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Priceonomics:

Rock Paper Scissors has serious players, organizing leagues, and sponsored tournaments that draw hundreds to compete for cash prizes. In 2006, Bud Light sponsored a tournament and offered a $50,000 cash prize.

While RPS advocates are eager to validate it as a serious pursuit, they also intend to have a good time. That said, if during a tournament you try to throw some sort of fourth move like dynamite that beats rock, paper, and scissors, you’ll be asked to leave.

Leave it to Canadians to come up with competitive “Rock, Paper, Scissors” and tie it into drinking beer.

Stratechery:

Conspicuous consumption and status-seeking are major drivers of the Asian market in particular, and are why Asians make up over 50% of the luxury market by nationality. In the case of handbags, you absolutely are saying something with your selection: a Louis Vuitton bag is many people’s first luxury purchase, and shows you have some means; a Chanel bag, on the other hand, signifies you are at least upper middle class, maybe even rich.

At the top of the heap, though, is Hermès: sport a Birkin bag and there is no question as to your status.

While I don’t agree with all of his points, it’s a very instructive way to look at Apple and perhaps how and where they see their place in the market.

Even if you don’t know a thing about Rugby, Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister in HBO’s Game of Thrones) might just get you to watch it.

Reuters:

Apple has invited top fashion editors and bloggers in unprecedented numbers to its Tuesday launch gala, further evidence that the iPhone maker is preparing to take the wraps off a smartwatch.

“It confirms that they have a play in wearables and that they want to appeal to the fashion world, and not just technology consumers,” said Lauren Indvik, editor in chief for Fashionista and another first-time invitee.

The event next week gets more and more interesting every day.

Vanity Fair:

Designer Marc Newson is joining Apple as part of senior vice president of design Jonathan Ive’s team, the company told VF Daily on Friday.

Newson, who will continue to be based in the United Kingdom, will be an employee of Apple, and will be frequently traveling to the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters. The industrial designer has had his work archived by MoMA, and has been commissioned by Ford, Nike, and Qantas Airways, among others.

Jonathan Ive you know. One of his best friends, Marc Newson, might not be quite as familiar a name to you but he is also a world-class designer.

Inc:

During my time in Australia, the relaxed lifestyle of the Aussies, Kiwis, and Europeans we met contrasted sharply with the “live to work” mentality so ingrained in American culture. To them, it isn’t about your place in life or how you make a living; it’s simply about living well.

Contrary to what many people think, this philosophy doesn’t have to clash with being ambitious. It just means making a fun, fulfilling life your first priority.

Living in Vancouver, I’ve met and known a lot of Australians and am always amazed at their wanderlust. There’s a lot of good advice in this column, particularly for those in college. Travel while you can.

In the case of Apple, the shareholders claim that Cook and others, including directors Al Gore and Bill Campbell, breached their fiduciary duty to the company and engaged in “waste of corporate assets.” They want the court to order Apple’s board to implement better governance measures, and for Cook and the other defendants to pay restitution to shareholders and to pay the shareholders’ legal bills.

comScore:

173 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (71.8 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in July, up 3 percent since April. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 42.4 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 1 percentage point from April). Samsung ranked second with 28.4 percent market share (up 0.7 percentage points), followed by LG with 6.4 percent, Motorola with 5.7 percent and HTC with 4.7 percent.

That’s a pretty significant lead for Apple and they are outpacing Samsung in terms of growth.

Jan Dawson on iCloud:

Lastly, we as the end users are always the weak point in security. That’s not to absolve tech companies of blame: in fact, it’s a key challenge they should all be working to overcome, while managing the balance between removing the barriers to good security and maintaining strong protections for users.

I think this sums up the whole iCloud situation for me.

A good article highlighting some of the improvements you can expect to see if you upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress.

Executives at Europe’s big consumer electronics trade fair this week in Berlin readily admit to hoping that Apple can crack the missing code for everyone. Where the U.S. innovator leads, its rivals plan to follow by bringing their own improvements or by seeking out profitable niche markets that Apple ignores.

“This is what we wanted,” Sunny Lee, CEO of Samsung Electronics’ European business told Reuters when asked about Apple’s likely debut.

I bet that’s exactly what Samsung wanted. Not that they’ll copy everything that Apple does, no, not Samsung.

The Wall Street Journal:

Apple said it plans additional steps to keep hackers out of user accounts, but denied that a lax attitude toward security had allowed intruders to post nude photos of celebrities on the Internet.

To make such leaks less likely, Mr. Cook said Apple will alert users via email and push notifications when someone tries to change an account password, restore iCloud data to a new device, or when a device logs into an account for the first time.

This is just one of many steps Apple will take to protect themselves and users.

BBC:

Laser “tattoos” could remove the need for sticky labels during the sale of fruit, developers say.

The technology removes pigment from the fruit’s surface to show information such as the item’s sell-by date and price.

The process does not affect the taste or the lifespan of the fruit.

I’d never thought about how much those paper labels cost. This is a fascinating idea.

The “Bing Image Widget,” released on Aug. 22, gives publishers the ability to create a panel on their websites that displays digital images supplied by Microsoft’s Bing search engine, according to the lawsuit.

Rather than draw from a pool of licensed images, the lawsuit claimed, the product grants access to the billions of images that can be found online, without regard to whether the photos are copyrighted.

According to some recent comments from chief financial officer Anthony Noto, however, the company is doing a lot more than not ruling it out — it sounds like a done deal.

Sigh.

Daily Dot:

Basically, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” was too good to mock. And as it turns out, there’s a reason for that. The film’s directors are fans of Honest Trailers, and they purposefully engineered the film so it would be harder to parody.

In a recent interview with Collider, Winter Soldier directors Joe and Anthony Russo were asked how they felt about achieving a positive Honest Trailers review.

I’m a huge fan of Honest Trailers and love the fact they had a positive influence on a summer blockbuster.

But in a statement, a spokesman for Twitter appeared to dispute Everett’s version of events, saying the company has no problem with Twitpic’s name.

“We’re sad to see Twitpic is shutting down,” the spokesman said. “We encourage developers to build on top of the Twitter service, as Twitpic has done for years, and we made it clear that they could operate using the Twitpic name. Of course, we also have to protect our brand, and that includes trademarks tied to the brand.”

So, Twitter would let them keep the name, but not the trademark? That’s how it seems to me.

In a note to investors on Thursday, White, of Cantor Fitzgerald, used the words “underwhelming,” “rushed,” and “half-baked” to describe Samsung’s announcements, which also included the Gear VR partnership with Oculus, a Gear S smartwatch, and the new Note Edge handset with a side-facing display. White said he believes Samsung’s announcements were a subpar attempt at garnering buzz for its products before Apple holds its own presentation next Tuesday, Sept. 9.

Analyst Brian White isn’t the only one saying this about Samsung’s announcements. As I said yesterday, things could get rough for Samsung in the coming months.

With Sonic Port™ VX, it’s finally possible to record complete songs anywhere inspiration strikes. The guitar/bass input features 120dB of dynamic range for incomparable tone and best-in-class dynamics. A stereo line input lets you record keys, drum machines, DJ mixers and other sources. Zero-latency monitoring means you can record without distraction. And with professional-level 1/4” stereo outputs, you can easily connect studio monitors and perfect your mixes. With Sonic Port VX, the world is your studio.

Sonic Port VX brings three built-in professional condenser microphones to the party. Matched stereo mics let you record live performances with remarkable clarity.

This is an impressive looking device. I haven’t heard it yet, but I have one of the original Sonic Ports and love it.

That’s a huge building for an event that’s going to last a few hours. Typical of Apple, they go all out.

If you’re worried at all about the security of your Apple ID, you should have two-step verification enabled. Allyson Kazmucha does a great job of explaining what it is and how to enable it.

We can’t share the full list of developers yet (we just cracked 100!). But we can show you nearly 20 apps that are already working on integrating 1Password’s iOS 8 App Extension for fast, one-tap logging in and even updating your passwords!

The 1Password extension is going to be one of the most important extensions on iOS 8. Security and having safe passwords are always a pain in the ass, but having easy access to 1Password through this extension will make things much easier. I’m looking forward to it.

There you have it, you can watch the event for yourself. No need for any live blogs for this one.

With Dan still out, Shawn King and Jim talk about Apple’s upcoming September 9th event, the large scale celebrity iCloud hack, how to keep your passwords safe with 1Password, Marshall amps, and more!

Sponsored by Iconic by Ridgewood Publishing (visit iconicbook.com/5by5 for 20% off select editions of this beautiful coffee table book all about Apple).

Looks like there are a lot of great changes to Wordpress 4.0. I’ll test it out before installing it on The Loop, but the video shows some nice new features.

A few weeks ago Twitter contacted our legal demanding that we abandon our trademark application or risk losing access to their API. This came as a shock to us since Twitpic has been around since early 2008, and our trademark application has been in the USPTO since 2009.

Damn Twitter.

This is a great list of things to do on World Beard Day like bar-b-q, change a tire, build an all-bearded human pyramid and other fun activities us bearded men do.

Justin Perkins:

There is much more to mastering than just the sonic aspects and it varies between different release formats. It’s also gotten more complex as digital distribution evolves, CDs become the minority, and vinyl makes a comeback.

What a great resource Justin put together. A few tips you may not have known about mastering songs for all the different audio formats available.

Much respect to IKEA, they did a brilliant job on this ad.

This is more than a passing collaboration; it’s a long term project with long term goals. Marshall and Softube already have several new products under development.

Okay, this is exciting news for fans of Marshall amps. Softube is great at making software plugins, so I expect them to do a really good job at producing some Marshall sounds.