The Latest from Boing Boing |
- Onion: "Supreme Court Upholds Freedom Of Speech In Obscenity-Filled Ruling"
- Aid packages come in wrappers that turn into kids' balls
- My "For the Win" book-tour: ORD, SEA, PDX, SFO, AUS, RDU, NYC, YYZ!
- Chinese WiFinders with built-in password-crackers
- How I got phished
- Amazing student created trailer for Rendezvous with Rama
- Trailer for Machete, Robert Rodriguez' Mexploitation love-note to Arizona
- Where do Martian gullies come from?
- Die Antwoord: Whoah. That's some hardcore marketing.
- Awesome one-man reenactment of Downfall "Hitler Bunker" scene
- Parody oil spill T-shirt
- Times Square bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad's résumé is terrifyingly mundane: "PowerPoint, email tools, internet experience"
- DIY iPad stylus
- Russian president asked to investigate MP's claims of alien abduction
- AT&T continues to excel at dropping calls, according to new report
- "Don't arrest me, I'm white!" and other favorite Arizona protest signs
- Cutting Libraries in a Recession...
- White Castle candle
- GPS directions in the voice of your choice
- Brits: demonstrate for electoral reform Saturday, Trafalgar Square
- Cognitive Bias song
- Musicians record album in rebuttal to File Sharing is Killing Music article
- An Inconvenient Nuke: Xeni interviews Lawrence Bender, Jeff Skoll on "Countdown to Zero"
- 14th Annual Webby Awards winners
- Why watching TV online (mostly) doesn't help ratings (for now)
- Century-old baby "mummy" finally buried, then snatched
- Tax Amnesty TV ad knows who you are, Tom.
- Stross explains why he's voting LibDem (me, too)
- HOWTO Tell a debt-collector to go to hell
- Canabalt goes Mavis Beacon with Typing Tutor Edition
Onion: "Supreme Court Upholds Freedom Of Speech In Obscenity-Filled Ruling" Posted: 05 May 2010 11:19 PM PDT The Onion's "Supreme Court Upholds Freedom Of Speech In Obscenity-Filled Ruling" represents exactly the kind of jurisprudence we need: "I'm beginning to wonder if you really understand what 'abridging the freedom of speech' means at all," said Stevens, a 34-year veteran of the court known for his often-nuanced interpretations of the First Amendment. "I'm also wondering whether you and your fat-faced plaintiffs over there need to have some respect for constitutionally protected expression fucked into your empty hick skulls."Supreme Court Upholds Freedom Of Speech In Obscenity-Filled Ruling (via JWZ) Previously:
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Aid packages come in wrappers that turn into kids' balls Posted: 05 May 2010 11:15 PM PDT Darren Barefoot sez, "A very clever idea: instead of wasting the packaging that aid to the developing world comes in, enable it to be folded into a makeshift soccer (or other type of) ball:" Dreamball (Thanks, Darren) |
My "For the Win" book-tour: ORD, SEA, PDX, SFO, AUS, RDU, NYC, YYZ! Posted: 06 May 2010 02:03 AM PDT Monday morning (volcano permitting!), I fly to the US for a tour to promote my latest book, the YA novel For the Win. I'll be making stops in Chicago, Seattle, Portland OR, San Francisco/Palo Alto, Austin, Raleigh/Chapel Hill, New York and Toronto. Tor books has just put the schedule online -- I hope to see you! And yes, the book will be available as a free download, just as soon as I touch down in Chicago and get the site online. I'm also going to pop in at Forbidden Planet London this weekend and sign their stock before I go. In the virtual future, you must organize to surviveFor the Win by Cory Doctorow Previously: |
Chinese WiFinders with built-in password-crackers Posted: 05 May 2010 10:13 PM PDT NetworkWorld reports on a hot-selling Chinese gadget: a WiFi network-locator with a built-in password cracker. These things show you which networks are available in your area and which password to use to get online with them. Alas, they're not stand-alone USB keys with a little LCD display, just WiFi cards with some specialized software. I betcha next year's model is self-contained, though: With one of the "network-scrounging cards," or "ceng wang ka" in Chinese, a user with little technical knowledge can easily steal passwords to get online via Wi-Fi networks owned by other people.Wi-Fi key-cracking kits sold in China mean free Internet (via /. Previously: |
Posted: 05 May 2010 10:10 PM PDT My latest Locus column, "Persistence Pays Parasites," describes the process by which I fell prey to a phishing attack on Twitter, and how I learned (the hard way) that my threat-model for this kind of attack was flawed: Here's how I got fooled. On Monday, I unlocked my Nexus One phone, installing a new and more powerful version of the Android operating system that allowed me to do some neat tricks, like using the phone as a wireless modem on my laptop. In the process of reinstallation, I deleted all my stored passwords from the phone. I also had a couple of editorials come out that day, and did a couple of interviews, and generally emitted a pretty fair whack of information.Cory Doctorow: Persistence Pays Parasites Previously: |
Amazing student created trailer for Rendezvous with Rama Posted: 05 May 2010 09:08 PM PDT In 2001 Aaron Ross created a beautiful short film for Arthur C. Clarke's book Rendezvous with Rama, complete with stunning sound design by Andrew Halasz. Last year Vancouver Film School student Philip Mahoney took the film and added his own sound design to the film -- including a fantastic voice over -- to turn it into a trailer for a film. A film I would now really really like to see based on this trailer. Both versions are awesome and you can see them below. Philip Mahoney's remixed version: Aaron Ross's original version: Must Watch: Fan Made Rendezvous with Rama Movie Trailer! |
Trailer for Machete, Robert Rodriguez' Mexploitation love-note to Arizona Posted: 05 May 2010 04:11 PM PDT Happy Cinco de Mayo. Ain't it Cool News got their paws on a trailer for Robert Rodriguez' Machete, a virtual eff-yoo to Arizona. Damn if that ain't the maximum badness of ass ever packed into 2:24. Danny Trejo is amazing. More about the feature here, due in theaters this September. Again, the trailer's here. "They just f*cked with the wrong Mexican..." |
Where do Martian gullies come from? Posted: 05 May 2010 03:18 PM PDT Well ... when one Martian gully loves another Martian gully very much ... OK, actually the question is really whether or not these things are formed by flowing water. As Phil Plait explains, there are pretty compelling arguments both for and against that idea—the primary alternative to water being sand and dust rolling downhill. How's that work? A recent paper provides a possibility:
Bad Astronomy: Are Martian gullies formed from water or not |
Die Antwoord: Whoah. That's some hardcore marketing. Posted: 05 May 2010 03:43 PM PDT To promote their forthcoming debut album release on Interscope (news of which first broke here on Boing Boing), Ninja of Die Antwoord gets a full-back tattoo of the album title, $0$. (And yes, haters, it's real: Ninja explains to Boing Boing that the video documents an uninterrupted 11-hour inking session, all in one shot).
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Awesome one-man reenactment of Downfall "Hitler Bunker" scene Posted: 05 May 2010 02:53 PM PDT YouTuber Brandon Hardesty re-enacts all of the roles (yes, including Hitler) in the "Downfall" scene made famous through internet funny-caption videos. This really is a phenomenal specimen of online video greatness, and a damn good performance. Nice going, Brandon. Reenactment #56: Downfall, aka the "Hitler Bunker" scene (thanks, Mark Day)
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Posted: 05 May 2010 02:19 PM PDT The makers of Demotivators created a classy T-shirt to commemorate the hard work of everybody's favorite oil company. (Via Dave Lawrence) |
Posted: 05 May 2010 02:30 PM PDT Faisal Shahzad, the Pashtun native of Pakistan who became a naturalized American citizen and is now suspect numero uno in the Times Square FailBomb case, stressed "experience with Fortune 500 companies" in his résumé. He also claimed to be a "good team player." OBJECTIVE: To work in a high-energy and challenging business environment that will promote professional and personal growth while adding significant value to my employer.PDF of Faisal Shahzad's resume. (via NBC News) Related: sounds like he spent all of 45 minutes learning how firecrackers work. Lucky for us all.
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Posted: 05 May 2010 01:45 PM PDT Another great Make: Online video by Collin Cunningham. Fingertip input is great for most touchscreen usage like typing, web-browsing -- all sorts of virtual button-pushing tasks. But for many people, drawing remains an activity best approached with a pen, pencil, brush, etc. |
Russian president asked to investigate MP's claims of alien abduction Posted: 05 May 2010 01:52 PM PDT Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the guy at left here, is the President of the Republic of Kalmykia of the Russian Federation. He is also a chess champion, a publisher, a multimillionaire, and a very eccentric dude. In a recent television interview, he claimed to have been abducted by aliens back in 1997. Now, a fellow member of the Russian government wants him investigated—over concerns that his alien abduction claims either mean he's a crackpot, or that he's undergone an experience of great military and political significance to Russia, and possibly leaked state secrets to extraterrestrial visitors. Ilyumzhinov said the aliens didn't make themselves known to the rest of the world because they weren't ready, adding that he communicated with them telepathically because there wasn't enough oxygen.ABC News, True/Slant, BBC. |
AT&T continues to excel at dropping calls, according to new report Posted: 05 May 2010 01:40 PM PDT "In a poll that asked 4,040 smartphone users in March how many dropped calls they had experienced in the past three months, AT&T -- the exclusive U.S. carrier of Apple's iPhone and iPad mobile devices -- came in dead last among the country's four largest carriers." |
"Don't arrest me, I'm white!" and other favorite Arizona protest signs Posted: 05 May 2010 01:31 PM PDT "Don't arrest me, I'm white!" A collection of some of the most interesting protest signs in pro-brown-people's-rights demonstrations in Arizona. |
Cutting Libraries in a Recession... Posted: 05 May 2010 01:07 PM PDT (Image: CuttingLibraries, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from daniel_solis's photostream) (via A Whole Lotta Nothing) |
Posted: 05 May 2010 12:51 PM PDT White Castle, makers of the world's finest square sliders (IMO!!), have productized their glorious steamed beef/onion odor in the form of a candle. The candles have already sold out online but according to WCPO.com, they can be purchased at White Castle locations for $10, including the ceramic carton. "Could A Familar Scent Be 'What You Crave?'" (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!) |
GPS directions in the voice of your choice Posted: 05 May 2010 12:35 PM PDT Nokia released an "Own Voice" feature for Ovi Maps that allows you to use your own voice, or anyone else's, for turn-by-turn directions. One could imagine the tension caused by having one's spouse providing the guidance, or the 1980s thrill of William Daniels as the disembodied navigator. Own Voice for Ovi Maps (Thanks, Mike Liebhold)! |
Brits: demonstrate for electoral reform Saturday, Trafalgar Square Posted: 05 May 2010 11:50 AM PDT Guy from Open Democracy sez, "This election campaign has seen repeated promises of 'change' and a 'new politics' from politicians keen to show they understand the public's anger at a corrupt and broken political system. But unless we make clear we are serious about the need for reform, politicians will assume they can get back to the same old politics. The election is too close to call but one result is guaranteed -- our unfair voting system will deliver a random outcome which does not reflect what people voted for. No matter what the colour of your political stripes, this is a democratic travesty and can't continue. We need to show that this is unacceptable. "Gather Saturday 2pm May 8th in Trafalgar Square to demand fair votes - and wear purple, the colour of the franchise. This must be the last election under our broken system. No more wasted votes. No more stitch ups. A large coalition of organisations, from the greens to the labour movement, to faith groups and community activists, are joining the call for change. We need to seize this moment to push for the urgent reform our democracy needs." Demo for democracy -- Saturday May 8th 2pm Trafalgar Square (Thanks, Guy!) |
Posted: 05 May 2010 11:41 AM PDT An AP Psychology teacher wrote a song enumerating several types of cognitive bias -- the blindspots in our thinking -- for his students. It's catchy, it's educational, and it might save you from getting conned, voting for a bastard, or having a stupid fight with your spouse! Cognitive Bias VideoSong (via Freakonomics) Previously: |
Musicians record album in rebuttal to File Sharing is Killing Music article Posted: 05 May 2010 11:36 AM PDT Marc Weidenbaum sez, "The May 2010 issue of the magazine The Atlantic featured an article by Megan McArdle -- the article in which she not only blames 'a generation of file-sharers' for the destruction of the music industry, but also manages to confuse the record industry with the music industry. In a small irony, the illustration used to decorate the article interpolated a detail of a preexisting work that appears to not yet be in the public domain. I got nine musicians (with more to come) to contribute to a non-verbal 'answer album' to McArdle's article. They accomplished this by interpreting the article's illustration (by the talented artist Jeremy Traum) as if it were a musical score. I posted it late Monday with seven completed tracks, and have already received (and posted) two additional tracks, and more seem to be on their way." Marc WeidenbaumDespite the Downturn: An Answer Album (Thanks, Marc!) |
An Inconvenient Nuke: Xeni interviews Lawrence Bender, Jeff Skoll on "Countdown to Zero" Posted: 05 May 2010 11:25 AM PDT A new Boing Boing special feature is up today: my interview with Lawrence Bender and Jeff Skoll (Cove, An Inconvenient Truth) about their new nuclear disarmament documentary Countdown to Zero. As they explain in our conversation, they believe there are two major "extinction-level" threats to the world today: one is climate change, which they tackled in An Inconvenient Truth. The other is nuclear weapons (by "accidents, miscalculation, or madness"), which they address now. XENI: Your film may not be a feelgood movie, but you seem to be trying to leave viewers with a sense of empowerment, the idea that they can do something about this big, terrifying thing that has the potential to destroy all life on the planet.Faces you'll see in the film include Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf, Valerie Plame Wilson, and Tony Blair. Random fun fact I learned, watching the film: a big bag of weed is an excellent place to hide a rod of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU). Also, an HEU specimen is about as big as, say, a shoe, and if you pack that inside a shoebox inside another box stacked in big rows of lots of crates on a cargo container, there's roughly zero chance of any inspector finding that before it enters the USA. Iran getting the bomb is scary, and an imminent possibility. Loose nukes out of the former USSR have already trickled on to the black market. And America is still on hairtrigger alert against Russia. Not a happy-fun film, but one that suggests a concrete path toward change. ☢ AN INCONVENIENT NUKE: Xeni Jardin interviews Jeff Skoll and Lawrence Bender on COUNTDOWN TO ZERO (A Boing Boing special feature) |
14th Annual Webby Awards winners Posted: 05 May 2010 11:17 AM PDT Our pals at the Webby Awards have announced this year's winners and, as usual, the list is a great launching point to check out a sampling of the Web's most interesting, innovative, and fresh sites, from both big organizations and indie media makers! Congrats to all the winners and nominees! 2010 Webby Nominees & Winners |
Why watching TV online (mostly) doesn't help ratings (for now) Posted: 05 May 2010 10:49 AM PDT If you legally watch a TV show online, does it count toward the ratings? It's a question I get asked a lot because more people are watching shows online, and those people know ratings determine if their favorite shows get canceled or renewed. The answer is no, yes and sort of. The "no" answer is easy to explain. TV ratings specifically measure the audience watching shows on TV, while a different kind of ratings system (actually several kinds of systems) measures audiences who watch online. Even though they share a lot of the same content and are integrally linked, online streaming and TV are fundamentally separate businesses that are usually distributed, funded and monetized in different ways. Although we can and sometimes do compile an aggregate number of all people who watch a show regardless of what platform it runs on, that's not an especially useful number on a day-to-day business level. For instance, if an advertiser buys an ad in the BOING SHOW on TV, they don't care how many people watched the show on iPhones because they didn't pay to have their ad run on iPhones. Sometimes advertisers will buy on air, online and mobile simultaneously, but it's not the standard (yet). Side Note: The convergence of advertising is particularly tricky because companies all buy ads in different ways. Some like to buy TV and the Internet as a package, some buy both but they do it separately, some buy only one or the other, and many use third-party agencies to help them figure out what and how to buy. Those agencies might use different internal buyers and planners for TV than online, and so on. Even when everyone wants to buy the Internet and TV together, syncing up the different groups with their schedules, creative and budgets can be challenging. On the other hand, YES! We do track who watches shows online, and we track the revenue that comes in from those viewers. Depending on a variety of factors, that revenue might go directly to us, directly to the show's producer, or be divvied up in any number of ways, with distributors like Hulu taking a cut too. Each deal is slightly different because no absolute standards have emerged (again, I'll add "yet" here). All of those viewers and the revenue that comes from them DO count toward the success of a show. The most accurate answer is probably the "sort of" one. Because the streaming markets for Web and mobile are relatively new, the revenue from them is small. So while revenue from them counts, it's not an especially big number right now and we still make the overwhelming majority of money from TV viewing. We'd rather have a million TV viewers than a million streaming viewers because we make more money from the TV viewers, which means they contribute more to the health and success of a show. Like most answers in the TV industry this one is murky, at times contradictory and will probably change tomorrow. But as things stand today it's a pretty decent overview of how your viewing habits contribute to the health of a show. TV is still by far and away king, but the landscape is evolving and that can -- and probably will -- change in the next few years. |
Century-old baby "mummy" finally buried, then snatched Posted: 05 May 2010 10:54 AM PDT Charles Peavey and his relatives had kept an embalmed baby corpse in the family for nearly a century, considering it an heirloom. Peavey believed the body to be the stillborn son of a great-great-uncle. Several years ago, a judge ordered that the corpse finally be buried. Now, police report that someone dug up the grave last weekend and removed the body from its casket. From the AP: Peavey denies disturbing the grave site, but his home and car were searched Monday, said his attorney, Jim Rosenberg."Mummified baby corpse missing from NH grave site" (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!) |
Tax Amnesty TV ad knows who you are, Tom. Posted: 05 May 2010 10:22 AM PDT At last! Someone has YouTubed the terrifying tax 'amnesty' ad that I wake up to every morning. [Elbunts via Dangerous Minds reader Stephen M Foland] |
Stross explains why he's voting LibDem (me, too) Posted: 05 May 2010 10:47 AM PDT In a long, thoughtful and informative post, Charlie Stross explains why he'll be voting LibDem in tomorrow's elections. So will I, for largely the same reasons. I was thinking of writing up something that explained why from top to bottom, but Charlie's really nailed it. I will add this: of the three front-running parties, the LibDems are the only ones that don't believe that I, as an immigrant, should be forced to carry biometric, radio-enabled identity papers. And they're the party that has an official policy of internet freedom and balanced copyright. If I wasn't voting LibDem, I'd consider the Greens, who, I think, are great on everything except homeopathy (I also have some quibbles with the LibDems, for what it's worth -- but they're minor compared to the large policy questions.) They appear to be more flexible and pragmatic, and much more deeply committed to civil liberties and decentralization and reform of political power than the other major parties. They're committed to abolishing the National Identity Register (which alone would be enough to capture my vote for an election), and more importantly, their party framework is based on a value system I understand.I've also met my local LibDem candidate, Dave Raval, and believe him to be principled, committed, and intelligent, and would be proud to have him represent me in Parliament. Likewise for our neighbours in Islington, whose LibDem candidate, Bridget Fox, deserves the bottomless thanks of every geek in Britain for sticking her neck out to get the party to adopt its forward-looking stance on copyright and the net. Bridget, a former librarian, has the makings of a hero of the information age, and would be an outstanding MP. Update: Before you ask, yes, I get to vote here, though I'm not a citizen. Privilege of the commonwealth -- Canadians, Indians, and other commonwealthers legally resident in the UK get to vote. Previously: |
HOWTO Tell a debt-collector to go to hell Posted: 05 May 2010 09:55 AM PDT Consumerist reader Mark got a BS debt-collection letter for a debt associated with an address he'd lived at 20 years before. He wrote the errant harassers the most comprehensive and compelling go-to-hell letter it's been my pleasure to read. Be sure to click the link below and read the whole thing. Now This Is How You Tell A Zombie Debt Collector To Buzz Off! Previously: |
Canabalt goes Mavis Beacon with Typing Tutor Edition Posted: 05 May 2010 01:40 PM PDT For everyone that thought Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman's surprise hit Canabalt [iTunes link] was, uh, too easy (those windows!), he's just upped the ante with his Typing Tutor Edition, a new web version that maps its jumps to a randomly selected keystroke which changes on every landing (select the keyboard on the menu screen). It starts off easy enough, but if you know its eventual breakneck speed, you've probably already got a single bead of sweat falling down your forehead at the mere thought. Canabalt: Typing Tutor Edition [AdamAtomic] Previously:
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