Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

80-port USB charger board

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 02:11 AM PDT


Building a PC? Why not throw in one of these 80 port USB charger-boards, so you can charge everygoddamnedthing you own? No data throughput, and it wants its own power supply (duh!).

80ポートUSBチャージャーボード (via OhGizmo!)



Fan-made Blade Runner chess-set

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 12:07 AM PDT


Andy sez,
Rick Ross, A long time fan who had made items in homage to Blade Runner before, has been working on a chess set and table in the style of the one that was owned by J.F Sebastian in the film for the past 2 years. Recently he completed a crate for the set that is also in the spirit of the film. One of Rick's prototype sets also was purchased by Adam Savage last spring.

It is an amazing work of art since all the chess pieces were sculpted from scratch by Rick based on HD screen captures of the film, and a poor copy of the set sold in the UK. Interestingly I later found an original copy of the chess set myself after years of searching, but not until after Rick had finished his sculpts. It amazes me how close he got to the original, and how much character he gave it himself. It shows what a true artist this guy really is.

Sebastian's Immortal Game (Thanks, Andy!)


HOWTO make a proto-mute-button for your 1954 TV: the SHADDAP!

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 11:48 PM PDT


This 1954 HOWTO from Mechanix Illustrated invites the reader to take apart the family TV set to make a remote-controlled mute button (called a "SHADDAP") (!). Remember, Zenith's first TV remote control was decried by the broadcasters as a tool of piracy, because it made it too easy to switch away from the commercials:
ARE some of those long-winded commercials spoiling your TV pleasure? You can cut them off temporarily, without getting up from your chair, by means of a simple gadget you can assemble and install in twenty minutes. It's nothing more than a push-type fixture switch mounted in a small box and connected by a length of lamp cord to the loudspeaker of the TV set. Or, for that matter, to the speaker of a radio set.

Look for a little transformer mounted di- rectly on the loudspeaker, or very close to it. Two wires run from it to terminals on the speaker frame; these are the voice coil connections. Cut either wire, and to the two ends thus formed solder the ends of the wire leading from the pushbutton box. The latter should be long enough to reach your normal viewing position. There is absolutely no danger of shock, as the speaker is isolated from the high-voltage section of the chassis and the juice across the voice coil proper is only a fraction of a volt.

When the selling spiels become too obnoxious, press the switch, and the room will be flooded with silence. Peace, it's wonderful!

make a "SHADDAP" (May, 1954)


New Canadian science fiction magazine

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 10:36 PM PDT

AE is a new Canadian science fiction magazine, named for AE Van Vogt. They're launching their issue one later this month:
In the meantime, you can read our exclusive interview with Hugo winner Peter Watts and our printable microfiction zine AE Micro.

Also, if you want a chance to contribute to AE, be sure to check out our ongoing Black Destroyer illustration contest.

NEW: AE is now open to submissions from Canadian writers.

AE -- The Canadian Science Fiction Review (via IO9)

Whatthefuckismytransmediastrategy.com: random transmedia strategies for everyone!

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 04:05 AM PDT

www.whatthefuckismytransmediastrategy.com is a project from Dan Hon and friends to generate random "transmedia" strategies for your business. Here are some I got:

Leveraging the power of event driven appointment to view broadcast to create continuous partial attention episodic social narrative dynamics

ARGifying serious games through cross-platform brand-smart interactive narrative

Enhancing the gamelayer with interactive cloudsourced narrative

The scary thing is, I've actually heard people say stuff that's even weirder than this.

Whatthefuckismytransmediastrategy.com (via Warren Ellis)

Anonymous cowards buy the US mid-term elections

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 10:25 PM PDT

Hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of right wing attack ads have been aired in this US mid-term election season, but for the most part, no one knows who is paying for these ads, as the payments are laundered through shadowy political organizations that are late (or negligent) in complying with disclosure rules. Dan Gillmor has a proposal:
If I could be media czar for a day, I'd get every newspaper behind this project:

* The first step would be, with the public's help, to visit every station, get a copy of every log of political advertising, and then compile numbers at local, state and federal levels.
* The next step would be to see who's benefiting from the spending, i.e. who's not being attacked, and disclose that.
* Then, see if the spenders are following the law in how they describe what they're doing with the money; as NPR observed, the gaps in the forms showed that the spenders were blatantly flouting even the minimal disclosure requirements.
* Then get every media outlet that cared to trumpet the results for their own regions and the nation.

That's the easy part, unfortunately. Learning how much is being spent, and on whose behalf, won't uncover the names and businesses of the anonymous cowards who are pouring so much cash into buying a new Congress. But perhaps, just perhaps, wider understanding of the vastness of this enterprise would generate sufficient public outrage to force some changes later on.

Anonymous cowards are buying the 2010 election

Inflatable xenomorph fetishwear

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 10:20 PM PDT

German inflatable fetishware store Blackstyle.de sells these groovycreepy inflatable xenomorph suits for people who are, I suppose, into a kind of rubbery anti-furry.

BILDER | PIX (via JWZ)



Jobs for open hardware hackers

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 10:10 PM PDT

The open hardware hackers Adafruit Industries have created a jobs board for "designers, makers, programmers, artists and engineers who are looking for great places work at & projects to work on" and the companies that want to hire them. Adafruit partner Phil Torrone sez:
The job board has jobs for people in the world of embedded linux to programming Arduinos and teaching PCB production - anyone can use the jobs boards, no recruiters and they approve each one. The whole system is built on the open source job board system "JobberBase".
Adafruit jobs board (Thanks, Phil!)

Ray Ozzie leaves Microsoft

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 10:07 PM PDT

Dan Gillmor has the news that Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's visionary Chief Software Architect, has left the company. Ozzie, whose P2P startup Groove was bought by Microsoft, is admired and well-liked in tech circles as someone who believes in the transformative power of technology to improve the world. Like Gillmor, I was very hopeful for Microsoft when Ozzie was given the Chief Software Architect role after Bill Gates stepped down, and dared to dream about what Microsoft might be like if he ended up running the company -- so, like Gillmor, I'm pretty disappointed to see him go (and excited to see what he does next).
For all his qualities, Ozzie didn't push Microsoft fast enough toward the future, or else his pushing was resisted. Microsoft dallied way too long to get into the "cloud" where software becomes as much as service as a product you buy. The competition -- Google, Amazon and others -- is more entrenched now, and for all the formidable technical talent at Microsoft, the company hasn't caught up in key areas. Keep in mind, however, that Microsoft's bread and butter (and gold and diamonds) remains in the licensed-software market, where it's still an absolutely huge and immensely profitable enterprise.

It'll be fascinating to see what Ozzie does next. I find myself hoping he'll try something in the social-entrepreneurship arena. Certainly he can live with a lower paycheck than most of us.

As for Microsoft, which keeps losing (or expelling) top executives, the questions grow more urgent. Ballmer has been a better CEO than his critics say, but if the board isn't pushing him to line up a solid successor, and soon, the directors are falling down on the job.

Ray Ozzie leaves Microsoft

(Image: Ray Ozzie on Day 2, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from begley's photostream)

Photos from Japanese pop-singer's abandoned house

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 09:58 PM PDT

Google Book Search will never have an effective competitor

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 09:53 PM PDT

MIT's Tech Review reports on a paper in the Stanford Technology Law Review, in which law/economic scholar Eric M. Fraser explains the anticompetitive aspects of the Google Book Search settlement that the Authors Guild has proposed. The Authors Guild -- a collection of 10,000 writers who had the gall to negotiate this deal on behalf of every writer, living and dead, all over the world -- completely ignored people like the Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle, who urged rightsholders to make a level playing-field for book-search be a prerequisite for any deal. As Kahle says, "Book-search should be like web-search." That is, it should be open to anyone with a good idea and some servers.
- The settlement allows Google to sell copies of works that no other organization in the U.S. can sell: so-called "orphaned" works where the original copyright holder cannot be located because, for instance, they went out of business, of poor record-keeping or mergers. This could eventually constitute the bulk of Google Books. As Fraser puts it, "No other firm has ever been able to legally copy orphan works."

- The settlement allows Google to do things that no one else can reasonably expect to ever be able to do. That's because the only way any other potential competitor for Google Books could reach the agreement it has with publishers--a class action agreement that gives Google default rights to all books ever published in the U.S. unless the holder of their copyright contacts Google to opt out--would be for that competitor to do what Google did: illegally scan the books and then hope for a good outcome when slapped with a class-action suit by all the country's publishers.

- This means that under the current settlement, there is no reasonable expectation that a competitor to Google Books will or could ever arise. Because Google will be allowed to set prices more or less in collusion with publishers, this will give Google no effective competitors in this space. Google will be a de-facto monopoly. "The parties to the actual lawsuit--Google on the one side and authors/publishers on the other side--all benefit from the settlement agreement because it enables collusive pricing," Fraser said via email.

Let's be clear: I'm delighted that Google has figured out a way to bring back orphan works -- I just wish that the Authors Guild and Publishers' Association had the foresight to understand that vesting all this power with one firm (even one I admire as much as Google) was disastrous policy.

I also disagree with the idea that scanning books for the purpose of indexing them is illegal -- making a copy of a copyrighted work in order to generate an index is fair use, and it takes place billions of times every day, as search engines crawl the web (itself made up of largely copyrighted works), doing exactly that.

Why There Can Never Be A Competitor to Google Books

Antitrust and the Google Books Settlement: The Problem of Simultaneity, Eric M. Fraser, Stanford Technology Law Review

(Thanks, Melinda!)



Graveside service for goldfish

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 05:19 PM PDT

From the apparently-defunct Channelbee website, via Roger Ebert.

What happened when one pilot refused to submit to "naked" backscatter scan

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 05:05 PM PDT

In an online forum for pilots of the private jet charter service ExpressJet, Houston-based pilot Michael Roberts relates the disturbing tale of what happened when he recently refused to consent to an "Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) system" (aka "backscatter scan," aka "naked scan" aka "the porn machine") at the TSA checkpoint. He also refused a manual pat-down from TSA agents, after already going through a metal detector, if I'm reading this correctly.

The short version is that Mr. Roberts was detained, interrogated by TSA and police, and then suspended from his job. The incident took place on Friday, October 15 when he was on his way to work, in uniform. I don't know the status of his case at the time of this blog post, but sounds like he may now be fired. Snip:

As I loaded my bags onto the X-ray scanner belt, an agent told me to remove my shoes and send them through as well, which I've not normally been required to do when passing through the standard metal detectors in uniform. When I questioned her, she said it was necessary to remove my shoes for the AIT scanner. I explained that I did not wish to participate in the AIT program, so she told me I could keep my shoes and directed me through the metal detector that had been roped off. She then called somewhat urgently to the agents on the other side: "We got an opt-out!" and also reported the "opt-out" into her handheld radio. On the other side I was stopped by another agent and informed that because I had "opted out" of AIT screening, I would have to go through secondary screening. I asked for clarification to be sure he was talking about frisking me, which he confirmed, and I declined. At this point he and another agent explained the TSA's latest decree, saying I would not be permitted to pass without showing them my naked body, and how my refusal to do so had now given them cause to put their hands on me as I evidently posed a threat to air transportation security (this, of course, is my nutshell synopsis of the exchange). I asked whether they did in fact suspect I was concealing something after I had passed through the metal detector, or whether they believed that I had made any threats or given other indications of malicious designs to warrant treating me, a law-abiding fellow citizen, so rudely. None of that was relevant, I was told. They were just doing their job.

Well, today was the day
(ExpressJet Forums, via @ioerror)

Perhaps the best part of the pilot's testimonial is the last line in his email signature: Malo Periculosam Libertatem Quam Quietum Servitium ("I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery").

And now, a moment of "Woah"

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 04:29 PM PDT

woahmoment.jpg

Today, while trying to come up with a comparison for the size of a Boeing 737, I stumbled across this Wikipedia image. On the left, the skull of a blue whale. On the right, some dude.

You could curl up in the blue whale's eye socket.

In other words: "Woah."

Snapshot: Via Corporativo "eco-architecture," Tijuana

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 04:22 PM PDT

Above, a quick iPhone snapshot I took over the weekend while visiting Via Corporativo, a new ecologically-designed/locally-sourced building in Tijuana, Mexico. This shot is looking up from the second floor through a kaleidescopic vertical pathway that twists through upper floors and to the sky. It was dusk, and a most striking element in a beautiful building. The snapshot's no prizewinner, but it's the best I have to blog right now. It reminded me of a recent visit to the SpaceX factory, and what I saw when I looked up through the mirrored inner hulls of rockets destined to ascend to space. Maybe this Tijuana building will eventually lift off for some other galaxy, too.

I'm told the wood and concrete in the building are locally sourced, as are other elements. Much thought given to cyclical solar and wind conditions in designing the building.

There will be a cool art gallery on the second floor, featuring local artists. I was in the area to participate in Tijuana Innovadora, which totally blew my mind—more on the cool things I encountered at that event in future posts. Many thanks to Tijuana-based arts organizer and curator Montserrat Leon for showing me the new space.

Chris Carter's Tutti Box sound generator

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 05:08 PM PDT

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BB pal Chris Carter of seminal industrial music group Throbbing Gristle, Chris & Cosey, and Carter Tutti is a music machine hacker of the first order. He just made this lovely Tutti Box, the first in a series of "scratch-built, self contained, experimental sound generators," for his wife, the lovely and talented Cosey Fanni Tutti to play on the upcoming Throbbing Gristle tour. What you can't see in the image above is the magick he worked into the top of this stately box. From Chris's CCCL blog:
The lid of the Tutti Box includes a small but powerful 'performer facing' amp & speaker and an 'audience facing' 6" plasma display. The display uses a mixture of Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon and Nitrogen to produce blue lightning strands triggered by the sounds generated. Tutti Box




Video: "More Dangerous Than Dynamite" (1941)

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 03:06 PM PDT


Note to self: Stop washing clothes in gasoline.

Roger Mayer, guitar effects maker for Hendrix, Page, Beck

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 09:10 PM PDT

Wikipedia Commons 3 39 Roger Mayer And The Jimi Hendrix Experience-1
Roger Mayer was an acoustic engineer for the British Navy who in the late 1960s, through his pal Jimmy Page, became the go-to electronic effects whiz for Jimmy Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, and a bunch of other innovative musicians. For Hendrix, he built the Octavia, a pedal that doubled the input pitch an octave higher or lower and, natch, added fuzz. I love the 1968 photo above of Mayer with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Mayer is still in the game, making and selling guitar effects pedals via his site here. And for an interview with Mayer, check out the video below.

New York Times belatedly discovers ayahuasca tourism

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 02:42 PM PDT

Maggie Simpson's naughty message

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 02:19 PM PDT

44K0N5Zmfo8 Tlyngpfbpxi Aaaaaaaaadq 4Sqldz W8Fa S1600 Maggielearnsinsults
See the blocks on the right. From last week's episode, "Money Bart." "Maggie Simpson learns a new word" (Thanks, bbmancini via Submitterator)

Ambient noise affects food taste

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 02:07 PM PDT

Noise can make foods seem crunchier and taste blander, a new study suggests. Andy Woods who is a researcher at the University of Manchester and also at Unilever ran the study, in which blindfolded participants ate and rated various foods while hearing nothing, quiet white noise, or loud white noise. From the journal Food Quality and Preference:
The foods were then rated in terms of sweetness, saltiness and liking (Experiment 1) or in terms of overall flavour, crunchiness and liking (Experiment 2). Reported sweetness and saltiness was significantly lower in the loud compared to the quiet sound conditions (Experiment 1), but crunchiness was reported to be more intense (Experiment 2). This suggests that food properties unrelated to sound (sweetness, saltiness) and those conveyed via auditory channels (crunchiness) are differentially affected by background noise. A relationship between ratings of the liking of background noise and ratings of the liking of the food was also found (Experiment 2). We conclude that background sound unrelated to food diminishes gustatory food properties (saltiness, sweetness) which is suggestive of a cross-modal contrasting or attentional effect, whilst enhancing food crunchiness.
"Effect of background noise on food perception" (ScienceDirect)

"Background noise affects taste of foods, research shows" (BBC)

Snapshot: Die Antwoord trufans, Los Angeles, Oct. 17, 2010

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 01:05 PM PDT

Jen and Bruce, Die Antwoord trufans, at last night's show in Los Angeles at The Music Box. The show was fierce, and so were the fans. I didn't get any good snaps of all the people wearing fake animals on their heads, in homemade ode to Yo-Landi's Evil Boy video "coat of rats," but holy cats: so many furries! Thanks to all the Boing Boing readers who said hi, too—what a super fun night that was. And if you're the guy I inadvertently gave a black eye to while moshing: ewps, yo.

New album's here. Tour date list is here. Seriously, if you're in any of these cities, you have to go see this band live. Such a phenomenal live show. Also: They'll be performing on Jimmy Kimmel this Wednesday, Oct. 20.



What Technology Wants

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 02:33 PM PDT

WhatTechWants.jpeg I'm breaking all the rules of Cool Tools here. I am going to review my own book, and it is not 100% toolish. But the book does have a lot to do with technology, and some readers may find it personally useful in helping them decide what kind of technology to embrace. I promise to unleash this kind of self-promotion only once every ten years, so I'll keep it interesting. My book, What Technology Wants, presents an unconventional view of technology. I inspect the world through the eyes of technology as if it were an autonomous system. Here are some provocative things I see through its point of view:


* Technology is the most powerful force on the planet.
* Technology is an extension of evolutionary life, best thought of as the 7th kingdom of life.
* Humanity is our first technology; We are tools.
* Technology is selfish; as a system it exhibits its own urges and tendencies.
* Technologies cannot be banned, and none go extinct.
* The progression of technologies is inevitable.
* Because technologies are inevitable we can prepare to optimize their benefits.
* Technology is not neutral but serves as an overwhelming positive force in human culture.
* We have a moral obligation to increase technology because it increases opportunities.
* The origins of technology lie in the Big Bang.
* Technology preceded humans and will continue beyond us.
* Among the things technology wants are increased diversity, complexity, and beauty.
* Technology may be as much a reflection of the divine as nature is.
* Technology is an infinite game, a grand story we can align ourselves with for greater meaning.

What I learned from writing this book is that I want to minimize the amount of technology in my own life while maximizing it for others. I want the largest pool of choices possible so that I can select a minimal set of highly-evolved tools that will optimize my gifts. At the same time I have a moral obligation to maximize the amount of technologies in the world at large so that others may also select their minimal set from this ever growing pool of possibilities.

I hope what you get from reading What Technology Wants is a useful framework for understanding what technology means in our lives -- a way to anchor your own self in the face of ceaseless accelerating technological change.

(I think of this book as the second part of a conversation that began with my research postings in The Technium. I've taken those rough posts, improved by readers' comments, thrown out half of the material, and then refined the best into a readable book much better than the blog. I've set up some forums for discussions, and a Facebook page where you can "like" it. I'll be on the road speaking about the book in October, November and January. My schedule and more can be found at the book's webpage.)

Oh, and one more thing: Starting with the premise that technology is selfish and slightly autonomous, I lay out a dozen or so long-term trajectories inherent in the technium. Taken together these giga-trends inform the development of technology investment and the choice technological expressions today. These "wants" of technology provide a long-horizon framework for business -- your business. I'll be doing as many talks at companies and organizations about "what technology wants" as I can in the coming months.

-- KK

What Technology Wants
Kevin Kelly
2010, 416 pages
$21

Available from Amazon


Comment on this and view excerpts at Cool Tools. Or, submit a tool!

Zola Jesus

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 12:23 PM PDT

[Music] Zola Jesus: "Poor Animal." Man, I'm feeling this. Takes me back to a moment on a front stoop in the South at 16, listening to my first Cocteau Twins and Bauhaus vinyl, smoking opiated hash, lightning bugs flickering in the night sky like living blink tags. Amazon Link.

Buddhist tee: This Body Will Be a Corpse

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 10:43 AM PDT

Steve Silberman sez, "'This body will be a corpse' - a dramatic reminder of impermanence from Ethan Nichtern's Interdependence Project:" "Wearing this tee is a reminder to stay in touch with the reality of impermanence as well as a way to support the efforts of the Interdependence Project."

"This Body Will Be A Corpse" Organic Cotton Tee (Thanks, Steve, via Submitterator)



Prentiss County, Mississippi Jail requires all inmates to have a Bible, regardless of faith

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 10:40 AM PDT

Matt Staggs sez, "Jews, Muslims, Hindus and non-religious types who just like to read: you're out of luck at the Prentiss County Jail. You can have three books, but one of those MUST be the Bible."
Property List
* 3 WHITE TOWELS
* 3 WHITE WASH RAGS
* 3 WHITE T-SHIRTS
* 3 WHITE PAIRS OF UNDERWEAR
* 3 WHITE PAIRS OF SOX
* 1 PAIR OF SHOWER SHOES
* 3 BOOKS - ONE OF THE BOOKS MUST BE A BIBLE * NOTHING PRINTED OFF THE INTERNET
* NO MAGAZINES

REMEMBER YOU CAN ONLY RECEIVE PROPERTY ONCE !!!

The Prentiss County Sheriff's Department Protecting and Serving the citizens of Prentiss County Mississippi (Thanks, Matt, via Submitterator)


TrustoCorp exhibition in LA, Oct. 23-24, 2010

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 09:34 AM PDT

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TrustoCorp (known for making signs and bolting them to urban signposts -- see here and here) has a show at 1988 Gallery in Los Angeles on Saturday, Oct. 23 and Sunday Oct. 24.

TrustoCorp exhibition in LA, Oct. 23-24, 2010

3D Lego printer

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 09:01 AM PDT

The MakerLegoBot is a Lego Mindstorms-based 3D printer that turns software descriptions of Lego builds into completed Lego pieces, automatically, picking and snapping down pieces as it goes. Next step would be a MakerLegoBot that prints other MakerLegoBots, of course:

A Java Application that runs on the PC takes an .ldr MLCad file, determines a set of print instructions, and then sends the instructions via USB over to the MakerLegoBot for printing...

The core concept that makes 3D print of Legos possible is the sticky grab and axle release mechanism. The printer head selects from an array of Lego bricks, moves to the correct location, and then places each Lego in its determined spot...

It took many nights and many iterations to get the feed system working consistently. The current design works with 1x2, 2x2, 3x2, 4x2, and 8x2 Lego bricks. Once a brick is grabbed, the next brick in line falls into place.

MakerLegoBot: A Lego Mindstorms NXT 3D Lego Printer (via Makerbot blog)



Random fact about sugary drinks

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 08:49 AM PDT

Cold soda pop is fizzier because the chill slows down the motion of carbon dioxide molecules, trapping the pop in your soda.

The Monarch Butterflies' Mexican Vacation

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 08:45 AM PDT

The annual Fall monarch butterfly migration is an astounding thing. Hundreds of millions of orange-winged insects, traveling upwards of 30 miles a day, so that damn near every monarch in North America can converge on the same small patch of Mexico. In these over-wintering grounds, the monarch butterflies hang from the trees in clumps so thick that they look like dense leaves. You can end up with as many as 50 million butterflies on an area of land a little smaller than two-and-a-half soccer fields.

And what happens when all those butterflies wake up in Spring? In this clip from National Geographic's upcoming Great Migrations series, monarchs open their eyes, stretch their wings and proceed to get it on.
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