The Latest from Boing Boing

Sofanauts: new science fiction chat podcast
Thanks for having us!
Associated Press will sell you a license to quote the public domain
Yeti Kong t-shirt
Botched building demolition creates real-world Katamari Damacy horror
Berlin's luxury car arsonists
CLIQ and other "unpickable" locks pwned at DefCon
Pantsed celebrity photoshopping contest
Incredible Thai Etan Trucks
Some Final Images of Mild Interest
Lysa Provencio's Custom Guitars
Ad Nauseam Reading Aug. 8 in Los Angeles!
Download Stay Free issue #21 (psychology)
Ray Bradbury's 89th birthday party in Glendale, CA, Aug 22

Sofanauts: new science fiction chat podcast

Posted: 03 Aug 2009 01:31 AM PDT

Tony from the StarShipSofa podcast sez, "The Sofanauts is a weekly SF news related show. Joining me each week are a variety of guests from science fiction literature, SF blogs and publishing to bring you the latest news and gossip from the world of SF. Guests have ranged from science fiction writers, including Jeff VanderMeer, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jeremiah Tolbert and Gord Sellar (nominated for this year''s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer) to editors and publishers, like the anthologist John Joseph Adams and Pablo Defendini (mover and shaker over at Tor.com). And one day I hope to snag young Mr Doctorow!

"We are now in the 14th week of the show's conception and it seems to be going from strength to strength. You can always tell how popular a show becomes as guests now ask to be on the show. This week will see the Sofanauts blast full throttle into Worldcon 2009, bringing you all the daily gossip and titbits of what is going on at this year's convention."

StarShipSofa, The Audio Science Fiction magazine has just given birth to... (Thanks, Tony!)

Previously:

Thanks for having us!

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:57 PM PDT

Carrie McLaren and Jason Torchinsky are guest bloggers! Well, they were.

From Carrie: Many thanks Boing Boing and goodbye everyone. I've had loads of fun. If you're ever in Brooklyn, come on down to our useless lectures series, Adult Education. The next show, on September 8, will focus on beer.

From Jason: This was a blast. Thanks very much to Mark F. for letting us do this, and for everyone for reading, commenting, and silently eye rolling when you didn't think I could see. And, if you don't mind, why not buy our book, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture! We appreciate it.

Associated Press will sell you a license to quote the public domain

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:11 PM PDT

James Grimmelman sez,

The Associated Press -- which thinks you owe it a license fee if you quote more than four words from one of its articles -- doesn't even care if the words actually came from its article. They'll charge you anyway, even if you're quoting from the public domain.
I picked a random AP article and went to their "reuse options" site. Then, when they asked what I wanted to quote, I punched in Thomas Jefferson's famous argument against copyright. Their license fee: $12 for an educational 26-word quote. FROM THE PUBLIC FREAKING DOMAIN, and obviously, obviously not from the AP article. But the AP is too busy trying to squeeze the last few cents out of a dying business model to care about little things like free speech or the law.

They tell me I have to use the sentence "exactly as written" and heaven help me if I don't include the complete footer with their copyright boilerplate. Along the way, their terms of use insisted that I'm not allowed to use Jefferson's words in connection with "political Content." Also, I can't use use his words in any manner or context that will be in any way derogatory" to the AP. As if. Jefferson's thoughts on copyright are inherently political, and inherently derogatory towards the the AP's insane position on copyright. I require no license to quote Jefferson. The AP has no right to stop me, no right to demand money from me. All their application does is count words to calculate a fee. It doesn't even check that the words come from the story being "quoted."

The AP Will Sell You a "License" to Words It Doesn't Own (Thanks, James!)

Previously:

Yeti Kong t-shirt

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:51 PM PDT

I really dig this new "Yeti Kong" t-shirt by our pals at GAMA-GO! Order it along with a Boing Boing t-shirt (or anything else to make your total over $25) and shipping is free!

Botched building demolition creates real-world Katamari Damacy horror

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:18 PM PDT

This botched Turkish building demolition features an entire building rolling, Katamari style, through the streets of Cankiri.

Cankiri Turkey Demolition Gone Wrong

Previously:

Berlin's luxury car arsonists

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:15 PM PDT

Berlin anti-gentrification car-arsonists use slow-burning fuses to torch an average of one luxury car per day -- and they also hit police cars:

THEY occur at a rate of nearly one a night, without warning or fanfare. By the time the police arrive, all that remains are smoking wrecks. Even the identifying badges -- Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, VW -- are often obliterated by fire...
During the past six months, more than 170 cars have been destroyed by fire in Berlin and police confirm conservatively that 93 were politically motivated attacks.
A mysterious, single page website, brennende-autos.de (Burning Cars of Berlin), shows the number of cars set alight and where the crimes occurred, revealing clusters in ''richer'' areas, or in suburbs where gentrification and redevelopment are changing the demographic of local neighbourhoods...
Police cars, too, are being targeted. The favoured method is to use the slow-burn barbecue fire starters, which take time to smoulder and provide plenty of get-away time for the perpetrators.
''It is very difficult to get evidence. The fire can be started underneath a car but the person that did it can be many streets away when it is alight,'' Mr Millert said.

German radicals turn to arson (via Beyond the Beyond)

CLIQ and other "unpickable" locks pwned at DefCon

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:10 PM PDT

Lockpicking legends Marc Weber Tobias, Toby Bluzmanis and Matt Fiddler demo'ed a series of ingenious hacks for opening "unpickable" locks at Defcon last weekend. Included is a hack that opens the expensive electronic/mechanical CLIQ lock, which requires an electronic handshake between the key and the lock, and which logs every open/shut event) by simply vibrating the key:

Bluzmanis demonstrated an attack by taking an Interactive CLIQ electro-mechanical lock made by Mul-T-Lock and inserting a mechanical-only key cut to the same keyway. After inserting the key, he does something to vibrate the key for a few seconds until the mechanical motor in the cylinder turns and lifts the locking element to release the lock. He asked Threat Level not to disclose the precise method, other than to say it involves no special tool or skill.
"There's no audit trail that the lock has been opened," Tobias says, "because there are no electronics [involved]." If the attacker entered the room to steal documents or sabotage the facility, the last person who entered before him and who showed up in the audit log, would presumably get the blame if the thief wasn't caught on surveillance camera or the video surveillance was also sabotaged.

Electronic High-Security Locks Easily Defeated at DefCon

Previously:

Pantsed celebrity photoshopping contest

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:06 PM PDT

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: removing the trousers of celebrities, revealing their tightie-whities and budgie-smugglers.

Where Are My Pants? 7

Incredible Thai Etan Trucks

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:13 PM PDT

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

I've been fascinated by these for quite a while, and I'm gathering information on them for a future book project: "These" and "them" are Thai Edan trucks-- possibly the only cottage-industry motor vehicles in the world.

These are farmer's trucks, made in rural workshops in Thailand to order for local farmers. Though there are many small village factories making them, they do appear to have some standardization of design; for example, they all seem to be built around the same 14 (or so) hp diesel Kutoba generator motors. They're all wonderfully and elaborately decorated and painted, and, while undeniably crude, seem very capable of doing their job.

I love the ingenuity of these, but I'm afraid they're not going to be around much longer; more advanced, cheap, and modern used Isuzu and Toyota pickups are starting to become competitive with the locally-built Edan trucks, so it's likely just a matter of time before these little workshops shut down. It's understandable, but a shame.

Information about them online is a bit scant, but this blog entry (also where I snagged that picture) has some excellent information from a man who had one built. I'm hoping to produce a nice, big coffe table type book about these, full of good pictures, since I think I'm not the only one who finds these lovely brutes fascinating.

Some Final Images of Mild Interest

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:36 PM PDT

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

My tour of blogging duty is wrapping up here, but I wanted to put up some photos I had set aside here for possible blogging use. Here we go:

This squirrel got himself stuck in our homemade squirrel feeder. Ha ha ha! Idiot! (I got him out okay; he's fine.)

No one here is interested in getting into any Apple vs. Microsoft crap, but I saw this Zune wall-outlet-to-5V-USB adapter, and compared it to the one that came with my iPhone, and was a bit confused. Microsoft is a colossal company, with more money than God's dad's boss. Why is their AC adapter about four times the size of the Apple one? Couldn't they have called, say, anyone in China and asked for an AC adapter as small as the Apple one? I can't imagine the cost is that much more, in volume. Baffling.

Murillee Martin at Jalopnik has a really wonderful set of junkyard pictures. You can never have too many. I had a Volvo P1800S like the one in the sample image there, too. I hope that's not it.

There's a fair number of sites on the web that mock these sorts of improvised solutions. I love them-- This guy had a dead van, a working truck, and a dream. Way to go, improviser!

This happened a while ago, but it's so much fun to talk about. One morning, I pulled back my desk chair in my office, and found this possum.

Lysa Provencio's Custom Guitars

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 08:14 PM PDT

Fender has had a program where they're finding up-and-coming artists to paint guitars; my friend Lysa Provincio has done a few of these, and they look pretty great. In addition to this one, there's more on her site. Enjoy!

Ad Nauseam Reading Aug. 8 in Los Angeles!

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:50 AM PDT

For those of you in the greater Los Angeles area who are either interested in the book Carrie and I wrote/edited, or if anyone just wants to berate me for any of the posts I've put up here these past two weeks, then come on out to Book Soup in West Hollywood where I'll be doing a reading from the book, answering questions, and maybe some small appliance repair. Hope to see you there, internet!

Download Stay Free issue #21 (psychology)

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:32 AM PDT

Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.

Before signing off from our stint as guest bloggers, I thought I'd post a back issue from Stay Free! The "psychology" issue has been unavailable for quite some time, so here it is in convenient pdf form.

Better Living Through Lobotomy: What can the history of psychosurgery tell us about medicine today?

Interview with historian Elliot Valenstein

Lawrence Kirmayer discusses cross-cultural mental health

A brief history of employee personality testing by Ana Marie Cox

Curious Mental Illnesses of the World

The history of psychosomatic illness (interview with Edward Shorter)

Enter the Wolfman: The syndrome that makes one howl at the moon

More!

The Szondi personality test (above) started with the assumption that everyone is a little crazy and proceeded to unearth which disorder was the cause. Each test subject was shown photos of people and asked to pick out the one they'd most like to sit next to on a train trip. Little did subjects know that the people they were shown were all "thoroughly disordered"--a homosexual, a sadist, and an epileptic, among others. The "disorder" that subjects selected was presumed to indicate their own disposition. -- from "Test Mania!"

Link (pdf)

Ray Bradbury's 89th birthday party in Glendale, CA, Aug 22

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 08:11 AM PDT

Keith sez, "Ray Bradbury will celebrate his 89th birthday in Glendale, Ca, on Saturday August 22nd. I contacted the book store and they promise to give Ray any cards that make to their address. I'll go to the mall and see if I can find a card with a dinosaur on it. The address is for sending birthday greetings is:"