The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Universal Subtitles: add subtitles to any video on the web
• Dirk Gently BBC trailer
• Judge to copyright troll: get lost
• Ink cartridge rant
• United States of Autocomplete
• $1.1 billion worth of US$100 notes out of circulation due to printing error
• EFF wants Righthaven to pay for its own ass-kicking
• Wikileaked: a foreign policy journal devoted to the Wikileaks releases
• danah boyd explains email sabbaticals
• TSA subjects India's US ambassador to public grope because of her sari
• California's safety codes are now open source!
• More than 1000 Wikileaks mirror sites spring up in a week
• R2-D2 and C-3P0 swimsuits
• Lovely song about math by Wilco frontman's son: Put A Line On It
• Onslaught! Arena featured in Google's new Chrome store
• Minimalist wooden PC case
• Continuing pro-Wikileaks DDOS actions, Anonymous takes down PayPal.com
• Watch listed for $9.95 on eBay turns out to be classic 007 "Dr. No" watch, fetches $66k
• Dramatic video of Antarctic Cruise ship in rough seas after losing engine
• Making omelets inside the egg
• Morten Traavik's skin-covered machine gun art removed so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of Russian president
• The push-button tool being used to shut down Visa, MasterCard, and other sites
• I think there's another planet past Pluto
• Hilary Clinton's "Remarks on Internet Freedom," January 2010
• British politicians remain superfluously witty
• Mini-Vise
• Having DDOsed Mastercard.com to the ground, Anonymous sets sights on VISA
• Photo of Pegasus
• Beautiful time-lapse footage of cordyceps fungi
• Xeni on Madeleine Brand radio show: Wikileaks, Anonymous, Mastercard DDOS, Operation Payback

Universal Subtitles: add subtitles to any video on the web Posted: 09 Dec 2010 04:28 AM PST The nonprofit Participatory Culture Foundation has just launched an amazing new tool: Universal Subtitles. As the name implies, Universal Subtitles makes it ridiculously easy to add subtitles to practically any video on the web, including any HTML5 video, FLV, YouTube, Vimeo, Blip, Dailymotion (you can add subtitles to a video without having to host it yourself, and the same subtitle file can be associated with multiple copies of the video all over the net). Why Universal Subtitles? Well, of course they're useful for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, but they're also a gateway to multilingual consumption of video (as a mostly monolingual anglo, I'm extremely keen to get a chance to follow along with all the fascinating videos made all over the world). Because Universal Subtitles hosts the subtitles separate from the video, it's easy to collaborate with others to produce translations, comic remixes (this is the world's easiest Downfall remix generator!) and closed captions. For video creators, this is a dead simple way to increase the audience for your work -- especially since there's a full-text search coming shortly. For subtitlers, the upcoming workflow management and collaboration tools will make volunteer efforts even easier to run. Both Mozilla and Wikipedia will be including the Universal Subtitles tool for their videos -- and the tool itself is free/open source software, which means that the community can be sure that it won't be orphaned and that the tool can always be improved. If you're a popular YouTube video creator and want to get involved in the launch effort, please get in touch with Dean at the Participatory Culture Foundation. And if you want to try it out now, have a look at the Dirk Gently video I just posted -- it's ready for your subtitles! Universal Subtitles (Disclosure: I am proud to volunteer my services as a board member for the Participatory Culture Foundation, the charitable nonprofit that created and maintains Universal Subtitles)   Miro wants you to adopt a line of code and help fund open video on ... Miro open video player/client gets a major update - Boing Boing Boing Boing: Participatory culture: Downhill Battle's TV-killing ... Make Internet TV: TV making guidelines for the rest of us - Boing ... Miro 1.1: faster torrenting for better net TV - Boing Boing

Dirk Gently BBC trailer Posted: 09 Dec 2010 04:11 AM PST The BBC has just posted the first trailer for its forthcoming TV adaptation of Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently novels, which, though very different from the better known Hitchhikers books, are absolutely charming and extremely funny reads. Coming Soon: Dirk Gently trailer   Fan podcast of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Boing Boing

Judge to copyright troll: get lost Posted: 09 Dec 2010 04:06 AM PST Notorious UK copyright trolls ACS:Law finally had to go to court to make its case against eight of the alleged copyright infringers to whom it had sent legal threats. The judge laughed the case out of court: Judge Birss somewhat politely described the cases presented as having "a number of unusual features." 1. The claimant, Media C.A.T, is not the rights holder of the works in question. A copyright case can only be brought by by the owner of a copyright or an exclusive licensee. Indeed, the Judge later noted that: "There is no plea that the works qualify for copyright protection at all." 2. "The Particulars of Claim include allegations about unsecured internet connections. I am aware of no published decision in this country which deals with this issue in the context of copyright infringement," wrote Judge Birss. 3. "The plea that 'allowing' others to infringe is itself an act restricted by s16 (1)(a) and 17 of the 1988 Act is simply wrong," noted Judge Birss. "The term used by those sections of the Act is 'authorising' and the difference may be very important if the allegation is about unauthorised use of an internet router by third parties." Judge Birss later noted: "A key part of the plea of infringement rests on an assertion [by ACS:Law] that 'allowing' others to infringe is itself an infringing act, when it is not." ACS:Law Take Alleged File-Sharers To Court - But Fail On a Grand Scale   Legal blackmail: comprehensive look at tactics of copyright bounty ... Inside the finances of the UK "legal blackmail" copyright ... Law firm that pursues file sharers gets hacker justice - Boing Boing Meet the US copyright lawyers planning a denial-of-service attack ...

Ink cartridge rant Posted: 09 Dec 2010 04:02 AM PST The copy on this sell-page for a remanufactured HP ink cartridge isn't the normal bland description; instead, it's a heartfelt rant, apparently by the person in charge of writing the site's mindless verbiage. Either that, or it's a stunt to get linkage to an otherwise boring web-page (if so, mission accomplished!): Remanufactured HP 300. Contains 8ml of high quality pigment ink and will print 380 ... Do you know what? I really can't be bothered with writing these description anymore, it's a printer cartridge! What am I supposed to write really??? It's a cartridge that prints ink on to paper, you could print some work stuff or a colouring in page for the kids that they'll half do and then leave laying around on the floor or a poster of the horrible Jonas Bothers for your teen daughter hoping that she might stop listening to there pathetic attempt of music so much. There good quality cartridges I'll admit that, every time I've sneakily took some home with me they've worked perfectly, but the thing that's doing my head in now is writing about them day in and day out with the boss giving me an impossible deadline to finish them all by which means I can't even sit at my desk pretending to work like I know most people do in this place. My advice to you is if you've got to this page then you probably need a cartridge, or you have a weird fetish for ink cartridges, either way it's a ink cartridge, it works perfectly, so if you want one buy one, if you don't then why havn't you left this page allready? Signed: The guy who writes the boring everyday mundane descriptions about printer cartridges everyday. Remanufactured HP 300 - (CC640EE) Black (Thanks, Mark!)   HOWTO trick your printer into using ALL its ink - Boing Boing Graph compares price of inkjet ink to other liquids - Boing Boing HP to spam your web-connected printer - Boing Boing Why HP's region coding excuse is bogus - Boing Boing Program forces Epson printers to use "empty" carts until they run ... Measuring font ink-use by hand-drawing sample text with ball-point ... HOWTO break HP printer cartridge DRM - Boing Boing

United States of Autocomplete Posted: 09 Dec 2010 04:01 AM PST Dorothy Gambrell's United States of Autocomplete map labels each state with the Google Autocomplete word that comes up when you enter the state's name. 12.03.10 United States of America Map (via Kottke)   Funny map of online communities in the style of a D&D map - Boing ... D&D-style map of C++ - Boing Boing XKCD's Online Communities map, part 2 - the online world ... The world according to San Francisco - Boing Boing Tube Map for Miss SC: The Iraqs and Everywhere, Like, Such As ... Great maps of comicbookland - Boing Boing Enormous, fetishistically annotated hand-drawn map of London ...

$1.1 billion worth of US$100 notes out of circulation due to printing error Posted: 09 Dec 2010 03:22 AM PST Some fraction of $1.1 billion worth of new US $100 bills will have to be scrapped due to a printing error; the new high-tech security features are so complex that they foiled the Treasury's own printers. Up to 30% of the bills are defective, and unless someone invents a machine that can tell bum notes from good ones, the whole run will have to be shredded. I think they should do it and sell printers' error commemorative confetti to pay for the next run. An official familiar with the situation told CNBC that 1.1 billion of the new bills have been printed, but they are unusable because of a creasing problem in which paper folds over during production, revealing a blank unlinked portion of the bill face. A second person familiar with the situation said that at the height of the problem, as many as 30 percent of the bills rolling off the printing press included the flaw, leading to the production shut down. The total face value of the unusable bills, $110 billion, represents more than ten percent of the entire supply of US currency on the planet, which a government source said is $930 billion in banknotes. For now, the unusable bills are stored in the vaults in "cash packs" of four bundles of 4,000 each, with each pack containing 16,000 bills. The Fed Has a $110 Billion Problem with New Benjamins (via Consumerist)   Hilarious money doodles - Boing Boing US dollar headed down the same toilet as the Argentine peso ... $134.5 BILLION worth of US bonds seized from smugglers at Swiss ... Counterfeit $1 million bill - Boing Boing

EFF wants Righthaven to pay for its own ass-kicking Posted: 09 Dec 2010 02:22 AM PST When odious the copyright trolls at Righthaven (a company that buys the right to demand legal settlement money from bloggers who quote newspapers from the papers themselves) sued Democratic Underground, the Electronic Frontier Foundation came to the rescue. They kicked Righthaven's ass. Now EFF is asking a judge to award them legal costs in Democratic Underground's defense. If the judge finds in their favor, it could put Righthaven out of business: after all, the copyright troll business-model is to skimp on legal analysis, threaten to sue people, and offer "settlements" that are cheaper than paying for a legal defense. But if the judge in the Democratic Underground case finds for EFF, then defending oneself against copyright trolls will come for free: contingency lawyers will spring up all over the country, knowing that they can beat back the groundless Righthaven claims and pocket hefty fees for their trouble. The more threatening letters Righthaven sends out, the more it will cost them -- that is, unless Righthaven restricts itself to bringing claims that have merit, but this is more restraint than any copyright troll to date has managed to show. The case centers on an EFF client, the political community site Democratic Underground. Righthaven sued the site months ago after a user posted four paragraphs from a 34-paragraph Las Vegas Review-Journal story in May on Sharron Angle, the unsuccessful Republican Nevada candidate for Senate. After suffering a defeat in a lawsuit with a similar amount of infringement, Righthaven moved to dismiss the Democratic Underground case last month. Righthaven, which has been taking advantage of a loophole in copyright law to win settlements in dozens of cases, has told a Nevada federal judge it could still win the case, so it should not have to pay the EFF's legal tab. But the EFF, which has countersued Righthaven, said in a legal filing late Tuesday that Righthaven must pay for Democratic Underground's defense. EFF Demands Copyright Troll Pay for Suing Democratic Underground   Awesomely awesome Australian copyright news: scrappy ISP beats ... Boing Boing: Copyright maximalist troll gets screwed by DRM

Wikileaked: a foreign policy journal devoted to the Wikileaks releases Posted: 09 Dec 2010 02:19 AM PST Wikileaked is a new foreign policy journal that covers nothing but the stories emerging from Wikileaks's leaks, including the latest batch of #cablegate leaks. It looks like an exhaustive blow-by-blow of all the revelations contained in the leaked cables -- something I've been looking for. There are at least four different Wikileaks stories: the intelligence in the cables, the reaction to that intelligence, the debate over the ethics of releasing the cables, and the news about Julian Assange. I find them all interesting, but I'm much more interested in the content of the cables themselves, put into context. Wikileaked is my new go-to source for that information -- despite the fact that its publisher is owned by the Washington Post, which has led the pack in stupid, reactionary attacks on #cablegate (ironic, given WashPo's own history with the Watergate leaks). Wikileaked (via Resource Shelf)   Extremely smart questions about the Wikileaks #cablegate - Boing Boing Boing Boing's Wikileaks "Cablegate" coverage, all in one linkdump ... Guardian editor on Wikileaks/Cablegate: "Terrible" disclosures ... An aid worker's take on Cablegate - Boing Boing Boing Boing's Wikileaks "Cablegate" coverage, all in one linkdump ... Why won't Wikileaks trend on Twitter? - Boing Boing Wikileaks secret US Embassy cable site live - Boing Boing

danah boyd explains email sabbaticals Posted: 09 Dec 2010 02:07 AM PST Many years ago, danah boyd taught me her fool-proof method for an email-free holiday -- a procedure for switching off your email while on vacation, without offending your co-workers, friends, and correspondents. I've used danah's method ever since, and I swear by it: being able to go on holiday from my email and knowing that I won't be clobbered by a mountain of backlog when I return is literally life-changing. The amount of wear-and-tear I've saved in cortisol-damage from email-stress has probably added ten years to my life. danah's off on another email sabbatical and she's posted a detailed description of her procedure and logic. I decided to start taking email sabbaticals as a systematic and respectful way of publicly communicating my boundaries. Six months before vacation, I let close collaborators and colleagues know that I intend to be wholly offline during a set of collectively known dates. A month before I leave, I write out to everyone that I work with to make sure that we all know what I need to accomplish before I leave and make sure that we have a check list to get it all done. I also publicly blog that I will be departing, letting everyone else know that they should get in touch if they're going to need something from me. A week before, I message out again warning people. In this way, I systematically make sure that I take care of others' needs before I depart. Communication is key to an email sabbatical. Disappearing without properly making certain that everyone has what they need is irresponsible and disrespectful. When I am on vacation, I am confident that I have taken care of my responsibilities before I left. I have contingency plans set up for anything I can predict might happen while I'm away. I make sure that my brother, mother, sysadmin, and housesitters all know how to reach me in case of an emergency. But most importantly, I know that my email spool is not filling up with a big To Do list that will haunt me when I'm gone. Do I miss things while I'm on vacation? Most certainly. Inevitably, I will receive numerous emails from journalists covering year-end stories about teens, people wanting me to review journal articles, students wanting help with their term papers, and perhaps an invitation or two. I do feel guilty not personally responding to these people to say that I'm unavailable but that's precisely the point. I need to let go in order to truly take a break and refresh. Are there going to be people pissed off at me because I'm on vacation? Sure. But I'm also used to getting pissed off emails everyday from all sorts of people yelling at me for my attempt to explain teen life. Part of me feels a guilty pleasure knowing that I will never see 5 weeks worth of angry emails. I AM OFFLINE! On Email Sabbatical from December 9 - January 12   danah boyd: Craigslist's "Adult Services" takedown actually hurts ... danah boyd on Facebook's "privacy trainwreck" - Boing Boing danah boyd's PhD thesis: Teen sociality online - Boing Boing Danah boyd's Friendster papers, all in one place - Boing Boing Facebook and "radical transparency": a rant by danah boyd - Boing ... The great Vaseline skin-whitening controversy of 2010: danah boyd ... danah boyd talks social networks - video - Boing Boing Social media's history and trajectory -- talk notes from danah ...

TSA subjects India's US ambassador to public grope because of her sari Posted: 09 Dec 2010 01:57 AM PST The TSA is refusing to apologize to India's ambassador to the USA, who was flagged for an extended public grope because she was wearing a sari. The Clarion-Ledger writes Ambassador Meera Shankar was in Jackson last weekend as a guest of Mississippi State University. "While in town, Shankar met with Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, representatives from the Mississippi Development Authority and members of the Indian community in Jackson, and she spoke to more than 100 people at the Executive Lecture Forum of Jackson," the paper writes. Shankar apparently was selected for enhanced screening, even though she did not set of the airport's metal detectors. Witnesses tell the Clarion-Ledger security agents told Shankar she was singled out because she was wearing a sari, which the paper notes is as "a traditional Indian robe that is draped across the body..." The Clarion-Ledger writes "witnesses said Shankar asked for a private screening, but she was led to a clear box where two officers searched her in clear view." "She is a very strong woman, but you could see in her face that she was humiliated," Tan Tsai, a research associate at MSU's International Security Studies center who witnessed the screening, tells the paper. "The Indian culture is very modest." It all goes to show you: security theater means never having to say "your sari." India diplomat gets 'humiliating' pat-down at Mississippi airport (Thanks, Zarabanda via Submitterator!)   Glocks stolen out of Israeli PM's bodyguard's luggage on American ... Pseudo-science and airport security - Boing Boing United Airlines and Dulles security treat Pakistani military ... Congressman: Air Marshals cost $200 million per arrest - Boing Boing UK Minister detained at Dulles airport - Boing Boing

California's safety codes are now open source! Posted: 09 Dec 2010 01:51 AM PST Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, Public.Resource.Org is pleased to announce that the public safety codes of California are now open source. This was accomplished by purchasing (for $1100!!) the fire, electrical, plumbing, building, residential, mechanical and other public safety codes, scanning the paper, re-typing all text twice to ensure accuracy ("double-keying"), converting to HTML during the double-key process, and the programmatic and manual manipulation of the HTML to add additional markup. This was all checked into Google Code, so you can use subversion to keep yourself up-to-date, the issue tracker to tell us about problems, and the Wiki to find opportunities to participate. You can view the HTML docs here or you can view the code repository here. Our hope is that the citizens of California, both geeks and those that work with the codes, will take this open source on and make these vital laws mean to improve public safety available to all. Title 24, California Code of Regulations¶ (Thanks, Carl!)   Why building codes should be open - Boing Boing Public Resource demands the source code to America's operating ... Begging states to try to enforce ridiculous assertion that the law ... 10 Rules for Radicals: Lessons from rogue archivist Carl Malamud ... US federal IT spending: a wasteland of misbegotten contracts ... Yes We Scan! Carl Malamud for Public Printer of the USA - Boing Boing

More than 1000 Wikileaks mirror sites spring up in a week Posted: 08 Dec 2010 11:47 PM PST The total grew by about 15% just today. [Wikileaks] Previously: Hilary Clinton's "Remarks on Internet Freedom," January 2010.

R2-D2 and C-3P0 swimsuits Posted: 08 Dec 2010 10:05 PM PST Cory posted in October about the R2-D2 swimsuit, but now Black Milk Clothing has added C-3P0 to the line as well! "Artoo Loves Threepio" (Thanks, Dean!)

Lovely song about math by Wilco frontman's son: Put A Line On It Posted: 08 Dec 2010 08:34 PM PST Attention mothers of mine who teach sixth grade: This is a great song to sing with your students for Friday Song. 14 year old Spencer Tweedy, son of Jeff wrote this parody version of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" for his algebra class. The song very neatly and cleverly covers a few key math concepts like lines, slopes and digits. And it is fantastically catchy. Original post with lyrics at Spencer's site [via Xeni via Cassandra Jones]

Onslaught! Arena featured in Google's new Chrome store Posted: 08 Dec 2010 08:01 PM PST Onslaught, one of my favorite entries into our recent game development competition, has become a featured launch title for the Google Chrome webstore. Congratulations to the devs! [Lost Decade Games] December 7, 2010 Contact: hello@lostdecadegames.com SUNNYVALE, CA -- Lost Decade Games is proud to announce its first release: Onslaught! Arena, a medieval fantasy arcade shoot 'em up. Built using HTML5 technologies, Onslaught! Arena is now available for sale in the Chrome Webstore via Google Checkout. About Onslaught! Arena Originally created for the Games Inspired by Music contest from Boing Boing, Onslaught! Arena began as a quick two-week project with programming by Geoff Blair, art by Matt Hackett and music/sound effects by Joshua Morse. Over the next few months, Geoff and Matt continued to tweak and improve the game and stuff it full of content, including: * 50 waves of combat * Over a dozen ferocious monsters * More than 6 types of weapons * Ability to continue from a saved game * Online high score table About Lost Decade Games Lost Decade Games was founded by Geoff Blair and Matt Hackett in September of 2010. Combined, Geoff and Matt have over 20 years of programming and design experience. Our goal is to create engaging, fun HTML5 games with a focus on gameplay and strategy. About the Chrome Webstore The Chrome Webstore is "an open market for apps." Released by Google in December of 2010, the webstore enables users to easily discover and install applications built for the web, with the option to pay for premium software via Google Checkout. Related links * Onslaught! Arena's official home page: http://www.lostdecadegames.com/onslaught_arena * Onslaught! Arena in the Chrome Webstore: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/khodnfbkbanejphecblcofbghjdgfaih * Onslaught! Arena Free Trial / Demo: http://play.lostdecadegames.com/onslaught_arena/demo * Onslaught! Arena Press Kit: http://www.lostdecadegames.com/assets/onslaught_arena_press_kit.zip

Minimalist wooden PC case Posted: 08 Dec 2010 07:44 PM PST Jeffrey Stephenson's famous for his elaborate deco-esque PC cases. This time, he's gone for a more modernist vibe with the Level Twelve. Level Twelve is a Teak and Birds Eye Maple minimalist-styled computer system with hidden vent ducting and a separate self-powered USB peripheral system ... The computer itself is located in the Birds Eye Maple box and is fully self-contained. It could be pulled out of the enclosure while it is operating. Construction photos and a peek at the back are at his website. [Slipperyskip]

Continuing pro-Wikileaks DDOS actions, Anonymous takes down PayPal.com Posted: 08 Dec 2010 07:47 PM PST Third finance-related Anonymous "Operation Payback" takedown in a single day: PayPal.com is effectively offline, moments after the command was tweeted. At the time of this blog post, the PayPal *service* is still functioning, but the site's dead. Earlier today, Visa.com and Mastercard.com were taken offline by Anonymous DDOS attacks, along with other targets perceived as enemies of Wikileaks and of online free speech... including Twitter.com, for a while. Update, 7:20pm: Huh. http://www.paypal.com/ and https://www.paypal.com/ load fine, http://paypal.com does not. But a DDOS is obviously under way. "Two options, could be the https protocol saving them (also suggested by Hacker News guys), or could be the subdomain accessing different servers," guesses Boing Boing's Dean Putney. See Also: Xeni on Madeleine Brand radio show: Wikileaks, Anonymous, Payback Anonymous' "Operation Avenge Assange" takes down Visa e-commerce engine? Having DDOsed Mastercard.com to the ground, Anonymous sets sights on VISA The push-button tool being used to shut down Visa, MasterCard, and other sites Having DDOsed Mastercard.com to the ground, Anonymous sets sights on VISA

Watch listed for $9.95 on eBay turns out to be classic 007 "Dr. No" watch, fetches $66k Posted: 08 Dec 2010 07:09 PM PST A retired Navy doctor named Bob listed a Rolex watch on eBay that he bought 52 years ago on a Navy exchange on the Kwajalien Atoll. He set the minimum bid at $9.95 According to Crunchgear, the item is a watch dork's holy grail -- A "Bond" Rolex Submariner Ref 5510, "the same model Sean Connery wore in Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Thunderball." The closing bid for the watch was $66,100. Rolex Owner Gets A Christmas Surprise: Posted His Watch On eBay For $9.95, Final Bid Was $60,000

Dramatic video of Antarctic Cruise ship in rough seas after losing engine Posted: 08 Dec 2010 05:39 PM PST From Russia Today: "A US-operated Antarctic cruise ship with 160 people aboard has lost an engine in high seas, but is limping safely to its scheduled port. The Argentine Navy said the Clelia II declared an emergency on Tuesday, reporting it had lost an engine amid heavy seas and 55 miles per hour (90 km per hour) winds. The ship, operated by Polar Cruises of Bend, Oregon, has 100 passengers and 60 crew members aboard." See Also: Cruise ship chaos video Cruise ship docks at private beach in Haiti for barbeque and water sports World's *est: Project Genesis Oasis-class cruise liner Man build 90-ton scale model of cruise ship in back yard Inside a retired vintage cruise ship Update: SS United States saved from the scrapper (for now)

Making omelets inside the egg Posted: 08 Dec 2010 04:44 PM PST Lenore and Windell, the Evil Mad Scientists, are national treasures. They are intensely curious amateurs who take great photos and produce well-written, funny, reports on their experiments. Today, they chronicle their quest to make an omelet inside an eggshell. While it may not be possible to make omelettes without breaking eggs, it turns out that you actually can get pretty close. In what follows, we demonstrate some methods of making omelettes inside of eggshells. Perhaps a culinary equivalent of the ship in a bottle. Making omelets inside of eggshells See Also: Make a lap stand for the iPad Physical Pong game The Evil Mad Scientists make a five-color LED-lit fake-seven-segment pseudo-digital pot, based on advanced mattress pad technology Smart coasters detect hot or cold beverages, created by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories Simple garden lights made with LEDs and mason jars Publisher Klutz lives up to its name: "Bristlebots," Scholastic, and Evil Mad Scientist Labs *UPDATED*

Morten Traavik's skin-covered machine gun art removed so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of Russian president Posted: 08 Dec 2010 04:18 PM PST Pete says: "A guy from my hometown Bergen in Norway, Morten Traavik was commissioned by the The Norwegian Armed Forces Museum to create contemporary art for them. However they are not known for their art research and were so shocked to see his work they took it down when the Russian President visited." See Also: Miss Landmine Angola -- beauty contest for landmine survivors

The push-button tool being used to shut down Visa, MasterCard, and other sites Posted: 08 Dec 2010 03:32 PM PST Terrific piece by Joel Johnson on Gizmodo about the software tool being used to take down MasterCard, Visa, and Sarah Palin's websites. LOIC ("Low Orbit Ion Cannon") is an application developed by 4Chan-affiliated hackers designed to--when used en masse by thousands of anonymous users--launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on websites. Like Visa.com and Mastercard.com, for instance. It's a pushbutton application... The idea behind LOIC is that it can allow you to participate in attacks even if you've no clue how to hack. Just download a copy of LOIC (available for Windows, Mac, and Linux!), punch in the target information like a URL or an IP address and zap. It's interesting to see the tweets from Operation Payback on Twitter. It looks like they've also gone after Joe Leiberman's site, as well. I'm sure he'll have some choice things to say about it. No doubt he is loving every second of the attention he's garnering from all this. UPDATE: Operation Payback just published a huge list of credit card numbers with expiration dates. (I saw the list, but I'm not going to link to it.) I don't know if they just grabbed these numbers today, or if they are real credit card numbers. Things are going to get worse before they get better. UPDATE 3:31PM est: The leaked MasterCard numbers might have been faked. (Can I have a T-shirt with that logo?) What Is LOIC?

I think there's another planet past Pluto Posted: 08 Dec 2010 02:33 PM PST (Palomar Observatory. Photo: Mike Brown) Last night's sliver of a moon grows a bit bigger and sets a bit later in its trek across the skies this month. Can you notice the earthshine getting a little fainter? While the view of the setting moon from my backyard last night was among the more spectacular I have ever seen, December is not always the best time of the year for sky watching, even here in southern California. In solidarity with those who have nothing but a blanket of clouds, I bring you an excerpt from my book How I Killed Pluto and How It Had It Coming, published just yesterday, of a December night 11 years ago, when my skies were bringing nothing but misery. One December night in 1999, a friend and I were sitting on a mountain top east of San Diego inside of a thirteen-story-tall dome. Only a few lights illuminated the uncluttered floor of the cavernous interior, but above you could vaguely see the bottom half of the massive Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory. The Hale Telescope was, for almost 50 years, the largest telescope in the world, but from where we sat, with the weak yellow incandescent lighting being swallowed in the darkness above, you would never have guessed where you were. You might have thought you were deep in the interior of a pristine Hoover dam, with cables and wire and pipes for directing the flow of water around. You might have believed that the steel structures around you were part of the far underground support and control of a spotlessly clean century-old subway system. Only when the entire building gently rumbled and a tiny sliver of the starry sky appeared far over your head and the telescope began to move soundlessly and swiftly to point to some new distant object in the universe, only then would you be able to make out the shadowy outline of the truss all the way to the top of the dome and realize that you were but a dot at the base of a giant machine whose only purpose was to gather the light from a single spot beyond the sky and focus it to a tiny point just over your head. Usually when I am working at the telescope I sit in the warm, well-lit control room a few steps away, looking at computer screens showing instrument readouts, staring at digital pictures just pulled from the sky, and pondering meteorological readings and forecasts for southern California. Sometimes, though, I like to step out into the cold dark dome and stand at the very base of the telescope and look up at the sky through the tiny open sliver high overhead and see - with my own eyes - exactly what the giant machine is looking at itself. This December night, however, as I was sitting with my friend inside the dark dome, there was no sky to see. The dome was fastened closed, and the telescope was idle because the entire mountain was covered in cold dripping fog. I tend to get quite glum on nights when I'm at a telescope with the dome closed and the precious night slipping past. An astronomer only gets to use one of these biggest telescopes a handful of nights per year. If the night is cloudy or rainy or snowy, too bad. Your night on the telescope is simply lost, and you get to try again next year. It's hard not to think about lost time and lost discoveries as the second hand very slowly crawls through the night and your dome stays closed. Sabine -- my friend -- tried to cheer me up by asking about life, asking me about work, but it didn't help. I instead told her the story of how my father had died that spring, and how I felt unable to really focus on my work. Desperate, she finally asked me if there was anything that I was excited about these days. I paused for a few minutes. I momentarily forgot about the freezing fog and the closed dome and the ticking clock, and I finally declared: "I think there's another planet past Pluto." See Also: Mike Brown, astronomer and "pluto killer," welcome to the guest blog! It's Only a Sliver Moon (Daily Astronomy Log with Mike Brown)

Hilary Clinton's "Remarks on Internet Freedom," January 2010 Posted: 08 Dec 2010 02:11 PM PST From Hilary Clinton's speech, "Remarks on Internet Freedom," delivered January 2010: We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated censorship. We are providing funds to groups around the world to make sure that those tools get to the people who need them in local languages, and with the training they need to access the internet safely. The United States has been assisting in these efforts for some time, with a focus on implementing these programs as efficiently and effectively as possible. Both the American people and nations that censor the internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote internet freedom. We want to put these tools in the hands of people who will use them to advance democracy and human rights, to fight climate change and epidemics, to build global support for President Obama's goal of a world without nuclear weapons, to encourage sustainable economic development that lifts the people at the bottom up. You can give us those tools now, Secretary Clinton, if you please.

British politicians remain superfluously witty Posted: 08 Dec 2010 01:53 PM PST Via Dangerous Minds.

Mini-Vise Posted: 08 Dec 2010 01:11 PM PST I have been using this little vise since my interest in electronics was sparked by Make and Hackaday.com. Before I was just using the standard two-arm alligator-clip and magnifying glass holder from Xacto. The Panavise is much more stable, adjustable and appropriate for breadboard soldering. It has the little grooves on the arms that your board can slip right into and a nice heavy base which means it doesn't need to be attached to a table if you like to move where you work around a bit. I've built several kits and designs of my own using this little vise. I am comfortable knowing *before* I start any project that this is one problem I am not going to have to solve. --David Van der Voort Mini-Vise $25 Comment on this at Cool Tools. Or, submit a tool!

Having DDOsed Mastercard.com to the ground, Anonymous sets sights on VISA Posted: 08 Dec 2010 01:38 PM PST Looks like Operation Payback is shifting targets from Mastercard.com to VISA. (Previous BB article here, and a related radio piece with Xeni is here.) Update, 1:02pm PT: The Visa.com site is now unavailable. Goodness, that was fast. Post updated with a screengrab of the response I get when attempting to access visa.com. Below, a video released when Operation Payback began back in October (only recently did the focal point become companies cutting off the lifeblood of funding or internet services to Wikileaks).

Photo of Pegasus Posted: 08 Dec 2010 12:03 PM PST From "The Week's Best Photos" at LIFE, this magnificent image of Pegasus, or an antelope being pursued by a crane. You decide.

Beautiful time-lapse footage of cordyceps fungi Posted: 08 Dec 2010 12:08 PM PST This clip from BBC Planet Earth contains amazing/disturbing macro time-lapse footage of cordyceps fungi growing on all kinds of plants and insects. Watch before the clip gets infected by a DMCA takedown fungus. Video link.

Xeni on Madeleine Brand radio show: Wikileaks, Anonymous, Mastercard DDOS, Operation Payback Posted: 08 Dec 2010 12:58 PM PST I joined my former NPR colleague Madeleine Brand on her new, eponymous radio show today, for a discussion on the spy-versus-spy hacker wars around Wikileaks, including the "Operation Payback" DDOS attack that took down Mastercard.com. As a Today Show bubblehead mis-quipped on TV earlier, "I sure hope they get that fixed soon for all the holiday shoppers." LISTEN: Madeleine Brand Show radio segment here (audio embed or download). Bonus: At the end of this clip, Madeleine Brand Show producer and reporter Steve Proffitt takes a few moments to explain what a DDOS is. Sure, if you're reading Boing Boing, you probably already know. But his explanation is non-intimidating and technically sound, and a helpful thing to share with others. (image: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images, via scpr.org. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, shown at a press conference on Nov. 4, 2010 in Geneva.)

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