I don’t care, I want some of that.

Earlier this year, I made a few bold CAPScalls. Of course, as with many moves one might consider “bold,” you can find yourself boldly wrong.I put red-thumb, underperform calls on Apple and Netflix, two stocks that have long been among individual investors’ favorites. This was despite the fact that I had previously called out both stocks with “outperform” ratings in the Motley Fool’s CAPS database for years.

Good to admit when you’re wrong.

Cool Material:

For some inexplicable reason, dessert has never been seen as a man’s game. Yeah, we’ll eat it, but baking never seemed to be nearly as manly as tossing a steak on the grill. If you’re ready to put your ego aside (at least partially) here are some desserts you could whip up that have a bit of macho in them.

“Chocolate-Dipped Beer Marshmallows”? “Bourbon Marshmallow Bacon S’mores”? “Beeramisu”? Well, there goes my diet. But “….for dudes”? I know lots of woman who will happily eat these.

Eric Slivka for Mac Rumors:

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Larry Page have been participating in active discussions to address patent issues relating to the two companies, “keeping the lines of communication open” as patent battles between Apple on one side and Google and its Android hardware partners on the other side continue to rage.

I would love to be in that room.

I’m particularly fond of the Soloist and the King V.

I love Apogee gear. This teaser looks very interesting.

I can’t imagine what it’s like when that gun goes off.

Today, Amazon announced that Kindle Fire is sold out, and that in just nine months, Kindle Fire has captured 22% of tablet sales in the U.S.

The mainstream press is jumping all over this pile of shit like it’s real news.

First, if a company announces that it sold out of one of its best selling products, it stopped production. Which means Amazon issued a press release saying it stopped production of the Kindle Fire. OF COURSE YOU’RE GOING TO SELL OUT!

Second, how can Amazon claim it has 22 percent market share when it has yet to share any sales numbers. Amazon will not say how many Kindle Fire tablets it actually sold.

There’s a lot of truth to this.

Looks like that site got “Looped” so here is a Google cache version.

Instantly create beautiful etched illustrations from any photo! Experiment with eight stunning styles you can tweak to fit your image perfectly — it’s easy and fun to turn your photo into a unique work of art.

This looks cool.

Eric Abent for SlashGear:

TiVo has finally given a release date for its incoming Steam [sic] transcoder, which was unveiled back in May. Pre-orders opened up for a select few yesterday, and the company says that the device will be arriving on September 6. When it launches, it will set you back $129.99, which doesn’t seem to bad for what it does.

The TiVo Stream is a hardware device that lets you stream or upload content from your TiVo DVR to an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

There are other ways to get content from TiVo to iOS if you’re so inclined. I’ve used Roxio Toast 11 Titanium with my TiVo, for example: it includes a TiVo transcoding app for the Mac which converts TiVo content to something you can watch on your Mac or sync to iOS using iTunes. But this seems like a pretty simple alternative for TiVo users who don’t want to futz around with intermediate steps.

Mike Rose dug into this and says Mac users aren’t likely to be affected.

On this episode Myke is joined by Jim Dalrymple. They discuss Jim’s process for finding stories and posting to The Loop, his Membership scheme, what it’s like to keep secrets and the Apple vs Samsung lawsuit.

Slate:

If you’ve ever met a Swede, chances are you asked her the following question: “What do you think of [ABBA/Ikea/The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/socialized medicine/the Swedish Chef]?” For Swedes, it’s the last of these questions—the one about the unintelligible, shotgun-wielding, and much beloved chaos Muppet—that is especially vexing.

Remember the Fawlty Towers episode where Basil says, “don’t mention the war!” Well, apparently Swedes can be a bit touchy about being asked about The Muppet’s Swedish Chef – who knew!? Turns out, he’s probably Norwegian.

Jim Dalrymple and Dan Benjamin discuss what we’ll see at the upcoming Apple events, Twitter’s change in demographic focus, a leaked HTC tablet with curious iMac styling, the outcome of the Apple v. Samsung lawsuit, guitars, and more!

Nope, nothing at all.

Yeah, what Gruber said.

The owner of an Indian clothing store said Wednesday that he would only change its name from “Hitler” if he was compensated for re-branding costs, amid a growing row over the new shop.The outlet, which sells Western men’s wear, opened 10 days ago in Ahmedabad city in the western state of Gujarat with “Hitler” written in big letters over the front and with a Nazi swastika as the dot on the “i”.

Wow.

This just looks weird.

Steve Wildstrom:

Samsung contributed greatly to this with a post-trial statement that said: ““It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies.” It’s more unfortunate that the claim was largely a fabrication that was swallowed whole by many writers.

What a great article by Steve. Go read it.

Michael Wolff:

But let us not argue the case that all this quite obviously impedes innovation and is part of a new unreal property land grab – not about technology at all, but about intellectual property: an effort to privatize much of what was once understood to be shared and public (indeed, not ownable, like the shape of the iPhone).

There is just so much wrong with Wolff’s story, it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s just take this little gem of a paragraph.

How is it that stopping a company from blatantly ripping off your design “obviously impedes innovation”? It doesn’t. As I wrote earlier this week, all it does it stop copying. It encourages innovation because companies will have to think for themselves instead of stealing like Samsung did.

This is not about the shape of the iPhone. Nokia has a rectangle phone too, but Apple didn’t sue them. This is about Samsung stealing everything that Apple did, from hardware design to software and sold it as their own.

Samsung and writers like Wolff are using this innovation argument as a scare tactic. It won’t work.

Josh Levs for CNN:

A man trying to create a Bigfoot hoax on a highway died after being hit by two cars, officials in Montana said.

There are stupid ways to die, but this just takes the cake.

Ina Fried for All Things D:

Apple’s request for an injunction against at lease eight Samsung phones — as well as Samsung’s effort to have the jury’s verdict set aside — will be heard at a Dec. 6 hearing, [Judge Lucy] Koh announced in a written order released late Tuesday.

It’s probably not going to make a huge difference for Samsung at this point – some of the phones listed are older models anyway.

Customers of Samsung have been dumping their Android products on at least one major resale site. Gazelle.com reports a 50% increase in Samsung smartphones over the past three days, which has led to a 10% drop in prices for those devices. “Consumers seem to be jumping ship,” says Anthony Scarsella, chief gadget officer at Gazelle.com. “We expect this trend to continue, especially with this latest verdict.”

All of Massey’s plug-ins are great.

Clearly this was built for me.