richman reminds us that sometimes you should be thankful to be alive.

This is how you can help. 100% of your donations go directly to the Make-A-Wish foundation. The Cancer Journal Project is completely self funded. We don’t keep a dime of your donation.

Help if you can.

I’ve always been a fan of Jackson, especially the Dinky models. They just feel really good in my hands.

Thanks to The Blueprint for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. This week The Blueprint is featuring the IN1 is a multi-tool utility case for your iPhone 5/5s. Like a built-in swiss army knife for your phone. Choose from 8 colors. Get yours for $44.95, ships in 24 – 48 hrs.

This was more interesting than I thought it would be.

I’d love to have one of the EVH guitars. Not a bad price.

Very sad news for the music industry, but after reportedly suffering a stroke earlier this year, it appears that Malcolm may not recover enough to rejoin the band.

Dan and Jim talk about the Apple/Samsung lawsuit, Twitch.tv and the death of Justin.tv, Russian Hackers, 1Password, Google and Barnes & Noble’s partnership, anonymity online, Wampler pedals, Godsmack, and more.

Sponsored by Sifter (Visit 5by5.sifter.me for an extended free trial of the most simple issue tracking tool around) and Squarespace (use code GUITARS for a free trial and 10% off your first purchase).

Corey funded the band’s first album through Indiegogo and it turned out great. Here’s a chance to help with the second one and support indie musicians.

I’m not usually impressed by this type of thing, but this is cool.

A three-day, 500+ developer hackathon, iOS DevCamp is the largest iOS event outside of Apple’s own Worldwide Developer Conference.

It takes place August 22-24 in San Jose, California.

This comes amid reports that Google is trying to buy Twitch, Justin.tv’s parent, for $1 billion.

Great looking update if you’re a Dish satellite subscriber.

After a short hiatus this summer, The Loop Magazine returns today with a double issue. I want to apologize to all the subscribers of the magazine for the unscheduled break in publishing, but we’ve put together a great issue for its return. To make up for the missing issues, I’ll publish another large issue shortly, giving you lots of great stories to read.

We have nine stories in this issue, including “State of Mind,” written by software developer, James Thomson. In his piece, James talks about how he feels when surrounded by some of the brightest developers in the world when he attends conferences. This is a free story that anyone can read by just downloading The Loop Magazine app.

Kirk McElhearn talks about the Zen practice of shikantaza, or “just sitting.” Matt Gemmell takes us into the world of fan fiction where people write works of fiction, long and short, set in the established universes of novels, TV shows, cartoons, movies, video games, and more.

Billy Sangster takes us through the feelings of getting back up on stage with his band and Rian van der Merwe explores the deeply spiritual experience of coffee. With so many devices to choose from to use on a plane, Darren Murph explores “The Unintended Death of the In-Flight Magazine.”

Arsenal FC is one of the most popular football clubs in the world—Stan Sulkowski helps run a site dedicated to the club and talks about his experience. Chris Domico’s body attacks itself, putting him in pain and hell without much warning. He talks about his struggles dealing with disease.

Finally, Mark Crump takes us through his guitar setup to play music on an iPad. He’s been playing guitar for 30 years, so he has some experience in getting the best sound from his instrument.

I really hope you enjoy the latest issue of The Loop Magazine. You can download it free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad.

Jim

IN1 is a multi-tool utility case for your iPhone 5/5s. Like a built-in swiss army knife for your phone. Choose from 8 colors. Get yours for $44.95, ships in 24 – 48 hrs.

The game begins with 16 triangles of primary colors. You combine them to make regular polygons with more sides. Squares, pentagons, hexagons, etc.

This could be another one of those additive games.

Charvel guitars are so nice to play.

Pretty cool project by Svein Sund.

That’s the takeaway from findings security researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell plan to present next week, demonstrating a collection of proof-of-concept malicious software that highlights how the security of USB devices has long been fundamentally broken. The malware they created, called BadUSB, can be installed on a USB device to completely take over a PC, invisibly alter files installed from the memory stick, or even redirect the user’s internet traffic. Because BadUSB resides not in the flash memory storage of USB devices, but in the firmware that controls their basic functions, the attack code can remain hidden long after the contents of the device’s memory would appear to the average user to be deleted. And the two researchers say there’s no easy fix: The kind of compromise they’re demonstrating is nearly impossible to counter without banning the sharing of USB devices or filling your port with superglue.

Frightening.

Publishers Adam and Tonya Engst have put out another great ebook written by Joe Kissell called “Take Control of FileVault.” This should answer any question you have about using Apple’s FileVault feature.

Bryan Chaffin fills in the “gaps” that Amazon tends to leave out of its numbers.

Marked is a previewer for Markdown files. Use it with your favorite text editor and it updates every time you save. With robust features for previewing, reviewing and exporting beautiful documents, you can work in plain text while reveling in rich formatting.

Brett Terpstra did a nice job with this app.

This is just great. Pick a year and see what songs were popular when you were growing up.

Apple executives have visited Beats’ Southern California headquarters this week and last week to offer groups of employees positions at Apple and to notify some members of the Beats staff that they will not be included in the transition.

This makes perfect sense. Redundant admin type positions are always going to be casualties in any acquisition.

Right now, today, in 2014 is the best time to start something on the internet. There has never been a better time in the whole history of the world to invent something.

I really enjoyed reading this article because I was around in 1985, where Kevin starts the article. There is always room for another great idea. Definitely worth a read.

iStumbler is the leading wireless discovery tool for Mac OS X, providing plugins for finding AirPort networks, Bluetooth devices, Bonjour services and Location information with your Mac.

This is a great wireless utility that I’ve used for years. I met the developer, Alf Watt, shortly after I started using the software and he’s a terrific guy.

This has always been my favorite Mötley Crüe song.

Horace Dediu has a look at iTunes growth after Apple reported its earnings. I’ve long held that it’s the ecosystem that Apple’s competitors can’t easily copy. The company was very stealthy in the early 2000s in building the infrastructure for what we have now with the App Store, music and video delivery. It all just syncs and works—that’s what consumers want to happen. I’m not saying it doesn’t need work, but even as it sits, Apple’s ecosystem is pretty remarkable.

A former IDC researcher:

“So, the mantra became, preserve the growth rates; to hell with the actual numbers. Even the growth rates are fiction. The fudge is in the “others” category, which is used as a plug to make the numbers work out. In fairness, we did do survey work, calling around, and attending white box conferences and venues to try to get a feel for that market, but in the end, the process was political. I used to tell customers which parts of the data they could trust, essentially the major vendors by form factor and region. The rest was garbage.”

So they make shit up.

Jared Sinclair opens the books on his RSS reading app, Unread. These are some sobering numbers, to be sure. I use Unread and really like the app.